There Went The Neighborhood - Studio Interview: Roger Brown
When: June 29, 2021
Roger Brown grew up in “The Old Neighborhood” and has vivid memories of playing in Summit Park next to a junkyard and slaughterhouse. He attended Jones School from 1963 to 1965, and he remembers his friends being bused to several different schools after its closure.
This interview was filmed during the making of the documentary film There Went The Neighborhood: The Closing of Jones School, produced by the Ann Arbor District Library and 7 Cylinders Studio. More interviews are available in the There Went The Neighborhood Interview Archive.
Transcript
- [00:00:05] DONALD HARRISON: This is Roger Brown for the Jones School project, and this is June 29th. [NOISE]. Welcome. [LAUGHTER] How do you feel?
- [00:00:20] ROGER BROWN: I'm fine.
- [00:00:21] CHRIS AVERY: That's great. What's your name?
- [00:00:24] ROGER BROWN: Roger William Brown, Roger Brown.
- [00:00:30] CHRIS AVERY: Where did you grow up and when were you born?
- [00:00:33] ROGER BROWN: Born in 1957, December 6th. My first memory is on Summit Street between Fourth Ave and Main Street. Because I was born on December 6, I had to wait a year before I entered into school. I graduated in 1976. I should have graduated in '75, but they made me wait a year being born in December.
- [00:01:03] CHRIS AVERY: Where did you grow up?
- [00:01:05] ROGER BROWN: On Summit Street. Well, actually it was Summit until 1964. It was probably August of '64, and we moved to Felch Street, not far away. Felch Street between Spring and Main Street.
- [00:01:30] CHRIS AVERY: What was the most memorable part of growing up in Summit Street in your childhood?
- [00:01:39] ROGER BROWN: The most memorable thing is living a block away from the park. But along with that came the slaughterhouse and the junk yards, the coal yard up the street at the railroad tracks. Those are the memorable things because you had to stay on your Ps and Qs. The pigs get loose, you had to climb a tree or a car or something, and then you wait till the all-clear sound. Those are the memorable things. The little small neighborhood stores we had. Then there was, right there at the corner of Main and Summit, right now it's a liquor store, but it was a laundromat. Those types of things was memories for me, and a close-knit neighborhood. No cell phone, but whatever you did wrong, your mother knew about it by the time you got home. There was no air conditioning in the house, so everybody knew you got a whooping. [LAUGHTER] Yeah.
- [00:02:48] CHRIS AVERY: That's great. What stands out the most when you think back on that time?
- [00:02:57] ROGER BROWN: We talk about PTSD or whatever. I call it LMNOP, it's just too many letters. Looking at all of that that people are going through now, and man, I could have been a number one candidate for all of that growing up, where I grew up at. I even saw a murder. I've seen fights, police arresting a person in my front yard, all types of things. Along with the pigs, along with the junk yard, along with the coal yard, just a lot of stuff that took place. I look back and say, wow, it seems like these children today if they get a nosebleed, then they're in bad shape. Back then, man, we went through a lot.
- [00:03:57] CHRIS AVERY: What did your parents do for work?
- [00:03:59] ROGER BROWN: On my birth certificate, it said my father was a bartender. I do remember him being a bartender, but I was told before I was born, that he drove a beer truck from Milwaukee to Detroit, hauling beer, Milwaukee. When he started having children and he realized he needed to be more home. He worked on Ann Street in the bar, one of the bars, Derby Bar, whatever the bars were called. My brother and I used to go up there, we'd get up there around 11 o'clock, he'd give us a Coca Cola and a bag of chips, but hurried us on wherever we were going, he didn't want us to stay around. He was a bartender. My mother used to work at St. Joe Hospital, the old St. Joe Hospital. I was told that my father strongly suggested that she quit the job so that she could be a household mother, but that caused a lot of financial strain.
- [00:05:15] CHRIS AVERY: Did you have siblings? If so, how many? Younger, older?
- [00:05:18] ROGER BROWN: Two, older. Let me say this also that my father also worked for a laundry delivery. I remember him taking me to places to deliver laundry, especially football uniforms. I remember he'd take me to Eastern Michigan, Boeing Field House and drive in, and delivered the uniforms and stuff. But then afterwards, he got a job with a place called Corey, and it was a pharmaceutical equipment company. That's where he ended up before he retired. I had two brothers older than me. We were stair-stepped, '55, '56, '57. Then a baby brother, Charlie Brown, he was seven years younger than me. No girls, which I often wonder how my mother survived that. I remember we used to just stand in the tub and take target practice on the toilet. You had to get your aim right, it was a rite of passage. If you missed, just reload later and come back, try it again. [LAUGHTER] That's what boys do. There was four of us.
- [00:06:31] DONALD HARRISON: Roger, I'm really interested in you bringing that neighborhood to life a little bit more like slaughterhouse, junk yard. Do you have any stories that come to mind as far as--
- [00:06:44] ROGER BROWN: Well--
- [00:06:45] DONALD HARRISON: What was it like? You said it was close-knit, everybody knew everybody. What comes to mind the most when you think back on that neighborhood?
- [00:06:54] ROGER BROWN: Again, the close-knitness, the pigs' smell. Matter of fact, years later my wife and I went for a ride out in the country. I said, "There's pigs around." "How do you know?" I said, "You never forget that smell." The smell and the sound. There was a guy that used to whip the pigs up a ramp from their holding, and that's where they would get slaughtered. We wouldn't see them get slaughtered, we could see them getting whipped up the ramp and just the squealing, and the noise, and the smell. Also when the pig trucks would come and deliver the pigs, that's usually when they'd get away through the transfer from the truck into the pen. [NOISE] There was also [NOISE] a dock. The dock had eight or nine barrels. The guy who was running it said that we can have whatever we wanted out of those barrels. In the barrels were pig nose, pig feet, pig ears, chitterlings. That was on the dock. Then right across the street, you had the junkyard, and you had that magnetic crane that kept picking stuff up, dumping it in the truck. [NOISE] All of this was going on while we were at the park playing. The park was smaller than it is now. It's hard to imagine. We're right about where the basketball court today ends, all the way to the curb, that's where the pig slaughterhouse was. Big, nasty looking thing, about three-story building, something like that. Then they cut off Summit Street at the park. It used to go straight up to Broadway, up to Beakes. It didn't cut off. On the right side of that was the junkyard. It's almost where the shelter for the park is now, somewhere in there.
- [00:09:00] DONALD HARRISON: Are you talking about Wheeler Park?
- [00:09:01] ROGER BROWN: Yeah. Wheeler Park. It was Summit Park.
- [00:09:05] DONALD HARRISON: They changed the name?
- [00:09:06] ROGER BROWN: Yeah. No, good thing was, back then and I do miss it today, that Ann Arbor must have had some grants, because we had counselors at the park every summer and we had people going from park to park, with arts and crafts, and storytelling, and that sort of thing. That was good. Watermelon eating contests, those kind of things was good. Then you had the hobos. I didn't know what a hobo was, but immediately in my young age, we were taught to throw rocks at the hobos. The hobos would come out right where there's a coal car up on a little bridge across the street there. Well, that used to be really dark, really woodsy. There was a little shack, we called it Hobo Charlie shack, I don't know why. Nobody stayed in it. Just a small shack. But that's usually where the hobos came out at, and throw rocks at them, and then sometimes they gave you money. Now back then, for a nickel you could OD at the store with chocolate. A lot of them would say, "I got money," the rocks would stop, then get a couple pennies or whatever. Again, I don't know why we threw rocks at the hobos. I just don't have a clue. You had the trains running. This is one thing that is really bothering me today. I just want to say it. I have a lot of hurt and anger about that area, but it's more controlled. I'm not going to cuss anybody out or anything, but I feel like I need to share some hurt and anger. [LAUGHTER] If we went swimming or fishing, there was four tracks right there, where that one track is today. There was four tracks. If we went fishing, sometimes there were three or four trains parked. That means if you really want to go fishing, you had to climb between those trains to get to the river. Then every once in awhile, one of the trains would be moving real slow. Well, that meant you might as well go back home, there's no fishing today. You never knew how long the train was. Now there is one track, used four times a day, one track. They put a tunnel under the track. [LAUGHTER] That's frustrating. You know what I'm saying? There's one track. [LAUGHTER] Now they say, "Well, we're also putting it there," because I talked to a city official. "We were also trying to alleviate the flooding in that area." Well, why didn't we alleviate the flooding when I was growing up? Because Summit Street would flood, a day like today or a day like Friday, it was swimming in the street. That's real frustrating. That's really frustrating to see a nice, beautiful tunnel, things are looking so nice, and there was not a thought of that when I was growing up, not one thought. We had the usual stuff, a swing set, the ballpark was so small because left field that's where the pig slaughterhouse was. But many times when you grow up in that situation, you don't even know that the situation is wrong. This is just where you are and this is what you do, until you go around and see other things. That usually happened when I was in middle school. I started noticing. I'm like, "Wow. I never knew this stuff existed." You know what I'm saying? Then also just to finish it, the coal yard which is right across the tracks from my grandmother's house, they had a whole lot of conveyors, because the train would bring the coal-cars there and dump them down a chute. Then a conveyor would either put them in trucks or put them in a pile. Those bearings on those conveyors are very squeaky. I really remember that sound. All day constantly, the squeaking of the bearings on those conveyors, along with the coal smell. Again, this is just where you live. You didn't know that there was anything better or you didn't know this was wrong.
- [00:13:33] DONALD HARRISON: You have the pigs, the slaughterhouse, the junkyard with cranes, and that sound of trains, so it was loud. There's a lot of noise. [OVERLAPPING]
- [00:13:44] ROGER BROWN: Two junkyards also. Where NEW is on Main Street, right by the dam there, that was a junkyard, Peter Lansky. So you had that sound there. Then if you wanted to go on the dam, now today, it's just a beautiful walkway. You can walk across the dam. They do ask you to walk your bike. But when we were growing up, you had to climb a little gate to get to the dam. It was off limits. Nobody on the dam. Of course, we went on the dam. I learned how to swim down there. Then when you walk by there and then you try to share with people, the first thing they say, "No, it wasn't, it's so beautiful now." Those are the memories of the neighborhood.
- [00:14:34] DONALD HARRISON: When you think back, and also, I'm going to have you watch your hands hitting the table too much. You can set them down but just watch out for hitting the table.
- [00:14:44] ROGER BROWN: Okay.
- [00:14:46] DONALD HARRISON: We're hearing it. When you think back on it, Roger, I'm just curious. You said how the changes, how you think back on what wasn't there and what then got added, right, and how it changed, and how you feel less anger, but still angry and resentful about that.
- [00:15:05] ROGER BROWN: Well, I'm very angry but controlled.
- [00:15:08] DONALD HARRISON: Okay.
- [00:15:09] ROGER BROWN: Not less angry, very angry, but controlled.
- [00:15:12] DONALD HARRISON: When you think back on growing up in that neighborhood, is it a mixed sense as far as were there aspects that you really love, is there a nostalgic fondness for that area, or is it mostly looking back and again, you didn't know better at the time, but just realizing it was, sounds like a lot of conditions that were hard to-- [OVERLAPPING]
- [00:15:39] ROGER BROWN: Yeah. Both, all of that. All of that, nostalgic. The whole bit. [LAUGHTER] Where I lived was to the right of the purple house. I'll say that, that house, has always been purple. The Wilson family used to live there, and I think they still do. One of the sons or somebody. I lived to the right of that house. I shared with you on how I had to wait an extra year to go to school, which meant I got in trouble a lot because I'm by myself, my two brothers are in school. I remember the day that they planted that tree in front of that house, I remember it and I remember walking around parade and I was young. Every time I ride by and look at the tree, that's my tree. There are a lot of fond memories. I'll say this, that the laundromat, I self-appointed myself too, to be the one who takes the pop bottles and puts them back in the crates. People washed clothes, leave their pop bottles out. I thought the cool part about that job was that if anything was left, I'd finished the bottles off as I was putting them back in the crate. But somebody put a whole bunch of cigarette butts in one of the bottles, and so I took swig that ended that job. [LAUGHTER] But I'm young and so these are the sort of things that we did or I did. I don't think anybody else would fess up to that. [LAUGHTER]
- [00:17:17] DONALD HARRISON: When you think back on the pigs getting loose and you have to climb trees, and the smell. Is there also a nostalgia for that or is it when you look back on it just like, yeah, that wasn't great. That was something you didn't like.
- [00:17:35] ROGER BROWN: They had, what was interesting is there was a guy at the gas station right there on Main and Summit, a little tiny gas station there. The guy at the gas station, couple of the guys, they were dubbed to be the pig catchers. They had a big pole, and they chased those pigs down and hog-tied them to the pole and they'd march them down the street straight to the slaughterhouse. When a pig gets away, then it's automatic. When you get caught, you're not going into the pen, you're going to get slaughtered. That was a remembrance of that sort of thing. I remember also when, it was kind of fun, when Michigan ever played Michigan State football, they would send a train down from Lansing. You see right there where the train bridge goes over Main Street by the dam, there used to be a connection. The New York Central, whatever that train is, the Amtrak train track that can connect to the Ann Arbor train track. They would go up the hill and through town, and they'd have a big parade looking train that was a lot of the Michigan State alumni. I remember when the National Guard would, be on the move because they go to camp or something and Main Street would be full of National Guard. You can sit there and watch them. I remember the phone booth that used to be right there at the corner of Main and Summit. There was a factory that was closer to the highway down Main Street. Seemed like that thing caught on fire a lot, especially at night. My brother and I would get a little close to it, big fire, I don't know what it was. I also remember people drowning at the river and that was very sad. Where they'd be fishing, you know, searching for the body and the family'd be on the shore and then the body's found, and all the crying and stuff like that. There was just a lot and I shared with you I saw someone get killed and that was up by the railroad tracks across the street from my grandmother's house. It was self-defense. You can't blame the guy for shooting the person, but just the fact of watching somebody--and the first impression that I had was, this was not what you see on TV. [LAUGHTER] You realize TV was fake. When this guy dropped in front of his family. And the guy shot the dirt first. I remember seeing the dirt puff up and the guy just kept coming at him with a baseball bat. And then what took place later--did you want me to talk about this? Okay. Then what took place later immediately, the traffic jammed up. It was a Saturday and the renter was washing a car, he had a couple of kids and his wife was there. Everything was fine. The owner of the two houses needed the renter to clean his junk up behind his house, because he's trying to rent the other house out. The argument pursued. The renter hit the owner with a baseball bat across the waist and went and got another bat, but by that time the owner pulled a gun out. It was a German Luger, because it was a friend of mine's father and we played with that gun a little bit before this happened. [NOISE] So thank God I didn't get shot by that thing with my friend. He came at him again, and the guy shot the dirt and he wouldn't stop. He shot him dead in the heart and that guy dropped. That's what shocked me the most, just watching him drop right in front of his wife, his kids. Immediate screaming and hollering. The traffic jammed up immediately and so bad that the police had to come up the sidewalk. They couldn't get through. The police got up there and then by that time, another renter who lived upstairs from that place, she came out with this butcher knife. See you're talking about PTSD or whatever you call it. I remember her swinging that thing at the shooter. The shooter is trying to help the guy he shot. She was pretty hefty and she backed him down that sidewalk back to the railroad tracks, trying to cut him and daring him to shoot her. Well, by that time the police got there [NOISE], and the police had to wrestle her down. While they were wrestling her down, another guy come out the house with a mop handle. [LAUGHTER] He swung it at the shooter. By that time two cops were at the shooter. Swung it at the shooter, hit a cop in the head. [LAUGHTER] The cop dropped, more cops showed up and the ambulance couldn't get up the sidewalk, so they had to put the guy dying in the same car as the guy that shot him. They went back down the sidewalk and by the time they got to Main Street, my aunt had a little police call box. They called in and said, "The guy just died." Seemed like the rain clouds rolled in. I mean, it just was a total reverse and for about two weeks my brother and I slept in the bed together. Every time you close your eyes, you could see this scene. So I guess I did have some of that, I guess it wasn't ever labeled.
- [00:23:23] DONALD HARRISON: How old were you? Do you remember?
- [00:23:25] ROGER BROWN: [NOISE] I don't exactly remember. I think I was in second or third grade. I've been meaning to go back into the Ann Arbor News just to try to take a peek at that. But to see it--I seen the whole scene, people walk into that street crying, it just was terrible.
- [00:23:46] DONALD HARRISON: There was a lot going on in that neighborhood. I mean--
- [00:23:50] ROGER BROWN: Yeah.
- [00:23:51] DONALD HARRISON: It's very vivid, everything you're describing.
- [00:23:53] ROGER BROWN: That's the thing about me, I seem to have things that are so vivid. I talked to my other brother because I only have one brother left and he's like I don't remember none of this stuff. And I remember it. I remember playing one day in the front yard and then all of a sudden--I'm not mentioned the name--come balling down the street and cop cars was on him. They caught him in my front yard and he was whooping them, even handcuffed he was whooping them. So one cop, there was one Black cop who was in the Ann Arbor Police and he said, "Cuff his feet." And he reached down and he kicked him. Kicked his shoe mark right there in his eye, you know, heel mark, and the cop fell back on my front yard. All of that kind of stuff was going on. [LAUGHTER] There was good things too. I was born and raised at Bethel AME up on Fourth, which is an apartment building now. We had good times there. There was also good times. It wasn't always that kind of thing, but at any given moment, anything can happen.
- [00:24:55] DONALD HARRISON: The first time we talked, you mentioned why and how that neighborhood, those few neighborhoods, that area, West Side, was pretty much where the Black community ended up.
- [00:25:07] ROGER BROWN: Yeah.
- [00:25:08] DONALD HARRISON: Not so much by choice. I wonder if you could just tell me that again.
- [00:25:11] ROGER BROWN: Yeah.
- [00:25:12] DONALD HARRISON: I thought you even said something like--well let me just stop there.
- [00:25:16] ROGER BROWN: Yeah. Well, if you were Black and came to Ann Arbor, It's like Ford with the Model T. You can have it in any color you want, as long as it's black. [LAUGHTER] You can live anywhere you want to long as it isn't in that neighborhood. You know what I'm saying? That was it. Unless you were educated, had a little money. My best friend's father was educated, became a principal in our school system and stuff. So they didn't live in that neighborhood, but everybody else lived there. That's frustrating, that that took place. What I remember saying is, and I've said this in another documentary, I can't remember when or what documentary it was, but it was racism that created that area. We move into the area and become a community and we know everybody, we survive, we're all tight. Then all of a sudden somebody comes along and says, wait a minute, this is wrong and it should be done better. Really what my statement was, we caught hell moving in and we caught hell moving out. That's one of the things I wanted to make sure I said. When they split that neighborhood up, when they shut Jones School down, it wasn't all peaches and cream. There was a lot of angry people. I remember those meetings that my mother might have took part of, or listening on the phone, they were very upset. There's the catching hell leaving. Catching hell going in, catching hell coming out. It just makes you sick, it makes you mad this sort of thing takes place. I call it reverse discrimination. We caught hell on discrimination, we caught hell on reverse discrimination. I purchased the house up on Brookside, probably 1990. It was a Black couple that owned the house and he handed me a folder and he said, "This is very interesting reading." I still have it actually. One day I sat down and read it. When they divided that land up on Pontiac Trail and Brookside Drive, they divided it from farmland to subdivision, many times, and then you saw the University of Michigan had something going on with that. Many times in there it said, "Do not sell to coloreds." This is 30s, 40s, maybe 50s. That pretty much explains things.
- [00:27:56] DONALD HARRISON: Yeah. Going to the 50s, whether it's the university or the city, there was so much intentional segregation happening within the city. When you were growing up, how aware were you of that or did that come later as you got older?
- [00:28:15] ROGER BROWN: Came later. Like I said, it started about middle school when I went into Slauson and I started seeing some things. Then you have friends that they join four or five elementary schools and then middle school. We called it junior high school. Then you might go to a friend's house or something, they lived on the outskirts of this area I'm talking about, and you're looking and saying," Wow, look at the toys, look at the bikes, look at the cars." Then I started realizing, man, I was left out of some things.
- [00:29:00] DONALD HARRISON: Tell me about where you went to elementary and kindergarten.
- [00:29:05] ROGER BROWN: Jones School. It was interesting what Jones School was, that a lot of times I went to school by myself. I walked from down in our house up to Jones School, crossing Beakes Street--thank God I never got wiped out there--and then going past where Zingerman's was--that was a neighborhood store--and going in. And many times I walked home by myself, kindergarten and first grade. That was [LAUGHTER] dangerous, and I developed four or five ways to get there. However I felt like, which way I was going go. That was dangerous. And like we talked earlier, there was very few whites there. I always thought they probably closed the school down because there was very few whites there and they got beat up a lot. I remember there was a family living right there on Fifth, right before the Broadway bridge. It was almost a daily venture of getting beat up on the way home. [LAUGHTER]
- [00:30:14] DONALD HARRISON: For that kid?
- [00:30:15] ROGER BROWN: For the family. It was a family. Jones School was a good place in so many ways. We had a janitor and he caught you cursing and you got a nice taste of the soap he had in his little janitor's closet. I mentioned that when I went through there. Mr. Perry. If you wanted to curse you better make sure Mr. Perry [LAUGHTER] is nowhere around. Jones School, it had swing sets, but nothing else. A sandbox right there where the parking lot is, now everybody parks to go to the market there. But there wasn't really much playground equipment or anything like a regular school. Curtis and I, if you look at his film, you see he has a scar over his left eye that's because of me. We had a slick of ice, and everybody was taking their turns going down it and sliding. It was my turn, but I went too soon and the next thing you know, there's blood all over. I felt real bad, everybody said Roger did it, Curtis. Had to take him to the hospital and stuff. I felt so bad. The teachers seemed to be cool. I had a Black first first grade teacher named Ms. Coleman. It seemed to be good. We had usual regular issues. The school seemed to be open a lot. I remember a Halloween party there. I remember May Day I got chosen twice to do the may pole tree. I don't know what you call it, carry the ribbon around a may pole tree. That sort of thing. Again, everything felt like this is the way it's supposed to be.
- [00:32:20] DONALD HARRISON: Tell me what years you went to Jones. And then talk about when it closed, and what your understanding of that was.
- [00:32:28] ROGER BROWN: Well, the years I was in first grade and kindergarten. Shoot, sometime I sit back and think about '63, '64 because I remember my uncle had passed away, the greatest uncle in the world, and I remember coming home. It was in the wintertime, and my mother, as soon as I got my stuff off, she said I'd never see him again. I thought cemeteries was just a weird park that nobody played in. I didn't know that they were about death or anything. He died in '64. It was back there at that time. What was the other question?
- [00:33:09] DONALD HARRISON: Then when it was closed, what you thought at the time or what you were told or what you remember?
- [00:33:16] ROGER BROWN: It was again, coming off of the attitudes of the parents, and that sort of thing. Looking to see how they divided the neighborhood up, it was just like, oh God. And then, you loved the school, you enjoyed the school and everything. The school stayed vacant for a long time when they shut it down. I remember right after my second grade when they shut it down, we had a person that was an overseer the school. He'd let us go in there, and play around. We played a lot, some days just go in there, and play, and stuff. It just was sad. I'll just be honest with you, when I look back, it seems like I used to be in all of the things that ended up shutting down. We had an all-Black Boy Scout troop. Well, it wasn't all Black, it was a mainly Black Boy Scout Troop at Mack School. That's gone, Jones School is gone. There was a lot of things in my life that seemed like I was the last one there, the last one out, turn the light off. [LAUGHTER] That's kind of weird.
- [00:34:29] DONALD HARRISON: I'm curious more about Jones because you mentioned a Black teacher. Were there other Black teachers? Was it mostly white teachers, and mostly Black students?
- [00:34:36] ROGER BROWN: I think it was mostly white teachers. Again, I was in first grade, I just remember a gym teacher named Mr. Bodley, who became the Dean of Community High School. His son and me became very good friends at Community High School. Dean Bodley. I remember him. I don't remember any other Black teachers at Jones School, so we have to take a peek at that. I don't remember. There was fights. It was some good fights going on, especially on the way home from school. I was in one or two of them myself. I beat some kid up, and I was beating him good, and some older guy picked me up. I thought it was the principal, because immediately that means your mother's going find out. But I've seen some fights where I saw one person, I'm not going to name any names because he's still living, but he was beating the other guy real good. I made sure I've told myself never get in a fight with that guy. [LAUGHTER] Leave him alone because he didn't want to stop. [LAUGHTER]
- [00:35:53] DONALD HARRISON: Was there tension, do you think, at the school then or was that outside of the school?
- [00:35:57] ROGER BROWN: It's just was regular stuff. But when you do the research after they shut it down, you'll see that there was really hell in the schools that they sent these kids in, and there was some hell going on when they broke the school up, and sent the kids other places. Not with me with Mack. I went to Mack School, and Mack School was the next school that was predominantly Black, but for some reason they didn't feel like they needed to close Mack. I don't know what that was all about.
- [00:36:32] DONALD HARRISON: Just about that, do you feel like after they closed Jones-- Maybe describe a little bit about what that was like. Kids were bused to different schools, but then also you had a school that was predominantly Black, and then you shut that down, and all of a sudden you have a lot of schools that have I'll say, more racial diversity, but maybe also more racial conflict.
- [00:36:57] ROGER BROWN: Yeah, and that's where Mr. Payne could come in, because he was part of that. They did not move like we moved. They stayed up on Beakes, and they got shipped out. He can really share with you some of the issues that they had.
- [00:37:10] DONALD HARRISON: So you got to stay in the neighborhood, because Mack is right in the neighborhood, for at least middle school?
- [00:37:17] ROGER BROWN: Yeah, Mack is a stretch. It's in the neighborhood, you're right. Right on the outskirts where you had a lot more whites living with Blacks. It wasn't deep in. I ended up in Mack School. But I remember as kids we'd talk about Mack School and how it had wooden steps, and stuff. It never had wooden steps. Then here I am talking about Mack School bad, and guess where I end up at? [LAUGHTER] In Mack School, and Jones School shut down. I remember the farmers' market, I remember there was a feed place there. I can't remember the place, and it smelled bad because it had manure for sale, and that kind of stuff. They had candy there, you didn't like to go there too much for candy. Candy was the gold standard back then.
- [00:38:15] DONALD HARRISON: When you look back. Chris, do you want to--? [OVERLAPPING]
- [00:38:20] CHRIS AVERY: Right now?
- [00:38:20] DONALD HARRISON: Sure.
- [00:38:23] CHRIS AVERY: Okay. [OVERLAPPING]
- [00:38:25] Toko Shiiki: You're touching the chair. [LAUGHTER]
- [00:38:28] ROGER BROWN: Man, this thing is sensitive. You probably picking up a frog down the street. [OVERLAPPING] Hit me Chris.
- [00:38:37] CHRIS AVERY: All right. Cool.
- [00:38:38] DONALD HARRISON: You'll just keep talking to me. I encouraged Chris to ask a few follow-ups.
- [00:38:43] ROGER BROWN: All right.
- [00:38:43] CHRIS AVERY: You said that you mostly had all-white teachers, and there were not a lot of white kids at the school. Because of that reality, do you feel like a lot of resources were pulled from your school?
- [00:38:59] ROGER BROWN: Absolutely. Just like the park, like the neighborhood, absolutely.
- [00:39:05] DONALD HARRISON: Roger, I'm going to have you frame the question in your answer.
- [00:39:08] ROGER BROWN: Okay. Yeah, yeah.
- [00:39:09] DONALD HARRISON: How would you describe that?
- [00:39:11] ROGER BROWN: Absolutely. We were short of everything. The library wasn't nowhere near, it wouldn't be at Mack School either. It was just terrible. Then that's why I said that I started recognizing, when I entered into middle school, that I was missing out on some things, including even a sharper education. You start realizing, "Man, I wasn't prepared properly." Unfortunately, I wasn't prepared properly, and then just like children who seek the path of least resistance, I just was going along for the fun. "This is fun. We're going to do it." I wasn't prepared properly, and then I started realizing that in middle school, that I wasn't prepared properly. I did go take a look at some other schools. Before we moved to Felch Street, we were told that on my side of the street, we would go to Pittsfield. Pittsfield was just under construction. We got to go to Pittsfield School to take a look at it while some of the walls weren't even up yet. You could see a stark difference then, even in the color scheme, the walls, the way the layout was. We got short-changed, definitely. You're dealing with racial prejudice coming out of the past, it took it's jolly good time catching up. That's why when they shut the park down, it was vacant for a whole year; there was no swings, no slides, no nothing, just vacant. Then all of a sudden you start seeing a change. The junkyard left, the slaughterhouse left, coal yard left. All of a sudden all kind of new equipment comes in. Now, it's hardly the core people living there anymore. Hobos start disappearing. Yes, definitely.
- [00:41:24] DONALD HARRISON: When you think back on, you were saying a lot of the parents were mad they were going to close Jones. Do you remember what they wanted, what they were angry about? It didn't have as good a resources like you're saying. Some people argued that it wasn't a fair education, which is why then they closed it. But do you remember the different arguments or the different--
- [00:41:51] ROGER BROWN: Well, the main thing I remember is what it was going to do to the community that we lived in and we knew each other and we learned how to survive, good or bad, killings, hobos, we learned how to survive there. Like anything you tell somebody after they've been there for all those years, including my mother was raised there, my father was come from that area, that you tell him that everything's going to change, then it's not going to be a good experience at first. It's like jumping into a hot shower and then the water turns ice cold. That's it. Now, Mrs. Payne will be able to really share with you a lot of the comments. Mr. Payne had shared something about how they finagled making people think that it's okay and how it can happen. Like I said, I was in the 2nd grade. [LAUGHTER].
- [00:42:50] DONALD HARRISON: Right. For you thinking back on a lot of stuff in terms of--
- [00:42:55] ROGER BROWN: First grade, I meant.
- [00:42:56] DONALD HARRISON: First grade. Yeah. How do you think, I guess, the pros and cons of what they did? Do you see it mostly as cons, as negative? Again, realizing that the education wasn't equal. That was where they got to. It was like, all right, this isn't as good an education, which you realized later. But then as far as what the solution was, looking back on it, what do you think as far as how that worked, or the good and bad of it? [NOISE]
- [00:43:31] ROGER BROWN: I'm trying to think of how to phrase this. I'll say this. I got twisted on your question, but I'll say this. There should have been a lot of apologies, there should have been a lot of admittance that we did things wrong. There wasn't that. They just come in and said, [NOISE] "We're busting this up, we're shutting it down." There wasn't no apologies. There wasn't no, nothing and there was no effort to ask the community who stayed there, to transform the community without busting it up. You see what I'm saying? You know what I mean? We talk about a phrase, throwing out the baby with the bathwater. That's what they did. They threw the baby out with the bathwater, everything going out the door, the community, the school, everything's busted up. Here's where your kids will be going, whether you like it or not, and we're not apologizing for how this came and we're not giving up any reparations. [LAUGHTER]. You can forget that. This is how it's going to be. God bless you.
- [00:44:36] DONALD HARRISON: Do you have a sense of what was happening nationally? Because I know you were pretty young because the Civil Rights Movement was happening, then the late 60s all the riots.
- [00:44:46] ROGER BROWN: [OVERLAPPING] Right. One thing I can say about Ann Arbor is Ann Arbor was very successful in keeping the Blacks really uneducated about what was going on nationally and what was going on internationally. It was embarrassing to me that it was after high school that I realized what apartheid was. I never heard the word apartheid. Never. There was a couple Black radio stations out of Inkster and if you ask me, they were blocked in Ann Arbor because they talked about racial things going on, Malcolm X, a lot of Martin Luther King, a lot of the protests and stuff. They kept that at a minimum in Ann Arbor. There was no thought of riots going on in Ann Arbor when Martin Luther King was killed or anything like that. No thought of it. There were a few folks older than me that become what you call radicals. You know how you would name somebody radicals and stuff. Even we thought that they were wrong and radicals, but now you look back and say, "Wow. They were right." This was injustice and it stayed covered over. Very interesting how that worked. Very interesting. That, to me, was a plan that was pretty successful back then.
- [00:46:20] DONALD HARRISON: Now you're saying that you feel that Ann Arbor was good at just keeping-- You know, it's a university town, they want to keep things a certain way so they were able to sort of-- [OVERLAPPING]
- [00:46:31] ROGER BROWN: Right. They had to keep-- Well, they're doing it now. If we knew really the crime that goes on on the campus and the things that go on then the university would be in trouble. Their thing is we got to try to make things seem like we're just such a phenomenal beautiful city and we have a little bit of crime, but we are okay. That's been from the beginning. My father used to listen to police scanner box all the time and he'd look at Ann Arbor News and say, "They're not reporting everything and it's on purpose." If you'd take a look at Ann Arbor News from back then, you'll see very little international stuff. Very little. Just kept it all under, all quiet. It was almost like we want to keep the natives calm, like you do the bees. You put a little smoke in there just to calm them down.
- [00:47:40] DONALD HARRISON: After you left Jones after 1st grade, Mack, and then middle school?
- [00:47:46] ROGER BROWN: Slauson for one semester because we moved again. We moved up on the North Side across from Arrowwood Hills. We used to call it Pontiac Heights. We moved across the street from there, so I started going to Forsythe for the second part of my 7th grade and then 8th grade.
- [00:48:13] DONALD HARRISON: From there, where did you go to school?
- [00:48:14] ROGER BROWN: Community High School, 9th grade. [NOISE] It was really a shame. It was really embarrassing how we got bused to Forsythe. We had to pay. That's another thing, going up through the Ann Arbor school system. It wasn't until maybe junior, senior year that everybody got bused. You know what I'm saying? It was weird because now we get to ride the bus, but if I had a nickel on how many times we had to be at the bus stop and pay our money to get on a city bus. We had to pay every day to get on a city bus. There were many many times we'd be out there in the cold, in the rain, and the school buses would roll by, hardly any Blacks on the school buses. We would be on the city buses. Get on those buses in the morning cold, we'd catch it at Pontiac Heights, put your money in there, then you go and transfer, then you go to Forsythe. It was not good. Then one time they dedicated some old bus from you would thought from the '40s or something and that gave us a straight shot to Forsythe; crickety windows hardly worked, cold, smoking all the time. You know what I'm saying? This is the stuff we had to deal with. At the school bus, especially at Forsythe where the yellow school buses picked everybody up, our clunky little bus was allowed to park there too. It was green and orange.
- [00:49:53] DONALD HARRISON: This was, "We're going to shut the school down, and desegregate, bus kids," but then you had to pay for it. I've never heard of this. You had to pay for the bus even though you were forced to be bused?
- [00:50:04] ROGER BROWN: No, see, they bused them. They shut the community down. But somehow the pattern I went in, I missed busing all together. I had to walk from Felch Street to Slauson. We had to cross Huron, go up that neighborhood. It's a wonder I didn't get wiped out at Huron. There was no busing for me until I think the second semester junior year or my senior year. None. No thought of a bus. We used to be huddled, I remember it was snowing when I was at Huron and we would just huddle right there on Huron Parkway. It would be snowing, and usually, the girls got in the middle, and then the school buses rolled by and we didn't even have to look. We knew who wasn't on those school buses. That was it.
- [00:51:13] DONALD HARRISON: Roger, you really experienced school during this whole early '60s to late '60s was like you're in first, second, third grade, and then into high school, and you see in the news, how much things shifted from the Civil Rights Movement. Hey, we have a problem, we've got to change this. Change is coming and all these, new legislations happening and things are happening locally. Then, fast-forward a few years later, and you've done some things to try to address the problems, and then things are just flaring up in terms of riots and fights and tension. What was your experience of that in the schools? By the time you got to high school or in middle school, was there racial tension that you encountered? [OVERLAPPING]
- [00:52:01] ROGER BROWN: There was definitely racial tension at Forsythe. I can speak more about Forsythe. Now, I will say about Slauson. Slauson was really cool. It seemed like it was more docile, white, Black, sports, that sort of thing but man Forsythe was almost the total opposite. Now, they did allow us to see one movie that was Jack Johnson, what was the name of that boxing movie? The Great White Hope. They shut down the school half a day. We got to go to a movie theater to see that but then on the TV, there was documentaries of how they were putting the dogs on the Black kids in South, and fire-hosing them and stuff. Well, if you was white, the next day, you were in trouble [LAUGHTER] because we took it out on white folks coming to school. Forsythe had ramps, not stairs. You could go from one level to another on a ramp. We stomped many a people on that ramp, and it wasn't good, but we took it out, and we had to get on our rickety bus and go home. All of that, it just piled up. Then, all the way from Jones School. How do you not have some anxiety about that?
- [00:53:46] DONALD HARRISON: Do you ever think back on Jones and breaking up that neighborhood and how that could have or should have been done differently?
- [00:53:53] ROGER BROWN: Yeah. like I said, there should have been a lot of apologies, there should have been even a community input where we bring the mothers in. How would you do this? Anything. There was none of that. It was like, boom, boom. [NOISE] That's it. No apologies, no recognition on how this whole thing started. It amazed me how long Ann Street stayed up, where my father bartended. That was weird. Right across from the courthouse. [LAUGHTER] I always made a comment. If you looking for anybody Black in Ann Arbor just stay there at Ann Street, sooner or later they'll roll through. All the bars, the junkies, the winos, everything right there. Salvation Army was, where the extension of the courthouse where they get the vital records, right behind that is now Washtenaw County. It used to be a post office, right there at Ann Street. That was pretty tight up in there and it amazed me on how long it lasted. But I was told that the Jews owned all of that, and so it may be because of their power that they allowed it to stay. But it seemed like the gauntlet dropped on Ann Street too. I wasn't sad that about that because it was just a mess but Ann Street got the gauntlet dropped on it too. [LAUGHTER] Yeah.
- [00:55:27] DONALD HARRISON: Would you say that was the heart of the Black business district or how would you describe the businesses? Your dad worked in one of the bars?
- [00:55:37] ROGER BROWN: Yeah. I guess you could say pretty much a business, because you had a lot of barbershops. It was about 3-4 barbershops there, and I guess it was the business district of the Blacks, Ann Street, just that one block. I guess so. I remember the jail used to be down there, where, what is down there now? It's a parking structure. [NOISE] Right by the old Greyhound bus station there behind, and how the prisoners used to holler out the window and try to give you instructions. "Go tell big mama I'm coming home." All that kind of stuff. All of that, all the noise. They had one little basketball hoop going on at that parking lot right there on the corner of Main and Ann, but they had a fence so you couldn't see who was playing but you'd see the ball going in the air once in a while, that was the county jail. We had Sheriff Harvey who was hell. [LAUGHTER] Harvey was not only hell on Black folks, if you was a hippy, don't go to jail because first order of business was your hair is coming off. Harvey was just one of those hard-nosed, I don't know if he was ex-military or not but you didn't have a chance if you were Black or if you were a hippy [LAUGHTER] because hippies were protesting the Vietnam War, oh they were cracking them up, or digging those holes on the campus and stuff. Oh yeah.
- [00:57:12] DONALD HARRISON: I'm curious too, that neighborhood, were white people coming down there? Then also, were you going outside into lots of other parts of Ann Arbor, or was it pretty separated then?
- [00:57:26] ROGER BROWN: It was separated and white folks wasn't coming down in our neck of the woods too much. No. We had a milkman and a mailman but no.
- [00:57:41] DONALD HARRISON: Those teachers at Jones would have been coming in to teach at Jones, but aside from that, it wasn't a place, and then were you also going outside of that area, those few neighborhoods?
- [00:57:52] ROGER BROWN: Yeah. Me and my brother, we traveled a lot going different places. Me and my brother Harold, he's the only one living now, he had a baseball team, we practiced at Northside, and that's out of the area. We had to walk to Forsythe every Saturday morning because my mother said that she wanted to make sure we knew how to swim and so they had swimming lessons every Saturday morning and we had to walk all the way up Sunset, and so that was in no man's land up there, up in Sunset area and stuff. Then we also poked around the campus, that kind of thing.
- [00:58:38] DONALD HARRISON: I'm really interested in getting your point of view and your takeaway in terms of, like you just said, you want to make sure you give voice to some of what people wouldn't know. Chris is in his 20s [OVERLAPPING] and I'm in my 40s, we weren't there. In what is now Kerrytown and what is being called Water Hill and what's happened in Ann Arbor, sort of your take on how Jones is part of that story that's been happening.
- [00:59:08] ROGER BROWN: Once again, you mentioned Water Hill, and I think I've shared with you before that it is absolutely nobody Black, appreciates that. There was no, again, no "Let's talk," nothing. Just one day, the next day it's called Water Hill, and that really is one of the nails in the coffin. It really is. I'm sure that you interview a lot of people, Shirley Beckley, a lot of them that probably have the same intimate feelings I have with a little more expression. [LAUGHTER] So with the naming of the Water Hill, how it happened, once again, it shows us that we're still excluded. There's still plans going on without us involved. The only way we're involved is when the plan becomes law and then we have to conform.
- [01:00:09] DONALD HARRISON: When you go to that neighborhood now, [NOISE] I'm sure it brings up a lot of feelings. I don't know if you've been there in a while.
- [01:00:18] ROGER BROWN: I'm there a lot of time. I go to look at my tree, plus I have five generations buried in Fairview Cemetery. I don't know. I'm self-appointed that I'm the guardian over the cemetery. On May 28th, I was able to get a brand new headstone for my great-great-grandfather who fought in the Civil War. We just had an unveiling, and at the same time, we buried my oldest brother's ashes, which is 90 feet away. We buried his ashes on my mother and father's grave, and then 90 feet away, we unveiled the new headstone that the War Department sent for my great-great-grandfather. So I'm there a lot. I like walking around the river at the dam by NEW, all that. So trust me, my memories are pretty sharp. Lake Shore Drive, I like riding my bike up through there, all kinds of stuff. A lot of memories.
- [01:01:25] DONALD HARRISON: What would you most want somebody to know about that neighborhood and the changes--desegregation and the breaking up of that neighborhood?
- [01:01:36] ROGER BROWN: The main thing is, I don't know, it seems like there's always this plan of whitewashing things, smoothing things over or letting it rest for a while. Like I said, that park was vacant for a whole year, nothing there, and just let it calm down because we're still sticking to our plan. It's like I'm sending warning, never let your guard down because that's always prevalent. So whoever's watching this 30, 40, 50, 60 years from now, know that there is one thing that we've experienced that as soon as we let our guards down, then we get jammed up again. Our memories are gone, just washed over that whole bit. One of the things my mother really struggled with was that, she said when she dies she'll be forgotten. It hurts even thinking about it, but I try to make sure that she's not forgotten and a lot of this other stuff is not forgotten. It came with a very heavy price, a very uneven price.
- [01:03:06] DONALD HARRISON: You were saying more about her and her feelings about when they closed the school down?
- [01:03:11] ROGER BROWN: Well, it's hard. They used to get on the phone. The phone was the hotline and I couldn't quite remember the conversations, but I knew they were heated. [LAUGHTER] You know what I'm saying? They were heated and they were often right, at that time. They were very hot all and heated.
- [01:03:32] DONALD HARRISON: Who were the calls between?
- [01:03:36] ROGER BROWN: Probably, Mrs. Payne, Mrs. Bird, the other mothers in the neighborhood. They were very connected because I used to do stuff and I'd get home and my mother already knew I did it. Then I'd lie, "I didn't do it." But I did, and I'm thinking, how did she find out? And she would never tell me her source. So she had spies all over the place. They were very connected. My mother was born in that house on Summit Street at the railroad tracks. It's not there anymore. She was born in that house. This was her thing, period. My father come out of Missouri and came a little later. I still haven't pinpointed exactly when he started school in Ann Arbor. My father had a very bad experience in Missouri. Missouri had a special kind of racism, the Jim Crow, plus I was told that his family had a lot of money, and the, what do you call it, the Depression took their money. So my father never said anything about his childhood. The only thing I knew about him was my grandmother told me. He had a bad experience. My mother had a fun experience. She was an extrovert. She had very good time in the limits and the parameters that was there. It could be that she was also upset about the splitting up the neighborhood. Just like I said, you've been here all your life and you learn how to get community and now it's being taken away. Change is hard on a lot of people, but illegal change is really hard.
- [01:05:32] DONALD HARRISON: Did you then see after they closed Jones and then they started to bus kids and go to different schools, did families then start to move to other neighborhoods, did they start to actually want to be closer to the schools?
- [01:05:47] ROGER BROWN: No, nope, nope. It wasn't we wanted to be closer to the schools. They were moved because they split that whole neighborhood. First, they started with Jones School and then they split the whole neighborhood up. Where you had Blacks living in one main area, now all of a sudden you got some Blacks living on South Maple, then you have some Blacks living up on Pontiac Trail, then you have a group of Blacks living in university townhouses. You've see what I'm saying? They systematically split and divided everybody up. You get what I'm saying? There were these, what do you call them? I don't want to belittle the name, but we used to call them little projects. But when I showed my wife, who's from the East side of Detroit, I said, "That's a project." She's like, "Where?" [LAUGHTER] It looked like a flower garden to her, while to us, that's a project. So they all of a sudden they had small projects, we'll say, splintered throughout the city, and so it's like we're going to divide that union, we're going to divide and split it up and even weaken what little power they had anyway.
- [01:07:03] DONALD HARRISON: So in a way, there was the redlining, this one pocket of Ann Arbor, and then around the time that Jones was closed, then you're saying it was the same thing but happening spread out?
- [01:07:15] ROGER BROWN: Yeah, that red line really started to disappear. It slowly chipped away at it. What's sad is, I knew a lot of mothers, a lot of older women who owned houses on Spring Street. I knew a woman who owned a house, she dies off, the price is nice, kids ain't thinking about what momma went through to keep the house, and so they sell it. It's usually whites. I'll say this too, my aunt who lived with me, my mother's sister, she lived with us for 15 years. Sweetest woman ever except for my grandmother. My aunt, I remember one of the last rides we took before she really succumbed to her illness and died, we rolled through the old neighborhood. She was born in that house too, like my mother. We went around, and this is a Saturday, and I said, "Do you notice something?" She said, "What?" I said, "There's no kids. There's no hopscotch, there's no baseball, there's no riding bikes, there is no children." When we were growing up, everywhere, just be behind on the porch when the street light go up. If you weren't on that porch when a street light goes out, you're in trouble. You even learn how to hear the street light come on. [LAUGHTER] It's like somebody alarms, street lights, [NOISE] get on the porch because when your parents look out there, you're behind better be on that porch. You ride through that neighborhood, you can ride through it blindfolded and not even worry about hitting a child on a bike. I'm going to start going through it a little bit more and see if anything's changed. But that was the weirdest thing. It was like they killed this community and in lot of ways, it stayed dead. In a lot of ways. You might want to say, well, the kids are into video games, stuff, and whatever. We were always doing something. A matter of fact, parents would say, "Go outside and I don't want to see you until the street light come on." Sometime you'd think they were hoping we'd get hit by a train or something, [LAUGHTER] so you won't come home. That was the truth. We had to go outside, and then we'd sit and don't know what to do. I lived right there on Felch Street, right behind the Railroad Tracks, and so, needless to say, I became a professional rock thrower. You just make up stuff. All of that is gone. That's my experience, and then once again, here I am at the end of something that's going to die, Jones School, the neighborhood. It's a wonder Mack School hadn't shut down, Slauson, Forsythe and Huron, and Community High School. Boy Scout troop left, and even in our Boy Scout troop at Mack School, you go to those big jamborees and then you realize, "Look what this troop has. We don't have that, we didn't even know it existed. Our stuff is hand-me-down from 50 years ago." You've just seen it. All my life, I've seen it.
- [01:11:00] DONALD HARRISON: You now notice Ann Arbor's known for having so much privilege and so much wealth and so many people now well off. But then to hear that there was a substantial part of the community, the Black community, that was not that at all within Ann Arbor. That's not, again, something you hear very often at all.
- [01:11:21] ROGER BROWN: Yeah, it wasn't there. We were broke. My father never missed a day of work ever, unless there was a funeral. He didn't wake up and say, "I got five days vacation time, we're going on vacation. " Nothing. Our summer break was nowhere. Some summers we didn't leave even the county. Then you go back to school, and then the teacher asks where everybody's been, and little white kids, "We went to France," and "We went to Germany," and stuff. So I just start lying, "We went to Spain," and "We went to Jamaica." I didn't go to none of those places. I didn't even leave the county. Just stayed right there. You fight your brothers, fight the neighbors, rock fights, putting bikes together, go-karts down Felch Street hill, whatever you could do. My brother, he's a mechanic, my oldest brother. He took a lawn mower motor off of a lawn mower frame body, and bolted it on a little red wagon. We'd pull the wagon up the hill, start it, and then go down to hill with the motor running. But it wasn't connected or anything, it was just the motor running. That was the coolest thing, the kids riding bikes beside you, riding down the hill. Finally, some little smart girl say, "Why don't you ride it up the hill? Why are you pulling it up?" I looked at her and said, "Well, we're trying to save gas." [LAUGHTER] You learned to lie, but it wasn't connected. But it was cool riding it with the motor running, and so these are the things that we did. None of that's going on now. None of it. It's sad. So it was pretty much killed in the switch.
- [01:13:20] DONALD HARRISON: Your sense of Ann Arbor nowadays as far as gentrification.
- [01:13:24] ROGER BROWN: You know what, I've stopped trying to figure Ann Arbor out. You think they're coming left, they go right. You think they're not plotting, they're plotting. After a while you just get tired, and I'm tired of fighting, and if I keep fighting more and more, then I'll get more angry, and I don't want to get angry. I don't want to be cussing, and throwing rocks, and "F the pigs," and all other stuff. That's not me. I pray, trust God, and I'm thankful for the good things, and thankful for a lot of the bad things because it gave me the strength to do a lot of things that I'm doing today. I'm pastor in the church, and I look back, and think about the troubles that we had, and how it did affect me, and a lot of it has given me some strength, some durability. Like I said, these kids have nosebleed nowadays [NOISE]. You get a nosebleed back then, you get your butt up and keep on playing. [LAUGHTER] You know what? They run, go to the hospital, ambulance, all that stuff. We ain't have time for that, we're busy playing. It brought a lot of toughness. But it still was wrong. We used to have the Summit Park. Every end of the year they would have a big to-do at Pioneer High School where you had baseball games, one park against the other, track meets, and stuff like that. Again, that's when you learn what you don't have. [LAUGHTER] Kids be having some gym shoes, you're looking like, I didn't even know those even existed, I'm still in my holy rollers [LAUGHTER]. I'll run this race bare footed. You had to make a lot of excuses why you didn't have certain things. "I didn't really want that," when deep down inside, "Oh, yes, I did and you look like you wear my size, don't leave those shoes alone." [LAUGHTER]
- [01:15:39] DONALD HARRISON: Really?
- [01:15:39] ROGER BROWN: Yeah. These are the sorts of things that you struggle with when you're dealing with that sort of thing.
- [01:15:46] DONALD HARRISON: Roger, I so appreciate you doing this. I think the last thing I would love to have you just say what you went on to do as far as like where you did career wise.
- [01:15:58] ROGER BROWN: Yes. Well, I will say this, that Community High School, as I said in the video, that was my weed smoking time. My teenage years was the worst years of my life. I just was stuck on stupid. Thought I knew everything. I used to wear this Air Force jacket, and it'd be 100 degrees out, and I'm wearing it. I'm cool. All that crazy stuff. We graduated in 1976 without any vision, without anything. It was the first semester of my senior year, I went to my counselor, and realized maybe I need to go to college or something. He talked me out of it. He actually talked me out of it. Yes, he did. I don't remember the name of the counselor, and that might be good, but he talked me out of it, and so I didn't go to college. I was blessed in September 23rd to go to General Motors. I got hired in General Motors, a well run plant. Three years later, I got accepted for skilled trades. So I was a millwright, skilled trades, top dollar. That was my life as far as putting it together after all of this. Became a pastor 12 years ago. But my wife and I have been serving in a church for a long time. So I went the church route, and that helped keep things in proper perspective. That's my life. Thank God that they were hiring. I do remember when I filled out the application for General Motors, and the guy looked and said, "You've never been arrested before?" I said, "No." He looked, and said, "You never been arrested before?" To me it was like, there's some of us that had never been arrested. I've never been handcuffed, never been in a police car. One time for five minutes because I didn't have my license. One night the guy says, "Get out of the car, you're under arrest." I was so insulted. I said, "I've never been handcuffed or sat in a back of police car in my life." Other than that, it shocked him that I'd never been. I have a 'fro, and probably looked from the hippie days, getting high days, and all that, I passed the drug test, all that. Something happened to me that I swore when it happened I would never tell anybody, and now I've loosened my standards. But I had been really messing around in life, and just not doing things right. I had the best grandmother in the world. I thought she was God until I realized she had a maker. She was that awesome. You just had to be with her, and yet my life went crazy, just doing all stupid stuff, getting high, drunk driving, and all this other stuff. Never got caught. I just said, "Man, I'm tired of living like this, I'm tired of lying. " So I decided I was going to join the Air Force. I went to the Air Force office on Stadium, right by Whole Foods. You got Whole Foods, and you've got Verizon, and then right next to that it was an Air Force recruiting office. The guy filled everything out, and everything, and so they said, "Now, I got to ask you this one question." He says, "Now this is just put into it, we have to ask this." He said, "When was the last time you smoked a joint?" Now I had promised myself to stop lying, so I said, "Two weeks ago." So he took all my papers, and ripped them up, threw them away, I said, "What you do it for? "Well, if it was a month or later than you could be in but, you know. " And then so here I am, I decided not to lie, and look what happened [LAUGHTER]. It wasn't long after that General Motors came along, and so there it is. I hired into General Motors with diaper rash. I hired in at 18, and got to retire at 48. That's the first time anybody in my family has ever retired at 48. Got a son from a first marriage, and got a granddaughter, grandson, and a great-grandson. I'm very proud of them. My wife had some kids. We got, don't even ask me how many, I don't know. You lose count. Just buy a whole truck full of toys for Christmas, and that's it right there. It's been a wonderful life. I don't want to try to figure Ann Arbor out. [LAUGHTER] Too much sneaky politicking, and backdoor maneuvering, and stuff. It's like chasing sparrows or something, forget it. I don't want fool with it. It is what it is. My mother was scared that Ann Arbor would turn into nothing but a city of restaurants. Thank God she left here before it happened because that's pretty much what it is. Downtown especially, that's pretty much what it is, restaurants. She was really upset at the thought of that. It is what it is. The university buying everything up, just buying, and scooping stuff up, it's just crazy. That hurts the old folks especially when they tore down the Frieze Building where their high school was, the old Ann Arbor High School. They were really upset about that. The university was like, "What? We own it, we're going to do whatever we want." They did leave a facade on Huron Street up for them, for memory. After a while you're just like, there's no way to stop this. No way to stop it, but they are the biggest employer in the county, right?
- [01:22:04] DONALD HARRISON: Sure.
- [01:22:08] ROGER BROWN: That's it.

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June 29, 2021
Length: 01:22:09
Copyright: Creative Commons (Attribution, Non-Commercial, Share-alike)
Rights Held by: Ann Arbor District Library
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