Maggie's American Dream: The Life and Times of a Black Family; No. 2

Welcome to Strike Twice Production presentation of Maggie's American Dream, The Life and Times of a Black Family by James P. Comer. And this inspiring success story centers on an exceptional woman, Maggie Comer, whose American dream brought her from abject poverty in the rural South to become the mother of four outstanding achievers. Maggie's American Dream is the unforgettable chronicle of courage and resourcefulness, pride and achievement of daring to dream. Despite the odds, we see how Maggie's dream went beyond the desire for material or social gains to a dream that America would provide opportunity and freedom through education for all people born without privilege. And now we are proud to present Maggie's American dream, the life and times of a black family read by our storytellers Ruby Dee and Ossie Davis. And part one of this story, my mother speaks her story, her hopes and her dreams, and part two, I speak for myself and my brothers and sisters who responded to the extraordinary effort by remarkable parents.

This extraordinary effort against great obstacles is the reason so many black people speak with pride about the black family and so bitterly resent those who focus on its weaknesses and ignore its achievements. The oral history of Maggie Luxora Comer as told to her son James when we last left our story, Maggie Luxora Nichols, ais a five year old girl in Woodley, Mississippi, loses her sharecropper father when he struck and killed by lightning. Levi, an occasional furniture maker, moves in on the family. He sells all of their possessions and takes the family to live in a series of ramshackle rundown shacks. Eventually, the family moves onto a houseboat traveling up and down the Mississippi River, picking cotton, almost drowning when the water rises as her stepfather, Levi, becomes more violent and abusive. Maggie and her siblings plot to kill him. Failing that one by one, they runaway north to the steel mill town

of East Chicago, Indiana. However, the north is not all that had been promised. East Chicago is just a few houses, and most of it was steel mill and smoke. There wasn't any finery or anything of the gun, but that wasn't what I was looking for. I was looking for a better life for myself. Do people talk about Chicago? As I had heard my sister talk when I was still in Memphis, you'd think that money was dropping off of trees. They would say that you just didn't have to want the anything you could have, whatever you want while still south. I thought to myself, I'll wait and see what it's like. As sure enough, East Chicago wasn't what I had been told. It was quite a letdown. And now join with our storytellers, Ruby Dee and Ossie Davis for Maggie's American Dream, The Life and Times of a Black Family. Most of the work in the two years before I was married was catch as catch can.

At first I held jobs for two or three weeks at a time. People were poor back in them times. They weren't wealthy enough to hire people for more than a day, a week or a couple of weeks. Most of the people did their own work. Being a girl from the South, my attitude was different to the kids in East Chicago. They wouldn't go out looking for work like that. My attitude was how I got my first real job in a candy store. It was a Sunday and this bunch of girls got together and went from Sunday school to this store where the kids would always go. That was my first time of being there. The kids here in Chicago was used to doing different than we was back in Tennessee when they rushed in. Everybody was saying, I want, I want. Give me this. Give me that. I stood back because I wasn't used to that sort of thing. Some would pick up something that didn't belong to them. The lady that owned the store, she was watching me very closely.

I wait until everybody's through and ask for what I wanted just before the kids all left. She said, You girl, I want to see you a minute. I did anything but I wanted and I did she think I had picked up something. I stood aside. She let all the other children go, and then she asked my age and where I lived and so forth, and she said, Would you like to work? Oh, sure I would. Where I would like to have you work for me. If you come tomorrow morning, I'll talk with you. The work was awfully hard. She put as much work on me as you ought to put on three people, but I was happy to have it at that. I did housekeeping and washing as a six year old girl. I was washing for a family of five. You ironed all day one day and watched all day the next day. I also helped her make sandwiches to sell at school and I did

all the scrubbing down on my hands and knees, but not cooking because she was Jewish and I wasn't able to cook that way. I didn't have time anyway. If there was ever any minute left after I finished washing and ironing before the day was gone, I had to work in the store. She paid ten dollars a week, which was surprising at that time because that was more than some of the women were making. But I worked from seven to seven, sometimes more and seven days a week. I got off at noon on Sunday. She was the first person that taught me about savings. She had two daughters, Sara and Pearl. The older daughter was home and the other went to school. Pearl and I wore the same size dresses and shoes, so she gave me their clothes. She asked me what I was doing with my money since I didn't have to buy clothes and I told her I was giving it to my brother not to keep for me. She said, No, you don't need to do that.

Pearl goes to the bank every Monday morning. If you want me to keep your money until Monday, I will give it to you and you can go with Pearl. She will help you start your own bank account. And that's what I did. But that wasn't very well welcomed back at home. A big part of my education came while I was working for this lady in the wintertime. I didn't go home until after dinner, but during dinner I would just sit around. She finally asked me if I wanted some books, so she dug out her old books that she had had in school and let me have them to study. At the same time, there was a poor white girl that would come over for the leftover donuts and so forth, I would say for her. So we decided to exchange. She would give me a lesson every day and I would save her food. She was much younger than I was, but we had a good time. She was a lovely little girl. When I came to town in 1920, Zion Church was a storefront

on Elm Street. Life was mostly church. You went to church on Sunday for mornings until 11 o'clock Sunday night. You go for dinner and back to church tonight, service. And then during the week, you had about three nights that you went to choir rehearsal and prayer service. Your recreation was really church and church socials. I didn't have a lot of close friends because girls were so well, there wasn't many my type of girls, but the girls I knew were from around the church. Lucille Tanso was one and Irene Lawhon was another. And Hazel Peterman, that was a married name. I can't think of another name. And Roberta Floyd, that was the preacher's daughter to go around with a preacher's daughter was something she was the leader of the group of girls, the one that we all looked up to. Now, you had to be a very nice girl to be able to go in her group.

I usually had to work on Sunday when I worked steady, but even then I was sometimes off at 12 and I could go to three o'clock service or I was off at five. I could go to the seven o'clock service. That's how I met your dad at church with his group of girls. He was looking for the nice kind of girl that was in this preacher's daughters group. Mr. Colmer, you komar was as near perfect a man as they can be. He didn't smoke, he didn't drink, he didn't care for the wildlife. If he told you he was going to do something, you could bank on it. And honest as the day is long, they don't make men like that anymore. He came to town before me in 1916 when I first came to Chicago. I was 16 years old. At 16 days, you dressed like a girl and he didn't pay much attention to

me. He was dating another girl that was older in 1920. He went back south for a few months. In the meantime, I changed my way of wearing clothes and dressed more like a young lady. When he came back, he didn't recognize me. He asked the preacher's daughter, say, who is that girl he had looking at me? That's Charlie Watkins, sister in law. You remember that next Sunday he came on down to our house after church. We lived just a block away. Somebody would always come with my brother in law every Sunday evening. Just sit around the next service as it have a seat, my brother, and I'll be out a few minutes. I didn't come to see him. I came to see you. And that's how it started. He was such an outstanding young man. I didn't think I was equal to such a person. All the people around in the church felt he was a nice guy.

He went to church and he worked. He wasn't a playboy or into messing around foolishness, as I would call it. He was very serious. He was stern about the things that he believed in, religion and education and just plain being somebody that was his all around person. He believed you could live the better way of life. He always felt that black people could get the better way of life just like everybody else, though it didn't seem so. We were almost engaged the first time we talked. At that point, I was afraid of me and but you, Komar, were so frank about his life. And and this turned me from thinking that all men were alike right away. He wanted to get married. He wanted to settle down. And I was the type of girl that he thought he'd settle down with. He was very honest. He he told me he'd been married and he had a daughter, Louise. He told me he and his wife was divorced.

At first I said, no, no, you've been married. And he said, but me and my wife have divorced and my wife is also married again. He seemed honest, but I didn't take that. I was always looking out for me. I said, oh, well, you and your wife might go back together someday. And I don't want to go between any man and his wife again. He told me that she was remarried. I still didn't take that from me. He had to write his mother in law and his mother and have them verify what he had told me. His mother in law wrote a very nice letter saying that she thought he was a nice fellow and she thought her daughter wasn't ready to settle down. His mother also wrote a nice letter, and after they wrote back, I felt like he was OK, but I didn't give him no date at all until I read those letters.

And he brought the proof of his divorce from this lady, which I have today, Brother Charlie, and says Carrie liked him. She knew right away when we started dating, being the fellow that he was, that she was going to lose me. Now, she didn't dislike him at all, but it was a fact that she didn't want to lose or help him. So she tried to discourage us, me at least. She called him Opar because he was twelve years older than I was. She said, I'm coming down the street and she'd stop. Here he comes. Where is he going? What do we want? It was quite funny because I knew what she was doing. She was trying to put me against him, putting him down. Me and Mr. Colmar got along right from the start because we had the same thing in mind. Getting ahead, getting our own home. We expected a family. We wanted children, and he wanted them educated. This was the kind of thing he preached until he died.

What he said about education and everything else, too, was what I had fought for as a child all around me. Kids went to school and were educated and came out with a degree and went into good jobs. This was the thing I wanted my children to have. This was the right man, Mr. Coma's family was a little better off than mine. Of course, that didn't take much. He was born in Colma, Alabama. Your dad liked to talk about his childhood. His parents were very strict, very religious and believed in education. All of the older ones went to school. Your dad went to what they call college. In those days. It was an academy for eight years. They weren't able to carry you as high in the black schools then as they are today. He was one of the most outstanding students they ever had.

I remember some of the fellows from the south teasing him about being such a good student and making it hard on them. He was also an outstanding baseball player. He was a real leader. He was an independent kind of person and didn't believe everything he was told. He was the first one to leave out of that neighborhood going away to the place they call Chicago. It was really east Chicago, Indiana. He stayed at this place where this fella had a tent where they just sleep men mostly. There was no black women or not any up to any good. They slept in tents until they made a few paydays and then they rented rooms or a house. He rented a house and kept a few renters. And then he sent back for a couple of his relatives. He put his plan to work and go back. Like so many others, so many other people that came here back in those days didn't come here to stay. They didn't like it here.

They didn't like the weather. It was so different to their way of life at home. It was hard for people raised in the South to adjust to the city type of life. This was almost like being in jail for them, living in apartment houses with a postage stamp lawn. They was used to spread out fields and crops, fishing ponds. They didn't come here to stay. I was talking to a lady from the south when your dad and I built our first house. She seen the house going up and she had heard that we were building it. I met her in the street one day and she stopped me and said, Girl, are you crazy? His mother and your mother is in the south and you are building a house here. Are you losing your mind? That's how people felt about this place at the time. We paid most all of our money out of the railroad, traveling back south. The fellows would work three months and one home, work three months and one home. And then they brought their wives and the wife had to go back home to see Mama. And if they got expecting a baby, they had to go back home.

They couldn't stay here because there was a way for Mama all the way from the south, not us. We was there to stay. And we was married when Mr. Cuomo asked me if I would marry him and I said yes. He asked me who he should ask, should he write and ask my mother or ask my sister. So I said, you write and ask my mother, but you can tell my sister. So when he told us this, Carrie, that she said very slowly, Well, I don't mind you getting married, but I want you all to live with us because you see, we have buddy rooming here and I won't be able to take care of him alone. You all can have that other bedroom there right

away. Mr. Cuomo said, no, I won't promise that I plan to go into a house of my own. The marriage didn't come off the way we wanted it, though, just before I got married. But he took sick with pneumonia. He was as sick as I've ever seen a person, my husband, to be set up with us at night because there wasn't any hospital in East Chicago at that time. Dr. Johnson was the first doctor we had. He said, get all the ice bags you could couldn't put around him, put him under this ice and he was just dying and screaming and screaming. So I called this other doctor and, oh, did he make a fuss? And he said, take all this ice out and take everything away, wrap him up warm and put quilts around him. We turned his mattress over and got all the iron and hot breaks we could find and put him to bed as warm as we could make him. We let all the windows down. He had a fever first and then the fever broke.

He got much better with all of the work. His illness changed our wedding plans. We had wanted to have a church wedding, but Buddy wanted to see his sister get married. So we decided just to get married at the house. My uncle was there and of course, the sick brother and Leroy Lucille Tanso was my bridesmaid. Roosevelt Newman was the best man and boss. Newman, his brother, was there also. I had a bald wedding dress. I borrowed this preacher's daughter's wedding dress. She got married a year before when I was going to get married, she was going to have a baby and couldn't afford to give us a gift. So she let me wear her wedding dress is her gift. And we was married. I was quite a bit younger than your dad country girl, and I didn't know much,

but I was a good listener and he was a good adviser. Things that I didn't know about because I wasn't raised in the same atmosphere he taught to me. He worked at Hubbard Steel, as it was called, and and that's where he worked practically all of our married life. Even though I stayed home, I was working right on what I would make of borders, pay the house rent and the grocery bill, and we would put up a little money. We started the first payday after we were married. We were able to put up like fifteen dollars. In those days, people couldn't make ends meet, no less put up money. We weren't married, but a little over a year before we started trying to look for a house to buy. Let me give you an example of what Mr. Colmer expected of me when we first met, I didn't know how to go to Chicago. Chicago was something in those days.

It was a beautiful city all over. But going from here to Chicago in them days was like going from here to London, England, after we were engaged to get married. He took me to Chicago all the way. He was teaching me, pointing out this, telling me that he showed me how to take the bus and streetcar. You get the streetcar here, get off of the east Chicago side of town, then get the streetcar to the state line, then get off and take. And so the next month, I went to Chicago all alone, just the way he taught me before I knew it, I was in downtown Chicago paying the bills. And he would not just throw me out there. He supported me to do things on my own. When we first got married and went to pay bills, he never pay those bills. He would drive the car there. But I paid. He said, I know how and I want you to know how you never fussed or made fun

of me. He just showed me how to do it. He was a stern person. He didn't believe in fun when it was working time, but he had a lot of fun when it came to fun time. And he couldn't take being a fellow, laughing all the time, doing nothing that meant nothing. If you make it OK, if you don't make it OK. He believed that if you want it, you have to go after it. And he went after it. We bought a lot, not a house the first year after we were married. I wasn't thinking about it a lot. When he suggested buying these lots around the corner from our first place, I said there's nothing but a sand bear out there yet, but a lot of cheap. We can build our own house and one of these days they are going to put streets out there. He was a man of great vision. He would talk about things that were going to happen. And many years later I have seen them happen.

And sure enough, we went on to build this house there. And a few years later, they put streets out there, like you said. Then the depression came on in a big way. But we lived well during the Depression compared to others. We had built these two duplexes that had our apartment, a garage and two rental places in them. And we helped many, many people during the Depression because we were the there things were so reasonable clothing, fuel and everything. People with any money at all could get ahead. The plant where you work kept only a few people working, and he was one of the few he worked two or three days a week, was never off the payroll. Mr. Colma always wanted to get ahead since there wasn't a store in that little neighborhood there. He thought that this would be a good way. First we opened it on the lot next door.

So little ice cream parlor, but people would come in looking for other things. So we started a little line of groceries that was, I'd say, 1932. You've been listening to the true life story of Maggie Colmer in Maggie's American Dream, The Life and Times of a Black Family by James P. Colmer, M.D., read by our storytellers Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee. As we've heard, Maggie has met and married Hugh Culmer, who she calls as near perfect a man as can be together. The two have begun to build a stable and sustaining life. Maggie and Hugh have worked hard. He and the steel mills, she doing domestic work. They've saved their money and even opened a store. Yet their married lives are missing. One important thing, children,

as our story continues, his daughter from his previous marriage, Louise, comes to live with them. Louise did well in school from the beginning. She went to the same elementary school with many of the kids whose families I worked for. Louise was determined to show them that she was just as smart as they was and she could hold her own with any of them. They were the kids of doctors, lawyers and politicians, most from the park, Ed.. The ritzy area. No blacks lived out there. Blacks couldn't even swim in the pool. Then as we listen, we hear that in the 1930s and 40s, the north as well as the South, presented racial challenges to overcome. One time we went into a drugstore where they had ice cream and white women with a little boy was sitting at the table having ice cream. I gave the storekeeper a ten dollar bill and he told us we would have to go outside and eat.

We couldn't eat it in there, but he didn't give me my change. I paid my last change on the streetcar. So I know I had to give him a ten dollar bill because I had no change to get him. So I asked him, would you give me my change? I don't owe you any change. Oh, yes, you do. He and the white woman looked at me and I said, Yes, sir, you owe me. I gave you a ten dollar bill. No, you did. Well, that's all I had. I didn't have anything but a ten dollar bill you didn't have in a ten dollar bill. You can come on back and take a look at the cash register. I looked at this woman. She didn't say anything but sugar head. Meaning, no, don't go back. She just kept shaking her head and looking at me. I didn't know what to do. I was dumbfounded standing there. Finally, she said to him, give her change. She gave you a ten dollar bill. And just like that, he gave me my change, minister Colmar. But pretty much the same about race. There is good and bad in every group.

You don't dislike the good because of the bad. He used to say don't take nothing off the white man and don't cut the fool to get along with him. But don't go out of your way looking for trouble either. I heard it many times said you fellows don't let race stop you from doing whatever you want to do. Just prepare yourself. Your time will come. That meant hard work. He believed that because Americans were supposed to be Christians, they had to open up and give colored people a better deal. And if you worked hard, you'd be ready. He was a proud black man and he used to say, just give my people a chance. So please join us again. When our storytellers Ruby Dee and Ossie Davis bring you more of Maggie's American dream, the life and times of a black family, the program you've been listening to is Magnes American Dream and Life and Times

of a Black Man by James P. and our storytellers for this presentation, our Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee. This radio series has been brought to you by the Rockefeller Foundation with additional funding from foods needs. Additional assistance has been provided by thrifty car rental. Maggie's American Dream has been produced by Strikes Twice Productions in cooperation with KQED from San Francisco. Welcome to Strikes Twice production presentation of Maggie's American Dream,

The Life and Times of a Black Family by James Biko. And this inspiring success story centers on an exceptional woman, Maggie Comber, whose American dream brought her from abject poverty in the rural South to become the mother of four outstanding achievers. Maggie's American Dream is the unforgettable chronicle of courage and resourcefulness, pride and achievement of daring to dream. Despite the odds, we see how Maggie's dream went beyond the desire for material or social gains to dream that America would provide opportunity and freedom through education for all people born without privilege. And now we are proud to present Maggie's American Dream. The life and times of a black family read by our storytellers Ruby Dee and Ossie Davis. And part one of this story, my mother speaks her story, her hopes and her dreams. And part two, I speak for myself and my brothers and sisters who responded to the extraordinary effort by remarkable parents.

This extraordinary effort against great obstacles is the reason so many black people speak with pride about the black family and so bitterly resent those who focus on its weaknesses and ignore its achievements. The oral history of Maggie Leukocoria Coma as told to her son James. When we last left our story, Maggie had journeyed north from Mississippi to escape hunger and a life of poverty with an abusive stepfather. She settles in East Chicago, Indiana, in this steel mill town. She meets another migrant from the south, an Alabama preacher's son, Hugh. With similar ideas in mind, Hugh and Maggie build a life together. I was talking to a lady from the South when your dad and I built our first house. She's seen the house going up and she had heard that we were building it. I met her in the street one day and she stopped me and said, Girl, are you crazy?

His mother and your mother is in the south and you are building a house here. Are you losing your mind? That's how people felt about this place at the time. We paid most all of our money out of the railroad, traveling back south. The fellows would work three months and one home, work three months and one home. And then they brought their wives and the wife had to go back home to see Mama. And if they got expecting a baby, they had to go back home. They couldn't stay here because there was a way for mama away from the south, not us. We was there to stay here, works in the mills, and Maggie does domestic work, which in those days they called day work. As our story continues, his daughter from his previous marriage, Louise, comes to live with them. Louise Hughes daughter from his first marriage first came to visit us when we were married about two years, but Mr Combet said

for her he thought she was going to come and live with us for good. I was so happy to have her and she was happy to be there. She was a lovely little girl, seven years old. We bought beautiful clothes for and started a school. Oh, she was just lovely, but she only stayed with us for about a year. Her grandmother wanted her back. She wasn't back there. But about a year before the grandmother died and left her with a step grandfather, the step grandfather wouldn't let her go. We had to get a lawyer. Mr Colmer had to pay a thousand dollars in them days. The step grandfather had the two little girls. This other little girl was Louise's half sister, not Mr Coma's child. Mr Colmer had been taking care of Louise all the time, but when the grandmother died and their step grandfather came into the picture, the Tacoma stopped sending money and tried to get the old man to let him have Louise.

But he wouldn't. The old man claim this was breaking them up after the lawsuit and we took Louise. Then he didn't want the other little girl. He gave her to some aunt or another. He didn't want either one, just what he could get. When she came back, she was a little bit different. This grandmother had just died and her half sister didn't want to leave. And there had been a lot of fuss over the lawsuit. When she first came to live with us, she was calling me Mama herself. When she came back, she wasn't calling me mama, she said her sister said she didn't have to say mama and that she would call me by my name. I told her that she could not call me by my name, either say Mama or Mrs Comar. So she said Mrs Coma for a while. And after that ma until the day she calls me Ma, I took day work because what he was making didn't cover what I wanted for a child, like a piano and music

and books. I wanted to dress her nice from the time we took Louise back the second time when she was nine years old. I worked until the year before you were born. Mr Combet didn't like it, but I could see it was helpful when she came with me. She'd have a certain time to get up, a time to eat and so on. She could play, but I wouldn't allow her to run and rip. She would have to come in and study music and then she'd have to take a nap and her bath. She wasn't used to this kind of thing. And rebels, she didn't know at the time it was helpful to her. She always wanted to teach school when she was seven years old and had other kids come over to play. She always want to have school. She would be the teacher. She always was going to grow up and be a teacher and have this fabulous house that she has today. Whenever we went shopping for most of the kids would ask for candy, she would ask

for crayons and paper tablets. At Christmas at seven, we bought her the little black that stood on legs. It had a show of animals on the top. You turned on a real of paper. It showed fish and bears and so forth. And it had the words there. It had all the alphabet letters and numbers up to ten. She would write them on the board. That's how she learned to write so well. Louise, we started going to Washington Elementary School. I used to have to walk to school every day because the kids were cruel. In those days, you dress real nice. Black kids in them days were wearing their father's old coat and their daddy's pants tied around with a belt. She was wearing clothes that fit and caps and coats and hats like the better off white kids were wearing. And her being just that one, kids would fight her. She was always so tiny. When she was seven, people thought she was about three or four for a long time.

I would have to walk out of school and meet her coming home from school and I just simply got tired of it. I hid in a church stairway outdoors, going down to the basement and she was coming, running kids behind. I had a big stick and I ran out and started lamb kids first one way and then the other. After that, I didn't have no more trouble. I went to meet her after that several times, but I didn't have no more trouble with them. Louise did well in school from the beginning. She went to the same elementary school with many of the kids whose families I worked for. Louise was determined to show them that she. It was just as small as they was, and she could hold her own with any of them. They were the kids of doctors, lawyers and politicians, most from the park, Ed.. The ritzy area. No blacks lived out there. Blacks couldn't even swim in the pool then. But the kids treated her where she had more trouble with some of the teachers

than with any of the kids. All of the teachers was white in him days, some of them just plain prejudiced. I remember one incident about Louise coming home complaining that the teacher didn't call on her. The teacher would say, get your books out. We're going to read Maria, Sally, recite. Then this child would call on the next and so on. There was only two blacks in the room at the time out of maybe 30 children. And that was Louise and the little boy that would play the monkey for the teacher all the time. She would call on him. The choice was never Louise because she was black. This bothered her because she wanted to be a part of everything. Consequently, she would come home and complain to me about it. They had these parents visitation at night. Her father and I went to visit there and we made a special effort to get into this teacher's class that night.

And this is the way said was the way she was doing. So as we were leaving, the parents would speak to the teacher. So I spoke to her and I said, I enjoy the class, but I would have liked to have seen Louise recite tonight. She just turned her head and didn't give me an answer at all, what I did then was to buy the books. They have a school for her to have at home. Things were pretty tough for us and we couldn't really afford it. But I told her, now you can recite just as well as anyone else, whatever lesson you know, that is a sign for tomorrow. You study it this evening when you come home, then when this white child gets up to recite, you just recite right along with them to yourself, Mr. Colmer, back me up. He'd say, get it in your head. They can't take that away from you.

They work in those days, they call it day work, you work maybe today or two days, sometimes three for one person. At one time I was working for three to four persons a week that was cleaning their whole house. I work for Dr. and Mrs. McDonald. Maybe on a Monday, maybe on Tuesdays. I would go to Dr. Matthews. I would go to the Van Horns and do a day's work. The Van Horns was a house with three lawyers I had in my life. After things I learned so many people would just work and pay no attention to what's going on. I didn't just cook and clean. I worked with my eyes and ears open. I watched and listened to them and the way they lived for me, it was like going to school. I have no complaint about most because they were very beautiful people willing to help and teach you along. I would ask them about this thing or that thing.

I would see them do a little helpful hints they had. They would pass it on to me as they shop. They would say, Maggie, do you ever do this or that? We do it this way. Those women would also tell you how to know that you were getting a good deal and what sort of stores to go do at the lawyer's house. They would discuss the business right over the breakfast table. That's where they did the most talked together after they would leave. She was a beautiful woman, too. She would sit down and have coffee with me and talk. Well, Maggie, if you ever get into a lawsuit, a problem of any kind handled it this way. I learned the cuts of meat at the Briggs's house. I worked for her when I was 17 years old. She had this cookbook, which I had never seen before. It showed pictures of the different cuts of meat. Rump roast said a cut and chops and calves liver, so on. So when I was shopping for myself, I would go to the store and ask for that cut

of meat. They were always surprised because as a rule, all people would go in and say, I want two dollars worth of pork chops or a dollar's worth of this so that they could get the best cut for the same money, but they didn't know any better. I learned the advantage of buying good clothing. You might pay a few cents more, but it paid off in the end because it lasted and always looked good. I noticed people they bought from the cheaper stores and my children's clothes. I wore them two to one. I learned a great deal from some of the people I work for, but well, there were problems in the tenth grade. Louise one the posture contest of about 100 girls. She was the only one black. They had all white judges. They didn't use any blacks because there wasn't any blacks in the school system at the time. I told you how tiny she was. She wore Cuban heels, shoes, and I dressed up for the part.

Louise got another word like that way back when she was a little girl in a spelling contest like the one they have today over the country. They spell down to twenty girls in the finals. She was the only black nineteen white. She spell those nineteen whites down and one that night after the posture contest. I was catering a party for this lady. It had been in the paper who won the contest and some of our guests had seen it. I went in to take something to the table and one of the guests said to this other woman, Did you see a little [Unrecognized] girl won the poster contest? These women turned all colors. I heard the woman I was working for whispered that her mother, that was Maggie's daughter. I didn't say anything. I just acted like I didn't hear. But when I went back to the table, everybody was quiet. They were looking at me. It really put a damper on the party.

One time, my husband's two sisters and mother came to visit us and I wanted to take off for the couple of weeks they were going to be visiting. So I sent a friend of mine to work in my place. This lady I work for said this friend, I hope you're going to be like Maggie. She doesn't take anything. She doesn't take my sheets and doesn't take this. This friend, knowing what I had said, Maggie wouldn't have anything you have in this house. She has a new piano and she just furnished a house with new furniture. When I went back, this woman was spouting tears. She said, I think I insulted your friend. I told her that you didn't take anything. And she said you wouldn't have anything that I have here. I wouldn't. I'm sorry that you thought that of her. Maggie, you got a piano. She went on. You have this and you have. After that, she got so tight, I quit working for. Race and reason, we didn't go back home as much as

some folks, I had trouble with something about race almost every time I went south. One time we went into a drugstore where they had ice cream and white women with a little boy was sitting at the table having ice cream. I gave the storekeeper a ten dollar bill and he told us we would have to go outside and eat. We couldn't eat it in there, but he didn't give me my change. I paid my last change on the street. So I know I had to give him a ten dollar bill because I had no change to give it. So I asked him, would you give me my change? I don't owe you any change. Oh, yes, you do. In the white woman looked at me and I said, Yes, sir, you owe me. I gave you a ten dollar bill. No, you did. Well, that's all I had. I didn't have anything but a ten dollar bill. You didn't have any ten dollar bill. You can come on back and take a look at the cash register. I looked at this woman. She didn't say anything, but Sugar had meaning to go go

back. She just kept shaking her head and looking at me. I didn't know what to do. I was dumbfounded standing there. Finally, she said to him, Give a change. She gave you a ten dollar bill. And just like that, he gave me my change, whether she was his wife. What I do not know. Sometimes they could go too far and their own folks would turn against them, particularly the well-to-do ones. I heard about this woman who worked for a wealthy white family, and she went into a butcher store right after a black man had been lynched. The butcher asked her if she wanted to pound the dead black man. Then folks got up in arms about that and they fired him. Minister Coma pretty much the same about race. There is good and bad in every group. You don't dislike the good because the bad. He used to say don't take nothing off the white man and don't cut the fool

to get along with him. But don't go out of your way looking for trouble either. I heard it many times, said, you fellows don't let race stop you from doing whatever you want to do. Just prepare yourself. Your time will come. That meant hard work. He believed that because Americans were supposed to be Christians, they had to open up and give colored people a better deal. And if you worked hard, you'd be ready. He was a proud black man and he used to say, just give my people a chance. He used to tell you guys that you should be proud that you are black and we talk like that at home. You all got along well with black and white children. I remember a teacher telling me once that you all got along as well with some of the worst hoodlums in the school as you did with some of the best children.

We like that. A lovely little neighborhood we live in, a lovely little neighborhood, our street was only a block long and cars very seldom turned, and they unless it was people that live there and there was many cars in those days, we were very neighborly, not in and out of each other's door every day, but we did anything we could do to help each other. So when another person moved into that neighborhood, it rubbed off on him what this neighborhood was doing. And they all just joined right in the same way. Most were black, but some were white. It was also a nice neighborhood for children. Everybody was very watchful.

I think I had about the only little children at that time. The neighbors would watch like they were theirs. You children could only go from one end of the block to the other. If you started off that block, one of the neighbors would say, go back. You can't go there so many times. I went to check to see where you were and the neighbors were already checking. There were more poor whites in our neighborhood than poor blacks. We sometimes gave food to some of them out of that little store when they didn't have anything to eat. Around the corner on another block, there was an old flophouse where some of the poorest white folks in the city lived. Most of the blacks in our neighborhood worked and made a passable living back in the Depression. People had to help each other out. The roofs were Jewish people. They were very nice, but they were poor. She and I were very good friends. And I remember that Mrs. Rough helped this little black boy learn to talk.

There was this lady with a large family and she wasn't able to cope very well. One of the younger children took a long time to start walking and talking. The other children were quite a bit old and nobody ever talked to him where people thought he couldn't talk. The child would come into Mrs. Ruffed store and just stand there. And when she asked him what he wanted instead of saying candy or something, he would just point to the counter and mumble. She would say to him, Candy, he mumbled something and she'd say again, Candy, she put her lips down where he could see them and say it. Finally, he would make a noise like, oh, she said that child can talk. And every time he would come in the door, he'd get this talking lesson. Finally, he started talking because he wanted that candy. In the meantime, her daughter had a job at the plant. They didn't own a car.

A black fella in the neighborhood worked at the same plant. He took this Jewish girl back and forth, at least for two years. What I'm trying to say is that's how people ought to be able to live together and help each other. There was nothing between them. Everything was just smooth. It was just people helping people. The herds was another family on the block. Mr. Herd was half black and half white. He passed a white and a steel mill. He was married several times and one of the women he married was a white woman, a Polish girl. She married this colored fella, Mr. Herd, because she was having such a bad time with this white boy she'd been married to. First, he left her and their child back there on the alley. Dirt poor Mr. Heard's garage was right across the alley and they talked. His first wife had died. He gave her food because she was hungry and he would try to help her like the rest of the neighbors did. Finally, they got in love and they got married.

But they took a little boy away from her because heard was black. The father wasn't able to take care of him, but his sister took the job because Mr. Herd could not have him. They lived real well. He bought her a fur coat and did everything for her. She was happy. Only thing was losing her little boy. That hurt her awfully bad. She took ill slightly. Nobody knew it was serious. The little white girl next door sat with her during the day and one day she came out and started hollering. I can't wait, Mrs. Herd. We all ran to try to help. I called Mr. Herd at the mill and he came right away. But she was gone. She went to sleep and never woke up. The doctor couldn't find anything. It said in the paper she died of Negro fight. You've been listening to the true life story of Maggie Colmer in Maggie's American

Dream, The Life and Times of a Black Family by James P. Colmer, M.D., read by our storytellers Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee. As we've heard, Maggie has met and married Hugh Colmer, a deacon in her church. Together, the two of them build a life in the northern steel mill town of East Chicago, Indiana, and raise his daughter from his first marriage, Louise. But after 12 years of marriage, Maggie desperately wants to have children of her own. We had been told by some of the better doctors of the city that we would never have a child. And then after we had gone along so long, 12 years, the doctors were sure that you was a tumor. We were so proud of you. You know, you had a big middle name, Pierpont. JP Morgan at that time was the richest man in the world. You was named Pierpont after him. It was your dad's idea. He always had high hopes for his children and he always hoped that you would someday be a rich man.

When Maggie's American Dream continues, Maggie, how to start a family for children. It was a beautiful number to raise any little town. You could have a party with four children. The days when the weather was bad, I would make cookies and candies and you would just have a party. I used to hear people say that they were sorry the children were home out of school. They were in the way. It was really happy days for me. When I knew you were going to be home, I would get up and get my work done to be able to do these things with you. People don't know that's the happiest time of life when you have your young children around you. Maggie, having been denied an education herself that had all of her children will be educated. Now with her husband support, Maggie starts to raise her family with her own uncommon common sense about child rearing. Raising a family is one of the beautiful things and no woman or man and wife can do.

When I look back at it now, it was a big deal. But then it was ordinary and it was great. I believe in talking with children, taking time with them, taking them to places, doing things together. But everybody don't see it that way. Some people wish the children off and they don't bring the children in on any of the things going on in the home. So if they don't bring the children in when they are children at home, how are they going to know when they go out? So join our storytellers Ruby Dee and Ossie Davis when we continue with Maggie's American Dream, The Life and times of a Black Family. This concludes our presentation of Maggie's American Dream: The life and times of a black family, thank you for joining us. The story was read by Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee based on the book Maggie's American Dream by James P. Comer M.D.

with text adaptation by Dawn Comer. The executive producers are Dawn Comer and Brian J. Comer. The producers are Michelle Tatum and Carol Pierson. The associate producer is Carol Mateland. This program was recorded at KQED-FM in San Francisco with post production by Ed Herman at Garuda Records in San Francisco. The musical score was composed by Richard Leider Words and Music, Los Angeles. This program was made possible through a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation. With additional funding from Kraft General Foods Inc. Ground transportation was provided by Thrifty Car Rental, Maggie's American Dream is a Strikes Twice production produced in cooperation with KQED-FM San Francisco.