By Natalie H., April 12, 2019 — I was born in New York City but when I was seven, my parents moved our family to a farm in New Jersey. In the first farm they owned, a black family also worked there and lived nearby. The mother of that family helped with cleaning on the farm and had three children. While there was a big age gap between us, I would often play with them. At one point, my mother decided to take our family on a vacation to visit her uncle who owned a hotel in Miami Beach. At the time I hadn’t thought of Florida as being part of the South. There were a lot of Jews moving there so it didn’t feel that different from New Jersey. While in a Woolworth’s in Miami, I was walking around the store and eventually went over to a water fountain to get a drink but my mother pulled me away before I could. I asked her why I could not drink from the fountain and she pointed to the “Colored Only” sign, something which I still vividly remember to this day. At the time I confused because I grew up, went to school, and played with other black children. It was something which I found shocking.
