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Title
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Detroit 67 Audio Oral History - Bessie Williams Ernst
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Description
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Link to video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tlLJsMQglDI
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Transcription Excerpt 1: Time Stamp (00:00 - 10:56)
LW: Today is June 16, 2015. This is the interview of Bessie Williams Ernst by Lily Wilson. We are at the Detroit Historical Museum in Detroit, Michigan. This interview is for the Detroit Historical Society and the Detroit 1967 Oral History Project. Bessie, can you tell me where and when you were born?
BW: Well I was born over eight decades ago in the city of Detroit, and I lived here most of my life. Educated schools here, Universities here and just done a lot of things and I love Detroit absolutely love it.
LW: What was your birthday?
BW: May 10, 1931.
LW: What neighborhood where you born in, in Detroit?
BW: I was born in the Cultural Center neighborhood, I was very fortunate in doing that because I was on a street called Medbury just east of Woodward about four, five blocks down. And I said I was lucky because I had in my backyard -- and visit every week with my father and my sister and brothers -- the art museum on the east side of Woodward and the Detroit Public Library on the west side of Woodward. And we went to story hours here and whatever we were studying in school my father would take us to the museum. He would find an area that dealt with that particular area or subject we would sit on the floor and he would tell us about everything that he would see; it’s a marvelous background.
LW: What did your dad do for a living?
BW: My dad worked at Ford Motor Company he came to Detroit one of those people, you know the job, so many dollars a day. That doesn’t mean he wasn’t educated, he was, through high school. That was his education that is what he does, my mother was a homemaker. I had lots of brothers and sisters to grow up with. I was the oldest and we had lots of fun. We loved Detroit.
LW: How many brothers and sisters?
BW: Um, I have four brothers and -- I have to figure this out -- four brothers and I had six sisters but in growing up in the early years, I was the oldest, seen a lot of things that some of my siblings never saw. They never saw the east side of Detroit or not remember it. And I remember very painfully when I graduated from college my mother could not attend my graduation because she was expecting my little brother. And she I guess she felt the ashamed because of her age and being pregnant. I never felt ashamed of her and my father, who worked at Ford, could not get the day off without losing pay. Nobody came and that was kind of painful for me, kindof painful for me, because I was the first one in my family to graduate. So I’ve made it a policy that with my children and my grandchildren. I will always and have always gone to their graduations. Because children remember things like that.
LW: Where did you go to college?
BW: Oh where didn’t I go? I got my first degree from Wayne University, my second degree from the University of Detroit, in between I took classes at the University of Michigan. I ended up doing some graduate work and studies at Harvard and was invited to speak at a forum at Oxford in England. So I’ve kind of been around awhile.
LW: What were your degrees in?
BW: My degrees are primarily in education. I started out in library sciences; my masters was in education and I worked for the board for many years. I ended up being assistant director of labor affairs negotiating contracts. I did teach and then once I left Detroit, once I retired from Detroit, I became a principal of a charter school which I dearly, dearly, dearly loved. I still write and do things. I go over to Wayne County Community College and take classes and trying to catch up with these young folks on the computer. I’m not doing too well on that but I’ll listen to some of them talk and I have to laugh and say if you only knew, if you only knew.
LW: Now you wrote the, this book of poetry that we have in front of us. In 1968 you published this, right?
BW: I published it in ‘67 because the riot was in ‘67 and that year instead of sending Christmas cards to my friends, I took all them and put them in a booklet like this and published it and that was their Christmas present. It was our memory of what we had seen, what we had done and what we had felt at that particular time because you really were confined, it was all over, it was all over the city. It was, you know, you could say your parents would sometimes say things like, “This is gonna hurt me more than it hurt you” and then they would give you a whipping. Well, the riots you can say, “Oh, I heard about that, oh I know about that,” but they didn’t live through it, they didn’t know the feeling. It’s a totally different kind of thing. When I think about it, when I talk about it, I become emotional, you heard me mention that I had a very large family, so when I got married, I moved away but I still had a brother and a sister, younger brother and sister who lived at home with my mother and they lived in a different neighborhood than I lived in with my family. And with everything that was going on there were certain streets that were blocked off, one of them being Grand River and you couldn't cross certain lines and my family, my mother, my sister and brother were in a quadrant where we could not cross that line to go where they were and my little brother called me to let me know. He said, “I just want you to know that we have to move because of the fire,” there was one about a block away from us. Where my mother lived on Grand River there was a furniture store and a few stores down from there was a gas station. That gas station was almost on the corner of my mother’s street. There was fear they would burn the furniture store and the gas flames would go over to the gasoline station and they would be burnt. And we had no way of contacting them so there were hours where we really didn’t know where they were or whatever. I had a sister that lived in a quadrant on the other side of Grand River. We were not allowed -- they were not allowed to cross that street because you had tanks and things and whatever. And so it was kind of a horrible feeling to know they are out there so there is a poem in here called “David” and every time I read “David” I think about the call I got from David telling me that they had to go and it was a period of uncertainty. In another neighborhood I had a friend whose sister’s son had to stay in their area and so he had a motorcycle and he would ride up and down the motorcycle. He was a young kid and the motorcycle hit a telephone poll. I was told he was killed on that particular day because he was in --he couldn’t go out. There are lots of things that happened, the looting and the burning and the calls that were made to, I believe it was President Johnson who was the president at that particular time when they called. The mayor called, it may have been [Jerome] Cavanagh, and he tried to get the president to send troops in but they didn’t do it. It was frightening because what started out on one street, which was Twelfth Street, sort of spread all the way, just spread all over the city. It happened so fast. Then all of a sudden it was there and we had to face it if you hadn’t done your grocery shopping. They were looting and burning and the people were just frustrated and the cause of it was supposed to have been related to these men that the police had picked up and mistreated more and more and that was a time when we had in our city mostly white police and a lot of our citizenry was black but you cannot have a government or police force consisting of one group and not be representing another. We see that all over this country, we see that in places all over the world where one group is dominant and unless you represent all the people; it’s a sad thing.
Transcription Excerpt 2: Time Stamp (50:47 - 53:36)
LW: I want you to read one of your poems before we run out of time.
BW: I would love to I read this one before.
LW: So this one is called--
BW: “Ode to Twelfth Street” because supposedly the riots started on Twelfth Street, and there was an interesting street so it’s called “An Ode to Twelfth Street.”
Everything’s calm now so peaceful and quiet,
but you should have seen what they did to Twelfth Street during the riot.
It was a street of prostitutes, pimps and deceivers,
Black Nationalists, Muslims, and non-believers,
churches, nuns, entertainers and ministers,
mamas and papas and even old spinsters,
dirty children, stray dogs and cats,
loan shops and markets and people of wealth
made of the sight of the street called Twelfth.
With barbeque joints and soul food tins,
delicatessens, bars, night clubs and pig pens.
A Chinese restaurant on one corner [did stand ?]
and yes, don’t forget the old chestnut man.
Lawyers, optometrists, dentists and physicians
shared offices along with the soul save missions.
And whether you loved it, liked it, or viewed it with fear,
it thrived with life and it was held dear.
One main artery through that Negro ghetto,
a life giving artery but destruction it lead to.
A street you could stop on during the day
but come night fall, you better get out the way,
for all kinds of vile crimes that would endanger one’s health
was available to anyone after dark on Twelfth.
But it’s all gone now. In its place devastation,
burnt out frames as viewed by all of the nation,
but the people who lived near the heart of this city
cried unabashed and think, “what a pity."
For, in spite of its grimness everyone you would meet
knew about Detroit’s infamous Twelfth Street.
But it’s all gone now all buried in disgrace
and with it many dreams of the negro race.
It was synonymous with our struggle, its destruction our pain,
it was our street now but nothing remains.
It’s gone, just gone, nothing to see
but the tear streaked faces of the people you meet,
wondering what really happened to our Twelfth Street.
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Date Created
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2015-06-16
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Creator
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Detroit67, Detroit Historical Museum.
Detroit 67 Audio Oral History - Bessie Williams Ernst