Mary Ruffin interview recording, 1994 June 22

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Stacey Scales	Okay, I'll start off by just asking you your name and how long you've been in the Birmingham Area.	0:00
Mary Louis Johnson Ruffin	Okay. My name is Mary Louis Ruffin. I have been in the Birmingham Area all my life.	0:07
Mary Louis Johnson Ruffin	I was born and reared in Birmingham.	0:20
Stacey Scales	Do you remember your grandparents?	0:25
Mary Louis Johnson Ruffin	Yes, I do.	0:28
Stacey Scales	Were they from Birmingham area?	0:29
Mary Louis Johnson Ruffin	They were from Choctaw County and Tuskegee, Alabama.	0:32
Stacey Scales	That was good.	0:38
Mary Louis Johnson Ruffin	Really? Very good.	0:38
Stacey Scales	What did they do?	0:45
Mary Louis Johnson Ruffin	Farmers. They were farmers. And of course, I picked cotton too because we was helping our grandparents and they raised food. Well, they were just farming.	0:47
Stacey Scales	And your parents, what did they—	1:01
Mary Louis Johnson Ruffin	Well, my father was a miner. Worked in a coal mine here in Birmingham, Edgewater. And my mother was a maid over the mountain and—	1:05
Stacey Scales	A maid over the mountain? What mountain?	1:20
Mary Louis Johnson Ruffin	Oh, well, they call it over the mountain. Mount Brook, around in that area. Still in Birmingham.	1:26
Stacey Scales	Okay. And your parents are still in Birmingham?	1:31
Mary Louis Johnson Ruffin	Both parents are dead.	1:40
Stacey Scales	Oh. So what did you do? What attracted them to Birmingham then?	1:41
Mary Louis Johnson Ruffin	Well, I really don't know. My father came from Choctaw County and I kind of think he got tired of farming, really. He didn't get a chance to go to school very much. I think his highest grade was third grade. At that time, you can make a little more money here than you could down there, because all in all, it wasn't very much anyway. Because I heard him say too many times he worked for $3 a week and there were quite a few of us. My mother had 14 children and they met here. And of course my mother's parents that come from Tuskegee, moved here, but I think all in all, it was into the city where they could do industry work and the bottom line was being able to make a little bit more money to better care for their children.	1:49
Stacey Scales	What did you do? What was your first job?	2:51
Mary Louis Johnson Ruffin	I would help my grandfather on the farm, my mother's father. And as I grew older and going to high school, I would do day work to kind of help out. I got married in 1951 and I can remember the first job that I had tried to get because my husband was unemployed then, and of course this was long in '56, '57, '58. I went over to a restaurant over here on the Bessemer Super Highway to apply for a job and I put in some applications in different places. But this afternoon, the lady called me and said— And I was always trying to be a short-order cook, but the lady called me.	2:54
Mary Louis Johnson Ruffin	The manager of the place said that she had seen my application there and she wanted to know if I was interested in being anything other than a short-order cook. I said, "Well, I understand that that's all the jobs that you all had available." She said, "Well, listening to you, I think you would be very good as a waitress." Well, I knew they didn't hire Black waitress, but she insisted that I come on. I didn't tell her whether I was Black or White. She insisted that I come on, but I knew then that she was assuming that I was not Black.	3:49
Stacey Scales	Do you remember the name of the place?	4:27
Mary Louis Johnson Ruffin	It used to be Russ's.	4:28
Stacey Scales	Russ's?	4:29
Mary Louis Johnson Ruffin	Uh-huh. It's right over there. It's MA Reatha's now, but at the time, I believe it was Russ's or Russelle's or whatever, but it was over on the Bessemer Super Highway in the same place where MA Reatha's is now. And when I got over there, I walked over there because we didn't have transportation. I walked from here over there, and when I went into place, all eyes was on me and I walked up and the lady said, "Well, may I help you?" I said, "Well, I came on at your request because I had put in for a short-order cook and you said you wanted a waitress." And she said, "You Mary Ruffin?" I said, "I am Mary Ruffin." "Well, I'm sorry, Miss Ruffin, we don't hire Blacks." So then I had to walk back over here, but I knew she didn't. I knew they didn't, but she was assuming from my tone of voice that I was White. I knew she did.	4:33
Stacey Scales	How'd you feel?	5:38
Mary Louis Johnson Ruffin	Well, I kind of knew it, but then you don't let yourself feel too let down over anything because I know how the Whites were treating the Blacks and I know there were certain areas they did not allow the Blacks in. And I know that there were certain jobs the Blacks just couldn't— There was no way for them to get them. Other than having to walk this far in a hot environment, it was kind of amusing, really. But for them to assume that I was who they wanted, then when they saw me, they found out that my face was too dark for them.	5:41
Stacey Scales	Did you have many experiences like that?	6:21
Mary Louis Johnson Ruffin	Well, I've had quite a few just on telephone. But after then, they would start asking, "Are you Black or White?" And when you say Black— Well, they didn't say Black then. They say, "Are you a Negro?" I didn't have to go through the ordeal of walking over there then being let down. They would just ask.	6:23
Stacey Scales	What did you do for entertainment?	6:55
Mary Louis Johnson Ruffin	Well, it wasn't too much of an entertainment, really, because I had— at that time, I had three children and my biggest of the time was taking care of them. And I am the mother of 12, but at that time I had three. I really felt that my place was with them and to do what I could for them. And of course, I was going to work at night and my husband, whatever he could find to do during the day, he would work in the daytime and keep the children at night. I was going to work at night, but I could be here with them during the day. That was the way that we had it planned out until he could get a more substantial job. Months after then, he got hired at SIPCO and he stayed there until he retired.	6:58
Stacey Scales	Were you living in this neighborhood when you originally moved to Birmingham?	7:53
Mary Louis Johnson Ruffin	No, I was living over in a place they called Riley Station.	7:58
Stacey Scales	Riley Station?	8:00
Mary Louis Johnson Ruffin	Mm-hmm. I mean, I didn't originally. I was born here in Birmingham, but I stayed there in my parents' house until I moved here. This is the first house that I've had since that I could call my own.	8:03
Stacey Scales	Did your parents rent the house or did they own?	8:22
Mary Louis Johnson Ruffin	My parents didn't believe in renting. My parents believe in owning whatever they had, and that's where I feel today.	8:23
Stacey Scales	Were most of the houses in the neighborhood owned by folks?	8:29
Mary Louis Johnson Ruffin	Yeah. Well, there were quite a few that was rented out, but most of us would— All my sisters and brothers, whatever we went into, we purposed to buy it, and so far so good. And of course, it seemed like my children are about the same way.	8:35
Stacey Scales	Let's see. Were your parents and grandparents formally educated? Did they go to school?	9:00
Mary Louis Johnson Ruffin	They went to school, but they didn't— I can remember my father going to night school when I was a little girl, but my mother never did go back.	9:06
Stacey Scales	Do you know what school it was?	9:18
Mary Louis Johnson Ruffin	They had a school, I think, they called Powderly. I was quite small then. I believe it was either Powderly Night School or Riley Night School.	9:21
Stacey Scales	How do you—	9:30
Mary Louis Johnson Ruffin	P-O-W-D-E-R-L-Y. Powderly. It was either Powderly or Riley, but he went to night school for a while to try and help further educate himself.	9:31
Stacey Scales	Did you go to school?	9:43
Mary Louis Johnson Ruffin	I graduated from high school in 1951. I got married in 1951. I graduated from Wenonah High School. In 1977, I went back to school. My 12th child was born in 1976. My husband left me and divorced me in 1977 after my 12th child was born. And I went back for at Lawson State for two years, graduated doing medical secretary, got an associate degree. Then in 1989, I went back and got me a degree in computer information system.	9:45
Mary Louis Johnson Ruffin	And of course, all during that time I was working for T.L. Moore Construction Company as office administrator bookkeeper. And in 1989, when I went back for the computer information system, I graduated in 1991. I immediately tried to go to Miles in the fall, but I was too late getting in the fall so I was accepted in the spring, which was January of 1992. And I graduated with my bachelor's degree in May the 15th of 1994. I'm planning on going to Birmingham-Southern in the fall to work on my master's degree in business and marketing.	10:35
Stacey Scales	Was the high school that you went to a Black high school?	11:34
Mary Louis Johnson Ruffin	All Black. Predominantly Black, Wenonah High School.	11:38
Stacey Scales	Were there places that you weren't allowed to go when you were coming up.	11:43
Mary Louis Johnson Ruffin	You couldn't go nowhere at all. Even on the buses, they had a sign for White and sign for Colored, and you have to pick your seat on the buses. And later— I mean, street cars. Later, we had buses but it was the same one.	11:49
Stacey Scales	Did you ever go to 4th Street?	12:07
Mary Louis Johnson Ruffin	Where's 4th Street?	12:10
Stacey Scales	In Birmingham. I think it's like Black Business District.	12:11
Mary Louis Johnson Ruffin	4th Avenue?	12:15
Stacey Scales	4th Avenue. I'm sorry.	12:16
Mary Louis Johnson Ruffin	Well, I worked on 4th Avenue for a while. I worked on 4th Avenue at a cafeteria there for a while in the late 50s, early 60s.	12:17
Stacey Scales	Which cafeteria was it?	12:33
Mary Louis Johnson Ruffin	I forget now, but that's where anybody could come in and sit down and eat on 4th Avenue. And that was about the only place you could go. I know that the man that owned it, I believe they called him Mr. Weathers, but I forget the name of the cafeteria.	12:35
Stacey Scales	In your family, could you describe the gatherings of family gatherings?	13:02
Mary Louis Johnson Ruffin	Well, every two years, the Hooks family had a family reunion and, often as we possibly could, we would get together on Thanksgiving and Christmas for the immediate family. And every Sunday after church, we would have a little gathering. That was about the size of it.	13:06
Stacey Scales	Were there ever hard times where you didn't have any—?	13:34
Mary Louis Johnson Ruffin	Very hard times. Plenty of time, we didn't even have food to eat. My father would go to what they call the NWPA. I guess you would be somewhat like the welfare system now. And they would give potatoes, cabbage, and something like that, where we could have that. And, oh, I don't know if it was Marita Bakery or Betsy Ross Bakery, they would have bread where the loaves will have broken and they'd put it all in a barrel. And my father would go and buy that and keep it in the crib to help feed the hogs, but we ate more than the hogs did of that. It was clean bread and cakes and things, but he would buy by the barrel and there were plenty of times we had to make a meal off of it.	13:38
Stacey Scales	Who made the decisions in the family?	14:39
Mary Louis Johnson Ruffin	Well, my mother and father. They both made the decisions. They just would more or less agree with this. Well, whatever differences they had, we didn't know them. They would've, I guess, worked them out before it got to our years and they were just together.	14:42
Stacey Scales	Were they ever a crisis time in the community or folks [indistinct 00:15:13]?	15:08
Mary Louis Johnson Ruffin	I don't remember anything like that. I can remember the Ku Klux Clan riding down our neighborhood and with their white sheets on and throwing crosses in people yard. But the people are just afraid. I mean, they were just simply afraid of the White man. And that's one reason I never allowed my children to look at Roots because a lot of these youngsters nowaday can't stand that, to see how the Black man was abused. And in their little hearts, they want to get it the first person that's White because they felt like they were so brutish to them. But I just know that that just wasn't doing any good, so I wasn't ever particular about them seeing it.	15:14
Stacey Scales	Did anybody in your family have their own way of protesting against Jim Crow?	16:07
Mary Louis Johnson Ruffin	Not really. Not really.	16:12
Stacey Scales	Remember the stories that [indistinct 00:16:21]?	16:20
Mary Louis Johnson Ruffin	Well, I can remember my father said one time that while working in the field, a White man had molested, had really raped his sister and he beat the man unmerciful and he left town. Then he left down to Choctaw County then, because he knew if they ever found out he did it, they would hang him, but I think this is one thing that really stayed on him for years and years. When my father decided to live a holy life, he said that it was the only thing that he felt that he had to pray so hard to keep down the animosity that he had in him for a White man because how badly they had been treated. And whatever they did, they could smooth it over and everything was all right. And he knew that it wouldn't do any good to tell anybody that this man had raped his sister, so all he knew to do was just beat the man himself.	16:21
Stacey Scales	Was the farm that your father work, was that his farm or—	17:37
Mary Louis Johnson Ruffin	That was his father's	17:37
Stacey Scales	His father's?	17:37
Mary Louis Johnson Ruffin	Mm-hmm. His father and mother's. He was the oldest of— I think it was 12 of them.	17:38
Stacey Scales	Did they have any interaction with the Black folks?	17:48
Mary Louis Johnson Ruffin	Well, I know they did because whenever they had to sell cotton and stuff, they had to carry to the cotton gin and the Black folks didn't have anything like that. And they would more or less give them what they wanted to.	17:55
Stacey Scales	Did he ever get treated unfairly with wages?	18:15
Mary Louis Johnson Ruffin	Oh, yes. He said that he and a White man would be working on the same job and there were things that he had to tell the White man in order for the White man to come through, but the White man would make more than double what he was making. In later years, that's where this Unfair Labor Law came into effect.	18:18
Stacey Scales	Do you remember how much he was making?	18:42
Mary Louis Johnson Ruffin	Well, now he said $3 a week. Now, what that would be— And they were working five days. How that was distributed as to what's— I don't know. But he knew that they could be doing the same job, but they couldn't make as much as the White man.	18:44
Stacey Scales	How did your family feel about church, was that mandatory?	19:04
Mary Louis Johnson Ruffin	Oh, very. We had to go to church and I've been the same way about my children. You must go to church.	19:08
Stacey Scales	Would you say your values have come down?	19:17
Mary Louis Johnson Ruffin	No, in fact, my values are still the same. I love going to church and I love helping others and I just love being a part of whatever as far as the church is concerned. In fact, that has been, for years and years, my own activity, because I had quite a few children. I never believed in doing much visiting, but I'd go to church and back home. And then when I got back in school, it was church schooling back home and it's about the same way now.	19:21
Stacey Scales	You have the same values as your parents and grandparents?	19:54
Mary Louis Johnson Ruffin	Well, I feel like I have. I think I have a little bit better understanding about a lot of things than they had, but I think the values are more or less the same. Our priority was God first.	20:03
Stacey Scales	Did anyone own a car?	20:16
Mary Louis Johnson Ruffin	My father always own those T Model Ford. And he had to have some way to get all of us back and forth.	20:23
Stacey Scales	Did you all ever take trips anywhere?	20:34
Mary Louis Johnson Ruffin	Well, no more than church and back home. With so many children in there, we couldn't take too many. We couldn't take any long trips. We would go to Aniston or to Talladega and all of that would be church, like in Vance, surrounding areas of Alabama.	20:36
Stacey Scales	With those children, how did the house function?	20:55
Mary Louis Johnson Ruffin	Well, it functioned well. You had nothing to do but feed them. The demands then were nothing like the demands are now. And I would tell people a lot of the time, my baby's 18 now and my oldest child is 41 and it's just as much different than them. It is in night and day, age gap, generation gap, whatever, but children will just— They're just different.	20:59
Stacey Scales	Do you have any other experiences of Jim Crow that you would like to share?	21:39
Mary Louis Johnson Ruffin	Well, that's about all I can. I'm pretty sure there are some more, but all I can think of right now. But—	21:48
Stacey Scales	How did you feel about being separated while on public transportation or on buses?	21:56
Mary Louis Johnson Ruffin	Well, to tell you the truth, I didn't give it any thought. I guess we more or less was just too glad to be able to survive. And as later in years as time go by, you would think about it then but we didn't give it too much thought. Years later, I got a car and I've done all of my maneuvering by car and I didn't have to get familiar with that. But when I had to, I dealt with it.	22:06
Stacey Scales	Did you have a lot of friends or relatives that went north?	22:42
Mary Louis Johnson Ruffin	Quite a few. And I heard them say the only difference in the discrimination in the South than that in the North, it wasn't as outspoken in the North as it is here. But there were places that they say they weren't allowed even in the North that we knew in the South there was a no-no. But in the North, they just wasn't as broad with it as they are here.	22:49
Stacey Scales	You said your mother was a maid. Did she ever speak of any confrontations she had to deal with?	23:22
Mary Louis Johnson Ruffin	Well, I know she had some and she had spoken of some, but she knew that that's what she had to do to make a livelihood, to help father with their children. And they just stood it and went on and made the best that they could.	23:29
Stacey Scales	Were there any taboos that's in Birmingham?	23:58
Mary Louis Johnson Ruffin	Dealt right now anyway.	23:58
Stacey Scales	Do you remember the early voting process?	23:58
Mary Louis Johnson Ruffin	Yeah, but we didn't really get involved with it because it was more or less against the rules of our church to become any part of politics. So, I didn't really get off into that.	24:12
Stacey Scales	The church didn't get involved in the politics?	24:34
Mary Louis Johnson Ruffin	They're doing it now, but it was against our church's rules because people are doing a lot of things now that they weren't doing at the beginning of the onset.	24:36
Stacey Scales	Could you tell me some of the differences?	24:54
Mary Louis Johnson Ruffin	Well, we just got a lot of people that's voting and we didn't have it then.	24:54
Stacey Scales	During the time, did many people talk about African-American history?	25:03
Mary Louis Johnson Ruffin	They really didn't. They didn't do a lot of talk about it naturally. We knew from our fore parents where we was coming from and he mentioned studying about George Washington Carver and how he was sold— His parents were sold as a slave and they never knew what happened to his father. And someone had come that night and took him, he was a baby, and the mother out. These were some more slave owners and how they found him near dead in some woods somewhere, never located his mother anywhere, anymore. And how it was such a struggle for him. In the year that he died in 1945, I went to Tuskegee and he had just died because that was my thing, my aim to go there and see him.	25:08
Mary Louis Johnson Ruffin	And our school had a bus to go down, but in the meantime he died. And just really going through the reading of what he had gone through and how he had purposed so in his heart how he was going to help his Black sisters and brothers to not to have to go through the ordeal that he had to go through. In the first college that he wanted to go to because he was Black, they turned him down and he had gone from school to school and stayed from first one person and the other, and more or less after he was 10 years old, he had to be more or less his own man.	26:15
Mary Louis Johnson Ruffin	And even though the story said that his slave keepers were like parents to him, he knew they weren't his parents because I think he admired them and did what he could to show them his appreciation. But some of the things in reading his history, it's really a hurting thing. We would go into that and how much he did with the peanut and how many times he failed before he got to where he was really aiming to get to. But it didn't stop him. He had to keep going and they would tell us that should be a lesson to us today and say that a winner never quit and a quitter never win. You just have to keep pursuing what you feel that is right. And wherever you set your goals, just keep pushing for it.	26:57
Stacey Scales	Do you know the difference between that lesson and how maybe education is today?	28:04
Mary Louis Johnson Ruffin	Well, in my African class, now African history class, that I have been studying at Miles, there are more talking about this empire overpowering the other empire all for power. And where how Morocco and Shanghai and Guyana and all of these different places, as soon as one get a little bit more power from the other, he overthrows this one, and as soon as that one build back up, he'll overthrow this one. And that's the most thing that they're teaching now. But to just really go down into the history of really the roots of Africa and what it's all about, I think more or less, they're just touching on the surface of it. That's the way I see it in what I could gather then and what I'm able to gather now. They're still not really bringing it out I feel that it should be brought.	28:12
Stacey Scales	Were there any other heroes or leaders during that time in Jim Crow period that people, I guess, looked to locally or nationally?	29:21
Mary Louis Johnson Ruffin	Well, I can't think of any right offhand. I wasn't sure whether Adam Clayton Powell was White or Black, but he said he was Black and how he stood up for what he thought was right and fought for what's right. But it looks seemingly as if the ones that could get by and get their points over the most is where people wasn't sure whether they were Black or White.	29:33
Stacey Scales	Do you know other people like that?	30:07
Mary Louis Johnson Ruffin	Well, in reading— I probably don't know them per se one by one, but in reading and looking back over their history, and I said this one probably got by because they wasn't sure whether he was Black or White. And then so many of our people that could go either way, a lot of them did that in order to get through and get by. And I couldn't see that being a true nature because the seat— It might get your place for a while, but after a while it's going to catch up with you.	30:11
Stacey Scales	Are you familiar with Parker Industrial High School?	30:50
Mary Louis Johnson Ruffin	Well, I had a brother to graduate from there, but I'm not familiar. I never went there. I heard him talk about how old it was and I know there were older mothers in our church that had graduated at that time. They call it Industrial High. And later years after the principal, Mr. Parker, passed, they put the Parker High School to it, but I never had any kind of interaction. I've never attended it.	30:53
Stacey Scales	Did ministers ever speak out against Jim Crow or segregation?	31:25
Mary Louis Johnson Ruffin	Yeah, they did, but it would just go to a certain extent. We go push just so far and then we don't push any further. Nobody went to the extent that Martin Luther King did. I know my fore parents would tell us that the chief apostle of our church said that God told him to tell the White man to lose the Black man and let him go and told him to declare that. And I think before our chief apostle really decided to do that, he took a trip to Africa and he never returned. Had to stay in Africa. And all of this was supposedly been through—	31:30
Stacey Scales	And when was that?	32:20
Mary Louis Johnson Ruffin	1921.	32:21
Stacey Scales	And he never returned?	32:23
Mary Louis Johnson Ruffin	Never returned. You get first one story and then the other, but as far as knowing the facts about what happened to him, I don't think anybody really knew. They had said that some king over there that he was with allowed him to be poisoned.	32:29
Stacey Scales	What was his name?	32:49
Mary Louis Johnson Ruffin	Ed Smith. We call him Father Ed Smith.	32:54
Stacey Scales	This is the same one that God told him to—	33:00
Mary Louis Johnson Ruffin	Tell the White man to lose the Black man and let him go. And we have a flag. We are chartered in the White House and our flag is Black and White. The field is Black and the stars are White, which means anytime that you are okay to have a flag, you have your own government. You can have your own government if people see fit to pursue it.	33:04
Stacey Scales	Did the church respond to his affirmation?	33:33
Mary Louis Johnson Ruffin	Yes, very much so. But the church became very disturbed after he left and didn't return.	33:39
Stacey Scales	Well, I can't really think of anything. Do you have anything you would like to share for the tape?	33:58
Mary Louis Johnson Ruffin	Well, I don't know. It is been nice talking with you and about the portion that I can recall right now. And then if I recall anymore, I can give you a call.	34:07

Item Info

Title:

Mary Ruffin interview recording, 1994 June 22

Date:

June 22, 1994

Creator:

Ruffin, Mary Johnson

Contributor:

Scales, Mausiki Stacey

Description:

Name: Mary Johnson Ruffin; Date of birth: 1932-09-14; Place of birth: Birmingham, AL; Occupation(s): clerical; secretary; nursing; Residence: Brighton, AL
Informant ID: 709; Interviewed by: Stacey Scales.

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English

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Behind the Veil

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

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

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

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a51fbdca-c09f-44a1-8db8-0a03394018eb
ark:/87924/r4pr80326
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Mary Ruffin interview recording, 1994 June 22

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1. Mary Ruffin administrative file, 1994

John Hope Franklin Research Center

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Mary Ruffin interview recording, 1994 June 22

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John Hope Franklin Research Center

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