Her father's parents were slaves, and McClinton grew up in a completely segregated society, the all-black town of Boley, Okla.
"I didn't realize how segregated everything was," she tells NPR's Lynn Neary. That changed after a visit with her uncle in Guthrie, Okla.
"I went to the movies and I didn't know blacks were supposed to sit upstairs. And I sat down and they told me to go up," she says.
"Well, later that evening when we were eating supper, I was talking about it, and I said they make the children sit upstairs," McClinton says. "My uncle said, 'They make you sit upstairs because you're colored.' And that was my first experience."
