Malvin Moore, III interview recording, 1994 June 07

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Charles Houston	—this meter. I don't even know where the microphone is in this thing. Can you turn up the sensitivity?	0:01
Malvin Moore, III	Okay. Today is June seventh, ninth. Okay, well—	0:07
Charles Houston	All right, I guess we're up and running here. All right, if I may, let me get you to state your name again.	0:11
Malvin Moore, III	Malvin Moore. Okay.	0:18
Charles Houston	Seems to be picking up. All right. Okay. Well, maybe we could start by your telling me a little bit about your family background.	0:19
Malvin Moore, III	Okay. Yeah. You tell me what it is that you want. I'll begin by saying I was born in Pine Bluff, Arkansas.	0:31
Charles Houston	Okay.	0:39
Malvin Moore, III	Was the second children born to Melvin Moore Jr. and my mother was Erin White Moore, who was from Selma, Alabama. We lived with our grandparents, with my grandparents, my father's mother and father and in Pine Bluff. That's okay. That's basic background.	0:40
Charles Houston	Okay. Maybe I should recite briefly the purpose of the project. I'm with the Behind The Veil Project and it's conducted by the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke in conjunction with historically Black colleges such as North Carolina Central. The purpose of the project is to collect the life stories of African-Americans who've had experience with segregation, as we all have who are in our forties or fifties.	1:18
Malvin Moore, III	I'm familiar with the project.	1:55
Charles Houston	With the project and so we want to create an archive.	1:56
Malvin Moore, III	Right.	1:59
Charles Houston	I really just want your life's story. In your own words, and of course, we're interested in your experience with segregation in the South.	2:01
Malvin Moore, III	This may be rambling.	2:18
Charles Houston	That's okay.	2:20
Malvin Moore, III	So—let me just talk.	2:24
Charles Houston	Sure, that's fine.	2:27
Malvin Moore, III	We had kind of a unique situation during my childhood years. My grandfather was a tailor. He was from Clarksdale, Mississippi and had gone to Tuskegee Institute, and his class was the last class that was graduated under the leadership of Booker T. Washington. Grandfather settled in Helena, Arkansas after he left Tuskegee, and it was there that he at my grandmother and my father was born.	2:34
Malvin Moore, III	Our family bears the curse or the stain of blessing really, I don't know how you want to put it, of the strange relationship that existed between Whites and Blacks in the days of segregation and that strangeness I'm talking about here in terms of group dynamics as opposed to personal dynamics, and as well there were some numbers, number of interracial liaisons that occurred back in those times. I'm certainly a product of it on both my paternal and maternal grandparents' side.	3:30
Malvin Moore, III	Grandmother, father was, they tell me the wealthiest man in Helena, Arkansas and he didn't disown her. My grandfather's father on the other hand, I know very little about. But they married and lived in Helena, Arkansas. It was during that time that they lived in Helena that they had the famous Elaine Riots, where Elaine was a little settlement, a little community outside of Helena where they had a very serious riot back in, I believe it was 1919, 1920, or something like that. A race riot. But it was during that time that my grandparents lived in Helena, and I can remember them talking about how scared they were.	4:45
Charles Houston	Sure.	5:47
Malvin Moore, III	I mean, no beating around the bush on that. It was a real tough period of time. Then subsequently they moved Pine Bluff, and my grandfather taught at what was then the Branch Normal College, which was the college for Blacks, which eventually became Arkansas AM&N College, and now it's University of Arkansas Pine Bluff. It's gone through three name changes. But my grandfather also was there at Branch Normal. And then, one other person of note who was there during that time was Mr. Alex Haley, who was George Haley, I mean, Alex Haley's father and George Haley's father. He lived in Pine Bluff for a good number of years.	5:47
Charles Houston	Wow.	6:44
Malvin Moore, III	I still remember him.	6:45
Charles Houston	Right.	6:46
Malvin Moore, III	My grandfather subsequently opened up a tailoring business in downtown Pine Bluff. When he first opened his business, it was in the small Black business district. He subsequently moved in into a place on Second Avenue in Pine Bluff, which was in the White business district. His was the only Black business in downtown, in quotes, downtown Pine Bluff. Subsequently, his business, ninety percent of his business was White clients, and he did pretty well.	6:48
Malvin Moore, III	This was a time when a tailor-made suit was a badge of honor, of distinction, a handmade tailored suit. He was a master craftsman, no doubt about it. He taught me. In the summers, I'd worked with him and my first job was working with my grandfather when I was in sixth grade. I would leave school and go to work with him.	7:44
Charles Houston	When was this now?	8:18
Malvin Moore, III	When I was in sixth grade.	8:20
Charles Houston	About what year?	8:22
Malvin Moore, III	Well, let's see. I was born in 1941. Yeah. I predate World War II, man. I was born in November of 1941, so this had to be '46, '47.	8:23
Charles Houston	Oh, sixth grade.	8:35
Malvin Moore, III	When I was sixth grade, I was—	8:36
Charles Houston	Twelve years old.	8:38
Malvin Moore, III	—I started school when I was four and because of the way my birthday fell, and so I guess I must spend about ten, eleven.	8:40
Charles Houston	Okay.	8:51
Malvin Moore, III	I'm making a big sum of twenty-five cent a week.	8:52
Charles Houston	Wow.	8:55
Malvin Moore, III	That was big money. I could go to movies on Saturday for a nickel and buy popcorn for a nickel and soda for a nickel and still had a dime for the rest of the week. It's big money. But it gave me a sense of responsibility and I'm grateful for that.	8:56
Charles Houston	You were an apprentice essentially, were you?	9:23
Malvin Moore, III	Yeah, actually when I first started working for my grandfather, I was dropping in after school and I would clean up the shop and run errands. Then after I got in high school, I became an apprentice and my grandfather taught me how to draft. I ended up during my college years and even in summers during high school, making my own clothes. One of the things that I used to regret, I guess, this is a hell of a thing to say, and it's something I hadn't really thought about in years, but during the whole time when I was growing up, I never had to play a pair of blue jeans. I wore slacks that were tailor-made.	9:25
Charles Houston	Right. Best dressed kid in school.	10:23
Malvin Moore, III	But it wasn't something I was proud of. I wanted blue jeans, man. I wanted to be the other kids. Then during a period of time, one of the fads was wearing coveralls. I wanted a pair of coveralls. Folks looked at me like, "Boy, are you sick?" Never will you wear a pair of coveralls while you're in this family."	10:26
Charles Houston	This was your grandparents who said that?	10:50
Malvin Moore, III	Well, we all lived together. We lived in the same house.	10:51
Charles Houston	Your parents and your grandparents?	10:57
Malvin Moore, III	Parents and my grandparents.	10:57
Charles Houston	Okay.	10:58
Malvin Moore, III	We had a real extended family. My father came back from the war. In fact, I remember the day he came back from the war in 1945, taught at the college, and my mother worked with my grandfather and she also subsequently taught at the college also. My grandmother was the one who was at home. She was the basic housekeeper and she was a tyrant, man. But I loved her dearly.	11:00
Charles Houston	Sure.	11:44
Malvin Moore, III	I could tell you some war stories about my grandmother, but we had a—	11:52
Charles Houston	She was a strict disciplinarian?	12:00
Malvin Moore, III	My whole family was.	12:02
Charles Houston	Okay.	12:07
Malvin Moore, III	To talk about segregation, to piggyback on that point, discuss segregation. I can't say that I was deeply affected by it. I think that was because of the family and because of our community. I had always been around White folks. It wasn't like they were some alien ogre that lived across the track somewhere. It was a very unique dynamics in Pine Bluff. In our block, for example, our nextdoor neighborhood was White. I've got some pictures here.	12:09
Charles Houston	Oh, that's great.	12:57
Malvin Moore, III	I'll show you my family. I'm the unofficial family historian, but our nextdoor neighbors were White across the street. The whole block across the street from where we lived was White. These were blue collar White folk now, we not talking about country club type things, but—	12:58
Charles Houston	You need to get that?	13:16
Malvin Moore, III	Yeah. In the next block across the street was all White.	13:20
Charles Houston	It was all mixed in like that?	13:29
Malvin Moore, III	It was mixed in.	13:30
Charles Houston	Throughout the whole community?	13:31
Malvin Moore, III	It was not the whole town of Pine Bluff. No. In this little section, maybe seven, eight square blocks. They were Whites and Blacks intermingled. I don't know whether it was by designing a necessity. I don't know. To be honest with you, it never dawned on me that to ask why this was.	13:32
Charles Houston	Right.	14:03
Malvin Moore, III	But this was certainly before the days of fair housing laws and all that stuff. We got along well, borrowed sugar and did things that neighbors do. The folks next door to us had a son and a daughter, and same age as me and my sister, and we played together up to a certain point. At that certain point, and I've always asked White friends of mine, at what point do you learn that Black folks are niggers instead of friends? Because that's certainly what happened growing up with these kids. But it didn't phase me. I mean, They went their way and we went our way, and we certainly had enough support system so that when those White kids went their way, it didn't bother us at all.	14:05
Charles Houston	Well, what age did this happen?	15:18
Malvin Moore, III	Oh, I guess it had to be around puberty. I can remember my grandmother calling this White teenage boy in, who I had grown up with and reading him the Riot Act, and just basically telling him he didn't want him fucking around with my sister. Pardon of my language.	15:20
Charles Houston	That's okay.	15:38
Malvin Moore, III	But that's basically what she did. Because I remember her telling him that. She wasn't going to have that shit. My sister was not going to be his nigger bitch, and he got the message.	15:39
Charles Houston	This was around age twelve?	15:52
Malvin Moore, III	Around fifteen, sixteen, somewhere like in that. He was in high school just starting out in high school and starting to feel his oats. We all had starting to get them urges because I was starting to look at his sister. Shit [indistinct 00:16:08].	15:53
Charles Houston	What did your grandparents say about that?	16:10
Malvin Moore, III	They made certain that I didn't look at her too hard.	16:13
Charles Houston	What, did they say anything to you?	16:17
Malvin Moore, III	They didn't sit down, with my grandmother that was sort of the social custodian, if you want to put it that way. I mean, it wasn't that she sat down and gave me a lecture, it was just in passing comment, that was something I would better not be thinking about. Sure as hell better not be doing. No problem.	16:21
Charles Houston	You said your grandparents gave you coping mechanisms. I mean, that you had been prepared and—	16:48
Malvin Moore, III	Well, not just my grandparents but my whole family.	16:54
Charles Houston	Okay.	16:56
Malvin Moore, III	But my whole family and the whole neighborhood. In the next block, on the same side of the street we lived were the Wileys and the Brantons, and they subsequently became great civil rights lawyer, Wiley Branton lived in the next block and his brothers Leo Branton, they all lived in the next block. And then two blocks from us were the Parkers. He was a dentist and his sons became dentists. Then there was Dr. Lawyer, it was just this little section. Mr. Perry was a funeral home man and Perry Funeral Home. Right around the corner from them was Dr. Flowers' office, and it was formerly a Black hospital. In fact, that's where I was born, just in that little six, seven square block area that you found this little pocket of White folks and Black folks living in harmony.	16:56
Malvin Moore, III	I mean, we lived in harmony. But I mean, you just accepted it and went on about your business. I mean, it wasn't like you had neighbors over and you had tea in the yard and all that shit, but hey, you lived there and we lived there and, "How you doing?" And keep on going about your business. You don't come to my house, I don't come to your house and I don't date your daughter. You don't date my daughter. On Sunday we both all go to church. You go there and I go there. It was just strange.	18:14
Malvin Moore, III	I'm talking about '40s and '50s Arkansas before [indistinct 00:18:49] and Little Rock. Of course, during that time we sure had our share of racist political leaders in the state of Arkansas. I mean, gee, folk think [indistinct 00:19:08] bad. [Indistinct 00:19:09] was nowhere near as bad as Sonny Loves. Sheriff in Pine Bluff, Jefferson County. Geez, man. My parents protected us from a lot of things like that. I couldn't understand it growing up. Now, we were in some ways being protected against the system, but—	18:44
Charles Houston	Well, the Black neighbors you mentioned, the Wileys and the Brantons and the Parkers and the Perrys and Dr. Flowers and so on. I mean, your Black neighbors were all professional, including your parents and your grandfather.	19:47
Malvin Moore, III	Yeah, yeah. But then again, and one street over there were some teachers and railroad people and a few blocks away, it's blue collar folk.	20:03
Charles Houston	Okay.	20:22
Malvin Moore, III	Yeah.	20:29
Charles Houston	Okay. Did working class Blacks live in a different area?	20:30
Malvin Moore, III	No, not really. Really. Two blocks, three blocks heading east where friends of mine. I was in school with, whose fathers were working class people and mothers were working class folk. We all interacted. I mean, it wasn't like I had a silver spoon born in my mouth. I wanted to make certain that folk understand that, that my family was basically middle class and we struggled.	20:35
Malvin Moore, III	But at the same time, I learned a lot about values and I learned a lot about social behavior and I learned a lot about life, just growing up in that situation and dealing with White people on a daily basis, and dealing with Black folk on a daily basis. I was able to move because of my grandfather and his business into relationships with Whites that were really no big deal to me. On top of that, my grandmother had some White cousins who would come to call on occasion. That was funny.	21:11
Charles Houston	How so?	22:25
Malvin Moore, III	They would always go in another room, close the door and they'd sit and chit-chat and everything. We would never would be privy to what was going on. It was always interesting. Occasionally they'd come here, when they'd come by the house. They were ladies, I mean, were two them. Well one, and she had two daughters, and she would bring her daughter. I used to love those daughters.	22:26
Charles Houston	Were they your age?	22:50
Malvin Moore, III	They were a little bit older than me. Oh, wow. But anyway, so it was interesting growing up in that town. I guess, the most unpleasant dynamic that I experienced in Pine Bluff was with other Black folk.	22:50
Charles Houston	What kinds of unpleasantness?	23:25
Malvin Moore, III	Well, we were taught how to sit at a table, and how to set a table, and a salad fork. Sometimes we ate on china and crystal, and we silver knives and forks and shit. My grandmother and mother knew how to entertain, and I wore tailor-made clothes and we always had a nice car, had a nice house. Not upper class by any stretch of the means, but we went to school, at the elementary school on campus in Arkansas AM&N.	23:28
Malvin Moore, III	It was considered a private school, but it wasn't a private school. It was an elementary demonstration school. We had teachers in there was a school that was set up for teacher trainers, student teachers to come in and learn their craft. But I mean, it wasn't a Durham Academy by any stretch of imagination, but in Pine Bluff terms, people considered it a private school. But we went there and it was understated in some cases. In some cases it was just outright, "You think you're better than we are." [indistinct 00:25:36]. "You go to training school."	24:43
Malvin Moore, III	That hurt. That hurt me far deeper than anything any White person ever did to me growing up in Pine Bluff. "Your Granddaddy think he something, because he down there with White folk, instead of being down on Third and State with the Black businesses." But that was never something I was taught. We had privileges, I guess, but my folks worked hard for that and I don't apologize for it.	25:45
Malvin Moore, III	But at no time were we ever taught that we were different or better than anybody else. At no time was I ever taught that. We went to Baptist Church and Sunday School and I was in Boy Scouts and Cub Scouts. I was a sorry Boy Scout, but I was in the Boy Scouts. Yeah. I worked, I certainly wasn't child of privilege, even to this day. I don't know how to play tennis. In the summers, instead of going and playing tennis and learning how to do all that stuff, I was working—	26:25
Charles Houston	With your granddad?	27:09
Malvin Moore, III	Yeah. I was working in the summers and at no time were we ever taught that we better than anybody else. When I would have these little snide remarks made to me, it would cut deep. As I said, those things hurt me far deeper than anything a White person ever did to me in my life, at least growing up in Pine Bluff. That's a real interesting situation that I don't think has been studied enough. I know that's not the purpose of this interview, but certainly I think inter-relationships within the dynamics—within the Black communities really needs to be studied because in a lot of respects, I think, it's one of our biggest problems. But anyway.	27:10
Charles Houston	Yeah. Well, I think that's very much germane to our conversation because one of the things that that's integral to the experience of segregation is the relationship with the community and the way the community's worked. I think this is very important and interesting.	28:25
Malvin Moore, III	Well, my folks are very active in the community. My grandmother, she was a socialite by Pine Bluff standards. She was also a very active church woman, and so was my mother. I've mentioned my grandmother, but my mother was, she was very active in organizations in and around Pine Bluff, and my dad and my grandfather. I've got some things that I'll show you about some of the things in my family. But yeah.	28:43
Charles Houston	I'd love to see those.	29:28
Malvin Moore, III	I'm proud of my family, because one of the things that I keep focusing back on my grandmother was, see, my mother worked and my dad taught. And then there was times when my dad was away in graduate school, and especially in the summers, he'd go back to graduate school. And then the last two years of my senior year in high school, he was away in graduate school studying for his doctorate. Then he was the first Black person to receive a doctorate degree from George Peabody College for Teachers, which is affiliated with Vanderbilt University.	29:29
Malvin Moore, III	We as a family paid our dues. But I come home, my grandma's there and see Mama, when mom got home from work, grandmother, and maybe with my grandfather, and it wasn't pleasant. I mean, it was an awkward situation. At some point growing up in that kind of situation, I don't like to talk about it, but that was my grandmother's house. It wasn't my Mama's house. That was my grandmother's kitchen and not my mother's kitchen, and I'm sure it was awkward for her.	30:22
Charles Houston	Sure.	31:15
Malvin Moore, III	I know it was awkward for me and my sister. I don't know if I'm giving you what—	31:15
Charles Houston	No, no, no. This is fine. I mean, this is fine. Just the two of you, your sister and you—	31:28
Malvin Moore, III	And had a younger brother, who's seven years younger than us.	31:36
Charles Houston	Okay. Different generation.	31:38
Malvin Moore, III	Yeah, man. He's in another time zone.	31:40
Charles Houston	Right. Did your mom, you mentioned that your mom taught too. I assume your dad taught at a AM&N?	31:42
Malvin Moore, III	At AM&N, he taught, and then after he got his doctorate from Peabody, and while he was also at Peabody, he was teaching at Tennessee State. He came back to AM&N, and he subsequently was dean of instruction, dean of education there for two or three years. Then Mama went back to school and got her master's. We were all in school at the same time, damn near.	31:51
Malvin Moore, III	I remember the time that I was in Morehouse, my mom was at Tennessee State, and I was on my way home for Christmas and had to change buses in Memphis because they had the White waiting room, Black waiting room. Hey, so what? I went in the waiting room, there my mom was. We were riding the bus. That was a primary mode of transportation back in those days, riding the bus.	32:25
Charles Houston	Right.	33:00
Malvin Moore, III	Yeah, my mom, she was on her way home for Christmas too. She was in graduate school too at the same time I was in school and my sister was in school. It was interesting that that happened. The one thing I would like to point out when I was a kid, see, my grandfather used to go to Chicago every summer to buy his woolens. I mean, he would go to Chicago and various woolen companies, cloth companies and pick out fabric. I was too young to go with him. But eventually, I started making these trips downtown Chicago and actually picking out cloth. It was a fascinating experience doing that and learning the worth in the piece of cloth. He could take that cloth and snap it, man, and hold it up and see how it was woven, how he was a workaholic. But we used to go to Chicago every summer.	33:02
Charles Houston	You were age what?	34:40
Malvin Moore, III	Oh, I guess we were about eight, nine. We started going up Chicago to see my—and we lived with my grandfather's sister, that's his sister, the lady right there. Show you how proud she was. She and my grandfather had the same mother but different fathers. I mean, this was a woman who could have passed for White any the day of the week, and yet, she was proud of who she was. She was a green-eyed White woman. But she was a Negro and she was proud of it. We would stay with Aunt Inez, and I used to love these trips, but it was interesting that how we had to make the trip. We'd have to leave at four o'clock in the morning or no later than four o'clock in the morning to get to Chicago by evening because there was no room at the inn, if you know what I mean.	34:40
Charles Houston	I know exactly what you mean.	35:59
Malvin Moore, III	In fact, there were certain places that we made gas stops every year because there was some places coming up to Missouri that would not even sell you gas. We used to have to take toilet paper on these trips. I mean, you didn't have a restroom, and I don't know, but this stuff didn't psychologically affect me. Maybe I was too young, maybe I was too naive. Maybe it just was acceptance of the way it was. I don't know. I don't know. But I know I used to love to look forward to these trips because we'd always have a box lunch and it'd be fried chicken and ham sandwiches and deviled eggs, and my sister and I would be back in the backseat and my father and my grandfather up front. It bothered them, sure. I'm sure they did.	36:00
Malvin Moore, III	But no, we'd leave at four o'clock in the morning, head on up through St. Louis and on in Chicago, and we'd get to Chicago. We'd usually to stay there for four or five days, and then we turn around and come on back home. I used to love going to Chicago as a kid. Remember first baseball game ever went to was a Wrigley Field. See the Dodgers. Yeah. Damn Jackie Robinson went oh for four, man, never forget that. Campanella hit one out. But it was like it opened a whole new vista for me. As a kid, I loved baseball, loved baseball. Still do today. It's my game.	37:11
Malvin Moore, III	I guess, if I got one great big disappointment of my life, my whole life, is that I never got a chance to play little league baseball. I told that to friends mine and they look at like you, "Are you sick? Playing little league baseball?" Yeah, that is the biggest disappointment of my life—	38:12
Charles Houston	I can understand.	38:43
Malvin Moore, III	Yeah I never got a chance to play little league baseball. My wife will tell you that right now. Yeah. My son and my kids.	38:45
Charles Houston	Why not? Why didn't you get a chance?	38:56
Malvin Moore, III	Because little league baseball, growing up in Pine Bluff, Arkansas in the '50s was only an activity for little White boys. When they tried to start some things, some teams at the Black Boys Club, but never got off the ground, didn't have equipment, didn't have field to play on and didn't have uniforms. I wanted a uniform. But yeah, that thing beeped.	39:02
Charles Houston	No, no, it was my watch. I'm sorry. Don't know how to turn it off.	39:47
Malvin Moore, III	Yeah, I guess, you can say segregation did kind of affect me. No getting around it. But it certainly was not a trauma.	39:52
Charles Houston	Right. Well, you mentioned the segregated waiting rooms in the Memphis bus station where you ran into your mom when you were traveling to school. Were there other signs of segregation like that in Pine Bluff? I mean, aside from the—	40:03
Malvin Moore, III	Yeah, well, yeah.	40:17
Charles Houston	—you couldn't play little league.	40:19
Malvin Moore, III	Movie theaters were segregated. Yeah, you had water fountains, places, department stores wouldn't let you go in and try on things. My Mama and them never had that problem.	40:20
Charles Houston	How come?	40:44
Malvin Moore, III	Well, I guess ultimately they probably did. But subsequently they had accounts at these stores, and my grandfather's business was right around the corner. I guess, we was the good colored folks. Yeah. Anyway. Yeah, there were certainly outward signs of it. The buses—	40:55
Charles Houston	Right.	41:25
Malvin Moore, III	—got on the bus, got in the back. The schools. I used to have to pass Pine Bluff High School to go to my high school. It was several blocks away, but certainly from where we lived, Pine Bluff High School was about six blocks from where we lived. My high school was on the other side of town. I didn't care. I never really felt compelled or really wanted to be around other White folks. You know what I mean? I certainly came in contact with them through business, my grandfather's business, and through some daily contacts and things.	41:27
Malvin Moore, III	But we had a nice little community. The social and cultural center of Arkansas was the college. I mean, wasn't Little Rock, wasn't Hot Springs, Pine Bluff. I mean, we had people from all the way. It was the center, and there was a lot of interaction between communities. There was a pipeline between Pine Bluff and Memphis, between Pine Bluff and Little Rock, and from Pine Bluff and Monroe, Louisiana. It was like the cultural center—	42:11
Charles Houston	For African Americans?	43:09
Malvin Moore, III	Yes.	43:10
Charles Houston	—the entire state?	43:10
Malvin Moore, III	Yes.	43:11
Charles Houston	—the entire region?	43:11
Malvin Moore, III	Yeah.	43:12
Charles Houston	Okay.	43:13
Malvin Moore, III	As a kid, I followed Mary McLeod and Langston Hughes. They would come to the colleges part of the Lysim Series.	43:14
Charles Houston	I'm sorry, which series?	43:27
Malvin Moore, III	Lysim. L-Y-	43:28
Charles Houston	Yeah, right. Right. I'm sorry.	43:29
Malvin Moore, III	They would come and give lectures and I mean giants. Seeing them—saw these focus as a kid. Part of the lecture tour. I mean, cultural events, I mean every year the cultural event during the Christmas holidays was the college's choir performing the Messiah. I mean, that was a cultural event of the Christmas season, the Messiah, and dance groups and musicians galore. White folk didn't have anything we wanted except a few more rights. I mean, that's the way I saw it. Again, maybe my folks saw it differently.	43:30
Charles Houston	Right.	44:40
Malvin Moore, III	They probably reacted very negatively to having to pay a poll tax and all to vote, which we had in Arkansas back in those days. They probably didn't feel too good about choice of candidates that they had to vote for choosing one rebel over another.	44:41
Charles Houston	But other than that, the community was self-sufficient?	45:03
Malvin Moore, III	No, you still depended on White folk. You had to go to the White man bank and you had to go to White man's grocery store. No. The community wasn't self-sufficient, by any stretch other than spiritually and culturally. We could depend on one another, or there was feeling of solidarity in the community brought about by these conditions. Walking down the street and might be somewhere I hadn't any business being, "Ain't you Mr. Moore's boy?" "Yes, ma'am." "What you doing over here? You better get on home." I knew what she meant. I better be heading on that direction, or by the time I got home, the news will be there waiting on me.	45:07
Charles Houston	That's serious trouble.	46:12
Malvin Moore, III	Oh, yeah. That was serious trouble, because if somebody had to call and report you, you were in for some pain. You know what I mean? But that's how it was in the Black community in those days. I mean these kind of things actually happen—	46:14

Charles Houston	—exciting.	0:01
Malvin Moore, III	Yeah, I always wanted to go in the pool hall, man. Just for some reason, I always wanted to—forbidden. I mean it was in—	0:02
Charles Houston	Nobody in your family would have gone in the pool hall?	0:10
Malvin Moore, III	No, it was in a section of town, too, I didn't have any business being. Well, you just didn't go down there. So I went to the pool hall, man. It just so happened, the guy that ran the pool hall knew my grandfather very well. I mean he was a legitimate businessman, but he ran a few shaky enterprises. You know what I'm saying? [laughs]	0:13
Charles Houston	I can imagine.	0:41
Malvin Moore, III	But he knew my grandfather, and I walked in. He said, "Boy, what are you doing in here?" In essence, "You better get the hell out of here because, if not, I'm going to report you." Then I had to ease out and sneak down the street and on up the street before anybody else saw me. Hey, that was the kind of community we had.	0:45
Malvin Moore, III	I mean it wasn't Nirvana by any stretch of imagination, but it was a place to grow up. It was a place where, at least in my situation, I felt comfortable. I can't say everybody did. I can't say that my childhood and early years experiences were certainly characteristic of others, but it's mine.	1:10
Charles Houston	When you were growing up in Pine Bluff, what's the earliest crisis that you can remember in the community? Was there any racial tension or were there any problems at all?	1:53
Malvin Moore, III	No. There were never any racial confrontations in Pine Bluff. We had tensions, but they were interracial—I mean they were internal tensions, like getting rid of—kicking the preacher out at the church. I mean that actually happened at our church. That was a big thing about that. But no, no tension to speak of in Pine Bluff. Now, when the situation developed in Little Rock, which was my senior year in high school, it was real tense. I mean tense. But it wasn't any confrontations. It was just tense. But you still went about your business.	2:17
Malvin Moore, III	I can remember the National Guard units and I don't know whether Army units or what stepping through town. My high school played the Black high school in Little Rock, and we were in the same athletic conference. They played their games at the stadium in Little Rock Central. I remember seeing soldiers bivouacked around the grounds of the athletic field because I traveled with the football team. I was the team statistician and reporter.	3:24
Malvin Moore, III	The White paper didn't have a reporter come to our games, so we had to — I wrote the game stories, and it'd be in Sunday's paper and everything. But I can remember those times very well. But I mean in terms of there actually being a confrontation in Pine Bluff between Whites and Blacks as a group, no. I mean there were always little skirmishes. A group of Whites and a group of Blacks get to fighting. But that was as much probably teenagers feeling ill to as much racial.	4:13
Charles Houston	What would provoke those fights?	4:53
Malvin Moore, III	I don't know. White boys might be in a car, and they riding down the street, "Hey, you niggers." Next thing you know, Black kid will pick up a rock or a brick and throw it and hit them on the head. Next thing you know, they turn around and jump out of the car and start fighting. Those kinds of things. That goes on in 1994 in Durham, North Carolina. So that wasn't anything that spectacular or anything to have [indistinct 00:05:25] in it.	4:56
Malvin Moore, III	That was just one of those things that happen between teenage groups. But then again, you'd have the same kind of situations between sections of town. Guys on the East End where I lived didn't like some guys from across town coming over to the neighborhood and dating girls. So, no big deal.	5:24
Charles Houston	Right. So you actually—our high school played in a Black football conference at Little Rock High School. I guess it was a statewide conference at the time that Little Rock was under siege, As it were. I mean that event went on. I would think that there would have been some concern about safety and—	6:03
Malvin Moore, III	Well, not really. As long as you had all those troops around there and FBI agents and plainclothes cops. The game wasn't that well-attended from a spectator standpoint. But this was the conference championship on the line, man, between Merrill High School and ours. Man, shit, you're not going to let a little thing like school integration problem—	6:21
Charles Houston	Get in the way of football.	6:45
Malvin Moore, III	—get in the way of a football game. So yeah, it was a statewide conference. It was Pine Bluff, our high school. It was Merrill High School, and it was a school in Little Rock, North Little Rock, Hot Springs, Hope High School, El Dorado, Texarkana and a school in Camden. That was it, the Big Eight. It was small, intense rivalries.	6:46
Charles Houston	So you stayed there. I mean you stayed in town for the conference. I mean you just drove for the day and played and—	7:15
Malvin Moore, III	No. It's high school, like the Big Ten. It's an athletic conference, like the Big Ten or the ACC. So all these schools were in the conference. It wasn't a meeting.	7:22
Charles Houston	No, no, no, but—	7:37
Malvin Moore, III	It was an athletic association. And then all these schools were members of what we call the Big Eight, like the ACC and those kind of things. But all these schools in these towns were all members of this athletic conference.	7:39
Charles Houston	When your team played at Little Rock Central, you didn't stay. You just drove up for the day and then—	7:58
Malvin Moore, III	Well, yeah, Little Rock wasn't but forty-five miles. The longest trip we ever took was to El Dorado. That was about two and a half hours on two-lane roads. But Little Rock was just forty-five miles from Pine Bluff. Zip up there and come on back home.	8:04
Charles Houston	I guess there was an active NAACP chapter in Pine Bluff?	8:24
Malvin Moore, III	No.	8:30
Charles Houston	No.	8:30
Malvin Moore, III	Mm-mm. No.	8:31
Charles Houston	In Little Rock?	8:36
Malvin Moore, III	Yeah. Because you had Little Rock, you had Daisy Bates. Daisy Bates, she was head of the state. I mean We had some NAACP people in Pine Bluff. But it wasn't a large, active, dominant force in the community. In fact, I guess it took the Little Rock school crisis really to generate growth in some of these civil rights organizations because I honestly don't remember there being a very large and vocal and dominant organization in Pine Bluff.	8:38
Malvin Moore, III	Before Little Rock, Daisy Bates was—and her husband, L.C. Bates, were trying to build the NAACP in the whole state of Arkansas, primarily through the newspaper that they had. It was only when the school crisis happened that the NAACP really began to grow in the whole state, largely through her efforts.	9:29
Charles Houston	So who were the Black leaders in Pine Bluff, say, when you were coming up before Little Rock?	10:01
Malvin Moore, III	The president of the college, Lawyer Flowers, and my grandfather.	10:07
Charles Houston	So when community issues came up, these were the people who were in the leadership position?	10:40
Malvin Moore, III	Right.	10:48
Charles Houston	Were there any issues during that time? Anything comes to mind? I know there were events at the college. What were, say, Flowers and your granddad's community leadership activities?	10:50
Malvin Moore, III	Well, see, my grandfather was a Tuskegee man to the core. My grandfather didn't believe in confrontation. He was quiet, dignified. He believed in, I guess, once it reached the confrontation stage it was too late, leadership sit behind closed doors so it doesn't get to that point. That's the kind of man he was. Only one time that he ever took to the streets, and that was late in his life.	11:09
Malvin Moore, III	He died at seventy-eight, seventy-six. So I guess Poppy must have been about seventy-one, seventy-two at that time. A lawyer in Pine Bluff had been arrested for some unnecessary and ungodly reason. I really don't remember all of the details. This gentleman was very well-respected, and he was a leader in the community. Subsequently, he became a leader in the community, this lawyer. He was much younger than my grandfather.	12:17
Malvin Moore, III	But anyway, he was arrested or something, and there was a mass demonstration called. This demonstration, folks marching down the street to the courthouse, my grandfather participated in the march and was one of the leaders of the march. The newspaper, the Pine Bluff Commercial, whose editorial page editor at the time was a guy by the name of Paul Greenberg who won a Pulitzer Prize some years ago while he was still with the Commercial.	12:59
Malvin Moore, III	He wrote an editorial that said something to the effect that if Malvin Moore was marching to protest injustice, then injustice surely must have occurred or something to that effect. This guy was subsequently released on this trumped up charge. The point was that, hey, things have really gotten to be unreasonable if this man takes to the streets because that wasn't the kind of man he was.	13:49
Charles Houston	When was this? When was this about? Around the time of Montgomery?	14:35
Malvin Moore, III	No. No, no, no, no, no. This was in the '60s.	14:43
Charles Houston	Okay, okay.	14:44
Malvin Moore, III	This was in the '60s, because my grandfather died in 1972. So this had to be in the late '60s. Yeah, it's the kind of man he was.	14:46
Charles Houston	Okay. I assume that at the time of the crisis in Little Rock, Black people in Pine Bluff became much more responsive. I mean you mentioned how Black people stuck together and that L.C. and Daisy Bates had been trying to make the NAACP more active, but it took Little Rock to raise people's consciousness.	15:07
Malvin Moore, III	Yeah. All over the country, really. I mean Little Rock happened right after Montgomery, right after the Supreme Court decision. I'm talking about within the span of two to three years. All these kinds of things were momentum things building up. I think what really got the Black community galvanized during that period of time was not so much the compelling need to go to school with White folk. Because when you look back over it, the worst thing they could have done was to begun integrating the schools at the high school level.	15:38
Malvin Moore, III	Attitudes have been set. It should have started out in the elementary school level, kinds of things that Kenneth Clark and Thurgood Marshall and a gentleman by the name of Houston argued about it in the case, but it started at high school. Well, [indistinct 00:17:06], man, looking back. But it wasn't that. It wasn't the National Guard being called out. It wasn't Eisenhower's intransigence and ineptitude during this crisis.	16:36
Malvin Moore, III	The whole thing that galvanized the Black community was those pictures of those snarling White folks snipping at the heels of these little Black heads, especially there's this one picture of Elizabeth Eckford walking down the street with her books in her hands. I mean you can see the hate in their faces. If anybody had any doubts at all about Daisy Bates' tactics and the tactics of the NAACP leadership during that time, I mean it was those kinds of pictures that was spread around the world that said, "Hey, wait a minute. Boom."	17:18
Charles Houston	So how did folks react in Pine Bluff? I mean what happened to—	17:58
Malvin Moore, III	Well, I mean there wasn't any mass meetings or we're going to march on Little Rock Central and save our children. None of that kind of shit. People talked, I mean but there wasn't anything we could do. I mean there wasn't anything to do. Stay indoors. If you venture out at night, be prepared to take some action.	18:01
Charles Houston	Where did Black people meet when they did come together? I mean did they meet at a Y or church?	18:31
Malvin Moore, III	Mr. Houston, I really don't know. The movement really hadn't started yet. When I left Pine Bluff, the movement hadn't started. I had left Pine Bluff when the lunch student sit-ins began—	18:42
Charles Houston	'60.	19:12
Malvin Moore, III	—in 1960. Martin Luther King came to town a couple times, but it was always in connection with some activity on campus. I can remember him delivering the commencement address at the college one year. I think was '58 or '59. The movement hadn't hit yet.	19:13
Charles Houston	Right. But the college was the focus. When he came, he spoke at the college?	19:45
Malvin Moore, III	He spoke at the college, but that was really the only place big enough to accommodate folks to hear him. At that time, Martin Luther King was still relatively new, even though he'd led Montgomery. In fact, I think he still was in Montgomery at that time. He hadn't moved back to Atlanta. I don't think he moved back to Atlanta until in the early '60s. I may be getting my history mixed up, but I think he was still in Montgomery at that time. But he was still relatively a newcomer on the scene.	19:48
Charles Houston	Okay. And more of a regional leader, I suppose.	20:38
Malvin Moore, III	Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.	20:42
Charles Houston	So during the '50s, residential areas were pretty integrated, I mean not socially, but in terms of residential distribution, residential patterns.	20:47
Malvin Moore, III	Not on a large scale. I mean there were pockets. Ours was a pocket. Across town over on Barraque Street, there were pockets of White folks living next to Black folks and across the street and on West Second Avenue. There were little pockets. But it wasn't a mass thing. I mean there was still a social structure at work in the South that you adhered to. I don't care who you lived next door to.	21:03
Charles Houston	So residentially—	21:49
Malvin Moore, III	Can I smoke?	21:51
Charles Houston	Yeah, sure.	21:52
Malvin Moore, III	Go ahead. I'm—	21:53
Charles Houston	Okay. Yeah. Residentially, African Americans were mixed with Whites in terms of residential patterns, but—	21:54
Malvin Moore, III	Some. Some were.	22:02
Charles Houston	Some were.	22:03
Malvin Moore, III	Some were.	22:03
Charles Houston	So there were areas where there were large aggregate Black populations?	22:04
Malvin Moore, III	Yes.	22:11
Charles Houston	Okay.	22:12
Malvin Moore, III	Most Black folk lived in Black neighborhoods, and most White folks lived in White neighborhoods, but there were pockets of integrated living conditions.	22:14
Charles Houston	Okay. Yeah. What about the business community? You mentioned that there was a business community.	22:28
Malvin Moore, III	There was a Black business community. There was Black businesses—	22:36
Charles Houston	Right. If you talk a little bit about that.	22:40
Malvin Moore, III	Well, typical Black business community. You had pool halls and restaurants and rib joints and juke joints and a couple movie theaters and an office building that had the Masonic Temple, Masonic Temple office building. Some doctors had their offices. I guess there was a Masonic Temple in just about every town. We had a Masonic Temple. I think it was three stories high.	22:41
Malvin Moore, III	On the second or third floor, they had the large room and auditorium. And then on one of the floors, there were a couple dentists. A couple lawyers had their offices there, Masonic Temples down there. We had a cab stand. The Brentons owned the cab company and pool halls and—	23:11
Charles Houston	Hotel?	23:37
Malvin Moore, III	There was a hotel where ladies of the night hung out. Funeral home. So typical Black business district. It was about two blocks, three blocks. Train station was a block up the street. I didn't hang out too much over there.	23:38
Charles Houston	Because your grandmother would have had something to say about that if she ever heard about it?	24:14
Malvin Moore, III	My family.	24:17
Charles Houston	Yeah. Okay.	24:18
Malvin Moore, III	Yes, sir.	24:21
Charles Houston	Where did most Blacks work at that time?	24:26
Malvin Moore, III	Well, you had a lot of folk working at the railroad company. Cotton Belt Railroad had a big repair shop and switching shop in Pine Bluff, east of town, and a lot of Blacks worked at the railroad shop, worked at the college. The Pine Bluff Arsenal, at that time it had the dubious distinction of being the largest concentration of chemical warfare agents in the world. I mean that's where they stored this chemical warfare stuff, man, The Pine Bluff Arsenal. Blacks worked out there.	24:31
Malvin Moore, III	I guess early in my high school career, people discovered that all those trees around Pine Bluff would be a good place to locate a paper plant. And then they opened up two paper mills in town, International Paper company and Dirk's Paper Mill, and Blacks started working at them places. Gee, man, I can remember sometime when the wind was right, Jesus Christ. You ever smell a paper mill?	25:33
Charles Houston	I think I have, yeah. It's—	26:10
Malvin Moore, III	Okay. Well, we had one—	26:12
Charles Houston	I don't know what the smell is, but—	26:13
Malvin Moore, III	Well, we had one on the northwest side of town and one on the southeast side of town. You caught in the middle and, man, I'm telling you the truth. But ultimately, you get used to it. You get used to that funk because I got used to it. You'd smell it every day. I don't care what direction the wind is blowing. You catching a whiff of that paper mill, one from over there or the one from down here.	26:14
Malvin Moore, III	Those were the principal employees, the college, the railroad shop, paper mills, the arsenal.	26:53
Charles Houston	Were those good places for Blacks to work?	27:05
Malvin Moore, III	I guess. I guess I don't know. I guess they were because for a little town the size of Pine Bluff at that time had less than forty thousand people, you had a very, very substantial Black middle class. But there were levels even within the Black middle class. Even within the levels of the social strata, there were varying levels. But it was a large middle class.	27:15
Charles Houston	So the total city population was forty thousand. What percentage of Blacks would you guess?	28:09
Malvin Moore, III	Jefferson County, I can't be accurate on this.	28:17
Charles Houston	That's all right.	28:24
Malvin Moore, III	It was maybe sixty-forty, forty-sixty. I mean because even outside of Pine Bluff, Jefferson County, you had a lot of Black folk. You had little towns. See, Pine Bluff's in the southeast part of Arkansas. It's in the delta. Farming was a big industry, agriculture rather. I'd have to say for the whole county, it had to be—I mean it wasn't like Black folk were totally overwhelmed in terms of numbers.	28:27
Charles Houston	Right. So the Black middle class in Pine Bluff then would served not just the Pine Bluff Black community, but probably for the county, I mean people in outlying areas, too? Okay.	29:24
Malvin Moore, III	We had some real big farmers out there too, now. One of my high school friends, her dad had a spread. I don't know how many acres he had. But I would imagine Mr. Brown had anywhere between two or three hundred acres and a big old brick house. I mean he was doing real well.	29:40
Charles Houston	So what did most Black farmers farm in that area at the time?	30:14
Malvin Moore, III	Cotton was big, soybean, regular farm crops.	30:18
Charles Houston	Okay. You said this was a friend of yours from high school. Was it her father?	30:26
Malvin Moore, III	Mm-hmm.	30:38
Charles Houston	Okay.	30:38
Malvin Moore, III	Yeah.	30:38
Charles Houston	So kids from came in from the outlying areas to the high school?	30:39
Malvin Moore, III	Right.	30:43
Charles Houston	When you were very young, you went to the lab school at the college, but then at some point you switched over from the lab school to the community school.	30:44
Malvin Moore, III	That was a very traumatic experience.	30:57
Charles Houston	Yeah. Well, maybe you could tell me about it.	31:01
Malvin Moore, III	Yeah, that was very traumatic.	31:04
Charles Houston	I can imagine.	31:04
Malvin Moore, III	Yeah. If I had been chosen to go to Pine Bluff High School to integrate Pine Bluff High School, I couldn't have been more nervous or afraid than I was that day when I went to Merrill High School the first time. First, I'd never been in the school with so many kids. The training school where I went, it went up to the eighth grade. It was a small school. I remember the day.	31:06
Malvin Moore, III	May seventeenth, 1954, we were out in the schoolyard playing. A friend of mine, Payola Boone, I'll never forget it. She said, "You're going to be going to school with White folk next year. You're going to Pine Bluff High School." I said, "What?" That's when we heard the news. Well, the next year, it wasn't Pine Bluff High School I was going to. I was going to Merrill High School, Pine Bluff, Arkansas. I was scared shitless.	31:36
Charles Houston	Why?	32:00
Malvin Moore, III	It's hard to explain. I'll do my damnedest to try to explain it to you. I was moving from a structured, protective type of an environment at this school where I went to, with kids that I had known all of my life and whose parents, for the most part, we socially interacted through. There were social organizations, fraternities, or the church or whatever.	32:13
Malvin Moore, III	Now I was going to this great big school with these eight and nine hundred thousand students I didn't know, backgrounds I didn't know. It's like being cast into an alien world. What made it so tough, all the kids who came with me, I was the only one in a homeroom by myself.	32:59
Charles Houston	I don't understand. You were in a homeroom by yourself?	33:38
Malvin Moore, III	Yeah. Well, you know homerooms in high school?	33:40
Charles Houston	Yeah.	33:40
Malvin Moore, III	Homeroom by myself, I mean I was the only one from that school. Everybody else was with somebody. Andre Moore might have been with Joyce Mazeka, Payola Boone and somebody else. I was the only one from the training school in a homeroom without a friendly face—	33:43
Charles Houston	Gotcha.	34:03
Malvin Moore, III	—and I was nervous. I was scared. It was a trauma. That's all I could say. I was afraid. I was afraid because I was being thrust into an environment in which, really, I didn't know anything about because I didn't know these people. But that didn't last long. I mean it took a couple weeks. I was at home. But that first day was frightening.	34:04
Charles Houston	You were wearing tailor-made pants?	34:58
Malvin Moore, III	Yeah, I had on tailor-made pants, man, and dress shoes and well-pressed shirt.	35:01
Charles Houston	Right. How was everybody else dressed?	35:09
Malvin Moore, III	Blue jeans and sneakers. They were loud, of course, to some extent. It was a combination of a wide group—diverse group of people that I was really coming in contact and interacting with for the first time in my life.	35:16
Charles Houston	Much wider than at the teaching school?	35:45
Malvin Moore, III	Oh, no question. I mean—	35:47
Charles Houston	They were all faculty members' kids.	35:49
Malvin Moore, III	Yeah. You were talking about people at the teaching school all basically came from the same social group. Now we were dealing with all kinds of folk. I was afraid because I didn't know what to expect. I didn't know. I mean, hey, for the first time in my life I'm out here dealing with all kinds of Black folks. There were all kinds. There were beer drinkers. That was the biggest thing back then, drink some beer and cigarette smokers and guys walking through the halls, rubbing the ladies on the back [laughs].	35:50
Malvin Moore, III	I'm seeing this stuff first up, man. There were some hoodlums and some thugs and smart people, brilliant people, talented folk. One of the, I guess, the greatest things that ever happened to me was going to that school. I mean I got over that initial fear.	36:41
Charles Houston	So how'd you do that?	37:16
Malvin Moore, III	You grow out of it. I mean it wasn't anything, light shone down from heaven and says, "Okay, you will not be afraid anymore." No, you get to know people. You get to know people. You get more acquainted with them. You get more familiar with them. You get more comfortable with them. It just evolved. It just happened. It happened not too long after I started. It took a while. But you develop friendships. You find out you have things in common.	37:17
Malvin Moore, III	Even though one boy's daddy might be working at a railroad shop and another boy's daddy might be a handyman, your daddy might be a schoolteacher. You still got things in common, and you don't let those things interfere with your relationships. So I had a group of friends that we were as diverse as could possibly be. I might have been one of the most fortunate in terms of economics maybe.	38:09
Malvin Moore, III	But there were times when my pockets were just as empty as the next boy's because if I didn't work, I didn't have any money. I was fortunate since I always had a job. But we interacted very, very well. But I want you to know, that first day, I was scared to death.	38:55
Charles Houston	So there must have been other people who graduated from that training school with you, but they went to other homerooms. You were the only one from your school assigned to that particular homeroom?	39:23
Malvin Moore, III	There was nobody from my school in my homeroom. I walk in this homeroom, and I'm in with a bunch of total strangers.	39:34
Charles Houston	Right. Yeah. No, that's hard.	39:43
Malvin Moore, III	Tell me about it, man.	39:44
Charles Houston	That's hard even when you're grown.	39:44
Malvin Moore, III	Tell me that's hard. Let's see. How old was I? I was twelve years old in ninth grade, scared to death.	39:47
Charles Houston	But no real problems? I mean no problems at all?	39:55
Malvin Moore, III	No, I didn't have any problems. I just didn't know anybody. I didn't know where I was. I didn't know where to go. I had never been around so many people in a school situation. It was moving from classroom to classroom and lunchroom and lunch at this time and just moving and just getting comfortable with that situation.	40:01
Charles Houston	So there were some in your community who thought that after the 1954 decision you would be going to the White school?	40:27
Malvin Moore, III	Well, that was just one of the things that one of my—	40:39
Charles Houston	It was a possibility.	40:40
Malvin Moore, III	Well, when they said the schools were going to be integrated, a friend of mine who was in class with me, she's twelve, thirteen years old, she just said, "Hey, you're going to be going to school with the White folks next year." And it was—	40:41
Charles Houston	Just talk?	40:53
Malvin Moore, III	—just talk. We had no bearing on it. I mean, hell, they didn't integrate schools in Pine Bluff for another fifteen years.	40:53
Charles Houston	But did the community talk about it? I mean was it something that came up at home? How did people around you feel about it, I mean other than the friend of yours who said you're going to be going to school with White folks?	40:59
Malvin Moore, III	It was a positive sign because it was a complete reversal. I mean there was a positive reaction to it because it was a complete reversal of Plessy Ferguson and that separate but equal thing. For the first time, the law of the land was saying that separate but equal is unfair. So yeah, that was received very, very positive. But I want to say this right here and now. My high school, Merrill High School, we didn't feel inferior.	41:11
Malvin Moore, III	In fact, we felt, many of us did, and I don't know during the time in school, but certainly upon reflection after you've left that environment, that we didn't take a back seat in terms of education to any White student in the whole state of Arkansas. One of the greatest things that we had going for us was the college because the brightness of education was always right there in front of us because everything revolved around the college.	41:59
Malvin Moore, III	We even played our high school football games at the college, the state basketball championships. The Black high school basketball championships every year were held at the college. So you came in constant contact with that college. We had student teachers from the college, and there was always an interaction. We always had before us the college because education was the way out.	42:39
Malvin Moore, III	We never once, in reflection, never once do I remember any teacher telling us what we could not do. You can do. You can be. I had some great teachers. I was sitting up watching Jeopardy one night, and there was a question dealing with something about geography. The answer was something that I hadn't thought about in thirty years. But I answered it. I sat here and I said, "Now, how did I know that?"	43:11
Malvin Moore, III	I came to the conclusion I knew that because I was taught that when I was young because my teachers taught me that. Much of what, I guess, my interests and my curiosity, even today, my friends over there as a result of that introduction to knowledge that I pursued in segregated schools in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, I don't think that any of us took a back seat to anything any White kid learned anywhere in the state of Arkansas, even Little Rock Central. I'm serious. Because we had great teachers.	43:56
Malvin Moore, III	We had great teachers who cared about us. If you didn't get your shit right, they'd be on the phone that evening talking to your mom and dad and your grandmom and them saying, "What's wrong with that boy? He ain't doing what he's supposed to be doing in my class." You paid severely for that, you know what I'm saying, through restrictions. You didn't do your homework. You didn't do that. You ain't going to the football game this weekend.	45:10
Malvin Moore, III	Not to be able to go to the football game on Friday night, that was tantamount to exile. Solitary confinement couldn't be worse. So you did what you had to do, and that's how it was. But no, we didn't take the back seat, not when it came to education.	45:36
Charles Houston	So I mean you mentioned that your mother taught, too, and when you were away in school, she went off to get her master's degree. Did she teach in the high school or did she teach at the lab school or—	46:03
Malvin Moore, III	No. She was at the college.	46:18
Charles Houston	At the college?	46:18
Malvin Moore, III	Mm-hmm.	46:18
Charles Houston	Okay.	46:19
Malvin Moore, III	Yes. Mom went away, went back and got her master's degree in home economics. She came back, and she taught home economics at the—	46:21

Charles Houston	You were saying that your mom worked for your granddad and she worked at the college.	0:00
Malvin Moore, III	Right.	0:05
Charles Houston	Okay.	0:05
Malvin Moore, III	And then my dad left and left Arkansas and worked at a couple schools, Miles College in Birmingham and at Fayetteville State University. And then he left there in 1968 and went to Salton University of Carbondale where he was a Professor of Education. And while he was there, my mom went back finally and got her doctorate, which was a great accomplishment. There's a picture of her up there.	0:07
Malvin Moore, III	She's in her fifties when she gone back to school, fifties, might even have been close to sixty, I don't remember. But she got her doctorate and then both of them were on faculty of Salton Illinois and they retired. Now they're living in Louisville.	0:53
Charles Houston	Living where?	1:11
Malvin Moore, III	Louisville.	1:11
Charles Houston	Well it sounds like the college was the center of your life in many, many ways.	1:18
Malvin Moore, III	Social and cultural.	1:25
Charles Houston	Right. And in a way, even in a personal way. I mean your family was very much involved with the college.	1:26
Malvin Moore, III	Very, very much. Very much. All the way through my years and even before from the time my grandfather first came to Pine Bluff. And then my father and my mother, myself. I guess you could say pretty much we've, all my life I've up to the point that I've came to Durham, and I've been pretty much associated with a higher educational institute.	1:33
Charles Houston	Right. So all through high school did you continue to wear tailored clothes?	2:12
Malvin Moore, III	Yes, sir.	2:26
Charles Houston	Did you?	2:26
Malvin Moore, III	Right.	2:26
Charles Houston	And to work with your granddad?	2:29
Malvin Moore, III	Yeah. I never had a pair of sneakers that I wore on a regular basis. I mean, I usually wear what we call little tennis shoes when I played basketball in elementary school. But I mean I never could wear them regularly. Talk about wearing them to school. No. No way, son. I remember I always wanted a pair of Converse All Stars. I mean that was the shoe then.	2:30
Charles Houston	Was it low or high tops?	3:09
Malvin Moore, III	I wanted some low top Converse All Stars. I just loved that red and blue stripe down the heels, man. The Star at the back of them, at the base of the heels. No, sir. You're not going to buy any sneakers. I owned my first pair of Converse All Stars, I was in the Navy and I finally bought a pair.	3:13
Malvin Moore, III	And I used to have blue jeans, but I didn't wear them out anywhere. I'd wear them around the house when I was doing work. Talk about work, talking about childhood. See, I used to, on Saturdays was workday, man. This was kind of the thing that our parents brought us up. On Saturdays we got up and we cleaned the house every day. I mean every Saturday we'd dust and dust mop and wax and wash windows.	3:38
Charles Houston	Just the kids? Or everybody?	4:19
Malvin Moore, III	Nah. Yeah, everybody, everybody. But we had our assignments. "Okay, this is what you do." My sister had her assignments. And then after I finished cleaning the house in the summers, I'd have to go cut the yard. And then when I finished doing that, guess what I did?	4:21
Charles Houston	Wash the car.	4:36
Malvin Moore, III	And when I finished doing that, guess what I did? I went to work.	4:38
Charles Houston	Ah, okay.	4:42
Malvin Moore, III	Right. So I mean, geez.	4:44
Charles Houston	So how did the living arrangement work? I mean, there were three generations in the house, your grandparents, your parents, and you and your two siblings, your sister and your brother. Did you all live on different floors?	4:49
Malvin Moore, III	No, it was all one house.	5:05
Charles Houston	Okay.	5:06
Malvin Moore, III	I mean all one floor.	5:06
Charles Houston	Okay. Who took responsibility for the household overall? You'd mentioned your grandmother was the host.	5:12
Malvin Moore, III	My grandmother did. Yeah. My grandmother did.	5:16
Charles Houston	Okay.	5:16
Malvin Moore, III	Yeah, she ran the house.	5:19
Charles Houston	Okay. And in terms of other matters, so she ran household matters, but in terms of financial issues and things like that, who handled those?	5:21
Malvin Moore, III	You know, I—	5:37
Charles Houston	Sort of running the household economy?	5:38
Malvin Moore, III	I really don't know what the financial arrangements were with my family. With my parents especially, what they contributed or did they pay rent and this and that. Did they share the household expenses fifty-fifty? I really don't know, but I know it wasn't a gratis arrangement.	5:40
Charles Houston	Right.	6:04
Malvin Moore, III	But in terms of what the share was, I don't know. The decisions concerning the house, again, I really don't know that either. It might have been a shared situation, but the house belonged to my grandparents, so it was their house.	6:06
Malvin Moore, III	And so I'm certain that decisions concerning the house were made by my grandparents. Mom and Dad eventually moved out, but again, I don't know. I don't know the situation. And there were shared cooking duties as well. I had two best cooks that ever lived. My mom, my grandma. Oh geez. And it didn't matter who was cooking.	6:28
Charles Houston	Yeah. You mentioned you moved out, your parents eventually moved out. Did you leave when they left?	7:13
Malvin Moore, III	Yes.	7:19
Charles Houston	Okay.	7:20
Malvin Moore, III	Right. But this was like my freshman year at college.	7:20
Charles Houston	Oh, okay. All right.	7:31
Malvin Moore, III	So all my formative years, all the way up through high school, I live in an extended family household.	7:34
Charles Houston	Right. And what about other relatives? Like great aunts and uncles? Aunts and uncles?	7:42
Malvin Moore, III	My dad is a only child. Okay. My grandmother was an only child from that union.	7:55
Charles Houston	Right.	8:13
Malvin Moore, III	Although her father had other children. My grandfather had her sister and two brothers. But I never knew his brothers. I knew his sister, Aunt Arnez. My mom came from a big family. And I haven't said anything about my mom's family too much. My mom was born on a farm in Alabama, in Selma, outside Selma, Alabama, Dallas County.	8:14
Malvin Moore, III	My grandfather had a farm and it's still in the family's possession. Had about 280 some acres right on the Cahaba River. So it's rich land. And his history and my mom's mother's history are very interesting, as well. I don't want to go into too much detail.	8:48
Charles Houston	Please do.	9:27
Malvin Moore, III	My mom is descendants of, my mom's great-grandma was Cherokee Indian. And if you look at my mom, you can see [indistinct 00:09:40]. And on her side of the family, it's White folks stuck in that tree too, man. Serious fact. There's a very, very strong relationship between some of my mom's cousins, White cousins, and my mom's siblings.	9:28
Malvin Moore, III	And the south is such a strange place. Just last year we were down family reunion. My uncle, my mother's oldest brother, had took some time out to go see his cousins whose father was my grandfather's brother. History at this point. But anyway, my mom was one of nine children, seven of whom went on to college and graduated.	10:13
Charles Houston	Wow, that's impressive.	11:21
Malvin Moore, III	Tuskegee is pretty much our family school on my mom's side. And my dad too because that's why my dad got my mom, in Tuskegee. But her sisters and brothers gone on to become nurses and professional people, nurses and teachers and retired military officers. [indistinct 00:12:06].	11:26
Charles Houston	How do you account for that? I mean—	12:07
Malvin Moore, III	That's a hell of a question to ask. I don't know how you account for it, other than the fact that our people have always been striving people, even in the face of overwhelming odds. I mean living in Selma, I mean in Marion Junction, Alabama, outside Selma, Alabama. Growing up in that environment, I mean certainly there were enough things happening to deflect any ambitions that a young Black person might have had.	12:15
Malvin Moore, III	And so, I mean, you talk about some rebels down there, geez. Things changed a little bit now. But I don't know, just strivings, prodding, encouragement. Mamas and daddies and love and willpower. I don't know. I mean my family, this is not unique. Any of these terms I've used certainly apply to all of us. Not just family, but all Black people who have emerged from these kind of situations.	12:51
Charles Houston	But your mother's father, your maternal grandfather, was a major landowner in—	14:03
Malvin Moore, III	[indistinct 00:14:11].	14:10
Charles Houston	You said around 280 acres.	14:11
Malvin Moore, III	Yeah, he owned a lot of land.	14:14
Charles Houston	Okay. Was that unusual for a Black man?	14:19
Malvin Moore, III	Yeah, White folk, they ain't like that too much. But he stuck it out. It was tough. And he was not an educated man. And I don't remember too much about him because he died when I was in an early age. But I remember my grandmother, my mom's mom, strong lady. Tough.	14:21
Charles Houston	Did the family ever talk about how your granddad, maternal grandfather, came to own so much land and such?	14:52
Malvin Moore, III	I'm working on getting all that data right now as being a matter of fact. I'm trying to accumulate information for family history, that side of the family history.	15:00
Charles Houston	It'd be fascinating.	15:15
Malvin Moore, III	Yeah. I really want to know. I want to know how he got it. I want know where he came from. Yeah. I want to know where my grandma came from. I know pretty much on my paternal side, but unfortunately on my mama's side, not a whole lot of records of that. A lot of what it is, is it's oral passed on from generation to generation. I want to put it down on paper. And not hardly any pictures. I got a few pictures. Mom don't have any pictures of my mom when she was a child.	15:16
Charles Houston	No pictures of your grandmother when she was very young?	15:55
Malvin Moore, III	Of my mother.	15:57
Charles Houston	No pictures of your mother when she was very young? Okay.	15:59
Malvin Moore, III	So trying to pull that together.	16:01
Charles Houston	Yeah. That sounds like a good project.	16:01
Malvin Moore, III	And I don't know how much time you got, but I'll be glad to show some things.	16:17
Charles Houston	I'm very interested in seeing the pictures.	16:19
Malvin Moore, III	Yeah. But I'm a product of all of that and I'm proud of it.	16:21
Charles Houston	Did you visit your Selma, I mean your family in Selma as a child?	16:30
Malvin Moore, III	Yeah.	16:34
Charles Houston	How did you go there?	16:35
Malvin Moore, III	Well we would travel by cars, it was another one of those situation. We'd have to cross the Mississippi in half a whole mountain and get there. And again, it was one of the things we boxed up lunches and carried toilet paper and left early in the morning and stopped in certain places. Because really there were some serious places in Mississippi that you did not want to stop.	16:36
Malvin Moore, III	And there were many a time when I saw my mom, grandma, and sister had to go up in the bushes, to the bathroom because they couldn't go. And you'd have to find a secluded place on the side of the road, whatever bushes. That bothered me. And then you get back in the car and press on, go to Alabama.	17:04
Malvin Moore, III	Used to love to go to Alabama. I used to go barefoot. Run around in the farm with my cousin. Take my shoes off and just have fun. Not that I didn't have fun in Pine Bluff, but I wouldn't go barefoot in Pine Bluff. That was not allowed. But in Alabama, as soon as it drove off, man, we had fun. Subsequently, I found out that, this was something that just recently told to my sister by my cousin, who's my agent. Who we've gotten to be very close, relatively close over past several years. That my cousins resented us. Anyway, I never knew that.	17:39
Charles Houston	In Selma?	18:42
Malvin Moore, III	My cousins in Alabama. They lived on a farm and they lived on my grandfather's farm. And basically his dad was a share cropper on his father's farm.	18:43
Charles Houston	Okay. So your mother had a brother who lived on—	18:59
Malvin Moore, III	The farm.	19:03
Charles Houston	On their father's farm.	19:04
Malvin Moore, III	Right.	19:05
Charles Houston	And that brother had children.	19:06
Malvin Moore, III	Right.	19:08
Charles Houston	Were there other siblings? Were there other brothers or sisters of your mother who lived on the farm?	19:08
Malvin Moore, III	No.	19:13
Charles Houston	Or was there only one family?	19:14
Malvin Moore, III	Only one family lived on the farm.	19:16
Charles Houston	Okay.	19:16
Malvin Moore, III	The other siblings moved away. One lived in Selma, another one was living in Opelika, Alabama. Another one had moved to Lafayette, Louisiana. And one brother was in Jasper, Alabama where he was principal of the school. And there was Uncle Cecil who was a retired Army major living in Germany. And Uncle Ed, a retired Army colonel who was living in Ohio. And Uncle Bo, which is Uncle Frank. We call him Bo. His family lived on the farm.	19:18
Charles Houston	Okay. And you said your cousins resented you, but you didn't know it?	19:53
Malvin Moore, III	I didn't know it at the time. And in some respects, I can understand it. It was like when we'd come down to the farm and stay with Mama Jenny, that was my mom's mom, Mama Jenny. It was like the well opened up and things were made available to us that were not made available to them.	19:58
Malvin Moore, III	And it was like, I guess city mouse, country mouse kind of thing. And city folk come to town, you open it up, it's country folk. And I can understand it. I regretted the situation, but it was nothing that we put on airs or anything. And we the city folk coming down here and dealing with you country people, it wasn't that kind of thing. Because I used to love to go down there and I couldn't wait.	20:22
Malvin Moore, III	And we'd go down there to their house and I'd love to put a pallet on the floor. Man, we'd all be sleeping out there and on the floor. All the kids, feet getting in each other's mouths and all fair. Just have a ball. And I loved it. But that was a slight resentment on their part. And I regret that. And we've overcome that now.	20:55
Malvin Moore, III	But as a child, you see things that are not made available to you, that are made available to some folk who come in from out of town, only going to be here for a week to ten days. And then they're gone. And then life goes back to being the same way it was. I understand it. I didn't know it at time. Because I loved my cousins, man. And I used to love going down to the farm.	21:24
Charles Houston	You mentioned that when you did go down there, your family packed up the car and you packed toilet paper. And I guess you took food and you made sure you left early enough that you got there before dark. So once you were there, I mean, even though you were on the farm, did you sense that the atmosphere, or say the racial atmosphere was different than in Pine Bluff? Or were you sort of totally self-contained there on the farm? I mean, did you go in the town to the store?	21:59
Malvin Moore, III	Yeah, we'd go into town, but we didn't come in contact with a lot of White folk either. We'd go to movies, but they went up the side door and going up to the bathroom. I mean, we didn't think about it. We just having fun as a child. And I remember my grandfather had a little store out back and out behind the house.	22:25
Malvin Moore, III	He didn't have a license to operate it, but he sold things back at discount prices to just some of the other Black farmers and share croppers around the area. Sheriff found out about it, I guess. I don't know how he found out about it. Came out and made him shut it down. Didn't arrest him, but made him shut it down.	22:55
Charles Houston	Why do you think the sheriff did that?	23:23
Malvin Moore, III	Well, he was running an illegal store. It wasn't because he was Black, I don't think. But if he'd been White, maybe he'd turned and looked the other way. I'm sure that definitely had a lot, had something to do with it. In fact that he was Black. But it was also, he was not doing anything crass. But he made him shut down. But that was Alabama in 1940s.	23:27
Charles Houston	So this is late '40s.	24:06
Malvin Moore, III	I guess this was ninteen, mid-'40s I guess because Papa Clams died in 1948.	24:09
Charles Houston	Okay. Do you remember anything about the Black leadership there? I mean in that area?	24:12
Malvin Moore, III	Didn't know anything about the south.	24:21
Charles Houston	Because you were too young.	24:23
Malvin Moore, III	During that time, no. I'm sure there were stirrings, I'm sure there were things beginning to get organized. I mean, we got to remember that coming or going back to '46, '47, '48, '49, we had a group of people coming back out of war now. And we've got the GI Bill that's allowing people to go on and do things and acquire middle class way of life.	24:32
Malvin Moore, III	And these are soldiers coming back from Europe, having been discriminated, yet at the same time, treated like somebody for the first time in their lives by Native Europeans. And they weren't coming back here to take that shit that they took before. That's all. So things had not yet started, but it was starting to be galvanized. But I don't remember anything in Alabama.	25:11
Charles Houston	Right. And were any of your family members, I mean your mother had a lot of siblings, that was a big family, I think you said there were nine children and seven of them went to college. Now, had any of them been involved in the war? Do you think any of their lives were changed by the war?	25:36
Malvin Moore, III	Yes. Oh, most definitely.	25:52
Charles Houston	Okay.	25:55
Malvin Moore, III	Military has always been a big part of life in my family. My grandfather was in the Navy. My father was in the Navy and I was a Naval Officer. Uncles, cousins, aunts. Oh yeah, the war affected them.	25:57
Charles Houston	Your father was in the military during the war?	26:22
Malvin Moore, III	Yeah.	26:23
Charles Houston	Okay. So he was away then during the period you were talking about? Came back in the—	26:26
Malvin Moore, III	Well, my dad didn't go in until '44. And so he wasn't in the war more than, I guess twelve, thirteen, fourteen months, maybe a year and a half. He was in the Navy and he was in the Navy Band. He was part of that Great Lakes Band group. And he subsequently was stationed in Chapel Hill.	26:32
Charles Houston	What did he play?	27:01
Malvin Moore, III	He was saxophonist.	27:02
Charles Houston	Okay.	27:03
Malvin Moore, III	And I can remember when he was away and he was stationed, at one point he was stationed in the Aleutian Islands on Kodiak Island. And I can remember the time when he was away. I can remember just as vividly, I can see it right now, my grandmother going through the house singing hymns, church songs.	27:03
Malvin Moore, III	Just singing or even humming to herself during time my dad was away. My grandfather was a stoic. He didn't show his emotions very strongly, although he was an emotional man. But I can remember my grandmother going through the house humming church songs. Mom was quiet during that time.	27:39
Charles Houston	During the time that your dad was away?	28:18
Malvin Moore, III	Yeah. She was quiet, scared to death.	28:19
Charles Houston	And working for your grandad.	28:26
Malvin Moore, III	Yes. I can remember planes flying overhead and sky full of bombers. I don't know where they came from, or where they were going. Pine Bluff is certainly nowhere near the Atlantic or the Pacific. There wasn't any Air Force bases around us. But I can remember, man, you see the sky, you hear this drone coming and it was like the roar of a 1000 freight trains. You woke up. Wow.	28:31
Malvin Moore, III	You see these B-29, B-17, and everything. That was always exciting. We always try to run down the street following them. But that was the war. But they were definitely affected by it and in a positive sense because the GI Bill let folk go back to school and get degrees and let people buy houses. You know what I mean? Just opened up a whole new vista.	29:10
Charles Houston	And speaking of buying houses, I mean obviously your family owned, your grandfather owned his own home. Did most Black people in your neighborhood own their own homes?	29:39
Malvin Moore, III	In our neighborhood, they did. Yeah.	29:52
Charles Houston	Okay. You mentioned that your granddad, that is your father's father, was not very religious, but sounds like your—	30:06
Malvin Moore, III	No, I didn't say that.	30:13
Charles Houston	Okay. I misunderstood. You said that your grandmother's sang hymns.	30:16
Malvin Moore, III	I said my grandfather was somewhat stoic in the sense that he really didn't show his emotions a lot.	30:23
Charles Houston	Okay.	30:32
Malvin Moore, III	But no, my grandfather was a very religious man. But he didn't wear it on his sleeve.	30:33
Charles Houston	Did you go to church?	30:47
Malvin Moore, III	Oh yes, yes. We went to church as a family. We had a family pew and you dare not sit in it.	30:49
Charles Houston	And it was reserved?	30:54
Malvin Moore, III	No, it wasn't that, it was just a—	30:54
Charles Houston	Custom.	31:04
Malvin Moore, III	People staked out a place in church and they still do that. If you look over there and nobody's there, then that mean the Moores not here yet. And over there was where somebody else sat. I know Mrs. MacFirsten sat on eighth row from the front on the aisle every Sunday. That was her seat. And you dare not sit in her seat, don't dare. And Sister Brown sat on the front row on the aisle. That was her seat. And that was St. Paul Baptist Church.	31:05
Charles Houston	Okay.	31:46
Malvin Moore, III	The Walkers sat a row behind us and there were other people that sat up in front of us. But we sat about halfway up the aisle, far right, that was our little church section.	31:53
Charles Houston	So was there a sense that—there was a relationship between the people who went to church other than on Sunday?	32:09
Malvin Moore, III	Oh yeah.	32:23
Charles Houston	In what way?	32:25
Malvin Moore, III	Some social interaction and some professional interaction. We had a lot of teachers and professors went there. I mean, it wasn't church reserved for the hoi polloi by any stretch. But we had all classes of people going to St. Paul Baptist Church. A lot of interactions. Social, civic, professional.	32:26
Charles Houston	What kinds of civic? And what kinds of social things might you have done?	32:58
Malvin Moore, III	Might I have done?	33:04
Charles Houston	Well, no, I mean, might the congregation have done—in connection with church or outside of it? Just curious about the church community.	33:07
Malvin Moore, III	Well—	33:21
Charles Houston	Picnics?	33:24
Malvin Moore, III	Yeah, you name it. People from St. Paul Baptist Church were involved in it. But there was also other churches that had their own structure. There was St. John's AME Church. That was a place that had, I guess you could say they really had the cream, I guess. The creme de la creme of the Pine Bluff's middle class, professional class, a Methodist Church.	33:25
Malvin Moore, III	But organizing, some of the civic things that folk would do would be to organize civic activities. Like my grandfather was a chairman of the Negro Park Commission, which organized and developed a very, very nice park for us. We had our swimming pools and playgrounds and athletic fields and barbecue pits. And I mean, we had the called clubhouse and the park. That's where we hung out on summers and had a lot of fun in the park growing up. Especially you turn into a nice little rendezvous place. I don't need to tell you too much.	34:03
Charles Houston	No, all right.	35:09
Malvin Moore, III	And on the fourth of July, we used to have a bathing beauty contests and whoa, see all these lovely ladies. And there was, I mean, masses of people attending. It was a social affair. And my granddad started all that. And there were other kinds of civic things that my family was involved in. The fraternities and social things and church organizations, social clubs.	35:11
Charles Houston	What about the social clubs? What kinds of dances? What kinds of activities?	35:50
Malvin Moore, III	My mother and grandmother were very active in bridge clubs and Pine Bluff Society, I guess you could say. And some of these clubs would have dances in Christmas time. Throughout the year, picnics, family gatherings, things of that nature. My dad and my grandfather were members of oh, man, that club. Can't think of the name of it right now. It was a poker club. It was about seven, eight men, professional men. They'd meet up once a month, play poker, drink a little liquor, eat some food, go home. And it was social out there. And had friends drop in.	35:57
Malvin Moore, III	My dad and my grandfather come home from church on Sundays. And the minister at the time was Reverend Davis, was very, very close with my father, very close with his family. He and my dad were real tight. And it never failed, come home from church. One of things that my dad and my grandfather used to come home from church, would fix themselves a Sunday highball and read the paper, sit down, listen to the radio. This is before TV day.	37:08
Malvin Moore, III	Because we didn't get TV in Pine Bluff until 1955. And it never failed. Minute my grandfather fixed his drink, the doorbell would ring and it'd be Reverend Davis at the door. That doorbell, it never failed. And eventually he would stay over there all day and then he'd have dinner. But it was kind of humorous looking back. Oh, man. But we had a close family. Yeah, I was fortunate to have grown up in that environment.	37:47
Charles Houston	Just a couple of more questions. You, I think said, and correct me if I'm wrong, that you never knew why your dad and your mom lived with your grandparents. It was just the way things were.	38:46
Malvin Moore, III	Yeah, I guess in looking back on it, I can probably understand it. Convenience, necessity. My dad traveled a bit and in summers was away in school. Then he was gone in the service, came back. Economics might've had a hand in it. I mean, being a college professor, they really didn't guarantee you a whole lot of money. So I'm sure all of that had a part of it. And I'm sure another factor was me and my sister and my mother, wanting us to be exposed to a lot of, to my family.	39:06
Charles Houston	Yeah.	40:16
Malvin Moore, III	I don't think that was a major factor in the decision. But certainly growing up in a household and with my mom working, it was good to go home and have somebody in the house. And we were fortunate. We used to have to take piano lessons. I went through fifth grade piano. I hated it.	40:17
Charles Houston	Mandatory.	41:05
Malvin Moore, III	That was something they wanted us exposed to. My dad had a professor from the college who'd come over on Saturdays and tutor us in math and Latin. I hated it then, but all that exposure certainly has helped me in my span of knowledge. I mean, it's not something I use every day, hardly at all. But certainly being exposed to how to think, recognizing the word origins, and things like that.	41:05
Malvin Moore, III	Being able to read music. I used to being at piano lessons, man, after school. The kid next door out there playing football. And I hit a wrong note, my grandmother, bam, standing on me with a little ruler. Bam. "You're not concentrating." No, I wasn't concentrating. I want to go out here and play some football. Not in here practicing all day on the piano. But exposure to cultural things, which that was.	41:43
Charles Houston	Right.	42:21
Malvin Moore, III	Didn't hurt.	42:24
Charles Houston	Yeah. The other thing I wanted to ask is, you mentioned that there were no crises in Pine Bluff as you were coming up, no real crises. And you mentioned that the only thing that got people kind of excited was the dismissal of the minister.	42:31
Malvin Moore, III	Well, I mean—	42:50
Charles Houston	If you don't want to talk about that, that's fine.	42:51
Malvin Moore, III	No, that certainly wasn't all peace and tranquility. But the kind of things that I thought that you were looking for was a serious crisis with regards to the racial relationship.	42:54
Charles Houston	That's true. That is true. But I would be interested in knowing if there were no crises involving race, then I'd be interested in knowing how the Black community responded around major issues internally.	43:06
Malvin Moore, III	Hit pause.	43:26
Charles Houston	We were—I had asked you about the dismissal of the minister from the church. And really, my interest is really to get some sense of the way the community functioned around a major issue. And I got the sense that this was perhaps a major issue.	43:26
Malvin Moore, III	This was a major issue with regards to our church. It certainly didn't have anything to do affecting the whole community. In fact, looking back on it, it was kind of damn funny.	43:48
Charles Houston	Okay. Were there any other major community sort of wide issues that would've required the leadership taking a position? Or leading people? Bringing people together?	44:01
Malvin Moore, III	No.	44:28
Charles Houston	Okay.	44:28
Malvin Moore, III	Again, the movement hadn't started yet.	44:38
Charles Houston	Right.	44:39
Malvin Moore, III	Okay. And even though there was a strict social code in the South at that time, there were no major problems racially in the whole State of Arkansas. I mean, in the whole state. The Little Rock School crisis brought some things to the front, maybe brought some emotions to the surface. But I mean there were no major problems.	44:40
Malvin Moore, III	You lived on your side of the street. I lived on my side of the street. And you did what you had to do. There were no problems. I mean, people protested in certain little ways, in quiet little ways. I mean, there were people who would not go to the movies. I mean, there were people who refused to ride the bus. There were people who would not shop at certain stores because they didn't feel they were treated with respect.	45:40
Malvin Moore, III	I don't know. I don't know how to say it, other than those things didn't bother me. Maybe they should have, but they didn't. I had no problems with climbing to the balcony to see Artie Murphy westerns. Randolph Scott. Alexis Spencer. I mean, I had no problem with that. Hell, I want to go to a movie, go to movie. Other people did.	46:24

Malvin Moore, III	—take us to the movies when we were kids, especially whenever a new Randolph Scott movie came to town. Randolph Scott was his favorite Western star. We'd go to a Randolph Scott movie and walk home. My dad would take us to the movies occasionally. But my grandfather's business was ninety-five percent White. And my grandfather, if nothing else, was a pragmatic man. And he worked behind the scenes. But my grandfather was not very vocal and not very out front.	0:01
Malvin Moore, III	Well, nobody was at that time, except one of the lawyers, Lloyd Flowers, who was head of the local NAACP, but there wasn't a whole lot they were doing. My grandfather didn't see any need to antagonize White folk who were really—if White people boycotted his business, it would've been disastrous for our family. And that doesn't mean he was an ass kisser, and he certainly wasn't an Uncle Tom. He was pragmatist and his modus operandi was to do things behind the scene. And he did, he did. And because he did, he was very well respected by both Blacks and Whites.	0:51
Charles Houston	Do any instances come to mind where he had to do things behind the scene to help people, or prevent a problem, or solve a problem? I know you would've been very small.	2:06
Malvin Moore, III	I don't want to go into a whole lot of detail on this, but I will say at one time, right before the Little Rock crisis came to a head, the governor came to our house to meet with my grandfather. I don't know what happened, I wasn't part of negotiating, I wasn't even in the house. We had to leave. There was some other men there too. I don't know what transpired, I don't know what negotiations were all about, but I do know that Faubus came up meeting with my grandfather in our house on [indistinct 00:03:17] Alabama Street. I don't know why. Soon to find that out one day.	2:18
Charles Houston	Pretty interesting. Not unlike—in some ways it's similar to the White relatives who would come to visit from time to time, and you'd mentioned, the women who would come over and they'd go in and close the door.	3:31
Malvin Moore, III	Yeah, women talk.	3:47
Charles Houston	Yeah, and you didn't know what was going on.	3:48
Malvin Moore, III	I didn't know what was going on. I used to be crazy about old Ray.	3:52
Charles Houston	Who was Ray?	3:57
Malvin Moore, III	She was my grandmother's cousin's daughter. She was the one who was one of the first women to fill me with lust, although I was too young to know what lust was. Whatever it was, I lusted after her. Anyway.	3:59
Charles Houston	Is there anything else from the pre-civil rights period, from the period of segregation, of Jim Crow, in your early years that you can think of that you think might be of interest to people doing research in this area that we haven't talked about?	4:28
Malvin Moore, III	Lynchings would always bring a sense of dread to [indistinct 00:05:14], and I remember when Emmett Till was mutilated down in Mississippi and Jet ran those pictures of his body.	5:01
Charles Houston	I remember that.	5:37
Malvin Moore, III	I remember it too. And it brought a sense of fear, and dread, and anger all at the same time. And the situation would get tense for a while.	5:44
Charles Houston	How so?	6:10
Malvin Moore, III	Well, I guess one would've had to lived in the segregated South during that period of time to really know what I mean. Tense. Yeah, tense, scared, shit. And some guys would just go around looking, just hoping somebody White would start something so they could go off on them. And we had those kind of people there too, folks who would just not take anything off anybody White, demanded respect. My grandfather and my father demanded respect in a quiet way, there were other people who demanded respect in a vocal way who were not afraid of confrontation. And we had people like that.	6:13
Charles Houston	Now, was there evidence of organized White hate groups in the area?	7:10
Malvin Moore, III	Not in Pine Bluff.	7:24
Charles Houston	How about the countryside?	7:25
Malvin Moore, III	Well, after the Little Rock situation, then Mississippi started getting hot, and Alabama with the bus boycott started getting hot. All that happened before the school integration thing. And you had White citizens council groups forming, but they were not very visible or very vocal in Pine Bluff. Now, throughout the state there was a group, I think the guy's name was Jim Johnson, who ultimately became governor.	7:30
Malvin Moore, III	Then you had people in Mississippi, Ross Barnett and that crowd, and being a neighboring state, certainly some of that filtered over the border. And even though we didn't really have a lot of obvious racial tension in Arkansas, we had some real rebel-ish governors, leadership state, some redneck crackers that would make Bilbo proud, some real bastards.	8:06
Malvin Moore, III	Now, I don't know how it was in Little Rock, little Rock was a big city, state. We had all kind of things going on in Little Rock, even before the school integration crisis Little Rock was a tough town, tough town. And we had some real mean Black folk in Little Rock. But overall, I guess one might be inclined to surmise that Black folk in the state of Arkansas knew their place, but that's not my impression at all.	8:50
Malvin Moore, III	It was, especially in Pine Bluff, not a self-sustaining community, but certainly a community that could turn inward for many of the things that sustained a community. The culture, the social, professional and relationships, the church, we had all those things. We had to go to the White man's store, we had to buy our clothes from the White man. If we didn't want to buy a tailor made suit, then Black folk didn't want pay to have a tailor made suit made, by and large.	9:45
Malvin Moore, III	But it was a unique community. And I go back to the fact that its uniqueness was because of institutional strength. I think that you find in communities where Black people have strong institutions, race relationships tend to level out. Like here in Durham, a strong core of Black institutional things here in Durham, and White folk can't mess with Black folk in this town because of the institutional strength.	10:45
Charles Houston	in Pine Bluff, other than A&T—	11:40
Malvin Moore, III	AM&N.	11:46
Charles Houston	—AM&N, were there other big institutions? There was no NAACP locally to speak of other than Attorney Flowers' activities, which were not really at the chapter level.	11:47
Malvin Moore, III	Not active. His was more or less court oriented, defending the NAACP, be taking up somebody's legal suit or something like that. But what you have to understand in a community of thirty thousand people, an institution strong like a college, that's a social and cultural hub, that's a strong base.	12:02
Malvin Moore, III	So strong in fact that every year during Homecoming, the Homecoming parade would go right down the heart of main street, and White folks would line on the sidewalk just as much as Black folk. Pretty majorettes come strutting down the street, man. And hey, I guess a certain pride was built into that, pretty much like White folk feel toward A&T in Greensboro. White folk, that's their school, they proud of A&T, and they were proud of that.	12:38
Malvin Moore, III	Hey, I'm sure a lot of White folk now when they go to the basketball game and then they look out and see the University of Alabama starting five Blacks, and University of Mississippi starting five Blacks, and the White folk from Alabama pulling for Alabama, and White folk Mississippi pulling for Mississippi. And I say it's like our niggers against their niggers. And that's the way it is.	13:15
Malvin Moore, III	The game's over, they go their way and the Black folk go their way. But these are Alabama niggers fighting Mississippi and Arkansas niggers. And I guess that's how a lot of them felt about that school. These are our niggers, let them have Main Street for a day, let them march down and parade. And five, six, seven, eight, ten thousand people come to town for a weekend, they going to spend money.	13:45
Charles Houston	So Whites came in from outlaying areas to the parade?	14:13
Malvin Moore, III	Yeah, they come to the parade, they know the parade's going to be there.	14:16
Charles Houston	But not to the game?	14:18
Malvin Moore, III	To see some high-stepping pretty little Black women walking, marching down the street. No, they didn't go to games. No, they didn't go to games. Black folk would come from all over, all over the country. Couldn't stay in the hotels, didn't have any hotels, stayed with friends, family. Social tower of the year man, Homecoming. But that was a strong institutional base, a strong institutional base.	14:18
Malvin Moore, III	And it permeated the community, because you had professors go to church, different churches, you'd have the educational impetus to filter down through the high schools, elementary schools. You don't have to go out of town and go to college, you can go here to college. And we had great teachers there, great teachers. Now they started moving away because again, they had some internal problems at the school. Faculty moved away, got raided by a lot of White institutions looking for Black faculty.	14:47
Malvin Moore, III	But at one point, you had some very distinguished professors on the faculty. Alex Haley's father. There's many names I can think of, Harding Young who was the Dean of School of Business at Georgia State University of Atlanta, an eminent scholar in the field of business. He was at Arkansas, from Arkansas, a native Arkansas as a matter of fact. We had that connection.	15:23
Malvin Moore, III	We had some serious scholars come through here and they taught, and they taught well. John Howard, a distinguished professor of art, and his students are scattered all about the country, headed the art department at Howard. Jeff Donaldson was one of his students. These were giants in their own right. And to have been exposed to these people not even aware of being exposed, not even being aware of the influence that they had on them. Looking back, a joy.	16:09
Charles Houston	Yeah. I wanted to ask you about something you mentioned earlier in connection with Emmett Till. You said that some Blacks were hoping that Whites would interfere with them. They were very angry. Do you recall any instances of manifestations of that anger?	17:05
Malvin Moore, III	Not really. There wasn't any broad scale thing you'd hear about.	17:33
Charles Houston	Public statements, anything like that?	17:40
Malvin Moore, III	Not really. Not really. Other than outrage, which see, we didn't have an outlet in Pine Bluff. We didn't have a radio station, and we didn't have a Black newspaper. The only Black paper in the whole state was the Arkansas State Press that was owned by Daisy Bateson, her husband. And that was an outlet for rage in that publication. But no, there wasn't any street corner demonstrations.	17:41
Malvin Moore, III	We are still talking about 1954, I don't think that people really understand the courage that it took to do something as simple as refusing to get up and give a seat to a White man on the bus. That was a courageous act. That was a courageous act. It was courage for those people to say, no, we're not going to ride these buses, we're going to walk. We're going to sit on this lunch counter. Now, those are acts of courage, man, because we're still talking about out the South in the late '50s, early '60s.	18:26
Malvin Moore, III	I graduated from Morehouse on June fourth, 1963. Exactly one week later, Medgar Evers was shot in his driveway. Those were terrifying times. And it was acts of courage from a whole group of people. I guess one of the things that disturbs me in terms of that whole period of time is that the credit is given to Martin Luther King. Martin Luther King would fly into Albany, Georgia and stay a day or two, and he was gone somewhere else.	19:23
Malvin Moore, III	Those people in Albany, Georgia had to stay down there and deal with them racist White folk, and suffer the pains and terror. And terror. And those people are forgotten. But every town you see, there's a Martin Luther King Boulevard, a Martin Luther King school, or a Martin Luther King Drive. I don't want to take anything away from him, he was a great man, but God damn it, there were a whole lot of other little foot soldiers there that carried the battle. And it happened all throughout the South.	20:35
Malvin Moore, III	And ultimately it reached Pine Bluff and like a great wave it swept all across and all over. And the people who don't understand and look back from a standpoint of 1994 revisionist history and thought, need to reevaluate themselves and really try to think about what it was like. These kids say, I wouldn't have taken that off these White fools.	21:17
Malvin Moore, III	Yes, you would have. In some cases you would have because the alternative was death. And a lot of times parents would go out of their way and protect their children from being exposed to those things like my folks did. If you're not exposed to it, then the danger's lessened. And I don't have any regrets on that.	22:08
Charles Houston	Okay. Well I don't have any more questions unless there are things that you can think of that we've left out.	22:52
Malvin Moore, III	I don't know if there's anything so much dealing with that period. I'll just say that the biggest scars that I have from that period are scars inflicted upon me by the Black people. The biggest scars that I have had since I've been a man have been inflicted upon me by so-called [indistinct 00:23:56] White folks of this period, worse than anything, that any racist segregationist ever has ever done to me. So I regret to say that as I've gotten older, I'm less tolerant, and I'm less understanding, and less respectful I guess, for White folks because I think in some respects now it's worse. It's worse.	23:03
Malvin Moore, III	And when I see somebody White smiling at me, Duke White folk, UNC White folk being educated, Chapel Hill White folk, I want this said and I want it understood when I see them White folk, I run. I run because they don't mean me, you, anybody else, any damn good. And I'd rather sit down and have a cold, long neck Budweiser with a red man chewing redneck stock car fan than I would having a glass of wine and cheese with some tookie.	25:01
Malvin Moore, III	And I really regret that my life has come to this point, but I've seen as a man, the evil that White folk present. But I don't hate anybody, I just don't put myself into an environment where I can be close enough to acquire that skills. In some respects I miss Pine Bluff Arkansas in the days of the '50s and '40s.	25:55
Charles Houston	Perhaps in some respects, that world is still with you, the world of self-sufficiency.	26:56
Malvin Moore, III	Well, it'll always be with me.	27:11
Charles Houston	Limited contact.	27:12
Malvin Moore, III	Yeah. I will never digest Pine Bluff Arkansas out of my system. Even though I don't go back now, I don't have any reason to go back other than to really visit my grandparents' grave, maybe run into some old high school chums. I've left Pine Bluff, but it's never left me.	27:13
Charles Houston	Well you got lots of photographs around here. I assume some of those are from those days.	27:37
Malvin Moore, III	Well no, all those are family shots. The pictures over here I'd like to share with you.	27:46
Charles Houston	Yeah, I'd like very much to see those. Shall we?	27:55
Malvin Moore, III	Do you want to cut? You don't want all this on tape do you?	28:01
Charles Houston	No. What I'd like to do is look through your photographs, and as you know, the center is interested in not only life stories, but also in collecting documents, including photographs. I'd like to look through those and perhaps arrange to come back or in order to, I could either borrow things to make copies of, or whatever arrangement we might be able to make about that.	28:02
Malvin Moore, III	But you lose them at peril of your own life.	28:33
Charles Houston	Oh, well—nothing—I would take very good care of them.	28:36
Malvin Moore, III	I'm certain of that, I was only joking.	28:39
Charles Houston	I understand how precious they are.	28:42
Malvin Moore, III	Yeah, okay.	28:44
Charles Houston	Okay.	28:44
Malvin Moore, III	Peace. Bye.	28:45
Charles Houston	Thanks. We've turned this back on because we've started looking at your family photographs and that's made us realize that we forgot to talk about the migration. Our discussion of your family genealogy has brought up the issue of migration on your father's side. And we're now talking about the migration of your grandfather's siblings from Mississippi. Am I correct?	28:46
Malvin Moore, III	We were talking about my grandfather's sister and she and her husband moved to Chicago, and that's how we got to talking about referring to the migratory patterns of Black folk. And it was very interesting. I think we were saying about how patterns evolved and how Black people in certain parts of the country migrated to certain other areas. And it seems almost until you get to Texas migrations, were in a due north pattern. Black folk on the East coast and North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, migrated to New York, and Baltimore, and Philadelphia, and DC, in that area.	29:29
Malvin Moore, III	And that's very evident by my wife's parents, or family, rather. She has aunts and uncles who migrated from Newport News, Virginia to New York and into the Baltimore area. People from on the other side of the mountains, Alabama and East Tennessee, in those area, they tended to move up toward Cleveland, Detroit, the industrial heartland, so to speak. Over in my area, Arkansas and people in Arkansas, Mississippi, and Tennessee, the western part of Tennessee especially, moved up to Chicago, straight up Highway Fifty One to Chicago.	30:33
Malvin Moore, III	And that's what my grandfather's sister did, and my aunt's husbands two brothers, they all moved from Mississippi to Chicago. And they all subsequently went into the funeral home business and had a series of funerals on the south side of Chicago. We used to love going up there in the summers too. Sometimes in the summers we would spend part of the summer in Alabama and part of the summer in Chicago, talk about a hell of a contrast, but it was fun.	31:30
Charles Houston	And your grandfather himself was a migrant.	32:19
Malvin Moore, III	But he moved across the river from Clarksdale, Mississippi to Helena, Arkansas. And the opportunities were better there, as I showed you in the letters from Booker T. Washington. There was an opportunity for him. And then he left Helena to go to Pine Bluff because there was an opportunity for him to teach. By this time he had a family and a son to provide for, he taught, then went into business.	32:23
Charles Houston	Could you read that? Just maybe read from that letter? This one?	33:02
Malvin Moore, III	Dated December third, 1914. Dr. E.C. Morris, Helena, Arkansas.	33:11
Charles Houston	And what's the letterhead?	33:16
Malvin Moore, III	Letterhead is Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute for the Training of Colored Young Men and Women, Tuskegee Institute, Alabama. Dear Dr. Morris, this note will be handed to you by young Malvin Moore a graduate of Tuskegee who finished with the class of 1914 and who has returned this fall to take additional work in drafting. Mr. Moore is a nephew of our mutual friend, Mr. Charles Banks. He has located in Helena and I am quite sure that you will be pleased to see him and to do anything possible to aid him in his work at that point. With kindest regards, I am yours, very truly. Booker T. Washington.	33:18
Charles Houston	Okay, thanks very much. So this was your granddad's migration, 1914.	34:06
Malvin Moore, III	But I don't really call this migration, it's just moving from one location to the other. I don't know, maybe I'm wrong, but in terms of migration, I'm thinking in terms of moving over long distance. For my grandfather it was just a matter of crossing the river.	34:17
Charles Houston	Was he moving from a rural area though? Had the family been on a farm?	34:36
Malvin Moore, III	No, Clarksdale was, and still is, a small town in the Mississippi Delta. My grandfather's mother owned a rooming house in Clarksdale that was located right across the railroad track from the train station. And it was here that people switching trains, or stopping over, or in route from New Orleans through Memphis to St. Louis, and Points North could stop and refresh themselves, and eat, and maybe even room over at night. So she was a hard-nosed businesswoman. And I don't know much else about her.	34:40
Charles Houston	Okay. But you heard some stories from your grandfather as you were growing up?	35:50
Malvin Moore, III	My grandfather didn't really talk too much about his childhood to me.	35:55
Charles Houston	Okay. Which would've been what decade are we talking about? When was he born? When was he born?	36:02
Malvin Moore, III	He was born in 1894. And I don't know, we didn't spend a lot of time talking about it. Much of what I've learned about my grandfather, I got it from my father. My dad told me that when my grandfather—the day before he died, he retired. We knew it, he knew it, and that was traumatic, he had cancer of the liver.	36:14
Malvin Moore, III	My dad told me that he had a talk with him and that he told him with tears in his eyes that he wanted to get something off his mind, that he was crying, and one of his great regrets in life was that he was a lost child. And he asked him what did he mean by that, and he meant because his mother and his father were not married and he was born out of wedlock. And that was his manner of expressing his hurt on his death bed. I guess that's one reason why we didn't talk. But like I say, he was proud man.	37:00
Charles Houston	Sure. He had reason to be. Okay. Well thanks very much. Would you like to talk any more about this, about your granddad's forebearers, or you want to perhaps just submit a copy of the literature?	38:16
Malvin Moore, III	I would rather not if you don't mind, because it can get very complicated if one doesn't have the visuals to go along with it.	38:45
Charles Houston	And I think that's pretty self-explanatory.	38:58
Malvin Moore, III	Yeah. And it tends to pretty much lay it out with the exception of my nephew's daughter now who has extended it, the family tree, one additional generation.	39:00
Charles Houston	Right. Well, the focus of interest will be from you and your generation on up. So I guess maybe we'll turn this off again and look at photographs.	39:15
Malvin Moore, III	All right.	39:28
Charles Houston	And back with the tape recorder on again, and again, it's because we've started looking at photographs. And we've looked at some photographs of your grandfather and your grandmother in the backyard of their home in Pine Bluff. But what really has caught my interest are photographs of your grandfather in his tailor shop. And there are pictures of him with some of his apprentices, or workers, and it's occurred to me that your grandfather was a master craftsman who had apprentices, or artisans, working for him.	39:28
Charles Houston	And we haven't talked about that at all, and I wonder if you could talk to us a little bit about when that would've been when he opened the tailor shop? I know that he taught at first when he arrived in Pine Bluff, and then he opened the tailor shop utilizing skills, I assume, that he learned at Tuskegee. And maybe you could talk a little bit about his transition from teaching, where he was teaching, what he was teaching, to becoming an artisan and how that was possible. Perhaps where the investment capital came from, and so on.	40:11
Malvin Moore, III	Well, at a lot of the schools that had been organized for Blacks in the years following slavery, and in the decades following, they were normal schools, they were not Institutions of the Academy, so to speak. Where here, Tuskegee was certainly the kind of institution that was a brainchild of Booker T. Washington's philosophy of education being focused on helping you acquire life skills, as opposed to W.E.B. Du Bois' theory of the liberal arts, more or less. No need to get into that philosophy. But Tuskegee had normal training, and that's what normal education was, the carpentry, bricklaying, tailoring, the crafts, so to speak.	40:54
Malvin Moore, III	And so when my grandfather graduated from Tuskegee with a letter from Booker T. Washington shows he went back and took some additional training in drafting, and designing clothes, and so forth. Then he went and opened up the tailor shop and worked in a tailor shop in Helena, and moved to Pine Bluff where he taught at Branch Normal College, which was again, an institution focusing on normal education, and he taught tailoring. And then he went into business. Now, where he got the capital from, I'd have to say from his own savings. There was no venture capital backing then for Black folk going into business.	42:12
Malvin Moore, III	And a lot of times in those early years, and I know especially during the time of the depression, my grandfather was very active in bartering. The bartering economy was very prominent during that period, and so I would imagine that in addition to his savings, and a little money that my grandmother's father loaned him. My grandmother's father was the richest man in Helena, Arkansas. I have a picture of him too, I'll show you. Mr. Toomy, He was a very, very, wealthy man. He was a planner, he owned the cotton gin, he owned the bank, he was a Harvard graduate. He took care of my grandmother.	43:03
Malvin Moore, III	And if my recollection is correct, he also lent my grandfather some money, or gave him some money, to go into business. Not no great sums by any means, but that was how he got started. During this picture here, it was one of the guys who was working for him. The times that I remember my grandfather, he always had at least two full-time employees working for him, and some part-timers.	44:01
Malvin Moore, III	There was one gentleman, Mr. Stubblefield, who worked at the Pine Bluff Arsenal, two gentlemen who worked at the Arsenal and who worked with my grandfather in the evenings after they got off working on weekends. So there were two and sometimes three additional part-time people. And then when my mom started working full-time he had three full-time people working. And that's not counting me who would come in after school.	44:37
Charles Houston	Okay. Now I'm not sure I'm straight about the chronology. I know that your grandfather moved to Helena in 1914 and then he moved to Pine Bluff.	45:06
Malvin Moore, III	They lived in Helena. My dad was born in 1918, so they lived in Helena for about a year or so after that. They left Helena after the Elaine riots.	45:17
Charles Houston	Okay. All right. And that was 1919.	45:31
Malvin Moore, III	That was in 1919, 1920, I'm not exactly sure, but it was around that period of time.	45:35
Charles Houston	And then your grandfather taught tailoring at the Branch for a couple years. So he would've opened then the tailor shop?	45:39
Malvin Moore, III	Around 1922, somewhere in that range. And he was in business until he sold it, less than a year before he died.	45:49
Charles Houston	Okay. And these photographs are from about what period would you guess?	46:04
Malvin Moore, III	That's 1930.	46:08
Charles Houston	1930, okay. All right. And he had a couple apprentices.	46:08
Malvin Moore, III	That wasn't too long after he moved over on Second Avenue downtown.	46:16
Charles Houston	Okay. Now this second Avenue would've been the establishment, his location in the White community.	46:20
Malvin Moore, III	Yes. He was there in 1930. There were White businesses on all sides of them, and there he was, Morris Tailoring Company.	46:25
Charles Houston	Yeah. These are fabulous photographs. I hope we have an opportunity to copy them.	46:37
Malvin Moore, III	Yeah, sure.	46:45
Charles Houston	That'd be very nice.	46:45
Malvin Moore, III	No problem. No problem.	46:46
Charles Houston	All right.	46:49
Malvin Moore, III	I'm about to run out.	46:49
Charles Houston	Okay, well maybe we'll stop this now.	46:52

Item Info

Title:

Malvin Moore, III interview recording, 1994 June 07

Date:

June 7, 1994

Creator:

Moore, Malvin E., III

Contributor:

Houston, Charles

Description:

Name: Malvin E. Moore, III; Date of birth: 1941-11-13; Place of birth: Pine Bluff, AR; Occupation(s): business; Residence: Durham, NC
Informant ID: 360; Interviewed by: Charles Houston.

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Business

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English

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Behind the Veil

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

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

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

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Interview number: 332
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Malvin Moore, III interview recording, 1994 June 07

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1. Malvin Moore, III administrative file, 1994

2. Malvin Moore, III slides: Aunt Inez Hauser Atkins, Uncle Tom Atkins, Chicago, circa 1914-1964

3. Malvin Moore, III slides: Etta Moore and friend Arthur Knight with car in front of Moore home, Pine Bluff, Arkansas, 1920s

John Hope Franklin Research Center

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Malvin Moore, III interview recording, 1994 June 07

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