Roosevelt Williams interview recording, 1993 June 24
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Transcript
Transcripts may contain inaccuracies.
Paul Ortiz | Mr. Williams, could you tell me a little bit about the area that you grew up in, where you were born at? | 0:01 |
Roosevelt Williams | Yeah. As I say, I was born in Pickens County, and I lived on a farm. Of course, we did own our own place. It was pretty rough out on the farm because cotton and stuff, that's the biggest thing we had to depend on far as cash crop, and it wasn't no price for nothing down, real low. We did very well, I guess, considering as far as living. We had plenty to eat and everything. It just wasn't all time what we wanted, but we had plenty because we raised most everything, you see. I lived down there, went to school down there and everything. | 0:09 |
Roosevelt Williams | In 1940, I left there and I went and I went to Meridian, Mississippi. I worked there about a year. I didn't like it as I was doing sawmill work and everything. I didn't like that. | 1:25 |
Roosevelt Williams | Then I got a chance to come to Birmingham and got a job with US Steel. I stayed there until I retired US Steel, Ensley Works. I did better there. After I got the job making a little money, I did very well. | 2:00 |
Roosevelt Williams | But now, this is a real segregated town, Birmingham. Well, we found it all over is that way, in Pickens County, far as that go. But Birmingham is very—but we come up in it, so we got along very well. I didn't never have no trouble because I always tried to stay within the law, do what I thought was right. I didn't never have no real trouble with nobody, but it was really going on, that segregation. We had to stay, I guess what they'd call then in our place for that because I got along very well. | 2:31 |
Paul Ortiz | Mr. Williams, you mentioned that your family were landowners. | 3:35 |
Roosevelt Williams | Mm-hmm. Yeah. | 3:40 |
Paul Ortiz | Do you remember about how many acres? | 3:42 |
Roosevelt Williams | Yeah. Yeah. We had 40 and 60, it's 40 and 30. It's 40 and 30, that's 90, isn't it? 40? Had about 90 acres of land. | 3:45 |
Paul Ortiz | Okay. Cotton was the cash crop? | 4:06 |
Roosevelt Williams | Yeah. Yeah. | 4:08 |
Paul Ortiz | Then you mentioned that you also raised your own food. | 4:09 |
Roosevelt Williams | Oh, yeah. | 4:13 |
Paul Ortiz | what kinds of? | 4:14 |
Roosevelt Williams | Well, we raised hogs and cows, meat and raised cows and had our own milk and butter, things like that. Of course, we raised other things such as peas and different things like that. Something to eat, had gardenings. We had gardening and everything. We did very well. Even as I said, a lot of time wasn't what we want, but we had plenty of whatever we did have. | 4:16 |
Paul Ortiz | When it came time to harvest the cotton crop, did you have enough family labor to harvest that crop or? | 4:57 |
Roosevelt Williams | Yes. Yes. It was always was enough for the family to do that. We didn't have to hire no one to pick. We did that ourselves. Yeah. We did that ourselves. We didn't hire nobody. | 5:06 |
Paul Ortiz | Were there other Black families that own land in Pickens County around where you were at? | 5:27 |
Roosevelt Williams | Yeah. It was quite a few scattered around on the land. Then it was quite a few working what you call sharecrops, you know, working with other. | 5:32 |
Roosevelt Williams | Take my family. Well, at that time, I say, they were some of the top Colored families in there because my granddaddy had a cotton gin and that was unusual, because no other Blacks down there didn't have that. He was a big farmer, my mother's daddy and all. Now he owned a whole lot of land. I don't know how many hundred acres he owned, but he owned lots of land. | 5:46 |
Roosevelt Williams | But after my mother married a man, just owned about 90 acres of land. Other words, they bought it after she married. When I was born and everything, they had the land and everything. We were inherited there. | 6:26 |
Paul Ortiz | Do you remember your grandparents? | 6:54 |
Roosevelt Williams | Well, I know my grandmother on both sides. They lived long enough for me to know them pretty good, but my grand-daddy on both sides, they died just before I was born. But I knew my grandmothers on both sides. | 6:59 |
Paul Ortiz | Did they ever tell you any stories or did you hear them talking about their own younger days? | 7:14 |
Roosevelt Williams | Well, I don't remember one in particular that they told me, but they would talk about, some of them even remembered a little something. None of them live through actual slavery, but they knew about it. I used to hear them talking about that, some of their people or their mothers or daddies lived through it. They would talk about. | 7:34 |
Paul Ortiz | What would they say about it? | 8:06 |
Roosevelt Williams | Well, they just talk about how rough it was and you just limited. They didn't allow you to, well they didn't want you educated for that, oh, you know, and all that. So they'd just have to— | 8:10 |
Roosevelt Williams | They'd learn a little something. They'd let them go school, learn a little something, to read and write and all but all because even their masters wouldn't allow because they want them there farming, in the farm working all the time. They didn't let them take time to really get no education, and so, they had to come up the rough way. | 8:33 |
Roosevelt Williams | And of course way back then, they didn't really have freedom to worship like we do. They had to what they called steal away, they said, and have their little worship and everything. I used to hear them talk about that. | 9:00 |
Paul Ortiz | Oh, really? | 9:24 |
Roosevelt Williams | But from long as I can remember, we was always able to go school and everything. But before then, I'd hear them talk about how it was before then coming up. | 9:28 |
Paul Ortiz | You heard them talk about stealing away? | 9:46 |
Roosevelt Williams | Oh, yeah. They would slip off somewhere and worship, pray, and sing. Anyway, their slave masters, they had to stay out of their sight to do that because they'd break it up because they didn't want do nothing too much. I used to hear them tell those kind of tales. It was rough enough with us, but it was still worse way back then when early on in slavery. | 9:50 |
Paul Ortiz | You mentioned you were talking about education. Did your parents have a chance to have education? | 10:31 |
Roosevelt Williams | Well, yeah. They got some but they wasn't able to finish school. They got a certain portion. They could read and write and figure and do, but they got somewhere maybe about seven, eighth grade maybe. But they wasn't able to finish. | 10:39 |
Paul Ortiz | How about yourself? What kind of education was available to you? | 11:02 |
Roosevelt Williams | Well, it was available, but now actually I didn't go all the way through because at that time we had, well we didn't have but three months school at that time. Having the cattle farm on and everything, a lot of time wasn't able to go all of that semester. I wound up about 10th grade before—I didn't quite finish. | 11:06 |
Paul Ortiz | Do you remember the names of your schools? | 11:47 |
Roosevelt Williams | Yeah. Pickens County Training School one. I went to course now I went to some local school before then, Cumberland Presbyterian Church. I went to that before I went to Pickens County Training. Excuse me. | 11:49 |
Paul Ortiz | Pickens County Training School was like a high school? | 12:10 |
Roosevelt Williams | Yes, yes. High school. | 12:12 |
Paul Ortiz | The Presbyterian church was like a grade school for Black students? | 12:17 |
Roosevelt Williams | Yeah. Yeah. That's right. That's right. | 12:21 |
Paul Ortiz | Do you remember anything about the teachers, about the books, where you got the books from? | 12:25 |
Roosevelt Williams | Well, I don't know exactly where we got the book from, but at that time we didn't get the first. The books are different from what the White got, I know that. I don't remember exactly where they got them, how they got them, but anyway, they were different. | 12:33 |
Paul Ortiz | As students, did you and your friends talk about that during the time? | 13:01 |
Roosevelt Williams | Well, we didn't know much better way back then. We just thought that's just the way it's supposed to be. We thought as far as we knew then because we wasn't taught. Until I got a little older and each other I learned about it, but back then when especially in grammar school and all, we didn't know any better. They thought that's all, that's the way it's supposed to be as far as we knew. | 13:08 |
Roosevelt Williams | But anyway, we had went to training school. This was about four or five miles, and we had to walk there because now wasn't no buses available for Blacks at all then. They'd pass right by you and these other buses with the White, but you couldn't get on. We couldn't get on. | 13:40 |
Paul Ortiz | You had watched the White? | 14:11 |
Roosevelt Williams | Oh, yeah. We'd watched them pass by and going on to their bus to take them to school, bring them back home. | 14:13 |
Paul Ortiz | What did you think about that? | 14:22 |
Roosevelt Williams | Oh, it was rough. It was rough. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I knew it wasn't right, but wasn't nothing. It seemed to be nothing I could do about it then, but they'd pass right by you but you couldn't get on that bus. | 14:24 |
Paul Ortiz | Did you ever talk with the White kids? | 14:43 |
Roosevelt Williams | Well, yeah. Sometime I'd talk to them, but well I guess they felt like that was right too for it to be like that. I didn't get much sympathy from them. | 14:48 |
Paul Ortiz | Were there fights? | 15:06 |
Roosevelt Williams | Well, we didn't have many fights among the races. Got along pretty good. Once in a while you'd have a fight, but we didn't have lots of fights among. Once in a while. I tell you once in a while, some of them you grew up with, they say— | 15:08 |
Roosevelt Williams | You know, they all don't live far apart, and when you're small, play together, you know the way. But now quick as he get as a man, quick as he get little age on him, then they want you to call him mister, you know. Now, that is a few fights about that. Yeah. | 15:27 |
Roosevelt Williams | You got to call him mister, that's what he wanted, you know. They'd have little squabbles about that sometimes. Yeah. | 15:52 |
Roosevelt Williams | "I'm getting of age now. I'm Mr. so and so." Sometimes you might be older than him, but he still wants you to call him mister. | 16:02 |
Paul Ortiz | The White kid would actually say? | 16:14 |
Roosevelt Williams | Yeah, yeah. Call him mister. Didn't care if you were older than he is but he's just going call you by your name. Other words, coming up there you never was I'd say considered a man. You was a boy. If you got old, you was uncle or something like that, they call you. Anything but mister. That's the way it was. | 16:19 |
Paul Ortiz | During this time, your parents were primarily farming? | 16:55 |
Roosevelt Williams | Oh, yeah. | 16:59 |
Paul Ortiz | Were they doing any other kinds of work? | 17:00 |
Roosevelt Williams | No, no. Wasn't no other kind of work. Now during the, sometime when you catch up, or during the winter months or something, it might do a little, wasn't nothing around there but little saw mills or something like that. They might do a little work there then, but the primary thing they depend on that farming. | 17:02 |
Paul Ortiz | Do you have brothers? You had brothers and sisters. | 17:44 |
Roosevelt Williams | Yes, I had about five sisters and one brother. I didn't have but one brother. He's older than I was, but I had five sisters. | 17:46 |
Paul Ortiz | Was there any difference in the kinds of responsibilities you had around the house say as compared to your sisters? Was there a? | 18:03 |
Roosevelt Williams | Well, yeah. Now as far as the housework, cooking, and different things like that, they had their jobs. Any outdoor work and everything, I'd do that or me and my brother would do that around the barn, or feeding the mule, or something like that. Getting the wood and stuff, we would do that. But the girls, they just had in the housework kind of thing, do that, but we all worked in the field together. | 18:13 |
Paul Ortiz | When you were growing up in Pickens County, do you remember any times or events that would bring people together? Any celebrations? | 18:50 |
Roosevelt Williams | Well, you mean both races or just? | 19:11 |
Paul Ortiz | Perhaps just Black people? | 19:19 |
Roosevelt Williams | Oh, yeah. Black, we'd often have big meetings and things, associations they call them, and the big days that there'd be lots of people together on those particular days. We'd celebrate the 4th of July. They had little sandlot ball teams and everything. We'd meet. We call ourselves, had a good time. We had a lot together and like that. | 19:21 |
Paul Ortiz | Who would organize those? | 19:52 |
Roosevelt Williams | Well, they had different ones in the community there that would do that mostly. They just get together and just organize the ball team or whatever it is. As far as big turnouts and everything, the leading church folks or ministers and things, they'd have these association meeting they called. All the churches, they meet together and have a big time, have a big dinner and all like that turn out. Yeah, we had some nice gatherings, big time together that way. | 19:54 |
Paul Ortiz | Which church did your family go to? | 20:41 |
Roosevelt Williams | It's in St. John Baptist Church. St. John Baptist Church in Pickensville. That's the church I was raised up in. | 20:45 |
Paul Ortiz | When did you start, and you moved to—You left Pickens County in 1940? | 21:07 |
Roosevelt Williams | I went to Meridian, Mississippi. | 21:16 |
Paul Ortiz | Okay. Was that your first job outside of the house? | 21:17 |
Roosevelt Williams | Well, my first regular job, like I said, during my spare time when I wasn't farming, I would get a little job around saw mills and things like that. Of course, yeah. I had left home one time and went up in Detroit, but now at that time, I stayed up there about three months during the winter. Tried to get a job, but I wasn't able to get one. That was somewhere along about 1936 or seven. After I didn't get no job, then I come back and farm about two, three years before I left there. You see. | 21:22 |
Paul Ortiz | Were you farming for your family? | 22:13 |
Roosevelt Williams | Yeah. Yeah. Otherwise, see I had married then. I had my own farm and everything. | 22:17 |
Paul Ortiz | What year did you get married? | 22:23 |
Roosevelt Williams | I got married in 1931. | 22:25 |
Paul Ortiz | You had your own land? | 22:34 |
Roosevelt Williams | Yeah. | 22:36 |
Paul Ortiz | Did you purchase that or was that? | 22:39 |
Roosevelt Williams | Well I inherited 20 acres from my grandparents, and I bought another 40 acres myself. That's 60 acres. I had that to farm on. Let me see. | 22:41 |
Paul Ortiz | It must have been, I've heard that those were very difficult years. | 23:09 |
Roosevelt Williams | Oh, they were. There were difficult years. You see, cotton got as low as five cent pound, and it take a lot of work to make a bale of cotton. You didn't get nothing much out of it for what you're doing. You'd have to have money to farm on by the time you support your farm and everything. When gathering time come, you had to pay it all out, whatever you made mostly. You didn't hardly clear no money. Mighty little if any. | 23:16 |
Paul Ortiz | Who would you sell your crop to? | 24:03 |
Roosevelt Williams | Well, they had an open market in a little old town like Carrollton and Aliceville. They had regular buyer that buy this cotton and stuff, you see. Of course, we had to take it to the gin, and you'd take it, then have it ginned, and they give you a sample, what they call it, wrapped in a sample. You get ready to sell it, you take it for this buyer, and he'll examine that cotton. Depend on what length it was and everything, and he'll pay you accordingly. But it wasn't much then. That's about the biggest cash crop you had because you could raise a lot of other stuff, but you couldn't sell it or didn't have nobody to buy it. Cotton, as I said, that's the only biggest thing we had depend on far as cash. | 24:05 |
Roosevelt Williams | But we'd raised penny corn, and we'd have had grits meal, make our own meal and stuff far as that'd go, and things like that. Raise our own hogs and kill hogs and have plenty meat and stuff like that. | 25:01 |
Roosevelt Williams | That's just the way we had to come up. I say we'd have plenty of that, whatever it was, but all this other fancy stuff, maybe what we wanted, we wasn't able to buy it. | 25:27 |
Roosevelt Williams | We'd raise cows and things. If you kill a cow, some you didn't have refrigeration, nothing much, you couldn't keep your meat and stuff. Now that pork, that hog, we would cure that, smoke it, and you could keep that. | 25:38 |
Paul Ortiz | When you would kill the cow and you couldn't keep the meat, what would you do with it? | 26:00 |
Roosevelt Williams | Well, most people, when they kill a car in the community, lots of them would sell, get engagement and people would buy it up down to what they just keep what they could get rid of, use before it spoil and everything. That's the way you do. We didn't do much killing cows for beef because didn't have no way to keep it. Nothing but hogs. We could do that. We keep them. | 26:05 |
Paul Ortiz | You began farming in 1931 while you were married in? | 26:49 |
Roosevelt Williams | Married in 1931, but I was farming before then. Oh, up until I got married. | 26:55 |
Paul Ortiz | You meet your wife through church or? | 27:04 |
Roosevelt Williams | Yeah, I met her at a church. Now, her home was in Mississippi, which wasn't far from where I was, but it was in Mississippi and I met her at a church. | 27:10 |
Paul Ortiz | Was that through a revival that you met? | 27:21 |
Roosevelt Williams | No, no. We just went over there. I had a cousin living over there, and I just went over there to the church one Sunday, and she had me to meet this girl. We start corresponding from then on, and we got married. | 27:26 |
Paul Ortiz | There must have been a point when you were farming after you married that you felt like things were getting especially hard, it was hard to make— | 27:57 |
Roosevelt Williams | Oh yeah, it was. Yeah, it was. That's right. | 28:08 |
Paul Ortiz | How did you come to the decision to go to Meridian? | 28:12 |
Roosevelt Williams | Well, as I said, I had a cousin down there. He was working at, well he was in charge of the lumber department down there. He kept on there and told me, "Come on down here, get you a job down here and make some money." Well, I went on down there, but they wasn't paying nothing much and working from sun up to sun down. I didn't like that. | 28:17 |
Roosevelt Williams | Then I got a guy over here, one of her cousins, he told me, he said—it was TCI at that time, was still TCI. He said, "They're fixing to hire some people. Why don't you come on over there and you might get a job over there." | 28:53 |
Roosevelt Williams | So I did. I left there one weekend, and that Monday morning they were hiring out there. It was sort of hard to get a job then. They just began, just after the war had broke out, just before the war broke out. They finally, he hired me. Lots of people there, but somehow or another through all that I did get a job there and hired. So, I stayed there for 35 years. | 29:17 |
Paul Ortiz | Did your family make that initial trip with you or did you make that alone? | 30:00 |
Roosevelt Williams | I made the trip by myself to start with. I come here and got a job and got established, well just about three or four months I went back and got my family. | 30:06 |
Paul Ortiz | It must have been quite a different way of life in Birmingham. | 30:24 |
Roosevelt Williams | Oh, it was. | 30:32 |
Paul Ortiz | Pickens County. What was it like? | 30:32 |
Roosevelt Williams | Oh, well it is a lot different. Now anyway, we had more places we could go and everything after we got to Birmingham. It was lots of different than city life and the country life. I come to like Birmingham very well, and so we just settled in here and decided to make this our home. | 30:34 |
Paul Ortiz | Were there people or institutions that helped you make that move or helped you settle in? | 31:06 |
Roosevelt Williams | Well, I guess that had something to do with it. But I come in, I soon joined the church and got with the church folks and liked them pretty good, and so went to socializing with different ones. Anyway, I liked it pretty well, and so I just decided to make this my home. Job, it was a whole lot better than even where I was in Meridian. The job was because I was making more money and everything, and so we did pretty good. | 31:12 |
Paul Ortiz | You were living in Ensley? | 32:08 |
Roosevelt Williams | No, I didn't ever live in Ensley. I lived in what we call Smithfield now. That's where I would, I'd live there for until 1948. I went to looking around then from some place because I wanted to buy my own home. See I was renting until then, and I come over here in Titusville this is called, and this is a vacant lot here. I bought this lot here. In May of 1948, they completed my house and I moved in here. 1948. | 32:11 |
Paul Ortiz | Who owned your house when you were living in Smithfield? | 33:04 |
Roosevelt Williams | Well, let me see. It was a man that run the store there. This building's onto the back of the store and it's his name, Rookie. He is Italian. Rookie. Well, I was renting from him there and that's where I moved from there here. | 33:08 |
Paul Ortiz | Was there a company housing in Smithfield? | 33:34 |
Roosevelt Williams | No, not in the company I was working with. No, no. They didn't have no houses there. They had houses all out in the ends and different places, but I never lived in the company house. | 33:41 |
Paul Ortiz | What did your wife think about the move? | 33:57 |
Roosevelt Williams | Well, she liked it. Well, she liked it because she was fed up with the way we were living and way things was, so she liked it very much. | 34:04 |
Paul Ortiz | What was your first job at at TCI? | 34:18 |
Roosevelt Williams | Well, I'll tell you, at that time didn't make much difference what you knew. You had to take a common labor job. I started out as a brick mason helper. Brick mason helper, see they use brick mason there to line those furnaces where they make that steel, and I was a bricklayer helper there. | 34:24 |
Paul Ortiz | Was the bricklayer White? | 34:52 |
Roosevelt Williams | Oh, yeah. They was all White. No, they didn't care how well you know how to do it, they wouldn't let you do it. No, they still had that. Although they had a union too, but they didn't make no differently. There's certain job you just couldn't get if you was Black. | 34:55 |
Paul Ortiz | Did you end up doing most of the work for the? | 35:17 |
Roosevelt Williams | Well, you get everything ready and everything. He had to work all right now, but you do the dirty work and the hard work. You get everything ready for him, and get your bricks, keep the bricks stacked that way he could get them and everything, and make up the mortar, and all that stuff. But he was making big money, see we wasn't making big money. That's the difference. | 35:24 |
Paul Ortiz | Were you involved, or did you follow the politics of the day? Roosevelt's New Deal? Were you voting at that time? | 36:01 |
Roosevelt Williams | Well, I started voting way back. I tell you, at that time, they had such strict laws. You had to what they call poll tax and you had to pay poll tax. I even paid poll tax, and you had to pass the board of examiners. They ask you all kind of strict questions and everything, but I was determined to vote. I kept on until I got to be a voter, but as I said, I had to pay poll tax for so many years. Then they cut out the poll tax after. | 36:16 |
Paul Ortiz | Did you start voting or trying to vote in Birmingham? | 36:59 |
Roosevelt Williams | Yeah, in Birmingham is where I started. No, I didn't even make no attempt down in there because I don't know. I don't think they had no Black voting down in Pickens County. I know that's just out the question. | 37:04 |
Paul Ortiz | Did anybody ever try? | 37:18 |
Roosevelt Williams | I don't know. I don't think it was open for Black, far as I know then. But I know after I come here, to Birmingham and everything, it was rough then. Didn't have just a few Black voters here. As I said, you had a tough time trying to pass the board of elections. | 37:24 |
Paul Ortiz | What kind of experience was that? What did you have to go through? | 37:50 |
Roosevelt Williams | Well see, you go before the exam, they ask you all kind of questions about the constitution, things they know you didn't know. They ask you all those silly questions. If you couldn't answer them all, well you turn down. But now what we did, we had a voting right school we'd go to, and they would teach us a lot of them things that they might would ask. We had it right here, sit up our church then. We'd have people coming in there and trying to learn them, train them to answer these questions. We got quite a few voters qualified through that, see. | 37:54 |
Paul Ortiz | What year was that? | 38:52 |
Roosevelt Williams | Oh, let me see. I don't know. That was way back then. | 38:55 |
Paul Ortiz | '40s? | 38:57 |
Roosevelt Williams | Yeah, I'd say at least in the '50. Early '50s. | 39:00 |
Paul Ortiz | Early '50s. | 39:03 |
Roosevelt Williams | It probably started in '48 or something like that, but I know in the early '50s. | 39:06 |
Paul Ortiz | There's a voting rights school at your church. Which church was that? | 39:14 |
Roosevelt Williams | St. James Missionary Baptist Church. | 39:17 |
Paul Ortiz | The Voting Rights School started after you had been there for a while? | 39:20 |
Roosevelt Williams | Oh, yeah, yeah. Years after. When I first come there, they didn't have it because I was working with this school. I was one of the instructors there. | 39:28 |
Paul Ortiz | Oh, you were one of the instructors. | 39:40 |
Roosevelt Williams | Yeah. After I passed the board and everything with that, teaching these other people about the things they might would ask them. They asked them at random different things, but we try to get them familiar with all those questions. | 39:42 |
Paul Ortiz | What led you to want become a voting rights instructor? | 40:04 |
Roosevelt Williams | Well, I know that's the onus. Well, I know we needed voters then, to get people in there that would do something for you. You know, because long as we didn't have no voters, no Black voters in there at all, the politician, the one could holler "Nigger!" the loudest, he the one got elected. Because he know where all his strength come from, the Whites. See, because Black couldn't do no harm at all, couldn't do nothing, so they didn't care. They'd tell them what they wasn't going to do or what they was going to do against the Blacks if they put them in and all. | 40:10 |
Roosevelt Williams | I knew we needed some Black voters, and enough to do some good. For a long time, they had to keep it down so low, well, it wouldn't amount to much. But finally, after the civil rights work, after they really got into it after Martin Luther King and all of them, after the Selma, Voting Rights Act passed and everything, we got a lot of voters, and so things began to change some after that. | 41:00 |
Roosevelt Williams | I knew it wasn't right what was going on, and I knew that's the only way we would ever get a little right in there by getting enough voters in there. That's right. That's right now. | 41:35 |
Paul Ortiz | Where did Black people talk politics act? | 41:49 |
Roosevelt Williams | Say when did they? | 41:53 |
Paul Ortiz | Now, you decided to become a voting rights instructor. | 41:59 |
Roosevelt Williams | Yeah. | 42:01 |
Paul Ortiz | Did you talk with other Black people about politics? | 42:02 |
Roosevelt Williams | Oh, yeah. | 42:08 |
Paul Ortiz | In the '40s. | 42:08 |
Roosevelt Williams | Oh, yeah. Yeah, I did. | 42:08 |
Paul Ortiz | Where did that happen? Where did that take place at? | 42:11 |
Roosevelt Williams | Well, different places are around in the city, different ones. We'd talk, and sometime some the, well, we had some of the preachers in it. We'd get together and we'd talk about these things and talk about what we should do. The main focus was to try to get more voters, and so we talked about it lots. Then one of the fellas in our church, he decided he wanted to be a leader of it, and he got me to work with him in there, you see. This is Leo Taylor, I believe his name was. He's heading in this voting rights school. I was working with him in that and instructing. | 42:12 |
Paul Ortiz | Do you know of other churches that have voting rights schools? | 43:11 |
Roosevelt Williams | Yeah, most of them. Lots of them, had voting rights school. They'd meet so many nights a week or something like that and try to bring the people up. Yeah, I know quite a few of them. | 43:13 |
Paul Ortiz | Was there activity along those lines by the, say the Urban League or NAACP? | 43:36 |
Roosevelt Williams | Yeah. Yeah. They was working on it too. They had study makings at different meetings, having different meetings, and just talking about it and everything, and trying to urge the people to get interested in voting and all. They did lots of that. | 43:46 |
Paul Ortiz | You've become a member of the NAACP in the '40s? | 44:09 |
Roosevelt Williams | Yeah. Yeah, I probably did in the late '40s. | 44:12 |
Paul Ortiz | Now in the '40s, you mentioned that for African-American workers and the plant, they had the toughest jobs. | 44:26 |
Roosevelt Williams | Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. | 44:38 |
Paul Ortiz | Discrimination. | 44:39 |
Roosevelt Williams | Yeah. | 44:40 |
Paul Ortiz | Were you able to, at some point, fight the way up the ladder or the job ladder? | 44:41 |
Roosevelt Williams | Well, I tried to fight way other words, department I was in, that's the bricklaying, just before I left there, I think they finally hired one Black bricklayer after the really civil right group tighten down on them. They got one man. Well, I put in for it, but I never didn't make it to the brick layer. The only thing I got to be a little gang leader we call it. Well now along with the bricklaying help, they always had different labor groups that come in there. They'd have what they call a gang leader over those people. I did get the place, I didn't have to work no more than I want to. I just tell them what to do and everything. That's about as high as I made it because at that time I was getting ready to retire, see? | 44:50 |
Paul Ortiz | That was in the '70s? | 45:58 |
Roosevelt Williams | Yeah, I retired in '75, 1975. But this was probably in the early '70s before I got to be there. I didn't pursue no further because I knew I was soon retire. | 46:00 |
Paul Ortiz | Is that primarily a Black work crew or a mix? | 46:20 |
Roosevelt Williams | It is mixed. It's mixed then. | 46:22 |
Paul Ortiz | Was that plant unionized? | 46:29 |
Roosevelt Williams | Was it what? | 46:33 |
Paul Ortiz | Was that plant unionized? | 46:34 |
Roosevelt Williams | Oh, yeah. Yeah. They had a union. They had a union, sure enough there, went there. But now, as I say, most of the leaders of the union was White and so they didn't fight too much for Black as far as going up the ladder. No, you didn't. Uh-huh. They didn't— | 46:36 |
Paul Ortiz | You're talking about the discrimination at the union. And was there a time when Black workers at the plant organized any kind of resistance to that or any kind of— | 0:05 |
Roosevelt Williams | No, they didn't really do that. I don't know whether they should have or not, but they didn't do it. Not against the union work at all. They had one or two Blacks with a position in the union. But most everything otherwise, what they would try to get through this out voted long and so they didn't make too much progress along that line as far as— | 0:25 |
Roosevelt Williams | Of course, a lot of them had land, like I said, lots of them did move up. You know some of those jobs, lot those Blacks got some of those jobs that even then, 'cause they had age on the White and some of them really got those jobs. But the job I was on, I didn't ever, by that time, like I said, I was getting ready to leave out there and I didn't pursue no further to try to get in the other department and do no rolling or nothing like that. But now lots of them did get those jobs before it was over because—But at first for a long time you couldn't get a— | 1:07 |
Paul Ortiz | Did you go up to a union meetings? | 1:55 |
Roosevelt Williams | Yeah, yeah I did. It's a mix. Black and White went there. Yeah, they—you know, as far as where the union meeting is concerned. | 2:05 |
Paul Ortiz | Oh, integrated union meeting? | 2:09 |
Roosevelt Williams | Oh, yeah. Well yeah, they'd all meet at the same, all and naturally at that time. Far as seating, everything is segregated but it's all in the same meeting. And most of the leaders, they had one or two Black, but most of the leaders was White and we'd all sit there and listen to the, you know, what they'd have, see what they had to say and everything. So we all met at the same hall like you said, but it was just segregated in there. And so— | 2:12 |
Paul Ortiz | Do you remember the local number? | 2:53 |
Roosevelt Williams | Let me see, what is that number? I believe it was 1489. I believe it was an end. I believe that's what it was. I'm not sure. 1489 I believe it was. | 2:57 |
Paul Ortiz | What was life like in general for you and your family in Birmingham during the forties and fifties? | 3:13 |
Roosevelt Williams | Well, as I said, if you—Like, under the circumstances, like thing was if you just go ahead on and sort of make yourself satisfied, I mean it was pretty good in a way. But the segregation was there and we knew it was there and so we didn't worry too much about and so we got along pretty good. Yeah. So yeah, a whole lot of things you couldn't do. A lot of places you couldn't go for. They'd go, but we just sort of made ourselves satisfied. | 3:25 |
Paul Ortiz | When you would go shopping and buy food and clothing and stuff, where would you go? | 4:11 |
Roosevelt Williams | We would go to the main stores because we'd go there and shop and sat and eat in places you couldn't go in, all that. But for the stores they had all them open. You could go anywhere you wanted there and trade before they'd go. And so that's what we did. And grocery stores and the clothing store, all them, they was open. You could go there and buy anything you want to, but— | 4:18 |
Paul Ortiz | Did you patronize the Black business district or kind of a— | 4:57 |
Roosevelt Williams | Well yeah, sometimes if they had a pretty good business, we'd patronize them. But lots of time you had to go to these other store to get what you really want. Because it wasn't too many big Black business at that time. They had some places, but we did lots of trading at the main stores, like White run stores, Pizitz, Loveman's, and all those big stores like that. We did lots of business there. | 5:03 |
Paul Ortiz | And you have children by this time? | 5:46 |
Roosevelt Williams | Yeah, we just had one child anyway, one son. So he lived with us a while after we got chairman. He went off in college and then from college he went in service and he made a career in the Air Force and so he wasn't living with us too much here. | 5:49 |
Paul Ortiz | What were the symbols of Jim Crow and segregation of Birmingham? | 6:22 |
Roosevelt Williams | Well— | 6:25 |
Ruthy M. Williams | How you doing? | 6:25 |
Roosevelt Williams | That's my wife. (Ruthy and Roosevelt laugh) | 6:25 |
Roosevelt Williams | That's all right. | 6:25 |
Ruthy M. Williams | That's okay. I'm feeding cats. (Ruthy and Roosevelt laugh) | 6:25 |
Ruthy M. Williams | Feeding alley cats. (Ruthy and Roosevelt laugh) | 6:39 |
Roosevelt Williams | Well the only thing I can say, it was rough for—Like they said like long as you stay in your place, what they call your place, you make it very well. But if you try to do anything that they think you are not to do, they say you was one of those smart guys. And so— | 6:46 |
Paul Ortiz | What happened then? | 7:16 |
Roosevelt Williams | Well at that time they would—Anything might happen 'cause the thing about it, if he complained too much or tried to do something about it, well the law—Thing about it, the law was on his side. They wasn't going to protect you, as long as you was in come conflict with some White man. Then they just going to jump on you or put you in jail or do something. Yeah. You didn't have no rights far as that go. | 7:18 |
Paul Ortiz | Do you know of incidents of that happening with friends or stories of your— | 7:51 |
Roosevelt Williams | Well I've seen a lot of it happen. I can't hardly call names exactly who, but I've seen lots of it happen along with Blacks and seen it where the other man really in the wrong. But if he tried to defend himself any kind of way where the law going come they going up on the Black, they going to blame it on him. They ain't going try to see where it started or who was at fault. But just start at him, he's automatically wrong. They going to take him on the jail. Sometimes, beat him up you understand. So all that we had to go through with him. So— | 7:59 |
Paul Ortiz | During that time you had, of course, Eugene Connor, Bull Connor? | 8:51 |
Roosevelt Williams | Oh yeah, he's rough. | 8:59 |
Paul Ortiz | What did you think about him? | 9:02 |
Roosevelt Williams | Oh, he was something else I'm telling you, he's automatically against all Blacks and so—Yeah, he was something. Yeah. And well wasn't nothing we could do by it. As I said, we didn't have no voters or nothing. So they'd vote him right back in every year because most of them, liked what he was doing see and so he's always ready to beat up on or encourage others as police department to beat up on Blacks and everything. So we had all that to go through. Yeah. | 9:04 |
Paul Ortiz | Were you able to keep contact with your family in Pickens County? | 9:43 |
Roosevelt Williams | Yeah. Well yeah. I would go down there with Oswald, I had a brother down there and sisters, and all my sisters and things. Most of them were down there. I'd go down there, I'd write them and I'd be in contact with them most of the time. Mm-hmm. Yeah. | 9:53 |
Paul Ortiz | Now when you were involved in the voting rights or when you began to be involved in the voting rights school, you were able to register in 1952 or? | 10:20 |
Roosevelt Williams | I believe, I don't know the exact year, but it's somewhere long then I was able to register. So— | 10:39 |
Paul Ortiz | Do you remember who you voted for? | 10:48 |
Roosevelt Williams | No, but I know how know far as the mayor at that time, let me see the time was a commission government at that time. It wasn't mayor. But anyway, I know I voted against Bull Connor, who's there were running. I think it's Sibo or somebody was running against him. I voted him and several others well and the others like the governor race and all. | 10:52 |
Roosevelt Williams | Well I tell you, I voted against George Wallace 'cause he's another and he is almost like Bull Connor as far as Black is concerned. And so I voted against him and all them hardcore fell like that. I voted for the next less evil some of them. I wasn't perfect but some of them better (laughs) than they were. And so I voted. But far as remembering exactly who, I can't remember. | 11:28 |
Paul Ortiz | Did either political party on a national level, Democrats, Republicans appeal to you during those years? | 12:07 |
Roosevelt Williams | Well looking like at that time the Democrats looked like was a little bit more liberal than most of Republican was, and so. Now in some cases some of the leaders, I didn't stick with the party all the time back then 'cause sometime the Republican would sound better, talk more in favor what he do for all the people than the Democrat. Well, who's never talked like what they is going to do more right for all the people. Well that's the point when I would usually vote for. See, but I've been voting Democrat most of my life. Yeah. | 12:19 |
Paul Ortiz | Do you remember when the NAACP was outlawed in Alabama? | 13:24 |
Roosevelt Williams | Yeah. Yeah. That's when it's Fred Shuttlesworth, them then they organized this Alabama movement for Christian, Alabama Christian Movement. I remember well when that happened, they outlawed the NAACP, and so that organization was born then and Shuttlesworth was leading that. And they just having meetings— one time they had meeting every night in the week, but at— | 13:29 |
Ruthy M. Williams | This one spoiled cat. (Ruthy and Roosevelt laugh) | 14:04 |
Roosevelt Williams | She got him spoiled, now. | 14:10 |
Roosevelt Williams | But at that time they just having meetings there pretty regular. And he was working in with Martin Luther King. And so they used to come, then they had lots of meeting here in Birmingham. I would go to most of those meetings. And so it was pretty rough then. We was trying to get things straightened out a little better, so— | 14:10 |
Paul Ortiz | Do you remember the tone of the conversations during those meetings? Was there a lot of debate over strategy? | 14:44 |
Roosevelt Williams | Well, a good little bit. But now what they would do, they would have policemen there every night. This meeting was, they'd have them to come to hear what was being said. You see. And they'd go to a certain extent, but I think when they get ready for the strategy, they'd have private meeting or they would know. But they would come out, oh, most of the things they was going to do, they had said right there and they'd know about it. Police was writing down everything was said in these meetings. And so they was up in arms on whatever was going on mostly. So they didn't try to keep too much of its secret from them. Yeah, yeah. So yeah, I attend those meetings and they'd make plans and everything. They'd tell them when they're going to march and all. So they'd be well aware whenever they're going put on a march or anything. 'Cause they'll speak it open in the meeting. | 14:51 |
Paul Ortiz | What did you think about those marches? | 16:22 |
Roosevelt Williams | Well, I don't know. I guess it helped some of them showing protests anyway. Protest marches you see. And just letting them know they wasn't satisfied with what was going on. The march had a whole lot to do with the passing of the civil rights bill and all that, you see. | 16:26 |
Paul Ortiz | But at the time did they seem to you to be too militant or too— | 16:50 |
Roosevelt Williams | Well no, they seemed to be— | 16:59 |
Roosevelt Williams | Sometimes it might seem that way, but I left it up to their judgment. I think they made some pretty good judgments I think. But all we could do is protest and so—though we wasn't satisfied with where things are going. That's the main thing. | 17:03 |
Paul Ortiz | What were the major changes that you saw in Birmingham during those years? | 17:34 |
Roosevelt Williams | Well, one thing, they had those buses and things so segregated and they began to open them up where you could ride anywhere. 'Cause I know way back there it was so bad. You get on the bus, you try to catch a bus—They had bus and street car running. | 17:43 |
Roosevelt Williams | They had what they call a board, that segregation board, they'd have it back so far. And the bus, sometimes they have it well over halfway. Most times it's a whole lot more Blacks riding than it was Whites. And they'd have way back there. Well, you would have to go on below that board regardless to how many—be plenty seats sometimes up front. But you had to, it depend on who the bus driver was and all. Some of them nicer than others. Some of them go back there and move that board up, and some of them wouldn't. | 18:13 |
Roosevelt Williams | You just got to pack back there and to the back and stay back there in the back and all them seats up there, you couldn't sit down on them. And then another thing when if it sort of crowded up there with the Whites, you had to go there to the door and pay him your money and then walk right back around and go in the back the bus, you know. You couldn't come down through there where they were and all that. So it was really rough. As I said, it had a whole lot to do with the bus driver and all. Some of them was nicer than others. Some of them would, he'd move the seat all the way up. Nobody wasn't just few White there, you know, now you plenty of rooms with the others. Sometimes they didn't care. They just let you stand and— | 18:55 |
Paul Ortiz | Were you riding the bus during those years? | 19:53 |
Roosevelt Williams | Well, those early years I was in the early fifties. I think I got a car about '52 when I got my first car. But up until then I was riding the bus and that's what I had to go through with. | 19:55 |
Paul Ortiz | Were you relieved when you got your car? | 20:15 |
Roosevelt Williams | Oh yeah. Yeah, I was relieved. I didn't have to get on that bus then. Yeah, I was relieved very much. | 20:18 |
Paul Ortiz | When you were riding the bus, did you see or hear of Black people who just said, "Forget this segregation thing, I'm going to sit where I—" | 20:27 |
Roosevelt Williams | Well, once in a while that would, but as I said, see what they could do then I've seen them stop the bus and call the police and come there and they can take him off and come to jail. They sit above that board. Yeah, sometimes he wouldn't say nothing. He just stop the bus and call the police. He'd come in and get them off of there. So that's all that church had to go through with. And so the law's on his sides. | 20:42 |
Paul Ortiz | Did it seem like there were more women than men who had challenged that or the other way around? | 21:25 |
Roosevelt Williams | Well— | 21:30 |
Paul Ortiz | Was it kind of a mix? | 21:31 |
Roosevelt Williams | Sort of a mix once in a while. Yeah. Sort a mix for all I know. | 21:34 |
Paul Ortiz | Couple of questions on your experiences of voting rights struggle. Who taught you to do that? | 21:45 |
Roosevelt Williams | Well, I tell you, I went over so much. We had papers on that and we just went over that a lot to ourself and learned them, those questions and things. And we got to the place where we could help others. We just learned them, just got them by heart mostly. And that way we could help others. But sometimes they'd come up with some other, you didn't never know exactly what they was going to ask, you know, the people. 'Cause they'd try to come up with different things that they thought they couldn't answer. And we just went over and so we'd know them ourselves, then we could help others, that's the way we did. We didn't have no special teacher to teach us. We just went. | 21:57 |
Paul Ortiz | Do you remember some of the early breakthroughs in getting people to vote? | 22:54 |
Roosevelt Williams | Well, I can't just name them right now, but I do know in on several occasion where they would, a lot of them we was training would go up there and they would pass to vote and everything. And a lot of cases. So our school, it helped a whole lot because we got quite a few people to vote. | 22:59 |
Paul Ortiz | Do you remember any particularly notorious registrars in Birmingham? People who seemed to be tougher than others? Or was it just everybody was— | 23:28 |
Roosevelt Williams | Well, I don't know. But like you said, some of them was tougher than others. You know you'd go before and I don't, don't know none of them by name or nothing like that. But I do know some of them was easier on them than others. You get some that it was tough. They just wasn't—Otherwise, they just wasn't going—If they make up their mind, I guess they going to pass two or three that day. They'll do it. But they going to ask others some questions and they going to find some way to turn them down. See, I think they was instructed not to pass, but just a few or something like that. | 23:43 |
Paul Ortiz | Do you remember a place in Birmingham called Dynamite Hill? | 24:25 |
Roosevelt Williams | Yeah. Yeah. I know. Yeah, I know where it is. On up—What are is that? Center Street or what is that? But anyway, I know where it is. It's up there just above Lawyer Shores, I believe that's Center Street. It's off of Center Street, back to your left going out that way. And they call it Dynamite Hill because it had several dynamites set off up in there, a different home, including Lawyer Shores house, all that. And they called his name the Dynamite Hill 'cause they, yeah, they set all several of them up in there. | 24:32 |
Paul Ortiz | Were you able to—Now you say you had one daughter? | 25:24 |
Roosevelt Williams | No, I have one son. | 25:40 |
Paul Ortiz | Oh, one son. Did you end up sending him to college? | 25:41 |
Roosevelt Williams | Oh yeah. | 25:47 |
Paul Ortiz | Which college did he go? | 25:49 |
Roosevelt Williams | He went to A&M Huntsville up in Huntsville, A&M. | 25:50 |
Paul Ortiz | So each generation in a way went a little further. | 26:00 |
Roosevelt Williams | Oh, yeah, yeah, that's right. | 26:03 |
Paul Ortiz | Well, Mr. Williams. I know that— | 26:04 |
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