When I was growing up in Gainesville, it was a much smaller place. A little college town often described as “sleepy,” bounded by Waldo Road on one side and the University of Florida on the other. Even then, in the 1970s, the town was split into two halves—a white half on the west, and an African-American half on the east.
For some reason, I grew up on the east side, and went to schools with a large African-American student body. The middle school I attended, Lincoln, had once been a segregated black high school in the first half of the twentieth century, and many of the teachers and administrative staff were black, as was a good chunk of the community that surrounded (and supported) the school.
This might come as a surprise to people on both ends of the political spectrum, but I have nothing but good memories of Lincoln Middle (nor of Williams Elementary, for that matter, which is roughly one-hundred yards north of Lincoln). It was grand old school, full of bright kids and tough teachers who had dedicated their lives to teaching. But there was another reason I liked Lincoln.
It was the building.
Bakhtin's Cigarettes 