Life in segregated Birmingham
Here, Threatt describes some of the limitations that segregation placed on African Americans in Birmingham, from proscribing where they could eat to restricting where or when they could watch movies. Segregation limited Threatt's interaction with white people; his first exposure to whites came at age ten or eleven when he sold peanuts at a local stadium.
Citing this Excerpt
Oral History Interview with Glennon Threatt, June 16, 2005. Interview U-0023. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) in the Southern Oral History Program Collection, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Full Text of the Excerpt
- KIMBERLY HILL:
-
Had you been around white people much before you went to Elyton?
- GLENNON THREATT:
-
I had, but the relationship that you had with white people then was
very, very different than it is now. You could go to stores for instance
and shop down town. You couldn't try on clothes. You couldn't eat at the
lunch counters. They had black and white bathrooms, colored and white
bathrooms. They would usually have a bathroom for white men, a bathroom
for white women and then one bathroom for colored. When we would go to
movie theatres here you would have to pay in the front and then walk
around to the back of the theatre and go up some stairs to sit in the
balcony. Sometimes they would have segregated shows where they would
have just shows that were only for colored, at the time and then whites
would go to the theatre at different times. So, I had been exposed to
whites. I had ridden on public transportation and stuff, my parents
lived in the city-oh and the other major exposure that I had
to white people was because my dad had a concession stand at Legion
Field, which is where the University of Alabama used to play their home
football games in the 1960s. So, I had a lot of exposure to white folks
then because I used to sell peanuts and popcorn and sodas to them. I
started working there when I was ten or eleven years
old. My dad got me a job selling peanuts at the stadium. I had my first
jobs when I was ten and eleven years old, so I had exposure to white
people that way. [another person speaking interruption] I had always had
exposure to whites because of my jobs, because of my dad's
involvement-because my father worked for the Birmingham
Housing Authority and also because there were lots of Italians that
owned businesses in the black community and we would go there and shop
because they would serve us. My first exposure to white people, I guess
were to the Italians that were shop owners and business owners in the
black community.