R., Ed, June 10, 1976, tape 2, side 1

Peter Gottlieb: This is the second part of an interview with Mr. Ed R. of 528 Hawkins Avenue, North Braddock, Pennsylvania. Recorded on June 16th, 1976, in Mr. R. home. Well, could you just describe to me the kind of things that went on at that time of year that didn't happen in other time of year?

Ed R.: Well, that's. Well, that's the time all crop comes to the point that they that you finish working them, you know, then you leave everything for them to develop themselves. So that always happened around July. Everybody worked hard to try to lay the crop by by July. And then from the rest of the time, it takes care of itself up to harvest time.

Gottlieb: You mentioned to me that this was a time when there would be church revivals.

Ed R.: Yeah, that's in August. See, everybody wanted to finish up so they could go to church for four weeks of August, and then September they would start the stripping the father off of the corn. And in September, from September on, then in October, then you start you dig your peanuts.

Gottlieb: Could you describe to me what happened during the church revival period time and what kind of church activities there were?

Ed R.: Well, they call that the old fashioned revival, you know, like new people coming in to church and getting ready for baptism. And in all of the churches, you know, they try to bring in as many what they call sinners as possible. And then that helped revive the old Christians, too. You know, that what they call backsliders. So they that's what most of the revival is for. That's why they call it revival.

Gottlieb: And there would be meetings almost every day of the week.

Ed R.: Yeah. Five days a week in different churches. Now, some of them would be in my district, maybe a couple up in my district, and and well, I'll tell you, it reached all over the whole South, mostly during that month of August, because that's vacation time, too, you know? Gottlieb: Right. Ed R.: And and they have church revivals during that one week. We had five about our church. And we lived at what we call New Hope. Then another one, Yale, Hunton, Carter. Well, all that around in our district that was in driving distance with horse and buggy, you know, and wagons. No cars. Gottlieb: Yeah.

Gottlieb: With the White churches be having revivals at this time, too?

Ed R.: Well, a few of them would. A few of the Baptists had it in some of the Presbyterians. You know, they didn't bother with it too much, but the White people had revivals, too. Now they have more of that in the Deep South. What they do around Virginia. Well, you know, you're taking Deep South. Now they have what they call camp meetings. Good, good work that we could stuff that we could produce with.

Gottlieb: Did you become very good friends with the people that you worked with? Ed R.: Always.

Ed R.: Always. Friendly man.

Gottlieb: Did you ever do anything with them when you when a job was over? Ever socialized with them when you worked. . .

Ed R.: Yeah. Oh, yeah. So I went driving myself. See, I worked up the river to myself. Gottlieb: Uh huh. Ed R.: Most of the time. The guys always want to work with me because we work together. See? Always. They claimed I was a pretty good leader. Gottlieb: Uh huh. Ed R.: Because we. We worked together. And after he the boy needed help, I would go with him and help him. One guy who had one boy that he didn't want the boy. So I said, Well, I'll just trade you. Then I'll take him. I took the boy. Well, he didn't let the boy doing nothing, see, So I had to do all the writing myself, see. So I said, Now you stand there looking at me, right? I said, I tell you what I'm going to do, and we can make more money. And if we want to do it. I said, Now you write all of this stuff down on the time sheet as we go along. See, and while I mean this mean my helper, my bucker up is taking the bolts out and reaming the hole. You write that down, and by the time we get through, we can start right back to work. We made nice money that way. Gottlieb: Uh huh. Ed R.: So the guy I told him, I said, Don't you wish you had your heater boy with back? I was showing him my my slip when my slip come around. Nice piece work I made. I was making more than he was. And he had straight jobs. Gottlieb: Yeah.

Gottlieb: What kind of things did you use to do with these the guys you worked with off the job? Would you just say so long, See you tomorrow when you left the job?

Ed R.: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Everybody's friendly, you know.

Gottlieb: Or did you. . .

Ed R.: See you tomorrow, The more we look forward, maybe tomorrow we can do better? Gottlieb: Yeah.

Gottlieb: What I meant to ask was, did you just say goodbye to them when the job was over, or did you have to go someplace, get a beer, something like that?

Ed R.: Well, I wasn't too much. I don't know what. See what my. All of my gang work lived somewhere else. They some of them lived in rank and some of them lived in Homestead. Some of them lived down East Pittsburgh. And I lived in Braddock. So sometime on payday we would stop and socialize a little bit. And then sometime I would get with some of the other gangs, you know, that that lived in the same town that I did. And we'd go one beer garden the other and have a little drink. After the stuff was legalized. [inaudible] of course it wasnt leagalized, you couldnt get nothing you go to a joint somewhere.

Gottlieb: Um. Do you Speaker3: Hello. Gottlieb: Hi. Do you remember when you first came up from Virginia and noticing any difference between Black people who had come up from the South and those who had been born and raised in Pennsylvania?

Ed R.: One, the only thing that I could could pay much attention to is, well, the one that is all born here was he went to school here that was a little different like they will push forward more so than the the kid from the South. He would hesitate because he didn't quite understand. But the ones that was already here, they would they would understand much better. And uh they would uh. I Think that was the only difference. But it wasn't long before they catch em. Welcome God to come inside. They were not damaged either. They just didn't know, you know?

Gottlieb: You used the term greenhorn a little while ago. Did people used to call men from the South That?

Ed R.: Huh?

Gottlieb: Did people used to call the men who would come up from the South greenhorns?

Ed R.: Well, some of them might make a crack like that, but you see them old, big, strong boys. Nobody didn't mess with them too much if they didn't know, know they other fundamentals, they know how to fight [Ed R. laughs]. They all was big and strong. You know, they eat good down there, you know. They damn no doughnuts and no coffee or tea in the morning. They didn't do none of that stuff. They eat meat and bread and eggs for breakfast. You take the most Southern men. They like your breakfast. You take most of the northern people. They want all they want a cup of coffee or meat. But I used to come looking at the restaurant. I'd go up there and order me maybe a couple of eggs and some bacon, you know, and coffee. And they were ordering doughnuts in that plain cake, you know, and dip it in the coffee. I couldn't stand that. I couldn't stand that dipping nothing, getting the wedding coffee and then eating it. I couldn't stand it. Still can't. Gottlieb: Uh huh.

Gottlieb: Do you remember when you first came up here whether there was something that you particularly wanted to get with the bigger money that you could earn up here? Was there one thing that you had in mind to buy?

Ed R.: Well, not too much that I wanted to buy, but I wanted to save up some money. That's what I wanted, a bank account more than anything else.

Gottlieb: You didn't want to do anything with it, though, in particular?

Ed R.: No, I wanted to save the money.

Gottlieb: Wasn't a house or a suit of clothes?

Ed R.: No, I. Well, I bought clothes after I was here. I had pretty fair clothes when I come here. So I worked here for a while. I got myself about $100 in a bank. Then I decided I would spend a little bit, you know, So I bought a couple of suits, extra pants and stuff like that.

Gottlieb: Can you tell me the different places that you've lived since you've been here?

Ed R.: Well, I ain't moved too much. I um first place I lived was 547 Coy Avenue. I stayed there for about, oh, a couple of years.

Gottlieb: Was that where your mother was living?

Ed R.: Yes, thats where my mother was living. And I got married. And I stayed there, I guess maybe 3 or 4 to 6 months after I got married. Then me and the wife decided we going housekeeping. Well, at that time I didn't had much money. I think I had a $2 bill in my pocket. We went down to Levitt brothers and told them we want to go housekeeping. And then found three rooms and I went there with that $2, $2 bill and that would forget it. And me and her bought three rooms of furniture, $2. And we set up housekeeping. We had we had one boy, you know, while we was over here on Coy Avenue, and we went moved down to 108 Sixth Street, and it aint been long tore that building down. Then we moved, we moved down there and then my oldest daughter come and I moved up Sixth Street, 521 Sixth Street. And we lived there for a while.

Gottlieb: You renting there too? Ed R.: Huh? Gottlieb: You renting there too?

Ed R.: Yeah. Then just before the Depression, I was living up on the wall. That was 5, that house that was 528 too. 528 Sixth Street. I lived 528 Sixth Street.

Gottlieb: What did you call it? The Wall?

Ed R.: Yeah. Up on the wall. Yeah. 528 Sixth Street.

Gottlieb: Why did they call that?

Ed R.: Well, that's up on the, You've never been sixth Street area?

Gottlieb: I've been on part of it but I don't know. . .

Ed R.: Well, Ralph, just before you get to the Pennsylvania Railroad, see Pennsylvania Railroad in the back. Gottlieb: Yeah. Right, Right. Ed R.: Well, if you go down that way, you look up there on top of the wall. There's no street down there. See, that's all up on the wall. So I lived up there, the Depression. I moved back to one 521. Then we lived at 521 and my family outgrown that place. And right down here on the corner I moved up there and got four rooms there. Downstairs we had to clean that out and that's 5, 565. [inaudible] avenue. Then the family moved out upstairs, so I went up there and my family outgrown that. So then we moved from there. We moved down to level five, Willow Way where I lived there for for quite a while. Then, Well, most all my kids had come. Then I had nine kids then. And then we moved over in the project. We lived in the project [inaudible] if i can find anything. . . close to ten years, I guess. Then we moved from there. From there, I moved on Sixth Street. 412 Sixth Street. I lived there close to four years. And then when I moved from there, I moved here.

Gottlieb: Is this the first place that you bought? Ed R.: Yeah.

Ed R.: So that's it.

Gottlieb: And these different places you were living were these pretty much Black neighborhoods you live in all around Black?

Ed R.: Not too particularly. Uh huh. Now, we lived in Willow Way. We had a White family on the east side.

Gottlieb: Were they. . .

Ed R.: Right, one on this side of us, one on this side. And. And 2 or 3 families in the front. All our kids raised up together.

Gottlieb: Were they foreigners?

Ed R.: Well, the [inaudible]. Id say foreigners. But they all American born. Gottlieb: They were all. . . Ed R.: All but their parents. The parents wasn't American born.

Gottlieb: Were you aware of what kind of ancestry they had, whether they were Polish or Ukrainian?

Ed R.: Well, you see. One thing about it, when I worked with this gang down at the what's it called, I learned to understand their language. So one lady come in there from up above, you know, one day, and the neighbor next door to me, she had two girls and a boy. And she started rattling off in Slovak. You know how the Dickens can you stand it down here with all these niggers? So I'm up in my window, you know, And I listened to them. I told them, I said, well, she's not tired. I said she didnt want to live with the niggers, she could move. From then on, she told her to speak English from. . .[Ed R. laughs]. He understands it, speak English. But she was a good neighbor. Good neighbor, but wasn't her know how it was her friend that come from up in the 1200 block. We all lived in 1100 Block.

Gottlieb: Was it true in Braddock, as it was in Homestead, that most of the Blacks lived down in the bottoms as as they came in Homestead.

Ed R.: In Homestead or in Braddock?

Gottlieb: In Braddock.

Ed R.: No, no, no. It was more White than it was Black. Gottlieb: In the bottom? Ed R.: Yes, sir. Yes. I said almost 75%. Looked like like most all of the foreigners lived down there in the bottom. Wasnt too many Black down there till later years.

Gottlieb: Did you have any relatives besides you and your mother to come up here and settle down? Any cousins?

Ed R.: No. Just, uh, I had one second cousin, a couple of cousins. One lived in Homewood and the other lived in Penn Hill.

Gottlieb: Did they get in touch with you when they came up? Did they? Did you help them out?

Ed R.: No well, the one boy, he come over. He stayed with my mother, you know. But the rest of them, they was on their own, you know.

Gottlieb: I just want to ask you a few questions about the church that you joined up here. Did you, you joined New Hope?

Ed R.: Yeah, I joined this. I come up here on the fifth Sunday in April, 1923. I got here at 7:00 o'clock in the morning and 11:00 o'clock I joined New Hope church.

Gottlieb: How did you under. . . why were you going to New Hope on that Sunday?

Ed R.: Well, you see, under the Covenant. Our covenant. We always join the next church. When you leave one state, you always come. Remember the next church to your convenience. Gottlieb: Uh huh. Ed R.: And that's. That's what I did, you know? So I never was out of church.

Gottlieb: You said that your church at home was called New Hope, too.

Ed R.: Yeah, it was new hope, too.

Gottlieb: Could you have under this covenant, was it all right to join any Baptist church you wanted?

Ed R.: Any Baptist church.

Gottlieb: Why did you join New Hope?

Ed R.: Well, that was the church of my choice. Gottlieb: Was there any. . . Ed R.: That was the closest Baptist church to me at the time. See, from Coy Avenue to sixth Street was just a small jump.

Gottlieb: Was your mother attending services there?

Ed R.: Yeah, she was already in there.

Gottlieb: So you just went with her?

Ed R.: Yeah, I went there by myself. Gottlieb: You did? Ed R.: Yeah went there by myself. Drilling that down. That's it.

Gottlieb: I asked you whether the revivals and the churches up here were different from those at home. And you said they were. Were there any other things about the church up here that was different from the church you grew up in?

Ed R.: No, no different. The Baptist church all run under the same covenant. All of them believe in baptizing. The only thing different is the Methodist. Speaker 1: Uh huh. Ed R.: Yeah.

Gottlieb: Did uh. Were there a lot of people at New Hope at the time you joined who were coming up from the South?

Ed R.: Oh, yeah. You couldn't hardly get a seat in there on Sunday morning. Thats how many people was there. Well, at that time everybody was making a lot of money, you know, just like it was now. But the money wasn't as big, but everybody was working. Nobody was loafing wasnt no welfare. I never heard talking of welfare until the late years. And then when when the things start to slow down and the depression started in, well, what people got, they got it from the county. It wasn't a set up, a welfare. The county would send an investigator around. You wasn't working, then the county would send you a small check. But I never got nothing from them because I was never off that much. And. . .

Gottlieb: Were you ever aware that the congregation in New Hope was from any particular part of the South?

Ed R.: Most all of them were from different parts of the South network. You, you, you could have counted the amount of people that was born in this state or northern states. Everybody was built mostly from one part of the south to the other.

Gottlieb: There weren't, they werent. . .

Ed R.: All in North Carolina, South Carolina, Alabama, Georgia.

Gottlieb: They were from all over.

Ed R.: All over. Everywhere.

Gottlieb: Were you active in any kind of church groups?

Ed R.: Yeah, I was. I was usher, I was usher for a long time. Then I used to teach Sunday School. The teacher boys glasses in sunday school. And I um, I'm still a trustee in church right now.

Gottlieb: Did you belong to any other kind of organizations aside from the church, like fraternal groups or anything like.

Ed R.: Yeah, I'm a free and accepted Mason.

Gottlieb: Did you join back in those years when you were first when you first came up?

Ed R.: Yeah, I. I didn't join until I was uh I was around 21, 22, something like that. You know, I think I was 25 when I joined been in for a long time.

Gottlieb: Was there any particular reason why you decided to join the Masons?

Ed R.: Well, I always did want to be one because my uncles and all of them was Masons. And so I went through the 32nd group. They either wanted you, I told you. . .

Gottlieb: Uh, did you ever become an officer?

Ed R.: No. They wanted me to be an officer, but with my work, I couldn't do it. I couldn't go to be a good officer and work the three shifts, you know? So sometimes the important meetings would be on be at the time that maybe I'd be working for the [inaudible] Gottlieb: Yeah.

Gottlieb: You, I think you told me that all the schooling you got in the South was about the fourth grade. Ed R.: Yeah. Gottlieb: Now, did you ever. Continue your education up here?

Ed R.: No, I never went to no school. I just done my all. I've done a lot of reading. I've done a lot of reading and asking questions. Almost like you [Ed R. laughs]. That's the only way you can find out things is ask questions.

Gottlieb: Did you ever feel at a disadvantage because of the the little bit of schooling?

Ed R.: Well, you know, I wasn't wasn't handicapped too much. Only thing I missed was a couple of good jobs I could have got if I have had the education. That's why I worked so hard with my kids, you know, make sure that they got an education because I didn't want them to be in the same position that I was, you know? So I got them all fixed up. So they every one of them might as a supervisor except one that's playing professional football. Well, he's he finished college in business administration, so that's what he took up in college. So he said we quit playing football and going back to college theres something else he wanted. I don't know what he wanted. Hes accomplished too you know.

Gottlieb: What kind of things did you used to like to read?

Ed R.: Well, anything mostly educational I would go for. I never went for too much love stories and stuff like that. What I needed was something to help me to to learn, to read good and write good. Well, I've done a lot of practice all by myself.

Gottlieb: I would have asked you what, when, When you had time to do this. You sound like you've been busy all your life.

Ed R.: Yeah, well, I have been pretty busy, and my wife needs to get on me sometimes all he can do is keep your head in the book. After that, You know how I stopped that? When we started reading, like we take the paper, I read everything in that paper. So I started giving her a section of the paper and I take one and she got interested in reading too. So that was the end of that.

Gottlieb: Did you used to do this much reading in the South before you came up here?

Ed R.: No, no, I didn't have time. I didn't do much or nothing before I come up here and I found out that I need to know more than what I did, you know, along with reading and writing. Gottlieb: Yeah. Ed R.: So when I first went to [inaudible] to mechanical martial. I couldnt even hardly write my name good. I can write it today.

Gottlieb: What, what kind of things made you realize? I mean, what kind of things did you have to do that made you realize you needed more education?

Ed R.: There's so many different things that confront you, you know, that you could if you could read it, you would really go for it, see? But by you didn't have the know how, you would have to back up on a lot of things.

Gottlieb: Could you give me one example?

Ed R.: That took a lot out of you. Gottlieb: Uh huh. Ed R.: Like somebody come along and sit down. I have a good opening for certain good things. But you got to do a lot of got to know how to read and write real good to do that. But I couldn't do that and I couldn't read and write that good. And that was one hand that kept him right there. And I had to back that up. But it wasn't too long, though, before I didn't learn that I could take any type of job mostly. See, the job that I really worked on was organizing the union. Gottlieb: Really? Ed R.: Well, I missed it. I missed out on that. I'm not able to read and write good, see? And soon after that, the guy wanted he wanted to give me the job the worst of all because I had the ability to meet people and uh and talk to people. See I could talk to people. And he said, you're the type of man that we need. Gottlieb: This is the CIO? Ed R.: I said, I have one handicap, I got a big family. I had to lie. The family didn't have nothing to do with it. I didn't have the education.

Gottlieb: This was a CIO union?

Ed R.: The CIO. Yeah.

Gottlieb: You were working at the fabricating plant when it came in?

Ed R.: Yeah, I was working in fabricating. And you had to, when we meet, I was a guard. See, I was in guard and we had another guy out guard. And he didn't know the people as good as I do, so we had to switch. He was elected to out guard and I was elected to be in guard. So we had to switch it around because I knew more people than he did. So I went. And when they come, I knew where it was safe to go in the meeting or not. Gottlieb: Yeah Ed R.: But he didn't. Gottlieb: Uh huh. Ed R.: So he he was White, but he was known as many people as I did because I was out on the street more. Gottlieb: Yeah. Ed R.: And that's how we worked that out. But still, I got pretty good out of life anyhow. I got my family raised, and most of them they educated. Gottlieb: Yeah. Ed R.: All of them did. Everybody went to high school. Gottlieb Uh huh. Ed R.: Three of them went to college. Four went to college. Lawrence went to junior college and she got a supervisor's job.

Gottlieb: I've gotten to the end of the questions I had to ask you, but I always tell people if I've left anything out, do you think that would be important for me to know? If I haven't asked you about it, I'd appreciate you're telling me, but otherwise I don't. I don't have any more questions that I've written down.

Ed R.: Well I dont think I can think of nothing right now that i didn't tell you but theres always something but you never can think of it at the moment. Gottlieb: Right

Gottlieb: Okay. Well, thank you very much.

Ed R.: You're welcome.