I Read Your Summary on Little Black Sambo

***The staff of the Jim Crow Museum receives dozens of letters and emails. Some of these communiques offer insight into race relations -- historically and in the present. While some are hateful, we have decided to share some of these letters and emails with our Internet visitors.***

I was prompted to write you regarding your summary on the children's book "Little Black Sambo." I am a 60s baby and grew up with that very same book. Although I am not black, I am Italian, I related to Little Black Sambo because "Italians" were portrayed as being greasy, fat, pasta eating, loud mouthed WOPS (illegal aliens that came WithOut Papers [WOPS]). I was insulted on a daily basis even by the school bus driver who one day told me "guinea wop lolipop." Here it is some 35 years later, and that horrible memory still comes to mind.

I was raised in a predominately "white" neighboorhood but I was considered a minority and lower than a "mexican" on the WHITE SUPREMACY scale if you know what I mean. So naturally, I grew up hating myself and all white people. Although the color of my skin is WHITE, I have always been taught that I am EUROPEAN and not WHITE.

There were only two black children that attended my school and I used to think how odd it was that they had to take three different buses to get to school when I only had to take one.

Anyways, to make a long story short, I left that stinking small thinking town and moved to the city where I met a wonderful Jamaican man who later became the father of my two beautiful kids. Thank you for being a part of that musuem and all the wonderful works you do.

-- Feb. 4, 2007