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Second Interview Insert Key
Indented text represents the follow-up
interview conducted on January 18, 2006.
Introduction of Interviewers
My
name is Alex, I am Alexander, my name is Irau, my name is Lindsey,
my name is Sarah, and we are the Urban School and we are interviewing
Floyd Dade on Wednesday May 12th in San Francisco.
My name's Liza, I'm Alex, and today we are interviewing Mr. Ford Dade, January 18th 2006 and we are in San Francisco California.
Can you please state and spell your name?
Floyd
Dade, F-L-O-Y-D, Floyd, D-A-D-E, Dade.
What was your name at the time of birth?
Floyd Dade, Jr.
What is your birthday and how old are you now?
I'm 80 years old now. My birthday's May 5, 1924.
What was the city and country of your birth?
USA. Texarkana, Texas.
Can you please introduce yourself.
I'm Floyd Dade. I was born in Texarkana, Texas, raised in Texarkana, Arkansas, and drafted into the US Army my senior year of 1943. I went into an armoured division when I was drafted. I went to Fort Knox, Kentucky to get my tank training. From there, we came to Camp Hood—Fort Hood now—and took our advanced training. I was with the 761st Tank Battalion.
I got discharged after World War II in 1946. I got discharged in California, I got discharged and stayed in California with my sister. I had to finish my schooling. I went to City College and also to Elkhart, Indiana to finish my high school and get my college degree. After that I came back to San Francisco and that's where I started living after I got a job here as a ____ologist.
What is your earliest memory?
I
guess the third grade. We were playing in the schoolyard, and some
kid urinated behind a tree and he told the teacher that I did it. I
got a spanking. I remember that very good, I didn't do that.
Do you remember anything else about your early school
life and friends?
Elementary
school–I was a good softball player. I loved to play softball
and do the other sports when I was in the sixth grade and higher. Then
I went on to be an excellent football player in high school, and baseball
and softball.
What was your family life like when you were a child?
Family
life? It was great. My mother and father—down south, he had a good
job during the Depression—he worked with KCS Railroad. He had a lot
of money coming in, about twenty-five dollars a week, and that was
a lot of money. My mother was a farm girl. She kept the gardens. We
had plenty fresh vegetables and everything. She fed the whole neighborhood
when people ran short on groceries and so forth.
Did you have any siblings?
Yes.
I had a sister, and a half brother.
What were their names?
Williola
Dade and William Pearce Dade.
Did you get along with them?
Oh
yes. The mother was the one I didn't get along with.
What else can you tell us about your mother?
About
my mother? She did all of the licking, as a matter of fact she did
all of the discipline. My father, he worked all the time, so she wasn't
like the rest of the families: "I'll tell your father when he
get home." She took care of the situation, "Johnnie-on-the-spot."
Do you have any specific memories about your mother,
things she might have done for you that were memorable?
Yes,
my mother she was a great lady. She didn't only raise us, she raised
the neighborhood kids also. What she did at that time during the Depression,
there was a lot of poor people, they weren’t as fortunate as
we were. So my mother would make sure that they had plenty of food
to eat. She'd make sure that they had clothing on their backs, and
she made sure that they had a place to stay. I will say this, at her
funeral, there was an old lady about ninety years of age—my mother
died at seventy-five—she said, "This lady is my mother." She
said, "What she did—I got tired of her coming by—I didn't get
tired of her coming by, but she always wanted to know if I had enough
groceries. She would get out of her truck, she'd come in the house
and she would look in my cabinets and see what did I need and she would
bring it to me, that she thought that I would need." So she had
a mother figure, that lady at that age.
She
had recreation for all of the high school kids—that we'd call hay rides
and dances. She would sell ice cream and hot dogs and hamburgers. Nobody
had the nickel or dime for the hamburgers or ice cream, but everybody
ate ice cream and hamburgers.
What else can you tell us about the Depression and
how it influenced your early life?
Being
a kid, the Depression, it didn't affect my early life in a way that
I remember because as a kid, all you know is your full every night
and some people didn't have that privilege. We had nice clothing, the
mother, she was able to sew. That was just about it.
Can you describe your high school?
My
high school–the transition from elementary to high school–the
kids are bigger when you go there with larger kids. You always have
someone there, what they call "the bully." We had old Jake.
We would fight our bully. He was trying to protect his territory and
then we are coming in on his territory was a guy called Chuck. They
would fight every morning going to school. On campus, everybody get
together for the fight. But Chuck, he finally won. Jake, he stayed
in the fifth grade I guess, about six years. That’s when they
had, the old saying said, the reason they put him out in fifth grade
because he wouldn't shave.
I
went
on to high school. Then I learned how to play football, baseball. The
math and everything was getting a little bit tough, and the English
and everything. But those black teachers, they really made us study
hard. They didn't take any foolishness, like the kids do nowadays in
school. Those black professors and teachers—the old principal, he'd
put his foot in your behind, and if you didn't like it, you'd go home
and tell you mother, then she would get on you. So you'd just keep
your mouth shut and go and do what you had to do.
We
didn't have telephones a lot. But if something happened on your way
home from school, I don't know but your mother knew about it before
you got there.
Did you enjoy school?
Oh
yes.
Did you have a favorite
class?
My favorite class was lunch. We had Miss Grant, she was the math teacher. We
had her from the fourth grade all the way up to the eighth. Miss England, she
was the history teacher. Triggy Jones was the football coach and our biology
teacher, and he was a role model. Mr. Grundy, he was also the English teacher.
Those were the teachers that we all wanted to be like when we grew up because
we had a role model at school.
When
the school became integrated, the black students, they lost all that
image because they laid off a lot of the black teachers, then they
integrated. The white teachers didn't know how to handle those black
students.
How did segregation affect your high
school experience?
Equal
but separate. That meant we got all of the second hand books when the
white schools had used them. Then when they were upgraded, the white
students would get the new books, and we would get the used books.
That went all the way down the line. If that's separate but equal,
I don't think so. Like our football uniforms and everything, we got
the used ones from the white schools because we wasn't able to buy
our own uniforms. But yet still we put out a lot of good football players
and basketball, and other players like that.
Can you take us back to when your school was integrated, where you in high school?
No, integration came son in '48. I was in high school in '43. I didn't get a chance to enjoy that, not at that particular time. When I went back to school, they were integrated.
Talk about this experience of segregation in high school.
I went to Washington High School, that was a black school, black teachers and everybody. We had a football team, all black. Then the white school, Arkansas High, they would come to our football games and we would go to theirs. When I went to the integrated school, we practiced football together and got on the same teams. As a matter of fact, the Army was integrated in '46, right after the war and I played football on an all white football team. Also, when I came to the states in '45, to reenlist, I played football at Fort Bliss, Texas. I was the only black on the team. So I just went in there and integrated myself. I was good enough, so they excepted me and I played.
Did you play against white schools?
Not
officially. The white kids in the neighborhood—we were surrounded.
I'll say this for example: we're down by the tracks, and they were
up on the hills, they would come down, the kids—kids are wonderful—and
we'd come down and we would play football and basketball and baseball.
Over at this grocery store on Dudley, about eight or ten old white
men would sit there chewing tobacco, watching us playing and spitting
and going on. Then when we got to be around thirteen or fourteen, they
said, "Well, you boys can't play like that anymore. You got to
cut it out." So we didn't know what it meant, just figured they
didn't want us to play, but the kids were doing wonderfully.
We
would go to their football games and the white school would play. And
then we would have a football game the teenagers, they would come over
and watch us play, the boys would.
Were there any tensions or anything unique about
playing against white kids?
No.
We just played harder. They were tough and we were tough. We all was
equal, we were just kids playing having a lot of fun. And you come
out with a bloody nose, all you do is get up and rub it and smile and
go back and try it again. And we got along very good. Kind of like
when we was fighting, you know. We fought together, we died together
and everything. I mean we could do everything together. I don't know
where they got this prejudice from.
Was there a time where you did have a problem or a
fight with a white kid because you guys were different races?
No,
I was a peaceful fellow. I never had a fight with a white kid or black
kid.
Can you recall any instances of struggle during your childhood with racism or depression?
With racism and depression and to get food on the table—I was a kid. My parents went through all that. I didn't have a chance to experience it because I was in school. What my parents had to do—I didn't have any problems with discrimination, because we had a car and my father had a good job—he worked for the railroad company, and he was paid good. My mother was a housewife, and she raised us and a lot of other kids in the neighborhood. She had gardens and everything—picture gardens—and then she would also feed a lot of the neighbors in the neighborhood. They didn't have welfare, but she took that role in helping the neighbors.
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