Description:
Kansas Johnson-Lawrence talks about her life growing up in Oklahoma.
Transcript:
Interviewee: Kansas Johnson-Lawrence
Interviewer: Francee Forshee Pendleton
Interview Date: August 13, 2009
Interview Location: Unknown
Francee Forshee Pendleton: My name is Francee Forshee Pendleton, and today is August 13, 2009. I am going to be interviewing my great-aunt Kansas Johnson-Lawrence. How are you doing today, Aunt Kansas?
Kansas Johnson-Lawrence: I’m doing fine. Thank you.
FFP: Great. Great. I need for you to tell me your full name.
KJL: Kansas Johnson-Lawrence.
FFP: And your date of birth?
KJL: October 2, 1919.
FFP: Where were you born?
KJL: I was born in Jones County.
FFP: Jones County?
KJL: Yes. That’s about [pause]. I don’t know how many miles it is from Oklahoma City.
FFP: Oh okay, so it’s not in Oklahoma City?
KJL: Oh, no. Jones County is out in the country by Luther. You know Luther?
FFP: Yes.
KJL: It’s out near Luther, Oklahoma.
FFP: And that’s where you grew up?
KJL: Yes. No, that’s where I was born. I grew up in Choctaw County.
FFP: Your siblings – how many siblings did you have?
KJL: Um, there were two mothers. The first mother had ten childrens [sic], and my father’s second wife, which was our mother – she had eleven kids. There were twenty-one childrens in all.
FFP: What were the mother’s names?
KJL: The first wife, her name was Laura.
FFP: My grandmother’s name.
KJL: Yeah. I don’t know her maiden name. I just remember them telling us her name was Laura. That’s all I know.
FFP: Was it Laura Huddelston?
KJL: Yeah, that’s it. Hudson or something.
FFP: Big family. We know this. My grandmother was the eighth, which was something.
KJL: She was the youngest girl in the first set of childrens, and they called her “Baby.”
FFP: I never knew that.
KJL: You didn’t?
FFP: No, I sure didn’t. [laughs]
KJL: Big Baby. That’s what they called her.
FFP: Describe for me your school life. What was that like growing up?
KJL: Well, I first went to school in District 47, which was in the county of Choctaw. Choctaw County. It was located where the area of Green Pastures is now. It was on the 36th at that time, 36th Street. We had no numbered streets. It was just a road. If it had a name, I don’t recall it. All we know was just a road and knew where it was located. You go two miles north or two miles south or a half a mile east, to that effect, we had no numbers on the roads out in the area at that time I was a kid growing up. We lived on a farm, and the area that is Parker’s Heights at this time, the man that owned that property, his name was Mr. Parker. One of his older childrens divided it up into lots and started selling portions of it, and that’s the area that’s Parker’s Heights. It was across the road from where we lived, where I grew up, but at the time I was growing up as a child and going to school, grade school, we called it – it was just a farm.
FFP: I forgot to ask you your father’s name.
KJL: My father’s name was John Johnson.
FFP: And his nickname?
KJL: Johnny.
FFP: Or “Papa” to the rest of us kids.
KJL: Papa to the childrens.
FFP: Our group originally from Grandma Laura and Grandma Willie, through Papa and Uncle Doc, is our family legacy.
KJL: Yes.
FFP: A lot of us.
KJL: Only Uncle Doc didn’t have as many childrens as his brother Johnny.
FFP: How many did Uncle Doc have?
KJL: Exactly? I really don’t know. I know he had two wives because he had one... there was a son named Tommy, and I remember him. He lived in Oklahoma City. He didn’t live out where we lived because Uncle Doc at first didn’t live out there. He moved out there after they opened up what is now Green Pastures.
FFP: You are the third or the fourth youngest?
KJL: Oh, no.
FFP: You’re not?
KJL: No. Fannie Mae comes after me, and Sim, Esther, Eddie, Amos Lee, Orville, and Arthur. They are all under me. All of them in our group, all the boys that my mother had, they’re younger than I am. I’m the fourth child of the second group.
FFP: I didn’t realize that.
KJL: Elector, Mary, and then our mother had a little boy they did not name. Then me. There were two girls and a boy before me.
FFP: Can you name them all?
KJL: Elector was my mother’s – now, this is our group.
FFP: Let’s start from the very first group.
KJL: There was Johnny, Andrew, Robert – let’s see. [pause]
FFP: Is Uncle Monroe in there?
KJL: Yeah. Monroe. [pause] I said Williams, didn’t I?
FFP: No.
KJL: Williams. And Leo. Leo was the youngest boy in the first group, and your mother Magnolia was the youngest girl. Rosie. I don’t know how many it was before Rosie or after Rosie, but Rosie was the oldest girl. Papa had two girls in the first group by his first wife, and four girls by our mother. There as four girls in our group.
FFP: And all those boys.
KJL: And all the rest were boys.
FFP: Tell me one of the stories of your childhood. I love the baseball story.
[both laugh]
KJL: Well, the baseball story was mostly – we loved baseball. We loved to play it because that was our sport and that was the game we played. Just like on the weekend after church, during the summer months when the weather wasn’t too hot, there was an empty field across the road from where we lived, and just our group, our family, and maybe the Houghs that lived about a half a mile from us, we’d go out and we’d make ourselves up a team and we played baseball. Cars would come past, people from out of Oklahoma City just riding and looking around in the country, I guess. They would come and they’d park on the side of the road and get out and sit on their cars and watch us play baseball. We had a good time. Our mother, our daddy, and our daddy couldn’t hit the ball, hardly. He wasn’t a good ball player, a good hitter, but he could throw the ball, but he couldn’t hit it. Our mother was just like one of the kids. She could hit that ball. It was a homemade ball. We didn’t have a professional ball. Our mother would take that ball and put it in a sock, and just keep working and working it around and around until she’d get it in a round position. Then she’d pad it with overalls and things, old clothes that had worn out in parts. She’d take the best part and use it to make the baseball. That was our baseball. Sometimes we’d put a rock on the inside of it and pad it with the old cloth and stuff.
FFS: And we had our own baseball team.
KJL: We had our own baseball team.
FFS: One family. [laughs]
KJL: Mama would have a group and Papa would have a group. The four girls would be in Mama’s group, and the boys in Papa’s group. I was a baseball player. I hit that ball and I’d hit this – I was a right hand batter. I think Mary was a left-hand batter, but she would do this. She would hit at the ball and then hit the bat on the – our bat was homemade too. We didn’t have a professional baseball bat or a professional baseball.
FFS: Just find something and use it, huh?
KJL: Papa would give us a big old piece of plank wood, and he would take it and smooth it down and fix it to where we could use it as a handle. It would be small at the little part where we’d hold it, and then at the top it would be large. The little kids, they had – it was just a wide piece of timber. He would smooth it down. They had their own bat because they couldn’t hold the one we used. They’d hit that ball and oh, we would make ‘em run. We wouldn’t try to put ‘em out. We’d just let ‘em get to the base, and they would be so happy.
FFS: Tell me another story from your childhood.
KJL: Like what?
FFS: Oh, let’s see. What about Mary and the chickens?
KJL: We have different stories. Mary was afraid of the chickens. I know that. We had some chickens that would run you out of the chicken yard.
FFS: We just celebrated our family reunion a couple of days ago. Our family reunions started in August of 1958 when Papa was sick. Our family reunions are standard. It’s every other year, the first full weekend in August, and we have never missed a year, have we?
KJL: [chuckles] No.
FFS: It’s been great. I’m just trying to think of something else. [pause] Another story? Any other story you can think of? Childhood memories?
KJL: I remember when I graduated from Dunbar. It was Dunjee School out there in the country, and it first started out as a one room school, and then they put another room on it and made it two rooms. The lower grades from primary up to I think it was fifth grade, they were in one part of the school, one room, and then from the sixth, seventh, and eighth grade, we were in the other room. We were high grades because our school only went to the eighth grade at that time. From primer to eighth. After the eighth grade, they had a school bus. Kids that graduated from the eighth grade to the ninth grade, we rode a school bus from out there in the country into Oklahoma City to Douglass High School. That’s where my first high school – well, I went to Douglass High School and I graduated from Douglass High School in 1938.
FFS: You went to the Douglass High School on 6th?
KJL: On Stonewall. You know Stonewall was on one side and High was on the other side, and I think it was 6th Street on – because it took up the whole square block. Was it 7th Street? Or was it 6th and 5th?
FFS: 6th and 7th, I believe.
KJL: 6th and 7th Streets, and then Stonewall, and High. The number streets ran – I don’t know my directions since I don’t live here anymore.
FFS: High runs east and west.
KJL: East and west. 6th and 7th ran north and south.
FF: Do you remember your teachers?
KJL: Yes. I had one teacher named Ms. Davis. She was our English teacher. Mr. Daily was our math teacher. Mr. Birch was our social science teacher, I think. Ms. Moon was our home economics teacher. I can’t think of our math’s teacher’s name. We had Ms. Keene. Ms. Keene was a very tiny teacher. She was a very strict teacher. She was our English teacher. She and Ms. Davis both were our English teachers, and they were very, very, strict. Ms. Keene was a strict little teacher. The kids would slip notes around when the bell rang at half time, thirty minutes. They’d stomp their feet. Ms. Keene would be at the front of the class and she would look to see whose feet were moving. I never would do it, but this particular time, I did. (unintelligible) being a good girl and I started moving my feet up and down like the rest of the kids. She saw me. I didn’t know she did, but she saw me, and when the class was over and we were going out to another class, I got to her and she said, “Step aside, little lady. I want to talk to you.” That’s what she said to me. My heart sunk. So she closed the door and she said, “Sit down. Of all the children, I always thought you were a model child because I never did see you doing the things that the other kids did. I was looking – “she [Ms. Keene] had expressive attitude – “I was looking, and whose feet be moving but yours?” I said, “But Ms. Keene – “and she said, “But, but, but nothing. You may go. I saw them.” I felt so embarrassed and so hurt, I didn’t know what to do. I had hurt her feelings and betrayed her because she thought I was a model student. [both laugh] But I was one of the devils like the rest of them.
FFS: What year did you say you graduated?
KJL: 1938.
FFS: Then you moved – tell me about your life after graduation, your husband, your children.
KJL: After graduation, I was married in 1940 to Clayburn Lawrence. Clayburn Lawrence grew up in Oklahoma City. He had two sisters and a brother. His brother’s name was Harvey. His sisters – his younger sister graduated from Douglass but I didn’t know her. I saw her several times in the school because she was a higher grade than I was. She and Maggie Jackson were really good friends. They went to the same church, Fairview Baptist Church. Maggie knew me – when she told us, “My brother is going with a girl and her name is Kansas Johnson.” Maggie said, “I know Kansas. She and I was in the same class.” I guess she got all the news she could get from Maggie about what type of person I was. [both laugh] We were married, my husband and I. We went to El Reno, Oklahoma and got married. My mother’s father lived in El Reno, so that’s where we went and got married. I told Clay that Grandpa always said that he didn’t see our mother get married, so he would like to see one of his grandchildrens, if they grew up and got married before he passed on. So, we went over one Saturday, caught the bus and went to El Reno, and that’s where we married. Grandpa was with us when we got married at the – what do you call it?
FFS: The courthouse?
KJL: Yeah, the courthouse. So, we went down and got the license and got married. We didn’t have to go through the rigmarole like getting a blood test and all that stuff like they do now. We just – they asked us our age, which we lied about because neither one of us was old enough. We had to be 21. Neither one of us was 21. So, my husband said he was 21 and I told them I was 20. [both laugh]
FFS: And your children?
KJL: Clayburn and I had two children. They were both born in Oklahoma City in the same house that he grew up in. The oldest one’s name was Edwin Baxter, and our younger son was Jerome Ison Lawrence. Ison was their grandfather on their mother’s side. I mean, was her father. His name was Ison, and they spelled it I-S-O-N. Edwin, the doctor that delivered Edwin, his name was Baxter. No, his name was Edward. Baxter – I think there was a doctor here named Baxter, and Mama knew him. Clay’s mother knew him. She wanted to put the middle name as Baxter, so Edwin Baxter Lawrence. My brothers and sisters saw them often. Those kids. They called him “Edwin Biscuit Eating Lawrence.” That was a nickname they gave him. Edwin was kind of fat. He was a chubby baby. When I went out one weekend and took Edwin so they could see him, they said, “Oh, Kansas brought her baby to see us! You know what his name is? Edwin Biscuit Eating Lawrence.” Boy, they got so tickled. They went to school and told the kids in school that my baby’s name was Edwin Biscuit Eating Lawrence.
FFS: There’s brothers for you.
KJL: Yeah, and he couldn’t even do nothing but drink milk from a bottle. I nursed him. Most mothers did.
FFS: When did you move to California?
KJL: We went to California in 1942 because Jerome was two months old. Edwin was two years old.
FFS: How did you get to California? I mean, what made you decide to leave here?
KJL: Well, they were building ships and they got – my husband at first was working at Tinker Field. I don’t know how the message came through, but they needed help in the shipyards out in San Francisco and Oakland and Richland. They had three shipyards in Richland, and that’s where my husband worked, in one of the shipyards in Richland. When we came, we lived in San Francisco when we went to California. We lived in San Francisco, and they had a ferry that would take peoples from San Francisco. They’d go down to the pier, get on the ferry, and cross over the bay and it would take them right to the shipyard. They had a special boat that would take them right to the shipyard, and that was their transportation to the shipyard. They’d take the streetcar and go down to the pier in San Francisco and get on the boat and go across to their job.
FFS: I never heard that.
KJL: You didn’t?
FFS: Nope.
KJL: That’s the way they got to work, on these boats that would take them from the pier in San Francisco over to the shipyard.
FFS: One of your sisters, Aunt Elector was a little Civil Rights leader in her own right. Can you tell us something about Aunt Elector?
KJL: Aunt Elector lived in Alameda. This little town, Alameda, was like a little island. It was across from Oakland. Aunt Elector lived there and several of her kids were born there. She had nine childrens, I think. She had four when she left Oklahoma City. She and her husband Emmett had four children. There was Mardina, Emmett, Leslie, and David was the baby. From Sophie, Velma, Esther Nola, Rosa, and James – they were all born in California. David was the baby and the last baby she had in Oklahoma City. She had Mardina, Emmett, Leslie, and David in Oklahoma City. There was four in Oklahoma City and she had five in California.
FFS: And she had a park named after her, right? Just recently?
KJL: Yes, after her death. They lived on this street – I can’t think of the name of it. My senior moments. Anyway, she was real staunch in the Civil Rights Movement. They had no Civil Rights movement in Alameda because there were very few Black folks that lived in Alameda. She was very outspoken. She’d go to the PTA meetings, which the teachers were just all about her action as a mother and as many childrens as she had. One lady that lived across the street later on, after she got acquainted with her, said, “How do you keep those children so clean? They don’t have dirty clothes and they come out going to school and their little shirts are starched and the girls’ dresses are starched. My goodness. You much wash every day.” Aunt Elector said, “No, I don’t wash every day. When my childrens come home from school, you notice they change clothes. They wear a dress or some pants and jeans and they wear them maybe two or three days. They take them off and hang them up. They don’t throw them down on the floor or leave them on the beds.” They said, “Well, how do you keep your house so clean?” She said, “My childrens clean it up and I make sure they clean it up. They wash dishes. They sweep. They mop. They help me with the clothes and everything.” She was a very strict mother.
This park – they lived on this street when they first moved to Alameda. Buena Vista. The park is about three blocks from where they lived when they first moved to Alameda. After her death, which was in – I don’t recall what year. The city department of whatever, some kind of auxiliary, they had this park that was already there. It was – I don’t remember the name of it before they changed the name to Littlejohn, Elector Littlejohn. They said she did so much in getting folks united, and they didn’t celebrate Martin Luther King’s birthday in Alameda. She was the one that started celebrating Martin Luther King’s birthday.
FFS: She has her own day.
KJL: Uh-huh (meaning yes). Is it over?
FFS: Nope.
KJL: Well, I’m tired.
[both laugh]
KJL: Anyway, I had retired at that time. She called and asked me would I come over. I said yeah and what do you want? She said that we were going to sing “We Shall Overcome.” They have a picture where she and I and all the rest of the group that was there, which were all Caucasians, we sang, “We Shall Overcome,” and they took our picture and had it in the Alameda Star, which is the daily paper in Alameda.
FFS: I just knew that my Aunt Kansas, once she started talking, had some great stories. Thank you so much for doing this.
KJL: You’re quite welcome.
FFS: It was a lot of fun, wasn’t it?
KJL: Well, it was okay. [both laugh]
FFS: Thank you very much, dear. I appreciate it.
KJL: I’m glad you do.
End of interview.