Mary Johnson

GEORGE GILLIAM: [00:00:00] What is your full name?

MARY JOHNSON: [00:00:02] Mary Jean Johnson.

GG: [00:00:06] And what was your date of birth?

MJ: [00:00:08] Two-eight-thirty-nine.

GG: [00:00:10] And were you married?

MJ: [00:00:12] Yes.

GG: [00:00:13] And what was your husband’s name?

MJ: [00:00:15] Kerry Oscar Johnson     .

GG: [00:00:21] And when were you married to Kerry Johnson     

MJ: [00:00:27] We were getting married in ’57, I think it was.  A lot of these things, I might not remember.  (laughter)

GG: [00:00:40] So you would’ve been about 18 years old?

MJ: [00:00:43] Yeah, I think so, mm-hmm.

GG: [00:00:48] And you’ve previously told me that you did not finish high school?

MJ: [00:00:52] No, went into eleventh grade.

GG: [00:00:54] If you had finished, you would’ve been in the class of what?

MJ: [00:01:00] If I had finished?  The last class I was in was ’57.

GG: [00:01:07] Fifty-seven?  All right.  And can you -- starting with your schools that you attended as a little tiny person -- can you tell me all your --

MJ: [00:01:24] Jefferson Elementary School.

GG: [00:01:26] Which one?

MJ: [00:01:27] Jefferson.

GG: [00:01:37] And then where did you go?

MJ: [00:01:40] After I left Jefferson, I went to Burley.

GG: [00:01:43] And you remember what year it was that you arrived at Burley?

MJ: [00:01:52] Not really.  (laughs) I finished at Jefferson with the eighth grade and then I went into Burley at the ninth.

PHYLLIS LEFFLER: [00:02:00] That sounds like it might’ve been 1954, since you said you went through eleventh grade and that was 1957.

MJ: [00:02:09] Yes, uh-huh.

PL: [00:02:11] Does that sound right to you?

MJ: [00:02:14] Yeah, because I think Burley opened up in ’53, I believe.  It could’ve been ’54.  Yes, so I guess -- mm-hmm.

GG: [00:02:22] Did you have children?

MJ: [00:02:23] Yeah, yes.  (laughs)

GG: [00:02:28] More than one?

MJ: [00:02:30] Five.

GG: [00:02:31] Five?  Can you tell me --

MJ: [00:02:33] Four boys and one girl.

GG: [00:02:35] Four boys and one girl.  And which schools did they attend?

MJ: [00:02:46] My son, Venable and (pauses) [00:03:00] it would’ve been at the Venable school, yes, mm-hmm.

GG: [00:03:08] And then did they go onto Burley?

MJ: [00:03:12] No, they didn’t finish.  I had one son graduated, and he went into the Navy.

GG: [00:03:21] And the others, did they remain in the Charlottesville area?

MJ: [00:03:25] Yes, mm-hmm.  My oldest son lives in Seneca, South Carolina, and my second son, he lives down there, Ferncliff, Virginia, around there near Louisa way.  My daughter, she’s in town, and my baby son, he lives in town.

GG: [00:03:53] What did you know about the so-called white schools?

MJ: [00:04:00] Well, when they integrated Burley, I wasn’t there, but I remember when they did it, mm-hmm, because of my brother.  He was over there, and I think he took his last year in Lane High School from Burley.

GG: [00:04:22] So, yes, that changed about 1967.

MJ: [00:04:27] Yes, uh-huh, Burley, yes, yes.

GG: [00:04:28] The Burley students went into Lane or Albemarle.

MJ: [00:04:32] Yes, that’s right, mm-hmm.

GG: [00:04:36] What is your recollection of Jefferson School?

MJ: [00:04:40] Well, when I started in Jefferson School, I think I was seven because my birthday came after school [closed?] but it was a very nice school, and I liked Jefferson School.  We played a lot of games and stuff.  I was in the old Jefferson School [00:05:00] before they built the new school, and we used to go back after school, back through the old Jefferson School and play games, shoot pool or bowl and all that after school, if we wanted to.  I was living down on Commerce Street, and I was right up because Jefferson School was on Fourth Street and I lived on Commerce Street.

GG: [00:05:35] Was it a strong academic program?

MJ: [00:05:40] Yes, the teachers were very nice.  I mean, we learned real good.  We had activities out in the yard and stuff.  It was nice.  I liked Jefferson School.

GG: [00:05:53] What were your favorite teachers?  What were your courses that you liked the most?

MJ: [00:06:00] I definitely didn’t like math and English.  (laughs) I liked phys ed and I liked the history and what else did we have?  I’m trying to think now.  I liked a lot of sports and stuff, mm-hmm.

GG: [00:06:30] Did you play sports?

MJ: [00:06:32] Yeah, shot basketball and played soccer, climbed the rope and stuff.  When I was over at Burley, we wrestled.  We had a wrestling team.  I had a baseball team myself, I went undefeated for five years called the Ever Ready that I made up myself.  [00:07:00] We used to play in different parks and stuff, went out of town, played games -- played them in Madison, Covesville, and places like that.

PL: [00:07:10] When was that?  When did you do that?

MJ: [00:07:13] That was in -- let me see.  I’m trying to think of the years.  It might’ve been in the ’60s.  My daughter was born in ’63, and I was playing softball with her.

PL: [00:07:31] There weren’t that many girls sports in those days, were there?

MJ: [00:07:34] No, no, not really.

PL: [00:07:36] So that’s pretty interesting.  You started a baseball program.

MJ: [00:07:41] Uh-huh.

PL: [00:07:41] A baseball program or just a --

MJ: [00:07:43] No, just a team.  Just the girls.  We got together and made up a team and started playing.  We played in Washington Park, Tonsler Park.

PL: [00:07:55] So this would’ve been for children?  The teams were for children?

MJ: [00:08:00] Well, we was teenagers.

PL: [00:08:01] Oh, you were teenagers?  Wow.

MJ: [00:08:02] Yes, mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

PL: [00:08:04] Good for you.

MJ: [00:08:05] Yes.  I was married when I was playing, mm-hmm.

GG: [00:08:12] And then you stopped school in your next-to-last year?

MJ: [00:08:19] Yes.

GG: [00:08:21] What happened to the teams?

MJ: [00:08:25] Well, the team, we had stopped because we didn’t have any players, and then some of them got to acting up and stuff, so we just canceled everything.  I remember when we first started, we had good players, and then we ended up with some younger ones on there and they didn’t do what was right, so I just forgot it.  But we was left for about five years undefeated.

GG: [00:08:55] Did you play against any white players?

MJ: [00:08:58] No, mm-mmm.

GG: [00:09:00] Were there any white teams of young white boys or girls?

MJ: [00:09:08] I don’t know, mm-mmm.

GG: [00:09:14] During the time that you were at Burley, did you feel that you had been well-prepared for high school?

MJ: [00:09:31] Not really, because I wasn’t too interested in the school.  (laughs) When I was there, I didn’t think I would go any further because at that time, I had gotten pregnant, and so I didn’t bother to go any further.

GG: [00:09:58] Did you [00:10:00] feel that the education that was at least offered to you was as good as it would be at a white school?

MJ: [00:10:13] I think so.  We had very good teachers, mm-hmm.  Most of our teachers, they was serious teachers, they were.

GG: [00:10:24] Did they prepare you for jobs?

MJ: [00:10:29] Maybe they did some kids.  They did.  We had a lady -- Ms. Brown -- work with the children and stuff and prepare them for jobs, if they wanted to.

GG: [00:10:45] And what sort of jobs were they prepared for?

MJ: [00:10:49] Well, a lot of them were out in housekeeping and restaurants and stuff like that.  There wasn’t that many jobs [00:11:00] available because when I started working in 1960 in the dietary department at the university, that was right after my third son was born.  He was born in 1960, and after I got (inaudible) that’s when I went to work in the dietary department at the university.  I worked there maybe about six years, and then I transferred over into housekeeping at night.

GG: [00:11:40] And how many years did you do that?

MJ: [00:11:44] Well, I can’t really think how many years it been, but I worked different shifts with the university.  When I transferred over, I was working from 11:00 to 7:00, and then we went on [00:12:00] a shift from 3:00 to 8:00 a.m.  Anyway, it was 3:00 to something else.  Now I’m up there working from 5:00 to 9:00, but I’m not on the university.  I’m under contract for the university now.

GG: [00:12:26] Did you work most of the time under contract rather than for the university?

MJ: [00:12:30] No, I worked most of my time under university -- 45 years under university.  That’s when I retired in ’02, and then after my fiancé died and my mother passed, I went back, and my supervisor called me -- asked me would I consider coming back to help out in Madison Hall?  [00:13:00] Because the lady up there, she was getting partial blind, and she had to drive back and forth at night, and yeah, he asked me would I come back?  So I went on back there, which I worked under university for a while until the new lady took over, and she tried to get rid of all the temps and the ones that had retired.  But some of them got behind that and got me on the contract.  That’s how I got on the contract.

GG: [00:13:38] When we think about preparing you for jobs, how did they prepare you for jobs?  What do you remember?

MJ: [00:13:52] Well, they didn’t really prepare me.  I went, I got my own job.  That’s when I got the job [00:14:00] in the dietary department.  They was paying 18 dollars a week.

PL: [00:14:11] What did you do in the dietary department?  What was your job like?

MJ: [00:14:14] I served trays to the patients on the ward, mm-hmm, yeah, at the hospital.  Yeah, uh-huh, in the hospital part, mm-hmm.

PL: [00:14:28] So you weren’t making the food?  You were just --

MJ: [00:14:30] No, no, uh-uh, I would come in and we would serve the trays.  In the morning, I would go and pick up the diet slips and turn them in for to fix the trays and stuff, and we’d just have a rack to go up on the ward and deliver the trays to the patients.

GG: [00:14:52] Were you the youngest person in the dietary department at that point?

MJ: [00:14:56] I don’t think so.  [00:15:00] I think some more was in there.  There were some older and some was younger, mm-hmm.

PL: [00:15:07] Did you like that work?

MJ: [00:15:09] Oh yes, mm-hmm.

GG: [00:15:12] And what is your job now?

MJ: [00:15:18] Housekeeping, cleaning, vacuuming, and getting up trash and stuff -- dust and stuff like that.

GG: [00:15:27] And you mentioned that, for a while, you worked around the history department.

MJ: [00:15:37] Yeah, I came down there and cleaned sometimes.  When they had somebody out, they would move us around to different buildings.  I worked in Cabell Hall and New Cabell, [Jeff?] Hall, Alderman Library, Darden School, Ruffin Hall, Chemistry Building.  (laughs)

GG: [00:16:00] You’ve cleaned the whole university.

MJ: [00:16:02] Oh yeah.  I worked in just about all the buildings around there, except the newer ones, since they done built.  I was at the Darden School for almost 10 years.  I was supervisor.

PL: [00:16:27] Was that after the new Darden School was built?

MJ: [00:16:30] No, that was the old one, mm-hmm.  [It standing up?] when I left Darden School and went into Ruffin Hall, mm-hmm, over there where they train the teachers and stuff, mm-hmm.

GG: [00:16:49] Were you at all interested in the desegregation movement with the schools?  [00:17:00] Did you feel like you were affected by it one way or another?

MJ: [00:17:04] Not really, mm-mmm.  I don’t think so.  Well, like I was saying, when I was a child, we always played with white kids and everything.  When we’d go to my grandfather’s farm in the summertime when school was out, we spent with my grandfather up in Chatham, up near Danville, and everything, and we associated with them.  People up there call my grandfather Uncle Joe and call my grandma Cousin Haddie.  And I can go there now and see somebody just passing by on the road, and they’ll throw their hand up and wave at you.  [00:18:00] It never made no difference with me.

PL: [00:18:03] So you’re saying that when you went to visit outside of Charlottesville, you played with White kids as well as Black kids?

MJ: [00:18:13] Oh yes, uh-huh.  Oh yes, we used to go over to the store and the kids would be over there because we lived two miles from the store.  Kids would be there, and we all would play together until Granddaddy get ready to take us back home.  Never had no problems.

PL: [00:18:32] What did your granddaddy do?

MJ: [00:18:33] He was a tobacco farmer, mm-hmm, yeah.

PL: [00:18:45] Do you mind if I interrupt?

GG: [00:18:46] Go ahead.

PL: [00:18:47] In 1954 -- would’ve been the year or the year after that that you entered Burley, and that’s the very same time that the Supreme Court [00:19:00] ruled that segregated schools were not equal schools.  That was the Brown vs. Board of Education decision.  So I guess I wonder if you heard about that or if you heard people talking about it at all?

MJ: [00:19:16] I heard them talking about it, but it didn’t faze me too much.

PL: [00:19:19] It didn’t faze you because you weren’t going to be a part of those other schools?

MJ: [00:19:22] No, uh-uh.

PL: [00:19:23] So you just (laughs) did what you needed to do, right?

MJ: [00:19:27] Yes.

GG: [00:19:33] Do you have friends from that era who you still stay in touch with?

MJ: [00:19:40] Not really.  I know a lot of my classmates and stuff that once in a while, they used to have Burley parade and all that stuff and we all used to be in that and everything.  A lot of my classmates has passed, [00:20:00] mm-hmm.  [Which?] girls and Connie, I see her every once and a while, and then another one lived down on 9th Street -- Vivian -- but I don’t talk to them that much.  If they have something about Burley, then I will see them.

GG: [00:20:22] Right.  Do you have other questions, Phyllis?

PL: [00:20:24] Yeah, I do.  I have several questions.  I’d kind of like to know what Burley was like for you.  I mean, what was your average day like at school?

MJ: [00:20:40] (inaudible) As far as doing my work and stuff, I did my work and stuff, but I liked Burley because I liked the sports and I always liked physical ed and stuff like that.  When I first went to Burley, [00:21:00] I had signed up for art class and they had asked us to draw a horse, and (laughs) I was drawing my horse, and I seen other horse that other people drawed.  I drawed mines up and went on in the chorus.  (laughs) I had a stink horse and everybody else had a pretty horse, and I said, "Uh-uh."  I got out the art class and I said, "Uh-uh, that ain’t going to do."  I went into chorus.  (laughs) But I enjoyed it.  The teachers and things, they were nice.  They taught us very well and everything, yeah.  We had a lot of fun over there with the classmates and playing against a lot of teams and stuff like that in soccer and stuff.  We had [00:22:00] one girl -- she passed away now.  Her name was [Merle Alexander?].  Whenever we had to play soccer or something, they always put you in a line and [take?] one step out, and step out to get your team together, and me and her always tried to [can dance?] so we’d be on the same team.  (laughs) And we did the same thing with basketball.  We wanted to be on the same team.

PL: [00:22:40] So there were girls sports teams at Burley?

MJ: [00:22:44] Yeah, we played basketball and stuff like that.  It’s school.  You never go nowhere, but just at the school.

PL: [00:22:55] Oh.  So I think what you’re saying is that in your physical ed classes --

MJ: [00:23:00] Yes, uh-huh.

PL: [00:23:02] -- pick-up games.  It wasn’t an actual team.

MJ: [00:23:06] No, uh-uh, we just played wherever at school.

PL: [00:23:11] Right, because I don’t think there were actually girls teams until --

MJ: [00:23:16] No, no, there wasn’t no girls teams, uh-uh, no.  We played basketball.

PL: [00:23:27] And you said you also played soccer?

[Extraneous material redacted.]

MJ: [00:24:02] Mm-hmm, yes, we played mostly just school sports at school, not really against no team or none.  We just played among the people at the school.

PL: [00:24:16] But the difference in terms of team sports was the baseball.  That was a real --

MJ: [00:24:27] Yes, that was the softball that played, was a team that I had myself, yeah.

PL: [00:24:37] But the baseball, you actually created like a baseball team.

MJ: [00:24:40] Yeah, softball, no baseball.  Softball, yes.

PL: [00:24:44] Oh, it was a softball team.  I see.

MJ: [00:24:45] Yes, mm-hmm.

PL: [00:24:46] And you traveled with the team to other places to  play games?

MJ: [00:24:50] Yeah, we’d visit Covesville and Madison and places like that.

PL: [00:24:55] That’s so interesting.

PL: [00:25:00] How did you get to Jefferson School?  Did you walk?

MJ: [00:25:05] Yes.  I was just right down the street from it.

PL: [00:25:07] Oh, you were close by?

MJ: [00:25:08] Yes, yes, Commerce Street and Forest Street was almost [combined?] together.

PL: [00:25:13] Right, you told us that already.  Sorry about that.

MJ: [00:25:19] I walked to Burley too.

PL: [00:25:22] That was a long walk.

MJ: [00:25:24] I never rode the bus to Burley, mm-hmm.

GG: [00:25:30] How old were you when your parents passed?

MJ: [00:25:35] My mother, she died in 2003.  I’m 83 now.  My mother died when she was 87.  And, of course, keeping up with these years (laughs) I’m not too good with it right now.

PL: [00:25:53] What kind of work did your parents do?  Did your mother ever work?  Or was she just at home?

MJ: [00:26:00] My mother, she worked down at the old bus station for a few years.  That’s when we was living on Commerce Street.  They had the old bus station back down there off of Water Street, right there where the bus station is now.  My mother worked there, and my step-father, he worked for the university.

PL: [00:26:34] Did you go to Burley football games?

MJ: [00:26:37] Yes I did.

PL: [00:26:38] Okay.  Can you tell us about them?

MJ: [00:26:40] Well, I can tell you half the time, I didn’t know who I was hollering (laughs) for.  They was a good team.  They was undefeated for  years there.  The captain and the co-captain, Lacey Jones and  Obadiah Jones, [00:27:00] they was real good.  But I used to prepare to be at the game every Friday and half the time, I was cheering for the wrong team.  (laughs)

PL: [00:27:13] Why?

MJ: [00:27:15] Because I’d get them mixed up.  They’d get to running and carrying on.  I don’t know who was running what, and I never did pay no attention to their hats or nothing.  I’d be up there hollering.  (laughs) Me and another girl,      Dorothy Jones -- she passed on now -- we would be prepared.  We would go downtown to -- what’s that store named? -- Tillmans.  We’d get dressed for the game and everything, and then we’d go down there and spray perfume (laughs) on us -- the sample perfume they had in there?  We didn’t spray one kind.  We’d be spraying all of them.  I don’t know how we was smelling.  [00:28:00] But we thought we was cool,(laughter) getting ready for the Friday night game.  But it was nice.

PL: [00:28:13] Were you spraying the perfume, hoping to meet some nice men in the process?

MJ: [00:28:18] I thought so.  (laughter)

GG: [00:28:21] Did it work?

MJ: [00:28:24] No, it didn’t.  But the games were real nice after I learned what team I was hollering for, yeah.  But the boys was real good.  We traveled with some of them games.  I remember we went over to Roanoke and we had to fight to get away from over there.

PL: [00:28:53] You had to fight to do what?

MJ: [00:28:56] Yeah, because after the game was over, then [00:29:00] the other team, they want to fight.  So      Coach Smith      -- he was the coach at the time -- he told us to go ahead and leave early and get on the bus because they had Burley dead and in the casket when we got there.  (laughs) Yeah.  And we knew back then that the team -- because Burley beat them, you see, and then you’ve got to fight to get back over there.  So we went and got on the bus and      Coach Smith, he came up on the bus.  A guy was trying to get on the bus.  You know them wooden crates that used to have Coca-Cola bottles in?  He took that Coca-Cola bottle and come up on that bus, and he was going to tear his head up with the thing, and we got away from over there without anybody getting hurt.

PL: [00:30:00] So the person who tried to get on the bus, was that another kid?  Or a grown-up who was trying to fight?

MJ: [00:30:08] No, they were one of the guys from the team.

PL: [00:30:10] From the team itself.

MJ: [00:30:11] Yeah, Roanoke team, mm-hmm.  Yeah, they had come up and tried to ram the bus -- the team -- because they lost, and Maggie Walker was the same way.  They were fighting with Maggie Walker, and they had to disqualify Maggie Walker from playing with Burley because every time they would play us.

PL: [00:30:38] So when you traveled on the bus, just regular people from the community wanted to see the game went and traveled with the team on the bus?

MJ: [00:30:47] Yeah, some of the people from Burley School.

PL: [00:30:51] So it was the team bus and as a student, you could get on the bus?

MJ: [00:30:54] Yeah, uh-huh, yeah, we just traveled with the team, mm-hmm.

PL: [00:31:00] And yeah.  But can you, I mean, just describe what the community spirit would’ve been like at some of those local Burley games?  You said it was real fun, but did you have a larger sense that this was a community event that people loved coming out for them?

MJ: [00:31:27] Oh yeah, they always had a good crowd for Burley because everybody talked about Burley, even when they had the Burley parades and everything.  They used to have the Burley parades up and down Main Street and stuff.

PL: [00:31:41] When?  When did that happen?

MJ: [00:31:43] That was all during the school years and stuff.  Burley went right there and got them green and gold uniforms.  Well, they was right.  (laughs)

GG: [00:31:58] And that would’ve been the [00:32:00] early 1960s.

MJ: [00:32:02] Yeah, in the ’60s, mm-hmm.

PL: [00:32:09] Burley marched every year, like in a Thanksgiving Day parade or a Dogwood Parade?

MJ: [00:32:14] Dogwood Parade, yeah.  They was always in the Dogwood Parade, uh-huh, yeah.  Yeah, I was in the parade when we were marching one time, coming up off of Vinegar Hill, and it started raining, and my mother pulled me out the parade.  I had a fit (laughs) because she pulled me out the parade because, see, I had asthma, and she didn’t want me to be out there getting wet, but I carried on because I wanted to march.  (laughs) I think I was about seven or eight years old.

PL: [00:32:59] So there were [00:33:00] people who marched -- kids who marched -- in the parade?

MJ: [00:33:02] Yes, mm-hmm.  Yeah, that’s what they had -- little Bluebirds when I was in Jefferson.

PL: [00:33:10] Did you have uniforms?

MJ: [00:33:12] Uh-huh.  Yeah, we had our little uniforms.  It was sort of like they were Girl Scouts but we were called Bluebirds.

PL: [00:33:22] Bluebirds?

MJ: [00:33:23] Mm-hmm.  (laughter)

PL: [00:33:26] That’s great.  What do you remember about Vinegar Hill?

MJ: [00:33:32] I worked there.  I worked at A and A Cafe on Vinegar Hill.

PL: [00:33:38] When?

MJ: [00:33:40] That was around the time I was living on Commerce Street then, too.  That had to be in the late ’50s.

PL: [00:33:56] And what kind of work did you do?

MJ: [00:33:58] That was waitress work.  [00:34:00] Uh-huh.

PL: [00:34:02] What was the name of the cafe, did you say?

MJ: [00:34:04] A and A Cafe.

PL: [00:34:05] A and A?

MJ: [00:34:06] Mm-hmm.

PL: [00:34:08] And was that a local place that a lot of people came to?

MJ: [00:34:11] Oh yeah, they came there to eat and do, mm-hmm, and then McGuinness, they had a hair place up there on the hill, and Yellow Cab, there had a spot up there.  And I was living on Commerce Street, and they had a store, but we used to call it the wine store.  We were supposed to be down on Commerce Street playing hide, and down there counting, and we up at the wine store.  (laughs) We went up at the wine store, reading comic books, and they’re down on Commerce Street counting, because we lived right on the back of Vinegar Hill.  All them places where they [00:35:00] tore down all down there on Commerce Street, that’s where we would stay for a while.

GG: [00:35:10] Have you seen his movie about Vinegar Hill?

MJ: [00:35:13] Oh yes, mm-hmm.

GG: [00:35:16] Is it good?

MJ: [00:35:17] It’s pretty good, mm-hmm.  I didn’t get to see all of it because someday, it come on while I was at work.  I caught some of it, though.  Yeah, because I used to go there.  Tillie’s Shoe Store was there.  My momma used to go there.  That’s where she bought our shoes and everything there.

PL: [00:35:47] I remember meeting Ms. Tillie back in the 1990s.

MJ: [00:35:52] Yeah, mm-hmm.

PL: [00:35:54] She owned that store, she and her sister-in-law.

MJ: [00:35:58] Uh-huh, and her husband.  [00:36:00] Mm-hmm.

GG: [00:36:00] The shoe store?

MJ: [00:36:01] Yeah, it was the shoe store.

PL: [00:36:02] Victory Shoe Store.

MJ: [00:36:04] Mm-hmm, and the Bibbs Fish Market was there right down below Vinegar Hill, and it was different than what the mall is down there now.  They didn’t have all them restaurants and all that.  They had little stores and stuff down there, because Belk was down there for a little while.  [Milden Rose?] and all was there now, and [Timmon’s?] and all of them.  And the old drug store’s still there now.

PL: [00:36:42] Timberlake’s.

MJ: [00:36:03] Timberlake’s, mm-hmm. Millers Drug Store, that’s where we used to go all the time.

GG: [00:36:50] Timberlake’s, I don’t know about their drugs, but their milkshakes are terrific.

MJ: [00:36:54] Oh yeah.  They make some good cakes and pies too.  (laughter) [00:37:00] Yeah, Timberlake’s is the oldest one down there.

GG: [00:37:05] Do you have any others?

PL: [00:37:08] I don’t really think so, but I’m hoping Lorenzo’s going to have some questions.

LORENZO DICKERSON: [00:37:16] I do.  I do have a few.  I was curious.  You lived on Commerce Street.

MJ: [00:37:22] Uh-huh.

LD: [00:37:22] Did you still live on Commerce Street when Vinegar Hill was torn down?

MJ: [00:37:26] No. I was gone from there then, because, see, they tore all that -- Lord, they took everything.  All these people’s homes and stuff from Commerce Street on down Williams Street on down to Third Street and everywhere, just tore down everything.

LD: [00:37:43] What do you remember that being like for the community at that time?

MJ: [00:37:49] It was kind of sad because a lot of people have a hard time trying to go somewhere, mm-hmm.  [00:38:00] But when we lived on Commerce Street, we was a big community.  Everybody knew everybody and everything, mm-hmm.  The house that we lived in, the part where we lived in was right across from a church, and that church, they tore all that down, and it was A&P Grocery Store around there, where that movie’s at?  I forget what they’ve got in there.  Lamps and stuff now?  There was an A&P store, and we’d shop there, mm-hmm.

LD: [00:38:43] And growing up on Commerce Street, where were some of the people that you remember?  The elders in the community or friends that you remember playing with?

MJ: [00:38:55] Well, one of them was [Marie Hesner?] [00:39:00] Well, she was [Marie Williams?].  She passed away.  And then there was another lady down there.  I forget her name.  Used to babysit for her kids, and Mildred Monroe, she was there.  I’m trying to think.  [Carl Brockk?], he was there, and Mary Anderson, they lived up above there, right as you go up to a place called Ice House Hill, which Reverend Kennedy’s church was there.  The church that’s down here by the park, Reverend Kennedy was there then, and his church was right there, right across from Jefferson School.  Yeah, Reverend Kennedy was the [00:40:00] one who married me.  Got married in his home.  (laughs) Yeah.

LD: [00:40:08] And was there any other African Americans working in the dietary department when you were there?  Were there other African Americans working at the --

MJ: [00:40:16] Oh yeah, mm-hmm, most all of us, mm-hmm.  Now, the cooks and things, all of them, the [Turls?] and the Turners and all of them, most all of them passed away now.  [Norma Turl?] and [Donald Turl?] and [Dedosha?] and Meg Crawford and Caroline Cobbs.  It was a bunch of us all worked together.  Thelma Paine.  All of us worked in dietary.  It was a lot of them.  I can’t remember all the names, but that’s some of them.  One girl, [00:41:00] Mallory Smith, she got killed.  She worked in dietary department, mm-hmm.  We didn’t have nothing but mostly just Black people just working there then, mm-hmm.

PL: [00:41:18] How do you feel the university treated you?  How did you feel that the university treated African Americans who were working there?  Were you treated well?

MJ: [00:41:30] Oh yes, mm-hmm, yeah.  Mm-hmm.

[Extraneous material redacted.]

LD: [00:42:07] And do you remember the baseball teams -- the men’s baseball teams -- that traveled around to different parts of the county and what not to play each other?

MJ: [00:42:16] No, I never was with the baseball or nothing because after I come out of school and stuff, I had to start raising kids, and so I wasn’t at the boys baseball.  I just know about Burley’s football team and stuff like that, mm-hmm.

LD: [00:42:41] I think I just have one last question.  I was just curious.  Mayor Charles Barbour was a nurse at UVA when he was at Burley.  Did you all happen to cross paths at UVA?  Were you there at the same time at all?

MJ: [00:42:56] No, Mayor Barbour, I know him [00:43:00] from church, mm-hmm, yeah.  Mm-hmm, because he was in Reverend Hayes’s church, the one that got burned down, up on Fifth Street, and that’s the church that I had joined.  My brother was the last minister in there, Frank Reeves, but he died.  He was in the Veteran Hospital.  He had COVID, so he passed away with COVID, and since then, I go to [Pilgrim?] Church, mm-hmm.

PL: [00:43:48] Can I just ask?  Go backwards in time and ask, were you and your family members of a church when you were growing up?

MJ: [00:44:00] Yeah, my mother always had been in church.  She joined Reverend Hayes’s church when it was on Commerce Street and all my kids, when I lived on Grove Street, they all went there right across from Bell’s Funeral Home.  It used to be Reverend Hayes’s church, and my kids went to Sunday School and stuff there, and I went to church there, mm-hmm.

PL: [00:44:34] Was there a good sense of community there, that people saw each other every Sunday?

MJ: [00:44:38] Oh yeah.  I mean, at that time, you had a crowd in church.  Now you don’t.  You look now, you see 20 peoples in the church on account of COVID.  Everybody’s scared and all.  But we had a time.  I wasn’t baptized in the church.  I was [00:45:00] baptized at -- called it Billy Washington pool, and that’s where I was baptized because they didn’t have a baptism pool in the church at that time, when I joined.  Mm-hmm.  But I don’t have a baptism record because it got burned up in the church.

PL: [00:45:28] So there was a fire at that church?

MJ: [00:45:31] Not that one, but the one over on Fifth Street.  That church caught a fire and they redid it again, mm-hmm.

LD: [00:45:43] Where was the pool at?  Where you were baptized, where was that pool located?

MJ: [00:45:48] (laughs) It was somewhere back off of -- I can’t really just tell you exactly where it was, but we called it Billy Washington pool.  [00:46:00] People would go out there and swim and stuff, and that’s where I was baptized at.  I think it was -- I don’t know which way we went to it (laughs) to tell you the truth.

GG: [00:46:16] Well, we really appreciate your time.  The stories that you have to tell are great, and we need to get more people to do what you do, and that is, let’s save these great stories.

MJ: [00:46:33] Oh yeah.

GG: [00:46:36] So thank you so much.

MJ: [00:46:37] Yeah. I came here when I was four years old because I had asthma, and I was 30 miles from the doctor.  To get to the doctor, you need 30 miles for the doctor to get to me.  And so that’s how I ended up in Charlottesville.  My mother -- [00:47:00] now, they had left -- when kids would leave home, the parents wouldn’t let them take the children, but that’s how they got me, by me having asthma.  That’s how I had left the farm because I was born in Franklin County.

GG: [00:47:24] When did you grow out of asthma?

MJ: [00:47:27] I still have it.

GG: [00:47:28] Do you?

MJ: [00:47:28] Yeah, mm-hmm, but it’s not as bad as when I first had it.  But I still have it, like changes in the weather and stuff like that, and I get kind of stopped up and wheezy and stuff.  I think it’s blooming and growing and stuff like that, but I don’t have it as bad now, because I used to have to go to the doctor and get shots.  I had to leave work, go get shots, and go [00:48:00] back to work when I was under Dr. Garrett’s care.

LD: [00:48:11] And was Dr. Garrett on Commerce Street?

MJ: [00:48:13]      Dr. Garrett was up there on Main Street.

LD: [00:48:16] On Main Street?

MJ: [00:48:17] Up there where they’ve got the Center of Birth or something now, right by the bus station.  That way, his office was, right there, mm-hmm.  Main Street don’t look like Main Street no more.

GG: [00:48:37] Yeah, it’s a different place.

MJ: [00:48:38] When I first came here, they had railroad and [shiny cars?] going down Main Street, and we used to go to that First Baptist Church.  I lived on West Main Street.  [Dr. Cove Dennis?] was on one side.  We was in the middle, and another family -- the Youngs -- lived on the other side [00:49:00] and church was right across the street, which it is still there now -- First Baptist.

GG: [00:49:11] I think we can release you now.

MJ: [00:49:12] (laughter) Okay.

 

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