Interview with Geoffrey Ellis, December 10, 2021

Joseph Manning: What's today? I know what today is, it's December 10th, which is my daughter's third birthday.

Geoffrey Ellis: Oh, man. You better --

Deirdre Ellis: And you're out working?

JM: Well, she's at her grandma's house. And we'll pick her up later and do birthday stuff. She's going to have a big party tomorrow.

GE: Good. You bring me a picture or something of her, I want to see her.

JM: Oh, I'll show you as many pictures as you want, Rev.

GE: Okay.

JM: So, today is December the 10th, and I'm here at the Ellis household with Deirdre Ellis and Reverend Geoffrey Ellis. December 10th, 2021. And we're going to conduct a follow-up interview, I think this is interview four, to sort of fill in some of the gaps and get a little bit more of the story of Reverend Ellis' very full and productive life. So, while we're looking at photos, guys, 1:00we'll just have the tape rolling. And we can talk about the things we find, and I'll just go ahead and I'll be asking some questions about this document that I gave you last time, reverend, which is I think really --

I mean, there's a lot going on. You've had a very busy life. You've done a lot of things. And I really appreciate you all going through it and thinking about the kind of questions that I had laid out. Reverend, if I may, I think I'd like to start back where I made that mistake the first time and I dropped the recorder. I lost about 20 minutes of our first conversation. And what you were telling me about was your childhood in Russell on Walnut Street. So, I wonder if we could just spend maybe 10 or 15 minutes talking about that part of your life, the earliest parts that you remember. Can you take me all the way back to those early days on Walnut Street? What do you remember about those days?

GE: Well, firstly, I remember where I lived, 2108 West Walnut. And the house was a two-story house with a backyard and a front yard. I remember that I had a lot of family members that lived in that house. I had my aunt, my cousin, my grandmother, and my great grandmother. We all lived in that house. We lived upstairs and they lived downstairs. We didn't stay there long, but we stayed there about -- See, I must've been -- [Inaudible] with John Clarke, I was standing in the yard -- That's what you got in your hand?

DE: No.

GE: No? Oh. And the second thing I remember about those days, is that I would 3:00take my father his lunch and he lived only about a block, not lived, I'm sorry, he worked only about a block from where we lived. That's what they call the Green Turtle, this was a bar, he was a bartender, bar keep. I would take him his lunch and how all the people always greeted me, "Here comes Little Goody, Little Goody." They knew me.

I remember walking up there and coming back. And I remember that I went to a school called James Bond, which is you're going to have to look that good at. And I got a picture somewhere of all of the kids, all of us were out in the backyard of the school. It was a one building school and we were -- Then, okay, 4:00so I remember that. I also remember, we had an indoor toilet. Yeah, we had a indoor toilet and a lot of people didn't. I don't know how we got one and nobody else had one.

JM: I remember you said that before. What stands out about that memory? Why do you think you remember that? Because it was so [inaudible -- crosstalk]?

GE: Well, I remember that because -- Now, wait a minute, let me back up. We might not have had an indoor toilet, and I think what I really appreciated about the bricks, Shepperd Square, when we moved from Walnut Street to Shepperd Square was that they had a indoor restroom.

JM: Oh, okay.

GE: See, that's why that sticks in my mind, the thing we did not have. Yeah.

JM: Let me ask you a little bit about the Green Turtle, where was that located?

GE: Let's see, we were at 21st, 20th and Walnut then. On the Northeast corner of 5:0020th and Walnut.

JM: Okay, what kind of joint was it?

GE: It was just a joint. I mean, it was a --

DE: Neighborhood.

GE: Neighborhood, it wasn't something big. It was something the size of a house.

JM: Right.

GE: But it was a bar.

JM: And how long did your dad work there?

GE: He must have worked there and we stayed there. He must have worked there 10 years; he must have worked there a little while. Because when we moved to Smoketown, he still was working there.

JM: Like I said in my note before, I love -- And I know these things of course because it was a lifetime ago, it can be hard to remember. But tell me about walking down there with the lunch, what kind of lunch did your mom make for him?

GE: Yeah, she made a two or three course dinner. And I can remember holding it 6:00and walking down street, you could do that then. I mean, nobody bothers you. Of course, I was a little tike. I was about 12.

DE: Mm-mm.

GE: Huh?

JM: I think you moved --

GE: 10?

DE: You was in Sheppard Square at 12.

GE: Okay, so it must have been --

JM: Yeah, I think you maybe moved to Sheppard Square six or eight. Is that possible?

GE: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, that's what impressed me about it. Even at that young age, I could walk down the street and take him his lunch, go in the bar and everybody would greet me.

JM: What did they call you?

GE: Little Goody. Because my father's nickname was Goody.

JM: Is that right?

GE: Yeah, because he was such a nice guy.

JM: Was he?

GE: Yeah.

JM: What was he like?

GE: Well, everybody knew him because he was charismatic like, but he wasn't overbearing with it. People that he knew and he liked, they were his friends, and they were his friends real deeply. He had a alcohol problem, and that's why 7:00I always wondered why in the heck is he working in a bar?

JM: Right.

GE: But it didn't bother me because he wasn't a reckless alcoholic, can I say that? Does that make sense?

JM: Sure. I get it.

GE: I mean, I don't know when he drank, I never seen him drink.

JM: Oh, really?

GE: No, I didn't. But I got a picture of him somewhere over there where he and I are in the house, and I'm sitting on his lap. Yeah, there it is. In the projects, after we moved to Sheppard Square, showing that he was present in my life.

JM: Wow.

GE: There I am, sitting there and we were reading the paper. There would be times that he would -- and it was really prolific to me, is there would be times that he wouldn't drink for about six or seven months. He would go on the wagon, 8:00you'd call it. And that's where he got the Goody thing from.

JM: Oh.

GE: Then it had to be another two or three months, whatever, the rest of the year that he would drink every day and people would bring him home. Cabs would pick him up, bring him home, wouldn't charge him. Why? Because he was Goody. So, that part of his life, I remember that vividly. But that picture there is a good picture of my relationship with him. He took me to football games and I was his only son at the time, I thought. I pretty much was. I had a sister that I met later on; we found out we were brother and sister, she's pointing to her. But there ought to be a picture in there and I don't know where it's at, that he and I went to Male High Stadium on a Thanksgiving Day, and I had a hat on.

JM: Really?

GE: Yeah. I had a big boy hat on. And what was important about that was that those Thanksgiving Day games were real important in the black community. Because that's when Central High School played somebody, anybody, whoever they played. Central High School was the color of the high school, as you called it. And to go to one of those Thanksgiving Day games was a big deal at Male High Stadium, which is still up there in the east end of town. And he and I were at the game, and I got a picture somewhere of he and I together.

JM: Just the two of you?

GE: Mm-hmm.

JM: And how old do you think you were roughly?

GE: Probably between 10 and 12.

JM: Yeah, huh.

GE: Yeah, between 1950 and 1952.

JM: Well, do you remember who won that game?

GE: No. Usually -- No, not all the time, usually Central won. At that point in time though, they were only playing other African American schools on Thanksgiving. They weren't playing anybody too much local.

JM: Right. So, your dad would be -- If I remember correctly, you said one time that, were there times when he wasn't around very much?

GE: Oh, yeah. Yeah.

JM: When did that happen?

GE: That happened before I went off to the military. And I went to the military in 1957, I joined after high school. So, in the 50s, no, in the late 50s --No, let me straighten that out. He was around until I went to the service. Because I 11:00got a picture of us at church, when they were sending me off to the military. Had the sign, him, and my grandmother, and my mother. So, he was always in my life, up until the time that I went in the military. And when I came back, they had separated. And my mother was married to another guy.

JM: Oh, she got married while you were gone?

GE: Hmm.

JM: I'd love to check out any of those you have over there, Deidre.

GE: I don't know. What do you think, Deidre? Oh, probably did. Yeah, no doubt, no doubt, no doubt. Because when I came back, she was out of the projects. And her and Mr. Robert, the new stepdad, were living down on 28th Street, across the 12:00street from the -- The house is still there. It's the alley behind the post office, which is in the -- post office isn't there no more either. It's the shopping center at 28th and Broadway. Pizza Hut, Pizza House is there now. Pizza Place, what is it, Deidre?

DE: Pizza Hut.

GE: Pizza Hut. Right behind Pizza Hut, there's an alley where the house was at.

DE: Chase Court.

GE: Chase Court. And that's where she was at when I got back out of the Navy.

JM: And so, like you say, that picture is really endearing. So, you and your father were pretty close growing up?

GE: Yeah, yeah. Because I mean, I was his only son, and he took me to Levy Brothers. I remember this, Levy Brother's clothing store in Loevenhart's, where you bought good clothes. And he took me there and he dressed me out of there, out of Loevenhart's and Levy Brothers. So, I was always an admired kid because 13:00my clothes were little suits.

JM: Looking sharp, huh?

GE: Yeah, I was pretty sharp. He made sure I was pretty sharp, it's good.

JM: Where was that store?

GE: It was on the corner of --

DE: Loevenhart's is where the Spaghetti Factory is now.

GE: Yeah, right where the Spaghetti Factory is.

JM: Oh, okay.

DE: It used to be closed.

GE: That was, what I'd say, Loevenhart's and what else?

DE: Loevenhart's.

JM: And was your dad a pretty sharp dresser?

GE: Yeah.

JM: Okay. Yeah. I mean, he looks really dapper in that photograph.

GE: There he is there with the hat.

JM: Yeah.

GE: And there I am, I don't know where that picture was taken, and there is my mother.

JM: Do you think it was taken at -- What was the name of that studio?

DE: Evans?

GE: Evans.

JM: Oh, okay.

DE: Probably if I take it out of the frame [inaudible] because they always involved, it was really Matt Brown --

JM: Yeah, Matt Brown.

DE: Matt Brown or Arthur Evans --

JM: Arthur Evans, yeah.

DE: They was the two black prominent --

GE: Yeah. That picture you just scanned is another era. That's the Delta 14:00Airlines era.

JM: Delta, yeah.

GE: [Inaudible -- crosstalk]. That's in the 60s, you're moving into the 60s.

JM: Well, let me take you back to the house on Walnut. Can you tell me a little bit about your grandmother and your great grandmother? What were their names?

GE: Oh, boy. My grandmother's name was Mama Nel, Nellie. Yeah. Nellie Ellis.

DE: She was --

GE: Huh?

DE: She was Bradshaw.

JM: Okay.

GE: Oh. I'm over here, I'm not going to ask where the Ellis came in.

DE: She married your granddaddy, Duck Ellis.

GE: And she was before that a Bradshaw?

DE: Yeah.

GE: Yeah. Because my great grandmother was Emma, right? Emma Bradshaw?

JM: Okay. And she lived in the house too? --

GE: And she lived in the same house. And my father and my uncle, Uncle Norman lived there too. Obviously, my father lived there because me and my father and 15:00mother lived upstairs. And one memorable thing that happened was that because he walked in the bar, and he also ran the gambling game in the back.

JM: Ah ha.

GE: Ah ha, he was the house man.

JM: Okay.

GE: That mean he had a lot of silver dollars in them days, Bo-Dollars, we called them.

JM: Bo-Dollar.

GE: Yeah. And he had a stack of them on the dresser, and we all three slept in the same room. Went to bed one night, woke up and they were gone. And we don't know who come in, how they got in, and got them, and they were gone. I never figured that out, I couldn't understand that.

JM: Oh, man.

GE: Yeah. I mean, that just blew my mind. I don't know if he didn't put them there, but they weren't there.

JM: Huh. What kind of gambling? Shooting dice, cards, what?

GE: Yeah, yeah. Dice. Yeah, dice. He was always the house man for that game in the Green Turtle. And also, for another gambling place in the east end called, what is it, Circle Bar? But there's another place that he was a house man too. And what I could always do was remember all about that, Joe, I could always go into the bar, go into the back room, just a kid, they knew me. And he would give me money to take home, "Take this." And it'd be all right with everybody.

JM: Wow, wow.

GE: Yeah, that was big time stuff for me.

JM: I'm sure. I bet that felt pretty cool --

GE: I mean, everybody was back there smoking and hollering and gambling. And he would, "Here comes the Little Goody."

JM: Oh, man. That's cool. I mean, that must have felt like as a little kid, that you must have felt like you were part of the club, part of something special.

GE: Big got in, I'd go in there. And obviously, no other kids could go in there. But I was his son, so I could get in there.

JM: So, what about grandma and your great grandma. You've told me they had a big effect on you, but I don't know how. What type of ladies were they?

GE: My grandma was a real light-skinned lady. We don't have any picture of her. We might have one, that we went down to the church, do you remember going there in 1957. My mother, my grandmother, and daddy, and I was kind of standing in the back. But the affect she had on me was, she made my father and my uncle, which were brothers, do right. I mean, I could see her telling them, "You got to stop that drinking. And stop fussing with your wife and carrying on," which was my mother.

I never seen my mother and father fight. I think one time they got into a heated argument, verbally. And I remember getting in between them saying, "Woah, woah, 18:00woah." And I must've been in Sheppard Square, I know, so I had to be about 12/13. But he never put his hands on her, never seen nothing like that. But anyway, my grandmother, that's what you're asking about. My grandmother, can you show him a picture? Oh.

DE: I will send you that.

JM: Yeah, please do. You can send it to my phone at 5-0 -- Here, I can put it in there if you want. Wow. Is this a picture of a picture? Or a scan, or what?

DE: Scan of the Navy.

GE: When is that?

DE: Of you in the Navy with a group of guys. I guess --

GE: Oh, three guys, we were in Cuba.

DE: No, not the one of you in Cuba.

GE: Oh.

DE: The one with you -- Oh, here's the one in Cuba.

JM: Wow. Yeah, we got that one --

GE: What am I looking at? What is that?

DE: This one with --

GE: Oh, this is in bootcamp.

DE: Oh.

GE: That's in Great Lakes. That's in bootcamp, that's in 1957. But you got to 19:00get back to the grandmother.

JM: That's right.

DE: Oh, here she is. Now, that's his grandfather, his mother's father. That's Willy --

GE: Willis.

DE: Willy. It's Willis, let me get the last -- Holt.

GE: Holt.

DE: Willis Holt.

GE: Willis Holt.

DE: Willis Preston Holt.

GE: Are you showing my grandmother?

DE: No.

GE: Oh.

DE: This is your --

GE: Grandfather.

DE: Grandfather Willis. Your mother's father.

GE: My mother's side.

JM: Now where was that picture taken, do you think?

DE: In Terra Haute.

JM: Terra Haute, Indiana.

DE: Mm-hmm.

JM: Is that where your people are from?

DE: No. His grandfather, after his grandmother, her mother died at the [inaudible].

GE: Yeah. And she knows that.

DE: Yeah. I do the family history. And that is Mr. Goody, and that's Grandma Nell.

JM: My goodness.

GE: What is that, I ain't seen it. Have I seen that?

DE: That's the one you all standing out in front of church when you're going into the Navy.

GE: Oh, okay. Yeah. Now, that's a good picture, Joe. That's --

JM: But where is this photograph, do you know? The actual one, the physical one.

GE: It's somewhere.

DE: I gave it to him because he was sending it to his cousin. And I don't know where the actual photo is.

GE: What'd we do to it?

JM: That's a great photo --

DE: Because it's the same day as this one. I have to find it; I don't know where. I'll find the actual photo.

JM: All right. Here, I'll trade you this phone for whatever you got there. Those look beautiful.

GE: Grandmother also lived in Beecher Terrace, that's how I got my Beecher Terrace roots. And my mother used to let me go stay with her, while she worked at 12th and Walnut in the drugstore. And so, I would stay with my grandmother, while she worked from about 6:00 to 12:00, till they close, I would be with my grandmother in Beecher Terrace. And then, I would interact with my uncle who lived there with her. Crazy, he lived there with her and it was just a one-bedroom house. So, she had her bed in the front room. But my grandmother was 21:00--Man, take me back because she was really important. I mean, I love my grandmother.

DE: She worked in the --

GE: Chili Parlor.

DE: In the Old Walnut Street Chili Parlor.

GE: Yeah. And I did too, standing on a box.

DE: His grandmother and his mother.

GE: My mother, mm-hmm. My mother, my grandmother, and me. That generation. Look at that, that's three generations. I would stand on a box and wash dishes. And again, I was the only kid that was doing that kind of stuff. Because here I am in a business, a serious business, Chili Parlor. Washing dishes, standing on a box. I didn't see no other kids doing that kind of stuff. Because my father and my uncle were so well known on Walnut Street.

JM: Really?

GE: That's how I could get away with all that. The Chili Parlor, Joe, it kept trying to create that chili from that point on and never could get it right. But 22:00the Chili Parlor lady was a Mexican.

JM: Is that a fact?

GE: Yeah. Her husband was a Mexican. That's right, she was not a Mexican. Her husband. Call him something, Joe. And that chili was so different from any other chili anybody ever had, that she offered my mother to take that chili, go to Cincinnati, and open up a place for it. My mother wouldn't leave because my father. "And I ain't going to leave my husband, we ain't going nowhere." So, my grandmother worked in there, and then that chili house, Chili Parlor, tried to keep that recipe and move next to the little place on Broadway.

JM: Now, whose recipe was it? Are you saying it was your mom's recipe?

GE: No, it wasn't my mom's. It was the lady that brought it from Mexico.

JM: Okay. Her husband was a Mexican guy and she was a African American lady?

GE: Mm-mm. No, she was a white lady.

JM: I'll be darned.

GE: Or Mexican one, I couldn't tell then. But she was on Walnut Street with all the businesses, when Walnut Street was in its heyday.

JM: Yeah.

GE: Okay. Before renewal.

JM: Right. And so, you worked there with your mom and your uncle. Is that right?

GE: My mom and my grandmother.

JM: Your mom and your grandmother, okay. They were working in the kitchen?

GE: Yeah. No, they served the chili. My grandmother helped make it and put it together, put it on the counter. And my mother took it to the tables, and I washed the dishes and kept the dishes moving.

JM: Wow, man.

GE: So, we really were helping in the business.

JM: And your mom also worked at the drugstore?

GE: Mm-hmm.

JM: Which one?

GE: 12th Street, called Zach's, Z-A-C-H. Zach is that how you spell that?

JM: That sounds right.

DE: Z-A-C-K.

GE: Z-A-C-K.

DE: I mean, that's how I spell Zacks. But I don't know, it could be spelled --

GE: But it was Zacks, it was on the corner of 12th and Walnut, or Muhammad Ali. 12th and Walnut, I'm going to keep it where it is. 12th and Walnut. And I used to be able to have the brand-new funny books, comic books because no other kids had access to comic books until somebody had passed them on or whatever. Mine were brand new. And so, I was very popular because I had these new comic books. Because she would bring some home every night. Yeah, she would bring some home every night, a new comic book.

JM: You're a sharp dresser, you got new comic books, you got a job. Everybody knows you; it sounds like a pretty good time in Walnut Street.

GE: Yeah. Yeah. Everybody knew me because of my mother and her working in a 25:00public place. And my dad, and him -- I call, what is it called?

JM: The Green Turtle.

GE: Yeah, the Green Turtle. So, people knew me but I didn't know them. They would see me and say, "Little Goody." I'd answer, "Hey." But I didn't know them. And all of them people, of course, that I used to know through that are dead, obviously. Once in a while, I'd run into a man that run around with my daddy, and knew me from being Little Goody.

I haven't had that happen lately, but I had that happen when I started going over to St. Stephens to the gym. I ran into a guy that was coming in the gym. And he and my father, he said, used to go up to Chicago. This is cool, go up to 26:00Chicago, get a trunk load of marijuana and bring it back to Louisville. But on the way, they got chased by, what was the gangster's name?

DE: Al Capone.

GE: Al Capone.

DE: I don't know if that's the --

GE: Well, no, no. Well, I mean --

DE: His story sounds kind of [inaudible].

GE: Well, no. The guy told me that, I didn't know nothing about it. He said, "Me and your daddy used to run marijuana from Chicago back to Louisville. And one time, Al Capone's guys got in behind us and chased us all the way to Louisville." They used to go up to Chicago and get this marijuana and bring it back.

JM: Wow.

GE: So, my daddy, yeah, he did not only drink alcohol, he was a marijuana man.

JM: And so, you went over to the gym at LCCC and --

GE: No, to the gym in St. Stephens.

JM: St. Stephens, my bad. And somebody just came up to you and brought this up, huh?

GE: Yeah. He's about 80 something years old, but he used to come over to the gym. Yep, sure did [inaudible -- crosstalk].

JM: Man, that's fascinating.

GE: Blew me away.

JM: Now, tell me a little bit about, I didn't know that your grandmother -- after you all left Walnut Street to go to Sheppard Square, your grandmother moved to Beecher Terrace, is that right?

GE: No, she was there before.

JM: Different grandmother?

GE: Oh.

JM: Your dad's mom, maybe.

DE: No, that's the same woman. That's the same woman.

JM: Okay. So, she lived with you on Walnut Street?

GE: Yeah.

DE: Then they went to --

GE: Then we went to Sheppard Square --

DE: She went to Beecher Terrace.

GE: She went to Beecher Terrace.

JM: Okay. And tell me about your recollections of Beecher Terrace at that time.

GE: Oh, boy. Well, a lot of athletes for Central High School came out of Beecher Terrace. I was one of the only kids that could be in Beecher Terrace, but lived in Sheppard Square. Because talking about gangs, it was territorial kind of a 28:00thing. You could go all over the city, but you couldn't date the girls in Beecher Terrace if you lived in Sheppard Square. They didn't want you to.

JM: Right, okay.

GE: But if you did and you were able to go down and see them, you would have to pass some kind of ritual, do something. You just couldn't walk in there and say, "Where are you from?" "You're from Sheppard Square, man, you better get out of here." So, grandmother lived in Beecher Terrace. I and my mother and dad lived in Sheppard Square. And I went to Sheppard Square in the late 40s, real early 50s, so about nine years old when I went to Sheppard Square.

JM: Okay. And you all lived on what street?

GE: Finzer, F-I-N-Z-E-R.

JM: Finzer, of course.

GE: They're still there. Yeah.

JM: Okay. I'm going to move us down the line a little bit. Man, oh, man. So, 29:00that one photograph in front of the boot shop is somewhere in the world?

DE: I don't know if it still exists. Because we did have [inaudible -- crosstalk] --

GE: Yeah, it exists. It's here somewhere.

DE: But I haven't seen it since the [inaudible -- crosstalk].

GE: With me standing in front of the bakery with the popcorn in my hand?

DE: I haven't seen it since Garfield.

GE: Oh, yeah. You have, heck yeah.

DE: No, I haven't seen it.

GE: I've seen it. Because you pulled it out. I told you Joe was going to see it and you pulled it out. Is it there?

JM: It's this one right here. Yeah. I can probably get a good scan of that; I'm going to try it again.

DE: That's the only one, I don't know where the actual photo is.

GE: I had it in my hand --

JM: I think I can get a good scan of it.

GE: Joe, you're going to have to cut that --

JM: Oh, yeah. Well, it magnifies pretty well. So, moving on down the line a little bit. Let's talk about --Oh, okay. Here we go. "I didn't want to go, I joined the Navy, and they immediately sent me to an aircraft carrier." Man, you 30:00told me some stories about that and I lost it on the first try.

GE: Oh, really? Okay.

JM: So, you did your basic training at Great Lakes.

GE: Right.

JM: And came out of there --

GE: Now, what was memorable about Great Lakes training was obviously the things I did. But my mother couldn't come to see me graduate. And so, my auntie had to come and see me graduate because she lived in Chicago. Oh, man. I was on the drill team that drilled in front of the stands of parents and visitors and officers. I was on the drill team, about 10 or 12 of us.

JM: Flags and rifles and stuff?

GE: Yeah, rifles. The stuff that the Marines you see do. Drill team.

JM: Drill core or something like that.

GE: Drill core, it's something like that. Drill team is really what it was.

JM: Okay.

GE: So, where you want to start? With the Navy stuff?

JM: So, you do basic and they send you to the Med.

GE: Yes, sir. Right away.

JM: Yeah, what ship were you on?

GE: Forrestal, I don't know if I got any pictures. But you can Google that, USS Forrestal.

JM: Okay. Tell me a little bit about it. What's it like to show up, you're green, you come from Smoketown Louisville, and all of a sudden, you're in the Mediterranean on an aircraft carrier. What are you thinking?

GE: Yeah. Well, the first thing, going to the aircraft carrier, I got my sea bag on my shoulder. And I'm walking down the dock to get to the ship. And I was walking under the ship and didn't know it, the overhang ship. Because it's the first of the supercarriers, where they had a angled deck where you could land, and if you didn't get caught by the resting gear, you'd go right off and go around again. I wouldn't like that. Before that carrier, they would have a streak deck. So, if you missed the wire, you went into a net and all that, you didn't hit nothing up front of the ship. So, this is a monster carrier.

JM: Huge.

GE: Oh, huge. I think 69,000 tons, something like that. Very huge; so huge that I was walking under the angled deck. And I asked the guy, "Where is the ship at?" He said, "Look up." "What? Wow." And I'm a Smoketown boy, I ain't seen nothing like that. Had never been to a body of water larger than a swimming pool.

JM: Oh my goodness.

GE: But here I am. So, I went on there and I stayed there. A lot of people went there and went to other places of duty. All my time in the Navy, I was on the USS Forrestal. And the exciting things that happened on there, they still talk about it now.

JM: Like what?

GE: Well, it's the most dangerous place to be on a ship, is on a flight deck of an aircraft carrier. With all this going on, with landings, and taking offs, and 33:00planes moving. Just a whole bunch of stuff happening. You can get hurt real easy, they say it's the most dangerous place to be.

JM: Sure. I believe that, for sure.

GE: Yeah. You either get hit by a propeller of an airplane with a propeller, and they still had some then. Or you get sucked up into a jet and that ain't good, you're dead.

JM: How many on the crew?

GE: The ship's complement was about 35 --

DE: 100.

GE: 100. And then, when everybody was on the ship and we were going overseas, you have about 40 something.

JM: Really?

GE: 100. Yeah, so big, that in fact, there was a guy on there from Louisville. I was writing to my girlfriend and she told me that, "Norman Brown, your buddies on the same ship." I said, "Well, I haven't seen him." And that was a year before I found that guy.

JM: Come on.

GE: Yeah, I'm telling you. I was working at night and he was working at day. And 34:00I just didn't see him. Now, none of them guys did I see any more after that. So, all that shows, Deidre, is me in bootcamp. [Inaudible -- crosstalk] and they call me Howdy. That was my nickname.

JM: Why?

GE: I don't know. Because look at that picture, I don't know.

DE: That's Howdy Doody.

GE: Yeah, Howdy Doody.

JM: That's funny.

GE: But I was popular. I was the second, only of two African Americans in that company. But I didn't feel the segregation. The first time being away from home in that kind of an environment, and did not feel segregated.

JM: Really?

GE: No, I remember that.

JM: Were you surprised by that?

GE: Yeah. Because back in Louisville, and there's certain places we can go. But then, in the Navy, here I am with, I don't know how many other guys, and we all were recruits, we all were in the Navy, and I was the best athlete in the company.

JM: Well, how many are in a company? I don't know.

GE: How many does that look, Deidre?

DE: I don't know.

GE: No. Go back, go back, go back. Right there. See us all there in the one class?

JM: Oh, okay.

GE: So, it was that large, 35, somewhere like 25, 35. Anywhere you see a picture of a group, that was a class, that was all of my, what do you call them in --Company. It was all my company; Company 72 I think I was in.

JM: Company 72. Okay.

GE: Well, you got the picture there, the pictures are back there of all of us. It was that many --

JM: And does that mean you all work together?

GE: Yeah.

JM: Live together?

GE: Yeah. Live together, work together, train together. And that's why I was surprised at the level -- It was a couple of guys that you could tell they were from the South somewhere, go back again. Go back again, go back again. Well, and 36:00go back one more time. You're right there. So, that's all the guys in the company right there.

JM: Okay.

GE: How many does that look like?

DE: That's five times five is 25, 50, 53. There's pictures.

GE: 53 guys all lived together.

JM: And what was your position?

GE: I was just a recruit like everybody else.

JM: What kind of job did you do?

GE: Well, we all did the same thing. When you're in basic training, you all do the same thing together. You stay together as a group, everything you do, you do together. You recognize as a group, you march together, everything. It probably tells you on the front of that, Company 270, does it tell you?

DE: It's company --

JM: 271. [Inaudible -- crosstalk].

GE: I almost remembered that, ain't that something, 271.

JM: But when you're on the ship, when you went to work every day, what did you do?

GE: Oh, gee. I was in the fuel. I was a air dell, and my job was refuel aircraft 37:00in a little squad of four. You know where you get that in?

JM: No, I'll just lay it right on top of there, flat.

GE: Now, you got to realize now, that's just nine weeks or whatever, basic training. That ain't the people on the ship.

JM: Okay. We got some other good pictures of that. So, what were some of the highlights of that cruise? You were on the Forrestal for how long?

GE: Four years.

JM: What'd you all get into?

GE: In the Mediterranean?

JM: Uh-huh.

GE: In Italy, France. The girls, we'd be out to sea for two and a half months, and then we'd go into -- But the place I like most in the Mediterranean was Naples, Italy. Italy.

JM: I've never been to Italy, what was it like?

GE: Well, on New Year's Eve, they throw things out the window. That's how crazy that was. They'd throw furniture and stuff out the window, that was how they celebrated. But there, again, we being African Americans, we being in a country where the other people are just almost the same color skin. We feel comfortable in Italy, in Spain. But not so comfortable in France. Cannes, France, on the beach. You know who was there, a lot of rich people were there.

JM: Right.

GE: So, we were just sailors. But that's where I first had my experience with, what was it, Deidre?

DE: Hepatitis.

GE: Hepatitis.

JM: Oh, yeah?

GE: Yeah. The fleet caught the Hepatitis. Here you got 45,000 people, men, because wasn't no women then. Men going to shore in Italy, in France. And we would come back half drunk, come back to the ship, and they would be selling food before we get on the boats to go out to the ship. And that food wasn't good. We didn't know it, we had the hamburger, hot dog.

And I caught hepatitis and half the fleet caught hepatitis. And they had to ship us, get us out of there. Get us off the ship and send us to Germany. Kaiserslautern, Germany, hospital in Kaiserslautern. I didn't think I'd remember that. Kaiserslautern, Germany. I stayed there about three or four weeks, got well. Because all they could do was feed you good food.

JM: That's all they could do, huh?

GE: Yeah. I guess they were giving us maybe some serum. We didn't know. But we got healed and went back to the ship.

DE: The kids colored on it.

GE: Things on the ship, Joe, that were memorable was just the fact of the excitement. You got to Google now any aircraft carrier, and you'll see how exciting that is. Planes taking off, planes landing. I mean, just exciting, never seen nothing like that. And now, she'll tell you, I go back now every once in a while and Google it, to see how all that operation went, just to remember all the things I did on the ship.

JM: Now, are these Navy pilots? Or are you guys hauling around Air Force pilots?

GE: Marine and Navy.

JM: Okay.

GE: No Air Force. Only the Marines and Navy, which the Marines, as you know, is a part of the Navy.

JM: Uh-huh.

GE: They are and she didn't know that.

JM: They don't like to talk about that.

GE: They don't like to talk about that. They don't like to talk about that. So, we're the ones that were always getting in some scuffles with them. Because they had a detachment of Marines on the ship, they really took care of the officers. 41:00There was a job as a detachment, and I guess, whatever, 50, 60, maybe 120. But we got along as long as we're on the ship because we had to get along with them.

JM: Right, you have to.

GE: Yeah. But when we got over in town, they went one way, we went the other. And if we met somewhere in town, there'd be a fight.

JM: Really?

GE: Yeah, Marines and Navy fight on land and live together at sea. Because Marines were sea and land type of a operation. And air, land, air. That's right, air, land, and sea. At sea, they were under our hand. And they had the planes, and they had the Marine pilots. We've seen a lot of accidents too, a lot of bad, people get killed.

JM: Just because of accidents on deck?

GE: Yeah. I told you it was a dangerous place, things going on. You got on your ears, it's probably why my ears ring now. There's no question. Because you get so used to these jets and things whining, the high whine, that you sometimes take your things off, unknowingly. You walk out on the deck, and the planes, and 42:00I bet that's why I got this whine in my ears. But anyway, yeah, I got saw a guy get sucked up in a jet.

JM: Oh no.

GE: And we got him out with a squeegee.

JM: Oh, buddy.

GE: Because the blades inside of there turn him at a high speed.

JM: Awful.

GE: And just shoot you up. And then, I seen another guy get hit by a airplane propeller, and knocked his head off. So, I wrote home and told my mama, "Mama, I kind of want to come home, the things I'm seeing --" She couldn't do nothing about it. But we really didn't know it, I could have got out because I was the only kid. I was the only child. So, you could get some kind of, whatever they 43:00called it, but I didn't want to.

JM: Yeah.

GE: I didn't want to. But I said I wanted to get out, but I really didn't. It was too exciting. Every year, going overseas and France, to Spain, Germany. One time we went up near Russia. Turks, Turkish people, they were some difficult people to deal with.

JM: Did you get off the ship in Turkey?

GE: Yeah.

JM: Man, I've always wanted to go to Turkey. No. 1 travel destination.

GE: Now, sure. But then, mm-mm.

JM: So, when you come home --

GE: So, I get out in '61.

JM: And your mom has moved, she's remarried. That had to be pretty jarring, I would think.

GE: Yeah. She wrote and told me. And I mean, getting it in a letter -- Because I never thought I would see them separate.

JM: So, you were surprised?

GE: Yeah. Oh, heck yeah. "What the heck is going on?" But I knew he would still 44:00be in my life, it's not that he wouldn't be. And he was. But I got home, where my mother lived at, and stayed with her and my stepfather. And he was a good guy. He really was a good guy, stepfather. Mr. Robert. So, I stayed there, they had a room for me.

JM: Sorry, where was that house?

GE: Chase Court.

JM: Okay.

GE: 2801, 280 something Chase Court. Still there, house still there. Go in the back, and he in the basement, he had a train set up, a model train.

JM: Really?

GE: Yeah, he had a model train. I mean, he had a big one.

JM: Really?

GE: All in the basement. And I'd go down there and he'd let me run the trains. But yeah, when I stayed with my mother there at Chase Court, I was beginning to -- I'm out of the Navy, so I'm beginning to stretch out. I hadn't met Ross yet. What was I doing, I wasn't doing --

JM: Started working at Delta pretty soon after that?

GE: Yeah. Yeah, that's good. You caught me right there. And that's the picture right there.

JM: Yeah, great photograph. And that's your mom and your aunt.

GE: Uh-huh.

JM: Real quick, let me just go ahead and get you to tell me the names of the people in your family. Your father's name?

GE: Chancy Ellis.

JM: Okay, and your mom's name?

GE: Wilimae, W-I-L-I-M-A-E. Who else, grandmother?

JM: Uh-huh.

GE: Nellie, N-E-L-L-I-E. Grandmother was Emma --

DE: Great --

GE: Huh?

DE: Great grandmother.

GE: Great grandmother was Emma, E-M-M-A.

JM: Your aunt?

GE: My aunt was Creamer, C-R-E-A-M-E-R. Right? Yeah. And who else was there? My uncle, my uncle. My mother's brother, he stayed with us a while in Sheppard Square, Smoketown. He was a merchant police, we call them security guard now, we 46:00call them.

JM: Oh, okay.

GE: Yeah. He was that.

DE: Walter.

GE: Walter. His name was Walter. And I remember what I remember about him, other than him being a good guy and all that, and then moving over in New Albany and me going over there and staying with him on the weekend when my mother worked. What I remember about him, he had his gun. He would come and put his gun up on the shelf of the closet. And one time, I got up and got it, and I think about it now, it could have been the end of me because it was a pistol. It was not a medic, so you could put the hammer back and pull it and bam. And I got it, and I don't know what I did with it. And he found out and got a whipping for that.

JM: I bet.

GE: Yeah, got a whipping.

JM: What was your cousin's name?

GE: My cousin?

JM: That you lived with on Walnut Street?

GE: Oh, John Clarke.

JM: Okay.

DE: Irvin.

GE: They didn't live with me, but he just said the one that lived with me.

DE: On Walnut Street, Irvin, Norman, Chancy, and John Clarke.

GE: Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, all of us. Dog gone it. Yeah, yeah. Irvin, Chancy, and Norman, Norman being the oldest. Irvin just died here this year. But all of them are gone. Except John Clarke, who I can't connect with. Last I heard about him, it was my Aunt Creamer's son. And somewhere, there's a picture of him.

JM: Because she would go out to LA because she was a model --

GE: She went to LA and lived. And he was in the Navy, and he retired in the Navy.

JM: Oh, really?

GE: Yeah. He retired in the Navy; he was an officer.

JM: I'll be darned.

GE: But we were all so close. John Clarke, do you have the picture where John Clarke are in the yard, in the front yard, and I'm looking down the street and John's there? Yeah. But we were really close.

JM: Yeah. They're around your same age?

GE: Mm-hmm. But John Clarke was my same age. Irvin, the next one, was a year older. Chancy a year older, Norman a year older. And they were kids of my uncle.

DE: It has to be upstairs.

GE: Okay. Well, I don't know if you're going to get it all, how are you going to find it?

DE: Good question. I'd have to go through all them pictures again.

GE: But is that important for you to have a picture of John Clarke?

JM: No, it's not. It's not. We're looking pretty good. I tell you, the pictures that would be most helpful to me are you -- The boot shop, I think we got a pretty good scan, that's going to work. Any of that era, you and the BULK guys, that crew, that kind of family that you were in with.

GE: I don't have any pictures that I can remember about that.

JM: Yeah. The BULK and you had a house at 35th and Broadway.

GE: The what? Oh, that house down there --

JM: The commune type house at 35th and Broadway.

GE: No pictures of that. I didn't take them, if somebody took them, somebody else took them.

JM: That's all right, that's all right.

GE: Deidre, I don't think you'll ever find that because I don't think I have nothing.

DE: What?

GE: On that era that Joe is talking about. He's talking about the era where I was involved with the Black Unity League of Kentucky and we were doing kind of a communal thing. Living down on there, you know where the donut shop used to be there on Broadway?

DE: Mm-hmm.

GE: The house next to it is where we lived. I ate them donuts --

JM: Now, which donut shop? I'm trying to think of where it is that we're talking about.

DE: It's on Sutcliffe and Broadway. I think it was Sutcliffe and Broadway.

GE: On the left-hand side going down there.

DE: Yeah.

JM: Now, here we have some pictures that look like they're around that time, but who can say, really.

GE: No, no. None of them are around that time. Yeah, when I knew Ross. Which one is before I got married? The one over top of you?

DE: This ones of me and you, that was in Central Park. It had to be around '79, '80, 1979, '80. Because we got married in January '81.

JM: Okay, okay.

GE: And anywhere you see Ross, that's the era you're talking about.

JM: So, these guys right here?

GE: That's me and him.

JM: You and Ross, you got a guitar. Where is this picture taken?

GE: It was in the house somewhere. His house, Ross' house, he got all these pajamas. Robe, I mean.

JM: That's cool. That's a good photograph, that's a really good photograph.

GE: The one on the left of that, I'm standing on a deck. That's out there on 7th Street. So, at that time, I was working with Delta Airlines, that's my Delta 51:00Airlines time. Because I had went out to LA, I used to go back and forth. Remember I told you because I had a pass on a plane? So, I could run around, I was kind of a hip guy. That's where I got the idea about the Boot Gallery.

JM: Right. Yeah, you told me. Yep. Do you happen to remember, you said it was maybe one of the LA Lakers that owned that shop out there? Do you remember saying that?

GE: No, it wasn't. It was one of the gangsters.

JM: Oh.

GE: It was the gangster kind of guys, the gang. The gang had made money and opened up a shop like that.

JM: Oh, okay.

GE: And I don't know what gang, could have been the Blood, the Crips, could have been any one of them.

JM: Yeah, yeah.

GE: But he had opened up that shop and made it like a living room, lamps, couches.

JM: Right. That was a good idea, sounds like it worked for a while too.

GE: When I brought it back here, it was very popular. I just got full of myself and didn't pursue it.

JM: So, here I have a note, basically, I edited this chapter together. You get out of the Navy, you're working at Delta, you're making some money, buy a car, moved out of your mom's house. And then, the way I have put it together, trying to kind of get you into talking about running around with Ross and ultimately, the BULK crew, talking about sort of your Pan-African ideology. We got a little bit of missing material.

And so, when I wrote these questions out, what I'd like you to think about, just maybe for a few minutes, is when you're working at Delta, you're moving out on your own, you're starting to hang around with the communal living set. I kind of want you to get you to reflect on what your ideas were, and what was going on at 53:00that time. So, you start to work at Delta, what's happening in Louisville? You've talked about being a west end advocate kind of your whole life, but what do you remember about this moment when you're working at Delta, maybe right before you're at the Boot Gallery, but right around that time, what's your thinking like? What are you concerned with?

GE: The fact that, I mean, everybody kind of had a job because International Harvester was going strong, and people had jobs. But my recollection of that period of time is that I was pretty free. And when I say free, I mean, freewheeling. I mean, I had a car, I had a nice car, I had a Riviera.

JM: Really? Nice vehicle.

GE: Huh?

JM: That's a nice vehicle.

GE: Yeah, I had a Buick Riviera. Nice car, green. That's when I got addicted to the color green. But anyway, living in the apartments down on 44th Street, 44th and between River Park and Broadway, essentially. I began to manage those apartments where I live because the black guy owned them, and he asked me to manage them. And I got into apartment management, had a car, lived in an apartment, had girls running in and out. And then, that's probably when I met my wife, first wife. Yeah.

DE: That's you and Mary Anne. Oh, don't worry, I was there.

GE: Well, we were down on 44th. She lived on 43rd.

DE: No, of the picture.

GE: Oh, the picture. We were out of town, so we were in New York, I think. We went to New York.

JM: So, this is around the time -- I mean, what year do you think that is?

GE: I can't, let me see. What year did I get married, Deidre?

DE: I don't know when you got married the first time.

GE: How old is Regina? You had to go back to there?

DE: Oh, lord. [Inaudible -- crosstalk].

GE: Regina's 59.

JM: Okay. So, you all get married around that time --

GE: She's 59 now. So, count back --

DE: Who's 59?

GE: How old is Regina?

DE: She's not 59, Sherry's 59, Regina is 57. She's two years younger. Sherry's 59.

GE: All right.

DE: Because Sherry's 10 years younger than me.

GE: Well, that means you go back. Regina's 57 and whatever year that is, backing up.

JM: Okay. So, you all got married and you had a family. How many kids did you all have?

GE: One. Just had one. Again, everybody was just one. But that was a real wild roots kind of a time in my life. Because I got married, had the daughter --

JM: Regina.

GE: Mm-hmm, yeah. Yeah, Regina. And we lived in the apartments that I used to manage on 44th Street. And I was still running around, and that's when one of my other daughters, had another daughter out of wedlock. And my wife found out and 57:00then we got divorced, began the divorce proceedings. And she kept me away from my daughter that we had. And I and my daughter had to get together later on. I and my daughter had to get together, and I had to explain all that to her, why that happened and whatnot. Because she kept away from me until my daughter moved to Atlanta.

JM: So, the daughter who's a judge now?

GE: Mm-hmm.

JM: Yeah. That sounds really hard, Rev.

GE: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's what happened there.

JM: That's really hard stuff. Okay. And then, that's also around the time when you're opening the boot shop, is that right?

GE: Mm-hmm.

JM: Which is '70 --Gosh, I know all this, hold on.

GE: You tell me now, it was in the 70s, right? Or what? Yeah, it's about the time of the Boot Gallery.

JM: Okay. Man, I wish I knew what year that was. That was the late 70s, early 80s. Okay. So, you got a loan from the SBA, Captain's Closet.

GE: Hold on, just a minute.

JM: Oh, yeah. Sure.

JM: Oh, you're fine. Okay, so --

GE: So, I can't even fit that in, Joe. I'm trying to fit that in because you asked me about the time of the BULK and all that, right? [Inaudible].

JM: Yeah, we do need to figure that out. So, I mean, here's what we have. We don't know when the boot shop really opened per se, late 70s, early 80s. But no, that's before you meet Ross.

GE: Mm-hmm. Yeah, definitely.

JM: So, BULK comes later, after you meet Ross, right?

GE: Right.

JM: Okay. While we're right there, this is the clarifying point, did Ross work at the boot shop?

GE: Mm-mm.

JM: He never did?

GE: Mm-mm.

JM: He just came in there once asking for a job?

GE: Mm-hmm.

JM: Okay. Good.

GE: My buddy from my Smoketown residency worked with me, who was from LA. When I 59:00brought that idea, he moved here to work in the boot shop.

JM: Oh.

GE: Yeah. One of my close friends.

JM: And he came from LA?

GE: Yeah.

JM: What was his name?

GE: Crowder, Ronny Crowder.

JM: So, you all were almost getting ready to shut the doors when Ross comes in? Comes in toward the later end of the boot shop?

GE: Mm-hmm, yeah.

JM: Now, this boot shop, is it where Dan's Pawn Shop used to be? On Broadway?

GE: Dan's? It's on the corner of 15th and Broadway.

JM: 15th and Broadway.

GE: Yeah. What's there now --?

JM: Like a Fifth Third Bank or something?

GE: Yeah, that's right where Fifth Third Bank is.

JM: Okay, gotcha.

GE: Yep.

JM: [Inaudible] great. Great. How old were you and Ross when you all met?

GE: Baby, we need you.

DE: Okay.

GE: Me and the wife hadn't got married, that's 44 years we've been married.

JM: Wow, 44 years. Incredible.

GE: How old was I when I met Ross? Well, we're fitting it in to the Boot Gallery days, which is in the --

DE: You would have had to have been in your 30's because I met you when you were 39 turning 40.

JM: And what year was that, Deidre?

GE: In the 30s.

DE: 1979.

GE: So, it was in the 70s.

JM: And so, when you met Deidre, did you already have the boot shop open?

GE: No.

JM: Okay.

DE: It had already closed. He was working at Presbyterian Community Center in a youth employment service --

GE: And that's because Ross and I wrote the program to work in Presbyterian Community Center, workplace two, which was with young people.

JM: Gotcha.

GE: Me and him, we wrote the grant for that. That's when SIA was the big deal in getting funding from the federal government.

JM: Okay. So, when you met Deidre in '79, the boot shop was closed, which means it opened up maybe in '75.

GE: Mm-hmm.

JM: Maybe around then.

GE: Around '74, '75.

JM: Okay, that's good to know. That's good to know.

GE: Yeah, yeah. Because I had a new Volkswagen.

JM: Oh, really? What kind?

GE: One of those station wagons looking Volkswagen. And that was with the chopped off front, it just had a hood.

JM: Formagia or the Fastback is what they called it.

GE: Yeah, yeah.

JM: Okay. So, I'm taking you back to --I'm just going to try to run through some 62:00of these points. Taking you back to that moment that you and Ross, and maybe Bobba, go to meet with some gang members.

GE: Yeah, there's a picture. Deidre, have you got the picture of me and Bobba?

DE: It's over there on the couch.

GE: Oh, lord.

JM: That's okay.

GE: Yeah, but it's that time.

JM: So, we've got a pretty good section about that meeting and what it meant and what happened. But can you tell me a few more details? You all meet in a park, I think. Was it daytime or nighttime?

GE: Meet with the gangs?

JM: The gangs.

GE: No, we met in daytime. And we met with the leadership.

JM: The Cross Brothers?

GE: Hmm?

JM: Cross Brothers?

GE: Yeah. One group, Cross Brothers, and the other group they were fighting with, [inaudible]. I don't know who they were.

JM: Was it the Crips and Bloods?

GE: No. Did they see themselves as the Crips and the Bloods? You got the picture of me -- what's that?

DE: This is your family tree.

JM: Oh, cool. I'd love to see that.

DE: And this is his family tree, this is his children, their mothers.

JM: Great. Can I take this with me?

DE: Yeah, that's yours.

JM: Great. Thank you. Rev, that day that you all meet with them, you meet at California Park maybe? Does that sound right?

GE: I'm not sure where we met because it was sort of secret. So, I don't remember. I just remember it was on the inside.

JM: Oh, you did go inside somewhere?

GE: We was inside a building.

JM: Okay. Okay.

GE: Because I know, at first, I thought we were outside. But when I think back on it, we were inside because we had to be secret with the meeting.

JM: Aha, aha. Okay. And do you remember, I don't know, any other details about 64:00anybody? How do you break the ice in a room like that? I mean, that's got to be hard.

GE: Yeah. Because I was with Ross, and Bobba was with Ross. Our presence was seen as neutral because everybody respects the Rosses, they were revolutionary. And Bobba is a martial arts expert.

JM: Sure.

GE: So, I'm safe with them. And so, I don't remember what we did to break the ice, but I remember we were at the middle of the table, and one gang head was on each end. [Inaudible] brothers was on one end and the other people on the other end. And we just told them, "You all can't do this. You all are killing each 65:00other. What are you doing?" We just tied to repeal to -- is that something? What is that?

DE: Elementary school.

GE: Oh, heck.

JM: Wow.

GE: Elementary school was when I was down on Walnut Street if that's what that is.

JM: Yeah. And you were at Bond?

GE: James Bond, that's the name of the school.

JM: Wilson's photos --

GE: What is that in your hand?

JM: June 1947, that's what that says.

GE: I was 7 years old then.

JM: My goodness.

DE: First grade.

GE: Yeah. But I got in early, I got to skip.

JM: Oh, you did?

GE: Yeah. I got in early. Instead of 7, I was 6.

JM: Huh.

GE: Wait, what is that?

JM: What do we have in this photo?

GE: Oh, that's daycare.

DE: That's him right there.

GE: That's the Catholic daycare we stayed in on 12th and Broadway. Still there and the church is still there.

JM: Augustus?

GE: St. Augustine.

JM: Augustine, yeah.

GE: Watch your glasses now, [inaudible].

JM: Oh, okay. So, you all went to a Catholic daycare, did you know some Catholic folks in your neighborhood?

DE: Auntie.

GE: Yeah, Aunt Bessie, I mean. Yeah, that's why I got there. How I got there, Aunt Bessie was the mother of my three cousins that lived altogether. And she, in fact, lived with us too now. Everybody was in this house. That's in the Navy, that's what I did in the Navy. I formed a singing group.

JM: You didn't. Really?

GE: Yeah.

JM: Wow.

GE: And we sung on the different ships, we at sea. And they would come over to our ship, and we'd put on a show for them.

JM: Really?

GE: That guy there was extremely talented. That guy there with the tie and stuff. He's not even in uniform.

JM: No, he's not.

GE: And so, we were singing, what was that, don't look back, yakkity yak. You remember that?

JM: Yeah.

GE: Oh, you remember that? No, you don't remember that, you ain't that old.

JM: I know I'm not that old, but that song stuck around. That's a song everybody knows. So, wait, where are you?

DE: I don't know where he --

GE: On the ship.

DE: On the ship?

GE: Yeah.

JM: Where are you in this group? Is that you on the end?

DE: That's him on the end.

JM: Wow, okay.

GE: Look on the back. On the back of it, it'll tell you it's an official photograph. USS Forrestal --

JM: Variety show on Saratoga CVA 60, USS Forrestal CVA 59.

GE: We were on the Saratoga, which is another sister ship to the Forrestal.

JM: That's January, February 13th, 1960.

GE: 1960, okay.

JM: Boy, Deidre got the jackpot upstairs and got a great folder of photographs. Okay, Rev. Now, something tragic happened when you all had that meeting with the 68:00gang and calmed things down for a minute. But it sounds like things popped off anyway and a couple kids got killed. You said you knew a couple kids who got killed around that time, and some gang violence, and you went to some funerals.

GE: Oh, yeah.

JM: Which is I'm certain something you've had to do a lot in your life and career. But at that time, do you remember anything about those conflicts and those kids who got killed? Specifically, do you remember going to a funeral?

GE: Yeah. Yeah. Terrible. Because we had -- I don't even remember what church, but it had to be a Baptist church. And I couldn't imagine a little casket for these kids. I mean, they're 15, 16 years old kids. And I can't remember much 69:00about that, except that I went to the funeral.

JM: Okay. You and Ross went together, maybe?

GE: Yeah. Oh, yeah. I and Ross was always together. Me, Ross, and Bobba, as a matter of fact. Because we thought we had failed because they did this killing, but it wasn't directly related to the Cross Brothers, it got convoluted some kind of way. Few guys crossed over into -- these kids got in the crossfire really is what had happened.

JM: Man.

GE: They wasn't meant to be killed.

JM: Let me read you a sentence from this chapter, speaking of you and Ross. Well, first of all, "He moved next to where I was living in an apartment." Where was that? "We were in a lot of the movement then, a lot of revolutionary kind of thing. Black Panthers were out." So, you're living somewhere and Ross moves in nearby? Where is that location?

GE: I think it was on 45th Street. You know where Flaget's practice field is? Still there.

JM: Uh-huh.

GE: It was three houses down from that.

JM: Okay.

GE: Wait a minute, Ross lived at that time up on Breckinridge, in the middle part of town, where Dismas House is. Second, third, whatever, he got an apartment there. But I was living down there, and he'd always come and stay with me. Even though he had an apartment because I had a extra bedroom.

I moved into a house; it was really crazy how I got that house. This lady had a house, and she wanted to rent it out. And it had a yard, a backyard, I think I told you it was next to Flaget practice field, that's where I raised my dog at. And I had a two bedroom with a full kitchen, and a full living room, and a full bathroom for about 40 something dollars a month.

JM: Wow.

GE: You could not do that now, there's no way in Jose. But she said, "If you take care of it, I'll let you stay there. Keep the yard up." And I did. I did that.

JM: Now, you all are living together at the time?

GE: No, I hadn't met her yet.

JM: Oh, okay.

GE: I hadn't met her yet. So, it had to be -- When did I meet you, Deidre? '79?

JM: '79.

DE: Mm-hmm.

GE: So, it had to be in the middle to early 70s, in that timeframe. Because I'm back from the military, of course. And I got out of military in '61. I was 21. Does that make sense?

JM: Yep. Yep. So, let me read you this --

GE: It ain't got nothing to do with nothing. That's Walter, that's my cousin.

DE: That's your uncle.

GE: No, that's Walter's son. That's Junior, Walter's son.

DE: Oh. Walter Junior.

JM: Oh my goodness. Who is that beautiful woman?

GE: Yeah, who is that?

DE: We haven't figured out her names O'Neil, I think this is the lady who raised Ms. Wilimae and her brother after mother died.

GE: My mother and my uncle.

DE: Because it has Chestnut and it just has O'Neil.

JM: Wow. Wow.

GE: We're not sure. It could be the lady that raised my mother and my uncle.

DE: Which is Francis O'Neil.

JM: Oh, okay. Man.

DE: His mother was Wilimae Holt. Then because her husband worked for L&N Railroad in order for them to get her and her brother to get on their insurance, had to have the same last name. So, they took the name O'Neil. So, part of her 73:00life she's Holt, then she's O'Neil. And her brother, he stayed hopeful a while, and then he changed and start being O'Neil.

GE: My uncle.

DE: Walter.

GE: That's how I got to ride the train free. Here we go again, airplane, train, free. And I just put that together in my head right now. I was always in something for free because of my family.

DE: Somebody you knew.

GE: Huh?

DE: Somebody you knew.

GE: Somebody I knew. And I would go to Valdosta, Georgia, which is one of the pictures over there with me sitting right here. This is Valdosta, Georgia, when I was probably about 12. I had to be 12 because I got to ride on the back, on the back, Joe.

DE: No, she said 8.

GE: 8?

DE: Uh-huh.

GE: I'm kind of big for 8, wasn't I?

JM: So, you're up in Georgia visiting, 8 years old, this is the photograph of Mr. Ellis on the bench. It's a great photograph.

GE: In Valdosta, Georgia.

JM: Valdosta, Georgia.

DE: Oh, here's another one.

JM: So, Rev, let me read you something here. You and Ross are hanging out. "We were the kind of leaders in that crowd, we listened to revolutionary music, wore dashikis, we called ourselves revolutionaries. Ross was a philosophical leader and partner and friend, and I hurt when I think about him being dead.

GE: Partner in crime, I said?

JM: My philosophical leader and partner and friend.

GE: And friend, okay. Partner in crime, what were we doing?

JM: When did Ross pass away?

GE: Oh, we got news clip.

DE: I got that, it's upstairs.

GE: Yeah, I saw it. I was looking at it the other day.

DE: I could Google it.

JM: Okay, I can do that too. That's true. Here's one of the things that I know 75:00we need to get on tape today. You guys are running around together, kind of living sort of on the outside of the movement that's going on in Louisville that's at the Quinn Chapel, that's marching all the time. You all are a little bit on the fringe of that. This is of course later; we're talking 70s and 80s.

GE: The Quinn Chapel thing is before I met Ross.

JM: That's 60, 70s, right?

GE: Yeah. That was before I met Ross,

JM: Sure. But you all have a philosophical kind of stance that's a little bit revolutionary, like you say. At some point, you kind of move into the center, and you kind of come in and start working within the system.

GE: Mm-hmm.

JM: Does that start to happen when you get with the NAACP? How do you come kind of from the edge into the system and work from within?

GE: That came, as you said, through the NAACP. Through my popularity and way of thinking about civil rights. And the Panthers and what they were doing, in terms of feeding the kids. So, I begin to kind of change into a less radical, more conventional African American leadership, in trying to get African Americans moving up.

That's when I became president of NAACP. They kind of tapped me on the shoulder and said, "We want you to be" -- "Oh, yeah." NAACP was too conservative for me in the beginning. But then again, they became interesting to me because of their stand on civil rights, period. One time burning and doing nothing to nothing. 77:00Every time I was getting people jobs and they can't -- So, I went from the NAACP --

JM: Let me hold you up right there because that's a big move. Like you say, I mean, you're running around with BULK. And some of those folks get prosecuted for some things that they maybe didn't even have anything to do with.

GE: Right, right.

JM: These are accusations about really trying to do revolutionary stuff.

GE: They finally cleared them years later too.

JM: Years later. And then, how did you get tapped by NAACP, and what kind of work did you do while you were there?

GE: I don't know how they tapped me. I guess they tapped me because I was --

DE: That was when you were working up in PCP in the youth programs. And you 78:00started working with --

GE: Getting popularity out of that.

DE: With the volunteering and working with youth --

GE: With who? With what?

DE: In football and other community organizations like it, before you really went into -- When I met him, he was in the NAACP, but he was volunteering as a member, and he was not a officer or anything. Then he was working with the youth in the projects uptown and in Sheppard Square.

JM: Okay.

DE: And what else, you were with the NAACP. He was tapping in; I don't know what --

GE: That's what happened. When I was at the NAACP, Lincoln Cosby, which Cosby's father.

DE: Kevin Cosby's father.

GE: Yeah. He tapped me to come and work at the Kentucky Commissioner on Human Rights. With Galen Martin.

DE: That was after your job at PCP because that's when I was married to you.

GE: Say what?

DE: That was after your job at PCP with Project Yes.

GE: Oh, yeah. Yeah.

JM: So, PCP is Presbyterian --

DE: Community Center.

GE: Which is up there still in Sheppard Square.

JM: See, this is the other thing we need to do. So, then you get a job with Kentucky Human Rights --

GE: Commission.

JM: Commission.

GE: Yep.

JM: Okay. In the housing department with Lincoln Cosby, I was a housing advocate. Now, at that time, that was the former arm of the Civil Rights Movement locally, Kentucky Commission on Human Rights. Because if you violate somebody's human rights, they took it up on a state level. And I was with them 80:00doing housing. And that's when I got tapped to go into politics. But let me stop right there because that takes in another era.

DE: The day you went into --

GE: Harvey Sloane.

DE: But you were also a member of the National Council of Christians and Jews --

GE: With Ward Walters at the Urban League. He and I put that together.

DE: So, he was volunteering with a lot of different organizations at that time. Community organizations.

GE: And Ross and I had not separated, never separated. But we kind of went different ways.

DE: Right. Because that's when Ross went back to school.

GE: Yeah, he went to school at Harvard. And got a degree from Harvard. Yep, two 81:00year, he got a two year master's degree from Harvard.

JM: Can we talk about the years you were at the NAACP? What years were those? You left that post in December of 1986, I know that much.

GE: Left what post?

JM: At the NAACP.

GE: Okay. What year, '87?

JM: December '86.

GE: '86.

JM: The end of '86 is when you left.

GE: So, you're on 36 now, right? '86.

DE: Yeah. No, you're '46.

GE: No. '86.

DE: Born in 1940. Duh. '46, '40 from '86.

GE: No, I wasn't that old. Okay. Okay.

DE: '46 and '86. And how many years did you serve as the president of NAACP?

GE: A couple of years. Just a couple of years -- it was a term, two-year term, and I only stayed one term.

DE: I thought you went back in '70.

GE: I went back?

DE: I thought you served more than one. No, I'm thinking of IMC.

GE: Yeah, IMC.

DE: I'm thinking of IMC, which was part of NAACP.

JM: Okay. Were you proceeded in that post by --

GE: Clifford Turner, I think. You mean with the presidency?

DE: Clifford was after you.

JM: I think Ross came right after you.

GE: Hmm?

JM: Ross was the president of the NAACP?

DE: No.

JM: No? Never?

GE: He was a volunteer with them at one time.

JM: I'll be darned.

DE: Aubrey Williams was the president. Did you come after --?

GE: After Aubrey. After Aubrey, after Darrell.

JM: Now, what do you remember, what stands out as your time at NAACP? What's one thing that pops out?

GE: There is one thing that really stands out. We found that a county police officer -- the city county government then, split government, city, county. One of the police officers in the city county, in the county police department, they 83:00found a KKK robe in his locker. Somebody found it, one of his superiors. And so, I ask that that officer's name be made public.

So, we would know who was in the klan and on the police force. And they wouldn't do it. They sequestered the name, whatever. They wouldn't do it. And so, I remember the NAACP marched about that, and wanted to know his name. Wanted him convicted and kicked off the police force. But they never would open up the file for his name. So, I remember doing that. And then, other things that I advocated 84:00for, but that was the big one.

JM: Wow.

GE: That was a big one. And now, this is side bar to that, later on under the Sloane administration, I mean, under the David Armstrong administration, which was after Sloane, when I was working for him. This same guy began to work in the government beside me, I mean, in government, out of the mayor's office. And I can't remember his name. He had quit the police force and I found out he was the one. I think he either told me or something, but I found out.

JM: He was the one with the hood in his locker?

GE: With the klan, I mean, with the sheet in his locker. And he said he was doing it as a prank. He said, "Yeah, I did that. But it was just a prank." "No, man. You know what you caused?"

DE: That's not a prank.

JM: That's a heck of a prank.

GE: Yeah, he said he was doing it as a prank.

DE: How do you get a hood --?

GE: I met him and he told me that, and nothing I could do about it then, it was 85:00all over.

JM: It was all way over. Okay, here's the question that I wrote. We need a timeline. You went from Kentucky Human Rights, then to NAACP --

GE: No, it was the same time. I didn't go from one to down. I was working for the Kentucky Commission on Human Rights, as also the president of NAACP.

JM: Aha, thank you.

GE: Yeah.

JM: And then, after you leave NAACP, you go to Sloane's office as special liaison?

GE: Mm-hmm.

DE: No.

GE: Yeah --

JM: Then with him to the county --

GE: Hold on. That's why Sloane got attracted to me. As president of the NAACP I was saying certain --

DE: You were still president when you worked for county government

GE: Yeah.

DE: Because I remember that used to be an issue with, whenever something was happening was, "Who are you?" And Geoff would always have to take and tell them, 86:00"I'm leaving. I'm going to be out for two hours. I will not be on government time." And then, he would go and do whatever he was doing, NAACP, and then he would have to come back on clock.

GE: Press conference or something like that.

DE: So, to speak, even though he didn't punch a clock. Come back and work, and he would take two or three hours on leave --

GE: That got real sticky. It kept getting stickier and stickier.

JM: Why? Because --

GE: Policy. The county would have one policy and I'd be advocating for another kind of policy, or a response from the county, about something happening, the people getting shot, people getting shot and carrying on about the police even then.

DE: Or housing.

GE: Or housing was getting denied, even then. Yeah, I remember that. They said, "You can't keep doing this." So, what I did, I had left the NAACP as president. 87:00I said, "It's time for me to go." And the big thing about was the school integration issue. When did that happen?

JM: Well, the bus thing was --

DE: '75, '76?

GE: '76?

JM: Yeah, that's right.

DE: Because Tim was in first and second grade when the busing issue and I remember --

GE: Okay, the busing issue, what happened with that, I was a member after I been prison, I still stayed a member. Okay. So, then whenever that busing thing came along in the 70s, whenever that issue got hot, and they were debating it, and the school system was debating it. And the president of the NAACP was Maurice Sweeney. He was pulled into being on the school system side, saying we wanted to 88:00do the busing, had to do the busing to get the kids integrated. And I didn't think so. And I was of mind that we shouldn't do busing because we were going to have the bulk of the busing black kids were going to carry the burden of the busing.

JM: Yeah, that's right.

GE: And they wouldn't let me in the meeting.

JM: Really?

GE: No, wouldn't let me in. Sweeney said, "Geoff, it's too radical. You'll tear the meeting up." Him and the lawyers for the school system and the people that were against it, were having a big meeting at Wyatt, Tarrant and Combs law firm, which is not here anymore. And they wouldn't let me in, said, "No, you got to sit on the outside." I said, "Oh, all right." But yeah, there was days of -- Does it fit, what you're asking me about, you're trying to figure out the days --

JM: Yeah. Because if you left your post in '86 as president -- Well, I mean, that busing stuff came up over and over again, up into the 90s.

GE: Oh, yeah. Yeah.

JM: I think there was a big blow up in the 90s, I can't remember. I get confused about it. I was living through it. Okay. All right.

DE: I think yet in your mind, is he worked for the Kentucky Commission on Human Rights. He was NAACP president. Then when he went to county government under Harvey Sloane --

GE: Special assistant.

DE: He was still NAACP president. So, its kind overlapped.

JM: Gotcha.

DE: And that was a volunteer position, it wasn't a paid position.

JM: Okay, got it. And then, you move with Sloane into the County Judge's Office.

GE: Mm-hmm.

JM: And then, the Dave Armstrong's office.

GE: Mm-hmm.

JM: Now, when Dave Armstrong assigns you, after a couple times of everybody 90:00talking about it, assigns you to go work on a plan and a survey in a study.

GE: We got pictures of the Sloane Administration, all them black guys and Ms. Waldriff (?) was standing there, Mary Sloane, I was a part of getting more African Americans in county government. I got to fighting about that, and I got into that. But that's all I would say to you, we got pictures of that. That's what I'm saying. Okay, but go ahead.

JM: So, you were working on a study about whether the merger is going to work.

GE: Right.

JM: And you say --

GE: There it is, that's the picture of the black staff of Harvey Sloane.

JM: Okay. Of Dave Armstrong?

DE: That's Harvey Sloane.

GE: No, that's Harvey Sloane. See Sloane in there?

JM: Oh, okay.

DE: That's Harvey Sloane.

JM: Got it, got it.

DE: That's Evan Waldra.

JM: Oh, yeah.

GE: She was head of Public Works.

DE: Pete, I think that's -- What's his name?

GE: Dei, I can't think of it. No, that boy --

DE: And that's David. very soon. Okay. So Dave Armstrong

GE: Wheat.

DE: Wheat.

GE: And he was head of personnel. And one guy on the end, where your hand is, was a county police officer, I think. Lieutenant. But anyway --

JM: So, "Dave Armstrong sent me and a couple more staff, sent us for a year to study this, really study it, see if it could work. We were called the TBY or TDA," whatever they called it. So, I don't know.

GE: What was that?

DE: The task force.

JM: Some kind of task force.

GE: Oh, yeah. The merger task force people. We were dealing with emergent government, we wanted to study whether or not that was a good thing to do. And they had had two or three, I think three votes on it. And it got voted down maybe two, and the last one, it got voted to do it. Emerge the government.

JM: What was this body called? What was the name of the group who did this one-year study?

GE: Oh, the taskforce, we were a task force.

JM: That's fine. We can just call it a task force.

GE: I think a task force on merged government.

JM: Okay. So, you're out of the County Judge's Office, "We worked out of GOI, we weren't physically part of the government." So, is this a job? Are you drawing a paycheck to do this work?

GE: I was still drawing a paycheck from the county.

JM: Okay, great. That's all I needed to know.

GE: We're on the payroll from the county.

JM: Okay. Gotcha. Okay, we'll skip that. I mean, there's one part right here where you said, "We spent our days researching, talking to people, looking at other cities that had merged." Now, right now we're in 1990 probably. Does that sound about right?

GE: Yeah.

JM: Merger was '91?

GE: Yeah. So, in the 90s.

JM: They were '89 or '90, probably, if you're doing this study.

GE: And I'm 50.

JM: Okay, and you said, "We're looking at other cities that had merged. Nashville had done it, Annapolis had done it, even Lexington was talking about it."

GE: Right.

JM: I don't know if those had happened yet. I'll try to figure that out. But I am curious what you all -- When you're spending this time thinking about it and talking about it, what are some of the things that you're looking at and how do you come to a consensus --

GE: We were looking at the ways services would be merged or not. Like sanitation, police department, Public Works. Well, sanitation was in Public Works. All the services that city had and the county had that were separated, we looked at how they would fit being merged. So, that's any public service, meaning the police like I said, the --

JM: Fire department?

GE: Fire department, all of that. Alright alarm me on it. And the people in the 94:00county, they wanted the services that the city had. But they didn't want to pay the tax or whatever. They didn't want to support it financially, but they thought they'd want to get it, that's how they got finally merged.

JM: Right. Yeah. But you guys said it's not going to work and they did it anyway.

GE: Yep.

JM: And here we are.

GE: Yeah, and here we are. Yeah. Yeah, here we are.

JM: Definitely one thing that I've been meaning to ask you for a long time is, I'd like to think about the hotel, the Allen Hotel. You and Ross open up a halfway house, specifically for folks in the West End, geared toward African Americans coming out of correctional facilities coming back home. You all are young, you all have an agenda, you all are, as you say, advocates. I guess what 95:00I'm saying is, when you talk about it, and when I hear you talk about it, you seem like you're approaching as very forward-thinking individuals.

GE: Yeah. Because we had to interact with feds, the federal people, the state people. And we had to be a strong advocate for what we wanted to do. And we were only advocates for what we wanted to do. I mean, there's guys and people, and of course prisoners, but I just thought that was very, very -- And I got paperwork here, I was looking at it last night, Deidre. Whenever you and I was up there. Remember that Irving House file?

JM: Yeah, we saw that a little bit ago.

GE: Oh, you saw that? Okay. We wrote the grant to get the monies from state government. And I didn't even know everybody was doing that. Maybe they were, I didn't know. We just at high school at that point. All we had was high school education, here we are dealing with high level politicians and the governor, to get the money to do the basics.

To get the grant from the feds, you had to have city support. So, I just told, Joe, it was a lot of writing being done. And I had to do the writing, Ross did the talking and thinking, I did the writing. And like you're doing with me, I would take down what he's talking about, and what he's thinking, and be the writer.

JM: Yeah. Well, I wonder if I can get you to -- I wanted you to think about this. So, what you all are up to back then, you have these ideals, and you're sort of living them out. And you open this halfway house, then you move it to Flaget. You get some pushback from the community at the time, which you were able to overcome it sounds like. I'd like to talk about that in a minute.

But I kind of want to have you fast forward from that moment to right now. And as somebody who's been in the middle of housing and the discussion about housing for so much of your career, right now in Russell, when you get a cross section of residents from around here, they pick out halfway houses as one of the things that is really a problem in the neighborhood. Absentee landlords -- Sorry about that.

GE: Okay.

DE: Okay.

JM: So, I guess I want you to reflect, if you don't mind, on how the halfway house scene was working when you started at the Allen Hotel, and what has become of it since then. And I'm coming from the outside. And so, I'm looking to you for information, as well as your sort of perspective. It seems to me that folks in Russell now have a pretty dismal view of how halfway houses have worked in 98:00the neighborhood in the past.

GE: Mm-hmm. That's right.

JM: X number of years. So, I'm wondering if you can just reflect on that a little bit.

GE: Well, one of the reasons is because of how they ran in a philosophical way of their existence. They're just doing it now to get the money that they get from the state government for the ex-offenders, and they don't have the same philosophical approach to the whole halfway house business. It's a business because you make money. And so, they're taking people that have various backgrounds, that do not fit in the African American community, or in a community like Russell.

Even though Russell is expanding, and you're going to have some, we call it gentrification, and that's okay. Whites are going to live and they want to live in the inner city, in the middle of the inner city, middle of downtown, so they 99:00can get back and forth to work. With all that thinking like that going on here, you drop in the middle of that a halfway house, well it is not well managed, in terms of the guys -- I think it's maybe just guys at this point, who they're getting, how they merge into the neighborhood.

I mean, most of them might come from Portland, might come from even out in the state somewhere and get paroled to Jefferson County, with the caveat that they'd get a job easier in Louisville than they could somewhere out in state. So, they come from out in state living, and you drop them in the middle of an urban environment. That's a conflict. And that's what the halfway houses are doing now. Yeah.

JM: Okay. All right. So, you've seen that development over the years. And your perspective is it's not working very well.

GE: Mm-mm.

JM: Okay. Yeah. So, oh, shoot, we already covered this. When did you join metro housing? When did you kind of come on board with them?

GE: With the what now?

JM: The housing authority.

GE: Oh, I don't know. When Deidre?

DE: It was 2016.

JM: Okay. Oh, shoot, man. That's 2:00.

GE: This guy's coming to get me I think --

JM: It's 2:00 now.

GE: 2:00?

JM: Yeah, we did pretty good. We did pretty good.

GE: Yes, sir. Hello? Hey, what's going on, Bishop? No, would you text me? I'm in a interview. Go ahead, tell me where to text at. Oh, yeah. Okay. I'm going to be ready. Okay, bye. 2:30, they're coming to get me.

JM: Yeah. You said we were going to cut off at 2:00 --

GE: Well, we can go on --

JM: Okay, great.

GE: Because all I got to do is get a sandwich before.

JM: Let me ask you --

GE: Where were you at? You were at somewhere.

JM: Let's see. Well, the time we have remaining -- So, that was good. Oh, yeah, metro housing.

GE: Yeah, Metro Housing.

JM: But you were serving, I didn't know, when you were at Human Rights, you were specifically on the housing committee, or what would you call that body? So, you've always had your head in housing. It's such a significant part of our community and the discussion, such a significant part of your career. Could you walk me through what kind of work you were doing in housing, in those early days, and how your thinking has developed?

GE: Well, in the early days, I was housing a person that took people's 102:00complaints about being discriminated in housing, trying to live in certain areas of the city and getting discriminated against. And they would bring that to me and I would investigate it.

JM: Oh, okay.

GE: And if it proven to be a fact, then we would submit it to the state, who would then adjudicate it, see whether it was right or wrong.

JM: Right.

GE: So, I was the lead person on getting that kind of information, collecting that kind of information. I guess you could call me a housing inspector for discrimination. That ain't the title, I forgot the title I had. But it was in that department, Lincoln Cosby was over in that department. And I worked in there for Galen Martin who was over the Louisville Jefferson County Human Relations Commission, that's what it was.

JM: And you came there later on.

GE: Right.

JM: So, you had a --

GE: You made me think, and there, I end up on the housing authority of the metro --

DE: Great uncle.

JM: Wow.

GE: Yeah. Here, I end up on the housing authority for metro government.

JM: Yeah. I mean, there was a lot for you to work on. There's been a ton of discrimination and it's --

GE: And now --

JM: Yeah, and now.

GE: And now it's not so much discrimination as it is economic.

JM: Right.

GE: It's more economic now than it was physical, color, or anything, it's economical. They're putting a lot of money in Russell to build the housing market. The question becomes for who? And so, that's kind of the way -- The mayor asked me, Mayor Fischer asked me what I want to do, and I told him I wanted to be on something that paid. And he's the housing authority. And so, how 104:00did it all happen? How did I remain in housing? I don't really know.

JM: How did you all decide to move back to Russell? I mean, you've started your life here in Russell, and then --

GE: Well, because I was doing so much work in Russell, in terms of volunteering. And I found out that --

DE: We lived on Garfield and the west end and I decided, "Okay, we're getting older, we got to get out of this house with all these steps." And so, started looking for a house that had no steps, that was level. And so, we had looked at several places, but he didn't want to move out of the county. Everything that I was looking at was out, except for the one house on Virginia. And everybody told 105:00me, "No, that's too much to remodel." And we came past and he saw the sign that said, "Rebound, build new house," and he said, "Ah, I forgot about this. Yeah, let's go over here. Oh, yeah, let me call. I know a guy, Kevin told me, let me call him and check."

GE: [Inaudible].

DE: Yep. And that's how we ended up over here. And that's when I told him, I said, "I grew up right over here on 19th in Jefferson." He said, "Well, I grew up right down here at 21st and Muhammad Ali." And I said, "And I grew up on 19th and Chestnut." So, we ended up in the neighborhood that we started out.

JM: Wow, amazing.

GE: Yeah, wasn't that something. I thought that was something.

DE: Did a 360.

JM: Yeah, you did. Where'd you all live prior to this place? Where did you all 106:00raise your family together?

DE: 38th and Garfield. We were down there 30 years.

GE: Shawnee neighborhood.

DE: Yeah, 30 years.

JM: Wow, 30 years. Incredible. And how many of these houses were on the street when you all showed up and started thinking about maybe --

GE: Oh, boy. Oh, when we showed up?

JM: Yeah.

GE: I thought you was going to say --

DE: One, two, three, four, there was four on this side. All of those on that side, down to that last house, so that's one, two, three, four, five, six, seven. So, it was about seven on there and four over here, so it was about 11 houses.

JM: Okay.

DE: There's been, what, four?

GE: At least.

DE: One, two, three, four, five, and six. So, it's six --

GE: Now, this neighborhood, let me tell you because I can talk about it from the 107:00strategy of the house --

JM: Let's hear it, yeah.

GE: They wanted to create something that was reminiscent of the way African Americans lived in the heyday of the Walnut Street. They had brick houses and et cetera. So, I don't know how they picked this area, but they got this area. And they began to attract, excuse me, developers. Developers didn't want to develop in the West End. "We don't want to build, ain't nobody going to buy no houses down here for the price we need it to make money.". But then, they found out that the African Americans did want to. And we being an example of that.

So, when we moved in, we got a lot of publicity about moving and building a house here. Because this is what they wanted to happen, African Americans to build houses in this area. They have. And you look all around as they have. People will come through this block and say, "Ooh, I didn't know these houses were here." And next block, devastation, in terms of the physical part of the housing. Devastation, torn down houses and vacant lots and blah, blah, blah. But 108:00this is going to move, this is moving west. Yeah, it's moving west. Rebounds got a place over here on, what is it?

DE: 21st and Jefferson.

GE: 21st and Jefferson, big spot, where they're going to build more of these kind of houses. So, I just wanted to be in the middle of what was going to happen, what was going to happen.

JM: Yeah.

GE: And try to keep that going. And that's how I got attracted to the housing authority, or how they put me on the housing authority because they figured, "This is a guy that's been always concerned about housing." If they look back there, they would have saw it. I don't think they did. They said, "This is a good place for Jeff, put him" --

DE: But you grew up in the projects. And you, like I said, worked on the Commission of Human Rights in housing. When you worked with PCP, you were 109:00working with young people, building them up to get their first job, to get out of the projects. So, it's kind of been your -- Whether you planned it or not, you've always been geared that way.

JM: Right. So, that's what it seems like to me too, Deidre. And so, I'm curious now what your thoughts are on -- I mean, really, let's be honest, we really messed it up a bunch of times before.

GE: Absolutely.

JM: Urban Renewal, redlining, the absolute, systematic devastation of old Walnut Street. We've screwed this up 100 times, a couple of really big times. What are your thoughts about what is happening today? Right now.

GE: The city has decided that the housing projects, like Beecher Terrace used to 110:00be, Sheppard Square used to be, they saw how successful Park Duvall is down there, where the homes are even better than these, from a cost factor. They saw how successful that was. And they saw that they needed to get rid of the projects, Park Duvall, Southwick, all of that. Had to get rid of all of that. What it was, they had to get rid of the concentrated poverty, which Sheppard Square and Beecher Terrace and all that do.

Young African Americans come in wanting to live anywhere, anywhere their money 111:00would let them live. My daughter's an example. Her significant other built a house in Fern Creek. We would have never thought about building a house in Fern Creek, no. But they did. And now, not now, but obviously then, and now the African Americans are in Fern Creek. So, the integration factor is not as messed up as it was. You can live anywhere your money will let you live.

Those of us who want to live where originally our parents and everybody lived, which is West End, have to have this type of housing to live in. We don't want to just live in what's already there. What's already there is a bunch of houses and lots, and I think it's 147, maybe 157 condemned houses in West Louisville. 112:00That's a lot of housing, condemned. Developers see all that, and they come in, and they want to build and make money and do that. We don't have the level of finances that they have, the white developers.

So, when we get our developers, they want to come in and develop housing tied into, what do you call them, shopping centers? When we tried to get one of those done between 9th and 12th, in the Beecher Terrace property footprint, they wouldn't let them do it. They had all kinds of reasons why they couldn't do it. So, a white developer is developing Beecher Terrace. They never try to partner. The political system in Louisville, to me, is still antiquated. We got nine 113:00neighborhoods, Shawnee, Park U, Russell, Algonquin, we got these neighborhoods.

The political system we got now, they get in and they start thinking about themselves. They don't think about the people enough, for me. And how the people are living, and the opportunity that people have. And then, we got this conflict between the young and old. The young and the, I guess, old. They're not necessarily trying to stay in West End, they're trying to go other places. So, we need to attract them back, so that we can have the kind of stores, we in a desert, we in a -- what is it, food desert. If you go shopping, you got to go over to Indiana, or you got to go way up east. That don't make sense.

JM: Doesn't make any lick of sense.

GE: So, that's the kind of thing I see is going to be a problem beyond me. I'll be gone, and they'll still be fighting that battle. Because I believe it's the lack of political will. And for thinking, I mean, not for thinking, but forward thinking for the political people that we're supposed to -- That's why I try to fool around with young people, and get them involved in politics if I can. Politics decide who gets what, when, where, and how. With that kind of a power, if you called it, then you got to be thinking about us. I'm going to need a sandwich soon, Deidre.

DE: Excuse me.

JM: Pardon me.

GE: So, I see, Joe, that we've gotten better with integration and housing, we're talking about housing. Integration and housing and economic development, but 115:00then again, we step back. We get something like this and it's limited. Because we don't have the people that want to build in West Louisville. They won't go. We say, "Stay and build in West Louisville." West Louisville has enough people to be a third-class city, like Shively and all your little cities, I call them little cities.

We have enough people to be our own city, West Louisville. We wouldn't do that, advocate that, succeeding from the whole government of West Louisville. But that's kind of how I see it. As far as housing's concerned, I see that we cannot attract, we have not attracted any young people, African Americans, to invest in West Louisville, as far as housing is concerned.

JM: I mean, I see a lot of remodeling going on.

GE: Remodeling, yeah.

JM: Well, there's obviously a couple of big developments. So, the Renew, sorry, the group that built this street, is that a black owned group?

GE: Yeah. It's called Operation Rebound. They work out of -- That's a crazy dog. They work out of Urban League.

JM: Oh, they're out of the Urban League?

GE: Yeah.

JM: Okay.

GE: Rebound is not a part of the Urban League, but they work out of the Urban League office.

JM: Gotcha.

GE: And people think they're a part. If you look at the thing that Sadiqa, head of the Urban League, built in West Louisville, that track?

JM: Yeah.

GE: That ain't what it's supposed to be. I mean, you don't have enough track activity to warrant that. So, she's trying to make it other things, they have meetings down there --what is it, the business groups and things have meetings down there and so forth. And that's good. So, I don't know what they're going to 117:00do with that.

JM: Look, I got to ask somebody straight up.

GE: Yeah.

JM: Why couldn't somebody put a grocery store right there?

GE: I don't know. Remember, they tried to put the big Walmart or something over there.

JM: Right.

GE: You had African Americans against that. And I'm saying, "Well, you hit your head." That'll draw business, that'll have economic benefits and whatnot. So, the question you asked, the political will to do it, it's not there. Maybe when we get this other mayor, it'll be there. Greenberg, I guess, he's probably going to be mayor. He's a Jewish guy that comes in with less bias, more forward open 118:00thinking. That's what it's going to take. It's going to take developers to understand that economic empowerment does exist in West Louisville. But when it gets ready to live, it's going to go somewhere else. Crime is a big problem.

JM: Yeah.

GE: If you can't solve that crime problem --

JM: But don't you think the economic development, the empowerment and the crime problem would kind of somehow hand in glove?

GE: Sure. Sure. People don't want to do what they don't want to do in West Louisville because they hear about the crime all the time. It's the way the media handles the crime. I'm not sure anymore there's more crime in West Louisville than there is somewhere else in Louisville. I'm not sure. I'd have to look at the statistics.

It's more horrendous, when you have a 15-year-old shot, standing on the corner 119:00next to the bus. But that didn't change, it ain't going to happen somewhere else. I've always blamed the media for kind of the way they publicize and sensationalize the crime. I mean, WLKY, you look at W-L-K-Y, Channel 32, WLKY. Every night they get something on air about crime in West Louisville, by shooting, by murder in West Louisville.

JM: Sure.

GE: Well, if I'm sitting somewhere, I'm a young person, I got a good job. I'm an attorney, my wife's this or that, and I want to build me a home. I'm not going to build it in West Louisville.

JM: No.

GE: Where somebody might shoot somebody on my street or something. Nothing, that hasn't happened on this street since I've been here. In fact, when they have New Year's Eve, when you shoot the guns and all that, you don't hardly hear all that out here. So, it doesn't mean people ain't got guns, it just means they're 120:00trying to have another way of living.

JM: So, you have all this money that's coming into Russell, Beecher Terrace --

GE: A lot --

JM: How many millions, so many. And a lot of federal dollars, it's getting spread around. And I can't keep up with it. I mean, I try to kind of keep up with how that money is getting split up and how it's being divided --

GE: Where you going, babe? Excuse me.

JM: No, you're all right.

DE: I'm going to pick up Trinity. She gets out of school.

GE: Okay, go ahead, Joe.

JM: That's all right. Hey, Rev, can I take your picture? --

GE: I may be gone. You know, I'm leaving at 2:30.

DE: I'm going to give you the key.

JM: You mind if I take your picture, Reverend?

GE: Of me?

JM: Yeah.

GE: Okay.

JM: Is that all right?

GE: Yeah.

JM: It'll be good, I got a microphone, looking good. Still looking sharp. Deidre, thank you so much for your help today.

DE: Oh, I didn't get to scan. You end up doing all the scanning.

JM: No, that's all right. You sorted through those, we got so many great images, 121:00it's really, really great.

GE: She helped; I couldn't have got all that together.

DE: I'm history buff, ancestry buff.

JM: Yeah, yeah.

DE: I guess I get it from my father. He was a history teacher.

JM: Oh, really?

DE: Yeah. So, I love history, and research, and all that kind of stuff. That's my thing --

JM: It shows, yeah. This was really helpful. Where was your dad a teacher?

DE: Central.

JM: Okay.

GE: Put it somewhere, lay it on top of here.

DE: It's in here, by your money.

GE: By my money?

DE: On the kitchen table. Because I'm going to go pick up Trinity, and I'll be right back.

GE: All right.

JM: Take care, good to see you, Deidre.

DE: Good to see you too. Take care.

JM: Well, Rev, you got some place to be, you need to eat a sandwich.

GE: Ah, I'm probably going to get one now.

JM: We'll wrap it up, this is good.

GE: That's a deep question you asked and there's a lot of technicals to it.

JM: Yeah, for sure. These are not easy questions.

GE: Not easy questions --

JM: No, and there's just a lot going on right now.

GE: There's a lot of moving parts to it.

JM: A lot. And a lot of moving parts, with some deep historical sort of roots and beginnings. You know what I mean? So, there's a lot of unpacking to do when we talk about things like this. And it's not really my job to unpack it, it's my job to hang around with folks and hear them unpack it.

GE: And to illuminate it. See, I think it's where you're at. Not specifically that issue or issues, but when you run across getting history from African Americans, you're going to run across it just right up, right smack, right up against it.

JM: Yeah.

GE: So, you got to figure out what part that's played in their lives, where they went about it, and what it is. And it's really systemic racism. Racism in West Louisville is systemic. You said it a minute ago, the redlining, the thing they did with the Urban League, I mean, with the Urban Renewal. They didn't have to 123:00do that. And what they've done is what they replaced, ain't never been replaced. It never been replaced.

JM: Nope.

GE: The economic benefits of Walnut Street, oh, man, we don't have that in no way in shape, form, or fashion. Like I said, we got a food desert in West Louisville, we got a shopping mall deficit. I mean, we got doctor deficits, dentists, and doctors, and all kinds of medical things. And you enough people to warrant having those things in West Louisville. So, I agree, I just hate to say it, but I just think it's the political will. Because things get moved by politics. And no political will ain't there. And that comes out of us, that live 124:00here or stay here.

We have to demand more of our politicians. We don't. We got the balance of power in the council. See, that's one of the things about merger. They said in merger, African Americans, people in West Louisville, are going to get a fair shot, a equal shot at the government. And we got to have African Americans in Russell, Shawnee, Algonquin, Park Duvall, Park Hill, Parkway, in those communities. Portland, we got to have people from those communities on the council. Well, that's beginning to deteriorate. So, many marriages have --

And I know Cindy can't have -- Jesus knows and God knows, and I'm telling everybody, and they know me. I am an integrationist. I am a person that sees the value in being integrated. I mean, it's just where people live, man. I want you 125:00to live next door to me. But like I say, we ain't got the political will to make that physically happen.

JM: Huh. How do you feel --?

GE: And there are young people.

JM: How do you feel since you all moved in? How long you all been here?

GE: Since 2017.

JM: So, what's that? About five years almost?

GE: Yeah.

JM: What's it like? What's it like to live in Russell again, and be a part of this kind of forward --

GE: Exciting.

JM: Yeah?

GE: Yeah. I mean, being a part of it. And being on a Housing Authority board, being a part -- because we're the biggest landlords in the city. We got property, man, we got property. We got money flowing through the Housing Authority related to housing. And I've dedicated myself to getting that commission, something other than saying, "All in favor, aye. All opposed, nay." 126:00I'm not there. And I've changed it that much, in that the board, the commissioners think commissioner kind of thoughts. I got to be concerned about the places that we own and that we manage. And how do people live in those places?

JM: Okay, tell me more about that.

GE: Well, they got to be concerned. The worst place now we have is called New Jack City. Up at the corner, the housing project at the corner of Jackson and Muhammad Ali. What's the name of that, oh, man --

JM: Jackson and Ali.

GE: Yeah.

JM: Oh. It used to be Clarksdale right around there, right?

GE: Right across the street from Clarksdale.

JM: Well, they already did those mixed income right there, right?

GE: Yeah, Clarksdale, what they did there is okay. I think that should have been done. In fact, whenever we place a project like Clarksdale, Sheppard Square, whatnot, with open, integrated, economic, integrated, housing, it's good if you're going to have a housing project. If you're not going to have it, you got to get rid of it, and be gone. And open it up like this for developers to develop.

JM: Right, right.

GE: But if you're going to have it, then modernize it and whatnot.

JM: I can't think of -- Oh, well now between there, there's Sheppard Square --

GE: It's sitting on the corner of Jackson and Muhammed Ali. Right across the street from all the U of L stuff.

JM: I don't know what neighborhood is there. Is it a housing project?

GE: Yeah.

JM: Nah. Oh, well, there's Phoenix Place. But that's --

GE: There's three buildings.

JM: Oh.

GE: High rises.

JM: Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Shoot. Not Community Towers, but --

GE: No.

JM: Man, yeah.

GE: Here I am on the housing authority. But we already talked about so much, and my mind is --

JM: So, housing authorities in charge of that one?

GE: Yeah, they're in charge of that. And they call that New Jack City, which means drugs and murders and blah, blah, blah, is going on. We need to tear it down, but we don't have the money to build something in its space. It would take millions of dollars to build something in its place. We don't have that. At least the government ain't giving it to us, 80% of our money comes from the federal government. We are that arm of the city. Really. That's why the mayor makes appointments to the board, and appoints us executive director. But we got the ability to do more Park Duvall's.

JM: Yeah.

GE: When you drive around through there, and you see all the things that they 129:00put up, the housing, and some of the rental housing. And then, the appearance of the community. It ought to be everywhere, not just be down there, not just be here, it'll be everywhere. But like I said, the political will ain't there.

JM: Well, but I mean, since they took down Southwick, Cotter Homes, we've pretty much gone through almost all of the public housing projects at this point, except for Park Hill and the one you're talking about.

GE: Yeah. Dosker Manor.

JM: Dosker Manor.

GE: Dosker Manor, yeah, and Park Hill. That's going next, but we don't have the money. Phew, that's where the Goon Squad is, one of the gangs over there, the Goon Squad.

JM: But what's to say --I guess I'm curious what you think about --they take down Clarksdale, they have a corner store there now, there's a corner store. 130:00There's still not a grocery store. They put up Beecher, they take it down. They put up buildings that look nice. I mean, here's what I mean to say, when Beecher Terrace was built, the old Beecher Terrace, it was intended to be and was populated by upwardly mobile African Americans, who were --

GE: On their way up. Yeah.

JM: Right?

GE: Yeah.

JM: How do we avoid that again? We have nice buildings at Beecher Terrace now, how are we going to avoid scratching our heads 50 years from now, and saying, "Where did we go wrong?"

GE: We probably shouldn't have built Beecher Terrace again. We probably shouldn't have rebuilt it.

JM: Oh, really?

GE: Yeah. Because the same thing is going to happen, I think. The people that we've allowed to stay there are people we've allowed to come back, that were moved out -- Supposedly, the better of the people that lived there. See what I'm saying?

JM: Uh-huh.

GE: You didn't let some of those people that didn't pay their rent, police always at the house, all that kind of stuff. Those people we moved out, and the 131:00guy knows -- And that's another conversation, where did they go?

JM: Right.

GE: Scattered site, don't talk about that. So, the people that live there now, you got to look at Beecher Terrace versus Nulu.

JM: Okay.

GE: See, that's a good look. Look what they're doing in Nulu, they're doing the same thing they're doing in West Louisville. They're building some apartments for people to live in, we call them the Buppies, to live in, the young African Americans, young white folk, to live in there and be able to work downtown and live not far from downtown. They can ride on their bike, they can go on their scooters, and all this kind of stuff. So, they're doing that in Nulu, upper -- 132:00Really, East Louisville, they're doing it there. Then they got West Louisville, the divide is 9th Street.

JM: Right.

GE: They're going to widen 9th Street, and make it more pedestrian minded, and how to do that. Maybe a overpass over the traffic and so forth. So, the question you ask about Beecher Terrace, folks that live in there, it becomes generational. And that's always been the case with Beecher Terrace. But I think there's maybe a place for that. I think it's a place for -- Well, I said something else a minute ago, second ago. I think it's a place for those kind of developments. But the kind of people you put there have to know that they're not there to stay there for their lifetime.

They still got to move, get them a house. Wealth building, we don't have any kind of -- African Americans compared with white folk, in terms of wealth 133:00building, which a home is basically above that. We're way behind. So, you got to integrate them again, you always got to integrate them. There are white people in Portland and whatnot, that need to come up out of there. Just come up out of there. They won't come out. We lived here all my life, my parents, my grandparents lived here. That probably didn't answer the question, but --

JM: Like you said, I mean, these are hard questions to even unpack. So, to get any discussion is good discussion. And especially for me because there's not a lot that --

GE: Where'd you grow up at?

JM: Grew up Highlands. Highland's neighborhood. Went to --

GE: Bardstown Road area?

JM: Bardstown Road, yeah. Deer Park neighborhood, like St. Agnes --

GE: Deer Park, I know where that is.

JM: Yeah, Newburg --

GE: Newburg?

JM: On Newburg Road, before you get to Newburg --

GE: I gotcha, I gotcha.

JM: What's that?

GE: Trevillian Way?

JM: Yeah. Near there, close. Near Bellarmine.

GE: Well, you know what they're doing for that area --Hmm. There's homes there, right? I mean, you grew up in a house, a home. I call them a home is a house. They was never ever a thought of putting -- I call them project type housing, not apartments. Is it apartments --

JM: There are some apartments in the neighborhood, from the probably 30s and 40s when six plex houses --

GE: So, small.

JM: Yeah. So, small apartment buildings. As far as big apartment buildings, not a lot of them. No. No, mm-mm.

GE: No?

JM: Not like the project housing or --let's see, there are a couple though. 135:00Trying to think, yeah, man, there's a couple here and there scattered through the neighborhood for sure. Some bigger apartment complexes --

GE: How dense? I mean, it's not 50 or 60 apartments, right?

JM: Not 50 or 60, no.

GE: Not three or four blocks of apartments.

JM: No, sir.

GE: No? Okay.

JM: Nope.

GE: Well, who makes those plans? Who plans all of that?

JM: Well, we do now. That's what I'm saying.

GE: Yeah.

JM: You have been in your career; people my age are now. I know a handful of urban planners and they see where we've come from. So, I'm hopeful that we can try to sort of redirect and re-correct some totally egregious and completely racist practices that have landed us here, where the income gap is directly 136:00correlated to crime. These things are not by accident. You know what I mean?

GE: No.

JM: I'm telling you all this --

GE: No, no, I want to hear what you think.

JM: Oh. I mean, I think it's just a travesty. In this work that we're doing, I'm trying to figure out what people in Russell think about this moment right now. When this money is coming in, there is a lot of promise, there's promise that things could change, and there is the ever-present threat that things could stay the same. And I think everybody has those questions and those concerns --

GE: Well, I see the promise. Where I add on that, what you just said. That's why I'm here, that's why I built here. My wife, she didn't necessarily want to build here in the beginning. But after I convinced her that this is where it's going to be happening at, it's going to be the center of the happening. She understood that and she said, "Okay." And it is, I think it is, I see the forwardness of 137:00this. I see this expanding.

JM: Really?

GE: Yeah. The Urban League at Rebound, you ought to kind of figure out what they're doing. They're buying properties and turning them into this, right next to me. This is a Rebound house.

JM: Right.

GE: Rebound house next to me, Rebound house on the other side. Now I was concerned about this house over here. First of all, it's so close. That's what we bought into. And then, you're putting siding up instead of brick, all brick. I say, "Hey," but they put a brick facade on the front with sides in the back as siding. I said, "Well, the house next door is all brick, house down the street, the big house, nice house, pattern after this house on the corner, it's not finished yet. You'll see it as you go out, if you go that way. And that's what you ought to do. You parked right out here, white car, right?

JM: Yeah, uh-huh.

GE: Go out and drive a block to 22nd Street. And man, I mean, you can't believe it. You look over here, you look over there, what? You look back behind you, "Oh, what's going on here?" We're moving, things are happening. We're moving the housing west. You got a development down in west, around Stanley Park area. Oh, they made a area down in there, nice homes. They were there in the beginning. And those homes are beginning to deteriorate.

JM: Yeah.

GE: White folks lived there and they moved out and we moved in. Houses are good, nice built, and whatnot, strategically located on a parkway. We got to come east from that, and how far can we go? Well, they've said 9th Street is it. Somebody said that.

JM: Uh-huh.

GE: 9th Street is as far as you can go, east. As far as you can go west is 9th Street. Who said that? Who did that?

JM: Right. Yeah.

GE: The political entity did it, or allowed it. And it's all about developments, developers, development, where you can develop it, where you can make money. Developer made money off this in here. I mean, heck, man. Good money, people got good mortgages here or whatnot and so on. So, I see progress, so slow. And the young African American, I'm not sure where their heads are at. I'm not sure where their heads at.

JM: How so?

GE: They haven't had the experiences -- What am I called, a baby boomer? Born in the 40s.

JM: Well, yeah, you're a boomer --

GE: I'm before the boomers.

JM: You're before the boomers, yeah. Just a little bit.

GE: Huh?

JM: A little bit.

GE: A little bit. But basically, we fit in the boomers. They are the X generation and whatnot now. What are they thinking? And the industries, and our jobs are not the same jobs. High tech jobs. So, they got to figure it out.

JM: Right.

GE: And it does not seem to me -- Louisville, I'm talking Louisville, I'm not talking country wide because you got Atlanta, Philly, and the big cities. They figured it out. We haven't figured it out yet.

JM: How to attract and keep young African Americans? Is that what you mean?

GE: Yeah. Look what happened to U of L.

JM: Shoot.

GE: They got wrecked.

JM: Wrecked so hard.

GE: AD and president, same day, he's leaving. Boom. They got to start all over again. And I talked to my buddies at work, on the way to my friend, I talked to my buddies at work, I was a part of that University of Louisville thing he said it's because of the trustees.

JM: Really?

[end of interview]