Run chillun run, the pattyroller git you -- Run chillun run, it's almost day.
-- Slave song
One evening in the 1940's, a young James Baldwin took the subway downtown to 42nd Street, just to explore midtown Manhattan. A policeman asked him what he was doing there, then told him to go back to Harlem where he belonged.
One evening in the 1950's, a young Tom Phillips walked out of a bar in Roslyn Heights, Long Island, in the poorer section of town around the railroad station. Emerging from a parked patrol car, a policeman asked me what I was doing "in there." I said I was having a beer. He informed me that everyone else in the bar was black. "So what?" I said. At this he grew defensive. He had nothing against black people, he'd "worked with them for many years." It was just that I didn't belong there.
Neither of these events would be likely today. Black people are welcome on 42nd Street, which has become an urban extension of Disney World. And the poor section of Roslyn has been torn down to make way for a parking lot. My classmate and teammate Sam Brown, whom I saw in that bar that night, now lives in Roosevelt, a poorer town farther out in a suburban sprawl that has become more segregated as it has grown more affluent. Such are the changes over time, but the basic principle remains: Each race has its place. And the cops will let you know it.
