Please forgive my use of language here. When I was a boy my grandfather would take me into town to the hardware store where one day some other farmers began berating him because he paid the same to a “brown man and a black man as he would a white man” which meant we got the best crew of cotton pickers. And, of course the word “nigger” was thrown about freely. My grandfather listened to their grievances and then answered that they too could acquire the cream of the pickers if they paid a fair wage. “And besides”, he said, “you know I’m Irish and I remember when I was a boy fresh to America and you called my people niggers.” Everyone shut up immediately with not another word said. Now the KKK did show up at our farm a few weeks later, but that’s another story as my grandfather was a former Texas Ranger and the baddest cowboy I ever would meet. This was in 1959.
Please forgive my use of language here. When I was a boy my grandfather would take me into town to the hardware store where one day some other farmers began berating him because he paid the same to a “brown man and a black man as he would a white man” which meant we got the best crew of cotton pickers. And, of course the word “nigger” was thrown about freely. My grandfather listened to their grievances and then answered that they too could acquire the cream of the pickers if they paid a fair wage. “And besides”, he said, “you know I’m Irish and I remember when I was a boy fresh to America and you called my people niggers.” Everyone shut up immediately with not another word said. Now the KKK did show up at our farm a few weeks later, but that’s another story as my grandfather was a former Texas Ranger and the baddest cowboy I ever would meet. This was in 1959.