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Transcript on deposit at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Library
Citation of this interview should be as follows:
“Interview K-0144, in
the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007,
Southern Historical
Collection, The Wilson Library,
University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill”
This is the second of two interviews with Lawrence Ridgle, who spent most of his life living in Durham, North Carolina. Ridgle begins this interview by offering a detailed description of his father's work with the American Tobacco Company, explaining that his father had a fairly good job with the company, considering the opportunities open to African Americans at the time. Following in their father's footsteps, Ridgle's sister also worked for the American Tobacco Company, she for more than forty years. Initially employed as a cleaning woman, Ridgle's sister eventually rose in the ranks of the company to become the first African American foreman. In chronicling her unique achievements, Ridgle argues that her success was a source of tension for some African American workers, who dubbed her "the slave driver." Ridgle shifts to a discussion of his years spent in the army, arguing that much like his sister, he covered new ground in the area of African American leadership. After first serving as a non-commissioned officer over an all-black battalion in the army, Ridgle presided over one of the first integrated battalions during the early 1950s. He offers numerous anecdotes about his experiences in the army, including the racial tensions he witnessed. Ridgle devotes the last third of the interview to a discussion of his thoughts on the state of affairs for the African American community at the time of the interview (1999), focusing primarily on the impact of demographic changes resulting from a rapidly growing Latino population. In outlining some of the emerging tensions between African Americans and Latinos, Ridgle argues that Latinos offered a good example of industrious behavior for African Americans and expresses his hope that the two groups could learn from one another. Asserting his belief that urban renewal in Durham was detrimental to African Americans, Ridgle also spends considerable time explaining his disdain for the current welfare system and his perception of drug abuse in Durham, arguing that both contributed to the decline of the African American community. The interview concludes with Ridgle's ideas for promoting alliances between African Americans, Latinos, and poor whites to work together for the benefit of all three marginalized groups.
Lawrence Ridgle, a near-lifelong resident of Durham, North Carolina, discusses his family's work at the American Tobacco Company and his role of leadership in the newly integrated United States Army during the early 1950s. In addition, he discusses the changing nature of the African American community, focusing on perceived threats to its solidarity, and the impact of demographic changes, primarily the rapidly growing Latino community.
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
This is Alicia Rouverol of the Southern Oral History Program. Today's date is June 9th 1999. And I'm interviewing Lawrence Ridgle, Jr.—Sarge is his nickname—in Durham, North Carolina. This is part of the New Immigrants project for the Listening for a Change project at the Southern Oral History Program. And this is my tape number 6999SR.1. And we'll be picking up on where we left off last week.
I thought we'd start by going back and kind of filling in a couple of things that I had questions on or that I wasn't clear on. When you talked about the men on the porch working in the neighborhood, they were making like bands to go around the outside of the barrels? Is that right?
Umm-hmm. To secure the barrel, you know. They put a top in it and then they have to have something to squeeze the top tight to keep it from coming out. They have metal bands today. But in that day they had to make them by hand. It was hard work and didn't pay much.
Now when you were talking about your dad working at American Tobacco—he worked in a storage house. Is that right?
Umm-hmm.
Now what kinds of jobs would have been available to him as an African American at that time.
Well, at that time
I remember as a kid I used to go down there and where they make the cigarettes, the machine that made the cigarettes, blacks couldn't work in there. Only white ladies worked up there and fix-its, guys that fixed the machine when it malfunctioned or something. And I used to go—it used to be so hot in that factory because—.
In fact, my sister worked down there. In fact, the American Tobacco Company used to be like a family orientated job. When they needed somebody to work they didn't necessarily like go to the employment office or put out some kind of, put it in the paper or something. They asked people on the job, "Have you got a child or you got somebody in your family that needs a job?" So everybody that used to work there until the union got there it was more or less—everybody was kin.
But blacks in the manufacturing department where the cigarettes were actually made, they did not work. There were some jobs like getting the tobacco ready to be processed for manufacturing. Now they had one or two guys and those were exclusive jobs that you could get because they used to put rum and a real good smelling syrup—they used to put it in the tobacco. They had a mix. They would mix it and then toast it before it would go to the machines to be put into a cigarette. And they had about two or three fellows that I can remember that kept those jobs and retired from them. Now those were the best jobs.
The blacks down there, they did all the manual labor like getting the
tobacco off the box cars, off of the trucks and before they got
thrashing machines, they used to have hundreds of women. They worked on
the line there. Tobacco would come in after it had
It's so hot in there. It was so hot in there that everybody would be wet with sweat. And as a kid I used to go down there to visit and I don't think—. Well, they used to call it the American Tobacco Company. They used to call it the slave house because they really—the people had to work just like machines to keep up with the machines. And it was a very hot and humid in there. And mostly there were women.
And when I got a job down there years later—. In fact, I was always big and I was strong because I played sports and stuff. And my daddy got me a job. I must have been about thirteen, but I was big. And the place that we had to work it was doing what they called the tobacco season, which starts around, I guess about—. Well they start coming in from Georgia—tobacco starts coming in about, I guess, about June, maybe May—late May or June. And they work a season up to about Christmas. And you talking about hard work.
They didn't have motor lifts. And the tobacco that came in from Georgia it came on a boxcar, big trucks. And, you know, tobacco is perishable and you've got to rush to get it—a certain moisture you have to get out of it or it will rot—before you put it in them barrels. And we used to get that stuff, man, them sheets.
Oh, them sheets weighed three hundred pounds. And we used to stack them up to a twenty-foot ceiling. And because I was young, and strong and eager to work, the older guys—which blacks always do. A young guy comes in, they don't like sort of show him, you know, show him the ins and outs out a job. They'll try to break his back. And I didn't know it. You know, that two people were picking up the sheet. That if I pick this side and I pick up first, I just turned the wheel over there. And when you pick up you'll pick up the whole thing, I just guide it. And that's what they used to do to me. I worked down—my daddy worked down there forty-seven years. My sister worked down there forty-four years.
Wow.
I think I worked about four days. Yeah, I quit. It was just too hard for
me. And the heat—your shoes would get full of water, you know. And they
didn't know nothing. And the foreman—they stayed, they worked about an
hour and another guy would come. He'd go back and change shirts and
stuff and come back maybe another hour later. But they didn't stay in
that building but one hour at a time. But the blacks, they stayed down
there all day. And when the union came motor lifts—I think the thrashing
machine came from England somewhere—way, way big. Manufactured them or
invented them. They put about—in both factories
Wow. You mean once the thrashing machines came in.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Stemming machine, thrashing machine. There was—I remember in poor neighborhoods black women that had jobs at the American and at Liggett-Myers—they wore—they even had uniforms they used to wear. And I thought there were—. They used to wear these baby type bonnets. It was almost like a nurse's cap. They were starched, and ironed and stood up. And they wore—I forgot the color of the uniforms. I believe it was blue and white. But they were always starched and they stood up like they might have had crinoline slips or something under them—and big white aprons.
And everybody—I used to hear men talk. If you wanted a girlfriend, you had to get you one of those American Tobacco women or one of those Liggett-Myers women. That was the thing. And they were kind of—I think that was the first ever I saw women trying to be independent because they were making the same money as men were making, black men.
What time period was this?
This had to be forties, late thirties, early forties. Like, well, even up
to the war because the union was just getting started and they were
having problems. Like R. J. Reynolds, who was a leading tobacco person
in what they called Tobacco Road. But he never had a union and still
doesn't have one today. R. J. promised his people if they don't get a
union he would give them as much or more that union people got and he
did. R. J. Reynolds was good to his people like that. All those people
are—they started the profit sharing and that type thing. He used to give
nice bonuses that
But, like my sister, she's got a hell of a success story. She didn't even
finish high school because Alfonso came along. And she went down there
to work. My daddy got
See my father had been working there a long time when she came along. And
he knew a lot of people and a lot of people respected my father because
he never missed a day in forty-seven years. And he was a hard worker. He
did what they told him and he did it right. And a lot of people knew
him. And if he went down there and asked for you a job, you pretty well
were going to get it. So because of my father
Really?
To work as a packer. She was the first black person that they picked for
a hostess. And later—they don't
Boy, I bet she had a wealth of knowledge.
And, then I think she got some more
Outside of the factories and things, yeah.
They'd come and punch in at the factory and they'd send them out to the house to work. Well, my sister—the manager—she cashed all of his checks, she got his car cleaned, she'd get his car clean, she went shopping with his wife, had the wife clean her house. Met his mother. His mother fell in love with her. And then they made him superintendent of the whole Durham operation.
Then the union came in. And his mother came to the factory one day. She just wanted to mosey around and see what—. I don't know whether she'd ever been inside to see them manufacture. But she came down and it was raining real hard. And my sister saw her and she got an umbrella, and went out to the car and got her. And his mother—they really hit it off after that. She used to call—she used to go out to his mother's house. So when they said that they're going to have to put black in management, his mother told him, said, "You'd better do something for Katherine." And she got bricks like that. And she was the first black foreman.
Really?
Umm-hmm. In the factory.
So the first black foreman was a woman not a man.
Umm-hmm, yeah.
I was wondering about women's positions there versus—African American women's positions versus men.
And you see what this
Wow.
Black people in this town call her a slave driver.
They called her a slave driver?
They still do. But she had—she—not because she was my sister, but from experiences of being in the service and then being in the penitentiary and seeing how people run things, she was no nonsense. You know, when you punched the clock she said, "You're on American Tobacco time. They pay you to work an hour. I expect you to work an hour." And she had the reputation—on a shift I think each machine had to do fifty-eight thousand cartons per shift. She could get more than that out of her people.
And any time they had a big rush order they'd give it to her, you know, because she could get it done. And for that a lot of blacks said that she was an Oreo cookie. She thought she was white. She's been brainwashed. But I wasn't there and I don't know how much of that is true.
But I know this. I know how she is today. And I've been knowing her all her life. She's very reluctant to lie. My daddy would not lie. And she tries to pattern herself after my father. She won't tell you no lie. If she tells you she's going to do something, she will do it. You can put your Bible on it. But if she says, "No", you can just forget about it. Now I know plenty of people who worked for her—even today and she's been retired for some years—she still has people bring her cakes. This one lady makes her bourbon balls that they make for Christmas ever since I can remember. This lady still—and she's got to be eighty some years old.
And these are people that worked with her at American Tobacco?
Mostly white people though. She's got lots of white friends that have
farms and things. They pick beans and corn and stuff like that. And all
the time they just come and bring it to her. Her birthday meant cakes,
pies, presents. So she couldn't have
That's interesting. Ambivalent feelings, probably.
Umm-hmm. And she's helped a lot of blacks because during this drug thing
she was instrumental in
And then blacks have a tendency to believe that—because I know. I lost my first stripes in the Army trying to be a good guy, you know. I had a fellow that worked in my section. In fact, he was smarter than me. Because we had to break down our—we actually in garrison we got all of the rations for our platoon and then we had to break them down according to company, you know, how many men they had. And I used to have a little shellac calculator that I used. That it would take me, shoot, an hour and a half to two hours to do it on paper, to break the rations down according to how many men you have. And then when we'd go get it in there you could look and see what this company was supposed to get and what that company was supposed to get.
But this little kid, I saw him every morning and early at night. I'd be
working
Is that something
That's got to be out front.
You were saying about those slide calculations.
You know like I try to be so precise. Like they had to have seventy-five pounds of potatoes. I would give them seventy-five pounds. But he would—if they came a hundred pounds in a bag, you know, if he had seventy-five, "Why don't we just give them a hundred pounds this time" and remember it. And the next time somebody else would get the little extra. It worked out real fine.
And he became my right hand man. He did all my paperwork for me. And really, I got real lazy down there. But I was getting all the food, all the fruit and everything. I got me a big twenty-gallon pot and we had all the ice and everything. I'd make big pots of lemonade. We had cold cuts over in our section. We would hardly eat in the mess hall. And I just sat down and got fat and a little bit on the lazy side because I wasn't—.
I had come from an airborne unit where we exercised and would run and stuff every day. And we called people—those jumpers, we called them legs. And this was a leg outfit. And the airborne thing, all the other outfits are lazy and we were.
And this guy, I got him promoted. I got him two stripes. And he really
took care of my job. All I had to do was just check and see was it done.
So I started going to town with him. We used to go to a little town,
Hineville, Georgia, down in Savannah. Hineville was very, very
prejudiced. And, in fact,
Our fence was right in that little town. So we cut a hole through the
fence. And when you didn't have a pass you'd go through the hole. So me
and this guy, him and I had met two sisters. They—we went to their house
one night. We were over there
Oh, woah.
But the Army has a way that you can report a man and he don't necessarily have to be there. You can say, "All present and accounted for." So I get slick and said, "All present and accounted for." I didn't know that being accounted for you had to be on the reservation.
Oh.
And he wasn't on the reservation, but I went on and reported him present.
Then I had another guy that knew about the hole. I sent him through the
hole. He knew where the house was. I said, "You go get Starr and tell
him to get here." So he went and was gone about twenty minutes. And he
came back and said, "He's over there, but he won't come." He was about
drunk. So I said, "I'd better go get him." So I went through the hole,
told the guys to cover for me. I got there. He wasn't there. They'd done
got in a car and gone downtown to the
Wups.
Now I go back to camp. I know he's going to come back to camp. But I said, "I'll just call for him today." He went downtown and got picked up by the MPs that morning. And the military police like everything else, they'd have him on the Army post and off the Army post that have any kind of contributions to the Army.
They got a little piece of paper that came down from headquarters—every outfit—called the "daily distribution." He gets picked up by the MPs. The MPs give it to headquarters that he was downtown without a pass early in the morning and working out. And it came down to our battalion commander at noon. It came down every noon, the daily distribution. He looks in there and here's a soldier from his outfit downtown. Now he checked the morning report.
Oops.
Everybody was present and accounted for. He called my commander. His name was Calhoun. He said, "Calhoun? All your people present?" He said, "Yes." He said, "One of your men's downtown. The MPs got him." "Oh, that's in Sargent Ridgle's section. Well let me check that, sir." Now he calls me. He was a good guy. He was airborne, too. We were sent down there to train these guys. So I told him exactly what happened—that buddy-buddy thing—which was a bad decision.
He said, "But, I can understand it." He said, "But when you play, you've
got to pay." So the
So then he tried to cross the battalion commander. He said, "Man. That
man wanted to give you a court martial." "We need to have a special
court martial, which other than that, he said, you're going to be
reduced, and probably fined. And if they reduce you low enough, you're
going to get some hard labor." So he said, "Well—" he
Oh my gosh.
And that got stopped. It came in later that day. He wouldn't even speak
to me. I saw him when he came in. He avoided me. So I went to his bed. I
said, "Man, why didn't you come when I sent for you?" He said, "I don't
know man. I was just drunk." He said, "To tell you the truth, I don't
know why I didn't come." I said, "Boy you know you got me messed up. I
was trying to protect you." I said, "I reported you present."
You know it's a good thing to cover for your buddy, but you've got to cover yourself first. And I think that's the kind of thing they saw in my sister down there. She had a production to do. They expected certain things out of her. And sometimes those people, you know, the machines the way I understand it, you don't have to do nothing to them but just keep them loaded. And sometimes when they've malfunctioned, you can just move a little thing, you know, to, you know, get back on track. But if are talking up there to another machine—. So she made people stay on their machine, the ones with machines.
Would she have been supervising both black and white workers?
Black and white, yeah.
The battalion you were in—. I know you were in an all black battalion when you were working as a paratrooper. Was this all black?
Yeah. This was before '52. See they didn't integrate. They had—. In fact, I was one of the first ones selected to do what they call token integration. They sent five of us to different outfits, just one man per company. In fact, the 87th Airborne division was the first one that tried integration in 1951. They did token integration to see how it would work. They got some nasty reactions.
But in 1952 it was mandated by the president that all units in the armed forces would be at least fifteen percent black. And that's when they really started integration in 1952. And that was a horse of another color.
I've had white guys to tell me they weren't going to do what a nigger said. Yeah. They just weren't going to do it. Especially if there are two or three of them and you're by yourself where you ain't got no witness. They say some nasty things.
But I was a pretty good soldier. And I did some nasty things to them, too. When I caught one of them kind of guys, any time—we used to have. Excuse the expression. There are a whole lot of details that come up in the Army that's called shit details. Them kind of guys, when the shit detail came up, they were the shit all the time. I used to see them milling around after duty hours. And if either one of those nasty guys in one of those nasty groups, I'd find something for them to do. I'd make them police the area and pick up all the cigarette butts. I'm behind them looking hard with a magnifying glass trying to find anything that doesn't grow. If I find something, they've got to go back through. If I find something that time, they crawl through.
So you're a pretty hard liner.
I am. Yes. I was romping, stomping. And I felt, I felt that the Army just a little bit, I felt that the Army wasn't quite treating black non-commissioned officers right because one time in the communication section I had—.
When you go out—. We didn't have
The guys would want to half do it—roll it up on the reel or either unroll it. And one guy—this is one of the guys who told me he wasn't going to do what no nigger sergeant said—I went to my commander and I told him. And I told him I wanted him court martialed. He told me to go think about it and come back. He said, "I'll see you in the morning. And if you still feel that way we'll see what we can do."
The next morning I was still smoking because he did it before my whole section. And if I let him get away with this, I can't run the section. So this is what I told the company commander the next morning. He said, "Well let me give him a reprimand." I said, "I don't want him to have no reprimand." I said, "I want him court martialed." And he wouldn't do it.
And then I started looking at him. And in his office he flew the rebel
flag above the U. S. flag. And then I got to thinking all kinds of
thoughts on some things that he had
That's great. What year was that in?
This had to be about '50 or '51.
Wow. That's great.
No. This was '51 because—no it might have been '52 because we had integration. And see what they did in black outfits—we had a nuclear of NCOs. And when they integrated they might send one NCO here and maybe fourteen privates.
And what's an NCO?
Non-commissioned.
Non-commissioned, okay.
And, actually, NCOs, believe it or not, run the service, not the general and if NCOs cannot get along then the NCOs are not being affected. And when we first went to those outfits—. Like they made me a section leader in a white outfit. Well, they already had a section leader but he had to go. Now they're mad at me because I took his job. I broke up their little nuclear. So you had that to work for—
Man. So you really broke some boundaries there.
Sure.
Yeah. Sounds like both you and your sister really broke through.
In a different way, yeah. And I was overseas and I thought, you know,
we'll go to combat. And I tell black guys this. And sometimes I put a
little shivy and put a little yeast in it.
We were dying—and we were dying together. We stayed on alert. We were the only airborne outfit in the Far East. We had the original combat team over there. And we were gung ho because we were the only airborne unit in the Far East. And our jobs were like specialty jobs.
When they called an airborne attack there's something very bad and something needs to be done real quick. And I guess we kind of liked that title. You know, we can fix anything. We're behind enemy lines to its flanks. We can get there and be ready to do business in eighteen seconds. And I was kind of proud of that.
And we stayed on alert so therefore, in combat you watch my back, I'll watch your side. If you don't know what's on your left and your right at all times in combat, you've got a good chance you're going to get killed. And these guys knowing this and they still had that black and white thing over there.
Christmas of 1954 in a little town called Barpoo, Japan—they had one of the biggest race riots that they've had. And for the next five or six months a black couldn't go into town by himself. And if the blacks caught a white by himself, they would mollywop him. So you had to go in groups. And I wrote to the inspection general in Washington, D. C. about the situation because it was escalating.
Was this in the military?
Yes, during the Korea War. And General Westmoreland had just come there and nothing. I wouldn't even go to headquarters with it because I never liked General Westmoreland. He used to be my battalion commander at Fort Bragg. We called him "Cold Ben Willy."
And so I wrote to Washington. But the inspector general to the Far East intercepted the letter. And I'm thinking I'm going to hear from Washington and I get—a couple, three weeks later, I think I'm going to hear from Washington any day. And one day I came in from lunch, the man told me to put on a Class A uniform and go to headquarters, which was General Westmoreland's office. I said, "Well, what is this?" Because sometimes they pick a guy and they want you to be an orderly or something. And behind him telling me to put on a Class A uniform, necktie and all that stuff, I said, "He must be going to pick me for an orderly or something."
But I found out when I got there it was a full colonel. I forget him name. He was from the inspector general's office in Tokyo. And he called me and told me who he was and why he was there. He said, "That letter that you sent to Washington, I intercepted it." He said, "I wish you would have directed it to me." He said, "Now if you want—if you just must send it to Washington, I will forward it." But, he said, "I wanted to talk to you first."
He said, "You know the army has just gotten integrated and we expected a
lot of trouble." He said, "Washington's got their hands full of all kind
of domestic and foreign things." He said, "And I'm over here to try and
straighten out things like this and I wish you'd give me a shot at it."
He said, "Now I want you to document all the complaints
So he did follow through on his word then?
Yes. They were skipping black guys for promotion. I mean doing obvious things. Black guys get beat up downtown and they don't even have any medical report of it. And they report every time you take an aspirin in the Army. And after that I said, "These guys just ain't going to treat you right."
And downtown, the girls, the Japanese people, they told them different—. I've had Japanese ask me, "Do all black women in the United States have hair like yours?" And I took out some pictures and showed them. And they said, "Ah. I see. Do all black people work in white people's houses in America—do domestic work?"
And the bar that the whites frequent—. Of course, they had country/western music in it and would not allow rhythm and blues there. And the cabarets and the things in Japan, the Japanese women as a whole, when you come in they'd be like hostesses. You'd sit down. They'd come right to your table. They'd sit down with you. They'd get drinks. Light your cigarette, keep your glass filled and do anything else you wanted them to do.
But in the bar that the whites frequented, the Japanese girl would come and take—she'd stand back with your glass and move back. You know, make you feel real uncomfortable. So they had some predominant black bars that had plenty of rhythm and blues and that type thing and the treatment was just the opposite. And that was because white guys had really told them that if they messed with black guys they weren't going to bother with them.
And a lot of those people wanted some tickets back to the United States.
And white guys were married. Them young boys over there—. Their average
age, I guess, was about twenty. They were going downtown marrying those
girls. So the Army had to put out an order that they couldn't marry
without the Army's approval.
I'm going to have to flip this take real quick.
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
The first time when I went to Korea, they got something they called
Gyray. That's when they would put a whole division of men on one ship.
They don't usually do that. And, in fact, they just started doing that
in '53. And they had a basic training outfit who had went and had a what
they call advance infantry training. And they sent them right overseas,
the whole division. And most of those guys came to our outfit, to my
outfit. And they were young. And some of them, I think, hadn't
experienced women too much. And the Japanese women, they were—they'd
make you think you were a god. How they wait on a man, adhere to every
desire that he had. And those guys had never had treatment like that and
they wanted to marry those girls.
That's a good story. Well, this is great stuff. You know, I think, when
Felicia comes to interview you I think she's going to want to talk more
about the time in the military because I think there's a lot of rich
material. I kind of—. And it, you know, again connects to this race
relation stuff. I have a couple of other questions about picking up from
last time. What is that when you were talking about Duke and Duke
backing,
Ed
Yeah. Are the first, the first, very first—that he was—
Well, it was three men: Merit, Moore and McDougal. They had some money but they didn't have that kind of money. They had to get some help even to get, I don't know what kind of license or bond or what you had to have to make an insurance company. But they couldn't have done it without some help. Yeah, they done it. But not knowing precisely the help could only have come from somebody like the Dukes.
The Dukes have helped the black community not—in stuff like education. That Warren Library down there, Duke had something to do with that. They had put out—. The Dukes have put out a lot of money to do things that were for general type things, you know. And people didn't see it directly coming to them. Like the library, which everybody should have a library—. But if you don't go to school, what are you building a library for? But it didn't benefit a lot of people like my father because he couldn't read nor write, you know. So they couldn't see those kind of benefits.
Central was a bunch of bull, wooden buildings. The Dukes intervened. And they do it quietly. I think they named a dormitory or some building, Annie B. Duke, or something like that. They've got two or three things down in Central that the Dukes allowed them to put. But old man Washington Duke, he didn't want to publicize that kind of stuff.
So you're saying a lot of stuff went on but it wasn't out in the open or out front?
No, no. And then a lot of people took credit. You had some blacks that took a lot of credit for things that they did. And I think—
Interesting.
North Carolina Mutual, even though those three guys started it, they
couldn't even hardly sell no damn policies. Black folks weren't buying
no policies from no black person. They couldn't see the money. And
somebody had helped those people, you know. And I don't what it would
take to get a bank, but I don't believe they could have gotten a bank by
themselves.
Right, right. It's kind of what I was expecting you might say, actually, as I was thinking about this. What about when we were talking about how—we were talking about Abe Shaw and that, you know, the hattery business and how he got moved to Tent City, I guess, you were saying and then never got relocated, which was pretty common. What about—. You said something about, "… but then they built that Heritage Square." What do you think about this Heritage Square that got built.
Tokenism. It couldn't—. The whole Heritage Square couldn't accommodate one—I'd say one-fourth of the business the blacks had. And then they did that twenty-five years later, or thirty. And a lot of the people that they put out of business was dead. And—
So kind of too little too late?
Yeah.
Yeah.
I think they just through that up for, you know, we promised to do something so we're going to do this.
Yeah, yeah. What do you know about that Haytie Development Corporation that was—I think they were behind that organization. You know behind the Heritage Square.
It was in the paper this morning. There have been a lot of people—excuse me just a minute.
Sure. Can I go ahead and pause this?
I read a lot about that Haytie. I've heard the name. I put it on the same—. And this is just me. I put it on the same plane with that Durham business and special team that they came up with years ago. It sounds good but they don't do nothing. And when you really look into it you find out that the people are lining their own pockets and things. There's affordable housing thing. It's in the news now. The city loaned them some money to—
Is this the Rolling Hills thing?
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
And they are eight hundred and some thousand dollars behind on their
bill. They haven't built—. The buildings look like they haven't built
half the buildings that
They seem pretty high, those prices for affordable housing.
And I think developers, lawyers, even city councilmen and everybody, you know, everybody wet their beak. And I think that a lot of the things that they come up with like United Durham was supposed to have been a black organization to help black people. They ain't helped black people do nothing.
Those people have got the monies that they could get out of it initially
and then
I used to truly admire that man. He was the first black lawyer that I saw in the courts and I've had some brushes in that court. He's the first black lawyer that I saw in the courtroom that acted like he knew his way around in the black room. They used to have black lawyers. It was just downtown. You'd tell a black lawyer, "Sit down." A lawyer couldn't plead a case. The very best that a black lawyer could do once one time—.
We had a lawyer here. His name was Gates. He was one of the most—as far as law was concerned he might have been on the same page with Chamberlain down there. He really knew Constitutional law and what have you. But he couldn't do nothing in the courtroom. The judge used to disrespect him.
When I saw Florence Mekisick get up he was dressed the part. He looked
like a lawyer. He acted like a lawyer. He talked like the courtroom was
his. I said, "Boy, we got a champion
And then, like so many of our people, he got hooked up with this. He was
going to build a
Right.
He was going to build. And he just did like everybody else. He got all those big grants and stuff and did some tokenism work out there and then it folded. And he lined his pockets with plenty of money.
So—
Ain't nobody for real. And if you watch most anything that they do, it might start off with a bang. But then you look at it and it ain't nothing.
What do you attribute that to, I mean beyond greed because you've been talking about lining the pockets.
Greed.
Is there some other—. I mean why is it that the African American elite are failing the working class blacks?
Well to put it mildly, we have an old saying that trying to outdo the Joneses, you know.
Umm-hmm.
Really getting more because it's there, getting more than they need. Why
in the hell does a person need five automobiles when he can't drive but
one? Everybody
You know, here's a man and wife and he wants a four or five bedroom split level house. He ain't got no kids or nothing. Why do they want such a big house? I think people have done got caught up in things so much. And what made Durham great—and I know this to be a fact—was the blacks used to be together. And there's a lot of things that separated them. And the blacks are just as much at fault or more at fault than the white.
Interesting.
They are because they could have—. That man down there that had the
printing shop that prints the Carolina Times, they
didn't make him move. St. Joseph Church, they wouldn't move for that
highway. They could have carried the highway out—and the highway doesn't
serve that much. I mean it's a good thing and a lot of people use it.
But Durham could have done without that expressway on 40. They could
have had a ramp coming off somewhere. They've got ramps all up and down,
you know, 40 keeps right on. And on that east/west expressway, they
could have come down Austin Avenue.
Yeah.
They put all those people out of business. And a few people had homes.
Look what they did for Fayetteville Street. I was on there yesterday and
it's pitiful. Fayetteville Street is like a ghost town. That was the
black people's Mecca, you know. When you went down Fayetteville Street,
I don't care who you were, if you were black, you felt a little
different, you know. The people that lived there, the blacks kind of
So they did their own version of white flight? They just—
Sure. They moved to—. Some of them are living out here—what's this out—. Well some of them are living out in Hope Valley North they call it. A few are living in Crowsdale. Out here off Ritter Road I forgot what this—I forgot what they call that area.
But they had real expensive houses out there because me and my wife went
out there and was trying to buy one. And this was quite a few years ago.
And they were talking about a hundred and ten, a hundred and twenty
thousand dollars then. And that wasn't even heard of in that day. And
blacks
And I feel like that Durham—. Another thing that starved Durham like in
the Army days, the esprit de corps. You want to compete, but you don't
want to—. You want to do better, but you don't want to push this man
down just so you can do better. They call that esprit de corps. You
know, give a man a
The white I feel like when they came through with urban renewal they were
going to do it. The worse thing that happened to Durham.
I ain't no genius and considered by some to be dumb. But if I'm going to help you I've got to know how long do I have to do this. How long am I willing to do this?
When they came out giving out those checks for the unwed mothers and food stamps they just stole a lot of money. Why? To help them or take care of them? Well why do you want to take care of somebody that's perfectly able and can take care of himself?
I came up with the idea that about three or four generations that we've had, we've had welfare. We've had—we've got a generation of people who have never done no more than wait for the welfare check. That's why they don't want to work now. They never seen their mother and father go to work.
That's why I love this community here. All the grown people in this community when I was a kid had a job. I don't care if it was dumping garbage. Every evening at four thirty, five o'clock you'd just sit on your porch and see Mrs. So and So. "There comes Mrs. So and So from work. There's Mrs. So and So coming from work." Everybody was coming from work. So children were inspired that work is a part of life.
But now we've got three or four generations of kids—their mother—they've never even seen their mother and daddy go to work. And I don't think that just happened. I don't believe that just happened.
Why would the government throw—give away so much money? And after getting so many complaints about the misuse of the money. But they still continue. Now they've got a bunch of fools out here that don't know anything about work, won't go to school.
And here comes the Spanish to the rescue. They don't need us no more. In
another ten years they won't need blacks to do the type jobs that were
set aside for
What was that last part?
The establishment wants their work done. And the Spanish people, really, I truly believe within the next five or ten years, the majority of blacks under thirty years old are going to be in the penitentiary.
Because—?
A lot of things. It ain't the drugs per se because the drugs—it had its uses, too. First they made us, through welfare, I think they made us unemployable.
I think you talked about dependency before.
Sure. Well why should I work? I've had girls tell me this. "I ain't going to work no where and flip no hamburgers for four dollars an hour, five dollars an hour. The welfare give me four hundred dollars a month. And I don't have to get up every morning or listen to somebody tell me to do this and do that." I've heard girls say, "I'd rather have me another baby and get me another four hundred dollars." Because they had that form, but if they hadn't have given it to them, they'd have got up off their butt and got it some kind of way, you know.
And then to compound it they come up with a new drug called crack.
No, you could get a little bit in a Coca-Cola. But blacks didn't know
better. We liked the Pepsi and RC.
I used to be working up at
He said he was what?
He was going to bury America and wasn't going to fire a shot. The Ayotollah Khomeni over there—they say the Shah left there with all the Iranian money and brought it here to the United States. And I know it was in the newspapers and television. And the Ayotollah told the United States to give them their money back. And right after that we got something they call China white heroin that was killing folks. And they said it came directly from Iran. I know that all these Iranians coming over here and they're buying up all these convenience stores. In Fayetteville they're buying up all the motels and what have you. Where do they get their money from? And we know right here in Durham, we don't have to go no further, there's been several Iranian stores that have been hooked up with trafficking drugs.
Really?
Sure.
So is that what you're thinking—? When you talk about crack and how crack has been—
Well, we had a drug scene, you know, in the—well it's a whole lot of things. See the government, the government is responsible for a lot of this shit. See World War II, the government started using LSD. And nobody knew nothing about no LSD. They were trying to make—they were trying to make a real live Rambo to do exactly what he's told to do. And they thought they might could do it through mind altering chemicals, which was LSD.
The government introduced LSD. And like any other drug or any other thing, it can get out of hand. Somebody sees making profit. I knew the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill back in the late sixties, mid-sixties, brother, there was plenty of that stuff you call LSD over there. And it's known—they've admitted that the government brought LSD out.
Why in the hell did they let it get out of hand and get it in the hands of these kids? Believe it or not, drugs came to this town through the school system, through—. Well, I don't know about Duke. Duke didn't have—. I don't—. I can't say that Duke had a whole lot of drugs. I know they probably did. But I know one time the University of North Carolina and Central—if I had had a daughter in the early sixties I wouldn't have sent her to Central for nothing in this world because there were plenty of drugs.
In fact, drugs were introduced in Durham through Central in the black
community. And those kids up in Chapel Hill—. I mean I know, I know the
rich family in Chapel Hill. I mean they are influential. In fact, I met
the lady that she was something
Is this McKane?
McKay.
M-C-K-A-Y?
Right. They're prominent people in Chapel Hill, very prominent people. And she had a daughter named Kathy. She was going away to buy drugs back in the early sixties. And she drove a—what was that she drove? It's expensive—a Jaguar. She's a little rich white girl coming over here buying drugs. And I got to know her.
I was in my company at that time and did a lot of things that kept her from getting beat and maybe something worse happening to her. So she and I got to be friends. And then she told me her name was Kathy McKay. And I knew she was Chapel Hill and I knew she was rich. And I asked her about her mother.
Her mother's a real tall woman. She said, "That's my mother." And she asked her mother—she told her mother about me. And her mother said, "Yes, I remember him working out there at the mansion."
But those kind of people getting affiliated in drugs. And I don't know if
she could have gotten raped over her, a whole lot of things could have
happened to her, you know. But she was running around in Durham in a
Jaguar. In fact she'd been to my house
It's really an astute point, yeah.
And I think she—. You know she had some friends whose names I don't know because they caught them up there. They've got a house somewhere on a hill. It's something like a summerhouse or something. And it come up in the paper that they caught them up there. They had a bunch of LSD and they were raising—had a lot of reefer plants and stuff. But they swept that kind of—. But you see people of means doing something then low-class think, "It must be something. They're doing it." And especially younger people. I think drugs—I was introduced to drugs in 1947. Didn't but a very few people know it. And nobody didn't know I was messing around.
What was the first drug you were exposed to?
Heroin. And I was in the Army and they didn't know because drugs were cheap. You could spend a hundred dollars and have enough to last you a month. Then when people got greedy. Blow is something they tell me you're supposed to throw away anyway. They put that outlandish price on it. Then they criminalized it. I can't understand why.
I know one time England did—they legalized it for a while. I can't understand why they've got legalized drug places all around there, these old methadone clinics. They're worse than heroin. Methadone associates, people that I've talked to in therapeutic communities, and hospitals and things—they say methadone is one hundred times stronger than heroin. But they give it to the kids up here every morning, you know.
Do they want us to be like that? Are they trying to create a segment of
the people that will always know that they're available for nothing? I
know the Bible tells
So you're saying that that's another way in which people get shut out.
Sure.
Yeah.
Them drugs didn't—. The people that use drugs in this town—and most people in America—it's not NATO that maybe that crack and that kind of stuff did. But you take what they call the hard drugs. And all of it's hard as far as I'm concerned. But the hard drugs what they called is the king is heroin. It's not made in this country.
What they call the what?
The king, the king, heroin. They got a song about it. James Brown made a song about king heroin. He says—it says something about—"I came to this country without a passport." And it goes down to say a lot of things that are real true. It says, "If you pick me up I'll make a raving beauty forget her looks and a school boy forget his books." There's a real message in that song. But—and it's true.
And I don't know no common people that's got an airplane or ships. They say this stuff comes from the Far East, comes from Turkey. More of the beautiful women are supposed to be over there by Vietnam. They showed his picture on television. He's got an army where he still raises the poppy plant and makes the heroin.
What was that last part? I missed that about it.
The poppy plant?
Yeah. You were saying.
This guy is in Thailand. Is in Thailand and he's way up in the mountains
in the government, he's got his own army. And this has been documented
on television. And they say he's providing like two-thirds of all of the
stuff that's in the world. And they can go—. And I know where they'd be
an international incident if they would send those same bombers that
they got in Kosovo and bomb that place up there where he's at.
Well it's interesting because I've heard people in the black community say before—folks that I know out in California that, you know, the white man figures drugs and shootings are going to kill off the African Americans. That the whites don't have to kill them off, the blacks will kill off themselves. I don't know if you agree with that.
I agree with a lot of it. But the drugs are just the icing on the cake to be sure that it happens. But it happened long before that. It goes back to welfare, food stamps.
See if you give me something, if you give me enough, I won't try to get nothing. And if you give it to me long enough you take something that nature gave me: a natural instinct to survive. Now all I have to do is look at you and I'm going to get what I need or what I can get by with. So you take something from me. And the government—and maybe they did it innocently. I would like to think that. But for forty years?
I have always assumed it had to do with guilt because it's not just—welfare isn't just for blacks. It's for whites.
Well, of course. When I say black, when I say black, believe it or not,
they've got some white people—as far as the economy and what goes
on—that's just as black as I am. We both
Shut out.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And the sooner poor whites learn that they are in the same boat—because a lot of them don't think they are—. See because the keeps—. You know that donkey? They tied a banana on his neck, and put a stick out there and put that banana. He goes walking to it. The poor whites still got that banana in front of their face. They think they're going to catch up with that banana. And some of them do just like some blacks. They come out of the ghetto. They get out of the mainstream of blacks and get up.
So some people make it through but that's the minority.
Yeah, very few, very few.
What do you think is the alternate and better for African Americans or for lower class whites? I mean, if it's not welfare.
Forget their differences. They had a guy and he was considered by people in Durham that know him as a hoodlum. He was vicious, and he was white and he came from east Durham. His name is Clayburn McGee.
Ask any white person over forty-five, fifty years old and they'll tell
you about Clayburn McGee. The police department was afraid of him. I've
seen him whup people right in the court house yard. The police walk
right down and won't even say anything to him. He used to go up and down
the street when they had beer parlors and things on
And when I remember when black folks couldn't go to east Durham. The poor whites down there they were doing their thing and didn't want no black people in there. Even the Western Union boy couldn't even deliver telegrams. When Western Union used to deliver on bicycles, they had to have one white boy—and they never had but one—that worked there delivering those telegrams. They had telegrams from east Durham.
But Clayburn came from east Durham. And he came right out of—. He was in school one Sunday, brought a bunch of rag tail white boys with him and we played sand block football. And we did every Sunday. And through playing that football we established a relationship with those guys. Clayburn McGee gave them an ultimatum. He said, "If any white man hit another black man in east Durham without a just cause he was going to have to answer to me." They ain't fought no more. East Durham, the first part of Durham where blacks and whites started mingling sexually.
Hmm, interesting.
But that one man did that. The churches couldn't do it. The courts couldn't do it. But he done it. I'm a living witness. I saw it. It's going to have to be something—.
And one thing, we got to start caring for each other. I don't mean giving people something. But just plain ass caring and being concerned. Like when I hurt, it's got to hurt you a little bit. And quit saying, "I ain't mean. I ain't got nothing to do with it."
Our police department is shameful. People who don't get connected with it, they can't see it. And they print so much shit in the paper about every little thing that's done. Now crime is going down, but not according to the newspaper, not according to the media, publicizes everything. And people that don't break the law, they can see us as being real lawless.
As being real—?
Lawless. You don't care nothing about the law and there's a lot of people
that don't.
I'll go ahead and pause this.
Turn this back on.
And highest chains.
That was the thing that was—it was the unwritten law. A kid couldn't walk
down the street and pass a grown person and didn't speak because if you
did he'd tell your mama or your daddy if he didn't grab you himself and
shake you. And you would get a whupping.
Okay. I'll turn this back on. So how have things changed in the neighborhood since you've been here?