Peter Dave, Jr. interview recording, 1994 June 23
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| Michele Mitchell | —picking up my voice now, too. Okay. It's Thursday, June 23rd at 3:00 PM, and this is an interview with Mr. Peter E. Dave, Jr. If you could spell your last name, sir, and tell me where you were born and when? | 0:01 |
| Peter E. Dave, Jr. | Last name is Dave, D-A-V-E. Born in New Orleans, Louisiana in the year 1933. | 0:15 |
| Michele Mitchell | Were your parents from Louisiana? | 0:24 |
| Peter E. Dave, Jr. | Yes, from New Orleans, Louisiana, also. | 0:25 |
| Michele Mitchell | So what did your parents do for a living? | 0:32 |
| Peter E. Dave, Jr. | As much as I know of, my father and mother was separated when I was young. He was a longshoreman. Well, at that time they called it a banana handler on the riverfront. | 0:36 |
| Michele Mitchell | They called it? | 0:49 |
| Peter E. Dave, Jr. | A banana handler. | 0:49 |
| Michele Mitchell | A banana handler. | 0:49 |
| Peter E. Dave, Jr. | He worked down in the hull counting bananas, nothing but on a banana boat. They brought bananas up. They put them somewhere. I didn't know too much about him. My mother, she was a presser. Ironically, my wife is ironing. She did ironing in the factory, and she also did what they called day's work, working in people houses, cleaning their house, doing the ironing. She also took in ironing and had people bring in ironing to the house, ironing shirts, and they would come and pick him up. | 0:58 |
| Peter E. Dave, Jr. | There was so much per shirt. It was like a hustle. The White race at that time always was looking for someone that could do the shirts because there wasn't too many laundries that did it. If they did do it, they didn't do it the way they wanted it done. So she did that kind of work and worked in a factory, and that was about it. | 1:34 |
| Michele Mitchell | What kind of factory, sir? | 2:04 |
| Peter E. Dave, Jr. | It was a pressing factory. It was a factory that did cleaning and pressing. They had machines like they have in the pressing shop today. But there were certain areas that they did by hand on the shirts. I don't know. I can't remember the time, but they call it the bus, the front of the shirt where the buttons is at. The collar and the cuffs had to be done by hand because it was starched and done by hand. | 2:07 |
| Peter E. Dave, Jr. | So everybody had a section of the shirt that they would do and worked on piecework, so much per piece, stuff like that. As long as I know, that's basically all she ever did is that kind of work. When one laundry would close, she went to another one until she got sick and couldn't work anymore. And then I took over. | 2:43 |
| Michele Mitchell | You took over doing the same work? | 3:07 |
| Peter E. Dave, Jr. | No. I just took over and went to work. She got sick and I didn't have any brothers or sisters, so I had to go to work. I went to work. Well, when I was younger, as a boy coming up, I always was taught to make some money some kind of way. I had a paper route. I sold The Louisiana Weekly, which was a predominantly Black paper. | 3:08 |
| Michele Mitchell | They still have that, too. Don't they? | 3:41 |
| Peter E. Dave, Jr. | They still have it. Jet Magazine was out at that time, and I sold Jet. I had a brief paper route for the—We had two types of paper, what they called the morning edition and evening edition. Well, I had the evening paper route. That didn't pan out too good. The money wasn't fast enough for me. Plus, shined a few shoes. They had different train stations in the city at that time. Before they made the one Union Station, they had Illinois Central Train would come in one station. The Southern would come in another station. They must have had about three or four stations. | 3:42 |
| Peter E. Dave, Jr. | You remember all the train stations, Rosie, that came? I don't know. They had one on Canal on the river, one on right there by Cross and Canal Street. That was the Southern. I know that because that was passing by the house all the time. IC, that might be the same one, IC. I can't remember all of them. You would go by there and see if you can get some shoes to shine, sell papers on Canal and Rampart. | 4:31 |
| Michele Mitchell | Canal and Rampart. What was Rampart Street like then? | 5:01 |
| Peter E. Dave, Jr. | Rampart Street, that was a Black entertainment area. It was on Rampart Street they had all the bars. At that time, they also had this Camp Leroy Johnson, I could remember out on the lakefront. It was an Army base on the lakefront. | 5:03 |
| Michele Mitchell | Camp Leroy? | 5:31 |
| Peter E. Dave, Jr. | Camp Leroy, L-E-R-O-Y, Leroy Johnson. That was the name of the camp. They had soldiers in town, and they would migrate on Rampart Street because that's where all the prostitution and gambling and the joints was for Black people on Rampart. And then Canal and Rampart was a central location. Streetcars, that was a connecting area. So we'd go down there. I would go down there. When I was in school, I worked in a dress shop. Let's see. Where was that thing at? | 5:32 |
| Peter E. Dave, Jr. | I think it was on Dauphine Street, a block off of Canal across the street from the Palace Theater, which was a predominantly Black movie theater house. They used to have vaudeville there, too. On Fridays and Saturday nights, they would have live vaudeville. | 6:14 |
| Michele Mitchell | Did you ever go see any of them? | 6:38 |
| Peter E. Dave, Jr. | Oh, yeah. Sneak in there. You had to know how to sneak in. The guy that was my neighbor in the housing project at that time worked. His father worked in a barbershop that was in that same block, and he was working on a corner. I think they had a drug store. He was delivering for that drug store in that area on a bicycle. This lady was looking for a person to keep her little shop clean. It was just a small place, not knowing, but she was teaching me how to dress mannequins at that time. | 6:39 |
| Peter E. Dave, Jr. | I used to clean the shop and keep the stock up and all this. And then the guys found out where I was working at, and they started calling me names, so I quit the job. That was a sissy's job. | 7:22 |
| Michele Mitchell | How old were you? | 7:39 |
| Peter E. Dave, Jr. | I was about 15 or 16. At that time, you could get a hustling job because it always was a hustle for me. They had a lottery in a different form than it is now, and I knew where all the lottery shops were. So the people that didn't want to go play the lottery, I would go for them. I was automatically paid so much for going. If they would win, I would get a percentage of the winnings. So that was a hustle, too. I always learned how to make a— | 7:40 |
| Michele Mitchell | Did they call it the numbers down here? | 8:09 |
| Peter E. Dave, Jr. | They called it lottery all the time. | 8:10 |
| Michele Mitchell | Lottery? | 8:10 |
| Peter E. Dave, Jr. | Yeah. It was a lottery. It was basically like the number game. But I guess every different states had different forms of it. But used to call it the lottery, and they would write the number. You would play three numbers and if those numbers came out, depending on how much you played for, if you played for a nickel, you'd win $9. You played for a dime, you'd win 18. 15 cents and on up. If you pay for a quarter, you'd win $45 and so on. | 8:11 |
| Peter E. Dave, Jr. | They had different companies. They had Blue Eagle and Red something. They all were located on different areas in the neighborhood, but they may have had a grocery on one corner. And then maybe around the corner two blocks away, they had another grocery that worked for a different company. Guys would go around or sit there. The White people that had the—They would have pads like that you have there would be double. | 8:38 |
| Peter E. Dave, Jr. | They would write the numbers down by hand in the carbon, and they would bring it to the place where they would draw the numbers. When it became a problem, what happened is that the White people had a problem with the lottery because they couldn't get the Black people to come to their homes to work because they could take a nickel and win $9 in a week. If you'd win $9 in a week or $45 in a week, you had plenty of money. So why go to their house and work for 2, $3 a day and you didn't have to go anywhere and make $9. | 9:20 |
| Peter E. Dave, Jr. | So they fought politically, and they discontinued the lottery because they couldn't get as many Black people as they needed to do work for them. So it became illegal in Orleans Parish, but other parishes still had it. So a lot of guys would go and write for that company. What they would do, they would come into the neighborhoods, collect the numbers, deliver the lists at night. If you'd win, they'd come to the house and pay you off. | 10:07 |
| Peter E. Dave, Jr. | That kept on for a number of years until they discontinued it altogether, until recently with this new form of lottery. But that was an income for a lot of people. That was a source of income. It was also a source of income for people that didn't have a lot of money. My mother kept records. She kept records in a tablet, in a composition book. She would get the lists, and she had one for each company. She would paste the list on the pages. That was to refer her back as a guide. | 10:41 |
| Peter E. Dave, Jr. | I mean it was like she had it down to a science, really. You'd play first and last. The first number they draw, you could get so much for that. If the last number they draw, you'll get so much for that. If you played first and last, you just got all kinds of ways of making some money. She kept a book with the company's name on it, and she would refer back. That's how she would decide on the numbers that she was going to play for that day. It was an everyday thing. | 11:22 |
| Peter E. Dave, Jr. | And then people in the neighborhood would refer to that person that kept the book. Sometimes she would loan it out. She was a very picky person. She was vain. She was thinking somebody borrowed her book and waste a little coffee on it, that was it. You couldn't get that book no more. | 11:59 |
| Michele Mitchell | That was it. | 12:19 |
| Peter E. Dave, Jr. | That was it. Game over with. But that was her way, and that kind of supplemented for income. In those times, if you won $45 a week, serious stuff. | 12:19 |
| Michele Mitchell | This is the late '40s? | 12:33 |
| Peter E. Dave, Jr. | No. Well, late '40s or early '50s. | 12:37 |
| Michele Mitchell | $45 a week? | 12:39 |
| Peter E. Dave, Jr. | On one quarter, you win $45, and $45 a week could go a long ways because you could go to the store and buy, what, half rice, half beans, half onions, half garlic and all that kind of stuff. This was in the '40s though. I guess I was always a hustler in some kind of way because I used to go—I remember going in the neighborhood to the barroom windows. They had little windows. You couldn't go to the bar. It depend. | 12:41 |
| Peter E. Dave, Jr. | If it was a predominantly Black bar, you still was too young to go in. So they would get a pail and send you down to the bar. You'd go to the window, and you'd get a pail of draft beer. That was a nickel for going, 2 cents or whatever, anything to make some money. | 13:12 |
| Peter E. Dave, Jr. | I can remember housing being a problem for Black people. I was eight years old when my mother moved into the housing project, which is right down here. | 13:33 |
| Michele Mitchell | What was the name? | 13:45 |
| Peter E. Dave, Jr. | Lafitte. L-A-F-I-T-T-E. Right over across these tracks, not too far from here. We moved in when I was eight years old because we were living in one room upstairs in the back of a house. That sounds like a long ways, which it was. Excuse me. In the back of a house upstairs. Along came the housing projects, which was supposed to relieve the pressure off of the housing problem that they had here, which it did. | 13:45 |
| Peter E. Dave, Jr. | According to the family determined the size of bedrooms you got. Oh, wow. Rosie, you want to give me a cough drop, please? | 14:27 |
| Michele Mitchell | If you need, I'll just turn it off. | 14:34 |
| Peter E. Dave, Jr. | Just turn it off for a minute, please. | 14:34 |
| Michele Mitchell | Sure. | 14:38 |
| Peter E. Dave, Jr. | My coughing probably come out better than anything else. | 14:41 |
| Michele Mitchell | No, it'll just pick up your voice real nice. | 14:45 |
| Peter E. Dave, Jr. | The Lafitte project. According to your size of your family, it had up to three bedrooms in these projects. We moved in, and the street wasn't even paved yet. The street was still dirt. We moved in. What they did at that time before you were qualified, a part of the qualification was they would come out and visit the area that you lived in and the house that you lived in to make a determination whether you qualified or not to live in the project. | 14:52 |
| Peter E. Dave, Jr. | We moved in, and the rent was 80 dollars and 25 cents a month. I never will forget that, 80 dollars and 25 cents a month. It was a one-bedroom, and we had a sofa sleeper, which was my bed, in the living room. It had the bedroom. That was a pretty neat little place. In fact, I'd like to go back and see it sometime. It was a proud thing to live in a project because you had hot and cold running water. You had heat. You had these little yards, a porch, and everybody took a lot of pride in living there. | 15:29 |
| Peter E. Dave, Jr. | I went to school not too far from there, but we had a territorial rights thing that existed in the projects as well as throughout the city. What I mean by that is if I lived on one street, I was bounded not to be able to cross over another street because I would get beat up if I was caught over there and vice versa in wards, areas like that. If you lived in the Sixth Ward, you couldn't go in the Seventh Ward or the 13th Ward. That stayed around for a long time. Eventually, it disappeared but— | 16:11 |
| Michele Mitchell | Which one was Lafitte in? | 16:49 |
| Peter E. Dave, Jr. | Sixth, huh, Rosie? | 16:52 |
| Michele Mitchell | Sixth? | 16:53 |
| Peter E. Dave, Jr. | Huh, Rosie? Yeah, it was Sixth because on the other side, Esplanade was the Seventh. But since then, it kind of rezoned. We didn't have voting rights at that time and stuff like that. So we just knew the ward that we lived in. In our cases, we assumed. We didn't know the boundaries because we weren't educated to that. We wasn't supposed to know that. That wasn't a part of our livelihood. | 16:56 |
| Peter E. Dave, Jr. | Before that, I can remember before we moved in the project, let's see, what's his name? The movie director back in—We was just talking about him the other night, the little guy with the eyeglasses. | 17:25 |
| Michele Mitchell | Oh, Spike Lee? | 17:39 |
| Peter E. Dave, Jr. | Spike Lee made this movie with the zoot suits in the beginning. That existed down on North Galvez and St. Bernard Avenue. I can remember that just as plain. They had a gang that used to be there in front of the Circle Theater in the zoot suits. | 17:40 |
| Michele Mitchell | This is North Galvez and what street? | 17:57 |
| Peter E. Dave, Jr. | St. Bernard. | 17:57 |
| Michele Mitchell | Okay. So just right— | 18:00 |
| Peter E. Dave, Jr. | Right. Used to be a Circle Theater there right where Rally's is right now. They tore down that building not too long, a couple of years now. | 18:06 |
| Michele Mitchell | The Circle Theater? | 18:17 |
| Peter E. Dave, Jr. | Right. Circle wasn't predominantly Black was it? | 18:18 |
| Roseline Collins Dave | Yes, it was. | 18:22 |
| Peter E. Dave, Jr. | It was? Circle was predominantly Black. They would be out there with the big hats, the coats, and all that. There were different gangs throughout the city wore those zoot suits. I could remember them as a child being out there. But we moved in the project, that was something different. You had gangs there, too, just like you have today. But it wasn't advertised as much. People got killed. They had shooting, had robbery. | 18:24 |
| Peter E. Dave, Jr. | All this went on. But it went on in the neighborhood whereby only if it was a White person involved, it wouldn't make the paper because there wasn't that much media exposure. The only thing you had was newspaper and radio, and that was it. Then the war came, World War II, and a lot of men left. A lot of women went to work in factories here. And then we used to have the air raids at night. They'd have the guard walking around the project. | 18:58 |
| Peter E. Dave, Jr. | If somebody had a cigarette lit, they would have to put their cigarette out. That was their responsibility. No lights would be on because if it was a real deal, they could see that little light from the air and knew that they had something going on there. So they would— | 19:43 |
| Roseline Collins Dave | And they would also see if you wanted to drive [inaudible 00:20:03]. | 19:58 |
| Michele Mitchell | That's intense. | 20:12 |
| Peter E. Dave, Jr. | No light. | 20:13 |
| Roseline Collins Dave | And they put blankets over. | 20:14 |
| Peter E. Dave, Jr. | No lights at all. That was just in case we were rated by the enemy. But that was interesting though. It really was. | 20:18 |
| Roseline Collins Dave | [inaudible 00:20:31]. | 20:29 |
| Peter E. Dave, Jr. | Yes, kids. Kids, you get outside. Adults would be hollering at you, "Don't you go down there," and all this kind of stuff. But it was something. Then the war went on. I remember when the war was over. There was a shortage of housing then because all the GIs was coming home, and they had nowhere to live and their families and stuff like that. What they did right over here across the street from this Lafitte project is put up some apartment housing. | 20:32 |
| Peter E. Dave, Jr. | They made it like the project with the little courts and everything. That was to take the pressure off when these guys came home. They called it the veteran project. They were able to live there and, after a few years, they was able to go to GI school. And then after so many years, they expanded out, and then they tore that down. It became obsolete. I don't remember all the years, but I remember it being there. | 21:12 |
| Peter E. Dave, Jr. | Prior to that, they used to have a fair that would come there every year and locate on the property and set up games and rides and all that, right across from the project. They would come from all around. I think White people came there because they had what they called a White project and a Black project. | 21:42 |
| Michele Mitchell | Can you explain about that? | 22:07 |
| Peter E. Dave, Jr. | Okay. Well, Lafitte was the Black. You know where North Claiborne is? | 22:07 |
| Michele Mitchell | Uh-huh. | 22:15 |
| Peter E. Dave, Jr. | Okay. They had the Iberville, which was the White project. | 22:16 |
| Michele Mitchell | And that's off of North Claiborne? | 22:16 |
| Peter E. Dave, Jr. | Right. Well, it is more or less if you go to the graveyard area, if you're on North Claiborne and you went by the graveyard, that project that's around across, that was the Iberville project. That was predominantly White. Now, if you going down Claiborne, let's see, when you get to Lafitte Street, if you're going down Claiborne towards St. Bernard, when you get to Lafitte Street, you had the Lafitte project and the Lemann Playground. That was predominantly Black. | 22:19 |
| Peter E. Dave, Jr. | The Iberville, there's a park over there, too. If you look to your right, there's a playground there. That was the White playground, predominantly White. So you had just the dividing was Claiborne Avenue from the White project and the playground from the Black project and the playground. Well, we used to sneak over in the White project and playground at night because they had better facilities than we had, in some cases, and better rides or swings and all this kind of stuff. | 22:58 |
| Michele Mitchell | You did that at night? | 23:34 |
| Peter E. Dave, Jr. | Oh, yeah. | 23:35 |
| Michele Mitchell | You didn't get caught? | 23:36 |
| Peter E. Dave, Jr. | No, indeed. No, we were too fast. Our strategy, whatever we did, we knew our next—It was just like playing anything else. But we didn't realize how good our minds were in doing these kind of things. We knew what we were doing. We knew how to get away. We would buss it. Get on our way. Most of my young days were in the project. In fact, when I met in the project, we got married. We were living in the project. | 23:37 |
| Peter E. Dave, Jr. | But I used to come over here because right on this corner here, the house still exists. They had some guys that I was playing ball with, it was called Boutte was their last name, Boutte Brothers. | 24:20 |
| Michele Mitchell | How do you spell that? | 24:33 |
| Peter E. Dave, Jr. | Spell Boutte. | 24:35 |
| Roseline Collins Dave | B-O-U-T-T-E. | 24:35 |
| Peter E. Dave, Jr. | B-O-U-T-T-E. We had with the churches, the Catholic churches, CYO, Catholic Youth Organization. Each church had a CYO basketball team, and we would play in the evening or at nights outside in the schoolyard. They would put a canvas up around the fence, so you had to pay to come in and see the game. Predominantly Black Catholic schools played predominantly Black Catholic schools. | 24:37 |
| Peter E. Dave, Jr. | St. Peter Claver was on St. Philip Street and, on Tulane Avenue, you have St. Catherine right across from what is called now Charity Hospital, Louisiana State Hospital up in that area. Peter Claver used to play St. Catherine. So I got kicked off of Peter Claver's team, and I started playing with St. Catherine's team. I knew these guys. I used to come across the track by way of Galvez Street though. We couldn't just go straight through and cut through there, by way of Galvez Street and sit down here on these steps. | 25:15 |
| Peter E. Dave, Jr. | Their mother died when they was young, and their daddy was bringing them up. He was a ice man. That was his livelihood, delivering ice. As he got older, he became a cab driver. Mr. Boutte must have lived to be about 95 years old because we had moved in this area, and he was still living. I used to play ball with them. I would be the last one going home at night, 11:00 walking. But it didn't bother me. I used to be cautious of everything, crossing the tracks. | 25:48 |
| Peter E. Dave, Jr. | But in that project on Orleans Avenue, they have Orleans and Johnson, the building is still there. They had the Carver Theater, which was predominantly Black, and they used to have talent shows in there. A lot of activities went on in there. Right down the street from there, the building is gone. But then you come down off of Interstate 10, exit Orleans Avenue, and you would come to the right. | 26:19 |
| Peter E. Dave, Jr. | In that block right there, there was a hospital. They called a French hospital. It was predominantly White, but it was right across the street from the predominantly Black housing complex. | 26:53 |
| Michele Mitchell | This was called a French hospital? | 27:04 |
| Peter E. Dave, Jr. | Right. It was predominantly White. It was a French hospital. Nothing but White patients went there. It was like a secluded hospital because they had Charity Hospital for everybody, and this was people with money. They would go to the French hospital. For many years, all up into the '50s, it existed and then eventually just faded out. | 27:05 |
| Peter E. Dave, Jr. | On the buses, we had these signs. I guess as we got older, there was a tendency for reluctance in this type of atmosphere. It worked in everyday living. Now you began to see what was happening in the churches because in the Catholic church here, if you went to one that was predominantly White, they only had two pews in the back for Coloreds to sit in. | 27:35 |
| Michele Mitchell | Just two? | 28:09 |
| Peter E. Dave, Jr. | That's it. Across the— | 28:09 |
| Michele Mitchell | Was it most churches? | 28:10 |
| Peter E. Dave, Jr. | Most churches. Mostly predominantly the White churches. You had two pews sitting in the back. You go in, boom, that's where you sit at. You only went up if you went to communion, and that was it. In some cases, they brought the communion back to you, so you wouldn't go all the way up. | 28:11 |
| Michele Mitchell | Seriously? | 28:29 |
| Peter E. Dave, Jr. | Seriously. That's right. | 28:29 |
| Michele Mitchell | I mean in terms of offering the chalice? | 28:34 |
| Peter E. Dave, Jr. | Well, at that time, they didn't have the wine in the Catholic church. The chalice to communion, took it out by hand, give and take. | 28:38 |
| Michele Mitchell | But the Black people would be the last to get it? | 28:47 |
| Peter E. Dave, Jr. | Right. Sometimes they would bring it back to you rather than you going up there. You couldn't go up there. There was a rule against that. They had the screens on the buses, which said Colored. Because the back of the seat had little holes in it and this piece of wood had little metal pieces out, and that screen would determine where you sat at on transportation. | 28:50 |
| Peter E. Dave, Jr. | So if they would move that screen from the front to the back as far as it can go, you only had the back seat across there, and that's where Black people sit. Now, if that was full, you stood up. Sometimes they wouldn't let you get on the bus if that was full because then you would be standing over White people. | 29:21 |
| Michele Mitchell | Well, see, no one's told me that. | 29:46 |
| Peter E. Dave, Jr. | No? | 29:47 |
| Roseline Collins Dave | [inaudible 00:29:50]? | 29:47 |
| Peter E. Dave, Jr. | No. It was about the bus being too crowded and— | 29:50 |
| Michele Mitchell | No one's told me that. | 29:53 |
| Peter E. Dave, Jr. | Okay. That back seat was there, and it was up to the discretion of the driver. These buses went through all the streets picking up Black and White because the bus still runs on out here to City Park, which was predominantly a White area, but it came through the housing complex was a predominantly Black area. But if he said, "Well, it was too full," you didn't get on that bus. | 29:53 |
| Michele Mitchell | So you just would wait? | 30:22 |
| Peter E. Dave, Jr. | You would wait till the next bus come along. The movement of the buses was pretty fast, depending on the route. But that screen determined where you sat at. So as Black people or Black boys or Black girls would have it, they got on a bus and it was half full, they would move the screen up to the front as much as possible and sit behind it. Now they could get on that bus and pick up that screen, and you'd have to go behind that screen, behind that piece of wood. | 30:23 |
| Peter E. Dave, Jr. | They call it a screen, but it was a piece of wood with Colored Only or something like that written on it. I don't know. If you get one now, you'll probably have a [inaudible 00:31:08]. That'd really be worth something. But that was the law. They could stop a bus and have you arrested if you didn't abide by that. But there was also some hitting across the head with that piece of wood later on in the '50s. They would fight. Before— | 30:59 |
| Michele Mitchell | With a piece of wood? | 31:24 |
| Peter E. Dave, Jr. | Oh, yeah. You can't make me move. We became more rebellion then, and things started happening. Now, I could have a bright friend, see how intelligent people are by just the color of the skin. They didn't know, and he would sit in front of that screen. They wouldn't know him, whether he was Black or White, and that still exists in New Orleans. It's hard for a lot of people coming from another state— | 31:25 |
| Roseline Collins Dave | I know one person that's working as a White person. | 31:57 |
| Michele Mitchell | Today? | 32:12 |
| Roseline Collins Dave | Today. | 32:12 |
| Michele Mitchell | Today? | 32:12 |
| Roseline Collins Dave | Yeah. Well, these was two brothers, and the girl was working with me. She told me when the two brothers went to apply for the job, they didn't ask them whether they were Black or White. But they looked White, so they just assumed they were White. The one brother is still working as White. | 32:12 |
| Michele Mitchell | To this day? | 32:39 |
| Roseline Collins Dave | He was getting a little upset because his daughter [inaudible 00:32:40] like me and [inaudible 00:32:40]. | 32:39 |
| Michele Mitchell | I see what you mean. I see what you mean. | 32:39 |
| Peter E. Dave, Jr. | Well, we had a lot of segregation among ourselves, especially in New Orleans. | 32:40 |
| Michele Mitchell | Really? Would you be willing to talk about that a little bit? | 32:49 |
| Peter E. Dave, Jr. | Oh, yes, indeed. Yeah. We had what they call the Creole people. You probably heard about that. That was light, bright, and damn near White. They would discriminate against a person her complexion, my complexion, because we were too dark. I could kind of pass the brown bag test. They called it the brown bag test. If you were darker than a brown bag, you had to get back. They had this club, the Autocrat Club on St. Bernard Avenue. | 32:50 |
| Michele Mitchell | What's the club called? | 33:18 |
| Peter E. Dave, Jr. | Autocrat. | 33:19 |
| Michele Mitchell | Autocrat? | 33:19 |
| Peter E. Dave, Jr. | Yeah, like A-U-T-O. Autocrat. It still exists. If you walk in there and saw some of the pictures of some of the past presidents, you should visit there sometimes. It was a discrimination within the race. It really was, until in the '50s and then the '60s. Then they began to take people of different textures or color of skin, but— | 33:21 |
| Roseline Collins Dave | Yes. [inaudible 00:33:52] show you these two pictures. These are two Black boys. | 33:51 |
| Michele Mitchell | For real? | 34:01 |
| Peter E. Dave, Jr. | Yes. | 34:02 |
| Roseline Collins Dave | Yes, they are. | 34:04 |
| Peter E. Dave, Jr. | That's their brother right here that she got in her hand. | 34:04 |
| Roseline Collins Dave | But those are two Black boys. | 34:08 |
| Michele Mitchell | Ma'am, would it be possible? We've got a camera. Could I come back and copy these photographs? | 34:10 |
| Roseline Collins Dave | Sure. | 34:25 |
| Peter E. Dave, Jr. | Oh, we can show you a lot of that. | 34:26 |
| Michele Mitchell | Good pictures? | 34:27 |
| Peter E. Dave, Jr. | That's John and Tony. | 34:30 |
| Roseline Collins Dave | Tony. | 34:30 |
| Peter E. Dave, Jr. | And that's Willie. | 34:30 |
| Roseline Collins Dave | And this is Willie. | 34:30 |
| Peter E. Dave, Jr. | See what happened is that— | 34:32 |
| Michele Mitchell | They're all brothers? | 34:33 |
| Peter E. Dave, Jr. | No. His mother, Willie, took them in and raised them. | 34:34 |
| Roseline Collins Dave | But that was her brother's kids. | 34:40 |
| Peter E. Dave, Jr. | Her brother's children, and they grew up together. | 34:42 |
| Michele Mitchell | Yeah. If I could copy those. I mean whatever photographs you'd would be willing to show me. | 34:48 |
| Roseline Collins Dave | Well, I would like to have his aunt was real fair with blue eyes [inaudible 00:35:01]— | 34:54 |
| Peter E. Dave, Jr. | I have a picture of my grandmother. | 35:00 |
| Michele Mitchell | Do you? | 35:02 |
| Roseline Collins Dave | I have a picture of my grandmother. They say she was tall, fair with long hair. But she married a short, stocky [inaudible 00:35:24], and her parents didn't want to have anything to do with her after she married this short Black man. | 35:03 |
| Peter E. Dave, Jr. | My grandmother was White. I have a picture of her with a turban on her. It's back there. It's a old picture, but turban on her head. I didn't know you was interested in pictures. We could put out some pictures of her. | 35:23 |
| Michele Mitchell | Oh, yeah. | 35:40 |
| Peter E. Dave, Jr. | Alvin Edges came here last week. If he came today— | 35:42 |
| Roseline Collins Dave | If he came today [inaudible 00:35:42]— | 35:42 |
| Peter E. Dave, Jr. | He's a guy, worked with him. | 35:42 |
| Roseline Collins Dave | They don't know what he is either. | 35:42 |
| Peter E. Dave, Jr. | Yeah. But that— | 35:45 |
| Roseline Collins Dave | And what's his name? Sarappa on that— | 35:46 |
| Peter E. Dave, Jr. | Oh, Joe Sarappa who Work in the French Quarter. Yeah. | 35:49 |
| Roseline Collins Dave | They don't know who he is. | 35:50 |
| Michele Mitchell | How do you spell his last name? | 35:54 |
| Peter E. Dave, Jr. | Oh, Sarappa, I'd have to look that up. Get my book. I got a card or something. He works in the French Market. But these are people that discriminated within the Blacks race at that time and still exists. | 35:55 |
| Michele Mitchell | Is it as bad, or is it different? | 36:14 |
| Peter E. Dave, Jr. | It depends on where you're located at. | 36:16 |
| Michele Mitchell | And what do you mean by that? | 36:18 |
| Peter E. Dave, Jr. | Well, I have some neighbors that'll be sitting out on the step later on this evening. They're very fair. Sometimes they look that way just not to speak. And then another time, they might. Their daughter's very, very, very, very fair and married a fellow's your complexion. They moved to Atlanta. They're still upset about it, but— | 36:20 |
| Michele Mitchell | I'm sure they are. | 36:43 |
| Peter E. Dave, Jr. | Not only that, their son had married a fair-complected girl. They separated. Now he's dating a dark-skinned woman. He brings her there. They opened up to them. But deep down in their heart, you have to live it to understand it. I know. I know them. I know them. I've worked at the VA Medical Center for over 20-some years. I retired from there. | 36:45 |
| Michele Mitchell | The VA Medical Center? | 37:10 |
| Peter E. Dave, Jr. | Yeah. The Veterans Administration. At one time, it was called Veterans Administration Hospital, but they changed it. People relocate throughout the United States from one hospital to the other. I know guys that came in from the North within the engineering department, and he had serious problems with knowing a Black girl from a White girl. He couldn't believe some of the girls I said, "She's Black." "Oh, no, man." He couldn't believe that in that time. | 37:12 |
| Peter E. Dave, Jr. | I don't know if he still here. He transferred out from the hospital into another job. I don't know if he's still here or not. But that was a reality of life, discrimination within the race. They call them Creoles. How you hear the word, now don't ask me how you spell it, passe blanc, it meant that you were Black passing for White. | 37:48 |
| Michele Mitchell | Okay. | 38:16 |
| Peter E. Dave, Jr. | "He's nothing but a passe blanc. She's nothing but a passe blanc." That's you're Black by blood, but the texture of your skin, you pass for White. Some people did it for whatever reason. I have a cousin that married a guy who has a hot sausage manufacturing place on St. Bernard Avenue. Her name is Wilkerson. He's light, bright, and damn near White. That is within the family. I have an aunt on my mother's side that was very fair. Everybody has that in their family. A lot of people are not willing to acknowledge it or want to talk about it. | 38:17 |
| Michele Mitchell | This is true. | 39:04 |
| Peter E. Dave, Jr. | They don't want to acknowledge that, and they don't want to talk about it. It's a nature thing because people have a problem with facing the truth, the reality of the truth. A lot of people don't want to deal with that. When you start telling the truth and talking about the truth, you get into a fight with some people, so you just back off from it. But if I walked down there and told Juan that him and his wife was prejudiced, I'd have to fight because they say hello to people or something of this nature. But that's the real deal. | 39:05 |
| Peter E. Dave, Jr. | It still exists, too. It still exists. Here in New Orleans, it still exists. Prejudice exists in a different form now. I can get on a bus and sit beside a White person, but that don't make it don't be prejudiced. It's just that way. Some people, "You prejudiced." "No. Oh, no." Lie. I am. I am prejudiced, and I don't have any problem with admitting that. I am prejudiced because I know what happened to me coming up, and I carry that, although sometimes you got to face the reality of life. | 39:40 |
| Peter E. Dave, Jr. | But for someone to tell me, especially a White person to tell me that they're not prejudiced, that's garbage as far as I'm concerned. | 40:19 |
| Michele Mitchell | Don't believe it? | 40:28 |
| Peter E. Dave, Jr. | I don't believe it. I may look at him and say, "Okay. If that's what you want me to believe about you, okay." But I know deep down you have it. It's in you. You're born with it. There's no way that you can tell me that you're not prejudiced. It's hard for you to tell me—How old is Ingrid? | 40:28 |
| Roseline Collins Dave | 37. | 40:49 |
| Peter E. Dave, Jr. | 37. That's our oldest daughter. She went to St. Joseph's school on Tulane Avenue, and it was an integrated school. She had some friends that was Whiter than the White child. | 40:52 |
| Roseline Collins Dave | I used to always say [inaudible 00:41:10]. I used to say, "Is there any dark-skinned children that go to their school?" I said, "Because all y'all friends is light-skinned." They said [inaudible 00:41:24], but they never did really bring any home. Well, Crystal did, but she didn't. | 41:06 |
| Peter E. Dave, Jr. | Well, they didn't have too many. | 41:23 |
| Michele Mitchell | Crystal's your daughter, too? | 41:30 |
| Peter E. Dave, Jr. | Yeah, Crystal. | 41:30 |
| Michele Mitchell | Crystal? | 41:30 |
| Peter E. Dave, Jr. | We have four children. | 41:35 |
| Roseline Collins Dave | [inaudible 00:41:37]. | 41:35 |
| Peter E. Dave, Jr. | Crystal works up—But they didn't have too many at St. Joseph though. They only have about two classes. | 41:37 |
| Roseline Collins Dave | No. Right. | 41:49 |
| Peter E. Dave, Jr. | The school was 200 and something. | 41:49 |
| Roseline Collins Dave | And something. | 41:49 |
| Peter E. Dave, Jr. | But she had some dark friends. | 41:49 |
| Roseline Collins Dave | Who? | 41:49 |
| Peter E. Dave, Jr. | Ingrid. | 41:49 |
| Roseline Collins Dave | Who? | 41:49 |
| Peter E. Dave, Jr. | I can't remember them by name, but we have some pictures of them when they was—like what you— | 41:51 |
| Roseline Collins Dave | I'm talking about coming here to the house. | 41:57 |
| Peter E. Dave, Jr. | Well, what-you-call-them used to come here. | 41:58 |
| Roseline Collins Dave | Who? | 41:59 |
| Michele Mitchell | Who was in the paper recently got married? You got that— | 42:00 |
| Roseline Collins Dave | She wasn't really. She was about your color. | 42:06 |
| Peter E. Dave, Jr. | Well, I mean you talking about real dark, like Joe? | 42:06 |
| Michele Mitchell | You mean dark, right? | 42:09 |
| Peter E. Dave, Jr. | Black. Shoe color. Shoe soles, stuff like that. | 42:09 |
| Roseline Collins Dave | Right. | 42:12 |
| Peter E. Dave, Jr. | But they didn't have too many of them going to those schools either at that time. You didn't have too many then. We talking about in the '60s. | 42:13 |
| Roseline Collins Dave | [inaudible 00:42:20]. I didn't want them to be— | 42:20 |
| Peter E. Dave, Jr. | Well, they learn a lot— | 42:28 |
| Michele Mitchell | Just being friends with— | 42:28 |
| Roseline Collins Dave | Right. | 42:28 |
| Peter E. Dave, Jr. | Her friend, Lisa, and her went to LSU together as roommates, and Lisa's brighter than them. Lisa Bell is her name. The guy she married was a Black fella, something like them, Damien Bell, who is Warren Bell—I don't know if you know him. He was a Black reporter on the TV. He's a anchorman. He was. He got fired recently. Well, that's Damien Bell's brother. One is darker than the other one. But that exists in families. It causes a lot of problems in families as they get older, black sheep of the family and all this kind of stuff. | 42:29 |
| Peter E. Dave, Jr. | To live that part in a household is different for me because I never had to really live it, other than visiting people of that nature and stuff like that. But it definitely exists then and probably exists more so now because of the time. You would think the people have died and this and all the commotions that went on about this, it would be a little bit more freer, but it's not. It's not. You can see it in the hearts of people. If you've lived it, when you talk with people, you can tell it. | 43:24 |
| Peter E. Dave, Jr. | I can tell it by looking, just really saying, "Good morning. Good evening." Saying this, look at the person. They may answer, but is it really coming in sincere or just a matter of that I should respond because I'm in this particular area or at this event or something like that? But you have to live it to understand it, to know it. | 44:05 |
| Peter E. Dave, Jr. | In religion, the first eight years of school, I went to Catholic school. | 44:41 |
| Michele Mitchell | Which school did you go to? | 44:49 |
| Peter E. Dave, Jr. | St. Peter Claver. It's on St. Philip Street. We were taught by White nuns, and there were White priests that ran the parish. If you saw a Black man that was with a collar turned around, he was considered as a, what, deacon or, no, he was considered something else. Didn't have too many Blacks in the seminary at that particular time. In the religion, to realize that what I call and a lot of people call it now is the Baltimore Catechism days. Those were the days that we were kind of brainwashed into there was only so many saints that was Black and maybe one or two that we knew about. | 44:50 |
| Peter E. Dave, Jr. | As you read into the history of religion now and how many Black people in all phases of life, in war, in peace, and wherever, you had Black people at the forefront. They tried to hold us back. I remember my uncle telling me a story about the Black regimen in World War II that was so forceful and the impact that they had on the war, which was just beginning to become being documented as to what effect they had on the war to try to keep them back behind the lines. | 45:43 |
| Peter E. Dave, Jr. | But if they knew the war was going to kill up so many White folks at that time, they'd have put all the Blacks up there, but they didn't realize that in World War II. That's true. | 46:18 |
| Michele Mitchell | Okay. When you say the conflict, what do you mean by that? | 0:00 |
| Peter E. Dave Jr. | That's what it was called, a Korean conflict. It was not a Korean War. The difference, they lost more lives in the conflict than they did in World War II because everybody in the world wasn't involved in the war, per se. It was confined, and the United States just stuck their nose in there. | 0:05 |
| Michele Mitchell | So where were you? You went to Europe? | 0:27 |
| Peter E. Dave Jr. | I was stationed in England. I was over there for three and a half years, and it was just like they had to be extremely careful over there because of communists and all this kind of stuff. They were cautioning you to that. They had May the 1st, May Day in England, it was suggested to you not to leave the base to go into town because that was a communist day over there. | 0:30 |
| Peter E. Dave Jr. | They found quite a few Americans dead in towns and whatnot that just went on in and they got killed, shouldn't have been there. Wrong place, wrong time. I was fearful of that, so I stayed on the base. I didn't like that at all, but this was in the 50s. In the 50s, the early 50s really, '52, I went in the military and in the military is where integration was first introduced and started. It was around that time when it was being enforced in the military, and I remember some tough times in the military with integration being enforced. | 0:55 |
| Michele Mitchell | What was that like? | 1:57 |
| Peter E. Dave Jr. | That was like, "This is where I am. I have to live with it. How do I deal with this? I know it's here." Make the best of it, just to sum it up. But you go into basic training and here you are, you're living in the same complex with Whites and Blacks. You're sleeping, you're snoring in each other's faces, you're eating in the same halls, and you've got Southern and the Northern Whites that come there. | 2:06 |
| Peter E. Dave Jr. | It's quite an adjustment for everybody to make. It's interesting. I have a picture back there of the command I was under in basic training, and I left from Texas and I went to Portland, Oregon. And then I found out that it was more segregated in that part of the country than it was in the South. | 2:39 |
| Michele Mitchell | Which part of the country? | 3:04 |
| Peter E. Dave Jr. | In Portland, Oregon. | 3:05 |
| Michele Mitchell | Can you explain? | 3:07 |
| Peter E. Dave Jr. | Sure. | 3:07 |
| Michele Mitchell | In what way? | 3:08 |
| Peter E. Dave Jr. | Okay. Here in New Orleans for example, you might have housing, you live right around the corner from White people or next door to some. Maybe eat at the same table, because there wasn't a race issue all the time. It depends on where you went. In Oregon, there was a certain street that Blacks was allowed on. There's very few that lived in the Heights. There was just a Black area, and that was it. It just wasn't mixed. It was separated. | 3:14 |
| Michele Mitchell | Totally separate? | 3:57 |
| Peter E. Dave Jr. | Totally. | 3:58 |
| Michele Mitchell | You're saying that here in New Orleans— | 3:59 |
| Peter E. Dave Jr. | You had mixed in people living— | 4:01 |
| Michele Mitchell | Just here and there? | 4:02 |
| Peter E. Dave Jr. | Right. But there was total, and I said, "Gee, whiz, here I am on the West Coast in Oregon and this really exists. It's still happening," there. I was just fortunate enough to be able to go into some other areas of Oregon and Washington State and parts of California, in my short stay there because I was on a drill team. The times that we stayed there wasn't too long, but we knew it exists. | 4:03 |
| Peter E. Dave Jr. | But then coming back here and leaving here and going to New Jersey to go overseas to spend nine days on the ship. I spent 11 days because I was part of an advanced party that went on the ship to make sure everything was like it was supposed to be and all this kind of stuff to go overseas and spend nine days on the ship, and that's very confined with Whites and Blacks and Hispanics, and all this kind of stuff. | 4:41 |
| Peter E. Dave Jr. | To arrive in England, into a new culture all together. Well, you had to have a mindset, you couldn't just go in. A lot of people went in with a prejudiced attitude and stuff like that. We stayed in huts. I was on the second-largest base in England, Sculthorpe they call it, I don't remember how to spell it, but we stayed in huts. | 5:18 |
| Peter E. Dave Jr. | It gets very cold over there, and our form of heat was a 55-gallon drum on the outside with a tube that fed the fuel to heat on the inside. When that drum ran out of fuel, we were cold. | 5:51 |
| Michele Mitchell | Cold. | 6:07 |
| Peter E. Dave Jr. | And they had a small attachment of a toilet area and a face bowl to the hut. But you had to go out of the hut and go down the hallway to get to the big—what they call the latrine, where all showers were, and face bowl community type thing. I'd seen White boys come in and hit the door and turn around. | 6:09 |
| Peter E. Dave Jr. | They'd say, "I'm not staying in this hut with these niggers." I saw one just—He couldn't get out the door fast enough when a Black guy was in front of him, the guy from Detroit. "What you mean?" Pow, he hit him, and the fight started and they broke up the fight. Both of them went to stockade, which was jail in the military, and spent a week or so, and they came out. He still came to that hut. He turned out to be pretty good after a while. | 6:33 |
| Michele Mitchell | The White man was from Detroit, or the Black man was from Detroit? | 7:09 |
| Peter E. Dave Jr. | Black man was from Detroit. The White boy was from the Alabama, but it worked out pretty good in the military. It's had its problems, because I knew that I was fortunate enough to get ranked and be in charge, wake-up sergeant? | 7:11 |
| Michele Mitchell | A sergeant? | 7:34 |
| Peter E. Dave Jr. | Mm-hmm, they called it Airman First Class. | 7:36 |
| Michele Mitchell | So, you were in the Air Force? | 7:38 |
| Peter E. Dave Jr. | Yes. Airman First Class, and the area I was over, they had privates and corporals working under me. Some of them were White. In fact, I had two White civilian women working under me in England on a base. They hired civilians to work there, and I showed them how to hustle. | 7:39 |
| Peter E. Dave Jr. | They didn't know what the word hustle meant, and the way we would do that, the job that I was in charge of required you had to know how to sew on a sewing machine, sew by hand, and paint, because it was called the leather and fabric section, which we did testing of the aircrafts to have so much fabric on it. Just by looking at it, you couldn't tell, but it had so much fabric on it, and you had to test it to see if it would stand the wind when it went up in the air, in certain parts of it. | 8:06 |
| Peter E. Dave Jr. | That required sewing. If you had a trainer plane, it was all fabric, and you had to replace the wings, you had to take it, strip it down and paint all the ribs of it and re-fabricate it. It was interesting, really. It was just interesting work. But along that came the promotion and demotions of people on the base. So if a guy got promoted, he wanted to get his stripes taken off and put his new stripes on. | 8:42 |
| Peter E. Dave Jr. | So that was where my shop came in, so based on your rank, you got your stripes sewed on. What I did, I would get a percentage of whatever was sewed on, and they did the work. That was the whole eye idea. They did the work and these women would sew stripes on and they loved it, because sometimes I would sneak it in during duty hours, but they would come early in the morning and I controlled the amount and how much we would take on, and fabricate jackets where it was all buttoned in the front. | 9:17 |
| Peter E. Dave Jr. | We would take the zippers and put in them, and make it easier to close up and fasten, and stuff like that. So that's how they learn how to hustle, the extra money on the side. It was cash. We would only do it in English money. We had scripts, they called it scripts. That was the money that you spent on the base. But if you went into town, you spent the pounds and shillings and all this kind of stuff to buy their goods, and that's all we would do it for, pounds and shillings. | 9:59 |
| Peter E. Dave Jr. | Depending on the rank, and the guy might get promoted this week and next month, he's busted back down, got to get all these sewn on, and every uniform had to have those stripes or whatever on it. And even if the guy got busted down to private, he had to get all these stripes taken off, and you just rip them stripes off and fix it so it never looked like stripes was on there, press it and stuff like that. That was hustling. But whenever you had an event going on, there was a lot of drinking going on. You always had fights. Black and Whites fighting each other in the military and outside of the military too, because the Whites have poisoned people's minds about Blacks. | 10:39 |
| Michele Mitchell | So this is towns in England? | 11:30 |
| Peter E. Dave Jr. | Yeah, well, all over England just about. Well, they did that in World War II also because a lot of times, guys went over— | 11:32 |
| Roseline Collins Dave | Didn't I tell you something, let me tell you about my cousin. He went to Germany and he said when he got to Germany, they had never seen a Black person. | 11:50 |
| Peter E. Dave Jr. | He is dark. | 11:53 |
| Roseline Collins Dave | They asked him to take his pants down, so they could see his tail. | 11:56 |
| Peter E. Dave Jr. | Thought he was a monkey. | 11:58 |
| Roseline Collins Dave | For real. | 11:58 |
| Michele Mitchell | For real. | 11:58 |
| Roseline Collins Dave | Still do. | 11:58 |
| Peter E. Dave Jr. | A lot of that went on. Black men would tell you that's what they were looking for over there in Europe especially. Not in the Philippines too much, but in Europe, their minds was partisan to that. But then that experience, that's a whole story, just four years that I spent in the military, but I had a guy, I remember we had went on a flight, we used to have these different flights going different places. We went on a flight one weekend, and we were coming back and we was flying over the North Sea and the weather was bad. | 12:09 |
| Peter E. Dave Jr. | In fact, we lost one engine on the plane and survival time was about maximum two minutes if you had to jump into the water, and it was 11 of us on the plane. We had trouble. So when we made it over the sea, we had to land, we couldn't land at our base, because we had so much snow and the weather was so bad. So we had to go to another base. And when we landed, just as the plane touched the ground, it ran out of fuel. So they had to taxi us into the hangar part and we came out and there was a process you had to go through. | 12:51 |
| Peter E. Dave Jr. | In this process, I met one guy and he and I were good friends here in New Orleans. We went to school together, talking about CB, and we hadn't seen each other in years. So oh, we greeted each other. And then the next morning, we had clearance, we left and went to our base and I didn't see CB no more after that. I knew what base he was on over there, and he knew where I was at. | 13:29 |
| Peter E. Dave Jr. | So there came time they had what they call a early release for the convenience of the government, and you might've got out of service about 30 days ahead of time, and you had to go to this big center in Scotland to be processed to come back home. And I ran into him again. So, we knew it was some way that we could come home together. But we was going to fly home, and while we was in Scotland, well, he was a guy that loved to play cards and gambling. So was I, but when we left from Scotland, we got to Manhattan Beach. | 13:52 |
| Peter E. Dave Jr. | We went around and that was a big center of people going overseas in different parts of Europe and coming back, and we went around to find out where the barracks was at for the people that was going overseas, and we had some English money. So the value of a pound at that time was $2.80. We knew the value of all the currency. So we went around there, we got a bunch of White boys and we sold them English money for double, we were broke, we needed some money. | 14:31 |
| Peter E. Dave Jr. | So we got this money and then we started a card game. Started a card game and we won about—I don't know how much, a few hundred dollars. We went to town and got broke. So we were supposed to ship out and they wouldn't ship us out. So we going to drink and go to town. We got so broke in Brooklyn, and we had to get back to the base because we didn't know what was going to happen the next day. We had to come across the Brooklyn Bridge and we didn't know where we was at. We hailed us a cab and the man brought us all the way back to the base, and we didn't have a penny in our pocket. Got to the gate and ran on the base. Man ain't never got his money. Just he knew it'd be nothing. | 15:02 |
| Peter E. Dave Jr. | We had nothing to pay him with. Once he got to that gate, that was it, and we were scared though because we thought he going to come and look for us. So we didn't ship out for a couple of days after that and we came back together on the train and we met some other guys from here. Oh, did we rock that train, all the way to New Orleans. We didn't want to catch nothing. They didn't want to fly, nothing. In New York, it was big time with selling cars to veterans and all this kind of stuff. They'll sell you anything, trying to get that mustering out money, they called it. | 15:50 |
| Peter E. Dave Jr. | You would get a big sum of money at one time, and they'll try to get that money from you by a down payment on a car and they had balloon notes and all that attached to it, and it was interesting. We came home in 1956. It was cold. I remember when we came from Scotland to Manhattan Beach, non-stop. We were supposed to land on the island in the middle of the ocean somewhere and we couldn't land because of the weather. So, they came straight on. They had women and children on that plane. But we came in, and me, I was so happy to get on the ground, I just stepped down there and I didn't hear the people saying, "Be cautious." | 16:30 |
| Peter E. Dave Jr. | I stepped down there and the snow had melted, then it froze into ice, and then it snowed on top of the ice, and I stepped down there and stepped on that ice. Ba-doom, I mean, I hit that ground so hard. It hurt too. But it was interesting. Life in England was interesting too, because where we were, we were quite a ways from London, we used to catch a train to go in town on the weekends and catching those trains coming back late at night, last train, if you missed the train, you had to walk. And that was detrimental to walk. | 17:19 |
| Peter E. Dave Jr. | I remember I jumped off the train. In England, slow times, the bus never stops. You got to catch it on a run, you hop on a bus, and you pay according to your distance how far you're going. And you tell them, and a person come around, and you tell them where you're going. That's how they charge you, they collect the money. At that time, they did. | 18:03 |
| Peter E. Dave Jr. | So I got off this train before it stopped, and I was running to catch the bus because I know if I missed this bus, it was walking time, that was too far to walk. I ran smack into a post. I mean, hit that post, so I tried to move it, but I got up. I suffered with headaches for days, but I got up. I caught that bus. | 18:30 |
| Michele Mitchell | No, you didn't! | 18:53 |
| Peter E. Dave Jr. | I caught that bus. I said, "Lord, be." When I got over there in England, it was right around the time of the inauguration of the Queen, Queen Elizabeth now. | 18:53 |
| Michele Mitchell | 1953. | 19:06 |
| Peter E. Dave Jr. | So they had a big celebration over there, but it was interesting just being at a train station waiting on the train, and everybody'd be following her train coming in, and she used to sit in the middle of the coach. To go to London and watch the changing of the guards, to go to Piccadilly Circus and see all the garbage that goes on down there, to meet all cultures of the world there. | 19:06 |
| Peter E. Dave Jr. | I thought that was interesting until I went to Cardiff, South Wales and they have the most cultured people there. I was fortunate enough to be able to go to Rome, and I was fortunate enough to be able to go to Amsterdam, Holland. | 19:40 |
| Michele Mitchell | Yeah? | 19:55 |
| Peter E. Dave Jr. | Oh, yeah. Amsterdam was a place something like the United States, it was very clean. Scotland was just out of sight. What people pay big bucks to do, I was able to see for free and things of that nature. I have some pictures of my experience over there, and now and then, I looked at them. I remember, I think about this little short White boy, me and him had some fights and I got a picture of him with a big old [indistinct 00:20:28], he looked like Al Capone. | 19:56 |
| Michele Mitchell | Oh, no! | 20:30 |
| Peter E. Dave Jr. | Sitting in the ballroom. He didn't have a hat on. He was mean sucker, and I hear Black people talking about White boys and they can't do—That's a lie. They got some White fellows out here, hard hitters. I mean, they can do you in if you don't know how to defend yourself, but they're a race of people that will do anything to get ahead in the world. | 20:31 |
| Michele Mitchell | You think so? | 20:55 |
| Peter E. Dave Jr. | I know so. | 20:56 |
| Michele Mitchell | Yeah? | 20:56 |
| Peter E. Dave Jr. | Oh, yeah. Just right there at the VA hospital, I experienced that as a foreman. I became the first Black general foreman at the VA Medical Center in recent times. I supervised Whites. So I know what it's like to be in charge of, and have to deal with that in these times, in these days. Because there was only about five years I retired, I was retired. They will do anything to get ahead. | 21:00 |
| Michele Mitchell | Did you start the job when you came back in like, '57? When did you come back? | 21:36 |
| Peter E. Dave Jr. | '56, when I came back. | 21:37 |
| Michele Mitchell | '56? | 21:37 |
| Peter E. Dave Jr. | Yeah. I meddled around and debated whether I was going back in the service or not, her and I was engaged, and her father worked for the housing authority. | 21:42 |
| Michele Mitchell | Here in New Orleans? | 21:51 |
| Peter E. Dave Jr. | In New Orleans, which is part of the projects, and he was a plaster and a maintenance man. Her brother and I, all we did was hang out. So fun started getting funny, and we had planned on getting married in April, right, Rosie? Yeah, April 7th. So, we decided we was going to get married April 7th, 1956. He decided he was going to get me a job and his son a job for housing authority. So we started working for the housing authority. | 21:53 |
| Michele Mitchell | Really? | 22:21 |
| Peter E. Dave Jr. | That's how we got on with the housing authority. Somebody we knew. He made sure that his son-in-law's going to work, and he used to cut grass for out back Canal Boulevard, and he used to come and get us up on Saturday, make us go cut grass with him and everything. But did that work for the housing authority for a while. We were living in Lafitte projects. | 22:26 |
| Peter E. Dave Jr. | I started going to GI school, because we get paid for doing that, and I guess I just went for the money. In fact, I know I just went for the money. But I was working for them, going to GI school, and somehow they found out I was going to GI school. So they raised my rent based on my income. We found us a house and moved out. | 22:47 |
| Peter E. Dave Jr. | I stayed with the housing authority for about six years, then I quit and came home and told her I quit. She thought I was crazy. Like everybody else that I work with said, "You don't need this job, a secure job like this?" I said "Man makes his own security." If you don't go to work every day, you don't have a job. If I don't come here every day, they going to find me eventually." So you make your own security. I started hustling again. | 23:11 |
| Peter E. Dave Jr. | I was a painter by trade. I can paint. I knew how to paint. So I drove cabs for a while, I drew employment, painted a room here and there. I was on a register with the federal government and I didn't ever go in for a job, because every time they called me, it was a temporary position and I didn't want to leave my good housing job to go for a temporary position. But they called me this time, and I wasn't employed. So I went for a temporary position as a painter, and it was a six-month appointment that lasted from January to June of that year. It was 1966. No, couldn't have been. '63. | 23:35 |
| Peter E. Dave Jr. | The fiscal year ended in June for the federal government at that time. They extended me for a month. Yeah, they gave me an extension for one month and then they let me go. The reason being, they had two permanent painters at the VA at that time. One of them had fell down in the stairwell and broke his heels and he was pending disability. So they had temporary guys working there, and it was two Blacks. | 24:35 |
| Peter E. Dave Jr. | This guy was older than me so they kept him, and then about a month later on, they called me and asked me if I wanted to come back in a temporary position. I played like I wasn't for one day and then I called them and told him I would accept it, and they let this guy go, and they said I took his job but I had more experience than him because I knew how to spraypaint. I can brush paint, and all the phases that they needed. | 25:11 |
| Peter E. Dave Jr. | So I worked there in a temporary position for three years, and the way they would do that, they would give you a six-month appointment and when that time was up, they would extend you, give you another six months, and I was on a register. So, the supervisor at that time was over the carpenters as well as the painters. They were under one supervisor. | 25:42 |
| Peter E. Dave Jr. | So finally, this guy's disability came through. So it left a position open and what they did, they asked me was I interested in primary position. I told them yes. So the name requested me off the register to fill that position, and then being the person that I am, I saw opportunities and this was in the 60s, and integration was beginning to start. Well, before I went there though, I got involved in a couple of marches here in New Orleans. | 26:12 |
| Michele Mitchell | Really? | 26:47 |
| Peter E. Dave Jr. | Mm-hmm. One Sunday, it was a group of us Black guys, we had a club and we decided that we was going to—This was just a club and we decided we was going to give a supper one Saturday on Dry Street. Dry Street was called the Black Canal Street. | 26:49 |
| Michele Mitchell | That's Dry Street? | 27:07 |
| Peter E. Dave Jr. | Dry, D-R-Y. At that time, it was what was known as the Black Canal Street, because they had all the shops and a lot of Black people walked there and did their shopping. We gave this supper and we raised enough money, we decided that we were going to incorporate. In the process of doing this, we decided we were going to open up a restaurant too. We opened up a restaurant, a 24-hour restaurant on Jackson and Dry. At that time is when the movements really started because we used to feed the marchers when they would come in. | 27:08 |
| Michele Mitchell | Really? | 27:48 |
| Peter E. Dave Jr. | Yep. They would come to Jackson and Dry, and we would feed the marchers and whenever we can, if the business could afford it, we would give them some money and whatnot. That was interesting. We had a booming business too, right on Dry Street. And then we expanded and went to a borrowing business down the street from that. That didn't last too long. | 27:50 |
| Peter E. Dave Jr. | And then integration really came in, and the street lost its oomph. But while the movement was going on, we were right there involved. In fact, Collins, Douglas, and Elie were the three Black lawyers that came out of school together. They were located in the same building we were in, but upstairs. They were the ones that incorporated us. Collins is in jail now. Douglas is a magistrate judge, and Elie's still an attorney running around. Collins was a federal judge. He went to jail a couple years ago, for doing something with a White boy dealing in something. | 28:17 |
| Roseline Collins Dave | It was for establishing [indistinct 00:29:13] the black ribbons on the door. | 29:09 |
| Peter E. Dave Jr. | That's when Luther got killed, when Martin Luther King got killed. Yeah, they'd identify that you were a Black person in that house, you had to put something black on the outside, turn your light on and display a black ribbon so you wouldn't touch your house, because a lot of burning was going on. | 29:17 |
| Michele Mitchell | Did they torch a lot of houses? | 29:36 |
| Peter E. Dave Jr. | Not here. Throughout the United States, yeah. They torched a lot of houses, a lot places burned. Oh, yeah. The theme was "Burn, baby, burn," for sure. That was an upset there. Killing King, that was tough. The Kennedy brothers, all this was a tough time for Black people. That was really a tough time. | 29:39 |
| Peter E. Dave Jr. | It went right on though. I don't know. My experience of it all, and to see where things is today, some progress has been made. But we still have a long, long ways to go as a culture of people. We haven't learned how to work together yet. We haven't learned how to respect each other. We haven't learned to prioritize the things that's important in life for each other to support each other. The reality of it all is that you have a certain population of Whites, you have a certain population of Blacks, and you have a certain population of foreigners that comes in and the government moves them in a way that they don't move us. | 30:05 |
| Peter E. Dave Jr. | Black people will say that we can do our own thing, but that's not true. That's a joke because a White man owns a certain percentage, and the population is a certain percentage, we've got 88% White and 12% Black. They're going to always be around. You're not going to ever get rid of them totally, and you need green money to be able to go with it. It's just a long ways off for it to be that way. | 31:16 |
| Peter E. Dave Jr. | We're making some strides in the right direction now. Especially when I see the news that's so depressing these days, not that it hasn't happened before, but it's happened in such a big volume now and media exposure makes it even worse, and it saddens me to see that these type of things happen, like with OJ, Mike Tyson, and I just take quiet time and make a comparison. | 31:49 |
| Peter E. Dave Jr. | Like they say, "Well, OJ, this White girl, what if OJ did the same thing to a Black girl?" Mike Tyson was involved with a Black girl. So you cannot always say it's because it's White and Black. It's just the person and what makes them do these kind of things. The struggle, the fame, I think it's not being able to deal with the fame that comes, the money, the power. It's just not being able to do it. I look at Mandela, he's able to do it because he's been around for such a long time, and he's cool with it. He can handle it very well. | 32:22 |
| Peter E. Dave Jr. | So when you get rich quick, people pray they win the lottery and they win it and they can't deal with it after. They suffer more than when they had it, when they get rich. You got to be careful what you pray for, because you just might get it, and then you can't deal with it. But overall, I could sit here probably and talk to you for hours and days, and maybe not repeat myself on any one particular subject because life experiences that I have had, that we've been through in schools, all our children went to integrated schools and their first [indistinct 00:34:03] their choice. We have four children, three girls and one boy. | 33:15 |
| Roseline Collins Dave | One of those three was the first Black girl that had graduated from Virginia. | 34:11 |
| Peter E. Dave Jr. | Yeah, we had a lot of firsts. | 34:11 |
| Michele Mitchell | Really? | 34:11 |
| Peter E. Dave Jr. | Yeah, we have a lot of firsts in the family. | 34:15 |
| Michele Mitchell | I see! | 34:17 |
| Peter E. Dave Jr. | I was the first permanent Black painter at the VA Medical Center. First permanent Black painter. Not the first painter, but the first permanent Black painter. That was the subject I was on. I made a separation. I was the reason for the separation between the carpenter and painters. What I did is I saw the future there, and I pushed to the point that they needed more painters, just in order to maintain the building properly and keep it looking good. | 34:26 |
| Peter E. Dave Jr. | So I was able to convince them that they needed more painters. In the process, I also convinced them that it would be too much for one man to supervise, that they needed somebody to supervisor painters. So then I became a leaderman, but I still had to report to the carpenter foreman who was White. But I was a leaderman, so I didn't mind because I had a plan, I knew what direction I was going in. | 34:53 |
| Peter E. Dave Jr. | I had a plan. So they brought in some temporary painters, and the White guy that was a permanent painter, it was him and I, he was White, he was older than me, and he went out sick and he came back and he saw some changes and then I was supervising him. | 35:21 |
| Michele Mitchell | Really? | 35:40 |
| Peter E. Dave Jr. | Yeah, I was supervising him. And then he was eligible for retirement, so he went on and retired. So then in the process, I was still working, and then they made all the leadermen supervisors, and then I established a paint shop with four permanent painters and worked from there. I worked as a supervisor for X number of years. I can't remember. I got it all on my resume, but then an opportunity presented itself for a general foreman. | 35:40 |
| Peter E. Dave Jr. | I was the first Black general foreman that they had at the VA Medical Center. But when I became general foreman, they had bets going around in the hospital of who was going to be the foreman. | 36:16 |
| Michele Mitchell | Now, what year is this? | 36:26 |
| Peter E. Dave Jr. | Oh, I got to look at my resume. | 36:30 |
| Michele Mitchell | Yeah? | 36:32 |
| Peter E. Dave Jr. | Yeah. | 36:41 |
| Michele Mitchell | In the 60s? | 36:41 |
| Peter E. Dave Jr. | No, it was at least mid-70s. | 36:41 |
| Michele Mitchell | They had bets going around? | 36:41 |
| Peter E. Dave Jr. | Yeah, well, this was just private bets. They had several guys that was in positions to become the foreman, the general foreman. Most of them were White, had two of us that was in it. I got the position, I was told that I had the position before the chief engineer went on vacation. He did interviews and whatnot and at lunchtime he called me and announced that I had gotten the position, and it was just like throughout the hospital. | 36:42 |
| Michele Mitchell | I bet. | 37:13 |
| Peter E. Dave Jr. | Yeah, it was quite a transition. That was some tough times for me too, because I had to make a separation of working with these guys and becoming a foreman over all the maintenance department, being a Black man, making a transition out of the white uniform into coat and tie and all that kind of stuff. | 37:15 |
| Peter E. Dave Jr. | The change of people in higher positions, and people don't know all I went through, but it was quite an ordeal. That's when I began to find out the true culture of people and what they would do to get ahead and how they would tell you, including your own. I've experienced that in Black men and well as White men, Black women. A woman called up here and you remember the one that called up here and Dolly answered the phone? | 37:40 |
| Roseline Collins Dave | [indistinct 00:38:17]. | 38:14 |
| Peter E. Dave Jr. | Yeah, she was carrying me through some changes at the hospital, but she was finally leaving. She was supposed to leave because she had a mental problem, slightly mental. She might be crazy by now, but to distinguish the truth, and when people was talking to you about different events that happened and how the White guy, I'm his general foreman, I'm his foreman at work, see him out in the street and how he just turn his head, don't know you with his family. | 38:18 |
| Peter E. Dave Jr. | I realized I became the topic of White folks' suppertime, when they was getting ready to eat supper, I was their topic of discussion and all this. I knew this, but it was quite an ordeal too, being the first Black man. But it was a proud thing for me to leave there because when I left, there was a female Black engineer that took my place. She was a graduate. I was not a graduate engineer because I wasn't fortunate enough to be able to go to school. | 38:57 |
| Peter E. Dave Jr. | My kids was, but she's still there at [indistinct 00:39:37] & Lombard, she's still there as a female Black engineer, and running the show. She used to call me quite a bit when I left to get some insight on some guys, and what kind of moves they would make, and I'd talk with her and tell her who to be careful of and what they were doing. She would see me and thank me, because this was a true thing, she couldn't understand how my insight was so great, to know all these things was going to happen. But it happened that way. | 39:32 |
| Peter E. Dave Jr. | I used to enjoy the fact of salespeople calling or anybody about anything. They would connect me to them, and I'd set up an appointment for them, and they would come to my office. After being directed to my office, come in and see my face and say they was in the wrong place. That's today. That's today. That's not been too long ago. In the 80s, it happened. It really happened, right at the VA Medical Center. | 40:07 |
| Michele Mitchell | Just like walked out of the office, because they knew that they couldn't have the right place? | 40:38 |
| Peter E. Dave Jr. | Right, because of me. But then they would go down and they would check and say, "Well, that's the man. That's his name." "Who you looking for? That's his name." Now if they wanted to, they could come and deal with me or leave, and if they left, well, it's just too bad. | 40:42 |
| Peter E. Dave Jr. | I made that decision and I had no problems with telling them about the decision I made. I was forced in a lot of cases to do things that I didn't want to do. But the thing that kept me there was a time investment, because opportunities opened up for me that I could've left there and went to, but I had so much time invested there, it wasn't feasible for me to leave. So, opportunities are still open, and then opportunities are always around the corner. You just have to keep turning corners and it's there. | 41:00 |
| Peter E. Dave Jr. | Everybody has an opportunity. Now whether they take advantage of it or not, but it's always around the corner. That's a fact. It's always around the corner. You just got to keep turning the corner and you're going to find that opportunity there. Now it may not be the opportunity you looking for, but there is one there and you pass that one up, you keep on turning corners until you find another one there. Guarantee it. It's just like an opinion. Everybody has one. | 41:34 |
| Peter E. Dave Jr. | That's true. That's true. Everybody has an opinion, and they're going to express it if they want to somebody. We all have opinions. How we look at it, who we are, we have an opinion. We have an opinion sometimes, and don't really realize that we're having one, expressing our own opinion. Attitudes, we all got attitudes. So if you get attitude with me, I can get an attitude with you. I mean, those are free things. They're free. Everybody don't realize, "I don't care about you." That's your attitude. That's your opinion. So, I get the same thing. No problems at all. | 42:05 |
| Michele Mitchell | That's how you've gone through life? | 42:45 |
| Peter E. Dave Jr. | Oh, yeah, but to seek to experience some things, White man teaching Black people and he's never lived it, it's hard for me to digest sometimes. It depends on the setting. You're never too old to learn. You're never too old to gain experience, and you're never too old to realize where you can learn from. Because I'm older than you don't mean I can't learn from you. I learn from my grandchildren. | 42:48 |
| Peter E. Dave Jr. | I really learn from them, and if I give them my undivided attention and pay close attention to them, I can learn something from them. How to deal with other children their age if I encounter them, I learned from my children how to deal with—That becomes a transition in life, because you have children and when they grow up to be adults, you got to make a transition to deal with them as adults rather than as children. Although they're still your children, you still got to make that transition, and that's part of life. | 43:27 |
| Peter E. Dave Jr. | Everybody don't do that. You got to realize that. So it's very difficult to realize that. The one thing I'm a strong believer in is sharing my experience with other people, because I didn't do it all to keep to myself and take my grades. So letting everybody, if I can teach somebody how to paint or share my experience with them, if I can teach them how to balance a checkbook, and just teach. That's all. Just show them how. | 44:03 |
| Peter E. Dave Jr. | If I can tell you what you're doing is wrong, whether you want to accept it or not, at least I've told you. We have a son that we tell him all the time. He's 29 years old, we tell him all the time, "Don't do that." He's began to listen after 29 years. He's just began to listen sometimes. Sometimes, but not all the time. He just wears me out. But when I get tired, I tell him—All our children depend on us for certain things. We have one in Atlanta, one in Jackson, and one here. The one here stayed in Maryland for five years. | 44:45 |
| Michele Mitchell | Wow. | 45:26 |
| Peter E. Dave Jr. | She came back and she realized that she needed a degree to make it in this world. So she came back, and we supported her as a student. She'll be graduating next year, and it is something because when you get away from school, go into corporate world for five years and then come back and go to school, that takes quite a bit to be able to do. She went through a lot of changes. | 45:28 |
| Peter E. Dave Jr. | She put us through some too when she came back. She don't realize it yet, but we'll tell her about it later on. They always call my wife and want to know how to cook. We have our youngest daughter getting married in October, and she just left here this weekend, and running me raggedy, need all my time, because she assumed that I was going to do something. Not really discussed it, but assumed. She just thought it was automatic I was supposed to do that. | 45:54 |
| Michele Mitchell | Now, your oldest— | 46:23 |
| Michele Mitchell | My father had told me that you have to learn how to be patient and that you just can't expect thing to happen in that way. | 0:02 |
| Peter E. Dave Jr. | Oh, okay. | 0:10 |
| Michele Mitchell | And I mean, I think that sometimes, it's difficult to realize that things just aren't going to happen. | 0:10 |
| Peter E. Dave Jr. | Oh, that's right. Okay, I was a person at one time that didn't say no, didn't like to say no. "Yeah, I'll do that for you, [indistinct 00:00:21]." And then you start saying, "No, I'm not going to do that in your time, I'm going to do it in my time," that's hard to accept. My children, it's hard for them to accept that because I was doing it so much. "Wait 'till I get 30 years old, tell me no," things of that nature. But it's a real thing. | 0:13 |
| Peter E. Dave Jr. | When they all left, in fact, none of them have been gone from this house because we were forced to buy this house, so to speak. Because where we was living at, people asked for their house. And this appeared in a paper and it came up and we looked at it and it was an old shack, livable but not—And we just bought it, took a chance on it. Just I'll take a chance in a minute, me. Didn't have enough money for the act of sale, borrowed that. Need $150. It was $150 short. Borrowed that money, right on faith, still do, still do. | 0:46 |
| Peter E. Dave Jr. | My daughter's nervous as feline worried about how this wedding going to be paid for. She's going to be taken care of, don't worry about it. Guarantee it's going to be taken care of. When time come—everything will be not perfect, but majority of it's going to be right. | 1:26 |
| Peter E. Dave Jr. | And we working here, her father and I. And we only have two tenants next door here. | 1:39 |
| Michele Mitchell | Oh, really? | 1:45 |
| Peter E. Dave Jr. | Yeah. | 1:46 |
| Michele Mitchell | Oh. | 1:46 |
| Peter E. Dave Jr. | There's a tenant over there. My father-in-law was the first tenant. He lived to be 92. 92 years old and he worked up until he was 91 before he started failing health. The first time he ever went to the doctor, when he 70. | 1:47 |
| Michele Mitchell | He worked until he was 91? | 2:00 |
| Peter E. Dave Jr. | Oh, yeah, around here, around here. | 2:04 |
| Speaker 3 | [indistinct 00:02:06] just about five years. | 2:06 |
| Peter E. Dave Jr. | He helped me build this house, remodeled it, just about, yeah. | 2:08 |
| Michele Mitchell | Because, I mean, I like the way they exposed brick. That's beautiful— | 2:13 |
| Peter E. Dave Jr. | That's not real. Let me tell you something. Well, you see the bricks outside? | 2:18 |
| Michele Mitchell | Mm-hmm. | 2:22 |
| Peter E. Dave Jr. | That was a fireplace in this room. | 2:22 |
| Michele Mitchell | Really? | 2:24 |
| Peter E. Dave Jr. | It was a fireplace, used to be a shotgun house all the way back. But we on a key lot, so we had room to go further, so I—That door there, they used to have a porch that would run all the way back for the house. So, we extended the walls out on that porch on both side. | 2:25 |
| Peter E. Dave Jr. | If you don't mind, I could just walk you through and show you. This is four-bedroom house with two baths in it. | 2:45 |
| Michele Mitchell | Really? | 2:50 |
| Peter E. Dave Jr. | Mm-hmm. | 2:51 |
| Michele Mitchell | Hold that for a minute? | 2:51 |
| Peter E. Dave Jr. | Sure. | 2:52 |
| Michele Mitchell | Yeah. | 2:56 |
| Peter E. Dave Jr. | Well, yeah, nobody tell you about that part of it? | 2:56 |
| Michele Mitchell | No. | 2:56 |
| Peter E. Dave Jr. | Oh, it's slippery [indistinct 00:02:59] go down. Just hold this. | 2:56 |
| Michele Mitchell | [indistinct 00:03:02] time. They used to—Can you repeat that? | 2:56 |
| Peter E. Dave Jr. | Okay. | 2:56 |
| Michele Mitchell | Because I don't [indistinct 00:03:06]. | 2:56 |
| Peter E. Dave Jr. | Say, from Canal Street, that song? | 3:06 |
| Michele Mitchell | Mm-hmm. Yeah, it's going. | 3:12 |
| Peter E. Dave Jr. | Okay. From Canal—On North Claiborne, from Canal, really, from Canal to St. Bernard, huh? | 3:17 |
| Speaker 3 | Right. | 3:21 |
| Peter E. Dave Jr. | Canal to St. Bernard was a neutral ground that was a treed area, nothing but trees that divided each side of the street. And that area was predominately where the Blacks had their carnival at during Mardi Gras, Mardi Gras day, until integration came in. | 3:22 |
| Peter E. Dave Jr. | You know where the municipal auditorium is, where they talking about putting temporary casino? | 3:51 |
| Michele Mitchell | Yeah. | 4:00 |
| Peter E. Dave Jr. | All the parades used to break up there, all the balls were held there, all the carnival krewes was there. But you could be on the route, Blacks and Whites on the route. But they had a common route. I used to go Uptown and follow them all the way down to the Arthurian. And the Zulus, you probably heard about how they parade. They had no route. They would just go on in any kind of route, they would just go on any kind of street. They would march all day, all night, every night the Zulus [indistinct 00:04:40] 'till they got organized. Zulu Club is not too far from here. | 4:02 |
| Michele Mitchell | [indistinct 00:04:43] Zulu Club. | 4:33 |
| Peter E. Dave Jr. | Yeah. They got organized, pretty organized. One time, when Louis Armstrong was king, he was all on St. Ann Street and everything. And Orleans Avenue, there's still has a neutral ground and everything. But they had more trees than they have from the [indistinct 00:05:18]. | 4:58 |
| Michele Mitchell | Where is it? | 5:17 |
| Peter E. Dave Jr. | I got this, right here. This is picking up. This thing picks up, I know that. From about Broad to [indistinct 00:05:27] Arthurian on Orleans Avenue, all that was just predominantly Black carnival area, in this downtown area. Well, everybody would come down here because Indians—In fact, that was it, that was just it. They had all the bars, all the clubs, and everything was in that area, the downtown area. And you had Uptown, different areas up that way. | 5:17 |
| Michele Mitchell | I've been wondering about that because nobody talks about when you were having Mardi Gras or anything like that. Nobody talks about going down to the French Quarter for that. So, they'd go to this area you're talking about? | 5:54 |
| Peter E. Dave Jr. | Well, the Blacks didn't go in the French Quarter during the Carnival season, other than to pass through. But that was during segregation time, that was where we migrated at, right there. You didn't see too many Whites come in that, too, neither. No. | 6:03 |
| Peter E. Dave Jr. | They never you experience about the Jim Crow days where we used to—in the project. City Park bus would pass on Orleans Avenue, coming from City Park going to Canal Street. At night, you would get on Orleans Avenue and the windows'd be up because they didn't have no air conditioning on the bus or nothing like that. It'd be hot. And we'd just decided, we would throw rocks and bricks at the buses, how many White folks we could hit. And they would stop the bus and get off to see. Couldn't see us because we had our fun. We'd get all in the bushes up against the building. They'd see nothing, and they'd be looking. But he wouldn't leave that bus too far, call the police. [indistinct 00:07:14]. | 6:21 |
| Peter E. Dave Jr. | We did some hell of a things though. Policemen [indistinct 00:07:26]. I went to jail one night with some friends of mine because we was standing on the corner of the drug store right there and they thought we was trying to break in steal something. | 7:18 |
| Michele Mitchell | [indistinct 00:07:40]. | 7:37 |
| Peter E. Dave Jr. | 2:00 in the morning. Couldn't tell them nothing, [indistinct 00:07:47]. Our parents called for us, they said we wasn't in there—'till shift change. Police came and got us out. | 7:46 |
| Speaker 3 | [indistinct 00:08:03]. | 8:03 |
| Peter E. Dave Jr. | I'll cut it off. | 8:03 |
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