My friend Ken Gale from my broadcasting days, and I were having a chat on his page. This about comic books culture history, and the things we live with. He mentioned that the "Green Book",...that guide to where traveling American Negros in the Jim Crow era could safely go.
Ken mentioned that in the 1940 edition of the "Green Book". The NYC Metropolitan Museum of Art is not mentioned as "safe".
It wasn't.
There were "White Only" days. That is certain days when Coloreds were not allowed to enter. They've btw buried that truth. You'll find it nowhere online.
It's become an oral history from those that were there then.
The Met was a place my folks never took us. I didn't understand why at the time. There being a burned paper trail I can't find the Jim Crow rules they used, and the dates they used them through. It's no surprise that to this day I have never been to the Met.
It's become an oral history from those that were there then.
The Met was a place my folks never took us. I didn't understand why at the time. There being a burned paper trail I can't find the Jim Crow rules they used, and the dates they used them through. It's no surprise that to this day I have never been to the Met.
It just became an off limits area that stuck.
Those of us that lived during Jim Crow have reflexive reactions to certain places. Even to whole regions that were unsafe for us. Even now 60 years later I'm uncomfortable traveling deep on to Long Island. Even though it's become far more multicultural. Back then if you weren't a maid driver or laborer you had problems.
Those of us that lived during Jim Crow have reflexive reactions to certain places. Even to whole regions that were unsafe for us. Even now 60 years later I'm uncomfortable traveling deep on to Long Island. Even though it's become far more multicultural. Back then if you weren't a maid driver or laborer you had problems.
In my mind's eye it's still "Whites Only". I imagine it always will be. This despite the large Indian Paki Mexican Haitian population out there now. Racism leaves strange scars.
3 comments:
That’s awful.
If you ever wind up going to the Met, maybe you could wear your Civil War regalia. It’s truly insidious how they’ve sanitized their history. I suppose you’d have to find multiple editions of that “Green Book” to get the time frame. I wonder would period newspapers mention anything about it? I mean in the regular announcements of Museum hours, etc.
I’d skip Long Island. Maybe we could pray for a tsunami.
Z
A tsunami would be the perfect karma for what's happened there in the last 400 years. This starting with killing off robbing, and generally seriously fucking over the Natives. That, and pretty much everybody else that didn't have money position or a certain lack of pigmentation.
Otherwise it's a swell place.
You're right about the press of the period having at least a trace of a paper trail. There was a major Negro newspaper here at the time. "The Amsterdam News" it was over 100 years old before I was born. So they'd certainly have shit on them assholes. I'll check it out.
Is this a swell country or what.
Ya see? Hard copy research beats the oh-so-manipulable web.
Maybe on alternate Thursdays you could also show up decked out as Marcus Garvey, Idi Amin or Huey P. Newton, just to scare the crap out of them. Only I’d leave the plastic machine gun at home. Times being what they are, you don’t wanna get gunned down by the NYPD, the FBI and CIA as a dangerous terrorist.
As for L.I., with a little luck maybe there’ll be a huge sewage spill just before the big wave hits.
Z
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