Ivy Reid Lewis | Interview 1 | August 4, 2006

WILMOT: And now we are recording. Here as well. Nadine Wilmot with Ivy Reid Lewis, August 4th, 2006. Okay, so good morning.

LEWIS: Good morning.

WILMOT: We usually start off by asking when and where were you born.

LEWIS: I was born in Oakland, California, February 25th, 1931.

WILMOT: 1931, and that was just like you were born kind of in the beginning of the Depression.

LEWIS: Yes I think so.

WILMOT: And what are your parents' names?

LEWIS: My mother's name is Beryl Gwendolyn Holder Dash. She was born in Bridgetown, Barbados. My father's name is Charles Rogers Reid. He was born in Angel's Camp, California in 1898.

WILMOT: Where is that?

LEWIS: Calaveras County.

WILMOT: In California.

LEWIS: In the Sierra Nevada Mountain Range. My grandmother, her family moved there from San Francisco to pan for gold. Three of my aunts and my father were born in Calaveras County.

WILMOT: So how far back do you know your family? And I'm sorry, I don't think I 00:02:00caught your father's name?

LEWIS: Charles Rogers Reid. I know my family's history because I did a lot of research on the subject. My great-great grandfather William Henry Galt and his wife and children came to California in 1861. His white father, who was a slave owner, sent all of his black children to California by clipper ship over the Isthmus of Panama. They came to San Francisco in 1861.

The white father took his immediate family and the black children's mother to New Bedford, Massachusetts to wait out the war. The reason I know this is because my 00:03:00great-great grandfather's son Richard Galt drowned in the Sacramento River. He was twenty one years of age and they sent a telegram to New Bedford, Massachusetts informing his father of his son's death.

William Henry became a captain in the California State Militia stationed at Sutter's Fort. In 1873, at a July fourth celebration, Governor Booth gave him an award for having one of the best military outfits in the state at that time. I 00:04:00found this information in the Sacramento Bee. My grandmother said that the Governor named Galt, California after him; however, in my research, I did not find this information. The records state that Galt was named after a poet.

WILMOT: And you said that the white slave-owner sent his children to California. Do you know why?

LEWIS: To escape the Civil War. And he didn't want to send them overland because they might get caught and put in slavery because they were black, and he sent them by clipper ship.

WILMOT: But he stayed with -- but the mom of the children stayed with him?

LEWIS: The mom of the children stayed with him and his family and they went to New Bedford, Massachusetts until the Civil War was over.

WILMOT: So were they together?

LEWIS: That family, the Galt family, they were together, yes.

WILMOT: That must have been very rare during those times for --

LEWIS: I don't know that it was rare because another part of my family was the 00:05:00Turner family and their white father also sent their black children to California at the same period of time, 1861. It is documented on our family's web site. My cousin Mary Lou Patterson is a physician and lives in New York City. Her father was a well known attorney, William L. Patterson. He was one of the first blacks to graduate from Hastings Law School. He wrote a book, The Man Who Cried Genocide. Mr. Patterson and Paul Robeson, the famous opera singer, petitioned the United Nations General Assembly in Paris and charged the United States of America with genocide against black people. Mr. Patterson also worked on the Sacco and Vanzetti and the Scottsboro and Angela Davis cases. Mary Lou 00:06:00said that one day her father was at a speaking engagement in New Jersey and this Caucasian man came up to them and said, "You're a relative of mine." He was a member of the Galt family. Later he came to visit them in New York. We have never pursued looking for the Galts, but we know that they reside somewhere in Virginia because William Patterson's mother who was William Galt's daughter periodically traveled back to Virginia to visit and it was the Galts who paid for William Patterson's college education.

WILMOT: How did you know all this history? Did your mother and your father talk about it all the time? Or how did you learn --

LEWIS: William L. Patterson, who's now deceased, wrote a book, The Man Who Cried Genocide. In the preface of his book, he talks about his family. That's originally how I learned about it. And when I was a student at Cal I met a Mr. 00:07:00Abajian. James Abajian. And I was talking to him. He says, "You know you have a very prominent family." You have a big history. It's part of my anthology about blacks in California. He gave me a lot of information about my family through census records. The 1900 census. My grandparents lived in Angel's Camp. And Mary Patterson who was a barber -- she was married to some man and they lived in Battle Mountain, Nevada. So I got a lot of information from Mr. Abajian and then I did a lot of research myself. Mary Patterson and her husband sometimes gave Virginia as their place of birth.

WILMOT: And when you were little, before you learned all this, was your family -- did you grow up with your grandmothers? Were they here?

LEWIS: Yeah, I would like to say something. Even though my family originally 00:08:00came from Virginia, my immediate parents, we were not southerners. So we have a different perspective. Most things I hear southerners say, to me -- I don't see the same. My parents, my father was a semi professional ballplayer in California. And so we were always involved in a lot of sports. And my grandmother lived in Berkeley on California Street. She was originally born on Minna Street, now an alley in San Francisco. And I think that Goldie said her parents lived on that same street, too. Nadine Byrd told me that. They all lived on the same street. When I was growing up, my grandmother lived in Berkeley. And at that time, we could ride down Highway 40, which is now Carson Boulevard in Richmond. We could ride our bicycles over to Berkeley to see my grandmother. And 00:09:00I loved to go to my grandmother's because she made apple butter and she always had good things to eat. My uncle worked at -- well, now it's Hostess Bakery, but it used to be Langendorf Bakery -- and he used to bring all the cakes and things over to my grandmother's. And we all congregated at my grandmother's all the time. I had a lot of aunts. My grandmother had 13 children. So we had a large family.

WILMOT: And she was at California and --

LEWIS: She was a Californian. Her mother was Annie Galt so she was the first generation of Galts born in San Francisco.

WILMOT: And she lived on California Street, and what was the cross street?

LEWIS: In Berkeley. Ward Street.

WILMOT: Ward. So right in that area. Right next to that --

LEWIS: Right across from a school, yeah.

WILMOT: I know exactly where that is. Okay, and your grandmother's name?

LEWIS: Virginia Reid.

WILMOT: Virginia Reid.

LEWIS: She was originally a Parker. Her father Edward West Parker registered to vote on the first day the 15th Amendment to the constitution was enacted. He gave his occupation as a special boot maker and his place of birth as Virginia. Mr. Abajian gave me this information and also showed me where he voted. My grandmother used to talk about the San Francisco earthquake and fire and how all the people would come to her house -- She saw how the fire was burning, it turned the moon red, it looked like there was blood on the moon. She always told a lot of history. My father was sort of a historian. Someone recorded his history but I don't know who he gave it to. But he talked about Berkeley when it was a small city and San Pablo Avenue was a dirt road.

WILMOT: That's how he remembered it. And your mother was from Barbados.

LEWIS: Yes.

WILMOT: How did she and your father get together?

LEWIS: Oh, I think my father went to a party or something or a picnic and he met my mother. My mother, you have to know a little history of California. When I was a child, West Oakland was sort of like Sugar Hill, where the rich people moved out and more working-class families moved in, but not a lot of black people. A lot of immigrant people. Where we lived, there were Syrian people, Italian people, all different groups of people lived in West Oakland and they lived in these big old Victorian houses. We still have that Victorian house in our family. My sister now owns it. But it was really a nice neighborhood and 00:12:00people, my girlfriend Lala, her name was Elaine Chukovich, she was Russian. All different kinds of people lived there and it was really a nice neighborhood.

WILMOT: Where was this house located, the house you grew up in?

LEWIS: At 1926 Chestnut Street in Oakland.

WILMOT: Okay, and that was West Oakland.

LEWIS: Yeah, West Oakland. But West Oakland, even when we went down to Wood Street -- because I remember so many things. You know the lottery they now have, like Keno, what they play in Las Vegas and Reno, it started in Oakland. Originally, the Chinese had the Chinese lottery, because I remember they used to deliver it, throw it on your doorstep. And my mother would play it and she would take me, we'd go down to West Oakland and play the tickets. They call them tickets. And all those big beautiful homes, they tore them all down, they were just beautiful, beautiful homes. Oakland tore down so many beautiful homes until 00:13:00somebody said Stop, you're tearing down really fabulous homes. They did. They tore down a lot. The Chinese moved their lottery to Reno, Nevada and opened gambling establishments. Before they moved to Reno, blacks were not allowed in the casinos.

But it was really a nice neighborhood. We had several people who were West Indian people. We used to visit down in those areas. But mostly it was not an all black neighborhood. It was a mixed neighborhood.

WILMOT: And so you grew up with people from all different backgrounds. Would you say that racism was an issue when you were growing up?

LEWIS: It was very subtle. There was racism but it was not like it is in the south. I mean, we didn't have that extreme racism. People all lived in mixed neighborhoods.

WILMOT: Like say when you were an adolescent then, was interracial dating something that was accepted? I mean, could you -- I mean did you even want -- did you want to have dates with white boys or --

LEWIS: [chuckles] Well, funny thing about that is that we lived in this 00:14:00neighborhood where a lot of people who were black looked like they were white. And they used to go to work every day as white people and came home at night as black people. And I have a half-sister who's passed for white for years. In fact she doesn't speak to me. Although my grandmother used to say Ivy and Bertha look alike, only Bertha's white and Ivy's black. So I don't remember, I know my aunts, both my aunts were married to Filipino men. And all of my uncles, my Uncle Vander was from British Guyana and my Uncle Robinson was from Jamaica and they were all chef cooks and so was my Uncle Gene -- he was Filipino, he was a chef cook. So I grew up around a lot of mixed people. So I never really noted -- and a lot of my family looked like Caucasians. So I didn't have that problem. I 00:15:00mean, as seeing mixed couple didn't -- I just took it for granted that's the way people lived.

WILMOT: But as an adolescent, when you were growing up, was that something -- like in your social group were there mixed white and black couples?

LEWIS: When I grew up in North Richmond, and I went to Peres School, until I was in the third or fourth grade I was the only black child in the class. I have a picture I can show you. There's maybe seven black families in North Richmond, it was all Italian and Portuguese and all mixed groups of people, some Spanish people. So I played with all different groups of people. When I got older the whole city of Richmond changed because of World War II so I never saw -- I don't think I ever saw any white people and black people together -- I mean as 00:16:00boyfriend and girlfriend. But my half-sister Bertha married a white man.

WILMOT: As teenagers. I think I'm confused because on one hand I have you in West Oakland, and now I have you in North Richmond, so could you break down for me the chronology? Like, you grew up in West Oakland --

LEWIS: I grew up in Oakland. My parents moved to Richmond when I was three years old, but I spent a lot of my time in Oakland. Summers and going to camp and going to DeFremery Park. My mother and father worked. So they didn't leave us at home and when we were small in Richmond we always went to my grandmother's or to my aunt's in Oakland. My grandmother and my aunt, they didn't want us to move to Richmond because my aunt considered herself to be a very socially prominent person and she had this huge beautiful home and she always gave these big parties and --

WILMOT: Where was her home?

LEWIS: On Chestnut Street.

WILMOT: Same house?

LEWIS: Same house. And Richmond was sort of a throwback, she said the people were ignorant there and there was no social life. In fact one of my aunts wanted my mother to take me to stay in school in Berkeley and not go to school in Richmond because they considered it a backward place. And we moved to Richmond. So we spent most of our time in Oakland. We were not involved. In fact, the first time my family was really -- my mother was a good swimmer and we always -- when we lived in Oakland -- I don't know where Depression Beach is, okay, I couldn't tell you, but I assume it's someplace down in the general vicinity of Jack London Square, some of that area down there, and my mother -- they always went down there. My mother was a good swimmer, and my father said my mother used to swim across the estuary all the time. So the estuary was from Oakland to Alameda, I think, and back. So when we came to Richmond, we lived in North 00:18:00Richmond, and at that time, Chevron had not blocked off the bay. The bay used to come into North Richmond and you could go swimming at a place down at the end of Vernon Street, they called the slough. So when we first moved to Richmond, Sunday morning we went swimming, and the people in the church talked about us. [laughs] They said these new people came and went swimming on Sunday and they thought that was terrible. So we never really fit in in Richmond when we first moved there. It was mostly southern black people and --

WILMOT: They talked about you in church?

LEWIS: Yeah, they said that --

WILMOT: Which church was this?

LEWIS: This was the Baptist church.

WILMOT: Which one was it?

LEWIS: And our neighbors told us about it. But then my mother became very popular because she was a good cook. And at that time, I remember the WPA and the Depression people. A lot of people didn't have food, and my mother used to 00:19:00cook a big pot of food and feed people.

WILMOT: Well, you said that your mom -- okay, so your mom was from Barbados. Now did she grow up in Barbados?

LEWIS: Yes, she did.

WILMOT: So how did your father find her?

LEWIS: Well, he came down to Oakland to a party or something and he met my mother. Either they went -- I think they were in a park, like a picnic.

WILMOT: So she was already here.

LEWIS: She was already here.

WILMOT: Is her family here?

LEWIS: My aunt who I talk about, my Aunt Maude Robinson, who lived on Chestnut Street, my grandmother's name was Ivy. And Ivy died and my mother was orphaned and when her father died -- my mother's father was Caucasian -- and when he died, her sisters didn't want to keep her because she was a half-sister of theirs. So a lady took my mother and kept her.

WILMOT: These are white sisters or black sisters?

LEWIS: They were white sisters. And when my mother grew up, this lady raised 00:20:00her. Her name was Aunt Liz. And then when she got to be about 12, I think, or 13, Aunt Liz died. So she really didn't have a family. And she had some cousins but they didn't really pay her too much attention. And my aunt said she had a dream that Ivy came and asked her to send for my mother. So she did. And my mother came here when she was15 years old. And my mother was very a beautiful woman.

WILMOT: Did she have an accent?

LEWIS: Pardon me.

WILMOT: Did she have an accent?

LEWIS: Yes she did, yeah.

WILMOT: What do you remember about your mother's Caribbean culture? Her Bajian culture?

LEWIS: She's a Bajian.

WILMOT: What do you remember about her culture? What did you learn from her about being Bajian?

LEWIS: My mother was a really good cook and she used to cook a lot of West Indian food. In fact every Christmas I still make coconut bread. In Barbados 00:21:00they have it every day, but we only make it once a year. And she used to make cou cou and fish, she was very -- my mother was really a good person, she would give you her coat off her back, because she was an orphan, she always took in children -- people would come and leave their children at our house and my mother raised so many other people's children. They would just drop them off and not come back and get them for a while.

WILMOT: How many siblings that were hers, how many -- ?

LEWIS: We had three children in our family. But my mother raised three more children from babies until they were about 12 or 15. And then, she had other people just leave their kids there, like, they worked and they'd leave them there all week, and she always had a houseful of kids.

WILMOT: And your half-brothers and sisters, they were on your father's side or 00:22:00your mother's side?

LEWIS: My half-brothers and sisters on my father -- my father was previously married and he had two children, Bertha and Donald.

WILMOT: What a story. Well how did Ivy get here then? I think I may have missed that.

LEWIS: Ivy didn't come here. Ivy died -- my grandmother, Ivy, was from British Guyana and when my mother was five years old she went back to British Guyana and my mother never saw her again.

WILMOT: So the woman who sent for your mom --

LEWIS: Maude Robinson.

WILMOT: And she was Auntie?

LEWIS: Ivy's sister.

WILMOT: Auntie. How did Maude get here?

LEWIS: They migrated from Barbados a long time ago. I think my Aunt Maude was a teenager when they came to the United States. Her mother and father migrated to California and brought my aunt with them. They had three children: my Aunt Maude 00:23:00and Uncle Vander and Ivy, my grandmother. I think my Uncle Vander came on his own. They left Ivy with her grandmother. Maude was born in Venezuela. Jules Vander and Ivy were born in British Guyana. My Uncle Vander spoke fluent Castilian Spanish I remember vaguely Maude's father. I never knew her mother. But she was somewhat like my mother because she fed and took care of a lot of people. One of the people she cared for was a West Indian man who was a merchant seaman. Somehow he got into trouble and he jumped ship in Manila. He became one of the richest men in Manila. I remember when they came to visit my aunt they 00:24:00would have like ten taxi cabs with theirs luggage [laughs] and everything. During World War II when the Japanese invaded the Philippines, Mr. Pritchard and his son were captured and forced in the march in Corregidor. H sent his wife and younger children to California and they stayed with my aunt for a while.

WILMOT: Okay, hold on one second. I'm doing some adjustments over here. [pause]

LEWIS: So even though I lived in Richmond, a lot of my social life was in Oakland. [laughs] My family thought Richmond wasn't too good.

WILMOT: How did you get back and forth?

LEWIS: You know what? I tell people that on Saturdays the Key system used to have free buses. You could ride free. Now they're talking about this new system where you can ride free. This isn't a new invention, because when I was a child, on Saturdays, you could get on the bus and go free to Oakland. Because everybody went to the -- was it the Seventh Street Market? Some market down there?

WILMOT: Housewives' Market?

LEWIS: Housewives' Market. But it wasn't called the Housewives' Market then. It was called Swan's Market or something like that. We used to go to Swan's Market too. Everybody did.

WILMOT: It's so beautiful hearing you talk about Oakland and hearing you talk 00:26:00about your childhood.

LEWIS: Oakland was really beautiful. We lived near 16th Street so we used to go up and catch the streetcar and go. And downtown Oakland where City Hall is, they had a plaza with all beautiful flowers and gardens around it. I know now, the discrimination, I remember we went to camp. I don't know where the camp was. I couldn't tell you. But I went with the kids from DeFremery Park. It was mostly black kids in those days, but I remember it was a mixed group, because my friend Lala came also. And this was before World War II, or it might have been just almost at the beginning of World War II. We went to summer camp and when we came out, some girls were there from Piedmont, and they were all white and they started calling us names. I don't know why [laughs] white people want to call 00:27:00black people names, I don't know what we ever did to them, but they looked kind of silly.

WILMOT: Did you smack them?

LEWIS: No, I didn't. No. I don't know what their problem was but anyway, I didn't have the same problem they did. But things like that, people calling you names. Once in a while that happened. I remember when I went to kindergarten in Richmond, one girl didn't want to hold my hand because I was black. But I never had really a lot of problems -- I was really a popular kid with other children.

WILMOT: So you were in North Richmond. Can you tell me the address of that place there?

LEWIS: In North Richmond? When we first moved to North Richmond, we lived on Filbert Street and we rented from some Italian people, I can't think of their name. But then we moved. When I lived in North Richmond, we lived all around 00:28:00Italian people. And I got used to eating dry salami with French bread, and they would always have that, and everybody sat around in the afternoon talking, eating French bread and salami and salad and drinking Dago red, they called it. [laughs] North Richmond was really a small community -- I lived in the city part of North Richmond most of my life, and it was paved but it was still county. It was not incorporated in those days. And but if you went past Chesley Avenue, it was nothing -- and I tell people that so many black historians have wrote about the cabbage patch; I didn't see any cabbage patch in North Richmond. Mr. Longo -- when you went out First Creek, far as you could see there was lettuce. They 00:29:00grew iceberg lettuce. And over the Second Bridge. We used to call the different bridges First Bridge, Second Bridge, First Creek, Second Creek, which was the First Creek was the big creek, Second Creek was a smaller creek next to North Richmond. But if you went across there the Baronis had a farm. Now he probably had some cabbage, but he also grew a lot of vegetables at the Baroni farm.

In North Richmond, there was a big family who lived out on Market Street called the Turners, and they were black. And there wasn't too many more people -- the Marlbroughs and the Turners had the biggest families. And I remember Richard Granzella, I used to like Richard Granzella when I was three years old. He would come down the street. Richard and Nelson Carter. Nelson and Richard Granzella 00:30:00were really good friends. And they used to go down to the dumps and dig around there because people would go down and nobody owned the dumps at that time. People would just go down and dump their things and then Richard and Nelson used to go down and do salvage work. And then Richard became the owner of the Richmond garbage dump. [laughs] So it was interesting. I knew those people when.

WILMOT: Did you know anyone named Alfred Granzella?

LEWIS: Oh, I went to school with Alfred Granzella. Yeah, I went to Peres Elementary School. Yeah, we were in the same room, same grade together.

WILMOT: Do you remember what he was like?

LEWIS: Alfred was a good little kid. I remember he was short and I was taller. I 00:31:00knew all those people who lived north of 7th Street. Let's see, there were the Banduccis, the Dell Simones, the Grandzellas and Angie Mapeli and Mary and Tony Uder. All the girls liked Tony -- he was good looking. Yeah, I knew all of those people. I went to school with them. Alfred was always a likeable kid.

WILMOT: Okay, what did your parents do? What kind of work did your family do? What were your parents?

LEWIS: We moved to Richmond because my father got a job at the Richmond Pullman Company sandblasting cars. My mother worked in the cannery and when the cannery wasn't on, sometimes she did housework, but mostly she worked at Del Monte Cannery in Emeryville. There was a big cannery there. And all my aunts worked 00:32:00there too, Del Monte Cannery.

WILMOT: Did anyone in your family go to college? Was your father or your mother a college graduate?

LEWIS: No, my father finished high school, but my mother didn't. My mother went, she said, as far -- in Barbados, you go to a certain grade and only if your family's wealthy you can go further. But they all knew how to read and write and stuff like that, but they were not college graduates. My mother went to school later. I don't know too much about my grandmother's education. But all of my cousins and aunts were college graduates on both sides of the family.

WILMOT: On your mother's side or --

LEWIS: On my father's side. I never knew my mother's mother. I never knew my grandparents on my mother's side. I knew my grandfather on my father's side died the same year I was born. But he came from Griffin, Georgia. And my cousin said 00:33:00there's a dispute -- they have a story about a guy who was a bouncer. [chuckles] Well, my grandfather was a bouncer at Jim Corbett's Saloon in San Francisco. And when they wrote a story -- they made a movie about that. My cousin says they didn't write it right because her grandfather was the bouncer at Jim Corbett's Saloon in San Francisco. But I didn't know him but I just knew my grandmother. My grandfather came from Griffin, Georgia. His mother was half black and Seminole Indian and his father was white.

WILMOT: You mentioned that in Oakland you lived in a neighborhood where there 00:34:00were many passing black people.

LEWIS: I didn't know that when I was a child but I figured it out when I got older.

WILMOT: How did you figure it out?

LEWIS: Well, I just figured it out that these people, they all looked like they were white, but they were not white. And they all worked in nice office jobs that blacks couldn't get. So I just figured it out after I got older.

WILMOT: So it was like a whole community.

LEWIS: It wasn't a whole community, but it was a lot of people who lived in the community.

WILMOT: Was there language for that when you were young? Was there a language for oh so-and-so is passing? Was there a language for that behavior?

LEWIS: Nobody I heard talk about it.

WILMOT: And when you moved to Richmond were you in a similar community or --

LEWIS: No, heavens, no. Richmond was more rural. When we moved to North Richmond it was the country, RFD.

WILMOT: RFD.

LEWIS: People had cows. My neighbors down the street, the parents were from 00:35:00Arkansas and they had cows and a windmill and they used to shoot possums and coons and eat them. [laughs] And one day, my girlfriend's mother had a possum cooking, and she says, "I want to have a turkey for Thanksgiving just like Mrs. Reid cooks." [laughs] Well, we always went over to see the possums and the coons. And they had chickens. And they taught me how to milk cows and how to churn butter. It was a different life.

What the kids would do in the evenings -- I was like the little devil -- they would go out and pull people's corn. A lot of people grew corn, and they would go and get the corn and make a fire and roast it. And I would get in the window 00:36:00and go [makes siren sound] "Aaah!" like I was the fire department and the kids would start running.

But anyway, my neighbor, Mrs. Delgadillo, she taught me how to speak Spanish because a lot of my friends were all Spanish and I would go over their houses all the time and help them do their housework and their parents would be talking to them in Spanish so I just sort of picked up on it. I'd go help Mrs. Delgadillo grind her corn and clean up the corn husks and put them in a sack and everything. And then they'd kill a hog and they would get a big copper kettle and put it over the fire in the backyard and make chicherones and tamales and all kind of stuff. I learned how to do all those things.

WILMOT: Let me just adjust this for one second. Did you go to a place called the Plunge?

LEWIS: We used to walk down the railroad tracks to the Plunge, down the Santa Fe 00:37:00tracks. Goes from North Richmond, you go straight to the plunge.

WILMOT: Did you know about the group of Native Americans who were --

LEWIS: Yeah. I have a picture -- I don't have a picture of them, but my father used to play ball at the First Street Park, there used to be a big ballpark at First Street and McDonald. And then right down from the ballpark close to where Saint John's Apartments -- there were some little grey concrete buildings. I think they were two like barracks. And that's where the Indians lived. And then some of them lived over in the Santa Fe yards, also.

WILMOT: Were there connections there socially? Did you connect with them? Or was it -- ?

LEWIS: They went to school with me, but let me tell you about a situation I remember. At 16th and MacDonald, they had carnivals and they wouldn't let the Indians come in.

WILMOT: Did they let little black children come in?

LEWIS: Yeah, but they wouldn't let the Indians come in. One man came one day and 00:38:00I think he was drunk and I remember the man said that they're not manageable when they get drunk, whatever. I was a little kid. I just -- my brother said -- my brother used to call me the Black Dispatch because I would listen to every conversation anybody had [laughs] and I knew everything, so I heard that man say that, that they were not manageable if they were drunk. So they put them out of the carnival.

WILMOT: Were there Asian people in Richmond? Chinese, Japanese?

LEWIS: Oh, I had a lot of Japanese friends in school. My brother used to work for Mr. Abbe.

WILMOT: What's your brother's name?

LEWIS: Charles. And my brother worked for Mr. Abbe at the nurseries.

WILMOT: A-B-E-I?

LEWIS: Mr. Abbe who owned the nurseries -- north of Wildcat Creek, he had all 00:39:00those greenhouses and grew long-stemmed roses. And there was a Japanese man next to him, too, who owned them and I think when he got interned, when they put them in internment camps, Mr. Abbe kept his place going for him. I read that story in the Reader's Digest. But I didn't know that at the time. But my brother worked for Mr. Abbe for a long time.

WILMOT: So when you were in high school it was basically really your high school years that the war was going on, is that correct?

LEWIS: No, the war started when I was ten years old. I went to junior high school, I didn't finish school here, I moved to Los Angeles, so I went to school in Los Angeles. When I first -- I think it was in the fourth or fifth grade when 00:40:00I came to school, there was a lot of black children who moved here because of World War II. And everything start changing then in Richmond. It got to be more discriminatory -- my father used to go and cash his checks when he got off work. My father didn't drink. But he used to shine shoes in downtown Richmond with a guy called Ollie Freeman. He played blues and he was a local disk jockey but he had a really nice shoeshine parlor. And people would come in and my father worked there on Saturdays. Yeah, I think he only worked on Saturdays. When he got off work, he would go and cash his check at 16th and MacDonald. One of the local city councilmen, [Gay Vargus], he owned a bar, and he asked my father not 00:41:00to come anymore because he said he didn't want black people to think that they could all come in there. He didn't mind my father coming, but he didn't want this to be a black bar. So that's the only thing I knew about.

Other than that, I never had any problem. But the white people who came -- they caused more discrimination. I remember once when I was about 16 I think I went to the skating rink in Oakland. And this white kid said to me, "You're supposed to come on Thursday nights." I said, "I can come on any night I want to come, and I'm coming here and you can't tell me when I -- ." "Well, the black people -- " they called them colored people -- "usually come on Thursday nights." I said, "Too bad." And I didn't learn till after I was grown and I went to the south, if they had like when the state fair was on or something, the black people only came on Thursday nights or they came on that day, Thursday, was the 00:42:00day for black people. So they were trying to institute their own thing. This happened after the war.

And I remember when I was in junior high school, a lot of the people petitioned Earl Warren. They wanted separate schools. They didn't want their kids to go to school with black kids. And Earl Warren had told them he went to school with black kids and his children were going to school with black kids and if they didn't like it they could go back where they came from. Earl Warren was the governor of California then. I remember we had lots of fights.

And the biggest thing I remember, my mother worked in the shipyards, and she was a welder. And one day we were going to Oakland after school. And my sister and I were to meet my mother and get on the bus. And we did. We met my mother and we got on this bus. And this black lady was sitting down and this white lady came up to her and called her nigger, she says, "Nigger, get up and give me that seat." And the lady start crying and my mother said, "She doesn't have to get up 00:43:00and she paid her fare and she can sit in that seat long as she want to." My mother says, "I'm glad I came from a country where people are not uncouth like you white people." [crashing sound]

WILMOT: That's that cat. But go ahead.

LEWIS: She said that she would get my mother after. She says, "When you get off of this, I'll teach you." She said, "People like you, we put in their place." And so my sister and I -- I think I was about ten and my sister was about six years old -- so we had our lunch pails and we said if she bothers our mother we're going to beat her up with our lunch pails. But she didn't say anything else to my mother.

WILMOT: She was a white woman from the South?

LEWIS: She was from Alabama.

WILMOT: From Alabama, how did you know she was from Alabama?

LEWIS: She said she was from Alabama. She was a tough-looking toughie. [laughs] So there were a lot of fights. At school, I mean, the white people really 00:44:00resisted. And I keep telling people this and they laugh at me, and I say, "Sometimes you live too long." The City of San Pablo grew with all those Okies and whatever they were, white trash, and then they moved out to Concord. They left Richmond. That's how Richmond became more black. They all moved because they didn't want their kids going to school with blacks.

WILMOT: So now you're here in Concord. [laughs]

LEWIS: Well, the reason I live in Concord is because I had a house at the Richmond Marina and my doctor told me -- and I have real bad sinuses, allergies, and he says, Don't live around the water, you have to live someplace else. And I kind of like the sunshine, I don't like the fog. But when I was younger, I really liked cold, rainy days, I grew up in the Bay area. But as I get older, that damp weather's really bad for my sinuses. That's why I live in Concord. So 00:45:00I would rather live in Richmond, closer, because I go to church there. I do a lot of things in Richmond. Our company is in Richmond.

WILMOT: What company is that?

LEWIS: Well, I worked for the City of Richmond for 25 years and Lucretia Edwards was a very dear friend of mine, and people give her credit for starting the neighborhood councils, but nobody gives me any credit for those 18 years I spent organizing the majority of neighborhood councils. When I first took over the neighborhood councils, we had about five neighborhood councils in the City of Richmond. When I retired, we had 35 neighborhood councils and I al started the Richmond Coordinating Council. So I've worked in Richmond and lived in Richmond. Most of the things I do over there benefit Richmond residents.

Before I retired, I started thinking about what I was going to do when I retired and I met this friend of mine who's an electrician. And he said, "You know there are a lot of women businesses going on now and so why don't you start a woman business." I said, "I'm not a businessperson, I don't know anything about business." He said, "Well why don't you just try it, he said you could be a wholesaler for electrical supplies and stuff like that." I went to several seminars before I got started and I hired a man to help me. He was a salesman. And I had a few good jobs. And that's before I retired. At that time I never bid on anything in the City of Richmond. But when I retired the Richmond Parkway 00:47:00came up and I bid on that and I won it.

And my son had had another business that wasn't doing too good because his business was really good but at that time it was a recession. And I asked him and his friend Bob to come over and help me because the business was growing too big and I really didn't have my heart into doing that. So they came over. Bob worked for me a long time. Bob was a friend of my son Todd's. And then Todd came over and took over the business and now we have two stores. We have one in Richmond and one in San Francisco. And we went to the planning commission last night to get approval for a conditional use permit to build an office park. So we're planning to build an office park in Richmond. And the business is Omega Pacific Electrical Supply. Most of our business is in San Francisco.

Want to talk about World War II some more?

WILMOT: Well, I want to but I'm just putting -- you just took me a different way. So when did you move out here to Concord?

LEWIS: I've been here about two years.

WILMOT: Two years, so you just moved out here. And before you were right on the waterfront in Richmond.

LEWIS: I lived on the waterfront in Richmond. I went to Louisiana for a while. And then, I moved to Roseville, and in Roseville I had a big nice house with a swimming pool.

WILMOT: Where's Roseville?

LEWIS: Roseville's 25 miles north of Sacramento. And I fell and broke my leg and so my children said you have to move back here, Mom. So this house cost more than my five-bedroom house with a swimming pool in Roseville. [laughs] The guy says, "Location, location." So I guess that's why things are higher here.

WILMOT: Well, it's the time, too. We're in that time. So you spent your whole 00:49:00life in Richmond?

LEWIS: Practically all my whole life.

WILMOT: Except for that time in Louisiana?

LEWIS: Yeah.

WILMOT: Why'd you go to Louisiana?

LEWIS: Oh, well, I worked for the City of Richmond and I came under a whole -- it's really -- let me just say this. When I was hired for the City of Richmond, my job description matched what the City Council wanted me to do. And later on it didn't. And so they kind of gave me a bad time as they usually do most people in Richmond. Richmond's an unforgiving place to work. If you devote your life to it, you're silly. It's really kind of crazy. But anyway, so my doctor thought that I should get out and do something different. He asked me to retire. So I did. And I went to Louisiana and I really liked it. In fact, I still own a house 00:50:00there. I have a house on a lake in an area that's called the Hunter's Paradise. It's really a beautiful area. And you can go fishing. And I bought a beautiful home on one acre and it only cost $59,000. [laughs] So I own a lot of land in Louisiana. It's really a beautiful place.

WILMOT: How did you deal with Hurricane Katrina coming through there? How did that affect -- ?

LEWIS: Nowhere near New Orleans. I live in what they call the Arklatech, Arkansas, Louisiana and Texas up in the northwest corner of Louisiana. It's close Shreveport/ I'm about 40 miles from El Dorado, Arkansas.

WILMOT: How did you know that Louisiana was a place you wanted to be? Had you visited there --

LEWIS: I had a friend who went down there all the time. And in fact, I had a friend years ago who was from this place where I moved. I actually don't live in 00:51:00the town called Homer, but I live four miles west of there. It's in the parish. They don't call them counties, they call them parishes. And I went down there visiting with a friend of mine and I really liked it.

WILMOT: It's funny, too, because I think of how you were saying that you don't have a background that's southern.

LEWIS: No I didn't get along with the southerners too well either.

WILMOT: But then you chose a southern life at some point.

LEWIS: Not really I never fit in with the southerners, but sometimes I think God puts people in places where he wants them to be. I went down to Louisiana and I got in with a crowd of people -- I belong to the Methodist Church. So I went down there and I met this lady who's really wealthy. She owns about five or six funeral parlors in Louisiana. And she has always been outgoing and doing things. 00:52:00I went and introduced myself to her because I knew her sister who was a member of the Episcopal Church. We have like -- this region here in California. California, Alaska, Washington, Oregon, Arizona and parts of Oklahoma is called Region Nine. So you get to know everybody in the region and I knew her two sisters here. So I just went up to her and spoke and told her that I knew her sisters, that I met them at several functions. And so we got to be good friends and she invited me to come to some meetings and they were trying to form a Boys and Girls Club.

So I became the first director, non-paid director, of the Claiborne Parish Boys and Girls Club. And we started the Boys and Girls Club. The city gave us an old armory and we got the prisoners to come out and clean it up and we did a lot of 00:53:00work and got it going and then we started another club in Hanesville which is about, oh, 14 miles from there. And we lived in what they call Karl Malone country. Karl Malone is a famous basketball player. I met his mother before she died and a lot of good people. A lot of white and black people together. Gene Colman is a State Farm agent, has a lot of money. And he put a lot of money into it and there was another family doctor, Stewart, she and her husband. He was an engineer. I just met the right kind of people who wanted to do something for children. We had these two boys and girls clubs now going, and Karl Malone just recently donated $100,000 to the Claiborne Parish Boys and Girls Club. I 00:54:00attended a meeting through the school district. And I always contribute money each year to the Boys and Girls Club in Claiborne Parish. So that was one of my pet things that I got involved in and I'm very proud of that.

WILMOT: So when you say that you didn't fit in with Southerners, can you just give me your early memories of that? What do you mean?

LEWIS: They have a different perception than I do. One of the things I learned immediately when I went to live in the south, black people and white people have a serious problem. They hate each other. I mean the hatred runs deep. I mean, blacks are just as bad as whites. But not everybody, you know? You hear it. I 00:55:00mean they'll express it to you. And sometimes I would look at some white people, hillbilly-looking people would come in and I'd look at them before I speak and they say, "How y'all doing?" or, "How are ya?" And I'd speak to them, you never know. But some of them are really prejudiced and they don't mind telling you that. But like my neighbors where I live in the country, I'm the only black person on that street, and my neighbors always watch my house and call me and come over and Miss Joyce calls me, she doesn't hear from me, she'll call me and ask me how I'm doing. The all called me Miss Ivy.

The reason I didn't fit in too well, let me tell you why, I don't have the same frame of reference to white people that they have. I haven't been brutalized or seen black people brutalized by white people. So I don't hate to the extent that they hate, and I'm more readily easy to just fit in. You know, when I first went 00:56:00there, I would go to the doctor and I would speak to the white nurses and they look at me like who you talking to, they wouldn't talk to me. But after a while, when they got to know me, I call them when I come to visit now. "Come on down and see me, Miss Ivy!" That's what they call me. My real estate agent told me -- I could buy houses. I bought like seven houses in Louisiana. I never had to pay a down payment or anything. And I tried to sell a house to a lady one day, and my real estate agent said, "Miss Ivy, we don't sell to blacks like them." "Why?" "Well, I don't know why." And they have a very bad habit of -- and then this is 00:57:00why when I go to the bank in Richmond or anyplace and they start acting funny, I know this is the same tactic they use in the south. Black people go into the bank and if you have a check -- like I have my own business check with my own signature -- this lady started to question me. They think they can ask you anything. I mean, you have no privacy and you're nobody. She started, "What is this signature?" And the other lady told her, "That's fine," not to bother me. But that's how they treat other black people down there, that have nothing or don't know their rights. And they don't stand up for themselves.

Tony Johnson is our real estate agent, and he told us we're the first black people who ever questioned him, about anything. Whatever he tells them, back people don't question him.

WILMOT: He's a white man?

LEWIS: Yeah.

WILMOT: Well, I need to stop and change all our recording media, tapes and everything, and then we'll continue for another hour.

LEWIS: Talk about World War II?

WILMOT: Yes.

Begin Audio File 2 Lewis 02 08-04-2006.mp3

WILMOT: Okay. So World War II, Pearl Harbor.

LEWIS: Okay, I think I was ten years old.

WILMOT: 1941.

LEWIS: I went to the movie on Sunday. We went to the matinee and they stopped the movie and they said that all military personnel have to report because United States had been attacked by Pearl Harbor by the Japanese. And a lot of the sailors were -- like, they all got up and left out of the theater. And that was the first thing I remember about World War II. And then Richmond was sort of like a little town with very few people. You'd go downtown Richmond and Richmond 00:59:00really had a nice downtown -- we had two movie theaters; Safeway was on MacDonald Avenue; dress shops; three, four markets; bakeries; all kind of things. And overnight Richmond changed drastically and a lot of black people moved to North Richmond. Housing projects were Canal, Harborgate -- mostly blacks and whites went into those projects. But they didn't get along. That's how they first started the neighborhood councils -- the neighborhood councils were first started to try to ameliorate the friction between whites and blacks. 01:00:00This was started after the war.

WILMOT: Were they successful in doing that?

LEWIS: I don't think so.

WILMOT: What was the friction like?

LEWIS: Well, because these people had never lived together before. If they all came from the south, they didn't jell. Like when you go down South now. In the town where I lived, there's a few blacks scattered in different neighborhoods, but there were clearly defined black and white neighborhoods. So they were not used to living in the same complexes with black people. Atchison Village, which I learned when I was on a tour recently out of Betty's office, was primarily set up for the personnel that worked in the shipyards and in Kaiser Hospitals and stuff like that. But for years Atchison Village didn't allow black people to 01:01:00live there. I mean they couldn't live there even after the war.

North Richmond, the county part of North Richmond, grew during World War II. A lot of people went out there living in tents and sheds and then they built little shack houses and things like that.

I remember going downtown. Richmond then, that's when they started having everything open on Sundays. Before you couldn't go shopping on Sunday because everything was closed. But then Richmond, after the shipyard came, they had everything open -- you'd go downtown Richmond, it would be just like going to the fair or something, there'd be so many people changing shifts and things like that. In fact, I saw a movie, somebody had a movie that they made of that period, I would like to get a copy of that, because it has the minister that 01:02:00built our church originally. He used to stand on the corner of Tenth and McDonald and ask people to help him, give him money to build the church. And I tell people that. I don't think they believe me -- when I was going to junior high school, when I'd come home and catch the bus to go home, he would be standing on the corner.

But we went from two movies on Macdonald Avenue to how many -- five or six movies. People stayed in the movies, some people didn't have places to live so they stayed in the movie theaters all night. And we had a big place, and we had -- white people lived on one end, they were from Louisiana, and we had some black people. And you know, I tell people this, they -- we had the Jones family come and live with us from Schaal, Arkansas. Their daughter was ten years old. I 01:03:00was 12. I'm two years older than her.

WILMOT: So your family took in boarders?

LEWIS: Yeah, we had all kind of people live -- the authorities asked you to let people live in your house, if you had room, because there was no place for people to live.

WILMOT: So you had two families come stay with you.

LEWIS: We had three families in our house. We had the Jones family, then we had the Devers family.

WILMOT: And did they stay in a room or did they have two rooms to themselves?

LEWIS: Some had two rooms. The Devers had two rooms. The Jones family had -- let's see. The Devers had one room. Well, first we had the Devers and then some Devers moved out and then we had some other Devers. But the Devers had one and the Jones family had two rooms. And the other people who lived, the white family, I can't remember their names, they lived in what -- we had another unit to our house. So they actually had an apartment.

WILMOT: So the Devers family, they were a black family. And they were from?

LEWIS: Schaal, Arkansas. And their daughter became the surgeon general of the United States. Joycelyn Elders. She lived in Richmond and went to Richmond schools and they never mentioned it and nobody ever talks about it, but she did. And they lived in our house for two or three years and then they moved to the projects because when they first came they didn't bring all of their children, and then when they sent for their other children they needed more room.

WILMOT: So Jones and Devers were both from Schaal, Arkansas?

LEWIS: Devers were from Shreveport, Louisiana.

WILMOT: And that's Joycelyn Elders' family.

LEWIS: Joycelyn Elders' family was the Jones. Her mother worked the swing shift at the shipyards, they would leave -- they had cooked food, so when we came home 01:05:00from school we would have dinner. And she'd tell me, "When I get big I'm going to change my name to Joycelyn because I hate Minnie Lee." Her name was Minnie Lee and she hated that name. But she was really a smart kid. I mean she was very smart.

WILMOT: That was your friend, that was your little girlfriend.

LEWIS: We got along well together. And I loved her mother and in fact, I've visited her when I was in Louisiana, I'd go up and visit her all the time.

WILMOT: Did the families all get along well? Your family --

LEWIS: Not the Devers, I hated the Devers family. I don't know why, I just didn't like them.

WILMOT: They stayed to themselves?

LEWIS: No, I just didn't like -- you know, you meet somebody you don't like? My mother got -- everybody got along with them but not me, I didn't get along with the Devers.

WILMOT: Did they have any children?

LEWIS: What I didn't like about them, they didn't know how to go to the bathroom. They had been going to outhouse bathrooms. So they used to go outside 01:06:00in the bushes and do their business. And I hated them. I mean as a kid, I just didn't like them. But I never got along with them. Now that I look at it, Mrs. Devers really tried to be nice to me. But I wasn't receptive to them. But anyway they moved, they built a house and they moved.

My father when he came from Oakland to Richmond, he happened to be at a ballgame at Nichols Park. And they saw him and people recognized him because I told you he was a semi-pro professional ballplayer and they asked him to be an umpire, to umpire games. And he became the official umpire for the Richmond Merchants. And all the games that were played at Nichols Park, my father was the umpire. And so because we had -- my father came out and he had two ball teams and they used to 01:07:00play in North Richmond Ballpark, and my father got a job working for the City of Richmond, and he'd go out on Sundays and fix the ball diamonds and we sort of lived -- that was our whole life, going to the ballgames -- we used to sell peanuts and hot dog and my mother's friend Rosie Delacruz would make -- tortillas with cactus, did you ever eat that? Yeah, she used to -- I forget what they call -- nopales? And we would sell all that stuff and soda water at the ballgames, and then I'd play ball on the girls' ball team and basketball. We were all involved in sports. And that's how my father retired and they named the park after him, Shields-Reid Community Center in North Richmond.

WILMOT: What was he like? What was your father's personality like?

LEWIS: My father was a really good person. He -- I never heard my father cuss and he didn't smoke and he didn't drink. He worked a lot. You know he was a hard worker.

WILMOT: He had the Pullman job, the shoe, the --

LEWIS: Well, that was earlier. Then he worked in Mare Island during the war. He worked in Mare Island in the -- he worked in the place where they tended to submarines.

WILMOT: What'd he do there? [repeats] What did he do there?

LEWIS: Do to the submarine?

WILMOT: What was his work there?

LEWIS: When the submarines would come in, they would bring them up -- I guess if you're in water a long time, you get barnacles and corrosion and stuff like that. And he worked there, because they used to have a hot pot they set out, I think it was something like that, melting hot lead and painting the hulls of the subs -- I don't know exactly, but I know it had to do with submarines.

[pause] There's a cat on the front page of the paper, look just like him today. [referring to her cat]

Then my father you know with the ballgames, all the ballplayers used to come and meet in our house and we'd always have a crowd -- when he first got a job at the park we had a house that we bought from the Lodedi family. They were Italian. Their house had a large grape arbor with grapes, and it was a big -- it was on an acre and a half.

WILMOT: Was that the Filbert Street house?

LEWIS: Pardon me?

WILMOT: Was that your Filbert house?

LEWIS: No, that was on Kelsey Street. And we had a big yard and everything, and 01:10:00my father, because we didn't have a recreation building at the park, my father would have all the kids over to our house. They would have wiener roasts and dances and everything. Our house was really the recreation center. [laughs] And so and when he would come home, Sundays he would invite all the workers up from Mare Island to come over to our house to have dinner and all that stuff. So our house was always full of people, crowded, full of people.

And we had rabbits and chickens and we grew all kind of vegetables, cantaloupes. And around the front of our house we had a lot of cactus. And we had all kind of fruit trees. So a lot of people would come and buy cactus and we would sell them rabbits. That's when everything was rationed -- if you didn't have a ration book 01:11:00you couldn't get meat. So people would come and ask us to sell them chickens and stuff like that. North Richmond gradually grew out of being a rural community because then they had a law you couldn't have chickens anymore. But all of our neighbors, like our next-door neighbors were Portuguese people, and they had a big garden. Everybody had a big garden. And had chickens if you lived in North Richmond, but then gradually the laws wouldn't allow you to have them. And people used to kill hogs all the time. I never liked to see them kill hogs because hogs really scream and holler when you kill them. And it grew out of being a rural community into a ghetto of shacks.

After the war North Richmond had a lot of working families and people started fixing up their housing. But one of the things that we fought against was bringing the housing projects to North Richmond. That kind of ripped North 01:12:00Richmond off. North Richmond used to be a very good place to live until they brought the housing projects and then North Richmond went downhill. To tell you something about the topography of North Richmond, if you went down Vernon Street, you come to the bay, and if you went down Gertrude, there was a lot of people who lived -- you know like they live in Sausalito out in the little boats, [you can] walk out to their little houses and boats out there? All that was water. And then when Chevron made those settling pools or whatever they did, they cut off all the water coming into North Richmond. So we didn't have water there anymore. You couldn't go fishing, couldn't go swimming or anything.

But North Richmond was really a rural community. Everybody had cows and I'd go around helping people churn butter and stuff like that. It was a different life. 01:13:00Peach trees. We used to go to First Creek, that's San Pablo Creek. First Creek had a peach orchard. And we'd pick peaches out there and pick blackberries and come home and make pies and I remember my mother would go with some people, ladies from Texas, and in the springtime, you know, you see those yellow flowers now, you see them, they're wild mustard is what they would -- those people would go and pick the wild mustard greens and cook them. My mother didn't know anything about cooking greens because she wasn't from the South. But they showed her how to cook them. My father wouldn't eat them. The Turner family would always have a big barbecue, and they would barbecue goats. They would kill goats and everybody would go out there. There were two churches, the Baptist church and then the Church of God in Christ. Well, the Baptist church was there first. 01:14:00So everything was centered around the church.

WILMOT: Is that the North Richmond --

LEWIS: North Richmond Baptist Church. Yeah.

WILMOT: Is that where you went? It's still there.

LEWIS: I know.

WILMOT: It's the oldest black church in Richmond.

LEWIS: It's the oldest black church in Richmond, yeah. It was in a little church and then they built another church, then they built that big church.

WILMOT: You don't go there anymore now, since you're Methodist?

LEWIS: I'm not a Baptist. I just --

WILMOT: But you went there when you were little.

LEWIS: I was an Episcopalian, but the Episcopalian church in Richmond is all white. We never went to that church. But when I lived in Oakland we went to the Episcopalian church.

WILMOT: Which one was that?

LEWIS: Saint Augustus. I think it's on Telegraph now.

WILMOT: So when you were in Richmond, when your family moved to Richmond, you went to the Baptist church but --

LEWIS: It was just right down the street.

WILMOT: And you went there growing up even though you were Episcopalian.

LEWIS: Yeah.

WILMOT: Okay. Can you tell me a little bit about that church?

LEWIS: That was a little old church. Reverend Watkins and Mrs. Watkins ran the church. I remember that they had a program for illiteracy, people who couldn't 01:15:00read, they taught them to read. And all kind of programs that they came in the community they would have at that church. I remember they used to have a sheet, you know, if they had a program, and I would always be on the Easter program. Get up and say your piece, they call them. You learn a piece.

WILMOT: What kind of pieces did you learn?

LEWIS: Oh, about Jesus and the cross and he rose on Easter morning and stuff like that. You know, my first -- my Sunday school teacher, I really liked. And everything I would always say, "My Sunday school teacher said that's not right." You know, I would really quote everything she said. My mother let us go to 01:16:00Sunday school and then we'd come back in the evening for BYPU and I sang in the choir.

WILMOT: What is BYPU?

LEWIS: I don't know what -- it's really a part of their program. I think it's like for young adults. And until World War II I went to that church. And then I had a best friend, her name was Jeanie Scurlock. And her grandmother was a Methodist, but she was an AME, African Methodist Episcopal Church. And we met a friend, Gloria Spearman, from school. They were two years ahead of me in school but we all became good friends. And Gloria was a CME. We didn't have a CME church in Richmond. So we would go down -- there was a little place in Richmond 01:17:00on the corner of York Street. Or York and Gertrude. And we would go down there. Reverend Davis lived there with his two daughters. They came from the Imperial Valley. And this was time that the shipyard was going and everything, and people were used to living in little shacks and stuff like that. And we would go visit them and he wanted to start a CME church in Richmond. So, the night that they decided to build the church, I was one of the people who was there, and Davis Chapel CME Church is the church I belong to now. It burnt down a couple years ago and we're presently going to rebuild. We're back in North Richmond, but the county's giving us kind of a runaround. So you know it takes a while. We're not a priority [chuckles] on getting permits in the county so it's taking a while.

WILMOT: Were Jeanie and Gloria from Richmond?

LEWIS: Jeanie was from Berkeley. And her family -- I mentioned Ollie Freeman a while back. Ollie Freeman's father was married to her grandmother. And they were sort of a prominent family in Richmond, and Ollie had a record store in North Richmond, and he was a radio disc jockey.

WILMOT: And Gloria, where was she from?

LEWIS: Gloria, I think, originally is from Oklahoma, but I think, when I met her they had lived in Arizona and then they lived in Allensworth -- an all black town in California. They lived down there in the valley.

WILMOT: I never knew about an all black town in California.

LEWIS: Oh, yeah there is. There is. Founded by black people, it's an all black 01:19:00town in California. If I think about it, when you get my age you sort of can't think of things right away.

WILMOT: That's amazing. I only hear about that happening in Oklahoma.

LEWIS: No, there's an all black town in California. And I think that's where they lived before they came here. And then her husband got to be minister and then a presiding elder of the CME church. She's now in a rest home in Vallejo, she had a stroke. But I went to see her several months ago. I need to go back and visit her again.

But I hadn't seen Jeanie in a long time. And when I was on that Channel Five News she saw me on there so she called me up. She looked me up. And called me. I hadn't seen her in years.

WILMOT: So she called you last night?

LEWIS: No, she called me after she saw that news -- saw me on the Channel Five News. Remember I told you the Channel Five News people --

WILMOT: About being hot?

LEWIS: Yeah, about being hot. And so she called me but --

WILMOT: So, okay. So you went to school at Peres first.

LEWIS: I went to Peres Elementary School.

WILMOT: And then Richmond.

LEWIS: I went to Roosevelt Junior High School. Then I went to Fremont High School. And I got married very young and I moved to Los Angeles and I went to finish high school in Los Angeles and then I came back to Richmond and I went to night school, but I didn't like night school because it was for dumb people. And so I took my GED and went to Contra Costa College and then I went to UC Berkeley and I took some graduate studies at San Francisco State. And then University of Michigan.

WILMOT: What were you studying at U Michigan?

LEWIS: Business administration.

WILMOT: Okay, and at Berkeley what was your major?

LEWIS: My major was sociology -- let's see. I started off as a major in political science but did not like the teachers. I mean, they didn't know anything. I was way ahead of what they were thinking. Politically, there was discrimination at UC Berkeley. I mean I would write papers for other people and they'd get good grades, and I -- because I was a very good writer -- and I never got really good grades. I mean, I always had to explain why my papers were not what they were supposed to be. Some black males could not express themselves in writing. I shouldn't say that, maybe that's not categorically true for everybody. But I helped a lot of them write papers.

WILMOT: And they would get good grades.

LEWIS: And they would get good grades and I wouldn't. They were not outspoken like me.

WILMOT: So you were outspoken. We have to talk about this. This is very 01:22:00exciting. Okay, so first husband. Moved to Los Angeles. Was he from Los Angeles?

LEWIS: No, from Tennessee. His sisters lived in Los Angeles.

WILMOT: Okay, and you got married when you were --

LEWIS: I'm not going to say. But young.

WILMOT: Young. Okay. How long were you in Los Angeles?

LEWIS: I stayed in Los Angeles about ten years.

WILMOT: Whoa! You were there for a long time.

LEWIS: Yeah, maybe not quite ten years.

WILMOT: Did you have your children when you were there?

LEWIS: Let's see. No. My children were born here. I'm trying to think exactly. I know I turned 21 in Los Angeles. I didn't stay long after that. I came back to Richmond. And went back to school. And, you know, because in Los Angeles 01:23:00everything I did was wrong. Education was not a priority for that group of people. I mean it was a waste of time as far as they were concerned. But it wasn't a waste of time for me because I wanted to get a good education. So, you know, sometimes you just get in the wrong group of people. And they had different priorities. They liked to party and have good times and I wanted to get an education. And they could not see the value of having an education.

WILMOT: Okay, so let me then be focused on World War II. And you told me about hearing about Pearl Harbor. Can you tell me a little bit about when the Japanese were interned? Did you know that that was happening?

LEWIS: Oh. Yeah. I remember that. But I'd first like to say this, that my mother 01:24:00worked in the shipyards, and we got in Kaiser when my mother worked in the shipyards. So my number is 0029200. That's my Kaiser number. So you can see it's a really early card.

I remember in school that -- this is not spoken of. Everybody talks about the Japanese internment. What about the Italian people and the German people and what they did to them? I remember the -- let's see, what was her name? I don't remember their name exactly but they lived in North Richmond, some Italian people, and they made them move to another area because one of the plants down in there, they were doing war stuff, so they didn't want them around there. And then I remember the Schwartz family, because they had some really pretty girls 01:25:00in their family. And they did something to them, too. They made them move. Or they did something to them, I remember that. Because they were German. And I remember how terrible it was and they took the Japanese people. And all over there by Cutting Boulevard, the white people went over there and broke all their windows. You know, they had hothouses and broke their windows out of their hothouses and stuff and broke the windows out of their homes after those people were interned. It's really terrible. I remember that. I really didn't like it.

WILMOT: Tell me more about that.

LEWIS: Well everybody -- you know people were really vicious if you were a Japanese -- you know, just as what they're doing now to some of those Mideastern people here. Where that black guy just shot somebody? Said he thought he was a 01:26:00terrorist? I mean, that's what they were doing to the Japanese people. And not so much the Italian people, but some Italian people I don't know why did they investigate them or something. But see my mother didn't have a citizenship, so they were always calling our neighbors, asking about my mother, too. My mother -- our neighbors would tell my mother. My mother would listen to Helen Trent, Our Girl Sunday, that's -- you know those were soap operas then on the radio. They would say my mother would have the windows open, and she would be playing the radio and the neighbors would say -- when they would ask about my mother, "Oh, Mrs. Reid, she's a nice lady but she plays the radio really loud." And so they were kind of -- in those days if you were not a citizen they were checking up on you during World War II.

And I remember nobody in our family was a warden. They had wardens and they came to everybody's house and they gave you a bucket. Was a tin bucket with like a handle. I don't know what you're supposed to do with that, put water in it. And then they'd give you a packet to tell you if they had a -- oh, you had to have sand, in case they dropped bombs and you could throw the sand on them and whatever that tin pail was going to do, put out a fire, I guess.[laughs!] But they had a block warden and used to have a tin -- metal hat and a band around his arm and he'd go around at night. You know I don't know what it was all about. But I remember that. And they would teach you, in case the place was bombed what to do. It was kind of scary for me. And you had to have dark window shades so lights could not be seen at night.

WILMOT: Did you know any of the people who went away?

LEWIS: To the internment? I probably did, but they -- some of the Japanese kids were not in my class, they were in upper classes. But after the war, I met a lot of people, friends that I know, that were interned that I didn't know that they were interned.

WILMOT: What did they tell you about that experience if anything?

LEWIS: Well they -- you know, one of my really good friends, she died recently. You know it was if you haven't done anything and people accuse you of doing things and take everything you have away from you I mean, it doesn't give you a lot of hope, does it? And she was a very bright person. She felt -- she always talked about it, but she never really expressed her regret or how she felt. She 01:29:00talked about being there and the things they did, you know, like passing the time. But, I think, if I remember, she said that it was mostly her parents, who really suffered -- she was younger, but her parents really felt bad about it. I can imagine that too. I mean, they take away everything you have for nothing and put you in a camp, I mean it's kind of a dead-end street for you. And then for the people to destroy all their property, it was really -- you know -- terrible.

I don't really know how they felt. I'm going to tell you the truth. Because no -- they have never expressed it to me. They didn't talk about it. Not to me anyway.

WILMOT: Do you remember your mom or your dad talking about what was going on?

LEWIS: Yeah. And you know the funniest thing about it, I tell people that and 01:30:00people laugh -- nowadays you look at television or -- everybody's got a radio or TV, people don't listen to radio anymore. And living in North Richmond, when anything would happen, the news people would come out, the newsboy would say, "Extra, extra read all about it!" They would be out selling papers and people'd be running out buying the papers to find out what happened because you didn't know. Communication wasn't that good and people would run out to buy a paper, "What happened?!" You know. So that's how you got the news.

But then, let me tell you more about North Richmond. North Richmond became very curious. A lot of people who lived in the county, little businessmen, they'd start setting up little businesses, barbecue joints. Then came the Savoy Club and Minnie Lou with her club. And then on Grove Street they sort of had a lot of 01:31:00little joints. And they start having blues places and then Tapper's Inn was down at the end of Chesley right where that plant is. And the guy who owned Tapper's Inn was an Indian guy, a Hindu. And he turned that into a big nightclub. And all the big names like Hedda Hopper and Little Willie John, I can't think of all of them -- Louis Jordan, all those stars of those days used to come to Tapper's Inn. Everybody went to Tapper's Inn. I mean, that was the place to come and North Richmond sort of became the blues capital. Lightnin' Hopkins? Oh, I can't 01:32:00think of the name, he was just at Point Richmond last year. Oh, Jimmy McCracklin! All those blues players, everybody came to North Richmond for the blues. They came to the Savoy Club on Sunday afternoon. After they'd get out of church, everybody from Berkeley and Oakland, they'd come to Richmond and start all kind of fights. They said it was people in Richmond but it was really them.

And I was right in the middle because we used to tell lies that we were going to church but we wouldn't go to church, we'd go down and watch all the action, till one time my father caught us down there and we couldn't go back. But as I got older I would go down and when they had Hedda Hopper, and you probably don't know anything about Hedda Hopper, but Hedda Hopper was really sort of like Mary Blige I guess, or somebody nowadays. So everybody wanted to go there. And Hazel 01:33:00Scott and all those players, we'd all go down to Tapper's Inn to see all those stars. And it really became quite popular.

Everybody came to North Richmond. I mean, we had a gang. We told people from Canal they couldn't come to North Richmond. Canal was out off of Gerard before you got to Cutting, right in that area was all kind of projects.

WILMOT: This is the Canal housing projects.

LEWIS: Yeah, so they used to have to ask us if they could come to North Richmond.

WILMOT: I interviewed one person who used to live in those projects, her name was Ermastine Martin.

LEWIS: Yeah, I know Ermastine Martin, but I didn't know that she lived in the projects. But Nat Bates' wife, Shirley, lived there. I used to go visit her all 01:34:00the time at Canal. And a lot of my friends who went to junior high school lived in Canal.

WILMOT: Did you know Edith Hill growing up?

LEWIS: Who?

WILMOT: Edith Hill.

LEWIS: No. And so but Canal was the closest housing project to us. Then there was Harborgate. I had a friend from North Richmond who married a girl from Harborgate. Then Seaport. All those housing projects. We didn't all go to the same school because I think Seaport might have went to school in El Cerrito.

WILMOT: So you made a club against Canal Street, Canal projects? You disallowed?

LEWIS: Oh no, you know, we just -- when they'd go to school, they'd say, "We're coming over tonight." "Oh, you can't come to North Richmond, "we would say that. It was just -- we didn't do anything to them. I mean that was just talk.

WILMOT: Was that like --

LEWIS: Turf war.

WILMOT: Folks who had been here for a long time versus people who had not been here for --

LEWIS: No, most of these people, I had been here a long time. Most of the people, my friends all were people who just came in the wartime.

WILMOT: Well, let me ask you a little bit more about that. So there was this -- you were living with those three families, the Jones, those three families were staying with you. Was this at the house -- this was not the house on Filbert.

LEWIS: No it was on Kelsey Street. We had a great big house. Let's see, it had one, two, three, four, five, six bedrooms in that house.

WILMOT: And you said the Devers went ahead and moved out.

LEWIS: Who?

WILMOT: The Devers you called them, one of the families?

LEWIS: The Devers.

WILMOT: The Devers, they left.

LEWIS: The Devers -- we had a lot of people moved in our house. First the Devers came. And then the Devers' came before the Joneses, and then when the Devers' 01:36:00moved out we had another small bedroom and the Devers' brother-in-law came and lived there for a while, and then the Jones family came and then the Jones family had two brothers, the Reids -- and they spell their name differently, that's R-E-E-D -- and they came and lived a while. Just in and out.

WILMOT: And then the white family?

LEWIS: The white family was -- we had to make them move because my father had to go over there one time: the lady was pregnant and the man was beating her up and kicking her. And so my father, you know, got after him about it and asked them to move and then we had Mrs. Riley moved in there and they lived there for a long, long time. She just died recently. She was 92, I think. But they lived in that house for a long, long time.

WILMOT: And the Jones, did they go and buy a house or make a home somewhere?

LEWIS: No, the Jones went back to Arkansas. And they had a lot of land and they were cattle farmers but, you know, living in rural Arkansas you don't have much money. And it was really funny because -- my mother was really a good cook and as I told you my uncles were all chef cooks -- the Jones family had never baked a turkey before. They never -- and I found that out when I went to live, visit my in-laws back in Tennessee. If they had a roast or a turkey or a chicken, they would put it in water and boil it and then brown it. So that's how they cooked, they cook differently. And so -- my mother would cook all this food and they would say, "Is that done?" Because they didn't think it could get done just roasting it in the oven, you had to boil it. [laughs] Had to boil it first. But 01:38:00it was really funny.

They still have the same little house out in Arkansas and they live way out in the country. Like Haller Jones used to tell my mother, she said you couldn't even hear a train whistle, they live so far in the country. And they did.

WILMOT: Do you remember hearing about the end of the war? Do you remember hearing about the bombs being dropped on Nagasaki and --

LEWIS: Yeah, I do.

WILMOT: -- Hiroshima?

LEWIS: I heard all about it. The end of World War II, I was right in San Francisco, right in the middle of all those people running down the street kissing each other. Everybody was -- Market Street was jammed with people just running round dancing in the street! They were really something. I was young but I remember.

WILMOT: Do you remember, was there like a sense of -- did people know what the capacity or the power of those bombs were? Did they know the kind of -- ?

LEWIS: We knew it was terrible and after that I read about it. Enola Gay, and how it burned all the skin off -- yeah, horrible and I always -- you know, if you live through a war -- now I didn't feel that way in the Korean War -- but World War II really made an impact on me. I was really frightened as a child about the war, and so to know that atomic bomb could do that to people, really it does something to you. It's really terrible and it's left a scar on me that I think you know will never go away. It hasn't gone away.

WILMOT: Did you learn that later on about what they did? What the impact of the bombs were?

LEWIS: I heard people talk about it and how terrible it was, and a lot of black people thought that they wouldn't drop it on the Germans but they dropped it on the Japanese because they were dark people and they didn't care about them.

WILMOT: Did you hear about the Holocaust, what was going on -- what the Germans were doing to the Jewish -- ?

LEWIS: You know, I was living -- when I lived in Los Angeles there was such animosity about Jewish people. And I really didn't understand that and I talked to my mother about it and my mother said that I was supposed -- no matter what -- because I didn't understand it. Nobody had ever talked to me about Jews before. And my sister-in-law wanted me to go with her and work for some Jews. She said she didn't work for Jewish people. And I said I didn't mind going to work for Jewish people. But I asked my mother and my mother told me to treat everybody accordingly, if they treated me right to treat them the same way and not to discriminate against anyone because discrimination was 01:41:00wrong. So I was just beginning to learn about this animosity for Jewish people.

But then when I got around the Jewish people, they started telling me how they hated Germans. [laughs] How the Germans were no good. And so it's the same thing as you see with the blacks and whites in the south. And I can understand to some extent if people are brutalized by other people, there has to be some animosity between them.

WILMOT: But while you were a young person in the Bay Area or in Los Angeles, you didn't really know, did you know about the camps that were happening in Germany?

LEWIS: I read about them. I heard about them. And I heard people discuss how terrible it was and I always -- you know, after I read about it and how the 01:42:00people came here in ships and how the United States turned them away, I wonder how could they do that to people. You know. Have you ever read that? They had a ship that just went all the way around, nobody would let them land, with Jewish people? Yeah, and they didn't -- you know, I just wonder how they could do that to people, the people were trying to escape, you know. And it's terrible.

But my -- you know my daughter-in-law is German and I've been to Germany and, oh, I don't know, it just takes a certain kind of person. You know, I talk to my son's mother-in-law about Hitler and she says, "Well, he wasn't even a German. He was an Austrian." So, people see things differently. I don't think that she 01:43:00agreed with everything, because she had a terrible experience, she lived in what is it -- she now lives in south Germany but she lived in past Berlin, and she was behind that wall and they had to escape and she said the Russians shot at them and everything. So everybody has their experience of World War II and the results of World War II, it wasn't very good. Richmond changed. My life changed. The whole area of California I guess changed because of World War II.

And I remember the Okies too you know. That's one of the things that really stays on my mind. I had a little friend named Bessie. And Bessie was an Okie that came when they had the problems in Oklahoma and they all came to California. And it's a really sad part of my life because they were all so young 01:44:00and they came and I was a little kid but I remember vividly they lived right down the street, Bessie and her family, and they were all sick, and they all died, really young. They came from Oklahoma when -- and then California, do you remember reading about California -- trying to stop the Okies from coming across the border into California? They enacted the Anti-Okie law. The Okies came because of the -- what happened in Oklahoma? They had a drought. The dustbowl. And they all came to California but a lot of them were sick and nice-looking people, and they died, Bessie's brother died, and they all were sick. Really poor people. And that was before World War II. Had to be before because I still lived on Filbert Street.

WILMOT: What kind of -- what do you remember about your 01:45:00mother working in the shipyards? What do you remember about that?

LEWIS: Oh, my mother was really proud. She got a job. And my mother's best friend's name was Rosie Delacruz. And Rosie lived down the street from us and her husband Faustino had a good job, but when he got paid he used to go to the canteen, it was right down the street from our house, and he'd go and spend all his money, and he wouldn't ever have money for his family for food. And so my mother used to loan Rosie money and they got to be good friends because we kids played together. And they worked at the Santa Fe cleaning out cars during World War II. A lot of jobs became available because everybody who wasn't in the service, they worked in the shipyards. And my mother -- we really were kind of late getting in the shipyard. And Rosie and my mother went and got a job in the shipyards. And they were so happy. My mother was a welder. They were both welders. And my mother would tell me how she could do this row and how you weld 01:46:00stuff, and one time she got hot slag on her and burned her and, oh, how they climbed up all on those big ships. And it was really interesting for them. And how they wore dark shades so they wouldn't get their eyes hurt from the welding torch.

And for me, I was 12 or 13. And then I put my age up because they couldn't find anybody to work in the canneries and so I worked at Red Rock Cannery during the summer when school was out. I worked the swing shift from 2:00 to 11:00.

WILMOT: Was that your first job?

LEWIS: That was my first job, working in the fish cannery. It was the Red Rock Fish Cannery. Point Malote.

WILMOT: What did you do there?

LEWIS: We worked on assembly line. When the fish came down, they beheaded them and gutted them and then you put them in the cans and then the cans go on to the cookers and stuff like that. All the kids worked. All the kids who could get a 01:47:00job worked. Because in those days, they didn't hire black kids. You couldn't work in like retail stores or anything. Sometime they would let you do inventory but you never could be a salesperson or anything like that.

WILMOT: Could you shop there?

LEWIS: Yeah, you could shop there, I never had any problem shopping. They just didn't hire you.

WILMOT: What kind of work did you get after the war?

LEWIS: After the war I moved to Los Angeles, and I did a lot of domestic work, and my sister-in-law, she did parties, like we used to work for Doc Stone, an actor on Gunsmoke and the producers of the Amos and Andy Show. A lot of show people she worked for. I'd go with her to serve parties. I liked serving parties the best. Sometimes I worked for a big company that would give banquets. That's 01:48:00the way you could make the best money.

WILMOT: Where did you live? Where did you live in Los Angeles?

LEWIS: I lived in a nice area right off of Adams Boulevard and it was called Cimarron Street and I lived in a court -- it was the funniest thing. [laughs] I lived in this court and it belonged to a friend of Pearl Bailey's. And she lived in Kansas City and one day she came and they had this big limousine and she had this little dog named Coco. And she came and she said, "Oh, this place is not being taken care of properly. You people are ruining our place." And I didn't know what she was talking about, because it was a nice place. But if you're never there and you hire people to do the work, then I don't know. You know. Anyway her dog ran in the street and she just screamed, "Oh, my dog! Something's going to happen!" And I went out and got her dog, I said, "Come on, Coco." And Pearl Bailey said to me he doesn't understand English, he only understands 01:49:00French. [laughs] That was my negative opinion of Pearl Bailey. But anyway. It was a nice area where I lived in Los Angeles. Now I understand it's a ghetto.

WILMOT: How did you watch women's roles change during the war?

LEWIS: Well you know women worked more. Before women didn't work a lot. You know -- they stayed at home mostly.

WILMOT: Do you think that was true for black women as well as white women?

LEWIS: No. I think black women always worked. If you look at the history of the blacks in the United States, black women could always get a job and black men couldn't get a job. And black women were always more successful than black men. But overall, more people worked out of the home. I know when I was smaller, my 01:50:00mother didn't work as much. She'd be gone half a day or something like that. But then, when the shipyard came, everybody was working. All the husbands and the wives and the kids were all by themselves. And as it turned out in our house, some people worked dayshift and some people worked swing shift, so there was always some adult around.

WILMOT: And how were you children being watched? While you were all young people, and there was all those people around, did they all just take turns watching you while they all worked?

LEWIS: Well, every Saturday we were allowed to go to the show. To a movie, or Sunday, depends if we did our work. We didn't have a lot of stuff to do for a long time. You know you'd go to your friend's house or you'd go to church. 01:51:00Everything centered around the church. And then when the church got so full, the Baptist church, then they didn't want me there anymore. Because I wasn't a Baptist. So a lady asked me, "Are you a Baptist?" I told her no. She said, "I don't think you should sing in the choir anymore then if you're not a Baptist." And so I stopped going to the Baptist church. But I had some friends -- my brother and another friend of ours, Leroy Mcgrew, we would go to church -- at nighttime. There was nothing in Richmond. I mean nobody was going to bother kids. So we could stay at church, we would go to the Baptist church and then we'd go to the Church of God in Christ. And they always had a show. We knew this kid named Elmer Cleveland and his sister now is a minister -- her name is Ernestine Reems. She has a college in Oakland. Also, she has a large church. 01:52:00Anyway they're missionaries and ministers. Elmer got to be a minister, too, and he would tell us different things he was going to do in church and we would all go there and see it. It was like a show. Have you ever been to a Church of God in Christ? It's really Holy Roller, you know. Shouting and everything. So we would go there and look at that.

WILMOT: I wanted to ask you also about sexuality. Did you know different people who had different sexual orientations when you were in that age group?

LEWIS: Never saw that before in my life until I was a teenager -- there might have been, now that I think about it, I think that a couple of people I knew might have been -- but nobody talked about it. Nobody, you knew, nobody said, "I'm gay." I was about 15 years old and I was in the Greyhound bus station and there was this white sailor and he was standing by his self and the two sailors 01:53:00behind him. They were bothering him when he got on the bus. And I was sitting there terrified because they were threatening him, they were going to beat him up because he was gay. And then I asked my mother about it. But my mother didn't know that much either. She just said you know some people are different. If I heard people call people names -- they would call them sissies, and nobody mistreated them, I mean I know -- I didn't know that they were different. Took me a long time to really iron that out.

WILMOT: Where were you going with your mom on the bus? Where were you going with your mother on the bus?

LEWIS: I don't know, someplace. To San Francisco probably. The Greyhound bus used to be the only form of transportation to places like Vallejo, Sacramento, and any small towns around the Bay Area. People did not have automobiles before the way, only a few did. If you worked at Mare Island, you rode the Greyhound to Vallejo and caught the boat over to the island. When the war came, transportation improved. Before the war, only a few people had cars and telephones.

WILMOT: On the Greyhound, okay, interesting.

LEWIS: When I was a little girl I remember going on the ferry to San Francisco. 01:54:00And I remember going across the bridge when it first opened, 1939, in a rumble seat because I was a Campfire Girl, no I was a Bluebird. And the Bluebirds went to Treasure Island to the World's Fair. We went to the World's Fair. I remember that.

WILMOT: How old were you when you went to Berkeley?

LEWIS: I was in my -- I was 39. I was grown. I mean I already was married and had children.

WILMOT: You had children. Were you married to that same husband from Tennessee or a different --

LEWIS: No, my second husband. My children's -- Lewis.

WILMOT: So, tell me a little bit about getting married to Lewis, Mr. Lewis.

LEWIS: Oh, I met him at one of the first families we made friends with when we 01:55:00moved to Richmond. Their daughter got married and she married a guy who was in the service, and Randy was his friend. They were in the Air Force. So we met at a wedding. My mother belong to the Jolly Thirties Social Club and they always gave big parties, and he came to the them, so I saw him from time to time. So my mother liked him a lot and they sort of picked him out for me. So finally we started going out together. I am probably a hard person to get to know. I like 01:56:00to read. I'm more of a studious person. Right now, I know a lot of people, but I have very few good friends. Well, we finally got married. We were married for 01:57:00thirty years. My husband is deceased now. We had three children together and I had three from my first marriage. Three of my children are deceased

WILMOT: I'm sorry to hear that.

LEWIS: But back to World War II, it was a really interesting time. You would have had to live here during World War II to really get the whole impact of it. People everywhere, the movie theaters stayed open all night -- everything was like wide open in Richmond.

WILMOT: How was that war different than the war we -- how does it feel different than the war we're fighting now in Iraq?

LEWIS: Because everybody isn't mobilized. In World War II, everyone was working towards the war effort. Everybody was doing something, working in the shipyards 01:58:00and other war related jobs. We were all praying for the war to be over and for us to win. We all knew some who's relative got killed and we all had to make sacrifices. We did not have all the food we needed. You were given ration books and if you ran out of stamps, you couldn't buy meat, sugar, or butter. There was no leather for shoes. Some people ate horse meat. Everyone worked together. We bought liberty bonds. We had slogans like a slip of the lip can sink a ship. I was frightened especially when they dropped the atomic bomb and I thought that could be us. Everyone was affected by the war in some way and we all worked together. Not now -- some people just act like they don't know there is a war.

WILMOT: Thank you. I'm going to close this for today.

LEWIS: Okay.

[end of interview]