Description:
Dr. Johnson "J.W." Sanford talks about his life and family growing up in northeast Oklahoma City, and becoming a doctor.
Transcript:
Interviewee: Dr. Johnson Sanford
Interviewer: Melba Holt
Interview Date: 11/12/2007
Interview Location: Unknown
Melba Holt: It’s my absolute honor and the greatest pleasure to sit here and talk with this gentleman today. I’m going to ask you to give me your full name. I don’t know if the J and W only stand for J and W, but I want you to give me the full definition of those initials, and I want you to give your full name, your date of birth, and where you were born.
DJS: My first name is Johnson, J-O-H-N-S-O-N. Middle initial W, W-I-L-B-U-R-N-E.
MH: Wilburne.
DJS: Yes. Last name is Sanford, S-A-N-F-O-R-D. Birthplace is Ardmore, Oklahoma, on September 24, 1930.
MH: Dr. J.W. Sanford. The whole world knows you as J.W. Sanford. Are you a Junior?
DJS: Yes.
MH: I thought I remembered J. Junior. Dr. Sanford, as I said, it’s a great honor for me to sit here with you. I have heard about you ever since I was a little girl in the fifth grade under the instruction and direction of Camillia V. Sanford, your mama. I thought you had left the city. I didn’t know that you were still here.
DJS: Is that right?
MH: Yes, because I hadn’t seen your practice. I remember when you came back to Oklahoma City. When was that?
DJS: That was October of 1961 when I came out of the Air Force. We started practicing at that time.
MH: Here in Oklahoma City?
DJS: Yes.
MH: Where was your office located?
DJS: My office was located on Deep Deuce on Northeast 2nd Street. 320 Northeast 2nd Street was the exact address.
MH: In 1961, you were back in Oklahoma City and opened up your private practice.
DJS: That’s correct.
MH: I remember your mother often speaking about you and you were one of the role models that she stood before us, that she placed before us.
DJS: Did she now?
MH: Yes, for accomplishing her goals for us. We didn’t so much have goals as she had goals that she set for us. You were the measure by which we were instructed to do certain things.
DJS: Is that right?
MH: Absolutely. She was very, very proud of you. I’m almost getting tears just sitting here talking about it because it brings back great memories of Mrs. Sanford. She was an excellent teacher. I’m going to stop going into my own Sanford memory bag, and I’m going to ask you to go into your Sanford memory bag. I want you to start with the beginning and talk about – give me a little information about your mama and your daddy. Tell me how they got into the educational field, and then how you came to be guided in the direction that you were guided.
DJS: To start from the beginning, I guess I’d have to start on September 24, 1930, wouldn’t I? Ardmore, Oklahoma. My father was principal of Douglass High School at the time. I’m an only child. From Langston, he was principal of Douglass High School in Ardmore as well as the football coach. He had dual roles at that time. Teachers and principals did more than just what the name implied. From there, my father got into some politics and sort of organized Black educators around the state of Oklahoma.
MH: While he was still in Ardmore?
DJS: Right. He was still in Ardmore. From there, he became president of Langston University.
MH: Oh, okay, so he went from Ardmore as principal –
Both: - of Douglass High School to president of Langston University.
MH: My goodness. Okay.
DJS: Much of my youth and infancy was spent on Langston’s campus at that time. I went to the training school.
MH: That would have been the high school.
DJS: It was the elementary school on campus at Langston at the time. Mrs. Favor was my teacher at the time. I imagine you’ve heard of Favor High School.
MH: Yes, I have.
DJS: I think that was named after her husband. I went to the training school on campus and made many friends out there.
MH: Okay, so the training school was the elementary?
DJS: It was an elementary school.
MH: On the Langston campus?
DJS: On that campus at Langston.
MH: And then after that?
DJS: After that, he was president from 1934 through 1939, I believe. The political picture changed and as the political picture changed, so did the political football at Langston University. We moved back to Oklahoma City in 1939, and he became a superintendent of Black educators in Oklahoma City.
MH: For the district of Oklahoma?
DJS: Yes.
MH: This would have been in the early ‘40s?
DJS: That’s correct.
MH: They had an association of Black educators at that time?
DJS: That’s correct. As a matter of fact, school was scarce and everything was segregated in the state of Oklahoma at that time. He organized a Negro Chamber of Commerce and served as its president.
MH: In?
DJS: In Oklahoma City.
MH: You know what? I have heard people speak of the Negro Chamber of Commerce. I have not been able to find anything in the library archives about that.
DJS: You may not find much in the archives.
MH: I’ve heard people speak but –
DJS: He formed the Negro Chamber of Commerce. The Negro Chamber of Commerce put out a Black telephone directory. I wish I had a copy of one of those things. It had Black folks with their telephone address and occupations and there was advertising in those journals.
MH: That’s exactly what I understand, but it was kind of a – I’ve been getting that word from different people who – I think they said they thought they remembered but they weren’t sure. Now you’ve given validity to that idea, so there’s got to be one out there somewhere. I will be looking for it.
DJS: I’ve got a large picture of him standing on the grounds at the dedication of the Negro Chamber of Commerce, and if you’d like to get a small thing of that –
MH: Yes. We can take it to Kinko’s and get a small one.
DJS: Yes. You’re welcome to that. He had the idea of Blacks, Negros, doing things for themselves in a segregated society. He never dreamt this would evolve and segregation would be abolished, so he felt like Booker T. Washington, that Blacks should do for themselves, have their own, develop their own, educate their own. He built a home on 7th and Bath, which was down from where he went to school. Then he developed a business section on Bath Street, which included the East Side Theater. It included a cleaners, a Black cleaners, a bakery, an apparel shop, a restaurant, and that was his dream for Blacks at that time.
MH: That development there on Bath was built by your dad?
DJS: That’s correct.
MH: It was a business district, and not only to serve that neighborhood, but it was the place for people to go. I remember that so well in the day. It was the place for people to go.
DJS: Sure. Absolutely.
MH: Yes. I want to show you something here that I think you will be just delighted to see. The way that I got in contact with you is I had interviewed Mr. Richardson. Do you remember who Mr. Richardson was?
DJS: Mr. Richardson. Well, look at this.
MH: He had these pictures. This one’s not clear. He had these pictures that were taken of Northeast Bath between 7th and 6th Streets, and it shows a part –
DJS: There’s the home place right there.
MH: Yes, right there. There it is right there. It shows that section that you just got through speaking about that your father built. I asked Mr. Richardson, I said I was thinking that the structure was already there. He said no, and they built the theater. I said, “How did you do that?” He said, “We had an architect, and then we got materials, and we built it.”
DJS: That’s right. I carried masonry during the summer. I carried cement blocks, and I got paid by my dad by the hour, something like ten or fifteen cents an hour.
MH: [laughing] Excellent!
DJS: I had a hand in actually building that structure.
MH: That is so wonderful. I tell you, I would give my eye teeth, maybe an arm or a leg, for some portion of that structure to still be standing.
DJS: Integration came along and that spelled the beginning of the end for Black-owned businesses. If you recall, back on Northeast 2nd Street, the businesses that Blacks had, and you may not –
MH: I do somewhat.
DJS: They had a hardware store, Walker’s Hardware Store. They had Ferguson Music Company. There were some physicians that were all in that same block. There was Dr. Finley. There was Dr. Willard Moore. There was Dr. Slaughter. There was Dr. Randolph. In dentistry, you had Dr. Pallmore, Dr. Willard Moore. You had a funeral home, Blanton and Butler. You had the Aldrich Theater. You had two drug stores on either corner, one on 2nd and Stiles and one on 2nd and Central. The one on 2nd and Central was named Vaughn Drugstore. The one on 2nd and Stiles was the Randolph Drugstore. Above Randolph Drugstore, that was Slaughter’s Hall where Black folks had entertainment on Saturday night and people like Count Bassie and the famous guitarist Charlie Christian – not Charlie Parker. Charlie Christian. They’d perform right there because there was no place else for them to perform. It was quite a night spot as well. The Randolph Drugstore is one of those longstanding.
MH: Even after other structures and businesses had closed, the Randolph –
DJS: The Randolph maintained itself for a long time.
MH: Many years before it was finally closed.
DJS: That’s right. They delivered pharmaceuticals. They had a fountain, a regular fountain, set up.
MH: A soda fountain, yes.
DJS: Pharmaceuticals, and then there was Dr. Finley that was across the street, who married Dr. Slaughter’s daughter. Dr. Slaughter was a physician, probably the oldest physician, unless we count Dr. W.L. Haywood. He had a hospital at one time in Oklahoma City.
MH: He did? Do you know where that hospital was?
DJS: It was about two or three blocks, right around 1st street.
MH: It was a Black hospital?
DJS: Yes.
MH: And it was called Haywood?
DJS: I don’t know what it was called. My father had gotten into politics and he was very close with Senator Robert Kerr. My father was very instrumental, at the time, in having someplace for Blacks to be hospitalized if they needed to be inpatients. Because of his association with Robert Kerr, a wing was opened at University Hospital for Blacks because there was no place that Blacks could be hospitalized in Oklahoma City. Dr. Haywood’s venture didn’t turn out well, the hospital itself. It was subpar.
MH: What was Dr. Haywood’s first name?
DJS: William. W.L. Haywood.
MH: You were saying his venture –
DJS: His venture into the hospital did not pan out for a lot of reasons. Quality, nursing, other reasons. When my father became instrumental in opening up a wing, a Black wing, at University Hospital, which was something that had never been done before. Blacks who would get sick had no place to go except to stay at home and have some physician visit them at home. They either got better or they passed on. At any rate, they opened this wing at University Hospital for Blacks, for Negroes, and Dr. W.L. Haywood was the Chief of Staff of that wing. No whites to be admitted to that wing. Everything was totally separate, absolutely separate, and Dr. W.L. Haywood was the director, medical director, of that wing. You had Black nurses there. Everything was all Black. That was the first time that Blacks could be admitted for inpatient care at any hospital, and that was done by Senator Kerr and his friendship with my father. That was some progress at that time.
MH: I want to ask you this about your father. Who were his parents?
DJS: My father was born in Etna, Texas. His father was Oscar Sanford. That’s about as far back – he had a brother, Oscar Junior. He had three sisters, Mamie, Sue or Susie. The history’s dead. It’s going to be lost.
MH: Oscar Junior, Mamie –
DJS: Johnson Wilburne Sanford – that’s my father, Mamie, Susie, and... I’ll get that later. It’ll come to me later.
MH: Those were his sisters and brothers.
DJS: Annie. They were all the –
[talking over each other]
MH: Where was Etna, Texas?
DJS: You’ll have to look.
MH: But it’s still there.
DJS: Of course. My mother was born in Hillsboro.
MH: Before we get to your mother, what was your father’s mother’s name?
DJS: I don’t know. He told me and I should have been more –
MH: On your birth certificate –
DJS: On my birth certificate, I was born at home.
[talking over each other]
DJS: The white doctor that delivered me just puts down any name. That was the way the Negros were born and it wasn’t a big thing, your birth certificate. As a matter of fact, as I look back at my old birth certificate, I thought he’d written it out. James. Just anything.
MH: Just anything. What was your mother’s name?
DJS: Camillia.
MH: Oh, that’s right.
DJS: Camillia Verniece Sanford. Her older sister was Ophelia, Ophelia Berniece.
MH: I remember her. She lived next door.
DJS: My mother was Camillia Verniece, and her sister was Ophelia Berniece.
MH: She was older than Mrs. Sanford, though, wasn’t she?
DJS: Yes, she was older.
MH: What’s your mother’s name? I’m thinking about her parents. That’s where I want to go.
DJS: Sam Blackburn and Delia Blackburn.
MH: They came from -?
DJS: Hillsboro, Texas.
MH: Mrs. Sanford was born in Hillsboro?
DJS: Hillsboro, Texas.
MH: What was your grandfather’s profession?
DJS: Farming and slavery. We’re getting back into slavery then.
MH: And your grandparents on your mother’s side?
DJS: They were children of slaves.
MH: Children of slaves. I’m trying to put together how, from that very, very humble beginning with your parents, that they came to be educators. What was the catalyst in there that brought them to education? Do you see where I’m trying to go?
DJS: My father was one of five children, I believe. Annie, Sue, Mamie, and Oscar. He was the only one that pursued further education, and he attended Prairie View.
MH: In Texas?
DJS: In Texas. He starred on the football team, captain of the football team. From there, he landed a job as principal of Peabody High School in Texas where he met my mother.
MH: And she was a teacher?
DJS: This is going to really strike you. She was a student. They married. My father was something like 20 years older than my mother. They were married, and then from Peabody High School, he got a job in Ardmore, Oklahoma. As you can understand, Ardmore is very Southern.
[talking over each other]
DJS: Across the line a little bit and that’s where his job in education after Peabody High School went, from Peabody to Ardmore.
MH: Education was his personal pursuit.
DJS: That was it. Yes. I thought that he was more of a businessman than an educator, but he was quite an orator. I’d like to sometime show you the commencement pictures with Carter G. Woodson that he’s had.
MH: He graduated with Woodson? Oh my.
DJS: He was a commencement speaker out at Langston, and Mary McCab Bethune was a commencement speaker and I have little pictures when I was standing that tall between Woodson, Carter G. Woodson, and my father with their caps and gowns.
MH: Oh my goodness. And you have these? Is this what your daughter described that she put together for you?
DJS: Yes, she did. I’d like you to see those.
MH: Wonderful. I would love to see those and have you put your trust in me to make copies of those and give them back to you. That would be so wonderful.
DJS: It’s perfectly fine for you to do that.
MH: Now, let’s talk about their bouncing baby boy. That would be you. Where did you go to elementary school? Well, we got elementary school. What about junior high?
DJS: Well, now wait a minute. Before we go to that, I get all the way out of elementary school. I was on Langston’s campus in the training school up through the fourth grade. Then we moved to Oklahoma City at that point. That’s when I started my elementary education at Dunbar High School.
MH: You went to Dunbar?
DJS: Yes, I did. I’m very proud. I attended in the same room that you were in, taught by Mrs. Reynolds. Do you remember Mrs. Reynolds?
MH: I don’t remember Mrs. Reynolds, but I’m one of those people that I do not have a good memory.
DJS: Do you remember Mrs. McFarlin?
MH: Mrs. McFarlin, I remember.
DJS: Mrs. McFarlin was probably there forever. There was Mrs. Reynolds, Mrs. McFarlin, Mrs. Rimskit. She was one of the Perry girls. You remember Reverend Perry? E.J. Perry’s daughters. Mrs. Wilson taught art at Dunbar.
MH: I’m not sure. I have a vague memory of Mrs. Wilson.
DJS: Okay. Well, that was so far.
MH: Yes, but you know what? Back in that day, too, teachers taught a long time. They taught a couple of generations, sometimes three generations of people.
DJS: Right. They would stay. My mother was a little skeptical about telling her age. She always wrote, “Legal.” I finished at Dunbar at grade school and went on to Douglass Junior-Senior High School.
MH: Which was on 5th and High.
DJS: Yes, 5th and High at that time. I finished there as President of the Student Council, science and math awards throughout that time. I played in the band under Mrs. Breaux, Zelia Anne Breaux. She was the daughter of Inman Page, which you may know of, who was one of Langston’s presidents, if not the first.
MH: The elementary school was named after him.
DJS: Yeah.
MH: Page Stadium also.
DJS: Page Stadium was named after him, and I think he was the first president at Langston University. I took music under Mrs. Breaux and got the E.K. Gaylord scholarship for math and science.
MH: That was a big one, wasn’t it?
DJS: Yes, it was. That was the big one that people stood up and looked. It was a lot of pride, if you remember.
MH: To get that one was to get notoriety.
DJS: I got notoriety even though I wasn’t a valedictorian, yeah.
MH: It was like a national acknowledgement or recognition.
DJS: From there, I went to Howard University in Washington, D.C. in 1948.
MH: Did you pick Howard?
DJS: I picked it. They were a little skeptical about my going to Howard because there some – Howard was a social school. Those kids were left wide open to party and do this, that, and the other. I sure did what I was going there for. I went to Howard from 1948 to 1952. I finished high school at Douglass in 1948.
MH: Oh, okay. ’48 to ’52, and then you went in the military after that?
DJS: No. From 1948 to 1952, I got a Bachelor of Science. From then, I was admitted to medical school in 1952, and from 1952 to 1956, I got the M.D. degree at Howard. Same school from ’48 to ’56, a Bachelor’s and an M.D. From there, I went to Saint Louis, where I me my lovely wife as an intern. She was teaching in the school system there. I spent two years at City Hospital in Saint Louis, and then an additional year of surgery in Philadelphia. From there, I was drafted into the service because it was the Korean War going on and they were drafting physician. I entered the service as a captain in the Air Force. I could choose the branch because you were a professional and you got commissioned as a captain immediately. You were required to spend only two years in the service.
MH: How long did you stay?
DJS: My two years!
MH: You did the requirement and got out of there.
DJS: I did my two years. They wanted me to stay but – I could have finished my residency at that time in the service, but for every year they train you, you’ve got to give two years back. I thought that I could do better than that, even though I was a captain. That was fairly good pay. My wife taught in the school on base while I was there, and we had our first child.
MH: Speaking of children, how many children do you have?
DJS: We have three daughters.
MH: Are any of them in medical or teaching?
DJS: I’ve got a daughter by a previous marriage. You’ve heard of F.D. Moon?
MH: Yes.
DJS: You’ve heard of his brother Edward E.C. Moon?
MH: No.
DJS: F.D.’s brother E.C. Moon, I was married to his daughter for a very short period of time. We have a daughter who’s an M.D. She’s in her twenty-third year at the V.A. hospital in Indianapolis in internal medicine.
MH: What’s her name?
DJS: Vivian Moon Sanford.
MH: And two more daughters?
DJS: No, there was this period of no marriage, and I matriculated into internship and residency and what have you where I met Daisy.
MH: Tell me the names of you children.
DJS: Camillia.
MH: Was Mrs. Sanford still alive?
DJS: Yes, she was.
MH: That was. Oh, boy. That was great. I know that thrilled her heart.
DJS: That did. There’s Camillia, and the second one was Carla, and the third was Jay’mee. My mother always called me J. Wilburne or J. Don’t you remember that? She spoke of me as Jay.
MH: She spoke of you as Jay to us.
DJS: We have those three daughters, and the one that’s in Indianapolis.
MH: Absolutely wonderful. I want one day for your grandchildren and your great-grandchildren to be able to go to the library and sit down and hear their ancestor talk.
DJS: I wish I knew more. That is my biggest regret. I had the opportunity at that time to sit down with my father and ask about and learn more about his father and his mother.
MH: Well, sometimes we just don’t know to do that, so we begin where we are and move forward.
DJS: Our daughter Camillia has gone back as much as she can in compiling the scrapbook and getting us that information.
MH: That’s just wonderful. In the not-too-distant future, I’ll be contacting you again so I can get those pictures. Mr. Richardson told me that you worked at the theater.
DJS: Yeah, when I was in high school. I learned to run the projector. My father gave me the popcorn business, which I rented from them.
MH: Oh my goodness. He was quite the businessman, wasn’t he?
DJS: I had to pay for the rental. I had to take care of business. I had to run it like a business.
MH: He taught you something, didn’t he?
DJS: Yeah, he did. He really did. He died in 1949 of lung cancer. Ironically, smoking was not linked with cancer and he smoked one cigar after the other. You almost hardly ever saw him without a cigar in his hand. That’s what I used to give him. That’s the only thing I knew what he wanted. El Producto cigars. That’s what he wanted. It was quite a happy childhood.
MH: Yes, and you were just the apple of her eye.
DJS: He wondered why in the world would I want to go into something as difficult as medicine when he had this business. All I had to do is come back and take over the business, which would not have been anything at this point in time. He gave in and he was proud of me. My mother lived to see me get my M.D. degree at Howard.
MH: Yes, she did. When did she pass away?
DJS: 1968.
MH: 1968. You told me about that little strip there that your father developed on Northeast Bath. Do you remember – you spoke of the businesses that were down on the Deuce, but in the area where your dad’s businesses were, do you remember any other businesses that were in that area? Can you remember any of those?
DJS: In the Northeast sector? Not necessarily on Bath, but in the Fairgrounds. Allen’s Grocery Store was a prominent one on –
Both: 6th and Kelham.
DJS: Listen to you!
MH: Across the street from my church.
DJS: There was Pierce’s Café on Rhode Island and 6th. There was Frank’s Barbecue, Frank’s Chicken.
MH: About where? Was it in the 6th Street strip between where Allen’s Grocery Store and –
DJS: Yes, it was on Rhode Island between 6th and 5th. As you know, Slaughter’s had a mortuary on Northeast 4th Street. Above it was Frank’s Chicken.
MH: Oh, the place above. I remember that place. I remember Slaughter’s being a funeral home, and then being an ambulance service. Maybe it was an ambulance and a funeral home.
DJS: Wyett was Slaughter’s son and Sharetta was the daughter.
MH: Oh, okay.
DJS: Wyatt Slaughter and Sharetta Slaughter-Finley were brother and sister. Wyatt was the embalmer and my father, when he knew he was going to die, was very interested in helping Wyatt get started and suggested that his body be given to Wyatt. Whatever he could do to get him started.
MH: A businessman to the end.
DJS: Yes, he was. Let’s see. What else was in there? Well, you know you had the barbecue place on 4th and Durland that was –
MH: Going on down?
DJS: Wait, I’m on the east side. I’m out of the Fairgrounds now.
MH: Yeah, you’re out of the Fairgrounds that way.
DJS: I was thinking – where was that barbecue place that was so prominent?
MH: I think it was Sutton’s. No. It wasn’t Sutton’s. It was – I don’t know but I have a listing from 1955 of that area so I can be able to look that up.
DJS: You had the Jones boys – didn’t you have the Jones boys’ grocery store down there on 6th?
MH: I think it was 6th and Bath on the corner.
DJS: Yeah, absolutely. Further on down you had Norwood’s, who was a white man. Negros dealt with him because you could put your groceries down on charge and get credit. Some of the others – there was the notorious Brown Bomber.
MH: That was between 5th and 6th on Wisconsin. Did they bring live entertainment there or something? I don’t know. It was popular.
DJS: I don’t know. I never went in there.
MH: You’re one of the few that was never in there.
DJS: Every now and then there would be a shooting, and that would not make news today, but if there was somebody shot or killed –
MH: The Black Dispatch would have it.
DJS: Right. Absolutely.
MH: That’s another one of my future research projects, will be to go and pull up the old issues of The Black Dispatch. My main focus will be to see what advertisers they have. That’s going to kind of help me focus on the Black businesses that were around. I do hear that they are available.
DJS: Roscoe Dunjee and my father were really close friends because of my father’s political aspirations and whatnot. Roscoe Dunjee was sort of a vehicle of getting Blacks together. Ponca City. Muskogee. Waurika. Getting a sort of a Negro block, so to speak.
MH: Isn’t that something? There was a power structure –
DJS: There was power and that’s how the white people understood that Blacks meant business because they had a block that they could – they voted together and they needed that.
MH: It was influential. They needed that influence
DJS: Roscoe had The Black Dispatch on 2nd Street, and my father bought part of ownership.
MH: Did he? Your daddy was on fire. Okay.
DJS: He bought one-fourth ownership of The Black Dispatch.
MH: He knew a good business situation when he saw it.
DJS: He and Roscoe became very close friends.
MH: Absolutely. I want to ask you this. Who were some of the other people that graduated Douglass High School with you? Who are some of the folks we might know, might have known, in the city?
DJS: Oh yes. I mentioned Randolph Drug, Dr. Randolph, the pharmacist, his son was a classmate of mine. Some other prominent individuals that I can think of, not necessarily in my class, are... I’m trying to think of those that have made well and done well.
MH: Any names that you can remember.
DJS: I’ll just name them one after the other. Negail Riley. He became very high in the United Methodist Church. He’s deceased now. There was Troy Davis, who was a contractor for NASA. The first Black to finish OU School of Medicine, Daniel, D.W. Lee. The first Black graduate from the University of Oklahoma School of Medicine finished in 1951. No, he was admitted in 1951. D.W. Lee was the first Black, and they were just going to admit one Black at that time. He was going to be the token Negro. He was admitted to the University of Oklahoma but he finished at Langston. He was a good student. He was admitted to the school of medicine and finished. He did well. He was admitted in 1951. I applied in 1952 to two schools, Howard and OU. I went so far as to have an interview at OU School of Medicine, and my rejection beat me back to Washington D.C. My feeling is they wanted someone from Langston, a graduate from Langston, a Black from Langston to be the second one they admitted. I was turned down by the University of Oklahoma, but was readily admitted to Howard. My main reason is because my mother was here and it would have been nice to still be close here at that time. When Daisy and I left the Air Force in ’61, we came back here because of her.
MH: I want to ask you a little something here. You spoke very, very briefly of the home that your father built for your mother. Do you have any pictures of the house?
DJS: Yeah.
MH: For the sake of this taping, I want you to tell me a little bit about what made the house so special.
DJS: The house was special because while he was president at Langston University, he and my mom took a European cruise on the Queen Mary. The house was built with port holes and –
MH: It was on the order of a ship deck.
DJS: It was on the order of a ship deck from the Queen Mary. It had the deck at the top and the portholes and that was the design of the house.
MH: Port holes and the deck on top and the staircase was like the inside of the ship. I had to have been in their house. I was there.
DJS: That was the model that he built the house on.
MH: It was special.
DJS: At that time, Blacks didn’t build homes in sections or neighborhoods that were ritzy. You just found a good lot that you liked and you just built it there. It didn’t matter what the house next door was like. That’s just the way the communities were at that time.
MH: You would see a little shanty, so to speak here, and you might see an opulent structure right next to it.
DJS: That’s right. It didn’t matter to them. It did not matter. Look at C.W. Morgan’s home on 8th and Lottie.
MH: Down the street from your place. It was a place that people came to see.
DJS: That’s right. That was F.D. Moon himself who lived there on 8th Street between Lottie and –
MH: Stonewall?
DJS: Kate. Lottie and Kate. Remember the little circle around going from Kate Street? On 8th Street, kind of the little curve going up to Lottie. That’s where Dr. Morgan built his big, huge house, right there on the corner of 8th and Lottie. I think Dr. Finley lived on 5th Street at the time.
MH: You found that throughout the neighborhood that the structure within the neighborhood that we lived in, you’d have your professionals would be living next door to – they lived within our community. Those people that were community leaders were also our neighbors. Our teachers and our ministers and our doctors were also our neighbors.
DJS: Neighbors. Right. Part of the neighborhood.
MH: Just part of the neighborhood. Sometimes my peers and I sit down and we talk about that. We think about the role models within the community that we had just right there. They were next door. We see them at the stores. We see them at the laundromat. We see them at church. We see them at school. We would see them everywhere.
DJS: Precisely.
MH: We were all right there together, so if we wanted to look up to someone, we didn’t have to look far to look up to someone.
DJS: No. They could be right here next door to you.
MH: That’s right, right there in the community. Well, I wanted to tell you that we’re just about wrapping this up. Is there something else that you wanted to make sure that you shared with me?
DJS: You were on that subject of the neighborhood, and it was a time in which you knew – everybody knew everybody within your block and several blocks around and back. You could almost house to house and say –
[talking over each other]
DJS: You’d know who those people were. It was just one proud neighborhood, usually. Everybody just knew everybody. There was nothing wrong with the lady down the street disciplining me and wanting to know, “Son, where are you going? Does your mama know you’re down here? I think I’ll call her.”
MH: Yes. Yes, absolutely.
DJS: That was pretty much it. I thought that Urban Renewal displaced a lot of lovely homes. They weren’t lovely homes, but they were neighborhoods.
MH: They were our neighborhoods.
DJS: Yes, it was. I’m trying to think of the fellow that had the white brick, white stone house. They had the hardest time getting him out of there. He stayed there a long time.
MH: He fought it.
DJS: Lovely gray brick.
MH: I can’t remember. Of course, we knew at one time because he was the holdout.
DJS: He was.
MH: I can’t remember, but I will talk to someone who remembers who it was.
DJS: When you do, let me know. It’s on the tip of my tongue.
MH: Was it on the corner of 6th and Lottie?
DJS: No, you’re too far up. You need to go more like 5th and Rhode Island.
MH: Oh, 5th and Rhode Island. Back down that way. Okay. I’ll talk to somebody.
DJS: That’s the direction you need to go. His name was Ted. I almost got it.
MH: Maybe it’ll come. Dr. Sanford, again, I can’t even really express the joy that I have of sitting here talking with Mrs. Sanford’s baby boy and her only one. I cannot express it. It’s just absolutely wonderful to be able to sit here. For me, looking at you is almost like looking in your mama’s face.
DJS: Really?
MH: Yes. I remember her so well. I will tell you that in the summers, she used to have me come over and help clean up her house. I would help her with cleaning everything, and one of the things she did was she used to give me her clothes. We were close in size. I was a big girl. We were close in size when I was in the fifth grade, and she would give me some of her clothing. My mother would alter them, cut them down for me, and the aroma, the fragrance of her perfume was still in her clothing. Whenever I wore Mrs. Sanford’s clothes, I smell like Mrs. Sanford. I kid you not. She was just – I adored her and I feel like she adored me because she –
[talking over each other]
DJS: It almost brings tears to my eyes when people like you say that, “Your mother was a teacher of mine.” I remember that. She was so interested in the personal, well-being of what happened to you after school.
[talking over each other]
MH: That’s right, and because she, as I said before, she established a goal for us. She was going to do everything in her power to make sure we reached that goal. She was just great like that. I’ll tell you, I do want to be sure and share this with you, because I five children. My first four children are between the ages of 30-something and 40-something, my first four. When they were little children and they were coming up, I used to have - it would be kind of a global little dish, really thick. Pond’s cold cream. You might remember Pond’s cold cream came in a thick glass container. Your mama used to keep little pieces of soap in those little thick jars and she’d put a little water in them so it’d be like soft soap and you could use it. She never did throw away the soap. She always kept those little bits and pieces and it would be colored soap, soft soap, in the container. When my children were coming up, sometimes that might be the only soap we had, but that was a habit that I saw her do that I carried with me for absolute years with my children, raising up my children. I wanted to be sure and share that with you because she touched the lives of many of her students in so many ways, even down to saving soap.
DJS: That’s wonderful. That’s a great story. That’s inspirational to me. Thank you. That’s wonderful. Thanks for inviting me and I’m so sorry that I was late.
MH: Oh, that’s quite alright. We’re patient. We don’t have anybody else on the books. It’s just for you.
DJS: Well, I’m still sorry that I was late.
MH: That’s alright.
End of interview.