Alfreda Wallace interview recording, 1994 July 19

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Alfreda Swan Wallace	I don't know if they were born here or Virginia. That's a— Where were my grandparents born? Now that's very interesting. Hold on. I'm trying to think, because my great-great-grandfather was Louis Adams.	0:02
Stacey Scales	Oh, yeah.	0:16
Alfreda Swan Wallace	Yes, and of course he was born here in Macon County. All of his children were born in Macon County, but I'm not sure where my grandparents were born. I just always assumed, but their father, my great-grandfather, is from Virginia and he taught here on the campus. I think that's where they met. He was an instructor here. His name was Matthew Driver. That's him you see in them pictures around here.	0:17
Stacey Scales	Matthew Driver?	0:34
Alfreda Swan Wallace	Matthew Driver. He was from Virginia and came here to teach at Tuskegee. Might have come here to go to school, but my family has just been here— Adams family just been here forever since before slavery.	0:43
Stacey Scales	So did any stories of slavery come down through your family?	1:10
Alfreda Swan Wallace	Oh, yeah, because my cousin Lily Wilson, she died about two, three years ago, two and a half years ago, and we called her the oldest one in the family, and she was a granddaughter of Louis Adams, and she was one of the only ones living who actually could remember him, remember him as a child. She was a child when he died. Her mother was the oldest child of Louis Adams so she had her recollections and she just passed it on to the rest of the family.	1:31
Stacey Scales	Do you remember any of those stories?	2:00
Alfreda Swan Wallace	Oh, yeah.	2:02
Stacey Scales	Did you see her?	2:03
Alfreda Swan Wallace	Oh, yeah. About Louis Adams? Well, she remembered Louis Adams as a small man who lived on— You know where— I guess it would be near where— What's the name of that place? The Wendy's.	2:06
Stacey Scales	Oh, yeah.	2:23
Alfreda Swan Wallace	Okay, on that corner right before you get to Wendy's, that's where he lived, and her mother was the oldest child of Louis Adams and she took care of him after her mother died, after Louis Adams' wife died. She died first but he raised those children living by himself until— And she was the oldest one. She was born during slavery and married during— Yeah, she was born during slavery. Yeah, she was born during slavery. Was freed shortly thereafter. But anyway, she remembered Booker T. Washington coming to her house on the first day that he arrived at Tuskegee. She remembered her mother cooking dinner for Booker T. Washington when he came. We heard that story so many times.	2:23
Alfreda Swan Wallace	And in Up from Slavery he mentions Louis Adams in Up from Slavery. And she remembered, since her mother was the oldest one, and he came over there and ate dinner there with them the first time he came to Tuskegee. Some other stories about Louis Adams? She told us a lot of stories about Louis Adams. She told us about riding in his little— Did you tell [indistinct 00:03:50]?	3:16
Stacey Scales	Yeah.	3:17
Alfreda Swan Wallace	Okay. She remembered riding in there. She said he had a little horse and cart that he called a little hug-me-tight that he used to ride all the grandchildren. When he would come with the wagon and the horse, all the grandchildren would run to catch him because he could only put two of them in there. So whoever got to the horse first, he would let them ride. She was a child. I don't know, she couldn't have been too old when he died. I'd say probably eight years old or something when Louis Adams died, but those were the kinds of recollection. She remembered him having a big fruit orchard in the back.	3:17
Stacey Scales	Were there ever any stories about segregation or how they felt about it?	3:17
Alfreda Swan Wallace	Can you stop that [indistinct 00:04:46].	3:17
Stacey Scales	During the segregation?	3:17
Alfreda Swan Wallace	No, well it was all segregated in those days. Louis Adams, as you may know, was a product of a slave mother and a plantation-owner father. His father was Jesse Adams. He lived here in Macon County. He had a lot of property. Jesse Adams is mentioned in a couple of books. One of them— I was trying to remember this historian from Birmingham. I have the book. My memory is very bad. I can't remember the name of it, and he's mentioned. He was a segregationist because I guess he integrated at night because his mother, Louis Adams' mother, of whom we know very little, was on that plantation. And Louis Adams kind of grew up, was kind of educated from being assigned to his little White brothers, half-brothers and sisters, brothers really.	3:17
Alfreda Swan Wallace	He learned how to read during slavery. Now it was against the law to learn to read, but he learned to read because he had to stand outside the door being attendant to those half-brother and sisters and in those days, they were educated in the house. They didn't go to the school. They had a tutor or whatever at the house is what we were always told, but he learned how to read and write during slavery. So after slavery ended in Macon County, he was a leader because he was one of the few Blacks who knew how to read and write. And he had some beautiful handwriting. I have in our family Bible— It's his Bible. It's about falling apart but it's his handwriting in the Bible that shows about the births, the deaths and so may be an interesting thing to see. But anyway, we were always told, but we were—	3:17
Stacey Scales	Here's the Bible.	3:17
Alfreda Swan Wallace	Yeah, he was one of the few Blacks who could read and write. Not only could he read and write, but he had several trades. He was a shoemaker, harness maker, and tinsmith. He taught those trades at the school too, once the school started. Before the school started, he was teaching those trades downtown in Tuskegee on the square. It was amazing really. He had a business down there but he taught those trades down there.	7:50
Stacey Scales	[indistinct 00:07:54].	7:51
Alfreda Swan Wallace	Actually, he apprenticed them and my cousin up there, cousin Lily— (phone rings) Oh, I don't believe this.	7:53
Stacey Scales	He could leave?	7:59
Alfreda Swan Wallace	Yeah, he could leave. He had a business out there, he was a tinsmith, a tinsmith. After Booker T. Washington came here, he taught those trades on campus. Prior to that, and that was kind of the impetus for getting a school here because Louis Adams— Our family always feels like Louis Adams is the true founder of Tuskegee because before Booker T. Washington came here, Louis Adams was apprenticing a number of newly-freed slaves in those trades and it just became cumbersome. I mean, he just didn't have enough spots to train all the ones who wanted to be trained, and he said, "What we need to have is a school here." Also, his wife apprenticed people in their home for teaching home trades because both of them were— I guess they were house niggers, I guess.	8:05
Stacey Scales	What was her name?	9:14
Alfreda Swan Wallace	Her name was Sally Green and she lived on an adjoining plantation. This shows the property, but it's really like downtown almost, over there. They're adjoining plantations over there in the areas where they had [indistinct 00:09:35] crossing and over in that area, and the Green plantation, the Adams plantation over in that area. So they didn't have enough room. This one person, she couldn't do it, and that what's gave them the idea what they needed was a school here.	9:17
Stacey Scales	[indistinct 00:10:00] White folks community?	9:50
Alfreda Swan Wallace	Now, from all of this I could understand, I don't recall any of that. In fact, one of the things that is very, very strange, because I have this interest in history and I tried to find— I tried to substantiate all of this because my cousin, as I told you, my cousin and my grandparents, my grandmother and my aunt, would try to go and verify all of this. And I went down to the Macon County Courthouse. Louis Adams had— His wife gave birth to 16 children. 12 of those children lived to adulthood. Strange, I can find no census records, could not find.	10:05
Alfreda Swan Wallace	Now even though the courthouse burned and some records burned at one time down there, I looked at the records of the census in the years that I knew he was here, because he's been here, he was here all of his life. He never lived any place else. I was never able to find anything, never. I looked at Jesse Adams' will because he was married several times and looked for a lady's name as a chattel. Could not find it. Very strange. I was trying to verify something my cousin always told me that when Louis Adams, when slavery ended, the property that he had down there, that it was given to him by Jesse Adams, that they just gave him the property, and I wanted to substantiate that and I was not able to find that.	11:00
Alfreda Swan Wallace	I cannot believe that somebody with a family as big as Louis Adams', that they're not mentioned in any of the census reports. And I looked at a number of years, could not find them. The years that I was particularly speaking of, like immediately after slavery, of course a lot of the records are missing. Could not find them, could not find the census. Now I said that I was probably going to try to look in the archives of history to see in those census reports if they are maybe more thorough, I don't know, but I couldn't find it. Strange, isn't it? Saw some other names of people that I knew. I mean, the family names.	12:05
Stacey Scales	How about the Vaughan house [indistinct 00:12:57] house on the corner. Do you know about [indistinct 00:13:03]?	13:06
Alfreda Swan Wallace	Well, now the Vaughan house, that's the Vaughan house, the one that you come right down before? I thought that was Vanna house.	13:06
Stacey Scales	Okay. I didn't know.	13:20
Alfreda Swan Wallace	I thought those were the Vannas who had the house.	13:21
Stacey Scales	[indistinct 00:13:24].	13:22
Alfreda Swan Wallace	It could be, it could be, because what about the house I remember from when I was a child, and people occupied that house. When I was a teenager, I don't recall anybody being there, but as a child over there, that was always the big house and that was the biggest house in Tuskegee. No other house as big or as impressive as that house, so it always had a kind of aura about it. We thought it was the stuff when the president got to live in the big house up there. [indistinct 00:14:05] I tell you something else [indistinct 00:14:07]. I won't say that.	13:31
Stacey Scales	[indistinct 00:14:09] on tape.	14:05
Alfreda Swan Wallace	And the overseers in the big house, but yeah, but growing up here, this is a strange place to grow— Well, an interesting place to grow up as a child because see now I'm 51— God, I'm 51, but as a child growing up, living in Tuskegee, you didn't feel the Jim Crow that you felt in a lot of other places. It was very different. You didn't feel it until you left Tuskegee. Now there were reasons to feel it because, well for example, if you went to the movies, we didn't have to go in the balcony. I guess at some point they might've had a balcony at a earlier point but when I was a child during the late forties and fifties, our theater was next door to it. [indistinct 00:15:49] we didn't go in the White side—	14:06
Stacey Scales	[indistinct 00:15:49].	15:48
Alfreda Swan Wallace	It's Macon Theater. That was right down there. You know where— The department stores down there. I want to say Allen's but it's not Allen's. I remember [indistinct 00:15:33] Tuskegee too much. Well, Alabama Exchange Bank right here, what's the name of that store that's right next to it? But that was where it was, where the parking lot was for Alabama Exchange Bank, where the drive through, next to that, I think, there's some music place and right next door to that is the— It's not the carpet store, it's a clothing— Daniel's, that's what it is. Daniels. It was where Daniel's was in that little block in there, and the Whites had one side, Black had the other side. We didn't go in the balcony on the White side. Now it might have been at an earlier period, but during the time when I was a child, we had a next door thing.	15:48
Alfreda Swan Wallace	I'm sure the White side was probably a lot more luxurious, but we didn't know. I mean it wasn't like we were in the balcony, could see over and see where the White folk sat. We had a theater next to it. Always in Tuskegee because of their university here, the Black in Tuskegee were just a lot smarter than the White folks here. Blacks in Macon county have always outnumbered White people, so growing up here, the kinds of things that you hear about the Jim Crow south, we were aware of it but we didn't live it every day.	16:22
Alfreda Swan Wallace	We didn't live it every day because, see, I grew up right on Montgomery Road, right next to [indistinct 00:17:14], right near the campus. That's the reason my father would not allow me to go to Tuskegee because Tuskegee was a very much a part of our everyday lives. As I said, our roots in Tuskegee were very— All of the people in my family were educated. Just about everybody was a teacher.	17:06
Stacey Scales	Yeah, [indistinct 00:17:39].	17:36
Alfreda Swan Wallace	No, they were public school teachers, and then the guys— Louis Adams' grandsons, there're not too many Adamses, not men. He had one son here, William Thomas Adams, who had children. He had two sons, but basically and as far as I know, that's the only Adams who had sons. Only Adams was William Thomas. As I said, there were 16 children. 12 grew to adulthood. Nine had children, three of them never had any children, and of that nine, only one was a man so there's only one Adams— I mean line of men and none of those cousins— Only one of those— Well, that's not true. Louis Adams, he had a son named Louis Adams, I mean a grandson named Louis Adams, and he had children, so I guess we have a number of, not that many though, Adams men.	17:39
Alfreda Swan Wallace	Now in Grambling, Louisiana, Charles P. Adams married one of Louis Adams daughter and her name was Martha Adams.	18:57
Stacey Scales	[indistinct 00:19:14].	19:06
Alfreda Swan Wallace	So yeah, so those cousins down in Louisiana are Adamses but they're not—	19:06
Stacey Scales	[indistinct 00:19:19].	19:06
Alfreda Swan Wallace	Well, not the father's name, but Charles P. Adams went to Tuskegee too and went down and founded Grambling, but he was married to Louis Adam's daughter, one of his younger daughters, Martha.	19:27
Stacey Scales	How was the neighborhood? Were most people homeowners?	19:32
Alfreda Swan Wallace	Most of the people who I grew up— I grew up, as I said, right in the shadow of the university. Most of the people in that neighborhood owned their homes. They either owned them or the university did. The university owned a number of houses on Montgomery Road near the campus. They owned quite a few of them, but I happened to live in a house that my great-grandparents [indistinct 00:20:12] because Matthew Adams, Matthew Driver, taught at the university and he built that house.	19:34
Stacey Scales	And was that Louis Adams [indistinct 00:20:28]?	20:20
Alfreda Swan Wallace	No, that was Louis Adams' daughter's husband. His name was Matthew Driver, but I think that daughter was the second-oldest child. Her name was Virginia Lou Adams and she was the first graduate of her school. My great-grandmother. She was the first graduate. They say the first graduate because her name was Adams so she was the first one to actually get a diploma.	20:27
Stacey Scales	Really?	20:52
Alfreda Swan Wallace	From Booker T. Washington, yeah, and that diploma is over in the museum. Yeah, my group, that's my group. The first diploma, first one to receive a diploma from the hands of Booker T. Washington. It wasn't called the Tuskegee University because in those days it was Tuskegee Normal. Right, okay, yeah, okay.	20:58
Stacey Scales	Did people own cars and—	21:06
Alfreda Swan Wallace	Yeah. That depends on how far we go back. Now, I can remember always, and I was born in '42, so we always had cars, my family did. They always had a car. I remember my grandfather always owned a Pontiac and my dad always owned a Buick. But he didn't live here. He came here to— My father was in [indistinct 00:22:39]. He came here to go to the VA hospital. He was a physician. VA hospital probably in 1940, '41 and he came before my mom met him. That's when she met him, when he came into work. They wouldn't take him in the army, not that he wanted to go, but physically, they turned him down.	21:36
Alfreda Swan Wallace	No, he was trying to avoid the army. He had flat feet. They shouldn't have taken him [indistinct 00:22:39] did take him, anyway, and to avoid having to go into the army, he came down to the VA hospital in Tuskegee. He worked over there and also over at John Andrew High School over in the clinics that they had over there because he was employed by the VA.	22:38
Alfreda Swan Wallace	But he always had a Buick, so in the forties and in the fifties, they always had cars. I can remember, though, that we had a horse that we kept over there in the back, in the yard. They had a place for— And we had chicken over there in those days, we had chicken because I can remember my grandmother going out there and they would clip the wings of those chickens so they couldn't fly away.	22:38
Stacey Scales	Really?	23:28
Alfreda Swan Wallace	Mm-hmm. And she'd get up real early in the morning before the chickens came up. It was dark, really. Yep, it would be morning, early morning, and clip and cut the chickens, one of the wings because the chickens could fly away otherwise unless you clip one. I can remember having chickens out there. I can remember that the one time they had a pig out there because they had a lot of nut grass and they had the pigs out there because they said they don't eat the nut grass and—	23:28
Stacey Scales	Did the community have [indistinct 00:24:16]?	23:28
Alfreda Swan Wallace	Not in the— You talking about having a garden where they all—	23:28
Stacey Scales	Or like a [indistinct 00:24:30]?	23:28
Alfreda Swan Wallace	Yeah, well see it was very close knit like that. I mean, I'm sure that no family, nobody went hungry here. I mean, we grew things back out there. We had a farm out farther on the highway and a pecan orchard and I guess they had families living out there, family out there. I guess it'd be sort of like— I won't say as a sharecropper, a sharecropper. It wasn't a sharecropper but they would stay out there and they would give us— In lieu of rent, they would give us various vegetables and stuff. I don't remember. I'm sure nobody went hungry because one of the things I was remarking on not long ago of how people— But this town has grown so and we're not close knit like we used to. It used to be that if somebody died, everybody would know. You would know, everybody would know.	24:34
Alfreda Swan Wallace	Now somebody would be dead and buried and you wouldn't know about it because it's gotten big, it's gotten less personal than it used to be. When I was growing up, it was very close knit. I say that when I returned here as an adult, because when I left here to go away to college in '59 because my father would not let me go to school because, see, see in those days all the good things were happening on this campus. There was nothing exciting happening until [indistinct 00:26:07]. I mean everybody came here. Marion Anderson, William Wolfville, any Black person who was anybody came to Tuskegee. Everybody came to Tuskegee.	24:35
Alfreda Swan Wallace	They had the Propeller Club. I mean, we had Nat King Cole, we had every big Black entertainer came through Tuskegee. The chapel was sitting, I guess basically, where we are sitting now. I can remember seeing Marian Anderson there. But see, I grew up in the shadow of the university. Now when I came back here in 1972 or '73, I guess you say I suffered culture shock because you don't realize how you are shielded from a lot of things literally, how much you didn't know living here. Well, I went to a high school that was segregated and the children came from all over the county. It was the only Black high school.	24:35
Stacey Scales	Which one was it?	24:35
Alfreda Swan Wallace	Tuskegee Institute High, except if they had a high school for Blacks that was in [indistinct 00:27:27], Prairie Farms, but other than that, if you didn't go to Prairie Farms, any other part of the county, you had to come to [indistinct 00:27:37] High.	24:35
Stacey Scales	How was it [indistinct 00:27:39]?	24:35
Alfreda Swan Wallace	How was it?	24:35
Stacey Scales	Yeah, the class?	24:35
Alfreda Swan Wallace	The teachers there, most of whom were educated at Tuskegee Institute [indistinct 00:27:53], you were taught, it was instilled in you if you were Black, you had to work harder and they wanted you to be [indistinct 00:28:05] all of the stereotypes of things, like of being lazy or being unkempt or unclean, you would come and have inspection every day. I mean, they inspected your nails. You did not come to school with pins in your clothes. If you came to school with a pin in your clothes, they would give you a needle and thread and you had to go and fix it. You did not chew gum. That was verboten, and you had assemblies every day.	24:35
Alfreda Swan Wallace	And they tell you at the beginning of the day— I'm trying to remember if it was every day or every week, but you had these assemblies and they'd give you lectures about what was expected of you as a Black person. And you always were taught, always were taught that if you were Black, you would have to be twice as good as any White person.	24:35
Stacey Scales	[indistinct 00:29:06] experience, do you think?	24:35
Alfreda Swan Wallace	No. The school that I went to was Louis Adams School and my aunt, my great-aunt, my grandmother's sister, was the principal of that school. And they just instilled that in me about values and about cleanliness, all those kind of things. And if you came to school, they would tell you if you don't have but one dress, one pair of underpants, one bra, you had to wash it every night and come to school starched and clean the next day. It was just not acceptable for you not to do that.	26:09
Alfreda Swan Wallace	A lot of kids who were in this area went to Children's High, [indistinct 00:29:56] Children's High School, which was a kind of a laboratory school for Tuskegee Institute, but I never went there. Because my aunt was principal of the other one, so I guess all of us [indistinct 00:30:10] went to Louis Adams School. So in that respect, I was different from a lot of kids who were around here. A lot of kids who were here, I mean in my generation and whose parent worked at the university or worked at the hospital, their parents were doctors like my father was a doctor. Those kids, most of them did not go to school here, did not go to high school here. Many of them did not go. They went to the prep schools. Remember New England prep schools? Most of them, most of them. I was one of the very few who did not go away.	26:09
Stacey Scales	Did your family do a lot of traveling?	28:27
Alfreda Swan Wallace	Traveling? My grandparents traveled. My grandmother and my great-aunt traveled a lot, my grandmother's sister. They traveled all over, all over the world. Really, they traveled with her. I traveled. I can remember going to Mississippi, going to Grambling. We weren't going to Mississippi, we were going to Grambling. We had to go through Mississippi. I'll never forget. I mean, I was terrified to go through Mississippi until I was quite grown. I mean, I'd say as recently as probably 10 years ago probably I didn't want to go to Mississippi because I was just terrified of it. All of the horrible things that I'd heard about Mississippi, Mississippi was worse than Alabama, and it's probably not worse than Alabama, but it was worse than what I knew in Alabama growing up in Tuskegee. And from what I have learned since I have been reading [indistinct 00:32:00]—	30:58
Stacey Scales	Were you terrified [indistinct 00:32:06]/	30:58
Alfreda Swan Wallace	Yeah, I was terrified of it. See my grandparents, my grandmother was very, very fair. She had very Caucasian features. She had very long, thin, very fine hair that she could sit on. Now my aunt, her sister, was fair, but she had Negro as the features. Her hair was mostly— We call it oil and Vaseline kind hair, and she looked Negro. But with my grandmother, they just wouldn't know what she was, and I can remember in Mississippi we stopped one time my grandmother got and asked this Black man where we could eat. So he said, "Oh, ma'am, you can go right down there," and she said, "Okay, thank you." When she got in the car and he saw us, me and my grandfather with our brown selves, "Oh, no lady. You can't go there." This was in Mississippi, and this were things that I declare was just terrifying. Terrifying.	30:59
Alfreda Swan Wallace	Even in Tuskegee, we had— I wish you could talk to my cousin. She's in Birmingham at the time. She grew up, worked downtown in [indistinct 00:32:35]. She worked as a maid. Her name was Florence Adams. She was married too. She was married to Louis Adams, as one of his grandsons. She lives in Birmingham and she could tell you about when the Klan marched and how she worked for White people. She worked as a maid. She actually worked in the kitchen and how one of the people she worked for, the son was a member of the Ku Klux Klan, and how she had found this role and—	32:35
Stacey Scales	[indistinct 00:34:06].	33:39
Alfreda Swan Wallace	She has the most respect. She has some fascinating stories to tell.	33:39
Stacey Scales	She found the role?	33:39
Alfreda Swan Wallace	Knew that he was a Ku Klux Klan. You'd have to meet Florence. You'd have to meet her. Now that [indistinct 00:34:22], she has those stories to tell.	33:39
Stacey Scales	[indistinct 00:34:24].	33:39
Alfreda Swan Wallace	Do you have a reason to go to Birmingham? I'll be glad to —	33:39
Stacey Scales	[indistinct 00:34:29] for three weeks.	33:39
Alfreda Swan Wallace	Really?	33:39
Stacey Scales	Mm-hmm.	33:39
Alfreda Swan Wallace	You need to talk to her. Florence must be— Is she [indistinct 00:34:37]. Oh, I haven't talked to her in so many years but I have her number. [indistinct 00:34:43] I'd be glad to call because she has some very interesting stories will keep you entertained. She talked about when they had the troops here. Anybody told you about that? When they had to send the troops in here when they had the Black director of the [indistinct 00:35:10]. Anybody tell you about that?	34:53
Stacey Scales	[indistinct 00:35:07].	34:55
Alfreda Swan Wallace	Yeah, she was talking about how— That's where I learned about all of what happened and the parades that the Klan had when they were getting that Black director.	35:10
Stacey Scales	[indistinct 00:35:23].	35:21
Alfreda Swan Wallace	I'm trying to— It's vague but Florence knows where, because that's who told me the story about it and how they said what the Klan was going to do because they insisted on having a Black director out there at the hospital. That's what caused all the hullabaloo and she was fixing food [indistinct 00:36:00] how to fix the food. Florence will have to tell you about it. [indistinct 00:36:00].	35:22
Speaker 1	She had to fix food because they [indistinct 00:36:00]. You have to talk to Florence. You have to talk to her about that. She has a fabulous story and see she broke— See now, all my family were educators. Our view of it was entirely different. We had to endure, when we traveled, the Colored and the Jim Crow things. I guess the most, as a child, the thing that I can remember so vividly because everything was fine more or less when you were in Macon County. The problem came when you went outside of Macon County. That was the problem for Blacks, at least for us who lived right around the campus.	36:00
Speaker 1	But I remember my father left here in 1951 and he went and started practicing in Detroit.	36:42
Speaker 2	[indistinct 00:36:50].	36:44
Stacey Scales	[indistinct 00:36:50] on the phone.	36:44
Alfreda Swan Wallace	Yeah, she did, and she was saying how, because she worked in the kitchen, she was a domestic. Like I said, most of kids little family were all educated. She was a domestic and she worked for him. She's almost like one of those Hazel kind of maids, you know? And she was saying how they were going have him— He had to take his family down the street down to the court when the Klan was having a meeting, and she said they thought she was stupid because they were acting like she didn't know what it was. They just said, "Florence, I want you to take some food and take it down [indistinct 00:37:41]. She said, "I don't want to be sitting down there with them Ku Klux Klan." She said she wasn't going.	36:49
Alfreda Swan Wallace	So she said— She called me. She said, "I'll [indistinct 00:37:47] couldn't make it," but you have to talk to Florence. She is hilarious and tell you about it. I [indistinct 00:37:56] her number [indistinct 00:37:58] because she has some very interesting stories about it from another perspective because she was not a professional. She worked and cooked in the kitchen and took care of the baby. My aunt used to sew for them. I think—	37:28
Stacey Scales	[indistinct 00:38:19].	37:28
Alfreda Swan Wallace	No, she used to sew for a White family. She was a very talented seamstress and she used to teach me. She used to sew for her, but as I said, it is very interesting because, you see, I never felt like we were inferior. You didn't feel like that until you left this area, and if you [indistinct 00:38:43] Selma, you wondered what, "What's the matter with Black folks down here." But I didn't know until I came back exactly how bad it was because we were really kind of sheltered. We grew up in this community.	37:28
Alfreda Swan Wallace	I had friends who lived in the rural areas. I've been out to visit them and knew about outdoor toilets. I knew about people who were sharecroppers, but it doesn't really hit you because you're not living it every day. As I said, we didn't feel it till we left here—	37:28
Stacey Scales	So traveling.	37:28
Alfreda Swan Wallace	— and traveling. I was saying that the saddest part of what I can remember my father, because my father was a West Indian and the reason he left Alabama was because he could not deal with the way he had to practice medicine here. To practice medicine here in the fifties, late forties, all prior to that time, Black doctors could see their patients until they had to go to the hospital. When they had to go to the hospital, unless you went to see them, if you were Birmingham and you had to go to the hospital, you had to turn it over to a White doctor. He didn't like that.	40:15
Alfreda Swan Wallace	And so since they didn't have any hospital privileges, and there was no Black hospital, he could not stand it. He could not deal with that because he was a very proud Black West Indian, my father probably would have gotten himself killed. The only time I can ever remember my father crying, when he moved to Detroit. We would travel from here to Detroit by car and, you know, those days it was very, very difficult to travel because you couldn't stop for a hotel. It was hard to find a place to eat.	40:15
Alfreda Swan Wallace	And he stopped at a place and my sister was in the car. He stopped at a place that he thought was for Black people and he went in there and I guess he saw White people in there. I don't know what my father was thinking because it just wasn't done, but he would've been [indistinct 00:40:46] approved to get service and they said, "We'll serve y'all to go around the back, nigger," and that's the only time I can every remember my father crying. Because I guess he had to see his children had to see him forced to go around to the back.	40:39
Alfreda Swan Wallace	And he tells a story about when he was in Birmingham [indistinct 00:40:46] and he said the maid or one of the White folks he knew that worked in the White folks' house and the White folks knew him, my dad, but they called and said, "I want you to come over here and see Sally," or whoever was sick." And he went over there— They did house calls in those days. He went over to her house and he went up the front steps and the man's wife was the woman of the house standing there, and she said, "Go around to the back."	40:39
Alfreda Swan Wallace	And he said, "Excuse me?" She said, "Yeah, you have to go around to the back, come around to the back." And he said, "I'm here to see," whoever the maid was. "Yeah, go around the back." He said, "Ma'am, I wouldn't walk through the back door to get to heaven." So he proceeded to go down and at that time the man was coming and he said, "Where you going, doc? Where you going?" He said, "Well, I thought you wanted me to see whoever, Sally or whatever." He said, "And I went to the door and the lady of the house told me to go around the back," and he proceeded to tell him that he wouldn't walk through the back door to— "Oh no, document. Come on, come on, come on, come on in, come on in."	40:39
Alfreda Swan Wallace	As he walked in he said, "I walked in through the front door," beaus he wasn't going through the back door. And he's always been that kind of proud person, and so he had to leave because they'd probably end up killing my dad down here. I can remember there was a time [indistinct 00:43:12] that the Klan marched through. They didn't march [indistinct 00:43:15] but marched through on the highway. And the word always comes, you know, "Turn off the lights." All the lights are off, all the Black folks sitting in the window watching the big parade, a long—	42:52
Stacey Scales	Must be at night [indistinct 00:43:27].	43:25
Alfreda Swan Wallace	Yeah, a convoy going— But they didn't stop, they didn't stop. But my father tells the story and, again, Florence could probably tell you this story about the Klan when they marched through here and it was many, many years— This was before I was born, I believe, but when the Klan marched— Now I can remember some occasion and it's kind of confusing to me at what point this happened because I can remember that we got word, we got a call that the Klan was marching through Tuskegee. I haven't had any older people that can set the time for this, but they were marching and in those days we had a hedge up there in our front yard and I can remember the word coming that the Klan was marching through Tuskegee, and the word just goes, "You [indistinct 00:44:31] they're marching."	43:26
Alfreda Swan Wallace	And I can remember them telling us to turn off all the lights and my grandfather going and getting his double barrelled shotgun and going out there behind those hedges, and I imagine that most other Black folks got their shotguns in Macon County through Tuskegee and the Klan march, they did not stop. And now Florence probably can tell you about that. Now I thought I remembered in my days, but maybe it was that somebody told me how it was because everybody I talk to said that the last time they did that was way back in— Was the time before I was born. See we didn't have— I can still remember how we didn't have paved sidewalks right up there on campus, near the campus. But I can remember those hedges and I remember him being behind them, but I don't know whether it's fixed or whether I heard the story so many times that perhaps that's maybe got me mixed up because I could just remember this double barrel shotgun, and they did not stop.	44:32
Stacey Scales	[indistinct 00:45:50].	45:38
Alfreda Swan Wallace	I don't recall any lynchings or hearing about any lynchings in Macon County. I don't recall, I don't recall any. I'm sure that there probably were, but I don't recall. I don't remember any talk of lynchings that occurred in Macon County. Now in other places now though. but I don't recall any mentions that were talked about or people we knew about when I was growing up.	45:55
Stacey Scales	[indistinct 00:46:30].	46:24
Alfreda Swan Wallace	[indistinct 00:46:31]—	46:24

Alfreda Swan Wallace	—my math teacher in 7th and 8th grade, and I grew up with Sammy. Well, he was a little bit younger than I was, but we all kind of grew up in the same area. I saw Sammy all the time. We played together.	0:00
Alfreda Swan Wallace	But when he died, the time when he died, I was in Tuskegee at that time. See, I didn't go to school at Tuskegee. I went to school at Howard. So I was either away at Howard or I had finished Howard, because I'm trying to remember what year. Was it in '60? Well, I finished Howard in '63 and I was in Louisiana. I was— Yeah. Because when John Kennedy was assassinated, I was at Baton Rouge at Howard at that time. It's the strangest thing because you know who was walking me home when we got the word that President Kennedy had been assassinated? H. Rap Brown.	0:16
Stacey Scales	Oh, yeah?	1:09
Alfreda Swan Wallace	The thing is so funny because I didn't know at that time that he was all this. I didn't call him Rap, I didn't know his name was Rap until I saw him in Jet magazine. Because I was always called him Hubert.	1:24
Stacey Scales	Oh, yeah?	1:28
Alfreda Swan Wallace	Mm-hmm. I didn't know that he was— His brother and I had gone to school together at Howard. When I went there, I looked him up because he told me, "Yeah, my brother's down there." He was the quietest guy, so under— so I just— When I saw the H. Rap Brown and all this, I couldn't believe it, that this guy we had talked together many times. I was with Hubert, as I recall, I know it was at Southern, and I couldn't believe it when I read that he was involved in all this violence, couldn't believe it. What else you want to talk about?	1:36
Stacey Scales	What was your first job?	2:12
Alfreda Swan Wallace	When I finished Howard, my first job I worked as a proofreader and editor at Baton Rouge. Because when I finished Howard, I went to Southern University and I worked at Southern, first independently as a proofreader of a newspaper, Black newspaper, there. Then, I worked as a secretary. I finished in Early Childhood, Child Development, really. Then I started working on my Master's and I worked as a secretary in the Chemistry Department at Southern.	2:22
Stacey Scales	Did you [indistinct 00:03:06] while you were growing up here, [indistinct 00:03:06]?	3:05
Alfreda Swan Wallace	Oh, you mean before— during that time? Well, my grandfather had a store and I used to work and then kind of clerk in the store for folks, dealing change. That was the first job I ever had. Then another job, I babysat, but that's all— Then I worked at Lerner Shops in the DC while I was in school.	3:05
Stacey Scales	Did you encounter any racism when you were [indistinct 00:03:35]?	3:34
Alfreda Swan Wallace	Well, it's kind of funny because I guess I was kind of naïve, I really didn't see it as racism. Most of the people who [indistinct 00:03:44] were all White and they would just push you out of the way, you're trying to get to a customer. But I always thought that it was because they were getting extra money on commission that they would do that to you, not just because you were Black. A racism that I encountered on a job, the first job after college, I mean, after I left Southern, was in California. I didn't really feel—	3:34
Alfreda Swan Wallace	I guess it was kind of bred in you that you had to better than the White person and you know that you're going to encounter it, just like you know you encounter it today, but you could drive yourself really, really crazy if you just, "It's because I'm Black." We were always taught that there was always the Ralph Bunche syndrome. Did you ever hear about this? They would make an exception for one. It doesn't help the people or it doesn't help the masses of Black, but Whites always were making exception on one or two, as long as they weren't scared.	4:25
Speaker 1	[indistinct 00:05:07].	5:04

Item Info

Title:

Alfreda Wallace interview recording, 1994 July 19

Date:

July 19, 1994

Creator:

Wallace, Alfreda Swan

Contributor:

Scales, Mausiki Stacey

Description:

Name: Alfreda Swan Wallace; Date of Birth: 1930-07-06; Place of Birth: Tuskegee, AL; Occupation(s): social worker; clerical; Residence: Tuskegee, AL
Informant ID: 693; Interviewed by: Stacey Scales.

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Language:

English

Digital Collection:

Behind the Veil

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

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

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CC BY-NC 4.0

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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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e1c04bc8-3825-4ec6-92f5-b3d61d82232a
behindtheveil
dc1b9e06-741c-4aee-8052-4b32bb0a19f7
ark:/87924/r4dn4b526
dc1b9e06-741c-4aee-8052-4b32bb0a19f7

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Alfreda Wallace interview recording, 1994 July 19

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1. Alfreda Wallace administrative file, 1994

John Hope Franklin Research Center

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Alfreda Wallace interview recording, 1994 July 19

Transcript

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John Hope Franklin Research Center

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