During the same period, Richard's mother worked at a restuarant on the white side of Norco. The front door bore a sign saying, "whites only." There was a window on the side where blacks could buy take-out. Since she was in charge of the kitchen, Richard's mother took full advantage of this segregated arrangement, dishing out 13 shrimp on a loaf for the white customers and 32 shrimp on a loaf to black customers at the window. Richard could take a super-loaded sandwich home and make short shrimp po' boys for the whole family. "Hah," her mother rejoiced. "They [the whites] think they got us, but we are going to make it."
. . .
Margie Richard had painful memories of the racial divide between Diamond and Norco. When she was growing up in Diamond, Norco's only public movie theater . . . was segregated. "On Sundays, if you put on your Sunday best, you could go to the [movie] show, but you better not get your dress dirty," she recalled. The faucet outside said "coloreds only," and after the faucet had been used a few times the dirt beneath it turned to mud. This created a dilemma for Richard and her friends: it was hot and they wanted a drink of water but they did not want to get their Sunday dresses and shoes muddy. "The faucet inside the show was nice and cool, and they had one man collecting ticketes, so we always went in all at one time, ordered popcorn, and when he turned his back to get the popcorn we would drink from the white faucet because we didn't want to get our dress dirty." To this day Richard is proud of the strategy that she and her young friends devised to circumvent the segregation rules.
. . .
While the girls were sneaking drinks at the water fountain reserved for whites, the boys had their own brand of protest. In those days blacks were made to sit upstairs in the balcony of the theater, where it was stifling hot owing to the absence of air conditioning. "they put us up top, but we used to throw stuff down [on the whites in the seats below]," recalled Devon Washington, 47. As a result, black patrons were soon moved out of the balcony and made to sit in the front rows. That was a victory of sorts.
Gethsemani Homilies by Matthew Kelty, O.C.S.O.
6 comments:
Reading that reminded me of when I started kindergarten in Louisiana, the black kids sat on one side of the schoolbus, behind our black bus driver, and the white kids sat on the other side. When I started first grade, the boys sat on one side and the girls on the other.
So anyway, what is this book about, and how did you come to be reading it?
The book is about the black Community of Diamond, LA near Norco, LA near New Orleans. This little community situated on the fenceline between the Shell Chemical plant and the Shell Motiva refinery and live with all sorts of environmental problems and dangers. They have tried to have Shell relocate them or buy them out or to fight for proper environmental enforcement but to no avail. The claim is that they are ignored by Shell and the government because they are a poor, black community.
It deals with the social-economic divide and injustice that still exists in this country despite any racial progress the country might have made.
I am not to far into the book yet. I picked it up for free at an Ingram function. Often at Ingram functions there are free, non-distributable copies of book available, mostly pre-edit runs of books, returns, surplus, etc.
I just finished reading Magic Time. Great book! How interesting that what you're reading now is in keeping with that theme.
Didn't plan it that way either. I had the Diamond book on my shelf for over a year now.
Yoo hoo? Anybody home?
Yes, I am just so busy I have not had time to post. Have some waiting in the wings though.
Post a Comment