Description:
Hazel Frazier talks about her Native American heritage, and living in Oklahoma City.
Transcript:
Interview with Hazel Frazier 11/13/07
Interviewee: Hazel Frazier
Interviewer: Melba
Interview date: 9/11/07
Interview location: Ralph Ellison Library
Transcription Date: 7/9/20
Transcribed By: Alex Hinton
Melba (M): Good morning Ms. Frazier, how are you today?
Hazel (H): I’m doing just fine. How are you Melba?
M: I’m doing just fine. We want to thank you for participating in our centennial project, Oklahoma Voices.
H: Okay, well I’m happy to be part of it.
M: Well, just relax and let your personality come through. Tell us your name.
H: My name is Hazel Morris Frazier.
M: And your birth date?
H: August 29th, 1951.
M: And our relationship?
H: Our relationship, we’re sisters in Christ.
M: And we’re in the choir together.
H: Yes, we are.
M: Where are we? Where are we located?
H: On the corner of Martin Luther King, and NE 23rd, at the Ralph Ellison Library.
M: Hazel, where were you born?
H: I was born here in Oklahoma City.
M: And where did you grow up?
H: Here in Oklahoma City. [laughs]
M: What was that like?
H: To me, it was fun. It really was. I enjoyed it.
M: Who were your parents?
H: My parents were Sylvester and Louise Morris.
M: What were your parents like?
H: [She considers for a moment]. They were versatile, both of them, but…I had to go to a therapist and she told me, “You grew up in a lot of love, and that’s mostly what you’re missing.” So, my parents taught us how to love one another.
M: What did you remember about your parents? What’s a memory that you would like to share with us about them? What stands out in your mind when you think about them?
H: Well my mom, she’s like you said. I was the baby and I was nurtured and pampered, and "Don’t do that, girl,” stuff like that. I could get away with it with my dad. That’s the difference [both laugh].
M: You didn’t get away with—
H: Not’s not to say—we had rules. Even though I had older sisters and brothers, I still couldn’t get away with what I wanted to do. Yeah, we still had rules.
M: Thank heaven. Would you want to name all your brothers?
H: My brothers? I had two. I had an older brother named Myers Andrew Vickers, and I have another brother named Charles Earl Vickers.
M: And could you name your sisters?
H: I have an older sister. Her name is Catherine Coulter Dates, and I have a second older sister that passed from pancreatic cancer. Her name was Bernadine Vickers. Then we had Joyce Vickers. Then we had myself. I was the baby, Hazel.
M: Where did you go to school?
H: My mother and them used to live off of South Robinson, and I remember going to an elementary school called Riverside, that was down off of SW 13th and Robinson. And we used to go to a little church up there on the corner called Cook’s Chapel. It was an AME church, and we used to walk up there to church.
M: Do you remember what your address was when you went to Cook’s Chapel and Riverside, your residence address?
H: [Long pause] No.
M: If you can’t, we’ll come back to it.
H: All I know is that is was on SW 13th. Then, after my mom after my mom was financially able, we moved to the east side in 1958 and it was NE 13th by then. Yeah, I guess it was because we lived on SE 13th.
M: Y’all like 13th street? And then you lived down on NE 13th. Do you remember that NE 13th address?
H: Yes. The address is 2021 NE 13th.
M: Do you remember your grandparents?
H: Yeah. I didn’t have grandfathers, except for one. My brothers and sisters had a grandfather, and he claimed me as being his and I grew up in love with him also. He was the minister.
M: What was his name?
H: His name was Myers Lee Vickers.
M: And where was he a pastor?
H: He was the pastor of Allen Chapel AME Church for fifty-three or fifty-eight years. A pretty good while.
M: You know Allen Chapel has paid special tribute to Reverend M.L. Vickers. What have they done to preserve his memory at Allen Chapel?
H: For one thing, they put an educational sign on the side of the church, and they put his name on the side of the church. He loved education and he wanted kids to all have one.
M: That was one way they tried to remember your grandfather. When you were young—you said you were the baby—would you say you were a happy child?
H: Yes.
M: Would you say that you got in trouble?
H: Yes. Like typical children, but there was just so much I knew I could get away with without getting a paddling [laughs].
M: [Laughs] So you did what you could. What is the best memory of your childhood, Hazel?
H: [She considers]. I guess going out of town. Going to McIntosh County with my dad’s mom and him, obviously, and seeing my uncles down there. We’d have to walk through the weeds and everything, and I was the baby and I didn’t want to walk so I cried, and he put me around his neck. So I was okay.
M: Okay so you would go down to McIntosh, to the country with its little towns.
H: Yes. McIntosh county. We’d go to – Well they called it “Pierce for a week,” right off on Pierce Road or either Sycamore Bay Road.
M: And what else do you remember about being off in McIntosh County?
H: I enjoyed my uncles, the farming that they’d done. Just like I said, there’s not too much we could do. Neighbors are far apart, so we just mostly played together, while I was there, and go out to the gardens as I watch my uncle feed his cattle.
M: What did they grow, and what were they raising?
H: Mostly they were raising their own food, and he had cattle.
M: Okay, so they were mainly cattle farmers. Did you trace your heritage back there in McIntosh County to the Indians?
H: Yes, I traced it all the way back to [she pauses to think] 1864? No, my grandfather died in 1864. It was before then that they were actually on the roll. About 1823.
M: Okay, so tell us about them being on the roll. What do you know about them being on the roll? Whose parents were they?
H: That was my dad’s parents that were all raised down there. I went and talked to an attorney. He asked me if I’d ever tried to get them put on the roll. I said no. He said, "Well, I see you have a lot of Indian in you and you need to be on the roll. Why don’t you try?” I said, “Well, I might.” So by then I knew that my grandmother was born and raised down there. I knew my dad was born and raised there, so I went a got my grandmother’s death certificate. When I got that I could get her mother’s name off of it, so that I could go and check to see if her mother was on the roll. I got her name off of there, and then when I checked her mother, it had the mother before her. Now my father did tell me that the Greens are the ones that started the family. So on the roll was actually the name “Green.” So when I came to her mother’s name, it was “Lizzy Green.” And then, come to find out, the lady asked me at the historical society, she said, “Didn’t you know that her father is famous?” I said no. She said, “Yes. He was Opothleyahola. He was a famous chief down there. He did a lot for those people.”
M: His name was what? [H repeats, and helps the interviewer sound it out]
H: I could have brought his book because I’ve purchased books featuring him only. I wanted to find out exactly what he’d done. At first I read about him in the Five Civilized Tribes book, in the section of the Creek, so I read about him then. Later on, I went back up to the historical society and I purchased another book concerning the rules and laws of—I forgot—the last laws they come up under, I went and bought that book.
M: Do you remember the name of the book?
H: No, because I went and left it at home also. But the guy told me that a lady wrote a book on him. She said that he was so famous and that every time she would check rolls up in Missouri, she would check archives in New York. Every place she checked she always kept running across his name, and she wanted to find out what he’d done and who he was. By then she’d checked and found out that he was very famous and wrote a book only of him, and I purchased that book. It has a lot to do with the things he’d done. He was a good interpreter for the Creek Indians because they didn’t interpret a lot of what the government did. He would live here in Oklahoma, and he would go to Washington and present things different things and present different things for the Creek Indian tribes. Then he would come back and interpret for the chiefs what the government said they were going to do for them another year. I was just tickled to find out all that old information. I really was.
M: So when you got that information concerning your father’s family, were you able to obtain the registration?
H: No [she coughs].
M: What happened with that?
H: They…I went to purchase the book on the Dawes Commission. So that’s the last book that I went to purchase, and that was concerning why they went back and took the land, the treaty, and why they started misappropriating different people of the tribe. Now, I did also read that Yahola met three presidents.
M: Who were they?
H: The favorite one that he enjoyed was Abraham Lincoln. He always called him “Father Washington.” He got along with him. He didn’t get along with, I think I read, Andrew Jackson. Meanwhile they got one of the men of up in Washington—the Creeks were coming for a treaty and he was going to present it to them. When he turned around Andrew Jackson said he was used to seeing good-looking Redskin Indians, but then this tall, dark, dusky Indian came in there. That told me that he had a dark complexion. By then, they wouldn’t send anymore funds like they used to do for the Creek tribe. They cut back their funds, which was unfair, even to read.
M: But that was the story. They had the nerve to tell what they did and why.
H: He was one of the richest men in Creek Nation in McIntosh County. He had over a thousand acres, and by then, that’s when they rounded the Indians up for the Land Run in Oklahoma. They sent them to a reservation close to Wichita and he went around and collected the Chickasaws, Cherokees, all of them that could walk and make it there. They made it there and put them all on the reservation. Meanwhile, the people at the land run came and took the land that they wanted. The book stated that when they got back, all the land was gone. Their cattle was gone. Their gardens were trashed. They had nothing to look forward to. So that just kind of hurt. I was stunned. Then they said after he came back, he wasn’t doing well and was getting real old. They couldn’t tell how old he was because he came to the tribe in 1823, before they moved from Georgia. So that’s when they said he first came to the tribe. He was a young Indian. So meanwhile in 1864, they turned around and they took the Creeks to Fort Smith, Arkansas. The government had little bitty homes that they could stay in. They said that they starved over 10,000 Creek Indians that year.
M: They starved them?
H: They didn’t send them funds for them—
M: To live on.
H: Yes. So that’s how he died. They say he died in 1864 in Arkansas.
M: Of starvation.
H: So Indians have been through a lot. No matter what tribe it is, they’ve been through a lot. I used to look at the Indians and wonder why they’d be kind of dark and their skin would be so wrinkly, but I can see now they were out in all types of weather. He had four daughters, one of which was my grandmother’s daughter, Lizzy. She started the tribe, the family. I noticed that even as she started the family, she’d already had a roll number and a file number. But then she turned around and got married to Joe Hope, and I didn’t like it because they changed his name from ‘Hope’ to Stidham and put him on another roll but left him with the same numbers. I couldn’t understand why they did that. But I see now that was how they slowly started getting some of the Black Indians off of the roll. His name was actually Joe Hope, and they named him Thomas Stidham. I also read there was a judge down there, Judge Stidham. So he was actually on Judge Stidham’s property so that’s how he ended up with the name Thomas Stidham. They changed it from Joe Hope to Thomas Stidham after he went to work for this judge.
M: My goodness.
H: So those books were interesting, and I just like to go back and read or browse through them sometimes.
M: You have a good understanding of what happened from reading those books. When did you begin your research?
H: Oh, I kind of started, like I said, after I talked to that attorney, around about 2000. In 2001 I was still employed at Lucent Technologies. By the end we were getting ready to phase out, or our job was. We retired in 2001. By then I actually had money and time to go up to the historical society and kind of start looking for different information.
M: What motivated you and gave you the inkling that you were going to jump up and do that?
H: I guess just sitting there talking to that attorney, and then my dad always told me, he said, “Sugar, all of them are not redskin Indians. There are dark-complected Indians.”
M: And your dad was trying to tell you his history.
H: Yes, he was. I used to get upset when I’d go to the cemetery and I’d see these really old headstones with the carving in it. He’d say, “Sugar, go one over thee and put some flowers in it.” And I’d be like, “Daddy, who are they? All I see is Kate and Scylla. Who are Kate and Scylla?” Come to find out, he said, “Sugar, one is my grandma.” We could always stop at his cousin’s house before we got to the cemetery. So one was her grandmother. Kate was hers and Scylla was mine.
M: That was his way of letting you know?
H: Yes, it was.
M: Where is the resting place?
H: Warrior Community Cemetery in McIntosh County.
M: Still in McIntosh.
H: Yes, it is; I still try to go down there.
M: That’s what we do to preserve our roots.
H: But it’s just amazing to go back and just look at how he had to go by horseback in probably every inch of that land he done been on down in there somewhere because he was even ride to Guthrie. I said, “Boy that took them a long time.” They said when they would go to Washington they would leave in the fall, and when they came back it would be close to spring.
M: The chief?
H: Yeah, that would be a long ride.
M: Washington DC? Would he go alone?
H: No, he would have several other Indians with him, but he would be the main one that was sit and discuss. The lady said he would be the main ones that signed the treaty.
M: He had the authority.
H: He did. She said that after she’d done all the investigating that he was just as important as Geronimo. So they actually did, later on, make a bust of him. They have it down there at Lawton, and they have another one down there at Creek Nation because she said that he was just as important as Geronimo. Everyone kept saying “Geronimo, Geronimo,” but he was important also.
M: I want you to say his name slowly again [H obliges, pronouncing the front half of the name “O-poth-ola,” and the latter half, “Ye-hola.”] Do you know how to spell it?
H: I did, but no. [laughs]
M: But it’s in the Dawes book?
H: Yes, it is.
M: Boy, that’s an overwhelming history. What can you remember for your school memories when you were in school? You said you were at Riverside for a while. Where else do you go to school?
H: Oh, there was another Catholic school around the corner of South Walker after you come up under the viauct and I can’t remember. All I knew is that was a Catholic school and I went there one year, like the first grade.
M: Okay, and where else did you go to school?
H: By then, in September of ’58, my mom and them moved to the northeast section of town. And I was able to go to Truman Elementary, which was located on 13th and Kelham.
M: And where else did you go to school after Truman?
H: We had to walk up to Moon, which is where the Presbyterian Hospital is now. So we had to walk there. I went to Moon one year. By then they were building John F. Kennedy and I was able to go down there by 8th and 9th grade. By 10th grade I went to Douglass.
M: And did you graduate from Douglass?
H: Yes, I did. Well, I got my diploma from Douglass.
M: Did you do any further study?
H: Well, I ended up getting married early, but I still went to business school, and got an education in bookkeeping and typing and ten-key by touch there.
M: Where did you go?
H: It was a training center that the government had over on 48th and Lincoln. I went on over there, and the training really helped. I was going up to their office to check on the daycare because I had children, and the counselor told me, “I have a job for you.” I told her, “I’m getting out of school in April.” This was December. I’m like, no, I wasn’t even looking for a job yet. She said, “No this place called and they need somebody who knows ten-key by touch and I know that you are the best one that I have. I’m going to send you on the interview.” So come to find out, I went to work at Rainbow Baking Company. They had sales tickets that they needed added up and they needed to have a carbon copy. I added those tickets up from Monday to Wednesday. I had a whole closet, boxes of them. By Wednesday I was finished. I called my counselor and I asked her, I said, “I finished my work. The office manager has not said whether I can stay or what they need me to do.” She said, “Just ask them if you can finish out the rest of the week, and by Monday you have to come back to school.” I did that, but by then he’d offered me a permanent position. So I was a secretary at Rainbow Baking Company for three-and-a-half years.
M: Okay, from…you mentioned that you got married.
H: Yes, I married early.
M: Who did you marry?
H: I married Glen L. Frazier, a classmate.
M: You mentioned you have children.
H: Yes, we do. We have three daughters.
M: Let’s name those daughters [The interviewer is clearly enjoying this line of questioning. It is as though you could hear her smile].
H: I have Glenda Marie Frazier, Chandra Denise Frazier, and Lawanda Janette.
M: You said your first job was a Rainbow Baking Company. Tell us about your career. From there, where did you work?
H: I had already worked there three-and-a-half years and I told my daughter that young people won’t work there for minimum wage. I had to work for a $1.22 an hour. Office work wasn’t paying that well back then. By then a friend of mine had went to Honeywell. That was during March or so of that year, maybe ’73, and she told me that Honeywell was hiring. Take a day off and go out there and fill out an application. So I went out there to 39th and Tulsa and I filled out an application. Sure enough, by the end of the next week the lady called and asked me to come in for an interview, and after the interview they had offered me the position on second shift. I was able to start out there around the summer of ’73.
M: From there, how long were you at Honeywell?
H: Well I was there until they changed over to MPI and by then they were having cutbacks. I was in the first cutback, but then the guy told us, “When I get through calling names, that’s it. Everybody else gets to stay for another week.” I got to stay for another two weeks. By the end, that’s when they had to cut back. They were changing over and cutting that building out and going to another building, so I was handed my termination. I went to draw unemployment after that and I told my dad. He said, “Well Sugar, I kept telling you, you should’ve went to college.” And I said, “Dad, there’s nothing I want to do at college. That’s a waste of money. But I love to fix hair.” So he told me, “If you go to school, I’ll buy your gas.” So he bought my books and my gas. I’m also a licensed beautician. I enjoyed that.
M: Okay, so you went to school to fix hair. How long did you do that?
H: I didn’t do it that long because it was kind of hard trying to find a shop that I wanted to go into. And by then Western Electric was hiring, in ’77, hiring off the street. So my sister-in-law and I went out there. I had my interview and everything, and my service date ended up being 8/22/1977. I got hired there and we stayed as it changed from Western Electric. We went to AT&T in ’83, and after AT&T we went to Lucent Technologies about ’94 or ’95. We were Lucent as long as we were AT&T. We were AT&T manufacturing a long time.
M: So you had a career in manufacturing. How long were you with them?
H: When I left in 2001, they gave me twenty-five years. I started on my twenty-fifth year.
M: That’s excellent stability. How long have you been married, Mrs. Frazier?
H: I’ve been married thirty-seven years. That’s straight, not off and on [The interviewer laughs]. It’s been tempting off and on, but we never did. We just went ahead and tough it out. Pray about it and keep going.
M: Y’all just stuck in there.
H: Yes, we have.
M: That’s excellent. Who would you say has been kinder to you than anyone that you can think of?
H: “Who has been kinder to me?” [She considers a bit]. Well the first one that comes to mind, God’s been kinder to me than anyone that I can name. He really has. He really has blessed me for many years. I’ve come through a lot of surgeries, but I thank Him for every day.
M: Do you want to talk about the experience that you had in terms of the miraculous recovery you shared with us? Do you want to talk about that in your interview?
H: A little bit.
M: You can say what you want to say about that.
H: I will say my dad and my mom did always talk to us and explain things to us. My dad always told me, “Sugar, keep up with cancer and diabetes.” My mom, she said "She was just like that man.” And I was [laugh].
M: What man was that?
H: My dad.
M: They were saying that you were just like your dad.
H: Yeah. I didn’t want to hear it. He would say, “Sugar, even though sometimes it might not always be what you want to hear, you ask and keep checking on it anyway.”
M: With your doctors.
H: Yes. So, I always had them check on cancer. But I was bothered with vascular surgery. I was listening to the commercial about P.A.D.: Peripheral Artery Disease. I was listening to a commercial about that, and I knew I didn’t want to have no stroke or heart attack. And I’m ‘bout like, “Well I better go to the doctor cause my foot and leg was getting numb.” When I went in for that, they also did X-Rays.
M: About when did this happen? This is 2007.
H: That happened in 2003. October 2003 was the vascular surgery. A couple of days later they were getting ready to let me go home and the surgeon’s assistant asked me if I knew I had a spot on my lung. I said no. My regular doctor had done X-Rays in 2000 and those were clear. So from 2000 to 2003 it had come up, and he said it was about the size of a nickel. They wanted to go in there and get a biopsy of it and everything, so that’s what they did. It took time to go through the changes. Meanwhile the insurance didn’t want to pay; they don’t pay certain places. I had to find a place where my insurance would pay before I could have the scans and everything. I just thank God that they found it early. Whatever they found, they found it early, and that they were able to repair it. I went through the surgery without the chemo. Right now, I’m still without the chemo, and I still thank God for that.
M: That is a survivor story.
H: That’s the first thing that I asked Him. I said, “Heavenly Father, let it be something that can be fixed.” Because just like He knew what we can stand, He knows what we can bear and what we can’t. I was much smaller than I am now. My husband had told me, he said, “I don’t think I really want to see you go through no chemo. I’m going to tell you now I don’t think I could handle that.” I had already seen my older sister go through it with pancreatic cancer and the different changes the body goes through, and how it breaks down. I’m like, “I wouldn’t have no help. I wouldn’t have nobody.” And he knew that.
M: That’s true.
H: Come to find out it was something that could be fixed surgically, and I could still go on. That was a blessing to me.
M: That was an answered prayer.
H: Yes, it was. I came home, and I wasn’t going to get it done. And we had taken down the Christmas tree and everything. That was my second year in our home. I told him, “I’m ready to go home. I’m not going to stay in a hospital with you all. I’m going home and I’m going to spend Christmas with my husband, because all we have is each other. So I don’t wanna stay Christmas day in the hospital. They hurried up and checked me out so I could go home.
M: You went home so you could spend it with your husband?
H: I got home Christmas Eve. I sure did. We had Christmas Day together and my mother-in-law cooked dinner.
M: That is wonderful.
H: My sister also cooked dinner. So I wasn’t worried about the dinner. I was just thankful that I was able to get home and we could still have a Christmas together.
M: And that was your desire.
H: I really didn’t want to have that surgery. I was thinking about it and thought, “Well Lord, what would happen if I just left it?” I was running the sweeper, getting up Christmas tree items and trash off the floor. I was like, “I don’t know whether I want to have that surgery or not.” By then, it seems like God spoke to me just as plainly. He said, “Why are you denying what I can do for you now, out of all the times you’ve called Me?” I cut off the sweeper and just sat there on the sofa and cried. I said, “Lord, I’m sorry. I’m sorry for even letting that devilish thought cross my mind. I know what You can do; You’ve already done things for me, in my eyes. The changes that I have seen! Why did I even let it cross my mind, ‘What You couldn’t do?’” About fifteen minutes later, the doctor’s office called and said, “Mrs. Frazier, you need to get that scheduled.” I went and told my husband I was fixin’ to schedule it and let them get it out of the way, because He had already answered and said, “I got you.”
M: You were clear.
H: Yes, He was. So, I had to let him have his way, because He answered. It was something that could be fixed, and it’s fixed today. I still thank Him.
M: Well I just can’t pass up the opportunity in this interview to have you tell us how you marched into the choir. [H laughs]. You were not singing in the choir. You’ve been at Allen Chapel how many years?
H: [coughs] Oh, I’ve been there ever since ’50, ’58. About the summer of ’58, we went to Bible school up there. After we went to the east side, we were able to walk to church.
M: I want you to let us know how you went from that experience and ended up in the choir there.
H: Well, I kept sitting there, and like I said, I sat out there and sang along with them. I always enjoyed singing. I used to be in the youth choir up there. But then, just like my dad told me, he said, “Sugar, if you don’t use that voice for God, He’s gonna take it.” So I [H holds a note]. You know, I was young and having kids and I’d go to church and then I’d drop out and then I’d go to church and then…but I never did stray too long. Not a long way and not a long time either. It might be I didn’t go this month, but I’m there in a few more weeks. I never did stray long, because I knew what my health was coming from. Even though He would help me in my home, when I talked to God in prayer, on my knees, He would help me a lot. He would show me things, and He also helped me raise my children the correct way, I hope [both laugh].
M: Well, you know.
H: But they grew up in the church. They grew up there in Allen Chapel also and they were busy. They enjoyed the YPD. Later on, they went on to the choir and enjoyed that. But they mainly enjoyed working, and that’s what kept me going.
M: Well do you want to name the solos that you sing in the choir?
H: “Name the solos that I sing in the choir?”
M: Mhm, with those repaired lungs [both laugh].
H: Well the last one that the organist had me try was “One Day in Paradise.” And I think that was my best one. I enjoyed that.
M: That was good. [H laughs] We had to pull you up off the floor when you did the first one. But you just let us have it. I mean it was…It was Sister Bennett. Do you want to tell how Sister Bennett pulled you out because you were trying to hide that voice?
H: No, I wasn’t hiding it. I was sitting up there using it the best I could with everybody else. I just wanted to be a choir member and participate with everybody else and my daughter told me, she said, “Mom, she said, God’s been good to you. You’re going to have to do – I’ve seen where you would be up in front –”
[Recording ends]