There Went The Neighborhood: Old Neighborhood Walking Tour

Tue, 07/23/2024 - 6:20pm

When: October 28, 2021

This filmed walking tour was created during production of There Went The Neighborhood: The Closing of Jones School by the Ann Arbor District Library and 7 Cylinders Studio (7CS). Led by three former Jones School students–Roger Brown, Cheryl (Jewett) O’Neal, and Omer Jean (Dixon) Winborn–the tour describes changes that have taken place in the neighborhood surrounding the school over the past several decades. Key stops in order of appearance include the former Jones School, Ann Street Black Business District, Dunbar Center, Bethel AME Church, Wheeler Park, and Second Baptist Church.

The route (although filmed in a different order) was inspired by the Living Oral History Project’s Walking Tour of a Historically Black Neighborhood in Ann Arbor, which was created in partnership between the African American Cultural and Historical Museum of Washtenaw County (AACHM) and the Ann Arbor District Library. Check out that tour to view these locations in person alongside historical photographs and interview excerpts!
 

Learn More

Watch the documentary film, There Went The Neighborhood: The Closing of Jones School

Explore the There Went The Neighborhood Interview Archive

Read about Jones School

Read about the Ann Street Black Business District

Transcript

• [00:00:14] ROGER BROWN: It was a wonderful job, the addition they put on here really matched the bricks.
• [00:00:18] CHERYL ONEAL: Yeah.
• [00:00:19] OMER JEAN WINBORN: Yeah I haven't been over here. That place right there was where the monkey bars were.
• [00:00:24] CHERYL ONEAL: And that's the door where you always used to go in.
• [00:00:26] OMER JEAN WINBORN: Go in that door.
• [00:00:27] ROGER BROWN: You guys went in that door all the time?
• [00:00:28] OMER JEAN WINBORN: Yeah.
• [00:00:29] OMER JEAN WINBORN: There's so many things.
• [00:00:31] ROGER BROWN: The swing set was right there where that trailer was, all of that was right there.
• [00:00:37] OMER JEAN WINBORN: Over here was the baseball playground.
• [00:00:40] ROGER BROWN: Yeah. I came here in '64 and '65, I believe it was. I was here kindergarten and first grade, and that's when it was announced that they're shutting the building down. That's one of the reasons why I'm part of this, because I want to make sure, as I said before, how devastated the parents were when there was no questions, no asking, nothing, just a note saying the school is shut down and basically, the whole neighborhood would be divided up. There was families living across the street from us that were shipped to a different elementary. The Mitchells up the street, across from Main Street, shipped to another different elementary, just destroyed the flow of the neighborhood.
• [00:01:28] OMER JEAN WINBORN: I'm Omer Jean Dixon Winborn, and I spent my whole entire elementary school years here at Jones School along with all of my siblings. Paula, my baby sister, went to first grade only here and was bused to Pittsfield. I am just now learning of the devastation and the things that she went through now. Within the last couple of years, I've just learned about all the trauma that she went through from being bused from one place to the other. She kept that, didn't share it until she was moved far away, long time, and just the memories of this place. It was just like Roger said, it was devastating for her. But my years were very different. All of my siblings, we all had the same teachers. We can all name the same teachers, but she didn't, and she told me how disconnected she felt and how much it just changed the way she felt about education and everything.
• [00:02:34] CHERYL ONEAL: I'm Cherie Jewett O'Neal. My mother and her older sister and younger brother went to Jones School, so that would have been back in the '30s. I wish she was still here to tell her side of the story, but I just lost her a year ago. I went here for kindergarten because we were living in the family home, just a stone's throw away at 209 East Kingsley. We escaped the trauma, I guess you could say, that others went through of the change because we had already moved due to the gentrification of the neighborhood to the north side of Ann Arbor. My brothers and I finished our years there. But I still have very good memories of being here during kindergarten.
• [00:03:19] ROGER BROWN: I also missed being bused because we moved from Summit Street, which will be close to Wheeler Park, which we call Summit Park over to Felch Street right at that time. We missed the busing thing, and then I ended up going to Mack School, which is funny how when we were in Jones School, everybody talked about how bad Mack School was, and then I ended up at Mack School. I'm like, okay. Mack School was basically the second, we could say, mostly Black school beside Jones School.
• [00:03:57] CHERYL ONEAL: I could say I remember this door because even after our family moved, and as time went on due to the desegregation and actually closing the school down, it was open to the community and became like an extension of our community center. It became a teen after-school center. We had dances here. We had all kinds of sports, and it was just really like a gathering place for the community.
• [00:04:27] ROGER BROWN: Now, right here, this room was when I was coming, it was the nursery. This is the nursery classroom here. It's interesting that this room became the student, what do you call it?
• [00:04:40] CHERYL ONEAL: Student Parent Center.
• [00:04:41] ROGER BROWN: No, I'm talking about Community High School. Community High School, this is the student room. What do you call it? The student hangout room.
• [00:04:50] CHERYL ONEAL: Like a lounge?
• [00:04:51] ROGER BROWN: Yeah, student lounge. What was the nursery school became the student lounge for Community High School. It's just interesting. You all would be getting hit by the swing sets that was right here in this little tight spot.
• [00:05:06] OMER JEAN WINBORN: The jungle gym was right right there where that trailer is, I can remember that. The field was where the parking lot is. Trying to remember, if I close my eyes, I remember the glass at the bottom of the school because that's where my brother kicked and broke the window and got in trouble.
• [00:05:32] ROGER BROWN: Not Stevie?
• [00:05:33] OMER JEAN WINBORN: No, James.
• [00:05:34] CHERYL ONEAL: A brother?
• [00:05:36] OMER JEAN WINBORN: Brother, yeah.
• [00:05:37] CHERYL ONEAL: Another thing about the nursery, this front classroom was my kindergarten classroom, and years later in the 70s, when it became what they called the Student Parent Center, it was for young unwed mothers to come and finish their education. I took part in that with my oldest son in '73, '74. Then years later, my mother came back to work in that center as one of the directors of the Student Parent Center.
• [00:06:03] OMER JEAN WINBORN: My sister did too.
• [00:06:04] CHERYL ONEAL: And Theresa was there too with her. We've had a lot of memories in this building.
• [00:06:09] OMER JEAN WINBORN: But my kindergarten class was upstairs.
• [00:06:11] ROGER BROWN: Mine too.
• [00:06:14] OMER JEAN WINBORN: I'm not sure what's up there now, but it was upstairs, and my kindergarten teacher was Ms. Blue. No, I can say this for sure. Mrs. Donnelly taught Leroy, my sister's husband, my sister, me, my brother, all of us, except Paula. Ms. Donnelly was our second grade teacher. We had no African American teachers. The first African American teacher to come was Madeleine Coleman. She and my sister developed a friendship over the years, and she eventually was my nephew's, my sister's son's, godmother.
• [00:06:55] ROGER BROWN: She was my first grade teacher.
• [00:06:57] CHERYL ONEAL: She was your first grade teacher?
• [00:06:58] ROGER BROWN: Ms. Coleman, yeah.
• [00:07:00] OMER JEAN WINBORN: She was Paula's first grade teacher, and her and my sister still have a relationship. They still talk to each other. The whole community watched over you, and then you were especially watched over in school by all the people and the support that you got from Mr. Perry. I don't know if any of you were close to your teachers.
• [00:07:22] CHERYL ONEAL: I was.
• [00:07:23] OMER JEAN WINBORN: We had some teachers that took time with us outside of school.
• [00:07:29] ROGER BROWN: My mother had spies up here. That's it, it just was spies.
• [00:07:33] OMER JEAN WINBORN: Well, my mom was up here all the time.
• [00:07:35] CHERYL ONEAL: That's how I was going to say, if you did something wrong, they would find out before you even got home because somebody was going to correct you and then you get it more than once.
• [00:07:46] OMER JEAN WINBORN: Well, I can remember going to the store and getting smart with Mr. Diroff, and by the time I got home from right there, Zingerman's.
• [00:07:53] CHERYL ONEAL: Wrong thing.
• [00:07:54] OMER JEAN WINBORN: "You were in that store talking smart to Mr. Diroff?" "Mom, how'd you know?" Everybody, that's how it went.
• [00:08:01] ROGER BROWN: And they wouldn't tell you who their source was.
• [00:08:02] CHERYL ONEAL: No, they never do.
• [00:08:03] OMER JEAN WINBORN: Spies.
• [00:08:04] ROGER BROWN: I'd say, "Well, how'd you know?" "I ain't telling you," you what I'm saying?
• [00:08:06] OMER JEAN WINBORN: I'd say, "How did you know?"
• [00:08:07] ROGER BROWN: Then I used to lie and say, "No, I didn't do that," but I'm lying. So yeah. It brought respect and you knew you were under a microscope. Again, there was none of these cellphones, none of these cameras. They knew. They absolutely knew what was going on, and that was scary.
• [00:08:29] OMER JEAN WINBORN: It was. You were scared to act up.
• [00:08:33] CHERYL ONEAL: I didn't do anything.
• [00:08:33] OMER JEAN WINBORN: Weren't you scared to act up? I was scared. I was terrified to act up. I can't understand--now I'm a teacher, and I always understand how these kids acted like this. I was too scared to tell my teacher off or say something, oh, no, I was scared to death.
• [00:08:46] CHERYL ONEAL: That would never happen.
• [00:08:47] OMER JEAN WINBORN: Never.
• [00:08:48] ROGER BROWN: When my brother got kicked out of school, I prayed for him. [LAUGHTER] My first part of the prayer was, "Thank you, it ain't me because he's about to die." Then I said, "Lord, don't let her kill him. But thank you it's not me." But the first day of first grade, I struck out by myself, headed to school from down on Summit Street, because I thought all the other kids, the Birds, and everybody was poking. So I stopped at Hickenbottoms right there on Beakes and Stevie was there, and so me and Stevie was getting ready to come to school and his sister opened the window and said, school is canceled. We're like, well, hey. We played with his dog for a while and then I had to go to my grandmother's house because my baby brother was just born, Charlie. I went to my grandmother's house, and my grandmother spanked me because I'm supposed to be in school, and then the other grandmother was going to spank me, and then when they brought Charlie home, I was going to get a spank, and I got out of that. Thank God. But then I remember coming back to school the next day and Ms. Coleman said, well, where have you been? I lied, and she knew I was lying. Once again, it's just you can't get away with nothing. That's what--I call it redlining--this whole area, it built a community that everybody watched everybody. They all knew what was going on for the most part.
• [00:10:16] CHERYL ONEAL: It was safe.
• [00:10:19] OMER JEAN WINBORN: Very safe. We just felt so comfortable.
• [00:10:25] CHERYL ONEAL: We went to each other's homes. We ate together. We spent the night, we played together. It was just like an extension of your home. We were just one big family.
• [00:10:34] OMER JEAN WINBORN: I can say pretty much, all of us came out pretty good. We're all professionals. Came out really pretty good from that support.
• [00:10:45] CHERYL ONEAL: My mother and her older sister and her brother, my Uncle B, Coleman Jewett, they all went here. I wish I could have her here and tell some of her stories, because it was something. Then, there was so much in the neighborhood that we had going on. They loved it. Once again, it was still the good old neighborhood. All the families were close, tight, and they all grew up together. They all went to school together, and they maintained those friendships for life. Like I said, I just lost her. She was one of the oldest living Jewetts in our family at 91-years-old, so she had seen it all.
• [00:11:25] ROGER BROWN: You were here in--
• [00:11:26] CHERYL ONEAL: I was in '59.
• [00:11:27] ROGER BROWN: Your kindergarten?
• [00:11:28] CHERYL ONEAL: Yeah, '59, actually.
• [00:11:30] OMER JEAN WINBORN: I was coming out of here.
• [00:11:32] CHERYL ONEAL: Here's my picture on my porch. I was in kindergarten in this picture. This was our front porch at 209 East Kingsley, just around the corner. My dad took this picture of me. He forced me to pose in my saddle shoes, which I hated. But this lets me know when it was because it was '59, and I was five-years-old. I was almost five.
• [00:11:55] CHERYL ONEAL: It makes me emotional because [OVERLAPPING] this is where we started, and it goes so far back, it's just emotional. Every time I drive by, I have that feeling. My great grandfather, George Henry Jewett, was just honored last Saturday at the U-M vs. Northwestern football game. The reason why we came here, why I'm here today is because of his father, who was the first George Henry Jewett, who came here in the early 1800s. He was a blacksmith. His shop was right there, which used to be the old Beer Vault, and he had a very successful blacksmithing business. He was very well to do, which allowed him to send his son to University of Michigan in 1800s. Now I don't know what it is. It was the Beer Vault when we were kids.
• [00:12:44] ROGER BROWN: A drive through store right there.
• [00:12:46] CHERYL ONEAL: My father used to drive through there and buy his beer, and then we'd get pretzel sticks. You'd drive in that one way and come out the other side. But back then, it was a blacksmithing shop, and that was my great grandfather's shop.
• [00:12:59] OMER JEAN WINBORN: This area right here was our business district, and all of our barbershops and beauty shops. There was even a grocery store on the corner. I don't know Roger if you remember?
• [00:13:10] ROGER BROWN: No, I don't remember that.
• [00:13:11] CHERYL ONEAL: Yeah, I remember that.
• [00:13:12] OMER JEAN WINBORN: Remember that Cheri? This was Hall's Barber Shop, I believe.
• [00:13:19] CHERYL ONEAL: Yeah, that was Hall's.
• [00:13:19] OMER JEAN WINBORN: Also my cousin John Easley had a barber shop there also.
• [00:13:27] CHERYL ONEAL: Then right on Ann Street around the corner, my great grand uncle, Henry Wade Robbins operated a very lucrative barber shop. This is a picture of him in the shop with two of his barbers. They say that he was very successful because he did not discriminate. His clientele were whites, Blacks, and any other nationality, and he gave superb service. He died a very wealthy man. Ann Street did have a dark side. When we were coming up in the '70s, it was drug infested. It was a place that you didn't go to. If our parents found out we went to Ann Street, we would be in big trouble. Because there was a lot of drug trade in the pool room and the bars, and it just wasn't a very savory spot for anyone to go to.
• [00:14:28] ROGER BROWN: It always baffled me on how Ann Street could be right across from the county building.
• [00:14:33] CHERYL ONEAL: They were doing all that activity.
• [00:14:35] OMER JEAN WINBORN: Right across from the jail too. The parking lot used to be the jail.
• [00:14:40] CHERYL ONEAL: It was right there. A lot of the brawls would end up in the jail.
• [00:14:45] OMER JEAN WINBORN: But really, Cheri, that was more so when you were coming up?
• [00:14:49] CHERYL ONEAL: Right.
• [00:14:49] OMER JEAN WINBORN: When my parents would come down here was a place that they could go.
• [00:14:52] CHERYL ONEAL: That's what I mean.
• [00:14:53] OMER JEAN WINBORN: Listen to Washboard Willie--
• [00:14:57] CHERYL ONEAL: There was also Beer Garden.
• [00:14:58] OMER JEAN WINBORN: --And drink and they have a good time.
• [00:15:00] CHERYL ONEAL: The Beer Garden. Do you remember that? My father used to go there.
• [00:15:01] OMER JEAN WINBORN: Because we weren't allowed to go to places where we had to have our own entertainment. We weren't allowed to go into white places.
• [00:15:09] CHERYL ONEAL: Do you remember the Armory right down there?
• [00:15:11] OMER JEAN WINBORN: Yeah.
• [00:15:11] ROGER BROWN: Yeah.
• [00:15:12] CHERYL ONEAL: We used to go there for carnivals, parties, dances. Another spot that was really perfect.
• [00:15:19] OMER JEAN WINBORN: There's a mural. Some of our heroes are over there.
• [00:15:27] ROGER BROWN: The neighborhood will take up more time, I think.
• [00:15:29] CHERYL ONEAL: Yes, it will.
• [00:15:31] OMER JEAN WINBORN: But some of our heroes are over there.
• [00:15:34] CHERYL ONEAL: My uncle is in there. Uncle B.
• [00:15:36] OMER JEAN WINBORN: You say he there. Dr. Wheeler, Reverend Carpenter.
• [00:15:41] CHERYL ONEAL: Reverend Blake. Mr. Blake is on there too.
• [00:15:53] OMER JEAN WINBORN: Willis Patterson.
• [00:15:54] CHERYL ONEAL: Willis Patterson. I remember that. That was done by the Community High School students.
• [00:16:05] ROGER BROWN: Again, the word was that a lot of the Jewish people owned these buildings, and they were the ones that allowed the bars and everything to be here.
• [00:16:16] CHERYL ONEAL: Right, because they were collecting rent.
• [00:16:17] ROGER BROWN: Yeah.
• [00:16:20] OMER JEAN WINBORN: But also, my dad purchased a home, and I'm going to do a little research on the person that he purchased the home from, and some of the people that my mother used to work for. He purchased a home, and what they had to do was to get white people to buy the houses for them, and then they repaid the white people. I can remember when my dad finally paid off the house, we had a big celebration. I can remember when Mr. Snyder would come collect the mortgage payment. I wish I knew how much it was, but I didn't. I know my dad paid $10,000 in 1951 for the house at 620 North Fourth Ave.
• [00:17:01] CHERYL ONEAL: See, my parents moved in after my grandparents had already built it and paid for it, so there was no mortgage on ours. Then when gentrification came in, totally lost it all.
• [00:17:13] ROGER BROWN: It's interesting. My father, he grew up in Columbia, Missouri, and they had money. The depression took all their money, and he dealt with Jim Crow. My father really never talked about his childhood. He never talked about any racial discrimination, especially what was going on here in Ann Arbor. I guess he just said he's tired of dealing with it and talking about it, so he shut down. I often wonder how much stuff did he know that went on here.
• [00:17:51] CHERYL ONEAL: My mother still talked about discrimination, even with her coming up. She would say she could remember the days when they had "Colored Only" signs up at certain places, and they knew the places they couldn't go. She even talked about Mr. Diroff, with him being our only corner store. She said that when they were kids, he would make them come in one at a time because he was afraid they would steal. They had to line up outside to get in the store.
• [00:18:19] OMER JEAN WINBORN: But do you know what? Cheri, I think about all the bad things and then the good things. The one thing about it is that he would buy things and food that we purchased.
• [00:18:29] CHERYL ONEAL: Oh, yeah. He did.
• [00:18:30] OMER JEAN WINBORN: He had beautiful stuff. The pork chops and the greens and all of that.
• [00:18:36] CHERYL ONEAL: And he offered credit.
• [00:18:37] OMER JEAN WINBORN: Yeah.
• [00:18:38] CHERYL ONEAL: My father got his chitterlings there. Only place in town could get them.
• [00:18:43] OMER JEAN WINBORN: Chitlins, yeah! My mom too [OVERLAPPING]
• [00:18:44] CHERYL ONEAL: Not many people in my family liked those, but he bought them.
• [00:18:47] OMER JEAN WINBORN: He bought from Wilson's Chitlins.
• [00:18:48] CHERYL ONEAL: Yep, he bought it from there. Frozen in the bucket.
• [00:18:51] OMER JEAN WINBORN: This is our community center.
• [00:18:52] CHERYL ONEAL: This is the Dunbar Community Center. Right here, this is where all the activity took place. My mother learned how to dance, sew, cook.
• [00:19:02] ROGER BROWN: Now, this is before my time.
• [00:19:04] CHERYL ONEAL: This is good times.
• [00:19:05] OMER JEAN WINBORN: I have very fond memories of the community center.
• [00:19:09] CHERYL ONEAL: We lived right across the street.
• [00:19:12] OMER JEAN WINBORN: There should be some pictures in the files of the community center.
• [00:19:15] CHERYL ONEAL: Oh there are. A lot. My mother, her sister.
• [00:19:18] OMER JEAN WINBORN: Virginia Ellis was a social worker.
• [00:19:21] CHERYL ONEAL: We had camps. And music teachers.
• [00:19:22] OMER JEAN WINBORN: We had everything we needed in our community. We would come here after school, our days were full.
• [00:19:29] CHERYL ONEAL: This is the Dunbar Community Center, and this goes back to before my time, even. My mother still had stories about how they came here for just about everything. They learned how to cook, sew, dance, sing, read. Back then, they didn't allow Blacks to participate in other places like the YMCA, so this was the only place they had to come to. Then in the summertime, there were camps. There was always something here year-round.
• [00:19:54] OMER JEAN WINBORN: But this was during my time, so I did go. Virginia Ellis was one of the social workers. It was a wonderful time for us because we would come right after school, and I only lived a block away. We could walk here. This is also where Ms. McKinney lived when I used to take my piano lessons. She moved in after the Dunbar was was moved over on Main Street.
• [00:20:25] DONALD HARRISON: Do you know why it was moved?
• [00:20:27] OMER JEAN WINBORN: It's bigger and bigger. Now I guess it's sold, right?
• [00:20:31] ROGER BROWN: I don't know.
• [00:20:32] CHERYL ONEAL: Yes, they did sell it. That's sad.
• [00:20:34] ROGER BROWN: Community center.
• [00:20:35] OMER JEAN WINBORN: But the history behind here.
• [00:20:37] CHERYL ONEAL: Yeah, the history goes way back. That house was my uncle Bill's house right there, which is 503 North Fourth Ave.
• [00:20:44] OMER JEAN WINBORN: I hadn't seen that!
• [00:20:46] CHERYL ONEAL: That's my uncle's house. He was the George Henry Jewett III, but we called him uncle Bill, and I never knew why. I asked my mother, if he was George, why did we call uncle Bill? I don't know. But he built that house, along with our uncle Will. There used to be a store in that reddish building there too. I don't remember the name of it.
• [00:21:05] OMER JEAN WINBORN: Mrs. Mayfield?
• [00:21:05] CHERYL ONEAL: That was it. Then our family home is right there at 209 East Kingsley and that's where my mother and her brother and sister grew up, and me and my two brothers grew up. My grandparents, of course.
• [00:21:21] OMER JEAN WINBORN: Cheri is my little sister, I call her, but I was engaged to her brother.
• [00:21:25] CHERYL ONEAL: That's right. That's why she's still my sister.
• [00:21:27] OMER JEAN WINBORN: And he got killed in the Vietnam War.
• [00:21:28] CHERYL ONEAL: In 1968.
• [00:21:29] OMER JEAN WINBORN: '68.
• [00:21:30] ROGER BROWN: You're saying this is?
• [00:21:32] CHERYL ONEAL: That's my uncle's, yes. Uncle Bill.
• [00:21:37] ROGER BROWN: Now, this house here used to be the DeGroots [?]. They were related to us through my great grandfather.
• [00:21:43] DONALD HARRISON: Right there?
• [00:21:44] ROGER BROWN: Right there, yeah. Now the rest of the family resides in Saginaw.
• [00:21:48] OMER JEAN WINBORN: Wow.
• [00:21:50] ROGER BROWN: They were the DeGroots [?].
• [00:21:50] OMER JEAN WINBORN: Now, this park right here, my dad had a garden. I wrote a story about the garden he had, and everybody could eat out of that garden. He was brought up in the South. He had greens. We had to all come over here and work, all the kids, and anybody that lived in this neighborhood was welcome to take from this garden. Right here where this park is. Oh, my god, what have they done to Bethel? [OVERLAPPING]
• [00:22:21] CHERYL ONEAL: It's condos. They turned it into condos.
• [00:22:21] ROGER BROWN: Do you remember that? The green house was a parsonage for Bethel.
• [00:22:23] OMER JEAN WINBORN: That was Ms. Shewcraft's house?
• [00:22:25] CHERYL ONEAL: Yeah, that was a parsonage. But look at the property. Looks like they haven't kept it up at all.
• [00:22:29] OMER JEAN WINBORN: Oh my gosh.
• [00:22:31] DONALD HARRISON: The church is the pink house.
• [00:22:34] OMER JEAN WINBORN: That's the church.
• [00:22:35] CHERYL ONEAL: When they bought it out to turn it into condos, they had something written into the clause that they must maintain the integrity of the historic building. So they would not change the structure outside. But that looks pretty bad.
• [00:22:49] OMER JEAN WINBORN: That does.
• [00:22:50] DONALD HARRISON: That's just condos now?
• [00:22:51] CHERYL ONEAL: Yeah, condos.
• [00:22:52] OMER JEAN WINBORN: There should be a sign under there that says Bethel.
• [00:22:55] ROGER BROWN: Mr. Baker that started at the Ann Arbor Foundry that was over on the Broadway and Jones Drive. They also were part of the families--there were a lot of Black families that owned property at what was called Wild Goose Lake.
• [00:23:11] CHERYL ONEAL: That was my family home. My mother and father built one out there at Wild Goose Lake.
• [00:23:16] ROGER BROWN: It's sad now that a lot of the younger ones just sell it off.
• [00:23:20] CHERYL ONEAL: They did.
• [00:23:21] ROGER BROWN: The Baker cottage is still is out there.
• [00:23:23] CHERYL ONEAL: It's still out there. My mother sold ours.
• [00:23:27] OMER JEAN WINBORN: Mr. Baker was in the Foundry and my mom used to cook for everybody. For us, big family, she used to fry chickens. He made her a skillet that would fry two chickens. He did. I wish I had a picture of the skillet.
• [00:23:47] ROGER BROWN: This is where you have to use your imagination.
• [00:23:49] CHERYL ONEAL: It was not like this.
• [00:23:50] ROGER BROWN: Right across was the junk yard. Where that shelter is, the street went straight through there.
• [00:23:57] CHERYL ONEAL: There was a street.
• [00:23:58] ROGER BROWN: It went straight through. I'm sorry.
• [00:24:02] OMER JEAN WINBORN: All those people who were at Jones School, and in this community, went to City Council, my mom included, anybody who was living here then, and petitioned them to get rid of that slaughterhouse and that junk yard, and they did that. Mom said, "You're going to be so happy when you see the plans because we already have this all planned out for kids to come down here, and not have to worry about pigs or rats."
• [00:24:28] ROGER BROWN: Come on down just here. Because this is where I grew up at next to the purple house, which was the Wilsons.
• [00:24:37] CHERYL ONEAL: The purple house. It's kind of faded now. It's not as bright as it was.
• [00:24:40] ROGER BROWN: They need to get a fresh coat on.
• [00:24:41] CHERYL ONEAL: It was really bright.
• [00:24:42] ROGER BROWN: My mother called it depression paint, or something she called it. But I grew up in the house where the fence is. There was no fence there. The Birds lived right there in that white house. But I lived in this house right here. Of course, it looks a lot smaller than it was, but this is it. A lot of spankings, a lot of whoopings, whatever you want to call it. This house right here. I'd love to go back in it one day. I just don't have the nerves to knock on the door. There was a Black couple that lived there. Mr. and Mrs. Wright. They were the sweetest people in the world. They were just so sweet. She was about this tall.
• [00:25:25] OMER JEAN WINBORN: Yes.
• [00:25:26] ROGER BROWN: That's where they lived. I do miss them. I really loved them. But this is me right here next to the Wilson's house and across from the Birds. There's so many stories that I can tell right here. It's just absolutely incredible. You talk about houses seeing me grow up. These definitely are houses. Miss Ray was living over there. You remember Miss Ray?
• [00:25:46] CHERYL ONEAL: Miss Ray? Yes.
• [00:25:48] ROGER BROWN: Then there was a gas station on the corner, a little old tiny gas station. Behind that was one of the neighborhood stores, which we had a million of them around here.
• [00:25:56] CHERYL ONEAL: My grandparents that built the home at 209 East Kingsley, through gentrification, ended up on Daniel Street, which is just up the hill. That was a whole 'nother thing. A lot of Black families who were in that neighborhood and now they're all gone. It's very sad to see.
• [00:26:17] ROGER BROWN: My great great grandfather, who I told you, we just put a new headstone on, he petitioned the war department. He fought in the Civil War. They said he was AWOL, and then they tried to say he was sick before he joined, he got tuberculosis fighting in the war. But he finally got his pension two weeks before he died. He said in the--well, it wasn't the Ann Arbor News, it was the Argyle, I think it was--he said that Simeon Davis died. He just received $1,500 from the war department. But I believe that's what the money that built that house there. My mother was born there, just plenty of family up there. If you go up Miller, of course, you had West Park going to the left going up Miller. But West Park was mainly in the white neighborhood to the left where West Park was.
• [00:27:07] CHERYL ONEAL: 7th Ave.
• [00:27:08] ROGER BROWN: To the right when you got Fountain and all those, those were Black areas. You had Fountain Street, Baptist Church, Reverend Remson all of that was Black. Then you go up to Mack School, and anything past Mack School was basically white, especially over when you cross 7th Street. All that was white. I'd have to think about it, but you knew.
• [00:27:33] DONALD HARRISON: This whole neighborhood down to here?
• [00:27:35] ROGER BROWN: Yeah.
• [00:27:35] OMER JEAN WINBORN: Main Street was part white too also. There were some few Blacks but mostly white.
• [00:27:41] ROGER BROWN: But when you get up to Sunset, when you go up Sunset, and you get to Spring Street, past Spring Street, then it's white.
• [00:27:49] CHERYL ONEAL: It was mostly German back then.
• [00:27:52] ROGER BROWN: You knew what was happening.
• [00:27:55] DONALD HARRISON: Then down through to what's now Kerrytown, this whole area we just walked through down to Division?
• [00:28:02] OMER JEAN WINBORN: Yeah, it was Black.
• [00:28:03] CHERYL ONEAL: It was all African American.
• [00:28:05] DONALD HARRISON: To about Ann Street, and Ann Street, you're starting to get downtown?
• [00:28:09] ROGER BROWN: That's more downtown.
• [00:28:10] CHERYL ONEAL: As far as living, no.
• [00:28:11] HEIDI MORSE: What about across the bridge?
• [00:28:15] OMER JEAN WINBORN: Across the bridge?
• [00:28:17] CHERYL ONEAL: That's where we ended up on the North side. There was a surgence of Blacks moving to the North side [OVERLAPPING] back in the '60s, which is where my family moved to Pear Street. We had what we call the fruit loop. It was Pear, Peach, Apple, Plum, and it was off of Pontiac Trail. That became another Black neighborhood, so to speak. Now that's been broken up, too.
• [00:28:42] ROGER BROWN: Then you go further up when Pontiac Heights came into being. A lot of Blacks moved to Pontiac Heights.
• [00:28:47] CHERYL ONEAL: That was by design, I think, low-income housing.
• [00:28:50] ROGER BROWN: See, that's what I was sharing with you about this design. They make these plans, five, six, ten years out and then they just come through and just shift everything. It's already been inked. You just have to hold on and go for the ride. You can lodge your complaints, but there isn't much else can happen. It was kind of sad.
• [00:29:15] CHERYL ONEAL: It was a game they played. They called them blockbusters. They were sent out to bust up the blocks. That was their job.
• [00:29:25] ROGER BROWN: You see the same thing with Black Bottom in Detroit.
• [00:29:27] CHERYL ONEAL: Yes, my father grew up there.
• [00:29:28] ROGER BROWN: They shut that down, shot a highway through there. It's happened all over the world, all over the country. I've seen it in Tulsa, some movies about that. Everywhere. It's just a crying shame. It's life, I guess.
• [00:29:47] CHERYL ONEAL: Yeah, it is. The sad part for me is that we were all kind of robbed of our family legacy as far as the wealth that should have continued on through the generations. Sadly enough, our elders were thought to believe that they could live a better life elsewhere, which was once again, by design, and thereby, we were robbed up our our legacy.
• [00:30:12] OMER JEAN WINBORN: My parents were talking about that on that article that's in the Ann Arbor News, and my dad saying he's not going to sell, and one of the things he asked us not to do, he asked us to live in it. But my siblings, since there was six of us, chose to sell, but we each bought our own property. Like I said, the lilacs and the train track knew that was my home from then on.
• [00:30:38] ROGER BROWN: I think Mr. Mitchell told pretty much his family, Debby and Larry and Herman and all of them, he wanted them also not to sell their house. But he built that house back behind there, and then he built a couple of houses over on Fifth and a couple of other places.
• [00:30:57] OMER JEAN WINBORN: Didn't they build a house out on on Dexter?
• [00:30:59] ROGER BROWN: Yeah, they sold that.
• [00:31:02] OMER JEAN WINBORN: Did they?
• [00:31:02] ROGER BROWN: Yeah.
• [00:31:03] OMER JEAN WINBORN: Did they sell this one, too, up here?
• [00:31:05] ROGER BROWN: Yeah, the two of them. There was two of them together up there.
• [00:31:09] CHERYL ONEAL: That's been kind of a standing issue, I think, with family members. It has caused dissension amongst families trying to keep the property in the family, where people couldn't all agree on what to do. That happened with my family's home on Kingsley. It happened with my aunt Letty's on Beakes, and it happened with the house on Daniel, where the family members could not agree to keep it in the family. They just wanted to cash in on the money and go there separate ways, which to me is really sad.
• [00:31:36] ROGER BROWN: Let me say this. I know we're about to wrap up. Not only did we have the two junk yards, the slaughterhouse, the lumber yard, the hobos, the coal yard, but right behind that patch of trees was a city-owned yard.
• [00:31:51] OMER JEAN WINBORN: Oh, that's right.
• [00:31:52] ROGER BROWN: Where they had a lot of stuff going on. That's even pretty much a polluted area right behind the community center. We were also in the middle of that, the trucks, the maintenances, all of that, the paint, they used to paint the stop signs and all the signs in the city right here. This whole area was just absolutely not cool to raise or live in, but this is where we had to live. In any rich white neighborhood, they would not have had half the stuff we had in this neighborhood. It's sad. You know what I'm saying. They would not have it, but we had to deal with it.
• [00:32:37] CHERYL ONEAL: A hundred percent. No, there's no way.
• [00:32:45] ROGER BROWN: I've taken people, Black and white, through here to try to describe what this place was, and they all said, "No!"
• [00:32:50] CHERYL ONEAL: They couldn't believe it. They wouldn't believe it.
• [00:32:52] ROGER BROWN: They absolutely could not fathom what I tried to explain to them this place was like.
• [00:32:58] CHERYL ONEAL: It's very emotional.
• [00:32:59] ROGER BROWN: Yeah.
• [00:33:04] ROGER BROWN: Now I tell you what? I shared this with you before. When they shut that slaughterhouse down, took the junkyard, all of a sudden, they took everything out of the park for about a year. No swings, no teeter totters, no nothing.
• [00:33:18] CHERYL ONEAL: Nothing.
• [00:33:19] ROGER BROWN: Then they started putting stuff in we never knew existed. By that time we were gone. We never knew those new-fangled swings and new-fangled this and that. We always had the old stuff.
• [00:33:31] OMER JEAN WINBORN: We didn't have a nice shed. You remember our thing? It was just a shack.
• [00:33:34] CHERYL ONEAL: It was really bad.
• [00:33:36] ROGER BROWN: It's the same structure. That's where, exactly.
• [00:33:42] CHERYL ONEAL: You could put a bench in down here. This is Mrs. Cherot's family. She had this bench dedicated. I don't see-- Oh, the dedication is still there.
• [00:33:56] OMER JEAN WINBORN: Theodosia Mills.
• [00:33:57] CHERYL ONEAL: In memory of her mom.
• [00:34:01] OMER JEAN WINBORN: Mrs. Cherot put this in here in honor of her mother that grew up in Ann Arbor and lived up the hill. Do you remember Flora Cherot? We're sitting where the junk yard was, and rats used to come out of the junk yard, and the swings used to be over there. Peter Sausage used to be right there on the end where the basketball court is towards the end. Slaughter house, Peter Sausage.
• [00:34:29] ROGER BROWN: You're making it sound nice.
• [00:34:29] OMER JEAN WINBORN: That's what it was called. The slaughter house, and we would actually see pigs hanging on a rack and we would see blood running down the street.
• [00:34:40] CHERYL ONEAL: Then sometimes they would get loose and run through the neighborhood.
• [00:34:43] OMER JEAN WINBORN: One of them got loose while I was on a swing right there. The swing was right there where that baby's swinging right there, it was coming towards, and that pig came out of there, and the Peter Sausage man came out with a long white coat on, blood dripping, big black boots, and I froze. Because I was down in the park by myself. My siblings were all at home, and I ran down here because it was hot, and I wanted to get on my favorite swing. As I was going up, the pig got out and came dashing towards me, and I went, oh, my goodness and he caught him by his tail, and he took him back in the slaughterhouse. But you could hear him squealing.
• [00:35:24] CHERYL ONEAL: You could hear them squealing all the time.
• [00:35:25] OMER JEAN WINBORN: You could see the blood running down the street, and then my brother would come at 3:00 o'clock in the evening, and they would give us cracklins, pig skins.
• [00:35:35] ROGER BROWN: In a white box. Bring your salt shaker, greasy white box.
• [00:35:38] OMER JEAN WINBORN: And your hot sauce.
• [00:35:39] CHERYL ONEAL: It wasn't just pigs. There were hogs too.
• [00:35:41] OMER JEAN WINBORN: There were hogs.
• [00:35:43] ROGER BROWN: But when the pig truck would pull up, the guy would have a battery charged shocker sticker.
• [00:35:54] CHERYL ONEAL: I forgot about that.
• [00:35:54] OMER JEAN WINBORN: Yes I remember that! Wow, Roger.
• [00:35:56] CHERYL ONEAL: They were so scary.
• [00:35:58] ROGER BROWN: There was an old Black guy. They would put them in a pen right when they'd go in the building, and there was an old Black guy that had a whip, and he would whip the pigs around. Once you see them go up the ramp, you might as well say goodbye.
• [00:36:14] CHERYL ONEAL: That was sad.
• [00:36:15] OMER JEAN WINBORN: Do you remember the big vats that they used to put them down?
• [00:36:19] ROGER BROWN: They had barrels of chitlins, pig snuts--that's noses--pig feet, pig tails, pig everything, ears. And at one time, they said, "Whatever you want, whatever you can carry out of here is yours." But then when the government allowed them to put fillers, which is those things in hot dogs and baloney--
• [00:36:40] CHERYL ONEAL: Then they needed them.
• [00:36:41] ROGER BROWN: --Those barrels disappeared. No. It was over with. Because they were putting it in hot dogs and baloney. They call it fillers. This was it. Wow.
• [00:36:53] OMER JEAN WINBORN: I was saying to my daughter, and I was telling her about raising kids, and she looked at me and said, "You had a village, and I didn't."
• [00:37:09] CHERYL ONEAL: That's true.
• [00:37:11] OMER JEAN WINBORN: That was very true.
• [00:37:12] CHERYL ONEAL: It's true.
• [00:37:15] OMER JEAN WINBORN: Cause this was my village.
• [00:37:16] CHERYL ONEAL: Mine too.
• [00:37:17] ROGER BROWN: You got anything?
• [00:37:20] CHERYL ONEAL: I'm just happy that we have the memories because that made us who we are.
• [00:37:27] ROGER BROWN: I'm hurting because I lived within walking distance of my grandparents and a lot of relatives. You go over this house, go over that house. It was nothing. You're there. Now my grandkids live in Taylor. My great grandchild lives in Taylor. I always thought that this is the way life was going to be. That when I get older, when I become a grandparent, I'll be right here in the middle with my grandkids coming over, and that's not happening. I'm a little disappointed that that was a dream deferred. But then at the same time, I wouldn't want them to live in this neighborhood the way it was.
• [00:38:10] OMER JEAN WINBORN: I want to thank you for taking on this project. It's absolutely wonderful.
• [00:38:16] CHERYL ONEAL: Yes, it is.
• [00:38:16] OMER JEAN WINBORN: Even though it was painful for me to come here and see it, at least our memory's not wiped out. This will live on through this documentary.
• [00:38:27] CHERYL ONEAL: Definitely.
• [00:38:29] ROGER BROWN: I want to say that still now there's more older Blacks than us. That remember even deeper, further back. Hopefully we can tie into them. I'm young, I'm only 25, so I'm young.
• [00:38:46] OMER JEAN WINBORN: Well, I have to say, I'm the oldest of the group, and our memories are a little bit different. But I'm amazed at Roger, he just brought up that memory about that pig. Shocking those pigs.
• [00:38:56] ROGER BROWN: Off the truck.
• [00:38:57] OMER JEAN WINBORN: Off the truck, to get them off the truck.
• [00:39:00] ROGER BROWN: The sound, the smell, the heat. Incredible.
• [00:39:09] CHERYL ONEAL: That was actually--what is now the Gandy Dancer, used to be the Amtrak station, and my dad used to bring us down on Sunday to watch the trains come in.
• [00:39:17] ROGER BROWN: We didn't say this, but you had St. Thomas. Go ahead. Now if you don't move, I'm going to throw you off there and jump on myself there. St. Thomas definitely epitomized the white world. They didn't fool with us, and we didn't fool with them and yet we were pretty close. But that was St. Thomas. You knew who they were, they knew who we were. They always practiced football down by Riverside Park, and they took over that park over there. But they were right across the street up on High Street, and that was just, you stayed away from over there.
• [00:40:01] CHERYL ONEAL: But later on in the '70s, they did become integrated because my oldest son graduated from St. Thomas.
• [00:40:06] ROGER BROWN: Did he?
• [00:40:06] CHERYL ONEAL: Yeah.
• [00:40:08] OMER JEAN WINBORN: My nephew went also. He graduated, it was recently. It was from the new one.
• [00:40:12] CHERYL ONEAL: It was Gabriel Richard by the time he went, they had changed the name to Gabriel Richard. Not many Blacks.
• [00:40:18] OMER JEAN WINBORN: Then I got married in St. Thomas Church. Duh.
• [00:40:21] ROGER BROWN: Shut up. My cousin got married there.
• [00:40:23] OMER JEAN WINBORN: Because my husband was Catholic, but I was still Baptist, and we, at the time, had a mixed marriage, and Reverend Span married me.
• [00:40:35] CHERYL ONEAL: This is Wickliffe Place named after my great aunt Letty Wickliffe, who also lived around the corner on Beakes. She was a very well known Republican here in Ann Arbor. She fought for civil rights and housing and all kinds of things. She was very outspoken, but she was one of my favorite aunts, and she was my grandfather's first cousin.
• [00:41:00] OMER JEAN WINBORN: She also was a teacher, too.
• [00:41:01] CHERYL ONEAL: She was a teacher. She was a master educator.
• [00:41:05] OMER JEAN WINBORN: The man that played on Designing Women.
• [00:41:08] CHERYL ONEAL: Designing Women. I can't think of his name. But she left here. She left Ann Arbor and taught in the public schools in Indianapolis for many years for a program with gifted children. She was very smart lady.
• [00:41:25] OMER JEAN WINBORN: Her papers are at the Bentley.
• [00:41:28] CHERYL ONEAL: Very strong personality. But I loved her dearly. This is in honor, to be named after her.
• [00:41:38] ROGER BROWN: This is Second Baptist Church.
• [00:41:40] OMER JEAN WINBORN: Reverend Carpenter was my minister. Reverend Carpenter used to talk all the time about Booker T. Washington and George Washington Carver. He used to be a student of Booker T. Washington and George Washington Carver. All that greatness that I was around. Now as an adult, I appreciate it. Because he did so much for our community.
• [00:42:01] CHERYL ONEAL: He sure did. On behalf of our ancestors, I thank you.
• [00:42:05] ROGER BROWN: Yes.
• [00:42:05] OMER JEAN WINBORN: Yes.
• [00:42:05] CHERYL ONEAL: As I always like to say when I end anything like this, I am my ancestor's wildest dreams.
• [00:42:12] OMER JEAN WINBORN: Thank you, Cheri.
• [00:42:13] ROGER BROWN: I like, through this, talking to the generations after us. Hopefully my great great great grandkids will be able to see this. Therefore, I say hello to you, even though I'll never know you. But hello to you.
• [00:42:29] OMER JEAN WINBORN: I can say that most of the people that grew up the same time we did, did pretty well.
• [00:42:34] CHERYL ONEAL: Yes.
• [00:42:35] OMER JEAN WINBORN: They did extremely well.
• [00:42:38] CHERYL ONEAL: Because we were raised well. That's why.
• [00:42:41] OMER JEAN WINBORN: All over, doctors, lawyers. All of us just did well.
• [00:42:47] ROGER BROWN: They made it happen where we were.
• [00:42:48] OMER JEAN WINBORN: It wasn't just one family. It was a community. It was a village.
• [00:42:54] CHERYL ONEAL: It's in our DNA.