Interview with William S. Steffens, April 23, 1984

 STEFFENS: He wouldn’t say when. Just like that. What about so-and-so-and-so? I’d say, “Let me see.” Now if the answer was yes, you know what I’d do. I’d say, “Oh, I believe so.” And look them right in the eye. And if it was no, “Oh, ah-ha. I, I, I don’t think so.” You see, I never said “Yes, sir,” and “No, sir,” because they never said that to any of our own people. Them little, little crackers that high, they’d call us little niggers, and I thought about it. I said, well. But did you know, I was glad when I had an opportunity to get away from there, because I know they’re beginning to find that out about me. You see, while I wouldn’t say yes or no, sir, I didn’t be dictatorial about it. I was kind of humble, like, submissive-like, you know, and I would, if he wanted me to do something, I’d 00:01:00jump right at it. “All right.” You know, “Yes, sir,” uh-uhn, no. “All right.” Just like that. One guy said to me, just before I had an opportunity to leave there during the First World War, he said, “Do you think he’s one of them uppity niggers?” When I heard him, he didn’t know I heard him, when I heard, I said, “Oh, my god,” I said, “They going to get onto me pretty soon,” and if I knew, if they had said that, and labeled me with that, I would never have been alive today, because I would have killed one of them. And I know that. You see, we had to live so dangerously down there. My mother told me, said, “Son, I know you’re a good boy. I do. Haven’t given me any trouble. If they ever put their hand on you, they’ll trump up something, and they’ll never let you get away.” And I knew that. Because I didn’t see it, my mama wouldn’t let me see it, I guess I was about, well, not quite five-years old, but they had a big cross, the Ku Klux Klan burned a Negro right at the state 00:02:00fair. And, oh, it was a terrible thing. You could smell his burning flesh five miles. And it was a terrible thing. And did you know, those Ku Klux Klan, after that, they, their flames were over, and he was burnt to a crisp, go around and cut things off of the, off of the, fingers, and toes, and give to these white women, and they’d take them home. The white women, with their children, take them home, and put them in glass jars (hands slapping together), and set them on their mantelpiece, and tell them, “Those, this is the way, what we do to niggers. See, there’s that nigger’s toes. This is this nigger’s—” You see, those are the things that made me know that if they ever put their hand on me, I would kill them just as long as I could, because I know what they would do. They’ll punish me, and make me suffer, but I know if I start to killing them, they’d kill me just like that, and I would be gone. But god in 00:03:00heaven has saved me five different times. And I have come through that every time I thought I was going to be killed, because the situation, he straightened it right out, just like that. And I’ll tell you the truth. I think it’s because he knew that I did not seek trouble. I tried to avoid trouble in every instance that I could, and because I did, the Bible said, “Obey your father and your mother, that your life would be long upon the land which the lord thy God giveth thee.” And did you know, I was 19-years old before I knew that I could stay away from home after 11 o’clock at night, and my parents wouldn’t know where I was.

DEVORE: The incident you just spoke of, how old were you when that happened?

STEFFENS: I guess I was about, maybe five-years old. Mama wouldn’t let me go near that thing. But we could stay in, well, where we lived, we could just smell 00:04:00his burning flesh. And you knowed, they asked me, how do I know it was done? When they put these things on the mantelpiece, all the Negro women who work for the white people down there, no white people work for white people. The Negroes were in their homes. They were cleaning, they were washing, they were ironing, they were scrubbing, they were cooking, and they were doing everything for white people. When they’d go there, they’d see those things on the mantel, and when they come to my house, “Oh,” they’d say, “Miss Fannie—” my mother’s name was Fannie—“Oh, Miss Fannie, I got something to tell you.” When I heard them say that, I’d get just as close to them as I could. Said, “Oh, they, she got three of, three of his fingers, three of his joints of his fingers in their home, on the mantelpiece.” Aw.

DEVORE: Are there any other childhood memories that stick out in your mind?

STEFFENS: Oh, girl. (laughs) Certainly I have. I have a lot of memories in my mind. You know—

DEVORE: Oh, when, by the way, were you born? When were you--

STEFFENS: Jacksonville, Florida.

DEVORE: What was the year?

STEFFENS: Huh?

DEVORE: What was the year that you were born?

STEFFENS: Eighteen-ninety-seven.

DEVORE: Eighteen-ninety-seven.

STEFFENS: I’m in my 88th year now.

DEVORE: Oh my. And you say you have a lot of memories from your childhood?

STEFFENS: Oh, I can remember it all, certainly. I have a wonderful memory. I can remember things, oh, 50, 60, or 70 years ago, yet I can’t remember a week, week before last. (laughter)

DEVORE: That sounds like me. Don’t ask me what happened last week. Ask me about five or 10 years ago.

STEFFENS: Yeah. That’s right. That’s right. Well, you know, my father—you see, let me tell you something, my mother, she was a wonderful, wonderful woman. And I have admired her all of my life. She was the only person that told us, give us the facts of life. Why? My father was 40 years old when he married my 00:06:00mother. My mother had been married before. She had a child by that marriage, which was my stepbrother. He was about five-and-a-half-years older than me. My father was a carpenter. When he had a job—now, in Jacksonville, from Jacksonville to Miami is 365 miles, and there’s 70 miles further down from Miami to Key West. That’s called the Florida Keys. He was a carpenter. Well, in those days, all that was called the Florida Riviera. Those hotels weren’t there reinforced concrete. There was no concrete there, and there was no steel. Those hotels were just five and six stories high, weren’t any higher, it was all made out of frame lumber, you understand?

DEVORE: Um-hm.

STEFFENS: And he was a carpenter, and when Flagler, this great financier, Flagler, I forgot his first name. It, it, it was called a Flagler system, he had a railroad that was his railroad that ran from Jacksonville to Miami and Key West. It was called the Flagler system. The name of the railroad was the Florida East Coast. When he would go down there to work on one of those buildings, on one of those hotels, he had a great, big tool chest as long as that table there, and that wide. It took two strong men to lift all the tools that he had in that chest and put them on a dray, horse and wagon, and take them down to the station, railroad station, and put them in the baggage car. Then those capsule, red caps down there would take it out of the baggage car and lay it on the platform, until he got there, and get a dray to take it from there to where they 00:08:00were going away. And when he went, took that chest away, then we didn’t see him sometimes for six months, because, you see, he couldn’t jump on no train, and come back 365 miles back to Jacksonville. He had to stay right there. They provided places for them to stay, and they could not go out of there, after work was over, they let them go someplace to get a, some food, and after that, go back there, and there you stay. “Don’t you be out in the street there after a certain time at night, because the cops catch you—” So, all that time, Mama had the whole responsibility of teaching us things. I remember her very well. She says, “Son,” I would get down on my knees, just like that, and just lay on her, just get her, and let her, and just look up at her, and just let her talk to me. She said, “Son, remember this. Never let anyone be nicer 00:09:00to you than you will be to them. Never let anybody do that. And if anybody does something good for you, always say thank you. Don’t never take it for granted. Always be grateful for somebody when they do something to you.” I put that a part of my life, and that’s been my life ever since. You see, and I’ll always think of her, because, you know, she said to me one time, she said, “Now, Son, you’re getting grown now.” Says, “You know, these boys, when you begin to get growing, you have ideas about girls.” Says, “Now look, now don’t tear down these nice girls that you go to see. Those are the girls you got to marry.” Said, “Don’t you do that.” She said, now I’m going to tell you just the words she used, she said, “You know, there’s some girls that ain’t thinking about marriage at all, nothing of, schooling, or nothing.” She said, “Those are the stinky foot girls.” Said, “Don’t you, don’t you—“ said, “Don’t you bother the nice girls.” Said, and 00:10:00I thought, well, she wouldn’t have told me something if, my daddy didn’t tell me nothing like that. When he came home, he was so tired, and everything, and he was so much older, he just felt that, well, just I guess it never occurred to him to talk to me anything, tell me anything about that. And that is the reason why, at 12-years old, I wanted to be married, and have a son, so I could be a pal to him. And did you know, I almost got that wish?

DEVORE: (laughs)

STEFFENS: I have a son. Put that down there, and come here, and let me show you. Put that, just lay that down. Just put it right on here.

[Pause in recording.]

STEFFENS: Yes, from kindergarten, first grade, second grade, third grade, all 00:11:00our teachers were white in Jacksonville, and they continued to be white, because the ci-, Jacksonville, Cookman was a church-related school. It was supported by the Methodist Church North. You see, when the Methodist Church North supported the, abolitions, when the supported the abolitionists, the Methodist Church South pulled away from them, because they supported freedom of the slaves under Abraham Lincoln, you understand? So there weren’t enough colored teachers educated enough to teach me down there when I was born in 1897, you see? The few black teachers that were available were teaching in church-related schools in 00:12:00the South that were black. See the idea? They had black principals, and black everything. This school, see you had white teachers, and white principal, in Jacksonville, at Cookman. And—

DEVORE: Public schools?

STEFFENS: Huh?

DEVORE: Public schools?

STEFFENS: No, church-related school. There was a pay school, church-related. We had to pay. And you know, we didn’t have enough money to pay. But we had chickens, we had a cow, and we had a horse, and we had a wood yard. Now, when Dad was away, Mama didn’t have no money, but we would send, sometimes she would kill two or three chickens, truss them, or she would, we had a cow. She would send milk, and we had a churn, and we’d churn the milk into butter, and 00:13:00we’d skim the cream off, and we’d send all those, and give those to the teachers for tuition.

DEVORE: Oh. I see.

STEFFENS: And those people would accept those things, because they had a manor house there on the campus there, at Cookman, and they would take these things, and put them in the manor house where they had a big storage refrigerator with ice, you know. It wasn’t no, nothing like this. Great big chunks of ice come, and just put it in there. And then when Papa would come home, whatever was lacking, when he come home, and bring that money, then we would pay, see? That’s the way we did. And the teachers taught us until they passed a law in Tallahassee that any white person caught teaching Negroes how to read and write would be put in jail. That knocked that in the head. The principal of Jackson-, of Cookman Institute, when I went there with white teachers, he was a fine, 00:14:00upstanding white man. He taught us how to hold up our heads, and be dignified, how to be proud of ourselves, and how to begin to inculcate that pride it, within us, that would serve us in the future as time went on. But he got old, and, of course, he had something, and he had to resign. And they put another principal in his place, G. Bottlestone, and he was the most rabid race-hater, you would ever—he would call himself a minister too. He would get up, we had devotion every day, devotional period, about one hour. He’d get up there on the platform, he’d find things in the Bible to read to us. One time he read and, and Ham, after the flood, you know, he was one of the children of Noah, and 00:15:00after the flood, Noah, his father, got drunk, and ripped off his clothes, and Ham laughed at him, and he’s reading the Bible, “So Ham’s children shall be black.” Then he’d find another spot in the Bible that said this, “Love envieth not. Love is not puffed up. Love hopeth all things. Love endureth all things. Love supporteth all things. Love, love—” And I read that. It’s in the Bible. I have Bibles here. I have three of them. And I thought to myself, why is he saying all that? And then when he’d stop, and look all around, hold 00:16:00the page, look all around throughout the auditorium to see if that was sinking in. Then another passage he would find, he says, “If the enemy smites you on one cheek, turn the other cheek. And if he asks for your coat, give your overcoat, or give him your cloak also.” That’s your coat and your cloak. I said, “Ain’t this something.” Well, it got on my nerves so bad, he found that part in the Bible that says, “Servants obey your masters, for this is right in the Lord.” I said, “What does that mean?” Oh, I hollered right out, right in that, and my teacher, she was a remarkable woman, she said, “Get up! Get up! Get out! Get out here!” If she hadn’t sent me out there, I’d have been, I’d have been, you know, I’d have been suspended from school, you understand? I would have never been able to get back there. Before he could react, she out-, out-thought him, and she knew-- and I jumped up, and ran right out. I had to say it. I can’t take a whole lot of foolishness. I was going up, 00:17:00and after it was all over, and recess was over, and she said to me, “Stephen, why did you do this--?” I said, “Miss Lewis, you knew what he was doing.” I said, “Dr. Dawkin didn’t do anything like that. He was teaching the servants how—” She said, “Well, don’t you go back into the assembly anymore.” I said, “Well, what must I do?” She said, “Do anything you want. Just don’t get in trouble. Stay in this room, and read, or go out there, and, and just don’t be noticed. Don’t be outside doing something.” She said, “Just stay there and be quiet.” And I never went in the assembly anymore.

DEVORE: What kind of advice did Mother or Father give you about education? And how did they feel about your education?

STEFFENS: Oh, sure. They wanted me to get all the education. I wanted to be a lawyer. My mother said, “Son, it’s all right to want to be a l—” Daddy wanted me to preach, see? And she said, “Son, it’s all right to be a lawyer, 00:18:00son, but if you try to raise a family on being a lawyer, won’t be able to do it.” She said, “You know, the white people ain’t going to hire you, and the colored people don’t have enough to hire you, and if they do have enough to hire you, what will they hire you to do? Because they’re all cot-, planting cotton, and, and, and so forth.” Says, “You can’t, you can’t make it that way.” So, see, I gave that up. Well, Daddy was a carpenter. He took my brother and I, and we had to go with him, so I knew how to do that. But you know, Daddy was, see, I thought about it later on, kind of turned me off against him, because he never gave us any money. We would go with him, and work all week long. You know, if he had given us about a dollar, or a dollar and half, or even 75 cents on Sunday, we could take the girls out to the ice cream parlor, you 00:19:00know, after BYP, our Christian endeavor, and give them a little ice cream, you know, sodas, something, you know. Because we had such lovely ice cream parlors down South, all the ponds all, and all down the aisle, and the girls would be so pretty, and so dressed up nice, and if I call this one my little girl, “Now, this is my sweetheart. I’m going to take her, and give her ice cream soda, or I’m going to give her a lollipop, or something.” You know? I had to stay on the side, you know, and see the boys take my little girl in there, and give her ice cream there, and I couldn’t take her. Oh, I was, I was so mad, you know. But later on in life, I realized he had to struggle so hard, you see? As soon as he began to get gray hair, he had to dye it, because the white bosses was going to fire him, because he’s getting too old Manuel. Old man, you’re too old. He had to keep pace with them 25- and 26-year old carpenters, you know, (claps 00:20:00hands) to throw up a scaffolding, jump on it, and go like thunder. You see, the guys were, “All right then,” all standing here hollering at them all on the scaffolding, you know. The other men, the younger men, could put five nails in the scaffold when they were supporting a scaffold, five nails and braces, and all. Well, he had to put three, because he had to keep pace with them. He had to watch and see if anybody’s getting ahead of him. If anybody, the man would come right there, and stand right up, and look at him, “Aw, you ain’t doing nothing.” Sometimes, when he loaded that scaffold, with a lot of lumber, shingles, whatever he was using, it would break, he would fall. He had three dislocated shoulders, he had three broken ribs. Mother would put that plaster all around him like this, you know, and tie him, and bind it, and bind him up, and go right on back to work. See, he couldn’t let anybody know. And she was a 00:21:00remarkable person. When he was away one time, for four months, we had a porch, and we was playing on the porch. He would bring home bricks that he, see our home, those cottages down in the South there, was on brick pillars, and the stood about that high above the ground. See you couldn’t have no cellars there, because Florida is sea bottom. If you dig three feet in, in, the ground, in, in Florida, in Jacksonville, you get oyster shells, shells there, from shellfish, because the land came up, you understand, as the water receded, or as some volcanic things in the soil, in the below surface pushed the land up, and that was sea bottom at one time. You see the idea? So Papa would bring home bricks when he was building a, you know, pillars to sit the, the foundation of 00:22:00these little cottages on. And the bricks was under the house, and I took the bricks out, and was playing with them right at the edge of the porch, and my sister fell off the porch, and hit her arm, and broke it in three, in two places, and the bone was sticking out of her skin, right about here. Did you know my mother had me to hold that child, while she caught her hand, and pulled that hand out, and got that bone. And when she turned it loose, it jumped back in the socket, and she bandaged that child up, and she was all right today. She has that scar on her.

DEVORE: Wow.

STEFFENS: Of course, she’s dead now. She’s been dead now about 10 years. And I thought about it many times after I got grown, I say, Mama was such a remarkable woman. My brother had his arm broken. She splinted his too. And-- Now, I’m going to get to another instance that I know about. My father was 10-years old before he knew he was free. Ten years old before he knew he was 00:23:00free, because he was born in the back-woods of Georgia, and those crackers would not let that information get to colored people, and the only reason my father said he knew he was free, a colored man, called a drummer, I don’t know what you know what a drummer is supposed to be. Do you know?

DEVORE: No.

STEFFENS: No.

DEVORE: Un-uhn.

STEFFENS: He was a fellow that went through all the, see, all the sections, black sections down there. Everybody had a little farm, and he had sometimes two and three boxes of cigars strapped with a red, with a leather strap on this hand, maybe two boxes in that hand, and he had a great big, what they called a red cross plaster, plastered to his chest, and everybody knew that colored people had the red cross plaster, because when they worked in the fields, they’d have what they called lumbago, and that red cross plaster went all across their chest, and sometimes, it was in their back, and sometimes across here, and all like that, you know. You could go to a drug store, and get these 00:24:00plasters, because that was the only thing that would give colored people relief. This fellow would come through there, call himself selling cigars. Well, he would sell cigars, because this man had a little cottage, you know, just a little three room cottage, with a little shelf on there. Said, “Mr. Fergus,” said, “Get me five ten-cent cigars.” And he’d give them cigars, you know. He could sell for 10 cents, but I don’t know what this man paid him. He put them on shelf, somebody come in, said, “Why don’t you all buy 10-cent from me?” You know, that was a little business. That’s what they called doing a little business. And Papa said, “This man had a copy of Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation on his chest, and this thing was plastered over it.” He said, “Because those, those crackers rode through there with big .45s on their hip, on horses all the time, and be like, “Hey nigger what’re you doing?” Grab him, come on, come on now. Come near him, “What have you got in 00:25:00them boxes?” “Well, nothing but cigars.” “Open them up. Let me see. What’s that all on your chest?” “This is, I got lumbago. This is a red cross plaster.” When he took his shirt and, all the white people knew that Negroes had red cross plasters, so he would let him go. Papa said when he got to his house, he pulled this thing down, and took this, he could read—my Papa couldn’t read, and his father couldn’t read or write—and read it to him, and said, “You’re free. Abe—” Old Abe, that’s what they called him—“Old Abe has signed that proc-, that proclamation.” Says, “Y’all is free.” So, oh, my goodness. Papa said he had take that down and off so much, it was all bloody, all raw all over his chest, because he had done that so many times, going through there telling the people they were free. Papa said his mother said, “Oh my God, we got to get away from here. What are you going to do? What we going to do?” Papa said, “We going to send you over there to old 00:26:00man so-and-so.” That was, his farm was five miles over there. Five miles was nothing for them, them fellows to go, you know, to go, just run that five miles in a little while. Mama got up, he said, his mother got up that morning, oh, about four o’clock, and start to cooking things for him, so he could take food, and things to take for a sandwich, and so forth, and so on. And give him some, getting ready to, give him some clothes. Said, “Papa where we going to go? Where am I going to go?” “Old man so-and-so.” “Then what is he going to do?” “Don’t ask me no questions. He’ll tell you what to do.” Because if you tell Negro, tell little children so, too much, the white people will beat it out of them, you know. Said, “You just go over there. He’ll tell you what to do.” Papa said before Ma-, his mother could get done making preparations for him to get away, they was going to send the other children some place else, you know, because don’t send them all together, because the white people would stop that right quick. Going to send one here, and one over there to meet the old man so-and-so over there, and going on like that. So what he was 00:27:00going to do, say, Papa said, they heard the hounds yelping, and they know, they knew then the white people had gotten word of what they were going to do. See, the idea? Now, before this, the white people used to turn the hounds loose, you understand? And the Negroes that was running from slavery, getting ready to, to run away from slavery—have you seen these big scythes that got handles that they take, and sweep, and cut the grass like that with it? They’d take the blade, see they knew how to do that, take the blades off, they’d have it razor sharp, and when they let the hounds come, they’d just stay right there on their knees, just like this, with that blade just like that. As soon as they get near, just swipe like that. One, run, and cut all the legs right off of them, you see? And the white people stopped from sending their hounds, because the hounds stopped yelping then, and the men could go. You see, they wouldn’t know where the men were then. See the idea?

DEVORE: Um-hm.

STEFFENS: So they had the hounds on the leash. They wouldn’t let them run loose. They’d just, just let them follow the scent, but keep right behind the 00:28:00hounds. Papa said when he heard that, they said, “Son, you’ve got to get.” Papa said he left there with a sandwich in his hand, and just a little something, a little shirt or something, and he had to bow low, because, see, when he jumped out the back door, there was a cornfield, and he ducked low, and the whites said, “There’s a little nigger,” and started shooting. He, Papa said he heard the shot, the bird shot, slamming through the corn field, as he was bowing low and running. He didn’t stop until he got to old man so-and-so’s house, and he told him what happened. Said, “Well, son, you’ve got to get.” And he kept on until he got to Savannah. Savannah was a big city, and everybody in Savannah knew the Negroes were free, free. Papa said he never went back, and never saw his mother, his father, nor any of his family from that day until the day he died. He never saw any of them. Never went back. So you see, I had all that in me. And I couldn’t have broke white people trying to be 00:29:00nasty to me. Actually, when I came up here, I couldn’t keep a job, because those foreman, you know, called me something, (slaps hands) and that’s what I’d do. Didn’t have no job. Some fellow told me, said, “Steve, you can’t raise a family in Philadelphia, if you don’t learn to take something.” Well, I don’t know. I didn’t learn to take anything. So, he said to me, this same fellow, now I had a job working for the railroad that was, Pennsylvania Railroad, but I wasn’t, I was handling mail. It was called the RPO, and that’s railroad parcel post, see. I was handling that, those great big packages that, magazines, and, Saturday Evening Post, Ladies Home Journal, and, and Country Gentleman. That was called Curtis, big, those big Curtis trucks that ran through Philadelphia, had great big motor on each wheel. Oh, they were powerful things. Am I talking too much?

DEVORE: No. (laughs) No.

STEFFENS: All right. And—

[Pause in recording.]

STEFFENS: And I didn’t know that I was ever going to have a chance to get away from the South, but because I hadn’t said, “Yes sir,” or “No sir,” to the white people down there, they got wind of the way I was acting, or answering them, and I heard them talking, two of them talking over there. They didn’t know I heard them. They said, “Do you think the way he’s answering he’s one of those uppity—” that’s what they—“one of them uppity niggers?” And I said, “Oh my Lord,” I said, “They getting wise to me now.” And if they’d come, and corralled me, and asked me point-blank why I didn’t say “Yes sir,” “no sir,” I knew I’d be in a lot of trouble. So—

DEVORE: Did you say you didn’t finish high school? You—

STEFFENS: Just finished second year of high school. That’s all. I didn’t get, I didn’t get to, you know. I didn’t get to my senior year. In fact, I 00:31:00didn’t get to my, got to my freshman year. But not to my junior year, not to my senior year. See, I finished my f-, well I finished my junior year too, but I didn’t get to, to the third or the fourth year. But I did that. And now, you see, when we got ready to go, I, I bought a ticket to go on the ship from Jacksonville to New York. There were about a half a dozen young men like me getting ready to go, and a fellow that was at the, at the, at the dock, he was a colored man, he walked up to us. He said, “Look, all of you all can’t leave here at one time, because they won’t let you go.” He said, “Now, there’s another ship going, another day, and if you go—” See now, this was the Lenape dock, and there was a merchant miner dock a little further on. He says, 00:32:00“Now, if you go down to the merchant miner dock, we split up this group,” and then you know, with just two of us right there, and these crackers came up, said, “Well, where you there, nigger?” I said, “Well, we’re going, we got a ticket here for the ship.” “You got a ticket going somewhere?” “Let’s see that ticket.” And I looked at him and showed him. “Uh-huh,” says, “You’re going to New York. What you going to do up there?” Now, I couldn’t tell him I was going up there to do war work, because that, they didn’t want us to do that. They didn’t want us to leave there to work, because we were going to get five, and six, and seven times the amount of money that they ever paid us down there, you understand? I said, say, “What are you going to do up there?” I said, “I have a mother up there. She is very sick. I am going up there to try to help her out, because my father’s, he’s has a stroke, and he’s incapacitated.” He did have a stroke, but it w-, it wasn’t that serious, you know, it just was a light stroke, and he got over it. 00:33:00And I said, “That’s where I’m going.” “Oh, yeah. Uh-huh. And where are you going?” He said, “I’m going along after him, because I’m his cousin.” Well, he wasn’t no kin to me, but you know, we had to do all those kind of things, and that’s the way we, that’s the way I got away. Now, I’m going to tell you how my father had to get away.

DEVORE: Oh, how old were you when you left?

STEFFENS: I was 19-years, little, I had passed my 19th birthday. My 19th birthday came in January, and I left there in April. See? That was that much beyond my 19th birthday. And I went on to New York. My father, they know he was a carpenter, and they had, they needed a whole lot of them, those kind of men up North, here. You know how he had to get away? They went to church, and this man, this recruiter, and give them a long list of things that they had to do, that he 00:34:00was going to take away, he, he had, he had interviewed all of them. There were carpenters, there were plumbers, there were painters, and there were—see, I was no, nothing when I left. I didn’t know anything to do. I knew how to do carpentry work, but I was too young to be a carpenter, you know, to, to—so, he got all those men together. He said, “Now, I’m going to take all you together at one time.” What we had to do, at a certain time, in the dark of ni—what they had to do at a certain time, in the dark of night, they had to go to the outskirts of the city, on a railroad spur, and they had put an old raggedy car on that railroad spur. He said, at a certain time, he was going to be on that car. He knew when everything was ready, he was going to light a cigarette on the deck of one, that old car, and the men that was hidden, my 00:35:00father was one, they were hidden in the bushes along side of that thing, laying in the bushes, say, “Now, don’t you all smoke, or talk, or do nothing. Just—” When he lit that cigarette, all of them got right up, and went and got in that car, and everybody was quiet, not a light or anything. What they call a little shifter, or little engine, came, hitched onto that car, and the car, the train, Broadway Limited was going North. He stuck it onto the back of that last car, and when that pulled out, it pulled on up, and the engineer knew that all of them was in this thing. Before it got into the New York City, uncoupled that little car back there, and pushed it aside. That little shifter come and pushed that car aside, way over there, and the men had to stay in that car until just about daylight, when a great big van came, and they got out of 00:36:00that van, and came on up to where they were going to be hired. That’s how my father got away.

DEVORE: Was the engineer, was he black, or—

STEFFENS: Who, my, the engineer? Oh, why, we don’t know who the engineer was. We just, we was just at the back of that whole train. We don’t know who he was.

HARDY: But he was, he helped them.

STEFFENS: No, but I mean, they, they, whoever was responsible knew what was going on, because it, it wasn’t a hitch in that at all. Everything moved on just as smooth. And that’s how Dad got away from there, because they wouldn’t let, they wouldn’t—they would, this is what they, how they would kill you. Two of them would always be together. Say, “Look, don’t he look like the guy that raped that white woman the other day?” The guy’d look, “Yeah, he does look like him.” Say, “Did you rape?” “No, I didn’t do anything last—” “Well, come on. Let’s go on down there. Let’s go on down to the, to the, to the station. Let’s see what we can find out about you.” Take you right on away, and if you got, if you had a ticket going somewhere, by the time they let you go, that ticket wouldn’t be any good. You 00:37:00had to get money together all around, all, you know, all. So that’s the way they did us down there.

DEVORE: Did your father leave before you did, or—

STEFFENS: He left after I did.

DEVORE: I see.

STEFFENS: He told me all about this. He left after I did. See, I had an opportunity to go before he did, and I had a friend up here, and that’s the reason I went up here. But my mother had been up here, you know, before. So I told my, shucks.

DEVORE: How did you feel about leaving?

STEFFENS: Well, I’ll tell you. I hated to leave my, my classmates, and things like that. But you know, I felt, I never thought that I would ever leave the South. I never thought I’d ever have an opportunity. I thought I was going to live and die right there in that place. And did you know, I’ll tell you something else. In those days, the automobile business was just in its infancy. And that sand out there, the wagons would make ruts in that sand, just that 00:38:00deep, and when guys with automobiles—now the street on the other side, I lived on Meadows, and the next street over there was paved. It wasn’t paved, it was called shell road, because they put oyster shells there, and it, the traffic beats it down, you know, when it rains, that compacts it, you know, and it’s a nice thing. But as soon as the sun comes out and dries that up, anything that goes on there makes a dust, whoo. Just, you’re just covered with dust, because that’s the dust of the ground up shells. Well, when these guys would buy automobiles, them automobiles in those days wasn’t much, and they’d try to negotiate that sand there, and they couldn’t do it. They’d get there, and get bogged down, then they had to get a horse and wagon to come, and hitch on to, to the car, and pull the car out until they got to the next street, which as the shell road, and it could run. But there were two cars that could pull the sand. That was a Cadillac, and that was a snort-nosed Hupmobile. You don’t 00:39:00know anything about that?

DEVORE: No idea.

STEFFENS: That was one that, the thing that filled up with the gas, for oil, for water, was something like that, was that much higher, but it stood way up on this, on the radiator in the front, and that’s why we called it the snub-, snort-nose Hupmobile. Looks just like a rhinoceros with that horn sticking out of its head like that. Those were the only two things. I said to myself, I said, “Well, when I get grown, I’m going to get me, I ain’t going to get nothing else.” I didn’t want a Hupmobile, because it just hold two people. I never wanted anything that would hold two people. I said, that looks too selfish. I always wanted something that would hold more than that. And the Cadillac would hold five people. I said, “I’m going to buy a Cadillac,” because that’s the only thing that, not that I particularly wanted a Cadillac, but that was the only thing that would pull that sand. That, and that other thing, and I thought, now, when I got grown, that’s what I was going to have. Now, see, when I had the realization that I could leave the South without being grown, see, I grabbed 00:40:00that chance, and that’s why I left. The rest of them wanted me to stay there, and finish my education, and get my diploma with them, but I didn’t do that. And I never got it. So I came North, and that’s the way I got in.

DEVORE: And you came to New York City?

STEFFENS: Came to New York City.

DEVORE: Had you already contacted—

STEFFENS: This friend.

DEVORE: A friend who lived there.

STEFFENS: Yes. Um-hm.

DEVORE: Had anyone told you rumors about the North before you, before you left?

STEFFENS: Uh-uhn. All the rumors I heard was that a wonderful place, and when you crossed the Mason-and-Dixon line, you were a free man, and you could be right there with any of the other free men. That’s what I was told. All you had to do was to cross that Mason-Dixon line, and then, since I was going to New York, I had this friend of mine, I just thought he was just okay, and I’d go up there, and, oh, I’d be so free. I’d be so free. I was a fool. And that’s what I thought. I was one disillusioned individual. When I got up to 00:41:00New York, I found out that they said when a Negro got a job in New York at that time, especially one in the late-teens, if he made $12 a week, that was a good salary. When I got there, I found out, yes, I could get a job for $12. Get a job starting off at $10 a week. If you work there two months, they raise you a dollar, and you work there two more months, they’d raise you another dollar, and that’s all you’d ever get. But I found out, to live in New York, a room rent would cost you six dollars a week. How would you live in New York, getting $10 a week, and paying room rent for four dollars, room rent six dollars a week. You’d have four dollars left.

DEVORE: Um-hm.

STEFFENS: How could I live that way? I said, “My God, how will I live in New York like this?”

DEVORE: Well, do you remember what happened when you first arrived in New York?

STEFFENS: Yes.

DEVORE: Where did you stay the first night?

STEFFENS: Yes, this friend, now you say, that’s something else I’ll have to tell you. This friend that I had, his mother, and his father, and all his family was down in Miami. That’s 365 miles below Jacksonville. But his father ran on the road. He was a Pullman porter. See? Now, the Broadway Limited came from Boston, and it ended in Jacksonville. It came from Boston, it hit New York, it hit, it hit coming this way, it hit one other city. One city in North Carolina. And then came on down to Jacksonville, and that’s where his trip broke up. Now, when he wanted to see his family, he had to deadhead from Jacksonville all the way to Miami. But you see, it wasn’t a whole lot of trains going all down 00:43:00there when, just when he wanted to go. He’d have to lay over in Jacksonville until that train that was going to Miami came so he could get that train, and go down. Then he had to, he couldn’t stay down there as long as he would like to, because he had to deadhead from Jackson-, or from Miami, back to Jacksonville, to be there on time to get his connection to go on up to Boston. You see the idea?

DEVORE: Um-hm.

STEFFENS: Now, they kind of got kind of close to us in Jacksonville, see, so that his family, while they did have a home down in Miami, they came up. Now that boy, that I thought was my friend, he stayed at our house. Now, him, and my brother, and myself, we had a room together, and we slept on blankets on the floor. They had a girl, her name was Maisie. She’s about three years older than me. Very pretty girl. She stayed two doors away from us in another place. 00:44:00Now, the mother would stay down there as long as she could, you know, to take care of the livestock. They had a little livestock there. And she’d come up, and she stayed in the house next door to us, so that that whole family was there. Now, every, now, when they would go back, this boy would still stay there with us. And every time our table was set, his feet was right on the, our table. Not a nickel passed between him, his mother, or his father, that came to our family. Not a nickel, but that was the way the Southerners do, you know.

DEVORE: Um-hm.

STEFFENS: Well, he did that. They did that. They sponged on us, until he got enough money to get to New York. And he sold his home down there, and went to New York, and he had enough money to, to maybe pay rent for, oh, about three 00:45:00years. In the meantime, he’s looking to buy a home in Jersey. You see? Right across the river. See the idea? But they were playing us for monkeys. Now—but I kept in contact with Dewey. Dewey Hicks, that was his name. Oh, I just thought, oh, now that he had been staying with us so long, that when I got to New York, oh, everything was going to be all right. I’d have some place to go. Well, my mother never let me go, and move all the way to New York without any money, so I had about $200, you know, but I never, you look at me, you wouldn’t think I had five cents, because I dressed all, no necktie, just, just old disheveled, kind of. But I had a suitcase. They called it a, a telescoping suitcase. It had ballasts. They would swing out like that. You could keep on putting things in it, put things in it until it stuck out like that, you know. 00:46:00Oh, I had some beautiful things in there, but you’d look at me, you’d see all that stuff I was carrying. They didn’t know what it was, and would look at me, I was just was an old straggler, just an old boy from, from the deep South who didn’t have, just looking for a home, maybe. Well, I told him when I was going to come to, when I was going to get to New York. I told him when the ship was going to arrive, and everything, and I thought sure he’d be down there, because he knew I didn’t know nothing about New York. I got to New York, and got off the ship, and went into, in the waiting room, and I waited, and waited, and waited, and waited there. I waited there for an hour and a half. And he didn’t come. I said, well, what in the world is the matter? Now, I didn’t know, that, whether or not they had a phone up in New York City, then. I didn’t know that. And I wasn’t thinking about trying to find anything of the kind. When I didn’t, didn’t hear from him, or he didn’t come, I started walking out there. I said, “Now I can’t ask anybody how to get uptown in New 00:47:00York City,” you know, in Harlem. I can’t ask anybody that. I said, “And I can’t stop and leave my suitcase down there, and look like I’m green, a greenhorn. I know I look greenie enough. If I just keep walking,” I say, “I’ll just keep on walking. I was kind of strong. That thing was heavy though. And I struggled, until I saw a cop, and when I saw him, I went to him, and I asked him a question, how to get to it. And he told me how to do, what to do. Go out Seventh Avenue, go and get the Seventh Avenue express. Oh, he explained it all to me. I, I put it in my mind that I could remember, and I went and got in the subway, and got in, and got uptown. When I got uptown, I walked to his house, and I rang the bell, and when he came to the door, I said, “Hi Dewey. Well, I thought you would be at the station.” He said, “Shh!” I said, “What’s the matter?” “Oh, everybody asleep.” Now it was about, after 11 o’clock in the morning. Everybody was fast asleep in New York, you know.

DEVORE: Hm.

STEFFENS: “Well,” he said, “Well, put your things down there.” He says, “And I’m going to show you New York.” Now, this is how he showed me New York. He knew how to get on the subways, and ride, ride, and ride, and then when he’d get off the subway, he’d go up maybe two stories, and get on another subway train, and go in another direction, ride, ride, ride, ride, ride. And when we’d get to the end of that, get on another train, and ride, ride, ride. And we’d come back here, and then get on this one, then go up three decks higher, and then get on the L and ride, and ride, and ride, and ride, and ride. And that’s what we did for about three hours. And I’m seeing New York, underneath the ground, up on the, I’m seeing New York. When we got back, his family was awake. All right. Now, what do they do? Say, “Willie,” I says, “Yes, Mrs. Hicks, would you care for a cup of coffee?” I says, “Mrs. Hicks, I don’t drink coffee.” She says, “You don’t? You care for a glass 00:49:00of milk?” “Oh,” say I, “Yes, I’ll drink some milk.” Gave me some milk, and a couple of cookies. And then Dewey took me out now, walking. Walk, and walk, walk, walk, walk. And the time come for dinner. She give me dinner. And I didn’t say anything, and she didn’t say anything. So she said to me, says, “Young man,” mind you, I was Willie before, “Young man,” she said, “Where do you think you’re going to live?” “Oh,” I said, “I’ll just live here with Dewey.” “Oh, we don’t have no place here for you,” she said to me. She said, “Dewey told you about your job you can get.” I said, “Yes, he told me a job, what’s I start off at $10 and go up to 12.” “Yeah,” she said, “Now, I have a friend that’s got a room. You can get that for six dollars a week.” I said, “Is that so, Mrs. Hicks.” She said, “Oh yes.” I said, “Oh, my Lord. What have I gotten, in myself, to? How will I stay in New York at that rate?” Now, my, my brother-in-law, my friend, 00:50:00his family had come North, ahead of me, you see? They’d come North ahead of me, but they stopped in Philadelphia. See, they came on the train. Now, I couldn’t stop in Philadelphia on the ship, because the ship didn’t stop in Philadelphia. It just came on to New York City. So I wrote to him. Call-, no, called him on the telephone. I knew they had a telephone. I called him on the telephone, and told him what I’d found out in New York, and what I, and that I didn’t like it, and I couldn’t stay there, because I couldn’t work for $10 and pay six dollars a week for a room. He said, “Man, come on here to Philadelphia.” Said, “I got a job, and I got a job here for you.” He says, “And I’m getting $17.65 cents a week, and you’ll get that same thing, too. And you can stay to our house for three dollars and 50 cents a week. Got a room here for you. You can stay right in the room with me and, and my brother.” I 00:51:00said, “Thank the Lord.” Then I was free then. And girl, let me tell you what I did. When I got back, when I, when I heard that, I was all right then, he said, “When are you going to come?” I said, “I don’t need to come until the end of the week,” I said, “Because I get there Saturday, and we’ll go down, and see about the job, and if it’s all right, I’ll start to work Monday.” Now I know what I was going to do.

DEVORE: Um-hm.

STEFFENS: Now this girl Maisie, she was a pretty thing, you know. As I told you, she was three years older than me. So, after dinner, that day, I said to, at the dinner table, to his mother, and Maisie, and Dewey, I said, “You know, I, I think I would like to go to a theater in New York City.” She said, “Yes.” I said, “Yes, I would.” I said, “I thought I would ask Maisie if she would 00:52:00know where some good theater, or some, some nice show that was going on, that she would like to see, and if she, you didn’t mind her going with me, I would just like to go and see something in New York.” She said, “All right. I’ll take you. I’ll be glad to take you.” Girl, I went in there, and I opened that suitcase, and when I put on my stuff, I knew it was right. I had my big bankroll, you know. When I came out, she looked oh so nice. She said, “You look awful nice.” “Oh,” I said, “Well, I, I don’t want to go out looking like I ordinarily look.” I said, “I’m taking Maisie to the theater.” When I got out, she said, “Now we’ll, we can go to a, to a, to 145th Street, and get the—” “Oh,” I said, “No,” I said, “We’re going to take a taxi.” Called a taxi. Taxi come. She said, “Now, don’t you tell him where to go.” She told the taxicab driver where to go. When he got up 00:53:00there, peeled off that, she looked at that money. I said, “You keep the change.” I say, “Is this the theater?” “Yes.” I walked up to the ticket office, you know, with my big bankroll, and flashed the stuff, and she’s looking all the time, you know. I said, “We want a theater down three rows from the front.” She said, she said, “That’s expensive.” “Well,” I said, “Well, I want you to see something.” I want, whatever the tickets were, flashed that big bill at her. She gave me a-- After the theater was over, got in a taxicab, I said, “Now, look, let’s don’t go home right away.” I said, “Is there a nice ice cream parlor, something, that you can take, to have for refreshments before you go home?” She said, “Oh yes, I know where that is.” I said, “Taxi!” Got in a taxi, and slipped on there, and we got through, called a taxi, and went on back home. Went to bed 00:54:00that night, oh, I was feeling good. The next morning, Mrs. Hicks came, knocked on there, “Willie, Willie, Willie. Come on breakfast is ready.” I said, “Oh, I see what the story is now.” Came out, went to breakfast. She said, “You know, Willie,” she said, “After thinking,” she said, “I feel, I found out that you can stay here with Dewey and us, and we would be glad to have you.” I said, “Well, Mrs. Hicks, I certainly thank you,” I said, “But I’m leaving Saturday. I’m going to Philadelphia because I have a job over there, all ready, and it’s all ready, I’ve been all ready spoken for over there, and I’m going to Philadelphia.” I will tell that to somebody, say, “Why didn’t you stay there, and carry Maisie somewhere?” I said, “Oh, I didn’t want to do that.” (laughs) So, that’s how I got away from New York, and I got over here to Philadelphia with my brother-in-law. He wasn’t my brother-in-law then, he was just my friend, you know.

DEVORE: Um-hm.

STEFFENS: He wasn’t my brother-in-law until we married two sisters, but then, that’s why I got to Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love, and when I found out that I could make a living in Philadelphia, I never wanted to go to New York any more. When my people came up, and all of them got to New York, see, when my daddy came up, he was in, in Pennsylvania, them, to that mining place in Pennsylvania, when I want to think of the city, I can’t ever think about it.

DEVORE: Bethlehem?

STEFFENS: Huh?

DEVORE: Not Bethlehem?

STEFFENS: No, not Bethlehem. He was not in that direction. He was further west, like that.

DEVORE: Um-hm.

STEFFENS: But anyhow, when he got to Pennsylvania, then I was already here then. And I got a job working just like my brother-in-law, just like he was working, and we just had a good time here together. Now, that’s the end of that.

DEVORE: Oh. This was during First World War, wasn’t it? About 19—

STEFFENS: First World War, that’s right. First World War, when the Kaiser was 00:56:00raising the devil. That’s right. The Kaiser was raising the devil. So.

DEVORE: Well, when you came to Philadelphia, what kind of work did you do when you first got here?

Steffens: When I first got here?

DEVORE: Um-hm.

STEFFENS: The work that I did when I first got here was called (clears throat) ship work. (clears throat) You know, these big tramp ships—I don’t know whether you know what the, what the word tramp means.

DEVORE: No.

STEFFENS: That’s a, that’s a, something like a big truck, in, transportation. That’s what that’s to haul any kind of junk that they have, and a tramp ship is the equivalent to a big truck that holds a lot of goods and things like that. Well, those ships don’t take passengers, see. They, if you 00:57:00stowaway on a tramp ship, you have to bunk, or sleep on the floor, anything like that, if, because you can go, when you, if you want to go on a tramp ship like that, you can go for one-fifth what the regular trip would cost you, because you’re just like, almost like a stowaway. But those ships were taking grain to supply over in Europe, because all of Europe was fighting. The men couldn’t work no farms. Everybody was under arms there, you know, see? And we would, those ships would go to the granaries that was in Port Richmond here in Philadelphia, those grain elevators, they called them w-, they go, they was great, they stored grain way up there, and those shoots would come, and shoot the grain down in the hold in the ships. Well, now, a ship had maybe, some of them had three holds, and some of them had four holds. But you couldn’t put grain all over that whole business down there. We had to build partitions, see, 00:58:00wooden partitions, and shore them with balusters, and things like that, you know. So, that’s what we were doing. Called ship carpenters. Hatchet and saw, that’s all we had to have, a hatchet and a saw. And all our nails were copper, because steel nails, if you hit it, it emits, a spark would fly, and if that hot nail would fall down in that, in that grain, it would catch fire in three weeks. It would catch fire while the ship was on the high seas, then all that ship would be destroyed, because you can’t put it out.

DEVORE: Well, tell me something. There were rumors around that period that the blacks who came from the South, that the Southerners were less educated, were less thrifty than blacks here in Philadelphia. Were you aware of any of those rumors?

STEFFENS: Aware of that, I was aware of that assumption. But I found out that that was not true. Those people that was up North, they felt that they was a 00:59:00little superior, you know, because they could ride with the white people, but they all went out to the mop and broom. You see the idea?

DEVORE: Um-hm.

STEFFENS: Now, know what, they thought they were superior, you know, because, now, I, I th-, saw that clearly. Now, they didn’t mind the white people, the big financiers, to get in and ride on the elevator, if their car was out of whack, they’d get on, and ride right there. Well, when they got off, they’d get out with their briefcase, and go to the stock market. I would get off there, and go to my mop and broom. But you see, down in the South, the Negroes had to ride in the back, but when they’d get out, they could go there and, and, to their, their employment, and them, them those men were artisans. They knew what to do, and how to do, you understand? See, that was the difference. But you see, that was the thing, those people were accepted by the white people, and they would, they would write articles about the, the shiftlessness of the Southern 01:00:00Negro that would keep us divided. See, that would keep the Northern white, colored man from fooling with the black colored man, and make the black colored man feel that they were no good, and the white man standing up over there laughing at both of us. You see? That’s what they did.

[End of interview.]