Catoctin Center

Projects

Interview with Thomas Hill

Citation

Please feel free to use the information from this transcript in any scholarly work. The full citation for this document is : Thomas Hill, interview by Linwood E. Reddick, Jr., October 14, 1998, OH025, Oral History Collection, Frederick Community College, Frederick, MD.

Abstract

Mr. Thomas Hill was born and raised in Frederick, Maryland during the late 1940's and the 1950's. Here he discusses his experiences in the school system, which were unique in some ways. Mr. Hill attended an integrated St. John's Elementary School because he was Catholic and was one of the twenty or so students to do so during the early 1950's. After completing the Catechism, he was forced to enter the segregated public schools system, and he attended Lincoln High School. After desegregation took place, Mr. Hill reentered an integrated school system and attended Frederick High School.

Mr. Hill's experiences in Frederick are also unique because he shares a black businessman's perspective from his experiences establishing his barbershop, along with his memories of being a teenager in a segregated Frederick. Also covered in this interview is Mr. Hill's perspective on the Civil Rights Movement locally, local leaders, and his thoughts on the modern Frederick black community, or lack thereof, in comparison with the community he recalls from his youth.

Transcript

TH = Thomas Hill (interviewer)
LR = Linwood Reddick (interviewee)

LR:	This is Linwood Reddick History 214, it's 5:45 PM, Wednesday October 14, 1998. I'm talking with Thomas Hill owner of the Hair Hut Barber Shop, #2 West All Saints Street. Mr. Hill was born and raised in Frederick, Md. Some of the topics I hope to cover are his early childhood experiences, life as a student at Frederick's segregated and integrated high schools, the civil rights movement in Frederick, experiences as a black business owner and finally, where Frederick is headed today. How are you today Mr. Hill?
TH:	Fine, Thank you. Pause - To check the tape.
LR:	Mr. Hill can you give me a little bit of your family history and early childhood experiences growing up in Frederick?
TH:	Well, I was born and raised on West All Saints, born 1945. As a kid growing up on Saints Street we had some of everything. We had our own businesses, we had a good family background of everybody was in the community looked out for everybody. We had our own, you know facilities as a youngster: we had the Hall and we had a restaurant and all the things for kids to stay out of trouble which they're getting into today. Saints Street was, and we had the role models, we had Mr. Bob Henderson at the barbershop, we had Dr. Bourne, you had Dr. Snowborn, you had the man who had the dry cleaners, Mr. Snoots Brown, you had of the Knights of Picken like Mr. Orsten Rollins, you had of Mr. Sam Stroud, you had the exultant ruler of the Elks, and the commander of the American Legion, that always took the kids at hand you know, things that are not being done today in the black neighborhood. As far as growing up in Frederick, I can remember the Jim Crow laws, I remember going to the opera house, we had to go in the back door. I can remember that some of the restaurants that you couldn't go in. When you was a kid you didn't realize why they had a little window set out where you went and rang a bell and they looked at you out the window and you couldn't come in, but as time went on, going to school in Frederick there at Lincoln having teachers that cared about you, looked out for you just like everybody in the community. The discipline and knowing that you just couldn't say or do anything within that system. As I went on at as far as, I had it good from both sides because I went to Lincoln High School and St. Johns Elementary School and I went to Frederick High.
LR:	What grades did you attend at Lincoln?
TH:	I went to Lincoln from about seventh grade all the way to eleventh grade, when it closed.
LR:	Then what high school did you go to?
TH:	Frederick High.
LR:	How long did you stay at Frederick?
TH:	Well, I stayed I didn't finish, because of, you know, things that happen with in the school far as not you know, taken the word and not being that upper time person, you know that was shuffling around at that time.
LR:	Basically life was tough leaving from Lincoln to go into Frederick.
TH:	Yes, it was.
LR:	Integrating it.
TH:	Yes, it was, it wasn't tough tough but they did the way that, the way they did it here, you know it was just a solemn way that they did things, as long as you performed as far playing basketball, football and all those other things. I can remember with the basketball team, the football team, when they had dances, you couldn't go. The black kids couldn't go and the white kids had a place to go and they canceled us out, you know, but as time went on, hey, we changed that, we changed it, we changed it.
LR:	From Frederick did you go to St. John's?
TH:	No.
LR:	You went to St. John's?
TH:	Elementary.
LR:	Elementary, OK then you went to Lincoln High School.
TH:	I can remember like of when I went to St. John's, like certain things that the sisters weren't going to allow. And as being a kid traveling and walking with the sisters and going places, they would pull the white man up you know. I can remember going to Braddock Heights Rolling Skating Rink and back during that time they said that black kid couldn't go in and they told us to stay out on the porch, but the Catholic sisters took all of the white kids out of the skating rink and brought them outside where we were. And then the guy who was running the skating rink looked at the sisters and they wasn't going to lose that money and it was only about, about five, no more than five to ten black kids within the group anyhow. But we sat out there on the porch what seem like ah, after the sister told the man about, we're going to take them all out. If these young, if these kids can't go in won't nobody skate. And the money change the way you know change the white man.
LR:	So, St. John's was integrated at that time?
TH:	Oh yeah, St. John's was the first intergraded school, they intergraded way before Frederick High, you could go to St. John's as a black kid in '52, you know way before they made it legal. It was a thing when black kids from Saints Street went up to Saint John's. It was something like you were a privilege character you know, but by being baptized catholic it was just a thing where you went because of you had to take the catechism, and they you know, looked out for you, you know. They had something's that the black kids couldn't get at Lincoln, by going to St. John's, what the white kids were getting, we got a piece of it too. Like Little League baseball, all them kind of things wasn't given to black kids in Frederick. It was taboo, but when I went to St. John's and they put out the Little League forms, by being with the white kid's I got one too. And then when you went to try out for Little League and they found out, "Well how did you that registration form?" There weren't given to the black schools. I go to St. John. "Oh." That kind of relation. And it was black kids that went to Lincoln that I know never knew that Braddock Heights had a skating rink, because you just didn't go there, you know.
LR:	How many black kids were at St. John's?
TH:	Oh, back in that time, I say at least 20, but it was a strict quota. A lot of times you, you know, only went to, as far as the black kids that once you got your catechism and all of the other things, before you turned seventh grade, you were back out to the black school. Because of that little thing, girl-boy thing comes into play. Then you didn't realize that.
LR:	So St. John's actually went to the twelve grade?
TH:	Yeah.
LR:	But being black you pretty much had to go to Lincoln after the seventh grade?
TH:	Right.
LR:	Basically, other than West All Saints Street, where were the other black communities?
TH:	You had, you had Fifth and Bentz that was a black community. East Street was a Black community. You had Phebus Avenue, black community. Lincoln Apartments, Carver Apartments and Sagner came in later and John Hansen Apartment. You had blacks that lived in all parts of Frederick. In your little bourghs and little owns that you always had a central place that we knew that where we could requent, and that was West All Saints Street, that was a part of the structure of living in the black neighborhood. Saints Street was the main Mecca. On the weekends this is where the people came from the country, came and shopped, got their haircut, did their little partying for what they were doing back during those times. We had Roger Smith's, Smoke Henderson the Elks Home, American Legion, the Amvets, the Soul Palace, you had the Knights of Pythian Hall, everything was right here the Mecca, right here on Saints Street. Because of the Jim Crow laws you couldn't go around the corner, so you stayed right within your block. We had, and right here in the neighborhood, you had a grocery store that was owned by a white man, but he gave you that credit and you dealt with it. You dealt with the times in your neighborhood. Our mother and fathers made a, it wasn't a whole lot of money there and it was a whole lot of children and they made ways. The main black employer in Frederick City was the Francis Scott Key Hotel and as kids I can remember walking up to the hotel and my grandfather working up there and if there wasn't enough to eat at the house. My grandfather worked at the hotel, I go on up to the hotel and sit down and get something to eat, but that was, there was a thing that you went in the alley, you didn't come in through the front door. It was a whole lot of that in Frederick. It was a white man's place and most black folks that had jobs in Frederick worked in a subservient field. The man here didn't want too many black professional. Because it interfered with what they were going to do. Anybody who came through Frederick that was like, Lenny Green who started the NAACP and he made ways, the man still has a way slowing you down and putting you back in order, when you started getting people in order. During that time Lenny Green with the NAACP, and Mr. Hampton, and them folks that were the organizers, I was in about my sixteen, seventeen, eighteen year old, and kind of militant towards the man. I went on some of the walks and things down to Annapolis and picket in front of the liquor store that was taking all the money out of the community. I walked with Chester Green, and Mr. Hampton, and Lenny Green, and a whole lot of other brothers that, as it went on to other places because of being ridiculed in this town and couldn't climb the ladder here. You had to go someplace else. I was one of them. I left, I worked for Mr. Bob Henson's Barber Shop on West All Saints, when I got out of barbering school and back during that time at that age nineteen, twenty, I just got married and it made it tough for a young black man to stay here. If jealousy didn't get you in the neighborhood, the man had us strung down because it was just a hard time, just the way they played the game. I left and went to Montgomery County. And stayed down there for at least fifteen, at least twenty years before I came back and opened up the barber shop in Frederick County. It was my mother's thing, because I didn't want to open nothing in Frederick. I didn't want to commit myself to anything in Frederick, because I wasn't sure, but my mother, said put some time in your own backyard and if you go out there and see something, and you like it, try it. So I opened up a shop here in 1978. And it has treated me good. The folks in Frederick has been very nice to me, black folks and white folks. I had good friendships with several, several white families in this town, that was definitely on the one. Everybody is not prejudice. Some people, they hold back and I can remember a point in Frederick, they were going to homes and we use to have round tables. It was Jew families and black families and the young black men and the Jew's boys and we used to dialog. After that, seem like everything got to be OK. Seem like, "Hey, Joe is all right", "I didn't know he was like that". Frederick has came a long way. There's just as many poor white folk here as there are black folk. Right here on Saints Street we had white folks that lived on the upper end of Saints Street and we had the blacks that lived on this end. In my time, and the new things that's happening here now. Our children won't know that this was the main Mecca in Frederick as far as blacks and black folks. This was the main Mecca. When you wanted something to do over on East Street, you came down to Saints Street. If you were living in Bartonsville, Brunswick, any little Hopeville, Centerville, if you wanted something to do on the weekend, Black folks met on Saints Street. And it was unity among us, you know, you had a poolroom. Young men honored each other, and respected their ladies and the old folks that was around, because you had families that lived here. We just couldn't come in town and just do anything, you couldn't do that. When you walked down the street you just couldn't do anything. We had, just like they had the police, as far as the white police that was on the block, we had men that was the police of the community. If you did something wrong, they pulled you up. And had the right to pull you up. You can't do that with the children today. You got to pull up on them, you got to say hey, you know, the discipline, they tell you what you can't do no more, all that.
LR:	Growing up back in that time the neighbors looked out for you, just as much as your parents did, when they wasn't around?
TH:	Yes they did, yes they did, that was automatic. I had my aunt's. My aunt lived upstairs, both my aunts lived over top of one house, my grandmother lived here. I had my aunt live across the street. You couldn't get away from them, family. In each block that you went in, that you went in you just knew what to do. I'll tell you a story, I was cussing coming from Lincoln High School, from school I was cussing and I knew we didn't have a phone at the house. When I got there my grandmother said, "you was cussing around that corner." I wonder how she knew. That's the kind of thing...and then you got discipline. And you couldn't say nothing. You couldn't tell it. "She lying on me." If you said that old folks were lying on you, you got your mouth smacked. Automatically, you know. "I know Mrs. Jones ain't tell no lie on you." "Why she gotta lie on you boy." "She don't have to lie on you." That's the way it was taught to me. Pause - Someone enters the barbershop.
LR:	About what year did things start to integrate?
TH:	We integrated up here in Frederick about 1959, 1960. Pause - Young boy knocks on barbershop door.
LR:	In your opinion, who was some of the black leaders when you was growing up here in Frederick?
TH:	Here in Frederick? We looked up to quite a few man in the town. I can remember Mr. Bateman at the Elks Home. There was Mr. Johnny Jones, Mr. Gibson, Mr. Bob Henderson, Dr. Bourne. I mean, all the old men, you looked up to them. You had respect for all of them for what they did, for what they were. You had, as a young man, when you got to Mr. Smoke's corner, you had to make sure that your parents told you, made sure that somebody said you could go to the next corner. Because the old men when you got down, "Boy what'cha doing down on this end." All…quite a few men in this town, Mr. Cooker, organizer of baseball. Black kids didn't have nothing to do, Mr. Clarence took you out there on the baseball field. We had Mr. Orsten Rollins, if you didn't have nothing to do, he put you out on the wood pile. Mr. Elkins, he put you on the wood truck or had you selling watermelons or something on Saturday. You had quite a few men that pointed you along the way.
LR:	Back when you say you were militant when they had demonstrations, were there big demonstration like maybe down South?
TH:	No,no, no, nothing that heavy. We didn't get the billy clubs and all of that, they did it, when they squeeze you economically. That's the way they did it here. They didn't come outright. Because, Frederick, this is a slavetown. You had descendants of slaves, the children, my great great grandfather, born and raised right here in Frederick. Frederick County. I can remember my great great grandfather with the folks here in Frederick, him telling you about when he was a kid, that had just come out of slavery. My great great grandfather lived until he was one hundred and seven years old. He was a man from Frederick, told me stories as a kid, as far as why things were the way they were in Frederick. I just listened to his stories and now that I have grown up, this is a part of the place where history was made. They broke up a whole lot of black families in this town. A lot of folks don't realize it, but families of who's gone by. This is one of the places that they took you from your family and shipped you to Kalamazoo, or you don't know. This was a breeding ground for slaves. And when I say breeding this is what is was. Frederick was a place where they bred slaves and they sold you and everything else that the white folks, you got folks that's still, that's in power today that's a part of the system that in the '60's that wanted to hold you back. You got the same old scenario today, but it's undercover that my father and them had in the '40's coming back from Korea. The same thing applies to all young black men. If you don't have anything to stand on, if you don't have nothing for economic development, things that you can do for yourself you're always be in debt to the white man. And our forefathers knew that. What I say is you got to do it for yourself. You know the white man's not going to do it for you, you got to do it for yourself.
LR:	So you started your first own shop in 1978?
TH:	Yes, '78 when I came back to Frederick.
LR:	Did you run into any problems trying to get established?
TH:	Naw, because the needed something, you know. Plus I wasn't a hindrance to what they were doing. I had my license, I went to school for barbering. I had everything in order as far as me with the hair thing. The whole thing of it, was getting a start. Every time I wanted to open a shop I never had no money. I just had the thing to say, I got to do something and the man, every time I go to work for the man he got something to say about it. So I do it for myself. I don't have to answer to no one. Sometimes it's bad, sometimes it's good. But as far as business here, as long as I run that, see back then, the white man doesn't want you to come to his barber shop. He doesn't want you to come up there. He don't want you to come up in his shop, a black man. Down here the black man is welcome. If you go up there to the white man's shop, he's looking at you. So he don't want that, so there's a piece left out for us. That's one little piece that I stand behind, cutting the black man's hair. Because you know that you don't want to do it. I can cut yours. I know how to cut yours. I know how to cut yours, but you never wanted that. Nowadays, the black women, she can go to a white shop and get her hair done. But the only reason why is because they want that money. And sometimes we're gullible especially our women. Knowing that they got sisters down there struggling. "I ain't taking my sisters money." They go right on out there to J.C.Penny's or one of the them places, put it on the credit card or come down to my shop get one on credit, write a check and get mad to give to the black folks. But the other person you're not going to do that to. You're not going to go up in there asking for a favor. That's the thing that happens within the black, when you're black and in business. You just got to roll and hope that you treat the folks with kindness when they come across the door. Don't be no fool. Work at your trade. I don't consider my, this business that I'm in, that a trade that I went to learn. By me sitting in that chair…by having my barber chair that was giving to me, not given to me, by a Jew. He let me get them on the take. I paid him up until he died. He was a good man to me. He was one of the good white men that I knew. One of them. He was true and honest, and I guess I was to because he took me under his wings. Other than that, hey, that's it.
LR:	Basically, how do you see Frederick today as far as race relations and being a black person living in Frederick today?
TH:	We're scattered out now. We don't have a black community anymore. It's a weekend type of thing for black folks now. When you come to the neighborhood, its a weekend type thing. People come back to the neighborhood on the weekend. Other then that there's no, were going to struggle it out. Years changed that. Our children today, not all of them. Still, they're doing things with the white children. Some find that they, I try to tell them, you can't do what the white boys do and get away with it man. If you think that's what you can be out there in those streets and the white boy can do it, and you think you can do it. Hey, you got another thought coming. The boys that I know are all in school. You get you something to go for yourself, or get the hell out of Frederick. You get you something you can lean on, and touch all three bases. They look at just the small spot on this here planet. Frederick is, you know. To me when I was growing up, it wasn't a place I wanted to hang around, because you could get a good job, so you left. And still today it's the same thing in Frederick. There's always exceptions to the rule. But they're still a little hands offish on you. The county workforce, the city workforce. If we can work out the system. You can see the system in Frederick is bad. The ratio don't match up, even the jail system. When you got, I have seen both sides. The ratio don't match. When you have a situation in Frederick. The white boy get this much time and the black boy gets all the time. It's a Jim Crow town. It was when I was growing up and it's still a Jim Crow situation in Frederick County.
LR:	Thank you Mr. Hill.