Finds No Hint Of Colour Bar

Press, Volume CV, Issue 31017, 24 March 1966, Page 14

Finds No Hint Of Colour Bar

Jimmy Fields, a 29-year-old Negro professional boxer from Los Angeles, has found no hint of a colour bar in New Zealand.

“I have been in New Zealand only 23 days—in Wellington and Christchurch—but 1 have found all New Zealanders amazingly friendly,” he said last evening. “In America it is different. I think it is because America is such a big country with so many people. In the United States people are very independent. They do not think of other people soznuch—they think of themselves.”

“In America there are different classes—the wealthy, the first, second and third classes, and the poor,” Fields said. “When you are in one class, you do not think about the others—until the poor rebel against the slums and the conditions they live in. “Over here, there are no classes, and all people are genuinely interested in each other. I have been invited to people's homes, invited to parties, invited everywhere, and made really welcome. “If I get invited back over here to box again, I shall fight for purses sufficient to bring my wife and boy with me to see New Zealand and meet

the people. My boy is only three, but I think he would gain from the visit.” Fields is a moulder in a foundry in Los Angeles, and ■has to be back there by March 28. “There are thousands of unemployed in Los Angeles, and I did not apply for leave beyond March 28," he said. “I want my job when I get back, because jobs cannot just be picked as they can here."

Fields received £lBO for boxing in Wellington, and will receive about the same—£2so less a £7O levy by the New Zealand Boxing Council —for fighting in Christchurch this evening. “It is about the same money

I get for boxing in the States," he said. “Of course, if you are in a different class you get better money. It is a question of knowing the right people, and being in the right dreles at the right time.” Fields said that life in New Zealand was much slower than it was in Los Angeles. “I waited one hour in a Wellington hotel before I got served. It was not colour bar or anything like that: I was in a group, and other groups were waiting. “And jay-walking—people here walk out in front of a bus! In Los Angeles they would get a ticket if they didn’t get killed,’’ Fields said, i shuddering. <