From all available evidence no black man had ever set foot in this tiny Swiss village before I came. I was told before arriving that I would probably be a “sight” for the village; I took this to mean that people of my complexion were rarely seen in Switzerland, and also that city people are always something of a “sight” outside of the city. It did not occur to me — possibly because I am an American — that there could be people anywhere who had never seen a Negro. In the village there is no movie house, no bank, no library, no theater; very few radios, one jeep, one station wagon; and, at the moment one typewriter, mine, an invention which the woman next door to me here had never seen.
Baldwin, J.: “Notes of a Native Son”, in the chapter: Stranger in the village (Beacon Press, 1990).