FRIDAY, JANUARY 18, 2008
News Conference Room
The Kingsport Times-News
TIMES-NEWS REPORTER: Matthew Lane
PHOTOGRAPHER: Erica Yoon
FROM LEFT TO RIGHT, AROUND TABLE:
Calvin Sneed (not seen in photo)
Johnnie Mae Swaggerty
Mary Beatty
Beulah Banner
Mamie Gillenwater
Louetta Hall
Ozine Bly
Matthew Lane
MATTHEW: FIRST OF ALL, WHAT DO YOU WANT TO ACCOMPLISH, WITH THE WEBSITE WWW.SONSANDDAUGHTERSOFDOUGLASS.ORG?
CALVIN: We want to keep the legacy of Riverview alive,not just for us, but for the children that will come after us. Riverview has a very storied and proud
history and it should be preserved, as part of their heritage. Our history is important to the history of Kingsport, and the purpose of the website is to
present that history for all of Kingsport to consider, when they consider their own history.
MATTHEW: WHEN DID YOU COME TO KINGSPORT?
CALVIN: I came to Kingsport around 1959, my mother came here to teach third grade at Douglass Elementary, V.O Dobbins hired her, and when Douglass closed, she taught physical education in the Kingsport School system, at Washington, Dickson, and Jefferson Schools. My father's people were already here, the Stafford family moved here from New Canton, my grandfather was Tennessee Eastman's General Foreman, and my father owned Sneed's Cleaning Service for many years. He was also on the Kingsport Planning Commission, and one of his pet projects was getting the soundproof walls along U-S 23 from Stone Drive north to Virginia.. another was the four-laning of Wilcox Drive from Industry Drive to Sullivan Gardens at John B. Dennis.
MATTHEW: TELL US ABOUT THE WEBSITE.
CALVIN: A year ago, we started the website www.sonsanddaughtersofdouglass.org originally as a means for Douglass High School alumni to stay in touch with each other and keep up with things going on in Riverview and South Central, but it quickly grew into this big information source for the entire community. I've heard it called "the EBONY MAGAZINE of Riverview," because everybody uses it for information and entertainment as well.
LOUETTA: I feel the people away from home, enjoy the website more than the people here, because it keeps them in touch with relatives and events that are going
on in the community.
JOHNNIE MAE: I was born and raised in Apt. 79 in 1959, and we stayed there until '66, because we got our first house on Dale Street, and I enjoyed it, I loved it, I met a lot of friends, my family grew up there, Alfred and Vinnie Smith and my grandparents, and I just had a good time. Schooling there was good, just met a lot of friends, like family, everybody knew everybody and if somebody disciplined me, it was all right, wasn't any child abuse back then, everybody was treated with respect.
(chorus of amen's to that). For me to let the legacy keep going, we had that picture-taking in front of all the apartments, we had a fellowship dinner at the Elks
Lodge and it was packed in there. And then we're talking about getting bricks, making a list of people's names to get bricks to give out as a memory, to use as a door-stopper or something, and we just want every year to have a reunion, to come back in the field or whereever we can plan it, just to keep it going, every year, every two years when Douglass has its Alumni Reunion, just keep it going.
And the kids, too.. I want everybody to participate, the churches, organizations, outside and inside, come together, welcome to come in and help out.
MARY: I've lived in the Riverview Apartments since 1942, I was born and raised in Apt. 11, delivered by a midwife, Dr. Foust, and I've been living there until
2007, when they decided to take me to another place to look at the apartments there, and I said 'why do you have to tear them down.'
MATTHEW: SO YOU'VE BEEN PRETTY MUCH WITNESS TO THE WHOLE HISTORY.. The whole history.. HOW HAS THAT CHANGED?
MARY: It's gonna change, I asked them not to change Riverview, leave it as Riverview, as in the name, that's important, because the lady Mama Bessie
(Hipps)was the one that named Riverview.
MATTHEW: HOW WAS IT LIKE, GROWING UP THERE?
MARY: Good, all was good. I knew if I did anything wrong, there was one woman walked
just like my mama, and I'd be doing something I had no business doing, and she'd whip me, but it was good. Didn't have to go no where to buy nothing to eat, we
had Reverend Edge, the Dairy Mart, we had a dry cleaners, had the Midway Grocery, a barbershop, the Confectionary, and we had a place to get your hair done, you didn't have to leave out of Riverview for nothing.. nothing.
MARY: I've lived in Riverview since '53, before that I lived in Alabama. I've seen quite a few changes as well. My son graduated, he went to Douglass School,
and then he went to Dobyns-Bennett, and then he went to Morristown College where he graduated.
MATTHEW: DID YOU EVER THINK ABOUT MOVING?
MARY: No, I never did think about moving out of Riverview. It broke my heart when they said they were going to do this, and I asked the man, why were they
gonna tear 'em down, and he said, well they're outdated, and I said well you knew that a long time ago that they didn't do it right the first time (chuckles all around), you should have done it right. It's hard to see them torn down. I know they brought a trash thing to pick up the trash Wednesday. I saw it coming in and I said 'Oh Lord, they're fixing to tear 'em down.. I almost cried when I saw them put the truck, the bin in there. I knew then, they were fixing to tear 'em down.
MATTHEW: DO YOU FEEL A SENSE OF SADNESS?
JOHNNIE MAE: It's almost like death, like we're getting ready for a funeral, and we're gonna cry.. then there's gonna be some laughter, but there's gonna
be more crying because of the memories that are gonna be there.
LOUETTA: It's where you romped and played as a kid and all types of events took place in the neighborhood, and that's not easily forgotten, because
it really is a part of your body, mind and spirit.
MARY: Plus you could sit on your porch and watch the movies..
MATTHEW: TELL ME ABOUT THAT.
MARY: The drive-in screen was through the woods behind Douglass School). You could sit on your porch.. you couldn't hear it, but you sure could watch it..
JOHNNIE MAE: My dad, Johnny Swaggerty.. used to take me and my sister, he'd pack baloney sandwiches and Kool-aid, and he had this old car, and we see.. my first movie was "Cat On A Hot Tin Roof," Tony Curtis.. I'll never forget that.. you'd put a blanket on top of the car and we'd sit there and just watch it.. and when we didn't have no money, we'd sit BEHIND the fence and we could look, and nobody would bother us, police wouldn't come over and mess with you, we just enjoyed it..
LOUETTA: The screen was so big.
CALVIN: You'd pull in off Wilcox Drive and the screen would be facing back towards the back of Douglass School in Riverview..you could see it, but you just couldn't hear it. This was back in the 50's and 60's. I also remember this in my research.. 'Zine, do you remember the guy who used to come over and put the
movie picture screen up in the baseball field in the summertime?
OZINE: I remember him, but not his name. I remember right in the corner.
MATTHEW: MRS. GILLENWATER, HOW LONG WERE YOU THERE?
MAMIE: We were the first family to move into the Apartments back in 1940. There was nobody over there but us. We had one light, one big light over on the left of us.. we had one phone that people would go out and use, and when we first moved into the apartment, we paid nine dollars house rent, and I had my phone put in for a dollar and a half.
JOHNNIE MAE: DO YOU REMEMBER YOUR PHONE NUMBER?
MAMIE: 2-1-9-6-W. And we had a skeleton key.. one key fits all.
MATTHEW: HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT WHAT THE CITY IS DOING, AND THE CHANGES THAT ARE GOING TO BE MADE TO RIVERVIEW?
MAMIE: Well, I really don't like it, because Riverview was just like home to me.. When I went to have my picture taken (at the Archives For Riverview), I
started crying, I lived in Apt. 12, there's where we moved to, Apartment 12.
MATTHEW: I IMAGINE YOU'VE SEEN QUITE A FEW PEOPLE COME AND GO, IN AND OUT.
MAMIE: Quite a few people.
MATTHEW: DO YOU REMEMBER SOME OF THE THINGS THAT USED TO BE IN THE COMMUNITY THAT NO LONGER THERE?
MARY: We used to have peddlers come through.. sell you greens, corn, stuff like that, then we had the Pet Milk lady come in, buy milk from her.. didn't have to
go to the store, didn't have to go nowhere. They would come to us.
JOHNNIE MAE: I remember, I have a picture of our family, a photographer would come through the apartments and take your picture one easter, a photographer.
OZINE: You didn't have to go downtown to the grocery store, had two grocery stores, Paul Taylor and his Midway Grocery, and Emmitt Collins Grocery. We were pretty well self-contained.
CALVIN: And then there was Clay Hill.. I called it on the website "Riverview's First Unofficial Playground. It's an area behind Dunbar Street, between Dunbar and
Industry Drive, and it's owned by the Brickyard (General Shale), but back then, you go up on Clay Hill and you couldn't go 50 feet without running into somebody else up there. People whose parents wouldn't let them keep dogs at home, they kept them on Clay Hill in doghouses and in their little pens up there, you camped up there..
JOHNNIE MAE: Roasted marshmellows..
CALVIN: You swung from the trees, you blazed paths..
MARY: Got your first kiss there (rousing laughter).
LOUETTA: Our classes would use it for picnics, and then Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts would utilize it for camping, things like that.
OZINE: Field trips..
CALVIN: Unbeknownst to us.. that's the place where General Shale dumped all of their industrial waste from making bricks. You'd be walking around and all of a sudden, there'd be a big puddle of white stuff over here.. some of us would take sticks and poke into it, and we'd walk around it and go somewheres else. There were like old machines, loads of bricks that they couldn't use, we would take the bricks and build
houses.. we had everything except a jungle gym, but with the vines, you could swing from one tree to the other.
MATTHEW: FROM WHAT YOU'VE TOLD ME, RIVERVIEW HAD A STRONG SENSE OF COMMUNITY BACK IN THE 50'S, 60'S AND 70'S, BUT IN RECENT YEARS IT'S HAD A NEGATIVE CONNOTATION..HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT THAT? YOU MENTIONED DRUGS, DO YOU THINK IT'S FAIR FOR THE WHOLE
COMMUNITY TO BE LABELED LIKE THAT?
CALVIN: No.. because drugs are so prevalent, that I kinda have an idea why Riverview kind of got that.. television.. newspapers.. people would see pictures.. they would hear about things going on in apartment complexes in Atlanta, Nashville, Charlotte, and people would automatically assume.. sometimes it wasn't just Riverview, sometimes it was Cloud Apartments, sometimes it was Lee, everybody just put the negative connotation to "apartments" and because we were so proud of where we lived.. I'm not saying it was a conspiracy, but everybody kind of looked at Riverview
and said 'well that's the problem right there, is those apartments, those "projects" over there. It was true to a certain extent, but not as much as everybody
thought.
JOHNNIE MAE: It was over-exaggerated.
CALVIN: Because we still had that sense of family, regardless.
LOUETTA: And we never really accepted that into the community, A lot of the time, it was people who infiltrated in from other places, that came in and sold their wares, and then influenced the young people in the neighborhood to sell it. Over a period of time, you had accidents, killings.. of course, that always breeds that sort of thing, but as a whole, some of the best people in the whole wide world lived in Riverview, who really wanted to live decent lives..
CALVIN: Had nice homes, they had flowers, trees, we used to have Christmas carols, we had everything that every other neighborhood in Kingsport had.. we also had that negative connotation.
MATTHEW: OTHER NEIGHBORHOODS HAD IT TOO, BORDEN HAD IT, HIGHLAND HAD IT TO A CERTAIN EXTENT.. BUT RIVERVIEW SEEM TO GET THE BRUNT OF IT. WILL THIS HOPE VI PROJECT HELP CHANGE THAT?
CALVIN: For myself, I'm kinda looking at it as a re-birth.. part of our life going to die when that wrecking ball starts swinging.. on the other hand, there's going to be a rebirth of a new spirit that we used to have there in Riverview, that makes people want to bring that family-type atmosphere back again, and that's going to be a welcome site.
OZINE: This HOPE VI concept is going to be a different type of people with mixed incomes that's going to move into these homes, and I'm like Calvin, it's going to be a bittersweet situation.. you're going to be sad that they're gone, the housing is gone and you're going to lose a lot of memories, but looking to the future and the young people with incomes moving in and with the possibility of buying a home, homeowners, it's going to be different. I'm sad to see them go.. I drove through the other night, it looked like a ghost town, I didn't see anybody, no kids..
MARY: I walked up through that way, I walked around and I said, look at my back door, why is my back door on the porch?.. and then all this scrap is just laying
out there, like you're in a war zone.
CALVIN: The way I understand it, when they tear 'em down, that field is going to be open for probably a year, and I'll tell you, that's going to be like an open wound.
LOUETTA: I lived in Riverview, I was born in 1941.. I lived with my grandmother, of course, my mother and father lived in that apartment at the same time because at that time, you had a couple of families living together, so I lived there until 1977 when I built my home on Maple Street, and being an homeowner, I know the wonderful feeling that that is.. We can look back and reflect on where we've been, but we can
also look forward to where we're going. I think it's a grand thing that people will have the possibility of owning their home and what it will mean to have that
responsibility of having your own "everything."
MATTHEW: LET'S TALK ABOUT THE SCHOOL FOR A MINUTE.. A LOT OF PEOPLE IN TOWN DON'T KNOW THAT WAS ONCE A HIGH SCHOOL.. HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT THAT, SHOULD MORE BE
DONE?
CALVIN: I think the school is, probably than the churches, I think the school is probably more of an institution in that neighborhood and in the African-American community, because THAT'S WHERE YOURKIDS LEARNED THE BASICS.. they learned from good
teachers, we had the best teachers at Douglass.. we had the best equipment at Douglass.. that auditorium over there is completely soundproof, it's one of the
most soundproof rooms in the City of Kingsport.. unfortunately with that comes asbestos, because asbestos is basically a soundproofing material.. but the school itself is an icon.. you can't say "Douglass School" or "Douglass High School" or "Douglass Kingsport" without some sense of reverence, and people tend to hold it that way. Of course, they're going to renovate it as soon as the city appropriates the money, and some of the changes for money's sake may be upsetting to a lot of people.. the (proposed new) gym is not going to be where it was first thought, it's
actually going to be beside the old gym in the parking lot. They don't know if they're going to be able to save the auditorium..
MARY: Oh..
JOHNNIE MAE: I wish they would.
CALVIN: ..because the way I understand it, you could pour a million dollars into cleaning up that auditorium, it needs a new roof, the asbestos has got to be cleaned out and properly disposed of, it needs heating and cooling.. the architect told me, you could pour a million dollars into that auditorium and not see anything physically changed about it.. and the whole idea of a renovation, is to make it look better. But you'll be pouring money into that money pit. She says, it's a question of whether we want to pour money into that to make it useful, or just gut it and let it go.
MATTHEW: WHEN I WALK INTO MY OLD SCHOOLS, MEMORIES START COMING BACK TO ME.. OBVIOUSLY I'M SURE THAT HAPPENS WITH DOUGLASS AS WELL..
CALVIN: Plays.. plays.. every class was responsible for a play, they had to put on every year.. and (the Times-News) has some of the pictures from the plays that were put on back in the 60's that we used to do..
MATTHEW: ANY AMATEUR ACTORS IN THIS GROUP?
MARY: Not me.. CHUCKLES..
JOHNNIE MAE: I remember they used to have talent shows there back in the 70's, which I've got pictures of.. just had a good time, and New Vision still uses it to hold our meetings, and some girls from Girls Inc, and Girls Circle that comes in and meetings, so that auditorium has been a blessing to everyone.
MARY: And the (Carver) library has, too.
CALVIN: In the tearing down of the Riverview Apartments, one of the things Dineen West, the architect says, that's going to be saved is, is the steeple from the Carver Library and it's going to have a prominent place in the new development.
EVERYBODY: Oh good, that will be a good thing for the community.
MATTHEW: WILL EVERYBODY BE RETURNING TO RIVERVIEW?
MARY: I'm going back.. I'm elderly, and I've already put my name down for it.
MAMIE: I'm also going back, because it's just home to me over there. It's the only place I ever moved into in Kingsport that I ever cared about. It was a great
thing when I lived there.
MARY: Now, since I moved out, don't have anybody to run to.. if I run out of coffee, don't have nobody to run up to, knock on the door and ask if you have any
coffee.. 'cause in Riverview you can go anywhere, and somebody could give you coffee, sugar, eggs, those that smoke 'got a cigarette.'
MAMIE: Didn't have to go no where to get vegetables, because we had gardens.. all kinds of gardens.
LOUETTA: My grandparents lived in the older set, and in the back where the library is now was an open field, and the families that lived in that row, they were the larger families that had five bedrooms, and there were barns and gardens.. there was a family (the Ross's) that had a cow, and goats and chickens and hogs as well, you had your hog pens back there. Everybody mostly raised their food and put up hams in
the smokehouses, and then the older ladies would can their foods.. There were pantries in the apartments, and I remember my grandmother's pantry was so colorful, she'd have tomatoes canned and they would be red, and green beans and they would be green and beets, and as a little kid, it would be a joy just to go in there and stand and see all these colorful vegetables that were there to make soup during the
winter.
CALVIN: Mary, you're right about the borrowing, if you needed milk, somebody had it, if you needed corn or something, somebody had it. And it wasn't just the
apartments.. ALL of Riverview was like that, you could go from house to house to house, and borrow whatever you needed for a MEAL.
OZINE: One of the main things I remember was the community parenting.. anybody would jerk you up and "give you an adjustment" and that was one of the great
things about the neighborhood. I can remember when we first moved into Riverview and my mother was saying how it was like a Godsend, those apartments, we left some row houses on Maple Street with water spickets and the bathroom on the outside, and when we moved to Riverview, we had warm houses and everybody had bathrooms there, running water. You remember those things like that in your first REAL housing. It's
hard to think about tearing it down, and that's the bitter part of it. But the sweet part of it, is the future for the young people.. home ownership.
MATTHEW: SOME OF THE APARTMENT WERE NEGLECTED BY HUD OR WHOMEVER, THEY WERE IN PRETTY ROUGH SHAPE..
LOUETTA: At one point, we had what was called the Tenants Rights Organization. and through that, we learned about HUD and we worked with HUD and some of the first remodeling was done, once we were educated about what could be done. At that time, Mr. Poston was the overseer of the apartments, and he was kind of stern..
MARY: Kinda?
MAMIE: He was more than that.
LOUETTA: Better word for "MEAN." (rousing laughter) We had to set a fire under him to motivate him to do the things needed, because I remember we would only have one gallon of paint and you had a five-room apartment..
BEULAH: You used a lot of water..
LOUETTA: And through the Tenants Rights Organization, we were able to get more gallons of paint. If your shade tore up, you maybe couldn't get a shade until next year, but through the organization we could find out exactly what we could do, through HUD. We had new cabinets put in, in the older apartments, they put down tile, they put in washer-dryer connections, new sinks, new heaters, new gas stoves to replace the coal ones. Those were put in the newer apartments, but the older ones were late to catch up.
MAMIE: And if you didn't pay your rent, you'd have your lights cut off.. your gas.
MATTHEW: HAS THIS PROJECT ALLOWED YOU ALL TO RECONNECT WITH OLD FRIENDS?
MARY: Oh yes..
JOHNNIE MAE: Definitely.
CALVIN: And then.. a lot of the connection.. never left. It's always been there, there's always been a way and a need for all of us to stay in contact with
each other, we wave going down the street, I think the connection has always been there.
JOHNNIE MAE: And we're gonna keep it going, not let it die down, if we have to do something every other month, we're gonna keep it going.
CALVIN: I think the kids nowadays, they just don't have any idea of the fun we had growing up. They don't have any idea of the discipline that we all experienced "getting adjusted." (CHUCKLES AROUND THE GROUP)
MARY: I remember that cowhide strap my moma used to whip me with, and she put me between her legs one day, and she was whipping me and I made the TERRIBLE mistake of biting her.
JOHNNIE MAE: Whoooo!
MARY: She liked to wore me out (ROUSING LAUGHTER).. I'd never do that again!
JOHNNIE MAE: I'd like to mention one more thing.. we did have a Riverview Boys Club and we did have a Riverview Girls Club.. the girls club was in 70 and 71.
CALVIN: And the Riverview Boys Club sign is still down there, it is still hanging on the side of the building there on Lincoln Street.. the paint is kinda faded and
the sign is kinda crooked, but you can still see "Riverview Boys Club."
MATTHEW: ARE YOU PLEASED WITH THE RENAMING WITH THAT PORTION OF LINCOLN STREET? MARTIN LUTHER KING DRIVE?
GROUP: Oh yes!
JOHNNIE MAE: It was known as "Swingin' Lincoln."
CALVIN: That was our business district.
LOUETTA: Everything went on, on Lincoln Street. I remember when you could leave your house, go downtown, and didn't lock your doors, and you came home and you found everything as you left it. In the summertime, we would sleep with our windows and doors open, and never feared about anybody coming in and molesting your children or stealing anything from you. That shows you how the times have changed, not only
in our neighborhood, but everywhere. You slept all night and got up, realizing that you were O-K, You don't dare go to bed now, without making sure everything is secure.
JOHNNIE MAE: And I need to give a shout-out to Reverend Edge. I'll never forget Reverend (C.E.) Edge.. he would take all of us in this big black Cadillac, he'd say 'y'all go home, get your clothes on, make sure you take a bath (GROUP CHUCKLES), I'm taking y'all over to Bristol, we'd go over to the Bristol church over there and go to birthday parties.. he'd take about five or six of us from the projects, you know, it was all right with the parents, and take us to Bristol, I really enjoyed that.
CALVIN: He pastored two churches, or was it three?
JOHNNIE MAE: I know he did two in Bristol.
OZINE: He also had one in New Canton.
LOUETTA: He was a retired mailman, from Alabama I believe.
OZINE: And once a year, he would feed the entire neighborhood at the Masonic Hall.. the entire neighborhood. That should have cost him a fortune.
MARY: He owned a store-restaurant on Lincoln Street and he and Mrs. Edge lived upstairs. Edge's Place would be a place, if you didn't want to eat in the
(Douglass) cafeteria, when it was time for lunch, everybody would run, headed for Rev. Edge's Place.. the hamburgers, the hot dogs, the pork chop sandwiches, the cheese sandwiches.
LOUETTA: Not to mention the baloney.
CALVIN: His place was down, not quite across the street from the (Riverview Swim) pad, but you had to run down Louis Street to get to it, and I mean that bell would ring, and whoom! That Dianne Simpson was the first one down there.. the FIRST one down there. Boy, that used to make us mad!
JOHNNIE MAE: And let's not forget about Mrs. Gladys Bly. She was like Mom, Grandmom to everybody, you didn't have to be related to her, she was Mama Bly.. she was there for you, and I'll never forget, while she was living over on Louis Street, I would see kids go over there, and she would sit down with them and read to them with their homework, and I was grown then and I would see that.. she would cook the best fish
sandwich you ever had..
CALVIN: Is that where you got them fish sandwiches from?
JOHNNIE MAE: Oh yeah.. and then, I'll never forget when my parents were living in Riverview, she would sell chitlin' dinners, and when all of them were gone, me and my sister would go down there and take the corn bread and soak up the juice, she'd let us do that.
(A ROUSING EWEEEEE! FROM THE GROUP)
CALVIN: You bring chitlin's in the back door and I'm going out the front door.
MARY: But they were still good.
JOHNNIE MAE: And I can still hear her song "This Little Light of Mine."
BEULAH: She could sure sing it.
OZINE: What amazed me about my mother, she made everybody feel like they were special.. if I was there, I was the one, if you were there, you were the one, whoever was around her, she made them feel like they were the one that was special.
LOUETTA: It's a gift.
CALVIN: It is.
OZINE: I try to be like that with my children, and it's hard to do. It takes a special person to do that.
CALVIN: We are proud.. we are proud of our neighborhood.. pride is the thing that motivates us, yes, we're sad about the things are going to be happening, but sadness can spur upliftness, too.
LOUETTA: It's like the Scripture says.. 'tears may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning, so we're looking for joyful things to happen in the
future.
CALVIN: Matt, let me say one thing before we break up.. Our heritage in Riverview, is not just about us.. our heritage is everybody's heritage, the heritage of
Kingsport. It's not just "Black" History, it's EVERYBODY'S history, of which we are a part of. I don't think that anybody would disagree that we want to encourage everybody in Kingsport to learn about our history, learn about the history of Riverview, because it's a very historic community. I don't even refer to
the Riverview Apartments as the Riverview Apartments.. they are the "HISTORIC" Riverview Apartments. We've always been here, it was separate but equal for a long
time, but this is a good opportunity for everybody to learn more about OUR culture and what makes US part of Kingsport, and I think it's important that they know
that, they and everybody else in the Tri-Cities to know that.
