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Transcript of interview with Constance "Connie" Bruce, September 21, 2008
Transcript of interview with Constance "Connie" Bruce, September 21, 2008
Transcript of interview with Constance "Connie" Bruce, September 21, 2008
Transcript of interview with Constance "Connie" Bruce, September 21, 2008
An interview with Constance "Connie" Bruce (1915-2012), the daughter of photographer Charles Bruce. Bruce talks about her relationship with her father and her memories of him. This interview was collected as part of Northeastern University's Lower Roxbury Black History Project (2007-2009).
Interviewer
Interviewee
Interviewer
Interviewee
Northeastern University (Boston, Mass.)
Northeastern University (Boston, Mass.)
Associated name
Associated name
transcripts
2008-09-21
2008-09-21
This transcript is unedited.
Transcript of interview with Constance "Connie" Bruce, September 21, 2008, Lower Roxbury Black History Project records, 2007-2009 (M165), Archives and Special Collections Department, Northeastern University Libraries, EH1.
Constance Bruce
Constance Bruce
Massachusetts
Boston
Roxbury (Boston, Mass.)
Massachusetts
Boston
African American women
African American women
Roxbury (Boston, Mass.)
http://hdl.handle.net/2047/D20201252
BruceConstance_20080921_Transcript
http://hdl.handle.net/2047/D20201252
African American women
An
Transcript of interview with Constance "Connie" Bruce, September 21, 2008
Lower Roxbury Black History Project records (M165)
interview with Constance "Connie" Bruce
Transcript of interview with Constance "Connie" Bruce, September 21, 2008
transcript of interview with constance connie bruce september 000021 002008
2008/09/21
Transcript of interview with Constance "Connie" Bruce, September 21, 2008
2008-09-21
Constance Bruce
African American women Massachusetts Boston
Roxbury (Boston, Mass.)
Parker, Lolita
Bruce, Constance
Parker, Lolita
Bruce, Constance
Northeastern University (Boston, Mass.)
Parker, Lolita
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09.21.08 Washington, DC Interview with Connie Bruce – Part 1 CB: On the other side where the stables were where they took care of the horses and did the menial work -- and all those and, of course, you probably know if you know the area that those places now unlike some around here that’s been torn down, they have been made into studio apartments, and they have lists miles long of people who would die to live in them. And the stones are still cobblestones. INT: I live in that neighborhood, so I’m familiar with it. CB: Well, you see that’s the thing they do in Boston that I appreciate. Now it is in that area among those people that most likely -- see, I’m the only one -- I’m the gizzard hoot -- and when I first found out my name was Bruce, I said what is a black person doing with a Scotch name. And it took me a long time, but I finally found out. INT: So, I know that you -- it is important -- I know you were born in the Boston area. CB: No, I was not. INT: I think you were born in Somerville. CB: Yes, well, the Boston area -- well, it’s all Boston now, I guess -- all those little bedroom places -- Quincy -- Interview with Connie Bruce pt 1/p. 2 the Adams lived there. They’re all Boston now. It irritated me so much when I went to the post office, and the sign said - - United States Post Office Boston, Massachusetts, Somerville Branch. I said -- (chuckling). If you can’t supply all of the municipal services, what are you going to do? INT: So, do you remember -- so, you were born in Somerville -- CB: Yes. INT: But as I have talked to a lot of people, it really didn’t matter what part of the city you were in, you probably came back to what is now being called Lower Roxbury -- that area. It was between Dudley Station to Mass. Ave. CB: That’s the part I know -- Dudley Station -- I lived down -- let’s see -- I can’t bring it back now. You know or maybe you don’t know that -- the West Indians -- they believed in owning a piece of land. INT: That’s right. CB: Okay. When nobody else had a piece of land, I had a piece of land, and I lived in the house that was owned by a West Indian. And it was two or three stops out of Dudley Street -- Dudley Station -- I think it was on Dudley Street. Now I can’t remember the name of the street. But that was when I was grown. Now when I was young, all I knew was someone from Massachusetts because you didn’t go anywhere. You see, this is the ‘20s dear -- (a chuckle) -- when decent Interview with Connie Bruce pt 1/p. 3 respectable young woman stayed home. And I had a home. I had a yard. I had everything I wanted, and I was a homebody anyway. So, that’s why I say -- these things, I have found out since I’ve been grown and found out from my own negotiation, sticking my nose in because in those days, you didn’t ask your elders anything. You waited until you were asked to speak. How dare you question your grandmother about anything would never enter your mind because you might think it’s (inaudible: 3:56). Just didn’t do that. INT: So, were your parents or grandparents born in Boston? CB: No. Grandparents on my mother’s side -- I don’t know where they were born. And I don’t remember where the grandparents on my father’s side were born. You see unless that stuff -- I was seeing the family Bible -- but nobody else has. What happened to it, I don’t know. But these were after the Civil War days. Negroes, blacks, African-Americans whatever were animals. My mother was very much surprised to find out she had social security -- ah, she had a birth certificate. They didn’t have birth certificates, and they didn’t have nothing. So, you can’t say where they were born. I don’t know how much time we’ve got. My grandfather on my mother’s side was a runaway -- because we couldn’t figure out any problem with the child or the plantation owner or the overseer. He ran away when he was 14 saying nobody was going Interview with Connie Bruce pt 1/p. 4 to own him. And he ran away to the Union Army, and he was a water boy in the Union Army. Where he learned to read and write, at least he did, I don’t know how he got to Manassas or Lynchburg or anywhere where the family was as far as we could go back. I don’t know. INT: Do you know his name? CB: James Glover. INT: And when he ran away, do you know where he went. CB: Don’t know. Don’t know. Don’t know. Well, I don’t know for sure if he did. That’s what I heard. Now on my father’s side, he was the only son -- I don’t know anything -- and you didn’t ask a lone woman anything because ten to one she was a World War I widow. My grandmother always wore black outside the house, and the idea of asking her about her husband or anything else wouldn’t have occurred to me. I’ve been in the house and operated the Dumb Waiter, and everybody was surprised when she died that she didn’t own the house she paid for several times -- with rent receipts but she never owned it. But I did run into some of her relatives in Chicago, but they’re her relatives. They’re not my father’s relatives. Now there’s this business of aunt and uncle you don’t know whether it’s real or whether it’s what they used to call them. You know about aunt so and so and uncle so and so. That’s what they called them. It had nothing to do with blood Interview with Connie Bruce pt 1/p. 5 relatives. In fact, I heard that my dear grandfather wouldn’t take it for five minutes if you called him uncle so and so. He said when was your mother my mother’s sister and that stopped her right there. He was Mr. Glover -- merchant period. But that was Lynchburg -- how did he get there, I don’t know. And my -- as I said -- I don’t know about my father because I don’t think he had any brothers or sisters. They say he was the only son of an only son. Well, in the Bible, they only got sons. I ain’t never heard of any relative -- of course I didn’t talk to him about it. And I never heard anything about it. So, this is why I say -- that part of the family is (inaudible: screwed 8:15). So, the only thing left of this box of stuff that they had that was in his possession evidently when he died, and I guess it was the second wife of his stepson or something -- brought him to me because I hadn’t had a chance to get there, and I was living in my mother’s house at the time -- and I had had some time keeping the two families apart. When my father was in Boston, my mother was in Washington -- it wasn’t too bad. But when my father married the second time, and she had a couple of sons here, they wanted their mother here. But he didn’t care. It didn’t make any news to him -- (a chuckle). So, he moved here. (Inaudible: 9:08) in Washington. So, I had a little difficulty, but I managed. You do manage. So, I did know Interview with Connie Bruce pt 1/p. 6 those people, and there were people who liked me for the simple reason that I didn’t pay attention to my father. Well, you see I have always been of the opinion that once you’re in the family, you’re in the family. I got nothing to do with that. And I told my mother when she had the divorce -- I said -- you told me -- you told me that that man was my father. And I said he’s do respect to the family. I don’t know anything about you and the marriage -- and husbands I don’t know anything about -- but the man has done nothing to me. And they knew I kept in touch. INT: So, what I wanted to ask you about is I understand that -- maybe it was your grandparents who maybe had a store in Roxbury -- some kind of a store. CB: Yes. INT: Could you tell me -- CB: Both of them -- they weren’t the grandparents -- they were the first generation. Did you know about them? INT: The first generation? CB: No, did you know about the stores? INT: Well, I’ve heard a lot about stores that were in the neighborhood -- so I’m not sure which store your ancestors had -- but if you could tell me anything -- CB: You did know that blacks had stores in that area? INT: Yes. I heard about one. But now this is a second one. I heard about one called Dolly’s. Interview with Connie Bruce pt 1/p. 7 CB: I’m not sure whether I heard about that one or not because there’s so many Dolly’s around. I’ve been to so many cities. But let me see if I can get you straight on this. Candle Street was one. Lenox -- (Halik: 11:11) didn’t know enough about the neighborhood that those streets said together. INT: Let’s see -- well, Candle. CB: Lenox Street would be next to it. INT: So, let me think. Let me just get myself situated. Some of the streets are gone. CB: Yes. I mean I’m talking ‘20s and ‘30s, see. So, alright. So, let me see. I don’t know which one -- I think it was -- I don’t know -- it may have been -- I remember my mother happened to get -- it could have been my grandfather -- I remember she said she was up at 5:00 o’clock in the morning or something because she had to be in the store -- and she lived in the store. She had to be in the store in the morning, and she went to school and came back, and she was talking about one time having to take five cents worth of -- what do you call it -- I guess you call it fat -- INT: Lard? CB: The meat you put in baked beans. She had to take this to a lady three flights up who couldn’t get out. And I noticed you can throw your keys and your money out the window. And they would be proud. And the only thing you gave them Interview with Connie Bruce pt 1/p. 8 maybe was a cookie that just came out of the oven. They were chosen. It was a great honor. People were honest. I think that was kind of the -- let me see now -- I think there was some argument in the family because when he died, I think it was left to a son that stayed home to take care of the parents. I know you’re taking pictures. I hope you know what you’re doing. INT: Of course I do. I’ve been doing it for 40 years even though I’m just 50. CB: Yes, I know. But I don’t like it. But I’m making my contribution. I think that would have been (inaudible: 14:13). Then the oldest daughter that was in the military -- she had another one because she had told them -- if she ever work for somebody else it’s because she wants to not because she had to. He never -- never worked for anybody. INT: Who your grandfather? CB: My grandfather never worked for anybody. INT: Do you remember the name of the store at all? CB: This was the grocery store -- as far as I know they didn’t name them. INT: And what type of a store was it? CB: It was a regular grocery store -- what they sold in those days. Most people cooked from scratch. I don’t know what they had in the store -- but it was like a local mom and pop store would have now. But that probably was grandpa’s Interview with Connie Bruce pt 1/p. 9 store. I came to the conclusion -- the reason that she was so good in math because she could take a pencil and go up a line like that -- nines and eights didn’t bother her. They had learned twelve, twelves. We only went to ten. She learned more than that. She evidently had to keep the books because he couldn’t read. And I remember she told me I don’t know how old grandma was -- but she said one day -- grandma -- thank God -- I can write my name. But she didn’t have to have an education. And yet, from what I understand that man -- put three boys and four girls, I think, through high school, which white people didn’t do at that time. And there’s a picture -- a family picture should be over in Marietta’s house -- if you know Marietta -- she’s the matriarch because I gave it to her. She may have had one of each -- each daughter, I think. When then gave gifts, they always gave the same one. So, for the most part, we all have the same pictures. There’s this picture of the family. And you can tell from the date -- I mean from the dress -- what the date is. And yesterday, somebody was looking and said -- oh, this is you right here. I said wait a minute. You know I never dressed like that. And they had these big bows in the back remember? INT: Yes. CB: Remember the ones they had -- you dare not sit back in the chair because you’d mess your bow. Well, it was my mother. She could see instantly. And then a woman told me -- Interview with Connie Bruce pt 1/p. 10 that was helping me with my mother -- she said I never in my life have seen anyone that so resembled their mother as you. Well, they tell young men -- if you want to know what your wife is going to look like in middle age look at their mother. But this must have been what it was. They had this store on Kendall Street because there was some argument later on about who really owned the place. And one of the uncles was living there. And he also had a camp up at some lakes that we went to. And there was a question whether there had been a deal with the store -- or you know there’s a place they live upstairs with some of them -- or downstairs or in the back. And I think of this one -- because I remember visiting there once when my uncle was there and a friend of his. They lived together. How big a place it was, I don’t know because I just went into the front room to make a call. Of course, they didn’t have single rooms in those days. I mean Joe and (Dulda) tripled up -- four in the bed and all that kind of stuff so I heard. So, it wouldn’t have had to have been too big a place for them to raise four girls and three boys, which evidently he did, and he put them through school. And the next oldest one was Florence. And I remember her as the widow woman because she wore black and the beautiful beaded -- have you ever seen any of those beaded -- INT: Yes. CB: Dresses. Interview with Connie Bruce pt 1/p. 11 INT: From the ‘20s? CB: They were black -- you know they wear them now. They don’t know what a beaded dress is. (Inaudible: 19:20) -- and her son -- both the sons had to do it. And they grew up. They were -- I don’t know whether they were born in Boston or not because they were before me. The only time I got to see them was what my father used to call a state visit. Maybe once a year or something like that, we would go and see the relatives. And that was a big deal. So, some of them went out to Hyde Park. Do you Hyde Park? INT: Yes. CB: One or two of them went to Hyde Park. And of course, to get out there was a whole day’s trip. And where they went from Hyde Park, I don’t know. At one time, there was a question of whether the two oldest -- wait a minute -- the two oldest -- the oldest and one other one -- I guess it was the oldest -- the next to oldest son because the girls (voice fades: 20:46). I tried at one time to figure out which was the oldest, and how they went down, but I couldn’t do it. So, all I can say -- two of the men -- from I got from the letter -- see my aunt’s correspondence was in my mother’s desk, and I was trying to go through that. But the ink fades, and people can’t read writing. So, that’s all lost. So, she and my mother were the last two. INT: And do you remember when you were living in Interview with Connie Bruce pt 1/p. 12 Somerville? Do you remember coming to Roxbury at all? CB: We only went -- Windsor Street -- that’s where my father lived -- his mother lived on -- I think -- either my grandmother -- my paternal grandmother lived on Windsor Street in Roxbury or else it was Windsor Street in Cambridge where my mother and father lived before they moved to Somerville, and where my brother was born -- now I’m not sure. But Windsor Street is in there somewhere. INT: Windsor Street -- what I have heard somewhere that your father was on Windsor Street in Roxbury. CB: In -- INT: Yes, Windsor Street. CB: You’re going to have to check it. INT: Windsor Street in Roxbury. So, I’m just wondering did you ever -- you know -- either as a child come to Roxbury -- shop at Dudley? CB: We went to Roxbury -- if he was at Windsor Street -- that’s where we went. And that’s the house that she died in - - that my paternal grandmother died in -- and they thought it was hers -- everybody thought it was hers. And I think it was in fairly good condition. I don’t believe they tore that down immediately. They left some of the things -- that was one of those -- INT: I think that street right there -- and that house, I think is still there. Interview with Connie Bruce pt 1/p. 13 CB: Well, it may be because they haven’t done anything with it. We said, well, they’ll turn it into a cow pasture after a while. But here and there where there was a good house, they left them standing, and the last I heard, they hadn’t torn it down. But you never know what. And you see, I haven’t been -- I haven’t been in that part of Roxbury since before World War II I’m pretty sure. So, I don’t know. But if you know for sure that it was Windsor Street, Roxbury, I don’t know what the street name was where they lived in Cambridge. I know he was born in Cambridge. And they were trying to get the house ready for the new baby. And some -- I don’t know whether you know it -- but in those days, the paint -- the smell of fresh paint would bring on a miscarriage. So, you had to be very careful moving into a new house. So, that was my mother’s trouble -- I don’t know when they were in Cambridge -- I don’t know whether they had a house or an apartment or a room. I don’t know what it was. I know that’s where my brother was born. So, I was -- INT: So, when you were a child did you ever come to Roxbury -- I know when we started, you talked about going to the MFA or -- CB: That was when I was (inaudible: too soft 24:37). INT: Oh, you were -- (voice too soft). CB: Yes. That was on my own. I mean my father used to take us around once a year to certain places like the Fine Interview with Connie Bruce pt 1/p. 14 Arts Museum -- the Public Library -- the places with beautiful murals on the walls. We saw them made a building -- the one thing you did. INT: The State House maybe? CB: Oh, we went to the State House. I don’t know -- I guess -- well, I remember going to the State House. I don’t know when, what -- because I remember that cod fishing. How old I was -- I don’t know. But the public library and the museums, I know we went every year in Boston. Of course, we lived within walking distance of the library in Somerville. So, I mean, we went there as a regular thing, except when I went as a child, I got tired of this children’s stuff. And I asked for permission to go to the adult library -- which was given to me. And they had beautiful marble stairs. And the grass. But I don’t know when it was that I used to dance through the Museum of Fine Arts, and I was particularly interested in the classical area and the Egyptian area. I don’t know what else it was. I’m not sure. But I went to the Indian Museum they had at that time. So, that was in New York. But we did a lot of those things. There were a lot of children at the time that didn’t do -- I don’t know why -- some people just take certain things. They call it being a defeatist or something. Just like I used to look at WETA a lot. And then one time I was being introduced -- they said -- well, she looks at WETA. Interview with Connie Bruce pt 1/p. 15 Some people’s taste is different from other people’s taste. And of course the people that look at the soaps and sitcoms aren’t of the same -- but they’re the ones that keep them on the TV. You see the vast majority is one thing, and then you have these people on the side who are specialists in something else. And they aren’t considered human beings, I guess, by the regular majority or something anyway. You can’t always let people know the things that you enjoy because they look at your differently. So, you can’t let your poker playing friends know that you go to church on Sunday or something. But you see, as far as I’m concerned, it’s the whole deal. So, you play poker; somebody else plays whist or drinks Saturday night. They don’t ask me to do it, and they don’t tell somebody that I did it unless you saw me do it. I tell them -- I don’t care what you do -- just don’t say I was there when you kill your mother. INT: Do you remember your father taking photographs at all or anything about your father’s -- CB: What he liked to photograph was architectural things. I knew that he liked that because he was patent maker. And you know what I’m talking about? INT: Being a patent maker? CB: No, architectural -- INT: Yes, I’ve seen a couple. I’ve seen a few photos that he took -- Interview with Connie Bruce pt 1/p. 16 CB: He took? INT: He took of the Christian Science Building in Boston and some -- CB: Where did you get those from? INT: They’re ones I saw here. CB: Oh, you’ve been in that box? INT: Well, yes, I just looked at some of the photographs. CB: Well, this is what I mean. I don’t know what’s in there. Well, you know, some houses have the beautiful decoration around the lights. INT: Yes. CB: That’s the sort of thing. Or some doors have Roccoco -- that’s the sort of thing he used to take pictures of. I know. Now about people, I don’t know. He took pictures -- well, we all had to buy the cameras, and we took pictures -- you know people take pictures. But he had his own darkroom, and he processed his own pictures. What he did with them, I don’t know. It was just a hobby with him. INT: Well, you know, I was speaking to someone -- a photography historian the other day -- and for your father to have taken the type of photographs -- not that many people were doing this as a hobby. It was very involved -- a lot of chemicals -- long process. CB: That’s what I’m talking about. Now why people are Interview with Connie Bruce pt 1/p. 17 like that, I don’t know. And why they live in this family, I don’t know. There’s a whole lot of that kind of stuff in the family. Why are these people like this? Don’t ask me. Why did this boy run away? But you see the most people are on my mother’s side. But my father knew my mother’s family, which is something they used to do after the Civil War when the various people moved various places during the migration. They kept in touch, which people don’t do anymore. And the young men used to visit the family just like they used to do when they were close by. And I have traced most of the people that I knew as family members, they all go back to Richmond. I don’t mean Richmond -- to Lynchburg. I said -- what do you know about this. All of these characters knew one of them went here -- one of them went there. But they were all -- I remember since the day one. But it took forever because I was interested to find out they all are related to Lynchburg, Virginia. How did they get there? I don’t know. So, he knew the daughters -- and in fact, there’s a tale that he courted the daughter just before the two (inaudible: 31:56). He courted her before he married my mother. I don’t know what that’s all about. People say things. And if you visit -- I mean if it was somebody else -- I mean the other day somebody came to see me and said -- is that -- I said no. I said you don’t ask me any personal questions. It’s none of your business. He was coming to see me a while. Where I’m Interview with Connie Bruce pt 1/p. 18 going -- two questions don’t ever ask me where I’ve been or where I’m going. It’s none of your business. If you know, or if you were included, you will be informed. But I present it right down to the floor. But people do it anyway. They assume things -- now I don’t know what was going on. That was before my time. But I do know that that’s what they did because I found out through many sources. This one knew that one and that one -- and my mother said -- well, they have the same name -- but it’s not spelled the same way -- and they’re not related to us. You see? So, it’s all up in the air. This is why I’m telling you -- the only reason I came was to let you know that you can’t prove one way or another that these things had anything to do with my father, except that one time or other, they were in his possession. INT: One thing that I can confirm -- I shared this with Linda today -- is that your father was a mason. CB: Oh, yes. INT: And he took photographs of mason events. CB: And that’s one reason they bought the house in Somerville because up at the top is the Masonic symbol. INT: And I went to the Masonic -- CB: That’s the black piece -- it’s Prince Hall. INT: Prince Hall. So, I recently went to the Prince Hall Mason Library -- CB: In Boston? Interview with Connie Bruce pt 1/p. 19 INT: In Boston. CB: Good. Good. That’s a good source. INT: I was in the library, and I saw a photograph that your father took. I know your father took it now because it’s in this box, and it’s in the Prince Hall Library. CB: That is what you’ve got to do. Now may I ask you another personal question, and you can tell me it’s none of my business? INT: Yes. CB: Are you black or white? INT: I’m black. CB: Are you really? INT: Yes. CB: God Bless America. (Laughter). INT: I’m about the same -- CB: That’s what they say you are. INT: Yes. I’m about the same complexion as you are. CB: Oh, well. We got to do something, haven’t we? (Laughter). INT: And you know what? Look, I have on sandals, too, because I don’t give up the summer until the summer is gone. CB: Yes -- gone. It ain’t gone yet not in this country. I feel a lot better. They call, and you see, this is definitely what needs to be done. Now if you’re into research, I will do everything I can do to help you. What I’m Interview with Connie Bruce pt 1/p. 20 not interested in is publicity. I don’t believe in it. I don’t want nothing spread all over. Now, you say you have proved that one point. Now if you are in touch with Prince Hall masons -- INT: And I am. CB: You check every damn one in there -- because he was Herbie. That’s what they called him. You remember that. They called him Herbie. My brother wouldn’t be called Herbie. And that’s another thing. See, this child who was seen at Charles River was Jr. And now I don’t know what my brother knows. INT: What I saw was a photograph that’s in this box -- I saw in the Prince Hall Library and the historian at the Prince Hall Library could name one of the people that was in the photograph -- you know he was a mason -- CB: You take them and see what else they got. INT: And so there’s a -- CB: That’s your best bet. INT: In the Prince Hall Library, there’s a framed collage of photographs of whatever -- CB: Now where’s the Prince Hall Library? INT: It’s in -- CB: I think they had a building there at one time. INT: It’s on the borderline of Dorchester, Roxbury. It’s in a place in Roxbury called Grove Hall or Dorchester Interview with Connie Bruce pt 1/p. 21 called Grove Hall. And there’s a library there. And I said - - I have seen this photograph before. CB: It hits you just like that. INT: It did. And so the historian there was able to tell me the name of the man in the photograph which now definitely says -- okay, this picture was taken in the Boston area at a particular time. CB: Do you know anything about Otto Snowden? INT: Yes, I do. CB: Frank’s son? INT: Frank Snowden? No, what I know of Otto Snowden is Northeastern University has Frank and Muriel Snowden’s collection which is what this is for. CB: Yes, we used to play together. INT: Who used to play together? CB: Frank and Otto Snowden. When you say -- (laughter). Do you see what I mean? INT: Yes. CB: That’s why I asked you if you were black. I said -- if you’re black, that changes the whole thing -- (chuckles) -- because this is what needs to be done. Now I’ve got a different opinion from the college -- because I didn’t have anything to do with it. See, I just knew the name and that wasn’t anything much. But now when you tell me what you’re doing, you see, that’s more like Tuskegee -- and what’s the Interview with Connie Bruce pt 1/p. 22 other one -- where the students used to build a place -- Hampton -- and they refused to be taken over, you see. These other places that have become part of the regular system -- like for instance in Tennessee -- do you know anything about Tennessee? INT: Well, I mean I know a couple of cities. CB: You heard? You heard about the University of Tennessee at Nashville? INT: Yes. CB: What it used to be -- they -- let me get this straight -- Agricultural and Industrial State Teachers College. INT: Yes. CB: You knew that? INT: Yes, I think my grandfather went there -- my godfather went there. CB: Really? Well see, it ain’t black no more. It’s white. This is what they do. But one year, they swept the Gold Medals at the Olympics. I don’t know if you remember that part or not. INT: Well, you mean, in Germany? CB: But I sure was listening. I forget what they did. I spent some time -- I said I knew them when they only had those three buildings. INT: So, what can you tell me about the Snowdens because Interview with Connie Bruce pt 1/p. 23 the Snowden’s papers are in the collection at Northeastern University? CB: Well, Otto Snowden had a neighborhood house up there. And he had those people I told you from over 50. He let them have a place there for one of their affairs. And he was so delighted he said you can have it every year. And of course, the man died, and I don’t know what happened. Now you might check with him and find out he would know some of those people, and then you can get in touch with that group that was up there in Roxbury. INT: I have interviewed a woman who was originally from Virginia and moved to Roxbury in 1924. Her name is (Osciolla) Nathan, but she was a part of that group that you were talking about. CB: Yes, now you knew where it is. I just heard about it. But that’s your best bet. Now this is the kind of research you got to do. On the back of those photographs, you probably already know there’s a name. Now whether it’s the studio that took the picture, or whether it’s something else, you don’t know. But that’s all you got to go by. Now you can check out Otto Snowden and do give him my regards because I sent him some material and never heard from him. But I’m used to that. And Frank Snowden almost got to be president of Howard University. And he was up here on Foxboro -- Fox -- something -- one of those uppity streets up here -- Embassy Interview with Connie Bruce pt 1/p. 24 Row -- up that way. And when my mother called -- when my mother died, I called him. I sent him a notice, I think, or something like that. And he called me on the phone. I didn’t want her to know that (inaudible: 40:56). But he was nice. He spoke to me on the phone. I had a bangle bracelet when I was young. They had three little -- well, they weren’t any kind of metal but tin maybe -- but silver looking -- and there were three bangle bracelets held together with a little clip, and we were playing. He took that thing, and he grabbed it and broke it. That’s what I remember -- out in the backyard on 62 Prescott -- it’s actually a casino. You can put this down and check it out because there may be somebody in there right now who might remember. I don’t know. As long as I can remember -- 62 Prescott Street -- you remember General Prescott? INT: No. CB: The Revolutionary War. INT: Okay. CB: Yes, the Revolutionary -- 62 Prescott Street, Somerville, Massachusetts, because he didn’t have any zip. Now let me see. Somerville -- I can’t -- I know the telephone number was the same as the cousin that I had over here on E Street. I remember that. Sometimes it will come to me, you know. But that was originally a one family house, and they made it into a two family house. And they told us when we Interview with Connie Bruce pt 1/p. 25 were there how easy it would be to make it into a three family -- well, I don’t know about the zoning rules. But I can tell you at the top of that was the (inaudible: 42:44) symbol. And it was either made with wooden nails -- or else it was made with -- new nails and little plugs were put in to make it look like it -- so you know how old the house was. I never saw the deed for that. I saw the deed for this one here. INT: So, do you have any other -- oh, I don’t know if I explained it -- but what I’m doing is called the Lower Roxbury Black History Project. And so that’s like I said between -- CB: Lower Roxbury -- what do they call that -- INT: So, what is now being called Lower Roxbury is Dudley Station to Mass. Ave. -- maybe Albany Streets to the train track. CB: You see that was pretty swank neighborhood -- the Back Bay. INT: To the train track -- you know Albany -- CB: Albany to the train track? INT: Yes, the train tracks are still there. CB: Oh, there’s another -- Glover -- but she wasn’t related. You’re talking about the train tracks. I think she was Newbury Street. Do you know where that is? INT: Yes. CB: Is that part of your project? INT: No, this is really -- Interview with Connie Bruce pt 1/p. 26 CB: That’s Back Bay. INT: So, it would be Dudley Station to -- CB: See -- but I don’t know what’s on the other side of Dudley Station. INT: Were you familiar with any of the nightclubs? CB: No, I was too young -- except -- wait a minute -- INT: Dudley Street to Mass. Ave. -- so, White Cross Drug was there on the corner. CB: Dudley Street to Mass. Ave., I wouldn’t know. I went on Dudley Street to Dudley Station, and then I would go over across town -- I don’t know on the other side of Dudley Street -- that’s a joke. INT: So, you would come into Dudley Station. So, would you take the train into Dudley? CB: No, the bus. INT: You’d take the bus? CB: Well, it was a trolley car. INT: Trolley car? CB: But you see I only went up Dudley Street. I would go up Dudley Street -- there was another street -- another main street I went up to visit some people. But I don’t remember that. INT: Did you ever go to any of the churches in Roxbury or -- CB: No. Interview with Connie Bruce pt 1/p. 27 INT: Schools? CB: Let me see -- Ebenezer, I think, was the church of one of the family members, but I don’t know -- INT: So, the churches that are around there -- some of them are St. Cyprian’s. CB: St. Cyprian -- now I think St. Cyprian’s is where my brother was baptized. INT: It’s the closest church to -- CB: And I know it was a black church. INT: Yes. CB: Now where’s that route there? INT: That’s really close to Windsor Street where your father grew up. CB: Now that would be it. INT: So, there’s St. Cyprian’s, and then down the street from St. Cyprian’s was Butler’s Hall and that’s where Marcus Garvey used to speak there. CB: Oh, I remember Marcus Garvey -- when I was running that way, it wasn’t him. It was the other guy. I don’t know whether that was Boston or New York. There had been a few of those boys, you know. But Butler’s Hall, I don’t know. See, I went from where I was to where I was going and came back maybe once or twice. INT: So, there was St. Augustan’s Church. CB: Well, I remember that. Wait a minute. Where was Interview with Connie Bruce pt 1/p. 28 that? INT: That’s on Lenox Street. Am I saying that right? CB: Are you talking about Roxbury now because I think -- INT: That’s in Roxbury. No, this one I’m talking about is in Roxbury. And there were a lot of stores in Dudley -- a lot of -- sometimes people would shop -- black people would shop in Dudley Square because it was more comfortable to shop there and maybe they were going downtown. CB: Oh, yes. Just like they did here -- shopped on U Street. But all that part is completely unknown to me. I just went out -- and see when I was living -- up Dudley Street -- from Dudley Station -- all I did was go to Dudley Station and take this -- what do they call it -- they call it the L. INT: The L. CB: Not it’s a T or else I walked -- I walked straight down Washington Street. I walked from -- I can’t think of the name of that street -- but where I was living in Roxbury -- I walked to Beacon Hill. There was a house that you could look out and see the Esplanade. I used to listen to the Esplanade concerts because I just got tired of riding and not seeing anything. So, I began to walk. And then I walked passed Massachusetts General Hospital. The expression was didn’t hang out in Roxbury. More than likely at that time I was going to Saint -- and it’s Augustine or Augustan -- however you want to put it -- I think it was a mission church in Interview with Connie Bruce pt 1/p. 29 Cambridge, and they moved into a Methodist Church when they were able to support themselves -- a Mission Church was supported by -- partly by the Diocese, and they moved into this church which had been a Methodist Church, and you go upstairs, and they took -- they had lifestyle murals. They were more than lifestyle. And I admired them very much. And I was very glad to see that they were able to move them -- these larger than life size murals of the trial horses. Now that’s probably where I was going because I had gotten to where I couldn’t keep going into Boston because ten cent fare -- you know -- if you don’t have ten cents, you don’t go. So, I could walk from Somerville to Cambridge. And that’s what it is. So, my association was more in Cambridge and Roxbury half the time. And I don’t know what they’ve done to it now because they were still working on what they call the Green Jewel, I think, of the waterway -- marshes and things like that, which I admired more than putting up these things like they got in Georgetown. Keep the water out, and it also keeps the fish and everything else out. You can live with water with fish in it. You can build over it. So, I like that very much. But I haven’t been in that area since I don’t know when. INT: Would you like any water or tea or any type of -- CB: Well, I supposed I ought to have some water. I’m just really glad to know there’s some research being done Interview with Connie Bruce pt 1/p. 30 because that’s what has been by blacks. See the whole thing has been that white people have done it, and I don’t like that. Not that there’s anything wrong with it. But I think it’s a lot righter for blacks to do it because it’s their history. Now there’s another thing. Some of these photographic studios have a lot of stuff in them that’s historical. I don’t know whether it was Boston or New York. I mean it is for photographer died. I think it must have been in New York because it seems like one of those (inaudible: 51:41) -- something like that. But he’s been in business ever since. And he has this place where he had been all the time, and he had this collection of these things. And when he died, they had something -- crisis -- not only from a photographic point of view but from an economic point of view. See, I had the bills there. The same thing happened I know in the Bronx. They went into an office -- somebody’s papers were just left thrown around. After a while, if there’s an historical society around, they have sense enough to go into these places. INT: That’s part of what I do -- go into old buildings and things that look like trash -- I gather them up. CB: Get it -- if you can put it in trash bags -- and take it out of there. You don’t have time to look at it there because they want to clean up the place and visit. Go ahead clean it up -- (inaudible words: 52:45). Bills from the year, Interview with Connie Bruce pt 1/p. 31 too. See, some places have a load of paper. See, they had the Bronx paper. And I used to buy this. But you didn’t get it for free. (I wanted to live in those). INT: So, what can you tell me -- you seem to be interested or more than interested in black history and black people -- preserving. Actually, how I came to this project -- I was working with a man who grew up in Roxbury. His name was Vinny Hayes. He has a brother Michael Hayes. And Vinny used to take me around the neighborhood and show me different things even though they weren’t there anymore, and he’d say this used to be there, and this used to be there. CB: At least you know it because somebody told you. INT: He was very adamant that -- CB: Did you take notes? INT: Yes, I did. He was very adamant that black people should be involved in reporting their own history. So, the question I’m going to ask you now isn’t necessarily about your father but as a black woman who has been alive for many decades -- the changes in history -- some of the things -- you know some things that you may have been at or you recall -- a significant point in time in your lifetime. Like some people tell me they remember when they were younger -- they’re in their 90s now -- that the coal man would come -- and the ice man would come -- and now they just flick a switch and there’s the heat. So, I guess what I’m trying to say is -- if there’s Interview with Connie Bruce pt 1/p. 32 anything you’d like to share with me from your point of view historically. CB: Well, the only thing I can say is keep in touch because I lose the prevailing circumstances -- just like every place I’ve been -- I’ve had to leave something behind. I have to pull down a curtain and make out like it never happened to keep your sanity. Now I haven’t even been able to have a correspondence or a conversation of this type. INT: Say that again. CB: I haven’t had a correspondence or a conversation of this type in years. So, I’m starved for it. INT: This is what I do -- CB: I can’t read all that at once. That’s why I say -- stay in touch because if you’re what you say you are, and I believe you, because of what you say, and I’ll give you as many leads as I can come up with, and now I can think of something, but if they ever let me loose, I am quite sure that I could support myself as a consultant but not under the circumstances -- END OF PART ONE +++ Interview with Connie Bruce – Part 2 CB: But the thing is, parents do not watch their children and see where they’re inclined, and guide them. They make ‘em do Interview with Connie Bruce pt 1/p. 33 this and they make them, well you want to do this. There’s no such thing as “ought to.” INT: Well, I can say that my father saw, like I started, he was a photographer, he was an engineer . . . CB: Oh yeah? What kind of engineer? INT: Electrical engineer. CB: Electrical? INT: Yes. CB: My brother was an electrical engineer, and then he went to sea and had to be a marine, and you can’t go to the 5 and 10 cent store when you’re in the middle of the pacific ocean, I guess. INT: He saw that I was interested in photography, and on my 16th birthday he gave me a professional camera. CB: Whoo! INT: A Nikon, I don’t know if you know about Nikons. CB: What had you been using before that? INT: Just, you know, a little Kodak Instamatic Brownie. CB: Oh, excuse me, we started with a Brownie. INT: When I was sixteen he gave me a professional camera because he believed in putting the best tools . . . CB: Right on. INT: . . . in a child’s hands. CB: But if you can’t have, what did you do with your original cameras? Interview with Connie Bruce pt 1/p. 34 INT: Um, they were stolen. They were stolen, but um, so I . . . CB: See what I mean? INT: I have been just been taking photographs ever since. CB: Cause what you should do is keep those for history. INT: Yes, I would have, but, you know, people broke in and took them, so they’re gone. Once it’s gone, it’s gone. CB: Yeah, don’t tell me. The things that I had to leave, cause I say when you have your choice between your mother and your pop, now what choice do you have? INT: Not much. CB: No, you know. But you have to live so the people think you don’t have anything. You have to live poor. As I tell them when they put all these things up on the wall, you know, the grates and all that, I say you’re just telling somebody there’s something in there worth going in after. I say if you don’t put anything up there, they say, well that poor sucker, she can’t even wash the windows. You know? But in all of historian is good, and now they’re recommending that you do the video camera for your inventory in your house. INT: Um hmm. CB: You know about that? INT: Yes. CB: That’s good then. Interview with Connie Bruce pt 1/p. 35 INT: So I do all kinds of things like that, I have a business also. CB: Well that’s just still diverse, as I said, or fickle, but that’s all right. INT: It used to be called fickle, now it’s called diverse. CB: Yes, that’s right, because I’ve been there too. INT: I used to be called a job-hopper, now I’m called. . . CB: Why don’t you get a steady job, right? INT: Right. If I ever had a steady job, I wouldn’t be sitting here with you today, and I . . . CB: You probably wouldn’t be here today, and I don’t even know how old you are, but you’ve been frustrated. INT: I was 52 yesterday. CB: How much? INT: 52. CB: 52? Well you got, you got to start now, dear, planning on being a hundred and something. INT: Um hmm. CB: Have you, uh, checked your . . . INT: Social Security? CB: No. You have to do that later, but you not only have to check your . . . oh well. You have to get your life expectancy. INT: Yeah, I have checked that, and it’s not good, so I’ve gotta make some changes. Interview with Connie Bruce pt 1/p. 36 CB: All right now, you see? That’s what you do. Because you are at the time now you will either live to be 125, or you’ll drop dead at 70. INT: That’s right, and right now I have a life expectancy of like 72. CB: They, all right now, that’s what I try to tell them with tears in my eyes and they will not listen. INT: I gotta make some changes. CB: Cause I was told when I was 81 if things were the same as they were then that there was no reason why I wouldn’t live to 125. And I said, oh boy. So I had to do a whole lot of finagling with the financial end. I’m only getting Social Security. INT: Right. CB: So you start cutting back. You gotta do something, but you look at it from long distance. INT: Um hmm. CB: I’m glad, oh I like you. INT: When I was 12, in 1968, I used to look at the perpetual calendars, and I would plan what I would be doing in the year 2000. CB: They don’t understand that, I have a two-year plan and they had everybody’s, if I had it now I could tell you something, except I can’t read it, and neither can anybody else, cause it’s written. They don’t read anymore. Interview with Connie Bruce pt 1/p. 37 INT: So, what I would like to, cause we probably have about 40 more minutes or so that we can go today, but, you know. . . CB: Well did we establish what we gonna do for the future? INT: Yes, we have, and I um, I want to thank you for, you know, allowing me to interview you, because I know that, like you said when you first came up, you know, you needed to get the, what they call a 369 (inaudible). CB: Um hmm. INT: And so, you know, some of the things that I’m interested in have to do with lower Roxbury, but some of the things have to do with just you as a woman growing up like, you know, maybe the games you played . . . CB: Oh, I can say that too. INT: Games you played as a child . . . CB: Well, see those are things I have to think about, that’s why I said somebody could come to me on their own time, cause I got nothing to do but time. INT: Okay. CB: And I’m sitting here with a potty. INT: Um hmm. CB: And you can get a lot done. INT: Yes. CB: I can’t do much writing, cause I don’t have anything to, you know, if I wrote it, it would just be trash, I might Interview with Connie Bruce pt 1/p. 38 throw it out. But at least I’d have something to think about. And then if somebody showed up, I might remember. INT: Right. CB: Or something you might say would trigger, oh yes. INT: Like when I say Grove Hall. CB: Yeah. The minute you say Grove Hall, wait a minute now. I haven’t thought about that in years. INT: So that’s something I’d do, if I were to say, let me think of something else, if I were to say, um, let me just think of something that . . . CB: Well, you’re gonna have to, it just comes out, if you try, you won’t get it, it comes boom, right out of nothing. When you’re thinking of one thing, something else will come right on top of it. You have to grab it before it’s gone. INT: Do you remember things, like okay, one of the things I would like to ask people is, what is, what are some of the first things you remember? Like when the curtain pulls back and you’re like, oh, you know? CB: Well, I can’t be sure. I’m pretty sure I don’t remember being born. INT: Okay. CB: After that, you see when you hear stories, you can’t be sure when you remember them whether you were there, or whether you weren’t. INT: Um hmm. Interview with Connie Bruce pt 1/p. 39 CB: I can remember being in primary school. Then before that I was in, yeah that was fun, I was in kindergarten. And I remember we had to walk to kindergarten, I think it was about a mile. After I got grown, the thing bugged me. I used to go back to Somerville every time I was in the area, and then it got to me when they did things after World War II, you know, all right, I been here for the last time. Honestly, now where was that place that I went to for kindergarten? And I said, I wonder if I could find, I called it my radar system. And one day I just started out for fun, you know I get oh yeah, and would come and suggest, yes, that’s the word I’ve been, and I went like a fool, hee hee hee, I found it! I don’t know where it is, I don’t know where it was, but I found it. I found it! I call it radar. Well see, I probably couldn’t find it again, I don’t know, I wouldn’t look for it again, I found it that time. Well, I remember that when I was grown then, but I remember going to the bottom of the street with mother and waiting for the children to come for the teacher, two by two, and then you know in those days, looking to the left and looking to the right and going half way and looking to the right and looking. Walk, don’t run. Cross the street. And one teacher would, God only knows how many kids, two by two, and she, they would walk. A mile to school is nothing. Well, of course we walked more than that in some places in the summer. INT: Um hmm. I was in Percyville, Virginia yesterday visiting with a man who took me to his family homestead from, I Interview with Connie Bruce pt 1/p. 40 think he said his great grandparents floating some logs down the river, and put this house up. And it was a good eleven miles to town, and he’d tell me that he would walk. CB: Yes, of course! INT: Barefoot. Winter and summer. CB: Yes! INT: To town. And I did an interview with him, I walked with him, cause you had to take a dirt road for so many miles, then you had to park the car and then you had to walk down the equivalent of, like three flights of stairs to get down to where the homestead was, so I’m taking away. On the way back, he’s just walking up like he’s a mountain goat, I can’t even keep up with him, I listen to the tape, it’s ruined because all I hear is me, this, (panting), that’s all you hear! So that was my, this morning. CB: And you can’t take it apart, see nowadays they might be able to do something about it. INT: Right, this was just yesterday. So anyway, would you talk about, you know, like chronological age and my health age, I need to do some changes, so that I don’t (panting) breath like that. CB: Well, I am glad to meet somebody that listens, because so many of them don’t, and you hate to see them, no, and I even know people that had been declared, um, sleep deprived. I mean they’re not! You can’t make up this sleep. Interview with Connie Bruce pt 1/p. 41 INT: No. CB: And they’re not doing a thing about it. They don’t get any more sleep. And I want in the worst way to tell them to call the institutes of health or something, and offered their services to some project that can loan it to them so they’ll get the information of what happens to a person as they grow, because you gonna grow anyhow, and that’s better than falling asleep on the truck or, you know, out in the street or something. But I know it wouldn’t do any good. INT: Well, I’m someone who, from a very young age understood that I didn’t have to make all the mistakes myself, that I could learn from other people’s. CB: Now see, me, I don’t plan on making them. If I make a mistake, it’s because it happened, or like they say, God intended it to be that way. Now I got a pretty messy life, but I don’t know anybody I’d switch with, up to now, because I’ve learned so much, and where I think life is all about is money. And what do you do with it later, like somebody said, there’s no way they can be something afterwards, after all you’ve been through, where does that information go? There’s gotta be something out there somewhere. So, you know. But you keep on, because that’s the way to go, I mean you got one person on your side there. If you got one, you’re doing all right. INT: So, the kinds of things, you know, that I would ask you about are, you know, some of the same things I would say, do Interview with Connie Bruce pt 1/p. 42 you remember, you know, songs that you might have sung as a child or music that you liked or games that you played, or movies you saw or historical events, like one man remembered Franklin Deleanor Roosevelt coming to, you know, driving up along Columbus Ave. CB: Oh yeah? INT: And his father came and took him out of school. CB: Oh, I guess so. INT: And he said he remembered the limousine or the car driving by, and seeing his profile with his cigarette. CB: Ha ha! He popularized the cigarette and the long cigarette holder. INT: So, those are the types of little stories, little memories, you know, that. . . CB: Some people have the dramatic things, and some people have that did nothing that eventful, and see I’m the kind of person that doesn’t react. I’m not emotional, I’m not affectionate, I’m not any of them things that get’s excited. Like, I guess they say I was not, what is that, unflappable or something like that, see? I’ve been so many places and seen so many things on each side that nothing excites me unduly. I might be surprised, but not really. So this is why it’s hard for me to distinguish any of those things. Yeah, I remember JF . . . I remember Roosevelt died on my birthday, and that was the end of my birthday, as far as I was concerned. I remember I was coming Interview with Connie Bruce pt 1/p. 43 up Seventh Street it is from Pennsylvania Avenue when Hans and Lanzburg were down there. And this old black woman was crying, and she said, the president’s dead, and I said oh no, that couldn’t be. I had come from work, and I had been in the street, and I hadn’t had dinner, so and I says oh, that’s what she was talking about. Well, since then I had seen the Eleanor, you know, the movie or whatever it was, and I don’t know, I don’t remember what I’d really saw and what I didn’t see, you know? I didn’t play any games to amount to anything, I was a homebody, always had been a homebody and still a homebody. But this by preference. When I want to go out, I go out. But, at thirteen, I was the lady of the house, so when my mother got the divorce, I didn’t think anything of it. I was the second in command after my mother. So naturally if my mother isn’t here, then I’m the lady of the house. INT: So just for someone in the modern context, they may not know what lady of the house means, so if you could describe what that means, that you were the lady of the house. CB: I was the woman in charge of the house, the meals, and anything that went on in the house, and I didn’t think a think about it. I knew how to do everything, but I’d never had the responsibility until my mother was not there. And then I had the responsibility. I still think I got on the maximum credit or the honor roll or whatever I was doing, cause I know I got my schoolwork done, there’s no question about getting your Interview with Connie Bruce pt 1/p. 44 schoolwork done. And I never was much for playing, as people called it, they would go out and play with your children, I never did that. INT: What did you do? CB: I was home. I would go out in the yard. I’d rather pull weeds out in the yard then go play with the children. INT: Did you have a garden? Your mother have a garden? CB: Oh yeah, we had a flower garden, a vegetable garden, at one time we even had chickens. But, you see, that’s, this is the way it is. Some people react, and some people just, it’s another day at the office. INT: May I ask you when is your birthday? I don’t think I asked you that. What day is your birthday? CB: April 12, 1915. Does that help you? INT: Yes, ma’am. CB: And what do you want to know that for? INT: Well, my father was born in 1914, and so one of the, I think one of the reasons, one of the things I bring to this work is that my father was of the generation of the people that I am interviewing. CB: Well there you go, cause I was gonna ask you, how about him? INT: He passed in 1986, but . . . CB: What’s his trouble? If it’s any of my business. INT: He worked with radioactive materials. Interview with Connie Bruce pt 1/p. 45 CB: Oh, he didn’t know it, huh? INT: No. CB: Cause they used to, when they were making their (inaudible) INT: Exactly. So, you know. But . . . CB: I’ll substitute. Sorry, I’m not a man, but, you’ll just have to do with me. For your records, this is all right. INT: One of the things I know about from, you know, growing up, he didn’t talk at all, he, I never knew anything about him until he passed because people didn’t talk then. CB: Well, a lot of them don’t, my father didn’t do a whole lot of talking. INT: What happened in the yesterday was in the past. CB: They didn’t, they didn’t. That whole generation, they didn’t talk. INT: That’s right. CB: Now, did he go to war? INT: He didn’t go to war, but he served in three branches of the military, and then he worked. CB: Well, I mean he knew the military life, you know they don’t talk. INT: And then he worked for RCA doing top secret work for the government. CB: Well, you know they don’t talk. They learn to keep their mouths shut. They even change the subject. Interview with Connie Bruce pt 1/p. 46 INT: That’s right. And so one of the things that I can bring to my work is because my father and his friends were born in 1910, 1914, or even before, as a little child I’m around listening, so I know about . . . CB: That’s the way you find it out, you’re behind the drapes. INT: Sticky girls, pigtails . . . CB: So you know about that? INT: Yes, ma’am. I know about, you know spinning . . . CB: I used to pull my curls down just to see them spin. INT: I know about bloomers. CB: Oh you do! INT: I know about knickers. So, that’s one of the things I bring to this work is having had . . . CB: It does help, doesn’t it. INT: . . . a parent in the same generation. CB: Well, you see, most of them are, but they don’t’ respect their parents, because their parents don’t ask them to be respected. Parents want to be loved. Well, see, I don’t care whether you like me or not, you will respect me, period. Now hate my guts if you want to, see that’s the way it is with me. But these people, this love business, I don’t know what that’s all about. INT: Well, I feel that way. There’s some people that I really don’t like at all, but I respect them. Interview with Connie Bruce pt 1/p. 47 CB: Yeah, they’re human beings, as far as you know. INT: As far as I know. CB: So, because you are the kind of person you are, you treat them like the kind of person you would like them to be. Yeah. About the songs and things like that, I don’t know, I know the Tin Pan Alley days and things like that, we had an upright piano, I used to bang on that, but we had piano for lessons, we had dancing lessons, you know. INT: Where would you go to take dancing lessons? CB: This is what I was going to tell you, this lovely woman, I can’t remember what her first name is, she is on Newbury Street, and she did most of them. We were in a recital and the recitals were held at recital hall, in this was the symphony . . . INT: Symphony Hall? CB: Symphony Hall, yes, that’s where. Durjean, Durjean Gloveburn, I think her name was. No, that may have been another one. I don’t know. But, I remember sitting, looking out the window at the train tracks and all the soot was on the window, and no way in the world you could keep the house clean with that. INT: I live next to the train. CB: Well, I have to tell you the choo choo train. Not the diesel, the choo choo. INT: Soot all over the window. Interview with Connie Bruce pt 1/p. 48 CB: All over the place. INT: When you were, so thirteen, you become the woman of the house, and so see you just told me you were born in 1915, so at thirteen it’s 1927? CB: Depression. INT: Depression? CB: That was one of the greatest institutions for learning that has ever been. And I have told many a young person, what you need is a good depression, cause you don’t know how to save money. You didn’t see anybody, you didn’t know anybody who knew anybody that knew anybody that had any money. People used script. Did you hear about script? INT: No. I heard about coupons or different things you could take to the store, but I don’t know that word, script, but no one has talked about it within the context of this history project. CB: Well, I don’t know as it referred to blacks, cause you didn’t have any celebrity blacks, but movie stars and people that were well known signed a piece of paper with their name on it, and that’s how they paid their bills. And those things have been worth tons of money, if anybody ever kept them. But that was what they called a script. But only the, only people that any fool would know who they were could do it, and you know we didn’t have any of them up there, because there were no blacks anywhere around. I don’t even remember, well, let me see. Who Interview with Connie Bruce pt 1/p. 49 was the first one? The guy that they didn’t like because he portrayed blacks in such a low way, as far as he was concerned. INT: What was his real name? Stepin Fetchit, but I can’t think of his real name. CB: I think it was Stepin Fetchit. INT: I can’t remember his real name right this minute. CB: Oh, no, who’s worried about the real name. Now, I think he was the first one. INT: He was a millionaire. CB: You got Beaver and all those people. It’s a job. If you’re gonna work, you’re supposed to work. And if you’re an actor, you act. INT: Did you go see movies? CB: Silent movies. I never had anything much for the talkies to do, but I liked the silent movies. Because with the silent movie, you could do anything you wanted, all you had to do was keep your eye on the screen, and then, well of course when you’re young, the only thing you can do is go to Saturday matinee. INT: That’s right. CB: You had to be a lot older to go to Friday night, and I remember going to the movies with my brother Friday night and we would wait until the last minute and then race each other to the theater just in time to get there, and that was before the show Interview with Connie Bruce pt 1/p. 50 went. But I didn’t have any favorites, I mean, I liked this opera, I liked that . . . INT: Did you go to see the opera when you were . . . CB: Not when I was young. INT: I had a man tell me about a black opera woman, her name was Sister UNKNOWN: Sister Rita? INT: That sounds right. UNKNOWN: Sister Rita Jones. INT: Sister Rita Jones, and she was, you know, her piano player came from this neighborhood in Roxbury. CB: Where else? It was either there or where Huby Blay came from. Me and Beal Street, that’s the only place. UNKNOWN: Blay’s from Baltimore. You know, a lot of us came from Beal Street. And we had a lot of talented people. But I didn’t come to interview. INT: So you went to see the opera, as a young woman or younger? CB: Hmm. Let’s see, I was in New York, so it had to be after, I don’t know. The opera was still down in Madison Square, along with Madison Square, you know everything they got moved up to 34th Street was down on Madison Square at the time, they got moved up to Lincoln Square. But it seems to me, I listened to it on the radio because Texaco has broadcast the opera ever since I guess they started, and I remember listening to it on the radio Interview with Connie Bruce pt 1/p. 51 Saturday afternoon when I was taking care of one of the, let’s see, I guess he would be a step uncle or something to me. I was woman of the house there. You know, about New England spinster? INT: Say that again? CB: A New England spinster? INT: No, tell me about a New England spinster. CB: Well, they’re single woman that seem to be in the world, just never other people, because that’s what they seem to do. Originally of course they would just belong in the window where you have a lot of virgins, and according to what the doctor told me sometime ago there are still a lot of virgins up there. It’s not a sin to be a virgin in New England, you know, it is in other places. Some of them are said not be able to get a man, others are said not to want a man, and others they can’t deal with a man, you know. You hear all kinds of things. But they’re usually virgins that are unmarried and, I don’t know about nowadays, but back in the good ole days they refused to live in a house under the thumb of their brother’s wives, cause that’s where a single woman would have to be. They were halfway between being in the convent, you know, they did that kind of thing. They would go and help whoever needed to be helped and, it sort of got to be a thing. So I tell people that’s what I am because they don’t believe that anybody has been this long, been this, you’ve never been married, you’ve never had any children? They just can’t conceive of it. I said, well when I was coming Interview with Connie Bruce pt 1/p. 52 up, dear, you didn’t have children unless you were married. Sorry about that. See, of course everybody does it now. But, it’s just one of those designations. I was trying to think of some others that they have, you know. But of course they talk about women more than they talk about men. They have these designations for particular people, and of course I can’t think of any one of them, but that’s the sort of thing. And because of the qualities I have and the ones that I don’t have, that’s lead to the kind of life that I have lead, I’m like you. I’m sorry if you don’t like it, I couldn’t see any other way of doing what I had to do at the time. Now if I had another option, maybe I’d been in trouble making whatever I was gonna do, but as far as I can see, I had no choice. INT: So, what kind of, so at thirteen you’re the woman at the house, you’re still in school, you graduate from high school? CB: Oh yeah. I went back from PG, they called it, because there was no where to go with us, so you had the option of going back to school for a year, so I knew I’d never make it to Harvard or Radcliffe, they were separate at the time. And I went back to see. . . One of my troubles is I’ve never known what I want to be when I grew up, still don’t. And my mother was a dressmaker, and I said, well, I don’t think much of that, I don’t mind sewing but, you know. I said well maybe if I did some designing, you know, I have Schiaparelli. I have some favorite Interview with Connie Bruce pt 1/p. 53 designers that I liked and I had, we had art in the schools in those days. Music and drawing, things like that, and I had drawn a piece that the teacher liked and I had asked for it back and of course I never got it back after they made the display. Those were the kind of things, you know, sort of get to you and I took the course, intending to see what I could do, where was it, Massachusetts Institute of Art or something like that. They have that? INT: There’s Mass College of Art, there’s many. There’s a number of schools of art there. CB: Yeah, well I think there was only one that I said I’d try out for that one. And I took the examination, I think out of fifteen points, ten of which are passing, I got five, so, that sort of didn’t work. So, my brother finally came up and took us down to Tennessee where he was. INT: I understand your brother was a Harvard graduate? CB: Yeah. He was graduated from the electrical engineering college they called. At the same time I think of Frank’s (inaudible). Thirty-three? INT: Um hmm. CB: I don’t know where Frank went. I mean, he wasn’t an electrical engineer. You know, my brother was electrical engineer, I don’t know if Frank was, I think Frank was in the, I’m not sure. But I know, but like I say the parents knew each Interview with Connie Bruce pt 1/p. 54 other, whether they knew each other before they got married, I don’t know, because see like so many of them did. INT: Well, you know, the one thing about Boston in particular is that the black, African American, however you want to say it, population was not very big. CB: No. And they all knew each other. And it seemed, as near as I can get it, most of them came from about the same place. And now you’ve got this nucleus, those in Boston, where in that Roxbury group and you catch a hold of them, they’re all over the place. And some of them may know others that, like if you say you’re interested in general history, they could probably tell you a whole lot of things. If you don’t have any leads, now I don’t know how you go about doing what you do. But there’s a whole gang of stuff out there. INT: I have all kinds of ways that I do what I do. Some people give me leads, some I just, and I’ll say it, it’s true, I have dreams about things. CB: Sure! INT: And then I’ll, you know, like today I kept dreaming about a black squirrel for a long time. Black squirrel, I have never seen a black squirrel. CB: Well there is where I am. INT: On my way here . . . CB: Right in front of the house, there’s one yesterday. Interview with Connie Bruce pt 1/p. 55 INT: On my way here today, a black squirrel ran in front of the car. I said, okay, I’m on the right track. CB: That’s right, and there’s certainly I saw one yesterday and the day before ran right in front of the house. I know they’re out there. INT: So you know, I had never seen one before. CB: Well, they’re around. Take a look. INT: I follow my instincts. CB: Yeah, that’s what you got them for. INT: You know, I’ll be passing by a particular house or I’ll just stop, I don’t know why. CB: You don’t have to, that’s the same as I call my radar system. You keep the waves going all the time, and you keep looking around. As I tell people, when you’re on a tour, you don’t just listen to the guy, you look at the ceiling, you look at the walls, you look at the floor, you look at everything in there, because most of it is interesting, and you gonna miss a lot if you don’t. INT: If you just listen to the prescribed tour. CB: You can read a book on that. And usually when I was on a tour I was doing some knitting and I had an earphone in, and the woman that was leading it, she said, well look at this. I said, I have five senses and I believe in using them all. And one has got nothing to do with the other one. And she couldn’t get over that I was knitting and listening to, I have found an Interview with Connie Bruce pt 1/p. 56 English speaking radio center in the foreign countries. All you have to do is press it, you know. But some people are just, I guess it’s adventureness, I don’t know. But, you sound good to me, and I wish you well because that’s the way I think a person should spend their life, doing something that just knocks them out and they can’t get enough of it, but the only thing is you have to take yourself by the scruff of your neck and say, you are going to bed, and go to sleep, you have to see that you get enough sleep. INT: Thank you. CB: That’s the only thing wrong with that program. But, if you’re enjoying yourself, it makes a lot of difference. INT: I did that last night, I was at the event that, uh, and I said, you know, what? I have to stop, I have to stop right now, and I just (inaudible) and I went home, I went to where I am staying and I went to sleep, and I got eight hours of sleep for the first time . . . CB: In thousands of years, I know. INT: . . . in a long, long time. And I said, I need to be awake, so that when I meet Miss Bruce I am awake and I am on the ball. CB: Yeah, definitely. INT: And so I have (inaudible). So if I were to come here all tired and foggy, no. Interview with Connie Bruce pt 1/p. 57 CB: Yeah, sorry. I mean that’s what you have it for. I keep telling them, but they don’t listen. That’s what you call, the little bird told me or the chip, they put a chip in there now, or they really want to call if you don’t believe in God, then all right, so believe in whatever you believe in. But there’s something there. If you live long enough and you pay attention to it, and it will guide you. And since I have not been able to SEE, I have found out there’s a lot of things you can see. They don’t understand that, either. I said there’s perception, you know. And a lot of what you learn, you don’t actually see it, you perceive it. You don’t get it. INT: Yeah, I get it, I do get it! CB: You get it, but I mean, the average person don’t know what you’re talking about. INT: Well when I was in my 20s, and this sounds a little old to be doing this, but when I was in my 20s, I used to walk around with my eyes closed in preparation for the day I may lose my sight, and I used to listen, I mean I used to, not busy, busy streets, but I would stand on a corner and see if I could cross the street with my eyes closed . . . CB: You didn’t. INT: . . . based on what . . . you know. CB: You’re worse than me. Cause this is what I tell people, what we used to do with the pin on the tail on the donkey at Halloween parties, you know? But I never went that Interview with Connie Bruce pt 1/p. 58 bad, but I did get the whole Braille alphabet, and I was learning it, except my fingers couldn’t handle it, and I said I’ll never be able to do this. And then I realized that everything that happens to a person happens to their right hand because that’s what they do, so I taught myself to write with my left hand. So my brother always was a sock puller, I said, well I’ll fix him, I’ll be able to write with both hands, and some people can’t do anything but write their signatures. INT: My brother was left handed and you know if you sit next to a left handed person and you’re right handed, you always bump elbows, so since I always sat next to him I started doing things with my left hand so that we wouldn’t bump elbows. CB: Sure. Brothers are good for nothing, but they’re a lot of fun, too. Was your brother older or younger than you? INT: I’m the oldest. They were younger than me. He passed about three or four years ago. CB: Well, now listen, do you live alone, if it’s any of my business? INT: No, I have, I don’t live alone, I have three children, a 26-year-old son, he lives with me, we have a business together, digital photography, computer. CB: Well, I’m just wondering about your junk. You can leave your junk around without anybody messing with it? INT: Yes. CB: At your house and at your job, too? Interview with Connie Bruce pt 1/p. 59 INT: Yes. CB: That’s the main thing. INT: And I have a 24-year-old daughter who just graduated from Columbia University in May. CB: What did she take? INT: She was an English major. Now she’s working on Madison Avenue, her first job out of college. CB: Madison Avenue, Madison, New York? INT: Madison Avenue, New York CB: You know, that’s a dirty word, don’t you? INT: Yes, I do. And I have a 17-year-old son who’s a senior in high school. CB: Well, that’s good. Well I can remember when blacks first showed up on Madison Avenue, and you had to have an extra pair of stockings in your drawer, because lo and behold that stupid advice, better not see you with a run, that’s when they wore silk hose and stockings. And you know those chairs like they have in the library? They catch you right there. They would tear your silk stockings. Yes, I remember the first one, I don’t know whether she was the first one, but I know she was black and she was working on Madison Avenue, and I said, kid, I think she retired, cause she moved down south. I lot of people do that. They come from the, they come up north and they live in the north and then when they retire they go right back home. Now see, I don’t see how you can take it, because I can’t. I said Interview with Connie Bruce pt 1/p. 60 that mentality down there just not my thing, I can’t do it cause I’m gonna be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and I’ll open my mouth and that’s gonna be it. INT: So when you graduated from high school and you did the PG, what kind of work did you do? CB: The only thing that came along, with or without money. If you needed me, I went. And that’s fun, too, you never know where you’re gonna end up. Yep, that’s why I don’t have any money, cause if you give me money, fine, cause when I, when I was the lady of the house my cousin told me, he says I can only pay you $2.00, I said, well I’m not gonna be doing anything, except maybe go to church, that’s only 10 cents, and I didn’t get to church so I didn’t spend that. So I put it, I always sneaked it away, I don’t spend it. As I tried to tell people, when you get a bonus, don’t spend it, put it in a CD if you’ve got enough or put it in a savings bank and forget you got it. That’s your future. Oh, no, they’re gonna celebrate. And spend more money than they got. But, see I didn’t have running around to do, so what difference does it make. But, I was really helping people. That’s why I say this is New England spinster business. Some people never consider helping other people. You probably run into a few. INT: Yes. CB: It never crosses their mind, they want money, honey. If it doesn’t pay, they’re not the least bit interested. Now, Interview with Connie Bruce pt 1/p. 61 I’m the other way around. Money stinks, as far as I’m concerned. It’s the root of all evil. People got around without money for thousands and thousands and thousands of years and did very well, thank you. It’s just a convenience. But I have learned, I’ve met some interesting people, I’ve been some places I would never have gotten. Like in Western Massachusetts, you ever been to the Birches? INT: Yes. CB: Ain’t that a nice place to visit? I’d never been there, if I hadn’t helped a couple of old women. I was there, let’s see now, remember Dorothy Mainard? INT: Say that again, Dorothy Mainard? CB: Dorothy Mainard. She was a singer, and she got to the opera by I think was exclusivity. They introduced her at Tanglewood where the Boston Symphony goes for the summer. I was there. I saw her. And I also saw her when, let’s see there was Mitchell, the first black male dancer open to school and the church for ballet. And she had married a minister, and you know Lia Talias? INT: No, I don’t think so. CB: They used to cut open here. INT: Leotard? CB: Well, some of the dear old souls in that church didn’t want them half naked women running around. That’s a good thing. I’m telling you. That’s the last time I saw her, she used to Interview with Connie Bruce pt 1/p. 62 wear black all the time. I had no idea how little that woman was, because I knew she was on a box when they had her at Tanglewood, but to see her at the church and also some Haley Jackson, you know when these people are nothing. INT: When they’re undiscovered. CB: She was married and Jackson was going out and doing her thing, I said boy oh boy oh boy. And then another thing, I got involved in organizations. So just like I would tell you, you were on the right track, I’m already involved with you. See? Cause you’re doing something that I believe in. Now if I run into somebody else, doing something I believe in, oh, no money in there. I don’t care. They’re doing something that I think is of some value. So you get in this committee, and that committee or you go to this meeting or that meeting and first thing you know you’re over your head. So I had the privilege of telling them one time when they asked me to be a chairman or something else, and I said when everybody in this organization is carrying as many committees as I am, I will consider another chairman. There are some people that never do anything, you know? INT: So what type of organizations were you, like? CB: Oh, you know, civic charity organizations, some of these, you know, some of these groups got together and had their own daycare center, some of these churches had these senior citizen things, long before it was fashionable, before Meals On Wheels, you know, and all of that. Well I knew people that Interview with Connie Bruce pt 1/p. 63 didn’t do it, so I did. And then if were somebody knew you do this, well come over here and help us. INT: I heard it described, if you do your job so well that people think you can do theirs, too, you know. CB: I haven’t heard that one, but that’s good. INT: You have to be careful, you do your jobs so well, that people think that oh, they can do this too. CB: Like I told the man, he had a position where he was supposed to be cooking, and he had a reputation of not cooking. I said, look, I say keep that, I say as long as you don’t know how to cook, they won’t expect you to. Any day you learn how to cook, you’re sunk. INT: Or as my son said, don’t you know the more you show them, the more they want? CB: That’s right. You have to lower the boom sometime and they are in, that’s what I try to tell them. I see, cause if they had to tell them, yeah, I don’t know what they tell you, but they tell, well you look like that way, I say well I’m not. And I say, you push me too much . . . INT: I do that too. CB: I thought you might. INT: They say, you’re not like a regular black person. CB: Oh yeah, that’s it. Now you’re an irregular. INT: And then they look at me like, oh I’ve said the wrong thing. Interview with Connie Bruce pt 1/p. 64 CB: Or like I was with a group that all us white girls do, and they were telling stories about something, they ended up with like that, and they looked up and saw me and said, we didn’t mean you. I say, well I know you didn’t mean me. No question about it. INT: We have about, 12 or 13 minutes left, cause I have to catch a plane this afternoon. CB: Ooh! You fly. INT: Yes I did. CB: I wouldn’t fly for nothing. But where are you at, my dear? INT: And so I just, you know, as we’re closing up today, wanted to ask you if there’s any things that come to your mind, um, that you’d like to share. One of the things that I find that I like about what I do is that I tell stories to young people, you know, based on the interviews I do and the pictures I collect, and they’re always so fascinated. They think that they invented something. CB: Oh yeah. Well, it’s wonderful they listen, because some of them don’t listen, their attention is diverse, you know? But I can’t help you there. INT: No, but what I do is sometimes what I know about young people, when they appear not to be listening, they’re listening. I have had two . . . Interview with Connie Bruce pt 1/p. 65 CB: Children, when they put on their act that, like boys do in school, they pretend they’re not listening, but like one fellow says, I got everything, I was just as bad as anybody other, I got my lesson. You see, in some environments you can’t pretend, you gotta pretend that you’re not doing what you’re supposed to be doing, because the majority on that side. But I don’t know anything I could tell you, to help these young people, I’m just glad to know you know somebody that you can tell some tales to. INT: They do, you know even when they appear not to be. One of the things that I do, is I’m very computer literate . . . CB: Good for you. INT: . . . I’m very technologically savvy. And so I mix things. CB: Yeah, you can speak their language, that helps. INT: . . . to keep them interested. CB: Well, do you do anything with your computer, do you communicate that way? INT: All the time. CB: Have you got a, what do they call it, you got a . . . INT: I have just about everything you can imagine. CB: No, but have you got your own, what is you call it? INT: Website? CB: Website. INT: Yes, I do. Several. Interview with Connie Bruce pt 1/p. 66 CB: Because you can search, you know. INT: Yeah, I search, I talk over. I just set up the other day, so now I can call someone anyone in the world. CB: That’s what I’m talking about, that’s exactly what you need. This is a global atmosphere, and if United States isn’t doing anything, tell them that the Japanese economy is a lot worse and they’re still saving 50% of the income, now how do they do that? That’s why they can buy the Empire State Building. I mean, if the own the Empire State Building, they’ll own most of the country now. INT: So, do you have any comments on the current political situation? CB: No, except that I am very interested in it. And a hope a lot of other people, I would if I was under any other circumstances, I’d probably be in the middle of it. There was some talk about having the fundraiser for Obama? I’m not even sure, I know I don’t know how to spell it. At the Hitching Post, you ever hear of the Hitching Post? INT: Vaguely. I don’t know. CB: All right, you know where the entrance to Soda Zone is? INT: Um mm. I am not really familiar, this is probably the second time I have been to Tennessee. CB: Really? Oh well. You see that was one of my favorite places where I would entertain. I don’t do anything at home Interview with Connie Bruce pt 1/p. 67 because I just don’t do anything. I don’t cook, clean, I mean I’ve been through that and it isn’t satisfactory so I found that place walking to and from the hospital, and I used to stop there. If I had been still on a merry run, see I would have been probably been into that, but I had been into anything all done. These things come up, but there’s nobody wants to share the program, see? So I don’t do anything but. I don’t know whether they know where I am or can get in touch with me, but I’m out of all of that thing now. Now you’re from Boston? INT: I’m originally from Los Angeles, now from Boston. I was born in Los Angeles. CB: Wait a minute, you’re going to Los Angeles? INT: Um hmm. CB: Well then you know about Santa Monica. INT: Yes ma’am. CB: Well I was at the beach when I was in Santa Monica when the convention center was at there. INT: The Santa Monica Convention Center? CB: Yeah, I think that was where they had the Academy Awards at the time. The first place where the Academy Awards, is a block away. Now they got a special place for them. INT: Yeah, they’re not downtown Los Angeles. CB: Yeah they built a place. Yeah, well that’s where I was. It’s a private beach, don’t ask me what the name of it was, but I was there and I was some other place in Los Angeles when Interview with Connie Bruce pt 1/p. 68 (inaudible) burn the trash out in your back yard before they had the smoke, and we went up to the Hollywood Bowl, and this is another thing people don’t understand, I don’t care how hard it is down there, you go up there and it’s cold. The only stadium I was ever in that wasn’t cold was Lewisohn in New York, 145th Street, something like that. And I had been outside the city and, I see you just came over it, now I had . . . INT: What are you looking for? CB: I had a little case and I had my pictures in, I guess this is a coat. INT: I see them. They look like they’re right here. CB: Yeah that’s the. . . INT: This little red pouch? CB: Yeah, that’s what I’m looking for. Yeah, my nose is running. I can’t blow it, cause I would make it bleed, and so I have to just wipe it. But, I don’t know about anybody being out in LA. INT: Yeah, I was born there. My parents left Chicago and went to Los Angeles, cause my father got work in aerospace industry as an engineer, he worked. . . CB: Now some of those over 50 people have been all over, but I don’t know of anybody in LA now. INT: I had met a man by the name of James Silcott, and he is in LA, but his parents were from, his mother and father came Interview with Connie Bruce pt 1/p. 69 from Barbados, I believe, to Roxbury, and his mother bought several homes. That’s how we started out. CB: You know about that. INT: Yes, his mother had bought several homes. CB: That’s what they believe in. INT: And she went, she had rooming houses . . . CB: Oh yeah. INT: . . . there in Roxbury. CB: Yeah, cause I think that’s what my paternal grandmother’s house was. I remember people coming up and down the stairs. Not a boarding house, just a rooming house, you’d have a room and then you would go out. I think that’s what she had. INT: That was the one on Kendall? CB: That must be. Windsor. INT: Windsor Street? CB: You said it was Windsor Street in Roxbury. INT: Yes. CB: Kendall Street was where the, my grandfather had the store. But the house where my grandmother, my paternal grandmother lived and paid for two or three times but never owned it, that was the one you say was Windsor Street. INT: Um hmm. CB: That’s where she had people living in the house, but they didn’t eat in the house. And that is why I don’t know Interview with Connie Bruce pt 1/p. 70 anything about it. When she died, I went up to my father’s bedroom for the first time. I think his was the first one up the stairs. That’s as far as I ever got in that house, other than down in the basement, but I don’t know as I went in the basement, maybe my mother went in the basement. I had the dumbwaiter that you pulled things up from the kitchen to the dining room. I think I operated it in the dining room, I don’t think I, you just didn’t go in other people’s houses and look all the way around. INT: Cause there was a family by the way of Byers who also lived on Windsor Street and the father was a black man who owned a cab. He lived not too far from your grandmother’s house, and he was married to what was thought to be a light skinned black woman, but she was really a white woman. CB: Well, that’s what they did, you know, it’s easier. INT: And they lived on Windsor Street, and he talked about how the kitchens were in the basement. CB: All of them were in those days. That’s the way they built the house. That’s the way the white house is. Yeah, all the workroom, the laundry, kitchen, all of that was in the basement. Now on the plantations where the hot country on the Bayou it was in a separate house, for fear of burning the house down. Once when we visited on the Levy, get this, they had to whistle as they brought the food from the kitchen to the house so they’d know they were going to eat. Can you imagine? Well, Interview with Connie Bruce pt 1/p. 71 you see, those little houses have to live by tourists now. Cause that’s their only thing that keeps them alive, but at least they have that. And it seems to be that tourism is one of the things that keep a lot of places alive, so a lot of these little places are looking around at their history to see what it is that they can use to draw tourists. The fact that you can sleep without being blasted out of your bed is, but see some people can’t stand that. They’re used to the noise so they can’t stand the peace and quiet of the country. But, you hang in there with Grove Hall and the Prince Hall nation, because at one time somebody thought father had died, evidently, and I knew the way I got it, cause you know how you say things makes a lot of difference. But it seems that somebody went to the meeting of Prince Hall Masons and I think my father, well he never got to anything, at 33 he wasn’t even trying, and they asked about her, but he says he’s not with us anymore. Well, I remember that, cause you can read that, like punctuation, you know? So, somebody told me that my father had died. I said, really? I said, well I don’t know about my stepmother, but I said, I don’t think I had done anything so bad or that she hates me so much that she wouldn’t have told me if my father died. So knowing my father like I did, I just simply wrote a card and told him that I heard he was dead, but I wasn’t sure. So I got a notice back that says, as far as I know I’m still alive. So we figured out that what they meant, that he was no longer with that Prince Interview with Connie Bruce pt 1/p. 72 Hall Mason, he had transferred here. You see? But they said he’s no longer with us. INT: Right. It’s how you say it. CB: You have to be careful. That’s why I say, you stick with them, because you might run into somebody who remembers Herbie. And at least, if not him, some of those other people in that area, because there were not a whole lot of them, you see. I was even surprised that they had that information. I don’t know how many. See, some of these organizations you have to have a certain number, you know, to have an organization. But I do know that they were black, and that he was a member in good standing, but (inaudible). When his second wife died, everything was just there like she left it. In fact, I think when he died it was still there just like she left it. I know with me, I wouldn’t have touched anything. I ain’t touched anything of my mother’s except something that I could have used if something needed to be taken care of. Everything else was right there. What move it for, he was father of the place. But, if you’re in an apartment, you gotta move, then that’s something else. But those are your best bets, and like I said, if you got sense enough to know how to take care of yourself personally, that’s good. I’m glad to meet somebody that does, because I’m tired of these other folks. And you can’t move forward in any direction by yourself for very long. There’s nothing I can do about this, but I can help you do a lot, maybe. But I have to think about Interview with Connie Bruce pt 1/p. 73 it. But while I’m thinking about it, that would give me something, to think about, you know? Because you can run amok thinking, but you can also think yourself out of the problem. So, you send your little emissary any time you want, if you don’t want to be bothered. INT: Or I will come back myself, I mean Boston’s not that far away. CB: Yeah, but you have other things to do. And with all the lead you got, I think you ought to finish those leads up there in Boston before you come back here, because there’s more leads up there, and anything I can tell you about my father is touch and go because it would have happened before 28 for the most part. I only saw my father on occasion after I grew up. We kept in contact, I mean, I would sending cards and like that, but to sit down and have a conversation, you know. And then, you see another thing, when he married I stayed out of it. INT: How would you describe him as a person? Was he talkative? CB: No. INT: Was he stern? CB: No, no. He was a regular guy, but he was hesitant. You would never see him smile, but he got the joke. That’s what I think upset my mother, because my mother’s an emotional person. My father is one of these. And I’m more like that, see. Now once I had to make a presentation to my father after I had done Interview with Connie Bruce pt 1/p. 74 something wrong, he gave me ten dollars to go to the store and buy a winter coat. He had seen them advertised in the paper, ten dollars for a coat. And it was one of those coats on Tremont Street. I don’t know the store that had them at that time. So I went in there and looked at those things and hmm, not ten dollars of my money. And my father sent me in with ten dollars to get one, and I was a good child, I did what I was supposed to be doing, that’s why my mother never paid any attention to me, she knew I was going to do what I was supposed to do. So, I said, well, I don’t know what I’m gonna do, but I’m not gonna pay ten dollars for that. Shoot peas through it, that’s what they used to say the kind that . . . INT: Shoot peas through it? CB: Yeah, it was so thin, you got a winter coat and you could shoot peas through it, that you don’t need. So then I said, well as long as I’m in this store, I’ll just look around and see what they have to do, you know. So I went and I saw the cubicle of your next area to where I was and they had those pal coats, the first time I had seen them, now they call them fake fur or something. When I looked at those coats and I say, whoo, and then here come the sales clerk, white sales clerk, course she didn’t have anything else, but she probably figured I was the maid or somebody getting it for somebody else, and that’s all right, I don’t care what she thought. Anyhow, I was looking, and she says, well what size do you want? I say well I’m just Interview with Connie Bruce pt 1/p. 75 looking. She says, well, you want it for yourself? And I says okay, she want to waste her time. So the upshot of it was, that this coat seemed to me to be worth more than the other coat, but the problem was, this coat I think was fifteen dollars, I knew it was more than the ten, and now I got a problem. So, I said, well, I told her that, I said my father sent me in here to buy, with ten dollars to buy a coat and I said I don’t want to pay ten dollars for those over there. I said if my father doesn’t like this, I can bring it back? She said, oh yes, yes you can bring it right back. So I took this home and I had the brown pal coat and now it had some brown suede like O-shoes they called them in those days, and it had a brown pocket book, I had a little brown outfit, felt hat with appliqués on it. This is depression, now I paid thirty-three cents for a black felt hat with appliqués on it. And I got this coat and so I know enough to wait until the moment is right. My father was sitting there in the room and I went in and displayed what I had, you know, and told him my long tale and I said, he didn’t say anything, just sat and listened to what I am saying, well I was surprised at that, because he could have, just take in on back in. So I take a very deep breath, he hasn’t said anything. I said, may I keep it? And he says certainly. That’s the kind of guy he was. So I nearly fell to the floor. Never showed the first sign of nothing. Just let me talk. But evidently I thought later, I say he’s probably giving me credit for having good sense. He didn’t Interview with Connie Bruce pt 1/p. 76 give me no money, if I wanted to spend my money to add to it, that’s all right with him. He gave me ten dollars, and he evidently thought I’d made a good decision. He never said nothing about it from that day on. And that’s all he said, certainly. Now that’s the kind of man he was. But he read the promise to us every Sunday with gestures and sound effects. I would be sitting on one knee and my sister was sitting on the other knee, and my brother would be around the back, and then when we got old enough to read the comics ourselves, mother said we had to read the comics ourselves first before he gave it. Well, in her house you didn’t read the comics. They had no sense of humor there. But, that was the best thing I can tell you about him. INT: Hard worker? CB: Hm? INT: Hard worker? CB: I would say so. He was apprentice to Charlestown Navy Yard when he was fourteen, and they asked him to retire when he was, well thirty-three years later because they wanted to give the jobs to the younger men, and he was already eligible for retirement, he just hadn’t retired. He didn’t have to. Well, thirty-three years after fourteen, that’s not an old man. INT: No. CB: But, he retired on half pay. And he really beat the system. He was retired on half pay longer than he worked for Interview with Connie Bruce pt 1/p. 77 full pay. And then when World War II came along, they asked him to come back. And he made the mistake of telling me about. And I said, they didn’t want you when you were willing to stay, I said you don’t even have the blisters or anything on your hands, now you haven’t picked up those tools and it would be just your luck to go back there and get hurt the first day you are back there. And earlier on if somebody died on the job, they just laid the body out there and put a bowl on him and you put your change in there and that’s how they buried them. No insurance, no, you know. So I said, I don’t see the point. I said, it’s up to you, but you told me about, I said, I don’t recommend it. I don’t know whether I had anything to do with it or not, but I know he didn’t go back. INT: I know he, I don’t know if he worked directly with him, but the artist Allan Crite? CB: Oh, he and I walked from Cambridge to Trinity Church one time. Did you hear, where did you hear about Allan Crite? INT: Um, well, you know being from Boston, well not being from Boston, but living in Boston and being involved in the Roxbury community, you can’t help but hear about Mr. Crite. CB: Yeah, he went to the same church. Now I’m not sure whether it was a mission church, I rather suspect it was the mission church that I told you about. And this was the young people’s affair. Now, the young people of the diocese, I guess, this is the Episcopal diocese, were having this congregation or Interview with Connie Bruce pt 1/p. 78 something, and he and I because he was a curiosity and I was a pain in the neck, we’re just oddballs, the others went on ahead and he and I walked together because like I say he had his little string tie on and I had my little prissy ways so Allan Crite and I walked from that church to Trinity Church at Copley Square and that’s the last I ever saw of him. I don’t, I think probably on the way back we all split up and had to use the public transportation, I know we didn’t walk back because it would have been around ten o’clock, and we all had to get back home, so I think we split up after that. But, I kept an eye out, I think it was, I don’t know whether somebody told me about it or not, but I know that at one time he was the only one that had both windows of the Old Corner Bookstore. Normally if you had one of those, when there’s only two windows with a door in the middle, he had both of them. And I think that to be big, big, big, and it tickled me to death, I says, I knew him when he was nothing, and nobody paid any attention to him. But he always did black and white. Everything as far as I know that he did was always, what do they call it . . . INT: Pen and ink? CB: Hmm? INT: Pen and ink? CB: No, not that, the uh, the type of thing he did. INT: Oh, um. CB: Oh well. Interview with Connie Bruce pt 1/p. 79 INT: Well, he had a large body of work. CB: Oh yeah, yeah because I’m not sure whether somebody sent me a book about it or not, because that stuff is all, was all in New York. But I know he was the only one ever to have both sides of the Old Corner Bookstore. INT: Um hmm. Well, I’m gonna have to stop here now. CB: Yep, well. I don’t know what eventually happened to him, but I know that I had to try to keep my contacts, know what people are doing, especially people that were, like a said, a little peculiar, a little weird, and I was still doing, with some of these organizations that we tried to help some of these people. We would give them audience, something like that to, and we just missed one of the stars that ended up, we couldn’t touch him with a ten foot pole the next year, somebody had told us about it and we had already had our program and we said, well we had him. . . INT: A program for what organization? CB: Well, this was just a community of people. They got together to give some of these up and coming people an audience. We would, well the minister of church would give the oratorium and we would send out notices to people we thought would be interested, I mean when people want to do something, they just do it. And some of them, and one of them has kept in touch all the time. But, we had to disband because, believe it or not, I think there was only seven women, and we couldn’t get together Interview with Connie Bruce pt 1/p. 80 any one day of the month. There was always somebody missing. We couldn’t change offices, nobody could switch from one thing to another. And we just had to call it quits, because somebody even moved away, and we just couldn’t do it. So, this is how things fall apart because there are not enough people who care enough to give their time. It’s only business people. You have a woman who has a family and she’s organizing the church or companies for her husband or something, and somebody like that is the one that’s going to help you help somebody else. Somebody sitting at home looking at TV they aren’t gonna come downstairs to see what’s going on in their own apartment house. So, this is what happens. That’s why I say you’re already in it, because you are doing the kind of thing that I think people should do, and I’m willing to help you just like I would be wiling to help these other people. Now, how much help I can be, I don’t know, because I’m not able to help myself. But we’ll see. I say, you send your little representative with sufficient identification, now. INT: Well I have a friend who lives close by and she’s a lawyer, and she’s very interested in black history herself, and I think, you know, if, you know, we’ll just see how it works out. CB: Yes, keep in touch, as I said, don’t know what will happen from here, but I think it’s a good start. And like I tell you, you follow those leads and the only thing you have to do for me is let me know what you find out. Interview with Connie Bruce pt 1/p. 81 INT: I will. CB: Because I kept in touch as much as I could. But when all my contacts disappeared, what could I do? INT: That’s the thing I . . . CB: But some of these things I will remember, you see, if it’s a proper condition. INT: Yes. Memories, you know, just sitting around thinking about one thing and all of a sudden . . . CB: That’s the only way it happens, the only way it happens. INT: Well, I’m gonna turn the tape recorder off . . . END OF INTERVIEW +++ Interview with Connie Bruce – Part 2 CB: But the thing is, parents do not watch their children and see where they’re inclined, and guide them. They make ‘em do this and they make them, well you want to do this. There’s no such thing as “ought to.” INT: Well, I can say that my father saw, like I started, he was a photographer, he was an engineer . . . CB: Oh yeah? What kind of engineer? INT: Electrical engineer. CB: Electrical? INT: Yes. Interview with Connie Bruce pt 1/p. 82 CB: My brother was an electrical engineer, and then he went to sea and had to be a marine, and you can’t go to the 5 and 10 cent store when you’re in the middle of the pacific ocean, I guess. INT: He saw that I was interested in photography, and on my 16th birthday he gave me a professional camera. CB: Whoo! INT: A Nikon, I don’t know if you know about Nikons. CB: What had you been using before that? INT: Just, you know, a little Kodak Instamatic Brownie. CB: Oh, excuse me, we started with a Brownie. INT: When I was sixteen he gave me a professional camera because he believed in putting the best tools . . . CB: Right on. INT: . . . in a child’s hands. CB: But if you can’t have, what did you do with your original cameras? INT: Um, they were stolen. They were stolen, but um, so I . . . CB: See what I mean? INT: I have been just been taking photographs ever since. CB: Cause what you should do is keep those for history. INT: Yes, I would have, but, you know, people broke in and took them, so they’re gone. Once it’s gone, it’s gone. Interview with Connie Bruce pt 1/p. 83 CB: Yeah, don’t tell me. The things that I had to leave, cause I say when you have your choice between your mother and your pop, now what choice do you have? INT: Not much. CB: No, you know. But you have to live so the people think you don’t have anything. You have to live poor. As I tell them when they put all these things up on the wall, you know, the grates and all that, I say you’re just telling somebody there’s something in there worth going in after. I say if you don’t put anything up there, they say, well that poor sucker, she can’t even wash the windows. You know? But in all of historian is good, and now they’re recommending that you do the video camera for your inventory in your house. INT: Um hmm. CB: You know about that? INT: Yes. CB: That’s good then. INT: So I do all kinds of things like that, I have a business also. CB: Well that’s just still diverse, as I said, or fickle, but that’s all right. INT: It used to be called fickle, now it’s called diverse. CB: Yes, that’s right, because I’ve been there too. INT: I used to be called a job-hopper, now I’m called. . . CB: Why don’t you get a steady job, right? Interview with Connie Bruce pt 1/p. 84 INT: Right. If I ever had a steady job, I wouldn’t be sitting here with you today, and I . . . CB: You probably wouldn’t be here today, and I don’t even know how old you are, but you’ve been frustrated. INT: I was 52 yesterday. CB: How much? INT: 52. CB: 52? Well you got, you got to start now, dear, planning on being a hundred and something. INT: Um hmm. CB: Have you, uh, checked your . . . INT: Social Security? CB: No. You have to do that later, but you not only have to check your . . . oh well. You have to get your life expectancy. INT: Yeah, I have checked that, and it’s not good, so I’ve gotta make some changes. CB: All right now, you see? That’s what you do. Because you are at the time now you will either live to be 125, or you’ll drop dead at 70. INT: That’s right, and right now I have a life expectancy of like 72. CB: They, all right now, that’s what I try to tell them with tears in my eyes and they will not listen. INT: I gotta make some changes. Interview with Connie Bruce pt 1/p. 85 CB: Cause I was told when I was 81 if things were the same as they were then that there was no reason why I wouldn’t live to 125. And I said, oh boy. So I had to do a whole lot of finagling with the financial end. I’m only getting Social Security. INT: Right. CB: So you start cutting back. You gotta do something, but you look at it from long distance. INT: Um hmm. CB: I’m glad, oh I like you. INT: When I was 12, in 1968, I used to look at the perpetual calendars, and I would plan what I would be doing in the year 2000. CB: They don’t understand that, I have a two-year plan and they had everybody’s, if I had it now I could tell you something, except I can’t read it, and neither can anybody else, cause it’s written. They don’t read anymore. INT: So, what I would like to, cause we probably have about 40 more minutes or so that we can go today, but, you know. . . CB: Well did we establish what we gonna do for the future? INT: Yes, we have, and I um, I want to thank you for, you know, allowing me to interview you, because I know that, like you said when you first came up, you know, you needed to get the, what they call a 369 (inaudible). CB: Um hmm. Interview with Connie Bruce pt 1/p. 86 INT: And so, you know, some of the things that I’m interested in have to do with lower Roxbury, but some of the things have to do with just you as a woman growing up like, you know, maybe the games you played . . . CB: Oh, I can say that too. INT: Games you played as a child . . . CB: Well, see those are things I have to think about, that’s why I said somebody could come to me on their own time, cause I got nothing to do but time. INT: Okay. CB: And I’m sitting here with a potty. INT: Um hmm. CB: And you can get a lot done. INT: Yes. CB: I can’t do much writing, cause I don’t have anything to, you know, if I wrote it, it would just be trash, I might throw it out. But at least I’d have something to think about. And then if somebody showed up, I might remember. INT: Right. CB: Or something you might say would trigger, oh yes. INT: Like when I say Grove Hall. CB: Yeah. The minute you say Grove Hall, wait a minute now. I haven’t thought about that in years. Interview with Connie Bruce pt 1/p. 87 INT: So that’s something I’d do, if I were to say, let me think of something else, if I were to say, um, let me just think of something that . . . CB: Well, you’re gonna have to, it just comes out, if you try, you won’t get it, it comes boom, right out of nothing. When you’re thinking of one thing, something else will come right on top of it. You have to grab it before it’s gone. INT: Do you remember things, like okay, one of the things I would like to ask people is, what is, what are some of the first things you remember? Like when the curtain pulls back and you’re like, oh, you know? CB: Well, I can’t be sure. I’m pretty sure I don’t remember being born. INT: Okay. CB: After that, you see when you hear stories, you can’t be sure when you remember them whether you were there, or whether you weren’t. INT: Um hmm. CB: I can remember being in primary school. Then before that I was in, yeah that was fun, I was in kindergarten. And I remember we had to walk to kindergarten, I think it was about a mile. After I got grown, the thing bugged me. I used to go back to Somerville every time I was in the area, and then it got to me when they did things after World War II, you know, all right, I been here for the last time. Honestly, now where was that Interview with Connie Bruce pt 1/p. 88 place that I went to for kindergarten? And I said, I wonder if I could find, I called it my radar system. And one day I just started out for fun, you know I get oh yeah, and would come and suggest, yes, that’s the word I’ve been, and I went like a fool, hee hee hee, I found it! I don’t know where it is, I don’t know where it was, but I found it. I found it! I call it radar. Well see, I probably couldn’t find it again, I don’t know, I wouldn’t look for it again, I found it that time. Well, I remember that when I was grown then, but I remember going to the bottom of the street with mother and waiting for the children to come for the teacher, two by two, and then you know in those days, looking to the left and looking to the right and going half way and looking to the right and looking. Walk, don’t run. Cross the street. And one teacher would, God only knows how many kids, two by two, and she, they would walk. A mile to school is nothing. Well, of course we walked more than that in some places in the summer. INT: Um hmm. I was in Percyville, Virginia yesterday visiting with a man who took me to his family homestead from, I think he said his great grandparents floating some logs down the river, and put this house up. And it was a good eleven miles to town, and he’d tell me that he would walk. CB: Yes, of course! INT: Barefoot. Winter and summer. CB: Yes! Interview with Connie Bruce pt 1/p. 89 INT: To town. And I did an interview with him, I walked with him, cause you had to take a dirt road for so many miles, then you had to park the car and then you had to walk down the equivalent of, like three flights of stairs to get down to where the homestead was, so I’m taking away. On the way back, he’s just walking up like he’s a mountain goat, I can’t even keep up with him, I listen to the tape, it’s ruined because all I hear is me, this, (panting), that’s all you hear! So that was my, this morning. CB: And you can’t take it apart, see nowadays they might be able to do something about it. INT: Right, this was just yesterday. So anyway, would you talk about, you know, like chronological age and my health age, I need to do some changes, so that I don’t (panting) breath like that. CB: Well, I am glad to meet somebody that listens, because so many of them don’t, and you hate to see them, no, and I even know people that had been declared, um, sleep deprived. I mean they’re not! You can’t make up this sleep. INT: No. CB: And they’re not doing a thing about it. They don’t get any more sleep. And I want in the worst way to tell them to call the institutes of health or something, and offered their services to some project that can loan it to them so they’ll get the information of what happens to a person as they grow, Interview with Connie Bruce pt 1/p. 90 because you gonna grow anyhow, and that’s better than falling asleep on the truck or, you know, out in the street or something. But I know it wouldn’t do any good. INT: Well, I’m someone who, from a very young age understood that I didn’t have to make all the mistakes myself, that I could learn from other people’s. CB: Now see, me, I don’t plan on making them. If I make a mistake, it’s because it happened, or like they say, God intended it to be that way. Now I got a pretty messy life, but I don’t know anybody I’d switch with, up to now, because I’ve learned so much, and where I think life is all about is money. And what do you do with it later, like somebody said, there’s no way they can be something afterwards, after all you’ve been through, where does that information go? There’s gotta be something out there somewhere. So, you know. But you keep on, because that’s the way to go, I mean you got one person on your side there. If you got one, you’re doing all right. INT: So, the kinds of things, you know, that I would ask you about are, you know, some of the same things I would say, do you remember, you know, songs that you might have sung as a child or music that you liked or games that you played, or movies you saw or historical events, like one man remembered Franklin Deleanor Roosevelt coming to, you know, driving up along Columbus Ave. CB: Oh yeah? Interview with Connie Bruce pt 1/p. 91 INT: And his father came and took him out of school. CB: Oh, I guess so. INT: And he said he remembered the limousine or the car driving by, and seeing his profile with his cigarette. CB: Ha ha! He popularized the cigarette and the long cigarette holder. INT: So, those are the types of little stories, little memories, you know, that. . . CB: Some people have the dramatic things, and some people have that did nothing that eventful, and see I’m the kind of person that doesn’t react. I’m not emotional, I’m not affectionate, I’m not any of them things that get’s excited. Like, I guess they say I was not, what is that, unflappable or something like that, see? I’ve been so many places and seen so many things on each side that nothing excites me unduly. I might be surprised, but not really. So this is why it’s hard for me to distinguish any of those things. Yeah, I remember JF . . . I remember Roosevelt died on my birthday, and that was the end of my birthday, as far as I was concerned. I remember I was coming up Seventh Street it is from Pennsylvania Avenue when Hans and Lanzburg were down there. And this old black woman was crying, and she said, the president’s dead, and I said oh no, that couldn’t be. I had come from work, and I had been in the street, and I hadn’t had dinner, so and I says oh, that’s what she was talking about. Well, since then I had seen the Eleanor, you Interview with Connie Bruce pt 1/p. 92 know, the movie or whatever it was, and I don’t know, I don’t remember what I’d really saw and what I didn’t see, you know? I didn’t play any games to amount to anything, I was a homebody, always had been a homebody and still a homebody. But this by preference. When I want to go out, I go out. But, at thirteen, I was the lady of the house, so when my mother got the divorce, I didn’t think anything of it. I was the second in command after my mother. So naturally if my mother isn’t here, then I’m the lady of the house. INT: So just for someone in the modern context, they may not know what lady of the house means, so if you could describe what that means, that you were the lady of the house. CB: I was the woman in charge of the house, the meals, and anything that went on in the house, and I didn’t think a think about it. I knew how to do everything, but I’d never had the responsibility until my mother was not there. And then I had the responsibility. I still think I got on the maximum credit or the honor roll or whatever I was doing, cause I know I got my schoolwork done, there’s no question about getting your schoolwork done. And I never was much for playing, as people called it, they would go out and play with your children, I never did that. INT: What did you do? CB: I was home. I would go out in the yard. I’d rather pull weeds out in the yard then go play with the children. Interview with Connie Bruce pt 1/p. 93 INT: Did you have a garden? Your mother have a garden? CB: Oh yeah, we had a flower garden, a vegetable garden, at one time we even had chickens. But, you see, that’s, this is the way it is. Some people react, and some people just, it’s another day at the office. INT: May I ask you when is your birthday? I don’t think I asked you that. What day is your birthday? CB: April 12, 1915. Does that help you? INT: Yes, ma’am. CB: And what do you want to know that for? INT: Well, my father was born in 1914, and so one of the, I think one of the reasons, one of the things I bring to this work is that my father was of the generation of the people that I am interviewing. CB: Well there you go, cause I was gonna ask you, how about him? INT: He passed in 1986, but . . . CB: What’s his trouble? If it’s any of my business. INT: He worked with radioactive materials. CB: Oh, he didn’t know it, huh? INT: No. CB: Cause they used to, when they were making their (inaudible) INT: Exactly. So, you know. But . . . Interview with Connie Bruce pt 1/p. 94 CB: I’ll substitute. Sorry, I’m not a man, but, you’ll just have to do with me. For your records, this is all right. INT: One of the things I know about from, you know, growing up, he didn’t talk at all, he, I never knew anything about him until he passed because people didn’t talk then. CB: Well, a lot of them don’t, my father didn’t do a whole lot of talking. INT: What happened in the yesterday was in the past. CB: They didn’t, they didn’t. That whole generation, they didn’t talk. INT: That’s right. CB: Now, did he go to war? INT: He didn’t go to war, but he served in three branches of the military, and then he worked. CB: Well, I mean he knew the military life, you know they don’t talk. INT: And then he worked for RCA doing top secret work for the government. CB: Well, you know they don’t talk. They learn to keep their mouths shut. They even change the subject. INT: That’s right. And so one of the things that I can bring to my work is because my father and his friends were born in 1910, 1914, or even before, as a little child I’m around listening, so I know about . . . Interview with Connie Bruce pt 1/p. 95 CB: That’s the way you find it out, you’re behind the drapes. INT: Sticky girls, pigtails . . . CB: So you know about that? INT: Yes, ma’am. I know about, you know spinning . . . CB: I used to pull my curls down just to see them spin. INT: I know about bloomers. CB: Oh you do! INT: I know about knickers. So, that’s one of the things I bring to this work is having had . . . CB: It does help, doesn’t it. INT: . . . a parent in the same generation. CB: Well, you see, most of them are, but they don’t’ respect their parents, because their parents don’t ask them to be respected. Parents want to be loved. Well, see, I don’t care whether you like me or not, you will respect me, period. Now hate my guts if you want to, see that’s the way it is with me. But these people, this love business, I don’t know what that’s all about. INT: Well, I feel that way. There’s some people that I really don’t like at all, but I respect them. CB: Yeah, they’re human beings, as far as you know. INT: As far as I know. CB: So, because you are the kind of person you are, you treat them like the kind of person you would like them to be. Interview with Connie Bruce pt 1/p. 96 Yeah. About the songs and things like that, I don’t know, I know the Tin Pan Alley days and things like that, we had an upright piano, I used to bang on that, but we had piano for lessons, we had dancing lessons, you know. INT: Where would you go to take dancing lessons? CB: This is what I was going to tell you, this lovely woman, I can’t remember what her first name is, she is on Newbury Street, and she did most of them. We were in a recital and the recitals were held at recital hall, in this was the symphony . . . INT: Symphony Hall? CB: Symphony Hall, yes, that’s where. Durjean, Durjean Gloveburn, I think her name was. No, that may have been another one. I don’t know. But, I remember sitting, looking out the window at the train tracks and all the soot was on the window, and no way in the world you could keep the house clean with that. INT: I live next to the train. CB: Well, I have to tell you the choo choo train. Not the diesel, the choo choo. INT: Soot all over the window. CB: All over the place. INT: When you were, so thirteen, you become the woman of the house, and so see you just told me you were born in 1915, so at thirteen it’s 1927? Interview with Connie Bruce pt 1/p. 97 CB: Depression. INT: Depression? CB: That was one of the greatest institutions for learning that has ever been. And I have told many a young person, what you need is a good depression, cause you don’t know how to save money. You didn’t see anybody, you didn’t know anybody who knew anybody that knew anybody that had any money. People used script. Did you hear about script? INT: No. I heard about coupons or different things you could take to the store, but I don’t know that word, script, but no one has talked about it within the context of this history project. CB: Well, I don’t know as it referred to blacks, cause you didn’t have any celebrity blacks, but movie stars and people that were well known signed a piece of paper with their name on it, and that’s how they paid their bills. And those things have been worth tons of money, if anybody ever kept them. But that was what they called a script. But only the, only people that any fool would know who they were could do it, and you know we didn’t have any of them up there, because there were no blacks anywhere around. I don’t even remember, well, let me see. Who was the first one? The guy that they didn’t like because he portrayed blacks in such a low way, as far as he was concerned. INT: What was his real name? Stepin Fetchit, but I can’t think of his real name. Interview with Connie Bruce pt 1/p. 98 CB: I think it was Stepin Fetchit. INT: I can’t remember his real name right this minute. CB: Oh, no, who’s worried about the real name. Now, I think he was the first one. INT: He was a millionaire. CB: You got Beaver and all those people. It’s a job. If you’re gonna work, you’re supposed to work. And if you’re an actor, you act. INT: Did you go see movies? CB: Silent movies. I never had anything much for the talkies to do, but I liked the silent movies. Because with the silent movie, you could do anything you wanted, all you had to do was keep your eye on the screen, and then, well of course when you’re young, the only thing you can do is go to Saturday matinee. INT: That’s right. CB: You had to be a lot older to go to Friday night, and I remember going to the movies with my brother Friday night and we would wait until the last minute and then race each other to the theater just in time to get there, and that was before the show went. But I didn’t have any favorites, I mean, I liked this opera, I liked that . . . INT: Did you go to see the opera when you were . . . CB: Not when I was young. Interview with Connie Bruce pt 1/p. 99 INT: I had a man tell me about a black opera woman, her name was Sister UNKNOWN: Sister Rita? INT: That sounds right. UNKNOWN: Sister Rita Jones. INT: Sister Rita Jones, and she was, you know, her piano player came from this neighborhood in Roxbury. CB: Where else? It was either there or where Huby Blay came from. Me and Beal Street, that’s the only place. UNKNOWN: Blay’s from Baltimore. You know, a lot of us came from Beal Street. And we had a lot of talented people. But I didn’t come to interview. INT: So you went to see the opera, as a young woman or younger? CB: Hmm. Let’s see, I was in New York, so it had to be after, I don’t know. The opera was still down in Madison Square, along with Madison Square, you know everything they got moved up to 34th Street was down on Madison Square at the time, they got moved up to Lincoln Square. But it seems to me, I listened to it on the radio because Texaco has broadcast the opera ever since I guess they started, and I remember listening to it on the radio Saturday afternoon when I was taking care of one of the, let’s see, I guess he would be a step uncle or something to me. I was woman of the house there. You know, about New England spinster? INT: Say that again? Interview with Connie Bruce pt 1/p. 100 CB: A New England spinster? INT: No, tell me about a New England spinster. CB: Well, they’re single woman that seem to be in the world, just never other people, because that’s what they seem to do. Originally of course they would just belong in the window where you have a lot of virgins, and according to what the doctor told me sometime ago there are still a lot of virgins up there. It’s not a sin to be a virgin in New England, you know, it is in other places. Some of them are said not be able to get a man, others are said not to want a man, and others they can’t deal with a man, you know. You hear all kinds of things. But they’re usually virgins that are unmarried and, I don’t know about nowadays, but back in the good ole days they refused to live in a house under the thumb of their brother’s wives, cause that’s where a single woman would have to be. They were halfway between being in the convent, you know, they did that kind of thing. They would go and help whoever needed to be helped and, it sort of got to be a thing. So I tell people that’s what I am because they don’t believe that anybody has been this long, been this, you’ve never been married, you’ve never had any children? They just can’t conceive of it. I said, well when I was coming up, dear, you didn’t have children unless you were married. Sorry about that. See, of course everybody does it now. But, it’s just one of those designations. I was trying to think of some others that they have, you know. But of course they talk Interview with Connie Bruce pt 1/p. 101 about women more than they talk about men. They have these designations for particular people, and of course I can’t think of any one of them, but that’s the sort of thing. And because of the qualities I have and the ones that I don’t have, that’s lead to the kind of life that I have lead, I’m like you. I’m sorry if you don’t like it, I couldn’t see any other way of doing what I had to do at the time. Now if I had another option, maybe I’d been in trouble making whatever I was gonna do, but as far as I can see, I had no choice. INT: So, what kind of, so at thirteen you’re the woman at the house, you’re still in school, you graduate from high school? CB: Oh yeah. I went back from PG, they called it, because there was no where to go with us, so you had the option of going back to school for a year, so I knew I’d never make it to Harvard or Radcliffe, they were separate at the time. And I went back to see. . . One of my troubles is I’ve never known what I want to be when I grew up, still don’t. And my mother was a dressmaker, and I said, well, I don’t think much of that, I don’t mind sewing but, you know. I said well maybe if I did some designing, you know, I have Schiaparelli. I have some favorite designers that I liked and I had, we had art in the schools in those days. Music and drawing, things like that, and I had drawn a piece that the teacher liked and I had asked for it back and of course I never got it back after they made the display. Those Interview with Connie Bruce pt 1/p. 102 were the kind of things, you know, sort of get to you and I took the course, intending to see what I could do, where was it, Massachusetts Institute of Art or something like that. They have that? INT: There’s Mass College of Art, there’s many. There’s a number of schools of art there. CB: Yeah, well I think there was only one that I said I’d try out for that one. And I took the examination, I think out of fifteen points, ten of which are passing, I got five, so, that sort of didn’t work. So, my brother finally came up and took us down to Tennessee where he was. INT: I understand your brother was a Harvard graduate? CB: Yeah. He was graduated from the electrical engineering college they called. At the same time I think of Frank’s (inaudible). Thirty-three? INT: Um hmm. CB: I don’t know where Frank went. I mean, he wasn’t an electrical engineer. You know, my brother was electrical engineer, I don’t know if Frank was, I think Frank was in the, I’m not sure. But I know, but like I say the parents knew each other, whether they knew each other before they got married, I don’t know, because see like so many of them did. INT: Well, you know, the one thing about Boston in particular is that the black, African American, however you want to say it, population was not very big. Interview with Connie Bruce pt 1/p. 103 CB: No. And they all knew each other. And it seemed, as near as I can get it, most of them came from about the same place. And now you’ve got this nucleus, those in Boston, where in that Roxbury group and you catch a hold of them, they’re all over the place. And some of them may know others that, like if you say you’re interested in general history, they could probably tell you a whole lot of things. If you don’t have any leads, now I don’t know how you go about doing what you do. But there’s a whole gang of stuff out there. INT: I have all kinds of ways that I do what I do. Some people give me leads, some I just, and I’ll say it, it’s true, I have dreams about things. CB: Sure! INT: And then I’ll, you know, like today I kept dreaming about a black squirrel for a long time. Black squirrel, I have never seen a black squirrel. CB: Well there is where I am. INT: On my way here . . . CB: Right in front of the house, there’s one yesterday. INT: On my way here today, a black squirrel ran in front of the car. I said, okay, I’m on the right track. CB: That’s right, and there’s certainly I saw one yesterday and the day before ran right in front of the house. I know they’re out there. INT: So you know, I had never seen one before. Interview with Connie Bruce pt 1/p. 104 CB: Well, they’re around. Take a look. INT: I follow my instincts. CB: Yeah, that’s what you got them for. INT: You know, I’ll be passing by a particular house or I’ll just stop, I don’t know why. CB: You don’t have to, that’s the same as I call my radar system. You keep the waves going all the time, and you keep looking around. As I tell people, when you’re on a tour, you don’t just listen to the guy, you look at the ceiling, you look at the walls, you look at the floor, you look at everything in there, because most of it is interesting, and you gonna miss a lot if you don’t. INT: If you just listen to the prescribed tour. CB: You can read a book on that. And usually when I was on a tour I was doing some knitting and I had an earphone in, and the woman that was leading it, she said, well look at this. I said, I have five senses and I believe in using them all. And one has got nothing to do with the other one. And she couldn’t get over that I was knitting and listening to, I have found an English speaking radio center in the foreign countries. All you have to do is press it, you know. But some people are just, I guess it’s adventureness, I don’t know. But, you sound good to me, and I wish you well because that’s the way I think a person should spend their life, doing something that just knocks them out and they can’t get enough of it, but the only thing is you Interview with Connie Bruce pt 1/p. 105 have to take yourself by the scruff of your neck and say, you are going to bed, and go to sleep, you have to see that you get enough sleep. INT: Thank you. CB: That’s the only thing wrong with that program. But, if you’re enjoying yourself, it makes a lot of difference. INT: I did that last night, I was at the event that, uh, and I said, you know, what? I have to stop, I have to stop right now, and I just (inaudible) and I went home, I went to where I am staying and I went to sleep, and I got eight hours of sleep for the first time . . . CB: In thousands of years, I know. INT: . . . in a long, long time. And I said, I need to be awake, so that when I meet Miss Bruce I am awake and I am on the ball. CB: Yeah, definitely. INT: And so I have (inaudible). So if I were to come here all tired and foggy, no. CB: Yeah, sorry. I mean that’s what you have it for. I keep telling them, but they don’t listen. That’s what you call, the little bird told me or the chip, they put a chip in there now, or they really want to call if you don’t believe in God, then all right, so believe in whatever you believe in. But there’s something there. If you live long enough and you pay attention to it, and it will guide you. And since I have not Interview with Connie Bruce pt 1/p. 106 been able to SEE, I have found out there’s a lot of things you can see. They don’t understand that, either. I said there’s perception, you know. And a lot of what you learn, you don’t actually see it, you perceive it. You don’t get it. INT: Yeah, I get it, I do get it! CB: You get it, but I mean, the average person don’t know what you’re talking about. INT: Well when I was in my 20s, and this sounds a little old to be doing this, but when I was in my 20s, I used to walk around with my eyes closed in preparation for the day I may lose my sight, and I used to listen, I mean I used to, not busy, busy streets, but I would stand on a corner and see if I could cross the street with my eyes closed . . . CB: You didn’t. INT: . . . based on what . . . you know. CB: You’re worse than me. Cause this is what I tell people, what we used to do with the pin on the tail on the donkey at Halloween parties, you know? But I never went that bad, but I did get the whole Braille alphabet, and I was learning it, except my fingers couldn’t handle it, and I said I’ll never be able to do this. And then I realized that everything that happens to a person happens to their right hand because that’s what they do, so I taught myself to write with my left hand. So my brother always was a sock puller, I said, well Interview with Connie Bruce pt 1/p. 107 I’ll fix him, I’ll be able to write with both hands, and some people can’t do anything but write their signatures. INT: My brother was left handed and you know if you sit next to a left handed person and you’re right handed, you always bump elbows, so since I always sat next to him I started doing things with my left hand so that we wouldn’t bump elbows. CB: Sure. Brothers are good for nothing, but they’re a lot of fun, too. Was your brother older or younger than you? INT: I’m the oldest. They were younger than me. He passed about three or four years ago. CB: Well, now listen, do you live alone, if it’s any of my business? INT: No, I have, I don’t live alone, I have three children, a 26-year-old son, he lives with me, we have a business together, digital photography, computer. CB: Well, I’m just wondering about your junk. You can leave your junk around without anybody messing with it? INT: Yes. CB: At your house and at your job, too? INT: Yes. CB: That’s the main thing. INT: And I have a 24-year-old daughter who just graduated from Columbia University in May. CB: What did she take? Interview with Connie Bruce pt 1/p. 108 INT: She was an English major. Now she’s working on Madison Avenue, her first job out of college. CB: Madison Avenue, Madison, New York? INT: Madison Avenue, New York CB: You know, that’s a dirty word, don’t you? INT: Yes, I do. And I have a 17-year-old son who’s a senior in high school. CB: Well, that’s good. Well I can remember when blacks first showed up on Madison Avenue, and you had to have an extra pair of stockings in your drawer, because lo and behold that stupid advice, better not see you with a run, that’s when they wore silk hose and stockings. And you know those chairs like they have in the library? They catch you right there. They would tear your silk stockings. Yes, I remember the first one, I don’t know whether she was the first one, but I know she was black and she was working on Madison Avenue, and I said, kid, I think she retired, cause she moved down south. I lot of people do that. They come from the, they come up north and they live in the north and then when they retire they go right back home. Now see, I don’t see how you can take it, because I can’t. I said that mentality down there just not my thing, I can’t do it cause I’m gonna be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and I’ll open my mouth and that’s gonna be it. INT: So when you graduated from high school and you did the PG, what kind of work did you do? Interview with Connie Bruce pt 1/p. 109 CB: The only thing that came along, with or without money. If you needed me, I went. And that’s fun, too, you never know where you’re gonna end up. Yep, that’s why I don’t have any money, cause if you give me money, fine, cause when I, when I was the lady of the house my cousin told me, he says I can only pay you $2.00, I said, well I’m not gonna be doing anything, except maybe go to church, that’s only 10 cents, and I didn’t get to church so I didn’t spend that. So I put it, I always sneaked it away, I don’t spend it. As I tried to tell people, when you get a bonus, don’t spend it, put it in a CD if you’ve got enough or put it in a savings bank and forget you got it. That’s your future. Oh, no, they’re gonna celebrate. And spend more money than they got. But, see I didn’t have running around to do, so what difference does it make. But, I was really helping people. That’s why I say this is New England spinster business. Some people never consider helping other people. You probably run into a few. INT: Yes. CB: It never crosses their mind, they want money, honey. If it doesn’t pay, they’re not the least bit interested. Now, I’m the other way around. Money stinks, as far as I’m concerned. It’s the root of all evil. People got around without money for thousands and thousands and thousands of years and did very well, thank you. It’s just a convenience. But I have learned, I’ve met some interesting people, I’ve been some places I would Interview with Connie Bruce pt 1/p. 110 never have gotten. Like in Western Massachusetts, you ever been to the Birches? INT: Yes. CB: Ain’t that a nice place to visit? I’d never been there, if I hadn’t helped a couple of old women. I was there, let’s see now, remember Dorothy Mainard? INT: Say that again, Dorothy Mainard? CB: Dorothy Mainard. She was a singer, and she got to the opera by I think was exclusivity. They introduced her at Tanglewood where the Boston Symphony goes for the summer. I was there. I saw her. And I also saw her when, let’s see there was Mitchell, the first black male dancer open to school and the church for ballet. And she had married a minister, and you know Lia Talias? INT: No, I don’t think so. CB: They used to cut open here. INT: Leotard? CB: Well, some of the dear old souls in that church didn’t want them half naked women running around. That’s a good thing. I’m telling you. That’s the last time I saw her, she used to wear black all the time. I had no idea how little that woman was, because I knew she was on a box when they had her at Tanglewood, but to see her at the church and also some Haley Jackson, you know when these people are nothing. INT: When they’re undiscovered. Interview with Connie Bruce pt 1/p. 111 CB: She was married and Jackson was going out and doing her thing, I said boy oh boy oh boy. And then another thing, I got involved in organizations. So just like I would tell you, you were on the right track, I’m already involved with you. See? Cause you’re doing something that I believe in. Now if I run into somebody else, doing something I believe in, oh, no money in there. I don’t care. They’re doing something that I think is of some value. So you get in this committee, and that committee or you go to this meeting or that meeting and first thing you know you’re over your head. So I had the privilege of telling them one time when they asked me to be a chairman or something else, and I said when everybody in this organization is carrying as many committees as I am, I will consider another chairman. There are some people that never do anything, you know? INT: So what type of organizations were you, like? CB: Oh, you know, civic charity organizations, some of these, you know, some of these groups got together and had their own daycare center, some of these churches had these senior citizen things, long before it was fashionable, before Meals On Wheels, you know, and all of that. Well I knew people that didn’t do it, so I did. And then if were somebody knew you do this, well come over here and help us. INT: I heard it described, if you do your job so well that people think you can do theirs, too, you know. CB: I haven’t heard that one, but that’s good. Interview with Connie Bruce pt 1/p. 112 INT: You have to be careful, you do your jobs so well, that people think that oh, they can do this too. CB: Like I told the man, he had a position where he was supposed to be cooking, and he had a reputation of not cooking. I said, look, I say keep that, I say as long as you don’t know how to cook, they won’t expect you to. Any day you learn how to cook, you’re sunk. INT: Or as my son said, don’t you know the more you show them, the more they want? CB: That’s right. You have to lower the boom sometime and they are in, that’s what I try to tell them. I see, cause if they had to tell them, yeah, I don’t know what they tell you, but they tell, well you look like that way, I say well I’m not. And I say, you push me too much . . . INT: I do that too. CB: I thought you might. INT: They say, you’re not like a regular black person. CB: Oh yeah, that’s it. Now you’re an irregular. INT: And then they look at me like, oh I’ve said the wrong thing. CB: Or like I was with a group that all us white girls do, and they were telling stories about something, they ended up with like that, and they looked up and saw me and said, we didn’t mean you. I say, well I know you didn’t mean me. No question about it. Interview with Connie Bruce pt 1/p. 113 INT: We have about, 12 or 13 minutes left, cause I have to catch a plane this afternoon. CB: Ooh! You fly. INT: Yes I did. CB: I wouldn’t fly for nothing. But where are you at, my dear? INT: And so I just, you know, as we’re closing up today, wanted to ask you if there’s any things that come to your mind, um, that you’d like to share. One of the things that I find that I like about what I do is that I tell stories to young people, you know, based on the interviews I do and the pictures I collect, and they’re always so fascinated. They think that they invented something. CB: Oh yeah. Well, it’s wonderful they listen, because some of them don’t listen, their attention is diverse, you know? But I can’t help you there. INT: No, but what I do is sometimes what I know about young people, when they appear not to be listening, they’re listening. I have had two . . . CB: Children, when they put on their act that, like boys do in school, they pretend they’re not listening, but like one fellow says, I got everything, I was just as bad as anybody other, I got my lesson. You see, in some environments you can’t pretend, you gotta pretend that you’re not doing what you’re supposed to be doing, because the majority on that side. But I Interview with Connie Bruce pt 1/p. 114 don’t know anything I could tell you, to help these young people, I’m just glad to know you know somebody that you can tell some tales to. INT: They do, you know even when they appear not to be. One of the things that I do, is I’m very computer literate . . . CB: Good for you. INT: . . . I’m very technologically savvy. And so I mix things. CB: Yeah, you can speak their language, that helps. INT: . . . to keep them interested. CB: Well, do you do anything with your computer, do you communicate that way? INT: All the time. CB: Have you got a, what do they call it, you got a . . . INT: I have just about everything you can imagine. CB: No, but have you got your own, what is you call it? INT: Website? CB: Website. INT: Yes, I do. Several. CB: Because you can search, you know. INT: Yeah, I search, I talk over. I just set up the other day, so now I can call someone anyone in the world. CB: That’s what I’m talking about, that’s exactly what you need. This is a global atmosphere, and if United States isn’t doing anything, tell them that the Japanese economy is a lot Interview with Connie Bruce pt 1/p. 115 worse and they’re still saving 50% of the income, now how do they do that? That’s why they can buy the Empire State Building. I mean, if the own the Empire State Building, they’ll own most of the country now. INT: So, do you have any comments on the current political situation? CB: No, except that I am very interested in it. And a hope a lot of other people, I would if I was under any other circumstances, I’d probably be in the middle of it. There was some talk about having the fundraiser for Obama? I’m not even sure, I know I don’t know how to spell it. At the Hitching Post, you ever hear of the Hitching Post? INT: Vaguely. I don’t know. CB: All right, you know where the entrance to Soda Zone is? INT: Um mm. I am not really familiar, this is probably the second time I have been to Tennessee. CB: Really? Oh well. You see that was one of my favorite places where I would entertain. I don’t do anything at home because I just don’t do anything. I don’t cook, clean, I mean I’ve been through that and it isn’t satisfactory so I found that place walking to and from the hospital, and I used to stop there. If I had been still on a merry run, see I would have been probably been into that, but I had been into anything all done. These things come up, but there’s nobody wants to share the Interview with Connie Bruce pt 1/p. 116 program, see? So I don’t do anything but. I don’t know whether they know where I am or can get in touch with me, but I’m out of all of that thing now. Now you’re from Boston? INT: I’m originally from Los Angeles, now from Boston. I was born in Los Angeles. CB: Wait a minute, you’re going to Los Angeles? INT: Um hmm. CB: Well then you know about Santa Monica. INT: Yes ma’am. CB: Well I was at the beach when I was in Santa Monica when the convention center was at there. INT: The Santa Monica Convention Center? CB: Yeah, I think that was where they had the Academy Awards at the time. The first place where the Academy Awards, is a block away. Now they got a special place for them. INT: Yeah, they’re not downtown Los Angeles. CB: Yeah they built a place. Yeah, well that’s where I was. It’s a private beach, don’t ask me what the name of it was, but I was there and I was some other place in Los Angeles when (inaudible) burn the trash out in your back yard before they had the smoke, and we went up to the Hollywood Bowl, and this is another thing people don’t understand, I don’t care how hard it is down there, you go up there and it’s cold. The only stadium I was ever in that wasn’t cold was Lewisohn in New York, 145th Interview with Connie Bruce pt 1/p. 117 Street, something like that. And I had been outside the city and, I see you just came over it, now I had . . . INT: What are you looking for? CB: I had a little case and I had my pictures in, I guess this is a coat. INT: I see them. They look like they’re right here. CB: Yeah that’s the. . . INT: This little red pouch? CB: Yeah, that’s what I’m looking for. Yeah, my nose is running. I can’t blow it, cause I would make it bleed, and so I have to just wipe it. But, I don’t know about anybody being out in LA. INT: Yeah, I was born there. My parents left Chicago and went to Los Angeles, cause my father got work in aerospace industry as an engineer, he worked. . . CB: Now some of those over 50 people have been all over, but I don’t know of anybody in LA now. INT: I had met a man by the name of James Silcott, and he is in LA, but his parents were from, his mother and father came from Barbados, I believe, to Roxbury, and his mother bought several homes. That’s how we started out. CB: You know about that. INT: Yes, his mother had bought several homes. CB: That’s what they believe in. INT: And she went, she had rooming houses . . . Interview with Connie Bruce pt 1/p. 118 CB: Oh yeah. INT: . . . there in Roxbury. CB: Yeah, cause I think that’s what my paternal grandmother’s house was. I remember people coming up and down the stairs. Not a boarding house, just a rooming house, you’d have a room and then you would go out. I think that’s what she had. INT: That was the one on Kendall? CB: That must be. Windsor. INT: Windsor Street? CB: You said it was Windsor Street in Roxbury. INT: Yes. CB: Kendall Street was where the, my grandfather had the store. But the house where my grandmother, my paternal grandmother lived and paid for two or three times but never owned it, that was the one you say was Windsor Street. INT: Um hmm. CB: That’s where she had people living in the house, but they didn’t eat in the house. And that is why I don’t know anything about it. When she died, I went up to my father’s bedroom for the first time. I think his was the first one up the stairs. That’s as far as I ever got in that house, other than down in the basement, but I don’t know as I went in the basement, maybe my mother went in the basement. I had the dumbwaiter that you pulled things up from the kitchen to the Interview with Connie Bruce pt 1/p. 119 dining room. I think I operated it in the dining room, I don’t think I, you just didn’t go in other people’s houses and look all the way around. INT: Cause there was a family by the way of Byers who also lived on Windsor Street and the father was a black man who owned a cab. He lived not too far from your grandmother’s house, and he was married to what was thought to be a light skinned black woman, but she was really a white woman. CB: Well, that’s what they did, you know, it’s easier. INT: And they lived on Windsor Street, and he talked about how the kitchens were in the basement. CB: All of them were in those days. That’s the way they built the house. That’s the way the white house is. Yeah, all the workroom, the laundry, kitchen, all of that was in the basement. Now on the plantations where the hot country on the Bayou it was in a separate house, for fear of burning the house down. Once when we visited on the Levy, get this, they had to whistle as they brought the food from the kitchen to the house so they’d know they were going to eat. Can you imagine? Well, you see, those little houses have to live by tourists now. Cause that’s their only thing that keeps them alive, but at least they have that. And it seems to be that tourism is one of the things that keep a lot of places alive, so a lot of these little places are looking around at their history to see what it is that they can use to draw tourists. The fact that you can sleep without Interview with Connie Bruce pt 1/p. 120 being blasted out of your bed is, but see some people can’t stand that. They’re used to the noise so they can’t stand the peace and quiet of the country. But, you hang in there with Grove Hall and the Prince Hall nation, because at one time somebody thought father had died, evidently, and I knew the way I got it, cause you know how you say things makes a lot of difference. But it seems that somebody went to the meeting of Prince Hall Masons and I think my father, well he never got to anything, at 33 he wasn’t even trying, and they asked about her, but he says he’s not with us anymore. Well, I remember that, cause you can read that, like punctuation, you know? So, somebody told me that my father had died. I said, really? I said, well I don’t know about my stepmother, but I said, I don’t think I had done anything so bad or that she hates me so much that she wouldn’t have told me if my father died. So knowing my father like I did, I just simply wrote a card and told him that I heard he was dead, but I wasn’t sure. So I got a notice back that says, as far as I know I’m still alive. So we figured out that what they meant, that he was no longer with that Prince Hall Mason, he had transferred here. You see? But they said he’s no longer with us. INT: Right. It’s how you say it. CB: You have to be careful. That’s why I say, you stick with them, because you might run into somebody who remembers Herbie. And at least, if not him, some of those other people in Interview with Connie Bruce pt 1/p. 121 that area, because there were not a whole lot of them, you see. I was even surprised that they had that information. I don’t know how many. See, some of these organizations you have to have a certain number, you know, to have an organization. But I do know that they were black, and that he was a member in good standing, but (inaudible). When his second wife died, everything was just there like she left it. In fact, I think when he died it was still there just like she left it. I know with me, I wouldn’t have touched anything. I ain’t touched anything of my mother’s except something that I could have used if something needed to be taken care of. Everything else was right there. What move it for, he was father of the place. But, if you’re in an apartment, you gotta move, then that’s something else. But those are your best bets, and like I said, if you got sense enough to know how to take care of yourself personally, that’s good. I’m glad to meet somebody that does, because I’m tired of these other folks. And you can’t move forward in any direction by yourself for very long. There’s nothing I can do about this, but I can help you do a lot, maybe. But I have to think about it. But while I’m thinking about it, that would give me something, to think about, you know? Because you can run amok thinking, but you can also think yourself out of the problem. So, you send your little emissary any time you want, if you don’t want to be bothered. Interview with Connie Bruce pt 1/p. 122 INT: Or I will come back myself, I mean Boston’s not that far away. CB: Yeah, but you have other things to do. And with all the lead you got, I think you ought to finish those leads up there in Boston before you come back here, because there’s more leads up there, and anything I can tell you about my father is touch and go because it would have happened before 28 for the most part. I only saw my father on occasion after I grew up. We kept in contact, I mean, I would sending cards and like that, but to sit down and have a conversation, you know. And then, you see another thing, when he married I stayed out of it. INT: How would you describe him as a person? Was he talkative? CB: No. INT: Was he stern? CB: No, no. He was a regular guy, but he was hesitant. You would never see him smile, but he got the joke. That’s what I think upset my mother, because my mother’s an emotional person. My father is one of these. And I’m more like that, see. Now once I had to make a presentation to my father after I had done something wrong, he gave me ten dollars to go to the store and buy a winter coat. He had seen them advertised in the paper, ten dollars for a coat. And it was one of those coats on Tremont Street. I don’t know the store that had them at that time. So I went in there and looked at those things and hmm, not ten Interview with Connie Bruce pt 1/p. 123 dollars of my money. And my father sent me in with ten dollars to get one, and I was a good child, I did what I was supposed to be doing, that’s why my mother never paid any attention to me, she knew I was going to do what I was supposed to do. So, I said, well, I don’t know what I’m gonna do, but I’m not gonna pay ten dollars for that. Shoot peas through it, that’s what they used to say the kind that . . . INT: Shoot peas through it? CB: Yeah, it was so thin, you got a winter coat and you could shoot peas through it, that you don’t need. So then I said, well as long as I’m in this store, I’ll just look around and see what they have to do, you know. So I went and I saw the cubicle of your next area to where I was and they had those pal coats, the first time I had seen them, now they call them fake fur or something. When I looked at those coats and I say, whoo, and then here come the sales clerk, white sales clerk, course she didn’t have anything else, but she probably figured I was the maid or somebody getting it for somebody else, and that’s all right, I don’t care what she thought. Anyhow, I was looking, and she says, well what size do you want? I say well I’m just looking. She says, well, you want it for yourself? And I says okay, she want to waste her time. So the upshot of it was, that this coat seemed to me to be worth more than the other coat, but the problem was, this coat I think was fifteen dollars, I knew it was more than the ten, and now I got a problem. So, I said, Interview with Connie Bruce pt 1/p. 124 well, I told her that, I said my father sent me in here to buy, with ten dollars to buy a coat and I said I don’t want to pay ten dollars for those over there. I said if my father doesn’t like this, I can bring it back? She said, oh yes, yes you can bring it right back. So I took this home and I had the brown pal coat and now it had some brown suede like O-shoes they called them in those days, and it had a brown pocket book, I had a little brown outfit, felt hat with appliqués on it. This is depression, now I paid thirty-three cents for a black felt hat with appliqués on it. And I got this coat and so I know enough to wait until the moment is right. My father was sitting there in the room and I went in and displayed what I had, you know, and told him my long tale and I said, he didn’t say anything, just sat and listened to what I am saying, well I was surprised at that, because he could have, just take in on back in. So I take a very deep breath, he hasn’t said anything. I said, may I keep it? And he says certainly. That’s the kind of guy he was. So I nearly fell to the floor. Never showed the first sign of nothing. Just let me talk. But evidently I thought later, I say he’s probably giving me credit for having good sense. He didn’t give me no money, if I wanted to spend my money to add to it, that’s all right with him. He gave me ten dollars, and he evidently thought I’d made a good decision. He never said nothing about it from that day on. And that’s all he said, certainly. Now that’s the kind of man he was. But he read the Interview with Connie Bruce pt 1/p. 125 promise to us every Sunday with gestures and sound effects. I would be sitting on one knee and my sister was sitting on the other knee, and my brother would be around the back, and then when we got old enough to read the comics ourselves, mother said we had to read the comics ourselves first before he gave it. Well, in her house you didn’t read the comics. They had no sense of humor there. But, that was the best thing I can tell you about him. INT: Hard worker? CB: Hm? INT: Hard worker? CB: I would say so. He was apprentice to Charlestown Navy Yard when he was fourteen, and they asked him to retire when he was, well thirty-three years later because they wanted to give the jobs to the younger men, and he was already eligible for retirement, he just hadn’t retired. He didn’t have to. Well, thirty-three years after fourteen, that’s not an old man. INT: No. CB: But, he retired on half pay. And he really beat the system. He was retired on half pay longer than he worked for full pay. And then when World War II came along, they asked him to come back. And he made the mistake of telling me about. And I said, they didn’t want you when you were willing to stay, I said you don’t even have the blisters or anything on your hands, now you haven’t picked up those tools and it would be just your luck Interview with Connie Bruce pt 1/p. 126 to go back there and get hurt the first day you are back there. And earlier on if somebody died on the job, they just laid the body out there and put a bowl on him and you put your change in there and that’s how they buried them. No insurance, no, you know. So I said, I don’t see the point. I said, it’s up to you, but you told me about, I said, I don’t recommend it. I don’t know whether I had anything to do with it or not, but I know he didn’t go back. INT: I know he, I don’t know if he worked directly with him, but the artist Allan Crite? CB: Oh, he and I walked from Cambridge to Trinity Church one time. Did you hear, where did you hear about Allan Crite? INT: Um, well, you know being from Boston, well not being from Boston, but living in Boston and being involved in the Roxbury community, you can’t help but hear about Mr. Crite. CB: Yeah, he went to the same church. Now I’m not sure whether it was a mission church, I rather suspect it was the mission church that I told you about. And this was the young people’s affair. Now, the young people of the diocese, I guess, this is the Episcopal diocese, were having this congregation or something, and he and I because he was a curiosity and I was a pain in the neck, we’re just oddballs, the others went on ahead and he and I walked together because like I say he had his little string tie on and I had my little prissy ways so Allan Crite and I walked from that church to Trinity Church at Copley Interview with Connie Bruce pt 1/p. 127 Square and that’s the last I ever saw of him. I don’t, I think probably on the way back we all split up and had to use the public transportation, I know we didn’t walk back because it would have been around ten o’clock, and we all had to get back home, so I think we split up after that. But, I kept an eye out, I think it was, I don’t know whether somebody told me about it or not, but I know that at one time he was the only one that had both windows of the Old Corner Bookstore. Normally if you had one of those, when there’s only two windows with a door in the middle, he had both of them. And I think that to be big, big, big, and it tickled me to death, I says, I knew him when he was nothing, and nobody paid any attention to him. But he always did black and white. Everything as far as I know that he did was always, what do they call it . . . INT: Pen and ink? CB: Hmm? INT: Pen and ink? CB: No, not that, the uh, the type of thing he did. INT: Oh, um. CB: Oh well. INT: Well, he had a large body of work. CB: Oh yeah, yeah because I’m not sure whether somebody sent me a book about it or not, because that stuff is all, was all in New York. But I know he was the only one ever to have both sides of the Old Corner Bookstore. Interview with Connie Bruce pt 1/p. 128 INT: Um hmm. Well, I’m gonna have to stop here now. CB: Yep, well. I don’t know what eventually happened to him, but I know that I had to try to keep my contacts, know what people are doing, especially people that were, like a said, a little peculiar, a little weird, and I was still doing, with some of these organizations that we tried to help some of these people. We would give them audience, something like that to, and we just missed one of the stars that ended up, we couldn’t touch him with a ten foot pole the next year, somebody had told us about it and we had already had our program and we said, well we had him. . . INT: A program for what organization? CB: Well, this was just a community of people. They got together to give some of these up and coming people an audience. We would, well the minister of church would give the oratorium and we would send out notices to people we thought would be interested, I mean when people want to do something, they just do it. And some of them, and one of them has kept in touch all the time. But, we had to disband because, believe it or not, I think there was only seven women, and we couldn’t get together any one day of the month. There was always somebody missing. We couldn’t change offices, nobody could switch from one thing to another. And we just had to call it quits, because somebody even moved away, and we just couldn’t do it. So, this is how things fall apart because there are not enough people who care enough Interview with Connie Bruce pt 1/p. 129 to give their time. It’s only business people. You have a woman who has a family and she’s organizing the church or companies for her husband or something, and somebody like that is the one that’s going to help you help somebody else. Somebody sitting at home looking at TV they aren’t gonna come downstairs to see what’s going on in their own apartment house. So, this is what happens. That’s why I say you’re already in it, because you are doing the kind of thing that I think people should do, and I’m willing to help you just like I would be wiling to help these other people. Now, how much help I can be, I don’t know, because I’m not able to help myself. But we’ll see. I say, you send your little representative with sufficient identification, now. INT: Well I have a friend who lives close by and she’s a lawyer, and she’s very interested in black history herself, and I think, you know, if, you know, we’ll just see how it works out. CB: Yes, keep in touch, as I said, don’t know what will happen from here, but I think it’s a good start. And like I tell you, you follow those leads and the only thing you have to do for me is let me know what you find out. INT: I will. CB: Because I kept in touch as much as I could. But when all my contacts disappeared, what could I do? INT: That’s the thing I . . . Interview with Connie Bruce pt 1/p. 130 CB: But some of these things I will remember, you see, if it’s a proper condition. INT: Yes. Memories, you know, just sitting around thinking about one thing and all of a sudden . . . CB: That’s the only way it happens, the only way it happens. INT: Well, I’m gonna turn the tape recorder off . . . END OF INTERVIEW +++
2021-04-07T19:52:55.381Z