SAGINAW, Mich. – It was a family tradition.

Every summer from the early 1960s on, my three siblings and I spent a couple of weeks visiting our grandparents and a multitude of aunts, uncles and cousins in Philadelphia, Miss.

And every summer, as soon as we were old enough to understand what “won’t come back” meant, our mother gave us The Talk before we left Saginaw’s city limits.

They literally were words to live by, because my beloved mother knew what her clueless children “from up North” didn’t know about the hate and ignorance that could get us lynched in her hometown.

“When we’re in town, if a white person calls you (the n-word), ignore it,” my mother warned. “Don’t make some smart remark back to that person. Keep going about your business.

“If someone calls you a colored boy or a colored gal and curses at you, don’t get mad and mouth off. Don’t do it! The white people down there are not like the people in our neighborhood. They will take you off someplace, and you won’t come back.”

Yes, it’s the same Philadelphia, Miss., where a jury of nine whites and three blacks Tuesday convicted onetime Ku Klux Klansman Edgar Ray Killen for the killings of racial equality activists Michael Schwerner, James Chaney and Andrew Goodman in 1964.

The three young men traveled to the small farming community – where we spent countless vacations playing in the red mud and reconnecting with relatives – to help register black voters. Shortly after the trio arrived, Klansmen – led by Killen – killed Chaney, a black Mississippian, and Schwerner and Goodman, white New Yorkers.

Forty-one years to the day after the slayings, Killen, 80, was convicted of manslaughter. Each of the three charges is punishable by up to 20 years in prison. And on Thursday, Circuit Judge Marcus Gordon sentenced him to the maximum term on each of the three counts of manslaughter. Gordon said the terms will run consecutively, or 60 years.

I was almost 3 when the murders occurred – too young to know that my skin pigment was a point of contention for some of the folks “down South.” My siblings and I grew up in a working-class neighborhood filled with Caucasian, Hispanic and black families.

The children in those families – which included the Mannings, the Estradas, the Lucios, the Clarks, the Hamiltons and the Coopers – were our playmates and friends. Race was never an issue, and everyone was a valued member of the community.

That was not the case in Philadelphia, Miss. It was as if we were traveling to another world.

My mother knew we weren’t aware that people in the South were killing folks who looked like us. She also knew we didn’t know that civil rights advocates were staging protest marches seeking the same quality educational, employment, housing and voting opportunities as well as legal justice as their Caucasian counterparts.

She hoped for the best but prepared us for the worst by reminding us again and again and again of the dos and don’ts in Philadelphia, Miss.

So the first time a Mississippi business owner asked me and my siblings, “Y’all coloreds not from ‘round here, are y’all?” we thought long and carefully before we cautiously responded.

“Vacationing down South” was serious business. We enjoyed eating the fantastic Southern food, lollygagging with relatives and the freedom that comes with country living.

However, we also knew as we got older that no matter how foolish we were around family, there was a very real barrier we didn’t dare cross around Caucasians, lest our lifeless bodies wind up dangling from a tree someplace or floating in a river.

Yes, the attitudes of many of the people have changed in Philadelphia, Miss. Killen’s conviction proves that, and it was evident when I journeyed back in 1996 with my own family. My sons and husband loved the tranquility and meeting my mom’s “people.”

While I hoped for the best, I wasn’t willing to stake my sons’ lives on reassuring expectations. So, The Talk tradition continues … just in case the old South resurfaces.