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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 R-0185, in
the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007,
Southern Historical
Collection, The Wilson Library,
University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill”
John Harris's father founded the Royal Taxi Company in 1934, serving the black community in Greensboro, North Carolina. After a childhood of work and play in the streets of segregated Greensboro, Harris followed his father into the profession, and at the time of this interview in September of 2002, the septuagenarian Harris was still driving. In this interview he describes his childhood in segregated Greensboro, rich in recreation but also redolent with the influence of a workaholic father; his experiences as a cab driver, including his escape from a hold-up; the effects of redevelopment on Greensboro's black community; and the civil rights movement. Harris, after many decades as a cab driver, remains a stable center in a changing community, the proprietor of a black business that weathered the economic pressures of urban renewal and growth. His position enables him to reflect on the pressures on businesspeople in the context of segregation and civil rights.
John Harris, longtime cab driver and businessman in Greensboro, North Carolina, describes his community in the context of race and redevelopment.
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
Have gone and they have to remind me.
Picking up here. Let me just start out by asking you, for the sake of the tape, if you'd just state your name and when and where you were born.
I'm John H. Harris the third. I was born on May 8th, 1930. I was born at 352 North Regan Street. The house that I live in now, I can look out my bedroom window in the back door of the house I was born in. My father couldn't afford to send my mother to the hospital; so I was born in the house. I moved, my family were tenants in that house. We later moved to a rented house on Beech Street. Then my father bought a house on Beech Street further in a different block. We lived there for five or six years, and we moved into a bigger house on the next street over, on the same street that I was born, on Regan Street. There we took in, my parents, it was a big house, and we took in roomers. This was during the World War Two. We had military families living with us from all different segments of different places in the country. These weren't just people who had occupied a room. They became like family. We still have personal contact with some of those folk. My mother and father maintained contact with them until their death, and they're on occasion now I hear from some of those same folk, and it's, now I'm hearing from their children. So it's been an experience.
So these were troops that were moving in and out of Greensboro.
Yes.
What were they doing in Greensboro?
They were stationed at ORD. That was an ordinance that were I think, I don't know whether they offered basic training there, but these were troops that were preparing for overseas duty or returning from overseas duty. The military provision or the camp is now a part of the A and T State University, I guess the north campus.
That's where the base was.
That's part of the base.
Part of it.
Summit Avenue, Summit Shopping Center, Bessemer Avenue, all of that was part of the base.
Wow. Well, that must've, can you remember a dramatic change between the '30s as a young child and then when the war came? I mean, I'm just imagining the character of this whole area must've changed.
Well, everything changed. I think the person that owned that, I'm not, I'm just I understand that they rented that facility for a dollar a year whoever owned it. But that area, it was wooded land. Before they built that military base in there, it was just woods. My friends and I used to play cowboy and Indians in those woods. There was a stream that went through it, and it was a tar branch, and I think it was the runoff of old Duke Power plant.
That you were playing in.
We played in it. Yeah. Even went swimming in it one day. Worst whipping I ever got was because my mother had that night, she had to clean me up with kerosene trying to get the oil and the tar off me. Oh boy, that was an experience. But well, we were just kids. We didn't know. We just saw water.
So the military, they didn't provide enough housing.
No.
The troops were kind of forced to find—
These were people that came, that had families, and there were no on post facilities. So they had, these were troops that brought their families. These were men that brought their families in.
So wives, children would move into the houses.
Wives and children. Most of them, these were young men; so they had
children. We had several children born while they were living with us
because they were just, they were young men. They were very talented
men. We had a gentleman that lived with us from Louisiana, I remember.
As a teenager he was a trumpeter, and I was must've been in my early
teens, nineteen or twenty, I went to DC one summer. His name was Calvin
Boze. He wrote a song that was very popular at that, at one time. It was
Safronia B. Calvin was out of Dallas, Texas, is where he was from. But
he was playing, I saw a sign saying that he was playing at the Howard
Theatre. So I made it my business to go. I went backstage, and he
recognized me, and we just had a good time. There was another gentleman
that was a musician. His name was Leek, Sergeant Leek. He was a singer
and a dancer. He and his wife lived with us. They were from Saint Louis.
In this neighborhood we
I know you were young, but was there any, what you remember or what you can guess looking back, was there a, I'm wondering were black troops forced to find board with families in town as opposed to the white troops that were brought into Greensboro?
They both had to.
Both were.
They both because they did not have, I was a student in high school one winter. During the winter break I worked on the post. I worked at PX, and so there were no. Most people, most of the troops just lived in the city. They were, it was a small facility by comparison. So there was some housing, but I think they were for officers. Under the non-coms, I don't think they had facilities on post. But even if they did, it was more convenient in the city.
Now tell me a little bit going back. You said you're the third. You're John Harris the third. What, was your grandfather born in Greensboro as well?
No. South Carolina.
He's from South Carolina.
My mother and father and my grandparents were from, they were from South Carolina.
Whereabouts in South Carolina?
A little place called Ridgeway.
Ridgeway. And where does that come in.
Ridgeway, my mother was raised in Ridgeway. My father was raised in
Ridgeway. My mother came from, my mother's family owned their land. My
mother was raised on 550 acres of land. My father was a tenant farmer.
His family, they just moved from farm to farm. Every year there was a
different farm to work. But my mother's family and my grandfather, my
grandmother, my great grandmother was bought off the auction block in
Charleston by Tom Davis. Of course, Tom was the plantation owner. But
Tom Davis didn't have any other family. He had ten children by my great
grandmother, and he died first. He died about 1870. My great grandmother
went to court because he had a
Okay. Which is still there.
Which is still there. It doesn't look like, my mother's baby brother lives in the house and raised his sixteen children there. It doesn't look like modern, but it's still, it's been fixed over so. But the original house was built was pegs. They didn't use nails to put it together. It was built with pegs. Didn't have a kitchen originally. The kitchen had a dirt floor. In fact the kitchen was sort of like a separate thing where they prepared food. But eventually they added a kitchen to the house. But now the house you wouldn't know it because it's altogether different, but I remember it.
So is it your understanding that this planter Davis, he essentially lived with your great grandmother. I mean, they were husband and wife for all practical purposes.
No, for all practical purposes he was still the plantation owner, and he owned her, and he owned them. We had a picture of him in the living room, and he was pretty mean looking, but also in the living room there was a picture on another wall of my grandfather's older brother, and he was dressed down. So apparently he did some taking care of—
Of his children.
Of his children, yes, because he had no other family.
He had no other.
Except when the night that he died we sent, we sent, my great grandmother sent message to his brother in Ridgeway that lived in town that his brother had died. They came in and got the body, but they never saw him anymore. They never saw it anymore. Never heard. There was no funeral where they all went. So that's—
This is an incredible story. Where, is Ridgeway somewhere near Charleston. Is it in the low country?
No, it's twenty-seven miles from north of Columbia. It's in Fairfield County, South Carolina.
So half-hour north of Columbia.
About a half-hour.
And you still have, there's family still there then.
Yes, I have, and I'll show you a picture in a little bit. About twenty years ago my grand, my uncle, my mother's sister's husband, my mother's sister died, and then thirty days later her husband died. Then he had a sister that was a lawyer, and she wanted her brother's part of the family. So there was a thing. It was five, my uncle had lived and raised, lived on the property, on the 550 acres, and he had raised all of his sixteen children there. As a result it was 550 acres that belonged to everybody, but then it didn't belong to anybody really. So anyway, she forced the land to be divided. So by this time there were only five descendants. So they divided the 550 acres into five parts. So I own 110 acres of that original plantation. Yeah. I belong to an organization, an Afro-American organization that they talk about plantations and where their parents were born. I own, and I'm about the only one in there that owns a plantation, own a part of a plantation. So it's in my family. It's been there all these years.
Wow. Is it a national organization, kind of genealogical—
Genealogical society.
So how did you get to North Carolina or how did the family—
My father had two sisters, two older sisters that came to Greensboro in the early '20s. They were tenant farmers, and so eventually they got jobs. They came here, and they got jobs. They did service work. They worked in Irving Park, and one of my aunts had gone to college, but she when she came here, she sort of knew what life was all about. Probably the best jobs at that time were these types of service jobs. They were live in. She had a place to live, and she had a place to eat and sleep. So these were good jobs for them. As a result when people start doing well, then they send for their siblings, and this is what happened. So I had two aunts. They sent for another aunt, and she did basically the same thing. Then my father, he came, his brothers. So the whole family ended up. This was in the late 1920s. Then in the late 1930s about 1936 or '37, my father brought his mother and father because they were tenant farmers. So they didn't have any roots. But there was just home. So he brought them to Greensboro.
So your father would've come in '28 or so, '27?
Right. He came in '28 and worked at Cone. His first, well, before that,
he went back. He came and then he stayed, and then he went back and got
himself a wife. That was my mother. My father was unique in, back in
that time young men stayed at home until they were twenty-one. Now you
get sixteen, seventeen, you're ready to leave, go out on your own. But
my father was true to the course. He stayed home, and his father told
him—. He worked, and he gave his father his check, and his father gave
him what he wanted him to have, and he was satisfied with that. So that
Wednesday before his—. Well, his twenty-first birthday fell on a
Wednesday, and he always got paid at twelve o'clock on Saturday. His
father was always there waiting for his check or whether it was cash or
check I'm not sure. I said check because that's what I'm used to. But he
was waiting for his money, for my father to give him his money, and then
he would give him what he wanted to have. He said on this particular
Saturday he had turned twenty-one that Wednesday, and he said his daddy
was standing there and he says, "Boy, didn't you forget something." He
said, "No Papa. You forgot something." He says, "I was twenty-one this
past Wednesday." He said, "I don't need you to take care of money now. I
can take care of my own money." From then on he did, he
That's some low overhead there.
Yeah. Said about 1933, '33 or '34 the police came down and put them all
in jail for solicitation, they were driving a cab without, being hired
out without a license. There were five of them. So all five of them went
to jail. The judge told them, he said, "Why don't you guys get you a
license and just form you a company?" Said they didn't know what it was
about that. Said after he planted the idea, said they investigated and
that's what they did. So they formed in 1934, they formed Royal Taxi and
Royal Taxi Company, and the Royal Taxi Company was born as a result. So
they put signs on the sides of their
I was wondering about that.
They were not happy with it. I've had, I had a friend of mine that knew the situations that went on, and she said the fellow that owned the Yellow Cab franchise hated my father. But he couldn't do anything about it. He was white and because my father had, he bought, he must've had four or five cabs, and he hired young fellows right out of school. Well, at that time, once a fellow, once a black finished eighth grade, there was no high school for him to go to. They had to get out and make a living for themselves. Up until 1929, '29 they built Dudley High School, and then after that then they had a high school to go to. But before 1929 the only school they had was East Washington Street, and once they finished East Washington Street that was it. Then they could go to Bennett College or A and T High School division, and the city would pay, but most time, they just didn't bother. That was it. But that's how my father got in the taxi business.
Now at that time I'm imagining that your father, did he drive both black and white patrons or was it just for the black community?
It was in the black community.
Yellow, I'm assuming, didn't have any black drivers at that time.
No.
So they were, obviously those white drivers wouldn't pick up black customers.
So that's why it turned out that it was, they served this community.
By and large it was separate.
Yeah. Right. But you had some white customers that liked to ride in the black taxis. They would search us out. There was gentleman in particular, I think his name was Troy Livengood. Anyway, it was Livengood. I know him, I've heard my daddy say, my daddy used to bring him home sometimes. But he would just, he'd just like to go. He liked to hang out in the black community. With a black taxi driver, he could just go about anywhere he wanted to in the, well, he could go just about anywhere he wanted to anyway. But he felt more at ease if he, with a black taxi driver.
So he was some sort of businessman.
He was a businessman.
He was looking for either liquor or women or something.
Well, mostly liquor.
Now, at what point did your father stop driving? Did he always remain a driver or did he at some point sort of assume more managerial responsibilities?
Well, he, he was always a driver.
So even when he had drivers under him—
Even when he had drivers. My father at one time owned fifteen cabs, at one time. That's as many as he's ever owned at one time, and even then he drove.
Was that always under Royal Taxi or did it—
No, no. Now Royal Taxi was good, and they served the community well.
Then the Army came, the war came. That brought in really big business.
That kept taxis busy. If you weren't a soldier, you had a hard time
getting a cab during the war. So my father was, at that time the
restrictions on taxi drivers, it wasn't restricted. In fact my father
used to during the war, he might pick up a load of soldiers and go to,
take them to Fort Bragg. He would stay in Fort Bragg until he would get
a trip, take another load somewhere else. Sometimes he would go and be
gone for weeks at a time. He would go to Fort Bragg, Camp Lejeune. They
were free to just, they could just go and stay and pick up and take
anywhere. So as a result the community got a little upset with Royal. So
when the war was over, their business was kind of slow. By this time, we
had other cab companies here, but Royal and Daniel were the two major
ones in the black community. By this time though now they've got Harlem,
Harlem Deluxe and MacRae Taxi Company. Now MacRae Taxi Company was a
young black entrepreneur that had a nice built a strong company. So the
people at Royal decided that our business is too slow. We need to get
with MacRae. So about 1946 or '47 we went to, about '46 I think it was,
we went to MacRae and MacRae was doing, they did a tremendous business.
I was then a teenager and I used to collect, I used to, it was my job to
collect the every twelve hours they would change shifts, and I would be
there to collect the money. I had cigar boxes with everybody, all the
owners' names on it. They didn't even have to do that. I would collect
the money, put it
But the difference was they were seen as a little bit younger, a little bit more responsive to the community.
They were a little, MacRae was a little more responsive to the community, and the war, the soldiers had gone. The camp had been, so that wasn't a situation anymore. That wasn't a factor anymore. In fact some of the, most of the drivers, we had a lot of drivers that were, they were holdovers, fellows that had gotten discharged here at this camp. They just stayed here.
For whatever reason.
They just stayed here. So and some of them became, came in with us as cab drivers and just stayed. One of our managers who was originally from Boston. He just died seven or eight years ago, but he was with us for twenty or twenty-five years.
When did you start driving?
When did I start? I started when I was eighteen years old. You had to be twenty-one to drive a cab. I had just gotten married, and I was going to A and T. My wife was going to A and T. My father said, "You need to start driving yourself." I had a couple of drivers. My father gave me two taxis and two drivers, and then one of my drivers sold. Anyway so anyway my wife—we went to school, and that was my income, but I lived with my father. So it was good for me and good for us.
This was before you were eighteen you had your own—
Yes.
Taxi cabs.
Uh huh.
And your own drivers.
Right, yeah.
Well, that's kind of young.
Yeah, well I didn't have any brothers or sisters. So my father and that
was what my father did for me to get me started, but he said, "Now you
need to go to work for yourself." So I had to go down, he said, "Go down
there and tell them you're twenty-one." So I said, "Okay." So I had to
go down there and
Did you have to come clean with anybody down at the state?
No. I thought I would have.
You just show your—.
I applied one time I just told them, my age is wrong. The year I was born—
There's a mistake here.
Well, that must feel nice to suddenly be three years younger.
Yeah, right. It made good conversation piece.
Well, where was Royal, where was the—
Royal Taxi was originally at the corner of Clinton and East Market Street.
Okay, which is about what hundred block on East Market Street.
That would be the eight hundred block.
So kind of in the heart of—
Yeah, at the corner of Clinton, Regan Street, right in the heart of the Palace Theatre. The theatre was across the street. Everything was right in that area. Everything was built around—
Now you mentioned, spending before the war spending time in the woods and in the area—
We called it the College Woods.
The College Woods.
Would you also go up to Market Street?
Oh yes.
Because it's really what three blocks.
Oh yes. Oh yes. What did they have on Market Street. They had everything on Market Street. Anything and everything that you wanted. It was an exciting place to just go up on Market Street. As a youngster, we used to go, we'd go, you could go to the bakery shop, the bakery because they sold doughnuts and ice cream, Harris Bakery. They, Mr. and Mrs. Harris, we didn't realize, but they were really ahead of their time because they had everything in that little shop. There was the poolrooms. We couldn't go in those, but some of our friends that put up their age, they could slip in now. They were a little more astute than we were. They were a little more grown than we were. But just walking up Market Street was, there were grown men, what you have to understand, and it's easy to understand because in your old pictures that you see of New York City, you see everybody in New York City, old pictures. You see everybody dressed down, suits, ties, hats. Ladies, same thing. They're dressed down, and that was the style. So if you didn't do anything but just go home, take your work clothes off, dress up and just walk up, just walk up on the street, that was good enough. Men used to go to the poolroom and stand around the poolroom. They dressed up to go to the poolroom. I worked in a shoeshine shop. I worked in a shoeshine parlor as a teenager. We would see, I saw all these young black men, old black men, young and old black men. They would all come. They prided themselves in how their shoes, how they dressed, everything had to be just right. They would come up and when they would shoot pool, they would take their coats off, hang them up, and they would shoot pool, but they dressed up to come out. It's not like it is now where jeans, that's what you worked in. I mean, it wasn't just like that in the black community. It was the same way in the white community.
Was that job in the shoeshine, was that your first job?
Yeah, shoe shine, yeah.
Where would that have been about?
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
My first encounter with shining shoes, I must've been nine, ten years old. I had a shoeshine box, and I used to go to the bus station, and you'd start shining shoes, and you'd look up, and here comes a cop, and you've got to grab your shoe shine box and head out for home or somewhere because they didn't allow that. But most kids, that's the way we did. We'd get out with our little shoe shine box, but it was "agin' the law."
So were you, do you think you have a particular kind of—that's pretty young to be shining shoes.
No, my father, my father taught me you work. You make a living. Whatever you do, in my neighborhood, in this neighborhood there were some old houses along here, one of my the worst jobs that I ever had the little old lady, nice little old lady, she said, "Johnny Harris, I want you to paint my house." She had a room she wanted me to paint. That house had never been painted, and that was the worst. She had cheap paint, and I just whipped myself to death. I couldn't have been eleven or twelve. But I had heart, and I knew I wanted to make some money. I knew if I could paint this room, I was going to get five dollars. But I finally got it finished, but I'm going to tell you that was the worst job I ever had. But I did the job. She was satisfied, and then I had another little lady that lived next door here, next door to this house right now, she would come out, and she would, we had a little convenience store around the corner. She would come out, send me to the store, and she was the penny lady. I'm going to get a penny from her. Well a penny would go a long way for what I wanted. But I learned to hustle. I learned to work because my father insisted.
So at about what age, it sounds like you were also pretty independent too.
Um hmm.
For as long as you can remember, like would you go up Market Street unsupervised as an eight, nine, ten year old?
Oh yes. My friends and I, we used to go up on Market Street on Sunday's we would go, we would go to the bakery shop. We would have, we would always end up, I don't know why we would end going to get pictures. We'd have pictures taken.
Where would you—
We would go to the photographers shop, Mr., fellow named Mr. Richmond, a nice little old man that had a photography shop upstairs. He'd take pictures and Mr. Richmond, and that's all he had done I guess all his life. When I say he was an old man, I'm not because we were teenagers, and he was, we weren't even teenagers yet. I guess we were, but he had been taking pictures for years. I've got some of those pictures that Mr. Richmond took or Mr. Troxler took. They were photographers, and for some reason we dressed up. I guess we always wanted to see ourselves. So the photographer was always an important part because back in those days they had photographers just on the street to just take candid shots. They would just take your picture, and then if you decided you wanted it, you paid for it.
How about the theatre? You were, did you go to see movies?
Yeah. I went to see, well, in our neighborhood we had the Palace
Theatre. On Friday and Saturday when they had the same pictures, they
had the same serials. They had a serials on Captain Midnight, the Lone
Ranger, what else. Charlie Chan, these were and they had these
A lottery basically.
It was a lottery. So as a result lots of people—you need to cut that off.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Where were we?
Well, the theatre, and would you ever go to the Carolina Theatre?
Yeah, we went to the Carolina Theatre. We went, they had a section in the Carolina Theatre in the balcony. They had one in the National Theatre in the balcony. They had the Criteria. They had several other movies downtown, but you just didn't go. It was for white only. So those you didn't even think about. But the National, they had a ticket, the National and Carolina had special ticket booths.
Even separate ticket booths.
Oh yes. Separate ticket booths. Separate entrances and separate, so you had all that. You didn't buy your ticket at one entrance and go in another. They had a separate booth.
What about, would you ever go to Elm Street for shopping?
Oh yes. Yes. Elm Street was a nice place to go. It was like on Market
Street, Elm Street was cluttered with people. East Market Street was
cluttered with black people. Elm Street was cluttered with white people
and black people.
Do you want to—I can flip it off.
Yeah.
So Elm Street, you would go down there to shop as well.
Yeah, I remember going, my mother and my aunts would go downtown, Woolworth's Kresses, some of the shops downtown, ladies shops, shoe shops. That was about the extent.
So there may have been some specialty items that you couldn't get—
Specialty items—
That you couldn't get on Market.
That you couldn't get on East Market. These were things—yeah. There were a lot of things that you couldn't get on East Market. We had some of the basic services on East Market, haircuts, beauty parlors, we had service stations. We had an auto mechanics shop, and we had doctors' offices.
Plenty of food.
Restaurants, drug stores, fish market, we had wood and coal yard. Now that's something that's almost unheard of today. But most people had coal stoves. There was, there were florists, funeral homes, nightclubs, law offices, we had newspaper offices. We had rooming houses, taxi companies, photograph studios, dance halls, hospital, pawn shops, laundromat—no, we didn't have a laundromat. That was not back then. But we had lots of tree mechanics. You know what a tree mechanic is?
A tree mechanic? I don't.
That's a guy that knows how to fix your car and didn't have a shop. So he's just, you just pull up under the tree, and you get your car fixed.
But we had grocery stores. Most of the grocery stores in the black community on East Market Street were run by white folks.
Is that right?
Come to mind the Coble Store was probably one of the better stores, kept fresh meat, but they also had little hanky panky going on, you could put your numbers in there.
So that was where the numbers was run out, huh.
Yeah. Really.
Was the numbers pretty big?
The numbers were real big. Most of the guys that hung out in the poolrooms, these were the guys that handled that kind of thing.
They were running and—
They were number runners.
Placing money.
Yeah.
How did that work in terms of I'd imagine somebody in the black community was kind of in charge or was—
Well, but eventually you did have some people in charge, but they weren't, they were just sort of skim off the top. But the, we knew where the money came from. But now numbers were, the numbers game was really a part of the neighborhood. If you could hit a number, you could hit a number, you could win yourself a hundred dollars, two hundred dollars, a thousand dollars, five thousand dollars. If you were and you know and some people played it to that extent. My father used to tell me, he said, "Now you could hit the numbers and buy a car." He said, "But you can't depend on hitting the number to keep the payments up. So you have to be careful. You need a job."
Don't count on it.
Yeah, numbers that's something you couldn't count on. You could count on it for the big haul, but now you had people that played numbers, hit the big number, bought a car, and then when the time came to make the payment, they couldn't even make the first payment. Eventually you know what that meant. So that's repossession. So they were satisfied with that.
Maybe the point of it is just having it for that first month. Was this ultimately protected by the sheriff or was there, to what degree would the police have been in on it?
Well, the police would have, it was against the law to start with. Every once in a while somebody would get busted. But who got busted, the little guy on the street corner. He's the one that got busted. They never got, they never get to the top. Nothing's changed. It's still the same way. So it's just, the numbers game is just a poor way to try to make a living. It's no way to make a living. It's just something that you do.
I'd imagine just driving a taxi that you kind of, I mean you must've known everybody's business just I mean you must've really sort of had your finger on the pulse of this street.
Well, that's, I guess that's part of what goes with the territory of driving a cab. And you're right. You know certain things. Now if you, you could develop a reputation. If you were a talking cab driver, you didn't get, everybody knew it. So they never, anybody that was going to use a cab on a regular basis, they're not going to call you because you talk too much. So if you were able, if you could build a reputation of not being of seeing and not seeing and seeing and not talking, you became respected for that.
So in a sense you're a priest, an attorney—
That's exactly it. That's exactly it. Because people get in your cab and they'll tell you things that just like is what they would tell their priest. You could either, you could either accept it and just say well, or you could discuss it. If you're smart you don't discuss other folk's business.
What about even with your wife or family. Would you ever bring stories home?
No. No. Well, sometimes you would, but most people, you don't talk about the misfortunes or fortunes of people. Well, everybody likes to talk about the fortunes of people, but sometimes you sort of just learn to not to discuss the misfortunes of people.
How long did you drive? When did you stop driving?
I haven't. I just don't drive that much.
You're still driving?
Yeah, I just don't drive that much. I got two cabs now.
Operating under—
United Yellow—
Under United Yellow. So at what point did you go from MacRae—
About 1948 a group of men that were with MacRae sort of, MacRae was a nice guy. But he was dictatorial. So there was a group in there that didn't like his methods. So they said well, we'll just pull out and we'll start our own. So in 1948 they had meetings at my father's house on Regan Street. They had meetings. There were men at MacRae's. There were men at Harlem Deluxe. There were men from Daniel Keck the other cab companies that found out we were going to form another company. They met with us. So in 1948 United Taxi was formed, and it was born in my father's living room. I was a senior in high school at that time. So they were trying to decide on a name so lots of names came up, and I suggested United Taxi, and they liked it. So that's what it became, United Taxi.
Where was that located?
At the corner of Clinton and Market Street. There was a little building at, right beside the Shell Station that they made the cab stand. So the man that ran the Shell Station was glad to see us come because that meant that we would be buying gas from him. We didn't have to pay him any rent, just buy gas. So it worked out very well. So we had to only thing we had to do was buy a phone, hire somebody to man the phone. So being new we just all sort of chipped in. The phone didn't ring like it used to because we used to sit, between rings we'd play checkers and do a lot of, have a lot of conversation because we weren't as busy then as we are now. We were just getting started. So we did a lot of advertising, and so we just, it was a lot of well, it was new. But we did, we finally, now we ended up the biggest company. We have at the United now, we have seventy-seven cabs in our—
But at some point you affiliated with Yellow, did you say?
Well, no, what happened was we had a manager that's a professor. He's a professor at A and T State University now. He had a cab with us. He thought that if we change it from, if we would add Yellow it would sort of change our image. So it was, Yellow was brought in as an image change. So we could and by this time the city had required that we have our color schemes. So our color scheme was black and white. So when we added yellow, United Yellow then that meant that we could put a yellow cab on or we could use black and white. I had two cabs. I've had a yellow one and a black one and a black and white. So I'm putting on one now, and I'll show it to you. It's yellow. I just decided that I wanted to make it yellow. So I had a car that was torn up a couple of weeks ago. So I decided I'm going to replace it and just make it yellow instead of black and white. So it's just a choice.
So you didn't affiliate with the national Yellow cab.
No, no. We have nothing to do with that. We're an independent.
Independent and locally based company. But the one that lasted.
Oh yes. Yes. We're pretty well grounded. Our telephone runs, our business is as good at two o'clock in the morning as it is in two o'clock in the afternoon. It's been, that's a sign of the times. We're living in a different, used to be that everything died at eleven o'clock at night and didn't wake up until five o'clock the next morning. So we used to, used to be we didn't have. We'd just close the door. But now we have twenty-four hour service, and the night operator is as busy as the day operators.
Is there a hall that the drivers gather at when they're out between runs or are they just—
No, we have a cab stand.
There is cab stand.
Yeah. Yeah.
Somewhere downtown.
We're downtown now. Urban renewal moved us from that Shell station and
moved us to Gorrell Street.
Should I stop this?
Yeah. Yeah.
So you were moved in what year? You were moved from you said—you moved to Gorrell Street.
We moved to Gorrell Street in the '60s, yeah. Probably in the '60s. No,
no. We moved to Gorrell Street in the '50s or '60s, '50s or '60s I'm not
sure. But then we had moved redevelopment came into that area, and we
ended up prior before going to Gorrell Street, we didn't pay any rent
because we were at that service station. So when we moved, so then we
had to, when we went to Gorrell Street, we had to pay rent. We went into
what was an old store, and so we stayed there, and then eventually the
store went up for sale. So we decided let's buy the place. So we bought
the place. So for the first time we owned our own building. Then we
improved on the building. We put, we built a new building on that same
spot because that was a frame building that we were in originally. Then
the urban renewal or urban removal came in, and so we had to—we had to
find a new spot. So we found a building on South Elm Street, Elm
You got a decent price.
Because we got a decent price.
But I was just in '97 that you were, you were relocated for the second time.
Yeah. For the second time. The first time was when, I don't when it was they moved off of East Market Street. I can't remember. That's why I said it was either the '50s or early '60s, something like that. Late '50s or early '60s. Okay. So we're on, right now we're on South Elm Street in the eight hundred block of South Elm Street. We have a nice new building, big lot. So every move that urban renewal has caused us has helped us as a result.
It has been a help.
It has been a help.
What about in terms of your trade along Market Street now? That must've changed dramatically. I'm thinking that in the '40s wasn't a lot of your business on the street.
In the '40s everything was, in the '40s and the early '50s, everybody that, if you wanted a cab, if you were anywhere near Market, you knew you could come to Market Street and get one. We had also I could get in my cab and just ride certain streets and especially downtown and just, not even depend on getting a trip from the office because we would get a lot of flags. If the cloud came up, it started raining, then you'd really go downtown because people want to go from point A to point B and not get wet. So sometimes I could work, I could work all day and not get a trip off the switchboard and stay busy and make money. I could even go into anywhere down, just ride up and down East Market Street, and somebody's going to flag you.
When did that end do you think?
That ended with the, we're living in the drug culture. That's when it ended. We're living in the drug culture.
So you're thinking—
This is where everything changed. People live, that's why I told you earlier that our business now is as good at two o'clock in the morning as it is at two o'clock in the afternoon because the night, when night comes everybody's moving, doing something. It's all, most of it's drug related.
Is that right?
Yeah. Yeah.
So you're—
But by the same token, now you have, and this isn't just, it's not limited to us. Used to be, I told you everything used to close up at eleven o'clock. Now nothing closes at eleven. In fact drugstores stay open twenty-four hours. Grocery stores stay open twenty-four hours. There has to be a reason for these people staying open. There has to be a, because people are moving. I'm not just saying that everybody that's moving is involved in drugs. I'm not saying that at all. But it's a sign of the times.
Has driving become more dangerous?
Very dangerous. Very dangerous.
At what point did you put up plastic—I'm assuming you've got it in your cab.
I don't have it in mine.
You don't.
No. I don't because—
You're like the hockey player that won't wear a helmet.
Right. Right. I'm from, I've been driving a cab for so long, I trust everybody and that's bad. I've been told. If I pull up to a situation and I don't like the situation, I just pull off. You never know what you're, how you're going, you may misread it. But so far I just haven't. Call it luck, dumb luck, whatever. If I see a situation that I'm not comfortable, that I don't think I can be comfortable with, I just pull off. Even I may pull up to you and you might be all right, but if I don't like what I see or what I perceive as being dangerous to me, I said I'll just pull off. I said you catch the next guy. You may be a good guy. You may be legitimate, just want to go from point A to point B. I said but I don't like the way, I don't like what I read.
So you haven't been held up.
Once.
We'll probably wrap this up in a few minutes, but so you were held up once.
Yeah, I was held up once, picked a guy up on Tate Street. He was a
hippie. This was during, must've been during the hippie time, I guess
'70s, and I was giving him advice, and he was sitting here and driver's
side, driver's side here on the left. He was sitting on the right side
in the back. He pulled his gun, and I just looked around. I said, "Oh my
gosh." I said, "I've never been held up before. I've never had anybody
pull a gun on me." But I've always said if he puts it here, I probably
have to give it up. But he was sitting here, and I said that's enough
space for me. So I slowed down. He said, "Don't stop." I had slowed down
enough. I just hit my brakes real hard, and by the same token I was out
of there. So I was on the ground. The car had stopped momentarily, and
then by this time it had started back up again because it was rolling
downhill. I'm sitting on the outside looking at him, and he's like, he's
trying to decide what do I need. What do I do? So the car rolled down to
the intersection of Chapman Street, hit a stop sign, jumped the curb and
went down into a little clump of woods. So when the car stopped, he got
out and ran that way. Well, I'm standing up there like this. So I went
down there, and I called the cops. They brought the dogs out, but they
didn't find him. So about two weeks later they came by and asked me if I
would come down and look. What happened, a guy had broken into a house
and he had
Too hard to tell.
Yeah, he was white, long hair and thin built, but I couldn't honestly say that was him or wasn't him. So I just told him, I just told him I couldn't just say that that was him because I couldn't honestly remember what he looked like because I just picked him up and just was, I was just talking. I was giving him advice on, that's one of my—
You're a brave man.
I drive cab, driving a cab for me has been an outlook for giving people advice because lots of time people ask for advice, and my father was good at it. So I was good at it too.
How long did your father drive?
Forty-five years.
So he would've stopped in about the mid '60s.
No, no. '70s.
In the '70s.
Yeah. In fact he, my father died in '76, and he drove I guess up until about four months after he, he got sick. He told me. He said, "You know they sent me on a trip the other night." He says, "I couldn't find it." He says, "They sent me to five-something Julian Street." He said, "And it took me two hours," and I said, "Well, okay." So I knew something was wrong. He had the problem a couple of times lately, but he continued to work, but he said it was just an incident where he said, "Why couldn't I find Julian Street?" My father never complained about his head. He looked good. He would just stop by, I used to run, I ran a little beer joint over on Gorrell Street and redevelopment took me too. My father used to complain about pain in his lower back. Actually he had cancer of the brain. When it was discovered, there was nothing they could do.
Too late.
Too late. Anything they would've done, they said if they tried to operate, it would just leave him a vegetable. I guess about four months after, he passed. But he worked, my father was a workaholic, and I guess it runs in the family because I hate to say I don't know how to relax, but I guess I've learned, but my thing, a lot of people talk about retiring and traveling. I've traveled. I've done everything so I don't find that fascinating. Right now I find, I have more fun with my computer than I've ever had in my life. I'm having fun. So I got the cabs. In fact I've got a couple of guys that work, and so there's always somebody wants to drive. But we have at our company now, we have a lot of Sudanese drivers. I think that's good. They have been good for our business because it's very difficult to get young blacks to drive a taxi.
Why is that?
Because it's dangerous.
And they know it.
And they know it. They sort of, they told themselves I won't do that. So
these guys, these Sudanese. They have come in, and they work. They work
hard. They're like well, an analogy is they say
So how many drivers do you have in your company now?
We've got seventy-seven cars running.
Seventy-seven cars.
You can take that seventy-seven and divide it in half and you might get the number of people that we have driving.
Thirty-five, forty drivers.
Hmm?
Thirty-five, forty drivers.
Yeah. Yeah. Most of these guys, most of these Sudanese, they lease their cabs. So they feel like they're part owners. A lot of the black owners, they've gotten like, they're like me. They've reached a senior citizen age, and they don't feel like driving a cab no more. They lease their cabs. I just haven't leased mine out yet. It's coming to that point.
So pretty much what you have are either older black drivers of your generation or else these younger Sudanese drivers.
Right.
Are there other ethnic groups who are driving in your company? Or is that pretty much it?
No, that's pretty much it.
Yeah.
Either blacks or Sudanese. Yeah. Some South Africans, we have some South Africans
But generally they're Africans or African Americans.
African American, yeah.
I want to just finish off by getting some of your reflections on overall on what happened to Market Street. Is there a time that you can remember where you kind of sensed that things are going to change on this street or things are changing?
Well, I grew up being born in the depression years, being born in 1930. I grew up when times were, when the economy, times were tough. Then the war came along, and then I saw times get better. By this time and it was my impression that everything that they had downtown we had on East Market Street. In fact you could probably live a lifetime without even going downtown because you had everything that was downtown was on East Market Street. So but for the most part what happened when redevelopment came, they took these places and people had to be removed. Well they had to move because either they had not made arrangements, or they were not financially stable enough to open somewhere new, or they had gotten to the point where well, this is it for me. It's time for me to go anyway. I guess those kinds of businesses, service, because all of them are service, most of them were service businesses. They had to do it. The people that ran the cafes, they were service-oriented, and they were the ones that were offering the service and doing the service. Depending on their age, I mentioned the bakery shop, Harris Bakery shop. These people, this was a young black—
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
[START OF TAPE 2, SIDE A]
Carried on the business. In that particular case, they carried on the business.
Somewhere else.
Somewhere else in another section of town. But they weren't as stable sometimes as their parents. So eventually their business went out. There were dry-cleaning businesses; they were relocated. I have in mind of one place that the gentleman, he moved, but after he had moved he did fine for a while, but then age caught up with him. There was nobody else and it was a family business. But there was nobody left in the family that was interested in carrying it on. So it died. It was, I was thinking of the newsstand. There was Boss Webster's Triangle News Stand where you could get sandwich, news, get your shoes shined, get your shoes fixed. But now when redevelopment came in, the only thing left then for him when he moved was he just fixed food. The shoeshine stand disappeared. The newsstand disappear, and the shoe shop disappeared. So he was left fixing hot dogs and hamburgers and good ones at that.
I've heard.
I heard they honored him the other day at A and T. Good man, but by this time he had, his age was setting in. So there was nobody else to carry on the Triangle News. It eventually died. I guess it's the same way with all. When you think about it, most of those businesses were good businesses, people made a living out of them. They educated their children, but their children were not interested in that type of business to make a living because they had become educated, and they could find something better. It's as simple as that. They could've stayed, but they didn't. They found something better. My case, I guess I just, I stayed and just continued what my mother and father had started. I say I'm still in it. But it hasn't, it's been good. It's been good for me and my family. I guess that's why I guess I'm still in it.
What do you think the goals of urban renewal were?
The goals of urban renewal, I think, were plain. They wanted to make the
life, no, they weren't interested in the life of the people. They wanted
to make things better for the city because it was a blighted area. The
buildings that most of those businesses were occupied by, we didn't own
those buildings. Very few people owned those buildings that they were
in. The housing in this area had gone, it had gone kaboo. It was
terrible. But people that are survivors, they do what they have to do.
They live where they have to live. They live where they can and they
make do. Even though, well they can't say, I
So you think it was a well-intended effort.
I think it was a well-intended effort. What it did, it exposed, and the landlords, these were slums, these were really slumlords. The same thing on East Market Street. These buildings, we didn't own them. They were old raggedy buildings, but people were, did a business in them. But the man was there every week or every month to collect his rent. But he didn't do any improving. So from that standpoint, and I say it because everybody in the end, everybody was really, everybody did better as a result of moving. Those that stuck with it. The sad part was that some of them didn't have the resources to move with it. They just said—
That's it.
That's it for me. So it died.
What about even the churches? Did they need to tear down all those churches?
My church is the only church that survived East Market Street.
Which one is that?
The Institutional Baptist Church. It's still there. It had a strong
pastor, C.W. Anderson. He was strong. He almost refused to go. He let
them know that he wasn't going anywhere. So they made arrangements, we
made arrangements, the church made arrangements to improve ourselves,
and we got, we built a new church building. That's the building we're
in. This is fifty years old. So it was in the early '50s. The old
building, we tore down. The old plank building, we tore down. But the
church survived. As a result we got more land. We were just sitting on a
little corner. We were just sitting in this little spot; so it ended up
we were the big guys on the corner. But when they got through doing all
their architectural configurations and what have you the layouts, we
were able to get more land and because I guess they said, you said
you're not going anywhere. So we'll just, so we were able to get more
land. So as a result now we have now we own, in fact we just bought a
parcel of land about two months ago at the corner of Murrow
Now again.
To Elm Street. So we went from, now we're on Elm Street.
Isn't that ironic?
Right. Right.
When did the industry desegregate, the cab industry ?
It was a slow process, but eventually they had two cab companies, two white cab companies. Two major, they had a lot of little ones. Bessemer had a cab company. Terra Cotta had a cab company, but your two bigger ones were the Yellow Cab and Blue Bird Cab. They were well-organized white companies. Of course, by the time that, by '48 we had just about, we would get calls just about anywhere. If white folks found out that they didn't, that Yellow Cab or Blue Bird was too slow, they would try us, and of course, we had, we hauled all of Irving Park's help to and from work, and then on occasion they'd say, "Well, we need a cab. Who do we call?" "United." So that's who we used. I used to go and pick up, we had a lady that rode with us all the time. Any time one of her children of the people she worked for needed a cab, needed to go somewhere. She would tell them, "You call John Harris." Say, "He'll take care of you." So it was that kind of confidence.
So starting in the late '40s just after the war you think things started to really break down.
Yeah. It had started during the war, but it really broke down during the war.
So that by the '60s you were driving—
It was just old, by the early '50s it was just old hat for us.
So you would drive to a white neighborhood and pick up a phone in.
Yeah. We get anybody that would call us.
Do you remember the sit-in protests and—
Very well.
What was driving like during them? Did it affect driving at all?
No. No. It was, you had, it was select. People were select. But when they would, when whites would call you, you just take them where they want to go. It was, you would find it odd, but you could make, the interesting thing was that you could make a living if no whites ever rode with you. But you could make a better living if they did. You see what I mean?
Right.
Because they're part of the riding public. So eventually we just saw it just disappear. People just want a cab. I just need to get to point A from point B. So color wasn't—it just got to be where it was just natural. So with the taxi industry anyway.
I was just wondering if the protests caused any chaos downtown that made driving difficult or anything like that. Not that you noticed.
No. Not really. No. Nothing. No. There's always that, it's always been
that black-white thing. But we're in the business, we were in the
business to serve the public. Now if you were white and you wanted to go
somewhere, we would take you and tell you how much it costs. If you were
black we did the same thing. But we didn't make too much difference. It
was business as far as we were concerned. I'm going to tell you it
happened so—I went to jail during the sit-ins. I was working then I was
working at the post office. I worked at the post office for about
sixteen years. They, Jesse Jackson was a student, president of the
student body at A and T, and I had a friend of mine to call me. We were
both working the night shift, and he said, he called me. He said, "What
are you doing? I said, "I'm getting ready, I just got off. I'm getting
ready to eat dinner. My wife's fixing me dinner." He said, "Well, come
on. Let's just run down there and just protest a little bit." So I said,
"Okay." I told my wife, "I'll be back.
They held you three days.
They held us three days. They took us down to the old polio hospital in massive. I had, I was working at the post office, but I was driving a cab too. So I called in the post office and had my wife call in the post office and told them I was in jail for protesting. Well, they didn't hold that against me. In fact I guess that was the only reason, and so I had a bunch, I had my little pouch because I drove cab in the afternoons before I went to the post office, and I had my little pouch full of change, and we went, and they took us. They took us to the polio hospital first. Then they transferred us to the National Guard Armory and I was hungry, didn't get to eat and when I walked in here. When they took us in there, they had all these vending machines, and so the young protesters leaders of the protest, they said we're going to boycott these machines. They turned all the machines around, and I'm sitting here with all this change, and I'm hungry. So I said well that's out. So the next morning, we didn't get anything until the next morning. They brought us some thick bologna on two pieces of bread. Now you're talking about good. I just, I just nibbled it because I was so hungry. But we ended up staying there for about three days. They let us go. We never did have to go to court. They had somebody that was, took care of everything. In fact I had a niece that was living with my wife and I, my wife's niece from Connecticut. She was a student at Dudley High, and they were all in that thing together. So they didn't, we didn't ever have, none of us had to go to court.
About what year was that?
That had to be, I don't know it must've been the early '60s, yeah whenever. It was during the time of the sit-in.
During the first sit-ins in 1960.
Yeah. That's when it was.
Okay, it was part of that. Were you driving the day the Klan shot the Greensboro protesters?
Driving a cab?
Yeah.
No. I was running a business up on Gorrell Street. It was on a Saturday morning, was it a Saturday? I think it was. I had just come in, and they said they had a shooting down in the Grove. Well, that wasn't nothing, that wasn't news to have a shooting in the Grove, but the plot thickened, and I found out it was the Klan, and they had, not only a shooting, some wounded and killing as well. That really was news. Yeah, that was rather shocking. It was shocking reality.
I've seen the, that film footage. It was unbelievable.
Yeah, and it had to have been planned, and it was typical of, I guess, Klan operation. They've always done what they wanted to do. That's an example of it. They weren't used to resistance, and I guess that's what has happened in the modern times with the Ku Klux Klan is they met with resistance. I think that's part of, and they had the law on their side. That's why they were so powerful. This is what Martin Luther King did. He attacked these unethical laws. They were just doing what came natural to them. What they had been doing all, that's what they had been taught as children I can imagine. That's all they've ever seen was, and it was ugly, and it was wrong, but nobody had challenged it. So that's what happened. It was, I guess, and it took, it took a Martin Luther King and an attitude like he possessed to make the changes. It wasn't really, I don't call it a black-white thing. It was a black-white thing because of the way people thought, but it was a human rights thing. It's not, you just don't treat human beings like animals. It goes back, it goes back to the 1600s when they first started bringing, robbing, abducting Africans off of African soil and bringing them, or putting them on ships and bringing them over here. That's the ugly part about it. It's just, it's the worst thing that ever happened to human kind. They talk about the Holocaust. It was bad. Hitler did it. But we, there was some Hitlers before him because we suffered. I think blacks, slavery is the worse thing that ever happened in human history, worst thing. It just didn't, and it took we suffered for three hundred years, and it's going to take another thousand years to really make it, get it where it's supposed to be. Things that are happening now, they're evolving, but it's not, it's still just going to take time for it to really just go away and say I can't remember. But it's just one of those things that's just going to take time.
Do you remember Dr. King speaking at Bennett College in 1958?
I remember Dr. King speaking. I knew he was there. I wasn't into, I was
trying to make a living. But I didn't, no, I talked about we talked
about Boss Webster. I saw Martin Luther King in Boss
Wow. So he came in for a bologna and crackers.
Yeah, one of Boss's famous bologna sandwiches. But he, that's what I remember.
Do you have any just any final thoughts, anything that we didn't cover that you want to state for the record that you know either having to do with driving, Greensboro, urban renewal, Market Street? Just any final anything, you'd want to add.
Well, this getting along or making decisions about people, people's lives has changed because now we have black people in positions of power, in positions to help make decisions. Decisions that we didn't have anything to do with in prior years, and this has helped because our voices now are being heard, and I have to compare that with a time when our voices didn't even matter. Nobody cared, but now we have people that do care. We have young blacks that speak for their communities. Prior to that, nobody listened. You've got, you used to get campaign promises at election time, and that was all. That's all they were, promises until they got elected. I think we've learned, and we've learned what campaigning is all about and what the reality of it is. Now our, I think our biggest job now is to really get out and vote. We need to learn, and we need to study candidates running for public office. We need to make ourselves available to them, and they need to make themselves available to us. We need to look, take a good hard look at the facts and not, we had one time, I had a lady to tell me yesterday. She said, "What are we going to do? I don't know who to vote for." George Simpkins is dead. He used to send out—
A slate.
A slate of officers. Who am I going to vote for? It's that kind of thing
that lets, that you, you can't legislate people into reading. They have
to read on their own. We're not, we're just not going to do it. We have
to encourage. We have to encourage reading in our communities because
that's why it's important, and that way we don't allow other folk to
make decisions for us. We can make a decision for ourselves. This is one
of our, I guess, one of the things that we're sort of weak in. We need
that. We need that reading program. We need that to learn how to think
independently, and this is where we're really short on, and the only way
you're going to do it, the only way you're going to solve it is to read
and draw
All right. Well, thanks so much. I really appreciate it.
I've sat here and talked forever. I don't know what I said anything.
No, this was great. This was really good.
END OF INTERVIEW