Interview with Lord Dunmore Nickens

My family goes back to before the Revolutionary War and in this booklet here, Virginia Negros and Sailors of the Revolutionary War. This book was published in 1941 and given to every black school teacher in the state of Virginia. In this booklet are four families, and one of those families are my family, my great-great-great grandfather was on his way to Barbados and stopped off in the States, and he decided to stay in the States, and he settled in Virginia, Spotsylvania County. If you ever visit Spotsylvania County, in the courthouse there, you will find the same thing that's in this book; the four black families who fought and supported the movement in the United States to free themselves from the tyranny of the British stamp act and so forth. In this booklet there are nine of my great-great uncles. So, we go back quite a distance, in this country.

Although we haven't been given full credit as being a first-class citizen, and it's still that way, in a sense of speaking. And therefore, I felt as though as a youngster, after being kicked in the butt at the Point of Rocks Station in 1919, December the 19th, when we moved, (my immediate family moved from Virginia to Maryland), by one of the conductors there, because at that particular time, we didn't start school until we were seven years old and I was only six, and I couldn't read so I had to go to the rest room and I walked into one that had a sign that said, "White Only," not knowing what that was or anything, and a conductor grabbed me in the back of the collar and kicked me in the butt and kicked me out in the waiting room again. We could sit in the waiting room, but we could not go into different sections of the waiting room.

The Point of Rocks terminal is still standing. It's a memorial to the B&O Railroad now. And I remember it every time I go past that because I don't live too far from there.

That started me at a young age of wondering what the difference was between colors, and the texture of their hair. Because, the place where we lived in Virginia, White Post, up next to Winchester, we had no trouble. And we moved to Lucketts; we had no trouble there. There were whites that were our neighbors and we all slept, and if we, our parents cooked enough for everybody within the neighborhood because we had these old open fireplaces. The fireplace, I guess, was about as big as from that wall to here, with big stanches and everything, that were way taller than what I was, and they cooked in pots, and they'd cook a big potful. Well, everybody from the neighborhood came and ate. They all had gardens together and everything. So, we all lived together; I knew nothing about it until I crossed the bridge to Point of Rocks.

Although, Virginia was a southern state, and there were good people in Virginia, just as there are good people in Maryland. But, it just so happened that an unfortunate little boy couldn't read, but soon after that I learned how to read and write, and I began to understand then what that so called separate but equal doctrine meant to all of us, and that was enacted in 1896. That you can do the same things I do, but you don't have the revenue to do it with, so it's up to you to find a way to do it, but just keep out of my way. And that lasted clear up until 1954. I was, and growing up into the neighborhood, we had our own black schools. I went to the one school that was on the corner of Bentz Street and Pheobus Avenue up until the sixth grade, and then I was transferred to the seventh grade up to West Seventh Street where the Catholic, what is it, home is up there or something. And then while we were, we all had to get in line out in front of the school each morning to march in the school to our respective classrooms and teachers. And while we were there, the young white students would come up going to Washington Street school, and the clouds would be coming up. It would be raining. The darkies were on their way in, the sun's going to come out. Or it was sunshine. All kinds of names that you were called. And you had to endure this for what reason, I was saying. So I became bitter. I was a real bitter youngster. And I was bitter up until way after I came out of the service.

I started working at the age of seventeen at Kemp's Department Store. And I was good at drawing, so the advertising manager asked the store owner about letting me print show cards. So, he said fine. And he asked him about letting me dress mannequins in the window, and he said fine. So, I started printing show cards. That job went, that went along good with my other work that I was doing as janitor of the third floor and the basement, and working out to the boss's house in the time that I didn't have anything to do at the store. Oh I was making good money, five dollars a week. Five dollars a week. Some weeks I put in over 80 hours or more. And there was one lady in town, I won't call her a name. She was a white lady, and she was very nosey. I don't know if she liked black people or not. They had blacks working for them. She said to the owner of the store one day, "You're going to have to get rid of that little black boy...." Colored boy we were called then, I take that back she did call me colored, "that little colored boy that you have dressing white mannequins in the window."

He said, "Why?"

"Because that would give him the inclination to grab white women."

I wonder what the significance was. So I had to stop dressing white mannequins in the store window. But I continued to print show cards. And I continued to clean up and work out to the house. So, one day I was on the way out to the house to work on Upper College Terrace, and they had started to work on Baker Park. Baker Park used to be a stock yard, where Zacharias and Nicodemus kept there cattle. And we as youngsters would drive those cattle as far as Baltimore to the Eskay slaughterhouse for ten cents an hour. And they'd, we'd, walk down driving the cattle and they'd bring us back by automobile. And as I was walking across from the bridge at Carroll Parkway over to Upper College Terrace, I had to walk either around the sidewalk, all the way around, and the short cut was to take the cement walk right straight from the bridge over to the swimming pool. So, I got halfway and I heard the police, this whistle blowing, and I didn't stop. And he, this officer, and I hate to say this because I hate to be called dumb myself, and I hate to call other people dumb, but I must let you know that this was dumbest officer on the police, Frederick City Police force. He could not write his own name. And he asked me what my name was, to write it on this piece of paper. So, I wrote my name on the piece of paper, Lord D. Nickens. And he said, "Your arrested for trespassing on city property." I went before the magistrate, and only making five dollars a week, and he charge me two dollars and a half of my week's salary for trespassing on city property. But, my boss got that back for me. He told him that I was working for him, and wherever I walked, that they had nothing to do with it. So, they gave him his money back because he was very influential within the community.

But, now my father was a taxpayer. He owned his own property; he was paying taxes in the city. This is a good Frederick city. And, one other thing was the former mayor at that particular time was very biased, and he lived on South Market Street. And the black, after they organized the sports segment within the city, one black and one white, one for black and one for white; I happened to be on the softball team that won the black championship at Melnicks Park, and we had six teams in that league and they had six in theirs. So, we worked the play the white champions to see who would be the city champions. We went to rural Baker Park, where the band shell is now, and he let us warm up, but then he put a policeman at each base, and he stood at the pitcher's mound, and said, "They'll be no mixed baseball here today; over my dead body if you play." So, they ran us off, so we didn't get to play Dr. Pepper for the city championship.

All these things tied in with going to the Peanut Gallery in the movie theaters, not being allowed into the YMCA, and hardly allowed into the churches. If you went to church, some white person went along with you. And you think you have it rough today. You should be glad that Thurgood Marshall and the NAACP opened the doors for us. I know I am elated, and I have felt better ever since.

After being laid-off at Kemp's, I went to work for a lady by the name of Tina Walker. She was, she made hats. And I delivered her hats for her, all over Frederick. And the studio above was Boe Rogers'. So, some how or another, he took a liking to me and said, "Lord, if you would like to learn photography, I'll teach you and I'll pay you while you learn." I said, "Fine, sure." So, I worked at both places, delivered hats and going out on jobs with him and then working in the studio, making prints. They had a young girl that did all the retouching, and it was interesting.

Well, then the war came along. Rumors hit that were running rapid. And, you know how your blood boils, even though you have been stepped on and stood on just about all of your life up to that particular time. You feel as though you owe the country something to help to pay for the keeps under the constitution. If you believed in the flag, you would look at the flag and say, "I owe that flag something, those stars and those stripes. My people helped to build this country. Why should I stop now?" So, I volunteered for the service. My qualifications were that I qualified for the Signal Core. But, there were no black units in the Signal Core, at that time. So, they were going to activate a new brigade; two black units and one white unit. But that was something that was just on the paper at that particular time. So, the sent me to Fort Wachuka, Kansas and Fort Pray for my basic training and S.C.T.C. training. After my S.C.T.C. training, with the forty-first engineers, the Seventy-Seventh Coastal Artillery was activated, and I went to the second metallion of the Seventy-Seventh Coastal Artillery Brigade, now we had two black outfits and one white outfit. The Seventy-Second and the Seventy-Third were black. The Seventy-Fourth was white, but we never came together. We never maneuvered together. And we would maneuver all over the southern part of the country with our big guns and the search lights, and our thirty-sevens, fifties, and twenty-twenty calibers, and M1 rifles, and the new O-3 had just come out at that particular time. We were using those. When we trained for, when we went in the army to train, there was only two hundred, I think, seventy-three rifles that were fire-able, that could be fired in the United States Army. And we were getting ready to declare war on Germany. We trained with tent pegs for rifles and stove pipes for machine guns. But, we were trained well. After...well, we were on way to go to Trinidad to fire our big guns because they had a twenty mile radius, and they didn't want to hit any ships on the coast, and they couldn't fire them on land because we weren't in our zone on the desert. That was taken up. And so we were going where we could set up along the coast and fire them at targets, sleep targets on airplanes, and sleep targets pulled by ships. That was on the sixth of December, we were in Florida, getting ready to board our ships to go to Trinidad, and the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor.

We were then rerouted from Florida all up the east coast to help to form an iron ring around the east coast. But, there were two rings. There was a black iron ring, and there was a white iron ring. And, if you were black, you had to penetrate both of them in order to do your job. Prejudice was very rampant. Even with the white soldiers, prejudice was rampant. There was a good young man, and you meet a young girl, and you wanted to talk to her; "I can't talk to you. You're an old soldier. You had a uniform on. Your soldiers are no good." I don't know how long that took the people to get over that in the United States, because we soon pulled out and headed for the Philippines. The Japanese were coming down; we got to Australia, and we weren't allowed to. . ., black troopers, troops weren't allowed in Australia. So, they rerouted us to Indonesia. Still on board, President Roosevelt issued an order to the Australians that if black troops can't come onto your soil, then no soldier will help to protect you from the Japs. So, black soldiers began to debark in Australia. And you must remember that Australia was almost founded like the United States was founded. Because of persecution by the British, the pilgrims came to America. England then took the prisoners to Australia and put the prisoners out there.

But yet, for the life of me, I couldn't figure out why. And what was so different between a black human being and a white human being. And science tells us that mutation has brought on the different colors. It refutes some parts of the Bible. That's why science and the Bible, stories of the Bible, don't get along together real good, because they refute each other, they dispute each other. It said that, in the Bible, that Noah had three sons, Hypocreaceae and Ham. Ham was the black one with kinky hair, and he's the one that peeped in the tent on his father after his father had made wine and was inebriated, and he laughed at him. If he was asleep, or in a trance, or drunk from wine, how did he see his son peeping at him? How, and put the curse on him, that you and your descendants shall be last, as long as there's a universe? I'm, I'm still baffled at that. My father was a preacher for eighty-nine of his 107 years, but he has never explained that to me. So, I'm still baffled. Science says that mutation has brought on, and they go back, way back to Africa. So, as a youngster, you become inquisitive, and you want to know, "Why was this? Why was that?" And you're in the army fighting for the freedom to maintain a freedom in which you are denied. But yet, you're so patriotic that you feel as though you're obligated to do this. Tell me, that's the same thing with religion. That you're obligated.

Well, I went on to war. I was in four combat missions. I have a couple of medals. Nothing to brag about. The Soldier's Medal, I guess, is the "best one." And in the service, while overseas, we were rerouted again from Indonesia back to a small island called Tongatapu, to prepare for the invasion of Guadalcanal. So, we started from Tongatapu to Guadalcanal and then came all the way up to the Salmons, and New Guinea, and Byac, and then we were headed from Byac to the Philippines for a D plus two. And, when we were in the harbor at the Philippines, I got my orders to report to a new outfit so that I could be rotated back home. I had more than the total number of points that we needed to be rotated. I was a Battalion Sergeant Major, and was transferred to another ship off of the ship that was with all of my buddies, and came back down the same route with the exception of Guadacanel and Tongatapu. And then we boarded the British ship again, Aquitania, the passenger ship converted to troop ship. And we came back to Hawaii. Now Hawaii was nothing, nothing at all like Tongatapu. The natives at Tongatapu were just as friendly as could be and would do anything for you. Even wash and iron your clothes better than the laundry could do. And the use of coconut fired iron.

And we got to Hawaii, so they were looking for Sergeant Lord D. Hickenbottom. I don't know how they got that name. So, I wouldn't answer. So, finally I said, "Well, maybe I'll get the chance to go on land in Hawaii--see Pearl Harbor and all that stuff we've been fighting for." So, they said the, the Skipper said, "We've been looking for you. We've had you marked AWOL." I said, "Well, how could I go AWOL in 30 days from the time we left New Guinea to Hawaii. I can't walk the water. I'm not crazy." And so he said, "I know you're not, but why didn't you answer?" I said, "What, to somebody else's name?" I said, "My name's Lord D. Nickens, not Lord D. Hickenbottom." He said, "Well, they made a mistake." So, I was in charge of the crew to pick up rations to last us the 11 days from Hawaii back to the United States. So when we were all ready, I had my big platoon ready, they had four truckloads of MPs. I don't know how many SPs. And we were put in the, jammed in the middle of them with this one little truck. And then another empty truck behind us to pick up the rations. I said, "What's going on here?" He said, "Well, we don't, you're quarantined, we don't want you to get what the other people have until you've been checked out. I said, "Okay." That was alright. So we came back to the, got our rations, came back to ship, and the ships pulled out the next day. We pulled into San Francisco Bay; went over to Angel's Island.

We thought we were treating the Japs bad enough overseas. Well, when we got back, and pardon any Japs; if there are any Japanese here, don't take it to heart. We got back; we went to Angel's Island. They had the Japanese in these wire cages, and threw raw sharks over there for them to eat. I was ready to leave there then, when I saw that.

We came back by train, all the way across the country. Everything was well coming through Texas, California to Texas, Arizona; we got to Arizona, we got to Mississippi. Got to Pelahatchet, Mississippi and one of the soldiers got off, they really weren't supposed to, but there was a fellow selling hotdogs, and he jumped off and got a hotdog, and they wanted to lock him up for getting off and getting a hotdog. I raised sam-heck, and they did let him get back on. They said they didn't want none of us getting off in Southern states anymore. By golly, we got back to Fort Meade. They cut my orders on the same orders with a young white lad from Martinsburg, West Virginia. Both of us were to report to the second army at Columbia, South Carolina. On the day after the bombing of Japan with the atomic bomb, that was the second of August, and we went back to the terminal. I got to Washington, D.C., riding the bus back, and an MP walked up and said, "Sergeant, where's your necktie?" I said, "I don't have one. I haven't had a necktie since 1940." He wanted to take me in, waiting at the bus terminal for the bus to take us back down south. So the lieutenant came around and said, " Sergeant, how long have you been back in the states?" I said, " Thirty days." He told the MP to go ahead and forget about it. He said, "This man, they don't wear no neckties over in the tropics." They didn't know what a necktie was. And so we came back; we got as far as Richmond that evening. And we wanted to get to the bus stop so we could get something to eat, or so they could get something to eat, all the white passengers on the bus. They went in the restaurant; they got what they wanted. And there was a white couple from Orlando, Florida, and I'll never forget those two people. Young couple they were. And they came back, because we couldn't go in the restaurants and knew nothing about Richmond and how far I had to go to get to the colored restaurant, as they were called then. And, they said, "Sergeant, you want something eat? We'll get you something to eat." So they went into this restaurant where they had eaten and got me a fish sandwich and a cup of coffee. Well, that lasted ‘till the next morning. At 7:00, we pulled into Arnsburg, South Carolina. Now, the month before that, they had blinded a black soldier who had just come back from Europe, fighting with an infantry outfit that went in on D-day at the invasion of Europe to knock down the Nazi regime. He was blinded. So, this couple said to me, "Sergeant, you better not get off here. We'll bring you back what you want. What do you want?" I said, "Well, bring the ham and egg sandwich and a cup of coffee." They said, "Fine." The lady went in, they ate, she came out, she had my sandwich and the cup of coffee, and she got to the door of the bus and the bus driver said to her, "What are you going to do with that? If you gonna serve that nigger, you're not getting on this bus with it." He knocked it out of her hands and tread on it. I was fuming.

So, we went on farther south. Got to Columbia. That was, I guess, 20 minutes of ten when we got into Columbia. And, immediately, after the recon had picked us up and took us to headquarters, second army headquarters, and there was a sergeant major sitting to the left of the door, a lieutenant sitting next to him, and then the major was in a little room off of the men. So, there was three benches in there, and I sit on the bench. The immediately call the white lad, sent him out to his outfit, and I sit there, and 6:30 that evening, nothing to eat, nothing to drink, I said to the sergeant major, "Sergeant, when am I going to be transferred and sent to my outfit. I've been here all day long." He said, "I know sergeant. Just say something to the Lieutenant." I said to the Lieutenant, "Sir, when am I going to be sent to my outfit?" He looked at me and says, "We don't have no place for niggers in the second army." And I was so angry. All this had built up into me, that I hit him in his mouth. And there's a toothprint right down my knuckles today to show for it. "I'm gonna court-martial you!" I knocked him over on the floor. "I'm gonna court-martial you!" And the Major walked out and said, "If anyone's gonna be court-martialed, it's gonna be you." So, he put me on a C-47 and flew me back to Fort Bragg.

Up to Fort Bragg that evening. That's where I got all my basic training and everything. That's where I joined the thirty-fourth brigade there. And we went in, we got off of the plane, the recon picked me up and took me in, and the Sergeant that was driving the recon said, "Sergeant, you can get your mess kit out of your duffle bag there and go and get in line and get something to eat. I said, "Okay." The German prisoners lined up, two rows of them, from here to the main gate, I know, if not farther. They were serving them. And they had fried chicken, and that was one of my favorites at that particular time. And it smelled good and I could almost taste it. By the time I got up there an hour later, the staff Sergeant, he pushed me out of line. And I said, "What's this for?" He said, " We don't serve niggers in here." I said, "You were serving German prisoners. Why can't you serve me? I just come from overseas, man! What's wrong with you?" "We still don't serve niggers." I said, "Well, if you consider me a nigger, I guess I have to go to the IG." I went across the circle to the IG's quarters and talked to him. He came over; he ripped the stripes off the Sergeant, and I got my fried chicken.

But, the next day, the Colonel in the outfit that I was sent to said to me, "Sergeant, I want you to prepare to discharge for. . ." He called the lad's name, I forget his name now, "but his boss want's him to come back and pick his cotton." And I looked at him and said, "Sir, I have never seen, since I've been in the army, and I've been in here five years; I have never seen the nigger in the soldier's guide. This is colored troops." "Who are you in the he-- to tell me what's in the manual?" I said, "Well, sir, you can have it your way if you want to." "But, I'm gonna send you to Korea." I said, "Well, we'll see." So, I went back to the IG's quarters, and asked for a discharge, because I couldn't take that no more, because either I'd be killed or kill somebody else. So, I get, eleven days later, my discharge came through. I was no longer under that Colonel. I was in a pool, a reserve pool they called it.

So, I was discharged. And I came on back home, and I said it's time for me to do something here. Of course, I had been a member of the NAACP in the initial opening of the first chapter in Frederick County in 1936. And I decided that it was time for me to start working for the NAACP. And I started working at the NAACP and got to meet quite a few people of stature. Thurgood Marshall was one of those. And at that particular time, just before that, prior to that, I had met Thurgood because we were working on the Scottsboro case. And those lad's that were accused of raping a white girl on the box car as tramps, that's what they were called, because we had all been in the jungle from the depression. Didn't want to be burdens on the families. So, we took to the road, and you would hitch a ride anyway that you could. Train, truck, horse and buggy, or whatever. And these lads in Alabama had gotten on this box car with these two white girls and they made the girls say that they had raped them, ravished them. And the one girl, she broke down, and her conscious whipped her, and she recanted her story. And we began a collection at that particular time of 25 cents per person, selling little buttons. And that little button said, " I was there." And we sold it for 25 cents. We raised enough money to get those fellas who had been sentenced to die from the death chamber and released. I think the last one of those fellas died about 1964, 66, something like that.

Then, the school teacher's salary came up. Equalization of the teacher's salary. White teachers were getting twice as much as, in salary, as the black teachers. And I don't want you to get me wrong, and I don't want you to think that I'm bitter, because I'm a changed man, but I'm just relating to you how history itself progresses from generation to generation, and how soon we forget and think that we're living in this world alone and on our own, when we all have to live with in synergistic atmosphere. We have to depend on one another. We have to be friends with one another. We have to trust one another. And to move on with the story, we worked with the Baltimore Chapter. We had no state chapter then. And there was only nine chapters within the state at that particular time. Now there's a chapter for each county, plus three for Baltimore county. And the teacher's salaries were equalized. Mr.Brunner, John W. Brunner, started in the school system at 20 dollars a month. As supervisor of all the black schools in Frederick County, he only made 40 dollars a month. The average first grade teacher, white, was making 42 dollars a month. Forty-two fifty to be exact. Mr. Brunner was a very congenial and friendly man, and so...

There was no black high school in Frederick County, so Mr. Brunner decided that he was gonna ask the school board to establish a black high school. If we wanted to go to black high school after we came out of the seventh grade, we had to go out of state, or go to Baltimore, or to Washington, or Virginia where they had black high schools, or Harper's Ferry Stork College. Stork College was the most prevalent one at that particular time for blacks in Frederick County. So, on Saints Street, Mr. Brunner...I thought I brought a picture of that building along, maybe I didn't...founded, through the supervisor and the county commissioners at that particular time, a little one room church on Saints Street. And that little one room church was opened as the black Frederick High School. And it was opened in 1922. The 8th grade of that school was taught in the rear of the Bentz Street school. There was three rooms in the Bentz Street main building, and it had sliding doors where you could open and we'd have general assembly of, and all could get together that way. There was a little building in the back for kindergarten and first grade--mostly first grade, because we had very little kindergarten at that particular time for blacks. And, Miss Molly Weis taught that. In the grade that I was in, grades from Miss Molly Weis up through Mrs. Evans to Miss Proctor, from Miss Proctor to Mr. Brunner, who, again, was supervisor and also teaching school at Seventh Street and seventh grade until he was given solely just the job of supervisor. I think I was in the last class that he taught in the seventh grade at Seventh Street school. We were transferred, then, over to the new school, which became Lincoln High School.

And we began to work in the various clubs in the black neighborhood. The adults had clubs and the youth had clubs. But, the adults were the overseers of the youth clubs, and so we had our peers to look up to, to help to guide us. And some of the most influential men in my life, in my struggle through segregation up through to the present time, had been Mr. Brunner--I'll name them in my order--Dr. U. G. Bourne, Sr., my father, and Mr. Brunner. Those three men taught me a lot about humanity, how to live, how to try to get along within the society, without most called an Uncle Tom, yet being stern in your convictions, and fighting for your convictions. And in this little pamphlet here, What Should I Tell My Children Who Are Black? It was published by the NAACP in the 60's up through the 70's. One of the writers in here, Margaret Burrow, she has a paragraph in there that I think would be fitting to all of us. The second paragraph of those What Should I Tell My Children Who Are Black,

I will lift up thy head, their head, in proud blackness with the story of thy fathers and their father's fathers, and I shall take them into a way back time of rings and kings and queens who ruled the Nile, and measured the stars and discovered the laws of mathematics, upon whose backs have been built, this one and more, and his heritage shall be his weapon, and his honor will make him strong enough to win any battle he may face, and since this story is often obscured, I must sacrifice to find it. For my children, even as I sacrifice to feed, clothe and shelter them, none will do it for me. I must find the truth of heritage for myself, and pass it on to them in years to come. I believe, because I have armed them with the truth, my children and their children's children will venerate me, for it is the truth that will make us free.

I was arrested for protesting against apartheid in South Africa, arrested with Harry Belfonte's daughters, Sherry, and her husband. There was six of us arrested that day in Washington. We were all released on our own recognizance. The charges eventually dropped. I was arrested for walking through Baker Park, trespassing on city property. I was ridiculed after spending five years in the armed forces, four battles, four combat zones. Five years in the service of my country, of paying respect to the Constitution and the flag, and to the government of the United States. I was denied, blatantly denied, an equal education, blatantly denied entrance in the front door to sit downstairs in the theater, blatantly denied to sit at a lunch counter and eat, blatantly denied to walk in the soda fountain to get a coke or whatever we wanted, or an ice cream cone.

As a young lad, there was an old German family that live up on Bentztown hill, that ran a store there. My mother was very fond of Nicodemus' ice cream. They call that the velvet ice cream. Ice cream cones was six cents. And she would send my brother and I. We lived on West South Street. Telegraph Street then came off of Patrick Street. And they lived on the corner, had the store on the corner of Telegraph and Patrick. And the ice cream was good ice cream. I don't know how many of you had the opportunity to eat any of the old Main's ice cream. But, it was good ice cream. It had a very rich taste to it. And we went in that morning, and this lady was named Shutes. She didn't care for blacks at all. Her husband was a little better. They spoke German and broken English. As for the ice cream cone, she said, she pointed to the counter and tapped on it, "Put the money down." So, we laid the money down. In the meantime, she said something in German, and her husband said, "Don't say that. Don't say that. Good little boys." The next time we went back, my brother and I decided we were gonna get even. We got a whipping for it. We were gonna get even. So, we took a pack of matches, a box of matches, a wooden pack, a box of matches, and two nails. And we held a nickel, and he lighted the match, and I held it over the match, and it got the nickel hot and laid it down and she grabbed it up. When we got home, we got fanned for it. But, anyhow, she never said, "Lay that money down." After that and never called us names. And, so, that particular time was funny even though the beating did hurt.

We came on up through the years with the NAACP with it's various presidents. Samuel Hamilton was in when the dialog groups were prevalent. And that was the beginning of the opening of hearts in Frederick County. And, from Maryland to D.C., to the Eastern Shore, to Pennsylvania, to West Virginia, because people from all areas attended different meetings. And we met in their regions too. We got to thrash things out racially. But, to try to find out what the difference was between black and white. When white was used as a basis for all colors. And, that was under Sam Hamilton. Then, under Lynwood Jones, we began, we didn't have marches in Frederick as they were having in the other cities and around, because the philosophy in Frederick County was a little different than what it was in the real hard core cities. We were able to talk to the three county commissioners at that particular time, although we didn't get the things that we asked for, only part of some. We were able to talk to, at times, to different mayors, although we didn't get the things we asked for. We were able to talk to the judges, the preachers, and the Catholic church was the arm that reached the farthest in to the black community for reconciliations. And still today, I feel indebted to those at Mount Saint Mary's and I talked to, give talks up there, to the students, and I help the students up there with their essays. I helped them to write their thesis, didn't want to write in on human rights or any black figure, they didn't want to pick within the system that came along in the system, or that's alive or in the system now.

And after, then Lynwood Jones began fighting for the restaurant, because at that particular time.....So, it had to go to referendum. And that was one of the first articles under referendum that we had. It passed. The voters accepted it. Unanimously. So, we could then eat where we wanted to, even if we so desired, and I used to get some of the black women. You feel free now that you can eat any place you want to. He said, "You oughta take that stand off the sidewalk and not eat out here on the sidewalk." But, they got a kick out of it and we did too. Jokingly, that was part of the philosophy.

Then we started on the theaters. Started on the theaters with Sherman Mason, and we were able to break down all the theaters but the Tivoli Theater. The opera houses had closed then. They closed the Star, which was the Frederick theater. They closed that. But, we did get to go to the first floor a few days before they closed it. Tivoli still didn't want to accept us. But, eventually they opened up the balcony, they wouldn't patronize the balcony. So, then Weinberg opened up the first floor to us.

Now, it may have been good philosophy, but he was a hard core man. I know, he has children living now. His son and I were good friends. But, the schoolman, he used to live next door to him, and I had two boys at that particular time. And, he had a boy and a girl. And he built a swimming pool. And Weinberg built a big fence, like they had over in Finchaven, New Guinea to keep us from looking at the first women we had seen in three and a half years, which was spikes or sparks or something like that. First one we'd seen in three and a half years, and if we looked at them, the Commoner said, "You'll get the death penalty." For even looking at them. So, we asked to be moved and went on to Finchaven. But that's what Weinberg had between his house and the schoolman's house. The schoolman said nothing, but my children still went over and swam in their pool with them, played in their pool with them. And he came down to my house one day and said, "I want you to get out. The headquarters built in this house is for the maid and the butler. I want you to get out of this house." I was renting it from the Reed's. A black couple up there who owned that farm. He said, "I want you to get out so that I can get my colored people in there that are going to wait on me." I said, "You're in the wrong place man." But Marshall Stobs tried to tell him to leave, and he wouldn't leave. Well, I made a pass at him. You may be, you may think of it when you go to the visual arts center now. I made a pass at him, and Marshall Stobs, he ran the whiskey store up on the corner of fourth street, and lived in Casanoma right across from me. And he said, "Let him go, he isn't worth it." And I did.

Marshall and I got along fine, but when my boys got ready to go to school, integration had started with school buses. And Feagaville, little Feagaville out here on 340, was the little place that the woman came and took her children off the school bus and said, "There'll be no (and I don't mind calling them names, because they all know that I've called them before), there'll be no riding of black children and white children together. Over my dead body." So my children couldn't get on the school bus, so we had a school board member that lived up in Braddock named Rhoderick and his wife lived down the boulevard from me. I live on, I can't think of the road right now. Anyhow, the third house off of the boulevard. And, Rhoderick called me at work. I was working at Detrick, in the lab. I had gotten a job there in the lab with Dr. Swan. And said, "Lord, stop pass the house before you get off from work on S>

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