Our last panellist, Mr Dale Butler, former writer, teacher and minister of government.
Best known as the Fish Cake King of Bermuda. He has written some 50 books.
Tonight, he reads from the book choir, number one and number two.
By the late Hilton here and from the first biography written about Dr. Eve Gordon in
order to highlight the problems he encountered when he came here regarding race.
Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Dale Butler. Thank you, Governor Ferguson and Mrs. Ferguson, Alexa.
First, I'd like to thank both 20-Year-Old Cordell Riley and Dr. Hudson and unions and churches and our panellists,
all of those people who have tackled the issue of race and already this evening ahead.
Well, he is my curriculum. So right, which was the problem that I encountered when I returned here in 1976 with the honours
degree in history and English from the University of Sussex and had the same issue.
Why is the curriculum my marks to teach so white and decided to do something about it?
By publishing books and the first comprehensive biography of Dr. Burden was produced Dr. Gordon, a middle working class which dealt with race.
And so when I got the call to read from my books, I was honoured, but I didn't.
It's not one of my forte is dealing with race, but I was surprised that I had actually written about it.
In fact, even in fiction, race and fiction where a in the world was at Christmas stories,
a church lost its minister and they were expecting a minister from overseas,
and they waited at the ship for the mass only to discover everybody got off
the boat and they were looking for a white minister and there wasn't any one.
It ended up being an oriental minister, and he walked right by them, didn't realise it.
So that was captured in fiction, not a book that sold out entirely. Add a little white, which I wrote.
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.
The Gobblers even been to my house. And so I asked him to come to my house and this was in January.
And he said, Well, I'll be late in February. He said he had a course, so he couldn't come in March.
He said that he had a board meeting, so he couldn't come in April. He said he was going away.
And in May, he said that it was this anniversary. So I said, What about you?
Can you come to dinner? He said, No, I have a funeral. So what should he said?
Chocolate cake. And your answer is cut. So what's what is a chocolate cake cut on?
The in black tuxedos cut up.
Well, we're going to have coffee at the end of our meal.
Yeah, that's what used to happen at the nappers club every Monday night when they had a dinner.
Any reference or hint of colour, like chocolate cake ready to show off any hint.
Coffee is black. Cut it off. We have brown sugar and I cut it off.
They're going to talk about race. They cut you off. Well, Hilton here was about to deliver this speech.
Quite a number one and quite a number two. And they cut him off.
So you were born. You have been delivered by a white doctor or nurse or midwife.
There are only white nurses, white interns, white residents, mostly from abroad, employed in our hospitals as a coloured the median baby,
you were placed on a coloured nursery segregated from the white babies who were kept in the white nursery.
At this time, there was a coloured medical establishment supported by coloured clubs,
and charities throughout the island were coloured doctors who could practise.
It was staffed by by very kind coloured nurses who cared for those sick patients whose ailments
were not serious enough to require the more advanced and specialised facilities of the hospital.
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.
However, it was not Greece, but the descriptive word hospital.
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,
in spite of itself, to provide the initial training for many able and efficient coloured nurses.
Somehow, we have always overcome despite the many obstacles placed in our path.
In fact, in my own experience in going to a black primary school central to a black high school,
the bottom instead of Black Church Symposium, I was constantly told it's not about race, it's about performance.
That's how you're going to win. Now back to our typical newborn baby in the nineteen twenties, thirties and forties.
As school age approached, every school in the island was totally segregated.
There are white schools and college schools, from kindergarten to primary to secondary level.
Never the twain to mix. Even on Sundays, if your parents were Anglican Episcopal, you would attend the Cathedral of Pembroke Sunday schools,
for example, from three to four p.m. each Sunday afternoon.
White children had already had their Sunday school before the morning services.
The Anglican Church was the state church, but in Bermuda it had no ordained ministers who recall it.
There were no readers who faithfully administer to the coloured congregation.
Worshippers in coloured neighbourhoods in chapels, not churches.
When a day in India can ministers who happen to be black visited from Europe from time to time,
they will be invited to preach to one of the chapels or on occasion who will be
honoured to preach at the cathedral or another Anglican church in the afternoon,
but never at a regular morning or evening service.
This did have a fringe benefit because it would provide an opportunity for the number two quiet to be heard.
Coloured buildings were not allowed to join the regular choirs, which sang at regular services and in churches.
They were segregated and choir number one and number two.
Client number two was a college choir which sang only coloured weddings and funerals,
ride services and other special of a special events and services.
There are also coloured Altar Boys Usher at Auburn to perform at these special services, even on the playing field.
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.
Sports contests were segregated as the school system.
Certainly, there were no coloured numbers of white sports clubs.
In the case of adult sports, there were a few occasions when white teams would accept invitations to be opponents at coloured sports clubs.
Never vice versa, and most prominent sports organisation would not even allow coloured people in their field as spectators in the 1940s.
The Bermuda Government Tennis Stadium was built with tax revenue for the use of tourism members and friends of white tennis clubs,
which of course refused black membership only go before the cradle halfway through a life already.
Let us consider the colonial comedian's career even as high school or college graduates,
the only fulfilling career seemed to be in a profession like your medicine, education or operating your own business.
But with desegregation, patents certainly narrowed the job market.
Take, for instance, government no colour permitting was allowed to sell a stamp in his or Her Majesty's Post Office.
The limited levels of employment and positions and the post office of this island.
Whereas mail deliveries, letter and parcel service and janitorial positions in the Immigration and Customs Department,
there were uniform coloured employees colour, secretarial or colour clerical employees,
there were none because general secretarial jobs were not open.
So what was our chocolate cake in your responses? Thank you.