Annie Patterson interview recording, 1997 December 05
MP3
Loading the media player...
Transcript
- Download transcript as:
-
Text
-
PDF
-
WebVTT (includes timecodes)
Transcripts may contain inaccuracies.
| Sara Forgione | Testing, testing. | 0:04 |
| Sara Forgione | I wanted to take some time on the second interview to focus in on some of the things we were talking about when you were growing up here and when this community used to be known as Hickstown. Wanted to know if you could tell me a little bit more of like a physical description of the neighborhood, what the houses looked like, where the borders of the neighborhood were, the streets. | 0:09 |
| Annie Patterson | Oh, the houses were rather rundown houses. There were a few nice houses and a lot of rundown houses that people rented, that wasn't properly kept up, but I don't know how old it was. Just a typical Black community. We had cleanup days, the cleanup campaign twice a year, where we try to keep the streets clean and the excess trash articles people put out during the year picked up keeping from accumulating in the yards. And the streets wasn't paved, but they had come through earlier and put some kind of tar, temporary paving on the streets in later years but when I was growing up, they were just plain dirt streets. They come through and put gravel down on the street. We didn't have no paved streets. But then later they put this temporary paving down, no curbing, no sidewalks, just in the middle of the street. | 0:45 |
| Sara Forgione | Most people in the neighborhood were renting their property? | 2:42 |
| Annie Patterson | Most of them. Most of them. Then there were quite a few that owned, owned their places. | 2:45 |
| Sara Forgione | What was a typical Black community like at that time? | 2:52 |
| Annie Patterson | Well you know, can always tell a Black community from a White one just going through at that time anyway. The yards wasn't, say, perfect. Some kept their yards nice and some didn't. And then like I said, the condition of the houses was not up to date. We had apartments down on this end of the community and all the rest of them were single houses, but the most of them were rented. | 2:59 |
| Sara Forgione | Were the owners of the houses that people would rent from typically White people? | 3:51 |
| Annie Patterson | Yeah, most of them, most of them. | 3:55 |
| Sara Forgione | They didn't keep the properties up as well as they should have? | 4:00 |
| Annie Patterson | No, long ways from it. | 4:03 |
| Sara Forgione | At that time when you were growing up here, what streets formed the boundaries of what you would refer to as Hickstown? | 4:09 |
| Annie Patterson | We started from Pratt Street. And that was Pratt Street, Shirley Street, Ringling Street, Crest Street. These were just faced— | 4:18 |
| Sara Forgione | Right. | 4:45 |
| Annie Patterson | Over. And then there was Pettigrew Street that come right down beside of the railroad track. It started up by West Durham Lumber Company and went all the way down by the railroad tracks. And that was Jordan Street, Beacon Street, Fulton Street, and then Nassau. That was most of the streets. And the community extended from the railroad track all the way back to—I can't think of the name of—Bass, was it Bass? This little street that come up right here where you come in. | 4:46 |
| Sara Forgione | Oh, isn't that Shirley? | 5:45 |
| Annie Patterson | It used to be Bass Street, but now it's Shirley, they extended Shirley all the way around and up the hill. And all these streets over here are renamed. They don't have the same names as it was in the old community. | 5:48 |
| Sara Forgione | Maybe help to look it up in the history books. | 6:11 |
| Annie Patterson | Yeah, because all the streets were renamed over here. Now Crest Street is still Crest Street. That was the main street coming from Pettigrew and went all the way up to where Douglas Street is and they used to be a dead end, then they cut Douglas Street. | 6:17 |
| Sara Forgione | Connecting down to— | 6:40 |
| Annie Patterson | To Erwin Road. But it wasn't there when the community was Hickstown. So, they moved the whole community over. So, from Fulton over this way is the new Crest Street area. But when growing up it was all right with us because that's all we do. | 6:42 |
| Annie Patterson | But a lot improving could have been done. But when you were renting and waiting on rent folks to fix up your place, that was out of the question. All that had to be done by you, however the person in the house was or how they wanted their yards or maybe doing screen doors and stuff like this. Most people had to do it they self. | 7:25 |
| Sara Forgione | How did Hickstown community compare with other Black neighborhoods in Durham? Was it similar to neighborhoods like Hayti? | 8:03 |
| Annie Patterson | Yeah, yeah. | 8:13 |
| Sara Forgione | Was there much interaction between the communities? | 8:15 |
| Annie Patterson | I don't think so. Well, each community had their own group. But in going to school we learned the children from other communities because we had to go to the same school, catch the same school bus. So, we learned the children from the other communities by dealing with them at school. But then they had ball teams. We played the different other communities, each one play against the other one and different activities like that. We deal with other communities. | 8:22 |
| Sara Forgione | What organizations would coordinate the balls? | 9:20 |
| Annie Patterson | I don't know really how we coming through. Maybe by the recreation department. I don't know. I don't know who set that up or who scheduled it, made the schedules each year. But I think it was through the recreation department. | 9:26 |
| Sara Forgione | And that was for grownups? That was an adult league? | 9:49 |
| Annie Patterson | What you mean by that? | 9:56 |
| Sara Forgione | The ball games, were they for children to play or— | 9:56 |
| Annie Patterson | Oh, we had children teams, yeah. | 10:00 |
| Sara Forgione | And then there was also separate games for adults in the community to play other teams. | 10:05 |
| Annie Patterson | I don't think we had an adult team though. Not when I was a teenager now I don't think they had an adult team. The teenagers had a team. The boys had a team, the girls had a team. But I don't remember an adult team. | 10:21 |
| Sara Forgione | What different community organizations were people a part of here in Hickstown? | 10:42 |
| Annie Patterson | What you mean like Boy Scouts? We had Boy Scouts, we had Girl Scouts, Brownies, Cubs Scouts, Patrols. And that's something you don't really see anymore. | 10:47 |
| Sara Forgione | And what are those? | 11:19 |
| Annie Patterson | The safety patrols. That used to stand on the corner by the schools. Each one was assigned a corner. Now got them grown people have that job. But when I was growing up, we had safety patrols that come through the school system and ever so often they all would come together, the different communities have patrol inspection, see which group went out with the neatness and the other patrol group. And we had just about anything that other communities had with being into different things. We didn't have a recreation center up here, but they used to go to the rec that was across the tracks right over here by the lumber company. Used to be a recreation center right over there. | 11:20 |
| Annie Patterson | This was say, when my children were growing up. When I was growing up, we didn't have a recreation center at all. The only recreation center was WD Hill down on Fayetteville Street. And— | 12:34 |
| Sara Forgione | It was a long way away. | 12:52 |
| Annie Patterson | It was a long ways away. But we went there, we went there, participated in basketball, baseball, the different things. They had summer camps. We went to the Y and the summer programs. It was a long ways away, but we went, so was the high school. We went to Hillside. So, everything that we were into was on the other side of town. | 13:15 |
| Sara Forgione | What kind of organizations were there for adults to be involved in? | 13:39 |
| Annie Patterson | Well, they had community club. They had the sportsman club and they had a house that was designated for their clubhouse that done a lot of sponsoring summer trips, parties, cabarets. And that was another club, it was two clubs. I forgot the name of that one, but I know the Sportsman Club and I can't call the name of the other one. Sportsman Club was mostly men. They wives participated, but it was mostly men. And the other club was mixed, men and women. And they had a lot of activities that the grownups deal with. | 13:48 |
| Annie Patterson | I never was a club-goer, but a lot of people enjoyed getting together, playing cards and having parties, New Year's parties. Oh, the Sportsman Club, they sponsor a trip every summer, bus trip. Maybe to New Orleans or to Atlantic City. And it was something to keep them busy. But like I said, I was a house person. I never did get out in join up with the clubs. I went to a lot of the occasions, the things they had but I wasn't a member. [Indistinct 00:16:04] would come to me, the name of the other club. Socialites, that was the name of the other one. The Socialites. And they sponsored a lot of activities for grownups. | 15:02 |
| Sara Forgione | I imagine that there's a lot of grown up involvement in the two churches here too. | 16:23 |
| Annie Patterson | Well, one of the churches, the Holy Church is no longer up here. It moved over on a Dearborn Drive, I think it is now, the Holy Church. But it's a lot of people up here that still attended the Holy Church, that belong to the Holy Church. They were mostly the older group of people. A lot of them is dead now. And all the rest went to the Baptist Church right down the street. | 16:29 |
| Sara Forgione | And would the church sponsor community events? | 17:04 |
| Annie Patterson | Yeah, we had a lot of things from the church. We had summer picnics and Easter egg hunts and plays at the church. The church had a lot of things going for the children. | 17:07 |
| Sara Forgione | I remember when we were talking last time you said that people referred to Hickstown as the country. | 17:37 |
| Annie Patterson | They did. They called us country children because the streets wasn't paved and there was a lot of wooded area over there. | 17:42 |
| Sara Forgione | Is that something that started happening when you went to school? Who would say country children? | 17:51 |
| Annie Patterson | Yeah. Yeah, the children from other communities called us country children because they always considered us to be in the country. And it was like the country, people raised hogs and they raised chickens and they had gardens. It was just as country as any country could be compared to other places across town. Oh, they were in the city, you say. Well, we were in the city, but the city limit like stopped right along here somewhere and down behind the cemetery and down behind the apartments and places. They had hog pins, raised hogs, and people raised chickens, and lots of gardens. So, we done anything that country children would do. | 17:55 |
| Sara Forgione | When children would call you country children—[phone ringing] Do you want to get that? | 19:14 |
| Annie Patterson | Hello? Hello? Hi. I'm fine. No, he's not back yet. | 19:20 |
| Sara Forgione | When I was asking was when the children would call you country children, were they teasing you in that way? | 19:34 |
| Annie Patterson | Oh yeah. They were teasing. It caused a lot of fights. It caused a lot of fighting, fight on the school bus. The school bus come through Walltown area before and then it come through this area, but it come down Hillsborough Road. We didn't have a school bus that come in the community when I was growing up. We had to walk over to the Hillsborough Road to catch the bus in the morning. But it was a designated bus just for school and only one bus came through. And if you didn't get that bus or miss that bus, then you had to catch the city bus, but it made two stops. One, that was over here by the lumber plant, over here by West Lumber Company and one down where it used to be that hot dog stand. It's a little restaurant or café or something that sits there now. | 19:40 |
| Sara Forgione | You mean Hazels? The little— | 20:52 |
| Annie Patterson | The little restaurant that sits right there on Hillsborough Road? Well, we had to walk all the way over there to the bus stop up, go across the track. But it was a little closer than here because then, said community, sat over there. And we had to go over there to catch even the city bus. Now, when my children was growing up, then they had a school bus that came into the community to pick them up. | 20:54 |
| Sara Forgione | Was your community fairly isolated from White neighborhoods in Durham? | 21:33 |
| Annie Patterson | What you mean, living arrangements or? Yeah, it was just a Black community. | 21:48 |
| Sara Forgione | Were the White neighborhoods physically different also? | 21:54 |
| Annie Patterson | What you mean, they're different house? | 21:57 |
| Sara Forgione | The houses and the way they're set up. | 22:06 |
| Annie Patterson | Oh, yeah. Yeah, whole lot different. Yeah, we all sat on this side of the track, White community started over another side of the Hillsborough Road. But now, part of this community was on the other side of the track there were warehouses on West Main. There were Black families that lived over there on Edmond Street, right along in there where—what is the Wild Bulls? | 22:08 |
| Sara Forgione | Yeah. | 22:59 |
| Annie Patterson | Yeah, it was families that lived around over in there. That all was considered a part of this community. | 23:01 |
| Sara Forgione | They're still having us there. | 23:17 |
| Annie Patterson | Yeah, yeah. There's that apartments, and then all where that fenced in car lot place, that was a whole row of houses, over there. | 23:17 |
| Sara Forgione | Wanted to find out a little more about community interaction here in Hickstown. When someone new would move into the neighborhood, was there anything that community did for them or how long did it take before they were considered part of the neighborhood? | 23:34 |
| Annie Patterson | They was part of it the day they moved in. No, it was nothing special done for them. | 23:52 |
| Sara Forgione | What kind of things would people do for each other if someone in the neighborhood got sick? | 24:01 |
| Annie Patterson | Oh, they were always good about helping the sick. Well, when I was a child, they had a community club. My grandmother and all of them was a part of, they had noon day prayer meetings and they go from house to house. Back then, and even now, up to now, people are very good to sick people. The sick, they always stuck with the sick and the older people. | 24:06 |
| Sara Forgione | And if a new baby was born into a family, would that be an occasion for people to get together? | 24:52 |
| Annie Patterson | No, not really. No. Due, they'd be getting together all the time because there was a lot of babies being born back then. People had large families when I was growing up. | 25:03 |
| Sara Forgione | And when was the VA hospital built? Do you remember when that was done? | 25:21 |
| Annie Patterson | That I really can't say, but I was a teenager when it was built. It was in the late '40s I believe. | 25:39 |
| Sara Forgione | Do you remember— | 25:56 |
| Annie Patterson | Or early '50s. Maybe the early '50s when it was built. | 25:56 |
| Sara Forgione | Do you remember that having a big impact on the neighborhood? | 26:07 |
| Annie Patterson | Well, not really because nobody could go there but the veterans. So, not really. | 26:11 |
| Sara Forgione | Since your husband was involved in military service, could you and your family the use the hospital? | 26:28 |
| Annie Patterson | No. | 26:36 |
| Sara Forgione | Did a lot of people become employed at the VA? | 26:39 |
| Annie Patterson | Yeah, there was a lot of people over here that worked over there. And— | 26:42 |
| Sara Forgione | What positions were people working in? | 26:43 |
| Annie Patterson | We had nurses over there from this community and we had people worked in dietetics, housekeeping. It was a lot of people. The head cook was from this community, was my husband's brother, was the head cook over there. And it was a lot of people that worked there from this community. | 26:44 |
| Sara Forgione | I noticed driving in that a lot of the streets, a lot of the houses, especially on Shirley Street, look fairly new. And even on this part of Crest Street. Were new houses built when the community shifted? | 27:17 |
| Annie Patterson | Yeah, some of them are new and the most of them were moved into here and renovated. | 27:37 |
| Sara Forgione | And when did that happen? | 27:47 |
| Annie Patterson | What? The— | 27:50 |
| Sara Forgione | The shift. | 27:52 |
| Annie Patterson | It started in the early '80s. I can't really call the year exact, but it was the early '80s when they—it had to be maybe '83 because it was after my father died and he died in '80. He didn't live to see the move, but they started, it must have been around '83 when they started to form in this community, clearing off, making the streets, cutting the streets. And then they started. Well I said, the people that own property and the old community all got new houses. All the rest of the people that rented had an option of whether they got a house or apartment. And the most of them got a house. | 27:54 |
| Annie Patterson | Everybody up here owns their own houses now. And then there was some that went into the apartments, but it was your choice. And a lot of them moved away from the whole community. They took the money that was offered and moved out. There wasn't a lot of them, but some did. And so, like I said, I could point out from house to house, which one was built from the ground, brand new and the rest of them were renovated. But actually by time they got through renovating the house, you couldn't tell whether it was brand new or not. | 29:20 |
| Sara Forgione | Was it something that was paid for by the Durham local government or who was sponsoring the changes? | 30:13 |
| Annie Patterson | I don't know. I can't go into that and be truthful about how that was really brought about. Now, my husband could tell you all of that because he headed up the move. | 30:20 |
| Sara Forgione | Is your house one that— | 30:43 |
| Annie Patterson | Was built brand new. | 30:44 |
| Sara Forgione | So, you've only been living here since— | 30:47 |
| Annie Patterson | '84, December of '84. | 30:52 |
| Sara Forgione | And the house that you lived in before this one, was that one turned down? | 30:57 |
| Annie Patterson | No, they moved it across town. | 31:02 |
| Sara Forgione | Oh, really? | 31:05 |
| Annie Patterson | Moved it across town. | 31:07 |
| Sara Forgione | You can go see your old house across town. | 31:09 |
| Annie Patterson | And do you know I never have. | 31:11 |
| Sara Forgione | Really. | 31:11 |
| Annie Patterson | The children said they knew where it was, but I never have. People come in and bought houses and moved them places, different places. Because the house I lived in over there, it was a decent house. It was one that was built when I was having children and they built quite a few houses on that street. And we moved in one, oh, let me see, it was in '64, I think, when I moved in there, the new house. And it was new. | 31:13 |
| Annie Patterson | And it was quite a few new houses that was built around over there. And it was quite a few decent houses over there. And then on this street down at the other end of the street, going out to the railroad track, there were nice houses down there, brick houses. The lady right next door to me had a nice brick home down there. And across the street was a barber shop right on the corner. We had a pool room, it was a store and it had a pool room. We had another café up on Pettigrew Street when I was growing up. It was a lot to do, as much as we could afford to do. | 32:14 |
| Sara Forgione | What happened to most of those businesses, with the barber shop? | 33:26 |
| Annie Patterson | Well, they all went down with the community and over here, I don't know how it's set up, but I don't think they allowed businesses over here in this area. | 33:33 |
| Sara Forgione | It may have been zoned for only residential. | 33:46 |
| Annie Patterson | Yeah. | 33:50 |
| Sara Forgione | Is your childhood home, the one that you grew up in, is that one still standing someplace? | 33:51 |
| Annie Patterson | No, all that was done away with when they tore down the community. They tore down the whole community. And let me see, they have a lot of landmarks that a lot of people can point out just where some of the things stood over. Because on the other side of the parking deck, that big parking deck was part of the old community. | 34:09 |
| Sara Forgione | That's where your aunt had a daycare, right? That area? | 34:52 |
| Annie Patterson | The daycare was right here on Crest Street. Right here within the block of the church. Yeah, she had a—Ms. Jones, Annabelle Jones, she owned a daycare and a Beauty Parlor. One house she lived in and the beauty parlor was on the front, built on the front of the house. Next door was the daycare. She had two houses side by side. But then it had been done away with years before this came about. | 34:52 |
| Sara Forgione | You were saying what used to stand over at the parking deck? You're about to tell me what used to stand. | 35:41 |
| Annie Patterson | No, I said over by the parking deck in different places the children can point out different thing landmarks, like big tree that was left there and whose yard that tree was in. But no, they wiped out the whole community, just everything over there. | 35:45 |
| Sara Forgione | Was that, would you say that was a devastating time for the neighborhood or were people managed to get through it? | 36:11 |
| Annie Patterson | Well, all that was arranged before they start tearing out as to where we were going. And as they built over here, then the people moved over here. They didn't come through until everybody was moved out. Everybody come over, went down to the office that was set up and chose their lots as to where they were going to live over here. Because everybody that moved into this community came from the old community. | 36:22 |
| Annie Patterson | And as they built, they moved and they moved them around in the different places. If one family house was ready over here and they move out, they would move another family into that house in order to clear some more land and stuff. And they just moved them around and around until everybody was settled. I think the apartments was the first built over here. The apartments was the first— | 36:59 |
| Sara Forgione | Where are the apartments now? | 37:45 |
| Annie Patterson | One is right down, not at the end of the street, just a block down the street and you turn off to your left and go down. It's a whole apartment area. And then the other one is like you come up the hills up Shirley Street. I guess that's the way you came in and you turn off— well leaving here, the first turn off to your right, you go down into that set apartments. | 37:47 |
| Sara Forgione | I guess that's it unless there's anything else you want to comment on. | 38:22 |
| Annie Patterson | No, not really. Not really. | 38:29 |
| Sara Forgione | There's a little bit of biographical information. | 38:40 |
Item Info
The preservation of the Duke University Libraries Digital Collections and the Duke Digital Repository programs are supported in part by the Lowell and Eileen Aptman Digital Preservation Fund