大象传媒

My friend, Edna, and I were at Burton鈥檚 storeroom or dance hall in Union Street, Plymouth. We were dancing a waltz actually when these two Yankee lads came up and split us up. The band started to play a quickstep. Before I knew where I was, the young Yank started doing a jitterbug which we鈥檇 never even seen or heard of. The next thing was, my legs were in the air, my head was almost on the floor, and I was trying to hang on to my skirt because I didn鈥檛 want everybody to see my underwear. The next thing I was down between his legs and up again. I just didn鈥檛 know what day it was! It was really, really funny afterwards, but at the time I was scared sick that the Redcap would come in and catch me, and I鈥檇 be in trouble once more.

The majority of the Americans who came over were very, very nice but I didn鈥檛 like the way they treated the dark-skinned Americans who were very polite lads. I鈥檇 been brought up in the East End of London where we had Chinese, Italians, Jews from all over the world, dark-skinned African men, so there was no colour bar. We never even knew about colour bar until the Americans came over. The majority of us British didn鈥檛 like it at all, so we were very, very pleased when the Americans saw sense and treated their dark-skinned gentlemen in their country as they should have done years before.

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