General Discussion

They simply didn't have signs up about it. They were sneaky about it.

1961. Ann Arbor, MI. My mum invited black co-workers to join her at her favorite restaurant, her treat, as a reward for all of the surgery workers who had gone above and beyond that year. The black people declined. They knew the restaurant never served them.

Mum insisted, though, she knew the owner, he wasn't a bad person. They reluctantly went along.

Go to the restaurant. Serving staff wouldn't even approach the table, not even to give them glasses of water. Waited over an hour to be served, while white people who came in after them got served. It was a hard lesson for my mum to learn as a newbie to American racism, Northern style.

That's effectively "Whites Only," whether or not a sign was up. In the South, that sign being up was at least honest about the matter.

Malcolm X himself said that racist was racist, and at least Southerners were honest that it's what they were, unlike the North, which was sneakier and more insidious about it. James Baldwin repeatedly wrote about that same issue in numerous novels, plays and essays. Have you not read them?

And consider this: The vast majority of major urban race riots during the 60s happened not in the South but in places like Detroit, Newark, Watts, Harlem, Rochester, Philadelphia, Chicago, Boston, Dayton and etc.

Did it ever occur to you why that was?