Alum Profile Wildcat Highlight Wildcats on the Move Link to Alumni and Parent Relations		But like everywhere else in California, Chico had discrimination against blacks in public accommodations and restaurants. The Hotel Oaks was the best hotel in Chico–perhaps the best in the Upper Sacramento Valley. Blacks couldn’t rent a room in there. The hotel wouldn’t even hire black chambermaids. Max’s Cafe was the best restaurant in town. On one side they had tables with white tablecloths and napkins. They wouldn’t serve blacks on that side. But on the other side they had a counter. You could go in there and eat and get the same food. They had a fancy soda fountain on Second Street called Price’s Place, where all the high school kids and the college students went. They wouldn’t let blacks come in there; they’d tell you right as soon as you opened the door. I didn’t like it at all. And some of the whites that I went around with resented it. They would tell people off if I was with them and said they weren’t going in there if I couldn’t go in there. A guy named Price was the owner. I knew him well–I used to talk to him out on the street. Other than his policy, I always found him to be a very pleasant guy. He just thought discrimination was good business. It didn’t make too much difference to me because I didn’t have money anyway to go into those places. But I didn’t like the idea of being stigmatized in that manner. There were a lot of nice white families in Chico. It always struck me as odd that when I came back to become the first black male raised in Chico to enter college, the white people appeared more delighted than the blacks. I think the blacks were a little bit envious because there had been very few blacks who had even gone as far as high school before my time. They’d usually get to about the fifth grade, and then they’d start working. When I returned, some of them told me to my face that I would not last long as a student. In the fall of 1933, when “Sunny Jim” Rolph was governor of California, the son of a wealthy department store owner in San Jose was seized by a kidnapper, who demanded a heavy ransom, which the distraught family paid. But when the money drop was made, the victim was murdered by his kidnapper. The police found the suspect, and he was placed in the San Jose County Jail. But the brutality of the crime inflamed the so-called law-abiding people in the city. Vigilantes stormed the jail and hanged the prisoner. Governor Rolph gave a public speech, stating that he did not care what happened to the suspect. As I walked to school that morning, I read of the incident in the big bold headlines of the Chico morning paper. Although the kidnapper was white, I was aware that this type of mob rule was common in some Southern States, were the victim was usually a black person. By the time I reached the campus, I was very angry, and my anger centered on the lawless white world of the South that used mob violence to uphold white supremacy. Groups of students, primarily males, were standing in small groups discussing the lynching in San Jose. I walked into the center of the largest group, stating very loudly that I hated lawlessness no matter who was involved, and that if I had been sheriff in San Jose the night before, there would have been some dead members of the mob blocking the jail doorway. PREVIOUS | NEXT
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