Press enter after choosing selection

There Went The Neighborhood - Studio Interview: Theresa (Dixon) Campbell

When: August 23, 2021

Theresa (Dixon) Campbell attended Jones School from 1957 to 1965, and she recalls being involved in Black student activism at Huron High School. She shares memories of her parents, William and Minnie Dixon, who did custodial work and owned a home in “The Old Neighborhood.”

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: We have Theresa Campbell [NOISE]. Let's have you start with your full name and when you were born.
  • [00:00:16] THERESA CAMPBELL: Long name, Theresa Yvonne Dixon Bennett Campbell. I was born in the end of 1951.
  • [00:00:30] DONALD HARRISON: Where were you born and where did you grow up?
  • [00:00:34] THERESA CAMPBELL: I was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan, at St. Joe's Hospital, and I grew up in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
  • [00:00:41] DONALD HARRISON: Tell me about where you grew up. Where did you grow up specifically? What was that? How would you describe it?
  • [00:00:47] THERESA CAMPBELL: I grew up on North Fourth Avenue and right down the street from the Farmers Market, which was really a farmer's market then, and the Farm Bureau. It was like the tractor stores they have now, but it was a real farmers market. They had like home goods, and stuff they picked from the gardens, and stuff like that. I grew up down the street from that. The Dunbar was up the street from me, and which is now Wheeler Park, but down the street was the park. Next to the park was where they slaughtered pigs and we could hear the pigs being slaughtered. But that was our playground. That's where we were, that was the park. We didn't realize we didn't have a park as nice as some of the other parks in the white neighborhoods, but that was a park. In the wintertime, there was roller skating, and in summertime, we were on swings and people played basketball and stuff down there. That's the area I grew up in. After school, we'd play outside and ride bikes and roller skate up and down the street. It was a really great community, it really was. The mothers always stuck together. My mother was really big on PTAs, PTO, she was a Boy Scout leader, she was a Brownie leader. She always was really, really involved in school functions, and she had the other parents, she would do meetings at her house sometime. That was where I grew up. It was a happy neighborhood. This is where we grew up. We'd be able to walk downtown on the weekends after we had our housework done. We had a very regimented household. You don't leave the house unless your bed's made up, you had all the dishes done. We had dinner at a certain time, I think about five or six o'clock, couldn't go outdoors until the dishes were done. But we grew up in a happy neighborhood. But a lot of parents were like that. You wouldn't see a lot of people out on the streets at dinnertime because everybody had dinner at that time. It was just very nice neighborhood. I enjoyed it.
  • [00:03:26] DONALD HARRISON: Theresa, what were your parents' names, and what did they do for work?
  • [00:03:31] THERESA CAMPBELL: My mother's name was Minnie Dixon, my father's name was William Dixon; and my father was custodial worker, and my mother cleaned houses and cleaned apartments. That's how we lived. He was a man's man. He made sure that the house was taken care of. We owned our home, which he was very proud of, and my mother would go to work in the daytime. When I was young and little, my father would stay home during the day and babysit me, and my mother, when she would come home, we'd all eat dinner together, and then dad would go to work at night and clean for Atwell-Hicks and Company. That's who he cleaned for. Like I said, my mother had different people that she cleaned houses for. I mean, there's things that other people in my family remember and I don't, because I would go to work with her a lot and help her clean. She cleaned down at a lumber company, I would go down there with her and clean because she pulled me away from my sister and I, because we would argue a lot and she didn't leave us at home [LAUGHTER] together, and she-- [OVERLAPPING]
  • [00:04:47] DONALD HARRISON: What was that like, Theresa? You probably got to see an interesting [OVERLAPPING] perspective of that. [OVERLAPPING]
  • [00:04:51] THERESA CAMPBELL: Yeah. I went to a lot of jobs with her, and that's how I made my extra money when I got older, I would clean with my mother. But I got a lot of opportunities that the people that she cleaned for gave her some opportunities that some of the other kids in my neighborhood didn't have. For instance, when it came to middle school when I went to Slauson, I got to do a lot of fencing. Kids then didn't do fencing. I loved fencing and I got to fence with some people at the U of M and I loved it, but it got to be really expensive. We got perks from a lot of people that she cleaned for.
  • [00:05:44] DONALD HARRISON: When you think back to your childhood growing up in that area, what jumps to mind the most? What are the things that, you ran through a bunch of things, but are there any sounds, smells, activities, or stories?
  • [00:06:00] THERESA CAMPBELL: Oh my gosh, I loved to be outside and work outside with my dad. He didn't own the property across the street, but they let him have this garden, and I'd love to sit and garden with him, and I loved the backyard. I liked the backyard because our backyard had all type of fruit trees. My dad loved a nice backyard with flowers and everything. I just remember that as a kid, we had backyards and we had a brick pit where my father and mom would cook the food. Every Sunday, we'd always have big family meals. It was always the big family meals, I remember that it was just family. Like I said, the gardening, and just the different type of stuff. But when I was really small, I remember we had chickens. When a city ordinance came that you had to get the chickens out of the yard, they had to butcher all those chickens. One of the things I remember at the back of my head, this is gross, but my father had chopped a chicken's head off and the chicken kept running [LAUGHTER]. I didn't know what that was. My dad told me, l said, "What's that? What's that?" He goes, "He just doesn't want to forget about his self anymore. He's just gone, he's just running around." He said, "He'll pass out in a minute. He'll forget he even has a head," and I'll go, "Oh." That was some of the things I remember back then, just silly stuff like that.
  • [00:07:41] DONALD HARRISON: I'm curious, so Summit Park is the park right over there, [OVERLAPPING] which was renamed Wheeler Park.
  • [00:07:43] THERESA CAMPBELL: Yes.
  • [00:07:47] DONALD HARRISON: For you to go down there and play, or ice skate, or any of these activities [OVERLAPPING]
  • [00:07:49] THERESA CAMPBELL: Right.
  • [00:07:51] DONALD HARRISON: [OVERLAPPING] There was a junkyard and a slaughterhouse. Did that affect you a lot?
  • [00:07:58] THERESA CAMPBELL: That didn't bother me because that was the norm. I mean, what else would we know. We had a little shack that you can change your skates or something in. It wasn't a house that you can change your shoes or a nice place you could sit. There was a little shack, and I think there was a burner or something in there. That was just the norm. If we got too cold, we'd go home and get warmed up and maybe come back out. But that was like the norm. That slaughterhouse we called it a slaughterhouse, that was no biggie.
  • [00:08:38] DONALD HARRISON: As far as Jones School, [OVERLAPPING] I'm curious to hear your memories of that. Do you remember when you went there?
  • [00:08:47] THERESA CAMPBELL: Oh, my gosh.
  • [00:08:47] DONALD HARRISON: Was it K through sixth grade?
  • [00:08:49] THERESA CAMPBELL: Yeah.
  • [00:08:49] DONALD HARRISON: Do you remember what years roughly? How would you describe what you remember of Jones?
  • [00:08:55] THERESA CAMPBELL: Jones, oh, my God. How would I describe Jones School? I think my sister had a different twist on it than I did. It was all right. There are some teachers that I remember that were very nice and there are some teachers that were rude, and I didn't know why they were so rude. I had some teachers that were really interested in us learning. One of my favorite teachers, I remember this, was my kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Blue. She was always so kind and so sweet. She would always hug on us and rub on us, and stuff, and talk, and if we cried or were sad, she said, "Well, you're having a bad time right now". She was just really mild and easy going. She was one of my favorite teachers. Some of the other teachers that I didn't really like was Mrs. Fox. She wanted to do an experiment with hair. She wanted to pull our hair and let us know why it was so different from hers, like it was a bad thing. Well, my mother didn't have it. My mother really went off on her and my mother went off on the principal too, because she asked as warning the principal, "How do you feel about--" back then, the word was "colored people or Negroes. " He said, "Well, I'm a little prejudiced, but I'm learning not to be". Oh, yeah, he said that. I had good and bad times there.
  • [00:10:45] DONALD HARRISON: As a kid, and I think we were figuring out the years for you and your sister Jean. Do you remember what years you would have been there, would it have been '57-'62?
  • [00:11:05] THERESA CAMPBELL: I think she was two grades ahead of me. I do believe '57-'62. I think it was that. One of the things I really remember, in sixth grade, they didn't prepare us for middle school at all. It was a shock treatment. They did not prepare us for middle school as far as anything, socially or anything. When I got to Slauson it was like a shock treatment to me. I wasn't prepared for middle school at all. I remember one of the counselors said to me, "Well, when you go to high school, we'll just put you in general, you don't want to go to college." He said that to me, and I remember that. I asked him, "Why wouldn't I want to go to college?" He said, "You probably have no interest in that."
  • [00:12:13] DONALD HARRISON: Did you feel this was the experience of other kids that you knew from Jones, or did you feel you got spread out from them? Did you go there with a lot of kids from Jones?
  • [00:12:23] THERESA CAMPBELL: Yeah. Most of the kids were from Jones from what I understand. I think I spoke to you about this, some of the teachers treated me, and I don't know what my sister's experience is, differently than they would some of the kids that really didn't have much in the neighborhood. They would pick me for things that they wouldn't pick the kids for. They would let me go to the office to pick up stuff for them more. I noticed that that was that type of segregation going on. Since there weren't a lot of white students in there. There were like one or two white students, but they segregated the kids that they didn't think had as much as some of the kids that they did. They segregated us for the way in which parents were involved too, like the Mr. and Mrs. McFadden. Mr. McFadden was really involved and my mother was really involved. Some of the other parents were really involved, but they, I don't want to say treated us better, but they treated us different than some of the other kids that didn't have. That was a certain type of segregation going on too. With that happening, then I had problems with the kids like that because then I would get bullied.
  • [00:13:46] DONALD HARRISON: I was going to ask you what it was like as far as the students you were with in terms of, when you were there was it mostly Black, was it pretty mixed in terms of ethnicity, how would you describe it? And then was there tension?
  • [00:14:03] THERESA CAMPBELL: It was mostly Black, but there was tension to a certain degree. Like I said before, I was getting bullied or people would laugh at me, about, well, she thinks she's better. I would get this "She thinks she's better than us". My mother believed in dressing us and our mother made a lot of our clothing and stuff, and tried to keep us up as far as appearance and personal hygiene and everything. She was big on that. There were some kids that would try to mess with me because of that. Like I said, it wasn't just because they did it, it was teachers also that put us in different classes and different groups. That's the feel I got. Like I said, my parents were strict, so there was certain times we had to be in, certain places we couldn't go. I know that we couldn't go roller skating. My mother iced that because it was outside of Ann Arbor. She wouldn't let me do that and I wanted to do that. She wouldn't. We could go to the Community Center, but I had to have my brother, I had to have my sister with me. I couldn't walk with a group of kids. I wasn't allowed to do that because she didn't like the group of kids that were in my classroom. My sister had, I don't want to say, I don't like to use the word better, but she had a more solid group of people that she hung around with and so did my brother. I had some kids in there that got to do a little more than I did. I don't like to put a name on it, but they got to do a little more and they would tease me about that.
  • [00:15:58] DONALD HARRISON: In terms of the students, it mostly Black. The teachers and the administration, what was that like when you were there?
  • [00:16:10] THERESA CAMPBELL: They were all white. I can't remember. The only two Black people that were there were the lunch lady, and I can't remember the name, and the custodial guy, Mr. Perry.
  • [00:16:23] OMER JEAN WINBORN: Ms. Lynn. No, no.
  • [00:16:30] THERESA CAMPBELL: Ms. Lee. Whatever. I can't think of her name. Mr. Perry would always pull the young guys aside if they were really acting up and saying something, or he would go to our parents and say something. He was the only Black role model for young men there. The only one. We had our parents, but we didn't have anybody in school that were people of color. Back then you didn't give it a second thought. If I had a Black teacher back then, I would've been amazed that, "Wow, we got this Black teacher here". No, I didn't have.
  • [00:17:14] DONALD HARRISON: It was Mr. Perry, do you think was a good role model, was he looked up to?
  • [00:17:19] THERESA CAMPBELL: Yeah, he was looked up to. He was a good role model. There was no gray area for Mr. Perry. If you're acting up, he was a big guy anyway, and there would be. He was looked up to, everybody liked him.
  • [00:17:36] DONALD HARRISON: Do you remember any activities that stood out from Jones, as far as anything? Violin?
  • [00:17:45] THERESA CAMPBELL: Yeah. Yeah, I love to play the violin. I played a bit at Angel Hall. I like to sing too, I sang up there at Angel Hall. Like my father, I'll bring him in again, he loved music and he was really glad that I continued on with music for a few years and that's where I remember it and I cannot think of my music teacher, but he was really hell bent on me learning and gave us different types of music to listen to. Still today I love to hear Pavarotti sing, I love Mozart and Beethoven. We would be able to go to different types of musicals and stuff like that and I like stuff like that. My father, he said music is for everybody and he taught us, we would play all types of music in the house. That's what I remember about dad is the music. That was my getaway, and I could go to the music class and other kids weren't going so that's what I liked.
  • [00:19:00] DONALD HARRISON: You said, your sister also said your mom was very involved in the school?
  • [00:19:04] THERESA CAMPBELL: Oh, yes. Yes.
  • [00:19:08] DONALD HARRISON: What was her impression of the school, the teachers? Do you know what that was? Would she have shared that then or when you were older?
  • [00:19:18] THERESA CAMPBELL: Maybe she talked to my sister but when she was upset with the teacher, she would say, "I'm going to talk to him." She wasn't the kind of mother say, "Yes, I'm going to do this and that," and fuzzed at the teachers in front of us. I never knew what she said to the teachers. She would always keep that private. But we knew if there was any problems, she would be there for us because that's the way she was. She would get her little purse and walk on up to school and have a little private meeting. My father didn't do that much with the schools like my mother did. He wasn't as involved with it. He kept the household going. That was his thing, to keep the household going.
  • [00:20:01] DONALD HARRISON: So you wouldn't probably have a sense of whether or not she thought you were getting a good enough education?
  • [00:20:07] THERESA CAMPBELL: She was concerned about the education. They both were concerned about the education because they would ask me, "What did you do in school today?" I would say--because I wasn't as into the reading and the math and all these stuff--I would always talk about, "Well, I went and I played my violin and Mr. so and so liked my violin." If there was something that I liked to read, if there was a book that I really liked I would talk to my mother about the book and stuff. They were interested in our education. They were hell bent on us getting an education.
  • [00:20:48] DONALD HARRISON: Do you remember, Theresa, because you'd already moved on to middle school and then this Jones report comes out [OVERLAPPING] and it shows it's not giving as good an education. It was a news story, and then it was closed.
  • [00:21:02] THERESA CAMPBELL: Right.
  • [00:21:02] DONALD HARRISON: Do you remember that? Do you remember what you would have thought then or does anything-- [OVERLAPPING]
  • [00:21:07] THERESA CAMPBELL: I don't remember but I remember my sister coming home and I said, "Paula, how was school?" and she goes, "It was all right. People don't like me there." Because there were parents, white parents, that didn't want the Black students there. And she remembers, I think she said something about signs or something like that, that the parents were protesting and she wasn't happy about it at all, at one time going to school there. But it's like my father or mother would say, "You take what you can get and build on that," and that's what she did. She just built her own little world and had her own little friends and stuff and she was all right. But at first she wasn't happy about it because there were days she would wake up and I'd say, "You going to school?" She said, "I just really don't want to go." But she would go and she figured it out.
  • [00:22:05] DONALD HARRISON: Do you know, when they closed Jones, where she went to?
  • [00:22:11] THERESA CAMPBELL: What school she went to?
  • [00:22:12] DONALD HARRISON: After that.
  • [00:22:13] THERESA CAMPBELL: Pattengill, no.
  • [00:22:15] OMER JEAN WINBORN: Pittsfield.
  • [00:22:17] THERESA CAMPBELL: I think that was the name of it. Pattengill in Pittsfield township.
  • [00:22:22] DONALD HARRISON: Maybe real quick, run me through the schools you went to, Theresa.
  • [00:22:25] THERESA CAMPBELL: I went to Jones, I went to Slauson, then I was the first graduating class inside of Huron High. I went to Pioneer for two years and then I graduated from Huron High.
  • [00:22:39] DONALD HARRISON: Why the switch? You switched, what was the reason for switching?
  • [00:22:44] THERESA CAMPBELL: Well, they had to build it. Pioneer was the only school. They had to build it and while they were building Huron High, I had to go to school in the evening because we were a split shift. I was at school till six or seven o'clock. Then I worked. I worked for Neil Staebler. He was a congressman or something like that. I worked for him and I did filing and stuff for him, one of my first real jobs. I worked for him. No, it wasn't. Yeah, it was the first real job.
  • [00:23:16] DONALD HARRISON: Maybe give me a quick career trajectory after that. Any other schooling or any other notable jobs that you [OVERLAPPING]
  • [00:23:23] THERESA CAMPBELL: Well, after I graduated, I went to Washtenaw for a while and then I worked at Chrysler at a factory for like a year. Found out I couldn't handle factory, didn't like it. I got married for a bit [LAUGHTER]. And then after that, down the line, I started working for Pfizer. My first job at Pfizer was, because they just called temporary service call, "Can you come in and deliver documents?" I said sure, I could do that. Five dollars an hour, I'll do anything. I delivered documents and long story short, I ended up managing print and graphic, the print side of it, and then traveling and teaching in-house customer service, and printing off stuff for the FDA, and getting some awards, and taking some classes at U of M for management and stuff. I took some classes, got some credit. Then I retired from there after they closed down Pfizer.
  • [00:24:32] DONALD HARRISON: So that coincided with your retirement?
  • [00:24:34] THERESA CAMPBELL: Yeah. Well, when I came back from California, I lived in La Jolla for a while working with them, downsizing people and equipment. I only had to downsize one person and I saved them millions of dollars for doing that with the equipment and the people. I forgot what I was saying here. [LAUGHTER].
  • [00:24:58] DONALD HARRISON: That's great. To give a sense for us, you came back [OVERLAPPING] and you retired after this.
  • [00:25:01] THERESA CAMPBELL: I came back and when I came back, they made this big announcement. But I knew that was going to happen because they phoned and warned me in La Jolla. This is what's going to happen, but the bosses want you to get your full retirement and you're good to go. They said you could either take it or you can move into a lateral position and I took it because I didn't want to move into a lateral position because you see what happened, they moved out and stuff just didn't work out for some people but it worked out for me.
  • [00:25:41] DONALD HARRISON: What year did you graduate from Huron?
  • [00:25:44] THERESA CAMPBELL: '70. 1970.
  • [00:25:47] DONALD HARRISON: And Theresa, that period of the late '60s, you're in middle school and high school, and it becomes much more volatile in terms of race and rioting in Detroit and stories in the Ann Arbor News talk about possible riots here and things [OVERLAPPING].
  • [00:26:04] THERESA CAMPBELL: At Huron High, there was a big shut down because the Black students weren't treated fair, and the white students were treated fair. There were no Black cheerleaders. Almost half the team on basketball team was Black. Just the way the teachers and the counselors were handling stuff, they started bringing Black teachers in there. It was a rough time then. But I became a cheerleader after they announced that we were going to have some cheerleaders on here that represent everybody. I don't know. It took its toll on some of the people. But then, it was going on like my last year, second to last year, or something like that. I just made the best of what we had and just went for it.
  • [00:27:14] DONALD HARRISON: When you look back at the neighborhood you grew up in, did you start to see that change at a certain point? Can you remember when and how, and for better or for worse, in some ways there were improvements to the park, right?
  • [00:27:30] THERESA CAMPBELL: There was an improvement at Wheeler Park. The Community Center was getting known. There was a few more things going on there. But I noticed people were starting to build up around us. In the back of my mind, I was wondering if they're building up so much around us, and they're seeing that this is a great neighborhood. People could walk and the farmers market was changing, and then it was Community High. There were waiting lists to get into Community High when I got older. I've seen people start selling their homes, and it was just sad. Because like my sister said, they never took account of the history that was there before. It was just like, let's just clean it up, fix the houses up, put some condos down the streets. We'll start at $200,000 - $300,000. Knocked down the old churches. That Methodist AME Church that was knocked down, and you see all those condos down the street. I drove down there a year ago, and I just almost started crying. Because there's nothing, no landmark there to say that this was a true great Black neighborhood where people were involved, we shared. When there were new families that moved in, my mother and other women said, let's make sure they have enough clothes, food, stuff like that. I mean, it was a great neighborhood, and now it's just totally strange. It just reminds me of, I don't know who likes New York and all this brick and all this--no personality to me, nothing. So, I don't know.
  • [00:29:33] DONALD HARRISON: When you think back on that neighborhood. Fourth Avenue, let's see, you were right on Fourth.
  • [00:29:40] THERESA CAMPBELL: Yes. Right in the hub.
  • [00:29:41] DONALD HARRISON: Right in the hub?
  • [00:29:42] THERESA CAMPBELL: Yes.
  • [00:29:43] DONALD HARRISON: Can you describe what that was like because from what I understand that was like the heart of the Black Business District?
  • [00:29:49] THERESA CAMPBELL: It was. My cousin had a barbershop. Ann Street was Black-owned. My cousin had the barbershop there and that's where my dad would go. He got to go out on a Saturday night down to his local waterhole [LAUGHTER], his beer place. I mean, it was comforting to just be there and have that. Tailors. There was a tailor shop down the street and just different stuff, and all that just got wiped away. It all got wiped away. We had little grocery stores down there, and that's some restaurant now, I forgot what it was. It would have been nice to keep a nice little neighborhood grocery store, and they don't have that anymore.
  • [00:30:42] DONALD HARRISON: It's interesting because part of what happened was due to segregation, redlining and these were the only neighborhoods that you could live in or own a business in. In many ways, that's generally considered not a good situation to have segregation like that. But then as that started to change, then you also have the flip side of the community certainly gets split apart. I guess I'm curious to hear your opinion of that.
  • [00:31:15] THERESA CAMPBELL: My opinion of [OVERLAPPING]
  • [00:31:16] DONALD HARRISON: Or your experience of the segregation of Ann Arbor. Did it feel segregated, or was that something growing up there that you didn't think about that much?
  • [00:31:28] THERESA CAMPBELL: Growing up, when I was younger, I didn't think about that. But the older I got, I remember that because-- I can't remember the story fully. My sister Jean worked at Kresge's. She worked at the soda fountain, or whatever you call that. I think that Black people had to sit at a certain spot, and then white people sat at their spot. There was something that Jean came home and would say, and I said, and I didn't realize like, "Wow, this is crazy." When I got into high school, that's when I started really paying attention. Not as much as in middle school, but in high school, I started paying attention to like Martin Luther King and Malcolm X and stuff like that. At Community Center, we had an NAACP teen group, which was very active. We were active in a lot of things in a very positive way. I start realizing a lot of things like, "Wow, this is happening right here." I didn't realize that. I don't know if I was protected from that. When you're young, some things you just don't notice because I was in the neighborhood playing with friends, excuse me, doing what I usually do until I got in high school and stuff. I was with my friend in high school, Florence. She's in TV, she's a talk show person a lot, now in New York. We started realizing a lot of things, and she would say "Theresa wake up. This is what's going on. Don't you see, this is what's going on here." Then I started getting more active into that and being a little more concerned about what's going on and what's going to happen to our neighborhood. It was happening when I was wondering what's going on, what's happening. People were moving out and getting put out of their homes. I guess we were blessed and lucky to be owners of our home, as some people rented homes.
  • [00:33:58] DONALD HARRISON: Theresa, again, you can't speak for your parents, but you grew up with them and you can give your perspective on their involvement in the community. They were pretty connected, it sounds like, within the community. Then, was everybody pretty aligned with each other, or was there a lot of disagreement as far as the schools and things like that?
  • [00:34:26] THERESA CAMPBELL: You mean the parents pretty aligned? The parents were pretty aligned with each other. They really were. I mean, I knew they had meetings and stuff on what was going on. I don't know how my mother felt about my sister being bused, but she was involved in all that. I don't know to what extent she was involved in that, or what extent some of the parents. But like I said, the parents would always come. Our house was somewhat like the hub, and I'm going to jump on something and not try to jump out of it. But even when my kids were going to school and I lived in the area, my mother made sure that the bus stopped at her house. All the kids would get off, and she had treats for all the kids, and she made sure the kids were treated right, and the bus driver was treated right, and the kids acted right. That's how my mother was always involved like that. They were pretty involved in the neighborhood stuff. We went to church all day Sunday, all day long. [LAUGHTER] All day long. I wasn't a happy camper about that. We were involved in church a bit, and during the week too. Some parents went down the street at Methodist, and we went to Bethel. But everybody went to church on Sundays. That was it.
  • [00:35:51] OMER JEAN WINBORN: It was one church at one time. The Baptists and the Methodists.
  • [00:35:56] THERESA CAMPBELL: I remember on Sundays we'd get to go to the movies. My father had us lined up because 50 cents would pay for everything. Thirty cents to get into movies and 20 cents for candy and popcorn, and we got that. We would go to the movies, and my parents said you can go at this time. All the brothers and sisters. We were not allowed to go by ourselves. We went to the movies and then we came home and that was our Sunday after church. Like I said, my parents are all involved. You would see parents sitting around on the porches talking to each other. We had respectability in that neighborhood because if Mrs. Jones was to say something to me and reprimand me, and I would go home to my mother and tell her, my mother would go, ''Good. She reprimanded you. She was supposed to, and don't you dare talk back to her again.'' We all had to have respect for everybody, all the parents in the neighborhood. That was it. You know how parents get mad at people for saying something to their kids, or the teacher saying something? My mother said, ''Well, the teacher should have said that. Don't come and tell me what a teacher said.'' But if she thought that teacher did something wrong, she wouldn't start fussing. She says, ''Okay,'' and I know that she would have gone and talked to the teacher and she would discuss that with my father, and since he did work as custodial in the evening and he did stuff during the day, she would keep him informed about what was going on.
  • [00:37:38] DONALD HARRISON: Sounds pretty unique to have that close-knit of a community.
  • [00:37:42] THERESA CAMPBELL: Yeah.
  • [00:37:43] DONALD HARRISON: Again, I grew up in an era where you might not know a neighbor five doors down [OVERLAPPING].
  • [00:37:48] THERESA CAMPBELL: Oh no, we knew everybody. Everybody knew everybody, and that's the way it was.
  • [00:37:55] DONALD HARRISON: How you describe the neighborhood, just in terms of the diversity, the ethnicity? Was it mostly Black, almost all Black, I hear there was maybe some Greek mixing in at different times?
  • [00:38:09] THERESA CAMPBELL: There were Greeks, you know, a different time, and our neighborhood was all Black, but anybody that was non-Black, my mother would always include them. I had two friends named Jenny Mitchell and Nadia, and Nadia, I don't know if she was Arabic because it didn't dawn on me then. Jenny was the only white girl that went to Jones School all the way through. And I talk to Jenny to this day, and she's still in the neighborhood, and she knew my father. She would actually go to my father's job in the evening and talk to my father. She said, "I remember Theresa--" She told me this when I talked to her, not even a year ago. She was talking to my dad, and I have to use this word, I'm sorry. But this white man walked up to her and said, ''You know that nigger?'' She said, "That's not--what is that, a nigger?" She said, "That's Mr. Dixon." She said that man was taken aback by what she said, and she said, ''I didn't know what he meant, because we weren't allowed to use those words and be like that." We were allowed to have any kind of friends. Anybody we wanted to come over to my house, my parents pushed that and opened the door for anybody to come in and welcome anybody. They never had that type of discussion about, they can't come in here because they're this or they're that. No.
  • [00:39:57] DONALD HARRISON: Did they talk much about where they grew up? Coming from Tennessee, did they talk about that and tell you about it or compare it to Ann Arbor at all?
  • [00:40:07] THERESA CAMPBELL: My father and some of the stuff I don't want to talk about. My father grew up in a very hard and that's why he pushed for having a family. He had maybe a sixth grade education at the time and my mother had an eighth grade education, I think. Life was really hard for them. I don't know what brought them up to Ann Arbor. I think my sister knows more about that, but like I said, I'm not going to delve into what their past was, but it wasn't the easiest past for them.
  • [00:40:53] DONALD HARRISON: Do you have any sense of what they thought of Ann Arbor?
  • [00:41:02] THERESA CAMPBELL: They liked Ann Arbor to a certain extent because it gave them opportunities. My dad got to buy a house. The house that's like $800,000 now, he paid $8,000 for and then they had me. My mother had me a day after we moved in the house, from my understanding. This was an opportunity for him and he was a very proud man, very proud man. He did not want to take any handouts, and he believed in working for everything and he believed in his kids eating good, we kept food in the house. We were well clothed and they worked well together on that. But like I said, both their childhood. My mother had a easier childhood. I know she had an easier childhood than Dad, but she had some hard times too.
  • [00:41:58] DONALD HARRISON: Is there anything, Theresa, that you didn't get to say yet or that I didn't ask you? Because I know there's a lot, but [OVERLAPPING]
  • [00:42:04] THERESA CAMPBELL: Yeah there's a lot. I think my sister said this best, but having the opportunity to finally speak about this and feelings that I didn't know were there coming out about the changes and stuff is a great opportunity and I hope it shows some of these kids some education and what to put forth and how to keep it going and better themselves. But I really would like Ann Arbor to realize there is some Black history there. Let it be known what's really going on there and what really happened, and how Ann Arbor turned to a brick city. Where are the old neighborhoods? Where are the Black families that made those neighborhoods good? What happened to that? Show us some history. Everything has a history. Why can't we have one?