Viola Robinson interview (2000-02-11)

              [Track time: 0:21:12]
CARVER LIVING NEWSPAPER PROJECT: ORAL HISTORY
Interview with Viola Robinson
Interviewers Lucy Lucas, Carver resident and Trina Davis, VCU student Date: February 11, 2000
(Interviewers questions are bolded)
Okay, state your name and your address
Viola Robinson, 1411 1/2 West Clay Street
And how long have you lived around this area?
Before I moved or after I came back?
Well, from beginning to end.
I've lived here forty some years before I moved, I went away for ten years, and I'm back again. I've been here two years.
You recently lived in Norton Street, right?
I've lived in 808 Norton Street.
And that was what?
They are apartments, up and down. And I went to Elba School when I was a child, I graduated from Elba School, and I went to Moore Street School, and I graduated from Moore Street School to Maggie L. Walker High School.
Okay. Let me see. Since you were my neighbor, and you lived two porches over from me, we used to come to your house across the porches right? We'd step across the railing from one porch to another, right?
Yes.
Now you and your mama both worked at the dairy, right?
Yes, we worked there at Richmond Dairy, we were the first black people that they enrolled in employment there at the Richmond Dairy, I think there was about five of us working there. That was my first job.
I remember when we used to come down there and look in the door for y'all to give us a popsicle.
Yeah, we used to give away popsicles and ice cream cones and milk to the different kids.
And then after that job, what did you do?
After that job I went to work in a Chinese restaurant on Leigh. And in my spare time I used to go downtown, which I wasn't old enough to go but I went, and I used to go to the nightclubs downtown.
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Okay. What types of nightclubs were they?
You know, nightclubs. They'd sing, they'd put on floor shows and stuff. I worked at [Bath's?] smoke shop that was on Second Street, between 2nd and Duvall. And I sang at the Legal Club, with my sister Merle. We used to go to Skateland to hear big bands, on 2nd Street between Clay and Marshall.
I've never been there.
You never went to the skating arena? When they had the big bands there they used to hold dances. That was our fun.
Can you remember any of the big band names that came?
Oh yeah. Bowman? Jackson, Count Basie went to the Mosque I think, Cab Calloway went to the Mosque, Jimmy Lynchford, I can't think of all of them but they're the bands that used to come through there. You'd pay for the bands and go to the dance and have a good time. Of course we went to the Mosque to hear when the bands went over there. Cab Calloway was the last concert I went to over there. I can't remember what year that was, but right after that I don't think they had anymore. They cut that out. Then I moved away from here in the later years. I left here in 1964 and I came back in 1998.
And from '64 to '98 how had it changed?
Oh, it had changed tremendously around here because I hardly remember where I lived. If I hadn't have remembered that street, because they're allowing such change, building houses and rebuilding houses and tearing up the streets, I didn't even know where I lived. I had to look. A lot of the stuff on	Street wasn't there, and on Harrison, all that stuff wasn't there. Downtown either. And I'm still not familiar with the place. I used to know how to go to Barton Heights and shortcuts all over the place now I don't know how to get around. They cut all that out. So right now at my age its hard for me to recognize where I used to go.
A lot of these streets now used to be through streets.
Right. When I lived here there wasn't any one way streets. I don't think.
Yeah, we did have one way streets. In the 60's?
Yeah, you remember when Emmett was going up the street to where the cops stopped him and he told them he wasn't going but one way anyway?
He was going the wrong way. But a lot of streets has turned one way since then.
That's right because Clay Street was two ways all the way down to Church Hill. And Marshall Street used to be two ways all the way to Church Hill.
The city jail used to be down at the bottom of Leigh Street, around 13th and Broad, under there.
I don't remember that.
It's over there somewhere now.
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But we did have a lockup here at Smith & Marshall, that's no longer there because I think the turnpike is there.
Well there used to be a store down there called Bowman's grocery store, down on Marshall, back in the 40s and 50s, back when we had the food stamps. Not food stamps. Ration stamps. You had to buy shoes, sugar, stuff like that. You had to buy stamps to get them. You could buy all the sandals you want, but to get a good pair of shoes, you had to use one of the stamps to get them. You had to use stamps to get liquor, and you had to use stamps to get coffee and sugar. So we used to go to this store called Bowman's to get our commodities and stuff. WPA used to come around in trucks and bring people food in cans, you know beef and chicken and stuff like that, poultry. But they would bring all this stuff around to the people that need it. The low income people. And they would come around certain times of month and bring that. What else did we have? We had a bunch of stuff going on like that in those days. All the grocery stores we had, we had a place called Green's here down at the corner of Norton and Clay, and across the street was Mr. Simm's, and down on Norton and Leigh it was Mr. Grossman. And the year 1939, when it snowed so, Mr. Green's store was the only one open at that time, and the only reason it was open was because he lived upstairs over top of it. And they built a path, I think we had 36 inches of snow, and we had a path about that wide going down the steps and down the sidewalk to Mr. Green's store. And that's the only means of food that we could get at the time, because there wasn't anything open. Streetcars and everything else stopped running. And the city was just snowed in. I don't remember how long it lasted, but it lasted awhile. Another incident I can remember, but I was small then too, was when the river flooded downtown. We used to be scared because we thought the flood would come up to this part. But it never got this far. The flood lasted, I think a lot of people down at the Canal had to be evacuated. And then the blackouts we had. Now I was really scared of the blackouts. When they had the blackouts, they used to have those men, what did they used to call them?
he men with helmets. I don't remember what they used to call them, but Mr. Caston used to be one of them.
They'd blow their whistle if your lights were on. That was during World War II. And they used to come around and holler "Blackout" and all the lights would go out and everything was in the dark. So I used to go outside. I'd go to the movies at the Booker T., and when the lights came back on I would go home. Because I used to be scared of the blackouts. But that's just about all we did was play around here. We had our new skates.
A lot of kids had bicycles.
Remember we used to go the carnival up here on Maury Street? And we used to go up to the carnival, and we'd go to the State Fair when it was up here on Hermitage Road.
Do you remember the block parties they used to have?
Yeah, they used to block out the streets and have the block parties for the kids. Play games and play music and stuff, hot dogs.
Were there any racial incidents in the neighborhood?
Back then we didn't used to have any racial incidents. At that time, everybody was knowing where they were going. We didn't have to go hide in the streets or anything. Everybody stayed over here in their own territory. So that was that. So we didn't run into no interracial stuff.
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I think you were gone when they had the Martin Luther King march to Washington DC come through here.
Lord when they had that march I was up in New York. I went to that march. They had collected so much food and everything, I don't remember how many trucks of food they had, but I went to that.
So you participated in that march?
Yeah, I was mixed up with all those folks up there. I really didn't like it, but the food was up there. I just didn't like the way the whole thing went. Because I didn't think they should be bringing the older people from Alabama up here. They should have let the older folks stay at home and the younger people come up here. But they brought everybody that wanted to come. And the water system was no good over there. You hear that a lot of things went on, a lot of things happened over there in Washington, I don't know if its true or not, but a lot of people say a lot of stuff happened at night. People beaten and raped and stuff like that. But I don't know if its true. I don't know about it.
My participation in that was just to watch it pass by here going up to Virginia Union, I think.
But it was a big crowd. I came here visiting, and I was on my way to Washington. I came here a couple of days, and then I left to go to Washington the day of the march. The day he speaked.
So you heard Martin Luther King's speech in person?
Yeah, in person. I heard him. And I bought the record, too. But I don't know what happened to the record now, I think I loaned it to somebody and they never bring it back. The march was nice, but to me it was just too many people. In my condition I couldn't take that crowd. But it was nice.
Well, since you been back here, what do you think of Richmond now, around this little are that we call Carver? That we used to call midtown.
Well I don't know, because when I lived here there weren't no college, Jackson Ward was Jackson Ward and that was down there, and this was midtown up here. And then middletown up there. Since I been back here, I told you, I think that Richmond has improved.
You think it has improved all the way to Leigh Street. Over what it used to be. As far as houses are concerned.
What about in the Carver area. How has that changed?
Well, its changed up in this area I don't see too much of a change. But I mean a lot of these houses that need to come down are still up here, and if they're going to improve the area, they need to tear them down and put up something else. You know. Put up some more houses. Because a lot of these houses around here need to come down. And they need to put in homes like they got up here now. Restored to the natural looks.
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And what would you like to see it look like here, in maybe the next ten years?
Well, I don't know. In the next ten years, I'd like to see nice looking houses up here with lawns and people in the neighborhoods keeping up their houses. It'd be beautiful like it was before.
It would be nice to see kids running around again instead of a bunch of cars speeding up and down the streets, and people shooting at each other.
There aren't too many kids around here.
It would be nice to have families around here for a change.
Yeah, that's true.
Like it used to be. And one time it was families, now it seems to be...
Well you know, families grow up. Children move. And some of them don't want to go back.
But I think if they grow up and move and sell their houses, other families with children should move in.
They should move in, but they don't. They'd rather go someplace else. Where they think its better. They can make this place better if they took it over, they could make it better. But they're not going to do it. They just like to move. They go someplace else. So I mean I would like to see it flourish in the next ten years.
Can you think of anything else you'd like to add? Well, I guess not. No, ain't nothing I can put into it.
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