Oral History Interview with Mattie & Harriet Davis

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“Stories From the Balcony”

Interviews about the Grand Theatre in Frankfort, Kentucky

Audio Only Interview on CD with

Mattie Davis

Also noted that in the room were Sheila Mason Burton and

Mattie’s daughter, Harriet Davis.

Tape 1 – 2007OH02.37a

And

Tape 2 – 2007OH02.37b

Conducted by Joanna Hay

October 20th, 2010

This project has been supported by the Kentucky Oral History Commission

And Save The Grand Theatre, Inc.

Audio only interview begins with Joanna Hay speaking. We later hear that the location is inside Mattie Davis’s home in Frankfort, Kentucky; the same home previously owned by Roberta Wilson, former ticket-taker at The Grand Theatre.

HAY: Ok. So, we’re rolling. Today is October the 20th, 2010. My name is Joanna Hay and we are on Murray Street in Frankfort, Kentucky interviewing Ms. Mattie Davis.

DAVIS: Right.

HAY: First, would you mind telling me what your full name is and where you were born.

DAVIS: My full name is Mattie Marie Garner Davis and I was born in Frankfort, Kentucky on…in the 200 block of East Second Street, Frankfort, Kentucky.

HAY: What year were you born?

DAVIS: Oooo [Chuckle]. 1921.

HAY: So that makes you…?

DAVIS: Uh hum. I’ll be eighty-nine next month.

HAY: You’ll be eighty-nine next month.

DAVIS: Yes.

HAY: Oh my goodness. What’s your birthday?

DAVIS: November the 28th, 1921.

HAY: 1921. That’s amazing. So you grew up in the twenties and the thirties.

DAVIS: Yes.

HAY: In what neighborhood? Did you stay on Second Street?

DAVIS: I stayed on Second Street until I was twelve years old. And then, we moved from Second Street to the 200 block of Murray Street, between Second and Third.

HAY: Ok. And that’s not too far. That stayed in the same sort of…

DAVIS: Yeah. Right down in the next block.

HAY: And your neighbors didn’t change and that kind of thing.

DAVIS: No. No.

HAY: So were there a lot of kids in the neighborhood when you were growing up?

DAVIS: Yes. There were a lot of children here. And there were a lot of grocery stores over here in South Frankfort. Uh hum. Yes.

HAY: That’s a big difference from today, isn’t it?

DAVIS: Yes. We had a grocery store…when we moved on Murray Street, there was a grocery store across from us. And then, there was a grocery store where Kings Center is that was called Volgus. And then, there was a grocery store on the corner of Fourth and Murray. And then, there was a grocery store on Steer, where the little grocery is. And then, of course, A & P where Pick-Peck is. And then, there was Newman’s Grocery on Steer…Second and Shelby. That many grocery stores over here.

HAY: That’s a lot. I guess everyone walked to the neighbor…to the nearest grocery store. To the neighborhood store.

DAVIS: Yes, we did. You didn’t see a lot of overweight people because everybody walked.

HAY: That’s for sure, isn’t it? [Chuckle] Now, where did you go to school?

DAVIS: Mayo Underwood High School on Clinton Street. Now, I first started on Clinton Street High School and I went there from first to third…from first to second grade, and then the third year I went to Mayo Underwood from then on. So I went to both schools, but the first two years was at Clinton Street.

HAY: So that was for high school, you mean?

DAVIS: No, from elementary on.

HAY: From elementary on?

DAVIS: Yeah, from the third grade I went all the way through Mayo Underwood High School.

HAY: Gotcha. Gotcha. So, what was Mayo Underwood like?

DAVIS: Well, [Chuckle] I can’t compare it because it was the only school that I knew. I enjoyed it. I liked it. The teachers seemed to like us, and they were concerned about us in a personal way. They took an interest in our lives outside of school. They planned activities for us. They encouraged us to do artistic things like plays. And, they had a choir if you wanted to join, which I never did, [Chuckle] but it was there. They developed any type of talent that you seemed to have. And they were…I don’t know whether they were stern disciplinarians, but they were strict disciplinarians, and they believed in prevention instead of caring… If they could keep you out of trouble, you know, that was much better than getting you out of trouble. We liked it. I enjoyed high school. I made…I went to school there and had friends, and we are still friends and we keep in contact with each other. Now, there are four…wait a minute…let’s see…there are four living members of my graduating class of 1939. We’re still living and we keep in contact with each other. Then, there are several members in the community that went to, perhaps, sophomore class and dropped out. We keep in contact. We know each other. But, there are four living members of the class of 1939, and we still keep in contact with each other.

HAY: Can you tell me some of their names?

DAVIS: Well, the one that’s living here is Mrs. Kaylie Jones. And, there’s one in Eminence, Mrs. Sarah Johnson Mason. And then, the only male was Reverend James Rufus Todd. He’s in Atlanta now. That’s the four, including myself.

HAY: That’s the four including yourself. Yeah. That’s amazing. From 1939.

DAVIS: Yes. Uh hum. Yeah.

HAY: Can I backtrack and ask you about the Clinton Street School. That was a different school?

DAVIS: Yes.

HAY: Did it close? Did it…?

DAVIS: I don’t know the politics of it, but for some reason they decided to build a new school for the Afro-American children, and they closed Clinton Street. And they had a good excuse, I think. No. I’m trying to think whether Mayo Underwood was built before the ’37 Flood. So, Clinton Street was closed long before that, you know. Uh hum. But, they just decided that we needed a new school, and they built it.

HAY: So, when you left the Clinton Street School and started at Mayo Underwood, were you that first year? Did you start in that school when it was brand new?

DAVIS: Yes. Uh huh. My first year I was at Mayo Underwood, I was in the third grade. Uh hum. Yes.

HAY: Alright. Now I understand.

DAVIS: Thank you. [Laughter] Well, it gets a little confusing.

HAY: Well, I’ve heard about Mayo Underwood, but I hadn’t talked to anybody who went to another school before that, you know.

UNIDENTIFIED: Mrs. Kaylie Jones is on that list so…

HAY: Yeah, she is.

DAVIS: Uh hum. Now she did.

HAY: Yeah, she would have too. So, when you think back…well, first let me ask you about your mother and your father. Tell me their names.

DAVIS: My mother’s name was Harriet Garner, and her background was not from Frankfort. She came here to work with a family that the State of Kentucky hired, as it’s first Commission of Forestry. And, my father was born and reared here in Frankfort and Franklin County.

HAY: And what’s his…tell me his name.

DAVIS: Henry Garner, Junior.

HAY: Ok. And then, do you have brothers and sisters?

DAVIS: As of two years ago, I had a brother. He passed…it’s been two years. His name was Robert Henry. Uh hum.

HAY: Did he stay in Frankfort or did he…?

DAVIS: Yes. Except World War II. He served in World War II.

HAY: So tell me…when you think back to your days as a teenager and a high schooler, what did you do for fun?

DAVIS: We danced. Now, my mother taught me to dance from the time I was about five years old. We would dance at home. When we got to high school in the eighth grade, and could go to little “sock hops” so to speak, I was one of the girls in my class that could actually dance. [Chuckle] And I really appreciated that. [Laughter] But we would dance. And, when we became older, Juniors and Seniors, sometimes we would have card parties, but there would be no money passed or anything like that. Children would just get together and play cards sometimes. We’d go to the movies. And, they would have picnics or whatever, you know, just…And, one thing we really enjoyed was summertime when the boats would go up and have dances. We would go up there and they would start. The boat would come up and dock behind Paul Sawyer’s Library and go down that slope. And, they would start the music about eight or nine; eight or eight-thirty. The boat would leave the dock and go up the river, and we’d dance all the way up the river [chuckle], and you could feel the current when you were coming down and we’d come on back. And, we would walk home together. And, my mother would always be down at the boat to, you know, walk back home with me. And, my brother and I liked to dance with each other because that’s the way we learned to dance would be at home. And, we would go. And, at dusk in the neighborhood, women sometimes would go down to the boat dock and all come back home together, because my mother wasn’t a person to let me go a lot of places un-chaperoned. She wouldn’t follow me, but she would, you know, be around someplace, sometimes. The parents took good care of their children.

0: 1:00 …-0: 2:00HAY: What kind of music did you listen to and dance to?

DAVIS: Well, we started out with what we called Old-fashioned Blues and Ragtime. And, my father had bought a victrola. Now, the people that my mother worked for lived on Capitol Avenue, and they would send—after he bought a victrola for us—they would send records to my mother for us, and that was the first time that my brother and I really heard operatic tunes. And, we didn’t know what they were, but we knew they were [chuckle] from the opera. And, a lot of the music she would send would be priced how my mother could afford, but she would send us these records and we would sit there. The Toreador song was one that I remember. And, I can’t recall now the opera that it’s from. But, my brother and I would sit there and we would listen to the records. And, then my mother would buy records from a young man that would come. And, she liked Blues records. And then, she liked Jazz. I grew up listening to Ella Fitzgerald, Count Basie, oh, Joe Williams, oh…I have to…King Cole. King Cole…and his Trio, which I liked better than I liked King Cole’s solo records. And, we’d listen to the Dorsey Brothers. We just listened to Jazz and Swing. All kinds of Swing music.

HAY: Swing dancing is really hard. Could you Swing dance?

DAVIS: Yes. My brother and I. Oh! I’ll tell you another thing. Dance. We would go to a dance and if you had a date, he would come and get you and take you to the dance. When you got there, he would dance with you that first dance and then you were free to dance with other boys. And they felt free to ask you. Before intermission, he would come back and you’d dance. Then, after that…but he’d make sure he danced the last two dances with you. And, when the younger students began to dance…I guess I was a chaperone, and the boys and girls would come as couples and they wouldn’t circulate, and I couldn’t get used to that, you know. You weren’t supposed to dance with anybody else. No. We didn’t do that. So, then you had friends and they would come and ask who wants to dance during the evening, and things like that. So we just enjoyed ourselves. And, I can’t get used to the young people monopolizing themselves that way. But times change.

HAY: When you had the dances on the boat, was the music live or was the music recorded?

DAVIS: Oh! It was live. Yes. Uh huh. Yeah.

HAY: So where was…so would the band come with the boat?

DAVIS: No. Organizations would rent the boat. They would make arrangements to get the band there, or hire the band, or whatever they were going to do.

HAY: Do you remember any of the bands?

DAVIS: No, but for a special treat every year, our school…the principal would hire an Afro-American band from Lexington called Smoke Richardson. He had a twelve or fifteen piece band and he would come and play for us. Now, for our little school dances and things like that, we would borrow a Whirlister from a restaurant there in North Frankfort. Sheila, can you remember the name of that?

UNIDENTIFIED: Tiger Inn.

DAVIS: Tiger Inn. Do you remember me telling you the name of the man that owned it?

UNIDENTIFIED: Mr. Atkins.

DAVIS: Yes. Mr. Adkins. Uh huh. And, he would close Tiger Inn from eight until eleven, and the boy seniors and juniors would go down to the restaurant and roll the Whirlister up a block to the school, and we would use it then. And, when it was over, while the friends were getting ready to leave, they would roll it back down to the restaurant. [Laughter] And then, on our dates we walked. We always walked. But, my mother always gave me money enough to call a taxi in case it rained or anything like that, because you weren’t allowed to go out with boys if the parents thought that they wouldn’t be respectful or take care of you. But, you know, things happen, and I never went out that I didn’t have money enough to be able to call a taxi. Of course, that was quite a big day-charge: twenty-five cents a ride. So I always had…[Laughter]

HAY: So when did you move away from Frankfort?

DAVIS: 1960.

HAY: So you graduated from high school in 1939.

DAVIS: Uh hum.

HAY: And then, what did you do at that point?

DAVIS: I enrolled at Kentucky State and I stayed there about two and a half years. And then, I didn’t go back. And, I stayed on Murray Street with my parents until I married, which was in 1950. Harriet, how old are you?

[Unidentified background talking]

DAVIS: Well, now…when you were about…well, I’m trying to think. When you were about…now let me see...

UNIDENTIFIED: [..]

DAVIS: No. Yes, but…you must…I must have gone back to school for my junior year after you were one year old, and that would be what? Nineteen…

UNIDENTIFIED: Fifty-three.

DAVIS: Fifty-three, when I went back and I did my junior year. 1953 I became pregnant, and I always told my husband that the missile that went to the moon was not the first one, [chuckle] because when they told me that, I shot straight up. So, that meant I would have to stop school, but I managed to make that year. So then, I stayed at home with the baby until she was five. And, when she was five, she went down the street to Rosenwald, and I went across the street to Kentucky State and I graduated in 1960.

HAY: And that’s about the time you…that’s when you left Frankfort?

DAVIS: Yes. I had a job in a small town called Eminence, Kentucky. The school system was still segregated from the elementary to the eighth grade. So, I got a job teaching in Eminence, Kentucky. And, the name of the school was King Street Elementary School. And, I worked there until 1963 when the City of Eminence integrated the complete system. And, from then on, I stayed until 1989.

HAY: In the school system?

DAVIS: Yes.

HAY: In the Eminence school system?

DAVIS: Yes.

HAY: And, so that’s when you came back to Frankfort after you…?

DAVIS: No. I came back in ’92 because we had built a home in Eminence, and I liked it and we stayed. But, my husband became ill, and he had a heart condition, and in Eminence the closest hospital was twelve miles away in Shelbyville. So, after we stayed there awhile, and he had a heart attack and we got over that, I talked to him and asked him would it be alright if I tried to come back to Frankfort because we had a home here. And, I explained to him about the distance, and I thought if I came back to Frankfort, and he had an attack, he would be ten minutes from a hospital. In Eminence, it would be twelve miles. And, I just couldn’t see treating him that way, and that was something. So he agreed, you know, that it would be alright, and we sold the home and came back to Frankfort.

HAY: What was different about Frankfort when you came back from what it was when you had left?

DAVIS: There were not as many Afro-Americans here, and the ones that were here, I didn’t know them. And, I thought I’d have to reacquaint myself with the people here because I had been gone thirty to thirty-five years, and you know, that’s a whole generation. And, when I would see people, I would have to…my daughters would have to identify…I’d have to go back to the mother or the grandparent. That was the difference.

HAY: So it was like a different…it was like a new community?

DAVIS: Yes, in a way. The buildings were familiar, but a lot of the people weren’t.

0: 3:00 …-0: 4:00HAY: So going back to when you were young and newly married here in Frankfort, what do you remember about going to The Grand Theatre? You mentioned that you would go to the movies…

DAVIS: Well, we would go to the movies and that’s about it. We’d go upstairs. Now, the woman that lived…that was the first Afro-American ticket-taker was the owner of this house. Roberta Wilson, who had been a former schoolteacher at Rosenwald, Kentucky State. And, she had retired, I guess, but she didn’t…you know, at her age, she didn’t work. And so, she took tickets at The Grand. And, we would go up there and stay. And, we’d go to the ten-cent store…

UNIDENTIFED: [..]

DAVIS: [Chuckle] Yes, we did.

HAY: Say that again.

UNIDENTIFED: You paid one price, and you got to stay until you got ready to leave.

HAY: You’d pay one price and you got to stay until you got ready to leave.

DAVIS: Yeah. If you were in here at twelve o’clock, you stayed until ten o’clock at night when they closed the theatre. You know, they didn’t empty the theatre like…oh, no. They didn’t do that until after World War II. [Laughter]

HAY: How old were you when you first went to the theatre do you think?

DAVIS: Oh, The Grand?

HAY: Uh hum.

DAVIS: I have no idea. Because the parents took us to the theatre, you know. I have no idea. There wasn’t a time that you said, “Well, I’m ten years old now. I can go to The Grand.” It wasn’t like that. No.

HAY: So the whole family went?

DAVIS: Yes. Whoever wanted to go would go. But, I do remember the serials on Saturday mornings. And on Saturday, they would always have a serial going on. And, I remember the cowboy pictures. And, I like cowboy pictures now and I watch them on TV. You’d see Tom Mix, and you’d see…oh I saw one here not so long ago, but you’d see those. And Rin Tin Tin, you’d see those kinds of movies at The Grand on Saturdays. Otherwise, you’d see just regular movies; first and second run.

HAY: Do you ever remember seeing any live performances at The Grand Theatre?

DAVIS: No, I don’t, but I did see one at The Capitol Theatre. I don’t remember. The Ballard Flower Company in Louisville, Kentucky was a major employee there. And, they hired a Vaudeville show and they booked this show at The Capitol. And, it was called: A Jug Band. And, we went up there to see…my father took us all to see that. My mother and my brother. But, I don’t remember any live performances at The Grand.

HAY: What year was that when you went to The Capitol Theatre? Do you remember what year?

DAVIS: No. I don’t remember the year. Can’t go that far back. [Laughter] I remember the incident.

HAY: Were you a child? Were you a young child?

DAVIS: Yes. Uh hum. I was past six or seven, but I was not ten or twelve. Uh hum.

HAY: Ok, that gives me a ballpark.

DAVIS: Uh huh.

HAY: So then, did you take your kids to The Grand Theatre?

DAVIS: Yes. Uh hum.

HAY: Yeah? So that would have…you would have taken your kids in the fifties…? In the fifties?

DAVIS: Yes, but we didn’t go often. But, yes.

UNIDENTIFIED: [..]

DAVIS: But, I took them to The Grand. Uh huh. Yeah. But, we didn’t go often.

HAY: So did you go more when you were a child than…?

DAVIS: Yes.

HAY: Why the difference do you think?

DAVIS: Why I didn’t take them?

HAY: Yeah. Why did your family go more when you were young than in the years when your children were young?

DAVIS: Well, my family went because we were down here and we could just walk on over town. When I married and had the children, we lived up on the hill, and to tell the truth, with three children, I didn’t go to the movies much. And, I would have had to have some way to get down the hill other than walk, so unless we just made a special effort to go, we didn’t go as often.

HAY: I understand. So what do you remember about Mrs. Wilson? What was she like?

DAVIS: I really have a hard time finding the adjectives to describe her because she was a very…she…I can see her plainly. She was a tall, heavyset woman; not too much. Black hair. Very particular with herself, and her speech, because she had taught, you know, school. I wasn’t intimately involved in her. She was a no…what I might call a no-nonsense person, but she wasn’t unfriendly or unapproachable or anything like that. I thought she was a nice person.

HAY: And, this was her house that we’re sitting in right now?

DAVIS: Yes. Uh hum.

HAY: Now, was she working in the balcony when you were a child? Or…?

DAVIS: Yes. Uh huh. She worked there. She took tickets there.

HAY: Do remember getting popcorn? Would she sell you popcorn?

DAVIS: No. [Cough] Excuse me. She took tickets. If we wanted popcorn, we went down to the main lobby and got it and took it back to the balcony. If we wanted candy, we would go down there and tell her we were going to the ten-cent store next door, get candy, and go back to the…you know…balcony.

HAY: So when you arrived at the theatre, would you…did you buy your tickets…where did you buy your tickets? And then how did you go in?

DAVIS: We bought our tickets at the central office. The glass-enclosed office. And everybody bought their tickets there. White people went in one way. We went upstairs to the balcony. She was at the top of the steps. She took our tickets and we went in. Now, they had nice restrooms up there, you know. The facilities were nice when we got there. They had a fountain.

HAY: What do you remember in those days, I know a lot has changed, but what do you remember feeling about why you had to go to the balcony to sit, and the separate…the segregation? The fact that you had to…African-Americans had to sit in the balcony and whites sat separately downstairs?

DAVIS: I didn’t have any feeling about it. It might seem strange, but I always enjoyed sitting where I sat because the way the theatre is designed, you looked this way and the higher you are the better, you know, perspective you have for viewing. So, and as far as being…I guess it’s a personal thing…and, if that’s where I was supposed to go, that’s where I went. If I wasn’t welcome downstairs, I didn’t feel like I wanted to be there anyway, you know. So, I guess that was about it. I wasn’t preached to about segregation. And sometimes, what comes out is what was put in. And, I was never reared where segregation was put into me that it was so terrible. We knew it was unfair, but we were never…the attitude was never put into you so that it made you feel uncomfortable. And, I guess, at the time, you were so young you wouldn’t have felt that way anyway. You kind of gained those attitudes as you grew older, and knew more, and understood more. And, I don’t know that a lot of Afro-American parents put those feelings into their children because it would have made their lives harder anyway, and they would have encountered it as they grew up, and they knew that. So, that’s the way that went with me.

HAY: And then, how did you talk to your kids as they were growing up about segregation? How did you deal with that with the next generation?

DAVIS: This is the…I don’t ever remember talking to them…Harriet?

UNIDENTIFIED: Yes ma’am.

DAVIS: Did I ever talk to you all about segregation?

UNIDENTIFIED: No, not in a specific term.

DAVIS: No.

UNIDENTIFIED: We were just taught our black history.

DAVIS: Yes.

UNIDENTIFIED: With the circumstances as it was presented to you.

DAVIS: That’s right.

UNIDETIFIED: And, then by the time we got to where…to the age where you would understand and internalize some of those things, the Civil Rights Movement had taken place all over the country. So, pretty much, the television took care of our generation because they showed the marches and the turmoil that was taking place during the Democratic Convention. So therefore you got a bit more of a world perspective on it.

HAY: That’s interesting.

DAVIS: A lot of African-American parents didn’t put a lot of animosity in their children. They just didn’t rear them that way. But we were made aware that they were as good…my mother always told me that I was as good as the queen of England, and that I was supposed to conduct myself that way. Now, I had no…no idea what she meant. But, that’s what we were taught. How to conduct ourselves. How to take care of ourselves physically. Things like that, but we really weren’t taught a lot of hatred or anything. Really. I don’t remember my mother ever saying a lot of mean things about people. You shouldn’t go there or you should be allowed to do this. Wherever you were, there was a certain way you were to conduct yourself. That’s the way we grew up. And, I guess, that’s the way Betty, Harriet, and Ruby grew up.

HAY: That’s really interesting.

DAVIS: And, I never did like putting hatred and meanness into children anyway, because they grow up with what they are around.

0: 5:00 …-0: 6:00HAY: And as a teacher, you probably…you carried that throughout your…

DAVIS: Oh, yes. Let me tell you about that. It doesn’t have anything to do with The Grand Theatre, but in 1963, I was told by my African-American principal that our school would be integrated. And, we had a nice, little school because the City of Eminence had built a new school building for Afro-American children. And we liked it. And, we just had…we enjoyed being over there. They did not tell us that we were to be integrated until May. Now, this is irrelevant to The Grand situation. And, I had all summer. I needed a job. So, I came back to Frankfort and I told my husband—we still kept a residence here—and I told him, I said, “We’re going to integrate the schools.” And, he was a calm person, and he said, “Well, what are you going to do?” I said, “I have no idea.” He said, “Well, what do you mean?” I said, “Well, how am I going to teach over there?” And, he never said anything. And, he came back. I said, “Well, I’ll try, but when the first time one of them calls me a name, or anything that’s offensive to me…” He said, “Now, you don’t have to take that.” I said, “Alright.” Well, we went back…I went back to Eminence and I had the girls with me then, and we went to a teachers meeting—a first, integrated faculty meeting—and they assigned the students to each teacher. Now, at the high school, they had a fifth grade and they had a sixth grade. Well, when I was added to the faculty, they had to make a place for me. I had been used to teaching two grades…two to three grades at a time because that’s the way Kentucky State trained their teachers. So, they made a fifth and sixth grade for me. And, in this fifth and sixth grade, they took the best students and put them there, and I was to teach these top students. Well, I went home there in Eminence and I didn’t know what I was going to do, but I always prayed a lot. From the time I was twelve years old, I can remember praying and asking the Lord for things. And, I said to myself, “What on earth am I going to do? These little children are coming.” And I said, “They all look alike to me.” I said, “They say all Afro-American children look alike.” I said, “But, all of the others look alike to me, and I don’t know how I’m going to manage this.” And I said, “They are the better students and they came from the better homes. What am I going to do?” I walked in the first teaching day, and they gave me my record book and whatever, and I walked in and I saw these little ole faces. They took their seats. One little boy’s father was president of the bank. One little boy’s father ran a business. They all…well, you know…and I couldn’t remember any of their names. And, those little ole rascals knew exactly what was being done to me. So, I started off…I had about thirty children, and out of that thirty I had about five Afro-American students. I organized my room, and I started calling the role, and they helped me because they knew that I didn’t know where they lived or their names. And, they would come up to me and if I wanted any of them to do anything, I would point to them and I’d say, “Now, sweetheart…” and they’d look at each other and they’d smile, and they would help Ms. Davis. Then, when we went to our first ballgame, they left their parents and they came and they sat with their teacher, and they treated me so well that they erased whatever inhibitions I had about teaching them. And, I never felt any feelings of racism or anything, and it just took all that away. And they did it. They were intelligent enough to know what was going on. They knew what was being done to me. I was their teacher, and they didn’t let it happen. And, as a result of that, it just erased all of that prejudice I had. Even going into, because even the thought of them being disrespectful never happened in that room. Never ever happened from those children, and it erased all of it out of me. It did something to me. Really. And, I’ll never forget them. I did have a [..], you know, in moving around, but that’s what happened in 1963. I’ll never forget. And, I see their little faces now. And if anything was going on, they’d let Ms. Davis know. And, they did well. They did so well on their achievement test that when the records went in, one of the teachers with whom I taught asked me how on earth I could teach two grades, two different subjects all day long, and have the children improve? And, I told her, Kentucky State College had to do it because they knew when we left and went into our segregated system, we were going to have to do two or three grades at a time. And, when I found myself being faced with the same situation, I knew what to do. Part of that was true, and part of it…those little ole rascals took good care of their teacher. It was. And, I’ll never forget them.

HAY: That’s a wonderful story.

DAVIS: It really…and I appreciate the way I feel about mankind. And, I was so glad then that I hadn’t put any of that into my girls. I don’t know whether it’s good or bad because sometimes they didn’t know color. [Chuckle] Oh, but they did.

HAY: That’s a beautiful story. That really is. Now, let’s see. Let me ask if you remember any of these names. And, I’m not sure which generations each of these people is from…they’re connected somehow to The Grand Theatre. Mr. Parsons from The Grand Theatre?

DAVIS: No.

HAY: Gene Lutes?

DAVIS: Now, he must have been manager about…I’ve heard that name, but I never saw him. [Clearing throat] Excuse me. I never saw him, but the name is…you know…the name is familiar. I don’t know whether he was owner or manager, all right.

HAY: Allie Combs?

DAVIS: No.

HAY: Jim Aderberry?

DAVIS: No.

HAY: Miss Wilson. We’ve talked about her. Roberta Wilson.

DAVIS: Yes. Mrs.

HAY: Mrs. Wilson.

DAVIS: Uh hum.

HAY: Callie Weathers?

DAVIS: Yes.

HAY: What do you remember about…? What do you know about Callie Weathers?

0: 7:00 …-0: 8:00DAVIS: Well, she took tickets there, and she was a citizen, you know, here in the community. Just a nice person. I don’t know anything…she had a talented son that became a doctor, and there’s a street in Louisville named after him. Doctor…what was his name?

UNIDENTIFIED: Lawrence?

DAVIS: No.

UNIDENTIFIED: Larry Weathers?

DAVIS: No.

UNIDENTIFIED: [..]

DAVIS: [..] William. Harriet, you know when we were over there looking…ok.

HAY: Now, the Marsh…is Don Marshall also…is that his neph…uh…?

DAVIS: Cousin.

HAY: Cousin?

DAVIS: Yeah.

UNIDENTIFIED: [..] would be his cousin.

HAY: [..] his cousin.

UNIDENTIFIED: Callie his aunt.

HAY: So, we’ve just got a couple of minutes left on this tape. What was it like in town…in the town of Frankfort, when you would walk to town…what was it like when you were a teenager? What were the streets like, and what were the stores like, and what was town like in those days?

DAVIS: The streets were laid out the same as they are now. We used the old bridge until Governor Chamber decided to put in what we still call the New Bridge. But, what is that bridge called? Really? The name?

UNIDENTIFIED: Is it a memorial bridge?

DAVIS: Yes, it’s something. Memorial Bridge. We always called it the New Bridge. Now, repeat the question.

HAY: What was town like? When you would go to town, was it busy? Was it…?

DAVIS: Oh, yes! And, where the insurance building was…that building down there?

UNIDENTIFIED: [..]

DAVIS: No. Capitol Avenue’s Heritage…

HAY: [..]

DAVIS: Yes. That was a beautiful flower shop. Yeah. Darlington’s. And, we’d walk around. It was just about the same. But, over on Broadway, they had more stores. They had a Newberry’s. They had a five and ten. Brown’s Clothing Store. You know, it hasn’t changed that much.

HAY: I’m looking at a photograph. Sheila has just handed me a book: Community Memories, with a picture of John Robert Davis, Junior in a Zoot Suit. 1941. Can you tell me about this picture, and who this is?

DAVIS: Yes. That’s my husband and her father. [Laughter] Yes.

HAY: He is dapper-looking, I’m telling you.

DAVIS: He was. What? Oh, yeah. But, he was. He wasn’t a tall, tall man. Medium. Would have called him medium-build.

HAY: Did you all meet at Mayo Underwood?

DAVIS: Yes. Uh huh. He was a graduate of Rosenwald, and they would come to Mayo Underwood to high school. When I went to high school, I was about twelve years old, and we went upstairs, you know. Elementary was downstairs and we went upstairs. And, it was so crowded upstairs that one of my classmates was playing with me and just picked me up and carried me through the hall. And, that tickled him so to see, you know, somebody…and he said after that, he would just watch me. And, they would like to tease. He and his friend would like to tease the girls. Uh hum. And, I came home one day and my mother asked me, “Well, now…” I said, “Oh! My goodness.” I said, “Mama, you know John Davis just makes me sick.” She said, “Well, what?” I said, “He just acts so silly, and when you look in the back of the room, he’s always winking his eyes at you.” She said, “Well, stop talking about him. You’re liable to end up marrying him.” I said, “Oh! My goodness!” [Laughter] But, he was a big tease. You can look at that picture and tell. He was a tease. Uh hum.

HAY: [Chuckle] So what did he…? It said he ran a barbershop?

DAVIS: Yes.

HAY: What other businesses and things did he do?

DAVIS: That’s about it. Because when he went into the Army. Then, he went to school. And came back. And married.

HAY: And, here’s another picture with him cutting the hair of young Tom Graham…

DAVIS: Uh hum.

HAY: Being held by Catherine Graham.

DAVIS: Yes. That’s the man that he bought the barbershop business from. Fred Alan.

HAY: Wow.

DAVIS: And those two men there, they eventually worked in the shop with him.

HAY: Fred Alan and Nelson…?

DAVIS: No.

HAY: Nelson Morton and Bias Graham?

DAVIS: Yes. And, I don’t know what happened to Mr. Fred Alan. Do you?

HAY: A little bit before my time.

DAVIS: Yeah. But, we lived in South Frankfort and I didn’t pay a lot of attention, you know, to what happened. But, I often wondered about him.

HAY: So, you continue to live in South Frankfort, and you kept your house here even during the years you were teaching in Eminence.

DAVIS: No. When I went to Eminence, in 1960, we built a home there. And, he kept a residence on Douglas Avenue.

HAY: Ok. Which is up on the hill.

DAVIS: Hill. Yes.

HAY: And then, would you also spend time…now when you lived in South Frankfort and went to Mayo Underwood, you had to walk all the way to North Frankfort.

DAVIS: Yes.

HAY: To go to school everyday, didn’t you?

DAVIS: Yes. When I started school at five years old, I had to walk from South Frankfort to Clinton Street. Five years old. They didn’t have a bus or any way, and we walked.

HAY: Who would you walk with?

DAVIS: My father would take me to school, and then he would go on to work. Go back uptown on Main Street and work.

HAY: What kind of work did your father do?

DAVIS: Janitorial work. And then he worked as a porter for a drugstore. Time up?

HAY: My tape is about to end, so we’re either going to have to…do you have anything else you wanted to cover, or…? I think I’m pretty happy.

DAVIS: Alright.

HAY: Anything else you wanted to…that you thought of that you didn’t say, or…?

DAVIS: No. I’m trying to think if there was anything else I could remember about The Grand other than I went there constantly until 1951 when my first child was born. I went there on a regular basis, you know. And enjoyed it. That’s about what I can say. I enjoyed the movies that they had there. And then, they had the regular Saturday night…Saturday movies for children. After 1951, I stayed at home with the babies until they got old enough to go with us and things, we’d go. But, from then on, mostly I was a housewife.

HAY: Well, thank you so much for taking the time.

DAVIS: It hasn’t been quite as painful. It’s boring for Harriet, my daughter. She’s heard these stories so many times, but it was nice and I’ve enjoyed it. And, thank you for recommending me. And be sure to go see Katie Lee because she can tell you a lot more about North Frankfort. Uh hum.

HAY: Alright.

DAVIS: And I think…I hope things go well with The Grand.

HAY: Thank you so much.

END OF TAPE 1

1: 9:00 …-0: 10:00BEGINNING OF TAPE 2

HAY: Ok, I still don’t have a pic…I’m not putting the picture on, but I’m just going to have it like this. Make sure I’ve got the microphone…

DAVIS: Yes.

HAY: Ok, I’ll ask the question. This is Tape 2 of the interview with Mattie Davis on October the 20th, 2010. Can you tell me about Ms. Roberta Wilson’s husband?

DAVIS: Well, his name was Bernie, and he worked for Roger Brothers Furniture Company that was located on St. Clair Street across from the courthouse. They had no children.

HAY: So, we were just talking about the problem of not finding photographs of Ms. Wilson and her family. Since they didn’t have children, nobody’s kind of carried that…

DAVIS: No. And, I don’t remember any relatives that either one of them had that was here in Frankfort.

UNIDENTIFIED: Did they live somewhere other than here that you can remember?

DAVIS: Not that I know of.

UNIDENTIFIED: Did someone own this house in between them and you?

UNIDENTIFIED: Yes.

DAVIS: Yes.

0: 11:00 …-0: 12:00UNIDENTIFIED: But, a lot of those photographs would have been destroyed in the flood of ’37.

DAVIS: Uh hum.

HAY: Ahhh. What year would she have passed away, do you think?

DAVIS: I have no idea.

UNIDENTIFIED: I always thought she was a member of First Baptist, but when I found this picture, she was in Corinthians [..].

DAVIS: With Corinthians. Uh hum. But, I don’t remember any…I don’t remember when she moved here. But, I do know she taught at Rosenwald. Uh huh. If they have a roster that might go back. Other than that, I don’t remember.

UNIDENTIFIED: Do you know if she’s buried here?

DAVIS: No, I don’t.

HAY: I think I heard she had a niece, who she may have gone to at the end of her life, but I’ll revisit those interviews and when we transcribe them, we’ll get that. And, I think it was…I think the niece lived elsewhere. Somewhere in Kentucky. [Note from transcriber: I believe it was Chicago.]

UNIDENTIFIED: We can always trace that through death certificates.

HAY: Yeah. Yeah. So, I’m just going to add to this…the end of this tape here that the other voices that we’ve been hearing, which I’ve written down on the release, are Sheila Mason Burton and also Harriet Davis, who keeps talking from the kitchen. [Laughter]

HARRIET: For historic accuracy. [Laughter]

HAY: For historic accuracy. And, now we’re going to go out and we’re going to take a picture of the front of the house.

HARRIET: Alright. It was nice to meet you.

HAY: It was nice to meet you too.

HARRIET: Yes.

HAY: You have good…she has good hearing. Your daughter.

HARRIET: Have had to practice.

UNIDENTIFIED: [..] said it was goose liver. [Laughter]

HAY: So, tell me about that.

UNIDENTIFED: Yes, and we’d pass it down because by the time we got there, you hadn’t had supper so you had something to eat.

DAVIS: Uh huh. And we’d bring food to The Grand.

HAY: So what would you take to The Grand?

DAVIS: Well, anything. Ritz crackers, bologna, and I’d make sandwiches and pass them on, and we’d be there and watch the movie. Uh hum.

HAY: My mom used to do the same thing. She’d pack soup and sandwiches, and we’d eat them all [chuckle] in the movie theatre.

HARRIET: So, did you have a favorite place in the balcony to sit?

DAVIS: No. I guess wherever you could sit. And, where the children…if you took children, you know, you’d want…but, uh…no. I never had a favorite place to sit.

HAY: So, who would you sit…

HARRIET: Now, I’ll tell you my memory of The Grand. I want to get to [..] was the pop machine. It had really pretty colors on it. And, I can just remember wanting to go out there and get pop because of the colors of the pop machine. [Chuckle] And, that the cup would come down and the soda would spill all out. And, that was my favorite thing.

HAY: That was Harriet speaking. [Laughter]

[The interview changes now as Mattie Davis and (Sheila Mason Burton) another move off and chat privately in the background. Harriet moves into better position to speak with Joanna Hay directly.]

HARRIET: That was my favorite memory.

HAY: That’s a good memory.

HARRIET: Yes. Because I was so little, and that was a treat to me to go and get, you know, this cup. And, the colors were just so pretty on the machine. Yeah, that’s what attracted me to it was the colors on the machine.

HAY: And, would you go with your sisters and your mom and your dad?

HARRIET: Well, I would go with my mother, but, you know, I could go in and out of there by myself without my sisters. And, I could go in and out of there by myself.

HAY: So that was a big deal.

HARRIET: It was a big deal because I was five or six.

HAY: So you were little.

HARRIET: Yes.

HAY: And, then you moved away?

HARRIET: No, I moved away when I was eleven. So. But, to have that freedom to go and come by yourself, even though you were in the movie, you could go to the restroom. You could go get the pop. Yeah.

HAY: You felt like a big girl.

HARRIET: Yes. That’s exactly what it was. I felt like a big girl. [Laughter] And, I can remember that.

HAY: Yeah. Because you were out in public.

HARRIET: Yes.

HAY: In a public place, but…

HARRIET: Yes.

HAY: You were free.

HARRIET: Yes.

HAY: To move around.

HARRIET: Yes. And, you didn’t get that everywhere. So that was my favorite memory.

HAY: That’s nice. Any other memories?

HARRIET: No. No, because we didn’t get to go to the movies unless our mother or our grandmother or my uncle took us. And, the last movie that I remember seeing there was my uncle took us to see Li’l Abner when it first came out as a movie because he always liked it in the funny papers. Yeah. So, that was the last movie that I went to see there.

HAY: That’s great. Thank you.

HARRIET: You’re welcome.

HAY: Thanks for chiming in.

HARRIET: [Laughter] Now, you all were supposed to be interviewing my mother, but, you know, sometimes…you had to tweak ‘em. [Chuckle]

HAY: Thank you for adding.

HARRIET: Tweak them a little bit, you know. But, I didn’t want to sit in on her interview, you know.

HAY: Well, thank you so much.

HARRIET: She still wants to be on her own. Ok. So, my father, when he came out of the service, you know, from the stories from my mother, he went to work in Dayton. So, he had to go to another state to get a job. He came home one weekend and my uncle, her brother, was going to West Kentucky Vocational School in Paducah, Kentucky. And, that’s what it was called: West Kentucky Vocational School. And, he…so he asked her to write a letter and she went there too. As each one of us graduated from high school, we went there for one year training in cosmetology. As we left there…as we graduated…it was a one-year program…and we graduated from West Kentucky Vocational School, we left there and that fall we entered Kentucky State University and did a four-year program there. And, while we were in school at Kentucky State, we had a shop in a house…our cousin was a…had gone there, and she was a cosmetologist, and she apprenticed my sister. And then, my sister apprenticed…I think I apprenticed under my sister. And, my youngest sister apprenticed under me. And, we ran that shop until we finished school and then we went on to jobs that, you know, would be our living—our life—for the rest of our lives.

0: 13:00 …-0: 14:00HAY: And, were you a teacher? Is that what I understand?

HARRIET: Yes.

HAY: Where did you teach?

HARRIET: I taught out in Henry County. Henry County Middle School. I taught sixth grade. Uh huh. And, my sister…my youngest sister and I were hired by outright application in 1976 to the Board. We were the first blacks…the two of us were the first blacks to be hired in an integrated faculty there. Now, the school system had integrated, but the faculty was not, so we were the first two hired to integrate that faculty. And, she married and left. And, our group was the first black to retire from that integrated faculty in 2004. Yeah.

HAY: That’s awesome.

HARRIET: Yeah. I thought it was. It was important to me. And, I taught in the middle school and she taught in the high school.

HAY: So, you really started a new era there, and then, throughout your whole career teaching in that system.

HARRIET: Yes, I did.

HAY: Working it through.

HARRIET: Yes.

HAY: I loved your mother’s story about how fearful she was, and anxious she was…

HARRIET: Yes.

HAY: When she was going to be teaching those white kids.

HARRIET: Yes. Yes. Well, see, I wasn’t fearful, but…I wasn’t fearful because they were white kids, I was fearful because they were just kids. And, I always said if they knew how scared I was of them that day, I probably would have never lasted twenty-seven years. But, I did. They didn’t know. And, they never got a clue. And, they let me stay twenty-seven years. [Chuckle] And, I started out in middle school and I ended up doing their alternative program. And, I ended up…when I retired, we were placed to a multi-county state grant at Cropper and Shelby County. And, I was one of the teachers they sent over to extend the faculty at Cropper.

HAY: Were there many black kids in Shelby County at Cropper?

HARRIET: Ummm…not really. Not like you would think. There were…perhaps when I got there, there were perhaps ten…well, let me take that back. Maybe eleven out of the thirty-some students that were there. And, I didn’t think that was a bad percentage. And, we did alternative…alternative education. We were Day Treatment and At Risk…Drop-out/At Risk students. And, that was really the highlight of my teaching. I loved that more than I loved anything else that I ever did…was working with the alternative and the average students. Because I liked to work with students that somebody told they couldn’t achieve, and they did. I liked the motivation. And, there was something about seeing them “turn it on” that really excited me.

HAY: And, also, you must have felt like you were undoing some of the bad teaching that had gone before.

HARRIET: Well, no, because it wasn’t that because I would never say a person was a bad teacher. Their teaching style may have been different from mine. So, I didn’t really know what their background was as far as the teachers they had in their background. But, I liked being able to help them understand that this thing called “education” wasn’t their enemy. And, I always…my philosophy and my mission statement in my teaching was that you never…you get as much of it as you can get because you don’t know where life’s going to take you. And, my mother always told me it’s better to have than to go back and get. And, these children never knew where their lives would end up. So, I always taught them as if they were going to go to college. Even if they didn’t. While I had my hands on them, they were going to be taught everything that they needed to know as if they were going to college. And that’s what I…and I would do that with the alternative students. I would teach them as if they were going to college.

HAY: That’s really great.

HARRIET: Yes. And, I think some of them appreciated it. I hope they did. [Laughter] I hope they did.

HAY: I bet they did. Thank you.

HARRIET: You’re welcome.

END OF TAPE 2

0: 15:00 …-0: 16:00END OF INTERVIEW

Total time: 1 hour, 15 minutes, 45 seconds