1950s Black & White Kids Got Along

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David Hoffman

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1950s Black & White Kids Got Along


Link to full video – https://youtu.be/NS4UT_t73b0
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Melvin considered himself an ordinary 1950s Washington DC guy. We interviewed him in 1989 as one of the characters for my television series, Making Sense Of The Sixties. He was frank and honest about what he remembered and how he felt about it at…

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35 Comments

  1. Same here small rural farm Town, either the black kids or the Panamanian kids, or the Mexican kids this was around 68. Tacos, meatloaf, smothered porkchops. I loved it!!

  2. I was in elementary school in the mid-70s and it was only me and two other white girls in my entire class and I didn't know any different these were just all my friends and I didn't know what racism was until we moved when I was in junior high school to an all white small town in rural Arkansas and I couldn't understand why these people hated black people so much especially black people that they didn't even know and I heard stories about burning crosses in the yards and how they ran black people out of town and I just couldn't understand it. I wasn't raised racist and I couldn't understand where these other kids were coming from they didn't even know any black people but yet they hated them so badly

  3. Yeah, I had black kids for friends too. We rode bikes, played ball, etc. We were out of town when "Roots" aired, when we got home, those kids weren't allowed to hang with me anymore, and I was the enemy all of the sudden. We moved out of the projects not long after, no more having to get in fights for being Wh1te

  4. I was born in 1998. Growing up in a military town during the height of the Afghanistan war, race wasn’t at the forethought of my and my family’s minds. It wasn’t until 2014 when it suddenly clicked in my mind that people were still ignorant in their minds about what a person should look like.

  5. I was lucky. I was a military brat almost 20 years on base housing. Played with every race kid ! I was lucky. Not like my relatives in rural KY. ALL WHITE town. Sad.

  6. I never knew my neighbors were Mexican until I moved out on my own and a friend asked me if I wanted to go for Mexican food. I told them I’d never had it before! When served I laughed bc I had been eating Mexican food all along whenever I was at my neighbors!!

  7. During the 1950s, my mother used to stay with her aunt and uncle in Wildwood, New Jersey in the summer. Wildwood was a huge resort Ocean City. Singers and musicians used to go there to get famous. The legendary, Sam Cooke was one of them.

    My aunt worked in the hotel business and Cooke was staying at that particular hotel. Without seeing who he was (and he hadn't been famous yet), my aunt sets my mom up with him. When she arrives at the restaurant, she sees that Sam Cooke is a black man and walks out.

    Now, growing up in the 80s and 90s, I expressed my disgust towards my mother and told her how rude she was. And she told me with the most serious face that it happened during the days of segregation. Had she stayed and had dinner with him, they both would have been arrested.

    I've told this story to many people and the whites usually have the same exact reaction I did, but black people? Not so much. They tend to be a little more in tuned with history. They told me that there was no way Cooke and my mother could have pulled that date off….not in those days.

    My mom told me that Sam Cooke didn't get angry for her walking out of that restaurant and was very understanding. She worked at a tropical drink stand on the boardwalk, and Cooke used to go there every day and b.s. with my mom. She said he was a really cool guy and was saddened by his death.

  8. That's because this was just before the government began intentionally pitting the races against each other so everyone would be too busy to notice how bad they were f*cking the American people over.

  9. This is similar to my mom as a kid. She had friends who would come over and play but when it first started the girls would try and leave right before my grandma got home. My mom didn’t understand why so she asked them and they said “won’t your mom be mad your playing with us?!” Well they stayed finally and learned that my granny could have cared less what the color of their skin was. My granny was born in 1922 and her parents were the same way. I’m thankful to come from a family who has always seen people as people and nothing less.

  10. Well isn’t that sweet. Unfortunately it doesn’t erase all the things said behind closed doors still to this day . More people need to keep listening to their inner child . Children instinctively know what is true and best.

  11. I remember the first time I learned about racism as a kid, but I didn't understand it. I grew up in a mostly black neighborhood, my grade school was mostly black (and the hallways reeked of cocoa butter lol)… My best friend in school was a black kid named Keith. Once he came over to play, and I asked my mom if he could stay for dinner. She had no problem with it. But then my dad came home, and could barely contain his discomfort. After the meal he told Keith it was time for him to go home. What he said to me then shocked and confused me. He said it was okay for me to be friends with them (blacks) at work or school or whatever, but you DO NOT bring them into your home!
    This of course made no sense to me, as it was completely opposite of what I was taught in Sunday school about Jesus wanting us to love everyone.
    I held onto my own ideals despite my father having different views, though I kept things to myself. My parents divorced when I was around 9, and he moved away. Throughout school, I would move from one parent to the other for periods. While I was staying with him in highschool one year, I fell in love with a black girl. She was so sweet and beautiful, and she loved me too. But because I knew how my dad was, there was simply no way. When she wanted us to go out, I had to make weak excuses why we couldn't. It really broke my heart. Here it is almost 40 years later, and I still wonder about her, and hope she is living well, and think about what might have been.
    when it comes to women and dating, I've never really made a distinction, though I've only ever dated white girls. But to be honest, I feel I'm missing out when I see happy black couples, where the woman is a true queen, holding onto God's word, and treating her man like a king. No girl I've ever dated treated me that way. Maybe one day I'll get my queen, but I'm feeling pretty much out of the game at this point in my life. I don't care to chase anymore heartaches.

  12. A.) Based on accent he likely grew up in the north where racism existed but less concern about mixing of the races. My dad grew up in a integrated neighborhood and went to integrated schools had black friends in the 40s and 50s and no 1 gave it a 2nd thought b.) Integration isnt a fad it's a civil right.