Roscoe Robinson | Interview 2 | January 24, 2003

FUREY: What I'd like to start out with is just a clarification a little bit about your time here or when you came to Richmond and worked in the shipyards, so I can just have right for the record. You came in July of '43, right? July '43, and the first place you worked was Shipyard One, right?

ROBINSON: That's right.

FUREY: And Shipyard One was the one you worked for two weeks in.

ROBINSON: That's right.

FUREY: You got in a fight with that guy, where he told you to urinate in the gun hole. So then you went back to the union?

ROBINSON: Yeah, and they sent me to the Prefab.

FUREY: And they sent you to Prefab in August or July?

ROBINSON: It must've been -- I got here on the 16th, so two weeks, must've been in August.

FUREY: Must've been in August you were -- in August, and you were in Prefab for 00:01:00how many months?

ROBINSON: I was in Prefab for over a year.

FUREY: Until the next summer of '44?

ROBINSON: Hm-mmm.

FUREY: Then in Prefab, that's when you got into it with the foreman, and so in the summer of '44 --

ROBINSON: Yeah. Then they sent me to Yard Two.

FUREY: Okay, so you went Yard One, Prefab, Yard Two. And then in Yard Two, what happened there?

ROBINSON: Let me think. Well, actually, I got into trouble, all right, but I was inducted into service. No, no, no. That's right. I got inducted into service from Bethlehem Steel, San Francisco. I had been working there for about a month or two. That's where this guy sent me from Prefab.

FUREY: And his father was --

ROBINSON: His father-in-law was over there at Yard Two. And he told him he was sending somebody over there who was tough, who'd back him up, you know. I didn't know nothing about this. I didn't even know they were related. So when I got over there, he sent me into a place to try to force the men out of the place, by spraying. They were welders and electricians.

FUREY: So he fired you. How long were you at Yard Two for before his father-in-law fired you?

ROBINSON: Well, let's see. I can't remember exactly how long it was.

FUREY: That's okay, you don't have to worry too much about it.

ROBINSON: But it was a few months, and he fired me. Then I was inducted into the 00:03:00army on August 8, 1945.

FUREY: So you go to the father-in-law's shipyard, Shipyard Number Two, and you go there for two months, then he fires you. What grounds does he fire you? He just fires you because he wants to?

ROBINSON: Well, I think it was because I wouldn't run these guys out of the room. See, in other words, they were already in there working, a painter and an electrician. Well, I'm supposed to wait until they get their work done before I 00:04:00paint, but he sent me in and told me just go in there and put my equipment on and just start painting and be through in ten minutes. And so when I got in there, I didn't know what the situation was with the gentlemen, but they could see that I didn't know. So they said, "He told us that he's going to bring us a bad dude to run us out of here." I said, "Well, I'm not here for that. I have a wife and children; I'm here to support my family." I said, "I know that normally painters and electricians do their work before painters do." So I said, "What do you fellas want to do about this?" So they said, "We are going to talk to the ship master." They were going to call him, and he came down and checked. And he said, "You know that you cannot paint before they do this, because if they weld 00:05:00after, there'll be a mess if you're welding. And they can't come in here and work on electrical work with paint all over the wall." I said, "I realize that, but," I said, "these are the instructions that my supervisor gave me." He said, "Well, tell your supervisor to see me." So when I told him, he got angry with me then. So he fired me.

FUREY: On what grounds, because obviously the boatmaster --

ROBINSON: I don't know.

FUREY: So it was a completely dirty -- .

ROBINSON: It was. But, you see, the reason that I let it go like that, because I knew that eventually this could be serious. See, if he tried at that time -- his son-in-law had already tried to hurt me by letting me fall through the hold. And now he's trying to make me fight these guys, so this thing is pyramiding and eventually somebody gonna get seriously hurt. So I just decided I'd go ahead on 00:06:00and accept the invitation into the army.

FUREY: You went to Bethlehem.

ROBINSON: Well, I transferred -- I quit this, that's right, and went to Bethlehem Steel. I was only there for about six to eight weeks before they inducted me into the army from Bethlehem -- about two months at the most. I was spraying under the hulls in the dry docks on the ships there. Then they inducted me into service, and that was on the 8th of August in '45. Actually, when they inducted me, they sent me to Camp Beale, that was about five miles out Marysville, about fifty miles north of Sacramento. They kept me there for a 00:07:00while doing menial jobs, getting ready to send me for basic training in Wichita Falls, Texas. When I went to Wichita Falls, I took basic training. And when I finished the basic training, they sent me to -- they gave me a fifteen-day delay en route, so I could stop and visit with my family en route to Boise, Idaho, from Wichita Falls.

When I got to Wichita Falls, it was December, and it snowed so hard there until you couldn't go across the street without snowshoes. Normally, soldiers would be cleaning up the area, but you couldn't clean up the area with snow waist-deep. So there weren't enough work really for us to do to keep us busy. The mess hall 00:08:00can only hold so many, so I asked them, I said, "Something I can do?" Because I like to play poker, but, I mean, I played poker so much, I got sick of playing poker. [laughter] So they said, "What kind of skills do you have?" I said, "I can type." They said, "Well, we'll talk to the colonel and see if we can get you a job typing for him." So they made an appointment for me to go to his office the next morning. When I was sitting outside his door waiting for him to call me, a public announcement came over the loudspeaker saying, "Any man with four children or more can get out on request." My friend Nathan Jones worked in the orderly room and so when I went to the orderly room, he's already typing out my 00:09:00request. He said, "I knew you were coming." [laughter] So they sent me to Camp Roberts -- that's down in Southern California, right out of Riverside, for separation. That's where I stayed until they finally got my discharge papers and all.

FUREY: Then you'd been in the service enough time to get the GI benefits and to get veteran's benefits?

ROBINSON: That's right, because you only had to be in ninety days, and I was in four months and three days. But you know, actually, it was the falling of the bomb -- the date that they fell -- if it had fallen a week or two later, they would not have inducted me. But after I was already inducted when it fell -- only about a week or so -- well then, they couldn't just kick me out then. I had 00:10:00to go ahead on and finish my basic training.

FUREY: Yeah. I'd like to back up to learn a little bit about the painters' union and how your relationship with that union was. In any of these episodes that you had -- because you had several episodes where you had conflicts with management. One was, you said before, when there were the yellow card and the white card. And then later, you had the problem with the supervisor and his father-in-law. Could you go to your union to represent you in any way? Did you ever do that?

ROBINSON: Well, actually, it wasn't necessary, because they needed men so badly and so you could get a job any time you wanted to. You'd get fired today, you'd get hired tomorrow. [phone rings] Excuse me a minute.

So in those days, you didn't even have to know a trade, they needed people so badly. Because what occurred was, when Hawaii was attacked by the Japanese, we were so unprepared. If they had continued, we probably would have lost. But [Henry] Kaiser was quite a lifesaver because he had a system where he could produce a ship in fifteen days. We had ways, we had one, two, three, four shipyards and the prefab, and that was just in Richmond. We were producing ships that were seaworthy in fifteen days, and that is quite a record. So we were able 00:12:00to build up our arsenals to go ahead on and fight this war.

Here's another thing: most of the people who came here from the South and West, and all over the country, many of them came from farms and country, and they didn't know anything but plowing and stuff like that. So when they came out here, why, they was living so much better than they had lived back home, but the authorities here figured that when the war is over, they was going to go back home. But when you leave a place where you're making fifty cents a hour and 00:13:00working like a horse and come out here and doing nothing, and making three or four times that much, you're not thinking about going back to that. That disappointed them in a way, because in the North Richmond area, they didn't even have sidewalks or streets out there at the time.

FUREY: Yeah. It was a shantytown essentially.

ROBINSON: It was. Hm-mmm.

FUREY: Could you talk a little bit about that? Did you ever go out there?

ROBINSON: Oh, yes.

FUREY: What was it like?

ROBINSON: It was not even incorporated. If you are on the south side of Chesley [Avenue], the Richmond police had authority there, but if you crossed the street, you were in an unincorporated area. So the guys would get onto this side of the street and shoot dice, and talk weird to the police and everything, because they couldn't do anything to them. They had one sheriff working on that entire area.

FUREY: That was just county land?

ROBINSON: It was just county land. Uh-huh. But what had occurred is, they had 00:14:00planned on -- after war was over, they were going to develop that and make it a real nice place to live. But instead of those people leaving and going back home, they started buying property out there. In order to try to entice them away from that, they developed what they called -- there's another housing development a little further out, I can't think of the name of it right now. But what they did is build all new houses out there, and they went to all of the black churches and got all of the pastors to try to entice their people to move out of North Richmond out there, because they told them they're going to have it just like Playland in Frisco. They're gonna have, just like, you know, in paradise.

They named the streets after all of the black pastors, and everything. So they were trying to entice them out there, but some of these people had already bought property and they weren't going to move out there on a promise, see? And then, too, they had a lot of houses that they would show you when you come out there, with people already in it and already furnished, and most of them had white people in them. And some had black in them. But once the thing was all over, there was nothing but black out there. They had no bus line out there, and it's three or four miles from town. No school out there, nothing. They just got them out there.

FUREY: A lot of people had to walk really far, didn't they?

ROBINSON: Oh, really, really. They walked and hitchhiked, and it was really a 00:16:00catastrophe there for a while. But then it eventually worked out to their advantage, because they bought the houses for a little or nothing.

FUREY: Yeah, from the county.

ROBINSON: Yes. And eventually, after a few years, then they began to increase in value and so they benefited in that way. And eventually they started having buses out there. They built a church out there, and it worked out to their advantage.

FUREY: Just on North Richmond, one more question. So there was no plumbing? Was there electricity or plumbing or anything?

ROBINSON: No. There was no plumbing. They had outdoor toilets.

FUREY: Did it smell?

ROBINSON: Hm-mmm. Hm-mmm. Yeah, it was terrible. In fact, if you go out there in 00:17:00the rainy weather, you might get stuck, might not able to get your car back.

FUREY: Because it would just get stuck in the mud?

ROBINSON: Get stuck in the mud. No sidewalks. They had one little area there where they had trailer courts. That little area was a little better than the other houses because they had to have a good foundation to be on those trailer courts. But I mean, you can put only so many people in trailer courts. Eventually, they offered people who owned houses in North Richmond good prices for their houses just to get them to move out. But they kind of combined their forces together and started a sort of coalition -- council, they like to call it 00:18:00-- and had presidents and officials. Then they would get information from the other people in city hall as to what the planning commission was trying to do. And they had ways of doing this because they have some blacks working in the city hall, and it helped to keep them informed. So they built a big park out there -- Mr. Reid's daughters and by himself. He lived right across the street from this vacant lot, so he started working with the children, trying them to keep them out of trouble and teach them games. He got the city to donate so much to help him, and it's a lovely place out there. Now they've got a baseball team 00:19:00and a ball diamond, and it has a volleyball court, and game rooms. So it's really nice. Now, it's incorporated with Richmond, so the police have authority out there too, now. In fact, a fire truck wouldn't even come up there at first. If you had a fire, you just lost your house.

FUREY: Burned down to the ground?

ROBINSON: Hm-mmm. I was fortunate that I lived real close to the shipyard, and streets were already installed there before we moved over there. They had to have it to get equipment to the shipyard, and stuff like that. So I was very fortunate, and I bought a house on South Twenty-third Street after three years 00:20:00of working and saving up my money. A three bedroom MacGregor home. My wife having been so young when we married, and her people were not as educated as my people were -- her father couldn't read and write, and her mother didn't even go halfway through school. They didn't have the ambition to try to go over here like my people did. I couldn't get her to help me to do some of things that I saw that I could've done. When I was in insurance business, I ran into a lady 00:21:00who owned a grocery store and she told me, she said, "You know, I have had a lot of people try to sell me insurance." But I'd taken five salesmanship courses and I'd gone to Oakland City College, too, to do a life underwriters training course. She said, "I've never had anyone sell me insurance before," she said, "I can't figure out how you sold it to me." [laughter]

FUREY: So you had a knack for that.

ROBINSON: Yeah. So she said, "I'm in real estate." She had a grocery store and a real estate office. She said, "If you can sell me something with nothing but words," she said, "if you had a house to show somebody, you'd be a whiz." She says, "I want you to come and do business with me." She said, "And an auditor will show you that it's not just a come-on." She said, "I'll sell you my most prime piece of property because I can see where you'd be an advantage to me." She took me and showed me. She had two triplexes facing each other. The front 00:22:00one was a two bedroom, and the next two was each one bedroom, and the same thing over here. So she said, "I don't have any children there, under sixteen." She said, "Everybody there pays their rent on time, and it's brand new," she said, "and it's my most care-free piece of property. To encourage you to come in with me," she said, "I'll sell you that piece of property for seventy-five thousand dollars, five thousand dollars down." So she said, "Can you raise five thousand dollars?" I said, "Sure," I said, "I can get that as equity on my property."

So I went and talked to my wife about it. She said, "We don't know anything about real estate. I like the place we have here." I said, "Yes, but we didn't have this, we didn't know about real estate when we bought this." I said, "This 00:23:00is a three bedroom house." I said, "One of the places over there, the two front ones are three bedrooms and two back ones two bedroom." I said, "Three bedroom over there is the same as three bedroom here." I said, "We can move over there so we can watch our property, and rent this out."

FUREY: Have good income off it.

ROBINSON: Yeah, right. So she said, "Well, we don't know nothing about that kind of business." Well, she didn't because she was in eighth grade when we got married.

FUREY: Obviously among the African American population in Richmond, your family -- I mean, your mother was an entrepreneur, not an entrepreneur but she was a manager and a very powerful woman back in Houston, and your father had a good job. Would you say that your family was probably more educated than most of the 00:24:00African Americans that were living in Richmond at the time?

ROBINSON: Yes.

FUREY: What was the education of most of the black folks that you had contact with?

ROBINSON: Well, most of them came from farms, you know. Most of them raised some pigs, and plowing, and stuff like that. Of course, they were living good, because they didn't have to buy a lot of stuff -- most of the stuff they had, they produced it themselves. That was all right for there, but it was no good for here. So, when the thing went down when the war was over, they didn't have any ambition to go back there and start all over again, especially on such a low level after they had came out here and lived in better surroundings.

But one thing about my mother, she had told me, she said -- my father was half 00:25:00Indian and half African and his father and mother were both slaves. And so my mother told me, she said, "Nobody in my family has ever graduated from high school." She said, "I only went to the fifth grade." She said, "But I'm determined that somebody is going to graduate from high school. Since you're the oldest boy, I'm going to teach you all I know up to the fifth grade and by that time, you should be able to catch on for yourself." So she started teaching me to read and count when I was three years old. When I was four, I started school because I could read and count. She had to pay the school board, because, you see it was a particular situation. School starts in September, my birthday is New Year's Eve, so that means that I wasn't five years old in September, so I couldn't go. She had to pay them to let me go. [laugher]

FUREY: A little bribe?

ROBINSON: Right. [laughter] So that means that I started school when I was four and I graduated when I was sixteen. By that time, she had gotten the playgrounds established. Because she had playgrounds around Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Wards. And junior high schools were allowing her the privilege of using those institutions from the time school was out until nine o'clock at night. She's getting volunteers from the college to come and help her. I was helping her too. I stayed there with her all the time, helped with the things that she didn't understand, because by that time I was in high school and I would make out her 00:27:00reports for her. And I could estimate, you know. Take, for instance, they had a question: how many people played ping pong today? How many people played basketball? How many played this game? It's got to balance out to how many people were there. Well, she couldn't do that, but I could. So I'd make out her reports for her every night. But she had a lot of gumption, you know, and she knew how to talk to people. She knew the right people to talk to so she'd get the jobs, and I'd help her with them.

FUREY: She must've been proud of you.

ROBINSON: Well, she was.

FUREY: How did she do? Because she came out to Richmond a little after you did --

ROBINSON: She came herself. She came before me.

FUREY: Oh, she came before. Can you talk a little bit about your mother's experience in Richmond, coming to Richmond and how she felt during that period, 00:28:00World War II?

ROBINSON: Well, what occurred is my two brothers had been in CC Camp. When they got eighteen, well, you know they automatically boot you out. Well, they were very adventuresome. They'd heard about California; they caught a freight train and came out here. They didn't know anything about it, but they knew they could make it anywhere they went because they didn't -- there were no limits to what they'd do to make it. So anyway, they came out here and they managed to get that apartment under the telephone building and fix it up. So then, they contacted my mother and father and told them to come out here. And they came out here and they all lived in the same place.

But I was still working for the railroad company. I had a wife and three kids and I couldn't see myself venturing to a state I don't know anything about, 00:29:00nobody there, until I got something or somebody ahead of me to establish something I could get my teeth in. So I stayed a year until they were pretty well established, and then when I found out that they were pretty well established, and people were coming all the time -- Kaiser was putting people on a train and bringing them out here free. And you didn't have to know any trade. You could come out here and say, "I'm a welder." They'd teach you how to weld. Say "I'm an electrician;" they'd teach you how. Anything you say you could do, whether you could or not, it didn't make any difference. They'd put you in the union and train you how to do it. Some of them weren't too good, because some of the welding, they'd have chewing gum in it [laughs] because it would break down, 00:30:00and all that stuff.

But nevertheless, that worked out to my advantage, because my father had taught me how to paint when I was younger. When I came out here, I was learning more and more and more. I enjoyed it. You know, when you got a job you enjoy, well, you can be much better at it than you got one where you hate to get up in the morning. So I did very well on the job. My brothers went into the merchant marine, and my father, too. They got me far enough to get my picture for my passport. But I never did get the passport. I told them, I said, "I'm twenty-five years old, and my wife is twenty-two," and I said, "I cannot see 00:31:00myself at sea six months at the time and my twenty-two-year-old wife running around." So I wouldn't go. I never did go. I'm the only male in my family who was not a merchant seaman.

FUREY: So they were all at sea during the war? And they were in the Pacific?

ROBINSON: Hm-mmm. All over.

FUREY: Because the merchant marine is pretty dangerous. It had the highest death rate of all sectors.

ROBINSON: It was. Hm-mmm. Because they couldn't defend themselves. They didn't have anything to fight with. My father went around the world seven times. My brothers went around once or twice. They were very adventuresome. One of my brothers, he had piles when the ship reached India. The ship was not going to 00:32:00sit there and wait for him to get an operation, and they couldn't operate on him on the ship, so they put him in a hospital in India, where he didn't know a single soul in the whole country. [laughter] When he finally recuperated and they put him out, he didn't have no home, no job, no income, or nothing. We got in touch with the Matson Line and asked them where my brother was. I said, "We haven't heard from him in six months now. Not even a letter." He couldn't write; he didn't have no money to get no pens or nothing. He couldn't speak the language. He was really in a destitute condition. He said a maharajah came -- I may not be pronouncing that word right.

FUREY: Maharajah. Yeah.

ROBINSON: He weighed about six hundred pounds, and the country had to give him his weight in jewels every year.

FUREY: He's an Indian king, right? An Indian prince.

ROBINSON: Right. Hm-mmm. Now, he's living in extreme luxury. Six blocks from him, there's garbage trucks coming along picking up the dead bodies off the street every morning where people are starving to death. He said that when he got out of the hospital, people would come to him and ask him, "Alms, alms." He didn't know what to do, because he had a little money, but he didn't have much. Because, you know, he had no income, and the only money he had was what he had when he got off the ship. He said it was dangerous to gave the kids money and dangerous to not give them money, because those big guys would stand back there and send the little kids out there and tell them to ask you for money.

FUREY: Yeah, I've been to India.

ROBINSON: If you give them some money, they figure, "Why, you got plenty more; 00:34:00we'll take it all." And if you don't give no money, "you're mean, so we're going to kick you anyway." [laughs] So anyway, he said he saw sometime when they pick up the bodies in the morning on the trucks, they'd take them and burn them.

FUREY: Cremate them, yeah.

ROBINSON: He said, sometimes the women would jump in right behind their husbands. They started taking them up on the mountain and letting the buzzards and things do away with them. It was over six months when he walked in the door one day. We had given him up for dead. We were so glad to see him, and that was my baby brother, too. I think that was very unfair for Matson Line not to let us to know that they had let him off in India.

FUREY: Yeah. That's the shipping line he was with?

ROBINSON: Yeah.

FUREY: That's quite a story though -- the guy from the South, in the middle of India.

ROBINSON: Yeah, and don't know not a human being in the whole country.

FUREY: But you're saying that he met the maharajah, the prince?

ROBINSON: Yeah, he saw him, but he didn't know him personally. But he happened to be around where -- he ran across some people who were friendly to him.

FUREY: India, at that point, it was falling apart. It was right before the British left.

ROBINSON: Right.

FUREY: So, you know, you had the transition after, where people went to Pakistan and India. Muslims went to one country and, you know, a couple of million people were killed. So at that time it was a pretty unstable place to be.

ROBINSON: It was very unstable. It had no value for lives at all.

FUREY: Yeah. What I'd like to ask you a little bit -- your mother's experience. 00:36:00Your father goes away on the --

ROBINSON: On the ship. But you see --

FUREY: And what does your mother do when -- ?

ROBINSON: You see, my father, he was sending the money back to help us, because he didn't pay no rent and he didn't have to buy any groceries or nothing. Besides, with me staying there with her, well, I was the man of the house at that time. I was working and the boys were sending money back too, so she didn't have a problem about money.

FUREY: She was well taken care of.

ROBINSON: Hm-mmm. Yeah.

FUREY: So she just took care of the house?

ROBINSON: That's right. She just cooked and cleaned and take care of us, but we took care of all the money part.

FUREY: Did you have sisters as well?

ROBINSON: No, my only sister died at child birth. It was just three brothers. Well, actually, I say four brothers, because I had a foster brother. In fact, he just died last year.

FUREY: He was in Richmond with you at that time working?

ROBINSON: Yes.

FUREY: He was working in the shipyard?

ROBINSON: No, he was a merchant seaman. All the males in my family were merchant seaman.

FUREY: Oh, okay.

ROBINSON: I'm the only one that was not a merchant seaman. But he had worked in the shipyard before I got here. He was the reason that I got the spray job, because he had been a spray painter. When they saw me with his clothes on, they thought I was a spray painter. [laughs]

FUREY: But your mother, did she like Richmond? Was it hard for her at her age to come?

ROBINSON: We weren't living in Richmond then. We were living in San Francisco, in Chinatown.

FUREY: And then she got a house in Richmond, and then you moved in with her. And then you got your own house?

ROBINSON: Yes.

FUREY: How did she like it? Did she have a community here, of people that she knew from her hometown or did she feel -- ?

ROBINSON: Not really, but what happened is she was a missionary and the church in North Richmond was the same denomination as she was. So she associated with 00:38:00them and she had a lot of friends there. She started working there -- working with the children before she got working with youth, anyway.

FUREY: Okay. She would take care of the kids while the parents were away, went to work?

ROBINSON: Right.

FUREY: Which might lead into -- obviously, your wife took care of the kids.

ROBINSON: My kids.

FUREY: Yeah. But what happened with your friends? What did people do with kids, say if the woman worked and both people were working? Were there any childcare places that you knew about?

ROBINSON: No. They just sort of worked it out and, like if they had a larger child, oldest child, would just have to fill in.

FUREY: Take care of the kids?

ROBINSON: Hm-mmm. Yeah.

FUREY: And your wife? Did she enjoy California? Did she work?

ROBINSON: Well, I wouldn't say she enjoyed at first, because all she had to do 00:39:00was cook and clean up and take care of my kids until I got home from work in the evening. And then they weren't making cars during that period of time, so we would take a walk in the evening and go out, have a bite to eat. Of course, we'd eat at home, because it's cheaper that way, but maybe we'd go out and have some refreshment like some ice cream or something like that, and walk around and look at the neighborhood and see what it was all like. One day I was walking down Twenty-third Street and I looked at a house, and I said, "You see that house right there." She said, "Yeah." I said, "I'm gonna own that house some day." She said, "You'll never own that house." She said, "No black people own a home on that side of Portrero [Avenue]." I said, "I'm going to own that house." And she's living in that house right now. I just glad I got it on the GI Bill of Rights.

I'm glad that I came to California, because so many of my people have prospered 00:40:00so well. My oldest son -- like my mother was about me, I felt the same way about my oldest son. I wanted to make him progress as much as he could. He was going to Boys Club, and it was only two blocks from our house. One day, I got a notice that all the boys from Boys Club were going on a two-week vacation. I was assuming that, you know, they was all mixed up, so I said, "Well, I'm going to see to him going." And I sent him and he went somewhere, I don't know if it was 00:41:00in this state -- all I know, it was a long ways off.

FUREY: On a camping trip, or something?

ROBINSON: Yes, for two weeks. He wrote me and told me, he said, "Having a good time." When it was almost over, he told me, he said, "I was there fourteen days and I won thirteen fights." [laughter] So I said, "What happened?" He said, "I was the only black there." [laughs] I said, "Well, I didn't know that. I thought it was going to be mixed people." Then at that period of time where, you know, it wasn't too much mixing at the time -- this was back in the early forties. But it was a good experience for him, because when he went to school, and he got in the reserves in El Cerrito High. He was in the naval reserve. When he graduated 00:42:00in June, in July, they inducted him. So he didn't have time to get involved in anything.

They sent him to Treasure Island, and then they gave him an aptitude test. They wrote me from Washington and they told me, they said, "Your son will have to spend twenty-two months swabbing decks. When he come out, he will have lost the continuity of his education, and also he can't make no money swabbing decks. But he has a very high IQ, and we have a proposition for you." They said if we were willing to send him to Treasure Island and if he passed this course -- he said, 00:43:00"but he'd have to sign up for six years before we will send him to Treasure Island. Because if he pass the course, we are going to spend $10,000 on him. We're going to send him to college for two years and we are going to put him on 00:44:00an aircraft carrier and let him work in the radar department. The reason we want to do it this way, is because if he do the two years swabbing decks, when he comes out, he has nothing going for him. But if he go for the six years, when he come out, he has a trade. But if we going to put that much money into him, we want to get some back too. So we want him, but there's only one catch to it. When he goes to Treasure Island to take his course, when he finishes it, if he passes, then we will put him in college in Pennsylvania for two years. Then we will put him on the aircraft carrier, so he can learn electronics," and whatever was going on that period of time.

So they said, "Now, we want you to decide whether you think it would be worth him taking this risk or not." I said, "Well, you just met him and you think that much of him; I've known him all his life." And I said, "I know he can pass it." So they sent him to Treasure Island and he passed with flying colors. They put him on the USS Boxer aircraft carrier and he stayed on there for two years. And then they put him in college for two years in Pennsylvania and then they let him put the last two years back on the Boxer.

FUREY: This is in between Korea and Vietnam?

ROBINSON: Yeah.

FUREY: So it wasn't wartime in between.

ROBINSON: No. This was before Korea.

FUREY: It was before Korea?

ROBINSON: Yeah. Let me see. This was --

FUREY: When was your son born?

ROBINSON: He was born in 1938.

FUREY: He was born in '38. Okay, so then he was eighteen years old in 1956. Yeah, so it was right before Vietnam. In between Korea -- Korea was in '51 and '52. What has he gone on in his career to be?

ROBINSON: Oh, yes. What happened is he served his six years in the service in the radar department. When he came out, he went to Silicon Valley -- well, actually, they didn't call it Silicon Valley, at that time -- Palo Alto, and he went to {________?} electronic plant and he got started there. He worked there 00:46:00for couple of years, then he went to another one. It was higher class. Then he just continued into that field. He never had but one job in his life and that was electronics. He was making about $75,000 to $80,000 a month when he quit, when he retired.

FUREY: Seventy-five thousand a year?

ROBINSON: A year, when he retired and he bought a house. His first wife was a nurse at Stanford University. Stanford Hospital. She was working in the intensive care ward, and she was making a pretty nice salary. She was a couple 00:47:00years older than him. So when he came out and started working in electronics in Silicon Valley, and she was working in Stanford, well, they had very good incomes. So they moved to Cupertino; they were the only black family in Cupertino and they sent their children to private school. They got a very good education. In fact, when they became in high school, they were high school age, he had worked, moved -- throughout the course, what do they call that? San Jose. So he bought a house in San Jose, a beautiful home. And his wife had an aneurysm -- she had just left my house on my birthday -- and died. Actually, she was on 00:48:00one of those machines for two or three days. I finally told my son, I said, "That's not doing any good," I said, "I can't tell you what to do, you have to make the decision, but I wouldn't let my wife go through that." So she died. He was the pastor at the church at that time in Sunnyvale. Since he was working in Silicon Valley, most of the people he knew were members of his church. He had about two hundred members.

FUREY: Was it a mixed church?

ROBINSON: Mmm. It was an advantage to him, because if he had an all black church, it wouldn't have had much money. But by being mixed, even the black folks in Silicon Valley, they had money. So he started out off in a little real 00:49:00estate office about twice big as this room. Actually, he started in his living room. Then he got this little real estate office, then he got a place about four times as big as this house, and he did real well in it.

FUREY: I'd like to go back to a little bit about the social life during Richmond during the war. Now, I know you were a hardworking man. You had, you know, a wife. But what were some of the -- like the nightlife scene? Because I heard there was a big -- was it Schwartz Ballroom? Was it Schwartz? I can't remember. But there were quite a few -- there were dances all the time?

ROBINSON: Oh yes, on the weekend especially.

FUREY: Can you talk a little bit about that, like the bands that would come? What kind of dancing you'd do?

ROBINSON: Jimmy McCracklin. He was one of the favorites, and Minnie Lou was out of North Richmond. She had a bar out there and she served food, and most of the 00:50:00youngsters would meet out there and dance, have a bite, and have fun, you know? Then there was another one on Chesley [Avenue], I can't think of the name of that one, but well-known musicians would come out to those places, too, sometimes. Most of the best ones would come to San Francisco, because even at the Golden Gate Theater, I remember seeing many outstanding musicians.

FUREY: Benny Goodman? Louis Armstrong?

ROBINSON: Yeah. In Oakland, on Eighth Street, they had what they called {__________?} Club. Upstairs, there would be dancing, and downstairs they had a photographer studio where they'd take pictures of people who were there. Then 00:51:00they had food, and it was very interesting. They had so many interesting places. Slim Jenkins' was about the most popular one on Seventh Street. He was pretty wealthy, and he had dancing and had about the nicest club in the black community there. But here in Richmond, Minnie Lou had the best one in North Richmond, and the Brown Derby. They had so many of them.

FUREY: What kind of dancing was there?

ROBINSON: Whatever happened to be popular at that time. I remember they used to have one called Funky Chicken and Camel Walk, and all that.

FUREY: But it was partner dancing, right? And you'd do lots of twirling? Swing 00:52:00kind of dancing?

ROBINSON: Swing, had that too. In fact, that was what was going on when I first came here. And then they was wearing those zoot suits, sixteen inches around here. Thirty-six inches. It was something! [laughs] It was not as violent as it is now. You know, people, they had their bad times. But it wasn't like it is now.

FUREY: You wouldn't get into a fight with a guy and expect him to pull out a gun?

ROBINSON: No, no.

FUREY: Maybe a knife?

ROBINSON: If you've whipped him, it was over. One night, he might come back with a Uzi. [laughter]

FUREY: So were these clubs, the Mary Lou and -- what was the other one you said?

ROBINSON: The Brown Derby.

FUREY: Were these mixed clubs, or were these all black?

ROBINSON: Well, they were black clubs, but we had a lot of white patrons, too, 00:53:00especially the ones in Oakland. At Minnie Lou's, there wasn't too many whites over there, because that was a place that had been recently incorporated -- it had been all black over there. In fact, the police didn't even go over there. So therefore, when she opened her club, she got all the black business over there. She made out very well. But the way she got started was, there was a guy named Fred, who was a pimp from Louisiana, he brought three women with him: Mary Lou, Miss Ford, and the third one I can't remember. But anyway, he had been pimping 00:54:00them back in Louisiana, and when he brought them out here, they worked for him for about three or four years and made him pretty wealthy. So he figured they were getting past the age for that then, so he set each one of them up in business. He put Mary Lou, Minnie Lou, in a nightclub -- I mean a restaurant and bands and bar. And he put this other one I can't remember, he opened her up a grocery store, and he married the third one. [laughter] So I knew them all.

FUREY: He set them up with a retirement program.

ROBINSON: Right. [laughter]

FUREY: Wow. Was there much dating? Did you see much interracial dating? Did you 00:55:00see white guys coming in these clubs and dance with black girls, or the other way around?

ROBINSON: Well, actually, there was a lot of it in Berkeley and in San Francisco, but it wasn't too much in Richmond. Once in a while, you might see them in the club together, but not walking down the streets together. But in Berkeley, it was common, and in San Francisco, too.

FUREY: What part? In the Fillmore [District] in San Francisco, or would you see them more in the -- what neighborhoods would you see interracial?

ROBINSON: Well, mostly around the --

FUREY: The waterfront?

ROBINSON: No. The one I named a few minutes ago. Where the hippies hung out.

FUREY: Oh, Haight-Ashbury.

ROBINSON: Haight-Ashbury.

FUREY: Around there, yeah.

ROBINSON: Hm-mmm. Then out on the beach was really a nice place, too, at that time. They had all type of entertainment.

FUREY: The Playland, out near Cliff House?

ROBINSON: Right.

FUREY: Yeah. You know, they just closed down -- remember the arcade that they'd have at the Cliff House?

ROBINSON: Yeah.

FUREY: Even in the last couple of years, we'd go there and they'd have the old games. They just closed that one down and took out all the old arcade. Because they are going to put in a restaurant, you know, make more money.

ROBINSON: I see. The North Park used to be pretty popular too.

FUREY: Pardon?

ROBINSON: North Park area, they called it. It wasn't too far from the Cliff House.

FUREY: Oh, the Golden Gate Park?

ROBINSON: No, no, no. They called it North Park, because it's where the kids would go out there in their cars --

FUREY: Above the Cliff House, or down below the Cliff House?

ROBINSON: Above the Cliff House.

FUREY: Oh, kind of near where Lands End is, where you can walk, and it goes out to the Presidio. Yeah.

ROBINSON: Yeah. I worked at Fort Mason, which was right by Presidio.

FUREY: How about at the shipyards? Did they have any social events that the 00:57:00shipyards would organize? Because I know that they had a newspaper and everything. Would they have dances, or holiday parties where you could bring your family?

ROBINSON: Occasionally, on special occasions there'd be -- most of the time -- now, for instance, the Boswell Sisters sang out there at the shipyard. And we'd have different entertainers who would come out there sometime at lunchtime and sing for us and entertain us. But there wasn't too much for families to do, because they were so busy trying to get those ships together. Because, you see, we were behind. We really were not prepared for that war. So they were really working; they worked twenty-four hours a day.

FUREY: What kind of things would they do to motivate you to work harder? Because obviously there was a lot of patriotism going on: we need to go, you know, help 00:58:00those boys --

ROBINSON: That's right.

FUREY: -- get this stuff to the boys. What are the kinds of -- ?

ROBINSON: Well, you see, one thing about it is that you know if we don't win this thing, then we're going down the drain. Because we were on the verge of it when they hit Pearl Harbor, and we really weren't ready. Everybody knows the effect. We had blackouts; we didn't have no lights on at night.

FUREY: Yeah. I remember my grandfather -- you know, because you can't walk on the Bay Bridge at all, but he was going across the Bay Bridge, coming into or coming back from the city at night, one time, and there was a blackout. You know, where they had put the sirens on. They stopped all traffic on the bridge, because you turn your lights off and stop. He was really happy though, because 00:59:00he got to walk around on the bridge as they stopped the traffic.

ROBINSON: Right. Yeah, it was very interesting. I learned because, you see, I was just at the age where I had a lot of energy. I was twenty-three when I came here. I had just retired from fighting, you know, so I was in very good shape, so I never got tired. [laughter] I used to stay at work all day and stay up half the night. You know, you'd be surprised at some of the places that were in Chinatown, in San Francisco. Like, I lived on 555 Pine Street. Now at night, you see all those tall office buildings, not a light no place. But if you knew, you'd go downstairs and if you knew the secret knock, then they open that door and you go in. There's a whole nightclub on the bottom basement floor, a band, 01:00:00and a bar, girls, everything. Looking at it from the outside, it's so drab you wouldn't think there was anything in there.

Then on the {________ at Post?}, that was a touchy place to go though, because the sailors liked to go there. See, what had happened, I remember my two brothers and I, we were all fighters, we went down there one night to have some drinks. These sailors come in, and say, "Well, we're leaving in the morning and we may never come back, so we're taking over tonight. Everybody get out." I asked the manager, I said, "Is that the way business is going to be conducted here tonight?" He said, "Well, I can't whip 'em all." There was quite a few Chinese in there, too, at the time, because we were just two or three blocks 01:01:00from Chinatown. So my brother and I, we said, "Well, we are going to leave, because there's no point in us staying here and getting in trouble, because I know somebody going to get seriously hurt." So we started off, and in the middle of {Duckton?}, here come about two hundred Chinese with machetes, and them sailors were jumping on people's cars, on the hood of the car, getting away from there. They was talking about running everybody else out and they got ran out of Chinatown. [laughter]

I really used to love to fight. My brothers and I did. If I took a drink and my brothers and my wife and I were going out to dance, my wife wouldn't go if I took a drink, because she knew I was going to get in a fight before I got back. We had the A Train. We lived in San Francisco and they had Count Basie showing 01:02:00at Oakland Auditorium, and he was one of my favorites. They didn't sell whiskey to civilians, because it was for servicemen, but you could get gin or vodka and something to get high on. So -- am I running out of time?

FUREY: Yeah. How about we take a little break here and we'll come back to Count Basie, because it's about to run out anyway.

ROBINSON: Okay.

FUREY: It's pretty funny -- two hundred Chinese guy chasing these --

ROBINSON: Yeah. They had machetes and they was coming -- they had guys jumping onto the hood of a car to get out of the way.

[Interruption while tape changed]

FUREY: Hello, hello. Here we are again.

ROBINSON: I had a big family and since I was in good shape, I always kept two jobs.

FUREY: Okay, so let's keep going. You were telling about Count Basie coming to town.

ROBINSON: Oh, yes. This particular thing here, this was when I first came to California and we were living at this, under this telephone company place. So anyway, there was no alcohol. I mean, there was alcohol but not whiskey. What happened, where they got a fifth of tequila and my father, my three brothers, 01:03:00and I, we started drinking and having a good time. We said we were going to see Count Basie and we were going to catch the A Train. My wife had got dressed too, and when she saw me take a couple of drinks she started taking her clothes off. She said, "No, no. I'm not going. I know he's going to get in a fight." They're saying, "He's not going to get into a fight. We'll look out for him." So we talked her into coming along. We got on the A Train going across the bridge, and they have an emergency cord you could pull if something happen, you know. They had this car be a smoking car and the next car a non-smoking, like that. I was pretty well tanked up by this time, and this guy in front me was smoking, so I said, "Would you put that cigarette out?" He said, "This is a smoking car." I 01:04:00said, "I didn't ask you what car it were. I said put the cigarette out." [laughter] My brother said, "Roscoe, don't do that. You'll get thrown out of the car" He said, "He got a right to smoke here." This other guy said, "Well, if he's going to be like that," he said, "I'll put my cigarette out." So he put his cigarette out. By that time, I got sick in the stomach, so I pulled the emergency cord and the train stopped right in the middle of the bridge.

FUREY: In the middle of the bridge? The Bay Bridge.

ROBINSON: Yeah. [laughs] So the man come up there, the conductor back there, he said "Who pulled the cord?" I said, "I did." He said, "Why?" I said, "Because I want to throw up, and unless you want me to throw up in here, you gonna have to open that door, so I can throw up outside." He said, "Well, I'm gonna do that this time," he said, "but don't do that no more." So he opened the door and I 01:05:00went outside and threw up. We come on back in and we rode -- and you know where you pay the bridge toll? Well, we were coming from San Francisco. At that time, there was nothing but waves all around there. By the time we got there to the place where they pay the bridge toll, I pulled the cord again. He come back there, he said, "Not you again." I said, "Yeah." He said, "You know I'm going to put you off, don't you?" I said, "No, you're not." I said, "I pulled the cord so I can get off." He said, "There's no streets and no sidewalks or nothing here." I said, "I didn't ask you for that. I want to get off." [laughs] I was crazy when I got drunk.

Everybody's all dressed up in their new suits and everything, and here we got to get off and all of these waves are knee-deep, and we got to walk at least a mile till we get to a civilized neighborhood. [laughter] My wife and my brothers were 01:06:00so mad at me, so they got to where they could get a taxi, and they took me to the {__________?} Club on Eighth Street. And when they got there, they told the taxi driver, said, "We are going to pay you to take him to San Francisco." They said, "We are going to fool him and tell him that we're going somewhere else. But when we get in, we are going to close door, and you take off." I don't even remember that part of it. The next thing I remember was the next morning I woke up in bed with all my clothes on. I asked my wife, I said, "What happened?" She said, "You acted the fool so we sent you home." [laughter] But they went on and had a good time at the club.

I would always get in trouble. I remember one night, on the same night when 01:07:00those Chinese ran those sailors away, we went to Fillmore then. I said, "I'm hungry." So we went there and I ordered some food, and they ordered some. My wife wasn't with us, that time. She had left us. I said, "I'm hungry." So I put some money in the juke box and I said, "Y'all getting mighty slow getting the food ready. I'm hungry." They said, "Well, we are doing the best we can." I said, "I tell you what we'll do just for entertainment." I said, "I'm not mad at anybody, but I just want to do something." I said, "Would somebody care to step outside and go a couple of rounds with me? I'm not mad with you, I just want a fight." [laughs] So my brothers told me, "Sit down, don't you say anything, you are crazy." There weren't nobody paying attention, no way. Finally, they got the 01:08:00food ready, and they wouldn't even let me eat. They fixed it to go and took me on away from there. We went to another place. I got into it. They started saying, "We are going home now." So they took me on back home.

I just could not stand to drink alcohol. If I got alcohol in me, I was really active. And I never did believe in mistreating anybody. I was kind to people. I wouldn't steal, or wouldn't do nothing wrong. But I just loved to fight. So that was what was going on. When we moved to Richmond, they had a few playgrounds, 01:09:00two or three. I went up to one, I told him, "I want you to teach me how to box." And so they looked at me. One of them said, "You want to teach him?" He said, "No." He said, "Do you want to teach him?" He said, "No." [laughs] I was young, but I was weighing about a hundred and ninety, and I was very active. So they wouldn't teach me, nobody wouldn't put the gloves on with me. I never was mean or nothing like that, but I just liked to get into something, you know, I was active.

I started thinking about what I'm going to do when this shipyard thing is over, whether I wanted to go back to Houston. So I said, "I'm going to go to school until I'm fifty-five years old. Every year, I'm going to night school." And 01:10:00that's why I said I wouldn't trade for all those schools I went to. I went to so many different schools and I studied so many different courses. I didn't intend to be into those things, but I wanted to know something about everything because I figured some of it would come in handy sometime, and some of it did. The painting itself was really an asset to me because I used to paint in Marin County and Terra Linda and those people were very wealthy over there. They didn't mind the entire price. So I would get off from work at Hamilton Air Force Base and go to work over in Terra Linda, and make a lot of money. While I'm doing this lady's house, her neighbor would come in and say, "I'm next on the list." I just kept jobs all the time. So my family, they thought we were rich. 01:11:00My kids did, because we were taking them to Disneyland, Yosemite, and wherever I could take them. I had two cars -- I had a station wagon and car. On a Saturday, we'd stock up the station wagon, pick out a place on the map and take off.

I always took them to church and taught them to treat people like they wanted to be treated. Not to mistreat anybody. So I brought them up in the right way, the way my mother had brought me up. But as far as what I would have liked to have done is, I would like to have been able to invest in real estate the way I wanted to. Like the lady who offered me those places for $75,000. If I had that 01:12:00place right now, it's worth a quarter million dollars. I could've bought it for $75,000, brand new. Just think of the stepping stone I could've made from that. [laughs]

FUREY: Yeah. But as they say, hindsight is twenty-twenty.

ROBINSON: That's right. Like a Monday morning quarterback.

FUREY: Now we can kind of go into the part about how Richmond was declining. You know, it was a boomtown and then it really declined. Before we kind of get there, I'd like to touch a little bit on one hand -- or the Kaiser Hospital. You said that one time you got injured, you went there. I want to know what your memories of that care was like?

ROBINSON: Actually, inside the shipyards, they had what they called area houses. 01:13:00They was about one fourth the size of this room. In case someone got bruised, and not bruised too bad, they could handle it there. If they had to, they sent them to the hospital.

I could run pretty fast too, so when we got off from work in the afternoon, we used to race for the gate. It was about, I guess, about a block. This guy, every evening, he would get all the bricks out. Somebody would get in front of me, and I knew I could outrun him. So when they called me to come to [Draft] Board 80 in Berkeley to be inducted, I told him that even -- I turned around and I said, "You know what, you've been beating me to the gate." I said, "But you're not going to beat me today." I said, "I'm going to outrun you." He said, "I bet you 01:14:00five dollars you don't outrun me." I said, "That's a bet." So I gave somebody the five dollars and we started off. I got about four lengths in front of him and I looked back, I said, "Robert, you going to lose your money." And when I turned back around, well this little lady was passing in front of me. I saw I was going to hit her, so I turned sideways like this to keep from hurting her too bad, and hit her on the side and knocked her unconscious. But we were right in front of the dispensary, and I picked her up and carried her onto the dispensary. I said, "I hurt this lady." I said, "Work on her and whatever the bill is, I'll pay it. Whatever time she lose from work, I'll pay her salary until she's able to go back to work again." I said, "I'm sorry this happened." I 01:15:00said, "But I was being foolish and I just have to suffer the consequences." So every Friday, I'd go down to her house, and pay her. She was making fifty-two dollars a week, and I'd give her fifty-two dollars a week.

FUREY: They didn't have any kind of workers' disability there?

ROBINSON: Yeah, they had it, but I think they kind of wanted to punish me. [laughs] When I came out, when I took her into the dispensary, when I walked out -- wait a minute. You didn't ask me that. You asked me about the climbing.

FUREY: I was just asking about Kaiser, or the hospital they had.

ROBINSON: Oh yeah, there was a hospital. This was part of Kaiser. That's why I was trying to figure how I got into this. So when I came out, there was three guys there, standing out there, and they said, "If I had him down in Georgia, 01:16:00see, I know what I'd do with him." When he said it, I dropped him, and the other two left. I hurt my best friend, Kelly Wong. I think I told you about when I blew that air hose in his eye. Where he had to go onto that thing, and to that place, too. And when I fell through that hole, they wanted to take me there, but they knew there was nothing that they can do for me in First Aid there. They sent me to the hospital. But they had those area houses, which came in very handy for small, not too serious, incidents. On Fourteenth and Cutting they had the hospital, and they would take you down there right quick and take care of you, and that was the most convenient place for anyone who got hurt here at that 01:17:00time. They had Blue Cross, they had Blue Shield, and I think there was another one.

FUREY: Hospitals?

ROBINSON: Yeah, in Oakland. A lot of people was talking down on Kaiser; they didn't like Kaiser. But Kaiser wound up, come up ahead above all of them really. I got into Kaiser in '43 when I first got into the shipyard. But when I went in service, well then I wasn't in Kaiser any more. When I came out, and started working for the contractors, I had their insurance. But when I started working at Hamilton Air Force Base, then they put me back in Kaiser again. Since I had 01:18:00had experience selling life and disability insurance, I knew the value of the insurance. They told us, "You can either take one plan A and it'll only cost you sixteen dollars a month, or you can take Plan B and it'll cost you twenty dollars a months." I said, "I want plan B," because I knew the value of insurance. I knew if they would charge me more for it you was going to get more service. And if I get sick, I want the best I can get. Everybody was getting plan A, because it was cheaper, but I said, "This don't make sense, getting it because it's cheaper. I want it for when I need it." So I got it and I still have it. I had an operation in 1996 cost $80,000; it didn't cost me anything.

FUREY: So you've been a Kaiser member for sixty years?

ROBINSON: Well, I would say except for when I went in service.

FUREY: Because you got it through the government?

ROBINSON: Hm-mmm. Then, when I came out, and went back work for Hamilton Air Force Base, then went back into it. Yessir.

FUREY: Did your family receive benefits of the medical coverage?

ROBINSON: Yes, they did.

FUREY: When you worked in the shipyards?

ROBINSON: Yeah, when I worked in the shipyards.

FUREY: So they could go and get care at the hospital? Okay. One more subject I'd like to touch on before we get into the part where Richmond sort of -- the end of the war in Richmond. Do you remember when they took all the Japanese away and interned them in camps? Do you have any memory of that period?

ROBINSON: Actually, I have memories of the period, but it wasn't in this area, that I knew of. Most of that, I understood, was in Southern California.

FUREY: Yeah. I think there were some Japanese people who were -- there was a decent size Japanese community in the Bay Area. I don't know about in Richmond.

ROBINSON: No, there weren't in Richmond, but they may have been in San Francisco. But see, by that time, I had moved to Richmond, so I didn't know about the Japanese community then.

FUREY: Okay. So what are your memories of -- see, you were in the service right after the bomb dropped?

ROBINSON: Yeah. Well, actually the bomb dropped about a week after I got in the service, because if the bomb had dropped before I got into service, they would not have inducted me. See? But after I was already in, there was nothing they 01:21:00could do about it.

FUREY: When you came back from your service, you came back to Richmond.

ROBINSON: Yes.

FUREY: Okay. Did you notice any change over that four-month period?

ROBINSON: Yes, I did.

FUREY: What were some of the things you noticed?

ROBINSON: Because there wasn't as many jobs, and there was still a whole lot of people here. See, there was so many people here until -- in the theater that stayed open twenty-four hours a day there was people sleeping, in theaters. And people sleeping in -- in fact, like this couch here. I could rent this couch out to somebody from eight o'clock in the morning to four o'clock in the evening. And when that one leave, another one come on from four o'clock in the evening to twelve o'clock at night, and then another one come on from twelve o'clock at night to eight o'clock next morning. I mean, it was just so hard to find a place to stay at that time. I remember that there was still a lot of people here, but 01:22:00there wasn't enough work to keep them all occupied. So they started traveling and going to the harvest, working in the fields, and doing whatever they could. The money was dwindling away, and some of them was going back to their hometowns.

FUREY: So a lot of people went back to -- did you know any? Your brothers were still merchant marines at that time.

ROBINSON: Yeah, they were merchant marines. Nobody from my family left.

FUREY: Wasn't there a merchant marine strike around that time in '46?

ROBINSON: Yes. Actually, what it was, was Marine Cooks and Stewards [Union] was in charge of the employees that worked in the cooking department. And they had another group, I can't remember the name of that other group that came in and take over. They are in charge now, but I can't remember the name of it now, it 01:23:00was so long ago. They did have a strike there.

FUREY: All the merchant marines were on land, were on shore at that point, right? That flooded the job market even more.

ROBINSON: That's right. They did.

FUREY: Then you have the boys coming home from war.

ROBINSON: That's right. It was really rough around here at that time. If you could get on unemployment compensation, you were doing good. But I was fortunate enough that I had learned enough about painting until I didn't have to work for nobody. I could get my own jobs. Hm-mmm.

FUREY: At that point in '46, after you came back from the service, you didn't have any problem finding work?

ROBINSON: No. No. The only problem I had was they were supposed to take me back 01:24:00on my job that I had when I went in. And when I went in, they didn't want to give it back to me.

FUREY: The job at Hunters Point?

ROBINSON: Yeah. At Bethlehem Steel. Remember, that's where I was inducted from, and when you come back, they are supposed to give you your job. When I came back, the union told me that I could've come through the window and got my -- I showed them my -- every quarter, you got a ticket showing that you paid, and I had all of mine for two years. And they are going to tell me that I could have climbed over the counter, go back in there, and get me a ticket every three months for two years? What kind of place of business would that be? So that's when Gerry Brown told me --

FUREY: Pat, his father. Pat Brown.

ROBINSON: Yeah, Pat Brown.

FUREY: Yeah, talk about that. So you went into his office?

ROBINSON: Yeah. I talked to him about it.

FUREY: He became governor.

ROBINSON: Yeah. He told me, he said, "If I was you, I wouldn't even go to nobody. I'd get me a shotgun and blow their brains out, if I went off, leaving my wife and four kids and take a chance on getting killed to protect them, and then come back and they don't want to give you your job back." He said, "If they don't come back here in the morning at nine o'clock with you reinstated, just let me know." But when I got home that evening, this black contractor from Berkeley had heard about it and he had called and told me to come over there, and he had a better job paying more money. So that's what I did. Working with him, I continued to get better and better, because he was quite an artist himself.

I always had a system of whatever I'm in, I try to go to school to learn a 01:26:00little bit more about it so I can have this little edge on the others, you know. So I was going to night school -- Contra Costa College was over here on Canal Boulevard at that time. They called it Contra Costa Junior College, and I was studying interior decoration over there while I was working at Oakland Army Base in the daytime. So I learned quite a bit about it, and I loved it. When you're working in the job that you like, well, it's no strain. But the economy was dwindling. It was. And it was in a place where people -- because most of them was renting anyway. They weren't buying their homes and then the government started tearing down those temporary houses.

FUREY: Up in North Richmond?

ROBINSON: They had some on the other side of Portrero. Actually, in North Richmond, they hadn't done anything.

FUREY: You mean, right up here, on this side of Portrero, or on -- ?

ROBINSON: It was down around Twenty-third Street. Everything on this side of Portrero was black. Everything on this side was white. But all of these were temporary housing -- what they called -- what do you call them?

FUREY: Bungalow or -- ?

ROBINSON: It was like eight families could live in each building, and they had about forty of them over there. So when they started tearing those down, that was really taking away a place to stay in what was already a bad place. So people started going back to their hometowns. But I had paid -- I was buying me 01:28:00a home by that time, so I wasn't going anywhere.

FUREY: I guess it's kind of like, sort of similar to the boom that happened in the Bay Area in the '90s. You know, you had -- they flooded the area with all these jobs. People coming from all over. I think the difference is that after this last one, everyone went home after this last one in the '90s. But here in Richmond, people just stayed around, behind.

ROBINSON: That's right.

FUREY: How about the clubs? Did a lot of the clubs shut down?

ROBINSON: Yes, a lot them shut down. In fact, I had managed one myself. I had one on Second and Ohio, the Flamingo Club.

FUREY: The one that Lee set you up with?

ROBINSON: Yeah.

FUREY: That's later on. But right after the war, did the clubs shut down immediately or -- ?

ROBINSON: Not really. It was gradually, because some people had saved up quite a bit of money. Some of them were working in two shipyards. They'd go to work eight o'clock in the morning and get off at four. And at four thirty, they'd go to work at the next shipyard. So they weren't having any time to spend their money; they was just saving it and banking it. So they had enough money to last them for a while. It didn't just collapse all at once. They were holding onto it, figuring something was going to happen before they run out of money. But they could see it was coming on, so they went back home.

FUREY: So you worked as a contractor, or you worked on a contract basis for your painting business?

ROBINSON: Yes, I was a subcontractor. See, Mr. {Vernon Dunn?} that I worked for 01:30:00in Berkeley, after I left him and I was working at Hamilton Air Force Base, that's when the people started seeing my work and wanted me to work over in Marin County. But I couldn't work over there, because I wasn't in the union. So I talked to {Vernon Dunn?} about it. He told me I could use his license, so I'd just stick his stick up in the yard and they wouldn't bother me. I worked as a subcontractor under him. Of course, I had to give him a little pinch for using his license, but, I mean, I was making so much money, that was minimal. Besides, I had a full-time job at Hamilton Air Force Base. In fact, it was strange how I -- I don't know whether I told you how I got this job at Hamilton.

FUREY: No.

ROBINSON: See, I had worked ten years for the federal government, for the navy. And this insurance company had come to me and asked me to work for them. I told them, I said, "Well, I got a wife and kids, and I got a job for life working for federal government." I said, "I don't know anything about insurance." I said, " I couldn't take a chance on putting my family at risk like that." This was the president of the company, who came from Los Angeles. I don't know who sent him up to my house. He and his assistant. So he said, "We know that you could do it." He said, "We got reliable information that you could handle it." I said, "Yeah, but that's your reliable information, it's not mine." I said, "My family's looking to me." So they said, "What we'll do, we'll put you on a salary for a certain period of time. Then we'll stop and recapitulate, and see whether 01:32:00you earned that much. If you did, then we'll keep on going." So I said, "Yeah, suppose I don't. I can't go back over there and tell them I want my job back." And so I told them, I said, "I tell you what I'll do. I'll work for you on a part-time basis for two years after I get off from work over here." And I did. I was selling more insurance on a part-time basis than some of the men who worked on a full-time basis. So when I saw that I could make it, then I quit. Because they were not giving me a fair break at Mare Island. They had men, paying them much more than I was -- doing easier jobs -- but not half as qualified as I was. 01:33:00Because I had studied interior decoration and I had twenty years' experience painting before I studied interior decoration. So I just quit and went into the insurance business.

FUREY: This is around the 1960s?

ROBINSON: It was '54.

FUREY: In '54?

ROBINSON: Hm-mmm. I quit the insurance business in '61. Well, I quit that particular company, because I opened an agency of my own.

FUREY: You weren't at all homesick for going back to Texas?

ROBINSON: Never.

FUREY: No?

ROBINSON: I went back one time since I left there. I left there in '43 and I went back in '69. I never been back since.

FUREY: Because all your family came over.

ROBINSON: Hm-mmm.

FUREY: So you worked in the insurance business from 1954 to in the 70s?

ROBINSON: Well, I worked for one company from '54 to '61 and that's when I went 01:34:00back to work for the federal government. Then I decided to work, go in business for myself in insurance, so I had an agency of my own. But I worked for several companies. I had an office in Walnut Creek, and I had one called Pierce National [Life Insurance Company] -- I leased, they had a big old peanut on top of the building. You could see it from the freeway. I worked there at Pierce National for a few years. In fact, I won a contest for being one of the top fifty agents two years in a row, and they gave me a plane trip for my wife and I to go down to -- on a vacation. They paid for everything.

FUREY: You had seven kids by your wife?

ROBINSON: I had eight by her, but one died. My oldest girl died.

FUREY: In what year did you divorce?

ROBINSON: In '70.

FUREY: 1970.

ROBINSON: Well, it was a particular situation. Actually, that's when I got injured at Hamilton Air Force Base when I was on a ladder rope and I fell sixteen feet, and a small part of my back hit on the ladder like this -- hit on the table. I was in the hospital in Pinole, and they told me I'd never walk again. That's when my wife came up to the hospital, and when she heard I wasn't ever going to walk again and told me that she was going to have to ask for a 01:36:00divorce. She heard that some woman had a baby for me seven years ago. I said, "It's just now beginning to worry you since I can't walk again? I often wondered what would happen if I ever got to a place where I couldn't support you." So I said, "But I don't give up. So I'm going to get you a divorce." She asked for separate maintenance, which mean I take care of all of her bills but I don't stay in the house. I said, "I got a better idea than that; we're going to get a divorce." [laughter] She did ask me to come back several times since then, but I told her, "Too much water gone under the bridge."

FUREY: In what year did you retire?

ROBINSON: I retired in '70. From Hamilton Air Force Base.

FUREY: From after the injury?

ROBINSON: Hm-mmm. Well, actually, the injury occurred in '65, but they kept on trying to keep me on payroll to see if I could recuperate, because they were training me to take the foreman's job. All I had to do was sit in the office and dispatch the men to jobs, let them know how many man-hours they had on the job, and stuff like that. And material. But I couldn't lift anything, and so I just got to the place where I just didn't feel like I was earning my money, you know? Every time I go some place, if I got to take a bucket of paint, I couldn't even carry a bucket of paint. Somebody had to carry it for me. So I said, "This don't make sense. You could go ahead and do that yourself." I was fortunate that I ran 01:38:00into a gentleman on the job who told me, he said, "Listen!" he said, "I'm going to contact somebody and they are going to contact you." He said, "I don't want to ever see you on this base again." He said, " I want you on permanent disability for life; you should've been on it five years ago." And so I went on and did what he said to do.

I got a letter in the mail telling me that {Jim Lymann?} was retiring from foreman and since I have been training for the job, they wanted to talk to me. So I went up to the employment office and they said, "We want you to go to talk to {Lymann?} and see if he's really going to retire, and if he is, you can have that job of foreman. And this gentleman, out of all the people on the base, 01:39:00walked into the office just as I was fixing to go downstairs. He says, "What are you doing on this base?" I said, "Well, I got a letter telling me that they wanted me to come to go talk to {Lymann?}." He said, "Look, I want you to get in your car right now, go home, don't ever come to this base again, because they are trying to trick you. If you go down there and work five minutes, they could fire you and you can't get a job nowhere." He says, "Go home now and don't ever come back to this base again for nothing. I don't care what they're saying." And I've been on permanent disability for thirty-three years.

FUREY: Well, that's good advice. So is there any sort of closing remarks you'd like to say about your experience coming to Richmond? How you liked it? Because, obviously, it was a major turning point in your life, a big change.

ROBINSON: It was. It was.

FUREY: Otherwise you would've continued working as --

ROBINSON: That's right. In menial jobs, not making enough money to support my family properly. And not being able to -- because I'd be so tired when I got home in the evening, all I could do was eat and bathe and get enough rest to go back the next morning. And we were just barely making it. So it was a blessing to me to come out here, because I have never had to want for anything. And I've been retired thirty-three years and I have never had to want for anything. So I think it was wonderful for me. I have no complaints, and I'm eighty-three years old. Not many people eighty-three years old are in as good a shape as I am. [laughs] I have many, many relatives. I got -- let me see. Forty grandchildren, 01:41:00seventy great-grandchildren -- that's 110 -- and now I got some great-grandchildren who are pregnant. [laughs] When you get enough fifth generation, I mean, they spring up so fast. My oldest daughter had twenty-one grandchildren.

So I feel that I had a blessed life, and I have no complaints. I know we all got to go some day, so I won't have no complaints when I go. A lot of people didn't make it this long. God's been good to me. And I just hope I can help somebody else to let them know that if they're trying to make it the wrong way, it's not 01:42:00going to work. I know people who are trying to make it the wrong way. There's only one of three ways that it's going to end. They are either going to go crazy, they are going to jail, or they are going to get killed, if they live the life that I was living. So I just thank God for bringing me out of it, and maybe be able to help somebody else.

FUREY: Well, thank you. I appreciate you talking.

ROBINSON: Well, I appreciate you, because I enjoyed your company, and I hope that something I said helps somebody.