William Gattis - On the loss of innocence (clip)
Interviewed on March 26, 2025
William Gattis: And as a kid, the other part to this puzzle is, and a lot of older people can attest to this, you actually learn as a child where you can go and be safe and not harmed. And you know at the bus station, you’re gonna go downstairs to use vending machines. And one of the sisters at St. Paul related her story of how she lived in Greenville, same thing, same scenario. The kids had to learn early. You talk about a loss of innocence? Imagine some of these places that you can go. The loss of innocence… a child in its own innocence, a child of color, is asking her father, “Daddy, why are we going to the back door when everybody else is going to the front? This is a child, so that becomes a loss of innocence. And like I said before it’s not even an elective, you are relegated to this kind of life in order to survive.
