Isaiah is 75. He was born in New Roads, Louisiana 40 miles north of Baton Rouge. He came North to get married.

On life in the South: “I had it good. I lived on a plantation. For the reason that the owners took a liking to me. I played with their children. During the time I played with their children, I rode the white school bus before bussing was available. In the evening the bus would take us all the way back to the owner’s house and I’d walk home. [The owner’s wife] told me when I was 7 or 8 years old, might have been 9. She told me during the Civil Rights thing, ‘I don’t see nothing wrong with you having the same education as my children. I like that. The only thing I’m against is mixed marriage.’”

“He said the owner’s brother was a KKKer. I didn’t know anything about the KKK. When I went home, I asked my father what the hell was the Ku Klux Klan? He said, ‘Well, it’s those people that wears a white sheet and a hood over their head and they burn crosses. And anything to do with white and black that they disagree with, they hang you.’”