Discovering a "Whites Only" bathroom ... in Ohio!

My Pastor posted this to her Facebook Page yesterday and gave permission to distribute this story widely.

Discovering a "Whites Only" bathroom ... in Ohio!


Driving past Toledo, OH, this past Saturday, we stopped for gas at a Sunoco station, just off 475 near the Ohio Turnpike. I went in to use the facilities. There was a sign taped to the door: 'Out of Order.'


"Oh, the restroom's out of order?" I asked the clerk, who seemed to be vaguely Middle Eastern. "No, it works. Go ahead," he said. "Really? But the sign says out of order." "No, it's fine. Go ahead."


I went in, and everything was clean and functional. Just what you want in a Sunoco restroom. Outside, I could hear my husband asking the same sorts of questions. "No, it's not out of order," I heard the clerk say. I heard my husband give him the same line of inquiry. We are big readers, so we take signs seriously. Why would you put up a sign that said, "out of order" if it was not actually out of order?


I came out. The clerk said, "That's to keep the wrong kind of people out." I went to grab a bottle of water, and just then heard someone come in. "Is the restroom out of order?" he asked. "Yes," the clerk replied.


I saw an African-American man leave the store and disappear around the corner. I went outside to the car, and saw a car sitting at the pump with a middle-aged African-American woman sitting in it. The same African-American man came back around the corner of the building and got in the car. I figured he had gone around the building to do what apparently he was not going to be able to do in the "out of order" restroom.


There was nothing visibly different between these two middle aged people and my husband and me. Their car was similar, their clothing was similar. Yet we were passed on, into the "out of order" restroom, and he was not.


I have lived almost 51 years on this earth. I have lived in the South, the North, and the Mid-Atlantic. I have traveled from the East Coast to the West Coast. Never before in my country have I ever experienced something like this before. That I would discover, and be allowed to benefit from, a Jim Crow restroom, in Ohio, in the year 2010, with an African-American as our President, was beyond my imagining.


I feel horrible. I feel horrible that this happened after I had been able to benefit from my whiteness, before I realized what was happening. I feel horrible that we drove away before I put all the pieces of this puzzle together in my head, and that we did not go back and confront the clerk. I did write to Sunoco immediately on the customer comments section of their website, but I don't know what to expect from that.


I know my African-American friends will tell me, "Honey, you haven't seen the half of it." That makes me feel even worse. On most days, I can imagine that we live in a post-racial society, and that things are so much better now than they were 50 years ago. And yes, many things are much better.


But too much is still the same.


Pastor Kit Carlson
All Saints Episcopal Church
East Lansing, MI