Zechariah Alexander interview recording, 1993 June 11

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	[Rhonda Mawhood] You were saying, sir?	0:03
	[Zechariah Alexander] Well, I'm-	0:08
	I was raised in Charlotte	0:10
	and I've been here since I was one year old.	0:11
	I'm now 87 years old.	0:17
	And my father and mother both were born in Charlotte.	0:20
	They were married in Rutherford, New Jersey,	0:27
	where I was born,	0:32
	but they only stayed there a year after I was born,	0:34
	so I've been here since 1907,	0:36
	beside the time I was in school.	0:41
	So,	0:45
	I know a great deal about Charlotte.	0:48
	I was raised in the Brooklyn area,	0:55
	where you now see all this activity.	0:57
	I guess you've heard about the Brooklyn area in Charlotte.	1:02
	Well, during the urban renewal period, why, it was	1:06
	what I call taken away from Black people, completely.	1:12
	It's not a vestige of anything there now	1:16
	that was there when I was born.	1:18
	I was raised on Stonewall Street.	1:21
	You know where,	1:28
	where that construction is going on.	1:29
	You know where Stonewall Street is,	1:32
	it's well right there where	1:35
	the building is facing Stonewall Street	1:40
	opposite the construction is going on there for the-	1:46
	I was raised, raised right where that building stands,	1:49
	where the young Ford used car lot was, office was,	1:51
	I was raised right there on that street	1:56
	and at that particular area.	2:00
	Brooklyn was the most thickly populated Black area	2:06
	in the city.	2:11
	And there been a lot of stories told about Brooklyn,	2:14
	which were colored differently by different people,	2:17
	depending on what their objective was in giving the story.	2:22
	It has generally been indicated	2:31
	that it was a slum area,	2:36
	which is not true.	2:38
	It had an area in it, of course, which was very rough	2:43
	and there was a lot of illegal activity going on,	2:50
	but as in any community, it had its different.	2:54
	But the majority of the people in the Brooklyn area,	2:58
	during my period, during my time,	3:02
	were not renters, there were homeowners.	3:04
	And although the old renewal grants	3:10
	were based on Brooklyn being a slum area,	3:14
	that was a lie.	3:19
	And Mayor Brookshire is the one	3:22
	who's the instigator of that lie.	3:23
-	Mayor Brookshire?	3:25
-	Yes.
	In other words, he,	3:27
	he was able to convince	3:32
	the powers that be,	3:36
	that Brooklyn was a slum area	3:37
	and was on the basis of it being a slum area	3:43
	that the grant was allowed.	3:45
	But Brooklyn was unique in the fact	3:49
	that it was located in the center of the city.	3:54
	And for many years it was boxed in	3:59
	from Morehead Street to Fourth Street,	4:06
	there was no-	4:11
	Except you would go through Second Street.	4:14
	There was no way to get uptown	4:16
	without going on the railroad,	4:18
	or you had to go through a circuitous route to get uptown.	4:21
	But the majority of people	4:33
	in the Brooklyn community were homeowners.	4:36
	And very substantial people lived in Brooklyn.	4:40
-	Who do you remember as being your neighbors in Brooklyn?	4:44
	Can you give me examples of what they did for a living?	4:47
-	Well, it was the, all of the neighborhood was mixed.	4:51
	There were people of average circumstances,	4:54
	there were professional people, all living together.	4:57
	On Boundary Street where just,	5:04
	well, since it's not there now, it's hard,	5:08
	you not having many, you wouldn't know,	5:12
	but Boundary Street was a block below Stonewall Street.	5:15
	And of course,	5:21
	Brevard Street was a dividing,	5:22
	Brevard Street was where Brooklyn was blocked off	5:24
	from uptown.	5:27
	Now, this was all designed, you understand?	5:30
	For many years	5:34
	there was an effort made to get streets opened up,	5:38
	but nothing happened.	5:42
	Well, there on Boundary Street,	5:52
	there was any number of school teachers.	5:56
	There was a medical doctor- two medical doctors-	6:01
	three medical doctors who lived in Brooklyn.	6:06
	Dr. White and his father,	6:12
	Dr. JT Williams, you heard of him,	6:19
	Dr. French Tyson, who lived on Brevard Street	6:25
	and on Boundary Street also, Bishop Warner lived,	6:36
	on Brevard Street, Bishop Bruce lived.	6:41
	So Brooklyn was,	6:48
	was a tremendous community.	6:53
	There were a large number of churches in Brooklyn.	6:55
	Every one of them was abolished,	6:58
	taken away.	7:03
	And First Baptist Church,	7:05
	the white First Baptist Church	7:06
	came from Tryon Street to Brooklyn	7:07
	and put that big facility there,	7:10
	the House of Prayer, you've heard of it.	7:12
	Well, the House of Prayer was in Brooklyn.	7:15
	Let me see,	7:18
	there was Brooklyn Presbyterian Church,	7:21
	was finally merged with the church on Seventh Street.	7:22
	There was Ebenezer Baptist Church,	7:27
	Friendship Baptist Church,	7:30
	St. Paul Baptist Church,	7:36
	Stonewall AME Zion Church	7:39
	and any number of smaller churches.	7:42
	Well, there was-	7:46
	A number of small Apostolic churches.	7:51
	I remember one particularly, Myers' Mission,	7:55
	that was in Brooklyn,	7:58
	near what at one time was the Charlottetown Mall,	8:03
	or is now what they call outlet center, I think.	8:06
	Well, all that territory was Black territory.	8:10
	Thickly populated with Blacks.	8:13
-	Excuse me, sorry.	8:15
	Which church did your family attend?	8:16
-	My father belonged to Friendship.	8:19
	My mother belonged to Seventh Street Presbyterian.	8:23
-	So which one did the children go to?	8:28
	Well, we went to both,	8:29
	but we went to Friendship primarily because it was so close,	8:31
	it was just a block from us.	8:35
	We could come right up through the alleyway there,	8:37
	up to First Street and we were right at-	8:40
	So we went to Friendship more than we did	8:42
	Seventh Street.	8:46
	And I think perhaps we are Baptist	8:49
	simply because we were closer to the Baptist Church.	8:53
	My father was a Baptist.	8:55
	So most of us joined Friendship originally,	8:58
	but after we grew up and married,	9:02
	I moved my membership to St. Paul Baptist Church.	9:09
-	Was your wife already a member of St. Paul's?	9:14
	No, my wife-	9:16
	Yes, my wife was a member of St. Paul.	9:18
	My wife was from West Virginia.	9:20
	She was a classmate of mine at Howard University.	9:24
	But I didn't finish Howard,	9:30
	I went to Howard for a couple of years,	9:31
	I didn't finish there.	9:34
	During that, during that-	9:40
	Educational situation in Charlotte was very bad.	9:42
	For many years, there was no high schools for Blacks,	9:49
	high schools for Whites, but none for Blacks.	9:54
	And if-	9:57
	Those of us who got a little education,	10:00
	we had to leave Charlotte or go to Smith,	10:02
	what they called the academic department at that time.	10:05
	Most of the Black university colleges at that time	10:08
	had high school departments	10:11
	simply because there were no Black high schools	10:13
	in the communities, South.	10:17
	I started out my education	10:26
	at the old Myers Street school, you've heard of it.	10:28
	It was a big barn,	10:31
	had pot belly stoves in it	10:35
	each room.	10:38
	And I never saw a new book or new piece of furniture in it.	10:41
	We got	10:48
	the old furniture from the White schools.	10:49
	We got, if any books in the library-	10:54
	we didn't have a library-	10:56
	but in the rooms were secondhand books,	10:58
	books that came from various schools.	11:01
	As a matter of fact, as far as the school was concerned,	11:04
	there was nothing new in the schools at all.	11:07
	And if there had been a fire that time,	11:12
	it would've been a catastrophe	11:14
	because it was a wooden school,	11:15
	large wooden school.	11:19
	And it had a baby grand piano as big as this room,	11:24
	but it was about- at that time when I was a kid,	11:27
	it was about 60 years old.	11:31
	So you knew it was secondhand.	11:34
	It was sent from some White school.	11:36
	And, the first-	11:39
	The first principal that I know about was Pride.	11:43
	If we heard this name called, I'm sure.	11:47
	Now, my family,	12:00
	my father was the first manager	12:04
	of the North Carolina Mutual Insurance Company,	12:08
	local branch of the insurance company here.	12:13
	And he was with them about 37 or 38 years, I think,	12:17
	before he retired from there.	12:21
	And when he retired from there,	12:25
	he bought into the oldest funeral home,	12:29
	what was known as Coles Funeral Home at that time.	12:34
	Well, they didn't call them funeral homes,	12:38
	then, called them undertaker shops	12:40
	'cause that's what they were.	12:41
	So our business is the oldest	12:51
	Black business in the city,	12:54
	Alexander Funeral Home.	12:57
-	And what did your mother do, Mr. Alexander?	12:59
-	My mother was a mother.	13:02
	She finished school- college up here,	13:05
	Concord.	13:10
	And when she and my father married,	13:12
	she was a homemaker and remained that through near	13:15
	all of her life.	13:17
	I give most of my,	13:22
	things that I've done worthwhile,	13:28
	I give my mother most credit for it	13:30
	because she was a character builder.	13:32
	My father was too busy with other things too.	13:34
	He was a good father,	13:38
	but when it comes to the real intimate things	13:39
	that only mothers can do,	13:44
	my mother gave that to us.	13:46
-	What kinds of things do you remember your mother doing	13:49
	that helped to build character like that?	13:53
-	Well, first of all,	13:55
	she was a strict disciplinarian.	13:57
	She was a person who believed in	14:00
	doing the right thing.	14:05
	She never condone us in any of our dirty little tricks,	14:09
	or anything of that nature.	14:13
	She set an example in the neighborhood,	14:15
	she was a neighborly type person.	14:17
	And she administered to the needs	14:20
	of anybody in the community who needed her service,	14:22
	why, they got it.	14:26
	I don't care how lowly they were.	14:27
	She was very active in the community life.	14:34
	Her friends, they belonged to,	14:38
	they had what they call the South Side Literary Club,	14:40
	I believe it was.	14:43
	And I recall that from a youngster	14:45
	because they used to come together	14:49
	and develop that program for the year,	14:53
	and they had a little booklet that each one of them had	14:56
	that they had their various assignments for the year.	14:59
	As far as cultural background in our family,	15:04
	if we didn't make it wasn't any-	15:11
	Our parents could not be the cause of it	15:17
	because I remember we had,	15:20
	my father bought a big dictionary that was on the stand,	15:24
	put in the front, in the living room.	15:30
	I remember it very well.	15:33
	And any questions about spelling and so forth,	15:35
	he point us to that book.	15:40
	We had one of those old time Victrolas	15:42
	with a horn to it, you know, it had the little dog.	15:46
	Well, we had one of those.	15:51
	And way back when I was a kid,	15:53
	I can recall classical records being played on it	15:55
	and other type records,	15:58
	but I remember some of the classical records very well.	16:01
	We had the Harvard classics.	16:05
	We were exposed to	16:09
	what I consider the best culturally,	16:13
	even though we lived in a mixed neighborhood	16:19
	that was now in the neighborhood where we lived,	16:21
	There were	16:25
	people of all stations in life	16:27
	and they all were our neighbors.	16:34
	And my parents made no distinction	16:38
	between classes of people.	16:41
	And my father was	16:44
	a stickler for Blacks being independent.	16:49
	Now, he never worked for a White person in his life.	16:55
	When he was a youngster, he worked for	16:59
	The Houser Brick Company as a bookkeeper.	17:04
	You heard of the Houser Brick Company?	17:08
	They used to make brick.	17:13
	And many of the old brick	17:14
	that were used for the buildings up time at that time,	17:15
	were made there.	17:17
	In his early years,	17:21
	he was bookkeeper there for the Houser Brick Company.	17:22
	Very active in community affairs from way back.	17:30
	Back at the time when	17:34
	a nigger was supposed to be uppity,	17:37
	if he questioned anything White people did.	17:40
	You had different kinds of Blacks,	17:49
	you had the Black people who believed	17:51
	that you're supposed to be easy	17:54
	where White people are concerned.	17:55
	Don't disturb, don't cause any,	17:56
	don't disturb the peace in any way,	17:58
	don't have any aspect of conflict,	18:01
	just go along being a quiet type person.	18:07
	Well, my father was not that type person	18:10
	and he didn't teach us to be that way.	18:12
	He taught us to be independent.	18:17
	I remember when Camp Green,	18:20
	the World War I camp facility,	18:23
	you've heard of Camp Greene here in Charlotte?	18:25
	But at that time, the kids were going out to Camp Greene.	18:29
	They were making big money shining shoes	18:31
	and doing things for the soldiers and so on.	18:33
	And my father wouldn't allow me to go, wouldn't allow.	18:37
	I was the oldest, oldest of the group	18:40
	and he wouldn't let me go.	18:45
	Very early,	18:56
	he became	18:57
	active in local affairs.	19:01
	I remember	19:05
	early, before they had any welfare department,	19:08
	they had what they call the Associated Charities, I believe.	19:11
	And Dr. McCrorey's wife and my father	19:18
	were very active in the Associated Charities' movement.	19:21
	Everybody knew my father as being very blunt and outspoken.	19:29
	And he was a person with what I consider sterling integrity.	19:40
	He didn't drink, he was a teetotaller.	19:46
	And there was no occasion for any strong drink	19:50
	to be in our house at any time.	19:52
	My mother was very much opposed to alcohol	19:56
	and he in all of his activities throughout.	20:00
	He was very active in fraternal affairs,	20:04
	my father was.	20:09
-	What kinds of organizations was he a member of?	20:10
-	Well, he was a member	20:12
	of practically every Black fraternal organization that was.	20:13
	He was very active in the Masons and the Shrine.	20:17
	He was a member of the highest areas of masonry.	20:22
	And he was Deputy Imperial Potentate of the Shrine,	20:32
	which was the second highest national office	20:35
	in the Black Shriners.	20:40
	He was-	20:47
	Well, I can recall many years ago,	20:51
	for many years, Blacks generally were Republicans.	20:56
	Well, he was a member of the Republican Party	21:01
	and at two times,	21:04
	he went to	21:06
	two of the national Republican conventions.	21:08
	When we began to grow up and become active in local affairs,	21:15
	we began to-	21:21
	Well, we discovered, as many others discovered, not just us,	21:24
	that being in the Democratic Party was just-	21:29
	I mean, being in the Republican Party,	21:32
	didn't give you any opportunity to be active locally	21:36
	in political affairs because-	21:39
	Now Democrats were in the tremendous majority,	21:44
	there were very, very few Republicans,	21:48
	White Republicans in this area at that time.	21:50
	And we gradually convinced our father	21:58
	that it was not worth our while	21:59
	to remain Republicans.	22:04
	So the question was,	22:07
	if we were going to be active in the	22:10
	political process,	22:14
	we'd have to invade the Democratic Party.	22:16
	Which historically, you know,	22:21
	it was a very difficult thing to do	22:23
	because of the laws, Southern laws,	22:26
	that prevented you from even voting	22:27
	without having to interpret the Constitution	22:30
	to somebody who didn't- who was perhaps almost illiterate.	22:32
	And that's general history, you know about that.	22:37
	But Charlotte particularly	22:42
	was what I would call a nice nasty community.	22:47
	They tried to always do things,	22:52
	keep things to the point	22:57
	where there would be no conflagration.	22:58
	They would always be willing to give a little,	23:01
	but never give you enough to be of any real value to you.	23:03
	You had to fight every inch of the way for that.	23:07
	So the Charlotte	23:15
	community, was a very interesting community, now.	23:19
	We had, during the period of my youth,	23:22
	there were a number of Black businesses uptown.	23:28
	You've heard about the Tate Barbershop,	23:35
	I'm sure the Tate family.	23:37
	There were several other barber shops,	23:45
	several other Black barber shops uptown.	23:51
	There was between College-	23:54
	Now, there were Blacks in business on College Street.	23:57
	I guess you've heard about that.	24:02
	Have you heard about the business of Thomas Hardy?	24:06
-	No, sir.	24:10
-	Well, where the Radisson Hotel is at this time	24:11
	on the corner, College Street side,	24:17
	Thomas K. Hardy, had a shoe repair shop	24:21
	where he had about four or five motorcycle delivery boys	24:28
	who delivered shoes all over the community.	24:33
	And he worked about 10 people in that shoe shop,	24:37
	he had a large shoe repair shop.	24:40
	Right on the corner of where the Radisson is,	24:43
	there was a Black gentleman who had a,	24:47
	what they call a pressing shop,	24:50
	press clothes and repaired clothes.	24:53
	Around the corner,	24:59
	or from College Street,	25:04
	was what they call the	25:06
	Howels Arcade.	25:12
	One block from College Street,	25:15
	it ran from Trade back to Fifth Street.	25:20
	Well, in that whole block in there were Black businesses.	25:25
	Fronting Trade Street,	25:30
	the North Carolina Mutual had an office.	25:35
	And below the railroad,	25:39
	Blacks had businesses down to Brevard Street.	25:44
	There were a number of different kinds of businesses.	25:48
	There was a drug store and several other businesses,	25:53
	on the north side of the street.	26:02
	But everywhere up from Brevard Street up to College Street,	26:07
	there were Black businesses on Trade Street.	26:11
	As time moved on, of course,	26:21
	they were pushed out of those areas.	26:24
	But Howels Arcade was a area	26:28
	where most of the Black people in the country,	26:33
	when they came to town on Saturdays,	26:35
	they came to College Street	26:38
	and Trade	26:41
	and Howels Arcade was the place	26:44
	where most of them would come to get their haircut.	26:48
	And there were restaurants in there.	26:51
	As a matter of fact, one time, the Cole Funeral Home,	26:54
	where the Coles undertaking shop that we bought,	26:58
	was in Howels Arcade,	27:04
	and that records of that business go-	27:06
	We have records of that business back to 1914.	27:09
	Now it was older than that,	27:15
	but we have records in the funeral home	27:16
	that go back to 1914,	27:21
	back when you could	27:25
	hire a car,	27:31
	a livery for a funeral service for $5.	27:33
	Back at that time, the funeral-	27:45
	the barber- the undertaker shop,	27:48
	before that time was on	27:52
	Fifth Street.	27:57
	The city hall	28:01
	was at the corner of Fifth and Tryon.	28:03
	The fire department was right behind it.	28:10
	And the Coles Undertaking Shop was opposite that, uptown.	28:12
	You've heard about the old auditorium that was at College.	28:19
	Well, it was in that territory,	28:25
	that's where they were at that time.	28:27
	Then it went to Howels Arcade after Sidney Coles, the,	28:30
	the oldest one died, it went to,	28:33
	Howels Arcade.	28:38
	And it was in the Howels Arcade area	28:40
	when we purchased into it, after Sidney died.	28:44
	We purchased his wife's	28:51
	interest	28:56
	and he had a brother, Walter Coles,	28:57
	who was in the business at that time.	29:02
	We bought a part in the business when he was living.	29:04
	And when he died, we bought his wife's interest,	29:11
	so that's how Alexander Funeral came into being.	29:15
	It was first W.L. Coles Incorporated.	29:19
	That's at the time when we bought into the Coles business.	29:24
	And then it was not incorporated at that time,	29:29
	but it was incorporated later as W.L. Coles Incorporated.	29:32
	And when Walter Coles died,	29:36
	we all called him Pepsi Coles.	29:42
-	Why was that, that you all said?	29:44
-	I can't recall why it was,	29:47
	but he was known as Pepsi Coles.	29:48
	We all called him Pepsi and I can't recall why,	29:50
	'cause I was young at that time	29:53
	and he was much older than I was.	29:55
	But I can't recall why we called him Pepsi,	29:57
	but we always call him Pepsi Coles.	29:59
	And of course, you know,	30:02
	Pepsi Cola was started in Charlotte,	30:03
	I guess it was his love for Pepsi Cola or some of that kind.	30:05
	They gave him that name, I don't know.	30:08
	Now, my primary interest locally	30:18
	was with the business,	30:22
	'cause my brothers were primarily involved	30:24
	in activities, community activities,	30:27
	which took up a considerable amount of their time.	30:32
-	Well, I'd like to talk with you about the business,	30:35
	but I'd just like to ask you	30:38
	if I can interrupt you for a moment,	30:40
	what was it that made your father	30:42
	or your parents decide to get into the undertaking business?	30:44
-	Well, at that time I was living in New York.	30:49
	When he went into the business,	30:55
	I had married in New York,	30:57
	I was working at that time in the post office.	30:59
	I worked in the general post office there at Penn Station,	31:03
	Pennsylvania Station at that time until I came home.	31:09
	Well, when my father went into the funeral business,	31:13
	he was retired from insurance business	31:17
	and I don't know what induced him to go into it	31:22
	because I had never planned	31:24
	to be in the funeral business myself.	31:26
	But he visited New York at the time when he bought it	31:28
	and he said he needed some help.	31:31
	He wanted me to come home	31:37
	and my wife and I consulted each other regarding it.	31:38
	She decided if I wanted to come,	31:43
	why, she'd come home with me,	31:44
	which we ultimately did after I went to school,	31:46
	I went to Renouard Embalming School in New York	31:50
	at that time,	31:53
	because I knew nothing about the funeral businesses.	31:56
	But I went to Renouard Embalming School	31:59
	and we came to Char- came home to live,	32:01
	my wife and I in 1928.	32:07
	And it was in 1928, that I	32:12
	passed the North Carolina Embalming	32:21
	Board and became a funeral director.	32:26
	My license, my funeral director's license is number 50.	32:32
	So I've had it a long time, since 1928.	32:40
	And I worked actively in the business	32:47
	until I was 70 years old, I'm now 87.	32:49
	I retired when I was 70.	32:54
	I came out of retirement,	33:06
	I went back into the business	33:09
	when they built the funeral home	33:11
	there on Irwin Avenue,	33:17
	I don't know whether you've seen it.	33:19
	Well, it's Irwin Avenue right there.	33:21
	We moved from Brooklyn.	33:25
	We used to be on Brevard Street in Brooklyn.	33:27
	And that's where we moved	33:33
	when the urban renewal came from there, to Irwin Avenue.	33:34
	That was an old couple who had retired	33:38
	and were getting ready to move to Florida.	33:43
	And a White friend of mine,	33:52
	who used to work on Trade Street there,	33:53
	when I was a boy working in my father's insurance office,	33:57
	he worked in the tailor shop right there.	34:02
	And we were friends as kids.	34:05
	We used to sit down on Trade Street,	34:07
	there were very few cars at that time,	34:09
	but we used to bet on the car license, a nickel,	34:11
	he would take odd and I'd take even,	34:17
	or he would take even and I take odd,	34:19
	and we'd sit down there and bet on car license every time.	34:21
	And during the day,	34:26
	we probably would exchange about 75 cents a thousand times.	34:27
	But he was in the real estate business	34:32
	and he got in touch with me	34:36
	and told me that he had a building he wanted us to look at,	34:37
	he thought I might be interested in	34:41
	since we were going to have to leave Brooklyn.	34:43
	He introduced us to this couple down there	34:50
	and we bought that house.	34:51
	It was a house at that time.	34:54
	When the addition was made,	34:58
	that was when we bought the	34:59
	property facing Trade Street there	35:04
	and the building next to us, to that house.	35:07
	There were two, there was a residence	35:15
	and an apartment house on that land.	35:17
	We purchased that land and tore those houses down.	35:20
	But I was actively in the-	35:27
	My father was active first,	35:31
	and when I came over in 1928-	35:33
	I can recall the very first body that I embalmed,	35:40
	I recall some lady got shot	35:45
	on Cherry Street.	35:50
	That's in the territory where the mall is down there.	35:53
	You've heard about the Cherry community.	35:56
	You probably have interviewed somebody	35:59
	in the Cherry community, 'cause	36:00
	that was quite an active community there.	36:01
	And I lived out- lived in Cherry from-	36:08
	I raised my children in the Cherry community.	36:10
	That's where my children-	36:13
	'cause I've only been out here about-	36:14
	Been in this area,	36:18
	I came into this area when my brother retired	36:19
	from the post office in New Jersey,	36:22
	he came back home to live and he's living here with me now,	36:25
	he's out of the city at this time.	36:28
	But,	36:32
	I,	36:36
	I came back home,	36:43
	I think I told you about that, in '28,	36:45
	and that's when I started in the funeral business	36:48
	and remained in it until I was 70.	36:50
	I retired and then went back	36:52
	and stayed a couple of years more.	36:54
	Then I finally retired for good from the funeral business,	36:57
	'cause you see,	37:01
	my brother's children were old enough.	37:05
	My two sons died, I had two sons	37:08
	and both of them died one year apart.	37:12
	So my oldest-they both were in the funeral business,	37:17
	but my oldest son was identified with the business	37:20
	when he died.	37:23
	So my children were completely-	37:27
	I didn't have any children when I retired.	37:29
	So my brother's children became active in the business.	37:32
	And Alfred and Kelly are the ones	37:37
	who were more active in it now,	37:39
	Fred daughter's not involved in the business much anymore.	37:42
-	You started to tell me about the first body	37:46
	that you embalmed was a woman who got shot in Cherry?	37:47
-	In the Cherry community, I remember that very well.	37:50
	That was my very first body embalming.	37:52
	And back at that time,	37:55
	you didn't have the-	37:57
	She goes far back to the point when-	38:00
	You've heard of coffins?	38:03
	Well, at that time they had coffins on the market,	38:05
	as well as caskets.	38:09
	Coffins were those things that-	38:12
-	Shape.	38:14
-	Yeah.
	Built narrow at the end and the kind of a round situation.	38:15
	Well, that was the kind of things that were-	38:22
	During our early beginnings,	38:32
	that was where the funeral business was.	38:37
	It was not out of the undertaker shops period,	38:39
	when I first started.	38:42
	And of course, as time moved on,	38:46
	why, things became more modern.	38:49
	We began to use cemetery equipment,	38:51
	which was covered the graves and so forth,	38:54
	and tents, which wouldn't have even known about that time.	38:58
	From a business point of view,	39:07
	our business was not just a funeral home.	39:10
	The NAACP local branch was born in our funeral home.	39:20
	The YMCA, Charlotte YMCA,	39:25
	the first meetings that were held	39:28
	relative to the development of a YMCA in Charlotte	39:36
	were built, were started in my office.	39:38
	So our family has-	39:48
	Well, really my life has been involved with my family.	39:50
	Our family has been community oriented	39:58
	from the very beginning,	40:01
	which I'm sure you found out	40:03
	when you talked to my sister-in-law.	40:05
	and I don't know whether you had a chance to-	40:08
	Now, in the archives at	40:11
	UNCC, there's papers of my brothers	40:15
	Fred and Kelly,	40:19
	I guess you've seen those, or been-	40:22
	So, but,	40:26
	Charlotte has been an interesting community,	40:34
	but-	40:39
	I don't know whether you ever thought about it or not,	40:42
	but we look at various communities,	40:46
	there were some Black communities	40:48
	where there was a considerable amount of business activity,	40:50
	there were others where there was barely none.	40:58
	But one of the reasons	41:04
	why Blacks were not involved in business,	41:05
	was because of the fact that-	41:09
	I don't know whether you ever thought about this or not,	41:11
	but most of the Black schools	41:14
	were endowed by White industrialists.	41:17
	And if you study the history of Black schools,	41:22
	you'll find that none of the industrialists	41:28
	endowed any chair of business,	41:32
	engineering or any of those fundamental	41:35
	courses, schools that were needed to orient you	41:41
	to learning how to become an entrepreneur.	41:45
	In all of the schools,	41:51
	you only got the liberal arts courses,	41:55
	yet all of the schools were endowed by rich people.	42:02
	None of them chaired a school of business.	42:08
	So when kids began to get education,	42:15
	they didn't get any education	42:19
	that would help them become entrepreneurs.	42:21
	They came out as lawyers, preachers,	42:26
	doctors and so on.	42:29
	Well, you see, those people don't make jobs for others,	42:31
	they don't have any jobs.	42:37
	Back at that time,	42:39
	if you were a lawyer, well, you could hardly exist.	42:40
	If you were a medical man,	42:44
	you didn't have anybody but a secretary.	42:45
	If you are a preacher-	42:50
	You understand?	42:52
	You just preached and you hired nobody	42:53
	'cause at that time they didn't have staffs.	42:56
	Many of the ministers didn't even have secretaries.	43:01
	So Blacks were blocked out of it,	43:05
	learning how to be an entrepreneur.	43:12
	They were taught to do	43:15
	things like bricklaying	43:22
	and various jobs that related to	43:25
	businesses, but they were not taught-	43:30
	They weren't even taught how to contract a job.	43:32
	Many of the Blacks who tried to be contractors,	43:39
	had to get somebody else	43:43
	to contract for-	43:50
	That is, to develop an estimate for the job	43:51
	because they didn't have that type of training.	43:55
-	So do you know how your father became interested	43:57
	in business, Mr. Alexander?	43:59
-	Well, yes.	44:01
	He became interested in business as such.	44:02
	Yes, because he got his first-	44:06
	His first jobs were with-	44:08
	The very first job he had as a young man	44:11
	was with the	44:14
	Houser brick making organization.	44:17
	And from that point on-	44:21
	As a matter of fact,	44:25
	he had no history	44:26
	of having worked for White people anywhere.	44:26
	Then he was also a lathing contractor.	44:32
	At that time, they used to use the wooden laths, you know.	44:36
	Well, he was a lathing contractor also.	44:39
	As a matter of fact, when I was born,	44:43
	he was doing that work in New Jersey.	44:44
	I don't remember-	44:50
	I can't recall what took him in that direction.	44:52
	I think- well, I know what I- yes, I do.	44:56
	Because his oldest brother lived in New Jersey.	44:58
	His oldest brother never lived in Charlotte.	45:02
	He was raised in Danville, Virginia.	45:05
	That's where my father's parents came from to Charlotte,	45:09
	from Danville, Virginia.	45:14
	And my oldest uncle,	45:16
	my father's oldest brother was born in Danville.	45:18
	So he never lived in Charlotte,	45:22
	he moved from Danville to Rutherford.	45:23
	And my father, when he was up there,	45:26
	he went to Rutherford	45:29
	and he was working in the lathing business at that time.	45:31
-	Did you happen to know if your father	45:36
	knew any Garveyites?	45:38
	Did he ever speak about the ideas of Marcus Garvey?	45:40
-	Well, you see, Garveyites came along in my time.	45:44
-	I see.	45:46
-	When I was at Shaw,
	in the academic department, see,	45:50
	that was during the period when Garvey was active.	45:57
-	I was wondering what your father	46:02
	and what you thought of them, thought of those ideas?	46:03
-	Well, my views were mixed.	46:07
	My father's views were mixed also relative to that,	46:12
	because while it was a tremendous	46:16
	idea,	46:21
	everything was against colonization of Blacks,	46:24
	at that time,	46:29
	because everybody, every place was already involved.	46:30
	You understand what I mean?	46:35
	He just felt that whatever Blacks were going to do,	46:39
	they'd best do it in America.	46:42

	[Zechariah Alexander] In my view, in my view.	0:01
	And it turned out that it was.	0:03
	He made a great contribution to awakening Black people	0:08
	to begin to stir and become	0:12
	actively involved	0:17
	in their own development,	0:18
	not waiting on somebody to give 'em something.	0:21
	But in this particular area of the country,	0:31
	it hadn't penetrated this far to become	0:35
	a factor in any way, to amount to anything.	0:40
	You found the young Garveyites were mostly in the colleges.	0:43
	I was at Shaw at the time	0:49
	when they didn't even have electricity in the dormitories,	0:51
	it was a long time ago.	0:56
	They used oil lamps in the dormitories.	0:57
	So that goes way back.	1:00
	But	1:04
	Charlotte	1:09
	has been in the midst of the	1:17
	stir for change.	1:21
	I think my family-	1:26
	I don't want them to see me egotistic,	1:29
	but I think my family was most-	1:31
	foremost in that	1:36
	because all of the family was involved.	1:38
	And at that time we-	1:43
	You know, at that time, we had what we would call	1:44
	Uncle Toms.	1:47
	And we had them on the higher levels	1:52
	as well as the lower levels.	1:54
	And we were	1:57
	considered to be the evil forces	2:01
	in the community that were working toward destruction	2:05
	of the relationship between Blacks and Whites.	2:08
	[Rhonda Mawhood] Who considered you as such, Mr. Alexander?	2:10
-	The White community, the powers that be.	2:13
	You understand. They used to want to pick Black leaders.	2:17
	They'd tell you, "this is a great man,	2:21
	you should like-"	2:23
	I don't want to call one person's name,	2:24
	but we had one very prominent theologian	2:26
	who was what we called a professional of the time.	2:30
	Any Black person who	2:49
	was resistant to the conditions	2:53
	that existed and had nerve enough to speak about it	2:55
	were classified as enemies.	2:59
	During my early years, it was during the McCarthy years,	3:01
	when everybody who was opposed to the status quo	3:07
	was a Communist.	3:11
	And my family was under surveillance	3:15
	with the FBI for many years.	3:17
-	And you knew this?	3:21
-	We knew this, we knew this.	3:22
	Absolutely.	3:24
	And in the later years-	3:27
	You learned about the bombing	3:30
	of my brother's homes on Lasalle Street down there.	3:33
	Fred and Kelly, and also a Hawkins.	3:37
	You've heard about that.	3:42
	Those houses were bombed all in the same night.	3:46
	And so	3:51
	Charlotte	3:58
	economic development	4:01
	was a result of-	4:05
	Lack of economic development, I say.	4:09
	Was a result of the-	4:12
	Now the older people, I have to go back a little bit.	4:21
	The older people who were active in business	4:24
	were active in business on nerve.	4:27
	I think however that they made a great mistake	4:32
	because they tried to have their children educated	4:35
	away from their hardships, which they had to endure.	4:38
	As a result of that,	4:42
	we lost a great deal of our heritage.	4:43
	For instance, if we had been business-oriented,	4:45
	we would've dominated the laundries,	4:49
	we would've dominated the catering areas of the community.	4:51
	You see, all those service industries,	4:55
	we would've dominated them.	4:58
	Like the Greeks are dominating the restaurant industry	5:00
	in this area now.	5:03
	But when our parents wanted to educate us,	5:05
	they made the mistake of trying to educate us	5:09
	away from the hardships they had to endure.	5:12
	That was an error, you understand.	5:15
	And the colleges didn't help you any	5:19
	because they were educated away from the basic things	5:21
	that Blacks needed to know	5:25
	to extricate themselves from poverty level,	5:27
	to teach them how to develop themselves.	5:29
	You understand?	5:33
	They were educated away from that.	5:33
	So we had a group of educated, young people coming out	5:35
	that were disoriented to entrepreneurship.	5:41
	And those businesses back there were generally lost.	5:46
	Most of them evaporated.	5:49
-	But your parents made sure that you didn't forget about?	5:52
-	Right. Right. Right.	5:55
	Our father didn't allow,	5:57
	not any of us ever worked for White people.	5:59
	Until we were almost-	6:02
	My brother Kelly	6:05
	worked for a	6:09
	New York jewelry company.	6:12
	They went all over the country.	6:15
	And what brought him into the-	6:18
	brought him so closely involved	6:26
	into the Civil Rights Movement was the experiences he had	6:28
	while he was working with the Saks people.	6:32
	Particularly in the areas lower Mississippi	6:38
	and all that area.	6:41
	That's what really turned his mind,	6:42
	made him very conscious of the fact	6:45
	that something had to be done	6:48
	and that he felt that he was going to be a part of it	6:50
	as soon as he got the opportunity.	6:52
-	Did you also travel that far South, Mr. Alexander?	6:53
-	What's that?	6:55
-	Did you also travel that far South?	6:57
	(crosstalk) - No. No, no, no.	6:59
	I went to the East as a youngster	7:01
	when I did go.	7:06
	I married in the East, but I came back home in '28.	7:08
-	What differences did you notice	7:13
	between living in Charlotte	7:15
	and then going first to Washington and then to New York?	7:18
-	Well, there were a lot of differences	7:23
	that you didn't have segregated schools	7:28
	and you had no segregated transportation	7:31
	and you could go eat anywhere you wanted to	7:36
	and go to any hotel you had the money to,	7:40
	you know, pay for.	7:42
	And those were the primary things,	7:45
	but what I observed, of course, was that you see	7:50
	there was a great migration of Southerners to the North,	7:55
	and they became victims.	8:00
	When they began to move in to Harlem and those areas,	8:05
	Whites began to take flight	8:10
	and the landlords took advantage of that.	8:13
	You understand.	8:16
	They had to pay	8:17
	tremendously for lodging.	8:21
	If they had a house, why, usually their houses-	8:24
	If you were able to get a house or even rent a house,	8:27
	you had to load it up with borders to pay the rent.	8:32
	And the Jews primarily dominated	8:36
	the business life of Harlem.	8:39
	And now I'm not saying that derogatory to Jews	8:42
	because the Jews had thousands of years of history	8:47
	behind them when it comes to entrepreneurship.	8:50
	So I'm not saying anything derogatory.	8:55
	They were just being American businessmen.	8:57
	They were playing it the American way.	9:00
	Take advantage of anybody you could,	9:02
	you understand?	9:03
	And make the most out of everything that you attempt to do,	9:04
	regardless to what the social circumstances were,	9:06
	or what developed from it.	9:11
	So I don't have any argument on that score,	9:12
	they were playing the American game.	9:15
	You understand?	9:17
	But we didn't learn the American game.	9:18
	You understand?	9:21
	So consequently, we missed out on opportunities.	9:22
	Like, we had the chance to dominate this whole territory.	9:28
	Back in the early 30s,	9:31
	Kelly was involved in trying to get	9:36
	a hospital in this territory.	9:42
	All this property that's known as University Park	9:44
	was owned by the Keller family	9:54
	and Keller offered	9:57
	the Black community	10:03
	an opportunity to purchase 20 acres of land	10:04
	beginning at Beatties Ford Road	10:11
	and couching what is now known	10:15
	as a University Park territory.	10:18
	And at that time there was Good Samaritan Hospital.	10:22
	You've heard of it.	10:27
	It was a Black hospital and it was the only place	10:29
	where Black doctors could practice	10:33
	and have any say,	10:37
	they couldn't practice in the White hospitals.	10:39
	So the effort	10:41
	that was made to purchase that land	10:45
	was aborted by Blacks,	10:48
	by the Black medical profession because	10:54
	they had their haven at	10:59
	Good Samaritan.	11:04
	You understand?	11:08
	And they couldn't foresee,	11:09
	they didn't have the foresight to see	11:11
	that if there was a hospital in a Black community,	11:13
	they would have the opportunity to be dominant in it	11:16
	because the Black doctors were just as good in my estimation	11:22
	as any of the White doctors.	11:26
	We never had a White doctor in our family.	11:28
-	And when someone in your family got sick,	11:34
	you would call on a doctor from your neighborhood?	11:36
-	Well, not necessarily from the neighborhood,	11:39
	but it was a Black doctor.	11:41
	We always had Black doctors in our family	11:43
	and up until today, we all have Black doctors.	11:48
	I broke my hip in 1990	11:52
	and the	11:58
	doctors son operated on me,	12:05
	who was my doctor many years ago,	12:08
	Eugene Alexander, J. Eugene Alexander.	12:10
	Well, his son is a surgeon	12:14
	and he operated on my hip.	12:18
	But the point I want to make is	12:24
	that efforts for the Blacks	12:29
	to become independent have been aborted	12:31
	primarily by the training.	12:34
	You understand?	12:38
	I'm talking about college training.	12:38
	We missed the boat in our collegiate training.	12:41
	That's where we lost the ball.	12:45
	In our collegiate training.	12:47
	There was nothing in our collegiate training	12:51
	that led toward economic emancipation.	12:53
	All intellectuals can do is sit down and discuss problems.	12:59
	You understand what I mean?	13:04
	Oh, we had people who could discuss problems.	13:05
	We had people who were very learned,	13:08
	but didn't have any economic sense.	13:10
	Even the college professors and the	13:15
	heads of colleges	13:21
	didn't have sense enough to realize	13:22
	that a change was needed.	13:24
	They was so glad to get the foundation funds	13:26
	that whatever the foundation wanted them to teach,	13:29
	that's what they taught.	13:32
	And I'll give you an example of what I'm talking about.	13:35
	Duke became interested in Johnson C. Smith.	13:41
	When I was a kid, Johnson C. Smith	13:47
	used to generate its own electricity.	13:49
	Oh, they used to generate their own electricity.	13:53
	And Duke became interested	13:58
	and he donated a large sum of money to	14:01
	Johnson C. Smith.	14:08
	And, of course, that ended the electrical situation.	14:09
	But on the other hand, he endowed nothing	14:15
	but the liberal arts courses.	14:20
-	Just to get this on the record, Mr. Alexander,	14:26
	why was it that Johnson C. Smith	14:28
	no longer generated its own electricity after Duke,	14:30
	Mr. Duke, endowed (crosstalk)	14:33
-	Well, you know what the Duke business is, electricity	14:34
	and public works and so forth, the tobacco and so forth.	14:38
	That's the reason.	14:44
	Now, let's take a contrast.	14:47
	Duke became interested in Trinity College in Durham	14:50
	which I think it was a Methodist evangelical school,	14:55
	a Methodist school of religion.	15:00
	And he converted Duke Trinity College	15:06
	into a major university which taught everything,	15:10
	everything!	15:15
	He endowed Johnson C. Smith.	15:19
	He got Duke Hall out there	15:23
	and number of other things that he did for Duke,	15:26
	and perhaps the Duke Foundation is still doing.	15:28
	But there was nothing in there to teach anybody about	15:31
	electricity, tobacco, manufacturing,	15:35
	or anything of that nature, the same thing, just the same.	15:40
	But when he endowed Trinity College,	15:44
	when he took over Trinity College,	15:46
	he made it a major university.	15:48
	Duke is one of the major universities in the nation.	15:50
	Johnson C. Smith is still a mediocre college.	15:56
	It's a good school,	16:02
	but when you think in terms of the standards	16:04
	that are required for today, it's mediocre.	16:09
	You understand?	16:13
	The things that Blacks need to be taught today	16:15
	can't be found in Black schools.	16:18
-	And you yourself went to Howard, Mr. Alexander?	16:25
	Why did you decide to go to Howard?	16:28
-	I went to Howard looking for a school	16:29
	of business administration. It wasn't there.	16:31
	It was advertised, but it wasn't there.	16:36
-	How is that so?	16:39
-	Well, I mean, they advertised-	16:40
	They didn't use business administration much	16:44
	as a term, but it was-	16:46
	They had courses what they called courses in business.	16:50
	The only courses they had in business was economics,	16:54
	which is general.	16:57
	You understand?	16:58
	And they had no specific courses in business management	17:00
	or anything of that nature,	17:04
	you understand. That was Howard University,	17:06
	which was classified as the, the university	17:09
	that Blacks had. Howard University.	17:12
	There was no business even there.	17:16
	So I lost interest in Howard.	17:20
	That's when I left Howard,	17:22
	I was at Howard, when I decided to go to New York to live.	17:24
-	And what was it that gave you the idea	17:30
	of moving to New York to live there?	17:32
-	Well, you know, New York,	17:35
	there's no city in the world like New York.	17:37
	New York has always captivated	17:40
	the minds of a lot of people	17:42
	before Hollywood became so important.	17:46
	Because all of the music,	17:49
	all of the movie industry was in New York.	17:51
	Long Island, that's where it birthed.	17:54
	And New York was just the place to be.	17:57
	You understand what I mean, see?	18:02
	And I'm glad I went because I learned	18:03
	tremendously.	18:08
	I learned a great deal about life and living	18:10
	that I would not have had the opportunity to learn	18:15
	in the South.	18:18
-	Can you give me examples of that, Mr Alexander?	18:20
-	Yes.	18:22
	For instance, as soon as I got to New York,	18:28
	I got a-	18:32
	Because of the advice of a friend of my father's,	18:34
	I took the civil service examination.	18:39
	And I only had one job,	18:42
	two jobs prior to that, before I was in the civil service-	18:45
	in the postal service. Contrasting that to Charlotte,	18:48
	you take a postal examination	18:54
	and you could be selected from the highest three.	18:58
	If you were one of the highest three	19:05
	in the exam,	19:08
	you would not be	19:12
	put on the list for a job.	19:17
	One of the Whites who were there would get that job.	19:18
	So it would take you 10 years to get on in the post office.	19:22
	You understand what I mean?	19:26
	See? So, and then the	19:28
	openness in so many ways	19:35
	that were not open in the South.	19:38
	For instance, I had an opportunity to visit	19:40
	any of the libraries which I desired to attend.	19:47
	And I spent a great deal of time in the libraries.	19:51
	And there were so many other things.	19:55
	You could go to the	20:01
	great plays that were held on Broadway.	20:06
	If you had the money, that's all it took, the money.	20:10
	Nothing else.	20:12
	Don't care what your station in life was,	20:14
	if you had the money, you could go, you understand?	20:15
	So there were so many things that were were different.	20:19
	But, I	20:24
	I still believe that	20:32
	we will never make it.	20:40
	Now, this is contrary to what people generally-	20:41
	they don't like to hear this kind of stuff.	20:46
	I say that that capitalism is not for everybody.	20:50
	Because capitalism flows,	20:54
	as you can see it right today,	20:58
	all of	21:01
	things move to become bigger and bigger	21:05
	and bigger and greedier, and greedier,	21:09
	and people are not involved.	21:11
	Well, it doesn't make any difference	21:13
	whether you're White or Black,	21:14
	you understand?	21:16
	These multinational concerns don't give a darn	21:17
	about people. It's profits, wherever the profits are	21:19
	that's where they go.	21:23
	You understand?	21:26
	My contention is that if Blacks follow that road	21:27
	totally,	21:33
	we are going to have a group of high powered	21:35
	Blacks living up in the air over here	21:39
	and what they have gained	21:43
	does not trickle down,	21:48
	reach the average Black.	21:50
	And there is a class of Blacks that remains	21:53
	on the lowest level of the ladder	21:56
	regardless to what the times are.	21:58
	Depression.	22:01
	Recession.	22:05
	Good times, bad times.	22:06
	They're on that lowest level and they stay there.	22:08
	There's no hope for them	22:11
	as far as a capitalistic doctrine.	22:14
	There's no hope for them.	22:19
	My contention is	22:22
	that if the Blacks in this country	22:24
	ever attain what they need to attain	22:30
	to get into the mainstream, it's not going to be by-	22:33
	It's going to be by Black people	22:37
	learning how to use their consuming power.	22:41
	You understand what I'm saying?	22:46
	We need Black entrepreneurs.	22:54
	But that lower level down there,	22:58
	there's nothing being done for that lower level.	22:59
	You understand what I'm saying?	23:03
	The only way that lower level can be extricated	23:05
	is to teach them how to use the money they earn.	23:07
	You understand?	23:12
	Today, with this several billions of dollars	23:14
	that Blacks earned,	23:20
	it goes right back into the White community.	23:22
	You understand?	23:26
	And the Blacks who reach the status,	23:28
	where they get up into the level up there,	23:31
	they're living in a precarious territory.	23:35
	You understand what I mean?	23:40
	If they reach a certain level, if they lose that,	23:43
	there ain't nowhere else for 'em to go.	23:46
	You understand?	23:48
	So when they get up there,	23:50
	they going to forget everything down here.	23:52
	They move into White neighborhoods.	23:57
	Well, there's hardly any neighborhood now	24:00
	that's not some Blacks in it.	24:02
	But what I mean is they'll move	24:04
	into the predominantly White neighborhoods.	24:06
	Well, economically that's sound	24:08
	because if they want to live in a big $200,000 house,	24:11
	it would be impractical for 'em to put it in Double Oaks	24:15
	or put it here. Because if they had to sell it,	24:20
	they'd have to give it away.	24:25
	You understand?	24:28
	So we don't have any economic sense at all, yet.	24:28
-	So you said that when you were coming up	24:32
	in segregated period	24:36
	that your family didn't work for White people,	24:38
	that you had Black doctors and so forth.	24:42
	Did you patronize businesses	24:44
	that were owned by White people?	24:46
-	Yes, because there weren't enough Black businesses	24:48
	to patronize.	24:52
	You understand what I mean?	24:54
	Wherever there was a Black business to patronize, we did.	24:55
	You understand. But there were not enough	24:59
	to supply your needs.	25:03
	See. So we have not had people who were willing to sit down	25:05
	and think about where is it that we made our error	25:09
	and where should we start now?	25:12
	My contention is that if the Black churches	25:14
	don't become involved in the extrication movement,	25:18
	it'll never happen.	25:22
	Why?	25:23
	The schools are not designed	25:25
	for either the very learned Whites	25:26
	or the very poor, White or Black.	25:30
	The schools are designed for the average person.	25:35
	Now, the persons who are on the top level over here	25:38
	that have brilliant children,	25:41
	they don't have to worry about the public schools	25:44
	'cause they send 'em to private schools,	25:46
	but the smart Black kid, he's lost.	25:48
	He hasn't got anywhere to go.	25:50
	You understand what I mean?	25:52
	See. So if Black churches	25:55
	do not become involved	26:01
	in the educational development of Black people,	26:02
	there won't be a possible chance for us	26:06
	to educate ourselves economically.	26:08
-	Do you remember debates of this nature coming up	26:11
	or of any other nature coming up in church	26:16
	when you were growing up?	26:18
	When you were a younger man?	26:20
-	Yes. But,	26:23
	you see, a young person like myself was considered	26:28
	offbeat, radical and trouble making.	26:32
	You see, ministers became secure in their positions,	26:39
	in the locality,	26:42
	the White persons would consult them	26:44
	about different things and they would give them favors,	26:49
	you know?	26:53
	So they were interested in maintaining the status quo.	26:54
	They didn't want to change that	26:56
	because personally, they was, fine for them.	26:58
	You understand?	27:02
	See, but young upstarts like me-	27:04
	They would tell even their children,	27:08
	"Don't have anything to do with them.	27:09
	Those people will get you,	27:10
	keep you in trouble all the time."	27:11
	See.	27:14
-	So were you a member of organizations yourself?	27:15
	I know that I asked you about your father and your mother,	27:18
	and you said they were,	27:20
	but were you a member of community organizations	27:21
	when you came back to Charlotte?	27:23
-	NAACP, primarily. Basically, or fraternal organizations,	27:25
	but the NAACP was a civil rights movement.	27:29
	As a matter of fact, the Civil Rights Movement in Charlotte	27:32
	has been developed by the Alexander family, frankly.	27:36
	And the Alexander family has been most involved in it.	27:43
	And at a time when	27:47
	teachers would make donations	27:51
	to the NAACP,	27:55
	but they would beg you not to use their name.	27:58
	Why?	28:01
	Because if it was found that they were donating	28:02
	to the NAACP, they would be fired.	28:04
-	But your family didn't have to worry about that?	28:10
-	That's right.	28:13
-	How many employees did you have in the funeral home?	28:20
	I guess the number changed over time.	28:27
-	Well, regular staff we had about 10.	28:29
	Part-time was probably anywhere from 10 to 15.	28:35
	Because,	28:39
	you know, people didn't die from one to five or-	28:43
	(laughs) You understand? They died any time.	28:47
	And a lot of people may die this week and none next week.	28:51
	(laughs)	28:56
	So we maintained a regular staff	28:57
	and then we maintained a large part-time staff.	29:00
-	And where did you find the people to employ?	29:04
	Were they strangers who made applications	29:10
	or people you knew beforehand?	29:12
-	In the early stages, there were people we knew.	29:16
	As we began to develop, there were people who sought.	29:20
	When we were seeking additional employees,	29:25
	well, we did like everybody else.	29:30
	We let it be known in the community that we were open	29:33
	for job interviews and so forth.	29:36
	And it operated like every other business.	29:40
-	And who were your customers, Mr. Alexander?	29:45
-	Well, all Black, but a few.	29:47
-	Who were the few who did not patronize with you?	29:51
-	No, I mean-	29:57
-	Oh, also Whites?	29:59
-	Yes. -Oh!	30:00
	Yes, we buried a few White people.	30:01
	But not in the early days.	30:05
	I think we buried at least, overall	30:09
	during the period,	30:13
	we buried about 15 to 20 White people all together,	30:15
	all down through years.	30:17
	But that was very unusual.	30:19
	You understand?	30:26
	But,	30:29
	our business was not just a business.	30:32
	It was a haven.	30:37
	For instance, I'll give you an example.	30:40
	During the period of time,	30:42
	when there was such cruelty in the lower South,	30:44
	when they uncovered the peon-	30:47
	The areas, those plantations down there that had Blacks	30:51
	that were imprisoned on the plantations.	30:54
	Many Blacks escaped from those. You see, what they would do,	30:59
	I'm a farmer. I'd buy, I'd purchase the slaves-	31:04
	I'd purchase the-	31:08
	the persons who were jailed,	31:15
	Blacks, I'd purchase their time.	31:18
	And they'd have to come and work for me	31:22
	for a certain number of years, or their time out.	31:24
	And many of 'em never got out of those plantations.	31:28
	When they try to leave, they'd kill 'em and bury 'em.	31:33
	When the investigations began to open up,	31:37
	and these things were found,	31:40
	many of those people escaped.	31:42
	Many times we have slept	31:45
	what we might call escapees	31:50
	from those camps in our funeral home	31:53
	on their way to different places.	31:59
	And those were things that	32:04
	there are very few Blacks	32:11
	knew about because we couldn't even trust Blacks.	32:13
	We had a lot of Uncle Toms, you know.	32:17
	We couldn't even trust Blacks	32:20
	to let us know what we were doing.	32:21
-	How did those men who escaped-	32:23
	I suppose, mainly men-	32:26
	who escaped know that your funeral home	32:27
	was a haven?	32:32
-	Well, you see, in the Civil Rights Movement	32:33
	you had contactual relationships with people	32:36
	throughout the nation. And particularly in the South,	32:40
	there were certain businesses	32:45
	that were involved in this movement of helping to get people	32:49
	out of these territories.	32:54
	And they would be told to go to a certain place	32:56
	and call a certain number.	33:03
	And they would give the code number of the place	33:07
	from where they came and we'd pick 'em up	33:10
	and feed them.	33:15
	Then they'd stay overnight, they stay in the funeral home.	33:17
	And we buy 'em a ticket to the next place	33:20
	where they were going, and we'd put 'em on the bus.	33:23
	They traveled primarily by bus.	33:25
	And we did that for a number of years.	33:30
-	Roughly what period did-	33:34
-	During the early period of time when the-	33:37
	This was shortly after the great migration	33:44
	of Blacks to the East.	33:48
	After so many moved out and we found that there were a lot	33:50
	yet who were imprisoned in the South on these farms.	33:53
	And it was at this particular time	33:58
	that this type of thing happened.	34:02
	Those people had to really escape or be killed.	34:05
	'Cause they found many graves in those areas	34:09
	where Blacks had been buried on the plantations down there	34:15
	and no death certificate or anything,	34:18
	they were just disappeared.	34:21
	You see.	34:23
	So we were involved in what was called,	34:25
	what we might call an underground movement	34:29
	during that period of time.	34:33
	See.	34:34
	That is where our family has stood in the community.	34:39
	And in my later years,	34:45
	I was never taught to loaf,	34:49
	but I felt that I was much older than my nephews.	34:52
	See, my sons had died, so there was a generation gap there.	34:57
	And if they were going to have to run the business,	35:01
	they needed to learn how to run it before I died.	35:05
	So when I retired,	35:08
	I retired from the business	35:11
	to let them run it.	35:14
	'Cause I didn't want them to say that "well,	35:16
	if you hadn't told us to do so and so,	35:18
	so we could have done thus and so."	35:20
	So they actually run the business.	35:22
	I don't have anything to do with it at all	35:25
	in the sense of management.	35:28
	I'm there on their consulting staff presently.	35:31
	And when I retired,	35:37
	I got tired of loafing and I	35:42
	got a job at my church, St. Paul.	35:44
	I worked about five years at St. Paul	35:50
	in the education department, educational area.	35:54
	And you might consult	36:15
	Dr. P.W. Drummond	36:20
	who is pastor of St. Paul about my activities in the church.	36:22
	He could tell you more about that,	36:25
	but I was active in St. Paul for, oh-	36:28
	When I left- shortly after I returned home,	36:32
	I joined St. Paul and I was a member there.	36:37
	I've been a member there about at least 65 years.	36:42
	And when I retired,	36:47
	I spent at least five years	36:48
	on the staff.	36:55
	And I became identified with the	36:58
	National	37:04
	Church Business Administrators Organization.	37:10
	And I'm now presently a life member	37:14
	of the North Carolina	37:16
	branch of the same organization.	37:18
	It has to do with church management.	37:25
	And when I left St. Paul on the staff,	37:37
	I got tired of loafing	37:42
	and I felt like the Lord	37:46
	had called me to preach.	37:50
	So I've been preaching for the last two years.	37:52
-	And where do you preach, sir?	37:57
-	I don't have a church,	37:59
	but I preach wherever I'm called to preach.	38:02
	And I assist with my church and my church activities	38:05
	and so forth, other nature.	38:08
	And I'm also going to school.	38:10
-	Where are you going to school?	38:11
-	I'm going to a private theological school.	38:13
	I have another year.	38:16
	I just believe in doing till you can't do.	38:24
	But I have a strong theory	38:29
	relative to what I consider emancipation.	38:32
	My contention is this, basically.	38:36
	And I believe that the only area that that can be done	38:40
	is in the school and the churches.	38:43
	Why?	38:45
	Because the church is the only institution	38:46
	that the Black man has that can't be controlled.	38:48
	If he's in business, the banker's controlling.	38:55
	You understand what I'm saying?	38:58
	If you're in business,	38:59
	I mean, you are subject to	39:00
	the foibles of bankers	39:03
	and financiers because you've got to have money.	39:10
-	I'm sorry, what bank did your family deal with,	39:14
	has your family dealt with?	39:17
-	Well, the only-	39:19
	There wasn't a Black bank here.	39:20
	My father started out with the Charlotte National Bank,	39:23
	which eventually	39:28
	moved into the	39:31
	Wachovia.	39:36
	Wachovia took over the Charlotte National Bank.	39:38
	My father did business with them a long time, so did I.	39:41
	But as you grow older,	39:45
	you learn that you have to shop around, you know,	39:48
	to get the best banking consideration.	39:52
	So my banking situation had moved around	39:54
	from different places.	40:00
	And of course, when the Mechanics and Farmers Bank	40:02
	moved here, well, we did business with them.	40:04
	Along with other banks,	40:06
	we couldn't confine our business to them	40:08
	because for economic reasons,	40:09
	you had to deal with some of the others	40:13
	because there was some things that you could get done	40:16
	in the larger institution	40:19
	that you couldn't get done with through the Mechanics.	40:20
	So you see we've been laced, so to speak.	40:24
	So we haven't been able to move out of that area	40:27
	where we had to depend ultimately on 'em	40:31
	somewhere along the line.	40:33
	But my contention is that if we	40:35
	move out of the-	40:39
	stop fooling kids and believing	40:42
	that each of them can become a millionaire.	40:45
	That's not even true for Whites.	40:49
	Look what is happening today.	40:52
	The large multinational concerns	40:54
	are taking over the local concerns	40:57
	and thousands of people lose their jobs on every turn,	41:00
	every change, thousands of people lose their jobs.	41:04
	And as capitalism is going today,	41:12
	wherever a robot can do a job, a person is displaced,	41:15
	or persons are displaced, and that's going to continue.	41:20
	That's going to continue.	41:27
	Under capitalism, people are not of major concern.	41:29
	Profits.	41:35
	I don't care how they put it,	41:37
	I don't care how much money they give away,	41:39
	foundations they develop,	41:41
	the foundations are control mechanisms.	41:43
	You understand, they have large foundations,	41:46
	but the people who are recipients of the foundation	41:48
	do what they want done, not what they desire to do,	41:51
	do what they want done.	41:55
	So getting back to my basic philosophy,	41:58
	I believe that until someone is willing to go	42:03
	and start to make the change	42:07
	where the change has to be made, that is the cradle.	42:10
	To bring up these kids in the same environment	42:15
	doesn't mean a thing,	42:18
	they're just moving into the same direction.	42:19
	But somebody has got to stop,	42:21
	start at a place where the kids begin to learn	42:24
	how to develop themselves from the cradle.	42:27
	So schools have got to be designed	42:31
	that start with the cradle.	42:34
-	Would you say that those schools should have White	42:37
	and Black students, or should they be for	42:40
	Black students only?	42:42
-	Now, here's where you have to mix up your philosophies.	42:46
	If the Blacks don't have the opportunity to learn	42:55
	what's best for them, they'll never know.	42:59
	I believe in a total society where Blacks, Whites,	43:06
	everybody has the same opportunity,	43:10
	but I got sense enough to know	43:12
	that if you don't learn how to	43:14
	secure your end you are going to lose out.	43:20
	So once we learn how to battle this area out here,	43:25
	we don't have to be afraid no more.	43:30
	Now, if a kid is taught the basics,	43:33
	when he's a child, a baby	43:37
	and understands that there's nothing free out there for him,	43:40
	that he has to learn how to earn his way through life.	43:44
	He learns that from the cradle,	43:49
	the environment in which he's developed	43:52
	has that as its greatest concentration	43:54
	and if he can get that type of training from the beginning,	43:59
	when he reaches 14 or 15 years old,	44:05
	you don't have to worry about it.	44:09
	He's learned that he's got to know the basics.	44:12
	He's learned that he's got to learn	44:16
	to be a strong character to make it out here.	44:19
	He's learned that that crime does not pay.	44:22
	He's learn that that the right side of the fence	44:26
	is a greener side even though it's maybe tougher side,	44:30
	you don't follow the line of least resistance.	44:36
	You seek to follow the line that develops you	44:38
	as you go along.	44:42
	That's the kind of training we've got to have	44:43
	from the cradle.	44:45
	Now, the only way,	44:47
	the only agency that is prepared to do that,	44:50
	or could prepare itself to do that, is the church.	44:55
	It cannot be controlled unless you let it.	44:58
	And another thing is nobody can tell you	45:05
	how you spend your money.	45:07
	Now we have learned how to save money.	45:10
	We have learned how to manipulate money.	45:13
	Sure.	45:17
	They want you to save.	45:17
	Why?	45:18
	Because the bankers get the benefit of your money.	45:19
	You understand what I'm saying?	45:21
	You are not manipulating your money, they are.	45:23
	You put your money in the bank on savings,	45:26
	they get the most benefit of that, you don't.	45:29
	You've got to learn how to manage your own money.	45:33
	And the only way that Blacks can do it	45:40
	is through their consuming power	45:43
	because that's the only way, only area	45:44
	whereby they can finance themselves.	45:48
	In a corporate business,	45:54
	they couldn't make it,	45:58
	in a cooperative business, they could.	46:02
	Why?	46:05
	Because the philosophy is different.	46:05
	The philosophy of capitalism is profits.	46:09
	The survival of the fittest.	46:14
	If you can't make it, to hell with you.	46:18
	Under a cooperative enterprise,	46:22
	you wait for the betterment of the whole.	46:24
	Now, that's contrary to the philosophy	46:28
	as you've been taught all your life.	46:31
	So it's a harder road to travel,	46:34
	but it's the only road	46:36
	that you are going to be able to travel	46:37
	to educate yourself from the bottom rung of the ladder.	46:39
-	Would you say that the businesses, the Black business-	46:43

Zechariah Alexander	—because they are comfort businesses. Do you understand what I mean? A corporation calls for something that you got to be trained for. We are trained to be individualists, you understand? You have to be trained to—In other words, this is where your religious training comes in, making it practical. You see, you're learning that you are your brother's keeper, that by working with your brother you can gain much more than you can working singularly.	0:00
Rhonda Mawhood	Is this a philosophy that you've developed with the wisdom of years, Mr. Alexander, or is something that you think you had the beginnings of when you were [indistinct 00:00:54]—	0:45
Zechariah Alexander	It's been in my system since I began to think for myself. I'm convinced more now since I'm older that is the only way that—You see, there's a group of Blacks that stay in the same class economically regardless to situations. I don't care how many millionaires that we get. They are still there. You understand? We've got Blacks in tremendous businesses now. Big businesses. But not enough to even make a dent in the total situation. We've got millionaires, multi-millionaires, Blacks. Even with all their multi-millions, they're still just a speck on the economic course.	0:56
Zechariah Alexander	We've got one bank in Charlotte that has more assets than all of the Black businesses in the whole nation. Nations Bank is bigger than all of the Black economic systems. You understand what I'm saying? You don't execute yourself from a situation like that by following that system. Now, if you wanted to become a puppet in there, that's all right. Go ahead. You may make a million dollar all right, but you crucify your kids. You understand what I'm saying? What happens to them? If you teach them from the beginning what it takes to make it in any world, that's making a difference whether it's a Christian, Muslim, or whatever.	1:52
Zechariah Alexander	What they are saying basically, they're off living that are required regardless to your religions. Churches were the very last to come into the fold as far as segregation elimination is concerned. Even after the laws were passed, Blacks were not welcome in White churches. Do you understand what I'm saying? So my point is that Blacks—You see, it didn't take this situation—This situation didn't develop over a few years. It developed since slavery. We've got a lot of unlearning to do. If there is going to be a change, there will be—My contention is that we will never make it doing the same things as we have done them before, because time has proven that it doesn't pay, only for a few Blacks even.	2:46
Zechariah Alexander	Why continue to espouse a cause that is lost at the very beginning? Why not think about what are your assets? Your assets is in the money that comes into your possession, whether it's welfare money or whatever. You are at liberty to spend it any way you desire. You understand?	3:57
Rhonda Mawhood	Yes, sir. This idea that you discussed with your wife while she was here?	4:25
Zechariah Alexander	Yes, I discussed it with my wife. I discussed it with my friends. When you're in the minority in a situation, there are very few people who see that. Most everybody feels like that they have to do like everybody else. But if they look at the situation, look how the White entrepreneurs in the South played the poor Blacks against the Whites. They taught the poor Whites that the Blacks were their worst enemies. "They'll take your jobs. If you fool with them, they'll take your wife. They'll be marrying your daughters." They said, "Niggers just to got to go. They are our enemies." They kept that going. They kept that going. They were exploiting the Whites all the same time.	4:28
Zechariah Alexander	Look how these Southern industrialists have gotten multi-rich on non-union labor. Do you understand what I'm saying? My point is that until you learn how—My point is very unpopular, that capitalism ain't for everybody. It particularly ain't for us, because the greater majority of us are poor. Our greatest asset is what we don't know how to deal with, our earning power, the money that we make. We don't know what to do with it. We don't know how to use it. When we learn how to control our consuming power, then we will begin to extricate ourselves. We need these entrepreneurs out there, and we will continue to have them.	5:31
Zechariah Alexander	My point is, that that lower strata, that stays on the lower level, will begin to rise. They will become independent instead of dependent. The training that they will receive from the cradle will lead toward to development of character. You won't have these boys going around impregnating these girls and running off. We won't have these boys feeling that the only way they can make money is to sell drugs. We can prove to them they can live well without it, by being a decent citizen. That has to be taught. A whole generation has almost been lost because of our parents, or their parents, not mine, trying to be like everybody else, striving to be rich, striving to be great. Just a handful of them reach there.	6:38
Zechariah Alexander	Who controls most of the money in this country? Is it the general masses of White people? Hell no. A handful. Look when Dillard's came into Charlotte and took over Ivey's. Ivey's had a store uptown. They stated at once, "We didn't come in here to save Ivey's. We came in here to take over Ivey's, but we have our own agenda. Uptown Ivey's, gone. Goodbye. We don't intend to have an uptown store." So they closed Ivey's, and all the big shots in Ivey's didn't no jobs with them. They had to retire. The poor people who were working there were out of jobs. They brought their basic staff with them. You see what I'm saying?	7:56
Zechariah Alexander	My position is that Blacks, as long as they travel that road, they will be right where we are. We've got to learn to use the greatest asset we have, and that is our earning power. Nobody can tell us how to spend it. Our churches are the greatest medium through which it can be done, because it can't be controlled. This is a long time agenda. It's nothing, a thing that can be done overnight, but it's fundamentally sound. Until Blacks understand that, they will never make it. Once they reach a stage where they can use their own earning power to their advantage, they don't have to fight nobody. All they got to do is walk by a White store in the community. They'll make no contribution.	8:50
Zechariah Alexander	The White store owner comes into the community, he makes money, and he takes it out of the community. He doesn't put it back in the community. He takes it out of the community. If you go to him and ask him for a donation, he'll tell you to go to hell. Because he knows that he's the only store in the territory and Blacks are going to come to him. We can change that. We're not going to run about with a gun. We're going to stop patronizing and develop our own neighborhood stores on a cooperative basis. That's the way to do it. That's sound, economically sound. White people don't have sense enough to see that.	9:42
Zechariah Alexander	Now, the groups of people who came over here, and some of the German community and all of those, they came over here with cooperatives. They organized. In the Midwest is where you'll find the cooperatives. You won't find them in the South. Agriculture, you find it in the South. Cooperatives came into being in this country through people who came here from overseas, Germans, Swedes. In the Midwest, you find tremendously large cooperatives, credit unions, and things of that kind. Blacks need to go into organizing credit unions. Cooperative stores, not corporate stores.	10:28
Zechariah Alexander	In cooperative stores, the people who patronize the stores are the ones who get the dividends. No matter how many shares you own, you don't have but one vote. So, nobody can come in and take it over by buying a lot of shares. It's built on a sound basis where everybody has to prosper, whose involved. The more involvement you have in it, the more you get out of it. The more you purchase, the more you gain. Because profits are not there. Savings. The persons who provide the savings are the ones who get them. Does that sound sound? Well, that's my philosophy.	11:23
Rhonda Mawhood	Thank you very much.	12:25
Zechariah Alexander	I hope to, before I die, if the Lord lets me stay here another 10 or 15 years, I hope to see particularly in the church where I go—We have a tremendous afterschool program. We have a tremendous youth program out there now. I would like for you to make contact with that church with Dr. Drummond before you leave. We are getting ready to build a new facility out there that has a gymnasium and we're going to convert our praising facility into a training center. I think you need to talk to him, because when we went out to the community out there, ti was a transition situation.	12:27
Zechariah Alexander	In the Belmont community, you heard a lot of talk about the Belmont community. I want you to make contact with Reverend Drummond, please. Right now, we have a summer program going on where the children whose parents don't get home until 5:00, as many as we can accommodate or seek the accommodation, we pick them up from school and bring them to the church. They stay there until 6:00, or until their parents get off from work. We keep in touch with the children's school teachers to find out what deficiencies they have. When they come, the particular individuals, we work on their deficiencies.	13:20
Zechariah Alexander	That's the part of the work they do there besides the recreation. Inefficiencies they have in their school programming, we work on that. We have a summer program where children come from wherever at certain ages, and we have a full summertime program for them where they are involved in character building, and if they have any shortages in their school program for the year, we work on that during the summer with them. Every Friday, those kids are taken on a trip. They've been everywhere. Every Friday, those kids go on a trip somewhere in the Carolinas and Virginia. Every Friday is the day they trip. They go on a trip every Friday. They call that an enrichment program. We have the nucleus for what I'm talking about. My minister and I—I'll give you an example.	14:18
Zechariah Alexander	When I was acting as Christian Education Director at St. Paul, which I did for five years, and Reverend Drummond will tell you about that too. I saw an advertisement of a program of child development which interested me, and I made inquiry. The leaders of that school, instead of writing us a note, they got on the telephone and called me, and Reverend Drummond and I talked. They invited us to come to their headquarters and discuss the program that we had in mind. They gave us two full days of orientation of the kind of programming that they were involved with.	15:47
Zechariah Alexander	I don't know whether you've ever heard of them. If you close for a minute, I want to get something.	17:10
Zechariah Alexander	The interesting about her, she was like this. When I married her, I was the oldest one. When I married—	17:14
Rhonda Mawhood	Excuse me. Please go on ahead. I just wanted to [indistinct 00:17:46]. Thank you.	17:45
Zechariah Alexander	When I married her, she told me, she says, "Now Mildred is my daughter just like you're my son. Don't you expect me to show any favoritism towards you because you're my son." She says, "If you are right, I'll be with you. If you're wrong, I'm going to give you the devil. If she's right, I'll be with her 100%." That's the way she was. She didn't have a line of affection for me, and differently for my wife. She took my wife in as her own daughter, and she treated her as such. She gave no favoritism or whatever. When I was wrong, I caught it.	17:45
Zechariah Alexander	I used to ask her, I says, "Who is your child, Mildred or me?" She said, "You both are. When you married her, she became mine too." See, that's the kind of training we've had. This is a program that I'm espousing. I read in a number of other books, they got all kinds of books on the training of children in every area of their lives. This is the book right here that tells you the kind of teachers you've got to have. The thing that was interesting was, they told us that they didn't bother with—Their business is with institutions like school boards, business institutions. Not individuals. Organizations.	18:42
Zechariah Alexander	Which is basically quite unusual for them to take to us. The reason he said that they took to us was because it was the first time they had ever talk of a Black church wanting to become involved in a situation like that. They wanted to meet us and see who we were.	19:48
Rhonda Mawhood	Thank you very much. [indistinct 00:20:11].	20:04
Zechariah Alexander	Well, that's about it. I don't know anything else of importance, other than a lot of personal yik-yak which is not important.	20:11
Rhonda Mawhood	I don't know about that. I have to ask you some personal things, some biographical information, a little bit of family history.	20:21
Zechariah Alexander	All right.	20:31
Rhonda Mawhood	I might have to write it down to make sure we get sort of a little bit of family history straight. I'll try not to make it take too long. Would you like to take a break before we sit down?	20:31
Zechariah Alexander	Oh, go ahead.	20:39
Rhonda Mawhood	All right. How do you spell your first name please, Mr. Alexander?	20:42
Zechariah Alexander	Z-E-C-H.	20:45
Rhonda Mawhood	Z-E-C-H.	20:45
Zechariah Alexander	A-R-I-A-H.	20:45
Rhonda Mawhood	A-R-I-A-H.	20:48
Zechariah Alexander	Nobody ever called me that but my mother. I'm known as Z-A-C-K. That's my nickname. If anybody would ask you "Who's Zechariah Alexander?" They couldn't tell you. If you asked them who Zach Alexander was, they'd tell you right off.	20:51
Rhonda Mawhood	Do you have a middle name, Mr. Alexander?	21:06
Zechariah Alexander	No middle name. Zechariah Alexander was long enough.	21:07
Rhonda Mawhood	It's true. What is your date of birth?	21:10
Zechariah Alexander	April 2, 1906.	21:21
Rhonda Mawhood	You were born not in Charlotte, but in—	21:27
Zechariah Alexander	Rutherford, New Jersey.	21:29
Rhonda Mawhood	You're a widower, is that correct, sir?	21:37
Zechariah Alexander	Widower, yes.	21:38
Rhonda Mawhood	What was your wife's name, Mr. Alexander?	21:40
Zechariah Alexander	Her name was Mildred.	21:42
Rhonda Mawhood	Mildred. What's her middle name?	21:42
Zechariah Alexander	Jeanette.	21:48
Rhonda Mawhood	How would I spell that, sir?	21:50
Zechariah Alexander	J-E-A-N-E-T-T-E.	21:51
Rhonda Mawhood	Her maiden name?	21:51
Zechariah Alexander	McCulough.	21:51
Rhonda Mawhood	M-C-C-U—	21:51
Zechariah Alexander	U-L-O-U-G-H.	22:04
Rhonda Mawhood	Thank you.	22:06
Zechariah Alexander	She was a teacher in the public school for 34 years.	22:07
Rhonda Mawhood	Oh, a teacher. That's good. What was her date of birth, please sir? Do you remember?	22:16
Zechariah Alexander	I've got her birth certificate in there. It's August—I think it was August 4, 1905 I believe.	22:25
Rhonda Mawhood	Thank you. What year did she die?	22:30
Zechariah Alexander	Let's see, she died in 1970, the same year my grandson was born.	22:41
Rhonda Mawhood	Where was she born?	22:59
Zechariah Alexander	She was born in Baltimore, Maryland. She was raised up in Wheeling, West Virginia. She got her schooling in Wheeling. She started off in Wheeling. That's where her parents lived.	23:00
Rhonda Mawhood	Your mother's name, please sir?	23:17
Zechariah Alexander	Louise B. McCulough Alexander.	23:22
Rhonda Mawhood	Your mother's name was McCulough as well?	23:30
Zechariah Alexander	Her maiden name, yeah.	23:33
Rhonda Mawhood	Do you know what year your mother was born, Mr. Alexander?	23:42
Zechariah Alexander	I can't recall it at all. I've got it in my files here somewhere.	23:45
Rhonda Mawhood	That's all right. Do you remember what year she died?	23:49
Zechariah Alexander	I'd have to look that up right now.	24:01
Rhonda Mawhood	That's fine. Your mother was born where, sir? You told me.	24:02
Zechariah Alexander	Charlotte. My father was born in Charlotte. Both were born in Charlotte. The original Charlotteans.	24:08
Rhonda Mawhood	Your father's name, please?	24:12
Zechariah Alexander	Z-E-C, same as mine, Zechariah Alexander, Sr. See, I've got a picture here of him when he was in the Spanish American war. Here's an old picture. That's a picture of my father. This is myself. That's Fred.	24:24
Rhonda Mawhood	It's a beautiful picture. Did the public library copy this picture, Mr. Alexander?	24:59
Zechariah Alexander	I don't think they have a copy of that one. That's when I was a little kid.	25:05
Rhonda Mawhood	And your dog named Mascot.	25:11
Zechariah Alexander	Yep. That's my father when he was in the Spanish American war.	25:17
Rhonda Mawhood	Did he ever talk to you about being in the war?	25:29
Zechariah Alexander	Huh?	25:31
Rhonda Mawhood	Did your father ever talk to you about being in the war?	25:32
Zechariah Alexander	Oh yes, he talked to us about it. He was an Army person. This is at the time of the North Carolina Mutual in 1924. This was about the time when my father was in the business before he retired.	25:34
Rhonda Mawhood	Is this—	25:57
Zechariah Alexander	That's a picture of me, but—	25:59
Rhonda Mawhood	That's you?	26:00
Zechariah Alexander	—it was just used. I was not that young at that time.	26:03
Rhonda Mawhood	Oh, I see.	26:07
Zechariah Alexander	It was just used.	26:07
Rhonda Mawhood	It's a baby picture of you.	26:07
Zechariah Alexander	That's a picture of my father. He was Deputy Imperial Potentate of the Shrine.	26:15
Rhonda Mawhood	Rams is Temple Number 51.	26:19
Zechariah Alexander	Right. That's a picture of my father and my mother.	26:20
Rhonda Mawhood	Oh, it's a good picture.	26:23
Zechariah Alexander	That's the program of a new facility at the funeral home when we built a new funeral home.	26:41
Rhonda Mawhood	In 1980, you opened a new one on North Irwen.	27:12
Zechariah Alexander	North Irwen, that's right. That's a newsletter that the funeral home put out at that time.	27:12
Rhonda Mawhood	To whom would you give his newsletter, Mr. Alexander? To clients of a funeral home?	27:12
Zechariah Alexander	Yeah, to the general public. Oh yeah, these are some pictures at the opening. Now my brother—Both Kelly and I were retired at that time, when the funeral home was built. Those were some of the pictures of the opening. This is a picture of the four of us. It's been used. When this building was open, this picture was selected by one of the artists and this picture was exhibited for nine months in the Carillon building on Tryon—Trade right across from the big church there. It was exhibited, it was a full wall. It was exhibited there for nine months when that building opened.	27:17
Zechariah Alexander	Let me see here.	28:45
Zechariah Alexander	Well, anyways, a young lady who was the artist, I have an article in here by her.	28:57
Zechariah Alexander	It's in here somewhere, but anyway, the young lady was from California. She was a Black girl. We don't know why she selected this picture. I guess she saw it in one of the—I don't know whether it's in this one or not.	29:06
Rhonda Mawhood	It's a very nice picture, and you all look so solemn in the picture, sort of intriguing.	30:21
Zechariah Alexander	This gentleman right here was one of the businessmen that I was telling you about that was Uptown years ago.	30:42
Rhonda Mawhood	Oh, yes.	30:48
Zechariah Alexander	Phillips. This is his daughter. She's living, his wife is dead. Her son is still living, and this daughter is living. He's dead. He was one of the old pioneers in business. He had owned a business Uptown.	30:49
Rhonda Mawhood	Mr. Phillips.	31:09
Zechariah Alexander	On Tryon Street. This is Kelly, my brother Kelly. This is AE Spears' son who was identified with North Carolina Mutual.	31:10
Rhonda Mawhood	This is in the African American Album. We have a copy of this at our center.	31:25
Zechariah Alexander	You probably have this. Here's that picture.	31:31
Rhonda Mawhood	Oh, yes.	31:33
Zechariah Alexander	I think that's where the young lady who selected this picture to do this situation, because we didn't know anything, she talked to us about it and said that she was going to be doing something and she wanted to know if we would object to her using this picture. Well, she used it and of course, it's an interesting thing. If you'll observe one—Let me get that picture. I'll show you one or two things about it that's a little—	31:34
Rhonda Mawhood	She changed some things on the picture.	32:02
Zechariah Alexander	All right, I think she has—Let's see. She has a picture of my dad right here.	32:06
Rhonda Mawhood	Oh, yes.	32:14
Zechariah Alexander	She's got several other family pictures all dotted around on this thing. This is my brother Kelly here, when he was a kid at high school. He was known as Shipwreck Kelly. He was on the high school football team and they called him Shipwreck.	32:17
Rhonda Mawhood	Why did they call him that, Mr. Alexander?	32:37
Zechariah Alexander	So rough. He was a fullback on the team. This is when the funeral home was on Brevard Street.	32:43
Rhonda Mawhood	Oh, yes.	32:51
Zechariah Alexander	This is—During this year, the Black Funeral Directors Association, that year in Charlotte. This is a picture of the ones who were present at that time. That was back in 1932. Here's another picture of my father.	32:56
Rhonda Mawhood	Oh, there he is.	33:26
Zechariah Alexander	When he's in the Army. Now this gentleman right here, has anybody told you about him, Colonel CS Elliott Taylor?	33:28
Rhonda Mawhood	No, sir.	33:35
Zechariah Alexander	You haven't heard anything about him?	33:36
Rhonda Mawhood	Oh, actually I have, yes.	33:37
Zechariah Alexander	Yeah, I'm sure you have.	33:39
Rhonda Mawhood	Yeah, yes. [indistinct 00:33:40], yeah.	33:40
Zechariah Alexander	He was one of the officers in this regiment that my father was. My father was what they called a Sergeant Major at that time. This is my brother Louis, who's living here with me now.	33:43
Rhonda Mawhood	Oh, I see.	34:06
Zechariah Alexander	He and I are the only ones living now.	34:07
Rhonda Mawhood	And he was a member of the Golden Gloves Social Club in 1925.	34:09
Zechariah Alexander	Yeah, at that time.	34:11
Rhonda Mawhood	I see.	34:11
Zechariah Alexander	1925. Shortly after that, he left Charlotte and he stayed in the same town where I was born until he retired from the post office. These are some of the other citizens of Charlotte.	34:14
Rhonda Mawhood	Oh, yes.	34:28
Zechariah Alexander	Oh yeah, this is when the Pisgah Lodge of the Elks had a building on South Caldwell Street, and this is the picture of the day they burnt the mortgage on that building. These are just some of the pictures of the old locality.	34:37
Rhonda Mawhood	They're wonderful pictures.	34:59
Zechariah Alexander	Let's see what dropped down here. Oh, this is a picture of my family. We lived on Stonewall Street when we were quite small. This is my grandmother. I wanted to show you. I had a picture I wanted to show you. Oh, here it is. That's a picture that was taken in 1907. I was just a year old. My grandmother worked for—Well actually, she during her lifetime, never worked for any poor people. Of course, they used to call them "mammies" then. She even nursed some of the kids. That's the Roger family there.	35:28
Zechariah Alexander	When my father's sisters moved to New York City, my grandmother ultimately went there. She worked for—You heard of the Dickinsons in Rutherford, who had operated the businesses that made surgical instruments? She worked in that family until she died.	36:07
Rhonda Mawhood	[indistinct 00:36:42].	36:35
Zechariah Alexander	She was one of the old-time "mammies" so they called them. She was born just about a year or two after the emancipation.	36:43
Rhonda Mawhood	Did you know her when you were growing up, your grandmother?	37:08
Zechariah Alexander	Oh yes, yes. She was one of my greatest mentors.	37:09
Rhonda Mawhood	What kinds of things did you do with your grandmother when you were a little boy?	37:15
Zechariah Alexander	There were so many things. She used to take us around with her a lot. She just did what grandmothers did, really. She would take care of us when our parents were out, and whenever we got sick she was the first one to call. They'd call her before they'd call the doctor. She was just that type of person. She was just a real grandmother.	37:21
Zechariah Alexander	This is a letter that involved the Urban Renewal taking over the property on Stonewall Street. By the way, we have the deed of that property. It was on Stonewall Street. My father bought that property in 1908. There were many others in Brooklyn who owned property back at that time that the historians don't mention. There were thousands of Negroes in Brooklyn who owned their own homes. As I told you earlier, the professionals and the average persons all lived together.	37:57
Rhonda Mawhood	That's one of the things that we will be writing about now.	38:59
Zechariah Alexander	Yeah, they actually did. On Caldwell Street, at 517 South Caldwell Street, one of the—That house there was classified as one of the major houses in Charlotte. Way back in those days, he had what they called central heat. They had a big thing in the middle of the floor, front room. It heated the whole house. That was big stuff at that time. Have you had any information about the First Ward community?	39:02
Rhonda Mawhood	Yes.	39:46
Zechariah Alexander	Okay, because that's a very interesting community. There were a lot of heavyweights, Methodist bishops who were living in that way, Bishop Clinton, Bishop Clement. On Brevard Street, Bishop Bruce. Then Bishop Jones lived here. The AME Zion connection here has a lot of people here are very noteworthy. Because you know about the AME Zion Publishing House here. You got the information on that?	39:47
Rhonda Mawhood	We have some information on that, but we're trying to look for more on it.	40:24
Zechariah Alexander	It used to be—You saw that picture of the funeral home?	40:26
Rhonda Mawhood	Yes, sir.	40:30
Zechariah Alexander	It used to be just a house above there at the corner of Second and Brevard. That's where it was when I was a kid.	40:31
Rhonda Mawhood	Did they publish only religious books, or other kinds of books?	40:44
Zechariah Alexander	No, they published only religious books. It was the headquarters of the AME Zion school literature and things of that kind. As a matter of fact, actually it was most of the bishops who lived in Charlotte had offices in that building, although their jurisdictions were other places. They maintained offices in that building too. During the Urban Renewal situation, they owned all the land from Brevard Street back down to Caldwell Street. The building they have now is on Caldwell Street. The only reason they're there is they own all that property, and they were able to up the kind of building they put up, or they would have lost it.	40:45
Zechariah Alexander	See, if they hadn't been able to pull up the kind of building that the Urban Renewal required for the area, they would have lost that property too, by being able to do that while they still owned that property. There's a lot of history in that building. Did anybody tell you about the man who built the MIC building at the corner of Third and Brevard Street next to Grace AME Zion Church?	41:48
Rhonda Mawhood	They haven't told me. They might have told some of our other interviews, but not me.	42:27
Zechariah Alexander	The man who built that building was a Black contractor.	42:35
Rhonda Mawhood	Do you know his name?	42:40
Zechariah Alexander	Yeah, his name was WL Smith. I think it's WL, but his name was Smith. He lived on Caldwell Street. He built that building, and that building has no steel girders in it. It had those big oak formation type things. I don't know anything about building. They had those kinds of girders in it, and it's still up there. It's still there today. MIC building right at the corner of Third, right there by where the—What's the United welfare thing? United—	42:40
Rhonda Mawhood	United Way?	43:26
Zechariah Alexander	United Way, yeah. That's where the Black, Colored library used to be on that corner. The YWCA used to be right below it. Then Friendship Church was right below it. I think I told you everything I know.	43:28
Rhonda Mawhood	Maybe I could just quickly finish your history here. Could you give me the names of your children, please, Mr. Alexander?	43:51
Zechariah Alexander	Andrew Alexander.	44:00
Rhonda Mawhood	Do you remember what year he was born, Mr. Alexander?	44:08
Zechariah Alexander	I think he was born in 1930, I believe. 1930 or '31. The oldest boy was born in '29.	44:19
Rhonda Mawhood	Do you know offhand the year that he died?	44:33
Zechariah Alexander	They both died a year apart. My memory from things earlier, it was in the 80s. It was '83 or '84. I'm not quite sure which. I've got the death certificates in there.	44:44
Rhonda Mawhood	That's fine. Thank you, Mr. Alexander. And the other son? There's Andrew and—	44:57
Zechariah Alexander	Andrew was the younger one. Z-E-C—His name was Zechariah too, but he had a middle name, Wilbur, W-I-L-B-U-R, Alexander. Wilbur was his grandfather on his mother's side. He got that from her.	45:02
Rhonda Mawhood	Did you have grandchildren, Mr. Alexander?	45:23
Zechariah Alexander	I have one. He's Wilbur's son, Michael Alexander.	45:31
Rhonda Mawhood	I'd like just to review the schools that you went to. You started at Myers Street School, is that [indistinct 00:45:56]?	45:36
Zechariah Alexander	Myers Street.	45:56
Rhonda Mawhood	Then you went to Shaw?	45:56
Zechariah Alexander	I went to Shaw, the academic department. I finished the academic department at Shaw.	46:01
Rhonda Mawhood	Then you went to Howard?	46:09
Zechariah Alexander	I went to Howard. I stayed at Howard a year, a couple of years.	46:10
Rhonda Mawhood	Do you remember roughly when you left Howard? Is that 1925?	46:14
Zechariah Alexander	I don't know. It's somewhere along that.	46:16
Rhonda Mawhood	That's fine. Thank you. Then you mentioned the place where you did your funeral training or undertaking [indistinct 00:46:33].	46:24
Zechariah Alexander	Renouard. It's an old school. R-E-N-O-U-A-R-D, I think it was.	46:33
Rhonda Mawhood	R-E-N-O—	46:41
Zechariah Alexander	U-A-R-D.	46:41
Rhonda Mawhood	A-R-D. Thank you. That's in New York City?	46:44
Zechariah Alexander	In New York City.	46:45
Rhonda Mawhood	All right.	46:45

Rhonda Mawhood	The school where are you now, sir?	0:00
Zechariah Alexander	Let me look at it. Let me get the name correct, I don't want to be putting down the incorrect name of the school.	0:09
Rhonda Mawhood	Thank you so much.	0:19

Item Info

Title:

Zechariah Alexander interview recording, 1993 June 11

Date:

June 11, 1993

Creator:

Alexander, Zechariah

Contributor:

Mawhood, Rhonda Lyn

Description:

Name: Zechariah Alexander; Date of birth: 1906-04-02; Place of birth: Rutherford, NJ; Occupation(s): mortician?; Residence: Charlotte, NC
Informant ID: 6; Interviewed by: Rhonda Mawhood.

Occupation:

Mortician

Location:

Format:

Language:

English

Digital Collection:

Behind the Veil

Source Collection:

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

Series:

Related Resources:

See below

Provenance:

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.

Rights:

Limited Re-Use

CC BY-NC 4.0

Rights Note:

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.

Identifier:

Interview number: 210
01534fb4-0207-4a95-a66a-60d5769bfdd1
behindtheveil
btvnc01006
ark:/87924/r4qv3hj6m
3008e7d7-b5ee-4743-9fcc-363461fe2811

Permalink:

https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r4qv3hj6m

Sponsor:

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Zechariah Alexander interview recording, 1993 June 11

Transcript

Item Info

1. Zechariah Alexander administrative file, 1993

John Hope Franklin Research Center

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Zechariah Alexander interview recording, 1993 June 11

Transcript

Item Info

Related Items

John Hope Franklin Research Center

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