An Interview with Rev. Michael E. Haynes 2007 Northeastern University, , MA

Photo circa 1941 by Winifred Irish Hall

An Interview with Rev. Michael E. Haynes 2007 Northeastern University Boston,

Rev Michael E. Haynes 2 Northeastern University Lower Roxbury Black History Project

INT: Rev. Haynes, Thank you so much for allowing us this opportunity to interview you. We have upon your request taken on the responsibility of initiating a history of African Americans, particularly those in Lower Roxbury and the South End. We’re so proud that you were one of the few people in Roxbury or in the city and maybe in the Commonwealth that has the kind of influence and impact that you have had over the years. So thank you, sir, for agreeing to do this interview. There are several questions I would like to start with a little bit about your background and let’s start with asking you about your family and how they first came to Boston and the impact that it had on them and them on Boston? When did they first come here? RH: My parents were immigrants from the Island of Barbados. From what I understand, my father had left the Island maybe as a teenager, to go to Sydney Mines, Nova Scotia to work and later came back and married my mother. She wasn’t interested in going to Sydney Mines, Nova Scotia. I gather from listening to my older brother that they compromised by coming to Cambridge for a short while. Then they moved into Lower Roxbury. I gather it was somewhere around 1919 or 1920, somewhere around 1919 or 1920. I was born in 1927. My oldest brother, Douglas, was born in Barbados and came to the United States with my mother as an infant child. My brother, Vincent, the next in line was born in the United States in Roxbury. Then came Roy born in Roxbury and then came Michael born in Roxbury. INT: laughing RH: Michael’s me, yes. INT: Can we talk a little bit about the major influences that shaped your

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family in your opinion? RH: Listening to stories from my father particularly and my mother. They settled in just on the threshold of the Great Depression. Looking back now, I’m sure both my mother and father had visions of sugarplums dancing in their heads. They expected great things out of being in America. They lived on several streets. At first they lived on a little street called Woodbury Street, which was a little, narrow cobblestoned street. It ran from Shawmut Avenue into Washington Street, down where the Lenox Street Project is now. Then they came up to Hubert Street, where Vincent was born. They went from Woodbury Street to Hubert Street where Vincent was born. Then Hubert Street was facing Madison Park and from Hubert Street they went to Thorndike Street, which still exists today where Roy and I were born - on Thorndike Street. My parents struggled and bought a little cottage on Haskins Street which ran off of Ruggles Street. They were the second African-American family to live on the east side of Haskins Street. There were several African-American families living on the west side of Haskins Street. One, the Mirak family and the Scott family had bought homes on the west side of Haskins Street. They became rather significant in the history of the black community. My family was the first and I guess my family was the first Caribbean family to buy a house on Haskins Street which, at that time, was predominantly Jewish and Irish Catholic. This was the strong influence around 1927 or ‘28. So I was raised in this very, very heterogeneous community. Down at the foot of the street, there was a Lebanese store, a Jewish store at the bottom of the street, a Jewish store at the top of the street. St. Francis DeSales, a Roman Catholic Church was on the top of the hill. Another Jewish Synagogue across from our house on the west side of Haskins Street and a Jewish Synagogue down at the foot of the street on Ruggles Street. It

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was this heterogeneous community in which we were born. At that time, Ruggles Street was kind of the line between the predominantly black communities. It was just beginning to shift. Blacks were now shifting south of Ruggles Street. But at the time we were born, once you stepped onto Ruggles Street going north, you were in the predominantly Lower Roxbury black community. Madison Park was just a block away from our house. INT: Describe what it was like to for you as a young boy growing up in a multi-cultural, multi-racial, dynamically changing community? [inaudible words – speaking too softly] RH: I remember going to primary school, William Bacon School, on Vernon Street and being very, very conscious of the fact that a number of my friends and my own parents, not so much my father because he had already mongolized his accent in Canada; but my mother’s accent was very, very foreign. A lot of the kids, I remember kids in school, kids in William Bacon School calling the people with the accents [monkey chasers]. I know what it was all about, you know. They were called monkey chasers; I never saw a monkey (laughing). Not until I started going to the Caribbean and realized that monkeys ran all over the place. But they had this foreign accent so often kids made fun of them. Then some of the kids I grew up with had parents who migrated from Ireland and also from Italy. So I had Cappuzo, Callahan – their parents had accents too. Accents were a common thing as we were kind of in an immigrant community. At that time that section of Roxbury was strongly Irish, strongly Jewish. Most of the Jewish people were immigrants also. So we were in an immigrant community at that time around the late 20’s. INT: When it moved into the 30’s was there significant changes? When

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was the major change that made the community predominantly black? RH: I’d say the 40’s. Black

institutions started coming like the Jewish Synagogue at the bottom of Haskins Street moved out; and it became an . I remember Pentecostal Mission coming in on Ruggles Street. The Blessed Sacrament Mission, Roman Catholic, was up at the top of Vernon Street which was a Catholic mission to the black community. INT: How did you view yourself? I mean, did you early on say you wanted to be a minister? What [inaudible] that part of you that attracted you to [inaudible]. RH: I don’t think I had horizons; I didn’t have a vision as a kid. I think I struggled to find my way. The Great Depression came. My father had a very, very difficult time with jobs. He got a job at the WPA and many times he told me later on that they relegated him the task for the WPA - they were cleaning streets and stuff. His assignment was to pick up dead cats and dead dogs. He was kind of the single black working on this truck. But I think my father was early disillusioned by America and the Great Depression and struck by racism very, very emphatically. My father always worked two jobs. He always found a job, always worked. He took to drinking a little bit. I think that was

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the result of the Depression and the frustrations that he found. He thought he was going to hit gold in America. In the Depression, he struggled to pay a mortgage on our house. Our neighbors on both sides, the Kelley’s lived on one side – Irish Catholic. Next to us were the Cheveau’s – they were Protestant of French decent. Next to the Cheveau’s were the Callahan’s and next to them was the Campbell’s also from Ireland. So we had this distant Irish community pretty close around us. Across the street was practically all Jewish on the other side of the street. But the Depression hit pretty hard. There was a period of time when my family, like many families in that area who were on welfare. Also many of the Irish families were on welfare. One of my close friends, I remember going to Timilty School one day and the welfare gave you clothes. You go to a school over to Upham’s Corner and get these big, big bundles. My mother would be so happy to have these clothes. I remember, I can see these pants like it was yesterday, these kind of a denim looking pants with kind of a pink stripe going through. I’d walk to school and one of my classmates, Johnny McGarrity pointed a finger at my pants and he had on the same pants and said you’re on welfare. My mother was ashamed to be on welfare and she used to go out and do day work and ride the bus to Wellesley and Newton, doing day work to get us off of welfare as soon as she could. But those were hard days. We knew hunger a lot. My mother would bring home stale bagels and [inaudible] from the Jewish homes she worked in. Me and Roy would be soaking those things and re-baking them. Then we’d go over to the firehouse on Cabot Street and get cans of grapefruit juice and slabs of cheese and butter. All those things were great but we knew what hunger was. We knew what hunger was in our house for quite awhile. We knew what it was to be poor. We knew what it was to be cold. INT: [inaudible – speaking too softly]

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RH: My family went through some transitions. Coming out of Barbados they were strongly influenced by the Anglican Church and the [Moravian church]. Then they came to the United States and were told to look for a Methodist Church that would be; and I remember hearing the story that the first night they were here and this was before I was born, my uncle had just arrived from Barbados. My uncle and my father and mother went to Columbus Avenue Inn, the Zion Church, assuming they had an evening service and there was no evening service. On the way home, coming out of Barbados, as it is even now, people are very conscious of their religious faith and on their way, walking back home on Columbus Avenue to Shawmut Avenue they heard, they passed a little mission on Shawmut Avenue. My mother decided that she’d go into this mission. My father said later, I’m going home. My father went home and my mother and her brother went into this mission, it was a Pentecostal mission; and soon thereafter, my mother joined the Pentecostal Church. So we were raised with these double influences of the Anglican Church, the Episcopal Church and the Pentecostal Church. The tug between the two for much of our lives. This uncle later became a Pentecostal minister and then became a Pentecostal bishop. So we had this double influence of the Pentecostal Church and the Episcopal Church. INT: [inaudible] RH: And then of a Baptist. INT: [inaudible] RH: My oldest brother, Douglas, as the population on Haskins Street changed, the big apartment house which was mostly Jewish, speedily changed and became predominantly black. Many of the people there went to the Baptist Church. At that time was significant. It had a comparatively new

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minster, Dr. Hester from North Carolina. His wife, Beulah Hester, was a social worker. So Mrs. Hester’s at the Shaw House influenced a lot of the young people and many of the young people on Haskins Street were going to Twelfth Baptist Church. My older brother went to the Twelfth Baptist Church and got baptized at Twelfth Baptist Church. That started the connection between Mrs. Hester, the social worker. She was the one that was getting underprivileged kids to go to summer camp. She worked for the Shaw House. She was the, I think they called her, the community visitor or something like that but she would be getting kids. So early in life, Mrs. Hester sent me and my brother Roy, like many other kids, to [Breezy Meadows Camp] which the Shaw House ran; which later on was to become probably one of the greatest influences in my life even a stronger influence than the Church. INT: [inaudible] RH: I went to Breezy Meadows and didn’t like it at all as a kid. Then a student from Gordon College, a guy from Ebenezer Baptist Church named Simpson Turner, volunteered. I guess a part of his going to college was to work with kids from the community. He became a counselor at Breezy Meadows Camp and offered me, at fifteen, an opportunity to be a junior counselor. That opened a whole new vista for me. That opened a whole new vista that never ended. Every summer from then on I went to Breezy Meadows Camp until I was in my 30’s. And eventually became the program director at Breezy Meadows Camp. All because of this guy, Simpson Turner, who became the strongest influence in exposing me to religion and church and the school of theology – because he was going to school in theology. He was a part of a music group, a head of its time, a religious music group called [Shaylo Kralls Electric Choir]. Shaylo Calls was a musical genius from an

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outstanding family called the Clark’s on Kennard Street. They were all very, very gifted guys. He formed in the 1940’s, I don’t know it might have started in the 30’s, I just remembered in the 1940’s when I got to English High School he formed this Shaylo Kralls Electric Choir with all electric instruments in 1940. Electric base, electric guitar, xylophones – all these things and he got this team of teenage guys playing in this choir with a girl soloist. They would go around to churches. As time went on this became a very popular group and this guy Simpson Turner, this guy from Ebenezer Baptist Church, this student at Gordon College, this black guy going to college was a narrator and a speaker and he became a boy preacher. One of the first local boys to become a popular preacher in his time. Simpson Turner put his hand on me particularly during when WWII broke out. There were two predominant; I guess you could call them gangs or athletic clubs, two predominant gangs in Lower Roxbury around the Madison Park area – the Eagles and the Panthers. Any teenager growing up around Madison Park, you expected to be either in the Eagles or the Panthers. The Eagles were maroon and gold and the Panthers were orange and black. The Panthers hung out on the, sort of the east side of the Madison Park; and the Eagles hung out on the west side toward Tremont Street – the corner of Tremont and Kennard - very, very famous corner. This was the Eagles corner. My brother, Vincent, coached the Eagles football team. He made me try to play football and it didn’t take me very long to know that I wasn’t an athlete and I became the manager for the Eagles. I didn’t know what all this stuff was going to lead me to. Because as manager to the Eagles, when I was a student in high school, later on I became the biggest sports manager in the town. From the Robert Shaw House, I started managing the basketball team. All of it came out of being manager for the Eagles. Then the war broke out and everybody started

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getting drafted before I finished high school. Guys in my class at English High were going to war. Vincent, my older brother, went to war. My oldest brother Douglas went to war and this guy Simpson Turner, because he was in theology school, didn’t have to go to war. He volunteered to continue to coach the Eagles and keep the Eagles together. This guy was imprinting in my life. I didn’t realize it; it took time for me to realize the dynamic of what was going on. INT: When did you realize your calling? RH: I got more interested in music first. INT: Okay. RH: In church music. My father was a musician, my oldest brother was a musician and Vincent was a music promoter and Roy was a musician. So I got interested in music. My father played the organ. In fact, as a teenager they say he was the soloist in his church in Barbados for the Tanner Soloist Handel’s Messiah, when he was 18 years old. He came and he played the organ and he played at the African Orthodox Church and other places. So the house was filled with music. We had an organ in our house. Roy talks about it all the time. We had an organ that you piped it with your feet. We had a little organ you would pull out the stops to our house. INT: You should mention that Roy Haynes was one of the world’s greatest drummers and I had the opportunity to interview [inaudible] and he said to me [inaudible] RH: Yes, yes. INT: [inaudible] RH: Roy struck gold with the drums. Interesting story about Roy. Roy went to work at Breezy Meadows Camp too in the kitchen. I became a junior

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counselor and then head counselor, program director and stayed there almost until the camp closed. Roy became a kitchen boy and he used to beat on the pots and pans; and Mr. Shelburne, who was one of the hero’s of the black community, Mr. Sheldman was one of the executive directors of Breezy Meadows Camp, fired him. Put him in the station wagon and brought him home and said he didn’t want him to work. INT: [inaudible] RH: Beating on the pots. He was beating on the pots all of the time. A few years later, Roy, under aged, was drumming in nightclubs downtown. A few years later he’s gone to New York. INT: So do you think change --? RH: I was interested in church music, very deeply in church music. INT: As a manager or player? RH: An experimental player and this Shaylo Choir promoted this thing. I started to learn how to play. The Hammond Organ Company developed a little instrument called the solo box and they had set up this little small keyboard on a stand and I started learning to play this Hammond solo box and I started to learn how to play the Hammond organ. So this plunged me into the genuine interest in church music. I think I won a hymnbook from every known denomination in the world. I studied hymnbooks. I would be playing hymns all the time, all of them. Then in 1935 or so you got this big wave of new religion, charismatic religion coming through Boston with Dr. Fisher and the International Gospel Party. That brought a whole new music thrust in the late 30’s or early 40’s of the Chicago Gospel music. The Thomas Dorsey stuff, the Sally Martin stuff. Dr. Fisher brought all of that to Boston. A whole new world for me. Even the guys from the nightclubs

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and clubs down on Tremont Street would go to Dr. Fisher’s to hear this new wave of gospel music. No churches had this. INT: Wasn’t he internationally known? RH: He was internationally known. He was an African American, Episcopal, Zion guy out of Livingston College who majored in dramatics and he brought all of that to bear in his religious thrust in Boston. INT: You even wrote about him? RH: Yes or this Dr. Turner wrote about him in a book that was used in one of the theological schools in New York. INT: Yes. And how do [inaudible] influence you? RH: The music. The music attracted me. The top musician, Raymond Tracy Hunter, who did a whole score for a major religious production, I think it might have been staged the first time in 1936 or something at Symphony Hall. I can remember my friends waking me up so we had to get there by 4:00 o’clock to be able to get in Symphony Hall on Easter Sunday. I remember going to Symphony Hall and seeing this drama with practically an all black cast or 99% black cast and Layman Tracey Hunter did all the music for the scores. Dr. Fisher did all of the drama, as I said he was a drama major before he went into theology at Livingston College. He did all the drama and he played the role of Christ. This is 1930 something, somewhere around 1935 or ‘36 and he continued year after year every Easter presenting at Symphony Hall and from Symphony Hall to Jordan Hall then they went from Jordan Hall to what is now, BU owned it for awhile, Huntington Theatre, I think. He tried to buy the Huntington Theatre. Fisher tried to buy the Huntington Theatre but he wasn’t able to get that. INT: [inaudible] impact on Boston.

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RH: He did. I think he was every pastor’s nightmare. INT: laughing RH: He was every pastor’s nightmare in Boston. INT: Why was that? RH: Because what he started doing after he, Boston became good to him. He started coming to Boston and he actually took over, he took over a Pentecostal Church. Christ Temple which is located up above Estelle’s Restaurant is, up there. I guess it sat about 400 people in that hall upstairs there. He used to come every year to hold a revival; and of course at that time more of the members of that church were his followers than the guy who was pastor. That became the first strong Pentecostal Church in Boston. My mother went there, my uncle went there and a lot of the people coming out of the Caribbean went there. It was filled with people from the South and from the Caribbean and numbers of whites. INT: Wasn’t that also the time when the Garvey Movement --? RH: The Garvey movement was --. INT: How did that work with --? RH: A lot of the people who followed the Pentecostal stream weren’t as committed to the Garvey Movement. Like my father started following Garvey and my mother did not. Once she joined the Pentecostal Church she got all immersed in the Pentecostal Church. But the Garvey Movement was taking place at the same time. I think the more powerful spokesman from my recollection was Father Bynoe and the Bynoe families were the spearheads that influenced the community I lived in at the time. INT: [inaudible] RH: Of course, Farrakhan wasn’t on the scene at that time. Farrakhan I

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guess is probably around 70 now. Farrakhan came out of Newark originally, he wasn’t born here. I remember him as a little kid. I had him at camp. I had him and his brother as campers, [inaudible] relationship with Farrakhan. I was his counselor at summer camp, him and his brother. Talented kids, smart kids, the mother raised them. They lived right up the block from Twelfth Baptist Church on Shawmut Avenue. They were good musicians. They were taught classical piano for the brother and classical violin for Farrakhan. In those days, the 40’s and the 50’s, music recitals were a common thing in the black community. Almost every time you turn around, some church or place would be having a musical recital. Many of them were held at the Masonic Temple on Tremont Street. Before long everyone knew that the Walcott boys were probably the most outstanding musicians - classical violin, classical piano. INT: [inaudible] RH: The Farrakhan’s name, the Walcott boys. This is how I met them because I directed the music thing; I directed the glee club and then Farrakhan signed up for my glee club. INT: Yes. RH: They were raised in St. Cyprian’s Church. INT: Oh, St. Cyprian’s Church? RH: Yes INT: [inaudible] did you stay in the Twelfth Baptist Church? RH: I went to the Twelfth Baptist as a young fellow. I --. INT: I thought --. RH: My brother did. We went to Christ Temple for a while then my mother’s brother opened his own Pentecostal Mission on Lenox Street near

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Shawmut Avenue. We went there to some degree. Roy tended to go between there and St. Cyprian. St. Cyprian’s was the West Indian enclave. Our closest friends were all in the choir and some cousins were in the choir at St. Cyprian. INT: [inaudible] very heavy influence in the political world of black Boston from the Caribbean prospective, [inaudible] incredibly important role. --? RH: You’re correct. INT: [inaudible] RH: I can’t give you the best picture of that. Now, a number of the Caribbean people went to St. Augustine’s Church on Lenox Street. Many went to St. Augustine’s Church. There was sort of like a cross – St. Augustine’s High Episcopal Church was on Lenox Street between Washington and Shawmut. Just up the block at Shawmut was Elder Payne’s mission and Elder Payne would have been my uncle that was predominantly Caribbean. There was another Elder Preston had another Caribbean mission right on that same corner. Many of the people from the Caribbean would send their kids to these Sunday schools. People didn’t go to the church but they sent their kids to these Sunday school. I think the Bynoe’s’ - while they went to St. Cyprian’s Church, they would send their kids to these Sunday schools. A lot of West Indies kids would go to these Sunday schools – the Elder Payne Sunday school or the Elder Preston’s, right there on Shawmut Avenue by Lenox Street. So it was almost a traffic flow from St. Augustine’s over to Tremont Street to St. Cyprian’s and as I said recitals was a big thing in the 30’s and 40’s. Everybody’s in music lessons. So you’re going to so and so’s recital at one place and so and so’s recital at St. Cyprian’s and so and so’s recital at Butler’s Hall. Most kids had music lessons when I was growing up, of some sort. INT: [inaudible]

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RH: Roy studied the violin and he didn’t like it and he finally quit and there was a guy from the Jenkins Orphanage. One of the big things in black Roxbury during the summer was the Jenkins Orphanage from South Carolina would come with their bus. They had this band and they would play on the streets of Lower Roxbury. Roy got fascinated with the drummer. The guy live on, settled on Haskins Street, a guy named Herby Wright. One of the first black jazz drummers in the Boston area. Roy got fascinated with this guy. He never turned off from that point on. INT: I want to ask you a series of questions about some of the [inaudible] families of the 30’s and 40’s but before I do that when did you actually go to seminary school? How did that work out? I’m very curious about --? RH: Simpson Turner. INT: All right [inaudible – laughing] RH: One of the things I said I had a little bout or contest with the former superintendent of school, William Orenburg who was the superintendent of Boston schools. At the time, he was the football and track coach. I couldn’t play football and I wanted to run track but I had to work. Everybody in my house had to work. They had to get jobs, there’s no money and we had to get jobs. So I had to work so I got a job in the First National store, part-time. The First National was still a three big chains in the late 30’s and 40’s chain stores. One was the First National, they were red. They had a store in almost every neighborhood. Then there was the Economy, they were green. Then there was National D, they were blue. So I got a job in the First National. INT: So the whole thing about red, blue and green - -? RH: The symbols of the stores. You see these stores, every fifteen blocks

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you go down Tremont Street and see these red stores on the corner; or you see these blue stores up on Humboldt Avenue. The National D, I think was Jewish owned. The Economy later became, I think, the Stop & Shop. INT: Yes. Why did they have to have colors? RH: To distinguish them. INT: okay, all right. [inaudible] RH: You could look up and down the street and you could tell a First National store, painted all red on the outside. INT: You worked in the red store? RH: I worked in the red store. You probably heard the name Ed Cooper before he died. INT: Yes. RH: Ed Cooper was the first black to be employed as a manager in the First National. That came about because of the pressure. He worked in the First Nationals, one up on Humboldt Avenue, one down on the corner of Shawmut Avenue. I worked around the First National down on Columbus Avenue; there were three of them on Columbus Avenue. That’s what I did going to English High. So I didn’t run track. They manipulated me into, from Timilty School, into the business course. My parents didn’t understand the Boston school system at all. All my mother knew, don’t bring home a red mark and don’t make me have to come to the school. There was nothing strange to see. One of my first nightmares in school, I was in elementary school, William Bacon, one of the West Indian mother’s came up and beat her daughter in class. I was terrified by it. My mother threatened to do the same thing to us. So we didn’t want my mother to come to school. First of all she had an accent and kids would make fun of her. So we didn’t

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want my mother to come to school. I was the last one and my mother did radical child abuse if you did something wrong or she got a bad report from school. My mother would always be ironing and she made clothes. She made all her own dresses. Everybody got pajamas in my house over and over again. She could sew and she could iron. My mother would always be at the ironing board. She’d sit the ironing board right by the dining room. If you got in the dining room, there was only one way out of the dining room. If my mother got a report from the school or anything from the teacher, she’d wait until she cornered you in that dining room. One day she cornered me in the dining room and she said take the ironing cord out of the iron, and beat the devil out of you. She’d go to jail these days for it. But my mother always threatened to beat us if she had to come to school. I remember my guidance counselor so I didn’t have like so many kids in my class, I don’t know if you’ve ever met Baron Martin, he’s a judge down in Wareham, he’s attorney Martin’s cousin. All of the kids from Humboldt Avenue that went to school with me had exposure to the powerful, powerful black leaders like, oh God he just died recently, he was a judge. I think in Newton Court – Mitchell, Attorney Mitchell. The Mitchell’s lived on Waumbeck Street. Mrs. Mitchell was the head; she was a pioneer in early education for kids. She ran the nursery at Shaw House. So Mitchell was in school with me. All of these kids from Humboldt Avenue, [Corte Alice] these are all the stars. All of these kids’ parents know, these American kids parents [inaudible]. They got the better opportunities. The guidance counselor wouldn’t give me the time of day. He wouldn’t give me, I will never forget, he wouldn’t give me the time of day. The time I got to senior year I didn’t know what I was going to do with myself. I applied to several schools. I wanted to study church music. I applied to several schools and every school I applied to said that I didn’t have all of

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the necessary credits to be accepted. In those days, it was unheard of that you became a special student. What you end up doing is find someone to make you below the Mason-Dixon Line to go away to school. INT: Yes, yes. RH: So Simpson Turner is in his senior year at Gordon College at the time. I applied to Gordon College, the dean was cold. I don’t think they wanted another black student. Gordon was over in Fenway at the time. I don’t think they wanted another black student there. I tried the Conservatory; Boston Conservatory all they said is I would have to get other credits to be admitted. At the time I got frustrated because the war was still on, this was 1944. I got frustrated and went and got a job at National Biscuit Company and said the heck with the whole thing. So I ended up buying clothes and records and it started getting good to me. Getting influenced by Vincent and Douglas rather than by the church folk; and Simpson Turner moved in on my life and says, no, God has a better plan for your life and this guy helped me to apply to several schools. I was accepted, minus a couple of necessary credits at a small, conservative theological school in Brookline called the New England School of Theology. The president of the school, a guy from Maine, named [Gaylord McVanna] took an interest in me. Come to find out later that the New England School of Theology was born as a bible institute. It started on [Rockford Park] in Roxbury. So this president, this school is in Brookline, took a particular interest. He always had some black friends in his class all during the time when he was a student. He paid for the courses I had to make up to get to become a student and that was the end of the story. I was treated like a king. I went all the way through and got a Bachelor of Theology degree. They sent me all over New England to all of these white churches as a student doing music directing.

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INT: Yes --. RH: I became the youth speaker. They had a quartet at this school of theology, these white guys; they put me in the quartet. I traveled with them for two years and on weekends we’d travel all over the place until they got an invitation to come to Boone, North Carolina. That was the end of my career with the quartet. INT: [inaudible] RH: They said you can’t bring him [laughing]. INT: I want to go back there [inaudible] the Bynoe family. RH: The Bynoe family is a prominent name in my life, all of my life. Maybe because the Bynoe’s came from Barbados and they lived on Williams Street. Williams Street was key because Cooper Community Center was on Shawmut Avenue and at the foot of Williams Street and they had their nursery on Williams Street. Cooper Community Center had their office and nursery on Williams. The Bynoe’s came, Father Bynoe with all the pride, with all of the industry, all that marked the best of Barbados was in Mr. Bynoe and Mrs. Bynoe. And it was transmitted to Victor. Victor was born in Barbados and all of the other kids were born in, the think one of the daughters may have been born in Barbados too, but the other ones were born in Boston. John was my age. I knew John from nursery school when he pushed me around in nursery school. INT: [laughing] RH: I remember that. He lived next door to Cooper Community Center and I was terrified by this kid. INT: [inaudible] RH: I haven’t in a long time. INT: [laughing]

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RH: So the Bynoe’s were very, very active in the Darby Movement and they were sort of the spokesmen for the Barbados groups. Victor, as a high school student at Sherwin School, was an athlete and very, very – as a high school student at English High – this guy was already a leader. He had a big influence on my older brother, Douglas. INT: How so? RH: Douglas went to the Sherwin School with Victor and, of course I said, the Bynoe’s had a family stability that my family didn’t have. My father started drinking and my mother was going to Pentecostal Church and he didn’t like the Pentecostal Church. The Bynoe’s became the stable family and Victor was a guy on a mission. He sort of became the leader for a lot of kids at Sherwin School and Boston English High where my older brother Douglas went too. Douglas ran track. Victor was in all of this. He was sort of one of the popular kids going up in the Lower Roxbury area. INT: How important was John Bynoe’s [inaudible] RH: I’m not clear if John was the original, I may be wrong on this, John was the second. It was very important because he gave professional blacks a private club. They had an exclusive caterer who ran the business from the basement. The name slips my mind but she died a couple of years ago; but I don’t know if you knew Edith Clapp who was the state policewoman? This was her family who owned that very exclusive catering business. You could go the businessman’s club for your private parties and your private affairs and that sort of thing. After hours the black socialites would hang out in the businessman’s club. INT: The [Guscott] family? RH: The Guscott family, they were caught up in the Garvey Movement

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also. The Guscott’s all played for the Panthers football team. They were all good football players playing the opposite team. John Bynoe played with the Panthers. Guscott went away to – Kenneth Guscott was always a gifted speaker. He went away to the Merchant Marine Academy and was on the debating team. I remember when the Merchant Marine came to the Boston University. I was so proud to see this black guy on this debating team. They were always, of course, Victor Bynoe – the older brother went to night school programs and worked at government jobs and became a part of the Boston Progressive Credit Union which sort of became the forerunner for a black bank. This became the powerful place where most blacks would take their money and Victor became a leader and eventually became a director or CEO of Boston Progressive Credit Union. Then later became the appointed consul for the nation of Barbados. So anyone coming from Barbados and any of the other islands – because Barbados serves several other islands with any kind of problems you go to Victor Bynoe for everything. INT: Who is Shag and Bal Taylor? RH: Shag and Bal Taylor – indispensible leaders of the black community. They were born in Virginia and I believe if memory serves me correctly, both of them went to Lincoln University. I think both of them became pharmacists, I think. They opened up a drug store on the corner of Kendall and Tremont called Lincoln Pharmacy in tribute to Lincoln University. Through the course of time, Shag was very interested in politics and Shag became the black ward boss for the black community. All the democrats’ politicians that had any concerns in the black community had to liaison with Shag Taylor. The first blacks that got on the police force, actually the first blacks because a couple of blacks got on before Shag’s influence, but numbers of blacks got on the police force was all through Shag

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Taylor’s invitation. His place was the hang out they tell me. When I was eleven I started selling the daily Record newspaper. That was the night newspaper that came out six o’clock and everybody bought it because it had the numbers in it. Listen, I didn’t know what the numbers was --. INT: [laughing]. RH: But I know I sold plenty of papers. INT: Yea [laughing] RH: In my corner, I sold – I had customers I would pick up my papers on Northampton Street and I would go out all the way up to Roxbury Crossing and deliver my papers to families and then I would come back down to the corner of Slade's Barbeque and that would be my corner. I’d sell the rest of my papers there. So Shag was one of my customers and so I would go into Shag’s to deliver my daily Record there. Shag’s drug store never had a whole lot of stuff in it [laughing]. We had two other black stores. Shag’s was on the corner of Tremont and Kendall and in Douglas Square and Hammond, there was another drug store owned by the Gideon’s. It didn’t stay very long. Up the street on the corner of Kennard and Tremont was Dr. Lewis. Dr. Lewis had everything in his place. His place was packed. This is where the Eagles hung out. He let kids hang out in his drug store, but Shag’s was a business. Everybody often would come into Shag’s and go to the back. As a kid I didn’t know what was going on in the back room. You would get liquor after the closing hours in the back of Shag’s store. INT: But this was for medicinal purposes only? [laughing] RH: Shag had his own private club across the street from his drug store, a dead end street; I don’t remember the name of that street. [inaudible] a duplex apartment house, maybe two or three stories, I never went in. I’d bring the

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Records but he never let me in past the door. But I know what went on in there, this mysterious place. This was Shag’s private after hour club over there. INT: [inaudible] RH: Wilford Scott, the Scott’s lived on Haskins Street. Wilford’s mother and father, I can remember them as a little boy. I almost think they had a wagon pulled by a horse. I’ve got to ask my brother, Roy about that. But I know there used to be a horse and wagon by their house. They had a beautiful home on Haskins Street and I can see the Scott’s now. The first car I remember on Haskins Street, the Scott’s had. The Scott’s son, this Wilford, married the daughter of a black lady; I think is from South Carolina that lived diagonally across the street from us. She did a beauty parlor in her house. She had three daughters and the oldest one married Wilford Scott. The second one became, through Wilford Scott, became one of the first black’s to be a secretary in the State House. The third one became one of the first black schoolteachers in the Boston school system. They opened up a business on the corner of Cabot Street and Gurgles Street called Deco Hair Supplies. They used to give away samples of pomade. Everybody needed pomade. We used to go in there and get samples. Then they moved across the street on the north side of Ruggles and I guess they were paying rent as I recollect. Then they bought a building off of Ruggles Street on the corner of Westminster, a three-story building and I guess they started making their own remedies for hairdressing and all this stuff. They rented the Deco Supply business there for many years and eventually moved to, after urban renewal, they moved up to Blue Hill Avenue. Wilford’s wife ran the business while Wilford Scott negotiated on behalf of the Republican Party. I can remember seeing limos pull up and I remember my brother Douglas got in trouble with the police or something one day and he went straight to

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Wilford Scott to help him out. So he was the recognized republican ward boss of the black community for years. INT: The Reed family? RH: The Reed family – some of the Reeds are still around. They lived on Tremont Street just up above Vernon Street. They were very, very active in Masonic orders and active in music and bugle and drum corps. Bugle and drum corps used to be big things in the community – Big Things! St. Cyprian’s had one of the early bugle and drum corps and it was one of the most popular things in the community. [inaudible] -- . Then they became very active in the Masons and in lodges. INT: [inaudible] individuals could you briefly in your mind describe why the black community in the 30s and 40s are so different than what we see today in the black community? What are the major things? You described things that the kids in Roxbury heard now would just blow their minds all of these cultural and musical and religious activities and different people – what’s the difference? RH: It was extremely different in Roxbury; it was an extremely different time. It was post Depression and Roxbury and Boston had eleven neighborhoods with housing restrictions. You not only couldn’t get a home in some of these neighborhoods but you weren’t too comfortable in others. As I look back now, some parts of Boston it was almost like being downtown Johannesburg when five o’clock came, you better find your way back where you came from. Boston had its own racism. I’ve been a victim of it on a number of occasions INT: [inaudible] Did you live in one --? RH: Well I was assaulted in Charlestown. As I said bugle and drum corps were big things. This was after I was a member of the [inaudible]. Most of the guys

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in town loved the bugle and drum corps, it was a big thing. They would either try to get into the Catholic Church bugle and drum corps. One of the catholic ones is closing this week down on Shawmut Avenue; I think it’s Holy Trinity Church which is scheduled to close this week. Father Carr he developed almost a virtual black bugle and drum corps down there. So bugle and drum corps were big things in the black community. One of the bugle and drum corps was marching in the Bunker Hill Day parade. Some of the kid in [inaudible] asked me to take them to see the parade because some of the kids that played basketball for me were marching in the parade. We went to the parade and when the parade was over we went back to my car, I had a big, black car, I was dressed up and going back to the car and all of a sudden some kids up on a third floor porch started yelling at us. What are you so and so’s doing around here? You’re troublemakers and then all of a sudden they started running down the three story floors. I thought it was two guys, I found out later it was three guys that were with me from [inaudible] I said go straight to the car. Before we got to the car, these guys that had come down with sticks and beer cans in their hand surrounding my car and the eleventh kid was running across and all of a sudden the eleventh kid caught my eyes and I realized who he was. I worked for the Division of Youth Services for a few years and one of my cases was this kid named William Hayes. These guys were just pushing me up against my car and Billy Hayes came and said, oh don’t touch him, don’t touch him, I know him. I had recommended this kid for parole consideration, Division of Youth Service. That would be a long story; I could write a book on that story alone. If he wasn’t there, people – adults - standing upstairs in a window laughing at the whole thing. INT: [inaudible] RH: My guess is 1957 or 8. There were adults standing there laughing and

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Billy Hayes made them let us go. I got in my car and pulled out. INT: The black community itself was different than it is -- ? RH: The black community was very cohesive, even the black community up on the hill. It was a neighborhood. There were relationships. The morals were different. The standards were different you know. INT: [inaudible - laughing] RH: [laughing] INT: [inaudible] I want to get around to Martin Luther King and some of the [inaudible whole section] the mores and --? RH: Your parents would chastise you. I get upset every time I see somebody being taken to court for giving their child a beating. We got beatings and the neighbors – I remember one day me and my brother Roy and Jimmy Callahan was our close friend. He was an altar boy at St. Francis and one day we went to see what Jimmy was doing on the altar. Two dumb little kids, we walked into St. Francis DeSales Church and the place was crowded. We walked all the way up to the front. Needless to say, Jimmy’s grandmother spotted these two little colored kids going to the Mass and the next thing you know Mrs. Callahan is at our house and we’re getting beat. The mores are different. The schools were different. I was telling someone yesterday that out of my Division of Youth Service experience and my parole board experience, I taught when they had weekly religious education for a number of years before the lady took the case to the Supreme Court, Madeline Murray O’Hare, and got it outlawed but kids that were not raised in religious families, you went to the Boston Public Schools System, I learned “come thou almighty king,” in school, in the Beverly School. Most of the teachers were Irish Catholic when I went to school. There were some Jewish teachers, some Italian,

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but most of the teachers were Irish. Almost every morning at school there would be a psalm. I look back on this now not so much as a minster but looking at it as a social worker. How you are in school, something is imbued in your head that is the ultimate authority here. There is a ceiling. You go so Farrakhan and you got to stop. There is somebody bigger than you. Whether or not you were raised in church you come thou almighty king. You learned that there is a God that teaches religious psalm in school. So this was inculcated very, very strong. So you had neighborhood – parents that cared. Somebody asked me if drugs were prevalent when I was growing up. Really the only time I heard anything about heroin was once in a blue moon down on Congress Avenue but where I was living, pot and a knife were going to be the big thing. Not a gun in the hand of a kid who has or feels he’s imitating the United States of America, the way to disperse with the enemy, if they get in your way, blow them away. I saw this at the state parole board. When a guy came before the parole board and he did not fear God, he didn’t believe in God, didn’t believe in a life hereafter, what the heck does he care about the judge or the parole commissioner or anybody else? That would always be a dangerous guy. That’s the kind of difference that we have in our society today. There is very little respect for authority. When the big things are, I’m coming to this conclusion out of my own observations is that a lot of people say America is a Christian country or was suppose to be a Christian country but the God that’s worshipped in America is not Jesus Christ, that’s not the God that is worshipped in America, the God is money. The love of money. I’ve watched the whole decay; I’ve watched the rip off of hip hop culture. It’s a money thing. They will do anything for money. They will distort the super bowl for money. Things are not clean and pure anymore. They’re just tools for somebody to make more money. All of this creates a wild society. I say

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over and over again, I don’t know anybody in Roxbury or Dorchester that’s making guns. That’s manufacturing guns. I know those who sell guns but the guns are not being manufactured by us. The gun lobby is so strong that they can’t get a handle on the guns and they’re all over the place, they’re in the hands of kids. The whole society is different. I heard somebody, it might have been a preacher on television and I always listen to him and I wrote it down. He said there is a hole in the moral ozone. I don’t --. INT: [inaudible] seem to have those values --? RH: it’s a challenge and I say this over and over again. We did this experiment with the Exquisites and I was fortunate to have a guy like [Gene] work with me over the years. I used to have to fight with the social workers about you can’t regulate the time of service to young people. It’s not going to be two o’clock in the afternoon to 10 o’clock at night. You can’t work that way. It’s going to be 7 24. We did this at Norfolk House. We did this with those kids. We immersed their lives, you might hear guys say that I come up to Grove Hall and get out of my car. We’d go anywhere, anywhere the kids live. Guys in Madison Park, I’ll walk into the middle Madison Park. We were 7 24 in our experiments with the Exquisites. Many of these guys came from broken homes or home where there were problems. Ably has been around my life since he was eleven years of age – [Ably Holland] – I love him. This is what [Gene] and I said, we have to fill these kids’ lives with new visions, new hopes, new mores, saturate them! That’s what we do with the Exquisites.

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RH: Just engulf their lives. But now we lost all of the settlement houses – Norfolk house is gone; Shaw House is gone; the summer camps are gone – all gone. I tried to get some people to fight it when it started happening. The only one who tried to fight it was Mrs. Hester because she was tough. But when they said they had to close Shaw House and they had to close Norfolk House – they closed three of the best agencies in this community. They’ve never really been replaced because what you had coming up is ages that worked more greatly on community development. Much is their project is community development. I said let’s develop a separate agency to work on that and let’s keep this concentration on kids and families in these housing development that you are building. INT: [inaudible] Martin Luther King, Jr.? RH: Martin Luther King, Jr. – upper middle class black kid comes to Boston at a young age. Remember he went into college at age 15. I’m almost two

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years older than Martin but when he came, he was ahead of me. He was working on a PhD and I was trying to get a Bachelors theology degree and this guy was working on a PhD. He had just broken up when he came up to Crosier. He had just broken up with a girlfriend that his parents liked. We were in Twelfth Baptist Church three ladies from Atlanta: Mary Powell, a part-time secretary; Barbara Wright, who used to babysit the King children. She used to babysit them at their home. She retired here because she had family here. Dr. King, daddy King and Rev. Hester, my predecessor, were friends. In those days, Baptist ministers had to be friends. That was your world. When you traveled you don’t stay in hotels, you have to stay in Dr. So and So’s house. There was a big network of these Baptist preachers. Rev. Hester was the big guy in New England. His brother-in-law, Marshall Shepherd, was the big guy in Philly and his brother had put him – Twelfth Baptist didn’t want him, they wanted his brother Marshall Shepherd. But he wouldn’t come, he recommended his brother. So Rev. Hester became the big cog for the National Baptist in New England. Daddy King calls him. My son’s coming to BU, he was worried about him socially; he was worried about him theologically because his son had been asking theological questions that concerned his father’s conservatisism and said would you look out for my boy while he’s in Boston? Coretta writes about it in her book and Daddy King speaks about it in his book. So this was the tie, he was told that he coming with Rev. Hester. He came and spent a lot of time hanging out at the Hester’s house up at 38 Highland Street. Rev. Hester had two nieces from North Carolina going to graduate school too so 38 Highland Street became sort of the hip place for the graduate students to hang out. Martin spent a lot of time up there and Mary Powell, Rev. Hester’s part-time secretary was the one that introduced him to Coretta.

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INT: Is that right? RH: Yes, she’s the one who introduced him to Coretta. He hadn’t met any girls on campus that he liked and he looked at the girls in church [laughing] there weren’t any girls in Twelfth Baptist that enamored him. He asked Mary Powell are there any, because Mary was a part-time student at the Conservatory. This is how she knew Coretta. Coretta was studying at the Conservatory. She said I’ve got just the girl for you and she set it up. Mary Powell set that up. INT: Mary Powell also gave you -- RH: My job at Norfolk House. INT: She was quite an active lady. RH: She was a brilliant lady. She was married to a nephew of Benjamin Mayes. She was brilliant. Mary Powell was a brilliant lady. She had been involved in some kind of ambassadorial level for the Red Cross, she was a brilliant lady. She had a breakdown later in life. She’s got a son here in Jamaica Plain, named Michael Powell. He’s a contractor. I remember the first time Martin preached and I knew I wasn’t preaching in Twelfth Baptist Church with him there. INT: [laughing] RH: I’m born in Boston and I’ve never had a black teacher in my life. All the schools I went to were all white. I never knew what a black teacher was and here comes this guy, younger than I, superb, superb! Superb preacher! He becomes very, very popular here. Soon after he met Coretta. Being in the PhD program, he met a lot of other guys. BU is one of the preferred places where a lot of guys in the south wanted to get their PhDs. So you’ve got this influx of guys that had master’s degrees in southern colleges coming here to get their PhDs and going back and teaching in black colleges particularly.

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INT: Was Thurman a draw? RH: Yes, Thurman was a draw for all blacks working in the academy. Thurman was a big draw and the relationship between Thurman and Dr. Mayes – this was a choice place to come. INT: So what was your relationship with Martin Luther King? RH: We sort of became friends. I took him on a tour to some youth programs, Shaw House, particularly. He had this think tank that used to meet at his house. These are mostly guys working on PhD programs; I’m just working on a bachelor’s degree. So I’m not invited to this think tank but we became closer after he settled in Montgomery and he came back to finalize some work here and to move out of the apartment. He preached at the Twelfth Baptist Church on a Sunday morning. I came out and was talking with him and by this time, I was the first recognized or publicized minister to youth in Boston’s black churches. I was the first celebrity minister to youth. The black churches hadn’t done anything like that yet. I spent most of the time concentrating on these youth programs between Shaw House and Twelfth Baptist Church. I had the first black guy who played for the Celtics. We had a big banquet at the Twelfth Baptist Church. INT: Cooper? RH: Yes, Cooper. Chuck Cooper INT: Yes Chuck Cooper RH: And so that became, Martin asked me if I would consider coming to Montgomery, Alabama. INT: Is that right? RH: But I have never, I hadn’t been below the Mason-Dixon Line at that time. I remember telling him how I could adapt to the south. My first trip south

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came the year after. But almost every time he came to Boston I’d end up driving him some place because he would always try to see the Hester’s whenever he came. Up until the time that Rev. Hester died and then Mrs. Hester died, he always wanted to check up on Mrs. Hester and Mrs. Wright who had been their babysitter. I ended up driving him much of the time in Boston and take him back to the airport rather than him riding in police cars, he’d ride with me. In fact his last trip to Boston he spoke at [Ford Hall inaudible]. I drove him back and it was quite different because the first time we didn’t have a whole lot of police and he said at that time he realized that there was a bounty on his life, there was no way he could hide from this thing. It comes sooner or later and it’s going to get me. INT: He actually knew this? RH: He knew that. He had discussed this with his wife. He knew his life was in jeopardy. INT: What was his last march here in Boston? RH: The march in Boston? INT: Yes, what was that about? RH: That was really two things: some of his advisors didn’t want him to take the time to do that. He felt he owed Boston something and he loved Boston. He had too many dear friends in Boston. So he conceded to come for the march on Boston for school. The major issue was the education issue. He made the visit to the schools and that was very interesting. That was his first opportunity – by that time I was in the legislature and so we had proposed, Frank Holgate and Bol and I to have the Massachusetts legislature invite him. Many legislators didn’t want it to happen. But they wouldn’t publically denounce it. So the vote came in, a lot of legislators didn’t come but they filled the place anyhow. Speaker Deveron was a very sensitive

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guy. He had already appointed a black assistant that became his black deputy secretary of state. He was a man of goodwill and the majority [inaudible] was also a guy of goodwill. So this was the first legislative body he spoke to in the nation. INT: Is that right? What year was that? RH: It was April 1965. INT: In some ways, it’s in the period in black Boston and he started a new – you mentioned from the 30s to the 60s were [inaudible] years black Boston. I’d like to pause here and you mentioned that you did several things in your life; I won’t spend too much time because I know you don’t like too but I would like to start with what you’ve done from seminary until now? RH: I was scheduled to be a missionary. In this little theological school that really, I went to three right-wing, white evangelical schools. That was kind of a natural for me because of the whole Pentecostal influence and everything, that wasn’t strange. Simpson Turner, who was a very conservative black, guided me in these schools. I went to the New England School of Theology where I was made to feel wonderful, made to feel very important. I became an officer in the class and everything else. I was treated royally. Then I got involved in, Billy Graham had a little bit to do with it, I had something they called student foreign mission fellowship sponsored by a church called Intervarsity Christian Fellowship which is on a lot of college campuses. I got involved in the school of Christian fellowship because ever since I was a kid and Kathy Watson talks about this, ever since I was a kid growing up on Haskins Street, I saw the world. I was always interest in everybody in the world. That’s how some people spoke at U/Mass on Martin Luther King Day. We had no holiday. My big holidays were the Jewish holiday and St. Patty’s day. These were my holiday you know and I knew, in fact I’ve got a

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funeral tomorrow, of a girl named Mary White. She came from a large immigrant family out of the Caribbean, the Whites. The oldest brother, Johnny White, black as I am. Johnny White teamed up in school with an Irish kid and they became, I forgot what you call it, a song and dance team for years. I remember John White and Frankie Hall putting on a performance on St. Patrick’s Day at somebody’s school up in Elliott Square. They go everywhere. So St. Patty’s day for anyone living in Roxbury, you’ve got three Irish Halls in Dudley. On Friday night and Saturday night in the 30s and the 40s is drunken time at Dudley Square. You’ve got these three Irish dancer Hall’s coming up. So St. Patty’s day was a big thing last week; but early in my life, I was absolutely intrigued with everyone from around the world. I remember I asked a librarian to check it out for me. We had a series and a library on Ruggles Street right across, right where you guys are building the new dorm. There used to be a library right there. The Ruggles Street branch of the public library. I remember going to get all these books, the African Twins, the Scandinavian Twins – all this stuff and I got fascinated with these people from all around the world. That stayed with me forever. When I was growing up my grandparents were already dead. The only grandmother, Roy and I joke about this, the only grandmother that I knew was Jimmy Callahan’s grandmother. It was a long time before I realized that Jimmy Callahan’s grandmother wasn’t my grandmother. [laughing] INT: [laughing] RH: We called Jimmy’s grandmother, grandma. Jimmy called her grandma and we called her grandma. Jimmy’s grandmother was very nice to us. The grandfather was different. I didn’t know until I got older, the grandfather was not very friendly. But grandmother Callahan was wonderful to me. Our closest

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friend was Jimmy Callahan growing up. We talk about it all the time. It wasn’t until Jimmy moved to St. Louis, Missouri and Jimmy would appear in some clubs with Roy was. All these different races of people I got intrigued with the foreign mission enterprise when I was in theological school. I wanted to travel and see the world. Then in the paper of Johnson Smith University they had sent the first African in this era to do youth mission work in China. This is 1945 now. I was absolutely intrigued. I read the story of this guy going to China. I spoke to the representative of the mission board and said do you have short-term mission projects in China and they said sure. And I said would you send a black guy, sure. So I got a note and when I finished theology school I went down to Charlton College in New York City, 360 West 55th Street, didn’t know what I was getting into, had a special training program in medical preparations for missionaries going into nations where medical services were limited. I applied and one of my classmates applied, a while guy from Waterbury, Vermont. I used to type; one of my part-time gigs in school was doing some sports for the Chronicle so I learned how to type. I typed out Floyd’s stuff for him. I put it in the mailbox and I mailed them. Floyd got accepted and I was rejected. So the editor of the Boston Chronicle got curious and did some investigating and found something was wrong. Something was wrong down in 340 West 55th Street. Come to find out that it was a racial thing. They brought it to the attention of the administration. They quickly covered it up and let me in the school. I found that I was the first black, this is 1949 now – first black to live in their dormitory. The school was filled with right-wing fundamentalist, many of them from the south. They were preparing for the masters program, the missionary medical program for those going into foreign mission countries and the bachelor program in this right- wing fundamentalist school. One of the worst years I’ve had

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in my life. I could have blown that school apart. If I left it to my friends at the Boston Chronicle, they would have blown the place up in terms of publicity. I got a friend out of the whole thing. The son of the president. I had him for a course in linguistics and he knew what was going on and felt very, very guilty and befriended me. Later on I was invited to Fifth Avenue Presbyterians and once a year I’d go the Fifth Avenue president of new York and this guys son who came up here to study in the Conservatory and he’s come to the Twelfth Baptist Church, I’ve got some friends out of it but I developed ulcers that year. It was the first time I’ve had stomach problems that year. So I went through that and by the time I finished, the revolution had taken place in China and all the missionaries had to get out. So I came back to Boston and started taking some courses in Gordon Divinity School and went to work at Shaw House. Not really sure as to what I was going to do but I worked at Shaw House. I loved it and then they asked me, they were trying to get blacks into the Division of Youth Service because there were no blacks in any rank and positions in the Division of Youth Service in 1950. I was the third black male to go to work for the Division of Youth Service. I went with the intention of being prepped to come one of the three commissioners of and John Shelburne was behind this. They were trying to prep to get a black commissioner at the Division of Youth Service and that’s what I was put on track for. Mary Powell, when they started having the problems at Elliott Square, race problems she recommended they hire me at Norfolk House – 7 ½ wonderful working year of my life. I wish I had a job like that where they say you get the project and we find you the money that’s when I established the outdoor basketball program and the Celtics used to come and help me in the summer raise scholarship to send kids to the black colleges in the south. That’s the place where I had every basketball player promise to come into the

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Boston School System. I would be the channel between them and the colleges the scholarship from there. I loved it. When I went to Twelfth Baptist, I always planned to go back to the Norfolk House. INT: How did you get into the program? RH: Mrs. Hester, the social worker; Mrs. Hester whom I worked with at the Shaw House. Rev. Hester was getting old and she was concerned about youth work in the church and she said Hunter why don’t you get Mike to come – 1951 they asked me if I could come part-time at $15 a week; minister to youth at the Twelfth Baptist Church. I had to raise monies to do anything with, a lot different than the Norfolk House. That was my part-time gig at Twelfth Baptist Church and they ran into a problem somewhere around the end of 1955 or 56. I think I had Chuck Cooper there in 1954.

That whole area of Madison Park was filled in land and all the big buildings around Madison Park that were over three stories high – here comes the historian par excellence – all the big buildings by the 40s began to have sinking problems. All the way over to Shawmut Avenue you found a lot of these buildings were being geared up and propped up and Twelfth Baptist was having foundational problems and eventually was condemned by the city. It was terrible. This almost destroyed Rev. Hester. He’s a guy who is now in his late 60s or something so I stayed with him during that crises. The big turmoil, the trustee, who’s to blame for their losing building, the trustee had a big war and they cut out but the loyal people stayed. I had a job so I stayed with him. I stayed with him through the crisis for free. I stayed

Rev Michael E. Haynes 40 Northeastern University Lower Roxbury Black History Project

as the assistant minister because Mrs. Hester and Rev. Hester were very good to me. I stayed with them through that period of time without salary. Then when he took sick in November of ’63 and Mrs. Hester didn’t want to reveal that he was terminally ill though I got an idea that he was terminally ill, she never admitted it and he died. I was going to recommend Simpson Turner from Brooklyn, New York, my friend as pastor but they said they wanted to talk with me and I had just been elected to the House of Representatives at that time. I always had another gig and I said you take me as a representative and that was the issue for those who opposed me that I was a dirty politician. A couple of people opposed me but I expected to be there a couple of years. INT: when were you officially appointed as the pastor? RH: of Twelfth? INT: Yes. RH: In 1964 I became interim; and in 1965 I became senior pastor. INT: just a couple of more questions, Rev.; I know I’m wearing you out. In WWII, if you had to talk about the impact of WWII on the black community, how would you describe it? RH: Awful, there was an exodus of black life out of this community - many of whom came back broken and angry including my older brother came back angry and bitter to America because they did not properly accept them. I saw a lot of guys who were in high school with me, the class of ’44 at English High. They never had an official reunion and it was decimated by WWII. A lot of those guys came back – some of those guys never got their lives together. I saw it as a tragedy for blacks but it certainly set the stage for black protests which eventually led us into what we saw in the 1960s.

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INT: Just one last question, if you promise to come back to fill in some more questions but [inaudible] the geographical movement from the Lower Roxbury up through over Mattapan, how would you describe that and [inaudible] RH: There was a lot of, I didn’t understand a lot of the things that were taking place until maybe I got into the legislature before I understood some of the things that the banks and the real estate people were doing, the red lining that was taking place; the whole urban renewal thing that just came and decimated big swaths of the community. I remember seeing Helen Davis cry. They owned a strip of beautiful houses on Warren Street, I remember seeing her cry with all this urban – my own mother, now that I look back and I get angry with myself when I realize that I let my mother get $5,000 for the house on Haskins Street but the shifting, John Shelburne who didn’t talk much, I wish I knew a lot of things that I learned later that I could have got from – he was one of the people from a family born and raised on the west end, on the other side of Beacon Hill, watching that whole migration out of Beacon Hill, Twelfth Baptist Church into the south end. Relatives of mine who lived in the south end, the kids some of my peers, walked away from their family homes because they didn’t sell them. I remember begging one of them don’t do this and they walked away from their homes so they could never buy again. They didn’t want to live in Natick or other places and they walked away from their family homes. So I watched all that shifting into Roxbury and now shifting into Mattapan. There’s no place else to go. We’re spread out all over the place. I tell people now when I ride through South Boston that there was a time when I wouldn’t do that and now we’re all over South Boston. We’re all over East Boston. We’re all over the eleven communities of Boson. I think there are real estate plans to try to control where we do go and Byron could probably speak better to that

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than I. I think there are still banks and real estate trying to determine what communities they are going to let so many live in as I see it. INT: [inaudible] Can you remember any of the protests, do you remember coming back and facing [inaudible] no black people --? RH: Woolworths. I’m sorry nobody got a hold of Charlie Lewis before he died. I think Charlie was nine. Charlie lived on Haskins Street for a while. I remember seeing him and his mother; he was carrying a flag because she was in the war mothers. Every march Charlie Lewis’ mother would be out there and his sister. I remember Charlie Lewis yelling at me for not going up to Woolworth’s Five and Ten on Washington Street. The guy who was the janitor of Dudley Station lived on Haskins Street; I think his name was Nobles. He used to take me and some other kids for rides on the elevator trains; he was the sweeper at Dudley Station. The first things that I remember that they held a meeting at Shaw House and they were going up to Woolworth’s Five and Ten, the only black at Timothy Smith which was our Filenes when I was a kid. Timothy Smith was as good as Filenes and the only black lady, she lives in Saugus and came from the family named Grays and I can see her now. She was the elevator operator at Timothy Smith’s. Nobody was working. The only guy at Clair’s worked on the liquor loader. He worked in the liquor sections and he’d load liquor onto the trucks but there was nobody working. There was a Martin’s Cut Rate store down by the corner of Williams and Washington Streets and none of these places had any black in it. So they started with Woolworth’s Five and Ten, Mrs. Case was out there, one of the spearheads and Charlie Lewis’s mother, one of the spearheads and the guys from NAACP – the Guscott’s, the Bynoe’s and all that force in there. Things started stirring and churning. The people in the Progressive Credit Union that were there -- A person who’s name I think is, I

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shouldn’t have forgotten, a father from St. Bartholomew’s Church, Father Hughes. I remember Father Hughes coming over into Roxbury. He was probably the most militant of the preachers in those early days. Father Hughes was out there on the cutting edge from St. Bartholomew’s Church. INT: I know I’ve kept you for an hour and one-half and I know it’s been a long time but I know Bynoe has at least one more question [inaudible] Well, thank you so much [laughing] RH: I’ve got my mike on yes.

END OF INTERVIEW +++

Rev Michael E. Haynes 44 Northeastern University Lower Roxbury Black History Project