The Great Depression; Interview with Mildred Roxborough. Part 3; Interview with Muriel Outlaw. Part 1

INTERVIEWER:

OK, so beginning with after your father, after your father left, what happened, you know, briefly, just what happened to the organization, and then [inaudible].

MILDRED ROXBOROUGH:

That Christmas Eve night, or Christmas morning, after my father left, marked the further decline of the branch because of the, the NAACP branch, because of the pressures which were increasingly being subjected to the people. And left without him as a key leader, they did not have as much of the energy and willingness and the enthusiasm to subject themselves to the pressures which were become almost unremitting. They met a few times after he left, the branch did, although the bulk of the membership dwindled away, so that you had the officers and a few of the members who would come together in homes and meet, as they were increasingly pressured about these activities. Finally, as the pressure continued, the visits to homes increased markedly. Each one was known, so they were intimidated by people coming to the homes, knocking on the doors, and making threats, yelling threats, if they even, even, if they did not come in, telling them what was in store for them. And denying them credit, doing all of those things which were combined, becoming almost intolerable. Eventually, I, I—

INTERVIEWER:

Let's, let's—we have to cut because of the siren.

INTERVIEWER:

OK. It's quiet. OK. So, you can begin with after your father...

MILDRED ROXBOROUGH:

After my father left that Christmas Eve, the membership of the branch dwindled and the meetings dwindled in, in numbers, until a few months later, after a number of visits at night to the members' homes. One of the officers, he happened to be the treasurer of the branch, Elbert Williams, his home was visited, and he was taken from his home in his pajamas and by a group of men in a car he was shot and thrown in the river, the Hatchie River. His body was found a day later floating in the river, having been riddled with gunshot. And following this particularly difficult and terrible crime, he, the branch, became dormant. It did not, the people did not continue to meet. And it remained so for a long period of time. Some of the key members left the town and went elsewhere to live, such as Elijah Davis and Reverend Buster Walker, went to other places to live. They were key people with my father in the branch originally, in addition to Elbert Williams, who was murdered. The branch did not become active again until the late '50s.

INTERVIEWER:

Great. Thank you. OK. Now I want to quickly move on to something that's completely unrelated, which is, do you remember Joe Louis at that time, in that time? And did, was there any, did anybody in your household pay attention to the fact that there was this boxer out there named Joe Louis? What do you remember?

MILDRED ROXBOROUGH:

Oh yes, there's, there's a couple things I remember as a child, and that is The Shadow [laughs], which is a radio program, and the radio, listening to the fights of Joe Louis broadcast on radio, an old modeled radio. We would sit on the floor. And there was much excitement when Joe Louis fought, and when I was a child, whenever he had a fight, people would gather together. Everybody did not have radios, so we would gather where there was a radio. In our living room, it was usually crowded, because we had a radio and we would listen to Joe Louis and root for him and just say, \"Beat him! Beat him! Beat him! We know he'll do it!\" [laughs] and \"He's the greatest!\" Yes.

INTERVIEWER:

Do you remember when he lost, the night that he lost? Do you have any recollection of that, when he lost to Max Schmeling? He was supposed to win. Do you remember that at all?

MILDRED ROXBOROUGH:

Yes, yes. It was a sad occasion. It was very sad, and you thought the world had come to an end. And for him to have lost to a German, that was just awful. They thought they were superior anyhow. This, I'm telling you, voicing what we felt. We, it was a personal hurt and an affront that a German would come and beat the great, invincible Joe Louis. It hurt. You just... And people literally cried.

INTERVIEWER:

So do you remember, then, when, two years later, when he beat the German again? Do you remember that?

MILDRED ROXBOROUGH:

Yes. I was in Kansas City then. Yes, yes. I remember that.

INTERVIEWER:

What was the feeling then?

MILDRED ROXBOROUGH:

Oh, it was the, much joy. The world was right again and Louis was on top, and the Brown Bomber, as he was called, and by which he was known in the, at that time, anyhow, reigned supreme. And we knew that he would do it. [laughs]

INTERVIEWER:

OK. Can we cut now for a second?

INTERVIEWER:

So can you remember how you felt as a young child at that time, when you saw that your house was, that, that your father, that your house was burned down, and that your father might be in it?

MILDRED ROXBOROUGH:

Well, it was a terrible feeling. My stomach felt empty. I, I'd never felt like that before in my life. And I said, \"Everything I have is in that house. My favorite toys, my tricycle, my father, my rabbits are gone.\" The world, my world just crumbled. \"My father! If I, we can't find my father, I can't live.\" I was a father's daughter. I was fond of my father. And I, I have never felt since quite that same way, because of those emotions, and my stomach just felt as if it had simply disappeared from my body and there was nothing but a void in me. That's, that's about as descriptive as I can...

INTERVIEWER:

That's pretty damn descriptive, I'd say... [laughs]

MILDRED ROXBOROUGH:

And as the smoke rose from the chimneys, because there was still smoke, I was wondering if my father were there.

INTERVIEWER:

OK. OK, if you can just do, if you can just do that little short bit about you started, you were nine years old when you started selling Crisis, it was 1936, so it was the next year.

MILDRED ROXBOROUGH:

The, I, my parents read The Crisis magazine before the branch was organized, and we were avid readers...

INTERVIEWER:

Just, just simply, I need the declarative connective sentence.

MILDRED ROXBOROUGH:

All right. You don't need anything, OK.

INTERVIEWER:

No, no details.

MILDRED ROXBOROUGH:

You don't need to know what the magazine is. All right. I think it was 1936 when I started selling The Crisis magazine. I was about not quite nine, eight and a half years old, and following my great venture selling The Crisis magazine, the branch, the NAACP branch was formally charted in 1937, which began the branch activity officially.

INTERVIEWER:

Great. OK. Thank you.

MILDRED ROXBOROUGH:

When my family relatives drove up to the house, or least where there had been a house, it was one of the worst periods in my life, worst times in my life. I, I felt as if my stomach had simply just dropped out of my body. There was a void there. There was nothing. And I could only think, \"There was, this was my home. What has happened? My toys, my tricycle, my rabbits, my beloved rabbits that my father was taking care of, and most of all my father, my father who, who, who was there yesterday. And where is he?\" And I looked at the two chimneys standing and the smoke rising nearby the chimneys, and I wondered if my father were there.

INTERVIEWER:

That's great.

[End of Roxborough interview; beginning of Outlaw interview]

CAMERA CREW MEMBER:

Scene three, take one. Sound roll four, camera roll six.

INTERVIEWER:

Tell us how, now we're talking specifically the Thirties, so I guess at that time you were becoming or you were a teenager at that point, and—

MURIEL OUTLAW:

Not quite.

INTERVIEWER:

Not quite, I said becoming a teenager. [laughs]

MURIEL OUTLAW:

INTERVIEWER:

But I'm thinking sort of the Depression, and in the Depression, can you describe the neighborhood you were living in at that time? Who lived there, how they got on together, how they got along in terms of livelihood and that sort of thing?

MURIEL OUTLAW:

Well, it was a Sicilian, predominantly—

INTERVIEWER:

OK, one thing I'd like you to do is you sort of have to incorporate my question, which would be to start off by saying, \"I lived in a predominantly—\"

MURIEL OUTLAW:

Oh, OK. I lived in a predominantly Sicilian neighborhood. There were a few black families, there were a few Norwegian families down the block, but the block itself was primarily Italian and Sicilian. It was a nice neighborhood to grow up in. We all had backyards, you raised vegetables, our neighbors killed chickens on Sunday mornings, you know for dinner, roasted coffee on Saturdays, the whole neighborhood smelled of coffee. In the Fall they made wine, so the neighborhood smelled of wine in September. It was a good neighborhood, and I was happy there as a child.

INTERVIEWER:

How did the, how did your family and other black families get along with the Sicilians, and how—?

MURIEL OUTLAW:

Well. We had no problems, they had no problems as far as we could tell. The kids were all friendly, played ball in the street, slept over. You went to each other's houses for dinner. They shared the wine. When my father made wine it usually had vinegar, so he gave them vinegar and we got wine in return. But, no it was a nice neighborhood. It was a poor neighborhood, it wasn't a rich neighborhood, but nobody knew they were poor. It was the kind of thing that nobody had fancy clothes, there weren't a lot of cars. If you had three cars drove up and down the street during the day that was a lot of cars, you know. So the kids played in the street. We turned on the hydrants in the summer time, and for election day built bonfires in the street. And as fast as the fire department came and put it out, we built another one, you know. It was that kind of neighborhood.

INTERVIEWER:

Can you just say explicitly on camera for me that, you know, that, that, the black, that everybody got along well, Italians and blacks, we all got along well? In other words, so that we know that we're talking about racial mix.

MURIEL OUTLAW:

Well, in my neighborhood Italians and blacks, and the few Norwegians we had down the block, we all got along well together. The kids all went to school together, we all played together every day. The adults didn't socialize as much because the Italians didn't speak English. The kids spoke English in school, but they spoke Italian at home because their parents were all immigrants. None of these were first generation Americans. The kids had been born in Italy and brought here as two and three year olds. So, like we were first generation Americans, but they were all immigrants.

INTERVIEWER:

OK, how—

CAMERA CREW MEMBER #2:

Move to your right a bit for glasses' sake, Stephen.

INTERVIEWER:

Oh, over here, this way?

CAMERA CREW MEMBER #2:

Yes.

INTERVIEWER:

OK, and what about your family? Where did your family come from, and how did life around your house change after your father, you know when the Depression came on, I understand your father lost his job.

MURIEL OUTLAW:

Mm-hmm.

INTERVIEWER:

How did things change from before when he was working to when he lost his job, and how did the household change?

MURIEL OUTLAW:

Well my parents came from Barbados, which was then British West Indies. It was a colony of England. Prior to my father losing his job, I guess which is about 1937 or '36, the household was fine. It was, well we were raised as middle class kids even though we didn't have a lot of money. But my parents came here as middle class immigrants. My mother never went through Ellis Island. My father went through Ellis Island, but not my mother. After my father lost his job then, things were really tough, but fortunately I had, we had a large extended family. I had all these aunts, my father's sisters, so that—one of the things I hated was having clothes passed down. I hated it. My cousins who were all older than I was would pass down their, like their coats, or their dresses, or something, you know, and I'd have to worry about taking things up, taking things in, and I just hated wearing hand-me-downs. To this day I hate it.

INTERVIEWER:

Great, great. Well, and what about your father though, who was a very proud man, what, how did it effect him to have been, to have lost his job?

MURIEL OUTLAW:

I think he, well you have to understand that West Indian parents were, tough parents. They were cruel. In these days we probably would have called the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. They believed in, they did not believe in sparing the rod. They used the rod very frequently. I ate lots of meals off the mantel piece because I couldn't sit down. It seems to me I got whipped almost everyday of the week. But my father, became kind of withdrawn. My father was a warm, loving man, and he was no longer this outgoing. When I was little my father never went out of the house without taking me with him. I went every place with him. My mother says that's how I got diphtheria because my father took me to somebody's house where diphtheria was around. But dad became withdrawn, he didn't spend as much time with his children, and I think a lot of his cruelty came out, and I think it was partly because he no longer felt that he was doing what men are supposed to do: taking care of his household and bringing home the money, bringing home the bacon if you want to call it. But, he, there was a difference.

INTERVIEWER:

OK, great. In 1935, well let me ask you this, do you think it was any harder or easier for blacks to survive the Depression than for whites?

MURIEL OUTLAW:

I think so.

INTERVIEWER:

OK, can you refer to me whether you think it was harder for blacks than for whites?

MURIEL OUTLAW:

I know that when I came out of high school I couldn't get a job, and I came out of high school in 1938, I couldn't get a job anyplace. And finally, I went to work in the garment industry, I was punching nail heads. They were wearing dresses that had nail heads all over them. And my cousin had answered an ad and she had gone to this place, and then she got me a job there. Well she went off to college the next year and I stayed on and worked there for about a year-and-a-half, had gotten several raises-

INTERVIEWER:

OK, but now remember my question was, do you think it was any harder for blacks than for whites?

MURIEL OUTLAW:

Yes.

INTERVIEWER:

And again, incorporate my question. If you do think so, that—

MURIEL OUTLAW:

Because there were no jobs for us. Especially for women, unless you were going to do housework. When I came out of high school, I came out with an academic degree. I was supposed to go to college, but there was no money for college, and I couldn't get a job any place. Nobody was hiring black girls. The department stores didn't hire you, you know, nobody hired you. So that unless you worked in a factory or went into housework, which I did both, you didn't have, you didn't work, you stayed home.

INTERVIEWER:

Great, OK. I remember you telling me a story, and if you could tell me again the story of in 1935 when Mussolini and Italy marched on Ethiopia, how your father re—how your father reacted to that? Now remember you're living in an Italian neighborhood.

MURIEL OUTLAW:

Right.

INTERVIEWER:

—how he felt about that?

MURIEL OUTLAW:

Daddy didn't react in the street or anything, he didn't—

INTERVIEWER:

OK, now again, could you start by saying, when—

MURIEL OUTLAW:

When Mussolini bombed Addis Ababa, my father came home, it was in all the papers, you know, big headlines, and my father came home very angry, very upset, and we had pictures like \"The Blue Boy\" on the wall, and there was some other pictures, and Daddy took them all and tore them up, and he said, \"Not another white face will hang on the wall in my house.\" He was disturbed about it. But nothing was said, as I remember, in the neighborhood about Mussolini, about Ethiopia. I can't remember the Italians celebrating, or the blacks feeling, and voicing those feelings outside of their own homes.

INTERVIEWER:

OK, can you tell me a little bit about, how we doing on film? How we doing?

CAMERA CREW MEMBER #2:

We're about to roll out.

INTERVIEWER:

OK, well then—

CAMERA CREW MEMBER #2:

Change?

INTERVIEWER:

Let's just change.