Airline Ads 2 - American 02.jpg (1/1)

[Mitchell Holman[_8_]]

[Byker]

"Mitchell Holman" > wrote in message
. ..

Hey, Mitchell:

"There's another unpleasant side of flight in the 1950s and 1960s that tends
to be glossed over. "I think it's important to point out that in the Golden
Age of Flying, only white people really flew," says de Syon. It was a racist
age, and this is reflected even at 30,000 feet.

"Part of the reason why so few minorities flew was simply economic. In 1950,
the median income for an African-American male was just $1,471 per year. The
average white male was paid nearly twice as much, and since air travel was
such a luxury, few minorities could afford it.

"'If you saw a black person at an airport during the Golden Age of Flying,
they were almost definitely a porter, not a passenger,' de Syon says.

"Even if you could afford a ticket as a minority, though, there was a good
chance you wouldn't be allowed into the same planes as white passengers.

"'In the 1950s, some airlines would train their phone operators to try to
identify the voices of African-Americans, then put them on certain flights
and not others,' de Syon says. 'It wasn't until the late 1960s and 1970s
that things started changing. It may have been the Golden Age of Flying, but
it was also a very racist age.'"

http://www.fastcodesign.com/3022215/terminal-velocity/what-it-was-really-like-to-fly-during-the-golden-age-of-travel