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Legacies Project Oral History: Shirley Beckley

When: 2022

Transcript

  • [00:00:10] INTERVIEWER: Any question or [inaudible 00:00:12] anytime for any reason.
  • [00:00:14] Shirley Beckley: Can I cross my legs? You're only going to shoot from here up.
  • [00:00:25] INTERVIEWER: We'll be getting interview. Now we can begin the first part of interview beginning with some of the things you can recall about your family history. Beginning with family name in history. By this we mean any story by your last or family name or family traditions and selecting first female names. Do you know any stories about your family name?
  • [00:00:47] Shirley Beckley: I know that the name Beckley, there is a Beckley, West Virginia. There's also a badly plantation, which we, in doing a lot of genealogy think that our ancestors came from and then were transferred to Mississippi, Tupelo. Really Palmer talk, Mississippi.
  • [00:01:19] INTERVIEWER: Are there any names, traditions in your family?
  • [00:01:24] Shirley Beckley: Name and traditions?
  • [00:01:26] INTERVIEWER: Naming traditions like how you got your name or how the family decided to name you?
  • [00:01:36] Shirley Beckley: I don't know. My mother had me and named me and that's all I know.
  • [00:01:44] INTERVIEWER: Do you know why your ancestors left to come to the United States?
  • [00:01:50] Shirley Beckley: Yes. Now the Beckley side is of course, my father, his name was James Beckley. Doing our genealogies, they were the Beckley five, which one of them was my great grandfather. Out of the Beckley five brothers, one of them killed his master so some of them had to flee and get away. My father, I don't know why he came to Ann Arbor, but he left [inaudible 00:02:36]. Let me backup. His father was Charlie Beckley and my great grandfather was Edmund. Edmund was part of the Beckley five. There's quite a bit of history about the Beckley five brothers. I never met my grandfather, who was Charlie, and I never really met my father. He died when I was two and he was in World War II. He was in the Navy and he had a medical leave. Shortly after that, he died. When he came to Ann Arbor, Michigan, he brought his mother and his sisters and other brother here. That's how they got to Ann Arbor. But they had property and still do have property in [inaudible 00:03:43]. There's quite a bit of history about the Beckleys in [inaudible 00:03:48].
  • [00:03:49] INTERVIEWER: Once your family came to Ann Arbor, do you know how they made a living?
  • [00:03:56] Shirley Beckley: Well, since he died in 1944, I don't know. When he got out of the Navy. He had a medical leave. I still have his papers because of him leaving the Navy. I don't know what he did.
  • [00:04:22] INTERVIEWER: Has family lived anywhere else in United States besides [inaudible 00:04:27].
  • [00:04:34] Shirley Beckley: Well, the Beckley's. Yes they live all over. Then on my mother's side, that's another whole story and they went to I don't know who they were, but they ended up in Canada and they ended up in Buxton, Canada.
  • [00:04:59] INTERVIEWER: Do you know, any family members that stayed behind in their country of origin?
  • [00:05:05] Shirley Beckley: Yes. I've gone to [inaudible 00:05:07] several times to visit my father's people. We have a cemetery down there at the Beckley of the cemetery and there's a church that the Beckley's built in [inaudible 00:05:25] and then they have I don't know the name of the road, but there's a road that's just a lot of Beckley land and so they have houses and so I have visited my relatives in [inaudible 00:05:44].
  • [00:05:46] INTERVIEWER: Do you know of any traditions that have been passed down from your ancestors when you pass on their members?
  • [00:05:56] Shirley Beckley: No. I don't think so.
  • [00:05:59] INTERVIEWER: Is there any traditions that your family has given up from the past?
  • [00:06:04] Shirley Beckley: I'm sure there's a lot they've given up. I can remember my grandmother. Her name was [inaudible 00:06:10] Beckley. I can tell you this little story. I was about five years old and she dip snuff. Do you know what snuff is?
  • [00:06:24] INTERVIEWER: No. Can you please explain.
  • [00:06:25] Shirley Beckley: That was her true. A lot of older people dip snuff and they didn't smoke tobacco. They would take a piece of tobacco and stick it up under their tongue. A lot of the cowboys did that. Lot of people way back before you even thought of dipped snuff. I remember one day she asked me to go upstairs to bathroom and get her snuff. Now I couldn't read nor did I know what snuff was, nor did I know what it looked like. But she told me I better come down with that can of snuff. I was up there looking, wondering what was snuff, how did you spell it? I didn't know how to spell and I knew I better bring it down, I was going to get in big trouble. I saw this little round tin box, it was around ten and everything else wasn't round. I just use my intuition at the time and I said I'm going to take this and I hope to snuff, but it looks different than everything else. Since I don't know what snuff is I'm taking it. It happened to be her snuff. I was all good for that day.
  • [00:07:48] INTERVIEWER: What was your education like when you were young? [inaudible 00:07:52]
  • [00:08:00] Shirley Beckley: Boring. Sometimes fun. I didn't like history. I liked English. I was very athletic. I enjoyed playing kickball and whatever we did, baseball, softball. Now, this was an elementary school you're talking about?
  • [00:08:40] INTERVIEWER: Yeah.
  • [00:08:40] Shirley Beckley: I just remember going, what I do remember is back in those days, even all the way up to high school, we couldn't wear pants, we had to wear skirts or dresses. There was no such thing as wearing slacks, which I hated wearing dresses because I am a tomboy, still a tomboy. I liked playing games and playing softball and climb and trees. When the weekend left and then I had to go to school and put on a dress, I didn't like that but that's what we had to do. But I don't remember anything other than just going to school. I went to Jones School, which is now Community High. I also went to North side school. That's when I lived on Wall Street. Then we move to Kingsley Street and that's when they had started disaggregating Jones School and I went to Maxwell school.
  • [00:10:03] INTERVIEWER: Was it different growing up for you as a tomboy in that time period? And do you remember when you first got to transition into we're in more pants that time period when you were able to have more freedom than the clothing?
  • [00:10:22] Shirley Beckley: The only time we could wear slacks was on special days like they would let you wear slacks when I went to Slawson, which at that time was a junior high and not a middle school. But I fit in. I mean, I don't know. I think we just were, I remember playing a lot of baseball with the kids up in the yard of Jones school after school. I think in my senior year at Ann Arbor Pioneer, maybe in the middle part of the year. They let us wear slacks. Most of us girls were happy about that because we could wear blue jeans and back then you could go to Sam's and buy blue jeans for $5. The Levi's with the buttons down the front.
  • [00:11:37] INTERVIEWER: Do you have any stories that your parents and grandparents had passed down to you, especially from your parents and how their lives were?
  • [00:11:58] Shirley Beckley: Well, I can remember what I did a lot of hanging out with older people. I was an only child. My mother, she had a sister that lived Inc Sterns Inc sterns. Do you know where Inc. Sterns. She lived in Inc stern and I spent a lot of time in angstrom girl. She had six girls. My aunt and so I spent a lot of time there, which I think helped. I think my mother made sure I grew up with some of my cousins since I didn't have any brothers and sisters. I remember asking my mother, why does she just have one child? Because I thought it was I had to all ironing and all the cleaning and washing the dishes and I told her it wasn't fair. The story she told me, she said, well, I was 35 when I had you. She labored 52 hours. I weighed 11 pounds when I was born. She decided she wouldn't do that ever again and that's why she only had one child, which I told her. I didn't understand any of that because, as a young person, not knowing what childbirth was, that didn't mean anything to me. I still thought she should have had some more. But now I understand all of it. I hung around with a lot of older people and my mother's aunts and my great aunts. Heard lots of stories because they believed in the spirits and girls and I heard a lot of ghost stories. I remember them telling me my great grandmother, whose name was Mary Perkins, had designed, she made an invention and this sticks out because I have since tried to do some research on it. The trains there was a step that would fall down so that you could step up into the train. She invented that step so that you wouldn't have trouble getting into the train and she found a lawyer to take it to thinking she would get a patent, but he stole it from her. She never got any credit for it, which I thought was a shame.
  • [00:14:48] INTERVIEWER: Do you know any starts about how your parents met?
  • [00:14:53] Shirley Beckley: I have no idea how they met. I know my mother told me that during the war she worked at the Bomber Plant which was in Willow Run. I don't know how they met at all. All I know is he died when I was two years old. Have lots of pictures of him holding me as a baby and I've been told we had a street called Dan Street. We still have Dan street, but it isn't what used to be the black business district and so my father took me up on Ann Street quite a bit. But all I know is what my mother told me and what his sisters and brothers have told me.
  • [00:15:56] INTERVIEWER: Do you have any other story about your father?
  • [00:16:04] Shirley Beckley: Other than he was just a very handsome man from the pictures I have.
  • [00:16:11] INTERVIEWER: Two minutes, I'm going to pause for a moment. [inaudible 00:16:19] [LAUGHTER].
  • [00:16:19] Shirley Beckley: I have a tendency to.
  • [00:16:35] INTERVIEWER: Can you tell us about your neighborhood, growing up, any type of different languages spoken those settings, how your home was household?
  • [00:16:48] Shirley Beckley: Well, I had fun growing up. I lived on Wall Street for a while. That's called Old Town. I had a dog and that was my mother and I lived there in an apartment and then my mother, she worked and saved her money and she bought a house and that's when we moved down Kingsley. I was about seven years old and she got remarried so I had a step father. We didn't get along and because he didn't talk to me just after, I wasn't there and I did and I was so excited to have a father. I thought he was going to take you to the carnivals until the circus and we're going to talk and do any of that and I didn't understand as a little girl. We didn't get along at all but I enjoyed. In spite of that, he had a son, so I have a step brother and he would come over and visit and we had a good time together. I had lots of friends. I had friends that lived on Kingsley and we hung out on Fourth and Fifth Avenue and beaks because that's where all my friends were. Lots of friends that live down the street and minor and found felt we just all gathered. Now, most of the time we gathered down at Summit Park, which is now called Wheeler Park and that's named after Dr. Albert Wheeler, who was our one and only black mayor. Which you have talked to one of his daughters, which is Gamma Wheeler Smith who was a senator and you're also talking to his other daughter, who was Judge Francis Wheeler or Wheeler Francis, whichever way. But when it was Summit Park, that's where we went to go and we ice skated and we have a little Shani. That's when the city would take a horse and they would freeze the ground and we'd go down there, escape. You get cold and you go into Shani and the Shani had a little pot belly stove and you'd warm up in there and you come out. I had a lot to keep myself busy, we played if we weren't ice skating there, we went to the U of M, I believe it was called the ice calcium and we go there on Saturdays. I escaped. Now we also roller skated. But you had to go to Ypsi to roller skate. The black kids could only roller skate on Monday night, even though it was open. Monday through Sunday. We our time was on Monday night. On Monday night, we would go on roller skates. It had activities and then we had activities in the church because we had youth program so that kept me busy, kept us busy and kept you close to your friends. I went to Bethel AME, which was on 45, and then we had Second Baptist, which was on fifth F, which was just around the corner. But we all did things together, the church didn't divide us. We were all friends.
  • [00:21:02] INTERVIEWER: Did your step father ever came after you?
  • [00:21:06] Shirley Beckley: Our stepfather warmed up. We warmed up to one another when my mother died. My mother was a pretty she handled the finances and things like that. When she died, he didn't know how to write a check or how to handle the finances. I had a conversation with myself and I told myself that I was going to have to help this man since I was living there with him. I had gotten a divorce. I had two children and I had moved back with my mother and my stepfather. About six months after I moved back and my mother had passed away, I was about 24 at the time, which was very devastating to me. He didn't know what to do. I did know how to handle finances my mother had taught me, plus the jobs I had had. I just decided I was going to have to drop all those feelings and help him. In doing that, that brought us closer together. It also opened it up where I could ask him when I was a little girl, why he didn't pay any attention to me. He explained to me that he didn't know what to say to a little girl. He just didn't know. We had a long discussion about it and then I understood his side of it, which brought us closer together. I felt bad because I was not too nice to him. He wasn't nice to me there, so we just clashed and my mother was always separating us. But once we sat down and could discuss it and he could tell me his side. I just wish that we could have done that when I was like maybe a teenager so I could've enjoyed him more because we became very close right up until his death. I lost a lot of time with him and he also with me. But I think we caught up.
  • [00:23:46] INTERVIEWER: Previously you talked about gentrification and segregation, can you explain how your neighborhood was changing.
  • [00:24:01] Shirley Beckley: Well, in the mid '60s. Let's see. My mother died in 1966, so somewhere in-between 67 and 68 is when the city came and took those houses on one side of Kingsley. That's pretty devastating. That was the beginning of the gentrification and the changing and we still had beaks and fifths and fourths have going on until I don't even know when it started. I'm trying to think when Carry Town started.
  • [00:25:02] INTERVIEWER: Do you remember why Carry town started?
  • [00:25:07] Shirley Beckley: To move the black people around, they were moving us out. I was just at a panel discussion at the university last week. I was on the panel with three other people and we talked a lot about that. What is so heart wrenching is to ride through all of those streets. You hardly see any black people. You see bigger houses. Everything has changed and then the fact that carry town, which starts at Kingsley and forth and it goes up, is historical. But from beaks down, it isn't. As I said on the panel last week, I hope to try and at least bring some recognition back to that part of for [inaudible 00:26:20] . Because I think we even had the Underground Railroad going on on Fifth Avenue. There's a house on fifth. There's two houses and here's a house on fifth, it has a tunnel in the basement and it goes underneath fifth ave down to Depot and that's where the slaves went underneath because the railroad was right there. That's how they got to Canada. That's one of the ways.
  • [00:26:49] INTERVIEWER: Isn't that justification still happening in and over all places like Detroit?
  • [00:26:55] Shirley Beckley: Yes. I think I personally think Ann Arbor has gotten so elitist that they're moving us out. At that panel discussion last week, there were quite a few young white U of M students. They were talking about how they didn't see any black people and they didn't think there were any black people living in Ann Arbor and I told them we're here. But we're so scattered that you don't see much but we are here. It's not a good feeling to not have your neighborhood anymore. When you go to your old neighborhood, it's all changed. Now, I understand that as you get older things change. But in this change it's not a good change because we don't have really anywhere where it's almost gotten to the place you can't afford to live here. I also recognize that that's happening in FC, even though they're kind of shoving us to FC and it's also happening in Detroit. I don't know where they want us to go, but some of us are still here.
  • [00:28:24] INTERVIEWER: How did segregation affect your neighborhood?
  • [00:28:31] Shirley Beckley: In our neighborhood, there weren't too many white, you know, it's interesting. On Main Street, up and down main street, there were a lot of Greek families and so we went to school with a lot of Greek families in our neighborhood. I don't know where the Greek families went because right now I think on Main Street and I'm talking about north main. There's a lot of businesses. All I see is I see a lot of the old houses, but there's like law officers so there's a lot of businesses that have taken over the neighborhood, as well as the new housing that has happened. Also during the '60s and '70s we started public housing. What the city will first wanted to do is just have a big high-rise with a fence around it so a lot of us in the community said, no, you're not going to put us all in one spot and put a big fence around us. We demanded that we have scattered housing. That's one of the reasons that you don't see us because we're scattered. Such as high cone is part of public housing and there's public housing on Green Road by Plymouth Road, and there's North and South maple. Then there was a little part of a Broadway. It's still there. Are any of those streets familiar? People that couldn't afford to buy homes once the city took property, they went to public housing as well as we had co-ops. We hit arrow. What was that first call?
  • [00:30:46] INTERVIEWER: Have you particularly ever displaced because of justification?
  • [00:30:50] Shirley Beckley: Only me. My mother had passed. My stepfather had remarried, and his wife had her own home so I lived in the house and I also worked for the city at the time so I got to see when the city was buying my mother's property, though, there were three houses there in that block. One of the secretaries asked me if she says I'm drawing up the papers for the city to buy your house you want to see it? I said, yeah, let me see what they wrote up. What I understood they wanted the land. But when I read the paper, Excuse me, I haven't had my coffee so my stomach's growling.
  • [00:31:45] Shirley Beckley: They were taking the land and the House and the property in the house. I went to one of the City Councilmen and I said, you can take what's in the house because some of it is mine and you're not taking my stuff. Well, anyway, it ended up being I had to go before City Council and they told me if I wanted anything in the house, I would have to make a list all the way down to the silverware. If I wanted. Whatever I wanted in that house, I had to name it or it was theirs, which I thought was unfair. Then they also once they bought the property, which my mother paid 12,000 for the house, but they convinced my stepfather to sell it to them for 10,000, which I kept telling him No, don't do that, but start talking to older folks back then. Then they wanted to charge me rent even though it worked for the City. I refused to pay the room and I told him I wasn't going to live in my mother's house that I grew up in, that I thought they were basically, stealing and I worked for the City and now, you want to charge me rent. I wouldn't pay the rent and eventually, they tried to evict me but that wasn't easy either.
  • [00:33:13] INTERVIEWER: [inaudible 00:33:13]
  • [00:33:20] Shirley Beckley: That's a good question. This was before public housing. Was right along with public housing, was just getting started but it was a housing. The City was trying to house displaced people. Now, that I think about it, it probably goes because they were taking people's property so they probably, felt but the problem was I was in charge of finding housing for other people but I didn't have any money that they didn't have money and I didn't have any money. I was like, Well, how am I going to household? Well, I mean, they can pay and I can help them pay. How are we going to do this? I'm talking to the mayor about this and he said why he didn't know and we had this one family that had come here, from the south and she had quite a few children and he told me to find a home for her. I found this great big house. I said so how are we going to do this? what he didn't know. I said, Well, you know what I'm going to do as I'm going to go get some mattresses and I'm going to put this woman and her children in the basement of City Hall, which I did. He didn't like that too, well, so he ended up putting them in a motel, and then miraculously I got some money so I could help this lady move. That's where I started. Then after I left that job, then I started working for Dr. Pierce. Dr. Pierce was a prominent doctor, they had moved into the black neighborhood. Have you ever heard of Dr. Pearson? You all are too young. But anyway, he was a white doctor he came into the black neighborhood, and he opened up a clinic and so if you couldn't afford a doctor at that time, you could go to Dr. Pearson so he trained me to be his medical assistance which you can do now, with either a certificate without going at least to Washington or community college or rocks or something like that. Then when I left there, I worked for the Ann Arbor Housing Commission has a manager which is on Michigan. Then in about 1979, I left Ann Arbor and moved to Lansing and I became a housing director and outcomes, but at that time I became a housing director.
  • [00:36:24] INTERVIEWER: Going back to each location. Do you know any stories of people or any personal stories of people who got their stuff taken away in that process and their possessions? [inaudible 00:36:37]
  • [00:36:41] Shirley Beckley: Most of the people, just those that could afford it went by. Like my neighbor, she bought a house up on Fountain Street. The other neighbor, I don't know where they went, but I did let them know to read the document very carefully that they were going to take everything in the house because since I worked for the City, I thought I should let them know so that so that they wouldn't lose their valuables. Some people lost. Some people that ended up in apartments, you couldn't take everything that you have, and they lost things that way. What I see now and saw in working with the City was the people that lived in these homes. Some of the homes were going down in the City, it was hard to get any help to renovate your house. Then they started a program with community development and that was supposed to help you but a lot of people weren't able to really fix their homes up. Now, I see people that are in the same area. They had brand new home, which is, just let you know that, that wasn't offered to the black residents. Also, if you ever take some time to look at some of the deeds on the houses, like Brooks and Minor in different areas in Ann Arbor. If you look at the old deeds, it'll say on the deed that you're not allowed to sell your house to a black person. The only way that black person can come in your house as if it's a servant or a guest, but you can not sell. Now, they don't enforce that now. They used to. They claim they don't enforce it now but they still have areas. You can live in the suburbs but if you want to live in Ann Arbor, they've got ways of keeping you in certain areas, which is called redlining. We had a lot of that.
  • [00:39:24] INTERVIEWER: You know, if you're up before you started [inaudible 00:39:26] quick.
  • [00:39:35] Shirley Beckley: [inaudible 00:39:35]
  • [00:39:35] Shirley Beckley: [LAUGHTER] [NOISE] It just went in and out a little bit, and so I was just checking to see what was wrong with it.
  • [00:39:49] INTERVIEWER: Four minutes.
  • [00:39:50] Shirley Beckley: Four minutes.
  • [00:39:51] INTERVIEWER: I think we should just [inaudible 00:39:52] right now.
  • [00:39:53] Shirley Beckley: Okay.
  • [00:39:53] INTERVIEWER: Were you done with your answer?
  • [00:39:55] Shirley Beckley: Sure.
  • [00:39:58] INTERVIEWER: That one? Was it going in and out?
  • [00:39:59] Shirley Beckley: Right when she said her last word and when she was finishing, that's when it was like, you can hear it a little bit, and I just didn't want to like go.
  • [00:40:09] INTERVIEWER: No, you did the right thing. Absolutely the right thing.
  • [00:40:15] INTERVIEWER: [inaudible 00:40:15]
  • [00:40:17] INTERVIEWER: Yeah we do.
  • [00:40:17] INTERVIEWER: Do you have a good note of where you left off and just wanted to pick up that question the next interview?
  • [00:40:25] INTERVIEWER: Yeah.
  • [00:40:25] INTERVIEWER: Sure.
  • [00:40:27] Shirley Beckley: It was just really cool.
  • [00:40:28] INTERVIEWER: It was interesting. You were saying stuff that I didn't even know.
  • [00:40:31] Shirley Beckley: There was a lot of segregation.
  • [00:40:33] INTERVIEWER: Sophia, I want you to resume discussion right now.
  • [00:40:41] INTERVIEWER: Last time we ended on gentrification, and how people were getting moved out of their houses. Do you know where that community people relocated or where they went?
  • [00:40:52] Shirley Beckley: Some people bought other homes, a few of them, and some people went to the co-ops, and then eventually people went to public housing. That's where a lot of people are. A lot of people are passed on, have died, older people. A lot of their children or their grandchildren are in public housing. Once they did that, it's gotten to where it's too expensive to buy a home. It's also getting too expensive to rent. Because public housing, they have a waiting list for their Section 8 vouchers. There isn't a lot of public housing.
  • [00:41:50] INTERVIEWER: Do you think that's a current struggle state [inaudible 00:41:56] should work on is getting public housing to more people?
  • [00:42:02] Shirley Beckley: Well, they need affordable housing. I don't know if we're going to have public housing. Especially with the administration we have now, I don't think we'll have much public housing. But the county is supposed to be working on some affordable housing. It'll be interesting to see how that comes about.
  • [00:42:30] INTERVIEWER: Now, I'm going to talk about youth culture in that time period. So would you describe any popular music at that time?
  • [00:42:41] Shirley Beckley: [LAUGHTER] The Temptations and Marvin Gaye. What's interesting, when I was in high school, during our lunch hour, we played music and we could dance, even out in the halls. You all I don't see that going on in the schools.
  • [00:43:09] INTERVIEWER: Were there any dances associated with particular music?
  • [00:43:13] Shirley Beckley: We had, of course, the twist and something called the mashed potatoes. Have you heard of that?
  • [00:43:23] INTERVIEWER: Yeah.
  • [00:43:25] Shirley Beckley: The mashed potatoes. That's all I can think of. We had a lot of different dances.
  • [00:43:35] INTERVIEWER: Were there any slang terms or phrases or words that were used that aren't really common today?
  • [00:43:44] Shirley Beckley: Yeah, we used to have, I don't even know if what we called it. It had a name, but nobody knew what we were talking about, but us. I'm trying to think what it would be called now. Like you talk about, well, not you, but students, I've heard students use like snizzle and shlizle and stuff like that. Well, we had something similar only it was like saying words backwards. Yes, we had our own slang.
  • [00:44:29] INTERVIEWER: Is there any popular clothing or hairstyles around what we're witnessing today?
  • [00:44:34] Shirley Beckley: No. At that time you had perms. The afro started later on in the '60s. But when I was, we didn't have afros. We didn't wear afros.
  • [00:44:56] INTERVIEWER: Did you ever wear afro?
  • [00:44:58] Shirley Beckley: Yes.
  • [00:44:58] INTERVIEWER: Was that like a political statement or just a fashion statement?
  • [00:45:05] Shirley Beckley: Well, it was a fashion statement and a political statement. I remember when Angela Davis, when they were looking for them, I was downtown Ann Arbor and a police officer stopped me because he thought I was Angela Davis because I had this huge afro. At the time she had a huge afro so they couldn't tell. I was light-skinned with this huge afro wearing glasses so I told him I wasn't Angela Davis, which she's someone I admired. I still admire her today.
  • [00:45:51] INTERVIEWER: What would you say the black community's relationship was with government officials at that time period?
  • [00:45:57] Shirley Beckley: Well, we were picketing and marching. At that time, one of our big pickets was with the school board that was to demand that we have more black teachers and administrators. Which we did get, but it's sad now because we don't have very many like we once did.
  • [00:46:29] INTERVIEWER: Can you describe any other moments that you protected were as particularly important to you?
  • [00:46:37] Shirley Beckley: Well, I protested with the school board, and I protested with the city hall, and that was protesting about the police, just like we're protesting now. That's what's sad to me because I don't see a whole lot of change. We did some change but it seems like it's being reversed and pushed back so here we are, we're still fighting over the same things we fought for back in the '60s. When I listened to Marvin Gaye and some of the other old singers, some of the things that they were talking about back in the '60s relates to what's going on right now which to me is sad that we had progress, but we have regressed as far as racial issues go.
  • [00:47:38] INTERVIEWER: You seem to have been interested in activism your whole life. What would you look forward to in younger generations to take on or how do you think younger generations can change what's going on right now?
  • [00:47:49] Shirley Beckley: I don't know how you're going to change it. But it's up to you.
  • [00:48:03] Shirley Beckley: I am reading a book. I can't think of the name of the book, but it's telling us that we have been programmed to think with our brain, and as little children we always thought with our hearts, and so we need to get back to thinking with our hearts. I think that's an important thing to look at. I think we need to be more about our heart. Now, I don't know how we are going to get government to do that. But I was at a workshop and this gentleman said, Well, the community has to be the ones that makes the government think with their heart. I don't know how we're going to do that. Cause they're not listening. They use their heads in everything. When you're in school, you're trained to use your head. You're programed, so it's hard to undo. But some way you all are going to have to figure that out. Hopefully.
  • [00:49:20] INTERVIEWER: When did you start getting interested in activism? Or rather at what age?
  • [00:49:25] Shirley Beckley: I thought about it when I was around 14, 15. I always knew that I didn't quite fit in, I was always different. I didn't know what that was all about at the time. But I didn't know until I got in my late 40s. I didn't find out about our culture. Once you find out about your African culture, that helps you understand what's going on. I think we have asked so many times the school board to make sure we have African history. We have some African-American history, but we need to get into the African history because a lot of our traditions come from there.
  • [00:50:25] INTERVIEWER: After you finished high school, where did you live or where did you go to school?
  • [00:50:33] Shirley Beckley: Well, I went to Ferris State where I think a semester and I quit. I quit because, first of all I didn't want to go to college. I don't like school. But my mother insisted that I go. That was another thing. Another reason that we were pushed to go, when we were in high school, our counselors didn't want us to take college prep classes. We were pushed into general studies. A lot of our parents insisted that we go to college. But I wasn't interested in school. But I went to Ferris State. I didn't stay. We had a meeting and the house mother. When I was at Ferris State, there were about five of us young Black ladies and there were about 60 Black males. The males left the campus to find women. They left us five, just sitting there. I was like this isn't going to work. Because back then we were encouraged to go to college, but we also were encouraged to go to college so that you could find a man that could take care of you. An educated man. Isn't like it is, we weren't pushed to have our own career. I figured, well, if the men were leaving the campus then I didn't have any reason to be here, so I left.
  • [00:52:23] INTERVIEWER: What was it was like for your mother at the time when you left college?
  • [00:52:29] Shirley Beckley: She was awfully angry. But I had gotten a ride, packed my trunk up and I was on my way, so I was there. She was very disappointed. But the other thing was in those times, we had a program called SIDA. Now, I can't remember what SIDA stood for, but you could train into different professions. I worked for legal aid and I was a paralegal. Now you have to go and get a certificate, but then you could train with lawyers and become a paralegal. I started with doing that and then from paralegal we had a program in the early 70s called Model Cities. Model Cities was a grant that the government gave different cities and silos at community developer and I did a lot of activism there, but we did a lot of training of the students. We would make sure that students got jobs and got training if they didn't go to college and if they wanted to go to college, we made sure that they got the grants that they needed. It was a very helpful thing.
  • [00:54:08] INTERVIEWER: You talked about going to college or alot of people at the time went to college to find a husband, if you were ever married and when did you meet your husband?
  • [00:54:19] Shirley Beckley: Well, I met my husband, he grew up here in Ann Arbor and he had gotten out of the service. I had two children by him. That didn't work, so I got a divorce three years after that. Then little later on I married again to a gentleman that grew up here in Ann Arbor. Both of them went to Pioneer High. Well, that time it was Ann Arbor High. I didn't marry a professional man and I purposely didn't marry a professional man because I thought professional men didn't understand where I was coming from. They were into academics and didn't really care about the community and I thought it was important to care about the community. We didn't connect. I didn't connect with a lot of professional men, so I decided I didn't want to be married to a professional man. Then I married a third time, I didn't have any children by him and he had open heart surgery and passed away after that. That was in the 80s. I have decided I don't think I should be married. I have my own program of what I want to do and it involves the community and helping where I can help and I just feel like men in my age group don't understand that.
  • [00:56:19] INTERVIEWER: [inaudible 00:56:19] your first husband was in the service, can you comment on that?
  • [00:56:28] Shirley Beckley: No. He just was in the army. He had gotten out of the army. My second husband was in the Marines. My second husband has since passed away. He and I stayed friends up until we actually found him. My daughter, Raham, found him, she was going to take him to the grocery store and he didn't answer, so we went to his apartment and he had died in his apartment. We found him. That was traumatic for both of us cause he and I remained friends. He even came to my wedding. We were that close. Now, looking back cause, no, you don't know. But when we get to be 18 and 19.
  • [00:57:24] INTERVIEWER: [inaudible 00:57:24].
  • [00:57:42] Shirley Beckley: I was on Facebook this weekend and saw my grandson in class on his phone, live. I'm like.
  • [00:57:56] INTERVIEWER: Who's your grandson?
  • [00:57:57] Shirley Beckley: His name is Riley and I was like, look at this, this is just stupid. My other grandson, well he's my great grandson. My grandson who was in Los Angeles. He saw him and he was asking him, what the hell are you doing? [LAUGHTER]
  • [00:58:19] INTERVIEWER: What is your grandson doing in Los Angeles?
  • [00:58:23] Shirley Beckley: He works but he's trying to be a rapper, but he's trying to be a rapper about what's going on. I told him that's going to be difficult because they don't really want real issues. He talks about real issues.
  • [00:58:41] INTERVIEWER: I thought you would attract to that label.
  • [00:58:44] INTERVIEWER: A lot of people try to rap about real things.
  • [00:58:49] Shirley Beckley: Well, he's rapping about because he marched with me too. When Rosser died, he was marching in that. He's talking about what's going on. You know damn well they don't really want to hear all that. Especially when I told them the music business is really not a nice place to be, to be very careful.
  • [00:59:14] INTERVIEWER: What's his name?
  • [00:59:15] INTERVIEWER: His name is Kamen.
  • [00:59:17] INTERVIEWER: Does he go by that?
  • [00:59:20] Shirley Beckley: He goes by Kamen Lauran Thomas.
  • [00:59:25] INTERVIEWER: Is your grandson that goes here is he a freshman? [LAUGHTER]
  • [00:59:38] Shirley Beckley: I don't know, I'm trying to think. Riley, he's 17.
  • [00:59:46] INTERVIEWER: Okay. I feel like I know what you're talking about. I feel like I've seen him. What was his last name?
  • [00:59:54] Shirley Beckley: Waren.
  • [00:59:56] INTERVIEWER: The name Riley is really familiar in that case.
  • [00:59:59] Shirley Beckley: We got kicked out last year.
  • [01:00:01] INTERVIEWER: This says he has a relative named Sierra.
  • [01:00:06] Shirley Beckley: He has a sister named Sierra.
  • [01:00:15] INTERVIEWER: [OVERLAPPING].
  • [01:00:25] Shirley Beckley: He's my great-grandson. He's my grandson's. [BACKGROUND] I don't think he's a senior. No I know he's not a senior. I don't record this [LAUGHTER]. What I do know is he has got to catch up on his because he got kicked out. I think this is a good place for him to me though because he needs the support that I think taking care of me. When I was here two weeks ago. I saw him when she was taking me downstairs. Saw him going into class, I'm yelling at him, I'm forgetting I'm at school. I'm just yelling. [LAUGHTER] But I think I have to come visit him.
  • [01:01:29] INTERVIEWER: That's cool. I don't talk too much, but when I do.
  • [01:01:51] Shirley Beckley: I try to teach him a lot about his culture and I didn't think he and my other Kamen, Riley's spent a lot of time and tried to teach him about his African history, but he, I didn't think he was really listening. Then one day he was talking to me and he was listening. He could tell me some of the things when he didn't appear to be paying attention. But when he was telling us, he was listening. That's a plus. Let me know that maybe kids might not be looking like they're paying attention and taking them and what do, what's important to them, they're taking that in. Maybe teachers aren't trained about that all the time. Now, which one are we talking about?
  • [01:03:02] INTERVIEWER: All three.
  • [01:03:04] Shirley Beckley: [LAUGHTER] The first one was abusive. I had to get out of that. The second one, we were friends and remained friends. We just were going in different directions. But it was very good that we stayed friends. Like I said, the third one had heart problems in surgery and passed away. When I came back, I just dated for a little while, but then I just decided I didn't need a man to define who I was. My grand-kids are always telling me, aren't lonely, don't you need a partner? I told them I don't need anybody no, I'm not. I'm not lonely. I'm okay, just like I am. Because I have the freedom to come and go and do what I want. If I want to get involved in things I can I don't have to have a man telling me, why you didn't cook and you didn't do and you didn't clean and you didn't do this. It's a little more freedom for me. I'm okay being single.
  • [01:04:32] INTERVIEWER: Do you know if your first husband is still alive?
  • [01:04:35] Shirley Beckley: Sure. He lives about five blocks away from me.
  • [01:04:39] INTERVIEWER: Have you ever been in contact with him outside of your marriage?
  • [01:04:46] Shirley Beckley: No. I'm in contact. I guess I don't want to talk about that too much. We're not friends. We're in touch because we have two children from time to time. But we're not friendly.
  • [01:05:07] INTERVIEWER: What was life like when your children were young, and when they aren't in the house?
  • [01:05:14] Shirley Beckley: Well, it was a struggle, but when I was divorced, it was a struggle. But My mother was pretty lenient with me, so I thought I should be lenient and listen to my kids. Even though I had rules and I had limits that they had but I listened to them. When they messed up, they got punished like my youngest daughter when she was 14. We were living in Lansing at the time and she went to a concert, debar concert. It was on a Sunday and it was at 3:00 in the afternoon. She and her little friends went and they didn't come home till about 02:30 at night. As mothers were, we know what was going on we were just scared. I punished her and I told her she couldn't go to anymore concerts unless she went with me. The only way she could go to a concert is if she was an adult. Prince came into tow. She just knew she was going to that concert. I said, no, you can't go. She kept this calendar. Now she didn't tell me that. In fact, she didn't tell me until she got grown, what happened that night. Those girls kept that secret for a long time. But she kept a calendar each time I punished her and the worst punishment was I wouldn't let her go to the Prince cancer. But my thing was if you mess up too bad, then you just get on punishment and you can get off until I take you off. I tried to be a friend and I know they tell you you can't be a parent and a friend, but I don't believe that. I believe you can be a parent and a friend. I think he ought to be friendly with your children because you need to listen. If you don't listen to them, then they'll find some other source or some other person and it might not be a good person for them to listen to. I was pretty lenient with them.
  • [01:08:00] INTERVIEWER: How many children do you have?
  • [01:08:02] Shirley Beckley: Three. One's 55 and one's 54 and one's 48.
  • [01:08:09] INTERVIEWER: How many children do they have or do they don't have children?
  • [01:08:18] Shirley Beckley: Well, I have Shireen, Richie, and Kamako. Shireen has two, Richie has four. That's six. Kammy has two. That's eight. Then there's lots of grandchildren. I can't keep up with them. In fact, we just had a new one. In fact, I have a great-great granddaughter. But I enjoy them.
  • [01:08:56] INTERVIEWER: What was it like for you when you were dating?
  • [01:08:59] Shirley Beckley: In high school?
  • [01:09:03] INTERVIEWER: I'm trying to figure out how's your dating progress from high school to?
  • [01:09:09] Shirley Beckley: Well in high school, I went with a guy that went away to school at Dartmouth. So I didn't date in high school because I was staying true to him, so I would only see him when he would come on breaks and vacations. I met my first husband, I had graduated from Ann Arbor Pioneer, and my boyfriend had come, but there was a party and he didn't stay to the party, which angered me. I thought he would go to the party with me. At the party, I met my husband. Now, I was too stupid, because when you're 18, you think you know everything and it takes a long time to realize we don't know. I still I'm learning. But at that party, I was 18, and my husband, the man I married, was 24. I wasn't thinking of what was this 24-year-old doing at a party with 17 and 18 year-olds, and have enough sense to know that. That's how I met him, because I was angry and just let him just woo me away.
  • [01:10:48] INTERVIEWER: What was he like for you as you got older?
  • [01:10:53] Shirley Beckley: Just interesting. I've met some interesting men in my life, and I don't regret any of it. I've learned from the different experiences. I think it would take an exceptional man to be a partner with me now. He would have to be secure in his self, he would have to know about his self, and he would have to have enough trust to allow me to be who I am.
  • [01:11:46] INTERVIEWER: I'm thinking what was your engagement and wedding like?
  • [01:12:07] Shirley Beckley: The first marriage was just at my husband's. My husband's father was a minister, so he married us. Really we got married because I got pregnant with Shireen, and Shireen was eight months old when we got married. My mother was against me being with him or marrying him, and I should have listened but I didn't have sense enough to listen. Plus I was in love or I thought I was. My second marriage was a nice marriage, and my third marriage was a nice marriage.
  • [01:12:51] INTERVIEWER: Can you tell me about your working years and what was a typical day like for you in your adult life?
  • [01:13:11] Shirley Beckley: I'm forgetting. I worked for Legal Aid and I worked for legal services. I learned a lot about the law from working with the law students. I think if I had gone back to college, I think I would've gotten into law. But then working from there, I went into housing. I think I said at the first interview, I worked in public housing here in Ann Arbor as a manager, and I became a housing director. I worked in housing for HUD for about 15 years. I enjoyed working with the tenants. After that, I was still working.
  • [01:14:05] INTERVIEWER: When you say you worked with tenants, were there any particular cases that interested you?
  • [01:14:12] Shirley Beckley: All tenants were. That's interesting. But the program was setup we were supposed to help tenants and help them with their rights. HUD, they have different programs in their housing, and so it was interesting to let the tenants know, some tenants didn't really understand what their rights were. I got in trouble when I went to Muskegon for teaching the tenants what their rights were, but I thought it was important for them to know their rights. I was let go of that job and then I sued them. That was a difficult time, that lawsuit.
  • [01:15:17] INTERVIEWER: What year was that in?
  • [01:15:18] Shirley Beckley: That was in 1988.
  • [01:15:23] INTERVIEWER: When thinking about in your adult life, what important social or historical events were taking place at the time and do you remember how that affected you personally or your family?
  • [01:15:34] Shirley Beckley: Housing, affordable housing has always been an issue, education has always been an issue.
  • [01:15:45] Shirley Beckley: I fought for civil rights then and I still fight for civil rights and I guess I will continue to fight. I still will fight, but deep down in my heart, it just seems like such a losing battle. Because I think when you go to a university, the university teaches you to think a different way and you, being a person of color, a black person or any person of color, you have to learn what it is, whatever field you're in, you need to learn that, but you also need to be able to hang on to who you are. I think universities interfere with that. I just met with a university student on Friday and he has been here two months. He goes to the Ovium. He was telling me how they're taught to think that they're the ones that are going to save the world, but they got to do it this way and that way. They're not really taught about their cultures and I think that's very important. I don't know how students are going to separate that, I think that's part of the problem. Because students and working with students, their academics getting in the way of being able to fight and work with the community. I don't know, maybe you all can figure it out.
  • [01:17:49] INTERVIEWER: I'm going to ask you about popular culture now. You mentioned that your grandson was a rap artist in LA and ready to give up rap music at this time.
  • [01:18:01] Shirley Beckley: Well, I like all music. I like music, I like melody and so a lot of rap artists don't, it's just talking. Even with my grandson, I tell him, but just make sure you have some music and some melody. Don't take that out of it. I'm sad that the industry has pushed rap to a point where you don't really know about the blues and they don't talk about the jazz and they don't talk about the rhythm and blues. I think it's important that we know about all music, country and western, all music. Even when I was in high school, my mother made me take piano lessons. I remember I had to play the classical music, which I didn't like some of it, but some of it I did like. But I wanted to play what we call boogie woogie, get down with it. I remember my teacher, she wasn't into that. But of course she wasn't an African-American teacher either. But I enjoy music and I think music is healing for us. I think it's a good avenue for young people. I just hope that they can some way get back to incorporating the blues and the jazz and the rhythm and blues into their music. At one time they did that. But now they are getting away from it and I hope they come back to it. But it's a way of expressing yourself.
  • [01:20:00] INTERVIEWER: Have you got any particular artist that you can associate with that are changing the current music [inaudible 01:20:07]?
  • [01:20:11] Shirley Beckley: I don't really listen. I listen to my grandson, but I don't listen to too much rap. Now, I tell you, I did like Missy Elliott and I did like Busta Rhymes, I liked his rap, I like Lauryn Hill, but I like a variety of music.
  • [01:20:47] INTERVIEWER: Can you describe any other patches [inaudible 01:20:49] from this time period, proper clothing, now that's different [inaudible 01:20:55]
  • [01:20:58] Shirley Beckley: I don't know. I think they're getting back to the short skirts and I don't know, I just see in living, being in my 70s fashion just goes in a circle. We wore miniskirts at one time and now we're back to wearing mini and hot pant and I don't know what you call them. You don't call them hot pants. What do you call them?
  • [01:21:32] INTERVIEWER: Leggings?
  • [01:21:34] Shirley Beckley: Not leggings, when you have real short shorts. What's that?
  • [01:21:37] INTERVIEWER: A mini short? Like short shorts?
  • [01:21:41] Shirley Beckley: Short shorts, not athletic. Short shorts.
  • [01:21:44] INTERVIEWER: [LAUGHTER]
  • [01:21:47] Shirley Beckley: That I see these young girls walking around. I'm not too much into that, but at one time, I never wore short shorts, but my kids. Fashion, it goes in a circle. Now I'm not a fashion person, I'm very relaxed in my fashions and I'm not one that dresses up or has to match her bag with her shoes and all of that.
  • [01:22:18] INTERVIEWER: What did you say about the hair styles or clothing or just hair styles this time?
  • [01:22:24] Shirley Beckley: Well, I'm glad we're getting back to our natural. Hair to me is hair. We have different textures and we have different styles, but there's no bad hair, there's no good hair. Just be glad you got hair and wear your hair as it was given to you. Now, that's where I am about hair.
  • [01:22:57] INTERVIEWER: We talked about your employment and your typical day of your adult life. Can you tell me about how you moved during your working years in retirement and your prior decision to move your current residence?
  • [01:23:12] Shirley Beckley: Now say that again.
  • [01:23:14] INTERVIEWER: Can you tell me about how you moved from place to place or where you were living during your adult years?
  • [01:23:21] Shirley Beckley: Well, I was raised here in Ann Arbor. I spent about 11 years away from here. I went to Lansing and then I went to Muskegon and then I came back. I've just been in Ann Arbor. I keep saying I'm going to leave Ann Arbor and last year I really actively looked for somewhere to go, but I haven't left. I don't know, something keeps me here. I don't know what keeps me here. Probably because I'm getting older and I don't want to start all over trying to find friends, because it's hard to find a good friend and all of my friends have passed away. I have a couple of good friends but I don't have the friends I had because they have since passed on. But I think if I get a chance, I might leave.
  • [01:24:23] INTERVIEWER: Where would you leave to?
  • [01:24:26] Shirley Beckley: Somewhere warm. I don't know. That was my other dilemma. Where would I go? I don't know.
  • [01:24:36] INTERVIEWER: How is retiring life for you?
  • [01:24:43] Shirley Beckley: I enjoy my retire. It gives me more freedom. Of course now I don't have any money. But I've learned to live with less money. You have to have some money, you know to be comfortable. But I'm okay with being retired.
  • [01:25:14] INTERVIEWER: [inaudible 01:25:14]
  • [01:25:17] Shirley Beckley: Okay.
  • [01:25:17] INTERVIEWER: But thank you very much.
  • [01:25:19] Shirley Beckley: You're welcome.
  • [01:25:20] INTERVIEWER: Thank you so much for coming back. I really love.
  • [01:25:23] Shirley Beckley: Okay.
  • [01:25:25] INTERVIEWER: Can you tell us about the riot at Pioneer and what year that was in?
  • [01:25:30] Shirley Beckley: Yes. We had a race riot in 1971 at Pioneer. At the time we had an ombudsman office. That office was housed in what is now Community High. I would go around to the middle schools and the high school and make sure everything was going along fine. But we had some white kids, wrote the N-word on the front of Pioneer High in white paint. Then they said they were coming to beat up the black kids. We had police there, we had administrators there. They had me there, and I was supposed to keep the black kids in the cafeteria, which I tried my best to do. But the white kids, they were males and they came in and they had rifles and nunchucks and so they were chanting the N-word and saying that blood was going to be running through the halls. I'm asking the administrators and the police, are you going to stop them or, but nobody stopped them. They kept coming and they kept chatting. The black kids that were in cafeteria, they were like, well, we'll just go out and fight, and I said but they got weapons and you don't have any weapons, and they were like, well, we're not scared of them. They came out in the hall so I was between the kids with the weapons and then the kids that didn't have weapons, the black kids. Then I said, well, I might need to get out the way. I did, I got out the way and they clashed. The result of that was the police started running after the black kids. The black kids were running outside and I couldn't understand why they were trying to arrest the black kids because they didn't start it. When I ran outside, this one police officer had one of the black girls on the ground and he had his knee in her back and she was crying. I asked him to just remove his knee and then I would put her in a car for him if that's what he wanted. He ended up arresting me and seven black kids. They took us all down to the police station and I was just live it because it was so unfair and nothing ever happened to that. I mean, other than they brought charges against us, but when I went to court, they dismissed the charges, but I lost my job because of that. Even though the charges were dismissed, they thought it was just too controversial and at that time, our superintendent was Bruce Macpherson and Dr. Potts was in charge of them, Boltzmann's office, and I just thought it was such an unfair situation. Now that was in 1971 and here we are in 2017, and we're still having problems. I don't know I've always felt that it was part of my job to protect the students because I think your students are so important and your lives are so important and it's up to us elders to help you and protect you, which we don't do a very good job of as a whole. I tried to make sure that students voices are heard. Like in 2013, we had here on Pioneer football brawl. Did you hear about that? Well, they had a football brawl and the two coach Pioneer kicked hearings but and the two cultures pushed each other. So all the teams came out on the field to support their coach. Then the police came to Pioneer and brought criminal charges against three black students that played on the football team. I went to the court cases and I was like, well, what about the cultures that started the fight? Nobody brought charges against them. Why are you bringing a felony charges against the kids and two of the kids would go on to college, and they wouldn't have been able to get in college with a felony charge. I got some community people together, and so we raised money. We paid their court costs. We couldn't get them to drop the charges, but they did reduce them and they took the felony charge off so that they could go to college. Nothing ever happened to the coaches. Well, I shouldn't say nothing ever happened. I think the coaches were resigned or let go. I don't know which, and the Pioneer coach did come to court in support of the free black students. But some kind of way with the help of the community, we have to help you all stop all these and make it a better world. That's what I think. That's me talking.
  • [01:32:17] INTERVIEWER: At the time of the riot in 1971, how old are you and were any of the white students did they get charges pressed against them?
  • [01:32:27] Shirley Beckley: None of the white students got charged with anything. In 1971, I was in my 30s, 30 something. I don't know.
  • [01:32:42] INTERVIEWER: When you were arrested, you were sent to jail. Is that correct?
  • [01:32:46] Shirley Beckley: No. I didn't go to jail. They put me in a room and they sent a policewoman in there and she told me to strip so she could search me. I told her I wasn't stripping because we really didn't have any business down here anyway and that I was just appalled. She was like, well, I have to search you and I said, well, I don't know how you go and do it because I'm not taking my clothes off. We had a standoff. She's looking at me and I'm looking at her and I said, "Now, I know you got a gun on your hip, but if you touch me, we going to fight. I'm just letting you know." [LAUGHTER] She was trying to figure out what to do because they knew we hadn't done anything, you know. Then she just said, "Well, just lift your shirt up so I can make sure you don't have a weapon in your bra." I did that. I did that much. Then she let me go and then we had to come back to court. Then they dropped the charges. But it was, none of the white males got arrested and they had weapons. I never understood that and I guess my job I probably was let go because I would have pursued that. Let's just let go. Nothing was there ever done but if you research, there's an Arbor News article of the race riot in 1971 at Pioneer. It talks about it. That's a little research you can do.
  • [01:34:44] INTERVIEWER: Have you been reconnected to any of those high school students?
  • [01:34:48] Shirley Beckley: Oh, yeah. The young lady. She and I talk, of course she's grown now and she has children, probably grandchildren now, but yeah, most of the kids.
  • [01:35:06] INTERVIEWER: How did the community react to the situation, especially the black community at this time?
  • [01:35:17] Shirley Beckley: Well, they had a few meetings about it. At that time Dr. Wheeler, I think he was still president of the NWACP and they were involved.
  • [01:35:43] Shirley Beckley: But nothing really ever came of it. They talked about it, but that's all they did was talk about it. One of the teachers, who was Brian Westfield, who has since passed away, went I went to court, he testified on my behalf and told them that I hadn't done anything and I was just trying to protect the girl. l don't know. When I read it, I have since pulled it up on a computer and copied it so I can just have it in my files, but it's a hurtful thing. The reason it's so hurtful still is because we still don't have enough protection for our children in this time, in this day and age. l don't know. I think that racism is something that we're not going to get rid of. I don't know. I hope I live long enough to see what you all can do about it. I got faith in you.
  • [01:37:03] INTERVIEWER: What do you think about current movement sterling that supported racist ideas in 2017?
  • [01:37:15] Shirley Beckley: We are in bad shape. [LAUGHTER] But what I do think, because of the precedent that we have, President Trump, I have done workshops on my white privilege. When we do the workshops, a lot of the white people say that there isn't white privilege. But one thing I think that comes out of Donald Trump's presidency, you can't hide the racism anymore, and it's just in everybody's face. Now when we talk about it, people can't hide and say there isn't racism because they're all coming out. I guess they feel comfortable doing and saying the things that they say. I have hopes. I know we can live together. I'm reading a book about getting in touch with our heart and thinking with our heart instead of our heads and it's really a good book. I think we need to get back to that because our heads are not connected to our hearts and we need to have this connection with our heart.
  • [01:38:48] INTERVIEWER: Earlier, you were talking to me about how disconnection with the head is really pushing on us by school and over-stressed in the school. Can you expand on that a little bit?
  • [01:39:01] Shirley Beckley: Well, we just self taught. If you think about it when you're little and you're coming up, you don't even think about color, you play with whoever you want to play with. It isn't until you start getting older and you get in middle school and high school and then differences are made aware of, and that's when all of that starts happening. When we start thinking with our brains and our head and looking at color and this person is different and that person is this instead of just looking at us as people and students. You can dislike people, I have people of color I don't like because I don't like their character. There's people I don't like because I don't like their character, but it has nothing to do with their color. Sometimes in the workshops that I do, I let white people, I try to let them understand we're not saying you're racist and saying that we dislike you, what we're trying to let you know is we dislike the racism. It doesn't mean that I hate white people it just means I hate the racism and I'm going to fight that. But it has nothing to do with them in particular. I don't know how you all are going to do it because we're getting older and nobody is listening to us really.
  • [01:40:51] INTERVIEWER: Throughout your, I would call it a career in activism, what do you consider your most triumphant achievement that you've made?
  • [01:41:01] Shirley Beckley: Wow. I don't think I've made a triumphant achieve because it's still going on so we haven't succeeded. But that doesn't mean we give up. I have hopes that it'll get better. I watch students and students you all seem to not look at color so much and you do things together. Sometimes we do things separately. I remember us when we were in 2013 helping with the football raul and one of the things some people in the community they were like, well, when you go to the cafeteria, the black kids sit together and white kids they sit together. But that's just I think, you sit with your friends and if your friends happened to, I just don't see that being like a separation. We sit with our friends and we do things with our friends. But in watching you all, I see more of the integration and you don't look at color so much. But we do things with our friends. Because of our culture, we do things differently and nobody really takes that into account. We do things differently, we have different sayings, we dance differently because we have a culture that nobody really understands. That's another reason why I think it's important that the school systems teach our culture so that everybody understands because I think if you understand the culture, then you don't have so much fear of us. Because you don't have to fear us because of our color. But that's all they see and then the media gives negative reports. Even when they report about a crime, if a white person does a crime, they report it differently than when a black person does a crime. It's like the world has almost ended when we do something.
  • [01:43:37] INTERVIEWER: Do you think that the portrayal of black people in media is getting better? Or was there a time period that was good for portrayals of black people or do you think it's still the same?
  • [01:43:50] Shirley Beckley: Well, there was a time when things were better. I think when [NOISE] Martin Luther King fought for civil rights and Malcolm X. Now, they were on opposite sides but they eventually even though they didn't agree on the process, they were friends and they could talk to one another about how they were doing things. There was a time when our voices were being heard, but that time has since left so our voices aren't being heard. I don't know what the reason for that, I don't know what's behind that. Well, let me take that back. I know what's behind it, I don't choose to discuss that. That's too controversy.
  • [01:44:46] INTERVIEWER: If you want to discuss it.
  • [01:44:48] Shirley Beckley: I know but I don't. [LAUGHTER]
  • [01:44:52] INTERVIEWER: I'd actually like to bring it back to your family and your mom. It seems like your mom has instilled very important values about femininity, especially at a time when you're young. Can you say anything that she's taught you over the years or anything that's resonated with you?
  • [01:45:16] Shirley Beckley: Well, my mother was a very strong woman and so she taught me to be strong. One thing about being a strong woman, people look at you like you don't have any feelings. Just because we're strong doesn't mean we don't hurt, I hurt a lot. But I've been taught to lick my wounds and patch myself up and just keep on fighting. I'm not going to stop even though I keep saying I'm getting older and I need to just sit down and shut up, but there's something in me that just doesn't allow that and I think that comes from my mother and what she has instilled in me. She always taught me to be honest as I possibly can. What's interesting to me is we're taught when we're little to be honest and not to lie and then when we get to be adults, then everybody wants you to lie and not tell the truth. You get in trouble when you tell the truth.
  • [01:46:38] INTERVIEWER: I guess we're going to take a break for the [inaudible 01:46:43] .
  • [01:46:46] Shirley Beckley: Even though she didn't want to talk about it and the fact that she was a product of a mixed situation.
  • [01:46:54] FEMALE_1: It's me again.
  • [01:47:01] INTERVIEWER: Wait, can we start over? [LAUGHTER] [inaudible 01:47:06]
  • [01:47:08] Shirley Beckley: That's okay. We couldn't allow interruptions.
  • [01:47:14] Shirley Beckley: She was a [inaudible 01:47:15]. She never knew who her father was. He was a white man and her mother worked for the white man and he didn't claim her. I think that instead of her using that as a crutch, I don't know where she got the strength because she'd never talked to him. She really didn't talk about that. When I would ask her why she looks so different from her sister, she just said there was no difference. I didn't learn about her situation until after she had passed on, and I asked my great aunt, who was her father and where was he and how come nobody talks about him. Then I learned from her and other relatives what had happened. But my mother never talked about it and she just accepted that she was a black woman, and when people would question her about her race, she always told them back then she was a colored woman. She always stood up for her race. She never got the chance to talk to her openly. We did talk openly about everything. She talked to me about sex, just everything, which was good for me because I didn't have to hide anything. My first child, I was not married at the time. When I went to her and told her that I was pregnant, I felt comfortable doing that. She just sat down and scolded me and told me, "I told you, leave that man alone. You didn't listen. But we'll go shopping and we'll get the baby's crib and we'll do this and we'll do that." So I had support where a lot of kids back then, but I was 20 also, but back then, you didn't have a lot of support if you had a child out of wedlock. But she just was this strong individual, and I really wish that we could have talked. But back then, our parents and grandparents didn't talk about their situations because I think it was too much shame or something so they just took that with them. I've learned a lot about her through relatives. But I thank her for giving me the strength to be able to stand on my own two feet. Because I've been through a lot because of how I feel, and because I've been an activist. You lose a lot of friends and people don't want to be around you because you talk too much and you might get them in trouble. Even I can remember in Sunday school, I asked a question. I was in high school and I remember asking since Jesus was God's son, he was this very important man and you talk about him when he was born, and then you stop talking about him when he gets about age 13. Then you don't talk about him again until he gets about 33. What was he doing from 13-33? Since he's God's son, he's somebody we should be talking about at all times. I remember the superintendent of Sunday school telling me that I was being disruptive, I was just running my mouth and I said, "I want to know what was Jesus doing from 13-33. This important man who's the son of God." I never got that answer. We still don't have that answer, so I don't know what he was doing. I guess he was doing what he was supposed to be doing, helping people. If you look at Jesus, he was an activist too, and he helped the people that needed help, and he helped the poor. That's all us activists do, is help the people that don't have any power. Jesus didn't get too far because they killed him, and they're killing us. I guess when you look at it from that point of view, that's just how the world is supposed to be, I guess. That's why I'm counting on you to change things, hopefully. I think you can do it.
  • [01:52:36] INTERVIEWER: How do you think of colorism has progressed the degeneration since you've been alive?
  • [01:52:44] Shirley Beckley: Well, there was a time when during the civil rights era, we got a lot of things done. I'm trying to think what disrupted that. Because I think when they took affirmative action away, that was the beginning of it. But what they did with affirmative action, affirmative action was to make sure that people of color that were qualified got the same chance as a European. But what the Europeans in power did, they started a quota system. They didn't care if you were able to do the job. As long as you were black, they would give you the job knowing you couldn't do the job didn't care whether you could do the job. Just so they could say, well, we hired some black people. That I think broke down the affirmative action because we never said to hire people of color that couldn't do the job. We want you to be qualified, but give them a chance. That's where the white privilege comes in. Because when you have white privilege, a lot of kids, their parents paid people to take their tests. They still didn't qualify. Donald Trump ain't qualified to be president. I'm saying this on this right here because he isn't and here he is running our country. That's a trackless State. But then you talk about President Obama who was a very educated man, but he's trying to undo everything he did. I didn't agree with everything President Obama did, but he was still a great man in the White House. He didn't bring any shame to the White House. But here you're trying to undo everything he did, which is just another form of racism just thrown right into our faces. I know they can shut Donald Trump, those of power. If you can shut President Obama up, you could shut Donald Trump up. But they're not wanting to yet, I don't think, those in power. Now that's my opinion.
  • [01:55:30] INTERVIEWER: How do you think feminism has progressed throughout the decades in you've been alive?
  • [01:55:37] Shirley Beckley: Feminism has progressed greatly. Feminism, I'm upset with the feminists because they use the Civil Rights tactics, which were our tactics. But a lot of the feminists are white women and a lot of the white women in charge do the same thing and show racism against us black women. I'm like, so you all got your rights but then you can kick us to the curb. I'm disappointed, even though we need feminism because women. The white women need to speak up because there was a time that their voices weren't heard. But don't speak up and then kick black women or women of color to the curb, we all need to do things together. But see, that's where the racism comes in. It's so strong. I think about it and I say, you don't like somebody just because of their color and if you notice, when they can't tell what color we are, then it doesn't exist because they don't know. We're more adept to tell who we are, why people are strictly looking at color. When they don't see color, then they assume that you're not a person of color. When we got a whole lot of people walking around here and some of them pants for white. Then the other thing is, nobody really wants to talk about racism. They act like it's a dirty word and it's a problem in our country, so why are we not talking about it so that we can end it? But it has a lot of power behind it. I think the people don't want to give up that power. They're afraid of black people. We get empowered, we might do them like they've done us. But we're not. Our culture doesn't teach us that. We're not here to get revenge. We're trying to make us all work together and be together and make it a better place.
  • [01:58:15] INTERVIEWER: Can you tell me of any other instances where you've experienced racism? From just average citizens or even like government officials or police? [BACKGROUND]
  • [01:58:34] Shirley Beckley: I experienced racism almost every day. This is kind of a funny story. I'll tell you a funny story. I went on a store. This has been a few years ago. I went to the store now. They started following me around in the store, which they do, because they're just assuming we're going to steal. Well, I knew the young man was following me and it wasn't a very big store. In fact, it was a TJ Max in Lansing. I walked around that store for four hours, not buying nothing, just looking. Because I knew he was following me. I finally came [LAUGHTER] on to me and he said, "Do you know how long have you been in the store? I said, "I have been here about four hours." I said, "You've been following me for four hours." I said, "But why are you following me? These people over here been ripping you off? I'm not stealing, you wasted all your time following me around this store." He said, "And you didn't buy nothing?" I said, "I don't have to buy anything. You have wasted your time following me around the store. But I did it on purpose because I knew you were following." And he was like, "Well, hope I don't have to do this again." He said, "Because I've never seen anybody just walk around the store for four hours." But when you go into a store, it used to be that we can't try on hats, because they thought we would get the hats greasy and messed up. Or just the summer. I was with my kids and my grandson who's 10. He goes to Patent Gil. So we were in the patent Gil area because his mother and uncle and aunt went to Patent Gil so we was riding around the neighborhood. It was a white couple pushing a baby and a lady came up to our car, first she approached us and she said, "What are you? " We were looking at her. I said, "I know she's going to ask us what we're doing here." We gave her all these little dirty looks. Then her husband kept saying, come on, come on, come on. She said, "What can I help you?" I said "No, you can't help us. We just looking. We grew up in this area. My kids went to school in this area, " Then my son was telling her, "Do you know about the plane when we were going to Patent Gil there was a plane fell down right down in the neighborhood. Do you know anything about that?" Well, she didn't know anything about that. We just [LAUGHTER] carried on this conversation with the lady. She finally went on, but she was really questioning why we were in the neighborhood. That's a form of racism. We can ride around the neighborhood if we want to without being questioned. But that's another form of race. You can't have a freedom to just have a joy ride some kind of way and we make fun of it. But afterwards, we were talking amongst that, we were angry about it even though we made light of it. But we were like this is so ridiculous that we can't ride around. Racism is taught, you're not born to be a racist. Some kind of way we got to undo that. We don't do it with violence. I don't know the answer.
  • [02:02:40] INTERVIEWER: What do you think about the current movements like Black Lives Matter?
  • [02:02:45] Shirley Beckley: Well, I'm a member of Black Lives Matter and I think it's a good movement. But if you notice not too many people are listening to them either. It is a movement and I remember they had a conference a couple of years ago in Cleveland that I attended. I've met a lot of the parents and families, of a lot of the like Michael Brown and I can't think of the man in New York that they were selling, trying to sell cigarettes or get cigarettes, and they choked him. I can't think of his name, but I met his mother and I even met a Matheyo's family. It just hurt my heart that these people can come on us. It was about 20 of them and they were talking about the incidence of their loved ones. I was just sitting there like, they can kill our people right in front of our face and no police officer has really paid for that. Even the one here in Ann Arbor hasn't paid. He's still broken. But I don't know how we're going to break that into that police thing because they have a union and they have their own way of doing things and they can keep us out. I don't know, if I was running the city, I would fire the police officer. If he can bring charges, you can at least fire him, let him go. But they don't do that either. It's just a very hurtful and to listen to the parents of these murdered men and women has just it's heartbreaking to listen to them. But they still go on. If you murdered my grandson or my son, I'd have to have a sedative or something. I couldn't be civil. I don't think. They'd have to give me a sedative so I wouldn't just go up. I wouldn't be able to take it on faith. But it just amazed me at the strength that those people had that they're still going on and they could talk about it. Yes, they cried, but they still had the strength. They've lost their sons and daughters. I've gotten to the place where when I see it on the news or see it on Facebook. I can't watch it anymore, it's just too painful. To me, like a lynching. They're getting away with killing instead that they can't lynch anymore, so now they're just shooting. I don't understand. That's just barbaric to me. I don't know. You can't make the government stop them.
  • [02:06:41] INTERVIEWER: Are there any instances of sexism that you faced throughout your career?
  • [02:06:46] Shirley Beckley: Yeah. We had sexism off mark of my career. I swore to dealt with that one-on-one. That wasn't so important to me, to me as racism, but you always deal with sexism. Even in school. When we went to school, if a boy patted you on your butt or said something sexist, we would just cut them out or slap on the lips. Wasn't a big thing like it is now. We'd handle it ourselves, us girls. We didn't have to run to tell anybody. It's along with racism.
  • [02:07:35] INTERVIEWER: Do you think that the Ann Arbor police force could do better addressing situations? Like it happened recently.
  • [02:07:43] Shirley Beckley: I think so, and I've been going to meetings because we've asked the city council and the Human Rights Commission to have a Citizens Police Oversight Committee, which they say they're going to have. But it looks like it's going to be watered down. But it's a step if we get it. But they said we going to get it. Hopefully, we'll have it.
  • [02:08:17] INTERVIEWER: I think we should conclude our interview now.
  • [02:08:19] Shirley Beckley: Okay.
  • [02:08:20] INTERVIEWER: This is our last interview, so thank you so much.
  • [02:08:23] Shirley Beckley: Thank you. It was such an honor. Am I okay? Are my colors okay? I thought you didn't have the green screen but you do.
  • [02:08:52] INTERVIEWER: We have some questions, just basically what I told you, we already did. We just have more like exactly responsible enough sleep like more specific questions.
  • [02:09:07] Shirley Beckley: Go ahead, do your thing.
  • [02:09:14] INTERVIEWER: We're just going to cover your explanation of the riot again and pioneer. It's like why don't you tell us why you're supposed to be doing and how it started?
  • [02:09:27] Shirley Beckley: How the riot started?
  • [02:09:30] INTERVIEWER: Yeah.
  • [02:09:30] Shirley Beckley: I don't remember. I don't know how it got started, but the white students, these are male students, [NOISE] they had painted the n-word on the school building, then we got that taken off. Then they came in to fight, they marched in from the parking lot entrance. Now that's what we called it. I don't know what Pioneer calls it now, but back then they called it the parking lot entrance. They marched in from that entrance with rifles and nunchucks, and they were chanting the n-word and saying that n-word and saying that blood was going to run through the halls. At that time I worked in the ombudsman office, who was Dr. Potts at the time. We were supposed to make sure that there wasn't racism in the school or to deal with the racism that was going on. My job was to keep the black students and they wanted me to contain them in the cafeteria. We were in the cafeteria, but when the chanting started, the kids were like, what an outstanding in the cafeteria. They want to fight, we'll fight. They came out in the hall and I was trying to keep them in the cafeteria and they're like, no, we're going to be out, we're going to do this so, they weren't going to back down. But what was interesting to me, we had administrators in the hallways and we had police in the hallways, but no one stopped the white kids with the weapon. I kept asking, how come you don't stop them? I didn't get an answer and they weren't stopped, so I didn't understand what that was all about.
  • [02:12:22] INTERVIEWER: Can you discuss the situation of black students being arrested and you being arrested after the raid?
  • [02:12:31] Shirley Beckley: Once they clashed and started fighting, the police started arresting some of the black kids. Kids were running outside. When I went outside, there was a young African-American black girl student on the ground and the police had his knee in her back and she was crying, and so I said if you take your knee out of her back, I'll put her in a car for you. He then decided I was interfering. He arrested both of us, me and the girl. It ended up being me and seven other students that were arrested. Now this all took place back in 1971, which I meant to send you the article, but there is an article that was in the newspaper. We ended up going to court, but it all got dropped or dismissed. But as a result, I lost my job.
  • [02:14:10] FEMALE_1: Excuse me sir. Yeah. [inaudible 02:14:19]
  • [02:14:19] INTERVIEWER: [inaudible 02:14:19]
  • [02:14:19] INTERVIEWER: Pairs of words. I'm sorry Ms. Beckley.
  • [02:14:23] Shirley Beckley: That's okay, go ahead.
  • [02:14:25] INTERVIEWER: I just want to make sure we get this, coming down to the [inaudible 02:14:28]
  • [02:14:31] Shirley Beckley: On the wire.
  • [02:14:33] INTERVIEWER: In Florida [inaudible 02:14:34]
  • [02:14:36] INTERVIEWER: You talked to you about the aftermath of the riot.
  • [02:14:39] INTERVIEWER: Just hold on a second.
  • [02:14:40] INTERVIEWER: Okay
  • [02:14:43] Shirley Beckley: We'll take a break.
  • [02:14:44] INTERVIEWER: Yeah, take a little break. [NOISE]
  • [02:15:07] Shirley Beckley: Now did somebody paint that right there? One of the students you think?
  • [02:15:11] INTERVIEWER: Not sufficient that we printed out.
  • [02:15:16] Shirley Beckley: That's the bell tower right there.
  • [02:15:19] INTERVIEWER: I don't think we use it anymore.
  • [02:15:21] Shirley Beckley: It's like a backdrop or something?
  • [02:15:24] INTERVIEWER: Yeah. I think we used that before we had the green.
  • [02:15:28] Shirley Beckley: The green?
  • [02:15:29] INTERVIEWER: But then we got the green screen so we can do any background.
  • [02:15:34] Shirley Beckley: What do you do? Just any background you can put on the screen?
  • [02:15:37] INTERVIEWER: Yeah. If you had a picture of it online, could make the background of whatever you had.
  • [02:15:49] Shirley Beckley: That's cool. That's better, isn't it?
  • [02:15:53] INTERVIEWER: Yeah.
  • [02:15:58] Shirley Beckley: Have you decided?
  • [02:16:04] INTERVIEWER: I don't really see what he's doing yet.
  • [02:16:07] Shirley Beckley: Mr. J. is doing it?
  • [02:16:10] INTERVIEWER: No, Trevor.
  • [02:16:11] Shirley Beckley: Trevor's doing it?
  • [02:16:13] INTERVIEWER: Even the video. He can do whatever you want.
  • [02:16:17] Shirley Beckley: He can put whatever background? We have to ask Trevor?
  • [02:16:20] INTERVIEWER: Yeah.
  • [02:16:23] Trevor: Thank you very much. Sorry about that.
  • [02:16:25] INTERVIEWER: Not a problem.
  • [02:16:26] Shirley Beckley: Trevor, I have a question. Since you're doing the editing and stuff. What backgrounds are you putting on? Do you know.
  • [02:16:36] Trevor: We're not sure yet. We still have to decide. [OVERLAPPING].
  • [02:16:44] INTERVIEWER: Some students just put like a nice light blue back there. Others did things that were more like photos.
  • [02:16:54] Shirley Beckley: That will be cool photos and stuff. I just wondering.
  • [02:16:59] INTERVIEWER: How far did you get?
  • [02:17:01] INTERVIEWER: We're on the second page talking about the consequences and the aftermath.
  • [02:17:05] INTERVIEWER: Do you feel like you're getting. This is your chance. If you need something, make sure you get it.
  • [02:17:27] INTERVIEWER: Can you just go over the consequences of their right and what happened after again?
  • [02:17:34] Shirley Beckley: Well, seven students and myself were arrested and taken down to City Hall. The ride down to City Hall was quite something. They had me, the female student, a police officer, and then this huge police officer that sat on my lap. Which I didn't understand that, but that's what he did. They took us to City Hall because that's where the police department is. They took us into different rooms. They asked me to take my clothes off so they could search me. They had a woman police officer come, but I didn't do it. I told her I wasn't taking my clothes off because I hadn't done anything wrong. In fact, none of us had really done anything wrong. My problem was, none of the white students that had entered the building with the weapons were arrested. I understood, but I didn't go along with what was going on. I wasn't very co-operative. But she went along with me. She didn't make me disrobe. Then we went to court, they set a court date, a hearing, and we went to that and the judge dismissed it. But as a result of what went on, I was removed from my job.
  • [02:19:27] INTERVIEWER: Can you explain why you thought they removed you from your job and why did they just make that choice?
  • [02:19:34] Shirley Beckley: I cannot explain it. Because I was acquitted and so the charges were dropped. I kept asking, why am I being removed? I never got any answer other than they decided to remove me. Only they knew.
  • [02:20:09] INTERVIEWER: I'm going to transition to talking about gentrification and how beginning Harbor. You said in the early '70s and late '60s identifications, certain k town, can you just talk about what's happening with the beginnings of that?
  • [02:20:26] Shirley Beckley: Now, in the beginning, Kelly Town hadn't begun when they first started. I'm trying to think. I was working for the city. Was in the late '60s, maybe '67, something like that. This was part of the urban renewal. Remember when we went on the tour, we talked about urban renewal. Urban renewal really was supposed to be where they were going to remodel the houses or tear them down and rebuild, and then we could come back into our old neighborhood, which that never happened. The houses were removed, but then we were left to find our own new places to live. That was the problem with urban renewal. It didn't do what it said it was going to do.
  • [02:21:27] INTERVIEWER: What were the forces that drove gentrification because we talked about how this he was pushing people.
  • [02:21:34] Shirley Beckley: Well, they were telling you you either soldier property or they would condemn it and take it. I explained before that was part of really splitting up the neighborhood and splitting up the community because people had find housing. Some people got enough money where they could buy another house, but some people didn't. They ended up in the co-ops or in other places. The community, basically, was split up, which it is still split up.
  • [02:22:18] INTERVIEWER: Can you talk about your loved ones to leave their homes, or like you said, that those three bark ban was lifted in Kelly Town, how can you discuss? We need five minutes because of the bell. You can discuss how they tried to push you out of your home. You said you experienced that also.
  • [02:22:48] Shirley Beckley: They didn't try, they did. They took it, tore it down.
  • [02:22:54] INTERVIEWER: You would wait.
  • [02:22:55] INTERVIEWER: We have to wait five minutes.
  • [02:23:01] INTERVIEWER: You can stop the camera, but let's pretend to work.
  • [02:23:05] Shirley Beckley: Who walked downtown with cameras. Saw sitting in another room shooting. I'm like they're just trying, but they're making it difficult because they don't really want it.
  • [02:23:18] INTERVIEWER: Can you tell us what year gentrification really took effect?
  • [02:23:32] Shirley Beckley: I would say around 1967, '68. When it started and went into the early '70s.
  • [02:23:48] INTERVIEWER: Can you just explain to us what gentrification was? Like a general definition of what was happening?
  • [02:24:01] Shirley Beckley: The old neighborhoods were toned down. Now they've been either rebuilt with bigger and more modern homes, or big condominiums very expensive. Everything's very expensive, so we can't come back into our own neighborhood if we wanted to live because it's too expensive.
  • [02:24:28] INTERVIEWER: When it comes to the city, what did they do to you say that they were buying people's homes right?
  • [02:24:35] Shirley Beckley: They weren't buying their homes. They were buying their property to tear them down. Now, the urban renewal plan was to.
  • [02:24:45] INTERVIEWER: Can I Interject you for a second? Be careful when you don't say a city because you want to say how he was behind him because if you say the city she's being answered unless you just did, which is they say city. Just make sure you just make it so that the natural reaction they say.
  • [02:25:12] Shirley Beckley: You want me to say city.
  • [02:25:14] INTERVIEWER: Basically the city define it.
  • [02:25:16] Shirley Beckley: It's right.
  • [02:25:20] INTERVIEWER: You just say how to gentrification and [inaudible 02:25:22].
  • [02:25:23] Shirley Beckley: Through the urban renewal was a plan for the city of Ann Arbor.
  • [02:25:34] INTERVIEWER: You talked about your experience with gentrification and your home being taken. Can you go over that? or other people's homes, how it affected community?
  • [02:25:47] Shirley Beckley: Well, it dismantled the community because now we don't have a community. It makes it difficult for you students now because in the black community, you don't have a community to help you along. Where when I was coming along as a little girl, we had the church, we had the community. We had a community to help us in whatever we needed help in even our community center, which isn't as active now as it was when I was a little girl. The problem with it is that they didn't follow through with the plan which was to rebuild the old neighborhood. They tore down the old neighborhood and then the white community came in and bought that property from the city with low interest rates and built bigger homes. Well, I'm not going to say, let me backtrack. Not the city, but developers came in and built condominiums.
  • [02:27:10] INTERVIEWER: Can you explain the process of how [inaudible 02:27:12] other people's left their. Because you were explaining to us about how the city cataloged silverware.
  • [02:27:24] Shirley Beckley: Well, I was working for the city. One of the secretaries showed me the document that the city was using to purchase our property and when I looked at the document, they were purchasing the home and everything in it and so I told them that they couldn't do that because most of that stuff in there was my mother's which I was going to keep because I was living in the home. Some of it was mine and they couldn't have it. I told the other neighbors to be sure to look at the document because they're not just buying your property, they're buying what's in it which I didn't understand that either. But what we had to do was go to the city council and the result of that meeting was we had to list everything that we want it down to the silverware. Whatever you wanted inside that house. He had to make a list and give it to the city so they wouldn't take it. Now, my problem with that was, what did our personal items have to do with they just wanted the property. What were they going to do with our personal items other than sell them and get more money?
  • [02:28:57] INTERVIEWER: Other were left into different home setting?
  • [02:29:00] Shirley Beckley: You didn't have a choice. There wasn't a choice in the matter.
  • [02:29:07] INTERVIEWER: You talked a little bit about how Ann Arbor has become more expensive. Can you explain why you think it happened or how that process and how it's detrimental to black people or working people.
  • [02:29:25] Shirley Beckley: Was detrimental to the black people that grew up in the area and it's also detrimental because you're working class. All people. Just sure. I guess I would say middle-class down can afford the properties such as West Kingsley where I grew up, there's a big condominium and I think it starts at $500,000 and up. Well, we can't afford to live there. Most working people can afford those things and that's why when I've met with like Eastern Michigan University and University of Michigan students, they're like, Well, where's the black community? You don't really see us because we're scattered around the city. If you come in to Ann Arbor or you see different pictures of Ann Arbor, you see very little African-American life. Because it's been removed and we were scattered throughout the city. It looks like we're not here, but we can't afford to be in the city. But I will say that I went to a city council meeting last week and the Ann Arbor Housing Commission was talking to the city about building some affordable housing. I think they're looking into it.
  • [02:30:58] INTERVIEWER: [inaudible 02:30:58] can say what was on that deed that was important?
  • [02:31:09] Shirley Beckley: Well, it's a deed. A lot of the deeds are covenants. They are called covenants and on the deed even though they don't enforce it, but because they haven't removed it, it could be enforced if the city so chose. But I'm the deed it specifically says that the house can be sold to any person of color. They can come to your house as a guest or as a servant, but you cannot sell your property to them. But that's on time many deeds in Ann Arbor, those are old deeds.
  • [02:32:04] INTERVIEWER: Just explain some of the important aspects of how the community was like before education. You can say a little bit about the center. Kids were in school just like your childhood when you were 18.
  • [02:32:24] Shirley Beckley: As I explained before, we started out with the Dunbar Center, which was on fourth and Kingsley, which is now considered that's part of Kerrytown. That part is. We outgrew the Dunbar Center and so they built the community center. This is where the black kids went after school because their parents were at work. When we get out of school, we would go to the center and do whatever homework or get help and whatever you needed help with in your schoolwork, and then have recreation afterwards. Then on Friday nights, we had dances. We still have the Ann Arbor Community Center, but it's not accessible to the community. We we don't know what's going on there. Does that answer your question?
  • [02:33:41] INTERVIEWER: Yes. You talked about how at that time the [inaudible 02:33:45] Can you tell me choice? Can you just explain I mean, emotions that people felt not having the choice to live?
  • [02:34:02] Shirley Beckley: The city had decided to take that property. The property is that they took so like I said, they told us either we sell or they would condemn it. Now the four families that are still in the area have just refused to give up. They just won't sell. The city isn't condemning those properties, they're just offering money, but it's not the money that they could if they sold the house on their own that they could get. One of the homes which is on for them, that house has been which is the baker House, has been there since back in the 1800s. I can remember, we had youth groups at the church so we would meet at the Baker house, which was across the street from the old Bethel. When we took that tour and saw the old Bethel Church, it was one of the houses across the street and we used to have her little youth meetings over there. There's still a baker living in that house and so he's not going to give up that house. You have some families that are just there hanging on.
  • [02:35:43] Shirley Beckley: But the part where from Kingsley and fourth and fifth up, going towards here on street is considered historical.
  • [02:35:57] INTERVIEWER: Hold on. Can you go into depth about how the Wagner [inaudible 02:36:00] time has not been considered historical?
  • [02:36:06] Shirley Beckley: There is no black community and what is considered historical, which is Kerry town. But from Kingsley and fourth and fifth down towards Depot Street, that's not considered historical, even though both the churches, the old Second Baptist Church, which is on the corner of fifth and beaks, and the old Bethel AME Church, which is left for fourth half, are well over 150 years old. They are historical but not considered historical.
  • [02:36:54] INTERVIEWER: Do you think gentrification is happening right now. Do you see it happening any time soon?
  • [02:37:01] Shirley Beckley: Gentrification has happened all over the country and most. When they did the urban renewal, that what was happening all over the United States. The same process went on all over the United States. It didn't just Michigan or Ann Arbor, is all over.
  • [02:37:24] INTERVIEWER: Well, in current times, in 2018, we realized that DC gentrification happened there?
  • [02:37:30] Shirley Beckley: Yes.
  • [02:37:34] INTERVIEWER: Can you go to depth about maybe things that you've seen [inaudible 02:37:39] or observations that you may have had that led you to be heard.
  • [02:37:45] Shirley Beckley: Well, what has happened is in Ypsilanti and Detroit, as well as Ann Arbor, the affluent parts of the cities, the affluent families moved to the suburbs, but now they're coming back into the city, the hub of the city, and so they're taking over, which is pushing the working class and lower out. Even if we go to Ypsi, it feels like you're unwanted, and so you need to move on. But we're like move on where? Because if you go to Ypsilanti, the same thing is going on, and if you go to Detroit, the same thing is going on. It's like where are we supposed to go? Then they're not building affordable housing even though earlier I said I was at a meeting at City Hall and the city council is considering building some affordable housing which is needed here, as well as Ypsilanti.
  • [02:39:09] INTERVIEWER: In relation to the city council, you said that you go to police task force?
  • [02:39:16] Shirley Beckley: No. I didn't.
  • [02:39:18] INTERVIEWER: Didn't build up the police task force would be contributed to the creation of the task force. Era police, you talked about how you got your essay, how they are being aggressive with high school or during pioneer in '70s? Have you seen the police change over the time period, or how they stayed?
  • [02:39:43] Shirley Beckley: They've gotten worse. That's why we have a set of police task force. The police task force, which has just recently been come about in just a month, I think it's been about a month, the reason for the task force is to build the Citizens Police Oversight Committee. They're supposed to put that together. We had a meeting last week with the task force and several people from the community was saying to them that they're representing the community, but they're forgetting that they're representing us. We're going to have a meeting on the 31st of May that's going to be open to the task force and the community talking together instead of them talking at us. We're going to try and break that barrier where we can talk together and come up with this Community Police Oversight Committee so that it can represent the community.
  • [02:41:07] INTERVIEWER: Can you explain how law enforcement has gotten worse?
  • [02:41:12] Shirley Beckley: I can explain why. I don't know what's going on that the police feel that it's okay to kill. I'm not understanding as a senior citizen and have lived and witnessed a lot of rioting and things that have gone on, I'm not understanding why it's happening, and I don't understand how the police can be the judge and the jury and executioner, and just do it all and nothing really happens to the police. Now I understand the how they get away with it, I don't understand why it isn't challenged by more lawyers. I think lawyers need to help the citizens challenge that so that we can stop it since the courts aren't stopping it.
  • [02:42:20] INTERVIEWER: Did you face any challenges when trying to contribute to cleaning this police task force?
  • [02:42:26] Shirley Beckley: Well, it took us three years to get to where we are. It actually took longer than that, but it came about after the death of Aura Rosser when the police officer shot her three years ago. The community came before city council and we asked for citizens police oversight. Now we've gotten to the task force they're supposed to set up the Community Oversight Committee soul. I guess I should consider that a plus.
  • [02:43:10] INTERVIEWER: Do you have any conflicts with city council officials in there, like do they stand in the way?
  • [02:43:23] Shirley Beckley: The mayor and most of City Council, not all of City Council really didn't want the Citizens Police Oversight Committee. But they also brought in a consultant, and that was last summer, that was to look at Ann Arbor's police and supposedly the community. They were supposed to talk to the community. Now they talked to some of us. But they didn't do a very good job of reaching the students, we were like, well did you talk to students, and did you go to the jails and talk to anybody that's incarcerated and how they feel about things? They hadn't done a lot of that and so we didn't think they did a very good job. But the problem with that was that we as a community asked that they didn't hire ex-police officers to be the consultants, which they did hire. The consultants were ex-police officers from Chicago, which didn't give us a good service in our eyesight.
  • [02:44:51] INTERVIEWER: In general, how do you think that we can work to improve the community in future?
  • [02:44:59] Shirley Beckley: Well, I think it's going to be young people that are going to have to take over for him. Because in watching you young people, you get along better, you don't look at colors so much, not that that doesn't go on, but you get along a little better. I look and hope that you young people are going to come along and do something about the ills of racism. It's a hard fight because it's a systematic racism. It's not an easy job that you have ahead of you, but hopefully you all will be able to do it. You've started with these school shootings and students have gotten together and even gone to your capitals and gone to the White House and protested. I see that you are will help us make this a better place for all of us. I'm just hopeful that I know that we all can live together, so I am dependent on you or to do it.
  • [02:46:16] INTERVIEWER: That was great.
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2022

Length: 02:46:13

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Legacies Project