Description:
Sandra Richards talks about life in Northeast Oklahoma City.
Transcript:
Interviewer - Dwee Williams
Interviewee - Sandra Richards
Dwee Williams - Today is September the 5th, 2007, and I’m Dewee Williams. We’re here in Oklahoma City, and I’m interviewing Sandra Richards. Ms. Sandra, would you like to tell us a little bit about you?
Sandra Richards - I can tell you that I’m an Oklahoma City woman. I grew up here in what we call the Old Fairgrounds. I was born here, born at University Hospital, which was the place that poor folks went to because they didn’t have money for the private rooms and so forth, and University Hospital was like a community service hospital at that time. It was a teaching hospital. I remember people saying that. Because you wouldn’t necessarily be seen by doctors, but you would be seen by the students, you know, by interns and so forth. So we were all basically born at University Hospital.
DW - Everybody was born at University Hospital?
SR - Uh-huh, at that time, 1948.
DW - Ooh, 1948, was that a good year?
SR - It was a very good year, yes.
DW - Tell me what the old fairgrounds area was like.
SR - The old fairgrounds community…
DW - Community.
SR - And it was indeed... in the true sense of the word, a community, that community was...I would call it the heartthrob of the Eastside. And the reason I use that terminology is because we could basically...we were basically self-sustaining at that time, when I was a kid, growing up in the area. The only time that I..in my small world, knew that people went outside of the area, and I mean to take the bus to go downtown...say was if you had a job outside of the area downtown, but for your everyday kinds of needs, things that people commonly these days might go to the mall for, or you might get in your car and drive 5 miles to get to, those things were already within the community of what we called “The Fairgrounds.”
DW - What are the boundaries of the area that you call the Fairgrounds community?
SR - Now, specifically, I can’t say exactly what the boundaries are, but I will tell you the boundaries that I’ve established for my project, and I’ll tell you why I’ve established those boundaries. I’m talkin’ about the area from northeastern, what used to be called Northeastern, now called Martin Luther King Boulevard. But the area starting at Eastern and going West to Lottie and then starting at Northeast 3rd street and then going North to 7th street, and when I talk with people, they often ask me well why’d you stop after 7th street? We had businesses on 8th street. We had businesses beyond Lottie and so forth, and I say yes I know that we did, but the focus of this particular project is the Old Fairgrounds, and, when you go beyond 8th street and go beyond Lottie, you go into kind of a different social strata, the upper-middle class people
lived, the upper professional-type people lived beyond those boundaries basically, and so when you got to 8th street, you were, what they call movin’ on up [laughs].
DW - [laughs] movin’ on up?
SR - Uh-huh, you were movin’ on up when you got to 8th street, or when you got beyond Lottie, you were again, movin’ on up. You were moving into kind of a different social strata, and also you would be going to a different school, so there were kind of seen and unseen boundaries that were pretty much already in place when I was comin’ up, so that’s why I call...put my focus just for that area.
DW - Can we back up a little bit? Do you have a title for your project? And then, tell me a little bit about, where the idea for this project came from.
SR - I do. Okay, there. Okay, I’d be delighted to tell you. The working title that I’m using for this project is the Northeast 4th Street project: Collecting Memories. The end title of it is going to be The Street Where We Used to Live and subtitled the Old Fairgrounds. And with regard to where the idea for it came from, I was...it was in 2001, and I was in Norman standing in front of the performing arts theatre. I had taken my baby girl there for her Saturday dance classes. And standing with me was Bruce Fischer, who is one of the administrators at the Oklahoma History Center. And Bruce and I had been friends from….I would say before he became Mr. Fischer *laughs*, for many years, and we’ve just kind of, we were reminiscing about that, about working with Rosie turner and some other people that were known back in the day in Oklahoma City, and he was waiting for his wife, Sharon to come out of the music theatre, she was at a meeting or something, across the street, and we were watching the OU Homecoming parade,
but...through all this noise and banter, so forth, he was telling me about the many items that he had accumulated, that he had collected for the history center, and this was before the ground was broken, I believe at that time for the center, and he talked...he spoke of, I believe, one of his special jobs was to collect the black-american historical items for the museum, and he was having great success at doing that, and he told me about the items he had gotten from Oklahoma City, some different items for Northeast 2nd street, which is the Deep Deuce, which has a history on its own for having been an outstanding black entertainment capitol for the East side. And he said that he had doughbellys shoe shine stand and doughbellys...the door that used to be in front of his, behind his stand, and he was talking about all of these fabulous items, and I said...I asked him, I said well Bruce what do you have from the old Fairgrounds? And he said what? I said what do you have from Northeast 4th street? He said nothin’. He said, but why would I have anything from Northeast 4th Street? And I said, well Bruce...I was just amazed. I said Bruce, I said the old Fairgrounds, I said that was where we all used to live. And I said, I said you...weren’t you able to talk to anybody? Nobody mentioned it to you? He was at a loss for why we were even talking about that area, and I remember that area as the place where I grew up, and I was a pretty old kid before I stepped outside of that area. You know, I was a pretty old kid before I had a need to step outside of that area. And so he said...he said no I don’t have anything. I said well aren’t you gonna try to get anything? I just got kind of…..you gonna try to get anything? And he said...he said no? He said, why don’t you do it? And I thought to myself, you know *scoffs* the idea, you know, just went past my head, I thought *scoffs* you know, no way, and so...and that was the planting of the seed. That was in 2001. Well, then let’s fast-forward to….I’m gonna say perhaps 2006, five years later. I began to get information about people who I knew who were writing books. And I’m gonna say that one of the people that was also an inspiration to me was Dwee Williams...you know her? *laughs*
DW - *laughs* Yes.
SR - Well, you were indeed an inspiration to me because I knew you as a friend, as a confidant, as you were just...to me...a regular person. I can’t say that there is nothing outstanding about you because there is everything outstanding about you. But you had written this book, and it’s not the first one. I know you’ve written others, but this particular one, I actually had a chance to get my hands on one day at the gym. You had it layin’ on the counter at the gym, is where we work out, and I got a chance to look through that book, and then I also noted that one of my classmates, Joyce Jackson was the artist for that book, so again, these are people I know. It’s not like you’re sitting’ there watchin’ Oprah, and she’s talking’ to you about….about somebody you don’t know who she wants you to know. This is somebody I already know. It’s somebody local for me, and then I got a notice in 2007, this year, I got a notice….somebody sent me an email about the black artist of Oklahoma. It wasn’t just Oklahoma, there were other areas too, but the Black artist seminar that was being held here at Ralph Ellison, and I came down that day, and I met some more people that I knew. A young lady that I had gone to church with, she’s just a couple of years older than my baby, and she had her booth space here, and she had several of her books on display and purchase, and I looked at her books, and she autographed it for me. First thing I do with a book is to see not necessarily if it was self-published, but to see if it was authenticated by having the library code and all of those essential things on it that kind of bonifay it, make it bonafide, and her book was. And another young lady, a very young lady who had written a book of poetry, and her book was, it was a real book. You know, you could go to the library and look it up. You could go online and purchase it. And I just, these kinds of things just started falling all around me. And I was just encouraged to...well maybe it’s time for you to start to maybe start thinking about doing something on that project, and then I began to think everybody that, whenever I ran into people that grew up in the area, and there are a lot of them that are still here. They didn't go anywhere, they left and they came back, but when I, when I began to...whenever I would talk to...sit down and talk to them or just in
passing or even just a few words with them. If they grew up in the Fairgrounds, they always go back. They always talk about it. They always bring up, well you remember when…
DW - Of course.
SR - You know, and it’s important to me because those memories are important to them. If you lose your memories, then what do you have? And they would always recall back in the day and back in that time, and so I was pumped. Okay, then I went to...this was maybe the [coupe de gras]. There’s a general store called Boone’s general store. It’s right next door to Java Dave’s on Northeast 10th. And they were having a book signing. Somebody sent me an email. Low and behold, this book signing was for a young lady who had written a book called Buck, entitled Buck and subtitled Stories from Boley, Oklahoma. And, as you know, Boley, Oklahoma is one of the still-existing all black towns in the state of Oklahoma. And this young lady, she grew up in Boley, well she started out in Boley, and then in Elementary school, her family moved to Oklahoma City, but her parents grew up in Boley, and throughout the years, they had always related stories to her growing up in Boley, and she wrote a book. She said it's a fictional book. I think it may be somewhat fictional, but it has a lot of facts about the Boley of that era, when Boley was a boomtown, and she had taken the time. It took her five years. I asked her, I said, how long did it take you to do this? She said it took me five years. I said, well what inspired you to do that? She said, well people always told that I was a good writer. That I could write things that I wrote well. And she said, one night she had a dream, and her father was talking to her about Bully, and it just became the idea for her to write a book about it. And so she was having a book signing at Boone’s general store, and that was just enough for me to...and after I got to talkin’ to her, I told her, I said I’m encouraged. She said, uh-huh? She said, oh you’ve been trying to write something? I said, I haven’t been, but I’m going to.
DW - You mentioned memories as a part of your subtitle. Do you remember your address that you grew up?
SR - You know, I remember the very last address at the old Fairgrounds on the Eastside, and it was 320 and a half North Jordan, and it was...I remember that it was a brand new duplex that had been built, and we lived on the side… we had a...there was one apartment in the front, and then we were on the side of that apartment, but it was a duplex. We were on the side. It was a two bedroom duplex, and it was a step up from where we had come from, which was what they call a shotgun house.
DW - What’s a shotgun house?
SR - A shotgun house is a house where all the rooms, where there’s….you can see from the front door all the way to the backdoor, straight-through, like a shotgun. And so you’re living spaces on either side of that shot gun, and so we had the living room. We had the bedroom, dining room, breakfast room in the middle, and then on one side was the bathroom, and then at the very end of that was the little kitchen, tiny little...all the space was tiny space, and my brothers and I slept on a sleeper sofa, so you let it back up i the daytime, you had room, you know?
DW - How many brothers?
SR - I have two brothers.
DW - Two brothers, what are their names?
SR - Their names are Edward David Curtis, he’s my oldest brother, he’s a year younger than I am and Dennis Lotaris Curtis, he’s my baby brother, he’s two years younger than I am.
DW - So you guys were stairsteps?
SR - We were stairsteps, mmhhm. And these pictures are from...when I look at these, it takes me right back to the Fairgrounds because this was the studio for our area. There were other black photography studios further down Fourth Street or in another area outside of the Fairgrounds, but in the Fairgrounds area, Mr. Hooker’s studio was where we went. Mr. Hooker, now, his real name really is Mr. Hooker, had one arm *laughs* and he always had his suit coat pinned up over that one arm, but if you look in the background, you’ll see the backgrounds are all the same, virtually, just different areas of it, but that’s because we took all of our pictures at Mr. Hooker’s studio, and he was located between Northeast 6th Street and 7th Street on Bath, a street called Bath avenue.
DW - Tell us about your parents. Are they originally from Oklahoma?
SR - My parents are originally from Oklahoma. They grew up in a little town called Gary, Oklahoma, and Gary, Oklahoma is about 45 miles or so West of Oklahoma City, just on the other side of El Reno, and my mother was born in Sayer, Oklahoma, and when she was a young, little girl, her family moved to Gary. Now my father’s family was already in Gary. My mother’s name is Helen Jo Hill Arthur, and my dad’s name was King David Curtis, yes well King
David Curtis Junior *laughs* and so...but yes they met in Gary, Oklahoma, and I’m not sure where they, they probably came to Oklahoma City and got married. I really can’t remember, but they were [in Gary]. We went to Douglas High School in Gary, Oklahoma, and it was segregated, of course at that time, and so they were in...we went to the black high school in Gary, Oklahom.
DW - But they raised their family in the Old Fairground area?
SR - In the Old Fairgrounds area. I remember my mother saying that when I was born, that they lived on Northeast 6th...Northeast 36th Street off of Eastern, and you know where the National Guard [aury?] is?
DW - Yes.
SR - At one time, there was residential...it was a residence, and my mother worked in the house, my dad worked outside the house, and they lived in a room like above the garage in the back of the house, and that’s where they were when I was an infant.
DW - So that’s where you started?
SR - Yes *laughs*
DW - *laughs* Your Old Fairgrounds project...so why is it important to do this project anyway?
SR - Well, for one thing, and I know this is really elite, but in my mind, I thought about a man who was really dealing with the history of the state of Oklahoma and of Oklahoma City also not having any knowledge of not really knowing that the Old Fairgrounds had once been important to us. As far as I know, there’s never been anything written, and I’m making this a broad statement, because maybe there is, and I haven’t found it yet, but nothing written with regard to growin’ up in the Fairgrounds. As part of this project I’m gonna be doin’ and researching and collecting memories, I wanted to focus on the black-owned and black-operated businesses that used to exist in the area that we called the Old Fairgrounds. On this map here, and this is to show you how...to give you an example of how vital the area was. This is one street, this is one street...Northeast 4th Street from Eastern over to Lottie, stopped at a street called Massachusetts, which was a little short street in that section of the city, but from Eastern over to Massachusetts, these little, those little strips there with the names, those are businesses that existed just on Northeast 4th Street alone. I haven’t gone to... I haven’t gone to 5th Street. I haven’t gone to 6th Street. I haven’t gone to 7th Street, and I haven’t crossed over to 8th street, but on this one street alone, there’s over 30 businesses. 30. Businesses. Between Easter and Massachusetts. That’s 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9….9 blocks. Can you imagine?
DW - 9 blocks. What were some of the businesses?
SR - Some of the businesses that were black owned and operated, that were black owned properties, a lot of different apartment buildings, rooming houses, people with...people had purchased large homes, and they had...they would rent out rooming spaces in some of the houses, so there were black owned apartment...apartment buildings, and rooming houses. Of course, there were the churches. And, of course, there were barbershops. And there were beauty shops, I’m talkin’ about...I want to talk about Tip Top beauty salon. I talk about that one
because Tip Top beauty shop was where I used to go to get my hair done, and the next door to Tip Top Beauty Shop was John Brown’s Tailor Shop and Cleaners. On the other side that was Mr. Robinsons upholstery shop. Across the street from that and on the corner was what was called Silver Star Sundry. It was an ice cream shop. It was the drug store. It was owned my Mr. and Mrs. Brooks. Now, facing that street, on the other side of the street, on the corner was St. Mary’s [unintelligible] church. Next door to that was [Hydra’s] grocery store. That was where my mother worked. Next door to her was Ms. Rose’s snow cones. Ms. Rose lived in the back, and the little snow cone place was in the front, and she shaved that ice and made those snow cones and poured that syrup *laughs*. That’s how we would get our snow cones.
DW - How much did a snow cone cost?
SR - Girl, a nickel.
DW - A nickel.
SR - A nickel, and I mean it was a real snow cone. You know that, you know that it was.
DW - How much did it cost to get your hair done?
SR - I don’t remember because you know I could care less, I just wanted to get it done, and it only happened on rare occasions because I had nappy hair, okay, and it….my mother would get my hair done in the summertime, and I lived...I’m gonna say half a block from Tip Top beauty shop, and I would go and get my hair done, and, by the time I walked home…*laughs*
DW - *laughs* What had happened?
SR - My mother would be angry because I would have sweat all the curls out, and my hair would have gone back *laughs* so that was….I got that done on rare occasions. It was very special for my mother to send me there. Otherwise, she would do my hair herself. But some of the other businesses….there was the first coin-operated laundromat on the Eastside was in that area, so it was on Northeast 4th Street. There, of course, was Sandwich shops….You know, we talked about today, we would go...we’re gonna do a fast food thing, we’re gonna go to Mickey D’s or Burger King or Sonics, or any one of those other places. Well, if you were gonna do a fast food thing, and weren’t gonna do your own cooking, you would go to one of the many eating places that you could go to in the Fairgrounds area, and really in any predominantly black neighborhood, there’s gonna be places where you can just go to a restaurant, and eat, so of course we had the soul food. We had what we call today soul food restaurants, but you had your burger shops, your hot dogs, your….the things that...Oh! Your Cherry Cokes, okay buncha drive-ins, had to get your Cherry Cokes, you know, so they had all of those kinds of places. You had plumbers. You had garages. You had the old folks home, they called it the old folks home, which of course was a nursing home, you know, and cleaners. Had a couple of cleaners, you had several grocery stores, variety stores. Now, I would love to research, to get information on what was contained in the variety store. You know, it had gift shops. There were record shops. You name it.
DW - All along 4th Street?
DR - In that area, all along 4th Street, so you got that goin’ on on 4th Street. So what did you have on 5th Street? On 5th Street, you had the pool halls, the gamblin’ shacks and other little corner grocery stores. You had seamstresses. My mother was a seamstress, so very seldom did anything that we wear come from a store. Everything was made, and on these pictures you see here, my mother made all of those, you know the suits for the boys, well not the jeans, but see the suit that Taurus is wearing, the little skirt, this was a man’s suit once upon a time. So my mother, she was a good enough seamstress to make anything, and that there, she made that outfit that she’s wearing and the hat because she made hats too.
DW - And the hat?
SR - She made everything! Yeah, so...but she was a seamstress for other people, and where would she go for her sewing, if she didn’t make it herself? She would go to another seamstress, and that seamstress’s name...it just amazes me that I remember…her name was Rose Warner, and her business….her place of business, which was a part of her home, and a lot of the businesses that were established were like that. They were part of the home, but her business was on Northeast 3rd Street off of [Kellum], and [Kellum] is one of those main streets...let’s see...there we go. Kellum is one of those main streets right there in the heart of the Fairgrounds.
DW - Well, how long do you anticipate it taking for you to complete this project?
SR - I don’t really know how long it’s going to take, but I have settled a timetable for myself
DW - What’s your timetable?
SR - I want to do...I want to do...I would love to do the interviews up through about mid-year of next year, and then after that time, I would like to start compiling the information that I’ve gathered, the research I’ve done, the end result that I’m hoping...I’m not even gonna say hoping for, but the end result will be a published book reflecting the old Fairgrounds, the street where we used to live, the area that we came up in, so that it will no longer be a lost part of people’s memories of this city. You know, when I think back, I look at the downtown area that urban renewal went through and revitalized and all of these different things, I look at that area, yet I can still see some areas that they preserved, some things that they preserved, so you can, when you go downtown, you can remember, oh yes this is the go-cart building, this is, you know, the liberty bank building, whatever, you can still go down there and see some remnants of what used to be there and recognize it. Some of the streets have been changed a little bit, but basically there Broadway, there’s Main Street, there’s Robert S. Kerr, there’s Sheridan, there’s Reno. Those are still there. So the core of downtown is still there. When you go over to the Stockyards, when you go over to the Stockyards and go down in that area, they have taken the time to preserve some parts of that old street, the old main street down in the Stockyards area. When you go over in the southwest side, you still see remnants of things that they have reserved on the southwest side. You still see that on the northwest side. You see that whole northwest area that’s now a historical preservation area that they chose not to destroy, but when you come down to the old Fairgrounds, you can’t even recognize the streets. The names of the streets have been changed *laughs* it’s just….it just drives a stake through my heart. The businesses, all those businesses that I mentioned, are no longer there. I’m not gonna say...well that’s just a shack there. They are not there! They don’t exist. It’s as if they never were, and, to me, for your history, to be razed...like R-A-Z-E-D like that...it’s like razing you, it’s like you didn't exist, and it just gives me the chills, and so I have to revitalize that area, so that one day they
can go get a book, somebody and go get a book, they can look at the old Fairgrounds, they can check that area out, and they’ll know what once was there.
DW - Do you have access to photographs?
SR - I don’t have access yet, but I know that someone has some photographs. There was a...there’s a man who was a local photographer, and I know he’s not the only one. His name is Mr. Miles. And that’s the best that I know to call him, and I hear that he’s perhaps in his late ‘70s or ‘80s. Mr. Miles took a picture of the upper end of Northeast 4th Street over by Aldridge, there over Jewel theatre on Northeast 4th off of [unintelligible] or Lindsey. Anyway, he took a picture of that end of Northeast 4th Street, and he’s gonna make that...a copy of that picture available to me, I think he says he has maybe two or three pictures of that end of 4th Street, but, I feel like if I put the call out, put a public call out, then I’m gonna be able to get some pictures. Also, a valuable resource is going to be the Black Dispatch, and I haven’t had a chance to do the research in that area yet either, you know, going through those papers from that era, but there are some resources out there. I’m gonna be able to get something.
DW - What do you...what do you want us to know about the Fairgrounds?
SR - I think one of the most important things that I want...I want people to know, as if it’s all brand new to them and I want people to remember because they lived it is the vitality, the pride, the energy, the innovations, that people had back in that day where they were not...seemingly not afraid. You know, it takes a brave person to go into business...to go into business for themselves, and these were people who had enough courage to go into business for themselves. That’s why I’m focusing on those business owners, those property and real estate
owners. They had what it took to get that kind of thing going in that area. You know, we were supposed to have been poor people, but, like I said, Northeast 4th Street alone had over 30 businesses operating there. They were legal enough to be listed in the Oklahoma City insurance directory. That means they were insured. That means they were legal. You understand? That’s one street in the Fairgrounds area, but that shows a people that’s determined to me. Today, it’s difficult to see that determination. Here and there in spots, but to see it in the Fairgrounds, in the old Fairgrounds area, it was as if it were a unified effort because so many people thrived right there in the Old Fairgrounds.
DW - In the Old Fairgrounds area….so when this project gets completed, you will have accomplished…
SR - Whew, that’s kind of a...well I will have accomplished probably a couple of personal goals. One of them, as I said, to inform the public of something that we have, we may not be using it now, we may not be using it today, but we’re capable, I believe, of so much more that we’ve been doing in this day and time and doing as a group of people, doing as a people...doing as a people, but I will have accomplished writing a book, rather than talking about it. I got a lot of friends that say “I could write a book...you know what, you should write a book. I oughta write a book.” You know, and I don’t know how many times I have heard that, and I continue to hear it. I will have counted the personal goal of actually accomplishing that task of actually writing that book. I hope that it will be a book that is worthy of getting some kind of recognition because that’s going to be one of my goals, that it be a book that’s recognized in the history of the city of Oklahoma City.
DW - And then you’ll take your book to Mr. Fischer and say, “you challenged me, and…” *laughs*
SR - I really want him to know...I really want him to know that...there was an analogy that he gave me, that he spoke...when he told me...when he put the ball in my court, and I will never forget it except I don’t have the exact wording of that analoge, but I can give you the thought behind it, and he said that the world will never know the...will never hear the story of a lion...will never hear the lion’s side of the hunt unless the lion writes his own story. The world will never hear the lion’s side of the hunt unless the lion writes his own story. We always hear about the hunter. But he was saying, then it’s time for you to write your own story. Don’t wait for somebody else to do it.
DW - You’re the lion.
SR - I’m the lion.
DW - You’re the lion.
SR - Writing my story.
DW - Is there anything else you want to share with us?
SR - That would be just about it. I do want to say that, the timing of this particular project could not have been better than for it to come together right now. The seed was planted in 2001. I began to get inklings that I was about to do something in 2005 and 2006. In 2007, which is a
centennial celebration for the state of Oklahoma, they have this project that they’re kicking off called Oklahoma Voices. In Oklahoma Voices, you get a chance to have your story recorded. You receive a copy of the tape, and a copy of...the master of that tape goes into the oral history, the archives for the state of Oklahoma! How excellent could that be? It’s perfect. It’s perfect for them, and it’s perfect for me.
DW - Thank you.
SR - You’re welcome.