Blatant & Latent Racism in North Carolina & the Midwest
Previously, we had discussed racial perceptions in affluent suburbs of Chicago during and after WWII. It is perhaps well to realize that at this point in history, the armed forces were still segregated, with black units often drawing the most unsavory assignments. Accomplishments such as those of the Tuskegee airmen went unnoticed. In fact, it has been only recently been public knowledge that the first colonist killed at the Boston Massacre was black: even the classic painting of the event revises history to make him white.
About the age of 10 I experienced the supposed liberal midwest, Minneapolis in particular. There, for the first time, I actually heard the word “nigger.” I didn’t know any of course, but there were slums near downtown which seemed to have solely black inhabitants. In the huge junior high school I attended there was one black girl student, but I didn’t notice that anyone went out of their way for or against her. I did play basketball for my church league team, and we played a team from the Pillsbury Settlement House every year. The Pillsbury House was sort of a community center for underprivileged, apparently black youth, funded, of course by the Pillsburys.
It was the coach of this team that introduced me to naked racism, although as I’m sure many of that time, he was unaware of it. He was very fond of telling us jokes on the way to and from games, and they were always about something called “niggers,” which I wasn’t sure what were. It is from him that I first heard the myth that many blacks were better athletes because they had to try harder to make the team: they couldn’t be as good ad the whites, they had to be better. Now, it was a little hard to check that out. The Minneapolis Millers, the New York Giants AAA farm team had “negro” players, but non of my beloved Minnesota Gopher teams nor the Minneapolis Lakers. AT this time, polite midwestern society was railing against the racial abuses in the deep south. I was horrified many years to learn, from their own media in the case of the U of M, that the absence of blacks was no accident. Before I leave the midwest. let me summarize by saying that apparently black were tolerated, not harassed or abused that I could see, but were definitely excluded from polite society, even from athletic teams. At this point it could be pointed that the only blacks on television were entertainers or vile charicature such as Amos & Andy and Jack Benny’s Rochester.
The last paragraph may seem a bit rough about the midwest, but in 1955 I was located in semi-rural North Carolina
and experienced pure racial hatred first hand. Blacks were not only second class citizens, they weren’t even citizens, not having even the basic rights. They were not allowed to hold jobs except menial labor and janatorial jobs, and so had no access to anything other than enough for just the basic necessities. The black neighborhoods had dirt paths for streets and few working street lights. Whites regularly abused blacks verbally and physically, but mostly verbally where I was. I recall our (all white, of course) high school activity bus driving through black neighborhoods with my teammates hanging out the windows screaming the vilest racial/sexual slurs imaginable.
I often hear people say that that those like my parents and me should have said something. Believe me, that would have done nothing but get me in more trouble than I already was. You see, in that area at that time, a frequent phrase was “goddamnyankee is all one word to me.” Fortunately, I was a good football player and this was North Carolina, and they do have their priorities. So at least I was accepted into society, sort of. But I did learn first hand what my old basketball coach was referring to: I couldn’t be just as good to achieve whatever(makijng the varsity, starting position, school band, etc), I had to be better. Much better. But this is a perhaps unnecessary digression.
Now this was after Brown V Topeka Board Board of Education, so supposedly racial equality was the law of the land. But not as far as this population was concerned. Blacks had, of course, no rights in court and in much of the South, couldn’t vote(I think they could where I was). But the “separate but equal” system had 8 white high schools, one black, in the county, and three white and one black in the Fargo sized city the county contained.
I believe during my later highs school years a negro tried to enroll in one of the white city schools(it was shortly after that if not). There was a large white turn out to physically prevent her from entering the school grounds. It seems to me that she eventually made it though.
Before I close this section, a little more about what segregation actually meant. It literally meant no race mixing. restaurants, movie theaters, all sporting events were strictly segregated. The only blacks I knew were our maid and the janitor at the local newspaper where I worked nights. It was this last that I realized that segregation violates everyone’s rights. You see, this janitor aad I became friends(not at all unusual, as long as he kept his place) and wanted to go to a sporting event together. But, you see, we couldn’t: it would have been illegal.
Next: A somewhat liberal college in a sea of racism.
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