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There Went The Neighborhood - Audio Interview: Mary Hinton-Branner

When: July 27, 2021

Mary Hinton-Branner attended Jones School in the 1950s, from kindergarten through sixth grade. She remembers going to the Dunbar Community Center and playing in the neighborhood with her eleven siblings. She recalls how the rise in public housing led to the gentrification of “The Old Neighborhood.”

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

Transcript

  • [00:00:01] Heidi Morse: Today is July 27th, 2021. I'm Heidi Morse, an archivist at the Ann Arbor District Library and I'm speaking with Mary Hinton-Branner about Jones School in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Could you please say and spell your name?
  • [00:00:21] Mary Hinton-Branner: Mary Hinton-Branner, M-A-R-Y, Hinton, H-I-N-T-O-N, hyphenated, B-R-A-N-N-E-R.
  • [00:00:46] Heidi Morse: That's B-R, the beginning of the second part of your name?
  • [00:00:56] Mary Hinton-Branner: Pardon?
  • [00:00:58] Heidi Morse: Could you repeat the second part of your name? Is that a V-R as in very?
  • [00:01:05] Mary Hinton-Branner: It's B-R-A-N
  • [00:01:13] Heidi Morse: B?
  • [00:01:13] Mary Hinton-Branner: Pardon.
  • [00:01:16] Heidi Morse: B as in boy?
  • [00:01:19] Mary Hinton-Branner: Yeah.
  • [00:01:20] Heidi Morse: Okay. Thank you. When and where did you grow up?
  • [00:01:28] Mary Hinton-Branner: I grew up in Ann Arbor, Michigan. We lived at 125 Beakes Street.
  • [00:01:44] Heidi Morse: Had your parents lived in Ann Arbor their whole lives or did they move at some point?
  • [00:01:51] Mary Hinton-Branner: They came from Mississippi. Back in 1938, they came to Ann Arbor.
  • [00:02:07] Heidi Morse: What kind of work did they do?
  • [00:02:10] Mary Hinton-Branner: My father was a chef cook up on a campus of university at the Pit Restaurant. My mother was a housewife, she took care of us.
  • [00:02:39] Heidi Morse: Did you have a lot of siblings?
  • [00:02:40] Mary Hinton-Branner: Yes, I have--It was 12 of us, eight boys and four girls.
  • [00:02:52] Heidi Morse: Wow. Where did you fall in that line?
  • [00:02:57] Mary Hinton-Branner: Well, put it this way, I usually say, I'm number 9. Probably in this day and age, I might not have even been here. [LAUGHTER]
  • [00:03:12] Heidi Morse: Lucky for us that you are. [LAUGHTER] What stands out to you most when you think back on your childhood in Ann Arbor?
  • [00:03:21] Mary Hinton-Branner: I had a very nice raising, I really did.
  • [00:03:42] Heidi Morse: What were some of your favorite things to do?
  • [00:03:49] Mary Hinton-Branner: As a child? [LAUGHTER]
  • [00:03:51] Heidi Morse: As a child, yeah.
  • [00:03:52] Mary Hinton-Branner: Well, we used to go to the old Dunbar Center up the street from our house which is called now the Legal Aid. It was activities for us there. Typical things, at those days, we had different seasons. Say in the winter time, when we were out of school, we'd go ice skating. In the spring time, March especially, everybody would go buy kites from [inaudible], the store across the street from us. And everybody would buy those paper kites, that was our thing. In April, [LAUGHTER] because if you say April showers bring May flowers, it would rain a lot, so what we would all do when it was raining, we would catch nightcrawlers. I was a tomboy basically. We'd catch nightcrawlers and then we'd would take them down to Miss [inaudible] Fish Shop down out Main Street. She'd buy them from us, a penny a piece or whatever. In June, we'd meet at Summit. Well, the Summit Park is now the Wheeler Park. We'd go down there, and they have all kinds of different games and stuff we could play. We had a lot of fun. Sometimes we'd sneak and go down to the river because we were nowhere from the river too. We had plans and sometimes we would go over to West Park. That's over off of Chapin Street and go through the old, we called it the old Indian Trail. We would go through that, and we would play over that park too. I think the most exciting thing is when they would have the the competitions of the park, and we would go to different parks, and different parks would come on to us. They'd have relay races, playing horseshoe, all kinds of things like that, and we used to love that, see who could be the best park. Then at the end of the summer time, we got ready to go back to school. At the fall time, our biggest day at that time was, how are we getting ready for Halloween or get dressed up for Halloween. That was a lot of fun. Then of course, winter time, like I said, we'd go skating and waiting for Christmas to see what we're going to get. [LAUGHTER] It was a really simple life. It was a lot of fun. We used to have kids come here, it was the old parking lot next to what used to be a house. They never put anything on it so if a tree happened to fall, and they took their time putting it down but then they cut the tree in big logs and stuff like that. So we all dug holes and made us our own little old shacks-like. We would put the logs, and we would put it around the hole. Then we would go up there to what used to be Godfrey's . It used to be up on Fourth Ave. We'd go up there because it was a moving company and they had boxes all the time. We'd go up there and get the boxes and stuff, and that would be our roof for our houses and stuff like that. Sometimes we'd have a bike shop too. Everybody knew how to fix chains, patch holes for their tires and stuff like that. We had something for everything, basically. [LAUGHTER]
  • [00:08:41] Heidi Morse: [OVERLAPPING] You had a lot of fun.
  • [00:08:44] Mary Hinton-Branner: Sometimes we would find different cherry tree. Who had the cherry tree? Who had the peach tree, and the apple tree, pear tree? [LAUGHTER] We really knew which tree was ready. Down on Main Street, the old town still was down there and the community is down there too. Behind it was a big, old pear tree. It has some big, old pears and stuff and we'd use sticks to knock the pears down. Then we'd go over to Ms. Garnett's because she had a cherry tree that was over on Beakes Street around Fifth Avenue. Well, she didn't want us messing with it but we would sneak over there and get it in her cherry tree and get some cherries. Then Ms. Dixon, she had one too and we'd sneak over there and get a little bit of hers. I guess we were all looking for food. You know what I mean?
  • [00:09:55] Heidi Morse: You always knew which one was ready?
  • [00:10:00] Mary Hinton-Branner: Yes. [LAUGHTER] We think so, so near over there, I think that tree there. Let's go hit that one. Then the apple tree. [LAUGHTER]
  • [00:10:13] Heidi Morse: What decade were you a young child?
  • [00:10:17] Mary Hinton-Branner: The '50s.
  • [00:10:21] Heidi Morse: Fifties?
  • [00:10:21] Mary Hinton-Branner: Middle '50s.
  • [00:10:26] Heidi Morse: Do you recall what grades you were in or what years it was that you attended Jones School?
  • [00:10:33] Mary Hinton-Branner: I started Jones School in '54 or '55, something like that. I started kindergarten. Let me tell you about my first day going to kindergarten. When you would have an interview, your parents would take you up there to the school and everything, and they introduce you to the kindergarten room. When I went in that kindergarten room and I see that little stove and those refrigerators, all those storage, you couldn't tell me nothing. I couldn't wait. My teacher, her name was Ms. Brink. I loved it. I just had a ball and we would play. Everybody wanted to go in the kitchen, even the boys want to go in the kitchen. [LAUGHTER] I can remember we would go half a day in those days or even the whole day. In the afternoon, we would get graham crackers and milk. I use to just love that, and I would get my little graham cracker, everybody got one graham cracker, and we break it in four. We just dipped the little graham crackers down in our little milk, and then we would eat it. Guess what? To this day, I still do that. [LAUGHTER]. Well, it was a lot of fun. My first friend, she went to kindergarten. Well, her name was Marisa [inaudible 00:12:38] , and we're friends to this day. Of course, everybody loved recess. Most in the kindergarten, we played different things. At school, they did mostly, we just played and got to know people, be around other kids, and stuff like that. Getting along with one another, and learning your name, and stuff like that. They teach us how to write, they would teach us our ABCs, and things like that basically, work what as you know with different little papers and stuff. But it was fun, I enjoyed it. Another best friend of mine too, she went to kindergarten. She live across the street from me. Her name was Deborah Hopkins, and we walked to school and her bigger sister, her brother wherever one of them would walk with us to help us get across the street because our house were nowhere from the school anyway. Because like I said, I lived down on Fourth Ave and Beakes. We would just cross the street from Beakes to hit Fourth Avenue. From Fourth Avenue, we'd hit Fifth Avenue, and then we would cross on Fifth Avenue, and then we get over by Detroit Street, and we crossed that, and the we'd be right up at the school.
  • [00:14:27] Heidi Morse: So you walk together with some neighbors?
  • [00:14:29] Mary Hinton-Branner: We'd all walk together, but the older kids would be with us to help us cross the little street. Yeah. It was a lot of fun.
  • [00:14:47] Heidi Morse: Are there any other teachers or staff members who stand out from Jones school that you recall?
  • [00:14:58] Mary Hinton-Branner: I'm trying to remember the secretary's name. I can't think of her name right now. What was her name? I can't think of her name right now, the secretary and the music teacher. I can't think of her name, ma'am, but she was a lot of fun when we took music class, and singing and stuff like that. The secretary, she was so nice to us. Anytime we needed something, we would go there. The teachers sent us down there, and then she had blonde hair. I can't think of her name for anything. I can remember my teachers, my 1st grade teacher was Ms. Nelson. She was nice. Let me see. My 2nd grade teacher was Ms. Donnelly. She was a twin. She had a twin sister. Everybody said she was the meanest. She was never mean. Ms. Donnelly and l got along real good. Then with the 3rd grade, what was that teacher's name? Ms. Johnson, she was mean and real hard. I think she had been in the service. Then we had Ms. Baum. She was real nice. I liked her a lot. Then my 5th grade teacher was Ms. Fox. She was nice too. She wasn't that far. Jones school was behind part of the campus and all that stuff, anyway. Ms. Fox, she was was fun. Then Ms. Strout was my 6th grade teacher. She liked the flower, she had a lot of flowers she would bring in all the time a lot of flowers and them plants. She liked that kind of stuff. She was all right. I can't remember who our gym teacher was. Mr. Powrie was our first principal, and he retired, and Mr. Nichols came. That was my favorite principal. He said, "Mary, if you have any problems, you make sure you come at me." I said, "l will, Mr. Nichols." He helped me out so much.
  • [00:18:54] Heidi Morse: Sounds like you were a favorite student.
  • [00:18:59] Mary Hinton-Branner: Something like a helping teacher. She would come in, she would get certain kids, and she would take them to a little room, and she would talk with us, and read books to us, and stuff like that. She was nice too but I can't really remember her name either. Oh yes, and we had to go home. Most of them went home for lunch too. Some people had to buy lunches, but we were so close to the house, we would go home to the house and mama would always say, "I've got a little lunch waiting for you." We never knew what it was going to be but it was always something good.
  • [00:20:00] Heidi Morse: That's nice to be able to go home for lunch.
  • [00:20:02] Mary Hinton-Branner: Well, then after school, we would go to the old Dunbar Center. They used to have contests. It was Mr. Ellis and Ms. Ellis. They were African Americans, they ran the Community Center for us. We would have this current contest, she had a closet in her room. It was just full of candy. Whoever had the best picture, it means you could go in the closet and pick out any piece of candy that you wanted. Boy, you should see those colors. That's how I really learnt how to color because I would go all around the lines and everything so I wouldn't miss it. We would go there, meet and stuff like that. Most of the time, I was winning too. We used to have a lady who'd come in, read books to us and when she was reading books she would always bring some graham crackers. Back then, that was a thing, those graham crackers. [LAUGHTER] Everybody'd get a graham cracker and then they'd be quiet and listen to her read books to you. So we liked her. Then Christmas time, boy, that was the best time. The students on the the campus, they would come down and get a group of us and take us back up to the dorm and they would have a big old party for us and stuff like that. Boy, we loved those two. They were so nice to us. Then they would have the Christmas time, they would have toys and stuff for us. They used to fix us these plastic bags full of all kind of candy and food and stuff like that. Boy, we used to love that. Everybody right there and getting their little Christmas present, whatever they had for us. We loved it at little Dunbar Center. They had one lady. She came up there. She taught us how to cook. I remember that because I cook it to this day. She taught us how to make tuna fish casserole. We all got a chance to [inaudible 00:23:02] and stuff like that. But she was right there with us and then she'd do the noodle pie and stuff and open up the cans and had this sweet peas and pudding and stuff like that and put the mushroom soup in there and all that. Then we would bake it. Sometimes we would bake a cake or we would make cookies. We used to love when she came.
  • [00:23:35] Heidi Morse: So this is someone who came in to do a special cooking class at the Dunbar Center?
  • [00:23:47] Mary Hinton-Branner: Yeah. They'd bring books, some people come in, like when the big people come in, they would bring us books and stuff like that. It was just something. It was a funny thing. The little kids were upstairs and the big kids were downstairs and we were never allowed to go down there. We used to all wonder what they be doing down in that basement. They had pool tables down and they'd play games and stuff down there. We were always on the first floor and the second floor. That was for the younger kids.
  • [00:24:22] Heidi Morse: It almost sounds like a supplementary education you were getting at the Dunbar Center.
  • [00:24:34] Mary Hinton-Branner: It was. It was really good. They helped us a lot. We went to school and stuff like that. It was just the little things that happened to us. Everybody was really nice to us. Most of our teachers were white but they were pretty good to us. We didn't have too much problems with them. But we knew our place and stuff like that, but everybody was kind to us. When I lived there, it was like a little neighborhood anyway, like a little family, like a little village. We had a lot of people come from Canada down there on the street that I was raised on. Mr. [inaudible 00:25:43] , they were right next door to us. They came from Canada. Then they all said that they came from Canada and the Clements, and the Calverts, the Dixons, and then Ms. Patterson, she lived across, she had a big old apartment house she lived in there. They all came from Canada. The Bakers, they lived down the street from me, and their father was part owner of the Ann Arbor Foundry years ago. The Scotts, they lived down on Fourth Avenue. The Howards. Mr. Scott, he was a foreman at the city in Ann Arbor. The Shepherds, and then across the street, it was the Matthew family. There was a big old house they lived in. Then the Pattersons, Preacher Patterson. Then [inaudible]. She was really elegant, she lived down on the corner of Fourth Ave and Summit. She lived right across the street from Wheeler Park and she had this backyard. We [BACKGROUND] walked down Fourth Ave and got to her house. She had like a sink-in backyard, it sunk down, and she used to have lawn parties and we would just watch as different people come over. I can't think of that woman's name for nothing, right now. Of course in our Wheeler Park, on one side of the park, it used to be a slaughterhouse, Peter's Sausage. It had a fence around it. Then they had these pigs, there were these pigs and you could hear them squealing, and sometimes once in a while when they was loading the pigs up, one of the pigs would get loose.
  • [00:29:02] Heidi Morse: Yeah.
  • [00:29:03] Mary Hinton-Branner: Well, in the evening time they would start frying the cracklins so that they can get the grease off of the fat so that they can make the lard. They would fry up the skin off of them. We liked those cracklins and so we could easily go around there. We went by evening time we'd wait around there and when they start frying the cracklins and stuff [inaudible 00:29:47] We'd say, come on, give us some of them cracklins. Sometimes he would put a shoulder, he would put it up by the grill window. We tore half the wire off so we could get the cracklins. Sometimes he would bring them out to give them to us. And they were so good. I'll tell you, we was always thinking about getting candy and getting our little fruits and stuff like that.
  • [00:30:33] Heidi Morse: To circle back to Jones School. How would you describe the education that you got there? Did you feel prepared for junior high and high school?
  • [00:30:57] Mary Hinton-Branner: You know, reading and writing and cursive and all that stuff. When we got in the fourth grade they would teach us cursive. I think it could have been better, but we had the old school kind of thing.
  • [00:31:28] Heidi Morse: Do you recall whether there was any racial tension when you were a student there?
  • [00:31:48] Mary Hinton-Branner: We really didn't feel that that much, you know what I mean? Most of the kids, they were African Americans. We had some white kids who were in the classroom and stuff like that, we had Mexicans in there, Greeks in there. Summertimes, everybody would pick out a partner and once you get a partner there'd always be somebody left, you know. And the teachers would always be our partners, that type of thing. You know what I'm talking about? We knew, you know what I mean? But they were all good to us. Now that I think about, I think we could have learned better, but that's what they had.
  • [00:33:11] Heidi Morse: Do you remember when Jones School was shut down and what that was like?
  • [00:33:21] Mary Hinton-Branner: When they shut down, I was out of there then. My younger sister, that's when they closed it down. She was born in '59, I was going into junior high. And they sent them out to Pittsfield. When we went to junior high, there were a few things, but all in all we didn't have a whole bunch of racial tension. Everybody knew their place, and we just learned to work with it.
  • [00:34:45] Heidi Morse: How would you say the neighborhood around Jones school and the neighborhood you grew up in has changed since that time?
  • [00:34:56] Mary Hinton-Branner: Pardon?
  • [00:34:57] Heidi Morse: How would you say your neighborhood has changed? Since you were a child, the neighborhood you grew up in.
  • [00:35:22] Mary Hinton-Branner: We were few white people down there. But mostly everybody from that area, it was all African American people. Then all of a sudden-- My mother moved into the house we lived in. They told us that my father's boss bought the house. He told them not to move in the house until at nighttime. They moved in there at nighttime, and he paid his mortgage to his boss. What do they call it? They started building the expressway, so they said. They were telling Black people they'd sell their houses and that they would start making these--the first one was Colonial Square out there. When you get old you don't have to worry about it because they will keep up your grass in front. They started making townhouses and stuff like that. They shoveled snow, and stuff like that. Then they had a 235 plan out here on Ellsworth Road you can buy a house for $250. You put $250 down to pay your little mortgage. Your mortgage was no more than $300, $200 whatever it was, and so everybody started selling their houses down there. It was like a 20-year plan. For some reason, the white people wanted to come back in town. I think it was about taxes or whatever it was. At that time the minister, Mr. Carpenter, he used to tell the people go on and sell your houses and with other people, Wheeler and them told us, don't sell your houses. It was said that-- I had a girlfriend her uncle was in real estate and it was told to us, mum was the word, that once you sell the houses, do not sell anymore to African Americans. So a lot of people sold their houses and got a little money, and some of them went out there and got the townhouses. At the time everybody was saying, well we're going to get the town houses and move in there. And then they built the heights up there on Pontiac Trail, a lot of them got those. Then out on Ellsworth Road they had the 235 Plan, then they had Arbor Park, then they had Forest Hill. It was a whole bunch of townhouses, so everybody started gravitating to the townhouses. The African Americans then they quit buying houses and so they went up, what do we call it? Summit Street had a hill, okay? It was a whole bunch of African Americans living up that way too. We were down--they call us down in the valley and they were up on the hill part. It was African Americans all around there too. They finally got everybody to sell their houses and then the whites all came back down there and it got to a point nobody could buy any houses anymore down that way. It was a 20-year plan, but it worked. They got everybody out of there and it was two churches. It was the Methodist Church on Fourth Ave and then it was Second Baptist on Beakes Street. That was our neighborhood. We could walk to Sunday school or we could go to the Baptist church if we wanted to, or we could go to the Methodist church and we'd all go together. Finally, they sold out. Second Baptist sold their church [NOISE] and they moved up on the hill behind Mack School off of Miller Avenue. Bethel finally sold their church and they went up on Plum Street across the Broadway bridge up to the Pontiac Heights area. They built a church over there. So they got the churches out of there and eventually like I said everybody got to selling their house or even some of them got old or whatever. It was just a few left, my mother, the Jones's, and I can't think of the lady, Ms. Seeley, the Nelsons, and then the Dixons kept their house and the Calvert family kept theirs, and the Bakers. Mostly, all the other people sold their houses. Our house sits right on the corner of Fourth Ave and Beakes Street. My brother still lives in my mama's house. [BACKGROUND] I think that's all that's left down there. [OVERLAPPING]
  • [00:42:06] Heidi Morse: What were your parents' names?
  • [00:42:16] Mary Hinton-Branner: Jim and Mary Jones.
  • [00:42:22] Heidi Morse: The 20-year plan you were describing, you think that was specifically targeted towards people in your neighborhood to encourage them to move out?
  • [00:42:33] Mary Hinton-Branner: Yeah, they said that--What's his name? The one that own the Domino's, what's his name?
  • [00:42:43] Heidi Morse: I'm not sure.
  • [00:42:48] Mary Hinton-Branner: He owns Domino's Pizza. What's his name? Can't think of his name. Well, anyway, he had started this church over on Miller Street and he wanted to have that area down there for his church members so they could all be together in the neighborhood. He owns--it's out there on Plymouth Road, Domino's Farm. Have you ever heard of Domino's Farm?
  • [00:43:39] Heidi Morse: Yeah.
  • [00:43:41] Mary Hinton-Branner: Okay. He own Domino's Farm and he owned Domino's Pizza. I don't know why I can't say that man's name. But he ended up selling it. He wanted that area down there, and he was rich. A whole bunch of things happened about this church that he had started up and all these people went in. I don't know what was going on but anyway, they said he was the one that started that so he could get that area. So then after that, the City of Ann Arbor, they had public housing and they had them different sites. They had some on South Maple, had some off of Packard, had some off of Greene Road, and they were townhouses too. So a lot of them moved in there and stuff like that. The children didn't actually want to buy houses, you know what I mean? And then they had Georgetown, and that was off of Packard too. They built Georgetown. Like I said, they had, they called it the 235 plan that was off of Ellsworth Road. They would be in four-bedroom little houses and land, and people bought them like hotcakes. Then all of a sudden in the neighborhood, everybody started moving out from Fifth Ave. Either dying out or moving out. Ms. [inaudible 00:45:48] was down the street on the far end of Beakes Street. She was right up from the old farmer's market. I'm talking about the old farmer's market. It's still there. Mum was the word not to sell anything back to the African American people. So that's how they basically got everybody out there and nobody can build anything but the Caucasians. Then the taxes got real high and stuff like that. Now, Phil was smart and bought houses over in Georgetown. But they wanted the downtown. You also want to know about Jones School, right? [LAUGHTER]
  • [00:46:59] Heidi Morse: Well, that's where we started, but it's about the neighborhood too, this is really important. Thank you for sharing that. Because I think this is a part of Ann Arbor's history that's not as well known as it ought to be.
  • [00:47:23] Mary Hinton-Branner: Now Fourth Avenue, Ann Street? It had a Kroger store there, they had a couple of bars there, they had a pool room, they had a restaurant, that whole street, and they had barbershops all around that way. There was a whole lot of Black people who had businesses up there too when I was growing up.
  • [00:47:54] Heidi Morse: Yeah. Do you remember any in particular?
  • [00:47:58] Mary Hinton-Branner: Huh?
  • [00:48:01] Heidi Morse: Do you remember particular business names?
  • [00:48:07] Mary Hinton-Branner: People that owned business up there? Let me see. Ms. Sadie had a beauty parlor there. Sanford, he had a shoe shining business there, sell shoes, and a cleaners, I think they had a cleaners. The Rosses, they ran the restaurant on Ann Street. Dave Keaton, he ran the bar. They had a Kroger store right on the corner. All Black women worked in there, ran the cash register. Johnnie Rush, he had a barber shop up there. Yeah, I can even tell you how our family got there too.
  • [00:49:19] Heidi Morse: Yeah, go ahead.
  • [00:49:22] Mary Hinton-Branner: It was an uncle, his name was Uncle Nel and aunt Ruby. Sometimes, my uncle, I don't know, he would take off and jump on a bus stop and get on the train and ride all the way up here. So with the railroad station and all that down that way on Depot Street and all that, the train station, well, he would get off there. He would see the park and he would see the neighborhood and stuff like that. He looked up Summit, they call it, it was the Fourth Ave hill. He had to get up the hill up Fourth Ave. He would always look up there and he said, "Dang, I don't see no Black people around here." So someone told him, go up that hill. He went up the hill and he kept on going and when he went up to the hill, he got to Ann Street and he's seen all the Black people and stuff. When he went up the hill, start seeing Black people too. He liked it, he said, "This place is so pretty." He told my auntie about it. He met people and stuff. He went back down to Mississippi and got my auntie and brought her up here. So they got a place up here. My auntie, it was my father's sister, was telling my mama then about it. She want to leave down South and she wanted to come up here. But what she did is she went to Chicago. Her auntie, she said, she didn't like nothing about Chicago, they live in big tenements. It was too big of a city for her. So my dad came up here. She went first and then he came behind when he couldn't find no job in Chicago. My mom said, "We're going back down South." My auntie said, I'll tell you what, she said, "We're going to come over and pick you up, and we're going to bring you to Ann Arbor. If you don't like it in Ann Arbor, we will take you back down South." When she brought my mother over here, they came in at night time. When she got up and she'd seen Ann Arbor, she didn't want to leave. She loved it. Because Ann Arbor, that's why our name Ann Arbor because we had arbors, the trees, and all that stuff. It was real pretty. The trees and stuff like that, it was nice, and she just fell in love. My father, he went up at the campus. Somebody told him about a job as a dishwasher so my father started washing dishes, and before it was over, he had been a chef cooking up there.
  • [00:52:55] Heidi Morse: That's a great story.
  • [00:52:57] Mary Hinton-Branner: Yeah. I had a wonderful childhood, I have to tell you that. I had a mother and father, and it was just nice.
  • [00:53:12] Heidi Morse: What was your aunt and uncle's last name?
  • [00:53:27] Mary Hinton-Branner: His name was Nel. Let me see. We called him Uncle Nel but his name was Harrington.
  • [00:53:37] Heidi Morse: It's okay if you don't remember.
  • [00:53:44] Mary Hinton-Branner: No, I can't remember. Her name was Ruby, his name was John. You know what? I think it was John Harrington. That's right. That was his name. John Harrington and Ruby Harrington, that's what it was. But we called him Uncle Nel.
  • [00:54:07] Heidi Morse: Well, I just want to thank you so much for your time today and sharing your memories. Is there anything else you'd like to add?
  • [00:54:27] Mary Hinton-Branner: I want you to tell you about how the Ann Arbor Art Fair started, if you want me to tell you about that?
  • [00:54:34] Heidi Morse: Okay.
  • [00:54:37] Mary Hinton-Branner: Downtown Ann Arbor. They had Sears, they had Kline's, they had the dime store, Kresge's. Every year they would have a sale, and all the merchants would put their stuff out on the sidewalk for sale. Selling different things they want to sell and give. It started getting bigger and bigger and then all of a sudden, people wanted to start bringing stuff in there and that's how it started the arts here. They would bring their arts and crafts and selling stuff and everybody even in the shopping centers, they would have it was the same week. The 15th of July they used to have it, and everybody would have everything on sale. I think it was because they always wanted to get rid of some of the stores there and then all of a sudden, they got it where they started selling booths, so people could bring their stuff in anytime and that's how the Art Fair started. [NOISE]
  • [00:56:00] Heidi Morse: Were you a part of that?
  • [00:56:03] Mary Hinton-Branner: I would go up there and stuff and years later I had a little thing. I used to sell candles and different stuff like that, but that's how it started and it just got bigger and bigger.
  • [00:56:18] Heidi Morse: It's certainly become a tradition.
  • [00:56:21] Mary Hinton-Branner: Yeah, it's the same as it started. They used to call it the Black businesses. They had that every year too. It would be the African American Festival then, because they would recognize the Black businesses that had been here too, it was hard on them, because they owned a lot of the buildings around there where Ann Street was. Did I tell you about Ann street bars and stuff? That's where the Black people had their businesses and stuff. That's how they started the African American Art Festival there too. I used to be a part of that, because I had a drill team and I ran a youth club called New Generation, and I got the idea from Ms. Ellis and them. You remember I told you about the Dunbar Center? And I ran that for seven years.
  • [00:57:17] Heidi Morse: Wow.
  • [00:57:18] Mary Hinton-Branner: Yes, I sure did and I used to have my drill team. Have you ever heard of the Ann Arbor Dukes?
  • [00:57:28] Heidi Morse: I have.
  • [00:57:28] Mary Hinton-Branner: It was a drill team. This drill team was so good. Have you ever heard of the Ed Sullivan show?
  • [00:57:33] Heidi Morse: Yeah.
  • [00:57:34] Mary Hinton-Branner: Their drill team was so good they ended up going on Ed Sullivan's show.
  • [00:57:46] Heidi Morse: Really?
  • [00:57:48] Mary Hinton-Branner: Yeah. [LAUGHTER] They sure would. One of the kids, Deon Jackson, have you've heard about the song, "Love Makes The World Go Around"? He lived right down the street from us. They're playing that song right now and there was Deon Jackson, and he loved to sing all the time, and that's when they had moved just down by the Center, to the Community Center, down there on Main Street. Do you remember that? [BACKGROUND] Huh? [BACKGROUND]
  • [00:58:32] Heidi Morse: Yeah.
  • [00:58:33] Mary Hinton-Branner: Okay, we used to walk down there and for some reason his dressing was good we'd all walked down there, and Deon for some reason he would always come, and he was always singing. "Be gone Deon," and he was singing and what it was, was one of the girls that he liked, she was the one telling him when we was going to be going down by the center. [LAUGHTER] I mean down to the Community Center, and he would be following behind, singing, and when he made the song, some of us he put in the song. Sure did.
  • [00:59:21] Heidi Morse: Wow. [LAUGHTER]
  • [00:59:21] Mary Hinton-Branner: Yeah, and another one was Deon Jackson and Barbara Lewis, we knew her brother and stuff. "Hello Stranger." She made the song too. She made the album too, and hers was a hit. They're still playing the old classics. They still play them, [BACKGROUND] but you know what, I tell you, I wouldn't change anything from where I was raised and stuff like that. I really wouldn't. I enjoyed my childhood. It was nice. [BACKGROUND] [OVERLAPPING] We would go and see Detroit and they would always say, "Y'all talk like white people." [LAUGHTER] They would, I'm serious. [LAUGHTER] I remember I used to go to Brooklyn, New York, it was so funny. I'd tell them I come from Ann Arbor. "Ann Arbor? Where is that?" I'd show them about 50 miles from Detroit. "Oh, we've heard of Detroit." [LAUGHTER] I guess I'd really just say that, and then I would probably start saying, "You know U of M football?" "Oh, yeah." "Well I live in that town." It's a college town. [LAUGHTER] It was so funny. [BACKGROUND] I learned a lot of things, and I used them. You remember I told you about the coloring contest?
  • [01:01:16] Heidi Morse: Yeah.
  • [01:01:17] Mary Hinton-Branner: I was a grandmother and grandmothers would come to the school and help the teachers with the kids, foster grandparents program, and I would color with the kids. I would trace around there like that, and she would say that, "You see how grandmother did her picture?" I say, "Do you know how hard I worked and did this stuff to get that candy?" I'd end up drawing and ended up learning how to draw from there. [BACKGROUND]. [OVERLAPPING].
  • [01:01:57] Heidi Morse: You learnt something.
  • [01:01:59] Mary Hinton-Branner: Yeah, I started painting. I sold some of my pictures too. They've been calling me an abstract painter. I drew Ann Street too.
  • [01:02:19] Heidi Morse: Oh, really?
  • [01:02:20] Mary Hinton-Branner: Yeah. Somebody came over to the house and said, "That looks familiar. I know it," and I said, "That's Ann Street. " "Yeah, I know that's what it is. Ann Street. "Yes, I drew it." [BACKGROUND] Like I said I have a lot of fun-time memories. [BACKGROUND]
  • [01:02:44] Heidi Morse: Well, thank you so much. I really appreciate being able to hear your memories and it's just really valuable to record this experience.
  • [01:02:58] Mary Hinton-Branner: I'm from the Jones family. I think we'd had all the kids. Twelve kids. [LAUGHTER] That's my maiden name.