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Kenneth ClarkKenneth Clark
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Session:         Page of 763

Q:

This means, in the nursery school you were in, in the Zone, that the others were also --?

Clark:

I think so. Now, that's interesting, because I don't remember color as a perceivable factor, while I was in Panam -- except that I don't remember any of my mother's friends or my father's friends who were white. But if you ask me about the church or the nursery school, and if you were to say to me, “Were they all black?” -- I would have to say to you, “I don't remember. I just don't know.”

In fact, I don't remember very many friends in school. I don't remember whether the other people in that performance were white, black, or in between. I remember the doctor, the person who was playing the role of the doctor, hovering over me, but I really don't remember his color.

Q:

During this time, did your mother work?

Clark:

My mother, as far as I recall, did not work while we were in Panama. My father worked. He worked for the United Fruit Company, and he had -- even, interestingly enough, even as young as I was then, I was aware of the fact that he had a status job, which his father before him had, you know. Now, this comes later. This did not come as a part of primary memory, then. It comes after I'm here, and my mother's telling me about my father, and I'm writing him, he's writing me. That it was an unusual job for someone who was not white, particularly for an American company in the Canal Zone, and it was a very important factor in his not coming to the United States, because the United Steamship Co., the United Fruit Co., and I think they were one, could not guarantee him





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