AAHP 358A Ann Pinkston African American History Project (AAHP) Interviewed by Justin Dunnavant and Ryan Morini on October 9, 2014 2 Hours, 56 Minutes | 82 Pages
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Joel Buchanan Archive of African American History: http://ufdc.ufl.edu/ohfb Samuel Proctor Oral History Program College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Program Director: Dr. Paul Ortiz 241 Pugh Hall PO Box 115215 Gainesville, FL 32611 (352) 392-7168 https://oral.history.ufl.edu AAHP 358A Ann Pinkston African American History Project (AAHP) Interviewed by Justin Dunnavant and Ryan Morini on October 9, 2014 2 hours, 56 minutes | 82 pages Abstract: Ms. Ann Pinkston was born in 1944 in Silver Springs, Florida. She recounts her cousin and brother Frank travelling to Boston to meet Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Her home oFten had short-term visitors, including Dana Swan. Her Father was a pastor For close to seventy years and owned a drug store in west Gainesville. One night, the Fear oF racial violence was so great, she did not stay home. The NAACP organized Mass Meetings oF prominent Black leaders partly led by her brother. Her whole Family was very inFluential, Ms. Pinkston was an organizer and picketed. Her husband was one oF the Few Black physicians in Ocala, and she explains the rudeness oF people in the health care industry. They discuss diFFerent Black newspapers that were available in Ocala. Keywords: Ocala; Silver Springs; Paradise Park; Civil Rights Movement; Chitlin’ Circuit; James Brown; Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.; Medgar Evers; Reverend Abernathy; Hampton Institute; Forest High; University oF Florida; Virginia Union; Voting; Schools; White Citizens’ Council; Black ProFessionals; Marion County. For information on terms of use of this interview, please see the SPOHP Creative Commons license at http://ufdc.ufl.edu/AfricanAmericanOralHistory. AAHP 358A Interviewee: Ann Pinkston Interviewer: Justin Dunnavant and Ryan Morini Date: October 9, 2014 M: So, this is Ryan Morini, with Justin— D: Justin Dunnavant. P: Ann Pinkston. [Agnes _______ in background declines to add her name, but speaks further on in the interview] M: Just the three of us, then. [Laughter] It’s October 9, 2014. We’re in the home of Ann Pinkston here in Ocala, Florida. So, let’s see—I mean, were you okay with a—did you want to keep talking informally, or did you want to do an actual interview? P: However you want to do. M: Either way. D: Yeah, it’s about— [Laughter] P: Yeah, I do a little column for our church’s monthly newsletter, and sometimes you find, depending on who it is, and how things go, you do have to mix it up sometimes. And sometimes, you just let them go, and you can get a whole lot that way. And then sometimes, some people, you have to ask them everything. D: Yeah. [Laughter] P: However, whatever works best for you, I’m okay with it. M: Okay, okay. Well, we’ll keep a mix of things going, I guess. But do you mind stating when you were born, for the record? AAHP 358A; Pinkston; Page 2 P: No, I don’t mind, at all. I was born July 13, 1944, in Silver Springs, Florida. The first girl out of, I was number, what? Six, I guess. Seven. Six boys and seven— hey, I’m getting mixed up here! Six boys and one girl. And I’m next to the last. M: Were you born in a hospital there, or were you born at home? P: Oh, I was born at home. We all were born at home, in a house that my parents built. Their original house was my grandparents’ home until they built their own house and moved into it. They moved into it, and—my parents were married in 1930, and then 1938, they moved into the house that they built, themselves, by hand—with the help of neighbors, of course. D: Were they originally from Silver Springs? P: My dad’s originally from East Palatka, Florida, my mother’s originally from Silver Springs. And they met here in Ocala, through some social function. And my dad and his brother, who was a pharmacist, came to Ocala and opened up a drug store on Southwest Broadway, and they called it Pinkston’s Drugs. And so, through people in the community and so forth, they finally, my mom and dad met. And of course, they were married for almost 68 years before my mother passed away. M: Could we get their names? P: My dad was Oliver Van Pinkston, and my mother was Amelia Mae Jones Pinkston. M: Okay. And you said “Van,” is that V-A-N? P: V-A-N, mmhm. Not like “van Pinkston,” as some countries, cultures and so forth, but… that was just his middle name. Van. He was a minister. But before he AAHP 358A; Pinkston; Page 3 became a minister, he did carpentry work. Built kegs and different woodworking projects up and down the Seaboard coast, between Florida and Maryland. D: So that Jesus-John the Baptist connection has a deeper meaning. [Laughter] P: Yes, yes. And so, the brother that he opened the drugstore with—my dad came from a family of ten, six boys and four girls. And that particular brother went to Howard, to pharmacy school. So he got his degree there. And so when he came back, then—as with a lot of big families, the older ones start working first, and then they help to send the younger ones off to college, and that kind of thing. And so that was what happened in their case, the older ones worked—he and a couple brothers—and sent that brother to school to become the pharmacist. And so when he came out, he asked my dad to come over to Ocala with him to open a drugstore. They did that for several years. But in the meantime, my dad was a boat guy also, at Silver Springs. He was one of the original boat guys down there. He and his father-in-law. And he did that for a very long time. And he just did a lot of—a lot of jobs, because, as they were married in 1930, kids started coming along. And so, my mother taught originally. But, after babies come along, it was kind of hard, at that time, to try to work outside the home and take care of a lot of little kids. So she became a stay-at-home mom, and he continued to grow in his different ways. And one of them was being active in the church. Became a deacon, and eventually felt the call to be a minister. And between the two of them, they felt like he needed to have an education as well. So, he didn’t go off to school, as such. When he was in high school, he did go to Florida Memorial, because they had a boarding section for high school-aged people, and people AAHP 358A; Pinkston; Page 4 going to go on into college. He did start college, but he did not ever actually graduate from Florida Memorial. But then, in the meantime, as he grew, he took courses from Crozier Theological Seminary—that’s in Pennsylvania—and from, there was another school in New York that he took courses through, and Virginia Union University. He would actually go there and study. And there was a place called Lakeland Seminary here in Florida that was near where the Reverend Billy Graham went to. There was a connection between those schools, where he went. So, he got his religious training, formal training. So anyway, they just raised a whole bunch of children, tried to educate them to the best that they could, you know, with [inaudible 7:07] and so forth. Some of us did, and some of us didn’t finish, and so. But everybody had the opportunity to do so, with them working hard. And my brother Frank went off to college at Virginia Union. I have a brother Fred who was just older than he, who had gone to Virginia Union. So it’s kind of like, maybe, one follows the other, kind of thing. And then, so that way they share things, and it’s not as costly. But, and that was where Frank got his connection with religion, becoming a minister, and becoming involved in Civil Rights. Because I had a cousin there who was a minister also, the Reverend Harold Pinkston, who was attending seminary at Union. He had graduated, gotten his bachelor’s at Union, and then was back working on his theology degree. And he just went to seminars all around, and found one up in Boston that Dr. King was at, and he had heard some things about him, and my brothers and he went up to this seminar up there, and my mother was one of those characters who believed in keeping up with what was going on with her kids, and she would call them AAHP 358A; Pinkston; Page 5 periodically. And you know, there was one phone in the dormitory kind of thing, but everybody knew everybody. And she called this particular weekend to speak to them. They weren’t there. And if they left to go anywhere, they were supposed to call home. But they didn’t. And then she found out some time later where they had been. And it was both the being mad at them, but also being happy about what they were doing. So, that was Frank’s initial meeting with Dr. King, was at a seminar up in the Boston area, on Civil Rights and human rights. But anyway… D: Did your parents talk about Civil Rights very much in the household when you were growing up? P: Not as such, no.