Deenie Drew Interviewed on January 27, 1995

HUNTLEY: Good morning.

DREW: Good morning, Dr. Huntley.

HUNTLEY: How are you doing? We are here this morning with Ms. Deenie Drew. I am Dr. Horace Huntley with an interview today for the Birmingham Civil Rights 00:01:00Institute. Today is Friday, January 27, 1995. Dee, thank you for coming out and taking time this morning to sit with us to talk about Birmingham and, really, just life in general. What we are attempting to do at the Institute is really develop sort of the definitive history of Birmingham and how it evolved--how people would come in from various places and make Birmingham today what it is. We, of course would like to do this interview with you today and we are just very grateful that you decided to come out and visit with us this morning.

DREW: Thanks for asking me.

HUNTLEY: Thank you. I notice that you are not a native Alabamian, so can you just give me just a little of your background? Where are you from, siblings, 00:02:00something about your family--

DREW: Well, I was born and raised in Ardmore, Pennsylvania. Ardmore is part of the main line, seven miles on the outskirts of Philadelphia. I went to school in that area. I lived there most of my life. I can't say most of my life now, can I? The early years of my life.

HUNTLEY: The developmental years. What about your siblings?

DREW: I have a brother, Jim Baker, who is an attorney here in Birmingham.

HUNTLEY: And is Jim younger or older?

DREW: Younger.

HUNTLEY: He's younger than you. Tell me something about your parents.

DREW: Well, the greatest thing about my Dad, I guess, is the fact that he lived to be one hundred and four years old. He was a water boy in the Civil War and he used to tell hair-raising tales about his youth.

HUNTLEY: Now, he was born in North Carolina.

DREW: Yes, Warren County.

HUNTLEY: And how old was he when he left North Carolina?

DREW: He was quite a young man. I would say he was between twenty-five and thirty [years old].

HUNTLEY: So, he has told you stories about the Civil War and the period of Reconstruction.

DREW: How he traveled around trying to find himself and the many things that he did to make a living, including prize fighting in either Newport News or Norfolk, Virginia. According to him he was a pretty good prizefighter.

HUNTLEY: Well, in his story development, tell me, did he give you any indication of what life was like during the latter part of the nineteenth century for a young Black man attempting to make it in this society?

DREW: The latter part of the nineteenth century? Do you mean like about 1990?

HUNTLEY: No, about the 1890s.

DREW: He said it was a very, very confusing time for Black people. Of course they had nothing whatever, although some master, or whatever those people were called, willed his children land or gave land to the children that had been in slavery on their property.

HUNTLEY: Was he one of those?

DREW: He was among them, and as years went on, that land was non-productive as far as he was concerned. He never made any money with it. It was taken away, I guess--confiscated or something.

HUNTLEY: Is that why he would eventually leave North Carolina?

DREW: He left North Carolina in a quest for a way to make a living and for a 00:05:00better life. He didn't know where he was going.

HUNTLEY: And he ended up in Ardmore, Pennsylvania.

DREW: He ended up in Ardmore, Pennsylvania, he says, following a lady, Ms. Joanna. Her last name happened to be Davis, too, but they were not related.

HUNTLEY: So, what kind of work did he do in Ardmore?

DREW: He was a landscape gardener finally. That's the way he ended his life, gardening. He was great with flowers, at home and for other people too.

HUNTLEY: What about your mother?

DREW: Well, I can't tell you very much about my mother. My parents met in Ardmore. I was three years old when my mother died and I didn't ever really know her.

HUNTLEY: So, then, you were reared by your father.

DREW: To be sure.

HUNTLEY: Okay.

DREW: There was no doubt about it. He was in charge.

HUNTLEY: He was in charge. Okay, good. Well, maybe we need more of that kind of rearing today.

DREW: I don't know whether young people would take it today or not.

HUNTLEY: You left Ardmore after high school and you eventually ended up in New York. Tell me a little about the transition from Ardmore to New York.

DREW: Well, I went to New York because I was transferred there. At the secession of hostilities after World War Two, the Signal Corps-- Well, of course, it can't disintegrate, so that's not the word--

HUNTLEY: You worked for the Signal Corps?

DREW: I was working for the Signal Corps and they laid off a lot of people. They kept some people and I was among those kept.

HUNTLEY: What kind of work were you doing?

DREW: Personnel, and they transferred me to the New York office where I continued to do personnel work.

HUNTLEY: And, you were there with the Signal Corps in New York for approximately two years or so?

DREW: At least. It was so long ago now, I've sort of forgotten.

HUNTLEY: Tell me a little about New York. Here is-- Ardmore, I'm assuming, is not a-- Well, it's near a metropolitan area, near Philadelphia, but coming from Ardmore to New York City, what type of experience was that?

DREW: Well, it wasn't so new to me because I had visited in New York all my life. There's only ninety miles difference. We had a lot of family and friends in New York and I would go to New York as a very small child for at least two weeks every summer. Some times it would be two months, so it wasn't foreign to 00:08:00me at all. Now Ardmore is not a little country town. It's suburban Philadelphia, like you have Mountain Brook here. We had Ardmore, Pennsylvania.

HUNTLEY: So it was really not a terribly great transition?

DREW: No, no. I knew my way around New York and it moves at a faster pace than Philadelphia or Ardmore and the transition was just almost non-existent.

HUNTLEY: New York at that time must have been a pretty exciting place, though?

DREW: Oh, yes, it certainly was. For a young Black woman, it was just out of sight.

HUNTLEY: What was exciting about it?

DREW: The men, the men, the men. The 332nd, the crème-de-la-creme of Black humanity, came back to New York after the end of the war, and they all came to 00:09:00New York when they left Europe. I was fortunate enough to know some of them and, therefore, I met others. It was wonderful to have them back for all reasons.

HUNTLEY: What about housing in New York? Where did you live?

DREW: I lived on 110th Street. It was very lovely down there right off the park at that time. Now that's considered slum. I had lots of friends and family that lived up in Harlem and Edgecomb, very elegant places up there, and a lot of them are still very, very well kept. These descendents of those people still live there.

HUNTLEY: Many of the well-known artists were in New York at the same time. Did you happen to know of those individuals? I believe you mentioned Gordon Parks.

DREW: Yes. My cousin was dating Gordon Parks for a while and we used to go with the guy I was dating. We would go out as, what do you call it, a foursome, two couples.

HUNTLEY: Double dating?

DREW: Double dating, that's the word. You see how antiquated I am.

HUNTLEY: Then, you lived in New York. You worked for the Signal Corps, but, then, you made an application to the Red Cross.

DREW: Years ago.

HUNTLEY: Then, you eventually heard from them. Can you tell me about that story?

DREW: Well, I had made application when I was probably eighteen or nineteen years old, at the very beginning, when people were being recruited and making applications for the World War Two positions, and I was too young. You had to be 00:11:00twenty-four [years old] for service in European countries, and, oh, I think in the Philippines or anywhere. But, anyway, I wanted to go to Europe because I had friends in the Red Cross who were in Europe and they were enjoying themselves despite the hazards. They said I was too young. But, somehow my file was not thrown away. It was kept. So many years later they were looking for someone with personnel training and background and here I was, so they sent me a wire and told me to report to Tuskegee in five days. They told me my salary, which was astronomical for those days. They told me that housing was available. I think that I had to pay a very small amount for the housing, but I remember this well: 00:12:00Fifty cents a day I had to pay the VA Hospital for my food. They underwrote the rest of this, but, for some reason, we had to pay fifty cents a day. And I said, 'A place to live fifty cents a day and they're going to issue me uniforms that I'll have to wear. I'll need no clothes. They're issuing me a car. I can get well down there! So, yes, I'll go for a year.'

HUNTLEY: What did your friends and relatives have to say about you leaving the East Coast coming to the Deep South?

DREW: They said I was a damned fool--that nobody leaves New York to move to Tuskegee. Everybody in Alabama is trying to get out and I'm going down there.

HUNTLEY: Did that discourage you at all?

DREW: It frightened me. It gave me leave... I certainly thought a lot about it.

HUNTLEY: What did your dad say?

DREW: Oh, my dad was adamant. He thought it was the dumbest thing he had ever 00:13:00heard. He told me that, 'You were born free.'

HUNTLEY: You were 'born free.' What does that mean?

DREW: Born free? Well, I was born without the shackles of-- I guess he was thinking in terms of slavery, since he had been born in slavery, but I think that's what he meant.

HUNTLEY: The assumption then was that you were born free, now you were going back to the South where black folks are not free--

DREW: And be enslaved. That's right.

HUNTLEY: He was very concerned about your safety as well.

DREW: That was the main thing that concerned him was my safety. He knew that I was an outspoken person and he knew that I was of a strong mind, and he was afraid I wouldn't follow the mores of the South and that I would get myself in very serious trouble.

HUNTLEY: Well, how did you get from New York to Tuskegee?

DREW: On the train.

HUNTLEY: Were there any experiences between New York and Alabama?

DREW: Yes. Yes. The conductor... The trains, of course, were segregated, and the conductor was trying to ascertain whether I belonged in the White or the Black part of the train.

HUNTLEY: How would they do that?

DREW: Well, they'd take a flashlight and somehow or another they'd say if they can look at the white of your eyes, they can determine what your race is, which they did. But, I didn't move. Fortunately, I was near Notasulga and that was the next stop to Cheehaw.

HUNTLEY: Okay, so you were, in fact, in Alabama at the time that this supposed test took place?

DREW: Right.

HUNTLEY: And you were seated... Were you seated in the Black car?

DREW: I don't remember. You know, when we left New York, we changed cars, I think, in Washington. I think it was Washington.

HUNTLEY: Right, that would probably be the first.

DREW: The Mason-Dixon Line. I really and truly can't remember whether I was already in the Black [car], or whether I was already in the White one, but I can assure you of one thing: I didn't move.

HUNTLEY: The conductor actually had a flashlight and he shined it in your eye and he would be able to determine whether you were Black or White?

DREW: There were two--the conductor and, I think, the brakeman, he was called. I guess they felt the majority would rule. I guess.

HUNTLEY: But you didn't move.

DREW: I did not move. I didn't move until they said, 'Cheehaw.'

HUNTLEY: Well, tell me, what was the transition like from New York City, urban and really exciting, to a little one-horse town, Tuskegee?

DREW: Well, you know, Tuskegee is a one-horse town, that's true, but Tuskegee at that time had just about everything. I had a very ambitious program. The week after I arrived I had to go to Atlanta for training at the Red Cross Training Center for this position of Assistant Field Director. That training took quite a long time. I've forgotten now whether it was a year, six months, a year and a half, or eight months, but I was in Atlanta for quite a while. But, weekends I would go back to Tuskegee, and there were lots of parties and dances and it was a very social town. I guess because it is sort of isolated and...

HUNTLEY: Atlanta or Tuskegee?

DREW: Tuskegee. Everybody has do to everything within the confines of this little dry town. Dry. The guys would fly in the whiskey by the crates. People 00:17:00would give them the order, you know, 'Bring me twenty-four bottles of...' and they would fly it in, because the police looked for the cars-- the cabs-- the license tags on automobiles going in and out of Macon County, because they knew that they were probably bringing back alcohol.

They would look in the trunks and they would take the whiskey and let you go on.

HUNTLEY: You said that these guys would fly the liquor in. What do you mean?

DREW: Well, some of them had planes that they would run and some of them... oh, what did they call him? Al-- He was from Ardmore [Pennsylvania], too. He was one of the heads of.... Anderson, Captain Anderson. That's what they called him down there. He's from my town. He and Gert were living there and some of them had 00:18:00access to airplanes or they had them.

HUNTLEY: These were associated with the Tuskegee Institute and with the ...

DREW: Mitchell Airfield. They would fly all over, either on some kind of mission or for fun or whatever and everybody would give them orders for....

HUNTLEY: So they would bring it back in through the air and there would be no possibility of being stopped on the highway.

DREW: Exactly, exactly. We were pretty good at outwitting them, you know.

HUNTLEY: Absolutely. Well, tell me. What was your social life like in Tuskegee?

DREW: Oh, wonderful. I used to play a lot of cards in those days and I played cards and I went to the parties. You could party every night if you would. You were invited somewhere almost every night. And, as I say, I had a hard work schedule. We set up that operation, Estelle Trenton and me. This was an 00:19:00experimental thing, servicing Veteran's Hospital and ours' was the first one in the nation. Where my personnel experience, I guess, came in handy was that we had to recruit these volunteers to work in this service. We went on.Well, we got all the big society ladies first--wives of the presidents of these different institutions, and they helped a lot. Vera Foster helped a lot--Dr. Foster's wife. She was one of my gray ladies. I guess we had a couple of hundred and then we, in turn, trained them and they could do almost everything for a patient that a nurse could do.

You know, the VA Hospital was and, I guess, still is a hospital for the mentally impaired and so it took a lot of training to teach them.

HUNTLEY: Was any of that time associated with Tuskegee Institute?

DREW: No, it was... Well, I don't know how to answer that. I really don't know. You see, there were the three great institutions. There was Tuskegee, of course, first and foremost.

Then, the VA Hospital and, then, John A. Andrews Hospital. And to say that they were not connected would be erroneous, but to say that they were... It was sort of like Booker Washington, you know, all fingers on the same hand.

HUNTLEY: Is this where you met John Drew? Did you meet John in Tuskegee?

DREW: Well, I had met him briefly in New York, but he was great friends with some of my friends, and they had contacted him and told him I was coming and 00:21:00asked him to be sure to look out for me.

HUNTLEY: The first time you met John did he sweep you off your feet?

DREW: [Shakes her head to indicate 'No.']

HUNTLEY: He didn't?

DREW: No. He did most women.

HUNTLEY: Tell me about the first time that you met him.

DREW: Well, the first time I met him, he had a bad cold. It was in the Hotel Theresa in New York. He was near pneumonia and that's not a good time to meet anyone.

HUNTLEY: You were not very impressed.

DREW: I was anything other than impressed. I found him very vulgar.

HUNTLEY: When did you and John actually get together?

DREW: In Tuskegee. In Tuskegee--after I had been there a while. I don't know, but, anyway, in Tuskegee.

HUNTLEY: How long did you live in Tuskegee after you and John met? Did you-- Were you married in Tuskegee?

DREW: Married in Philadelphia. I wasn't sure... I still wasn't sure I was going 00:22:00to live in Alabama the rest of my life, and I knew that he would always either be in Alabama or Georgia. He was committed to insuring everybody in Alabama and Georgia. That was his mission in life and I wasn't sure, yet, that I wanted to do that.

HUNTLEY: Were you still working with the Red Cross at the time?

DREW: No, no. I had left. [Es]Stell had gone to the Orient and I had left. That was enough.

HUNTLEY: Then when did you move to Birmingham?

DREW: Some time in the 1940's--'49 or something. I lived with, and worked for and with, Mrs. Anderson--Nanette's Homemade Candy. She's a Black woman that had 00:23:00a factory.

HUNTLEY: In Tuskegee?

DREW: No, right here in Birmingham.

HUNTLEY: Mrs. Anderson?

DREW: Gertrude Anderson. She is one of the unspoken and unheard of people here and I can't understand it. She was the foremost woman here. She had a factory. She supplied chocolates to Loveman's under the name of-- Her name was Nanette Homemade Candies and they would buy her candy and put another box top over it with Loveman's something or other. There were two candy makers here, Mary Ball and... No, there were three, and she ranked up with them. They interchanged things. She had hand-dipped chocolates and so did they. She also sold hard candy.

HUNTLEY: Where was the factory located?

DREW: At 508 Eleventh Avenue North. The freeway came along and destroyed the 00:24:00whole thing.

HUNTLEY: And is that your first job here in Birmingham?

DREW: Those months, yes. I opened a candy store on Fourth Avenue between, I guess, between Seventeenth and Eighteenth Street in the same block where Bob Savoy was. That was a bustling area at that time.

HUNTLEY: The same block that the famous New Frolic was?

DREW: Across the street.

HUNTLEY: Okay. This was your candy store and she supplied you with candy.

DREW: Yes.

HUNTLEY: Okay, well, then, after the freeway came through, is that what ended her business?

DREW: No, no. Actually, I got married and her children... Charles was a lawyer. 00:25:00Her children, B.J. and Eleanor, they wanted to take over the business. Charles had left Massachusetts. He re-codified the statutes of Massachusetts. He was a very brilliant guy. In fact, all of them were brilliant. Mrs. Anderson's father built Sixteenth Street [Baptist] Church, Reverend Fisher. Brilliant family. Anyway, they wanted to take it on, but they didn't do well with the business... So often the next generation doesn't do too well.

HUNTLEY: How long did you have the candy store?

DREW: About a year.

HUNTLEY: What did you do after that?

DREW: I went back to Philadelphia.

HUNTLEY: For how long?

DREW: I can't remember these years. I swear I can't.

HUNTLEY: But, you eventually came back both prior to...?

DREW: John came-- John came to New York and we went to St. Simon's Episcopal 00:26:00Church and got married and then we came back.

HUNTLEY: Now, when you came back, I'm assuming that's in the mid-1950's or so and prior to the development of the Alabama Christian Movement.

DREW: I don't remember the date of the... but John and me were there [at the first meeting of the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights].

HUNTLEY: Okay, that was in 1956.

DREW: Well, I don't know how I happened to be here. Oh, in '56? I was well... I was-- My child had been born by that time. We were at the opening meeting.

HUNTLEY: So you were one of the founding members then?

DREW: We were there. That's the meeting where Fred Shuttlesworth called Mrs. Plump 'sweetheart' and she stood up and said, 'I am not your sweetheart,' and it almost broke it up.

HUNTLEY: Tell me a little bit before we get into the Movement. Tell me what community you lived in at the time.

DREW: I've always lived in the same area.

HUNTLEY: What area is that?

DREW: Well, I think...Smithfield.

HUNTLEY: Smithfield. Is that near the area that's called Dynamite Hill?

DREW: I lived on the top of 'Dynamite Hill', right on the top.

HUNTLEY: So, when the freeway came through, that, then, sort of divided that community.

DREW: It did, and it took my house and half of my land, and my husband and I decided that we would just build another house up there.

HUNTLEY: So, you didn't move out of the community?

DREW: We just built another house on the part of the land that they didn't take.

HUNTLEY: Tell me a little bit about that community--the make-up of the community.

DREW: Well, most all the business and professional men and families in the city 00:28:00lived up there. Virgil Harris, I don't need to name them, but almost all the doctors and lawyers and everybody that made any kind of money had a house up in that area.

HUNTLEY: Was this-- When you moved there, was it a Black neighborhood?

DREW: Well, the reason, one of the reasons, it's called 'Dynamite Hill' is because we integrated it. The first house I lived in was on First Street, one block away from what is now called 'Dynamite Hill.' It was a brand new little brick house and while John was in Philadelphia marrying me, the Ku Klux Klan came and burned all the doors. They took the doors from inside the house, and I guess... I don't know what that was... I guess because the house was solid brick and not veneered, but they thought that it would probably burn up. So we had to put in brand new doors in the bedrooms and all around the house.

HUNTLEY: Burned all of the doors.

DREW: Burned the doors. You ever heard of such a dumb thing?

HUNTLEY: Inside the house?

DREW: Inside. They must have been... I'm guessing. I don't know what's in their minds, but they must have expected some kind of an implosion that would have destroyed it.

HUNTLEY: Well, how did you react when you came back and saw this?

DREW: We were furious! That's how we felt.

HUNTLEY: What did you do? Did you report it to the police?

DREW: No. We called the builders and ordered some doors and cleaned up the mess. And I went down to Loveman's and Pizitz and those stores and bought beds and chairs and put them in there. It was ours.

HUNTLEY: So, they were not running you off. Did you ever think of something like not moving in there?

DREW: Never. I had many scary nights and days, but I didn't. My attitude was to 00:30:00fight back.

HUNTLEY: What was scary about the nights and days?

DREW: Well, almost every night some house was dynamited or burned down. I could stand in my bedroom window and look over to Center Street, one block away. Where I now live there were three three-story houses. Moncrief--a big name still in Birmingham in politics and stuff--the Moncrief's lived in one of them and they torched those three houses. They were largely framed and they burned all three of them down in one night. I've never seen such a fire in my life. All three houses were up in flames.

HUNTLEY: These were Black people that lived in these houses at that time?

DREW: Black people were trying to buy property up there. A Mrs. Monk had bought a piece of property down the hill, like about between probably Ninth and Eighth 00:31:00[Streets] or Ninth and Tenth [Streets]. Somehow she had managed-- A Black woman had managed to buy that land and she had begun building and they just kept on harassing her and doing things to her. She lives.Oh, I think she's dead now, but her family still lives there, although

the house was never completed. But some ordinance or something must have passed because people were buying property. Dr. Elliot bought some property up there. He was an old dentist here. Arthur Shores bought property. He was living farther down in Smithfield on First Street. But everybody was afraid to build their house, because they knew what was going to happen, you know--that it would be destroyed.

HUNTLEY: This next question, then, raises another issue. What was the 00:32:00relationship with the community, your community, with the police department?

DREW: Horrible. They despised us. It was absolutely horrible. They were not our friends.

HUNTLEY: They didn't come in to protect and serve you.

DREW: No.

HUNTLEY: How would you characterize it?

DREW: Well, let's see. I'd go to Shores' house. When Shores was building his house, all the men everywhere around in the neighborhood would meet there every night with their arsenal. They would have their own guns and stuff. Leroy Gaylor and BeBe Core and some of the others, they were like vigilantes. They were driving around the area with walkie- talkies in those days and spotting--looking for police, looking for trouble. If they saw anything, they would tell my husband and Shores and all those people, you know, 'Look out,' and they would 00:33:00get the guns ready.

HUNTLEY: You mean they were actually on the look out for police.

DREW: Right--and Klansmen--policemen that were Klansmen. Either one. We didn't know which was which, because one was the same as the other.

HUNTLEY: So the police department and the Klan were very closely associated.

DREW: Extremely. It was my belief that all policemen also belonged to the Klan. That was my belief. I don't know that every single one did, but I believed it.

HUNTLEY: Would this, then, be one of the reasons that you would get involved with the Movement--that you would be at the first Alabama Christian Movement meeting?

DREW: John and me, yes, because they were calling us all the time. When we moved in the little house and-- You wanted to know, well, what did we do? We moved into our house. But, they were calling and saying, 'Nigger, be out of here,' you know, by such and such a time or 'we're going to come and do so and so.' And my 00:34:00husband would say, 'Well, just come right on. I'm ready for you.' He would talk back to them. Then I wrote a letter to the [Birmingham] Post Herald in 1957. John Temple Graves was the editor of the paper and somehow or another it touched him and for at least six issues of that paper, Deenie Davis Drew's name was in this, was brought up. It caused a lot of....and my address...

HUNTLEY: Your address was printed.

DREW: Yes, when I wrote the letter, I didn't know how... I said who I was and [the address] 1112 North First Street.

HUNTLEY: What did John have to say about this, your writing letters?

DREW: Oh, he proofread it. John was a great grammarian and I'm not, and whenever I had to do anything I would always say, 'Read this,' and he would edit. He was 00:35:00proud of me, I think. But, the letter only said that if Birmingham would stop waving the red flag-- If the newspapers and your officials--you would have a pretty good city. That was the gist

of it. That they were... The headline was, 'Deenie Davis Drew of this city says we're waving a red flag.' So, that's all I said, [that] if you [newspapers and officials] just stopped doing that, you know, people would get along.

HUNTLEY: At that point that was a rather militant statement.

DREW: In the early 1950s that was unheard of.

HUNTLEY: A revolutionary statement, in fact.

DREW: That's right. But, of course, you know I didn't know that.

HUNTLEY: In 1956 the State of Alabama outlawed the operation of the NAACP in the state, which resulted in the establishment of the Alabama Christian Movement for 00:36:00Human Rights.

DREW: Exactly.

HUNTLEY: You and John attended the first meeting. Do you remember the first meeting? What was it like, those first meetings that the movement had...the mass meetings that were going on in 1956 and '57?

DREW: I think we were in Reverend Alford's church. I'm not even sure, but it was somewhere up on Enon Ridge or up that way. Was that where it was, at Sardis [Baptist Church]?

HUNTLEY: Sardis, yes Sardis.

DREW: I remembered better than I thought. I can't tell you everybody that was there. Mostly it was ministers, but the women like Mrs. Plump and me...

HUNTLEY: What was the atmosphere like? You said....

DREW: I don't remember that they had guards. I'm sure they did have.

HUNTLEY: So Reverend Shuttlesworth made a statement to Mrs. Plump.

DREW: Well, we were all putting up-- 'Who will give a $100 dollars?' you know, that kind of thing. You know, you can't operate without money and Mrs. Plump was a very wealthy woman and very interested in doing something about race relations. She and I worked together back before that. She admired Bryant and Mrs. Anderson, Miss Gisgham, all those old...

HUNTLEY: All these were Black women?

DREW: Yes. Some of them were Black like me and some of them were Black like you. But, we were already going to Burger Phillips and Lovemans and asking them to take down the signs over the water fountains and so forth.

HUNTLEY: Did you ever go into... I know there were times when Black people would go into certain stores and they were not allowed to try on the hats there.

DREW: Oh, I don't go and put my foot in Sears, Roebuck to this day because of that. I went to Sears, Roebuck with Eleanor Anderson and I had been going in and 00:38:00out of Sears, Roebuck, and Eleanor had a beautiful dress and she had been looking for a hat. I said, 'There's the hat, Eleanor.' I grabbed the hat and she started screaming, 'Don't do that. Don't do that.' I said, 'Try that hat on, Eleanor. It's just like the one you're looking for.' By that time, the sales people were there and they were snatching the hat out of Eleanor and my--out of our hands. And when I found out what it was about, and they gave Eleanor a rag to put on her head and then she could put the hat on, I said, 'Let us get out of here,' and we got out, and until this day I haven't been in Sears, Roebuck.

HUNTLEY: You have not been Sears, Roebuck.

DREW: No, I haven't.

HUNTLEY: In forty years.

DREW: That's right, and they keep on writing me and telling me that I have an automatic charge account. They can keep it.

HUNTLEY: Did you ever go into the places alone and were allowed...

DREW: I went everywhere, because I didn't know any better. See?

HUNTLEY: Did they simply assume that you were white?

DREW: I guess so. They didn't bother me until I went in with somebody who wasn't--you know.

I think I told you that story about me in Burger Phillips' parking lot.

HUNTLEY: No, you didn't tell me.

DREW: Well, I had been going in there for years. I usually would go shopping alone because...I still do. And, I would drive up there on Fourth Avenue and the man came out and [said], 'Good morning, m'am,' and he gave you a ticket and took your car and put it somewhere and you walked across a ramp, so the White ladies wouldn't get wet, and did your shopping. [You'd] come back out and give them the ticket and they'd bring you your car, 'Yes, m'am. Yes, m'am.' I'd been doing that for years. Gene Belcher, Doctor Belcher's wife, and Mina, Mina King--her husband's a big surgeon--she was from out of town. She came in town to shop and 00:40:00I picked them up. We were going down to Burger Phillips to shop and we were laughing and happy. I drive up in there like I'd been driving up there all along and the boy that's been parking my car, he comes over. I said, 'Good morning.' He looked at them and he asked me what my nationality was. And I said, 'I'm American. So what? Give me the ticket.' He runs and gets the boss, the manager, and the boss comes over and he tells me, 'We don't park colored cars.' I said, 'I see a blue one and a green one and a yellow one. What are you talking about you don't park colored cars?' Gene and Mina were just going crazy. They just knew we were going to get lynched or something terrible was going to happen, and I was telling them to shut up and they were [saying], 'Deenie, please. Please.' 00:41:00I said, 'Let me get to the bottom of this. I don't know what's going on.' So, he told me I had to take the car out of there and I said, 'Just tell me. What you are talking about?' Then, I found out that...

HUNTLEY: Did you not know what was going on?

DREW: I did not know. See, there were a lot of mistakes I made. If I had known, I don't know whether I would have ever gone in there. I just don't know.

HUNTLEY: This was not a protest, more or less?

DREW: No. That was ignorance on my part, but, then, I did protest mightily.

HUNTLEY: Did anything ever come of that? Did you ever make a formal protest to that store?

DREW: Oh, I did indeed. I went in there and threatened to cancel my charge account and I stayed out of there a long time. But I didn't cancel, because I loved their stuff...you know, I loved it and I had this house I was furnishing 00:42:00and I had this... I loved it, and I didn't cancel it. I took most of my business elsewhere, but I did not cancel that.

HUNTLEY: So, really, at the time the Movement started, you and others were really sort of ripe for that because of the things you had gone through.

DREW: And, when we were trying to do something about it. We had an interracial women's group before I married John.

HUNTLEY: This was prior to the Movement?

DREW: Yes, and they did a lot of praying. That was never exactly my long suit, but I understood why because-- Well, there was a White woman whose name was Tatum, Nora Tatum. I know the last name was Tatum, because it was something 00:43:00about bread. She lived on Fifteenth Street up on The Highland. We couldn't go there for her meeting, when her turn came, until her husband went to work. And so, I guess a needed... The women were scared to death.

HUNTLEY: This is Fifteenth Street South?

DREW: Yes. You know where Sirote is? Well just another block up.

HUNTLEY: What were some of the issues that this interracial women's group...?

DREW: We went to... It makes you laugh now. Mostly, we went to stores. I forgot what we called that committee. I was always on it. We'd go to the stores and ask them to clean the ladies rooms or furnish... No, the [Black] women had no ladies 00:44:00rooms down there. There were no ladies rooms in those stores. I think...

HUNTLEY: Like Loveman's or Pizitz?

DREW: I think either Loveman's or Pizitz had one way down in the basement. Now, you're up on the Seventh floor and you need to go and you have to go way down there. I think it was Pizitz that had it in the basement. One of them did. But, most of them didn't have any facilities, and if you took your children-- I used to have to carry a little jar with a screw top on it around for Jeff. Fortunately, he was a little boy and when I would have to bring him downtown to buy shoes or whatever and he had to go to the bathroom....

HUNTLEY: So there were rest areas, rest rooms, for White women?

DREW: Oh yes, sure. I've been in all of them.

HUNTLEY: But for the Black women there weren't any?

DREW: None. Loveman's probably had the nicest one [for White women]. They had a balcony up there over the first floor and they had a tea room up there, and off the tearoom was a rest room where ladies could go and sit down and chat and if they were tired. Then the toilets and washbasins were set off from that. Very nice.

HUNTLEY: But, tell me about some of the experiences that you had as it related to the Movement. I know that you knew Martin Luther King personally.

DREW: Very well.

HUNTLEY: He would actually spend time at your home. Can you tell us just a bit about how the movement evolved, say, from the beginning of the Alabama Christian Movement until just prior to Dr. King coming to Birmingham in 1963? What was happening? What was taking place? What was the focus of the Movement at that 00:46:00time? Did you have any close relationships with the Movement prior to the big demonstrations of 1963?

DREW: I can't... The Alabama Christian Movement invited the SCLC here. At that time, Fred [Shuttlesworth] was zeroing in, I think, on schools. He had children and he was trying to put some of them in Phillips [High School], if my mind serves me right. And he was severely beaten--severely beaten with chains and all manner of things.

HUNTLEY: That's right. His wife was stabbed in the hip.

DREW: Right. That's right. And that caused us to-- You know, those kinds of 00:47:00things just made us livid. I can't tell you, because I can't remember any one specific thing that caused us to invite them [leaders of the SCLC] in.

DREW: More than Albany or any of those other places that you could do something, you that something can be done. I just really and truly don't remember what the spark was. You may know. I don't remember.

HUNTLEY: Obviously, there was a necessity for the...

DREW: We needed help.

HUNTLEY: Right. We needed help. But SCLC needed help also, because of the Albany situation...

DREW: Failure, or so-called failure--

HUNTLEY: So-called failure, and there was a national meeting, I believe, in some place in Georgia, and there was discussion of what was next. I believe that's where the invitation was given to have the meeting here in Birmingham. When Dr. King came to Birmingham, when did you first meet him?

DREW: Oh, I first met him...I guess we had married a year. That must have been about 1951.

HUNTLEY: He initially came to Dexter [Avenue Baptist Church] in 1954, I believe.

DREW: Yes, in 1954.

HUNTLEY: Yes, '54.

DREW: Well, then, I guess I met him in '55. When did the bus boycott start?

HUNTLEY: Boycott was 1955.

DREW: Well, I'll tell you how I met him, and then you can tell me what year it was, because I'm not good at remembering years. We had been to Tuskegee to a funeral, John and me. As we were leaving there, John said, 'Deenie, we're going to stop in Montgomery.' He said, 'There's a little--' You know what he said, down there, calling me about getting some insurance on those buses. And he said, 'I've got to stop by there and see what he's talking about.' He said, 'I just don't know what we could possibly do, but, anyway, I'm going to give him [King] the courtesy.' And so, that's when I met him for the first time.

HUNTLEY: Yes, that's probably 1955.

DREW: All right.

HUNTLEY: So then, how did you... I assume that your families then became rather close.

DREW: John and his [King's] father were at Morehouse at the same time. His 00:50:00father was quite a bit older, I mean, you know, eight or nine years older than John, but he was late going to college. They were at Morehouse together and as years went on, you know, John worked in New...yeah, he worked in New York, too--but, he worked in Atlanta and down on Sweet Auburn and they renewed all their friendships and ties and stuff, so, John knew his father very well. I guess that's how Mike came to call John is because of the association between his father.

HUNTLEY: Was John able to insure the cars?

DREW: Oh, yes. Yes. He remembered that T. M. Alexander-- They're the... I always say John was the 'and Company.' Alexander and Company; T. M. Alexander and Company. Well, T. M. had a line straight to Lloyds of London and on the way, 00:51:00driving, after John found out and, you know, he said, 'I've got to help him. I don't care. I've got to help him.' As soon as we got home, he said, 'You go drive home.' He went to the office. Started calling companies and asking, 'Would you take this? Would you take it?' Everybody was saying, 'No. No. Too risky. Too risky. Too risky.' And, so, he said, 'Well, the only thing I can do is to see if Alex still has that contact with Lloyds.' So, he called Alex and Alex did have and so, then, you know, we were all the same company at that time. We did finally buy out--Alabama, but, anyway, they made contact with whomever at Lloyds of London and they said, 'Okay.' They would do this. That's how the bus boycott became successful.

HUNTLEY: Right, as a result of John being the intermediary between King and Lloyds of London.

DREW: Right, right.

HUNTLEY: Well, when Martin King, then, came to Birmingham in 1963, can you tell me any of the occurrences that you may remember that were quite vivid to you in how that portion of the Movement would evolve? I know he came in a number of times prior to...in April--

DREW: Yes, he came and visited us one Saturday--he and Shuttlesworth and Nelson Smith and Abernathy.I can see these men plainly walking down that long drive with these big hats. You know, the men used to wear these big, broad brimmed hats. (laughing)

HUNTLEY: That's right.

DREW: I don't remember if that was very early in the '50s. I don't remember. I 00:53:00think we struck up a friendship. Of course, with John it was, you know-- He already knew his [King's] parents and all that so well, but I didn't. And they began talking from time to time about the needs and then Mike sat down one day and asked me a lot of the same kind of things you're asking me, you know: 'Deenie, how did you ever come to this hell hole? This is the hell hole of the world. How did you do this?' and blah, blah, blah.

HUNTLEY: You called Martin 'Mike.'

DREW: Oh yeah, yeah. I think that it was during that time that he said if they came--if they did come here to work, he asked me if he could stay at my house. I said, 'I'd be honored. Sure, yeah.' He said, 'Well, now....' I said, 'I said yes. Whatever it takes.' So, that's how come. People would say, 'Deenie, how did 00:54:00he ever stay at y'all's?' And I said, 'Because he asked me.'

HUNTLEY: He actually asked you if he came would he be able...could he stay with you.

DREW: Yeah, because he knew that he was going to need somewhere aside from the hotel.

HUNTLEY: So, how often did he come to your house?

DREW: Oh, I couldn't possibly tell you that.

HUNTLEY: He came many times.

DREW: Many, many. He would call any time of the day or night, four o'clock or five o'clock in the morning--morning, noon or night, you know--and say, 'I'm in Europe' or, 'I'm in California and my plane arrives at--.'

HUNTLEY: So, I would assume, then, that, in addition to his staying at your home, you and others similar to you who had businesses actually donated a lot of money to the Movement?

DREW: Yes. YES. (laughing)

HUNTLEY: Was this something that...?

DREW: We even put up our properties.

HUNTLEY: For any particular...

DREW: For bail bond.

HUNTLEY: Did you lose any of those...?

DREW: John had tickets or, you know--(uses her hands to indicate stacks of cards)--He sat out there and all those people in the neighborhood and the Brewers--Doctor Hamp Brewer-- ooh, he had so much property--and they came and brought those tax cards and John would just stack them up, you know, and give them a receipt... No we never lost a penny.

HUNTLEY: Do you know of any of the other people that lost money as a result of putting property up, or lost property?

DREW: No, no. Now, of course, I would have known if anybody lost property. John pretty much helped... He had his hand in all of the financial dealings. He had his hand in the whole darn thing, if you want to know the truth, but, certainly 00:56:00in the financial dealings.

HUNTLEY: John, then, was one of those individuals who, although he was not in the spotlight, he worked behind the scenes. But, in fact, he was part of the negotiations committees?

DREW: He was part of it all. There was no part that he wasn't part of. He is not a preacher. I mean, you know, he--didn't do that.

HUNTLEY: How was Jeff at the time? Was he in elementary school?

DREW: Yes.

HUNTLEY: Did he get out of school or participate in any of the demonstrations or anything at that time?

DREW: Uncle Mike wouldn't let him. Uncle Mike said, 'Jeff, if you ever become twelve [years old] I'm going to take you to jail with me and you can stay as 00:57:00long as you want to.' So, Jeff was like eight, nine, ten or eleven.

HUNTLEY: So he would not allow him to until he was twelve.

DREW: No. He said if we went, you know Jeff or me or John... They were shooting in our house and dynamiting and here we were heading up this stuff and we were troublemakers and we were all of that. He said there was no telling what would happen to Jeff. It wasn't worth taking the chance. We used to have to hide him. Burke Marshall and Doar, all those people would know when there was going to be a bombing or a shooting or something up there.

HUNTLEY: They would know.

DREW: Yes, and they would call me. Tom Dolen--Tom Nolen--. There were two of those Toms. One was a Dolen and one was a Nolen, but he would call and say, 00:58:00'Mrs. Drew, drive your car onto the back of your lot.' You know, we owned half a city lot. 'Drive it back there near the barn, where the pony used to be. Just take a pillow back there and a blanket and Jeff, because they say they're going to blow up your house tonight, or they're going to bomb it,' you know, or something.

HUNTLEY: This was, I assume, as a result of a plant that they had within the Ku Klux Klan?

DREW: It was Klan. It was Klan and police that-- Sometimes they would form a ring on the corner where Eleventh Avenue and Center Street--that intersection--and they would form a ring around there and there were big streetlights up above and they would shoot out all of those lights. Some of the people were dressed in policeman's clothing.

HUNTLEY: So, in fact, they were policemen.

DREW: And my house was on that corner.

HUNTLEY: That could be very frightening for you and your child.

DREW: The night they made Jeff and John lie down on the ground was the worse thing that I ever went through.

HUNTLEY: Tell me about that.

DREW: That's it. There's nothing else to tell you.

HUNTLEY: Who made them lie down?

DREW: These same characters that I'm talking about. How do you know who They are?

HUNTLEY: Did they come to the house?

DREW: They were on Center Street. I don't know whether they were trying to get down to Shores' house or what. I've forgotten that part of it. There're some things you have to block out. And, they forced them to lie down. I think that's that same night that they killed a man, so if you want to go back and find out all that, you can. There was a man killed out there near Shores' house. A bomb went off, so that's when it happened.

HUNTLEY: So, John and Jeff, then, did they come to the house, or were they coming in at the time?

DREW: John and Jeff?

HUNTLEY: Yes.

DREW: No, they were out on the walk. We live on Center Street and Shores lives on Center Street. I can't remember to save my soul. I think I blocked that out, but they had them prone and I guess as soon as the things walked away, they jumped up and ran back home. I don't know. I was there, but...

HUNTLEY: Some of those things you don't want to remember.

DREW: That's right, and I got rid of it.

HUNTLEY: Is there anything else we have simply not covered that you remember vividly that you think would be important for an oral history project to tell--any other things that I've not asked?

DREW: I know so many stories.

HUNTLEY: There are so many stories. I think what is important is that you have really given us an idea of how you came into the city, the kinds of things that you encountered that led you to get--to really be adamantly involved with the movement, and how important your family was for the movement. That is so vitally important and I certainly appreciate your taking the time out to talk with us about that.

DREW: Well, if you want to know anything else, you are going to have to ask me specifically, because lots of things I have forgotten and lots of things I have made myself forget.

HUNTLEY: Right. What I will do, I will... We are going to go through this material and I will probably call you and we will probably do this again some time, but I just want to thank you for coming today.

DREW: Well, you are more than welcome. More than welcome. I'm sorry that... I'm 01:02:00really sorry that you didn't start doing these things while John was alive, because he could have told you so much more. He blocked out a lot of things and we would sit down talking some time and he'd say, 'Deenie,' you know, 'Tell me what I did,' you know--a lot of fun things and a lot of bad things, because I would tease until the end about he and Sid Smyer taking their coats off to fight. I have to find that letter that Mr. Smyer wrote him.

HUNTLEY: We hope that if you have any kinds of materials that you would like to present to us, you will.

DREW: You see, they burned up the barn... When they took the house, we stored in the barn all manner of things that we didn't think we'd need while the new house was being built.

HUNTLEY: And that was burned.

DREW: All kind of papers and things you know, that we.... We just had papers and things. We just had a ram full of Christmas decorations, you know--things that, you know, 'Oh, I don't need these,' and darned if they didn't walk. After we had moved out, somebody called and said, 'You've got another fire. Your barn's on fire.' And, we got up there and it was burned to the ground and, of course, everything in it was burned--was burned to the ground. So, we lost a lot of stuff as a result of that.