Like most people, I like to think of myself as not having a racist bone in my body. But is that really true? Probably not. Who was it who said “You have to be taught to hate to hate and fear”? Was it Oscar Hammerstein or Emile De Becque? So hard to keep those guys straight.

I think it is time to do a bit of racial self analysis.

What did I learn about race growing up in the 1940s and 1950s in St. Louis? Were there any Blacks in my family? No. Did my parents or my grandparents have any Black friends? No. Were there any Blacks in my school, teachers or students? No. Did any Blacks live in my neighborhood? Not at all. None.

So you get the idea. It would not be accurate to say that I never say anyone who was Black. I did see one all the time. I saw Alice Tennyson. Until I was in the third grade, we lived with my grandparents. And a woman named Alice lived there, too. She was my grandparents’ maid. She was a small woman, her hair graying and tied back, she wore rimless glasses and I don’t think she spoke much. I have no photographs of her. I am not sure what her responsibilities were. I think that my grandparents did not think she was very good at what she did, but she was – in a strange sense, I guess – part of the family.

I remember she was always on duty, except for Thursday nights, which was her night off. And on Thursday nights, she went to stay with her brother. I don’t know who he was or where he lived, and I don’t know if my grandparents knew, either. I also don’t know when she came to work for my grandparents and when she started to live in their basement. I vaguely remember a story about how she simply showed up on their front door on a cold, rainy night, and how my grandparents invited her in, and she just stayed and stayed. Sounds like a tall tale, I know. But who am I to say?

I said Alice lived in the basement. She did. But it wasn’t a fancy finished basement, it was just a basement. And she had a room that, from my memory of the very few times I was down there, was barely habitable. I can blame that on my grandparents or my parents, but it was clear to me that Alice probably bore some responsibility as well. She could have fixed it up, decorated it a bit. There was also a bathroom down there. I am sure Alice was not permitted to use any other bathrooms in the house.

For a short time, there was another Black woman who came to the house once a week, or maybe once every other week. Her name was Susie and she did laundry. I don’t know how many years she came. I don’t remember ever talking to her at all. She was a large woman, much larger than Alice, and she seemed more worldly. She probably was.

Alice and, sometimes, Susie. That was basically my Black world for the first eight years or so of my life. The only other Blacks I saw were also maids; they worked for other relatives, or for friends. I think that was it.

There were a lot of Blacks in St. Louis, to be sure. Did I see some of them, just here and there? I am not sure, but I imagine I did, although I didn’t go to neighborhoods where Blacks lived, so I am really not sure.

When I was quite young, 7 or 8 I think, I was allowed to take the bus by myself or with a friend – to a movie on Grand Avenue, or to my grandfather’s office, or my father’s downtown. I remember being on a bus, and there was a Black woman sitting across the aisle from me. I think she got on the bus before I did. Then, a Black man got on the bus. He walked right by her and sat further in the back. I was astounded that he didn’t say hello to her, or at least smile and nod. At that instant, I realized something. I realized that all Blacks didn’t know each other, and that they didn’t acknowledge each other as members of the same group. How stupid of me to think otherwise, I thought even then, but I think it was the first time that I realized there were things in society that I really didn’t understand at all.

St. Louis was a segregated city. It was a city with a white population divided between northern liberals and Confederate sympathizers. Missouri had been a slave holding border state, as you know. A lot of that carried over. Even today.

St. Louis was not a deep South city. It didn’t have white and colored entrances and waiting rooms, it didn’t have white and colored drinking fountains, and Blacks didn’t have to sit in the back of the bus. But other than that……..

Schools were segregated. Parks were segregated. Blacks were not welcomed in restaurants or in most stores, in hotels or in theaters, and in sport venues, they were restricted to certain areas. For example, at Sportsman’s Park (home of both the Cardinals and the Browns), Blacks had to sit in the left field pavilion. They couldn’t catch a home run ball, because the pavilion was screened, and they sat on wooden benches, not seats. And when Jackie Robinson and Larry Doby and others came to play major league baseball in St. Louis, they could not stay in the same hotels, or eat in the same restaurants, as their teammates. St. Louis was the only major league city where this was true.

In St. Louis, no Blacks lived in white neighborhood, and no whites lived in Black neighborhoods. Period. At some point, after urban renewal took hold in the 1950s, Blacks began to move into some nearby neighborhoods, chasing the whites out to the suburbs. But in the 1940s, I don’t think even that had started yet. There was no city with more residential segregation than St. Louis. Rich or poor, you lived apart.

This segregation forced the Black population of St. Louis to fend for itself – it had its own groceries, theaters, shops, funeral homes, newspaper, and so forth. We whites knew nothing about that. At least I didn’t.

I have a book to recommend. I am sure you haven’t read it, and it may not be easy to find. It’s a short novel called “Mrs. Palmer’s Honey”, and it was written by Fannie Cook, a Jewish woman who was a friend of my grandparents. It is set in St. Louis in the 1940s. Honey is Mrs. Palmer’s maid. Honey knows everything about Mrs. Palmer. Mrs. Palmer knows absolutely nothing about Honey. (Their worlds clash at the University of Missouri when Mrs. Palmer’s son, a student and frat boy, meets Honey’s son, a waiter at the fraternity house – but that’s another story.) What is important is that the reader of the book, as opposed to Mrs. Palmer, learns a lot about Honey, and Honey’s family, and the neighborhood where they all live. Mrs. Palmer had no clue.

If you were white in St. Louis at this time, you would be like Mrs. Palmer. You would come into contact with the Blacks that worked in your house (and if you worked outside of your house, maybe you would see some Black factory workers or custodial workers), but you would know nothing about them. You would not be curious. You would not think that there are things about them you didn’t know. You just wouldn’t think about it at all. Just like you wouldn’t wonder why no Blacks ate in the restaurants you ate in, or sat next to you at the movies, or swam with you at the pubic park pool. It would never occur to you to wonder about that.

For those who are growing up today (and perhaps for all those under, say, 50 today), this may be impossible to really comprehend.

But this is how I grew up.

(To be continued)