1 00:00:00,060 --> 00:00:05,910 Our last panellist, Mr Dale Butler, former writer, teacher and minister of government. 2 00:00:05,910 --> 00:00:12,570 Best known as the Fish Cake King of Bermuda. He has written some 50 books. 3 00:00:12,570 --> 00:00:17,400 Tonight, he reads from the book choir, number one and number two. 4 00:00:17,400 --> 00:00:22,170 By the late Hilton here and from the first biography written about Dr. Eve Gordon in 5 00:00:22,170 --> 00:00:27,810 order to highlight the problems he encountered when he came here regarding race. 6 00:00:27,810 --> 00:00:39,120 Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Dale Butler. Thank you, Governor Ferguson and Mrs. Ferguson, Alexa. 7 00:00:39,120 --> 00:00:50,100 First, I'd like to thank both 20-Year-Old Cordell Riley and Dr. Hudson and unions and churches and our panellists, 8 00:00:50,100 --> 00:00:55,650 all of those people who have tackled the issue of race and already this evening ahead. 9 00:00:55,650 --> 00:01:02,700 Well, he is my curriculum. So right, which was the problem that I encountered when I returned here in 1976 with the honours 10 00:01:02,700 --> 00:01:06,150 degree in history and English from the University of Sussex and had the same issue. 11 00:01:06,150 --> 00:01:10,200 Why is the curriculum my marks to teach so white and decided to do something about it? 12 00:01:10,200 --> 00:01:20,310 By publishing books and the first comprehensive biography of Dr. Burden was produced Dr. Gordon, a middle working class which dealt with race. 13 00:01:20,310 --> 00:01:26,340 And so when I got the call to read from my books, I was honoured, but I didn't. 14 00:01:26,340 --> 00:01:31,440 It's not one of my forte is dealing with race, but I was surprised that I had actually written about it. 15 00:01:31,440 --> 00:01:38,100 In fact, even in fiction, race and fiction where a in the world was at Christmas stories, 16 00:01:38,100 --> 00:01:43,920 a church lost its minister and they were expecting a minister from overseas, 17 00:01:43,920 --> 00:01:47,550 and they waited at the ship for the mass only to discover everybody got off 18 00:01:47,550 --> 00:01:52,170 the boat and they were looking for a white minister and there wasn't any one. 19 00:01:52,170 --> 00:01:56,250 It ended up being an oriental minister, and he walked right by them, didn't realise it. 20 00:01:56,250 --> 00:02:04,080 So that was captured in fiction, not a book that sold out entirely. Add a little white, which I wrote. 21 00:02:04,080 --> 00:02:11,760 Maybe I compiled a group of stories, mainly because I asked a white friend of mine to come to dinner at my house, my summer house in English Street. 22 00:02:11,760 --> 00:02:17,520 The Gobblers even been to my house. And so I asked him to come to my house and this was in January. 23 00:02:17,520 --> 00:02:22,410 And he said, Well, I'll be late in February. He said he had a course, so he couldn't come in March. 24 00:02:22,410 --> 00:02:26,160 He said that he had a board meeting, so he couldn't come in April. He said he was going away. 25 00:02:26,160 --> 00:02:30,030 And in May, he said that it was this anniversary. So I said, What about you? 26 00:02:30,030 --> 00:02:38,520 Can you come to dinner? He said, No, I have a funeral. So what should he said? 27 00:02:38,520 --> 00:02:46,960 Chocolate cake. And your answer is cut. So what's what is a chocolate cake cut on? 28 00:02:46,960 --> 00:02:51,400 The in black tuxedos cut up. 29 00:02:51,400 --> 00:02:54,940 Well, we're going to have coffee at the end of our meal. 30 00:02:54,940 --> 00:02:59,150 Yeah, that's what used to happen at the nappers club every Monday night when they had a dinner. 31 00:02:59,150 --> 00:03:05,920 Any reference or hint of colour, like chocolate cake ready to show off any hint. 32 00:03:05,920 --> 00:03:10,870 Coffee is black. Cut it off. We have brown sugar and I cut it off. 33 00:03:10,870 --> 00:03:16,810 They're going to talk about race. They cut you off. Well, Hilton here was about to deliver this speech. 34 00:03:16,810 --> 00:03:21,610 Quite a number one and quite a number two. And they cut him off. 35 00:03:21,610 --> 00:03:26,770 So you were born. You have been delivered by a white doctor or nurse or midwife. 36 00:03:26,770 --> 00:03:35,680 There are only white nurses, white interns, white residents, mostly from abroad, employed in our hospitals as a coloured the median baby, 37 00:03:35,680 --> 00:03:41,710 you were placed on a coloured nursery segregated from the white babies who were kept in the white nursery. 38 00:03:41,710 --> 00:03:46,390 At this time, there was a coloured medical establishment supported by coloured clubs, 39 00:03:46,390 --> 00:03:51,010 and charities throughout the island were coloured doctors who could practise. 40 00:03:51,010 --> 00:03:57,760 It was staffed by by very kind coloured nurses who cared for those sick patients whose ailments 41 00:03:57,760 --> 00:04:04,450 were not serious enough to require the more advanced and specialised facilities of the hospital. 42 00:04:04,450 --> 00:04:12,340 There was a little facility first located in the back of town near Frizzled Hill and in the latter years on the road to prospect. 43 00:04:12,340 --> 00:04:17,410 However, it was not Greece, but the descriptive word hospital. 44 00:04:17,410 --> 00:04:26,020 Instead, it was called a nursing home. It was a place to provide its services in place of a hospital for many coloured immigrants and was able, 45 00:04:26,020 --> 00:04:32,890 in spite of itself, to provide the initial training for many able and efficient coloured nurses. 46 00:04:32,890 --> 00:04:39,510 Somehow, we have always overcome despite the many obstacles placed in our path. 47 00:04:39,510 --> 00:04:44,740 In fact, in my own experience in going to a black primary school central to a black high school, 48 00:04:44,740 --> 00:04:51,040 the bottom instead of Black Church Symposium, I was constantly told it's not about race, it's about performance. 49 00:04:51,040 --> 00:04:58,360 That's how you're going to win. Now back to our typical newborn baby in the nineteen twenties, thirties and forties. 50 00:04:58,360 --> 00:05:03,040 As school age approached, every school in the island was totally segregated. 51 00:05:03,040 --> 00:05:07,180 There are white schools and college schools, from kindergarten to primary to secondary level. 52 00:05:07,180 --> 00:05:16,870 Never the twain to mix. Even on Sundays, if your parents were Anglican Episcopal, you would attend the Cathedral of Pembroke Sunday schools, 53 00:05:16,870 --> 00:05:20,530 for example, from three to four p.m. each Sunday afternoon. 54 00:05:20,530 --> 00:05:24,760 White children had already had their Sunday school before the morning services. 55 00:05:24,760 --> 00:05:30,580 The Anglican Church was the state church, but in Bermuda it had no ordained ministers who recall it. 56 00:05:30,580 --> 00:05:34,510 There were no readers who faithfully administer to the coloured congregation. 57 00:05:34,510 --> 00:05:38,410 Worshippers in coloured neighbourhoods in chapels, not churches. 58 00:05:38,410 --> 00:05:43,450 When a day in India can ministers who happen to be black visited from Europe from time to time, 59 00:05:43,450 --> 00:05:47,650 they will be invited to preach to one of the chapels or on occasion who will be 60 00:05:47,650 --> 00:05:52,900 honoured to preach at the cathedral or another Anglican church in the afternoon, 61 00:05:52,900 --> 00:05:56,650 but never at a regular morning or evening service. 62 00:05:56,650 --> 00:06:03,650 This did have a fringe benefit because it would provide an opportunity for the number two quiet to be heard. 63 00:06:03,650 --> 00:06:10,210 Coloured buildings were not allowed to join the regular choirs, which sang at regular services and in churches. 64 00:06:10,210 --> 00:06:17,130 They were segregated and choir number one and number two. 65 00:06:17,130 --> 00:06:22,300 Client number two was a college choir which sang only coloured weddings and funerals, 66 00:06:22,300 --> 00:06:27,300 ride services and other special of a special events and services. 67 00:06:27,300 --> 00:06:35,490 There are also coloured Altar Boys Usher at Auburn to perform at these special services, even on the playing field. 68 00:06:35,490 --> 00:06:43,530 Seldom, if ever, that the coloured comedians had the opportunities to encounter white, their white peers or to play or perform on the same team. 69 00:06:43,530 --> 00:06:47,970 Sports contests were segregated as the school system. 70 00:06:47,970 --> 00:06:52,710 Certainly, there were no coloured numbers of white sports clubs. 71 00:06:52,710 --> 00:07:01,200 In the case of adult sports, there were a few occasions when white teams would accept invitations to be opponents at coloured sports clubs. 72 00:07:01,200 --> 00:07:09,720 Never vice versa, and most prominent sports organisation would not even allow coloured people in their field as spectators in the 1940s. 73 00:07:09,720 --> 00:07:16,950 The Bermuda Government Tennis Stadium was built with tax revenue for the use of tourism members and friends of white tennis clubs, 74 00:07:16,950 --> 00:07:24,840 which of course refused black membership only go before the cradle halfway through a life already. 75 00:07:24,840 --> 00:07:30,420 Let us consider the colonial comedian's career even as high school or college graduates, 76 00:07:30,420 --> 00:07:37,980 the only fulfilling career seemed to be in a profession like your medicine, education or operating your own business. 77 00:07:37,980 --> 00:07:41,370 But with desegregation, patents certainly narrowed the job market. 78 00:07:41,370 --> 00:07:47,370 Take, for instance, government no colour permitting was allowed to sell a stamp in his or Her Majesty's Post Office. 79 00:07:47,370 --> 00:07:52,260 The limited levels of employment and positions and the post office of this island. 80 00:07:52,260 --> 00:07:59,430 Whereas mail deliveries, letter and parcel service and janitorial positions in the Immigration and Customs Department, 81 00:07:59,430 --> 00:08:04,860 there were uniform coloured employees colour, secretarial or colour clerical employees, 82 00:08:04,860 --> 00:08:09,600 there were none because general secretarial jobs were not open. 83 00:08:09,600 --> 00:08:19,152 So what was our chocolate cake in your responses? Thank you.