Hitchhiking as a black person was very risky, and he needed to get around. His mother raised him well, although he was by no means an angel. His pride turned to shame in an instant.ĭespite growing up in this atmosphere, Hinton had a largely happy upbringing. That was when it dawned on him they were actually shouting a racial slur. He walked off the court to chants that he thought were “Hin-ton! Hin-ton!” But he was a little confused when he realized that the opposition crowd was chanting the same thing. One time, playing basketball for his school, Hinton scored 30 points in a half – a school record. His mother warned him to run if a car full of white men ever pulled up alongside him. Hinton remembers one time when a church was bombed, and he and the other children had to stay at home. And even in the mid-seventies, you could tell that servers weren’t happy about the new arrangement.ĭespite the end of segregation laws, the 1970s were a decade when the threat of violence was ever present. Growing up as a black man in Alabama in the 1970s meant experiencing constant racism.Īlabama had been a deeply segregated state, so it was only at the beginning of the decade that a black person could go into a diner, sit at a counter and order a burger. Be polite to teachers and follow the rules. Don’t try to talk to any white girls, she said. His mother sat him down and gave him a warning. In the beginning of the 1970s in Alabama, Hinton and his friends prepared to start attending a white school, after segregation had been abolished in the state.
What he didn’t know was that almost 30 years would pass before he regained his freedom. He wasn’t afraid when the police came to arrest him – because he knew he hadn’t committed a crime.
In 1985, on a hot summer’s day in Alabama, Ray Hinton was mowing his mother’s lawn.
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