Jack Whitten: I grew up in 100% total American
apartheid, there is no other way to put it,
there is no other way to put it, totally 100%
American apartheid.
Everything was separated; the whole concept
of separate but equal was a cruel joke.
I have no memory whatsoever of nothing being
equal, nothing.
Every aspect of our lives were dictated by
white people: employment, all forms of economics,
transportation.
When you see those photographs of the signs
which says colored and white, that's I grew
up with that.
The city bus there was a sign the front of
the bus said white the back said color, and
you were not allowed to remove that sign.
In truth one of my memories from childhood
is the death of a young man, the Hood family.
He came home with his from the army with his
uniform on, and one day he boarded the bus
and he removed the sign to take a sit seat;
the bus driver pulled out a pistol and killed
this young man.
Now I have memories of the hearse moving through
the black neighborhoods, they did it purposely,
of a flag-draped coffin and the people in
the neighborhoods made sure that it went through
all the black neighborhoods, that black that
flag-draped coffin, I remember that.
A lot of stuff that I witnessed growing up
in the south I don't even mention because
it's like, how much weight can one bear from
memory?
There there's a there's a limit, there's a
limit.
Everything, we had a park in Bessemer, Alabama,
the only shaded spot in the whole town really.
We could walk through that park, but we could
not sit down, and God forbid there was a water
fountain that you didn't go near that.
I think Alabama in the summertime is hot,
I mean you sweat, the humidity is like can
be 80 to 90 degrees humidity.
Bessemer, we had a lake, West Lake we call
it, it's a large lake.
There was a roadway that passed through the
middle of the lake with a bridge; we could
walk and stop at that bridge, and we had to
look from a distance and all the white kids
having fun with their water slides, their
floats, we couldn't go there, we had to stand
on the bridge.
My brothers and I and my buddies we were into
fishing; I could look at the fish, but I couldn't
fish for them.
But my good buddy JD and I would sneak in
the back, and we develop a technique we call
tight line, it's a form of fishing with a
cane pole, that we cut ourselves by the way,
we would fish for bluegills.
Often tell the story, I was never in the Army
I never went to Vietnam I've never been into
combat, but I know what the sound of a bullet
sounds like when it passes over your head.
There were signs in the back there where we
used to sneak in that said, “no niggers
allowed,” that's the way it was put, but
we would sneak in anyway.
There's a lot of incidents like that, there
was a swimming pool in Bessemer; we could
pass by and watch, but we could not participate.
Now this was by owned by the city, this was
taxpayer’s money.
Kelly Jones: Did they have any black swimming
days, negro swimming days?
Whitten: No, absolutely not, absolutely not,
didn't exist.
We had one public pool on the other side of
town in Birmingham, in a place we call Tuxedo
Junction, and they would put us on a bus and
we'd go all the way across town into Birmingham
and they're overcrowded, that's the time.
My older brothers and some of the older boys
in the neighborhood dammed up Parson’s Creek,
Parson’s Creek was a creek that I used to
fish in.
My older brothers dammed it with logs and
wood and made us a swimming pool.
It was a lot of fun; I have some great memories.
We had a classic car tire hanging from a rope
from a tree that we would climb in swing and
drop.
It was a lot of fun, but evidently for the
white folks, it was too much fun.
One night they came in and they drop tons
of broken bottles into our swimming pool.
Now unbeknownst to us, the first kid who jumped
in the next morning came out with bloody feet,
that kind of a thing.
And those kinds of stories, the stories I'm
telling you now, are quite mild very mild.
Jones: There’s another story that you have
about the library.
You started out talking about the library
at Cooper Union so, I think it would be interesting
to tell people, I mean you talked about that
library, I mean there's a lot of students
who talk about going to the library and being
in love with it, but I think your story about
libraries in the south will put that in another
context if you can tell that story.
Whitten: There was a building in Bessemer,
Alabama, very imposing building.
I remember very big white pillars, brick structure,
quite an amazing building in my little mind,
and I never knew what went on in that building.
My mom allowed me to go downtown to visit
my aunt Lana, she and her husband owned a
restaurant called Hall's Cafe anybody from
Bessemer during the forties would know Hall’s
Café, that was my aunts place.
And on the way home I decided, I must being
eight years old, I wanted to peep into that
building and see what it was, and I remember
pulling myself up on the windows and peeping
inside.
What I saw was whole walls of books, I became
so excited.
There were people sitting at the tables and
chairs, these very nice tables, reading.
I lowered myself down and, I think I ran all
the way back home.
And I ran home, and I told my mom what I saw.
She went into a fury, she’d curse, she hollered
at me, she says, “you have to promise me
never to do that again; don't you understand
those people will kill you?
Don't you ever do that again.”
It was the Public Library, the Carnegie Library,
but we couldn't go there was no library.
But before I graduated Dunbar High School,
maybe about the tenth year, people in Bessemer
took it upon themselves to make the Bessemer
colored library.
It was a small room about, at the most ten
feet square, and they had to give it a few
books, and there we could go and read a book.
I mean it an unbelievable story; I mean it's
something you take for granted today being
able to go to the library.
