Colour Bar In N.Z. ‘Evident’

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30586, 31 October 1964, Page 1

Colour Bar In N.Z. ‘Evident’

A colour bar which was evident in New Zealand should not be permitted to get any worse, the Negro male lead of “Black Nativity,” Mr Alex Bradford, said in Christchurch yesterday.

A belief he had held that there was no colour problem in this country was apparently shattered shortly, after his arrival in Auckland, when Mr Bradford and his daughter invited two Maori friends to dine with them at the Hotel De Brett He said that other guests refused to eat in the room while the coloured party was there.

“We had the diningroom entirely to ourselves,” he said. “I decided to stay there for two hours and let the other guests get really hungry. "As vie left there was a tremendous crush as the others began entering the diningroom,” Mr Bradford said. New Zealand should profit from America’s mistakes and not let the colour problem get any worse, he said. Mr Bradford said he and other members of the cast had found pakehas “standoffish." “We have visited 18 countries but this is the first in which we have felt like strangers,” he said. “The Maoris, however, have done everything possible to make us feel at home. Maybe it is because we are people of their colour and that they identify us with their struggles and their ways."

Mr Bradford said he felt a little bitter towards the attitude of the pakehas at first. “But after assessing the position for several days, I felt their attitude was mainly due to our show. Some people think that anything involving the word ‘religion’ is the kiss of death. “Because we in the show are religious does not mean that, we are ready to be locked up in a convent,” he said. Much of the thinking in New Zealand had obviously been moulded by the "cold, strict and just too dead” thinking of the Anglican Church.

He recalled the comments of the Archbishop of Canterbury (the Most Rev. Dr. Michael Ramsey) after a Royal command performance of “Black Nativity” in Coventry Cathedral. “Everyone was in tears, and he said he had not thought he would ever hear such clapping in the cathedral. He also said that the Anglican Church could draw back its young if It followed our style.” “The Archbishop in effect admitted that his church was not getting across to its younger members,” said Mr Bradford.

Questioned further on the issue of racial discrimination,

Mr Bradford said be was not a “race fighter,” nor bad he been involved in any racial incidents overseas. The problem In New Zealand was being caused by a very small minority. “And I am sure that this minority

has been imported into New Zealand rather than comprising native New Zealanders themselves,” he said. Mr Bradford, who has been with the show since it first opened in New York three years and a half ago, is a professor of music. He is a former schoolteacher and is a minister of the Baptist Church. He is also choir master of two churches.