Rebeca Cannon (primary interviewee) and James Cannon interview recording, 1994 July 01

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Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Very early, from the time I was three years old, I was removed to Birmingham. And so many years, there was what was known as a Jim Crow area in Birmingham. So many things we could not do because you looked at it, and you thought only White could do. Of course, I was so small at the time I didn't know any better. And so I thought this was, at that time, I thought this was the way we were supposed to live, until I became an adult. And I knew better at that time.	0:04
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Because a lot of things you did, to you, it didn't matter what happened because you were young, and you just did them. When now we weren't supposed to ride on the street cars. I was supposed to ride in the back. And you got off in the back.You didn't go up to the front. Only you come through that to pay your money, and then you get in the back. And then you get off at the back. Because there were fountains, as you know, for White only and for Black. Stores did not serve you even though you paid your money, as they did Whites. Because they started fighting for that after Montgomery.	0:53
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	So once they became aware that this is the way we should act, then they really started fighting. We gave money. We spent a lot of money, giving it to people who were out there fighting for the things that we thought we should have. We knew we should have. And of course, it has made it better. And of course, younger people don't know and don't quite understand. But they're out there, and they don't care which way they go. Just whatever they want to do, they do. And whatever comes later, well, they accept that.	1:49
Paul Ortiz	Mrs. Cannon, can you tell me a little bit about the neighborhood that you grew up in in Birmingham and where that was?	2:42
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	That was in North Birmingham. This is the area over there. And only Blacks were there. Few Whites. You never went to see—Young people never went to see who was in your neighborhood, other than the people around you. And of course, it's dilapidated now, that area is just about gone.	2:50
Paul Ortiz	What did your parents do?	3:24
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	My parents, my mother didn't work. My father worked for TCI, the Tennessee Coal, Iron, and Railroad Company. And of course, that was a good company. It was a steel company. And they had the best of food and clothes and whatnot because they did everything for the workers.	3:28
Paul Ortiz	Did he work in the factory?	3:56
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	No, he worked in the mines.	3:58
Paul Ortiz	Oh.	4:00
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Yeah. He sprayed water on the gas fumes in the mines so that the men could work, and they wouldn't be overcome by this gas.	4:00
Paul Ortiz	And did you grow up in a company-owned area?	4:27
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	No. I wanted to. He did. But I wanted to. The educational facilities and everything else were better. I wanted to go, but I couldn't go because I lived in Birmingham. And the company-owned area was far away from us. And I couldn't go to those schools and things like that. And I wanted to go. I did.	4:27
Paul Ortiz	What were the schools like that you went to?	4:49
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Public schools. I thought they—	4:54
James B. Cannon	They had class loads somewhere.	4:55
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Yeah, they had a lot of them in the class. But I thought they were fine. I didn't know any better because I liked school, and I wanted to go. But there were too many children in the class. 50.	4:57
James B. Cannon	50, wasn't it?	5:11
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	50, 75 children in a class.	5:14
Paul Ortiz	Do you remember the name of the grammar school that you went to?	5:17
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Hudson.	5:21
Paul Ortiz	Now, you moved from Dallas County at the age of three—	5:24
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Yes.	5:28
Paul Ortiz	With your parents.	5:28
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Yes.	5:28
Paul Ortiz	Did your family maintain a contact with your family, with your relatives, back in Dallas?	5:32
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	No. And I wish they had.	5:37
Paul Ortiz	So were you able to have recollections of your grandparents?	5:42
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	I do. I remember them, but I was too small to do anything about it.	5:46
Paul Ortiz	What were your earliest childhood members? Were they of your grandparents?	5:52
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Yes. My grandfather reared horses.	5:59
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	What kind of horses do we call them? Fine horses.	6:08
Paul Ortiz	Race horses.	6:13
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Race horses. They were stallions and everything.	6:14
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	And of course, the White folks used them mostly, and finally took them from him after he'd raised them and trained them. I just wish I had been big enough to do something about it.	6:18
Paul Ortiz	And now what year did your family move from Dallas County?	6:39
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Ooh, what year?	6:44
James B. Cannon	How about how old were you?	6:47
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	I was three years old then, and I am 82. I'm 82.	6:49
James B. Cannon	81.	6:53
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	I'm 81? Okay. I'm 81. So how many years was that? Three from 11 is—	6:55
James B. Cannon	78.	7:03
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Yeah. So how old? What? Many years ago? How many ago was that?	7:06
James B. Cannon	Hey now. Let me get these figures?	7:14
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Three from 80, 81 is 70 something.	7:14
James B. Cannon	70.	7:14
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	78. That's about 78 years ago.	7:15
James B. Cannon	78 from 94 is what?	7:15
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Oh, 78 from 94, huh?	7:15
Paul Ortiz	That would've been 1916.	7:15
James B. Cannon	16.	7:15
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Yeah, something like that.	7:15
Paul Ortiz	So you moved from there—	7:15
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	1916. It's been a long time, isn't it?	7:27
Paul Ortiz	Do you remember what the neighborhood was like in terms of its growing?	7:56
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	To Birmingham?	8:01
Paul Ortiz	Yeah.	8:06
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Where I was?	8:06
Paul Ortiz	Yeah.	8:07
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Well, kind of country-like. No pavement. As we remember, you had electricity, but you had a light in each roof. No we didn't. We had lamps.	8:09
Paul Ortiz	Lamps.	8:27
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Yeah. Oil lamps. And we finally got a light in each room. But you liked the neighborhood because you liked your neighbors. And they had little gardens, and they had chickens and plenty. They raised those themselves. So you didn't have to go to the store to buy too much because you raised what you wanted to, your vegetables.	8:28
Paul Ortiz	Did your family go to a church that was nearby?	9:07
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Yes. 22nd Avenue Baptist Church. That's the one I used to slide down the banister. I remember it.	9:09
Paul Ortiz	What kind of church was that?	9:24
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	It was a Baptist church, and I sang in the choir. And I liked it.	9:27
Paul Ortiz	So that was something that you were, just from an early age?	9:33
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Yes. Eight years old.	9:36
James B. Cannon	Well, most Blacks were Methodist or Baptist.	9:39
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Methodist or Baptist.	9:44
James B. Cannon	We didn't have all these others.	9:45
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Then.	9:46
James B. Cannon	Then finally, the St. five churches came.	9:48
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Came. The Catholic Church.	9:52
James B. Cannon	It was a Catholic.	9:53
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Yeah, they finally came.	9:53
Paul Ortiz	So in North Birmingham, in the early-20s, where would your family go if you needed, say, staples or groceries.	10:03
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	You had to have the money to buy them. We didn't have anything like they have today, where you could go and get anything free. You worked for what you got, and you paid for it.	10:18
James B. Cannon	All they paid was cash.	10:32
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Yeah, it was cash. You didn't have no credit.	10:36
Paul Ortiz	Where would your family shop at?	10:39
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	The neighborhood store. Or with my father, they had commissaries. And we got good food at the commissary.	10:43
Paul Ortiz	That was run by TCI?	10:55
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	TCI.	10:59
Paul Ortiz	Do you remember who owned the neighborhood—? You mentioned neighborhood store.	11:03
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Neighborhood store. What was that—	11:07
James B. Cannon	Mostly, it was—	11:08
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Yeah, wait a minute. What is the man's name out at where we went to buy the wine? Where went to buy the wine wholesale?	11:08
James B. Cannon	I'm not sure. Who now—	11:17
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Because I talked to him. One of the sons runs a store now out at East Birmingham, out in that area.	11:20
James B. Cannon	He's an Italian.	11:31
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	He's an Italian, yeah.	11:32
Paul Ortiz	Is that Bruno's?	11:32
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Not Bruno. There's one before him.	11:34
James B. Cannon	Bruno's is in this area.	11:36
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Yeah, it's down here. What is his name? I wish I could think of him.	11:38
Paul Ortiz	But you knew he was Italian.	11:42
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	He was an Italian. And most of them come—And you're not Italian, are you?	11:47
Paul Ortiz	No.	11:50
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	All right.	11:51
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Most of them go into Black neighborhoods and set up their stores. They don't do too much now. But they set up their stores, and they make good money off of us because we will go in there and buy. And there was a time they would run bills and things, and you could go and buy whatever you want to buy. We didn't do it, but a lot of people did. This is what made Bruno what Bruno is today.	11:54
James B. Cannon	But one thing you can sell out.	12:24
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	He has helped. They helped.	12:26
James B. Cannon	They grew up at Horace and things in the neighborhood.	12:28
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Yeah.	12:28
James B. Cannon	And they helped that neighborhood.	12:28
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Yeah. They sent them to school.	12:36
James B. Cannon	The Blacks and them, it was reciprocal.	12:38
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Yeah.	12:39
Paul Ortiz	Could you tell me a little bit about, perhaps this might be a bit later, maybe 20s, 30s, about Black businesses in this area?	12:41
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	What did they do? They had cleaning establishments, as far as businesses are concerned, and other things I can't tell you what they did.	12:53
James B. Cannon	They wasn't, none of them, a good thing.	13:09
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	But see, that's what we don't want. You don't want us to tell you about that.	13:11
Paul Ortiz	No, that would be fine.	13:16
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Well, see, they sold corn biscuit. That's what they did. And—	13:17
James B. Cannon	Mabry had some clothing stores.	13:23
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Yeah, I down on Fourth Avenue.	13:27
Paul Ortiz	What was the name of that store?	13:30
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Mabry.	13:31
James B. Cannon	Mabry. Charles Mabry.	13:31
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Charles Mabry. And	13:33
James B. Cannon	M-A-B-R-A.	13:33
James B. Cannon	Wait a minute. Now, I can get the thing downstairs and find that.	13:33
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	I think it was B-R-O-Y.	13:42
Paul Ortiz	B-R-Y.	13:43
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Mabry. They had a clothing store, and they loaned money.	13:46
James B. Cannon	Bob Savoy—	13:58
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Yeah, Bob Savoy had a, what? He had a cafe, and I don't know what else went on in there. But—(laughs)	13:59
Paul Ortiz	Oh, did you hear rumors about it?	14:05
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Oh, yeah.	14:05
James B. Cannon	Yeah.	14:05
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Had a good place.	14:05
James B. Cannon	And Leola's husband had a barber shop.	14:05
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Yeah, had barbershops downtown.	14:17
James B. Cannon	And a beauty parlor.	14:19
Paul Ortiz	Would you go into Bob's?	14:21
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Savoy?	14:23
Paul Ortiz	Yeah.	14:23
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Yeah. It was a nice place.	14:23
James B. Cannon	That was the finest place we had.	14:23
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Yeah. It run by—	14:40
Paul Ortiz	When did you start going there?	14:40
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Huh?	14:40
Paul Ortiz	When did you start going there?	14:40
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Yeah, I was grown.	14:40
Paul Ortiz	Okay, so maybe the 30s and 40s?	14:40
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Yeah.	14:53
Paul Ortiz	Okay.	14:53
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Yeah. We'd go in there.	14:53
James B. Cannon	Let's see. We went down in the parlor.	14:53
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	We had good times.	14:53
James B. Cannon	When I was teaching, I started middle-30s or something like that.	14:53
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Yeah, yeah. We did it.	14:53
James B. Cannon	Because we were trying to get the Torches. I happened to have a Torch, high school Torch. And we were trying to get an organization for Black Torches. And the only way we could get them now was one of five us on Catholic church at that time would give us, have dinners there for us and get a free lunch. So we Torches would go to the meetings so that we could get free.	14:56
Paul Ortiz	And they were at Bob's?	15:25
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Savoy. Yeah.	15:27
James B. Cannon	Yes. S-A-V-O-Y.	15:31
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Yeah. They was one of the nicest places we could go because we couldn't go into the White establishments.	15:33
James B. Cannon	Now, I had one a little worse than that, and then I'm going to let her have it. I was in the segregated Army in World War II, where all the officers, commissioned offices, were White. All of the enlisted men and the officers were, the [indistinct 00:16:08] and so forth were Black. But the Blacks had better NGCTs. That was the classification test. They made higher grades than the officers, if you get what I mean.	15:44
Paul Ortiz	Yeah.	16:32
James B. Cannon	But still, we had to take everything from them because they were the command.	16:33
Paul Ortiz	And what unit were you in?	16:39
James B. Cannon	I wasn't in a unit unfortunately. I was at Fort Bennett, and I shouldn't, this part I would burn. I was at Fort Bennett.We had a bus that could take us to Columbus, and Army bus. We had to pay back. And no one, nothing but Blacks rode that bus. We couldn't ride the bus the Whites rode. And even when we would come from Columbus, this very interesting, when we would come from Columbus to Birmingham on a three-day pass, a weekend pass, it was only five seats on the bus the Blacks could sit on in the back seat.	16:43
James B. Cannon	And after that, they would let us own first, and we would politely go to the backseat because we wanted to come back. We wanted to go back to the Army, come back home again. And the Whites, then, would have all the rest of the bus, empty seats and everything else up there. But we could only sit on the—The streetcars and things that they bring in Birmingham were the same way. We pay our money up to the front, and we go around the back door.	17:37
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	It was awful. It was awful.	18:09
James B. Cannon	It's things like that burn me. So I don't sit around and talk—	18:11
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	It was awful.	18:15
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Children now in school would read in the books about these things that actually happened. Because I was librarian. And they would come to me and ask me if this really happened. I said, "Yes, darling. It happened because I was in it." And I was.	18:15
Paul Ortiz	What were some of the first experiences that you had with Jim Crow?	18:38
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	After I was coming up?	18:47
Paul Ortiz	Sure.	18:50
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	What did I first—I didn't—	18:53
James B. Cannon	Let me put it this way—	18:56
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	—I didn't go where they were, where that group was. So I didn't encounter that the whole while I was in school, until I became an adult and went down University of Alabama.	18:58
James B. Cannon	Now see, here's what I want to say about that. At that time, it was two kinds of Blacks, the crazy nigger and the good nigger.	19:21
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Oh!	19:35
James B. Cannon	And if we did not follow the pattern of which they had established, we was a crazy nigger. And the others—	19:36
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Followed it.	19:48
James B. Cannon	Were the good niggers.	19:49
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Because they followed whatever they—	19:50
James B. Cannon	And they finally got the name of Uncle Thomas or Uncle Tom. Because there was a story that was written around that time about how good Uncle Tom was. And the Whites called him Uncle Tom.	19:52
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Of course.	20:08
James B. Cannon	And from that, grew out of the nickname for the good niggers as Uncle Tom. And I'm through after this. I said I was going to let her do this because I get all candid, and I can't get out it. I happened to have taught at an integrated school when they first integrated. I had the experience of officiating the first integrated—	20:10
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	That's true.	20:22
James B. Cannon	—predominantly Black basketball team against the predominantly White basketball team.	20:43
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	And you know what? They didn't want that team to win.	20:52
James B. Cannon	And I had the experience of officiating the first—	20:53
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Sure did.	20:57
James B. Cannon	—predominant Black football team against the—	20:58
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	White.	21:03
James B. Cannon	—White football team.	21:04
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	And I was there.	21:05
Paul Ortiz	You were there?	21:06
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Oh yes. Sure was. I really was. I thought it was really nice.	21:13
Paul Ortiz	Now, Mrs. Cannon, in the beginning when we were talking, you were running down just some of the local history in this area. But there was a nickname for this area.	21:15
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Bomber's Hill.	21:30
James B. Cannon	Bomber's	21:30
Paul Ortiz	Bomber's Hill. Can you tell me a little bit, actually, could you tell me as much as you know about that—	21:31
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	About Bomber's Hill.	21:36
Paul Ortiz	—experience.	21:36
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	It—	21:39
James B. Cannon	Me reacting—	21:42
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	—it got the name Bomber's Hill because Blacks were moving in this area, across Center street.	21:43
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	See, before now, Blacks lived on the other side of Center Street, and Whites owned all of the property this side of Center Street. And we had, Bull Connor was the, what was he, babe? Mayor.	21:56
James B. Cannon	He was the mayor.	22:18
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	He was the mayor of Birmingham.	22:18
James B. Cannon	No, he was commissioner, I believe, or something. Anyway, he was the head.	22:19
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Down in Birmingham.	22:24
James B. Cannon	He ran Birmingham.	22:28
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	And of course, he's really, because of the expressway coming through this way. Because Blacks started moving on the other side, on this side, buying property and moving on this side of—	22:29
James B. Cannon	Center Street.	22:43
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	—Center Street.	22:43
James B. Cannon	Center Street, which way did you come?	22:45
Paul Ortiz	I came—Well, first I came from the Civil Rights Institute. From downtown.	22:49
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Yeah. That's back this way.	22:54
Paul Ortiz	Okay. And then I crossed Center Street.	22:56
James B. Cannon	Center Street. That's the one. That was—	22:59
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Divided.	23:03
James B. Cannon	That was the division line, Center Street.	23:03
Paul Ortiz	Center street was—	23:03
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	The division line, Blacks and White.	23:03
James B. Cannon	And old Center Street, where you turn that church. Did you turn at the church up outside? At that church, on your right hand side, it was all right to live.	23:08
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Yeah.	23:18
James B. Cannon	But not on the side where that church. And Lawyer Shores lives in that house on your right hand side.	23:19
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	When you come up to—	23:28
James B. Cannon	He is the lawyer who fought the Autherine Lucy case on the University of Alabama.	23:42
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Right.	23:43
James B. Cannon	I believe that was the first Blacks that—Well, he was a lawyer.	23:43
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	He's my church member.	23:43
James B. Cannon	And his house was bombed about three, four times.	23:46
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	It was.	23:49
James B. Cannon	And that was part of where—Not only was his house bombed, any house that moved over on this side—	23:51
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	This side of Center Street.	23:57
James B. Cannon	Center Street where you are now.	23:59
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Yeah. They used to come down this street when we were first in this house.	24:02
James B. Cannon	I can tell you when that was, and I ain't have no problem—	24:09
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	When we were right in this house.	24:10
James B. Cannon	This is 65 that you're talking about now.	24:15
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Right.	24:16
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	This when we were first in this house, everybody had shotgun at the door because they used to run through and break the windows. Little young Whites would do that.	24:16
Paul Ortiz	And you had a shotgun in this house?	24:28
James B. Cannon	No. No.	24:28
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Yeah. Not now.	24:28
Paul Ortiz	But you did?	24:28
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Did.	24:28
Paul Ortiz	Okay.	24:28
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Yeah, behind the door.	24:28
James B. Cannon	Not only that, but just why I can tell you it was 65, I just a 65 Buick Riviera.	24:28
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	And he belong solely.	24:28
James B. Cannon	That would do 140 miles a hour, I believe it was, on the speedometer. I don't know whether that ever did that. But it was the lookout car for us at Center Street and Tenth Court.	24:29
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Right.	25:08
James B. Cannon	Where when they would come through bombing—	25:09
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	It was awful, it was awful.	25:10
James B. Cannon	—come through this area. We had walked the talk for some things at work. And my car was, I believe, probably 65 Buick.	25:18
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Yeah. He just sold it a few months ago.	25:28
Paul Ortiz	Oh.	25:29
Paul Ortiz	How would you, you talked you had a lookout car. You had walkie-talkies. You had to arm yourself to protect yourself.	25:30
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Yes. Sure.	25:39
Paul Ortiz	Were you able to stop some of this violence against you?	25:43
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Listen, some men who lived in this area, before even they could lived in this area, would catch them when they did something down in here. And follow them. And the fellow who lives up the street, Jesse Lewis and few others, caught a fellow, some fellas up the street. And of course, they was fixing to do them in. And they told them, "No,' said, "don't do it." Said, "Call the police." And they did. They got the police, and that's what stopped them from coming down in here.	25:47
Paul Ortiz	But they caught them?	26:23
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	They caught them.	26:24
James B. Cannon	Well, you see, what actually, what happened, when they bombed Shores house, back to those two type of niggers that we had now, when they burned that house, the crazy niggers showed up. And they had, the shirts were worn on the outside. Black shirts where the knot tied and tell you about it. And in there, they carried that switch blade knife and bricks. And anytime that they would hear a bombing or something, they would show up. And it was so bad that if you drove through the Black area, it was nigger—it was Colored area then. If you drove through the Colored area, you had to turn your dome lights on.	26:25
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Yeah. So they could see you.	27:19
James B. Cannon	And don't be a light-skinned Negro because you would be in trouble too. (laughing) I had one who you couldn't hardly tell him, his complexion from a White.	27:24
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Get you foot off the top of the thing.	27:28
James B. Cannon	That was Jerry. And—	27:40
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Talking about, "Don't y'all know me?"	27:42
James B. Cannon	Jerry liked to have got killed riding with some of us. We had to tell them that he was Black.	27:44
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Because you didn't know him from—	27:52
James B. Cannon	But see, they didn't know him.	27:53
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Things happened.	27:53
James B. Cannon	It happened many times. And most of it, I just can't—	27:53
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Yeah.	27:53
Paul Ortiz	Now this particular struggle with Black families trying to purchase homes in this area, again in the 40s.	28:02
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Oh yeah.	28:09
James B. Cannon	It was the north here.	28:09
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	It was before then. Yeah.	28:09
James B. Cannon	You bought this area over here.	28:09
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Couldn't do nothing in it. If you bought it, you were afraid of build anything in it because—	28:16
James B. Cannon	Because you didn't know what was going to happen.	28:26
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	—they would tear it down.	28:30
Paul Ortiz	Oh, okay. So Black people were buying land and trying to build houses through here, in the 30s?	28:33
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	No, no, no, not in this area.	28:38
Paul Ortiz	Not in this area.	28:40
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	They didn't buy anything in this area. But they—	28:41
James B. Cannon	But this is the first area that was bought here, other than Shores' house and this other.	28:44
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	That's true.	28:48
James B. Cannon	And one up here on the corner where Sally lived, it was over—	28:49
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Yes, uh-huh. Sally bought them there. But she was on the other side of Center Street. But it was in the 40s. They finally bought some lots. They had the lots, but they were afraid to build on them.	28:53
Paul Ortiz	Yeah. You mentioned Jesse Lewis, who caught—	29:12
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Two. Jesse Lewis and Abraham Jones.	29:15
Paul Ortiz	Was that the Jesse Lewis that—	29:19
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Jesse Lewis that owns the association.	29:21
Paul Ortiz	Birmingham Times?	29:23
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Yes. Yeah.	29:24
Paul Ortiz	Okay.	29:26
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	They caught them. They hemmed the fellow up. Some fellas up at that.	29:27
Paul Ortiz	I interviewed him. And he never did tell me that story.	29:30
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	He forgot it, maybe.	29:33
James B. Cannon	Which a lot of things, I won't mention.	29:36
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Yeah, he forgot it. That's probably what he did. He and Abraham Jones caught the fellows up there.	29:38
James B. Cannon	I wouldn't suggest putting that in the paper, in anything you have.	29:43
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	No, not now. Not for him. No.	29:44
James B. Cannon	No names.	29:44
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Not for him.	29:44
James B. Cannon	No names. Although we have moved little from it, we not far enough away.	29:54
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	(laughs)	29:58
Paul Ortiz	And yeah. And this is not for the newspaper.	29:58
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	No, it's not. It's not. There's something else.	30:04
James B. Cannon	See, no names—	30:07
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	He's not.	30:09
James B. Cannon	—should be used in this in any way. See, not even that I and the car thing.	30:11
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	But see, this is for inside. For a project, baby. This is for project, not the paper.	30:18
James B. Cannon	Because at that time, in the 60s, we had come out the service, and I was teaching. And most of those that were on the look out, they were athletes and things before and college—	30:27
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	This is good.	30:37
James B. Cannon	—and they in pretty good condition. They were able to take care of themselves. That's the thing.	30:46
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Right. Okay.	30:50
Paul Ortiz	Now, Mrs. Cannon, you mentioned earlier about school. Did you go to Industrial High School?	30:55
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Yes.	31:03
James B. Cannon	They have been Black.	31:04
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Yeah. Listen, 3000 children down there. Maybe a few more. But that was the only, at that time, that was the only high school Blacks could go to. Because they changed later on. We've got few other schools. But that was.	31:05
Paul Ortiz	What kind of experiences did you have there?	31:25
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	At there? Beautiful experience.	31:26
James B. Cannon	We thought it was the finest thing.	31:29
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Sure, we did.	31:30
James B. Cannon	The largest high school in the area.	31:30
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	It was, it was. And so many times, people would come to hear us sing and see us to do things.	31:33
Paul Ortiz	And you were in the choir?	31:42
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Yes. Yes, I was. Still do it.	31:43
James B. Cannon	In my graduation class of high school, we had—	31:49
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	I don't how many go there.	31:57
James B. Cannon	—semester graduations.	31:57
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	That's true.	32:00
James B. Cannon	Twice a year. And it is approximately 250 students graduated in my—	32:00
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	At a time.	32:08
James B. Cannon	—January class. And her class at the class ahead of mine, the junior class, it had over 200 some students in it.	32:09
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Sure. We thought that was a fine school. In fact, I guess it was.	32:18
James B. Cannon	And at that time, you didn't have all your universities and things.	32:25
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	No.	32:30
James B. Cannon	The only thing that we had was Alabama State Teachers College.	32:32
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	That's true.	32:37
Paul Ortiz	In Montgomery?	32:37
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Yeah.	32:37
James B. Cannon	Yeah.	32:37
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	And that's where we—	32:42
James B. Cannon	You could get what was two-year teacher certificate or something. And most of the teachers were White.	32:42
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Those who came out before us didn't go to school. No, what they did, they went down there. And they had a test that they gave them. That was before we got out of school. And see, they didn't go to college like we did. And some of them never went back. But we didn't know it.	32:52
James B. Cannon	Excuse me. I'll be back.	33:15
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	We didn't know that this was what they were doing, and how they got a certificate to teach. We thought they had been to school, like we had to go to school. Some of them never went back to get an education as such. But they could teach school, because they could read ,I guess.	33:17
Paul Ortiz	And what year did you graduate from high school, Mrs. Cannon?	33:36
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	1929. That's been a long time. 1929.	33:42
Paul Ortiz	That was a very fateful year in one sense.	33:53
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Yeah, 1929.	33:57
Paul Ortiz	The start of the Depression.	34:01
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Right.	34:04
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Oh, don't say word about it.	34:04
Paul Ortiz	What was that like?	34:11
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Awful.	34:17
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	But we had plenty of food. We weren't worried about what you were going to wear because my mother sold. So I had no trouble. But some people—And see, my daddy worked for TCI, so I didn't have any problem with what I was going to eat nor what I was going to wear. And I could go to school. So I was happy.	34:17
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	We rode the street car. And you got little tickets to ride the street car. You bought them. I think they were $2 and a half, for how many tickets? I've forgotten how many tickets were in the book. But you ride for so long.	34:45
James B. Cannon	School bus.	35:03
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	School tickets.	35:04
James B. Cannon	There was 50 tickets was in. They were two and a half cent a piece. You got $1.25.	35:05
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Oh. He does remember that.	35:10
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Well, I rode the bus because see I lived in North Birmingham, and I had to ride over to Parker High School.	35:13
James B. Cannon	We made our money that way.	35:22
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	I didn't do that.	35:24
James B. Cannon	We would buy the tickets for a dollar and a quarter.	35:26
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	I didn't.	35:29
James B. Cannon	A book.	35:29
James B. Cannon	And sell them for nickel a piece.	35:31
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	I didn't.	35:32
James B. Cannon	Remade our money that way. Selling school tickets for—	35:33
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	I didn't do that.	35:35
James B. Cannon	But you who did that?	35:36
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	They were boys. They did it. I didn't do it.	35:37
Paul Ortiz	What did you think about that, Mrs. Cannon?	35:42
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Listen, I had to keep my tickets myself because I had to ride back and forth. I wasn't even thinking about what they did.	35:43
James B. Cannon	We didn't have school tickets.	35:47
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	See, they'd walk. And they'd probably walked and—	35:54
James B. Cannon	We walked—	35:57
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	—and sell that tickets. I didn't do that. I rode.	35:58
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Yeah, that's how we got where, back and forth to school. And I had to be real careful about that.	36:04
James B. Cannon	See, and I had a better education than she, because—	36:09
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	You hear that.	36:12
James B. Cannon	—see, I went to a TC and I school.	36:12
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Yeah. But you see, he didn't have any better. He ain't no smarter than me.	36:21
James B. Cannon	I didn't say that. And—	36:23
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	They didn't get through.	36:28
James B. Cannon	—we would, at this TC and I school, it was 14 of those schools. See the Tennessee Coal and Iron Company. See, Birmingham was an iron and ore city at that time.	36:29
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	That's true.	36:42
James B. Cannon	They had the place to mine. They mined their ore. They mined their coal.	36:43
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	They had everything.	36:53
James B. Cannon	Limestone and everything here for making steel. And this Tennessee Company owned all of it.	36:55
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Owned most all of Alabama.	37:03
James B. Cannon	They still own it.	37:07
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	They do. They really do.	37:08
James B. Cannon	They had 14 schools in these—See, they had schools that each one of these mining camps.	37:09
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Right. We know now.	37:26
James B. Cannon	And they had the best teachers available because they were making three or four times the salary that the other teachers were making. They could afford to pay them. But they could afford to pay them because all of the workers at the TC and I, wherever you live, you had to pay, were cut a certain amount of money.	37:26
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Even though my daddy worked for them, he got cut, and I couldn't go.	37:51
James B. Cannon	But her father—	37:55
Paul Ortiz	He got cut to pay for—	37:56
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	He got cut.	37:56
James B. Cannon	He was cut, but she couldn't go because he lived—	37:59
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Yeah, he lived nothing in the city.	38:03
James B. Cannon	—in the city.	38:04
James B. Cannon	But I lived on the mining camp. So that's where I had to go to school.	38:04
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Yeah. He could go.	38:10
James B. Cannon	And we had everything that you would want.	38:12
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Sure did.	38:13
James B. Cannon	You—	38:13
Paul Ortiz	Now, which camp were you living in?	38:16
James B. Cannon	Edgewater.	38:19
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Edgewater. That's where my father worked.	38:23
James B. Cannon	It was three coal mining camps. Edgewater, Docena, Bayview. And it was, I believe it was 11 oil mining camps. And I wouldn't try to name them to you because you couldn't spell them. They were Indian names. Ishkooda, Muscoda, Keytona, Wenonah, and all of those.	38:24
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	But TCI had a good program for the folk who lived, whoever worked there. It was a good program.	38:47
James B. Cannon	But they taught you what they wanted you to know.	39:01
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	They surely did.	39:02
James B. Cannon	And that's—	39:03
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	It was a college education when you left there, even though they were elementary and high school. When you left there, you knew because those teachers had to teach.	39:04
Paul Ortiz	But there were certain things they wanted you to know?	39:16
James B. Cannon	And same things Blacks weren't supposed to know.	39:19
Paul Ortiz	What were the things that Blacks weren't supposed to know?	39:30
James B. Cannon	Well, I don't want to get into that part.	39:30
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Yeah, but they taught you.	39:30
James B. Cannon	I'm seeing it through a Black—	39:30
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	They had social service teachers. They taught the girls sewing and cooking and stuff like that, that they needed.	39:32
James B. Cannon	You would make good maids. That's what they taught you to be, good maids. And—	39:43
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Yeah. But see, some of them didn't make good maids. They went on to do something else after they got—	39:49
Paul Ortiz	So, Mrs. Cannon, what did you do? 1929, you graduated from high school.	39:56
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Yeah.	39:58
Paul Ortiz	Now where did you go from there?	39:58
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Alabama State. Alabama State Teachers College.	40:00
Paul Ortiz	That must have been quite a change from Birmingham. What was different about life in Alabama State?	40:06
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Oh, it was fun. But you had to get your lessons. Of course, you knew—	40:20
James B. Cannon	But they were all Black.	40:23
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	If your people paid for you to go to school, you got to get that lesson and graduate. You know that.	40:24
Paul Ortiz	Did you have a scholarship or—	40:33
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	No, no, no. My parents paid for me to go.	40:35
James B. Cannon	It was too expensive to think about scholarships.	40:38
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	No, we didn't get it.	40:41
James B. Cannon	When I went to school and college, I paid $33.33 a quarter.	40:44
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	But you see, you didn't have—You really didn't. Well, times were about the same as they are now when you think about it.	40:56
James B. Cannon	It was $200 a year for room and board and—	41:00
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	But you didn't have that.	41:04
James B. Cannon	And that was inexpensive school.	41:07
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	He was down in Talladega.	41:09
James B. Cannon	See, Alabama State and all those were cheap schools.	41:10
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Yeah.	41:14
James B. Cannon	But they had $3 and something.	41:14
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	And mine was.	41:19
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Yeah, I went to Alabama State, and I didn't stay in there no four years because I came out and taught school. And then I would go in the summer until I finished.	41:19
Paul Ortiz	Oh, I see. So you were teaching. And going to Alabama State.	41:33
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Yeah.	41:33
Paul Ortiz	Okay.	41:33
Paul Ortiz	Now, you're the first person that I talked to that went to Alabama State during that time. So could you tell me a little bit about school, and what it was teaching?	41:38
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Let's see.	41:47
James B. Cannon	Trenholm was the President.	41:57
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Yeah.	41:57
James B. Cannon	I remember.	41:57
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Trenholm was president. And they taught us social. The history, still had history, geography, music.	41:58
James B. Cannon	Most of it was—	42:09
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Math.	42:12
James B. Cannon	—to prepare you for a teaching experience.	42:12
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	This is what you're going do. General subjects.	42:12
James B. Cannon	You take a course in education.	42:14
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Right.	42:17
James B. Cannon	Because—	42:18
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	This is what we were doing.	42:18
James B. Cannon	—we teased the person who we thought—We thought we, after Talladega, we thought we had the best, we and Fisk University. You probably know—	42:20
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Yeah. Fisk.	42:29
James B. Cannon	Talladega and Fisk thought we had the best colleges in the United States.	42:31
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	They did.	42:44
James B. Cannon	North Carolina State Duke, figure they had the best colleges they do in North Carolina. Not only that, but in the United States.	42:45
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	They got good schools, though. Really.	42:46
James B. Cannon	And we thought that we beat those. And Alabama State Teachers College was a school where you were taught—	42:52
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	To teach.	43:00
James B. Cannon	—to teach.	43:01
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Whatever you needed.	43:02
James B. Cannon	See, nothing else you could do.	43:04
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Plus the fact—	43:05
James B. Cannon	When I came out of school, there wasn't but two things that I could expect to do. That was teach or preach.	43:06
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Well, Alabama State had, they had courses away from Alabama State. They would come up to Birmingham. And in the winter sometimes, and have classes so that people who couldn't go to Alabama State could get courses and still work on their graduation certificate.	43:13
Paul Ortiz	And so were you taking those extension courses.	43:37
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Yeah. Some of them. I took those too. Go to school in the winter time. Teach school.	43:37
Paul Ortiz	Where were you teaching at the first years?	43:43
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	When I first started—Oh, father. Where did I first teach? Wilcox County.	43:46
Paul Ortiz	Oh, so you were going out.	43:55
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Yeah, I'd go to Wilcox County.	43:56
James B. Cannon	Couldn't get a job.	43:58
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Couldn't get a job here. I went to Monroe County Schools. What was that other one?	43:59
James B. Cannon	Did you go Kaneka County? I can't explain—	44:06
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	No, I didn't go to Kaneka. Lee. Down here. [indistinct 00:44:20] Lee Schools. And then I decided to try to come home, and I did. I started Birmingham City Schools.	44:14
Paul Ortiz	How many years were you teaching at Wilcox, Monroe, and Lee?	44:29
James B. Cannon	I tell you that subtract—	44:29
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	I don't know how many years.	44:29
James B. Cannon	She taught a, subtracting number of years that you taught.	44:29
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	I don't know how many years I taught.	44:29
James B. Cannon	At a school, running—	44:31
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	I don't know how many I taught there. It's been so long.	44:38
Paul Ortiz	Was it up to World War II, after World War II?	44:51
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	World War II, I was teaching at Lewis School out there in North Birmingham. And I went, in fact, I was hired, from World War II, to teach at Lewis School because the young man who was leaving to go to the service. So I replaced him. How many years did I—How many years I taught at that? 1936.	44:51
James B. Cannon	We went, I didn't go—	45:14
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Wait a minute.	45:14
James B. Cannon	—in the service until the 40s.	45:14
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	That was you.	45:14
James B. Cannon	That was 43. They burned Peal Harbor in 41, see. I'll never forget that because—	45:15
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Well, I went—	45:33
James B. Cannon	—after that, they had me.	45:33
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	—I went to teach at Lewis School. I can't remember how many years.	45:35
James B. Cannon	It's around 40 years.	45:42
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	I know it. I taught 47 years. So it was around 40 years that I worked out there.	45:44
James B. Cannon	You got to subtract from the Lewis School.	45:51
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	About 40 years. About 40 years I worked in Birmingham now.	45:57
Paul Ortiz	Okay.	46:00
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	City School.	46:02
Paul Ortiz	And when did you meet Mr. Cannon?	46:02
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Where was I working? We've been married 27 years. So I had a husband before then. He had a wife before then.	46:09
James B. Cannon	I knew for long before then, in the 30s.	46:23
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	See, I didn't know that. I didn't know. I didn't know he even knew me. I didn't. Uh-uh. But where'd I meet him? On the playground. He was a supervisor, and I worked in summer on the playground under him.	46:27
Paul Ortiz	Oh.	46:53
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Yes. Did that. So that's where I met him.	46:54
Paul Ortiz	Now, when you were able to get a job back in Birmingham, where do you live?	47:01

Rebeca Courtland Cannon	But I lived on 12th Terrace.	0:01
Paul Ortiz	Okay. You lived on 12th Terrace when you came back to teach?	0:03
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Mm-hmm, yeah.	0:04
Paul Ortiz	Had you noticed any changes in Birmingham, from the time you had been teaching out in the county, to the time when you came back to teach in Birmingham?	0:09
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	To teach in Birmingham?	0:15
Paul Ortiz	Did you see any changes, say during World World War II? Did you see any changes in life? Changes in race relations?	0:17
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	No, not much, mm-mm, because the buses were still doing the same thing, segregating them. You were still segregated when you went downtown to buy whatever it was. But I had learned, I just didn't like them anyway. When they asked me questions, I wouldn't answer right, I wouldn't do right, because I hated the way things were. It made you act like that. And then you out here working, you're teaching school and you can't teach kids the things that you'd like for them to know.	0:25
Paul Ortiz	What would you have liked to teach them that—	1:16
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	That people were just people, and that they're not going to do ugly things to you. Which they were going to do it if they could, but you don't want to teach kids that.	1:19
Paul Ortiz	But you felt, as a teacher, that you were working for the system that would not allow you to—	1:32
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	No, you couldn't do that.	1:41
Paul Ortiz	What were some of the restrictions? What were some of the things you couldn't tell the kids?	1:44
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Well, no point in telling them that you are going to be treated just like any other person when you get hired, because you're not going to.	1:48
James B. Cannon	Well, the main things that you were supposed to teach them was to know the customs where you are, when you were there.	1:58
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Right. That's true.	2:10
James B. Cannon	And you got to adapt yourself to those customs—	2:12
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Mm-hmm, that's true.	2:14
James B. Cannon	—to make it. And other than that, you put up any front you want, but know that you got to adapt yourself to those customs and you were a good citizen.	2:19
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Yeah.	2:32
Paul Ortiz	And so would you teach those customs in the classroom?	2:33
James B. Cannon	You would have them to understand that there were certain things that you didn't appreciate, because—	2:38
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	That's true.	2:43
James B. Cannon	I—	2:43
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	No, you just have to teach them their regular lessons.	2:47
James B. Cannon	For example, I had some boys out playing when I first went through integrating students. Some of the boys was out there playing ball and they were still segregating themselves, just as they did before integration. And they would holler, "Nigger, do so and so. Nigger, do so and so."	2:51
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	And you got to tell them, "Don't do that."	3:17
James B. Cannon	And I had them put their arms around one another, two were Blacks, and says, "Don't call him nigger." Because if one of them that was White called me that, we're going to have a fight.	3:17
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	I know.	3:30
James B. Cannon	He said, "Mr. Cannon, they don't know how to say the word nigger."	3:34
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	And they use it. Black, Mm-hmm.	3:39
James B. Cannon	And I started paying attention to that.	3:39
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Of course.	3:39
James B. Cannon	And the Whites couldn't say nigger.	3:44
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Because they didn't know.	3:45
James B. Cannon	Like the Blacks, they can't say it.	3:47
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	No.	3:49
James B. Cannon	They try and they can't say it.	3:49
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	No, they can't. Uh-uh.	3:51
James B. Cannon	And that's why they stopped calling them Negroes.	3:53
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Mm-hmm, because they called them Black.	3:57
James B. Cannon	And one of the persons said, "Black is beautiful, so I am Black." And from then on, it changed over from Negro.	3:58
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	To Black.	4:09
James B. Cannon	—to Black.	4:09
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	They couldn't say Negro.	4:10
James B. Cannon	They couldn't say Negro and they couldn't say nigger.	4:11
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	No, they better not say that.	4:16
James B. Cannon	If they could say nigger, it was all right.	4:19
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Yeah. But it's the difference in the way they say it. The differences in the way they say it. That's it. I'd say, "Nigger, just go somewhere and do such and such a thing." But it's something—	4:21
James B. Cannon	And you were smiling.	4:38
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	—the love behind it, and they couldn't say that.	4:39
Paul Ortiz	In terms of, you mentioned before that Whites in Birmingham had certain expectations, and that if you looked up these expectations, you mentioned that there were two different kinds of Black people. The kinds that follow the rules and the kinds that pushed.	4:41
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	That's true.	5:01
Paul Ortiz	And could you tell me, in Birmingham, who would fit into which group, in terms of politics, say in the '30s, '40s?	5:03
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	I don't want to name nobody.	5:15
James B. Cannon	Here is what would make that worse. The Blacks played dumb—	5:16
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Yeah.	5:36
James B. Cannon	—when they weren't dumb. And then you have to approach the White man and then you had to approach the Black man.	5:36
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	They used. They used.	5:37
James B. Cannon	And they used those kinds of tactics.	5:38
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Right, they used the Whites. And I don't blame them.	5:41
James B. Cannon	And they would smile at how they had done so, and got them to believe that they were humble people.	5:42
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Yeah. And it wasn't anything like that.	5:42
James B. Cannon	When the only thing they were doing were pleasing the Whites. That's why I say I don't like to get into those things at all.	5:56
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Uh-uh, but sometimes you had to do it; if it was something that you wanted or needed, you'd just say, "Well, okay, yeah. Yeah, you're right." And to him, he wasn't right at all. You'd get back where your folks were and said, "I did such and such thing, but so and so ain't such and such thing."	6:00
Paul Ortiz	What kinds of things, what kinds of concessions could you get from the system by doing that?	6:20
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Almost anything you wanted.	6:22
James B. Cannon	That's the way you got what you wanted, and you did what you wanted to get what you wanted.	6:22
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Yeah.	6:22
James B. Cannon	Although you knew some of them.	6:35
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	You were promoted if you dealt with the Whites like they thought you should deal with them. You'd just say, "Okay, yeah, I think you are right. You're right. You do so and so." Didn't believe it at all.	6:35
Paul Ortiz	Did you know of people or did you have friends who maybe fit into the other category, who pushed past the system?	6:57
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Yeah, Mm-hmm.	7:02
James B. Cannon	Yes.	7:02
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Yes. I know a girl who lost her job, because she stood up in the teachers' meeting, where we had supervisors and whatnot, and she told the supervisor, she said, "Listen, you are wasting our time, because you haven't said anything and you don't have anything to say." And she wouldn't beg the supervisor pardon and they fired her.	7:04
Paul Ortiz	What was the supervisor saying?	7:33
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Huh?	7:35
Paul Ortiz	What was the—	7:36
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	She was at this meeting and she was supposed to be instructing the smaller grade teachers into how to conduct this. And she told her, she wasn't saying anything. "You'll never say nothing and you are wasting my time and I could be doing something of value for my children." She would not apologize to the teacher, because she said, "I was right. I was not wrong, because she wasn't saying anything." And they fired her.	7:36
Paul Ortiz	Were you involved in the state teachers' organization?	8:11
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Not to do anything. Uh-uh, I was just a member.	8:18
Paul Ortiz	Well, okay, yeah. And did you have, say, conventions or conferences?	8:22
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	We did.	8:28
Paul Ortiz	Was that an all Black organization?	8:31
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Yeah. Until integration, and then they tried to fix it in such a way where you didn't even have to get together. Rather than come with you and talk about things, we just cut it out.	8:33
James B. Cannon	Well now, this is one thing that I think maybe they'll want in the interview. That at one time, the Blacks were fairly blessed—	8:48
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Of course.	8:56
James B. Cannon	With the same type of education.	8:56
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	That's true. Some of them had better education.	8:56
James B. Cannon	When they gave us the certificates. You could get a teacher's certificate, and they would rate those certificates from A on down, and went to your class and they rated you, and the schools that you went to. That's how they rated those schools, and therefore rating those schools low, they rated you low. I was just fortunate enough to have come out of services, and the first thing I said, I had this GI Bill, that I did not want to go to a school that would rate University of Alabama that way, although I couldn't go to University of Alabama or University of Auburn or any of those. I don't think I could even go to Duke or North Carolina State or North Carolina U at that time.	9:08
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Uh-uh, no, not then.	10:08
James B. Cannon	Not at that time. But I wanted to go to a school that was rated as high as those would be rated. And I was fortunate enough to get one, and the new government paid for mine.	10:10
Paul Ortiz	Talladega?	10:20
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	University Michigan.	10:27
James B. Cannon	No, Talladega was in that. That was one of the Black great schools.	10:28
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	University of Michigan.	10:28
Paul Ortiz	Oh, Michigan.	10:28
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Yeah, so you thought you were smart then.	10:28
James B. Cannon	No, I didn't think that. I just wanted to go to—I didn't want to have a smartie. I just wanted to go to—	10:33
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	But he was. He really was a brilliant scholar. I'm not trying to say about that.	10:38
James B. Cannon	I did want to go to a school that would be in—Although I didn't know anything maybe, when I left.	10:42
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	That's all right. You did.	10:47
James B. Cannon	But I had gone through that school to get a little piece of paper. And I was able to use that paper. I could get respect from that piece of paper.	10:49
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Right.	10:57
James B. Cannon	If I didn't know it.	10:57
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Yep. Yep. But that's good. We've had it, but we I don't—	11:00
James B. Cannon	That is long time ago.	11:07
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Yeah.	11:11
James B. Cannon	That was before you were born or anything.	11:11
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Yeah, it was.	11:12
Paul Ortiz	The question that I wanted to ask you, Mrs. Cannon, about the State Teachers—	11:12
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Association?	11:18
Paul Ortiz	Association. Would you have speakers come to your conferences?	11:19
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Yes, Mm-hmm.	11:24
Paul Ortiz	Do you remember any of the speakers? Were they distinguished educators?	11:26
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	They was supposed to be.	11:41
Paul Ortiz	But what was the reality?	11:41
James B. Cannon	I'll tell you which one would give you a big change in that. We would get most of our speakers from the Black schools to speak to us. And therefore, they knew how to do that. But we had one down here, Talladega, which was not—They were not paid by the state. And by not being paid by the state, they was an AMA, American Missionary Association school.	11:41
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	That's my church school.	12:00
James B. Cannon	And [crosstalk 00:12:05] didn't mind telling them what he thought.	12:07
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	But now listen, when we had our conventions and things for our association, we had the governor, whoever the governor of the state was at the time, and the mayor of the city, wherever the convention is being held. And then we had some prominent Negros. We thought were prominent. And of course the other things that surrounded them, like the social events that went along with it. Now, they talked and you could get something out of what they were talking about, so far as working the next year.	12:08
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	We was concerned. But the best thing you could do is do what you can for your children, yourself. You go out there, and for instance, they'd start a new book that they have brought out and, "You ought to use this book, because—" I ain't going to do it. I taught my children what I knew they needed and were going to—A foundation. For instance, the little new English book that they have doesn't teach kids how to speak English or congregate—	12:54
James B. Cannon	[crosstalk 00:13:33].	13:32
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	What you talking about? They stopped teaching kids phonics, you know? You know that?	13:33
Paul Ortiz	I don't think he knows about phonics.	13:38
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	No, he doesn't know anything about phonics. But they are so sorry that they did it, because kids do not enunciate words like they're supposed to, because they haven't had any phonics, so they don't know sounds. All right. And of course don't teach them alphabets. They don't do that. How is he going to know letters if you don't? But they don't believe in that anymore. Those little English books that they have, I threw that thing away and went and got my book that my teacher taught me out of English.	13:40
Paul Ortiz	[crosstalk 00:14:18].	14:16
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	No, not the blue book, but the modern English. And they have how you diagram sentences and everything, so kids will know parts of speech and how to work with them when they needed them.	14:17
Paul Ortiz	Now, from your view as a professional, as a teacher, during those years, what was your perception regarding the differences between the way they were instructing you to teach, compared with the way they're instructing White teachers to teach?	14:33
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	To teach? At that time, I didn't know what they were teaching their kids. All I was interested in is getting these that I have with me to know, not only the book, how to use these books for themselves, but how to live when he gets out here. And this is what I did.	15:01
James B. Cannon	Let me try.	15:24
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	And I see them now, grown and up doing things, and it makes me feel good. I think I did a good job.	15:26
James B. Cannon	Let me try to answer that, far as my experience with it. See, I was teaching at one of the Black schools.	15:39
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Yeah, me too.	15:45
James B. Cannon	[indistinct 00:15:45] inspiration.	15:45
Paul Ortiz	Which school was that, sir?	15:45
James B. Cannon	It was Rosedale.	15:51
Paul Ortiz	Rosedale?	15:52
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Lord, I'm listening.	15:52
James B. Cannon	It was as good as any White, which was nice for me.	15:52
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Mm-hmm, good school.	15:54
James B. Cannon	But we had only a small number of children. We didn't have—	15:56
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	We had a lot.	15:59
James B. Cannon	—all areas coming into that school. We were over there in Homewood. You might have heard of Homewood.	16:02
Paul Ortiz	And now that was an elementary school?	16:07
James B. Cannon	No, this was high school.	16:09
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	High school, Mm-hmm.	16:19
James B. Cannon	And after that, I was transferred to a White high school. I didn't know whether I was going to be teaching mathematics or science, so I brought it home. By going to an integrated school now, the Black children, and they just started integration. I came home. I had to have the lesson plans and [crosstalk 00:16:44]—	16:20
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Yeah, you have to do that.	16:20
James B. Cannon	And I went out there. After my second day, I threw those lesson plans—	16:51
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Away.	16:55
James B. Cannon	I was in mathematics and they put me in what was supposed to be one of the worst subjects, which I thought was one of the best subjects. They put me in geometry. Plain geometry. And I threw those lesson plans away and went back and went to fractions, decimals, then went into geometry. We were able to see those things, because they had been memorizing all of that stuff. It was verbatim.	17:00
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Won't do you a bit of good. Mm-mm.	17:31
James B. Cannon	And that might answer what was the difference? I was thinking what I had been teaching wasn't going to be good enough for me going into an integrated school, so I had to come and make me some lesson plans, but before it was over, I had to make lesson plans over to reach where they were.	17:34
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Yeah, [crosstalk 00:17:58].	17:57
James B. Cannon	If that can answer what you were speaking about, what did I expect? I expected them to be up on a pedestal somewhere and for us to be down there.	17:57
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Well, they didn't have the basics.	18:06
James B. Cannon	I found out that both of us were down there.	18:07
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	They didn't—	18:09
James B. Cannon	It wasn't only just the Blacks down there.	18:12
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	They didn't have the basics.	18:13
James B. Cannon	That might answer your question. I went, expecting more than what I found. And those that I thought were down, I were able to raise them a little bit, because some of the best—	18:17
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Yeah, they were willing to—	18:30
James B. Cannon	—some of the best ones that we had, when I was at Rosedale, they were just integrating there, and they went to Birmingham Southern.	18:31
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Mm-hmm. And that's a good school.	18:40
James B. Cannon	And I rate Birmingham Southern, I'm sorry to say—	18:42
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	It's one of the best in the country.	18:44
James B. Cannon	I would rate Birmingham Southern along with it too.	18:46
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Right.	18:49
James B. Cannon	That's the way above University of Alabama. I'm sorry.	18:50
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	It's one of the best.	18:53
James B. Cannon	I don't like to get into those things.	18:54
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	But that's true.	18:55
James B. Cannon	Birmingham Southern, that little school right up the hill.	18:55
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	That's right. One of the best—	18:55
James B. Cannon	It's one of the best educational schools in—	18:55
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	In the United States. It's rated that way. Not just by us.	19:03
James B. Cannon	Now it doesn't have all those fancy athletic teams.	19:08
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	No, but you get your lesson over there, or don't you go.	19:11
James B. Cannon	And if it weren't for basketball, you wouldn't hear anything about Duke.	19:14
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Mm-mm. They get their lesson, one of them learning schools.	19:15
James B. Cannon	I'm not ready just to do anything about Duke—	19:15
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	No, no, no.	19:15
Paul Ortiz	Oh no, you can be, feel free—	19:24
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	No. Uh-uh, we like it.	19:25
James B. Cannon	They got one of my good friend's sons graduated this year, and signed the second highest contract for it.	19:29
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	That's true. And I like their little coach over there.	19:37
Paul Ortiz	Mrs. Cannon, I wanted to ask you a question. Mrs. Worfolk told me that you could tell us a little bit about social and civic wide—	19:40
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	In Birmingham?	19:52
Paul Ortiz	In Birmingham.	19:54
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	What we do?	19:56
Paul Ortiz	Yeah, what you do and how that's—Maybe if you could start perhaps from the '40s and '50s and tell me how that's kind of changed over time?	19:57
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Well it has. We've always played cards. We play Bridge with—What's that [indistinct 00:20:21] we play. I like to—Not going to tell you what I like to play.	20:06
James B. Cannon	Penny poker.	20:36
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Penny poker. I like playing Poker.	20:37
James B. Cannon	I'll tell you what, at one time it was Penny Poker.	20:37
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Penny Poker.	20:38
James B. Cannon	It's up to about a dime now.	20:38
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	No, it ain't. That's right. We play 10 cent limit.	20:39
Paul Ortiz	And so you started playing cards in the '30s?	20:42
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Oh yeah, way back then. We played cards way back there.	20:44
Paul Ortiz	Was there women's clubs that did this?	20:50
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Women, yeah.	20:57
James B. Cannon	And some of them—	20:57
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Even now.	20:58
James B. Cannon	Some of those women you're talking about now, I have to move back a little—Some of those women you're talking about now are still trying to play.	21:01
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Yeah, they still playing. Got good minds.	21:04
James B. Cannon	Can't really move.	21:07
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Yeah, I'm still playing.	21:08
Paul Ortiz	Yeah, and when you started, back in the '30s—	21:11
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	They went to—	21:13
Paul Ortiz	I'm sorry.	21:14
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	They went to teas. I don't know whether you know anything about a tea. Well, a lady would decide that she was going to have a tea at her house, and you use it on the lawn. You could go on the lawn. They wore their nice dresses and hats and things. Yeah, I remember going up to the show with the one. I hated a tea, but—Oh, I shouldn't say that. But this is what they did. Went to teas, and of course weddings and whatnot. Of course they had those. And even now, we go to—A group of us will get together and we'll go to the track, the racetrack. Anything else, we get together and do it.	21:15
James B. Cannon	You had your debutantes and things.	22:00
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Yes, we had them balls and whatnot.	22:02
Paul Ortiz	Oh, were you involved? Did you go to those balls?	22:04
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	I don't go now anymore.	22:06
Paul Ortiz	But did you go?	22:06
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	But I have, yes, Mm-hmm, yeah, Mm-hmm.	22:09
Paul Ortiz	And when did you start going to those?	22:13
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	When did we start to?	22:16
James B. Cannon	She's asking me. [indistinct 00:22:21].	22:17
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	I don't know.	22:21
Paul Ortiz	Well, was that at high school?	22:21
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Oh no, in high school, we would stop by matinees. You know anything about a matinee? Yeah, we stopped by matinees and—	22:24
Paul Ortiz	Downtown?	22:32
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Yeah, down at the Masonic Temple in—	22:34
Paul Ortiz	Oh, the Masonic Temple had matinees?	22:38
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	They did have matinees. I don't know whether they have them now or not. But they did have matinees at the Masonic Temple. And we'd go by there and dance ours shoes off and go home. Because you couldn't be out at night.	22:41
James B. Cannon	You'd be home before sundown.	22:55
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Had to be home before sundown.	22:55
Paul Ortiz	What kind of music?	22:56
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Well, they played the piano. And later on, we had an orchestra.	22:59
James B. Cannon	See now, you had your music, then you had your bands, big bands to come in. That was [crosstalk 00:23:12]—	23:05
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Yeah, but we didn't have no big bands for the matinee.	23:11
James B. Cannon	I mean, but as a whole, the music group, that was the time of the big bands—	23:14
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	At your school.	23:19
James B. Cannon	Now, you might have heard of Benny Goodman and Wayne King.	23:21
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	But Whatley—	23:27
James B. Cannon	Isn't that my high school?	23:28
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	—was the one who played, and they was at our school. He taught at our school and he had the—	23:29
James B. Cannon	He was the music teacher there.	23:34
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Yes, uh-uh. Yeah, you know about him.	23:35
Paul Ortiz	You saw him play?	23:52
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Shoot, y'all, I was in the school—	23:52
James B. Cannon	He was a teacher.	23:52
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	I was supposed to be in the band.	23:52
James B. Cannon	I was supposed to be in his class. And he threw a drum stick at boy in there and I didn't go after that, because he—	23:52
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	I went in there and he hit a boy and it scared me and I didn't go back. But yes, but he played. He lived and worked at Park High School.	23:56
James B. Cannon	And did he play at the Masonic—	24:06
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Yes, yes, he played for the dances and things, when we would go to the dances at night.	24:09
James B. Cannon	Yep, and [indistinct 00:24:16]—	24:14
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Right. We did, so I enjoyed that.	24:15
James B. Cannon	All of those Black—I know you probably don't follow jazz much. Do you follow jazz music?	24:20
Paul Ortiz	Little bit. Different periods.	24:26
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Yeah.	24:27
James B. Cannon	Back in those days—	24:28
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	He was good.	24:29
James B. Cannon	—Alabama State gave scholarships to band students, just as Duke give scholarships to basketball. And all of these athletes went to Alabama State—	24:35
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Alabama State.	25:02
James B. Cannon	—and they had three bands that were playing. And the best band—	25:02
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Was our band.	25:10
James B. Cannon	—was the one who would go around Chicago and New York, and all around, and play for those big night club. And those fellows got together and said, "Man, we crazy to go make all of this money for the school and send it back to them." And instead they sent the bus back to them and they formed their own band.	25:11
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	They did, uh-huh. They really did.	25:37
James B. Cannon	That was the band of Lester & Hawkins, might have heard of them.	25:37
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Yeah, you know by then.	25:37
James B. Cannon	And most of—	25:37
Paul Ortiz	And that's how the band started?	25:46
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Yes, that's it.	25:46
James B. Cannon	No, it didn't start that. It was already there. That is how they got professional.	25:48
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Yeah, that's Fess Whatley's students.	25:54
James B. Cannon	And most of those were Fess Whatley's students.	25:54
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Yeah, okay, now let me get through.	25:54
James B. Cannon	That's why there's so many, if you get a history of it, you'll find that most of those students at that time played and stayed there, and they were able to be Birmingham students. And how did so many Birmingham folk get there? That's how they got there.	25:54
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Yeah, they took them band instruments.	26:22
James B. Cannon	Because those who finished school, those who were in school, they couldn't come back to Alabama State Teachers College and get a teachers certificate.	26:25
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	No.	26:32
James B. Cannon	They had to stay where they was.	26:32
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	They had to play music.	26:32
James B. Cannon	And they played music up there. And that was Lester & Hawkins band.	26:34
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	That's it. But Fess Whatley was the man who started them.	26:38
James B. Cannon	[crosstalk 00:26:43], some of them were my classmates.	26:43
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	They did good.	26:46
Paul Ortiz	And so apparently now, the Masonic Temple was a really happening place.	26:47
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	It was. It was the place. It was the only place we could go—	26:57
James B. Cannon	And the Elks. The Elks.	27:01
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Well, the Elks, yeah, but the Elks wasn't as big as Masonic Temple.	27:03
Paul Ortiz	There were matinees there. What else? What other things would happen there?	27:08
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Dances, real dances. Clubs dances were there.	27:13
James B. Cannon	Nat King Cole used to—	27:18
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Any of them come there.	27:23
James B. Cannon	If Duke Ellington—	27:23
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	—played there.	27:23
James B. Cannon	—would come through, they would play at those places. Count Basie, the city after—	27:23
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	But that's been a long time after then. I was full grown when that happened.	27:29
Paul Ortiz	What other kinds of things would you do for leisure activities, or—	27:37
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Well, I played tennis for years and years and years.	27:42
Paul Ortiz	And where—	27:46
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Played all of—Basketball. What's that other one I played? Volleyball and tennis. I used play tennis for the city.	27:47
Paul Ortiz	Were you involved in any of the women's clubs? Federation of Colored Women's Clubs?	27:58
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	I couldn't stand the Federation.	28:06
Paul Ortiz	Why not? Was it a—	28:11
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Fuddy duddy. Yeah, because you going to sew and you going talk and you going to sit still, and I can't sit still. I had to be doing something, so that's the only reason. But they were nice ladies. Girl Scouts.	28:13
Paul Ortiz	[indistinct 00:28:33] Girl Scouts?	28:34
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Girl Scouts, Mm-hmm. Yes, uh-huh.	28:34
James B. Cannon	Don't talk him to death now.	28:40
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Who? Who are you telling don't talk folks to death? You the one. (laughs)	28:40
Paul Ortiz	It's interesting, because I've heard a little bit about the Federation, but not—	28:46
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Yeah, the Federation, they were good. Remember that. But they were—At that time, I was a young woman. They were elderly ladies, going—	28:51
James B. Cannon	To the picnics?	29:04
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	No, they did a good job, because they would help the—They had a hospital themselves, number one. Of course, they eventually had to get rid of it and whatnot. And they supported the Girl Scouts. They did. And any organization that they thought was doing a good job, they would support them. That was fine. That's what they did. I didn't want to be no part of that.	29:05
Paul Ortiz	But they didn't play cards?	29:39
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	No, I never seen them play any cards.	29:41
Paul Ortiz	Okay. And now, you mentioned playing different card games. Was that an occasion where you maybe talk a little bit of politics, local events?	29:53
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Listen—	30:06
Paul Ortiz	Local politics?	30:06
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	This house set off politicians. We had a friend up the street who was interested, and he asked us to have some politicians come in and make a speech to keep them in the community. We'd get up to folks in the community and let them come over here, and of course, they would talk politics to them here. We'd do that.	30:11
Paul Ortiz	In between cards and—	30:45
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Listen, we would serve them something real good, and then if they want to make a donation, they could make a donation to the politician. I worked with the Democratic Club for many years.	30:48
Paul Ortiz	When did you start working with the Democratic Club? Before the 1960s?	31:08
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	When was it that Gregory Peck was here?	31:19
James B. Cannon	When Gregory Peck—	31:25
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Gregory Peck was here. I have to get the book and look at it. I've forgotten when it was.	31:26
Paul Ortiz	1950s?	31:30
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	I got a book.	31:30
James B. Cannon	Yeah, you and got the microphone.	31:30
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	I know it.	31:30
Paul Ortiz	I'll disconnect it right here.	31:30
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	—something to try to help the community. That's what we do. Recently, most of our folks ain't done so well. They've been losing.	33:42
Paul Ortiz	What were other recreational activities? Did you ever get involved in say the YWCA or the—	33:51
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	I donate to them, but I don't go. I've got to get down to the place you just left.	34:02
Paul Ortiz	Civil Rights Institute?	34:18
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	The Civil Rights Institute. I can't go there. I haven't been able to go there yet, because it affects me so much. I've got to get myself—I believe it's one of the reasons she sent you up here is to make me come down there. I've got to get so that I can go in there and go through there and it not affect me. It's kind of rough for me. And I explained to her that I still, I couldn't do it. But I've got to try, because I want to go and I want to see it. But it's not easy. Thinks you hear that big bomb and I jumped out the bed and ran out the back door and screamed just like it was right at my door.	34:20
Paul Ortiz	You were wearing a nightgown?	35:09
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Huh?	35:09
Paul Ortiz	Or when—	35:09
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	When they bombed the church down there, and killed all those children.	35:13
Paul Ortiz	And where were you living at that time?	35:16
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	I was at 46 14th Court.	35:18
Paul Ortiz	You could hear it?	35:21
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Yeah. Oh God, it was awful. It was awful. I knew something had happened, bad.	35:22
James B. Cannon	At that time 16th—	35:30
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	It was terrible.	35:30
James B. Cannon	16th Street was one of the big churches for Blacks.	35:30
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	It still is a big church.	35:34
James B. Cannon	But that's one of the big—It was the biggest Black—I don't know if it's bigger than 6th Avenue or not.	35:36
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	No, no it's not as—Mm-mm. No, 6th Avenue is larger. But after that bombing, they had people from all over the world sent money to that church, and the most beautiful stained glass windows are in that place you have ever seen. They've remodeled it since then. It's beautiful.	35:46
Paul Ortiz	It is a beautiful church.	36:08
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	It is a beautiful church.	36:08
Paul Ortiz	Ms. Cannon, I have a few more questions I want to ask?	36:09
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Okay.	36:11
Paul Ortiz	And I want to say, Mr. Cannon, this is some information I'll have both of you fill out individually. If you could, would you mind filling that out? Because this will go as part of the file that we—One copy will be deposited at the Civil Rights Institute.	36:13
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Oh, yeah.	36:30
Paul Ortiz	And this is just biographical information, if you would please sign.	36:31
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	You could go get a pen.	36:33
Paul Ortiz	Now Mrs. Cannon, you talked about—	36:39
James B. Cannon	I'll be back in a minute.	36:42
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	All right.	36:43
Paul Ortiz	You mentioned that when you came back to teach, you were teaching at which school?	36:49
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Lewis School.	36:56
Paul Ortiz	At Lewis.	36:57
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	That's in North Birmingham.	36:58
Paul Ortiz	What was your social life like during those years?	37:11
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	During those years?	37:15
Paul Ortiz	Late '40s, early '50s.	37:16
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	What was I doing? Well, I was going to dances and we had little group school clubs and we were playing cards. I've been playing cards almost all my life.	37:21
Paul Ortiz	Now, were the clubs, were they formal clubs? Did you have names?	37:41
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	For them?	37:44
Paul Ortiz	Yeah.	37:45
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Yeah, they had. Club Finesse, Club Pearl, those are Bridge clubs. Good Bridge clubs. What else did we do?	37:46
Paul Ortiz	How were those clubs organized? Did you start those clubs?	38:15
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	I didn't start them. Someone else started them. I joined and I had a good time. I enjoyed being with them.	38:19
Paul Ortiz	Primarily women?	38:26
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Women. Women.	38:27
Paul Ortiz	What kind of woman? In other words, what would distinguish a woman in clubs—	38:30
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Professional. Professional women. Whatever she did out there, it was professional. We didn't mistreat anybody. No, no, no, but we wanted them to be a professional character.	38:35
Paul Ortiz	How would you get recruited to one of these clubs? It sounds like they were very—	39:02
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Well, we'd investigate you, see where you worked and how you lived. And then we'd ask you if you would like to become a member of this group. And if you were not of good character, then you couldn't be a member, because we only had people in there who were of good character.	39:07
Paul Ortiz	And when were you first recruited?	39:42
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Recruited? Oh, so many years back. Honestly, and I was very young when I started playing with them. And we have stayed together all these years.	39:44
Paul Ortiz	Was it when you were teaching at Lewis?	40:01
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Teaching at Lewis School, Mm-hmm. Surely was.	40:03
Paul Ortiz	Would you ever, in the Bridge clubs, say in the 1950s when you were playing Bridge, kind of in between hands or even during hands, would you ever talk about politics?	40:11
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Yes. While we playing. Sometimes we do that now. Yeah. "What are you all going to do? What are we going to do about so an so, whoever is running. What you think about them?" Of course, they say whatever they think about him. We don't go out and talk about that after then. But sometimes it plays on your mind, as to what so and so said about so and so, as to what you going to do about them, yeah, they do.	40:26
Paul Ortiz	During the age of—Well, before the Civil Rights Movement, before say '63, do you remember the kinds of political conversations you would have? Say in the '50s, a Bridge game, you'd get all the women together. Do you remember some of those conversations, Mrs. Cannon?	41:02
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	During the '50s?	41:24
Paul Ortiz	The '50s.	41:24
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Yeah.	41:24
Paul Ortiz	Brown versus Board of Education, '54, Montgomery Bus Boycott. Did you ever talk about those?	41:33
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Yeah, we talked about them. Yeah. "What were we going to do about it? Do you know what they did down at Montgomery?" Yeah, and we'd say Birmingham is not going to ever do anything, any fuss about it, because nothing had happened here. And when it did happen, it frightened us. Because we didn't think it was going to happen, but it happened on a Friday night. And folks downtown, after the bombing of that church, and they were cut up so bad, it frightened all of us. They really did, honey. They threw so many bricks, they tore down a whole store and hauled the bricks in a wheelbarrow to the people who were throwing them. They did. They threw away a fellow's bricks that he had, up on the other side of 7th Street, that he had put up there to fix his house up with. Fellow didn't even mind. Said he didn't care if they did throw them away. Brand new. But this is—You get it in your mind. You can't help but think about it. Yeah.	41:39
Paul Ortiz	Now, you were a graduate of Alabama State?	43:11
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Yes.	43:14
Paul Ortiz	And so what did you think about when Jo Ann Gibson Robinson, who were involved in Montgomery's—Who were teaching at Alabama State during the Bus Boycott? Did you follow that?	43:15
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Then, Mm-hmm. I didn't go, because I was teaching, so it meant that I couldn't leave my job. I got to keep that, and go and help. But we always gave money to help them.	43:30
Paul Ortiz	You donated to the cause at that point?	43:49
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Yes, yes.	43:50
Paul Ortiz	Did you have connections with a sorority or with any other kind of organization?	43:58
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Not then.	44:02
Paul Ortiz	What's that?	44:03
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Not then.	44:04
Paul Ortiz	Not then?	44:04
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Mm-mm, mm-mm, mm-mm.	44:04
Paul Ortiz	But was it become a particular point of pride to you, that there were people in Alabama State involved in that?	44:10
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Mm-hmm, yeah, it meant that there was some folks somewhere who were trying to do something better, make it better for us. We were proud of them. We really were. It was not an easy thing, because sometimes people lost their jobs and things, to do well. And you had to think about your livelihood, because you got to try to live. It's not easy.	44:17
Paul Ortiz	Do you think that the events of Montgomery influenced people here locally?	44:59
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	They did. If Montgomery can get up and do this, why can't we make it? And I really think that after Montgomery, Birmingham was just terrible after then, but it was all right. And we were proud that they did get up and do something. Really do. And Northerners were real proud that we did it, because it helped them too. It really did.	45:06
Paul Ortiz	Oh, um, [indistinct 00:46:04]—	46:01
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Okay.	46:03
James B. Cannon	[indistinct 00:46:08], spouse, place of birth, city, county.	46:07
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Dallas County. Oh, city, county, state? Where?	46:10
James B. Cannon	I can't read you—	46:13
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Spouse's date of birth, 10-12. You got that. You got 10-16-12.	46:17
James B. Cannon	I got that, but this one.	46:22
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	Oh, city. Hazing. Dallas, yeah, Alabama.	46:24
Paul Ortiz	Kind of to wrap up, Mrs. Cannon, in your view, what have been the biggest changes that have happened in Birmingham over the years?	46:48
Rebeca Courtland Cannon	That Blacks can now get better jobs. They can go to school wherever they want to go.	47:07

Item Info

Title:

Rebeca Cannon (primary interviewee) and James Cannon interview recording, 1994 July 01

Date:

July 1, 1994

Creator:

This Behind the Veil interview is restricted from public online access until 2065.

Contributor:

Ortiz, Paul

Description:

Name: Rebeca Courtland Cannon; Date of birth: 1914-01-09; Place of birth: Hazen, AL; Occupation: educator; Residence: Birmingham, AL. Name: James B. Cannon; Date of birth: 1912-10-16; Place of birth: Columbus, MS; Occupation: educator; Residence: Birmingham, AL
Informant ID: 752; Informant ID: 753; Interviewed by: Paul Ortiz.

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Educator

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Language:

English

Digital Collection:

Behind the Veil

Source Collection:

Behind the Veil: Documenting African American Life in the Jim Crow South interviews, photographs, and project records, circa 1864-2011, bulk 1990-2004

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Provenance:

The David M. Rubenstein Rare Book and Manuscript Library acquired the Records of the Behind the Veil Oral History Project from the Duke University Center for Documentary Studies in 1997, 1998, 2000, and 2002.

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Limited Re-Use

CC BY-NC 4.0

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Copyright for content created by the Behind the Veil project is held by Duke University and made available to the public using a Creative Commons Attribution / Non-commercial (CC-BY-NC) license.

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RL00170-CS-0369
1279be79-e91d-4169-a594-5058c2feebe6
behindtheveil
190c6941-5000-4fd7-ae4e-bb0b52ff159e
ark:/87924/r4417576d
190c6941-5000-4fd7-ae4e-bb0b52ff159e

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Rebeca Cannon (primary interviewee) and James Cannon interview recording, 1994 July 01

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1. Rebeca Cannon and James Cannon administrative file, 1994

John Hope Franklin Research Center

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