You were lucky then. I grew up in both a small town and rural area of southeast MO, where the Ozarks met the Mississippi River bottoms. If you weren't WASP you were ignored at best and you don't  want to know the at worst.  My third grade school teacher was my Catholic godmother. My fifth grade teacher taught us about the evils of the Catholic Church and how it killed god fearing real Christians for reading the Bible and led prayers asking that we all come know Jesus. amen. There were at least three Catholic kids in that class.  In high school my advanced French class was made to sing a rather nasty song about a monk who broke all of vows and the various ways he did so.  Crosses were still being burned in the country and a barn or two as well. The neighboring county where my family came from, had no black residents into the 1990's. Any who tried to move in, even as hired help, would be warned it wasn't a good idea to stay too long...it was always understood too well.