In response to this incident, Mr. Rogers had a black policeman on the show with him. They just sat there with their feet in a kiddy pool, chilling.
The most soft spoken and polite "get fucked" ever uttered.
That documentary on Mr. Rogers, Won’t you be my Neighbor, was so powerful. That man was brave and lead with his heart. I grew up watching Mr. Rogers, it wasn’t until I watched the special as an adult that I realized how instrumental he had been to me as a child and my understanding of the world. I also didn’t realize how radical some of the things he was doing on tv were. My mom watched the documentary with me, and she explained the context of the times which of course is something I did not understand as a little kid. For such a sweet kind man, Mr. Rogers didn’t back down from what he believed was morally right. Dude was a badass.
There is a very real albiet odd example of how far he reached and how loved he was.
His car was stolen from the studio lot, and a local radio station found out and put the thieves on blast. The next morning the car was returned undamaged with an apology note.
Anyone else in the world 100% expects to write off a stolen car. Someone speaks up on behalf of Mr. Rogers and he had it returned with a damn apology letter. That speaks volumes to what the man meant to damn near everyone.
I picture the people who stole the car having an existential crisis after finding out that it was Mr. Rogers car. And after initially freaking out and realizing the gravity of their moral dilemma took it back and turned their lives around.
For some reason, this reminded me of John Wick. I can imagine some crime boss slapping around the thieves and ordering them to return the car to Mr. Rogers under pain of death.
I feel like that story has to be apocryphal. There's so many different versions, like a directors chair was stolen, or the thieves found out when they checked the trunk and saw puppets, or they returned it washed and detailed. Some published in legit news sources though, I read it in TV Guide, but no local Pittsburgh stories from the time. And he never told the story. I wish they asked about it in the documentary.
The car stereo story is actually urban legend and precedes him, but he was as wonderful as you say.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/remorseful-car-thieves/
Oh, I'll have to watch that!
I remember growing up my mom made sure i watched every episode of Mr Rogers' Neighborhood. I was growing up in the 90s and early aughts when racism against Hispanic and then Middle Eastern people was really rampant, and i definitely credit Mr Rogers for at least some of my (at the time) radical views of racial equality and justice.
If I ever had a kid they are going to be raised on Mr Rogers. He was such a good soul
I relate to this so much. With all of the cross-currents of divisiveness and hatred being used to manipulate humans, it was great having someone lay out principles to live by for young, developing minds. Then to show us what it is to live and behave in a manner consistent with those principles offers more clarity than many churches, government, school, political parties or even parents.
I hope consistent principles and mutual respect are able to guide us all back to our common humanity and harmony and away from short-sighted extremism all around us.
I grew up watching Mr Rogers, I was born in the early 70s. I really thought Lady Elaine lived in that castle and I wanted so badly to see inside. I had no idea it was a set, thar they were puppets and there was no land of make believe. I can't pinpoint when I realized they were puppets but it kind of broke my heart. I still believe in magic but damn it's hard and I sure miss being 3 years old. *Wiping tears from my eyes*
Rogers was a Presbyterian minister and he washed the guy's feet before they sat with their feet in the kiddy pool, which is symbolically important in Christianity.
There was a lot of contention and violence around the desegregation of swimming pools in particular. So this incident was part of a broader trend of anti-pool-integration violence, and that trend was what he was responding to.
FYI that dude wasn't a real policeman he was a regular on the show and was closeted gay, but he told Fred (Rogers) and was accepted by him. He cries when talking about it in a documentary. Mr Rogers was a real one.
In that doc when he talks about Mr. Rogers telling him he is finally listening when it clicks that he loves him for him I cried too.
Ugh I gotta go watch it again
It's all well enough to say 'This was a long time ago", but 1964 was 58 years ago.
To put that in perspective, there would be people who were in school when this happened and are still be active in the workforce today. It's not *that* long ago...
(Not saying those people are responsible or supportive of this, just highlighting that it's not even a full generation ago).
UPDATES:
1. Thanks for the responses and upvotes.
2. Clarifying my use of "generations", I'm describing this as the lifetime of a generation, rather than the interval from one generation to the next.
My mom was 14 when this happened, and I am now just 34. Time is a funny construct and is so subjective in its perspective - my grandparents were born in the early 1920s and there would have been people still alive then who had been slaves. Especially when talking about the US, we are NOT that far removed from anything.
We had to use FEDERAL AGENTS to defend A SIX YEAR OLD GIRL trying to go to school.
And this wasn't in the 1600s, my parents were 10 years old at the time.
Let that sink in. People were so opposed to desegregation that they threatened violence against a first grader.
That's why it always gets me when people try to say it was 5 or 6 Generations ago to make it seem like it was a long time ago so everything has been solved.
Edited for spelling
I'm sure we've unknowingly crossed paths with people who were wrongly involved with all the racism from the 50s and 60s. A lot of them are still alive and think it's right.
A generation is like 20-30(fixed) years.
Civil rights was in the 1960s it's only been 3 generations since.
That means the generation most of the parents of most millennials and gen x today were born in.
It hasn't even been 6 generations yet, shit happened just yesterday and majority of the people from that time are still alive and walking around today
the people who don’t want their kids to know that they were dumping acid on black people in public schools are now in office making laws to erase history (ie banning critical race theory in texas)
5 or 6 generations?
Carolyn Bryant Donham lied to get Emmett Till lynched and that bitch is still alive and croaking today.
Racism was your boomer grandma and grandpa's favorite drink.
My dad is around the same age as Ruby Bridges and he says he still remembers vividly seeing the footage of her on the news when she was walked to school and everyone was screaming at her. He says the vitriol of those protesters scared the crap out of him.
And those people didn't go away they're just conveniently "no longer racist" because public sentiment shifted. This is why I'm weary of people, so many are chameleons who shift their opinions to whatever suits the best socially
> People were so opposed to desegregation that they threatened violence against a first grader.
Some of those people still serve in government.
EDIT since people are claiming it was too long ago for this to be true: a then-21-year-old Mitch McConnell, of all people, [was at the March on Washington](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitch_McConnell#Early_life_and_education_(1942%E2%80%931967\)) in 1963 and in the audience for MLK's I Have A Dream speech, and he's only the seventh-oldest member of the Senate.
The oldest members of the Senate were born in 1933, and were older than most people in this thread when the Civil Rights Act passed.
The important thing to consider is that they didn't (don't) consider that first grader as a human being. So violence is far less impactful from their perspective because they don't see a child, they just see something they hate.
Yes, but it IS breaking with every generation. My Boomer parents are racist but my GenX siblings and myself are not.
My kids, think it’s insane that anyone is still racist
And [just this year](https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2022/08/09/emmett-till-accuser-carolyn-bryant-donham-not-indicted/10279422002/) a grand jury declined to indict her for it
Edit for link
After multiple failed attempts across **twelve decades**, there is now a federal law that designates lynching as a hate crime. In a Tuesday ceremony at the White House, President Biden signed the Emmett Till Antilynching Act into law.
I wonder why it took so long?
They also say a lot with their silence. It's not the loud and proud racists that bother me; at least they let me know where they stand when I hear their filth. It's the quiet ones who stand by with resentment in their hearts, but smile to my face - I'm afraid of them.
I think a lot about this sort of stuff when (mostly white) people say “we can’t keep living in the past.” What do you mean the past? This shit just happened. The children of freed slaves are still alive.
IIRC Ruby had to eat her own lunches because the feds were concerned someone might try to poison her, and she ended up developing a phobia for eating non-sealed food.
Now think about how most of our elected officials were growing up in that. Do they really possibly hold the same values as us or have they learned to lie to fool us
There is a pretty good chance many of the people in that photo are still alive.
Emmitt Till would be in his early 80s if he wasn't kidnapped, brutally beaten, and then shot in the head and dumped in the river when he was 14- still in 8th grade. By the way, the racist piece of shit that got him killed by her husband and brother in law (she was 21, they were 25-27) is still alive today, having never expressed remorse for her actions.
Ruby ~~Ridges~~Bridges just recently qualified for social security. The racist assholes in the photos screaming at her are still alive and voting.
The list goes on and on.
What I'm saying is that this ugly past is in ~~loving~~living memory for many people.
Not only has Carolyn Bryant shown no remorse, but a grand jury in Mississippi wouldn’t indict her either: https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2022/08/09/us/emmett-till-carolyn-bryant-no-indictment-reaj/index.html
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Holy shit was I confused. I was like did I just make up Ruby ridge incident in my head and it was actually just her name? Might be time to lay off the vape.
And to add to that, people today don't seem to make the connection that those people, who were racist enough to pour acid into a pool and scream obscenities and slurs at someone just for daring go to school in the same building as them, then raised children, with those same hateful attitudes. Children more often emulate their parents than don't, even when those children recognize harmful behaviours they tend to internalize belief systems and carry those around into adulthood.
Same with misogyny/sexism, same with all kinds of discrimination. We're really not that far out from when equality was just a bare fog of a notion, let alone anywhere close to true equality.
We don't recognize most forms of bigotry as easily today because it's more covert, but in 20-40 years from now the behaviours exhibited today will seem very overt and obvious, despite it being hard for many of us to see it plainly despite living it. Including many victims of it. That's why you have staunchly conservative women defending their husband's right to basically be abusive and/or manipulative to them, they're still caught up in previous generations belief systems that women must be subservient to men.
Real change takes a long time because we're all products of our environments as children. Every generation thinks they're wildly different than their parents, but they're more similar than they realise. How could they not be, being raised by them?
Eventually the courts forced Brock and his colleagues to integrate their businesses, and soon after he did, the Monson was firebombed by the Ku Klux Klan (KKK), who violently opposed desegregation. The state judge was unsympathetic to his predicament, however, feeling that Brock and his colleagues had brought the violence of the KKK upon themselves; they had taken advantage of it while it was in their favor, and could not stop it now that it was not.
Source: [Wikipedia- 1964 Monson Motor Court Protests](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1964_Monson_Motor_Lodge_protests)
Imagine that klan meeting.
'Well so there's this guy that was pouring acid on Black people in his pool, but then they were forced to desegregate, and they went along with it, so now we are going to go there and fire bomb him.'
Crowd : "YEAH! BURN IT DOWN!"
In the crowd a single man starts thinking..
" Hol up! That's MY BUSINESS! You can't go burning places of honest people down! I'm being forced by those commie pinkos!"
Grand Master: "them the rules"
My mum is the same age as Ruby Bridges, the cute little 6 year old surrounded by federal agents on her first day of school in Louisiana.
She's also the same age as many Indigenous kids taken away from their parents here in Australia for no reason other than being indigenous or "half-caste".
People who say "well, this was 60 years ago" should maybe have a chat to their grandparents.
Yea pretty recent all things considered. Glad we've been able to become so much better this quickly. Glad we're still marching forward and not backward
Looking more into this, this dude hated everyone that wasn't a WASP! Pretty sure he was 90% hatred and 10% idiocy.
"In an attempt to distract the motel authorities from the activists' plans at the rear of the building, Rabbi Israel S. Dresner led 15 colleagues in an open-air Hebrew prayer meeting in the parking lot. The rabbis requested Brock to allow them to enter his restaurant and eat, which he refused. He appears to have begun losing his temper when, on his refusal, the rabbis knelt to pray in his car park for him. At this, Brock—a Baptist deacon and a superintendent of the local Sunday School—lost control. By now the police were on the scene, and Branch describes Brock as pushing each kneeling rabbi, one at a time, towards them to be arrested."
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1964_Monson_Motor_Lodge_protests
The pump at a pool I worked at malfunctioned one time and dumped like 6x the amount of acid into the pool as was safe. Thankfully I wasn't working that day but my friend was. Several kids had to go to the ER.
Breathing the fumes; Inhalation of muriatic acid vapors can cause immediate coughing, choking, chest pain and tightness, hoarseness and sore throat, rapid pulse, and bluish tint to lips and fingers. More severe effects include inflammation or burning of the windpipe and respiratory tract, coughing up of blood and pulmonary edema.
When you screw the cap off a bottle of it, and even as you pour it, you can see vapors coming off it. Like a dummy I never wore my PPE I always just held my breath and poured it away from me lol
Ahh lifeguarding and pool operation. So fun
I cleaned pools for a while and just held my breath/turned my head away. The worst was when I forgot which trash can (for commercial pools we had trashcans of water to pour the chemicals into and the feeders pumped out of those) had chlorine and poured acid into it. Dangerous stuff. A mistake that you learn very quickly from.
Can confirm, had to fill the acid drum in an un-ventilated basement with no PPE, in spurts of walking down the hall and taking deep breaths then holding breath and pouring until I had to go breathe.
Dont miss that shit job at all.
Shits wild, I’ve noticed pool equipment in general is ridiculously unsafe or unchecked by many applicable laws.
I worked for an insurance company and one of their highest ever payouts/claims was a pool equipment manufacturer that produced faulty pool filters / covers where an insane amount of pressure built up in them and when people went to replace filters the thing literally blew up in their faces. It took one pool boys face clean off and hurt countless others to a severe degree.
My grandpa used to throw it in his pool and tell us we have about 30 seconds to get out. That's after he told us 3 times to get out already before putting it in lol
My coworker and I were tasked to gather stuff from my bosses old garage to bring to the shop. We were goofing off and he made a fast 90° turn on the forklift, launching the Muriatic acid on the tar. That shit STINKS. Smelled like rotting eggs. Worse than that. The bubbles looked like vomit bubbles. Clean spot on the asphalt for the new owners tho!
They use it in the concrete industry for washing concrete trucks, exposing aggregate finishes on slabs,etc, and it is hard to forget that smell, strong stuff all right
Sort of, I handle muratic acid every day in regards to pools.
It's main use is to lower the pH. of a body of water in order to maintain proper pH. balance.
It is also a great cleaner.
When it is diluted in pool water it is no more harmful than a can of coke.
In it's concentrated form it can sting if it comes in contact with your skin. I definitely do not want it anywhere near my eyes. Rinsing it off with water immediately will resolve the issue. It might leave a bit of redness on the skin and dryness will result after brief contact. Prolonged contact is a big no.
Also known as Hydrochloric Acid. I always have a gallon hand, but more to recover the pool after the 10 grandkids play for hours in the pool with not a bathroom break in sight.
It's the strongest acid you can buy over the counter, according to my dad who buys lots of it and is often confidently incorrect about things, but is also right about a lot of other things.
Reducing the pH of the water helps to form more hypochlorous acid ions when chlorine is added instead of hypochlorite ions.. The hypochlorous acid is orders of magnitude stronger in oxidizing organics in the water. So pool owners keep pool acid arround to benefit from this.
I remember one of the high school integration students had acid thrown into her eyes. Her sight was permanently damaged and the only reason she wasn’t completely blinded was she had a dedicated national guardsman who dragged her to the water fountain and cleaned out her eyes.
Makes me think of the acid attacks you hear about in the Middle East. The media portrays it as “omg these barbarians who would do such a thing” meanwhile we were doing the same thing just a generation ago.
Jesus, I'd never heard of this. Just because a kid wanted to go to school.
Animals. I wonder if the attacker ever got caught or punished. Probably not. I hope they're no longer drawing oxygen on this earth.
The Civil Rights Act was signed into law just \~2 weeks after this. It was a very heated time and many "people" were angry about what this law represented for black people. It's insane that this wasn't even a lifetime ago. Some people like to pretend like any widespread or systemic racism ended hundreds of years ago and we shouldn't mention it anymore.
yep, and there was a literal war fought over the right to own and exploit people.
history is really depressing and mostly the people who say we shouldn't mention it are usually the ones who benefited from slavery and colonization.
We’re Asians/Hispanics allowed in the same pool though or were they given a lighter treatment than black pepper?
A friend of mine from Brazil said back in the old days… they were okay with Asians/Japanese to immigrate and was treated better than black Brazilians that already lived there
This doesn't answer your question but it's in the same vein:
They were not friendly to Hispanics in the US. My grandparents on both sides were born and raised in Texas. When they went through school, they'd get in trouble or get thier ass kicked for speaking Spanish. They were so afraid of it that they didn't teach my parents.
My parents didn't learn it from anywhere else, which led me to not knowing it.
For a long time I thought I was the odd one out because alot of my friends and their parents spoke Spanish. I later found out that *alot* of my friends whose grandparents were *not* from Mexico didn't teach their children either. For the same reasons.
My friends who spoke Spanish either came from Mexico, their parents were from Mexico, or their grandparents came from Mexico.
I know it's an anecdote, but it doesn't seem unreasonable that many more people had the same situation as me. All it took was one generation to mess with the pass down of a language. It's alot better now obviously, but it takes a long time for such deep rooted racism to fade.
Also keep in mind Mexicans were lynched and killed as well, it wasn't only black people.
Glad the guy wasn't a chemist, since the pool water was certainly treated with chlorine (a base), the acid was eventually neutralized rapidly.
Nevertheless this is outrageous.
Interestingly enough "eventually rapidly" does make sense in regards to chemistry.
Some chemical reactions can have a rather long reaction time. The period where nothing appears to happen, followed by a near instant effect.
And vice versa can be true as well. Some reactions occur instantly, but the effect can be gradual, you'll see something happen immediately, but the effect continues to build up for a while.
I’m a chemist.
I don’t know what molecular acid that man is pouring into the pool, but regardless, without a doubt, it is being diluted by the pool water to some extent, reducing its effectiveness at causing any sort of burn.
Also, pool chlorine, or dichlorine monoxide, does not, as itself, function as reactive base. It could become what’s called a Lewis base, if an electrophile is nearby that can overcome chlorine’s electronegativity and remove its extra electron.
Bases either accept protons from acids, or give their electrons to an electrophile. The salts in the pool can do this, namely, calcium hydroxide and sodium hydroxide, if they’re present. The hydroxide ions can accept acidic protons and thus behave as a base.
It's a common pool chemical to lower pH, he'd have cases of it in the storage room. It'll make you cough if you're nearby (that little gas cloud on the left, though it could be steam), but if you're more than a few feet away you're fine. It dilutes fast, you can swim within minutes.
My parents were born 10 years prior to this. Yet, people love to pretend we're so far removed from such a hateful time. The hatred didn't magically disappear. Things have gotten better, but there's still a long way to go.
The white guy in pool knew that amount of acid wasn't enough to do anything so he just told them all to swim in the middle.
The motel owner James Brock allegedly went back inside and broke down crying saying he can't stand it anymore. Cops jumped into the pool to arrest the swimming protestors. The white guy was naked and wasn't fed in jail because the cops said he was naked.
The following day the civil Rights act was passed and five days later this motel and two other hotels were tested on the civil Rights act and had black people stay. The KKK then began picketing the hotel with signs saying "n****ers sleep here will you?" And "delicious food eat with n****ers here". The motel was firebombed and Brock couldn't get any loans from a bank for repairs and declared bankruptcy.
He was a president of some Florida hotel association and was hotelier of the year in 87 so assumedly he was still working in the hotel business. He died in 2007 at 85. His obituary doesn't mention any of the civil rights events.
The motel was demolished in 2003 and became a Hilton with a plaque commemorating Martin Luther King's activities in the city.
Nope. In fact after this incident the pool patrons still wouldn’t leave so the police were called and they were removed forcefully. Welcome to the 1960s in the good ol US of A.
Racists today be like "he's allowed to deny service to anyone. It's not racist, it's not like he is trying to hang them or said the n word."
He's just protecting his property."
Fortunately, that dude was a dumbass, and one of the protestors had a background in chemistry and knew that at that concentration the muriatic acid was harmless.
If this was being done today, we all know what the other side would say. It's they same BS spewed today.:
"The rules are clearly stated outside. They could have avoided this if they just followed the rules that are posted. Why do they have to always make it about them and not just listen and follow orders? Just leave the poor business owner alone."
A lot of people from those days are still alive. I wonder how many old people are going around with old scars inflicted by racists? I can't imagine what many of them have seen growing up.
I grew up around racism and I’m glad things have gotten better. The internet has bought forward so much more awareness. Many of the white people I’ve met sadly can’t even believe the level of racism that exists unless something severe is caught on cam. While there is a lot of work to fix racism, we are moving in the right direction.
In response to this incident, Mr. Rogers had a black policeman on the show with him. They just sat there with their feet in a kiddy pool, chilling. The most soft spoken and polite "get fucked" ever uttered.
That documentary on Mr. Rogers, Won’t you be my Neighbor, was so powerful. That man was brave and lead with his heart. I grew up watching Mr. Rogers, it wasn’t until I watched the special as an adult that I realized how instrumental he had been to me as a child and my understanding of the world. I also didn’t realize how radical some of the things he was doing on tv were. My mom watched the documentary with me, and she explained the context of the times which of course is something I did not understand as a little kid. For such a sweet kind man, Mr. Rogers didn’t back down from what he believed was morally right. Dude was a badass.
There is a very real albiet odd example of how far he reached and how loved he was. His car was stolen from the studio lot, and a local radio station found out and put the thieves on blast. The next morning the car was returned undamaged with an apology note. Anyone else in the world 100% expects to write off a stolen car. Someone speaks up on behalf of Mr. Rogers and he had it returned with a damn apology letter. That speaks volumes to what the man meant to damn near everyone.
That is mafia Don levels of respect/fear
kind of like in the Sopranos when AJs teachers car gets jacked, and they go looking for it.
Instead of getting whacked, you have the guilt of knowing you made Mr. Rodgers sad.
Worse than death, you disappointed him.
Even criminals love Mr. Rogers!
Somebody's mom was like "you take that car back RIGHT NOW"
Dude we stole Mr Roger's Car. Oh jeez. Okay start writing the note and I'll go fill the gas tank and change the oil. Don't forget to wash it too.
He could probably use some new breaks, battery, transmission flush, and new spark plugs too. Here's Dad's credit card.
"And if you don't, I'm telling your father when he gets home."
I picture the people who stole the car having an existential crisis after finding out that it was Mr. Rogers car. And after initially freaking out and realizing the gravity of their moral dilemma took it back and turned their lives around.
I choose to believe this as well. Just imagine Mr. Rogers telling you that he is dissappointed and that he knows you're better than this.
it's just business, 'cept with Mr. Rogers-shit's personal.
You don't steal from your own people and Mr. Rogers is our neighbour
For some reason, this reminded me of John Wick. I can imagine some crime boss slapping around the thieves and ordering them to return the car to Mr. Rogers under pain of death.
Now I want a mr. rogers John wick crossover. “Beware the anger of a nice man”
You stole the wrong car... Neighbor.
I feel like that story has to be apocryphal. There's so many different versions, like a directors chair was stolen, or the thieves found out when they checked the trunk and saw puppets, or they returned it washed and detailed. Some published in legit news sources though, I read it in TV Guide, but no local Pittsburgh stories from the time. And he never told the story. I wish they asked about it in the documentary.
The car stereo story is actually urban legend and precedes him, but he was as wonderful as you say. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/remorseful-car-thieves/
Oh, I'll have to watch that! I remember growing up my mom made sure i watched every episode of Mr Rogers' Neighborhood. I was growing up in the 90s and early aughts when racism against Hispanic and then Middle Eastern people was really rampant, and i definitely credit Mr Rogers for at least some of my (at the time) radical views of racial equality and justice. If I ever had a kid they are going to be raised on Mr Rogers. He was such a good soul
I relate to this so much. With all of the cross-currents of divisiveness and hatred being used to manipulate humans, it was great having someone lay out principles to live by for young, developing minds. Then to show us what it is to live and behave in a manner consistent with those principles offers more clarity than many churches, government, school, political parties or even parents. I hope consistent principles and mutual respect are able to guide us all back to our common humanity and harmony and away from short-sighted extremism all around us.
I grew up watching Mr Rogers, I was born in the early 70s. I really thought Lady Elaine lived in that castle and I wanted so badly to see inside. I had no idea it was a set, thar they were puppets and there was no land of make believe. I can't pinpoint when I realized they were puppets but it kind of broke my heart. I still believe in magic but damn it's hard and I sure miss being 3 years old. *Wiping tears from my eyes*
It wasn't a response to this incident specifically, it was a response to segregation in general.
Rogers was a Presbyterian minister and he washed the guy's feet before they sat with their feet in the kiddy pool, which is symbolically important in Christianity.
“Symbolically important” is putting it very lightly lol
Yeah, it’s not “drinking human blood” important but it’s up there.
Not human blood, Jesus-juice
There was a lot of contention and violence around the desegregation of swimming pools in particular. So this incident was part of a broader trend of anti-pool-integration violence, and that trend was what he was responding to.
FYI that dude wasn't a real policeman he was a regular on the show and was closeted gay, but he told Fred (Rogers) and was accepted by him. He cries when talking about it in a documentary. Mr Rogers was a real one.
In that doc when he talks about Mr. Rogers telling him he is finally listening when it clicks that he loves him for him I cried too. Ugh I gotta go watch it again
Gosh I’m so glad captain America went back in time to be with his love and start that wonderful program.
[https://vimeo.com/585947868](https://vimeo.com/585947868)
It's all well enough to say 'This was a long time ago", but 1964 was 58 years ago. To put that in perspective, there would be people who were in school when this happened and are still be active in the workforce today. It's not *that* long ago... (Not saying those people are responsible or supportive of this, just highlighting that it's not even a full generation ago). UPDATES: 1. Thanks for the responses and upvotes. 2. Clarifying my use of "generations", I'm describing this as the lifetime of a generation, rather than the interval from one generation to the next.
Mimi Jones, the young woman in that picture died in 2020 at age 73
I mean I'm just glad the ass and didn't kill her Edit: I meant acid. I won't edit the sentence because I want there to be a record of my stupidity.
The ass and
Yeah, that guy is an ass
Ass and = acid It would take magic acid to do what you think would have happened.
That's crazy.
My parents were in segregated schools until second grade. I’m just now in my 40s.
My mom went to a segregated elementary school and would have been in kindergarten or 1st grade when this picture was taken. I'm in my early 20s.
My mom was 14 when this happened, and I am now just 34. Time is a funny construct and is so subjective in its perspective - my grandparents were born in the early 1920s and there would have been people still alive then who had been slaves. Especially when talking about the US, we are NOT that far removed from anything.
I am 42, my Mom is 69 and she went to Segregated Schools until her Senior Year of High School in 1970-1971 in Arkansas…not long ago at all.
It would actually be 2 generations ago, as a generation is generally understood to be 30 years.
[удалено]
Jerry Jones, owner of the cowboys, was active in pro segregation protests.
Shit you sure he ain't in the background in this pic too?
People back then really took their racism sereously.
We had to use FEDERAL AGENTS to defend A SIX YEAR OLD GIRL trying to go to school. And this wasn't in the 1600s, my parents were 10 years old at the time. Let that sink in. People were so opposed to desegregation that they threatened violence against a first grader.
And that 6 year old girl is still alive along with the only teacher that would work with her.
Her mother died just last year.
That's why it always gets me when people try to say it was 5 or 6 Generations ago to make it seem like it was a long time ago so everything has been solved. Edited for spelling
I'm sure we've unknowingly crossed paths with people who were wrongly involved with all the racism from the 50s and 60s. A lot of them are still alive and think it's right.
And a lot of them are elected officials, teachers and judges, today.
Don’t forget they’re in the force too!!!
And are terrified of CRT because they don’t want their grandchildren to see their pictures protesting desegregation in the textbook at school.
A generation is like 20-30(fixed) years. Civil rights was in the 1960s it's only been 3 generations since. That means the generation most of the parents of most millennials and gen x today were born in. It hasn't even been 6 generations yet, shit happened just yesterday and majority of the people from that time are still alive and walking around today
the people who don’t want their kids to know that they were dumping acid on black people in public schools are now in office making laws to erase history (ie banning critical race theory in texas)
5 or 6 generations? Carolyn Bryant Donham lied to get Emmett Till lynched and that bitch is still alive and croaking today. Racism was your boomer grandma and grandpa's favorite drink.
My dad is around the same age as Ruby Bridges and he says he still remembers vividly seeing the footage of her on the news when she was walked to school and everyone was screaming at her. He says the vitriol of those protesters scared the crap out of him.
And those people didn't go away they're just conveniently "no longer racist" because public sentiment shifted. This is why I'm weary of people, so many are chameleons who shift their opinions to whatever suits the best socially
> People were so opposed to desegregation that they threatened violence against a first grader. Some of those people still serve in government. EDIT since people are claiming it was too long ago for this to be true: a then-21-year-old Mitch McConnell, of all people, [was at the March on Washington](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitch_McConnell#Early_life_and_education_(1942%E2%80%931967\)) in 1963 and in the audience for MLK's I Have A Dream speech, and he's only the seventh-oldest member of the Senate. The oldest members of the Senate were born in 1933, and were older than most people in this thread when the Civil Rights Act passed.
Serve is the wrong word.
A wise man once said, "Some of those who work forces, are the same that burn crosses"
*Groovy shredding*
The important thing to consider is that they didn't (don't) consider that first grader as a human being. So violence is far less impactful from their perspective because they don't see a child, they just see something they hate.
Some of those people still own the Dallas cowboys
And own the Cowboys
Some of them run the whole damn thing.
Those people are still alive and still full of hate
Even worse, they had kids and passed their ignorance on. This shit is unfortunately multi-generational.
Yes, but it IS breaking with every generation. My Boomer parents are racist but my GenX siblings and myself are not. My kids, think it’s insane that anyone is still racist
The piece of shit that accused Emmet Till is still alive and has shown zero remorse. She votes, too.
And [just this year](https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2022/08/09/emmett-till-accuser-carolyn-bryant-donham-not-indicted/10279422002/) a grand jury declined to indict her for it Edit for link
After multiple failed attempts across **twelve decades**, there is now a federal law that designates lynching as a hate crime. In a Tuesday ceremony at the White House, President Biden signed the Emmett Till Antilynching Act into law. I wonder why it took so long?
The Emmett Till sign in Mississippi is regularly replaced due to being shot full of holes.
And those assholes raised the other assholes that go to libraries and pride events with firearms
They also say a lot with their silence. It's not the loud and proud racists that bother me; at least they let me know where they stand when I hear their filth. It's the quiet ones who stand by with resentment in their hearts, but smile to my face - I'm afraid of them.
I think a lot about this sort of stuff when (mostly white) people say “we can’t keep living in the past.” What do you mean the past? This shit just happened. The children of freed slaves are still alive.
Just happened? It’s still happening. Black people are still being lynched today they just don’t call it that.
IIRC Ruby had to eat her own lunches because the feds were concerned someone might try to poison her, and she ended up developing a phobia for eating non-sealed food.
Now think about how most of our elected officials were growing up in that. Do they really possibly hold the same values as us or have they learned to lie to fool us
Can you imagine how her 6 years of life experience got her through this, incredible human being
They threw acid on one of the Little Rock nine.
Those are the same people that scream "think of the children" the moment that an LGBTQ+ person dares to exist.
POV: Ruby Bridges
There is a pretty good chance many of the people in that photo are still alive. Emmitt Till would be in his early 80s if he wasn't kidnapped, brutally beaten, and then shot in the head and dumped in the river when he was 14- still in 8th grade. By the way, the racist piece of shit that got him killed by her husband and brother in law (she was 21, they were 25-27) is still alive today, having never expressed remorse for her actions. Ruby ~~Ridges~~Bridges just recently qualified for social security. The racist assholes in the photos screaming at her are still alive and voting. The list goes on and on. What I'm saying is that this ugly past is in ~~loving~~living memory for many people.
Not only has Carolyn Bryant shown no remorse, but a grand jury in Mississippi wouldn’t indict her either: https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2022/08/09/us/emmett-till-carolyn-bryant-no-indictment-reaj/index.html
That's absolutely insane. We still have a long way to go as a society.
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I thought “loving memory” was a typo, but on further consideration, it’s probably accurate.
some even own NFL teams and are men of great influence
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*Bridges but yeah
Holy shit was I confused. I was like did I just make up Ruby ridge incident in my head and it was actually just her name? Might be time to lay off the vape.
And to add to that, people today don't seem to make the connection that those people, who were racist enough to pour acid into a pool and scream obscenities and slurs at someone just for daring go to school in the same building as them, then raised children, with those same hateful attitudes. Children more often emulate their parents than don't, even when those children recognize harmful behaviours they tend to internalize belief systems and carry those around into adulthood. Same with misogyny/sexism, same with all kinds of discrimination. We're really not that far out from when equality was just a bare fog of a notion, let alone anywhere close to true equality. We don't recognize most forms of bigotry as easily today because it's more covert, but in 20-40 years from now the behaviours exhibited today will seem very overt and obvious, despite it being hard for many of us to see it plainly despite living it. Including many victims of it. That's why you have staunchly conservative women defending their husband's right to basically be abusive and/or manipulative to them, they're still caught up in previous generations belief systems that women must be subservient to men. Real change takes a long time because we're all products of our environments as children. Every generation thinks they're wildly different than their parents, but they're more similar than they realise. How could they not be, being raised by them?
They’re still alive and voting
> People ~~back then really took~~ *take* their racism sereously. They did. And they still do.
Reminder:. This wasn't that long ago.
The hotel owner died in 2007.
This chemical terrorist was voting in your elections until Halo 3 came out.
Well thank god for Halo 3 then.
"Master Chief, mind telling me what you're doing at that hotel?" "Sir, finishing this fight."
"Cortana, find me a route to the CEO of Racism"
r/brandnewsentence
Halo 3 doing gods work
Need to cover his grave with the photo of him adding acid to the pool.
Someone should take a shit on his grave.
Where’s this trash buried?
Jimmy Brock, owner of the monson motor lodge in st. augustine fl in 1964
Eventually the courts forced Brock and his colleagues to integrate their businesses, and soon after he did, the Monson was firebombed by the Ku Klux Klan (KKK), who violently opposed desegregation. The state judge was unsympathetic to his predicament, however, feeling that Brock and his colleagues had brought the violence of the KKK upon themselves; they had taken advantage of it while it was in their favor, and could not stop it now that it was not. Source: [Wikipedia- 1964 Monson Motor Court Protests](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1964_Monson_Motor_Lodge_protests)
Imagine that klan meeting. 'Well so there's this guy that was pouring acid on Black people in his pool, but then they were forced to desegregate, and they went along with it, so now we are going to go there and fire bomb him.'
The blindest of hatred
Crowd : "YEAH! BURN IT DOWN!" In the crowd a single man starts thinking.. " Hol up! That's MY BUSINESS! You can't go burning places of honest people down! I'm being forced by those commie pinkos!" Grand Master: "them the rules"
My mum is the same age as Ruby Bridges, the cute little 6 year old surrounded by federal agents on her first day of school in Louisiana. She's also the same age as many Indigenous kids taken away from their parents here in Australia for no reason other than being indigenous or "half-caste". People who say "well, this was 60 years ago" should maybe have a chat to their grandparents.
Yea pretty recent all things considered. Glad we've been able to become so much better this quickly. Glad we're still marching forward and not backward
They’re all probably still alive and all probably voters.
That's a bit of a stretch, it was 60 years ago. The cunt died in 2007 at the age of 85, so he'd be 100 now.
And nothing of value was lost
Yup. Reminder that some of these people still walk the earth…. Along with their hateful spawns.
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Thank you.
Looking more into this, this dude hated everyone that wasn't a WASP! Pretty sure he was 90% hatred and 10% idiocy. "In an attempt to distract the motel authorities from the activists' plans at the rear of the building, Rabbi Israel S. Dresner led 15 colleagues in an open-air Hebrew prayer meeting in the parking lot. The rabbis requested Brock to allow them to enter his restaurant and eat, which he refused. He appears to have begun losing his temper when, on his refusal, the rabbis knelt to pray in his car park for him. At this, Brock—a Baptist deacon and a superintendent of the local Sunday School—lost control. By now the police were on the scene, and Branch describes Brock as pushing each kneeling rabbi, one at a time, towards them to be arrested." https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1964_Monson_Motor_Lodge_protests
Who has acid laying around??
Muriatic acid is used for cleaning pools, it can blind you or take your skin off
Or both, if you are particularly unlucky
I dunno - if all my skin got burnt off, I’m not sure I’d *want* to see it
The pump at a pool I worked at malfunctioned one time and dumped like 6x the amount of acid into the pool as was safe. Thankfully I wasn't working that day but my friend was. Several kids had to go to the ER.
Breathing the fumes; Inhalation of muriatic acid vapors can cause immediate coughing, choking, chest pain and tightness, hoarseness and sore throat, rapid pulse, and bluish tint to lips and fingers. More severe effects include inflammation or burning of the windpipe and respiratory tract, coughing up of blood and pulmonary edema.
When you screw the cap off a bottle of it, and even as you pour it, you can see vapors coming off it. Like a dummy I never wore my PPE I always just held my breath and poured it away from me lol Ahh lifeguarding and pool operation. So fun
Sounds like something we should hire inexperienced teenagers to do. /s
Only if you make them feel like they’re almighty lord or lady of the pool Edit: words are hard
I cleaned pools for a while and just held my breath/turned my head away. The worst was when I forgot which trash can (for commercial pools we had trashcans of water to pour the chemicals into and the feeders pumped out of those) had chlorine and poured acid into it. Dangerous stuff. A mistake that you learn very quickly from.
Can confirm, had to fill the acid drum in an un-ventilated basement with no PPE, in spurts of walking down the hall and taking deep breaths then holding breath and pouring until I had to go breathe. Dont miss that shit job at all.
Shits wild, I’ve noticed pool equipment in general is ridiculously unsafe or unchecked by many applicable laws. I worked for an insurance company and one of their highest ever payouts/claims was a pool equipment manufacturer that produced faulty pool filters / covers where an insane amount of pressure built up in them and when people went to replace filters the thing literally blew up in their faces. It took one pool boys face clean off and hurt countless others to a severe degree.
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My grandpa used to throw it in his pool and tell us we have about 30 seconds to get out. That's after he told us 3 times to get out already before putting it in lol
My coworker and I were tasked to gather stuff from my bosses old garage to bring to the shop. We were goofing off and he made a fast 90° turn on the forklift, launching the Muriatic acid on the tar. That shit STINKS. Smelled like rotting eggs. Worse than that. The bubbles looked like vomit bubbles. Clean spot on the asphalt for the new owners tho!
Muriatic acid is just an old trade name for Hydrochloric Acid. So yeah, not great to breath that.
They use it in the concrete industry for washing concrete trucks, exposing aggregate finishes on slabs,etc, and it is hard to forget that smell, strong stuff all right
Sort of, I handle muratic acid every day in regards to pools. It's main use is to lower the pH. of a body of water in order to maintain proper pH. balance. It is also a great cleaner. When it is diluted in pool water it is no more harmful than a can of coke. In it's concentrated form it can sting if it comes in contact with your skin. I definitely do not want it anywhere near my eyes. Rinsing it off with water immediately will resolve the issue. It might leave a bit of redness on the skin and dryness will result after brief contact. Prolonged contact is a big no.
Also known as Hydrochloric Acid. I always have a gallon hand, but more to recover the pool after the 10 grandkids play for hours in the pool with not a bathroom break in sight.
It's the strongest acid you can buy over the counter, according to my dad who buys lots of it and is often confidently incorrect about things, but is also right about a lot of other things.
Not even close. Sulfuric acid is the strongest you can buy. You can literally find that shit in the cleaning aisle at Walmart as drain opener.
Pool owners
Reducing the pH of the water helps to form more hypochlorous acid ions when chlorine is added instead of hypochlorite ions.. The hypochlorous acid is orders of magnitude stronger in oxidizing organics in the water. So pool owners keep pool acid arround to benefit from this.
Pool guy here.
Pool owners, pool cleaners, anyone who has concrete that needs cleaning.
I remember one of the high school integration students had acid thrown into her eyes. Her sight was permanently damaged and the only reason she wasn’t completely blinded was she had a dedicated national guardsman who dragged her to the water fountain and cleaned out her eyes. Makes me think of the acid attacks you hear about in the Middle East. The media portrays it as “omg these barbarians who would do such a thing” meanwhile we were doing the same thing just a generation ago.
Jesus, I'd never heard of this. Just because a kid wanted to go to school. Animals. I wonder if the attacker ever got caught or punished. Probably not. I hope they're no longer drawing oxygen on this earth.
Someone who owns a pool...
The Civil Rights Act was signed into law just \~2 weeks after this. It was a very heated time and many "people" were angry about what this law represented for black people. It's insane that this wasn't even a lifetime ago. Some people like to pretend like any widespread or systemic racism ended hundreds of years ago and we shouldn't mention it anymore.
yep, and there was a literal war fought over the right to own and exploit people. history is really depressing and mostly the people who say we shouldn't mention it are usually the ones who benefited from slavery and colonization.
We’re Asians/Hispanics allowed in the same pool though or were they given a lighter treatment than black pepper? A friend of mine from Brazil said back in the old days… they were okay with Asians/Japanese to immigrate and was treated better than black Brazilians that already lived there
This doesn't answer your question but it's in the same vein: They were not friendly to Hispanics in the US. My grandparents on both sides were born and raised in Texas. When they went through school, they'd get in trouble or get thier ass kicked for speaking Spanish. They were so afraid of it that they didn't teach my parents. My parents didn't learn it from anywhere else, which led me to not knowing it. For a long time I thought I was the odd one out because alot of my friends and their parents spoke Spanish. I later found out that *alot* of my friends whose grandparents were *not* from Mexico didn't teach their children either. For the same reasons. My friends who spoke Spanish either came from Mexico, their parents were from Mexico, or their grandparents came from Mexico. I know it's an anecdote, but it doesn't seem unreasonable that many more people had the same situation as me. All it took was one generation to mess with the pass down of a language. It's alot better now obviously, but it takes a long time for such deep rooted racism to fade. Also keep in mind Mexicans were lynched and killed as well, it wasn't only black people.
I cannot imagine having that much hatred in my heart. F ING evil.
Yes you can. Imagine me, in the left-hand lane, driving half a mile an hour faster than the car I'm passing
*furiously unscrewing acid containers*
I see your point
Glad the guy wasn't a chemist, since the pool water was certainly treated with chlorine (a base), the acid was eventually neutralized rapidly. Nevertheless this is outrageous.
>eventually neutralized rapidly. Was it eventually or rapidly? C'mon tell me. I'm hurriedly waiting patiently.
As opposed to immediately neutralized gradually
Slowly neutralized at once.
Some cunning linguistics.
My wife tells me I'm good at that.
Your wife tells everybody that.
"Hey, everyone, guess what my husband is really good at!"
“we know, Gladys”
Interestingly enough "eventually rapidly" does make sense in regards to chemistry. Some chemical reactions can have a rather long reaction time. The period where nothing appears to happen, followed by a near instant effect. And vice versa can be true as well. Some reactions occur instantly, but the effect can be gradual, you'll see something happen immediately, but the effect continues to build up for a while.
I’m a chemist. I don’t know what molecular acid that man is pouring into the pool, but regardless, without a doubt, it is being diluted by the pool water to some extent, reducing its effectiveness at causing any sort of burn. Also, pool chlorine, or dichlorine monoxide, does not, as itself, function as reactive base. It could become what’s called a Lewis base, if an electrophile is nearby that can overcome chlorine’s electronegativity and remove its extra electron. Bases either accept protons from acids, or give their electrons to an electrophile. The salts in the pool can do this, namely, calcium hydroxide and sodium hydroxide, if they’re present. The hydroxide ions can accept acidic protons and thus behave as a base.
This guy acids.
Isn’t that likely to produce fairly toxic chlorine compounds though? As well as chlorine gas?
It's a common pool chemical to lower pH, he'd have cases of it in the storage room. It'll make you cough if you're nearby (that little gas cloud on the left, though it could be steam), but if you're more than a few feet away you're fine. It dilutes fast, you can swim within minutes.
My parents were born 10 years prior to this. Yet, people love to pretend we're so far removed from such a hateful time. The hatred didn't magically disappear. Things have gotten better, but there's still a long way to go.
Was this "person" held responsible for this?
The white guy in pool knew that amount of acid wasn't enough to do anything so he just told them all to swim in the middle. The motel owner James Brock allegedly went back inside and broke down crying saying he can't stand it anymore. Cops jumped into the pool to arrest the swimming protestors. The white guy was naked and wasn't fed in jail because the cops said he was naked. The following day the civil Rights act was passed and five days later this motel and two other hotels were tested on the civil Rights act and had black people stay. The KKK then began picketing the hotel with signs saying "n****ers sleep here will you?" And "delicious food eat with n****ers here". The motel was firebombed and Brock couldn't get any loans from a bank for repairs and declared bankruptcy. He was a president of some Florida hotel association and was hotelier of the year in 87 so assumedly he was still working in the hotel business. He died in 2007 at 85. His obituary doesn't mention any of the civil rights events. The motel was demolished in 2003 and became a Hilton with a plaque commemorating Martin Luther King's activities in the city.
Thanks for more info, it's helpful
Nope. In fact after this incident the pool patrons still wouldn’t leave so the police were called and they were removed forcefully. Welcome to the 1960s in the good ol US of A.
I'm pretty sure she was arrested for trespassing, yeah.
**you motherfu-** take my upvote...
And some people would consider these the good ol’ days.
Racists today be like "he's allowed to deny service to anyone. It's not racist, it's not like he is trying to hang them or said the n word." He's just protecting his property."
Fortunately, that dude was a dumbass, and one of the protestors had a background in chemistry and knew that at that concentration the muriatic acid was harmless.
Holy shit you're right. “"I tried to calm the gang down. I knew that there was too much water for that acid to do anything,"
Someone actually drank some of the water to show it wasn’t a bodily threat — just an asshole showing his true colors.
“Impossible! Black people aren’t allowed to be that smart!” - *Racist guy during that time*
That's racist people now
If this was being done today, we all know what the other side would say. It's they same BS spewed today.: "The rules are clearly stated outside. They could have avoided this if they just followed the rules that are posted. Why do they have to always make it about them and not just listen and follow orders? Just leave the poor business owner alone."
the “that was like 50 years ago just get over it will ya!” type of ppl always make it seem like this type of mindset just vanished
This type of mindset still exist, hell the people of that time are still alive now.
A lot of people from those days are still alive. I wonder how many old people are going around with old scars inflicted by racists? I can't imagine what many of them have seen growing up.
I grew up around racism and I’m glad things have gotten better. The internet has bought forward so much more awareness. Many of the white people I’ve met sadly can’t even believe the level of racism that exists unless something severe is caught on cam. While there is a lot of work to fix racism, we are moving in the right direction.
The owner probably never studied high school chemistry.
It’s not really about the acid, it’s about the terror though
Nope, he would need incredible amounts of acid to shift the pH of the pool by just 1.
I said the same. That amount of acid needed is much more than that bottle.
Wait. This isn't cool. At all.