Brenda Quant interview recording, 1994 July 02
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| Kate Ellis | Will you say your name, and when you were born? | 0:05 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Brenda Quant. I think that's right. It's so hot, I don't know. I was born in 1946, in New Orleans. | 0:06 |
| Kate Ellis | And then, let's just see, when this tape comes up. | 0:18 |
| Speaker 1 | What are we doing? | 0:20 |
| Kate Ellis | Okay. And this is Kate, on July 2nd. | 0:25 |
| Kate Ellis | Again, this is July 2nd. This is Kate Ellis, July 2nd, 1994, with Brenda Quant. So do you want to start, by just telling me about your background, growing up in New Orleans? Were you born in New Orleans, or— | 0:28 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Yeah, yes. I was born in New Orleans, in '46, and I have one brother who's older, about a year and a half older. And I guess, some significant things about my family might be that my father was Baptist, very staunch Baptist, and my mother was just equally as staunch a Catholic. And at that time, the Catholic Church was strict about marriages between Catholics and non-Catholics. My father actually had to make some kind of vow, that any children that they would have, would to be baptized Catholic, and raised Catholic. So he did agree to that. And then, it was four years before they had any children. So this was the real telling time. When that time arrived, he had his doubts. In fact, he really wanted my brother to be baptized in his church, which was a Baptist church that he actually helped to found. | 0:49 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | My parents actually came close to splitting up over that. As a child, I heard about this, and I just found it to be kind of difficult to imagine that—Well, everything about it was difficult to imagine. But anyway, we both ended up being baptized Catholic. And then, for the time, until my father died in '52, I was really kind of confused about religion, because we went to both churches. We went to his church, which was Law Street Baptist Church, which, his name is still on the cornerstone here. | 2:15 |
| Kate Ellis | Yeah. | 3:06 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | It was an all-Black church, and we were all welcomed in it. My mother didn't go to church, but she participated in all their activities, like the Easter egg hunt, and she dyed a jillion eggs. Everybody pretty much treated her like she belonged. They called us Sister Dyer. So we felt welcome and comfortable with that church. But we lived in the Ninth Ward, and the nearest Catholic church was St. Mary of the Angels, which was a White church. So we would sometimes go to early Mass with my mother, and then come home and have breakfast, and then go to my father's service. | 3:11 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | But at St. Mary of the Angels, all the Black people who came there were ushered into the back pews. So my early memories of that church are of being in the back, and my mother every now and then, picking me up, so I could see the priest, and not really being aware yet that there was something really wrong with this. It was a fact of life, kind of, even at that early age. But I wasn't old enough quite yet to see how blatant and racist and stupid it was. It wasn't like they threatened us, or they issued written rules. It was just understood, that if you came to this church, and you were Black, you had to sit back here. So it was a real different experience, going to church with each parent. | 4:05 |
| Kate Ellis | Did you ask? Well, maybe you'll get to this. But did you, at some point ask, why there were these differences between these two churches? | 5:21 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | No, I never did. I didn't really become inquisitive about how society was run, until I was older, until I was actually about in the fourth grade. Could I use that to family, then? | 5:30 |
| Kate Ellis | Yeah. | 5:51 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | When I was in the fourth grade, that was the year of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, and it was our fourth grade teacher, Miss Matthews, who told us about it. And this was the first time that I could recall a teacher telling us anything like that. To me it, was like the adults kind of, "This is the world you're born into, so make the best of it. Get A's and B's, and be on time." And rarely did they talk about race in the classroom. So this was an eye-opening experience for us, I think, for everybody in the classroom, that people were actively trying to change their position in society. | 5:56 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Actually, I'm writing something about that, about the fourth grade, and the things that I learned during that year, that had to do with all of those things. Of course, at home, I can't remember my father talking about race very often, but I was only six when he died. But at home, it was always a topic of conversation. It just came naturally to conversation, because it was so pervasive. We lived in a neighborhood that was racially mixed, and had a housing project, right adjacent to the block we lived in. | 6:55 |
| Kate Ellis | What was that? | 7:48 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | The Florida Project, which is now all-Black, but it was all-White, up until Hurricane Betsy. Hurricane Betsy was '65, and that's when they started to move Black people into that project. And it seemed, I don't, I can't find any evidence of a plan, but it seemed as if once the schools were desegregated in that neighborhood, more and more White people moved out of it. Evidently, a decision was made, at some point. I don't know, I can't swear to that. But there was a brief period when the project was actually integrated. And gradually, there were fewer and fewer Whites, until they were all gone. That was over a period of some years, I guess. | 7:49 |
| Kate Ellis | What was it about Betsy that made that, that created that change, that created the population movement, in a sense, or— | 8:54 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Well, I think it was, Betsy came at a time when people were looking to move. We had neighbors next door who were White. In fact, on our side of the street, it was almost a checkerboard. It was almost, Black, White, Black, White. But our next door neighbors, the Hemelts, we were very close neighbors. I babysat the children. Mrs. Hemelt saved my brother from getting sucked into the washing machine ringer, when he was little. You know, those washing machines, you put the clothes? | 9:03 |
| Kate Ellis | Yes. | 9:46 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Well, he, I don't know what, he got caught. He got his arm caught, and it was about to eat him alive. At that time, there was no fence between the houses, and she heard him screaming before my mother did, and she got to him first. And she knew what to do. Mr. Hemelt used to go fishing. My father fished too, but after he died, neighbors used to give people fish, and Mr. Hemelt often gave us fish. | 9:47 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | His brother was a baker, and used to bring day old pastries, and they'd always give us some. One of the kids, I can't remember now, which one, they were younger than me, but one of them got so attached to me, from being his babysitter and neighbor, that he called everybody in my house Brenda. | 10:24 |
| Kate Ellis | Really? | 10:46 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Anybody, any strange person going into my house. "Brenda." But then, in 1960, the schools were integrated, the public schools were integrated, and then, two years later, the Catholic schools. And one day, I was out in the backyard, and I heard the same little boy having a fight with another White child. From growing up in that neighborhood, I knew White children called each other nigger when they ran out of names, when they couldn't think of another filthy thing to call you. Nigger, or nigger lover. This little boy called his friend, they called each other names back and forth, and then, the little Hemelt boy said, "Well, at least I don't go to school with niggers." | 10:48 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | I was in the backyard, and he didn't see me me, but I stood there, and just waited until he turned to go inside, and saw me. And he just looked embarrassed, and ran in the house. I was, by that time, in tenth or eleventh grade, I don't know. He was still a little kid, maybe 10. So I think what happened was, Betsy made a lot of people think about moving. Or I think school integration, actually, made people think, White people think, about fleeing the city. | 11:47 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | And Betsy was a great impetus to get out of the Ninth Ward, because they had us to believe back then that the Ninth Ward was the most flood prone area of the city, which, that isn't really true. Now we know, because every area is flooded. So a lot of the Whites in that block moved in '65 and '66, after Betsy. I remember the last White person who moved, actually, was a lady who lived across the street, Miss Mary, we called her. A very nice woman, she was always kind to us. And she came to tell us goodbye, the day she was moving out, and she cried, and my mother cried, which is very unusual, not a all out crying fit, but she had tears. | 12:35 |
| Kate Ellis | Which she didn't often display? | 13:36 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | No, no. I tried to play it down, at the time. It was the '70s. No, it was close to the '70s, I guess. But it was at a time when Black nationalism was gaining popularity, and it denied any kind of real affection between Whites and Blacks. But I really genuinely did like this woman. I just tried to deny it at the time. Actually, I learned some things from her that I guess I wouldn't otherwise know, about what it is to be White. Because she took some abuse for being friends with the Black people in the block. | 13:40 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Because I guess I should back up and tell you, we had neighbors who didn't speak to us. And we also had neighbors who would speak to us in the block, but not away from the block, not on the bus, not if you ran into them on Canal Street, or anywhere in town. In fact, she may have been the only one who didn't do that, now that I think about it. I think she was the only one who didn't do that. But she used to get me or one of the other girls my age in the block to help her clean and set her hair. | 14:34 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | I was setting her hair one day, and she told me, she had a group of friends that she played cards with once a week. She told me how hurt she had been a couple nights before, when the woman had came to her house, to play cards. They were talking about another woman who was not there, who had moved into a neighborhood that was a racially mixed neighborhood. One of them said, whatever her name was, let's say Sally, "Why would Sally want to move into a neighborhood like that?" And another woman said, "Well, she must be like Mary, she must like niggers." | 15:27 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | The thing about that was, she told this to me, and she expected sympathy from me, and I didn't have it to give. It just was impossible for me to relate to what she had said, from her point of view. Because I had just been so insulted and put down. It took years for me to see, or to try to see, I don't think I could ever see, but to try to see that from her point of view, it was so hurtful for her to be told something like that. But this is the kind of thing that Black people don't ordinarily hear. | 16:18 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | You don't ordinarily hear what it's like to be a White person who has Black friends, and exactly how the abuse is verbalized. And it's happened to me a couple of times since then. Once, when I was hospitalized, this was many years later, and I was in one of those double rooms. The other patient was a young girl of, she was a high school student of about 16, very, very sweet child. And she was White, her name was Jenny. And her family would come and go, and they would always speak. It's normal for strangers to speak here. You wouldn't walk into a hospital room, and walk past the other person, without saying good morning, or acknowledging the person somehow. So they were cordial. And I met all her family, her parents, her grandmother. | 17:11 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | But anyway, one day, she seemed depressed, and I kept asking her what was wrong, and she kept saying nothing, and I kept pressing. And finally, she said, her family had asked her, how could she'd stand to be in the same room with a nigger? They wanted to get her moved to another room. And she was almost in tears. It had the same effect, this jolt. But then, I was in my late twenties, I guess, and she was such a sweet child, I couldn't be upset with her. And I could, almost, really see it from her viewpoint. | 18:27 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | But that's the kind of thing, that we just don't often get the opportunity to hear that. I think it's something that in some way, should be recognized, that there is a tremendous price that White people pay when they're not racist. Another source that I think people could learn it from is a book that I read some years ago, The Shadow of Little Rock, by Daisy Bates? I wrote it on your list that I was preparing for you. | 19:25 |
| Kate Ellis | Thank you. | 20:04 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | The book is about the Little Rock School system desegregation, and the last chapter has a title like, The Martyrs of Little Rock, or something like that. So I fully expected the chapter to be about what the Black people suffered. And what it was about was, the police chief at the time who, when the law changed, tried to obey the law, and a White minister who did the same. The police chief tried to protect the children who were entering the school. He took abuse for that from everybody, the press included. And this minister, same thing. | 20:05 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | He actually was one of the people who escorted the children, when they walked to school. The minister's son killed himself. The chief of police killed himself and his wife. And I never knew this until I read that book. This is not something that was really publicized. Even today, people don't know about that. But again, by the time I read the book, it was just a book I found on a shelf at my brother's house, that somebody had left. And it's a very well-written book. But by that time it was in the mid-'70s, and all this had happened in the late '50s. | 21:05 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | It made me aware, once again, there is a price to pay. If you are White, and you live in this society, and you resist racism, there is a price to pay. And I think that Black people don't understand that. I understand why we don't understand it, too. But I think, by and large, we just don't see that. And I know we don't. And I'm not suggesting we do try to accept excuses people make, for not doing the right thing, because it's always up to the individual to do the right thing. | 22:08 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | But I think we don't recognize that it takes something on their part, that we don't have any clue about. I think the only thing that we could relate it to, I mean, as Black people, would be prejudice and hatred against homosexuals. That's the only place that I've really seen it, where Black people feel justified in prejudice. I don't mean, in a general sense, that this is a general Black attitude, but I watched a hearing on cable. They televised the City Council hearings, and there was an ordinance introduced by two Council members against discrimination of gays and lesbians in housing, employment, et cetera, in the city. It didn't pass. | 22:58 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | But so many of the people who came to speak against it were Black. On the other hand, the two Council people who introduced it were also Black, but a lot of Black ministers, it was a number of people who, and felt so totally justified, to be able to quote the Bible, and make a case against extending equal rights to homosexuals, that I began to see it as a kind of parallel, not an exact parallel. But it came up nationwide, when the Clinton thing, the gays in the military. And again, there were Black Congressmen, who I thought took a really anti-human rights stand. | 24:09 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | On the other hand, there was a Congressman, whose name I can't remember, a Black Congressman who said to his fellow Black Congresspeople, "You ought to be ashamed." I mean, he used those words. "You know what discrimination is like. You ought to be ashamed." But I think it's that thing, the fear that people have. "What will others think of me, if I go against what I think is the majority here, and stand up for these people? They'll think I'm one of them." | 25:07 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | I think it's a parallel to how White people feel, when they try not to be racist. They begin to feel they don't fit. I think the homophobia brings out the same kind of fears in people, that I won't belong, where I know my world. I'll be cast into their world. I'll be an outsider. So fear is, it comes down to what people's fears are. What will happen to them? What will people think? And sometimes, the people whose opinions you fear, their opinions don't even count. You wouldn't respect them, normally, but yet, people let themselves be driven by that fear. | 25:49 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | I don't know what they call it, but there's a side to every movement, that has a psychology to it, that I think we don't really recognize, that it's just not that easy for people to change. And they're going to be pulling things from all aspects of their life with them, when they make a change, and won't be able to go back, in a sense, maybe become isolated. That's when you really have to look at the people we have called leaders in the movement. Like King, who was isolated, ultimately was murdered, but these are the costs. These can be the costs. So we just need to weigh all of that, and look at all of that. I think I was talking about the—Oh, Betsy, and that. | 26:48 |
| Kate Ellis | Well, yeah. And about the White neighbors who moved away. | 28:12 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Yeah. So by the time Miss Mary moved, she was the last one. That was 1970. I remember, because it was the year Ted moved here. | 28:14 |
| Kate Ellis | Oh, moved— | 28:26 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | To New Orleans. | 28:27 |
| Kate Ellis | Oh. | 28:28 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Yeah, it was 1970. So she held out. She really didn't want to leave. | 28:29 |
| Kate Ellis | Why did she leave? | 28:39 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Because she was the only one. She just became a minority in her— | 28:40 |
| Kate Ellis | You know something? I mean, anything you said has struck me, but one that just stands out at this moment, is that when you started off, you said that you lived in an integrated neighborhood. I mean, what you said, a checkerboard. And it sounds like you had, obviously your family, and you had White friends in the community. And I've heard other people of color down here say the same thing. But you also said that these people, some of these people didn't speak to you. | 28:47 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Right. | 29:17 |
| Kate Ellis | Like others didn't. Some didn't speak to you outside of the community. And I'm curious now, it makes me want to go back to all the other people who told me that they had Whites living in the neighborhood, and they were friendly with them, if they sort of neglected to mention the folks who— | 29:18 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | It could be that they forgot. Because it was almost understood in our block, on this side we lived on, there were Blacks and Whites. Across the street was all White. That's where Miss Mary lived, across the street. There were children that we played with, who were White. There were some older boys, that we were very close with, that were older than my brother and I. There was one in particular, I remember, named Bobby, who lived directly across the street. And I was crazy about Bobby. He was an adult, really, he was a young adult. It wasn't like we played together. | 29:33 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | It was just that we would, when we'd see him outside, we'd run across the street and harass him to death, ask him questions, and, "Where you going, Bobby? What you doing, Bobby?" But he was nice, he was patient with us. And my mother told me one day, that Bobby had told his father, that when he grew up, he wanted to be like my father. He admired my father so much. Well, anyway, I remember that. And I remember that one day, I ran out of the house when I saw Bobby, and I waved, and I yelled, "Hey, Bobby." He turned, and then he turned away, never spoke to me again. I don't know what happened. | 30:31 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | I don't know if it had to do with what he said about wanting to be like my father. I mean, I just don't know. Now, it was common for the White children that were closer to our age, that they would get a certain age—I would just let the machine get it. They would get to a certain age, and they were too old to play with the Colored children. So they just wouldn't. They would say, "My mama doesn't want me to play with you anymore." And it was just, I think that was common throughout the city, throughout the South, probably. | 31:20 |
| Kate Ellis | Do you remember around the age of something like that, what happened? What was the turning point? | 32:09 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | School, I guess. | 32:17 |
| Kate Ellis | You mean, going into school? | 32:18 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Well, with the girl that was my age, that I used to be friends with. I think it was around first grade, maybe. | 32:21 |
| Kate Ellis | Oh, I was thinking it was more like 11, you were 11 years old. | 32:29 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | No, no. | 32:34 |
| Kate Ellis | It was more like, six years old? | 32:34 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Yeah, yeah, I think so. With her, anyway. | 32:35 |
| Kate Ellis | And is that what happened, she came to you, or— | 32:40 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | I don't remember what she said. But now, this was a strained friendship, anyway. I mean, she was the only girl on the block who was my age. Even though this was a poor, a working-class neighborhood, some of those people had Black maids. And Elaine had a nanny who was Black. And there were Black women working in the project. I resented that, that Elaine had a nanny. It just meant to me that they had a servant, that they could abuse, and disrespect. It was an older lady. | 32:43 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | And I couldn't go in Elaine's house. Her mother forbid me to come in the house. It's just, I could come in the yard, and they told me that, that I couldn't come in the house. So we'd play in her yard, or my yard. I don't remember her ever coming in my house, now that I think about it, but all the other kids were free to come in our house. But she may have been told, I don't know. She may have been told not to. But anyway, I know a point came when Elaine and I just—But for boys, I think it was older, because there was a friend, a boy named Lynn, who actually was Miss Mary's nephew, who lived around the corner. | 33:35 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Lynn was older than us, but not that much. He was maybe three or four years older than my brother. But he was old enough, that when I was a baby, my mother said he used to come by, and take us both out. And my brother, when he got a certain age, he wanted to leave me home. She said Lynn would be so patient, he'd sit and wait for her to get me ready, and put me in a stroller, and wheel me around, up and down the clock. He's a very, very nice boy. My brother would be the one saying, "Leave her. She can't walk, she can't talk, she can't do anything." | 34:30 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Well, Lynn and my brother remained friends, and along with, there was another Black family with children in the block. And he was friends with them too, with the boys, until they were older. But still, the day came when I waved at Lynn, and he didn't wave back, and then, he never spoke again. I remember the day, and it was a heartbreaking thing, because he was really a friend. | 35:19 |
| Kate Ellis | About how old were you, again. | 35:51 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Well, I was older. Lynn kind of held out longer than some of the others, and he was more my brother's friend. They did stuff, like camp out in the vacant lot. They did stuff, they would fly kites. But I guess that was around, maybe 12 or 13. And he was around 16 or 17, because this was right after he got a car. Because the day that I waved, and he didn't wave back, he was in his car. I remember that. | 35:54 |
| Kate Ellis | When those things happened, how did you make sense of it? What would— | 36:33 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | It just filled me with rage. Yeah, it was a combination of being hurt and being angry. I had long since figured out that it was stupid. It was just plain stupid. But I still was subject to the rage, and it hurt. They could hurt you. | 36:41 |
| Kate Ellis | I mean, those were relationships. | 37:05 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Yeah, yeah. But from growing up in that neighborhood at that time, I can't say that I ever knew a time when I didn't know I was Black, because I was surrounded by so many White people. And some of them were very mean, called us names. | 37:08 |
| Kate Ellis | Did they? | 37:33 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Yeah, even little kids. | 37:34 |
| Kate Ellis | In the neighborhood? | 37:36 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Yeah. | 37:37 |
| Kate Ellis | What would happen? | 37:38 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Well, nothing. You'd call them names back. | 37:40 |
| Kate Ellis | But I mean, on a typical day, you'd be outside or something, playing, and they'd go by, and— | 37:42 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | It could be like that. Or you could be engaged in something, and something would happen. They'd lose a game of marbles, or something, and they'd get mad and call you nigger. So we'd call them peckerwoods and paddies. There never was quite a word to equal— | 37:49 |
| Kate Ellis | No. I bet. | 38:12 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | There just never was. | 38:12 |
| Kate Ellis | My friend, well, this guy Felix that I work with on this project, a couple weeks ago, he was mad at some guy. Oh, I know, it was some jerk. He'd heard some White guy saying something stupid about OJ Simpson. And he said something like that, "That cracker, blah, blah, blah." And I just hadn't heard him properly. So I said, "Wait, what did you say?" So then, he said this sentence again, but he left out "cracker." And I was like, "Felix, it's all right." And I say all this, because in a sense, I agree, that there's something— It's just not loaded in the same way. | 38:13 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | No. | 38:48 |
| Kate Ellis | I don't think. | 38:48 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | No, there's no equivalent. Because, I guess, because there's no material equivalent. There's been no enslavement, dehumanization of White people systematically, the way there's been a Black people. I guess, if there had been that, there would be some feeling that you could come up with an equivalent for "nigger." But there just isn't any. There can't be any. | 38:50 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | But this phenomenon about not speaking to us outside the neighborhood, it persisted. There was a woman across the street who, we didn't know her there. I mean, we didn't associate with her all that much, but we knew her by name, and spoke to her. I was on the bus with her one day, I was coming home from school, and she worked on Canal Street. So I saw her on the bus, and I decided I was going to break the rule, and speak to her. And she just pretended she didn't hear me. | 39:29 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | So we got off the bus at the same stop, and she walked down one side of the street, I walked down the other side. Because the project was still White, I guess. And we had a habit of not walking on the sidewalk right next to the project. We got attacked like that once. | 40:21 |
| Kate Ellis | You got attacked once? | 40:40 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Well, actually we got attacked across the street. | 40:41 |
| Kate Ellis | We, you? | 40:45 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | My brother and I. So if we walked along— | 40:46 |
| Kate Ellis | By White people? | 40:49 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Yeah, if we walked along that street, we would walk on the other sidewalk. She walked on the side where the project was. I walked on the other side. We got to, it's a block, and then, a left turn, and a half a block, and we're home. So when she made the turn, she's still across the street. We turn onto the [indistinct 00:41:12], she's across on her side, on my side. And we made the turn. | 40:49 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | She turned and said, "Hello, Brenda." And I didn't speak to her. I just decided that day, I was not going to play the game. And I didn't speak to her. I had never had it happen quite like that. My brother, after the buses were desegregated, my brother got on the bus, and sat next to the man who lived next door to this lady. And he jumped up. He had known my brother since he was a baby, since we moved in the block. But he jumped up. Sonny was just another nigger trying to sit next to a White person. | 41:17 |
| Kate Ellis | That's what he said? | 42:05 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | No, I mean, but that was the message. | 42:05 |
| Kate Ellis | But that's what that was. That's right, yeah. | 42:06 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | "Don't think, because I live in the block with you, that I'm going to sit next to you." Miss Mary actually lived on the other side of them, and she used to tell me how racist they were, even though their children—Well, the boy anyway, was one of my brother's acquaintances. They weren't really close friends. But Miss Mary told us that the reason they had moved to New Orleans was to get out of Texas, because Texas was full of Mexicans. She didn't like those people. | 42:07 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Then there was a girl in the block who was older than me, who got a job, right after she finished high school. I was still in high school, and her name was Carol. And I was on Canal Street with my friend, my Black friend my age, who lived in the block. We were waiting at the light, for the light to change, so we could walk across the street. And we spotted Carol, waiting on the other side. Now this would have been, when maybe I was in the twelfth grade, 1962 or '3. | 42:49 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | So when we crossed, we just practically rubbed shoulders with her. I said, "Hello, Carol." And she stopped in her tracks, and she gave me a look like she just wanted to kill me. So then, a few days later, this same girlfriend and I, we were in my front yard. We used to put a blanket under a tree in hot weather, and sit under the tree, and pretend we were having a picnic, I guess. So we were out under the tree, and Carol was coming home from work, and she passed in front of my house. And my girlfriend is named Everee. | 43:43 |
| Kate Ellis | What's her name? | 44:29 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Everee, a very unusual name. So she passed in front of the house, and she stopped, and she turned and looked at the two of us, and she said, "Hello, Everee." And then she walked on, to make it clear that I was the one who had committed the offense. Well, I don't think Everee spoke to her after that anyway, either, but— | 44:30 |
| Kate Ellis | These are all unwritten rules. | 45:00 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Yes. I don't know about other people, but my mother never told me, "Don't speak to these people when you see them out." But the times I did see them out, and did speak to them, I knew what was going to happen. Everee's brother, one time, ran into one of the Hemelt kids, the ones who lived next door? | 45:03 |
| Kate Ellis | What's the last name, again? Hemel? | 45:30 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Hemelt. | 45:31 |
| Kate Ellis | Hemelt? Will you spell it for the— | 45:31 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Yes. I think it was H-E-M-E-L-T. | 45:35 |
| Kate Ellis | Okay. | 45:38 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Well, he ran into, the oldest boy, I think, was about his age. And he ran into him on Canal Street. Everybody had to go to Canal Street. There were no shopping centers yet. And he actually physically grabbed them by the shoulders, and said, "I'm so glad to see you, Morris. I haven't seen you in so long. How have you been?" And just held onto his shoulders, until Morris finally said, "Hello, Samuel," and just ran. But I'm sure that their parents, too, never said, "Don't speak to these people." It was just something you learned. | 45:41 |
| Kate Ellis | Yeah. | 46:21 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | If you speak to them, this is what they're going to do. | 46:22 |
| Kate Ellis | Again, it just seems like one of those things, where often, this is what I've heard, that in some way, you know there's certain questions you never ask about why things are, in a sense. | 46:28 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Well, with— | 46:44 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Okay. I think it was just understood. Nobody gave us instructions. But it was just kind of understood that this is what's going to happen and your parents can't prevent it. They didn't advise us what to do really. It was just the way it was. | 0:01 |
| Kate Ellis | And they never advised you not to spend time with White people? | 0:27 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Never. | 0:30 |
| Kate Ellis | Because that is, I'm sure, something that some parents would tell their kids not to play with White children because they didn't want their kids to have the, I think, the kind of experiences you described. | 0:32 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Have those experiences. Yeah. No, no. They never made any restrictions on who our friends could be, who could come to the house. It was a different time than—I know a lot of people now say that that can be damaging to children, should be avoided. | 0:43 |
| Kate Ellis | What can be damaging? | 1:12 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | To have neighbors who are like that. But the people who moved into the Ninth Ward were just looking for cheap land. I still have some of the papers from when my parents bought their house. My daddy actually borrowed the money and built the house, and it was a matter of hundreds, not thousands of dollars for the land and then for the materials. | 1:14 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | That's really all people wanted. It wasn't that they wanted to live near White people. This was some cheap land. This was—1946, the year I was born, they built that house. They were still draining swamps in parts of the Ninth Ward that weren't even inhabitable yet. That was the real consideration for them. The other stuff, it just came with being Black then, you didn't even have to live in a mixed neighborhood for that to happen. But so many of the neighborhoods then were mixed that I think it was really a common experience for somebody born in the '40s to have had White friends and then be completely rejected by them at a certain age or at the urging of their parents or whatever. | 1:47 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | But I don't think they ever stopped and thought about, "Maybe we should find a neighborhood where we're not going to encounter any White people." Because it just wasn't something you thought you could avoid. It was so pervasive. It was just everywhere. | 2:54 |
| Kate Ellis | You mentioned that it was something that race was talked about in your household. | 3:14 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Yeah. | 3:19 |
| Kate Ellis | In what ways was it talked about? What kind stuff was it talked about? | 3:21 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Okay. One of my earliest memories was a man came in the neighborhood with a pony, a Shetland pony and you could pay and get a ride. He was at the corner from our house on [indistinct 00:03:48] Street. My brother, we were really little. I don't know if we were even in school yet. We ran home and asked my mother for money to ride the pony. | 3:29 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | She said, "How much is it?" And we said, "$7. $7 a piece." And she said, "$7 to ride a pony?" And we said, "Yeah, that's what the man said, $7 a piece." We didn't know what $7 was. And she said, "It doesn't cost $7 to ride a pony. The man just told you that because you're Colored and he don't want you on his pony." The only thing I remember about the rest of that day was standing in the window, not wanting to go back outside and seeing the White children with coins, with change ride this pony. | 4:02 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | That was my earliest memory of what it meant to be Black. I already knew I was Black, but that was the day I learned what it meant. Life was going to be more expensive for me. My mother didn't try to apologize or explain. She just said it real matter of fact laughing because that's how she experienced it. Sorry, it just slipped my mind. There was another—What was the original question? I can't remember. Something else that I wanted to add. | 4:49 |
| Kate Ellis | How was race talked about in your family? | 5:37 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Oh yeah. Well, I can remember when I was pretty young and being told by my mother about the church in Opelousas that they belonged to. The only church I remembered was Holy Ghost, which was a Black Catholic church. But she told us that when she was coming up, everybody went to the same churches. There was more than one Catholic church, but there was no Black Catholic church. | 5:39 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | So you just went to the closest or the one you liked the best. They went to St. Landry Church and not only did they sit in the back, but they couldn't even go up to the communion rail. They had to—I can't remember exactly how she explained that, but it was like one end of the communion rail, which we don't even have communion rails anymore at Catholic churches. But the way it was then, people would line up on their knees to get communion across the width of the church. | 6:20 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | But they had like a Colored window almost for communion, where they would go to one end and get communion after all the White people got communion. I remember when she told me that, I thought well I guess things have changed some because that seems so blatant, so irreligious. But of course things hadn't changed all that much because when we did go to a White church, we still did sit in the back. The alter rail thing I think had changed by the time I was born. But it wasn't all that different. My mother actually didn't tell me this story until I was grown. She was on the street car one day. This would've been in the '30s. She was a maid. She worked uptown in like garden district homes as a maid— | 7:01 |
| Kate Ellis | [indistinct 00:08:26] in the St. Charles. | 8:26 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Yeah. She was coming home from work or from shopping. Anyway, she was carrying some things. And the street cars and buses were segregated by this piece of wood. We called it the screen. I have something to copy for you about that, about the screen. I got its name and stuff. The screen was a movable thing that Black people sat behind and White people in front of it, but you could move it around the bus as people got on and off. She was sitting behind the screen and some people behind her got off the street car. | 8:30 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Now, that meant that she was supposed to get up and move back and move the screen with her so there'd be more empty seats in front. She didn't do that. So the conductor called to her from the front of the street car and told her to move back and she just ignored him. He got out of his seat. At that time there were two men that—There was the conductor who drove the car, and then there was the man at the back who took the money, and they were all White men. | 9:23 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | And so he came, stopped the street car came where she was and told her again to get up and move back. And she said, "No, I'm not going to move. I'm almost at my stop. I've got packages, I'm not moving." So he took the screen, this piece of wood and yanked it up out of the seat in front of her and he put it behind her. So now she's really in violation of the law. It could be jail if he wanted to. But she told him, "I don't care if you throw it out the window, I ain't moving." | 10:02 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | I remember when she told me the story, I said, "What did he do?" She said, "He went and sat down and drove his street car." But she didn't even tell me that story until I was grown and we were looking at an anniversary of some civil rights legislation or March or something, and Rosa Parks was on, and somebody was talking about describing how the events that led up to the boycott with Rosa Parks. And she said, "I did that back in 1930s." She just had never thought to tell. It was before we were thought of. She had never told it to us. | 10:46 |
| Kate Ellis | Speaking of criminal acts, I read your piece last night. Actually, I read it this morning, The Swings, which is a wonderful piece. | 11:43 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Thank you. | 11:54 |
| Kate Ellis | Would you describe that story? | 11:54 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Yeah. It was—I can't remember the year of course, but I was maybe 12 or probably not older than that, 12 or 13. My mother wanted to go to a—I think they called it Solemn Novena, which meant that she went every Tuesday night for nine weeks. | 11:58 |
| Kate Ellis | It's called a what? | 12:24 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Solemn Novena. Novena, I think she always means nine of something. | 12:24 |
| Kate Ellis | Oh, okay. | 12:33 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Nine prayers. Nine. | 12:33 |
| Kate Ellis | I was wondering about that. | 12:34 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | So you could have Novenas that didn't last nine weeks. But this was, I think they called it a Solemn Novena that lasted nine weeks. So we to get to church, to Holy Redeemer church, we took the Desire bus and the church was right next to a park, Washington Square, which was a White park. | 12:37 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | In fact, there were over 100 White parks and only 20 Black parks. When we got off the bus to go to church, well, the way the Desire bus ran, we could get off the bus on the street where the church was. But then to get back home, we had to get the bus going the other way. We had to walk to the other side of this park, which meant you couldn't walk through it, which would've been the shortest route. You had to walk around it. | 13:06 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | This was at night. The Novena probably was at like 6:30 or 7:00 or something like that. It was like maybe nine o'clock, 9:30 at night when we left church, walked around the park to the bus stop and the buses ran really slow at night. You just were prepared you were going to wait. Just out of the blue, my mother said, "Why don't you go swing on the swings until the bus comes?" This was a moment for me. It was the most trivial thing but it was stealing, like the pleasures of stealing. It was dark. There was nobody around. The park was always open. And so I did that. | 13:42 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | I swang to my heart's content with my mother standing at the corner and looking out. But there was some anxiety to it, some fear because I knew it was breaking the law. I knew that there'd be consequences if something happened that we should get caught. I thought of it as we, my mother and I, as I knew she'd be in trouble. But we didn't get caught. We made the nine weeks and every week, I swang. It was something that as a child, I didn't get to do often because we didn't live near any Black park. The one that was closest that we could have walked to was a White park. | 14:39 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | I got my fill of swinging. Well, maybe I didn't but I did swing for nine Tuesdays. But when I thought to write that, I thought about the message that that was sending me as a child, almost an adolescent, I guess. That certain laws should be broken. Really, that's what the movement was based on. It wasn't really based on obeying the laws. At first, it wasn't even really based on changing the laws. That eventually was the goal. | 15:36 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | But the beginning was, let's break these laws. These are stupid and unjust laws. I don't think I understood it at the time, but it really was a monument thing that people did in breaking laws because they wouldn't have had anything to back them up. If you did something and there was a law to protect you, you could get out of it. | 16:22 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | But in this case, people did things that they knew they were going to go to jail for because there were laws that they had broken. But I think that early experiences like that and drinking out of a White water fountain, which I think every Black child did that got the chance just to violate a stupid law. And when I did it, I was loud about it and talked about how it didn't taste any different. I know that's a thing that a lot of children did. | 16:51 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | I think that's one of the unique things about that whole period was that that was one of the things that we were learning that laws meant nothing if they were unjust and stupid. Because they primarily—You first understand them as just stupid. Yeah. I think it just is something that just got into our system, our psyche. So that when the movement really did start to really take off throughout the South, it wasn't a difficult thing to do for a lot of young people and older people too, to defy laws. | 17:29 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | At the time, I wouldn't have made—I wouldn't have put it together but this country has that as a precedent too. The American Revolution was based on all the documents or based on violation of unjust laws, the divine right to break unjust laws. But I didn't put it together at that age. | 18:24 |
| Kate Ellis | Can I follow up on something which struck me when you said that once, when you and your brother walked past the projects where the Whites were, you were attacked. And I wonder if you can tell me about what you remember of that. And also then, I'm curious if you grew up with a sense of physical danger. | 19:00 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Yes. I did. The town that I was referring to was—The school that we went to was seven blocks. Seven blocks from home. | 19:27 |
| Kate Ellis | Now, what's the name of that school? | 19:44 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Johnson Lockett Elementary. It was on the street that was right at the corner from our house, the street that the project was on. | 19:46 |
| Kate Ellis | What street was that? | 20:02 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Dourgenois. D-O-U-R-G-E-N-O-I-S. North Dourgenois. That was the shortest way to get to school. It was on the same street. So we'd walk up Dourgenois Street, but staying on this side because the project was on that side. One day, this gang of boys, big boys, we were little kids. They were big boys. Just they came from across a big courtyard. We could see them. They were like, I don't know, maybe a half a block away, maybe more, it seems like further. But in no time, they were running and throwing rocks at the same time. They just pelted us with these big jagged rocks. | 20:04 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | My brother got a big cut right here and bled pretty profusely. And then we were running home, which probably made him bleed worse. Actually, that incident is in the essay that I've been having so much trouble writing, the one I mentioned yesterday. Well, it was just really frightening. It was frightening for that to happen. And then to see my mother in this state she was in, when we got home like this, it was just—I had never seen her like that. It was like she was capable of murder. It was just like nothing I had ever seen in her. And that was almost equally frightening, is the attack. | 20:59 |
| Kate Ellis | How old were you? You mean below 10 or over 10 probably? | 22:05 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Below 10. | 22:14 |
| Kate Ellis | Okay. | 22:14 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | I wasn't in the fourth grade yet. I know that. Because the fourth grade was like that turning point for me. Definitely, I was under 10. And then there was another time we were walking home and now all the people who lived on that side of Dourgenois Street and houses also were White until we got to Desire Street or until we got a block before Desire, yes. | 22:17 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | We were walking on that side of the street. It wasn't all that safe. It wasn't safe on either side, but it was just that the worst attacks would come from the projects. But anyway, there was a house I could take you and show you the very house where the people had a rabbit, a cute little rabbit. We would pass and play with the rabbit through the fence and then walk onto school. We'd play with them on the way home. One day, we passed and the rabbit was outside his yard on the sidewalk. | 22:57 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | We went and rescued the rabbit. "Oh my God! The rabbit's out." And we knew where he lived. So we picked the rabbit up and we're putting the rabbit over the fence when the man who lived there came out and he thought we were stealing the rabbit and we couldn't even defend ourselves. We were so terrified. The man grabbed us with overcoats on. I remember him grabbing our coats and put his face in our face and he threatened to kill us. | 23:40 |
| Kate Ellis | Did he? | 24:15 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Yes. He said, "If I ever catch you little niggers trying to steal my rabbit again, I'll kill you." And he said, "And I can kill you too, because I'm a policeman." And he said, "You see this? This is my badge." And he was wearing a round button. I couldn't even read yet. That's how young I was. But it was a round button that was a bright color like orange and had Black letters on it. | 24:15 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | And he probably said, "I like Ike." But he said that was his police badge and he was going to kill us. We were trembling. We couldn't respond, we couldn't defend ourselves. It was just terrifying. I pass by there often because my aunts live in that neighborhood still and I can't pass that house without thinking about that. It was no question that we were stealing the rabbit. We were Black, we had to be stealing the rabbit. Really, we saved this stupid rabbit. But that was about, I guess, the two most terrifying things that happened just in the course of walking to school. | 24:46 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Can I take a quick break? | 25:57 |
| Kate Ellis | Yeah. Of course. | 25:58 |
| Kate Ellis | [INTERRUPTION 00:26:02]. | 26:02 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | One of the points too about that neighborhood and I don't remember the year, but when my father was still living. He died in '52, so I was old enough to be aware, but I couldn't have been older than six. That project, the Florida Project has—Florida Avenue is really a strange street because it has a canal in the middle of it that runs length-wise parallel with the street and then railroad tracks. And then the other side of the avenue. | 26:04 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | One side is like a block from the other side. The other side is Desire, which is a Black project. That whole community around there has always been majority Black. There's always—At least, there used to be a few Whites in that area that worked in programs or churches but pretty much that's all always been an all Black area. But sometime, I probably was in around 1950 or '51, something like that, two children disappeared who lived in the Florida project. They were never found. And so it was speculated that they must have fallen into the canal. | 26:51 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | I can remember my father talking about that because after that happened, a big fence was built with barbed wire at the top because before the fence, there was nothing to keep children from wandering off and falling in the canal. But I remember my father, I remember the adults talking about the fact that there were children on the other side in just as much danger. But there was no fence put up on the other side, where the Black people live. Well, just recently, I called to interview somebody by phone, a White man who ran a store in the neighborhood back then. I didn't know the man. I just tracked him down because the store still exists. | 27:49 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | It just moved out of the neighborhood. In the process of him telling me what he remembered about what I was asking about, which was a boycott of his store, he was sort of reluctant to talk. I told him my age and everything. He asked me if I remembered when those two children disappeared. I said, "Yeah, it was something so far in the back of my mind." | 28:46 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | But I didn't know, he told me that—He said, "Yeah, I was on the committee of people that raised the money to build that fence." And that was the first I knew that the city didn't build that fence. Once again, it was a reminder to me that as hateful as those people, those Whites in that neighborhood could be, they weren't valuable either. This was poor White people who lived among Black people or who had Black people living among them, I guess. They were the majority in that neighborhood, but they were devalued people. | 29:15 |
| Speaker 1 | Which is why they chose Frantz Schools to integrate. | 30:01 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Yes, I was going to get to that. (laughs) Thank you. | 30:05 |
| Speaker 1 | Which is why— | 30:07 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Well, when the decision was reached to integrate the schools, they chose two schools in the Ninth Ward. Two all White public schools that. | 30:10 |
| Kate Ellis | That were poor? | 30:26 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Yeah. | 30:26 |
| Kate Ellis | That were poor. | 30:26 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | And that was why, because this was those devalued White people, those no count White people in the project. The thing that always strikes me when I think about that is that these were some of the most hateful, racist people you could imagine. Not every single individual, but it was like they felt like they were defending their system, but the system really didn't care about them either. | 30:30 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | They were just a step above us as far as the system was concerned. They were the ones who got their schools invaded first. I just found out just a matter of weeks ago that the city didn't build them a fence either. The integration of those schools in 1960, I was in the 10th grade. France school was very close to our house, and I could actually hear the jeering people. The school was three blocks away. | 31:12 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | In my house I could hear the jeering people chanting and screaming names. There was one little girl who integrated that school and she just caught pure hell. She had spit on and kicked by these people who valued their system so much, but who the system didn't care about much more than they cared about us. And the other school was also in the Ninth Ward, but across the canal in the other direction, going east, there's another canal. We were surrounded by canals. Again, it was people who bought even cheaper land. | 32:04 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | You were going even further out of the central part of the city and some of that was still swamp land. And so this was a collection of poor and working class Whites and Blacks. There's neighborhoods all over town that they could could've spread out the integration if they wanted to, but this is what they chose to do. This is when those people started to move out of the neighborhood. | 32:56 |
| Kate Ellis | What high school did you go to? | 33:31 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | I went to a Catholic high school, St. Mary's Academy. I went to Lockett School through the fifth grade, and then I went to a Catholic elementary school for two years. | 33:33 |
| Kate Ellis | What was that called? | 33:50 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Holy Redeemer was the school connected without church and then went to public junior high, Carver Junior High, because I thought I never wanted to see another nun as long as I lived. And then a lady in my neighborhood talked me into trying Catholic school again. And so my high school experience was good. It was a Black Catholic high school with Black nuns who the order went back to just after the Civil War, I guess or maybe even over than that. Our school was in the French Quarter back when the French Quarter was not ritzy and yuppy like it is now. There were a lot of poor families, a lot of Black families that lived in the French Quarter. | 33:51 |
| Kate Ellis | Was that common in the French Quarter? | 34:59 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Yeah. | 35:04 |
| Kate Ellis | There were a lot of Black families. | 35:04 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | And rundown— | 35:07 |
| Kate Ellis | Was that the case in the '30s and '40s too, do you know? | 35:08 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Yeah, yeah. Because I had a friend who grew up in the French Quarter, was born in the '30s. | 35:11 |
| Kate Ellis | I only am surprised because when I was talking to some folks of the day, I think Michelle had interviewed somebody who grew up in the French Quarter, and it was sort unusual. It's basically made it seem like it was sort of unusual that she actually was there, that it was hard for Blacks to be able to buy houses there. | 35:20 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Well, you don't really buy houses there, you rent. | 35:39 |
| Kate Ellis | Or maybe it's because this woman had bought a house, that it was unusual. | 35:45 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Or maybe so. But the French Quarter up until, I don't know exactly when it started to change, but throughout the time that I was in high school anyway, it was strange. It was the strip joints on Bourbon Street, the antique shops on Royal Street, the art galleries and then towards the river there was more shops and then the French market. But on the other side, going towards— | 35:48 |
| Kate Ellis | Frenchman Street. | 36:25 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | No, the other direction towards the auditorium, Armstrong Park. That end was full of poor Black families who rented these fallen down apartments, slave quarters, shacks. I guess it was in the '70s that developers just kind of changed the face of that side of the French Quarter. | 36:28 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | In the summers, my school had a Bible school and we would volunteer, those of us who were in this program would volunteer to go around and sign children up. I saw these families living all on that side of the French Quarter right around our school. Our school was right behind the cathedral. I guess that was sort of in the middle of the French Quarter, which is like a square. That side towards the river was like it is like you said today. But the other side, leaning buildings, stairways with missing steps, rats. | 36:57 |
| Kate Ellis | Wow. | 37:50 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | And now this friend of mine who grew up in the French Quarter, she told me the rent they paid was something like $25 a month. She got off the bus one day and she saw the house they had lived in was being renovated, and she went and asked the people if she could—It was just workers in the place. And she asked to look around and she said it was like a whole new place. It was totally refurbished and probably was going to rent for hundreds of dollars a month. | 37:52 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | It was the kind of thing that I understand happens in a lot of cities where the rich people move out of the inner city and just kind of spread out. And then they realize, "Look how far I am from my job." And they come in and reclaim the inner cities again. I think that's really what happened. At one point, it was like—Well, in the beginning it was the whole city. It was the whole incorporated city when the city was founded. | 38:29 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | And then it was the French area. When the Americans came, the Americans lived on the other side of Canal Street. Which is why we got the word neutral ground, the term neutral ground instead of medium, the middle of the street. Because Canal Street was called the neutral ground because the French lived on the downtown side. The Americans lived uptown and they hated each other. But they all had to do business on Canal Street. That was their neutral ground. | 39:04 |
| Kate Ellis | I'm going to pause for a minute. | 39:42 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | I just thought there would be kind of a parallel that these poor White people had this zeal to defend their way of life or whatever terms they might have put it in. I think there's a parallel in the Civil War for that too, that the people who actually fought for the Confederacy, for the most part were not the people who owned the slaves or the land, which was the real wealth. Who'd got either caught up or dragged in to defend the people who did own the slaves and the land. | 39:54 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | I think it just hasn't fundamentally changed that these people who are so devalued, that they get to have their children washed away by the canal. We're chosen to be the first to experience integration, the great evil. Or people who were out in the streets fighting against it, fighting for their system. In fact, around the corner from—In fact, where we got off the bus, there was a woman who lived in that project apartment there, a family who was Hispanic. I never knew their nationality but they were White people, but they were Hispanic. | 40:33 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | But they were accepted as—I don't think they had any problem getting into the White project or anything, but they chose to keep their children in school. Their house was bombed. I remember getting off the bus there and seeing that they had spray-painted the house, "Nigger lover, get out of town." But they finally did leave. I don't know if they left town, but they left the neighborhood. Their lives were threatened. I think the husband lost his job. And the woman tells the story in that video, A House Divided, of what happened to her family. The same thing happened to a minister whose daughter I think attended the other school that was integrated. A minister at St. Mark's on Rampart Street and he was run out of town, the church was defaced. | 41:35 |
| Kate Ellis | This sort of gets back to something we were talking, well, we've been talking about it, but my question of the sense of danger that you grew up with, I'm wondering if you can talk about that. It sounds like at a young age, you learn that White people might not hesitate to hurt you [indistinct 00:43:18]. | 42:51 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Well, I think a lot of that I thought was kind of a universal thing. I think I assumed that we all knew what that was like. We all had some experience like that. But it actually was when when I met Ted, I think that I started to see that these were some exceptionally brutal things that I remember. I remember telling them about being faced with these boys who attacked us. And then when we got closer to the school, there were Black thugs who would take children's lunch money. That never happened to us because they would generally catch the children who crossed on a little foot bridge over the canal. | 43:20 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | But there was this sense that this could happen to you too. But I was trying to make the point to him when I was telling him about this, when I guess when he first came here, that I would've preferred to be attacked by the Black boys because they just wanted money from him. If I had it, I would've given it to him, it would've been over. But his reaction was that this was also monumentally horrible, a horrible thing for a child to face. He had never faced anything like that at that age. | 44:21 |
| Kate Ellis | He grew up in Washington, D.C.? | 45:06 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Yeah. Mm-hmm. And that was really the first time I really stopped to think about that. Not every child grew up with this. And it was these Black thugs really who kind of brought it into focus because I had not been able to resolve— | 45:08 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Well, I guess I have to explain the same thing that I'm writing, I can't finish. When the boycott of that grocery store began, I don't know if it was the same boys who robbed the little kids. But there were boys like their age that started to walk the picket line and threaten violence. I don't know if they actually beat anybody up but they threatened to beat people up who tried to cross the line. In my mind, these were the same boys. | 45:36 |
| Kate Ellis | The same thugs at school stealing lunch money? | 46:19 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Yes. | 46:23 |
| Kate Ellis | Threatening people— | 46:23 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | I don't know that they were— | 46:23 |
| Kate Ellis | But you saw them as— | 46:26 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | But I thought of them as the same boys because they were thugs. They were all thugs. And now the thugs were on the picket line. So I thought— | 46:28 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | —with this impression that there was something redeeming about the Black thugs, but I couldn't find anything redeeming about the White boys who just beat us up for the sake of it. But yeah, it was more violence in the lives of children at that time, and from the White boys and from these Black boys who—They didn't throw rocks and draw blood, but they intimidated you enough that you'd give up whatever you had. | 0:01 |
| Kate Ellis | Did you have a schema in your head of areas that were safe and areas that weren't safe? I mean, I have this vision of what it would be like for you to pass by the White housing project or the guy's yard who had the rabbit. And in your mind it's like, "Okay, that's a bad area." You do what you can to walk around it. Were there other areas like that and areas that felt safe? | 0:54 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | In the neighborhood? | 1:24 |
| Kate Ellis | Yeah, and in the city. Tell me your neighborhood again. I mean, for the sake of the sake of the record, the street that you grew up was? | 1:25 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Bartholomew, between North Rocheblave and North Dourgenois. And now it's called the Florida area because of the project, but it used to just be called the Ninth Ward. Actually, it was federal funding that made people start to make these designations, the Florida area, the Desire area, and the Lower Nine, where before, it was all the Ninth Ward. When federal money came in the early '70s, I guess it was, they started to make those distinctions. But the only place that we didn't go in the neighborhood was into the project. You could walk the street on the edge of it, but to cross into the actual grass and be in the project, we never did. Well, I did once, but it was to get ice cream. I'd missed the ice cream truck. (laughs) | 1:33 |
| Kate Ellis | It's amazing the risks we'll take with the things that really matter. | 2:49 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Yeah. | 2:56 |
| Kate Ellis | What about for the rest of the city? I mean, if you could afford the car fare, did you feel that you're comfortable going wherever you wanted to go? | 2:57 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Yeah. Yeah. The place I think that I was really fearful of, and I still am, is Jefferson Parish. The parish on the other side of us is St. Bernard, which is notoriously—I mean, it's Klan turf. And the man who was the parish president during the '60s was Leander Perez, who was just a demagogue, a racist old-school. Built a jail, built a special jail for civil rights workers in St. Bernard Parish or Plaquemines. It was one or the other. But anyway, that whole area east of the Lower Ninth Ward, notorious. But I wasn't afraid of that area, I think because it was so much like my neighborhood. | 3:06 |
| Kate Ellis | It looked like your neighborhood? | 4:12 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Yeah. It also had the same kind of mix. I had a friend in high school who lived in St. Bernard Parish, and there were White people in that block. And we'd catch the bus and go places. So it was sort of familiar. It was kind of more rural than the rest of the city, and so was the Ninth Ward. People still had chickens. And the next-door neighbors when we moved in that house had a cow. There was a horse in our backyard once that got out. And everybody had little vegetable gardens around there. But Jefferson Parish was like Klansmen with suits and ties and white shirts, and that was much more frightening to me. Plus, the places my parents had come from were rural towns. | 4:13 |
| Kate Ellis | In Louisiana? | 5:16 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Yeah. My mother was from Opelousas. | 5:17 |
| Kate Ellis | Will you spell that? | 5:17 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Opelousas? | 5:17 |
| Kate Ellis | Yeah. | 5:17 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | O-P-E-L-O-U-S-A-S. | 5:23 |
| Kate Ellis | Okay. | 5:26 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | And my father was from a really tiny place called Lindsay, which is not on most maps. It's kind of included with the next-biggest town, which is Jackson, Louisiana. And the more rural you get, the more isolated you get, then the more danger there is that if you're Black, that you can run into trouble. But I think because I had grown up visiting those places, I don't think there was anyplace that I was really fearful of except Jefferson Parish. And it was an indescribable kind of fear. We would never go there. There was never any reason to go there. | 5:27 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | And one thing that I remember, when we'd take trips to Opelousas, we had to pass through Jefferson Parish on, I guess it was, the old Airline Highway. A lot of the people had swimming pools. You could see these people were better off. But a lot of them also had bomb shelters in the '50s during the bomb scare. Nobody in the Ninth Ward had a bomb shelter. | 6:24 |
| Kate Ellis | You had a vegetable patch. | 6:56 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Yeah. Yeah. So I didn't know what to make of that. Were they going to be the only people to survive? We didn't have a bomb shelter because we couldn't afford it. All those things ran through my head when we passed through Jefferson Parish. And it's like it was all kind of verified later because that became the stronghold of the Klan. That's where David Duke lives. That's where he has his headquarters. And so it did kind of transition into the Klan with suits and ties. That's what they are today. He broke with the Klan that wore blue jeans. And now he's supposedly respectable. He's run for office and been elected, but he's still the Klan. He's still a Nazi. | 7:00 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | So for me, it was more frightening because this was more like the image of America, not the rural Southern image, but the corporate image of America. Even today, I hate to go in Jefferson Parish. And it's not an ungrounded fear because there are laws about Black people being in Jefferson Parish. The sheriff—There is an ordinance or there is some official document that says that the sheriff deputies can stop suspicious-looking Black people in the parish. You don't have to be up to anything, just be Black. And then a couple years ago, there was a movement to build a wall where—One of the boundaries of Jefferson and New Orleans is a street. And there was a movement of some White Jefferson Parish residents to put up a wall there. They didn't even want to have to even look across the street and see us. So it has a history. | 8:07 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | And this is where a lot of White people fled to, which is why if you go in Jefferson Parish, you will get lost because it was like it grew overnight. It was not planned. They just started building houses and plowing up streets. Even people who live there get lost. I had once stopped to ask the mailman directions. He couldn't direct me. I went to the fire station. It was work-related. | 9:40 |
| Kate Ellis | You had to— | 10:17 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | I had to find somebody's house. I went to the fire station. I said, "For sure. What if a fire happened on that street?" They couldn't direct me. It's that bad because it grew so fast. | 10:17 |
| Kate Ellis | And this was right around [indistinct 00:10:36]? | 10:34 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Yes. Yeah. | 10:35 |
| Kate Ellis | Something I wanted to go back to. [indistinct 00:10:46]. | 10:41 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Yesterday, I think you had wanted me to talk about, on tape, the Catholic school issue. | 10:54 |
| Kate Ellis | Oh, yeah. Mm-hmm. | 11:00 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | The public schools were integrated in 1960, just those two schools at first. And the Catholic schools did not integrate until two years later, 1963, '62. And after the—Well, for me, it was after the fact. I guess some people weren't as slow to figure it out, but I didn't see it until after the fact that this was an opportunity to enable White flight out of public schools and into Catholic schools. It was a bastion of segregation for those two years. And in those two years, the Catholic school enrollment grew so phenomenally that they had to put up very many new schools, and most of them in Jefferson Parish, a lot of others in surrounding other parishes, too. And that's bad enough. | 11:06 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | But they also had during those years a diocese-wide fundraising drive for improvements to churches and schools. And they enlisted all the Black churches to participate. I remember my pastor got my cousin and me to help with the paperwork, to get pledge cards filled out and so forth. Every family was to pledge a certain amount and pay on it over this period of time. And so they raised millions. Wait for the second time. She likes to tease you. I don't know of any Black parish that got a nickel. That money all went to build these new White Catholic schools, which are still in existence now. | 12:25 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | I think the Black churches all kind of went into this thinking they were going to get something back. And a lot of them really needed repairs, and the schools may have needed upgrading. But to my knowledge—Now, there may have been some pittance that was spent on the Black churches and schools. But the people that I knew who were also going to Black Catholic churches then, their parishes didn't get anything. And it was like a huge joke on all of us that we helped to fund segregation in schools. | 13:34 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | And you had asked me about being fearful. There was a period of time when in 1961, those schools were integrated, that I was fearful to ride the bus. I came home every day on a Desire bus. Besides the violence that actually was going on, there were rumors all over town. And so it was rumored— | 14:33 |
| Kate Ellis | To help to enforce the terror? | 15:01 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Yeah. It was rumored that there would be White people on the buses throwing acid on Black people. And my uncle who lived in the block was—I loved him dearly. He was my godfather. The worst thing you could ask him for was a ride in his truck. He had a truck. He was a cement finisher. And even in the rain, he really hated people asking for rides. Well, on the day that the schools were integrated, it was not announced beforehand what schools it would be, so nobody knew until all the uproar began. My uncle showed up at my school to pick me up. | 15:02 |
| Kate Ellis | Really? | 15:59 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | I came out, and there he was. I thought the world must be coming to an end or something. | 16:01 |
| Kate Ellis | It's like, "Who died?" | 16:06 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Yeah. He said, "Oh, no, Ann. I couldn't let you ride the bus today." And he drove me to school and picked me up for several days after that, which I really deeply appreciated. But for it to be him, it was a real indication of how fearful people were. And I never heard of anybody actually getting acid thrown on them, but it did strike fear into your heart, the thought that just randomly, somebody could throw acid through a window and you could catch some of it. | 16:08 |
| Kate Ellis | So changing gears a little bit, will you tell me about your parents? | 16:56 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | About their— | 17:02 |
| Kate Ellis | Well, especially what you remember about them, about their lives. What did your father do while he was alive? | 17:06 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Well, first, he worked at a cement plant for a number of years. And then I guess it was only a couple years before he died, he got a job in construction as a carpenter, which is what he had always wanted to do. He had gone to night school and finished the eighth grade, he had only gone, I don't know, to the primary grades as a child, and learned the finer points, the blueprinting and that kind of thing. So that was what he had always wanted to do. And he did finally get hired in that. | 17:13 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | When they met, my mother—He worked at the cement plant. My mother was a maid, and she and all her sisters, actually, were maids uptown. And they lived together in a house that they rented from my mother's sister. | 18:02 |
| Kate Ellis | Oh, okay. | 18:22 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Because they all lived at the places where they worked, and they had a day off. Once a week, they had a day off. So they had a place to come on their day off. So my Aunt Nelly's husband, Uncle Willie, worked at the cement plant, and he actually was the one who introduced my parents, my mother's brother-in-law. | 18:23 |
| Kate Ellis | So he kind of [indistinct 00:18:50]? | 18:49 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Yeah. I remember we were children, and my brother asked my mother how did they meet or when did they meet or something? She said, "The first time I saw your daddy, he was knocking at the wrong door on 4th Street." It was a double house. And she hears all this knocking, and she went to the porch and looked. And he was there with something. He had brought flowers and candy or something. He was a very sweet person. And she figured he was looking for her because Uncle Willie had, "I met this man. He's perfect for you." And so they got married in, I think, 1940. | 18:51 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | And my mother didn't work after they got married. Well, she actually did work. But what happened was my father told her he wanted her to quit work and just be a housewife. And they thought they would've had children sooner, but they didn't have any children until four years into their marriage. So my mother was bored, and she actually snuck out and got a job and would be on the job. She would leave after he left for work. She'd be home before he got home. And she was doing this behind his back because she was bored, and she figured she could earn a few dollars. And so she did this. I don't know how long she did this. And finally one day, he told her, "I hope you don't think you're fooling anybody sneaking out of here to go on a job." So he didn't complain. He just went along with it. So then after they did have us, then she didn't work until I was nine or 10. Then she went back to work. | 19:41 |
| Kate Ellis | And he had died when you were six? | 21:09 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Yeah. | 21:10 |
| Kate Ellis | And that was accidental? I mean, it was— | 21:11 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Drowning. Yeah. He drowned. After he died, we got Social Security payments. And it wasn't a lot, but we made out. And then my mother went back to work, which I really hated. I had gotten accustomed to her being at home. And she worked until she retired. Well, she retired early because she had arthritis. Something else I wanted to tell you about them. | 21:14 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Oh, about their families. They both were raised on farms, and they both had parents who had started out as sharecroppers and then bought the land. And on my mother's side, we can't trace any further back than—Well, for most of my ancestors, we can't trace any further back than the Civil War. But one of my grandmother's great-grandmother's was a Choctaw Indian, and she was from Virginia or West Virginia. They don't know for sure. And her name was Nina, and that's all they know about her. And she ended up moving with the family. She worked for a family as a servant, and she ended up moving to Louisiana with this family. | 22:00 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | And my mother's father's father fought in the Civil War and was a deserter and seemed to be very proud of that. My oldest aunt remembers him, remembers the stories he told about the war. And actually, desertion was probably pretty common when you were in this part of the country during the war. I think probably, there wasn't much of a network. I don't know. I'm just guessing. But they ended up just starting to walk in the direction they thought was home, this whole group of soldiers, and with no supplies. And they ate dead animals that they found along the way. These are my aunt's stories that she remembers. And they drank water that settled in animal tracks. And eventually, he did make it home. | 23:15 |
| Kate Ellis | Amazingly. | 24:33 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Yeah. And he had three wives. They say he was so mean that he just wore them out. He just had to keep getting a new one. And his last wife was my grandfather's mother. They don't know how many children he had. They never knew. Some of his first wife's children, they never knew. My mother and her sibling had aunts and uncles that they never knew. My grandmother never would tell us. We would ask her things about what she could remember, and she always—It was like she had something to hide that she didn't want to tell the children. | 24:34 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | So you couldn't press her. It wasn't allowed. So I don't know who in my grandmother's lineage was enslaved because I only know about those—Before the Civil War, I only know about those two people, my grandfather's father and my grandmother's grandmother. But on my father's side, my—I get the number of greats mixed up. I think my great-great-grandmother, the one who's—The little photograph. She— | 25:32 |
| Kate Ellis | Yeah. Right. The little photograph. | 26:13 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | The little one. I have a color copy of it, and I found the little one sitting in a chair. | 26:16 |
| Kate Ellis | Uh-huh. Yeah, really old. I mean, yeah, yeah. | 26:22 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Yeah. Yeah. She was a little girl when freedom came. She was a slave. She remembered slavery. And her name was McNeely, and that was the family who owned them, the McNeely family. So that's the name they gave her. But she must have been pretty amazing because she lived to be almost 100, and she learned to read and write. My cousin has a postcard from 1920 that she wrote to send for one of her children to come because she was sick. | 26:26 |
| Kate Ellis | And she was living where at this time? It was in Aurora? It was in one of the— | 27:06 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Yeah. In the same area. I don't know if it was in Lindsay or around Lindsay. But she also had a piece of land that I didn't know about until I was an adult that she had somehow managed to get. And that was still in the family. I just didn't know about it. Well, anyway, that's—And her name was Jane McNeely. And so one of her daughters was my father's mother, Molly. | 27:11 |
| Kate Ellis | Okay. | 28:03 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | And this is another story that I didn't know until recently. Molly and her husband, Frank Dyer, she married Frank Dyer— | 28:06 |
| Kate Ellis | Which is your maiden name? | 28:18 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Yeah. | 28:20 |
| Kate Ellis | Your father's name? Okay. | 28:20 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Right. Mm-hmm. They were sharecroppers with this family named McHugh, I think that's the name, a rich White family, which still today is a rich White family. You can kind of see, from the plantation to the banks, the same names. Well, they lived on these people's land. And Mrs. McHugh lost her mind right after she had given birth to a baby boy. She went crazy, this is how my aunt told me the story, and jumped out of a second-story window and killed herself. So Mr. McHugh had this infant son to raise without a wife. So he gave this boy to my grandparents to raise. I mean, they were on his land. It wasn't like he gave him up. But because my grandmother had just had my father, she could wet-nurse this boy. So that's what happened. She had two babies to nurse. | 28:21 |
| Kate Ellis | Wow. | 29:45 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | But because of the boy living with them, he gave them more than he gave all the other sharecroppers. That may be how they got land, because eventually they did get some land, too, which is still in the family. But then when my father was very young, eight, he was eight years old, he was—When his father died, he was eight years old. My brother was eight years old when our father died. I can remember that now. There was another Black woman who lived on this plantation who was very jealous of them because they had more than everybody else because this boy lived with them. The White boy lived with them. So this woman made some kind of pie, like a sweet potato pie or an apple pie or something, something that she regularly did for my grandfather. She'd make him his favorite pie and bring it to him. She brought him a pie that had ground glass in it, and that's what he died of. Now, that's the story I got. | 29:48 |
| Kate Ellis | Jeez. [indistinct 00:31:21]. | 31:17 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | And then my father's mother, she died soon after that. | 31:20 |
| Kate Ellis | Of? | 31:28 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | I don't know. | 31:29 |
| Kate Ellis | So who raised the two boys? | 31:30 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | The oldest children raised the younger one. And now the oldest one is the only one living in the family. | 31:32 |
| Kate Ellis | That's a really— | 31:44 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Yeah. And I had never heard this. | 31:45 |
| Kate Ellis | And your aunt told you this? | 31:47 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Yeah. Well, first, I got it from my little cousin, Keisha, when she was doing a school project on our family history, and she called around. So she was the one who told me the story, but I didn't know about the— | 31:52 |
| Kate Ellis | Do you want me to— | 32:08 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Ted, would you let Zora in, please? | 32:11 |
| Kate Ellis | It's okay. I'll do it. | 32:13 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Okay. | 32:14 |
| Kate Ellis | I got it. | 32:15 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | I didn't know about the suicide, about the Mrs. McHugh jumping out of a window until this year. Well, no, the end of last year. And about my father being a baby at the time all this happened, I didn't know that. I knew she had wet-nursed this White infant. But my aunt said she nursed them both at the same time. And that family name is still prominent in that area. It's a small area, but they have a pharmacy and maybe a real estate. I don't remember now. | 32:20 |
| Kate Ellis | What you just said—Well, go ahead, unless you were going to— | 33:07 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | No, I think that was really all I knew about my father's—I don't know much about his father at all. | 33:10 |
| Kate Ellis | This might seem like a strange leap, but I was remembering something that you had mentioned when we were sitting outside that I wanted you to talk about on tape, which was you were talking about on the bus how some Black people treated each other on the bus, or on the streetcar. We were talking about how the Whites would ignore you. | 33:33 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Oh, yeah. Yeah. | 33:57 |
| Kate Ellis | And I wasn't sure exactly what you were saying because— | 34:00 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Yeah. I can't say this ever happened to me personally. I don't remember that it ever did. But it happened a lot to Ursula. | 34:02 |
| Kate Ellis | Ursula's your friend? | 34:18 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Yeah, who grew up in the Seventh Ward. But her family is not light-skinned. The majority of the people back then in the Seventh Ward were a light skin, like a caste who kind of didn't go outside certain boundaries. And families married into families that had known each other for 100 years, that kind of thing. And a lot of them passed for White in public as a way to get what they wanted, jobs or entry into school, a loan at a bank, whatever. | 34:18 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | But it happened to Ursula more than once, that she would see people she knew, people who were neighbors, people who went to her church, she'd see them in public. And they'd be sitting in the front of the bus with the White people. And the thing that she said about that was, "I just couldn't imagine how I would've reacted if it was somebody really close to me." But she said it gave her—For a little kid, she said he gave her such a sense of power because she could have busted them if she wanted to. She knew what they were up to. And they'd have this pleading look, you know, like— | 35:17 |
| Kate Ellis | Mm-hmm. | 36:04 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | And it happened also that during segregation on the buses and the streetcars, if a White person ended up in the back of the bus, the conductor would stop and tell them—They'd sometimes embarrass them and tell them, "Get on your side of the screen," or, "What's that White girl doing back there in the back of the bus?" My cousins had that happen to them on the train. A conductor thought they were White, and he just screamed on them and told them, "Get back. Get in the front car where you belong." And they just said, "We're Colored. Okay? Leave us alone." But— | 36:11 |
| Kate Ellis | (laughs) See, this is the kind of thing. You got to say what you are. This is kind of like, "You are this." "No I am this." | 37:01 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Right. Yeah. Mm-hmm. | 37:08 |
| Kate Ellis | It's just [indistinct 00:37:14]. | 37:08 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Well, but recently, I was talking to Joe Logsdon, who's a history professor at UNO. And he's done a lot of research on that period. And he said that it happened so frequently with light-skinned Blacks who would be in the back of the bus, and they'd get embarrassed by the conductor trying to make them sit in the front, that they would just sit in the front. And so he said that's really how that got started, passing on the bus. I had never heard that, but I knew it could be perfectly accurate because my cousins had that experience on a train. But then once you set something in motion, it's in motion. Another generation grew into segregation, and it became something that some of them just would do just as a matter of everyday life when they got on a bus or—Yeah. | 37:14 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | This same cousin once took us—She used to take us to the zoo. She was older than me. She was 20-some years older than us. And so when we were kids, she'd take us on outings. And we could go to Audubon Park where the zoo was, but we couldn't buy anything at the concessions. We couldn't ride the rides, things like that. So she would go and put us behind a tree or something, and she would go and buy us a Coke or a hot dog or something and then bring it to us. And I think all families here probably have had experiences like that where there was one you could send. | 38:29 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | In fact, when I was in high school, we had belonged to a group that was like a split from the Youth Council, the NAACP Youth Council. It was called the Negro Betterment Council. And that's a story in itself. But we were all in high school. My brother was in it. Ursula was in it. I still hang with the same people. And one night, one of the things we did kind of unofficially, we had a priest who was like a moderator. He tried to keep a lid on things. He was very nice and knowledgeable and all of that, but we thought he was a little bit too adult, I guess. I don't want to say conservative because he wasn't that. But he would try to talk us down from things we wanted to do, and so we did stuff that we just didn't tell him about. | 39:22 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | One night, a group of us, about 10 of us or more, decided we were going to go and—I don't know what they call it. It wasn't a demonstration. Well, this is what we did. There were these hamburger fast food places called Frostop. I guess they were a local chain. And anybody could buy a hamburger and a root beer. They didn't discriminate about who they sold to. But the White people got a frosty mug for their root beer, and the Black people got a paper cup. | 40:41 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | So we decided that we were going just teach Mr. Frostop a lesson. And so we went after the meeting when I used to meet at St. Augustine High School, and we walked from the high school to the Frostop which was maybe six or seven blocks. We sent—I think it was two girls or maybe a girl. I can't remember. But there were two or three in the group who looked like White, who could pass. So they went ahead of us and ordered a root beer. So by the time we got there, they were having root beer in a frosty mug. So we ordered everything on the menu. We ordered like 50 hamburgers and 100 shakes and all the french fries you have. And then we ordered our root beer, and they gave us paper cups. | 41:28 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | So we challenged them. I mean, we knew they were going to give us paper cups. And they said, well, they had a policy not to serve Negroes in mugs. That's what they said. I don't remember the exact words they used, but that's what they said. So we said, "Well, you served my sister and my cousin over there." (laughs) It was like three of them, I think. "That's right. I'm her sister." (both laugh) So then we all got together and we hugged each other, and then we walked out of the place, left all these hamburgers frying, all these french fries frying, malts shaking in the thing. And the man yelled after us about, "What you want to do with all these hamburgers?" (both laugh) I can't tell you the things we told him to do with his hamburgers. | 42:39 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | So I don't know. I don't know how we got to that. | 43:45 |
| Kate Ellis | Well, I was asking about passing. | 43:50 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Oh, yeah. Yeah. Right. Yeah. | 43:54 |
| Kate Ellis | [indistinct 00:43:56]. | 43:55 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Yeah. | 43:55 |
| Kate Ellis | Mm-hmm. Well, I'm thinking of moving on to the forms, which are going to take a while. And then just, we can keep talking. Those are— | 43:59 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | While we do the forms? | 44:15 |
| Kate Ellis | Yeah. | 44:15 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Okay. | 44:15 |
| Kate Ellis | And then I'll keep the tape on. | 44:18 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | All right. | 44:19 |
| Kate Ellis | And there's still more stuff I want to ask you. But [indistinct 00:44:25] we should start on those things. [indistinct 00:44:35] important. | 44:23 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | And fun. Yeah. | 44:33 |
| Kate Ellis | [indistinct 00:44:40]. | 44:33 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Spectacles. | 44:45 |
| Kate Ellis | But again, I don't want this to necessarily be a break from the story, but just—I want to start. Give me one second. What's your middle name? Do you have your middle name? | 44:47 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Ann. | 45:02 |
| Kate Ellis | Ann. A-N-N? | 45:03 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Mm-hmm. | 45:04 |
| Kate Ellis | And your maiden name is? | 45:05 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | D-Y-E-R. | 45:06 |
| Kate Ellis | And I know I have it written down, but would you just tell me your street address? | 45:10 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | 5527 ECDS. | 45:14 |
| Kate Ellis | Yeah. What's your ZIP? | 45:22 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | 70122. | 45:28 |
| Kate Ellis | 70? | 45:28 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | 122. | 45:28 |
| Kate Ellis | Ah. And your date of birth? | 45:28 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | February 13th, 1946. | 45:40 |
| Kate Ellis | And that was in New Orleans? | 45:46 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Yeah. Is the tape on? | 45:53 |
| Kate Ellis | Yeah. | 45:53 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Because I don't have my— | 45:53 |
| Kate Ellis | Oh. I know. I'm getting [indistinct 00:45:59], so—Okay. How would you like your name to appear in written materials? | 46:18 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Brenda Dyer Quant. They had baptisms [indistinct 00:46:44] from the Catholic Church. | 46:22 |
| Kate Ellis | Uh-huh. But they weren't given birth certificates? Your mother wasn't given a birth certificate? | 46:46 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | No, because they would deliver by midwives. | 46:51 |
| Kate Ellis | Right. At home? | 46:54 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | At home. | 46:55 |
| Kate Ellis | There wasn't a registrar that you would then submit— | 46:56 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | You might write it down in a diary or something, but— | 0:02 |
| Kate Ellis | Well, but wouldn't the owner register it as like a— | 0:07 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | No, | 0:11 |
| Kate Ellis | It would be considered additional property or something like that? | 0:11 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | There was no official register for slaves, no official birth records, death records, which is why it's so hard to trace Black families beyond the 1860s. The only records that I would think would exist on my mother's side would be church records, because they were Catholic so far back. We were able to get my grandfather's baptism certificate, which had his parents name on it. | 0:14 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | I think I mentioned when we were talking about my ancestors, they had this big fight about my grandfather's mother's name, what her name was. He went to this little place, I guess it's part of Opelousas, but it has a name of its own called Chataignier, and it was just a bump in the road, I think, and that's where he was born. My grandfather. So the church actually had his baptism record from when he was born, 18 something. I have it in that folder. | 1:08 |
| Kate Ellis | Oh, you do? What is that folder? | 1:47 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | That's just family stuff that I've saved. | 1:49 |
| Kate Ellis | Records and stuff like that, or just stuff? | 1:52 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | I don't have too many records. I have the family reunion stuff and articles and death notices. | 1:55 |
| Kate Ellis | Okay. Your mother's last name was Dyer? | 2:09 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Mm-hmm. | 2:11 |
| Kate Ellis | What was her date of birth? | 2:14 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | June 8th, 1915. | 2:17 |
| Kate Ellis | When did she die? | 2:21 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | November 12th, 1983. | 2:24 |
| Kate Ellis | She was born in— | 2:30 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Opelousas. | 2:32 |
| Kate Ellis | Will you spell that one more time? | 2:33 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | O-P-E-L-O-U-S-A-S. | 2:34 |
| Kate Ellis | Louisiana. You said that she was a maid. Was that her occupation? | 2:37 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Yeah. Mm-hmm. | 2:51 |
| Kate Ellis | Your father's name? | 2:52 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Joseph. He had no middle name. | 2:54 |
| Kate Ellis | His date of birth? | 3:00 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | I don't know. I would have to go and look. I have his succession papers. I can't remember. I know it's June. I can't remember the date. | 3:03 |
| Kate Ellis | Okay. You don't know the year? | 3:16 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | 1913, I believe, but I can check. | 3:18 |
| Kate Ellis | Okay. June, blank, 1913 is probably good. | 3:20 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | I can check. Yeah. | 3:27 |
| Kate Ellis | Great. Then when did he die? | 3:28 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | December 20th, 1952. | 3:33 |
| Kate Ellis | He was born in? | 3:35 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Lindsey. | 3:43 |
| Kate Ellis | Is that L-I-N-D— | 3:44 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | S-E-Y. Uh-huh. | 3:46 |
| Kate Ellis | He worked in a cement, but his last job was a construction worker? | 3:52 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Yeah, carpentry. | 3:56 |
| Kate Ellis | Carpenter. Okay. You have one brother? | 3:58 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Yeah. | 4:05 |
| Kate Ellis | What's his name? | 4:05 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Joseph Dyer Jr. | 4:06 |
| Kate Ellis | What's his birthday? | 4:13 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | September 7th, 1944. | 4:15 |
| Kate Ellis | He was born in New Orleans? | 4:19 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Yes. When we were children, I used to wonder why his last name was different from mine. Junior. | 4:21 |
| Kate Ellis | Oh, why would he be junior and not yours? | 4:31 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | I really thought that was his last name. I really did. | 4:33 |
| Kate Ellis | Do you have any children? | 4:40 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | No. | 4:41 |
| Kate Ellis | I didn't think so. Have you lived anywhere besides New Orleans? | 4:41 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | I lived in Los Angeles for a year. | 4:52 |
| Kate Ellis | Okay. So you lived in New Orleans from 1946. What was the year that you went to California? | 4:55 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | 1969. | 5:08 |
| Kate Ellis | 1969. Then Los Angeles from— | 5:11 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | '69 to '70, but it really wasn't only a year. | 5:20 |
| Kate Ellis | Okay. | 5:23 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | You're a lefty. | 5:23 |
| Kate Ellis | Yeah. Why? | 5:31 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Ursula's a lefty. Yeah. No, I relate to lefties. | 5:33 |
| Kate Ellis | My handwriting is—Of course, they beg us to write neatly on these forms, and I totally respect and understand that. Just is a condition of mine. Okay. I need your education history, all the schools you attended and the years that you were there? | 5:38 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Oh, okay. I can remember them. | 6:01 |
| Kate Ellis | Great. | 6:03 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Johnson Lockett. | 6:05 |
| Kate Ellis | I love that picture of your fourth grade class. | 6:08 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | It was second grade. | 6:15 |
| Kate Ellis | Oh, it was second grade. | 6:15 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Yeah. | 6:15 |
| Kate Ellis | Oh, okay. Is that two T's at the end? | 6:18 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | End? L-O-C-K-E-T-T. Uh-huh. | 6:20 |
| Kate Ellis | Okay. The years? | 6:25 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | 1950—I have to count now through the fifth grade. | 6:27 |
| Kate Ellis | You started in kindergarten? | 6:40 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Kindergarten. | 6:41 |
| Kate Ellis | So '50 to '51 was—'55 to '56 maybe? | 6:42 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | I guess so, yeah. | 7:00 |
| Kate Ellis | Okay. Then— | 7:04 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Then Holy Redeemer. | 7:07 |
| Kate Ellis | 1956? | 7:07 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Let's say, yeah, that's right. '56, I'll say two years. | 7:26 |
| Kate Ellis | So '58? | 7:35 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Mm-hmm. Then the '58-'59 school year, I was at George Washington Carver Junior High. Oh, that's the story in itself too, changing schools. | 7:39 |
| Kate Ellis | What do you mean? Wait, that was '58-'59? | 8:05 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Yeah. Then St. Mary's Academy, 1959 through '63, so they came out even. Well, when I went from Lockett to Holy Redeemer, I really didn't want to go to Catholic school because it was unfamiliar. We had had nuns in catechism. When you go to public school, you had to go to catechism, and they were so mean. This priest talked my mother into—He told we could go without paying tuition, which was $2 a month, but still it was a cost. Just made her feel like we were going to just be delinquents. They have no father. They need guidance. | 8:13 |
| Kate Ellis | If you stayed at Lockett? | 9:08 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Yeah, we were going to go astray. So he talked to her just incessantly about this. So finally she told us, well, I'm going to leave it up to y'all, if y'all want to change schools. I had the feeling that she really wanted me to, I didn't want to, but I thought that was what she wanted me to do. So I said, "Okay, I'll go to Holy Redeemer." As soon as I got there, the nuns had me picking up trash in the yard, because I wasn't paying tuition. So these were Irish nuns who, they were just so mean. They were just awful. | 9:09 |
| Kate Ellis | This was—Okay. Obviously it was a Black school and White nuns, mostly White nuns? | 10:02 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Yeah. They were all White. I guess they thought of themselves as missionaries, but they really hated us. There's just no getting around that. So anyway, my mother found out I was picking up trash. She just really lost it. She said, "Well, if you're going to stay at that school, I'll come up with the tuition." It wasn't just tuition. They had this book rental fee you had to pay at the first of the year. They had raffle tickets you had to sell. You had to buy a uniform. Goodnight. | 10:09 |
| Kate Ellis | Good night. | 10:59 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | And the $2. Anyway, so I stayed, but I hated it. Then I remember talking to my mother about leaving, going back to Lockett School the next year. Well, the next year, Lockett School cut off the seventh and eighth grade, because they opened a junior high. It was back in those days, all the elementaries hit seventh and eighth grade. They opened this junior high way uptown, and that's where the Lockett seventh and eighth grade was supposed to go. | 11:08 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | So I couldn't go back to Lockett. There was no seventh grade. My brother ended up at Holy Redeemer, lots of kids from Lockett did. The alternative was a long bus ride up to Woodson Junior High, way uptown, on the other side of town. One of our friends did end up on that long bus ride, a friend in the block. It was him who made me realize some years later that we always had busing. When cities would be blowing up over busing, he said, "I was bused to Woodson." That was busing for segregation. Now people want to squawk about the poor little children riding buses to be integrated. | 11:55 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Well, Woodson, by no stretch of the imagination, could it be considered in your district, from the Ninth Ward to Central City. I don't know if you know where that is. It's way uptown. So that's how a lot of kids from Lockett ended up at Holy Redeemer, rather than take the bus ride. So my brother went to Holy Redeemer only for that one year. In retrospect, that was really callous the way they did that. The way they closed, it just effectively put you out of your school. | 12:52 |
| Kate Ellis | Not even have one nearby. | 13:36 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Right. So my brother did a year. I did two years at that school. I think we still have scars. | 13:42 |
| Kate Ellis | From the way you were treated by nuns. | 13:55 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Yeah. | 13:55 |
| Kate Ellis | Huh. | 13:55 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | They were mean anyway, but they were especially mean if you came from a public school. You were just trash. Anyway, let's— | 14:00 |
| Kate Ellis | Okay. Then Carver and then St. Marys and— | 14:17 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Yeah. So Carver was like public school heaven. | 14:19 |
| Kate Ellis | Mm-hmm. Really? | 14:23 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | It had just opened that year, 1959, no, '58. That was its first year and it was a huge complex. It was the junior and senior high. My girlfriend in the block, Everee, the girl I mentioned earlier, she had gone to a Lutheran school, which was a small, one room school really. A Black Lutheran church ran a school in the basement, and I think through sixth grade. It was her brother who ended up at Lockett and then ended up at Woodson. Anyway, she had gotten fed up with Lutheran school and wanted to go to public school. You just thought that would be exciting. She lasted one day. | 14:24 |
| Kate Ellis | Really? | 15:18 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | I don't think I'm coming back. For me, it was like, I had friends from Lockett who were at that school, so it was a continuation of. Then this White lady around the corner, I used to clean after school for her every day. She was on me about being in public school. It was like if you were in public school, there was no way you would turn out to be anything decent. We weren't bad children, but people hounded us about Catholic school. So I thought I never wanted to see another nun, but then I found out this school had Black nuns, so I'm glad I did it end up at that school. It was a good experience. Anyway, that's— | 15:21 |
| Kate Ellis | Okay. The next is your work history and it's listing your current and most important previous jobs. So now I'm wondering, for the first one, if I should just put writer. | 16:24 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Yeah. Okay. | 16:38 |
| Kate Ellis | Are you comfortable with that? | 16:39 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Yes. | 16:41 |
| Kate Ellis | I'm going to say self-employed. Is that— | 16:44 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Right. That's what Uncle Sam says. | 16:46 |
| Kate Ellis | Yeah. Did you go to college? | 17:06 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Mm-hmm. | 17:06 |
| Kate Ellis | Well, where'd you go to college? | 17:06 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | UNO. It was LSUNO then when I went there. | 17:10 |
| Kate Ellis | It was what? | 17:14 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | It was Louisiana State University at New Orleans. | 17:15 |
| Kate Ellis | Oh. | 17:19 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Which it still is part of the state university system, but they changed the name. | 17:20 |
| Kate Ellis | To University of New Orleans? | 17:26 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Yeah. | 17:27 |
| Kate Ellis | So should I put University Of New Orleans? | 17:27 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Yeah, because nobody would realize if you put LSUNO. | 17:31 |
| Kate Ellis | I knew there was something missing there. Was it 1963 to '67? | 17:33 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | No, '68 when I finished. | 17:45 |
| Kate Ellis | Okay. Is that it? | 17:45 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Mm-hmm. | 17:45 |
| Kate Ellis | Okay. So writer, self-employed in New Orleans. This asked for dates and I'm wondering, how long would you say that this has been, even if you've had other jobs while you're a minor? | 18:03 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Well, I guess I would start with the first thing I had published, which was '89, I think. | 18:25 |
| Kate Ellis | Okay. | 18:39 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | I think it was '89. | 18:40 |
| Kate Ellis | So I'll say 1989. | 18:41 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Yeah. | 18:41 |
| Kate Ellis | This reminds me of seeing an interview with Toni Morrison, I guess it was last year, when she was on Charlie Rose. If it's possible— | 18:48 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | I really never thought it was possible. I never thought that I could be a writer. It just wasn't something I took seriously. It was something that I dreamed of that I wished I could have been. Ursula and I, in high school, in our class, we were the best writers. The class prophecy was that we would be writers, that we'd be partners writing something together. We both went to the same college and she taught English for a number of years. Then she worked at a junior college, but throughout all those years, she was writing and I wasn't. I just thought it was just a high school dream. It was a fantasy. The whole time she was on me, because I wasn't, "Why don't you ever write anything?" My response was always, "I'm writing all the time. I have a report due. I have an article to write for the paper, a newsletter." I was always writing, but I knew what she meant. She meant something different. | 19:01 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Whatever year it was that I read The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison's novel, I was just so overwhelmed when I read that novel because I thought, these are thoughts that I have had that I thought nobody would want to read. They seem so much mine, so personal, that who'd want to read that? I read that book and I cried in places and I couldn't explain why, but it was because it was like it was my story in so many ways and it was a wonderful book. I remember talking to Ursula after we had both read it and telling her, she was living in California then, and I told her, I think about it and I think, well, I could do this. I could write such a story. Then I would think, but she already wrote it, and I don't have anything left to say. She said everything. | 20:32 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Finally, in 1983 I had been out of LA and spent some time with relatives and then I went and spent a few days with Ursula. She and her husband, they're both writers actually, but she's really more into it than he is, but they made me promise that I was going to stop putting it off and write something. So I came right home and did that. I wrote a short story, which I haven't looked at it in a long time. I don't know how good it is, but it felt so good to write. It just was, I don't know, it was liberating just to write it. I sent it to them. So anyway, I've been writing ever since, even though I've had jobs and dry spells. | 21:51 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | I think when I really crossed the hurdle was in 1990. I applied for a fellowship with the State Arts Council and got one, which was a real shock. Then I was at a really unlikely place. I was at Angola State Prison. I had gone with a group of people for a drama event that the prisoners had written a play as part of a literacy project, and they were going to perform the play. I went up with some people who are with the Gary W, not the Gary W, the Gary Tyler Defense Committee. Gary W., that's another life. Gary was in the play. | 22:53 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | So anyway, when we were outside the prison, in meeting some people who came, we went up in a van, I think. Anyways, lots of cars of people coming in, and somebody introduced me to somebody. Then I heard this voice say—Oh, no. I was in the middle of shaking hands with this woman. Somebody was introducing us, this is Brenda Quant. She went, "Brenda Quant, the writer?" I was just so stunned. I had no public. Well, it turned out she was on the staff of the division of the arts where I got the fellowship. | 23:53 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | So that's how she knew my name, but she was so excited to meet me. So that's how she said it, "Brenda Quant, the writer?" So it was like a hurdle. I had to realize that somebody else had identified me as that, I guess, and then I could be legit. So yes, that is an issue I think for women, and maybe especially for minority women. If you look back through American history, you find more Black male writers than females. The average person probably couldn't name five Black women writers even today. | 24:45 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | One of the things too that, I don't know how to express it, I guess it's grief. My mother died before she read anything that I wrote, except for school papers and stuff. That first story that I wrote was really about my father's death. Before I got a chance to show it to her, she got very ill and was hospitalized, and she eventually died. I just regret that I didn't have that to share with her, because she really loved to read. She only had a sixth grade education, but she read all the time. I majored in English. She should have gotten a degree too, because she read all the books that I had to read for classes. She— | 25:47 |
| Kate Ellis | Really, you mean as you were reading them? I mean not as you're reading, but I mean you bring home books and she'd read them? | 26:52 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | If it was novels, she just devoured them. She loved novels. She read some nonfiction too, but she really loved novels better than anything. She loved a good story. She was a good storyteller and she just really appreciated good storytelling. She would critique the books. The ones she liked, she'd tell me what she liked about them. So I wish I could have shared that with her, but maybe she knows. | 26:59 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | I hate to keep going off on tangents, but a close friend Paul, the one who rode the bus to Woodson, the one who was put out of Lockett in the eighth grade, he was a very close friend of ours. Even into adulthood, we were friends. He would come over when I was in college, in high school too, I guess. "Have you written anything? You got anything for me to read?" He just loved anything I wrote. He just loved it. He would just read stuff, and sometimes he'd take it with him and come back and tell me what he liked about it, and really pumped me up. He died, but at least before he died, I got to talk to him about the writing. | 27:47 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | He didn't get to read any of it, but I told him I was writing. No, wait. He did get to read that first story, and then I didn't see him for a long time. That was one of the first things he asked me, "You still writing?" I had planned to go and copy some stuff to bring to him. It was just a matter of a few weeks I think, he died before I could do that. He did read that first story. In fact, I had named one of the characters after him in that first one, which he really appreciated. It just still didn't seem real, even though Paul was a fan almost, and would just really encourage me. I just didn't believe it. It just didn't seem possible. | 28:52 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | That's one of the reasons that I really appreciate Alice Walker and Toni Morrison and a lot of other Black women who are writing now, because it was very brave what they jumped out there and did. I think they probably had every reason to expect to be dismissed and trashed. Well, Alice Walker was, absolutely, but I think they were very brave, Maya Angelou. They're still defending themselves, especially Alice. Even The Color Purple is a decade in the past now and she can't be interviewed without that being a major topic, which I think is pitiful. | 29:54 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | I think it's because this was the voice that was missing from American literature, a Black female voice. Not everybody can listen to that voice, so scrolling. The voice is legitimate and real and it's not going to go away. I think it really led almost like a movement, those writers, that enables a lot of other women to at least be noticed. So I pay my respects to them and others too, Zora. | 30:56 |
| Kate Ellis | All right. So what are other jobs that you've had? | 32:02 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Okay, the last— | 32:12 |
| Kate Ellis | Let me just say, you don't have to—Obviously, the ones that are most important. | 32:16 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Yeah. The last job-job that I had was for the—Well, it was actually for the federal court, but I really was paid by the state. The state lost a lawsuit called the Gary W. Case. It involved children with disabilities, children with behavior problems being sent out of state for their education and training and housing and everything. The majority of them ended up in Texas. Texas had all these institutions that I think they were opening, because they were getting all these kids from Louisiana. | 32:19 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Anyway, because the children were out of state, there was no real monitoring and a lot of abuse happened. Anyway, the parent of this boy named Gary W. went to Texas to try to find her son. He had been transferred from one institution to another. He was lost. They didn't know where he was. So that's what started this suit. That's what made people start to look into what was going on. So the outcome of the suit was that Louisiana was instructed, by court order, to bring all these children back and provide whatever they needed basically. That was in 1976. I worked in the case, not continuously, but off and on from 1980 to 87. No, more recent than that, 91. This is 94, 92. It wasn't continuous. | 33:23 |
| Kate Ellis | So what was the job? | 34:54 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Reviewing programs, housing and services provided for 600 plaintiffs. | 35:00 |
| Kate Ellis | Who should I write as the employer or the— | 35:18 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | The state, State of Louisiana. | 35:23 |
| Kate Ellis | Okay. | 35:24 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | It was odd because the state paid us, but we really worked for the federal court. | 35:31 |
| Kate Ellis | Okay. What else? | 35:40 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | What else? Before that, I worked for the Louisiana Hunger Coalition. | 35:44 |
| Kate Ellis | What was your job? | 35:54 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | What did they call my title? Trainer, I think they called us. It was funded by the federal government under the Community Services Administration, which Reagan abolished. We were funded to increase participation in federal nutrition projects. I worked with the school breakfast and summer food programs and you wouldn't believe the hell I caught. It sounds like something, what school wouldn't want that, but we practically had the Klan on us. | 36:00 |
| Kate Ellis | For introducing— | 36:54 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | School breakfast. It was a communist plot. In one parish, it led to the, I can't remember if it was the city council or the school board, tried to pass an ordinance that any child came to school without breakfast, the parent would be investigated. What it was, they saw it as a program for Black children, for poor Black children. Even in parishes that were majority White, once it had that, what they considered a stigma, then they were against it at all costs. | 36:56 |
| Kate Ellis | Like they wouldn't have any poor people in their community. | 37:41 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Yeah. | 37:45 |
| Kate Ellis | What years did you work in the program? | 37:46 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | 70—Let's see, the last year was there was 1980, 81. I guess I started there in 76, 77. | 37:52 |
| Kate Ellis | About 80? | 38:08 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Yeah. Okay. | 38:09 |
| Kate Ellis | Then before that? Is that pretty much the most important? | 38:19 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Well, I guess that was the biggest chunks. | 38:28 |
| Kate Ellis | Okay. | 38:30 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | I taught school for two years. | 38:31 |
| Kate Ellis | Okay. | 38:33 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | I taught English. | 38:34 |
| Kate Ellis | English teacher, what school? | 38:35 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Woodson. I was at three schools in two years. | 38:39 |
| Kate Ellis | Oh. Then I'm going to say New Orleans Public Schools. | 38:44 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Yeah. | 38:47 |
| Kate Ellis | From? | 38:47 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Well, it was split. It wasn't like two straight years, because in between, I went to California for that year. | 38:58 |
| Kate Ellis | One year was 1968, because you were in California, or '68, '69? | 39:10 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Yeah. | 39:17 |
| Kate Ellis | Then the other year was? | 39:17 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | 70. No, I guess it was 71, 72. | 39:23 |
| Kate Ellis | Okay. Have you ever received any awards or honors or held any offices? | 39:33 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | A plaque when I was with the Hunger Coalition. | 39:44 |
| Kate Ellis | Oh, is it a plaque from the Hunger Coalition? | 39:50 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | No, it was from a group that I had worked with in one of the parishes that we had worked with. It was the Fishermen And Concerned Citizens Association of Plaquemines Parish. | 39:51 |
| Kate Ellis | Okay, so plaque from Fisherman and Concerned— | 40:01 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Citizens. Plaquemines, P-L-A-Q-U-E— | 40:02 |
| Kate Ellis | One second. | 40:04 |
| Kate Ellis | P-L-A— | 40:04 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Q-U-E-M-I-N-E-S. | 40:14 |
| Kate Ellis | Parish. For work at Hunger Coalition, or for work during? | 40:27 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | For the work of the Hunger Coalition, I guess. | 40:35 |
| Kate Ellis | Okay. | 40:37 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Certificate from the Survival Coalition. | 40:50 |
| Kate Ellis | Uh-huh. What about your fellowship? | 40:54 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Yeah. Literature Fellowship, 1991. I think that was 91. | 41:07 |
| Kate Ellis | From Louisiana State? From State of Louisiana? | 41:22 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Yeah. | 41:24 |
| Kate Ellis | 1991. | 41:24 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Yeah. | 41:24 |
| Kate Ellis | Okay. What is your religious denomination? Do you still call yourself a Catholic? | 41:34 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | No, because people have expectations when you do that. | 41:41 |
| Kate Ellis | So do you have a current religious denomination? | 41:46 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | No, I wouldn't say so. | 41:47 |
| Kate Ellis | Okay. | 41:55 |
| Kate Ellis | So you don't have a current church that you're in now? | 41:55 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | No. | 42:02 |
| Kate Ellis | What is your past church membership? | 42:10 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | St. Mary pf the Angels. | 42:17 |
| Kate Ellis | St. Mary of Angels? | 42:20 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Mm-hmm, and Holy Redeemer. | 42:21 |
| Kate Ellis | Okay. What organizations do you belong, civic, community, educational, political, etc.? | 42:41 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | I'm on the board of Louisiana Guardianship Services and Pyramid Parent Training Project. | 42:59 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | I think that's it. I pretty much have tried to remove myself. I was on too many things. | 43:31 |
| Kate Ellis | This wants some things that you used to belong to. Can you name the main organizations that you used to belong? | 43:39 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | That I used to belong to? | 43:48 |
| Kate Ellis | Yeah. | 43:49 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | I was on the board of Culu, C-U-L-U, African Dance and Drum Company, traditional African dance. | 43:49 |
| Kate Ellis | How did you spell that? | 44:02 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | C-U-L-U. | 44:03 |
| Kate Ellis | Culu, African—What was it called again? | 44:08 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Traditional African Dance and Drum Company. I was on the board and I was like the volunteer grant writer. | 44:09 |
| Kate Ellis | Around what time was that? | 44:26 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Oh, that was up until recently. | 44:28 |
| Kate Ellis | So can I say 1990s or 1980s? | 44:31 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | From about 1990, I guess, until 93. | 44:35 |
| Kate Ellis | Okay. | 44:39 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | I was on the board for Sacred Dance Ministry. | 44:46 |
| Kate Ellis | It's also in the nineties? | 45:02 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Yeah. I just resigned from that this year. | 45:05 |
| Kate Ellis | You said you're also on the board for Culu? | 45:11 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Yeah. | 45:37 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | I guess it's always been in the eighties and the nineties. | 45:37 |
| Kate Ellis | Okay. | 45:38 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Survival Coalition, I was a volunteer grant writer. | 45:43 |
| Kate Ellis | That was in the eighties or nineties? | 45:58 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Eighties. | 46:01 |
| Kate Ellis | You belonged to some civil rights organizations? | 46:15 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Yes. I belonged to the NAACP. | 46:18 |
| Kate Ellis | In the sixties? | 46:23 |
| Kate Ellis | So NAACP in—? | 0:02 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Yeah, I was in it in the '70s again for a while. And in high school I was in the Negro Betterment Council. And I was in the Youth Council, well, I wasn't really in the Youth Council. | 0:05 |
| Kate Ellis | And high school was— | 0:23 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | I was in something called the High School Council. The Youth Council at the time was mostly college students. May have been all college students or that age, and they started the High School Council for high school kids. I was in that, but then that was like the Negro Betterment Council was a split off from that. | 0:28 |
| Kate Ellis | All right. List any other activities or affiliations like military service, labor unionizing, hobbies and interests, publications, et cetera? | 0:54 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | You would have to write it there, don't you? | 1:11 |
| Kate Ellis | Well, if you want, you have a list of publications? | 1:15 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | Yeah. | 1:18 |
| Kate Ellis | Actually give that to me. | 1:18 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | You want me to get it now or? | 1:21 |
| Kate Ellis | I can get it after. | 1:22 |
| Brenda Dyer Quant | I can. | 1:23 |
| Kate Ellis | I'll turn this off. | 1:24 |
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