Full Text of the Excerpt

While I was working, still working downtown when I graduated, this was in 1950 I graduated, I went to one of the ladies' stores downtown where a lady, one of the owner's of the—not the owner—one of the managers of the stores—. It was a chain of stores, and she offered me an alteration department, and I didn't have to pay any rent. But I had to do the repairs for the store and answer the phone for all incoming calls. It was on the balcony like, and that's the service that I rendered to the store for free rent. That's where I started building up a clientele.

KIERAN TAYLOR:

Your own clientele.

LAURA B. WADDELL:

My own clientele. Everybody who came in the shop came to the alteration department whether they were customers of the store or not. They paid me for the work that I was doing, and I started making so much money, much more money than the other sales people in the store, until the manager changed the rules. He asked me to give her a percentage of what I was taking in. I didn't like it at all, but I said to myself how could she tell how much I'm taking in. She can only tell how much I tell her I'm taking in. So well, anyway it worked out fine for me. I had no overhead. I didn't have to pay any taxes. So I stayed there for, I can't remember exactly, I think about seven years I stayed there, and this was just the beginning of the integration. There were demonstrations downtown, and I remember one weekend they were asking a number of the blacks to come downtown and not to shop in any of the stores. I could not make anyone understand that although I was downtown I was not helping nobody else make money but myself, and if I didn't come downtown to do my work, then I wouldn't get any money. They didn't understand, and I couldn't explain it to anyone. But I still maintained my business during the demonstration, which was really hard for me. People in my position had a hard time during the demonstrations downtown.