“A Good Life”
c. Steve Pavey, Hope in Focus
“Grandma raised me while momma worked at different people’s
houses. She did the washing, and cooking, and grandma did too. We walked to town. We
walked the railroad track to town. We didn’t have an easy time.”
Mary Willa's mother came back and was pregnant, and she’s
been told she was different people’s half-sister, but she doesn’t really know.
Mary Willa is a very old woman, mid-nineties at the time of
our interview. She is blind and hard of hearing, but more alert than you think.
She’s well-groomed and cared for by her grown children. Her daughter, Betty,
who lives in Frankfort, is there and takes part in the conversation. When she
recalls something that tickles her, Mary Willa's face blossoms into a grin.
“House had old stove, where you put wood in it to get heat.
It had an old floor, with holes in the floor. The house didn’t have no heat it
would get cold. My grandmother’s house had a dirt floor.”
Grandma lived on Bloomfield Road, as did Mary Willa.
“We went to school, I went to eighth grade. Springfield
high school.”
There was a bit of confusion at this point because Betty
did not think her mother had gone to high school. Perhaps she was thinking
about her children.
“How did you meet your husband?”
“He lived on a farm and worked on the farm, and we worked
at the houses.”
“But
how did you get together with him?”
“Meet up with the girls and he deviled us, that’s all I got
to tell you. His name is Willis.” Here she got a huge smile and a twinkle in
her cloudy eyes. Even though she could not see me, or any of us, she was seeing
something lovely from her past.
“Is he with God now?”
“Yes.”
Betty said, “Daddy worked at the rock quarry. We had twelve
kids, and there were some miscarriages.” All living except oldest sister.
“What can you tell her about Daddy?” Betty says to Mary
Willa.
“No good.” This brought laughter, but
we soon realized she thought she was talking about Betty.
“Not me, momma, Daddy.”
“He worked at the rock quarry.”
Betty said, “Daddy was a good soul. He’d have us plant
three or four gardens. Then share with our cousins and kinfolk who came over
that lived in Louisville and such.”
“We had a good life, we didn’t know a whole lot but we
enjoyed a lot. Willis worked at the rock quarry.” M added.
Betty
tells a story about when her dad had to go set off the dynamite for Dr. Cecconi
when no one else could get it to go off. He was known as the dynamite man.
‘We had a good life,” Mary Willa says, again.
c. Steve Pavey, Hope in Focus
“Are
there other Black families that live on Bloomfield Road?” I asked
“Oh
yes, and some white families, we all got along good. It was mixed.”
Betty and her mother
together struggled to list those they could recall: Grundys, Lintons, James
Smith, Cap’n Gowdy, George Reed, Mr. Edmonds.
“Whites
come eat to my house, get something to eat.” Mary Willa said. Betty explained
that what she meant was that everyone was friendly, and white folks felt just
as comfortable visiting back and forth as did other Black folks and kin.
Betty
talked about the outings they’d take: “We’d go after church, on Saturday night
we’d get all the dinners ready then we’d drive until we got hungry. Then we’d
pull off the side of the road. And we’d eat and come back home.”
“Mama
would get mad because we’d be waiting after church and daddy would be telling
stories, and she’d say, go get Willis tell him to come on. His stories were
always animated. If he was talking about a horse he’d wave his arms up and down
and go cloppedy-cloppedy, cloppety,
clop.”
c. Steve Pavey, Hope in Focus
“But
Daddy just loved animals. He had a horse. What was that horse’s name, Momma?” Neither
of them could remember. “We had a dog named Snowball, he would get up on the
stove whatever was up there he’d just eat whatever was up there. Finally,
Daddy gave him away to some people on the other side of town. But a few days
later, he just came back on his own. So Daddy said, if he came all the way
back, he might as well stay. So he let him stay after that.”
**Rosemary
started the family history**
“Did you give them some coffee or something to
eat?” It would appear that Mary Willa was fast asleep, her eyes closed and head
nodding on her chest, but she’d suddenly jump into the conversation, alert and
clear as a dinner bell.
Betty
filled in that they went to Holy Rosary, and they weren’t allowed to swim in
the public pool most days, and there was just one day designated when they
could go to the pool. but she said her mother would swear that the white people
were very nice to her because they gave her clothes and all sorts of things.
Pansy
asked Betty if she’d gone to a Rosenwald school. CLICK HERE FOR MORE ON ROSENWALD SCHOOLS
These
schools were started throughout the south by Julius Rosenwald, whose parents
were Jewish emigrants from Germany. He was a wealthy philanthropist who started
Sears, Roebuck, and became enlightened to the need for quality education for
African American children through his contact with Booker T. Washington and
others. He saw over 700 schools built in his lifetime. After he died, the
building continued, and a school was constructed in Springfield. Over five
thousand Rosenwald schools were constructed throughout the South. One, in
Lebanon, no longer stands, but a historic marker preserves its memory.
Routinely,
those who attended the Rosenwald schools reported having positive experiences.
Money for teachers, books, and materials were all provided through the fund. It
was after the schools were forced to integrate (which for some reason did not
happen until the nineteen sixties in Washington County, although Kentucky
schools by law were desegregated a decade earlier) that Black residents report
having challenges related to school.
I
do not think you could find a practicing Jew in Washington County today. Most
school kids here are assumed to be Christian. Just a few weeks ago, the pastor
at Johnson Chapel spoke about the Jewish holiday of Chanukah with respect and
curiosity. Beyond that, I’ve heard little reference to the Jewish faith. I
wonder whether those children who thrived and learned so well at the Rosenwald
schools even know that an immigrant Jewish man, who only took a salary of $15,000
a year when he was head of Sears, Roebuck, & Co., allotted $5,000 for
living, $5,000 for saving, and $5,000 for tzedakah.
Tzedakah is the Hebrew word for charity. In the life of Julius Rosenwald,
his charity extended to the Black children of the South, because he saw a need
in those who, like the Jews of Europe, had been repressed and discriminated
against. He also helped create the Parcel Post system and the Extension Agent
system we know today. His own children played with African American children of
the people who worked for him, even though he and other reformers and
philanthropists were called “Negroes” because of their generosity to Blacks.
I
find it beautifully ironic that in this county where family farms still produce
tobacco, graze cattle and sheep for market, and make modest livings for almost
exclusively white farmers, and where there are no Jews or Muslims (that anyone
knows of, since my husband and his sister are Jewish by birth, if not
religiously and surely there are a few others) there are residual effects of
the tzedakah of a Jewish man whose
parents were neighbors with Abe Lincoln in another Springfield over one hundred years ago.
We
talked about the school buses. The priests drove the buses for St. Rose, and
the Black kids had to stand up, even on the private school bus, while the white
kids sat down. Then when some of the
brothers, who were coming down from New York to study, observed this,
they “didn’t like how it was here. They told us to sit down but we were afraid
to. We didn’t know what would happen. When we got home, we told Momma and Daddy
and they said don’t do that again.”
“Murphy’s
station was the good filling station, and the other one was the bad filling
station… and Murphy’s had the ice cream cones. Just little things like that,
just things you just knew.”
“I
wish I had something to give y’all.” Again, Mary Willa had popped up from a
seeming slumber. Ever the hostess.
Pansy
asked Betty, “Does she remember who her father is?”
“Ask
her and see what she says.”
“I
don’t know.” Pause. “Mama never was married.”
Betty
explained: Her mother went to New York, and the plantation where she worked is
still up and running. We’ve done a lot of that work. But we just haven’t been
able to find out.
“We
were kept from doing things, that was true, but we more than made it up with
what we had within our families. We didn’t want for anything; like Momma says,
we was happy. We didn’t know and things were as they were until somebody
pointed it out. We didn’t have a lot. We were happy, though.”
c. Steve Pavey, Hope in Focus
You
know Harriet Beecher Stowe said, I led a
hundred people out of slavery, and I could have led a hundred more if they knew
that they were enslaved.
