A Friendly Greeting in the Hotel Lobby

There was a certain kind of learned prejudice in Grampa and Daddy. They both knew limericks and songs that discriminated against minorities and occasionally performed these for us kids. (I will not repeat the lyrics I remember here, believing some things just need to “die out,” though I remember them all word for word. Mom was very specific when she told us kids after these events that no person in the world is better than any other person. She gave this speech often and always out of Daddy’s earshot. I think it neutralized those songs for me and along with my own serious problems of being discriminated against, and my liberal education, I feel I am not a prejudiced person today. I’m not sure whether any prejudice was intended or not, but when I was about eight or nine, Daddy took me to the LeClaire Hotel in downtown Moline, and walked me in. Halfway into the lobby, he stopped me and rotated me by the shoulders until I was looking at a black man shining someone’s shoes. The black man had his back to us and did not see us. I was just dumb- struck by his color. Suddenly the man turned around, and with a big friendly smile said, “Would you like a shoe shine, young man?” I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I had only seen white people before. I couldn’t answer. Daddy just said, “Okay, let’s go.” I think he just wanted me to see the man. Nothing more was said, that I can remember. But that was a long time ago. Occasionally I’d hear Dale McFarland complain that black men were coming up from the south and taking many of the jobs at the Farmall plant where he worked in mechanical maintenance. The Swedes and Belgians were everywhere in Moline and I think they took a lot of abuse from people who preferred to think of themselves as “Just Plain Americans.” There were cruel references to their intelligence but I don’t remember the sayings, luckily. One may have been about a Swede being a monkey turned inside out, or something. I hope that all prejudice ends with our generation. I like the saying “No one is free until everyone is free.” About says it all.