There Went The Neighborhood - State Theatre Interview: Diana McKnight-Morton

Tue, 08/06/2024 - 5:20pm

When: April 16, 2023

Diana McKnight-Morton was interviewed after a preliminary screening of the documentary film There Went The Neighborhood: The Closing of Jones School at the State Theatre on April 16, 2023. She describes her father’s business, DeLong’s Bar-B-Q, which operated across from the farmers’ market.

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

Transcript

• [00:00:05] DIANA MCKNIGHT-MORTON: My name is Diana McKnight-Morton. My maiden name is Thompson. I grew up on West Kingsley Street all my life and went to Ann Arbor Public Schools, elementary, junior high and high school.
• [00:00:23] DONALD HARRISON: And then for your connection to Jones?
• [00:00:26] DIANA MCKNIGHT-MORTON: I started going to Jones School when I was five years old. Yeah, I had to start as kindergarten. I left maybe in the third grade because the boundary changed. One reason it changed was because of the urban renewal, and so they moved the schools for kids to go to. First of all, I went to Mack School. Then the next few years, then I went to Bach School, and I graduated from Bach School.
• [00:01:10] DONALD HARRISON: It wasn't Jones closing that you stopped, they just redrew it.
• [00:01:13] DIANA MCKNIGHT-MORTON: No, they just redrew it. Well, actually, I went back to Jones, and I did the fifth and sixth grade in Jones. Mr. Mial was my sixth-grade teacher.
• [00:01:27] DONALD HARRISON: At Jones?
• [00:01:28] DIANA MCKNIGHT-MORTON: At Jones.
• [00:01:29] DONALD HARRISON: Okay.
• [00:01:29] DIANA MCKNIGHT-MORTON: Right.
• [00:01:31] DONALD HARRISON: Anything that wasn't captured or shared that you want to add to what you just saw what was in the film? Because obviously, we couldn't get it all.
• [00:01:39] DIANA MCKNIGHT-MORTON: Sure. I wanted to just mention about my parents' restaurant, DeLong's Bar-B-Q. The restaurant started in '62, but I shouldn't say restaurant, my father started out at the back of our house on the patio, and people would smell it through the holiday time. Finally, someone said, well, why don't you start a business? It took about a year, and they finally opened up in 1964. But prior to that 1963, they were on the side of the building, because the restaurant used to be a gas station. The person who owned the gas station finally said, okay, you can purchase the gas station, and he did all the requirements. In the meantime, he was selling, she let him use the side of the building, which is facing the Kerryown, the farmers market. He would sell his ribs and chicken and all the barbecue stuff from that side window. I want to say. The line was long every weekend from Friday through Sunday.
• [00:03:08] DONALD HARRISON: What year did DeLong's close? It was '63-64 to--?
• [00:03:17] DIANA MCKNIGHT-MORTON: They both retired. Someone else had it for a second, and then I had it for a year and a half. It finally closed in 2003.
• [00:03:30] DONALD HARRISON: There was a little overlap when it was Jones School. DeLong's was across the street.
• [00:03:34] DIANA MCKNIGHT-MORTON: Oh, my goodness, the kids.
• [00:03:36] DONALD HARRISON: For like a year.
• [00:03:37] DIANA MCKNIGHT-MORTON: Oh, yeah, when the school shut down. Right, it was. A lot of my business I would say from university majority, not just the majority, but I'd say a good portion of our sales was from University of Michigan. Either the students, faculty, whoever it was, we didn't know, but they would order a lot of food, especially during the football games. Naylor Automotive company. Mr. Naylor was there every weekend when there was a home game. We had people from Detroit, celebrities, and I don't want to say some names where they were, but I remember that were there when the White Panther was here and the Black Panther, but the White Panther, John Sinclair, he would order tons of food from DeLong's. So, yeah. Then some people ordered that had left, graduated, moved out of State, they would still call back and order some sauce, and my parents would make it for them. The building now, it's disappointing because the building is not there anymore. My parents sold it, and then someone else bought it, and then they rented it out. Then as of this year, it's been purchased by a developer, and they're going to build a high rise there.
• [00:05:11] DONALD HARRISON: [BACKGROUND] You saw gentrification up close. You saw Ann Arbor change from the '60s to now. In watching this film did this capture some of it, or what's your perspective? I feel like you would have a unique perspective on what's been happening with Ann Arbor. I know, a big question.
• [00:05:37] DIANA MCKNIGHT-MORTON: Yeah, it is a big question. I'll start that--my neighborhood was a lot of neighborhoods, and we knew a lot of people. My parents were very active. My mother was active in the church, and my father was very active, what he was doing. We knew a lot of people. It was nothing for me to go to other neighborhoods and play or they come over to see me. I was the only child and so I just enjoyed it when we'd go on trips. But what really hurt a lot is when the gentrification came through. I know this has been said previously, but it hurts to see what it is now and not a neighborhood. It really is not a neighborhood. I had next door to me, there was African Americans. But down the street, they were Germans. There was Greeks, all kinds of nationalities and they knew me, I knew them. Some have kids, some didn't. That's the way it went. When I would go up to what is now the farmers' market, where the Greek Church is at. I knew those people. They knew the Blacks and we knew them. We were all together. It wasn't a matter that was so segregated because there are a lot of places until the gentrification came through, and then I had to really go places that a little distance from me.
• [00:07:15] DONALD HARRISON: Is there anything else that you want to add that wasn't captured in there that you think is important or adds more?
• [00:07:22] DIANA MCKNIGHT-MORTON: One of the things that caught my attention right away is that there weren't too many people, first Blacks that had been on things. Several things I'll mention. There was the first Black that taught at Jones School. Mr. Herb Ellis. He was also the first Black to be the biology teacher for Ann Arbor Pioneer School. My husband was the first Black sergeant for the Washington County Sheriff's Department. There's Harold Omens, who was the first Black sergeant for Ann Arbor Police Department. There's other folks.
• [00:08:15] DONALD HARRISON: So Harry Mial wasn't the first Black teacher?
• [00:08:17] DIANA MCKNIGHT-MORTON: No, he was the second.
• [00:08:19] DONALD HARRISON: So that's something we need to fix.
• [00:08:21] DIANA MCKNIGHT-MORTON: Harry was the second. But it had been a few years before that. Mr. Ellis, his wife, when the Dumbar center opened up, when they moved to Ann Arbor, she became the director of programs at the Dumbar Center.
• [00:08:46] DONALD HARRISON: It's good that we--we're not done with the movie [OVERLAPPING]
• [00:08:51] DIANA MCKNIGHT-MORTON: Like I said, there's a lot. I want to mention of Cheryl O'Neal. Her grandfather, as far as I know, was the first Black who worked for the Ann Arbor News in the printing department. He was a print setter or a setter printer, or whatever you call it.
• [00:09:17] DONALD HARRISON: The Jewett family.
• [00:09:19] DIANA MCKNIGHT-MORTON: And the Jewett family? Nationally, Jewett's great great grandfather played football on the U-M football team. That was back in the 1800s. There was a Black lady that went to U-M first time ever. Like I said, there's a lot of history that's here, and we're still trying to get it all formulated in our minds of what's going on seems like some things are being said over and over, but there's a reason why because we're still trying to connect the dots of what's been going on in our lifetime. I was just talking to Heidi about generations and there's so many generations, but you know what? The people who are here now, we know who our grandparents are. We know our parents, but our kids really don't know. When this happened, the break up community, break up of families sometimes here in Ann Arbor broke up. There's no connection other than how are they at that time. It really does show a lot of what history that is here. We may be a small population, but we are here, and we're not going anywhere.
• [00:10:38] DONALD HARRISON: But Diana, our hope is this film gets seen by young people, right?
• [00:10:43] DIANA MCKNIGHT-MORTON: I hope so.
• [00:10:44] DONALD HARRISON: That's an important thing for us is to try to make sure that it's going to reach younger audiences and keep their attention and teach them because I think that's important. We know that there are high school-age kids that are interested, so we really want to make sure that connection happens.
• [00:11:01] DIANA MCKNIGHT-MORTON: Right. I hope so, too. I did another project with Skyline, and I talked a little bit about my experience, but not like today. This really is a good thing to be done, and I really applaud the Ann Arbor school system and align this faculty and administration to help out with this program, because it is so important to the history of Ann Arbor. Ann Arbor is not what people know of naturally if you're moving in, you don't know. But somebody needs to tell the real story from the real people who lived in these communities and are talking about it.