Contents
- 1. Transcript
- 1.1. TAPE NUMBER: I, SIDE ONE March 20, 2004
- 1.2. TAPE NUMBER: I, SIDE TWO March 20, 2004
- 1.3. TAPE NUMBER: II, SIDE ONE March 21, 2004
- 1.4. TAPE NUMBER: II, SIDE TWO March 21, 2004
- 1.5. TAPE NUMBER: III, SIDE ONE March 28, 2004
- 1.6. TAPE NUMBER: III, SIDE TWO March 28, 2004
1. Transcript
1.1. TAPE NUMBER: I, SIDE ONE
March 20, 2004
-
MILES
- Today is Saturday, March 20th. My name is La'Tonya Rease Miles, and I'm
interviewing Mr. Neale Henderson.How you doing?
-
HENDERSON
- Fine, and you?
-
MILES
- Good, thanks.
-
HENDERSON
- All right.
-
MILES
- All right. For the record, could you spell your first name for me.
-
HENDERSON
- Okay. My name is Neale Henderson, and it's N-e-a-l-e,
capital-H-en-d-e-r-s-o-n.
-
MILES
- Do you have a middle name?
-
HENDERSON
- No. Nickname is "Bobo."
-
MILES
- But no middle name.
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah. B-o-b-o.
-
MILES
- Let's start right from the beginning. Where and when were you born?
-
HENDERSON
- I was born in Fort Smith, Arkansas.
-
MILES
- And what day and what year?
-
HENDERSON
- I was born June the 24th, 1930, at 1:00 p.m. in the morning.
-
MILES
- I want to know about your first name, because that's an unusual spelling
with the E on the end. How did that happen?
-
HENDERSON
- Well, my father, he was a Geechee, and all my life I spelled my name
N-e-a-l. Well, finally, I looked at my birth certificate, and then they
had an E on it. I asked my dad what was going on, and he said, "Well,
when I pronounced the name, I said 'Neally,' and the doctor misspelled
it and he put an E at the end of it." My dad's name is N-e-a-l. But when
my birth certificate came out, the doctor, because my dad pronounced it
'Neally,' like a Geechee would sound, and so on the birth certificate, I
had come up with that E on there.
-
MILES
- How old were you when you found this, the E on the end?
-
HENDERSON
- At the age of nineteen.
-
MILES
- And from then on you put the E on the end?
-
HENDERSON
- I had to put, yeah.
-
MILES
- You had to put the E on.
-
HENDERSON
- Because that's the way they signed my contract when I signed with the
Kansas City Monarchs in 1949.
-
MILES
- Because they had your birth certificate.
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah. I had to show my age.
-
MILES
- Now, you say your father's a Geechee. What does that mean?
-
HENDERSON
- Well, it mean "poor Geechee." [mutual laughter]
-
MILES
- Where is he from exactly?
-
HENDERSON
- He was born in Arkansas, but his mother and father were from North
Carolina.
-
MILES
- What about your mother; where is she from?
-
HENDERSON
- My mother, she was born in Little Rock, Arkansas. She is part Cherokee
Indian, and her father was full-blooded Cherokee. His name was Green
White, and my mother's name was Rosalie White.My mother and them moved from Little Rock to Fort Smith, and that's when
my dad met her. She was quite young when my dad met my mother. She was
only thirteen years old.
-
MILES
- Thirteen years old? How did they meet?
-
HENDERSON
- Well, she was going to school and everything, and so my dad worked down
at Sears and Roebucks, and she had to go past the Sears and Roebucks to
get to school, and so my dad started talking to her. And back in those
days, you could marry at thirteen, fourteen, fifteen.
-
MILES
- Didn't matter.
-
HENDERSON
- And so they ended up getting married and had my sister at the age of
fourteen, and she had me at the age of sixteen.
-
MILES
- Were you the second child?
-
HENDERSON
- I was the second child, and then my brother was born in 1932. My sister
was born in '28.
-
MILES
- Was it just the three of you?
-
HENDERSON
- Just the three of us, three children.
-
MILES
- Was that considered a small family at that time?
-
HENDERSON
- At that time, yeah. My grandmother, she had a total of twenty-two
children, and she outlived all of them, all of them except seven.
-
MILES
- Whose mother was that, that had the twenty-two, your father's
mother?
-
HENDERSON
- My mother's mother.
-
MILES
- Your mother's mother had twenty-two children.
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah. Name was Maggie White, and she stuttered. Oh, man, when she'd get
to stuttering, you get ready to get a whupping.
-
MILES
- Because she was mad then?
-
HENDERSON
- Oh, Lord, yeah. Lord, yeah.
-
MILES
- You said your mother was thirteen. How old was your father then? How
much older was he?
-
HENDERSON
- My father was born in 1905. So you can see. My mother was born in 1913.
So that's, what's that, eight years' difference?
-
MILES
- Eight, yeah. So he was still a pretty young man, though. He was
twenty-one years old when he met her.
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah.
-
MILES
- So that was in Little Rock where they met, right?
-
HENDERSON
- No, they met in Fort Smith.
-
MILES
- Now, what was Fort Smith like? How big was it?
-
HENDERSON
- Fort Smith was a pretty large town. It sat at the border of Oklahoma. It
was about thirty-eight miles from Muskogee, Oklahoma.
-
MILES
- How much do you remember of it?
-
HENDERSON
- Oh, I remember it well, yeah. I know it was— The schools was segregated
at that time. I went to a school over on the south side named Dunbar. It
was [Paul Laurence] Dunbar Elementary School.
-
MILES
- Was it named after Paul Laurence Dunbar?
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah, Paul Laurence Dunbar. And all the classes they had from the front,
kindergarten all the way up to the sixth grade, in one room, one
teacher, and she taught from kindergarten all the way through to the
sixth grade.
-
MILES
- Just one teacher the whole time.
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah.
-
MILES
- So you knew who you were going to get every year.
-
HENDERSON
- Oh yeah.
-
MILES
- Who was that teacher?
-
HENDERSON
- Mrs. Lewis.
-
MILES
- Was she nice, or how did she treat you?
-
HENDERSON
- She was firm. She was firm. And back then, you know, they could put some
leather on you. They'd whup you.
-
MILES
- That's what I was going to ask.
-
HENDERSON
- There wasn't no [inaudible] in the hand. You go outside and pick a tree,
and you had to get your own switch and plat it and bring it in, and
that's what you got a whupping with.
-
MILES
- What would you get a whipping for? Not you, necessarily, but what—
-
HENDERSON
- Well, I got one every day. [laughs]
-
MILES
- Oh, did you? Were you misbehaving?
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah, yeah. I was being a boy.Then, you know, back then, she'd whup you. Then when you get home, your
mother whup you. And, maybe your aunt and uncle, cousin, someone before
you get home, you get a whupping.
-
MILES
- Did you get one every day?
-
HENDERSON
- Oh, no, no. I got to so I was immune to whuppings.
-
MILES
- Just had this healed over—
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah.
-
MILES
- About how many students were in the classroom?
-
HENDERSON
- Well, she had at least twenty. Yeah, she had at least twenty.
-
MILES
- That's a good size, though, if you think about it.
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah, back then, yeah. There was twenty childrens from the first,
kindergarten all the way to the sixth grade.
-
MILES
- Now, was that the first school you went to? Did you start at
kindergarten or was there a school before that?
-
HENDERSON
- No, that's when Dunbar was, my first school.
-
MILES
- How old were you when you started?
-
HENDERSON
- When I started, I was six. Well, my age, my birthday was in June, and so
I was almost seven years old when I started and everything.
-
MILES
- You started in September, right?
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah. But being born in June, my birthday, I was six— Some kind of way
it came out, because when I ended up graduating from high school, I was
getting ready to turn nineteen.
-
MILES
- That makes sense, because you would have either had to start early or a
little late because of the summer birthday.
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah, I was a little late because of being born June 14th.
-
MILES
- June in 1930. Now, what did your sister do? What did she go on to
do?
-
HENDERSON
- My sister—
-
MILES
- She's the oldest.
-
HENDERSON
- She's the oldest, and she went to the same school, Dunbar, and then she
went on to Lincoln Junior High School, which was on the north side.
That's five miles from where we lived at. And we didn't have buses back
in those days, and we had to walk to school. And on our way to school we
had to pass a white school to get to the black school. The white kids
would jump on us and chase us to the black school. Then when school was
over from there, then the black kids would chase us back to the white
school, then the white kids would chase us all the way back to the south
side.
-
MILES
- Now, why were the black kids chasing you?
-
HENDERSON
- Well, they—
-
MILES
- Well, you know.
-
HENDERSON
- Well, we wasn't doing anything. They were just being mischievous, you
know, because we lived— The south side, they call us the poor folks, you
know.
-
MILES
- It had to do with what side of town you were living on.
-
HENDERSON
- Right. We raised hogs. My dad had maybe thirty, forty head of hog, and
they called us the "pig boys," you know, have to go and get slop for the
hogs. And all most of the rich peoples lived on the north side of town,
and we had to go on the north side of town to get the slop. And that's
where all the pretty girls were, and me and my brother would hide in
alleys to keep from going around to where the girls would see us.
-
MILES
- You didn't want them to see you?
-
HENDERSON
- Oh no. Oh no.
-
MILES
- How were you dressed at that time?
-
HENDERSON
- Well, we were in overalls, you know, with the bib.
-
MILES
- Then what did the north side, how were they dressing?
-
HENDERSON
- Oh, they dressed in regular jeans and regular little what they call
corduroy pants.
-
MILES
- Now, when you went, did you go to Lincoln?
-
HENDERSON
- No. I went to Howard [Elementary School] up until the fifth grade,
because we moved to California just before the war in nineteen— We came
out here just before the war.
-
MILES
- Which war?
-
HENDERSON
- We came out here in '40, and the war started in December 7, 1941.
-
MILES
- Okay. So the Second [World] War, then.
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah.
-
MILES
- Let's back up, then. Let's talk about what your father was doing for a
living. You said that he was a farmer.
-
HENDERSON
- My father, he was a minister. Yeah, he was a preacher, and also he
worked at Sears and Roebucks. And we had everything that anybody else
would have. My dad, he was a hardworking man, and on the weekends he
would play baseball and he also was a boxer. He boxed. Then he was a
preacher on Sunday, and we had to stay in church 24/24. [mutual
laughter]
-
MILES
- There was no 24/7.
-
HENDERSON
- No, no, no, no, no. So I swore when after I grew up, I said, "I'm going
to have to leave church alone for a little while."
-
MILES
- Was that true? Did that happen?
-
HENDERSON
- It happened for a little while, but I got back on cue.
-
MILES
- Now, what was the name of his church?
-
HENDERSON
- St. James Baptist Church.
-
MILES
- Was that an old church or did it—
-
HENDERSON
- Oh yeah, it was old.
-
MILES
- And what happened, did he just take it over? How did he become the
minister?
-
HENDERSON
- He became a minister because his dad was the minister.
-
MILES
- Was your grandfather a minister where? He wasn't in Arkansas, was
he?
-
HENDERSON
- No, no. He had passed away by the time that my dad had told me that he
was a minister also.
-
MILES
- Where was he a minister, though? Are you saying North Carolina?
-
HENDERSON
- North Carolina.
-
MILES
- So he was a minister. How long was he the pastor of that church?
-
HENDERSON
- My dad?
-
MILES
- Your dad, yeah.
-
HENDERSON
- Oh, Dad was pastor eight years, about eight years at St. James. I know I
can remember his name being in the stone outside the church there.
-
MILES
- Actually, you're a junior, then, because he was a Neal also.
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah. But you know how it is when you don't—Everybody call you "Junior."
You don't want to be junior, so I dropped my name. But it was on my
birth certificate.
-
MILES
- You dropped it and became what?
-
HENDERSON
- Just Neale Henderson. And my son, I named my son Neale the fifth, and he
done even drop the fifth. He don't even— He just go Neale just like I
did, Neale Henderson.
-
MILES
- So you're the fourth, then? You're the fourth Neale?
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah.
-
MILES
- Oh, okay. So it really is a family name, then.
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah.
-
MILES
- I thought you were just a junior. You're number four.
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah. Well, that's the way. But the name on my birth certificate, it was
junior. But going down the road after my son, they checked it out and
everything.I named my son Neale the fourth, and somehow they did it, the government
or whoever, put the fifth.
-
MILES
- Put the fifth on there.
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah.
-
MILES
- That's interesting. They changed it for you.
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah.
-
MILES
- How did you get the nickname Bobo?
-
HENDERSON
- Oh, the lady across the street, she was white, and when I was born, she
came over and she looked at me and she said, "Oh, he look just like Bobo
the Clown."
-
MILES
- Now, hold on. Wait a second. This was when you were just born?
-
HENDERSON
- Just born, yeah. You know back then they had midwife brought us into the
world, which her name was Aunt Jo. We called her Aunt Jo, and she dipped
that snuff.
-
MILES
- And she was a white woman?
-
HENDERSON
- No, she was black.
-
MILES
- The midwife was black, okay.
-
HENDERSON
- The midwife, yeah. But the lady across the street, Mrs. Flippant, I
think her name was, she came over when my mother had me, and she said,
"Ooh, he look just like Bobo the Clown."
-
MILES
- How did your parents take that, as a joke?
-
HENDERSON
- She, my mother, evidently she liked it, because it's still hanging on
me. It's still hanging. I was Bobo.
-
MILES
- What was that woman's name?
-
HENDERSON
- I think her last name was Mrs. Flippant.
-
MILES
- Do you know how to spell that?
-
HENDERSON
- F-l-i-p-p-
-
MILES
- Probably a-n-t.
-
HENDERSON
- -I-n-g, something like that, Flipping.
-
MILES
- What did she mean by that?
-
HENDERSON
- That's what I'd like to know. I never did figure it out, but I know that
it hung on to me, and I never got teased about it or nothing.
-
MILES
- No? People just—
-
HENDERSON
- No, not nobody ever teased me, and I never had no fights behind it.
-
MILES
- Okay, that's good.
-
HENDERSON
- And it hung. My brother and my sister, they called me Bobo before they
called me Neale.
-
MILES
- Do most people call you Bobo instead of Neale?
-
HENDERSON
- In California they mostly called me Neale, but down in Arkansas
everybody called me Bobo. But out here, everybody, you know, call me
Neale.
-
MILES
- Do you have a preference?
-
HENDERSON
- No, it doesn't matter. I answer to both of them.
-
MILES
- Now, what did your mother do?
-
HENDERSON
- My mother, she was—
-
MILES
- She was young, first of all.
-
HENDERSON
- Oh yeah. But back then, my mother took in laundry and everything, and
she, back then, washed and ironed all day for twenty-five cents. I can
remember like it was yesterday. But twenty-five cents would go a long
ways back then. But I used to feel sorry for my mother out there washing
and ironing, and all she was getting was— Now look back at it and say a
quarter. But back then, go to the movies for a nickel, and they used to
give us fifteen cents to go to the movie, and we'd buy popcorn and get
in the movie and get candy and stop at Cress's Kress's and get cookies
and everything else, you know.
-
MILES
- So twenty-five cents seemed like a lot, probably.
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah.
-
MILES
- Did most of her money go towards just the family expenses?
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah. It bought food. You'd go to the store and get a nickel worth of
this and a nickel worth of that.But I'll tell you a story. We had a dog, name was Tarzan. Yeah, we named
him Tarzan, and he was German Shephard. And this dog, we would give him
a note and tell him to go to the store, and he would go to the store and
jump on the counter, and the man fill out the note, put a basket on him,
and bring it on back home.
-
MILES
- He was that smart?
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah. I can remember one year I slipped and fell on the ice and I broke
my collarbone, and I laid there and I hollered and hollered, and how I
must have laid out there for maybe an hour or so. And my dog evidently
heared my voice and the dog came to where I was at, and I told my dog to
go home and get my mother. And he goes to the house and bring my mother
back.
-
MILES
- You just talked to him like you talking to a person? "Tarzan, go home
and get Mama."
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah.
-
MILES
- And he did it?
-
HENDERSON
- Oh yeah. Oh yeah.
-
MILES
- I wonder how your mother knew.
-
HENDERSON
- He would grab her. He would grab her by her dress and pull her.
-
MILES
- And pull her, okay. That's a smart dog.
-
HENDERSON
- Oh, yeah, Tarzan.
-
MILES
- How long did you keep him?
-
HENDERSON
- Oh, we kept Tarzan about ten, twelve years.
-
MILES
- Did he come to California with you?
-
HENDERSON
- Oh, no, no, no. My dad ended up having to shoot him because— I'm talking
now broken English, "shoot him." But my dad shot him because Mr. Piggy,
he used to come around the house and flirt with my mother and
everything, and the dog didn't like him. So one night, he come through
there and the dog got after him, and he split him open, cut him open.
And my dad told us that—
-
MILES
- He bit him? What did he do, jump on him?
-
HENDERSON
- He lunged at the man, and the man hit him with a straight razor and laid
his breast open.
-
MILES
- Oh, he cut Tarzan.
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah. And my dad told us he was going to take him to the doctor, but he
ended up taking him out in the woods and shot him.
-
MILES
- Who was this man that was flirting with your mother?
-
HENDERSON
- Shelly Piggy. I remember him real well. He was a heck of a ballplayer,
too. He played baseball with my dad back in the old days.
-
MILES
- He was just a neighbor?
-
HENDERSON
- Uh-huh. But it was a funny thing. My dad was a jealous man, you know,
and he used to— I don't know if you ever heard the story, but about
somebody sweeping they footprint? My dad would take the broom back then.
We didn't have no grass; we had to keep dirt clean. And my dad would
sweep his footprint out all the way to the street and get on his bicycle
and ride to work.So the dog would hear my dad. Around eleven o'clock, Dad would always
come home for lunch, and my mother and them would be playing cards and
different things, partying. Then the dog would start barking, my mother
knew that Dad was on his way home. She'd get in the house and cook in
fifteen, twenty minutes, you know. So she would run everybody off, and
then she would take and sweep just like my daddy did, make it look like
nobody'd been there, you know. Mama and Aunt Marg and them, they partied
from seven in the morning till eleven that morning.
-
MILES
- What kind of partying were they doing?
-
HENDERSON
- Playing cards, drinking beer.
-
MILES
- Your mom, too?
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah. Partying, drinking beer.
-
MILES
- Do you remember what kind of cards they'd play?
-
HENDERSON
- They played bid whist.
-
MILES
- Bid whist, that's what I thought.
-
HENDERSON
- And Spades.
-
MILES
- Even then, played Spades?
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah, played Spades back then.
-
MILES
- Did you know how to play?
-
HENDERSON
- No, my dad didn't allow us to play no cards. The only thing we could
play was Chinese Checkers and checkers, that's all; no cards, no
nothing. Couldn't listen to no kind of music except spiritual or like
The Ink Spots.
-
MILES
- So your mother was doing it when he wasn't home.
-
HENDERSON
- Right. She partied. [laughs]
-
MILES
- Well, she was a young woman.
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah, she was young.
-
MILES
- Well, he was young, too, though, if you think about it.
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah, yeah.
-
MILES
- What was your house like?
-
HENDERSON
- We had a three-bedroom, and back then, you know, we even had running
water. But the toilet was on the outside, but we had to use slop jar at
night, and the toilet was on the outside. But we were the only one; we
had running water to the toilet outside the house.I was born right across the street from the ballpark, Andrew's Field. We
could walk right across the street, and the ballpark's right there. And
that's where I— Would I be getting ahead of us if I said that's when I
first met the Negro League leaguers?
-
MILES
- I'll come back to it. Don't worry about it.
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah. That's how I got involved in baseball.
-
MILES
- So that was before you went to California, then, right?
-
HENDERSON
- Oh yes. Oh yes, yes.
-
MILES
- How old were you when you went to California? Just curious.
-
HENDERSON
- Ten. I was ten.
-
MILES
- But you got involved in it before you were ten?
-
HENDERSON
- Oh yeah.
-
MILES
- Okay. All right. We'll come back to that, then. We'll come back. So you
had this three-bedroom house. Who slept where? Because there's three
children and two adults.
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah. Well, my mother and father and them, they had the bedroom off from
the kitchen, and my sister had one of them. Me and my brother slept in
one room, you know. Like if anybody else come to spend a night, like an
uncle or whatever, my sister would come in the bedroom where we was at,
and then the company would—
-
MILES
- Have her room.
-
HENDERSON
- Uh-huh.
-
MILES
- How did you get along with your brother and your sister?
-
HENDERSON
- Fought every day, me and my brother, with the neighbor. We lived next
door to the Whitfields, and it was seven, eight little ones. Five boys
and five girls, and we fought almost every day. When we'd get out of
school, it was always a fight.Then we had another guy, we called him Snooky, and he was the bully of
the neighborhood. He was a lot older than all of us. He was about seven
years older than myself and he was about four years older than my
sister, and he was always trying to flirt with my sister, and she didn't
like him at all. Then we would always get in a fight with him and
everything.Aunt Jo, which was his mother, she had taken him and tied him up and put
him in a croaker sack and put him right in the gutter. Put him in a
croaker sack, built a fire.
-
MILES
- What did he do?
-
HENDERSON
- He tried to mess with my sister, you know, and everything. And she kept
telling him to leave her alone, leave her alone, and he wouldn't listen.
So she took and built a fire and put the fire out and put him in a
croaker sack and swung him over and smoked him.
-
MILES
- Did she burn him?
-
HENDERSON
- No. And every time he'd go by, she would whup him, hit that croaker
sack. He's still Snooky.
-
MILES
- I assume he's black, right?
-
HENDERSON
- Oh, yeah.
-
MILES
- And the Whitfields?
-
HENDERSON
- The Whitfields is black. But it was only three families, and we was the
only ones in this all-white neighborhood.
-
MILES
- Really?
-
HENDERSON
- Oh yeah. The white kids would come over and sleep with us, and we'd go
over and sleep with the white kids. No, we didn't have no problems.
-
MILES
- No problems?
-
HENDERSON
- No problems whatsoever.
-
MILES
- Now at this time, I'm sure you didn't think of yourself as black or call
yourself black. What did you refer to yourself?
-
HENDERSON
- Oh, no, we was colored. We was colored.
-
MILES
- Yeah, that's what I figured.
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah. And just like going to the movies, you had to sit up in the
balcony and everything, you know. But my grandmother, she came to visit
us in 1936 from California, and we went downtown and she'd get on the
bus, and my grandmother'd sit right down right in front, and we went on
back to the back. So the bus driver, he sit there, and he'd look back at
my grandmother, say, "Ma'am, you're going to have to move there. You
can't sit there." So my grandmother kept sitting there. So he sat there
for about maybe five minute, look back at her again, said, "Miss, you
can't sit there. You going to have to move to the back of the bus." So
my grandmother sit there and so she finally said [stuttering], "All
right. Where I come from, you sit anywhere you want."So the man look back at her again, cranked the bus up, and went on.
-
MILES
- No problem.
-
HENDERSON
- No problem. No problem.
-
MILES
- Where was she talking about, where she came from, from California?
-
HENDERSON
- San Diego in California.
-
MILES
- From San Diego. So you already had people in San Diego then.
-
HENDERSON
- Oh yeah. My uncle came out here right after World War I.
-
MILES
- The First War?
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah, the First War. He was a general's boy. He worked for the general.
He was a general's boy. He took care of the general. So he came with the
general to California. And he bought my uncle a car, a 1917 or
19-something convertible, and my uncle drove that car back to Fort
Smith, Arkansas, and the white people took that car away from him.
-
MILES
- No, they didn't.
-
HENDERSON
- Yes, they did. Took it away from him. It was red, red convertible. And
he came back to California—
-
MILES
- Without the car?
-
HENDERSON
- —without the car, and the general went down there and got that car, told
them, "Wherever I send my boy, wherever my boy go, you don't mess with
him."
-
MILES
- What was your uncle's name?
-
HENDERSON
- Name was Alan White.
-
MILES
- How did they take the car from him?
-
HENDERSON
- Well, just because he's black. They said, "Hey, ain't nobody down here
with no car like he had."
-
MILES
- Nobody, black or white, right?
-
HENDERSON
- That's right. Yeah.
-
MILES
- Was there any violence involved, or they just took the car?
-
HENDERSON
- Oh no, no. They just wanted it; they took it. Back in the day, he always
have had a nice home. Boy, he had a fantastic home, and back in them
days you might not think— You might think I'm telling a story, but he
had a garage-door opener in that day, in them days.
-
MILES
- When was this, like the twenties?
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah, this was in the twenties. This was in the twenties when he came to
California.
-
MILES
- It opened up automatically?
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah.
-
MILES
- Just like we think of today?
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah.
-
MILES
- How in the world did he get that?
-
HENDERSON
- Well, things been like that for years, you know, work for anybody. He
had an electric door opener back in the twenties. But the general had
anything he want, and so uncle had just about anything the general
had.
-
MILES
- So he came out here around, what, 1914 or something like that?
-
HENDERSON
- He came right after World War I, after the war.
-
MILES
- Now, did you go to California before then? When was the first time you
came to California, even if it was just to visit?
-
HENDERSON
- I came to California— We came out here in 1937.
-
MILES
- Was that the first time that you—
-
HENDERSON
- The first time, yeah, I came out. I was seven years old.
-
MILES
- But your grandmother was already out there?
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah.
-
MILES
- And your uncle was in San Diego?
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah. They were out there, yeah.
-
MILES
- Your grandmother, where does she live when she was out here?
-
HENDERSON
- She came from Fort Smith. They left Little Rock and came to Fort Smith
and then from Fort Smith, she came to San Diego.
-
MILES
- Why did she move to San Diego?
-
HENDERSON
- She had one of her sons was out here.
-
MILES
- Just to be with him?
-
HENDERSON
- Uh-huh.
-
MILES
- This is your Uncle Alan, right?
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah, Alan.
-
MILES
- Would he come back and tell you about California?
-
HENDERSON
- Oh yeah.
-
MILES
- What did he say?
-
HENDERSON
- He would tell us how prejudiced it was. Oh, yeah, it was awful prejudice
when we got here. Yeah, I learned all about it. But you'd be surprised
what all the blacks own. Back then, they called it the Waterfront, and
it was all black-owned all the way down to Harbor Drive. And from Harbor
Drive all the way to 16thStreet, all that was black-owned. And all the
way over to Washington [Street], because my grandmother lived over there
off of Washington by [Scripps] Mercy Hospital, and all that was
black-owned. I remember that like it was yesterday.
-
MILES
- When he said it was prejudiced, though, what was he talking about?
-
HENDERSON
- Oh yeah. You couldn't, like, go to the movies and everything, you
couldn't sit anywhere you want; you had to sit toward the back. You had
to get on the bus and everything; you had to sit to the back. It was
just ridiculous, you know, but just like I thought I was back in
Arkansas.
-
MILES
- That's what I was going to ask you. What were things like in
Arkansas?
-
HENDERSON
- They was the same prejudice.
-
MILES
- Even though you said you still were friends with the little white
kids?
-
HENDERSON
- Oh yeah. Back then, both white and we ate together, slept together and
played together and just played ball against one another and never had
no misunderstanding, no fight, or anything, you know. And when the war
broke out, the guys that was within that age group, when they came to
California and soon they came to San Diego, they would look us up and
spend the night with us and everything.
-
MILES
- White guys?
-
HENDERSON
- Oh yeah.
-
MILES
- Which war was this, II? This was World War II at this point?
-
HENDERSON
- World War II, yeah.
-
MILES
- So then if everything was pretty equal with the young people, when did
things start to change? I mean in terms of like I guess when you become
an adult things get difficult.
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah. It was like that all the way through my adulthood, and it ain't
too bad down there now. But you couldn't sleep in the hotels. You
couldn't, some restaurants you go to and it said "We have the right to
refuse service to anyone."I might be getting a little ahead, but after we moved, like I said, we
moved to California just before the war, and we would play sports. We'd
come up to L.A., and, man, it was prejudiced. A lot of places we
couldn't go in and eat with the team members, and with the group that
we'd be with, they would get stuff and bring it out to us and
everything, you know.
-
MILES
- Which was worse, San Diego or Los Angeles?
-
HENDERSON
- San Diego.
-
MILES
- San Diego was worse?
-
HENDERSON
- Oh yeah. San Diego was a little smaller than L.A. was and everything.But like a lot of the white guys that we'd be with, they would go into a
place and order something and walk out, you know, and wouldn't pay for
no meal. They'd order up a whole bunch of stuff, and when they'd bring
it to them, they'd get up and walk out. That happened all the way up
until I was eighteen years old, be playing sports and different things
up and down the coast. A lot of the high schools we'd go to, we would
have to sleep in the gym. We couldn't sleep in the hotels and
everything.
-
MILES
- Just the black players?
-
HENDERSON
- Uh-huh. We had to sleep in gyms.
-
MILES
- Okay, let's go back a little bit, though. We're still in Arkansas.
-
HENDERSON
- Okay.
-
MILES
- Even though you played and had white friends and everything, the schools
was still segregated?
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah. Boys Club, everything.
-
MILES
- The Boys Club was segregated?
-
HENDERSON
- Uh-huh.
-
MILES
- So then how did you have opportunity to play with the white kids if the
school was segregated? Just after school?
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah, after school and everything, go, we'd just— See, like, we want to
play ball, and we would gather up about nine of us black kids and then
we would get the white kids, we'd play against one another.
-
MILES
- Baseball?
-
HENDERSON
- Baseball. Yeah, but, you know, across the street, the guy, when they
break a bat, whenever, we'd go over, and they'd give it to me and I'd
nail it up, tape it up, and they'd give us baseballs, give us a little
raggedy glove or something, you know.But my dad, he worked at Sears and Roebucks, and we had brand-new mitt,
and my brother, he had a brand-new catcher's mitt and everything.
-
MILES
- What did your father do at Sears?
-
HENDERSON
- He changed tires and also janitorial work and drove a truck.
-
MILES
- For Sears?
-
HENDERSON
- Sears. Uh-huh.
-
MILES
- And he was the pastor of a church.
-
HENDERSON
- Uh-huh.
-
MILES
- Now, you said you were in church a lot.
-
HENDERSON
- Oh yes.
-
MILES
- Every day?
-
HENDERSON
- Every day.
-
MILES
- What did you do in church every day?
-
HENDERSON
- They would have prayer meeting.
-
MILES
- Now, what did you do, though? [laughs]
-
HENDERSON
- We mostly'd be outside playing hide-and-go-seek and everything, but most
of the time, you know, you had to sit in there, and practice like for
programs and different things, you know, and had a choir.
-
MILES
- Were you in the choir?
-
HENDERSON
- I couldn't sing a lick, no. I stuttered. Back when I was a kid, I
couldn't say "street sweeper." I couldn't say it, and I couldn't say a
lot of things. I'd get my tongue get tied up, and I couldn't pronounce.
I just couldn't talk, in other words. My mother, when she'd get ready to
whup me, I was a tattletale. I told my daddy everything.
-
MILES
- And you stuttered, too.
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah. Because he would come home from work and ask me, "Bobo, what's
your mama been doing?" And I would just haul off until I can't say what
I wanted to say. Back then I couldn't say "truckin'." So you can imagine
what I was saying. [mutual laughter] And then he'd go in there and jump
on my mother.
-
MILES
- And then she'd jump on you.
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah, boy, she called me and said, "Bobo, come here. I'm going to teach
you how to say "truckin.'" Ask me why I can say truckin'. [mutual
laughter]
-
MILES
- So you weren't in the choir. Did you have to do anything for the
church?
-
HENDERSON
- Well, what we had to do, I had to clean out the trough where the stove
was, where they had sand around it. And you know, my sisters with that
snuff and stuff, they'd be [spits] spitting it, hitting that stove. So
that's what I had to do; I had to keep that stove whistling clean. And
also I put out the pamphlets and different things and did whatever, like
put up the water for the priest, pastor, or whatever, you know.But my brother, my brother Bobby [Henderson], he was almost a minister.
He took up preaching.
-
MILES
- At what age?
-
HENDERSON
- Bobby started preaching when he was thirty. He tried it and everything,
and he went into it for not the right reason.
-
MILES
- What reason was that?
-
HENDERSON
- He went into it talking about money. My brother was money crazy. Yeah,
he has his own postal annex here in Monrovia. Yeah, my brother, he was
smart, that boy. He graduated, what, two years early.
-
MILES
- Oh, really?
-
HENDERSON
- Oh, yeah, he was very— Also he went to USC [University of Southern
California] and went to UCLA [University of California, Los Angeles] and
took classes and everything, and he's a speaker, I mean. Bobby's
good.
-
MILES
- What did your sister end up doing?
-
HENDERSON
- My sister, she ended up getting married, and she worked at the [Los
Angeles] County Hospital here in L.A. for a little while, and then she
and her ex-husband— She broke up and then she remarried, and she's
living out in Compton.
-
MILES
- So everybody's out here?
-
HENDERSON
- Except me. I don't like L.A.
-
MILES
- Oh, yeah, well, they're in California, though.
-
HENDERSON
- They're in California.
-
MILES
- Now, were there any expectations for you to become a preacher? Did your
father—
-
HENDERSON
- Oh no. I couldn't talk. Could you see me up there trying to— I'd get
excited and start trying to stutter. Yeah. No, no.
-
MILES
- Did your friends make fun of you for stuttering?
-
HENDERSON
- Oh yeah.
-
MILES
- What did they say?
-
HENDERSON
- What they didn't say. But I was a fighter.
-
MILES
- Oh, did you, literally?
-
HENDERSON
- Oh Lord, yeah. My dad and them used to have to whup me not to fight, and
I'd fight in a minute. I'd fight in a minute. I don't care what, yeah,
Lordy, what size you were or what, I'd tie into you.
-
MILES
- Did you have a best friend, though, little buddy?
-
HENDERSON
- William B. I had my best friend down in Arkansas, his name was William
B. And "B Boy," we called him B Boy. He lived over on Red Road, that was
over across the tracks, and we would go up there and we used to— I don't
know if you ever seen the movie they call Ali Baba
and the Forty Thieves?
-
MILES
- Oh yeah.
-
HENDERSON
- We had to yell, "Ho-ho!" We could holler from where I lived all the way
over the hill where he lived across the railroad tracks, and he'd holler
back at you.
-
MILES
- So you were the two thieves.
-
HENDERSON
- That knew to come, I knew to come, let's come together. I would get
ready to get up a team and play ball.
-
MILES
- How did you meet him? How old were you?
-
HENDERSON
- Oh, in grammar school. In grammar school, I guess.
-
MILES
- So you were there till sixth grade together?
-
HENDERSON
- Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Best friends. He cried when we left Arkansas. He cried
and I cried. We was just like brothers, and I lost him about five years
ago.
-
MILES
- You stayed in touch with him?
-
HENDERSON
- Oh yeah. Every time I go down there, we'd still— Even after we got grown
and everything, I'd go to visit, and we'd get a team together and go
over in Oklahoma and play on Sundays and play a team over in
Oklahoma.
-
MILES
- So he played, too?
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah.
-
MILES
- What did he do? Did he stay in Arkansas all that time?
-
HENDERSON
- Yes, he stayed and went to work in the service and everything down
there. But he ended up marrying one of the Whitfields. Yeah, he married
one of the Whitfield girls.
-
MILES
- One of those ones you were fighting?
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah, Bertha. He married Bertha.
-
MILES
- One of those ones you were fighting?
-
HENDERSON
- B Boy had— They had six kids together down in Fort Smith.
-
MILES
- Now, baseball sounds like it was really important.
-
HENDERSON
- Hoo, back then—
-
MILES
- Yeah.
-
HENDERSON
- —baseball was my life dream. I ate and slept baseball.
-
MILES
- When do you first remember playing?
-
HENDERSON
- Well, my mother and Aunt Marg and my sister, they would get out there in
the field and play with us.
-
MILES
- The women played, too?
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah.
-
MILES
- Was that common?
-
HENDERSON
- Oh, that was common, yeah. My mother and them, yeah, that was common,
yeah. The mothers in our neighborhood, they got out there. Everybody got
out there and played. Oh yeah.
-
MILES
- In that field you were talking about?
-
HENDERSON
- In that vacant lot. Anywhere. Yeah, we made— And we used to use cow
flop. You know, hard, after it get hard, we used cow flop for the
bases.
-
MILES
- So as early as you can remember, you were playing.
-
HENDERSON
- Uh-huh..
-
MILES
- And your sister played, too.
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah. Mary Frances was a good little athlete. But my mother played
basketball in high school at Lincoln [High School]. She was a heck of a
little basketball player.
-
MILES
- Now, did your mother finish high school?
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah, she finished school.
-
MILES
- She was still married, though? Was she married when she—
-
HENDERSON
- Uh-huh..
-
MILES
- Married and going to high school.
-
HENDERSON
- And finished school.
-
MILES
- That's great.
-
HENDERSON
- Yes.
-
MILES
- And while she was married, she was playing basketball at this time.
-
HENDERSON
- Uh-huh, and she was a heck of a basketball player. Oh yeah.
-
MILES
- So it was okay for women? Was it okay for women to play basketball?
-
HENDERSON
- Oh yeah.
-
MILES
- It wasn't considered too, you know, "manly" or whatever?
-
HENDERSON
- No. They could have a regular basketball team.
-
MILES
- How good were they?
-
HENDERSON
- They was good. They was good. Oh yeah. They played Oklahoma and they
played Little Rock. Yeah, my mother was real good.
-
MILES
- What position did she play?
-
HENDERSON
- She played guard.
-
MILES
- Back then there was six on six, though, wasn't it?
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah.
-
MILES
- Did she play five on five?
-
HENDERSON
- Five on five.
-
MILES
- Or six on six?
-
HENDERSON
- No, five. Played five on five.
-
MILES
- Wow. Because you know they didn't change the rules till a lot later to
five on five. I know some places has five on five. Did your father go to
her games?
-
HENDERSON
- No, Dad was strictly church. And like I said, after he got— Trying to
keep his congregation together and everything going, choir rehearsal and
everything, and then he studied that Bible, man. We almost could know
his whole sermon. He practiced. He'd get in front of the mirror and make
them expressions, and my dad would get on that one foot. He would get on
one foot and boogie all the way across the floor. And he started dancing
and he'd—That old man was something else.
-
MILES
- He played baseball, though, right?
-
HENDERSON
- Yes.
-
MILES
- How did he feel about sports in general? [tape recorder off]
-
MILES
- You were telling me about your dad, and I was wondering how he felt
about sports.
-
HENDERSON
- Ooh, my daddy loved sports.
-
MILES
- Oh, he did? So he didn't feel like it was like heathen or anything?
-
HENDERSON
- Oh, no, no, no. No. After I played American Legion ball and I was in the
movies there in Fort Smith, my daddy would sit there the whole day
waiting for the news to come on to see me on the news, yeah. I made the
news down there in '47, sliding into home. Old man sat there and
cried.
-
MILES
- You told me your father, not only did he play baseball, he did something
else, too.
-
HENDERSON
- Boxed. He boxed.
-
MILES
- Tell me about his boxing.
-
HENDERSON
- His boxing, he was good.
-
MILES
- This was before he was a preacher?
-
HENDERSON
- Yes. Yeah, he was quick. He was a good little boxer.
-
MILES
- Who was he boxing for? Was it just a little local thing?
-
HENDERSON
- A local thing, uh-huh..
-
MILES
- In Arkansas?
-
HENDERSON
- He didn't go professional.
-
MILES
- What about his baseball playing days?
-
HENDERSON
- They would play in Little Rock. They would play Muskogee, Tulsa, and
they'd play over in New Orleans. They'd go down, go down to Texarkana
and different places, yeah. He played all of them.
-
MILES
- Who was he playing for?
-
HENDERSON
- For the Fort Smith Giants, a Negro— The team was black. It wasn't pro or
nothing like that, but they would just, yeah, get up a team and go
around and play. And they would go and have a little Model-T Fords.
Sometimes they'd go in a wagon or whatever, you know.
-
MILES
- Was he married at this time?
-
HENDERSON
- No, Daddy wasn't married.
-
MILES
- This was before that?
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah, before then.
-
MILES
- So once he got married, he stopped playing that?
-
HENDERSON
- No, he played while he was married. Oh yeah.
-
MILES
- He just didn't play for that team.
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah. I used to have a picture with him with his uniform on. They had
their pant knee-high, like knee-high and then socks and skintight. It
was skintight, yeah. We laughed at him.
-
MILES
- Did you go to his games?
-
HENDERSON
- I don't remember, because I don't remember him playing after I got up
around five and six years old. It might have been when I was two or
three or something like that. I don't remember that.
-
MILES
- Okay. But he did play every now and then?
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah.
-
MILES
- You said he played on the weekends and stuff.
-
HENDERSON
- Oh yeah.
-
MILES
- Who was he playing with then?
-
HENDERSON
- With the Fort Smith Giants, [inaudible]. They named their team, like the
white team, they were named Fort Smith Giants. And my dad and them, they
took that name.
-
MILES
- Was he playing on an all-black team at this point?
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah.
-
MILES
- Were there any integrated teams?
-
HENDERSON
- Oh, no, not back then. No.
-
MILES
- Not at all?
-
HENDERSON
- No. But before then, back in 1800s, they was integrated.
-
MILES
- In Arkansas or just in—
-
HENDERSON
- Throughout the whole United States. Down South also, because the West
Coast, out here, they never did have no Negro League or anything like
that. But we had a team named the Gibson Tigers, which was a Negro
all-black, and we tried to get— Well, we were organized. We did play or
go over to Mexico and different places. We played here and there in San
Diego against a lot of the white teams and beat them. We won. We won the
league.
-
MILES
- Did you?
-
HENDERSON
- Oh yeah.
-
MILES
- This is after you moved out here?
-
HENDERSON
- No, it was winter ball. I'd play one after— Get through with the Negro
League, and then during the winter months, we'd all have jobs and on the
weekends we would play different organizations.
-
MILES
- Hold on. We're running out of time on this side. Let me turn it
over.
-
HENDERSON
- Okay.
1.2. TAPE NUMBER: I, SIDE TWO
March 20, 2004
-
HENDERSON
- In my high school days, well, back when I was in the Boys Club—
-
MILES
- This is in Arkansas still?
-
HENDERSON
- No, no, we'd moved to California.
-
MILES
- Let's stick with Arkansas. You're playing baseball in Arkansas.
-
HENDERSON
- Then in Arkansas, like I say, we would get little teams up and play the
white, and then we'd bounce over, go all the way over on the north side
and play against the black guys and everything. But when we'd get over
there and play the blacks, after the game, I'd always get in a fight.
You don't know why, but I guess it's the same way as it is today, one of
us would get to fighting against one another.
-
MILES
- This isn't mostly north side versus south side?
-
HENDERSON
- Right. You hit it right on the head. That's what it was about.
-
MILES
- Was it a little more of the middle-class in the north?
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah. They had better homes than what we had. I tell you, strike a
match, ain't no telling what's liable to happen. [mutual laughter] But
we were one of the first families on the south side to have electric
lights.
-
MILES
- Regardless of color?
-
HENDERSON
- Right, regardless of color. My daddy was one of the first to have
electricity. And I never will forget it, I tried to figure out what made
the light, and I stood up on an ironing door and unscrewed the bulb and
stuck my finger up in there, and if my brother hadn't hit that ironing
board, I'd been dead.
-
MILES
- Yeah. You were trying to figure it out.
-
HENDERSON
- I remember my mother put bluing, put bluing all over in there. I don't
mess with electricity today.
-
MILES
- Since then, huh?
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah.
-
MILES
- But you said you were one of the first families in that neighborhood.
Were there any problems that you know of when they moved in?
-
HENDERSON
- No, no, no, no, no. Like I said, my daddy had a barbecue café. My daddy
had a café and he barbecued, did hamburgers and everything, you know.
Peoples come from Oklahoma and all around just for my daddy's barbecue,
regardless of color. Yeah.And like I said, the restroom that was there with running water was out
behind our restaurant, and the peoples from the ballpark, they'd park
out on our ground, and Daddy would charge them, what, fifteen cents a
car back then for parking for the ball games and stuff.
-
MILES
- So he would just move— Where was the barbecue?
-
HENDERSON
- He had a café.
-
MILES
- Where was the café?
-
HENDERSON
- On the side of the house.
-
MILES
- Okay. So it was near your house. Okay.
-
HENDERSON
- It was right near the house, because I remember big old trees we used to
swing on and everything. Tornadoes come through there, boy. Can you see
us trying to hold a door , at six and seven years old, and my daddy is
helping us trying to hold something. [mutual laughter]
-
MILES
- Tell me about this field that you say was across the street from your
house. Andrew's?
-
HENDERSON
- Andrew's Field. Yeah, the home of the Fort Smith Giants. It was a nice
ballpark. Like I say, only time we could fit in the grandstand would be
when the Negro League would come to town.
-
MILES
- So it was segregated seating?
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah. We had to sit on the bleachers and everything.
-
MILES
- Now, Fort Smith Giants, that was the white team?
-
HENDERSON
- The white team.
-
MILES
- Did you ever go watch them play?
-
HENDERSON
- Ooh, yes.
-
MILES
- It didn't matter to you?
-
HENDERSON
- No. We went all the time. We never did have to pay to get in.
-
MILES
- Why not?
-
HENDERSON
- Because we did pick up the cushions and different things, and Mister
[inaudible], he knew us real well, and I used to slip over the fence and
go around and run the bases. I'd go over there just by myself, get over
there and just play like I hit the ball and take off, and I got to where
I could scat around them bases and everything. Even after I grew up and
everything, they used to brag on me about how fast I could run the
bases.
-
MILES
- Now, who were you going to the games with at this time?
-
HENDERSON
- My brother and the Whitfields and my buddy B Boy. We'd all go together
and everything. Like I'm saying, the white team would be practicing,
they never griped at us. We would go out there and flag balls with them.
They never ran us out or told us to get on out of here and call names.
But what they used to try to do is rub our head and everything. We
wouldn't allow them to do that. And throw money and try to make us
scramble for us. We'd use our noggin; we'd wait till they'd leave and
then we'd get the money and everything.
-
MILES
- Why wouldn't you let them rub your head?
-
HENDERSON
- They think they're Uncle Tom and trying to say for good luck, rub your
head for luck. I wouldn't play. That wasn't my game or my brother. My
dad told us not to let nobody be doing that.
-
MILES
- Did the girls go with you, or was it mostly boys?
-
HENDERSON
- Mostly boys. Yeah, girls they'd be playing dolls, hopscotch, or
something.
-
MILES
- So boys and girls did have some things they did together and some things
they did separate.
-
HENDERSON
- Uh-huh. We played hide-and-go-seek together. [mutual laughter]
-
MILES
- Real hide-and-go-seek. All right.
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah. Had to hide and go get it. [mutual laughter]
-
MILES
- Did you have a girlfriend?
-
HENDERSON
- Ooh!
-
MILES
- In Arkansas now. I'm not talking about later.
-
HENDERSON
- I had more than one.
-
MILES
- Back when you weren't yet ten years old, were you?.
-
HENDERSON
- I knew what girls were.
-
MILES
- Okay. You were fast in other ways.
-
HENDERSON
- I had a little one named Matty Jo. She was part Indian, Negro, black
back then. But you're talking about pretty. And had a sister named
Palestine. They was the prettiest girls you ever wanted to see, boy.
They was part Indian, and Lord have mercy.
-
MILES
- Was she your girlfriend?
-
HENDERSON
- If you want to call it that.
-
MILES
- If I asked her that, would she say that?
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah. Oh, yeah, back then, yeah. Because I ended up, after I got
married, a couple times out here I ended up taking her out here. In '67,
I brought her to California. We stayed together about five years. We
have son named Anthony, a little boy. Anthony. He was a heck of a little
basketball player there in Fort Smith.
-
MILES
- How did people— If you could speak for the community, what did they
think about baseball at this time?
-
HENDERSON
- Down there in Arkansas?
-
MILES
- Yeah.
-
HENDERSON
- Whew, they loved it. Yeah, the whole community. Yeah, they loved it
because that was income for them, because the teams come with cars,
didn't have no place to park, everybody in the neighborhood was parking
cars, you know, making a little extra change, and selling sodas or
sandwiches or whatever, you know.
-
MILES
- How did you follow the games? Was it in the newspaper?
-
HENDERSON
- Through the newspaper.
-
MILES
- Ever on the radio?
-
HENDERSON
- Oh yeah. They'd announce it on the radio. Oh yeah.
-
MILES
- What was your favorite way to— You just followed it in the paper?
-
HENDERSON
- No, I'd be at the game. [mutual laughter] Eating peanuts and everything.
Yeah, boy, we used to have a good time.But during when there wasn't no ball game, they would have rodeo. That's
where I met Gene Autry, Roy Rogers. I met all the movie stars, I mean
cowboys, back in them days, rodeo. They tricked my brother and them one
time and the Whitfield boys, and they put them in a croaker sack and
drug them out on the field. [inaudible], and they drug them out on the
field. Like I told you a while ago, I was a tattletale. And they drug
them out on the field, and the old guy on the microphone would say,
"Hey, what you got there?"Say, "Man, I got a bunch of coons." "Man, this ain't coon season. What
you mean you got some coons?" "Yeah, man, I got me five coons," and
everything. So he drug them out there. "Oh, man, you ain't got— Let me
see 'em."So he took and, bam, bam, bam, shot up in the air and took and dumped
that croaker sack, and my brother and all them come out of that
sack.
-
MILES
- Your brother was in there, too?
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah, he was in there. And one day I [inaudible] and went home and told
my mother and told her.
-
MILES
- What did your mother say?
-
HENDERSON
- Come out of there raising sand.
-
MILES
- Oh, yeah?
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah. And she whupped my brother and, well, all of them got
whupping.
-
MILES
- But why did she beat the boy?
-
HENDERSON
- Beat my brother?
-
MILES
- Yeah.
-
HENDERSON
- Because she always told him never to get in no croaker sack, don't be
around letting them people do the things what they was doing, you know,
and that's the reason why he got a whupping, because he went against my
mother's word.
-
MILES
- My mind went in two different directions there. Let me ask you about—
Back to the baseball team. How did the people feel about the Negro
League at the time?
-
HENDERSON
- Well, they loved it. We had a sellout crowd every time. Like when the
Negro League would come to Fort Smith, I would always be the batboy for
the Kansas City Monarchs, and my brother would always be the batboy for
whatever other team that was there and everything.So then in '36 when the Monarchs came, I was the batboy for them, and
then the following year in 1937, I was the batboy for them. This was the
year that they had the first night game played there in Fort Smith,
Arkansas. This guy came up with a truck, and I asked, "Hey, what you
going to do?""Man, we're going to have a night baseball game."I said, "A night game?""Yeah." And he explained to me what he was going to do and showed me
about the generators and all this, and he put the lights all out on the
field. And he put one up around third base, put one back of the
backstop, then he put one behind first base and all around the field.So round about five o'clock, the Monarchs pulled up, and I asked them
could I be the batboy, and they said yeah.
-
MILES
- Was this the first time you'd asked them?
-
HENDERSON
- No, no. This was the following year in '37.So my brother, round about five-thirty, the Homestead Grays came up. My
brother asked them could he be the batboy, which he did and everything.
So then that's when I met [John] "Buck" O'Neil.
-
MILES
- You were seven years old.
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah, I was seven years old. And Cool Papa Bell and all the guys. So
they get out and they take infield, I get right out there with them. And
Cool Papa Bell and them, they let me take my turn.
-
MILES
- At bat?
-
HENDERSON
- At everything. I did everything that they did. They taught me everything
until Cool Papa Bell took me under his wing, showed me how to field a
ball. I could scat, yeah. I was doing everything he was doing. So every
time they'd break a bat, I would put it back, you know, because we were
going to take and fix it and everything. But Buck O'Neil and all, they
taught me a lot.My brother had a catcher's mitt, and Josh Gibson had a catcher's mitt and
he had five sponges in it. They were just ate out in here, in the palm.
So he asked my brother, "Son, let me use your catcher's mitt."My brother said, "Okay, but make sure you give it back," you know.So he used it the whole game, and then after the game was over, my
brother ain't seen that catcher's mitt. My brother had that old
catcher's mitt, and I remember when we left Arkansas, my brother left it
with my dad. And I remember going back fifteen, twenty years later when
I went there, that catcher's mitt was out in the backyard. But just
think of what that catcher's mitt would be worth today.
-
MILES
- Exactly.
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah, that catcher's mitt was worth some money. Yes, Lord.
-
MILES
- How is it at age six you could approach them to be a batboy?
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah.
-
MILES
- You just asked?
-
HENDERSON
- Uh-huh, because I loved the game. I loved it, loved the game.
-
MILES
- But everybody loved the game. What set you apart?
-
HENDERSON
- It's just something that I— Because I know my dad played, and I wanted
to be just like my daddy, except for preaching, because I had a speech
defect. And that's what my problem was in school, everybody would laugh
at me when I get up to read, and they would laugh at me. That's the
reason I hated to read and I hated to even talk half the time. But the
reason why I loved baseball and I got to a place where I could hit and
I'd bunt, I did everything just perfect, you know.
-
MILES
- So at this point, did you want to be a ball player?
-
HENDERSON
- Yes, yes. Well, like I said, while I was out there taking infield with
Cool Papa Bell and all of them, I made a vow. I said, "One of these days
I'm going to play with these guys." And twelve years later, I signed
with the Kansas City Monarchs.
-
MILES
- Eighteen years old.
-
HENDERSON
- Uh-huh. I was just getting ready to turn nineteen, because I signed with
them in 1949.
-
MILES
- When you were six, around this time did you have a favorite team or a
favorite player?
-
HENDERSON
- My favorite player at that time was— You know who. You seen him in the
paper here today. Babe Ruth.
-
MILES
- Oh yeah.
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah, Babe Ruth, because when I grew up and everything, that's the
number I wore, was number three, Babe Ruth and everything. I finally got
to meet Babe Ruth.
-
MILES
- When?
-
HENDERSON
- 1947, when I was playing in the Little World Series and everything, I
met Babe Ruth, taking pictures with him and everything.
-
MILES
- What is it that you liked about him? Why did you like Babe Ruth so
much?
-
HENDERSON
- Because he was hitting them home runs, and he was real friendly to all
the youth, young men. No matter if you was black, green, white, or
whatever, he spoke to you and held your hand and everything, you know.
Like when he held my hand and everything, talked to me, about out of six
teams I was the only person that had number three on, and he stood up
above the grandstand and he looked down on the field, and when he came
down, he came straight to me because I had number three on, and he went
straight to me.
-
MILES
- Where was this?
-
HENDERSON
- We were playing in the Little World Series here in Los Angeles.
-
MILES
- Oh, you were here?
-
HENDERSON
- Uh-huh. 1947.
-
MILES
- Did you have a favorite team, too, or just a favorite player?
-
HENDERSON
- My favorite team, I always wanted to play with the [New York] Yankees.
That's who I wanted to play with, until— I knew about prejudice and
everything, and I thought maybe that thing would change, which it did.
But you had to be strong. If you were like me, I was raised up to not be
taken, let nobody rub my head, not let nobody spit on me. I couldn't
take that. So I was going to be a man regardless.
-
MILES
- Now, at this time, were there people, let's say, black people in the
community who were trying to integrate or anything like that, or did
people just keep to themselves mostly? Like we think about Rosa Parks,
you know, years later.
-
HENDERSON
- Are you speaking of in Arkansas?
-
MILES
- Yeah, in Arkansas.
-
HENDERSON
- Oh, in Arkansas, no, we mostly stayed to ourselves, you know, because we
know the consequences. I remember the time when a kid drowned down on
the river. St. James, our church, had a picnic down along the riverbank
and barbecuing and doing everything else, and this kid or young man fell
out the boat and drowned.
-
MILES
- Black man?
-
HENDERSON
- White guy. And this black guy, he sent him out, [inaudible] this tree,
and they saw him when they fell out the boat, and they hollered,
"Somebody fell out the boat and they're drowning up there," and
everything. So everybody swam over there to try to help him and
everything, but it was too late. He went down; nobody found him. So they
put the word out that a kid, somebody, had drowned, and they come trying
to say that we drowned him. You should have seen the black folks getting
off the riverbank and then going home. You could see shades coming down,
curtains coming down, because they were scared of the after effects,
what's going to happen, you know. So they came. They drug the river and
they finally got him out, and they found out that he was drunk.
-
MILES
- What would have happened, do you think?
-
HENDERSON
- Whew. Somebody was going to lynch somebody or do something to
somebody.
-
MILES
- Were there lynchings back then?
-
HENDERSON
- Ooh, yeah. Back then, yeah. My mother used to tell us when they'd lynch
somebody, they would take and tie them to the back of the car and drag
them through the street, through the Negro neighborhood, and was still
shooting the body and everything when they was [inaudible].
-
MILES
- After they took the body down, or was this before they'd even lynched
him?
-
HENDERSON
- They tarred and feathered them and everything after they lynched
them.
-
MILES
- After they lynched them?
-
HENDERSON
- After they lynched them, they tarred and feathered them, and then they
drug them through the street. Then the body was just— They said flesh
was just falling off.
-
MILES
- Do you know what for?
-
HENDERSON
- The same always; some white girl, you know. But back then, when I was
kid growing up, you could see the white womens coming over with black
guys and talking over there by the ballpark because there wasn't no—
There was a vacant lot and everything out there, and you could see any
direction if anybody was coming.But us kids and everything, we never missed nothing. [mutual laughter]
Because boys will be boys, you know. So we never missed nothing. We seen
all that.The white women would come over there with the black guy, and if they get
caught, you know, they going to holler rape, but it wasn't always that
way.
-
MILES
- Were you told to stay away from white girls?
-
HENDERSON
- Oh, yeah, I knew that. I knew that, oh, yeah. Oh yeah.
-
MILES
- So you'd play with the white boys, but not necessarily [inaudible].
-
HENDERSON
- No, never did, never did play with the girls. My sister and them played
with dolls and everything with the girls, but, no, we knew better.
-
MILES
- So then how did your family decide to move to California?
-
HENDERSON
- Well, I forgot to tell you about that. My grandmother worked for this
white lady over on— No, Aunt Priscilla. The lady I'm talking about right
now, Aunt Priscilla, she had a son by— What's the name of the book, Roots, the one that wrote the book.
-
MILES
- Alex Haley.
-
HENDERSON
- Alex Haley. His brother was named Sidney, Sid. Sam. Sam Haley. His name
was Sam Haley [cannot confirm that Alex Haley had a brother named Sam or
Sidney]. And my aunt had a baby by Sam Haley, which his name was Sam.
They called him Sam. Sidney White, but they called him Sam.She worked for this white lady, and the white lady had a Polly parrot.
And this Polly parrot, she taught him how to say "nigger." So the Polly
parrot would say, "Hey, nigger, nigger. Polly want a cracker. Polly want
a cracker. Priscilla! Priscilla! Nigger! Nigger!"Then when we go over to visit and everything, and hear that parrot call
Aunt Priscilla nigger, so Aunt Priscilla had somewhere to go one day,
and we come by there coming from school, and we stopped and wasn't
nobody at the house. So we went around to the back door, because
couldn't go through the front, went around to the back door, knocked and
everything. So we went on in, and so we ended up killing that parrot.
[laughs]
-
MILES
- You did? This is in Arkansas, right?
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah. Yeah, in Arkansas. We killed that parrot.
-
MILES
- How did you kill the parrot?
-
HENDERSON
- Choked it. Choked it.
-
MILES
- Why did you kill that parrot?
-
HENDERSON
- Because he called "nigger." And he was white. He was a white parrot. And
we ended up, me and my brother and my cousin there, yeah, we killed him.
My cousin, he dead now, Donald. The Ware brothers. Like I was telling
you before, the one went to UCLA, Timmy Ware, played end for UCLA. He
went pro and did real good there in UCLA.But anyway, we killed that parrot, and Aunt Priscilla quit work and moved
to California.
-
MILES
- Because you guys killed the parrot?
-
HENDERSON
- Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Yeah. And not too far from there, that's when my mother,
we all moved, came this way. My dad, my mom, they broke up and
everything, and that's when my mother moved. She came out here first and
left us with Aunt Marg, and about six months later then we came.
-
MILES
- Wait. You told me a lot there. Okay. So Priscilla, is that your mother's
sister?
-
HENDERSON
- Right.
-
MILES
- Where did she move to when she came out here, where in California?
-
HENDERSON
- San Diego.
-
MILES
- Did she move with your grandmother or just in—
-
HENDERSON
- She was the first one to come. She came before my grandmother, my Aunt
Priscilla.
-
MILES
- Oh, she came. Oh, okay.
-
HENDERSON
- Priscilla White, she came. She worked for a doctor in Point Loma, a
rich, rich doctor.
-
MILES
- A white doctor?
-
HENDERSON
- Oh yeah. She was a woman, was a woman doctor.
-
MILES
- A white woman?
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah. Dr. O'Donald, and, boy, she was rich. She had money. She had
property up in Big Bear. She used to live— Aunt Priscilla— We went up
there a couple times to Big Bear.
-
MILES
- Was she married, this woman?
-
HENDERSON
- No, she wasn't married. She gave Aunt Priscilla anything she wanted.
That woman had anything she wanted. We're talking about luxury. Boy,
when she passed away, Dr. O'Donald gave her all kind of jewelry and
different things, you know. When she died, she left Aunt Priscilla a
whole lot of money and everything. Aunt Priscilla had a very nice home.
She had a five-bedroom house over in the black community.
-
MILES
- Did she get married, Priscilla?
-
HENDERSON
- No, she never did get married. No.
-
MILES
- But she had her son, Sam?
-
HENDERSON
- She had more than one son. Altogether she had four boys.
-
MILES
- But she never married?
-
HENDERSON
- She never married.
-
MILES
- So she came out here first, then your grandmother, but your uncle was
already here?
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah.
-
MILES
- Is that your mother's brother, too?
-
HENDERSON
- Right.
-
MILES
- So why did your mother come?
-
HENDERSON
- My mother, after my dad and my mom broke up, she moved out here to be
with her mother.
-
MILES
- Okay. So they split up first before she came out here?
-
HENDERSON
- Oh yeah.
-
MILES
- How did your father feel about you guys leaving? Because he stayed in
Arkansas, right?
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah, he stayed, stayed in Arkansas. And he said he couldn't raise us
and everything, plus being a minister and doing what he was preaching,
not being at home.My sister, Mary Frances, was thirteen, and I was getting ready to turn
eleven. And she scalded herself. I never will forget this. She was
trying to cook, and turned the pot over on her, and it scalded. She
still got that scar. Almost got in her ear. She got a big blister-like
on her back. Never will forget that.
-
MILES
- Were you guys at home by yourselves or something?
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah. Oh yeah. My dad was at work.
-
MILES
- Where was your mom?
-
HENDERSON
- She was in California. She had started coming out here to
California.
-
MILES
- Oh, she already— Okay.
-
HENDERSON
- Aunt Marg was supposed to been watching us, but she was at work, and my
sister was trying to raise us when she was just— Mary Frances was
thirteen. She was trying to cook and do woman's work, yeah.
-
MILES
- Right, and still a child. Was it a scandal at all in your church,
considering that the pastor and his wife had broken up?
-
HENDERSON
- Oh no. No. No, no scandal.
-
MILES
- Those things happened?
-
HENDERSON
- Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Boy, my mother had a voice. She could sing. We had a
beautiful choir. And like I said, my brother could— I'm trying to find
this here— If you ever could find somebody to find a poem and say "You
may talk about the Negro," boy, that poem is a beautiful poem, and I'd
love for somebody to trace that down. It said "You may talk about the
Negro, but when you get to heaven, my white brother, there will be some
Negroes in it." I never will forget that.
-
MILES
- You don't know who wrote that?
-
HENDERSON
- No, that's what— If I knew that, I probably could find it. "From the
[inaudible] to the Senate, there's not a place on earth that a Negro
isn't in it." Oh, it was a beautiful poem. My brother cited that at the
age of six and got a standing ovation. We was at a convention, and he
turned that place out. Like I said, he was a—
-
MILES
- Where was this? What convention?
-
HENDERSON
- We was in St. Louis, the big the Baptist church there in St. Louis.
-
MILES
- Oh, I see. So he was the speaker, huh?
-
HENDERSON
- My brother?
-
MILES
- Yeah.
-
HENDERSON
- Well, they had him recite that poem, yeah.
-
MILES
- How did your mother get out here when she left you guys?
-
HENDERSON
- She came out on the train.
-
MILES
- Did she tell you any stories about it?
-
HENDERSON
- Oh, told me how it was, and that's the way it was. My sister came out
before we did. Then my brother and I came out later, and we traveled by
ourselves, you know, and that was a— They put the money on my brother.
They didn't think that Bobby would have any money. They'd probably think
me being older, they'd got me. But they put all the money on my
brother.
-
MILES
- Hold on. Actually, how did you feel about your parents splitting up? I
didn't even ask you that. Didn't bother you?
-
HENDERSON
- No, it didn't bother me.
-
MILES
- Oh, okay.
-
HENDERSON
- But like I said, my dad, even though he was minister, he was pretty
cruel to my mother and everything, you know, because he was jealous. My
mother had any kind of clothes that you could name, and my daddy would
take and burn her clothes up, you know. I hope I ain't talking too much,
but that's the way life was. And I swore when I grew up I never would
mistreat my wife or treat nobody the way that my mother had to go
through. All them mink stoles and different things that she had, all
them things were burned up.
-
MILES
- So she decided to go.
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah, she decided that she was going to leave him, and she did.
-
MILES
- What did she do when she came out here?
-
HENDERSON
- She worked. Like I said, she worked in a cleaners, in a laundry. She
even pressed clothes down in Arkansas at her age and everything. She was
one of the top pressers, said she would do nightgowns, the gowns for all
the rich white people, tuxedos and—
-
MILES
- That's what she did when she came out here?
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah. She worked for a laundry and a cleaners, dry cleaners.
-
MILES
- Did the pay change?
-
HENDERSON
- Oh yeah.
-
MILES
- She got paid more?
-
HENDERSON
- Oh yeah. Oh yeah. [mutual laughter] Oh yeah. Oh yeah.
-
MILES
- Because you told me she got paid about twenty-five cents.
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah, she was making twenty-five for doing laundry down in Arkansas.
-
MILES
- Do you know what happened when she came out to San Diego, what the
difference was in pay?
-
HENDERSON
- No, I can't— It was more than twenty-five cents a day to wash all day
for twenty-five cents, plus iron, you know, and wasn't getting no
nickels a shirt or nothing like that. It was twenty-five cents,
period.
-
MILES
- So tell me about this trip you had to take out here with just your
brother. How were you feeling about it before you had to come?
-
HENDERSON
- Oh, it didn't bother us. We knew—
-
MILES
- Were you excited to go?
-
HENDERSON
- Oh yeah. Oh yeah. And I remember after I got older and I came this way,
I came on the bus, and these white guys talked about how they was going
to kill me. And this white lady heared them over talking it, and so she
came back and said, "Son, when you guys stop up here at the bus stop,
don't you get off this bus. I'm going to bring you back some food and
everything, but don't you get off this bus." She never did tell me what
was going down and everything. I didn't get off the bus.So when she came back, she gave me the food. What did she do that for?
Them guys went berserk, and the bus driver ended up getting them off the
bus.
-
MILES
- Was this that trip you were making to come here for the first time, or
this was later on?
-
HENDERSON
- This was later on when I was sixteen. I was sixteen years old. It was in
'46.
-
MILES
- Who were you traveling with?
-
HENDERSON
- I was by myself.
-
MILES
- You were by yourself?
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah. I came home to see my dad and everything. I was going back, coming
back to California.
-
MILES
- Where were you?
-
HENDERSON
- We was almost to Texas.
-
MILES
- But that first trip you made with your brother.
-
HENDERSON
- Oh, we were on the train. We went to St. Louis. From St. Louis, we came
this way.
-
MILES
- Did you have to sit in a certain section?
-
HENDERSON
- Oh yeah. Oh yeah.
-
MILES
- Did it change at any point, like when you got to, I don't know,
Oklahoma, you could sit somewhere else?
-
HENDERSON
- No, didn't change till you got to California. It was the only time it
changed, all the black folk. Then coming back this way, when you get
over to Arizona, that's when you had to get to the back of the bus.
-
MILES
- So really, when you got to California is when you could just sit
wherever you wanted to?
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah.
-
MILES
- What did you think about California before you got here? What did you
think it was going to be like?
-
HENDERSON
- Paradise.
-
MILES
- Why did you think that?
-
HENDERSON
- Oh, looking at the movies, looking at different things, you know, and
from the way my mother and them talked about it, you know, that you
could go to school with the white kids and you can play sports and, you
know, Boys Club, go swimming and everything. Now, only thing about,
like, at the YMCA, the blacks could not go swimming with the whites in
San Diego. We had to wait till they were going to get ready to dump the
pool, and we could go swimming. That's on Saturday night, when they were
getting ready—
-
MILES
- That's the only time you could do it?
-
HENDERSON
- Only time a black man could go. You couldn't even take a shower. If you
played basketball, after the game you couldn't go in there and take a
shower with the white kids or nothing like that. You had to go
[inaudible]. You couldn't take no shower.
-
MILES
- How was your train ride?
-
HENDERSON
- The train ride, we had to stay right in one spot, you know. You couldn't
go to the diner and eat and sit down and eat, but you could go down and
order then come back to your seat. They had the people that go around
and sell things. But we always carried a lunch, box, box lunch.
-
MILES
- But that was a long train ride. How long did it take you?
-
HENDERSON
- We had peanut butter sandwich [inaudible]. It took, what, like two and a
half, three days and two nights, or two nights and three days, something
like that.
-
MILES
- You had enough food for that?
-
HENDERSON
- Oh yeah. Oh yeah.
-
MILES
- Peanut butter sandwich and what else?
-
HENDERSON
- Peanut butter and jelly.
-
MILES
- What else? That was it? [mutual laughter]
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah, peanut butter and jelly.
-
MILES
- That's a lot of sandwiches.
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah.
-
MILES
- Did you make friends when you were on that long trip?
-
HENDERSON
- Oh yeah.
-
MILES
- You talked to people?
-
HENDERSON
- Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. The conductor, they looked out for us, one of
the black porters.
-
MILES
- I'm sure there were porters.
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah. Oh yeah.
-
MILES
- They were looking out for you?
-
HENDERSON
- Oh yeah.
-
MILES
- Did they ask you where you were going?
-
HENDERSON
- Oh yeah.
-
MILES
- Were you excited?
-
HENDERSON
- Not leaving my friends. We cried, boy. You should have seen the stuff we
buried, talking about we coming back. Man, Marlboros and toys and
different things we buried. Then I had to leave my dog and everything.
Oh, man.
-
MILES
- So that was hard for you.
-
HENDERSON
- It was hard. It was hard.
-
MILES
- So when did you get here? When did you get to San Diego? Do you remember
what month it was?
-
HENDERSON
- It was March. School was still going on.
-
MILES
- Yeah, that's what I was trying to figure out. So you left in the middle
of the school year.
-
HENDERSON
- Uh-huh. We got here in March.
-
MILES
- Did you start school as soon as you got here?
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah. Went to Stockton Elementary [School].
-
MILES
- What's the name of it?
-
HENDERSON
- Stockton Elementary.
-
MILES
- What grade were you in?
-
HENDERSON
- Fifth.
-
MILES
- And how was that compared to the school you were at? You were at
Lincoln. No, Dunbar.
-
HENDERSON
- Dunbar.
-
MILES
- You left Dunbar and then you went to Stockton. Okay. What was Stockton
like then?
-
HENDERSON
- Oh, man, it was— The first person I met was a guy named Tommy Martinez,
a Mexican, and we befriended and to this day we're still friends. We
played ball together, and he played second base and I was shortstop. We
were the best on the West Coast. We got all kind of awards, and we made
All-State for three years.
-
MILES
- And you met him in fifth grade?
-
HENDERSON
- Uh-huh, and we did and are still friends to this day.
-
MILES
- Since you've mentioned this, had you had any encounter with Mexicans
before?
-
HENDERSON
- No. My dad used to tell us, said, "Don't you mess with the Mexicans out
there, man. They'll cut your throat and drink your blood." [mutual
laughter] I was scared, and that was on my mind all the time. Don't be
no friends with no— But anyway, that was my best friend. And next door
we had a kid named D. T. Trujelio, and he was Mexican. He and I was
friends, because Tommy lived down in the Valley and Trujelio lived next
door to us. I see Trujelio sometime right today, and we're still
friends. We used to walk and ride our bikes over to Mexico to Tijuana to
visit his grandmother.
-
MILES
- Did you? They let you go over there?
-
HENDERSON
- Oh yeah. My mother let us ride bikes and everything over there.
-
MILES
- What neighborhood did you move to when you first got here? I keep saying
"here." To San Diego.
-
HENDERSON
- We lived with my cousin, Aunt Dinah [Jones]. In fact, when everybody
left Arkansas, just about, that's where they came to, 2926 Commercial,
with Aunt Dinah Jones, the Jones family.
-
MILES
- So you stayed with her first.
-
HENDERSON
- Uh-huh, that's where my mother was and my grandmother, and Aunt
Priscilla was with the doctor down at Point Loma and everything, but
everybody that came from Arkansas stayed right there at 2926 Commercial.
Yeah, that's where everybody got started at.
-
MILES
- Where is that street in the city?
-
HENDERSON
- It's [inaudible] ways to the town, you know, and not really in the
ghettos, but it was in the ghetto.
-
MILES
- All black?
-
HENDERSON
- No.
-
MILES
- Oh, that's right, because Tommy was there. I mean not Tommy, but the
neighbor was there.
-
HENDERSON
- Uh-huh.
-
MILES
- Okay. So what kind of people lived there?
-
HENDERSON
- Well, mostly Mexican. Japanese. I can remember when they came and took
all the Japanese people away, and all our friends, man, we cried. They
cried, we cried, to see the Motos and everything, when they put them in
a truck and hauled them off.
-
MILES
- Yeah, you would have been a teenager around that time, right?
-
HENDERSON
- No.
-
MILES
- No?
-
HENDERSON
- No. I just turned eleven.
-
MILES
- Oh, yeah, that's right, the beginning of the war. That's right, not the
end.
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah.
-
MILES
- Was this the first time you'd ever seen Japanese?
-
HENDERSON
- Yes, yes.
-
MILES
- Did your father warn you about the Japanese, too?
-
HENDERSON
- No, no, no. But we had a lot of friends, a lot of Japanese friends. Like
I said, we all hugged, cried, when they took them off in the army trucks
and everything.
-
MILES
- What did you think of San Diego when you first got there?
-
HENDERSON
- Oh, I wanted to be back in Arkansas.
-
MILES
- Because you missed your friends?
-
HENDERSON
- [inaudible] on the streetcar. Only way we could get to where we was at ,
because my mother didn't even have cab fare, so we had to catch a
streetcar. And it was only a nickel. Didn't have to pay for us. She had
to pay a nickel.The first person I saw was a girl named Donna Walker and Betty, and they
looked just like the ones I left down in Arkansas, talking about Mattie
Jo and Palestine, and they was my first love. Love at first sight.
[mutual laughter]
-
MILES
- Did you forget all your friends then?
-
HENDERSON
- Oh, Lord, yeah. I said, "I'm going to get that girl." And sure enough, I
did. [mutual laughter]
-
MILES
- So did she live in your neighborhood?
-
HENDERSON
- No, she lived about four blocks down, but we all went to the same
school, to elementary school.
-
MILES
- So you were sad when you first got here?
-
HENDERSON
- Oh yeah.
-
MILES
- How long did it take you to get over it?
-
HENDERSON
- Not long, because after I started playing ball and kickball and—
-
MILES
- You got your friends?
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah. And like I was saying, I was the first person anybody ever seen
kick a football barefooted. I learned how— Mama used to whup me because
I used to kick out of my shoes all the time, so they put the steel plate
on the toes of my shoes and I still kicked out of them. So I learned how
to kick barefooted to keep from getting a whupping.
-
MILES
- Didn't it hurt your feet?
-
HENDERSON
- No, no. I used to kick old rubber balls barefooted. So when the war
broke out, we used to go on the navy base, marine base and everything,
and we used to perform for the soldiers and sailors and everything. And
they saw me kick, and I used to show them how to kick a football
barefooted. I kicked it before forty-some thousand people in a high
school game that we played.
-
MILES
- What high school did you go to?
-
HENDERSON
- San Diego High [School]. I was one of the first black quarterbacks there
at San Diego High School. I'm the one that started the ball a-rolling
for the black quarterbacks on the West Coast.
-
MILES
- Really?
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah. Well, they had them up here in L.A. like at Jordan [High School]
and different places like that, but not at the white schools, see.
-
MILES
- What was Stockton like?
-
HENDERSON
- Stockton was a grammar school, you know, and it went to the sixth grade.
And that's where I kicked out of my shoes and everything. [laughs] Well,
it was fun. I had a lot of fun because we had a coach there name of
Frank Penuelos, and Frank taught me a lot; ball, plus fighting.
-
MILES
- He taught you how to fight?
-
HENDERSON
- No, I already knew how to fight, but if you get in an argument or a
fight, he made you put on a glove. He wouldn't let us go fist to fist,
and he made you put on gloves and you had to go.There was a guy named Billy Jones. He used to— I don't know what went on
with him. Me and him had a fight every day, seven days a week. He used
to come to my house before school and wanted to fight.
-
MILES
- Was he a black guy?
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah. Well, he was high yellow. He was high yellow. And his name was
Billy Jones. We had to fight before we come to school. After we get to
school, we fought all day at school.
-
MILES
- Why was he fighting you?
-
HENDERSON
- He was just one of them types, a bully, you know, and I wasn't going to
let him bully me. Then he would try to jump on my brother. Bobby was
littler than I was, but Bobby would hold his own ground.
-
MILES
- What about Frank? What was Frank—
-
HENDERSON
- Frank Penuelos, the coach?
-
MILES
- Yeah.
-
HENDERSON
- Oh, man, to this day, he used to— After he would leave school, he would
come over to our house, and him and my mother then would drink beer
together. And he just took up with me and just made sure that I was good
at school and— You know. He taught me manhood, because we didn't have no
father, you know. I came up without— After ten years old, I came up
without a father.But thank God and everything, my mother taught us a lot. I had a paper
route. I shined shoes. My brother, he sold newspapers and he shined
shoes and everything.We hustled. Then I worked for Harry's Market right around through the
alley, and I worked there as a stock clerk.
-
MILES
- After school?
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah.
-
MILES
- I remember you telling me that in Dunbar you had that one teacher for
all grades?
-
HENDERSON
- Right, right.
-
MILES
- What was Stockton like?
-
HENDERSON
- Stockton, like fifth grade, one class. There wasn't no— It wasn't like
Dunbar had everybody in one room. No, fifth grade, had fifth grade one
room.
-
MILES
- So one teacher per grade.
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah, fifth, sixth. You had a different teacher for the fifth grade,
when I got in the fifth grade.
-
MILES
- It went to sixth grade?
-
HENDERSON
- Uh-huh. Junior high school was from seventh to the ninth. Then went to
San Diego High School from the tenth grade to the twelfth.
-
MILES
- Was Stockton integrated?
-
HENDERSON
- Yes, yes.
-
MILES
- You had white kids, too?
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah, everybody. Yeah.
-
MILES
- How did you feel going from an all-black elementary school to a mixed
school?
-
HENDERSON
- I was fascinated. And guess what? When I got from elementary school and
went to junior high school, the white kids was bused in.
-
MILES
- Really?
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah. [mutual laughter] The big old yellow buses come up every morning
and everything, and we used to tease. To this day we still tease one
another, "Hey, you guys were bused." Yeah, we tease one another to this
day about that thing. How does it feel to be bused in?
-
MILES
- Did you feel uncomfortable at all?
-
HENDERSON
- No.
-
MILES
- Did you feel uncomfortable at all when you started?
-
HENDERSON
- Never. Never. Never. No, because, like I said, my mother, in South we
would play with white, yeah. The only thing that hurt me was when black
playing baseball and they call you nigger. And football, man, they had
it bad. They'd call you a nigger and everything, you know.
-
MILES
- On your team or the other team?
-
HENDERSON
- Oh, no, on the other team. Oh, no, you better not— Oh, no, nobody on our
team called you nigger. But the other team would call you a nigger, them
white boys get on like Frank Gifford. You ever hear of Frank
Gifford?
-
MILES
- Yeah.
-
HENDERSON
- Frank Gifford had it bad calling you a nigger.
-
MILES
- Really?
-
HENDERSON
- Oh, Lord have mercy. Oh, Lord. And Granville Walker, he's out of
Bakersfield, he came from out of Bakersfield, and we played them up
there. Granville Walker whupped him something terrible. Oh, yeah, Frank
Gifford.
-
MILES
- Was he on an all-white team?
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah, up there. And in college, we played him in junior college, and he
had calmed down a little bit then. You know, it wasn't all that "nigger"
this and "nigger" that, you know, and he was a little bit better.
-
MILES
- He got tired of being whupped. [mutual laughter]
-
HENDERSON
- He was a little bit better in college and everything.But like we'd go down to Arizona and play, we had to stay with a
preacher; we couldn't stay with our team members. We had to stay with
the preacher. And even here in California, some places like Riverside
and all up along there, we couldn't stay at the hotel; they made up
sleep in the gym.
-
MILES
- Oh yeah, you were telling me about that. This is when you were in high
school, right, and you were traveling?
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah, high school.
-
MILES
- We're getting at the end of the tape now.
-
HENDERSON
- Same way with Bakersfield, when we'd go up there in Bakersfield,
yeah.
-
MILES
- Okay. We're going to pick up on this next time, because we have to end
the tape.[End of March 20, 2004 interview]
1.3. TAPE NUMBER: II, SIDE ONE
March 21, 2004
-
MILES
- This is La'Tonya Rease Miles, and I'm interviewing Mr. Neale Henderson
on Sunday, March 21st.All right. How you doing?
-
HENDERSON
- I'm fine. I'm blessed. I'm still breathing.
-
MILES
- Still breathing. All right. Okay. I was listening to the tape yesterday,
and just a couple of things I want to go back to.
-
HENDERSON
- Okey-doke.
-
MILES
- The first one was, I'm not sure that we ever got your mother's name.
What's your mother's full name?
-
HENDERSON
- Her full name was Rosalie, and everybody called her "Baby." Her nickname
was Baby.
-
MILES
- And her last name was White before she got married.
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah, before she got married, her name was White, Rosalie White. And her
mother named her Baby because she was the last of twenty-some children
she had.
-
MILES
- She was number twenty-two?
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah.
-
MILES
- Wow. Okay. And her sister that you were talking about, Aunt Marg, is
that her sister?
-
HENDERSON
- That was her play sister. Margaret was her play sister.
-
MILES
- Oh, Margaret, that's her full name.
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah. And her sister was Aunt Priscilla, Priscilla White. She was the
oldest.
-
MILES
- The oldest out of the twenty-two?
-
HENDERSON
- No. The uncle, the one I was telling you about was in the First World
War, he was the oldest, Alan White.
-
MILES
- And Priscilla was the oldest girl.
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah.
-
MILES
- Okay, I got you.
-
HENDERSON
- My grandmother lived to be 109 years old.
-
MILES
- Where did she die?
-
HENDERSON
- She died in San Diego.
-
MILES
- Now, I want to go back. I know we made it to San Diego in the last tape.
I want to go back to Arkansas just for a minute, because you mentioned
that the Yankees were your favorite team and Babe Ruth was your favorite
player.
-
HENDERSON
- Uh-huh.
-
MILES
- Did you have a favorite Negro League team?
-
HENDERSON
- Oh yeah.
-
MILES
- Who was that?
-
HENDERSON
- Kansas City Monarchs.
-
MILES
- Okay. No question?
-
HENDERSON
- No questions there.
-
MILES
- And tell me, why were they your favorite team?
-
HENDERSON
- Because that's the team that I batboy for mostly when the black leagues
came to Fort Smith, and I got to be friends with mostly every player
that was on the team. You know, like when the Indianapolis Clown came
and they had a guy, he's 100 right now, [Ted] "Double Duty" Radcliffe,
he's 103.
-
MILES
- He's still living?
-
HENDERSON
- He's still living. We was just together a couple months ago, and he's a
hell of a guy and he loves young women. A hundred-and-some years old and
any young woman won't pass him, man. He's going to stop them.
[laughs]
-
MILES
- Did you have a favorite player in the league?
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah, my favorite player was Cool Papa Bell.
-
MILES
- On the Monarchs.
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah, on the Monarchs. And then next to him, it was [John] "Buck"
O'Neil.
-
MILES
- Now, why was Cool Papa your favorite player?
-
HENDERSON
- Because he was the one that taught me a lot when I was seven years old,
six and seven years old. He was the one that helped me a lot in fielding
the ball and how to hold a bat and how to swing a bat and how to steal
bases.
-
MILES
- That was the main thing. That's what he's known for, too.
-
HENDERSON
- Yes.
-
MILES
- Now at this time, or at least when you were a youth, did you think of
the Negro League in terms of play, style of play, as different from the
white teams, the way they played?
-
HENDERSON
- Oh, yes, yes, very much so. I would notice that the pitchers, they would
pitch differently from the white teams.
-
MILES
- How's that?
-
HENDERSON
- Like he really followed the catcher. The catcher was almost the leader
of the team, because he could see the whole outfield, and every batter
that come up, he would give the pitcher a certain pitch to throw to this
batter and everything. And I noticed like on a white team, the pitcher
just about controls, to tell the catcher what he was going to throw.And I noticed that a lot of the white teams, they used to come out and
watch the black teams play, and they would go back and they would
imitate, you know, the blacks and what they do. I know we, the blacks,
was the first ones to come out with their pants from their knees to
their ankle, and later on, you could see the white team, they changed
and started wearing their pants the way the blacks was wearing their
parts.I had a friend named Gene Richardson, left-hander, and he was All-State
and everything in high school with us and everything, and when he went
to the Monarchs in '47 and he had a move to first base. And Whitey Ford
claimed his move that Gene Richardson had and said that he come out with
it. But, like I said, they would come out and watch the black team play,
and they would go back and emulate everything that they saw us do and
they would do it.
-
MILES
- How did you feel about that, the white teams copying you?
-
HENDERSON
- Oh, it didn't bother me at all. We learned from each other.
-
MILES
- Now, still, you as a boy now, did you have a favorite position that you
liked to play?
-
HENDERSON
- I played mostly shortstop. I liked the infield, but I learned how to
play all position. I could catch, I could pitch, play first base, second
base, shortstop, third base, outfield, you know, because when we was
playing as kids, you know, you couldn't pitch all the time. Like my
brother, he owned the catcher's mitt and I had a glove. My brother, he
wanted to catch, but you know, you got to trade around, you know, let
other kids pitch to get along good if you want to have a good team.
-
MILES
- But you liked to play shortstop?
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah, I loved it. I loved it. I loved it.
-
MILES
- Why shortstop, though?
-
HENDERSON
- Because you could roam. You could cover third base, you cover second
base, and go back out deep in the middle of the field and get balls and
everything. I loved it because you had a long throw to first base, and I
had a good strong arm. I used to tease the guy. He hit a ball, and I
know the ones that run slow. I'd tease them and tell them, "Run! Run!"
And before they get halfway, I'd throw the ball and throw them out. I
used to have a lot of fun.We used to talk to one another, and the kids today, you know, they don't
talk to one another like we did. Is it okay to talk on this here?
-
MILES
- Uh-huh.
-
HENDERSON
- The crowd used to come out just to watch us practice, you know, do a
little thing before the game and everything, batting practice, and we'd
take infield practice. And the crowd would really come out to see us act
a fool out there in emulating, you know, like a guy would run around the
bases, the guy would take the ball, hit the guy out to the field, and
the guy would throw him out going to third or trying to steal going into
home. And the crowd used to just go crazy over that.Yeah, and then they would have races. You know, like a guy would run,
like from the Clowns or whatever. Back then, a woman played in the Negro
League. There were four womens that played.
-
MILES
- I didn't know there was four. I know about Toni Stone.
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah, there was four of them. And one of them is still living.
-
MILES
- Really?
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah. Mamie. Mamie. She's still living. We were just together about two
months ago. They called her "Peanut." Her name is Mamie Johnson.
-
MILES
- Did they all play for the Clowns or they played for different ones?
-
HENDERSON
- Oh, different teams. Oh yeah.
-
MILES
- I didn't know that. Okay.Now, once you came to San Diego, though, how did you maintain your
connection to the Negro League once you moved out here?
-
HENDERSON
- Because, like I was saying, my buddy Gene Richardson, which we played
together in high school, he joined the Kansas City Monarchs in 1946, and
we stayed in touch with one another. And they also came to California
and played against the Padres, and my buddy Gene Richardson pitched
against the Padres, and he struck out this one guy four times, which was
the Padres' best hitter. And he struck him out four times, and the white
guy called him—excuse the expression—"a dirty blackassed nigger." And
Gene was just as white as he was, you know. But, no, he was black, but
he called him a dirty name. And Gene put that little walk on and swished
on off the field and everything. He didn't get mad or nothing like that
and everything.So we really had a good time. That time after the game, and everything, I
talked with most— Gene introduced me to most of the guys, and three
years later, like I was saying, I signed with them and everything, which
he kind of helped me to get on with the Monarchs besides my coach, Mike
Morrow, from the high school.
-
MILES
- So you were able to watch them when they came out here to play?
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah.
-
MILES
- Was that mostly during the winter leagues when the—
-
HENDERSON
- No, no, they were doing the regular baseball season. They hooked up a
game with the Monarchs, and they came west and put on an exhibition game
with the Monarchs. They had Luke Easter and all them playing at that
time with Padres and everything, you know. That's the time Luke used to
hit one out of the ballpark and it landed in a boxcar and they found it
up in Frisco. And they call it the longest ball ever hit, you know.
-
MILES
- How did you feel about the Padres?
-
HENDERSON
- The Padres, at that time, you know, we had a guy on the team that
called— Was Johnny Ritchey, and which was the first black to sign with
them. And the Padres I liked. I still like the Padres and everything,
but as far as playing with them and everything, to me, back in the days
they really wasn't ready for the blacks because they really didn't treat
all the black guys that played with them right. When they tried to get
them to go professional, I mean they were professional, but when they
liked to move up to other teams like Chicago, they would sell them, and
they didn't pay the black guy what they was supposed to pay them, you
know. Like I know a friend of mine, they still owe him some money, but I
don't know what's going to be the outcome of it.
-
MILES
- To this day, they owe him money?
-
HENDERSON
- To this day, uh-huh.
-
MILES
- What, forty-something years later, more than that years later?
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah. Yeah.
-
MILES
- Once you were in San Diego, you were about ten, eleven years old, how
often did you go back to Arkansas?
-
HENDERSON
- Well, my dad was still there. We went back mostly every summer.
-
MILES
- Every summer for the whole summer?
-
HENDERSON
- No, not for the whole summer, because I was involved in baseball with
Post 6, American Legion baseball, and I was involved in American Legion
baseball with coach Mike Morrow from my high school. And we would play
the teams up here in L.A., and we played teams up in Oakland, played
teams all up into Frisco. We played a team in Sacramento, and this white
guy came out who was watching the game, and we was beating Sacramento
pretty good, and he started calling us names. You know those favorite
words, "nigger" and everything. And we couldn't really play for him
interrupting, calling us names and everything. So my coach went and
found someone to get security, so they had security to get a policeman
to come in, and they escorted him out, and they made him apologize.
-
MILES
- Really? And he did it?
-
HENDERSON
- Oh, yeah, they made him. Yeah, he apologized, because we was, what,
fifteen, sixteen years old at that time, you know. And he apologized and
everything, and we went on and played good baseball after that and
everything.
-
MILES
- How old were you when you first started playing in the American
Legion?
-
HENDERSON
- In American Legion baseball, I was fourteen.
-
MILES
- What kind of league did you play in before that?
-
HENDERSON
- I played with what's called the Gibson Tigers, and I started playing
with them when I was eleven years old, all the way up until I signed
with the Kansas City Monarchs till I was nineteen. Mr. Gibson, John— He
was related to Josh Gibson.
-
MILES
- That's what I was going to ask you.
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah. He was related. They was first cousins. Like in the picture I
showed you, you could look at him and look at Josh Gibson and you say,
"Yeah, they cousins," and everything.The Padres would refuse to play us because what would happen if they beat
us. Well, you know what they called us and everything. It wouldn't prove
nothing for them or to us, you know, and so they would never play us.
But we played teams like the Lions during the Winter League, and they
had would have most of the Padres' players playing for them. One year,
Ted Williams played with us. You hear of Ted Williams?
-
MILES
- Yeah.
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah. Ted Williams worked with Consolidated Aircraft [Corporation]. We
had guys like John Ritchey and had Walter McCoy, had Gene Richardson,
and myself. We won the winter league that year, which was, what— I think
it was '52, '51, '52, somewhere around in there.
-
MILES
- You were playing with them for a long time, then.
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah. I worked with General Dynamics [Corporation], started with them in
'52, I think it was.
-
MILES
- How did you get involved with the Tigers?
-
HENDERSON
- The Gibson Tigers?
-
MILES
- Uh-huh.
-
HENDERSON
- Oh, I got involved with the Gibson Tigers from when I was in Memorial,
going to Memorial Junior High School.
-
MILES
- So this is after you left Stockton.
-
HENDERSON
- Yes, after I left Stockton and everything, well, I got involved with
them because, like I said, I was a pretty good athlete, and they would
come to my mother's house, because my mother, we all was from Arkansas
and that's where Gibson was from, from Arkansas. And he would come and
ask my mother, said, "Miss Henderson, is it okay if Neale go play
baseball with us this Sunday?" And like I say, I was eleven.And she said, "Yeah, if you really take care of him and watch out for
him," and everything. And I was eleven years old playing with guys,
fifteen, sixteen, eighteen years old, twenty years old, or older,
because like Mr. Earl Wilson, as old as he was, he was in his thirties
probably back then. And I had Mr. Powell, Charlie Powell's dad, played
with us, and there was a lot of older guys. Some of them was thirty and
forty years old.
-
MILES
- On the same team as you?
-
HENDERSON
- Yes, yes.
-
MILES
- Were you the youngest?
-
HENDERSON
- I was the youngest. I was, like I said, eleven years old, and I could
hang at shortstop, and I would go and play shortstop with them and
everything.
-
MILES
- How did they treat you?
-
HENDERSON
- Good. You know, they drank and everything, and I'd drink soda. They'd
give me sodas and everything, sandwich, and they treated me just like I
was one of them except for being around alcohol. They never tried to
give me no kind of alcohol or nothing, no.
-
MILES
- When did you play? What time of the year were you playing?
-
HENDERSON
- In the winter, during the winter months.
-
MILES
- How did it, or did it, conflict with school at all?
-
HENDERSON
- Oh no. No, no. It never conflicted with school because played on
weekends.
-
MILES
- Oh, I see.
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah, played on the weekends.
-
MILES
- How often did you go— Well, you said that you went back home during the
summer, back to Arkansas during the summer.
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah. Like after my mother would said, "Well, you're not going to play
baseball this time. You're going to see your father." He would want us
to come South. But after we would get down South, like I was saying,
we'd get up a little team, William B., B Boy and all the Whitfields
would get together, and we'd go over in Tulsa and Muskogee and Farrow
[?] and them places over in Oklahoma and playing down in some parts of
Arkansas like Arkadelphia and Little Rock and different places around
there and play baseball on weekends.
-
MILES
- But once you went back, how did you feel about being in Arkansas? Did it
seem different to you when you went back, after having been in San
Diego?
-
HENDERSON
- Oh yes. Oh yes.
-
MILES
- What did you think of it then?
-
HENDERSON
- I still loved Arkansas, and, like I said, the people down there in
Arkansas, the whites in Arkansas, it seemed like they was better to you.
Well, you knew your place and everything. But in California, it was just
like I was telling you before, you know, I was going to school. When I
got to San Diego High School and I was a good athlete, well, naturally,
all the girls, most everybody, going to start trying to be your date or
whatever, you know. And this one love, she was a Portuguese girl, she
used to come out to watch me practice every day. She would come sit
there from two-thirty till five o'clock.
-
MILES
- Watching you.
-
HENDERSON
- Watching me and everything. So I don't know how her mother got my phone
number, but she called me one day and told me, said, "Neale, if my
daughter's going to stay there and watch you play practice, the least
you could do is make sure that she got home safe and everything. But
watch out for her father, because he don't like blacks." It wasn't
"black" then, but, you know, "colored."So I says, "Okay." So all of my team members, the whites and the rest of
them guys, used to tease me and say, "Man, how can you get a
good-looking girl like that?" and everything.I'd say, "Hey, I don't know." I would walk her from the school to the
bus, and the white people would be looking and running into one another
and wrecking their cars and everything. So word got out that we was
dating one another, and the principal called her in and then they called
me in and told me that was a no-no, you know. So we was going to have to
change schools if it continue and everything. So, well, I got away from
that because I loved baseball and football and basketball and
everything, so I left that. We got out of that, but we still stayed
friends.
-
MILES
- What was her name?
-
HENDERSON
- Josephine Macowich. She was one of the head cheerleaders. She did the
flags and everything. And the girl that I married, my first wife, Mary
Ella Williams, she was also. She was a pompom girl and everything, big
old bowlegged. She was pretty.
-
MILES
- She was the one that you saw when you first— Was that the one you were
telling me about yesterday?
-
HENDERSON
- No, no, that was— Her name was Anita Walker. She was part Indian, Negro,
and had a sister named Betty.
-
MILES
- That's right. But you married Mary Ella.
-
HENDERSON
- I married Mary Ella. Her daddy was one of the barbers there in San
Diego. But Mary Ella, that girl could sing. Ooh, she had a voice. Yeah,
she sang in the choir at San Diego High.
-
MILES
- When you first arrived in San Diego, back in Stockton Elementary, what
did your classmates think of you? Or do you know what they thought about
you when you got there?
-
HENDERSON
- Well, at first it was hard making friends. Like I said, my best friend
at that time was Tommy Martinez, Mexican guy. I stayed at his house, he
stayed at mine, and we befriended one another all the way through.
Pretty soon, you know, after they saw the type of athlete I was and
everything, everybody wanted to be my friend because I could kick the
ball the farthest and I could throw the furthest, and because I had some
good teachers down in Arkansas, which, through the Negro League, and I
learned a lot and I was able to pass that on to some of the kids in my
school from the experience that I gained while I was—
-
MILES
- What did you teach them?
-
HENDERSON
- How to field the ball better and how to charge the ball. You know,
that's the main thing. Don't let the ball play you, but you play the
ball, you know. And that's what Cool Papa Bell and Sherwood Brewer
taught me.
-
MILES
- So why was it hard to make friends at first? Because you were new?
-
HENDERSON
- Because I was new, and the girls, they always wanted to try to check you
out, you know. [laughs]
-
MILES
- What did they think about you?
-
HENDERSON
- And I was a good dancer. I could dance, because I had pretty good feet
movement.
-
MILES
- What kind of dancing were you doing then?
-
HENDERSON
- Turkey trot, Suzy-Q, Jitterbug.
-
MILES
- Well, let me ask you this. You said your father was still back in
Arkansas. Was he still pastor of the church then?
-
HENDERSON
- No, he had moved over into Spiro, Oklahoma. He had a church over in
Oklahoma.
-
MILES
- Oh, he moved.
-
HENDERSON
- He also moved a church down in Pine Bluff, Arkansas.
-
MILES
- So he didn't stay in Fort Smith?
-
HENDERSON
- He was still living in Fort Smith.
-
MILES
- Oh, he would just travel.
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah, he would travel and drive down there.
-
MILES
- Okay. Did he remarry?
-
HENDERSON
- Yes.
-
MILES
- Did he have other children?
-
HENDERSON
- Well, stepchildren.
-
MILES
- Oh, none of his own?
-
HENDERSON
- No. None of his own.
-
MILES
- Now, back in San Diego, what was your life like without your father? I
remember you said you couldn't listen to certain kind of music and that
type of stuff. Without your father there, did it change for you? Could
you listen to music now?
-
HENDERSON
- Oh, yeah. Oh yeah.
-
MILES
- Because I know Mom liked to party.
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah, my mother— Oh, yeah. We had the latest music and everything. And
my life without a father, you know, it was rough, but my mother was
trying to be a mother and a father to us, which she did a very good job.
We never went to jail during our childhood, never went to a detention
home or anything, and we knew right from wrong. We never sassed nobody.
Because of the upbringing that we had down in Arkansas, you better speak
and say "Good morning" to everybody you saw. No matter if you white,
black, green, or whatever, you had to speak to one another. And I wish
we could come back to that today, you know. We have lost that in the
home, you know, get in the morning, say "Good morning" to one another.That's what we need to be doing today, and maybe the young generation
that's coming up would learn responsibility and respect to one
another.
-
MILES
- So what kind of music were you listening to then?
-
HENDERSON
- Out here?
-
MILES
- Yeah.
-
HENDERSON
- Oh, the blues. I'm a blues man. I love the blues and rock and roll.
-
MILES
- Do you have a favorite rock and roller? Who were you listening to?
-
HENDERSON
- Back then, I listened to all of them. Wasn't nobody special. I liked Sam
Cooke and liked— What that one that danced?
-
MILES
- [Ernest] "Chubby" Checkers?
-
HENDERSON
- James Brown. Well, we used to go to Chubby Checkers' and dance, used to
come hear B.B. King, Louis Jordan. And back then, back in the forties,
wasn't it Joe Louis came there to the USO [United Service Organization].
That's what was strange to me, that here it is, you had the armed
forces, but the blacks had their own USO. We couldn't go to the white
USO and everything. We had a black USO out off of Imperial there. And my
sister, back in '43, she was Miss USO in San Diego.
-
MILES
- Really?
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah. My sister was built. She was a good-looking girl, you know. And
she taking picture with Joe Louis and everything there at the USO.
-
MILES
- You moved to San Diego in '40. A year later the war broke out.
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah.
-
MILES
- What was your memory of that war? Do you remember Pearl Harbor and
hearing about it?
-
HENDERSON
- Oh, yeah, yeah.
-
MILES
- What do you remember?
-
HENDERSON
- Well, I remember— I think we was in church when it happened and
everything, and, well, everybody, we all left church and everything.
After the preacher prayed for everybody and everything, then we left
church and everybody came home. And it was just a turmoil, you know, and
everybody came together. It seemed like the whole world came together
once that broke out. And like I said, we lost all our Japanese friends
when they came and picked them up and put them in concentration
camp.
-
MILES
- Can you say some more about that? What do you remember about that?
-
HENDERSON
- Well, I can remember when they brought all these army trucks and started
gathering up all the Japanese there off of Imperial and down in the
Valley, which was off of Paradise Valley Road and everything there in La
Mesa. They had gardens and everything out in the farmlands. And we had a
lot of friends that lived out in the farmlands, because we used to go
out there and get vegetables and different things. And they picked all
those guys up, and we hated to see them go. But the government had to do
what they had to do.
-
MILES
- What happened to their houses, do you know, while they were gone?
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah, they lost them. Yeah, they lost all their property and everything.
And down in the Valley where most of the Japanese was— The Daltons.Well, I went to school with the grandchildrens of the Dalton Gang. They
went to Memorial Junior High School with me. And they was bad. They gave
me my first pair of Levis. Like I said, my mother, she worked but she
didn't make that much money and everything, and I always wanted me a
pair of Levis. And one of the Dalton boys gave me my first pair of
Levis. They were used. [mutual laughter]
-
MILES
- Do you remember when your friends came back after the internment camp?
Do you remember them coming back?
-
HENDERSON
- Oh, yes, yes. After the war was over, they came back and got back on the
football team. By that time, we was all in senior high school, and they
all came back and just like they never left.
-
MILES
- Did they tell you about what it was like?
-
HENDERSON
- Oh yeah, yeah.
-
MILES
- What did they say?
-
HENDERSON
- A lot of them joined the armed forces, you know, and they didn't send
them to Japan, but a lot of them was interpreters and everything for
them. But a lot of them went to Germany and everything.
-
MILES
- Do you know of any other people, not Japanese, who went and enlisted,
who fought in the war?
-
HENDERSON
- Yes, yes. You've seen the movie Cabin in the
Sky?
-
MILES
- Yeah.
-
HENDERSON
- Had a buddy named Sonny Peaton and he did that, the Jitterbug and, what
was the name of them, with the peg-legged pants on, he was the one that
was doing that—
-
MILES
- He was in the movie?
-
HENDERSON
- Oh yeah. In the movie he was one of them curly-haired, light-skinned,
women's man back then, and that boy could dance, though.
-
MILES
- Was he in the army?
-
HENDERSON
- Yes.
-
MILES
- And he was an actor, too.
-
HENDERSON
- Uh-huh.
-
MILES
- Now, you did mention church. Even though your father was a preacher back
in Arkansas, back in San Diego how much did you get involved in
church?
-
HENDERSON
- Well, my mother sung in the choir, and she went back to a Methodist
church where her mother was attending a Methodist church, and my mother
started attending the Methodist church, but we continued to go to the
Baptist church. Yeah, I belonged to the Bethel Baptist there in San
Diego, and I stayed with Bethel Baptist until I got married, and I left
Bethel Baptist and went to my wife's church.
-
MILES
- Now, your mother went to one church, and you went to another church. Who
did you go with then?
-
HENDERSON
- My brother and sister, we all stayed in the Baptist. We stayed Baptist.
My mother—
-
MILES
- The three of you went without an adult?
-
HENDERSON
- Uh-huh.
-
MILES
- All right. So you're still in church at this point.
-
HENDERSON
- Yes, yes.
-
MILES
- But at some point, and that's while you were still— I guess you're
probably in junior high at this point now when you joined the Tigers,
when you started playing for the Gibson Tigers.
-
HENDERSON
- Gibson Tigers.
-
MILES
- Okay. And that allowed you to travel a lot.
-
HENDERSON
- Yes. We went to Mexico. We traveled over into Mexico. We went down in
the Valley, played up in L.A., mostly all around here in L.A. and
everything. Being as young as I was, being eleven, twelve, and thirteen,
I learned a lot from each one of the guys that I played with.
-
MILES
- Now, tell me about your experience in Mexico then. You're eleven years
old?
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah.
-
MILES
- What was it like? What was your impression of it?
-
HENDERSON
- Man, the way the peoples live down there, you'd go in the house and
would be dirt floors. Wouldn't be no wooden floor, wouldn't be no
concrete; it was right on plain dirt, you know.
-
MILES
- What city did you go to in Mexico?
-
HENDERSON
- I went to like in Tijuana, went to Mexicali, went to Calexico, went to
Ensenada, and on down further than Ensenada.
-
MILES
- Did you learn Spanish at all?
-
HENDERSON
- I can say all the bad words. [mutual laughter] I learned a little bit,
because my friend and next-door neighborhood when we lived on
Commercial, they was mostly Spanish, and they taught me—
-
MILES
- The bad words?
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah.
-
MILES
- What was your impression of other cities throughout the state? What was
it like compared to San Diego, let's say, or Sacramento or Los Angeles
or all these different places?
-
HENDERSON
- Well, I thought that like when we came up here with the Boys Club, I
found L.A. to be in certain areas was really prejudiced.
-
MILES
- Name some areas.
-
HENDERSON
- I mean, like we couldn't go in a lot of the restaurants and eat, for one
thing. We had to go down in the ghetto, mostly, and that's where we
mostly went down and got like the big restaurants and the hotels. Like
we would come up, they wouldn't let us stay in the big hotels. We had to
go down, either stay at the Boys Club or stay at like the campus, UCLA
or whatever, stay in the gym. They would put cots in there. We came up
to like for to run track at the Rose Bowl, and there would be sometimes
twenty, thirty busloads of us, and everybody couldn't stay at the
Y[MCA], when they put us like at the gyms and different schools.
-
MILES
- You couldn't stay at the Y because they didn't allow you to stay in the
Y because the Y was segregated, or there was just too many of you?
-
HENDERSON
- It would be too many of us. And like I said, you couldn't use the
showers. They wouldn't let you go to the swimming pools, nothing like
that. So they put us at the schools, because you could use the showers
and everything, take a bath.
-
MILES
- What was considered the ghetto at that time in Los Angeles?
-
HENDERSON
- Down where the burlesque shows and everything was, down in the lower
part of the town.
-
MILES
- Down like Central Avenue or—
-
HENDERSON
- No, downtown.
-
MILES
- This way? Okay.
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah. We would be downtown.
-
MILES
- Then you went to Sacramento.
-
HENDERSON
- Uh-huh.
-
MILES
- What was Sacramento like?
-
HENDERSON
- Just like any other part of California. It was prejudiced, and they
still had their own little areas that you wasn't allowed to enter. If
you was out there after dark, the police would stop and ask you what was
you doing out in this area, the same way they did there in San Diego.
Yeah, we wasn't allowed in a certain part of town at night, you know,
because they would run you out of there and give you a ticket.
-
MILES
- A ticket for what, though?
-
HENDERSON
- Being at the wrong place at the wrong time.
-
MILES
- That's what I was saying, just for being colored.
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah, for being a black; colored back then.
-
MILES
- Yeah, colored at that time, right?
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah.
-
MILES
- What was the high school like for you?
-
HENDERSON
- Over when I was at Memorial Junior High School, back then they was
allowed to give you swats. Like if you was bad, [inaudible], you'd go to
the vice principal. He had a paddle in there about like this here with
suction holes in it. And you had to drop your pants, and he'd give you
so many swats, you know.
-
MILES
- Did you get swats?
-
HENDERSON
- A whole lot of times. Yeah, he got to know me pretty good, because I
used to tease the kids, the girls. I used to take their hair and put in
the inkwell. In other words, I hate to say this, because I wouldn't want
the young kids to act like I was acting when I was young, but seemed
like that's the only way I was getting attention and everything. So I
was kind of being mischievous. Today I look back at it and say, "Oh, you
was a fool." But I made friends with a lot of the girls.
-
MILES
- Now, your junior high was also integrated, too, right?
-
HENDERSON
- Yes.
-
MILES
- Were you an athlete in junior high?
-
HENDERSON
- Oh yeah.
-
MILES
- What were you playing there?
-
HENDERSON
- I played everything. I never was a good swimmer. Yeah, my dad—
-
MILES
- Did you try it?
-
HENDERSON
- I tried to swim, but my dad made us a fear of water back in Arkansas. He
didn't allow us to go nowhere near no water.
-
MILES
- Why is that?
-
HENDERSON
- I really don't know, but he was scared we would drown. Then you had all
them water moccasins and different things around there. I remember the
time that one Easter I saw my first snake, and a lot of peoples don't
want to believe about a jointed snake.
-
MILES
- What is that?
-
HENDERSON
- A jointed snake is when you hit him, he'd break all apart and the parts
would go different directions.
-
MILES
- Oh, that's nasty. [laughs]
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah. Then you'd see him all of a sudden, he'd start crawling with them,
he'd go back together, and he'd take off.
-
MILES
- You saw one of those?
-
HENDERSON
- Oh yeah. Yeah, one Easter. We had an Easter egg hunt there at church,
and that's when I saw my first jointed snake.
-
MILES
- Jointed snake. I don't think I've ever heard of that before.
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah, well, they're real.
-
MILES
- Okay. What sports did you play? This is junior high, I guess.
-
HENDERSON
- Junior high I played basketball, football, softball, because you wasn't
allowed to play hardball. I played handball and volleyball, and I played
all— And then we had track meets there at the school. I did the hop,
skip, and jump, and ran the hundred, seventy-five, the fifty, and broad
jump, hop, skip and jump, pretty good all—
-
MILES
- Did you have a favorite? Because that's a lot of teams there. Was there
one sport that you really liked best above all?
-
HENDERSON
- Baseball.
-
MILES
- Still baseball?
-
HENDERSON
- Still baseball. Yeah, I wanted to be a professional baseball player. I
wanted to go up to play with the Yankees. That was the team I
wanted.
-
MILES
- That was your goal?
-
HENDERSON
- That was one my goal. "One of these days I'm going to play with the
Yankees."
-
MILES
- Did you ever consider any other occupation besides playing baseball?
-
HENDERSON
- No. Playing baseball, that was it. That was my goal, was to be a
professional baseball player.
-
MILES
- Now, as an athlete, were you treated differently? Did you have any
special privileges because you were an athlete?
-
HENDERSON
- No.
-
MILES
- They treated you the same?
-
HENDERSON
- Uh-huh.
-
MILES
- What carried over into high school then, in terms of you playing
sports?
-
HENDERSON
- Well, like I said, my high school coach saw me playing with the Gibson
Tigers, and he came to me and asked me what school was I going to. And I
said, "My goal is to go to San Diego High School," because that's where
Gene Richardson, Charles Coffey, and a lot of the older guys that I
played with the Gibson Tigers, Willie Steele. Willie Steele went to
[Herbert] Hoover [High School]. He was the only black out there at that
time. Then his cousin came up; Harold Steele was the next black to go
there that I know of back then, two blacks going out to Hoover High
School.
-
MILES
- Wait. The whole school, you mean, not just—
-
HENDERSON
- The whole school out there at Hoover. They didn't have hardly no blacks
out there at Hoover.
-
MILES
- Why was that? Was it because of the part of town it was in?
-
HENDERSON
- Uh-huh.
-
MILES
- About how many blacks were at San Diego?
-
HENDERSON
- [laughs] They were swamped. [mutual laughter] Yeah, that's why we were
so powered. We had power.
-
MILES
- What about whites, then? What was the racial breakdown? About how many
whites, how many Mexicans? Do you remember?
-
HENDERSON
- I would say it was 25/25/25.
-
MILES
- Oh, it was equal?
-
HENDERSON
- Oh, yeah, it was just about equal.
-
MILES
- Okay. It was really mixed then.
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah. But there was less Japanese, Filipino, you know, like that, but it
was more black, white.
-
MILES
- Mexican.
-
HENDERSON
- And Mexicans than anything.
-
MILES
- Now, you said that you hoped to go to San Diego. Did you have a choice
in where you could go for high school?
-
HENDERSON
- No.
-
MILES
- It was dependent on where you lived?
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah. After the war was over and my mother remarried to Thomas
Scroggin—
-
MILES
- Oh, she did remarry?
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah. She remarried to Thomas Scroggin, which was my daddy's handyman
down in Arkansas.
-
MILES
- So he moved out to California, obviously.
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah. My mother sent for him and he came down to California and they
ended up getting married. And with him being an ex-serviceman, ended up
getting a house over in Coronado, over in the project. And we all moved
over to Coronado, and now they had a school over there, Coronado High
School, and we thought we was going to have to transfer to Coronado High
School, but they didn't allow no blacks to go to that school. My brother
tried to go to the school, and they refused him to go there, so we was
all going to San Diego High.So after my first year of playing sports and everything, I was real good
playing, good athlete, and they found I lived in Coronado, they were
going to try to make me go to Coronado High School now. So my mother
said, "Oh, no, Neale's going to continue to go to San Diego High
School," and everything. My brother's going to continue to go to high
school, "and my daughter's going to continue to go to high school."Out of the project, which was almost about 50 percent black, all those
used to catch that ferry and come over to school in San Diego. But two
years later, they finally got some blacks, I remember, and that's the
first time they ever won a championship.
-
MILES
- When they got the blacks.
-
HENDERSON
- Got the two black young men.
-
MILES
- Just two?
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah, it was two.
-
MILES
- Two, and they won the championship?
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah. We couldn't even go to the movies over in Coronado. And we
boycotted. We boycotted, and finally they started letting blacks go to
the movies.
-
MILES
- What sport did they win the championship in?
-
HENDERSON
- Basketball.
-
MILES
- What was the city like?
-
HENDERSON
- Coronado?
-
MILES
- Yeah.
-
HENDERSON
- Well, you know, it had the air force or navy. It was navy. But like I
said, even the sailors and none of them could go to the theaters,
couldn't stay at the hotels over there, nothing.
-
MILES
- What was San Diego High like?
-
HENDERSON
- Oh, San Diego High was— It was nice. Only one time we had an incident.
The principal called Teresa May Dixon a nigger.
-
MILES
- The principal did?
-
HENDERSON
- The principal did, and she came, told. We found out about it and
everything, so we boycotted the school. We refused to play football,
baseball, any kind of sport, until he apologized to her and
everything.
-
MILES
- When you say "we," who do you mean?
-
HENDERSON
- The whole team. The whole school. The whole school, we boycotted, and we
said the only way that we was going to continue to play sports and play
anything until he apologized to the whole school. So they called a
meeting, which all the whole school came to the auditorium, and he
apologized to Teresa May Dixon up on the stage and everything.
-
MILES
- Really?
-
HENDERSON
- Oh yeah. And that Friday, they lost the football game because we wasn't
there and everything. And they lost.
-
MILES
- Did no one show up for the game?
-
HENDERSON
- No. No blacks.
-
MILES
- No blacks.
-
HENDERSON
- No blacks.
-
MILES
- Did other players play?
-
HENDERSON
- Oh yeah.
-
MILES
- How did you manage to organize a boycott? Was there some person who all—
Was there one leader, or people just started talking?
-
HENDERSON
- There was one leader. We had a leader, which was Teresa May Dixon. Yeah.
Teresa, she was dipping snuff back in them days.
-
MILES
- As a teenager?
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah, as a teenager, she dipped that snuff.
-
MILES
- What happened? What did she do?
-
HENDERSON
- She got the whole school; we signed a petition. She got up a petition
and everything and signed it, and, like we said, we started boycotting
and got the word out, what the principal did. We came together and
everybody was for us 100 percent.
-
MILES
- Was she an athlete, Teresa?
-
HENDERSON
- Oh, no, no, no, no. Teresa was just an outspoken person, you know.
-
MILES
- Were there female athletes in the school? Was there girls' teams?
-
HENDERSON
- Volleyball and golf, things like that.
-
MILES
- Not softball?
-
HENDERSON
- No.
-
MILES
- And what about a basketball team?
-
HENDERSON
- Basketball. I don't remember no girls playing basketball.
-
MILES
- All right. But there were cheerleaders and stuff?
-
HENDERSON
- Oh yeah.
-
MILES
- And was it integrated?
-
HENDERSON
- Integrated. My cousin was one of the first black—her picture's still in
the gym down there at San Diego High—to twirl a baton. She was the first
black. She passed away about two weeks ago, and they still recognize her
there at San Diego High.
-
MILES
- Wow. Tell me about you playing football.
-
HENDERSON
- Oh, that was— My baseball coach didn't want me to play football.
-
MILES
- Why?
-
HENDERSON
- Because he didn't want me to get hurt, because he wanted us to win the
championship that year. And they wouldn't let me play varsity. They put
me down on JV [junior varsity], but I was good enough to play. And I
found out about that and everything, so the following year, they asked
me to play quarterback, which I played quarterback, but I couldn't run
the ball. They didn't want me to run the ball because—
-
MILES
- They didn't want you to get hit?
-
HENDERSON
- They didn't want me to get hit. So we planned just about the end of the
season, I broke and ran one and scored a touchdown, and my coach put
that play in the game. [laughs]
-
MILES
- Did they let you run after that?
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah.
-
MILES
- Hold on. You know, we're at the end of the tape already.
-
HENDERSON
- Already?
-
MILES
- Yeah.
1.4. TAPE NUMBER: II, SIDE TWO
March 21, 2004
-
MILES
- You said yesterday that there weren't that many black quarterbacks.
-
HENDERSON
- No. I was one of the first blacks on the Pacific Coast in an all-white
schools to play quarterback. I started the ball rolling for the black
quarterback in the black high schools that was all-white and
predominated black. I started the ball rolling for quarterbacks in the
high schools.
-
MILES
- Now at this time, what were the perception of black quarterbacks? Was
there a stereotype about them, about their ability to be a
quarterback?
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah, they said that we couldn't think and that we wasn't able to
communicate with the team members and everything. But I proved them
wrong and everything.
-
MILES
- Why is that they let you become a quarterback?
-
HENDERSON
- Well, we were playing up on the upper field one day and just playing
flag football, and a coach happened to pass by me, saw me hook a pass up
with a guy named Douglas Hunt, which could run about a 9-800 or
whatever, you know. I threw a pass pretty deep, and he ran and caught up
with it and went in for a touchdown. So the coach said, "Well, I think
we're going to make Neale our quarterback," and everything. So that's
how I got to be the quarterback.
-
MILES
- How did people treat you as a quarterback? What were the fans saying
about you?
-
HENDERSON
- Oh, man. Oh, they loved me.
-
MILES
- Were you the hero?
-
HENDERSON
- After the game and everything, all the kids, young kids would come over
and ask me to sign autographs and everything. The first black judge at
San Diego, which was [the Honorable] Earl [B.] Gilliam, he only had one
eye and everything. I remember one night, they hit Earl pretty hard and
his eye popped out. Each team, I remember everybody got down on the
ground, feeling for his eye.
-
MILES
- His eye popped out?
-
HENDERSON
- Well, he had one eye, a glass eye, and the eye popped out. See, we
didn't have face masks and everything back then, and his eye popped out.
And we all got down on the ground, and they found the eye. And Earl took
the dip and rinsed it off and popped it back in, came back, "Neale,
Neale, call that same play." So we got back in the huddle and called the
same play. To this day, before Earl died, he never told us what he did
to this guy, but the guy was bloody, ooh, Lord. Looked like he'd been in
a hatchet fight, and there wasn't no penalty called on it. But this guy
was laying out, and nobody ever knew what Earl did to this young
man.
-
MILES
- Who were the teams that you played?
-
HENDERSON
- We played John Muir [High School], played Compton [High School],
played—
-
MILES
- Compton in Los Angeles?
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah. They didn't have no blacks.
-
MILES
- But you were a high school team in San Diego. What were you doing
playing a team up there?
-
HENDERSON
- We played in the Coast League. It was All-Coast league.
-
MILES
- For football?
-
HENDERSON
- For football. We played, like, Compton, John Muir, East L.A., and the
Valley, and Pasadena High [School] and just everything up in this
community.
-
MILES
- What was your teammates made of, mostly black?
-
HENDERSON
- Oh no, we were integrated.
-
MILES
- Integrated through and through.
-
HENDERSON
- Power. Power. And, see, San Diego and Hoover High was about the only big
schools there. But, like, Point Loma [High School] and all those schools
around there, they wasn't as power as we were, you know, so they was in
the city teams. They didn't travel up in the area, playing unless it
was, like, for championships.
-
MILES
- How many championships did you win?
-
HENDERSON
- Oh, we won ours just about every year that I was there, baseball and
football, basketball. Our team even played the Harlem Globetrotters.
-
MILES
- No, you didn't.
-
HENDERSON
- Yes, yes, they did. I played basketball when I was playing for the Boys
Club. I played one game, scored fifty-five points.
-
MILES
- By yourself?
-
HENDERSON
- By myself. At the high school they wanted me to play basketball, so I
went out and played, but I was too involved in working after— Trying to
help my mother and everything. So I went out and worked, you know, so I
could help support our family, and I wouldn't play basketball because I
had to try to help my mom with money-wise.
-
MILES
- What position did you play for basketball?
-
HENDERSON
- I played guard.
-
MILES
- Two questions. What kind of jobs did you do, and then how did you have
time to do all this?
-
HENDERSON
- I had a paper route. I would get up early morning before school and go
do the paper route. Then I would work in Harry's Market, which was
stock. I was a stock boy and everything. And shine shoes, and I'd go on
the base and different places, had a little shoebox and everything. Sold
newspapers on weekend out on the corner. Different little things. Then I
even worked in a leather place over in Coronado, worked in a leather
shop there polishing s____ and different things for the— Washing
windows. I was washing windows, washed windows.
-
MILES
- What kind of student were you? Did you like school?
-
HENDERSON
- No. No, I wasn't like my brother. I had problems, you know, spelling,
and reading, because like I was telling you, I was tie-tongued, and the
kids would laugh at me.
-
MILES
- Even still in high school?
-
HENDERSON
- Even high school, yeah. I didn't really learn how to pronounce words and
everything until later on in life, and after all the whupping my mother
gave me to learn me how to say "truckin'". I couldn't say like "street
sweeper" and different things, you know. I just had problem pronouncing
words.
-
MILES
- Did you have a favorite subject, though, at all or one class you liked
more than the other?
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah.
-
MILES
- Which one?
-
HENDERSON
- Gym. [mutual laughter]
-
MILES
- I'm noticing a pattern here.
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah. I couldn't wait for gym. I'd go out there and get my hand on a
football, a baseball or handball or volleyball. Anything that was
athletic, I was superb.
-
MILES
- So why did you choose baseball over football in terms of a career?
-
HENDERSON
- Not to get hurt. Football was a tragic game. You could easily get hurt,
break a leg, anything, but baseball was more comfortable for me and
everything.
-
MILES
- Could you tell me, in Fort Smith, baseball was really popular. Was it
just as popular in San Diego as well?
-
HENDERSON
- No.
-
MILES
- No? Why not, do you think?
-
HENDERSON
- In the games, the high school games and everything, nobody never came
out to a baseball game, not even the school. When we played for the
championship, we would have everybody. People would show up for the
game. But as far as games, the only time we would have— I'll bet you it
wouldn't be ten people at the game.
-
MILES
- No way. Why is that, though?
-
HENDERSON
- I don't know. No high school kids. Nobody would come out for to watch us
play. On Saturdays and Sundays that we would have games, nobody. No,
we'd be out there playing amongst one another, and just that was it.
That was it.
-
MILES
- What did they watch, then? Was there another sport that people
preferred?
-
HENDERSON
- No. Now, even professional baseball, they would get pretty good crowds
down at the Padres and everything, but even those guys on the baseball
team, we hardly ever went down to watch the Padres play. But nobody
hardly ever came out to watch high school games or anything.
-
MILES
- That's surprising.
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah. But football, ooh, Lord. We would have thirty- and forty-thousand
people at our high school games.
-
MILES
- So in '47, Jackie Robinson signed. Do you remember that?
-
HENDERSON
- Oh yeah. Oh yeah.
-
MILES
- What were you thinking at that time when you heard about it? Where were
you when you heard?
-
HENDERSON
- I was in high school, and when Jackie signed and everything, also that
year we was playing ball down in Arizona, and our coach, Mike Morrow,
had went— We was, like I told you, ended up staying with a preacher down
there, and my coach went before the board down in Arizona, Tucson,
Arizona, and told the guy that was over the baseball game for that
night, said, "If you do not bring," he called them, "boys, as you call
them, downtown and let them sleep and eat at the hotel and everything
else, we refuse to play you." And they had sold out for this game
because it was the championship game and everything.So they called a town meeting and everything, so they told him, said,
"Okay, you can go get your boys and bring them down to the hotel and
everything." And we integrated. The same year that Jackie Robinson made
it to the majors, we integrated Tucson, Arizona, for blacks, just not
the team, but all blacks could go to the hotel, could eat and sleep, eat
in cafes and everything.
-
MILES
- After you guys did it, everybody could.
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah, everybody. It was open. We integrated Tucson.
-
MILES
- Do you remember what hotel that was?
-
HENDERSON
- Tucson— What was it? No, I don't remember the hotel. [tape recorder
off]
-
MILES
- Tell me about how you heard about Jackie Robinson.
-
HENDERSON
- Oh, well, back in the days when Jackie was at UCLA, I followed him in
his baseball career at UCLA and wished him the best. But when he signed
with the Kansas City Monarchs and he played in the Negro League, and I
came two years behind him. He played shortstop and also played second
base. Well, he could play any position, and he didn't know how to play
first base until he got with the Brooklyn Dodgers. They pushed him over
to first base.But I came two years behind Jackie and I came behind— Can't think of the
name right now. But I came along with Ernie Banks, Elston Howard, Roy
Campanella was still there, and Buck O'Neil and Sherwood Brewer and the
brothers, the ones that live here in L.A. You're going to do the next
interview on them.
-
MILES
- The Porters.
-
HENDERSON
- The Porters, yeah, Merle, Merle Porter. Merle was a hell of a
ballplayer. Yeah, he was. He was a hell of a ballplayer. And like I say,
all of them should have went to the majors, but they was different
personalities, I guess, is what it was all about, you know. They look at
your personality and the way you reacts and everything with different
peoples and everything. And some of us, if you spoke wrong, then they
weren't looking for that, you know.
-
MILES
- What do you think they saw in Jackie Robinson?
-
HENDERSON
- They saw that Jackie Robinson could take abuse. He wouldn't fight back
verbally or physically, you know. And a lot of us, just through the tone
of our voice to the white man, could be abusive to him, you know. He
would fear you, you know. And they really did a complex on some of us,
and they know we— There was better ballplayers than Jackie Robinson, but
they knew who to put there for to get us into baseball history.
-
MILES
- Did you see him play before he played with the Dodgers?
-
HENDERSON
- Oh yes. Oh yes.
-
MILES
- You saw him play for the Monarchs?
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah, for the Monarchs and also UCLA.
-
MILES
- What did you think of him?
-
HENDERSON
- Oh, he was a ballplayer. Yeah, he was a team player. Yeah, he was a team
player.
-
MILES
- So what was your reaction when you heard that the Dodgers had signed
him?
-
HENDERSON
- Oh, I was happy. I said, "Oh, the ball is rolling now. Yeah, the ball is
rolling now." And they picked a lot of guys from the Monarchs and
everything, and I was proud of that. And I just knew that some day I
might would make it to the majors.
-
MILES
- To play for the Yankees.
-
HENDERSON
- To play for the Yankees. But I was farmed out to a little team down in
Abilene, Kansas, and that's where I met [Eldrick] Tiger Woods' dad, Earl
Woods. He played for a team out on the army base there. It wasn't
Jackson City. It wasn't in Kansas. What's the name of where the army
base is there in Kansas? But we played them for the championship and we
won. And like I was saying, I was one of the first blacks to sign for
Abilene. I was down there. That was where [Dwight D.] Eisenhower was
from.
-
MILES
- Was this before you played for the Monarchs?
-
HENDERSON
- No, the Monarchs farmed me out down to Abilene.
-
MILES
- Were you at all concerned about what integrating the majors would mean
for the Negro League?
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah, very concerned. Very concerned.
-
MILES
- What were you thinking?
-
HENDERSON
- I was thinking that maybe this would be a token where others would
follow, you know, other teams like football, basketball, golf, you know.
That would be a start for us, which it was. It started open the doors
for us and everything, every token of sports.
-
MILES
- Were you worried, though, that the Negro Leagues would fall apart? Was
that a concern?
-
HENDERSON
- No. We thought we was going to be able to go on, you know, but it broke
us up. You know, that was the fall of the Negro League.
-
MILES
- Why did you think that that would be— You said you thought you'd be able
to go home. Why did you think that would happen?
-
HENDERSON
- In what term? I can't get it, "go home"?
-
MILES
- Well, I'm just wondering, did you think it would be good or bad for the
Negro Leagues?
-
HENDERSON
- I thought it was going to be good.
-
MILES
- Why did you think it was going to good?
-
HENDERSON
- Because that would open up more positions and more things for the
Negro—
-
MILES
- Oh, the other players. I see.
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah, right. See, even though they might not jump good into the majors
with the farm teams and everything, they could still play in the Negro
League, which would boost them forward to the farm teams for the major
leagues, which it didn't. Everything started folding up.But here's the way I looked at it. The white man was after that dollar,
you know, and, see, we— Little do they know, we, the Negro League, saved
a lot of ballparks here in the United States. A lot of the ballparks was
going broke, and we went in there and played at the ballparks and put
them back on their feet. But see, history don't tell this, but it really
happened and everything. This is what I would like to go on the record,
that we played a role in saving a lot of the ballparks here in the
United States.See, we used to have like the National League against the American
League, just like the white team, the National League against the
American League. We used to pull in eighty- to a hundred-thousand people
at our World Series games and everything. They saw this, and they out
for that dollar. So they said, "Well, hey, if they can pull in that kind
of money, now what if we get them to playing in our league and pull in?
We could make this money," you know.
-
MILES
- Why do you think they didn't do that before, though?
-
HENDERSON
- They wasn't thinking. They wasn't thinking. But they got the wrong
person in there that loved that dollar. So they say, "Well, now, hey,
let's go after them black players and after that money." See, but the
blacks fooled them. They just about stopped going to baseball games
after they integrated.
-
MILES
- Why?
-
HENDERSON
- I don't know. I don't know, but we used to pull in that because we used
to see pictures and they'd be out there in their suits and they women
would be in they mink stole and show them things. The preacher would let
church out early so that to go to the ball game, and that's really why
everybody would be dressed so nice and everything, because they would
leave straight from church and go to the ball game.
-
MILES
- Was this here in San Diego, too?
-
HENDERSON
- No. The Negro League, they came here just barnstorming, you know. But
I'm talking about back in the South and the East and everything.
-
MILES
- What were the crowds like when they saw the Negro League players in San
Diego?
-
HENDERSON
- In San Diego, we had a packed house. They filled up that stadium,
ballpark.
-
MILES
- So they filled it?
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah, we filled it. Yeah, we filled it.
-
MILES
- Was it an integrated crowd?
-
HENDERSON
- Yes.
-
MILES
- Or mostly black?
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah, integrated crowd. But here in California, you could sit anywhere
you want. But like back in the South, they would rope off a certain
area, you know, right behind, but they would charge more money. But they
would rope that off and most of the white people sit right behind the
home plate and everything, but they paid more money.
-
MILES
- Now, you mentioned that Jackie Robinson had more of a mild kind of
personality, and some people felt like he was an Uncle Tom. What was
your feeling?
-
HENDERSON
- Oh, no, no. He did what he had to do, you know. No. He spoke up, you
know. He didn't let nobody— He knew what to say at the right time. Yeah,
he thought before he spoke, you know. So I think they took the right man
for the job, yeah.
-
MILES
- Now, tell me about you joining the Kansas City Monarchs.
-
HENDERSON
- Oh, like I said, my first night up to Kansas City, they was out on a
road trip, and I arrived there late that night. The Monarchs, they came
in round about one, and they woke me up, and I happened to— I thought I
was going to sleep with my buddy Gene Richardson, but they put me with
Elston Howard. That night, before the game and everything, they didn't
have a uniform for me, so Elston Howard gave me— He happened to have an
extra uniform, and Elston Howard was way bigger than me, and they made
me damn near look like a clown with the [inaudible] and everything, you
know.Anytime a new player come in, they tried to— I don't know what it is, but
they don't seem like they try to help you. They try to hinder you and
everything. But when I got out on the field, even though I had a uniform
on that was dragging the wind and everything, couldn't move the way you
wanted to, I performed excellent. Buck O'Neil was [inaudible] out there
with me, and Barney Serrell was playing second base, and he really
helped me out. He made me look good. After I'd throw the ball to him
made on a double-play or whatever, and Buck hit one out over second
base, and I went over and got it and made a perfect throw to first base,
and I got a standing ovation from the crowd.
-
MILES
- Did you?
-
HENDERSON
- Oh yeah. And Willie Mays and [Henry Louis] Hank Aaron and them was over
in the opposite dugout, and that's the night they signed professional
with Birmingham Black Baron. And Piper Davis, which was the manager for
the Birmingham Black Baron, after the game and everything was over, he
talked with my manager and everything, and he tried to buy me from the
Monarchs.
-
MILES
- On your first game?
-
HENDERSON
- On my first one, yes.
-
MILES
- Now, had you finished high school by this time?
-
HENDERSON
- Oh, yes, yes. I had graduated.
-
MILES
- So tell me what happened between you graduating high school and you
signing with the Monarchs.
-
HENDERSON
- Oh, I left. See, the same week that graduation was over, I left that
weekend for Kansas City.
-
MILES
- You did? Why did you go to Kansas City?
-
HENDERSON
- Because they gave me a $10,000 bonus signing and $300 a month, you know,
and being young and [inaudible], but I wasn't twenty-one, everything
went to my mother. I got just enough to buy my toothpaste and to eat and
everything, and the rest of the money came home to my mother.And my mother had taken that, the money to pay down on a home. That's
when we moved from the projects to the home, and guess who the home that
we bought? It was a boxer, and his name was Rusty Payne. You probably
never heard of him, but back in the San Diego days, he was one of the
heavyweights and a great person there in San Diego. And we bought the
home that he was living in.
-
MILES
- Was that in Coronado?
-
HENDERSON
- Right around the corner. No, in San Diego, off Ocean View. And I still
have that house.
-
MILES
- Was that before or after you guys were in Coronado?
-
HENDERSON
- This was after. We moved from Coronado to the house that I have.
-
MILES
- Back to San Diego. So they were courting you while you were still in
high school?
-
HENDERSON
- Oh yeah. Oh yeah.
-
MILES
- When did they first approach you, do you remember?
-
HENDERSON
- Yes. Well, I had scouts to come from the Yankees and from Chicago [Cubs]
and from different ones.
-
MILES
- The majors?
-
HENDERSON
- The major leagues, yeah, minor and major leagues and everything. But
like they said, I showed aggressiveness. Like we played San Bernardino
one game and Eddie Mathews hit a home run. And when he was coming around
second base, I put my hand out to shake his hand and he shoved me. And I
fell back and fell down, but when I came up, I decked him, see. And I
got a standing ovation from the crowd and everything, you know, and
everybody asked me, well, why was I being aggressive? I said, "He could
have broke my leg, he could have hurt me, and I wasn't expecting on him
to push me, you know, that hard and push me down and everything."So that was one of the reasons why I probably didn't go into the majors,
because they said I couldn't take it. But, hey, I could take it. But
we're out here to play ball, we're not out here to clown and for
somebody just to abuse me or something like that and spit on me. No.
-
MILES
- You weren't going to take that.
-
HENDERSON
- Oh no. No matter if I didn't go into professional ball, I was going to
be a man in any sport that I go in.
-
MILES
- That's right. Now, what was the scouting report on you?
-
HENDERSON
- I was too aggressive.
-
MILES
- What did they say about your skills, though?
-
HENDERSON
- Oh, man, I was a ballplayer. They said my skill was superb and
everything.
-
MILES
- Just too aggressive.
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah. Roger Maris and everything, I played for a team that would
barnstorm in my days for St. Louis Cardinals, and Roger Maris stated
that I was too aggressive and everything. So that helped me not getting
into professional baseball.
-
MILES
- You heard the scouting report on you?
-
HENDERSON
- Oh yeah.
-
MILES
- Did you ever consider toning that down a little bit?
-
HENDERSON
- Well, I toned down 100 percent, you know, but I still didn't make it to
the majors.
-
MILES
- How did you feel about that?
-
HENDERSON
- I had everything that they had, you know, because my mother took the
little money that I did get and she invested it and everything. And like
I say, I own property. I got the same thing all the— And some of the
major guys that played professional baseball don't have what I have and
everything, because my mother used her head with the little money that
we got, and she— That's the reason why all my kids, like where we're at
right now, I'm helping them get they own homes and everything. So that's
what it's all about.
-
MILES
- So Buck stayed in contact with you all the time?
-
HENDERSON
- Oh, yeah, Buck still— We still friends and everything, and another
major, Andy Porter, we all meet just about once a year. Well, we down
from five or six hundred of us, we're down to about a hundred and twenty
or hundred and some of us still alive. We're trying to get some money
from the major leaguers that would help us before all of us die, and we
hoping and praying that we get this little money, you know. They talking
a pretty good lump sum, like sixty thousand dollars plus
eight-hundred-and-some dollars a month for the rest of our life.
-
MILES
- Wow. So when did you decide to sign with Kansas City? Were you still in
high school?
-
HENDERSON
- I was still in high school when I signed.
-
MILES
- Oh, you were in high school when you signed?
-
HENDERSON
- Uh-huh. Yeah, I was getting ready to graduate. And the same day that we
graduated, the next night I left for Kansas City.
-
MILES
- Right after that.
-
HENDERSON
- Uh-huh.
-
MILES
- What was your contract again? How much was your contract?
-
HENDERSON
- I got $10,000 for signing the contract.
-
MILES
- Was that considered a good contract?
-
HENDERSON
- For the Negro League, yeah. And $300 a month, which is $75 a week.
-
MILES
- How did your mother feel about you doing that?
-
HENDERSON
- Boy, she was happy.
-
MILES
- Was she?
-
HENDERSON
- Oh, Lord have mercy, yeah. She said that was a— When they gave her that
check, she said, "Oh, we can get out of the projects." So we got out of
the projects, and she invested the little money that we had. And when I
came home during that September after league was over, she bought me a
car, a 1937. Now, this is '49. She bought me a 1937. [mutual
laughter]
-
MILES
- A twelve-year-old car. What kind of car was it?
-
HENDERSON
- A Ford, something that we could afford. [mutual laughter] We paid cash
for it, and my buddy, Floyd Robinson's dad, Mr. Robinson, he was a
painter, and he painted it green. I tell everybody always my car to this
day the one I have at the house is green, and I tell them I like
anything green because it's the color of money.
-
MILES
- So you left in June to go to Kansas City?
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah, straight out of high school.
-
MILES
- What was Kansas City like?
-
HENDERSON
- Oh, 18th and Vine, that's where we stayed at, and that's where the new
museum is at today. But I stayed at the Street Hotel on 18th and Vine,
and that song, "Kansas City, Here I Come," it was beautiful. Oh, it was
beautiful.
-
MILES
- What was it like?
-
HENDERSON
- I had relatives living in Kansas City. My mother's play sister Margaret,
the one you mentioned a while ago named Marg, her mother and her lived
there in Kansas City, because Aunt Marg, when we left Fort Smith, she
came to L.A., and she was living here in L.A. And my mother, we would
come up here every weekend, and my mother and them, they would get
together and party. But Kansas City was beautiful, oh, man.
-
MILES
- What do you remember the city being like?
-
HENDERSON
- Oh, bright lights, you know, big city, and pretty girls. Yeah.
-
MILES
- Different than San Diego?
-
HENDERSON
- Oh, Lord, yeah.
-
MILES
- In what way?
-
HENDERSON
- Oh, man, hey, just walking down the street on 18th and Vine, just
looking at all them pretty girls, man. Oh, Lord. And the park, now, they
had a park and they had a swimming pool there, and that's mostly where
the Monarchs, we hung out up there at the park watching all the pretty
girls up there.Then they had a drugstore down on the corner, which we didn't have. We
had one in San Diego on 25th, but down on the corner they had a
drugstore with a fountain, and that's where all the girls and people
hung out at. And we would go down there after practice. Then they had
Gates, and the Gates Barbecue, but Gates finally went to Las Vegas and
lost its hotel—I mean the barbecue place.
-
MILES
- What, he gambled it away?
-
HENDERSON
- Uh-huh. It's mostly white-owned, and barbecue is not what it used to
be.
-
MILES
- Was this mostly a black section of town?
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah.
-
MILES
- Did you experience any prejudice in Kansas City?
-
HENDERSON
- No, no, not while I was there. No. The whites was glad to come out. But,
you know, like we'd go on ball signing, autographing them things, the
Negro childrens didn't know anything about the black Negro League. More
white kids came out there than blacks.
-
MILES
- In '45?
-
HENDERSON
- No, I'm speaking like now, you know. But back in the forties and
everything, before the games and everything, man, they'd have a band
come out and march and do the flag and everything. Hey, it was on the
ball. Yeah.
-
MILES
- Were you considered a celebrity?
-
HENDERSON
- Oh, man, yeah. Everybody that played ball back then was a celebrity. Oh
yes, well respected.
-
MILES
- Were you the only rookie that was signed that year?
-
HENDERSON
- Yes. In late '49?
-
MILES
- Uh-huh.
-
HENDERSON
- The following year, remember he wasn't a rookie, but he came up, Milt
Smith. He was out of Frisco, and he came up in '50, and we rode the
train together. And his son Dego lived there, and Milt made San Diego
his home because he signed with the San Diego Padres, and he made San
Diego his home. He married— When we were down in Juarez, Mexico, playing
with the Negro League, he met a Mexican lady there and he ended up
marrying her. And they had five kids, which I know every one of them
there in San Diego and everything. His son was a hell of a ballplayer,
but he made a few mistakes in life. He look back now, he opened a drug
program, trying to help kids not make the mistakes that he had made.
-
MILES
- Who was on the team when you joined?
-
HENDERSON
- Oh, we had like Merle Porter, and we had Roy Campanella was still there,
Gene Baker, and had Gene Richardson, had Sherwood Brewer. We had Ernie
Banks. Had— I've named Elston Howard, and had— I said Sherwood Brewer.
Oh, man, my mind ain't what it used to be. Barney Serrell. "Baldy." I
can't think of Baldy's first name, but he liked to clown around, but he
was good. I forget the one that went to Chicago. We had a hell of a
team.
-
MILES
- Now, who were you closest to on the team when you first started?
-
HENDERSON
- Gene Richardson, because he was from San Diego, and Ernie Banks, Elston
Howard, Barney Serrell.
-
MILES
- That's a lot of people, actually, that you were close to.
-
HENDERSON
- Oh yeah. Well, we was all just a— Wasn't no strangers on that team.
Everybody was just like family. We were no strangers.
-
MILES
- Now, when you traveled, what was your mode of transportation when you
went to—
-
HENDERSON
- Bus. They had their own bus.
-
MILES
- What was the bus like? What was the experience like?
-
HENDERSON
- It was nice. We ate and slept and everything on the bus. We ran into a
lot of towns that was prejudiced that you couldn't go in a hotel and we
had to go around to the side windows, couldn't use some of the
restrooms. And pull up in a service station, they'd tell you that you
can't use the restroom. They'd tell you, "Hey, stop pumping the gas.
Don't put no more gas in this here," because the man look up and say,
"Hey, I'm going to lose all this money, because that bus hold a whole
lot of gas. Go on and use the restroom."
-
MILES
- I see money talked, didn't it.
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah, money talked. But a lot of time we played, and like in Mexico we
went over there and played, we won, and they refused to pay us, ran us
out of town. We didn't get paid in that town. A lot of southern towns,
they would do the same thing. They would pay you and some kind of way
before the bus could get out of the city limit, they would pull us over
and arrest the bus driver, say he was drunk and then they would take the
money.
-
MILES
- Fine you?
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah. And take the money back and everything, yeah.
-
MILES
- So how did you guys react to that? What did people say?
-
HENDERSON
- Oh, we didn't— Just let somebody else drive the bus and we keep on
stroking, man. We had to catch up.
-
MILES
- Did you get mad at all?
-
HENDERSON
- No, no need getting mad; wasn't nothing we could do. Sure wasn't all of
us wasn't going to jail.
-
MILES
- That's how you looked at it?
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, we kept our cool. Cool Papa Bell was my manager when I
came up in '50, and he kept us— We had to be clean-shaved and had to
wear a tie. He made us look presentable every time we got off the bus.
We didn't look scaggy or nothing, you know. We looked professional.
-
MILES
- How did the crowds react to you when you were in—
-
HENDERSON
- Oh, man, they loved to see you. Yeah, they loved to see us. But, like,
the kids, like they didn't know nothing about the Negro League. To this
day, look around, they don't know nothing about the Negro League. And we
trying to teach them about the Negro League today, and you doing what
you doing, put it in the history books and everything, maybe down
through life we never will be forgotten. And the only way that we won't
be forgotten is through peoples like you that are doing the history and
the stories on us and everything.
-
MILES
- Right. What was your experience like in Mexico as a player?
-
HENDERSON
- Well, in Mexico, they was good ballplayers. They was very good
ballplayers. But as far as they seen what was going on in the United
States, so they were trying to treat us the way that they was being
treated here in the United States and everything, you know, and that
didn't work.
-
MILES
- What did they try to do?
-
HENDERSON
- Well, they wouldn't let us use the shower, you know, after a game. We
beat them now. If they accidentally beat us, then it was all right, you
know. [mutual laughter] But they would want to try to think that
everybody was drunks or something and wanted to try to pay you with beer
or something, you know, but that didn't work. Money talked.
-
MILES
- What did you think of clowning, you know, teams that—
-
HENDERSON
- Oh, we didn't. We were professionals, yeah. Just like the thing I showed
you the other day on Soul of the Game. If you've
ever seen that movie, that didn't portray us good at all. And during the
movie, after the movie went off, we stood up and we spoke on it and told
them, no, it wasn't like that. We were professionals.
-
MILES
- How did they portray you in the movie?
-
HENDERSON
- Oh, like throwing the ball all up high and you jumping high and all
that. No, no, we made perfect throws. Around the bases, no. Yeah, they
portrayed us as clowns, you know. Had [Leroy Robert] "Satchel" Paige out
there on the mound clowning. Satchel Paige was a professional. He never
clowned or anything out there on that mound. He was very
professional.
-
MILES
- Now, some teams did do that. What did you think of those?
-
HENDERSON
- Well, you know, like that was like Bingo Long [Traveling All Stars and
Motor Kings] and all that, our last one we met, we was all together that
summer. The kid that played that part, he passed away about two months
ago.
-
MILES
- [Leon "Daddy"] Wagner.
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah. We was all together in Maryland. But we didn't clown. We were very
professional. And you better not, if he catch you clowning, he'll pull
you out.
-
MILES
- Who was that?
-
HENDERSON
- Cool Papa Bell and Buck O'Neil. No, you didn't clown. You be a
professional.
-
MILES
- Any feeling about teams who did do that?
-
HENDERSON
- No. But we, like I said, we looked at the kids today, all the clowning
what they're doing today, and to me it's very unprofessional. And that's
the reason why a lot of the young kids don't want to play baseball,
because they saying it's too slow, you know. But when we played, the
game went fast because we made it fast because the way we played the
game. See, you don't wait on no ball. You go after the ball because we
ran down the bases. I mean, we ran, because that's the reason why you
have a coach at first base, a coach at third base. You paid attention to
the coaches. We would hit the ball, we would run. The kids today, they
hit the ball and look at it. And the guy is right, he don't have to
charge no ball because he don't have time to throw you out, because you
up here clowning. The only thing I look at, the World Series, and I see
a lot of mistakes in there.
-
MILES
- Do you see—
-
HENDERSON
- Oh yeah. Yeah.
-
MILES
- What did you think of the women that were playing? Toni Stone was in
when you were.
-
HENDERSON
- Uh-huh.
-
MILES
- Did you have any feeling about her?
-
HENDERSON
- Oh, no, no, no. Just when as us kids growing up, girls played ball with
us then, so I didn't have no bad feeling about ladies playing
baseball.
-
MILES
- Did you play against them? Did you play against any of the women?
-
HENDERSON
- Some of them have passed away. And Mamie came a little bit after I had
retired and everything.
-
MILES
- Now, what position did you play for the Monarchs?
-
HENDERSON
- Shortstop, but I could play any position. I could bat left or right. And
my batting average, lifetime batting was 342, and that's pretty
good.
-
MILES
- I know.
-
HENDERSON
- I had a lot of inside-the-park home runs and everything, and I had a
head-first slide. I was good at that, at sliding, and I started running
when I'd slide. If you make an overthrow or miss with me, I'll be on
third before you know it. [mutual laughter]
-
MILES
- That fast, huh?
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah. I stole home a lot and everything. I was another Jackie Robinson
on stealing home. I would get on third base, I'd worry that pitcher to
death. Yeah, Lord.
-
MILES
- Once you started playing for the Monarchs, how often did you go back to
San Diego?
-
HENDERSON
- After the season was over. Yeah, we would leave and everybody would go
their own way. That's when I would work at General Dynamics and play
winter ball and everything.
-
MILES
- When did the season end for you?
-
HENDERSON
- When everything ended for me was in '53.
-
MILES
- No, what month of the year was the season?
-
HENDERSON
- September.
-
MILES
- September. That's when you went back to San Diego?
-
HENDERSON
- Uh-huh.
-
MILES
- So tell me about your experience in the winter league.
-
HENDERSON
- Oh, man, we had a ball.
-
MILES
- Who did you first play for?
-
HENDERSON
- I played with the Gibson Tigers.
-
MILES
- What year? Well, you always played with them.
-
HENDERSON
- I played with them every year.
-
MILES
- So you just came back?
-
HENDERSON
- Uh-huh. Then I started working at Convair, General Dynamics, Convair. I
was a painter and I ended up being the supervisor over the paint shop.
I'll tell you a story about that. I'm the type of guy that I was raised
up to speak to one another, you know. And every day my boss used to come
in, and I'd speak to him. I'd say, "Good morning, sir. How are you this
morning?" He never spoke. He never said— Five years went by. So one
morning he came in, I said, "Good morning, sir." His name was Ridley.
Says, "How you doing this morning, Mr. Ridley?" He never opened his
mouth.So this one morning he came in and says, "Henderson, when the whistle
blows, I want you to come to my office."I said, "Oh, Lord have mercy, what have I done?"
-
MILES
- This was a white man?
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah, he's white. Red, red-looking.And I said, "Oh, Lord, what have I done now?" So the whistle blew, and I
punched out and went on the office.He said, "Neale, I want to ask you why is it that every morning that I
come in here you speak to me and I never have spoke to you?"I said, "Sir, I don't know what it is for you, but this is the way I was
raised up, and I'm going to be like this till the day I die, you know.
It makes me feel good and everything." I said, "You ought to try it."So he says, "Well, I just thought I would ask you," and everything.Then I said, "Well, Mr. Ridley, you don't know what it is to speak to one
another. You ought to try it."So the next morning, he came in, he spoke. Everybody spoke to him, and
everybody had a different expression on their face. "Man, Mr. Ridley's
speaking?"So man, it went on to for almost a year, you know, and productivity and
everything, boy, went up and work, everything, was just smooth and
everything. He called me in and he said, "Neale, how would you like to
be supervisor?"I said, "Who, me?"He said, "Yes, you. I'd like for you to run my paint shop."So I said, "Mr. Ridley, could I think about it?" He said yes.So I was going on vacation, so I went down to Arkansas, and, guess what,
the telephone rang, and it was him on the phone. And he said, "Neale,
have you thought about it?"I said, "Mom, what you think?"And she said, "Go ahead and try it, son."I said, "Yes, sir, I'll go ahead and take it." So when I came back, they
made me supervisor over the paint shop.
-
MILES
- So did they hold the job for you when you played ball or did you—
-
HENDERSON
- Oh yeah. Oh yeah.
-
MILES
- What did they think about you being a ballplayer?
-
HENDERSON
- Oh, they loved it. Yeah.
-
MILES
- Did you sign autographs?
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah, sign autograph, and in the same way like when my son played
football down at Southern University. Well, my son played against Doug
Williams at Grambling [State University] Southern Bayou Classic. And my
son intercepted Doug Williams three times.
-
MILES
- Oh yeah?
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah. And my son helped win the game. It's the first time they won a
game in thirteen years.
-
MILES
- Is this your son Anthony?
-
HENDERSON
- No. Neale. And he ended up signing for the Seattle Seahawks and
everything. He was good. He was good.
-
MILES
- Your son did?
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah. And he ended up, he spent his life dream he worked for the youth
prison there in Baton Rouge, and he was the highest ranking officer in
Baton Rouge, police officer for prisons.
-
MILES
- Let me just stop you here. Let me just— [End of March 21, 2004 interview]
1.5. TAPE NUMBER: III, SIDE ONE
March 28, 2004
-
MILES
- This is La'Tonya Rease Miles, and I'm interviewing Mr. Neale Henderson
in his son's home in Los Angeles. Today is Sunday, March 28th, I think
we said. This is tape three.Now, last time we left off, you started telling me about your son Neale.
He went on the play football, right?
-
HENDERSON
- Yes.
-
MILES
- Let's go back and put him into the whole picture. When did you start a
family?
-
HENDERSON
- Oh, I started this family in 1956. But my first family, I started in
1950. My oldest daughter, she's '50. But I really had a son in '47, but
he died at birth.
-
MILES
- What's his name, the son that died?
-
HENDERSON
- He would have been named Neale.
-
MILES
- Then go ahead and tell me all your children. We'll put them on here.
-
HENDERSON
- Okay. All my childrens that I have, my oldest daughter, her name is
Vonda. What's Vonda's middle name? Vonda Garcia Shelbry. Then I have a
daughter named Chere—it's French—Vashone.
-
MILES
- How do you spell Vashone?
-
HENDERSON
- It's V-a-s-h-o-n-e. Her name is— Don't ask me how to spell Purifoy.
-
MILES
- Okay. I have an idea.
-
HENDERSON
- That's supposed to be French. And then I have a son name of Ronnie
[Stevens Henderson].
-
MILES
- That's right, who I met.
-
HENDERSON
- Neale's the oldest.
-
MILES
- Neale, then Ronnie.
-
HENDERSON
- Neale, same as mine.
-
MILES
- Then Ronnie.
-
HENDERSON
- Then Ronnie. Then Paul. Paul Gerald [Henderson]. And Ronnie's name is
Ronnie Stevens. Then I have Anthony, whose last name is Jones. I have a
daughter named Marilyn Yale. And I have a son named James Bray. And I
have a bunch of stepchildren.
-
MILES
- What did your children go on to do? You mentioned that Neale went on to
play professional football.
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah, Neale went on and played football, and then he ran a youth prison
down in Baton Rouge. He worked there for twenty years, highest paid
officer in the State of Louisiana at one time.
-
MILES
- Was he born in San Diego?
-
HENDERSON
- Yes.
-
MILES
- Then he moved to— Well, he went to school.
-
HENDERSON
- He went to school at Southern University.
-
MILES
- That's right, and then stayed over there.
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah, he married, stayed down there. They have a daughter.
-
MILES
- What did Vonda go on to do?
-
HENDERSON
- Vonda, she ended up, she moved to Frisco after she left San Diego, and
she had a son. He played in the movie Soul
Food.
-
MILES
- He was in Soul Food?
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah, he played in Soul Food.
-
MILES
- Is he an actor?
-
HENDERSON
- Well, he want to be. He tried. He's somewhere up here in L.A. now trying
to do his thing.
-
MILES
- Chere?
-
HENDERSON
- Chere, she went into nursing and everything, and she's still trying to
do a little nursing.
-
MILES
- Where does she live?
-
HENDERSON
- She lives in San Diego.
-
MILES
- So she's still down there. Ronnie's here.
-
HENDERSON
- And Ronnie's here in San Diego. Ronnie works for drug rehab. He helps in
Long Beach there, there's a Drug Rehabilitation Center. He's executive,
one of the officers there in the center.
-
MILES
- I know he just moved to this house here in Los Angeles, but where did he
move from? Was he in San Diego?
-
HENDERSON
- No. He was here in Los Angeles.
-
MILES
- So he just moved to a different place here. Where's Paul?
-
HENDERSON
- Paul's in San Diego. Paul works for the City of San Diego, and he also
have his own little business. What's that ceramic tile? He does ceramic
tile, refurnish bathroom, anything where money's at, Paul can be there
making money. He's like his dad.
-
MILES
- That's what I was going to say.
-
HENDERSON
- He work two and three jobs, you know. He loves to travel. He loves nice
things.
-
MILES
- Where's Anthony?
-
HENDERSON
- Anthony, he's in Fort Smith, Arkansas.
-
MILES
- He's in Arkansas?
-
HENDERSON
- Down with his mother. He's a mother's boy. He works for Tyson
[Food].
-
MILES
- And Marilyn?
-
HENDERSON
- Marilyn, she's in San Diego. She works for the Welfare Rehabilitation
Center.
-
MILES
- Okay, and then James. Is he the baby?
-
HENDERSON
- James works over at North Island. He works over at North Island, and
he's a supervisor.
-
MILES
- How many grandchildren do you have, by the way?
-
HENDERSON
- Oh, Lord have mercy.
-
MILES
- Can you keep them straight?
-
HENDERSON
- Twenty-eight.
-
MILES
- Twenty-eight grandchildren. You must be really proud.
-
HENDERSON
- Oh, very, yeah. They're all trying to be somebody. I stress that to any
child and parents.
-
MILES
- Now, of all your children, only Neale was the only one who played sports
professionally, right?
-
HENDERSON
- Yes.
-
MILES
- Did you ever give him any advice about playing sports or anything?
-
HENDERSON
- Ronnie, all of them did, they tried, you know, and they faltered down
the road. But Neale wanted to go to college. The other boys, they was a
workaholic. They wanted to work instead of going on and getting their
education like Neale did. And Neale, he's doing real good. Like I said,
he has a nice place in San Antone [San Antonio], and he left there and
he moved back to Baton Rouge. He's retired and everything now.
-
MILES
- Were any of your children playing baseball at all in high school?
-
HENDERSON
- No.
-
MILES
- No?
-
HENDERSON
- No, no, no.
-
MILES
- Did it stop with you? [laughs]
-
HENDERSON
- They loved football and football. Well, they tell me baseball was too
slow for them. And that's what we having a problem right now with our
black youth.They don't want to play baseball. They want to play basketball and
football. Baseball too slow for them.
-
MILES
- Did you ever take them to the games? Did they ever see the Padres play
or anything?
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah. They even saw me play there in San Diego during they growing up
and everything. But my grandchildren, now, little Raymond, now he should
have went pro in football, baseball, basketball, and anything. He
faltered along the way, you know. He got on them drugs and everything,
and them drugs just took his life away from him. This is what I stress
to any child, you know. Don't let drugs take a hold of your life,
because it will ruin you.
-
MILES
- Whose child is Raymond?
-
HENDERSON
- Chere.
-
MILES
- I lost my train of thought. You said something about them seeing you
play. You were traveling a lot. Did you get to see your family often, or
how did you work that out when you were still playing?
-
HENDERSON
- While I was still playing, it was just another job. The wife, she did
what she had to do, and I would call home all the time, you know. We
didn't have a problem, me being away from them or anything like
that.
-
MILES
- About how long would you be gone from home at a time?
-
HENDERSON
- Well, during the summer league, I would be gone, what, like four or five
months.
-
MILES
- Straight?
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah.
-
MILES
- Wow, that's a long time.
-
HENDERSON
- But, you know, if you got to make that dollar, you got to make that
dollar. You just have to have a strong wife, you know. She know that you
out trying to make it and just got to do what you got to do, you
know.
-
MILES
- Who was your first wife?
-
HENDERSON
- My first wife, her name was Mary Ella Williams.
-
MILES
- That's right. I remember. And your second wife?
-
HENDERSON
- Hannah May, that was my first wife. That's Vonda's mother.
-
MILES
- Then who is your second wife?
-
HENDERSON
- My second wife was Elsa Boudreau. French Creole.
-
MILES
- Oh, so that's Chere's mother.
-
HENDERSON
- Chere, Neale, Ronnie. Then the other one I had was Matty Jo, with
Marilyn and James and Anthony.
-
MILES
- Who is your current wife?
-
HENDERSON
- My current wife is Annie Ruth, my Mississippi woman, the best thing that
ever happened to me.
-
MILES
- Oh, that's wonderful. How did you two meet?
-
HENDERSON
- I was walking across the park there in San Diego. That's where old
Sheffield, he practiced there and everything. But anyway, I walked
across the park, and she saw me coming and she said, "Mmm, look at that
bowlegged man coming across that field," you know.And I happened to look down there and I saw her. And I said, "Ooo-wee!"
to myself, "look at that woman over there. Man, she is stacked." So she
happened to be talking to a friend named Erma. So when I walked up to
her, I started talking to Erma and everything, and I asked Erma, I said,
"Who is your friend?" So she introduced me to her, and the ball got to
rolling.
-
MILES
- That was almost like love at first sight?
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah.
-
MILES
- Or something at first sight. [laughs]
-
HENDERSON
- I think it was love at first sight.
-
MILES
- Love at first sight, that's great.
-
HENDERSON
- But I wish I could have had a woman like her when I was playing ball and
everything. I might would have went on and kept playing. But you know,
behind every good man there's a good woman.
-
MILES
- What is it about her that you think would have allowed you to keep
going?
-
HENDERSON
- She was firm and she accepted the things that I liked to do and
everything. But my other wives, they wanted to be in the lamplight
instead of trying to raise a family.When I married her, she had five children, and then I was raising five.
So between me and her, we raised ten childrens together.
-
MILES
- You're like "The Brady Bunch." [laughs]
-
HENDERSON
- Oh, yeah, yeah.
-
MILES
- Okay. Let's go back to your playing for the Monarchs. Now, you had been
following the Monarchs for as long as you could remember, but when you
actually played for them, the majors had already integrated. Were there
any changes that you noticed in the league after the majors were
integrated?
-
HENDERSON
- Yes, it started to disintegrate.
-
MILES
- What happened?
-
HENDERSON
- All the white leagues was picking up most of the blacks, and the leagues
started to fold. I have a few things here that I was going to give you
to show you that the teams [inaudible]. But anyway, the league started
to fold, and I just folded with it.
-
MILES
- Were there any changes in terms of, I don't know, salaries or—
-
HENDERSON
- Oh no, our money stayed the same.
-
MILES
- Money stayed the same, that's good.
-
HENDERSON
- You know, had like the American League and they had the National League,
you know, just like the white league. And every year at the end of the
season and everything, whoever won the American League, they would play
the National League team, you know. When I came along, just about all of
that had just about folded up, but they still played, you know, but I
never did make the All-Star team or any of those.
-
MILES
- Did they have the All-Star team at that when you—
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah.
-
MILES
- Did you play in the East-West game at all?
-
HENDERSON
- No. I wasn't fortunate enough to make it to the All-Star games.
-
MILES
- Was there a change in the number of fans that came out?
-
HENDERSON
- Oh yes, a great deal.
-
MILES
- What happened?
-
HENDERSON
- It seemed like after Jackie Robinson and all, they made it to the majors
and everything, just like all the— Then most of the black people just
stopped going to the ball game, because newcomers was coming along, and
the top-name billings, you know, the younger generation, they wasn't
like the older generation. You know, the older generation, they didn't
have hardly nothing to do, so they went to the baseball game. Even
everybody, like I was telling you before, that's the reason why you
would see everybody in suits and the womens in they mink stoles and big
old pretty hats and everything, because the church would let out early,
because the pastor wanted to go to the baseball game.
-
MILES
- Did any of your close friends go to the majors?
-
HENDERSON
- Oh yes.
-
MILES
- Who? Tell me about some of them.
-
HENDERSON
- It was quite a few of my friends went into major league baseball, you
know, like Elston Howard, Ernie Banks, Buck O'Neil. Who is that other
one? Roy Campanella and Gene Baker.
-
MILES
- Did they ever tell you about their experience playing there?
-
HENDERSON
- Oh yeah. They loved it.
-
MILES
- What did they tell you?
-
HENDERSON
- They loved it.
-
MILES
- What did they say was it— What did they love about it? Let's start
there.
-
HENDERSON
- They loved the challenge. They knew that they was going to have take
abuse and take different things and that, and it was a great experience
for them, you know, to see if they could take it. A lot of them, they
took it for so many years and everything, and finally they said, "Well,
that's enough."
-
MILES
- And then what did they do?
-
HENDERSON
- They started voicing their opinion and speaking up.
-
MILES
- Who would they speak to then? Who could they—
-
HENDERSON
- The managers. Start off with their manager and everything. If it didn't
work with the manager, then they go to the next step. They did it the
way the book calls for them to do it.
-
MILES
- Any other stories that they told you about it? Anybody not like their
experience?
-
HENDERSON
- Oh, I forget this young man's name, but Buck was telling us about a guy
at that time when the St. Louis Cardinals put that black cat out on the
field and everything.
-
MILES
- A real cat?
-
HENDERSON
- A real black, yeah, a real cat. And Buck O'Neil told me, said they had
guys that played with the Monarchs with us that had it happened to them,
they would have took that black cat and stuffed it down their throat,
you know.
-
MILES
- What was that supposed to mean? I don't even get it.
-
HENDERSON
- It was showing they had a black guy playing on the team. It was
downgrading him, you know.
-
MILES
- So they let the cat walk across the field?
-
HENDERSON
- Right. Chased him out on the field. Well, they did some crazy things,
you know.
-
MILES
- Yeah. But for the most part, people enjoyed their experience there?
-
HENDERSON
- There you go. There you go.
-
MILES
- I'm sure they were happy to be there.
-
HENDERSON
- Oh, yeah, yeah. Some people just come out to just mess with you, call
you names, try to see if you would quit or if you would take it. A lot
of guys would walk off the field or something, you know, but it would
take a man to stand on out there and take the abuse without doing
something about it.
-
MILES
- That's right. Exactly, I agree with you there. How long did you play
with the Monarchs?
-
HENDERSON
- I played with the Monarchs four years.
-
MILES
- So your last season would have been what year, '53?
-
HENDERSON
- '53.
-
MILES
- Did you ever consider leaving the U.S. to go play somewhere else?
-
HENDERSON
- No, no.
-
MILES
- Why not? I know some people did.
-
HENDERSON
- Family. Family. And I was making more money working. Like I was telling
you, I was a workaholic. I worked two and three jobs. Wherever I could
get hired, I would work. Sometime I would sleep three and four hours,
you know, and go to my next job, because I had childrens that I had to
take care of. So I worked two and three jobs, whatever it took, you
know, to support my family.
-
MILES
- What ended your career with the Monarchs? Why did you stop playing?
-
HENDERSON
- I got injured.
-
MILES
- Did you? What happened?
-
HENDERSON
- Riding a motorcycle.
-
MILES
- Not even on the field? [laughs]
-
HENDERSON
- Not even on the field.
-
MILES
- Where were you?
-
HENDERSON
- I had ridden a— Well, back in the young days and everything, I used to
go down into Mexico and play baseball. One Sunday we decided that we
would ride down to— Not Ensanada. We would ride down to Mexicali, and we
rode down. On our way to Mexicali, we got down there, partied for a
little while, and then we started back. A Corvette was coming down this
hill, the curve, winding curve, and he happened to come over into the
left-hand lane, which was coming. It was only one lane going and one
lane coming. And he set in the curve in the left-hand lane coming back
up, and I was coming back. And just as I set in the curve, he was
heading— We was heading right into one another, so I took the shoulder.
I hit a rock, and it threw me. I went down a canyon; went about three
stories.
-
MILES
- You went down a canyon?
-
HENDERSON
- I went down in a canyon. See those scars right there?
-
MILES
- Oh yeah.
-
HENDERSON
- That's from my helmet, where my helmet crushed into my skull. If I
hadn't have had the helmet on, I would have been adios. And it broke my right femur. Right here the bone came
up through here and everything, and I got a steel plate here in my right
knee.
-
MILES
- But how did they get you out of the canyon? What happened? Who was with
you?
-
HENDERSON
- Someone seen the accident, and the guys that I was riding with, I was
the last bike, and the other bikes had went on. And the cars caught up
with the bikers and told them that one of us had gotten hurt, which was
me, and they came back. The littlest guy in the group picked the
motorcycle up off of me. The highway patrolman, when he got there, he
told me after I came to and everything, he and I had played football in
high school, the highway patrolman who came to the scene.
-
MILES
- Was this a black man or a white guy?
-
HENDERSON
- No, white. And he stayed at the hospital with me until I was okay. He
stayed— I think it was twelve, fourteen hours, and he stayed right there
at the hospital until he knew that I was all right. Just to show you
that the camaraderie that we had back in those days, even though he went
to [Herbert] Hoover [High School] and I went to San Diego High [School],
everybody was still friends and everything, you know. Mom said it wasn't
all that black and white thing. It wasn't no big thing to our high
school friends or anything.
-
MILES
- Which hospital were you in, in Mexico, or did they take you to
California?
-
HENDERSON
- No, I was in Grossmont [Hospital] just outside of San Diego.
-
MILES
- How did they get you there?
-
HENDERSON
- Ambulance came.
-
MILES
- Came and got you?
-
HENDERSON
- Got me and took me red light all the way back and everything, and they
didn't think I was going to pull through, you know. They called my dad
down in Arkansas and everything, and my dad, did he need to come out,
and they decided, no, don't come out, so my dad sent me a prayer cloth.
He was strictly into holding his church, and he believed in praying. He
sent me a prayer cloth, and they put it on the wound and everything. So
I believe.
-
MILES
- How long were you in the hospital?
-
HENDERSON
- Oh, Lord have mercy. I was in the hospital eight months.
-
MILES
- Eight months? Okay. Hold it. At the time of the accident, was it during
the off-season, or what time of the year was it?
-
HENDERSON
- It was in March. This happened in '58, 1958.
-
MILES
- Oh, this happened in '58?
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah.
-
MILES
- We'll come back to that part, then. So it wasn't '53.
-
HENDERSON
- No, no.
-
MILES
- It was in '58.
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah, this happened in '58.
-
MILES
- But at that time you wouldn't have been able to work, either, right,
when you were in the hospital for eight months?
-
HENDERSON
- No.
-
MILES
- How did your family respond to that?
-
HENDERSON
- Well, my job?
-
MILES
- Your job and your family, yeah.
-
HENDERSON
- My job, they held my job just like they did during the baseball season
and everything. I was a good worker, like I was telling you.
-
MILES
- Did they continue to pay you?
-
HENDERSON
- Oh yeah.
-
MILES
- They did? Oh, that's great.
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah. And the guys on my job, the ones on the motorcycles when I was
riding, most of us all worked together. They took up a collection and
brought toys and everything at Christmas to the kids and everything.
When I hurt in March all the way through Christmas, they took a big
collection and bought toys and food and everything to my house.
-
MILES
- But your career with the Monarchs ended in '53. What did you do after
that?
-
HENDERSON
- I worked at General Dynamics, like I said, and played sports. I went to
[San Diego] City College. I was going to City College, and I played
football for City College, everything.
-
MILES
- Yeah, because you would have been a young man still. You were still,
what, twenty-three or something?
-
HENDERSON
- No, I was a little older than that.
-
MILES
- What were you born in, '30?
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah.
-
MILES
- And you ended in '53? That's twenty-three.
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah, twenty-three.
-
MILES
- Yeah, that's young.
-
HENDERSON
- But I thought we were talking about '58.
-
MILES
- Oh, no, no. I'm talking about what happened when you stopped playing
with the Monarchs in '53, though, right? Is that right?
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah.
-
MILES
- So what happened in '53 that you didn't continue with them?
-
HENDERSON
- The reason why I didn't continue with them in '53 was that— What
happened? In '54 I got my shoulder busted.
-
MILES
- Oh, it was a different injury.
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah. In football, yeah, playing.
-
MILES
- Where were you playing football?
-
HENDERSON
- City College.
-
MILES
- Oh, you started City College at that point?
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah.
-
MILES
- Okay. All right. So when did you start City College? You were the man
doing everything. When did that start?
-
HENDERSON
- I started City College in '53, '54, '53. Yeah, they talked me into
coming back playing football because they needed a quarterback
[inaudible], so most of my friends that was in college, they talked me
into coming to City College.
-
MILES
- So was it your plan to play football and continue playing baseball, or
were you going to switch?
-
HENDERSON
- No, I was just having fun. You know, I was working graveyard shift on my
job so I could go to City College. And it so happened that my boss that
was on nights, he had a concession stand there at the football games,
and he gave me pretty good jobs.
-
MILES
- Now, which City College was this?
-
HENDERSON
- San Diego.
-
MILES
- San Diego City College. And what was that like then? What was school
like?
-
HENDERSON
- Oh, man, it was nice. I enjoyed it.
-
MILES
- You had a family, too, and you're going to college?
-
HENDERSON
- Uh-huh.
-
MILES
- What kind of classes were you taking?
-
HENDERSON
- P.E. [mutual laughter] And body shop. That's where I learned how to
paint and everything, you know, took up painting there. And I took up
science, and— What was the other one? One other class that I had, basic
that you had to take.
-
MILES
- Probably like an English or something, huh?
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah. I mean you had to take English.
-
MILES
- That's what I figured. Everybody had to take that.
-
HENDERSON
- So I enjoyed it.
-
MILES
- You did? Well, I was going to say, because I remember when we talked
about you being in high school, you didn't like it so much. But did
things change for you at that point?
-
HENDERSON
- Yes. They tried to get me to come to Cal[ifornia] Poly[technic] [State
University] and everything, you know, to play football for them.
-
MILES
- Up here?
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah. I don't know if you ever hear of a guy named John Jeter.
-
MILES
- No.
-
HENDERSON
- Jeter played with Santa Barbara and everything, and we played them for
the championship. And every time he scored, I would score. And that's
when it happened when I got my shoulder broke. They told us, "The only
way y'all going to win a game, you've got to get Henderson out of
there."So I made a touchdown. When I came back on the next play, a guy came and
hit me as I was coming up and broke my left shoulder just before
halftime. But before then, the school up in— I don't know if you ever
heard of Weber College, Weber College.
-
MILES
- Oh, I heard about them through basketball.
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah. Well, we played them in football, and they was trying to pick the
saddest team in the nation, and they happened to pick San Diego City
College. They didn't know that—
-
MILES
- You.
-
HENDERSON
- —they'd gotten somebody to play quarterback and could run the ball. So
we went up there and they played us, and I scored both touchdowns. It's
in the history books. And we beat them twelve to nothing, two touchdowns
that I made.
-
MILES
- How long did you play for them before you were injured?
-
HENDERSON
- For City College?
-
MILES
- Yes.
-
HENDERSON
- Two years.
-
MILES
- Oh, it was two whole years?
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah, '53 and '54.
-
MILES
- And what did your family think about you going back to school?
-
HENDERSON
- Oh, they loved it. They loved it. My mother never had seen me play
football when I was in high school, and she happened to come to one of
our college games, and my mother was running back and forth, up and down
up in the stands, back and forth, from one end of the field to the
other.
-
MILES
- What was your team like?
-
HENDERSON
- Oh, we had a mixed team. They was good. We had a very good team, very
good team.
-
MILES
- Were you playing with the Monarchs at the same time you were playing
football?
-
HENDERSON
- No. No, that's winter months.
-
MILES
- Okay. Oh, so this would enabled you to play all year round, just
different sports. It's like going back to high school again for you.
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah.
-
MILES
- Then how long did it take you to recover from that? Did you break your
shoulder?
-
HENDERSON
- Yes.
-
MILES
- How long did it take you to recover from that?
-
HENDERSON
- It was like three, four months.
-
MILES
- Did the doctor tell you you wouldn't be able to play baseball anymore,
or what happened there?
-
HENDERSON
- Well, I couldn't get this arm up, you know, like I can now, you know. I
could only go so high with it. If I wanted to catch something, I wasn't
able to function in the way I was supposed to. So I just decided on my
own to leave it alone.
-
MILES
- How did you feel about that, though?
-
HENDERSON
- Oh, I hated it, but, you know, I was starting to make good money down at
General Dynamics. I said, well, I was making more money there than I was
in playing baseball, and it didn't look like I was going to get picked
up with no major league team. There wasn't nobody that was writing to
me, so I did what I had to do. I just—
-
MILES
- Decided not to do it.
-
HENDERSON
- Uh-huh. And I also opened up my— I had my own little business.
-
MILES
- Tell me about that.
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah. Started painting for CDs, the box, and putting that speckled paint
all on the boxes and also on the telephone boxes and everything. I was
doing the speckled painting for a major company.
-
MILES
- Where were you doing this?
-
HENDERSON
- In San Diego.
-
MILES
- But did you have your own shop?
-
HENDERSON
- Uh-huh. Me and my stepson, James Bray, went into this business.
-
MILES
- How long did you keep that business?
-
HENDERSON
- Five years.
-
MILES
- Did you continue going to school?
-
HENDERSON
- Yes.
-
MILES
- Even after the injury?
-
HENDERSON
- Yes.
-
MILES
- Did you finish there?
-
HENDERSON
- I didn't finish, no.
-
MILES
- But you kept going still for a while?
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah, I kept on going. Then I dropped out, because you can only play
sports two years. I think it was two years.
-
MILES
- Yeah, that's right.
-
HENDERSON
- At City College.
-
MILES
- Right around this time, too, because you're talking about the
mid-fifties, was Brown vs. Board of Education
and those type of civil rights legislations. Do you remember hearing
about any of those, when they decided to integrate the schools,
according to the law, anyway? [laughs]
-
HENDERSON
- Oh, we was already integrated. We didn't have no problems there in San
Diego. You had problems, but you know your limits.
-
MILES
- But when you heard the [U.S.] Supreme Court decision, that didn't really
affect you in San Diego, did it?
-
HENDERSON
- No.
-
MILES
- Were there any kind of civil rights protests going on in San Diego at
that time?
-
HENDERSON
- No. No, everything was— To me, everything was functioning pretty good,
except for back when I was going in senior high school. That's when we
had problems.
-
MILES
- That would have been in the late forties, though.
-
HENDERSON
- In the late forties, yeah. That's when they still was having problems.
They was really, really prejudiced.
-
MILES
- At your school or in the city?
-
HENDERSON
- In the whole city.
-
MILES
- Like what was going on in the city then?
-
HENDERSON
- In the city, like I tried to get on the police force. I passed the test
and everything, and I went down to be interviewed, and they had— I guess
this guy just had got out of [U.S.] Marine Corps, whatever, you know,
and they interviewed me and they told me that I was too short. And I'm
just as tall as I am now and everything.They asked me, say, "What side of the bed your wife sleep on?" and said,
"What would you do if you had to arrest your mother?" You know, stuff
like— And that's one of the reason why I— They told me that I didn't
qualify to be no policeman.
-
MILES
- Did they ask you this verbally, or did you have to write these answers
down?
-
HENDERSON
- No, verbally.
-
MILES
- Then they tell you you didn't pass?
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah.
-
MILES
- This was in the forties, though? What year, around what time would that
have been?
-
HENDERSON
- Oh, this was in the fifties.
-
MILES
- Were you aware of Martin Luther King [Jr.] or any other civil rights
activists at this time?
-
HENDERSON
- No.
-
MILES
- Did you see any of the protests on TV or anything? Like in the South I'm
talking about what was going on.
-
HENDERSON
- That came along 'round the sixties, yeah.
-
MILES
- And you started to see it then?
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah.
-
MILES
- What were you thinking, though?
-
HENDERSON
- I wished them well. But like I was telling you, the San Diego police was
really hard on the blacks back in the forties and the fifties and early
sixties.
-
MILES
- How were they treating Mexicans then?
-
HENDERSON
- Same.
-
MILES
- Japanese?
-
HENDERSON
- Anything but white.
-
MILES
- Anything but white. Everybody was grouped together, huh?
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah. But I can say one thing, that the ones in school, we all stuck
together.
-
MILES
- Regardless of color.
-
HENDERSON
- Regardless of color. The Marine Corps came up there once and the school
came together, and we whupped the marines all the way back to the
base.
-
MILES
- What happened? Why did the marines come?
-
HENDERSON
- They came, trying to take the girls.
-
MILES
- What girls?
-
HENDERSON
- The high school, in senior high school. So they went back and brought
almost the whole marine base back to the campus, and the school came
together, all black, white, green, whatever.
-
MILES
- Wait. Hold on a second. The United States Marine Corps, a group of
marines, came to your school?
-
HENDERSON
- Uh-huh.
-
MILES
- What were they trying to do to these girls now?
-
HENDERSON
- Trying to take them away from the guys, you know. They was white,
but—
-
MILES
- And the girls were white?
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah. But everybody in the whole school came together and fought the
marines.
-
MILES
- But why in the world would the marines come into your school?
-
HENDERSON
- Bold. I guess they just bold. They was fighting with the cartridge belts
and everything. Everybody on our side was fighting with their bare
hands. And we got them all the way back to their base. The military
police came up and everything, the MPs, SPs.
-
MILES
- Now, whose side were the police on? On your side?
-
HENDERSON
- On nobody's side.
-
MILES
- They were just trying to break it up. Did the marines fire any weapons
or anything?
-
HENDERSON
- Oh, no, no.
-
MILES
- It was just fighting?
-
HENDERSON
- Just fists and cartridge belts.
-
MILES
- When you made your decision to stop playing, did you stay in contact
with your teammates at all?
-
HENDERSON
- Oh yeah. Oh yeah.
-
MILES
- How would stay—
-
HENDERSON
- That's the reason we still together, you know, with the Kansas City
Monarchs. The whole National League and American League, we all every
once a year we get together somewhere in the United States and we meet
up. We just got together in Maryland where I made the Hall of Fame, and
that's what I was just in.Then I showed you pictures down in Georgia, Alabama, Memphis, Tennessee.
We had a big reunion in Tennessee and got to go over to where Martin
Luther King was killed, and it was very educational. A lot of guys had
never seen the place where Martin Luther King was killed at and
everything. When I played with the Kansas City Monarchs, we used to stay
right there at that same hotel.
-
MILES
- At that same hotel?
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah, when we'd go to there to play Memphis. We used to play the Memphis
Red Sox, and we used to stay at the very same hotel.
-
MILES
- Did you continue to follow baseball after you left?
-
HENDERSON
- Still do. I love the game. I love baseball.
-
MILES
- You had been hurt, but you recovered. Did you pick up another sport
after your injury from football?
-
HENDERSON
- Bowling.
-
MILES
- When did you start bowling?
-
HENDERSON
- Oh, I started bowling— Me and my son, James Bray, we was all on the same
team. That's when I bowled a 295; almost had a perfect game.
-
MILES
- Almost perfect.
-
HENDERSON
- Some guy gave me a drink of whiskey, and that did it.
-
MILES
- He knew what he was doing. [laughs]
-
HENDERSON
- And happened he went to Hoover. [laughs]
-
MILES
- Where did you bowl?
-
HENDERSON
- There in San Diego.
-
MILES
- Did you have a particular bowling alley you liked to go to?
-
HENDERSON
- No, because I wasn't really no bowler, you know, but I got on a league.
We got in a league and we organized a team. It was three men and three
women, and James and I was the only black on this one team.
-
MILES
- It was an integrated team?
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah, integrated team.
-
MILES
- In that league, did you go to the same bowling alley or you just went to
different ones?
-
HENDERSON
- Went to different ones.
-
MILES
- So did that become your new sport after being hurt and not playing
baseball?
-
HENDERSON
- No.
-
MILES
- Just something to do?
-
HENDERSON
- Uh-huh.
-
MILES
- So what other kinds of things did you? Because I know you're very
competitive. [laughs]
-
HENDERSON
- I went out and bought me a motor home.
-
MILES
- Around what time was this? Around what year or time of your life was
that?
-
HENDERSON
- This was in the eighties.
-
MILES
- Okay, a little later. You bought yourself a boat?
-
HENDERSON
- A motor home. Bought a boat, too. I never put the boat in the water. My
wife used to get mad at me, "I told you you wasn't going to never put
that boat in the water." I bought it because my next-door neighbor had a
boat, and I'm going to buy me a boat and I'm going to put it in the
water. But I wasn't that much on swimming, because my dad wouldn't let
us go near the water when I was growing up.
-
MILES
- Yeah, that's right. So why did you buy a motor home?
-
HENDERSON
- A motor home? Because I took up outdoor life, camping out. I love to
camp out.
-
MILES
- Where do you go?
-
HENDERSON
- Down in the Valley, down in Imperial Valley.
-
MILES
- Did you continue to play baseball at all just for fun?
-
HENDERSON
- No, but used to get out in the yard and on the street and play street
ball with the kids. Me and my son, Ronnie, that home we have right now,
Ronnie was a very good glove man. He handled that glove just the way I
used to could and everything. He could have made it in baseball if he
had wanted to go into sports, but he didn't. He didn't go into no kind
of sport.
-
MILES
- How long did you stay with General Dynamics?
-
HENDERSON
- I stayed with General Dynamics almost forty years.
-
MILES
- So after your injury in '58, you just went back to that job and stayed
there for a while?
-
HENDERSON
- Uh-huh.
-
MILES
- Let me see where we are. Let me stop. [tape recorder turned off]
-
MILES
- So you stayed with them for forty years.
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah. I made supervisor down there, and they put me in charge of the
paint shop, and I did all the paint. I did the cruise missiles and I did
the Space Shuttle. I did the Atlas missiles. You know one of them
capsule that John Glenn went up on?
-
MILES
- Uh-huh.
-
HENDERSON
- I did that.
-
MILES
- What did you do, exactly? [laughs]
-
HENDERSON
- Oh, I did most of the painting, you know, put— We had a certain type of
paint that we use for outer space for heat-resistant.
-
MILES
- Did you retire from there?
-
HENDERSON
- Yes.
-
MILES
- Did you work after that, though?
-
HENDERSON
- Retired supervisor.
-
MILES
- Did you take up another job after you retired?
-
HENDERSON
- After I retired?
-
MILES
- Uh-huh.
-
HENDERSON
- I painted houses. Like I said, I was a workaholic. Yeah, I did have my
own little business. And Sonny, we went into business together painting
houses.
-
MILES
- What are you doing now?
-
HENDERSON
- What am I doing now?
-
MILES
- Yeah.
-
HENDERSON
- Just taking life easy and going fishing and camping out. Going to take
the grandchildren out. All my kids are grown, and I take the grandkids
and we go camping in the motor home and everything.
-
MILES
- We started talking before about basketball. You were saying that
nowadays most young kids are interested in basketball more than
baseball.
-
HENDERSON
- Right.
-
MILES
- What do you think changed? Because baseball seemed to be really
important for black communities. What do you think?
-
HENDERSON
- They said baseball too slow, it's boring, you know. But it's boring if
you make it boring, you know, but baseball can be awful lively if you
make it lively. But like I look at the kids today, they be out in the
field and have their arms folded and don't even be communicating,
talking to one another, be just out there. It's that dollar. See, they
making them millions and [inaudible]. But when we was playing, man, we'd
be talking to one another and I'm talking to the pitcher, talking to the
catcher, you know, just making up noise and everything and beating your
glove. But the kids today, man, they stand out in the field like they
asleep or something. To me, it don't bring to get the crowd involved,
you know, but when we was playing, we kept the crowd into the game, you
know.
-
MILES
- How did you do that? How were you able to keep the crowd into the
game?
-
HENDERSON
- By communicating with one another, talking, you know, and maybe look up
in the stands and start talking to somebody up in the stands.
-
MILES
- Were you joking with them?
-
HENDERSON
- Oh, yeah, get them involved, get them into it and everything. Sometime,
you know, like the guy be after a fly ball and go into the centerfield
lane and going, "Get on over there! You ain't going to—."
-
MILES
- Trash talking.
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah. He gone all the way from left field to right field after a fly
ball or something, you know, so he'd be into the game.
-
MILES
- Who are you following these days? Do you follow any particular team?
-
HENDERSON
- [Los Angeles] Dodgers.
-
MILES
- The Dodgers?
-
HENDERSON
- I'm still Dodgers. I love them Dodgers. Yeah. And you know, we have
reunions up here. I come up here in L.A. We came up here one year, and
we got about thirty-, forty-thousand peoples. They had a Negro League.
They wore all old uniforms, and the Latin Americans played against the
blacks, and it was good. We had a lot of fun.
-
MILES
- Why the Dodgers, though? Because I know you liked Babe Ruth, right?
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah. The Yankees?
-
MILES
- Yeah.
-
HENDERSON
- Because of Jackie Robinson. Yeah, Jackie Robinson.
-
MILES
- That's right.
-
HENDERSON
- The Dodgers took him.
-
MILES
- And that became your favorite team.
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah, because they let the black man in and started the ball
a-rolling.
-
MILES
- What about any current players you like to follow today?
-
HENDERSON
- Oh, I followed— I can't think of the kid's name that got on them
drugs.
-
MILES
- Strawberry?
-
HENDERSON
- Darryl Strawberry. Because his brother-in-law and I, we fish together
down in the Valley. He married one of my buddy's sisters. His first
wife, Darryl Strawberry's first wife, yeah, that was one of my buddy's I
fish with sister.
-
MILES
- You know there's a new book out about Darryl Strawberry in Crenshaw.
-
HENDERSON
- No. I'd like to read it.
-
MILES
- It's about baseball in Crenshaw, actually.
-
HENDERSON
- In my church, Darryl Strawberry's, one of his sister-in-law attend our
church, and she was talking one day and told me her name. And her last
name was Strawberry, and I asked her was she related to Darryl
Strawberry, and she said, "Oh, yeah, that's my brother-in-law."I said, "Get outta here. I'm going to give you a baseball," and
everything.But we have a beautiful church. My pastor, man, that man can sing. He
plays organ.
-
MILES
- What's your church name?
-
HENDERSON
- New Hope Missionary Baptist Church. I'm on the [inaudible] board there.
If you belong to his church, you're going to have some kind of duty.
You're going to do something in that church to get involved, and I like
that.
-
MILES
- What's the pastor's name?
-
HENDERSON
- Robert Houston. That man could whup an organ to death. Oh, man, when I
tell you he can play an organ and sing, yeah. He was raised up down in
New Orleans, come out of down South, and that boy, I love to hear him
preach.
-
MILES
- How long have you belonged to that church?
-
HENDERSON
- I've been with the church now three years. I used to belong to New
Horizon, and he passed away, and he was out of Arkadelphia, Arkansas,
and that's where all of my peoples came from.I forgot to tell you that my grandmother was a Witherspoon. Did you ever
hear of the Witherspoon, one of the fighter, the boxers, and Jimmy
Witherspoon the singer?
-
MILES
- No, I haven't.
-
HENDERSON
- Those are all on my mother's side, grandmother's side. They're famous
people, and I'm trying to find out this Witherspoon that played with
them Wayans brothers on TV—
-
MILES
- John Witherspoon, yeah.
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah, I'm trying to find out if he's related to us, trying to find out
where he's from and everything. He just might be related to us.
-
MILES
- Let me stop and turn the tape over.
1.6. TAPE NUMBER: III, SIDE TWO
March 28, 2004
-
HENDERSON
- Have you ever heard of Jimmy Liggett, the Liggetts?
-
MILES
- No.
-
HENDERSON
- Jimmy Liggett, the singers, they was singers?
-
MILES
- No.
-
HENDERSON
- We're related to the Liggetts, to Jimmy Liggetts.
-
MILES
- Through your mother again? On your mother's side?
-
HENDERSON
- On my daddy's side.
-
MILES
- What do they sing? What kind of music?
-
HENDERSON
- Oh, they were blues, rhythm and blues, the old-time blues.
-
MILES
- You mentioned a few minutes ago something about the Negro League
uniforms and the merchandise. And they're making a comeback among young
people right now. What do you feel about that, you know, where they
wearing some of the hats?
-
HENDERSON
- Oh, I love it, because I sells it.
-
MILES
- Now tell me about that. See how I transition for you? [laughs]
-
HENDERSON
- Through the [Negro League Baseball] museum, we're helping the museum and
helping one another. Through the museum, the money goes into a bucket
and like certain families, if they need it, we help out.
-
MILES
- Tell me how does the whole process work? Do they send you the shirts and
things?
-
HENDERSON
- You have to order it and be responsible for the— Whatever you sell,
you're responsible for it.
-
MILES
- What kind of things do you guys sell?
-
HENDERSON
- We sell from t-shirts all the way up to the uniform, baseball, caps,
gloves. Whatever we played with and had on, you can buy.
-
MILES
- Who do you primarily sell them to?
-
HENDERSON
- To anybody, anybody that want to buy them, all races. And everybody buy
them, too.
-
MILES
- Is it like school groups or at the park?
-
HENDERSON
- At school and just like go to a swap meet, and we be out there at swap
meet. And we also sign autographs. I have baseball cards that I sell and
everything. Like my baseball card's five dollars, you know. And like if
you buy a cap or whatever, I autograph the cap and everything. And like
I'll tell anybody, you see this little logo right here?
-
MILES
- Right.
-
HENDERSON
- If this logo isn't in it, it's not authentic. They have now people
trying to— Everybody trying to sell the Negro League stuff, so you got
to watch what you buy and know the gimmicks, the fake.
-
MILES
- What's your relationship to the museum?
-
HENDERSON
- Oh, I'm in the museum. They have pictures of most all the guys that
played in the Negro League. And once a year, Buck [O'Neil] and them, we
all get together and have a big reunion and everything.
-
MILES
- At the museum?
-
HENDERSON
- At the museum and everything. We down to about— Out of four, five
hundred of us, through the years we're down to say about a hundred, if
it's a hundred now. The way time passed.
-
MILES
- [laughs] You still looking good. You're maintaining. How do you manage
to stay in touch with people?
-
HENDERSON
- Phone, through the phone, and through the museum. All you have to do is—
Now, we have a group, that one I was just showing you there, the one
back in Maryland. And Mamie Johnson, all you have to do is call Mamie,
and Mamie know where everybody's at, because everybody love Mamie
because she was one of the only females out of three of them, four of
them that played in the league. She's the only one that's still
living.
-
MILES
- Do you know where she's living now?
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah. She living outside of Baltimore, Maryland.
-
MILES
- Oh, really? Okay. I'm from there. I might have to—
-
HENDERSON
- If you meet her, you met a nice person, and she's a wonderful
person.
-
MILES
- Now, do you get calls often to make appearances or—
-
HENDERSON
- Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Yes.
-
MILES
- Tell me about those.
-
HENDERSON
- I get called quite a few. We go all over the United States to talk to
kids and to talk to churches and to talk to different groups and
everything, college and everything, you know. Like you just met a friend
of mine's last weekend. He's over at the NFL, and I do shows and
everything with the NFL. And we have a bat here in L.A., the Dodgers. I
go and work with the Dodgers, through the Youth Fund and everything with
them. And I get a lot of calls to speak at churches.
-
MILES
- And you still do it?
-
HENDERSON
- Oh yeah. And I just lost a friend of mine. They're probably having his
funeral next Friday. Earl Wilson, Earl Wilson, Sr.
-
MILES
- He did?
-
HENDERSON
- He passed away.
-
MILES
- When was that?
-
HENDERSON
- He passed—
-
MILES
- That's recent.
-
HENDERSON
- —the other day, yeah. Friday. He passed Friday.
-
MILES
- You know, I talked to him about a month ago.
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah, I remember he told me you had talked with him. But he's gone now,
and that was my heart and soul, you know. I don't want to talk about
him, else I'll start crying.
-
MILES
- Okay. I'll change the topic real quick. Someone, actually Mr. James
Lewis, was telling me about an article in the L.A.
Times where a group of former white major league players were
trying to sue for reverse discrimination. Did you hear about this?
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah, they doing the same thing, but they dropped theirs. I got word
just the other day that they dropped they case and everything. Maybe the
movement for us will work a little faster, but they're trying to get
money for the Negro League, which was due to us but never did come. And
we got old "Peach Head" Mitchell, Mitchell, he's the one that's spending
his own money fighting them and everything. And the ball is looking
pretty good for him.
-
MILES
- That's good. Tell me about the case. What is it that he's trying to sue
for? Why is there money owed to you?
-
HENDERSON
- Oh, the money's owed because— I can't really explain it, because I don't
know too much about it myself and everything, and I don't want to say
the wrong thing and everything, so I'll just leave that alone instead of
go into something I don't know anything about. I'm just hoping and
praying that it come through.
-
MILES
- You just said there are only about a hundred of you players left. What
do you think is important for people to remember about the Negro
Leagues?
-
HENDERSON
- The main thing, that the camaraderie that we had and still do, you know.
That's what I'd like for peoples in our own race to get that camaraderie
that we have, because we still speak and talk to one another,
communicate with one another. And our black youth and everything, they
don't even know what it is to speak to one another. And this is what we
need to get back into, you know, and maybe we can get stronger through
communication. You know, we learn through communication, which is
speaking with one another. We learn from each other. And if we can ever
get back to that the way our forefathers and everybody was, hey, I think
we can be a lot stronger than what we are today.
-
MILES
- Any other final thoughts you want to add?
-
HENDERSON
- Oh, we ain't through. I love to talk. My wife always on me about talking
and everything.Back in the days, our mother and our father, they get up in the morning,
they would speak. Today, the mother get up, she don't say "Good morning"
to her child or don't say her name, you know, and the family's just not
like it was in the old days.
-
MILES
- What do you think happened? What change do you think happened there?
-
HENDERSON
- The kids, you know— I know you realize when a mother is carrying a
child, that baby hear everything that you converse, what you saying. And
why, when the baby come, because the baby already know how to cuss, know
how to fight and all that because of the way the mother and father act.
See, there it starts in the home, you know.Then they took out, in schools, for the teachers used to could correct
the kid and everything right then and there. They can't do that no more,
you know. And the kids, they don't have no respect for themselves, so
how they going to have respect for the teachers?
-
MILES
- Do you think we should go back to that?
-
HENDERSON
- Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
-
MILES
- Even giving out spankings and everything?
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah. It sure helped me, I'm going to tell you that much. And the older
peoples in Arkansas, you better speak when you walk past an elderly
person or else they say, "Hey, boy, what's wrong with you? Don't you
have a mommy and a daddy? You don't know how to speak to nobody?" And,
hey, you speak, and if you don't, you'll get a whipping right then and
there. Then they'll take you home, and then you get another whipping.Because the old folks say it takes a village to raise a child, man, I
believe that, you know. We wouldn't have all this gang-banging and stuff
if we had more respect for one another, you know. But if a kid don't
have respect for himself, how he going to have respect for others?
-
MILES
- Were you able to pass that on to your children? Because you're in San
Diego now, not in the South.
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah. Oh yeah. My kids speak. I raised my kids up the same way I was
raised up. I was up in the park, my son was messing up up in the park,
and he was with some guys I didn't want him to run with. And I happened
to be going past the park and I saw him. I got out of my car and went
over there and was whupping him, and the San Diego policeman came up to
me, "Hey, don't you know you can't whup that child like that?"I said, "Hey, wait a minute." I said, "I'm going to whup my child before
you have to kill him."He said, "Okay, go ahead," you know, and he let me, and I kept on
spanking him, you know. I embarrassed him in front of his friends and
everything, and his friends started respecting me and everything, you
know, because they said, "Oh, Mr. Henderson don't play."And I tell them, "No, I don't play." No.
-
MILES
- But you were able to carry that with you from being in the South,
right?
-
HENDERSON
- Oh yeah. Once I tell any kid— There's one kid in San Diego that if he
had listened to me, he wouldn't be in a wheelchair today. Somehow word
had got to me that something had happened down on Ocean View
[Boulevard], and I gets in my car and I runs down there, because they
told me my son was down there. But after I got down there, my son had,
they said, just left. They was fighting. And Donald, a friend of ours,
my son's best friend, he was down there. So I said, "Donald, come on,
I'm going to take you home." So I put him in the car and took him home.
And I bet you I wasn't in the house five minutes, the telephone rang,
and they said, "Donald just got shot," you know.
-
MILES
- What happened?
-
HENDERSON
- The guy got shot. He left the house and went back down on the street,
and some other guy shot him right through the throat right here
[gestures], and he's paralyzed. He lived, but he's paralyzed today. And
my son's eyes opened up. Yeah, he opened up. That boy straightened his
whole life out, and once again I'm proud of him. But you know, I just
hate it had to happen that way for a whole lot of eyes to be opened up.
But there's still a lot of young kids that still's gang-banging and
doing things that they shouldn't do, but they should look and see what
happened here.Then they could say, "I don't want that to happen to me," and quit all
that stuff that they doing.
-
MILES
- Right. Where did your children go to school in San Diego?
-
HENDERSON
- Oh, they went to grammar school and they went to— I can't think of the
elementary school that they went to right there in the neighborhood.
-
MILES
- Did they go to San Diego High like you did?
-
HENDERSON
- Oh, none of my kids went to San Diego High. They went to Lincoln.
-
MILES
- Why not?
-
HENDERSON
- They went to a black school, Lincoln High School. And my son is in the
history books there at Lincoln High School.
-
MILES
- Which son is that?
-
HENDERSON
- Neale. Ronnie— I'll tell you a story. We moved out into El Cajon. El
Cajon, that's mostly a white community. And I moved out there, and this
was in the sixties, late sixties. I bought a lovely home out there, five
bedroom, and I was only paying three hundred and fifty-some dollars a
month for it. It was a nice little home. I was still working for General
Dynamics. As soon as I moved in, the guy across the street come running
out there, "There's a nigger moving next door. There's a nigger moving
in our neighborhood," you know.And I got right out there next to him and said, "Yeah, and this nigger
here to stay," you know.
-
MILES
- Where is El Cajon?
-
HENDERSON
- Just outside about eleven miles from San Diego.
-
MILES
- North? No, no, east.
-
HENDERSON
- Going east. Going towards Highway 8.
-
MILES
- What was it like when you moved in the city?
-
HENDERSON
- Prejudiced. Wasn't too many blacks out there. Wasn't too many blacks in
El Cajon.So we moved in, and my kids started going to the schools out there. There
wasn't too many blacks in the school and everything, and my son was
going to El Cajon High, I think it was. One of them El Cajon ones. And
he was going to play football for them and everything, and then Ronnie,
he was going to Grossmont. And Grossmont was really prejudiced back even
when I was playing against them. And Neale, they fell in love with Neale
because he was a good athlete and everything, you know.The police— Like I say, I was working at General Dynamics and I had a
security job, which I was working out in El Cajon where they was
rebuilding and everything. I would watch the heavy equipment at night. I
would work out there until about one o'clock in the morning, and then I
would go home. And the police would always stop me, you know, because I
was wearing a gun and everything.
-
MILES
- Well, how did they know you were wearing a gun?
-
HENDERSON
- Well, they seen me patrolling around and everything. They're always
talking about, "What you think, you're a policeman?" or something like
that.I'd say, "No, sir, just doing my job." We were allowed— I worked for ADT
[Security Services, Inc.], and I said, "I'm just doing my job," you
know, "and I'm on my way home."So they found out that I lived out there, and when my kids would go to
school and everything, they would mess with my kids. They would sic the
dogs on my kids.
-
MILES
- The police would?
-
HENDERSON
- The police and everything. So I was into it with the guy across the
street and everything mostly, and so I said, "Well, the best thing for
me to do," I don't think I stayed out there a year.
-
MILES
- Oh, you didn't stay long at all.
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah, I rented my house out over in San Diego, and I had to end up
going, living with my stepson James Bray until I could get my other
house vacated, the one that I had bought with my Monarchs money.
-
MILES
- This is back in San Diego now?
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah.
-
MILES
- So you went back to that house?
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah.
-
MILES
- Then did Neale switch schools then at that point?
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah, went back to Lincoln. He went back to Lincoln High School.
-
MILES
- Now, why did they go to Lincoln and not San Diego High?
-
HENDERSON
- Because it was about four blocks from the house where we was living
at.
-
MILES
- Oh, Lincoln was closer?
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah. Lincoln opened up in '53, I think.
-
MILES
- Was it a new school?
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah.
-
MILES
- You said it was mostly black at that point, then, right, when Neale went
there?
-
HENDERSON
- Black and Mexican.
-
MILES
- Okay. What was his experience like at that school?
-
HENDERSON
- Oh, he loved it, because he was always like a star, wearing that big old
Afro. Boy, I wish you could have seen that Afro. [tape recorder off]
-
MILES
- All right. Ronnie was a big star.
-
HENDERSON
- Neale.
-
MILES
- Neale was a big star at this point.
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah. Neale swam. Oh, boy, that boy could swim. Yeah, he was a lifeguard
down at the Y and he played water polo. I was trying to get him to go to
the Olympics and everything, you know. He could have been another Tiger
Woods.
-
MILES
- But in water polo. [laughs]
-
HENDERSON
- That boy could swim.
-
MILES
- I was going to say it sounds like you're saying that San Diego seemed to
be relatively free of prejudice, but once you go outside of San
Diego—
-
HENDERSON
- Oh, man, yeah.
-
MILES
- I didn't realize that.
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah. I had a friend that moved out there near where Archie Moore had
his training camp. Archie Moore was one of the great boxers. You heard
of Archie Moore, haven't you?
-
MILES
- Uh-huh.
-
HENDERSON
- And he was really a good friend to my Uncle Sid, and they ran together
there in San Diego. And I had a guy I went to school with, Thomas
Andrestep moved out in Pine Valley, I think it was. And the Ku Klux Klan
burned a cross and caught his garage on fire and everything, and Archie
Moore's camp was right down the road from where he trained to fight. In
San Diego, man, that's where the Ku Klux Klan is, out there in the
Valley. Oh, yeah, they— Forget that Mexican or whatever his name, all
this.
-
MILES
- But if you stayed within the city itself, you were okay?
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah.
-
MILES
- Okay. So you didn't have to worry about it too much.
-
HENDERSON
- They beat this one marine up, they paralyzed him. I know you heard about
that.
-
MILES
- So, what, no?
-
HENDERSON
- Because he was out there with some buddies of his, they beat him almost
to death; they paralyzed him out there. They hardly did nothing about
it. Those kids didn't get prison terms or nothing, I don't think.
-
MILES
- How long did you stay in that house that's near Lincoln?
-
HENDERSON
- Where now?
-
MILES
- The house that you moved back into, how long did you stay there?
-
HENDERSON
- I still own that house. I bought that with my money that I got from the
Kansas City Monarchs.
-
MILES
- So you're not going to sell that house?
-
HENDERSON
- Oh, no way. I paid nine thousand dollars for it, and it's worth almost
two hundred thousand now.
-
MILES
- But you're not living in it right now?
-
HENDERSON
- Oh no. I have it rented out.
-
MILES
- When you moved back then from El Cajon, how long did you stay in that
house before you moved again?
-
HENDERSON
- I stayed in that house until '80.
-
MILES
- Oh, a long time.
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah.
-
MILES
- Since you had been there, for, wow, almost thirty—
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah, I bought that house in '49. When I signed with the Monarchs, they
gave me that.
-
MILES
- That same year?
-
HENDERSON
- And my mother bought that house. I wasn't old enough, you know. I was
telling you, they sent all my money to my mother, and my mother took
that and paid down on this home and put it in her name and my name.
-
MILES
- But in that long stretch of time, I'm sure you got to see a lot of
changes.
-
HENDERSON
- Oh yeah.
-
MILES
- What happened? What was it like in '49? What kind of changes occurred
over time?
-
HENDERSON
- The Negroes started to move up. Where I'm at now, that used to be all
white. You better not be caught up in there at night driving through
that community at night. It was the same way like on El Cajon, El Cajon
Boulevard. If you go on the north side of El Cajon Boulevard at night,
you just about get arrested. It was bad for the black man back in the
late forties and early fifties.
-
MILES
- What neighborhood was that, though, the one that you're now that you
couldn't go into, I don't know, thirty, forty years ago? What
neighborhood is that, or city?
-
HENDERSON
- That was in— They call that San Diego, off of University and El
Cajon.
-
MILES
- Is that where you live right now?
-
HENDERSON
- No, no, no. I live in the Skyline area now. And you couldn't go into
that area when they first built it up. The blacks couldn't go out there.
It wasn't no blacks out there on the other side of Euclid, east of
Euclid. You just about couldn't be caught back up in there.
-
MILES
- You said, though, that in the old house, the one that your mother bought
for you, that now or over time blacks started moving out. Right?
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah.
-
MILES
- Why did the move out?
-
HENDERSON
- That's what the other places opened up, and they started selling their
property and moved out to where the whites— When the whites were moving
out of there back up into the hills, you know, and now they're trying to
move back to the city.
-
MILES
- That's true.
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah. See, back in the old days, I remember when I first came out here
in '37, down near the waterfront, that was all black-owned, all
black-owned. And now the blacks sold all that back then, and then the
whites are trying to buy it back now, see. And all the property is so
high back down in there now, but all that was black-owned. Now
everything is white, all down on Fifth Street and Market and everything
there, that's what's called the Gaslight District now. And all of it is
white-owned. All that was black-owned. And now they just stole that
property from them black people.
-
MILES
- So that's the same house. What's the neighborhood like right now?
-
HENDERSON
- Mexicans live there now.
-
MILES
- Okay. It's not down by the water?
-
HENDERSON
- They still call it the waterfront.
-
MILES
- It's probably worth more than a hundred thousand. I'm sure it's worth a
lot more than that.
-
HENDERSON
- Oh yeah.
-
MILES
- What do you plan to do with that house?
-
HENDERSON
- I'm going to keep it. They even put a Home Depot and everything up right
down the street from me and everything, and they're still building up,
put a Popeye's [Fried Chicken]. Well, the graveyard is about two blocks
from my property and everything. So it's a nice little good community
there, quiet.
-
MILES
- Do you plan on passing it down to somebody?
-
HENDERSON
- Paul. I've got it in my son Paul's name right now.
-
MILES
- That's good. [laughs] Because like you said, I know too many—
-
HENDERSON
- Paul work— He's strong-minded. He had to learn the hard way. I had to
straighten his life up, and once I got firm on him and showed him that I
meant business, he woke up and saw the light and made 180-degree
turn.
-
MILES
- Wow. That's good.
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah. I'm so happy for him, I don't know what to do. He can get my heart
right now, because he's straightened his life up.
-
MILES
- How has the city of San Diego changed since you first went in 1937?
-
HENDERSON
- It's still got a little ways to go.
-
MILES
- Why do you say that?
-
HENDERSON
- The reason why I'm saying that is, you know, you ever seen how you make
a cake?
-
MILES
- Uh-huh.
-
HENDERSON
- It's sweet on top, but when you get down a little ways, it ain't so
sweet.
-
MILES
- Why, what's going on now? It's 2004. [laughs]
-
HENDERSON
- Well, they still got a long ways to go. As far as, like, jobs, they
still don't give the black man preference and everything. And I'm not
racist or nothing like that, but we need to come together. And, you
know, like the Mexican race— I'm saying "race." There ain't but one
race; the human race. But they help one another. And we don't help one
another, and that's what we need to come together. If you see a brother
down, don't talk about him down; try to help him up. Pick him up. Don't
leave him down there; pick him up. But the Mexican people, they work
with one another, you know, and that's what we need to do, you know, if
we start helping one another instead of degrading one another.
-
MILES
- You mentioned, though, that, I don't know, in the fifties or sixties,
the police were after you. When did that stop? When did that change? Or
did it change? [laughs]
-
HENDERSON
- It hasn't changed. They're still racist. They catch you out by yourself,
and they just down you. I know one night I was on my way to work, and I
happened to be— I had to meet a friend of mine because at that time I
didn't have a car. My girlfriend had wrecked my car, and so I had to
ride with another guy. So I had to meet him up on Wabash, which was
about five blocks away from the house there on Ocean View. So I was
walking there to meet my friend, and the police stopped me. So the lady—
He had the lady to get out and question me, and the lady asked me, says,
"Where you going?"I says, "I'm on my way to work.""At this time in the morning?"I said, "Is there a special time I have to go to work? I have to be here.
I'm working overtime, so I have to be to work at three o'clock in the
morning."So she say, "Well, do you have an I.D.?"I said, "Yeah." And I reach up to get my I.D., and she did a roundhouse
kick at me and everything else and pulled her weapon on me. Now, "Hold
it, hold it. Hey, hey, hey. Don't, don't, don't. Don't shoot. Don't
shoot. You asked me for my I.D., and I'm getting my I.D."And the guy standing up there, the other policeman, was laughing. I told
him, "Man, excuse me, I don't see nothing funny here. I could have been
shot.""Oh [mumbles]."I said, "No, ain't all the [mumbles]. What's your badge number?""Well, no, you don't have to go into all that."I said, "Yeah, I want your badge number." And I got her badge number and
everything else. And just about this time, the guy what I was going to
ride with came up, you know, and he asked me what was wrong, and I told
him.He said, "Neale, that didn't really happen."I said, "Yes, it did, too."
-
MILES
- When was this? When did this take place?
-
HENDERSON
- This was in the eighties. It was in the eighties.
-
MILES
- What were your children's experiences like with the police? Any
run-ins?
-
HENDERSON
- No. No, because they, back then at that time, they walked the chalk line
because I kept them— They wasn't into drugs or any of that, and nothing
like that.
-
MILES
- Did they ever experience any prejudice that you know of?
-
HENDERSON
- Not like I did, no. Not like I did.
-
MILES
- I know that you come up to Los Angeles frequently. Do you ever think
about moving here?
-
HENDERSON
- Oh no.
-
MILES
- I knew what you were going to say. [laughs]
-
HENDERSON
- I come into L.A., and I go out of L.A.
-
MILES
- Why do you do that?
-
HENDERSON
- I came up here one year, and my sister live in Compton. I came up here
to visit my sister, and I'm sitting on the couch, and a bullet went
through the wall up over my head, you know. So I sit there, and later on
that night, my niece and her boyfriend or somebody, they came in, and
something happened. But anyway, they got to fighting, and my niece
dialed 9-1-1. The police and everybody else come to the home, and at the
door, my sister went to the door, and she said, "Oh, ain't nothing
happening. Ain't nothing going on."Police said, "Well, we had a 9-1-1 call from here." And my sister said,
"Oh, lord, I got everything under—." And he said, "Oh no," and he took
and slammed my sister back. She went back across that what's the name
there. And he came in there, and everybody came in there, there was nine
of them, come up with their guns cocked. And I'm sitting on the couch
and everything else.And the guy, my niece's boyfriend, he happened to went in the room and
took and put a whole lot of clothes over on top of him. He was under all
them clothes. When they went in there, they didn't throw the clothes or
nothing.
-
MILES
- Why did he do that?
-
HENDERSON
- Because he was hiding from them, because him and my niece had gotten
into it. They came responding to the 9-1-1 call. So they said, "Well,
everything look clear and everything here," so they left and everything.And when the left, I left, and I haven't been back to my sister's house
since then. Normally, I used to be— And I don't know if you see it right
there and right here [gestures], that's from police handcuffs on me.
-
MILES
- Here?
-
HENDERSON
- No, this was in San Diego.
-
MILES
- Why did they handcuff you? I can see that.
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah. I'm telling you the truth. They handcuffed me and everything.
-
MILES
- What happened?
-
HENDERSON
- What happened is we was out gambling.
-
MILES
- Now, wait. When was this? Tell me when this was.
-
HENDERSON
- It was in the fifties. This was in the fifties. And we went out and had
a little poker game at the house, and you're not supposed to play cards,
you know, gamble. They raided the house, and I was the houseman. I had
money, and they went after the money and everything.So Charles Rucker, he's dead and gone now, he and I went to school
together, so when they raided and everything, my mother— I happened to
hit two or three of them, and so the guy got me down and they really
clamped the handcuffs on me. And my mother happened to come out of the
back bedroom in the house where I was living at, that she had. But
anyway, my mother came out of the room and I looked at her and I
hollered, "Mama, Mama, help your son." [laughs]My mother looked at me and said, "You're on your own," and got back into
bed.So then everything got under control and everything, so they arrested
most of the guys that was there and took all of us to jail.
-
MILES
- For gambling?
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah, for gambling, and I had to pay to get everybody out of jail. See,
but they was trying to get the money that I had on me and everything, to
confiscate the money. But I didn't give that money up and everything. I
told them, "All this is my money," because we was playing with chips and
everything.
-
MILES
- Did they search you looking for the money?
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah, yeah, but they couldn't take the money.
-
MILES
- Did they find it?
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah. I kept my money on [inaudible]. When I went down to the jail,
that's how I bailed everybody out, and I was responsible to bail
everybody out of jail. I got them all out.
-
MILES
- How were you treated when you went down there?
-
HENDERSON
- Good. They didn't mistreat us, because Charles Rucker was there. Yeah,
he was a pretty well-known black policeman. This is when blacks started
moving on up in the department. He ended up a detective.
-
MILES
- Okay. So that made a difference?
-
HENDERSON
- Oh yeah.
-
MILES
- What has been your perception of Los Angeles?
-
HENDERSON
- I don't know too much about Los Angeles. All I know is when I used to
come up here back in when I was in junior high school, I belonged to the
Boys Club, and we used to come up here, and we couldn't go in the
hotels, couldn't sleep in the hotels. We couldn't go swimming in the Y
and different things, you know. It was the same way in San Diego, you
know. Certain things, they just wouldn't let the black man do.
-
MILES
- Better or worse than San Diego?
-
HENDERSON
- This was better than San Diego.
-
MILES
- This was better than San Diego?
-
HENDERSON
- Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. San Diego was— I remember when Compton didn't
have no blacks going to school out there. Yeah. We used to come up and
play football, wasn't no blacks in Compton back in the forties when we
used to go up there and play football. They had a Chinaman, and I
remember the Chinese guy, he played.
-
MILES
- Now, I know you said you have a sister here, and I think you have
another relative living out there.
-
HENDERSON
- My brother.
-
MILES
- Your brother, too, right?
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah, my brother live in Altadena, up in the mountains. He must have a
seven-room house and a swimming pool, yeah. See, he got his own postal
annex. He got his own business, and he own five or six homes in the
Pasadena area. He rent them out; got them all rented out.
-
MILES
- What did your brother or your sister tell you about life in Los Angeles?
Have they talked about it at all?
-
HENDERSON
- No. I got a nephew, my brother's son, he works— He's well known in one
bank. He's a bigwig, he goes all overseas, and everything. He got three
or four homes. He's doing real good. He went to USC. He graduated at
USC. And I had a lot of cousins and my brother took a class at UCLA and
everything. Like I told you, my brother was a speaker. Yeah, and he
tried preaching.
-
MILES
- Oh, right, I remember. That's right.
-
HENDERSON
- He tried. He started preaching.
-
MILES
- But he didn't make any money. [laughs]
-
HENDERSON
- He said the money wasn't coming fast enough, so he had to go back to
gambling.
-
MILES
- What was his experience like at UCLA? He had to go back to gambling?
[laughs]
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah, he went back to gambling.
-
MILES
- From preaching to gambling?
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah, he went back and he started gambling. I never will forget the time
my brother came down and stayed over in Tijuana and he had five hundred
dollars, and he put that five hundred dollars on a horse named Eager
Abby. And Eager Abby broke out the gate, and my brother broke out the
gate with him. So Eager Abby started on down, boy, my brother got down
on four hands. My brother went back up to the infield, said, "Run, Eager
Abby, run! Run, Eager Abby! Swish your tail." The horse had a habit of
when he'd do his tail, he's ready to run. So he still had to swish his
tail, he got a run on the turn, and he's running about seven.Bobby yelled, "Swish your tail, Eager Abby! Swish your tail!" About that
time, Eager Abby did the tail like this here [gestures] and started to
move up. And he came on around and started for home, and my brother was
up at the other end, and him and that horse running, running up and down
yelling, "Oh, swish your tail, Eager Abby!"When Eager Abby won the race, my brother made a turn just like this right
here, went on right out to the window, and they paid him off. He went
straight on down to Ernie Wright, and they had a Mercury turning around
on a turntable. He paid for it.
-
MILES
- He ran straight from the thing right there. [laughs]
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah, he ran down at the other end, and after that, the race was over,
he went and got his money and went down to Ernie Wright and bought that
Mercury that was turning around on that turntable.
-
MILES
- Right on the display that day, right. [laughs]
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah, the one on display. And right after he bought his Mercury, I was
jealous. I ended up buying me one.
-
MILES
- A Mercury, too?
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah, I bought— Mine wasn't as nice as his. He bought the Monte Carlo,
and I bought just the plain Mercury coupe.
-
MILES
- Did you still have that Ford? [laughs]
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah. My mother bought me a '37 Ford. Yeah, I still had that Ford.
-
MILES
- You kept it for a while, huh?
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah. It was clean. Ooh, that was a clean little Ford. I used to take my
Ford, and I'd run a '47 Cadillac, yeah. That little '37 went so fast
that the voltage regulator would jump off.
-
MILES
- You must have taken good care of it, though, because that's a long
time.
-
HENDERSON
- Oh, I did, yeah. Floyd Robinson's dad is the one, Mr. old man Robinson,
he was a good baseball player, too, just like Floyd. He learned from his
daddy. The old Arkansas blood.
-
MILES
- Speaking of Arkansas, when's the last time you've been to Fort
Smith?
-
HENDERSON
- I was down there coming back from Maryland, I stopped in Fort Smith and
saw my son, saw my— I still have relatives down there, and I saw my
cousins and everything, went to my daddy's grave and everything.
-
MILES
- When did your father pass away?
-
HENDERSON
- My dad passed in '85. My mother passed in '80, and my dad was still in
love with my mother. He grieved his self to death. Even though, because
he used to always say he was going to get my mom back, and he was going
to get a two-story house and get his whole family. That's all that old
man used to talk about, getting his family back.
-
MILES
- Never happened for him.
-
HENDERSON
- Never happened, no.
-
MILES
- Did he ever stay in contact with your mother or talk to her, they see
each other?
-
HENDERSON
- Oh yeah. Oh yeah. When she passed away, he was right here. He came to
[inaudible].
-
MILES
- Even though she remarried?
-
HENDERSON
- Yeah.
-
MILES
- He was still in love with her.
-
HENDERSON
- He was there, yeah.
-
MILES
- So what's Fort Smith like these days?
-
HENDERSON
- Fort Smith is moving up, the blacks, yeah. Where I was born at, that's a
graveyard over there all in that area now. All the blacks mostly that
was on the south side, they're putting factories and everything over
there on that south side. Almost all the blacks moved to the north
side.
-
MILES
- Race relations any better there?
-
HENDERSON
- Oh, way better.
-
MILES
- How?
-
HENDERSON
- Way better. Business. They got they own business and they're working at
all different banks and working in the movie theaters. And you don't
have to sit upstairs no more; you can sit amongst one another. And
everybody working in stores and cafes. Where we used to couldn't eat, we
can eat there now and everything, yeah.
-
MILES
- Do you know when their schools integrated? Because when you left, they
were still segregated at that point. Do you know when that happened?
-
HENDERSON
- In the fifties. Yeah, because I remember going down there and I saw
Lincoln. Lincoln just about folded. They didn't have no football team no
more. They was all going to a white school. Because I remember going
over into Little Rock. The school played Little Rock that night.
-
MILES
- Did you hear of any problems when the schools started to integrate?
Because you know a lot of schools didn't integrate peacefully, you know.
There was some fighting.
-
HENDERSON
- Back in the days in Little Rock, they had a confrontation, but up in
Fort Smith, they didn't have no confrontation, not at Fort Smith. It was
like I tell you, I can't remember hardly nothing happening like that in
Fort Smith. Just like I told you about when my grandmother got on the
bus and the man told her she had to move back to the back and she sat
right there, there wasn't no big disturbance in that. She sat and went
on where she had to go.Just like at the ball game, we knew we had to sit in the bleachers, we
sit in the bleachers. We didn't have no confrontation. And people, they
wanted to buy something, you get in line, and the white would get right
behind you. They didn't try to get in front of you and tell you to get
back or whatever. You stood in line, got what you had, and just like
when the game was over— I told you we had a restaurant right across the
street. Whites would come over there and eat and everything. And we had
the only toilet in the neighborhood that flushed.
-
MILES
- I remember that. [laughs]
-
HENDERSON
- They would use the toilet and everything.
-
MILES
- What were the police like in Fort Smith?
-
HENDERSON
- Well, the only thing I can remember, my mother and them told about how
this one police officer, he was real bad off, and he used to do the
blacks wrong until they had a shooting and he ended up losing an arm.
They put him on one of them three-wheeled motor scooters, and that's the
last little confrontation I ever heared about.But like I was telling you about the kid named Snooky and how his mother
used to whup him, he used to go around and pick up cigarettes. His mind
was a little disturbed. And I remember him going down on Eighth Street
and stealing a horse, and he rode that horse all over the neighborhood
and everything else. Then he took the horse and rode him down Garrison
Avenue and put the horse on a meter, and the horse was all up on the
sidewalk doing its thing. And the police came and came up in the
theater, and he knew exactly who to call for. He told him if he don't
come and clean up that— And they made him take that horse back to where
he stole it from. They wouldn't even put him in jail.
-
MILES
- They didn't put him in jail, huh?
-
HENDERSON
- No, his mind, he was disturbed.
-
MILES
- But that's really different, I mean interesting, compared to what your
experience with the police is like in San Diego versus Arkansas.
-
HENDERSON
- And even like the Woodard brothers. Them Woodard brothers, they were
bad. Remember I told you they stuck the ice pick in my daddy's house and
everything, well, them Woodard brothers, them was the ones that was
really messed up for the blacks there as far as in the community. You
couldn't lay nothing down.
-
MILES
- How did they make it bad for the blacks?
-
HENDERSON
- Through stealing chickens and, you know, just messing up.
-
MILES
- Did the police know is was them?
-
HENDERSON
- Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah, if anything went wrong in Fort Smith, they'd go
looking for the Woodard brothers. There was seven of them. All bad,
too.
-
MILES
- I was thinking it was just two of them.
-
HENDERSON
- No, seven of them.
-
MILES
- Seven. Winter? What's their names?
-
HENDERSON
- Woodard. And I remember one stole a chicken and a guy shot him with a
shotgun half in two, both barrels over a chicken. I never will forget
that.
-
MILES
- We really are running out of tape now. So I'm going to give you some—
Any last words you want to put out there to the young people?
-
HENDERSON
- Oh, Lordy, that's the main thing. Whatever you young folks do, please
come together. You love one another, you know, and communicate with one
another. If you have a problem with one another, talk to one another
about it. You don't need all this shooting and cutting and cussing out
one another. And honor your father and your mother, you know. Don't talk
back to your mom and dad. If you have a problem, go to them like two
human beings should be. Don't go up there cussing at your mama or
threatening her or hitting her and slapping on her. You know, start
communicating.And to you young women's that pregnant and everything, when you're
pregnant, try not to disturb your child that you're going to give birth
to. Treat the baby just like it's already here, because when the baby
come into the world and can remember the way it is, and she can hear
everything that you're talking about, or him. And you got to teach a
baby to honor their father and their mother, just like the Bible says,
and your days will be long and holy.I believe thoroughly in the Bible, and that's the way I was raised under
the Bible. I used to watch my daddy preach in front of the mirror and
make different expressions and everything, and I knew the sermon before
he'd say it and everything.But God is good, and trust in him, and he'll always be good to you if you
be good to him.
-
MILES
- Okay. Well, on that note, I'd like to thank you. It's been a tremendous
pleasure to meet you and to talk with you.[End of March 28, 2004 interview]