The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Roseanne’s tweet reminds me of a trip to the South with Southern’s baseball team
The recent firing of Roseanne Barr for her racist tweets has reopened once again how racism in America is still quite prevalent.
I can only recall how I personally had to deal with the ugliness of racism in April 1957 when I was a member of Southern Connecticut State University’s baseball team on our way to our first southern baseball trip.
Our team had only one black player — my roommate for the trip Sam Burrell known mostly as the father of legendary Connecticut athlete Scott Burrell.
Dr. Moore, our coach, had made arrangements for the trip that we would only eat and sleep on the trip in either military or educational facilities since segregation in the South was the law of the land. But on the trip as we drove south, many of our players became hungry and wanted to stop on the highway to the first restaurant where we could buy a hamburger.
We came to a well-known restaurant in Colonial Williamsburg, Virginia.
A group of us headed for the large circular table so our group could sit together. A waitress came over and placed a menu in front of everyone but Sam Burrell and myself.
Dr. Moore asked the waitress why we didn’t get a menu. She responded quite matter-of-factly “We don’t serve colored here!”
Obviously, she wasn’t used to seeing swarthy Italian youngsters with a five o’clock shadow in Virginia.
Dr. Moore responded unbelievably, “No, only Sam is colored; Johnny is white!”
With that, she came within 1 inch of my face to get a real close look at me and stared intently at me. She had a necktie on which rested on the table. I was within seconds of pulling on her necktie and bouncing her chin on the table!
I gained emotional control of myself and said to Sam, ‘Sam, let’s get the (expletive) out of here!’
We all got up and began our walk to the entrance. The restaurant became completely silent as we and our teammates walked out. I was convinced that we were about to get attacked and as I walked out, I looked at every empty chair in case I had to defend myself.
We did make it outside and to create some levity with the situation that had all of us quite shaken, our teammates in a form of gallows humor made Sam and I sit in the back of the bus as reminder that we were in the segregated South.