Biden Tells Story About Black Lifeguards He Worked with as a Kid Who Were ‘Relatively Well Known Athletes’

EXCERPT:

BIDEN: "And so it’s — when I started off as a kid getting involved, I had a job with a nice country club kind of pool as a lifeguard. I wanted to work on the east side because I knew I played ball with a lot of great black athletes but I knew, you know, I didn’t know them. We knew each other, they were friends but I didn’t know them. It was a great education. It was like The Green Mile, you know? You've seen the movie? Well, it’s like that. You know? You began to realize that the people I’ve known for a long time, that, you know, they lived in the middle of a city and a county that was white but they didn’t know anybody. They knew but they didn’t know anybody. It was a real education for me. I’m not being melodramatic, I mean, it really was. And I think I’ve told a couple of you, the guys who, men who were all lifeguards at that time, the guys who got the jobs were usually the relatively well-known athletes who they hired. There were people, all being 13 lifeguards I worked with, all of them became really successful in their lives.”