Clarita Reed interview recording, 1994 June 24

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Clarita MacDonald Reed	Since I have to live with these people. What you want to know?	0:01
Michele Mitchell	Well, let me just start saying that, this—Let me see if it's picking up. Okay, I think it's picking up. It's Thursday, June 24th, 1994. And this is—	0:06
Clarita MacDonald Reed	This is Friday.	0:16
Michele Mitchell	Oh, it's Friday. It's Friday June 24th, 1994. And this is an interview with Mrs. Clarita Reed. And first of all, if you could spell both of your names and state when you were born and where you were born.	0:17
Clarita MacDonald Reed	I got to tell my birthday?	0:29
Michele Mitchell	Yeah.	0:31
Clarita MacDonald Reed	All right. C-L-A-R-I-T-A R-E-E-D, I was born in New Orleans, October 5th, 1922. And that's in my house, because you couldn't go to the hospitals then.	0:32
Michele Mitchell	Did your mother have a midwife?	0:49
Clarita MacDonald Reed	No, a regular doctor came from Touro Infirmary.	0:51
Michele Mitchell	Really?	0:54
Clarita MacDonald Reed	But you just couldn't go in there. You could use their clinic, but you couldn't—We only had one hospital that would take us. And that was Frank Goodwins, which is now a nursing home—Senior citizen apartment run by the Catholic nuns. But that was it. So if you didn't go there, you didn't go.	0:54
Michele Mitchell	Well, wasn't there—Some people have mentioned something called Charity Hospital.	1:11
Clarita MacDonald Reed	Yeah.	1:14
Michele Mitchell	Now what was that?	1:15
Clarita MacDonald Reed	That's a big place down there in Tulane Avenue. It wasn't quite that big and it's just what it is, Charity Hospital. But if you had any kind of income—	1:16
Michele Mitchell	You couldn't go there?	1:26
Clarita MacDonald Reed	No, you still can't, supposedly. But a lot of people would lie and go because you always got good service. And if you're really in an accident or something, the best trauma center in the country.	1:26
Michele Mitchell	Really?	1:37
Clarita MacDonald Reed	Mm-hmm. They send people down here to study the trauma center at the Tulane—I mean Charity.	1:37
Michele Mitchell	Charity.	1:43
Clarita MacDonald Reed	They get so much experience, you hear the news every morning.	1:44
Michele Mitchell	But I've never heard of them. I haven't heard anybody mention Touro Infirmary.	1:50
Clarita MacDonald Reed	That's the Jewish hospital across town.	1:55
Michele Mitchell	Where?	1:58
Clarita MacDonald Reed	It's over there on Prytania Street. But the Black hospital was—Oh my heavens, I pass it every day. But it's now a nursing home and it carries the same name. [indistinct 00:02:17], this is terrible, I can't remember that hospital. The only thing I remember is Touro, which now takes us. But we had one Black hospital and it came under Dillard. Yeah 'cause Dillard has this nursing school and it was run and operated by Dillard. Yeah.	1:59
Michele Mitchell	And so where was the house that you grew up in?	2:36
Clarita MacDonald Reed	Uptown Upperline Street.	2:39
Michele Mitchell	Upperline Street?	2:40
Clarita MacDonald Reed	No, that's where I was born. I grew up in the house I'm living in right now. It's my sisters and my brother were born in that house.	2:42
Michele Mitchell	And where's the house that you live in now?	2:50
Clarita MacDonald Reed	It's over here in Mid City.	2:52
Michele Mitchell	Mid city?	2:53
Clarita MacDonald Reed	Not too far from here.	2:53
Michele Mitchell	What ward is that?	2:55
Clarita MacDonald Reed	14th I think.	2:58
Michele Mitchell	14th?	2:59
Clarita MacDonald Reed	Mm-hmm.	2:59
Michele Mitchell	And if you could just start off talking a little bit about your childhood and what sort of things that you did and where you went to school.	3:05
Clarita MacDonald Reed	Oh, I went to Catholic schools and just did the normal things. We took music lessons, we went to school. We were a close-knit family, and that's about it. We just grew up together. And my father always had someone take us to school until we went to high school. And it became difficult for him to arrange different hours, different people, different schools. But basically that was it, nothing unusual. And we came over here to Xavier, except one sister went to Southern in Baton Rouge, she was tired of nuns. But otherwise there was nothing uneventful about it as far as home life. Very Catholic. Very, very, very, very, very, very Catholic.	3:09
Michele Mitchell	And what do you mean by that?	3:53
Clarita MacDonald Reed	Just Catholic. Typical stereotyped Catholic family.	3:55
Michele Mitchell	But which schools in particular did you go to? 'Cause I know there are lots of ones here—	4:00
Clarita MacDonald Reed	Blessed Sacrament, Xavier Prep and Xavier University. All run by the sisters, the Blessed Sacrament.	4:03
Michele Mitchell	Did you take any courses that were Louisiana history? Do they have any courses on Black history whatsoever?	4:17
Clarita MacDonald Reed	When we came to college, there was one man, Dr. Hamilton, who taught a course in Black history, but that was it. I'm sure we took Louisiana history, every states part of their own history, but I don't recall it.	4:24
Michele Mitchell	So it wasn't anything like [indistinct 00:04:40]—	4:39
Clarita MacDonald Reed	No. Oh no, because it was probably, the same old stuff you were reading in the newspaper and crooked politicians and that kind of thing. But it's was nothing about it that would me say, oh my word, I'll remember this the rest of my life. Nothing.	4:40
Michele Mitchell	Nothing? So not that big of an impression?	4:57
Clarita MacDonald Reed	No. No way. Uh-huh.	4:58
Michele Mitchell	But what sort of—I mean, did you go play in any parks or?	5:02
Clarita MacDonald Reed	Well, no you couldn't go play in any parks.	5:06
Michele Mitchell	Could you elaborate a little bit more?	5:09
Clarita MacDonald Reed	Well, you could go to the zoo, but you couldn't sit down on the benches. No one's told you this before?	5:10
Michele Mitchell	This is the Audubon Zoo?	5:17
Clarita MacDonald Reed	Yeah. No one's told you this? Well, you couldn't sit down on the benches. Adolf should've told you that. And his grandmother raised a lot of fuss, all them park. But the city park, you could ride through but you couldn't stop. So we had these gorgeous parks, but they were definitely off limits. Because my mother once took Adolf and it's the closest—Well, the closest in age cousin Gwenny to the zoo. And she wanted them to ride the horses or something and this man told her they couldn't. And take your picture on the little pony and she—You should meet my mother, now that's where you should go. He didn't tell you to go see his grandmother?	5:18
Michele Mitchell	He did, but I wanted to talk to you first.	5:59
Clarita MacDonald Reed	Oh. But he said I'll tell my sister to tell her you're coming.	6:00
Michele Mitchell	Yeah.	6:06
Clarita MacDonald Reed	But the man told her, you can't ride. They can't ride. And of course she says their fathers risk their lives fighting to make this country free for you. And I be damned they're going to ride or you going to pick me up off this ground. And well, my brother-in-law had been a prisoner, he was in that Air Force from Tuskegee, was shot down over Germany and spent some time in prison camp. And she told him he had been a prisoner and all of this, the usual, she'll tell you how she operates, but it came, he let them ride, 'cause he didn't want a scene.	6:06
Michele Mitchell	Really?	6:45
Clarita MacDonald Reed	Yeah. But you couldn't sit on the benches even if you were going to pass out, you better pass out on that grass, not on the bench. I guess they told you about the seating on the buses?	6:45
Michele Mitchell	Some, but everybody tells me slightly different things about that. And no one's—People talked about buses, but not necessarily the street cars.	6:58
Clarita MacDonald Reed	Well, we had more street cars and buses, for one thing. Buses is kind of new invention. We had street cars, now they're trying to go back to these street cars again. So back with city, Silas would explain the politics of the city to you, but you had this little screen, you move it back and forth. My sister-in-law, if she can find it, still has one. She took—	7:06
Michele Mitchell	Really?	7:27
Clarita MacDonald Reed	Yeah, she came here to school from Alexandria. But she has one, it's about this and like that. And it just moved it up and on it, it had the color patrons on and you sat behind that. And when it got crowded, you just kept moving it. And then they move, move, move, it's one of those kinds of things. A lot of times the streetcar, motorman or the conductor didn't know what you were, so they get embarrassed a lot of times. They said, a lady is sitting behind the screen goes to sit in front and she'll say, I'm Colored. And he'd get all red-faced and going back to mind his business.	7:28
Clarita MacDonald Reed	But basically, you have a lot of stores you could go into all of them, one store you couldn't try on hats. Another store you couldn't try on dresses. They had separate drinking fountains. There were no restrooms. And even I found out, oh, long after I was married and Adolf was born, they even had separate dressing rooms. It just because I went into the store to buy an overcoat and I wanted to try it on. And they took me to a dressing room and then the maid was in there and she was going in another dressing room with a lady. And then I realized they're two separate even places for you to change and try on clothes.	8:05
Michele Mitchell	Was that in most stores?	8:47
Clarita MacDonald Reed	Well the big ones.	8:48
Michele Mitchell	The big ones.	8:48
Clarita MacDonald Reed	Some of these cheap stores. But like Gacho's and Kreegers and Gus Mayer's, those people, Mayer's they had that and just a lot of them, you just couldn't try them on at all. You just have to buy it like that. And definitely with a hat, they would not let you try it on. And I don't care if you went there in a deal or dress, you still didn't try on.	8:49
Michele Mitchell	Oh. So where did most people do their shopping then? I mean, was this—	9:12
Clarita MacDonald Reed	Right there, yeah. Where else were you going to go? Well, a lot of people, the Creoles are very talented seamstress. So a lot of people had clothes made and you just—Well Krauss you could always go in and try on a hat and try on a dress. But Krauss is a nice store, but it isn't Saks. Course Saks [indistinct 00:09:36] Saks either. But you could always go the Krauss and buy a hat. And you had your little learners in middle in those places who were very glad for your business, so you could try on. But basically that's what it was. You never knew where you were welcome, where you weren't.	9:16
Michele Mitchell	So I mean, when you say that, does that mean that it sort of changed over the years or it would just be up to the individual establishment?	9:55
Clarita MacDonald Reed	Well, the establishment along with the city laws, remember the city had laws and laws and laws and laws that protected all these kinds of things. But there were so many places like restaurants and those kind of places. And dime store lunch counters had two in Woolworths Kress and those places we call dime stores, and there were two, the White lunch counter and the Black lunch counter.	10:06
Michele Mitchell	And the Black lunch counter will be in the back or downstairs.	10:34
Clarita MacDonald Reed	This is on that side, we don't have downstairs. You'll get water, but over here would be one and over here would be the other one, up front and behind. Just wherever they could fit them in.	10:37
Michele Mitchell	See, a lot of people told me that there were just no lunch counters at all for Black folks.	10:47
Clarita MacDonald Reed	Yeah, there were lunch counters, Woolworths and those places had them, there weren't that choicey, but they had them. And we had our own restaurants, of course.	10:50
Michele Mitchell	Which restaurants did your family like to go to?	11:00
Clarita MacDonald Reed	My father did not eat out, not even friends' houses. I guess Adolf to his father, his grandfather was from Cuba. So he didn't eat out. He believed everything took place in your home. But most of them used to be up on Louisiana Avenue across from Holy Ghost Church, there's a post office here. And used to be, well there's a still little restaurant there. Hayes Chicken Shack, and that's where most of the young people went, had the best fried chicken in the world.	11:02
Michele Mitchell	Hayes?	11:32
Clarita MacDonald Reed	H A Y E S.	11:33
Michele Mitchell	And this was on Louisiana Avenue?	11:33
Clarita MacDonald Reed	Mm-hmm. Louisiana and Daniel. And finally during the war when all these military men were here, he built another bigger place. There were other places, but they were all off limits. So we just didn't go there. But there were places downtown 'cause Adolf's favorite place, Mulé's was in operation.	11:34
Michele Mitchell	How do you spell that?	12:00
Clarita MacDonald Reed	M U L E with the accent on the E.	12:00
Michele Mitchell	Mulé, okay.	12:03
Clarita MacDonald Reed	He goes every time he comes here, he still hangs out in there. But that was strictly in Creole town. But he loves that place. Like he loves Johnny Adams, he finds him every time he's in town. And Johnny Adams was born and grew up in the same neighborhood with me.	12:05
Michele Mitchell	For real?	12:24
Clarita MacDonald Reed	But Adolf loves to say, but he was on the wrong side of the track. When I said I don't remember him, he said he's on the wrong side of the track. But my neighborhood is interesting, it's like a dead end. We have the New Orleans Country Club here. The [indistinct 00:12:45] line here, Hunter Train expressway here. And it comes around, it's one way in and one way out. So the police say we're pretty safe, I don't know. Used to be a very interesting neighborhood, it was predominantly White. The White Catholic Church and the White Catholic school, but after World War II it changed. And now it is predominantly Black. There's a pocket of very wealthy Whites in there next to the country club. Then there are some Blacks. Like this woman, Olga I told you to call, she lives right across the street from the country club golf course. It's a real mixed economic neighborhood.	12:24
Michele Mitchell	That sounds—	13:23
Clarita MacDonald Reed	And they have changed the school name, I just heard from Judah P. Benjamin to Mary McLeod Bethune.	13:23
Michele Mitchell	They just did that?	13:31
Clarita MacDonald Reed	Yes, it will be announced when school opens in the fall.	13:32
Michele Mitchell	Judy P. Benjamin?	13:35
Clarita MacDonald Reed	Mm-hmm, Judah. Oh yeah, they know the old general. And they've changed it to Mary. They're changing a lot of these schools, the McDonogh's schools and a lot of them giving them Black hero names.	13:36
Michele Mitchell	I read some newsletter were, it was saying that a lot of the public schools and a lot of the schools around the city were named for people who were racist.	13:51
Clarita MacDonald Reed	Of course. Well this was a White school. This was a White public school.	13:58
Michele Mitchell	Oh, okay.	14:03
Clarita MacDonald Reed	And because the neighborhoods predominantly White and they have nice little marble mantle pieces in it, the most beautiful little built-in cabinets. I guess they're still existing over there, 'cause I haven't been in there in four or five years. And there's a fireplace in one classroom. There was a difference in the schools. And that's why we went to Catholic school. It was a little bit better education, educational system. And at least we had to buy books, but at least you had up-to-date books. Whereas in the public schools you got them after the White students got new ones. But basically that's New Orleans.	14:04
Michele Mitchell	Now, see that, I'd like you to talk a little bit more about what it was like to grow up in that neighborhood, 'cause if it was predominantly White then, I mean it must have been sort of interesting growing up in the neighborhood and just being around—	14:42
Clarita MacDonald Reed	Well, in times of trouble and in the light, it was just very friendly. Well, people were White and you knew you were Black but a Colored, whatever we were during those days. But still in awe, there was a corporation. And you played with the children. He spoke, but of course he went to different schools. And once they became teenagers, we became teenagers, your life goes different directions of course. But basically these were little middle management Whites and a little manager in the light company and the gas company and the telephone company, those kind of people. I guess you would call them, they called themselves middle class. So little single houses and those little double house, they had mother-in-law on one side and they were on the other side. That kind of thing.	14:53
Clarita MacDonald Reed	But you got along and we used to have a policeman, John that walked the beat. They used to have policeman for each neighborhood. Each neighborhood had a policeman. John was definitely poor White trash. And he got hooked up with a lady that was poor White trash in the neighborhood. And that gave us something all to talk about. And it was predominantly Catholic neighborhood. B, of course, the church we belonged to, we had to go past three other Catholic churches to get there.	15:40
Michele Mitchell	Could you explain a little bit about that?	16:13
Clarita MacDonald Reed	Well, I mean, what is there to explain? The churches were segregated.	16:14
Michele Mitchell	No, but see, people are telling me different things. Some people are telling me that you could go into a church until the priest would tell you that you couldn't go there anymore and would suggest another church.	16:18
Clarita MacDonald Reed	Well you would have to sit in the back and you would have to go—Confession, you have to go behind everybody, communion you go behind everybody. But you got buried and you got married in what was called your parish church. And mine was past where the [indistinct 00:16:40] live, that was near the river.	16:27
Michele Mitchell	That's a little ways.	16:43
Clarita MacDonald Reed	Yeah, because we passed the church that's now in my neighborhood that is predominantly Black. We passing in Connie Word, we pass Mandela Rosa, might be another one stuck in there somewhere to get to St. Joan of Arc.	16:44
Michele Mitchell	St. Joan of Arc is where you went?	16:57
Clarita MacDonald Reed	Yeah, that's where we were supposed to go. And if you want—	16:59
Michele Mitchell	Holy Ghost?	17:03
Clarita MacDonald Reed	Huh? Holy Ghost is on Louisiana Avenue, we got a lot of Black churches here. Black Catholic churches here. The largest Black Catholic Church in the country is downtown there in Creole town, Corpus Christi with the Josephite priest.	17:03
Michele Mitchell	But St. Joan of Arc was totally—	17:24
Clarita MacDonald Reed	Was our parish church, yeah. But everybody in this area, on the other side of Carrollton, because these people on this side of Carrollton went to St. Monica's, which is still in existence, it's right there by the big project.	17:26
Michele Mitchell	Yeah. And the gentleman would tell me about St. Monica's yesterday.	17:40
Clarita MacDonald Reed	Yeah. They've got a beautiful gospel choir. Yeah, they got a nice priest that's a pastor now. Used to be over there where my neighborhood, Monsignor Rashad, he's very nice. Very, very nice. Thinks he can sing. But basically that's what it was. Each church had his own school, run by the nuns, Black or White. And that's where you went. You paid tuition, you bought books, you took music lessons. And you were friends with your parents' friends children. That was it, the twain didn't mix.	17:42
Michele Mitchell	What did your parents do?	18:23
Clarita MacDonald Reed	My father managed the building supply place. The only Black in the area who took that. My mother worked for an exclusive men's tailoring shop.	18:25
Michele Mitchell	Was this downtown?	18:36
Clarita MacDonald Reed	She was downtown, yeah. And none of us learned how to sew. Well I think my younger sister sews a little bit because she made everything.	18:38
Michele Mitchell	And what did your parents parents like tell you about—Did they comment a lot about segregation or did they just not really—	18:51
Clarita MacDonald Reed	My mother, which you will find out when you meet her, she'll tell you all about it. She will love to tell you about it. But the thing about it, you had to sit upstairs in the movies, you never knew when somebody was going to insult you. But the thing that kept me worried was with my brother out, he went out, all you have to do is just look at one of those little women. And they would say, he touched me. He said something to me. And you were in trouble. You didn't have to say anything. You didn't have to do anything. You were always—I know, I was always desperately afraid of that. And that's why my father would never let us go into small towns, never. Because you always had that danger if you were a Black male, your life wasn't worth a dime. Because all they had to do was just say he touched me. And these policemen would half beat you to death.	18:59
Clarita MacDonald Reed	So I was getting a ticket to go to Atlanta once from Delta Air Lines. I ran into one of my students downtown and you had to go to what's now the Fairmont, but was a Roosevelt hotel. So this student said, "Where you going Ms. Reed?" I said, "I'm going pick up my ticket inside the Fairmont." So he said, "Oh, why you going to walk all the way around instead of going through the Verone Street entrance?" I said, "I don't like going through that." He said, "It's a beautiful lobby." So I said, "Okay, I'll go through you." As we were going through, he said, "See, ain't it beautiful?" I said, "No." I said, "Because every time I walk through here—" So I don't like the old hotels because every time you walk through, I'd say nothing. That old, dirty, homeless White man, I just passed on the street, come in here and get a room. He's better than I am. And still is. Still is. And I was never welcomed in there. So now I don't want to be welcomed in there now.	20:02
Clarita MacDonald Reed	But those are the kind of things you'd see ignorant, poor, dirty, loud, wrong, but they were still better than you. In the scheme of things. And a Black male wasn't safe. And a Black woman could get insulted at any time.	21:00
Michele Mitchell	In any way, I'm sure.	21:18
Clarita MacDonald Reed	That's right. And you just didn't have any recourse. So most of the times, most people kept their daughters sheltered and tried to keep their sons in. But these people that paint these gorgeous, beautiful pictures, home life was wonderful, interesting. You always take your parents to protect you. And basically we had a good life, because we never had to worry about anything. Father was never out of a job, he had a semi white collar job. We had a lot of close friends. My sister still has a lot of them because she's never left town. But you always had that fear. You were always Black, Colored, nigger, whatever, Negro.	21:19
Michele Mitchell	Negro, yeah.	21:58
Clarita MacDonald Reed	And or a Negress. And you were always bad, and particularly if you had a young Black male in the family. And then a lot of the young men, they didn't have jobs because if he didn't carry a mail that taught school, there was nothing else for you to do. There were any number of college graduates who were bank clerks—Or not clerks, bank messengers and that kind of thing.	22:02
Michele Mitchell	Messengers?	22:24
Clarita MacDonald Reed	Messengers, that kind of thing. If you did that, you just didn't have any. I show my students all the time this thing on the Pullman Porters, miles of smiles and years of tears and trying to let them see just what life was like. Because the social leaders were the Pullman porters and the teachers. That was the society then. Because Black doctors and lawyers and dentists didn't make any money until after World War II.	22:24
Michele Mitchell	Not even serving within the community? Because people didn't have—	22:58
Clarita MacDonald Reed	Well you didn't have much hospitals to go to. Black Good Rochester Black Hospital. $3, they'd come to your house. But if you're going to have to be operated on, they would've to go get a White surgeon to come to Frank Goodwins to operate on you. And people just didn't have the money and who are you going to sue? So after World War II, things got a little bit better. As far as professionals were concerned, but there were any number of professional men working on the railroad. If they were going to support their families, they had to. That's why they were always so well-spoken and so well-dressed.	23:01
Clarita MacDonald Reed	At the end of that video, I always ask my students, what impressed you the most? What did you really notice? And the thing that I always look at, at the end, when the old men are stepping off this old Pullman car, those shoes. Those shoes were so shiny and the pants were just cut and fit just so—But all those people were college graduates or three fourths of them. But there was nothing else to do. That was the profession. Those were your social leaders. Those are the people in these carnival clubs and what have you. But it wasn't easy. You just got hardened to it, you always expected an insult, regardless.	23:43
Michele Mitchell	Daily.	24:29
Clarita MacDonald Reed	Oh, of course. Anybody tells you differently they lying because it was. And a Black man just didn't stand—A Black boy just didn't stand a chance. And you walked past someplace and it had been broken in, they were going to say, you did it. It's almost that bad again now though.	24:30
Michele Mitchell	Yeah, it is.	24:54
Clarita MacDonald Reed	With the way we killing it going on here. But basically that's what growing up in New Orleans was.	24:55
Michele Mitchell	And then you said that things got slightly better after the war?	25:02
Clarita MacDonald Reed	Well, as far as Black males getting jobs and then gradually Martin Luther came along and not even a little bit [indistinct 00:25:14]. But there's still places that do not want you in there. And I'm very quick to turn mine and go out because like I say, in New Orleans, I don't stand in line for food and I don't get insulted for food, 'cause there's too many restaurants and too many places who would gladly have you. And if I walk in the store and you're going to follow me around, I'll leave it. There are a lot of stores too. And there's still mail order, you can order through the mail. I don't.	25:04
Michele Mitchell	So a lot of people would order through the mail instead of going to stores?	25:44
Clarita MacDonald Reed	Oh sure. You would have to. Well they used to run excursion trains to Chicago or to New York. The famous one was always to Chicago. Every now and then in the summer, they'd run them to Los Angeles. People would shop there. They said very cheap excursions going to Chicago look like every other week in the summer. And most people would go to Chicago to shop and for their entertainment. And we used to have some horrible Black hotels here where Black entertainers would stay, bedbugs and [indistinct 00:26:17], whatever else. But they had no other alternative that, or live with Black families. Because when Hazel Scott came here to play for the Zeta sorority, she lived with my godmother who was lived across the street from me. And I saw Adam Clayton Powell every day, walking around the block.	25:46
Michele Mitchell	Oh, that's when they were still married?	26:35
Clarita MacDonald Reed	Yeah, that's before they'd had the baby. And he walk around the block. Every day he took his exercise walking around the block.	26:37
Michele Mitchell	That must've been something.	26:44
Clarita MacDonald Reed	Oh yeah, just a look at him, good-looking man. And everybody on the street, White and Black, because the neighborhood was still mixed, more mix than it is now. They were looking and say, who is that man? Course his coming did not make the front page of the paper, it was somewhere buried on the inside of the paper. He was here. But people that came, if families didn't take him in then, because what opera singer was that? Went down with a plane into Lake Pontchartrain that they never gotten up? Who just given a concert here, a Black man, tenor. Can't remember his name because I was living in New York then, he lived with a private family. He came here to give a concert with some sorority, or fraternity, or what have you. Or one of the two colleges still at Xavier. Basically that was life in New Orleans.	26:45
Michele Mitchell	Now by the time you were in college at Xavier, this was around 40?	27:38
Clarita MacDonald Reed	40, yeah, 41. I came out in three years.	27:45
Michele Mitchell	Really?	27:48
Clarita MacDonald Reed	Yeah. There were no males in school, so you came out. Because one Sunday, they took about one or two train loads. They emptied these schools, Dillard, Xavier, Southern Baton Rouge, the Army.	27:52
Michele Mitchell	Just emptied it out?	28:06
Clarita MacDonald Reed	Of males, drafted them all. There was one male left in my class and he had his draft road office in Springfield, Ohio. And his father worked for somebody and they gave him an extension till he graduated. And there was another male who was an older man who was coming back to get his degree. He was a teacher because you could go to the normal and teach and you eventually demanded a degree.	28:08
Michele Mitchell	So just across the board, Black men could expect to be drafted and just—	28:34
Clarita MacDonald Reed	Oh yeah.	28:40
Michele Mitchell	Go on out?	28:40
Clarita MacDonald Reed	Mm-hmm. And then many of them who were doctors, lawyers, and Indian chiefs wound up in charge of latrines loading and unloading ships. And the interesting thing was, when the camp here out on the lakefront, they had German prisoners and they were better than the Black soldiers. They could use the offices club.	28:41
Michele Mitchell	The German—Wait.	29:05
Clarita MacDonald Reed	The German prisoners were better than the Black American soldiers.	29:06
Michele Mitchell	And this was on the camp on the lake or on the river?	29:16
Clarita MacDonald Reed	On the lake. On the lake where UNO is now. That used to be a great big army camp. They were better. And with the Italian prisoners, they were made part of the Italian community. The Italians in this community could come get them in a big truck and take them to dances and things. Now the German prisoners worked in the offices club and that kind of thing, but they were better. They had many more concessions than the Black American soldiers had. I can't think of anybody who's around here now who was stationed out there. Because most of those—And most of them were college graduates or men so close to graduating from college who were drafted. There were doctors, lawyers, teachers, a couple of college professors from Chicago.	29:16
Michele Mitchell	That's outrageous.	30:10
Clarita MacDonald Reed	I know. But that's America. That's America. That's why I said one day America's going to pay for a whole lot of things. I just hope I'm not here when they start paying. We got to pay. Look what they did to Indians. And it's just a continual thing. And they say, God blesses us. One day. One day.	30:11
Michele Mitchell	Oh, that's outrageous.	30:40
Clarita MacDonald Reed	I know, but that's a fact of life. That's a fact of life.	30:42
Michele Mitchell	Did you stay in the area after you graduated college?	30:49
Clarita MacDonald Reed	I went to Atlanta to social work school, then I got married, then I got out of the area.	30:53
Michele Mitchell	So what year did you go to Atlanta?	30:59
Clarita MacDonald Reed	Oh Lord, what year. August, 44, 45 something like that. Because I married in 46 at the end of the war. And Adolf was born 47.	31:00
Michele Mitchell	Did you notice any big differences between Atlanta and New Orleans or more of the same?	31:10
Clarita MacDonald Reed	Well, in Atlanta I've been used to, you could go in and out of these stores, couldn't try on, or you could go to—Well most of the time you went to a White doctor because he had all the equipment, the medicine and everything else. But in Atlanta, the first thing they told us was we loved to be service to you. But over there on Hunter Road, which is now Martin Luther King Boulevard, you have a bank, you have doctors, you have this, you have that. They were very nice to steer you back over there to that side. And they always—The first question that Atlanta people would ask you, "Now, what did your father do?" That was the first time I'd ever experienced that.	31:23
Clarita MacDonald Reed	So I told my roommate, who was an older person, she said, "What'd you tell them?" I said, "I told him he was a garbage man." So she said, "What?" And I said, "I told him he was a garbage man." So she said, "How'd you do that?" I said, "They're so stupid. They didn't realize picking up garbage was too good in New Orleans. The garbage men were all White."	32:08
Michele Mitchell	For real?	32:31
Clarita MacDonald Reed	And they used to be this open garbage pickup wagons pulled by mules. So there he's sitting, two of them sitting behind the mules stinking and in front of the garbage stinking. It was too good. It was too good for us. That's yours isn't it? The garbage wagon was too good. And who wanted to ride on the stinky garbage truck? But after World War II, we got Black garbage men. Of course, some of them make more money than teachers. 'Cause if they do two shifts and about one o'clock, a lot of them are finished. Yeah. But even the garbage men were White. Nobody told you we had White garbage men?	32:33
Michele Mitchell	No, nobody.	33:19
Clarita MacDonald Reed	Yeah, we had White garbage men. Yes, we had White ones. Well, I didn't have to be worried anymore, I never got invited to anything because I had a father that was a garbage man.	33:19
Michele Mitchell	Oh, that's wonderful.	33:38
Clarita MacDonald Reed	Well that's how you handle things. That's how you handle them. Sometimes somebody will say, "What is Adolf doing?" I said, "I don't know. He didn't go to jail 'cause nobody called me last name." But they go with that.	33:40
Michele Mitchell	And you just let them believe it?	33:56
Clarita MacDonald Reed	They're stupid enough to believe it? Yeah, let them believe it. Gives them something to talk about. Give them something real nice to talk about.	33:58
Michele Mitchell	So you met Mr. Reed in Atlanta?	34:11
Clarita MacDonald Reed	Uh-huh in New Orleans. He was one of these educated folks. There was loading ships here during World War II.	34:14
Michele Mitchell	Oh, down at the dock?	34:20
Clarita MacDonald Reed	Well wherever they had these army ships that they was—	34:21
Michele Mitchell	Okay.	34:23
Clarita MacDonald Reed	Yeah, they army ships. And that's what Blacks did, even though he was in the second wave at D-Day, they were there to unload ships that landed on Normandy. They didn't take them into really service until they got almost into Paris and the war was going so badly. And the White soldiers started complaining that they were losing their lives and Blacks were sitting back there enjoying life. Well they did because Adolf's father used to always say he really hated it when they started raising that sand, because they would be sitting back there behind the lines, very safe, enjoying themselves. In the ballrooms and the what of Europe. But the young White soldiers started complaining.	34:24
Michele Mitchell	Because they were dying off.	35:05
Clarita MacDonald Reed	Mm-hmm. Now we were there living it up, 'cause that Red Ball Express was Black drivers, the movie made it White, but those were Blacks. 'Cause a lot of them were trained here in New Orleans. And if you go back and dig in history, you'll find out it's the truth. Because they were the maintenance people for the army until the Germans almost whipped them back to England. Then they decided to put these—And of course they said that the NAACP kept agitating to put Blacks on the front line. And a lot of people wanted to kill Walter White and Wilkins about that too. A lot of those soldiers. But basically that's what it was like.	35:06
Clarita MacDonald Reed	If you didn't have a sense of humor, you'd die or you'd lose your mind. And a lot of my high school classmates just became White and moved out in Metairie. There are a lot of Whites out there in Metairie with Black roots. The women who raised the most fuss with the integration of schools were people who had probably gone to Savior Prep for McDonogh 35, that was the public school to go to. I had moved out to Metairie to become White.	35:51
Michele Mitchell	Well—	36:19
Clarita MacDonald Reed	That's always your worst enemy. There's always someone who's been you once.	36:20
Michele Mitchell	The people out in—	36:27
Clarita MacDonald Reed	A lot, not all. Yeah, a lot who are out there, yes.	36:28
Michele Mitchell	Out there?	36:31
Clarita MacDonald Reed	But I don't mean the rich ones. I mean the little ordinary ones, yeah. They went out to California and became White. An awful lot of people out there from Louisiana.	36:32
Michele Mitchell	Oh see I was asking somebody why California? Just because it was on the west coast?	36:47
Clarita MacDonald Reed	Well they went out there for wartime jobs and they just stayed. And then others just went behind them, family members and what have you. And the question is, why would you pass for White out there?	36:51
Michele Mitchell	Yeah, very much so.	37:03
Clarita MacDonald Reed	There was never been a logical answer to that. I guess they just wanted to be White.	37:05
Michele Mitchell	But that must have, I mean—	37:13
Clarita MacDonald Reed	Well they always lived in fear that somebody would discover them, particularly they here. And embarrass them. Well I saw a couple of my classmates, but I said, that's the way they want to live, live. Yeah. What would it do for me to say, well hi Shirley? Forget it. Because if you would meet your neighbors downtown, you'll stop and say hi or something like that. But with them, they were so obvious, turn their heads. But basically that was New Orleans. I don't see how anyone who grew up anywhere in the south who could not have a lot of anger. [indistinct 00:38:02] that they had Black males in their family because you always lived in mortal fear. I know I did. I never slept till my brother came home. My father never went nowhere but to work and home. He made meals at home three times a day. But my brother was always out and he died a month ago, but he was always out. It was young people and because he was the youngest and he just worried until he came and knocked on my window to let him in.	37:15
Clarita MacDonald Reed	So my parents wouldn't know he was coming in that route. But you worried constantly. Constantly. Because you never knew what would happen. They'd get angry because you dressed better or you had something they wanted and they would just lie. And the lies stuck. There was no changing the lie. It was just a fact of life. And there's still towns like that. That's why I hate it when Adolf drives home.	38:33
Michele Mitchell	Yeah, Because he—	39:04
Clarita MacDonald Reed	I prefer him to fly.	39:05
Michele Mitchell	A lot.	39:06
Clarita MacDonald Reed	Too much. And of course he got all these speeding tickets so he can't very well drive home now because they got him in driving school. But I worry about that. I worry when he and Therese used to come from Atlanta all the time like that.	39:07
Michele Mitchell	Even on the interstate?	39:20
Clarita MacDonald Reed	Oh yes.	39:24
Michele Mitchell	I was nervous driving down here.	39:25
Clarita MacDonald Reed	You were right to be nervous. You were right. When you hit the south because these policemen have basically the same mentality, they haven't left the 19th century yet. They haven't made it to the 20th century. They're still back there. And don't you know they hate seeing Blacks? Silas and I were laughing one day. I said, you know when David Duke ran and he had all these stupid people listening to him, these niggers taking your jobs, these niggers doing this. And I told Silas and I told my students, I said, "All right, you a CPA, this man was digging ditches until the machine came along. How in the world do you have his job? But David Duke has him psyched up to believe you got his job." I said, "If he lived to be 2000 years old, he's not going to keep anybody's books because he can't keep his own. He can barely read and write." But they firmly believe we have gotten their jobs.	39:26
Michele Mitchell	But how? I mean when you look at the economic conditions of most Black folks here, Black folks, anywhere, that's ludicrous.	40:28
Clarita MacDonald Reed	But look at them. You have you been digging ditches or walking in the field somewhere behind a mule? 'Cause they have a lot of Whites who did that too. And how do we have their jobs? How you going to keep somebody's books? How you going to operate on somebody's brain? Just cause you what? Well, he had them believing that. And they believe, they got our jobs and the jobs that they would've had the Vietnamese have taken. They don't mind pulling weeds. We don't pull weeds anymore. Maybe we need to, but we don't. But there's still a lot of that around.	40:34
Clarita MacDonald Reed	I remember once in Arkansas, they did a series of Chicago's papers did years ago, Blacks who migrated from Arkansas to Chicago and Whites who migrated. And they did it over a 10-year study. And they found that after five or six years or maybe 10, you didn't know where those Blacks came from. They may have come and all lived together and struggled. But they have lost their accents. They had lost their customs. 'Cause most of them came out of the fields, 'cause that's about all I can saw here is cotton fields, soybean fields. Of course now they're raising catfish farming. But all that was gone.	41:12
Clarita MacDonald Reed	Their children were in school, they moved out to the suburban areas. They were owning homes and cars. No way anywhere you point them out and say, oh that person went to—Was on the farm, a sharecropper. You couldn't tell it. And somebody used to work here said a sugar shack. She told me she was raised in a sugar shack. But the Whites 10, years later, 15 years later, were still the same. They were still chewing tobacco, they were still spitting it, they were still playing the guitar. And they all lived in one area. They didn't go to school and their children didn't go to school. And they were still sitting there blaming them nigras. They never going to get nowhere when they've got the David Dukes of the world to keep them unsettled. But that's growing up here.	41:53
Michele Mitchell	I mean everything you said, I mean sometimes we go and we tell people that we're studying the Jim Crow South, it ended it. And people look at us like we're crazy—	42:45
Clarita MacDonald Reed	No it's not. It has not ended. It's subtle. It's gone underground. It's different. It's very different. It's very different. And Adolf's father once told some [indistinct 00:43:05] who he grew up with, very wealthy, wealthy family. See his father was about the only—There was only two Blacks in the town [indistinct 00:43:12]. And him and the veterinarian and everything in that little town is AL Read. So we were very close with this White, the Trulock family, you always had one good Black friend. But they were talking one day and [indistinct 00:43:31] segregation, integration, whatever had come to Arkansas. And he said the only thing you could do is take some of the doctors, the lawyers, and the university professors, let them join the country club and said, then you sit back. He said, because they'll keep the rest of us in line. And that's true, they'll keep us down there because they don't want us to be like them.	42:53
Clarita MacDonald Reed	I mean, everybody wants to have somebody to step on. I tell my students, you're standing on somebody else's shoulders, you also—Some of us are stepping on others to stay up there. And that's true, the more I thought about what that nut said, the more I believed it. Yeah, that is true. They would've fought to keep the ordinary, what they called ordinary, quote, unquote Black out of there. Out of these clubs, they want to be very exclusive and very special. And that's what's being Black means. It's schizoid. It's a schizophrenia.	43:52
Michele Mitchell	It is.	44:34
Clarita MacDonald Reed	And every time I'm downtown, like yesterday when I was going getting red hair, I looked at some of them and I don't know why it does that to me, I really need to get away. I was telling my Korean child this morning when he called to see how I was feeling, I said, "I got to get away from here for a while." As I walked down the street, I look at him, I said, "Now she's better than I am, in this scheme of things." And I'm nice and clean. I own a house. I'm a college professor, but she's better than I am.	44:34
Michele Mitchell	Just the carriage.	45:06
Clarita MacDonald Reed	No, she's homeless, but she's White.	45:08
Michele Mitchell	But she's White.	45:09
Clarita MacDonald Reed	She's White. She's welcomed in 10 times more places than I, even now.	45:11
Michele Mitchell	Homeless? Even now?	45:17
Clarita MacDonald Reed	Even now. There are a lot of places. As subtle as it is, it's there. And I spend a lot of time at Asians, I guess Adolf told you. And so I get a double dose because they don't want the Asians either. And this Korean family that I have—Oh, he told you I was supposed to go to Korea?	45:18
Michele Mitchell	Mm-hmm.	45:46
Clarita MacDonald Reed	Yeah, I don't know about that one. I talked to them the other day, "Grandma, when you coming?" [indistinct 00:45:52]. But like Lee always tells me, he says, "I'm dirt in this country." He says, "When they look at me, they see a poor Vietnamese. A poor Chinaman. And I'm nothing."	45:47
Clarita MacDonald Reed	Let me see if that woman is downstairs.	46:14

Item Info

Title:

Clarita Reed interview recording, 1994 June 24

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https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r4st7s60b

Date:

June 24, 1994

Creator:

Reed, Clarita MacDonald

Contributor:

Mitchell, Michele

Description:

Name: Clarita MacDonald Reed; Date of birth: 1922-10-05; Place of birth: New Orleans, LA; Occupation(s): educator; college professor; Residence: New Orleans, LA
Informant ID: 584; Interviewed by: Michelle Mitchell.

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RL00170-CS-1251
444ec42d-32fe-4d09-a46d-6376289ebcf4
behindtheveil
f372e6a2-68fb-4781-be38-7c0d09d06bab
ark:/87924/r4st7s60b
f372e6a2-68fb-4781-be38-7c0d09d06bab

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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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Clarita Reed interview recording, 1994 June 24

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1. Clarita Reed administrative file, 1994

John Hope Franklin Research Center

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