Juanita Clarke interview recording, 1994 June 29
Loading the media player...
Transcript
Transcripts may contain inaccuracies.
Paul Ortiz | Mrs. Clarke, could you tell me about the area that you were born and when you were born and a little bit about the community that you grew in? | 0:02 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | I was born in Forkland, Alabama in 1923, September 29th, 1923. I don't remember anything. My first memories were of Birmingham when I was about four, but I spent much time in Forkland after that and I know what it was. My mother's father lived on the 20 acres of land adjacent to, it must have been my grandmother's land because next to it were about two other tracks of 20 acres and I had two of my grandmother's sisters lived on those. And I got to know both of those fair well, but my grandmother was dead by the time I went to visit down there. My grandfather was pastor of a church in the community, a Methodist Church, and he had a small farm there. He had married again, and their other sisters lived on adjacent land with their children and husbands and family. | 0:13 |
Paul Ortiz | And what county is Forkland in? | 1:21 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | Forkland is in Greene County. | 1:23 |
Paul Ortiz | In Greene County, Alabama. And did your mother's father own that, the 20 acres? | 1:26 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | Yes, he owned the 20 acres, and I just assumed put together that they were originally somehow give, I know as a matter of fact, that it was my grandmother's land because he was from some other place. And it was just only recently that we found some relatives of his, and we know basically where he came from. But he was on my grandmother's land. And evidently, the 20 acres were left to each one of the daughters because they all had 20 acres right there together. | 1:37 |
Paul Ortiz | Oh, okay. And then now where, it was in an inheritance? | 2:06 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | Yeah. Well, since my grandmother must have been a, I would say she must have been a slave or right out of slavery. I just imagine that the master must have given, I don't know how they got the 20 acres, but each one of the daughters had 20 acres. My grandmother was also a teacher, she had a teaching certificate. I have the certificates at home now. My grandfather was too, she earned $25 month and he only earned 15. But I have the teaching certificates that I showed my students in a materials and methods of teaching class, and history and philosophy of education class that I would show to them. And you read the contract, you see how all the rules and regulations for women who were teaching back in those days. And that's about all the history I know about that place. | 2:11 |
Paul Ortiz | Did your grandmother used to, would she tell you stories when you were a child about her upbringing? | 3:14 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | No, really I didn't get to meet this grandmother. She was already dead when I went. I was much old, much later. I guess I must have been about from five or six on. And my grandfather, I had a step grandmother then. But now I spent some time with my paternal grandmother over in Sumter County when I was about five. My first memories were of Birmingham because that's where I was, right here in Birmingham, over on Enon Ridge. But my mother sent us to Sumter County to live with my paternal grandmother when I was about four or five years old, and we spent several years there. And those were my earliest memories. | 3:26 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | And she had a big farm, about 300 and some acres with a lot of cows and horses and all, and she ran the farm by herself. My mother and father had, there was a house out from the big house where they had lived and there was some other houses around where people, some of them were stepchildren and all in their families and they helped her with the farm. And we had a good time running all around. There was one horse that we could ride, and there was one cow that we could milk who wouldn't kick us. | 4:11 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | And we were from the city so we had a good time those few years running around the farm, and those were some of my fondest memories. That was in Sumter County right out from Demopolis, about three miles from Demopolis, Alabama. And it was called something like MacDonald's Chapel or something like that. | 4:51 |
Paul Ortiz | What kinds of responsibilities did you have when you were working or when you were living there? | 5:15 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | When I was living there, there were three of us. And my brother was the youngest, I was the middle, and my sister was the oldest and she had most of the responsibilities. She helped my grandmother do everything. My brother and I mostly played and they, well, had a hard time keeping up with us because we were always running through the pastures and that kind of thing. | 5:21 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | I don't remember any special responsibilities except maybe sweeping the yard, we had to use some brushes to sweep the yard to keep it clean. And my grandmother wore a long skirt and (laughs), I don't know what I'm talking— | 5:51 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | And we helped, we helped with—picked the cotton and things like that, but we didn't really have the duties, any duties related to that. But she would show us how to milk the cow and let us do it. There was one horse as I told you that we could ride and the horse was gentle, wouldn't throw us or anything, and we could play with that horse. | 6:09 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | We could help pick cotton, but we didn't have to. But we would go out there and pick it some. And my sister, as a matter of fact when my grandma, I guess she wasn't feeling well after a while, my father came and got my brother and I and took us to Chicago, but left my sister there to help grandma because she was a big help to grandma before we weren't. | 6:31 |
Paul Ortiz | Now, your grandmother was running up this farm, 300 acres. | 7:00 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | Yeah, she sure was. | 7:04 |
Paul Ortiz | And she should have been quite a— | 7:04 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | And she had big crops. I remember when she got the sugar cane and whenever she would process that, she had some men to come and they put the sugar cane in big bunches and they had a tub up under it. And they had ropes and horses to go ride them in, would ride the horses around the squeeze. So the ropes were squeezed, the sugar cane juice would fall down into the pan underneath. And that's the way they harvested, they made the syrup from that. | 7:07 |
Paul Ortiz | Right, sorghum syrup, or— | 7:39 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | And she would have hog killing days when the man would come and help her kill the hogs and then they would skin them and all. So we really did get an education in those few years. I doubt if I would've been very smart had I not had that experience because we learned so many things. We didn't know anything at all about a farm, anything like that. But we saw the whole process through that. She let us have a little garden so that we did plant seeds and all, she had a garden. She was very patient with us, she taught us a great deal. | 7:40 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | She had lots of African sayings and all. She would, when we were sick, we would have to go to bed and she'd take a flannel cloth and put it in something, camphor or something and put it on our chest. So she was the doctor and we never had a doctor. She did. And she had little roots and different things for you to take if you had a fever, if you had this, she had something to cure it. She had little sayings for anything. She said, "See a penny, pick it up, all the day you'll have good luck." And right now, I still say that (laughs). And sayings for everything, she had a— | 8:19 |
Paul Ortiz | What other kinds of sayings? | 8:59 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | Let's see. It's hard to think of just all of them right off, but she had them for just about everything. | 9:01 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | She also had a parlor where she had all kinds of books and all kinds of little interesting whatnots and all. We weren't supposed to go in there, but anytime we found the door open, naturally we would go in there and we'd just sit in there and read the books and look through all her things and then until she would come and put us out, because she didn't want us in that too much. She kept it like it was a parlor and it was for company. And she had all her important things in that. | 9:09 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | She wore a long skirt. I would say we thought it was most amazing that grandma didn't have to go to the bathroom. She'd just pull her skirt out like that and urinate and it'd go straight down and we didn't know. (laughs) So she was quite a wizard. | 9:47 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | And the thing of it is though, when she would harvest her crop and take it to market, she was never satisfied with the prices she got. And I think although she worked very hard and she had to harvest, bring it in and all. I think she went deeper into debt or something and had she talked about the mortgage, and eventually it became too much for her. And I think that's when she had my father come get the two of us. And she kept my sister with her. And after we were up there for a short time, we heard that she was on her way up there with my sister, but she didn't make it very far. She became ill. She stopped in York, Alabama and she died there. And then my parents went and got my sister, so she had a pretty tough time trying to run it by herself as I look back. | 10:01 |
Paul Ortiz | When you would go into the parlor and sneak in and read the books, do you remember what kinds of books were in there? | 11:00 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | Oh, we read all kinds of little Bible stories and things like that. And I guess I read just about all because I started the school, there was a church just a few miles from the house and it was on the property. My grandfather had been a minister when he ran the farm, and I'm sure they were very prosperous back in those days. But now, he had been dead for quite some time. | 11:06 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | And I said he was prosperous because they had a big farm there and my father did go to Tuskegee and that was unusual. He didn't graduate, but he did go there. So I know that was unusual for most people, for most Black people. So they were very prosperous on that farm when my grandfather was there. Plus he was the pastor of the church and the church was still there. | 11:34 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | And we all had to go to the church every Sunday. And we started school there. It was just one big room. And we had our primers, and we learned to read while we were there. And I remember getting a book and taking it under a tree that day after school, and I read the book all the way through in that first day, that little primer. | 11:58 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | And we also read all of grandma's books. I think that was the most reading that, I don't think I've done that much reading. (laughs) Well, I have, but that was the basis I think for most of my knowledge, reading all of those little Bible stories and all that she had in there. She just had so many treasures in there like that. | 12:20 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | And then besides that, she had little sayings for everything about what made you rich, I've forgotten. They would come to me from time to time, but just to sit here and think of them but—About rich man, poor man, and all kinds of little things like that you remember that would fit just about everything I guess. | 12:42 |
Paul Ortiz | You mentioned earlier that she also, some of the sayings came from African culture. Did she talk about that too or? | 13:06 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | Well, I'll say that because she did dig up roots and things, and she would make different kinds of little poultices to put on her chest and to put on injuries. And she had little things that, drinks that she would make from roots and different things that we would drink. And it was only after that I connected it with African culture, but I'm sure that that's what it was, plus the sayings and all of that. | 13:15 |
Paul Ortiz | Okay. And so when you went there originally you were about four or five? | 13:49 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | Well, I remember being four in Birmingham so yes, I was four or five. And in Chicago, I remember I was around eight. So we stayed there a few years from the time I was four or five until I was about eight. | 13:54 |
Paul Ortiz | Okay. And then did her family helped, her family, other family members helped her harvest? Do you remember? | 14:10 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | She had some stepsons and all, they were her husband's children who lived out in a couple of houses out on the fringes of the property. And they would come in and have some, but I think most of our help really was hired help. I don't know what, they may have been neighbors because they would come and I'd seen the ones who would come for the sugar cane were a certain group of men. And then another group would come for the hog killings and all so it may have been that different farms, the people would come and do that. But I do remember she would have this man to come and they were not the men who lived, or the people who lived in those houses. They helped with the cotton picking and all that. | 14:21 |
Paul Ortiz | Okay, so you moved back with your parents and then went to Chicago? | 15:08 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | No. | 15:14 |
Paul Ortiz | Or? | 15:15 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | My father was in Chicago. My mother and father was separated. | 15:15 |
Paul Ortiz | Okay. | 15:17 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | So my first memories were with my mother. My sister and my brother and my mother in Birmingham. And my mother, I don't know whether my mother became ill or what, but she sent us to stay with grandma. My father was still in Chicago, he came and got us and took us there though. And then he went on to Chicago. | 15:18 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | He had a car, he had a little convertible, an automobile and he would come to see us and we'd run and meet him. And then finally she sent the two of us with him to Chicago. He took us to Chicago. He had a sister there who helped out at first. And then later on we just stayed with him. And that was the time of the Depression. | 15:39 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | And he was doing all right when we first got there. But after we were there a while, he had trouble finding work. He showed us the corner where he stayed. He stood there waiting for work and eventually, he developed tuberculosis and he died there. He never did get back to the South. | 16:04 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | Right during that time my grandmother died coming up there, my mother came, we were playing with my father. He was playing with us on the bed, playing with us. We didn't know what was going on except my mother came in and she came in. She came to get us. | 16:28 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | I don't know whether he was sick right then, because shortly after then, he did go to the hospital. And when we went to see him, he had lost a lot of weight and we never saw him again after that. So he died of tuberculosis. But she came in and she said she came to get us. And he said, "Well, I guess I'll go too." So they went back together then. But then shortly after that, he went to the hospital and he died. And that was during the Depression. | 16:46 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | And I thought back on that, I thought—he developed tuberculosis, but actually my brother and I always ate well. We always had—we didn't realize that we were that bad off, so he took very good care of us until my mother came. | 17:14 |
Paul Ortiz | And then so you moved back down to Birmingham? | 17:37 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | My mother came and got us and took us back to Birmingham, yes. | 17:39 |
Paul Ortiz | What was life like growing up in Birmingham? | 17:43 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | In Birmingham, we moved a lot. I remember that little house we had a shack, an old wooden house that went straight back on 12th Street between 7th and 8th Avenue in Birmingham. And it was right across from the Elks Rest. And we lived in there and we went to Lincoln Elementary School. I was in the fourth grade. And sometime mama would have trouble paying the rent, but the man would let her buy a lot. And then I remember at the Elks Rest, the man at the Elks Rest would give us Coca-Colas and he would always give a nickel. So people were nice, but we didn't stay there very long. And I found out later that the rent man, who was very nice to my mother, was the father of my husband that I married later on. | 17:47 |
Paul Ortiz | Oh, really? | 18:42 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | When he, uh-huh. Mr. Clarke. Peter Clarke. (laughs) | 18:43 |
Paul Ortiz | Interesting. | 18:50 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | Well, that's another story. | 18:52 |
Paul Ortiz | Okay. | 18:54 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | But when we left there, we moved to a big house up on Avenue D and 27th Street on the south side. And that was a great big house. And we went to Lane Elementary School, that was down on 18th Street and about 4th Avenue South. That was a pretty long walk. But in that house, the thing that was important to me was it was an old house and it had a sewing machine up in the attic. | 18:54 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | And I used to go up there and fool with the sew machine and I'd get some oil and oiled it and I finally learned how to pedal it and I'd just go up there and stay for hours and hours playing with that sewing machine. And so when I got to the fifth grade in school, my sewing teacher asked, "Who can operate a sewing machine?" Because they were all trained like that, and I raised my hand up and I was the only one with my hand up. So sewing has been very important to me throughout my life. And as a matter of fact, I majored in home economics in college, because I wanted to be a sewing teacher, because I found that sewing machine. | 19:26 |
Paul Ortiz | What kind of school was Lane Elementary School? Can you tell me what it was about? | 20:11 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | It was a small Black elementary school with eight grades. And we had a principal, his name was Bill Moore. His style, he was a strong disciplinarian. I guess you could say, it's very embarrassing, but he did paddle me one time. He had a big belt and I've forgotten what I did, but it was very embarrassing. I had to go in there and lean down while he gave me about five licks. They didn't really hurt, but it was very embarrassing and I didn't tell anybody but, so that's the way the schools were actually just. | 20:15 |
Paul Ortiz | The teachers and principals of that school were Black. | 20:59 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | Black, yes, all Black. And my sewing teacher, after I could sew, she lived in North Birmingham and I spent a lot of time in her class sewing. And whenever I could be out of another class, I was in there too. And I would walk over to her house. She lived in North Birmingham. That's all the way on the other side of town. But during the summers, I would walk over there and stay over there as long as I wanted to and became a member of that family more or less. And she's still a good friend of mine. She lives in Seattle, Washington now after she retired, but she's still a good friend of mine and I was basically a member of that family. | 21:04 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | And that was my second home over there. My fifth grade, well, she was a sewing teacher and we started taking sewing in the fifth grade. And she would give me some of her dresses made out of nice material, and I'd cut them down and make dresses for myself and stuff like that. And also give me material sometimes. And her sister was a seamstress too, I'd go over there and help her sister. And I guess I learned more about dressmaking by going over there, helping the sister do ham hand work and stuff. | 21:48 |
Paul Ortiz | I see. So you really became quite a seamstress in your own right really? | 22:24 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | Yeah. Well, yeah. Not making any money at it, but I made all of my clothes and all of my daughters, I have four daughters now and I sew for them too, and my mother and my sister. And also, I still have lots of material now. I'm always making something. That's my main hobby. | 22:32 |
Paul Ortiz | During this time when you were at Lane Elementary School, was your mother working outside of the home? | 22:54 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | My mother, maybe not so much. Then she had, there was some kind of welfare program where she supervised the playground and she would get, that helped us get food and we would go to the playground if then it paid, it gave her enough money to pay the rent and to provide food. Basically, our diets all the way through school was basically peas, beans, or greens or something like that and cornbread, and very seldom much meat or anything like that. And actually, we ate once a day and that was dinner. We could cook grits or something like that in the morning for breakfast, but you had to make a fire and all that so we'd always skip breakfast. And I don't understand now how we were able to get up in the morning, go to school, and especially high school and walk all the way to Parker and walk back and eat dinner and that was all. We didn't have any lunch money or anything and still do all right. | 23:00 |
Paul Ortiz | So you were going to Parker, what year did you start at Parker? | 24:15 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | Let's see, what year? It must have been around 1936. | 24:20 |
Paul Ortiz | 1936. Was Dr. Parker still there? | 24:25 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | Yes, he was principal. | 24:30 |
Paul Ortiz | Okay. Now, I've heard a lot of different stories about him. Do you remember your perception of Dr. Parker at that time when you were going to school? | 24:34 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | Oh well, there was so many of us. That's the only contact I had with him was just seeing him sometimes. The school was well run and everybody was very proud of it. We wore a uniform, a blue uniform, girls had to wear blue dresses and all and conduct was exemplary or whatever. And there was a big band. We had a big band, a big marching band. The teachers there were revered by everybody and everybody in Birmingham knew them by name. And Dr. Parker and all of the teachers were some of the most important people in Birmingham. If you went to Parker, if anybody that worked at Parker, everybody in Birmingham knew who they were and thought they were very special people. | 24:45 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | Later, one of my sister-in-laws, Mary Ellis Clarke was teaching there. She taught me, she lives over in [indistinct 00:25:50] now. And she was one of the teachers, and her sister and one of her sisters taught that too, and then the Joneses. But if you taught at Parker High School, you were very, very special to the Black community and looked up to as just the tops. | 25:39 |
Paul Ortiz | What kind of subjects did you concentrate on at Parker? What were the most important to you? | 26:11 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | Oh. Well, I always liked English especially. And after we were there, about a year and a half though, they opened up Ullman High School down here on the south side, over on the south side and we went there for one semester. And I loved math. I remember thinking of myself, oh, this is fun. But I thought, I don't know what I'll do with that. I didn't know how it would help and anything that much fun. I just didn't see any practical application for it, I think about that all the time now. But I loved it. | 26:18 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | But when I went to college, I majored in home economics, because back in those times you thought of, you going to get married and you didn't even see many women going into careers or anything so I didn't think in terms of that. I said, "Well, I'm going to have to work, but if I major in home economics, I can work and then I can get married too." And that's what I majored in. | 26:56 |
Paul Ortiz | Where did you go to college at? | 27:20 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | At Xavier University in New Orleans. And the way, the reason why, when I was at Parker, I always knew that I wanted to go to college. And when I was at Parker, there were so many students there that I knew that if I went to college, I would have to get a scholarship because I didn't have any money. And there was a Catholic school right across from me and there was not many students over there. And I would go to church over there sometimes. And I asked the priest if I could come to school over there without paying any tuition and he told me I could. And I decided that I would rather go to school over there because I would have much better chance of getting a scholarship than I would in a high school where they had thousands of students there. And I chose to go over there. | 27:22 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | And my sister and brother went over there too. And we had two coaches from Xavier, the basketball coach and the football coach were from Xavier. And I was writing an application. Now what I did was apply to a nursing school because I knew that you could go there and not have to pay any tuition and they would even give me some stipend. So I sent an application in for my sister and for me to St. Mary's Nursing School in St. Louis. And then I applied as Xavier, but I didn't know whether I would get anything or not. And it just happened while I was working on my application, Mr. Cole came by, that was the basketball coach. He was one of the Chicago Five at Xavier, that was the real famous, he would've been a professional basketball player all five of them. We had integration because they were outstanding. | 28:13 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | But anyhow, he put a note in it and sealed it up. I didn't know what it said, but I got a scholarship. And I had an uncle, my father's brother lived in Gary, Indiana. And when we were in Chicago, he took us over there one time to visit Uncle Briton. Uncle Briton had gone beyond the third grade at home in Sumter County. And I'd never seen him before then because he was older than my father. My father was much younger, but he lived in a house with a couple of apartments to it. And he worked in the steel mills and he wore a suit and he had a gold watch. And I just thought he was well off, I liked him. And so I would always write to him. I never received an answer at that time. But I would write to him, and especially after my father died, I would write and tell him about what my grades were and that I was going to school like this. | 29:10 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | Secretly, I was thinking he would help me go to school, but I would tell him everything. And so when I did get that partial scholarship, I got a letter from him and he asked me how much it would cost for me to go to college. I said, "Well, he's never gone beyond the third grade," because he could barely write. I said, "And I'm going to tell him, I'm going to make it as low as possible, but he's not going to hardly want to give me any money when he gets this." But I told him, and it wasn't that much because I got think my tuition, I had something like $50 a semester scholarship, and I didn't need a whole lot more than that to go with it. I needed something for room rent and books and stuff like that. So I told him it might've been about 50, 60 more dollars for that. | 30:17 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | So I wrote and told him that and I got a little fat letter with cash money in it he sent back. And that's how I went to school. Plus my other coach told me, he was from New Orleans. He told me he arranged for me to live with his family while I was there, and so I'd always gone down there, live with his family. And then I'd talk to the nuns about a job and get a job babysitting. And that would take out my room and board, and maybe about $2 a week. And that would give me car fare to get school and back so that's it I worked out. | 31:08 |
Paul Ortiz | What was the name of the high school in Birmingham? | 31:44 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | That was Immaculata. | 31:48 |
Paul Ortiz | The Catholic. | 31:48 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | Immaculata High School. It's now Our Lady of Fatima, and they don't have a high school anymore, they have the elementary school. They just had a reunion a couple of weeks ago. | 31:49 |
Paul Ortiz | And that was right across from Parker? | 32:03 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | That was right across, no, that was right across from where we lived on the south side on 17th Street. | 32:05 |
Paul Ortiz | Okay. | 32:09 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | And Avenue F over there where UAV is now. | 32:10 |
Paul Ortiz | Oh. | 32:13 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | The Catholic Church and the school were right over there. | 32:14 |
Paul Ortiz | So you graduated from that high school? | 32:17 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | From that high school, yes. | 32:21 |
Paul Ortiz | Okay. Let's see. And so how old were you when you graduated? | 32:25 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | I was 16. | 32:33 |
Paul Ortiz | So it must have been quite a change to, I mean, you were 16 and you moved to New Orleans to go to school. That must have been quite a different milieu, a different. | 32:33 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | Well, that's a Catholic school too now and have the nuns there and Ms. Anderson who was our coach and our science teacher, his family was there. I stayed with them, they became like a family to me. I stayed with them. And then being on a Catholic campus, it wasn't that large and I got to know people and I felt perfectly at home. And then I had a mission. I mean, I didn't do it, I mean, my job was to go to school. I knew I had to take all the classes that they would allow me to take each semester. And that I had my budget. I didn't have any backing except my uncle was sending me that money, I didn't know how long that would last. | 32:49 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | So I would pack up my trunk, get on the train. I was glad to go. And there were no dormitories at Xavier at the time either. You either boarded on a house with some other girls close by that was approved by the nuns. And when I was ready for a job, I would go ask them about a job and they would place me with a nice family. I know it was a lawyer and his wife, a young couple, and they had two little children. I had to cook. And I had a nice room with where I could study and I would have to cook, prepare the meals and all and look after the children. | 33:42 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | And if they went out any place, I was there to keep the children. And it worked out just fine, and I fit right in with the family. And you just had a mission. I mean, I did what I was there to do and it worked out just fine. I know I had to graduate in four years, I always made the plans around that. I found out later that had I really, hadn't been so set on four years, I could have finished in three because I could have gone to summer school two summers. But I just thought in terms of four years, and that's what I did. | 34:27 |
Paul Ortiz | Okay. You majored in home economics? | 35:07 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | Home economics. | 35:09 |
Paul Ortiz | And so you graduated in about 1943. | 35:12 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | '44. | 35:15 |
Paul Ortiz | '44. And what were your plans at that point? | 35:16 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | The thing of it is, that's ironic. I was so set on going to college, graduating that except for teaching, I was prepared to teach. But I would say sometimes that I was going to be a dietician, but I really made no moves to do anything to get into dietetics, I could have. I came back home and what I found was that I couldn't find a job, because see, people who taught in the public schools then kept those jobs. I mean, they didn't move around anything and there were very few vacancies and I found unless you knew somebody to help you get a job, you couldn't just apply and get one. And so I had been working at the hospital as a nurse's aid in the summertime and that's where I was right back there. And I even saw a couple of other college graduates were there and I couldn't get a job at all. | 35:21 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | And we worked, we went to work at seven and we had a three-hour break and we worked till seven at night. And we bathed the patients, they trained us and we did all of the work that the nurses did, changed the beds with the patients in them and all. And I think we made something like 10 or $15 a week, something like that. And I would have to wiggle my toes at night to get the blood circulating. And there were actually just no other jobs for that. I mean, because most people just were not, you were not going to just walk into a job like anybody else and get one, because we were in segregation. | 36:24 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | I had a friend from Philadelphia whose father was a, and I didn't know anybody important enough to help me get a job. Her father was a supervisor at the post office and I wrote her a letter, her name's Julie Lee. I wrote Julie a letter and asked her, says, "Your father is a supervisor in the post office. If I came up there, do you think he could get me a job?" And she wrote back and said yes. So I went to Philadelphia to Julie's, and Julie's father got me a job. They were a Catholic family too. They got me a job and they helped me find a place to stay. So I stayed there for two years, worked in the post office and people would say, "How'd you come up here and get a job just like that?" Because I had to use connection. | 37:08 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | That's how bad it was. Even if you got an education, you weren't necessarily going to get a job. And later on, my husband, I had met my husband when I was at home, he was in the Navy. And I would see him when he came down to New York. Sometimes I'd go to New York and I was married while I was up there working in the post office, and he played music for a while. I went to New York and we stayed in New York for a while, but then I got pregnant so he decided that he was going to give up and music and go back home. And I tell everybody, it was not my idea, it was his idea. But we came back home, had no trouble getting a job teaching because all his family folks were well known and his sisters were teachers. And that's the way it went. You had to know somebody. | 37:54 |
Paul Ortiz | Oh, okay. Where did you first meet your husband at? | 38:46 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | I met him at my house. Actually, I met his brother-in-law when I was out at what they call, I think it was in [indistinct 00:38:59] Club. It was a big house where they had a music box and all the people would come in and they'd talk and they'd play the [indistinct 00:39:07] and dance and talk and stuff like that. So I met this, Woodrow Young was his name. And we talked and talked and talked and he took me home. He asked if he could come back to see me. And I asked him if he was married. He said yes. I said, "Well, I don't call with married men." | 38:49 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | He said, "Well, I have somebody I want you to meet." And so he came over there with, Chuck was on a fair load, he brought Chuck over to my house and mama found out that was his father was our rent man when we first moved back to Birmingham and she knew him. And by the way, he was one of the people who started that Penny Savers Bank that they had way back. They started my husband's father, Peter Clarke. And my grandchild, my children and my grandchildren now, they very proud of that fact that he was. | 39:23 |
Paul Ortiz | Oh, I see. | 40:05 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | Founded in that. And they have a picture that they have blown up with him standing there looking out proud with the others. You may have seen that picture. He's on that. | 40:08 |
Paul Ortiz | Yeah, we got the, they're inside the building and they're behind the boots. Yeah. | 40:22 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | And he's really, I think the central figure there standing up there with his chest out, but that's my husband's father so they're all very proud of that. But I met Chuck then, and then later on when I went to Philadelphia, he would come down to visit me sometimes and we continued the relationship. | 40:23 |
Paul Ortiz | Did your mother remarry at during this period of time? | 40:45 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | No, she never did. | 40:49 |
Paul Ortiz | She never remarried. | 40:50 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | What she did later on, she had a job at the Famous Theater. She took up tickets and she also at the Carver Theater and she worked there. That was the regular job that she had after we left. She spent many years working at selling her tickets at the Famous Theater and the Carver Theater. And she had been a teacher herself back in Forkland years ago. She finished, to teach then, you only had to finish about the ninth grade or something like that. And she had attended Barbara Memorial School or something like that. But she did, she had a teaching certificate too. She and her mother did too down years ago in Parkland. | 40:51 |
Paul Ortiz | So she finished, she went up to ninth grade? | 41:39 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | And so she was considered educated by, and taught school down there. | 41:42 |
Paul Ortiz | Now when you moved back to Birmingham, it was about 1946 with your husband. '46? | 41:49 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | 1940s, let's see. Yes, it was. Yeah, we were married in 1946 and came over shortly after that. And probably that same year, a little later in the year around 1946. | 41:56 |
Paul Ortiz | Did you notice changes were in Birmingham when you came back as opposed to when you had been there before? | 42:09 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | Well, it was better for me because I was able to get a job. But I attributed that more to the fact that his sisters and brothers knew the principals and everybody in the school and they have more influence and they would just hire. And the reason why I couldn't get a job before is because I didn't know anybody. I didn't have the connections to get a job. And then they just, I found out they just don't hire. | 42:15 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | They only have so many jobs, and if the principal recommends you to another principal or somebody who's been teaching in the school a long time, recommends you, well, you get the job. And I couldn't get one before that. It's not that way now. All our students get jobs when they go down to apply. But it was pretty hard to get a job there, because one thing, teachers stayed in those jobs. They didn't have any other jobs. So once they had a job, they stayed there. And so there were just not that many vacancies. And those few that there were, I guess they had relatives and friends who would get them. | 42:46 |
Paul Ortiz | And where were you living when you moved back to Birmingham? | 43:30 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | When we moved back to Birmingham originally we moved in with my husband's folks. All the daughters and all that, they had a big house on 11th Avenue and all of them lived there with their husbands and all of the—His mother, his father was dead, and so the daughters were there and that was a home house. And we stayed there until we could find a place. When we found an apartment up at Dr. Lace's house, he had been a dentist and he was living there by himself. And he had, except for his son who had a wife there, he had built two little apartments in there. And we took one of them. | 43:33 |
Paul Ortiz | Dr. Lace was Black. | 44:18 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | Black, but had been a dentist for many years and had a big house. | 44:20 |
Paul Ortiz | Okay. So at this point, are you still working? Did you go back to working at the hospital or did you? | 44:34 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | I started teaching. I taught at Hooper City, taught the seventh grade at Hooper City High School for a year. And then I became pregnant, and when you become pregnant, you have to resign and stay out for two years. And then after that child was born, then I had a job in the city. Now, where was that? Let's see, maybe I chose not to go to the city I guess because if you got pregnant in the city, you had to resign. Anyhow, they would had all those and they were building, they built Holy. They were building Holy Family High School out in Ensley. And I applied there. I stopped working for a long time. I have five children, so when my children were old enough and I started taking them to school, they were building a school at Holy Family in Ensley. And they had a home, well, better than a home economics room. And I said, "Well, I'm going to apply here because they don't care whether you're pregnant or not." And I applied there and they hired me there. And I taught there for about 17 years something. | 44:44 |
Paul Ortiz | Was that a public school? | 46:04 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | No, Catholic. | 46:05 |
Paul Ortiz | That was a Catholic school. | 46:05 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | Catholic school. It's still out there in Ensley. And I think they had two lay teachers, a biology teacher who was the coach. And I was the English teacher, sophomore and junior English teacher and the guidance counselor and home economics teacher when they had home economics. But they started cutting that out, and I ended up an English teacher. | 46:06 |
Paul Ortiz | Were you going to a Catholic Church at that time? Which church was that? | 46:38 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | Our Lady Queen of the Universe. I had been going back to Our Lady in Fatima, Immaculata is the same one, but Father, what's his name? I can't think of him right now. | 46:44 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | He was doing street preaching over in that community over there by us, so that he started a church over there, a mission. And so I changed over, started going to the street preaching and then when we built the church up there, then I started attendance there. | 0:06 |
Paul Ortiz | I see. Where would you go during this period of time? Say you and your husband, when you had some spare time? | 0:28 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | Where would we go? Let's see. My husband was a musician. He played a lot. So I guess it would be to—I would go by myself or with somebody else, but we would go to hear them play, dances and different things like that. And I guess that was the most important social activity that we had. I was a member of a sorority and we had a dance every once a year and you would invite the same people, and they'd sit around, take their [indistinct 00:01:21] food and eat. And most of the sororities and fraternities had dances regularly. Sometimes they played at the club, A.G. Gastons had a club right down here and they would play there, and we would go there and listen to the music. | 0:39 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | And he would play with lots of different bands and different—So that was the main thing we did. Other than that, we went to the movies. We saw the Carver Theater, famous theater. We saw all of then, they showed the Black movies so well throughout high school, that was one of the main things we did. We saw all of the movies at the famous theater, the Jackson Five, and anybody with the Black movie, they were even in a Black movie, we were going see that. | 1:41 |
Paul Ortiz | So you spent a lot of time around the Fourth Avenue area? | 2:16 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | Yeah, we would walk down there to go to the theater from the south side every Sunday and all. And sometimes I whispered—I was big too, I would go, Father Smith was our priest, and we'd go around to the sacristy where Father was and whisper in his ear to give us show fare. He could take it right out of the collection plate to give us our show fare and we walked to the movie. (laughs) | 2:19 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | See it was a mission. And we would help clean up, help cook, go over there. And answer his mail, work in the office, and so I would say the Catholic church was really responsible for the mission, the Catholic mission, because at Xavier, that school was opened by the Blessed Sacrament nuns and they started school specific, their order was specifically to help educate Blacks and Indians. And I would say that, and we got the very best education there, they were great. | 2:48 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | I had not had any sciences in high school, anything, but they taught it so well that I was able to do very well and then I was qualified to teach it when I left there. And I took in English, well I made in home economic, certainly didn't think I was prepared to be an English teacher, but I was always—We had to take English every semester. That was their requirement. And so I ended up with the sufficient hours in English to teach and I thought I couldn't teach, but I was a very good English teacher, outstanding English teacher. Turned out to be all my students could really write and all, and I attribute that to Xavier, and I didn't know I was prepared to teach English. | 3:33 |
Paul Ortiz | When you were teaching English, what kinds of materials would you use? | 4:30 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | Well, we had a McMillan—The nuns have been using the McMillan series, so I followed it to the letter mostly. But one of the things that made it most successful that was what they called dictation exercises. We'd get the grammar rules and all, punctuation rules, a certain number of them that the students would go over, and then at the beginning of each class we would have dictation exercise. I'd get my book, and that would be the roll call. That's the roll call. Everybody has—One person goes to the board. Everybody else at their seats, would apply certain rules that we had gone over, and we have about five sentences that I would dictate and they'd write only on every other line, make sure the sentence was written correctly, punctuated correctly and all. And then they'd changed papers and correct each other's, while we corrected it at the board. | 4:34 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | It didn't take but a few minutes, and then they put the number correct on there, and that was the roll call. And by practicing like that, and then we go on with writing and of course we started with the sentences and then the paragraphs and then we'd write, we'd end up with the critical paper, and then the research paper. And then we had some novels to read and I'd have to figure out unique ways to teach sophomores, because that soil is dry, and it is hot summertime. So we'd do things like pick out a little page scene up in the beginning, and in the middle, and toward the end and get a group of students to rehearse and do a drama presentation on this part, and on this part, and this part. And then they'd do that and they got to be real good at it. | 5:32 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | And then they wouldn't mind reading it, we'd do things like that. But I think that dictation exercise made all of them very, very good. And John Rogers, in the state legislature now, he was one of my students. One of my students was deputy police chief. I attribute, naturally, I say all of my students when I tell them afterwards, I said, "Well, you can write anything now. You can write this, you can write the critical paper, you can write—And you use the same techniques to write a whole book if you wanted to." And they were really good. Besides their parents picked up their report cards, each time we couldn't give a report card to students, their parents had to come to a PTA meeting on Sunday and we had an individual interview with each one of them, as we gave them the report cards and the parents would be looking you in the eye when they see a bad grade on that. | 6:25 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | And I remember I had one student that I thought he wasn't doing, his handwriting was poor, he was sloppy and he didn't do it right. And I said to myself, "You are just going to get a D." And then I thought, "Well, now what am I going to tell his father when his father's looking at me about that D." I said, "Well, I'll tell him. Well, I did this and I did that and he still didn't get it." So I had to do this and that. And to my surprise, when I did this and that, the boy was doing just find, so he needed that attention. And that taught me a lesson about that. And of course I used that later with my students Miles too. I tell them that little story about that student, I remember him clearly. He was doing all right, but I was about to give him up. | 7:30 |
Paul Ortiz | And now this was at the Catholic School in Ensley? | 8:17 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | Uh huh, that was that. | 8:19 |
Paul Ortiz | These were primarily Black students? | 8:21 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | They were all Black students. | 8:22 |
Paul Ortiz | They're all Black students? | 8:23 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | Now the faculty, the nuns were White. And when we had religion, we had our priest, teacher of religion and stuff, they were White. But they were all Black students. All Black. | 8:24 |
Paul Ortiz | But you were one of the only Black teachers, or? | 8:37 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | Mm-hmm. Not the only, we had a business teacher, a young man teaching business, and we had a biology teacher who was also a coach and he's still, he's principal of a school out in Fairfield now. But he was the biology teacher, coach. Mr. Boykin. | 8:41 |
Paul Ortiz | And you were teaching there up till 1960— | 9:05 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | I said 1969. | 9:07 |
Paul Ortiz | 1969. | 9:07 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | And I guess I would've been there now, but I was recruited, I was really recruited by one of the aunts of one of my students. She said she had come with her brother to pick up the card and they needed somebody at Miles to teach English in a special program. And they sent one of the students who finished Miles to come out there for me to interview, see if she could take my place, and they got me to go to Miles and teach in that program. And that's how I went there. | 9:13 |
Paul Ortiz | So, from '69 till— | 9:45 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | From '69, I retired 1986. But I'm still back out there though now since my husband died, back out now. | 9:48 |
Paul Ortiz | Oh, I didn't write down the name of the school in Ensley. What was the name of the school in Ensley? | 9:59 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | Holy Family High School. | 10:05 |
Paul Ortiz | Okay. Holy Family High School. And you said that that was a relatively newer school? | 10:06 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | They were just building it when I was taking my children to the elementary school, and I saw them building that school, and that's how I got the idea that I would work there. Because at least one more of my children was born while I was working there. See I could just go on teaching there, and Carol, as a matter of fact, she was born while I was working at Holy Family. The one who took to talk to you. | 10:11 |
Paul Ortiz | And you were teaching there throughout the fifties and sixties? | 10:41 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | Mm-hmm. | 10:43 |
Paul Ortiz | What were, in Birmingham, during those years in the fifties and what were the symbols of Jim Crow? | 10:45 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | Well, that was before the Civil Rights Movement. Main ones were on the bus. The partition. You sometimes on some of them you could move it back, sometimes they was stationary, but it had gotten so you could move it back and forward and all, it was not a big issue in Birmingham so much. But in some of the smaller towns, and I guess it all depended a lot on the bus driver too, on that. | 10:57 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | But in general, if it were crowded, you would stand up, you would be left standing because there wouldn't be as much room, there would be more room to accommodate the larger number of Whites. And then the signs, there were on restrooms and things and all kind of public—Even water fountains, that were White fountains, Black fountains. | 11:28 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | Alabama Theater, we could not go to the Alabama Theater. We said we went to the Famous and the Carver, but these were the only ones we could go to. Now, the Lyric Theater, you could go and sit upstairs and they had a balcony way up high where we could go and see. But mostly we just went to the Famous. | 11:58 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | And then well, and all of the colleges, the only college that students could go to in Birmingham would've been Miles College. And I got my bus fare, rode out there and ran to the president's doorbell, and he came out and talked to me. I asked him for a scholarship, when he told me he didn't have any money. And so I was determined to get one. | 12:18 |
Paul Ortiz | Right. | 13:01 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | Yeah. And I did succeed. And now of course it's all different. | 13:01 |
Paul Ortiz | Did you have any personal experiences with segregation that you can remember that? | 13:01 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | Actually, I guess we were pretty, I guess you'd say we were pretty docile or whatever, but we just abided by the rules and were not all that upset. I guess the main thing that I remember mostly was that the policemen, they were pretty hostile, they were not nice to us. And I see that as the main thing that I noticed that I thought was bothersome. | 13:10 |
Paul Ortiz | I see. Can you tell me, I'm really curious about you mentioned earlier your husband would play at different places, can you tell me some more about those places? Would he play in houses, play at clubs— | 13:43 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | Oh no, he played in clubs. He played for dances and all like that. He had been in the Navy band, that's all he did in the Navy was play. And he played with quite a few very outstanding musicians, some of them were. And I know a couple of them, well at least one was a composer, and they had throughout—And quite a few of them from Birmingham too, because we did produce some pretty outstanding musicians. | 13:56 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | So it was kind of like a fraternity or something among those musicians, because they all knew each other wherever you go all over the country, they were like brothers or something. And he had two older brothers, Pete who played in—We have records where he was playing with Duke Ellington and Ella Fitzgerald, and away back in the thirties, so all of the Clarke brothers, well, I guess Pete was the first one up there, but he spent his whole life up in New York playing music with Duke Ellington and all of those. | 14:28 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | And then Richard was in the service too, but when he came out he sold it in my husband. He also played in New York. And then Chuck, when he got out of the service, played with Cootie Williams and that's where he was playing with Cootie Williams when I married him. | 15:09 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | But he didn't like being out on the road and he just decided to give it up, and come back to Birmingham. And he taught band, and then he just played around locally. And then after that he got a job in the post office and with social security, but he didn't like the lifestyle of being on the road. And he said he couldn't do that and have family. | 15:27 |
Paul Ortiz | What were the best clubs to hear music at in Birmingham? | 15:55 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | Let's see. In recent years or long time ago? | 15:59 |
Paul Ortiz | Say in the forties and fifties. | 16:04 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | Forties and fifties, I'd say that they were this A.G. Gaston Club. That's where they played, they played regularly down there. Now they had other clubs with little bands on them, but they weren't—But I'd said, oh, that one is the main one I can think of. | 16:04 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | And other than that, they played dances, they played—Back then they mostly just played around different places, dances and things like that. Yeah, all the clubs had, that was the major entertainment I guess you could say. We had social clubs all over and people would have dances at the LR Hall, and in the Masonic Temple right over there. Those were the main places where we went to dances and all. And those were the Black, whenever you were going to dance, you were either going to LR Hall or you're going Masonic Temple. | 16:31 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | And then they had some clubs located all around, but now Chuck didn't play in so much. They mostly had Rock-Olas or they may have a little group or somebody in there, they would drive out to the club. And cars was not all that plentiful (laughs), so you didn't frequent over every time all that often. | 17:13 |
Paul Ortiz | When did you and your husband get your first car? | 17:35 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | In 1955, 1955 Chevrolet. | 17:36 |
Paul Ortiz | Were there places in Birmingham that you didn't want to go, that were considered tough places that— | 17:44 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | I don't really know of any like that then, because as I said, even when I was young, I could walk from outside over there by UAB, all the way over to North Birmingham. Nobody would bother me. And if anything people would look out for you. It was perfectly safe to go anywhere. And other Black people especially, it was just like they were almost like a member of the family or something. | 17:56 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | And if a young person were doing something wrong, they'd correct you just like they knew you or something. That's the way it was. No, we would go for a walk for recreation, we'd walk up to Vulcan and back. We'd hike up there and hike back, and it was the same with—I said basically with White people too, nobody bothered you. | 18:23 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | And it was sometimes you might witness a domestic fight or something like that, but no, everything was walking to school and back. Groups of people walking to school, no fights, no anything. Everything was just peaceful. I'm sure there were some fights somewhere sometimes, but I don't remember any in particular, I guess. | 18:49 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | No, I don't. I sure don't. When we were younger in Chicago sometime, we were real little, I remember a couple little fights, but that wasn't anything for somebody picking on you and turn around and go like (laughs). | 19:19 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | But no, I don't remember any—Everybody was trying to make it the best way they could, I think. And neighbors looked out for you too. And even other people, teachers, like I said, my teachers helped me with my clothes and different things like that. And we did the same thing at Holy Family too. We had a boy there, a young man there, who was there with his grandmother and he was the smartest boy in the class. His suits were too big and stuff like that, but his name was Prince Thomas. He still writes to me, he sends me flowers on Mother's Day. But his grandmother died while he was in school. | 19:30 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | And when it came time for the junior prom, he didn't have any way to go to the prom, he didn't have any back and forth one thing. And then the other thing, he didn't know how to dance. So we got together, somebody said, "Well." Wilda Dean, her name was, she said, "Well, I'll teach him how to dance." She was very vivacious. I said, "But we can't have the—Just teach him how to dance because he'll be embarrassed." So we have to open it up for everybody who doesn't know how to dance, because he is the only one who doesn't know how to. So then now anybody who doesn't know how to dance, there's a dancing lesson in the home ec room. So Prince came to the, he went and he practiced. And then we had to get him a tuxedo. We had to get him some shoes. We borrowed tuxedo, because Chuck played music and he had one, he was about his size. | 20:16 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | But anyhow, we got him to the prom. And since I was the counselor on my free period too, when he took the ACT, naturally when the scores came back, he was invited to all these different colleges, and so we discussed what college he probably ought to go to. And we chose Berea, because it wasn't too big. And we thought it was one of the, it was integrated and it ought to be, but it wasn't too far away and kind of small. So we suggested that he go there. And we had to help him get some pants and some shirts and different things to go, but he went. And then years later, when he was married, he wrote me a letter and thanking me, and he told me that he was married to an insurance underwriter, they live on some kind of meadow, some lane in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. So it's a nice home. | 21:09 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | He's deputy to the Attorney General of the State of Pennsylvania. He's a lawyer. And he still says—And he invited me to his son's graduation, except I had a nephew who was graduating from Duke, and I went to his graduation, and at the same time, but his son was graduating from University of—Not, is it Pittsburgh? Something like one of those big colleges up there. | 22:14 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | And I said, I never did get a chance to see him, but he called recently, left a message on the answering machine, told me it was good to hear my voice. But he sends me flowers sometimes on Mother's Day and things like that, and although I don't see him. And he also made long telephone calls to tell me about what he experienced at the college. Oh, he wrote a letter once and told us he hadn't been dating in high school, no social skills, but he wrote this letter and said he was dating and he was dating a White girl. So I told the business teacher, he was a young man, I told him to write him a letter and tell him the facts of life. I don't know what he told him, but he wrote him a letter that he might want to take it easy and don't go too far now all at once. And anyhow, he got through it just fine. | 22:44 |
Paul Ortiz | At Holy Family, how were the relations between the teachers, between you and the other teachers? | 23:44 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | Oh, just now the nuns lived together and all of that. But they all—Just fine. I never had to discipline anybody, because the principal was kind of stern. She didn't bother anybody much. But whenever I had a problem with the student, I said, "Would you wait outside the door until I could speak to you?" And I put them out in the hall and he's standing out there until I can get to him. He said, "Let me back in please!" (laughs) He's all afraid the principal was going to see him, so that's all I ever had to do. (laughs) And they just begged to get back in, and there once a while I walk over there and say, "Well, now." And say a few words to him or something. And then he just dying to get back in because he's so afraid that Sister Miriam was going to see him out there. I don't think she would've done anything that much, but she just looked stern. | 23:53 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | And then they had it set up so that their parents were in contact, because they were paying that tuition and they were making a sacrifice for them to come. And they just rather not getting in trouble with the principal. But they were just beautiful people to work with, always professional and not that warm or anything, but they always gave you anything you needed to work with and—No, and they—Well, I had been taught by nuns in high school when I went there, they were always very good teachers and very devoted teachers. | 24:46 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | They really taught, that was their main thing, they didn't have anything else. If they were teachers, they taught. And Carol is so good, right now I'd see little workbooks where she just went all had to do all these workbooks in grammar and all of that, and that's the reason why she never had any trouble with her schooling. But if you went through all the way through a Catholic school and all things, you really know what you was supposed to know. | 25:39 |
Paul Ortiz | Now you mentioned advising your student. What was his name? | 26:09 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | Prince Thomas. | 26:17 |
Paul Ortiz | Prince. Okay. I'm sorry. Prince Thomas. You advised him to go to Berea College? | 26:18 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | Yeah, I didn't know much about them. We looked at the ones that he had offers for. Some of them, if they were very large, what I said was that somebody who's not all that socially developed might not do very well in a very, very large college. | 26:24 |
Paul Ortiz | Okay. | 26:42 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | And so you wanted something kind of medium-sized where he could relate to people better and that kind of thing. And I kind of did that with all of my students. I found that you have to fit them in according to their— | 26:43 |
Paul Ortiz | Social graces— | 26:58 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | If they end up [crosstalk 00:27:03]. | 26:58 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | Right, and if they end up in the wrong place where they can't make an adjustment, then they'll flunk out. And I always knew that some of the larger universities, like the University of Alabama is okay for some people, but for other students who didn't have too many social skills would be much better off in a predominantly Black college. And so that's, because they need that nurturing and they need that one-on-one with the teachers and things like that. And on the other hand, some other students would go to the University of Alabama and do just fine. | 27:02 |
Paul Ortiz | Okay. Now through these years, through the fifties and sixties and on up, did you maintain contact with family or relatives from Forkland or Sumter County? | 27:46 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | Oh yes. And we still have that property down there. Yeah, we're in touch with them. Of course some of the relatives are up in Tuscaloosa, in Birmingham, and we were in touch with those on a regular basis. And then also down there from time to time, go down there, and we had a property down there, still down there. We used to sell the timber on it and all. | 27:59 |
Paul Ortiz | What was medical care like in Birmingham? | 28:28 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | Medical care? Well, we had Hillman Hospital up there. It was about two blocks from us. And it takes in patients, but we never had to go. I guess we were lucky, because I guess all that walking to school and back and eating beans and things, we were never ill. Nobody in the family. | 28:33 |
Paul Ortiz | And when you had your children, were they delivered at Hillman, or? | 29:00 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | No, they were, by that time, hell, I had insurance and everything by then. And they were all delivered at the hospital. I did have a— | 29:05 |
Paul Ortiz | At home hospital, or? | 29:16 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | No at, let's see. What was it? Jefferson Hospital. It was the one over there at UAP, and then one over, there was a little Baptist hospital over there on the south side. I've forgotten the name of that. | 29:16 |
Paul Ortiz | That was in fifties? | 29:34 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | Oh, in the fifties, now let's see. Oh, let's see. Now let me get that straight. Well, oh, let's see. | 29:35 |
Paul Ortiz | I was just wondering, | 29:46 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | We had a hospital out in Ensley. I'm trying to see if—Dr. Bryant, the Black family doctor, I went to him for the first two children, and they were stillborn. Then my sister's a nurse and she worked at Lloyd Noland Hospital, and we last stayed at Dr. Lacey's house and his daughter-in-law was a nurse at the same hospital. So I got them to recommend somebody for me to go to, and I went to a White specialist. And those babies, so it was a hospital over in the medical center that he took me to. | 29:46 |
Paul Ortiz | Okay. | 30:34 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | I think Dr. Bryant probably did take me to the Ensley Hospital and I compared what he did and Dr. Bryant did, they did the same thing. So I don't know what, I've never been able to figure that out, why did those two babies die? They were fully formed and all, but they were born dead. And then I went to Dr. Word twice. The children were fine. I went back to Dr. Bryant, lost a child. And then all the rest of them, I went to the specialist and they all lived. Now what it was, I don't know, but that's what happened. And all of those with Dr. Word were in hospitals over in the medical center and they were White. | 30:36 |
Paul Ortiz | What were the biggest changes, if any, that you witnessed in Birmingham during those years, from the time that you were a child and coming back and teaching, in a sense retracing some of your footsteps? | 31:30 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | Well, I'd say that the Black community was, you knew just about everybody in the Black community, because you had to go everywhere you went, well you did all your business basically for the Blacks. And you knew everybody, you knew who was supposed to be important, who was not. And then after, with integration, seems like there were more Black people more and you didn't know as many folks. | 31:48 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | But on the other hand, after in integration, we were more involved with the government of the city and all of that, because Dr. Errington was our dean out there at Miles. And then now he's the mayor, and then all of the city councilmen and all of those folks are people that you know and you know ad personally. Before then, we weren't even interested in what was going on at City Hall, because we didn't feel influenced by even part of it. And so was you read about it and it was something distant. But now with all of the civil rights movement, we've a part of what's going on. | 32:20 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | And also you see more and more after integration, you see young people going into jobs, earning more money and that kind of thing. And when before, it was like a cap on it, he wasn't going in front of them. Maybe teaching you going to be well up, you could teach to get a job in post office or work in a mine or something like that, that would probably be it. If you were exceptionally smart and had the money, you could become a doctor or something. But only a few people going do that, you didn't aspire to do that too much. | 33:14 |
Paul Ortiz | Well, sounds like, to me, that in a way you transcended many of those barriers in your life. | 33:53 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | Yeah, well I guess my grandmother and everybody always emphasized education. I knew that I wanted it. I didn't know whether I was going to get it or not. | 34:01 |
Paul Ortiz | Okay. Oh, Mrs. Clarke, I don't want to take up too much more of your time. You've given me, I'm just learning a lot. But it's what time is it [indistinct 00:34:26]—So Mrs. Clarke, could you tell me about how you continued your education? | 34:15 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | Well, after teaching at Holy Family and going to Miles, I was at—Well, at Holy Family, as soon as we were able to go to the University of Alabama, a whole group of teachers in Birmingham immediately went down and enrolled. And I was going, because it was fun to go, I wasn't even thinking about a degree or anything. I just wanted to go and I enjoyed going. And I remember one summer a friend of mine called, that I wrote with, and said, "Are you going to summer school this summer?" And I said, "Well, I don't know, I guess so." She said, "Well, if you go you can get your degree." I said, "I can?" She said, "Yeah." She had figured it out, I hadn't thought about a degree. | 34:35 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | So we earned a master's degree and we kept going together until we finished the EDS degree. And it was just fun riding down there in the carpool, and going to the classes. It was a whole new experience. And then after I started working at Miles and I was associate professor of education and all, one year I decided, well, I could go one more year and get the doctorate. So I went that final year and done the doctorate. And the whole thing was a very pleasant experience for me. | 35:24 |
Paul Ortiz | What year did you start at UAB? | 36:00 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | At UAB, that was the University of Alabama. Let's see, down in Tuscaloosa. | 36:01 |
Paul Ortiz | Oh Tuscaloosa. | 36:07 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | We commuted down there. At the time we started our program UAB was rather small. It had education, but it just expanded really much later than that, I think, it wasn't large and it didn't have the degree that we required. We took some courses over there that would allow us to take six hours on each program. And I took those, but it was at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa. | 36:07 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | But I started down there. When did I start? I earned the master's degree in '67. So I started in '65 and earned a master's degree in '67, while I was still at Holy Family High School. | 36:41 |
Paul Ortiz | So your MA in '67, and then when did you receive your EDS? | 36:58 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | The EDS degree was something like 1974. | 37:05 |
Paul Ortiz | And that was from University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, also? | 37:09 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | That's at University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa. And then in 1979 I earned the doctorate, PhD. | 37:14 |
Paul Ortiz | And the primary emphasis was in education? | 37:23 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | I started off in English, secondary education, because that's what I was doing at Holy Family High School. And then I was counselor too, so I switched over to counseling and for my EDS degree, and I continued on with the PhD in counseling. | 37:28 |
Paul Ortiz | So, you came quite a long ways in your educational strides— | 38:06 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | Sure did. | 38:11 |
Paul Ortiz | —from those days when you would sneak in to your grandmother's parlor and read the— | 38:12 |
Juanita Waiters Clarke | Yeah, right. But that started me off though. And it still influences me a lot, because I still think about my grandmother and what she said. | 38:17 |
Paul Ortiz | Okay. Mrs. Clarke, now we have, this is what I was showing you earlier, and this paperwork becomes part of the file in the archive. And I think that I mentioned, or I might not have mentioned this over— | 38:31 |
Item Info
The preservation of the Duke University Libraries Digital Collections and the Duke Digital Repository programs are supported in part by the Lowell and Eileen Aptman Digital Preservation Fund