another "Negro" in quotes

[Joel S. Berson]

At 10/24/2010 03:06 AM, Wilson Gray wrote:
>Little-known fact: back in the day, Southern - well, farther behind
>the Cotton Curtain than Saint Louis, IAC - telephone books placed a
>"c" after the names of people who had telephones and were also
>colored. That always struck me as overkill, somehow.

Presumably so that the whites, if they had necessity to call a "c",
say for some servile occupation, would know they might be
contaminated by picking up their telephone handset without putting on
gloves, or afterwards washing their hands with kerosene (preparatory
to cleansing them by fire).

A thought suggested by an episode of "Monk", where he has just been
informed that the potential client he shook hands with is a leper
(pardon me, has Hansen's disease).

Joel

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