Interview with Charles Vance, March 4, 1984

 HARDY: OK, I’ll get it in here close and get us both on the mic.

VANCE: When are you going to start to talking from? From my earliest—from my earliest—from my earliest age?

HARDY: Earliest age. Where were you born? Let’s start —

VANCE: Mobile, Alabama. Born in Mobile, Alabama, in nineteen and two. My mother died when I was—my mother died when I was nine years old. Nine years old, my mother died. And my—and my father moved us to live with my grandmother out in Whistler, Alabama. We stayed out there in Whistler, Alabama, with her for a while. Then this was about the time my father left Alabama. He told me, he says, “Charles,” he says, “Charles, you stay here with your—with your—with your grandmother, and as soon as I get to Connecticut—Hartford, Connecticut—I’m going to send for you.” And when he left, I left. Same 00:01:00time. When I left home, I had 10 cents in my pocket—10 cents, when I left home. And I went to Harlan, Kentucky, and worked back in the coke oven—stayed there for a long time—the coke oven. Then I worked in the coal mines in Virginia. And I worked on the railroads. And I also worked on the ships. And I also [ ] time. And I shipped boxes. And I have a—load cross ties-loaded cross ties for a penny a piece, load two or three hundred of them a day. [ ]

HARDY: Huh.

VANCE: Three, I worked on the railroad too. And I—finally, I got—I stopped—when I was in the South there, and I was a young man, [ ] you’d 00:02:00walk in the streets and you’d see—and you’d see white people coming. They’d be walking three, four abreast, and you had to get off the s-, off the—off the pavement, on the side. And they’d call you a nigger, and they’d spit on you at times. You had to sit in—you had to sit in a certain place in the bus. You couldn’t sit where you wanted to. Sit anywhere—certain place in the bus. And just treat you like a dog. And I worked in the—I worked on the—I’ve been back on the- back on the farm. Back on the farm, and I was too young to do any hard work, so I stayed at this house. I stayed at—with the—with the family there. They treated me very nice. And they kept me—I slept in the kitchen, and I done washed the dishes and things for the—for the family. And I drove a—I drove a buggy back and forth, and took the daughter to school. They were very nice to me. And I did work in—I worked in a sugar-cane 00:03:00mill. I worked in every kind of job that you can—you can imagine. And I eventually—eventually, I came to Philadelphia, and I came to Philadelphia in 1923. My father was here, so I suppose and he said—my stepmother said, “Do you know this man?” He said, “No, I never seen that man before.” I was 21 then. “I’ve never seen this man before.” So, he says—he says, “You mean to say you don’t know your own son? That’s your son.” So, then my father was sick all his life. Sick all of his—my father was sick all his life. And it—and he was operated on because he had cancer, and he died. The nurse said his last word—his last words was “thank you,” three times: “Thank you, thank you, thank you,” and went on to sleep. I was sick myself for 11 years, so I thought I had the cancer, but I didn’t. So then the doctor told me, “If you had to have this operation...” They’re taking one—taking one 00:04:00third of my stomach out. “If you had to have this operation in 1926, it would have been over for you. You’d have been dead.” But Philadelphia has been very good to me, and I got here, and I got to be a—well, I worked on construction. And I was a labor foreman with the—with the carpenters for a long time. Then I was a city builder, and I done very good here. And I —my Social Security was very low, so every year or so they give me a raise in my Social Security. And I first started getting five hundred and something dollars in Social Security, and now I get $634 Social Security. And at the present time, I’m doing very fine, very fine. That’s about the end of—end of—end of—about the end of my career . (laughter)

HARDY: That’s a—got a quick thumbnail. Here. Let me give you Kleenex here.

VANCE: So any questions you want to ask me?

HARDY: OK, yeah. You say when your father left, down in Alabama, then you took 00:05:00off too?

VANCE: I took off, too. My father left—my father left—my—as I say, I was a-, I think I was about 15 years old.

HARDY: About 15. And what did you do then, you know, when—

VANCE: Now I went to—I went to—I went—I went to—I came to Virginia, let’s see now, a place they called Darbysville [sic], Virginia. And I—and I worked in the coal mine. I had to change—I had to change my age to 16, as in to work. I changed my age to 16 because you couldn’t start working in the mines until you were 16. And I used to be a brakeman on the motor—you know, to bring the coal into the—brakeman. And then I started loading coal.

HARDY: What motivated you to go up to Philadelphia? How did you make your decision to come here?

VANCE: My father was here. My father was here. And I—and he—and he gave me a letter, and I couldn’t—I couldn’t—I couldn’t write my name when I came to Philadelphia. I really couldn’t at all. I really couldn’t at all. So my 00:06:00father was here. And I went to school at night, at the—at the Barratt Junior—the Barratt Junior High, 16th and Wharton. I went to school there at night, and that’s how I learned how to read and write. And my—so my—I didn’t know my father’s address. I knew I couldn’t hardly read and write, so they told me—they—there were thirty-nine—they said it was thirty—it was 1320 South Boober Street—Boober—B-O-B-E-R. But it wasn’t it. It was 1320 South Bouvier Street. And I said, “Where Boober Street is?” He said, “No, I tell him Boober Street.” He said, “I know where Bouvier Street is.” He said, “Well, we’ll go there and look.” I said, “Yeah, I’ll go there and look.” I met that --and saw my stepmother. And then my father came home, and that’s when he didn’t even know me. He said, “I never saw this man before.”

HARDY: Yeah. How long had you been in Philadelphia before you found him?

VANCE: ’Fore I found him? Well, I was—I was only there for a couple of days before I found him.

HARDY: Just a couple of days?

VANCE: Yeah. And since I’ve been to Philadelphia, I have left—I left 00:07:00Philadelphia. I stayed in Atlantic City. I stayed in Atlantic City seven years. I work down there as a short-order cook in [ ] restaurant. And I left, and I—every year I was leaving—I was leaving there every year is over. When the season is over, I ain’t got nothing to leave with, and I couldn’t stay—couldn’t leave. So, I stayed down there seven years, then I came to Philadelphia. I came to Philadelphia, and I left—then I stayed—since I been here, I lived in Buffalo since I’ve been here. And I lived in New York City since I’ve been here. And I lived in—I lived in Brooklyn since I’ve been here. But every time I go away I come back again to Philadelphia.

HARDY: How come?

VANCE: I don’t know, I just like the city, that’s all. They say if you ever get in Philadelphia one time, you go away, you come back again. (laughter) That sure is true.

HARDY: When you—was Philadelphia—was that the first time you’d ever been outside of the South, when you came up here?

VANCE: No, I stayed in Virginia. I stayed in Virginia—

HARDY: Yeah, well, that’s still the South.

VANCE: Well, yeah, yeah, that’s Virginia. I worked in Pittsburgh for about the 00:08:00two months. Just like I said, [ ] when I first left the South, I stopped in Pittsburgh. I was on the—what’s it called? Transportation. You know how they bring people to work in different places? And they brought me to Pittsburgh, and I stayed there, I guess, about four or—three or four months, then I came to Philadelphia.

HARDY: When was that that you went to Pittsburgh?

VANCE: Joining like a steel mill. Oh, that was—I think that was about—that was about 19 and—close around 1923, close to around when I came to Philadelphia.

HARDY: Around ’23, that you lived in Pittsburgh.

HARDY: Can you tell me about what your first impressions were of Philadelphia when you arrived here?

VANCE: Well, my first impression of Philadelphia was pretty bad, though, for a while, because it had—every year they have elections, and they had elections, you know, for governors and presidents and things like that. And always talking about what the South was doing—what the South was doing. And I said, now, what the South was doing, it’s true. It was no good. But the—I said, now, look, look—right in Jersey there, I say, you can’t eat in a number of restaurants 00:09:00in Jersey. You got to buy your food and take it out, right in Jersey. You don’t have to go way down South. Stop right there in Jersey, and you’ll find the same thing. In Philadelphia restaurants there that you couldn’t go in and eat. It was—it was—it was beer gardens out there that. I go to Strawberry Mansion. You go in there and you buy a glass of beer and the—and as soon as you finish it, they throw the glass in the trash. I think the people don’t realize that. That’s true.

HARDY: Yeah.

VANCE: Yeah.

HARDY: So, you didn’t find that much difference between Philadelphia and the South?

VANCE: No, no, no, no, very little difference. Very little dif-, that’s the only difference I know—it was that they wouldn’t bother you. Nobody would bother you. But they didn’t care for you. They didn’t care for you at all. And I had a job in a—and a [ ] apartment down there on Spruce Street, downtown there. And the—they paid me—I think I was making about 15—I was 00:10:00making about $15 a week. Now, I worked there for a while, and I got—I got—and I got a laundry job at 11th and Mifflin. I worked over there for, oh, I guess, about five or six months, 11th and Mifflin. And the man said, “You look like—you look like a good man.” He said, “I’m going to give you a job. I’m going to start you off at fourteen forty, and don’t ask for no raise.” So I said, “Well, OK.” And I used to work 10, 12, and 15 hours a day, but at $14.40. And I worked here—and I worked construction work here in Philadelphia for 15 cents an hour. That’s right, 15 cents an hour for construction work, right there in the city.

HARDY: What was the job that you did down on Mifflin Street?

VANCE: Laundry—11th and Mifflin, laundry—Manchester Laundry.

HARDY: And was that during the ’20s, then? Was that soon after you came to the city?

VANCE: No, that was a little later. That was—that was—that was maybe about —that may have been around—that may be around—that was in the Depression 00:11:00days in the Depression. And I had—I couldn’t make enough money to feed myself because the wages were so low. I used to go to work in the morning—I’d go to work in the morning and—early. And you know—you know you used to have milk on the porches, and bread? Used to take the milk and the bread off the porches there, and go on and eat it. Take it home and eat it, because you didn’t make enough money to take care of yourself. Couldn’t make enough money to take care of yourself. It was bad. You tell people that, they don’t believe it. And—and I had two children. I had a—I had—I had three children. And then—and then, at that time, I could take $5 and go to the store and I couldn’t bring back the food that I—that I could buy for $5. And now $5 ain’t nothing.

HARDY: Yeah. Did your wife work, too, back then?

VANCE: Yeah, yeah, in Philadelphia. Yeah, she worked here. She worked.

HARDY: What did she do?

VANCE: She worked in a bag factory, making bags—making bags, cleaning bags.

HARDY: So, what did you do with the kids, then, when they were young?

VANCE: Well, when they were young—she didn’t work when the kids was really young. And waited till they got kind of big. The kids, our kids were some—we had had sufficient money to get clothes for them, she used to wash their—used to wash their clothes out today for the—tonight for tomorrow. And shoes—used to—had to stay at home until we could get some money to fix the shoes. Nothing to fix them with. And it was pretty rough, I had it rough all my life and now when I think about it, it makes me cry. (Voice tears up) Just to think about it, when I come up. I was sick 11 years. Sick 11 years. Sick, couldn’t eat nothing. Couldn’t eat night, 11 years. Everything I’d eat, it come back up again. And so, I went there to Dr. Howard, in the—in the Hahnemann Hospital. 00:13:00He operated on me. And so, he told me—he said, “Ain’t nothing going to do you no good without an operation.” I said, “Well, I’m ready for it.” He said, “No, you ain't ready yet. So you go home and you talk it over with your people.” I said, “Doc,” I say, “nobody hurting but me. I’m the only one that’s hurting. “ (laughs) So, he said, “When do you want to have it?” I said, “Anytime you want to do it.” He said, “Well, we’ll do it Wednesday.” I said OK. When Wednesday comes, they had too many, and they couldn’t take me. So, and he said, “Well, I’m sorry, Vance. I can’t you to today. I’ll take you next week.” I said—well, I cried. I said, “Well, don’t let it go no longer.” I was—I was—I was a deacon. I was a member at this church. Reverend Shepard comes down and he said “Vance”--I was a deacon-- he said, “You scared of that operation?” I said, “Scared?” I said, “If I go to sleep and don’t wake up,” I said, “I’ll be satisfied.” (laughter) That’s how you feel, you know?

HARDY: Yeah.

VANCE: Yeah.

HARDY: Well, you seem to have recovered, then?

VANCE: Oh, yeah, I—yeah, but I mean, I drank and I smoked, and I come through all right. But if I was a smoking man or a drinking man, I wouldn’t have made 00:14:00it. Wouldn’t have made it.

HARDY: Right, yeah. Well, it sounds like you really must have had a hard time when you were a young man and a kid?

VANCE: Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, I worked on the ships, coal mines, I loaded cross ties. I worked on the railroad. I worked on—what was it called, them jobs? Levee camps, and driving mules and teams and like that. I did everything you can do—everything.

HARDY: Now, did you do all this traveling around yourself, or were you part of a gang that moved from p-?

VANCE: No, no, not part of a gang, by myself. See, at that time, they were--they would take you—they would take you—especially Negroes, and they would—and then they would carry you on the transportation to certain different jobs, you know? And you—that’s the way you travel. That’s the way you travel. Anytime I worked in Knoxsville, Tennessee for the traction company. I didn’t -- I can’t recall it myself, yeah. And I worked—and I worked on a job where—I worked on a job in North Carolina at the levee camp, every, every week 00:15:00they paid me, they had me two, three dollars short. So I said, I said, “Well, I’m--”—I said, “I’m going to tell them about them—my money’s short.” So, the fella tell me, he said, he says, “There ain’t no need to—ain’t no need to tell them about it, because they ain’t going to do nothing about it.” I said, “Well, I’m going to tell them just the same.” So I went—they said, “What you want? What do you want there, nigger?” I said, “My pay is short.” He said, “Let me see.” And I stand there a minute or two and he come back. “No, your pay is right.” I said, “No, sir.” I said, “I can count a little bit.” He said, “Don’t tell me, get the hell outta here nigger. What you want? What you doing? You calling this man a liar? This man is right .” No, it was rough. I had it rough all my days. I don’t know how in the world I lived to get 82 years. I don’t know how I made it. But the Lord is with me, so I know I ain't no drinking man, or a smoking man, you see. That helped me out.

HARDY: So, in all these different jobs that you worked when you were a young man, would these be short-time types of work, then? You’d go and you’d 00:16:00finish a project and you’d move on, or...? You know, why did you move around so often rather than stay in one place?

VANCE: Because they wouldn't pay you, and you would work in—stay in a place for a while, and you’d leave and go some other place and work, because they wouldn’t have to pay you. They wouldn’t have to pay you at all. You—but see, the average person, they don’t know what the levee camp is. You went to—you went to—the levee camp is bad. Now, a levee camp, you’re thinking I get a—maybe 8 or 10 dollars a week, I get it, and I didn’t—I didn’t know what to do with my money. And I put it under my head, you see? And I’d wake in the morning, that money would be gone, see? If I go to sleep, then some guy take my money, so I— take my money, I was going to tell the—I was going to tell the company about you, see? But they don’t have no police there. They had what you call a shack rouster—shack rouster. And he’s the man that keeps order in the camp. He carries a gun, thing like that, and he keeps order in the camp. And any time somebody takes your money, you tell him about it, and then they would beat him and put him out from the job you see, making him leave.

HARDY: Can you tell me, then, some more about what the levee camps were like? How they—

VANCE: Levee camps is a job—and when they take you on the levee camp—on the—what they called the transportation. They’d take you there, and give you the job. Now, they—and they’d bring—they’d bring a carload of men there—a truck—a trainload of men, but then they’d bring a trainload of women. You ain’t go no women, you’d go, you pick yourself out one, you see? You’d say, “This is mine.” That one over there, that one is mine, that one is this guy’s. You pick your own out, see? And you can pick them out, you’ve got to take care of them, you see? You’ve got to feed them, you see, what I mean. And that’s how you get your woman, you see? I remember the time there, you know, the fellow there didn’t have no woman, so, he had a woman and a girlfriend, so I—the one with the girlfriend is a—he was a friend of mine, so he had taken sick. So I said now is the chance for me to get a woman, because I’m going to help him to go to the hospital. So I helped him get to 00:18:00the hospital in order to get his girlfriend, you see? (laughter) In the place of—in the place of taking his wife, he’s taking his girlfriend, and left his wife on the job.

HARDY: When you go to these—they’d just bring these women in?

VANCE: Oh, yeah, bring them in, in your transportation. Yeah, bring them in and they’d put them out there, and you’d pick you one out.

HARDY: Would you stay with them, then, or just while you were on—

VANCE: You’d stay—sure, you’d stay with them. Sure, where else would you stay with them?

HARDY: OK, so, these were women that you would then marry and then take with you where—

VANCE: No, they didn’t do no marrying, nothing like that.

HARDY: OK, so, these were just women you’d stay with as long as you were at the camp?

VANCE: That’s right, as long as you wanted, yeah. As long as you wanted, and then until they leave. Now, at some of those camps, you can’t leave. You’ve got to run away. You can’t just walk off. You’ve got to run away.

HARDY: Did that happen to you, then?

VANCE: Sure, I left a place. I’d run away. I’d run away. And the best time to leave is around midnight. So, I mean, everything is quiet and you leave. And if a foreman or anybody on their travels see you and send you back, they get a hundred dollars, see? So you had to be very careful. So that—sometimes I would 00:19:00stop and I’d want something to eat, and I had no money, I said, “Madam,” I said, I used to tell them, I said “Would you mind giving me some food to eat? I’m so hungry, and I don’t know how where I’m going to sleep here tonight.” That way you ask them for two things at one time, you see? (laughs) So, then they say, “Come on in, come on in.” You’re scared to go in, but you got to go because you got to eat, so you go on in. Some of the people were very nice, sit you down at the table. And some of the places I’d been traveling through Tenne-, traveling in Tennessee. And so, I’d be traveling, and looking for s-, looking for something, most anything. And the children never seen a Negro before. And, “Mama, there’s a nida, Mama, nida, nida, nida, Mama, nida, nida.” And they'd go runnin' and hollerin' and like nobody’s business, see, but they never seen a Negro before, see, so they called you a “Nida. “

HARDY: Huh. Now, were these women who came into these camps—were they of loose character? Were these—

VANCE: Oh, yeah, they ain’t got no husbands. And at that time, you see, take them people only around, like, if a man sure to have a woman, you see? Yeah.

HARDY: Take a break a minute. Sure.

VANCE: You know what? Some years ago, used to bring ships over here from different parts of Europe. And some of the fellas, soon A they would get here, they would jump—the seamen would jump ships, and didn’t have anyone to take it back. And we would take it back over there, you see? So, take them back—take them—we would take them on back over there, and went into Hamburg, Germany. So, I got into Germany. And we were discharged there. We were discharged there. So, they discharged me there, and they couldn’t send me back home because I didn’t have no passport, you see? I had nothing. So, they said I was—they said, “You ain’t no American. You’se an African or West Indian or somebody.” They don’t tell me. “That’s where I come from, the United States.” “No you didn’t, neither.” So, they wouldn’t—they didn’t want to send me back, till finally the-- they wouldn’t nobody accept me over there, so they had to send me back here, you see?

HARDY: So they’d just take you the one way, because they only needed you one 00:21:00way. And then they’d just drop you off.

VANCE: That’s right. That’s right. And generally, they were—generally, it was very nice over there. And me and another Negro was together. He was real light. Couldn’t hardly tell—he was real light. He said, “Are both of you Negroes?” I said, “Yeah, both of us are Negro.” He said, “Well, well what about your color, Nigger? Why are you so dark and he’s so light?” I said, “Well, you can—you see for yourself.” (laughs) What they’d do, they say they’d just call us baboons, don’t have no Negro, so used to call us baboon.

HARDY: What’s “barebones”?

VANCE: That’s a monkey. A baboon, yeah.

HARDY: Oh, baboon. Oh, yeah.

VANCE: A baboon, you see, yeah? The black folks don’t deal with no Negro. You don’t [ ] over there. I said, “Well, you can see for yourself.” I’d say, “He’s a—he’s a Negro, and I’m a Negro.” “Well, why you so light?” I said, “Well, you must have go with somebody, to be so light.” But they treated you very nice over there. And that’s the first I’d ever 00:22:00been to where they had prostitutes see the doctor, you know, once a month. The prostitutes go the doctor once a month. And in Hamburg, Germany, they had about 8 or 10 blocks fenced in. They had four gates. And then, when you wanted to have sex, that's where you’re going to pay for sex, you know what I mean. The prostitute would just see the doctor, then, you see. But I can’t tell people that—what I’ve been—what I’ve been through in my life. I’ve been through something. And I could have been most anything. I never tasted any dope of no kind. Not any kind. I remember a time when you used to have whiskey, denatured alcohol. They would put it in a pot and stick a—and put a match to it, and let it burn till it goes—until it goes out. And take the alcohol off. And then, when it goes out, then they’d get a bottle, a quart of soda and mix it in there with it . They’d say, “Come on, take a drink.” I said, “Me, well no not me. I ain’t taking no drink. I don’t drink that stuff.” Well, see, I could have been most anything. I’d never take no kind of dope. No kind.

HARDY: Never a drinking man either, then?

VANCE: No, no, no, no drinking either, no, no. See, what I say it was, I had a very fine grandmother, and my mother was a Christian, and my father was a Christian. My father was a Christian. Your mother and father’s prayers, if you let it--they’re praying to God for you. If you listen to them, praying for you, God will answer their prayer and take care of you. And that’s—and you’re not—that’s how you—that’s how I got up in the world. Otherwise I would have never made it. Never made it. I actually live in New York City in the Depression days, in New York City, I didn’t even know where to stay. You go down to 6th Avenue and get a job down there, they’ll pay you a dollar a day for washing dishes. And, of course, they’ll give you something to eat and a dollar a day, washing dishes, to get something to eat. And I had a job working in a laundry out there, in Queens, Long Island, getting $15 a week. And your car 00:24:00fare was three dollars a week, and your room was three dollars and what you got, and you had to borrow—every Monday morning you borrowed money. Why you couldn't save no money? What couldn’t save no money?” What are you going to save on $15? You can’t save nothing. We used to stay in our room, it looked like an air shaft, it was called an air shaft. If the room—it was called a air shaft, middle way of the building. They had a place where they had to come through there. But a room was three dollars—three dollars a week for a room in—with the air shaft. You could never see—it always looked like daylight is just breaking, because you can’t see the daylight, see what I mean. But so far--what I’m telling you, so far as me, I don’t know how I’m living. I had a tough time in my day. I don’t know how I’m living. I’m doing fine. I have no aches and no pains. No aches and no pains. Had it hard for all my life, and still alive, and I’m doing fine.

HARDY: Well, it’s good that, yeah, you can have some comfort in your old age, yeah.

VANCE: That’s right, that’s right. I’m doing fine now. I get the—I get 00:25:00the—a hundred and s—I get s—I get the $654 in Social Security, and I get some one hundred—and one hundred—and $141.50 from the union.

HARDY: What union is that?

VANCE: Construction.

HARDY: Construction union.

VANCE: The construction union, yeah. And I’m doing fine.

HARDY: Good. Let me take you back, then. I was really fascinated when you were telling me about the levee camps and the transportation. You say they take you on the transportation. That would be, they’d take you by the train.

VANCE: It don’t cost you nothing. They take you there. They take a bunch of you out of the city and take them out there, you see.

HARDY: OK. How did you get recruited to get on—you know, to go to these camps?

VANCE: Well, you ain’t got nothing in the city, and then they come around and say, “You want a job, boy?” You said, “Yeah, I’d like to have a job.” “You working?” “No, I never... Job? Yeah, I want a job.” And then they’d get maybe two or three hundred of them together and take them out on these camps. They want to the camps. They, they’d feed them. They’d feed 00:26:00you. But they—but so far as money, some of them don’t pay you no money, and they give you two or three dollars, and then you gamble. And the man that win all the money, he’d leave and he’d walk away from the job, you see? But they didn’t pay you no money. They didn’t pay you nothing. And when the job’s finished they say they’re going to pay you. When the job’s finished, boy, it's so sad, you didn’t get nothing, yeah.

HARDY: In the cases where you were getting underpaid, or where they weren’t going to pay you, there’d be a couple of hundred of you. Did you all ever try and get together and say you were going to try and force them to pay?

VANCE: Oh, no, no, no. No one would do it. No one would do it. You couldn’t pull anything. You couldn’t pull anything, because if you start anything, they’re going to beat you up. Like I told you about that man that told me, that said—he said—I said—you know, I said to him—“Every week,” I said, “my s-my money is two or three dollars short.” Well, he said, “Let me now—let me go in there and see.” He went in to see. He didn’t ask them about it. He come back and say, “Nigger, your money is right. “ I said, “I 00:27:00can count.” He said, “Now, do you mean to call Mr. So-and-so a liar? Get outta here, nigger. Get out of here. Stay out of here.” I’m telling you.

HARDY: Did you ever—when they’d get a gang of you guys together and you’d go from job to job, did you always do that alone, or did you ever go with friends from one place to another? Would there be a group of you, or whole bunches of you who’d go from job to job?

VANCE: Well, they’d take them from the city—they’d take them from the city, and they’d stick them out there, and they’d get tired and they’d leave one by one.

HARDY: One by one.

VANCE: They’d leave at night, because we got to—you’d have to run away. You’d run away, and if the foreman—the foreman catches you leaving, and can call the authority, and then come get you, they get a hundred dollars apiece for you and they’d take you back. And they’d tell you again, “Nigger, if you leave here,” say, “we’re going to kill you the next time.” They ain’t going to give you no break.. They’re going to kill you.” Well, you’re scared to leave, you see because they ain’t going to pay you nothing. That’s what they called the levee camp. Then, you know, there—they were building 00:28:00locking dams, rivers and things—like, they’d be widening the river and other things. I worked there. I worked there—and another thing that happened to me, I was in Knoxville—I was in Millville, Tennessee, at a [ ] plant there. So, I worked in there. So, I was working at night. And I went there, and I went to get my money. Had to walk to the job to get my money. And I passed—I passed three white fellows on the way going. I was running, to get there quick. And I passed them on the way. I guess I’d be about 8 or 10 blocks ahead of them because I was running. And now, when they got there and saw me in line, “Nigger, get out of the line. You passed me running. You passed—get out of the line.” Well, you got to get out of the line and get behind them, you see? And it would be that and it’s, just that’s true. It would happen. I could —I could tell you some much stuff (laughs) until you wouldn’t hardly believe it yourself. It’s really—it’s really something, the way they used to treat 00:29:00them people. And then the women—they’d get them women, and take them on them jobs. And then they didn’t take no children. Take women on the job. And the—and the—and the boss is there, they’d go with the women themselves. And the [ ], the good ones, they would have them do the cooking, you know, and things like that, you see?

HARDY: How did they get the women?

VANCE: Get them and put them on transportation. Get them and put them on transportation.

HARDY: Yeah, but, I mean, they couldn’t just go into a city and say, “Hey,” you know, to the women, “Do you need a job?” And the women would say--

VANCE: No, they’d go out and pick up the men, and the men would get the women. You’d get some women, too. If they wanted the women, the men would get them for them, you see? Men would get them. And they’d take the women right along with them. And anybody who didn’t have a women, you could get one of them, you see? You’d say, “This is mine.” That’s all. “This is my woman. This is my woman.”

HARDY: And you just paid—you’d take care of—you’d give her food and take care of—did she get paid, too, to do work, or you’d—

VANCE: See, you’d have what you call a, what’s called a mess hall. You’d 00:30:00eat out at the mess hall, you see? And then anything—nothing to see. How you going to pay for that, for something That’s your woman, you see? Yeah.

HARDY: So they just gave you—getting a woman was part of being on the job.

VANCE: That’s right. That’s right. You’d get a woman.

VANCE: And then, when you left, you’d just leave the women behind.

VANCE: Well sure, you leave her there , you don’t think about here. You leave her there.

HARDY: What became of the women? Any idea?

VANCE: I don’t know, what became of them, they stayed there 'til they get tired or the job finished. The job finished—I mean, when the job finished, they’d send them all away. You send them back to where they come from. They’d send them back when the job finished, because we didn’t—you didn’t get no money. But the thing about the men, they, had a crap game all the time. Every time they’d get paid, the men ---there was one man there, he was a very smart man. He was from Alabama, too. Every week they’d have a crap game, and he would take his money and buy old corn whiskey, 100 proof. And then, they would shoot dice. And each man had maybe two or three dollars apiece, maybe 00:31:00two or three hundred people had two or three dollars apiece, shooting craps. So, you—“Come on, man. You’re my friend. Have a drink.” And you bring three or four of them corn whiskey and there come the whiskey glasses, and your money’s gone because they take it, you see? You can’t say nothing. What can you say? You can’t say nothing. And we should learn boys, learned boys how to play poker. Learned them how to play poker, and I said we—we’ll tell them when they win. You tell them when they win, you ain’t going to win much, because you don't tell them, you really don’t got to them you see? (laughter) I’ll tell you, it was something.

HARDY: Yeah. So, when you were a young man, you’d just sort of go from camp to camp and job to job trying to get by.

VANCE: Yeah, that’s right.

HARDY: Now, during the years of the First World War, the jobs started to open up in the North, right? And men started going up in teams, on the transportation, I guess, by the hundreds, up to Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Detroit, whatever. Do you remember when men started going north?

VANCE: No, I can—I can remem—when we started going north. When we started going north, it was around nineteen—let’s see, now. My father left home in, I guess it was about nineteen—and like I said, 1916 or ’17 is when my father left home. That’s when you started going north. Now, Alabama people—Alabama people were stopping in Cleveland, Ohio, or someplace up there. Now, but, yeah, you’d find very few Alabama here in this town, because it’s too far, you see? They’d go someplace closer. But by me being a long [ ]. I used to go everywhere you see. I used to ride a freight train. I used to get on the—I would get on the—I would get on the freight train and didn’t know where I was going. Just get on any—and I'm riding . Sometimes I’d get on—

[Pause in recording.]

VANCE: “That nigger’s on there somewhere they can’t find him.” And if they find you, they’d put you off. So, I mean, they put me off at and I worked 00:33:00on a river a piece and

HARDY: Wait, wait—

[Pause in recording.]

VANCE: And they’d find me and put me on—“Now, nigger—get off here, nigger. You get back on there again, we’re going to—we’re going to kill you.” I’d get off there, and walk down the road a piece, not too far. And some of ga—a pretty good start and I’d junp on them again, and get on like that. And I remember the time when I was in Mascot, Tennessee, I used to sell coal. That’s where I’d make my money, selling coal. I’d get on a freight train and ride to Northbrook, Tennessee. And then I’d get on another freight train coming back, one that’s got coal on it. And as soon as I’d get to my—about a mile from my—to my place, I’d go throwing off the coal, you see? Now I came back and get that coal and bag it and sell it for cents on the bag, you see? Like a [ ] fits in a coal. I used to make money like that. But it was rough. Tough times. Tough times.

HARDY: Do you remember—now, when the men first started going north around 1916, ’17, when your father left. Do you remember what people were saying or 00:34:00thinking about the opportunity to go north, then?

VANCE: Well, they were thinking that it—they were thinking—my father said that, he told us, he said, now, my mother’s dead. My mother’s dead. My father—the best that he could make working on the section, you know that’s a railroad, is a dollar an hour. Not making a dollar an hour-- no, is two dollars a day, That’s what they paid him. Now ,you’re taking care of a wife and five children (laughs) on two dollars, four out of seven So, we were—the only thing, the only thing that we bought—we didn’t buy no sugar. We didn’t buy no corn. The only thing we’d buy was flour and coffee. That’s all we bought, because we raised the rice and we raised the corn, and things like that, and we raised hogs.

HARDY: So do you remember him talking about people—just other men talking about what they hoped to find when they went north? Or what their expectations were?

VANCE: Well, the expectation was, when they would go north, that they would—that they—everybody that they would talk to, they could—they could make it pretty good, you see? They’d have a chance for—to make some money in life, you see,, because otherwise, they wouldn’t make nothing, you can’t make nothing. The South treat people like dogs—like dogs. I used to tell them—I’d say, “You’re always talking about what they’re doing down in Alabama. Look at it here in Jersey there. You buy food, . You can’t eat it there. You’ve got to eat it on our side.” And right there in Philadelphia, some restaurants you couldn’t eat in. I remember the time in the—

HARDY: Yeah, but you didn’t fear for your life like you did in—

VANCE: No, no. They didn’t bother you or nothing. They wouldn’t bother you nothing, you know, they wouldn’t beat you or nothing . Only thing is there were places you couldn’t eat and places you couldn’t go.

HARDY: Now, you didn’t go up North until ’22, ’23.

VANCE: I come up North in ’23.

HARDY: Twenty-three.

VANCE: Yeah.

HARDY: Now, so, there were a number of years then—had you had any desire to come up North before then?

VANCE: Well, I had no desire to come up North until my father came up here, because he stopped in Hartford, Connecticut. He stopped in Hartford, Connecticut. Then he said if I’d stay there, he was going to send for me the first one . But the same day he left, I left the next day. I had one 10-cent in my pocket. I stopped in Birmingham. Stopped in Birmingham. I told the man, I said, “I’m a long way from home. I don’t have no food. “ And I had 10 cents in my pocket. So he—he gave me a bag of old [ ] and things for 10 cents. That’s all—that’s what I had now. But the—people was very nice down there, but they would give you something to eat. Yes they would do that. Told them you were hungry and they'd feed you. Feed you. I stopped one time and stopped--and then the dog tried to b-bite me. Now, I hit the-- “Don’t you hit my dog.” You know, “If he bites you, it’s all right, because you got no business in here.” That’s right. (laughs)

HARDY: Yeah? We’ll be another couple of minutes, if that’s OK?

MAN: [ ].

[Pause in recording.]

MAN: [ ].

HARDY: OK. Just let him get—

VANCE: Track, Lining track and had them boys (Tap, tap, tap, tap. singing) “If I had known my boss was blind, I wouldn’t went to work before half past nine. Oh, boy, Can you line that –tap tap--oh, boy, can you line that. Shine her head and send her back. Can’t you line it just one hair. Oh boy, just a little bit tap tap tap The boys would hit you, know what I mean? That was it. That was singing up on the railroad. (Singing) “Oh, boy, can you line it. If I’d a known my car was dead, dead—If I’d a known my car was dead, [ ] (Pause) Ever since my car been dead all my children is about to die. Oh, boy, can’t 00:38:00you line it. Oomp. Oh, boy, can’t you line it. Join her head, send her back, can’t you line it just one hair. Oh, boy, just a little bit. Oomp. Oh, boy, just a little bit. Oomp. My boss got a—the boss got a water berry just like mine. Kicked like hell, don’t keep no time. Oh, boy just--.” And that’s on the railroad, a song we sang.

HARDY: (coughing) I’ve got a little frog in my throat here.

VANCE: Those big rails- those big rails—had six men to lift them rails. That’s big rails. And two on each end, and then two in the middle. But they’d haven’t anything—they’d have a—they’d have a crane to lift them now, but they—at the time, they had men to lift them.

HARDY: Yeah, I guess that would have been backbreaking work.

VANCE: Oh, my—backbreaking, that wasn’t anything. And the way you've got to raise it up, you had all of you get up at the same time. If they’d get up and 00:39:00before you get yours-- and you can’t it up.

HARDY: How long would they work you in a day? One of those—

VANCE: Twelve hours. Twelve hours. That’s why I, at that time, down South, If a Negro—a Negro gets—when a Negro got 35, 40 45, 50 years old, he was through. To old, he can’t work. You is worn out. The Negro is worn out, because he worked too hard, worked too hard. And you’d think driving mules down there in the field, he’d know—you’d know what time to go home, because when it’s time for him to go home, he ain’t going to go nothing, because you try to make him go, you go home to the house, no place else.

HARDY: Now, if you were working a 12-hour day, doing that backbreaking work, I would think by the time you got through, you’d be absolutely exhausted. Would you?

VANCE: That’s not the question. But exhausted, you could hardly raise up. I used to work in the mines all day, and the coal isn’t as high as about that, 00:40:00[holds up his hand] bout as high as that , someplace in Virginia. And you’d be working on your knees all the time. Then when you—when you were working there, you were working 8 hours, sometimes 9, some 10. And when you come outside, you could not have stayed up—could not have straighten up because you’d be walking like this here, because—and had to straighten up little by little, you know? Little by little, you straightened up. And in the—in the Second World War—and I think in the—oh, in the First World War, there—the First World War, I was in Darbyville, Virginia. And I was—I was 17 years old then, I think—17 years old. And they s-they sent me a questionnaire to fill out, tell me to look for a call anytime. I filled it out, and I quit my job. As soon as I quit my job, the war was over, and I didn’t have no job, and I can’t go to war. I wanted to go to the war, you see? I never been to war. And in 00:41:00Philadelphia here, I registered for the service, and they were taken the men--I was 39 at that time, and they were taken the men 40. And they didn’t take me. I got so mad, . Never been to war. Never did. Never was.

HARDY: Deacon Vance, do you remember any songs about the North when you down South, about going North? Or about what it would be like in the North?

VANCE: No, no, no, no.

HARDY: Were there any songs like that?

VANCE: No, we used to sing—we used to sing songs about the South. (singing) “Trotting Liza, trotting for long for the cater, Trotting Liza, trotting for long for the cater. All in one day, yeah. all in one day.” (laughs) We used to sing that on the railroad. I know—I know many songs that they sang at that time. They didn’t sing the whole song, just maybe two or three verses of them, 00:42:00you see? I remember times I used to cry when I was a kid. I used to cry because I didn’t have no shoes to wear. Couldn’t go to church because I ain’t got no shoes. I didn’t want to go to church barefoot, you see? I had no shoes. I used to cry. Boy, I’ll tell you, the Lord brought me from a mighty long way—mighty long way.

HARDY: Yeah, Now, when you first arrived in Philadelphia, where did you live?

VANCE: 3940 South Bouvier Street. No, now, wait a minute now. I’m sorry. That’s wrong. I lived at 1320 South Bouvier. That’s 1320 South Bouvier Street.

HARDY: Did you live with your father and stepmother then?

VANCE: I lived with my father and stepmother.

HARDY: How long did you stay with them?

VANCE: Less than a year. Less than a year, because my father—he was real sick, and my stepmother, she didn’t care for us—care for his children. And I 00:43:00didn’t—but we didn’t bother her. And he—he —my father died in 1926 from an operation at the Hahnemann Hospital. He died. And the doctor told me—he said he had a cancer, and if I had to have my operation at that time, see, I would have died because they couldn’t take a third of your stomach out. Took a third of my stomach out. Now, you know, I can’t eat—very little at a time. Not too much at a time, but I eat regular, now I eat regularly now.. I might eat now a small amount of food. In a—in a—in a couple of hours, I might eat a sandwich or something like that, you see?

HARDY: Right. What sort of job did you look for when you came to Philadelphia?

VANCE: Well anything, anything. Many a time-- I cleaned brick here. I cleaned brick for 85 cents a thousand.

HARDY: Eighty-five cents a thousand?

VANCE: Eight-five cents a thousand, cleaning brick.

HARDY: What does “cleaning brick” mean?

VANCE: Huh?

HARDY: What’s that mean?

VANCE: Like a brick on a building. Like bricks for the cement and stuff. But you 00:44:00clean them, you see? You cleaned a thousand, you got 85 cents. And I remember the time you’d get—you used to get 15 cents an hour for construction work. I used to push the Georgia buggy, here, for 30 cents an hour.

HARDY: What’s a “Georgia buggy”?

VANCE: That’s a buggy you put in your—you have concrete in it, see? And they don’t use them buggies anymore. They have cranes now, you see? You take that buggy and [ ] around, you see? I was pushing that for 35 cents an hour. So everybody—so we decided we wanted a raise. And the last job I had was at 18th and Wharton. We decided we wanted a raise, and they wouldn’t give us no raise. And so we said we were going to strike. And everybody would put down their tools. They said, “Well, wait for about a half hour, and they will pay us off.” So, they paid us—they paid them all off. They started to pay them off. Everybody went back to work but me, I didn’t go back to work. I said, “Well, I’m finished.” So I take my money, I think gave me two or three dollars, or something like that. But they—it wasn’t much—it was a little better for a Negro here. But one thing, they wouldn’t bother you. You 00:45:00wouldn’t bother nobody. But other than that, it —it was no good.

HARDY: Why wasn’t it any good in Philadelphia?

VANCE: Hm?

HARDY: Why wasn’t it any good up here?

VANCE: Well, it wasn’t—here—it wasn’t too bad for Negroes. It wasn’t too bad. But in the South, it was no good at all. It wasn’t too bad here. There wasn’t much money they was going to pay you, but they ain’t going to beat you, and they ain’t going to call you “nigger” now, and they weren’t going to bother you like that. I mean, I got like this. But otherwise, down South, they did beat you, kick you, too. Kick you. I mean--. And they’d make them [ ] and all that other stuff. That’s bad. And there’s nothing you could do about it. Nothing you could do about it.

HARDY: Yeah. Now, when you came to Philadelphia, you were a young man who’d worked on different labor gangs.

VANCE: All different kinds—yeah, all kinds.

HARDY: You’d been all around. You didn’t have much educa-I guess, practically, you had no education when you arrived in the city.

VANCE: I couldn’t—I couldn’t—didn’t when I came to Philadelphia.

HARDY: Yeah, now—and you came into a city, of course, where there were people 00:46:00who were pretty cosmopolitan in comparison to yourself, right?

VANCE: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

HARDY: Black men and women who’d had education, steady jobs, that sort of thing.

VANCE: Uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh.

HARDY: How did—did you have any troubles adjusting to life in this city?

VANCE: No, I didn’t—I had no trouble adjusting because I was a young man, and I’d been through—I’d been through so much I could take most anything. But I didn’t bother with no alcohol and things like that. I lived a very decent life, otherwise I could never have got this old, a very decent life, and so for things like that I didn’t bother with things like that. But I tried to work—I tried to work and do the—and do the thing that’s right, and I used to get along pretty good, pretty good.

HARDY: Yeah. How did you feel that other people treated you—the black people in the city, who had already been there, you being fresh up from the South?

VANCE: Well, the black people in the city—

HARDY: A real greenhorn?

VANCE: They wasn’t too—they wasn’t too bad, but they wasn’t too good or 00:47:00. So far as--, you wasn’t much, you wasn’t much nothing much around them because they’d been here for a long time . When you—when I came here, and you lived on—we used to live on—when you’d live on Christian Street. Christian Street in South Philadelphia, I lived on Diamond Street, you was the big Negro. Them two streets, they were the big Negroes. (laughs) You see, other than that, they didn’t bother them. They didn’t bother them. But they--you wouldn’t know about them because you had no education. And —back at home, I went to school, I think about—for maybe about two or three months, that’s about it. That’s when you didn’t have nothing to do, that’s when the harvest was over. But—so I went to school here at night, and I just worked so hard in the daytime, I-- “Wake up. Wake up [ ] How are you going to study in your sleep?” Wake up and I tired to do the best I can. I done fine. I had a pretty good education. I went to—I didn’t go to--I went to sixth grade, that’s all—sixth grade.

HARDY: Yeah. Well, that took a lot of commitment and drive to go to evening school after work and—

VANCE: Oh, sure, sure, [ ]. You’re working hard, and [ ]. It’s pretty hard, pretty hard. So when I got—oh, when I—that Morrisville steel plant, that’s about the best job I ever had, that Morrisville—you know where that Morrisville is—steel plant. It’s in Pennsylvania, Morrisville. The steel plant—that’s about the best job I had. I got . That was my first foreman job. I got a—I was making a dollar an hour. That was big money.

HARDY: You were a foreman?

VANCE: Yeah.

HARDY: When was that?

VANCE: That was in—that was on my—’47, ’48, somewhere along there.

HARDY: OK, so that’s after the Second World War, then, so things had pretty much opened up.

VANCE: Yeah, I was making a dollar an hour. A dollar an hour, foreman. Now I used to make $40 a week. You make $40 a week, at that time, you were making plenty of money—$40. So that’s why the Social Security here, every, every four or five years they give me a raise. Give me a raise because when I was working, I wasn’t making nothing, because they didn’t give you a raise. I got two raises on Social Security. I got a thousand do-- I got $2,000 at one 00:49:00time, and I got $1,000 or something one time.

HARDY: Sure. Well, that’s good.

VANCE: I don't get no more raises, I guess.

HARDY: You ever have any desire to go back south?

VANCE: Oh, yeah, I go back down there once in a while, just to see my people. They’re nice down there now. “Oh, where you been so long? Where you been? Don’t stay away so long. Come on back up here, we’re glad to have you. We’re glad to have—“ They treat you, they treat you—you can go anywhere down there now like you can up here Everybody's nice down there everywhere. When you go to the supermarket and buy your stuff, they put it in the car for you. It will surprise you down there, now. And that’s how it is nobody will bother you down there now at all.

HARDY: So are you glad you made your move up to Philadelphia?

VANCE: Oh, sure, sure. But I didn’t [ ]. I left here about six or seven different times and then come back. I went to Buffalo for one time. I went to Pittsburgh one time. And I went to Brooklyn one time. I went to New York City 00:50:00one time. (door knock) Yeah?

[End of interview.]