Description:
Kimberly Francisco talks about life in Northeast Oklahoma City.
Transcript:
Venita Johnson (VJ):
May I get you first to state your name and spell it?
Kimberly Francisco (KF):
Yes, Kimberly Francisco, K-I-M-B-E-R-L-Y F-R-A-N-C-I-S-C-O
VJ:
Excellent, when and where were you born?
KF:
I was born here in Oklahoma City at Saint Anthony in March of 1960
VJ:
Oh Saint Anthony?
KF:
Yes
VJ:
All right awesome. Do you know what brought your family to Oklahoma?
KF:
I don’t know specifically what brought my father’s family. I know that both of my parents were
born in Oklahoma. My father would’ve been born on a small reservation outside of El Reno in
Oklahoma, and my mother would’ve been born here in Oklahoma City. I know that her
grandmother and three siblings all moved from the Louisiana, East Texas area. Their mother
and grandmother had both been born into slavery. They were then sharecroppers, and as often
would happen the brother came here first looking for employment and got a good job in
Packingtown. He was kind of a larger man, and then the sisters followed. My great
grandmother’s youngest sibling, who lived with us, she lived independently until she was one
hundred years old, right here at the corner of Northeast 4th and High- 505 North High. She
moved in with us for two years, but she liked to go riding on sunday. She called it her Sunday
Ride, and she would talk about picking cotton along the North Canadian River when you know it
was just fields and fields of cotton. That’s what they did. So it was certainly around, I’m sure,
opportunity and employment. My father’s family settled in and around the Seminole in Lima-
Lima, Oklahoma
VJ
What is the most memorable places somewhere in Northeast Oklahoma City on the Northeast
side that’s most memorable for you?
KF:
Most memorable? I have such fond memories of this neighborhood because I had from this
structure- this school - a block and a half south I had one grandmother at 505 North High, and
one block west at 6th and Kelly where my other great grandmother lived. So this is kind of
where my story began and then my education actually began here in this building. Headstart
was a summer program. That first summer once President Johnson began the war on poverty
and one of the initiatives was this preschool initiative called Head Start, so the initial inaugural
year- the summer of ‘65- there was a summer program. So I was in Head Start in this building,
and then I began kindergarten that fall. So even now it can elicit those smells, and I have fond
memories of that kindergarten classroom, first grade classroom, also then I think tied to that is
just the memory of what happened around urban renewal, not fully understanding that at age
seven.
VJ:
What do you mean?
KF:
Well the displacement of my family. They’re losing their homes. The irony of it is that this
neighborhood was so rich, and there were so many homes and families, and it’s where you
interfaced, and you played, and went to church, and you know everything took place here, and
then there’s this program that comes along called Urban Renewal. I can just remember the
conversations. The adults with the hushed conversations at dining room tables, knowing that
this was pretty significant, and not even making the correlation that we were having to move, or
they were having to move. And so my great grandmother who lived at Sixth and Kelly lost her
home with Urban Renewal, and then my grandmother who lived at 4th and High watched all of
her neighbors lose their homes, and she was one of two homes left standing on that block,
which then further isolated her, so this isolation that occured. You know I know that my
grandmother, Veronica Star, who ended up buying property in what is now the larger health and
sciences center in the Lincoln Terrace area. She didn’t live but eighteen months, two years,
post urban renewal and it had been this extremely, vibrant, active…
VJ:
She’s the one that went from sixth and Kelly?
KF:
Yes, and then she bought property at about sixteenth and Kelly. She ended up working with her
son, and they figured out “if we buy those duplexes..”. Remember those Duplexes?
VJ:
Yes!
KF:
So now the V.A parking lot has taken that land as well. But she bought three duplexes, and she
lived on one side of one, and the idea was that she would generate income. Her house on sixth
and kelly was HUGE and it had duplexes in its backyard. So she’d always been a property
owner, had always had rental properties, they had land at an Edward’s edition. I don’t know if
she could ever reconcile moving from that large house that she and her husband worked so
hard for to one side of a duplex, even though she owned it, and could rent the other side. And
there were primarily medical students at the time. But anyway, so many memories here. I had
family who attended church at East Sixth Street. That’s where my husband and I still attend:
East Sixth Street Christian Church. It’s still there at Sixth Street and Everest, walking that one
block to Butler’s BBQ, using that Sunday school money when you weren’t supposed to.
VJ:
Where was Butler’s?
KF:
I’ll have to get my directions. Butler’s sat just on the east side of the school, and that would be
Stonewall? So about fifth and Stonewall? So much lost, like I said: the isolation that occured,
with one great grandmother’s home still standing but none of her neighbors.
VJ:
So Butler’s was open on Sunday?
KF:
Well you would use your, I should say [laughs], you got your sunday school money on saturday
because you had to go to choir practice on Saturday, and depending on which parent or aunt
was doling out the funds, that’s kinda how it worked in our household. The idea was that you
were to keep it, and then have it for Sunday School the next morning because so often we went
to Sunday school but because of parent’s work schedules, maybe they joined you for eleven
o’clock service. The idea was certainly built around trust, but you always had an older cousin
who had a better plan. You know how you could take those quarters and parler that and maybe
we win it this way we can get one winner sucker, and if it’s a winner we can maybe get two
more [laughs]. Yes, yes… lots of fun memories. You know Mrs. Smith’s candy store that sat on
fifth street. So you played hard at Washington Park, there was an olympic size pool there, as
well as a wading pool. So you spent your days at Washington Park, and then you spent your
pennies at Mrs. Smith’s. She had snow cones, candy, and cookies.
I think about the porch sitting. I did lots of porch sitting with my great grandmothers. But the folk
who’d walk past your house, you know your home, you saw your school teachers. They lived
here in your community. You saw your pastor at your church, your Sunday school teacher. I
can still remember Judge Alexander walking the dogs down High Street. He had two
dobermans. You know the fact that he’s a municipal judge, but the fact that he lived here in our
community, and his wife taught P.E at Douglas. So you had all these connections, and so if you
had been let’s say disruptive in school or not on your best behavior at choir or practice or
sunday school, it wasn’t this disjointed conversation with your family. It happened rather
naturally as they were passing by. You know and it would be that reminder: “we’re not gonna
have any more difficulty are we?” So and so in the presence of the adult.
VJ:
Well fun, fun!
KF:
So lots of memories… lots of memories in this neighborhood. My parents first home sat where
what is now the clock tower and the health sciences center. So they lived at 1101 N Stonewall,
so we lived on Stonewall which is now the clock tower that’s there. So I can remember when
the Health Sciences Center was old Main- just university hospital. So on Stonewall were these
beautiful two story homes that faced the boulevard and had beautiful upper and lower porches.
VJ:
Are there any other smells, sounds, smells, or sounds that you associate with north east
Oklahoma City?
KF:
You know’... I never thought of associating it with another… it’s bittersweet at times because I
do have such clear memories of what the community was and what it represented. I probably
more so as an adult have been able to look at what was happening at that time. What was
happening in 1967, what was happening in 1968, and the impact it was having on this seven,
eight year olds life. But also the peace around integration and busing, and the future impacts.
We had urban renewal and the disruption of a community, and the splintering of families.
People having to relocate and move, and thinking about what the community represented? And
so far as what businesses we had, how we took care of our own. Not so much because that was
the plan, but it’s what was the law of the land: separate but equal. So we had to have our own
physicians, and dry cleaners, or laundromats, or whatever it may have been… restaurants.
VJ:
So they were here?
KF:
They were all here. My parent’s first home was there at 11th and Stonewall. They then in the
summer of 63 bought a home at 20th and Prospect. I can remember lots of conversations
about me being the first black child on the block. We were the third African American family but
the first black child. I had a buddy across the street, Michael, and we would ride trikes back and
forth, back and forth. I can remember this one day when he wasn’t allowed to ride over to our
house anymore. You know it was a child’s mind, four or five, but hint: their family moving. And
then watching that neighborhood turn from being this predominantly white neighborhood to
being a predominantly black neighborhood, and I don’t know if that was urban renewal or not. I
don’t know if you can visualize where Pitts Park sits, but those were all homes when we first
moved there. It’s between 20th to almost sixteenth. You know Prospect to what Kate or Bat on
the other section line? But it felt like even at that point we remember this being very much being
like another Urban Renewal because I can watch it from my front porch… literally the houses.
VJ:
So that year was?
KF:
Like I said my parents would have bought that home in 63. Urban renewal and that
displacement was occuring like 68 to 69, so this would have been in the 70’s probably when
Pitt’s Park was being constructed. But again, you know the Urban Renewal meant the shifting
of schools for me. After school I would walk to either great grandmother’s home, so when that
displacement occurred I changed schools. So I left Carter Jean Woodson, which was this
school, and then moved to Culbertson.
VJ:
Over on 13th?
KF:
Exactly, and then my great grandmother had bought the duplexes on 16th and Kelly, so that’s
where I would go after school, and then she passed the summer of 70. I can recall those
conversations hearing my mother and her father talk and them fully feeling as if she died of a
broken heart from losing what she… you know… even though she saw that she was able to buy
something with that but it wasn’t by choice. She had no desire at that point in her life to be
moving you know. That’s where her gardens were. That’s where her roses were, her hollyhock
she had moved from Texas. So it was a lot of loss.
VJ:
So were they flower gardens or?
KF:
They were flower gardens, and she had vegetable gardens, and the land they had in Edward’s
Edition was a huuuge garden. So my great grandfather, that’s where he would seek refuge
during the weekend. He had also worked in Packingtown, but on the weekend’s he would go to
Edward’s Edition, and they had a small structure there. My goodness he had the meanest
geese. I once got nipped by the geese. He had a pig. They grew the best collards and
tomatoes and onions. And I laugh all the time, so my after school snack was hilarious at that
Great Grandmother’s house, it was: collard greens, fried chicken, hot water cornbread, and corn
pudding [laughs]. That was quite an after school snack wasn’t it? But just recalling you know
those special weekends and going out there to spend the night in the house. I’m sure there was
electricity but my great grandfather just didn’t trust it or believe in it, so you went to bed when
the sun went down and you were up when the sun came up. It would be quite the experience.
And I can remember him just always being frustrated not with the geese but with me [laughs], so
I was agitating the geese. The geese were geese. The geese were gonna do what the geese
were gonna do.
VJ:
So did he have an outhouse? Did he have indoor plumbing?
KF:
Ya there was indoor plumbing. I can still visualize where… I don’t know if you’re familiar with
Edward’s Edition at all but there was Mr. [Vicker’s] grocer right there at 16th? So his land would
have been just a little further South East of that, and it was just rich soil and I don't know that
probably now it wasn’t that geographically far, but it was in that day and time because I’m sure
he was either going out there by the street car, by the bus because they wouldn’t have had a
vehicle. He wouldn’t have been driving but it must have felt like he was just able to leave the
big city behind and that’s where he was most comfortable.
VJ:
So that seems remote?
KF:
Yah it did seem very remote
VJ:
And that’s over by where Edward’s park now?
KF:
It still is. That’s the same neighborhood: Edward’s edition
VJ:
So what would you say has changed the most about North East Oklahoma City? What streets,
what neighborhoods, other than those that you’ve already mentioned?
KF:
Well again when I have looked at Urban Renewal and what the intent of it was at the national
level I think most tell that we weren’t even an old enough city to benefit from this level of
renewal. The idea was that you were going into structurally blighted or communities that were
in need of some renewal. So we weren’t even fully old enough, and when you think about the
structures that were lost and you think about what was constructed then the intent wasn’t
around the embetterment of a community it was around the imminent domain of land. The
expansion of the health and sciences center, the expansion of Lincoln Boulevard, broadway
extension, the on-ramp now that you take when you’re traveling south of Lincoln Blvd. to get
onto the Broadway Extension, that took my church. That’s where Tabernacle Baptist Church
sat, that took the Y where I studied ballet as a little girl, that decimated that part of Deep Deuce
that also then drew attention to that area and the continued sort of… I don’t know… I think of
second street in particular, that’s where my pediatricians office was. That’s where the drug
store was. 3rd and buyers that’s where my Church sat and the pastor’s parish is right there. All
of these landmarks I can’t show my children or grandchildren. I can take them onto the on ramp
of 235 and say right about here would’ve been the steps and right about here is where I was
being baptized. I watched Shirely Darrel and the number of years that she had mourned the
losses and the continued retraumitization of her family’s home which would’ve sat in the
fairgrounds which wouldn’t have gone with the first round of urban renewal but then her father
which was land that he eventually owned was around that same on ramp and now where very
expensive townhomes and condos sit would have been land that her family owned. And
because she was demanding fair market value for said land, she had to sue, and she wasn’t
successful and the land was still taken. What she kept saying was “I see what you intend to do
with it building these condos, why can’t my children and I do such?” It begins to again feel as if
what is done to us and not what is done with us… but also not being naive and knowing that
decisions were made about this community there were folk who looked like me and lived in
those communities who were at those tables and so we’ll never know why certain blocks or
tracts were targeted and others weren’t. And then how long the land has set fallow. The
renovation of this particular building I see is a complete resurgence of activity in this area. I
worry that the gentrification we see occuring with the new structures and the beautiful buildings
and the homes that are being built will this community be able to afford to live there? You see
that happening… it isn’t a new story… it’s a script that… hell anyone can pull up and that urban
setting in any city and see that too. I think we lost so much around integration and I don't know
if that’s around what happens when you’ve internalized so much and you start to believe those
aspects of internalization and internalized depression. You see it so often in communities of
color and that retraumatization, and so what we had in communities around segregation was
survival. We had to, we had to have our physicians and our own attorneys. You had to be able
to construct your own home, whatever it was. Redlining laws that restricted us, Jim Crow laws,
the litany, and so how much you’re swallowing and internalizing and that whole idea of separate
but equal. And how it must have felt… when those opportunities are opened up, and if you’ve
swallowed that and begun to believe that internalization that you are less than then all of the
sudden when someone says “oh so today you can eat at this restaurant, and you don’t have to
own to eat at that location” then how a community with reckless abandon leaves its own. So my
father’s family owned a dry cleaning business, we had a cleaners on second street. We had a
cleaners on eight street, and we moved our cleaners at about twelfth and Lotty. I can remember
the last location was when we moved to the 23rd and Martin Luther King
VJ:
What was the name of that?
KF:
[Stadum’s Son’s Cleaners?]
But I can remember that so often cleaners were kind of what barber shops were our in
community. My uncle and all of his buddies would sit all day sort of in the foyer right there in the
front of the cleaners and solve all of the world’s problems. I can remember him talking about
friends and associates who would come to still socialize but who always brought his family
clothes to him and his father and his brothers. But when opportunities, you know like I said, as
integration allowed those opportunities, they would still come to socialize but they wouldn’t bring
their clothes. They wouldn’t use the business. And so there’s that aspect of internalization
where you… My grandmother and her sister would always say “you’re thirsty for so long, that
when someone comes along with a glass of water it just looks like the best tall drink of water
you’ve ever had.” And is that what happened? If as we begin to have opportunity where we get
moved into park estates, into Forest Park and into WileWood. As we could then shop at Penn
Square or Shepard Mall. We could go into the bathroom and change your child’s diaper if you
needed to and didn’t have to try and figure that out on the street or in a stroller or on your lap.
You know? Or those opportunities what comes first of leaving your own and just that desire? I
don’t know. Or is that part of the design? I think that’s what frightens me the most. Is that part
of some further design for the further decline of your community. Then as the community
begins to self medicate and what… that takes on and how that looks. The further vilifying of the
community, that it isn’t safe, or that it isn’t “worthy”, that it isn’t a desirable place, and so then
our community does what? We buy into that and we continue to buy further and further North,
and West, right? Away from that center. And I always think that as we’re moving further and
further North and West I say “do you ever realize folk are making a u-turn?” The folk that we’re
chasin to live in their communities. They’re coming back. They’re giving up the commute
because they realize I can live right here and walk, take a bus, ride my bike. I don’t know. It’s
very intriguing all of it, and the intersectionality of what occurs around privilege, racism, and the
internalization of oppression. And just the… mind screw [laughs]
VJ:
So you have very vivid and clear memories of what the community was and how it is now. Do
you see that as more as a gradual process, or do you see certain periods of leaps?
KF:
You know… it’s interesting when I think about the progression from Urban Renewal from 1972,
Oklahoma City Public Schools comes under federal court order to desegregate. We’ve been
toying with, and trying different plans for minorities to open doors. All those plans to
desegregate our schools. Judge Luther Bohanan’s judgement, with him coming down and
saying “you will desegregate or the federal government comes in and does it for you”. Then we
implement the finger plan, and when you look at the finger plan, the finger plan was a further
decimation of the community because essentially it was born on the backs of children of color.
It stated that kindergarten children would go to their neighborhood kindergarten, but first and
forth grade that same child would then be bussed out of their neighborhood to create a diverse
environment in a neighborhood that isn’t theirs. And then in fifth grade will bring them back to
their neighborhood schools. And all of our elementary school’s were titled “fifth year centers”,
so they held neighborhood children for K and then returned them for fifth. And then fifth grade
you also then bussed in children of the dominant culture because that was going to be their
first.. But then kindergarten through fourth those children still attended their neighborhood
schools. So was it a head start for them to figure out what to do for fifth grade or for middle
school? You see the rise of certain private schools. I don’t know, when I look back on it… it
did probably feel like at that time it was happening very slowly. But was that all part of it? Was
that a further part of the design? And then we come around full circle and we see the chartering
of schools, and even the construction of this amazing school downtown with John Rex. And so
is that school constructed for families who may return to this community, or are going to return?
And who are those families? I don’t know… again you watch that further and further
progression north, north, north. We made a conscious decision, my partner and I, to return to
northeast Oklahoma City and to live in his grandparent’s home. The home that they would’ve
bought post urban renewal because this is my home, and this is where I feel that I can have the
most impact, and speak to what needs to happen if I’m living it, and not just sort of studying it
from afar. We often hear people speak of “it’s my work, it’s my work” around issues of equity or
inclusion and diversity, that’s their piece of work. I don’t see it as my work. This is my life. I
don’t get to choose whether I work on it or not.
VJ:
Is there a specific building or business you most wish still existed in northeast Oklahoma City?
KF:
I would probably have to say our church rebuilt. So it now stands at 36th and Martin Luther
King, but certainly, it was so… those stained glass windows and the tabernacle, and that
massive flight of stairs that you would walk up. It was so beautiful with the wood, and then just
knowing my great-grandmother and her friends, and their mothers, and their friends, and how
these people would have been maids, butlers, and chauffeurs. How they had such pride in this
edifice that they had built, right? They had put in, and the mortgage burning. It felt like such
another loss losing the church after seeing home after home that’s so and so’s house. All the
places gone, so yah… I think that would be… I would love to drive my children past that or still
be worshipping in the old tabernacle. It was hard when I’m talking with my children, but then to
visualize this community or homes, vehicles, and folk, and children playing in Washington Park,
and that amazing pool, and the wading pool that was there. The businesses along fourth street:
Mathew’s filling station, that sat right there at the corner right next to us. That was the wall that
was essentially in our backyard. Oh my goodness the antics that we got into at the gas station,
but on around the corner. My great grandmother and her two sisters. Like I said her brother
worked in Packingtown. They came here, and they were proficient at picking cotton because
that’s what they did as sharecroppers in Louisiana and East Texas. So they picked cotton along
the North Canadian River, saved their money and opened up a restaurant: Maud’s Cafe. That
was there on Fourth Street, so all of those businesses that you could pick and choose. My
mother talked about when she’d save her pennies and all the kids would want to go to the store
and buy penny candy, and she would want to go to the store and buy a hunk of cheese and
salami [laughs]. So her tastes always ran a little differently, but you know that cafe is where the
community came before they went off to work, and that’s where my mother would go and have
her breakfast, before she would then walk to this building which was then Douglas, right? She
went to elementary school at [Eminen?] Page, so even the combining of the name when that
occurred, the history around who Carter G. Woodson is in our community and what it means in
the African American community- who Eminen Page was in this community, and then the district
combining the name and so did we lose something? Did kids really know when they were
attending Page Woodson who Eminen Page was and who Carter. G. Woodson was. We
started very morning singing the school song. I will not sing that for you today [laughs], but I still
can. I still recall it because that’s just how you began every single morning here. I don’t have a
singing voice. [laughs]
VJ:
What are the lyrics?
KF:
It’s “Carter G Woodson, the name we love so dear, we try to uphold it throughout the upcoming
year. A banner high up to the sky, we will always try to be the kind of boys and girls he would
have us to be.”
VJ:
That is so powerful…. Okay, what are some of the places that have remained the same?
KF:
Well I think about my husband’s church East Sixth Street Christian Church at North East Sixth
and Everest. That church has immense history. It began literally as a brush harbor in
Sandtown. And at that particular time, you could only cross the river, and how they had to cross
the river from Sandtown to get in across the North Canadian River was treacherous. These
seven sisters came together and started a little congregation in the brush harbor there for folk
who had settled in Sandtown. It’s also my father’s family, backtracking, like I said they had
settled in Lima, and when they moved to the city that’s where they settled in Sandtown. They
had a little ice cream burger stand in sandtown. And eventually when they moved to Oklahoma
City they too lived near my great grandmother in that sixth and Kelly area, but anyway I digress.
But that building still stands- East Sixth Street. It’s a stone building and it literally was erected
from a pile of stones. Folk would just put in their money and they’d keep buying stones until
they had enough to build the building.
VJ:
Wow…
KF:
Yes it’s a pretty powerful story. This building, the fact that it’s still standing, that it has now
been renovated, and I had my first speaking part ever on this very stage in kindergarten. I often
would bring my children here and snap pictures when it was boarded up and in such slow, slow
decline, but I’m so grateful that… but you know the health sciences center has continued to
grow and encroach. There are few homes that are still in the area that have been here in the
area since my childhood. I think when the neighborhood on the East side of Lincoln Boulevard
when Lincoln Boulevard was expanded, and I think all of those homes- can you remember that?
I think it was called Walnut Grove.
VJ:
I can remember that
KF:
Ya… I think that area was a great roasted chicken spot. My parents used to frequent, but ya-
“Burger Brother’s. I even think about some of the meat counters that my mother would visit and
grocery stores, and I often would wonder, because she would often talk about that relationship
from her grandmother, and if those were places that would allow folk of color to patronize in. I
don’t know, I often wondered why she would drive there to that location, and knew those folk
well, and they knew her and remembered her. I never got that piece of the story, but certainly
remember. And now, not to say what is here now with Dean McGee, and the Harold Hampton,
and the Cancer Institute, that that progress wasn’t needed and that we didn’t need the Health
Sciences Center. I don’t think anyone is saying that, but with the… but were the powers that be
really forthright and honest with the community about what that intent was, as they were taking
that land? For so long with the redline we couldn’t even buy land across eighth street, and then
we could, and then it’s taken. Culbertson that school is no longer in existence now, one of the
health science centers. You’ve seen the further encroachment of the VA, going north with the
parking garage. Not saying the parking garage wasn’t needed, but I can recall the night driving
down Kelly, like I said my great grandmother buying that property, staying in my family for a
period of time, the property was eventually sold by her son after my mother passed, but driving
down Kelly and seeing that the entire block was gone again. It felt like a retraumatization. The
entire two blocks and they’re gone, and now it’s a larger parking garage for the VA.
VJ:
So what other schools did you go to?
KF:
So elementary schools in oklahoma city? I started my education here at Carter G Woodson and
went to Culbertson elementary until my great grandmother passed, had to then make the
transfer after she died, my mother was an Oklahoma City Public School school nurse, so they
travelled I don’t know if you remember that, so she was at Garden Oaks. So I ended my
elementary education at Garden Oaks sixth grade, and then we came under court order to
desegregate. So middle school I was bussed south to Capitol Hill Middle School. I would’ve
walked to what would have been John F. Kennedy. I think its now titled Moon, and then
would’ve walked to Douglas, where all my family had gone.
VJ:
So Jr high from Capitol Hill, where did you go to highschool?
KF:
Junior high I would’ve been bussed to SouthEast highschool, but my mother had other plans.
She had grown very frustrated at that point with what was happening in public school. And
when I talk with her later, you didn’t get a say in it [laughs], this is where you are going, so I
went to private school at that point. High School was a private highschool, but that was an
interesting time. I think about that particular school; kids who were there probably being sent
there so they wouldn’t have to be bussed to be around children like me. My mother sending me
sort of to the beast of the belly, but her intent was your education, and it’s really imperative that
you be prepared to go to college, if that’s what you want. That’s what I want for you. I can
remember her saying “I don’t trust fully that the system as it's being constructed, as it’s being
laid out now, that you’re going to get fully what you need, if I send you where the district is
saying I’m supposed to send you.” She took quite a bit of grief for that. It was a...she took quite
a bit of grief for that in making that decision.
VJ:
Professionally?
KF:
I’m sure it was professionally. She was an employee of Oklahoma City Public Schools you
know? I don’t know that her frustrations were anymore than anyone else’s, but certainly in the
community because the school she had made a decision which wasn’t necessarily her first
choice, but it’s where she could get me in was a school that could easily be termed “a school
that emerged around white flight.”
VJ:
Is there anybody you would suggest that we could interview for this process?
KF:
I know that my husband and I are talking with our grandchildren, but he has such a powerful
story around this community, and certainly how Urban Renewal and what was occuring, and his
grandparents losing their home, it informed his career, and where he is now, and why he is in…
and why he studied what he did study at the University of Oklahoma. And why he moved into
the career that he’s in, and trying to better understand how urban planning occurs.
VJ:
Okay, Okay, thank you so much. Is there anything else that you would like to talk about or that
we didn’t cover? Any questions you would like to ask?
KF:
No this was good. There’s so much that it makes me smile to think that you’re capturing this. I
would have loved to try and coordinate some things. I still have some friends who I started
Head Start with, and it would be cool to get involved with in here to talk about starting school
and what that looked like. But again, what I was sharing with Vanessa and Gena, what you’re
doing here is also a level of inspiration to continue to encourage friends and associates to keep
capturing those stories, and to keep telling them to one another, and sharing them with each
other, and laughing, and laughing through tears. I had a great reunion here with a friend. She
was here to sing at the Ambassador’s- the dear Mrs. Parks- the concert they recently did. She
was one of the soloists- Bonitta Franklin. So she and I started elementary school here together.
Are mother’s are both single parents right? So we were laughing about snow days. “Did we get
those? I don’t think we did?” So her mother worked at Tinker and had to be there early. So that
plan was that my mother, she lived at 23rd and Hood, I lived at 28th and Prospect just a few
blocks apart. So my mother picked up Bonnie and Christy, and they were bringing us here.
She drove a little Mustang. Well there was a sixth street, a pretty significant incline at that point,
the Mustang was not going to make it up that incline. She was to be at Dunbar which was a
little further East, what was literally downhill. The plan was that “I could coast downhill onto
Dunbar, but I am going to have to let you guys out here at this corner. Oh my word! We must
have tumbled up and down that street trying to make it. I used to get into the school with…
[laughs between VJ and KF] I can remember the grand plan that we would try to traverse it on
the grass, and so we can take ourselves right back to that moment. I’m hopeful… I’ve been
sharing this. I certainly hope that some of those folk will still come through because there’s lots
of stories, lots of stories to be told, lots of memories that people hold.
VJ:
Well thank you so much, if you have any names that pop up that you would like somebody to be
contacted, I think there’s a way that we could pick up some people and take them back home.
KF:
Okay! Sounds good.
VJ:
As we go through this process, and the videography on the 21st, 22nd, and the 23rd of next
week.
KF:
The digital storytelling?
VJ:
yes , the digital storytelling.
KF:
Yes, thank you so much!
VJ:
My pleasure!
KF:
It was very nice to meet you! Thank you!