1965 on the South Side of Providence before the war on poverty

By ROGER SMALL
“There was no place to go to cut classes.”  — Former basketball star Marvin Barnes, on how he earned so many college credits in prison. 

It was in late afternoon in January 1965 when I was informed that Gene Palmer would not be coming to the South Side Boys’ Club in Providence, Rhode Island for our scheduled city league game. Gene was one of the star players on the team.

“The cops raided their apartment last night,” a neighbor of Gene Palmer informed me. “They found all kinds of stolen property. His mother had a gang of teenagers stealing the stuff for her, then she’d sell it. The cops put her in jail. They put Gene and his brother Porky in a juvenile home on the other side of the city.”

I had started work as the director of physical education for the Providence Boys’ Club in September 1964. Previous to that I had been the physical education director of the Manchester, New Hampshire Boys’ Club for two years — one year before and one year after I had done my two-year hitch in the U.S. Army.

During my military career I had seen racial segregation for the first time in my life. I did not have a prejudiced drop of blood in my body. My most vivid perception of people with dark skin, until that time, had been my admiration and respect for Jackie Robinson of the Brooklyn Dodgers. To this day, he is the man I most idolize — for what he did as a man, not as a baseball player.

I was curious to learn more about people with black skin after I had been in the Army for a year. I filled out an application to join the Peace Corps, requesting duty in either India or Africa. My application was rejected because I had top-secret security clearance. I was informed that the Peace Corps could not risk the chance that they were sending spies to foreign countries.

I was through Boys’ Club of America’s headquarters in New York City that I learned of the opening at the mostly black Boys’ Club in South Providence. There were 1,000 members of the club — 50 of them were white. The three years I spent there were extremely fulfilling for me. The boys were from age 8 to 18. It was the slum section of the city. The Boys’ Club was a home for many youngsters. Those were the days just before the civil rights movement, starting a few months before President Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty began.

Gene Palmer was a shy, respectful 13-year-old with brown skin. He and his 12-year-old brother, Porky, came directly to the Boys’ Club as soon as Roger Williams Junior High School let out every afternoon. They stay at South Side until it closed at 9 p.m. The Boys’ Club and the school were a block away from the Roger Williams Housing Project — a black ghetto — where almost all the boys I knew lived.

Within hours of learning why Gene Palmer was absent, I was able to get a phone number of the place where he had been assigned. I called the director there and asked if I could go there one evening a week and bring Gene over to South Side to play in the basketball league games. I explained that I also wanted to bring his brother, who did not play basketball. He reluctantly agreed.

I would drive across the city in my beat-up 1959 white Ford Crown Victoria to get the boys. They were extremely excited to see my car pull into their parking lot. On the drive over on the first night, Gene told me they were doing all right but that they felt uncomfortable living in a home with white people. They missed their old South Providence neighborhood, such as it was. When we arrived at the club I gave each one of them a fistful of change so they could buy soda and snacks from the Boys’ Club vending machines.

Gene explained that he missed his mother, a lady I did not know. It was obvious from his conversation that he loved his mother and that he felt her illegal activities had been conducted so that she could better provide for her two sons. Those were the days before welfare. They did not know where their father had disappeared to.

The other members of the Boys’ Club were pleased to see Gene and Porky the one night a week that they visited. The basketball team was especially happy. The team was mediocre without Gene Palmer. With Gene Palmer, it was an unbeatable team.

I had learned that the black kids at the Boys’ Club appreciated the many little things I did for them, beyond my responsibilities as physical education director, but they had difficulty expressing their gratitude.

One night, when I was returning Gene and Porky to the other side of Providence, Gene shocked me. “You know,” he said in a soft voice as we were stopped in traffic, “you should have a better car.”

“I’d like one. I can’t afford it,” I responded.

“Pick one out that you’d like,” he said. “Stop the car. I’ll get it for you.”

 

“Prejudices are most difficult to eradicate from the heart whose soil has never been loosened or fertilized by education: they grow there, firm as weeds among the rocks.”  — Charlotte Bronte

Originally published June 28, 2000.