RICH NEGRO’S TRIALS.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXX, Issue 5505, 25 November 1929, Page 3

RICH NEGRO’S TRIALS.

COLOUR BAR IN ENGLAND. NO ADMITTANCE AT HOTELS. Mr Robert S. Abbott, a wealthy American negro, reputed by his friends to be a dollar millionaire, has been refused admission at so many London hotels that he has given up trying to find accommodation in Lon-, don. He has been on a three months’ holiday tour of Europe with his white wife, and he declares that he met no colour bar until he reached England. Mr Abbott is owner and editor of the “Chicago Defender,” the largest “coloured” newspaper in the United States. His treatment in London, he says, has been as follows : “Refused admission to thirty hotels ; compelled to leave one hotel at half an hour s notice ; and requested to leave another after having booked rooms for a fortnight. “I went first to Paris,” said Mr Abbott to an interviewer in London, “where I was accorded the highest treatment a man could have. I was received heartily at the first hotel I entered. In the cafe everything was open to me ; nothing denied to me. We went on to Antwerp, Brussels, and The Hague. The treatment was the same. It was the same at, Amsterdam, Bremen, Hamburg, Berlin, Wiesbaden, and Cologne.” Mr Abbott shook his head reminiscently. His eyes shone and his teeth flashed. Then London was reached. “I am not talking against the English people,” he interposed with sudden seriousness. “I have found them to be quite as broadminded as the people of the Continent. I have met in England some of the finest people to whom God ever gave breath. London is magnificent. I like the public spirit of the people, how graciously they direct you anywhere you don’t know. The people in the streets are as fine as any I met anywhere.” Mr Abbott, after this caution, described his struggles to find accommodation. “I was booked through by the tourist agents to spend one night at ” he said, naming a noted hotel in a fashionable district. “I was out early next morning, and when I returned at 11.30 a.m. a porter asked if I was going to stay or not. I replied that I would probably stay twelve or fourteen days. When he reported this one of the managers came and told me he was sorry, but he had a party of seventy-five people arriving, and as the party did not wish to be separated he would require my room, and I must leave by twelve o’clock. That gave me half-an-hour’s notice. “My wife and I then went to the naming another hotel in the West of London. “I went there saying we should stay for nearly a fortnight, and the woman in charge said that would be all right. We felt we were settled, but next morning we received a note from the management saying they required oui’ room at midday that day. “We must have tried thirty hotels that day. “My problem was solved at last when ! remembered the name of a professional coloured man, and rang him up to tell him my predicament. He told me to come right out to him, and we are staying with him in Forest Hill. . . “There is colour prejudice m the States, especially in the south. If I tried to enter an hotel in New Orleans they would lynch me. At least they would kick me out, and if I resisted they would lynch me. But in England, which has millions of coloured people under the flag, I expected different treatment.”