Wallace Booker interview recording, 1993 July 27
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Transcript
Transcripts may contain inaccuracies.
Wallace M. Booker | Was born in Richmond, Virginia. Oh yes. | 0:01 |
Kara Miles | I from | 0:01 |
Wallace M. Booker | Richmond, Virginia. Oh, is that right? What part? | 0:01 |
Kara Miles | West Street, Henrico County. The area around Richmond. Where exactly in Richmond? | 0:06 |
Wallace M. Booker | Well, I started on Church Hill and moved over on the last residence I had was up there on Whitcomb Street, which is, I'd say between Churchill and North Side. | 0:14 |
Kara Miles | Yeah, I know where all that is. So how long were you there, did you live in Richmond? | 0:31 |
Wallace M. Booker | I stayed in Richmond until I went off to college and I've been away almost continuously since then. Let's see, when did I go to college? I left in 1932, going to college. | 0:38 |
Kara Miles | Where did you go to college? | 1:11 |
Wallace M. Booker | Virginia State in Petersburg. | 1:11 |
Kara Miles | Okay. That's where both my parents went. | 1:11 |
Wallace M. Booker | Is that right? Who were your parents? Who are your parents? | 1:11 |
Kara Miles | My father's name is Foster Miles and my mother was a Raglin. Name was Ruth Raglin then. | 1:15 |
Wallace M. Booker | No, I don't know. | 1:20 |
Kara Miles | They weren't from Richmond. | 1:24 |
Wallace M. Booker | I see. | 1:29 |
Kara Miles | Okay. Backtrack. | 1:30 |
Wallace M. Booker | All right. | 1:30 |
Kara Miles | Growing up in Richmond, what did your parents do for a living? | 1:31 |
Wallace M. Booker | My father was a blacksmith. My mother was a teacher. She taught in Henrico County, also. So I'm familiar with the area. | 1:39 |
Kara Miles | Which school? She taught at Randolph? | 1:54 |
Wallace M. Booker | No. | 1:54 |
Kara Miles | What school was it in? | 1:54 |
Wallace M. Booker | She taught at Quioccasin. Well, let me put it this way, the last schools, because she taught before she was married and then after she was married she returned to teaching after; I guess she got me housebroken; and she taught at Quioccasin, which is at Passing Avenue, I believe, in that neighborhood. And her last school was at Gravel Hill, down the other side of Fulton. | 1:58 |
Kara Miles | How many children was it? | 2:35 |
Wallace M. Booker | Just one. | 2:37 |
Kara Miles | Tell me about your house. What was your house like that you grew up in? | 2:41 |
Wallace M. Booker | Just a house. Nothing unusual about it. Two story, seven rooms. No, nothing unusual, but as I indicated, it started out on Church Hill. I think I was born on 29th Street and I moved to 24th Street and later moved to Pink Street and finally over on Whittcomb Street, which is now Whitcomb Street, which is like I said, located between Church Hill and North Side; in that particular area; that was the house that my grandfather had built and it was a family house and we acquired. It just belong to me now, since I was the only heir. Nothing unusual about it. | 2:48 |
Kara Miles | Do you know anything about your grandparents? Do you remember your grandparents? | 4:02 |
Wallace M. Booker | Both my grandfathers died before I was born. I remember my maternal grandmother. Of course, she died. I don't know, had to be in the twenties. I don't know what year it was. And my paternal grandmother lived until I was about a senior in college. I was in college when she died. She was on Church Hill also. | 4:09 |
Kara Miles | What do you remember about your grandmothers? What kind of memories do you have of them? | 4:47 |
Wallace M. Booker | Very little, actually, because my fraternal grandmother, when she died, I was quite a young fellow. But as I said, my paternal grandmother didn't die until I was in college and the best thing I can remember about her, you might think it's silly. She baked a nice pound cake and I just enjoyed visiting her from time to time. As I said, both of my grandfathers died before I was born. She had remarried and she married a minister and I can remember him. That was only grandfather I knew, that was the step grandfather, so to speak. | 4:55 |
Kara Miles | Do you remember either your grandmothers or your parents telling you things about their life, about maybe their childhood, their growing up? | 6:07 |
Wallace M. Booker | I don't recall anything specific about it. I do remember my mother explaining about her father, which was a grandfather. He worked in the lumberyard and he had an accident there and it left him blinded, as I recall. But I don't recall anything different. Remember we're talking about a whole lot of years ago, which is only dim memories. | 6:22 |
Kara Miles | Do you know where your father learned his trade? Where he learned blacksmithing? | 7:11 |
Wallace M. Booker | There in Richmond, I guess. | 7:18 |
Kara Miles | No idea who taught him or how— | 7:21 |
Wallace M. Booker | No, I imagine it was on-the-job training that he picked that up. That's what I would imagine. He didn't have any formal training in that respect, like going to a technical school or anything like that. | 7:24 |
Kara Miles | How about your mother in teaching, do you know? Did she go to college? | 7:45 |
Wallace M. Booker | She graduated from Hartshorn. | 7:49 |
Kara Miles | Hart? What is that? | 7:52 |
Wallace M. Booker | Hartshorn, which was a college. Do you know where Maggie Walker school is in Richmond? | 7:55 |
Kara Miles | Mm-hmm. | 8:04 |
Wallace M. Booker | Hartshorn was located in an area just behind where Maggie Walker School is located. | 8:05 |
Kara Miles | And that's Hart's? | 8:16 |
Wallace M. Booker | Horn. | 8:17 |
Kara Miles | Horn? | 8:18 |
Wallace M. Booker | Yeah. You see, Hart is a deer and his horn like a deers' antlers. I think that's how the name—now, of course after that, she had [indistinct 00:08:44] would have at Virginia State, maintaining her teaching credentials. | 8:19 |
Kara Miles | When you grew up in Richmond that was an all Black neighborhood? | 9:03 |
Wallace M. Booker | Yes. | 9:08 |
Kara Miles | What were the other Black neighborhoods in town? Can you say that this was a Black neighborhood and call it by name? | 9:11 |
Wallace M. Booker | Yes, we did. Church Hill was predominantly Black. East of Churchill is Fulton, which is as I recall, heavily Black. Then you had Jackson Ward, which is around Lee Street and those streets back up there. Then you had another section called Sydney, which is Oakwood Avenue. Not quite as far as Barrett Park. Of course, you had South Richmond, which was—I don't know, there were Black areas in South Richmond, but I don't know of any particular designation for them at the present time. | 9:24 |
Wallace M. Booker | It's quite different now because Richmond is almost a Black city now. So. | 10:45 |
Kara Miles | You said it was quite different, compared, what was it like then? | 10:54 |
Wallace M. Booker | I mean, you had pockets of Black populations. Now, they're everywhere. That's the difference. | 10:59 |
Kara Miles | Are there distinctive things like did certain certain Black neighborhoods have different reputations than others? Did certain kinds of people live in certain neighborhood? | 11:09 |
Wallace M. Booker | I think we looked at the people in Jackson Ward, which is the area right now starting from about 9th Street on up to maybe Harrison Street, going west. Maybe that's where the elites were. I'll put it that way, 'cause then I think of on Lee Street, Maggie Walker, she lives there. And BAC was that group. I think we looked upon them as more, well, I don't know wealthy is the correct term or not 'cause none of us had any wealth in those days. But anyway, they were the elite. They were considered that way. | 11:27 |
Wallace M. Booker | Whereas take Church Hill, for an example, it had a lot of migration from North Carolina in that area who came up and had to work in tobacco factories. We didn't have, I guess you could say they were dividing lines, as far as where people live. For example, usually think of the Black people lived on the other side of the railroad tracks. But weren't any railroad tracks, as such, making those divisions. But now take Highland Park and Ginter Park, which is almost entirely Black right now, was almost entirely White then, or was entirely White. Black people just didn't live in those areas. But they've moved in as the Whites have moved out. That makes a difference in the composition of the population right now. | 12:44 |
Kara Miles | What kind of relationships did White Richmonders have with Black Richmonders? | 14:14 |
Wallace M. Booker | There weren't any. | 14:22 |
Kara Miles | There weren't any? | 14:22 |
Wallace M. Booker | The Black were the employees and the Whites employers. Now, Richmond was different from some other cities I had been acquainted with and I think we had more access to stores than the—I'm thinking of what's come to mind right now. Atlanta, in those days, they didn't want you to try on any garments if you went to a department store. But there you could go to tall Hamas or Millrose and so forth and be treated reasonably well. | 14:25 |
Kara Miles | So they would let you try on clothes— | 15:17 |
Wallace M. Booker | Oh, yeah. Right. | 15:21 |
Kara Miles | And this is during the twenties? | 15:24 |
Wallace M. Booker | Yeah, the time when I grew up there. Like I said, I was there until 1932. That's when I left to go to school. | 15:27 |
Kara Miles | So the stores would let you try on clothes; did they observe the usual segregation things like not addressing the Black women by Miss, not addressing Black people by titles, and letting White people go through lines first, things like that or how was that? | 15:43 |
Wallace M. Booker | Yeah, that existed. Thinking about that, I can remember very recently White people here would rather call you Professor than Mr. There weren't, as far as I know, too many instances of calling Black men uncle or Black women auntie or something like I've heard that has occurred. I haven't noticed that around here, but they avoided giving you any recognition. Now, of course, there were some people who were a little more civilized as far as White people go in those days, but there were very few. And it depended on the relationship that you had with particular White people. White people, even today, can accept you as an individual, but they don't want to accept you as a group. I think that still exists today. We don't have any difficulty now being called Mister, Miss, Missus because of the fact that I believe we reached a point where we have more money to spend or to withhold and they break their backs to get it rather than offend you. | 16:02 |
Kara Miles | You talked about being accepted as individuals, that that was possible; Growing up, was your family accepted as individuals? Were you all treated fine by Whites as individuals? | 17:58 |
Wallace M. Booker | Yes. I would say that. Fortunately, I believe I can say, I was never involved in any stressful situation of being discriminated against. I had one instance which still burns me, which I was badly mistreated, I think. I was a chemistry major in college. And of course after I graduated, I made a lot of applications for employment as a chemist. Well, I remember, I'm sure it was before the war, that of all the application sent, I received a telegram to come to Fort Belvoir for an interview in reference to a job I had applied for. Well, I went to Fort Belvoir and I stayed around there all day. Nobody would recognize that telegram or know anything about it or what it meant or anything. See, that's the first instance they found out my color, when I got there. And so finally I left there without anybody making any attempt to interview me. That was the most bitter experience I've had as far as racial differences. But otherwise, I think I've maybe been more fortunate than some other people have. | 18:17 |
Kara Miles | Growing up in Richmond, when would you have contact with Whites? When would you see White people? | 20:47 |
Wallace M. Booker | Wouldn't have any personal contact with White people. Fact, the schools were separated; they had no contact that way. So the only time that I can recall having any contact with White was when you out in public, in a public place. If you went to a theater, you sat in the balcony and the White folks sat downstairs. You get on the, we had street cars then, buses, you'd be separated on the train. You even more separated because you never in the same coach. They had special coaches way up the front of the train where all the centers and ashes were. So there wasn't any contact with Whites. | 21:05 |
Kara Miles | Were there ever people that you remember or did you yourself ever defy those rules? I mean, not sit in the back of the bus or drinks in the White water fountain and things like that? | 22:00 |
Wallace M. Booker | No, I don't recall having any instances in which I was challenged or I challenged the system. | 22:20 |
Kara Miles | This is kind of off the subject a little bit, were there separate fitting rooms at the Miller [indistinct 00:22:42]? | 22:34 |
Wallace M. Booker | No. | 22:41 |
Kara Miles | So you tried, you went to the same room the White people went? | 22:43 |
Wallace M. Booker | Yeah, same room. | 22:48 |
Kara Miles | That's very interesting. | 22:49 |
Wallace M. Booker | Of course, in the bus station, the railroad station, there was separate waiting rooms there. | 22:54 |
Kara Miles | You said that you never defied those rules in any way. What did you think about them? What did you think about— | 23:04 |
Wallace M. Booker | Oh, I objected to them. In fact, there were times when I'd rather walk than to get on the street car to go where I would go because of that. I had to go, they would enter from the front and went all the way back to the back. Didn't like those things, but it's just a way of life that you grew up with and accepted. | 23:09 |
Kara Miles | When you were a young child, how did your parents teach you about segregation? | 23:43 |
Wallace M. Booker | I don't remember any teaching about that, because like I say, it was just an accepted way of life and as things were. Now, the few times that we were able to get to the northern area above Washington, it was a whole new world. We enjoyed that. I can remember going into Washington and eating at the Union Station there, which was quite an experience because you didn't do it down in Richmond. But as for any specific directions or teaching about it? No. | 23:58 |
Kara Miles | Do you remember your parents ever talking about Whites, like maybe experiences, run-ins, or things they had had with Whites or do you know how they felt about Whites and about segregation and all of that? | 25:01 |
Wallace M. Booker | No, I don't remember any talking or anything about that because they had grown up in the segregated system and so I guess we just accepted it. That's what it amounted, just accepted as the way things were. Not liking it, but still accepting. | 25:19 |
Kara Miles | So did you know people? Were there people maybe who weren't from Richmond, maybe outsiders who moved into Richmond who didn't accept that? Or do you know anyone in that time who didn't? | 25:56 |
Wallace M. Booker | No. Uh-huh. Now, here is a situation, most of the people who came into Richmond were people from farther south who already had the same type of experiences. People from the north who had been up in the northern states, they may have come down for visits, something like that, for a weekend visit. But beyond that, those things never occurred. Now, I had an uncle who lived in Philadelphia, and I can recall him making mention of how Whites were Whites, even up there. How you went to a bar and you ordered a drink, they'd break the glass after you finished, showing that they had to serve, but they didn't want you. And of course I had another uncle who lived in New York and I don't think I remember his coming down to Richmond. When he left, he left for good. | 26:12 |
Kara Miles | Did you all used to go visit them in Philly and New York? | 27:43 |
Wallace M. Booker | No. I had an uncle in Atlantic City that visited once and—yes, had visit up in that area; that's how we knew about what went on in that area. But it was just short visits, nothing an extended thing. A day or two like that. | 27:47 |
Kara Miles | Do you remember any instances while you were in Richmond of racial violence of Ku Klux Klan or any act of racial violence there? | 28:20 |
Wallace M. Booker | No, I don't remember any, but I'm sure they had some. I do recall, I don't know is any connection here or not, a man who lived across the street from where we were living, and he disappeared. I don't remember how long the period was, but when they found his body, it was out in the woods somewhere and the buzzards had got it. Now, how he got out there or what caused his death, I don't know, but I just know about that. But I'm certain there were instances, but I don't remember any huge instance or event. | 28:39 |
Kara Miles | I want to talk a little bit about the Black community. Were there times, maybe celebrations, or times that people from whole communities would get together or that you would have contact with people from other Black communities? | 29:45 |
Wallace M. Booker | The only instances which that was when you might have conventions. I'm thinking right now of an Elks Convention in which you had a lot of visitors coming in for the purpose of it. And of course, as you know, there weren't any hotels available, so you had to distribute people in homes around town. And I recall the Elks Parade, which was a fabulous thing, but that's about it on that. | 30:12 |
Kara Miles | If you lived in Church Hill, you might not know people in Jackson Ward or the other— | 31:08 |
Wallace M. Booker | Very few, unless you had relatives in the other area. And on the other hand, after we left elementary school, we just had one high school, which was Armstrong up on Lee Street. Everybody went there, so you were able to meet people from the other areas there. But other than that, no. Unless there were church groups who went across town, so forth like that. | 31:15 |
Kara Miles | Were your parents big churchgoers? | 31:57 |
Wallace M. Booker | No. | 32:00 |
Kara Miles | No? | 32:01 |
Wallace M. Booker | Definitely not big. We attended church with nothing. We weren't fanatical about it. | 32:04 |
Kara Miles | Did you attend every Sunday or just kind of- | 32:15 |
Wallace M. Booker | No. | 32:18 |
Kara Miles | —when they felt like it? | 32:19 |
Wallace M. Booker | When they felt like it. Now, of course, because of their pressure, I attended Sunday school. But beyond that, well—my mother and father belonged to one church and I attended another church, which was closer to home at the time. Now, the other members of the—no, I don't say the other members, any of them were a big church goers. We were affiliated, but he had Taylor lead. | 32:24 |
Kara Miles | When you joined church, did you join your parents' church or you joined- | 33:14 |
Wallace M. Booker | No. The one that I had attended, Sunday school, which was a block away. I lived on 24th Street and the church is on 25th Street. That's a block away. | 33:18 |
Kara Miles | What church is that? | 33:29 |
Wallace M. Booker | Mount Olivet. Are you familiar with 25th and S Street? | 33:30 |
Kara Miles | Not really. How old were you when you joined church? | 33:42 |
Wallace M. Booker | Oh, I guess about 15, I imagine. No, I was 16. I think I joined 1931. Yeah. | 33:45 |
Kara Miles | Why did you choose to join then? | 34:18 |
Wallace M. Booker | Well, remember I told you my grandmother married a preacher and she was always insisting that I be affiliated with church and be active in church. And she'd be very displeased with me right now because I'm not very active in church. But she was very active because naturally she went with her husband to church every Sunday and so forth; She sang in the choir and all that. But I guess that was a great influence because my parents didn't put any pressure as far as that go, because after they got me in Sunday school, I understand that was quite an ordeal. I had to get a whipping one day because I said I wasn't going. I've heard that told to me. | 34:23 |
Kara Miles | Did you continue going to Sunday school until you went to college or was there an age where you stopped going to Sunday school? | 35:32 |
Wallace M. Booker | I stopped, I guess, when I went to college. And right now, I'm teaching Sunday school. I got roped into that. Well, this is how it happened. There was a fella here who was very into the Sunday school. He insisted; he kept bugging me to come to Sunday school. And so to get him off me, I went to Sunday school once or twice. And then the next thing I know, one Sunday they asked me to handle a class. I guess they thought maybe I was qualified. And so right now, for the last few years I've been saddled with this class. So I go to Sunday school now, but if I get out, I don't go to church. So, you see, I'm not fanatical about it. | 35:46 |
Kara Miles | Something about church. What denomination did you grow up? | 37:03 |
Wallace M. Booker | Baptist. Oh— | 37:17 |
Kara Miles | Do you remember what was baptism like then? | 37:20 |
Wallace M. Booker | What do you mean? What was that? | 37:29 |
Kara Miles | Well, first of all how, when you decided you were ready to join church, was there a certain time of year that baptism was— | 37:31 |
Wallace M. Booker | Oh, yeah. At our church up there, they used to have what you call a revival, in the spring; a week of preaching and so forth. And then the first Sunday in June, the people who declared that they wanted to join church, they've been converted, we use that expression, they'd have baptism. We had baptism once a year, the first Sunday in June. Maybe if you got a whole lot of people who couldn't accommodate, they'd have two baptism. One, the first sun in June, one, the first sun in July. But now, I believe they have it any time that you're ready. So that's when I was formally associated with the church. | 37:39 |
Kara Miles | Were you baptized in a river? | 38:46 |
Wallace M. Booker | No. Pool. | 38:51 |
Kara Miles | They had a pool? | 38:51 |
Wallace M. Booker | Pool in a church, yeah. | 38:51 |
Kara Miles | You talked about getting a whipping because you didn't want to go to Sunday school. | 38:54 |
Wallace M. Booker | Yes. | 38:58 |
Kara Miles | Who used to discipline you in your family? | 38:59 |
Wallace M. Booker | My mother. | 39:02 |
Kara Miles | Mother? | 39:02 |
Wallace M. Booker | Yeah. She took care of that in a great way. Yeah, I understand she sent me to Sunday school one Sunday with a lady, and I got to the door of the church and I decided I wasn't going in there. And so that lady had to bring me back home and that was it. That's when I got it. I don't remember the incident, but that's what I've been told. | 39:03 |
Kara Miles | What other kind of times do you remember getting it? | 39:43 |
Wallace M. Booker | Oh, so often. Things I would do, I don't know. No, I don't think I got a whipping on this, but I remember it so clearly though. School was out for Easter and my mother told me to go to my aunt and spend the day. I went to the movies. I didn't go there. Course, I told her I had been there. And so my aunt got in touch with my mother, wanted to know why I didn't come that particular day. Now she caught me in this life and she really—I don't know if whipped me or not, but I do remember this, she had bought a pen and pencil set for me. Course, I didn't know, and she showed that to me and told me because I told her that story, she was not going to give it to me. And she didn't. | 39:47 |
Kara Miles | Ever? | 41:17 |
Wallace M. Booker | Ever. I found that same set after she died, when I was going through things, that she had kept all that time. She kept her word. But I don't think that she whipped me that time. But there are so many other things that I had done that she whipped me frequently. Maybe she'd be guilty of child abuse today. | 41:21 |
Kara Miles | But your father never? | 41:49 |
Wallace M. Booker | He never whipped me. I don't know. I'd say we were buddies, but I don't know. Guess we were, because I was 11 when he died. But he never had an occasion. Maybe I'd already got enough by the time he got home. | 41:50 |
Kara Miles | Did your mother remarry after your father died? | 42:18 |
Wallace M. Booker | No. Uh-huh. She just stayed single and worked until she died. | 42:20 |
Kara Miles | How did that affect your family? I mean, with your father not there with money, financially and everything, how did that affect you? | 42:39 |
Wallace M. Booker | Well, that made it a little—necessarily be very, very frugal, I would say. That's when my mother returned to teaching, which would give her a better income at that time, because she didn't teach as long as she was alive. | 42:52 |
Kara Miles | She had stayed home— | 43:16 |
Wallace M. Booker | Yeah, she had stayed home. So. | 43:18 |
Kara Miles | You left the college in '32; what do you remember about the depression? | 43:29 |
Wallace M. Booker | It was rough. I think they thought that they're making provisions for me to go to college, and when depression came, the bank closed. But I started in school and it looked like I wasn't going to get back to school. But I was able to get a job on the campus, and so I worked the rest of the three years there. But it was rough because of the fact that it just didn't happen. The bank had closed up, and I don't remember what they paid, but they paid only 2 cents on the dollar of what the deposits were. So that was money lost. | 43:35 |
Kara Miles | Where did you work those years that you put yourself through school? | 44:43 |
Wallace M. Booker | On the campus. I worked in a dining room one year and I worked as a lab assistant in chemistry lab the rest of the time. A couple of summers I went to Atlantic City to work. I didn't make a whole lot of money up there, but I went through the motion anyway. | 44:48 |
Kara Miles | What did you do in Atlantic City? | 45:16 |
Wallace M. Booker | Worked in a hotel. Each time I was there, I worked, ran the elevator and then when things got quiet, cleaned up at night. Yeah, I worked at night and elevated in the afternoon and so forth. | 45:19 |
Kara Miles | What did you think of Atlantic City in comparison to Richmond? | 45:43 |
Wallace M. Booker | Oh, it was a great place. | 45:46 |
Kara Miles | What was great about it? | 45:46 |
Wallace M. Booker | Oh, well, it was more integrated society, I'll put it that way. In fact, actually, it looks like, to me, it was better then than it is now, because it is pretty much run down now if you get beyond the boardwalk. Well, the casinos and so forth are, but neighborhoods where the Blacks live there, a lot of vacant places where the houses run down and torn down. Nothing been rebuilt and so forth, so it's a— | 45:51 |
Kara Miles | How about differences between Richmond and Petersburg? | 0:01 |
Wallace M. Booker | Well, Petersburg is just a country town, actually, to tell you the truth, we call Virginia State as being in Petersburg, Virginia State College was actually in Ettrick, Virginia, and that was across the river up on top of the hill. But we went down into Petersburg occasionally maybe to shop or whatnot. I didn't have any money, so I don't recall going to the movies or anything like that down there. But Petersburg is just a small town, of course Ettrick was even smaller. | 0:07 |
Kara Miles | How about differences, were White people nicer, meaner the same? How about contact with White people? | 0:54 |
Wallace M. Booker | They weren't in contact. In fact, we lived on a whole world around. In those days, I don't ever had any White faculty members, but once a year we'd have a governor's day and the governor would come and so forth for us to show off of here. But other than that, you say we had our athletic programs. We wasn't in contact with White. Now VPI was a White counterpart to Virginia State College. So like I say, we're not mixing, this is almost like apartheid in South Africa, I would think. | 1:05 |
Kara Miles | Let me go back a little bit. | 2:13 |
Wallace M. Booker | All right. | 2:13 |
Kara Miles | What did these to do for fun in Richmond as a child? | 2:13 |
Wallace M. Booker | We played ball in the streets and stuff like that. | 2:30 |
Wallace M. Booker | I don't know anything specifically we did. We did play ball, like I said, it was in the street. Now, this brings to mind something. You may be familiar with the early years of Arthur Ashe, how he played tennis and he couldn't play up at Bird Park. He lived up in the Sydney section next to it. And of course he had come down there in Jackson Ward to play. In my neighborhood, there's no such thing as playing tennis. Oh. Nothing formal. I'll put it that way. I don't remember boys going fishing in the river or anything like that. I never caught a fish until I came to Newburg. Nothing organized, just we existed. I'll put it that way. | 2:50 |
Kara Miles | How about as a teenager, can you think of what you did for fun as a teenager? | 4:09 |
Wallace M. Booker | Same thing, I guess. There's bicycle, bicycle around. We roamed around. See, like I said, I was 17 when I left. I just in the middle of teenage. I don't recall anything special with that. | 4:30 |
Kara Miles | How about dating? Were you dating when you left Richmond? | 4:43 |
Wallace M. Booker | No, uh-uh. As I can recall, so far as I know, very little of that went on. Because we like so-and-so like that. But no, uh-uh. I never had any. There were dances. I didn't go to many of them. That is the truth. But there were dances everyone went to. It had a dance hall there on Lee Street, Johnson's Hall, which was over top of a funeral home there. They built a housing project there, Gilpin Corridor, I recall. Of course, I was a long way from that because we didn't come up there. It was part of the elite group of Jackson Floyd. | 4:54 |
Kara Miles | Well did, oh, nevermind you told me where the dances were. Were you in any social clubs in school? | 6:34 |
Wallace M. Booker | No. | 6:37 |
Kara Miles | Athletics or anything? | 6:38 |
Wallace M. Booker | No. Looks like we can never fill the football team constantly. Once or twice, there was a football team at Armstrong. Was music groups there. But beyond that, I don't remember any extracurricular activities that went on. Dramatics, they had dramatics there in high school. | 6:40 |
Kara Miles | There was one high school, so everybody came to that one high school. | 7:32 |
Wallace M. Booker | Right. | 7:32 |
Kara Miles | Were there any tensions between people from Jackson Ward not liking people from Sydney or things like that? | 7:32 |
Wallace M. Booker | Not as a group, no. They might have individuals just like you might have individual disputes. | 7:40 |
Kara Miles | But there weren't any neighborhood— | 7:47 |
Wallace M. Booker | No, no. I can remember the last whipping I got in school was between me and another boy who lived in Fulton. Being in different neighborhoods, didn't have anything to do with, I think, I was just mad or something like that. And we ended up fighting that day after school. And we got a whipping for that. I had my share of whipping, both at home and away. | 7:51 |
Kara Miles | How old were you when you had the last whipping? | 8:31 |
Wallace M. Booker | Oh, I don't know. I was about the seventh grade, I think. I know I was in seventh grade. Sixth—probably about 13, I guess. | 8:35 |
Kara Miles | What did your mother do to punish you after that? | 8:55 |
Wallace M. Booker | Oh, she didn't know anything about that. | 8:56 |
Kara Miles | No, after, I mean— | 8:56 |
Wallace M. Booker | Oh. | 8:57 |
Kara Miles | After she stopped whipping you. | 8:57 |
Wallace M. Booker | Oh, I don't know. Just got mad and fussed me out, I think. That's all I remember. No, I don't have any specific punishment of laying out, because she didn't do that. | 9:05 |
Kara Miles | You were saying she didn't know anything about— | 9:30 |
Wallace M. Booker | Oh, I thought you meant because of the whipping I got at school. No, she ain't know anything about it. I didn't let her know about things like that. | 9:32 |
Kara Miles | Well, the teacher gave you that whipping? | 9:40 |
Wallace M. Booker | Yeah. Assistant principal, I think it was. Yeah. Mr. Fox. I remember. I think about it every time I pass that school building. | 9:42 |
Kara Miles | Did you get a lot of whippings at school too? | 9:56 |
Wallace M. Booker | At one time I did. Oh, when I was in the lower grade, yes I did. I get one probably every day in lower grade. I don't know. I guess I was just playful that's all. | 10:03 |
Kara Miles | Were there any teachers that you had in elementary or high school that really made a big difference in your life that you really admired or thought real special? | 10:28 |
Wallace M. Booker | No, I wouldn't say so. I don't remember a whole lot of them. I think I remember my first and second grade teacher, maybe fifth grade teacher. I remember her because she was close, associated with mother, so I had to be good. In high school, I remember few of them, but not that they made a great impression on me. And the same thing in college. A few people or a number, most of them, I don't remember right now. But no, I can't say they were role models or anything like that. Not taking anything away from them, but I just wasn't impressed that way. | 10:51 |
Kara Miles | Do you feel, or did you feel then, did teachers play favorites? Did they give maybe lighter-skinned children, did they treat them better or maybe more elite kids better than poor kids? Was any favorites played? | 12:01 |
Wallace M. Booker | None of that registers with me right now. Never had any complaints as far as I felt. No. | 12:23 |
Wallace M. Booker | No, I don't know of any incidents I can think of that classify to that respect. | 12:32 |
Kara Miles | Why did you choose to go to Virginia State? | 13:05 |
Wallace M. Booker | Well, as I told, my mother went there for certification purposes, and there were other members of the family who had attended Virginia State. And I just hooked on Virginia State. As my first year in school in college, it looked like I wasn't going to be able to go back there. And so it was discussed that I go to Union instead. But I was adamant that I wasn't going to Union. And so I got the job over there at State, I went back. I don't know why I would've had anything against Union, but I just wanted to go to State. | 13:13 |
Kara Miles | Union was a private school, wasn't it? So how would you— | 14:04 |
Wallace M. Booker | Yeah, unions is— | 14:06 |
Kara Miles | If you couldn't afford to stay at State, how would you have been able to afford? | 14:08 |
Wallace M. Booker | Well, it'd have been less expensive because I live at home and just a matter of paying tuition to go to Union. I might've even had to walk to school. But Union never impressed me like State did. | 14:11 |
Kara Miles | What was it about State that impressed you? | 14:34 |
Wallace M. Booker | I don't know, maybe there was no logical reasons, because other people in the family had gone there. Let's see, how many people went there? My mother and 1, 2, 3 cousins and one husband of a cousin. They all. | 14:38 |
Kara Miles | What kind of things did you used to do for fun there? | 15:17 |
Wallace M. Booker | Oh, we played basketball, intramural sports, I'll put it that way. And what else did you do? | 15:21 |
Wallace M. Booker | I don't know. They did travel to football games and stuff like that. | 15:29 |
Wallace M. Booker | And I guess being away from home was another thing. It's a whole lot of unusual freedom that you never had before, which is attractive too. But what else did we do then? Again, memory fails right now. Because I can't think of anything it did other than that. Oh, after they built the pool, I swam a lot. | 15:52 |
Kara Miles | Did you join any social clubs there? | 16:37 |
Wallace M. Booker | No. | 16:39 |
Kara Miles | Fraternities or anything? | 16:39 |
Wallace M. Booker | No, I didn't. | 16:39 |
Kara Miles | Were the fraternities on campus then? | 16:43 |
Wallace M. Booker | Yeah, we have—let's see. They had Alpha, Omega, Sigma and Kappa. They had four fraternities. And of course they had the sororities, which was— | 16:44 |
Kara Miles | None of the fraternities impressed you? | 17:10 |
Wallace M. Booker | I didn't have the money. Yeah, I was a poor boy then. | 17:14 |
Kara Miles | So did you want to join one and couldn't? | 17:17 |
Wallace M. Booker | Not particularly, I wasn't, not really. Of course my mother tried to knock over the thing of not having money, since she said if I had wanted to ask her, she would've made provisions for it. But I never pushed the issue. | 17:20 |
Kara Miles | Was your mother in a sorority? | 17:42 |
Wallace M. Booker | No. | 17:43 |
Kara Miles | You said that you had more freedom at State than you had at home? | 17:50 |
Wallace M. Booker | Yes, naturally you would because you were on your own there. I can remember, I think the first time I ever stayed up all night was at school. But I finally got away from that too, because that didn't work with lessons. Staying up all night and so forth like that, hanging out all night. But that's what I'm referring to—nobody to challenge you there. Boys just free to do and go and come when they got ready. Because girls they had a different—yeah. It was different for them because they had a dormitory matron and so forth like that. | 17:57 |
Kara Miles | But the boys pretty much didn't have any supervision. | 18:54 |
Wallace M. Booker | No, no supervision at all. I don't know how it is now, maybe nobody has supervision now. | 18:56 |
Kara Miles | So did you start dating there? | 19:05 |
Wallace M. Booker | Yes, eventually. | 19:13 |
Kara Miles | What kind of things would you do on dates? | 19:18 |
Wallace M. Booker | Nothing, just sat around talking around the—stuff like that. | 19:21 |
Kara Miles | You would meet somewhere on campus? | 19:25 |
Wallace M. Booker | Yeah. You had socialize I think twice a week, something like that. Because I didn't, they had services on Sunday. I didn't bother with that. | 19:27 |
Kara Miles | You didn't have to go to that? | 19:49 |
Wallace M. Booker | Uh-uh. | 19:54 |
Kara Miles | Oh, okay. | 19:54 |
Wallace M. Booker | We had to go to, what do you call? Chapel, I think twice a week, Sunday and one other day in the week. Oh man. Yeah, they had a number on the back of the seat. And that number was supposed to be covered by you. Somebody sitting out of their seat, they see that number, you know your absence. So that's something you had to answer for. But other than that, it was really no restrictions at all. | 19:55 |
Kara Miles | Why did you choose chemistry? Had you always liked chemistry or made what made you choose? | 20:28 |
Wallace M. Booker | Yeah, I was very successful in chemistry in high school. And I continued with that and I decided I wanted to be a chemist. But I never succeeded at it. I had one in addition to this incident at Fort Belvoir, that I mentioned, I had one nibble from General Electric up in Lynn, Massachusetts. But they had a position for chemical engineer. But I didn't have chemical engineering. I had chemistry. So I never succeeded in getting a place in my field. | 20:37 |
Kara Miles | So what did you do when you came out of college? | 21:36 |
Wallace M. Booker | Taught at school. | 21:38 |
Kara Miles | Taught chemistry? | 21:38 |
Wallace M. Booker | Did I teach chemistry? | 21:53 |
Wallace M. Booker | No, I never taught chemistry. | 21:53 |
Wallace M. Booker | Looks like I taught everything but chemistry. I taught general sciences. Most of my teaching was in mathematics, algebra and general math. I believe I had geometry one time. I never taught physics. I taught biology. I taught civics. And I taught world history. I taught everything but chemistry. No, I never thought. | 22:01 |
Kara Miles | Did you have to go back to school to get certified to teach history and civics and things? | 22:39 |
Wallace M. Booker | No, that was just civil subject you might say. Now, I went to school in Virginia. I got a certificate for teaching in Virginia. But when I came to North Carolina, they didn't give me a certificate. I had to take either one or two courses before they gave me a certificate. And of course, I don't remember just what the courses were right now. But I took, I think, two correspondence courses. Excuse me. Before they gave me a certificate to teach here. | 22:46 |
Kara Miles | Was that them giving you a hard time because you were Black or what? | 23:34 |
Wallace M. Booker | I think it more because I was from out of state. Yeah, I think that was the situation. Of course race might have had something to do, but I had no way of knowing that at the time. | 23:39 |
Kara Miles | So when was this that you came to North Carolina to teach? | 23:53 |
Wallace M. Booker | 1938. I taught in Virginia prior to that. | 23:58 |
Kara Miles | Where? In Richmond? | 24:15 |
Wallace M. Booker | No, Galax. | 24:15 |
Kara Miles | Oh. | 24:15 |
Wallace M. Booker | You never heard of it, I bet. | 24:15 |
Kara Miles | I have. | 24:15 |
Wallace M. Booker | Oh, you have? That's—yes, up there in the mountain. And left and came down here. | 24:15 |
Kara Miles | What was that like? That was a different environment going into the mountains. | 24:15 |
Wallace M. Booker | It was a world of difference. | 24:27 |
Kara Miles | Tell me about that. Tell me about the differences. | 24:28 |
Wallace M. Booker | Everything was different. The first difference, I know this is going to sound silly to you, I wanted to be on the train. And the train was so ancient, they had a stove inside the coach to heat it. I'd never seen that before or since. Of course, went up on the train and the train went up into Galax, and backed up and turned around, came back. That was the of the line. But it was a small four room school up there. The guy who was principal was a guy named Lawrence. And I don't recall who the other three fellows were. The other two fellows rather. But I was able to get out of there. Of course I lost money in coming here though. Because I was making $76 a month up there. I got 75 when I got to Newbern. I took a pay cut of a dollar. | 24:39 |
Wallace M. Booker | But of course there was a whole world of difference. There's no activity up there in the mountain. They came down to Winston-Salem to get a haircut. No, uh-uh came down the mountain area to get a haircut. They got to Mount Air before you got to Winston-Salem off the mountain. But it was fascinating. I lived in the mountain and you see the clouds come down over the mountain, cover the top of the mountain, so forth. First time I saw swinging bridge, we had to go across a swinging bridge to get to—I don't know why I was going across that bridge, maybe going down into town or something. But like I said, it was a new experience. | 26:09 |
Kara Miles | Were the children that you taught, was that a very poor area? | 27:11 |
Wallace M. Booker | Oh yeah. It was poor, yes. Real hillbillies. That's such a mountain people. Again, I don't remember any White folks up that way. I imagine they were, there had to be some up there. Because the people had to work somewhere. But I don't remember now. Let's see, that's over 50 years ago. | 27:14 |
Wallace M. Booker | So in my whole life, I guess I have been denied a whole lot of things, but made it some kind way. | 27:59 |
Kara Miles | So when you left Galax, you came to Newbern? | 28:14 |
Wallace M. Booker | Right. | 28:15 |
Kara Miles | Why did you come to Newbern? | 28:16 |
Wallace M. Booker | Well, I wrote to register at Virginia State about making a change. And apparently the people here had written to Virginia State for a teacher. And so she recommended me. Incidentally, the guy who I succeeded was a Virginia State graduate also. I guess she was satisfied with the Virginia State product. So she sent me and he accepted me here. I didn't plan to stay here, but I've been here ever since. | 28:21 |
Kara Miles | I guess You must have liked it, huh? | 29:14 |
Wallace M. Booker | That first day I said I didn't like this place, I was going to leave here. But then I got to living here, stayed here. After a couple years I married here. And so that settled it, I guess. | 29:17 |
Kara Miles | Why didn't you like it when you first came? What didn't you like about it? | 29:41 |
Wallace M. Booker | I didn't like the town. The streets with dirt. The streets weren't paved and no sidewalks. It just was not a—I don't know. This wasn't attractive to me. To come from Richmond in that area down here is like going in another world. Of course now it's different, things are different now, because everything looks different. The streets are different. The houses are different. In those days, many of the people didn't have running water. They had to go to the corner. They had hydrants on the corner that people went to get their necessary water and carry it home. So it was—and of course, after I got here, after I met people and went, I didn't have an automobile there, which rather made it difficult, they sort of got me really pinned down here. But it grew on me. So like I said, I'm still here. I guess I'll be here now. | 29:45 |
Wallace M. Booker | I did leave once though, during the war I got dissatisfied with the salary here. Everybody else is making big money during the war. And I got an opportunity to go back to Richmond to work with the employment service. And there I went up there and stayed a couple of years, like four years I believe it was. That's all right. You don't have to tip. | 31:30 |
Kara Miles | Well, can I get back? | 32:04 |
Wallace M. Booker | Yeah, you can get back, just don't break my card. That's my wife. | 32:05 |
Kara Miles | Thank you. | 32:17 |
Wallace M. Booker | But I came back. I stayed back a little better than two years. I went to service, service less than two years, and then return here. Like I said, I've been here ever since. So I left, but I came back. | 32:27 |
Kara Miles | Did you go to the service, were you drafted? | 32:42 |
Wallace M. Booker | Yeah. Yes, I didn't go on my own. Let's see. Yes, I went to Texas, went to Florida, went to Salt Lake City and then went to the Philippines. And about then the war was over. And when I came back I went back to the employment service where I had left from. But I wasn't satisfied with that. So I was forced enough to get a job back in Newbern. So I came back. | 32:45 |
Kara Miles | Tell me about that. Well, first tell me, once you were drafted, what did you think about having to go? | 33:46 |
Wallace M. Booker | Oh, I hated that, every day of it. But it wasn't too bad after all. I didn't work hard. I didn't have any rough experiences. I worked in the office all the time. So I say it was just day's work. Yeah. | 33:53 |
Kara Miles | What kind contact did you have with the White there in the Army? | 34:17 |
Wallace M. Booker | It was still a segregated army. We had commanding officers who were White. Well, that's the only White we saw, everybody else is all Black units. | 34:33 |
Kara Miles | How old did the commanding officers treat you or treat the Black troops? | 34:51 |
Wallace M. Booker | There was one guy I hated. Every time I looked at him, just irritated me. But other than that, I got along all right with one exception. Now, I went to the Philippine Islands. Over there, the natives, I don't guess natives is a good word, but the Filipinos, would steal. We had a commanding officer who was a caramel, and his adjective was a major. That's up at Clarkfield, the other side of Manila. I don't know if you've heard of it or not. Anyway, the major had a Jeep that night. | 35:03 |
Wallace M. Booker | He went to a club and he left the keys in the Jeep. Well, the MPs discovered it and reported it to the colonel who's in charge. Well, we in the office here. My desk is here and they over there. The colonel jumped all over the major for doing that, leaving those keys in that Jeep. Well, he caught me laughing at him. So he came to me and fussed me out. That's the other thing I didn't do, is just sit there and take it. But that colonel really laid him out for leaving those keys in that Jeep, because all those Jeep was not stolen that night because it could have been stolen because they will steal. | 36:18 |
Wallace M. Booker | But other than that, no contact. The next guy in line over there that I had had was a Black guy from Washington. He was a lieutenant. And so everybody's Black except those two people. | 37:20 |
Kara Miles | How did you get along with the Filipinos? | 37:51 |
Wallace M. Booker | No problem. Yeah, they are good people. | 37:56 |
Kara Miles | So when you came back here, you got another job teaching? | 38:06 |
Wallace M. Booker | Uh-huh. | 38:09 |
Kara Miles | At the same school? | 38:10 |
Wallace M. Booker | Yeah. | 38:11 |
Kara Miles | What school was that? | 38:12 |
Wallace M. Booker | It was West Street School. West Street High School. Which is the one high school. Yeah. Because, again, there's still in the segregated school system. The Whites had their high school and we had ours. And again, we did everything separately. We didn't even meet together. So the head people, should appreciate integration because it cuts their work in half. Before they had to have work with the White and come meet with the Blacks, but now they do it all together. | 38:14 |
Kara Miles | When did school integration come to Newbern? | 39:13 |
Wallace M. Booker | We had a situation that they tried in the state of freedom of choice, and what they started out with here in Newbern, in the elementary school, we let the seventh and eighth graders decide whether they wanted to stay in the Black school or go to the White school. It didn't work the other way around. None of them decided to come to the Black school. And so they did it that way. And I don't remember the mechanics of the whole thing. But anyway, we reorganized about 1966, I would imagine. It was by that time in which they broke it down. | 39:49 |
Wallace M. Booker | That seventh and eighth grade choice, we continued that on through the high school. And then we reorganized so that we had grades one, two, and three went to the White school. Four, five, and six went to the Black school. And then, they had a fire here. And I'm trying to wonder how that affected because—oh, we ended up all one, two, and three went to the White school, then all four, five and six went to the Black school and did it that way. | 41:10 |
Kara Miles | All Black and White? | 42:29 |
Wallace M. Booker | Yeah. | 42:32 |
Kara Miles | 1, 2, 3, went to one school. | 42:36 |
Wallace M. Booker | Right. Yeah, that's the way it worked that way. | 42:36 |
Kara Miles | What did you think of school integration when it came? | 42:40 |
Wallace M. Booker | I don't remember any specific thoughts about the whole thing. I was principal at the time. And I know that I had to take some White teachers. And so my teachers go to the other school and they pleaded and they begged and so forth, they didn't want to go, but it wasn't a choice. But fortunately, the same thing the other way, as I know now. They didn't want to come over with me. But we got along all right. Never had any problem. In fact, the ones I got, turned out to be very hardworking people. | 42:57 |
Wallace M. Booker | I had one, I think of one who's kind of lazy, I think. And I know of another one who apparently couldn't stomach it, and so she quit. Well, it worked smoothly here, I think. And of course, I see some of those people now. And they were friendly, no problem. And of course, with the other administrators, there was no problem with that, we all got along well. So I didn't object to it and it didn't work in a hardship on me. Now, some of the parents I know they resented me. | 43:58 |
Kara Miles | Some of the Black parents? | 44:55 |
Wallace M. Booker | No, White parents. Yeah, White parents. Most of the White children I know were quite all right. In fact, I saw one this morning working at the gas company. Oh, he was driving now. But other that that, maybe life hasn't been too bad after all. | 44:55 |
Kara Miles | What did the Black parents think? | 45:30 |
Wallace M. Booker | I don't recall any of them creating a static or anything. | 45:41 |
Wallace M. Booker | I don't recall any great objection that they expressed to the integration. It worked rather smoothly. As I said, we had a fire and the fire destroyed much of the Black elementary school. And I think they felt that there was some. | 45:45 |
Wallace M. Booker | It has worked out pretty well, I think. Now, as you know, everything is completely integrated. | 0:03 |
Kara Miles | You said you were principal when this happened. When did you become principal? | 0:16 |
Wallace M. Booker | You mean a year? | 0:24 |
Kara Miles | Yeah. | 0:25 |
Wallace M. Booker | 1951. | 0:26 |
Kara Miles | I guess you had to go back to school for that? | 0:31 |
Wallace M. Booker | No, I had been to school prior to that. | 0:34 |
Kara Miles | Okay. | 0:37 |
Wallace M. Booker | I was certified before I got the job. | 0:39 |
Kara Miles | Where did you go back to school? | 0:43 |
Wallace M. Booker | Teachers College, Columbia University. | 0:47 |
Kara Miles | We have a lot of people who we've talked to this summer who went to the Teachers College at Columbia. Why did you go there? | 0:53 |
Wallace M. Booker | I'll go back to my chemistry now. When I went to the service, the employment service, I worked year round for almost a year. There was a break. I've got to go back further than that now. Prior to this, when I left Virginia State, I went to Cornell, and took my physical chemistry. We didn't have physical chemistry at Virginia State. When I completed that, I went to the University of Pennsylvania to do organic chemistry, 'cause that's what I wanted to be, an organic chemist. | 1:07 |
Wallace M. Booker | In the meantime, I went into the employment service, and there was a break in my studies as far as chemistry goes. When I came back out of the employment service, when I went to go back to Pennsylvania, because of that break in the time, the guy up there, the advisor in Pennsylvania, made a suggestion that maybe because of that break, I'd do better if I went into education, and he recommended Teachers College Columbia. I went there, and spent a whole long time up there. That's how I got to Teachers College. I'd go there in the summertime. | 2:01 |
Kara Miles | What'd you think of New York? | 3:06 |
Wallace M. Booker | It's great. I liked New York. | 3:08 |
Kara Miles | You became principal in 1951. The other principal had stepped down? | 3:16 |
Wallace M. Booker | No, a new school was organized. In those days, the White folks were trying to appease the Black folks by giving them good schools, because they had been saddled with poor schools all through the ages. They built two new high schools here, one White and one Black, and I took the Black one, which was a new school. | 3:23 |
Kara Miles | What was that called? | 4:05 |
Wallace M. Booker | J.T. Barber High School. | 4:06 |
Kara Miles | You had become qualified earlier, when you went to Columbia. You were just waiting for an opportunity. | 4:14 |
Wallace M. Booker | Yeah, that's it. | 4:20 |
Kara Miles | When you became principal, I imagine that you had to start dealing with White people. You had to deal with a White superintendent, and things like that. | 4:26 |
Wallace M. Booker | Yeah. | 4:34 |
Kara Miles | What was that like? What was your relationship with those? | 4:34 |
Wallace M. Booker | It was just a continuation of one that was of a relationship that existed all along. The fellow who was superintendent at that particular time was a teacher in the White high school when I was a teacher. We knew each other from then. It was just a continuation of, I might say, a friendship. | 4:39 |
Kara Miles | You would call him a friend? | 5:23 |
Wallace M. Booker | Yeah. | 5:25 |
Kara Miles | You knew each other when you were both teachers. | 5:27 |
Wallace M. Booker | Right. | 5:30 |
Kara Miles | What kind of contact would White and Black teachers have? | 5:30 |
Wallace M. Booker | None. | 5:32 |
Kara Miles | How did you get to be friends with him? | 5:33 |
Wallace M. Booker | When I say contact with Whites, as individuals, not as a group. We never met as a group, but as individuals, you know people. | 5:38 |
Kara Miles | How would you get to know a White teacher? How did you meet this man, and become friends with him? | 5:51 |
Wallace M. Booker | I think somehow we were both working in science at the time, so for some reason, we had contact. It's just like, I knew the maintenance people in charge of maintenance, and so forth. Another thing about that which gave me an opportunity, I worked with the football team, and that made it necessary for us to have a relationship there. | 6:01 |
Kara Miles | Why did that make it necessary? | 6:44 |
Wallace M. Booker | We had to make arrangements for the use of facilities. We all used the same park, and so forth, and we all had to coordinate schedules, and things like that. The average teacher didn't have an involvement in those things. Those are the ways that we got together. | 6:47 |
Kara Miles | You would say you had good relations with— | 7:15 |
Wallace M. Booker | Yeah, and they still exist. | 7:17 |
Kara Miles | Okay. You talked about appeasement, that they were trying to appease Black people by building a new school. Do you think that worked? | 7:27 |
Wallace M. Booker | To a certain extent, until the Supreme Court's decision to outlaw segregation, because it says there's no such thing as separate but equal. I think that's one of Marshall's principles that he worked on when they argued the case before the Supreme Court. It was separate but unequal. They still were not equal even though they built—what was ending up there at the particular time, throughout the south, the Blacks were getting better facilities than the Whites were, because they were new facilities. Whether the offerings and the programs were equal or comparable, there's some question about it. That was the idea, to keep them separated, because one of the things they were complaining about was their run down buildings and so forth, and the lack of equipment that the Black schools had. The Whites satisfied that by building all these new facilities. | 7:42 |
Kara Miles | The new Black school, would you have said it was equal to the White school? | 9:26 |
Wallace M. Booker | No. To give you an example, if they spent $1 million on the White school, and $750,000 on the Black school, you're not going to get the same thing. The Black school was better than what they ever had, but it didn't compare with what the Whites got, because they built a new high school at the same time. The real improvement in facilities came after they integrated the student body. What they would be satisfied with as far as the Black students, they probably would not have been satisfied when they put the White ones in. They had to bring it all up. That made a difference. | 9:36 |
Kara Miles | I think I'm out of questions. | 11:06 |
Wallace M. Booker | I hope I have enough answers. | 11:13 |
Kara Miles | Do you have any answers to anything that I didn't ask, that you think is important, that you want to tell me? | 11:13 |
Wallace M. Booker | No, I believe anything that I could say has already been pretty well documented by other authors and so forth, because the situations that I lived with are well known, and have been reported and documented all through the ages. Like I said, I have not had any unique experiences myself. Maybe I've been fortunate in that respect. Things that existed, it just existed, and they were accepted, I'll put it that way. Like I said, we weren't even considering anything different. In fact, the circumstances that we live in now, I never dreamed of them being 50 years ago. | 11:43 |
Wallace M. Booker | When I was a teenager, I never thought we'd go to the YMCA and jump in the swimming pool, and swim back and forth, as an example. There are so many other things like that, that have been a difference in people. We touched on church. I think the church leaders have a great responsibility that they are missing. I'm thinking of an instance, a man who is, I don't know if I can use the term popular preacher or not, but he is a very vocal preacher, I'll put it that way. | 13:11 |
Wallace M. Booker | I used to do a lot of flying, and I was at the airport one day with a fella, and this preacher and a couple of other fellas came up. We all met there, and stopped to talk, and this is the way the introduction went. "This is brother so-and-so." "This is brother so-and-so." | 14:22 |
Wallace M. Booker | "This is," I don't they said Mr. Booker, or something like that, but I was not a brother. There are things that the ministers and church leaders could do to help improve attitudes. That's the secret of the whole thing, the attitudes are faulty. Like I said, I feel bigger than those things. They don't bother me. I can look at them. The idea of the elimination of Jim Crow is a great step, a step in the right direction. The next thing is, we've got to change attitudes. Of course, attitudes have to change on both sides, because many of our Black people are equally prejudiced, and bitter as they are. I don't know if it can change. I look at right now the Israelis bombing the Palestinians, and the Lebanese. Over Yugoslavia, how they are killing, calling it ethnic cleansing of the Muslims and so forth. They're all people. The same thing, you take that Sunday, in the church in South Africa, where the guy went up and shot up all those people. There's enough work to do for millennium. | 15:01 |
Speaker 1 | Thank you. | 17:19 |
Wallace M. Booker | All right. | 17:19 |
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