WEBVTT 00:00:01.000 --> 00:00:35.000 Peter Gottlieb: This is an interview with Mrs. Sadie M., which took place on May 19th, 1976, at the Office of the Concerned Parents of the General Braddock Area on 420 Library Street, Braddock, Pennsylvania. [recording paused] 00:00:35.000 --> 00:00:38.000 Gottlieb: Could you tell me where your parents were born? Sadie M.: Oh. 00:00:38.000 --> 00:00:48.000 Sadie M.: Uh, my father was born in Selma, Alabama. And so my mother was born in _____[??]. 00:00:48.000 --> 00:01:04.000 Gottlieb: And your grandparents. Do you have any idea-- Sadie M.: They were born in the same place. Gottlieb: Tell me a little bit about what kind of work your, uh, your grandparents or your parents did, depending on how far back you can remember. 00:01:04.000 --> 00:02:40.000 Sadie M.: Well, my grandparents were sharecroppers, and they helped to, um. They lived on a farm and they helped to plant. And then at the end of the year, they were allowed to _______[??]. Cotton is the big thing. So Horton is the big thing. Cotton, tobacco and sugarcane. Make sure they're allowed. And I can remember my grandfather, but not the grandmother. Uh, being an older man, uh, talked a lot about his childhood and how they taught him to hunt and how they had to fish fries on Saturday night. And how about living in a log cabin. Also the sleeping on the shocks, bed, so forth and so on. And the many tales are told about the languages. And a lot of people never understood that the Black man, being that he had the best communication system in song than a lot of people ever realized. And I think today, even in our modern society, the clarks have a way of talking. And then how would you say we put a message over that only they understand. Gottlieb: Mm hm. 00:02:40.000 --> 00:04:56.000 Sadie M.: And I came from the South, when I was four and a half years old, and they say, you can't remember that far back. But I'm not trying to be cute, but I do have a memory like an elephant. And I can remember my mother giving away chickens that day, about the beds being taken down, and the talk for weeks about going away. I had been told since I was a little girl about the time that they had migrated and they turned the children with three older children were born to Pennsylvania in 1918. Gottlieb: Mm. Sadie M.: And during that time they had to go through an epidemic here and that people were dying very fast. And that frightened my mother and father. And they went back South. This is where I was born. She asked me when she came up in 1918, she had three more when she got back up here. And I'm not going to tell you what year that was. And the family all of a sudden decided to migrate. And my mother's family was a very large family of 18 sisters and brothers. And they all decided because some of them worked in the coal mine in the South and they decided to come North. But they sort of did a little bit like, uh, Moses did when he crossed the desert. They decided to go in different directions, not to all starve to death in one place or that you have to be the case. So a large number of them, our family went to Detroit, Michigan, and settled and they have a large family there right now. The others stopped off at West Virginia, Fairmont, West Virginia, because they were the coal miners. And we have a large number of relatives living in Fairmont. My father decided Pittsburgh because he had been here in 1918 and he was always a man for the dollar. You know, he decided there was more money to be made in the steel mill and he had never did it for people doesn't care about went on the ground. 00:04:56.000 --> 00:05:02.000 Gottlieb: Can I interrupt you for a minute and ask why he originally chose Pittsburgh in 1918? 00:05:02.000 --> 00:05:37.000 Sadie M.: No more than that. It had been the tales coming back, dropping back down to the South, about to get money. I suppose you understand too that 1918 was just closing after the war. So probably 1916, 15, 17 was a lot of money to be made in the steel mills during the war. As it had done in the 1940, 41. Through the Second World War. And I think this was one of the things that allowed my father to Pittsburgh in 1948 [??]. 00:05:37.000 --> 00:05:45.000 Gottlieb: Was it-- Could you tell me this at least because it's important for my research. Was it many, many years after 1918, or was it kind of after the flu had passed? 00:05:45.000 --> 00:05:53.000 Sadie M.: Oh, yeah. He came back up in 1920. Yeah. Okay. I was only kidding, I like to be cute up for that. 00:05:53.000 --> 00:06:03.000 Gottlieb: One other question. Let me put in here. Your mother's side of the family was in coal mining and the brothers are taken. Sadie M.: Yes. Gottlieb: What about your father's family? Had they been on the land? 00:06:03.000 --> 00:07:00.000 Sadie M.: They were the farmers. I mean, my mother's father were the free miners. Uh, the, uh, my father's people were, uh. How would you say not as big a family, uh, as, uh. Uh, I think he only had 2 or 3 sisters. You know, I think it was like a family of 4 or 5 compared to what my mother had or the larger family, the 18 sisters and brothers. And we came here in March of '24, and my father was dead in October of the same year. Contract pneumonia from working. He was part of building the tunnel that is now another power plant in> He got pneumonia. And we were out of father. 00:07:00.000 --> 00:07:58.000 Sadie M.: My mother had six children, four girls and two boys, and the baby was 18 months old. And the following March, we lost him, you know. So my mother was instrumental in raising four girls and one boy. And my mother worked very hard and very, very little education and apparently had only been in school maybe one year out of her whole life. All she had ever known she had learned how picking up, farm Southern cotton, picking cotton in cotton fields, so forth and so on. And in those days, you didn't have Social Security and, uh, compensation for widows. So my mother went to work and I can I remember back in. 00:07:58.000 --> 00:08:32.000 Sadie M.: Those days, but this whole day was like $30 million. So we know what our cold water flat for. And you can lay in bed and count the stars, my heart, that you slept with your coat on in wintertime, that you put paper in your shoes. But all the families from I mean, all the men and women from our family all came here to Pennsylvania, let's see how many. 00:08:32.000 --> 00:08:37.000 Sadie M.: 100 and four five. Six, seven or 'em, seven of 'em came to Pittsburgh. 00:08:37.000 --> 00:08:41.000 Gottlieb: Of your mother's name or your-- Sadie M.: [simultaneous talking] Right. 00:08:41.000 --> 00:08:52.000 Sadie M.: There was a couple previously over here that had preceded my mother and father and we all moved in with them on our way in. And you know how that goes. Has 25 people in three rooms. 00:08:52.000 --> 00:08:53.000 Gottlieb: Was that here in Braddock? 00:08:53.000 --> 00:08:59.000 Sadie M.: Rankin, the first one that I had when we moved them to Swissvale and my. 00:08:59.000 --> 00:09:05.000 Sadie M.: home in Swissvale until 19___[??] and someone bought it 00:09:05.000 --> 00:09:22.000 Sadie M.: Back for a couple of years. And then we moved to Swissvale. The conditions today I don't think are very much different than they were when we first got off the train in 00:09:22.000 --> 00:09:45.000 Sadie M.: Pittsburgh. The educational value has gone up for the minority people. Uh, fortunately, not everybody out of our family were industrious people. Uh, I can remember being on welfare for some reason or like that. My husband, we were forced to go on welfare. 00:09:45.000 --> 00:10:09.000 Sadie M.: I remember checks being for $430 or $450 a week to feed six people. Um, being raised in Swissvale, there a majority of Italian people. _____________[??] Is one leave in ____________[??] On your love and will always remind us of our life here. 00:10:09.000 --> 00:10:24.000 Sadie M.: With the Latin people with us because when we were there in Swissval on the street where we lived, the way we all-- and we shared and laugh together and cried together. 00:10:24.000 --> 00:11:20.000 Sadie M.: And as a kid I can remember counting the votes now on every Wednesday afternoon and the great big stone oven was cleaned and a fire was built and the bread smelled all over the neighborhood and we had spaghetti and hard bread. And most of all, we gave over it, drank it from the time I was about six, even made it every fall by jumping in the barrels, you know, I mean, the wooden barrels, we would all trump grapes down and and it was a beautiful experience going on. Hard work never hurt me. I knew what it was to be poor. I knew what it was to be uneducated. And I will say America is the only game. We have no home, you know. And I'm talking about all the majority and people here in my state. 00:11:20.000 --> 00:11:49.000 Sadie M.: It is a good place to live. And it is what you make it. Is what comes. I don't think there is anybody that's ever been denied or deprived of anything because if you knew what you were doing as a people started to stop deciding that you go. In most cases, you find the good people who would lend you a helping hand. And that is one reason. 00:11:49.000 --> 00:13:43.000 Sadie M.: That I think I grew up to be a social worker is to extend my hand and fellowship to any young person that wanted to get ahead if you want to call it that, get ahead, work, working better themselves and teaching all the time that education is the path forward. And like I said, moving North. I've never had any inclination of going back South. I don't know. We went back down again and I was around 13 when I lost my father. I knew my grandfather. We had been up here for 30 [??] approximately 7 or 8 years. And as you know. You can always see what it was like back home. So when we get down there and get on a streetcar, my mother forgot that she went to the back of the streetcar to sit down and she sat right up in front. And my mother, as I stated, got on the front of the bus and sat and she was told that she had to go to the back and she told the bus driver to go to hell. We all got thrown off. So we were there about two weeks while she buried her father and we came back North. And she has always stated she would never go back. So I suppose that's that. The brainwashing I would right along to them. So I guess we never had any information about South. So but I am-- have watched with great interest. But what the things and how things are happening in the South with Black people. Gottlieb: Mhm. Sadie M.: And I a, well I don't mind today or something but they had progress a lot faster, a lot farther within the northern side. Gottlieb: Mhm. 00:13:43.000 --> 00:14:44.000 Sadie M.: Uh because they are industrial schools all over the world and United States. For the ghettos and goes and bars. I think this as our Lord said, the poor will always be with us and I think this is a thing the same as death and taxes, but I think in the South today the Black man has a better chance of getting ahead and more education and more and things that we don't have, especially in the state of Pennsylvania. I don't know about any other state? But I do know you still have your vice or something. Gottlieb: Mhm. Sadie M.: And bigotry, which I'm sure you find anywhere you go, but I think in the South the people understand the Black and they're truthful by stating some of the people. Gottlieb: Mhm. Sadie M.: And I think that's an understanding that they all understand. 00:14:44.000 --> 00:15:05.000 Sadie M.: But you pretty much got the same thing here in Pittsburgh. You have your Polish Hill. Gottlieb: Mhm. Sadie M.: You have your Squirrel Hill. Gottlieb: Mhm. Sadie M.: You have your whole school and working class. So they're supporting people like you and I think too that that's every man for white to make me want to keep it. I think that should Black and white. 00:15:05.000 --> 00:15:21.000 Gottlieb: Let me jump back a minute here. Um, you mentioned that one of your earlier memories about moving up here was your mother selling chickens that they gave her. Sadie M.: Oh yeah. Mhm. Gottlieb: Do you remember, uh, what kind of transportation they took up here? 00:15:21.000 --> 00:16:27.000 Sadie M.: Never forget it as long as I live. Let's see. Uh, we took, uh, train that came up to Columbus, Ohio. You know, you don't work for, I would call it the Mason-Dixon line, but when you changed over and you're pretty much ride where you wanted to ride up, but up as far as Columbus, Ohio, you were still, uh, like some of the benefits, uh, segregated. But once you got there and had a layover, I think the layover, like probably five or six hours because the train we going to Pittsburgh and we came into the downtown Pittsburgh. You know, if my memory serves me right. And but there were the two trains that were very long and. Uh, two days coming off when I was down there. Yeah. 00:16:27.000 --> 00:16:35.000 Gottlieb: Uh, how many, uh, material possessions did your parents bring with you? Do you have any idea? Did they-- just clothes or-- 00:16:35.000 --> 00:17:55.000 Sadie M.: Oh, yeah, I can remember. And, uh, probably we had them had a camera at that time. It would have been one of the most unique pictures I would have had. Migrating from the South and down in the South, everything that you throw it around and throw it on your head. So therefore, we had baskets and boxes and my mother couldn't walk as tall on the street with a very large load on her head, with her hands on her head, never missing a step and nothing never moving. She used to amaze me. And we worked at Jackman's farm. Uh, South Hills. How she going to come out with bushels of food on her hand. Without spilling or dropping. And I found-- I learned how to do it with a book. And I do walk around talking about poise with the book. And she did it as natural as it was done the night we did bring with us all of our worldly goods. Uh, that could be put up in baskets and boxes and associated [??]. And I had clothing, had ourselves _____[??] and so on. 00:17:55.000 --> 00:18:08.000 Sadie M.: But we were pretty poor sight. When we got to Pittsburgh. With six children and a husband and all we could carry in a suitcase and a couple of trucks. Right. 00:18:08.000 --> 00:18:13.000 Gottlieb: Um, your father had been farming just before he left. 00:18:13.000 --> 00:18:16.000 Sadie M.: Yes, he had. He was coal mine. He did coal mine. 00:18:16.000 --> 00:18:17.000 Gottlieb: He also. 00:18:17.000 --> 00:18:52.000 Sadie M.: He was a big coal mine and farming with his parents. And, uh, he was a great one for her because she had left him 2 or 3 times and was off looking for a better job. Down to Florida, went to Texas, went to Georgia and not finding anything. But eventually came back to our and I said, I think what really caused him to move North. Because he was a very young man when he died. And, um. 00:18:52.000 --> 00:19:14.000 Sadie M.: Like everybody else that had migrated during that time because-- part of the 20th century, there was a Great Migration of the Black people out of the South. And I also hear that. In 1975 and the Great Migration of the Black people. Back to the South. Right. 00:19:14.000 --> 00:19:22.000 Gottlieb: Do you know whether or not he was-- He quit his coal mining job to come up here in 1924? Or did he quit farming because-- 00:19:22.000 --> 00:20:29.000 Sadie M.: [simultaneous talking] He wasn't working in the coal mine because farming did not pay enough money. He had six kids. That is why he went into the mine. But he was never a great one for mining simply because my mother had lost her younger brother in a mining accident. And I think, too, that is why and the majority of the men have decided on going into Detroit, Michigan and going into the factories and building cars. And there was about oh 6 or 8 of them went into Detroit and did very well and built very nice homes and had with the families and raised and educated their children. West Virginia is the same way, although it was country even long before the Pittsburgh had grown up. He would go them for family reunions and we been to West Virginia. And it was like going all the way back into the South. Until today, they don't have sidewalks. We burned in the last couple of years. He was one of our relatives from West Virginia and had to go back down. This has not changed any 00:20:29.000 --> 00:21:04.000 Sadie M.: In Fairmont because of they quite a few now universities and high schools are now. And amazingly, those miners did raise their children and send their children off to school. And I say ____[??] trader or became a teacher. They migrated according to the work and there was now very little bit of a family left in West Virginia simply because West Virginia was practically all out. The mine has practically taken all of the old town that they lived in. Well. 00:21:04.000 --> 00:21:14.000 Gottlieb: You mentioned that your parents had some relatives in Pittsburgh when they moved. Was that true in 1918 as well as 1924, or did they come up here? 00:21:14.000 --> 00:21:32.000 Sadie M.: They all took-- they all came up at the same time and they all took off back South at the same time when this epidemic went through. But the following year or so, there was 1 or 2 of them was game enough to come back. They were here when my father was able about to let them out when he was coming back too. 00:21:32.000 --> 00:21:36.000 Gottlieb: So that was your mother's family, not your father's relatives? Sadie M.: No, no. 00:21:36.000 --> 00:21:51.000 Sadie M.: My father's mother just never left. All about. But still, there was an old alarm practically all the time. But there are hundreds of, um, second and third and fourth and fifth cousins down there that I've never seen. 00:21:51.000 --> 00:22:02.000 Gottlieb: Your maiden name was-- Sadie M.: Jackson. Yeah. Gottlieb: What-- do you know what job your father had when he came up in 1918? 00:22:02.000 --> 00:22:10.000 Sadie M.: He was digging a tunnel that is now under the river. I don't know-- 00:22:10.000 --> 00:22:21.000 Sadie M.: That you can go from the Rankin side or to the Homestead side without, uh, crossing the river. And that is a job that he was working on when he became ill. 00:22:21.000 --> 00:22:24.000 Gottlieb: So he got the same job when he came back in '24 that he had in 1918. 00:22:24.000 --> 00:22:34.000 Sadie M.: I don't know what he had in 1918. I wasn't born. Think that was the one that he told me about. So I didn't know too much about that one. Right. 00:22:34.000 --> 00:22:37.000 Gottlieb: Do you know where they lived in 1918? 00:22:37.000 --> 00:22:50.000 Sadie M.: Yeah, they lived on, uh, Chartiers Street in Rankin. [long pause] 00:22:50.000 --> 00:23:06.000 Gottlieb: Well, let me. And did your, uh, either of your parents used to send money back to their people in the South to support them, to their parents in order to support them? Sadie M.: Are you kidding? 00:23:06.000 --> 00:24:00.000 Sadie M.: For years, we didn't have money to even pay rent. And I can remember a landlord saying, Hey, could throw you out, there would be nobody to move in. At least while you're staying there. You're keeping the house up. Uh. If there was a time _________[??] see. I remember when they voted Hoover out, when he was Roosevelt in, and many tales have been told about that. But I can say one thing. When Roosevelt gave it back dignity and respect because he put a dollar back in his pocket. And it's not very nice to say that it took a war to bring the country back to normalcy. But that's what was doing. 1939, I-- 00:24:00.000 --> 00:24:59.000 Sadie M.: Think they started to rattle the cymbal. And things began to boom. And I met many, many young people who migrated from all parts of the South coming up here and making big money. They had never steal because I am still in the impression that big money is not stealing. They lived in the South here regardless. The needle was the cost of living with inflation and running rampant every day. But I met and talked to many people that were from the same background and the conditions that prevailed on the South and many of the stories that we shared and shadowed of the lynchings and the bombing of churches and the killing of what it was. 00:24:59.000 --> 00:25:29.000 Sadie M.: That was not much different than what they do today. But this is back when we can call it a lynching and just call it murder. But they was perpetrated in a much more subtle way than it was back in those days. And I suppose many times, many times. But he is worried. About living in the South so many years. 00:25:29.000 --> 00:25:49.000 Sadie M.: And I tell you, there's a melting pot, because I think the United States is made up of all minorities to make the whole state of children, of people, poor people find themselves in much in the same boat. Gottlieb: Mm hmm. Sadie M.: Our problems are all the same and different. 00:25:49.000 --> 00:26:13.000 Sadie M.: Black, white, yellow and polka dot. But if you're poor and sit here, and as I grow older, I finally went to college in the States. It's the political power. And. The leader for both you and you got the money and the politicians got the money and the money and politicians are running pretty much closed down all of the government. 00:26:13.000 --> 00:26:17.000 Gottlieb: What kind of work did your mother do up here? 00:26:17.000 --> 00:27:10.000 Sadie M.: Made us work. We had farming. We had a small farm and that we went over and worked paid so much money to pick beans and tomatoes and the couch and so forth. And the kids had a ball because it was horses and chickens and cows and things. And it was a really a ____[??] experience for us growing up. Then the man was kind enough to let us, being in the fields afterwards and told her that she could bring home and she was allowed to-- two, three. I recall, we were never starving. And that was always a pot of beans or a pot of potatoes and a piece of bread. The one thing I would say about my mother, she worked very hard and she made us work. 00:27:10.000 --> 00:29:04.000 Sadie M.: That was up early to bed and early to rise and a lot different than the teenagers are today. Bringing water to wash your clothes. I mean, I see my kids now running the bathtub to the top. You know, they get in and it's brought a what? A bucket full and bake. Gottlieb: Yeah. Sadie M.: Because, uh, there wasn't the water and electricity and things that they have today. And a lot of people say, I look back on the good old days, you know, I don't because there really never was really no good old days. I don't think there ever has been. Really good old days. And because, uh, let's face it, life is complexity. It's part of you have to deal with it. My mother dealt with him in a way that I didn't have to deal with it. She did what she could to teach me, uh, to be able to support myself. Uh, which reminds me of what she would do every once in a while. Uh, to me, my own sister. She had learned from the Italian women to pick dandelions and the different meanings, you know? And she, too, from the South, the different watercress and the different greens that, you know, we would and she would say to us that she was very straitlaced. The tough woman, you know, she'd say, Now, if you had a headache and you were sick, I would keep you home from school and take you to the woods. You weren't playing hooky. You were sick. All of a sudden, you was dead. You know, she would take us in to the woods and show us many plants. Uh, berries, different roots, different barks. For medicine, uh, the way the moss was. 00:29:04.000 --> 00:29:34.000 Sadie M.: There was something else. The way you find your way our if you were lost. There some things that nobody's ever taught me in school about survival and the way that you need to survive. She taught us also how to set a wooden tub outside in rain, and then we'll start moving to this water. And amazingly, a little bit of life was there. 00:29:34.000 --> 00:30:05.000 Sadie M.: We had soap and so many other things. She taught us how to make dumplings and biscuits which-- A lot of people try to make the other day and bounce them off their head and could have kill us because they're so hard, you know? Gottlieb: Yeah. Sadie M.: So I remember my mother with admiration for she had a rough, tough life and that. 00:30:05.000 --> 00:31:20.000 Sadie M.: She did to the best of her ability to make it easier for me. Although she didn't have any education, she insisted that we go to school. And when we all got to 11th grade, and, hey, 16, 17, you know, the education, you need money, you need a job. And I remember the first job, I thought, I got my feet on the street I thought was like 300 or 600 a day. And to my dismay, I found that it was a lot harder to go back to school after a certain number of years and to continue life as it was. This is one reason the top priority of our organization is education, and we do to the best of our ability to the kids. And starting school won't stop at education. Opportunities are difficult because when I decided to go back to school. Because I've always thought that I had something a my heart and if I had just continued on I'd finished high school because I think I put in-- about seventh grade [??]. 00:31:20.000 --> 00:32:41.000 Sadie M.: I went back to the gym. And them seminars about community development I feel how to operate on The greatest education I received was not school, on the job training, best kind of education in the world. And this is pretty much what I mean after setting a I probably remember back by, you know, as a get togethers and the songs that we sing like dinner brought or soft and playing with a guitar and then wanting to run barefoot because after coming here and I never worn shoes, never know what shoes were. And when you find yourself slapped in shoes and then being in a warm climate with coming into cold weather, weather and until that day, I never got used to cold wet weather, you know. And I always stated if I ever earned enough money, although I won't go back South, I would go to a warm front. Only place I can figure I would be out west somewhere. Gottlieb: Yeah. Sadie M.: Right. I don't know. And as I grow older, maybe one day I will go back to the South. 00:32:41.000 --> 00:32:50.000 Gottlieb: Did your mother ever work anywhere else except that farm? Or is that the-- Sadie M.: Housework. She did housework. Gottlieb: She was a domestic? Sadie M.: Right. Gottlieb: And in Swissvale? 00:32:50.000 --> 00:32:56.000 Sadie M.: Oh, Squirrel Hill, Swissvale, Edgeworth. Not responding. [??] 00:32:56.000 --> 00:32:59.000 Gottlieb: Do you know how she found those jobs? 00:32:59.000 --> 00:33:36.000 Sadie M.: More so by word of mouth. You know, I mean, there is, you see the churches and not only were church or maybe you had to go to that church every Sunday and the master of my church, the church always hasn't been the place for the Black people and always seem to be well-structured right outside of the family, structured into the family and the family into the church and the ministers as a rule were always read about all found jobs. And because whenever anybody ever wanted to know anything. 00:33:36.000 --> 00:34:04.000 Sadie M.: Main thing they do, want to date. They want to know something about you. They go to your minister and to you partition [??]. Two of those places in the world you can go to get any information about anybody because first of all, nobody's going to let your minister know you didn't do anything right. But this is pretty much where the information and referral services were. 00:34:04.000 --> 00:34:13.000 Gottlieb: And the wealthy or wealthier women would come down to Black churches to-- Sadie M.: Well they always call. 00:34:13.000 --> 00:34:43.000 Sadie M.: Cause he usually always have the telephone at his house, the only phone probably in the neighborhood. And by word of mouth, like I stated, that this woman was working in Squirrel Hill. And the woman next door wanted a girl, and she would say, Can you get me a good girl? And then there would be another couple of days picked up. And it's pretty much how she sustained this, view overnight. She go to work and there's another girl working. And working until 76 years old. 00:34:43.000 --> 00:34:51.000 Sadie M.: Then for at least 25 years she was queen, of court, she didn't have to work. 00:34:51.000 --> 00:35:03.000 Gottlieb: Uh, did you mention that you lived with relatives when you first came back in 1924, did you always stay with relatives during the time that you were living with your mother or-- Sadie M.: Oh, no, no, no. We moved. 00:35:03.000 --> 00:35:37.000 Sadie M.: We only stayed with the relatives until my father went to work in the steel mill. Then we moved to Arthur Street in Swissvale, which is just right across the little valley, like from one Chalmers [??] Street. And we lived on Arthur Street for many years. Then we moved on Agnes Street, and then we moved on to Collingwood and then from Collingwood, I might. Yeah, but I lived in Swissvale all those years. 00:35:37.000 --> 00:35:46.000 Gottlieb: Did you have any of your mother's relatives ever lived with you, your mother, and-- Sadie M.: Well, we had some of the brothers. 00:35:46.000 --> 00:36:07.000 Sadie M.: My mother had one brother who had, oh, 6 or 8 children, and they went out to live in coal mines outside of Pittsburgh. I think were out in that section. And I mean, because deep down inside. 00:36:07.000 --> 00:36:20.000 Sadie M.: So they went out there and worked in coal mines or. And the one wife died, and the mother-- moved in with us for a couple of years. 00:36:20.000 --> 00:37:16.000 Sadie M.: Six other children inside and six, _____[??] 5. He lost his wife and there was eleven kids in the family with my mother and her brother. He had no wife and she has no husband. And I was born in this time and I was born. There were fights. Fights. Exchanging of clothes and learning how to share. Yes. That is the one time you really learn how to share. Because when you have anything, you better not let die. So you get it, you know? And then again, we had another offer, we had three children. We had come to Pittsburgh with us and stayed here for all, I suppose, 10 or 12 years. And he just he had two children, in his family, had three children, and he went to Detroit and he was _________[??]. 00:37:16.000 --> 00:37:25.000 Gottlieb: Since it was your mother, one of the older among her brothers and sisters? Do you remember? 00:37:25.000 --> 00:38:04.000 Sadie M.: She was the seventh or eighth child. Something like that. See, as the older girls and were all in the family for my children were small. They helped to, you know, take care of us. And along with Mom. Uh, they're all dead. There's not one. Living. We just lost the last one. She was 70 something. My mother's been dead 16 years, she died at 76. 94. 00:38:04.000 --> 00:38:25.000 Gottlieb: Um, we said that you socialize quite a bit with the, uh, people, the Latin people in Swissvale. So it wasn't a Black community at that time. Sadie M.: No, not even when we moved there. 00:38:25.000 --> 00:39:34.000 Sadie M.: I come to find out it wasn't a Black community in Lincoln because there were quite a few of Italians there, so a lot, a lot in London, but was always the Italian people that I related to. And I don't remember them Italian mothers pounding me with a boom. They were the same as your mother, no doubt. And you got out of line up the street. They knocked you on your behind and you didn't go home and tell your mother because she was going to tell her when she saw her. But she thought it. The strangest thing about it. The Black women with their children were the switch, you know, and the Italian mothers battered you with a broom. I got clobbered on my head so many times with a broom. And I always would tell the kids, hey, you know what? You got it easy. I'd take a broom batting any day to gettin' whipped with one of them-- a switch, on my legs with a switch. 00:39:34.000 --> 00:39:35.000 Gottlieb: From a bush or something like that. 00:39:35.000 --> 00:39:44.000 Sadie M.: Oh, brother, that really sting. You get batted on the head with a broom. That's nothing. 00:39:44.000 --> 00:40:00.000 Gottlieb: Well, it's interesting to me because, um, when you hear about, um, sometimes about racism today in the North, it's all-- people often talk about white ethnics as being the worst or the most blameworthy and stuff like that. But it sounds like it was very different back then. 00:40:00.000 --> 00:42:23.000 Sadie M.: And to tell you the truth, if you wanted to learn the truth, I have no one in my life ever been discriminated against. I mean, outright discrimination. I've seen it done out of both sides of your mouth, you know what I mean? Where you might say something very nice to me in my face and then chop off my head and walk out the door. Knowing situations I knew that this is what has occurred. But just to be downright discriminated against, saying, hey, because you're Black, I don't want you here. I really never ran into that problem. I mean, speaking for me, I heard many people say that they had. But as far as, uh, growing up in the 30s and the 40s and 50s and all that and fought-- Black kids fought among themselves. Black kids fought the white kids. White kids fight among themselves. White kids fought the Black kids, you are playing in the midst time. Gottlieb: Mhm. Sadie M.: Oh really. Ethnic slurs and names. Oh we do. We did it back then and thought about it. Today we walk through here and nigger and hunky means nothing. It's just another word. Gottlieb: Mhm. Sadie M.: And a lot of times I really, really don't think that the word was used. Move it. I think people took those words and made them. The funny thing about our idea was said in amazement. We were about a month ago when Jimmy Carter made a focus on ethnic purity. And how people got uptight with that. And the funny thing about it. Jimmy Carter apologized two weeks to the Black people and never said a word, in my opinion, clearly about anything, but never did. He said that ethnic purity was them Polish or German or Slovak or any, everybody assumed a sort of working assumption that he was speaking of Black people. You know what I mean? And he gotta apologize to anybody, you know. But that that amazed me. You know, that that really taught me. 00:42:23.000 --> 00:42:54.000 Sadie M.: How people can get more match up. I could see the political ramifications for the better. It's one thing for them to take it and go. But I heard people saying the guy's no damn good anyway and it's how he talks about niggers. So, hey, the man didn't say anything about anybody, Black or whatever he did. You know what the man said? So. So you come to the conclusion that people hear what they want to hear, right? Let me tell. Do something. Yeah. So do you deal with. 00:42:54.000 --> 00:43:00.000 Gottlieb: Were both your parents Baptists? Can you tell me which church they joined and-- 00:43:00.000 --> 00:43:31.000 Sadie M.: Joined the Union Baptist Church in Swissvale. And we had Reverend Shaw, who was a very young man, you know, he was around 1920. And when the First Way Baptist church was opened up in Swissvale on Ninth Avenue and _____[??] lot, and he-- he went to church and he told me he had enough money to buy a little church down on Arthur. 00:43:31.000 --> 00:44:34.000 Sadie M.: On Arthur Street in Swissvale. That church remained for all these many years. And last year we had, they built church down on the corner. And you can see it from the bridge when you go on, an extra four hours [??]. And most of the Black people in Swissvale of all those years that they were together and Reverend Shaw went out, he was from Tennessee, he went inside and the 5 or 6 children of his own to raise them to educate. And he was asked to go back to his hometown to preach. So he gave the church up in Swissvale. And have a young Reverend-- that became as a young man, as a young married father, had children, he had about twelve of them. And those two very beautiful young ladies, he's a minister of the church in Swissvale. 00:44:34.000 --> 00:44:49.000 Gottlieb: Do you have any knowledge of why they chose that particular church in this area? Was it the only church anywhere near them that they could have gone to? Sadie M.: No, there wasn't one. Well, we had the church behind the mill [??]. 00:44:49.000 --> 00:45:07.000 Sadie M.: I think New Hope was sixty. I think there's that one in Rankin. They had a pretty big one there on Fourth Street, they had, the-- _________________[??] 00:45:07.000 --> 00:45:12.000 Gottlieb: It was an older church than Union. 00:45:12.000 --> 00:45:18.000 Sadie M.: [unintelligible] And, um, these were professional. 00:45:18.000 --> 00:46:18.000 Sadie M.: Boxer from New York and later lived here for a-- eight, seventy years. People in Swissvale got together pretty much in the same. And Union--
Reddit
Twitter
Facebook