Interview with William Fields, November 11, 1984

CHARLES HARDY: --came up, you said that you arrived in one of the railroad camps.

WILLIAM FIELDS: To uh, to uh Carney’s Point--not Carney’s Point, I never can think of the name of that thing, that place where we stopped. Uh--Anyhow, it was out in southwest Philadelphia. And we just walked over in town, a bunch of us did. Nobody bothered us. We went around the church; we went down Mother Bethel, down to Mother Bethel Church. And then we found the Y, M--on Christian Street. And that’s where we got beds.

HARDY: But the first night, you stayed in the railroad camp, right?

FIELDS: Let me see. I don’t think I stayed any nights in there.

HARDY: You didn’t spend any nights in there?

FIELDS: I don’t think so, let me see. Because we got there on Sunday, and that Sunday afternoon we all come in town, and then we went to the Y.

HARDY: So, you never even spent one night in there?

FIELDS: I don’t remember, I went back out there for the clothes--what little clothes I had.

HARDY: Do you remember what the railroad camp looked like?

FIELDS: Nothing but tracks, all I know, uh.--

HARDY: You know, one of the things that interests me is they’re bringing up all of these men from Texas, and Georgia, and Florida, and they’re putting them up, sometimes in boxcars, sometimes in, you know, shanties, the railroad is. So, what I’m trying to do is, you know, find someone who can remember just what sort of living arrangements they had for men working on the railroad.

FIELDS: Well, we came in the regular passenger car. We had no rough trouble, we 00:02:00just come on up, that’s all. And we had no, uh, conflicts in getting here. No fights or nothing like that.

HARDY: Right. Was it expected you would work on the railroad when you got to Philadelphia?

FIELDS: Well, it was signed in. We were signed up to work on the railroad, but when we got here, we never--they never hindered us. Because on a Monday, on a Monday, I found the way up to Arch Street, and that’s where I run into the hotel man, Shelter Haven Hotel, New Jersey. And got hired from him the next day.

HARDY: Right. So, now when you were back in Texas, and uh, I guess you signed up for the railroad in Texas?

FIELDS: Yeah.

HARDY: What… Do you remember what sort of agreement it was?

FIELDS: No, I don’t. [laughter] All I know is sign the name on--sign me on the list, you was listed in.

HARDY: Was the fellow down there a Northerner who was signing people up?

FIELDS: I don’t know where he’s from, a railroad man, I guess.

HARDY: Just a railroad man?

FIELDS: As far as I know.

HARDY: Did he try and, you know, recruit people and tell them how great things were going to be up north?

FIELDS: Yeah, that was the understanding, we were supposed to be taken care of for improvements. That is why we were being excited.

HARDY: So, what sort of things did he tell you would, would be up north, or what 00:04:00sort of promises did he--

FIELDS: Oh, the railroad, they wanted you to work for the railroad, Pennsylvania Railroad, that’s why we’re supposed to work, and at a reasonable salary. I never did do no railroad work. Some of them not here. [laughter] So--

HARDY: You know, what sort of things did they tell you--what would a reasonable salary have been? Do you remember what they were offering?

FIELDS: I don’t remember now exactly what, but it was more than we were being paid on our jobs there. And--

HARDY: Did you know you were going to Philadelphia and not New York or Pittsburgh?

FIELDS: Yeah. Yeah, that’s how I come here, I just loved the Philadelphia name. [laughter] I love the name Philadelphia. Yeah. I didn’t want to go nowhere, because they were sending them west and everywhere. A lot of people, a lot of acquaintances in all--a lot of them were in California the same time I came here.

HARDY: Yeah, from out in Texas, I guess it was just as easy to go west as east.

FIELDS: Yeah, they were going that way too, same time.

HARDY: Did any of the friends you came up with stay on the railroad? Put in some work there?

FIELDS: Some of them did. Some of them worked. Some of them got--my closest friend got a job at Strawbridge’s. He was a kind of a secretary anyway. He 00:06:00was my church secretary. But he went back home before long, because he, he got a job at Strawbridge, and he worked there while I--and then he went back home.

HARDY: Why’d he go home?

FIELDS: I don’t know, just didn’t like it, I guess.

HARDY: He never told you about--

FIELDS: No, I never got to talk to him about it. He was gone before I knew it. [laughter]

HARDY: Now, did you know anything about Mother Bethel before you came up?

FIELDS: No, no because I was a member of another denomination. I didn’t know about the AME Church still. I was a CME, which is called the Colored Methodist. That’s what I was raised in.

HARDY: Well, then how did you hear about Mother Bethel to go there when you arrived in the city?

FIELDS: I don’t know, hardly, how we found our way down there< Any how we got down there, and we were at church that night, the whole bunch of us. And then, from there they told us about the Y, we could get sleeping at the Y.

HARDY: Yeah. Do you remember R.J. Williams?

FIELDS: Williams?

HARDY: R. J. Williams.

FIELDS: Preacher? Yeah. He started uh--he’s the one that started the church at 20th and Fitzwater.

HARDY: Metropolitan.

FIELDS: Metropolitan.

HARDY: And I guess he was--

FIELDS: I think he was pastor then.

HARDY: Yeah, he was pastor at Mother Bethel when you arrived in the city.

FIELDS: Yeah.

HARDY: What can you tell me about him? Any recollections of what sort of man he was?

FIELDS: I didn’t know him too well, other than I just liked to hear him preach. He was a very good preacher.

HARDY: Was he?

FIELDS: Yeah. And he must’ve been a very good pastor, because he opened that church up, started that church up there.

HARDY: Do you remember, we found a letter of his, an open letter, to men and women in the South.

FIELDS: He did?

HARDY: Yeah, explaining the reasons that they should come north to Philadelphia. You know, and there’s a picture of him in a frock coat with one arm.

FIELDS: Is that so?

HARDY: Yeah, telling people to come north. So, you know, I was figuring, and I guess they circulated that letter down in the South to encourage people to come up.

FIELDS: They might have, that might be the way. Of course, I found it out in the group--from the group, the way I found out. The man was gathering them up. 00:09:00I was disappointed, though, when I got here, and went hiring around these stores, because I was making more money than down there than these stores were paying here.

HARDY: Really?

FIELDS: As far as a porter and things is concerned. Strawbridge was paying their lead men $9 a week. Now, I was packing for Western Electric, $10 and something a week.

HARDY: Down in Texas?

FIELDS: In Texas, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I was--but after I got out of--I didn’t 00:10:00work for that, I just told the men I couldn’t work for no $9 a week. The other men was getting $8. So, he raised me to $11, the head porter, he was a white man. He paid me $11. Then, I didn’t stay there, I went to work--I got in the gang going out Baldwin Locomotive work.

HARDY: You went out to Baldwin?

FIELDS: Yeah. That’s where the money was. And the transportation was very poor from here to there. It had them little Singer buses-- cars--and people 00:11:00hanging out the cars trying to get rides. [laughter] Then I got me a room out in Elmwood, and I’ve been there, and worked at Baldwin’s in the molding shop. Worked until winter come on. And I didn’t do much work that winter, because it snowed the whole winter. It was snowing from Thanksgiving, and it snowed until March, every night, every day. [laughter] It sure did. That spring, I got a job on Hog Island, on the 50th Way, that’s the last way. And 00:12:00I worked there until we finished that way. And we were digging down in the muck. We thought we was digging rocks, and it was ice. Ice had been covered over, you see. We were way down in the hole.

HARDY: I guess that winter in 1917-1918 was one of the, one of the coldest.

FIELDS: Oh, I ain’t seen one since. It was rough. I really got--my fingers and toes, got frosted because I was just jobbing around, you know. . And well, 00:13:00a fellow had, uh, teams, you know, and he was carrying them from Delaware Avenue out to 46th Street. And I got, that was the day, I got my hands and toes frosted. The snow, and I wasn’t just--I wasn’t really dressed for this part of the country at that time. I still had my southern clothes. [laughter] So, it got kind of rough-- that was the roughest part of my whole seen here, was that winter. We ain’t had a winter since then like that one.

HARDY: You know, one of the things that uh, that I’ve heard was that a lot of 00:14:00the men coming up during those years were not being used to Northern winters, and that being a particularly severe one, a lot of men died, caught pneumonia--

FIELDS: Light shoes, light weight shoes and all of that kind of stuff.

HARDY: Do you remember cases of any men catching pneumonia or dying? Any of your friends.?

FIELDS: Not directly. Because they’re scattered around so, working here and there Some of them caught colds, some of them did catch colds, I know. And thank God, I didn’t--I feathered the weather. [laughter]

HARDY: Got a little frostbite, but no--

FIELDS: Yeah, just a little frostbite, that’s the worst I got.

HARDY: Did any--that must’ve been quite a shock, coming up from sunny Texas to the middle of one of the worst.--

FIELDS: It was, it was. And it started so early. Thanksgiving. And made 00:15:00November to March, continuously. It snowed every day, if it didn’t snow in the day, it snowed at night. That whole winter, through. And I ain’t never seen a winter like it before or after. They haven’t had one here like that since.

HARDY: Well, what did you think of Philadelphia and the North, you know, when you were greeted with this sort of weather?

FIELDS: Well, I don’t know, I just didn’t let it get the best of me and kept going, best I knew. After I finished that job on the--at Hog Island, see, the war was going on then. Of course, the war was going on when I come. I come to 00:16:00Mrs. Riddick’s, used to have an employment office there. And she sent me over to--that’s where I got to Carney’s Point from. I was getting to be a little bit of a cook, and I got in the cook gang.

HARDY: Right. Now, back up, you went from-- When you arrived, you got a job in Strawbridge’s, and even after you got your raise, you only got $11 an hour, so you went out to Baldwin, because it paid better?

FIELDS: Yeah.

HARDY: What were they paying you out at Baldwin’s?

FIELDS: Oh, they was paying about 20 some dollars a week, something like that, 18-20-some dollars a week.

HARDY: So, that was pretty good money?

FIELDS: Yeah. That was pretty good, pretty fair money at that time.

HARDY: Did you work in an all-colored gang?

FIELDS: Mixed gang. All of the gangs were mixed something.

HARDY: Were they?

FIELDS: Yeah.

HARDY: So, there was no segregation?

FIELDS: None. I was never interrupted. I’ve been forced, I’ve never been in no segregated gang if there was any.

HARDY: Why did you go from Baldwin over to Hog Island?

FIELDS: I was getting work wherever I could get it.

HARDY: So you finished a job at Baldwin, and the next one came--

FIELDS: Well, I don’t know--I finished work at Baldwin, I finished up the winter, almost, doing nothing. Just catching as catch can. And when it in-- along in the last of March or April and I was all right.

HARDY: Of 1918?

FIELDS: And that--yeah, and that finished up in 1918, in April, the latter part of April or May, something like that. That’s when I--And then I got this job across the river.

HARDY: Right. Now, Hog Island was a huge place.

FIELDS: Yeah.

HARDY: Men from all over the--

FIELDS: All over the world.

HARDY:--world working there, yeah. And you must’ve met a lot of other men up from the South? From different--

FIELDS: Well, there was quite a few in the same group of them, but I didn’t particularly know any of them personally, but we all got acquainted. We all got acquainted when the--I was working on the nightshift, mostly.

HARDY: Nightshift?

FIELDS: Yeah, they had shifts, you know? That was the roughest work I’ve ever done. I had to come out of that, and come in--in the kitchen I worked right until the war was closed, over there.

HARDY: Now, are--

FIELDS: I worked--I had a special--during the flu, I was in the special hospital for women.

HARDY: Oh, you said you and one doctor, right? And the rest were all women?

FIELDS: Yeah.

HARDY: That must’ve been nice. [laughter]

FIELDS: It wasn’t bad at all.

HARDY: Let me ask you one more question about Hog Island. Now, you know, working on those teams, did you and the other men from different parts of the South ever talk about back home?

FIELDS: No--

HARDY: Talk about--ever heard them talk about Georgia, or you talk about Texas?

FIELDS: Well, you just--we met from the South Carolina, you met some from South Carolina. And I had a boy in there, he was working in our gang, he uh, he couldn’t read or write. And when my way was finished, he went to hire on another job, another contract. That’s when they got him for--as a slacker. And he had registered, he had the little blue card. And they disregarded it. I sat down and wrote my boy at home and told him what had happened up here. Right away, they sent me a card for examination. That was before I went over across 00:21:00the river, got in with--see, that was a government job, too, over there. And in two weeks time, they had this boy on the way to France, no experience. And I didn’t hear of him anymore.

HARDY: Yeah, I thought if you were--

FIELDS: He and I, we were rooming at the same place, that’s how I knew about him.

HARDY: Yeah, I thought that if you were doing government work at Hog Island, or even one of the war plants, that, you know, you didn’t--

FIELDS: They didn’t regard it, at Hog Island.

HARDY: Now, you say you did room with this fellow?

FIELDS: Yeah, we all roomed at the same place, out there in--on Yocum Street.

HARDY: How many of you to a room?

FIELDS: Oh, only two of us.

HARDY: Oh, just two? Do he ever talk about South Carolina?

FIELDS: I don’t know, I didn’t know nothing about South Carolina. He was born in South Carolina.

HARDY: Right, no, I’m saying did he ever talk about--

FIELDS: Ah, no, not too much. He wasn’t too talkative.

HARDY: You know, what I’m interested in finding out about is, is here there are men from all over the South who come up to work in Philadelphia. And I’m wondering, you know, how they felt about being in the city, or working in the war industries, what they felt about leaving home.

FIELDS: Well, I don’t know --there wasn’t too much--I didn’t get into the conversations too much. I’m a very slow conversation man. I don’t push my way into people’s--unless I’m interested, or they’re interested in having me in their group, so. I’m still that way. [laughter]

HARDY: And I guess when you’re working down there, there wasn’t a lot of time to talk?

FIELDS: No, no, there wasn’t. [laughter] You didn’t do too much talking, because the gadgets, they keep working.

HARDY: I talked to um, a fellow whose father had been with the NAACP in Philadelphia during the First World War, and they apparently brought suit against Hog Island because--

FIELDS: Really?

HARDY: Yeah, because of the segregation, I guess, in some of the mess halls.

FIELDS: Yeah.

HARDY: And because they weren’t allowing--

FIELDS: And you see all the way, they had the different contracts. You could be on one way and not be on another. But it’s a different contract. That’s the way it was, they could easily do that.

HARDY: Oh.

FIELDS: File a case against my contractor, or your contractor could file a case 00:24:00against mine, see?

HARDY: So, they were pretty much separate?

FIELDS: Yeah.

HARDY: Was there any--did you work in an all-black team at Hog Island, when the--

FIELDS: Mostly, mostly. Yes, all of my gang was black.

HARDY: Did you all have any, uh,--and, you know, did you have any awareness of what other men were being paid?

FIELDS: Not that I know of.

HARDY: Yeah.

FIELDS: Not that I know of, see--

HARDY: So, there were never any complaints about the type of work that other men were getting, or that you all weren’t being paid as much, or--

FIELDS: I didn’t get into it, if it was.

HARDY: Now, what did you do in your spare time during the first winter? You know, first year, first at Baldwin, then Hog Island?

FIELDS: Well, that winter, there was two or three of us, four. We had a house 00:25:00out there in Elmwood. And it took all of us scratching to keep warm, there. [laughter] After we--see, the work slowed down at the plant, and got to laying off. So, that winter, mostly, until it come up to May, was almost just scratching to live.

HARDY: Just trying to get--

FIELDS: Go out and catch what you can catch, if you can make something here [I said yes? ]. And there was a little to be made around here, you could pick up something. Enough to eat, anyway. I never did get hungry. [laughter]

HARDY: Now, when you were in Texas, before you came up to Philadelphia, did you have--you know, you must’ve thought about the future, what you would do once you went north or went to Philadelphia. What-- what were your expectations, or you know, what did you dream about when--

FIELDS: Well, I’ll tell you I didn’t, I did not consider this thing, come up almost instantly. Because I was working, I had a job. I had nothing to worry about. Only just think I wanted to leave there. And come here, I thought it was going to be better. I didn’t leave because I was distressed or anything.

HARDY: Right.

FIELDS: Because I left my family over there. And a house, and everything.

HARDY: Were you married?

FIELDS: Yeah, one child.

HARDY: One child?

FIELDS: That’s my daughter I got now that I live with.

HARDY: So how long until you brought them up?

FIELDS: I didn’t bring her up here until ’32.

HARDY: Really?

FIELDS: She was past 18 when I brought her up here, her mother was still living, her mother died that same Christmas. I brought her up here, and on my vacation, I was working over in the sanitarium over in Jersey.

HARDY: So, you left a wife and child, came up to Philadelphia and you didn’t--uh, your daughter didn’t come up until 13 years later?

FIELDS: I went back and brought her up.

HARDY: Thirteen years later?

FIELDS: Yeah.

HARDY: So, did you send money? How did that work? Did you send money home?

FIELDS: I sent money home for her all the time, clothes and everything. I didn’t desert them. I was just away from them. And I didn’t have money enough to send for them. I couldn’t get enough ahead to send for them. But I did send money back to help them out.

HARDY: Right, that seems to have been pretty typical, too, for people to send money on back home for--

FIELDS: Yeah, because it took a lot of money to bring her here. And it looked like I could never get enough head to do it. Flies.

HARDY: Flies, yeah. Did you go back to Texas during those years, between 1918 and ’32?

FIELDS: No, I didn’t go back to Texas for 15 years, no.

HARDY: And how about your wife? Did she want to come up, or was she pretty happy back home?

FIELDS: Well, she got married again.

HARDY: While you were still alive? Y’all were divorced, and--

FIELDS: We were divorced.

HARDY: Oh, you were divorced.

FIELDS: She sent me papers. She sent me papers. I signed them and sent them back. She got married and had another child. The child lives in California. A sister, the half-sister of my daughter. She been up here. She was here a year ago from California.

HARDY: OK so-, so after you came up, your wife met someone else, and sent up papers, and--

FIELDS: Yeah.

HARDY: Right. You ever remarry up here? Get close to remarrying?

FIELDS: Yeah, I got married.

HARDY: Ah.

FIELDS: Wasn’t too good, though.

HARDY: No?

FIELDS: It wasn’t too good.

HARDY: Was she a southern woman, or--

FIELDS: I’ll say--I stayed with her six years, I had to give it up. [laughter] I had to give it up. I haven’t married since. I tell everybody else I lost all of my wills. [laughter] I’ve met a lot of good women, yeah. There’s lots of good women, that I think was good, but I didn’t tie up with them. [laughter]

HARDY: OK, so you were in a good situation. You had a steady job, a wife and a child, and you decided to make the move to Philadelphia?

FIELDS: Well, the bunch, the church bunch, the fellows from the church, we all 00:31:00got together on this going away. They decided to go. I did too. [laughter]

HARDY: You know, another one of the things I’ve heard about was when people came up to Philadelphia, they would have letters from their church that they would bring with them, so when they arrived in the city, they would present that to the new pastor to, you know, show that they were, I guess, good churchgoing people, and get accepted. Did you all have--

FIELDS: I didn’t--

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HARDY: So, there’s a whole group from your church, then that--

FIELDS: Yes, two or three fellows--three or four fellows. We all worked in the church together. He was secretary, I was the--let me see, what was I then? Usher, I think. That’s one thing I’ve always done, though, is stay with the church.

HARDY: Did you talk to your minister back home about coming north, the group of you?

FIELDS: No, no. We didn’t talk that much.

HARDY: So, he had no idea you all were leaving?

FIELDS: He didn’t know about it, that I know of. Not that I know, but--

HARDY: So, you snuck away in the still of night, or-- [laughter]

FIELDS: We just signed--we all just signed up in time to go, as far as I know. That is the thing we did wrong.

HARDY: How’s that?

FIELDS: We should’ve consulted him. But I don’t think we did. I even forgot his name.

HARDY: Why do you think now that you should’ve consulted him?

FIELDS: Well, when you’re going to do something like that, you should consult somebody. I’ve learned that since. Somebody--you should always have somebody advising, if they are your superiors. They can always help you out with advice, 00:33:00which is best, or which is not best. And the minister is the man to do that. That’s his job.

HARDY: Now, what church did you join when you came up to Philadelphia?

FIELDS: Uh, first one I really joined is the one I belong to now, Mount Olive? in Clifton Street, in 1920.

HARDY: Nineteen-twenty. So, there were three years, then, or two and a half years.

FIELDS: I floated around. I floated around, I floated around, I couldn’t find the CME church that was convenient for me. That’s how I come here and get into AME. Because there was CME out on Hunting Park Avenue, and I didn’t know 00:34:00about this one up here at 34th Street at that time. The only one I knew was out in Hunting Park Avenue. Well, that was very much out of my reach, because I was settling in this section.

HARDY: So, did you go to an AME church before you found it, or did you stay away from church for a while?

FIELDS: No, I continued to go to church. If I didn’t join, I kept going to church. I never did stop going to church.

HARDY: Do you remember those, those first couple years you were here--another one of the things we’re interested in sort of finding out is, is what the ministers or the churches said or did to help people from the South, um, you know, make their way in the city. What encouragement did they give them, or 00:35:00instruction, or whether anything like that was done for all of the people coming up north.

FIELDS: Not in a big way that I know about. Because all the ones I know made their own way.

HARDY: What’s that?

FIELDS: All the ones I know made their own way, like I did. I know I did, I didn’t, I didn’t get no advice where to go, with these churches. I used my own mind.

HARDY: So, the, the ministers wouldn’t say anything?

FIELDS: Well, they might have, they might have said it in a way. I wouldn’t say they didn’t, because they knew people were coming in. And because it’s their job to try to get them in, any way they could. But I never had any trouble, I always was able to make my--find my way.

HARDY: Right. That’s another one of the things that comes up, is uh, you know, men and women up from the South arrive in Philadelphia, big city, the bright lights, and talk to some people who talk about, you know, the temptations in the city. The chances of being led astray, you know, the drinking, or gambling, or prostitution, or whatever. Did uh, you--did you uh, what was your awareness of the bright lights in the city? You know, the sporting class, or the nightlife, or those sorts of activities going on?

FIELDS: Well, I was always very temperate about anything that I did. I wasn’t too easy to be lead. And usually travelled by myself principally. I’d meet 00:37:00somebody socially, yeah. I went to the nightclubs and things here, dances. And I joined the organizations, I was already an organization man back home.

HARDY: What organizations did you join then in those early years?

FIELDS: I joined Odd Fellows before I left home, my father was--he was a big Odd Fellow man. I joined up as soon as I was old enough. And it was some smaller organizations that I, that I belonged to also. And then I joined the 00:38:00American Woodmen in May of that same year, and was elected to an office in June. And I left there in August to come here. So, and I--in the, the fall of 1918 is when I got in touch with the American Woodmen deputy here, just in time to work 00:39:00in organizing the first camp on Federal Street. I was escort for setting up the organization, the camp, first camp of the American Woodmen here in Philadelphia, because I was already in.

HARDY: You joined in Texas?

FIELDS: Yeah. So, I pretty well always had a guide in my life, I’ve never been running loose and meeting this one and that one, and all of that kind of stuff. I was very particular who I met, who my company was. I’ve been that way all the way up the line.

HARDY: Great.

FIELDS: And I didn’t take up everything that I seen. And pretty well 00:40:00protected all along.

HARDY: Now, you had joined the Odd Fellows back in Texas, when you came--

FIELDS: I didn’t keep that up.

HARDY: OK, you didn’t keep that up when you came to Philadelphia?

FIELDS: No, I let--I dropped out--. Some of the other organizations from the --they had a piece on organizations and insurances, and things. And some of the others that I belonged to, they failed, because they were--wasn’t able to stand it, I guess. Now, I didn’t get into the Masonics until way up. I joined 00:41:00the Masonics, I was past 50.

HARDY: Why didn’t you join them when you first hit the city?

FIELDS: I don’t know, I didn’t--really, I didn’t uh, know enough about it to get in, and I didn’t seek, I didn’t know how to get in--well, it used to be a hard job to get in the Masonics, very hard.

HARDY: Pretty much an elite organization.

FIELDS: Well, the restrictions were very high. Your reputation had to be high. Know where you come from, and practically know where you’re going. Family and everything else. It turns out they dropped some of those restrictions, but not all.

HARDY: How about the Elks?

FIELDS: They had a pretty good reputation, I don’t--

HARDY: Did you ever have any--

FIELDS: Yeah, I joined them. I [?] Quaker City.

HARDY: And when did you join the Elks?

FIELDS: I joined the Elks, I can hardly remember now what year it was.

HARDY: Would that have been in the 1920s?

FIELDS: I joined the Elks in Quaker City, it was organized right over on Kater Street. 16th and Kater, and that’s where they were when I joined, the Elks. Back before they bought the home on Christian Street.

HARDY: Who was the leader of that chapter when you joined the Quaker City group? Any recollection?

FIELDS: Guy was from Oklahoma, what was his name? He was head of the--had moved 00:43:00them to Christian Street. I can’t think of his name, now.

HARDY: I got a question for you. Now, when you were--first couple years you were in the city, you must’ve written home to your wife, to your friends?

FIELDS: Always. I kept in touch.

HARDY: What did you tell them about Philadelphia?

FIELDS: Oh, I don’t know, I told them--I did tell them that things weren’t like I thought they was going to be, there were some things. That’s why I wasn’t able to send enough money for them to come. Oh, I couldn’t get money enough for me to go. [laughter]

HARDY: Really?

FIELDS: No, I didn’t--in fact, I didn’t really try to go back. I just lived 00:44:00it out, lived out to--but I never forgot, what little I got ahold of, send them some of it.

HARDY: Yeah, one of the things we found out is, talking to people form the Carolinas, they say, you know, they remember when they were young, and cousins, or people who lived in town with--had gone up to Philadelphia, would come back and they’d be all dressed nicely, and they’d be talking about how well they did, and what good jobs they had, so this encouraged people still there to come on up to Philadelphia, and once they got here, they found that they weren’t bartenders, they were janitors, that they uh, really weren’t making that much money, or doing that well, but I guess they said, you know, the feeling was uh, they didn’t want to let people back home know that they weren’t doing as well as--

FIELDS: Well, the people back home had the idea that up here, money grows on 00:45:00trees. They give you that impression, you know? They think you could always come, but they could never come. That’s been the impression that people left in the South until the last few years, the last few years, they’re doing so well in the South, everybody wants to go back. [laughter]

HARDY: Yeah, it started switching--it changed around now, hasn’t it?

FIELDS: Yeah.

HARDY: [laughter]

FIELDS: A lot of the restrictions have been wiped out, segregation has been changed around and all of that kind of stuff. People are living so much better down there than they was.

HARDY: Did you ever, did you want to go back home during those early years?

FIELDS: I’ve never wanted to go back for a living.

HARDY: Never did?

FIELDS: I’ve been--I went back there twice.

HARDY: OK, but even with your disappoints in Philadelphia, of not making as much as you thought you would, you didn’t want to go back to Texas?

FIELDS: Well, I’ve always--I’ll tell you, I’ve gotten along in Philadelphia pretty fair. I can’t complain, because I’ve always pretty much had something to do. And then, when I became able to hold a cook job, I was always in somebody’s kitchen. And I’m practically a self-made cook. I never worked under too many men.

HARDY: Did you ever do private work, or all institutional?

FIELDS: Almost all institutional, or houses out on, you know, houses on the 00:47:00campus. I worked in them at, at uh 34th and Powelton, that house there, I worked in that house. That’s a big house, it’s next to Drexel. fraternity house, I’m trying to think.

HARDY: Yeah.

FIELDS: Yeah, yeah. So, I haven’t really had a chance to think about returning to Texas for a living, and I’ll spend a vacation in Dallas in ’68, I think it was.

HARDY: Yeah, you told me about how you went back there, couldn’t recognize anything, it looked all modernized, and grown into a city.

FIELDS: Yeah, I did tell you, right. [laughter]

HARDY: Yeah, some sleepy country town, I guess.

FIELDS: Yeah.

HARDY: So, even during those early years, you had no desire to go back?

FIELDS: No, because I’ve been kept pretty comfortable.

HARDY: But you were comfortable in Texas, too, before you left.

FIELDS: I was comfortable when I left there.

HARDY: Yeah, so, you know, why be comfortable in Philadelphia rather than in Texas?

FIELDS: [laughter] So, wherever I have been, I was very quick to make myself comfortable. It’s possible I had never been here, had I not got in the gang. You know, you can get in the gang, and get persuasion, and one thing or another, 00:49:00you were changing minds, a lot of times. You knowing what is right, and you knowing what is wrong, you just take the chance on it. And that’s just the way it was for me.

HARDY: Yeah. Did you vote when you came to Philadelphia?

FIELDS: I’ve always voted, ever since I’ve been old enough.

HARDY: Did you vote in Texas? You couldn’t vote in Texas, could you?

FIELDS: Yeah.

HARDY: You could vote in Texas?

FIELDS: Yes. Yeah.

HARDY: So, you’re a Republican?

FIELDS: I voted in Dallas.

HARDY: So, you were a Republican when you came up here?

FIELDS: Yeah. Yes, I was a Republican. I was a Republican until I worked over 00:50:00in Jersey. And uh, President Harding, I think it was, I changed.

HARDY: Why did you change your vote?

FIELDS: I liked --the Democrats . I was working over in Jersey, and this, and this doctor was the head of the sanitarium, he was a Republican. I was a Republican there with him. And I hadn’t voted Republican since then.

HARDY: Ah. Now um, when you voted in Philadelphia during those early years, uh, did you just walk into the polling place and vote, or was there any--

FIELDS: I registered.

HARDY: Pay your $0.25 poll tax, or whatever it was?

FIELDS: No, I didn’t have to pay no poll tax. I ain’t done nothing but register to vote when the time come. I never had nobody help me in the, in the, in the voting room.

HARDY: Your committee man never came around and uh, told you what--who you were supposed to vote for, or how things were supposed to work?

FIELDS: I had him just say so and so -- but. I never seeked that kind of help, because I didn’t think it meant anything to me. I never had a man hand me fifty cents to vote, and all of that kind of stuff. I knew it was going on. But I’ve never seeked it.

HARDY: And so, you couldn’t stay clear of it, then. They weren’t knocking on your door, and--

FIELDS: I’ve been a free man all my life. I don’t believe in buying it, that’s one thing that I--objection that I have of having a city job. You had to go--it has been so you had to go with the administration. I never did try to get onto a city job. Maybe I lost money, but not--but I’m still living.

HARDY: Which most of them can’t say this morning. [laughter]

FIELDS: [laughter] I’m not hungry, either. [laughter]

HARDY: You seem to be doing pretty well.

FIELDS: [laughter] I’ll say, I’m not hungry.

HARDY: OK, let me see. Do you have any photographs of yourself from the early days?

FIELDS: Hmm?

HARDY: Do you have any photographs of yourself from the early days in the city, or from Texas before you came north?

FIELDS: Let me see. No, I don’t think so from Texas.

HARDY: How about from, from, Philadelphia?

FIELDS: I have, I have some from here.

HARDY: How far back do they go, you think? To the 1920s, maybe?

FIELDS: Twenties, no, I don’t think I have one. I don’t know that I have one that far back in there. I’m not so sure. I think most of my pictures have been since ’50, 1949 or ’50.

HARDY: Right, yeah, that seems to be typical. We’re having a real difficulty locating ones from the teens and the ’20s.

FIELDS: Yeah.

HARDY: OK, let me ask you one last sort of question. You’ve reached the age of 95 now.

FIELDS: Six.

HARDY: Ninety-six now? Oh, maybe--did you have a birthday recently, or--

FIELDS: Had a birthday in August.

HARDY: In August? OK. I think I spoke to you before August.

FIELDS: I was 95 last time.

HARDY: OK, 96 now. So, you’ve lived uh, almost a full century. You must’ve seen a great deal of change.

FIELDS: Quite a few. Quite a few--

HARDY: What have been the greatest changes since you were a child or a young man?

FIELDS: Well, I did write a book, I told you about it, never did get it back.

HARDY: No.

FIELDS: The guy never did--he carried it off and I started another one, from 00:55:00childhood. I can remember when I was a child, at least when I was eight years old. I remember things that I used to have to do, all the way up the line. I surprised myself about memories, but it, it’s just some I knew that did happen, see? That’s what I--when I was writing it. I mean, I would write in the house now, but I think the last one I wrote since he went off with that one. He got the first one I wrote.

HARDY: What--who’s this? What happened to it?

FIELDS: Well, he was--he was at the club, you know?

HARDY: Oh.

FIELDS: And I told him about it, and he wanted to see it, and he seen it, and then he took it home and then he quit the club. He don’t come around.

HARDY: So, what, what then, are the greatest changes that you’ve seen, you know, over your 96 years now?

FIELDS: Well, I’ve seen some changes in politics. So, many changes in features of people, styles, keeping up with styles and all of that thing. I, I can remember things people used to wear, and those kind of things, they don’t wear them no more. And the nature of people has changed. And the atmosphere and 00:57:00everything has been changing. It’s people.

HARDY: How has the nature of people changed?

FIELDS: You don’t-- uh, it used to be friendly. It used you could trust friends. Families used to have raised families. Today, I can’t say nothing to your child, and you, you can’t say nothing to my child. My child will tell you something, you believe it. If your child tell you something, and if my child tell me something, I got to believe what he said. All the time, it’s not true. See, families used to help raise families. And that’s one of the 00:58:00biggest changes. And in the schools, the schools have changed. And I’ve gone to school--there were certain things that I used to have to do that they don’t do no more. It don’t go. Even the books have been changed. The books that I used to use, they don’t use no more. They changed them.

HARDY: Yeah. What do you think about the overall quality of life?

FIELDS: Well, I don’t know. People are growing so weak, male and female. 00:59:00They’re seeing life so different. And they’re making their own way of lives their own way, so many of them. And another thing, they’re bunching up too much, getting in droves, taking up, take up this, and taking up that. That’s being done a lot, now.

HARDY: Wait, bunching up in what? You mean, like, gangs, or--

FIELDS: Gangs, or--just in human nature, children gangs. And growing up in gangs. They follow one another if it goes wrong, quicker than they will if they 01:00:00go right. It’s hard to talk to anybody with reference to doing the right thing in life. They think you’re crazy.

HARDY: Now, when you were young, did uh, did you have--do you think you had more respect for your elders, for older people?

FIELDS: Yeah.

HARDY: And you’d listen to them.

FIELDS: You had to have.

HARDY: Why is that?

FIELDS: Because the older people made you do it.

HARDY: [laughter]

FIELDS: From family to family. Families were families in them days. You had to respect them. You had to respect Miss so and so. If she say you done so and so, you better not say you didn’t.

[Off-topic discussion with someone else in room]

FIELDS: I got Charlie, I thought he done forgot me.

HARDY: Oh no, it took a while to pull things together. [laughter]

FIELDS: [laughter] Yeah. How are you today?

[break in audio]

HARDY: When you grew up, were your grandparents around?

FIELDS: No, I never knew my grandparents. I never knew any of my grandparents. I grew up under my father and mother, that’s all.

HARDY: What did your father do?

FIELDS: Farmer.

HARDY: He was a farmer?

FIELDS: He used to farm. I was raised on a farm.

HARDY: What, what kind of crops?

FIELDS: Anything. We raised everything. My father used to make, make uh--we 01:02:00used to have mills, grinding cane to make molasses. And he used to make molasses with the country, for the community. And I used to hate to see that season come, [laughter] grinding that cane.

HARDY: That meant work?

FIELDS: Yes. That’s heavy work, too. Running that cane through a mill.

HARDY: What did you--did your parents ever have any aspirations for you? Did they want you to, you know--did they want you to become anything or do something when you grow up?

FIELDS: Not directly, I don’t remember. They tell me right from wrong. [laughter]

END OF AUDIO FILE

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