Interview with Geneva Blasingame, July 12, 2013

Duvacat: Okay, this is the First Person Project, interview number fourteen. I am Laura Duvacat, I'm here with Rene Donnell, and today I am talking with Geneva Johnson Blasingame. We are in the Bob Short Oral History Studio inside the Richard B. Russell Library's Wilson Oral History and Media Gallery at the University of Georgia Special Collections Libraries in Athens, Georgia. The date is Friday, July 12, 2013. Okay, Ms. Blasingame, thank you for being here. I guess we'd like to start by asking you about where and when you were born, and then just tell us about your experience here in Athens.

Blasingame: Okay. My name is Geneva Johnson Blasingame, and I was born in Athens, and we called it then Bray Camp. It's over there on 4th Street. Then 00:01:00we moved over here on Lydon Row, and we called it Linnentown when I was two. And it, where it is now, it's in the midst of the University of Georgia, but it was on Baxter, off of Baxter Street, around Cloverhurst, between Peabody, which was all a Black neighborhood, Finley Street, which was all a Black neighborhood, Newton Street, which was all a Black neighborhood. We was homeowners. And we stayed there, and I was raised there until I was eighteen. And in between there, we all came together. We was a family, and we helped one another, and it was a good rearing that my daddy and mama gave us. Daddy worked. At the University of Georgia, Fine Arts Building, all my life, till he retired.

Duvacat: What did he do there?

Blasingame: He was a janitor. 00:02:00Mama worked at Snelling Hall, in which he served. They called my daddy Snowball, called my mama, Mama Carrie. So we could walk from Lyndon Row, and it was always a path that we could go to, to Lumpkin Street. And go over to Snelling Hall to see mama if anything came up. Of course, she would give us something to eat to bring home to the rest of the kids. It was eight of us, which now is only six. At that time, when we were staying in our Black neighborhood, which we own, we all kept, the children, we went to school, we walked to some school, Reese Street School, where I started at. When it was, you know, time for me to go to school. And we walked from Lyndon Row to Reese Street, where it was on, going up Pope. And it was on the 00:03:00corner of Reece and Church Street. From there, we could always walk back home. Then we start growing up. Then we had to go to East Athens School, which is a whole different thing. But while we was in this community right here, between Lyndon Row, Finley Street, Peabody. And on the other street, now Finley Street would go all the way out to the tree that owned itself. It still owns itself. But that was our Black neighborhood. We all owned our home there. In 1962, they started building, we saw the University of Georgia start doing things. And in 1964, '63, '63, excuse me, that's when they started pushing 00:04:00the Blacks out. My daddy, who, like I said, worked at the Fine Arts Building, they had a meeting. Everybody who owned a home, which was practically everybody, maybe one or two who rented from somebody, but we owned ours. And then they had him at a meeting. When he came home, I would see my daddy was six feet five, tall, strong man. And he took care of all eight of us. Never no relief or nothing. And he had tears in his eyes. And mama asked him, I remember, what did he say? You know, you couldn't sit and look in your parents' face, but we still listened when we didn't supposed to listen. You know how that goes. They say we got to move. And Daddy told them he didn't want to. They told him, "Snowball, you do not have a choice to move." So what they did, they took our home, and it was a small house up there on Peabody. 00:05:00They sold that to Daddy and gave him about, I don't know how much money they gave him, two, maybe $300 from what I understand, and put him where I am now living in a house.

Duvacat: Can you tell us more about what that house was like, and what the--

Blasingame: What I was living in?

Duvacat: Mm-hmm, the houses in the neighborhood before?

Blasingame: Oh, my goodness, the house. Now, our house, it was eight of us. When we first moved there, as a little girl, I remember we had a bedroom, a living room, and a kitchen. Daddy built--we had an outdoors toilet. Any of y'all know what that is? Okay.

Duvacat: The outhouse.

Blasingame: Outhouse. An old man used to come in, had to inspect that and all. But then Daddy built a bedroom, a bathroom, and a back porch and a garage to that house. At that time, my oldest brother, he had left and went to the Army. Another brother had kind of moved next door to Miss Gertrude Clogg's house, who had a 00:06:00mansion, because it was only her and her sister. So we took care of one another. In the next house it had two sides to it, so it housed two families. The house next door to that was Holmes on up the street. Do you want me to call them out? I could, but y'all don't have enough time. Okay, now I'm going to go on around to Church Street. All this went all the way up from Cloverhurst to Lyndon Row. Around Lyndon Row, Church Street. All this was not paved. But down at Cloverhurst, it was paved. But where the Black people, we lived, it was not paved. All around Church Street was not paved. You come down Peabody, that was not paved. And up Finley Street, Baxter Street was paved, but when you jumped over to Finley Street on the other side, it stopped being paved. Newton Street, down there where the Holiday Inn and stuff is now, and Parkview 00:07:00Apartment, it was not paved. That was all Black. All the way to Broad Street. And the community, Union Institute, we, well, that's the one that children from the country had to come to Union Institute, right in this community, and go to school. And in the meantime, people like us, and the lady next door, next door, we would take the kids in through the week, because the parents didn't have no way to get them up here no more, on the weekend. And our parents would take them in. And they would live with us until the parents came and got them on a Friday night and took them home. Brought them back Sunday night. After church, of course. And that's the way we lived. We took care of one another. But that was our home, our community. That belonged to us. But we had no choice. We had to move.

Duvacat: Earlier you were describing how your yard was set up and how you grew all 00:08:00those things. Can you elaborate on that some?

Blasingame: A garden. We had. collards, corns, watermelons, cantaloupes, cucumbers. The cucumber was down there. We had a brook at the end of our property, and the cucumber was down there. Oh, we had squash. They stayed, but they had to plant it. My daddy was a wonderful--he had a green thumb, and he would plant all these cucumbers and squash, and then the okras, they was down there by the, by the, we called it a stream then. Y'all caught it. I'll call it a brook now, but then it was a creek. So you know, we had different names for everything, things, do what it had to do. But um, we see we had turnip salad, oh my Lord, Mama made us soap. We made our own soap, and in the morning at five o'clock, Daddy would get all us up, the one that could go work the garden. He would turn, he would turn on his headlight to his car, so we could see 00:09:00how to work the garden. We had to work that garden before we went to school. Come in the house, make sure your feet were clean. Wash up and go to school. Now the front yard, we had a yard on both sides. We had to keep it clean. You didn't grow grass then. Mom and Daddy made brushbrooms. And we cleaned our front yard and side and the back yard with that. But where the garden stopped at and started, children couldn't walk in them. No more than the working. But we didn't go hungry. We had butter beans, snap peas. We didn't go hungry. We didn't have to really buy anything. I remember they did let Dad at the time get a hog. His name was Porky. But once Dad killed the hog, we couldn't eat it because it was a pet. And we went down the country. My mama's brother had stuff down there, so we 00:10:00went and got stuff there. That was good.

Duvacat: Did you have a garden in the house where you moved after?

Blasingame: That was a garden? No, I didn't see, mom and daddy moved in there first, and of course they're gone now. Daddy died in 2004, and he was 94. Mama died 2007, she was 100.

Duvacat: Oh, wow.

Blasingame: And they had a garden when they first moved the house over there in 1964. But since I've been there, which has been ten years, that place I am now. No, I don't have a garden, but I have flowers.

Duvacat: How has the view from the front door of the house that you just moved into, how has that changed since you moved in there in the 60s? Or is the neighborhood kind of the samea?

Blasingame: Well, when mom and daddy moved over there, of course I was there for about a year with them. The neighborhood, 00:11:00there was teachers, there were professionals, there was dinosaurs like daddy, and there was--people that worked there over at the Snelling Hall, like mama, she worked on the line, and was a cook. And there was all different walks of life. But now, yes, it has changed. Next door to me now, I got a professor that works over here at the University of Georgia. Because of my age, he cut my grades for me. And the next girl next door, you know, she lives there. And she's--these two on the one--this side white, that side white. In front of me, the people have died out. And then later-- who live kind of down the street. It has changed a lot since mom and dad had first moved over there. It was the place to be. And that was a nice street. And then it got off. But now, with the help of the Lord, it has gotten back.

Duvacat: You mentioned being close with your neighbors. Did a lot of people that got displaced that 00:12:00were that moved in the 1960s move into the same neighborhood together? Did you keep in contact with any of them?

Blasingame: We are still in contact with the one that's still living. And we are family. Whenever anybody meet one another, we see one another as sisters, the ladies. And we see a guy, that's our brother. We stay in contact. We know where everybody is from the later state next door to me, Ms. Gertrude Clark. All them dead. All the old ones are dead. So we are the generation that's living now. My mama's generation, all of them gone. So now we are the generation, my age. Six to eight, the oldest one that I can remember that's living is my brother. He's 80 years old. So that's about how it is. But we stay in contact. We know where everyone is, and then we just love one another. It's a family. That's a bond that can't be broken. You can't do anything with it. The most heartbreaking time it was, as children, we thought we was going to be there. But I 00:13:00think, I'm reflecting back, when everything really started breaking up, when Union Institute stopped being there. The buildings was there for a long time, and the professor's house was there. But then the school, nobody went there anymore. We still took a shortcut going through there, but nobody went there. So I think that's when it--

Duvacat: What year was that?

Blasingame: That was 1960--two or three.

Duvacat: Okay.

Blasingame: I'd go with two, but I never went in, yeah, two. And that was, like I said, we could walk up Peabody, and go in the back, and go through Union School Yard, and end up on Baxter Street, and then we'd go on.

Donnell: Since you grew up in segregated times in Athens, What did you guys do for extracurricular activities? 00:14:00Like what did you guys do for fun or where'd you guys hang out? Was it just where everyone hangs out now or separate?

Blasingame: Let me tell you something, when we were young, mom and dad went to work. You didn't go out the yard. On Saturday that day to clean up. I mean, you went to school, and you came back. And in the cotton picking time. So we could go to the fair and help mama, cuz the university always closed down. And so in time to pick cotton, we had to go with mama to help pick cotton, even as little children. Now I was a little child, but I had a baby sister that was born right over here at 123 Lyndon Road. She's dead now. And mama would take us to the field with her when she picked cotton, when she wasn't working over here at Snelling Hall. And she'll put a sheet out, a cotton sheet, and she'll sit the baby on it. And I was the one that see about the baby. But my brothers would help mama pick cotton. Daddy still was at the Fine Arts Building working. 00:15:00But when I grew up enough, like I think I was about nine years old, they would give me a sack and I had to start picking cotton, just to help mama out. And he was giving us $3 a hundred, a hundred pound of cotton was $3. And we would take the little money that we make out of cotton, we'd pick and put it on mama's sheet. And then at the end of the day, he would give mama the money. And she would stop at Mr. Edward Grocery Store on a corner of Baxter and Finley Street. And then she would stop and give us a little bag of cookies, which was a dollar. Not a dollar, a penny. And then she would take the rest of the money and we ate. She bought whatever she wanted, she did what she wanted to do with it. I remember daddy used to get up at 5 o'clock in the morning on Saturday morning and go to the place called the Kurd Market. We call it now the Flea Market. But it was very exciting times if it was my turn to go. Cuz I could get up and go with Daddy and Mama. And we would get 00:16:00shoes, brown shoes, y'all call them something else now. But we called them brogains then. They're like them old army brown shoes. And you couldn't tear them up. And that's what we got to wear to school. And then we got the Black and white shoes, they called rock and roll shoes back then. We got those, and Daddy got them from that. We call them the KURD, K-U-R-D, Market. And Mama on Saturday morning was our outing time if we was good. I had a sister named Marie. She's still living, she's 77. She would take me on Saturday on Clayton Street, that's where all the Black people went to town. It was their time to go to town. Town is downtown. Clayton Street, where all the shop was, Cress's, The Diana Shop, all the shops. And we stayed there all day long. And then we'll walk all the way back from Clayton, down Lumpkin, 00:17:00then we know to cross the street down on the corner of Lumpkin and Baxter. Go up Baxter, go around Cloverhurst, and then we was home, 123 Lydon Road. But after all the time, you had to hold your sister's hand.

Duvacat: Did your family belong to a church?

Blasingame: Oh, Lord, yes. Oh, yeah, Daddy was a good deacon at Honor Grove Baptist Church, that's down in Oglethorpe. And I was baptized at St. James Church on Lexington Road in a creek. And they were real, real—oh, yeah, we had to go to church. Even after we got a certain age, we had to go to church. My daddy was real active in church. Mama was, too. Mama was a Methodist. But after her and Daddy got married, she had started going to his church which was a Baptist, but she never did change over. She stayed a Methodist, but she went with her husband. They were real loyal to their husband back then. Very obedient. 00:18:00She was a good mama. We had the best mama in the world. All the ladies were ladies over there. And they was real respectful, and if they saw me do something, let me tell you, they had permission to spank my honey pot. And when Mama then came home, oh boy. The same brush broom that I swept the yard with, sometimes you've got to whoopin with them. But it was a good time. We had running water. We didn't have to have a well, because we was in the city. So we didn't have to have a well. Not over there, off of Cloverhurst, on Lyndon Road, right in the midst of the university. And they took it. Did I suppose to say that? Well, I said they took it. They made us move. And we didn't want to, nobody wanted to move because we were set up. And I miss it to today.

Duvacat: I'm sorry, you said that you only lived in the 00:19:00house that you moved after that for a year, is that when you got married?

Blasingame: Oh yeah, I got married and I have five children, a mother of five and I buried my baby in '93, he died playing basketball in college. Burst of a heart, he died of a massive heart attack. That was my baby.

Duvacat: How old were you when you got married?

Blasingame: I was eighteen years old when I got married. Had a baby when I was nineteen. And I had my last baby-- I had Caroline, Terrence, Mika, Eric, and Percy was my baby. That's the one I buried in '93.

Duvacat: Can you tell us how you met your husband?

Blasingame: I met my first husband on a dare.

Duvacat: On a dare? I'd like to hear that story.

Blasingame: Well, my girlfriend was going with this guy's best friend. 00:20:00And, you know, the guy was kind of macho, you know. The lady who was at him. "You can't get him?" I said, "Yes, I can." And I got him. And I married him. He died. He's dead now. And that's when I married Percy's daddy, my baby's daddy. So I met my first husband on a dare. But Percy's name was Percy Everhart, not Percy the Blasingame. It was Everhart. But he went to Clarke Central. He was a good baby. He was seven feet tall.

Duvacat: Oh, wow.

Blasingame: Yeah, that was my baby.

Donnell: Kind of backtracking, after you finished high school, did you finish high school?

Blasigname: Sixty-four.

Donnell: Okay. Did you go to college or anything?

Blasingame: No, I had a scholarship, but I was in love. I had a scholarship to Albany State College. I played the flute.

Donnell: Really?

Blasingame: Yeah.

Duvacat: Do you still play?

Blasingame: I sing. 00:21:00But I don't play anymore. I played it for five years. See, high school started in the eighth grade back then. And I dared him. Bought me a brand new flute from Baldwin Music, I remember.

Donnell: Is Albany State College now Albany University?

Blasingame: I didn't keep up with it. I didn't keep up with it, I guess. I wouldn't really know. But it's about Linnentown over here, this Black community we were raised in. It was a dry cleaner over there, Chokes Dry Cleaner, then it was the Dairy Queen. We called it the Arctic Girl. It was Leigion--the pool is where Legion Pool is now. See we could go down there, we could skate, we could clean the pool up, but we couldn't get in the water. And when the band got ready to practice, University of Georgia, they practiced in the field over there. We had to stand on this hill. There was a hill there then, they shaved it down. And look at the 00:22:00band. But we couldn't go out there on the field, not while the band was playing. But when they left, you know they'd make a mess. We had to go, we could go clean it up. And then they'd give us a nickel. And we thought that was some money then. But it was fine. It was fine, that was the way it was. But it changed, praise God. I did demonstrate. That was a good time.

Duvacat: Can you tell us more about that?

Blasigname: The demonstration?

Duvacat: Yes, please.

Blasingame: Well, okay, I was in high school when it started up.

Duvacat: In the 1960s?

Blasingame: In the '60s, when Charlene Hunter and Hamilton Holmes came over here. And they--Reverend Hudson came, and he--we started, Martin Luther King was supposed to came to Athens but he didn't 'cause the life was threatened. And so they went to Oglethorpe and got Oglethorpe, Oconee County, Oglethorpe, Madison County, Madison, Georgia. And they got all these people to come up here, and we was demonstrating. We started demonstrating. It 00:23:00was organized, because it was a peaceful time, but there was some people that didn't have to be peaceful. And I was in a crowd that was peaceful sometimes, but then I also wanted to be in a crowd that just sit and didn't move. And then they went and got those people and they brought dogs up here, you know, to sic on us and stuff. And they called us derogatory names and everything. But we marched. We went to jail and they put us in this place out here on Boulevard that was a jail then.

Duvacat: How big was the crowd of demonstrators that you were with?

Blasingame: It was huge. Like I said, there was people from Oconee, Oglethorpe. They went and got the men, white men, and to make us, you know, get us, and to scare us. And it was scary. And then they got dogs.

Duvacat: You were a teenager.

Blasigname: Yeah, and they got dogs, and I was having a freak dog. And so it was scary. But Varsity, we used to couldn't go into the Varsity. Let me tell you about that. Used to go, we used to pay our money, 00:24:00give somebody our money, right there, at the door. Tell 'em what we want, mama made a stop. Go to the side, they had a slot, they would push your food through. You couldn't go into Varsity when it was downtown. It was downtown on the corner of College and Broad Street, right there, right there. See, before it moved up there on Broad Street, up on up the highway. We couldn't go in the Varsity, we couldn't go in the drug stores. The man at the drug store, corner of Lumpkin and Clayton. He took all the seats out of his drug store because he didn't want to sit in there.

Donnell: Is that the Horton's drug store?

Blasingame: Yes.

Donnell: Oh, that's where I get my pharmacy.

Blasingame: Well, you know, he was, I guess he dead and gone, be with the Lord and repent and everything, you know. But that's the way it was. But we, I would demonstrate because I knew that one day I was going to have children and grandchildren, nieces and nephews, and I said, "Oh, this is not going to work."

Duvacat: How long were you in jail? 00:25:00Blasingame: My daddy came and got me about fifteen minutes later.

Duvacat: Were they proud?

Blasingame: No, we weren't in jail. We were locked up, but they didn't put us in jail. They put us out there in the yard, and they had it fenced in. We called it the bullpen. That's what they called it, too. And I heard my daddy say, "Where my baby?" I said, "Here I am, daddy." He came, he said, "Didn't I tell you?" I said, "Yes, sir." He said, "Didn't I tell you not to do that?" I said, "Yes, sir." But you didn't. You didn't say, "Lie around your parents." You didn't say, "Fool." You didn't say, "Curse." You didn't say, "Uh-huh" and "Uh-uh." "Yes, sir." "Yes, ma'am." "No, sir." "No, ma'am." I said, "Yes, sir." So he got me out. Of course, the next day I was downtown demonstrating again, and he just saw me and didn't say a word. And he didn't bother me no more. So it came out pretty good. But it never did bother us over there. All the things that was going on with Hamilton Homes and Charlene 00:26:00Hunter, they never bothered us. I could walk home from up there—there was a little canteen after we grew up. We could go there, you know. And so I was supposed to have walked home with my brother, but he was cold and I was impatient. But I walked home down Baxter Street by myself, walked down Findlay, hit Cloverhurst down the bottom of the hill, which was one little old light, and it was a scary thing, and ran on home. And they didn't say a word. We saw the whites. They looked at the students. It wasn't the students, guys. It was the outsiders. That's who it was. But they were pretty nice, too. They didn't bother us. I think because they really--you know, Daddy, they called him Snowball. The mama, Mama Karen. They knew that we--everybody over there in that little vicinity mostly worked for the University of Georgia, the one that didn't work in homes, you know. Did private, did cleaning up, maids and stuff. 00:27:00My brother worked for Miss Ethel Grocery in the A&A Bakery, y'all remember that?

Duvacat: Where was that?

Blasingame: Honey, it was down on Lumpkin Street, the best pastries in the world. But it's gone now.

Duvacat: I'm sad I missed it.

Blasingame: You missed something good. They had real donuts then, they had real fruit bars, they had completely real food. Oh, my mama could cook the best in the world. Yeah, it was pretty good.

Donnell: What kind of jobs did you have, well, like, your whole life, like, you know?

Blasingame: Okay, I worked at a sewing factory, and at the sewing factory, they had, we had to use different bathrooms. That was the, the first five bathrooms was white, and they had two Blacks. And you couldn't, but I worked at the sewing factory, and then, after that, I worked at the poultry. I would have done factory work, 'cause I like it.

Duvacat: Where were they factories?

Donnell: Yeah, where were they?

Blasingame: Lion's 00:28:00Textile Mills right here where the Classic Center is now.

Donell: Okay.

Blasingame: That was a sewing factory. Hence, some garment was down in the basement. And the other factory I worked at was Westclock General Times, out there by ABB. Power Partners out there. Remember that, anybody? Okay, now, I had a good job at Gibson Discount Center. I was in shipping and receiving up there, and I was good at it. Another kind of job I worked, Steinmark. I was in shipping and receiving. I was over that. My best job I loved was Creation Windows. We made windows for airplanes and big vans. When the van was huge, remember them big vans? The Winnebago's and things, we used to make windows and stuff for that.

Donell: Where was that located?

Blasingame: That was out there off the Cleveland Road. Huntington Park is down in there, in that area, you know. Now my daughter, 00:29:00my oldest child worked for the American Medical Association. And I got another daughter, got a good job in Florida. She was my oldest one living in D.C. My other daughter, I made her leave Athens to get a good job, get a good education, a good job. And Caroline went to school over there in Georgia, and she finished up there in D.C. And she has a good job. Mika didn't go to college, but she's a computer expert. It's just a gift. I have another son. It's Terrence. He does sheetrock work. He's the best finisher. He has been doing it since he was eight years old. You know, we just work. I hung sheet-- oh, I hung sheetrock for seven years. Did sheetrock work for seven years. I like that old stuff. And I got another son who's in college. He's fourty-four, but he went back to school. And my baby, who passed. He was about to become, put Athens on the map, become, he was going for the pro. Magic Johnson, Charles Buckley had wrote him, and they wanted him to try out 00:30:00with him. But he had a heart attack. I had just taken him back from spring break. On a Sunday, Monday, he had died. That was in '93.

Duvacat: Earlier when we first showed you this 1950 map, you got a little emotional. Is there anything else that you haven't shared with us that kind of sticks out to you?

Blasingame: Yeah. I miss my home. I feel like we didn't, I feel like, you know, like when kids leave home, look like they would just say, "Okay, I'm ready to leave." But we were forced out. I miss my home. That's part of me. Part of me is still over there. But I miss my home. I don't see nothing that belonged to Black people. But I do see everything of the white houses, white people's houses over there. Just telling the truth. Up there on Peabody, all those houses was there. Hall Street, around Cloverhurst, I remember this little old lady house, little white house. 00:31:00And it's still there. But you don't see nothing, nothing that belonged to us. Even the little branch that ran in the back of our property, they got it covered up. So, it's really, when I was riding over here, the guy that picked me up, John, I almost, I got so emotional, I got filled up, and I didn't know I was going to do that. It hurts. You don't want that taken from you. I don't have anywhere to show my children where I was raised up at, nothing. Even when I was born at, it still got all the, the chimney is still there, over there on 4th Street. It's a historical spot. It's still there. It's still there. It's still there. I was raised, I was two years old when we came over here, but you see nothing. So that's why I got a field map. That's my house right there, 123 Lyndon Road. That's our house. We lived right there. And on the corner right there, where the pave, where it was paved at, you know, there was these other people that lived, 00:32:00but when it came to our facility, we couldn't pave it, but when they had the games--all the students and all the people that came to the University of Georgia, they parked up there and told us to watch their cars. You know, said, "Watch our cars, or we'll give you a nickel when we come back." And we watched those cars. Nobody messed with those cars. But the next day, when the University of Georgia got through with the games, that's when they built this beautiful place they got now, we would go over there and walk those benches and pick up Coca-Cola bottles in a crate. They was glass bottles then. And you got a penny, a crate. So you really had to hurry up and fill it up. So we all went over there and we made money. We came back home and gave it to mom and dad. Everything that we had, we had, we gave it to our parents. We didn't say what this was. They wanted to give us a penny or two. We got it. Of course, we saved our little pennies and went to the fair. They gave us free tickets back then. At 00:33:00school, you got free tickets. Kids got a free ticket to go to the fair. But then--when you get in, you had to have your own money for your little ride, which wasn't much but a nickel or something. It was pretty nice. So we did what we had to do. It seemed like a hard time to you guys, but we did what we had to do. The best time, we could pull our door up, just pull the door up when we went to church, anywhere. And then we'd come home, just push it open. Nobody didn't break in and do something now. There was no disrespectful children or nothing. Maybe one broke out every once in a while, but they straightened it up because the father was in there. I don't remember any single parent.

Donnell: So, would you say your overall experience in Athens has been, or how would you describe your overall experience, your life here? 00:34:00Blasingame: Fine and horrible. It wasn't good for Black people back then, and it's not good for them now. But it's what you make out of it. I trust in God. I know Him. I know I give my life to Jesus Christ, and I'm doing fine. But I told my girls to leave, I told all my kids to leave, and do better, because we're still in the box, but we can get out of it better now than we ever have. We got opportunity. And maybe we had one then, but I didn't see it when I was coming up, you know. And it is what you make of yourself.

Duvacat: Well, we only, we have, you know, just a couple more minutes. Is there, I mean, is there anything else that you'd like to share with us? Any, any memories that you really want to share?

Blasingame: Well, there's so much. 00:35:00I get home and I probably say, "Well, why didn't I tell them about this?" All I can share is, the lady next door, Mama and Daddy, how hard they work. I seen them, the car wouldn't start, I seen them walking, to work in the cold. We had to meet Mama sometime Snelling Hall would give her food to help feed us, there were so many of us. And we would meet her sometime, go through the woods. And then we'd hit Lumpkin, Mama would be coming across Lumpkin, and we'd all go through the woods, no matter how cold or hot it was, nobody never bothered us. And we would come across Cloverhurst, and there was our house where we'd go. That's when the car wasn't running. But most of the time when Daddy got off from work at five, Mama got off from work like from seven to seven. And he would go and stay there from like six o'clock to whenever she got off and bring her home. But they always would give her food to feed us, whatever was left over. And we thought that was wonderful. 00:36:00But then they stopped doing that and started throwing it away. They wouldn't give them no more. They stopped and they started throwing it away. They said that the university had a new policy not to give food away anymore. And so they stopped, it made it a little harder on mom and dad, but we survived. That was life. I have no regrets of being raised in Athens cuz I could have left whenever I got ready, but my roots are here. My roots are over there, 123 Lyndon Road. My roots are right here in Athens and my roots mpw are at 1550 East Broad Street. And this is Geneva Johnson Blessing Game. (laughs)