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There Went The Neighborhood - State Theatre Interview: Scott Forrest McFadden

When: April 16, 2023

Scott Forrest McFadden 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. After attending preschool at Jones School, he recalls being bused to Allen Elementary School.

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

Transcript

  • [00:00:05] SCOTT FORREST MCFADDEN: Scott Forrest McFadden. My connection to Jones is I am the youngest alumni in its history. My preschool class was ended in 1965.
  • [00:00:19] DONALD HARRISON: Anything that wasn't in the film that you want to add--any story or a piece of that story that again, we couldn't get it all. What do you want to add?
  • [00:00:29] SCOTT FORREST MCFADDEN: Interestingly enough, on Fifth Avenue there was a family, which I happened to be a part of that grew up right next to the Second Baptist Church and right around the corner from the Bethel AME Church and the church's instrumental performances in raising the kids with a certain ethos that a man by the name of Reverend Carpenter brought. He lived in the parsonage, directly next door to our house on Fifth Avenue. As a kid, I remember him.
  • [00:01:05] DONALD HARRISON: What do you remember? I think he was a big figure.
  • [00:01:08] SCOTT FORREST MCFADDEN: He was the moral compass. He was the moral police. He was that pinnacle that each and every one of us strove for and growing up on Fifth Avenue and being so young and being witness to all of these incredible people. The beneficiary of this experience is like none other.
  • [00:01:36] DONALD HARRISON: And Scott, so Jones was closed. You were in kindergarten or first grade.
  • [00:01:40] SCOTT FORREST MCFADDEN: I was in kindergarten.
  • [00:01:41] DONALD HARRISON: What happened where did you end up?
  • [00:01:44] SCOTT FORREST MCFADDEN: I ended up at Jones. From Jones, I ended up at John Allen Elementary.
  • [00:01:51] DONALD HARRISON: How was your experience?
  • [00:01:53] SCOTT FORREST MCFADDEN: I have a lifelong friend by the name of Bruce Geffen, who to this very day, we are still the best of friends and that relationship wouldn't have culminated unless we had undergone that busing and desegregation and the dismantling of our neighborhood.
  • [00:02:15] DONALD HARRISON: There was some positives. It wasn't among the recent positives that came up.
  • [00:02:20] SCOTT FORREST MCFADDEN: I can't say that there was any positive for people being displaced and for an entire history to be swept under the carpet. But more importantly, it diminishes the eclectic nature of Ann Arbor itself and the rich history that Ann Arbor alone can testify to it. But being a repository of that neighborhood, it's a special feeling.
  • [00:02:46] DONALD HARRISON: Anything else about the neighborhood that wasn't in there that you want to add?
  • [00:02:50] SCOTT FORREST MCFADDEN: Oh, we'll get to that a little later on, but that was a tremendous undertaking. It pulled at the hard strings. I was heartbroken, and I still am heartbroken because I've been in Texas for a couple of decades, recently returned to Ann Arbor in 2016, only to find out that there was nothing to return to.