29. Lake City has a troubled race history
Lake City in the 1950s was fairly typical of a pre-Civil Rights Southern rural settlement. The city was home to segregated black and white populations. Think of what Martin Luther King Jr. fought against in the 1960s, and you’ve got a pretty good idea of life in Lake City during Ronald McNair’s childhood. Lake City’s history is peppered with racial injustice. In 1898, for example, a notorious murder took place there. A white mob burned the house of Frazier B. Baker, shooting him and his infant daughter dead when they fled. Baker’s crime? Being Lake City’s first black postmaster.