The Great Depression; Interview with Dave Moore. Part 1

Transcript

JON ELSE:

Mr. Moore, in the late '20s, why were people attracted to Detroit?

DAVE MOORE:

People were attracted to Detroit like they were attracted to any place. That's where

there's money and possibility of better living conditions or better ways of supporting

their families. Blacks were attracted to Detroit for many reasons, well, I won't say

many, but for one particular reason. At that time, the exodus was taking place from

the South, if you remember. And this was right after World War I. A lot of black

servicemen had returned to the South. Even though they'd been fighting for democracy

and all that, and they didn't find it. And with the industrial revolution beginning

right after the World War I, and the opening of jobs in the industrial areas,

especially here in the city of Detroit, blacks and a lot of Southern whites were lured

to Detroit because of possibility of getting jobs, number one, and getting better

conditions to live for number two.

JON ELSE:

What'd your father say to you?

DAVE MOORE: What did he say to me?

JON ELSE:

Yeah. Your father was interested in coming to Detroit. What did he say to you?

DAVE MOORE:

Well, you got to back a little bit in my family. I was originally born in South

Carolina. My father was a fireman on a train in South Carolina. They wouldn't, a white

man would not fire a train in the South at that time. That was below his dignity, to

be a fireman on a train. The white persons in the engine would only be there as

engineers, running the train. I had an uncle living in Columbus, Ohio. And my uncle

had told my father about how much money he could make by coming to Columbus, Ohio.

Instead of firing a train there, he could probably get a job in Columbus, Ohio firing

a train. Lo and behold, when he got into Ohio, they wouldn't hire blacks to fire

trains in Columbus. It was vice versa from what it was in the South. That was too,

that was a job that no blacks could have. And after we settled in Ohio for some time,

about five years, my daddy had been working as a construction worker, and he and my

mother came over to Ohio, over to Detroit one weekend to see a cousin. He was on a,

what you call, an excursion. They would run excursion trains from Columbus, Ohio to

Detroit. Most people were coming to get some Canadian whiskey, liquor. You know, at

that time it was, you know, well, well, go to the Motor City and you can get whiskey

from Canada. My mom and dad, you know, neither one of them drank it. But anyway, I had

a, he had a cousin working here, and somehow he convinced my father he could make more

money in Detroit than he could in Columbus. And my father, back and forth on the

weekends, he and my mother would come over. So finally he decided to come over and

give it a trial round. And, and that trial round resulted about three or four months

later in my mother and father moving to Detroit. That's what brought me to Detroit,

Michigan.

JON ELSE:

How'd he tell you to move, I mean, the news of this? How did he tell you

that?

DAVE MOORE:

Well, we were all going to school. You've got to remember, I came from a large

family, with seven boys and two girls. And he would write letters back home, and

finally he came home on the weekend, he got us all together, and he told us we, that

he and my mother had decided to move to Detroit because of the money involved, and we

could get better, he could get better pay, and all of us could be going to school here

in the city of Detroit, which would make it better, and how much money his cousin was

making over there. I didn't want to come. In fact, when my older brothers, I, out of

the seven boys, I'm between the first three and the last three, the two girls were

older than all of us, none of us seemed to want to come at the time, but my uncle had

a lot of kids our age. But we finally decided, and he broke it to us that, \"No, this

is upsetting, again, but I think it'd be better if all of us stayed together. Let's go

to Detroit. There I can get a job that pays much more money. You can go to school

there. There's possibilities after you get out of school. You can get a job with

General Motors, Ford, Chrysler, and that's where the bulk of black people are.\" Well,

it was Negro people at that time, or colored people. There was some hesitancy on the

part of my older brother, the two older brothers. But anyway, we came. And my father

did get a, get a job, and he was making $5 a day. That was some big money. And I ran

away three times, going back to Ohio. I didn't like Detroit. Last time I ran away I

had six cents in my pocket over in Toledo, Ohio, going back to Columbus, Ohio November

the 11th. My daddy, the state police called him, told him, \"Come over and get this

guy.\" My daddy told me, \"It's the third time you've run away. I'm taking you back to

Detroit, and if you do it again, blah, blah, blah.\" And I heeded my daddy's advice and

stayed here. And that was the beginning of my full-time residency here in the city of

Detroit.

JON ELSE:

Now, in 1929, something happened here. What happened to Detroit in 1929?

DAVE MOORE:

Well, to know what happened to Detroit in 1929, you would have to live here in 1929

to see what happened. In fact, all hell broke loose. The bottom dropped out. That was

the beginning of the Depression. People called it the Great Depression. Banks closed.

They would run on banks. People who had had some savings began to go to banks and got

what money they had out. People who were living, we called at that time, high on the

hog, middle class and the upper class, they began to be the first ones to get to the

banks. And, as a result of that, the Depression set in. The factories began to lay

off. People became unemployed. And you had a lot of suicides here in Detroit, people

committing suicide because they lost their money. And from 1929 on, it got worse. It

didn't get any better, got worse. And the, some of the trials and tribulations that

people had to go through during that Depression, sometime I, I'd even been a little

reluctant to talk about it, because being an eyewitness to it, and to survive it and

still be around brings back a hell of a bitter recollections and memories.

JON ELSE: If you walked down the streets of

Detroit in 1930, what would you see?

DAVE MOORE:

If you would walk down the streets in Detroit in 1930, you would see people standing

on street corners. You would see people, a few people having apples on the corner,

selling them. You would see people discussing what should be done. You would hear

people saying the leadership in Washington wasn't worth a damn. You would hear people

say, \"Where in the hell is the 'chicken in every pot'? The 'two cars in every

garage'?\" And you would hear them discussing, \"Let's form our own party, the

Republicans or Democrats aren't worth a damn.\" You would hear, you would go and see

people on street corners holding meetings, or in the lot holding meetings. Each and

every group who that leader was speaking to, that leader has his own opinion about how

to survive, or what the country was not doing or what it was doing. You saw people

hungry. You saw young men and women, parents who could no longer afford to, afford to

send them to school. You saw people going up in alleys, looking in garbage cans to

find what you'd, what was eatable. You saw people being evicted from their home

because of non-payment of rent or because non-payment of mortgages or not paying on

the home if they were buying it. You saw people discussing ways and means of, at that

time, saying, \"Let's march on Washington.\" You saw veterans who had been in World War

I going to the veteran's post, the American Legion post, and saying that they had been

betrayed. You saw church people asking you to come to church and pray to God for

salvation and to relieve this way of living, the plague that had been brought on them.

Then you saw people say that, \"We're not going to take this anymore\" as the

Depression went on. Then you begin to see formations of different organizations. You

had the hate groups, you had the togetherness groups, you had the veterans groups, you

had the beginning of the formation of the Unemployment Councils. You had—

JON ELSE: Let me put a question to you though, first,

before you go on. There's Detroit in 1928. Then there's Detroit in 1930, '31. What's

the difference?

DAVE MOORE:

Detroit in 1928 and Detroit in 1930 and '31 is hell of a lot of difference. People

were working in 1928. And in 1929 that's when it hit. In 1930, from 1929 on, that's

when the Depression hit and it was downhill. 1928, everybody was working. People were

living [inaudible] each other. There was a

lot of social gatherings going on. The parks were filled every Sunday and Saturday

afternoon. You had the theaters going, and you had the burlesque going, you had the

speak-easies going. You know what a speak-easy is? You've heard of them, no doubt.

That was before Prohibition, if you remember. And you'd go to one of these

joints and knock on the door, and the guy'd look out, and if you're all right you can

come and you can buy yourself some beer or some alcoholic beverages.

And you had the big bands, you had your dance halls.

hell of a town. It was real good, it was. The different nationalities were living

close together. There were no outbursts of racism. Seemed, everybody seemed to, was

congealed to a certain extant, that was one of these things that you could consider to

a certain extent, you, \"We are our brother's keeper,\" you know. But then 1929, when

the Depression hit from then on, it was a different Detroit altogether, from the

standpoint of unemployment and the attitude of the people, when I say Detroit

differently altogether from the standpoint of living conditions, unemployment.

JON ELSE: How important was Henry Ford in

Detroit?

DAVE MOORE:

Henry Ford was important to Detroit in many ways. A lot of people who lived in

Detroit worked for Henry Ford. To, to a certain extent that was pretty good because of

the income. Henry Ford was also a detriment to the city of Detroit because of the

conditions in the shop and the way that you had to almost give up your manhood to get

a job there. The other one, about the different type of people he employed as the

overseers of the Ford plant, goons he had hired to prevent unions from coming in,

ex-cons he had on as service people. He would get them paroled from the different

prisons he had here in Michigan, and he would hire them for the sole objective of

preventing unions in hope to keep order in the plant. He was an individual that I

would say in certain ways contributed a lot to the economy. But then contributing to

the economy, he took that back by doing, as I said before, preventing unions, had a

financial stranglehold on the city of Detroit, and, to a certain extent, on the city

of Dearborn and some of the outlying communities. Because if you've got to remember,

Ford was the first one to offer five bucks a day. That was a hell of a lot of money at

that time. And when that was announced, you had people coming from everywhere to work

for Ford Motor Company. The difference is, you, the question you asked was, the bottom

is line from 1928 to 1930 and on, from 1930 on, 'til 19--, 'til the war began, was

that, financially, from 1928 to 1930 Henry Ford was, I would say, I key figure in the

economy of the city of Detroit.

JON ELSE: At one point you said in you, in your

tape interview that he, he was the kingpin. He ran Dearborn, and he wanted to run

Detroit.

DAVE MOORE:

That's right. He, he ran Dearborn, everybody who, practically, well, not everybody,

but he had a lock hold, financial lock hold on Dearborn. And he dictated the policies

of what the city of Dearborn should do, when they'd do, and how they'd do it. And he

had laws passed where you couldn't pass out any literature on the streets of Dearborn.

He financially, by paying taxes to the city of Dearborn, he controlled it.

JON ELSE: What'd he want from Detroit?

DAVE MOORE:

All Henry Ford wanted from Detroit was some hell of a manpower to work in his plant.

And he would like to have also controlled Detroit politically. But, to a certain

extent, that didn't happen. Most certainly, he had people in high places in Detroit,

elected people in high places in Detroit who catered to Mr. Ford, who bowed to his

wishes, but in the main, I think, most of the politicians were, to a certain extent,

independent, and far beyond, well, the, what the politicians of the city of Dearborn

were to Henry Ford.

JON ELSE: How did your family get by?

DAVE MOORE:

Well, we got by just like any other family had to get by. We were, as you remember,

back at that time, they didn't have gas furnaces. We burned coal to keep your house

warm in the winter time. All of us would go outside in the winter to shovel sidewalks,

to haul ashes out of basements of people, 15 cents, 15 cents was a hell of a lot of

money. Shovel a sidewalk, and carried out all of their ashes out of the basement, dump

them in the alley. We would go to the market to help the farmers unload their food. We

would jump on the train to keep warm in the winter time, a freight train, when it was

loaded with coal going down over here on the East Side. We would throw off coal, take

home, and challenge the railroad detectives. Not only my family did it, all families

did it, black and white families. That's what I think is missing today. The black and

white families at that time were, they, they was under the same roof. Nobody could

claim, \"I'm better than you because of my income,\" because everybody was getting

kicked in the rear because of the Depression at the time. And they had acknowledged

that. Their own appearance showed it. Their living conditions showed it. Their homes

showed it. And you've got to remember there were seven husky boys in my family, and

just only two girls. And it was hard. I left home along with my brothers, sometime,

when we would, my mama would cook dinner just to make it possible for my younger

brothers, my sisters, my mom and daddy to eat. I wouldn't eat. My other brothers'd do

the same. I was hungry as hell, but my mother and my dad, well, they'd say, \"Come

back! Sit at the table, come on and eat.\" So, \"Well, now, I'm going down to Brewster

Center, down to the gym, and work out.\" We played basketball in the winter time,

played baseball on the playground in the summer time. But hungry as hell, but what we

would do, the Eastern Market wasn't too far, not too far from here, say, we all ate

apples that, that, that'd been injured, that the farmers discard, try to the sell

them, well, we'll take them. Take that rotten part off and eat the good part. Bring it

home and peel it, have your mother make some apple jelly, or make some fruit out of

it. Boil it, fry it, or whatever, what, potatoes the same way. You got to remember, we

still had Grosse Pointe. Grosse Pointe is the, was, and still is the

financial... uptight, upper crust part of the city of Detroit. You had

millionaires living there. But they also had their trials and tribulations, because

the income they'd been accustomed to was not as great as it had been. But they were

still living 100,000% better than we were. But they needed our services. Services

included, again, I repeat that, cutting their lawns in the summer, having your mother,

your sister, doing domestic work for them, or my father chauffeuring for them. My

mother never did do any domestic work. My father never did do any chauffeur. I think

that was because my mother had a large family. We were proud that we were able to have

her stay home with, with us. And we would do they work, whatever we could get. You got

to remember, the cost of living was so far down, it wasn't high like it is here, you

could get a quart of milk for four cents. You could get a dozen eggs for three cents.

You could get a slab of bacon like that

for 35 cents, that's a slab of bacon. But where in the hell was you going

to get the four cents? Where were you going to get the 35 cents? That was the big

question. You could get a steak dinner for 40 cents. You could get a rib steak, mashed

potatoes and gravy, cup of coffee, apple pie, ice cream on it, for 40 cents. That was

a big deal.

DAVE MOORE:

You asked how we got by, that was how we got by, by doing whatever we could.

Transcript

Transcript

Series: The Great Depression

Raw Footage: Interview with Dave Moore. Part 1

Producing Organization: Blackside, Inc.

Contributing Organization: Film and Media Archive, Washington University in St. Louis (St. Louis, Missouri)

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Credits: Interviewee: Moore, Dave
Interviewer: Else, Jon
Producing Organization: Blackside, Inc.

AAPB Contributor Holdings: Film & Media Archive, Washington University in St. Louis
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Citations: Chicago: “The Great Depression; Interview with Dave Moore. Part 1,” Film and Media Archive, Washington University in St. Louis, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC, accessed October 23, 2024, http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-151-9s1kh0fh90.; MLA: “The Great Depression; Interview with Dave Moore. Part 1.” Film and Media Archive, Washington University in St. Louis, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Web. October 23, 2024. <http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-151-9s1kh0fh90>.; APA: The Great Depression; Interview with Dave Moore. Part 1. Boston, MA: Film and Media Archive, Washington University in St. Louis, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Retrieved from http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-151-9s1kh0fh90