Their School Integrated But Racial Divisions Remained: 'We Missed Knowing Each Other'
Eli Brown, who's black, and Natalie Guice Adams, who's white, were classmates when their Louisiana school integrated 50 years ago. "Our lives were so intertwined, but so separate," Adams said.
Eli Brown and Natalie Guice Adams first met as third-grade classmates, when their school in Winnsboro, La., integrated in fall of 1970. Although they would share a similar academic trajectory, Brown and Adams lived very separate experiences.
"I feel like we missed knowing each other," Brown, a 56-year-old African American man, told Adams, a 57-year-old white woman, during a StoryCorps conversation recorded earlier this month.
When Brown's parents told him that he would soon attend a
