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There Went The Neighborhood - Audio Interview: Fred Adams

Fred Adams attended Jones School from kindergarten through ninth grade, from 1937 to 1947. During junior high he played in the Intramural Football League against teams from Tappan and Slauson. He also recalls several Black-owned businesses on Ann Street, where his father worked.

More interviews are available in the There Went The Neighborhood Interview Archive.

Transcript

  • [00:00:00] HEIDI MORSE: Today is May 26th, 2021. I'm Heidi Morse, an archivists at the Ann Arbor District Library, and I'm speaking with Fred Adams about Jones School in Ann Arbor and the surrounding neighborhood. So to start out, could you please say and spell your name for us?
  • [00:00:21] FRED ADAMS: Fred Adams. F-R-E-D A-D-A-M-S.
  • [00:00:28] HEIDI MORSE: When and where did you grow up?
  • [00:00:33] FRED ADAMS: Born and raised in Ann Arbor, I grew up in Ann Arbor, lived here all my life.
  • [00:00:44] HEIDI MORSE: What about your parents? Did they also live here their whole lives or move here in adulthood?
  • [00:00:55] FRED ADAMS: Far as I know, they lived here all their lives.
  • [00:01:01] HEIDI MORSE: What did your parents do for work?
  • [00:01:05] FRED ADAMS: My mother was an elevator operator for the Ann Arbor Trust Company, also she did some waitressing for the Midway Bar. My father also worked for Ann Arbor Trust Company maintenance repair that kind of thing. Also worked as a bartender at the Derby Bar.
  • [00:01:36] HEIDI MORSE: Wow. Those are both on Ann street, aren't they?
  • [00:01:45] FRED ADAMS: Both the bars were on Ann Street, yes. [OVERLAPPING] [NOISE] Ann Arbor Trust is of course still there on the corner Huron and Main Street.
  • [00:01:59] HEIDI MORSE: Okay. Did you have any siblings?
  • [00:02:04] FRED ADAMS: Nope. Only child. [OVERLAPPING] My mother remarried and for the period of time that she was married I did have a step brother. Lasted maybe a couple of years.
  • [00:02:28] HEIDI MORSE: Okay. What years and grades did you attend Jones School in Ann Arbor?
  • [00:02:38] FRED ADAMS: I attended Jones School from kindergarten through the 9th grade. I left there in 1947, so that's 10 years so it was '37 to '47 roughly, I guess.
  • [00:03:00] HEIDI MORSE: Okay. You had the full experience at Jones School really as a kid through high school.
  • [00:03:08] FRED ADAMS: You got it.
  • [00:03:13] HEIDI MORSE: How did you get to school? To Jones? Can you describe that?
  • [00:03:18] FRED ADAMS: As a kindergartener, I don't really remember. I can only guess that either my parents took me to school or I walked to school with neighborhood kids. I really don't remember how I got to school those early years. Of course, in the later years, I was born on the corner of the Ashley and Kingsley. I walked from there to Jones School, which is roughly four blocks. But when I was very young, Kindergarten and first grade, I really don't remember. But I got there.
  • [00:03:56] HEIDI MORSE: That's what counts. Could you describe a typical school day? This might be quite different depending on your age so whatever you have the strongest memory of.
  • [00:04:11] FRED ADAMS: I really don't have any memories of what a typical school day would have been.
  • [00:04:20] HEIDI MORSE: What about all the [OVERLAPPING] Oh, go ahead.
  • [00:04:22] FRED ADAMS: Other thing is coming out of school and being there and going to classes or as a elementary school, we had homework of course, we did whatever happened at home and junior high school portion of it. We went from class to class. But what happened in those classes? I really couldn't tell you. What a typical day was? I really couldn't tell you. Other than we had classes, we had lunchtime, we played in the playground. I played at Jones School. As she got older, we played a pretty rough game of soccer during lunch hour on a field that was pretty much gravel.
  • [00:05:13] HEIDI MORSE: That would be a rough game.
  • [00:05:15] FRED ADAMS: There were some scratches and scars, yes, because as we got older we played tackle rather than touch or anything like that. Not smart. [LAUGHTER]
  • [00:05:33] HEIDI MORSE: What activities did you participate in? Sports, music, arts?
  • [00:05:45] FRED ADAMS: Sports. It was organized football from my 8th grade on. Full equipment, helmets, shoulder pads, the whole bit. As a team, we went from Jones School, down to Riverside Park, we walked down there for practice and back. We had an Intermural League Football between Jones, Tappan, and Slauson Junior High Schools. There was a gym available, a locker room, and gymnastic equipment, played basketball. Pretty much a full range of athletic endeavors. We were kept busy. There must have been music, but I really don't remember participating in music. As a junior high school, one year we had art, one year we had home ec, one year we had shop and we have facilities for each one of those. The shop teacher who was also the enforcer in the school. I had there were some spankings but I don't remember getting any. In fact I know I didn't have some. I was a wimp. [LAUGHTER] Other than that, except I was very busy. Very carefully busy. I learned how to cook for my home ec course which I took home. Because my mother sometimes didn't get off from the second job until late. If I wanted to eat, I'd prepare for myself or I had to go where she worked or I had a meal in the bar or restaurant. They sell food as well as being a bar. What else can I remember? I can that I enjoyed home ec, I learned to cook. I enjoy cooking till this day and I became a fairly decent cook. Wood work, I enjoyed. Did some stuff in wood work that led to continuing as an adult. I would say I didn't go far in art, I wasn't much of an artist. But I enjoyed it. It was something we had to participate in, one year of each.
  • [00:08:53] HEIDI MORSE: I don't know if you had a sense of this for shop and home ec, but maybe you did for the intramural football league. How do you feel that Jones School's facilities and resources compared to other schools in the area?
  • [00:09:13] FRED ADAMS: Don't have a real feel for it, never saw facilities in the other schools. My guess is that our resources were not up to Slauson and Tappan. Our equipment probably was not to Slauson and Tappan either. I have no real cue for that because I wasn't in and out of those schools that often.
  • [00:09:48] HEIDI MORSE: Were all the games at Riverside Park or is that just where you practiced?
  • [00:09:54] FRED ADAMS: I cannot remember. There was a part of this where we practice. I don't remember where we played. I don't think we played our games at Riverside. I think we may have played some of the other fields, maybe at Slauson or Tappan, I don't remember.
  • [00:10:16] HEIDI MORSE: How would you describe the education you got at Jones School? Did you feel academically prepared for high school, for example?
  • [00:10:24] FRED ADAMS: I have no real way of evaluating but as I went from Jones School to Ann Arbor High, I personally didn't feel noncompetitive with other students at Ann Arbor High. I can't speak for others of my class. Are you still with me?
  • [00:11:08] HEIDI MORSE: I'm still here. Yeah.
  • [00:11:10] FRED ADAMS: Okay.
  • [00:11:12] HEIDI MORSE: Who your classmates at Jones School? Who lived in that neighborhood and who attended that school?
  • [00:11:24] FRED ADAMS: That's a lot of names. [LAUGHTER] But I can remember, people like Audrey Sleet, Dick Sleet, Coleman Jewett, the Baker family, the Calvert family, [NOISE] there were some Jacksons, there were some Gulleys. I'm still thinking. Beyond that, I really can't remember. I remember Margaret Takagi and Tony Lupi and some of the other Lupis. We had people who would bus in from Whitmore Lake and from Hamburg. Other than the Lupi family and Margaret Takagi, I really cannot remember. Other people like Nelson Turner or the Pattersons.
  • [00:12:43] HEIDI MORSE: That's a good selection.
  • [00:12:46] FRED ADAMS: Betty Williams. There are a few others. If I spent some time thinking about it, I probably could remember running up and down the street of my mind. Doug Williams, who ran the Dunbar Community Center. His children went to Jones School. Paul Bacon, the Bacon family. There are a few there. They'll pop up later.
  • [00:13:29] HEIDI MORSE: Yeah, that's a fantastic start. In terms of the students who bussed in from Whitmore Lake and Hamburg, do you know what the reasoning behind that was or the goals of that? Having them bus in?
  • [00:13:49] FRED ADAMS: No, I don't, other than the faculty. I don't think they had the facilities, in Whitmore Lake in particular. Some of these schools were still one-room schools in Whitmore Lake. Other than that, I don't really know why they bussed them in.
  • [00:14:10] HEIDI MORSE: Did that shift the demographics at the school? Was it primarily, would you say, Black students? Would you have a guess at the racial demographics of Jones School when you were there?
  • [00:14:31] FRED ADAMS: The students out of Hamburg and Whitmore Lake were Caucasian. We had the Cook family, who lived across the street from me on Kingsley, went to Jones School, and another Caucasian family who lived next door to them, the Fritz family, Marilyn Fritz, also went to Jones School who were also Caucasian. There was a mix there, there was also, if memory serves me correctly, several Greek families like the Harrises and the [inaudible 00:15:11] who also went to Jones School. My memory is now dry.
  • [00:15:29] HEIDI MORSE: [LAUGHTER] Did all those students get along at school or were there any tensions?
  • [00:15:34] FRED ADAMS: Racial tensions, no. We were just kids going to school together.
  • [00:15:42] HEIDI MORSE: With all the normal school interaction?
  • [00:15:46] FRED ADAMS: Yeah. Pretty much so.
  • [00:15:51] HEIDI MORSE: Do you remember when Jones School shut down in the '60s?
  • [00:15:57] FRED ADAMS: No idea. I do not know.
  • [00:15:59] HEIDI MORSE: Okay.
  • [00:16:00] FRED ADAMS: I was aware that sometime later it became a Community High School and it was a voluntary school, if memory serves me correctly, that you could like to go to. I don't remember much about that just reading some things about the school. I didn't participate in anything at the community high school.
  • [00:16:29] HEIDI MORSE: Okay. Then during the time you were at Jones, were there any discussions about segregation at Jones School or in the surrounding neighborhood that you remember?
  • [00:16:45] FRED ADAMS: No, Jones School was there and we were just students at Jones School, it never came up as far as I can remember.
  • [00:17:02] HEIDI MORSE: [OVERLAPPING] Go ahead.
  • [00:17:04] FRED ADAMS: I think as we got in high school, we became a little bit more aware of that kind of thing. We had our families. We went home to our homes and they went home to their homes. There was not much after-school participation between the two groups other than football or other athletic endeavors. Pretty much separate.
  • [00:17:37] HEIDI MORSE: Okay. What stands out about the Kerrytown, 4th Avenue neighborhood during the time that you were attending Jones School? You said you were running through the streets in your mind; do you have a mental picture of it or smells or sounds you remember?
  • [00:18:15] FRED ADAMS: Not really. I can't answer that one.
  • [00:18:31] HEIDI MORSE: That's okay. You said you were frequently walking back and forth between school or football practice and over to 4th Avenue to Midway Bar. What was that experience like for you as a child or adolescent?
  • [00:19:04] FRED ADAMS: It was just something I did. Nothing associated; nothing negative, nothing positive associated with it. I went from point A to point B and back again. We went to football practice as a group. There were no negative things that occurred that I can remember. Like I said, it's just something we did.
  • [00:19:44] HEIDI MORSE: Do you have any other memories of Ann Street, where Midway Bar was? I'm curious to pick your brain a little bit about the businesses on that block.
  • [00:20:02] FRED ADAMS: I spent a lot of time on Ann Street. My uncle, Wendell Cooper, also lived with us in my home on Kingsley Street. Ran the pool room and he allowed me to come in before I was 16 to play pool. As a result of that, I played a lot of pool in that particular pool room on Ann Street. There were two pool rooms on Ann Street, one run by the Whitman family, who were Black. I think the other pool room was owned by a Greek gentleman, run by my uncle. On the corner of Ann Street and Main Street was a Kroger store, next to that was the first pool room, next to that was the Midway bar, owned by David Keaton and his wife, Mozelle Keaton, who also had rooms they rented above the bar area. The Midway was a bar, and it served food as well. At one point in time, they had music in the Midway. My favorite person, of course, was Washboard Willie and his super sense of rhythm. He actually played a washboard as part of his instruments. Over the years, they did have other groups that came in to play, college students. Caucasian college students frequented the bar, the Midway it was called, to participate in and listen to the music played there. It got to be a very popular university student place. Next door to that was the Derby Bar, where my father worked as a bartender. They also served food and they had housing rooms that were rented above that building on second floor or third floor. I can't remember whether it was third floor or not. Next to that was a barber shop run by Johnny Easley. I can't say much more than that he ran a barbershop. [LAUGHTER] Next to that would have been another barbershop? No, Sanford McKinney had a shoe shop and a shoe shining place and I think he did dry cleaning as well there. You have to ask Willis Patterson about that because he worked for McKinney as a shoeshine person for a while.
  • [00:23:53] HEIDI MORSE: Okay.
  • [00:23:54] FRED ADAMS: Next door to that was a small restaurant. I can't remember who ran it. Either that or the other pool room run by the Whitmans was next door to that and a small restaurant was next to that. There was a leather shop on the corner that was run by, I believe by, a German gentleman. Right on the corner was a gas station which was Black-owned. I did gas and service vehicles there.
  • [00:24:46] HEIDI MORSE: [OVERLAPPING] Do you remember the name of that?
  • [00:24:50] FRED ADAMS: I was going to tell you his name. I'm not sure the gas station had a name. God I know his name as well, it may come up later in the conversation. Around the corner on 4th Street was another Black-owned barbershop. I can't for sure remember who owned that, who ran that. I remember Eudoris Collins was one of the barbers in the barbershop. Next door to that was maybe a beauty shop, but I'm not sure about that. There was rental rooms and that was pretty much the end of the Black businesses in Ann Arbor in that time period.
  • [00:25:52] HEIDI MORSE: That's fantastic. Thank You. I think you got the whole block and smells and sounds in there too with the washboard, [LAUGHTER] music, and restaurants. It all came out. [NOISE].
  • [00:26:17] FRED ADAMS: There maybe a little wrongness in the sequence of the buildings but they were all there.
  • [00:26:26] HEIDI MORSE: Linking this again to also the neighborhood around Jones School, do you remember discussions about urban renewal?
  • [00:26:58] FRED ADAMS: No. I really don't.
  • [00:27:01] HEIDI MORSE: Or the Packard-Beakes bypass was a conversation [OVERLAPPING] in the '60s, I think.
  • [00:27:11] FRED ADAMS: Vaguely in the back of my mind, in the '60s I'm not sure where I lived. I may have been out of that area and not involved in what was going on on that area.
  • [00:27:31] HEIDI MORSE: Okay.
  • [00:27:32] FRED ADAMS: So I remember some talk about urban renewal, but not much.
  • [00:27:41] HEIDI MORSE: How would you say that Kerrytown and Water Hill neighborhoods have changed since say the '50s?
  • [00:27:54] FRED ADAMS: Gentrification there is much more Caucasian in that area than it was then. There were only a few scattered families in the area and I don't know, but I believe that there is a fairly large contention of Caucasian people in the area. I think at one point in time it became a good place for poorer people with money to buy property and modify the property.
  • [00:28:45] HEIDI MORSE: Did you or your family look for housing anywhere else in Ann Arbor?
  • [00:29:04] FRED ADAMS: I was born and raised on the corner of Kingsley and Ashley. There were five houses between Main Street and 1st, maybe six or seven houses that were Black-owned. There were some White-owned houses in that area also. My grandmother owned the homes, my stepfather wanted to purchase a house that was on Ashley bought it up to the house on Kingsley that we grew up in. But because we were Black, we could not purchase any house from Kingsley all the way down the street, Ashley to Felch Street was all a White neighborhood. Redlining, I guess you'd call it. [NOISE] Other than that, I'm not aware of my folks trying to purchase housing anywhere else in Ann Arbor. There were Black families on Woodlawn, in Ann Arbor. Woodlawn is off of Packard and runs into Sheehan and there were several Black families there, when they came there, I don't know. I had relatives who lived in that area.
  • [00:30:50] HEIDI MORSE: So it's another pocket of houses?
  • [00:30:54] FRED ADAMS: A very small pocket.
  • [00:30:57] HEIDI MORSE: Okay.
  • [00:31:01] FRED ADAMS: Like I say, only, if memory serves me correctly, maybe half a dozen or so houses.
  • [00:31:18] HEIDI MORSE: Can you think of anything else that you'd like to add at this time about your memories of Jones School or the surrounding neighborhood?
  • [00:31:31] FRED ADAMS: No, I have a lot of memories of people talk to you about the Dunbar Community Center which was a very active place to go after school. We had our own pool table and ping pong table and basement and the Ann Arbor Black scouts troop, troop number 75. My uncle Vernon Adams, better known as Archie, was the troop leader. There are house there if you like. Music and other social functions took place there. Very active in community. Later the community center moved to a spot on main street by which time I was not connected with the area anymore. I knew about it, but I wasn't involved in it.
  • [00:32:40] HEIDI MORSE: Okay. But you were in the Boy Scouts troop that your uncle was?
  • [00:32:49] FRED ADAMS: Yeah, I was in the Boy Scouts from the age of 12 until I went into high school, probably age of 14. We did as a Boy Scout troop attend a jamboree of Boy Scouts. My first train ride from Ann Arbor to Valley Forge for the jamboree took place.
  • [00:33:17] HEIDI MORSE: Wow.
  • [00:33:21] FRED ADAMS: Can't tell you what year it was but sometime in the mid-'40s or even after the war, so maybe '45,'46, '47 even, some time around then.
  • [00:33:44] HEIDI MORSE: Do you happen to remember if any Boy Scout troops were ever connected with Jones School?
  • [00:33:52] FRED ADAMS: To my knowledge, no. Because if they're connected with Jones School, it would have been an entirely Black troop owing to the fact that it was a de facto segregated school.
  • [00:34:25] HEIDI MORSE: What was it like for you to transition from Jones School to, was it Ann Arbor High that you went to?
  • [00:34:32] FRED ADAMS: Yes, ma'am. I don't remember a lot except there were a whole batch of people there. Going from a majority-Black school to a majority-white school, it was an experience. Once again, I don't remember many discriminatory experiences in Ann Arbor High School. We participated in athletics with no problems. Members of a lot of the athletic teams; basketball, football, track. As far as track goes, I was a co-captain of the track team in Ann Arbor High School, so it was pretty interesting. My best friend in Ann Arbor High was Caucasian. We had a lot of fun together. I fact, he became a dentist and he was my dentist, Dr. Glen McDowell.
  • [00:36:04] HEIDI MORSE: Glen McDowell?
  • [00:36:05] FRED ADAMS: Glen McDowell, yes. We did things like double date even. [LAUGHTER] That was back in the late '50, '51. Once again, for the most part, after scores, he went home, they went home. [LAUGHTER] There was no mixing from that standpoint for the vast majority of people.
  • [00:36:46] HEIDI MORSE: Okay. Anything else you'd like to add?
  • [00:37:00] FRED ADAMS: You've picked my brain pretty clean. [LAUGHTER]
  • [00:37:08] HEIDI MORSE: I showed up with a lot of questions, so thank you so much for sharing.
  • [00:37:14] FRED ADAMS: The gentleman who owned the gas station on the corner of Ann and Fourth Ave was a Walter Harris.
  • [00:37:24] HEIDI MORSE: Okay.
  • [00:37:27] FRED ADAMS: Nicknamed, Fuzzy, for whatever reason. [LAUGHTER]
  • [00:37:36] HEIDI MORSE: I believe we interviewed Ann Arbor Cultural and Historical Museum. Living Oral History Project interviewed Henrietta Edwards who remembered working with her husband at a gas station or service station possibly on that corner.
  • [00:37:57] FRED ADAMS: Could be.
  • [00:38:02] HEIDI MORSE: Okay. That's great to have that name, Walter Harris. Thank you. Well, thank you so much, Fred, and thanks for your time.