WEBVTT 1 00:01.000 --> 00:14.000 Backgrounds are very different even though some of our parts of our lives are similar in similar areas. So whatever way you want to go. 2 00:14.000 --> 00:23.000 Well, Mrs. Walker, could you tell me about the area that you grew up in and about your childhood? 3 00:23.000 --> 00:57.000 I grew up in Fort Worth, Texas, and I was one of two children, one of two girls. My mother was a registered nurse. My father was a dining car waiter for the Texas and Pacific Railroad. 4 00:57.000 --> 01:00.000 And what part of Fort Worth did you grow up in? 5 01:00.000 --> 01:04.000 The east side. 6 01:04.000 --> 01:06.000 Okay. 7 01:06.000 --> 01:34.000 Fort Worth was separated for Black people into lots of different areas because many Black people lived on each side of town, but I lived on the east side, which was really a relatively poor neighborhood. The south side was where most of the associates were. 8 01:34.000 --> 03:02.000 There was one Black high school, so all of the Black kids from all over town went to one Black high school. And there were elementary schools in each section of town for Black children. I never had a White teacher in my life until I got to college, so my education was predominantly Black. My mom was the public school nurse, which meant that she had usually the three months off in the summer. And in the summer she did domestic work, like housekeeping and so forth in order to augment her income because at that time, I believe in the whole state of Texas, but at least where we lived, the Black public school employees made about half as much money as the White public school employees did. 9 03:02.000 --> 04:06.000 And it was that way up until 1940 something or other when the Gilmer Aiken Law was passed, which equalized salaries. So if Black school nurses and Black school teachers made $64 a month, then White school teachers and White nurses made at least twice that much. Now in my home, we always had an extended family. My father's mother lived with us until she died, which was before my birth in 1928. 10 04:06.000 --> 05:37.000 Then later, as I guess maybe I was seven years old, my mother's father had lived with us and he died living in our home. My mother's sister lived with us, so there was always some other member of the family who could help take care of the children. My mother's father was a farmer who had lived in Tahoka and Melissa, Texas until he was much older in years. Than he came to live with us. He ate one meal a week with us, which is really very important in my life. And that was Sunday morning. He had breakfast and he prayed a long time. And of course, we had to go down on my knees and my sister and I peeped over the chairs at each other and kind of made eyes and all kinds of weird stuff because prayer went on for a long time. He was killed. This is my mother's father. 11 05:37.000 --> 06:25.000 He was very independent man who didn't want to be bothered with us very much. And even though we'd get in the car and go to church regularly, he would never ride with us. He always got up earlier than we did, and he walked from the east side to the south side to church and came back. He lived in what we called a garage apartment, which was above our garage, and he was killed walking across a trestle and he couldn't get off the trestle in time. And the end of the train caught him and knocked him off the trestle. 12 06:25.000 --> 07:34.000 I started out telling you that my mother did domestic work in the summertime. She cleaned and cooked for White people who lived not too far from us. And with that money, she felt that her daughters needed to know some really fine things about life, and that was like piano lessons and dancing and the things that she felt were important for young people to have. Our life was completely separate from the lives of Black people. We could go a whole week and never see any White people until we started riding the bus to school. And I guess maybe my most traumatic experiences as a Black little girl were in riding the bus. 13 07:34.000 --> 08:23.000 It was at that time that we were supposed to sit in the back of the bus, and I knew that. And ordinarily I got on the bus and went on back to the back. And I remember one day I got on the bus and I did not stop in the front section, but just behind that section where you go out the back door, I sat in the front seat there and the bus driver got up and came back to tell me that I had to move out of that seat because I had to go all the way back to the back. And it made me so angry. Now, I wasn't really a rebellious kid. I followed the rules. I never got into any problems, but that day I was just mad. So I got up and I did not go to the back of the bus. 14 08:23.000 --> 09:10.000 I just stood in the stairwell that you had to walk out of to get off the bus, and he was determined that he was going to make me go and sit down, and I was determined that I wasn't going to do it. So I just stood there and he finally said, "Well, I'm going to have to go get a policeman." And so I just stood there and I knew that if my mother knew that I had acted out, that's what it was called, she would really be very upset with me. But I just stood there and when the bus stopped, I just got off and I walked home. I just didn't want to do what he said to, and that's about the most rebellious that I was. 15 09:10.000 --> 09:16.000 About how old were you when that happened? 16 09:16.000 --> 09:51.000 I must have been about nine or 10. My method of getting along with everybody was to just shut up. And if they didn't bother me, I didn't bother them. So now you can ask me something else. 17 09:51.000 --> 10:09.000 Now, you mentioned that your grandfather was a very important part of your life when you would come by at least once a week. Do you remember stories that he told about his own upbringing? 18 10:09.000 --> 10:53.000 No. No, I do not. And I do not remember stories that my mother told me about her growing up. Mother was one of 12 children. There were three boys and nine girls in her family, and we were very close to those sisters and brothers. And we always had Thanksgiving dinner, Christmas dinner, either at our house over in Dallas or down in Tahoka. 19 10:53.000 --> 11:37.000 I remember once a year we went down to the place where my mother was born, which was Melissa, Texas, and we went to what they called a May meeting. And we went from Fort Worth, which was maybe 30 miles or 40 miles. It was close to Denton, Texas. That may be something that you have heard about. And we'd all go there once a year to have this big meal on the grounds at their church that they grew up in. 20 11:37.000 --> 12:15.000 And then after our folks moved from the rural areas, the town, well, we were mostly between Dallas and Fort Worth and some relatives were in Ardmore, Oklahoma and Spring, Oklahoma and around those areas. And we always visited them frequently, but I can't remember stories. And that's what you asked me about. From my grandparents, I cannot. 21 12:15.000 --> 12:19.000 Now you grew up on the east side of Fort Worth? 22 12:19.000 --> 12:20.000 Correct. 23 12:20.000 --> 12:24.000 Did you go to church on the east side? 24 12:24.000 --> 12:24.000 Went to church on the south side. 25 12:24.000 --> 12:27.000 The south side. 26 12:27.000 --> 13:22.000 Went to the same church. It was Methodist Episcopal Church, St. Andrew's, and it still is St. Andrew's at this time. I was just there not too long ago. And that's the same church that we started in that changed locations. All of the locations for St. Andrew's Church were on the south side, and they still are. But yes, we went south side to church and we did go to church. Gosh, I remember when I decided I was too old, I didn't want go to church anymore, and I got up one Sunday morning. I told my mother, I said, "I'm grown now and I'm not going to church anymore." 27 13:22.000 --> 14:07.000 My mother read a psychology book somewhere in her life, and somehow it must have told her, don't challenge these weird kids. Just say, "Okay." So she said, "Okay, you don't have to go. You can cook dinner." Well, we were having chicken for dinner and it was a whole chicken, and I didn't know how to cut it up. And I spent that whole morning trying to figure out how to get those legs and wings off that chicken while everybody else was going to church. Well, needless to say, I didn't decide not to go to church anymore. 28 14:07.000 --> 14:08.000 I see. It was a formative experience. 29 14:08.000 --> 14:24.000 Yes, it really was. And that was the same way it was with her learning how to talk heart-to-heart rather than to spank. And I wish she'd get out that belt and use it and shut up. 30 14:24.000 --> 14:40.000 Now, you said that there was a difference in the Black community in the east side and the Black community in the south side. Can you explain the difference with the people and occupations? 31 14:40.000 --> 14:57.000 Well, yes, as far as occupations were concerned, the Black people who lived on the east side did the more menial kinds of work. 32 14:57.000 --> 14:58.000 Blue collar community. 33 14:58.000 --> 16:11.000 Most of the Black people who lived on the south side were professional people, school teachers and principals and so forth. They had bigger houses. They had better houses, in the main, on the south side for Black people than the Black people on the east side. We lived next to the railroad track. There was only one block between my house and the railroad track. And I guess that's one of the things I do remember about my grandfather was his telling us that we had to help the hobos because when the freight trains came through our community, they would get off and come up that street. On Second Street is where we lived, and they would get off and come up the street and they'd knock on the door looking for food, and they were willing to work part. 34 16:11.000 --> 16:11.000 Do you know what hobos are? 35 16:11.000 --> 16:12.000 Yeah. People that rode the metal. 36 16:12.000 --> 16:28.000 Yeah. And grandpa said we should help them because they wanted to work for it. So we always made sandwiches if we didn't have something left over from another meal and gave it to them. 37 16:28.000 --> 16:35.000 Was there a change in the tenor of life during the depression? Well, of course you grew up during that time. 38 16:35.000 --> 16:56.000 Yeah, I was born in 28, so the depression is an era that I can't remember too much about because both of my parents worked. They had jobs and they always had jobs. 39 16:56.000 --> 17:09.000 Would you describe the Black community in the east side as close-knit, loose knit? 40 17:09.000 --> 18:13.000 Well, it was very close-knit community. All of us knew each other and everybody kind of took care of each other. There were people in my community who depended on my mom for healthcare because they didn't have any money as such to go to the doctor. There was a doctor in our neighborhood who took care of a lot of people. He was a Black doctor, took care of a lot of people without any charge. But then we had a lot of people in our community who belonged to what we called at that time, the Holiness Church. And those people's ideas about healthcare was kind of like the Christian scientists. 41 18:13.000 --> 19:16.000 They did not believe in going to the doctor. They didn't believe in taking care of medicine, but they called my mom, Nurse Miller. So when anything happened, then they needed things did not clear up right away. Then they would always call Nurse Miller to come over and see about them. And she always went, but she was kind of a—I don't know what was mother, she was kind of a stickler, and if she told you what to do and you didn't do it, and you came back with the same thing again, you got a lecture and she just told you, "Don't come back over here to me for advice if you're not going to do what I say do. And you get some soap and water and you clean this up and you cover it up and keep that grease off of it and then come back and I'll see what else you need to do." 42 19:16.000 --> 20:21.000 It was the same way at school. The teachers in our schools took care of the children. They brought hair ribbons, and these were all Black teachers. We didn't have any White teachers. They brought hair ribbons and ties to school so that everybody could look like everybody else. And so they had ties for the boys, they had hair ribbons for the girls. They had combs. And this was even after I became a school nurse, which was much later, and we combed the little girls' hair if they came to school without it being combed. If they came to school unkempt and not clean, we took them to the restroom and we washed them, cleaned them up, and put on clean clothes. And we always did that. One of the things about schools that I remember very well was that we always got what was left over from the White schools. 43 20:21.000 --> 21:10.000 We never the whole time I was going to school had a new stove or new pots or new pens or anything in our home economics department. Everything that we got was passed down to us from the White schools. This was junior high school, which is where we had our first experience in home ed and senior high school, same way. And we knew it. Books the same thing. We never had a new book. If you got a book and that whole page wasn't filled out with names, in the front of the book, there's a little thing that has about eight or nine lines on it. 44 21:10.000 --> 21:58.000 If you ever got a book where only two lines were filled out, you really thought you were getting something special. That meant that only two folks had had it before you got it. But we did. We took care of each other as we got older and started into high school. Then we always had a car. My mother had to have a car in her work, and so we just loaded up the car with all the kids in the neighborhood who wanted to go to the ballgame. And if you could stand mother's mouth, then you were okay, because she gave a lecture every time. 45 21:58.000 --> 22:01.000 Were there Black owned businesses in Fort Worth? 46 22:01.000 --> 22:09.000 Yes, very many, many restaurants that were Black owned. 47 22:09.000 --> 22:11.000 On the east side? 48 22:11.000 --> 22:14.000 Yes, on the east side. 49 22:14.000 --> 22:24.000 This was really a necessity. She couldn't go to the White restaurants, so it was the only option you had. 50 22:24.000 --> 23:02.000 We could go to the White department stores. We had separate fountains like you've seen in all the movies and stuff. One for Colored and one for White and all that. But they did accept our money when we bought stuff. And in Fort Worth, I cannot remember that they didn't let us try on things in Dallas at some of the stores. They didn't let you try on stuff. 51 23:02.000 --> 23:03.000 At Fort Worth? 52 23:03.000 --> 23:16.000 In Dallas, but I can't remember that. We could not. I remember trying on clothes and things in Fort Worth. 53 23:16.000 --> 23:23.000 Now you mentioned that The Holiness Church. Now, this is something I really don't know much about at all. 54 23:23.000 --> 23:24.000 That's what we called it. 55 23:24.000 --> 23:24.000 It was the Church of God in Christ. 56 23:24.000 --> 23:30.000 Something like that. 57 23:30.000 --> 23:33.000 But these are very demonstrative people. 58 23:33.000 --> 23:36.000 It still exists today. 59 23:36.000 --> 23:45.000 Who explode and yell and scream and roll on the floor. 60 23:45.000 --> 23:47.000 Talking tongues I used to call it. 61 23:47.000 --> 24:02.000 And there was that church, that kind of church right behind our house, and that was one of our entertainment activities. We run down and peep in the windows and see what they do. 62 24:02.000 --> 24:06.000 Make fun of them. 63 24:06.000 --> 24:30.000 But they really did. The people shouted and cried. The minister yelled and carried on. Many times they had church outside, and even though there was quite a bit of shouting that went on in our Methodist church too, but it was not the same kind of uncontrolled shouting and so forth and so on. 64 24:30.000 --> 24:36.000 And they had different kinds of medical practices. 65 24:36.000 --> 24:46.000 They did not believe in using medicines. Medicines last resort was use some medicines. 66 24:46.000 --> 24:51.000 And that's still true with that particular religious group. 67 24:51.000 --> 24:54.000 But they use perhaps herbal remedies? 68 24:54.000 --> 24:57.000 I don't know. 69 24:57.000 --> 25:24.000 No, they didn't. As far as I know, I cannot remember that they used any herbal remedies. What they used was something we called carbolated Vaseline. Carbolated Vaseline is like Vaseline, blue seal Vaseline, or a petroleum jelly with some carbolic acid in it. And it was something that you could buy across the counter. 70 25:24.000 --> 25:33.000 Oh, okay. Haven't heard about that. 71 25:33.000 --> 25:43.000 Yeah. And it's still very good medicine, if you can find it. 72 25:43.000 --> 25:49.000 Mr. Walker, could you tell me what area that you grew up in? A little bit about your childhood? 73 25:49.000 --> 26:46.000 Well, much of my early childhood, we lived in the same community on the east side, so you have all of that. So I lived in the east side, several different places, but all on the east side until I was I guess sixth or seventh grade, which means I was almost a teenager. So around 11 or 12 years old, I moved from the east side to the north side, which was a similar community, but a different makeup of people. I kind of quasi rural. By quasi rural, I mean many of the people had been farmers and moved into the city to work at the packing house house. You understand where the packing house is? 74 26:46.000 --> 27:15.000 So the north side housed the stockyards, what was it called? Fort Worth Stockyards. And the pay was outstanding as far as Black people were concerned. Everybody made good money. So the community was quite different from the east side, even though these were blue collar workers, they had good incomes. 75 27:15.000 --> 27:36.000 So the quality of housing and things in the community was much better than it was on the east side. And I only lived there for a little while, moved from there to the west side, which was similar. Another one of these quasi rural communities, which was, what was it called? Lake Co— 76 27:36.000 --> 27:41.000 Lake Como. 77 27:41.000 --> 28:53.000 Lake Como, yeah. And by then I was ready for high school, and from there we moved back to the east side. So for the I guess first and second years of high school, I lived on the east side again. And then my senior year, my family finally bought a home on the south side. But World War II brought income for my father that had not been possible earlier. Just the volume, the other people having money, because my father was kind of a, I don't know what to call him, an entrepreneur, I guess. He sold lumber. He sold firewood. Then lots of people had ice boxes as opposed to refrigerators. So he sold ice to people. Summer, he sold ice, winter, he sold wood, and then he sold anything that people would buy. He sold it. And my mother, of course, was always a domestic, and she always worked. 78 28:53.000 --> 29:35.000 So by the time I was 15, 16 years old, of course, we moved to the south side. Of course, by then I was working. I started working I think when I was 12, 13 years old whenever I wasn't in school. School was paramount to me. It was kind of odd during those days because most boys my age didn't care very much about school. They had to be made to go to school. But it was special for me. 79 29:35.000 --> 30:31.000 And then of course, during the war, I made lots of money personally, as a teenager. Jobs were plentiful. So from I guess age 15 until I finished high school, I always had a full-time job even though I was going to school. And for many of those years, I was the what do they call this? Delivery boy for the local Black owned pharmacy. Well, drugstore, because he sold more than just pharmaceuticals. And I worked that job for eight hours a day, seven days a week. And of course, he was nice to us when we weren't busy, I could do my homework. In fact, he insisted on it. So it was very compatible with my schooling. And then doing this— 80 30:31.000 --> 30:32.000 It was a supportive community. 81 30:32.000 --> 31:13.000 Everybody supported anybody who wanted to go to school. That was the tendency throughout all of the communities. Any of the kids who were good in school and who wanted to go to school, got support from everybody. And then of course, I worked for the war, the war calls as they called it in those days, and canning factories mostly where they were canning beef to ship to Russia and to Europe. And of course the pay was tremendous. So I worked there during the summer and still kept my drugstore job. So I was working two jobs. 82 31:13.000 --> 31:24.000 And Archie, I think you ought to tell him about your life before you moved to Fort Worth. I think that's the most interesting part of your life to me. 83 31:24.000 --> 32:08.000 Well, so much of it is vague to me because I was so young. It was before six years old, but I remember some of it. I did grow up during the depression, and I remember it very well. My father was a tenant farmer when I was first born. And in those years, just immediately preschool and first grade, we lived on a farm. And during the depression, everybody was on relief. Relief was the same as today's welfare. The government came around, I don't remember how often, but they brought— 84 32:08.000 --> 32:08.000 Every month. 85 32:08.000 --> 33:07.000 What was it? Every month they brought canned foods, fresh fruits and fresh vegetables in season. And the fresh fruits were grapefruit. And I think that's why I love grapefruit so much now. I only got fresh grapefruit when the relief truck came and you know don't have any refrigeration, so you don't have any way to keep them. So you eat them as fast as you can. They brought canned beef mostly. Pork and beans, and of course fresh potatoes. And then of course, all the fresh fruit, apples, oranges, grapefruit. The other thing that tied with the relief program was the local merchants I suppose, had a program they called—Well, I don't remember what it was called now, but at Christmastime, you would write a letter to this person— 86 33:07.000 --> 33:10.000 The Good Fellow. 87 33:10.000 --> 33:15.000 Good Fellow. That's what it was. 88 33:15.000 --> 33:27.000 Good Fellows was the name of the program. It's like in St. Louis, they have something called Family—One Family in Need or something like that. But these Good Fellows were folks who collected good things. 89 33:27.000 --> 33:29.000 And gave them to the poor kids. 90 33:29.000 --> 33:30.000 These Black business people? 91 33:30.000 --> 33:34.000 No, the whole community. And you'd write to— 92 33:34.000 --> 33:35.000 More White. 93 33:35.000 --> 33:38.000 In fact, almost all White, I would guess. Wouldn't you guess? 94 33:38.000 --> 33:39.000 Yes. 95 33:39.000 --> 34:15.000 It was the big department stores, the banks. Those were the guys who were funding it. And that's where we'd get Christmas gifts, birthday gifts. You'd write into these people and tell them what you needed. They made you make two lists, what you needed and what you wanted. And what you needed was almost always met. What you want, you were supposed to list them in the order of how much you wanted them and one for each child. The parents weren't included for these. 96 34:15.000 --> 34:55.000 And then at Christmastime, Christmas Eve, I think it was, or the day before Christmas Eve, it got delivered to your front door and your parents would take it and put it under the Christmas tree. And the next day you had gifts. All the poor kids who chose to write, and some were too proud to do it. But that part of the depression, I remember very well because my dad didn't have a job. And so we lived off of what he could grow and what he could sell of what he grew after he paid the owner of the land. So it was very, very difficult. In fact, that's why we left the farm. 97 34:55.000 --> 34:57.000 And where was that farm at? 98 34:57.000 --> 35:07.000 Waco, Texas. Waco, Texas. And so we moved from the farm to the city. 99 35:07.000 --> 35:13.000 I want you to tell me about your great-grandmother who lived with you. 100 35:13.000 --> 36:23.000 Lived with my aunt. My father had a huge family, nine boys and one girl. And they all almost all lived right there in Waco at that time. But I had a great-grandmother who lived with the only girl, my aunt, and she was the matriarch of that family. So she did all the cooking, all the buying for my aunt's family. And she walked to the market every day to buy fresh food to cook every day. And the distance that she would walk would be the equivalent of walking from the hotel to downtown Tuskegee to the city of Tuskegee and back. And she did that every morning before sunup. And she did that, I think she lived to be 102, 105, a hundred something. She died after my kids were born. 101 36:23.000 --> 36:53.000 So that would've been a long time. She lived a long, long time. All of those things were—And I can't remember them all, I guess. I remember walking to school, that was funny. I had to cross a creek. My mother and my dad said I was afraid of water because if the creek was up this much, I would come back home and I say, the creek is up. My dad used to spank my butt and make me go across the creek. 102 36:53.000 --> 37:41.000 I went to a one room school in the first grade, first through the 12th grades, all in one room. And the teacher was a Mrs. Jones. I know the name very well. And I got to introduce my wife to Mrs. Jones, who was—I don't remember how old she was when you met her, but she was very, very old. Very old. But she remembers me, and she always remembered me. We used to exchange notes every year through my—I guess through the time I graduated from college. Kids who went to college were almost worshiped in my section of the family. 103 37:41.000 --> 38:26.000 I was the first person. And all of my family, they get a college degree. And when I say all, I'm meaning my father and all of his brothers, all of their children and all of their children. So that's three generations of children that could have gone to college who did not. And we all grew up in the same circumstances because some of my father's brothers were older than his mother. My grandfather, my father's father had two, almost three families. 104 38:26.000 --> 38:29.000 No, just two as far as I know. 105 38:29.000 --> 38:53.000 Two sets of families. So that when he married my father's mother, he already had grand grown children. So I had cousins who were my mother's age from my grandfather's earlier families. 106 38:53.000 --> 38:58.000 And cousins kind of kept up with each other, Archie's family and my family. 107 38:58.000 --> 38:59.000 And we still do. 108 38:59.000 --> 39:30.000 There were just two of us, and most of my mother's sisters had two children. There were no really big—That's really strange. It's second generation. See, mother comes from a family of 12, but nobody of her sisters or brothers had more than two children. Nobody. And we are still very close. Those of us who are alive now. 109 39:30.000 --> 40:05.000 And my family was just the opposite. All boys. My father had one sister, all of his brothers and sisters, almost all of them except two. Well, Aunt Gert, Uncle Gibbens, I guess were the only two who had more than one girl. And they all had four or more children. And then I had two girls, and my son had all boys. 110 40:05.000 --> 40:08.000 Yeah. 111 40:08.000 --> 40:09.000 Yeah. 112 40:09.000 --> 40:12.000 Had your great-grandmother been born a slave? 113 40:12.000 --> 41:20.000 Yes. Yeah. She was an ex-slave. She was. And you asked, I heard you asked my wife, we ever heard stories. There was a hush, hush among Black people about those kinds of experiences. Bad experiences were seldom repeated to the children. And even the ones that they may have experienced, they were never discussed. I was telling my wife once about some very bad experiences I knew my dad had race-wise, where White people had really abused him verbally. And he was so ashamed that we had to hear that. And we would went, "Daddy, what's the matter? Shut up. Boy. We're not going to discuss that." And that was the end of it. As I remember it, that's the way Black people were. They did not discuss— 114 41:20.000 --> 41:22.000 At least in our family. 115 41:22.000 --> 41:27.000 —unpleasant racial experiences. Never. 116 41:27.000 --> 41:50.000 And my mother would never discuss anything about—Now, maybe if she had lived to hear Roots and to get—Maybe she would've been pushed to discuss, but my mother would not discuss the fact that she was a mixed parentage. She never admitted— 117 41:50.000 --> 41:53.000 Yes, that's right. 118 41:53.000 --> 42:35.000 —that her grandfather was an Irishman from Ireland, her father's father. She would never talk about that. And we'd ask her, "Now what?" I don't know. And she just would not discuss it, even though you could look at her. And she was a very, very fair person. And I knew that there had to be a racial mixture in that family, but she would never admit it. She would never admit it. 119 42:35.000 --> 42:42.000 Never even discuss it. And that was traditional— 120 42:42.000 --> 43:18.000 And I'm sorry now that, because I don't know anything about our family. The only things that I know were from my vagabond uncle who went off to California and stayed for six years, and about the seventh year he'd always drop in on us with a big sack of nuts and a big sack—And he always had some girlfriend or something standing off somewhere. And he's the only person who would really share anything with me about our families. 121 43:18.000 --> 43:24.000 We would press, we called her Mammie. Do you know, to this day, I don't know her name. 122 43:24.000 --> 43:30.000 Your great grandma. 123 43:30.000 --> 44:10.000 Yeah. All we knew was Mammie. And before it was important for us to know. It wasn't important for us to know. By the time it was important, everybody who could know was dead. But it was never discussed. If it was discussed, it was discussed in whispers. One of the other things that seldom gets mentioned now, I listen to these TV shows when people are relating, there was a period in which Black people did not want to be called Africans. You know that? 124 44:10.000 --> 44:11.000 Sure. 125 44:11.000 --> 44:12.000 And I mentioned that. 126 44:12.000 --> 44:15.000 And Black was terrible. 127 44:15.000 --> 44:49.000 And I mention that because of Roots. It came out just a little bit in Roots where that started. They always talked about the African as if he was something different than what they were. And that was in the Black community as long as I can remember. Africans were somebody else, not me. And that was by design. If you weren't an African, maybe they wouldn't treat you like slave. 128 44:49.000 --> 45:45.000 I know that sounds silly, but that's what went on in people's minds. The racial thing for me and my generation or my peers, was a little more traumatic I imagine, than Ferdie's might've been, because there is a difference in the way White people treat Black males and how they treat Black females. And it has always been that way, that we used to wonder, what have we done to make these guys so scared of us? Because that's the way we were treated as if we were something to be afraid of. And so some very nasty things could happen to those of us who were 14, 15, 16 years old.