Betty Allen interview recording, 1994 June 25

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Tywanna Whorley	Please tell me your your name.	0:02
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	Betty B. Allen.	0:03
Tywanna Whorley	What does the "B" stand for?	0:06
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	Bell.	0:08
Tywanna Whorley	Bell?	0:08
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	Mm-hmm.	0:09
Tywanna Whorley	B-E-L-L?	0:09
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	Yes. Bell is my maiden name. I usually use Betty Bell Allen, but my name is Betty Lawan Bell Allen.	0:10
Tywanna Whorley	How do you spell Lawan?	0:21
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	Capital L-A-W-A-N.	0:24
Tywanna Whorley	How did you get that name?	0:29
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	My mother gave it to me. I don't know where she got it from now.	0:29
Tywanna Whorley	Where were you born?	0:30
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	I was born in the town of Panola, Alabama, in Sumter County.	0:34
Tywanna Whorley	Panola. P-O?	0:39
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	P-A-N-O-L-A. Panola.	0:39
Tywanna Whorley	Can you tell me the year?	0:44
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	September 9, 1928.	0:46
Tywanna Whorley	Okay. Do you remember anything about your grandparents?	0:50
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	Yes. I remember my grandfather and my grandmother.	0:53
Tywanna Whorley	What were their names?	0:56
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	My grandfather's name, Bob Bell, Sr. My grandmother's name was Sarah Ann Bell.	0:58
Tywanna Whorley	Did they live here in Birmingham?	1:07
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	No, they were from Panola in Sumter County.	1:07
Tywanna Whorley	What can you remember about your grandparents?	1:12
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	Well, we were farmers. At least they were farmers. I can remember them being very religious people. Yeah, we had to go to church. We were brought up that way. Well, they farmed. You had to get up from sunup to sundown in the fields. So that's what I remember about them, the working. That's the way they worked. We raised just about everything we had to eat on the farm.	1:14
Tywanna Whorley	Oh okay. Did your grandfather own the land?	1:47
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	No, he didn't. He leased it out.	1:50
Tywanna Whorley	So you had other families living on the land?	1:54
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	I tell you what. He had all his sons. He lived in a big house on the hill, and all the sons lived there around about him, maybe about half a mile to a mile. They all live around them and their families.	1:56
Tywanna Whorley	I mean did you visit them in terms of in the afternoons or were you there to help out with the chores?	2:14
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	Well, my mother was a teacher and when she met my father, well, he didn't want her to work anymore. But she ended up with him having nine sisters. I think it's nine sisters. Anyway, she ended up being in the fields, too. I called myself going to help her because her hands would get blistered, and they ended up giving me a hoe at age seven. So I worked on the farm, too.	2:21
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	Yeah. We raised all kind of foods, peanuts, ribbon cane, sorghum cane, corn, cotton, all those kind of things, watermelons. We raised a lot of stuff. We had hogs, cows. We had horses, and we had a fruit farm. You know fruit, the apples and the pears and the pecans, different stuff like that.	2:53
Tywanna Whorley	Did your grandfather sell any of the food?	3:23
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	Sometime they sold corn. They did sell the cotton and some of the corn, and we used to use the corn for cornmeal for the wintertime and the peanuts for the wintertime. We used to have to shell the corn so they could take it to this grounder who would make the corn into meal.	3:27
Tywanna Whorley	I suppose you probably don't remember how much your grandfather got for that.	3:55
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	You know what? I don't think he got what it was worth. Sometimes he wouldn't get very much for the whole year with all of them farming. He didn't get that very much, the way I used to hear it. He didn't get what he deserved to get, but we made it by the grace of God.	4:01
Tywanna Whorley	So your father had had a portion of the land, too?	4:28
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	Well, see, my father worked on the railroad. He was the only one that worked on the railroad. The other brothers farmed. He had one brother that was a preacher at the time, and he didn't do too much farming, but he did farm some.	4:31
Tywanna Whorley	Okay. What railroad did your father work for?	4:49
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	Southern Railroad. It was between Aliceville, Alabama, and New York and further beyond, then Mississippi, I guess. I was trying to think of the railroad's name, but I can't. I know it was Southern something.	4:51
Tywanna Whorley	Okay. Do you remember the hours he used to keep?	5:06
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	Well, he used to go early in the morning. We wouldn't see him until the evening. They used to lay those — I'm trying to think of the name of it right now. You know those big logs that go under the railroads?	5:11
Tywanna Whorley	Okay.	5:31
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	I did know the name of them. I've forgotten it now since you're asking me.	5:32
Tywanna Whorley	Okay. Do you remember the house that you stayed in in Alabama?	5:40
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	Yes. Well, when my mother and my father, before my granddaddy died, we used to live in a house just like the rest of them, not too far from my grandparents. But when my granddaddy died, my grandmother wanted my father to come up to the house to live with them because he was the next to oldest. We lived in a 10-room, two-story house. But see, that housed a lot of sisters. My aunt had died, so she had some of her grandchildren there.	5:40
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	The house was full all right. We had a great big dining room, a big kitchen. When we had a big dinner, there used to be so much food on the table that you really didn't know what you wanted to eat.	6:18
Tywanna Whorley	How was that growing up in an extended family?	6:33
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	I didn't like it at first. I really didn't. Because we had been where it was just the three of us at that time. I'm the oldest. Then I have my brother, and a younger sister was just born on the 4th of July. I didn't like it too much because it was too many women up there. It really was too many women, with all those sisters. I think maybe one or two of them were married. The others were just still at the house at that time.	6:36
Tywanna Whorley	Where did you go to school?	7:16
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	Well, we came to Bessemer, Alabama, in the Christmas of 1941. I'm trying to see. Was it '41? Yeah. Coming over into 1942. That was done Christmas time. We moved to Bessemer. We stopped farming. Everybody moved to Bessemer. We brought chickens, and we brought some of everything from the farm. The people laughed, but they really busy trying to get some of it. But we came here, and I went to Dunbar High School in Bessemer. That was the colored high school in Bessemer.	7:16
Tywanna Whorley	Dunbar, huh?	7:56
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	Yeah.	7:57
Tywanna Whorley	What elementary school did you—	7:58
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	That was an elementary and high school.	8:03
Tywanna Whorley	Oh, okay. Where did you live when you moved here in Bessemer?	8:04
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	We moved here to 2111 Fifth Avenue. That's what it was. It was a two-story building there, too. So we all got a chance to have apartments in that, one uncle upstairs one way and the other uncle up that way, my grandmother on this side, my parent on the other side.	8:11
Tywanna Whorley	Let me see here in these questions. How was that, going to Dunbar High?	8:31
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	It was nice. When I got up into high school, I played basketball. I took home economics, and I played basketball. We had two championships while I was there, one for the state and one for the county. I enjoyed it very much.	8:39
Tywanna Whorley	How did your parents travel to Bessemer?	8:58
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	We came in cars. We had some cars. We couldn't have made it. It'd been like going to Texas if we had been riding by mule or something like that. But we came in cars.	9:00
Tywanna Whorley	Can you estimate how long you felt the ride was from where you were to Bessemer?	9:15
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	Well, I guess during that time it would be about three — We didn't go there now in two hours, so it'd have to be about three or four hours. I said cars, but we came in cars and a truck because we were moving.	9:21
Tywanna Whorley	Okay. Did y'all ever stop in terms of those hours driving from there to Bessemer?	9:37
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	I'm sure they did. I can hardly remember stopping because one would take the wheel when the other one got tired. So we were able to continue. I'm sure it took much longer than it would now because we didn't have the roads that we have now, freeways and highways.	9:45
Tywanna Whorley	How was your neighborhood that you lived in in Bessemer?	10:10
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	Well, it was a low-income neighborhood. Now, we lived on Fifth Avenue, which was the main drive. But then the other part on either side of us was kind of rough, people fighting and carrying on all the time during the weekends. When we went to the store, we had to peep around the corner before a brick would jimmy around there, young people fighting. We didn't ever have that kind of stuff. No, no, no.	10:13
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	The street we lived on was very quiet because we had a doctor living on our street. See, it was one side of the street because the other side of the street had the whole block was a furniture company, McDonald Furniture Company. They made furniture. So we didn't have that problem with other people across the street, just the people up on that one side. A grocery store on the end came later on, and there was a cafeteria for the rolling mill plant on the other end. So we didn't have too many people on our street.	10:44
Tywanna Whorley	When you moved here, did your father keep his job with the Southern or did he—	11:22
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	No. He went to one of the plants. He started at SECO, I believe, and then SECO moved to Birmingham. I remember he brought a check home one week for $22.50 to feed the family. I had about six brothers and sisters at that time. No, I didn't. That's later, because he was working at SECO, and I think there was about four of us. No, it wasn't. Let me get it straight now. It was five of us during that time because my brother Donald was born then. He was working at SECO.	11:25
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	Then when he left SECO, he went over to the rolling mill where you rolled steel. He used to work so hard sometime that his pant legs would be burning and his skin would be burning. We used to try to keep patches thick on his legs where he was handling the iron. Well, he worked until he died, the same plant.	12:07
Tywanna Whorley	Did he ever talk about his job? Did he talk about it?	12:35
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	That it's hard and it was hard work, and he was able to handle it. I guess that's the way he raised us, to work hard, do the best we can.	12:38
Tywanna Whorley	Actually, what year did you finish high school?	12:53
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	I finished high school in 1948.	12:55
Tywanna Whorley	And what happened afterwards?	12:58
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	Well, I got married. I got married. Well, a few of us girls, we were pretty big-sized girls so we wanted to get married, and we did. I got married after high school. But I took up flower making for funerals and weddings and different things like that. Well, I used to work in a flower shop.	13:00
Tywanna Whorley	Do you remember where?	13:31
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	Yes. The people who owned the place used to own Starworth and Johnson Funeral Home. So they put a flower shop right beside our house, and we couldn't do anything about it. So the lady there taught me how to make flowers.	13:32
Tywanna Whorley	So that was your first job?	13:53
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	Mm-hmm. That was my first job in a way, not from babysitting. I used to babysit. I started babysitting at 14, used to make a dollar a day, had to pay a nickel for my bus ride. That would be a dime coming back, see. I would make a dollar a day. You'd have to see about babies and wash diapers and stuff like that. Sometimes you'd even have to cook some. That was at 14, I think I started.	13:57
Tywanna Whorley	Were those for White, Black folks—	14:25
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	White.	14:25
Tywanna Whorley	White?	14:25
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	Yeah.	14:30
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	Poorer than me, I suspect. But a dollar a day wasn't very much for them to get the work that we were giving. And then that gave me money for school.	14:31
Tywanna Whorley	How did you happen to become a babysitter?	14:43
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	Well, somebody was looking for a babysitter, and they recommended that I go there.	14:47
Tywanna Whorley	Okay. So you finished high school. You get married. What did you do—	14:52
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	Well, see, now what happened was I was working babysitting while I was in school. Then after I finished school, then that's when I started working the flower shop. I worked there. And then when they weren't doing anything much, I started working. Somebody told Mr. Pratt about me making flowers. But during that time, I was working as a babysitter for one of the rich people in Bessemer, Paden Realtor Company. They were you know what you call big shots.	14:59
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	I went to Florida with them, and we were living in a long building, women on one side who went down there to work for them, the people who they were working for. They would send us up to a long building, the women on one side, the men on the other one. The men would have to come through our living quarters to go to the bathroom. I told the lady. I said, "My daddy wouldn't like this at all. He would never let me come down here if that's what was going to be happening."	15:34
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	So she said, "Just give me another day, and what I'll do is I'll ask for another apartment. You can sleep in the same room with my daughter." He was the solicitor. Now at that time, I was working for the solicitor of Bessemer, I mean a district attorney. They were good friends with the Padens. So I started working for the Padens when I think I was about 16 or 17.	16:12
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	Anyway, they all would go down to Florida together. Anyway, she did get me from up there. It was frightening, being young, not having menfolks to come through your bedroom to go to the bathroom. It was a mess that the people had to put up with. But you were working for them, so they looked for you to go up to that place to live. It looked like a barn. That's what it looked like. But anyway, when we got back to Bessemer, I started working with the Padens, and I worked for them up through my marriage.	16:44
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	After I finished high school, I got married. I had my first child. I was intending to come to Miles College, but he had told me he would let finish my education. But I started having babies so fast that I didn't get a chance to. I had three children in three years.	17:24
Tywanna Whorley	Wow.	17:45
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	Yeah. Now, I tell you what. I could have done a little better, just the same if I had pushed myself. I acted as so many of other people act. We don't really go into things that we need to because I should have gone. I think many times I should have, but then I wouldn't have my lovely children that I have. I'd rather have them.	17:46
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	But then I took home economics in high school, and that's what I worked with all the other years I worked. Because I can remember when we were younger, we were down to living on Fifth Avenue at the time. Then when the Klans came through your area, you would know it because it'd be lines of cars blowing their horns about 12:00 at night or somewhere along in that time, maybe not that late.	18:14
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	But you'd wake up with all those horns blowing, and they'd be shining lights on your house. I remember my brother jumped up and went to the window to see what was happening. By that time, they had a light shining at our window, and I pulled him down right quick because I didn't know what their purpose was coming through our neighborhood in the first place.	18:40
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	But I didn't experience too many incidents with those people because it's just that segregation. We knew what we had. You would go to the back, and that was it. But I started working. My husband and I separated. He went to Chicago, and I stayed here. I started working for the Franciscan Friars, meaning the Catholic priests.	19:01
Tywanna Whorley	When was that?	19:39
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	That was in 1954, which is 40 years this month. No, it would be 40 years in August. That's the reason I'm waiting till August to retire, which would be 40 years to the day. When he came to Bessemer, he said, "Betty, you could get waited on in a store faster than I could." He said he had been to the five-and-dime stores, stood there and waited and waited. Somebody else would come up. They would wait on them.	19:39
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	He would have his priestly suit on, and they wouldn't even wait on him until he would ask a young lady, "I've been standing here waiting for you to wait on me. Are you going to wait on me today?" Then she'll be nasty and then come over and wait on him. You know how they could throw your money to you?	20:10
Tywanna Whorley	Mm-hmm.	20:28
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	You couldn't complain because I guess the man who was over it was worse than she was. But we came out with the help of God. I'm a member of Port Chapel CME Church, which is affiliated with Miles College. That's Christian Methodist Episcopal Church in Bessemer. We've been a member there since we've been in Bessemer. The whole family joined there. It was a small church. So we filled it up when we got there because there was so many of us.	20:30
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	I was still a member. While my children went to St. Francis Elementary School, I was working there already, but I had to pay just like anybody else. But they attended school there. My daughters, Melanie, my daughter, Carolyn, finished here at Miles. But my daughter, Cheryl, went to beauty culture school. My son, Joseph, first went to Mississippi to college. I could think of the college when I'm not thinking.	21:06
Tywanna Whorley	Jackson State?	21:49
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	No, it was the one down in Itta Bena. No, not at Itta Bena. He was at the one where Coach Casson was coaching at. I'm trying to think of it. Anyway, it was by the end of Mississippi. But he went there. But he came back to Miles. But he still didn't finish. He got married, and he quit school altogether. I had raised them by myself, my children by myself with the help of my parents.	21:49
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	During that time, parent would help you with the children, and the whole neighborhood could help you raise them. That kept kids in line pretty good then. No such thing now. If you try to chastise somebody's child, they would end up putting you in jail, coming to find you. So you're afraid nowadays to really say something to somebody's child. But during that time, you could always chastise a child, and you could even whip them. You know spank them?	22:33
Tywanna Whorley	Mm-hmm.	23:02
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	By the time you got to your home, if the word got home before you did, you can look for another one because you disobeyed. We were supposed to obey all grownups if they were right. See, sometime even then, grownups weren't right. At no time grownups always been right because they weren't. But as long as we were respectful, everything was okay. But my daddy worked hard, my mother along with him.	23:03
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	I used to get up on a Saturday morning and wash for 10 people. I started washing about 8:00, ended about by 4:00-something that evening. I was using the rub board where you boil your clothes. You rinse them twice. You'd have to rinse them in the regular water first. Then you'd have some bluing water—	23:35
Tywanna Whorley	What's that?	23:57
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	— with bluing in it. You put little drops of blue in the water to turn it blue to help it whiten your clothes. Yes. That's what we used. I used to have to do mostly all by myself. So I washed then for 10 people. It didn't kill me because it made me work. I've been working all these years. I had to raise my children, and I raised them without help.	23:58
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	I did get $5 a piece for them a week when I went to Chicago to see that my husband helped me with it. But $5 a week, maybe it was pretty good at that time. But that was just in the '60s though.	24:25
Tywanna Whorley	Wow. Wow. How important was church in your family's life?	24:44
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	Say what now?	24:48
Tywanna Whorley	How important was the church in your family's life?	24:49
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	The church was very important. I learned to know that the church was important, and prayer is the key to the kingdom because I don't think I could have made it by myself. And then I did have different people helping me. The sisters at St. Francis helped me a lot with my kids. But my daddy always told us to give to the church and to pray. He couldn't read, but he would tell us.	24:50
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	In Sunday school, he would say, "Well, you can tell me what you want, but I have to go to the Lord and let Him show me the way because you might not be reading me the right thing." But he said he always would hear you, but he would always pray about it. We learned to go to church. We were brought up in the church, and they didn't only send us. They took us, those that didn't go with him.	25:17
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	He would go earlier to open up the church. Then we would come with Mother. In between him and Mother, we would all be there. We was there on time for Sunday school, too. Another thing he taught us, if you are sick and don't want to go to church, I found that out. You were sick all day on Sunday. You couldn't go anywhere. I wasn't feeling too good, and I told him I was sick.	25:44
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	Later on that day, I felt pretty good. So I asked him if I could go to the movie. He says, "No, baby, you're sick." I said, "I feel all right." He said, "Let me explain one thing to you right now. If you're sick on Sunday and can't go to church, you are sick all day." So learning that, we would go to church sometime we were feeling terrible.	26:10
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	You just had to be half dead in order not to go to church because if you wanted to even go walking that evening— A lot of times we didn't have nowhere to go window shopping and then go to the movie that evening or just go walking. But you couldn't leave that yard if you didn't go to church on Sunday morning.	26:31
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	So we learned to participate in the church and go and to try to raise my kid the same way. You go to church. If you're not feeling well Sunday morning, well, you're assumed to be ready to be feeling bad all day because you could not go anywhere.	26:48
Tywanna Whorley	How did you travel to Dunbar High School?	27:07
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	We walked. Let's see. I lived about, let's see, 22nd, about five blocks from the school.	27:09
Tywanna Whorley	So what time did you—	27:21
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	We walked.	27:24
Tywanna Whorley	—leave out in the morning?	27:24
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	We'd leave out in the morning sometime by 7:30 or 20 minutes to 8:00 to get there for 8:00.	27:25
Tywanna Whorley	And you would walk back?	27:31
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	Yeah, we walked back. Rain, snow, sleet, or shine we'd have to walk.	27:33
Tywanna Whorley	I guess your father, he stressed education?	27:40
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	Yes, he did. He didn't have it, but he stressed it for us. If we lived in his home, we would have to finish high school. Now, you go to college if you can. If you didn't want to go, he didn't make you go. But you had to finish high school. My brother thought he could get away with it. He made him stay right there until he finished. He went into the Air Force right after.	27:44
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	He lived in California after then, but he had a heart attack and died. We have a history of heart attacks in my daddy's family, his mother, father, most of his sisters and brothers. At that time, he had lived to be 60, and he was the oldest one. He was the only one that made 60 at that time. He was born in July 1st, but then he died July 30th. He lived a month after he turned 60. All them heart attacks.	28:12
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	Now I have an aunt now that's about 80 years old, and she worked hard on the farms. She just left the farm about not too many years, maybe about 10, 12, something like that. Anyway, she's lived longer than any of them because she got to be 80, and that's older than her mother and her father. All the rest of them died earlier.	28:49
Tywanna Whorley	When there was someone sick in your family, where did you go?	29:11
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	We went to a doctor in Panola. When we were in Panola, we went to a doctor. But then when we came to Bessemer, it was a doctor by the name of Dr. Payne most of the people used to go to.	29:18
Tywanna Whorley	A Black doctor?	29:27
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	White.	29:27
Tywanna Whorley	White doctor.	29:27
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	Then we had a doctor by the name of Dr. Dembey and a dentist by the name of Dr. Dawdill. But my mother started going to Dr. Dembey, who was a Black doctor. He delivered my later sisters and brothers.	29:30
Tywanna Whorley	Did he live in the neighborhood area?	29:44
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	He lived not too far from us. He lived on Ninth Avenue and 25th Street. Now, Ninth Avenue was the elite area for the people who were kind of up. He lived on Ninth Avenue. That's the main drive.	29:45
Tywanna Whorley	That is—	30:03
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	Excuse me, highway number 5 or 11. You can get to Highway 5, but that's Highway 11. Excuse me. That could take you all the way to Tuscaloosa.	30:03
Tywanna Whorley	Was your mom still a housewife when you moved?	30:21
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	My mother was a housewife when we moved to Bessemer. She used to supply in the school areas, in the elementary and high school. She supplied them till she was about 60-something.	30:23
Tywanna Whorley	Wow. How did she manage a house of 10 people?	30:38
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	Well, I did a lot of work. She did a lot of sewing. She made our clothes, the girls' clothes anyway. She had to work the best way she could. I had to do most of the doings, seeing about the children under me. I had to cook when I came home. She'd be washing during the week. Now, on the weekend, it was the big washing. That was me. I had to do it.	30:43
Tywanna Whorley	What did the other kids have do?	31:19
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	Well, they were younger than I, but then some would be cleaning some and cleaning the yard and stuff like that.	31:21
Tywanna Whorley	Oh, okay.	31:31
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	See, I'm older than they. See, so they were coming under me. It wasn't too much they could do when I was there.	31:32
Tywanna Whorley	You said your mom made your clothes mostly?	31:47
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	Yes, she did. She'd do that then in the country, too.	31:49
Tywanna Whorley	Okay. Did y'all ever travel to, say— I don't know if Bessemer ever had a downtown at all?	31:53
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	Yes, we used to go to downtown Bessemer. We used to travel when my dad was working on the railroad. We could travel free. Yes. My mother went to Chicago free, and I would go to Demopolis. We would go from Panola to York. And then we would catch a bus and go to Demopolis where my aunt was. But we could travel free when he was working on the railroad.	32:00
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	Now, in Bessemer, yeah, we used to walk to the store. The hardest thing was trying to bring groceries for 10 people when just a few went to get it up. You cut it off? [INTERRUPTION 00:32:41]	32:22
Tywanna Whorley	Okay. You telling about groceries?	32:42
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	Yeah, we used to have to go to the — My daddy was working at the rolling mill that, like working at TC and Iron, all of them the same. So we used to have to go to the commissary to get groceries, which was on 19th Street and Second Avenue at that time. They had clothing. They was like a department store, but they also had a grocery store in the back. That's where we used to go and buy your clothes, get your groceries. Everything you had to do, you'd get it at that one store.	32:44
Tywanna Whorley	Do you remember some of the prices when you were growing up?	33:13
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	I can't remember them too well, but they weren't so high.	33:18
Tywanna Whorley	Did they have a separation in terms of Blacks and Whites going in there?	33:24
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	No. We went to the store, and everybody went through the same part. That was in the '40s and the '50s.	33:28
Tywanna Whorley	Okay. Who managed the money in your family?	33:35
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	My mother. Yeah. My daddy would bring his check home and give it to her. They used to cash it for you. Sometimes they would give it to you in money in the beginning. So he would bring it home and hand it to her. Even at rolling mill, I could remember many times he would bring the brown envelope home and just hand it to my mother. He'd be able to get a few dollars out of there. But then he started working at a furniture store, delivering furniture and stuff to help out some, too.	33:39
Tywanna Whorley	Let me think of a question. Oh, I know. When was the first time that you actually became aware that, I guess, in Bessemer or prior to that that, for some reason, you couldn't go a certain place where a White person could?	34:15
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	We knew that all the time. Even as little children, even down in Panola, we knew that it's certain things you couldn't do or places you couldn't go.	34:27
Tywanna Whorley	Did your parents explain that to you? Because I'm thinking if you're five years old and you want to go somewhere, like to the park or—	34:40
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	See, down there we didn't have no parks. We didn't have parks. Now, we had them here. We had a swimming pool here in Bessemer. Black people could not go to that swimming pool. We used to pass there on the bus and look at all the White kids swim. But we could never go there. They had a ballpark there. They could play ball. We could never go there. So during the early part of the '50s, I believe, that they built a swimming pool down out from the Carver High School.	34:47
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	See, they divided the school up, later years after I left from Dunbar. They had all the kids that come from down the Jonesboro area would go to Carver High School, and the children on the north side would go to Dunbar High School. That was in the '50s, I guess, the latter part of the '50s that they built the school down there, I believe it was.	35:20
Tywanna Whorley	But even when you moved—	35:49
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	Excuse me one minute. I was telling you they built a swimming pool down there across the street from them for Black children, for the Black people. And then when the integration things started coming, they filled in both of them. They filled it up. They still don't have a swimming pool down there. They filled it in and had the baseball park put there.	35:50
Tywanna Whorley	Did you ever go to the state fair, the Alabama State Fair?	36:18
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	I've been there, but later years. I never cared too much about going.	36:23
Tywanna Whorley	But back in the '40s and '50s?	36:26
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	I'm trying to see. I went there once or twice in the '50s.	36:26
Tywanna Whorley	Only on Saturday could you go?	36:31
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	Oh, you mean the regular park, not when something was there for you to go see. You mean the regular park. I never did go there. No, I didn't go.	36:36
Tywanna Whorley	Because some of the people I've interviewed, they said that with the state fair that's right here in Birmingham—	36:46
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	Yes.	36:50
Tywanna Whorley	—they could only go on Saturdays.	36:53
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	No, I didn't go at all. See, that's on the main highway, also, which connects Ninth Avenue in Bessemer to the Super Highway. That's what they called it, the Super Highway, because everywhere you went, that's the road you have to take. You'd turn off on 78 or 79, something like that. But you could always get to Birmingham on the Super Highway.	36:56
Tywanna Whorley	Was it Bessemer— Could you tell the difference between Birmingham and Bessemer during the '40s and '50s?	37:20
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	Not much because they both were the same. I remember I came to Birmingham once to go and check my children's birth certificate. And we wanted to eat something. I'd come way from Second Avenue with three little babies and go around to Fourth Avenue where you can find something to eat. Because I went around to this five-and-dime store and I waited and I waited and waited. But they didn't wait on us, so I just left out.	37:32
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	We had to go all the way around to Fourth Avenue to get something for my babies to eat because we had been in Birmingham quite a while. The same thing was in Bessemer. We had that McClellan store down there, and the Whites could come down and sit and eat, but we couldn't. Now, we could order things from the side, but you could never sit down. We had to get it and leave. But the Whites could sit on those stools around the counter there.	38:06
Tywanna Whorley	Back then, did you think things were going to change at all in terms of—	38:37
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	Well, I believed a change would come, but I didn't know how and when. I did not know. But I just believed that one day things would be different. When they were having the marches and everything, I didn't know my children were up in Birmingham marching. They were in college here. I did not know that they were up there, too, until later on she told me that that's what they had been doing, leaving school, going up there to march.	38:44
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	I didn't know it. They didn't tell me. They just went. I guess a lot of kids didn't tell their parents. They didn't get arrested, but they did march.	39:17
Tywanna Whorley	Do you remember at all during the, I guess, '50s, about Miles College here? I mean did anyone ever tell you that there was a Black school here?	39:32
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	I knew darn well. Like I said, I knew Miles College was affiliated with Father's church. That's the reason I knew it was here.	39:45
Tywanna Whorley	Did you ever—	39:55
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	I knew that Daniel Payne was affiliated with the AME church, and we all had our colleges. Yeah, we had been here before, before all the buildings were put up there.	39:55
Tywanna Whorley	How was it back then, compared to now?	40:07
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	Well, I didn't have any connection with the school. So we just saw it, and that was it.	40:09
Tywanna Whorley	That's what I meant, just in terms of the campus.	40:15
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	Seeing it? It's really nice now. It wasn't too much to see when I came before. Just a few buildings. Really nice. I know we could stand some more buildings. I was thinking the other day here it would be nice to have a gym up on the hill up here instead of way over in Fairfield. It would be real nice. But I guess with the money crunch, you just can't get the money up.	40:19
Tywanna Whorley	Did you ever hear about the Autherine Lucy case?	40:51
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	Yes, we did.	40:55
Tywanna Whorley	What did you hear?	40:57
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	We kept up with it very much so. During that time, those White people were really mean. I was fighting for her. I didn't want anything to happen to her. Only thing we could do was to pray. You can't go out and do what they did down there to help her, but you could at least pray for her. It hurt. But we were glad that she had the nerves, that's what we'll call it, to go there and stand for that.	40:57
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	My brother used to march down in Georgia. He was going to Morris Brown College. He said how they used to spit in their faces. They used to tell them to take those headscarves so they can wad up to spitting on them. But I told him. I said, "I don't think I could take it." You have to be nonviolent, and it's real hard to be nonviolent when somebody kept spitting in your face. I know you're supposed to take it, but I didn't think I could take it, so that's the reason I didn't even try.	41:37
Tywanna Whorley	You said you kept up with the case?	42:19
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	Yes, I did.	42:21
Tywanna Whorley	What newspaper?	42:21
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	Well, during that time you could see some television. No, was it television or was it seen though? Well, we had to see it on television because you could see some of the things. But mostly, we were using radios. But then you could see some of the televised actions afterward. But then they had those cameras and everything there, too. You could see it.	42:24
Tywanna Whorley	What were the newspapers?	42:51
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	Birmingham News would carry it or Birmingham Post-Herald. Then we had our Black papers that would carry it, too, Birmingham World. I don't know if The Times were. I don't think The Times were there yet, but I know we already had the Birmingham World. That's a Black newspaper.	42:55
Tywanna Whorley	Did you subscribe to it or—?	43:14
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	You could buy it. A man used to come around and sell it to you.	43:17
Tywanna Whorley	Oh, okay. Do you remember how much it was?	43:23
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	I'm trying to see was it a nickel or a dime, somewhere along in there. It might have been a nickel.	43:25
Tywanna Whorley	In the '40s and '50s, did you ever travel outside of the Birmingham-Bessemer area?	43:34
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	Not during that time.	43:40
Tywanna Whorley	No?	43:40
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	No. I went to Chicago, but it was after the '50s.	43:42
Tywanna Whorley	Okay. Okay. I guess another question I want to ask you is in terms of values and knowing the environment that you were growing up in, would you consider that your life was happy even though you grew up in segregation?	43:52
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	Yes. That's what we had to depend on one another, the family and the community where we lived and school. It didn't bother me as much. But then when you look around, you see that when I was working for the Padens, they asking me to help them with their eighth grade daughter work. I looked and I saw that we had never seen that book. I come to find out that we were two years behind them.	44:10
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	I managed the lunchroom when I graduated from high school. When we got ready for anything for the school, they would always give us the thing from the White school and buy them new stuff and give us the old.	44:42
Tywanna Whorley	What was the name of the White high school?	45:01
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	Bessemer High School.	45:04
Tywanna Whorley	How far was that from your home?	45:06
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	It was past downtown, which was maybe about two miles maybe.	45:10
Tywanna Whorley	So was it—	45:15
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	Was it two miles or about a mile and a half? About two miles.	45:16
Tywanna Whorley	So was that closer to where you lived or was it—	45:19
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	Well, that wasn't too close to where I lived because I didn't have to go that way to school. But some of the kids had to come through downtown Bessemer, pass the high school, come through downtown Bessemer, and come up to Dunbar. I remember the president of our class was coming through downtown and because he didn't move off the sidewalk for this White lady, one of the policemen slapped him. I don't think he ever forget that either. He never did.	45:22
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	He was a professor last I heard. His name was Norman Allen. That was his name. I think he was a professor somewhere in Mississippi last time I heard something about him. So I don't know where he is now. But I know he can always remember how, because he didn't get off the sidewalk for this White lady, he slapped him. He said something to him. Knowing Norman, he would say something back, and he slapped him. So he never did forget that.	45:51
Tywanna Whorley	Yeah. He didn't retaliate.	46:25
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	Yeah. My mother was telling me that my granddad, during his time, they had to pay a— I don't know whether all the menfolk had to do that or not in— Let me see. It was in Greensboro, Alabama. They used to have to pay a street tax.	46:26

Betty Lawan Bell Allen	To pay a street tax for walking on the street. But I don't know what that concerned both White and Black or not. But I know they had to pay, I don't know how much it was either. But she said they had to pay a street tax for walking on the street, the men did. During the early years in the '30s or whatever it was, she said that they had to pay a street tax, the men did. So things had been kind of tough for us all the while. But during that time, see, we had to tolerate it because we couldn't do anything about it.	0:02
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	At that time, you couldn't do anything about it. They could hang you and nobody would even think about it except your people. You couldn't do anything about it. The judges were White and they felt the same way the people did who did the hanging. Because I know some of those people that was in those cars were people you traded with in their clean suits and stuff like that. The people that you went to their stores and place of businesses and yet they could put on their hoods at night and you don't know who they are.	0:39
Tywanna Whorley	The incident that you told me about in the cars and the lights, did that frighten you in terms of—?	1:16
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	Yeah, it frightened us very much because see, we didn't know why they were coming. You know when you are asleep and something wake you up like that? Lines of cars all blowing their horns as loud as they could get them, I guess. And you wake up at night and you going to run to the window to see what's happening. And when we found out that's who it was this frightened us even more. We didn't know what they were intending to do. We didn't know what their purpose was for coming into our neighborhood.	1:27
Tywanna Whorley	Did your parents ever try to explain to you why things were the way they were?	2:01
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	Well, my mother did. She would explain things to us. But Daddy was, he didn't say very much about it.	2:04
Tywanna Whorley	You remember what she told you?	2:16
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	Well, she just said that some things we can't do because we were Black. Some places you can't go because you are Black. Now, she didn't try to make it like that because you were White, you were right. But she just told us some of the things to keep us from getting hurt, I guess. Don't go to these places. And you have to say, "Yes, ma'am" and "No, ma'am." And during that time, you have to say, "Yes, ma'am" and "No, ma'am" to even the children. And this little baby down here like this would be Miss Jane or Miss Julia or whatever it was. A grown man would have to call the child Miss and they would call him sometime boy.	2:18
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	And he would have to say, "Yes, ma'am" and "No, ma'am" to them. But during my time, a child I didn't say, "Yes, ma'am" or "No, ma'am." And I didn't say "Miss Judy" either. But I did have to say yeah, "Yes, ma'am" and "No, ma'am" to them. I remember I was working a job. After I got married, I got a job and I started working. The lady called on the telephone and said, she said, "Betty." And I says, "Yes." And then she started talking and I called a woman to the telephone. She told her, "Did you know she told me yes?" She said, "You're supposed to say yes ma'am to her." I said, "Look, she asked me, 'What is Betty doing?' And I told her yes." Now, that's what I had to tell her. Yes. It was Betty. But that's the way they wanted you to talk to them. Yes, ma'am. No, ma'am.	3:06
Tywanna Whorley	Were you referred to by just your first name or by—?	3:58
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	Betty. No Mrs. Allen. I mean no Miss Bell or no Miss Dotson. They didn't do that. Because this is my second marriage doesn't mean I forgotten to say Mrs. Allen. I mean Mrs. Dotson. And they never did tell you, "Yes, ma'am. No, ma'am." Now, there are some children now who's White who's most respectful to you than your own Black children. They tell you, "Yeah, no." And the little kids be saying, "Yes, ma'am. No, ma'am." It make you feel bad that instead of us keeping our ways that we had for being respectful, that didn't mean we supposed to change from being respectful. And I think most of the people thought that you change all the way around when you changed. But there's no such thing. Our kids are very disrespectful.	4:00
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	But I always made every one of mine to say, "Yes ma'am. No, ma'am." And you can hear the dean sometimes saying, "Yes, ma'am" or "No, ma'am." That's my daughter. And so you hear her saying that sometimes. But no, I taught them that you still be respectful. It burns me up to hear the kids tell me, "Yeah, no." Even our little kindergarten kids. We just not teaching them. Just because we got out from under that mentality, it still doesn't mean that you are not supposed to be respectful and not speak correctly to grown people. All the time we were supposed to respect you if you were grown. Because if you didn't you would get it. No joke.	4:59
Tywanna Whorley	Besides the Autherine Lucy case, do you remember any other national events?	5:49
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	Yeah. I remember the time when Emmett Till was killed in Mississippi and the three guys, Gooden and—	5:54
Tywanna Whorley	Cheney.	6:04
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	Cheney and the—	6:06
Tywanna Whorley	Schwerner.	6:06
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	Yeah. I remember when they were killed. But see, during that time they could do whatever they wanted to you. And during that time, they were more old. They were just like the devil himself. They just didn't care about a Black life at all. And if a White person showed any kind of feeling for the Blacks, they would be just like that too.	6:07
Tywanna Whorley	When you found out about the Emmett Till murder, was there a lot of talk in the community about it?	6:40
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	Oh, yes. Hurt. You know, a child, that they could do something like that. And I remember another incidence in Mississippi, I believe. However, this man was the father of 10 children and this lady said that he was, what the word she used? Anyway, she said he was glaring at, no, looking at her, just looking at her and they wouldn't— He was 10 feet from her and they put him in jail. They put him in jail because she said that he was looking at her in a unusual way. And the man said, "If I looked at her I didn't even see her."	6:45
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	He wasn't paying her any attention. She was the one that was looking in that way. But he said that he didn't know, he wasn't even paying her any attention. There's been so many incidents that happened. But some of them I can't remember and some I can that I did read about, I did hear about. And there have been things happening in Bessemer too that maybe I've forgotten exactly what it was, but different things did happen down there.	7:29
Tywanna Whorley	Just in general, do you remember some of them?	8:03
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	Well, was a guy, policeman down there by name of Stud Grimes. He was a little short, fat guy with a cigarette in his mouth and most older Black people was afraid of him because he could shoot you in a minute. I remember the time when they said that this Black young man was breaking into a store next door to the movie house on First Avenue down in Bessemer. That's where the Black people used to be all the time on First Avenue that was there with the cafes and everything down in there.	8:05
Tywanna Whorley	The Black business area?	8:35
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	Yeah. Mm-hmm. And they shot him to death down there. Young guy about 16 years old. And there were so many things that he did to Black people that when he got sick and he was just in bad shape, one guy down there got a chance to get a little revenge while he was down there because he used to have to bathe him and everything. But he got him a little revenge. But everybody was afraid of him because he was just like, he looked a little bit like this guy of the Heat of the Night—	8:37
Tywanna Whorley	Carroll O'Connor?	9:17
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	Yeah. Kind of heavyset and big boss man. He used to dwell in doing things to Black people. You know, that time you see crime, even now. Now we know that Black folk don't commit all crimes, but we do know that we only see their faces mostly. Whatever happened, you see their faces. But during that time you could do nothing about it. Although you wanted to, but you couldn't. I guess it would take one person but one dead person won't do any good. You strike out on something and they kill you, then everybody else be afraid to do anything about it.	9:18
Tywanna Whorley	What did you think about the Brown decision, when that came out in 1954?	10:06
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	The Board of Education. I was glad of that because that did give us a little leeway. Because just like I told you, our high school, you know [indistinct 00:10:21] school? But I can admire most of us for trying with the limited education we know could get being two years behind the Whites. No wonder they could go to college and do the things they were doing because they had the up-to-date books and they would take those books from down there and give them to the school up to Bessemer to use for different things.	10:10
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	Now, just thinking they were giving us 12th graders maybe 10th graders' books and that didn't help us any. We learned what we learned out of them but then when you go off to college, our kids never could do too much. They used to give us this California test. And as I looked at it, to me, if you take a test it's got to be something that you have read about or something that you have participated in.	10:44
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	But to look at those things, I never seen some of the things that we were supposed to have known. I never even had a book to even read it. But they gave the test to us anyway. And that's the reason I say even now if you're going to give a test, all these standardized tests, also give them, let them to have read something about them, about these tests. How can you answer something when you've never seen it before?	11:15
Tywanna Whorley	I just want to ask, do you remember one of the questions?	11:45
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	Oh, gee. That was so many years ago. I can't even remember them now. But they were about different things that we were supposed to have read in our school or have done in our school. But then we hadn't done it and we hadn't seen the books.	11:48
Tywanna Whorley	Did y'all talk about that amongst your classmates?	12:05
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	Yes, we did. We did. Now, I guess some of them knew some of the questions, I'm sure. And even I knew some of them but I was reading about, what I was reading, most of it I hadn't even heard of it before. Mm-hmm.	12:10
Tywanna Whorley	Was there a Black library in Bessemer when you— go to when you were small?	12:28
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	No. Only White library.	12:33
Tywanna Whorley	You couldn't go to that one?	12:36
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	Well, I never tried to go there but I'm sure if we went there, we only could get a book and come out with it. Now, we had a library in the school we used to use most of the time.	12:37
Tywanna Whorley	Okay.	12:48
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	We used to use the school library most of the time. And we had a pretty big one there. And during my time we had a Black history book. But then they brought it in late, then they cut it out while I was still there.	12:50
Tywanna Whorley	You ever find out why?	13:05
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	I didn't. I don't know why. We used to, we had a teacher by the name of Miss Lea Kate Taylor, used to teach us. And she used to give us the information on the war that was going on. Every day in her class we used to read about things of Black history. And the book was about an inch, maybe a good inch and a half thick. That's all they could find to put in about Black people. And so many things I learned afterward. The Birmingham News used to, during a certain time, put a paragraph alone in the paper about different Black people and what they had done. Nobody ever knew that the Black man was responsible for the wheels of the train. Nobody ever knew that. Some of them know that the Black man was responsible for the traffic light. And so many, many things.	13:09
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	But during that time also, that you would give the White man your patent, your project. To have a patent, you have to give them everything to it so it can work. Then they would turn around and take it. They've done so many Blacks like that. The things that they have invented was turned out to be theirs. They made the money off of it. And I guess they couldn't do anything about that either. So it was tough. Really tough. You can go to court nowaday, but you couldn't then because who will you go to? You're going to a person who said that you can't call a White man a liar. And I always remember that if a Black person steal, I used to say if you steal a spool of thread you get 20 years. A White man can steal a million dollars and he'll embezzle and get five or maybe not— [INTERRUPTION 00:15:10].	14:06
Tywanna Whorley	I wanted to ask you. You said one of your brothers joined the Air Force. Did he participate in World War II?	15:13
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	I think he did. He was in— Wait a minute, that was in— No, he wouldn't have been in that one. But he was in the Air Force. But I don't know where he went to because we didn't hear from him too often. Mm-hmm. He was stationed in Ogden, Utah. Ogden, Utah.	15:18
Tywanna Whorley	Ogden, Utah?	15:43
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	Yeah. That's where he was stationed at because that's where he met and married his wife.	15:44
Tywanna Whorley	Mm-hmm.	15:48
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	Mm-hmm.	15:49
Tywanna Whorley	Hmm. What was told to you about World War II in school?	15:50
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	Well, we knew that the United States were there and we knew that the day that they invaded that they were with the, let's see, the Russians, they got together. Well, they were fighting one another first. Then they went into Germany and I remember those, you know what they're talking about? That they celebrated the other day here.	15:56
Tywanna Whorley	Oh, Invasion of Normandy?	16:25
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	Yeah. And we heard about when they were in Okinawa and all those places like that. You heard about it. But then you turn around and all these years you can't remember all the things that you know you heard then. Yeah, but in our last year we had some guys that came back from the service. When you come back from the service, you can come to class and graduate from whatever grades were you were coming from.	16:25
Tywanna Whorley	Oh, okay.	16:53
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	Yeah. You did. And we had quite a few of the guys that served in the service. And they were over in the war. But you know during that time that they didn't think the Black guys could fight that well anyway. So they would have the Black guys to be the backup to bring them artillery and stuff like that. And the White man did the most of the fighting except for the guys who did fight. And they did such a heck of a job that they knew that the Black man could fight too. They knew that. So even reading about it now freshens your mind to know that our guys participated and did all the things that he did.	16:54
Tywanna Whorley	Did they ever talk about any of the experiences when they came back from the war?	17:34
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	Now, I tell you the experiences I've heard most of was the Korean War. And we lost our vice president in the— Let's see. That was the Korean War. And then the Vietnamese, the Vietnam. Well, the Korean War is where we lost one of our class members. Maybe one or two of them. But I know it was one. And my brothers, both of them were in the Vietnam War. My two younger brothers. And I did hear about them. It was hectic.	17:39
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	And one other man I know they got hurt on one of the ships when it was bombed. Yeah, my brother, he talks about it even now, other things that happened. Then my brother that died, I had a brother to go to Saudi Arabia about three years ago, two years ago. Anyway, when he was over there and he came back home, in two weeks, he died. Two weeks after he got home. He was the nicest young man. Telling you. He was 45 years old but I still think he's a young man. He brought us pictures back.	18:21
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	He loved children and he would bring us picture about when they were going to a village how little kids just hang onto him. He enjoyed the children. And I guess he hated to see the things that were doing to children, that was done. But those two served in that war and they were in the position for fighting. Mm-hmm.	18:56
Tywanna Whorley	When you look now at Bessemer, when you see how it's changed or it looks like some of the conditions have worsened. Do you see that there needs to be— What changes do you see need to be made to Bessemer?	19:23
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	Well, I see that you can just about go anywhere you want to go to and you can participate in a lot of things. I don't deal with Bessemer that often anyway. I pay most of my bills by check and through the mail. I don't have time to run down there and go there and be out there a lot. But I do see a big change in the way you are treated when you go into a store and the service that you get. That's a big change. It not like it used to be. The only change I see for the worse is they don't have enough people around in these stores to wait on you. You got to try to find somebody to give you some information. But other than that, I see them sitting in the malls, White and Black. They talk to you and they're nice and we have to be nice too.	19:40
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	We have some people who are not nice too. We have some people who are just as prejudiced as the White man is, or more so. And I always try to tell them you're supposed to treat people as you want them to treat you. That's the main thing you want to do. But Bessemer to me is, well, now you know we have a Black mayor, we have majority Black council. But we still have some of the Whites out on the outskirts of town just like they always been. But they can't do anything about it. See?	20:44
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	We have Black judges down there. Yeah. No, in the county part. In the county courthouse. And the lawyers and all them can get there and they seem to be where they could do what they need to do. I know when we had voter registration, our teacher was teaching us when we were in sewing school at night, she was teaching us how to vote. And we studied and we studied. And when I went down there they were saying those people were so mean. Scared half to death but you go anyway.	21:21
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	I got there and when the lady called me, I just prayed about it and went on. I was looking at her because we had studied so much because they would ask you so many different things. When I got there she asked me who were the two judges downstairs. Then she asked me, they say, "Who was the sheriff of Jefferson County?" And I'm sitting there waiting for her to ask me some of those questions that we had been reading about. And she says, "That's fine." Told me to, "Sign right there," and that was it. And I was so happy because— But I had studied but they did so many people wrong. So many. They had to go so many times to try to vote. At that time we had to pay a tax. Let me see. I'm trying to think. It was a dollar and a half?	21:59
Tywanna Whorley	Poll tax?	22:46
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	Yeah. I'm trying to see. It was a dollar and a half or something in that area that we had to pay. If you wanted to vote you had to pay it. So I had my money ready. That has changed, thanks to Lord. It has changed. So many things have changed since that time because that was in the fifties when I started voting.	22:47
Tywanna Whorley	Okay. Where did you say the Black business area in Bessemer was?	23:21
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	The Black businesses mostly was on First Avenue between 19th and 20th Street and between First and Second Avenue on 20th Street. But not too far. Just up to the alley. And the rest of it was the White businesses. Mm-hmm.	23:21
Tywanna Whorley	Is it still thriving now?	23:44
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	Oh no. All the buildings are just about torn down there. Mm-hmm. That's where all the people used to go and shoot and kill one another, down on First Avenue. That's why Daddy used to tell us never to go on First Avenue.	23:46
Tywanna Whorley	You never went?	23:54
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	Yeah. And I tell you what I did was I disobeyed. A friend of mine wanted me to go to the store with her to get a record. And she went to the store on Second Avenue. She couldn't find it. She said, "I'm going to have to go around on First Avenue to get this record. Come on." I said, "My daddy said not to go around there." And she begged me and begged me. She said, "We going to rush right back." I went down there with her and just about the time I got in the middle of the block, a man and a lady was fighting and he was slinging a knife out of his hand and it came right between my top lip and my nose.	24:00
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	But it didn't cut me. The handle hit me. I picked the knife up and threw it across the street and I got out from around there to let you know that I wasn't supposed to be there. I never did tell my daddy that either. Because he told me not to go. And that's where they used to be and they used to, every weekend used to be cutting and shooting and fighting.	24:35
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	You know how it is when they all get together drinking. And those cafe, was one with George Hall and one with George Pearson. They both looked like White men but they were Black. George Pearson looked more White but George Hall looked sort like red and ruggish. But anyway, that's where the Black people used to go to every weekend.	24:55
Tywanna Whorley	Was it Black? Was lot of the businesses Black owned or were they White owned?	25:18
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	Yeah, some of them were Black owned and then some were White in the midst of it. Mm-hmm. You know how they're going to get right in there too. Clothing store. And the biggest thing about it's how they would double charge. Charge you so much for something that wasn't worth it. They would charge you more because even in the grocery store they used to put the finger on the, put the hand under there and to make the thing go up way more.	25:21
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	Excuse me. Yeah. They used to do that at the grocery store. We had an Italian grocery store on every corner almost. And they used to cheat, especially older Black people, they used to cheat them to no end. And thank God there's really no here but a few now in the areas. But they used to have one on every corner. Sometimes there would be two. One on this corner, one on that corner. And when you get your paycheck as far as you go right there and get your groceries. They would charge you more.	25:53
Tywanna Whorley	Can I ask you a question? A lot of people have referred to the Italians back then as Degos?	26:26
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	They did.	26:32
Tywanna Whorley	Why? Where did that come from? Do you know?	26:33
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	That's a derogatory just like somebody call you a nigger. That's it in a nutshell. That was a like they called a Jew a wop. Something like that. Well, that was the negative name for—	26:37
Tywanna Whorley	An Italian?	26:51
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	Yeah. And then when they learned it, they didn't know the difference that it wasn't the right name to call anybody. Well, everybody was calling everybody everything else at that time. Yeah. So, that would cause them to call them that sometimes. But they would definitely overcharge you. I'm just saying. And they made plenty of money off of the older people. Plenty of it. Then they would turn around and say, "Well, you know I did so much for you. We did a lot for you all." Said, "No, you didn't do a lot for us because we paid you more than that. But everything that we got from your store, you didn't give us anything. We had to pay for it and we paid for it dearly. So you didn't give us anything."	26:52
Tywanna Whorley	I got two more questions for you. How was it that you were able to work for these White people knowing that there was segregation going, that there were certain things that you couldn't do? You had to work these places.	27:47
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	You needed the money to live and you knew you had to take some things that you didn't like, but you still had to feed your family. So that's the reason you stayed into it. No, in that. You didn't like it, well, there wasn't anything you could do. When I say there wasn't anything you could do, you could leave but you didn't have many Black businesses that could hire you or Black people that could hire you because they weren't making any money either. That's the reason you have all these people catching the bus, going to Mountain Brook and all those places like that. Because that's the only job you could get. But now, they were making money. When I was working, some weeks I would work seven days and wouldn't make but $15. Plus I would leave there and go down and clean up the office.	28:02
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	Now, this was before 1954. This was up to 1954. August 1954. And then when I quit working on there, I used to work in the flower shop for $10 a week. That was for a Black man because he didn't have too much business that time. In order to make enough money to try to, in order to make $19 a week, I would go over to the cafeteria and work until nine o'clock through the week and about one o'clock on the weekend. I made $9 there trying to get something to help me with my children. Working hard like that was better than anything, some of the other things you could have done.	28:56
Tywanna Whorley	Mm-hmm.	29:34
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	Mm-hmm.	29:34
Tywanna Whorley	Was Mountain Brook the dominant White area?	29:35
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	Oh yeah. Right now you have a few Black people living in Mountain Brook because they're making the money that they're making. You could never live up there on that salary that the Black people got. You could not do it. And see, they had the business of Vestavia, Mountain Brook [indistinct 00:29:56], little places like that. They're running out there but now they can't hide because everywhere they go, Black man can be right behind them. No joke. They can be right behind them now because they are making good money now.	29:38
Tywanna Whorley	I want to ask you is, did you ever hear about Dynamite Hill over in Bessemer?	30:10
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	No. That was in Birmingham.	30:21
Tywanna Whorley	Yeah.	30:22
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	Yeah.	30:23
Tywanna Whorley	But did you ever hear about it?	30:23
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	Yes we did. How they bombed the Shores' house and all those— No. Dig the dirt over there? Yes, we heard about it.	30:24
Tywanna Whorley	Were y'all, in terms of, I know you were afraid for those people, but did you think that anything like that would happen in Bessemer?	30:34
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	Oh, it would happen. It could have happened in Bessemer because so many things were happening. But whenever something like that happened, you would think that you would know it right away. When that the sit-in in Bessemer, we had a sit-in there during this time at Bessemer at the McClellan store I was telling you about it. And we heard it on the radio. On television or the radio. One or the other. We didn't know anything about it until we heard it on the news that they had a sit-in down there. It would have been many things that you can hear it on national television and you would never know that it happened in your own city. But yeah, we remember those times when they were blowing up everything around. And I think they're cowards when they do that.	30:41
Tywanna Whorley	Well, what do you remember about the sit-in in Bessemer during that time?	31:38
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	They did have their sit-ins. They put them in jail. I guess some of them got beaten but they would still sit there. I remember the time when we had a bombing in Bessemer but it was the bombing of the mayor's office. There was the White man that usually, he was friends with Black people a lot. Max Williams. And I don't know what their problem was but they blew his hand off, just about. I think he had one thumb left and just messed his face up and his eyes.	31:43
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	And they killed the lieutenant that opened the box for him. It would've killed him if he had opened the box. But he asked him if he wanted him to open the box for him and he said, "Go ahead." And then just as soon as he opened, the whole [INTERRUPTION] —And everything were blowing out of the city hall where his office was. That was a trying day in Bessemer too. But that didn't concern the Black— That wasn't with the Black people. It was a person who had been friendly with Black people. Mm-hmm.	32:17
Tywanna Whorley	After the sit-in, did Blacks go on a regular basis to the McClellan store anymore?	32:52
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	Oh yeah. They started sitting. They could go there and eat but they soon closed it down, that part of it. You know that they couldn't have their way. Most of the time they would close it down or cut it out. They still had the store but it was long time though. But they kept it open but you can go there and sit down and eat. I think they just closed it out not too many years ago.	32:58
Tywanna Whorley	Did you ever go down there after the sit-ins?	33:25
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	I have been in the store but I didn't eat because see, it's right in my hometown. I wasn't hungry anyway.	33:27
Tywanna Whorley	Right.	33:34
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	Right there at home mostly. But we've had many things happen. But I feel that God has His own time for everything. We suffer but He'll bring us out. Like they say, you cry tonight but in the morning the sun will shine for you. There's joy in the morning. There's joy coming. Just got to wait on it for a while. And sometimes it seems so long. So long. I look at the people of Africa, how long they have waited, how Mandela had gone to jail and stayed there for 27 years or something like that. And look now where he is. God is looking. He let us suffer sometime. And I think He let Black people suffer a lot because to me, when I hear a Black man say there is no God, I don't know where he came from.	33:36
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	Because we've always depended on God. We've always depended on the church to help us go in the right direction. Well, so many people now are preaching what the people want to hear them preach. I had a cousin just say, have a member to tell him, that, "You weren't supposed to preach that. You didn't say nothing to us about preaching anything like that. And you are not supposed to preach that unless we tell you that."	34:38
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	And he had to leave that church. But although they had to have a court doing to do it. But it's just one of those things. You can't tell the preacher what's the preacher about as long as he's preaching what God wanted him to preach. But now, you would know yourself if you knew he got up there and said something out of the ordinary like, "There is no God. You can do what you want to do whenever you get ready." Now, you know he be lying then.	35:08
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	But you don't know what God put in his heart. Maybe just one person there that needed to hear that that day. That's the way I feel. Sometime I've heard preaching and it is just what I needed to hear at that time. So we as Black people, we going to have to stay close to Him because we know He has brought us out. Like the people of Africa, now, they are real good in going to their churches. But what are our people doing? Saying that God gave us job, good job, let us buy homes and cars and nice things. And we think that meant that we supposed to go home and sit down and not serve anymore because we didn't need Him anymore. We're not sending our children to Sunday school. Not even sending them, less talking about bringing them. Because we see so many kids playing in the streets on Sunday morning.	35:36
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	What does that tell us? That we are missing our mark. That we are not teaching our children. That's why our kids are in the condition they in today. We are not teaching them because we are not showing the right way ourselves. A parent would have to live a good life in front of their children in order for their children to know what a good life is all about. Not that you don't have problems. You do have problems, but you got to teach your children that there is a God who can hear and answer their prayer.	36:29
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	I taught mine that to the point that we used to have Bible reading on Wednesday night until all of them started getting big where all of them had to go different directions. They would have to read the verses and then explain them to me. And after they explain it in their own way. But then we would all discuss it together. And I think when you bring up a child knowing about God, he can always be ready to call on Him or come back to Him even though he might leave and not go to church or nothing, but they always come back.	37:00
Betty Lawan Bell Allen	I'll be 66 this year. But God has been good to me because just like I told you, we have so many heart attacks in our families and He let me live and I'm so happy he did because I've learned so much since I've been older. Much more than I ever would have when I was younger. So we just have to keep teaching the younger people. And they know more now than we did then. We had so many uneducated people at that time. Some had never been to school. Some went just a few grades and quit. But see, they needed to hear. And the church was a place where we could hear.	37:32
Tywanna Whorley	Okay. Thank you.	38:22

Item Info

Title:

Betty Allen interview recording, 1994 June 25

Date:

June 25, 1994

Creator:

Allen, Betty Lawan

Contributor:

Whorley, Tywanna

Description:

Name: Betty Lawan Allen; Date of birth: 1928-09-09; Place of birth: Panola, AL; Occupation(s): domestic; dormitory mother; Residence: Bessemer, AL
Informant ID: 740; Interviewed by: Tywanna Whorley.

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Language:

English

Digital Collection:

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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behindtheveil
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Betty Allen interview recording, 1994 June 25

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1. Betty Allen administrative file, 1994

John Hope Franklin Research Center

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Betty Allen interview recording, 1994 June 25

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