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Texas introduced the family to America s split attitudes toward difference and racial discrimination.
“It was our first exposure to racism in the sense of seeing Confederate flags and people who let it be known that we weren t welcomed,” Swen recalls. “We had to ask ourselves, ‘Did we do something wrong?’ In Africa, there were tribal differences, but that had nothing to do with the color of one s skin. I was forced to look at these things, to understand my place in this new country. As a child, it was all very confusing.”
Yet, there were also parishioners of a White church who helped the family with bills, covered the cost of summer church camps for the children and provided the family with its first car.