Hard Times (67 page)

When my husband fell dead, my daughter wasn’t two years old. He died on the third of September on the job out at the packing … and she was two years old on the eighth of November. Well, I had this little girl and I just thought everybody was pushing me around because my husband was gone. And I was very mean. Very mean.

So I moved in a place—the old building is torn down now. The bathrooms and toilets were all on the halls. You could meet the water coming downstairs. It wasn’t fit for anybody to live in. I heard about it, and I moved in there to get into a fight. And I got a good fight.

I started organizing those people in there and every time I’d get one
leaflet, they’d take ‘em down stairs and pile ’em on the landlord’s desk. He lived out in Beverly’s Hill.
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He’d come the next morning, with all those leaflets piled up there. Naturally he looked at me. “Miz Jeffries …” He was offering me $500 to stop organizing the building. I’d say, “Look, these people I’m organizing are my people and I do not sell them out. Your money is counterfeit.”

And, honey, Wilkins
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had him a paid-off bunch of police officers. They were detectives, plainclothesmen, from Forty-eighth Street.
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He had a list of every widow woman living in the building, and was on relief. He gave those names to the police officers, and around eleven thirty or twelve o’clock, they’d come in and knock on your door to see if you had a man in there. See? Everywhere they found a man, they had those people on relief cut off.

So on this particular night, when the law knocked on my door, I say, “Who is that?” Me and a fella named Edward Gray was playing a game of cards. We had a drink. We had a pint of liquor settin’ on the table, but it wasn’t open. He knocked again. He say, “Police officer, open the door.” Well, I had a broom handle. I said, “Come on in. You got your goddam key.” And that time, he kicked on the door. I threw it open. He run it ag’in. I hit him. I said to my daughter, she was nine years old, “Jean, get out of bed and get down to the next block.” The president of the Workers Alliance was on the next block. She went down there and got Tony, and Tony couldn’t get here fast enough.

I was having a fight with Malone. Tony said, “O.K., hit him again, Sis.” And he stood and held his watch, forty-five seconds, he say, “Hit him again, Sis.” I got an old pen knife that I still got in my place that I pick my corns with sometimes. It was lying on the table. When he got tired of taking those hits over the head, he run under the stick and caught this arm and twisted it. That made me fall against the table. It knocked the knife off. My daughter saw it and run off the bed and run and picked it up. About that time, he just shoved his gun right into her side like that.

So he finally called the patrol. He said, “There’s a fighting woman here and can’t do nothing with her.” I was a big lady. I wasn’t skinny like I am now. So here come the police, the patrol, the old black maria. They say, “Gray, you better get out of here. We don’t want you.” He said to them, “Look, I would be less than gentlemanly to walk out on this woman now. I visited with she and her husband when her husband was livin’ and I would be less than a man.” He said, “If she gets ninety-nine, I can certainly stand a hundred.” O.K., they took us both.

During the time we were waiting to go for trial, we got out a leaflet. Everybody from the South Side that belonged to the Workers Alliance was
over at the courtroom that morning. So they messed around that trial all day, talk a little and call us up there.

In the meantime, Malone saw that everything was against him, ’cause he was the intruder. He had no business at my door. He called Gray to come in the hall. So Gray come back and he told me what Malone wanted. He wanted Gray and myself to pay a dollar fine and plead guilty. I said, “Look, I was a free woman when I come in here. And when I walk out I’m gonna be free.” I’m not gonna have no record when I got out of here.

Well, the case was called. Wilkins had about fifty people there to appear against us. They were sitting in the back of the courtroom. We went up and the judge say, “Case dismissed.” Wilkins and his wife got halfway up there and we were already halfway back. They didn’t know what happened. So they all went home.

Wilkins say, “Miz Jeffries, could I take you back to the South Side.” I say, “No, thank you. The streetcar runs out there. That’s how I got here, that’s how I’m going back.”

I was doing tenants’ work then and, you know, I didn’t mind going to court with all those other people. They thought I was a lawyer. (Laughs.)

You see, I had a big, brown briefcase. And after, they commence to holler in court every time I go in court, two and three times a day: “This old lawyer woman!” I got a whole lot of newspapers and tore ‘em up and put ’em in that briefcase. (Laughs.) Them were my law books. I had people laughin’ about that all the time: “Here comes that old lawyer woman!” Goin’ up front, case called … and I got my rosary laying there on that thing. The judge had on some, too. And I had a little pocket, here, stick the crucifix down. He thought I was a Catholic like him. (Laughs.) I didn’t lose a case.

Well, I went to Washington and came back.
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It was rainin’. When I got home that morning around eight o’clock, that whole wall was wet. There was no gutter to throw that water off. I had a two-room apartment. I sent for him. So Wilkins comes up. I said, “You see this? You think I can sleep here tonight? You put some gutters up.” He said, “Come here.” He showed ‘em to me layin’ out in the yard. I said, “Those gutters have been laying out there for over three weeks. They’re no good out there.” I said, “Look, I’m not paying any rent until you get those gutters up there.” He put the gutters up the next morning.

And I had asked him about enamel paint. He promised me. So he had a cousin that did his painting. He sent him up with cold-water paint. I sent him back: “You can’t put that on my walls.” He finally come up with the right paint. Painted my two rooms beautiful.

That evening, everybody in the building wanted to see my apartment, it was so pretty. I say, “Look, I’m gonna tie up this whole floor.” I tied up
the whole second floor. Nobody on this floor paying no rent, ‘cause everybody wanted what I wanted, and he didn’t give it to ’em. All right. I got everybody’s rent. And I wouldn’t give it to him. I said, “You’re gonna pay your rent when you got the decorations that I got.” Some of ‘em wanted a bed and some of ’em wanted linoleum and some of ’em wanted chairs and tables.

They got Mrs. Griffin right across from me, they did hers next. I asked her, “Now, you need anything in the apartment?” She said, “I don’t need nothing like that.” I said, “Then go downstairs and pay your rent.” Mrs. Saddler, the next little lady next to me, she had a lot of children. And her husband was dead. I said, “Now what you want in here?” She say, “I need a mattress for my children’s bed and I need some chairs and a table.” He got it downstairs in the store room, but he won’t give it unless you protest for it, see. I say, “Go downstairs and ask for it. But I’m not gonna give you this money unless you get what you want.” She went downstairs and got what she wanted. Major
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up and brought it. As they did the decorating, whatever those people said they wanted, they got it, before he got any rent.

So then he proceeded to evict me. I let him evict me. I let the bailiffs come and set me out.

 

They put your furniture out on the sidewalk
… ?

 

Mm-hmm. Yeah, I let ’em come and did that. But we had a committee, see. We had everything arranged. We stayed out there a whole week. That was to excite the neighborhood. To what was happening. I had a very dear friend that lived around that same building. Every morning when I got tired from picketing, I’d go up there and sleep. My little daughter, she slept upstairs every night. So finally he came. “Miz Jeffries,” he say, “there’s no need for all this.” I said, “Sure, there wasn’t, but you put me out. So I’m gonna stay here as long as I want. You can’t put me off. I’m not on your property, I’m on city property. The block don’t belong to you.”

It rained, but the men had tarpaulins. Nothing got ruined. We cooked, we had more to eat out there than we had in the house.

A lot of ‘em was put out. They’d call and have the bailiffs come and sit them out, and as soon as they’d leave, we would put ’em back where they came out. All we had to do was call Brother Hilton, he’s about ninety some years now. Look, such and such a place, there’s a family sittin’ out there. Everybody passed through the neighborhood, was a member of the Workers Alliance, had one person they would call. When that one person came, he’d have about fifty people with him.

Well, now the landlord’d disconnect that stove and put that piece of pipe away. If it wasn’t up the ceiling, they’d take it, and just put the lights
off. We had in the organization some men who could do electrical work, see. We’d sneak around through the crowd, and all this nice furniture sittin’ on the street, and sometime it snowin’. Find out who own it, see. “If we put it back, would you stay there?” “Yes.” “All right, let’s go.” Take that stuff right on back up there. The men would connect those lights and go to the hardware and get gas pipe, and connect that stove back. Put the furniture back just like you had it, so it don’t look like you been out the door.

 

 

Nobody had any money. And we formed this organization. We would allow people to pay ten cents a month dues. Then we would give parties and raise money so we could carry on the work. But the majority of people when the war come along, they got ahold to a little money. Then you couldn’t tell ‘em nothin’. They didn’t need you, see. Back in the Thirties, when it was really tough, and nobody was working, we divided whatever we had with each other. Being on relief, I’d get that little piece of check, pay off my rent. They were givin’ you then a little surplus food, remember? You’d have to go to the station and pick up some meat and some beans and bread and stuff like that. We’d divide it with our friends.

Now, if they see you ain’t got nothing, they ain’t thinking about you. They’ll throw it in the garbage first. Some of them think they’re better than you are. Some of ‘em say, “I wouldn’t give ’em the time to die.”

The same is when we had the picket lines and struggled to get these colored fellas on these streetcars and els. That was a tough struggle, too. But we got ‘em on the jobs. Now some of ’em don’t know how to treat us. Some of ‘em are so nasty when you get on these buses over here. They don’t know how they got it. And sometimes I call out and say, “You don’t know
how
you got on here. You
got
on here, but you don’t know
how
you got on here.” There are some of ’em who are sympathetic and will talk about it. I say, well, it was a struggle.

Most of the people from the Thirties are gone in. I’m just around here, me and Drummer Yokum. That’s about the only two from the Thirties that I know of.

During the Depression, “I was the only guy working in the house at the time. So the windup is they become big shots and I’m still working.” But he has had compensations: “It boils down to having a front seat in the theater of life.” As court bailiff, he had had in his custody, a sixteen-year-old, who had killed four people on a weekend. During the trial, “he bet me a package of cigarettes, understand, he’d get the chair. And I bet him a package of cigarettes he wouldn’t. When the jury come up and found him guilty, he reached back in a nonchalant way back to me and said, ‘O.K., give me the cigarettes.’ I gave it to him in open court and pictures were taken:
KILLER BETS PACKAGE OF CIGARETTES.
You know what I mean, and made a big thing about it.” The boy got the chair—“it was quite a shock to him.”

During the Thirties, “I was a personal custodian to the levy bailiff.” Writs of replevin and levies were his world, though he occasionally took part in evictions. “Replevins is when somebody buys on a conditional sales contract and doesn’t fulfill their contract. Then we come out and
take the things back. ’Cause it ain’t theirs till the last dollar is paid for. Levy, understand, is to go against the thing—the store, the business—col—lect your judgment
.”

 

WE HAD ‘EM every single day. We used to come there with trucks and take the food off the table. The husband would come runnin’ out of the house. We’d have to put the food on the floor, take the tables and chairs out. If they were real bad, we’d make arrangements, you understand, to leave a few things there or something. So they could get by. But it was pretty rough there for a lot of people.

Once we went to a house and there were three children. The table seemed to be part of the furniture company’s inventory. That and the beds and some other things. The thing that struck us funny was that these people had almost the whole thing paid for, when they went to the furniture company and bought something else. So instead of paying this and making a separate bill, the salesman said, “You take whatever you want and we’ll put it on the original bill.” They paid for that stuff, and then when they weren’t able—when the Depression struck—to pay for the new articles they bought, everything was repossessed.