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Keywords: Berkeley; Berkeley CA; Berkeley, CA; California; Chinatown; El Cerrito; El Cerrito CA; El Cerrito, CA; Houston; Howard Hughes; Hughes Aircraft Company; Kaiser boxcar; Kaiser shipyards; Richmond; Richmond CA; Richmond, CA; Southern Pacific Railroad Station; Yard One; boxcars; pre fabrication; pre-fabrication; prefab; prefabrication; secretary; shipyards; spray painting; transportation
Subjects: Community and Identity; Rosie the Riveter World War II Home Front
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Keywords: Asian Americans; Chinese Americans; Chinese-Americans; Houston; Houston TX; Houston, TX; Richmond; Rosie the Riveter; Wendy the Welder; burners; feminism; inter racial relationships; inter-racial relationships; interracial relationships; pre-fabrication; prefab; prefabrication; racism; shipyards; welders
Subjects: Community and Identity; Rosie the Riveter World War II Home Front
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Keywords: African Americans; African-Americans; California; Chinese Americans; Chinese-Americans; Houston TX; Houston, TX; Mexican Americans; Mexican-Americans; Texas; race; racial relations; racial tensions; racism; segregated restrooms; segregation
Subjects: Community and Identity; Rosie the Riveter World War II Home Front
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Keywords: African Americans; African-Americans; Chinatown; Chinese Americans; Chinese-Americans; Hamilton Air Force Base; Richmond; Richmond CA; Richmond, CA; Santa Rosa; disabled people; inter racial relationships; inter-racial relationships; interracial relationships; shipyards; social life; women
Subjects: Community and Identity; Rosie the Riveter World War II Home Front
FUREY: Here we are, January 13, 2003, in Roscoe Robinson's home in Richmond,
California. The way we start this out is from the beginning, which is where you were born and the date you were born. Could you talk a little bit about your place of birth?ROBINSON: Yes. I was born in San Antonio, Texas. December 31, 1919. I lived in
San Antonio for four years and we moved to Houston, Texas, because my father could get more work there. I was raised in Houston from age four to age twenty-three. At age twenty-three I was working for the Southern Pacific Railroad Company in a freight station, loading and unloading boxcars and trucks. 00:01:00And my brother, who had came to California ahead of me, he found out that I was working for sixty-two and a half cents an hour from sunup to sundown and making half as much as he was up here. So he encouraged me to come to California and work in the Kaiser shipyards because they was hiring anybody to help build ships real fast.FUREY: Maybe we could back up. Could you, for the record, tell--what were your
father and mother's names?ROBINSON: All righty. My father's name was Porter Robinson and he was from State
Line, Mississippi. His mother was an Indian; his father was an African. They were both slaves. I went to school in Houston, in the elementary class at four 00:02:00years old because my mother taught me how to read before I went to school. So I graduated from high school at age sixteen and I went to Prairie View College and I didn't stay there very long, only five months, because--would you cut this off for me?FUREY: Sure. [tape interruption] Okay, so we talked a little bit about your
father--Porter Robinson?ROBINSON: Porter Robinson; P-O-R-T-E-R Robinson.
FUREY: What did he do? What was his occupation?
ROBINSON: He was a cement mason. In San Antonio he could do small buildings and
when one was finished he'd got to wait until he could find another one. But he 00:03:00heard that in Houston, Texas, a hundred and ten miles away they was building a fifty-two story building called the Esperson Building, so he figured if he could get there, he'd have work for a long time. So we only stayed in San Antonio four years after I was born and we moved to Houston and he did get work on the Esperson Building. Should I go to my mother?FUREY: Sure.
ROBINSON: Okay.
FUREY: Her name--do you have her maiden name?
ROBINSON: Yes. My mother's name--her maiden name was Willie Mae Mosely, and her
father's name was William Mosely--he was a Pullman Porter on the Missouri Pacific railroad station. And she had four sisters, so whenever he was gone those five sisters were alone. And so the oldest one sorta pinch hit as a mother, because before that, when the mother was living, she took sick and my 00:04:00grandfather hired a lady to take care of her. The lady figured if she could get rid of my grandmother she could get my grandfather, so she poisoned her. But my grandfather didn't like her.FUREY: So she poisoned and killed--
ROBINSON: Killed my grandmother so she could get my grandfather, but he was very
hostile about that. He continued on the railroad but he left the five sisters alone, but they stayed real close together. And the oldest sister just stepped in and took the position of the mother and they stayed together until my mother was a young lady when she met my father and they came from State Line, 00:05:00Mississippi, here and got a job working at the post office. And that's how they met. Eventually they married and there was three brothers of us as a result of that marriage, one sister who died at birth so I never did know her. So we lived in San Antonio, Texas for four years. There's very little I can remember of it, but I do remember some parts of it. I remember that we lived close to an army post and the soldiers would pass our house every day. Sometimes they'd have a funeral and there'd be a wagon holding a coffin, you know, and it was so interesting to us--we'd sit out on the sidewalk and watch it. And I remember the Breckenridge Park, because it was unusual. The streets go through the Breckenridge Park--the river come up about six inches across the street--and 00:06:00that was real amazing that we had to drive through the water to go through Breckenridge Park. So there was not too many things that I remembered about San Antonio, except that my mother started teaching me to read and write when I was, oh--less than four years old.FUREY: And what was her occupation?
ROBINSON: Well, at that time she was just a house--a homekeeper, but when we
moved to Houston, she became a--she opened up three playgrounds, because we only had one playground in Houston: the Emancipation Park. And Houston was a big place; you could fit San Francisco in it twenty times. One playground was not large enough for all the black people in Houston. At that time--this was in the thirties--and, you know, they were divided. So they only had one playground for the blacks. My mother went to the school board and asked them if they would let 00:07:00her use the junior high schools in each of the different wards when they closed at three, let her take over at three-thirty and keep them open until nine, and get the recreation department to furnish her with the equipment, and the colleges to give her volunteers to help her run it. So she had playgrounds in Sixth Ward, and Fourth Ward, and in Fifth Ward. Many of those kids in those playgrounds grew up to be in professional sports. And it was a great asset to me because I had to be with her all the time so I learned all the games very well.FUREY: She would organize the administration of the playgrounds?
ROBINSON: Yes.
FUREY: So was she--was this a common thing for woman to do?
ROBINSON: No.
FUREY: It doesn't sound--
ROBINSON: She was the first one that ever did in Houston. She had one in Fourth
Ward, Fifth Ward, and Sixth Ward. As she would establish one and get it going 00:08:00good, then she'd put an assistant over that one while she would establish another one. She would put someone in charge and she'd go and establish another one. And she had a good recommendation because the fist one she had opened was so successful--the children, when they got out of school, they had someplace to go instead of getting into trouble. And they was learnin' different games. They had boxing, they had table games, there was art and plays, we had plays--circuses and different things like that. And so, when she would get one established and had two or three people helping her and had it where it could go by itself, she would move to another ward and open another one and then she'd move to another ward and open another one. But she'd still keep check on all of 00:09:00them. Also the city would, too. That's where I learned how to fight. I was a fighter from 1935 to 1943. I was inspired by Joe Louis. And I fought--I gave exhibition bouts at each one of the playgrounds every Wednesday night and I worked out every day five days a week to stay in good shape. I played football and all table games: ping pong and art and things like that.And so I went to college. The Recreation Department assisted me in going to
Prairie View College. The girl I had been courting, I didn't realize, you know, that we had gone as far as we had and when I was in college five months, my mother sent me a telegram telling me to come home at once. I thought someone was 00:10:00sick or something and I went home and when I got there she told me, she said, "This lady came over and brought her daughter with her and said that she was pregnant for you." She said, "Is that possible?" I said, "It's possible but not probable." [laughs] So she said, "Well, why do you say that?" I said, "I was only with her once." She said, "It don't take but once." So she said, "I always taught you since you was twelve years old not to take a lady for a girlfriend that you didn't want for a wife. Now you're responsible for that child being in the world and you're going to have to get out of college now"--because I was going to be a doctor, because I was going to be a surgeon--"and you're going to do common labor. You have to support this kid. You can't go into doctoring at this time."FUREY: And how old were you?
ROBINSON: I was eighteen.
FUREY: You were eighteen and you had just entered Prairie View College?
00:11:00ROBINSON: Mm-hmm. I'd been there five months.
FUREY: Was this a black college?
ROBINSON: Yes.
FUREY: In Texas.
ROBINSON: Yeah, around Hempstead, Texas. About sixty miles from Houston.
FUREY: So your education up until that point--you went to a high school, a
public high school?ROBINSON: Yeah, I graduated from Booker T. Washington High School in Houston.
Then when I went to Prairie View I was very active, but I got in a lot of trouble there, too, because I just had a lot of energy and I wanted to get into different things. [laughs] They put me at the head of the table in the cafeteria, and whoever sits at the head of the table they bring all the desserts and all the milk to them and they see to it that everyone around the table has what they want and whatever's left of it, they do what they want to it. They'd have eighteen or twenty tables like that. I was the head of this particular 00:12:00table, but the lady who waited on us, she didn't like me. So she came and said something bad to me and I responded; they took me to the dean! [laughs] So he told me, he said, "I'm responsible for these girls, and I don't want you to ever get out of line with one of the girls again." I told him, "I wasn't raised like that. My mother's a missionary." And I said, "She kept picking at me until she provoked me." I said, "I won't do it again." And so he said, "Okay." They had a girl's dormitory was separate from the boy's dormitories and we went to a tennis match one evening--all of the girls and boys together. They'd sit together at the tennis match so they could make plans for the night, you know, and I was very devious so I asked one of the girls, I said, "Why don't you make some 00:13:00cookies and lemonade tonight, invite me and my friends up?" She said, "All right." So she said, "How are you going to get up?" I said, "Tie some sheets together and tie it to the bed and we'll come up."[laughs]FUREY: [laughs]
ROBINSON: So there was a guy around there with a uniform on who patrolled the
grounds all the time--we called him the Lone Ranger. I could outrun any of the other kids so I told them, I said, "Now look, you three guys go up first. If I see the Lone Ranger, I'll get him to follow me and get you a chance to stay." And so they did; they went up first and just about the time I got halfway up, there he come! So I just turned it loose and started running--I knew he couldn't catch me--I went around one building, around another one, around another, until eventually I ran into one and I told the guy, I said, "The Lone Ranger come in here, don't act surprised, don't say nothin'." I just jumped up in the bed and got a paper and sat there like I was reading, trying to keep from panting too 00:14:00hard. [laughs] So he came in, he looked around, he said, "Robinson," he said, "I can't swear that was you," he said, "but you got on a white shirt and black pants." I said, "A lot of people in this room got on a white shirt and black pants." He said, "But I feel like it was you, and I'm going to report it but I'm not going to say it was you. I'm going to say that I thought it was you."The dean called me in his office again the next day. He told me, "This is the
second time you've been sent to my office here in two weeks." He said, "Now, I can't have this." He said, "I'm gonna have to do something about this." So nevertheless, they gave me a job working in the horticulture, I guess you call it--it was for flowers--working with a guy who did all of the gardening and I worked with him. That's where I wasn't getting into contact with nobody where I 00:15:00could get in trouble. I was working over there one day when the telegraph came from my mother and I went home. My father said, he said, "Well, look. I make enough money where I can take care of the child and the girl until he goes ahead and finishes his education because he wants to be a doctor." My mother said, "No. That's his responsibility and I taught him year in year out not to get into anything like that." So I wound up unloading boxcars, putting bales of cotton in the compress, I loaded sugar boats with hundred pound bags of sugar, and doing all type of work that I had no intention of doing. I don't know whether this is what you want to hear or not.FUREY: I am very much interested in knowing what your work, your occupation was
00:16:00prior to going to California and prior to coming into the shipyards.ROBINSON: So what happened--the last job I had before I came into the shipyards
was working for the Southern Pacific Railroad station unloading boxcars and trucks, and I was only making sixty-two and a half cents an hour. My brother was making a dollar thirty-five an hour and he said he worked less in a whole week than I did in one hour! And so, he encouraged me to come out here. I got the railroad company to give me a pass to California for my wife and my three children and I left Houston, I just walked off from my home with everything in it for anybody who wanted it and I came to California. My brother had gone to Chinatown to the telephone building right across the street from the park in Chinatown between Grant and Kearny-- 555 Pine Street--and it was a telephone 00:17:00building there, but the basement was not being used. Housing was hard to find at that time so he talked them into letting him remodel it and make it into a home for us for however long we needed it.FUREY: This is in Chinatown?
ROBINSON: Yes.
FUREY: And who was he talking to?
ROBINSON: To the owner of the telephone building.
FUREY: He wasn't a Chinese--?
ROBINSON: No, but he was right across the street from a Chinese park and right
between Grant and Kearny, and Grant was the main street in Chinatown at that time. He allowed us to take the basement floor. I came, my mother came, my father came, my four brothers--three brothers and one foster brother came. We all stayed down there; there was plenty of room. And we fixed it up like a home and we stayed there for a while. So I got a job. All of them had just signed up 00:18:00for the merchant marines when I came here, but they had been working in the shipyard before. I told them, I said, "Look--I don't want no merchant marine. I'm twenty-five, my wife is twenty-two and I can't see being at sea six months at a time!" So they say, "I'll tell you what you do, we'll take you down to the painter union on Sixteenth and {Capp?} in San Francisco and let you join the union, and we've already got painting equipment where we've been working out there. You don't have to even buy any clothing." So they did; I got a job, I entered the union and they took me the shipyard and introduced me to the people whom I needed to meet to get a job there.Well, one of my brothers had been a spray painter so he had on a coverall suit
which had spray paint all over it so they assumed I was a spray painter. When I went there for the job, there was about twenty-five or thirty of us. He said, "I 00:19:00need eight spray painters." He said, "This one right here"--he pointed at me, because I had spray paint, but I was not a spray painter! Then he said, "And the rest of you will report to the brush painting department." When we were going to the spray painting department, he said, "Now look, I don't care whether you guys know how to spray or not." He said, "I'm gonna get paid no matter what you do." He said, "So what you do is you watch what the other person do, and you do what they do." He said, "It's all right with me!" [laughs] So I went to work for this fella, he was spraying red lead on the decks, which was very simple. But the main thing I was watching about was how he connected the gun and the hoses and how much pressure he put on the pot and how he strained the paint first. And I got all of it down pat because it doesn't take long to learn how to spray. And so, inside of two or three days I had it down pat and I worked on that for a 00:20:00couple weeks.FUREY: In the Prefab?
ROBINSON: In the Prefab. No, this was in Yard One. But what happened is, I
didn't work there long. I only worked there two weeks and I got in a fight. [laughs] And they fired me, so I went right on back to the union and they hired me, sent me back to the Prefab the very next day! And so, I worked there a long time. Now, Prefab would prepare deckhouses--foredeck and aft deck houses. Where, right next door in Yard Two they had a ship on the keel block and they'd start working from the keel clear on up the sides and the superstructure and all of the ship. But when they finished--they had a fixed time so by the time we got the fore and aft deck built and painted, it would be just in time to put them on 00:21:00the ships.FUREY: Mm-hmm.
ROBINSON: I worked there for a long time and I got in trouble again.
FUREY: So--do you mind if I go back for just a second to--?
ROBINSON: Okay. Come on, any time.
FUREY: When you were in Houston and you're about to come to California, I was
wondering--what were your expectations of California? Obviously, you'd been--had you been receiving letters? How did you communicate with your brothers?ROBINSON: Yes, they stayed in constant contact with me. And the way he really
fooled me--he sent me a picture of him with a bunch of pretty girls around him and he was all dressed up, laying up on the orange tree at the University of California. He sent me a picture from Berkeley, California, and the next week I'd get a picture from him in El Cerrito, California with a bunch of--[interruption]. And so, the next week, he sent me a picture from him in El 00:22:00Cerrito, California, with a bunch of girls looking all sharp, you know? And orange trees all around. And the next week, he sent one from Richmond, California, and then he sent one from Oakland, San Francisco, or Marin County. I said, "My, that guy's travelling!" You know? He hadn't traveled fifty miles! [laughs] And so, he told me how much money he was making and every time I see him he had a bunch of pretty girls around him. I said, "It don't make sense for me to work this hard here." I worked so hard until--when I wake up in the morning to go to work I worked, until time to come home at night. And I'd be so tired all I could do was take a shower and go to bed, get enough rest to go back 00:23:00the next morning. I was only making sixty-two and a half cents and hour and he's making a dollar thirty-five an hour and he's having all this fun! [laughs] So that's what enticed me, because I had a wife and three kids then to try to make it on sixty-two and a half cents an hour. I figured I could give them a better life on a dollar thirty-five an hour, which was minimum wage at that time.FUREY: Did you have other options? Or did it seem within your community that
most young men in your position were coming to California, or were there other options like going to back East or to Chicago? There was a big shipbuilding--Todd-Houston was in Texas so--ROBINSON: Yes.
FUREY: --what were your other options?
ROBINSON: Well, I had other options. I had other jobs. I worked for Howard
Hughes at his plant, because he had oil well equipment there and I'd go there 00:24:00and spray oil on it to keep it from rusting. And I worked as a secretary for another oil well company. This man had just came from Sweden and his father was an established oil well man, but his father was trying to get him started in business for himself. He had an office, and a car, and two great big tankers. So what he would do, if he would hear of someone hitting a wildcat--in other words, discovered oil--he would try to get there first so he could--since, if you first discover oil, you have no pipes going to the refinery. So he had his trucks to deliver the oil and he'd try to get there first. He had two great big diesel trucks, and so he--I was at the employment office one day and they said somebody was coming from the road company and hired somebody. I was there and we 00:25:00waited--he was supposed to be there at nine and we waited until eleven and he wasn't there. So I went up to the office and I told the man, "Sir," I said, "I have a wife and three kids to take care of. I've been here two hours, and the man from the road company hasn't come." I said, "And if he's not coming, I've got to go somewhere else and find me a job." So he said, "Well, I can't guarantee you that he's coming," he said, "but he said he would be here this morning." So when I went back to all of the guys, the black guys come up to me and they said, "What did you say?" And I told them. After a while, another--this Swedish man, Mr. Hansel, from Sweden--he came in to ask this man. He said, "I need somebody to work in my office, because I've got to be running off from one oil well to another to find out if I can get the job." He said, "But I need somebody to take phone calls for me and it's a little office. You sit there and take phone calls." He said, "Who would you recommend?" He said, "I'd recommend 00:26:00that guy there." He said, "He's very aggressive." [laughs] He said, "He came over and talked to me and nobody else wouldn't. When he went back, everybody ran to him." So he said, "I would recommend him."So he hired me, and I worked there--in fact I worked there for quite a while and
whenever he would have to go out of town he'd leave me with a brand new car so I could drive home and back every day. It really was an asset to me, and when he'd have an entertainment, he would have--because his father was very rich--he'd have Betty Grable and other movie stars come to his house. And he'd have me cook--or cook barbecue or something like that--and have a big dinner, because I was a very good cook because my mother and father both worked and I had to cook. I was the oldest son. He was a lot of help to me, and eventually, when I came to 00:27:00California the reason I was encouraged to come was because Kaiser would send a train down to Houston and getting as many people as he could on that train and bringing them to California, free, to work in his shipyard. I didn't have anyone else offer me that kind of deal. But I didn't use his transportation: I got a pass from my rail company for me and my wife and my three kids.FUREY: So you didn't have to go in the Kaiser boxcars?
ROBINSON: No.
FUREY: Because I heard that journey was--it was really crammed--people were
really crammed in together.ROBINSON: No, but I got a pass from my railroad company for my wife, three kids,
and I.FUREY: So the final job you had in Houston was--
ROBINSON: Was working for the railroad company, loading and unloading those boxcars.
FUREY: So how did your secretary job end?
ROBINSON: The secretary job ended when my wife was having a baby and I was out
00:28:00to his house preparing a barbecue and serving and he told me, he said, "Roscoe, phone call has come." He said, "Your wife is having a baby," he said, "take my car and go see about it." So I took the car and I went to see about her and when she was free to come home, I took her home. So then I told him, I said, "Mr. Hansel," I said, "You're the nicest man that I've ever worked for. You've helped me more than anybody I've ever known." I said, "But now I've got another member added to my family and the salary you're paying me just won't cut it." I said, "And I can understand you're just getting started and you can't do any better," I said, "but I can't explain that to my wife and children. So I got to have a 00:29:00job paying more money." So that's why I left that job. But it was a wonderful job. That's when I went to the railroad company because they was paying more money, but they was working me--FUREY: So, manual labor?
ROBINSON: Yeah. When I heard about--my brother kept sending me all these
pictures, telling me all the money he was making, and how easy--things was better out here; people will treat you better and all this sort of thing. Well, it encouraged me to come out here.FUREY: Now did he talk about--did he say anything about California being more liberal--
ROBINSON: Yes.
FUREY: --and being--accepting blacks more?
ROBINSON: Yes.
FUREY: Because I know that even though there was plenty of segregation in the
Kaiser shipyards, you know--blacks tended to be in the heavy loading jobs--ROBINSON: Yeah. Of course, most of the people who came out here was from the
00:30:00South anyway.FUREY: Yeah. The Midwest--there were a lot of Midwest people. And I interviewed
one woman who worked first in Prefab, as a welder, and in the shipyards. Then she went to Todd-Houston in Texas and she said the shipyards there were completely segregated and blacks could not be journeymen, or I think that's the highest they could be--I can't remember. They had to be assistants.ROBINSON: Yeah. Well, see, here I made supervisor--not only did I make
supervisor, my foreman when I worked for Hamilton Air Force Base out here after that, he was going to retire in two years so they started training me to do his job at Hamilton Air Force Base. But that's another story. Because I worked for--when I worked--when the shipyards were over, I went to service from the 00:31:00Bethlehem Shipyards in San Francisco and when I came back, they were supposed to give you your job back when you went to service and came back. When I came back, they told me, they said, "We don't have no proof that you worked for--or that you were in our union before you left." I said, "I worked two years in your union, and I have my cards where I paid every three months." I said, "How could I get a card every three months if I weren't in your union?" "Oh, you could crawled through the window and went back there." I said, "You mean to tell me every three months I could crawl through the window and go back there and get a card?" He said, "Yes." So they said, "The president, treasurer, and the secretary all ran off and took all the money and we don't have any money."[Pat] Brown was district attorney of San Francisco at that time and I went to
him and talked with him. He told me, he said, "You mean to tell me they won't 00:32:00give me your job back?" He said, "That's the law they've got to give you your job back when you come back from service." He said, "I'm gonna subpoena all of them to be in my office at nine o'clock in the morning. I want you to be here." So when I went to his office, he said, "Now I'm gonna tell you fellas something," he said, "he's going about it the legal way, but if I went to service and left my wife and three kids, and put my life on the line for my country, and came back and you're all giving me this cock and bull story you're giving him," he said, "I'd get me a shotgun and shoot all of you."[laughs] He said, "Now I want him to be at your office at nine o'clock tomorrow morning and," he said, "if they don't treat you right, you come tell me and I'll see to it that they are rightfully punished." So it happened that when I got home that afternoon, this black contractor in Berkeley had heard about it and he had heard 00:33:00about how good a painter I was, so he told my wife to tell me, forget about that. Come to his office on--what's the street? So I said, "Well, I guess that would be better because we're talking about some confrontation here could cost some lives over here." And so I says, "Not that I'm afraid, because I never was afraid of anything or anybody," I said, "but I got a family to take care of." So when I went to see Mr. Dunn and he questioned me, and put me to work. And so we did interiors--we were master painters and decorators. We worked up in the hills, doing jobs. We painted churches, we painted--FUREY: This is after--this is the late forties?
ROBINSON: Mm-hmm.
FUREY: After you'd come back from--
ROBINSON: Yes, after I come back from service.
FUREY: Okay. Well, I'd like to get back to where you first came to Richmond and
00:34:00how you became acclimatized in Richmond. How you found housing. So maybe we could start there.ROBINSON: All righty. What occurred is--I was living in, as I said, in that
telephone building in the basement and I'd go down to the Ferry Building and catch a boat and it would take me to the shipyard every day. But it would take so much time going to and from, then I got to work all day. So I said, "Now, if I could live in Richmond it would save me a lot of time." So I started inquiring around and they told me that they had housing--multiple housing--you know, eight or ten families living in two-story housing, and they had a whole bunch of--a colony of them, and it was in walking distance from the shipyards. So I just started investigating it, and I found out that you had to get on a waiting list, 00:35:00so I got on the waiting list and eventually I was called and so they gave me an apartment in Richmond in the Canal Section. So I moved there, and my wife and kids and I moved to the Canal Section and I was in walking distance to work. I just stayed there until I was inducted in service.FUREY: And that was the Federal Housing Authority that you went to, to inquire
about the housing?ROBINSON: Yes.
FUREY: What was that process like? Because I heard there was a big run-around
for new migrants that came to--you'd go to the Housing Authority, and you'd wait in the line, a really long line--ROBINSON: Mm-hmm. Well you see, I had--I skipped one little thing in there,
because my mother had moved--she had gotten called before I had, so she had got a place on South Twenty-fifth Street. She told me, she said, "Well, you don't 00:36:00need to stay in San Francisco until they call you--come on over here and live with me and you'll be walking distance to your job." So while they was putting me off and delaying me and different things, well I was still in walking distance of my job. While I was living with her they eventually called me to my own place. And so, then I went to Canal and got my own place.FUREY: With all your family.
ROBINSON: Yes, it was just my wife and my kids and I.
FUREY: And how did that whole--how did it, the move, affect your family? Was it
hard? Was your wife at all--did it take time to adjust, or did you have a community of people, of family and friends?ROBINSON: Yeah. I knew some of the people who were already in Canal apartments.
FUREY: From back in Houston?
ROBINSON: Yes. Mm-hmm. It wasn't a problem, because I was just determined to
00:37:00take care of my family regardless of what I had to go through. And so, I came there. I'm skipping a lot of things that wouldn't be interesting to you.FUREY: Uh--no. Tell the story as you need to tell it. It's always impossible to
tell everything all at once. You know, it would take a whole lifetime to tell all of it. Just, you know, about your family and your children.ROBINSON: When I was in Prefab, I was a spray painter. They gave spray painters
yellow cards and they gave brush painters white cards. With white cards, you only got a dollar twenty cents; with spray painters, you got a dollar thirty-five. Nowadays it doesn't sound like much, but in those days it made a difference.FUREY: Yeah.
ROBINSON: I noticed that when it rained, they wouldn't even give the black
people yellow cards. They'd give us all white cards. That means we was only 00:38:00getting a dollar twenty. But the whites were still continuing to get the yellow cards whether they would spray or not. And so, I asked the guy--because I always was adventuresome--I said, "Why do you guys spray when the weather's fair, and you don't spray when it isn't fair?" I said, "Don't you know that when the weather's fair that those white fellows can't do all this work?" I said, "They need you then." I said, "But even then, you're working then." I said, "All you've got to do is refuse to work when the weather's fair, and then they'll have to get you some cards when the weather's not fair." And so they said, "Yeah, but that's a big step." I said, "Well, if you want anything worthwhile you've got to take a big step." They said, "Will you be the leader?" I said, "Yes I will." I said, "I'll go approach the foreman and tell him to give us white cards all the time if he's not going to give us yellow cards all the 00:39:00time." I said, "But I want to have this understanding--I want every one of you to be behind me, because if you're not all behind me it's not going to work."So I went to the foreman. I said, "Mr. Lehman," I said, "We don't feel like
we've been treated fair. And I feel like, if we're not going to get yellow cards all the time, give us white cards all the time." He said, "How many are--I want the name of everybody that feels that way." I said, "Well, put my name down first." And so, I was looking around, watching them all and I saw Jones trying to take off. I said, "Mr. Jones is going to the restroom. Give them his name next!" [laughs] And so he got all our names. So the next time it rained he gave us all white cards. And finally he gave us white cards every day. But then, when 00:40:00the rain happened and it dried up and everything was nice and clear--those people that was building the ships, when they got to a certain point they want those fore and aft decks to put on there. The ship can't go without those. And so, he came to me. He said, "Robbie, you're my best painter." He said, "And if you will come and work with me, I'll give you a yellow card every day." I said, "Look, I talked all these black men into giving up their yellow cards and I'm gonna get a yellow card?" I said, "You want me to have them kill me?" [laughs] I said, "No way!" I said, "Either you give us all yellow cards or explain to the union why you're not!" And so then he set a trap for me to kill me. If you're on 00:41:00this deck and there's a deck down below, in order to put a ladder, steps from this level to that, you've got to cut a hole first. Then you put the ladder down there. Until then you have stanchions all around with ropes around. So he came and told me one day, he said, "Robbie," he said, "I want you to do a {develop?} for me."FUREY: Who is this that's telling you?
ROBINSON: My foreman.
FUREY: The foreman. Who is--he's a white foreman?
ROBINSON: Yeah. Mm-hmm.
FUREY: Who's in between you and the supervisor?
ROBINSON: Yes. Mm-hmm. So he said, "I want you to spray the deck--overhead,
rather--at lunchtime, while everybody's gone." He said, "You can have it all finished when they get back." He said, "It don't take but one man to do it." He 00:42:00said, "As far as the hole," he said, "we've got ropes all around that, so if you happen to back up and back into one of those, you'll know you touched it and you can make adjustments accordingly." While I was spraying, they took all the ropes away, and I fell off into that hole down to the next deck. And I guess he thought it was gonna kill me, but it didn't. It knocked me unconscious and hurt my back very badly so I couldn't move. I just laid there until after lunch. So after lunch they got an ambulance and took me to Kaiser [Hospital].They worked on me--I don't know what all they did, but I know that when I got
through they did have me taped from here clear down to here. I couldn't hardly move. If I sit down, I couldn't get up, but if you put me on my feet I could walk, you know? He knew that I was capable of figuring it out and getting even 00:43:00with him, so he transferred me to the next yard, where his father-in-law was supervisor. He said, "I'm sending you a bad nigger over there." He said, "You gotta watch him." He said, "Because he's treacherous." Now, I wasn't treacherous, but I was just defensive and I wanted right--I wanted what was due me, you know? And I was willing to do whatever was necessary to get it. He sent me over there and I was working pretty fine and getting along good with the fellows for a while. And one day, he told me, he said, "Get on the outfitting dock." The outfitting dock is the last place a ship is checked over to see that everything is right before it goes out for a shakedown run. A shakedown run is a run out under the Golden Gate Bridge and when it comes back , if anything is out of order the shakedown run would reveal it. And so, he told me, he said, "I want 00:44:00you to go down in a certain room down there, and put on your hood and your mask and everything, and spray that room out." It was only about as big as this room here. He said, "Spray it out as quick as you can, don't talk to nobody." This was sounding very strange to me. And he said, "I'll come back up there after you get through." So I got my equipment and took everything--my pot and everything--and connected my hose and gun and everything. I got ready to put my equipment on--protective equipment. There was a welder in there welding on one wall and there was an electrician working on a box. Well, painters are not supposed to go in until all crafts are through. Because it doesn't make sense for me to paint this wall and then a welder come in and mess it all up. Or an electrician to cut a hole in it and mess it all up. 00:45:00FUREY: Yeah.
ROBINSON: When I walked in there, I said, "You fellows through in here?" They
said, "No. He had another man here before you and he told him to just go ahead and spray all over us." He says, "He left," he said, "but he told him he had one that was bad enough to come in here and run us out of here." He said, "So he went and got you." He said, "But you haven't given any indication that you are antagonistic or nothing like that. So maybe we should explain to you what the thing is." He said, "Now, since you haven't irritated us in any way, we feel like you don't know what's happening. The boat boss is over your boss and every boss in the shipyard. You get the boat boss and tell him what the situation is, and if he say for you to spray before we do our work, we'll get out. But if he 00:46:00say for us to do our work before you spray, you get out." He said, "Is that fair enough?" I said, "That's fair enough with me."So they went and got the boat boss and he came by. He said, "You know very well
that you're not supposed to spray nothing in here until the men are through." I said, "I know it, but my foreman came in here and told me not to spend more than ten minutes in here and have this room finished when he come by." He said, "You tell your foreman to come see me when he comes." So the foreman came back, I said, "The boat boss said he want to see you." "The boat boss!" I said, "Yeah." He said, "I thought you was a man." I said, "I am a man. And I'm not afraid of anybody that will bleed, because if they can bleed I can find some way to get some blood out of 'em."[laughs] I said, "But I'm not a bully. And I treat people like I want to be treated." I said, "So, therefore, I'm following the boat boss's orders." He said, "Well, you can pack your stuff up and leave, then." He 00:47:00said, "I thought I had somebody that I could depend on." I said, "Well, if you want that done--you're my supervisor--I know you know how to paint. Why don't you come in here and run 'em out?" [laughs] I said, "Not that I'm afraid of it, but it's not right." I said, "Because I have protection on me. I can protect myself against anybody." I said, "But why should I come in here and do that?" And so he got angry with me. So he fired me. I come back to the shipyard and got another job the next day, the next yard! [laughs]FUREY: The next yard over. [laughs] So this was your second yard after you had
been expelled?ROBINSON: Mm-hmm. Right.
FUREY: Now was this foreman that you're talking about that you had problems
with--was he--ROBINSON: He was the father-in-law of the one that I--
FUREY: He's the father-in-law? Okay.
ROBINSON: Mm-hmm.
FUREY: I'm not quite clear--he was telling you to go into a hold or some part of
the ship to paint it to do the final painting--and was he doing that so that you would force other people to leave, and then you would get in trouble, and then 00:48:00he could fire you for that?ROBINSON: Yes. Right. In fact, he knew that this other guy might jump on me. And
I'd have to protect myself, and naturally I'm going to come out the loser. So I did it, what I figured was the right way to do it.FUREY: And what happened--did you hear about what happened with the boat man and the--?
ROBINSON: The boat man told my boss--he said, "Look, you know wrong. You know
better than this." He said, "I don't want to hear about anything like this again." He said, "You're trying to cause confusion." And so, he ate him out, you know, and he got mad at me, said, "I thought you was a man!" I said, "I am a man!" I said, "I was a fighter for eight years, and I can hold my own with most anybody." I said, "Besides that, I know a lot of dirty ways to fight." [laughter] But nevertheless, that was what occurred in that particular yard. So 00:49:00then they sent me to another yard, but I had no problem in this other yard because this supervisor had no connections with him.FUREY: And which yard was the last one?
ROBINSON: The last one--let's see: Prefab, One, Two--oh, they sent me--I know
what they did. The union sent me to Bethlehem Steel in San Francisco. That's what they did. Where I wouldn't be working for Kaiser at all. That's what they did.FUREY: That's the final one? Okay.
ROBINSON: Mm-hmm.
FUREY: So that was the end of your time at Kaiser?
ROBINSON: At Kaiser, uh-huh.
FUREY: So how many months--when did you come? When did you start employment at Kaiser?
ROBINSON: July of 1943.
FUREY: July of '43. And your first, Yard One you were at for two weeks.
ROBINSON: Yes. And I got in a fight there, and then I went to Prefab and I
stayed there for about--oh, about a year.FUREY: A year in Prefab.
ROBINSON: Mm-hmm. And then I got into it there.
00:50:00FUREY: Now, could you talk a little bit about Prefab? Because Prefab is where
there were a lot of women working.ROBINSON: Yes, it was.
FUREY: As welders there, right?
ROBINSON: Yeah, welders and laborers and--
FUREY: And they had Asians doing some electric stuff. Can you talk a little bit
about the work environment of Prefab?ROBINSON: Prefab was really a nice place except the pressure they put on me. I
loved my work and I could do it better than the rest of 'em could, so I wasn't having any problem with my work. In fact, my best friend was Kelly Wong. He lived right--a half a block from me on Grant Street in San Francisco.FUREY: And was Kelly Wong a--where was he?
ROBINSON: He was a burner. You know, there's welders and burners? Well, he was a
burner. And he had a friend of mine--we called her "Good Time Charlie." She lived in Berkeley. He and her worked together. And both of them were friends of 00:51:00mine. See, at lunchtime--we had an hour lunchtime--and we used to shoot dice at lunchtime. If we wanted to. If I didn't, I didn't play. But I was pretty good at that too.FUREY: So you would interact with the Chinese?
ROBINSON: Oh, yeah. Mm-hmm.
FUREY: How about with the women? Would you work shoulder to shoulder with the
women there? Or were they, the welders--ROBINSON: I didn't see any Chinese women in--
FUREY: Oh no, not Chinese women. Just women in general.
ROBINSON: Oh, yeah I had lunch with the women. I had two or three women I ate
lunch with every day. In fact, one of them invited me to her house in Oakland on Sixteenth and Adeline. She fixed me a dinner fit for a king and then took me to a movie after. And that almost got me in trouble with my wife! Because she came 00:52:00outside where I live and came out there in front of my house, and blew her horn!FUREY: So she liked you?
ROBINSON: Mm-hmm.
FUREY: Now, I've read somewhere that there's this kind of old fear of white
men--this is what I've read, that there's a traditional kind of fear that black men would start dating the white women. Now, was that--did you notice that at all? Say, if you were to talk to a white woman for a long period of time, would that tradition--ROBINSON: I got fired in Houston for that. And I wasn't courting the lady, but
we were working in a plant. It was making parts for the atomic bomb but we didn't know what it was. But these women were working on lathes. You know, it turns around and it spins a lot of--what do you call it--it spins, a lot of 00:53:00metal comes off. And I would have to come around and clean that metal up and oil their machines. There was about twelve, fifteen of them. And at lunchtime I would go up to Washington Avenue and buy my lunch. And so a lot of them would tell me--they'd say, "Bring me this and I'll give you a dime. Bring me this and I'll give you a nickel for my meal." It wasn't much money, but I mean I'm going up there anyway so why not collect as much as I could? Sometimes I could get eighty-five cents or a dollar, just going up there and I'm going anyway. So this young girl came over there--she was only eighteen. And she started working there, see?Now, I was fighting then every Wednesday night and there was two white guys on a
motorcycle. They were good friends of mine, and they would drive out to watch me fight every Wednesday night. This white girl that came out there, her father was 00:54:00a foreman at Hughes Tool Company. And so, she came out there and started working. I'd go to raise her machine and clean out the shavings--that's what it is: the shavings. And she would keep me there talking longer than I really needed to be there. And she'd call me more often than she really needed me there. And see, I was only nineteen and I'm in perfect shape because I'm fighting all the time and staying in shape. The owner of the place, his son was sweet on this girl but she wasn't paying any attention to him. And so, when I got ready to get my paycheck he'd give me half a check. I said, "What is this?" He said, "Your work fell off." I said, "Well, I thought it was customary letting a person know if you're gonna cut their salary so that they could have an option 00:55:00of working or quitting." He said, "That ain't the way I do it. When your work pick up again, then your salary will pick up." She really was bold; she made a couple of plays that were not too kosher. She came to me and told me, she said, "I belong to what they call a Ford Club. Everybody in my club," she said, "seventy-five of us, we have Fords and once a year we go down to Mexico." And she said, "Each one of us, if it's a boy who got a car he takes his girlfriend. If it's a girl got a car, she takes her boyfriend." She said, "But I don't have no boyfriend, and I just want you to go as my chauffeur." I said, "That's not gonna look right. To haul south, we gotta go--you gonna get me hung!" [laughs]FUREY: [laughs] Whoa!
ROBINSON: So, I told my wife about it and my mother, and they said, "Oh," they
00:56:00said, "Don't go for that." So I told her, I said, "Well, I can't do that." She said, "Well, you know my mother and I were making some clothes--some dresses--and we bought some material. And I know you've got some girls." She said, "We changed our mind about using this material." She said, "Come over to my house and pick up the material when you get off of work. Instead of you catching the streetcar home, let me take you to my house to get the material and I'll take you home." I thought, "This don't sound right to me--she's gonna get me in trouble. She's not gonna get in trouble; I'm the one who'll get in trouble." So I said, "Well, why don't you just bring the material to work in the morning?" She said, "Okay." So the next morning she said, "I forgot it." I said, "Well, I'm afraid I've got something to do this afternoon. I can't go." And so I didn't go. Then, when the boss came to me with this half a check--and another 00:57:00thing, too, is when I'd go up on Washington Avenue and get those goodies for the people they'd give me five or ten or fifteen cents. When she'd come and found out that this was happening, she started giving me a dollar. And that was a whole lot more than anybody else was giving. And she said, "You buy what you want, and you take this dollar." I said, "You know, you're making a lot of attention on me. It's pressure on me. It's not pressure on you." She said, "It's my money, I can do what I want with it." I said, "That's true." And so, that's when the boss came to me with his half a check. I told him, I said, "Well, I'll tell you what: you keep the half a check, you won't be bothering me anymore." I said, "I can find another job."So it wasn't three days before I had a job at Dairyland Ice Cream Company. I
00:58:00would take the ice cream when it come out of the big vats into the five-gallon cans and when it filled up, I would put them into the freezer and put a top on it. So when the trucks come, it would be all ready for them to take it to delivery. Then this other girl came to work a couple of days after I did. My wife fixed me a nice lunch every day and when I sat down to eat, I noticed that she was sitting there looking at my food. I said, "Aren't you gonna have a lunch?" She said, "I don't have any lunch." I said, "Oh, God." [laughs] I said, "I'll tell you what I'm gonna do." I said, "I'm gonna give you half of my lunch today, but I'm not going to do this every day." I said, "Because I just came to this job from getting fired"--not fired but mistreated--"because I was friendly 00:59:00to a white girl on this other job." I said, "And I'm not gonna lose this job. I've got family to take care of. I can't look for jobs every week." And so, I gave her half of it--half of my lunch. Nobody noticed. She didn't bother me anymore and I didn't have any problem out of that one. But I mean, I had problems on several jobs.I worked for Mr. Dunne; he was a real rich oil well man. But he had a son who
was kind of loose upstairs. And so, when these movie stars and rich people would come to his home in River Oaks, he would act crazy and do any kind of stupid thing and it was embarrassing Mr. Dunne. So he bought a ranch out in a place called Anawak, which was about sixty-five or seventy miles from Houston. And the ranch had a cow and horses, turkeys and chickens, and everything on it, a 01:00:00garden. The island was seven miles around and his son Lindsey lived on this end and there was an old man who lived way on the other end. That's the only two people who lived on that island. So he told me, he said, "I want you to go out there to cook because he can't cook." He said, "That's all you've got to do is cook for him."FUREY: And be with the crazy guy! [laughs]
ROBINSON: And keep him away from the house so I could--
FUREY: While he was entertaining guests!
ROBINSON: Yeah! And the way you get there, you have to drive to Cove, park your
car, get on a motor boat, and drive seven miles to the island. My wife was pregnant with my first child and I had made arrangements with Mr. Dunne. I said, "My wife's gonna have my first son in June," I said, "and I'd like to have two weeks off at a time." He said, "Okay." And so, when it got--every month he would 01:01:00let me have a week off at home with my wife--well, not a week, maybe three days weekend, like that. So when it started getting close to June, I told him, I said, "You know, it's getting close to the time for my wife to have my baby. She's living with my mother." I said, "Now, I would like to get my two weeks off so I can be with her when the baby's born." So he said, "All right. When the time comes, you can--you tell me what day you want to go." So I told him the day the doctor said it would be. I said, "I'd like to go three days ahead of what he say, because he could be wrong. And then I'll be there for sure when the baby's born." So the date that I gave him, Lindsey came and took the boat and left and 01:02:00there was no way for me to get to land. And kept the boat for three days. I was still waiting. And I'm worried to death for my wife; she wasn't fifteen years old. I wasn't but eighteen. And I said--and I'm mad as I could be. I said, "He had no reason to do this. He knew what arrangement we'd made." I was out in the stable, raking up--FUREY: Do you mind if we just quickly change the tapes?
ROBINSON: Go ahead. I need a break, anyway.
ROBINSON: As I said, I was supposed to be able to come and be with my wife when
my baby was born. He took the boat and left for three days, and he knew that was the day that I was supposed to leave. I was in the stable, just scraping it up, cleaning it up, when he pulled up at the boat. I said, "Mr. Lindsey, why did you leave me like this and you know I'm supposed to be with my wife?" He said, "Just take off and walk on that water and go on over there." I said, "That's not possible." So he said, "Well, don't talk to me biggety like that." I said, "I'm 01:03:00not talking to you biggety. That was an agreement made," I said, "and you're not keeping your part of the agreement." "Oh, I'm not keeping my part of the agreement, huh?" I said, "No." He said, "Well, I'll keep my part of the agreement." He took off and run into his house, run through the front door. So I took off and went to mine and went through the back door. When he come out, he had his rifle, and I had mine. So I said, "What you want to do?" He put his rifle down and jumped in the boat and left me, "I'm gonna get my dad." So he went on back to Houston. When he came back the next day, his dad came with him. He had me all type of candy and cake and ice cream and funny books. So Mr. Dunne say, "See, never been a problem." I said, "So what?" I said, "What do you mean, 01:04:00what's up with that?" I said, "I want you to take me home." I said, "I quit." He said, "Well, you can't leave me like this." I said, "You can't leave me like this, either." He said, "I'll tell you what I'll do. You go home and stay a month, think it over, and then come by and let me know if you want to come back." I never saw him again. So that was the end of that. There's so many parts of my life.FUREY: Back to kind of the differences in what was acceptable, or the
relationship between white people and black people, how did the social 01:05:00relationship change?ROBINSON: Well Mr. Dunne and I, we got along real well. And Mr. Hansel, when he
had his trucks and things, I got along real well with him. Because I knew the limitations of myself and I stayed within the limitations. I tried to maintain my integrity at the same time. I knew, for instance, if I'm walking down the sidewalk, and this man and his wife was coming down the sidewalk, I've got to step off the sidewalk. Let them pass on by.FUREY: That wasn't the case when you came to California?
ROBINSON: No. Uh-huh. Then with those streetcars, they had a long car and it had
a little sign on it like this. On this side it said "White" and on the back side it said "Black." They could adjust it according to the amount of peoples on the car. If there was only about ten people on the car, they could put it right behind the last white person. So a black could sit anywhere in there, but if 01:06:00some more white people come back, they'd slide the card back. So the black ones sitting in front of it would have to get up and go back and stand up. I mean, I was raised under those circumstances, so I knew that I had to do that. There was many, many other things that we had to deal with.I told my mother--I saw something happen one time. I was visiting this girl, and
her father came in from work. He brought his boss with him. He couldn't read or write so he had to do a little brown-nosing to keep his job. When he came, when the boss came, he came in and slapped the man's wife on the butt. "Come sit on my lap." She sat on his lap. He said, "Get up and go get me a drink." She goes grab some beer and gave it to him. So I left, and I tell my mother, "Well," I 01:07:00said, "I heard that in California, black people are treated better than they are here. I'm not going to live if I stay here, because I'm not going to stand for no man to slap my wife on the butt. I don't care what color he is." I said, "And I saw that today. He treated her like she was an animal. I really want to go to California. I heard they treat people like humans out there." She said, "Well, son, don't get too upset." I said, "I can't help it. I'm not like that." I said, "I'm not going to mistreat nobody and nobody's going to mistreat me and get away with it." I said, "If I have to die, I'm gonna kill somebody first." So when the opportunity came for me to come out here, I took the first opportunity and came. 01:08:00Now, I've met prejudice out here. It's like that everywhere you go, but it's not
as deep-seated as it was there. I remember one day here when I was working here at a shipyard, and I decided to go to a movie up on Macdonald [Avenue]. I went up there, saw the movie. It was a real hot day. I was coming back and I saw a beer joint, and I decided that I'd stop in and have a cold pint of beer on the way home. I walked in the beer joint. I noticed there was nothing but whites in there, but I didn't think nothing of that. The owner was wiping the counter, and when I went in he went down to the other end and started wiping the counter. I went down there, and he come back up this end and started wiping the counter. I said, "Sir, it seems that we can't get together." I said, "All I want is beer and I have the money to pay for it." So he said, "Well, I'm going to be honest 01:09:00with you, Sir. I wouldn't mind serving you a beer, but all of my income comes from these white people," he said, "and they don't want me to serve you a beer. So I can't do that and injure my income." I said, "Well, I can understand that." So this guy said, "You want a beer?" I said, "You heard me say I wanted a beer." He said, "I'll buy you a beer." He said, "Bring him a beer." So he bought the beer, and he said, "Drink it." I looked at him and I didn't say nothin'. He said, "Drink the beer." So he said, "You'd better be glad you didn't drink it, because if you had drank it, I would have knocked it down your throat." I said, "This is a place of business, and I'm not going to cause any confusion in here." I said, "But if you gonna step outside, you can come outside and knock that beer 01:10:00down my throat if you want to." He wouldn't come outside. [laughs] And that was right on Sixteenth and Macdonald, right by the BART [Bay Area Rapid Transit] station. I begin to realize that I hadn't left it altogether, but it wasn't near as bad as it was down there.FUREY: In the Prefab, was there any racial tension or segregation?
ROBINSON: That's where I got fired. What happened was I was friends--there was
only two of us working on the ship. I was spraying red lead on the deck, and this welder was working on it. He didn't say anything to me and I didn't say anything to him. So there was no facilities on there for restroom, but on the dock they had restroom down there. So I left the ship and went down to the restroom, urinated, come back up. "Where'd you go?" I said, "Restroom." "Why'd you go way out there?" I said, "I assume that's what they built it for." "You 01:11:00don't have to go out there, you can go in--there's a gun mount here. That's where I go." Next time I got ready to go out, I went back out there again. I come back and he says, "You went back out to the restroom again?" I said, "Yeah." He said, "Why go way out there when you can urinate right in here." It was that deep with urine in that place. There was nobody on the ship but he and I, so I guess there must have been somebody, I'm assuming, before I came on. So, he said, "It don't make sense to go out there, so why don't you just go ahead and urinate in here?" I said, "It just don't seem right to me." He said, "How do you think all that got in there?" I said, "Well, I guess I will." So next time I had to go, I urinated in there, and he went down to my shop and got my foreman and brought him back up there. And he said, "He was up there urinating in this 01:12:00gun mount." I looked at him. I said, "What did you say?" He said, "I told him you just got through urinating in that gun mount." I teed off on him, and [inaudible]. That's why I didn't work at that first place for two weeks. Because he told me to do it, and when I did it, he went and got my foreman--all the way two blocks down to get him and bring him back and tell him that I urinated in it. I haven't left all that stuff yet. Well, I know better than to listen to what one will say next time. Nevertheless, I have never judged a man by his color. I judge him by how he treats me, and so I had plenty of white friends, 01:13:00Chinese friends, Mexican friends, it doesn't matter to me. We were good friends.FUREY: Can you talk about that a little bit, some of the friends you made
working in the shipyards and the Prefab?ROBINSON: Yes, when I was working in the Prefab, Kelly Wong--I was telling you,
the Chinese person who was over in San Francisco--he was working there too. He would always pull little jokes on me, and I'd pull jokes on him. He came to me--when I was spraying, if you take the hose and bend it like that, well then nothing but paint will come out. No air will break it out and make it into a fan. So he sneaked up behind me and bent my hose and made me mess up. I had to clean it all and do it over. I said, "Okay, I'll get you." I took my hose off my pot and bent it, and had all the power in it. And I went behind him to blow his 01:14:00hat off his head with the hose, with air, and he turned around and it blew his eye up like a balloon. He ran to the dispensary. They asked him what happened. He said, "I kicked the thing and the air came in." He wouldn't tell him I did it. If he did, they would have fired me right on the spot. He and I were very good friends. In fact, his father gave him a Buick and he said he didn't want the Buick. I had just got the call to be inducted into the service.FUREY: In 1944?
01:15:00ROBINSON: Yeah. He said, "Do you want the Buick?" I said, "Yeah, I don't have a
car, and they're not making cars now." He said, "Well, I tell you what. I'm going to give you that Buick." And they inducted me into the service before he could give it to me. And I never saw him again.FUREY: What kind of social activities would you do with him? You'd play dice.
ROBINSON: Mm-hmm.
FUREY: Shoot craps.
ROBINSON: Mm-hmm.
FUREY: Would you go see movies and things like that with him?
ROBINSON: I never did see him outside the shipyard. But we were good friends;
spent most of our lunch periods together, talking. Since I lived in Chinatown, we had some things to talk about, about Chinatown. He told me, he said, "Now listen, when you go down Grant Street and you see all that china on display, don't buy it." He said, "That's fake. The good stuff is in the back." Yeah, he always kept me informed on what was going on. He helped me, he said, "If you want to buy something, you come over here and I'll sell it to you." He and I were good friends until I went in service. I had another friend, I had a couple 01:16:00of white friends that were very good friends too. In fact, one, when I was at Hamilton Air Force Base, we used to go out together chasing girls. It didn't make no difference which color we ran into. We'd chase them, you know? When I was in the veterans hospital I ran into a guy, he had both his legs cut off. He was a wild one. He'd do wheelies all up and down the hall.FUREY: In his wheelchair?
01:17:00ROBINSON: Yeah. I don't know how he managed to take this man's truck with his
legs cut off, and ran it off into a ditch. He was living up in Santa Rosa. When we got out of hospital--we were in veterans hospital together about six weeks. That's when the veteran hospital was in Oakland, on Ellis Street. So he would come over to visit me sometimes, near Richmond. I'd go and visit him over in Santa Rosa. He took some man's car, truck, and ran it off in the ditch. He couldn't hit the brake because he had no leg. [laughs] I don't know why he did that, and I don't know how he got it. He must have had some sticks or something pushing the pedals. He and I were very good friends.I had some friends I used to shoot pool with. In fact, one of the best friends I
ever had, his name was Lee, and the way I met him--I was in Berkeley one night and I met this girl, and she and I--she at a friend of mine's house. She said, 01:18:00"Where you from?" I said, "Richmond." And I said, "Where you from?" She said, "I'm from Richmond." I said, "What's your father's name?" She said, "Bradford." "Do you live on Second and Chancellor?" She said, "Yeah." I said, "Your father's a very good friend of mine." So she said, "This man sitting over there is trying to take me to San Francisco and putting me on the streets. And I don't want to go." I said, "Well, you won't have to." I said, "When I get up and say I'm going to Richmond, you just get up and follow me and don't say anything. If he make any move at all, you won't have to worry about it. I'll take care of him." So, when I got up and left, she got up and left with me, and he didn't say a word. She was a go-go dancer. You remember, they used to have those girls up in a basket up in the clubs, dancing? She was one of those. So she took me to each one of the clubs where she went to dance, where she was dancing regularly. They would treat me royally. They would give me seats right down front, bring me big 01:19:00pitchers of beer, food, and everything. Five nights we were together, and one day she came back to Richmond and we went to {Larkspur?} and her brother said, "Sis, where you been?" She said, "None of your business." He said, "Well, Lee's been looking for you everywhere." See, Lee was born rich, and he was in organized crime.FUREY: This is her father?
ROBINSON: No, no. This was a white guy.
FUREY: Oh. Okay
ROBINSON: He had never touched a woman until he was twenty-eight years old and
she was the first one he touched, and it just blew his mind. He would buy her clothes, buy her a car, buy her a little coupe just so she could get around. He was born right up here in Albany, and he was born rich. Only reason he went to school was to learn how to manage his money, how to make more money, and 01:20:00self-defense. That's all he was interested in. If he'd hear of a contest in Los Angeles, karate, he'd take a plane and go down there. So anyway, what occurred was, she and I ran together for five nights. And when her brother told her, "Lee's been looking for you everywhere," she hadn't told me anything about it. Lee and I had a brand new {doeskin?} Ford just come out of the showcase window, and she was driving a hoopty. She asked me to drive her car, so I parked my car at the motel where I was staying. When we came back from where her brother had told her that Lee had been looking for her, I said, "What is he talking about?" She said, "This man takes care of me. And he's in the underworld," she said. "He takes care of me and my baby and my mother. Gives us everything we want." I 01:21:00said, "Well look. I stopped you from going to San Francisco and be put into a situation that you didn't want to be put in, and now you have me driving this man's car when I got a brand new one sitting right up there at the motel where I'm living." I said, "I don't think it's fair for you to put me in this kind of position." She said, "Hey, he's pulling up beside us right now." At Sixth and Macdonald. It's a bad spot. Nothing but white people there. [inaudible] So he pulled up to us. He said, "Where you headed?" I said, "Ninth and Main." There's nothing but black people there. That helps me then, because I got a pistol and he got one. But I said, if I'm lucky enough to kill him, at least I got all black witnesses. I got a better chance to get away. 01:22:00So I told her, "Now listen, when we get out here to talk to him, don't say
anything flippant to him, don't argue with him. Let me talk with him. Answer his questions civil." I said, "Whatever your problem is, you solve them when I'm not around. I didn't bring your problems on and I'm not here to solve them." So I said, "Don't get between me and him on any circumstances. Stay beside me." I said, "I've got medals for shooting and I'm positive he can shoot clear too. But it shouldn't have to come to that. I think I can talk to him if you'll keep quiet." So when we got there, he said, "Jazzie, I haven't seen you in five days." She said, "What?" He said, "I haven't seen you in five days." She said, 01:23:00"Well, my mother is a missionary. She feeds him, she dresses him, takes him to school, takes him to church. I couldn't do any more, if I was there." He said, "Well, take my car and drive it either to my club, or up in Albany to my mother's house." She started switching in front of me, and switching toward him. "I'm not taking nothing nowhere." He was an eight degree black belt, and he off and grabbed her and twisted her around. There was nothing but his head over her shoulder. So, I mean, he got me at a great disadvantage. He got me my whole body as a target and all I got is his head. I said, "Mister, I'd like to talk with you." I said, "I haven't done anything to you, and you haven't done anything to me. I don't know even know you. She didn't tell me anything about you." I said, "And I wouldn't want her for my woman anytime if she'd put me in this kind of danger after I had gotten her out of the danger she was in." I said, "She no good." I said, "So you can take her. I'm not interested in her. I've got plenty 01:24:00of women." I said, "And I'll tell you another thing: if you want your car driven somewhere, I will drive it wherever you want it, and you and I can talk while you're bringing me back here to my car." He said, "Okay."So I drove his car to his club. When I got in his car, I told him, I said, "The
first thing I want you to remember is slavery time is over. You white people don't own us no more." I said, "And I haven't done anything to you. You haven't done anything to me. I don't see why we should have any beef with each other. You've got a beef with that crazy woman of yours." I said, "I don't want her. I got five or six, ten times better than her." I said, "So I don't see why we should have a beef. But if you insist that we do, well, just explain to me on what basis." He said, "I agree with what you say. We don't have a beef." He said, "Well, take me back there where she is." I said, "Okay." I took him back 01:25:00there to the service station. He went into a women's restroom, went into a men's restroom. She had gone upstairs in my hotel room. He said, "I don't know where she went." I said, "Well, I was with you. How could I know?" He said, "Well, when you see her, bring her up to my club tonight. I want to talk to her." I said, "I certainly will. That's between you and her, I have absolutely nothing to do with it." So I took her up there that night. So they have a little argument, but I left. And I told her, I said, "Look, I don't ever want to see you again." She didn't even know where I lived. I don't know how she found out. I lived with my mother. When I was on the streets--cause I had gotten pretty far out there in wrongdoing. I was raised by my mother. She was a missionary, but I 01:26:00wanted to explore to see what was on the other side of the street. I take it I could have some fun and come on back. I figured I could go out there and have a little fun and come on back, but I got farther than I intended to, and got involved in things I didn't intend to--dangerous things.I was sitting having breakfast with my mother the next day. I had a lady paid to
care of my mother's cooking and washing and ironing and cleaning and everything. My mother didn't have to do anything. A horn blew. My mother said, "Who is that?" My family don't blow; they come on into my house. The horn blew again. So she went to the window and looked out. She said, "A woman's sitting in a car, looking over here." I went and looked and there was that same little nut sitting 01:27:00up in the car. I said, "Don't blow in front of my mother's house. I told you I didn't want to see you again." She said, "I just want to talk with you." I said, "There isn't much to talk about." She told me that she and him had broke up. I said, "That doesn't make any difference to me." All of this doesn't lead to a lot of unnecessary talk, but nevertheless he came to me and he told me, he said, "I've got a club I want you to manage." I said, "You want me to manage it?" He said, "Yeah." I said, "Why?" He said, "You got courage. And you got intelligence enough where you can manage it." I said, "Why do you want me to manage it?" He said, "Because the fella I got managing it killed a highway patrolman, and he 01:28:00went to prison and did his time because it was in self-defense." He said, "But the Richmond police have heard that he killed a policeman, and when police hear that a man killed a police, they gonna try to kill him one way or another sooner or later." He said, "So I'm going to set him up to do {________?}, but I want you to manage this club in Richmond." I said, "Well, I'll tell you what I'll do. It'll take it on a 30-day basis. If after thirty days I'm not satisfied, we can quit. After thirty days, if you're not satisfied, we can quit." And so, I went and ran it for a while.FUREY: What year was this?
ROBINSON: This was 1973.
FUREY: How about we just back up. We can come around, back to--
01:29:00ROBINSON: I don't necessarily have to tell all of that, but he got to be my best
friend. That's the reason I was mentioning him. Yeah, he got to be my very best friend. But that's just about all I want to talk about there.FUREY: In the Prefab--I imagine Prefab is where you worked around most of the women.
ROBINSON: Yes.
FUREY: So, do you have any stories about--how did you view the women being treated?
ROBINSON: Actually, I was so interested in my work that I really didn't have
much contact with the women. Except one particular one, who found out that I was from Houston, Texas, and she was from Houston, Texas. She invited me to her house. But I don't--I didn't have too much contact other than just speaking to them and treating them with courtesy. See, I was already learning this painting 01:30:00trade, spray painting, over in a car-painting place after the war was over. So I spent all my efforts to learn everything I could about painting surfaces. Making them come out perfect. And that's what my mind was geared to. My wife was only five or six blocks away, so I really wasn't too interested in women.FUREY: Where there any social events?
ROBINSON: Well, there was, because there were two women there who came to work
every day with their fingernails all polished. You could tell they were not working. They'd be dressed in sport clothes, and they'd be sitting up on a top of a hatch of the cargo hold. Then, after a while they'd disappear. They'd go on down in the hold. After a while, they're back up there again. I found out that 01:31:00the supervisor they were working for was pimping them. They were prostitutes. From Vallejo. So there was quite a bit of that going on. But I didn't have much to do with that.FUREY: That was an exception, though, the prostitutes?
ROBINSON: Oh yeah, that was an exception. Because these two were the only ones
that I knew personally. One woman was down there doing it on her own, and somebody told this guy and he went down to try it out, and found out it was his wife. [laughs] But it wasn't a common thing. Those were the only three I knew on the whole ship, the shipyard that I worked in, that was doing that. Most of the women were either welding, sweeping, or doing menial jobs like cleaning up 01:32:00behind somebody or masking. Doing things like that. But I didn't have much contact with them because, as I said, I was really interested in my work because I planned on making it my life's work. I was doing it the best I could, and learning all I could about it.FUREY: Well, then, let's go into that. What was your daily routine as a painter?
ROBINSON: First thing I would do after I got all dressed in my equipment, I
would find out what my assignment was. I would go and find out if it was all clear, nobody else was working in the area. Then I'd just go ahead and do the paint job and do it the best I could. And as soon as I could. I'd clean up my equipment if we had to change different colors of paint, and go to another area. 01:33:00Sometime we'd paint--then, when I worked in the shipyard, it was much different. After I left Prefab. Because I worked in all areas of the ship. I worked on masts, I worked on the chain lockers, I did the chains. I did the captain's area where he worked from. I did the cargo holds, the bulkheads on the outside, the shell of the ship. We got on sort of like little buoys with ladders, three decks of ladders on it. So we'd go round the ship and paint the ship from this instrument. Every part of the ship that had to be painted, I worked on at some time. Even in the electronic department, we had to do what they called {________?}. We'd paint this electronic equipment and then put it in an oven to 01:34:00a certain degree and it would wrinkle. When you bring it out it would be all wrinkled. So, I did all phases of it--priming, finished work, and everything. Because I wanted to learn everything about it I could learn. When the war was over, I worked in the Mare Island shipyard in the submarines. I worked there four years.FUREY: In your final job, I guess you were in Yard Two? Was your last--no,
Bethlehem. The union sent you to Bethlehem.ROBINSON: Mm-hmm. I worked in a lot of shipyards. I worked at Mare Island [Navy
Yard]. Because when I started working for this black contractor, in the rainy 01:35:00season he didn't have enough outdoor work to keep us all busy. So I went to Hunters Point on a ninety-day appointment. I figured by that time, the rain would be over and I could go back to work with the contractor. But they liked my work so much, after the ninety days, they give me a six-month extension, then they give me a one-year extension. After two years they're supposed to keep you permanent. They kept me until two weeks before the two years was up, and then they let me go. But what I did, is I went to [Port of Embarkation at] Fort Mason without any break in service, and gave a continuity to my two years. So I got made permanent at Fort Mason and Oakland Army Base. Naval Supply [Oakland Fleet and Industrial Supply Center]. 01:36:00FUREY: What years?
ROBINSON: I started at Hunters Point [Naval Shipyard]. Let's see, I came out of
service in '45. I started at Hunters Point in '51 and I worked there just about two years. I was going to be discharged before my two years was up, so they didn't have to make me permanent, but I transferred to Fort Mason and kept my status, so I would get permanent. And I worked there seven years, but I was working for Military Sea Transport[ation] Service. We would paint the ships wherever they would lie, wherever they would land, while the longshoremen were loading. Sometimes it would be Oakland Army Base, and sometimes Naval Supply, sometimes it would be in Alameda [Naval Air Station]. Wherever they would land, 01:37:00wherever they would dock is where we would paint them. They had cargo ships, passenger ships, tankers. And the Hope was a hospital ship at that time. It wasn't a hospital ship; it's a hospital ship now. At that time it was a pineapple ship, it just ran from San Francisco to Hawaii, but eventually they made it a hospital ship. But I worked on practically every navy ship that came to Hunters Point. In the period I was working there, I worked on aircraft carriers, on battleships, on destroyers, on cruisers.FUREY: Can you talk a little bit about right before you were taken, how that happened?
ROBINSON: I was working at the Kaiser Shipyard at that time, and they sent me a
01:38:00notice to come to Berkeley to [Draft] Board 80. I didn't want to go, so I pulled a little trick to make me fail the examination.FUREY: The physical?
ROBINSON: Mm-hmm. What I did, I made it look like I was in very bad shape. And
so, they waited about a year and they sent me again. And I did the same thing. I said, "I can't be in this good a shape if I was in that bad a shape before!" So the third time they sent for me, they didn't even examine me. They gave me a ticket, told me to get on a bus and go to Camp Beale, up about five miles from Marysville, about fifty miles north of Sacramento. Didn't send nobody with me or 01:39:00nothing. Just told me to go. So I went up there and they wouldn't let me eat nothing but what they fed me for two weeks. After the two weeks, they examined me and I was in perfect shape, so they inducted me.FUREY: You had no choice; you were forced to eat?
ROBINSON: Yeah. I stayed there for a while until they sent for me for basic
training in Wichita Falls, Texas. When I had finished my basic training there, then they sent me to Boise, Idaho for assignment. While I was there, a notice came over the public address system stating that all men with four children or more could get out on request. And so when I went to the auditor room, my friend Nathan Jones said, "No need for you to say nothing. I'm already typing your request." [laughs] So they sent me down to Riverside and discharged me from there. 01:40:00FUREY: How long had you been in the service until then?
ROBINSON: I hadn't been in there long. I was only in there four months and three
days. I was in there enough to pay us the ninety-day status that makes you eligible for benefits. And so that was an advantage I have had. Veterans--I had teeth done while I was in there. My wife's baby was born. I bought two homes on the GI Bill of Rights.FUREY: Wow, so you received GI Bill of Rights?
ROBINSON: Mm-hmm. If you stay in over ninety days. I stayed in four months and
three days. 01:41:00FUREY: Wow, that was lucky. How about we kind of bring it to an end. Would you
be willing to do another interview session?ROBINSON: Of course.
FUREY: Maybe some time next week. I can look over everything we've done and take
it at another angle.ROBINSON: All righty. Any time.
[end of session]