Oral History Program Sylvester Daniels Interviewed by Joan Effiong 28 October 2013 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Sylvester Daniels Interviewed by Joan Effiong 28 October 2013 Copyright © 2014 by Weber State University, Stewart Library Mission Statement The Oral History Program of the Stewart Library was created to preserve the institutional history of Weber State University and the Davis, Ogden and Weber County communities. By conducting carefully researched, recorded, and transcribed interviews, the Oral History Program creates archival oral histories intended for the widest possible use. Interviews are conducted with the goal of eliciting from each participant a full and accurate account of events. The interviews are transcribed, edited for accuracy and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewees (as available), who are encouraged to augment or correct their spoken words. The reviewed and corrected transcripts are indexed, printed, and bound with photographs and illustrative materials as available. The working files, original recording, and archival copies are housed in the University Archives. Project Description The New Zion Community Advocates worked with community members age 80 years and older to have contributed to the history of Ogden city. The interviews looked at the legacy of the interviewees through armed services, work, social life, church, NAACP and educational systems in an environment where their culture was not predominant. This program has received funding from the Utah Humanities Council and the Utah Division of State history. ____________________________________ Oral history is a method of collecting historical information through recorded interviews between a narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well-informed interviewer, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the historical record. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account. It reflects personal opinion offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as such it is partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable. ____________________________________ Rights Management This work is the property of the Weber State University, Stewart Library Oral History Program. It may be used freely by individuals for research, teaching and personal use as long as this statement of availability is included in the text. It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Daniels, Sylvester, an oral history by Joan Effiong, 28 October 2013, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, Special Collections, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. iii Sylvester Daniels, photo taken at his home on October 28, 2013 Abstract: The following is an interview with Sylvester Daniels Sr., conducted on October 28, 2013 by Joan Effiong. Also present is Sylvester’s nephew, Larry Dawson. JE: Okay Mr. Daniels again we’re happy that you allow us to come in and do an oral history on you. So we are going to start by asking you to please tell us your name, your birthdate, and how we’re related, and what we are doing now. So tell us your name. SD: My name is Sylvester Daniels Senior. JE: And your date of birth? SD: March 25, 1929. JE: How are we related? We’re not related. SD: Not that I know of JE: Okay and what are you doing now? What are you doing now? SD: I’m not doing anything, I’m retired. JE: Okay good for you. What are the most important lessons you have learned in life? SD: Well, just a normal life. I worked for 30 something years for the railroad and now I’m not doing anything, I’m retired. That’s about the most important thing in my life that I did. I worked for most of my life. JE: What are you proudest of in your life, one of the most important things you’re proud of in your life? 1 SD: My children. Some of them did real well and some of them did fairly. I’m more proud of them than anything else. JE: How long have you lived in Ogden, and what brought you to Ogden? SD: I came to Ogden to visit my brother and I stayed after I got here. Coming to Ogden, I didn’t like the city when I first got here, but it grew on me and I enjoyed it. JE: How has it changed over the years? How has Ogden changed over the years? SD: Well, when I first came in they were kind of afraid of the city. I don’t know, some people said it was the Mormons and some say it was other things, but I always got along well with both sides. JE: What was it like when you grew up and then when you first move up here? SD: Well it some different at that time. There weren’t very many blacks here at that time. Then you have one area of the city downtown it grew on me and I got normal. I moved from here to Los Angeles, stayed there for 20 years and when I retired I moved back here. It was kind of quiet and I liked it. JE: What do you miss most about how Ogden used to be? SD: Well like I said when I first came here it seemed like they were prejudice people here at that time. I don’t know if it was the Mormon people or the white folk because there weren’t many blacks here at that time and they all stayed in one area of the city. That’s about the only thing I noticed different then than now. JE: Who are some of the great characters from here? SD: When you said great characters what do you mean? The people that live here? JE: The people, yeah. 2 SD: Back then, you know, like I say, there weren’t many blacks here and we had a guy that ran a club down on 25th street named Billie Weekly. He more or less was one of your top major black persons in the city that time of the ones that I knew. JE: Do you remember any great stories or legends about our town? SD: Great stories huh? The biggest thing I remember about Ogden. Like I said there weren’t too many blacks here and most of them down there in the 12 block area of 25th street down towards 22nd street most of them in that area. Like I say I don’t know what you would call because that didn’t ever bother me, just wasn’t enough blacks here for me at the time, but I managed through it and everything. Got along pretty well with them and what few people I worked for then. They treated me fairly. JE: Did you have any nicknames? SD: No more than Sylvester or some people just said Sil. The one’s that knew me well said Sil, but other than that that’s my one nickname I ever had. JE: Okay I was going to ask how did you get that Sil nickname? SD: Well I don’t know they just started calling me Sil. I don’t know, they were saying Sylvester and cut it short and said Sil, you know. JE: Who were your best friends and what were they like? SD: Well there were a few guys here then. Wasn’t too many guys here. You had Walter Reeve and L.D. Stewart and few people who I run around with, some I worked with you know. There was a guy named Hubert Reeves and we were pretty close. Most other time were hosts who came along later, not the regular pack. I got along well with all of them. If the guys had a squabble or a fight they 3 didn’t try to kill each other they would just fight and go on the next day, they’d forgotten about it. JE: After work what did you do for fun? SD: Well I worked on the railroad, so that meant I was out of town quite a bit and I was in town quite a bit. We’d go down to a place called The Club and a place called Sloppy Joe. There were only a couple of places that blacks really could go at that time, so we had drinks and things at those clubs and we had a lot of fun. We started going fishing and hunting and things like that. I enjoyed that pretty much. JE: Alright, what are your best memories of grade school of high school? SD: Well, when I came to this town I had finished my schooling. I had finished schooling and wasn’t going to school then. I went to school in Alabama. Most of my schooling was in Alabama so I just enjoyed it then. I played ball, the sports and stuff with the fellows you know. I played some sports after we came out here you know, baseball and things like that. JE: How you doing? SD: I’m doing fine. JE: Shall we go on or do you want to take a break? SD: No I don’t want to take a break. JE: Okay. How did you meet your wife? SD: I met my wife in Alabama, my first wife I’ll say it that way. She now lives in California, I think, or someplace out there. We met, I was in the service when I first met her. She was a little girl so we met and we went together for a few years 4 then finally we got married. So we stayed together quite a few years then we came to Utah. She came out here with me and we didn’t get along too well after we got to Utah. I don’t know if something about the area or the atmosphere or something. We both, I guess, just changed quite a bit so we couldn’t make it in that marriage so we finally divorced. JE: How has being a parent changed you? SD: Well I don’t know. I didn’t change much after being a parent. I was kind of ignorant to the parent facts that I should do or shouldn’t do. I was a little while and I grew up behind the girls, what few girls there were here, but that didn’t change me too much. I was just a regular guy. JE: What do you do for a living? SD: I worked on the railroad for years then I was a bartender for the rest of the years. After I went to Los Angeles I worked down there as a bartender on the railroad. Like I said when I retired from the railroad I moved back here. I had a brother living here then and most of my kids lived here. JE: What did you want to be when you grow up? SD: That’s a good question. I wanted to be rich. I did a lot of work for a little money. I never got rich so I just settled with what I had. JE: Were you in the military? SD: Yes that was before I came out here when I was in the navy. I was in the navy for two and half or three years. After I got out of the Navy I went back to Alabama. I stayed in Florida most of the time and then my brother was living out here so he came down to visit and I visit him. That’s what got me stuck here. 5 JE: How did war change you? SD: When I was a youngster, a kid during the war. First years they didn’t train me at all. I lived the same life as if there was no war. When I went into service the war was over more or less so it didn’t change me at all. JE: What lesson did you learn from this time in your life? SD: To try and leave other people’s business out of my business and take care of yourself. Try to treat everybody the same equally and that was just about it. That was about all I did. JE: Anything else that you would like to talk about that we didn’t cover in this interview? SD: Well you could say when I first came here I didn’t like the city at all. I accepted it, but I didn’t like it. My brother being here it made it a little bit easier. Then when my job asked me to move a lot I was ready to go because I was glad to leave here. JE: Okay that will conclude our interview. LR: Well I have, would you mind if I asked a couple of questions? Would that be okay? JE: Yes LR: Okay I wasn’t sure. You talked about the community, the black community in Ogden and you said it was a 12 block area. SD: Yeah most of them lived on a 12 block area and that’s giving them a lot of space. LR: So when you were working on the railroad where did you live? 6 SD: I first lived on 29th street in Ogden, then I moved down on 22nd street in Ogden, I lived down there until I left and went to Los Angeles. LR: I was curious how was Ogden different from where you had come from Alabama and Florida? How was it different because you said you didn’t like Ogden very much? SD: I didn’t care much for it when I came here. Like I said it was prejudice, course Alabama was prejudice too but I didn’t mingle with too many races but the black race when I was down there. Then I come out here and the whites was prejudice to the blacks. To me at that time, maybe some of them might say differently, but to me it was because you all could live in certain areas of the city. LR: So I’ve heard rumors, they’re not rumors. I didn’t mean to say rumors. But 25th Street was very segregated. SD: 25th Street on one side of the street was blacks hung out and the other side of the street whites hung out. Very few people would go over on that side of the street because they knew they weren’t wanted over there so they stayed on the south sides of the street. LR: I think it’s one of the most ridiculous things I’ve ever heard. It’s hard for someone in my generation to imagine that people could be so ignorant. LD: Thing is he’s 30 years older than me and I grew up in Alabama too. 30 year span and the same things were happening. SD: When I said people didn’t mingle with each other the whites and the blacks didn’t mingle too much. The white would come over to the black side if they wanted too, but very few blacks would go on the white side you know. Not only here, you had 7 quite a few of the states have segregation. I even saw segregation in Los Angeles. I saw segregation in a lot of cities. You may not think would happen. I’ve seen segregation in St. Louis, Chicago all those places because I worked on the railroad and went to those cities. That was places you didn’t go as same as Utah. JE: How would you feel now in 2013? Do you feel like the crossing over has been a little easier in this city? Do you think that blacks and whites are mingling or are we still in pockets? SD: Well there is certain pockets you can find them in, but now you can find blacks living in most areas of the city that they can afford to live in. JE: Do they have a relationship in terms of fellowship or what would you say? SD: You might have a few more relationships now than you did then. LD: Well one thing would be the church. You know the white and black church. SD: You can go to black churches. You would probably have to live in order to understand it. A lot of times you would go east of Washington Boulevard and police would stop you and tell you to go back down below the boulevard. LR: I’m sorry I shouldn’t interject. SD: Oh no go ahead. Well in this city here like I say in most of the major cities. I was in New York and all those cities back then, Washington. It was back there. Chicago. LR: I’m sorry I just cut you off. I apologize, I shouldn’t do that. Were you still in Ogden when oh I just lost his name. Marshall, Marshall White. 8 SD: Marshall White, yes back then he was a policeman. Whether he arrested white folks or not I don’t know because I never saw him arrest any of them. More or less he arrested I guess was in my neighborhood the black if you know what I mean because most blacks lived in certain neighborhoods. You had one or two blacks here and there that would live above Washington Boulevard, but most of them lived below Washington Boulevard. LR: Did his becoming a police officer help do you think? SD: No I don’t think it helped any. It was the same I guess because he was just a black police officer in a black neighborhood, that’s what I would say. The whites would go in any neighborhood they wanted too but I never saw him above Washington Boulevard arresting no one. JE: Again we thank you for… SD: I hope I give you something that would help you. I don’t see what will. JE: Gives us education, we love education. LD: You guys only heard a part of it, he got a lot of stories. He didn’t know what you were coming out here for, he knew an interview but he got a lot of stories you didn’t talk about. JE: Well that’s why we asked, “Is there anything you’d like to tell us that we didn’t ask?” Is there any story you want to put on the record that is in your mind that you want to leave for us, the next generation? SD: Like I said, by me working on the railroad I traveled a lot in different cities and different states. You found more prejudice here than you would find in Chicago, but it was prejudice there also. You would find more here than in Los Angeles, 9 but it was prejudice there also because I ran into prejudice in most every city that I’d ever been in. I would run into prejudice in Wimbledon, Delaware. Now who in the world would think that I’d be in Wimbledon Delaware? I was in the navy and we was traveling by train and we stopped there. I go in to get a soda and two other guys with me they got up on the stools. I don’t know why I didn’t, but I didn’t I guess because I was used to it by being in the south. The man told them he couldn’t serve them on the stool and this is Wimbledon, Delaware. So they refused to move until the man called the policeman then they ran. I didn’t do either one, I stood right there. I guess the police wanted to hit me when he came in there, but the guy told him he hadn’t done anything. I didn’t do anything because I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know whether to run. That had never happened in the south, I wouldn’t have run. If you come up and said something to me I’ll answer you know, but it was yes sir, no sir you know. They ran, I didn’t. In the city you would go in and find that somewhere. I was in Los Angeles, we were walking one day and the police pulled up beside us and asked us, “Where you boys walking to?” “Oh we just walking.” “Well why don’t you turn your ass around and walk the other way?” Those were white folks talking to black people, so I’ve seen all of it. Some was fair and some was terrible. LR: So was a waiter, I heard that on the railroad the blacks were only allowed to be a waiter or a porter? SD: Yeah you could say that. That’s all I ever saw, the waiter’s and porter’s were blacks. So it wasn’t until years later basically that I saw whites be porter’s and such. 10 LR: Did you ever run into Joe McQueen? SD: Joe McQueen? LR: Yeah SD: You mean the musician Joe McQueen? LR: Yeah the musician. SD: Yes I run into him I guess when I first came here. He was the musician in the city. LD: Have you ever heard him? LR: Yes LD: Yeah we know Joe McQueen JE: So what story can you tell us when you were in the military? How was the relationship with your cohorts that were white? SD: It was pretty same now. If you was in the navy, if I was in the navy the only thing I could be in the navy was a cook or a waiter. Same thing it was, waiter you know? You were a waiter out there. I guess that’s why I followed it as a I come out and move west and wait tables because I was a waiter. It was prejudice in there, but we were segregated there. The white sailors over there and the black sailors over here. JE: Now how does it feel, how does it feel now for you to be able to live on this side? Are you the only black in this neighborhood? SD: I’m the only black I know of in this neighborhood yes. JE: Yes, how does it feel? 11 SD: I never thought much about it really because when I left Ogden and went to Los Angeles I lived downtown in the ghetto. Then when I come back I look for a house anywhere I could find one that I could buy. So I could move anywhere I wanted too. I don’t know about up on the east bench now over there in Ogden if you could stay up there or not I never tried to go up there. I come in and find this house it fared well to me and I accepted it. Before I went to Los Angeles I couldn’t afford a house like this at that time. Naturally you couldn’t stay up here. JE: So how long have you been on this side? SD: Oh up here on the hill? I’ve been living up here about what 25 years I guess. Close to 25 years. JE: So there would be some neighbors that have come and met you here right? SD: Oh I’ve met a lot of the white neighbors here. So I haven’t had no prejudice. They might be, but I don’t know it. They don’t bother me and I don’t bother them. They accept me as I am and I accept them as they are so I’ve never had no trouble like that. LR: So is that different than it used to be? SD: I guess so. When I lived here before I went to Los Angeles I didn’t even come out here. Like I said most of your blacks lived in the lower Ogden area. West Ogden and that area. I don’t’ know anybody that lived out here, nobody came out here. At least I didn’t because there was nothing for me to come out here for. I come through here going to Salt Lake, but I didn’t have a reason to mingle. So I didn’t know anyone out here. 12 JE: What I’m trying to find out is since you’ve been living here do you feel lonely or do you feel open to your neighbors? Do they take care of you, when they see you do they say hello? If you have got to travel you say I’m leaving, keep an eye. SD: They speak to me. My neighbor to the right over here. When I first bought the home I lived in Los Angeles for a couple years later. I had the home the whole time. I let my daughter stay here for a while I was in Los Angeles and I met this guy over here. He was you could tell he had prejudice in him. Anyone that is prejudice, if they feel it in front of you you’ll feel it too. I know he’s slightly prejudice but he’s never been nothing anger towards me. He’s always treated me equally and I treated him equally. If he hadn’t I wouldn’t have said anything to him. The people over here, there’s an old man living over there on that side of the house. I knew he was prejudice. I could just tell the way he talked he was prejudice, but he doesn’t show it much. So I accepted him as he was. I’ve never let prejudice bother me not since the south. I was down there a while before I moved out here. I didn’t let the prejudice bother me down there, I ignored it. I had seen all of it. I had seen it all. Gosh I see it in Chicago, New York. I saw prejudice everywhere. It wasn’t no special place, everywhere I went I saw prejudice. Me, I don’t care. If he prejudice let him be prejudice as long as he didn’t bother me. If he had bothered me we would have had a confrontation but that never happened. JE: So that is another story by itself? Some tips that you could leave when you mention that you didn’t let prejudice bother you? What were some things you did 13 that you could pass on to us and some other folks to be able to not feel—keep on going. SD: I’m sure there’s a lot of people who see prejudice now. Me I don’t see it because I don’t pay no attention. I ignore it. LR: How did you learn to just ignore it? SD: By living in all of it. You going to find it. Some people say this that but you’re going to find it anywhere you go. Well at least I did. I found it in the northern, east, western states. Saw it everywhere. In some places you learned to ignore it and you live with it. LR: Would it be fair to say that you learned to be comfortable with you and not let anything else bother you? SD: I learned how to try and accept myself as I am and hope he do the same. I’ve had confrontations with whites, but nothing real physical you know. As long as he didn’t bother me I didn’t bother him. I don’t care what he do. I don’t care what he say. I’ve heard people get called niggers. Me, if he wasn’t talking directly to me, I ignored it. He was showing himself how stupid he was to call another human being a name when you are all human beings. Sometimes I would get angry and people would get out of line with me, nothing physical or bad. When I was living in the south they said nigger and thought nothing about it. You wouldn’t think nothing about it because that was a routine thing there. He was prejudice and you know he was prejudice and you didn’t mingle. Sometimes you wouldn’t mingle with anybody white or black. He didn’t want the other whites thinking he 14 mingled with blacks. He figured it made him look bad. Most of them look bad anyway so it didn’t bother me. JE: I went through the same thing he did 30 years later. Same town, but you know it got better over the years. It’s still there though. SD: Oh gosh yes it’s prejudice there. He don’t show it as much. He tries to shun from confrontation with you and me I try to shun confrontation with him. I don’t care what he say or what he do as long as he’s not doing it to me. LR: Things are better though. SD: I would say they’re different. It might be better for some people, but to me it’s always been this way for me. When I was a kid my daddy didn’t allow nobody to mess with his children whether they were white or black. My daddy had some big boys then and it took us all keep him from grabbing his gun and going to see a man about it. He wouldn’t see him anyway. This was in the deep south of Alabama. He just didn’t bother nobody but didn’t let nobody bother his family. He probably would’ve killed him you know, but I never ran into too much. As I was a kid growing up I guess you could say we knew where our place was and they knew where their place was. You didn’t have to run into them too much because he was a label like you were. He didn’t show too much prejudice, you could sit down and talk together, eat together. You know that they was prejudice and he knew I knew it so it wasn’t no big thing. JE: Alright thank you so much. 15