Larry Henderson interview recording, 1994 June 11

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Larry Henderson	Should I stand?	0:08
Stacey Scales	We'll get a shot of that.	0:09
Larry Henderson	Yeah. Might have even had a Masonic Template over at—	0:12
Stacey Scales	Who owned it?	0:18
Larry Henderson	I don't know who the owner is at this time?	0:19
Stacey Scales	Do you want to do the writing thing? Do you want me to write it down or—	0:21
Tywanna Whorley	Yeah, that's fine.	0:27
Stacey Scales	Okay.	0:27
Stacey Scales	So this is the first — So this was what now?	0:27
Larry Henderson	It was a funeral home at one time, and possible Masonic Template.	0:37
Stacey Scales	Black-owned, right?	0:50
Larry Henderson	Right, mm-hmm.	0:51
Stacey Scales	Do you know who owned it?	0:56
Larry Henderson	No, it's just always been called Jackie Boys, probably for about 50 years.	0:58
Stacey Scales	Is it possible you could get closer, like where this grass is?	1:06
Larry Henderson	On the other side of it?	1:08
Stacey Scales	I could walk out there. I'll do it.	1:08
Tywanna Whorley	Do it right here?	1:08
Stacey Scales	Yeah.	1:08
Tywanna Whorley	That used to be a funeral home?	1:08
Larry Henderson	Yeah.	1:08
Tywanna Whorley	Before it became a barber shop?	1:08
Larry Henderson	Yeah, mm-hmm.	1:08
Tywanna Whorley	You don't remember the name of it, do you?	1:08
Larry Henderson	It might've been Blevin's. I'm not sure.	1:08
Stacey Scales	All right. Jackie Boys?	1:08
Stacey Scales	The Black Races.	1:08
Larry Henderson	Mm-hmm. It's a—	1:08
Stacey Scales	It's a gang?	1:08
Larry Henderson	No, as a matter of fact it's some kind of mental guy that goes around writing a lot of graffiti.	2:10
Stacey Scales	Oh yeah?	2:14
Larry Henderson	It seems like it's reverse graffiti or something.	2:15
Speaker 4	Hey, should I take y'all's picture?	2:17
Larry Henderson	Just the building, Booker. You don't know how old that building is, do you? Everything's all right.	2:20
Stacey Scales	Yeah. That the barber?	2:24
Larry Henderson	Shoeshine. Probably the owner.	2:35
Stacey Scales	Oh, okay.	2:36
Tywanna Whorley	Want [indistinct 00:02:40] here chicken?	2:36
Larry Henderson	Mm-mm.	2:36
Stacey Scales	They going to call [indistinct 00:02:42]?	2:36
Larry Henderson	No, no, I know them all. He know me. Once he saw who it was—	2:46
Stacey Scales	What about that building there?	2:53
Larry Henderson	Yeah. This is Carolina Avenue. What he's talking about, it was an old hotel, The Southern Queen.	2:55
Stacey Scales	That's Black-owned?	3:02
Larry Henderson	It used to be.	3:02
Stacey Scales	Oh yeah?	3:02
Larry Henderson	I think it was in the Bradford family.	3:02
Stacey Scales	Maybe I can get right here at this corner. Anybody behind you?	3:02
Larry Henderson	No. Not out of the way, but —	3:02
Stacey Scales	It's still— You could still see the words "Southern Queen" on the front of it.	3:03
Tywanna Whorley	Southern Queen Hotel?	3:30
Larry Henderson	Mm-hmm. My uncle would be the contact person on that. Actually it's in his family, I think.	3:44
Tywanna Whorley	Are they going to do anything? It's just run down?	3:56
Larry Henderson	Mm-hmm. You know how limited their money is for that kind of stuff. They be fixing more in the downtown area before they would just get a building on the outskirts like this.	4:10
Stacey Scales	I got two shots of that one, so that's one, two, and three. So that was an old hangout, huh?	4:24
Larry Henderson	Just a little hotel, business hotel, you know? And people lived there by the week and month and stuff, too, at one point.	4:37
Tywanna Whorley	So what would this be? Like a Black-predominant area of Birmingham? The south?	5:15
Larry Henderson	Hmm. It's mixed. It wouldn't ever be predominant. It's just this is what they call the south side of town, just on this south side of those tracks there.	5:24
Stacey Scales	Oh, yeah?	5:31
Larry Henderson	Yeah.	5:31
Larry Henderson	This is Carolina Avenue, what the mayor was telling you all about. You don't have any more of those brochures on you, do you? I was going to pass that guy one, what was looking for.	5:41
Stacey Scales	What brochure?	5:55
Larry Henderson	I think everything's back at the car.	5:56
Stacey Scales	The guy who came out of the store?	6:02
Larry Henderson	Mm-hmm, just to satisfy his mind, that's all.	6:04
Stacey Scales	Okay.	6:04
Tywanna Whorley	He has been—	6:04
Stacey Scales	Hmm, this is a Masonic Temple, or it used to be.	6:04
Larry Henderson	Yeah, it is. Still is.	6:04
Stacey Scales	So this whole area right here?	6:20
Larry Henderson	Yeah, yeah, that's what— I think this is the area the mayor was talking about, what used to predominant. Black cafés, Silver Moon Café right there. Barbershops. Cab stands.	6:24
Tywanna Whorley	You going straight down the line?	6:39
Stacey Scales	Yeah, I'm going to just kind of take like a distance view of here. What's that say? The Moon Café?	7:05
Larry Henderson	Silver Moon.	7:05
Stacey Scales	Hmm. So that was a club or something?	7:05
Larry Henderson	Yeah, café, restaurant, all that.	7:12
Stacey Scales	Okay.	7:12
Larry Henderson	Sold meals to the plant workers.	7:25
Tywanna Whorley	Is that new there, the A.D. Grant Grocery Shop, is that old?	7:28
Larry Henderson	That's not — No, it's not old at all. Relatively new. I don't know what used to be in it.	7:40
Stacey Scales	I took three of these. One of that whole row, one of the Moon Café, Silver Moon. That's closed, huh?	7:44
Larry Henderson	Yeah.	7:44
Stacey Scales	You got it.	7:44
Stacey Scales	A club?	7:44
Larry Henderson	No.	7:44
Stacey Scales	Something Birmingham.	7:44
Larry Henderson	Owl?	7:44
Stacey Scales	Yeah.	7:44
Larry Henderson	What about it?	7:44
Stacey Scales	Owl's Club. It was popular during the '30s and things. Mr. Lowe was telling me something about it. He never got into detail, but—	9:07
Larry Henderson	Yeah, Ms. Monroe would know about it.	9:10
Larry Henderson	I was telling her, they sell a few drinks in that place. That's the reason that guy was so nervous, you know?	9:24
Stacey Scales	Really?	9:29
Larry Henderson	Mm-hmm.	9:29
Stacey Scales	They were like bootlegging?	9:45
Larry Henderson	Yeah, exactly.	9:45
Stacey Scales	Ms. Monroe bootlegged, she said.	9:45
Larry Henderson	Mm-hmm. Yeah, it was illegal.	9:49
Larry Henderson	This is Cook's Cleaners. It's—	9:49
Stacey Scales	Oh yeah—	9:50
Larry Henderson	That sign where it say "Since 1923."	9:55
Tywanna Whorley	Oh.	9:57
Stacey Scales	Yeah.	9:57
Tywanna Whorley	Black-owned?	9:57
Larry Henderson	Yeah.	10:00
Stacey Scales	All right.	10:01
Larry Henderson	Mr. Joe Cook, and his son is a Supreme Court judge, Ralph Cook. Alabama Supreme Court judge.	10:02
Stacey Scales	We should have taken a picture of it. In front of—	10:11
Larry Henderson	Well, that's okay. I can give you better angle. I ain't going to put you— I ain't going to make you uncomfortable.	10:18
Stacey Scales	Maybe we could just back up and I could like—	10:23
Tywanna Whorley	Hey, there's a [indistinct 00:10:29].	10:23
Larry Henderson	I'll come around where you can just take your picture from the window.	10:33
Stacey Scales	1923, that's that's allright.	10:35
Larry Henderson	Mm-hmm.	10:36
Stacey Scales	Could be historical.	10:36
Larry Henderson	Mm-hmm.	10:59
Stacey Scales	I don't think she was too thrilled about us coming to find that picture again.	10:59
Larry Henderson	Naw, they just not comfortable.	11:06
Stacey Scales	So most of the Black businesses was over this way. None of them was like down here in the south side—	11:18
Larry Henderson	Well, on both sides of the track, you know?	11:23
Stacey Scales	Okay.	11:23
Larry Henderson	Yeah, it's all part.	11:23
Stacey Scales	[indistinct 00:11:33] this way.	11:23
Larry Henderson	Mm-hmm.	11:23
Stacey Scales	All right, let me get ready. I want to make sure I get that 1923, too.	11:23
Larry Henderson	Mm-hmm.	11:23
Stacey Scales	[indistinct 00:12:08].	11:23
Tywanna Whorley	[indistinct 00:12:34]?	11:23
Stacey Scales	I'm trying to see what my aperture [indistinct 00:12:38]. I'm taking it now.	11:23
Tywanna Whorley	Wait, what?	11:23
Stacey Scales	This thing over here, in the numbers.	11:23
Tywanna Whorley	Oh.	11:23
Stacey Scales	Want some sunglasses?	11:23
Larry Henderson	No thank you.	11:23
Stacey Scales	All right.	11:23
Larry Henderson	This is an old Black drug store, Union Drug Store.	13:13
Larry Henderson	It was about the same time, right on the corner. I'll bring you— Yeah, I'll bring you back around to it.	13:16
Stacey Scales	McGill Insurance Agency.	13:23
Larry Henderson	Yeah, I don't remember what was in there, but all this was a Black block.	13:24
Stacey Scales	Really?	13:29
Larry Henderson	Even more of it here, yeah a lot of it coming down with barber shops and taxi cab stands. We'll come around. And that was the one in the newspaper article we talked about, The New Deal—	13:29
Stacey Scales	Just where that guy is?	13:40
Larry Henderson	New Deal Café or something.	13:41
Stacey Scales	This is what really brought us out here. We were looking for the Black business district.	13:43
Larry Henderson	Mm-hmm.	14:03
Stacey Scales	So just right there?	14:17
Larry Henderson	Yeah, this is the row of buildings—	14:18
Stacey Scales	Oh, this over here?	14:21
Larry Henderson	Yeah, that's just where the Mayor's Barber Shop. You'll see the signs saying 20th Century Barber Shop. I'm not sure when that building was built, but it was probably the mid-'20s, early '30s.	14:21
Tywanna Whorley	So they had First and Twentieth, Twentieth, and then First Avenue? All of—	14:46
Larry Henderson	Yeah, First Avenue was mainly the Black businesses, and then, along Twentieth Street and also Carolina Avenue. Mm-hmm.	14:53
Stacey Scales	All right.	15:01
Larry Henderson	That's a Black tailoring shop over there on that side, but I don't know exactly how old it is. It's probably been going on a long time, though.	15:12
Stacey Scales	I mean, this store is called Town's Ego Shop.	15:35
Larry Henderson	Mm-hmm. Named properly for the owner.	15:37
Larry Henderson	I wish that had been open. He's got a lot of original stuff in there, but that was the Black movie theater and—	15:50
Stacey Scales	Right here?	15:56
Larry Henderson	Uh-huh, barber shop.	15:56
Stacey Scales	Said it earlier.	15:56
Larry Henderson	Uh-huh. Mainly owned by Italians, but patronized by Blacks.	16:02
Tywanna Whorley	Do you know the name?	16:16
Larry Henderson	Little Lincoln Theater.	16:17
Larry Henderson	This would be owned by an Italian guy, Mr. Toni LaSalle. I guess you'd spell it just like LaSalle.	16:18
Tywanna Whorley	What's this boarded up here?	16:40
Larry Henderson	It's a tailoring shop, just in the office part of it. [INTERRUPTION 00:17:20]	16:52
Stacey Scales	I can kind of tell we're here, in Birmingham. The south side is separated from the east side—	17:22
Larry Henderson	Mm-hmm.	17:27
Stacey Scales	— by First.	17:27
Larry Henderson	Yeah.	17:27
Stacey Scales	There's another one of those spots, Royale's—	17:29
Larry Henderson	Yeah. Now, that's the printing business I was telling you about.	17:32
Stacey Scales	Really? Royale's is?	17:32
Larry Henderson	No, yeah, yeah, the guy that owned the printing business, he died out, and his wife died, and I guess he was renting it to this place, but I know they had an old 1920-something printing press in there that was real heavy. They could never get it out of there. You know, probably got it out since, but a couple of churches been in there.	17:36
Stacey Scales	I don't know if I want to take a picture of this place.	17:56
Larry Henderson	Why you say that? 'Cause it's falling or just 'cause of the nature?	17:58
Stacey Scales	Juju, but—	18:01
Larry Henderson	Uh-huh.	18:03
Stacey Scales	If you back up, I can take it from here.	18:04
Larry Henderson	Yeah, you got more juice than they got money. (laughs) Yeah, because if you stop and believe for a minute about that candle and forget about the higher power—	18:05
Stacey Scales	Yeah, I burn candles myself, but I don't know if it's for the same reasons they do.	18:05
Larry Henderson	Who knows, who cares?	18:05
Tywanna Whorley	Now, you say it used to be an old printing—	18:07
Larry Henderson	Model Printing, uh-huh, owned by Mr. Brown. I want to say Normany Brown, but that doesn't sound — Like, I think that's somebody over in Birmingham.	18:26
Tywanna Whorley	In the '20s?	18:34
Larry Henderson	Yeah, '20s, '30s, Model Printing. But that's who printed up a lot—	18:39
Stacey Scales	[indistinct 00:18:43] a bird.	18:41
Larry Henderson	Printed a lot of placards and posters and stuff like that.	18:41
Stacey Scales	Oh. She wanted to know why I was taking a picture. You want to tell her?	18:41
Larry Henderson	You can tell her. I don't have to. I just had to deal with that bootlegger back there, say she ain't going to hurt nobody.	18:41
Stacey Scales	Might put a hex on you.	18:41
Larry Henderson	Nah, you can tell her if you want. Just go in there.	18:41
Stacey Scales	I'll go, yeah.	18:41
Larry Henderson	I can tell you want to go. You just saying to say you want to go.	18:41
Larry Henderson	Perhaps I need some cameras or something.	18:41
Tywanna Whorley	That's strange, being on that this would be all the way over here.	18:41
Larry Henderson	Well, it probably had other businesses mixed in between and then this more less a thoroughfare, you know? See, because what you're actually talking about is, back in the '20s and '30s, you had Blacks, Whites, and Italians all living close together. See, like where my father grew up, he had Italians for his neighbors and Greeks or Irishmen in his backyard, see? So it wasn't so much where it wasn't—	19:49
Stacey Scales	Where my brochures?	20:27
Larry Henderson	Yeah, y'all going to have put me on the payroll next. I'm passing out more brochures than y'all are.	20:34
Stacey Scales	She know where she can keep—	20:43
Tywanna Whorley	A Kit-Kat?	20:43
Larry Henderson	You need to see if that printing machine in there—	20:46
Stacey Scales	What?	20:48
Larry Henderson	—where we go on, get it.	20:48
Tywanna Whorley	—any need for a Kit-Kat bar? I have to tell her, "No, we don't have that."	20:49
Larry Henderson	Tell her I'll drop her one back off, you know?	20:58
Stacey Scales	All right.	21:00
Larry Henderson	I've got an extra one.	21:00
Stacey Scales	Do you think she might know you?	21:03
Larry Henderson	No, I doubt it.	21:05
Stacey Scales	Oh.	21:06
Larry Henderson	She's new. I'm not.	21:08
Larry Henderson	Mm-hmm.	21:33
Larry Henderson	See, y'all'll be gone, and then people'll be saying, "Yeah, Larry Henderson was taking some folks around taking pictures."	21:35
Stacey Scales	Well—	21:41
Larry Henderson	And I'll say—	21:41
Stacey Scales	Yeah, well, people are saying they want a personal item of yours.	21:41
Larry Henderson	Who cares?	21:48
Larry Henderson	Well, see, just like we having fun and y'all been riding around, having fun, that's the same way when I was up in South Carolina with those guys. You know, you drive about 700 miles with a person, you kind of get to know him.	21:48
Larry Henderson	Hmm?	22:19
Tywanna Whorley	[indistinct 00:22:24].	22:19
Larry Henderson	I know.	22:19
Tywanna Whorley	[indistinct 00:22:24].	22:19
Larry Henderson	Mm-hmm, and that's just all — That's what I put on the U-Haul in South Carolina. I probably did the same here in South Alabama with them.	22:24
Stacey Scales	I went in there and said, "You probably wondering why I took a picture." She said, "You damn right."	22:41
Larry Henderson	Naw, not that little girl.	22:44
Stacey Scales	That was a woman.	22:46
Larry Henderson	Was it?	22:47
Stacey Scales	Yeah.	22:47
Larry Henderson	I guess they know ain't nobody buying no roots, so they got to blame it on someone. But they messing with the right somebody if they looking for trouble. I'm mad and broke, too. (laughs) That girl come out there—	22:54

Item Info

Title:

Larry Henderson interview recording, 1994 June 11

Date:

July 11, 1994

Creator:

Henderson, Larry

Contributor:

Description:

Name: Larry Henderson; Date of birth: unknown; Place of birth: unknown; Occupation(s): unknown; Residence: Bessemer, AL
Informant ID: 744; Interviewed by: Tywanna Whorley and Stacey Scales.

Location:

Format:

Language:

English

Digital Collection:

Behind the Veil

Source Collection:

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

Series:

Related Resources:

See below

Provenance:

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

Rights:

Limited Re-Use

CC BY-NC 4.0

Rights Note:

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

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