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Transcription: [00:03:06]

{SPEAKER name="Victoria West"}
You know, you don't go to the theater maybe onest a week. Cause there's a movie house. Was a--and they had a Vaudev--a Vaudeville. And you--the girl would set there and play the piano.

{SPEAKER name="Pearl Bowser"}
Uh huh.
[00:03:17]

{SPEAKER name="Victoria West"}
And we had no television at that time.

{SPEAKER name="Pearl Bowser"}
Right.
[00:03:21]

{SPEAKER name="Victoria West"}
And so you had to go someplace. So we went to the movies. There were movies downtown, but they didn't segregate.
[00:03:27]

{SPEAKER name="Victoria West"}
You could go in, but they-- You buy your ticket in advance, and it was so that they seated all the colored together! [[Laughs]]
[00:03:36]

{SPEAKER name="Pearl Bowser"}
Ah. Ah that's interesting.
[00:03:37]

{SPEAKER name="Victoria West"}
It wasn't that you were pushed. They didn't tell ya, but when you got there, you could see that all the colored were in this t-- couple of lines together.
[00:03:47]

{SPEAKER name="Pearl Bowser"}
Now where were this? Where was that in town?
[00:03:49]


{SPEAKER name="Victoria West"}
That was the Majestic on Fulton Street, downtown Brooklyn. That was a big theater. And that was in about 1917-18.
[00:04:00]

{SPEAKER name="Pearl Bowser"}
Um-humm.
[00:04:01]

{SPEAKER name="Victoria West"}
And-- but that's the only theater that I can remember that showed any, and the one on Fulton Street. Prejudice. Because we didn't have many.
[00:04:09]

{SPEAKER name="Victoria West"}
Later on, the theaters came and they didn't show prejudice. The Albee was there, and the Fox, and they didn't show any prejudice.
[00:04:18]

{SPEAKER name="Pearl Bowser"}
All right.

{SPEAKER name="Victoria West"}
Now all the stores downtown had 'White, no colored'.

{SPEAKER name="Pearl Bowser"}
Right.
[00:04:23]

{SPEAKER name="Pearl Bowser"}
What-- what about the movie house? Did they hire any blacks?
[00:04:27]

{SPEAKER name="Victoria West"}
No, no black was hired. All white. There was only a white girl played the piano cause they didn't have any of--they didn't have talkie movies then.
[00:04:36]

{SPEAKER name="Victoria West"}
And the white girl played the piano. And white ushers. Only had one usher, and the ticket agent. That's all, all white. Everything was white.
[00:04:45]

{SPEAKER name="Pearl Bowser"}
What, what, what did you see?

{SPEAKER name="Victoria West"}
At the--

{SPEAKER name="Pearl Bowser"}
--At this movie house. Yeah.
[00:04:50]

{SPEAKER name="Victoria West"}
At the movie house? Umm, I don't remember then. They had Vaudeville.
[00:04:53]

{SPEAKER name="Victoria West"}
I know they had somebody come out and dance and sing. And they always had somebody come out with blackface. I remember that!
[00:05:00]

{SPEAKER name="Victoria West"}
They blacken him up and make him look like Bill Robinson. [[Laughs]].

{SPEAKER name="Pearl Bowser"}
Ahhh. [[Laughs]]
[00:05:05]

{SPEAKER name="Pearl Bowser"}
Did, umm-- Were there any actual black performers?
[00:05:09]

{SPEAKER name="Victoria West"}
No.

{SPEAKER name="Pearl Bowser"}
No?
[00:05:10]

{SPEAKER name="Victoria West"}
No. No. Blacken up. White blacken up, but no black. Black didn't get any employment.
[00:05:16]

{SPEAKER name="Victoria West"}
And when we moved here, in 1924, yeah, 1924; the year that Eddie was born;
[00:05:26]

{SPEAKER name="Victoria West"}
I moved before she was born. When we moved here the-- was two colored families on the block.
[00:05:34]

{SPEAKER name="Pearl Bowser"}
Um-hmm.
[00:05:35]

{SPEAKER name="Victoria West"}
And a few doors from where we lived, there was a Salvation Army.
[00:05:41]

Transcription Notes:
---------- Reopened for Editing 2023-05-26 13:44:51 ---------- Reopened for Editing 2023-05-28 19:14:43