In 1954, Betty White rejected pressure to stop featuring tap dancer Arthur Duncan on her show because he was Black
- Betty White rejected attempts to keep Black dancer Arthur Duncan off her show in the 1950s.
- Her respond to pressure to stop featuring him was that people had to "live with it."
Betty White pushed back against pressure for her to stop featuring a Black tap dancer on her show in 1954, The Washington Post reported.
When encouraged to take Arthur Duncan off the air, White, then in her 30s, said: "I'm sorry, but, you know, he stays," per the Post.
She also told her critics to "live with it."
That year, 1954, also saw the Supreme Court handing make the Brown vs. Board of Education decision which banned segregated schools.
"I was on the show and they had letters from Mississippi and elsewhere that some of the stations would not carry the show if I was permitted to stay on there," Duncan recalled said in a 2017 interview on Steve Harvey's "Little Big Shots: Forever Young."
"Well, Betty wrote back and said: 'needless to say, we used Arthur Duncan every opportunity we could,'" he said.
Reunited with White on "Little Big Shots," Duncan reignited trademark banter they used to have on her show.
"I hope we have a chance to visit after this is over," Duncan told White, to which she replied: "Oh, I hope so. You never call. You never ask me out," per People.
"The Betty White Show" was short-lived, repeatedly rescheduled and eventually taken off air, per the Post.
The show was the first big break for Duncan, then in his early 20s, he said in the 2018 documentary "Betty White, First Lady of Television."
"The first TV show I had ever been on, and I credit Betty White for really getting me started in show business, in television," he said.
He went on to have a decades-long career as one of the first famous Black tap dancers in the US.