There Went The Neighborhood - Studio Interview: Jennifer (Mitchell) Hampton
When: October 18, 2022
Jennifer (Mitchell) Hampton attended Jones School in kindergarten, fifth, and sixth grades, and she remembers being one of very few white students in the school. She shares memories of her classmates and teachers and her perspective on racial attitudes in Ann Arbor in the 1950s and 60s.
This interview was filmed during the making of the documentary film There Went The Neighborhood: The Closing of Jones School, produced by the Ann Arbor District Library and 7 Cylinders Studio. More interviews are available in the There Went The Neighborhood Interview Archive.
Transcript
- [00:00:05] DONALD HARRISON: This is Donald Harrison with Seven Cylinders Studio. Toko Shiiki is on camera. Heidi Morse from the library is here as well. Jenny, thank you so much for being here and talking with us today.
- [00:00:19] JENNIFER HAMPTON: You're welcome.
- [00:00:19] DONALD HARRISON: Like I said, we're going to start with just really the basics of who you are, and where you grew up. If you could start with your name and any nicknames.
- [00:00:28] JENNIFER HAMPTON: My name is Jennifer Hampton. My name that I went by as a child was Jenny Mitchell, I was native of Ann Arbor, born and raised, born at University of Michigan Hospital in 1951 and grew up downtown.
- [00:00:49] DONALD HARRISON: Jenny, you don't have to look at the camera. You can look at me.
- [00:00:51] JENNIFER HAMPTON: Okay, good.
- [00:00:54] DONALD HARRISON: I know it can be hard to know which one to talk to. But yeah, so we're just in conversation. What was Ann Arbor like growing up?
- [00:01:07] JENNIFER HAMPTON: Well, I don't know, outside of the downtown area and so being in downtown kid in West Park was very memorable. I was just in that little area. For me, it was different because we live so close to downtown and we were latchkey kids. We just went and came in a little. I remember going to the park with my neighborhood friends two blocks, three, with no parents. We just went and stayed at the park all day and then did hair. There was supervision. Somebody would stay all day, watch the kids, they were hired from the Ann Arbor Rec Department, so to speak. They stayed with the kids, basically like a chaperone, and so that was it. Then I was two blocks from Main Street.
- [00:02:14] DONALD HARRISON: I was going to ask where exactly did you grow up?
- [00:02:16] JENNIFER HAMPTON: We grew up around the corner on Ann and Miller. I'm sorry, Ann and First, and my birth certificate says 220 Ann, which is an infamous street, very infamous, two blocks up, and which was an all Black neighborhood with bars and barbershops and whatever. It was not infamous when I was little. I never felt in harm's way or anything. It was just that there was where Black people went to be with other people, pool halls, and wherever. There was really nowhere else and so that was close by. Then later maybe in the 70s then it started getting rough. But so that's where I grew up.
- [00:03:09] DONALD HARRISON: We'll get into that too. What about your parents? What are your parents' names and what did they think?
- [00:03:14] JENNIFER HAMPTON: My father's name is Jules Mitchell, mother was Elizabeth and my dad worked down the street at King-Seeley's. Then he moved out to Chrysler. They moved out to Cyril Township and then he ended up working at until he passed away. Then my mother worked at St. Joe, which was walking distance. Actually, we didn't have a car. We didn't get a car, I think until I was seven years old. My father, he'd share rides with people. My mother just walked to the hospital.
- [00:03:53] DONALD HARRISON: St. Joseph is walkable?
- [00:03:55] JENNIFER HAMPTON: Yeah. It was up on Ingalls Street.
- [00:03:58] DONALD HARRISON: Currently, St. Joe's now is.
- [00:04:00] JENNIFER HAMPTON: Yeah. I think it's part of the University of Michigan now, but it was on Ingles and Catherine.
- [00:04:07] DONALD HARRISON: Then you said, where did your dad work and what was that?
- [00:04:10] JENNIFER HAMPTON: He worked in the factory. It was called King-Seeley's. I can't remember, they made different parts for cars and so he was like on the assembly line.
- [00:04:23] DONALD HARRISON: For you, what stands out when you think back on your childhood? What comes to mind about what stands out the most, are there any memory, sight, sounds, smells?
- [00:04:32] JENNIFER HAMPTON: I got a childhood that's different than most. Meaning that it pretty much was like Little Rascals. If you watch the Little Rascals, you'd never see parents ever and so we were kids that just went--we'd go from Main Street, walking up and down Main Street, buying things at Kresge's, cheeseburgers down around the corner at Dagwood Diner, which I found out years later was very infamous. My girlfriend's dad, who was way older than me, said "I can't believe you went to Dagwood Diner." As I said, I went to Dagwood go and get good cheeseburger. The guy said, "Hey Jenny, you clean up tables and do some stuff for me, I'll make you a cheeseburger." I'm probably about 12 at that time. Main Street was close, the movie theaters were very close, like the Michigan, State. We'd go to the movies by ourselves.
- [00:05:38] DONALD HARRISON: I know the table is right in front of you, but we're picking up some of that. You're totally bringing me back to that time. You were really just a downtown kid and you were exploring a lot. Did you go down into the old neighborhood a lot? Did you go down to what's that, Kerrytown?
- [00:06:05] JENNIFER HAMPTON: All the time. Matter of fact, I tell a story that very few remember. I'm sure Russell does. Surely. There was a slaughterhouse on Summit off of Main and pigs running around and I remember taking one kid there and I said, come and they went in with me and there was big barrels with taps on and it pigs heads, the parts on these barrels. The Black neighborhood up the street, would go down and stand with buckets and get leftovers like chitlins and whatever, neck bones. I don't know what they got but I didn't, but memories of others that did. It was a place that real estate agents only showed Black people because it was a slaughterhouse and it stunk. That's where Black people ended up living there. My knowledge, somebody else might have some other history, but that's my history.
- [00:07:26] DONALD HARRISON: Do you remember the junkyard, Lansky's junkyard?
- [00:07:29] JENNIFER HAMPTON: There was a junkyard there too. I remember there was a house there and it's still there. It was for people that, it was like for welfare, poor people, whatever, lived there on the corner. I remember that and I remember everybody through that neighborhood. Dixons, Theresa Dixon, her parents, who loved her and her mother, very sweet. I found a picture of her mom down on Main Street, just go into the archives through the AADL and I said, "Is this your mom?" She goes, "Yes. Where did you get the picture?" That was really good because that was like in the 50s that I found the history of that picture.
- [00:08:25] DONALD HARRISON: What's called Kerrytown, where the farmer's market is now? What do you remember of that area?
- [00:08:30] JENNIFER HAMPTON: Well, I remember, it's still the same market where all the farmers would come and sell their vegetables and such. But the building was in the back a feed store and the front we would go in and get penny candy, big glass case, and all these little penny candies. Before lunchtime, we'd run in there and get our little candy spot next, Mary Janes, whatever. Then Diroff's around the corner or service line is Zingerman's and our history there. You didn't care for Mr. Diroff's. He was honorable guy with cheap people. But my very dear friend's great grandfather built that building and he still has some blueprints to Zingerman's building. That's interesting.
- [00:09:37] DONALD HARRISON: Jenny, so growing up you were gone around all over the place. What's that sound? That might've been your phone. Set that on airplane mode. Can you turn it on or off?
- [00:09:58] JENNIFER HAMPTON: There we go.
- [00:10:03] DONALD HARRISON: Were you aware growing up of the racial and ethnic makeup of the different areas?
- [00:10:12] JENNIFER HAMPTON: It was very bad, in the sense that it was a mix of good families. A lot of kids have two parents in the house, worked, and then there were some kids who didn't. Then there were some kids I went to their house, seriously, all that they had in their living room was a sofa and a fold-up chair. You had a mix but I saw the difference, and I didn't care. I was always welcomed with open arms anywhere in that neighborhood, anywhere. I think that's probably why I have a very close attachment there. It was different. I'll speak to some people that say Ann Arbor wasn't really bad. You didn't hear the things I've heard because being a little white kid, I heard things that maybe people wouldn't say in front of the Black kids. Some parents would say, "Don't associate," but I was blessed that my family doesn't like that. My father was from New York City. He couldn't be like that. [LAUGHTER] But there was differences.
- [00:11:50] DONALD HARRISON: The neighborhood you grew up in, was it more mixed and then if you went one direction was it more Black? [OVERLAPPING]
- [00:11:56] JENNIFER HAMPTON: My block, it was white. Next block up, there was Black families. Then get up Kingsley, Black. Then you'd go up Miller, the whole neighborhood that they claim is Water Hill, I think now--which none of us in the community have ever heard of that, ever, there's no such thing--that neighborhood was all Black. My mother-in-law lived up on Gott Street and all my friends, I had so many. But again, it was mainly Black, but there was white all through there too. Then you had the grocery stores that you could walk to, which was really nice.
- [00:12:43] DONALD HARRISON: You were friends with kids who were Black and white, it sounds like. [OVERLAPPING]
- [00:12:47] JENNIFER HAMPTON: Oh, yeah. [OVERLAPPING] I mixed up, but I was probably one of very few white kids that was accepted with the Black kids, and so we had this really tight bond that we were really connected. I had a bad name. People called me names because of that attachment, and it hurt sometimes when you'd have an adult approach you and quite frankly say, "What are you doing with those niggers?" What do you tell? Little kid. You freeze up. Lump in the throat, scared. But then I'd go on my way, and I don't care. They're my friends. I love them. They love me. Their parents loved me, so I always just felt a little bit more closer with that community because of the acceptance, because of the love, and because to be honest, I just had more fun being with the Black kids.
- [00:13:59] DONALD HARRISON: We've had a lot of people who grew up in that neighborhood, that it was a very tight-knit community and that it was very close. Did you feel that? Can you tell me if you experienced that?
- [00:14:10] JENNIFER HAMPTON: I do, and we still talk about that today. There was churches that everybody belonged to right there. There was a church there on Beakes. There was another one--I always get the two mixed up--Fourth ave, the Baptist Church there. What do they call those churches where they just off the street. It's not a real church, storefront. Storefront church was right there where Kerrytown is on Kingsley. Storefront. It was close. Everybody knew everybody, and sometimes, everybody knew too much business about everybody else, but yeah, I think so. A lot of people ended up marrying into each other's families too. I can definitely say that I know so many people connected to even my family, that came from that neighborhood.
- [00:15:10] DONALD HARRISON: Then do you remember the community center, the Dunbar Center, and then it moved to Main Street?
- [00:15:15] JENNIFER HAMPTON: I wasn't there when it was Dunbar, most of my friends went to the Dunbar Center, but I did go to the Community Center on Main. I remember that and it was fun. It was a good place for the kids to go. I was sad to see that it was sold, and I went to the meeting and Shirley was there and Russell was there, and I spoke my piece what I felt about it, because I did go there a lot, but not only did I go there, my son went there, and we lived in area when he was little, and he took the bus. They had a bus that would come and take all the kids down in the Community Center. Then when I had heard what was going on, we just still don't think we know the whole truth. It was sad. Because that was for Blacks and it was to remain always by Blacks, so that was sad.
- [00:16:22] DONALD HARRISON: Then tell me about Jones School because that was the neighborhood school around Kingsley, right?
- [00:16:35] JENNIFER HAMPTON: I would say Jones School was probably one the most memorable times of my entire life, and brings tears. I went from St. Thomas, which was Catholic, all white. Not one Black person, to my knowledge, was in that school. I went to Jones in kindergarten, then I knew the kids and still know Horace Edwards, he's still around. Then I went to St. Thomas, and fifth grade, they flunked me and my mother was very upset. She thought it was basically political, that we weren't big benefactors, and quite frankly, my mother never went to church. [LAUGHTER] I think she had issues. My mom wouldn't go to church. I think there was something there, I really do. Then when I went to fifth grade to Jones, I had to take all these tests, and I remember my little boyfriend who ended up being my boyfriend, he came in from another school, so we had to take this test and came back, apparently that the teacher told my mother, "We have nothing to offer her here. She should be in the seventh grade academically."
- [00:18:13] JENNIFER HAMPTON: Because St. Thomas Catholic School, you really are advanced. My mother said "No, she's too tiny." And I was extremely small for my age. If you saw me if I was 12, I looked 10 or nine. She said "She's little and I don't want her to get a big head, so she's going to stay." Thank God, she left me there. I was probably the smartest kid in the school academically, but not really, I was not the smartest. There were kids in my class that were smarter than me. I was just educated, so to speak, but they were smarter. The things about that I look back now on a school that was basically all Black. It was fun. We had a lot of fun, but we weren't taught anything. There was no Black history whatsoever. I think today, if those kids were taught all the accomplishments that Black people had, you know traffic lights, washing machines, heaters. There were so many things that Black people did that was an everyday thing in our lives. I think that Black people, my friends, would have felt a little bit better about themselves. Instead of always everything was white. And that everything that's white was better. This was your lot, so to speak, what people were told. Anyhow, then we had Mrs. Fox, who was our fifth grade teacher and everybody remembers Mrs. Fox. All I've got to say, Mrs. Fox she was something. She was the greatest teacher and I kept contact with her until I was probably 45 maybe. She always reflected Jones School because when they closed, Mrs. Fox went over to Hayes and she said it was totally dead. Those kids are totally different than the Black kids. I asked her one day, I said, well, how? She said, "Jenny, they could fall and have little bitty scratch. Then she said Black kids fall, bust their head open, get back up and keep going and doing whatever."
- [00:20:53] DONALD HARRISON: They were tougher kids.
- [00:20:55] JENNIFER HAMPTON: Much so and had to be. It's just the way, that was a difference. I don't want somewhere to say difference in culture, but there was a difference. Black kids were tough. I was scared. I didn't want to go there. Even though I was at the park with the kids, I was in the neighborhood, there was kids I didn't know. I remember when we got out of school at St. Thomas, we had to walk by Jones and we tried to get there fast before they got out. We got out about 15 minutes earlier than the kids at Jones. "Those kids are rogue. Hurry, [LAUGHTER] we don't want to get caught." I was so nervous on my first day and Nadia was with me and Nadia her father was from Egypt, her mother was a Caucasian from Kentucky. She blended in a little bit better and she had been there a couple of years and she kept saying "You'll be fine." I go, "Okay." Mrs. Fox's doing a roll call and when she got to me, I stood up, because at St. Thomas you could never talk sitting down to the nun, you have to stand up. I stood. Everybody started laughing and I was like [LAUGHTER] Mrs. Fox was so sweet. She just said, "You sit down. You don't have to do that here." Then I learned we didn't have to do a lot of things there. Then I really started relaxing and feeling good because it was not a school that stifled you. You didn't walk in single files and couldn't talk to each other, it was relaxed and I liked that.
- [00:22:40] DONALD HARRISON: Do you remember roughly when you went there? It sounds like.
- [00:22:44] JENNIFER HAMPTON: Yes, when I went to Jones in fifth grade, it was 1962. I was there 1962 and 1963. Then of course there was 1956 when I went to Kerrytown.
- [00:23:02] DONALD HARRISON: Were there any Black teachers? What was the teacher--?
- [00:23:05] JENNIFER HAMPTON: We were talking about that the other day. I remember only one Black teacher at Jones and he was what we called special ed. Mr. Shepard. And he was down on the lower level which we called the basement, and he was down there and then they transferred Mr. Shepard over to Slauson few years later. But he was young.
- [00:23:28] DONALD HARRISON: Do you remember a janitor--either Mr. Pitts, Mr. Perry. Was there a janitor, Black janitor there, when you were there?
- [00:23:38] JENNIFER HAMPTON: No
- [00:23:39] DONALD HARRISON: Okay.
- [00:23:39] JENNIFER HAMPTON: Not that I'm not telling I remember maybe Mr. Pitts. That's sounds familiar, but that could also have been a little bit late, for me. Because I was really surprised that the people that I knew their parents went to Jones School. Like Bob Thompson that owned DeLong's restaurant. Good friend of mine. I didn't know Bob went to Jones School. I didn't know, my best friend Brenda McFadden, her dad went to Jones School. I was pretty amazed to know that now. I wish I would've known that back years ago.
- [00:24:16] DONALD HARRISON: So you said you think back on Jones, it was one of the best times of your life. Tell me a little bit more about why. Was the education great or was education not great? What stood out for you?
- [00:24:27] JENNIFER HAMPTON: Well I think it was. I really do. I think Mrs. Fox was an excellent teacher and she was really good with the kids because they were tough kids. Some of them were tough and some would talk right up to the teacher. She had to deal with some tough ones. Then again, it was just once in a while. But she was good. She would get tripped up sometimes talking about math and then get into some of her personal stuff. But anyhow, she was a great teacher and we loved her. She lived two blocks from the school and we could go visit her in the summer, we'd go up there at her house and knock at her door and Mrs. Fox let us in. In sixth grade when we talk about Ms. Santomieri, she wore these big petticoats under her dress and the type of high heels that were spiked high heels or pointed toes. She was Italian, and she was real strict. You didn't get in trouble with Ms. Santomieri. Then I remember music and I told Martha, I remember this now, that a lot of those songs that we were taught by Mrs. White, a little white lady with white hair. Some of those songs like "We Are Climbing Jacob's Ladder"--which it was beautiful the way she had us going back and forth--but that's an old spiritual. A lot of the songs like "Oh Shenandoah," a lot of them now I know were geared to Black. But we didn't say Black then. We said colored when I was there. If I called somebody Black, you're going to get in trouble. But anyhow, so back to that. I'm thinking, boy, wouldn't it be interesting if she would had told us the history of this song? We were just singing it. We didn't know.
- [00:26:54] DONALD HARRISON: Did you feel like you were accepted like the school was you said mostly Black by the time she got there. Did you feel like you were nervous at first?
- [00:27:02] JENNIFER HAMPTON: I was nervous. You didn't know what to expect. I will tell you, a friend of mine who's Black, grew up here in Ann Arbor, lived down the street. He had a twin brother. He told me, he said, "You know, Jenny, my dad would not let us go to Jones School. They took us down to Perry," which is on Division. I said, "Why?" He said because it was too tough.
- [00:27:31] DONALD HARRISON: But your experience there seems positive?
- [00:27:36] JENNIFER HAMPTON: What happened with me I think everybody looked out for me because I was small, and I wasn't trouble. I wasn't any threat to anyone. I was protected, put it that way. I had protectors. If somebody even dared to say that they were going to want to fight or whatever, then somebody else would come by and saying that they're not bothering her. The farmers market was the place that everybody got in a fight. You couldn't fight on school property. They would take me to sit at the market and that's where some of them would fight.
- [00:28:30] DONALD HARRISON: Then your friends at St. Thomas. Did they--?
- [00:28:35] JENNIFER HAMPTON: I just left them. They were no longer my friends. The people cross the street, [LAUGHTER] they went to St. Thomas and they were my friends, the neighbor girls, but really I didn't keep in contact with them. I just stayed where I was.
- [00:28:54] DONALD HARRISON: Did you feel like you were between two worlds?
- [00:28:57] JENNIFER HAMPTON: I went back-and-forth. I didn't know. I was not one of these people that stayed for, I liked everybody. I have white friends and went to their homes and whatever. What people talk about. There wasn't any racism. I always say to my white friends now because they're still here with me. Did you ever go to any of your Black friends home? Did you eat at their house and any of that? No. Same idea.
- [00:29:36] JENNIFER HAMPTON: I have stories of my girlfriend, who lived above the pool hall. They were poor. She came from a family with eight brothers. They shouldn't have been poor. Lot of times I tell my husband because he knew them. He's nine years older than me. He grew up in the neighborhood and I would say something about them. He said "They weren't poor. They had good jobs." I said, "Well, why did they live like that?" He said, "Because they spent their money on other things." I was like, "Oh, okay." But I loved her so much and she was probably the toughest kid in school. She again took me under her wing. The pool hall was down below. She would eat lemons that she forced me to eat lemons with salt. I'll never forget that. I remember one time squeezing lemon juice on the drunks below at the pool hall and she thought that was so funny. They thought it was raining. Another story, and I've got millions of these, she told me, she said, "Go around the corner to the welfare building," which is above Hall's Barber Shop. She called it the welfare building. She said, "Go over there and get me a hot comb from so-and-so." Back then, you know, you took a comb and you put it on the stove and heated it up and straightened your hair. I ran around and went up there was blood all on the wall going up the stairwell and dried blood on the steps. I still went up and I looked and come to find out that the man at the bus station, Art, who worked at the bus station, somebody hit him with a hatchet. Oh yeah. It was tough. Hit him with a hatchet and there was blood everywhere. To this day I always go, "Why did my mom and dad allow me to go?" But they never said I couldn't. My girlfriend lived up there, but anyhow, so then I went up there and lost my radio. I had a little transistor radio my dad bought me. It was as big as a cell phone. That's what happened. When I was up there with my friends, this drunk from across the hall came over and just start acting crazy. [LAUGHTER] He had a butter knife and I'll never forget that he was chasing us and I lost my radio. I was like, my father's going to kill me if I don't get my radio, and I can't tell my father I was up there and some guy was chasing me with a butter knife or I can't go there anymore. Long story short, we had a boxer dog, which was intimidating to some. My little friend says you give me the dog and we'll get your radio. So we took the dog up there to get my radio. I swear. That was a funny story, but that's just what it was. Honestly, I mean, there's things that doing that could have put me in harm's way. But it really never felt that way. I never felt that way. The people on Ann Street, the bars, the pool halls, I'm walking there. I had to go that way. A lot of times going to school, she lived upstairs and I picked her up. I never had anybody mistreat me, if anything, they always protected me respectfully.
- [00:33:36] DONALD HARRISON: Was the perception in town that that was a dangerous area?
- [00:33:40] JENNIFER HAMPTON: Yeah, it was Ann Street. It became dangerous. I knew people that were stabbed in there. I knew people that were murdered. I knew them personally.
- [00:33:52] DONALD HARRISON: At some point it did become more of a dangerous area.
- [00:33:56] JENNIFER HAMPTON: Yeah. Like the girl that lived above the pool hall. I loved her so much. And she died from a heroin overdose, you know. Some people went on and did extremely good in life. Others died young, went to prison and got on drugs. It was kind of a division. It wasn't everybody there. A lot of people went there after work to get a beer and then associate with other Black people because there was no where. That and the Elks on Sunset.
- [00:34:39] DONALD HARRISON: As far as that neighborhood, the old neighborhood, Jones closed the year after you left because first, I'm interested in hearing your perspective on that. If you remember, when it was closed and what you thought or what you were told?
- [00:34:53] JENNIFER HAMPTON: Yeah. Well, we were just talking about that the other day. Why were those kids bused? Well, how come the white kids weren't bused over to Jones? Well, we know why. Yeah, it was unfair. Who cared? It was all Black. Everybody was having fun. Nobody ever thought this is an all-Black school. We were different. To me, and I'm just giving you my opinion because everybody else has different stories. Some might say we didn't like it. I'm white. I can't speak for the Black community. I can just share my part in it. But we didn't have a problem.
- [00:35:43] DONALD HARRISON: If you can tell me, so Jones. Again, if you can rephrase the question. As far as like when Jones close. What is your feeling or your reaction that?
- [00:35:52] JENNIFER HAMPTON: When Jones school closed, it was sad because there went that school that we all had this attachment to. Really, I'm serious. People had an emotional attachment. I don't know about other people going through. But there is an emotional attachment to it because we were all part of each other and the community and now it's gone. That neighborhood, Pioneer High School. Do you know how far it is? We walked. I remember they had the city bus was available for a window of time and then I don't know what happened. Maybe they went on strike. But we walked to school from down there. That was far.
- [00:36:43] DONALD HARRISON: So some of it, it logistically impacted you to have to walk or bus?
- [00:36:48] JENNIFER HAMPTON: Yeah.
- [00:36:49] DONALD HARRISON: Then we didn't have a school bus because the distance wasn't I guess you have to have a certain amount of distance for school bus. So there wasn't a school bus. So we had to walk. Imagine walking in a skirt. You couldn't wear pants to school. You had to walk in a skirt. All the girls then, had to wear miniskirts. [LAUGHTER] You freeze unless you can find someone to give you a lift.
- [00:37:16] DONALD HARRISON: This was the era of busing and desegregation, right? But you are saying some people didn't get bussed.
- [00:37:24] JENNIFER HAMPTON: Well, I'm talking about Pioneer at that time when I left so then that's years later, after Jones had quit that we went to the high school. But we had to walk. Well, yeah, I guess you might. I would assume that the bus would have been because most people in that neighborhood were Black.
- [00:37:44] DONALD HARRISON: And do you remember what you felt and thought when you heard that it was closed?
- [00:37:49] JENNIFER HAMPTON: Yeah, I felt sad. I did-- [OVERLAPPING]
- [00:37:54] DONALD HARRISON: What was sad to you?
- [00:37:55] JENNIFER HAMPTON: Well what made me sad about it was now what are they going to do with this? It's our school. Then people in the neighborhood. Seriously, you could just send your kid to school or go to school. Now, they have to get on a bus. They have to be bused up to Northside, or wherever else that was available for them to go to. To me, it just didn't seem like it was fair. If the school was all Black, well, bring some white kids over there. Instead of closing it, which they did, why couldn't they used it and blended it somehow? And it would be so much that we need it to be integrated then why didn't brought some white kids in and put some Black. You know what I'm saying. I don't know. I think it would've been a better solution. Then years later it became Community High School.
- [00:39:04] DONALD HARRISON: You left Jones because you went off to junior high? Where did [OVERLAPPING].
- [00:39:09] JENNIFER HAMPTON: We went to Slauson. That was fun too. [LAUGHTER]
- [00:39:12] DONALD HARRISON: You went from a school that was mostly Black to then Slauson.
- [00:39:18] JENNIFER HAMPTON: Yeah.
- [00:39:20] DONALD HARRISON: What about other kids from Jones, did they come with you?
- [00:39:23] JENNIFER HAMPTON: Oh, yeah. They walked to school with me. Again, when you get older and now you're becoming a teenager. You're more aware, whatever, your identity, your sexuality, all of that starts to come play. The Black kids were more advanced when it came to that. They knew more about life and sex and all of that before anybody else did. Seriously, I learned a lot. [LAUGHTER] When I went over there, a woman said to me, we were talking [NOISE] not too long ago and she said something about me being tough. She said, "Yeah, well, you were tough but you always had seven Black girls behind you." I said, "Hey, you should have got seven Black girls." Then when I went there, it was more awareness of where am I fitting. People would say, "Don't be with her. She's a nigger lover." That's the truth. I'm not saying that, it's true. But I went in with my Black friends, stayed with my Black friends, but did not make it. Like I said, I like all sorts of different people, so I was mixing and mingling with everyone.
- [00:40:53] DONALD HARRISON: That was not easy or some people didn't quite like that or accept you?
- [00:40:59] JENNIFER HAMPTON: No. It was, she's the one. I was always different in that sense. Because the other kids at school, there was a few like Linda and Nadia. They came from that. They were white kids that were like me in a sense. The other white kids from the other neighborhoods, were all white neighborhoods. They didn't really have the attachment that I did, or the history with not just my friends, but their mom and dad, their brothers and sisters. Their brother could be friends with my brother which they weren't. We had this family. It was more family and to this day, I'm 71 years old, they're my family. Somebody showed a picture, a group of men of eight and they wanted to know who they were. I knew almost everybody. Very close and I said they're not friends, they're family. Then they all said yes they're family, because that's the way we felt about each other. White people didn't have that bond that Black people had.
- [00:42:24] DONALD HARRISON: Say that again.
- [00:42:26] JENNIFER HAMPTON: The bond between Blacks was, I think, it was closer than the bond that the white kids had amongst each other. The white kids had their bond with their friends and still do to this day. I go to class reunion, [NOISE] and they're still buddies. But as a community they didn't have that. Because Black had a community right here, this home, this neighborhoods right here and the white neighborhood was everywhere. I think that was probably another reason.
- [00:43:05] DONALD HARRISON: Did you see that start to change? Jones is closed and then the neighborhood started to, churches closed, the Dunbar Center moved. Did you see that change? Did you have perspective on that?
- [00:43:16] JENNIFER HAMPTON: The evolution of the neighborhood, how it ended up evolving was to this day and to me, is bittersweet. Because I live in the township. I come into Ann Arbor, I walk. I'm by myself, I reminisce. I'm a very sentimental person. I know every nook and cranny of Ann Arbor. You can't take me anywhere, you take me blindfolded because I was what my son called a street kid, and I was. When I walk through the neighborhoods, it's sad, there was no one. The Joneses, they're still there on Beakes, and another family up on Spring and I think there's another family over on Gott Street. Everybody is gone and there's no Black people. It is all white people walking everywhere, free up there. It's strange to me, to be honest. It's very strange. I get upset because I see a house that was maybe 1,000 square feet, 1,200, 4,000. They wouldn't want a Black person to have a permit to put a garage. But now you can add an additional 2,000 square feet to these homes. My mother-in-law bought her home on Gott Street for $12,000, $13,000 by herself with seven kids. She said, "Well, I paid $400,000 for this house and I paid for it." Like it's paid off or something. I'm like, "Oh, okay. Well, my mother-in-law bought it like $12,000." [LAUGHTER] I know there are time and seasons, and I know that life changes and things evolve. But basically it's gentrification. In my book, I want to see part of that old neighborhood. I do not want to hear of Water Hill. I'm tired of it. I just look at people and I go, "What is Water Hill?" Well you know up on whatever this lady was telling me one day she lived up there. I said, "Oh, you mean the west side?" We called it west side. She goes, "Yeah." She said, "It was pretty bad up there." I go, "It was?" Then she goes, "Oh, yeah there was a lot of crime and drugs." Lady, I don't know what you know, but that was a great neighborhood. We had three grocery stores that you could walk to, right in that neighborhood. It was a great neighborhood. We didn't have any problems. It ended up becoming more Black, well, it always was. Next it was few Mexicans in town, Montalvos and they're still here. We didn't have that. That's not true. It upset me when she said that and it just sounds so pretentious. I think the Brook Street man said he started calling it Water Hill because they were having a party. It was on the hill, there was Fountain, and then it just stayed that way. But I think the real estate agents bid on it and they make it sound good like Barton Hills, Water Hill. They gave it this name and it became the name. So everywhere you go up there, believe me, $500,000 up on all those homes. A little bitty one I saw was $700,000 just because it's Water Hill.
- [00:47:20] DONALD HARRISON: So then when we go back to that Jones era where all this had not started, civil rights was also happening and you had Martin Luther King, and "I Have a Dream" speech and all these things were playing out. What was your sense of that and how it was impacting Ann Arbor and your experience? Were you seeing kids wanting to live that dream together? Did you feel that was-- [OVERLAPPING]
- [00:47:46] JENNIFER HAMPTON: No, they didn't. At least the kids that I grew with.
- [00:47:52] DONALD HARRISON: They didn't what?
- [00:47:53] JENNIFER HAMPTON: They didn't want to be with the white kids. They knew that they were different, they knew that they weren't as accepted. I told my friend yesterday we went to football game and afterwards there was the dance. The white kids were on this side dancing, Black kids were on this side dancing. I'm over here with the Black kids dancing. They're better dancers [LAUGHTER] But after the dance, we went to an after party and I never can forget this. We had to stop at a gas station and I was with my Black friends, met boys and girl and we have to stop at a gas station to get gas. That was a gas station that they came out and pumped your gas. All of a sudden they said, "Get on the floor. Jenny, get on the floor." I'm like what?
- [00:48:48] JENNIFER HAMPTON: I got up and they threw coats on me because it was fall. They threw their coats on me. What the heck is going on? They would laugh. I said, "Why'd you guys do that to me?" [LAUGHTER] "We didn't want to be seen with a white girl." That's how far--and to this day I just feel so blessed when I see kids of all ethnic groups, religions or whatever in a car together because you didn't see that when I was a kid.
- [00:49:20] DONALD HARRISON: Is that something that you valued or is that something that you wish there was more of?
- [00:49:26] JENNIFER HAMPTON: I wish there was more of it. I think if people had had my experience, they would know there is no difference. There's only the difference in culture and even culture to me is the same because we all drink Coca-Cola, that's part of a culture. But Black community had a different culture. They had a Southern based culture, they had a culture with living. Like a lot of people I knew came from, my husband, they were sharecroppers, but even going back further, my husband's, was slaves. We have the original bill of sale of his family that they just found recently. They brought this culture North, the food and everything. Going to my one friend's house, we were going somewhere, I went to pick her up and she said come in and I went, "Oh no, what's that smell?" She was offended. She's really talking about stinks. [LAUGHTER] She said, "It's chipmunks." I don't want any part of that and to this day I have not eaten a chipmunk, even though my family eats them, I won't eat them. But long story short, so that was funny. But we had questions. Black kids would ask me questions about white people. The white kids would ask me questions about Black people. Go, mix, mingle, there's not a difference. Maybe a difference when somebody wants to eat certain food or something, or a little language difference because the difference in slang talk or whatever. But I don't know. Black people that I wanted to be around and still to this day, Black people were fun, they had an energy, they could laugh in the face of adversity and I liked that, I did and I admired it. Because most Black people honestly felt you had to work harder and you had to act a certain way and taught them to be different around some white people.
- [00:51:53] DONALD HARRISON: Did you get a sense of the racism that they experienced, your friends?
- [00:51:59] JENNIFER HAMPTON: Yeah, I did.
- [00:52:01] DONALD HARRISON: Did you say you saw it and you heard about it, so you had a sense of it?
- [00:52:05] JENNIFER HAMPTON: I heard because I was white and a lot of white people would say the things that they said to me to a Black person. But they said things. But that's what I liked about Black people. Black people, believe me, they did say things about white people too. I was caught when Black friends would say something about white people, derogatory and then they look and they go, "I'm sorry." [LAUGHTER] I go, "I know you're not talking about me. Don't worry about it." Because that's just the way that humans, people are. When you don't know and even in small Ann Arbor, if you're going to keep yourself separate, you're not going to learn a lot. I think in life in general, that's the problem that we have that people don't know. That's why to this day I always tell people I'm blessed, I went to Jones School. I got the best education, but I certainly got something that other people don't have. That's a sense of I can go anywhere and sit anywhere, I can walk into a whole building with Black people and they may look at me strange, but I don't feel uncomfortable because I know that they are still the same.
- [00:53:42] DONALD HARRISON: Is it your sense of, I guess, Ann Arbor, when you step back on it in terms of how it handled the situation in the '60s, how segregated did it seem to you as a kid and then how did that change in the '60s?
- [00:54:00] JENNIFER HAMPTON: For me, I can't speak for everyone else because in my community like my girlfriend's dad, actually, he was the janitor at our junior high school when all this was going on. But he was also going to school at night and he also ended up being a school teacher at Clague Junior High School. You had Mr. DeLong, we called him. His real name's Bob Thompson. He had the restaurant right there. He's successful and you had Calverts, they were successful and the Bakers, they were super successful. You had a lot of people that were having a lot of success. But they probably had their issues too, getting to that place of success. Harry Mial, he went to Jones School and he ended up the principal of Northside. There's a lot of successful Black people in the neighborhood. Don't get me wrong. Like I said, I was not the smartest kid in school because I was white. I just had more opportunity. I don't know. I think there was a lot of them in the civil rights. Black people were getting angry and there's like it's come on, what's going on here? We're still not getting looked upon the right way. You can't buy a house in certain neighborhoods. But all of the things were--I'll give you example. My father died when I was 14. When he went to the factory he was working, they were Kentucky people. They all came up to work in the factories. My father is from, like I said, Jersey City, New York City. He didn't understand their mentality. He was at work and he came home really angry because a Black man came to work at the plant. There wasn't any there, I guess and so daddy got up, went over, took his lunch, carried his lunch, took his lunch and went and sat with him. He didn't hear the end of it, called him all names. Why you sitting damn near him? I can remember his anger and that was early '60s. That was Ann Arbor and another thing I recall, I still want to go back and see if anybody else recalls, but there's a restaurant called Sugar Bowl. It was on the corner of Main in Huron. It was fancy type restaurant. Preketes, I think was the owner, maybe. They were Greek. I don't think they allowed Black people to eat there. I think they only allowed them to work.
- [00:56:50] DONALD HARRISON: Still remember the places that was not barricade?
- [00:56:54] JENNIFER HAMPTON: Yes. "We're not going in there, there's a white folks." [LAUGHTER] Whatever, move on. Then saying what some of my white kids, "I'm scared, I don't want to go over there." Then I go, "Nobody's going to hurt you. Come on, let's have fun." I don't know. But West Park was a great place for them because we had, that neighborhood park had Black, white, everybody. You name it. We were all there. It was a great place for us kids to learn about each other. We as children didn't really talk a lot of politics. But knew the difference. I'm going to tell a story--and I was just saying nigger because it was a word that was used. I can't just say N-word because it doesn't mean as much when you say it. Theresa Dixon's dad, Mr. Dixon, he worked a block away at Atwell-Hicks and I think he was maintenance man or janitor at night, whatever. He told me as an adult, he said, "I'll never forget you Jenny." He said, "Here you came up on your little bike, just a little kid. You came up on your bike, you had two little kids with you, white, and you were talking to me." I loved Mr. Dixon. Honestly, I loved Mr. Dixon. He said, "And when you turned around and ride away and you said bye and the little kids said, who's that nigger you're talking to?" He said, "You just so proud stood up and said, that's not a nigger, that's Mr. Dixon." I said, "I did?" He goes, "Yes, you did." It's funny to think that, a kid would have to say that. Not funny that I had to say it, but in the manner that I said that that he was Mr. Dixon. I loved him. That's the things that I had to deal with knowing the Black community that I did and knowing they're my best friend's parents and their brothers and their sisters and their cousins and everybody was related and still are.
- [00:59:26] DONALD HARRISON: It's a lot to figure out for a little kid, right?
- [00:59:29] JENNIFER HAMPTON: It was very strange. I remember one girlfriend, her mother was from Kentucky. She told me not to go around Black people. I'm like why? No, we don't do that here. But if you didn't, people hate it. Let's put it that way. It was here.
- [01:00:01] DONALD HARRISON: You saw that but it was more hidden?
- [01:00:09] JENNIFER HAMPTON: Yeah. I don't know. As a kid it hurt but you'd get back up. It didn't bother me enough there. It would make me stay away from my Black friends. No. I couldn't do that. They were my family, like Brenda and she died not too long ago. We talk all the time. Brenda would go, you know you're my sister. I put you and Brenda and Martha. I just knew these people, the Calverts and the Dixons and all these people that I knew over the years, I did not know them from Jones School. That Jones School opened their doors and then the years went on and on and on into to this day. So many people have died, but we're still all family. I think that we have a bond, all of us.
- [01:01:10] DONALD HARRISON: From.
- [01:01:13] JENNIFER HAMPTON: From Jones School. I think that was like a little home. Ridiculous it was that they were both women. Jones, there was Mack School too. Mack did have, of course, they had Gott Street and whatever. That school did have quite a few Black people but it wasn't like Jones School. That was a little bit different, I think.
- [01:01:33] DONALD HARRISON: Jenny, the quality of education, when they closed it down they were showing that the quality of education wasn't the test stage [OVERLAPPING]
- [01:01:42] JENNIFER HAMPTON: Of course, it wasn't. I think it wasn't because I think in a lot of retrospect because, of course, as an adult, learning more things I've learned over my lifetime, I think because white people had more influence within our public schools. They could go in there and say, "I want this, this, this, this." When you got some people in the Black community that may not even be in high-school educated as parents, they're not equipped to go in there and say, "My child needs XYZ." Over the years what happened is you just hand your kids over to the educators thinking they know more than I do. We'll just go with what they have to say. But then when they're telling your kid later in life, "No you don't really need--go into wood working or something hands-on instead of getting a degree at a university." That's the mindset. I think that if there was more involvement or could have been more involvement like in the white community that Jones School kids probably would have got a better education. I do. I mean Burns Park, all over. I'm sure their fathers were professors.
- [01:03:13] DONALD HARRISON: The year that you went there in fifth grade, did you feel that it wasn't inferior education or did you do?
- [01:03:18] JENNIFER HAMPTON: I had no idea. All I knew was I was smarter. Put it this way. I didn't ever think I was smarter, but I knew I was advanced. One time, twice, I was called down to the office to work in sixth grade, and because the principal, Mr. Stevenson, and the secretary had to go somewhere and they needed somebody to handle the phones, be in the office, so they'd come get me. Well, I wasn't the smart one, I just kind of probably knew how to do something that the other kids weren't taught. But one of the smartest in the class is my good buddy Nadia who I'm going to be seeing soon, but she was, what they call, probably go like ADD so they couldn't trust her in the office, but anyhow and then when it came to a play, for example, I was always the narrator because I had excellent reading skills and I could read with expression or whatever they said. I was taught all that at St. Thomas. I was taught to diagram sentences in the fifth grade. I didn't learn it till eighth, in public school. I had a lot going there. They had nothing really for me. But I can't say that the kids were given materials late. Fifth-grade kid was given a second-grade, none of that happened. They were all up to the fifth-grade level according to the public school. We were probably given the same material, but--these kids did not have the advantage as the white kids. I don't know why, to be honest, but I'm just giving an idea of what I think why, because the white kids had the advantaged of having parents that could get in there. Still to this day, you get in there and you say no, here. Oh this Mr. so-and-so, he's a professor or whatever, so you do it.
- [01:05:45] DONALD HARRISON: Is there anything that you haven't said or hasn't come up yet that you think is important for younger people nowadays to actually know some of the history of that, the west side in your neighborhood?
- [01:05:58] JENNIFER HAMPTON: When I tell people history, they can't believe some of it. They've got serious. [LAUGHTER] But I think it's all generational. I mean, my dad could have told me story and I wondered, are you serious? You know what I'm saying because it's just time and seasons and how everything evolves.
- [01:06:19] DONALD HARRISON: What's important from that time and season that you grew up and people you think should know now in terms of that neighborhood or that school?
- [01:06:29] JENNIFER HAMPTON: I think what people should understand is we've not come that far. We have not come that far. People are judged by what they look like, not who they are. I don t think they came that far. Like my husband, he's 80 and he remembers the South. He won't even go back. We'll be riding to somewhere rural, maybe a little town, we'll see a Black person. I'm serious. And he goes, "Where did you come from?" Because we didn't see Black people in all these cities that we see now. We're doing more in a different, in their own area. I think that's good, but I still think we haven't came far. It did for a minute. It really did, but it never came to where it should be.
- [01:07:29] DONALD HARRISON: Where should it be and do you have a sense of how it could maybe get further?
- [01:07:35] JENNIFER HAMPTON: I can't hear.
- [01:07:36] DONALD HARRISON: Do you have a sense of how you think it could get better or could make progress? Do you have a sense of what could or should happen?
- [01:07:45] JENNIFER HAMPTON: No. Honesty, I don t think things will change. I think it's human nature to feel that you're better than somebody else. What did Martin Luther King say. I can't remember that quote, but it was just such a good point, but it wasn't there. Those people that need that. You could be the poorest white person with the least education living in the worst conditions, and you meet a Black person who's got a doctorate, who's a scientist or whatever, and he's driving a beautiful car and lives in a beautiful home, but I'm better than him. I don't know where that mentality comes from, but it does. It's not just in the United States, you'll find that in another country. I'm better than them because, I think that's part of human nature to want to feel better than someone.
- [01:09:04] DONALD HARRISON: You're a testament, I think to the opposite Jenny. [OVERLAPPING]
- [01:09:11] JENNIFER HAMPTON: I'm blessed in this situation. Nadia, who lived next door, went to Jones School because everybody knows Nadia and everyone loved Nadia. She is crazy. Her father was from Egypt. He was Islamic and so was his friends, they would come. There was Jordan, they were Saudi, there was Egypt, and they were all at Nadia's right next door to me playing this crazy music all time, which I couldn't stand. [LAUGHTER] And I learned that culture. So when people say to me, talk derogatory about Muslims, and I go, why are you saying that? Do you know any, grow up with Islamic people? I was never treated bad by an Islamic man. No one ever tried to convert me. No one ever tried to put anything on my head. Nadia went to church with me. I mean, can I go to church with you?
- [01:10:10] JENNIFER HAMPTON: But so I heard that too. I was lucky to be exposed to that and we did have a mixture of different ethnic groups because of the university. I think that's a blessing that we did have there. I think Ann Arbor is good for that. Even to this day because of the university, we have people. But the people go in pockets. North campus, you have Asian people and then you have over here, and then you have some Indian, people like to stay in their own. I guess it's true. Look at San Francisco, everybody has these pockets that they feel comfortable with and we need to get out of the pocket. New York City is a good example. A man said he stayed there now for 18 years, I think, because he went there, he started at a Korean restaurant and he said he went to lunch and there was everybody, of every ethnic group and every color of skin, and he said, ''I'm staying because even though you look different, talk different, or whatever, it's the same.'' But just a little bit of different culture or an accent or religion. But we're still the same. I think that people need to get out. If you don't ever get out and some people can't. Quite frankly, can't afford to get out and mix and mingle. But that's the only way we're going to do it. Get out and be with other people now. Instead of, you hear things about a different group and then you go "Well, that's true." No, it's not true. But that door swings both ways.
- [01:12:13] DONALD HARRISON: I'm curious, Heidi, if there's any question that you'd like to follow up on, anything you didn't cover because, Jenny, you remember so much. Thank you for covering.
- [01:12:24] JENNIFER HAMPTON: I hope I did. I probably missed a lot.
- [01:12:26] DONALD HARRISON: Anything about Jones in particular that you want to hone in on, or the west side or Wheeler Park?
- [01:12:35] HEIDI MORSE: I think we covered a lot. I can't think of anything.
- [01:12:36] DONALD HARRISON: Yeah. [BACKGROUND] Is there anything else, Jenny, that feels important? As far as when they got rid of the junk yard, the slaughterhouse, and it became Wheeler Park. Do you remember that?
- [01:12:49] JENNIFER HAMPTON: What again?
- [01:12:50] DONALD HARRISON: When Wheeler Park became named and replaced Summit, got cleaned up.
- [01:12:55] JENNIFER HAMPTON: There again, bittersweet. Everything is kind of bittersweet. Because you have these memories of all that area the way it was. Then when you go there and there's such a difference, Wheeler Park. I guess he was the mayor and he was Black. I don't know. Did he live there? No. I don't think he lived in that neighborhood. It should have stayed Summit Park. They're saying--one day I went to West Park and these people were working over there doing all sorts of crazy stuff to the ground. They said, ''Oh yeah, we're going to change the name.'' I said, ''Over my dead body and anybody that's alive that went to this park, it will never be anything but West Park.'' So when you see those changes, when you walk there today, when you go through Kerrytown, and you see again the affluent, the people that have the money that can shop Kerrytown. That live there, they couldn't or can't. Then everything it's just sad to me that the Black community was basically eliminated from Ann Arbor. Even when they closed Ann Street down, a friend of mine recently put a picture of the gallery on Ann Street on Facebook, white lady, and I said no and I posted a picture of what it used to be like, when it was a Black neighborhood and my girlfriend lived upstairs from that gallery. She said, ''I said this is what I remember.'' She said, ''Well, this is my friend's gallery.'' I said, "Well, your friend should know a little bit of this history of that gallery." Because once again, that whole block, that was Black and it was, like the welfare building. All of that was for Black people that came from miles out and they would need to find places to live and they had a book, even Ann Arbor was in that book, where you could go stay if you were a Black traveler. That was the welfare for Blacks, Dunbar down the street. Nothing. It's all gone.
- [01:15:39] DONALD HARRISON: You think it's important that people know that history -
- [01:15:41] JENNIFER HAMPTON: I think people should know that history and I heard, I have not been, but the museum up on Plymouth Road is not a very good representation of what the Black community was all about. But I haven't been to it, so I can't judge that. I'll go and see.
- [01:16:04] DONALD HARRISON: Is there anything else that you want? Actually, I guess the one other thing that maybe at the beginning to just cover what you went out and did, your own work and life?
- [01:16:17] JENNIFER HAMPTON: In my life?
- [01:16:18] DONALD HARRISON: Yeah. Just real basic.
- [01:16:20] JENNIFER HAMPTON: Well, I was a teenage mother and I was divorced at 18. I was married at 16 and divorced at 18. Had my fair share of this and that. Nothing ever really bad. Then I met my husband. We've been together 44 years. I worked at the University of Michigan. I worked in the Intramural Sports Building. Then I went on to work for my best friend's family, which was Rendel's Upholstery and Interiors, and Ann Arbor Bedding which since 1922 was Ann Arbor Bedding and I did the books for both companies. Then my girlfriend took over Ann Arbor Bedding and she passed away a few years ago and then I retired. But that's what I did and what else to say about that. Then, with my husband for 44 years. And Cooper, bless his heart. He's been part of the Black community. Everybody that's been here that you've probably interviewed all know my husband. And I asked him, because my husband did not mix and mingle with white, maybe business but not relationship, girlfriends, or whatever. I asked him, I said, ''Would you have dated me if I wasn't Black oriented?'' He said, ''Not at all.'' and he said, ''By the way, you knew more Black people than I did." [LAUGHTER] Which I probably did. But yeah.
- [01:18:11] DONALD HARRISON: Well thank you so much for sharing.
- [01:18:19] JENNIFER HAMPTON: You can condense it. I know I talk a lot.
- [01:18:24] HEIDI MORSE: Can I ask one more question?
- [01:18:24] DONALD HARRISON: Oh yeah.
- [01:18:26] HEIDI MORSE: Did you and your husband, Cooper, did you have children together? And you can speak to Donald.
- [01:18:35] JENNIFER HAMPTON: Yeah. Cooper and I.
- [01:18:37] DONALD HARRISON: Oh yeah.
- [01:18:39] JENNIFER HAMPTON: Oh, sorry. Real quick. Yeah.
- [01:18:42] JENNIFER HAMPTON: Yeah. We had four sons. I always count my oldest because he helped raise him since he was eleven. Then we have Cooper who's 42, another Cooper, and then we have Adam who's 38. Then a great nephew who we've raised, Aaron, who's 32. I just have to say something and I remember. And I never just dated. My oldest son is white, so I'm not one of those people that say, you know, I'm just staying here. No, if I love you, I don't care what nationality or where you come from. That's not how I pick my relationships. But anyhow, my mother had said, 'I don't mind, but what about the children?'' I said, "What about them?" She said, ''Aren't they going to suffer? '' I said, ''That's not my problem, Mom.'' I said, ''I want to have children by the person that I love, and it's my God given right to be able to choose that, not have society choose it for me.'' And look at us, 44 years. We're still together, we're still in love and he's out in the car waiting. That's love. See, it can work.

Media
October 18, 2022
Length: 01:20:05
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
Ann Street Black Business District
King-Seeley Corp.
Dagwood Diner
Peters Sausage Co.
Diroff's Market
racism
Ann Arbor Community Center
St. Thomas School
DeLong's Bar-B-Q Pit
James L. Crawford Elks Lodge 322
Preketes' Sugar Bowl Restaurant
Racial Segregation
Colored Welfare League
Rendel's Upholstering Co.
Ann Arbor Bedding Co.
LOH Education
LOH Education - Jones School
Education
Local History
Oral Histories
Race & Ethnicity
There Went The Neighborhood Interview Archive
Jennifer Mitchell Hampton
Jules Mitchell
Elizabeth Mitchell
Theresa Dixon Campbell
Russell Lee Calvert
Shirley Beckley
Horace Edwards
Nadia Shalaby
Elizabeth Fox
Brenda McFadden
Robert Thompson
Martha Monk
Carroll McFadden
Harry Mial
Cooper Hampton
401 N Division St
220 Ann St