One night I was working with an Afro-American on an aircraft on the flight-line and he began asking me if two of the men in the shop practiced Jim Crowism. Had I heard them say anything? I said, "Naw," because I had never heard anything derogatory about Blacks coming from them. I never heard them say anything one way or another. But the guy insisted that they were making derogatory remarks about Blacks.
At the time I thought he was mistaken, but now I think they may have been saying something to him, or acting in some way because he was pretty insistent about it and he wasn't one of those "everybody's a racist" guys.
He then told me about his being a waiter prior to the Air Force and he told me, "People are really stupid to treat badly anyone who handles their food." I had never thought of that before, but I immediately understood the idiocy of it. And evidently, from what he discussed, he himself had practiced retribution while working as a waiter.
Thinking on this today, I put it alongside some war stories I have read.
In WW2, Negroes worked as stewards on ships. They handled the officer's food. Now, I know how most officers treat enlisted, and I know how Whites treated Negroes back in the forties. So, although I have never heard or read of anything pertaining to it, I am convinced that some pretty horrible things were done occasionally to the food served to officers during that war, especially in the navy.
Ironically, in one book I was reading about the Battle of the Bulge, this guy telling the story came across a Negro in his Company. He had never before seen Negroes on the front line, so he asked him how he came to be there. The Negro told him that he was being punished in his old company by being sent to the front line with the Whites.
The guy telling the story thought that a strange take on segregation, for Negroes to be punished by sending them to where Whites who were not being punished were being blown apart hourly.
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