Old Neighborhood Reunion - A Film by Kameron Donald
When: 2024
In this documentary short, filmmaker Kameron Donald lets us spend a day at the 25th Old Neighborhood Reunion, a (mostly) annual gathering of former residents of Ann Arbor's Historically Black Neighborhood. Attendees eat, dance, and share memories of growing up in a very different Ann Arbor at a very different time.
Transcript
- [00:00:37] DON SIMONS: My name is Don Simons. I'm a co-creator of this old neighborhood reunion. My family surprised me with my 50th birthday party. A few weeks after that I recognized there's a lot of people that I had not had contact with over the years, especially my buddies. I called Russell Calvert and suggested that we get a picnic together in which we called the round-up. That was in 1993 at Gallup Park.
- [00:01:07] RUSSELL CALVERT: We started off with just having a retreat, so to speak, with just the guys that we grew up with, Don Simons, myself. At that time it was called a round-up.
- [00:01:18] DON SIMONS: We had about 55 men showed up from all parts of the country and they all signed their name. I still have a copy of the original people that were at that picnic in 1993. From there, quite frankly, the ladies were a little upset in the community that we did not include them.
- [00:01:40] RUSSELL CALVERT: All the guys or most of the guys we grew up with showed up, but a couple of the girls, ladies that grew up with us, found out we had this and we got threatened. Said, if you have another one and not invite us or make us inclusive of what you're doing, then there's going to be some trouble. [LAUGHTER] We took it to heart and from then on, we invited everybody. That's where we decided to have it on the first Saturday of August every year. It's just evolved over the last 25 years or so.
- [00:02:16] DON SIMONS: This is our 25th anniversary. But in 2019, I created these shirts that also has the imprint on the back of the original old neighborhood. This happened to be the 25th because in 2019, when I designed the shirts, COVID started in the next year.
- [00:02:39] RUSSELL CALVERT: COVID interrupted our 25th anniversary, but now in 2024, we decided to have, rekindle and hopefully we can continue doing it every year.
- [00:02:58] MELISSA REDDING: One fond memory that I have growing up on the north side of town because I had older siblings, and Northside School always had a skating rink in the wintertime. We would go down and skate where they would just spray the grass with water. Back in those days, late '60s, early '70s, it was real cold. That's a fond memory.
- [00:03:18] LEESA CURRY: We used to get on our bikes and ride through the neighborhood. We went up to the Arrowwood and then we would go down on Broadway and get penny candy. That's when candy was a penny. We would go ride down there and come back. We used to get around everywhere. The environment was great. Things weren't as bad as it is for young kids to travel up and down the highways and late at night, it was always fun. It's a great time.
- [00:03:46] KIMBERLY ADAMS-MURPHY: I remember riding bikes also. We would go down Pontiac Trail to Stop-N-Go. It's no longer there. I remember the ice skating rink as well. I couldn't skate, but I would try. It was a better time then because you could ride miles from home and not worry about anything that you have to now. It was just a good side of town.
- [00:04:10] AUDREY LUCAS: When we came to Ann Arbor, there were only certain places that African Americans could live because we were red lined. I lived in three places because my family believed in renting. We never purchased a home. I think that was just because my dad didn't think it was necessary to purchase a home. We moved into a small apartment upstairs just before World War II started.
- [00:04:42] LARRY MCKINNEY: My old neighborhood is Main Street and Fourth Avenue. I went to Mack, Jones, Slauson, and Ann Arbor High. Well, the French Dukes, when Kirk's brother got out to at the service, I guess he seen a need because we were just hanging out. We weren't doing much. The old street market over on Division, that's where we used to practice. We didn't know what we were doing, but he got us. As a matter of fact, they became so good. I was in the Army when they actually drilled at the presidential inauguration parade. [MUSIC]
- [00:05:29] EDITH CHANCE: We grew up on the northwest side in the area between Miller and Felch. We lived there till I was about 13. Then we moved to 520 Cherry.
- [00:05:48] KIM SMITH-HARDING: We were, like, in between Summit and Miller. That's where most of the kids and the people in the neighborhood grew up in that area, but I would say railroad tracks, we were on the west side of the railroad tracks.
- [00:06:06] DON DAVIS: Right. I grew up, in fact, I think all of us.
- [00:06:12] EDITH CHANCE: Me too.
- [00:06:13] DON DAVIS: 415 Felch was our address. From there, we moved to Cherry, which was 520 Cherry, as she said, but it all started on Felch for us.
- [00:06:25] EDITH CHANCE: I want to say that I liked that area the best 415 Felch to 520 Cherry. We lived in the time when everybody knew everybody and everybody's mom and daddy was your mom and daddy. If you went someplace and you weren't supposed to be, they would tell your mother, I'm telling Dorothy, you were so and so.
- [00:06:47] DON DAVIS: I would have to agree. In fact, what I recall more is when we used to play softball in the Ann Arbor Construction parking lot that was right next to our house. We used to hit home runs over the railroad track. That was the home run.
- [00:07:04] KIM SMITH-HARDING: We used to go to West Park. In the winter, go ice skating. In the summer, they had all the, Coleman Jewett used to have a lot of activities for us there.
- [00:07:18] JUAN CARLOS-MORTON: We lived on Kingsley, as I said, as a baby, moved to Spring Street when my dad bought his first house. Then we moved to the south side of Ann Arbor over off Creek and Packard, where my parents and I became pretty prominent because we didn't go to that school across town, which is called Pioneer. We ended up going to Huron, which was great rivalry. It was like family and friends that we competed against. One thing about the neighborhood that I found was so prominent was everybody helped raise everybody. It wasn't just like one family. It was all families. When you got in trouble, this is before they had cell phones. You can get in trouble up the block, and by the time you get home, you was in trouble a couple of times. You didn't know how they found out because you're like, won't no cell phones and back then, we didn't know no better because we just knew somebody told. But the way that community was, they spoke to everybody, and they made sure that they took care of the neighborhood.
- [00:08:16] KEITH BOSTIC: This is my Great Aunt Dimples right here. She's 103 years old, and my sister Betty.
- [00:08:24] BETTY BOSTIC-PARKS: [INAUDIBLE]. How are you?
- [00:08:32] DON SIMONS: I grew up in Fuller Street. Actually, the address was 900 Fuller Street in the middle of the block. It's the railroad tracks run along Fuller Street. I was in a neighborhood with at least fourteen, fifteen other Black families. Fuller Street, Glen Ave, Catherine, and Wall Street were target there is where people of color were living. One thing I remember clearly about that time was in the winter time, trains were run by coal and the snow would be white and beautiful. Until the trains come by, you go outside, there'd be black soot on the snow. One of my highlights of living on Fuller Street. My brother and I both were golfers. I worked at the Rock Pile golf course when I was eleven years old, which is now all the property of the University of Michigan. They have a swimming pool down there, and the soccer fields. But I remember clearly my brother and I being in the front yard, we had hit golf balls over Fuller Street, over the railroad tracks, over the trees, over the river into Riverside Park. I enjoyed that time living in the neighborhood.
- [00:09:57] KIMBERLY ADAMS-MURPHY: This is my first time at a reunion. It's very enjoyable. I see people from my past that I recognize. It would just be better if we could figure out a way to get the younger generation here as well. But I love the event.
- [00:10:14] MELISSA REDDING: Well, the old West Side reunion is very important. We're talking about comradery. We're talking about Black people who lived in the community, who got along, who taught their kids to get along. We need to pledge forward and continue this. Unfortunately, the world doesn't view things quite the same way. We are used to judging by the contents of character, not the color of people's skin, but we're moving away from that, which is unfortunate.
- [00:10:40] KIM SMITH-HARDING: This is good to get together because we are all in different cities now. They moved out of the neighborhood. I know that several of my doctors I work with at my hospital now live in that neighborhood. The landscape changed, the houses are changing, and this is a way to get back together and congregate and see people you haven't seen in years.
- [00:11:06] EDITH CHANCE: We as a committee have really concentrated on trying to get people here in all kinds of ways because we know people are in diverse places, in different cities, different states. When we get together, it's such a good time. Some of the people that are here right now, I haven't seen in ten years. It just feels comfortable, I guess, more than anything that we can still communicate, even though it's been so many years that we haven't seen each other. You feel comfortable. You say, Oh, my gosh, there's so and so. I haven't seen you in ten years or fifteen years.
- [00:11:42] DON DAVIS: Relationships make the world go round. If you don't have relationships, it's hard to make it in the world. You all know that. And that's what this does. It rekindles that relationship.
- [00:11:57] KIM SMITH-HARDING: Because it's important to all of us to stay together as a family, as a people, to get together in reunions and just like any family reunion, just to get together and see one another again.
- [00:12:13] DON DAVIS: Just like a big family.
- [00:12:16] EDITH CHANCE: That's how it was in the old neighborhood. We were all just one big family. Yeah. One big family, yes.
- [00:12:22] LARRY MCKINNEY: It was important because it takes you back to when you was a child. A lot of these people I knew as children when we played in the parks, at school, Diane's father used to serve barbecue, I remember that. It was a very close knit group back then.
- [00:12:40] AUDREY LUCAS: That's why we call it a neighborhood. Because we love one another. We grew up with one another. Genuinely cared about each other. That's where we are as a neighborhood and why this picnic is really important to us.
- [00:12:57] RUSSELL CALVERT: It brings together a lot of us who were born or went to school in Ann Arbor, grew up in Ann Arbor, moved away, and a lot of them people came back. We've had people come all the way from San Francisco, San Diego, Corpus Christi, Georgia, Florida, people who came back and from the East Coast, too, come back to the reunion.
- [00:13:21] DON SIMONS: It's important to have this reunion because it's a positive event that we look forward to rather than always meeting at funerals or occasions that are not of positive nature. I think it's very important that the younger folks can pick up the torch or the baton and carry it forward because it is a legacy of the culture of the Afro American community and the neighborhoods.
- [00:13:49] RUSSELL CALVERT: I'd like to extend a thanks to everybody who has participated and supported us over the years. And I want to give a big shout out to a fellow young man who was instrumental in the 499 Union, who has been very supportive of what we do for the community. They've donated revenue toward our cause, and also Barbara Meadows and Doctor Meadows, who has always supported us.
- [00:14:19] DON SIMONS: I appreciate this year, and people such as yourself, putting this history together that will be saved on the archives forever. There are a number of events that were lost in history because they weren't recorded as we're doing today. I am sure the original committee and everyone here appreciates the efforts you're putting forth to capture our history. [MUSIC]

Media
2024
Length: 00:15:12
Copyright: Creative Commons (Attribution, Non-Commercial, Share-alike)
Rights Held by: Ann Arbor District Library
Downloads
Subjects
Film
Reunions
Black Neighborhoods
Black American Community
Black American Women
French Dukes Precision Drill Team
Gallup Park
Don Simons
Donald L. Simons
Russell Lee Calvert
Melissa Redding
Leesa Curry
Kimberly Adams-Murphy
Audrey Lucas
Larry McKinney
Edith Chance
Kim Smith-Harding
Don Davis
Donald Davis
Coleman Jewett
Juan Carlos-Morton
Keith Bostic
Betty Bostic-Parks
Thekla Mitchell
Barbara Jean Meadows
Theodore Meadows
520 Cherry St
415 Felch St
900 Fuller St
Ann Arbor 200