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TI: So childhood memories growing up in this neighborhood? Any, like stories about, I don't know, just activities and things you would do maybe on the weekend or after school?

FC: There were a couple of African American families that, my parents were very protective. They didn't want us running around the neighborhood, but if these girls came over to play they would be accepting of it, so these were African American neighbors. And an interesting story I remember is that two doors down, the family next door to the German couple was this African American family who were quite proud because they owned a Cadillac, and the mother and the grandmother would sit in the car and eat their meals in their car. [Laughs]

TI: Oh, they were so proud of the car they would eat their meals in it?

FC: Exactly. So the kids would run up, and they lived in a really large two story house, and they were quite affluent, and as I say, they were so proud of this car.

TI: For them to be so, to have so much money, what did they do?

FC: I don't even remember. I don't remember what they did. There was another family that lived next door to them that were very nice to us, and they, her husband was a chauffeur for a movie star in Beverly Hills. This family -- oh, I take it back. He ran a barber shop on Central Avenue.

TI: The one with the Cadillac?

FC: Cadillac. Yeah. And then on the corner of our street, at Central and Forty-Second, was one of, one of two large funeral parlors. And so years later the daughter of that family that ran the funeral parlor was at SC when I was taking my, we were both graduate students at the school of social work, so interesting how our paths crossed.

TI: How interesting how it...

FC: And I never knew her, of course, 'cause I went to a special school.

TI: When you talked about the, sort of the transition in neighborhood from white working class to then more African American, where were the African Americans coming from, and what kind of work were they doing?

FC: I think they were, one of the earlier, they moved from poorer neighborhoods. They were able to buy their homes, so this was sort of like the beginning of a middle class community of African Americans, and they were very proud of the fact that they owned their own homes. And so there was a couple that lived across the street from us that my mother got to know, and she would make doll clothes for us. Then two doors down was another woman, she and her husband, I think he also had something to do with the barbershop, but my mother said when she was pregnant with me this woman, especially towards the end, made some meals and brought it over for my family to eat. And she remembered being introduced to collard greens. [Laugh]

TI: So it sounds like your mother was really friendly and did a lot with the African Americans.

FC: Yes.

TI: And probably the whites too, or more African Americans?

FC: Yeah, well the German couple next door, she would, they would spend time talking across the fence in the backyard and talking about their lives. And it was amazing, my mother somehow was able to speak enough English to get along with the neighbor next door, the woman across the street, and the woman that brought the meals over. And then I got to know this woman whose husband was a chauffeur much later, when I was, in fact, I think it was mostly after the war that I got to be good friends with her.

TI: In the neighborhood, as the neighborhood started transitioning, was there tension between the whites and the blacks? Do you recall any?

FC: I don't recall that, 'cause I think they pretty much moved out fairly closely. The only persons that were left was the Italian family that ran a grocery store on the corner of Hooper and our street. And you could tell that they had some negative feelings about the African Americans, but I don't recall any major confrontation. But they sort of, they did a lot of cash and carry business, and they had people on credit, and I guess sometimes the black folks couldn't meet their payment at the end of the month, so you could tell that they were kind of disparaging of them. But the neighborhood was quiet. Almost everybody owned their own homes. And my folks were kind of snobbish, so they wanted us to only associate with people who had a better standing, so down the street was another family that had a son and a daughter that were a little bit more my older sister's age and they came over to play. In fact, when that Long Beach earthquake hit in 1933, the son, I remember someone holding me. He was carrying me while the house was shaking, so apparently they were over playing and the earthquake hit. So for some reason my family approved of them. There was a family that lived around the corner where the husband was Filipino and he was married to an African American woman, so those two kids were "acceptable" and we would go over to their house.

TI: Okay, so you would, I was asking, I was gonna ask whether or not you ever got to go to other people's homes. Sounds like people were coming to your house.

FC: Yeah. They were the only home that my parents allowed us to go visit. The rest of the families came to our place to visit with us. It's interesting.

TI: Yeah, okay.

<End Segment 6> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.