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BU: You want to talk about a few other incidents of mine about discrimination?

MA: Sure.

BU: Well, I was in the Air Force, I got stationed George Air Force Base in Victorville, California, in 1959. And they had two nice golf courses there, outside of Victorville, one in Apple Valley, and one in Hesperia. The one in Apple Valley, I'd heard that blacks couldn't play there. Hesperia, I knew blacks could play. The one in Apple Valley, if the Air Force intramural teams had a black member, they couldn't play their match at Apple Valley, they had to play it at Hesperia. So one day I asked this major who was in charge of the special services, I said, "Hey, Rib, why don't you check and see if I can join Apple Valley?" He says, "Sure, you can." I was a captain then. And I said, "Okay, just check." And he came back to me a couple days later, and he was shocked, 'cause he was from the Midwest. And he says, "No, you can't join Apple Valley." I said, "Okay, how about checking with Hesperia?" So he checked with Hesperia and I was allowed to join there. Okay, and when I retired to Oakland in 1970, there were two country clubs in Oakland, Claremont country club and Sequoia country club. And I had heard that they were both exclusive. And I was working in the Oakland school district around 1982... 1981 I had heard that the first Nisei, Japanese American, was able to join at Sequoia. That was 1981, and the first time a non, well, first time an Asian was able to join. Just a few years before that, the first Jew was allowed to join. And the blacks still could not join in 1981, in Oakland. What was the population at that time, thirty, forty percent black? But they were, maintained their discriminatory thing. So in 1982, I asked one of my coworkers, I just mentioned that I'd like to join Sequoia. And he found somebody whose father was a member there, prominent member, and he said, oh, he'd be happy to sponsor me. So in '82, I joined, but there was still no blacks. But now, the current president is black, and I think a couple years ago, the first black president of the club. So it's fully integrated now.

MA: But it took until the '80s for that to happen, it sounds like.

BU: '80s, yeah. Well, the blacks didn't get in until about '87 or somewhere in there, oh, yeah. But there are still clubs around that are that way, you know. And not only blacks, but for whatever reason. The clubs in San Francisco, in the peninsula there, pretty much that way.

<End Segment 19> - Copyright ©2008 Densho and the Topaz Museum. All Rights Reserved.