I had to think through a ‘what if’ situation. It was all based on fear, anxiety and reputation. You’re in a place where racism was rampant and vicious. SB: I was in Cape Town, South Africa at a restaurant having good conversation with some guys I had just met, and they invited me to go to a party maybe a forty-minute drive from my hotel. LL:How about you, Stephen? A travel memory that especially sticks with you? ![]() The white ladies almost had heart attacks when they came out of their stalls and saw me standing there! I couldn’t go into the ‘colored’ restroom. LB: Because it was dangerous to be black, and I am light-skinned, I was ‘passing’ in that situation as ‘Hawaiian.’ So I had a dilemma. LL:Lezlie, I know that you had one especially awkward situation on that 1964 college trip in Mississippi when your group visited a White Citizen’s Council meeting, and you were having to deal with avowed racists. Do the darker-skinned Dominicans get treated differently? And the guy said, ”No, we’re all Dominicans.” That was a really cool answer to hear. ![]() SB: I was in the Dominican Republic, talking to my cab driver and I asked him if they had racism. Is there an area of the world where you felt most comfortable traveling? LL: Stephen, I know you’ve also traveled to South Africa, Mauritius, Canada, Mexico, among foreign destinations. But he knows how to deal with the police. When he was trying to pick me up at LAX airport, he was stopped by a police officer because he was sitting in his car, texting. LB: I feel worried more when he’s in the United States, and that he’ll be mistaken for some other person who’s done something terrible. LL :Lezlie, do you feel worried when Stephen travels? After hearing stories from my mother and seeing things happening around the country, those fears are real, and I feel fortunate that I haven’t yet had any really bad experiences. When a policeman gets behind you feel anxiety as a person of color. You feel walls closing in, that you may at some point experience something unpleasant. The feeling that you have inside - it’s almost like a prison. In certain places it’s almost as if, as you’re driving, the trees are talking to you. Stephen Bishop : As an actor I stay pretty secluded, but as a baseball player and scout I traveled alone through much of the south. You’re a familiar face to many, but have you experienced problems while traveling in the U.S.? Stephen, since George Floyd’s murder and the Black Lives Matter movement we’ve become even more aware of the dangers of even jogging or driving, especially for black men. She even set a timer to remind herself to move along. She checked in with her family every night, no matter how late gave them all Apple Maps of her locations avoided gas stations in small towns at night never drove overnight or walked down dark streets. Rita Omokha, a black reporter, recently traveled solo across America. LL: And over 50 years later there are still problems. Our professor had to bail him out of jail. ![]() Suddenly a policeman appeared, enraged: “We don’t do things like that down here! You take your hands off that girl!”Īnother white student was thrown into a paddy wagon for walking down the street with a female student from a local black college. We were walking down the street in Jackson and my red-haired boyfriend had his hand, protectively, on the small of my back. We were followed by state police constantly once we passed Illinois. I was the only black student, and the only female. In 1964 I joined a group of five students from Ripon College in Wisconsin on an educational exchange program in Mississippi. That was my first real experience with overt racism. I do know that you took one eye-opening college road trip to Jackson, Mississippi. To book a dinner after my prom I had to call ahead in Chicago to ask if a place “served negroes.” If not, there would be suddenly “a mistake in the reservation.” Lezlie Bishop: I lived up north, and my experiences were more frightening than dangerous. What was it like for you, Lezlie, moving around and traveling during Jim Crow?
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