Page 1 |
Previous | 1 of 6 | Next |
|
|
small JPEG (250x250 max)
medium JPEG (500x500 max)
Large
Extra Large
Full resolution JPEG ( > 500x500)
Full Resolution
All (PDF)
|
This page
All
|
Alfonzo Peter Bailey Tape Log
March on Washington Oral History Project
DC Public Library, Special Collections
Interviewee: Alfonzo Peter Bailey
Interviewer: Kelly Elaine Navies
Interview Date: June 26, 2013
Location: Martin Luther King Memorial Library
Length of Interview: 01:31:05
Comments: Text in quotation marks is verbatim – all other text is paraphrased
00:00:03
Introductory Statement
00:00:39
Mr. Bailey recalls his early childhood. He was born in Columbus, Georgia on February 24, 1938, but was raised in Tuskegee, Alabama. Tuskegee was highly segregated, but Mr. Bailey remembers it as self-sufficient community because of Tuskegee University and the Veteran’s Hospital. As a child, he that “it was a very interesting situation, where, unless you went downtown, you had very little interaction with whites. Everyone that we saw, the teachers, the doctors…they were all black. So it gave us a very good role model.” The nuns at his school were white, but he remembers not thinking of them “as white.”
00:03:12
Mr. Bailey explains the Catholic school (St. Joseph Catholic School) he went to from first to eighth grade. Though he knew the nuns were white, he thought of them in their roles as nuns/teachers and not in racial terms. He doesn’t think they could have gotten away with any kind of discrimination; “everybody in the school was black. All the kids. All the parents.” The few Irish-Americans in the community would attend the all-black church. The nuns were Irish-Americans, and he remembers being taught in an Irish Nationalist paradigm. Mr. Bailey was impacted by this view as a child, and as an adult now recognizes that “words matter. There’s a whole period of European history that is determined by whether you say the Protestant Revolution or the Protestant Reformation.” Ms. Navies: “Or the War between the Sates…” together: “or the Civil War.”
00:06:50
Mr. Bailey remembers becoming aware of racial segregation. He would have to go downtown to go to the movies, and Tuskegee had two separate theaters for black and white people, the water fountains were segregated and there was a statue of a confederate soldier. “I remember when I got to be about 13, 14, I went shopping with my mother to one of those stores in the downtown area. And…the sales clerk, who looked like she might have been late teens, she called my mother by her name…rather than with white people it was Ms. this and Mrs. that…so I noticed that…but it wasn’t something that was a problem…because of the nature of the town.” Mr. Bailey attributes the town’s relatively quick desegregation to the white community being economically dependent on the black community.
00:09:40
Mr. Bailey describes his family’s move from Tuskegee to Nuremburg, two weeks before his 15th birthday. “You talk about culture shock, I went from a totally black environment, to a situation where in my sophomore, junior, and senior classes I was the only black student in my class.” He didn’t find the transition too difficult, he
Object Description
Description
| Title | Page 1 |
| Transcript | Alfonzo Peter Bailey Tape Log March on Washington Oral History Project DC Public Library, Special Collections Interviewee: Alfonzo Peter Bailey Interviewer: Kelly Elaine Navies Interview Date: June 26, 2013 Location: Martin Luther King Memorial Library Length of Interview: 01:31:05 Comments: Text in quotation marks is verbatim – all other text is paraphrased 00:00:03 Introductory Statement 00:00:39 Mr. Bailey recalls his early childhood. He was born in Columbus, Georgia on February 24, 1938, but was raised in Tuskegee, Alabama. Tuskegee was highly segregated, but Mr. Bailey remembers it as self-sufficient community because of Tuskegee University and the Veteran’s Hospital. As a child, he that “it was a very interesting situation, where, unless you went downtown, you had very little interaction with whites. Everyone that we saw, the teachers, the doctors…they were all black. So it gave us a very good role model.” The nuns at his school were white, but he remembers not thinking of them “as white.” 00:03:12 Mr. Bailey explains the Catholic school (St. Joseph Catholic School) he went to from first to eighth grade. Though he knew the nuns were white, he thought of them in their roles as nuns/teachers and not in racial terms. He doesn’t think they could have gotten away with any kind of discrimination; “everybody in the school was black. All the kids. All the parents.” The few Irish-Americans in the community would attend the all-black church. The nuns were Irish-Americans, and he remembers being taught in an Irish Nationalist paradigm. Mr. Bailey was impacted by this view as a child, and as an adult now recognizes that “words matter. There’s a whole period of European history that is determined by whether you say the Protestant Revolution or the Protestant Reformation.” Ms. Navies: “Or the War between the Sates…” together: “or the Civil War.” 00:06:50 Mr. Bailey remembers becoming aware of racial segregation. He would have to go downtown to go to the movies, and Tuskegee had two separate theaters for black and white people, the water fountains were segregated and there was a statue of a confederate soldier. “I remember when I got to be about 13, 14, I went shopping with my mother to one of those stores in the downtown area. And…the sales clerk, who looked like she might have been late teens, she called my mother by her name…rather than with white people it was Ms. this and Mrs. that…so I noticed that…but it wasn’t something that was a problem…because of the nature of the town.” Mr. Bailey attributes the town’s relatively quick desegregation to the white community being economically dependent on the black community. 00:09:40 Mr. Bailey describes his family’s move from Tuskegee to Nuremburg, two weeks before his 15th birthday. “You talk about culture shock, I went from a totally black environment, to a situation where in my sophomore, junior, and senior classes I was the only black student in my class.” He didn’t find the transition too difficult, he |
