Interview with Norma Jean Walker

              Special Collections
Public Spaces in Miami: An Oral History Project
Interview with Norma Jean Walker
Miami, Florida, July 8th, 1999
Intervew IPH-0036
Interviewed by Aldo Regalado
Recorded by Aldo Regalado
Summary: This interview with Norma Jean Walker was conducted in July 1999. Ms. Walker is a native of Jacksonville, Florida and moved to Overtown in 1964. The interview took place at Ms. Walker’s office at the Belafonte Tacolcy Center (BTC) in Liberty City. Ms. Walker speaks of community life, the use of public spaces and parks, and the sense of family that existed in the neighborhood in the past. She contrasts the community life of previous years with the current state of affairs where racism, politics and economics have eroded community ties.
This interview forms part of the Institute for Public History (IPH) Oral History Collection, directed by Professor Greg Bush from the History Department and curated by the University of Miami Libraries Special Collections.
Copyright to this interview lies with the University of Miami. The interview recordings or transcript may not be reproduced, retransmitted, published, distributed, or broadcast without the permission of the Special Collections. For information about obtaining copies or to request permission to publish any part of this interview, please contact Special Collections at asc@miami.edu.
1300 Memorial Drive, Coral Gables, FL 33124-0320 * 305-284-3580 * 305-284-4901 fax Norma Jean Walker
July 8, 1999
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Aldo Regalado: This is Aldo Regalado conducting an interview with Ms. Norma Jean Walker at her TACOLCY office in Liberty City. The date is July 8, 1999, and we are beginning the interview at 11:56. The topics of discussion will be Ms. Walker’s perceptions of Overtown, having lived and worked there, and how they relate to public space issues and other issues that may come up. So, OK, thank you for being here, for doing this. I’m going to put this closer to you.
Norma Jean Walker: I still live in Overtown.
AR: You still live in Overtown? Great. OK, so, I guess let’s just start off at the beginning. Could you give us your date of birth and where you were born?
NW: OK, I was born October 4, 1947 in a small town called Hillyard, Florida. It’s about thirty-two miles from Jacksonville, Florida.
AR: OK, and were you raised there, or did you--?
NW: I was raised in Hillyard. I came to Miami when I was eighteen years old in 1966.
AR: What did your parents do for a living?
NW: Well, my mother was a domestic engineer, you know. Back then they called them maids. And my father was a, worked in railroads. He was a railroad worker. He went from town to town, you know, working on the tracks and repairing what was broken, taking up the cross-ties and putting them down.
AR: So, and why did they decide to move to Miami?
NW: Not my parents. Only me.
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AR: Only you?
NW: Only me. I had two older sisters here, and I left, I went to college. And I just, didn’t complete my first year and I came to Miami.
AR: How would you characterize your childhood?
NW: Very happy. Very loving, you know, a very loving and caring family. Lot to do. Very spiritual, we had a lot of spiritual things to do. We had fun. We had ball in the road. My mom played ball with us. We went to church every Sunday. We went to school. Never missed a day from school, unless we had to be really, really sick. And during the summertime, there was no summer school. We had, our summer school was fun. We didn’t go to school just to make up grades, because we had to do it year-round when school was out. And we did very well. I graduated, in my class, I finished number three, and we all finished high school. Mom and Dad had three children, two boys and a girl.
AR: So, could you describe the neighborhood that you were raised in? What it was like?
NW: Well, it was like, a lot of land, a lot of houses that [were] was, like, far apart, not like in Miami where it is so close together. It was like, you may see a house here, and you may go like, for example, like five blocks, another house right there, and then you might go another five blocks and see, like, three houses together. But there was a lot of land. We had a field; in the field we’d plant vegetables every year. Like one neighbor would plant corn. We did, like, the peas and the greens and different things for the, during planting time. But it was a lot of land, a lot of fun. It wasn’t, no congestion, there was no street bus, you know, like you catch the bus and go downtown. There [were] was no taxis. Nothing like that, you know, it wasn’t anything like that.
AR: So there was really, I mean, there was no, were there parks and, or it was so much natural space that--?
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NW: It was natural spaces. We played ball in the road. The road was big enough to play ball, and there was no parks. I can’t remember a park when I was growing up.
AR: [laughing]
NW: Nope. We had to go twelve miles from my hometown to another town for school because it, during that time, it was segregation, it wasn’t integration. So we didn’t go to school in the same town where we lived at, because [it was] all-white schools, and during that time, blacks didn’t go to all-white schools. So we, all the surrounding areas from the small cities, we caught the bus and went to a school in Callahan, Florida called Pine Forest Union High School.
AR: Growing up there, was there, you mentioned it was segregated of course, was there a lot of tension, or did the ( )--?
NW: No, no, no. Everybody knew everybody. Every white person knew every black person. There [were] was some people that [were] was very, very prejudiced and it showed, and they would show it. And there was some that didn’t even care. They knew whose child you was, who your mother was, because the town was small, so everybody knew whose child belonged to who[m]. One thing we didn’t do, we couldn’t, like, sit on the stand at the drugstore because that still was not integrated yet. We went to the grocery store, and we shopped where everybody shopped, you know. When you got on the bus, you know, when the Greyhound bus came through Hillyard to go to Jacksonville, we sat in the back of the bus. [unidentified noise] But otherwise, everything else was OK, you know. There was not like no-- I remember years when I was young, hearing my parents tell me about a cross being burned in one lady’s yard, you know, in our town. When a politician ran for office, they would have, like, a big fish fry, you know, in this big open field, and they would have music, and we would all come out, you know. And they would encourage, blacks always voted. There was a heavy turn-out back then, allowed to vote. There was a very heavy turn-out, and, it wasn’t like women voted more then men. Who all could vote, voted.
AR: Interesting. And there was never any attempt to control that, or--. Norma Jean Walker
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NW: Not to my knowledge--.
AR: Not to your knowledge?
NW: Not to my knowledge. I’m not saying a lot of things went on behind the closed doors. Not to my knowledge. You know, we had a Sheriff Youngblood for many, many years. He was sheriff, I think, until he got just too old to be the sheriff. You know, of the whole county, Nassau County. So, I don’t think--.
AR: Well, since ultimately we’ll be talking about leisure activity and public spaces in Miami, or in Overtown, could you give me a sense of what—you know, you mentioned that you have a lot of fun—could you describe sort of what leisure activities that you did in Hillyard?
NW: Well in Hillyard, you know, we can play, we can play freely. You know, we can play ball. We can have music. We can take out, we can go fishing. We can plant. We can have nice beautiful gardens. We can have our fence put up. We can visit neighbors. We just could shop. But, and it’s like—and the neighbors [were] was neighbors. Like, you got along. The neighbors knew each other. When something happened, you know, you didn’t have to fight for territory. There was no fighting for territory. You had your land, you paid your tax, that was it. You know, but now it’s not, I don’t find that here in Miami. And since 1973, there’s like been a big change.
AR: I’ll definitely talk about that--.
NW: When I first came here, it was different. It was more like home when I first came here.
AR: Huh?
NW: Well, you know, but now, it’s like, really sad.
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AR: Was there—institutions were segregated, businesses and stuff—were the neighborhoods segregated in terms of housing? In other words, was there a black portion of housing and then a white--?
NW: Yes, when I grew up--.
AR: So...
NW: Yes there was. There was a black section of blacks, and section where whites lived. And then you, like, we lived on this side of this highway, and when you cross over to this side, there’s a white section, but as you went down, you crossed, like, ten blocks you went into another black section, you know. It was, like, quarters. You had, like, this end, this end, you know. One quarter they called it Turpentine Quarter because they ( ) turpentine to make different stuff with. And they had a Sawmill, where they did a sawmill, and they did, you know, mill grinding and stuff.
AR: Did the children of both communities play together?
NW: Of course we played together.
AR: Whites and black kids?
NW: Yeah, we played together. Because, remember now, that many women back then would baby-sit.
AR: Right.
NW: So, a lot of time they bring the parents, the children to the parents’ house. And either the child, the mother went to the child’s house. If that white child’s mother had to work later, or come in late, the mother would bring the child home to her house so she could fix dinner for her children, and they’d play together. Norma Jean Walker
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AR: OK, well let’s for now—let me come back to Hillyard later-- for now let’s move to Overtown then, when you first moved down. Could you describe what the neighborhood was like?
NW: The neighborhood was very friendly, very close. Everybody looked out for each other. It was like a neighborly neighborhood. I came to Miami and I became a waitress, and everybody knew you. Your customers knew you. You knew what your customers liked. And, you know, when they came in for their meal, you got to know them, you know, to bring a glass or water or not to bring a glass of water. You knew to bring some, like, corned beef and grits. But people [were] was very friendly. And your neighborhood where you lived at, nobody broke in[to] your house, and they’d look out for your children. When you had to go to work, they had a babysitter right there in the building. But now, it’s that, you can play in the park, the kids play ball in the road, then come home. I remember Gibson Park, it wasn’t Gibson Park then, it was called Dixie Park. And it was, you can go play, live the hump. We had, what you call, Overtown come alive, I mean they had the classical parade on FAMU ( )--.
?: [in background] ( ).
NW: You had, Second Avenue was booming, you know. We had fun. We had the clubs everybody could go to, like you had the Sir John, you had the Rocking Palace, you had the Classic Lounge—small lounge on ( )—you had the Stone Drugstore. You had different kinds of cafeterias, restaurants. You had the Ball Fish restaurant. You had the Chinese restaurant. You had, I mean, it just was, you had doctors in the neighborhood. You had your own doctor. You had a GYN, Dr. Henry. You had a dentist there. You had a medical doctor. Your had Dr. Checkov, he was of another descent. He wasn’t black, but he was, like, a friendly doctor. We had a clothing store there. We had Jack’s Clothing Store. We had a tailor there. We had a grocery store. We had so many things where, it was like, you didn’t have to go out of your neighborhood. All of the money stayed in the neighborhood, and people that lived in the neighborhood, worked in the neighborhood. So you didn’t have to go out of the neighborhood to make money. Those who worked down in Miami Beach, they’d have a car to get in and back, but basically we stayed in the neighborhood and Norma Jean Walker
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worked. I worked in the neighborhood, so I got to know everybody. We had a fish market neighborhood. But now, it’s like a big change.
AR: You know, you describe a very vibrant community, which I also heard described--.
NW: Very, very economic. We had money. So, if you didn’t have to pay bus fare, so you are going to save $2.50 a day. So that money, instead of going out of our neighborhood, could stay in your house, where you pay rent, you know. And the landlords were much better. They [weren’t] wasn’t like slum landlords there, they just want the money, the rent is higher for less, you know, investment. And plus, you’re don’t get a lot of care. They don’t come back and repair the plumbing. They don’t want to cut the trees. They don’t want to fix the lighting. They just don’t want to do anything. They don’t want to paint the building. They don’t want to fix the ( ) when they fall out. So it’s like that’s why there a good name for them is slum landlord.
AR: Were the people who owned, were the landowners back then, did they live in the neighborhood?
NW: No, they took a tenant within the building and they became the manager of the apartment building. So anything that went wrong, they kept it clean. They kept the yard clean, they kept the apartment taken care of. If the toilet stopped up, the manager would come out there that same night and do it right then. He had his agenda of what he had to do.
AR: I’ve read, listened to your description, and also reading Marvin Dunn’s description of, in his book on blacks in Miami of Second Avenue, of their very vibrant life. Could you give me a sense of what it was like on a typical day, not a typical weekday, a typical weekend on the streets? The sorts of activities that went on the--?
NW: Well, during the day I remember when, as I remember it, that people went about their business, going to work. If you went down Second Avenue between Tenth Street and, I remember very well, between Sixth Street, that’s where Jack’s Clothing Store was, and the Norma Jean Walker
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tailor’s, and different shops, and a poolroom where the kids, where the guys shot, you know, were shooting pool. But what I do remember was that one lady that was a worker at Jack’s Clothing Store, her name was Farrah Stein, she would stand outside and have a sale sign, you know, what was on sale. And Mr. Jack, who was a white man who owned the store, was very involved with the community. He would be out there too, you know ( ). Miss Maple was his nurse. And she would, like, come out there every night and day, and, you know, she would, “Look, you going to go in there, you’re going to have to wait no whole long time.” And we had a doctor’s office who was on the Second Avenue also, he was, like, take your, medical doctor, you saw it is, like, GYN also. Dr. Henry was our GYN doctor. He delivered my second child. And we had Dr. Miro. We had, Dr. Davis was a dentist, and he was, his sister was right there on Second Avenue when she lived in Coconut Grove, but he brought all his expertise to the Overtown area. Right on, and during the day you had the cab stand. You didn’t have to go, like, wave down and call for a cab. You just walked to Eleventh Street and that’s the site of the cab stand, and you get the jitney stop, and the cab was right there. And right around the corner was Frenchy, which was the ice cream store, where they sold the best homemade ice cream and sausage sandwich, you know. And the businessmen came out on the sidewalk, and they, “Hi, how’re you doing?” You know, you had Clyde Kitlin, who was still [in] Overtown, and you have Moore’s Garage, and you have the little baby Cohens, and Mr. Cohen would come by and wave and speak. They would come open their place in the morning so if anyone needed a cold drink, or a cold soda, or cold ice cream, or whatever, a nice hot biscuit and grits, it was always available. And they made you feel so welcome when you came in. They wanted you to come, not just get your money, you know, you felt welcome. On Second Avenue, like, a guy would tell you in the morningtime, 4:30, hurry up and get to work, you know. There was no danger. I didn’t feel any danger as I walked the street to work on Second Avenue, and I would have to be at to work at 4:30, and I, although I lived a block and a half from work, I didn’t feel no danger, because all the customers, all the guys on the street knew me, all the ladies knew me. And, it wasn’t like, you had to be afraid to walk down Second Avenue. There was just so much love, you could feel it, you know, and it was so vibrant. Everybody got ready for their class. Everybody got ready for Christmas, you know, everybody got ready for anything, you know, and even during death, during that time, everybody got together and made sure that each Norma Jean Walker
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family was supported, that that family had what they needed, that that child had what they needed. Every neighbor watched out for each other’s child, you know, it wasn’t like, people didn’t prey on the poor as much as they do now. Come in your neighborhood and just prey on you, you know. Sell high products and not good products, you know, and just move out. It was more like a family, you know, like just closer. And now it’s not that feeling, it not that, there’s no feeling in a lot of areas of Overtown. As if though you had, you know, you can apply for a job, you can’t apply for jobs in Overtown now. There’s no job service. It’s as if though the politicians forget about Overtown until it’s time for election, then they come in—not all of them, but not the ones that run for our district, for their own districts themselves—but a lot of them will come in Overtown and promise you the whole world and once you elect them you never see them again. Like, there’s no accountability from the city and the county when it comes to HUD. The housing are all abandoned, HUD housing, like, you got like, a hundred some HUD apartments abandoned, and the county and city are not being accountable for it. And they move black folks out, down to Homestead, different areas when you need somewhere to go. They just like, dismantled the whole community, and they’re not responsible for keeping the city, maintaining the community. Where in the past you would find that people kept the streets swept, the trash picked up, light bulbs in, but nowadays they don’t maintain, don’t trim the trees, you almost have to, like, just call ninety-nine people before you get an answer. And then you get like a, what you call those, Band-Aid answers. When it rains, streets flood, you call ninety-nine times, they don’t fix it, you know. It’s that, even, the people in the community become frustrated and begin to move out to a better neighborhood, what they call a better neighborhood, which Overtown is a very rich, great neighborhood. And I realize that a politician would know it’s rich, but they just want to keep it that way, so they can come in and benefit from the profit once most of the blacks have moved out.
AR: I definitely want to come back to that a little later. I want to explore a little more the Overtown of back then. You mentioned a couple of things, of events. One is the classes--.
NW: The class is around December, around December-time, with FAMU, which is the college, and another college would come to Miami and play in the Orange Bowl. And the Norma Jean Walker
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street be, the street on the Second end would be so packed. The Dorsey Hotel was there during that time. We had all the clubs, you know, we had Lane’s Guest House, they had the Carvel Hotel where they stayed. We had our own black hotel. No more. It’s been promising for years to come back to Overtown, nothing yet. You know, the Dorsey House had been remodeled, restored, but it’s falling apart again. There’s a lot of rich history there and for, like Dorsey Library’s all closed down. It’s like there’s so much in Overtown where it would take not much money, people willing to do, but there’s some reason that when money’s allocated for the Overtown area, it never gets there. There’s always a hold-up, which I feel that when the money’s allocated for the rich history that we had in the past, it should be like, when you allocate $10,000,000, you should have a year to spend it, because you know, we’re going to use it. It’s not like we’re going to say, you know, we got $10,000,000 we’re going to decide what we’re going to use it for. We know what we need it for. We need housing, we need better streets, we need better lights. And you see, Overtown’s a very black area now because they keep it very dark, even around the community’s center. You have to go out of the community just to be certified for food stamps. Now they decided that they may bring it back, you know. We’re not accessible. People [who] don’t look like us, could come into Overtown and get a business overnight, and stock it overnight. People who, in the past, when I first came, it wasn’t that way. You had people that owned the building, owned the building, let us work the business. We worked and there was pride in who was working. The men who was porters, who worked in the dock, who worked in the airport, and there was waiters in restaurant, they dressed in black and white. You took pride on going to St. Clair Cafeteria in Hialeah, working, and coming back home. You took pride in it, you know. And the role model is in your home. But now, when you have a man who can’t find a job, or no one will give him a job, and he [has] have children, his wife [has] got to go to work or be on public assistance, you know, what this is. So, it’s like a lot of things [were] was taken away. It’s taken away, so you know, so that we can’t have any. You know, it’s easy to get business back. You had an empty building, you had a business. Now, no. What I find about Overtown in the government and the ones who do, as far as the business section is concerned if I may, that they have no problem bringing a liquor store in Overtown. They’ll do it real quick. Anything that will help, like computer centers, job programs, they brought a bank. We finally got a bank there. The shopping center in Overtown is like a big joke, you know. Norma Jean Walker
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People who get business don’t live in Overtown. They don’t even live at all in Overtown. But they get the business faster than people live in Overtown.
AR: Could you give us a sense of how that mechanism works? Why it is that it’s hard for people that live in Overtown to get businesses and just sort of give me an idea of what the barriers are?
NW: Honest opinion, and I say it now until the day that I leave this earth, people are placed in Overtown to help us, but they are placed in there to help us, but they are not helping us! They are placed in Overtown, but they are not working for the Overtown. You understand?
AR: And why is that? Because--?
NW: Because that’s, I feel that’s the plan. I feel there’s a plan that people send people into Overtown to hold position in Overtown, to be leaders in Overtown. So-called directors of different agencies. And they sit there, so nothing will happen in Overtown. Because if you’re in Overtown, and you have an office in Overtown, you ought to make sure that everything is kept maintained and clean and safe. It shouldn’t be a no problem for you to come right out and cut a tree if it’s in the middle of a light. Or fix a light bulb. You shouldn’t have to call no fifteen times or bring the person out, you know, and show him the light, and it still don’t get fixed. That’s what I had to do several times. Several times! And it takes a while for it to get done. And the garbage can runs over, and the lot be overrun. If you ride through Overtown on a rainy day, you’ll see the flood. You’ll ride through and say, now why is all these buildings abandoned? Why does it look this way? And you got an office in Overtown, who is doing code enforcement. So who is doing the code enforcement? And, then you complain, and you go to meetings, you go to community meetings, you complain, you raise your hand. They have studied us to death. Overtown needs not to be studied any more. [pause] Overtown needs no, it’s been studied enough. What we need to do is take the money that you’ve been studying with and just start rebuilding the buildings, you know, build some homes. And see, government is very smart, but ladies like me are very smart too. Home ownership is very important, and they know that. So once they don’t Norma Jean Walker
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build homes in Overtown, there’s no home ownership. And if we had like, I say, about thirty-five more homes in Overtown, single-family homes, it’d be a big difference and the government knows that. So they start doing inferior housing, they don’t put them in Overtown.
AR: Do you attribute that to, what, to racism, to economic interests, to--?
NW: I attribute it to people who work in Overtown, just really don’t care. They’re not working for the community. Because if you got a community behind you, and you’re fighting for better lighting, better business, and your people are behind you, all you got to do is well look, I got this lady who wants to open up a laundry, a dollar store, or whatever. We want to help her. But you can’t. The lease is like for thirty days for the shopping center. Now who’s going to put $2000 worth of materials, I mean merchandise for a thirty day lease? You won’t find another community. I have, I ride down Thirty-Sixth Street. I ride in the Hispanic community, and I see what they got, look at the shopping center own by the ( ) Center. Look at that shopping center and look at Overtown’s shopping center.
AR: And, so do you think it’s—I’m trying to phrase the question—so you think it’s a lack of interest?
NW: It’s a lack of-- it’s the wrong people working in the community.
AR: Yeah.
NW: You understand what I’m saying?
AR: Yeah.
NW: You have to take ownership in what you’re doing. If you go into a community to work, you must go into there wanting to make a difference. If you’ve been there for a while, and you’re not making a difference, then something is wrong. If you got residents like me Norma Jean Walker
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complaining about the same thing as a simple light, speeding up and down Third Avenue—most of it done by police officers—and you complain about it, and no one never helps you, what do that say to you? It does not get to your desk. It may get from your desk to the garbage can, but it doesn’t get anywhere else. And, our commissioner for our area, our politicians for our area, for Overtown, are doing all they can. But they are being fought, and they are being knocked down left and right, and they are being fought. And if we the community stand behind them, but then you got an agency in Overtown who’s not standing behind them. The business got to stand behind them. The business doesn’t look like us. So they’re being benefited, they get the insurance, the get the bulk buying. Overtown, the black businesses have a hard time getting it. And if a black guy stands on a corner, or drive on the corner, they arrest him, they harass him. If other guys come to our community, if a different color, they won’t stop him. So, it’s like a catch-22, you know, you do if you don’t. And people that work in Overtown, I say it constantly and I say it again, and I will say it forever, they’re not working for Overtown. There’s some people in Overtown, and they are working for Overtown, but it’s like three.
AR: Who are they? Who would you say?
NW: Well, I say that Sabrina Baker-Bouie is one of them. I would think that Miss Bouie would make a, she was making a great impact in Overtown. We had a marketplace the first Saturday of every month, we had a big marketplace on Ninth Street, the first Saturday of every month, where everybody came together and sold their goods like a marketplace. Residents got used to that. We had fun. We had rides for the children. And since she left, no more.
AR: She did describe--.
NW: We had a flower garden. We had a community garden. We had people doing tutoring. We had parents getting together. A lot was going on. But now since she left, the Eighth Street has grown up. Dr. Dunn, Fourteenth Street is still pretty. And Gibson Park, which is a Norma Jean Walker
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big park in Overtown, one of the biggest parks in Overtown, it’s that, when it’s used by other people that don’t live in our community.
AR: Yeah, Ms. Bouie mentioned that to me--.
NW: The Nicaraguans come in. The Hispanics come in. They play soccer. They play ( ), they play volleyball, they take advantage of the park. They sell anything they want to sell. They have cars all down Fourteenth. But the minute, the minute that the blacks have something in Overtown, the police officers get out of their cars, and tell you to turn your music off. You can’t have parties, you can’t enjoy yourself. I think it should be a limited time they turn it off, and how loud it should be, but they like stand [unidentified noise] ( ) and look at you in a way to intimidate you.
AR: And they don’t do that with Hispanics?
NW: No. They got out of the car and talk to the players, and have fun, and drink stuff, I think soda, you know. [coughing]
AR: Are there, could you give me an idea of—let’s talk about Gibson Park—are there any programs there for the community?
NW: No.
AR: None?
NW: There’s none. And I remember when I first came, when I was first going to Gibson Park, they had a karate class there. I took karate. They had the--.
AR: This is when you first came here?
NW: It was like in the seventies. Norma Jean Walker
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AR: In the seventies?
NW: After seventy-three, something happened. I mean, something began to happen. You know, that people just didn’t care anymore. You had great park management. One was Emmanuel Washington, great park manager. You had our sensei Jesse Beat, great karate teacher. We did, we had arts and crafts, you know, we made pyramids and stuff. The kids, after-care. Barbara was there, you know. We had Karen ( ) who was a great native of Overtown. She was involved. We had aerobic dancing. We had tennis. We had fun. The park was filled with young black children and their families, you know. Like, I was in the park taking karate, and my sons was outside practicing snatch-rag or whatever, you know. But now it’s that Optimist Club is like a big, it’s the Optimist Club but it’s not like, I don’t know, something is missing. Something is missing.
AR: Do you have any sense of what is missing?
NW: What is missing is that it’s hard to get things for the children to have, like the uniforms. We should have uniforms. Make sure they’re acceptable to the park. And, could I just ( ) for a second?
AR: Yeah, of course. [unidentified noise] OK, so back then in the seventies, and before seventy-three, you had these things?
NW: We had a football team. We had football teams in Overtown. We had Bugtown. We had Swamp City. We had Twenty-Second Avenue. Twenty-Second Street where they played football. And every weekend, somebody had a big football team. Where football players [unidentified noise] and the park was booming, just booming. We had Stone Drugstore with Dr. Sidney Cox the pharmacist, where he had the ice cream and the punch. And it was just booming, we had fun. I mean, people had somewhere to go, you know. And, it seemed like all that love was there, you know. We had furniture stores in Overtown that during the night after the riot, a lot of them got burned down the night of the riot, but you could still see that something was trying to happen again. But Overtown coming alive, it Norma Jean Walker
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stopped. You know, money became so short, and I don’t know what could have happened just that, people kind of like, someone gave up hope. But many, many of us still have hope. And every time you want to build something, this piece of land belonged to this person and they want to sell it to this person for this much money, you know like, and that’s why you can’t build. When we went about building an open building for a business, they find us a code wrong. But the Arabs could walk into Overtown and open a building and sell anything they want to sell. And it’s fine. And, there’s something wrong with this whole place, too.
AR: Yeah.
NW: There’s something wrong. See there’s no accountability. Nobody is being held responsible here for what our community should be having. Our residents, our children. So, if I skip into the community and say what I feel, it’s like, OK, we’re going to do it. When the city manager comes into, when our meetings, and says, “OK you going to take care of things.” I say, “I’ll hold you to it.” And he said, “I know you will.” And he still don’t do it, you know what I’m saying? So, it’s that, they bring false hope, but they share hope while they’re sharing, but they’re really bringing you false hope. It’s like a Band-Aid to pacify you, OK you be quiet for a little while, and you’ll be OK, and I think we’re pretty tired of it.
AR: So, you, let me see how much longer, I was going to ask another question, I think we have a little more tape. [pause]. Well, I have a couple questions I want to ask you, we only have a little bit of time left though, um, hmm. Well, let me ask you about this, parks, back then in the seventies. You considered them, did you consider them safe places--?
NW: Safe places, accessible, fun, well-lit.
AR: Yeah. And now?
NW: Now, dark, not accessible, but maybe when they weren’t to be. One summer the pool was not open, next summer the pool opened. Nowhere to walk. You want to remodel the parks so we can walk around our park, go for a walk, like a walking club, you know. We Norma Jean Walker
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would get together and walk and exercise. [pause] Nobody sits down to their desk when you’re giving these ideas in Overtown and says, let’s do this! They take Williams Park and make it a park where the senior citizens or the young people want to go for a walk, like at Moore’s Park. And you can go to community, you can just raise your voice and just share that, how you feel about that, and it’s the same old thing.
AR: Do you see any hope, any improvement?
NW: If you move some of the people that’s [are] working in Overtown out of there, yes. But if you put somebody in there who really want to see things happen. Some people don’t want to see things happen, and I think that’s there intention to be there, so nothing happens!
AR: Yeah.
NW: If you make a man or a woman, empower them, they can buy their own Christmas toys for their children! They don’t need to go out, ride around in police cars and fire trucks and give them toys. It’s good to do it, but if you give them a job and hire them, empower them, you won’t need to [do] that. What you would say that this family moved into a home. Or this family’s child made the honor roll. Or this father got employee of the month. They want to see, we don’t want to see, well, we gave this child some toys because the father lives underprivileged. We’re all at risk. The whole world is at risk.