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00:24:48
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Transcription: [00:06:49]

{SPEAKER name="Pearl Bowser"}
Did you see any other um, black films?

{SILENCE}

[00:06:55]

{SPEAKER name="Pearl Bowser"}
Either in the movie house, or someone traveling around like Reverend Taylor?

{SPEAKER name="Lula Adams"}
They weren't making 'em.

{SILENCE}

[00:07:03]

{SPEAKER name="Pearl Bowser"}
I'm sorry?

{SPEAKER name="Lula Adams"}
[laughing] They weren't making any black films that I know anything about.
[00:07:09]

{SPEAKER name="Pearl Bowser"}
Okay, okay.

{SPEAKER name="Lula Adams"}
This is the [[??]] something that is come up. Now, the only thing we got to see was white films, see.
[00:07:20]

{SPEAKER name="Pearl Bowser"}
At the Idle wa-- at the Idle Hour Theatre um, was that a wooden structure?

{SILENCE}

[00:07:26]

[[crosstalk]]

{SPEAKER name="Pearl Bowser"}
The theatre itself?

{SPEAKER name="Lula Adams"}
Well, it had been a store.

{SPEAKER name="Pearl Bowser"}
Ah-ha.
[00:07:31]

{SPEAKER name="Lula Adams"}
Now, I don't-- no it wasn't a wooden structure

{SPEAKER name="Pearl Bowser"}
So it was a store, and how did they change it into a movie?

{SPEAKER name="Lula Adams"}
They just didn't, they had a balcony in the back for the film operator and screen down in, in front.
[00:07:50]

{SPEAKER name="Pearl Bowser"}
What were the seats like?

{SILENCE}

[00:07:54]

{SPEAKER name="Lula Adams"}
Uh in, oh, in folding chairs.

{SPEAKER name="Pearl Bowser"}
Wooden?

{SPEAKER name="Lula Adams"}
Wooden, but they were hinged together. Individual seats hinged together.
[00:08:05]

{SPEAKER name="Pearl Bowser"}
And when there were black people and white people that were both in the theater at the same time.

{SPEAKER name="Lula Adams"}
No, that was the principle-- the people that attended the Idle Hour were black people.

{SPEAKER name="Pearl Bowser"}
Were black.
[00:08:17]

{SPEAKER name="Pearl Bowser"}
Did they have special showing for whites? Or whites didn't go?

{SPEAKER name="Lula Adams"}
No they just {chuckle} no no they just didn't, unless it was somebody that just wanted to see something, then they just come on up in there. That was up to them.
[00:08:30]

{SPEAKER name="Lula Adams"}
Whether they wanted to come in there, and sit.

{SPEAKER name="Louise Spence"}
And they could sit anywhere?

{SPEAKER name="Lula Adams"}
umm,hmm.
[00:08:34]

{SPEAKER name="Pearl Bowser"}
Do you remember how much it cost?
[00:08:37]

[all laugh]

{SPEAKER name="Pearl Bowser"}
How much did you get from your aunt?

[laughter]
[00:08:41]

{SPEAKER name="Lula Adams"}
Oh, I got a whole quarter and went to the show. And had some money to buy me some oranges with. But, I did not get to do that, see, 'cause, right down the street, there next to the fire station was Mr. Angelos place where we would go get out fruit and candy and stuff you see.
[00:09:03]

{SPEAKER name="Pearl Bowser"}
And you would bring that to the theater?

{SPEAKER name="Lula Adams"}
Uh-huh [affirmative]
[00:09:06]

{SPEAKER name="Pearl Bowser"}
And what were your favorite candies?

{SPEAKER name="Lula Adams"}
Oh Peppermint. I like peppermint candy.

{SPEAKER name="Pearl Bowser"}
Peppermint candy
[00:09:15]

{SPEAKER name="Lula Adams"}
and chocolate ice cream. Got some now. [laughter]
[00:09:19]

{SPEAKER name="Pearl Bowser"}
They did not sell anything in the theater?

{SPEAKER name="Lula Adams"}
Oh no! Wasn't no place in there to sell it!

{SPEAKER name="Pearl Bowser"}
It was a small theater?
[00:09:26]

{SPEAKER name="Lula Adams"}
Very small. Just like a bit size, I don't know, store. That's the kind of-- and anyways, I'm sure it was brick on the outside.

{SPEAKER name="Pearl Bowser"}
Do you remember who owned the theater?

{SILENCE}

[00:09:45]
{SPEAKER name="Lula Adams"}
No--

{SPEAKER name="Pearl Bowser"}
Was it a white person?

{SPEAKER name="Lula Adams"}
Oh yeah! I believe so. That's what I'm telling you. The folks all lived next door to one another and everything up there and, and I was told it was an Italian man.
But now I don't know who actually owned the theater.
[00:10:08]

{SPEAKER name="Pearl Bowser"}
And the person that took the tickets?

{SPEAKER name="Lula Adams"}
Well, that's what he was, Italian.
[00:10:17]

{SPEAKER name="Louise Spence"}
Was this small theatre usually full when ever you went there?

{SPEAKER name="Lula Adams"}
Oh yeah, they had a good congregation.
[00:10:26]

[all laugh]
[00:10:29]

{SPEAKER name="Lula Adams"}
Because, I'll tell you what, the people: the operators did always treated everybody like they wanted them to act, ya know. And, so that was the way we didn't have a lot of fightin' going on and tryna start up something like I seeing here now in some neighborhoods, like this one.
[00:10:57]

{SPEAKER name="Pearl Bowser"}
Mmhm.

{SPEAKER name="Lula Adams"}
We all the time, we'd see the police that driving through the [[??]].
[00:11:04]

{SPEAKER name="Lula Adams"}
But, in later years, when the old folks that started up the neighborhood began to die, and the younger ones they grew up here and moved somewhere else to start their families. When the old folks died, they redid the place, and that's what started the stuff.
[00:11:28]

{SPEAKER name="Pearl Bowser"}
I see.

[[crosstalk]]

{SPEAKER name="Lula Adams"}
Because one woman, a misses Guaia. G-U-A-I-A.

{SILENCE}

[00:11:38]

{SPEAKER name="Lula Adams"}
When [[??]] were color, the colored man there owned probably every [[??]] Hollywood Street and Hunter. And well, from Hunter, from Hunter Street 'cause there was a white man that owned there. A corner there, the [[??]] back to Hunter, 'cause that was a commercial street and [[??]] a grocery. It, uh, Mr. [[Bearn??]] and his wife bought over that [[??]] in Hollywood. Bah!
[00:12:22]

{SPEAKER name="Lula Adams"}
But, uh, this Mrs. Guaia-- guhaya or gaiyah, whatever-- she bought up them and [[??]] put a liquor store, not on the [[??]]. She wanted to put a liquor store in and the natural thing, white people moved back over to Chelsea Street. They got rid of the colored people who live down here, and wanted to stop her from putting a liquor store there because the high [[??]] schools at Hunter, [[??]] at that end of Hunter Street down there and [[??]], where the park is. Oh, and she went on, she couldn't get it here in Memphis because we get some friends up there and in charge of government and tell us what to do. And those white people that were, the preacher knows, was trying to help us keep 'em from putting that liquor store out between the children on the east side of Hollywood Street would have to come cross then come back, you know, to go to school.
[00:13:50]

{SPEAKER name="Lula Adams"}
She went all the way to Nashville, and I knew [[??]] the people in east Ten-- middle and east Tennessee, thought all the folks in west Tennessee [[??]] wonder where all
of Tennessee's tax money was coming from were a bunch of idiots and [[??]] all he had to do was [[??]] on some watermelon. Oh boy, they told some-- I learned that after I got grown. Back on to the

[[??]]

[00:14:52]

{SPEAKER name="Pearl Bowser"}
Ms. Adams, can we-- I have a question about the Idle Hour, if you don't mind. You told us that Saturday they played westerns, and Monday and Wednesday they played the serials--

{SPEAKER name="Lula Adams"}
serials
[00:15:03]

{SPEAKER name="Pearl Bowser"}
that your mother liked so much.

{SPEAKER name="Lula Adams"}
Uh-huh.
[00:15:05]

{SPEAKER name="Pearl Bowser"}
Do you know what they played on Tuesday and Thursday and Friday?

{SPEAKER name="Lula Adams"}
Uh-uh [negative]
[00:15:08]

{SPEAKER name="Pearl Bowser"}
You never went those days?

{SPEAKER name="Lula Adams"}
No. No, I didn't go those days.
[00:15:11]

{SPEAKER name="Pearl Bowser"}
After you started working, did you still go back to the Idle Hour, or did you go to other theaters?

{SPEAKER name="Lula Adams"}
I went to other theaters. That's something, I tell you, I went to the one on Mains, downtown, I think of the correct name of the theater.
[00:15:28]

{SPEAKER name="Pearl Bowser"}
That was the theater where you went the [[??]]

{SPEAKER name="Lula Adams"}
Uh-huh [affirmative] That's where I saw The Ten Commandments and all those shows.
[00:15:38]

[[silence]]

[00:15:41]

{SPEAKER name="Lula Adams"}
But, uh, later I started going to the [[??]] when it reopened, let me tell you.

{SPEAKER name="Pearl Bowser"}
But does-- the big shows like The Ten Commandments didn't play at the Idle Hour?
[00:15:55]

{SPEAKER name="Lula Adams"}
Oh no, no no no no, not then! They didn't cause I don't, guess it was made by, let's see, Ten Commandments wasn't made until later years.

{SPEAKER name="Pearl Bowser"}
Right, but when-- was the Idle Hour still existing later, or did it close down?

{SPEAKER name="Lula Adams"}
No, they didn't [[??]] a thing was closed down [[??]]
[00:16:16]

{SPEAKER name="Pearl Bowser"}
Oh, I see.

{SPEAKER name="Lula Adams"}
[[??]] upstairs, which I didn't go to. Though I didn't say I didn't [[??]] I couldn't do it in public because of family objections [laughing]
[00:16:37]

{SPEAKER name="Pearl Bowser"}
The theater that you can't remember the name of-- but you said there was a theater you can't remember the name of, the one that you went to, afterwards.

{SPEAKER name="Lula Adams"}
It was on Main Street.
[00:16:49]

{SPEAKER name="Pearl Bowser"}
On Main Street.

{SPEAKER name="Lula Adams"}
Uh-huh, between, uh, let's see,[paper sounds] [[??]] on the-- this side of the street.
[00:17:00]

{SPEAKER name="Pearl Bowser"}
Okay, but you went to that theater because you didn't have to go around back?

{SPEAKER name="Lula Adams"}
That's the one I went to, you had to go around through the alley and go up on-- on the side. Outside. To get into the part where, they had colored places. Before that, we didn't get in [[??]]
[00:17:27]

{SPEAKER name="Pearl Bowser"}
Oh, you couldn't get in, before that? And oh, around what period is this? Can you remember around what year? Before you--

{SPEAKER name="Lula Adams"}
No.

{SPEAKER name="Pearl Bowser"}
No?
[00:17:41]

{SPEAKER name="Pearl Bowser"}
Could you tell us a little bit about before you got finished with 11th grade? Did you start working then?

{SPEAKER name="Lula Adams"}
Uh-uh [negative]
[00:17:50]

{SPEAKER name="Pearl Bowser"}
You stayed with your family?

{SPEAKER name="Lula Adams"}
I stayed with my family and as I said, they all worked, and I had the responsibility to take care of everybody's bills and paying them on time, and keeping up with everything.
[00:18:07]

{SPEAKER name="Pearl Bowser"}
So you managed the household?

{SPEAKER name="Lula Adams"}
Uh-huh [affirmative]
[00:18:10]

{SPEAKER name="Pearl Bowser"}
And--

{SPEAKER name="Lula Adams"}
And when I started off-- getting social security payments was because after we had moved out here and I was good and grown [laugh], Mrs. [[Gerber??]] started-- her husband was an attorney general office at the time-- she started to give
[00:18:33]

{SPEAKER name="Lula Adams"}
she had 'em made, she lived at 761 University, and she had 'em made. And she said, "Lula, I tell you what." She said, "I know the position you in. You a woman, you get a job that you can't [[??]] they send me to handle the bills 'cause I [[??]]
[00:18:56]

{SPEAKER name="Pearl Bowser"}
Mmhm.
[00:18:59]

{SPEAKER name="Lula Adams"}
I knew I knew little, and Mr. [[Gerber?]] would tell me, he'd say, "Now anything you don't understand, oh I can tell you-- give you somebody to go to, so they can explain to you what you can and can't do. Say we know the [[??]] to his wife.
[00:19:22]

{SPEAKER name="Lula Adams"}
They has told me the position that you in, and we don't want to offend [[Carrie??]] and [[name]]." And Katie goes they been, as he told 'em one time about a guy that raising a lot of [[sand?]], I don't know.
[00:19:40]

{SPEAKER name="Lula Adams"}
We were living on 2nd Street then, and a friend of mine came to see me and about 9:30 that night, I was walking her down to the corner of, we live between Concord and Overton, and I was walking her to the corner of Overton with her talking.
[00:20:03]

{SPEAKER name="Lula Adams"}
These guys had come to wait on the [[??]] railroad line, and they were around that. And they started doing a lot of talk to us, and a man that had grown up in the neighborhood with me and his sister.
[00:20:21]

{SPEAKER name="Lula Adams"}
He said, "Uh-uh. You got the wrong girls. And, uh, they don't participate in what you doing. Don't count them in." And oh they would go knife him, and uh--
[00:20:35]

{SPEAKER name="Pearl Bowser"}
Mm.

{SPEAKER name="Lula Adams"}
Because they work for the railroad well [[??]] told me my daddy worked for the railroad when I was born in the north central. That's why I was [[??]], when I was 11 years old. But, and we went to-- so we called the police to them because they were carrying out so bad.
[00:20:58]

{SPEAKER name="Lula Adams"}
And Mr. {[Junior Salvurn??]] told 'em-- he was city attorney at the time. He said, "Dear John, or whatever they tell you, they'll tell you the truth, because they-- she's from that kind of a family. So now we know that she didn't take a part, and wasn't allowed to take a part in all that kind of carrying on like they were doing."
[00:21:29]

{SPEAKER name="Lula Adams"}
So that was what they were finding. Man his brother come and, come and-- "I just want to talk to you, you know my brother that he, he told us--"
[00:21:42]

{SPEAKER name="Lula Adams"}
I said, "Well now see, I got nothing to do with your brother, though." I said, "No sir, I don't have nothing I want to say. If they want to fine him for it, they--"
[00:21:54]

{SPEAKER name="Lula Adams"}
[as brother]"Well you know we go to court and you appear to testify against him, he going to have to be found out." He thought that I would be stupid enough to stay away and not let people testify from me-- he knew me and my family's character-- because he would pay me some money. I said, "Uh-uh."[negative]
[00:22:17]

{SPEAKER name="Pearl Bowser"}
Did these men who worked for the Pullman, or the railroad, did they housing right there, in this town?

{SPEAKER name="Lula Adams"}
Did they have--?

{SPEAKER name="Lula Adams"}
Did the railroad provide them with housing in town?
[00:22:34]

{SPEAKER name="Lula Adams"}
No! They would just, you know, fixing the tracks. The L and N railroad was what they would see.

{SPEAKER name="Pearl Bowser"}
Uh-huh.
[00:22:43]

{SPEAKER name="Lula Adams"}
Louisville and Nashville. And that was-- had been a substation of that, on the 2nd Streets of, uh, between Concord and [[Archshore??]], on the same side of the street where we lived.
[00:23:01]

{SPEAKER name="Lula Adams"}
They had to go by, they were in car boxes, or whatever cars L and N provided for them to sleep in--

{SPEAKER name="Pearl Bowser"}
That's-- that's what I meant.

{SPEAKER name="Lula Adams"}
see when they're going around, you know, going around butting in with, well there was a section of women that took up time with that bunch, see.
[00:23:21]

{SPEAKER name="Lula Adams"}
And, he was just going to take over the neighborhood. They just thought, you know, cause they were filling in the railroad, they understandably stayed where everybody else was. Go to in the way of [[comerce??]], as they say.
[00:23:38]

{SPEAKER name="Pearl Bowser"}
Mm. Um, the women that you said, the women that worked for the Pullman Company cleaning-- cleaning cars?

{SPEAKER name="Lula Adams"}
Cleaning the sleeping cars.
[00:23:52]

{SPEAKER name="Pearl Bowser"}
Right. And they cleaned and worked for the railroad, only when it came through? Or did they travel on the--

{SPEAKER name="Lula Adams"}
No. They, just when it-- they would bring the cars. See, at that time, uh, the Illinois Central had their station at Poplar and Front, and all down there was the railroad yard.
[00:24:25]

{SPEAKER name="Lula Adams"}
The cars, when they would come in, unless they were going all to [[??]], see. They would put clean cars on, going on from-- like from Chicago to Memphis, then they'd have pickup a clean Pullman line of cars to go through to New Orleans.

[00:24:49]



Transcription Notes:
First transcription is finished with timestamps, but still a number of [[??]] throughout where I could not quite make out what was being said.