Curtis Williams interview recording, 1994 June 28

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Sally Graham	1994. I'm Sally Graham and I'm sitting here with Mr. Williams, Curtis Williams from Albany, Georgia.	0:01
Curtis Leroy Williams	Albany, Georgia, yes.	0:12
Sally Graham	Okay. So let's just start from the beginning. When and where were you born, and sort of your background?	0:13
Curtis Leroy Williams	I was born in a small town called Waukeenah, Florida. That's outside of Monticello, Florida. Monticello is about I don't know, maybe one or 2,000 people. It's in Jefferson County in Florida. That's North Florida, near Tallahassee and I attended public schools of Jefferson County. The school was called Howard Academy, which is a rather strange designation because it was a high school, but it was a Howard Academy Elementary, Primary, High School.	0:21
Sally Graham	Okay.	1:07
Curtis Leroy Williams	It was the high school from which I graduated in 1957.	1:08
Sally Graham	Was that a segregated school, or?	1:18
Curtis Leroy Williams	Oh, definitely. Very much so. I remember when I was a junior. I was editor-in-chief of a school newspaper and I wrote an editorial requesting a gymnasium. We played basketball outside with the court enclosed with pieces of tin to keep the wind out, whereas, the White school had a gymnasium. And I said, "We want a gymnasium." That was the title of the editorial.	1:22
Curtis Leroy Williams	My principal kept it from being published, of course. He said, he would explain it to me later. Now, almost 30, 40 years later now, later he still hasn't explained to me why. But I understood, so that was basically the way it was. Segregation and well, as you know, the 1954 desegregation meant very little to us at that time in terms of of any changes. So I graduated from a segregated high school.	1:55
Sally Graham	Yes. What were some of your earliest memories of realizing or being taught about racial barriers?	2:28
Curtis Leroy Williams	Well, the movie. I loved going to the movies, so and we had to go to the balcony. Got a better view, I think. But we had to go to the balcony of the movie.	2:39
Sally Graham	Was there a separate entrance, or?	2:54
Curtis Leroy Williams	Yes. Separate entrance. At the bottom of the stairs, there's a little booth where Blacks bought their tickets and went up. Was into a little door. Now, and on the White side was a spacious entrance, popcorn and all that kind of thing. If you wanted popcorn up there, you had to request it. The lady who took up the tickets at the top of the stairs had popcorn in a box, in bags in a little box that we would. I remember she dipped snuff, as I recall, and she sold us that popcorn, which I rarely ate.	2:57
Curtis Leroy Williams	I suppose I was something of a closet militant. I wouldn't do things like that. I went because there was no other movie to attend. That's the only reason I went, but other things I would not take part in. I didn't realize it at the time that I was being in a sense a militant, especially with the article I think. I was very outspoken about it at the time, but mostly around the school and naturally administrators kept that under wraps as much as possible. But I do remember that the Whites did come to see the basketball games. We had a fairly good basketball team and they used to come see us play.	3:43
Sally Graham	Where would the Whites sit when they came to see you play?	4:26
Curtis Leroy Williams	They just came and stood around. We had no seats. Everybody came and stood around to see us play. In fact, I don't remember having any benches to sit on once we came off the court. I think we stood there until it was time to go back, as I recall.	4:30
Sally Graham	So you were playing basketball?	4:46
Curtis Leroy Williams	I played basketball, yes.	4:47
Sally Graham	What other high schools did you play?	4:50
Curtis Leroy Williams	Other Black schools in the area. Mostly around a place called Madison, Florida, Greensville, Florida. Those are cities about 30, 40 miles away. We didn't go that far to play ball.	4:54
Sally Graham	How did you get there?	5:12
Curtis Leroy Williams	By dilapidated bus. School bus is how we got there. Now that I look back on it, I realize we had this great disparity in what we had at the Black schools and what the Whites had at the White school. I might add that there was a gymnasium at the White school, spacious one, that high school from which my sister later graduated. It's interesting.	5:13
Sally Graham	What year did she graduate from that school?	5:48
Curtis Leroy Williams	Must have been about '70, '71. I'm not certain of that date. It's about that time.	5:53
Sally Graham	Was she one of the first Black students to go to that school, or?	6:01
Curtis Leroy Williams	No. No, no. I don't remember when it was integrated, but she wasn't one of the first. It's before that. And strangely, Lyntha got along extremely well. Very little racial friction of any kind. Once they integrated, the teams played together extremely well. The boosters supported everybody. That's the way it was. It's interesting situation.	6:05
Sally Graham	So even the basketball teams and all those sports, they were integrated as well?	6:35
Curtis Leroy Williams	Yes. At that time. Very easily and quickly, without very little rancor, as I recall. I don't remember any incidents.	6:38
Sally Graham	How far away is Jefferson County from like the biggest city? Would that be Tallahassee?	6:48
Curtis Leroy Williams	Well, Tallahassee's the closest city to Monticello. It's about 26 miles—	6:54
Sally Graham	Wow.	7:00
Curtis Leroy Williams	—west of Monticello. On the edge of Jefferson County, it's about maybe 10 miles away from the borders of Jefferson County.	7:00
Sally Graham	Did you hear about any other kind of like racial strife when you were I guess in high school?	7:13
Curtis Leroy Williams	I don't recall because the papers that we got were the Florida Times-Union, and the Monticello News, and the Tallahassee Democrat. They had very little about that kind of thing. It seemed that it was I suppose an effort to keep us from knowing what was going on. Very little access to television at the time. I don't remember many people having televisions. My friend had one, as I recall, well, his parents and I suppose that's the only way we could really get current news.	7:25
Sally Graham	How did Blacks get information about the Black community? Was there a Black newspaper or radio station?	8:06
Curtis Leroy Williams	No. No Black radio station. We got a great deal of news through the Pittsburgh Courier paper mostly and you know how much local news that would contain. I think it was published in Pittsburgh, so not much local news could be included. Just general news.	8:16
Sally Graham	Would relatives send it to you or were people able to get it in Jefferson County?	8:41
Curtis Leroy Williams	We were able to buy it. I think there was a vendor, as I recall, coming around selling door-to-door.	8:44
Sally Graham	When were you born?	9:01
Curtis Leroy Williams	1939, January 29th.	9:03
Sally Graham	What were your parents doing? Were they farmers or what were they vocationally doing, I guess?	9:15
Curtis Leroy Williams	My mother was basically a domestic. My father worked in the woods. Logger for most of his life.	9:24
Sally Graham	Would that be like sawmill kind of thing or cutting trees?	9:35
Curtis Leroy Williams	Sawmill kind of things, yes. Cutting down pine trees and loading them on a truck. Shipping them off to sawmills to be reduced, converted into paper, other kinds of products.	9:38
Sally Graham	Is that what most people in your county were doing? Is that the main occupation?	9:54
Curtis Leroy Williams	That was among the best-paying occupations and of course, farmers, and maids, domestics, yard people. I, myself worked around a yard as I was growing up. The watermelon fields, tobacco fields, cotton, those kinds of things, but seasonal things.	10:00
Sally Graham	How old were you when you first went into the field?	10:26
Curtis Leroy Williams	I probably was junior high.	10:33
Sally Graham	Were those kind of seasonal things? Were you taken out of school for that kind of thing?	10:40
Curtis Leroy Williams	Oh, no, no, no. No. There were some students though who didn't come to school until they harvested certain kinds of crops. We knew that, but I was living in what was called town at the time. We'd moved to Monticello, so I was in the big city. I wasn't around those areas where cotton and tobacco were grown. We had to go out to what we called the country.	10:45
Sally Graham	Okay.	11:08
Curtis Leroy Williams	Was only about five or 10 miles, if that far. So there was very little in Monticello proper to do.	11:11
Sally Graham	Monticello is the town where you were saying there's a movie theater?	11:25
Curtis Leroy Williams	Yeah. That's where the movie theater was.	11:28
Sally Graham	What other kind of things did the Blacks do for recreation? Was that also segregated, I guess?	11:31
Curtis Leroy Williams	Everything was. Everything. The library. Nothing was integrated when I was growing up, except hardships.	11:42
Sally Graham	Was there separate Black library or how did that work?	11:57
Curtis Leroy Williams	Well, the school was the only source of books for us and sometimes hand-me-down books from places where our parents worked. This is how I got into reading. My mother worked at a place. She used to bring books home, magazines and all kinds. I used to read them. That's how I got into reading.	11:57
Sally Graham	So there was like a public library there in Monticello, but Blacks weren't allowed to go? Is that?	12:21
Curtis Leroy Williams	They were not allowed to go. Yeah. Everything was segregated, except hardship. We all shared in that.	12:26
Sally Graham	What about like the actual place where you were growing up? Were there White families and Black families together, or?	12:39
Curtis Leroy Williams	Let's see. Close by. Now, where I lived, on the next block, we had White families. I think we lived in the last block where Blacks lived in that particular area where I was. I had White families to the west of me and to the north of me. I think I could look down from the backyard into the backyard of a White family.	12:49
Curtis Leroy Williams	I remember looking down and seeing some young boys and I was told they just had come from Germany. It struck me then of how quickly they were assimilated. I just knew that something wasn't quite right. I thought how these guys from Germany are coming in and they're having such a reception. They can just live here, but I didn't voice my opinions that much about it. But I knew something wasn't quite right about it.	13:21
Sally Graham	How did you voice your opinion in other ways?	13:59
Curtis Leroy Williams	I suppose by achieving what I could under circumstances, doing as well as I could. I saw it as a kind of challenge. You have to remember, it was basically a way of life in the South. It wasn't a great deal of questioning so much as the wondering. Not really working against it because didn't have force of law on our side at the time. You could wind up killed for resisting or at least we thought so.	14:05
Sally Graham	Did you grow up hearing about White terror against Blacks and lynching?	14:50
Curtis Leroy Williams	Occasionally I would hear about it. As I said, the news media were pretty much controlled, so we didn't hear. Except maybe had relatives who would come down from the North and we would hear about certain kinds of things.	14:58
Sally Graham	Did they think that life in the North was better or equal to life in the South?	15:14
Curtis Leroy Williams	Well, they definitely thought it was better. Aside from the interesting thing about Monticello, is aside from the obvious separation, and obvious differences in facilities, there was not a lot of hostility between Blacks and Whites for some reason. Yeah.	15:22
Sally Graham	Why do you think that was so?	15:50
Curtis Leroy Williams	It's rather strange. I don't know. I don't know. But people were basically friendly to one another. It's now that I look back on it, a very interesting situation. I remember that one of the people who came to see us play was an insurance agent who when I went off to college got me a job, so that I could make money. He was very supportive of me. He always would come and find out what I was doing, how I was doing. When I went off to college, he was constantly in touch with my mother about what was happening with me. I remember that very well.	15:51
Sally Graham	Did you decide one day that you wanted to be a director or how did that actually come about?	16:40
Curtis Leroy Williams	I think I loved adventure growing up and I heard of the FAMU Players, Florida A&M Players. I was drawn to the concept of creating actions on my own. I suppose that was a kind of escape from what was happening. With the plays, I could go any place I wanted to and movies I could go any place I wanted to. I suppose that's one of the motivating forces. I started writing plays, I suppose, around eighth or ninth grade. Very crude material, as I now recall. I remember writing a play where I was dealing with segregation.	16:45
Sally Graham	Really?	17:38
Curtis Leroy Williams	Domestics and their employers. I did. But I had that feeling of a friendship among the different individuals. Now that I recall, it comes back to me now. I remember even the kinds of paper I wrote it on. Some kind of paper my mother brought home from where she worked. Had illustrations and writing on one side. Had blank on the other side.	17:38
Curtis Leroy Williams	That's the side I wrote on and when the FAMU Players came down to Monticello to present some one-act plays, I showed it to the director, Randolph Edmonds. He encouraged me to keep writing and I had a love for theater from that point. But when I went off to school, I thought of majoring in history or music. Then I gravitated to English because the little school I attended did not have theater, so I went into English.	18:09
Sally Graham	Which school did you attend?	18:43
Curtis Leroy Williams	Friendship Junior College in Rock Hill, South Carolina. It's not far from, oh, just below the North Carolina border. I had this professor who was interested in what I was doing. I also tried to write poetry, so he was trying to show me how to measure the lines and those kinds of thing. I think he steered me to literature, English. So I went from there to Morehouse College in Atlanta where I majored in English, and minored in sociology because I was interested in social relationships.	18:45
Curtis Leroy Williams	I've always been that way, even in writing. I write about those kinds of things and from there to Atlanta University. When I graduated from Atlanta University, I had what was called a Merit Scholarship to attend school in England, Manchester University. All of these things or places are parts of how I got into directing. I came back. I worked a number of years as an English teacher at South Carolina State and Albany State.	19:24
Sally Graham	Oh, yeah?	19:56
Curtis Leroy Williams	Then I went down. I had a friend who was working at Albany State, who went to Florida State to get his degree in speech and he told me of a theater program. So I went down to check it out and met a man named Frank Gagliano. I applied for admission to the MFA program in playwriting at Florida State and I was accepted. Had sent them my acceptance fee and in the meantime, Gagliano moved to the University of Texas at Austin. He told me of the PhD program there.	19:56
Curtis Leroy Williams	So I said, "Well, what sense does it make to go to an MFA program. I could go to a PhD program." So I went. I was accepted at University of Texas at Austin and I was in the playwriting program basically. But I had to take directing. I just wanted to write plays. I didn't want to bother with all these other things. Don't tell me about theater history and all these kinds of things, but I realized the importance of all these. They are interrelated and I began to enjoy directing. I went to all the directing projects, everything. I missed none of them for two or three years. I went to everything.	20:37
Curtis Leroy Williams	I just soaked it up and when I came back to Albany State, I went from English department to speech and theater department. I was a theater person, so I had to direct plays. That is what I did. Based on my experience at Texas, I had to do a directing project and I was in a class of a man noted as one of the top directors in the United States, Francis Hodge, who did a textbook on directing for Prentice Hall. He's an excellent director. He's inventive. Elderly man at the time, but very inventive, and very contemporary in his thoughts, and teaching. It's amazing how he could adjust and could see things. I was very impressed with him. So basically that's how I got into directing.	21:17
Sally Graham	So what was your first play that you directed?	22:18
Curtis Leroy Williams	I think it was Morning, Noon, and Night by Ted Shine. I think it was, as I recall, it was a story about a grandmother who poisoned the grandson, I think.	22:23
Sally Graham	What were the kinds of I guess storylines that Albany State or traditionally Black colleges that you were teaching at would perform?	22:39
Curtis Leroy Williams	Well, Black storylines mostly and none of the plays I directed were my own. I wrote plays that I thought this area could relate to. Not to say that it was overly regional, but I thought these were situations that anybody could, but particularly this area. I wrote plays about poverty I think from my background, having been poverty-stricken myself and so these were them. We'd occasionally do plays that were considered White plays. My reasoning was that if one goes to University of Duke, for example, if one goes there, one sees plays by White authors.	22:52
Curtis Leroy Williams	You don't say this, but that's what you do. You see very few plays by Black authors, so I had no compunctions about really plays by Black—In fact, I did plays of some authors who were not well-published, well-known, like Ted Shine. A very good playwright, but little known outside of the Black community and not even known in this area. So I would do plays by Black authors and some of my own because I knew the facilities here. I knew what access I would have to actors and so I could write plays that would lend themselves to the kinds of situations we found ourselves in.	23:41
Sally Graham	When you were in classes, were Black authors taught or Black playwrights taught along with?	24:33
Curtis Leroy Williams	When I took classes, or?	24:41
Sally Graham	Yeah.	24:43
Curtis Leroy Williams	No, no.	24:43
Sally Graham	So how did you educate yourself about the playwrights that were out there?	24:46
Curtis Leroy Williams	Just by reading. I came across a book called Black Theater USA. Ted Shine had a hand in publishing that book and that's a series of plays, about 45 Black plays. These are the ones. My initial readings were White plays. Even in high school, I would get plays and I would read these ones that were available because I don't remember reading a single Black play when I was in high school. Not one. Not one.	24:52
Sally Graham	When you were in high school, did you have access to books written by or novels written by Black authors? Poems?	25:35
Curtis Leroy Williams	Yes. We had one or two. Yeah. Paul Laurence Dunbar, of course, everybody believed he was a great author and even Whites, I suppose because of the language in which he wrote. I enjoyed those poems by Dunbar. Langston Hughes, of course, one of my favorites. I don't remember how we got access to them, whether through the library or just somebody who gave us books.	25:47
Sally Graham	You graduated from high school in '57?	26:25
Curtis Leroy Williams	'57, yes.	26:28
Sally Graham	FAMU Players, were they—FAMU is a Black college, or—	26:28
Curtis Leroy Williams	Yes.	26:42
Sally Graham	—historically Black college?	26:42
Curtis Leroy Williams	Yes.	26:42
Sally Graham	Where did the, I guess, the players that you saw, where did they all come from? Did they come from the South? Did they come from rural areas, or local areas?	26:45
Curtis Leroy Williams	Oh, I'm not quite certain. I'm not quite certain. Probably from the South. Randolph Edmonds was one might call a dean of Black directors. He was extremely good. But it shows you how segregation worked at the time. He was at Florida A&M. He had very few other opportunities except maybe at another Black school, but he was extremely qualified.	26:54
Curtis Leroy Williams	Extremely good and he had a national reputation among Blacks and I suppose the Whites who knew of his abilities probably. But A&M at the time had an outstanding theater program because of him. I think he was trained at Oberlin. I'm not quite certain, but I think. He was trained in White schools and he came and applied it, just as I did with Texas. I applied those technical things all the other things I knew to Black plays, Black theater. But it was—	27:20
Sally Graham	But it's something that you wanted to do and you wanted to go to traditionally Black colleges and varied those programs?	28:00
Curtis Leroy Williams	Yes. That's what I wanted to do. I remember my dissertation supervisor telling me that. He said, "Well, you can get a job almost any place you want now, if you want." I told him, "No. I came here to get this information, so that I can take it back to Albany State." That was my aim and I think this is basically the aim of many Blacks who grew up in my generation of sharing. Although opportunities open up in White colleges they were still interested in dealing at predominantly Black colleges. Not to say only to Blacks, but whoever comes, White, Hispanic, Black, but at least in that situation.	28:10
Sally Graham	How did you find your actors at Albany State?	29:07
Curtis Leroy Williams	Through auditions mostly or some would come and ask about the players. I would take their names and we would try-outs. I would inform them mostly. Well, at one time, we had a speech and theater department. It was combined with music and art to become the fine arts department. But even then, we had only a few majors. That's one of the reasons for the combining of the three departments and so most of our actors came outside of speech and theater.	29:11
Sally Graham	The with the play that I saw, Home, where were those actors from?	29:44
Curtis Leroy Williams	Community. One was a student from Albany State, Reginald. The other two, well, Geraldine Hudley who's an instructor at Dougherty High and Erma Young is a nurse.	29:53
Sally Graham	They just heard about the auditions and came or did you know them?	30:12
Curtis Leroy Williams	I told Geraldine. Well, I've known her for a long time and she said she wanted to work with me. I wanted to work with her. I've seen her work, so I told her about it. Reginald, I taught at Albany State. He's an English major, but he's interested in theater. Erma came because she read about it. I knew of her, but I didn't know her well.	30:16
Sally Graham	One of the ladies has like independent kind of monologues or something to show?	30:43
Curtis Leroy Williams	That's Geraldine, yeah.	30:49
Sally Graham	Geraldine.	30:49
Curtis Leroy Williams	Mm-hmm. I heard her do a mono, I mean, a poem at the Museum of Art and I from that point, I wanted to work with her. Extremely talented and dedicated, committed. Yeah.	30:51
Sally Graham	For people that are kind of in school that haven't had formal training, but have I guess talent, how has the Black community bolstered that?	31:10
Curtis Leroy Williams	By giving opportunities to train that talent. As I was saying like Reginald, for example. Reginald does not basically train as an actor, although he took one acting course from me. Just given an opportunity, I would take anybody who was committed enough and has the basic talent to work with a play because for me, directing became teaching as well. We had time to work with them about stage decorum, movement, all those kinds of things. So we would encourage them to participate. Now, churches often have little plays, Easter and Christmas. I used to work with the churches on their little pageants. Maybe I shouldn't say little pageants.	31:28
Sally Graham	Did you grow up in the church?	32:23
Curtis Leroy Williams	Yes, I did. Yes. I grew up in the church.	32:27
Sally Graham	Is that like a Baptist church?	32:30
Curtis Leroy Williams	Baptist.	32:31
Sally Graham	They had little pageants there?	32:34
Curtis Leroy Williams	They had. I appeared in them.	32:36
Sally Graham	You appeared in them.	32:37
Curtis Leroy Williams	But I think that's, now that you mention it, one of the reasons I was interested in theater. I appeared in plays, school plays. I remember them. I do. I can remember some of the things I did like having to kick a nose off somebody. That just shows you how ill-equipped we were that on this particular play, we didn't have makeup. We didn't have access to all that kind of thing, so whoever this was, was supposed to have a long nose that I was supposed to kick.	32:38
Curtis Leroy Williams	So the director put a wad of chewing gum and extended it. I couldn't kick that high, so I just slapped it off, as I recall. I think this is why I loved it so much that the how to adjust to the moment, that theater is adjusting to the moment so many times. Although one might rehearse, and rehearse, and rehearse, there are things that come up, as you well know, that one does not anticipate and you have to work your way out of it. Yeah. That was the way I liked that.	33:14
Sally Graham	What was that, some sort of Pinocchio kind of thing?	33:46
Curtis Leroy Williams	I don't know, but whatever it was, he had a long nose. It could have been. Had a long nose. I was supposed to kick off, but I couldn't do it. I appeared in little church pageants doing doing poetry with my hands behind my back because with the toes hooked together.	33:54
Sally Graham	What was that stance for, toes hooked together?	34:12
Curtis Leroy Williams	Well, you just didn't know any better. That's what they want. You know how one being self-consciousness about things? I'm never one to. Now, if you were doing this on video, I'd be different because I'm not, despite working in theater and that kind of thing, being onstage, I'm not a very public person. I do not like being interviewed necessarily. I am doing this basically because you've been in touch with me through Reverend Wells, whom I greatly respect. That's the only reason. Otherwise, I would have said no. I would not be sitting here now, but this is a man I greatly respect.	34:15
Sally Graham	He's a very warm and generous person.	34:56
Curtis Leroy Williams	Yeah. He's the word and genuine. One doesn't find people like that a great deal. He's a rare individual and that's why.	34:59
Sally Graham	Were you in Albany coming up with the movement? Is that how you knew Reverend Wells, or?	35:13
Curtis Leroy Williams	No. I knew of him. I came to Albany in '65, so I missed the movement proper. But I've been working with him on reunion of workers or participants in the movement. This is how I got to know him, but I'd heard of him and I've seen some books that he had compiled. I scribed books. You might have seen them.	35:24
Sally Graham	Those are all like the clippings and articles about—	36:03
Curtis Leroy Williams	Clippings and, yes. Right.	36:05
Sally Graham	—Black leaders in Albany.	36:06
Curtis Leroy Williams	Massive collection.	36:06
Sally Graham	I think he takes it around to different places, right, too.	36:14
Curtis Leroy Williams	I'm not certain what he does with them, but we had retrospective of it. We met some years ago and one of the individuals had borrowed a book from him to show, a scrapbook. This is when I learned of him and one would hear from time to time about people who had participated in the movement. His name would come up, Dr. Anderson, and others I'd hear about. Some I met. Some I'd only heard of, C.B. King, those individuals.	36:18
Sally Graham	In any way did you participate in this in '65 when you came back or came here in any way?	37:02
Curtis Leroy Williams	I think when I got here, most of the things were, as I recall, integrated or moving to an integration. I remember hearing of Greg Caldwell going to Albany High and playing on the football team. I think about at that time, to make a comparison, Monticello was probably—Well, around about that, Monticello was far more integrated than Albany was. Albany now, is probably closer to where Monticello was maybe almost 30 years ago with the relationships and cooperation.	37:11
Sally Graham	You mentioned that in Monticello there was more of a warm feeling—	38:04
Curtis Leroy Williams	Yes.	38:10
Sally Graham	—between Blacks and Whites.	38:10
Curtis Leroy Williams	Yes.	38:12
Sally Graham	What was the feeling that you gained when you came to Albany that existed in Albany?	38:12
Curtis Leroy Williams	That kind of hostility still exists, I think. But I got that feeling. More rancor. More division, but you have to take into consideration that Monticello is a much smaller town. But you have more educated people here, so I think the transition could have been a lot better, smoother, faster. But it hasn't worked that way.	38:20
Sally Graham	Do you ever feel that you may be pigeonholed as being a Black director and therefore, must deal with Black issues?	38:56
Curtis Leroy Williams	That's almost a given. People tend to see Black directors as interested only in Black, but as I grew up Eugene O'Neill was my favorite playwright. That's what I had. I have a book. It's a collection of his plays. I just read everything Great God Brown, all of those. I read them. I read them even before I even knew whether he was Black or White. I wasn't thinking that and when I write plays or direct plays, I'm not thinking necessarily, "This is a Black thing. You wouldn't understand."	39:12
Curtis Leroy Williams	I am saying, "This is a Black situation. This is what has happened to an individual in this particular situation, as it would happen to Hamlet in his situation, or anybody else's situation." My reasoning is this, that in Crimes of the Heart, for example, nobody has to keep saying, "We are White. We are White. We are White." You know that. You have these references, as you recall, to Blacks, the young Black boy and the maid. I wish they'd get rid of, but it's about White people.	39:45
Curtis Leroy Williams	Do I pigeonhole White directors for that? No, no. That's the way it works, but I can direct a play about Whites because the instincts are basically the same. I don't say we're all the same. That's not true. I don't believe that because we're different. Even among Blacks we have our differences, our likes and dislikes. Conservatives, liberals, all kinds of individuals among Blacks, so I'm not saying that we are one. But I'm saying whatever I'm dealing with, I have a particular situation dealing with this particular group.	40:18
Curtis Leroy Williams	I don't mind doing that. If I think White directors did more with Black plays, I wouldn't have to do that. I'm doing it because it's a neglected area. That's why and I'm always interested when these individuals are writing, criticizing Black studies departments. I mean, you have Asian studies and the Russian studies and all. What are you talking about? William Shakespeare, when you read him, that's White studies. He is a White man. That's what I see. It's just a fact.	40:56
Curtis Leroy Williams	I'm not bitter about it because I love Shakespeare. Oh, my goodness, I love it. I taught it. I believed in it and still believe in it. But I believe there are Black playwrights who approach any White playwright you can think of and if the characters did not have Black names or call themselves Black, you wouldn't know it. If you just changed the designations, you'd have a White play in so many instances. Plays are based on conflict and one confronts whatever is his obstacle.	41:44
Curtis Leroy Williams	Whatever that obstacle is, he confronts it and if it's discrimination that's it. How are you going to write a play about somebody confronting dragons when discrimination is a thing that is keeping them down or keeping him, whether mentally or physically, keeping him from achieving what he thinks he ought to achieve?	42:25
Sally Graham	When you were growing up, was discrimination, oppression, something that you saw maybe others or people in your family being kept down because of that?	42:52
Curtis Leroy Williams	Yes. I knew that, but I wasn't going to let it stop me from doing what I could do under the circumstances. We knew that. We knew we didn't have the best books. We knew that we got second. We talked about that. We got secondhand, thirdhand, fourth-hand buses and books with the names of White students already written in them. We got them, but they were the same basically information and that's the way that I looked at it. Sure enough, something will change. Sooner or later, it will have to.	43:06
Curtis Leroy Williams	But if you're going to say, "Jack and Jill went up the hill." Whether it's in this book, a new one, or an old one, that's about Jack and Jill. That's the way I thought and I had just an interest in knowledge from all sources. I really didn't think about Black knowledge and White knowledge. I just thought about something that I could be interested in.	43:37
Sally Graham	When you were growing up, what kind of artists did you hear about like singers or performers in the Black community? Was there any kind of information that you heard about or on the radio?	44:08
Curtis Leroy Williams	Yes. James Brown, Aretha Franklin, the typical ones. Elvis Presley, Tennessee Ernie Ford, yes. I was into it. I knew there's some country songs that have been recycled. Come on. I know the lyrics because I learned them when I was growing up. Sixteen Tons, was Sixteen Tons to me. I enjoyed listening to it. I listened to Johnny Ace. I listened to all these others too, James Brown, Muddy Waters. I listened to all kinds of music, so I didn't try to pigeonhole it. But I knew James Brown was Black. I know Tennessee Ernie Ford was White. I knew that and I suppose that's an outgrowth of that situation that one has to think in terms of White artist, Black artist.	44:24
Sally Graham	In general, everyone danced to White and Black kind of music?	45:26
Curtis Leroy Williams	We danced. Mostly, no. We wouldn't be caught doing that. That's going a little too far. No. But we would. Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, they were very popular in the Black community and we would dance of them. Don't be cruel, no. In fact, I was in a little, what we called a jazz band. We played Elvis Presley tunes. Great Balls of Fire was one of my favorites growing up. So was Please, Please, Please. So was Try Me by James Brown. Pledging My Love by Johnny Ace.	45:30
Sally Graham	Who were the heroes for people in your community?	46:19
Curtis Leroy Williams	Well, we had the athletes who were—	46:30

Curtis Leroy Williams	And as I said, I remember looking up to people in the community. My brother was a hero to me. When I was growing up, people used to tell me how good he was in school and I wondered whether I would be as good. And I wanted to be as good as he was, and I tried hard to be.	0:04
Curtis Leroy Williams	Certain basketball players, Frankie Shula, Douglas Connor, local basketball players that I wanted to be like, dribble the way they dribbled and that kind of thing. I wasn't thinking NBA and those kinds of things. I wasn't there. Teachers I admired. Gertrude Canty, Raleigh Cox, Emery Howard, who, by the way, was once a member of the FAMU Players, taught me chemistry. These individuals were my heroes.	0:23
Curtis Leroy Williams	And, of course, George Washington Carver, even liked Booker T. Washington. Many Blacks gave him a fit but the man founded Tuskegee and all these, and we looked at those kinds of things, things that would enable the race to progress. Those were my heroes. Even a drunk or two. I look back, because they used to tell me, "Don't destroy your life and don't sell yourself short." Drunks used to tell me this. "You see me, don't be like me." Guys would say that. And I listened to them, I said, "No, I won't."	1:12
Curtis Leroy Williams	I see some of them occasionally when I go home. One guy that runs around, he's truly out of it now, but he used to talk to me as I was growing up. He used to tell me he was going to buy me a suit so I could go to school, he never did, but I appreciated the thought. "I want you to do something with yourself." And those two kinds of people. It was the kind of love that people seem to have for one another that I really worshiped. And of course my father and mother were my heroes. My father who went only as far as second grade, but tried to make sure that his family was fed. Might have been fatback and those kinds of things, but he believed in getting what he'd call the groceries.	2:03
Curtis Leroy Williams	And I remember most of all how used to get up with me. I had terrible earaches as I was growing up, he used to get up, he was a logger, he had to be at work at four or five o'clock, but he would get up and stay up all night with me. And I had earaches, he would just say, "Are you all right? Are you all right?" He would just sit there until I was all right, and he would try to go to bed. And when I tell my students, my father never said to me, "I love you." I said, "Didn't matter because I knew he did by a deed." He wasn't a very effusive person or a very emotional person, very laid back. I suppose I inherited a great deal of that, but he was very laid back, but I knew he loved me.	3:02
Curtis Leroy Williams	And that's what I appreciate about him, and if he could have done better, he would have. My mother was the same way. I understand she was very bright, and she went only fifth grade and stopped to work. I think my mother and father got married when he was about 16, she was about 14. Nothing but hard work all their lives, and they tried to give to me of our meager resources. I remember when I was at Morehouse, they sent me $35. I knew it was a drain on them. I kept it for a whole semester. I lived up that $35, because I didn't want them to give me anything else, I knew what sacrifice it was for them.	3:44
Curtis Leroy Williams	This is why when I got a chance to give to them, I did. And to other relatives. I had relatives like that too, I had an uncle I loved. He's dead now, my aunt. And he's an uncle by marriage, but any member of the family could go visit and stay with him as long as he wanted. He never complained, he never said get out, he would bring food. He never said, get work, get a job. That's the way he was, and he ever complained about it. Those were my heroes. And they all influenced the way I am now, I think, the way I act, the way I deal with people. Practically all unlettered individuals, but truly concerned and giving, and I love that. I didn't need to run around and look at the role models, I had them.	4:40
Curtis Leroy Williams	As I tell my students often, or used to, that if you can't find somebody in your own family or somebody close around you, problem, looking for a role model. I refuse to believe that everybody in your family is rotten. I just can't believe that. Know so much for that philosophy. That's an issue there very close to my heart where I get talking and I won't leave here for a while because that's what I believe. And I think that's the kind of thing that sustained me throughout my life is those kinds of people, even the White insurance man that I was telling you about, that fellow who got me jobs. And people knew about the basketball team and the White community from him, he was spreading.	6:04
Sally Graham	Oh, boy. I've heard about a Negro baseball league that was a Georgia/Florida team. Was that something that you heard about? Did you see them?	7:16
Curtis Leroy Williams	I saw that. I saw that. The man named Zo Williams, we call him, it might have been Joe, people in my hometown used to confuse his name. We call him Zo Williams, I grew up calling him Zo Williams. Was a baseball player in Monticello.	7:25
Sally Graham	[indistinct 00:07:40]?	7:38
Curtis Leroy Williams	No, he wasn't in [indistinct 00:07:40]. He was a mechanic, such as it was. I think he might have torn up more cars than he repaired. Well, he was a town mechanic, Black mechanic, so we had our own enterprises.	7:40
Curtis Leroy Williams	There was a ballpark there where they played, I forgot the name of the team. Monticello something, I don't recall. But I used to go see them play, and when Jackie Robinson broke into the major leagues, I heard about that. Jackie Robinson, that's all I could hear. Jackie Robinson. I went up to see a game and there was a fellow who was playing and he hit a home run. I said, "Is that Jackie Robinson?" I didn't know. I thought he was in Monticello.	7:52
Curtis Leroy Williams	That was the extent of my vision, I think. "Is that Jackie?" They said, "No, that's not Jackie Robinson." Somebody told me. Some others didn't know. I said, "I don't know. Is that Jackie Robinson?" But they knew his name so they knew he wasn't Jackie Robinson for that reason. But they didn't know who Jackie Robinson was. Yeah, we had Shorty White, people like that. Guy we called Sly. These were the baseball players. Some of the loggers, they would come in and play baseball on Sunday, Saturday, the weekend. That was really fun. I remember playing in that ballpark. Good seating capacity as I recall.	8:26
Sally Graham	What teams did the Monticello team play?	9:17
Curtis Leroy Williams	Well, teams were like—	9:21
Sally Graham	From what towns?	9:22
Curtis Leroy Williams	Thomasville, some Georgia towns might have had. Sometimes they went farther than that, but mostly around that area. Tallahassee. And I think I remember vaguely, I don't know whether I might have confused with another situation playing a White team in the—Yeah, I believe so. I'm not certain. I might have seen it some other place, might have read about it. Have memories get intermingled.	9:26
Sally Graham	So about how old were you when you first saw the teams playing?	10:01
Curtis Leroy Williams	First around '47, '48, so I had to be around 10 or about nine or 10.	10:07
Sally Graham	Did any of those players ever make it, break into the Major Leagues?	10:14
Curtis Leroy Williams	Oh, no. None of those.	10:18
Sally Graham	Okay.	10:18
Curtis Leroy Williams	No.	10:19
Sally Graham	So these guys were playing baseball on the weekends—	10:19
Curtis Leroy Williams	Yeah, some of them were old too. All they were all old to me, 30 and 40. At the time I thought they were ancient. I said, "30 years old? You ought to quit. You should be dead by now. How does someone live so long?" It's amazing what a perspective a child has.	10:22
Sally Graham	Oh, yeah.	10:43
Curtis Leroy Williams	What I thought that. But I think Pisole played into his probably 70s.	10:45
Sally Graham	Wow.	10:53
Curtis Leroy Williams	I saw him do what is called fly ball practice. He would hit the balls out to the outfield, they would go way up, standing way back and I mean to say way back. Not a way back. He was standing way back and he would hit the ball to them on fly.	10:54
Sally Graham	How long did that league last, do you think?	11:18
Curtis Leroy Williams	Up until the '60s. Because I remember going back and finding that Shorty White's son was playing. Shorty White was short, that's why they called him Shorty. But he was a good hitter, I've seen him hit home runs, and I think that's another thing that inspired me. Guy that's short, not even tall as I am.	11:23
Sally Graham	How tall are you?	11:52
Curtis Leroy Williams	I'm about five eight. Shorty must have been about five four, five, something like that.	11:52
Sally Graham	That is pretty short.	11:57
Curtis Leroy Williams	He might have been even shorter, I don't know. He was short, but he could hit. And that was among this book outlet that we had on the home baseball team.	12:00
Sally Graham	What about the uniforms? What did they wear? Did they have uniforms?	12:16
Curtis Leroy Williams	They had uniforms. Yeah. I don't know how they did it, whether they each bought uniforms or whether they were a gift. I don't know.	12:23
Sally Graham	Were those teams sponsored by businesses in the Black community?	12:34
Curtis Leroy Williams	I don't know.	12:42
Sally Graham	So you went to Tuskegee and then you went to Clark Atlanta?	12:48
Curtis Leroy Williams	No, I didn't go to—I went to Friendship Junior College.	12:53
Sally Graham	Friendship Junior College.	12:54
Curtis Leroy Williams	Then Morehouse.	12:55
Sally Graham	Morehouse, Morehouse.	12:56
Curtis Leroy Williams	Then Atlanta University, which is now Clark Atlanta, because at that time it was Atlanta University alone and it combined with Clark College and became Clark Atlanta.	12:59
Sally Graham	Okay.	13:11
Curtis Leroy Williams	But it was just the graduate school at the time. Now it's undergraduate and graduate.	13:11
Sally Graham	So Morehouse was the undergraduate?	13:19
Curtis Leroy Williams	No, Morehouse was a four-year school in Atlanta, in Atlanta. Now it's a four-year school, now Friendship is a two-year school. Or was, it's out of existence now.	13:20
Curtis Leroy Williams	And when I graduated from there I went to Morehouse, a four-year school. Now Atlanta University was the graduate school in that Atlanta University Center. Clark was another four-year school, Morris Brown is another four-year school. They had Morris Brown, Spelman, Clark, Morehouse were the four-year schools.	13:33
Curtis Leroy Williams	And Atlanta University was the graduate school by itself, it was a separate entity, but working cooperatively before undergraduate. In fact, when I was a senior, I took one or two graduate courses at Atlanta University. So it was only at that time, I say only in the sense that it was not connected with an undergraduate school, it was only a university.	13:53
Curtis Leroy Williams	Now it combined for financial reasons with Clark and it has now become Clark Atlanta University. That's how I [indistinct 00:14:35].	14:24
Sally Graham	And you graduated from Morehouse?	14:34
Curtis Leroy Williams	From Morehouse.	14:40
Sally Graham	In what year?	14:40
Curtis Leroy Williams	In '61.	14:42
Sally Graham	And then what? Oh, Mid-Atlanta.	14:57
Curtis Leroy Williams	Mid-Atlanta University from which I graduated in '62 with a masters degree in English. Then I went from there to University of Manchester as a foreign study travel student, Merrill Lynch and that group, as the chairman of the board, Charles Merrill, who was a trustee of Morehouse College. He made available $3,000 scholarships for students from Morehouse, Spelman, and Atlanta University to study abroad for a year so I can just get the international flavor. And it was based on academics and leadership, and so I was fortunate enough to get one.	14:57
Sally Graham	And you did that in '63?	15:52
Curtis Leroy Williams	Yes. And I went in '62 and came back in '63. I was able to study at the University of Manchester and to travel in Europe. I went to Italy and Switzerland. And of course I traveled throughout England. Played basketball there, too, that was interesting.	15:56
Sally Graham	Oh, you did? You played basketball?	16:20
Curtis Leroy Williams	Yeah. At the University of Manchester. Yes, I made some friends. This is when I really got to see something outside of the segregated setting. Although in '61, well, Morehouse at the time was segregated and Atlanta University was segregated, all the Whites were permitted to come. For the first time I got to work and live around White people, English and White, and had no problems really. That's the first time I had really firsthand contact with people other than Blacks, other than somewhat work-employee relationships that I had known most of my life in some.	16:21
Curtis Leroy Williams	I remember when we had an exchange student, White student come to Morehouse and we were all excited about that. We got ourselves a White student, can you believe it? We had White instructors at Morehouse, but no White students. Name was Bill, I think.	17:10
Sally Graham	So you wanted the White students to come?	17:31
Curtis Leroy Williams	Yeah, we thought that was the way to go, to be open. It should work both ways. Yeah, we were.	17:33
Sally Graham	And you didn't have any Black instructors at Morehouse?	17:42
Curtis Leroy Williams	Oh, we had Black, but I was just saying that we had no White students, but we had White instructors there.	17:44
Sally Graham	Oh, okay.	17:50
Curtis Leroy Williams	In fact, my psychology teacher was White, but generally Black faculty. But when I was hired regardless of race, that's the way Benjamin Mays did it. He came up in a segregated situation, he understood all of that, but when he became president at Morehouse, he did not erect those barriers that would keep out any race as students or as faculty. So I think when I look back on it, talking with you, I realize that my life has been touched in many ways by very positive thinking people and very positive situations, even on those certain circumstances.	17:51
Curtis Leroy Williams	Positive in a sense that it would give me a sense of the world, what's going on people. And one of my best friends was a White fellow from England, Terry Hill, that I haven't heard from in a number of years, but we used to correspond regularly. But he kept moving around and I moved around a couple of times, we lost touch, I don't know where he is, but he's still a good friend. I don't know whether he is even alive, but wherever he is, he's a good friend of mine. And it was never an issue of Black or White, it was issue of we played basketball together, we were friends.	18:45
Curtis Leroy Williams	Well, [indistinct 00:19:38] if you want to, we'll go to you.	19:30

Item Info

Title:

Curtis Williams interview recording, 1994 June 28

Date:

June 28, 1994

Creator:

Williams, Curtis Leroy

Contributor:

Graham, Sally

Description:

Name: Curtis Leroy Williams; Date of birth: 1939-01-29; Place of birth: Waukeenah, FLA; Occupation(s): educator; drama professor; theatre director; Residence: Albany, GA
Informant ID: 813; interviewed by: Sally Graham.

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Behind the Veil

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Behind the Veil: Documenting African American Life in the Jim Crow South interviews, photographs, and project records, circa 1864-2011, bulk 1990-1999

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

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

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Interview number: 57
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Curtis Williams interview recording, 1994 June 28

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1. Curtis Williams administrative file, 1994

John Hope Franklin Research Center

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Curtis Williams interview recording, 1994 June 28

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