DeGrandval Burke interview recording, 1993 June 14
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DeGradval Burke | — For Blacks for the other section developed, you know? You had everything over there. The only Black schools, many of the Black churches started over there. You had most of the Black businesses over there and everything. Well, I won't get into that because one of the fellows on this list that you have here, he came from over there and he'd just love to talk about it, Reverend Booton. | 0:01 |
Karen Ferguson | Booton? | 0:33 |
DeGradval Burke | Well, you got Booton. Well, he's one too. I had him on it, but I took him off. Somebody said he was already on it. | 0:34 |
Karen Ferguson | Yeah. | 0:40 |
DeGradval Burke | This fellow's name is Maxwell. Joe Maxwell. He's on the list there too. And we have a slide series on Brooklyn that we developed that we would show around to the different senior citizen groups throughout the last 10 years. Since I retired, I've been working in this with the African American Center and that was one of the first projects that we undertook to get pictures and that kind of stuff. | 0:40 |
DeGradval Burke | We did the Brooklyn story brochure from the material we had, but we got a lot of pictures since that time and we got a slide series now, about 50 pictures. And we show them around the senior citizen groups every year. Churches and schools and all that type of thing, television. And so we are now trying to compile a composite thing on it. We got to do some taping. We already got accepted to do some taping of people who live there. When we have the slide series, we have some people who came from over there and they talk about the pictures. | 1:10 |
DeGradval Burke | If we flash the picture of this place or that place, this building or that building. They know all about who was in there and all that stuff. But we don't have it on tape so we have that as a project now to complement it. Where we've been doing it, we had these people just talk. We show the slides and they would talk, then we'd hit the next slide, then they'd talk about that and keep on until we got through. But it wasn't anything down permanent. So we were hoping that to complement the pictures, that we would have some authentic comments on the different things to get the feel of the community and that kind of thing, you know? | 1:55 |
Karen Ferguson | So wait, were you born in Brooklyn? | 2:35 |
DeGradval Burke | I wasn't, I used to just go there and visit. No. Yeah, near Matthews, about 10 miles down the road towards Monroe in the country. I was a country boy and my daddy was a farmer down there and everything with the five children. And I went to elementary school down there. And so in high school— Well I went to a boarding school in South Carolina, Harvest Institute, which was a private 10 boarding school for boys. | 2:37 |
DeGradval Burke | You would stay there and work your way. They had a big farm connected with the school and that kind of stuff. So the principal of the school back then and my daddy— He came from down in that section where my daddy would be on the same church before he got to be principal of the school, Dr. Porter. So he came home that summer and he said— Well my daddy was saying, that we had finished elementary school, my brother and I, "So why don't you come down to my school?" | 3:13 |
DeGradval Burke | So we went down there. That's where I went to high school. Then I came back and went to Smith after that as you know probably, college and seminary, Smith. And I graduated and worked at McCormick Theological Seminary. I got a masters and I went to Garrett in Northwestern for some graduate work after that when I was teaching at Smith at the time. But let's get back to the real thing now about Brooklyn. | 3:42 |
DeGradval Burke | So I suggest that they get a real detailed picture of Brooklyn. You talk to Ray Booton and this other fellow, they can give you far more information about Brooklyn than I can. Mostly what I got was from talking to people and just visiting over there as an outsider. But they lived in the area all their lives. I mean while they were coming up and everything. | 4:16 |
DeGradval Burke | I don't know specifically what you want me to say with reference to the topic. What your concern is about Jim Crowism. I tried to think. I read the letter. Somebody sent me a letter sometime ago about the Jim Crow phase of it. And where I came up, we didn't have any White people but one family that lived anywhere near where we were and they had some small kids. We were small then. I was in my teens then and our relationship was very good. | 4:39 |
DeGradval Burke | I mean people farming then, they would come over and borrow stuff from my daddy and work back and forth. We didn't have any problems with them as such. Going to school, the bus would pass by us walking to school for about two or three miles and the White kids would be riding on the bus and one of my best friends was driving the bus for the White kids and so forth because we used to be mad at him because he said, "I don't have anything to do with it. Y'all know I'd pick y'all up ready if I could." | 5:19 |
DeGradval Burke | Well we all understood that part. We didn't hold it against him or anything. But as far as the race relation was concerned, we got along all right. We didn't know the difference, so to speak, as far as any incidents that would break into the picture. And then we moved into the little town of Matthews when I was in high school here and we lived near White families there. But they were older people, the man and his wife. My mother used to work down at the house for them and stuff like that on the side. And we didn't have a large farm then and so we were way different way. | 5:50 |
DeGradval Burke | But we had very, very sound relationships with the Whites in that town. And they showed respect and we showed respect and everybody knew where their line went and where the other line went and so forth. Only thing I could think of that might have any significance was, they had a little drug store in the little town and they had some tables over there on one side where people would come in and sit down, drink cokes or something, order ice cream and so forth. | 6:35 |
DeGradval Burke | The druggist— If I went in there when some White people were there, I had to stand over there until they left out or something. Or if anybody looked like they were coming in to buy something, I had to wait. But other than that, I didn't see anything that was really something that was scary. I think that, on the whole, in places like that, you had certain understandings and that type of thing from your parents and other people and unless just something happened up, but everybody worked together seemingly pretty good. | 7:09 |
DeGradval Burke | The White school, we couldn't go to it. They had a White high school there, but I had to go away to Harvest to go to high school or either come to Charlotte, to West Charlotte here. My sister came to West Charlotte and she was older than I was. And so she came up and stayed with our aunt and finished West Charlotte. But other than that, as far as Matthews was concerned, it was just a little country town and so forth. And everybody knew everybody else. | 7:52 |
DeGradval Burke | But as far as Jim Crowism was concerned, I don't see anything where it helped or hindered in any special way except the school situation that I talked about. You might have a question you might give a lead on and that'll help me. | 8:21 |
Karen Ferguson | Did your family own their own farm? | 8:42 |
DeGradval Burke | No, they didn't own their own farm. They were renters, they called them. The person that owned the farm was a White man who ran the store, the general store in town. And he had three or four farms and had Blacks on each one, you know that worked the farm and you'd give him so much of the cotton that you made each year, a certain percentage of the cotton for rental. | 8:47 |
DeGradval Burke | And he furnished the house and you had your own meals and that kind of stuff back then. But not many Blacks owned farms in that section at all. My daddy— We bought a house for him later on after he moved into the little town and so forth there. But while we were farming, it was always the other man's farm. But we made a very comfortable living. There were four of us boys and my daddy. And so if you had boys who would plow, several people to plow, I mean you were considered in pretty good shape. | 9:10 |
DeGradval Burke | You could raise a lot of cotton and you could raise all the food you could eat and that kind of stuff. And people thought you were in pretty good shape. You weren't down at the bottom of the list so to speak. And so you could make a very comfortable living like that. Yes siree. I don't know anything else particularly that would tie in with the racial problem or something. | 9:53 |
Karen Ferguson | Well we're interested in just everyday life as well for African Americans back then. So, when you lived at home when you were growing up, did you just grow up with your immediate family or did anybody else live— | 10:24 |
DeGradval Burke | Well, there were other Black families who lived in the general area. We had one family that was about as far from here as up to Northridge Junior High School up here. They were the closest Black family, closest any family. And we would visit them, they'd visit us and everything was very congenial and everything. We'd share things if we had something and they didn't have it. They'd come over and borrow something from us and we'd borrow something from them or whatever it was like that. | 10:42 |
DeGradval Burke | It was that kind of situation where you shared. If anybody was sick or anything like that, they would come over or my mother would go over and take something over there to them and it was a very nice type of life, quiet and that type of thing. But we went to church together on Sunday. We went into Matthews to the church and stayed there all day, about till late that evening. And they'd take food to church with them for the little children and baskets and that kind of stuff. And people would walk. I remember way back when people would walk to church or some of them would go in wagons if they had a lot of children or a buggy, before cars came out. | 11:20 |
DeGradval Burke | I remember very distinctly before cars. I remember the first car I ever saw. I didn't know what in the world that was going up the highway. We stayed right near the road, the main road from here going to Monroe, Monroe Road now. But then it was just a road, it wasn't big as that road or street out there then and rut centered and all that stuff. But we'd walk to church, we'd get this family and pick them up so to speak. | 12:13 |
DeGradval Burke | And the road would be full of folks and the women would have on their old shoes so they wouldn't get their new shoes dirty in the dusty roads. And before they get to the church, they'd stop on the side of the road and wipe their feet and put on the good shoes. And put the old ones in a bag or something so they could go in the church looking sharp. In the wintertime when it was cold, we didn't go to church that much as kids because it was too bad. But the older people went, I remember we used to look forward to a children's day, which was last Sunday according to the Almanac. | 12:43 |
DeGradval Burke | And all the kids would work to go to church that Sunday. They'd have on their little new outfits that the mama made for them and all that stuff, tennis shoes and everything. Go to church to say your speech was children's day. All the kids around, no matter what church they belong to, would go to one church or the other. When they'd have that special day, you know? Say they little speeches and the folks would clap for them and bow and all that. It was a very interesting time in a way. It was simple. No complications, no nothing. But it was a very rewarding type of thing. | 13:26 |
DeGradval Burke | You go fishing, it was a stream down not too far from where we lived and you'd go down there and fish on Saturday and you couldn't catch a fish big enough to have a good bite off of but at least you were fishing, you know? And climbed trees. The train ran down past our house about two or three blocks from there, Seaboard Train going to Charlotte. We loved to listen to the train blowing and everything and go down and wave at the conductor. He'd wave at us and the firemen, he'd be standing outside the plate. I think he looked for us every day. | 14:07 |
DeGradval Burke | But anyway, those were some of the simple things that we went through during my early years. Up in teens during World War I, I remember after World War I, we used to be down looking at the trains and there'd be a lot of soldiers on the train hobo-ing and stuff. And I used to ask my daddy, "Why were they on the train and looked so bad? Ragged and stuff." So, well after World War I, a lot of them were stranded and getting from one place to the other. And so they caught trains and stuff like that and rode on them. We used to feel kind of sorry for them. We didn't know what it was all about, but that was the explanation my daddy would give me about it. He was drafted, I remember just before the war ended and he didn't have to go. So we were glad of that. | 14:49 |
DeGradval Burke | So then we moved into Matthews, like I said and changed our— Well I was in high school then and for four years I was in and out. And I wasn't closely related to the people in the community because I stayed down at Harvest a couple of summers. They'd keep some boys down there to work on the farm to pay for their tuition the next year. And so I stayed down there a couple summers and had my accident down there at the Saw Mill where I cut my hands and cut my arm off and everything down there. | 15:46 |
DeGradval Burke | But anyway, I lived that at least. And I came on to Smith on the full scholarship and the church that owned the school down there and everything. So I came on to Smith, graduated in '38. I majored in Math and History and I taught two years, three years after that. Then high school down in Georgia at Boggs Academy and I wanted to teach. I thought the Lord called me away from that. So I came back to Smith in '41 and finished seminary in '44 and started pastoring a church here in the city. | 16:27 |
DeGradval Burke | So I stayed at the church. The first two churches I had were small rural churches and I served them for about 17 years and the church merged with another church. And I was called to Smith to teach and I went off and got my master's and I came back to Smith in the Department of Religion. So my whole experience since that was tied in with the education field in religion at John Z. Smith. Not in seminary but in the college department where they had a full department of religion. | 17:10 |
DeGradval Burke | Then they had five full-time teachers in the college department. And so I was one of the full-time teachers there in that department until I retired in '76. After that I was just around and I started in this research project. Then the African American Center was just opened up and they had a fellow there who was interested in Black research. And I had my students the year before to write a paper on their home church. They had a course in church history. And rather than talking about the Roman Church and what happened these thousands of years ago, I told them to write a term paper on the history of their home church. And they came back after Christmas and they didn't know anything. | 17:49 |
DeGradval Burke | Nobody in the church knew anything. And there's one old man, got up every year and he talks about the church and stuff. And the day when he dies, anybody won't know anything about it. So they began to see the need of finding out something. I said, "Well you go back, when you go home for the holidays, you go and interview some of the older people around. Whether they belong to that church or not, if they live in that community, they knew about the church." | 18:40 |
DeGradval Burke | And they came back and they had some very interesting papers after that. One of the ministers wrote me a nice letter that said, that after the child wrote the paper in their church and everybody was so pleased about it that they had put it in a form and they were going to keep it as part of their history that they could pass down from one year to the other, one generation to the other. Well I knew that's the way it was in my home church, they had one old man who used to always talk about what it used to be like and this, that, and the other and the preachers who were there and the leaders and that kind of stuff. | 19:08 |
DeGradval Burke | The old families who'd been there for generations and stuff. And so a lot of churches had their history down for the first time in a simple form. But it was something that they had down, which they hadn't had down before. So from that point on, well I started getting a history of Charlotte churches and so forth. Then we went into businesses and the schools and that kind of stuff. We found out that Myers Street School was the first Black school in 1882. | 19:48 |
DeGradval Burke | We got pictures of the first school that's in the Brooklyn story thing where they got the steps outside going up. So I was able to find out some material in that and some of the other principals and teachers and that stuff. But it wasn't in Brooklyn when they first started, it was in First Ward we found out. And then they switched it over to Brooklyn a few years after that. But anyway— And then Second Ward high school and that kind of thing. Of course they got a lot of stuff on it since it's continued. | 20:27 |
DeGradval Burke | But they had a college over there, which was a Black community college tied in with the second one for years until they put the new building up here off of 85. I don't know whether you've seen it or not, but they don't use it now. But they built a nice structure up there for the college. So I don't know, in the other period though, I'd say that Blacks had more independence and appreciation in businesses and so forth because that was the only place that Blacks could go to, another Black business, to get things done. | 21:01 |
DeGradval Burke | We talked about the other day, some of us was talking about you don't have half as many Black businesses in Charlotte as you used to have because they went out of business and they got another section and Blacks go to the White thing. Now you didn't have to go up there to the Black place. But back then that was the only place you could go for a lot of things. Downtown Charlotte, the only place that had Black businesses was just a little arcade up there off of Trade Street and College Street. Just a little alley, out of all the downtown. Now if you wanted to go to a Black place to buy something, they had Barber Shops in there and they had cafes and stuff. | 21:46 |
DeGradval Burke | If you wanted something to eat or something, you'd go to Brooklyn or somewhere where they had nice Black cafes and all kinds of things to go to. If you wanted to go to the theater, you go to the Lincoln Theater over there or the Grand Theater out here. But now all those closed up and so forth. Now people go downtown to the big White theaters. So we've lost a lot I think in the transition period. | 22:28 |
DeGradval Burke | Although Jim Crowism was a dreaded thing as such, but I think Blacks learned to live within the bounds of it and made it work for them sometime to a more advantage than it is now. That might sound strange, but it's an actual fact. So, as far as the changes are concerned, Black churches have been in existence for a long time. They came out of the White churches, a lot of them. You have some integration but not that much. Although a lot of the churches now would accept other racial people into them. | 22:56 |
DeGradval Burke | Take Memorial up here where we belong, Memorial Presbyterian next to I-85, they have three interracial marriage groups. They belong up there. And I know several Black families belong to all White churches, where there's not many, but a few. I think the separation of church life, I think it's just a part of an inherited thing that all racial groups have. You take the Koreans, you take the Chinese, you take the other people like that. They have their own churches a lot of time. So I don't think that Jim Crow part was tied in with it as such because it was a choice type of thing. All right. Anything else you can think of? My brain don't work well. | 23:35 |
Karen Ferguson | It sounds like it works okay to me. But do you know when Brooklyn first developed really as an area? A Black business area? | 24:35 |
DeGradval Burke | No, I don't have a possible date on that, but it must have been back in the 1880s or 1870s, somewhere back in there. Because we do have some representations on the city. They didn't have a city council, I mean government thing then. But we have a list of Blacks who elected officers to the thing before the Jim Crow thing went into effect just before the time of sanctuary, before the soldiers went out in the '80s and so forth. You had Black representation on the council and they stated they were from Brooklyn, Second Ward it was called. | 24:45 |
DeGradval Burke | In fact, all of them were elected from that area. And the other areas seemingly have developed after that to a large extent and so forth. I'd say around in the '70s, 1870s or somewhere like that. 60s, in the middle 60s and so forth, but I haven't got an actual date for it. It seemed to develop in a kind of gradual pathway after the deal was to exclude the White section was built off of Morehead Street. They needed Blacks for maids and chauffeurs and that type of thing. | 25:27 |
DeGradval Burke | One source I got that said that Brooklyn was the first part, the rental part of Brooklyn where they had a lot of rental property. They were built. People come to rural sections and come up there and they could walk over to Dilworth to work. And so you had Blue Heaven as they called it, and some of the other poor areas of Brooklyn where you had all of these maids and yard men and so forth. Every rich White family out there had to have it's maid and chauffer you know? Even so, more than it is today. We used to have a lady that lived right out there. She died last year, but she worked at that section all her life practically for this rich White family. | 26:08 |
DeGradval Burke | She used to talk about the situation, you know? Say, "The maids come out of those sections just to die of poverty and put on those clean uniforms, where they had to wear to work. They lived in two worlds, two separate worlds. When they went to work, they were in one world, when they came back home, they were in a world all together different." And it was very interesting. She used to talk about it so much, "How they couldn't even go in the front door, although they were the maid, they had to go around the back of the house." But it seemed like it developed as adjunct to Dilworth's section out there before Myers Park was built up. | 26:56 |
Karen Ferguson | What you talked about maids and people who were working in Dilworth. What other kinds of people lived in Brooklyn? | 27:49 |
DeGradval Burke | Well, you had all types of skilled people and that was one of the things where you had skilled laborers. You had people who helped to build Charlotte, downtown masonry, carpenters and all type of skilled laborers over there came out of Brooklyn section. They lived over in Brooklyn section. I was talking to one fellow about that and he was talking about how they helped lay the concrete downtown and helped to build the Independence Building. That was a long time ago when they had the big Independent Building right on the square and how Blacks did most of the labor, the skilled labor in building the downtown area. | 27:57 |
DeGradval Burke | It's like in most sections back then, certain types of labor, Whites didn't do, you know? So it gave Blacks a chance that had these skills, to really get in the areas that they normally wouldn't have been in if they had to compete, you see. We were talking about Thad Tate who was— You've probably heard of Thad Tate. He was one of the rich influential Blacks in Charlotte and Thad Tate had a barber shop downtown and he did White people's hair, not Black folks hair. | 28:44 |
DeGradval Burke | Because it came out of the old concept that cutting hair was— Blacks have been cutting White peoples hair all during slavery times. You didn't have White Barber Shops and stuff like you do now. So Thad Tate got rich cutting all these business people's hair and shaving them every morning before they went to work. And they had an office downtown right there, a block from the square for years and years and everything. | 29:19 |
DeGradval Burke | Dr. J.T. Williams, now he was a physician but they had White physicians. But Dr. J.T. was such a good one that they let him have an office down there and he waited on White people and so forth. Well most of the Black doctors were in Brooklyn area and waited on Black people. But Dr. J.T. Williams, who was an ambassador to Africa one time and he was appointed by the governor and all that stuff. And so he had a good practice downtown, but you had to cross over sometime as far as occupational skills that Blacks were able to get over in an area that had been a great area coming out of the slave period that was still hanging in there, you see? All right. Anything else? | 29:47 |
Karen Ferguson | Yeah. What do you think, say in the beginning of the 1930s, '20s, '30s, '40s, how many inhabitants in Brooklyn do you think were working within the Black economy or in Black institutions? Not working for White people but just working in Brooklyn for Blacks or elsewhere? | 30:41 |
DeGradval Burke | Businesses and so forth? Oh, I assume that— | 31:07 |
Karen Ferguson | Like teachers? | 31:11 |
DeGradval Burke | Yeah, they had a lot of teachers that lived over there and they taught in the schools and so forth for a good many. But in the area of teaching. Vernal can give you more on that because she came up in there. But I know they did have a lot of the teachers, when First Ward began to develop. A lot of professional Blacks moved to First Ward because they didn't have the slum area down there. Now, like Brooklyn had developed through the years you had— Brooklyn was divided into two main areas. There's the real slum area below McDowell street and going over towards Morehead where you had the real real slum areas and going up the other way where Second Ward high school was and up in that area you had a professional group in nice homes and that kind of stuff. | 31:11 |
DeGradval Burke | But as it developed, First Ward developed then a lot of Blacks developed in First Ward because it was a nicer section. And so you had that difference of two. But all your businesses still remained in Brooklyn practically, Black businesses. You didn't have many Black businesses in First Ward. You had a hotel over there, Alexander Hotel, it was a nice Black hotel. The nicest Black hotel in Charlotte through the years. He was a medical doctor, Dr. Alexander was. But you had some places where Blacks could stay. A small— It wasn't all the hotel necessarily, but boarding houses, they had more of them in the Brooklyn area. | 32:00 |
DeGradval Burke | People ran boarding houses. If you had a nice house and stuff and you had some rooms you'd rent them to people who didn't have anywhere to stay. And they worked in Charlotte. A lot of them came from the rural sections and the YWCA was in Brooklyn and they had rooms for Black women who came from other sections, small towns. And they stayed in the Y. The YMCA was over there too, but it didn't have any place for folks to stay in the YM. But the YW was very famous by the picture visiting in the brochure, the Phyllis Wheatley YWCA. But you did have a good many rooming houses where people live nice and respectable and— | 32:53 |
Karen Ferguson | Roman Catholics? Is that what you— | 33:42 |
DeGradval Burke | No, they weren't Catholic houses. | 33:44 |
Karen Ferguson | Rooming houses, I'm sorry. | 33:45 |
DeGradval Burke | No Catholics. So you didn't have any Black Catholics. | 33:46 |
Karen Ferguson | Sorry— | 33:52 |
DeGradval Burke | You had more Baptists than anything else and you still have in the South. You have a good many Methodist, you have a good many AME Zions and stuff and in the Charlotte area. You have a lot of Presbyterians because Smith was here kind of back during the years when the Smith faculty used to go across town, the church, the Seventh Street or First United, the professors and everybody else, the president would walk from Smith over to Seventh Street where it is now. | 33:52 |
DeGradval Burke | So because of that contact with them and you had Smith professors, this was way back now, way back in the 1800s where Smith was very close related to the Presbyterian churches in the Charlotte area and they developed Brooklyn Church and you had several came out of Seventh Street Church and formed new churches in different areas as they developed, you see? So you have a stronger Presbyterian entity in the Charlotte area probably than you'll find anywhere you're going. Even in Atlanta and all these other places. Because of that expansion in the area from the school being here. | 34:30 |
DeGradval Burke | Professors used to go around to different places and helped to organize churches and all that stuff. The seminary was very influential through the years, especially before the turn of the century and after that when I was there. It was really something that they took pride in. It wasn't isolated like it became after that, like it is now. I hate to say that, President not here so I can say it, but in the last two or three presidencies it has kind of gotten isolated from the community as such, more so than it was when I was there. | 35:18 |
DeGradval Burke | When we had the Department of Religion, the faculty worked in the communities and churches and this, that and the other. There were ministers on the faculty, priest and churches around that where I served the church, just part-time minister for all the time I was and after I left there. And while I was there you'd fill in at churches where you didn't have a preacher or something. | 36:00 |
DeGradval Burke | So it gave us a distinct relationship to university to the community. And I think it was good and it enhanced the thing more than having all this stuff. What they're having now is good but as far as community relations, they've lost a great deal of it from when I was there. Any other thoughts? | 36:26 |
Karen Ferguson | Yeah, I wanted to know— You were talking about the development of the First Ward neighborhood and that people left Brooklyn? | 36:50 |
DeGradval Burke | Well they left. Some of them left and went over there and other people coming into the Charlotte area as the population expanded. Many of them came into the First Ward areas as it was developing and so forth because Brooklyn had become filled up almost, so to speak, and there wasn't any where else to go there because you were almost over to Morehead Street where the White people lived beyond that. | 36:57 |
DeGradval Burke | And out below McDowell Street, it was already down to the creek down there. And so there was no where to go there to develop. So one reason they went to First Ward because it was developing into a very decent and high class section, so to speak. And people thought of it as being kind of high class like Belville developed later on out of this section. | 37:23 |
DeGradval Burke | You stay in Belville, "Oh you stay in Belville?" | 37:47 |
DeGradval Burke | "Oh, I stay in Belville." | 37:50 |
DeGradval Burke | "Oh, that's all right then." So you had a professional group that enhanced the area and that became the prize area to shop for Blacks for a long time. It was bordering on a White area over there. But first you had— In First Ward you had the White school over there before it became Black. First Ward school and so forth. The Whites lived in part of First Ward, the back part near the expressway, even near the Blacks over there, they weren't the high class Whites. But up there on College Street you had some high class White folks stayed up there, all on College Street up there. | 37:52 |
DeGradval Burke | And the Whites were bordering on them, which gave it a different type of a mixture than what you had in Brooklyn. You had a lot of people coming in from Brooklyn, from the rural sections and the poor class and that kind of stuff. And they made up a large part of the population over there. And so a lot of the upper class Blacks who stayed in Brooklyn left out from over there. When you got too many of that group in there and the crime rate was high. | 38:44 |
DeGradval Burke | You talk to Ray Booton, he was one of the four Black police here. And he talked about how they would stand out on the corner of First Ward Street and McDowell and couldn't even arrest White people at all, but they were supposed to arrest the Blacks and keep them in line. And didn't even have guns to start with and all that type of stuff. So Ray would be a good man to talk about all that stuff. Have y'all talked to him yet? | 39:19 |
Karen Ferguson | We've tried to arrange a time because he seems quite busy. | 39:49 |
DeGradval Burke | Well he would be good because he was a postman. He used to carry mail, one of the first mailmen in Charlotte, Black. And he was one of the first policemen in Charlotte. Then he went into the preaching business after he had been out of all this other stuff. But he's a good man to talk to on that area. | 39:53 |
Karen Ferguson | When did people start moving out of Brooklyn? Sort of the professionals and so on? | 40:26 |
DeGradval Burke | Well, I wouldn't know the exact time, but the urban renewals section came in the late '50s and so forth. When they tore out the whole area. Before that, some of them had moved out but not a great many of them, but urban renewals— Charlotte got a grant for urban renewal because they was close to downtown and the White people thought it was a disgrace. | 40:30 |
DeGradval Burke | Well, in part, it was a disgrace because of the crime rate and in this relationship downtown, it had a terrible crime rate. It was growing and growing and so instead of tearing out just the sections where the crime was, they ended up tearing out everything since it was the first urban renewal effort. Well, Blacks didn't know what was going on until it was already done. And so some of them tried to hold out near the end, but they'd gone too far. | 40:58 |
DeGradval Burke | Then they would take your property. If you had a house, they'd appraise whatever they thought it was worth and put the money down and one of the bulldozers would come by and take your house out. So it was one of those deals where they got trapped into the situation. And so they got scattered all around town under urban renewal. After that, of course urban renewal went in the First Ward section, but they had more control over that because they had learned from the Brooklyn experience. | 41:32 |
DeGradval Burke | And although they had tore it out for business and that kind of stuff and built some homes over there, the Blacks had a chance to decide to move out. Started moving to this section up in Hyde Park, which was a new development, kind of exclusive for Blacks up at First Ward. And other sections, Greene was the same way over here, they tore it out, which it never had the prestige that First Ward had. But it was a very large section and the Blacks were in pretty good shape and that kind of stuff. | 42:02 |
DeGradval Burke | But it was just one of those things that changed up the whole pattern of population growth and so forth. And Blacks started moving into White areas and the sections, they began to build up White areas beyond the traditional White section like Myers Park. You don't have any Blacks over there in Dilworth because that was built up and filled up. But they started to build, expanding Charlotte all around and after integration came, Blacks started moving in those areas. | 42:36 |
DeGradval Burke | And practically any area you go in now, you run upon some Blacks over there. He said, "Well I thought this was a White section." Well, it was a White section but now— And another thing, you have a lot of these big companies like IBM and other people bringing their people into Charlotte from other places and everything and they get them homes in these sections. We were talking to a group about Charlotte areas some time ago, and a lot of these fellas were IBM and other big companies. | 43:10 |
DeGradval Burke | They'd moved in from way off somewhere else. They transferred them to Charlotte or they get you a house in this section, in that section. And they don't go into the traditional Black section to buy them a house. They go in these new places and get them a house, you see? And so that has scattered the population per se, in the light of that growth of population shifts and so forth. | 43:44 |
Karen Ferguson | When people moved out of Brooklyn, did they still come back to do their— change the services? | 44:17 |
DeGradval Burke | All the stores were knocked out too along with it. They were scattered. | 44:25 |
Karen Ferguson | Before that and people were living, say in First Ward or Greene— | 44:28 |
DeGradval Burke | Oh, I see what you're talking about. Yeah, they went back. That's what he was saying, that no matter where you live, Brooklyn was the center for Black stuff. You had the only theaters, the Black theaters were over there first. You had the shopping area all along Second Street, what they call, The Block, there where they had a whole block of stores and all types of businesses. The YMCA, the Y, WC was right around the corner. | 44:32 |
DeGradval Burke | The library, the only Black library in town was over there right on the corner. The AME Zion Publication House right up on the other corner. The undertakers were all over there. They had Grier's Funeral Home. And the examiner, all of those. You had about 10 Black churches in the area, different denominations and they pulled people from everywhere. Some of your strongest Black churches were over there like St. Paul Baptist. | 45:03 |
DeGradval Burke | And they were on the radio and you had some of the oldest Blacks churches like Grace AME Zion, it's still over there, it's the only Black Church still over there on Brevard Street. They didn't tear it down and the MIC Building, which was a business next door to it. The three story building that Dr. Williams and some of the big shots like Thad Tate and those built that building for a professional building. Well when they tore out Brooklyn, they had enough prestige or something, I don't know what. | 45:32 |
DeGradval Burke | But they didn't tear that out and they left the church right next to it. Grace AME Zion Church. And now you have just a few places left coming out towards Trade Street. I know a lady has a beauty parlor still over there between Fourth Street and Trade Street and she's been in Brooklyn for all these years. But it used to be further over before they tore it down. But she still has a spot there that she has a little building there where it's not built up that much. | 46:08 |
DeGradval Burke | But people still go back to her I guess because she's been in stuff a long time. But all your other businesses left out from there and moved over this way or other ways then other places like that. But it's scattered now. They're not concentrated like it used to be. You used to go to grocery stores and any other kind of store you wanted, whatever you need— | 46:42 |
DeGradval Burke | Anyway, they had all types of shops and so forth in that area, which I think has been really down draft since they scattered all around everywhere else, as I said. | 0:02 |
Karen Ferguson | Did Whites own any of the businesses that were in Brooklyn or were they all Black owned? | 0:24 |
DeGradval Burke | Well, they owned some of the buildings and so forth, well, that Blacks rented. But you had a good many of them were owned by Blacks, mama-papa type of little businesses over. But some of your larger buildings, White real estate people owned them and so forth. But the Blacks had the offices in there, had about eight or ten Black physicians and doctors and stuff in the building, I'd say was still over there now. They used to be in that building. It was kind of a doctor building. You had lot of your professional people who were in there, lawyers, doctors and that type of thing in that one building over there. | 0:28 |
DeGradval Burke | The undertakers were very influential and so forth. The Black community there now, they're scattered all around over town too. I think we've come a long way. In some way, it's been good. Some ways, it's not been so good as far as the Black entrepreneurship is concerned. You have to go up here on Betty Ford Road or some other place where they have the shopping center up here. I know that you were up there last weekend when they had the West Fair. But anyway, that's the largest Black shopping area that's owned by Blacks and Blacks in the place, have all Black stores up there. You have some White stores in there even. | 1:16 |
DeGradval Burke | But in Brooklyn, you thought of it as being almost a stick to Black community as such. As far as businesses and other things, you could be self-sufficient, not even go downtown at all the whole year for practically everything you wanted. That's what made it significant, I think, over all the other sections. | 2:04 |
Karen Ferguson | The clientele was exclusively Black, or were there ever Whites who came into Brooklyn to do shopping? | 2:38 |
DeGradval Burke | Well, I don't think Whites went over there to shop or do anything else, to be frank with you. They might have gone through on the bus and that's all. But I've never heard anybody say that the Whites would come over there to do any shop or that kind of stuff. I would say no to that question. | 2:43 |
Karen Ferguson | Now, Blue Heaven, we heard a lot about Blue Heaven. What was in Blue Heaven? | 3:06 |
DeGradval Burke | Well, Blue Heaven was across the creek over there. Someone said that when you go to Blue Heaven, the Lord would stop at the creek and say, "You on your own." It was a very poor section. I got some pictures to show some of the houses, stuff that you won't believe that people actually lived in them. The people who own those houses, say the real estate people, they would put up, just throw up anything without having to go through city code or anything. Poor people would come in. | 3:13 |
DeGradval Burke | A lot of people came in from the rural sections and they had somebody and they got jobs and shopped for the first time. These farmers that I talked about when I was down there, and they come to shop. They didn't have education and they got a job at some White place or something like that. Well, he stay anywhere practically. Some of them had kin folk. If you came up and got you a job, and then the next thing you know somebody in your family would come up to stay with you. And so, it would just build like that until you just got. The house would run down and the landowners wouldn't fix them up, and they were just a real ghetto. | 3:54 |
DeGradval Burke | But they were all in a general area. McDowell Street down there where the hotels are, going on that side of McDowell all the way out to Morehead Street. It was that type of situation where you had the real ghetto type of situation, high crime rate, people getting drunk and arrested and the police, that was about the only place where they had to go in Brooklyn on weekends. They had the beer joints and everything and folk you know, these fellows would get their little money when Friday come and go out and get drunk and everything. | 4:33 |
DeGradval Burke | You didn't have any serious crime like killing, like you done now or anything. It was just one of those things, fights or something like that, where a fellow was drunk and you put him in jail and you'd let him out the next day to go back to work. But Blue Heaven, we been trying to figure out how it got that name, but I haven't been able to find out yet. I've talked to hundreds of people, supposed to keep out of their stuff, but nobody knows exactly how it got that name. But that was a very significant name. When you said Blue Heaven, everybody know what you talking about. | 5:22 |
Karen Ferguson | Was it was the roughest part of Brooklyn? | 5:58 |
DeGradval Burke | Yeah. It was rough in the sense that you had a lot of people drinking and fighting and that kind of stuff, but you could go through Blue Heaven and they wouldn't bother people that wasn't in the thing. I've been in Blue Heaven many times. I had a cousin lived over in Blue Heaven. We used to go to his house sometime, but at the same time, you go and get out and everything. You wouldn't be scared for your life, I mean, to walk through it. | 6:01 |
DeGradval Burke | I wouldn't go there on Saturday night though. They'd be throwing a party or something like that. You better stay out of the way because one the rocks might hit when they're throwing it at somebody else. But, I mean, it wasn't the type of thing where it was just dangerous to go in, that kind of thing. But it was just poverty, like you find in most cities. In fact, in any city you go in, any size, you're going to find some area where it's that type of situation. And so, it wasn't bad in the sense that it was just people shooting each other all the time and that kind of thing. But it was just a poverty stricken area and so forth for low income people, and that's all. | 6:31 |
Karen Ferguson | Was it only poor people who lived in Blue Heaven? | 7:18 |
DeGradval Burke | Well, we would say that. The ones that I knew of, they were either poor or else, the housing was so dilapidated that anybody who had anything wouldn't rent over there. That's the thing about it. They had a few houses on one section now that were pretty livable. Four room houses and looked pretty decent and everything. You had some people who lived in those houses who were making a little more money than the other people. | 7:21 |
DeGradval Burke | But the people who lived in those poor houses and everything, they didn't have the money to rent or want a better house, you see. And so, they had to live in whatever they could live in and everything. Those houses, some fellas, they was about as good as what they lived in, some of them, in the country. Those farm houses about to fall down like a barn and stuff so they were used to that. No heat, proper heat and stuff, just the fireplace in the one room and all the rest of the house cold and so forth. Well, they'd been through that all their life, so that wasn't any strange. | 7:52 |
DeGradval Burke | I can remember that when I came up in the country. You had one fireplace in the front room or whatever it was, the bedroom, and all the rest of how you get warm and run to your room back there where it's so cold and freeze to death. But you get so used to being cold, you didn't feel cold. Yeah, I didn't think I was all that cold. I was in pretty good shape, I thought. It's all the way you look at a thing. If you don't know any better, well, it's not that bad. | 8:31 |
Karen Ferguson | Was there any— ever any effort by the professionals or the higher class people in Brooklyn to clean up an area like Blue Heaven? | 9:10 |
DeGradval Burke | I don't know of any. As I said, that some of these folks like Joe Maxim and those who lived there, and Joe Tabin, they knew all about those particular things. My observations were just from Joe's information, but they could give you specifics on it. I'd rather not get into that because I'm not an authority on that phase of it. I used to go over there just to go the movies or something like that and come back home when I was at Smith, but I never did live over as such. I just visited and heard other people talk about it and that kind of stuff. | 9:21 |
Karen Ferguson | I think that's about all that I have to ask about Brooklyn. | 10:00 |
DeGradval Burke | Good. | 10:19 |
Karen Ferguson | I guess we can sort of end up here. | 10:21 |
DeGradval Burke | Good. Good. | 10:24 |
Karen Ferguson | Tie up. | 10:25 |
DeGradval Burke | That's fine. That's fine. | 10:25 |
Karen Ferguson | Thank you very much for your help. | 10:26 |
DeGradval Burke | That's fine. | 10:28 |
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