Percy Williams interview recording, 1995 June 27
-
Download
- Rights
- Files (3)
-
MP3
Part 1
-
MP3
Part 2
-
MP3
Part 3
- Please be patient with media downloads. They are often large files.
- Share
Loading the media player...
Transcript
- Download transcript as:
-
Text
-
PDF
-
WebVTT (includes timecodes)
Transcripts may contain inaccuracies.
| Doris Dixon | Mr. Williams, could you state your full name and date of birth, please? | 0:01 |
| Percy Henry Williams | My name is Percy Henry Williams. I was born here in Memphis on September the 2nd, 1929. | 0:05 |
| Doris Dixon | So what did your parents do? What was [indistinct 00:00:23]? | 0:14 |
| Percy Henry Williams | My mother and father separated before I was born. I was reared by my grandparents, with my grandfather and his wife. And they took me in, I think when I was four months old, and we lived in the Douglass community area from that time on. I was reared up in the Douglass area. | 0:25 |
| Doris Dixon | What do you remember about Douglass in the '30s, when you were growing up? | 0:52 |
| Percy Henry Williams | I knew it was an all Black neighborhood, and I knew it was a community that was just growing up, and it was a community in which people were more involved in things. When they had a fair, over to the school, at the closing of that school. Not the closing, at the end of a school session, because it was a county school and we got out early. So my father, my grandfather was over there, which I related to him as father because I didn't know of any other. And he was talking to Mr. Lucky Sharpe, who was the principal at that time. And he said, "How is this boy, of the students?" He said, "Well, he's not but five. So he can't—" He said, "I'll bring him on. He's bright enough to be in school." So I started school at five years of age, instead of six. | 0:57 |
| Percy Henry Williams | And I started out in the first grade because of course they didn't have primer. They had a primary there, but they didn't have a kindergarten, or anything. So from then on, I just went to school, and of course I was in all the activities a young boy could be in. Cub Scouts, and then later on, the Boy Scouts. Anyway, I achieved the highest ranking Boy Scout in the Seminole Division, at that time. It was an all Black division. And I was awarded in a ceremony at the LeMoyne College, under Dr. Price. But however, that was in '46 I think it was, because I was in high school when I got it. | 1:57 |
| Percy Henry Williams | But back before then, in '35, '34, just as I started to Douglass, was a time when the school was burned down, the old school down on Brooking Street. I know you don't want a history of Douglass, but that's where the first school was at, over on Leewood. That was that little section over on the L&N Railroad, and most everybody went to school over there. And when they built this wooden school, over on Brooking Street, then that's where I first started school there. And of course right there, where I started, burned down. And of course we had to attend school in churches at that time, until such time that they built the new school over on Mt Olive, and of course I went on over there. | 2:56 |
| Percy Henry Williams | But the school didn't go no farther than the ninth grade, as a county school. So of course I had to leave there and go to Manassas, which I had to walk from Douglass to Manassas, because the transportation was so crowded, and was so slow at that time, that I could almost beat— By the time I transferred and got in there, school would almost be out. So we would walk to Manassas, we'd hit the railroad, and go on down to Manassas High School. And we did that. Of course, I worked, during my high school there. I worked at the Gayoso Hotel, where I made about 45, 50 cents a day. | 3:54 |
| Doris Dixon | And that was the Gayoso? | 4:47 |
| Percy Henry Williams | Yeah, every afternoon I used to go down there and clean the transits, the little things over the doors and things. They gave me a brush, and that's all I had to do, for a while. | 4:48 |
| Percy Henry Williams | I got a chance to see a lot of segregation, by going to town, because I had to get back to Douglass before dark. And of course the street car was running then, then later on when the streetcar did— The streetcar used to, didn't go any further than Bellevue. And then it went, extended on out to Douglass, just before you get to the railroad. And even before then, in the early, early days of my life, which I was very small, when Douglass was just building itself. Before it really got started, I'll tell you, because this is what my father told me. That the only streetcar went that way was the number three National, that went all the way out to the National Cemetery. | 5:13 |
| Percy Henry Williams | And that was a White neighborhood over there, so they wouldn't let the Black people play over in any of the parks, over there. So this White man said, "I'm going give y'all some land over here." So they gave Mr. Promise some land, and he came over and they gave us Douglass Park, which we named it after Frederick Douglass. Because at that time he was emancipated, and he was one of the leading— Then you got Booker T. Washington, had already been established. And they had a choice of names, and Mary McLeod Bethune, after then. But most of them decided, "Well, no, let's name it Frederick Douglass," so consequently they named it Frederick Douglass School. | 6:09 |
| Percy Henry Williams | And it went on from there, Douglass Park was more in existence then, because of the baseball team. We always had good baseball teams over there. And then, I can remember the days of Mr. Crump, when we would go into the park and they would have a political rally. And they would give us, all the children, hotdogs and watermelon. And of course the elder people, they would have a juke band and get them corn whiskey, and stuff like that. And money to shoot dice, even. | 6:59 |
| Doris Dixon | Really? | 7:41 |
| Percy Henry Williams | Uh-huh. And we did that, and one of the things that my grandfather told me back then. He said, "As long as I live," I don't know whether he got into a fight about what was going on over there. But he said, "Son, if you ever grow up be anything, don't never vote for a Republican." That's what he told me. "Never vote for a Republican." | 7:44 |
| Percy Henry Williams | And even at that time, George W. Lee was very affluent in the neighborhood, and he had quite a bit of people in the Douglass community, Van Hooks and Flagstone, people like that. But then there were more people like Mr. Van Buren, Edgar Van Buren, and Dave Edmonds all those people, stayed with the Democrats. My father, his friend, they stayed on the Democrat side. So that's what I've been doing ever since then, I have stuck in my mind, I never vote for a Republican. I don't care how good he is, I've had, but I never voted for a Republican. Always, a Democrat. | 8:08 |
| Percy Henry Williams | And when you're going, on Beale Street we could go, you had to go down there. There was one bowling alley, down there. We used to go down there and set pins, at a penny per game. And then, there wasn't too many, I don't think they had about five lanes. It was sitting right next to the Harlem House. And we had to stay there from as soon as we got out of school, until one or two o'clock. That last lineup, what they call a lineup, for the street car. And if we missed the lineup, we'd have to stay there all night, either walk home, either one. Or catch ride with somebody. | 8:50 |
| Percy Henry Williams | But that was one of the things that, everything was, it was so segregated, you just didn't know of any other way to live. Because you couldn't— Let me see what to say. They would say it now, you were honed into— I'm sorry, that's not the word I'm looking for. But you would be telegraphed into a segregated society, so you really didn't pay it too much attention. For instance, when we were young, we had one day to go to the zoo, which was on Thursday. And we didn't go to the fairground at all, until the fair time was. And to get our money from the fair, we had to go pick cotton and chop cotton, in order to make us some money to spend at the fair. And of course, some of us could do that, and some of us couldn't. | 9:36 |
| Percy Henry Williams | But I worked at the Bungalow Pharmacy, which was owned by Dr. Walker, who was a Black pharmacy. And at the time, there was a lot of businesses in that area. Doctors, drugstores, grocery stores. And it was only the one Asian drugstore, I mean grocery store, which still exists there now. And that was the only thing that was brighter than the average bright man. And they stayed there, because they came in, they kind of helped the Blacks along. Anybody would come in, because we didn't have much money, and the wages was very, very low. My father worked for the Memphis Light, Gas and Water then, and he was a chauffer for Mr. Steve. | 10:40 |
| Percy Henry Williams | And I can remember as a young kid, that he went downtown, as he had the use of the automobile. And he went to take some of his friends down to the soup line, and of course I was in the car because he didn't want to carry me, so he left me in the car. So then the water was rising, like it is now, so the big sheriff and all them came up and got all the Black men, and made them go down there to stack sand. So that left me in the car, which it was kind of cold, and I kind of got a pneumonia and was in pretty bad shape. So my father, he raised all kind of hell about it, him being, knowing Mr. Steve, he got some heads chopped, and stuff like that. Because Mr. Steve was close to Mr. Crump. And that was one issue that I should never forget. | 11:35 |
| Percy Henry Williams | But anyway, after then, we moved. Of course, they moved to Douglass in '29, directly after I was born, I think it was '29 or '30. And that's where, but like I say, we used to live up on Speed Street up in Klondike. And we moved, they moved to Douglass in '30, and that's when they took me in. And Douglass was just being built by Mr. Curry, J.W. Curry and his son. And then, it was known as Bungalow. The Douglass area, which was farther— What is that? East of there. And Bungalow was further, closer to the railroad, and they built a whole lot of bungalows in there. Mr. Curry did, I think it was about four, five streets of nothing but bungalows. | 12:38 |
| Percy Henry Williams | And I think from Brooklins Street on down, it was named Douglass. And Crump area was north of there, and it was owned by a Black man, Mr. Snipes. He owned Crump, at that time. But he got in bad, and he was a big gambler, and a drinker. So he lost it to— I don't know whether he borrowed some money on it, or what. But he was a big gambler, and he borrowed money, and he lost it. And Mr. Crump bought it, so that's why they named it Crump. And that's the Douglass, Bungalow & Crump, that's what it's named now. | 13:28 |
| Percy Henry Williams | So after our little ordeal, as far as going to school, going to play basketball, we had to go all the way down from Douglass to Church's Park, to even— Rehearsal, to practice. We had an hour and a half to practice, on certain days. And then we had, we went to— Trying to think where else did we have to do, to get, which was segregated. I'm trying to leave out all this other stuff that came in between then. | 14:14 |
| Doris Dixon | But don't leave anything out, [indistinct 00:15:00]. | 14:55 |
| Percy Henry Williams | Well, it's so insignificant. Like the fights we had, they wouldn't allow us on Beale Street, they wouldn't allow— | 14:59 |
| Doris Dixon | No, that's significant. That's significant, we want to get that. | 15:08 |
| Percy Henry Williams | Oh, okay. Well, we always had, it wasn't gangs. But it was just a group of fellas, sticking together. So we always were together, and of course they tried, they blocked us from— We had a pretty good basketball team, Booker Washington, and Douglass, and Woodstock was about the baddest basketball teams going on. So we would go down there, and they'd try to bar us from coming down there, because they said we were country people, and we're all the way out there. | 15:08 |
| Percy Henry Williams | So we had our little fights, and they would run us just about every— So one day we decided, we just wasn't going to run no more. After, first when Mr. Sharpe had told us that, "This is just much yours as anybody's. And don't run away from anything." And we went there that time more prepared to fight than to play ball, because we took everybody with us, then. And sure enough, they were waiting for us when we come out. And that's when it first, we battled and we battled. We won the fight, and we were able to go down there anytime. Oh, we could go down there most anytime, and nobody would bother us at all. Of course, we never had no problem with Woodstock, because they was just like we were. | 15:43 |
| Doris Dixon | You were fighting people from Booker T? | 16:29 |
| Percy Henry Williams | No, from— Yeah, well they went, most of them went to Booker Washington. They were Black. | 16:34 |
| Doris Dixon | They were trying to keep you out of Church Park? | 16:44 |
| Percy Henry Williams | Yeah. They were trying to keep, they didn't like us coming down there. And we had a good girl's basketball team, but they didn't, they practiced on the dirt court. They didn't have to go down there and rehearse, because only they did that, because they was improving the gym. Woodstock always did have a good gym, because they was an institution-like type school. They had their own gymnasium, and they stayed on campus like college, and all that there. They had more agriculture, and I think they got theirs from what at that time was the C.C., they called it C.C. Camp was out there, over here. I think they got that, and then after, they closed the C.C. Camp down. | 16:55 |
| Percy Henry Williams | The C.C. Camp was where boys would go and stay, just like in the Army, and learn different trades and things like that. And it was more or less, higher up from the Boy Scout camp. We had, old Camp Daniels was down there, back in Douglass. Which was by the Seminole Division of the Boy Scouts, which is all Black, Seminole, headed by Mr. Beecham. And that was our own swimming hole, was the Wolf River. So we went down, we cut up some trees, and we built a swimming place down in the river for those who couldn't swim, and those who could. And our diving board was out of the tall tree, and things like that. | 17:38 |
| Percy Henry Williams | And coming on up the years, I'm kind of getting ahead of myself, but coming on up the years when Douglass, they built Douglass School in '35, I think it was. And then they got the high school, and the first graduating class was in '46. And before then, after I finished the ninth grade, they didn't have a high school. So I went Manassas, as I told you. And then some of them went to Booker Washington, and well, it was the only other school you could go to, at that time. Other than Woodstock, and those two were the closer. | 18:33 |
| Percy Henry Williams | And when Douglass had their first graduating in '46, they began to get a football team. So it was just impossible for me to make Manassas' football team, because they had all those big humongous people there, and they were playing people from down in Dunbar, and St. Louis, and they all looked like professionals, then. So I went back to Douglass in '47, when I graduated, in 1947. I then married my childhood sweetheart when she was 15 and I was 18, in 1948. And we had to go to Hernando, Mississippi, get married. We had to— Hmm? | 19:17 |
| Doris Dixon | You had to? | 20:23 |
| Percy Henry Williams | Yeah, because they wouldn't marry younger than 21, here in Tennessee. And you had to go through a whole lot of formalities, but in Mississippi they would take you. All you had to do was just go up there and put your money in. But I'll never forget, I went to— Wait on it, you want some napkins? I got some napkins. | 20:24 |
| Doris Dixon | Oh, okay. Thank you. | 20:42 |
| Percy Henry Williams | You're okay. And we went up there to get married, so we had to ride the Trailways bus up there, was on the bus up there. And of course we went in and got married, the lady asked no questions. We just told her we wanted to get married. And of course she asked, how old was I? And I didn't know no better, I thought she was going to really— I said, "21." And then, I looked at my wife and she said, I think she said she was 18, which was a permissible age, at that time. | 20:42 |
| Percy Henry Williams | So that time, no questions asked, we paid two and a half and went on. There was a lady standing there, a Black lady, telling us, "Come on," her husband would marry— He was a preacher. So we walked about a half a mile down in Hernando, Mississippi, down there. And of course, her husband was out there chopping wood, had on his overalls. When we got around to the front door, he had on his suit, his tuxedo, and all that. And they had a little foyer they made you stand up in, so we went on there, that was in— What did I say? '48. | 21:19 |
| Doris Dixon | '48? | 21:58 |
| Percy Henry Williams | Yeah. '48. April 3rd, don't let me forget that one. And after we was married, which took about 20 minutes, after the marriage we had to go back up to the highway to catch the bus, flag the bus down to catch it. And while we were there, there was a country store up there, which we went in. They let us buy our stuff, but we couldn't stay in the store, we had to go outside the store to eat it. So there was a bench down on the side, there. But we went down there, and sat down and ate baloney and cheese, and crackers. And a big drink, we shared together, until the bus came, which it didn't come, until about 12 o'clock. So we got on, and we came on back home. That was that much of it. | 22:00 |
| Percy Henry Williams | During July of '40, Captain George Robinson, at that time he was a captain. He finally ended up being a major, but at that time he was one of the old school teachers at Douglass. And he always thought of me as a leader, because I was a Boy Scout leader. So he come to me and said, "Percy, I'm getting up a company, a reserve outfit. And I need to help me get these fellas together." And then he said, "You come on, I'll take you over here and get you inducted, and maybe that will show them, reel them in." He said we'd be getting $48 a month, and stuff like that. And all we had to do is go two nights, two days a month, to serve. So we did. And I went back over there, and he was all, everybody hung out in Douglass Park, because there wasn't anything to do in the summer. No job, no nothing. Nowhere to go. | 22:50 |
| Percy Henry Williams | So we'd go, I went over there and I was in his, he was driving this weapon carrier. And we went over there, and of course I was really neat, they gave me one of those gabardine outfits, and then he also made me a PFC, and that made me have a stripe on. Almost, just as I got through being sworn in. And we went over there, and we recruited I guess about 70, 75 boys out of Douglass. And then, after we got going, we had to go out to the Army Depot, where it is now. And we would march all the way back. We were so enthused about drilling, that we would march from the Army Depot back to Douglass School, and we would come down through there. And we'd be shouting a cadence, and that enthused the Orange Mound Boys, again. "Hey man, how y'all get that? How y'all get all that?" | 24:02 |
| Percy Henry Williams | So we told them, so the next time they had a meeting, they came in. And then we started getting folks that came in that was in World War II, young fellas that had rank and stuff, for the extra money they could get. But little did we know that, in 1950, that they would activate our unit to go overseas, and that was for the Korean War. And that's how we got in, in September. September the 3rd, we was activated into the regular Army. And of course I spent four years in the Army, and we went to Alaska. And we went to Greenland. And some of us went to Korea. But that was the ones that was chosen, out of a group of people, to go to Korea. And of course we all, practically, lived through it. But maybe one or two that didn't make it. But we all came back. | 25:00 |
| Percy Henry Williams | At that time, we thought we was going to have a job because naturally, I had been the command battalion motor pool clerk, where I was the person who took in all the accounts from the company, seven companies, as to the staff status. How many you are, how many this, how many officers on duty, and all that kind of stuff. I would take that in, when I got through, I could go home. But luckily, I was underweight. I was about 130 pounds, you wouldn't believe it, but I was about 130 pounds. And with that Army overcoat on, I couldn't hardly scuffle with my rifle and my bag. So they decided, "Well, we have to put some weight on him." So they put me on a diet, and I had to go to a special cafeteria there, to eat my food. They had it all ready when you got there, and they knew what I was supposed to have. So I didn't start getting this way until, oh, in 1965 when I really started picking up. But that's getting a little ahead. | 26:12 |
| Percy Henry Williams | So after then, when we came home, we thought we had good jobs. Army Depot was booming, all just jobs, go everywhere. And— What was the thing, out there on Jackson? Oh, shoot. I forget the name of it now. It's out there on Jackson, where they, all those fashion things out there, those warehouses. You never been there? Okay. I can't think of the name of it now, but they had moved all the people out of, what we called across the railroad, lived over there. And they had moved all of them out, over into the Douglass area. And then they took that space and made a distribution place out of it, like the Army Depot. So we thought we should have had jobs, because we were warehousing, we were in the, what they call the famed 241st Transportation outfit. | 27:34 |
| Percy Henry Williams | And we thought sure we had a job, but they only had a few of the stronger boys, that could lift stuff and stuff like that. I thought, "Well, with my expertise," typing, I'd been in typing school. I just knew I had it made, but they didn't need no typing. Everything was practically written, so I didn't get the job. So that meant I had to— By then I had two children, so I had to maintain some kind of subsistence to survive, so I started waiting tables down at the Claridge Hotel. Well, first I was working at the Claridge, I had to be there when they opened up in the morning, at 5:30. Well, they open up at 6:00, but we had to be there at 5:30, because I had to make the coffee and get all the chairs down off the table, there's a whole lot, a bunch of stuff. And get them ready for breakfast, so six o'clock. | 28:38 |
| Percy Henry Williams | So I would get there, and I had to ride the streetcar all the way. The first streetcar started at five o'clock, leaving the barn, so to speak. So it would get there about 5:30, the first car, and I would catch it. No, it got there at five o'clock, and I would catch it so I could be to work at 5:30. Had I missed it, I wouldn't get to work until about 6:30. So I did that, in the snow and the rain, or whatever. | 29:43 |
| Percy Henry Williams | And I worked there, and I think it was paying a dollar 75 cents, per night. But I was making $12 and a half every two weeks, for that. But I had enough then to maintain my family, I didn't have no problem. And then, I'd make tips then, but the tips wasn't that big. But it was say, seven, $8 a day. And then at night, if they wanted some extra help, I would work doing all the extra nights, especially on the weekends. And I would make pretty good little tips and things, especially when they had the cotton common here, and before they got all these, when the old sides, a few of those cubes and things. Then, it was different. | 30:10 |
| Percy Henry Williams | And I never will forget, I'm trying to think of his name, and I can't. He was a baseball player. He was a commissioner, at that time. And they only had four commissioners, and he was a commissioner at that time. I can't recall it. I've been kind of ill, and I can't remember as well as I used to. | 31:02 |
| Percy Henry Williams | But anyhow, he would always call me Red. And he'd say, and I'd hear people saying, "Yeah Red, you got me fixed up, Red?" And I'd say, "Yes sir, yes sir." Just like back in the old days, "Yes, sir," smiling, grinning. And so he would say, "Yeah, old Red's my nigger." And I'd go up there, "Yes sir, what can I do for you, man?" He'd say, "Get me some whiskey. I need some whiskey." I'd go down there, I would run all the way down Main Street, and get him a bottle of whiskey, something like that. And come back. So at the end he paid me for his tip, when he signed his check. And he put on there for me, a tip for $3. But I thought it was real good, back then, so I never forgot. I can't think of his name to save my soul, now. I wish I could. But he was a commissioner. He played baseball. Oh, shoot. | 31:26 |
| Percy Henry Williams | Well, anyway, that's how I reared up my two boys, at that time. And then of course, after I couldn't get the job at the Depot, I decided I'd go to college. And I went to, I started at LeMoyne-Owen, at LeMoyne, it was LeMoyne before LeMoyne-Owen. And I started there, but I didn't have enough money to finish. But Mr. Price was just like Mr. Sharpe did, when we were first saying. When Mr. Sharpe said, "I got some boys and girls I want to send over there to you." And of course Mr. Price said, "Yeah, send them on. How much can they pay?" He said, "They ain't got much money, the father," this, that, and the other. He said, "Well, send them on, we'll see what we can work out." | 32:31 |
| Percy Henry Williams | So I went there, but I couldn't stay for the semester. Because that's when, I had another son, and I couldn't stay on going to school. As a matter of fact we had, a bunch of the fellas had rented an apartment over there, in the Martin Garden. I think, if I can remember it was eight, something with a C. Leno Place. And that's where we would hang out at. We had a girl to come over there to cook, and we cooked things like ham hocks and pigtails, and all that stuff. Kind of a soul food, like this. And everybody would come over there to eat during the lunch hour, even we had Dr. Gibson, that time. He would come over. "What y'all cooking today?" And he would come over and eat, and of course, we had beer. And we didn't put it up in front of him or anything, but he enjoyed it, he ate and he went on back. It didn't help us on our grades, any. | 33:22 |
| Doris Dixon | Did you charge, was it like? | 34:24 |
| Percy Henry Williams | No, no, no. It was just a thing we did. Because most of the stuff, we didn't pay for, either. We either stole it, or raised it out in Douglass, where they had a garden. We had the Plant for Prosper. I forgot to tell you about that. | 34:40 |
| Percy Henry Williams | In the early, what was it? The late '30s, Lucky Sharpe started a paint up, cleanup, fix up deal out there. And that soon became a big thing in Memphis. They got the City Beautiful Commission, now. But we would, as Cub Scouts, we would go by everybody's yard and clean up everything out of that yard. Put it out front, have it ready. At that time the penal farm had men in chains, with the stripy shirts, and they would come out and trench the yard. And put trenches, and put those big red bricks down, out there every second. And that was our deterrent, as to never go to jail. | 34:58 |
| Doris Dixon | Seeing those men? | 35:54 |
| Percy Henry Williams | Right. That was, we never wanted to do that. But I can remember one incident, while we were in school then, one of the boys said something back to the deputy sheriff, or something. He went and hit him in the head with the butt of his rifle. When they had guns, and stood over here, even though they didn't shot him. And so Mr. Sharpe saw, we're all standing out there in the yard, on the campus. And Mr. Sharpe saw, he said, "My God." And he went out there and told him, "What are you going to hit him for, like that?" And he said, "You better get your own ass back in there," during the school. He said, "Come on in, young man." | 35:55 |
| Percy Henry Williams | Took the man in there. We ran over there and got Reverend, A.W. Williams was the first aid man, he was just like a doctor in the community. We went over there and got him. He came over and treated the boy, who was just bleeding down his head, just blood everywhere. And we didn't have a phone in the school, but Reverend Williams done had a phone. So they called out to the penal farm, and so they had all squads, just like somebody had committed a robbery. Had, I don't know how many squad cars and things, out there. So we were bad, young boys, we're standing behind our school. We didn't have nothing to fight with, but we put a circle around there. We started shouting, "Ain't nobody, you ain't coming in here. You ain't coming in." | 36:32 |
| Percy Henry Williams | So, they could have mopped us up, but that was just our own pride. So they came on to the shop, told them what happened. So they took them all home, back to the thing, and everything. Then they soon took them off. I don't know what, from out there, working and anything. But they would come out there with them, that truck would dump them red rocks on that street. Lord have mercy. | 37:22 |
| Doris Dixon | So what happened, do you know what happened to the men? | 37:46 |
| Percy Henry Williams | Yeah. He took him on back to the penal farm. | 37:48 |
| Doris Dixon | Oh, okay. | 37:48 |
| Percy Henry Williams | The workhouse, that's what it was, then. And they took them on back out to the workhouse. Now what they did to them out there, I wouldn't know. | 37:48 |
| Doris Dixon | So it was just like a supervisor, or overseer, to get them over there. | 37:56 |
| Percy Henry Williams | Yeah. And we were all, I guess, I don't know whether he was showing out in front of us, or what. And then after, because we would have classes out in, especially on hot days, we would have class out in the shade tree because it was much cooler. And see, by being out there, they was working on, they had a little ditch right down the street, that they had to clean out. And when he popped this guy upside the head, we all ran around and said, "Look at that." And Sharpe run over there, and I guess he wanted to show his enthusiasm about it. So he told him, got the boy, and took him away, in the school. And we was all holding on to him, and he went and applied some pressure on him. And we run over there and got Reverend William, and he came over and gave him first aid. | 38:02 |
| Percy Henry Williams | Then they, the old deputy, he wanted to, oh he threatened us all kind of way. And then by that time they had a whole, like I said, all the squad cars in Shelby County was out, downtown. And we didn't know what was going to happen. It was one of those things like, we really didn't care, but we just wasn't going to shelter. That's what Lucky Sharpe had instilled in us. You believe in something, you fight to the last, regardless. And that's what we did. And that's why, a lot of people asked about Douglass, as to why we were so close? Because we lived like a family. If my mother didn't have it, your mother had it, we still had it. And I ate at just about everybody's house that I thought about. Nobody turned us down for food. | 38:58 |
| Percy Henry Williams | We started a Plant for Prosper, out there. Behind Douglass Park was a big field, and we would plant corn and potatoes and beans, just all vegetables back there. Anything we could get from the Agricultural Department, we were planting back there, and working. And during the school time, that's where we got our food from. And especially the boys that boxed, and things like that. We would get free meals. So we had beans, and stuff like that. It was really good, nourishing food, and we had people that cooked and they didn't charge. People would come over to the school, and cook, and didn't charge a thing. Like Ms. Tyes, Ms. Williams, Ms. Harris. Oh, I can just keep on naming, Ms. Ware. Miss Susie. All these people just came over. You never had to ask. All they wanted to know was what you wanted to do. | 39:51 |
| Percy Henry Williams | And they would come in and pitch in, and they had this big, they made quilts and things for people that didn't have it. And they had expos, just about every year, the people who made vegetables, canned goods and stuff. And they had a big shelf, a whole thing, shelves full of food that people had canned, and brought away to put on exhibit. All that kind of stuff. And nobody never went on. It's just unbelievable. And then finally, it came down to the point where they couldn't have chickens and hogs, in the backyard. Oh, boy. That started a fight. That started a catastrophe in Douglass, then. | 41:00 |
| Doris Dixon | What happened? | 41:45 |
| Percy Henry Williams | Mr. Sharpe was getting, I don't know really what started it, but it was the Health Department had kind of made a survey, I imagine it was. And they had told Mr. Sharpe on how it was infecting the Blacks and everybody, by ticks and cholera and stuff like that. So Mr. Sharpe said, "Well, we'll just have to do something about it." So, he being kind of a leader out there, he told everybody they had to get rid of their chickens and hogs, put them up in a pen. Because they just ran around. And boy, people didn't like that. Oh my God. And they was ready to throw him out of Douglass, and all that kind of stuff. But be as it may, he won out, and we cleaned up all them hog pens, and all that stuff in the back. And it became a very good neighborhood, and people then appreciated him for that. | 41:47 |
| Doris Dixon | You said it became a very good neighborhood? | 42:45 |
| Percy Henry Williams | Oh, yeah. One of the best. | 42:47 |
| Doris Dixon | You didn't think it was before then, or when did it [indistinct 00:42:52]? | 42:48 |
| Percy Henry Williams | Yeah, it was already that. It was just like that. What I'm saying, at the time that they had this fight about the chickens and hogs and things, that's when it kind of got a little divided. Some of the most elegant people wanted to get rid of the chicken and hogs, and things. And there was some who didn't want to get rid of them, but they kept on it, and they finally got rid of them. And I think it was the Health Department that came in and added their two cents into it, and they kind of let the people know that it wasn't good for them, and that it would not kill them if they kept them up in the pen. | 42:52 |
| Percy Henry Williams | And then it got, so then, people got to stealing them so bad and they started dying, and stuff all like that. So they just stopped fooling with it, I guess, that's the only thing I could see. But then I know Mr. Sharpe come out in roses. They had a big write— I'll tell you, where the academy offices were, at that time carried— Like the Tri-State Defender. It carried the biggest old story, if you would like to read them, way back. I'm trying to, I don't know what year, but it was back, had to be back in the '30s. Late '30s. | 43:29 |
| Doris Dixon | What do you think, speaking of the '30s, what do you remember of the Depression? | 44:09 |
| Percy Henry Williams | Well, nothing really, because I was just born, I was about two years old when the Depression was on. I didn't feel it, because like I told you, my grandfather worked for the rich. And we got everything that they didn't eat, he'd bring it home. And of course, wasn't nobody but he and his wife, and myself. And then she was working for some White folks, Mr. Henry Clayton. And I was getting all the clothes that his son couldn't wear, and all this, let me down. So we were living pretty good, at that time. So the Depression didn't phase me at all, too much, because I never really had to live like— | 44:13 |
| Percy Henry Williams | But I did see the soup line, and I was very small. I was about what, three or four years old, when I saw the soup line that went down on Beale Street. And I could see, I can imagine it now, the pots were sitting there in Hanley Square. The big old pots, where they were serving people out of. And then most of them, they'd send them on down to the river, to put sandbags up and things. People just hanging around, looking for work. Sometimes the man come by in the truck, and everybody knew then to jump on the truck, and they either go into the field, or somewhere. I was trying to think of something else back then, that really touched— But I can't recall. | 45:06 |
| Doris Dixon | Let me ask you this. Did your grandparents tell you about how they came up? Did they tell you about their families, and some of the things that they had to go through? | 46:02 |
| Percy Henry Williams | Yeah, well of course my grandfather, like I said. He lived in Klondike, and he didn't, even as a young man, he started working— | 46:13 |
| Doris Dixon | You were talking about your grandmother, your mother? | 0:01 |
| Percy Henry Williams | Yeah, my mom. Well, she's my grandmother. She was always working in a home and cleaning up, maid, ironing, and all that stuff, cooking. And she would work from 6:00 in the morning until 6:00 at night because he would drive her and drop her off, and then go on and take Mr. Steve on to the office. Then he would come back and see that I got off to school and everything. And then he would go back, and then so on and so forth. | 0:04 |
| Percy Henry Williams | So the people in the neighborhood, after we went to come from school, there's some people across the street. It was the Echos family. Now, we were close because all the other kid, their kids was the same age as me. And we kind of stuck together. And then some next door, Miss LuLu and Miss Fowler, they would always see after us when we come from school, see that we had something to eat and all that kind of stuff. And because most of the time, we played out in the street, other than the winter time. So we had to get in and our first duty when we got home was to make a fire in the stove, get your coal and kindling in, and just sit down and get your lesson. | 0:32 |
| Percy Henry Williams | Then you could go out, if anybody was outside playing, you could go out. If it wasn't, you couldn't go and play. But I always could go because they didn't want me staying at the house. | 1:21 |
| Percy Henry Williams | Well, my great-great-grandmother was there too. I could always ask her, and she said, "You can go across the street." Because that was the only fun. They would come over there sometime because there wasn't anybody over there to keep them either. So they would come over to my house and miss dinner. We the only one had a phone in about four blocks. And when somebody wanted somebody on Oriole Street, then I had to take off running. I had to take off running to tell them that they had a message on the phone. And they would give me a nickel sometimes for coming, and sometimes they wouldn't give anything. But them kind, I didn't go too fast. I'd walk to the place, take my time. | 1:32 |
| Percy Henry Williams | Because you could go— In Douglass, you could go on one side, from the railroad all the way back without even going up on Chelsea Street. Chelsea, we— Tell you, we didn't want to go on Chelsea Street because it had tar on the street. And like every other week, they would put some tar on top of that tar. And woo, that stuff was hot. And it'd get all in your toes and your feet. And then you had to use coal oil to get it off. And somebody had to help you get it off. | 2:21 |
| Percy Henry Williams | So we learned how to walk through— How, through lots and things. Never fences, nothing like that. No screen, they'll leave the house open, everything, though. You just walk on through, walk on back. And you could do that all the way over, one side. And then you run fast, you just pick you a nice spot to cross, where you wouldn't get all that tar on you. And sometimes we would go all the way down to the end of Chelsea where it changed over to where about Quaker Oat is now, and come back down the other side just to keep that tar off your feet, uh-huh. | 2:57 |
| Doris Dixon | The streets in Douglass paved in any? | 3:36 |
| Percy Henry Williams | Uh-uh. All them had those red rock on them. And you could buy a pair of shoes from up there in Hollywood at Frankton or Harris Shoe Store. And you couldn't wear those shoes but maybe one time because evidently they had pasted those bottoms or something in. Because once you hit them rocks, them shoes was gone. They'd turn all over and everything. So most of the time, we had to put the shoes in the bag, or put them under our arm and walk to church and put them on when we got to church, or something. | 3:48 |
| Doris Dixon | You did a lot of working downtown and such, did a lot of riding the street cars. Can you tell me about the street cars downtown? | 4:27 |
| Percy Henry Williams | Yeah, the streetcars was all right because we knew we had to go to the back. So it wasn't no— You know, wasn't no— You needed no question about it, you know where you supposed to go. You go to the back. When you went to the back and it fill on up. And now, if it was enough on there, you could eat up another seat, you know? If enough Blacks was on there. But you couldn't get no one at least the third seat from the driver. Because he would look at you, and he would holler in a minute, "Get back, nigger. Don't get up here, you know we got to save some seats, get back there." You know. | 4:31 |
| Percy Henry Williams | And that went on for a long while, but you know that everybody up there was coming from Hyde Park, [indistinct 00:05:21] or Douglass, you know now. So we didn't have too much trouble but from Bellevue on round downtown, it was just impossible to think about sitting up font in those street cars. | 5:12 |
| Doris Dixon | Is that where the White people started getting on, around Bellevue? | 5:32 |
| Percy Henry Williams | Uh-huh, yeah, that was White. All this was White. See all this, where we at now, was White. And Bellevue, you know, up there by the expressway. All that was White, all across there. So in Florida, when I had to go to Manassas, my mother and them had— And my mother and my oldest sister and my brother and my baby sister were living on Dunlap Street at the time, in what we called Springhome Bottom. And my grandfather passed then, in '41. So and due to the fact that I had to go to Manassas, and my grandma didn't want me to walk that far, she let me come back and stay with my mother there. Because my mother had married again to a [indistinct 00:06:37] and so she let me go on back out there and stay with them. | 5:36 |
| Percy Henry Williams | But when I was out there, over there on Dunlap, it was just about as bad as Douglass. We was going to Manassas School. If we come down Haitian Street, we would have to fight what we called the Sugar Hill Boys. If we went down Manassas Street, we had to fight the Humes Boys. And of course if we went down further, and you'd be I don't know what time getting to school because you had to transfer from Glenview to Crosstown at Faxon and then ride on over. I mean at, yeah, Faxon, ride over on to catch a bus going on to Manassas. And it would be packed, you know, everybody you could see was on that bus. | 6:41 |
| Percy Henry Williams | And that's when we caught our biggest problem in the wintertime or summertime, it didn't give us no sweat because we kind of settled the Hazel Street boys down. Because like I said, we fought. But we didn't fight with guns and knives, we'd throw bricks and we'd knuckle them, you know? And ran. Until we told Mr. Hayes "How you doing?" So he had the police to patrol through the area now and then. Even at that time, they would do so, but when the boys from Hume would gather, no matter what Mr. Hayes said at that time, the police, you know, they wouldn't ride, they wouldn't stop or nothing. They'd just come out and bombard us with rocks and things, call us a bunch of niggers and— That's why I'll never forget Elvis Presley. Because he was living on Greenlaw at that time, and he was going to Hume School. And he was in one of them groups. | 7:27 |
| Percy Henry Williams | But see he had— That time, my sister, Ursel, was living on Saffarans Street, which is the next street up from Greenlaw. And when he come, he knew he had to— He was brought up with Blacks, see? So he had to be very careful about being seen with his White friend. So every time we'd get a chance, we would run him. Give him that wheel, almost, you know? And never did we think that he'd become, you know, a rich person. When we used to sit there on the porch and we passed by there and we'd go into the ice house and he'd be singing. You know, we'd go by "ah ha" we laughed. Every White man played the guitar, we though he was a hillbilly. And we just go by just to aggravate him. But it was then until probably in the '50s, when the Flamingo was down on Hernandez. We used to go down there and he would always have his guitar down there, wanting to sit in and play. | 8:29 |
| Percy Henry Williams | And he did, he let him play and he just mingled around with them. BB King, at that time, was on WDIA, of course that was before they— And used to sing that pick guitar in that attic. And we just say "Oh, get that thing off the radio, please." And he just sang (singing) and all that. Had a car, all that stuff. We cut that radio off. Because radio went off at 5:00 at that time. | 9:46 |
| Percy Henry Williams | So there's a few people, because we used to go down to The Palace, amateur night to see Rufus and Bones was a comedy show at that time. Beside, they had dancing girls and all that kind of stuff. It was something like the Apollo nowadays. Nat G. Williams was the head MC and all that. | 10:21 |
| Percy Henry Williams | And, oh yeah, I forgot to tell you about the first band. Douglass had the first big band that played Negro— All Negro band. That's where most musicians start, like Pete Ware, Sam Ford, and Eston Brone. That's where they start, there, Douglass Swingsters. Omar Robinson. And what I was going to say? He's the power of the pianos. And they had a big band that time, Willis Dessin blowing first trumpet. Thomas Branch, Trippy. All that was back in the '30s, late '30s. | 10:55 |
| Percy Henry Williams | That's where Ben Branch started. He used to roll up the back of his tablet. You know, they had them pop tablets, and you roll the back of it up and you roll it up and you blow through them. And that's how he start. So Miss Shaw got with his mother and they went, I think, fifty-fifty on it. And Miss Shaw stood for not— I'm sorry, Miss Shaw stood for them a saxophone from the pawn shop. But she paid for it because his daddy was— Oh, he's a big drunk of a thing. And he had a old mule, a horse and a wagon and he was working in that— We were working at— He worked at the— What do you call it? The charcoal factory was out there. | 11:47 |
| Percy Henry Williams | And Ben Branch was being [indistinct 00:12:53] started because he went on up, and Omar Robinson. Sam Ford is in Florida now, teaching. Anna DeGoodridge. See, all those people, they're firsts. Abel Lewis, Bowleg. Until Ben started playing at Curries in the '50s. | 12:47 |
| Percy Henry Williams | And we would go down, in Mississippi, to play for fraternities and things down there. Matter of fact, before then, Douglass Swingsters played at the Tennessee State's prom, and they wanted them back every year because they was just that good. But they couldn't fulfill because they were graduating, and most of them went to Tennessee state. | 13:12 |
| Percy Henry Williams | And matter of fact, back at that time— That was in '48, '47, '48, Mr. Sharpe sent us to Tennessee State. We were all-star football— That they didn't give all the members. We just was all-stars there. Myself, Eston Brone, Ben Branch, Thomas Branch, Frank Gary. It was six of them. One of them— There was one other, I can't think who it was now. But they sent us to Tennessee state. Lord have mercy, we got up there, everything up there was like, over 300 pounds. And I'm still that little weasely 135, 40 pounds. There wasn't anything I could do. I couldn't even be the— I couldn't even work with— Be the water boy. The water boy was sitting on the bench, waiting for his time to go in, you know, be there. | 13:49 |
| Percy Henry Williams | So then the coach came and said "Well, why don't you try out for something else?" So I would try out for track. That didn't do. I couldn't— I could run, but I wasn't faster than them guys, woo. You know, it's different than just flat out running, running from a starting point like they did. So Ben Branch, myself, and Eston Lee didn't make it. We came back, they sent us back home after that first semester. | 14:50 |
| Percy Henry Williams | Basketball, that tall boy, Marcus Haines, he was one of them, he played. And it's just unthinkable trying to match with those guys. What we did, we was three Lettermen, but we just couldn't compete with those guys. | 15:22 |
| Doris Dixon | So Mr. Sharpe sent you to Tennessee State to try out for scholarships? | 15:44 |
| Percy Henry Williams | Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Sure did. Sharpe had that kind of connection. He was one of those principals that didn't go home when the bell rang. He would be out in that community riding. He'd go be visiting people in the community, talking to people. It'd be just about— It'd be sometimes nine, 10 o'clock before he would leave Douglass. And most of his teachers there would do that too. When you wasn't doing good in school, you better believe that teacher was going to be there. Because she going to look at what you doing, or talk to your parents. | 15:47 |
| Percy Henry Williams | If your parents didn't get off until six or seven o'clock, they were going to be there, because they didn't have phones, you know, to get them. But they was going to be there. And they know they couldn't write and tell her to come over there because there wasn't nobody going to get off of work, because they wasn't making nothing no way, to be able to come over there to the school. So they would sit there, and they'd just be there waiting. They'd probably be next door, talking to a neighbor or something like until their parents come home. And if you wasn't right, you could look for her. | 16:35 |
| Doris Dixon | Did this happen to you? | 17:00 |
| Percy Henry Williams | Oh yeah. Yeah, I had many a day. So when we were playing football at school, we couldn't practice football until we came home, did our homework first. And then we could go back to the practice field. And once the school was out about 2:30, 3:00, and they would let us go home at 2:30, round. And then we would get back to school, back to the campus about 4:30 or a quarter to 5:00. And we'd go rehearse and practice until dark. And see, we didn't have much time. But that's the way it had to be, and that's the way it was. So we did the best we could. We knew what we had to do. And that went just about for everybody. We had a show that we traveled to the naval base and to the old Kennedy's place out there and put on shows. | 17:10 |
| Doris Dixon | Douglass Swingster Theater? | 18:05 |
| Percy Henry Williams | Uh-huh, Douglass. We had a dance group and a ride and we had the— What they call that? Mister— I can't— The Minstrel Show. All that, we came. Until everybody practically graduated, Mr. Pyles was head of running that. And then we had to— It got more to updating and certain things like The Minstrel Show, we had to cut out. Different things. | 18:09 |
| Percy Henry Williams | We wanted to hear Joe Lewis fight, we had a radio. And before we had to practice our football stuff, by the time the fight got on— By the time we got home, the fight was over with. Because Joe Lewis been done knocked somebody out in the first round, all that stuff. And we all would be running to get home and listen to the fight on the radio. And a lot of them would go to the closest radio we could get to. And that was my house or— Who else house we stop at? It wasn't nobody between there had a radio. | 18:43 |
| Percy Henry Williams | Like I said, we were kind of elite people around the neighborhood. We had some of the first of everything. We used to box under Mr. Mack Fowl, in his job for bread. You know, the prize would be maybe some bread or some donuts or some cookies or something like that. And that's how we started boxing. He had a nice long yard and that's where we would box. And of course then Mr. Cash came on and he took it on from there. We'd follow him. | 19:25 |
| Percy Henry Williams | I boxed at Douglass and Manassas. And I think my career ended at Manassas because I met a fellow from Hamilton. Yes, it was Hamilton. And he beat the snot out of me. But first time, I beat the guy from Melrose, so that carried me to the quarter final. And I just though "Oh, Mr. Hayes was really—" When we was winning, he would have a assembly. And he'd have all us up there, and he'd talk about us and everything. And everybody would give us that good pep rally and all that stuff. | 20:06 |
| Percy Henry Williams | And then next night, I went up there and that boy be the haymaker. I couldn't get out the way of them for nothing. He wasn't boxing, he just— Just like a street fighter. You know, hey man. And I'm just trying to be— But anyway, that ended my career on that. So after I was in the 11th grade there, I came out and Douglass got their football team and I went back there because I made first string and everything. And I'm trying to get down to probably the most basic thing there. | 20:51 |
| Doris Dixon | Well let me ask you this. You said that you all were among the first to have things in Douglass? | 21:32 |
| Percy Henry Williams | Mm-hmm. | 21:39 |
| Doris Dixon | Do you remember people who were a little less fortunate out there? | 21:40 |
| Percy Henry Williams | Well, no, we didn't have any less fortunate. We didn't have any welfare and one couldn't talk about the other one because we were all in the same marriages. It just wasn't— It was some maybe didn't have as much as the other one, but if somebody found out they didn't, they would have it. That's all, they'd say— Somebody says, "Oh, you know Miss So-And-So ain't got no clothes for them boys." You take, like Mr. Buddy Johnson, some of them, they'd go up to the little dry goods store up in Hollywood there and tell Mr. Frank, one of them White men, they'd fit him up and give them the bill. | 21:40 |
| Percy Henry Williams | And that's the way we did all that. And all of them would get together and pay up and split that. So it wasn't many people out there that didn't have nothing. Even at Christmas time, we had Santa Clause. We had— Mr. Curry would send us stuff out there that people now don't even think about getting. We got wagons, tricycles, and all that kind of good stuff. The girls got dolls. All the girls got dolls. Yeah, skates, and didn't have nowhere to skate in. | 22:28 |
| Doris Dixon | Well it sounds like Douglass was also kind of a leading community. What were relationships like among some of the other communities? | 23:08 |
| Percy Henry Williams | It was no comparison. It just wasn't— All the communities— Anybody could tell you that I wish I was in Douglass, because we were together. And that's why they call us now the most unique community there is or was. But now, since they got in the later days, when all the elder people done faded out and moved somewhere else, it's not quite as together as it has been. But back then, we had businesses, stores, grocery stores, Hunter Cross Grocery Store. People like that, you could just go and say "I want some neck bone, Mr. Cross, I ain't got no money today." Come one, he'd give you a sack of neck bones to take home. When you got the money, you pay. If you didn't, he never would say one thing about "I need my money," or nothing like that. And most all the drug stores, all the grocery stores like that. | 23:21 |
| Percy Henry Williams | Doctor Walker had the [indistinct 00:24:21] following. When people got sick and they didn't have the money for medicine for it, he'd send them the medicine. Doctor Prader was the physician and he lived out there. And he would go make these house calls. And he'd stop up and these prescriptions up there every day. If you didn't have the money, it was all right. As long as you out there. And if you got it, everybody had that mind that "Well, I've got to pay this, I'm going to do that." And they did, and they survived on it. You know, everybody in there. | 24:17 |
| Percy Henry Williams | There was no conflict. They just wouldn't allow too many White people, the White people who come in there. The sheriff wouldn't come out there unless they were called. They came out there one time for harassing somebody and they laid down and one of them got killed. Guy laid down in the store, right there in front of the church, Mount Olive Church, and shot his shotgun and he run in the store and he shot it and he killed one guy and wounded another one. And he didn't get no time for it. They told me he aught not to have been out there. So it was hard to get a police out there, so we had to do our— The elders had to do their own policing. | 24:53 |
| Doris Dixon | How'd they do that? | 25:38 |
| Percy Henry Williams | Well it wasn't none policing to do. So they so called— Long as you didn't steal my car with it, not many of them got killed. Better believe it. When I was in Boy Scouts counseling, we were furthest back. All through the night, we could hear them back behind the Scout Camp. They was hollering and throw somebody in the river or something would happen back there, and we knew it because we could hear them whine. But we wouldn't go investigate or nothing. No, Lordy. | 25:39 |
| Doris Dixon | So the Boy Scout Camp was out behind, further east? | 26:11 |
| Percy Henry Williams | Well, no, it was further north. | 26:14 |
| Doris Dixon | Further north. | 26:17 |
| Percy Henry Williams | From Mount Olive Street. | 26:18 |
| Doris Dixon | From Mount Olive Street. | 26:18 |
| Percy Henry Williams | Yeah, but behind the school. All the way back down. And at that time, there was a lot of wooded area there, and then way on down back over the hill was the Boy Scout Camp. | 26:20 |
| Doris Dixon | And you could hear— You said by the river you could hear people, or? | 26:32 |
| Percy Henry Williams | Yeah. Yeah, back there. And of course White men had sex with Black women back there, especially in the day time. The Barrel Laundry man, he was one of the daytime, round the— He would have sex with the Black women back then. | 26:36 |
| Doris Dixon | Who were these women? | 26:56 |
| Percy Henry Williams | Just women in the community. You know. Had all kinds, he had some of everything. But they knew when to stay in line, when not to— And the church was full every Sunday. You didn't have to beg nobody to go to church. And they had quartets singing. And some churches didn't even have piano or anything. And they had drums in the church. | 27:00 |
| Doris Dixon | What church did you go to? Did you attend, too? | 27:38 |
| Percy Henry Williams | Yeah, my grandmother was attending. She always rode the bus down to First Lauderdale, First Baptist Lauderdale, which was over on Jefferson that time. Jefferson and Lauderdale. And she would go there because the Reverend Theo Fuller at that time was the minister and she loved him. So she went over there, but after he passed, then she went back to First Baptist Mount Olive. Over that time, Reverend— Aretha Franklin's daddy, Reverend Franklin was a minister over there. | 27:41 |
| Percy Henry Williams | And she just kept her membership there and of course I could go to any one of them that my friends wanted to go. Like the people across the street, they went to First Baptist Church. I always would go up there with them. Most any church. You could go to any church, Mount Morning Star. And most of my traveling to church was because I had a girlfriend. And I would go where my girlfriend was. But all my mother wanted to know was did I go to church. And if you didn't, somebody there going to tell her, because she going to ask them, you know? | 28:21 |
| Doris Dixon | Let me ask you this, because I know— Were there churches that you preferred to go to? Because you know how kids, they somehow— They'll like this church over this church because of the service, because of the music, or what have you. | 29:02 |
| Percy Henry Williams | All the churches was about on the same keel. Other than the Sanctified Church. You would get enjoyment out of that because they would have a guitar and a drum and stuff. And you would enjoy that a little bit, and see them dancing. And you'd enjoy that one, but all the rest of them— Or most of them was Baptist now, but two Methodist churches out there. And that was Grids Chapel and The Watkins Chapel. And those two churches was Methodist churches but they were just like the other church because everybody in there was practically friends and you just go by there. Some of them wouldn't be really shouting and hooting and hollering like. But then very few of them went to those churches. | 29:16 |
| Percy Henry Williams | So the other churches are— Saint Stevenson Church was across the railroad and they moved over there. And of course, most of their members come from a different area now. They don't have many Douglass people in there. But Saint Paul one of the oldest. And Church of God in Christ down there on Channel. Oh, and Peace Baptist. First Baptist of Mount Olive, First Baptist Cheshire. All those first churches, they really kept crowd and active. And of course they had morning and evening services, night services there. And nobody feared to walk, and even back there. Nobody feared. | 30:02 |
| Percy Henry Williams | Now when I went back to live with my mother, and that's when I went to Mount Baptist Church, and I was baptized there in 1942. A full Sunday in May. And I never moved my membership. I always stayed there because I went back. Even when I moved to Douglass, I would go back out there to church. Because for some reason or another, it appealed to me more— I don't know, just I guess because I had so many friends out there, I guess. And then of course, I was a lifeguard over there at the Dixon Home Pool. And I always would come from there and go to church and leave church and go to the swimming pool. | 30:50 |
| Percy Henry Williams | And LD Eule and I was good friends and he lived right adjacent to the pool. And that's where I would change clothes at. Then I would catch the bus and go back to Douglass. And I went through there, Reverend Tate and then Reverend Williamson. But then I didn't go too much because I was courting during the time of Reverend Tate, I was courting here with my wife. And I would go every now and then because it was a man named Mr. Peoples and a man named Mr. Petty. They lived down in Douglass and they was going to our church, which was on 821 Lane. So they would come by and see if I wanted to go. | 31:45 |
| Percy Henry Williams | But most of the time, like any other youngster, I was far out. I had been out Saturday night, didn't have no mind of getting up on Sunday morning going to church. But every now and then, I would get up and I would go down, you know, continue my membership. But even though I went to Saint Paul, I never did move my membership at all. | 32:34 |
| Percy Henry Williams | And the difference in the school, the schools now don't teach, I guess it's because of their curriculum or whatever. But regardless of whatever our curriculum was back in Douglass, people would tell us, would give us etiquettes. Would tell us about who the school was, the Black leaders in the school. Like, they always named Booker T. Washington, George Washington Carver, Frederick Douglass, Mary McLeod Bethune, and all those people. They would constantly keep those people in our mind. | 33:02 |
| Percy Henry Williams | And then not only that, they would, when we went to the cafeteria for lunch, they would correct our eating habits. Tell us how to hold a spoon or knife, all that kind of— They did that extra, they just didn't give you some food and turn you loose or nothing like that. And most of us had to carry lunches anyway. But those who did have the 15 or 20 cent to pay for the plate lunch, that's what we— You know, we'd go to the cafeteria. | 33:47 |
| Percy Henry Williams | I know that I feel that nowadays, the teachers are not putting all they can or what they should do, into the school to help Black people. But then instead, they're just doing things just to get by, seemingly. They won't stay there after school to help nobody. Students that's slow, they might not be able to keep up with some of the faster ones, you know? And so they say "Well, you just a dummy." But now back then, some of the dumbest of dumb ones caught up. And they stayed on keel. | 34:22 |
| Percy Henry Williams | We had to get our books from Tech and Central, the ones they'd thrown away. That's how we got our book. And I can remember right now getting a history book from Central. And I got a mathematic book from Tech. But it really didn't make no difference. Because Mr. Sharpe told us "Don't worry about your books." Because some of us said "Oh, this book tore." We thought we was getting new books, you know? And he said "Don't worry about it, it's what's in the book that's what you want. Don't worry about the back on it." Said, "We not charging you for anything, okay? Just do your best. Take what you got and do your best with it." And that's what we did, and that's what the teachers did. | 35:02 |
| Percy Henry Williams | And of course, Miss Topton was one of the real, real bright teachers, she could pass for White. And she would go to all these White functions. Americo and stuff. She would come back and tell us about how in Georgia, a certain move or a certain player or a certain incident, and that lifted up our eloquence as to the way White people were. And we could appreciate that. It's just so many things that they did, it's impossible now to even think of. But sometime I always thought that we might be able, some day, to go back. Not go back to those days, but go back to some of those things. Like, I never went to jail. Matter of fact, we didn't have but one person out of Douglass, one teenager out of Douglass, to go to juvenile court. And he was just a thief from his heart. His daddy was a thief. Even then, we still took him in and everything. So now he's big man up in Chicago now. | 35:50 |
| Percy Henry Williams | But they just instilled in us to stay out of jail, to stay in your place, do the things that you had to do. And that you would make it. And said don't never grumble. Ain't no need of grumbling, as long as you know what the situation is. And that's the way I've prepared my life. Because Shape was like a father to me because after my grand daddy died, there was nothing else, I had to depend on him. Of course there was Reverend Williams, Mr. Tides, Mr. Tig, oh there was a lot of them that kind of focused my life. And they was— Oh, I don't want to forget Mr. Beecher. Mr. Beecher, boy, he was one of the best. Well, he and his brother. They found out and kept me in the Boy Scouts. | 36:57 |
| Percy Henry Williams | And I figured at that time, the Boy Scouts was 100 per cent, you got a lot to learn. It learned you a lot about the outdoors, how to survive, stuff like that. Nowadays, they go in the pizza house and eat pizzas and stuff. But then, we would learn how to make an outdoor fire without matches. See, and we'd learn all these type of things. It's just pathetic to try to compare back then with now because it done got so far. I can understand the media has been responsible for a lot of the television thing, but a kid has to focus his self on where he wants to go and you've got to give him a direction. | 38:01 |
| Percy Henry Williams | And that's what I did to my kids. And I always try to give them a positive direction in which to go. And of course, I've had success with them. My oldest son, he's the vice president of communication out there at MCI now. And I had a son that died back in 1990, he had a PhD from Michigan University, where he was. And he taught at Kinder King in Chicago. He taught there for about 17 years. And my number three son, he lived in Philadelphia and he had his own business as a car detailer and that's what he did on his own. You know, he could take an old car and make it look like new, in other words. So he's back in Memphis now and he's doing the same work he was doing over there. | 38:55 |
| Percy Henry Williams | And then my baby son, this boy's daddy, he's in the Navy, he's been in that Navy now about 15 years. And he is one of the chief mechanics, he's a chief petty officer. And a jet plane or helicopter cannot take off unless he has checked it. If his signature ain't on it, that means majors or colonels, whoever can't enter that vehicle and move it. | 39:55 |
| Percy Henry Williams | So I'm quite proud of that achievement. Because I give them a focus and they all belongs to churches. They all was raised up in the church, that's one thing. I always kept them in the church, I always carried them to church. That's same as I do with my grandson. Sunday morning, we going to church. I don't make him partake in all the activities. Now, that is left up to him. But far as going to church, he going to church. | 40:26 |
| Percy Henry Williams | All of them, I tell you. Me and my family, we shall serve the Lord. And I believe that, that's what we going to do. And my wife, she's a hard-working church member. She in the choir and on the usher bowl. Of course, I'm a deacon. I've been deacon for quite some time, now. Lord knows, since about '60, '65 I believe it was when I first made deacon. That ain't nothing to boost up because you really not supposed to stay there that long but somebody's got to carry on. And some of the older ones have died out and I've patterned my life behind them. | 40:56 |
| Percy Henry Williams | I'm just thankful. All I got his, I owe it all to God. Nothing I could do without him. I know he brought me a long way because I used to be a dice handler. I used to work over in Tipton County from eight o'clock in the evening to daybreak in the morning. And I cheated a lot of people. I can't take that back, I was just— At that time, that was my lifestyle. And I made money, I spent money. I had a dog track man I could— One year, I could pick anybody, winner, at the dog track and I could win anywhere from seven races out of 10 any day that I go. And the following year, I couldn't win a pen— I couldn't win a dime. Couldn't even borrow nothing. People I loaned money and gave money to, I couldn't get no response from them. | 41:37 |
| Percy Henry Williams | So I was down on that. I even would shoot dice over in West Memphis, there on 7th Street. And couldn't win over there. Couldn't even— Well they did feed me. I always liked that hot fish they had over there. They did feed me. So I had to sit over there one morning until finally I saw somebody coming to Memphis. I hopped a ride with him and came home. So I told my wife, I said "Well," I said, "I've lost everything. I don't have a thing, I owe everybody, I done got all my money out the credit union. I just don't have anything new. So if you want a divorce, I won't contest it." Say, "You talk like crazy, nigga." You know, she went on, said, "I work, I got some money, we got enough to get by this week." | 42:49 |
| Percy Henry Williams | I'd get some— If I get up Monday morning, I can get some money, you know? So that time, I swear. That was back in '58, and I haven't been to the dog track since because I made her that vow that I wouldn't go back and gamble any way now. I don't even bet on football games now. So when you come up that way, put all the children through school and through college. | 43:46 |
| Percy Henry Williams | Basically that's about as much as I can tell. Other than, I was an ambassador for Memphis Trucking Line, you might say. At least they told me I was. I used to drive for Cutter Haye Packing Company. And I used to go from here all the way over. City roots from here on back to New Orleans. And they told me I wanted a bed because they didn't have any hotels for Negroes or none of that. We stayed in a hotel, it had to be a transit hotel. And Lord knows what you could hear all through the night and you had to get up the next day and drive. They didn't want me to sleep in the truck because they didn't want no harm to come to me there, so I would lock the truck up. But I had to go somewhere. So I made the best doing what I could. | 44:11 |
| Percy Henry Williams | On down in Greensboro, Vicksburg, just wasn't any place to stay. And when they built that Holiday Inn on 51 and going to Jackson, Mississippi, oh I just knew I had a place then. But I couldn't— They wouldn't even let me out the truck. When I came by, they saw I was Black, "Keep going, Brother." And I was in a county, I think it was Jones, Yalobusha County down in Mississippi one evening, I was going through there, and I was running late. And I evidently forgot to pull up my brake, my air brakes on my truck, and they start smoking real bad and another truck, a man, he said, "Hey your brakes are on fire. Your truck is on fire." I said, "Oh my God." | 45:15 |
| Percy Henry Williams | So I went over the stop and I jumped out and got my thing and I was out there throwing dirt on it, spraying the stuff on it, you know? So here comes another truck by a car and said, "You all right?" I said, "Yeah." He said to me, "Hey, man," He said, "You Black." "Yeah, I know." Like- | 46:13 |
| Percy Henry Williams | Went to the fairgrounds, went to the fair. And they would [indistinct 00:00:05]. We were fighting. Sometimes we'd run. I remember one time, we was over there and we had 11 of us got into a [indistinct 00:00:17] at one time. 11 people. And then some of them just kept on running. Yeah. But it was a whole bunch of them [indistinct 00:00:29] that time. But we went back over there the next day, and we cleaned them out. We went over there in truckloads. We used to play ball over there. | 0:00 |
| Doris Dixon | At the fairgrounds? | 0:38 |
| Percy Henry Williams | No. At [indistinct 00:00:43] just adjacent to the pool there. Yeah. We played ball all up out there in the — Oh, what's the thing? Other side of Walker home. [indistinct 00:01:00]. Yeah. We played out there and [indistinct 00:01:04] whiskey and stuff like that. We played all up and down. We went to the state champion, national. [indistinct 00:01:14] came that time. I forget to tell you Douglas's name. Douglas Greyhound [indistinct 00:01:31] changed it to Douglas Devils. And then that's what we remained, the Devils. Even though we got some people now, after all these years, some of the younger people we didn't know from the time that Douglas named after Frederick Douglas. So I guess you saw in the paper— | 0:46 |
| Doris Dixon | Actually, I did see that. | 1:54 |
| Percy Henry Williams | They were trying to name the school Frederick Douglas. And of course, all those people that know Frederick Douglas was asking them why when it's already named after Frederick Douglas. What good did Frederick do by putting it in front of Douglas? It would only add — So we talked to the principal there, and she said, "Ooh, that would be a worst thing." She said, "Well, I got all my things for the year. T-shirts and everything has just got Douglas Elementary on it." So now they have to change and put Frederick Douglas if it was changed. So she said rather stay like it was. A lot of us older people how know that was Frederick Douglas, we got together and we were going to protest it. And of course, we got it blocked at the school board. We called some members and told them that Douglas was already named after Frederick Douglas. | 1:55 |
| Percy Henry Williams | Matter of fact, the community was named after Frederick Douglas, and that's why it was the Douglas community. But we wasn't going to change the name of the Douglas community to Frederick Douglas Community. So— | 2:58 |
| Doris Dixon | Was this before the high school closed? | 3:08 |
| Percy Henry Williams | No, this was— | 3:11 |
| Doris Dixon | More recently? | 3:12 |
| Percy Henry Williams | Yeah. Yeah. Matter of fact, last two or three weeks, four weeks. Yeah. | 3:13 |
| Doris Dixon | Oh, really? | 3:19 |
| Percy Henry Williams | Yeah. Ms. Glen Johns, she had the Juneteenth and she had [indistinct 00:03:36] over there last year. And they decided to do this. And so she put the resolution in before the board, but a lot of us didn't even know about it. This was done by just a few hands, and we had to hone in and try to tell them that Douglas was already Douglas School. Of course, some of them contend they didn't know who the school was named after. And I said, "I just can't believe that." I said, "All your parents went to Douglas," and I said, "I know somewhere, as much as Mr. [indistinct 00:04:08] instilled in us about Frederick Douglas — because that was really his man. They should have known. | 3:23 |
| Percy Henry Williams | And of course, with the change in time, we got new principals and new schoolteachers. They cared less about Douglas Community. They didn't come out in the community and do nothing. What you did at school was fine. If you didn't ask no questions, you was all right. They didn't come out to see if you were doing or talk to your parents about you or anything. Not until Mr. Wesley came. And of course, he wasn't there but a few years because in '81, the school closed. He was brought in to get things going back when it closed. And the only reason the school closed is we had about 1200 students at that time at Douglas School, and they were all — This busing thing came through, and they were going to send 600 students for Whites and 600 Blacks out. And that would keep the racial up and that would keep the school. But the Whites didn't come in. | 4:18 |
| Percy Henry Williams | So that left nothing but the Blacks. So after that graduation class, it feel down about 300. I think it's 375 was the only thing left. So with all that planned there, they couldn't operate that school with 375 people. So [indistinct 00:05:43] had to close. They recommended that they close. And that's what they did because we didn't get — They were White that came out of — They started putting up these Christian schools in these churches, Skyview and all those things. So therefore, didn't no Whites come, so then the Black — And they didn't change the Blacks to come back because the Blacks had built up the White school. So they didn't want to take them and send them back, so they decided just to close the school down. | 5:24 |
| Percy Henry Williams | And Douglas, the businesses was going out. Really, wasn't going out then, but after they closed the school, then the community started deteriorating. Wasn't no business. The stores had dropped off. I don't think they got but two stores out there, and there's one Asian store. And then Black store that's out there, they're either doing something illegal or the prices so high, you'd rather go up in Hollywood to Metro Market and get something better. | 6:13 |
| Doris Dixon | When you were coming up, it was affordable — | 6:55 |
| Percy Henry Williams | Oh, yeah, yeah. Yes, Lord. Yeah. Buddy Johnson's store, and he had almost a supermarket. And had McGary's just a block away. And then they had Tolson's Grocery Store was about three blocks down. And John [indistinct 00:07:21] store was on the corner. [indistinct 00:07:21], and next to it was an Asian grocery. And then on [indistinct 00:07:34] store, and then on up about three blocks was Crosby's Grocery. And two houses down was [indistinct 00:07:42] Grocery. But all of them was doing a miraculous [indistinct 00:07:46] because if you got mad with one of them, you go to another one. And you could go to most any of them and say, "Look, I ain't got no money, but I need such and such thing." You ain't said nothing but a word. | 6:59 |
| Percy Henry Williams | And if you kept on, then some of them probably wouldn't let you have anything if you didn't pay them back in a certain time. Of course, you take Crosby's Grocery, he was the closest to the school. Most of the school children would eat their lunches up there. He gave them a sandwich. They wouldn't have maybe a dime, 15 cents, and you'd get a big, fat ham and cheese out there with everything on it. They'd just eat and probably get a drink with it. And some of them would mix it all up together, and he'd just tell them, "Put what you got up on the counter." And he survived, I guess, because of his goodness. And I thought that was very — All of them did that. Of course, Buddy Johnson Store, being the biggest store out there, him and his brother, Ed, if you didn't have anything, they kept an account for you. An open account. | 8:07 |
| Percy Henry Williams | My mother and father had an account with Mr. Tomerson's grocery store. And he had one with John Lee Grocery Store. And of course, if one didn't have what the other ones had, you could go out and get it. I could go and get a certain amount, but I couldn't go to [indistinct 00:09:35] and stuff like that. When I could go down there and get me a 10 or 15 cents of bologna, and ooh, that was more than enough. That was a half stick almost. And I could get me some cookies, which was two for a penny. Little [indistinct 00:09:52] cookies, and I could get a dime or nickel's worth of them. And crackers already come it. They come with your bologna and cheese. Everybody was able to survive. That's all I can say. And just about everybody had a garden. | 9:13 |
| Percy Henry Williams | We had tomatoes, peas, okra, stuff like that. And I made one across that had corn and squash and stuff like that in their garden. Maybe next up, they have something different. Turnip greens and cabbage and stuff. Even lettuce, they grow. That green lettuce. So any time you wanted anything, you just go. Call. "Hey, Mr. So and So, you got any corn up there you can let us have?" "Yeah. Come on up here and get what you want." They'll come out here. "You got any tomatoes?" "Yeah, come on out here. I got some. Get what you want." All the way through Douglas, that's the way it was. And— | 10:10 |
| Doris Dixon | There wasn't nobody who would say, "You can't"? | 10:55 |
| Percy Henry Williams | Nobody. Nobody. Even the thieves wouldn't steal because you could get what you want. We had some to steal the chickens, but they was stealing chickens to sell them or give them to somebody else. That's all they were doing. So they never went to jail for that. Nobody would call the police on them. They knew who it was. People like [indistinct 00:11:24]. He was one-legged, and he could run. Boy, he could run fast as anybody with two legs. He had a peg leg. Now he would steal chickens. I forget this other guy. [indistinct 00:11:38] go steal. But they steal to give to somebody else. Somebody else probably didn't have nothing. They would steal a chicken for them. So that's the way it was. Nobody went hungry. That's all you could do. | 10:58 |
| Percy Henry Williams | [indistinct 00:11:58] go to the school garden back there and then get all the — They got sweet potatoes or whatever back there. And just get them. Don't nobody question you about it. Nobody never went really hungry or desiring things. You buy your clothes and things. They had a clothing store up there in Hollywood. [indistinct 00:12:29] And shoe store was half. [indistinct 00:12:33] store was [indistinct 00:12:35]. Of course, they had a hole in a knot up there. You could go up there and get your big groceries. People would buy 50 pounds of sugar or 50 pounds of flour, something like that. That would last for a long time. 50 pounds of meal. We'd get the yellow meal or the White meal. | 11:55 |
| Percy Henry Williams | That's what you go up to the big store to get that. And then the rest of it — You run out of something and daytime if you run up to the grocery store — Run to the store, and you could get in and fill in. Get you spaghetti, tomato sauce, something like that. That was about the closest thing to family or community because everybody there was the same. Even the schoolteachers lived in the community. They were all the same. | 12:55 |
| Doris Dixon | What do you mean they were all the same? | 13:33 |
| Percy Henry Williams | Well, they didn't consider themselves as being bigger than you or anything like that like they do now, think, "I've got a Ferrari and you got a Honda. You ain't what's happening." But no, no. They would help people better than trying to talk about them or belittle them or anything. And they went to the churches out there just like anybody else. They really didn't have any different from me that I could see. Everybody was on the same keel. Of course, you could those that did a little better than others because of the house. | 13:36 |
| Percy Henry Williams | Some of the houses people went in had china and all this stuff and tablecloths on the table. One thing about it, you had to be there to eat. At breakfast time, everybody had to be at the table to eat. At dinner time, at lunch time, it might be a difference. But at lunch time and evening, 5:00 — Between 5:00 and 6:00, whatever time they set the time they going to eat lunch, you had to be at lunch. You had to be at dinner. And you would sit down. They had a napkin, napkin holder, and stuff. You had to sit down there and eat. | 14:24 |
| Percy Henry Williams | Now a lot of times, my mama would have the preacher over there. And of course, we would kill three or four chickens. And of course, he would bring his family. He got a wife and three children, and Lord knows it was like they would come over and eat them chickens and eat that food up. Because all [indistinct 00:15:21] was gone. And of course, they cooked all parts of the chicken then. And the only thing that was left for me and my brother and my baby sister was the chicken feet. But they were good even because they were crisp. I ain't talking about the thigh. I'm talking about the feet, the leg parts from there to their toes. That's what we would eat. But they would leave us enough spaghetti and potato salad and dressing that it would taste all right. So we would really hate to see the preacher come to dinner. | 15:01 |
| Percy Henry Williams | But they had all this edible stuff, these things like [indistinct 00:16:04] and all this priceless stuff in place and things. They wouldn't pull them out until somebody come for company. The rest of the time, you ate out of the little pans or had them little pie pans. And that's what we ate out of because we would drop so many plates. We would break up so many plates. That's before they got this [indistinct 00:16:26] and stuff. So they just gave us this little pie pan. We ate out of them. When we got threw, throw them on over there somewhere. Had to wash them. That's what I had to do. I had to wash dishes. I had to wash dishes. Had to scrub pots. That's was one of my chores. I had to get the kindling in, cut the kindling. I had to— | 15:59 |
| Doris Dixon | You had a wood stove? | 16:56 |
| Percy Henry Williams | Yeah. We had a big ol' cooking stove. Had six eyes on it. In the wintertime, you had to lay that fire. What they called laying was [indistinct 00:17:15] put some kindling on it and stuff like that when you get up about 4:00 in the morning and light it up. Every day, they get up and fix them biscuits and maybe have some side meat or some rice or molasses. But on Sunday night, for breakfast, you'd have chicken, some liver, kill a hog or something like a [indistinct 00:17:42]. Stuff like that, you would have. But you're going to have biscuits. Light bread was very hard. What they call light. I don't know why they call it light bread, but that's what we always taught to call a loaf of bread was light bread. As far as wheat bread, that wasn't even in our vocabulary. Yeah. But that light bread, we didn't even fix lunches with that. | 16:57 |
| Doris Dixon | So what did you have for lunch? | 18:15 |
| Percy Henry Williams | For lunch when we were going to school, we would take some biscuits and put a piece of that side meat in a biscuits, a piece of ham in the biscuits and maybe a — They had these Hostess cupcakes. Put some of them in or some cookies and an apple, get the hell on out of there. You go back home, you like to find a piece already been [indistinct 00:18:50]. You ran the water of of them, rinse them off again, put them back in another pot and put the water. And they'd be ready about suppertime. My mama would come in sometimes. She's cook some pork chops or something like that with them. Get some corn, fry that corn. That was delicious. | 18:20 |
| Doris Dixon | Do you remember when Mrs. Roosevelt came? | 19:23 |
| Percy Henry Williams | Yeah. Yeah. Mrs. Roosevelt was there. Matter of fact, I was — [indistinct 00:19:33] gave her the roses, and I was standing right over there because the Cub Scouts had on their uniform and things. And the Boy Scouts, we were standing over there about right adjacent to her. Sure did. | 19:25 |
| Doris Dixon | [indistinct 00:19:49]? | 19:43 |
| Percy Henry Williams | Yeah. Her name was [indistinct 00:19:50]. She was a little cute girl at that time. Yeah. | 19:48 |
| Doris Dixon | She was the one chosen to give flowers? | 19:57 |
| Percy Henry Williams | Yeah. Yeah. I was the first [indistinct 00:20:05]. Me and Anna Knox, we were married. They had put on all them kind of things. [indistinct 00:20:25] And I was playing Jesus Christ at an Easter program, and I had long curly hair. Had just a big curl. And so my mother told me to go up to [indistinct 00:20:41]. He was like my uncle to me. He said, "Go over there to that [indistinct 00:20:46] cut your hair. Just shave it off now." So I went up there and said, "Mama said cut my hair." I said, "I'm going to be in a program at church tomorrow." That fool messed around and cut them curls real low now. Boy, my mama was so mad, she wouldn't even let me go back up there no more. Everybody was mad with [indistinct 00:21:13]. "Why'd you cut that boy's hair like that?" And there I was supposed to have long hair like Jesus. People were [indistinct 00:21:28]. They paid that stuff really high. | 19:59 |
| Percy Henry Williams | And I preached my first sermon. They had a church service. I forget the name of their play now. But we did that play down at St. Paul, and I was a preacher there. And as soon as we got through, it stormed. I mean, it thundered and lightninged like nobody's business. And I remember the pastor, Reverend [indistinct 00:22:00], when that lightning hit, bam, he shot out that door. He lived across the street, and we lived across in front of him. My wife lived over there across from St. Paul. | 21:29 |
| Percy Henry Williams | So everybody went to running, and so after that, nobody said anything about that anymore. Now everybody laughs at it because they say there was something funny when you preached. You brought down fire and brimstone. It was really fun, though. Another incident back in the old day before they got lights out there, when we would go to the school for a dance or something, we'd come on — If we went to play basketball and didn't get home until late, we'd always stick together. And we'd go by to see that everybody got home safe. | 22:13 |
| Percy Henry Williams | The biggest crowd would come down Brooklyn Street where the church was. And we'd come down the church, and lo and behold, the piano started playing. This was 12:00, 1:00 in the morning. Boy, it was getting hot, real warm. And everybody started running. My wife, she was living on the street, and I would generally stop there. We'd stop there and smooch a little bit. But I told her, "Baby, I have to go now." And we just kept on. Her brother kept on down to my house. He was running so fast. He was running all the way down to my house. Yeah. And then to bring it all back, the man across the street, he could tell some of the harshest lies about haunted houses, haints, and things. I live across the street. I'd be too scared to go home. His daughters would have to walk me home. And then my mama and them would have to walk them back because they'd be too scared to go back. Yeah. | 22:59 |
| Percy Henry Williams | Then [indistinct 00:24:14] wife, when she come here, said, "You have no business scaring them children like that." She said, "Well, they had to do something." And he could tell some ghost stories. And they used to have wakes in the house instead of the funeral, and man, they would take all the furniture out of the front room, sit it on the porch somewhere or back in the other room. At that house, you couldn't get me in that house. We had a funeral at — I'm trying to think what church that was now. I think it was at First Baptist Chelsea. Back in the embalming days — They didn't embalm you like you do now. They had a lot of wind on them. The churches wasn't a solid foundation like they are now. So this guy was just a preaching. Boom. And he had [indistinct 00:25:24] and they go, "Ahh!" So when he got through, this air bubble or whatever was in this corpse come up. And he said, "Ooh!" And Lord, do you see somebody running! | 24:13 |
| Percy Henry Williams | I mean, the church would be empty. You wouldn't have no more funerals that day. No, Lord. Until they finally found out what it was and they started doing something about it. I don't know what they did. I think they put cotton down in them or something. Boy, those used to be the days. Because they wasn't no lights. They had lamps around the church then, and if the wind was blowing, it would blow hot them lamps. Oh, boy. I remember when I was on the mourner's bench up there. Every mourner's bench, I went to. Matter of fact, all the young boys. | 25:46 |
| Doris Dixon | On the mourner's bench? | 26:27 |
| Percy Henry Williams | Uh-huh. That's where you get religion at. You had to go to the mourner's bench before you could live. | 26:27 |
| Doris Dixon | Even at that age? | 26:27 |
| Percy Henry Williams | Uh-huh. I guess I was about 9 or 10 years old. Everywhere they had revival, they would send us to it. "Get on down there to revival." We'd be sitting up there, all of us looking crazy and half sleepy. So one of the boys, Reverend [indistinct 00:26:59] son, John [indistinct 00:27:01], he was sitting next to me. Francis and [indistinct 00:27:05] was sitting next to me on that side. [indistinct 00:27:11] and he always fall on my shoulder. And he was snoring. And the folks be looking around at me like — So I keep [indistinct 00:27:20], and he leaned back over. I said, "Fran, give me that pin you got." She had a big old safety pin. I said, "Give me that pin you got there." She said, "Why? What you going to do?" I said, "I'm going to wake this man up off me." So sure enough, she gave me the pin. And she going to start laughing like that, and folks kept on looking at us. | 26:41 |
| Percy Henry Williams | So I waited until he got quiet. He would throw his head on back of me. I popped him with that pin. And he jumped up. "Ow!" And then all the mothers run, lay their hands on your head, and, "Thank you, Jesus! Thank you, Jesus!" And all of them, they just be going down. The music, they be singing, singing. And so they said, "Tell it, son. Tell it!" He said, "Somebody stuck me with a pin." And they looked dead at me and said, "All of y'all, get up and get on out of here." | 27:45 |
| Doris Dixon | They thought he had got in the spirit. | 28:15 |
| Percy Henry Williams | Yeah. Back in them days, they'd lay hands and you'd have to get up and tell. And he said, "Somebody stuck me with a pin." And they know wasn't nobody on that side but me. [indistinct 00:28:39] I got home, there was another whooping later. They would lay your whoopings up for you. | 28:22 |
| Doris Dixon | They would lay them up? | 28:46 |
| Percy Henry Williams | Yeah. | 28:47 |
| Doris Dixon | What do you mean? | 28:47 |
| Percy Henry Williams | "I'm going to whoop you. I'm going to get you for that. I'm going to get you for that." And then when you really did something bad, it's, "Oh, yeah. I owe you one for sticking that boy with that pin." [indistinct 00:29:04] "I owe you for that." You stop naming off if they don't know. You said, "No, mama. You said you wasn't going to whoop me for that." You just be praying. Yeah. But they'd tell you to go get your own switch. And you go out there and you try to find one that ain't going to hurt you. | 28:50 |
| Doris Dixon | The least one you can find. | 29:26 |
| Percy Henry Williams | And then she'd say, "Oh, I see." They had an old willow tree out there. An old willow switch. I mean, them things are like a whip. And she'd say, "All right, now. If I have to go out there and get a switch, it's going to be too bad." So I'd go out there and I'd come back with another little switch. And then they'd tell — She'd go out there, and she'd get her a switch. That switch would be double the stuff I brought in. And like everything happened, I would be the one to get caught at it. First thing they look for is me. Yeah. I taught me something. We had that type of discipline. And not only one person on the street could give me a whooping. Anybody that caught me anywhere in that neighborhood — If I was doing wrong or anything they thought about, they'd whoop me. And then they'd come down to my mother's house or either catch her coming from work and tell her, say, "I had to whoop Percy today. He got [indistinct 00:30:44]." | 29:34 |
| Percy Henry Williams | She'd say, "Oh, you did? What he do?" And they'd go on and tell. When I get home, I'm thinking — You know how you go in, "Hey, mama." She'd say, "Yeah, hey, mama. You been bad today." And she'd light in on, "Go get me a switch." And she said, "I ought to tell your dad." That's when I was fooling with the little girl. She said, "I ought to tell your dad." I said, "No, please don't do that. You go ahead and whoop me." That guy, he'd come in there and he's take his belt off. He had a razor strap, back what they shaved with. And he had a razor. "No, please don't tell him." But one day he got over, and they're always talking about, "I don't want to whoop you, son. I love you. And you this and you that, and you going to be — He said I was going to be a lawyer. "I know you going to be a lawyer because you lie a lot," and all this other stuff. "But I'm going to have to whoop you. And I know this is going to hurt you more than it hurts me because this and that and other." [indistinct 00:31:58] | 30:40 |
| Percy Henry Williams | He could hit that and I'd be sure enough screaming. Yeah. I'd be screaming so loud until my mama come in and say, "Ain't that enough now? You done gave him enough." Yeah. But it sure taught me how to respect authority. Taught this one to me. And through that day up until now, I never been arrested. I never been any way with the law, anyway. They used to catch us doing little pranks and things like that, but they'd never do anything about it. They just- | 31:54 |
| Doris Dixon | Did they ever tell you anything about your interactions with White people or how to act around people outside of the community? | 32:43 |
| Percy Henry Williams | They taught us how to respect everybody. That's what they did. Regardless for the color, you respect them. And that's why we had said, "No, sir," and, "Yes, ma'am." I don't care whether they was Black or White. That's what we had to do. Now we wasn't supposed to get in no argument with no White person at all. Just walk on off. That's what they taught. Just walk on off. But now if the young boys started, we were supposed to be whooping their butt. | 32:51 |
| Percy Henry Williams | We handle anything in our range. But any grown person, White or Black, "Yes, sir," and, "No, ma'am." I don't care whether it was an older person — We didn't say, "Yeah." We didn't say, "No." We didn't say, "Yes." It was, "Yes, ma'am," and, "No, ma'am." Or, "No, sir. Yes, sir." And I know nowadays, they don't teach them to say that. They teach them yes and no. And yet still, they would say, "Yeah," and, "Naw." I had a problem with this boy. Sometimes he'd get to talking with his [indistinct 00:33:56] and forget he's talking to us. | 33:22 |
| Percy Henry Williams | And I have to roll my eyes at him. I said, "You're using the right pronunciation." My son had the same thing, but I taught them. But they learned to say, "Yes, sir," and, "No, ma'am. "Yes, sir," and, "No, sir." And that's the way I always live, even in my work. I was supervisor. I didn't ever tell you about me being one of the first black probation officers. | 33:55 |
| Doris Dixon | Can I go use the phone real quick? | 34:32 |
| Percy Henry Williams | Yeah. And I was stating, in 1962, Governor Clemmons appointed me as the first probation officer for Brolin Probation officer. At that time, I was the second one because he had one appointed already to the board. But that made me the second probation officer. And I was probation officer for the state of Tennessee when I would counsel with prisoners and supervise them that come out of the institutions. And then in 1972, I was the first full-time criminal investigator for the public defender's office. And that's where I retired. They gave me 29 years and 8 months of law enforcement. There was a lot of experiences in that. That would take a whole day to tell you about it. It was interesting because I always felt like doing something for the downtrodden. That's why I liked that field better than going to the other side of the law. | 34:34 |
| Percy Henry Williams | But it was all in law enforcement, and I enjoyed a good life. I retired as the chief investigator, which I had seven people under me to work with. And we never had any trouble whatsoever. That's just about as much of that. Of course, you can see the plaque up there that I [indistinct 00:36:36] church work. And of course, I got a den full of them. So I'm not boasting. I'm not getting pats on the back. The things I have done, I did not tell you about because I do not like to pat myself on the back. The things I've done, good things that I've done to help people and what I've done for people, I don't brag about it. I would look for that reward when I get up to glory. So basically, that's about the side of it. Of course, unless you have something or somewhere I didn't come up loud enough that you might want to come back, I'll be here every day. I'm retired. | 36:02 |
Item Info
Related Items
The preservation of the Duke University Libraries Digital Collections and the Duke Digital Repository programs are supported in part by the Lowell and Eileen Aptman Digital Preservation Fund