So it sounds like housing there was discrimination,
how about other things like movie theaters,
restaurants?
Well, the restaurants, we didn't have much
trouble with the restaurants. But then the
movie theaters, we were always shunted upstairs.
Any theater that had an upstairs, why, they'd
always ask us to leave and go upstairs. Now,
I didn't notice that, that type of thing.
I thought, "Well, upstairs is where the seats
are," and so we just went up there as normally
as it could be. Except that on one occasion,
I had, I didn't have any patients that day,
and I thought, "Well, I'll go down to this
Capital Theater, and they have an upstairs."
And I walked in, I got my ticket and I walked
into the lobby there, and I met this fellow
that I went to school with. And he was working
his way through medical school at the time,
and I sat, I stopped and talked to him for
a little while. And he directed me right to,
to a seat down on the main, main floor. And
another, one of the ushers came up to him
and says, "You can't let him sit down here,
he's gotta go upstairs." Well, there was hardly
anybody in the theater, it was a very... in
fact, if I'd have gone upstairs, I'd probably
have been the only person upstairs. But then
I could overhear him say, "You can't let him
sit down." He says, "Well, I know him, he's
a friend of mine and I went to school with
him, and to high school with him." He says,
"I can't go down and tell him to go upstairs."
And so I could overhear their conversation,
he says, "Well, the next time any of these
Japs or colored, you send 'em upstairs." And
that's when I first realized that all the
so-called "coloreds" were directed upstairs.
