Ada Ateman (primary interviewee) and Henrene Ateman Jenkins interview recording, 1995 June 20, 1995 June 20

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Laurie Green	For the purposes of the tape, so the transcriber could tell you two apart, would you each state our full name and date of birth, please?	0:06
Ada M. Ateman	Not the year.	0:15
Laurie Green	Okay, that's fine. (laughs)	0:16
Ada M. Ateman	My name is Ada M. Ateman, A-T-E-M-A-N. My birth date is April 5th, 1916. That tells it all.	0:19
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	Oh, you decided to give it to 'em. Listen, did you put our middle initial there?	0:32
Laurie Green	Yes, ma'am.	0:36
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	All right. Now that's all you want?	0:37
Laurie Green	Mm-hmm.	0:38
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	Okay. Now my name is Mrs. Henrene A. Jenkins, H-E-N-R-E-N-E, middle initial A, Jenkins.	0:41
Laurie Green	Okay.	1:03
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	Now what else did you want?	1:04
Ada M. Ateman	Birth date.	1:10
Laurie Green	Date of birth.	1:10
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	Oh, I was born July the 31st, 1908.	1:10
Laurie Green	Okay. And were you each born in Memphis?	1:11
Ada M. Ateman	I was.	1:13
Laurie Green	Okay.	1:14
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	I was born in Brookhaven, Mississippi.	1:16
Laurie Green	Okay. And when did your parents come to Memphis?	1:17
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	I was five years old, so that would be 1913.	1:27
Ada M. Ateman	1913. I was born here.	1:30
Laurie Green	You were born in Memphis. And do you know why they came to Memphis?	1:36
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	Yes. My father, became a railway mail clerk. And he decided early on that he wanted to come out of Brookhaven, Mississippi and come to the big town, which is Memphis, Tennessee. It was everybody's desire to get to Memphis in those days down south.	1:40
Ada M. Ateman	Educational facilities.	2:07
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	Educational facilities. He came here and built him a home and brought his family here. He was a railway mail clerk. There weren't too many of those at that time who were Black. He used to work in a lumberyard. He married my mother in Brookhaven, Mississippi. He was born in Port Gibson, Mississippi, but when they married, he was working in a lumberyard in Port Gibson.	2:09
Ada M. Ateman	In Brookhaven.	2:43
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	I mean Brookhaven. But he knew that he would someday come out of there. He said he always loved to see that big train high balling through there. And he told the fellas where he worked. He said, "I'm going to be riding that mail car one of these days." And they just laughed at him. But it took examination, that sort of thing, and he passed and he became a railway mail clerk. But he had told them that he was going to move from the lumberyard. Someday he'd be riding that train that high tailed through Mississippi every day. So that's how he came here. He had aspirations to do better things than working in the lumberyard. He knew if he could use his brains to take an examination, he could get that job and he did. Eventually became not only the railway mail clerk—	2:44
Ada M. Ateman	Clerk in charge.	3:39
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	He became clerk in charge. And before his career was over, he had become—	3:44
Ada M. Ateman	Vice President of the National Alliance of Postal Employees.	3:53
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	Vice President of the National Alliance of Postal Employees.	3:56
Ada M. Ateman	One of the founders, Harnene.	3:59
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	One of the founders. When he retired from the railroad, then he—	4:00
Ada M. Ateman	Post office. Postal service.	4:08
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	Retired from the post office. That's right. He retired from the postal service as clerk in charge. When he did that, then they utilized his services and his knowledge. The NAPE stood for the National Alliance of Postal Employees, of which we just said he was one of the founders. Then they utilized his services after he retired—	4:11
Ada M. Ateman	A consultant, he was on there—	4:36
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	As a consultant and liaison person between Memphis and Washington, where things got done, whatever they needed done. All right. I haven't got the right word for you. Not consultants. HH Ateman, was his name.	4:36
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	So he fathered six children, three boys and three girls. It was his aim to see that every one of them went to college. He had that kind of ambition. Brought him out of Brookhaven, Mississippi lumberyard to a railway mail clerk in Memphis, Tennessee. And every one of his children went to college.	4:59
Laurie Green	Okay.	5:34
Ada M. Ateman	You have some more questions?	5:43
Laurie Green	Yes. You said he built a home here in Memphis?	5:44
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	Yes.	5:50
Laurie Green	Where was that?	5:50
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	That home was built at 820 Olympic Street. 820 Olympic Street.	5:51
Laurie Green	In what part of town?	5:57
Ada M. Ateman	Northwest. Klondike.	5:57
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	That's in the north section of Memphis in an area that's known as Klondike.	6:00
Laurie Green	Okay.	6:09
Ada M. Ateman	The house no longer stands. In that urban renewal thing that came along, they seem to have picked the houses of people who were leaders in the neighborhood to remove them. And they replaced them with little brick homes that you see now, small brick homes. But they went through the neighborhoods and that was one of the things—	6:09
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	The neighborhood's where you found—They were characterized as depressed. It was one of the finest neighborhoods in Memphis when we were children. And when we moved from there, things had deteriorated. The neighborhood had deteriorated and people no longer had the kind of aspirations to keep up their homes. We sold the place long before all this happened, and it broke our hearts to drive back through there years later and see that the government had taken that home among others, which were supposed to be some of the better homes—	6:41
Ada M. Ateman	And they were.	7:24
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	They were the better homes. And they built these little—	7:24
Ada M. Ateman	Compact brick places you see up and down. They did the same thing on Beale Street to Church Park. That's the same sort of thing that they were doing. Okay. I'm listening, sister.	7:26
Laurie Green	Okay. You said it was one of the finest neighborhoods when you were children?	7:40
Ada M. Ateman	It was.	7:46
Laurie Green	Why?	7:47
Ada M. Ateman	Well, it had a lot of good leadership. It had the first community club organized in Memphis. It was organized out there. Had a good school. They had pretty good streets and we had good civic organization.	7:47
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	And everybody owned their own home.	8:09
Ada M. Ateman	That's right.	8:13
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	That was one thing. Everybody owned their own home. It was not a rental area.	8:14
Laurie Green	People own their homes. What kinds of occupations were there?	8:24
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	Various things. In those days—	8:28
Ada M. Ateman	You didn't have too many doctors and lawyers, but you had people doing ordinary work who were frugal and—Well, you could buy a house for $500.	8:35
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	You think so?	8:49
Ada M. Ateman	I know you could. You could buy a house for $500. A little straight—What they called a shotgun. And people owned their own homes, they were frugal, they had gardens.	8:50
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	In those days, women did not work outside the home. Sure didn't. That's the funny thing. Yeah. Everybody is working now in the home, the wife and the husband. Times have changed so they have to, but in those days, most of the women were at home. The husbands were making the living such as it was.	9:08
Ada M. Ateman	And the women were raising the children. But see, families wanted less. Now everybody wants everything they see.	9:29
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	Everything everybody else had. And we lived diagonally across the street from the school, Klondike School.	9:38
Laurie Green	Is this an all Black neighborhood?	9:47
Ada M. Ateman	Yes, it was.	9:48
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	All Black. And you would not find professionals out there, not many of them. You'll find, as I said-	9:49
Ada M. Ateman	Businessmen.	10:01
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	Yeah. And you'd find letter carriers. And my father was the only railway mail clerk out there. And I don't know why, but people just—You say the word railway mail clerk, they just looked up to it and, "Oh, he's a railway mail clerk." He was the only one in that neighborhood who was, but we had letter carriers, we had contractors. Mr. Horton—	10:03
Ada M. Ateman	And we had a doctor, Dr. Miller. We had undertakers.	10:26
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	Yeah. Dr McClellan, the doctor.	10:33
Ada M. Ateman	Dr. McClellan.	10:33
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	Dr. McClellan lived in that community. So we had a good mixture, a healthy mixture. And then we had a lot of people in there. The women did not work outside the home, but they worked. You know what, quite a few of them took in washing. Washing and iron in their own home. My mother never worked for [indistinct 00:10:52]. My father supported his family, come sleep and raised all six of his children, give them a education. But my mother never knew what it was to work outside the home, take in washing, or anything like that. She was the—	10:36
Ada M. Ateman	The lady of the house.	11:07
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	Lady of the house.	11:07
Ada M. Ateman	Raising us.	11:09
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	At one time, she was the president of the Woman's Auxiliary to the railway mail clerks of the city.	11:11
Laurie Green	What kinds of things did she do at home?	11:22
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	Oh, my shirt. Can you imagine raising six children? She was a homemaker and—	11:24
Ada M. Ateman	Our home was highly organized. All the work didn't have to be done by my mother, you see. We had three brothers and there were three girls of us. And each of us had a job to do. Each of us had. So when I was two, well say three, I had to sweep the front porch, little things like that. I grew up doing little things. I had little responsibilities. Everybody had. And the washing, and people washed out in the backyard on tubs, the boys didn't—My daddy would come in off the road and the boys—Am I right? Boys would wash the clothes.	11:31
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	What about Ms. Eps? Ms. Eps washed our clothes.	12:14
Ada M. Ateman	Ms. Eps washed our clothes, but—	12:18
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	See, people didn't have washing machines then.	12:21
Ada M. Ateman	Ms. Eps was washing those things before I came along. 'Cause I don't even remember Ms. Eps. I remember y'all talking about Ms. Eps.	12:27
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	You don't remember that? But see, my father would hire people to do things to make life easy for my mother. She was—	12:32
Ada M. Ateman	Mama was very small.	12:46
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	Had for a size five shoe. She was a tiny thing. And everybody loved her. Now let's see, what else was I saying?	12:48
Ada M. Ateman	My two brothers fixed breakfast in the mornings. My mom and my two sisters cleaned the house, made up the beds, the lunches were already prepared and we'd go—When we got back home, but dinner was ready. We always ate our meals together. And then somebody had to wash dishes. Somebody had to dry dishes.	13:04
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	Yeah, Dad had it arranged so that you knew it was your time to do the dishes.	13:27
Ada M. Ateman	Everybody had a day off.	13:37
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	Sure did.	13:38
Ada M. Ateman	Everybody had a certain job to do. And you had a day off. On that day, you didn't have to do anything. He had us highly organized.	13:38
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	Organized. That's right.	13:45
Ada M. Ateman	We went to school. We all went through Klondike School. And then there was a school called Grant School. Everybody walked up there. I didn't get to go there because my mother died when I came out of the Klondike School. So my sister was going to LeMoyne then, and so she took me with her to LeMoyne. And LeMoyne then had a sixth grade, an entire grade in elementary school. They even had a kindergarten. I went in the sixth grade.	13:47
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	We never went to the public schools any longer than eighth grade.	14:28
Ada M. Ateman	Klondike.	14:31
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	He wanted us to go to LeMoyne, which was not free, but he was willing—He wanted to pay for his children to get the best kind of education they could and get the best kind of influence. And so all of us went through high school at LeMoyne, which was—It wasn't LeMoyne College then.	14:33
Ada M. Ateman	LeMoyne-Owen Institute.	14:55
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	LeMoyne-Owen Institute has gone through those various stages that take it to where it is now. LeMoyne-Owen. It was, first of all, it was LeMoyne-Owen Institute. After that, they cut out the lower grades and just focused on—	14:57
Ada M. Ateman	The high school.	15:14
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	The high school giving a good college preparatory training. And then—	15:15
Ada M. Ateman	The junior college.	15:24
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	[indistinct 00:15:25] There and finally got ambitious and put two years of college on, became LeMoyne Junior College. So those are the stages through which LeMoyne went. Finally, it became a full fledged college. By that time, it was the time enough for me. I had gone to Fisk, 'cause they had not done all these things. So I went to Fisk. I'm a graduate of Fisk and my brothers went to Morehouse.	15:25
Ada M. Ateman	And Atlanta U.	15:51
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	And Atlanta U.	15:53
Ada M. Ateman	And I'm a graduate of LeMoyne.	15:59
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	Of LeMoyne. And one of the other brothers graduate LeMoyne. I want to say this is about our home life. Mama had a lot of time for—In spite of her children, she kept up with reading in the home. We had—	16:00
Ada M. Ateman	Magazines.	16:21
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	We had magazines. We had the Woman's Home Companion. What else did we have?	16:22
Ada M. Ateman	The Delineator.	16:26
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	Delineator, another magazine, which is no longer in existence.	16:27
Ada M. Ateman	The Delineator.	16:27
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	Delineator.	16:27
Ada M. Ateman	That was it. That came before Ladies' Home Journal and things like that.	16:33
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	Yeah, that too. And my father would read to us. He would read to us. Mind you, he was not a college man. He had just gone through school. But he was full of ambition and good head on him. He would gather us around and read Julius Caesar to us. You remember Ada?	16:38
Ada M. Ateman	I remember hearing Julius Caesar before I could walk good.	17:01
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	And we had poetry books in the home. One of them was Paul Laurence Dunbar.	17:06
Ada M. Ateman	Paul Laurence Dunbar.	17:10
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	Oh. And we used to read that—	17:12
Ada M. Ateman	Just, we had just a lot of good reading material.	17:15
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	Ada would cry when you get to, what is that part in.	17:17
Ada M. Ateman	Assassinated.	17:21
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	Where he stabbed him. But you see, he would be home, he'd be away. And you see several days on his run.	17:24
Laurie Green	Right.	17:30
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	He ran. But when he was home, then he had the leisure time to do these things. And he read to us and we all came up loving good books and that kind of thing.	17:30
Ada M. Ateman	We learned. We all were taken to church.	17:42
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	Oh yeah.	17:47
Ada M. Ateman	There was no, "Are you going? Will you go?" Or "Will you be ready?" At eight o'clock in the morning? My father would—	17:48
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	Have that watch on—	17:54
Ada M. Ateman	Have his watch in his hand. That means come out.	17:56
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	Yes.	17:58
Ada M. Ateman	We would come out if we were going on the church bus. We got on that bus at eight. If not, we went down to Jackson Avenue and caught the street car and went off.	17:59
Laurie Green	Is this Metropolitan?	18:08
Ada M. Ateman	Metropolitan?	18:09
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	Metropolitan. We were living from Metropolitan, but this is what we did. And he was a deacon at Metropolitan.	18:09
Ada M. Ateman	And Sunday school superintendent.	18:19
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	Superintendent of the Sunday schools.	18:19
Ada M. Ateman	29 years.	18:20
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	That was 29.	18:20
Ada M. Ateman	29. We grew up.	18:20
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	We all grew up, and my sister and I were teachers in the Sunday school.	18:34
Ada M. Ateman	Yeah. Well I taught a while in the Sunday school, but for about 40 years I was secretary. My daddy got me out. Dad got us out our classes and put us to work in different places. He put me in as Secretary of the Children's Division. I stayed there I guess 40 years. But back to high—	18:42
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	I worked in the Young People's Division, all of my church career. And eventually they made maybe superintendent up there and the Young People's Division was on the third floor. I stayed there until I asked to retire about—	19:01
Ada M. Ateman	Two years ago.	19:22
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	Two years ago. And then church gave me a beautiful retirement affair—	19:23
Ada M. Ateman	Now—	19:29
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	Because I had been there over 20 years as a superintendent. But I had been teaching ever since I was a young woman. I was super. So I had a teaching career in the Young People's Division. And it eventuated into being the superintendent.	19:30
Ada M. Ateman	I think if there were the certain things about our home life that I think were most important, we were given home Bible training. I didn't learn, now I lay me down to sleep until I went to school. I learned to pray the Lord prayers my mother's knee. I learned to read before I went to school, I used to sit on steps and beg principal to let me come to school. I told him I could read. He told me I could come when I was five years old. I learned, we learned about God at home. We were taught. We had family devotion. We had family prayer. Dad read the Bible. So we learned about the Bible. We had good reading. We had love of each other ingrained in us. And we had music, good books and music. My father provided us with a piano. A mother and father took singing lessons, or vocal lessons. And all of us girls took piano.	19:47
Laurie Green	Who'd you take piano from?	21:05
Ada M. Ateman	Huh?	21:05
Laurie Green	Who was your—	21:05
Ada M. Ateman	Mrs. Emma Borden Jones. Mrs. Townson. Mrs. Anne Townson.	21:06
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	Mrs. Willard Townson.	21:13
Ada M. Ateman	Mrs. Willard Townson.	21:14
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	His wife or one of our early ministers. And I took from Mrs. Hooks too.	21:14
Ada M. Ateman	Did you?	21:23
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	Mr. Hooks, Ms. Jones.	21:24
Ada M. Ateman	And Mrs. Townson—	21:26
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	And Mrs. Towns.	21:27
Laurie Green	Julia Hook?	21:27
Ada M. Ateman	And I took from Mrs. Emma Borden Jones and Professor Whitaker, he was then head of the music department of LeMoyne then.	21:30
Laurie Green	Mrs. Ateman, you remember the Delineator magazine was fine [indistinct 00:21:50]?	21:48
Ada M. Ateman	They had a children. Yes. They had a children's page in there. And I'd get out on the floor. But that children's page and you take little brush and some water and you could color, you put the water on there and it would change the colors. And also we had little booklets that had poems in it. I like the one with Lead Kindly Light and Rock of Ages. And it had little pictures in them. I can see the pictures of the one just had Lead Kindly Light. And I can remember that now. And I remember the Delineator always was my favorite. I just loved it. And I know my love for reading started there, 'cause my sister, when she went to college in the high school, everything she read, I read. So everything she read, I read. You was reading it, I was reading it too. So it was a natural thing.	21:51
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	I bet you didn't read that Latin behind me.	22:56
Ada M. Ateman	No, but I took Latin. Yeah. It took me, took Latin Honor. Miss, what's her name? Graham. She's scared. I was scared of her. I couldn't.	22:58
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	She was the French teacher?	23:11
Ada M. Ateman	Yeah. But that bond, the home bond is what has sustained us all these years.	23:19
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	And another thing about LeMoyne, the reason I think Daddy wanted us to go to LeMoyne, you had Bible in LeMoyne. 'Cause that's out the question now. But that was, you had Bible and I learned some Bible there that I have never forgotten. I could recite for you.	23:28
Ada M. Ateman	And I did too.	23:47
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	I could recite for you. Yeah, Ada learned everything I did. Yeah. I could recite you the 137th Psalm if I had to because I had a teacher that inspired me. I just thought it was wonderful that she knew all this Bible and I liked the Bible. And I'm going to Sunday school every Sunday. Got that training in LeMoyne. They don't do that anymore. They don't even do it in LeMoyne now. But I'll never forget that lady, name was Ms. Wiley. You remember, Ada?	23:49
Ada M. Ateman	Yes. I too.	24:19
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	Oh, from New England, that missionary LeMoyne is a mission. If you say.	24:20
Laurie Green	That's, yes ma'am. There's something in particular that you wanted to talk about?	24:32
Ada M. Ateman	Oh, no, you go ahead and ask your questions.	24:41
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	Uh-huh, about your—	24:43
Laurie Green	Okay.	24:46
Ada M. Ateman	Our community was, at that time, everybody knew everybody else in the community. And everybody's child was every adult's responsibility. And it was required of every child by his, her parents doesn't give respect to all adults and obey all adults, which was a hard thing for a lot of us to do. But that was a requirement. That's the way that they brought up in those days. Are you hearing me?	24:48
Laurie Green	Yes ma'am.	25:26
Ada M. Ateman	All right. There was a sense of community. There was a closeness that, it was not the fear that we have now. I never had a key until I came out here in 1965. We didn't need keys. You didn't have to lock your doors did we? We didn't have to lock doors.	25:27
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	No, indeed.	25:54
Ada M. Ateman	Nobody would go into your house. You could sit out on your porch at night. I, we going to sit on house now we could sit out our porches. You could go anywhere you wanted to go anytime of day at night. And you were unafraid. First place, you knew that nobody was going to bother you. Second place, you knew everybody in the community and they knew you. That was just that. That's what the community was like. Children played together and everybody, and when I was growing up, everybody went to church. No matter what they did during the week on Sunday, everybody went to church. Everybody.	25:56
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	I don't know nobody in our community who didn't go to church on Sunday. That's right. And now people stay home and don't think anything about the sabbath.	26:38
Ada M. Ateman	Everybody.	26:46
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	In large numbers stay home, wash their cars and they got too much. We have too much now. Tell you the truth. We didn't have cars to wash and stay home and look at TV. Church was a bag.	26:47
Ada M. Ateman	It was a must.	27:00
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	Yeah. It was a must in [crosstalk 00:27:04] the church.	27:02
Ada M. Ateman	Major point. Sure did. And you didn't go and stay little while you wouldn't stay a long time, you know?	27:06
Laurie Green	How long would service last?	27:08
Ada M. Ateman	Oh, sometimes you get out at, well look, we'd get out on the first Sunday, maybe at one o'clock. But we go back there again at three o'clock for communion service. And you get out of there and after a while you're back there for BTU and night service. So Sunday was a day of worship, spent Sunday at church. Matter of fact, it didn't go anywhere at our house, if it didn't go to church.	27:12
Laurie Green	Was in there any time that you never went, that you didn't go to church?	27:42
Ada M. Ateman	If you was sick or somebody in your house was sick.	27:46
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	That was time when I didn't go back to BTU.	27:48
Ada M. Ateman	Well, I had to go around the corner to Smothers when I didn't go down there.	27:56
Laurie Green	Well, let me ask you some questions about, what did your mother and father tell you about the world outside of the community? What did they tell specifically? I mean, what about White people? About people who aren't Black?	28:02
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	Well actually they wouldn't have to tell us anything.	28:26
Ada M. Ateman	You experienced it.	28:28
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	You experienced what it meant to be Black. You knew that you did not go to restaurants where White people were. You knew that there was this line between Whites and Blacks.	28:29
Ada M. Ateman	You didn't understand it, but you knew it was there.	28:47
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	That's right.	28:49
Ada M. Ateman	It was, you experienced it subtly.	28:51
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	Yes.	28:53
Ada M. Ateman	That's the way it came to you.	28:53
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	You knew that you had to ride on the street car in the back. You knew that. That was enforced.	28:58
Ada M. Ateman	And you learned—	29:06
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	Ride on the back. And also you knew that, you couldn't try on any hats—	29:11
Ada M. Ateman	At certain—	29:13
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	Certain stores. [indistinct 00:29:18], for instance. A Black person couldn't try on a hat. 'Cause they felt that no White person would want to buy a hat that you had tried them, so you couldn't try them.	29:16
Ada M. Ateman	And when you went in the stores, you sat, remember the shoe department in Goldsmiths, Whites were here and there was row seats like this here and Whites were in this row. And Blacks were in this row. That's where you got remember those? I do. And I remember, I think the hardest thing about learning about segregation is watching what it does to—It's when you grow up watching what it does to the young children. 'Cause I can remember what it did to my nephew when he found out he wasn't supposed to sit on the [indistinct 00:30:06]. You remember that?	29:29
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	No, I don't. That's my son.	30:06
Laurie Green	What does it do to you?	30:10
Ada M. Ateman	He didn't understand it yet. It enraged him. He came on, got on the street car and sat over here on a long seat behind the driver. Oh, on this side was another long seat. And there was a little White girl sitting over there. He sat over there and—	30:12
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	While you were paying the fare I guess?	30:32
Ada M. Ateman	Yes. And I had to tell him to come on, let's go back. He wanted to sit up there. This kid was sitting over there, why couldn't he sit over there and I had to my—	30:34
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	That was so embarrassing.	30:41
Ada M. Ateman	Yes, it is hurtful to him. He was just enraged and he had to come, go back there. And this kid could sit over here, but he couldn't. And that bruised my heart. I have never forgotten.	30:43
Ada M. Ateman	Then you learn, this is the way you have to tell your children about the segregation. "You can't do this." "Why?" "You just can't. It's against the law." And they wonder about the law. They wonder why is it against the law. But we couldn't, they had signs on the street, cars, Whites here, this end for Whites, this ends for Blacks. And they could move those signs back. And as people would, Whites would get on, they'd move them back. And sometimes the Blacks didn't have but one double seat and one long seat in the back. And yeah, you stand up. White folks sitting down.	31:01
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	Yeah. That's terrible. Oh then let's talk about the zoo. We could not go to the zoo daily. That's White people. They go any day they wanted. We had one day we could go. And that day was changed. But first it was on-	31:48
Ada M. Ateman	Tuesday.	32:10
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	On Tuesday. That's when Blacks could go to the zoo. And that's when White folks would stay away because they knew nothing but Black faces out there. All right. After a while, Tuesday became a day that they wanted to do things or something. They just arbitrarily changed from Tuesday to Thursday, made Thursday the day when Black folks would go out there. This is all very humiliating. Hard for young people to understand. And some young people courted trouble, 'cause they would slip and go anyway, hoping that their mama wouldn't find out that they did. 'Cause my brother has told me about how some of them would go on a day when they said they couldn't go. All they did was just watch, you know where the—you know a policemen when you see one, you duck, that's what they did.	32:10
Ada M. Ateman	And the White people come out on the days that you were supposed to be there. 'Cause they were White. They could come out.	33:06
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	Yeah, they could come on our day if they wanted to see. They're just terrible. What about the one you all I know with your love books, did you patronize the public library?	33:12
Ada M. Ateman	The library was at LeMoyne.	33:22
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	That's—	33:22
Ada M. Ateman	That's where we got our—	33:25
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	That's where we got our love of reading.	33:26
Ada M. Ateman	Because this one wasn't open to Negroes for a long time.	33:29
Laurie Green	That's right. But there was a branch.	33:32
Ada M. Ateman	There was a branch?	33:35
Laurie Green	Near the [indistinct 00:33:38].	33:37
Ada M. Ateman	And it had a lot of information. And it burned mysteriously, yes. [indistinct 00:33:48]. But sister, are you through with that? I want to go back to when you get through.	33:41
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	Well, I just started down. Did you have more questions about that?	33:54
Laurie Green	No ma'am.	33:58
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	I wanted to mention race riots. Now, there was a man who had a store.	34:00
Ada M. Ateman	Jones.	34:16
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	Owner of—	34:16
Ada M. Ateman	Alma Jackson.	34:17
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	Alma Jackson.	34:18
Ada M. Ateman	Jones Hardware.	34:21
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	And it was Jones Hardware store. And I don't know the details, but they had a Negro lynched. They had a Negro lynched. And when my father heard that there was going to be, my mother sometimes would get out and go to town without reading her paper first. You know how you want to get out early, do your shopping and come back. And my father always had an account at Goldsmiths where his women folk could go and charge anything they needed. And she went one day and she got on there and she found out that it was all in the air that that was a race riot.	34:22
Ada M. Ateman	Go take place. Black men on the bus.	35:04
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	Yes.	35:07
Ada M. Ateman	Street car glaring at White men.	35:07
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	Yes, sir. Word they gotten out there, something's going to happen today. And when she got back home, she swore. She said she would've never put her foot in the streets again without reading the paper. And my father, because she would've known not to be in that atmosphere. Anything could have happened. It could have overtaken her. And one time, tensions were very, very high because of this hanging that was going on.	35:10
Ada M. Ateman	Lynching.	35:41
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	Lynching. That's really what it was, because of the lynching. And my father, I told you, his works railway mail clerk took him out of town and he would be out of town maybe three days on his run, then come back and have equal time at home with his family. When he left there this day, the rumors were riff, that's that there was going to be a race riot. And he told my brothers, he got a shotgun, wasn't it?	35:42
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	And he told my brothers, "When I come back, if it's taking place, I expect to find your dead bodies across the doorway." In other words, he meant, "You going to protect my mother, my wife, and my children. Nobody's going to come in and rape them." He said, "I'm expect to find your dead bodies across the doorstep defending them." It didn't come to that, they had to use it, but he certainly had prepared them. And they would've done it. They would've gone down fighting. It's just terrible to live in times like that.	36:09
Ada M. Ateman	And back to the transportation problems, I can remember a girl named Annie who was a cripple, who went to LeMoyne and she ride that Walker Avenue Streetcar. She got on that. And there was one White woman sitting about four seats back, and all the other seats in front of her were empty. And we asked her if she would move up, would she please move up? So Annie could sit down. She wouldn't move.	36:45
Ada M. Ateman	She was, that's just how low down she was. We put Annie's books beside her. Put your books down, Annie. And the woman got up and came out there she said, "I wish I had you in Mississippi, wherever she came from. You have to cut that off." That's one of the mean things about the transportation system. Then if you get on the street car, I remember one of my classmates got taken to jail for getting on the street car in front of a White woman who reached up and grabbed her and pulled her back. And the girl turned around and hit the woman and he took her to jail. And we were in the LeMoyne then.	37:22
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	Don't talk so soft.	38:06
Laurie Green	We're getting—	38:08
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	She did go to jail.	38:13
Ada M. Ateman	Yeah. They took her to jail. Took her to jail and the mama went down to pay a fine. She said, "no, I don't pay no fines for me. I stay here." And she spent that night in jail waiting for the trial the next day. And they did fine her. They didn't do anything to the White woman who attacked her. Another mean thing was that Negros were buying Cadillacs and fine cars, but they had an automobile show at the Civic Center and we were not allowed to go. And the way the Negros did was, this year, they decided, we don't buy cars, we can't go to the show. We don't buy cars. And that broke that up. But this is how much meanness there was. It's back today. But it was just acceptable then. It was a thing that White folk knew they could do. And they didn't mind doing it. Nobody reprimanded them about it. But that's the way it was.	38:14
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	Goldsmith had cornered the market as far as Negroes buying, purchasing powers concerned. That's where Negroes bought their fine clothes. They bought that everything for their family. Jay Goldsmith and Sons, you remember where they was, don't it? Right down there. And they had delicious food served at lunchtime. But no Black person could go back where they were serving and sit down and eat. If you went back there, you went a roundabout way. And I have done it to my chagrin, and ordered what you wanted and you brought it out some kind of way.	39:37
Ada M. Ateman	But they had a place back there behind those boards where you could sit down and eat.	40:25
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	But you couldn't be seen by the White folk who were eating in a regular dining area.	40:28
Ada M. Ateman	And you were paying the same price.	40:32
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	The same price. And we should have choked eating, but we just hadn't got our fill yet. But when I cut ran over, that's when people start saying, we are not going to support Goldsmith. They're going to, we going break down this bias about eating. We spend too much money. And so they started having boycotts, wouldn't shock.	40:35
Ada M. Ateman	And turning in our charge accounts, charge cards.	41:03
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	Turn in charge account cards. Yes.	41:05
Laurie Green	Do you remember exactly when that was?	41:08
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	This was during the—	41:11
Ada M. Ateman	Civil rights.	41:12
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	During the '60s.	41:13
Ada M. Ateman	In the '60s.	41:14
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	Yeah. When we got organized. Yeah. These things, our cup had just gotten to a place, it had just run over so many injustices and humiliations. And in the '60s, I never shall forget. The first sit-in was in Greenville.	41:14
Ada M. Ateman	North Carolina?	41:32
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	Was it North? All—	41:34
Laurie Green	Greensboro?	41:35
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	Green, Green.	41:36
Ada M. Ateman	Greensboro.	41:37
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	Oh. But anyway, I will never forget when the word came over the news of it, honey, so many people said, "Oh, they've gone too far. They gone too far." Now don't need to do that. Guess who one of them was? He's dead now, I can tell you, don't tell no one, don't call his name.	41:38
Ada M. Ateman	I don't know who he was.	41:59
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	The president of LeMoyne.	41:59
Ada M. Ateman	Who was that?	41:59
Laurie Green	Dr. Price?	41:59
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	Yes.	41:59
Ada M. Ateman	Yes.	41:59
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	He disapproved.	42:09
Ada M. Ateman	Oh yeah. They had to go in. They had a sit in over there for him.	42:10
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	Yes, sir. So they had to straighten him out. He's just said it had just gone too far. Ms. Ribbon thought that too. But she wasn't an educator. And then we started having organized them here. 'Cause what they did over in South Carolina, was in North Carolina.	42:13
Laurie Green	Yes ma'am.	42:32
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	Yeah. Whatever they did there, it was a marvel. As you know they started all over the south then, breaking it down by going at these counters and sitting there and knowing you weren't going to get service. You saw that in the Civil Rights Museum. They had one of those things. Knowing you wouldn't, but you going to go to jail, that's what you going to get. Why ain't you going to get fed? You going to jail. But people would fill up the counter and they would really want to go to jail, break this thing down.	42:33
Ada M. Ateman	The other things were—You know what wasn't so bad is that you were paying to be humiliated. You buying clothes, buying cars, paying to ride the bus just like everybody else. The same amounts. And you were still being humiliated. All the things that White people take for granted. You were paying for, but you weren't getting them. You were getting crushed inside. For instance, when we go to the movies, we had to go up and way up where we call the pigeon roost. Go way up in the pigeon roost, third floor of those stairs—	43:03
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	Oh, yeah. If we wanted to go to the opera bad enough, we humiliate ourselves and go up there in the pigeon roof and sit to hear the works of the famous artists.	43:39
Ada M. Ateman	Artists.	43:47
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	But we won Mr. Whitaker, Professor Whitaker. He had taken his music students, he was at LeMoyne. He would go through that humiliation because we wanted to love to see the operas. We loved them, we wanted to hear them. And we would do that.	43:48
Ada M. Ateman	We played dearly for all our experiences.	44:03
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	Yes. And then we took on the commercial appeal. That was the main paper here. We had to press something at that time. But we took commercial appeal on, because they would write the word Negro with a small N. And secondly, we had to, I think didn't boycotts—	44:03
Ada M. Ateman	Yeah. And they had ham.	44:40
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	They would not have a Mister or Mrs. Far Negro. And we broke that, broke all that down. At the same time, we humble them because money talks. And we just got together and organized, and we just drop our subscriptions. And until they could see the light.	44:43
Ada M. Ateman	In the area of education, I taught in the elementary school. And they would send us books from the White schools.	45:02
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	Yes.	45:15
Ada M. Ateman	That were just terrible. They had been written in and written over and pages were out. But these were the books that would be sent to us.	45:16
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	Black schools.	45:24
Ada M. Ateman	At the Black schools. And we never got new books. Not until people began to raise their voices. We didn't get new books. We got secondhand, thirdhand, castaway books. The White folks got the new books. And for years, from the time I began to teach until say, 20 years later, Black teachers had to make first graders, we had to prepare readiness work for our children. You had to get them ready because they were still in a backwards stance. Is that the word I want?	45:25
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	Yes.	46:17
Ada M. Ateman	And we had to make, train their ears to hear, train their eyes to look at words and configuration. Just get them ready to learn. And so we had to make materials for those children.	46:18
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	Readiness materials.	46:35
Ada M. Ateman	I made it for 20 years and the way we found out that the White teachers didn't have to do it was they made a mistake and sent some readiness tablets, booklets this tall, out there with everything already-	46:36

Ada M. Ateman	I had even bought Readiness books for my children before. I mean, when I was very new at teaching. And my supervisors would come by and see them and they'd talk to each other about, "Look here at so and so." They'd talk to each other. And I'm sure they went back and told that and bought those things for their White children. But this time, this year, Readiness Tablets were sent out by mistake to our school and they called back. We were just elated over them.	0:00
Ada M. Ateman	They called back and said, "That's a mistake, please send those books back." We had a principal that said, "Well, now why is this a mistake? Why do we have to send them back?" And I've really forgotten the outcome. But I don't think we had to send them back. I think she raised so much Cain that we were allowed to keep them. And I think that from then on every year you could order those readiness books.	0:45
Ada M. Ateman	See, they would send you a list of things to order. You could order the Readiness books but you never got them. But this is the way they would send the material out. All filthy ragged books that had been manhandled and torn up, written in. Not secondhand books, fourth hand books, that's what we got. All through the system wasn't it so, sister?	1:11
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	Yeah.	1:37
Ada M. Ateman	All through the system.	1:37
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	I taught in the high school all the years, but this was rampant down there where children needed the best of everything to get started on a good education, good learning adventure. [indistinct 00:01:58].	1:45
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	Well, that brings me to one more thing I want to tell you about the school system. I'll tell you about an incident that is, how degrading the system has been all the way through. We had supervisors, of course, Black and White. And on one occasion our superintendents at a joint, at a meeting, I don't know whether it was joint or not.	1:54
Ada M. Ateman	It was joint. Yeah.	2:33
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	It was joint? It was at a joint meeting of the teachers in the system. The superintendent made remarks and addressed his White supervisors by their titles. When he got down to the Black ones, he called them by their first name. I'll never forget Lucille, one of the best supervisors, Lucille Hansburg, that was her name. And he addressed her before all of us. And I don't think that the rest of them were there.	2:36
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	I'll never forget my principal, J. Ashton Hayes jumped to his feet when the man got through and made a little speech in which he had to say that woman's name three or four times and each time he called Miss Lucille Hansburg. And that man's face turned as red as a beet because he got the message. He knew he was being challenged about a system that was just indecent.	3:15
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	There she was. All of her teachers that she's a supervisor over. See? And we are, "Ms. Hansburg this, Ms. Hansburg that." And we just knew she was the best. And then before all of her teachers to get up and speak about her as Lucille, not even Lucille Hansburg. But honey, when Mr. Hayes got through. He jumped to his feet, as I said. And he found occasion to make some remarks right behind this superintendent in which he called her name three or four times. And the teachers and the audience just cheered.	3:44
Ada M. Ateman	Sure did. Everybody got the messages.	4:22
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	Everybody got the message. Teachers just clapped and cheered. They knew what Hayes was doing. Pretty soon that was changed too, you see. All that was hand in hand with the commercial appeal, the way they write people up. It's a Negro because there's no title in front. And that was as bad as calling a Black man, "Boy."	4:28
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	They have done that for years. But to do our people generally in that way, just subhuman, they don't deserve a title. That thing stuck in my craw, but I'll tell you the way those people cheered. Jay Ashton—	4:50
Ada M. Ateman	Yes. I'll never forget it.	5:09
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	And we didn't know whether his job would be on the line or not because they could call you in on a moments notice you know? Contract or no contract.	5:12
Ada M. Ateman	But he was Mr. Krump's boss.	5:19
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	Yeah, he was—	5:21
Ada M. Ateman	That's right.	5:21
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	Yeah. Mr. Krump was the big man. You've heard of him?	5:23
Laurie Green	Sure, sure.	5:26
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	And if he put you in—	5:26
Ada M. Ateman	Nobody got you out.	5:28
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	You'd have to come by boss Krump. So Jay Ashton Hayes knew that he was Krump's man. And he said it. I tell you, that was one of the most embarrassing things I have witnessed as a teacher. But I lived to see the day when all of that was changed. And that very same man had to refer to us by our titles.	5:31
Ada M. Ateman	And they can walk into your room and call you by your first name.	5:56
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	By your first name in front of your children. I'm glad you said that. They would. I'm Henrene. You see? And our children have to accept that. You know what that does to them? They know what's happening.	5:58
Ada M. Ateman	Yeah. This is another way they experienced it.	6:12
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	Yeah.	6:14
Laurie Green	Let me ask you about this. One of the things we want to learn about is now in the organized protest or in the civil rights movement, but responses or resistance or what have you—How people reacted before '54, before '60 in Greensboro? What were in the forties and the thirties, what kind of reactions were happening then to some of these things that you talked about? You see what I'm asking?	6:17
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	[indistinct 00:06:52]. (laughs) It wasn't anything then.	6:52
Ada M. Ateman	See and hatred's down in here. Hatred begets hatred. And it was all down in here and rage. That's what made Black men's pressure high all the time. The inner rage.	6:54
Laurie Green	Black men?	7:07
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	Oh, you just saying that now that is not true.	7:07
Ada M. Ateman	I imagine it's more pronounced in Black men because, why? A Black man watches himself, knows that he's being humiliated. But he sees all his other people, his women, his children, his sons and daughters. And he's full of rage.	7:12
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	That's getting back to peoples actions. They were not overt.	7:34
Ada M. Ateman	They were not overt.	7:38
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	No, they definitely weren't. We kept them bottled up and you didn't even use the church for a platform to talk about Mr. Charlie.	7:39
Laurie Green	Not even metropolitan?	7:52
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	Not in those, Uh-huh, no. Not before the civil rights movement was in. That's right. That's right.	7:55
Laurie Green	Was there any place where people spoke—When people—Oh, I'm sorry. Let me calm down. I guess in the homes is where people—Behind closed doors.	8:01
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	Yes.	8:13
Laurie Green	Where people voiced the discontent.	8:15
Ada M. Ateman	And it had to be behind doors. You had to talk to your children behind closed doors so that when they got out in the public, they would not be the victims of that hatred.	8:20
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	And tell them how to act because—	8:28
Ada M. Ateman	You wanted them to live—	8:30
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	Wanted them to live and you just don't go around here flaunting yourself in folks faces or doing things you know you aren't supposed to do. And you just have to live it.	8:31
Ada M. Ateman	I saw a movie somewhere where some child did a thing that his grandmother knew would get him killed and she almost beat him to death herself. But she saved his life. This is a sort of attitude that the older folk had, "You have got to do such and such a thing. You have to accept this. This is the way it is."	8:44
Laurie Green	Well why?	8:57
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	That's just the way it is.	8:58
Ada M. Ateman	That's the way it is.	9:09
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	Just the way it is. There were questions that children raised, but you tell them, "That's just the way it is."	9:09
Laurie Green	That's terrible.	9:22
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	Well, let's see if I can think of anything else in the way of response—	9:24
Ada M. Ateman	One more thing. The water fountains. White and Colored. Remember them sis?	9:26
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	Yeah. You knew about that didn't you?	9:36
Ada M. Ateman	Did you? Was that in existence?	9:37
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	Yeah, that was in existence until the '60s.	9:42
Ada M. Ateman	Yeah. I drank from both of them.	9:42
Laurie Green	You did?	9:42
Ada M. Ateman	Oh yes.	9:42
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	She was a bad girl.	9:42
Ada M. Ateman	I made it a point to drink from both of them. First I wanted to see was the water different? Did it taste different? Next one, I was just going to drink because it said White and Colored. Let's see, we touched on transportation, education, entertainment, home training, church.	9:48
Laurie Green	If the church was not an open or an explicit pulpit, what kinds of things were you being taught in church about how to make it, how to survive?	10:19
Ada M. Ateman	Well, what Christ says tells you how to survive, how to treat everybody. That's a survivor lesson. Do unto others as you would—	10:30
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	I think what she's talking about, I think we're getting to it.	10:47
Ada M. Ateman	I don't think it was addressed the way she thinks. We had community clubs in which we—Civic clubs that did more of addressing the wrongs than the church did.	10:54
Laurie Green	Tell me about some of those civic clubs.	11:08
Ada M. Ateman	Well, we had one, well everybody for a while, there were a lot of claims. Just community civic clubs where you could send a representative to downtown to make requests for what you wanted and then somebody [crosstalk 00:11:34] —huh? Some of the clubs—	11:10
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	She used to work in that area.	11:34
Ada M. Ateman	I'm about to tell her about that. You're talking about the Council of Civic Clubs?	11:36
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	Yeah. She worked in it. I mean she was with that because—But now I thought maybe you might want to name some, I can name only one because I didn't go that route after my mother died, I was more or less the mother figure in the home. But my sister has always been sort of militant in her nature. But now one of the city clubs is the Klondike Civic club where we lived. Can you name anymore?	11:41
Ada M. Ateman	Orange Mound.	12:13
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	Orange Mound Civic club.	12:14
Ada M. Ateman	South Side. That's about all I can name because I was not familiar with those areas too much. But Mr. Branch, A. A. Branch, who was a professor in Des Moines had the idea that there ought to be a council of civic clubs. A place where the community organizations could come and make plans about what their common needs, were and how to go about it. And it proved to be a powerful thing because when word got around that these folks were organized into a council on civic clubs and that they were voting together.	12:18
Ada M. Ateman	See we had voter instruction. We talked to people. We had an institute every year. And we tried to tell the members of the clubs what the needs were, what they ought to be looking forward to, what they ought to be doing and about the best way to approach it. And when it became evident that we were being a sort of cohesive body, they began to respect us downtown.	13:13
Ada M. Ateman	And we could send representatives. We learned where to send representatives. We got people to come out and talk to us. And wherever White men saw votes, he respected them. And so we got a lot of things done. It was only after the sixties that we went down. We just dispersed. Well see, the Council of Civic Clubs was a group that helped the NAACP get it's foothold in all the communities.	13:48
Ada M. Ateman	And then along comes the civil rights movement. And they were able to use the same sort of things because when we would have elections, we had places at each election center where we could tell how many people were voting, who needed to be sent for, what the outcome was. I mean, just about the percentage of people that were voting. We were right on top of them. And if there was any trouble going on, it was a command post. That's what the word was.	14:32
Ada M. Ateman	We would call a place that had been set up somewhere in the communities and get a troubleshoot out there to see. It was very, very effective until a lot of the stress and strain had been done away with because of the activities of NAACP and the Civil Rights.	15:14
Laurie Green	And so you were involved with the Klondike Club?	15:46
Ada M. Ateman	As a little girl, yes.	15:48
Laurie Green	Oh, as a little girl?	15:50
Ada M. Ateman	I was just a little, I was smaller.	15:51
Laurie Green	In the Klondike?	15:52
Ada M. Ateman	I wasn't very much involved with the Klondike—	15:52
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	What?	15:58
Ada M. Ateman	The Klondike Civic Club? No, because I was 11 or 12 then.	15:58
Laurie Green	Which club were you involved in?	16:15
Ada M. Ateman	35th Ward Civic Club. That's the Florida Street School area. That was a very active, influential club because we got lights for the school. We got sockets for the schools. Wall—No plugs in, not for all the visual aids, not for lights, anything else. And no lights. Street lights. We got street lights. We got streets fixed. Just got the community tended to, and it was a good club. And there were quite a few of them. I worked with that one because that was a place where I taught.	16:17
Laurie Green	Where did the club meet, 35th Ward?	16:58
Ada M. Ateman	Where would we meet? At the school? Right at the school.	17:02
Laurie Green	Did you ever meet at people's homes?	17:04
Ada M. Ateman	No. We met at the school because it was central. Talking about the Civic club. See it was central and people—	17:10
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	What school?	17:16
Ada M. Ateman	Florida School. And I had literacy classes.	17:26
Laurie Green	Excuse me?	17:26
Ada M. Ateman	Classes for old folk, teaching them to read. That's about all.	17:27
Laurie Green	How many years were you involved in that?	17:40
Ada M. Ateman	Oh, 15 years, 20 years. As long as I was out there. And I was there from '40 to '65. I don't think the organization was that old. Say from '50 to '65.	17:44
Laurie Green	And at that time, were you all still living in the same—Klondike?	18:05
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	We've just been here—	18:19
Ada M. Ateman	30 years.	18:21
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	30 years. My husband died.	18:21
Laurie Green	Mrs. Jenkins you said you didn't go that route, what did you mean by that?	18:29
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	I mean that I did not attend the civic club meetings, anything like that. My sister was very faithful that she and a friend of hers, they were very good workers. But I just never attended any of those. Never did. That's all, I was in favor of everything they did but I just never attend any of those meetings.	18:36
Laurie Green	What about women's clubs? Were there any women's clubs in Memphis? Some of the ones that would've been associated with the Federated Women's Clubs?	18:57
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	There was—	19:09
Ada M. Ateman	Hiawatha?	19:11
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	No, these would be—	19:12
Ada M. Ateman	You're talking about Federated clubs?	19:13
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	These, I think what you mentioned is, there are a number of social clubs, but they were not civic minded.	19:13
Laurie Green	Okay. None of them?	19:25
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	Well, some of them might have been civics, I think.	19:26
Ada M. Ateman	I can't think of one.	19:28
Laurie Green	Okay.	19:29
Ada M. Ateman	At that time, we were not actively trying to do things about the situation. We were trying to help ourselves and we were seeking, I guess, pleasure for ourselves. The only freedom we had was in our associations among ourselves.	19:36
Laurie Green	What are some of the things that you did help, that Black people were doing to help themselves or the people that you knew?	19:54
Ada M. Ateman	That's on her probably. I can tell you one thing, that was the YWCA effort.	20:13
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	I got that. I wish you [indistinct 00:20:25] wrote it down. For many years we did not have the YWCA in the Black community. But in 1941 a move was made in that direction by the establishment of a calling together of a group, a bi-racial group or interracial, that's who it was. And it was a study group to study the need of a YWCA presence in the Black community. And I was one of those members.	20:23
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	And after a year of studying, we came up with the proposal that it was definitely something that Black women and bureaus needed access to. And so in 1942 YWCA established the first branch in the Black community. It was named the—Let's see, we organized the Vance Avenue branch, which is the first branch in the Black community. And I served on that board of directors.	21:18
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	And my sister was in charge of the committee that worked with young girls. They were called Girl Reserves in those days, they don't call them that now. But anyway, she had charge of the Girl Reserve work. And as I said, I was a member of the first overall committee on the board rather. And Mrs—I forget her first name, but Mrs. M. W. Bonner, that's her husband's initials, was the first president.	22:07
Laurie Green	What was the last name again?	22:51
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	Bonner, B-O-N-N-E-R. Mrs. M. W. Bonner was the—Some of, or all of those people are gone now.	22:51
Ada M. Ateman	Can I say one thing? The way I got into that Girl Reserve leadership was they asked if I would have that group and see if there would be response from the young leaders of the Black community. And we had a gorgeous reception. Some of those young people are some of the leaders in education in various areas of this community to this day.	23:06
Laurie Green	Tell me, you said in the study group, you all came to the decision there was really something that the women and girls needed. Could you explain to me that need or the percept, why did you proceed there to be a need?	23:39
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	Well, the YWCA was a Young Women's Christian Association.	23:52
Laurie Green	Right.	24:00
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	And we should not be left out of anything that was for women and girls. And that was Christian. And that was our thinking. And that is why we came up with a study group. First of all to look at it and see if we felt that this is something that the Blacks really wanted, would support it and would flock to it when the doors were open. It was just a beautiful site. The fact that the Black women and girls—	24:00
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	Oh yes, they were so delighted to be incorporated in that because we had women and girls and had aspirations that they didn't belong to Whites only. So we were Christians. We had the same needs that White women and White girls had. They needed to be addressed. It was a shame that had been that long because the White YWCA had been established a long time before that.	24:33
Laurie Green	I guess, I meant more of the conditions that Black women and girls were facing in the various neighborhoods, was that part of the assessment? Do you understand what I'm asking?	25:03
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	Not quite.	25:16
Laurie Green	Okay. I was wondering if part of what the study group was looking at was the actual problems, the setting conditions that were setting Black women and girls was not just the general need for the YWCA, but the particular needs of Black women and girls.	25:16
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	I believe we did not go with any particular needs.	25:35
Laurie Green	Okay. Okay.	25:36
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	I believe we did not.	25:36
Ada M. Ateman	Most of the needs Black people felt then were met by their church, by their training in the church and in their home. But White people had for their boys and girls almost from infancy something for them to do.	25:44
Laurie Green	Sure.	26:02
Ada M. Ateman	And our young girls were going to grow up. They had been growing up doing well, but there was a need for activity, Christian activity like this.	26:03
Laurie Green	Okay.	26:16
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	I don't have anything else then [indistinct 00:26:27]. Something else lurking in her mind?	26:19
Laurie Green	The race riot?	26:33
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	You might want to indicate that the Vance Avenue Branch later became the Sarah Brown Branch. That's one and the same. And here's the way that happened. When Mrs. Brown's husband died, she offered to sell that home where the Y is now. But she was just absolutely more of a home than she would need by herself—	26:35
Laurie Green	Susan Walker right now?	27:04
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	Right there Mississippi. [crosstalk 00:27:08] It's on Mississippi, uh-huh. And she was an honored work. She was very interested in the Y. When her husband died, then she wanted to make a move that would take her away from that. That property was more than she would want to be involved in by herself. So loving the YWCA and what it stood for, she offered it to them at a very reasonable price with the stipulation that it be named in her memory while she lived. It was named the Sarah Brown Branch of YWCA. And to this day, that's the only one we have ain't it [indistinct 00:27:56]	27:06
Laurie Green	Who were the leaders, when you were growing up in Klondike, who were the leaders in that neighborhood?	28:00
Ada M. Ateman	Our father, Warren.	28:06
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	Yeah. H. H. Abram Jr., our father.	28:08
Ada M. Ateman	Dr. McClellan.	28:08
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	Yeah. I can't remember his initial. Dr. McClellan. Walter Tucker.	28:13
Ada M. Ateman	Doctor—What was his name down the street? Dr. Miller, was he one? No.	28:31
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	No. Now you asked for leaders. He was a doctor. He wasn't a leader. And there was a certain amount of infamy connected with his name. I don't think he was—Dr. Miller murdered his wife. And I don't think we want him. Do you agree? And then going around the corner, think about, there was Dr. Jefferson, the dentist.	28:38
Ada M. Ateman	Mr. and Mrs. Ellison, who was a contractor. Was he one?	29:09
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	I didn't know him, but his son was, let's see.	29:15
Ada M. Ateman	Mr. Burrows.	29:23
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	Yes. There was [indistinct 00:29:27] Burrows. And he was a minister who lived at that same residence.	29:27
Ada M. Ateman	Bishop Costrel.	29:32
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	Bishop Costrel.	29:37
Laurie Green	What about among the women?	29:37
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	All right. And let's go back and think about some of the—	29:38
Ada M. Ateman	The educators. Mrs. [indistinct 00:29:51] would that be people who—	29:46
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	I can't think of her name, but Mrs. Ellerson had one of the fine homes out there in the neighborhood. And she had built a place called Ellerson's Hall where meetings could be held. Meetings of a civic nature and that od a social nature too if necessary.	29:53
Laurie Green	And where was that?	30:13
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	Oh, that was at Alaska and—	30:13
Ada M. Ateman	And Jackson.	30:18
Laurie Green	Oh, that's gone then?	30:20
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	Oh yes. It's gone. Yeah. Later there was a business there. Business venture called the Blue Bird Diner. Yeah. Jenny Broadnack did that. She was a teacher and she didn't live in the community, but her friend, H.C. Ellison, who was a son of this matriarch who had this fine home and built this hall. Well his lady friend, what was her first name?	30:21
Ada M. Ateman	I don't know.	30:59
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	Excuse me. But anyway—	31:03
Ada M. Ateman	You just called her name.	31:05
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	I called it a while ago. What did I say? It just came up. What?	31:05
Ada M. Ateman	Jenny.	31:07
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	Jenny Broadnack. She had established this Blueberry Diner. People would come because it was a nice place.	31:22
Laurie Green	Were there others in that area?	31:25
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	I'm trying to think.	31:27
Ada M. Ateman	Stores. Mr. Horn had a store.	31:30
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	Yeah. A Black man named Eugene Horn had a store.	31:31
Ada M. Ateman	And Walter Love.	31:33
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	Walter Love had a store.	31:33
Ada M. Ateman	And there were two undertakers who lived in the community.	31:37
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	Oh yeah.	31:41
Ada M. Ateman	Mr. Walker and Jesse Oats.	31:41
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	And William Walker.	31:47
Ada M. Ateman	Oats establishment is still in existence.	31:48
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	Walker and Oats were the undertakers in those days. Later on, they did what many partners do, they divided and one paid the other out or something and each one had his own. But the Walker one did not survive very long because he didn't last very long. And he only had one son. And that son died of peritonitis.	31:56
Ada M. Ateman	Oh, sure did.	32:22
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	Early in life. But Oats is still—They flourished for years and years and years. Casey Oats and Sons because he had six sons.	32:22
Laurie Green	Is that Oaks or—	32:26
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	O-A-T-S. Yes. Jesse Oats and Sons. Now every son is gone. The business is still being run by a descendant of one of the sons. So it's out there on—	32:27
Ada M. Ateman	Auction and Jackson.	32:45
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	It's—	32:53
Ada M. Ateman	Auction and Jackson.	32:53
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	Auction and Jackson? Not Seventh?	32:53
Ada M. Ateman	I don't know, it's on Auction.	32:53
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	I think Auction and Seventh.	32:56
Ada M. Ateman	Auction and Seventh probably.	32:57
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	Auction and Seventh.	32:57
Laurie Green	What about—You mentioned Goldsmith's Fine Clothing. Were there any places you could purchase clothing in—	33:01
Ada M. Ateman	Oh no. No. No.	33:10
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	No. No. People bought their clothes downtown. Yeah. Got on that street car and ride down it and buy our clothes.	33:10
Laurie Green	Any theaters?	33:19
Ada M. Ateman	Oh no. No. Not anywhere in Memphis except downtown. Handy Theater came many, many years later.	33:21
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	Later on we had theaters down on Field Street but this had nothing to do with our community. Right?	33:31
Ada M. Ateman	Everything was downtown.	33:39
Laurie Green	Right, right. So, but in later years in some of the communities, like south, around in Mississippi and Walker—	33:40
Ada M. Ateman	Yeah. That was a place there.	33:50
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	But our community was never home to a theater.	33:50
Laurie Green	Okay.	33:52
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	Or a clothing store, anything like that. We had none of those businesses. We had groceries, like I said.	33:54
Laurie Green	Were all the groceries African American?	33:56
Ada M. Ateman	No, no. We had a barber store at Jackson and Olympic Street for a while.	34:05
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	Oh. I was just thinking about Walter Love—	34:08
Ada M. Ateman	You had Engleburgs—	34:12
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	Horn. Yeah. Bluebird and Horn. Those were African-American. But there were two Whites.	34:13
Ada M. Ateman	Engelberg's was Jewish—	34:20
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	—in the neighborhood, wherever you got Negroes, some White people going to get in there with a business because they knew they could make good money.	34:25
Ada M. Ateman	And Bowers store was at Jackson and Olympic Street. But most people would go to, what was that Saunders' place up at Breedlove and Jackson? We walked up there and did our shopping.	34:35
Laurie Green	Piggly Wiggly?	34:47
Ada M. Ateman	Piggly Wiggly. Yes.	34:48
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	Saunders opened up the first store of that type, our area. He opened it up, not in the neighborhood, but—	34:49
Ada M. Ateman	Within walking distance.	35:01
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	Within walking distance, maybe 10 blocks away. And I remember we would—It took a lot of business away from smaller places because people go down and get good prices and bring your own stuff home. It was really something. My daddy used to line us up and there were enough of us to walk down there and shop. Bring our things.	35:02
Ada M. Ateman	Everybody had a bag.	35:24
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	Everybody had a bag.	35:24
Ada M. Ateman	And you could do that for $5, couldn't you?	35:30
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	What?	35:32
Ada M. Ateman	And you could buy $5 worth of stuff—.	35:32
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	Oh my goodness, things were so inexpensive then.	35:32
Laurie Green	Now were the clerks at Piggly Wiggly—	35:32
Ada M. Ateman	White.	35:32
Laurie Green	They're White?	35:32
Ada M. Ateman	White. I don't remember a Black clerk.	35:46
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	No, no, no, it wasn't Black. Piggly Wiggly, Clarence Saunders, have you heard of—	35:47
Laurie Green	Yes ma'am.	35:55
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	He was White. So I think, did we have a barbershop out there?	35:56
Ada M. Ateman	Snipes Barbershop? Yeah.	36:03
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	We had a Barbershop, it's—	36:05
Ada M. Ateman	It's S-N-I-P-E-S. For a while that was on Jackson Avenue and he moved it into his home. That was a pool room on Jackson and between Olympic and Montgomery. There was a drug store.	36:06
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	It was Black owned.	36:26
Ada M. Ateman	That was owned by a Black man.	36:29
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	We had two drug stores out there.	36:30
Ada M. Ateman	Sure did.	36:30
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	One was Dr. Forkes, F-O-R-K-E-S Drug Store.	36:30
Laurie Green	Okay.	36:30
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	And the other one, both of them were on Jackson Avenue, they were a couple blocks of each other.	36:30
Ada M. Ateman	Yeah, he moved. Who had that other one sister?	36:30
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	Anderson.	36:52
Ada M. Ateman	Yeah, Dr. Anderson.	36:52
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	Dr. Anderson had a—	36:54
Ada M. Ateman	Dr. Hiram Anderson.	36:54
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	And then we had a garage too.	37:03
Ada M. Ateman	Smith's garage.	37:07
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	What was his first name?	37:09
Ada M. Ateman	I don't remember.	37:09
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	And on Valentine, we had a store owned by Negro. What was his name sister?	37:15
Ada M. Ateman	I don't know.	37:23
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	Oh, you do. He was Mr. James. He started his business as a little vegetable stand on Jackson Avenue. And he grew and grew and grew. And he finally moved, got him a big place on Valentine and Claybrook. I think it's still operating today.	37:24
Laurie Green	Now, most of these things that you described, were these in the twenties would you say?	37:44
Ada M. Ateman	Oh no, these were in the forties.	37:48
Laurie Green	The forties, okay.	37:50
Ada M. Ateman	[indistinct 00:37:58] died in the 40s. Well, I say from the 20' to the '60s.	37:57
Laurie Green	All right.	38:04
Ada M. Ateman	Okay? Because some of those places were existent during the war.	38:11
Laurie Green	When we first started talking though, you mentioned how the neighborhood declined. Do you want to point to when that started?	38:18
Ada M. Ateman	I equate the decline in communities with the institution of welfare.	38:30
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	Now that's false.	38:48
Ada M. Ateman	Sister, we're trying to figure out when did the community begin to decline, an issue—	38:51
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	It begun to decline when we moved in 1965, I'll never forget, my brother who lived in Chicago, came down unannounced one day. We looked up and said, "What you doing here?" He was coming around back. He said, "I came to move you girls." We had already made a move to buy and had bought this house. But we were waiting, going to stay there until the sale of the other house came through.	39:00
Ada M. Ateman	But when did—	39:26
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	Huh? Well Archie, he Wanted us out of there.	39:27
Ada M. Ateman	I know, but when did she, her question was, "When did we notice a decline in the community? When did it start?" I said, "I thought it started when the welfare system got instituted."	39:32
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	I don't know what you mean.	39:50
Ada M. Ateman	Well, when they put people on welfare.	39:51
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	I couldn't put my finger on any—Of course I couldn't put my finger on the dates when I first noticed the decline. But it took some doing, I'm sure for us to decide that we wanted to uproot ourselves. That's where our memories were, so it had to be before 1965, things had begun to—They had begun to have violence out there at that time.	39:57
Ada M. Ateman	No, that came after Dad died and Dad died in 56. So really might say it began to deteriorate between 1956 and 1965. But the causes of it, I can't put my finger on.	40:30
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	I would rather put the date of the deterioration at '60. I wouldn't say it was between '56 and '65. I'd rather say at about '60.	40:49
Ada M. Ateman	Well, I knew it hadn't begun when Dad died.	41:03
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	I know. And it didn't begin soon after he died either. We were quite content there a few years after he died.	41:06
Ada M. Ateman	Yeah. Okay. That sounds good. That sounds good.	41:13
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	I forgot to tell you, we had one thing. This is very popular. Oh, in connection with Forke's Drugstore. We had Forke's Dreamland Garden. That was a dance hall. Yeah.	41:18
Ada M. Ateman	Now that was in the twenties, wasn't it?	41:35
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	In the twenties?	41:36
Ada M. Ateman	Sure. When the boys were growing up. Mama was living.	41:44
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	Yeah.	41:48
Laurie Green	That's all right.	41:48
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	It existed. I'm not sure when, you're about right because Yeah. Forke's Dreamland Dance Hall. And they called it Dreamland Gardens Dance Hall. Oh boy. And you could hear the trumpets, sit in your front yard and hear the saxes and the trumpets and all that good music floating through the air you know and of course our father, they wouldn't let us go out. You see the others passing by, going to have a ball. Have a good time.	41:49
Ada M. Ateman	Excuse me.	42:22
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	We could sit out there and look, we weren't allowed to. I can't think of any business that was a social outlet. It wasn't just for, [indistinct 00:42:39] like, it was known all over Memphis. They came, had bigger bands out there, didn't they?	42:22
Ada M. Ateman	Yeah.	42:45
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	The guys, the fellows from South Memphis would get out there in North Memphis and get out there to that Dream Garden.	42:47
Ada M. Ateman	We didn't have anything like parks other than that.	42:58
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	Sometimes that Dream of Gardens was a scene of something other than just the dances because I remember very well, mama let them put my name on a program and I had to play the piano.	43:07
Ada M. Ateman	You did?	43:23
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	Yeah. I forgot the name of it, but I forget what that thing was I played, Lord have mercy. But anyway, the club that mama belonged to, they were having a program, they had it at that Dream of Gardens and I will never forget mama let them put me down for a solo, an instrumental solo—What can I play? It looked like to me like it was a dance floor of butterflies or something crazy.	43:23
Ada M. Ateman	You loved to dance.	43:53
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	Huh? No, I loved it. Oh yeah, as I played that, in my heart [indistinct 00:44:01] at home. I was wild about that. But this was something that my music teacher had reminded me—Yeah. Yeah.	44:00
Laurie Green	Yeah. Well, I won't take too much more of your time.	44:10
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	All right.	44:15
Laurie Green	I usually like to conclude by asking people what would you like—Whomever comes to hear this tape, an interviewer, a researcher, historian, to know about your life? If there was one thing that you would want them to understand about what they had heard? That might be a really simplistic thing to ask, but if there was something, some kind of caveat or some kind of addendum that you want on your tape?	44:19
Ada M. Ateman	Let me hazard a guess. I would think the one major thing in my life was my home training that fitted me for everything. And I think that's the one thing that the children today don't have. They don't have their family background. I think the way we grew up, the kind of home life we had. The kind of home training we had fitted us for our lives. Whatever success we've had, for me, that's the only thing I can tell you.	44:55
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	I had full care.	45:52
Ada M. Ateman	It insulated us to a good degree	46:00
Laurie Green	Insulated you from what?	46:04
Ada M. Ateman	The things that we've been discussing. From the segregation, we were able to absorb it, but we were, as I said, we were insulated because we were secure. We had a security that came from our home and our training, our church life. And that's what it has done for me.	46:07
Henrene Ateman Jenkins	The lasting memory is the good books, the magazines, the poetry, like the book by Paul Lawrence Dunbar and in the home. Plus the fact that I'll never forget my father sitting down and reading to us at night out of Julius Caesar, anything that Shakespeare wrote, we got a taste of and to me—	46:56

Item Info

Title:

Ada Ateman (primary interviewee) and Henrene Ateman Jenkins interview recording, 1995 June 20, 1995 June 20

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June 20, 1995

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Green, Laurie

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Name: Ada M. Ateman; Date of birth: 1916-04-15; Place of birth: Memphis, TN; Occupation: educator; social services; Residence: Memphis, TN. Name: Henrene Ateman Jenkins; Date of birth: 1918-12-27; Place of birth: Brookhaven, Miss.; Occupation: educator; Residence: Memphis, TN
Informant ID: 816; unidentified interviewer.

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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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Ada Ateman (primary interviewee) and Henrene Ateman Jenkins interview recording, 1995 June 20, 1995 June 20

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1. Ada Ateman and Henrene Jenkins administrative file, 1995

John Hope Franklin Research Center

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Ada Ateman (primary interviewee) and Henrene Ateman Jenkins interview recording, 1995 June 20, 1995 June 20

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John Hope Franklin Research Center

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