MSS 179 Robert H. Richards, Jr., Delaware oral history collection, Special Collections, University of Delaware Library, Newark, Delaware

Transcription

1 Citation for this collection: MSS 179 Robert H. Richards, Jr., Delaware oral history collection, Special Collections, University of Delaware Library, Newark, Delaware Contact: Special Collections, University of Delaware Library 181 South College Avenue Newark, DE / (fax) askspecref@winsor.lib.udel.edu Terms governing use and reproduction: Use of materials from this collection beyond the exceptions provided for in the Fair Use and Educational Use clauses of the U.S. Copyright Law may violate federal law. Permission to publish or reproduce is required from the copyright holder. Please contact Special Collections, University of Delaware Library, for questions. askspecref@winsor.lib.udel.edu A note about transcriptions: Of the original 252 audio-recordings in this collection, 212 of these tapes were transcribed around the time of the original recordings (between 1966 and 1978). In 2012, Cabbage Tree Solutions was contracted to create transcriptions for the remaining tapes. Corrections to and clarifications for all transcriptions are welcome, especially for names and places. Please contact Special Collections, University of Delaware Library, for questions. askspecref@winsor.lib.udel.edu

2 Mr. George Wilson [0:00:00] The new story about it, I read about in the newspaper. I was about 15 years old on the day of December when the story was told about the stock market crash and I didn't begin to understand what it meant. This was, I believe, in December of However I think that I experienced in Newark, especially among the Black population, was a little different than in other communities. We had so very little. We've lived so very close to poverty, anyhow, that the effect on us wasn't the same, so as the President, the out flawed, shall we say. We live in what was a perpetual depression and those of us who were lucky enough to have parents who honestly give a damn about us. Really, we were not aware of how poor we were. Mainly because, somehow the kids I don't recall ever comparing my status with white kids, in any way at all. I don't know that what they had was strictly for and what we had was strictly ours. At this stage in my life I didn't question the right or the wrong of it. You would have to imagine a society inside of a greater society, where everybody was exactly the same. In other words you have to imagine a society where a Black with a thousand dollars in his pocket could starve to death in Newark on Main Street, sure, because he couldn't buy any food, if you understand what I mean if you have to spend that money only on Main Street. So this will give you a picture of what it was like on this town. The University was there, this was a white university. No black had even thought about going there. Black parents raised their kids in Newark to go out into the world and make a living. They didn't raise their kids to make a living in Newark. 1

3 And as a consequence, up until very recently, or shortly after, even 10 years after World War II, you had no black leadership, that was an electoral black leadership. Am I giving you what you want to know? Interviewer: [inaudible] [0:04:07] Newark had no, because, I protect my own family. There are 12 kids in that family. And to emphasize what I said, my father made only $25 a week in his life. This is his kind of life. He is a wonderful man. My mother was a wonderful woman. But I tell you I was never hungry in my life. Out of this family came And in spite of the environment where, it was achievement, yes it was until 1929, it was an achievement for a black kid to finish high school. [0:05:00] There was one accredited high school in the state of Delaware that a black kid could go to, up until That was when they had a high school in Wilmington. Interviewer: [inaudible] [0:05:19] Yes, that's why it amuses me, when I read about the terrible things for people to ride buses. It was a terrible for white kids to ride buses, this is what they mean. Back in 1929 we even paid our own way to ride the bus. My brother Roland, now a physician in Fort Wayne, Indiana; my brother Allan is an Orthodontist in Fort Wayne, Indiana, all of them were products of the Delaware school system, Lincoln University and Harvard University in Washington. My sister Mabel is a Supervisor in the Newark City Welfare System. My sister Bessie is there also, works for the same people, a very good job, a professional job. My sister Alice is a Registered Nurse, she's been working in Newark now for 33 years, I guess. 2

4 These people were produced by Newark, but Newark got none of the benefit of what they have to give. Because the society didn't act in encouraging Negroes to stay, it's even too much to encourage them now. I say this to emphasize that those of us that are, specially guys like me. The depression didn't change things too much for me. I can remember Richards Store which was located, which you would know as the record shop that was down on the Fourth, being a railroad, [inaudible] [0:08:19] on one side and Main Street on the other, the store right in the middle there, back of the other store there. This used to be the Richards Grocery Store. In fact Janet, Richards' daughter still owns its building. This man owned a farm north of Newark on 896, widely known as Elbow Lane, in fact, I think some of his, [inaudible] [0:08:53] is still on this ground. This was in He had potatoes. I can remember him coming in town and let it be known that he was going to plough all the potatoes. We would pick them up, every third basket of the potatoes, uncalled, unseparated, you know we pick them us it come, every third basket would be ours. He would haul them in the bare room for this. Every black family in Newark in 1930, 1931, were loaded with potatoes, because that's how he would pay us, he paid with potatoes. [0:10:00] I could remember another time, down where the Ed Pond Garages it's on the lower end. There used to be warehouse there. Richards also owns the cannery that's where the cannery was, where the city of Newark has their garages now, down there. That's where the railroad tracks? This is a horrible place. I can remember cleaning out those warehouses for Mr. Richards and he had given away gallons of the tomato paste to everybody in the black neighbourhood side. Yes, I don't know if I'm talking about the right things or not, but this was what life was like, I can give you those. Second hand clothes, everybody 3

5 wore them, I guess. There was a vulcanized fibre mill over here. A rag mill and they got bundles of the overalls, shirts and tees like this. If you need another pair of pants, you went over to the mill and got a pair. You found a pair; everybody had a job working at the mill. I had somebody in the family that worked at the mill. It was a real sweatshop over there. Everybody was closer to that mill too. They had this sterilized uploader into them, and he had room full of, a pool room or someplace, this guys work at that mill, you'd think that everybody that works in that mill, you'll start to smell in them this darn clothes. These are the sort of things they did. On Ray Street, where there are now some pretty nice houses, right in the intersection of Ray Street and Rose, used to be a City Damp there, and it was an open damp, it wasn't a landfill. And it's funny, now that I look back on it; I wonder how I grew up, seriously. Because I can remember waiting for trucks to come in. that was all rubbish from the stores and places. And as they damped those trucks we would pick through it and get fruit and food and staff out of the trucks. And the big rats that were there on that damp, I guess everybody on this side of town had huge rats running around. We ate what we found and we grew. I know fellows in this area who hunted, went hunting when the season came, not just because it was a good sport, they hunted for food. Small game like rabbits and ground hogs and squirrels and, at this time there weren't any deer in Delaware. I don't think that money was the more important commodity in the society that we as blacks spent them. Because there weren't any nice homes available to us. And white folks justified those by saying, those are Nigers and that is how they want to live. It doesn't matter what they want, there is only one way they permitted you to live. Do you know that up until 1940 in the black neighbourhoods of Newark there wasn't but one and I know every house in town, one house, [0:15:05] 4

6 I remember one, two, three, out of the approximately 150 houses in the black neighbourhoods of Newark. There was probably three houses had bathrooms and less than half of these houses had been connected to the sewer, and I dare to say there wasn't plenty of them that had inside toilets. The rest of them had this bowl, maybe 20 of them had these forestry torch, you know, you sat down on them and the seed operated the water for it, when you got to fluff up, it sprang and would splash in that manner. But we had, everybody had a privy. I don't even remember people having a screen on them because I can remember huge flies that we had to contend with. I really wonder how we grew up. I guess we developed a resistance to these things. But gradually, starting probably with, around 1930, we started having kids graduate from Howard High School, on a regular basis, two, three, four, five, and six people graduated every year. These kids, I think had imparted something to their parents, started making them to want something because this begun to make a change. Interviewer: [inaudible] [0:17:19] I don't think that, as I've said before, everything was sort of a storybook adventure. I can remember, as boys we would go to Atlantic City and seek some work down there. Pushing those chairs, went to work in hotels, and later got jobs working in the summertime, and pokes their nose at the resorts there. We always left Newark for these things. They went to the University of Delaware, down in the kitchen. There were two kitchens at the university and only two. One of them was in Kent Hall at the Women College, the other one was in the Common, at the Kennedy Campus. I heard them, it was a feature and of course they don't know how. The University paid huge wages, it's a kind of very god wages at the time, and they paid $10 a week for the people who work from seven in the morning till seven at night and three meals. But these three meals included left- 5

7 over's. I don't know that my brothers bring home a five gallon can of baked beans that would have been thrown in the garbage. And of course we ate beans until we And a great many black families ate left-over's from the University of Delaware, this aren't staff that they stole, and it's not that this people are stupid, now there a number of tin cans, gallons of cans, they used to come home about two o'clock in the afternoon, they will be home from two until four. [0:19:50] They could become a freak with all, from all the tin can, then whatever food they would have normally thrown away. There were food and they feed their family with, this kind of stigma like it would now. You can't talk to somebody for some left-over's now. I didn't mean that they scrape plates, they didn't do that. But it was left-over's that was in the pots that they would normally throw away. During the depression in Newark, everybody worked at, you see they work for the three meals, plus the vulcanizing and all, The University of Delaware, a few of them worked in the city. When you understand that Negroes were restricted to the dirty, filthy jobs that no white would do, what was as Niger type jobs, except at The University of Delaware, they didn't demean the workers there, they cut grass where they use a hand marsh. The horse-drawn marsh, of course was operated by white people. A lot of them did Janitor works, but not much. These are two works at the university that are skilled above the Negros, more or less a few Negroes got into it. On the city, Negroes were permitted to dig sewers. They dug them by hand, from the waterline. But they were not permitted to drive Trucks. They could have a Negro with a chauffeur's license, and this was up until 1948 when, I made, I personally made sure of it. If they needed someone to drive the one of the City Trucks, and the Negro driver would say "Hey get out of the street, pick up your kids" they didn't care if you 6

8 have a license but if it was going to be Black driving one of those Trucks, and you know, they made a big issue, a big thing of this. As I said before they work at this three places. I can remember the mill shutting down and they will only work for two days. Interview: [inaudible] [0:22:45] We didn't have that many jobs, and the jobs we had were the white folks didn't work. This kind of stigma thing. This was how low down the scale they were. I can remember my brother Roland, the one that's a physician now. He and I took a job unloading a carload of coal for the cannery. It was 700 ton carload of coal. We were coming out of the bucket, I think that's what you call them, underneath, you know, the hoppers, and we got paid $15 for this. And we wheeled that coal for about a hundred yards. These weren't rubber type wheels either. This was iron and we did it through dirt. We put planks down, and it took us three days. And when I say three days, I mean 3-12 hour days. I can remember that this was in the month of August. And it's the season for tomatoes... I never ate so many tomatoes in my life. We ate tomatoes in the morning, noon, and night. We just go open a bag and get a basket of tomatoes and there were cans of it, there were cans of tomatoes down there. But we made this $15, my brother needed this to pay, this was in '31, see he was starting go to Lincoln at that time, and $15 was something he needed back at school. There were no business areas in the Black community, because there weren't any businesses here. [0:25:13] 7

9 It was during the depression that the numbers were first played in Newark. I knew of no way to legalise gambling, could ever replace the number racket and what it did for people. Interviewer: [inaudible] [0:25:42] Well, yes, but it was something special here. Here was people who had never had, none of these people had never as much as $50 in their life, and spend a dime on a number. And as of the other thousand, some of them were paid if they were paid $54 for that dime. As five-four, or five hundred and four, or it was 61 but the rider got six with it, or ten percent. And he would pay a penny on it, in other words, paid penny and get $5 and 40 cents. The number riders were respected by, believe it or not. He was a guy who had enough left to buy an automobile, at this stage in time where you could buy a car, brand new car for about $400, we had him graduated to a heater and a radio and that sort of thing as a piece of standard equipment, back when bumpers were standard equipments then. Do you have a question there? Interviewer: [inaudible] [0:27:17] I don't think that Roosevelt had the same effect that he had on other black community. In the first place, I can remember being raised from the town and there was let me tell you about my father. This is the only area my father and I ever disagreed on anything. My father was an American, a Black America. He was a Methodist, and he was Republican. This wasn't because, this was the terrible thing about this, I just found it out, or maybe it was during the war that I found this out, it was fact that up until 1928, a black couldn't be a Democrat in Delaware. The Democrat Party in Delaware is the white man's party. So my father was an American, Black American, a Methodist, and a Republican. And one of them is as much part of his life as the other. And I 8

10 think he just got about the same of Mount Olive in each of them, because I know of nothing, if progress is concerned, nothing that Republican Party had given to black people in the State of Delaware. I'm speaking about the state from a local standpoint now. Only thing that they fed them was the Abraham Lincoln Legion, and there were times when the blacks rallied and tell Negro jokes. The kind of garbage I heard that they tell off, and give them absolutely nothing, I mean give them nothing. [0:29:54] Roosevelt immediately offered some hope, though. I can remember my brother Raymond and I There were a lot of Black people in Newark at this time that was on welfare. My brother Raymond and I had a deal of a job and we were the first group of people who left Newark to go into the Conservation Corp, did you know all these. And we went to New Jersey spent a couple of weeks there and then we went to, about 20 miles west of Fort Luis, Washington and through the National Forest and help build roads and things like that out there. We got $5 a month for our self and $25 a month to come to our parents. In our own particular case, I guess our position was unique. My father and mother never used their money, unless we specifically gave it to them. And they won't let us give them this money, they saved it for us. But we stayed there for six months and then we came back, whatever it was that we had earned was in the bank waiting for us when we came back. That was a wonderful experience. Can you imagine a couple of guys from a small town like Newark where we, our community then was not representative above the whole City of Newark? The black kids of Newark identified with the total community now. We identified about 700 people which was the black community of Newark. We were the poor men who trained to Washington, and we were the poor men back in the State of Washington. This in itself was a unique experience. 9

11 This was the first time in my life where I was in the position where I could take a bath everyday. Oh, I must tell you about this. White creek had not become polluted then. We will start swimming about middle of April. It was always a game, who's first one to go in. We could start, from the time we went swimming until it got too cold to swim. I guess it was five months. We swam form April until September, and everyday it was warm enough to take a swim, because you took your bath over the creek, you took Irish Soap over there, which you floated, and you dove, and then you come back to the bank and you soap yourself all over and you dove in again, and you would had a bath, because there was no bathroom. Everybody would go on and take their towel with them and someone would their washcloth, and [inaudible] [0:33:43]. You took a bath in the creek, that's how you do it. We did it because it's the only way we could do it. I can gauge how far other towns are in the back of Newark by what their facilities are like; I compared it to what we had then. But you asked me a question about how Roosevelt affected the town. Well, I don't know how it affected the white community because we didn't belong to the white community. I looked on Roosevelt as some sort of God, because he had given me a look at life that, I would never see in any other way. I give him credit for making me want something other than what I had. But the other thing that it did for me was, he made me want it here. I never had any desire to go away and seek my fortune. I want to find it here, and I want to do something in my own town. [0:35:09] But Roosevelt could never get a majority among the Negro vote. The Negro vote belongs to the white people, the white Republicans in this town. Do you know that any black man who voted a Democrat in this town, let it be known that they voted Democratic and they wouldn't have a job after the election, if he had a job. I mean that's a fact, that's an absolute fact. 10

12 In 1940 I expect, out of the possible Well let it me give it to you like this. Before, the re-district they did this, in this area, where White Creek was a district and it was District up until, maybe, eight-ten years ago. Up until about, I'll skip the man's name, that we had, since the World War, we had one Democrat from this district, White Creek that was what it was like until, I can't place his name or where he live in, I may think of it. In this century, White Creek District had elected two Democrats to the legislature. One of them was John Slater. He served one term. And the other one was, I think it was eight or ten years ago, they elected one, just before the re-district thing came about, you know when they split the district all up, and what was responsible for this mostly was the black vote. Up until 1948, they could count, and I use 1948 as a turning point. The Republicans could count the, or rather, the Democrats had overcome roughly, a 300 vote majority, that the Democrats started out with, I mean that the Republicans started out with because every black in this area was bought and paid for by the Republicans for about $2, and this too is a fact. This was why the town was so slow moving. But after 1948, after the boys came back from the service, after the boys were saying how other people had lived in these things. This one of the rare things, I don't believe that the Democrats had ever bought a vote in Newark. There are people who belong to my father's generation who were still alive. This was done so openly. They actually believe that being paid to vote was a part of the election. That's there's a pay connected with it, and you can't convince them that there is not. They think they're being cheated when they're not paid. And this is something that was put into this community, not by the Democrats but by the Republicans. So when you ask me about Roosevelt's impact on this, he didn't have much, in fact, everything that he gave them, for instance, let's start with FHA. The FHA is probably the oldest housing thing agency that we have. The FHA is more to perpetuate and build segregated communities. They wouldn't even lend money, the FHA would even lend money to blacks in a black neighbourhood. You couldn't borrow money from this people, 11

13 you can never guarantee a loan, even if they do, you'd find isolated cases where guys got a loan from them, no. The effect on community such as, I mean the black community. Even Roosevelt didn't break through, never made too much of an impact. Some of those, like little things that did, manage to come through to us. [0:39:56] But you're looking at a community that up until 1956 or 1957 before there was even more on white coloured workers in the black community in Newark, outside of the three school teachers we had down here. And we don't have a whole lot. Of course now, this town had gone from this This is probably more of a liberal town in the State now. Newark was bankrupt so far as black in electoral leadership was concerned, up until then. I have downstairs, open letters that I wrote to the faithful leaders in this town back in 1951 and if you like to read it I can give you copies, hold this for the time being. On the years that followed, the political leadership in this community had been so accustomed to use a couple of bucks in buying out black leadership that this was the only thing that they ever offered. Back in 1948 certain of us from the service got together and with on aim and that was to repudiate the black political leadership in the area. We did for the first time in this area, in this district, turned out a respectable number of black voters who refused to accept any fee for their votes of any kind. This was progress, real progress. In 1951 I was approached by one of the leaders and wanted me to take over the political leadership for the reason of a white man appointed leadership. I wrote him a letter in which I told him that I was flattered but that I was raised in a comfortable way in this aera and if he had sworn me immediately, and this was graduated from, because both of us were going to sandwich, that they would be permitted to work in his mill, he was the vice president of the National Vulcanized Fibre company, at whatever their education qualified them to do. He could be assured of my support in whatever political adventure he wanted to be involved in. 12

14 do you know that he wouldn't give me this insurance? Because blacks were only supposed to pull boulders and this was as late as And this was all the insurance I wanted from him. That if my son is a college graduate and wanted to work in Newark, he would be able to work here as a white colour worker. So when you asked me about the impact of Roosevelt on this area, not very much, if you understand what I mean. Interviewer: [inaudible] [0:44:07] Interviewer: There was never enough of an impact for this people to vote for him. They didn't connect. You must understand about what I'm trying to say about this. A vote was just something you get paid for doing and you did it for the Republicans and that was all there was to it, not me, but this was the way it was done in this town, believe me. [inaudible] [0:44:46] and now I'm talking to you and you have a completely different story. Well, I don't know about them but I'm giving it to you as I see it young fellow. [0:45:07] You wonder why a person, so ready to fight with somebody that says Niger to them. Only a black man can define the term Niger. And just to define it, to just say they were something less than a man is such a dehumanizing thing. White people doesn't even regard us as people. And this is the thing that bothers you. You hear that everytime we made a step towards getting out of what we were, we had no help in this town. In fact obstacles were placed in the way in order to stop us from having things that didn't affect the white man in one way at all. And they always say that "What is it that you want". And the only thing that we wanted was to be treated like people. I don't want to stay on this crap so let's go into something else. What other questions do you have? 13

15 Interviewer: [inaudible] [0:46:46] Interviewer: Oh let's hear it anyhow. [inaudible] [0:46:51] In the black community was there much cooperation, much help? Yes. It was sort of a Actually we live in communes, ours was a commune. If somebody, like in a funeral, if someone died, you have to be in good terms or certain things that you did for these people. I can remember, this particular one where the mourners didn't have suit. What I did was find somebody around who did have a suit so he could dress up and go to the funeral. Food, everybody just took some food there, you understand what I'm saying here? Somebody got sick, everybody helped. I don't know, they fought and they killed one another, but nobody went hungry in this town, not one ever rally went hungry, maybe I'm wrong, maybe I'm living somehow in this crazy dream world. Do you know that I was grown man before the pilgrims landing and all these staff, about Thanksgiving Day had any significance to me? Thanksgiving Day were hog killing day. Everybody had a pig, raised a pig in their backyard. Imagine what it smells like in summertime in black community. Everybody killed them on Thanksgiving Day. They dress their pork and I don't know if money changed these men, I never knew it. They did it together. I don't know how it worked out, I know I used to help as a kid, you know. Help chase the pig, help throw the pig while somebody struck it, sure. Interviewer: [inaudible] [0:49:35] 14

16 I was always something of a dreamer. I never saw a bad thing. Somebody will actually have to draw me a picture. I can remember as a kid, an exciting afternoon for me, I think the fare at Wilmington was for three cents, I'm not sure, on the train. [0:50:04] I would go to the BNR station around noon and catch a train to Wilmington. And I'd walk from BNR station in Wilmington, all the way over on the east side of Wilmington, which was, I guess, two to three miles until I find a black drugstore with a soda fountain, where I can buy an ice cream soda, because you can't buy one Newark, and I'd buy an ice cream soda, and I'd turn around and I'd walk back to the station and I'd sit around there until the train came that will stop in Newark, and come back in Newark. And that was a Sunday afternoon. There was one theatre in the entire State that black kids could go to and that was the National Theatre in Wilmington. I can remember I had an old model T truck to haul the garbage and rubbish in and I used to load the kids up in that truck and take them into Wilmington to see the movies. This cost 15 cents to get in there. I have gone to a theatre in Newark, even to this date, twice in my life, because this represents something to me I guess. But you know that when they got ready to have movies on Sunday and they held a plebiscite or whatever you call it to decide whether to get to it. Blacks weren't even allowed to sit in the balcony, they didn't have any crew and ask there, they just don't sell ticket and say blacks don't go to movies here. But do you know that the guy that operated the theatre come up in mass for blacks to support the Sunday movies for him, and they had a vote on it. And I would say "Sure, I wouldn't do this sir, not if I' going to work for it, but why not let us sit on the balcony". And he just wouldn't do this. But he did ask us to support the Sunday movies. Now that's the sort of what I tell that they even didn't regard us as people. 15

17 If it weren't because of, they would never have opened that place. But he had the guts to come up here and say "No, you can't go to my theatre". But we voted to so that white folks could go to it on Sunday. That's how much respect they didn't have for us. Interviewer: [inaudible] [0:52:55] Oh well, I guess you saw very late movies. They appealed to the children, you know, the pseudo maps and that sort of thing. The man had no competition, remember? After I was married and had an automobile, well in fact, even before that, before I got car. I can remember that on a Sunday... Even the rest of them couldn't deal with it either. My wife and my little boy and I would go to Wilmington on the bus, or maybe, I've always had a truck of some kind, we would go up in a truck and park it at the Wilson Line Boatyard. It used to take two and a half hours for a boat to go to Philadelphia and only cost you 15 cents to go, 25 cents for a round trip. And we'd go to Philadelphia on a boat, we'd get there at about 12:30 in the afternoon. We would get off, and it would cost a nickel to ride a trolley. We ride a trolley up on Market Street, go to a movie, and then come back on a boat in the afternoon after having eaten dinner in a restaurant, and this was a day's outing for us. Incidentally, I was married in the height of the depression; I was married on the 16th of December [0:55:00] I rented a house, five rooms and the bath about a whole 50 feet back out in the backyard, a privy, running water though, we had a tap in the kitchen. And also running rats and roaches. There were five rooms as I recall, $10 a month. On the day that I was married, I completely furnished that entire house for $13. I went to an auction sale and bought furniture, to furnish the entire house. Now it wasn't some fancy furniture but it was good, strong furniture, clean furniture. 16

18 Nobody had any money where you could buy a three piece living room suite; I think I paid something like about $4 on a three piece living room suite. And I had a nice bed freeze room and a nice bureau freeze room. I can remember though that you couldn't heat that house save your neck. You would actually stand right over the top of it on the cold dead, that was just an extremely cold winter, the winter of '34, Used to stand right over the top of that stove, the stove red hot you can see your breath. You would be warm down here and freezing up here. And that was just a cold place. I can remember that winter; we struggled through that winter somehow. And then in March, I felt a little guilty, my wife was about 16 years old, I was 19. By this time she was pregnant. I hadn't given her very much, I thought. I went hunting for a job; it was the only time in my life that I ever did this, because I always work for myself. While in Wilmington, I went past a place on Washington Street, I don't know Wilmington very well, Delaware Emergency Relief Administration, it was the name of it. I went in this place, while I was there these people gave me a pair of brand new bib overalls and a coat, and if I'm not mistaken, big piece of frozen beef. When I sat down I gave this information that they wanted. This was in the morning I think, because when I got home, it was afternoon. But by the time I got home, there was a ton of coal in my yard, a lady had been there to see my wife, and left her a check for $3 to use some groceries. Now, we hadn't gotten hungry yet. I have been honest with you, I guess we stayed this way for maybe two months, where they gave us $3 a month, and it gave my wife some new clothes and gave me some work clothes and what not. A $3 a week is what they have been giving us, we would buy a lot of food with this money. 17

19 The Mayor of Newark was the Director of the State, Mayor Collins. He called me into his house one day; The University bought the building that he used to live in. And he called me up into his house one day and said "George I have known you a long while, this relief thing isn't for you, you can make it without this." And then he cut me off, sombrely, he cut me off from it. And I never bothered with him from that day till this. But I was put on without asking to go on and taken off without asking to come off. [1:00:03] End of Audio 18