Odessa Raiload Tracks

When I was born in 1958, Odessa was divided racially along the railroad tracks running along 1st Street. White people lived north of the tracks and black and Latino people lived to the south. This was not unusual in Texas at the time or in the entirety of the southern United States. The Supreme Court, in Brown vs. Board of Education in 1954, had already declared separate but equal schools to be unconstitutional but integration of those schools and the neighborhoods that surrounded them were slow to change. Odessa is now an integrated city but it didn't happen without it's fair share of dissension and controversy.