Blondale Cross interview recording, 1995 June 23
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Blondale Clady Cross | —pay our seven cents to ride the streetcar to go to Manassas. We'd go as far as crosstown and we had to get a transfer there and to go back down here to Manassas. If he was feeling pretty bad that morning, he'd just take off and leave us, and let us get almost there and look like he was looking in his mirror laughing at us. So then we just put on a protest one day, that we just didn't want to go back to Manassas. It was 21 of us. Our principal, Mr. Sharp, Lucky Sharp over at Douglas, he loaded us up in a car and carried us down to the County Board of Education. Miss Sue Powers, she was superintendent at the time. | 0:01 |
Blondale Clady Cross | So he went in and talked to her, and told her that he had 21 children out there that wanted a high school. They wanted to go on farther in high school. So that was something like the middle of that week. The next week, Monday morning, he told us to be there at school. So we were there and we got whatever books was left. Not the secondhand books. We got whatever books was left. Some of them was pages missing and whatnot. | 0:55 |
Blondale Clady Cross | But he was a very smart man and he had smart teachers, which provided for us to go on. He got a man just out of college, Mr. Frank Graves, which was chemistry. We had to have that in 10th grade. So he went around to different schools and got what was left over from the chemistry department and brought it back to Douglas School. Then about two weeks later, they sent us some great math teacher, Miss Catherine Baker. I believe she slept and ate math because it's all she talked about. | 1:25 |
Blondale Clady Cross | So we went on from there. That was '43. So '46, we graduated. We were the first graduating class, my husband and I, and the rest of us that came out of Douglas High School. It was an enjoyable experience, now that I look back at it. A lot of time, when you don't have things hard, you don't know how great it is to have something that's good. We had our own prom over there. We went around all these peoples' yards that had beautiful flowers, a lot of older people then that really took pride in their yard. They had roses, and honeysuckle, and locust bushes, and all of that. | 2:17 |
Paul Ortiz | Around Douglas High School? | 3:28 |
Blondale Clady Cross | Uh-huh. Around in this neighborhood. So when we had our prom, they permitted us to cut their flowers and take them over there. That night of the prom, they came and sit on the sideline, and drank punch with us. They just marveled at seeing the children dance together. It wasn't like it is now. The children don't want their parents to show up on the scene, nothing like that. | 3:28 |
Blondale Clady Cross | So we had to walk. We had no cars. I lived about eight doors, from this block to the next block where I lived, because this is Mount Olive. Arnette would be the next block down. We wore our flat shoes so we wouldn't mess up our Sunday shoes on the rocks. They would come out once a year and throw a little rock. The street wasn't wide at all. I'm not good at measuring, but anyway, it was just a narrow little street. When it rained, between here and the next block down there, you had to go around back of somebody's house to come back up, to keep from getting soaked in water. | 3:56 |
Blondale Clady Cross | You could tell when election time was coming. They would come out with their microphones and come and tell us, "Come on out and vote." Mr. Crump, he would always get a big truckload of watermelons and put them over near the voting polls, which was up on Chelsea, right on the next corner up there. Everybody that wanted watermelon, he'd get them a watermelon and tell them, "Come on. Mr. Crump said take home a watermelon with you." | 4:45 |
Blondale Clady Cross | I don't remember what year it was they stopped paying poll taxes, wheel taxes, whatever you want to call it. But anyway, my friends down the street, they all worked on the poll. That was Mr. David and Mr. Ike Stone, and Professor Titus and his wife. Professor Titus, he taught in the city school. He taught at Booker Washington. Mrs. Titus, she was a civic leader, PTA civic leader. She and Reverend Gladney, and Miss Bessy Harris, Miss Annie Bland, and those were the people that brought the message back to the neighborhood, to the people to keep them together. | 5:31 |
Paul Ortiz | In the '40s? | 6:31 |
Blondale Clady Cross | Yeah. Through the '40s and '50s. Mr. Dan Gardner. We have some pictures showing them at the polls voting, at the voting poll. | 6:31 |
Paul Ortiz | Mrs. Cross, I'm afraid I turned on my tape recorder a little late. I wanted to make sure that I got your opening story about when you were first going to Manassas and with the— | 7:01 |
Blondale Clady Cross | Yeah, the bus driver? | 7:11 |
Paul Ortiz | Can you tell that one more time? | 7:12 |
Blondale Clady Cross | Yes. We were saying that we lived down in this area, right along in here. Up there where the railroad track is up there at the Buckeye, the streetcar driver, he would swing around there and according to if he's a good one, felt good that morning, he'd wait and let us get on. But if he didn't, he'd look and see us, and he'd let us get about half way at track and we'd just be running to get on, and just take on off and go on. We'd look like we could see him in his mirror, looking back at us. | 7:14 |
Blondale Clady Cross | So when the next guy came that would pick us up, that made us late when we get over to Manassas because we had to transfer when we got to Chelsea and Brilow. We had to get on the bus. That's where the bus picked us up at. We just got tired of it. It was downright boring to think that you're on your way to try to make it and then somebody see you coming and pull on off and leave you. That's a hollowing feeling. | 7:53 |
Paul Ortiz | That was '43? | 8:24 |
Blondale Clady Cross | Yeah. | 8:25 |
Blondale Clady Cross | That was some of the things that made us really make ourselves go to the board as students, to get a high school over here at Douglas. The principal, Mr. Sharp, he would go around after. We had Miss Sue Powers had permitted him to have a high school. He'd go around to different schools, like Mexican, all those books and things, we would get their books, and Central High or whatnot, we'd get their— | 8:32 |
Speaker 4 | Good morning. | 9:05 |
Blondale Clady Cross | Good morning. | 9:05 |
Paul Ortiz | Morning. | 9:05 |
Blondale Clady Cross | —their chemistry things. We had a bunsen burner. We didn't know anything about it. The teacher had just out of college, he didn't know. It was just really, all of us learned together what we did learn. | 9:11 |
Paul Ortiz | So Mrs. Cross, the protest of the 21 students was important getting Douglas High School started? | 9:30 |
Blondale Clady Cross | Right. That was it. We didn't call it as such a protest then. We was just telling them what we wanted. | 9:37 |
Paul Ortiz | Mrs. Cross, you said you came to Memphis in '43? | 9:56 |
Blondale Clady Cross | Right. | 10:00 |
Paul Ortiz | Could you tell me about your family life before that? | 10:01 |
Blondale Clady Cross | Oh. We had a mile in [indistinct 00:10:12] walking to school. It was a one room school and one teacher. She was the basketball coach and she was whatever you wanted to call. It was in the time that the girls played basketball and the girls were divided. Our goal was, we changed goals. You know how they change goals now. It was six girls on each team; three on this side and three on that team. We had to, if you go across the line over here when you're playing your opponent, then you were out. Now the boys, they could go all over the goal post. So you could see, men has always had it great here. | 10:05 |
Blondale Clady Cross | We had to go to school as long as there wasn't any cotton to be chopped or picked. We got out of school about the last of April. The first of May was time to chop cotton. The cotton opened up in August, about the first of August. We had to go in and pick cotton until October then. After then, it was back to school again. It was just a matter of when you didn't have any work to do in the fields, you were permitted to go to school. | 11:15 |
Paul Ortiz | And what county in Mississippi did you grow up in? | 11:59 |
Blondale Clady Cross | Bolivar. Bolivar County. | 12:00 |
Paul Ortiz | Bolivar County. | 12:01 |
Blondale Clady Cross | Mm-hmm. | 12:03 |
Paul Ortiz | So your parents were farmers? | 12:05 |
Blondale Clady Cross | Right. Right. | 12:07 |
Paul Ortiz | Mrs. Cross, who was in your household when you were growing up? | 12:12 |
Blondale Clady Cross | It was my grandmother, and my mother, and my stepfather. | 12:15 |
Paul Ortiz | What are your earliest childhood memories in Bolivar County? | 12:28 |
Blondale Clady Cross | My earliest I can remember, I started going to school in a house because it was a lady. She came from Shelby, Mississippi to Salmon, Mississippi. She was just out of Mount By High School, so I don't know about what grade she went in, but she was very interested in getting children. So it was my cousin and I, and three more children. That's what she started off, teaching us how to write and read. From then on, I just like the way she talked and the way she showed us different things. She could draw beautiful pictures. I remember the picture of Jimmy Dale, the dog, and his doghouse, and stuff like that. She made it really interesting to us. | 12:36 |
Blondale Clady Cross | We had another mile when we wanted to go to church. So that's two miles we had to go. In the run of a day, you'd walk four miles; two there, and two back. From then, they built a one room building and they sent a man out there, which was a teacher. So we had Miss Luella and Mr. Johnson, which was our, we would say a principal at that particular time. From then, each year they would give us an extra person to teach. As far as I heard, they didn't draw too much of a salary because they assumed they would go back to work in the field, too. | 13:46 |
Paul Ortiz | The teachers? | 14:46 |
Blondale Clady Cross | Uh-huh. By living in Mississippi, you would think that we would have a different fair, but when they had a fair for the White, they had a fair for the Black, too. We just didn't get on when whatever they were riding. You waited until they got through riding and then you got your next turn, like that. It was all, the amusement things was once a year and they would have that about the last of October, after we'd just about done gathered all the crop up, and you would have money to spend at the fair. | 14:52 |
Blondale Clady Cross | But when I came to Memphis, we just had one day to go to the zoo, and one day to go to the fair, and stuff like that. It was just completely different, just that one day. Like the Fourth of July, if something came on that Thursday when we were supposed to go to the zoo, they just canceled it for us and we had to wait until that next Thursday come around. | 15:29 |
Paul Ortiz | Mrs. Cross, what was the process that brought you to Memphis in '43? | 15:56 |
Blondale Clady Cross | My dad, he had married again and he had six more children, so he said he wanted all of us to be together. My mother, he had always wanted me to come and live with him, but she said she wanted me to be the age where I could take care of myself, so if I was being mistreated, I could let her know or go back. So after I got here, and I liked my stepmother, and she's still alive now, and she's just as sweet as she can be. She's the most sweetest person you want to see. | 16:06 |
Blondale Clady Cross | So my daddy worked at the Buckeye up here. He was president of the CIO. In doing that, that was during World War II that they called him into the Navy, a man with seven children. That's when we say we know the union had something to do with him being called away from up there, because the unions had just started opening up and letting Black people in and such things like that. | 16:45 |
Paul Ortiz | So his union activity was what caused the draft board to try to— | 17:25 |
Blondale Clady Cross | Uh-huh. | 17:28 |
Paul Ortiz | —take him out of the scene. | 17:30 |
Blondale Clady Cross | Yeah. So he stayed in the Navy three years. Then, when he came back, his position was depleted. That just did that. So daddy started carpentry. So he took good care of us in doing the carving because he knew his type of work because when he was living in Mississippi, that's what his dad was, a carpenter, and he always went around with his daddy, building. So he just went back to his old trade. So eventually, he moved to San Diego, California, after. | 17:31 |
Blondale Clady Cross | That was really a hardship, calling a man in with seven children. They put him on a ship, too. Two or three years, he was gone. | 18:25 |
Paul Ortiz | Mrs. Cross, could you tell me about your father's activity when he was active in the CIO? | 18:46 |
Blondale Clady Cross | Yes, he was. He had an office right on the corner of, upstairs over Second and right at the corner of Beale. The union, you know how they meet and pay their dues and whatnot. I would go down on Saturdays and help him. I had moved on to the 11th grade and I could write a real legible hand at that time and I was interested in doing such as that. | 18:56 |
Paul Ortiz | Were there a lot of Black people involved in the CIO in those days? | 19:48 |
Blondale Clady Cross | Yes. Yeah, it was lot of them. Quite a few of them. They were glad to have something to promote them. A lot of young men, to go to work, they would give them a job. They worked at the ax handle factory over there. That was part of the union folks, and the Buckeye on Chelsea, and then there was a Buckeye on Jackson, right there at the Five Dollar. It was quite a few Blacks. | 19:52 |
Paul Ortiz | Mrs. Cross, how would you compare Memphis to Bolivar County? What's some of the differences? | 20:41 |
Blondale Clady Cross | More of less then, it was people that, the White were, say, your neighbor. You stayed on your side of your field. You spoke and are friendly with them. But here in the city, they didn't know you and you didn't know them, so you looked off or they looked off when they saw each other. Unless they got to know you real personal, or you worked —When children finished high school then, they didn't have anything to look forward to but a person's housework, or kitchen, or take care of their children, or something of that thought. | 20:55 |
Blondale Clady Cross | We always had a job on Saturdays. When Daddy didn't have me down at the office with him, I worked for Mrs. Nat Burring, his mother, Mrs. Burring. I'd go there on a Saturday and she'd pay me a dollar and a half a day. When I get there about 8:00, wash the clothes, put them on the line. Then while they're drying, I'd shampoo her hair, so I was her beautician, show her the things that I had to do. | 21:51 |
Blondale Clady Cross | At lunchtime, she would fix some soup. It really wasn't anything. She was a Jew, so they really, she had her real strict Jewish rules. She was one of the old time Jews that, they didn't have any pork or nothing, no kind of meat. They had chicken broth and stuff like that. That was the lunch on Saturday. | 22:31 |
Blondale Clady Cross | I had to wash the clothes by board and try to get them out there on the line as early as I could so they could dry. Then clean out the fireplace, mop the kitchen, clean the pantry while they're still drying and her hair drying, and her hair was down to her waist, and I had to hand dry it with a towel. | 23:02 |
Blondale Clady Cross | She was very—She'd say, "I really like you. You're a beautiful person. You're going to go somewhere in life. You're going to have a beautiful life. You have a beautiful life." | 23:27 |
Blondale Clady Cross | So I married my husband and we had six children. By him being in the Navy also, when he came back, he got discharged from the Navy and came back, and they were giving him $50 a month, so we started saving our money. Then they started the GI schools and such, and guys would go to GI school. So we wanted to do something on our own. We started out with a little store on the next corner, man he helped—my husband worked at the [indistinct 00:24:39], and then he helped this man. That man's wife died and he didn't want the store anymore, so we got the store in 1950 and we stayed in it until 1988. Then I got sick and he just gave it up and they demolished the building on the next corner. | 23:40 |
Blondale Clady Cross | So we were able to raise those six children and send them part of the way to college, those that wanted to, take up a trade and whatnot. | 25:06 |
Paul Ortiz | What was the name of the store? | 25:18 |
Blondale Clady Cross | Cross Grocery. | 25:19 |
Paul Ortiz | Cross Grocery. | 25:20 |
Blondale Clady Cross | Yes. We stayed there 38 years. | 25:21 |
Paul Ortiz | Mrs. Cross, when you were going to Douglas, were you involved in the school activities? | 25:27 |
Blondale Clady Cross | Yes. We had, we called it 4H Clubs, the projects of raising chickens, and gardens, and things of that sort. We had, our school's one of the best basketball teams in the city. | 25:33 |
Paul Ortiz | The women's basketball? | 26:13 |
Blondale Clady Cross | Girl's, uh-huh. | 26:15 |
Paul Ortiz | And you played? | 26:17 |
Blondale Clady Cross | Yes. | 26:18 |
Paul Ortiz | What position did you play? | 26:19 |
Blondale Clady Cross | One of the forwards. | 26:20 |
Speaker 5 | Hey. | 26:20 |
Blondale Clady Cross | Hey. How you doing? | 26:20 |
Speaker 5 | All right. | 26:20 |
Blondale Clady Cross | And we had a glee club and we would sing all over the city. It was mostly church activities, but Mr. Sharp and Miss Powers. We had one of the best bands in the city. They call them the Douglas Swingsters. I got pictures and things. I lost my husband May 25th of this year, so we had a lot of people that come in and the pictures of different things are being, I put them away. I was trying to think of a book that I had, that we had the history of Douglas out here in 1977. We had an expo, something similar to the Juneteenth, but ours was just to expose the talent of the children and adults crocheting, and dolls, and making things like that. | 26:28 |
Blondale Clady Cross | But our neighborhood has always been a close neighborhood that we could easily get a group of people together. If you just call one and that one calls somebody else. You see how many people were over in the park Saturday? Were you over there Saturday or Sunday? | 27:48 |
Paul Ortiz | Saturday. | 28:06 |
Blondale Clady Cross | Uh-huh. | 28:09 |
Paul Ortiz | Mrs. Cross, when you were going to Douglas, what kind of aspirations did you have for your future? It doesn't sound like you wanted to have a lifetime of private household work? | 28:13 |
Blondale Clady Cross | When I was going to Douglas, I really wanted to go to college, but it wasn't no such thing as money to go to college. It was just that or this. My husband and I, we talked together and he said he didn't want to be going to a public job. So we just pooled our money together and saved it until we was able to have our own business. One time, we were able to hire delivery boys riding bicycles to deliver the groceries. We knew every address out here in the neighborhood, who lived there and what they wanted, and all of that, at that particular time. | 28:33 |
Paul Ortiz | Did you have a fountain in the store? | 29:34 |
Blondale Clady Cross | We sold Slurpees. My husband was the first one to invent the submarine sandwich, you know, Subway. Because the bread salesman, he would have day old bread and he would let him have that. Then he would take it and put bologna, and cheese, and tomatoes, and all of that stuff on it, and sell them sandwiches for 10, 15 cents. | 29:37 |
Blondale Clady Cross | We were able to sell steaks, and pork chops, and all that. My husband was just a gifted man. He could see somebody do something and he could just pick up on it. By him was in the Navy, he worked in that capacity of food. When he got out, they had Alonzo Locke waiter school. That was down there at 3rd and Hunan, I think it was. Anyway, he just watched those waiters, how they prepared the food, so he was able to do that. | 30:14 |
Paul Ortiz | Mrs. Cross, during those years, growing up in Bolivar and then later in Memphis, what was the main source of your news in those two different areas? | 31:03 |
Blondale Clady Cross | Like a newspaper or something like that? | 31:24 |
Paul Ortiz | Yes, ma'am. | 31:26 |
Blondale Clady Cross | They had the Press Empty and the Commercial Appeal was delivered. The White people, they were regular takers of the paper. They would give you the paper after they had read it. After we looked on and read what we wanted to read on there, we'd take it and paper the house with it, put flour and put a little turpentine in it to keep the mice from eating the flour off the wall, and your house would be pretty and clean. You had clean, clean house. | 31:26 |
Blondale Clady Cross | So that's how we got news. Then the radios were at a price then that you could order one from Sears Roebuck and get the battery and sit the battery down beside a window of the house and you had all the news you wanted. | 32:07 |
Paul Ortiz | Would you subscribe to Black newspapers during those years? | 32:32 |
Blondale Clady Cross | No, it wasn't, in our area, it wasn't any Black newspaper at that particular time. Later on, it was the Tristate Defender after I came to Memphis, after I was in Memphis, but there wasn't a Black newspaper. | 32:37 |
Paul Ortiz | Mrs. Cross, who was the main clientele for Cross Groceries? | 32:54 |
Blondale Clady Cross | The neighborhood. The neighbors. All these people were. It was a store right there, but we, by my husband being a younger man and a popular man, that made him because the Reverend was an older man and he preached on Sunday and he'd rest through the week. | 33:00 |
Paul Ortiz | Mrs. Cross, was there a Black Chamber of Commerce, a Black Businessperson's Association that you were affiliated with? | 33:31 |
Blondale Clady Cross | Yes. They did have a Black Chamber of Commerce. That was headed by Reverend Gladney and Mr. Frank Johnson. Mr. Frank Johnson, he had a store over there, about the fifth street down. It was enough money out in this neighborhood to take care of, supply these stores and things because they didn't have cars and they couldn't go to Hollywood as such all the time. We had credit at that time and people would be just as dutiful, coming to pay us on Saturdays, or Fridays, or whenever they got paid off. We didn't suffer for anything. We just lived as normal as anybody else would live that worked hard. | 33:41 |
Paul Ortiz | So it was mainly a Black clientele? | 34:53 |
Blondale Clady Cross | Right. Right, Black. Wholly Black. | 34:55 |
Paul Ortiz | Mrs. Cross, when you were going to Douglas, what role did Douglas play in the wider community? | 35:03 |
Blondale Clady Cross | It wasn't but two sources, three, because it was your home, your school, and your church. The church and the school were the main —Douglas School burned down in, I wasn't here, '42 or '43. But anyway, it used to be up the street there before they moved it down there at the power. Our church right here, Saint Paul, they helped house the children over there until they could get the school built back. So the church and the school has been a real close connection and still is. | 35:14 |
Paul Ortiz | Would the teachers at Douglas make home visits? | 36:17 |
Blondale Clady Cross | Yeah. Yeah, they'd make a home visit. Parent would, they would come to the meeting. They believed what the teachers had to tell them and show them. | 36:20 |
Paul Ortiz | I see. Mrs. Cross, this part of Memphis is considered north Memphis. | 36:42 |
Blondale Clady Cross | Yeah, uh-huh. | 36:47 |
Paul Ortiz | Could you tell me the differences between, say, north Memphis, south Memphis, and Orange Mound? What distinguishes them from each other? | 36:49 |
Blondale Clady Cross | It was more people that were educated in the south Memphis area than it was in the north Memphis area because it was educated people all around, but as a whole, it was more teachers over in the south Memphis and Orange Mound area than in the north Memphis area because most of these people, some of them were still farming, had farms and things. They'd go back and chop and pick. They'd make a little money that year, and then they'd take and buy them a lot from Mr. Curry and build a house, two rooms, or three rooms, or whatnot. So it was more urban area out in the north Memphis area than it was in the south Memphis area. | 37:03 |
Paul Ortiz | I see. Was there neighborhood rivalries? | 37:49 |
Blondale Clady Cross | Yeah. Yeah. You go to Booker Washington, they're going to beat you one way or the other. If you get on the bus to come home, they'd break the bus. | 38:00 |
Paul Ortiz | Did your children play neighborhood sports? | 38:15 |
Blondale Clady Cross | Yes. I had two boys was in the band. One of my boys played football on the football team. The younger boy, he was quieter. He just loved the library. He was a library fanatic. He's a photographer, so now he's working at Color Lab over there by Memphis State. He develops pictures over there. The second boy, he works up there at the Buckeye. When those trains come in at 5:30 in the morning, he have to get out there and take those numbers off those boxcars that they have left there and call them in to Peoria, Illinois. So that's the type of job he does. My daughter, she works for Cable Vision. She was in the park Sunday evening. She was a soloist out there. She had on a red dress. | 38:19 |
Paul Ortiz | Oh, yeah. See, I wasn't out there Sunday. | 39:39 |
Blondale Clady Cross | My other daughter, she works at Federal Express. One of my sons, he preceded his daddy. He died in '78. He had a heart attack. | 39:45 |
Paul Ortiz | Mrs. Cross, what role did women play in the neighborhood here when you were growing up? | 40:04 |
Blondale Clady Cross | The women, they played a great part in the church activities and school activities, putting on projects to raise money for children that was less fortunate, to go to school, or get scholarships together and send them to school. Women have always played a great part because most times, the guys, they be going on to work and they said, "Leave it to the women to do." The women has always had a great part in this neighborhood. | 40:12 |
Paul Ortiz | Would you talk a lot to other women in the neighborhood about neighborhood issues? | 41:06 |
Blondale Clady Cross | Yeah. They was always to the point to try to better our neighborhoods. We had some [indistinct 00:41:38] and things that we would make. It was a boundary, how close they could come to a church. | 41:17 |
Paul Ortiz | So you would work to keep that boundary firm? | 41:55 |
Blondale Clady Cross | Yeah. Right. | 41:59 |
Paul Ortiz | What were some of the other projects that you worked on in this neighborhood during the '50s and '60s to improve it? | 42:01 |
Blondale Clady Cross | One thing was, we got the streets paved because they were just rock road with holes and gutters. So they're in pretty fair condition now. | 42:15 |
Paul Ortiz | And how did you go about doing that, Mrs. Cross? | 42:29 |
Blondale Clady Cross | We had our president of the council, Bluff City Council, we take our issues to them, and then they would further it up to the County Council. See, we were in the county at first and then we had to go from the county to the city. | 42:36 |
Paul Ortiz | So they were Black officials? | 43:01 |
Blondale Clady Cross | Yeah. And they would tell the White officials down there what we were in need of out here. | 43:05 |
Paul Ortiz | Mrs. Cross, who were considered to be the leaders of the neighborhood? | 43:13 |
Blondale Clady Cross | Mr. Frank Johnson was one and Mr. Buddy Johnson. They weren't related, but they had the same last name. Mr. Paul, I think you're supposed to talk to him. Paul— | 43:21 |
Paul Ortiz | Nichols? | 43:41 |
Blondale Clady Cross | Uh-huh. | 43:42 |
Paul Ortiz | Oh, okay. I think he's on— | 43:42 |
Blondale Clady Cross | Yeah. | 43:44 |
Paul Ortiz | What role would they play in the neighborhood? | 43:48 |
Blondale Clady Cross | Well, they would go to them and tell them what we need and put us on the agenda to ask for different things. We had got the gym and the community center. All of that was through those guys that went to Mr. Love and the officials. | 43:54 |
Paul Ortiz | Mrs. Cross, could you tell me about how segregation worked in Memphis during those years? | 44:30 |
Blondale Clady Cross | We just knew our place and you didn't get out of it. We were a band of tight neighborhood people that we could go to. We always had somebody on that board that you could talk to, that would step and give you a chance to tell them what you wanted. That was through Reverend Gladney and Nichols Henry. We call him Nichols Henry, but Paul Nichols. He'll tell you about that. | 44:45 |
Paul Ortiz | During those years, Mrs. Cross, would you go downtown and do your shopping? | 45:34 |
Blondale Clady Cross | Yeah. That was the only place you had to go. | 45:39 |
Paul Ortiz | Were those stores segregated? | 45:46 |
Blondale Clady Cross | Oh, yes. They wouldn't let you try a hat on in there. You did, they put a scarf on your head, or stocking, silk stocking to keep from getting the hat dirty. But I didn't go there because I didn't have to. They didn't have nothing I wanted that bad, but some people would. | 45:48 |
Paul Ortiz | Did you make it a point not to go there because of that segregation? | 46:10 |
Blondale Clady Cross | Uh-huh, I really did. And they— | 46:16 |
Blondale Clady Cross | Yeah, they had that, they were on sale. It was much cheaper than the ones. We'd go to Bry's and Lowenstein's and Goldsmith and Helen's and Levis. Now Levis, they weren't as segregated, but you stepped around another room and tried on your clothes, if you're going to try on a dress or something. | 0:04 |
Paul Ortiz | There was a separate trying on room. | 0:35 |
Blondale Clady Cross | Yeah, fitting room. | 0:38 |
Paul Ortiz | Fitting room. | 0:39 |
Blondale Clady Cross | And also the bathroom were in the basement and you had to take your turn as men would be in there. Black women, Black men used the same one. You go take a woman to the bathroom with you, so she'd hold the door until you got through and come out. | 0:42 |
Paul Ortiz | Oh, I see. Mrs. Cross, during those years, did you know or hear of Black people who began pushing against that system? | 1:04 |
Blondale Clady Cross | Yeah, there was plenty of them. Dr. Price over at LeMoyne, his wife was right at a fountain and she wanted some water and so she went to get it and then a guy told her no, she couldn't drink. She said that was for White people. She said, well, she couldn't tell the difference in the water because all of it was White to her and she couldn't read the sign in no way. | 1:18 |
Blondale Clady Cross | And so it was a controversy about that. But eventually they start slacking down on different things. They built a little thing around where the Black women had to go to the bathroom. Whereas the White people, they had a very big luxury. You could just look in there and that's all. In the 10 cent store, they had a dining area and down where the Colored was, they had a sign they could move it up or down, and up where the White sit, they had stools and tables for them to sit down and eat. | 1:46 |
Paul Ortiz | Uh-huh. | 2:44 |
Blondale Clady Cross | You had to buy a hot dog or had to buy whatever you bought, you stood up at the counter and ate it. | 2:45 |
Paul Ortiz | Mrs. Cross. Would Black people, were they beginning to challenge that segregation of the buses and— | 2:55 |
Blondale Clady Cross | Yeah. Now they bus that from here to South Memphis is there mostly was Black people, and from down the fairgrounds and all of that, those were White. And the bus, part of it came to Hollywood. And part of that route was White in there. | 3:14 |
Blondale Clady Cross | Soon as a White person would be sitting here and you couldn't sit in front of them, you had to sit behind them or the side or just stand up, and some of them would just be so mean that they wouldn't move up and let you sit down and know that you were tired and had worked all day. They'd just sit there. And some of them hothead would say, "Don't you see that White woman you standing in front of?" Well, just evil. Just evil. Had evil spirits. And sometime they have little tussles like that but it was never a big thing. | 3:40 |
Paul Ortiz | So a Black person on the bus would refuse to stand? | 4:31 |
Blondale Clady Cross | Uh-huh. | 4:39 |
Paul Ortiz | Mrs. Cross, earlier you were talking about women in the neighborhood. So I was wondering, in this neighborhood around here, were there women who worked as midwives when you first came here? | 4:47 |
Blondale Clady Cross | Yes, some of them did. Miss—Well, she lived right down here. And she waited on White people too, because a lot of people that she had taken care of there, when they were born, they go get her to deliver their babies. And then they started to stop our midwife and they had to have the John Gaston Hospital to send out a doctor and deliver the baby. | 5:07 |
Paul Ortiz | Did you have midwives in Bolivar County? | 5:46 |
Blondale Clady Cross | Yes. They had midwives in Bolivar County. | 5:47 |
Paul Ortiz | Were there Black doctors during those days? | 5:55 |
Blondale Clady Cross | Yeah, there was some few, at Mound Bayou, Mississippi, they had a Black hospital there. But most of the babies were delivered in the homes by midwives or either doctors would come out, White doctors would come out and deliver the babies in the home. | 5:58 |
Paul Ortiz | So were you born in the home? | 6:21 |
Blondale Clady Cross | Yeah. | 6:24 |
Paul Ortiz | Mrs. Cross, could you describe the difference between your education and your parents' education? | 6:30 |
Blondale Clady Cross | Well, my dad and mother, they didn't get any further than the sixth and seventh grade, but I finished high school from Douglass. So that was quite a difference in our educational span between my mother and dad. | 6:39 |
Paul Ortiz | You were talking earlier about the voting situation here, when did you begin to start voting? | 7:03 |
Blondale Clady Cross | Oh, I was looking at my restoration card not long ago. 1950, first time I went and signed up and voted. And I voted every time that I can. I'm like that Peter Pan Congression. (laughs) As long as I can go, I want to vote. Because people had been so long that they didn't know what to vote for or couldn't vote. But we still don't really know a lot of times what we are getting or voting for, but do go and make your mark as they say. | 7:23 |
Paul Ortiz | And then you spoke earlier of the crop machine. Were you voting with that or against that? | 7:58 |
Blondale Clady Cross | Oh, we voted with it. They had whoever they had to come out and pep you up to talk. That's the one you voted for. Because as they got back down there, you don't really know what was taking place to the point of it helping you or not helping you. But there were changes made, so therefore we continued on to want to vote because we did see some changes from the last time of something. | 8:08 |
Paul Ortiz | Who were the Black political leaders in Memphis? In the '50's? | 8:47 |
Blondale Clady Cross | Let's see. I can't think now. Who were they? Well, Sugarmon and Higgs and all of those come on from that group. Let me see. Moohah, which was AC Williams. He's still alive. And Turner. They were the people that were coming out of that age group. | 8:47 |
Paul Ortiz | Did you approve of their leadership? | 10:24 |
Blondale Clady Cross | Yes, I did because it was more of the grouping of our neighborhood together. And our council leader told us, Mr. Stone and the Johnson's, they told us, we group our little group together, like that. | 10:42 |
Paul Ortiz | Now, Mrs. Cross, after you graduated from Douglass, did you ever go back and become active with the school? | 11:13 |
Blondale Clady Cross | Yes, I served eight years of President of PTA, Parent's Conference. | 11:26 |
Paul Ortiz | Now, Mrs. Cross, if you could look back on your life, what were some of the things that inspired you to reach your goals and to keep striving through your lifetime? | 11:52 |
Blondale Clady Cross | No, this song that, "You're My Hero," I think my husband was my hero. He just loved people. He's just that kind of person. And he said that I was his hero. | 12:21 |
Blondale Clady Cross | So we belonged to the same church and we worked together, we finished school together. So it just looked like it was just a matter of we being one, and whatever one wanted the other saw fit to like it. | 12:44 |
Blondale Clady Cross | And we never—we had one fuss a year, if it was—of course, it's too hot now. Whoever thought he had more sense than the other, but he laughed at it. So you couldn't fuss by yourself, so you had to stop somewhere along the way. | 13:07 |
Blondale Clady Cross | But it was my husband I thought that gave me my inspiration because the more I did, the more he praised me. And my personality is that if a person gives you credit for something, look like you want to do more to please that person. So that's who I think was my hero, when it come down to it. | 13:25 |
Paul Ortiz | Were there other things that you wanted to add that we didn't touch on? | 13:55 |
Blondale Clady Cross | No, I think you didn't talk me enough this morning. But I've enjoyed talking to you. | 14:02 |
Paul Ortiz | Well I've enjoyed talking with you, ma'am. | 14:10 |
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