Before the Fires: An Oral History of African American Life in the Bronx from the 1930s to the 1960s
225
Before the Fires: An Oral History of African American Life in the Bronx from the 1930s to the 1960s
225eBook
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Overview
In the 1930s, word spread in Harlem that there were spacious apartments for rent in the Morrisania section of the Bronx. Landlords, desperate to avoid foreclosure, began putting signs in windows and placing ads in New York’s black newspapers that said “We rent to select colored families”—by which they meant those with a securely employed wage earner and light complexions. Black families moved in by the score, beginning a period in which the Bronx served as a borough of hope and upward mobility.
Chronicling a time when African Americans were suspended between the best and worst possibilities of New York City, Before the Fires tells the personal stories of men and women who lived in the South Bronx before the social and economic decline of the late 1960s. Located on a hill overlooking a large industrial district, Morrisania offered migrants from Harlem, the South, and the Caribbean an opportunity to raise children in a neighborhood with better schools, strong churches, more shopping, less crime, and clean air. It also boasted vibrant music venues, giving rise to such titans as Herbie Hancock, Eddie Palmieri, Valerie Simpson, the Chantels, and Jimmy Owens.
Rich in detail, these interviews describe growing up and living in communities rarely mentioned in other histories. Before the Fires captures the optimism of the period—as well as the heartache of what was lost in the urban crisis and the burning of the Bronx.
“Excellent . . . profound, moving.” —Robert W. Snyder, Rutgers University, Newark
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780823273546 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Fordham University Press |
| Publication date: | 08/08/2019 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 225 |
| File size: | 3 MB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
Avis Hanson
Avis Hanson (1924 — 2015) taught English at Morris and Taft High Schools in the Bronx.
My family's roots are in the Caribbean. My father was Jamaican, and my mother was Antiguan. They met in this country, and my mother was married when she was eighteen. She had come to America the year before, and she sent some of the money that she earned back to Antigua.
My father worked nights at a printing shop, and my mother worked days in the dress industry as what they called a finisher. She did buttons and buttonholes, and she was a piece worker, which meant she got paid for every dress she handled. And of course she was a member of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union. You had to be a member of the union; otherwise you couldn't have a job.
The owner of her shop was Jewish. His name was Mr. Block, and I remember him because he used to give my mother some lovely dresses. But most of the workers were Italian, and it was from them that my mother learned a few phrases of Italian.
I don't remember exactly where in Harlem my family was living when I was born, but when I came to consciousness at the age of three or four, we were living at 148th Street, three doors down from Seventh Avenue. This was a five- story walkup, but we were lucky. We lived on the second floor at the back, and when you looked out the window, you saw other people's backyards. But we were the poor members of the family. We had some relatives who lived up on Washington Heights, and they'd come down to visit us, particularly at Christmas time.
It was in Harlem that I got run over by a car. We were playing hide-and-seek. I was the fastest runner on the block, and I was sure I could get across the street before this car hit me, but I was wrong. They took me to Harlem Hospital to patch me up, and my father brought me flowers. It was the first time anybody had brought me flowers. I was so happy, almost weepy when I looked at them.
The way my family came to move to the Bronx was an interesting story. Every Sunday my mother used to read to me from the Sunday edition of the Daily News. She'd read me the funnies, and it was through her doing this that I learned how to read. One day she said to me, "You're getting too heavy to sit on my lap. You've got to read this for yourself." So I did.
Then one day in between seasons in the factory, my mother shows up in my classroom. The teacher is nowhere around. I'm sitting in the high chair. I've got the flash cards, and I'm teaching the class. I'm six years old, and I got these kids answering questions from the flashcards. My mother comes back three or four times that week and not once did she catch the teacher in the room. The teacher is down the hall having coffee with the principal.
Later I hear my mother and father talking about me and my older sister, Ivy. They're saying, "Ivy is pretty, but Avis needs an education." If you were pretty, you got married. If you weren't pretty, you'd better learn to make a buck. My mother went back to work, and there they told her that where there are Jews, there are good schools. That was the Bronx. So one Sunday the four of us put on our good clothes, went across the Harlem River, started to walk, and found P.S. 23, which was on 166th Street and Tinton Avenue.
My mother said okay, we've got the school. Now we've got to find a place where the girls can come and go by themselves. And we ended up in a walkup at 815 East 166th Street, near St. Anthony's Catholic Church.
The landlords were these two sisters, the Jacob sisters. I was amazed because I didn't think women could be landlords. But anyway, they made a deal with my parents, and my parents rented the apartment. I remember looking at the side of the building, and there's a huge sign that says, "We accept select colored tenants." I said to my father, "Are we select colored tenants?" And he says, "My child, we are select people."
We were on the second floor, and my mother got her older sister, Millie, and her husband, Josh, to live with us because we couldn't afford it by ourselves. Aunt Millie and Uncle Josh had two or three rooms, and we had two or three rooms.
When we moved to 166th Street, my sister and I had some black friends, but we also had some friends who weren't black. I can't tell you the proportion, but I can tell you one thing my teacher said it to me. "Avis, you speak so well," she said. "Who taught you to speak so well?" "I taught myself," I said. Which of course was true. Children teach themselves to speak according to what they hear.
I went home and told my mother what had happened, and she was furious. It took me years to understand why she reacted so strongly. I thought she was angry because I had the effrontery to say that I taught myself. But she was angry because the teacher had the effrontery to suggest that I had no business speaking good English.
My mother didn't have a Caribbean accent. She had a more pronounced New York accent than I do, except when she got mad. And my father used to correct my English. You learned at the age of four or five that you'd better match up your verbs and your subjects, even if you don't know what they are.
After my teachers got used to me, my school experience in the Bronx was positive. But you don't want to hear about my sixth-grade teacher. Her name was Miss Sullivan, and there were three things about me she did not like. She didn't like my brain, my hair, or my bosom. In those days, eleven-year-olds didn't have a bosom. She also used to feel my hair.
We used to have to wear medium-length skirts to school, but one day we were allowed to dress otherwise. I don't know where my father got this Mickey Mouse shirt, but I wore it that day. Miss Sullivan said, "Avis, when you go home for lunch today, take that shirt off. After all, there are boys in the class."
She and my mother also had this argument. Miss Sullivan wanted ten cents for lunch or something. My mother sent her a note. "For God's sake, leave her alone. I'm not giving her the ten cents."
I also remember we had an essay contest. I won everything. I won the district. We had to go to the awards ceremony on the subway. So this woman waits until I'm caught between my seat and the closet, and she says, "Avis, you have won, but you're not going to the awards ceremony because your mother can't afford ten cents for the subway." Max, bless his heart, a round Jewish boy in brown knickers, left the boys' section, came over to the girls' section, put his hand on my shoulder, and said, "Don't worry, Avis. Being poor ain't no crime."
At the same time the teacher always had me around her desk. I would straighten it out better than anybody. I always knew where everything was. But I didn't do any extracurricular activities in elementary school. After school you came home. That's where you belong, my mother thought. I think a lot of that had to do with her panic at working and wanting to know where you were every minute.
My mother controlled my sister and me through letters that she left on the kitchen table. When we came home from school, there would be a letter telling us how late we could stay out, which vegetables to prepare for dinner, how she wanted to see the homework done when she got there. That sort of thing.
Since we were from the Caribbean, our background was Episcopalian, and we went to St. Margaret's Episcopal Church, where my brother was christened. One evening I was walking with my sister, who is light skinned, and this white lady we passed commented that "these half-caste people don't know where they belong." She objected to my sister and me because she thought we would spoil her church.
We go home, and we tell my mother. And she says, "You ain't going back there no more." So we were looking for another church.
A cousin of my father's told us about this new black minister at St. Augustine's Presbyterian Church. And my mother said, all right, we're going to try it. I remember dragging my kid brother there when he was about four and saying to the minister, this is my baby brother. That's how we met Reverend Hawkins, who became a family friend.
I was twelve or thirteen when I first set foot in the church, and I was impressed by Reverend Hawkins. I was impressed by the contrasting facets of his personality. He came across as an almost timid, shy person, but although he was gentle, he was also hard as nails.
I began to listen to him talk about the civil rights movement. One of the issues he was concerned about was what they called the Bronx slave market. Women lined up on Union Avenue at 160th Street under the El, next to the five-and-ten. The women would sit on milk crates. Whoever needed a day worker would come by, pick out somebody, and take her for a price.
I don't remember a lot of political discussion in the community or in school, people talking about the war or the Depression or any of these issues. But there were people who used to get up on little platforms. There were plenty of soapboxes. The soapbox corner was on Longwood Avenue near Prospect Avenue. And of course people lived in the street more than they do in the era of television. Television killed a lot of things. The Ed Sullivan Show killed the Sunday evening worship service at St. Augustine's.
And there wasn't much political discussion in my house, which is why I remained ignorant of the civil rights movement for so long. We were so busy seeing to it that the shoes were shined and there was food on the table. In those days when you had one parent working at night and the other working in the day, you had to coordinate things pretty closely.
I never saw marches or demonstrations — I only saw them in newspapers. But in the thirties and forties we saw a lot of signs of poverty and distress. We saw people's furniture on the sidewalk. That's how I learned the meaning of the word "eviction." We saw evictions routinely. But I don't think it was the sense that poverty was right around the corner that drove my parents to work so hard. I think they just grew up with the ideal that that's what you did. Nobody asked questions. You were just supposed to work.
I went to Hunter College High School. You had to take a test to get admitted, and it's still one of the hardest schools in New York City to get into.
When I was a student there, I had a job during lunch hour at a little neighborhood store on Ninety-Sixth Street, which is where the school was located at the time. One afternoon when I was late for my class, the teacher said, "Avis, it's not like you to be late." I apologized and I told her about the job. She said, "You don't have to do that any more. I'm going to get you a job in one of the offices in the school." So my name got put on a list, and I worked in the superintendent's office.
One Christmas time the doorbell rings, and there are a couple of people from the school with a Christmas food basket. My father asked me, "Do you know those girls?" "Yes, daddy," I said. "Are you going to see them when you go back to school?" he asked. "Yes," I said.
Later I went into the bedroom, and he was there crying. "What's the matter, pa?" I asked. "I let you down," he said. "When you face those girls, just keep your head up." His pride was damaged. His daughter's family had to receive a Christmas basket. He didn't realize that my name got on the list because my teacher got me into this program to work in an office at the school.
I think I always knew that one day I'd become a teacher. My mother's best friend in Antigua was a woman she called teacher Avis. And remember, I was teaching when I was six years old. I enjoy being on either side of the desk. I love the exchange of ideas.
By the time I got to Hunter College I had friends who wanted to be teachers, and I was an English major. I loved languages. I had Spanish and later French and Latin. I went to the Spanish Institute on Forty-Second Street and took a year there so at least I'd know what was going on when I walked into a classroom. My mother also let us go to the library, and the library had storytellers.
After graduating from college I worked for six months at the Veterans Administration down on Wall Street. In those days you couldn't get near a school unless you took an exam. I began in a junior high school, and that's how I wound up at Junior High School 45.
But I hadn't taken a teacher-training program at Hunter. I was an English major. I believe that if you're going to be a good teacher, you become proficient in your field.
CHAPTER 2Vincent Harding
Vincent Harding (1931–2014), a civil rights activist, a theologian, and one of America's most distinguished historians, was a friend and confidant of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the senior advisor to the film Eyes on the Prize, and the founder of the Institute of the Black World. His books include There Is a River: The Black Struggle for Freedom in America and Martin Luther King: The Inconvenient Hero.
My parents were born in Barbados and moved to the United States shortly after World War I.
My mother started out in Boston, where a brother of hers had immigrated, and then moved to Harlem in New York.
My family belonged to Victory Tabernacle Seventh-Day Christian Church on West 138th Street near Eighth Avenue. Seventh-Day Christians were a little different from the Seventh-Day Adventists, but it's an interesting difference. Seventh-Day Christians were one of the main groups of black Seventh-Day Adventists who in the Marcus Garvey and post-Garvey period became uncomfortable with the white Seventh-Day Adventist leadership. So they started organizing in Harlem and elsewhere and started independent Seventh-Day Adventist churches. But since they couldn't use the same name for their church, they came up with other names. Ours was the Seventh-Day Christian Church.
When my family, which by then consisted of me and my mother, moved to the Bronx, we never considered the possibility that such a move might mean no longer being a part of the church. The church was so central to our life that we figured we'd just get on the train and go back to Harlem to go to church every Saturday morning and Wednesdays, Friday nights, and Sundays.
The church was a combination of my extended family and my father, especially in the light of the fact that we were only two. I always felt that that church was really my family. There was a very deep sense of closeness about it. There were only about 115 members, but for me the church was a deeply grounding experience, an institution where people believed in me absolutely and expected great things from me.
From the very outset, the church provided a platform, literally and figuratively. My first public performance was singing a song there. My song was "Jesus Loves Me," and I think I was four or five. I remember that I messed up the words and ended up singing, "We are strong, but he is weak!" In that church you went to what we called Sabbath school. You were there not simply as a sponge listening to people present information to you, but you did other things. You served as secretary of the class. You served as assistant Sabbath school teacher. You served as assistant Sabbath school superintendent. The church was very conscious of the need to develop leadership capabilities in young people.
One expectation for me was that I would eventually end up as the pastor of that church. I think I preached my first sermon there when I was fifteen or sixteen. I was at Morris High School at the time, and I still remember the text of that sermon, which was "I am the door."
There was also tremendous emphasis on culture. We had Sunday-afternoon programs called Lyceum programs where you had poetry readings, singing, quartets, piano presentations, and speeches. I also got involved with something called "dramatic reading," where you memorized poetry and memorized and delivered speeches. This was one of my specialties, dramatic reading. I started this in my early teens.
People sometimes wonder how my mother supported us, and the answer is: with a great deal of love and struggle. For most of my childhood she was a domestic, working for families downtown and in the Bronx. What was very clear to me was that she had every intention that as far as education was concerned I should go as far as I possibly could, and she'd do whatever was necessary to make that possible.
After Morris High School I went to City College, and in my last year I was in the one dormitory that City College had. When I came home I had an epiphany because I found out that in addition to her work as domestic, my mother was bringing home laundry to iron, and this was her way of contributing to whatever I needed to pay for my education. I have lived in deep gratitude to this woman.
Sometimes my mother would take me to the homes where she worked. I remember one name particularly, a Mrs. Slatin, who lived just north of Central Park. My mother must have worked for Mrs. Slatin for seven or eight years, and Mrs. Slatin was clearly interested in me and in the fact that I was trying to get an education.
(Continues…)
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