While compiling a catalog of the books here in the archives I ran across this interesting excerpt from a book called "Naturalist's South Pacific Expedition: Fiji"
Ordonez and I were about to enter the rest house when Mr. Stanley, who is familiar with the ways of the colony, tactfully suggested I go alone to arrange about our quarters. Blue-eyed, dark-haired Miss Lorna Reay, in charge of the rest house, post office and just about everything for which efficiency and dispatch are required, wished to accommodate me and my Filipino assistant. Yet, because a number of white guests were lodged in the building, she was not sure how they might react to the unprecedented situation of living under the same roof with a colored person. I consulted the highest authority in charge, the "D.C.," about it. He explained that it were best not to start a troublesome precedent, no matter how well educated the Filipino might be. He could not live in the rest house, but he could live in the native servants' quarters, eat his meals in the rest house kitchen, join me in the rest house to help me with my work, but not use the main entrance which was reserved for guests.
And later on, after the author is furious at the terrible treatment provided to his assistant, he rents out a house and he, Ordonez, and Mr. Stanley move in together.
There, the general public would never know that Mr. Stanley, Ordonez and I, all three of us, lived in perfect harmony and actually ate together at table as real human beings. I have always admired Mr. Stanley, a man of education, for waiving a custom prevalent in Fiji as well as in benighted and bigoted sections of the southern United States.
The year was 1940.
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