There Went The Neighborhood - Audio Interview: Martha Monk Hill
When: February 16, 2022
Martha Monk Hill attended Jones School from kindergarten through sixth grade, and she grew up on North Fifth Avenue with her foster parents Arnell and Bill Ridley. She recalls how her neighbors supported one another, especially parental figures like Carroll and Annette McFadden and Waltstine Perry.
More interviews are available in the There Went The Neighborhood Interview Archive.
Transcript
- [00:00:00] HEIDI MORSE: Today is February 16th, 2022. I'm Heidi Morse, an archivist at the Ann Arbor District Library and I'm speaking with Martha Hill about Jones School in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Could you please say and spell out your name?
- [00:00:19] MARTHA MONK HILL: Martha, M-A-R-T-H-A Evelyn, E-V-E-L-Y-N, Hill H-I-L-L.
- [00:00:35] HEIDI MORSE: Is that your married name?
- [00:00:37] MARTHA MONK HILL: Yes, ma'am. My maiden name is Monk. That's what I went by when I was going to Jones School.
- [00:00:50] HEIDI MORSE: So did you grow up in Ann Arbor your whole childhood?
- [00:00:55] MARTHA MONK HILL: Yes, ma'am. I was there from the age of five and a half up until I was about 22.
- [00:01:12] HEIDI MORSE: Do you know what brought your family to Ann Arbor?
- [00:01:18] MARTHA MONK HILL: Well, I was raised in a foster home. I'm originally from Birmingham, Alabama but my parents decided to come here at the age of four. We lived in Ypsilanti for a while and then we left there. Before we left there, my mom got real sick and my dad wasn't able to take care of two girls, my sister Esther and I. We were fostered out to Arnell Ridley and Bill Ridley, at 524 North Fifth Avenue. That's where I grew up. It's so funny because nobody ever knew that I was in a foster home. They always thought that was my real parents until I got older and I told them and they was like, "What Martha?" I didn't want nobody to know I didn't have my real parents. Everybody had theirs and I wanted to have mine.
- [00:02:25] HEIDI MORSE: Were there other children in the household, you mentioned your sister, did they have other children before her?
- [00:02:31] MARTHA MONK HILL: No she had one daughter, Loretta. I was five and a half, Esther was six, about six and a half and she had a daughter at the age of seven months when we arrived at her home. So, Loretta, she grew up with us, which is their daughter. That was their daughter.
- [00:03:13] HEIDI MORSE: That sounds like it must have been a difficult transition.
- [00:03:16] MARTHA MONK HILL: It was. It truly was, but after [BACKGROUND] being in a home and [BACKGROUND] seeing that we were loved. I'm doing a documentary now. Yes, after being there and we had neighbors, actually some relatives or some kin to them that lived at directly across the street which was the McFaddens and everybody is very familiar with the McFaddens. Mr. Carroll McFadden and Annette were people that helped out with the community as far as the black children were concerned that didn't have anywhere to go, especially Mr. Carroll McFadden. He was the one that opened up Jones School on the weekends so we can have somewhere to go to dance and things on a Friday and Saturday. Every Friday and Saturday after we got to the age of 15. You had to be 15 to 18.
- [00:04:44] HEIDI MORSE: What grades did you attend Jones School? And around what year was that, do you think? [OVERLAPPING]
- [00:04:47] MARTHA MONK HILL: I don't even know, from the kindergarten to the sixth.
- [00:05:15] HEIDI MORSE: How would you describe the education that you got at Jones School?
- [00:05:20] MARTHA MONK HILL: It was good. We had real good teachers. Matter of fact, I can remember all the teachers that I had. It was real good. The teaching was real good. They taught us what we could understand. They took the time with us one-on-one. If you had a problem or you were slow about learning a certain thing they took the time to come over to you to help you to figure that out. We did have that where the teachers dealt with the students one-on-one. I remember one of them, Ms. Carter, if we really had bad problem she would take us home, ask the parents if we could come home and she could tutor us on whatever it was that we were dealing with that we didn't catch on to.
- [00:06:16] HEIDI MORSE: [NOISE] That's really impressive.
- [00:06:23] MARTHA MONK HILL: Yes. [BACKGROUND] Also, Heidi, they did a documentary of our classroom in the sixth grade. Ms. Santomieri was our teacher. We were on the news.
- [00:06:47] HEIDI MORSE: Oh, really?
- [00:06:50] MARTHA MONK HILL: That class--I can't think that year, Jenny would know. She would know the year that we were in elementary school. I can't think of the year. It's been so long ago and I've been through so much through the years until I actually forgot. Let me see. Katrina was my oldest daughter was born in '68, so '55, '60 would it be, it would be probably the year of 1956 or '57. Somewhere I'm thinking in there, because I was born in 1950.
- [00:07:45] HEIDI MORSE: Was that the local news?
- [00:07:48] MARTHA MONK HILL: Yes, ma'am. It was [NOISE] and what was so funny that my foster mom got real upset about, was because when they did this, when they were doing the broadcasting, when it did come on TV, it had us going across there like we were just poor children. And the song was, "We Shall Overcome." My foster mother didn't know that that's what they were going to do. She did not know that, but that happened that year that I was in the sixth grade because it came on TV. My foster mom, we watched it.
- [00:08:41] HEIDI MORSE: That's really interesting to hear about that.
- [00:08:44] MARTHA MONK HILL: Yes. That's what I was saying. Even if you, while you're doing this or whatever, to pull it up. I just don't know the year that it was, but probably it would have been in the old archives or something.
- [00:09:01] HEIDI MORSE: We'll look for it, for sure.
- [00:09:04] MARTHA MONK HILL: We were on TV, we really were. As a matter of fact, our foster mom went and bought me an outfit for that day. I can remember very well what the outfit was. But we weren't expecting that. She wasn't expecting that. I guess from migrating herself from the South and going through different things in the South when she was younger, that it bothered her a little bit because they never said that that's what it would be about. Even to the saying, what the saying would be and whatever it was they was going to put on there with that, well it sure wasn't us.
- [00:10:01] HEIDI MORSE: What was your sense of race relations at Jones School?
- [00:10:05] MARTHA MONK HILL: The what?
- [00:10:08] HEIDI MORSE: Race relations. Were most of your classmates white or Black? [NOISE]
- [00:10:18] MARTHA MONK HILL: Mostly Black. I think in the whole school, there was only about maybe six, at the most, white children. [BACKGROUND] [NOISE]
- [00:10:39] HEIDI MORSE: That film clip, was it just about Jones School?
- [00:10:48] MARTHA MONK HILL: Excuse me?
- [00:10:50] HEIDI MORSE: Was that film clip just about Jones School or about a lot of other schools?
- [00:10:56] MARTHA MONK HILL: Yes, it was. I don't remember them going anywhere else. It was supposed to be what we were learning, the teacher and what we've been learning. Seemed to me, it was about segregation in a way, I'm just saying. That's how my foster mother took it, like we were poor, low-income, and actually, my foster parents were middle-upper class people, and so she didn't appreciate that at all. She didn't mind so much them doing that, but it was how it was set off and shown on TV.
- [00:11:52] HEIDI MORSE: Now what schools did you attend after Jones, and how was that transition for you?
- [00:11:59] MARTHA MONK HILL: After that, Slauson Junior High. That was pretty good, we had some good teachers over there too. That school, it went to the 9th grade. After leaving there, I went to Ann Arbor High School. After not fully graduating in the year 1970, I did attend Washtenaw Community College after taking up some studies with getting my GED because I was pregnant, and I got my GED. Also, I was taking up another class, psychology or something like that, I was doing. But being that I was with my first husband, it was a lot of abuse so I couldn't continue to go on with doing the studies for that.
- [00:13:24] HEIDI MORSE: What do you remember about-- [OVERLAPPING] Oh, go ahead.
- [00:13:29] MARTHA MONK HILL: Okay. Also, during the time of growing up, the period from maybe six to maybe eight, we had a community center that was right around the corner from us. It was called the Dunbar Center. We would go there, the children that was in a neighborhood, and even other children could attend. They would read us stories, her name was Miss Elliott. She would take the time with us after school. Then they later on built the Community Center which was on, I'm thinking it was North Main. I'm forgetting now. But it was on North Main, the big Community Center. They had everything in there you ever wanted to do. My foster mother, she [LAUGHTER] tried to put me in everything. She tried me with piano lessons, I guess because my mind wasn't really focused, then she tried me with tap dancing, that didn't really work out. Finally, she just left me alone and just let me attend every day after school. They had home economics there, you learned how to cook, it was awesome. It was really nice. It gave us something in the neighborhood to do, to go to. The children also on the West side, they could also come because we would all gather together after school there in the evenings. Everything was divided up into doing different things. It was very structured in teaching different things. Ping-pong, if you wanted to learn how to play ping-pong, ping-pong table was there. But they also taught you how to not just get up there and shoot the ball across a table. It was somebody there to show you how to actually play ping-pong. Let me see what else. It was nice. Then after I gotten away from Jones School going to Slauson, I can remember some of the teachers, not very well, but when I got to Ann Arbor High School, it was a Mr. Westfield there. Mr. Westfield, he dealt with all the children that had problems at home or something going on in their life that they didn't want to attend their classes or they weren't interested in learning. Mr. Westfield started a class for those children. This was in the 10th grade, and if we took the time to do our homework and everything, and got everything right the way it was supposed to be, we would get to go to the campus where we would have tickets, where we could go to Krazy Jim's and get us some hamburgers and french fries. That made it more interesting for us to learn. Whatever that homework assignments that we had in the other classes, we would take it to his room. As long as we did it, we would get those tickets to go anywhere up on the campus and eat. I know it did me, it made me really want to get my work in school. [OVERLAPPING]
- [00:17:14] HEIDI MORSE: That's a good incentive.
- [00:17:17] MARTHA MONK HILL: Right. It was very good, because it was about 15 to 20 of us in there, and we looked forward to it every day. Even though we would have to walk to school, we would have to float our way to school in the snow. There wasn't any buses at the time going to Slauson Junior High. We waded ourselves to school because that was only four blocks from Farmers Market. You know where Farmers Market, right? In Ann Arbor, you know where that is, Heidi?
- [00:17:56] HEIDI MORSE: Yes.
- [00:17:56] MARTHA MONK HILL: Yes, I just lived right down the street, maybe two blocks down. That's where I lived, and it was good. Back to Jones School, Jones School also had a program for the children that were in 5th and 6th grade. Being that you were getting ready to go to high school, they would prepare you with a tutor. They would give you the name and number of the tutor that you wished to have. We would go to a church that was maybe three blocks over from Jones School to get tutoring. Because I had problems, I really did, trying to keep my mind focused because I missed my mother so much, and so I had to work with that in my head and the teachers just about knew what was going on, which you know my foster mom never discussed very much of anything with them, so they didn't know until I got in trouble. When I came out of, like I said, elementary school, I did good. Then when I got to Slauson, I still wasn't there like I was supposed to be. But when I got to high school was really when I've seen how much they truly cared there about their students and their learning. My dad worked at the Quality Bakery. On the way to school in the mornings, I would stop at the Quality Bakery to get donuts for us to eat on the way to school. My dad worked there for years, my real dad, he worked there for years. Matter of fact, I went to Michigan and brought him here to the South, he and my sister, to live with me. But I lost both of them. They're gone, but my sister took care of me. She was like a mom. I'm still trying to get past that. But I have very special friends in Ann Arbor, which a lot of them went on to get careers, so a lot of them are retired now. Some of them, we keep in touch. We still keep in touch. [NOISE] And I just love it. Then with the social media, that really brings us together, the ones that was in my life, that were around me. Jenny Mitchell, she was one of the ones that is really left of the little group that we had. She was one that I keep in touch with. Stella Taylor, I kept in touch until she passed. I forget who else, but it's just a handful of the ones that are left there that I deal with, just a handful. Jenny Mitchell is the main one, and Beverly Bird are the two main ones that I keep up with. [OVERLAPPING]
- [00:21:28] HEIDI MORSE: It's good you were able to keep in touch. [OVERLAPPING]
- [00:21:29] MARTHA MONK HILL: Everybody else has passed. Hmm?
- [00:21:35] HEIDI MORSE: I'm glad to hear you were able to keep in touch.
- [00:21:39] MARTHA MONK HILL: Yes, we even would go home to visit. My husband would take me home to visit because I left at an early age and he cheered me home after all those years. Hey, Precious. Yes, he carried home.
- [00:21:57] FEMALE SPEAKER: I said "Hey" and you ignored me.
- [00:21:59] MARTHA MONK HILL: I'm sorry. I'm doing a documentary so I can't fuss with you. You heard me? That's my daughter-in-law. [LAUGHTER] I have to come in the room.
- [00:22:15] HEIDI MORSE: Yes. That's fine.
- [00:22:17] MARTHA MONK HILL: Everybody just gravitate toward me that's the type of person I am. Yes.
- [00:22:29] HEIDI MORSE: That's good. So either towards the end of your time in Ann Arbor or visiting as an adult, what are your feelings about the closure of Jones School in the mid-'60s or if you noticed any changes in the neighborhood around that area?
- [00:22:51] MARTHA MONK HILL: Well, when I went home, it was a big heartbreak for me. Bye, Jamil. It was like a big heartbreak for me because, Heidi, I realize that I'm 71 and that our parents, they were young too, and that everything is gone, there's nothing, nothing is the same. The house I was raised in, I pull it up. But when I went home, you were asking me, when I went home and during that time when my best friend Stella Taylor was living, we rode through there and it was just so sad because you'd look for something to still be there, even just part of it still being there, and it's not because everybody have died off or they moved away or they sold out and moved away, but most of them have died out and here we are, right there with them saying they came our way. Some of them left to come our way and here we are, and nothing stays the same. Nothing. It's all temporary and I had to learn in my years of growth and growing and seeing things. Our homes are just temporary, we're just passing through. Because when you go back it's like nothing ever existed. You can see yourself playing, you can see yourself running up the hill, Fifth Avenue, you can see going across the street, you can see walking to the center with your friends, you can see the train track where we would go after school we'd stand up there and watch the older guys swim. [BACKGROUND] Those good things, those are gone. We just have to accept that. And sometimes even today, as old as I am, I go back because you know what, Heidi, I have memories. A lot of us don't have memories, ones that are still living. Someone when I spoke to them, and they're like, "Martha, how do you remember?" I said, "You know what, because my life was special to me. The people in my life were special to me." The memories that I have, it's like something that I put in a treasure box and I can pull it out, pull the memories out anytime I want to. Because I had a happy childhood after going through what my sister and I went through, it was a happy childhood. I didn't even think it would even get to that point of being happy, but it did. I have had people to call me and ask me questions, "Martha, do you remember so and so?" And I'm like "Yes, I do." Well, what do you call him told me to call, gave me a number to ask you. I said, well now I'm getting to a place, Heidi, I can't remember too much. [LAUGHTER] I told Jenny, I said, "Well if she don't call me in a few days and I can't keep putting it off because I might not even know what my name is." But it was beautiful, everything, my life and meeting people and growing up, it had its ups and downs, but that was a part of life and I've learned through life to deal with change because that's what we go through, change in our life, and I had to realize that when I went back home and everything was gone, everything. I talked to the next door neighbor, his mom, about five years ago. They lived right there--she was a nurse and she had a son named Horace. We grew up together and he called me and he's taking care of his mom. They sold their house next door because she was a single mom because her husband died and she raised Horace was their only child. I talked to him from time to time. Haven't talked to him in a while, though. But his mom passed not too long ago, but I admired her when she would take us to school in the morning, to Slauson to school in the morning. She used to be, when she'd go in and change her uniform, she would dress. She would have on heels, she would be so pretty. I turned out doing the same thing when I was in high school. When I could wear some heels, I wore heels. Well then, we couldn't wear pants anyway, but I was one of the best dressed in Ann Arbor. One of the best dressed kids and everybody knew this. Me and my sister were the best dressed there in that hometown. Because my foster mother, she went to Kline's, she went to Goodyear's, I think it was Goodyear's, she bought our clothes out of there. Mast, the shoe store. When it was time for us to get shoes, they would send her a card letting her know it was time for us to get shoes. We took our clothes to the cleaners at seven years old. Our clothes went in the cleaners. We were the best dressed and so there was a lot of jealousy toward me. It really was. The girls always wanted to fight me because they said I thought I was pretty, but I never thought that way, Heidi. Even to this day people tell me I'm pretty. I have never looked at myself as being pretty or to feel a certain way because I'm pretty. I never felt like that, I love everybody. I went through some fights and things but after I showed who I am and I wasn't, "Hey, this is who I am, you can't do me like that". I was left alone and everything was beautiful. But, now today, I would not live in Ann Arbor because I like Nashville, Tennessee. I've been here longer than I have been there and I love it here. It's anything that you want to do. It's beautiful. It has grown since I've been here. Uptown, it's so beautiful. But going back home, I would never live there. Now if I had never left and set up home there, I never knew about anything else, that's where I would be. But because I left and ventured out, that's not where I would want to live again. [OVERLAPPING]
- [00:30:28] HEIDI MORSE: What brought you to Nashville?
- [00:30:32] MARTHA MONK HILL: It's a long story.
- [00:30:36] HEIDI MORSE: You don't have to get into it if you want. I just wanted to give you the chance to talk about your later life [OVERLAPPING].
- [00:30:42] MARTHA MONK HILL: But I'm glad I'm here. I got four beautiful daughters. I had them at, three in St. Joseph Mercy Hospital, Dr. Frye delivered my daughters. My baby daughter, she was born here in Nashville, Tennessee. I was married when I came here, but I got divorced, and I'm remarried. I've got an awesome husband that loves and has so much respect for me, it's just beautiful. It's beautiful and nothing is too good for me. He let me know when I never had nobody to push me to do something. He always said you can do it. Martha, how come you have not doing this, and I say so and so, he says, well, let's do it. Do you want to do it? I say, yes. He says, let's do it. I'm retired now. I'm disabled, and both of us are retired, so we're just enjoying our life. I can't go anywhere because I'm not well. I haven't been well for about 13 years. But it's okay because I've got a big support system here. I got family, and I brought the spread here. I started the spread with my girls. My girls had children and those children had children. I'm a great grandmother. I didn't have a family. I didn't have that. When I went in the foster home, I didn't have my real family, I never knew who they were, but I found them.
- [00:32:28] HEIDI MORSE: I'm so glad you have that support system.
- [00:32:31] MARTHA MONK HILL: And I'm very close to them. Yes, I do. [OVERLAPPING] .
- [00:32:39] HEIDI MORSE: Just going to say, I'm really grateful to you for sharing your time and your memories with us today.
- [00:32:46] MARTHA MONK HILL: Yes, I love that. Like I said, even with you, you have memories, you have some good memories. I think it's really sad, because something I found out the other day, a couple of months ago, Heidi, was that one of our classroom people that I fell in love with, but I didn't know and I kept my distance, because she was distant, but she was hungry when she was coming to school. She just told me this. I'm like, what? And when we'd go home for lunch, she said she hated to go home for lunch because she knew there wasn't going to be any food. I said if you just had told me and Brenda, because the McFaddens lived across street, it was seven children across the street, and me and my sister, and my foster sister. But my foster mother would have made a sandwich. Brenda's mom and dad, if he was, whoever was there, would have made a sandwich, we would have carried you some, we would have brought you some lunch. We would have done that. Because I lived good, I did, and when she told me that, she told me her story, I'm like, what? I didn't know. I said I noticed that you kept your distance, and I told her everything about herself, everything. She said, "Martha, you remember." I said, "Yes, I do". I remember the outfit that you would wear all the time, but you would always be clean. It made me cry to know that she went through that while we were going to school, because I didn't know what it was like to be hungry. I didn't. I don't remember being hungry, or without lights, or water, or clothes. I didn't know anything about that. But she told me this a couple of months ago. She's living somewhere else. She's doing real good. Her daughter is a broadcaster. She just got over a bout with cancer, and she's doing good. We just never know what nobody else is going through. I think the first time that I dealt with death, was a friend that lived around the corner, named Inez Blissit. She passed at 13 years old. She was my friend. I would go to her house, and I can remember we would take potted meat, and she'd put mayonnaise in it and mix it up, take it out the can and make us a sandwich apiece. When she got sick, I did not understand that. Then she passed. When they said, she's gone, Martha, she's gone. I didn't understand. But it hurt me to my heart, because what I did understand, I would never see her again. She was my friend. She was one of my best friends when growing up. That was the first death that I ever had to experience. The very first one, because we didn't have that much death amongst the children. I did see one of my schoolmates. Her mom used to walk past our house, walking her to school when she was eight or about that, first or second grade, she would walk her to school, and she passed. I didn't understand that. I knew my mom got sick and got taken away, out of the house while I was there, but I didn't understand how people died. How they could be with you one time, and you don't see them no more. But I learned as time went on. I can remember some of the people, some of the white children that were in school. I loved them. Sometimes I would pick at certain ones, but they loved me, and we were friends. When I was in Jones School, Mr. Perry, used to be the maintenance man. When we would go home for lunch and come back from lunch, we would play baseball, and Mr. Perry led the baseball game. Of course, Jenny Mitchell could never play because she was my white Barbie doll, and at the time, she didn't know that. I didn't really consider her a Barbie doll then, but she was very special, because she had that long hair so she could not play. She would tell me, "Martha, not today." I say, "Yes, today and every day, when you come back from lunch, you got to get your hair done." She said, "But it's already done." "No, not the way I want it." Mr. Perry, came over here, he put a stop to it. He said, "Martha, what are you doing to her?" I said 'I'm doing her hair," because I was doing her hair, had my hand on her hair, putting a rubber band on it. He said, "Jenny, do you want her to do your hair? Would you like to play baseball?" She said, "Yes, I've been wanting to play." He said, "Martha, today is your last day, because I've been watching you. Every time she come home from lunch, you sit her down, and neither one of you guys are playing. You are doing her hair. You're not to do it no more. If you want to play baseball, you can, but leave her hair alone." I almost cried, but it was fun playing baseball. [LAUGHTER] That made up for it. But Jenny is the one that you talked to, Heidi.
- [00:39:03] HEIDI MORSE: Yes, she gave your name to me.
- [00:39:08] MARTHA MONK HILL: She knows that our memories are so special. She has them too, and she remembers things. She does. We talk on the phone, we keep up with each other. She came back down through here about four years ago and she stopped. We went to lunch, and everything. I really enjoyed that. I wasn't doing too good when she came, but I've been standing on my own right now, and persevering on through. But I surely have good memories of growing up, I do [OVERLAPPING] and I miss those days.
- [00:39:46] HEIDI MORSE: I think I have a photo of you and a few others participating in a book club, at the Ann Arbor Community Center. It was published in the Ann Arbor News, 1964. [OVERLAPPING]
- [00:40:03] MARTHA MONK HILL: Look, look. Also, Heidi, and then I was in a talent show at the Community Center, and that was in the paper. I don't know what year it was. It was Linda Williams, Janetta Bryant, and me, during that time. I think we were still in Slauson. No, we weren't. We were in junior high school. Brenda's father, Carroll McFadden, he promoted that talent show at Jones School. There was just so much going on that Mr. McFadden kept going for the children. [BACKGROUND] You're getting ready to go? [BACKGROUND] I'm doing a documentary. I know we're talking mainly about Jones School, and I'm trying to remember certain things. Also, while going there I can remember too, going back, I might be jumping from here to there, but going back to Jones School, I remember having the crossing guards, they always gave you something special to do, always. You could be a crossing guard. You had your little thing that you put on to show when it rains, because when you had the thing that you had on, it lit up, and that was very special. When we would do that, even in the winter time, we would go in and drink hot chocolate. It was like we was deserving of that.

Media
February 16, 2022
Length: 00:41:56
Copyright: Creative Commons (Attribution, Non-Commercial, Share-alike)
Rights Held by: Ann Arbor District Library
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Subjects
Jones School
Jones Elementary School
Ann Arbor Public Schools - Desegregation
Adoption
Slauson Junior High School
Dunbar Community Center
Quality Bakery
LOH Education
LOH Education - Jones School
Education
Local History
Oral Histories
Race & Ethnicity
There Went The Neighborhood Interview Archive
Martha Monk
Esther Monk
Arnell Ridley
Bill Ridley
Loretta Ridley
Carroll McFadden
Annette McFadden
Jennifer Mitchell Hampton
Stella Taylor
Beverly Bird
Brenda McFadden
Waltstine G. Perry
401 N Division St
Birmingham AL
524 N Fifth Ave