I grew up in the Tampa Bay area of Florida, as did my mother in the 1920s and '30s. To her family's chagrin, my mother married a Northerner and, worse, a Catholic. My father had his faults, but he was rock-solid in one way – his abhorrence of Southern bigotry.
At extended family gatherings, in the 1960s, I was shocked to hear cousins and uncles regularly toss out the N-word – a use of language never allowed in our house.
