Transcript of Interview with Barbara Lomax Dawson, July 22, 2008

An Interview with Barbara Lomax Dawson July 22, 2008 Medford, Massachusetts An Interview with Barbara Lomax Dawson July 22, 2008 Medford, Massachusetts Barbara Lomax Dawson 2 Northeastern University Lower Roxbury Black History Project INT: Today is Tuesday July 22, 2008. I am Lolita Parker, Jr. I am here with Northeastern University on behalf of Reverend Michael Haynes, with the Lower Roxbury Black History project, which goes from 1910-1968. I am here today with, can you tell me your name? BD: Barbara Dawson. INT: Do you want to tell me a bit about yourself? When you were born and where? BD: Well, I was born in Boston and I grew up in Roxbury until we moved here in 1958. So my youngest child then was ready for kindergarten. We lived on Cedar Street, right opposite the park on the Washington Street end. INT: Do you have any of the, I mean do you know the address? BD: I am sorry, 16 Cedar. I went to school at Nathan Hale Elementary, which was up the hill more towards fort hill. Then for 5th grade I went down on Thornton Street for a wooden building, that had just one grade in it. Then I went to the Dillaway down in the Dudley street area for the 6th grade. From there I went to Girls Latin. So I graduated from Girls Latin in ’46, I guess it was. INT: So do you want to tell me what year you were born? BD: I am sorry, I forgot that. I didn’t mean to omit it, I just wasn’t thinking about it. I was just thinking about, where did I grow up and what have you. December 24th 1928. It was the day before Christmas and everybody says, oh you must get cheated? I said, no I don’t get cheated because my mother’s birthday was December 30th and she had 5 brothers who made sure she didn’t get sited. So I never got cheated. INT: So were your parents from Boston? BD: No, my mother is from San Francisco and my father was from South Carolina. He came here as a young man and, I guess he had an uncle who was with the railroad and that is how he came to Boston and he stayed with 2 other gentleman, Barbara Lomax Dawson 3 Northeastern University Lower Roxbury Black History Project they opened the business. My mother had an aunt and cousin, I don’t remember which, cousin I guess it was, in Stoneham and she and her mother and a brother or 2 had come across country by train to visit this family and through a mutual family that my mother and my father met and she went back to California and then ended up coming back here. So, she had been here ever since then, and that was 1927 I think. I think she went back once in 1934 because my middle sister was born in San Francisco and the she never went back again. INT: There is a lot of Similarity between Boston and San Francisco, actually. BD: That is one thing she said, that the weather was very similar. END OF AUDIO +++ Barbara Lomax Dawson 4 Northeastern University Lower Roxbury Black History Project INT: The recorder is back on. When you hear the term Lower Roxbury, what does that mean to you? BD: That to me means the, well it is not actually gerrymandering, but it was the way the political stuff was and the words were distinguished and separated and designated and all, because growing up it was just plain Roxbury. Even Cedar Street was Roxbury because upper Roxbury was humbled avenue. We weren’t up that far and Ebenezer was in the south end. It was the south end at that point. In my mind anyway, it was the other side of Mass Avenue. But, lower Roxbury, I don’t have any particular memories of it, but I know it got, when it got divided into upper Roxbury and lower Roxbury, the way it is considered now is, I really, I don’t think I was there. So I don’t remember. I always have to stop and think, okay lower Roxbury is at this point it almost includes Dudley Street. Then I guess what I think about when I think about that is when I got involved with Freedom House boundaries were something else, which you know, was another geographic designation that really didn’t mean anything to me. But I know it was separate from lower Roxbury. It was Roxbury/Dorchester. So the political designation is there, not terribly clear in my mind because it didn’t really have any meaning. INT: So I guess the next, if we have, if there is anything you want to add about your younger days, if you want to talk about I guess, say your first year of college, if there is anything you would like to add or remember or something I haven’t asked you about in terms of the life of, I have seen a few photographs recently of Douglas square, say in the 40’s from ’39-’46. There were a lot of photos that were taken back then. BW: So you had seen my fathers business in there then? INT: Well, pretty much what, they were more on the street. BW: OH, the side streets? INT: The side streets. Barbara Lomax Dawson 5 Northeastern University Lower Roxbury Black History Project BW: Oh, okay. INT: Do you remember you know, any of those big changes happening or were you still a little young? BW: Yeah, I remember when Lennox Street was the first project and I remember knowing that it was built and that it was a project. But you know, project didn’t mean anything. It certainly didn’t have the connotations that it has now. What I think of when I think of Lennox street, is the other woman, I said there were 2 of us who graduated from Girls Latin and her father was the manager for the Lennox street project, David lane, her name is Nadine. I don’t remember whether he was the first manager, but he was the first one that I remember anyway. I remember when Twelfth Baptists and all that got condemned and torn down. That was a pretty upsetting thing for the community in general because the city certainly didn’t reimburse people for what they needed. This tunnel that I was talking about, and I don’t, it is funny when I think about it, that I have no recollection of what it was called, but I remember that people in the area, between, especially between Tremont Street and going up toward Charmin, excuse me, toward Charmin Avenue. We would talk about the damage of the buildings, the foundations and all this drilling that nobody wanted to admit to and nobody you know, got reimbursed for it or anything like that. Not at this point, maybe between now and another time, I might but for now I don’t. INT: Okay. The other thing that I am you know, very curious about, especially when I look at a lot of photos, is that the neighborhood was, it seemed like it was a lot of different kinds of people, ethnically, within population there was west Indians, there is people from the south, there is you know, this whole, that you saw in the store. BD: Yeah, and we just took it for granted. I mean, it wasn’t anything special about it. The thing along the same line is what I remember is as I got older and I Barbara Lomax Dawson 6 Northeastern University Lower Roxbury Black History Project realized that the dentist that I went to and the other dentist that was there, they were pioneers. Well you know, okay so they were dentists, big deal. The chronicle and Mr. Horton and the guardian and Dr. Stuart and all, they were my parents peers and friends and I didn’t think anything particular about it. Then there was a, oh dear, Jesse Garnet I think her name was, she was a, I think she was a dentist too, but she wasn’t in Lower Roxbury, I think she was in upper Roxbury or what have you. But I knew her and alright, so she was a dentist. You know, later on these people were pioneers because they did these professional things and we just took them for granted. Doesn’t everybody? So the class structure was not something that you know, we were aware, I was aware of or made any big deal about. INT: It seems to me again, through whether it was by you know, choice, because I did hear of some stories where people from western part of the state got you know, pretty tired of being isolated out there and were moving in town, or because you really couldn’t live in a lot of other neighborhoods that you had a very dense, rich, I don’t even know what to call it, not range, spectrum. I don’t even know, I am at a loss for words, of people and you know, you can have someone who was a dentist but still live on the same block as someone who wasn’t. BD: Yeah, it was all mixed in together and nobody made any big deal about it. INT: So, I think what I am hearing is because you were working in the shop, you said that you know, maybe you know, some of the things, dances, did you go to camp in the summer at all? BD: I went to camp twice.

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