Shirley D. was fourteen years old and in the ninth grade. On a regular day she would wake up eat breakfast and go to school. When she got home she would do her homework and make sure her chores were done. Along with her nine other brothers and sisters they would enjoy each other's company and watch there tv shows in the after noon.
In the the 1960s in West Memphis Arkansas there was a lot of racial tension. Shirley describes that there were separate places to sit in movie theaters and separate schools. Her interactions with white people were minimal and she didn't know any different. She did experience prejudice but she choose to ignore it. Life wasn't bad for her but she could always feel the tension between whites and blacks.
The day Dr. King died she was having a normal day and it was going well. She remembers when she got home that it came on Tv and her mother immediately started crying she said she cried because her mother was. She knew him as a hero and was sad, but she was really upset because she wasn't able to watch her normal show. That night was just a sad night but the days following there were riots and violence happening in West Memphis and Memphis.
Shirley said that she never saw a real change in west Memphis after the fact except of the Schools integrating and even the white parents sent their kids to private schools to keep it segregated. They also wrote "go away niggas" on the school walls on the day of the desegregation of the schools. She says it's better now but she still sees discrimination in this country and especially in Arkansas