Description:
Francie Pendleton talks about growing up in Oklahoma City.
Transcript:
Interviewer: Today is September 18, 2007. We’re in the downtown library in Oklahoma City and as part of the Oklahoma Voices program, we’re interviewing Francie Pendleton today. Can you tell us, Francie, when and where you were born?
Francie Pendleton: I was born in the north side of Oklahoma City, August 13, 1948, Friday the 13th.
Interviewer: Has that had any implications for the rest of your life?
Francie: I’ve always had good luck.
Interviewer: Okay.
Francie: I mean it hasn’t been bad, but my mother says that it was a good day.
Interviewer: Great, okay. Did you grow up in that side of Oklahoma City?
Francie: Yes, I grew up there and I remember my address as 506 N. Nebraska. It was the second house off the corner of Fourth Street
Interviewer: Okay.
Francie: And Eastern.
Interviewer: Fourth and Eastern, okay.
Francie: And at that particular time, the fairground was still located on Eastern, which is now Martin Luther King, in the same area where Douglas High School was. That was the original fairground.
Interviewer: Okay.
Francie: And I remember going there.
Interviewer: To the fair or to the fairgrounds?
Francie: To the fair, when I was three.
Interviewer: Could you get onto the fairgrounds when there is no fair? Was there anything to do there or was it all-
Francie: I don’t remember that. I do remember the trolley.
Interviewer: Okay.
Francie: The trolley would go back to the corner of 10th St. You would get off and it was just red mud everywhere.
Interviewer: Really?
Francie: Red dirt, yes.
Interviewer: So were the streets not paved?
Francie: They were not paved.
Interviewer: Or just that part?
Francie: Just that part.
Interviewer: So who are your parents?
Francie: My parents were Lawrence Forshee. He was from a small town out 80 miles east of here on the Creek Indian Reservation called Sand Creek, which is now one of the Oklahoma ghost towns. It was on the Creek reservation right outside of bowling.
Interviewer: Okay.
Francie: My mother was Ruthy May Murphy, she was born in Coyle, Oklahoma and grew up in El Reno.
Interviewer: And Coyle, is it out a little bit east of Langston? Sort of north of Stillwater right?
Francie: Yes, Perkins, Guthrie, yes.
Interviewer: Do you know how your family came to Oklahoma, either the Forshee’s or the Murphy’s?
Francie: My mother came by way of her mother who came to Oklahoma City for work. I’m not really sure about my dad, except that Uncle Sue moved up here. My dad was one of the first four African-Americans to be employed by Oklahoma Natural Gas.
Interviewer: Okay, interesting. Do you remember when that was roughly?
Francie: My brother was born on March 1, 1952. My dad started to work March 2.
Interviewer: Okay, neat.
Francie: That’s the easy part.
Interviewer: Yeah, it’s very easy to remember that. What kinds of things did you do for O+G?
Francie: Actually he started out as a yard man, a janitor, then he became a meter technician and worked at the meter shop upon retirement.
Interviewer: Building meters?
Francie: Yes.
Interviewer: And repairing them and things like that?
Francie: See, my grandmother, she’s a fascinating woman. She did work for Douglas Aircraft. She worked on railyards. She actually helped repair the railyards. She had a bicycle, she was such an enterprising woman. She had a bicycle and she sold ice cream off of her bicycle and everybody knew her as mother Louis. That was her name, she also had the first coin-operated self service laundromat on the east side of Oklahoma City, located on Fourth Street about four blocks from where we lived.
Interviewer: Okay, what is this, your dad’s mother?
Francie: That was my mother’s mother.
Interviewer: Your mother’s mother, okay. So are your grandparents in town then or what grandparents were around you when you were growing up?
Francie: My grandmother, we lived with my grandmother, with my mother’s mother. Everybody, her family called her Mama Maggie, so that’s how we referred to her, Mama Maggie. We lived with Mama Maggie and the memories were great. She was a fantastic cook. She was a big woman. She was probably 6’2, 6’3. I do remember she wore a size 13 shoe.
Interviewer: Wow, that’s big.
Francie: That was big. My step-grandfather was, he worked on the railroad.
Interviewer: Okay, how far is the railroad from where you lived? What is it, like the Rock island probably?
Francie: Probably, I don’t really remember, except that there was a train over the viaduct on Fourth Street so whether or not you worked off of that one, I really don’t know.
Interviewer: Okay, what did he do for the railroad?
Francie: I’m not sure of that either.
Interviewer: Okay.
Francie: He died when I was three, so I don’t really remember.
Interviewer: You don’t really remember I’m sure. What do you remember about your parents meeting? Did they meet in Oklahoma City or how did you ever hear that story?
Francie: They met through my dad’s cousin, up here, and that’s how they always referred to it as “up here” from the country. He was up here and my dad came up here and they went to a juke joint. I think that’s how he met my mom. I know that they met through cousins.
Interviewer: Okay, but a juke joint, was that on Second?
Francie: On Fourth Street, see the streets in Oklahoma City, it was its own little world at the time. Most people seem to think that the world was right on Second Street, it wasn’t. The world actually was between Fourth and Eighth Street. That was a boundary, actually. African-Americans were not allowed to go past Eighth Street, or maybe it was Ninth, but there were certain boundaries within that boundary in my neighborhood. There were at least three grocery stores and there is a church across the street. That was what my cousin says, whenever he comes from California, “In California we have a liquor store on every corner and Oklahoma, there’s a church on every corner.” Mama Maggie, by the way, was a minister.
Interviewer: Okay, wow. She really was busy.
Francie: She was busy, she was always busy. My mother got that from her and I got it from my mother. I went to Dunbar junior high school and again, over the area we had shoe cobbler’s. It’s hard to remember, there were more juke joints than you could shake a stick. There were a lot.
Interviewer: Was Fourth Street, did it have a trolley line?
Francie: No.
Interviewer: I guess it kind of stopped after World War II.
Francie: At 10, it was 10th Street.
Interviewer: Okay, and Fourth Street was paved?
Francie: Yes, well yes it was. I think it was kind of a black top. I don’t really remember, cement? I’ll have to go with blacktop.
Interviewer: What other things were along there? I knew that there was a Y on Fourth and the library. Do you remember those?
Francie: Dunbar Library, or colored library, was located on Fourth and Lincoln. It was right across the street from the doctor’s office. There were also three doctors in that area, so everything was just-
Interviewer: So that was really your Main Street?
Francie: That was our Main Street, that was our main area.
Interviewer: That’s kind of interesting because now, I know, the city is trying to get a grocery store on the north side and you had three.
Francie: Three.
Interviewer: On the main street, tell us, you said you lived with your-
Francie: Grandmother.
Interviewer: What was the house, what did it look like? How big was it?
Francie: It was a duplex. Second duplex off the corner. It was just a basic duplex, it actually was not a shotgun shack and most of the houses on the north side where I grew up were what was called shotgun shack. Are you familiar with that term?
Interviewer: I’ve heard the term. I think I know what they are but why don’t you tell me what you think it is.
Francie: A shotgun shack is when you walk into the front door and you can see straight back into the back door.
Interviewer: Okay.
Francie: Everything is located on either side, but it was not that. It was two bedrooms. I really don’t ever remember not having a telephone, a car… I grew up listening to the radio which is one of the reasons I love having people read to me. I can listen to books on tape all day long. Because I could sit there and listen to the Inner Sanctum and just had myself a field day right there.
Interviewer: Was the radio in the middle of the house like a TV is now?
Francie: Yes, and actually sit there and look at it, that was most amazing.
Interviewer: So I guess when TV came along, it was pretty natural then.
Francie: Just I’d stare and it was a smaller, smaller box. The neighborhood was full of children, full of kids. Most of the friends I have now are the friends I’ve known all my life, one of my closest friends was also a classmate. Six months older than I am, I’ve known him all my life. We had our own little small close knit community and we were separate from the suburban kids. The suburbs, it was addition, those are the people with the money.
Interviewer: Okay, well I wanted to ask you that too. Well, I’ll ask you that in a minute, but let me ask you a quick, what really was your range or your stomping grounds or whatever. You said that the district kind of ran from 2nd to 8th and then King or Eastern Walnut or something, could you go anywhere, where did you hang out?
Francie: My school, Dunbar Elementary School, was located on Sixth and Kate and I actually moved from that area when I was seven going into the second grade. In that point in time, I probably couldn’t go anywhere other than four blocks in either direction because I was still basically a little kid, but there really wasn’t much to do, except maybe on Saturday nights. We would sneak up to the corner of Fifth Street to where the real joints were. Just stand there and listen to them dance.
Interviewer: That’s interesting because, like you said, earlier the historical district and all the attention is on Second and yet you’re saying their real joints were on the Fifth. How are they different? What would you find on one that you wouldn’t find on the other?
Francie: The only thing that we didn’t have on that particular area that was on Second Street was the movie theaters. There were two movie theaters on Fourth Street. We didn’t have a movie theater in our area. We could go there if somebody was taking you, and a drugstore, but otherwise we have pretty much the same thing they had on Second Street.
Interviewer: What theaters did you go to? I know about the Aldridge and the Jewel.
Francie: The Jewel and the Aldridge, yes.
Interviewer: And you could go to those?
Francie: Ten cents, you could stay all day long. You got dropped off by the droves, you got left there on a Saturday morning. You went and you did your thing, you would stay there and parents came back and picked you up. I think that was the time to grocery shop and do whatever they needed to do without kids.
Interviewer: Yeah, have some free time, personal time, whatever. Now back to the other, you mentioned the suburbs, I was wondering what other neighborhoods were there and what was your connection or relationship to them because I know I’ve heard about Garden Oaks.
Francie: Yes.
Interviewer: Forest Park.
Francie: Oh, Forest Park, that was strictly white territory.
Interviewer: Well, which one am I thinking of? I thought there was another Forest something.
Francie: Edwards addition, Garden Oaks.
Interviewer: I might have just been thinking about, was a third Dungee neighborhood?
Francie: Creston Hill, well no it wasn’t Creston Hill. Dungee, no Dungee.
Interviewer: That was a separate kind of neighborhood.
Francie: Well, Dungee was where my grandmother’s family lived and it was at a time called Spencer and Green Pastures.
Interviewer: Green Pastures is what I was thinking of.
Francie: That was kind of a ways away. That was on 36th and Spencer Road and anytime I meet somebody who says that they’re from Green Pastures, all I have to say is, “Do you know any Johnsons?” My grandmother, Mama Maggie, was the eighth of 22 children.
Interviewer: Oh my gosh, could you even remember any of your brothers and sisters?
Francie: She could, that’s how she was. As a matter of fact, we still own the land that belonged to my great grandfather, papa, and land is not allowed to be sold outside of my family. We still retain that land when my Papa laid on his deathbed in 1952. He gathered all of his children, all of them came in, he made them promise him that they would have regular family reunions. We just had our family reunion last month in Las Vegas. We have had a family reunion the first weekend of August ever since 1956 without fail.
Interviewer: Well, it’s probably pretty large if you had 22 siblings.
Francie; It’s not as large as it is when it’s here.
Interviewer: Oh, I see.
Francie: But, it was a pretty good size. She has one brother and three sisters left out of the 22.
Interviewer: Is she still living?
Francie: My grandmother? No, my grandmother died in 1985.
Interviewer: ‘85, okay. Did you remember encountering your father’s folks very much?
Francie: Yes, that was our summer home.
Interviewer: Okay.
Francie: When we were kids, that was the first thing we did and also the kids in my area, their parents came from, it was called the Country. Somebody’s country somewhere, so you were packed up and you were sent to stay with the grandparents for the summer. We spent every summer in Sand Creek and then when my grandparents moved to Okemah to Clearview every year until I was about 13, I think that was the last I ran away.
Interviewer: Oh wait, you didn’t mention that.
Francie: I hated it there, but I ran away with my brother and my sister. I never left alone.
Interviewer: Never by yourself.
Francie: I was the oldest.
Interviewer: How do you accomplish this, you were the leader of it?
Francie: I was the leader.
Interviewer: Well, did you jump on a train? How did you get home?
Francie: We were walking.
Interviewer: You walked from Okemah?
Francie: Well, we walked back to the highway. The highway was probably half a mile from the house. That’s just how far back, we’d kind of get our butts spanked and we would just sit in a chair but yes. We would spend summer in the country.
Interviewer: Well, do you remember, are there any family stories that you used to tell? History or anything like that?
Francie: Actually, we didn’t know a lot about my dad’s family up until about four years ago. There’s an interesting story about that. My grandfather was one of the children. There were three sets of twins in that one family and two single children are two boys, which was my grandfather, two girls and a boy, and a girl. His family was from Summit or the Twin City Georgia, somewhere in George, and his dad, his mom and his dad, his mother was half-Cherokee Indian and half white.
Interviewer: Cherokee on the older side?
Francie: Yes, and my grandfather, great-grandfather, I am assuming that he was probably a slave, but I do know that my great-grandma Sarah Spamy was not.
Interviewer: Interesting, okay.
Francie: She was not by being Creek and half white. Needless to say, she met and fell in love with an extremely dark man. Nobody was happy, but it’s my understanding that my great-great grandfather, his name was Mitchell Forshee. The last name was, we pronounce it For-shee, but it’s actually pronounced For-shay, which is French. Nobody knows any more than that, can’t go any further than that, but that is part of the origin for For-shay. He was a slave and his brothers and sisters had been sold off into slavery and he discovered that some of them were in Texas, so he left my great grandmother and the kids to go find his brothers and sisters. While he was gone, he died so she had heard about the freedmen in that Boley-Clearview area. She took the eight children and got on the train and they rode the train from Georgia and the train led right directly into the middle of Boley. My grandma, who just died in March at age 92, two days before her birthday, loved to tell the story of all the kids riding the train in peppermint. Peppermint is a novelty in the African-American community. You cannot find any women, any black person, over the age of 60 who does not have a pocket full of hard, peppermint candy.
Interviewer: Why is that?
Francie: I have no idea, it’s just something you always remember. When you go in the church, when you walk in the church, that’s usually what you do. My dad, until today, before in church, he reaches in his pocket and he has a peppermint candy. He always has it, but my great aunt, she said that they were on the train and then they got to Boley, that everybody was there waiting for them. They were waiting for the novelty, three sets of twins in one family. Well, and that’s one of each possible type of twin.
Interviewer: That’s amazing.
Francie: But you really want to know what’s the amazing part?
Interviewer: Sure.
Francie: Well, this is amazing. My grandfather and his twin brother were Taff and Teddy and then there were two girls, Era and Vera, my aunt Essie and her brother Dessie. All of my grandfather’s brothers and sisters were extremely light-skinned with green, gray, or blue eyes. Every last one of them, except my Uncle Dessie, who is the twin of Aunt Essie, he was extremely dark.
Interviewer: Wow, that’s like a genetics study or something like that, to try to understand it. That’s interesting.
Francie: It really was, but he had the gray eyes. That was the novelty right there. My family was-
Interviewer: Did any of the streets get passed on through, did any of the traits get passed on through? Did the eye color get passed on through?
Francie: The eye color, almost everywhere were the eye colors, twins that was another, twins in the family. My grandfather had a twin, a set of twins, girls. His twin brother didn’t have any twin children, but he has at least two sets of twins in every generation from then on.
Interviewer: That’s amazing.
Francie: My grandfather does not have any.
Interviewer: So it got into one of them and that was it. That’s interesting.
Francie: And I’m thinking, are there any other sets of twins? One of my grandfather’s sisters who is not a twin, she just had her great great grandchildren of twins. All of the twins are boys.
Interviewer: Wow.
Francie: There are probably five sets of twins in the family, but every set are boys and they’re all identical, every last one of them have the traits. My grandfather and his twin brother were known as Big Boy and Little Boy. My grandfather was Papa Little Boy, he was the shorter of them.
Interviewer: So you even called him that?
Francie: Everybody did. He was Papa Little Boy or Uncle Little Boy, tell everybody to the whole town.
Interviewer: That’s pretty cool.
Francie: He was a character.
Interviewer: We might need to do another session on him, let’s jump back to Oklahoma City. Now, we talked a little bit about school. You told us that you had gone to Dunbar. Did you walk there?
Francie: Yes.
Interviewer: And when you moved, did you stay at Dunbar?
Francie: No, we moved, we actually moved at a time where blacks were allowed to go farther. to go farther.
Interviewer: Okay, when was that or you said you were about seven, didn’t you?
Francie: I was seven when we moved from that house. We moved to Tenth Street and my parents were saving to buy a house. They bought a house when I was nine because my sister had just been born. I was six years older than she is so they bought a house on the corner of 20th and Prospect.
Interviewer: That’s pretty far out.
Francie: Yeah, that particular school at that time was Truman Elementary and I went to school there. I finished my second grade year there. My teacher, her name was Mrs. Mary Francis Oliver. I remember this name because Miss Mary Francis Oliver was also my kindergarten teacher at Dunbar. I was named after Miss Mary Francis Oliver. My cousin actually named me because this little boy was in love with his kindergarten teacher. He wanted the baby to be named after the teacher. So the story goes my name is actually Francis, but it was never spelled Francis so that’s how it gets kind of jumbled up when I say I was named after Miss Mary Francis Oliver. I went to Truman when I was five and then we were annexed to Culberson School. That was the first time there was any action, interaction, between black students and white students. I think there were maybe six kids in my fifth grade class.
Interviewer: So this is right, I guess Brown vs. Board was around 1954, are we in that neighborhood? Then ‘54?
Francie: Yes, somewhere around then. A little bit later than that.
Interviewer: Okay, it wasn’t fully integrated, but it was somewhat-
Francie: Somewhat, because there really wasn’t a lot of black students that moved from the fairgrounds. Our area was called the fairgrounds. It was never called Fourth Street, East Side, or anything. It was always called the fairgrounds area. So there were still quite a few blacks that lived on the fairgrounds. There were still quite a few up until urban renewal came in the 60’s. Everything still existed there until the 60’s.
Interviewer: That’s what I wanted to ask you, when you moved to 20th, did you still come down?
Francie: We still came over, we still came over to the library because they wouldn’t let us in the big one yet. We still came to the library, we still came to the movies on Sundays. But by this time, I was a big girl so I didn’t want to to go to the Aldridge, I wanted to go to the Jewel but we still had interaction there. Oh by the way, there was a business school.
Interviewer: Okay.
Francie: It was called Weisener’s business school and he was located on the corner of Fourth and Stonewall I believe. Later on, my mother went to Mr. Weisener’s school and took her secretariat bookkeeping courses there. So we had her own school.
Interviewer: Okay, was she working all the time?
Francie: She was a domestic.
Interviewer: Okay.
Francie: She actually had worked in my grandmother’s laundromat for a while. Then, she worked as a domestic. My dad, up until he started working for Oklahoma Natural Gas, worked with my grandmother in the laundromat. He did the deliveries and the pick-up for the clothes and all the things. We had this station wagon with a paneling on the side, reaching back.
Interviewer: One of those Woody’s or what do you call them?
Francie: Woody’s, yes.
Interviewer: Cool and they would go around town, picking up all of it?
Francie: Picking up and delivering.
Interviewer: Did your grandmother’s laundromat only serve the African-American community or did she work to take on white clients as well?
Francie: I don’t know.
Interviewer: I mean, you could probably handle only so much.
Francie: She probably did, especially since mom worked as a domestic. She probably brought clothes home to go there, I really don’t know.
Interviewer: Then you went to, you said, Dunbar Junior High?
Francie: Elementary school.
Interviewer: Then where did you go to junior?
Francie: Moon Junior High School, which is now a part of the medical complex. It is one of the oldest existing buildings and it was actually Old Webster High School that’s right on the corner of 10th and off of Lincoln. It’s not on 10th. It’s on Park and 10th.
Interviewer: Oh okay.
Francie: Right in the middle of the medical, Moon Junior High School. It was named after F.D. Moon. They changed the name when the African-American kids came because when I went to junior high school, it was the only junior high school around so we had kids from Creston Hills, Garden Oaks, Edward’s Edition, Dunbar and Truman all going to one junior high school.
Interviewer: Okay well-
Francie: And junior high school than was 6th, 7th, and 8th.
Interviewer: Okay, and we didn’t really fully explore those other neighborhoods. Did they really mix all right?
Francie: no.
Interviewer: Okay, well tell us about that.
Francie: Of course not, the suburban kids, they were the little snobby kids. They were the little kids whose parents probably always had good jobs. Most of the people in Edward’s Edition were ex-military kids because I just found out that Mr. Edwards, when he built that edition or started working on that, he went through a government grant.
Interviewer: That’s right, GR Build Funding.
Francie: Right, so those are kids who always had the upper crust. The strangest thing about it is that my dad was never without a job. I never remember, like I said, not having a telephone. The only reason that we didn’t have a television was because we didn’t have it then. All of the things that they had, I never ever remember not having.
Interviewer: It’s just something about living in those houses with a single-family home in the yard and all that.
Francie: Yes, they made a difference. We got a piece of the American pie.
Interviewer: Okay, well where did you go to high school?
Francie: The one and only Douglass High School.
Interviewer: I thought so, what can you tell us about life in Douglass? See this would be-
Francie: 1962, my class was the first class to open to admit ninth graders at Douglass High School. When we first went to Douglass, the ninth grade class there was over 1300 kids that came into the ninth grade alone.
Interviewer: Wow, that’s big.
Francie: It was huge, I mean just the idea of going to Douglass was exciting because Douglass was the place. My mother went to Douglass and her sister went to Douglass. Her sister was a major rat, my mom dropped out of high school in the 10th grade when my grandma got sick. She needed help and by the way, one of the original Douglasses was on Sixth and High, which is called Military Hill. It was a military academy, it was a school for white kids That’s Military Hill.
Interviewer: That building is still there, it’s just-
Francie: The building is still there, it’s going to be re-renovated into a history center, but that was actually the third Douglass High School. That’s where my mom went.
Interviewer: Okay, she went to the one on High.
Francie: She went to the one on High. Her sister went to the one on Martin Luther King, but that was great. Kids loved Douglass because you had sports icons and you just had the pride of Eastside. If Douglass was known for nothing, it was known for sports and it was known for the marching band. Side note, Douglass marching band, one of our principles was J.C. Whitaker, one of the first African-American to attend West Point.
Interviewer: Wow, I didn’t know that.
Francie: His legacy was to have been drummed out of West Point when he was accused, when he was beaten, tied up, hair cut, he was accused of doing all this to himself. He was sent away from West Point and at the time, he had his degree in education. But he came as principle of Douglass High School and he was here for a year.
Interviewer: So did he bring military discipline?
Francie: he brought military discipline. He brought military precision to the marching band and the marching band was actually under his tutelage and another lady by the name of Zelia Breau. Ms. Zelia Breau was part of the Aldridge Theater. My mother talked about Ms. Zelia Breau like she was her best friend.
Interviewer: Really?
Francie: Yes, she was the music teacher and everybody loved her, but yes. The Douglass marching band was created and all of the routines and precisions and military discipline came from J.C. Whitaker.
Interviewer: Now, you said that sports and the band were the highlights there, but were you involved in any of those? Did you march in any?
Francie: I sang in the chorus. My parents, their idea was to make sure that their children, which I guess is most parents, was to make sure that their children had things that they didn’t have, that they wanted. My brother and I took piano lessons and we took horse lessons. It followed us through, my brother went on to play the organ. My mother said I unfortunately discovered boys, so I had no use for the piano, but I still sing in the choir.
Interviewer: Okay, so you can still play a little.
Francie: No, I can probably do a scale and if I sit down, I can probably figure something out. I could not read music, I tried really hard. It was terrible, but I always wanted to play the piano. I could never remember not knowing to and my brother was the same way, but he could read music a lot better than I could. It was a lot harder for me.
Interviewer: Okay, well before we get you out of high school, you mentioned at Culberson, you had limited experience with integration.
Francie: Yes.
Interviewer: Of the schools, and do you remember, I guess you would have been junior high in ‘57 or ‘58. I’m not sure when it was when Clara Luper and the other students started the sit-ins and things like that.
Francie: Oh yeah, Mrs. Luper was a neighbor to one of my grandfather’s sisters.
Interviewer: If you remember the date, you can tell it because I remember it was ‘56, ‘57, or ‘58, somewhere.
Francie: I don’t remember the date, but I do remember that my cousins who lived across the street from Mrs. Luper were babysitting me and my brother and my sister. They took us downtown to a sit-in that my mother was mad at me so that’s really about all I remember. My mom was really protective so she kind of kept us away from most of that.
Interviewer: What are some of the attitudes from your house or among your family about what was happening? I mean about the sit-ins and things.
Francie: Well, my grandmother, I believed was a lot more vocal. My mother wasn’t pretty solid. The only time I really remember my mother getting upset when it came to race, I will never forget this, is that she went to apply for a domestic job once and she had all of us in the car with her. She went to the door, to the front door, and rang the doorbell. When the lady came to the door, my mother told her she was there about the job and the lady told my mother to meet her around the back door. My mom got to the back door and the lady chastised her and told her, reminded her, that she was black and was never allowed to go to any white person’s front door. The language my mother used stuck in my mind, which we cannot repeat, and then she politely told her what she could do with her job. Then she said to us, “You always remember that you are just as good as the next guy.”
Interviewer: Now I should say I knew your mom later on-
Francie: Yes.
Interviewer: -And it sounds exactly like she would say, yes it does. So then you’re in high school and you said you discovered boys.
Francie: Yes.
Interviewer: Did you date a lot?
Francie: No.
Interviewer: Did you meet Mr. Right?
Francie: I met a lot of Mr. Wrongs. I met a lot of Mr. Right Nows. It was high school, it was fun, it was great.
Interviewer: And tell us, when you were telling me about that, what did you do on dates? What did you do on Friday nights if you remember? What was high school life like?
Francie: Well, at this time when we moved to the 20th Street house, there was a movie theater on 23rd and Lottie called the Bison Theater. That was where most of the teenagers went and that was in walking distance of the house. You went to the Bison Theater, there was a place called Bryant Center. Bryant Center at this time was really the hubbub. It was located on the east side of the highway off of 23rd that was a fantastic place. That building is still there, but it was a bowling alley, a restaurant, a skating rink, and a nightclub on the top called The Top Hat Night club.
Interviewer: Wow.
Francie: People like James Brown, the Temptations, and Tina Turner, everybody performed there and it was a great place. In those days, people dressed, I never hardly ever remember seeing my mother when she did not have on pearls. June Cleaver liked pearls. She was a clothes horse, but she always wore pearls and she always dressed. That was one of the places. I was not really allowed to go to Bryant Center, except with my parents. At this time, bowling was big. My parents were two leagues there for their children to learn how to bowl. We were in Saturday morning early. There were, in high school, the little cliques, had their clubs, so part of my little clique was, for two years in high school, I dated a swimmer. We also had championship swimming team, wrestling team, and pretty good at golf and tennis. Yes, we always played golf. Douglas has always had their own golf course.
Interviewer: Okay.
Francie: We had an Olympic-sized swimming pool and remember, we weren’t allowed to go any places so we had to have our own stuff.
Interviewer: That’s right, separate but equal.
Francie: Yes, and tennis was very popular. My brother was a great tennis player.
Interviewer: Now were all of these facilities on the old fairgrounds?
Francie: Located on the fairgrounds and I’m losing my directions, but probably to the east behind Douglass, there was this huge two-story building. We had our own vo-tech center. There was postering, bricklaying, automechanics, tailoring, I can’t imagine. There are probably six vocational subjects offered there. Cosmetology, cooking, just everything. Everything was really self-contained. We had our own little world.
Interviewer: Then, when you would go out with your friends or your clique or whatever, are you in cars? Did you cruise, were you driving?
Francie: No because actually, you know, now kids get cars in the 10th, 11th grade. Most of the kids I went to school with didn’t get cars until the 11th grade when they had to get jobs. But in a particular area across from Douglass, there was Dairy Bill directly across the street.
Interviewer: Okay.
Francie: A couple blocks down the street was Blanchard’s Drive-in, which was the place to go, Tom’s barbecue, Dunn’s Hot Dog Stand, so there were always these things for kids to gather around after football, basketball games.
Interviewer: Okay, I had another question, it slipped on me, I wanted to ask before we get you out of high school, what were holidays at your house, Christmas and Thanksgiving and most of that, like?
Francie: Food. My grandmother, like I said, was a great cook, and so is my mother. There was always food at my house and even my grandmother, my dad’s mother, my sister and I were just talking about this when we were coming from my grandparent’s hometown for the funeral. We were talking about food and my grandmother's name was Lula, so we called her Mama Lula. My sister said, “When we were kids, did you ever notice that whenever you open the bureau drawer, there were always cakes and pies?” Even if somebody came and took one, if you go back five minutes later, it had been replaced. That’s the way it was at my house. Growing up with my mother, she loved to cook so there was always food. Always people, my dad’s brothers, when they came to the city, they were always having a place to stay for a couple months until they got to find something. Ruthy May fed everybody. One of her, one of my favorites, was homemade cinnamon rolls. I always got homemade cinnamon rolls, my own pan, for my birthday.
Interviewer: That was your cake.
Francie: I didn’t want to share.
Interviewer: I remember, again I met your mom at UCO, I remember there was always something on the third-floor to eat.
Francie: She loved to cook.
Interviewer: That’s cool, okay. Do you remember, you said you were singing in high school and things like that.
Francie: Yes.
Interviewer: But do you remember, you would have been in, if you were in school during the 60s, that was kind of the Mo-town on the radio.
Francie: Yes.
Interviewer: Do you remember listening to the radio much then? What did you like, pop music, how big of a role did that play in your life?
Francie: We listened to the radio but we didn’t have a station so there was always a mixture of music. I think when it was probably 1963, a radio station opened on 23rd and Coltrane. For the life of me, at this particular moment, I can’t remember the call letters, but I was just talking about it. It was an all-black station, it was on from 6 o’clock just a couple hours.
Interviewer: Okay.
Francie: But in that frame, time frame, we listened to our own music and that was really great because it gave us another outlet. Now ‘78s were big, I never remember not having a record player. There was always music in the house. My mother loved to dance and so did my dad so there was always a party or cards. They played cards every Saturday night at somebody’s house. Being little kids, I think we kind of crawled along the floor and drank whatever it was on the glass.
Interviewer: I see, okay.
Francie: But there was always music, the very first ‘45 I ever bought was a 1964. That was the Four Tops.
Interviewer: What kind of things did they play on the radio station, was it only pop or did they have to sppeal to a wider range?
Francie: No, they didn’t. It was only African-American music.
Interviewer: Okay.
Francie: It was our first station.
Interviewer: Great.
Francie: The DJ at the time was a man by the name of Ben Tipton. He was called the Tall Man. He was extremely tall and he had this deep baritone voice. Ben Tipton went on to open a disk jockey school at the station. I can’t remember, I wish I could remember, and kids in high school that I went to high school with flocked to the place. He probably trained maybe 15 or 20 kids from the school. All of these children went on to be DJs or disk jockeys of some kind on the radio station. There was a special that was just done on him at the history center in May.
Interviewer: Okay, I think I've seen that display or something related to that at the center.
Francie: And when he passed away, the radio station did a whole day's tribute to Ben Tipton the Watash was how he did his ending. His ending was, “This is the Watash, put a candle in the window, Mama, the Tall Man is coming home.” That ended every show.
Interviewer: So when you were in high school, a senior or whatever, what did you see in front of you? Did you have goals, did you have plans?
Francie: At one point, I wanted to be an architect. When I discovered I had to know math, I changed my mind and then I thought about sociology. I was always good at art, so I had a chance for an art scholarship. I did get an art scholarship, but by this time by Senior high school, I just wanted to get married and have babies. So that was the end of the dream until I realized that there is life after babies.
Interviewer: Well, how did you meet your husband? Did you start working right out of high school then? Where did you meet him in high school?
Francie: No, actually I’ve been married twice. My first husband was my high school sweetheart. He was a football player and we married two months out of high school, had a big wedding. After that, my mother swore she’d never give another kid a big wedding. She told my brother and sister that she would pay for them to elope and she did. She paid us all to go to Las Vegas so my sister could get married. But I married my high school sweetheart and a year later, we had our first child. Three years later, we had our second.
Interviewer: Okay.
Francie: And then we divorced and then I met my second husband on a blind date.
Interviewer: Who set that up?
Francie: My girlfriend was dating his friend, a friend of his, and they were truck drivers. My husband was actually from Ohio and he had just come through and was going to work for a couple months. Then, he was going to go to California to visit his mother and stay there for a while, then we met.
Interviewer: Okay, and you’ve been married ever since?
Francie: No, they don’t act right, have to replace them.
Interviewer: Okay, alright.
Francie: But I’m looking so-
Interviewer: Just clearing up the details.
Francie: But I have three wonderful kids, so everything worked out just fine. I’m friends with my ex-husband. I lost my first husband, he died a couple years ago.
Interviewer: You stayed in contact with him?
Francie: I stayed in contact with him, I still tend to contact his family. I’m going to the family reunion next week. I just talked to the sisters last week. His dad, before he passed, still called me daughter.
Interviewer: That’s great though, for the kids and grandkids. I wanted to ask you too, since you brought up urban renewal earlier, do you remember when it came to the northeast side or are you still living there?
Francie: Yes, in fact our house was bought up.
Interviewer: This was the 20th and Prospect house?
Francie: The 20th and Prospect house was bought. I was married and away from home by that time.
Interviewer: Yeah this would’ve been ‘68, ‘70?
Francie: ‘67.
Interviewer: ‘67, okay.
Francie: They wanted to buy the property and put a park on that side. There’s a park, Riley Pitts Park.
Interviewer: Okay, he was a Vietnam veteran vet.
Francie: My parents moved to Springlake Drive, which is off Forest Park. They were expanding. I personally think urban renewal was one of the worst things that ever happened to Oklahoma City.
Interviewer: Okay, do you want to tell why?
Francie: Because it’s destroyed a lot of beautiful buildings, destroyed the history of Oklahoma City, which is why now, you scramble to find old pictures to see what life used to be like here. I've never in my life gone to any major city and not found a main street that went from one end to another. This was the only one where you got a stopping point. There are no shops, there’s nothing. Urban renewal destroyed the black community as we know it.
Interviewer: That’s what I wondered, when did you start seeing changes on Fourth and things like that?
Francie: During urban renewal? All those people, most of the people were basically forced out to be homeless because a lot of people didn’t own their own homes. They were rented, so when the landlord was ready to sell, they were just out on the cold.
Interviewer: Right.
Francie: And along with that went Dunbar library.
Interviewer: Yeah, it was the widening of Lincoln that took that out.
Francie: Yes.
Interviewer: So where did you live then? After you said you had, after you got married, you left 20th and Prospect of course. Where did you move after that?
Francie: My husband and I moved to 12th and Walnut, which is right in the middle of the science and math school.
Interviewer: Oh, yeah okay.
Francie: Beautiful, old Renaissance apartment houses. I loved it. I love that place, we lived there and then we had our first child when we moved a little bit farther. Then, we bought our first home over by Northeast High School, where we bought our home because I’m still there.
Interviewer: Okay, so that area wasn’t affected then by them.
Francie: No because at that time, a little bit before that, Dr. Dial had to sue the school board to get his son into Northeast School board because Northeast was off-limits. I’m thinking that it was probably in ‘65 because a lot of my classmates that didn’t graduate from Douglass went to Northeast.
Interviewer: So that was when the schools were officially integrated then, but weren’t being practiced.
Francie: Right, because they were still so far away.
Interviewer: Right there became neighborhood schools since the neighborhoods weren’t mixed.
Francie: Because we walked to school. There were no school buses, I don’t really remember when there was a school bus because we always walked to school. Rain, sleet, or snow, we walked to school.
Interviewer: And it had to be at least a mile from there.
Francie: Yes, but when you walk in a group, you really don’t notice it.
Interviewer: That’s true, even if it’s two people and you’re talking. You can cover quite a bit.
Francie: Really don’t notice. These kids nowadays, they’re so spoiled.
Interviewer: Where did you work in your adult life?
Francie: I worked, actually my very, very first job, I worked at a nursing home. I worked there for two and a half hours because that’s a terrible place to work. I didn’t really realize until later that when people get old and sick, they get mean. They don’t get mean because they wanted to get mean, they get mean because they are sick. At the end of that two and a half hours, when I took my break, I left and went home and never came back. That was it, I couldn’t stand it and then I went and I got a job through Urban League at the Downtown Library as a part-time page. I went to work there and I worked there from eight to noon and then from one to five, I worked in the basement of the Downtown Library in the tech-processing department. I worked there for a year and then I got a job at Arthur Andersen and Company and I worked with Arthur Andersen as a file clerk. I was there for three years until I had my third child and my husband thought... he had a good job, he thought it would be good for me to stay at home, so I tried it and I discovered I love my kids, but I didn’t like them for 24 hours a day. I went back to work. I had been in contact with Dwayne Meyers, who was at the time, the director or associate director. I had stayed in touch with Dwayne and he had called me and asked me if I wanted to come work part time to take care of maternity leave at Northeast High School. I mean, Northeast Library, which was only seven blocks from my house and actually across the street from my parents.
Interviewer: This is different from the Dunbar library right?
Francie: Right, this is when Dunbar closed and reopened in the Northeast Shopping Center. I thought this is a good deal, I could actually walk to work from home. I went to work there and I was there for two months when he asked me if I wanted to come to work full-time. I jumped on it and that’s been 35 years ago. I haven’t looked back.
Interviewer: Wow, that’s great.
Francie: It’s been quite a ride.
Interviewer: We’ll have to interview again sometime about the library.
Francie: Oh, okay.
Interviewer: Because we’re getting close to time here, but I want to hear about that.
Francie: Great.
Interviewer: I think in 35 years, you might have a story or two.
Francie: I’ve got a few.
Interviewer: Okay, well do you have any words of wisdom or anything? Sometimes I like to say that this is a letter from you to your descendants, you know, your great grandchildren and things like that. They can listen back to hear their ancestors speak, do you have anything, any messages for them or words of wisdom perhaps?
Francie: No, not really. No I don’t. I just basically believe that your life is your legacy or maybe it’s like the dash between the time you’re born and the time you die. Just make good use of your dash.
Interviewer: Okay.
Francie: That’s it.
Interviewer: Is there anything that I didn’t ask you for, that you would be interested in sharing or anything like that?
Francie: No, you know, I love to talk, but it didn’t talk much.
Interviewer: Okay, well I had an interesting interview and I really appreciate it.
Francie: Thank you, I really appreciated it to sit down and the words start to flow, don’t they?
Interviewer: They do, they really do.