Transcript of Interview with Steve Nelson Sarah Jane Shoenfeld July 12, 2017 Mapping Segregation in Washington, DC DC Oral History Collaborative

Biographical Information: Clyde Steve Nelson was born in 1960 in Washington, D.C. Soon after, his parents bought a house in Riggs Park during the period of white flight. Nelson's mother worked as a budget analyst for the Department of Navy and his father was a chauffeur for the Civil Service Commission. Nelson had two brothers, David and Mark, and a sister. As an adult, he worked as an electrician for D.C. Public Schools.

Description: In this interview, Steve Nelson discusses how his family saved money to purchase a house in Riggs Park during the period of white flight from the neighborhood. Nelson recalls his experiences in the D.C. Public School system, including LaSalle Elementary and Bell Vocational High School. Nelson also recounts a crime resulting in the death of his brother, and how the neighborhood continues to evolve.

SJS: This is Sarah Shoenfeld with Steve Nelson on July 12th, 2017 at his home at 335 Oneida Street NE. We're recording this interview for the DC Oral History Collaborative. Good morning Steve, and thank you so much for your participation today.

SN: Good morning.

SJS: Let me just start by—I know that you'd answered some of these questions in the form that we filled out but I want to get them on tape. Can you just start by stating your full name?

SN: My name is Clyde Steven Nelson.

SJS: Clyde Steven Nelson and that's S-T-E-V-E-N right middle name?

SN: Yeah.

SJS: You go by Steve Nelson?

SN: Yeah.

SJS: Your date of birth?

SN: November 2, 1960.

SJS: Where were you born?

SN: Washington.

SJS: Washington.

SN: Washington DC.

SJS: You were just about to tell me something just before I turned on the tape.

SN: You was, uh, for our previous meeting, you was talking about the schools and where you went to school versus where the majority of the blacks went to school. I remember, I went to Bell Vocational High School—the old Bell—and I took electrical wiring there. Uh, to illustrate the condition of the building—I later started working for DC schools as an electrician repairing them, but this is one story.

When I was in Bell the cafeteria was located in the basement and it was just two rooms on the side, on each side of a hallway. And on rainy days, the rain—there was three floors to the school plus the basement, but the basement actually make it four, four levels. The rain would leak in from the roofs, it come all the way down through the building between the bricks and all and be dripping on us sitting in the cafeteria, on the tables, on the serving trays and things of that nature. So therefore, when I later became an employee of DC schools, whenever there was a problem we jumped on it right away to try to, you know, better the building so that the kids coming up behind us wouldn't have to experience the same things that I had. Whereas when we went west of the Park [Rock Creek Park], if a light bulb blew out, they had three crews, three teams up there to fix it in five minutes, you know? You asked for a little bit of history.

SJS: Yeah. How did that play out? How did some mechanical difficulty happening in a school west of the Park receive higher priority than a leak at Bell?

SN: Your roster, the economic situation of the area. Actually, to be honest with you, that expression the squeaky wheel gets the grease? Well I couldn't contribute all of it to race, but that did play a large part of it. Also, I think that people west of the Park had more knowledge, they knew who to call, they knew which buttons to press, where to apply pressure. Whereas people in your lower income areas or more densely black areas, they left it up to somebody else to do, they'll take care of that, whatever. It's just a matter of who has more interest, more concern, who's more outraged at the situation, that's what gets things done.

SJS: When you were there at Bell as a student or then later on when you were working for the schools, was there anybody that expressed that? That sense of unfairness or outrage about the condition of the school?

SN: Actually, I worked at Plant Maintenance—we were located in Penn Center at the time— since then been disbanded, they’re all contracted out now. I think for the most part all of the—Well, I'm not going to say all because you did have some upper crust African Americans, you know, who were like our present president. They were there to feather their own nest—but you did have a lot of guys in supervisory positions and who doled out the money for certain repairs. They were just as interested and as outraged as a lot of us mechanics were as well. Say for instance, your handicapped schools, Sharpe Health or Mamie Dee Lee, whenever—well I don’t work for the schools no more so I can say this—whenever they had a work order, we could be on our way to school west of the

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Park. But if one of those schools had a work order, emergency or no, we took care of that because those are handicapped kids, and what was breaking down there wasn’t due to some kid throwing a temper tantrum and busting something. These were fair wear and tear type of situations. So, we tended—all of the mechanics down, I don't care what trade you were in—they tend to look out for those particular schools with more urgency than anyone else, any other building.

SJS: Well, that's good to hear. My daughter is developmentally disabled so I'm familiar with those schools. And especially Mamie D. Lee, because I was very close to that one, or what was Mamie D. Lee.

SN: They built a brand new one.

SJS: Yeah, but it's not Mamie D. Lee anymore.

SN: It isn't?

SJS: No, there's a couple other charter schools and a social service agency in there. I think they consolidated all the schools for the special needs and moved them somewhere else.

I want to go back to the beginning now, and then if you want to talk about this more when we get to it in the chronology, that's great. Can you tell me where your parents are from?

SN: My father is from Crest Hill, Virginia, it’s up there in Fauquier County, up there near The Plains and Warrenton and all that. My mom is from—she was born here in DC but her family is from Roanoke, Virginia—Lynchburg or Roanoke, Virginia one of those places down there. I can't remember the exact name. It's a mountainous town. My grandfather was a carpenter and back in those days in that rural of an area, you had to be—I mean a black mechanic, tradesman, trying to get a job to feed his kids was—if you didn't farm or whatever, that was the only work they had and he had a craft. So he moved here to DC, he was a carpenter for the Department of Treasury.

SJS: Oh ok, this was your mom's dad?

SN: Yeah. My mother later on she went to school at, she graduated from Cardozo and she married my dad when she was eighteen. She went back to night school to take accounting and she became a budget analyst for the Department of Navy. My father, since he had went on to work for the Civil Service Commission, he worked directly with whichever director was, Republican, Democrat whoever was in office. A Republican director or a Democratic director, didn't make any difference, he worked with either one of them. And he worked there until he retired. What else?

SJS: What did he do for the Civil Service Commission?

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SN: He was a chauffeur, wherever the director went or wanted to go he took him. Sometimes it meant if the director had a nighttime thing where he was going to take his wife wherever to, out on the town, he took the government car (laughs), because it was a nice Caddy—It was a Cadillac, Lincoln or whatever, and, you know, I guess it was nice working for that particular time.

SJS: Although, it sounds like he might not have had a lot of control over his hours.

SN: No no no, and another thing, he and the other jobbers would joke about, that they used to train—see this is back in the Cold War era—and they used to train, they had scenarios where they had so many minutes, Russia dropping a bomb. They had so much time to get their director or whoever in the car and get them—they had a place up in Shenandoah Valley, an underground place for a lot of government officials. And you were supposed to go get whoever you worked for, or drove for, and take them to this place. He would say that all of the drivers would joke all the time and says, "I don't know about my man but if he wants me to take him to the bunker, we're going to stop by my house and pick up my family too.” (laughs) He says that they all would joke and say, "What difference does it make if I'm alive in the bunker and I know my family is out here burning away." He said no, they couldn't do that, they joked about it a lot but I'm quite sure it gave them a lot to think about at the time knowing that you only had minutes to—

SJS: So did your dad actually practice that at all?

SN: It was a drill, like you had fire drills in schools?

SJS: Yeah.

SN: They would actually be sitting around the building and dang ding ding, alarms would go off and you got so much time, you get your official and head toward—and actually get in the car and head toward the bunker.

SJS: Would they drive all the way out there?

SN: No, they wouldn't drive all the way there, they would just get them together and start, and they would do the time thing from there. I guess at that point they would kind of calculate as to, based on the time and based on the severity of the panicking or whatever, where would the traffic start bottle necking. I mean they would, I guess run the scenarios, the different routes to take. But he didn't go into great detail as far as all that was concerned but he did tell us about the drills that they would have. Again they was saying each time they would have a drill and they would get a different mapping where to go, they were all were trying to figure how to get their families also involved, pack all of us in the car.

SJS: Of course.

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SN: I'm quite sure that if it actually came down to it, who knows how much time you would have had in a situation like that, what you would have actually done in a situation like that, I don't know. But that would be kind of hard, I think, for a man of my father's character to get his boss to a safe place and leave his family. I don't know if I could do that, put it like that. I couldn't leave my family just to get this man. Hey, that was the times we were living in at that point.

SJS: And where was the Civil Service Commission located?

SN: At the time I want to say 1900 E Street, I went down and worked with him once or twice when I was a kid. I believe it was 1900 E Street. It's since then been renamed Office of Personnel Management. I don't know where they are located now but in those days it was Civil Service Commission and I think it was 1900 E Street.

SJS: Can you say your dad's name just so we have it on tape, I know that you wrote it for me.

SN: Clyde W. Nelson.

SJS: Clyde W. Nelson. Approximately what years did he work for the Civil Service Commission as a chauffeur?

SN: I can't help you on that, I think he retired in—I think he retired in ‘83, I want to say ‘83 but I'm not sure. But he worked there for, I think it was thirty-five years. When he first come to DC he drove a taxi and he worked as a mechanic on automobiles until he got into the Civil Service Commission. But I can't remember how many years he worked for Civil Wervice. I want to say thirty-five, but I can't remember.

SJS: Do you know how he got that job?

SN: No, I have no idea.

SJS: Can you say your mother's name?

SN: Maddy R. Nelson.

SJS: Maddy R. Nelson?

SN: Yes.

SJS: When did she come to DC?

SN: No, I think she was born here.

SJS: Oh, you said she was born in DC, you said her parents were from Virginia.

SN: Her parents, yeah.

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SJS: Do you know where she grew up in DC?

SN: Florida Avenue, Ninth and Florida Avenue, 962 Florida Avenue NW, yes that's what I think it is, or Northeast, I don't know. Right down there where Sherman ends and Ninth Street begins.

SJS: That's Northwest, 962 Florida Avenue.

SN: A block down from Cardozo High School.

SJS: Did her parents own a house there or did they rent, do you know?

SN: Yeah.

SJS: They owned? Okay.

SN: My grandmother hit the street number and bought the house (laughs).

SJS: What's that? She hit the numbers?

SN: Street number.

SJS: Oh she hit that street number?

SN: Yeah. So she was able to get—

SJS: And that's how she chose the house?

SN: That's how they got the house, yeah.

SJS: Your mother, you said, worked for—sorry, could you just go over her history? She went to Cardozo?

SN: She went through all of her school, pre-education, then she graduated from Cardozo Senior High School. Then she went back to school at night to take up accounting—

SJS: Right, okay.

SN: —after she and my father got married.

SJS: How did she meet your father?

SN: Her sister was dating one of my father's best friends from up Crest Hill, Virginia. My father had been married before and when he went off to war and came back, he went to France and when he came back he and his first wife, they went their separate ways. At the time his best friend was dating my mother's sister and my mother's parents were a little strict and they said, "Well, if you want to keep going out with this guy and you're

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staying out later and later, you need to have someone with you." And so he finally enlisted my aunt to get one of her sisters to go out with my father. He needed a friend to take one of his girlfriend’s sisters out, and that's how my mother and father met, and they started dating, consequently got married.

SJS: When did they get married? Approximately.

SN: I want to say it had to be back in the—I don't know, I want to say 1950. No, between 1951 and 1952.

SJS: And where were they living at that time or where did they live after they married?

SN: At that particular time you had apartment buildings that had janitor quarters whereas the janitor or whoever did maintenance on the building, they gave them a free apartment and they were living on Kansas Avenue at janitor quarters. My father took care of an eight-unit apartment building, and he worked civil service during the day, came home and would do whatever repairs that were needed, he took care of them before he was able to go to sleep. That's what prompted my mom to go back to night school, because she got tired of him coming home from a long day's work expecting him to spend time with her, and then my brother, oldest brother. And the phone was ringing every five minutes. Somebody wanted him to come unstop the toilet or whatever, so that's what prompted her to go back to night school and take up accounting so that she could get into the government and they could leave the janitor quarters and go buy their own home.

SJS: The eight unit building that they lived in on Kansas Avenue, do you know who the occupants were?

SN: They were all white.

SJS: They were all white? Okay.

SN: Yeah.

SJS: Do you know if there were any other black families that lived around there?

SN: If they were, they were in the same situation, janitor quarters. You see back in those times if there was a white person living in the apartment building—If you were black they didn't want you living in an apartment next door, they didn't want you living in a house next door, house across the street. Back in those times if you were black you were there to serve. There had to be a line of where your life stopped and theirs began. It wasn't on the same, you know, it wasn't a thing where a black person would come out of apartment 1A and a white person will come out of 1B and they were coming out going to work at the same time, no, no, no. If you lived in that building you had to be in janitor quarters and they were always in the basement right next to the boiler room, or the trash room.

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SJS: So how long did they live there in that building?

SN: I believe they stayed there until my mom got her job with Navy because back in those days my dad used to always talk about how his take home pay every two weeks was ninety dollars, after taxes and this, that and the other, and so—I mean but then again things were a lot cheaper back then—and so with his salary and her, combined salaries and then he drove taxis at night. Once they got the house, then he would drive taxis at night, because that’s the type of car he had. And that's how they—

SJS: That's how they moved here?

SN: Yeah.

SJS: Just before we get to that, do you know what the address was on Kansas Avenue?

SN: No.

SJS: Or the cross street? I live right up off Kansas Avenue.

SN: I want to say—I think it's Kansas and Taylor. You know where, okay you got Georgia Avenue, then you get Kansas, and you get Taylor's a cross street, and then you go down and there's another cross street because there's a little church.

SJS: Upshur, maybe, or—

SN: There's a little church down there on it, but I think it's, I want to say somewhere near Kansas and Taylor I believe. I can't be one hundred percent certain but it's somewhere in that neighborhood there.

SJS: Then what year did they move to this house?

SN: 1960.

SJS: 1960.

SN: I was six months old.

SJS: And how old was your brother?

SN: My oldest brother?

SJS: Yeah.

SN: He was born in ’52, so in 1960 he was eight years old.

SJS: What was his name?

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SN: Mark. Actually by then I had my brother and my sister. She was—I forget how many years older than—I think he was two years older than her. Yeah, I think she was born in ‘54, I think, yeah.

SJS: What's her name?

SN: Her name is Janet Marlene Nelson.

SJS: Janet Marlene Nelson?

SN: Yes.

SJS: So it was your parents, your brother, your sister and you that moved here to Oneida Street in 1960?

SN: Yes.

SJS: And you were six months old?

SN: Yes.

SJS: Do you know how they happened to move here?

SN: Again, my mom she worked for main, she worked for main Navy, and one day she was coming in the building, and like a lot of government buildings they had bulletin boards. And she saw where this house, houses were for sale and she wanted a house. At the time they were still in the janitor quarters and she wanted to get out of these janitor quarters. So she was moving her plan forward. She went to school, got her education in night school and then she got the job. So then the next step was to get the house to get out of these janitor quarters. And she saw the address of this house here and the guy that owned it noticed her looking at it. And he worked at Navy, and he was Jewish, and he came up to her and said that, "Yeah, that's a nice house, yeah I own that house." He says, "You need to come by and look at it."

So at the time he wanted thirteen thousand, thirteen five, I can't remember what it was exactly. She said, "Oh, I'm just looking, that'd be nice, but I think that's a little bit too much." So he came down five hundred. And then the next day—she stopped looking at it after that but he would kept coming up to her office—dropped it another five hundred just because he wanted to get rid of this house. And so then she became a little curious as to what's wrong? Why are you trying to unload this house? Why are you— want to get rid of this house? After a while he kept at it, he wouldn't give her no peace and finally he came down to twelve thousand, twelve thousand and five, and she was able to get my dad to come out here and look at it.

And when they got here they put two and two together. There was a man that lived across the street. He was black. He owned a hardware store, shop was about three blocks away, which enabled him to buy a house because this whole street, whole

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community was Jewish. And when he bought that house, the people across the street from him, right next door to us, didn't want to live across the street from a black. So they put their house up for sale. But the only people who had ready money to buy houses would not want to buy a house next door or across the street from blacks. So he went the next best thing, he put his house up for rent, which prompted our neighbor who eventually moved in there to rent the house and they were black.

Then the guy that owned the house that my mother then bought says, "Oh no, I'm living next door and across the street." That's what prompted him to put this house up for sale. And so forth. And that's why he was dropping the price increments of five hundred dollars, because he wanted to get rid of this house. Eventually he came all the way down to eleven thousand dollars from thirteen five. So my dad, he went on and bought, he went on and bit. Soon as they bought this house, the “for sale” signs was going up three at a time all up and down the street. My sister would tell me that she was asking, "What's wrong? Why is everybody moving?"

She says not one house goes up and then it sells, and another one. Three, four houses and you would ride down, it got to one point where you would ride down the street and like they were like 10 to 15 houses, all of them had “for sale” signs on them. But, at the time, again, the only people that they would—their target audience could only be blacks. Because no whites, no Jews, just people wanting to move. They desegregated the schools; that means that their kids had to go to school with blacks and that was a no no. They didn't want to live beside them, they didn’t want their kids going to school with them, and so forth. So, slowly but surely, one by one, two by two, Riggs Park went from a Jewish community to an African American community.

SJS: Pretty quickly it sounds like.

SN: Yeah, houses nowadays that they're selling around here for half a million dollars were back then sold—the house next door to me, the man came down to $7,500 to try to get him to buy that house. Seven thousand dollars.

SJS: Wow.

SN: That's how drastic his situation was to get rid of it.

SJS: Where were all these people moving? Do you know?

SN: I would imagine up west of the Park: Reno Road, Chevy Chase, Friendship Heights. As my father—again, actually he was a taxi driver and I actually hear him joke about that, about at night time his fares, or in the evening, weekends, that they would come to town and do their little drinking and partying and get togethers and all that. And that the majority of all of his white clientele and Jewish clientele, the ones who took a taxi, he was taking them to Friendship Heights, Chevy Chase.

SJS: I wonder, given what they were selling their houses here for, if the prices were comparable. That's what I'm wondering, like, how did they afford to buy over there?

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SN: Well, again, this is just my opinion, but I think it falls back on economics. Number one, from the start, from the word go, they had better education, better materials, so they were able to learn a little bit more, and then they had more information. Information is power, they stuck together. If they would migrate to a certain area of town, and they would keep the prices so that, just enough to keep—the element that they were trying to escape from [from] be[ing] near them—and still comfortable for them to afford to live there and be able to raise their family. As now, I look at this neighborhood now, and the apartment complexes are going up two at a time. And the prices that they're charging for a lot of these efficiencies down here at this new complex, they’re $1,800.

SJS: I know I just saw that in the Post—

SN: And you pay your own utilities!

SJS: Art Place at Fort Totten?

SN: Yeah!

SJS: Fourteen hundred something for a studio.

SN: And you pay your own utilities. Which, I mean, I don't mean to speak ill of anyone—

SJS: It's okay.

SN: But, I mean Steve Harvey said it, Bill Cosby said it, I mean everyone wants a nice place to live, they want a better place for their family and their kids than they came from. So you try to rise above any squalor or crime, whatever. But, if you keep things on a fair or even keel, so to speak, so that anyone can move in beside you, just because you have that attitude about your life and your family doesn't mean that your neighbor is going to have that attitude. I mean, they might not mind walking through trash debris, rodents, insects and all that. It might be fun for them, but for you, it's detestable so therefore you want to try and keep people of that element and caliber away from you.

I mean, I know I wouldn't want to live next door to someone who throws the trash—I don't know, I don't know how to put it, again I don't mean to put anyone down, you know, everyone has a right to live how they want, but if a certain person has a type of standard that they wish to go by, I don't think that they should impose that on other people. I mean if I'm spending all this money on my home and you don't care about yours, no matter what I do to my home, because you don't take care of yours, mine is not going to be worth anything or is not going to look like anything. If I can't open my windows without smelling whatever you got going on in your yard or house, I mean that's no way to live.

SJS: But I mean that wasn't the case with the people that were moving out from this neighborhood. Because this is a nice neighborhood.

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SN: No, no, they just didn't want to live next door. Because for the most part the blacks who did come here, I mean they were, to them, this was stepping up, and upward move, and they had pride in their surroundings. The fact that their kids were going to a nice school at the time because they would just—like I said, desegregation came in so that the schools were still pretty much in very good condition; materials, the books and everything, teachers and all. Back then, I know when I came up, the teachers and all, they cared. The teacher could smack your hand if you got out of line. Now the teacher talks loudly enough to a kid, you're looking at charges. Then now look what you got, look at the school. But anyway, yeah, they just didn't want to live around blacks at that time. But the blacks that did move here had a sense of pride about themselves. It wasn't as it is now, it wasn't.

SJS: When you say it wasn't as it is now you're not talking about this neighborhood, are you? Or are you?

SN: Well, I'll put it like this. The elementary school that I went to now has—an elementary school, kindergarten through six, has a metal detector that the kids have to walk through.

SJS: Is it [Jessie] LaSalle [Elementary School]?

SN: LaSalle has a metal detector that you have to walk through checking for guns, knives and weapons.

SJS: Do you know if that is in response to weapons actually being brought into the school?

SN: I mean I'll put it like this. If you got a choice as a school administrator you have a choice of buying X amount of new books for your students to learn from or a metal detector that detects guns and x-ray machines that x-ray their backpacks. If you were a true administrator, which would you buy? I mean, you would put your money–working on a budget, as they probably are—I would think that they would want to concentrate their finances or their funds on educational material because I'm quite sure they have the superintendent to answer to as far as the overall grades, the test scores of the pupils of their school that they're charged with.

So now, having their kids walk through a $10,000 metal detector is not going to make them smart versus brand new books. If they felt the need or the importance to buy metal detectors instead of new books, there's got to be a good reason there for that, a criminal reason for that. They're worried about what's coming into the school.

SJS: So you think that's a decision of the administrators at the school and not the city?

SN: I don't know if it's solely on the principals, I think it is nowadays. Now with these charter schools and principals being in charge of their own budget, I think yeah. Because first and foremost you want to make sure that your kids and your employees are safe. Actually no, LaSalle now—they closed [Bertie] Backus [Junior High School] down so now they've introduced a lot of the junior high school kids down there. I think Lasalle goes

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now up to the eighth grade. So when you got kids coming into schools with guns to prove that they're bad or to prove that they're cool or whatever, I don't know what the reason is because in my day that would have been—you used your hands to defend yourself, to make a point.

But anyway, if you have an administrator who's worried about a kid getting mad and pulling out a gun because a teacher calls him out for not doing his work or disciplines him verbally and he pulls a gun out and starts shooting. I think [unintelligible] to worry about that, yeah, it would be necessary to put in metal detectors, you know, because if the smartest kid in the world is sitting there, it's useless if someone pulls a gun out and shoots him in five minutes time over something as simple as the teacher getting on him for not doing his homework.

SJS: Tell me about your time at LaSalle.

SN: Totally different. Totally different.

SJS: First of all, when did you go there? I mean I have it on your biography sheet so if you don't remember, it's okay, I just thought I would get it on tape before you start.

SN: Born in ‘60, that would be ‘66, ‘67. No, actually by my birthday in November, I was not old enough to start school in September so I had to wait a couple of months. I was there like ‘67, ’68, when I came out of there [unintelligible]. Back in my day, I'll put it like this, I'll say with me, I had a crush on my third grade teacher and I was always asking my mother to buy her handkerchiefs and things and she was just the nicest lady—I mean, that's what I would do but we did our work, if we were out of line, we got punished. There was much more respect for authority. I mean to be obnoxious and just total disrespect, that wasn't the case. I was very lucky and fortunate to have both my parents. Up until the day my dad died they stayed together. So we were governed by rules and regulations and, you know, totally different atmosphere.

SJS: Who was your third grade teacher? Do you remember her name?

SN: Ms. Lewis.

SJS: Ms. Lewis.

SN: Chubby little lady. She was the best. When I graduated to fourth grade I remember first day back at school I went ahead to report to her classroom. She says, "No you have to go, you graduated." I threw a fit and ran home. I didn't want to go school, if I couldn't be in Ms. Lewis' class I don't want to go to school. Then there was another teacher who became the principal that I kind of liked. I mean I don't know a lot of kids liked their teachers and would bring them—corny as it may sound, we'd bring them apples, do things. Go past their room, wash the chalkboards and all that after school. Nowadays—

Of course, we knew it wasn't going to go anywhere but it's just the fact that we liked them. I think until the day she retired the principal of LaSalle kept my picture on her

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desk because I used to leave Ms. Lewis' room in the evening and I go down to the principal's office. I'm in the fourth grade, fifth grade. I'd hang around with her, carry her stuff to her car when she's ready to leave.

SJS: Who was the principal?

SN: Her name was Ms. Posie [Posey?]. Elderly lady, silver hair, wore glasses on the tip of her nose. But she was just as nice and sweet as she had to be.

SJS: What was the racial makeup of LaSalle when you went there?

SN: All black.

SJS: All black. So even though they were a bunch of Jewish families living in the neighborhood still—

SN: If they had any kids they had already sensed a [unintelligible] system and had different addresses for their—the kids weren't going to LaSalle. LaSalle was all black when I was there, when I got to go there.

SJS: What about the teachers and the administrators?

SN: You had a few all white teachers in there, yeah you had a few white, but you could tell that the longer that they stayed—the ones that were there and stayed there, you could tell that they were about their profession. I'm quite sure that when my brother and sister, when we first moved here, I'm quite sure that all the teachers were white, but by the time I came along and went there, they were all black.

SJS: You had mentioned you went to Truesdell [Elementary School] before that, right? Before LaSalle.

SN: Yeah.

SJS: Why did you go to Truesdell first and then switch over?

SN: My grandmother, my mother's mother, they had moved from 962 Florida Avenue to 817 Ingraham. That's right across the street from Truesdell. My grandmother, she worked nights as a custodian, for one of these government buildings, I can't remember which one. When I got out of school she would watch me until my father came back and picked me up. So therefore, when I started school—well, she watched me during the day—then when I was old enough to go to school, well me and my younger brother, I went to Truesdell because then when I got—in kindergarten when you got out of school, kindergarten was half a day then. And I’d come across the street, all I do is walk across the street and she will watch me until my dad get there, until I got old enough to come to LaSalle, which is third grade with Ms. Lewis.

SJS: How did your grandmother happen to buy—did she own the house at 817 Ingraham?

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SN: Yeah, sold the house on Florida Avenue.

SJS: Okay, because wasn't that a white neighborhood also?

SN: Ingraham? Evidently not, because, well I’ll put it like this. Once they desegregated the schools in DC, DC schools, if the whites or Jews or whatever that were in those neighborhoods couldn't go as far west of the park as they may have wanted to, they went totally out the city into Maryland where they could be guaranteed that their kids would be around nothing but whites or whatever. Or if there was a black there, he was a fly in the buttermilk, so to speak. But by the time they moved, I'm quite sure, since they were able to move in, a lot of the whites and Jews or whatever had already moved out because again like I said, number one, they didn't want to live beside you. Number two, they didn't want their kids sitting beside them in the classroom.

SJS: When did your grandma or was it both of them? Your grandparents buy the house?

SN: Bought Ingraham? I couldn't tell you. I was six months old, no I was six months old when we moved here.

SJS: When you moved here.

SN: So, what you have to be to start school, five years old?

SJS: Yeah, kindergarten is five years old.

SN: I would say it had to be, I'm guessing now, between ‘62 and ‘65.

SJS: After Lasalle you went to Backus and then to Coolidge.

SN: Then to Bell.

SJS: Then to Bell that's right, you only very briefly went to Coolidge, half of tenth grade?

SN: Yeah.

SJS: Right, any particular memories about Backus or Coolidge or Bell that you want to share? Did you have any teachers there that are especially memorable, or experiences?

SN: My English teacher in Bell, Mr. Bonsavage, he used to sit back and—he was a white guy—and he would tell us about how the transformation of—Bell was located 14th and Hyatt Street. I think it's Northwest, downtown. He was telling us how the neighborhood there had changed, because he lived right around the corner. He'd say how he and his wife would walk to the Tivoli Theater at 14th, Park Road, catch a movie. You could walk the streets all hours of the night and as time went on, more blacks moved to the neighborhood and crime escalated and things of that nature. He said that they’d have to be in the house before—well his wife didn't feel safe being on the streets after the sun went down for whatever reason.

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So I would sit there and listen to him a lot, listening to his version of the transformation of the neighborhood. But I wouldn't begin to try to explain why, other than the obvious reasons, inequality, why blacks did the things that they did, or why they felt they had to do what they did just to survive. Because basically that's what it came down to, just surviving. You didn't have an even playing field as far as getting jobs. You either had to know somebody or they had to have a heck of a demand, a heck of a shortage, or whatever laws the current presidential administration could put into effect. Like when Kennedy was in there, he evened the playing field, so to speak. I believe a lot of jobs and a lot of upward mobility came with the Kennedys. I don't know, but for the most part I feel a lot of it is just survival, doing what they had to survive, wanting more for their kids and their family.

SJS: Do you recall, when you were at Bell, it seems to me by then this would have been after 1968 [phone rings], let me pause this. [Interview resumes.] Alright, I'm thinking by the time you went to Bell it had been after 1968 when a lot of that area was destroyed, right? Along Fourteenth Street there?

SN: Yeah, the riots took their toll on that area real bad. By the time I went to Bell it was, I'm talking the ‘70s now, ‘75, yeah ‘75.

SJS: This teacher that you were telling me about, he was still living in the area?

SN: Yeah, he walked to work every morning, his wife had passed, but yeah, he was still there in the morning.

SJS: Were there any other white teachers at Bell that you recall at that time?

SN: No, I think Mr. Bonsavage was the only white teacher there at that time, was left. Yeah, he was the only one left. I think it was because, I guess number one, he was true to his profession. Then once times had changed, then he felt like he and his wife—I don't know, he used to talk about how he and his wife loved that area and I guess that was his way of holding onto his memories, I don't know, whatever, a job at the same time, usefulness. He taught English. For the most part those are like show classes, you just show up to get a grade, he didn't dare cross a student or make a student mad. I mean if you wanted to learn, if you showed—if you were interested in learning, I mean out of a classroom of maybe like twenty kids, it'd be like five chairs around his desk. I was in one of them.

SJS: You were in one of them?

SN: Yeah, I bought him his coffee and doughnut every morning. Kind of greased the tracks for a good grade (laughs). But no, actually, he was a nice guy. If you sat there and you talk with him and when you got people who are kicking you around, just coming out their mouth at you with all kind of nasty stuff, when you sit there and you talk with somebody and you're listening to them for a while, you kind of get a sense about people whether or not they’r true, whether they're BSing you or whatever. And he, Mr. Bonsavage, he was a good guy.

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Again, like I said if you were truly interested in getting your learning, he had about five, six chairs around his desk. The rest of the guys were talking or playing catch or whatever or out in the hall, wouldn't come to class. A lot of days, especially rainy days, the class would be empty with the exception for us four or five. He had made a statement one day how it was sad but he was kind of glad that the rest of them didn't come in because—excuse me—he didn't have to talk over them to teach us what we were trying to learn, but such as it was.

SJS: How do you spell his name? Mr. Bonsavage.

SN: B-O-N-S-A-V-A-G-E. I may be wrong but yeah, he was the English teacher down at Bell Vocational High School.

SJS: So it sounds like—when you described LaSalle, like there was still this kind of high respect for teachers and real high level of discipline. But by the time—of course there's going to be a difference between elementary and high school anyway—but do you think there had been some kind of shift in the whole, in the—

SN: Well my oldest brother went to Rabaut, which was the zoned junior high, then he went to Coolidge. When he came through that, there was still a lot of respect and value placed on education because a lot of his peers that came through, they went onto college like it was the natural thing to do. I just remembered Coolidge used to have a thing, they were so in tune with their education that if you had petty disagreements with somebody, you didn't start to fight in the class.

Number one, because you'd be disciplined for it, no one wanted their parents to have to come even at my brother's age, wanted their parents to come to the school because they—look, they're sweating these bills and these mortgages to provide a decent place for you to go to school. Kids kind of still respected their parents and the law of the land because a lot of them went onto college and did whatever, did great things. Superintendent for PG [Prince George’s] County Schools used to live right down the street.

SJS: Oh really?

SN: Yeah.

SJS: Who's that?

SN: Last name was Burnett [Howard Burnett?]

SJS: Burnett?

SN: Yeah. I should remember, it'll come to me once I leave but I don't know if he's still the superintendent now, but he went on to be the superintendent for Prince George's County Schools, he moved on. A lot of people in this neighborhood of my brother's age, college was just the way of life if your parents could afford it. But when I came along, it

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was kind iffy, like with me, I started at Montgomery College but then I was working part time in the government. And when you look at overtime coming, increases in pay, upward mobility and I'm around mechanics, I'm around people working with my hands, which is something I liked to do all along, my grades started sliding.

I started making more hours, more money, more promotions. My grades started sliding so finally, much to my parents dislike, I quit school before my grades totally tanked and started working full time. Which I don't really regret it because I was able to learn not only with the books and my shop teacher at Bell taught me. You know you're around all of the trades, all of the mechanics and you're picking up bits of information. I like to work with my hands. That was as good, that was like college to me as well.

SJS: Bell, do you feel like Bell prepared you pretty well for that?

SN: Oh yeah.

SJS: What was your focus of study about?

SN: Electrical wiring.

SJS: Electrical wiring, okay, and when did you then quit Montgomery College and start working for the city full time?

SN: 1980.

SJS: You worked specifically for the schools as an electrician?

SN: Yes, DC schools. Actually I started out as a custodian, I worked as a custodian for two years and every time something in my particular building would break down I was on it. If they sent a repair crew from Plant Maintenance, where I eventually ended up, out there to fix it, I was right there. Supervisor would always come—if they couldn't find me in my designated area, all they had to do is go to wherever the repair was being done, and that's where I'd be. And so he chewed me out but I didn't care, write me up if you want—I don't care. This is with my folks.

SJS: What building?

SN: I was at John Burroughs Elementary School, Eighteenth and Monroe, that's where I started.

SJS: And then, what, were you were promoted or, how did you then become an electrician for the school system at large?

SN: There was another elementary school, Langdon, Langdon Elementary School it was shorthanded. They detailed me up there for 190 days. I didn't like that because Langdon was open area school, it's not like John Burroughs, you had classroom. You had an open area. I just didn't like it, I didn't like the supervisor. The supervisor up there was a short,

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little guy and I guess he was angry because of his height, didn't nobody take him seriously. He just had that look about him. If he gave you an order, you’d look at him and laugh, get out of here. I think that kind of PO'ed him so he felt that he could write you up and get back at you that way. One day I just got tired of him ragging on me.

I said, "Look man, I'm doing my job and that's all I'm here to do. I'm not here to kiss your butt, I'm not here to “yes sir” you. If you're looking for that you might as well go downstairs and start writing or make a phone call and get rid of me. But he needed personnel, he can't be on the phone crying one day and then the next day trying to get me out of there. So he set his sights on breaking me and, in [the] open area, it was carpeted, and one day he came up to me and he said something to me and I had enough. I said, "Look man get out of my face, leave me alone." I turned and walked away from him, so then he got real mad and he came up behind me and he pulled this hawkbill knife out of his pocket. And he held it like two inches from my nose and he said, "You see this right here? He reached down and he cut up like a loose thread of carpet. He said this is what I use to cut carpet with."

He was holding it real close to my nose, in other words he was telling me two things at the same time, he uses this to cut carpet and he uses this to—I was pretty good with a buck knife and I never carried it but the next day I had it, I purposely did something to make him come and rag me out. He got about two feet from me and I pulled mine out my pocket real fast and I said, "You see this right here? I use this to cut up niggers—ah, excuse me—I use this to cut up people who get in my face." I must have put the fear of God in him, because fifteen minutes later there was two DC school security guards there, there was three Metropolitan Police Department, the police there. The area manager was there, the head engineer was there. I hear all these walkie talkies and I'm in the bathroom.

I hear all these walkie talkies and I go out there and they ask me did I have a knife? I said, "Yeah, I was told to bring the knife to cut the carpet strings." All the other custodians, "Yeah that's right, I got one too." They asked me, "Did you threaten him?" I says, "By no means no." I said, "Come on man threaten him? I don't want to lose my job." (laughs) Everybody knew what type of person he was, they knew of his character. The area manager was looking at me like this. He was like, "Yeah Clyde, I got you, you didn't want to come here. Okay, now I got to move you."

I'm looking at him and he's saying all this with his eyes. And I'm pretty much reading him then I start smiling. (laughs) And from then, I moved down to—that's what got me my opening in Penn Center. He didn't have anywhere for me to go, so he took me into his office as an area repairman and his office was on the other side of the building from Plant Maintenance. On my lunch breaks, on my regular breaks, if we would have a lull time around the office, I was over there, talking to, schmoozing up to anybody with any type of authority: pull me in here! And eventually, that's how I got in.

SJS: So then you were an electrician for whatever—

SN: I was an assistant, I was an apprentice at first, and studied and finally moved up, got promoted into electrician. Again, I had some good guys, one that I still talk with until this Page 19 of 37

day. My foreman, bless his soul, he's still alive. And my [unintelligible] electrician, he's still alive and he's still in business, he's almost 70 years old. Every time I have a question or got stomped I call him up and he talked me through it over the phone. Nowadays you can't buy that kind of help from nobody. It was a different time.

SJS: What's his name?

SN: Clayton Brooks, Brooks Electrical Contractors & Associates. I'm an associate.

SJS: Do you do any electrical work currently, or outside of your job with the school system?

SN: Oh at the time, oh yeah, I had side work coming up, that was another—See my dad was the one that got me interested in the trade because, like again, my first year at Coolidge, I was really messing up big time. I don't know how, but four months into the school year he got me pulled from Coolidge and he got me placed in Bell. How he did that in the middle of the year I'll never know. Because nine times out of ten they make you wait until the beginning of the next year. He got me out of Coolidge and got me into Bell. That's how I picked up electrical wiring. Of all the trades that were there, I picked electrical wiring.

Like I said I had plenty of side work, being in the school system you're always running into teachers, it was a bank of extra work because I mean there was always somebody that needed something done. I mean I'd get off at four, run to a side job, wouldn't get home until eleven thirty, twelve o'clock at night because I'm working. Government check goes straight in the bank, you lived off of your side work. It was just something else I learned from my dad. His government check went in the bank, he lived off his pocket money was from the cab. It was different times, just different times. Nowadays I'm afraid to walk the streets sometime and I've lived in this neighborhood, again, since I was six months old.

SJS: You're afraid to walk the streets in this neighborhood?

SN: Yeah.

SJS: Why?

SN: I'm talking about like one or two o'clock in the morning, if I need a pack of cigarettes or something, walk down—oh no.

SJS: Who are you liable to run into?

SN: I mean any young teenager out here looking for a wreck. I don't know, bang! It's easy just to squeeze off, I mean, eighteen year old boy got shot in the back of the head at nine o'clock at night right across street from the rec. Shootings all the time, in one weekend I think there were like four shootings. I mean all time, got the window open and—you hear this all night and sometimes there's an exchange that goes on for two or three minutes. Five minutes later then you hear sirens coming. I'm almost sixty years old

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too, that's another thing. There's no fight in me, to get shot or try to get robbed for the price of a pack of cigarettes walking down the—no, at twelve o'clock at night.

SJS: You've lived here for a long time in this neighborhood. Was there any period when there was a particular crime wave or feeling of that it was unsafe, like more so than now?

SN: Actually, here in the last ten years has gotten—I've seen it as worse as it's ever been. Even when I was a teenager coming up, the guys that were carrying weapons I mean you didn't flash them for everybody to see. I want to say it's a different brand of criminal or whatever but nowadays the element that’s out here now, they don't care. They have no respect for life, property, nothing. They don't even respect their own lives, so you know they're not going to respect you and yours. Back when I was a teenager coming up if you felt you needed to carry a weapon that was one—you didn't flash it because that would like be showing your whole card, so to speak.

You only pulled it if it was a do or die situation. You didn't pull it just to be looking whatever, because if there was somebody that you have a problem with you don't want them bringing more fire power than you. You were only going to use it if it's a life or death situation and you don't want to tip your hand, so to speak. Nowadays everybody has gotten one.

SJS: Did you carry a gun or do you own one?

SN: No.

SJS: No. So let me jump back and ask you about the church. You said when we talked earlier that church played a big role in your life growing up here and that your dad especially was very involved and so were you all. I just wanted to hear about that a bit.

SN: Both my mother and father were very strong, heavily in the church. To go back to my dad's days, my great-great-grandmother was a slave and she had nineteen kids with her master. He had built a one-room house, so to speak, for them to live in. When he died he left her the land that the house was sitting on and a hundred acres around. Well the man was married and he had a son and a daughter. And they all figured that was too much land for a former slave to have, at that time it was former. So they did everything they could to take it away from her, but little bit by little in order to pay taxes and to survive, she had to sell off an acre, an acre, until it all dwindled down to one little corner section where the house was sitting at. When she died, the ancestors, following relatives, they turned that little house into a church.

They modernized it and put a floor in it and all that, turned it into a church and had a graveyard. The surrounding grounds was used as a graveyard because back in those times you didn't find too many white funeral directors that wanted to take care of blacks, you had to take care of your own. Anyway, that cemetery there is pretty much full of a lot of my ancestors but until this day that church still stands. There has been a new addition put on it. The great-great-grandma, as you walk in the door there's a big

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picture of her, and all the history behind it and all the kids that she had, and, as far as anybody can remember, how they branched off in whichever way.

So when we came here to DC, and I guess back then that was the one day that ain't nobody had to do a whole bunch of working and church was very strong in all the community. When my dad moved here, he and my mom, both of them just happen to be very strong religious people. And as we came up, we had to be there anyway with them, and I was a junior usher, accolyte, youth choir, whatever the church had to offer me I was there. You either sit in a room and stare at the four walls or you became part of what was going on.

SJS: What was the church?

SN: Which one?

SJS: The church that you all attended.

SN: At the time it was Simpson United Methodist, Thirteenth and Monroe.

SJS: How did your parents—it's Simpson United Methodist at Thirteenth and Monroe?

SN: No, they later on—the fellowship started to decline due to the pastor and things with the pastor. The enrollment got to be so low that they couldn't take care of the bills of the church. They had to merge, they had another similar church, Hamline United Methodist on Sixteenth and Oaks, I think it was, that was a similar situation so they merged together. One who had the most money in the bank, their name went first in the merger. So Simpson-Hamline United Methodist, I guess that's how it came to be, but that was when they moved to up on Sixteenth Street.

SJS: Did you attend at both locations?

SN: Yeah. After I got of age, my job at that time, I bought myself a truck. I left the government, bought myself a tractor trailer. I was moving furniture and I started, I ran the road for seventeen years. That kind of took me up, but even out on the road they have little trailers in all the truck stops, Sunday morning for church, I'd stick my head in there going on for a couple of minutes until it got to the point where it was more singing than preaching.

SJS: Tell me just, like, what was a typical Sunday like for you all?

SN: Get up at seven, eat breakfast and get ready for church. Mom and dad were both Sunday school teachers so we'd go there. After Sunday school we would collect the money from the Sunday school classes, tally it, get it ready to present to the minister. Go to 11 a.m. service, we'd get home about three o'clock, two thirty, three o'clock every Sunday except when we went to Virginia for all day church meeting. We leave home at six o’clock and get back home at six thirty, seven o'clock, but it was an all day thing. When you're a little kid you kind of hate it because you're spending all day, but then

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again, like I said, you're there, there's nothing you can do about it, you can't leave so you either be a part of it and just get the day going or you go somewhere and sit under a tree and the day drags on.

SJS: Who was the minister?

SN: Up in Virginia?

SJS: Well, the one here at Simpson-Hamline?

SN: Christ, what was his name? It's on the tip of my tongue. The one at Simpson at Thirteenth in Monroe that was—it'll come to me but he had, it grew to a very large congregation at one time but then things got political, he wanted more money because he felt he brought in all this following. I guess it was a thing where he had got too big for his pants and then membership started walking away. When it got down to the last days it split, half of them wanted him gone and the other half wanted him there. The ones that wanted him there were outnumbered by the ones that wanted him gone. So that's how he had to leave—what was his name?

SJS: You can think of it later, I mean-

SN: Okay, because it's on the tip of my tongue right here, it'll come to me once I stop— Anyway, then the same thing happened at Hamline, Simpson-Hamline. When the two churches merged, membership grew and grew and then the minister up there had an extra-marital affair and then the gossip and yada and the church split again. At that time I had my sights, my signature was getting ready to go down on my first truck.

SJS: What about when you went to Virginia for these all day meetings, was that back to the Crest Hill Church?

SN: Yeah, that's Crest Hill, Trough Hill Baptist.

SJS: Trough Hill Baptist.

SN: That's the name of the church. It's located in Crest Hill, Virginia.

SJS: Crest Hill, Virginia, got it. How did you then transition to working as a long distance truck driver? When did that happen?

SN: 1985, I was a young electrician working, I had pretty much two jobs, money in the bank, I thought I can get married. The sun rose and set on this young lady of mine, the engagement went south. I felt hurt, to say the least, and quit my job, drew my money out, bought my first truck and just kept moving one step after the other, didn't think, just kept moving, just kept taking them steps because I had already had a Class A license. I always had a fascination with big trucks. So on the weekends when I didn't have nothing to do, I went to school to learn how to drive big trucks.

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SJS: Where?

SN: In Delaware. Just to have something in my pocket. I was very heavily into my electrical work I just wanted to, "Yeah, I can drive that vehicle if I wanted to. No, you can't. Here’s my license.” So I'd say when it came right down to it, having a job and doing something was never an option. To sit around and do nothing and live off someone like that, no, I wasn't raised that way. Everybody in my family, you never only had one job, you had two. You did what you had to do to make things work. Everybody liked to be able to pull a little money out the pocket after they done pay the bills, after they done bought the groceries, after they done did their responsibilities, be able to pull a little bit of money out your pocket. Like I said, when all those plans, I went south too, I just kept on moving. That's how I started driving.

SJS: When was that?

SN: 1985.

SJS: Then how long did you do that for?

SN: Seventeen years.

SJS: Wow, then when did you come back to this area and where did you live?

SN: I had hurt my back down in—I was in Louisiana and I hurt my back, I thought I'd pulled a muscle and I was loading for California. I got to El Paso and once you leave El Paso there's nothing but desert until you get to Albuquerque New Mexico. And I felt like I had this pain, I said the last thing I want to do is be out here on this desert and something happened and I can't move, it'd be a couple of days for a trooper to find me. I went to a hospital and they couldn't find nothing wrong. At the time I could stick a pin in the palm of my hand and wouldn't feel it, that's how numb my hand was, something was wrong. I dropped my load in the warehouse, it cost me a lot of money and it cost the company a lot of money but I wasn't going to leave my truck.

A drive that would normally take two days, three days to get home, it took me nine days because the pain was so bad, I stopped at two hospitals on the way because it kept getting more and more worse. All I could get was over the counter, like Tylenol, and I'm popping four or five of them at the time. Even at that I could only drive sixty-five, seventy miles at the time because either the pain would get me or I would be drowsy because of the pills. It took me nine days to get home but when I got home I had an MRI and all that and I found out that I had ruptured two discs in my back. First operation I went in and it wasn't two discs, they found it was three and they took them three out and put a plate in. I've had since then had two other operations, disc one through five are gone, I got a plate in my back, on disability now.

SJS: That was?

SN: That was ‘90—

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SJS: [‘9]2 or so?

SN: No, ‘97. It was close to ‘98, yeah ‘98.

SJS: When you came back did you move back in here to Oneida Street?

SN: No, I was living at Clinton at that time.

SJS: Clinton, Maryland?

SN: Yeah. Then when I had the last operation things got thin financially so that's when I came back here. Then I got a job with a Metro, drive a Metro bus.

SJS: Driving a bus?

SN: Yeah.

SJS: It's the same license that you need for the truck or the bus?

SN: Yeah, but there's no lifting.

SJS: But that's still a lot of sitting, with your back.

SN: I was involved in three gun incidents in thirty days, I was stationed in Bladensburg. The third, which they put a gun in my face at 1:45 in the morning to rob me off everything I had in my pocket. I said, the heck with this. The only thing the supervisor was concerned with when they came to the scene was getting another operator in there to keep that line moving. I'm sitting there like, "Hey, luckily I'm sitting here alive, I could be laid down on the ground with a sheet over my face and y'all still be holding the same conversation, who can we get in here to keep this line running?" But then I applied for subway school training, and I went out on EAP, stress, and they wanted me to come back. It was a week before subway classes was supposed to start.

SJS: EAP?

SN: Employee Assistance Program. For whatever sickness or stress, physical ailments.

SJS: I see.

SN: They wanted me to come back to the bus, I says, "No, I've already been accepted in subway training, starts in a week. I'm not going back to the bus. I've had guns in my face three separate occasions." Well, their concern is to keep that line moving, they need you behind that wheel. I said no. They fired me for insubordination. I felt each time the severity of the situation was growing. One time they shot at the bus, the next time they were shooting at somebody on the bus and then the third time they had a gun right in my tongue. I said, "What's next? For five days I go out here and drive a bus and I get shot? No." But anyway—

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SJS: What line were you driving?

SN: I was running D8 at the time, the one that runs from Union Station to Ivy City, coming down Florida Avenue you turn left on Trinidad Avenue, turning left on Trinidad Avenue, I have four teenagers on the bus at 1:45 in the morning. They rang the bell to that first stop, I pulled over so as to stop, one stopped in the doorway looking down the street, the other three were right behind him. I knew what was going on there. The next thing I know I felt something cold and hard up against my tongue. They said, "You know what this is, give me everything in your pocket or we're going to blow your head off right now. I had twenty-six dollars on me. I didn't know if they was going to kill me because that wasn't enough money, they could kill me because it was something to do, kill me because they knew they could get away with it, or whatever. I don't know.

I cashed in all my chits with the Lord. I asked God, "If it's going to happen, do it fast." But hey laughed, took the twenty-six dollars, strolled on off the bus. I got up to West Virginia Avenue, nearest pay phone, called the police, call Metro police, DC police responded in three minutes. Metro police got there twenty minutes later, asked me where they went. I said, "By now they probably were in their pajamas. It's been twenty minutes ago." That's when I went out on stress, three gun related incidents.

SJS: Did the DC police—

SN: Never found nobody. The neighborhood, it's like a honeycomb with alleys and shortcuts, that's their backyard. They could disappear in the blink of an eye. So I knew they weren’t going to find them, I'm just glad it wasn't payday (laughs), when I had more check on me, but anyway.

SJS: So then did you go work—you went out on stress through the Employee Assistance Program. And during that time then applied to work for, on the train?

SN: No, I had applied for the train before all this had happened.

SJS: Oh I see.

SN: And then when this had happened, I had forgotten all about anything connected with the EAP organization, but then their doctors were trying to get me back to work. And at the time it didn't dawn on me to get my own doctor. I went to see their doctor, and in his eyes he's trying to do what his superiors are telling him to do, which is trying to do what the board is telling him to do. Get that man back to work. I was off for like a month, still receiving my check. "You need to get that man back to work." And like a dummy, no, because I was generally afraid, you know? I mean, I don't have to step in dog poo too many times to realize it stinks and not to—This problem is not going to be any different than that problem. But no one understand, all they understood was get that line moving, we've got to keep so many lines moving.

SJS: When was this? When did that happen?

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SN: 2003, yeah 2003.

SJS: Speaking of crime, why don't you tell me that story about what happened to your brother, your older brother.

SN: It sounds like this paper is going to be on me (laughs). He was in the Army, stationed in Fort Huachuca, Arizona and newly married, six month old daughter. They sent him to Germany for however long, I don't know. He came here on thirty-day vacation leave before he go to Germany, it's Christmas time 1980. I was staying at the time with my uncle, so I let him and his wife have my place there so that they wouldn't have to stay here with mom and dad for thirty days. New Year's Eve, he went to a party at my cousin's house. My brother liked to drink. He would get upset and voice his opinion. He will go all the way up to that line, as far as getting physical. He was saying what's on his mind but hit a woman, no, that wasn't his thing. He hit a man, but he wouldn't hit a woman.

He left to cool off and get some air and later on that night, I mean my mother told him, the last thing, “don't be caught drunk driving out there because you don't need that type of trouble." Later on that night, we get a phone call—six o'clock, five o'clock in the morning—he's at the burn unit in Washington Hospital, car caught on fire. Ninety percent of his body was burnt. We all rushed to the hospital and we stand there waiting. Detective walks up to us and he asks us, "Was he having any problems with anybody?"

He hadn't been here long enough, he's only been here for a couple of days he's on his way to Germany. I said, "Why do you ask?" Because in a fire, he's supposed to be in an enclosed car, but his left arm was broken, and it was broken in a defensive posture like he was holding his arm up to protect his head. That led them to believe that someone was either fighting with him or broke his arm, then set the car on fire, we don't know. Come to find out later that's what the findings were concluded to, we couldn't prove anything as to who did it.

SJS: You mean there was an official finding?

SN: Well it was suspicious in nature. His wife was the one that halted everything. She asked not to—car caught on fire, she started introducing all these reasons, other reasons how that arm could have got broke. When you deal with a certain, even homicides, and you deal with this type of stuff every day. But if the main person involved doesn't want you to pursue it and if they have nothing else to go on, they can't get any information to go anywhere, to move forward. There’s a lot other crimes in DC that could warrant their attention. But we came to later find out the true story, and that's the part I really don't want to go into because of his kids.

SJS: What was your brother's name?

SN: Mark.

SJS: That's right Mark, Mark Nelson. Did you have another brother?

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SN: David.

SJS: He—

SN: He's the one young—he's the baby.

SJS: Did you all keep in contact with your brother's wife or his young child, are they still—is the child part of your family, or—

SN: His daughter, yeah. She's living in California now, yeah we stayed in contact with her. His wife, we kept in touch with her in as much as was needed to stay in contact with his daughter. For a while there, there was a lot of bad blood because of a lot of events that had transpired that we felt that laid up to things that happened. Then again, we can't be one hundred percent sure, but there's one hundred percent and there's ninety-eight.

SJS: Right, where was it that he was found in the car?

SN: 16th and Oaks. No, 16th and—I forget what the cross street was but it was not too far from where I went to school. Bell was at Fourteenth and Hyatt and you got Park Road as an intersection, Sixteenth Street is the next major street over going east or west. I can't remember exactly what the cross street was, but yeah he was on Sixteenth Street. There was a nurse on her way to work and she went to the bus, he was parked by the bus stop. She walked into the bus stop and she see smoke, ____ out this car, so she walked and she saw through the flames a body in there.

She opened the door and she was the one that pulled him out of the car and ironically this nurse worked at Washington Hospital Center in the burn unit. She was there every day even though he wasn't her patient, she was there every day. God works in mysterious ways. Like I said, even though he wasn't her patient, on her off time she would come there and help because he was in such a state that he needed a lot of attention. Bandages needed to be changed like quarterly, every quarter of the hour, so she was there until they transferred him to Walter Reed and that's when he took a turn for the worst and started going down.

SJS: What happened?

SN: The day he died? His lungs collapsed, his liver stopped functioning, everything, all his internal organs just shut down. Before he left Washington Hospital Center he was standing on his own, on his own power. He couldn't walk too much but his strength had come back that much. When he went to Walter Reed we just figured that he wasn't getting as much attention as he was getting at Washington Hospital Center because he went down fast. He went there and within fifteen days he was dead.

SJS: Wow, this was?

SN: This was in 1982.

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SJS: What was it like during those fifteen days that you visited him, what was Walter Reed like?

SN: He was lifeless, when he was in Washington Hospital Center he would—he couldn't talk to me, he couldn't talk. He would make noises and gestures, if you was getting ready to leave and he didn't want you to leave he would make gestures. He would display his disgust or anger in what you were doing. When he got to Walter Reed it was like he was just laying there lifeless just like he didn't care like, "You do whatever you want, man." It's like he had given up, again when he was in Washington Hospital Center he was always—you go to visit him every five minutes, every ten minutes there was a nurse coming and doing this, doing that, putting ice chips on his lips, changing his bandage, asking him did he need anything, checking his bed—

He had attention, when he got to Walter Reed, I go to visit him, I'd be in there an hour and nobody even come there, wouldn't come in the room. I guess if you're laying there and you can smell your wounds, if you can smell yourself, I guess it kind of bring the reality of what is life starts to kick in, what he's got to look forward to started kicking in too heavily, too strongly, more so than it should have, I would imagine. He didn't pull no tubes or nothing out of his arms, but in order for you to get well any doctor will tell you, you have to want to survive. I guess he just, hey, started thinking about—I guess they had plenty of conversations as to what he had to look forward to.

Like I don't know if you've ever known anyone who's been burnt severely, they wear like a protected cloth or a glove or something over the area because of the ugliness of the scar or whatever. He would have to wear a suit of such nature covering his whole body. I don't know if you remember that movie, “The Boy in the Plastic Bubble” or whatever. I don't know if that kind of came into his mind or what, I don't know. I guess that was not something he wanted to look forward to so I think he asked the Lord to come take him. My mother and father were there when he died and asked him if he felt the pains, and alarms start going off, bells started ringing and the nurses was coming in, he had a DNR plus his wife—his wife was like, "Do whatever you can to save him." My mother was, "Just let him go because he wanted the DNR."

He died, doctors came out and said, "We did all we could." Then he looked at my mother, he just looked at her. I think my mother knew, "Let him go." Because I don't think he wanted to live another night conditioned like that. There were some issues about his death and so much so and I felt so strongly about him that I had started following the person that I thought had a lot to do with his death. I got to know this guy's habits, his hangouts, where he lived, where he worked, what he did. He never knew that I was looking at him until I came up with the idea that one night I was going to do what I wanted to do.

SJS: Keep going.

SN: I don't know, again, like I say, God works in mysterious ways. Dad came down the night before I was getting ready to leave, and seeing what I had, and took it. It was a gun, and he took it away from me, asked me not to do anything that would cause him to lose everything that he worked for. I let it go. My brother was already gone and I had a Page 29 of 37

respect for him and his wishes. I just let it go, but I never forgot it and that's all I got to say about that.

SJS: Alright, thank you. When you left Metro, and that was around 2003 when that incident happened on the bus, did you retire at that point or—

SN: No, at that point, again, I was still dealing with complications for my back but at that time receiving disability was not—I didn't look at that—as long as I was able to work and do something I wanted to try. I started driving, excuse me, I started driving dump trucks. I knew guys that, when I bought my first truck they bought their first dump truck. I went my way in business and they went theirs. Their way prospered so I started driving for them until the point came that, like all business do, work falls off or mechanical difficulties play a certain company where they come to the point where they can't keep as many people, and the last hired is the first fired. And then my dad got down sick, and he lost his leg, so therefore, I primarily started looking to help him, his prosthesis. Help him to walk and learn how to walk on it, taking—he was here at home—taking care of him and doing things that a nurse would do, I did it for him, because he was my dad, he was the man, until he died.

SJS: When was that?

SN: 2004.

SJS: Was he still living here at the time?

SN: Yeah.

SJS: Then since then you've been mainly taking care of your mom?

SN: Yeah. I've had another back operation, each time I have a back operation I'm laid up for ninety days, I can't do anything. The first forty-five I'm in a chair with a cast on so she has to bathe me, feed me and empty my bedpan, things of that nature. When I got back up on her feet, then she started not feeling so well, I said, "Well, you did it for me.” (laughs) Even if she hadn't had done it for me, I'd still be there for her.

SJS: What about your siblings, where are they?

SN: Younger brother, he works for some company. He leaves home on Monday, gets back on Friday, he's in the air five days a week. My sister, she's had two heart attacks, she's not as well as she could be but she sells real estate, that's it. My oldest brother died.

SJS: Does your sister sell real estate in this area?

SN: Yeah. And she teaches it as well.

SJS: Is she successful at it?

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SN: Well, she still has her own home (laughs). She has more money in her pocket than I do. But yeah, I like to think, yeah, she's been selling real estate for twenty-five, thirty years. I would say she's successful, but then again I don't know how success is measured in real estate game you know? She has her own life, her own home, whatever.

SJS: Does she work here in the District primarily, or in Maryland, or—

SN: I would guess. yeah, I think that most of her listings are probably in Maryland. I don't know if she likes coming to the District that much. I don't know, you know you have different rules or whatever. Again, I don't know too much about—every now and then I might hear about—she doesn't talk too much about her listings or whatever, but like anyone you go where the money is if that's your business.

SJS: Seems like there's a really hot real estate market here in DC.

SN: Today, it definitely is a buyer’s—actually it's a buyers and a sellers marke. People are flipping houses like crazy. I wish I was in a position to do that, and could do that. I mean when you double your money in ninety days, you can't get any more legal than that.

SJS: Yeah, you probably have a lot of the skills to do that, to rehab the houses.

SN: I know the people that I could pull in, if I just had the money and the physical stamina to do it. God has a different plan for me right now. She's sitting right there on that sofa.

SJS: How do you feel about it? That's happening a lot in this neighborhood right? These houses that you—I don't know if it's happened to houses where you actually knew the people but where they're being redone, new residents.

SN: Well, actually, before I got down bad, this house right next door , I went in there and I did a lot of work and all the electric in there. I did all of the painting and everything and that was right next door. I mean the house right down the street here, was sold for $300,000. The guy went in there who bought it and it took longer to sell than it did to fix it. It only took him forty-five days to rehab it, and it took another fifty, I think, to sell. He bought it for 300000, I think he maybe—

I don't know, in the business on the outside looking in, he may have put ninety into it because he went back to the brick as far as rehabbing it. It was all from the roof to the furnace, everything is new and he turned around and sold it for half a million so he made $100,000 in what? Ninety days. Again, I'm just saying hypothetically his expenses should have accounted to no more than $10,000, realtor's expenses, materials laid and all that. Put $100,000 dollars in your pocket in ninety days, that's good money. If you do that every ninety days, that's more than a million a year.

SJS: Do you know any longtime residents in the neighborhood that have sold their houses too, and then they've been rehabbed? I mean I guess they wouldn't know once they've left but I'm just trying to think, like what is the, how has the neighborhood evolved in terms of who is here now, or how many people you know, or the neighborliness?

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SN: As far as you mean, who is still here from when the neighborhood went from Jewish to black?

SJS: Yeah, and then who is coming in now, and do you know them?

SN: Like the blacks were coming in one by one then, the whites are now coming back in one by one. We have, what, one, two, we have three white couples ___, two of which are very nice and one of which I hardly ever see. We have a couple of Hispanics right across the street. There's a mixture now, there's not just one particular race or people coming back in. There's an array, a mixture. But, yeah, it’s starting to come back, other people moving back, it's not an all African American community. And I like that. I never was too keen on the idea where you live with your own, like up in New York you got neighborhoods where there’s all Italians, neighborhoods where there’s all Jews, and if you even think about buying a piece of property there, you'd be chastised or life would be made very difficult.

For instance, in my trucking days I met a young lady in Asheville, North Carolina. We, off and on, I stayed there for maybe six months. They had two hospitals in Asheville and there was a brain—neurosurgeon—that this hospital had been trying to get for the longest time. Finally he conceded to move there. Asheville is a mountain town, where Billy Graham had one of his retreats, and there's this one prestigious section of the town that's up on a hill, everybody called it Loot Hill at the time because you had to have money to live there. He went and had a real estate agent procure a house for him there. He moved in and for the first two weeks after that, every morning he'd walk outside to his, rolls and strings of toilet paper all over his house, trash all over his yard, eggs, his car would be bombarded with eggs, nothing like scratching the pane or breaking the window or anything like that, just stuff that needed to be cleaned up. Then when he went to work he received a whole bunch of people pushing back on him there. Evidently, this neurology was his specialty, they paid him all this money to get him here, all this big fuss was made to get him there. I guess that the people resented the fact that this was African American doctor coming down there. This was all in the papers and it was all over the black stations in the town. Everybody was glad at how they were treating this man.

They were glad to see him come because Asheville was still pretty much, you stay on your side part of town. You stay in your place, I should say. Eventually, he says, "I'm on top of my field, I don't need this crap. I can go to New York and make twice what I'm making here or I can go to any other major town and make two to three—I don't need this every day." He left, it was their loss, because heck something happened where they need a top-notch neurologist, they don't have one now. They couldn't see that for the pettiness and the fears and the racism, they couldn't see that. How did we get on this subject? You're talking about—

SJS: We're talking about the transformation of the neighborhood, yeah.

SN: They stopped that transformation down there. That was their way of stopping it, I guess a lot of people still feel that's the way to go. But here, for instance, the white couple that moved in down the street, they're very nice, I speak to them, they speak to me and Page 32 of 37

my mom when I take my mom out for a walk. Right when they moved here, they moved here in the spring, the year that they moved, it was spring time and then they went to holiday vacation. There were some derelicts that watched them come out the house one morning, six o'clock, putting their luggage into a taxi to go on vacation. Well I guess these mother fuckers had enough education to realize they're going on vacation, they're not going to be there, so what they do. they kick the front door of the house and they rob them. That right there, that got to me.

I mean it's my consensus that a lot of these young people do these things because A, they look at all of the injustice that still goes on towards blacks and this is their way of lashing back. This is their excuse at lashing back. With everybody using violence and racism and using other excuses, things will never change. You can say about all you want but in reality ...

SJS: Who were these kids?

SN: I don't know them by name, I just know the fact that at the time there was a—I'll put it like this, every time there was a disturbance, all of the alphabets of the law enforcement would come: DEA, ATF, SWAT. If there was an abbreviation for a law enforcement agency they were there.

SJS: For a house break in?

SN: No, they were into more than just breaking and entering. I mean when you have that many police agencies coming at you, I mean you got to be some kind of a bad, really some kind of a bad element. I'm just not talking about a couple scout cars, again I'm talking ATF, DEA, all these people in full riot gear, twenty or thirty of them running behind one another, covered. When you're committing crimes like that and again when I was a kid things like that, you didn't see things like that. Number one, the neighbors, the people that they saw you doing something, they would cut it off right there and they would get on it.

They would tell your parents, it would be handled. Very seldom police came. Why? Because nobody wanted a report made of them, ain't nobody want their kid fingerprints and report in somebody's file cabinet somewhere to be misconstrued with another incident somewhere that he has to prove that he had nothing to do with it. Nowadays kids don't care about you having their fingerprints, they think it's cool, but go figure.

SJS: Do you have any relationship with the police, the local precinct or authority—

SN: Yeah.

SJS: Oh yeah? You know them?

SN: My mom, she has dementia and during the various stages that you go through with that. She'll call the police and they have to respond so they've been here many times so they know her. They see me walking in the street they'll ask me, "How is your mom doing?" A

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lot of police officers, they're pretty good. There's a few out there, I don't know why on earth they picked law enforcement unless they had a Napoleon type complex that they didn't get respect at home or whatever and they feel that this is a way for them to get respect, I don't know.

There's a few of them that are real good, they stop, they talk to you not just to be saying something. They really have conversations, they ask me, "How are things going?" And they seem like they generally are interested. I had no problems with the police. I'm not a criminal.

SJS: Wasn’t Muriel Bowser living over here until like last year?

SN: Yes, on the next street over.

SJS: I'm guessing there was more of a police presence that time.

SN: Well, that was kind of bitter sweet because where she lived, she lived maybe a hundred yards from the corner, from the bottom of the hill. So there was always a scout car sitting out front with a police officer in it and there was a little booth they had constructed on her lawn with a police officer in it.

SJS: Really?

SN: Yeah.

SJS: It's not a very big lawn.

SN: No, that's right, you can spit from her front porch to the sidewalk, but hey, you know you're mayor. But there was a shooting like 75 yards from her house, and two people were shot and an elderly lady was glazed by one of the shots and the police didn't move. They said that their responsibility was protecting the mayor's house and they did not move from their spot, two police officers and neither one of them moved. But at that particular time there was a lot of shootings going on around here, a lot of shooting because normally, like when Marion Barry had his place over here, you only saw one police officer, that was the one that stayed in the booth. You didn't see one sitting in a car twenty feet from the booth.

There were so many shootings around here at that particular time and too much gun play I should say, not so many shootings but gun play. We had gun fire all night long sometimes, every night rather. I think that's why they had such a hot presence, plus all of the cameras on the telephone poles in front of and behind her house, which are still there, because I think she still owns the house, because that's where I think her family were brought up at. Her father used to work in the school system.

SJS: Really?

SN: Yeah, he was an area manager in the school system.

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SJS: Did you know him?

SN: Not personally, I knew of him.

SJS: Where did—sorry.

SN: No, go ahead.

SJS: I was just wondering where Barry lived. You said he lived near here in this neighborhood?

SN: No, he lived over in Southeast.

SJS: I thought the way you said it, that he lived here.

SN: No, he lived in, I forget which—It was off Alabama Avenue. Only knew it was his house because they had that guard check with the police officer in.

SJS: I wonder if she’s still got that in her yard now up in Colonial Village.

SN: No, it's good. Oh wherever she—I heard she moved up off Sixteenth Street?

SJS: Yeah, like way up, like towards Silver Spring.

SN: I'm quite sure wherever she is, unless the residents around there don't think that it’s chic enough for the neighborhood.

SJS: That's what I'm thinking.

SN: I bet you their scout cars are plenty out there. I think that probably the neighborhood would probably like that a little bit more. They have two scout cars with police officers just sitting in them.

SJS: Did you interact with her at all?

SN: No. When she walked the neighborhood looking for votes, other than that, no. That's the only time I saw her, when she was looking for votes.

SJS: Did you support her?

SN: No.

SJS: No. We're in Ward Four, right? She was the council person following Adrian Fenty?

SN: Yup.

SJS: Before she became mayor.

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SN: To me, and she might read this paper or read this book, but I don't care because it's the way I feel. She said what she had to say and did what she had to do or said what she had to say to get the job. I don't see her following, for instance, there was a time when the young teenagers in the different neighborhoods would steal cars and they were dumping them here on this street primarily right in front of my door. Every three days I'm walking out here and I'm seeing this abandoned car half on the sidewalk and half in the street with the windows broke out and the ignition torn all off of it. I call the police and it'd take the police three, four, five days to come and get it. Okay, well she was walking the neighborhood one day and she knocked on the door and asked can she put one of her signs in my yard.

I says, "Okay Ms. Bowser." I said, "You see that car there? It's been stolen, the police came, they took in their little information on it and they've gone. It's been sitting here in excess of five days even after they came and took their report. If you can get that car moving, you can put a sign with your name." She went there and she took down the license number, she wrote this and had all her people looking at it, four, five people then the next thing they left. Her people came back the next day, the same ones that were there and they were writing down—I said, "Did you guys write down or see everything you needed to see? I'm expecting y'all have a tow truck here by now."

Well it still sat there, she still had a sign in the yard, now one of the supporters for the other candidate, I can't remember his name, she came. Her grandmother lives down the street, another long time resident of this neighborhood. She said, "What are you doing with Muriel Bowser's sign in your yard?" I said, "Well, she says she could get this car moved, I said I could—she could get this car moved." "How long has it been?" I said, "It's been about four days." My girl whips out her telephone, her cell phone and makes two phone calls. Twenty-five minutes, twenty minutes later, there's two DDOT tow trucks out here and a supervisor towing that car away. I said, "Now that's power." I took Muriel Bowser's sign out and put the other candidate's sign down in my yard.

SJS: Was that Vince Gray, when he was running for mayor or when he was–

SN: No, I don’t think it was Vince Gray. Who else—

SJS: [crosstalk 01:58:13]-

SN: What's his name?

SJS: Catania? David Catania?

SN: No. Was it Embawe? Wait a minute, what the heck was his name?

SJS: Was it for council or for mayor?

SN: For mayor. I can't remember. Was it Vince Gray? I don't know. I can't remember who it was. I want to say it was a man, and two men—

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SJS: Anyway, it’s a good story.

SN: She got that car moved, her whole involvement took a hour, one hour. And her Muriel Bowser done been here twice and had people here writing down this and the car is still sitting there. I think her piddling around was just for more show, but anyway.

SJS: Alright, well let's wrap this up, is there anything else that I didn't think to ask you about or—

SN: I don't know, like I said I feel like Jane Pittman, I've been talking about—

SJS: No, it's great. It's a good story.

SN: No, I can't think of anything else, I can't. Reverend Carter was the Reverend down there at the Simpson United Methodist, Carter was his name.

SJS: Reverend Carter, okay.

SN: Yeah, that was the one at the Simpson United Methodist, 13th and Monroe.

SJS: Did he move over to Simpson-Hamline?

SN: Oh no.

SJS: Okay, no he didn't, right because that was when the whole split happened over him.

SN: Yeah, they wanted to get away from him.

SJS: Okay, got you.

SN: That's about it.

SJS: Alright, well thank you, I'm going to go ahead and turn this off, thanks so much for talking with me today, this is really interesting.

SN: No problem.

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