Reply #11: It wasn't just the south [View All]

In 1959, I was in high school. I entered a speech contest put on by some local service organization. The city I lived in, about 50,000 people, had very few blacks at the time, probably about six or eight families -- and they were pretty well known.

One of the other contestants was a black female high school student whose family lived about a mile from mine. They lived in a nice neighborhood. I don't know what her parents did, but they seemed to be about the same economic status as my family.

During a break in the contest, my folks were talking with the black student's mother and she mentioned that they might have to leave early because they needed to take the bus home. We offered them a ride, since we lived so close. They accepted.

Later, some other friends suggested we go to a local hotel restaurant, one of the nicer places in town at the time, for "coffee and dessert." We asked the black students and her mother if they'd like to come along.

The mother hesitated for a few seconds and then said "Oh, we can't do that -- black people aren't allowed in there."

I almost fell over. I had no idea. My parents were also surprised. Of course, we didn't go. We took the student and her mother home, as we had said we would.

This wasn't in the south. It was in Massachusetts.