Savoy Theatre on S. McDowell St. Undated. Hank Daniel, Staff - The Charlotte Observer
2nd St. between Caldwell & Brevard, Brooklyn neighborhood. Undated. Tom Walters, Staff - The Charlotte Observer

Lem Long

September 28, 2016 by Alex Chapin

Dr. Lem Long was born in Mint Hill in 1923 and has lived in the Charlotte area for most of his life. In 1937, he began working in the business that he would be apart for the remainder of his career, mortuary services. As such, his work brought him often to the old neighborhood of Brooklyn, where he would often conduct business in people’s homes. He was also a prominent member of the AME Zion Rockhill church and an Elk’s Club member. Dr. Long provides an interesting outsiders perspective on the process of urban renewal as well as perspectives on process of urban expansion and the relocation of people.

Tape Log

Tape Log: Oral History Interview with Lem Long

Interviewed On Thursday March 15, 2007

Interviewed by Nicholas Gallardo

Urban Renewal and Brooklyn Neighborhood Oral History Project

Time	Description of Interview Contents
0:00	Beginning of interview
:30	Background information of Dr. Long
:55	First Contact with Brooklyn community, first mortuary service job
1:50	Discussion of local high schools
2:30	Involvement in AME Zion Rockhill
4:10	Funeral practices in Brooklyn, comparing past practices with present
5:02	Questions about holidays
5:49	More comparisons between past and present funerary practices (use of cars)
6:42	Impressions of city/Brooklyn vs. country life
7:25	Movement of Brooklyn churches, House of Prayer
9:30	Mention of stroke
10:15	Expansion of House of Prayer, Ministers trained there
11:36	Mention of more differences between past and future funerary practices, story about bed acquired.
13:10	Describes living with uncle, setting up own funerary service
13:46	Gives thoughts on urban renewal and Charlotte, discusses impact of change
15:14	Talks about moving bodies of people native from South Carolina from Charlotte to South Carolina
16:20	Relocation of people over the years; relation to urban renewal.
18:10	Effect of new people on existing communities
18:54	Advertisements at Excelsior Club, WSOC radio (First African American announcer in Charlotte
21:05	Ambulance service provided by funeral homes
22.33	Ambulance calls in Brooklyn
23:50	Story about man killed by heart attack caused by shotgun blast
25:43	Comparing past urban renewal with present day activity
27:33	Comparisons between city and country. In city, races were more centralized while in country more intermixed.
29:22	Discussion of using “urban blight” and slum clearance as excuse for urban renewal.
31:30	Switch to current topic discussion about public school system and child discipline today.
32:28	Military service, changes in past to present
34:40	Effects of urban renewal on community
36:00	Discussions of personal responsibility, life under tenancy
37:02	Story of getting father out of debt

Transcript

Lem Long

Oral History Program

Dr. Lem Long Jr.

Interviewed at Long and Son Mortuary Services

Thursday March 15 2007

Interviewer: Gallardo, Nicholas

Title: Interview with Dr. Lem Long Jr.

Bio: Born in Met Hill in 1923, Dr. Long has lived in the Charlotte area for most of his life. In 1937, he began working in the business that he would be apart for the remainder of his career, mortuary services. As such, his work brought him often to the old neighborhood of Brooklyn, where he would often conduct business in people’s homes. Dr. Long provides an interesting outsiders perspective on the process of urban renewal as well as perspectives on process of urban expansion and the relocation people.

Key Words: Funeral Homes, Ambulance Service, Relocation, House of Prayer, Churches, Country vs. City

Interview Date: March 15, 2007

Format: MP3. File

Coverage: Charlotte, NC 1930s-1960s

Interviewer: Nicholas Gallardo

Transcriber: Nicholas Gallardo

NG: Nick Gallardo

LL: Lem Long

NG: Alright, today is March 15th 2007 and this is an interview conducted with Dr. Lem Long. It’s being held at the offices of Long and Son Mortuary Services and being conducted under the auspices of Dr. Karen Flint’s Oral History Class at the University of North Carolina. My name is Nick Gallardo and I will be moderating this interview. Good afternoon Dr. Long.

LL: Fine, how do you feel?

NG: I’m feeling good thank you. I guess the first question I would like to ask is why don’t you tell us a little about yourself, when you were born, where you grew up, that kind of thing?

LL: I was born August the 16th 1921 on Thompson Road, that’s between Mint Hill and Mathews

NG: Mint Hill and Mathews. And what was your relationship with the neighborhood of Brooklyn, or how were you aware of it?

LL: I came in contact with Brooklyn after 19, beginning in 1937. That’s

when I started the high school and I started working at McClure Funeral Home.

I’d get to go, in those times, I used to drive a car for him at times when he

needed somebody. That’s when I came into contact with Brooklyn.

NG: And McClure, that’s when you first started out in the funerary service,

correct?

LL: That’s right. I started working for McClure in 1937 and started for myself

in 1940, 50, 47 .

NG: Let me see, you attended high school at, around Mint Hill correct?

LL: No, I attended Clear Creek High School.

NG: Clear Creek.

LL: At that time there were only four high schools in the county for black

people and one was Clear Creek out in the Hickory Rd. section and one in

Pineville and one in Davidson and one out here in Plato Price, and I forget the

name of the street out there where it was.

NG: And I see you attended the AME Zion Church, correct? That was your…

LL: Yes, I grew up in Rockhill AME Zion Church, that’s in Union County on

Lawyers Road and I still belong there. And I worked with the church and I got to

be, I got elected General Officer of the church and that was as high, as high as a layperson could go in the church. And so I was secretary of the Treasury of the Department of the church extension and home mission for 32 years, I believe. I managed the publishing house for 27 years. And I retired, I guess its been four or six years ago.

NG: So the publishing house, did you happen to work in the publishing house at, in the Brooklyn area? Cause wasn’t there an AME Zion…

LL: Yes, it was on Third Street in the Brooklyn area.

NG: I guess starting with your work with McClure, what was it like going into, well I guess I don’t know too much about the funerary business, but what was it like going into neighborhoods like Brooklyn and conducting services?

LL: Well it wasn’t, it wasn’t anything like it is now. During those times we would always carry a body and put it in the home, and it stays in the home overnight. And we had to have a background to put up because the homes weren’t so up to date. They probably have, some of them were sealed up with newspaper, and to hide that we had this background we put up in there and we put up lamps at the end of the casket, make it look different. We don’t even carry bodies home now. Haven’t carried one home in I guess 10, 15 years.

NG: Come here instead?

LL: Yes, either carry it to the church or have it here.

NG: I was kind of interested, interested about…ok so you went into Brooklyn to conduct these services. Did you happen to go in during holidays, Easter?

LL: No, no. See I was living down at Mint Hill, and the only thing that we would do in town is have funerals in town. I didn’t come to any affairs in town, we were out there in Mint Hill.

NG: Can you recall a specific event that took place in (pause) or something that’s memorable to you in general about those services?

LL: Well it a, today we have limousines. There was a time when we would call the company, they would send us a cab that didn’t have the name of the cab on it. That would be the family car. Today it’s a different thing. Sometimes we got as many as four limousines on a service. But that’s beginning to cut down now. People are having less cars. And I think the day is coming when you won’t even have to have a car, because most people have good cars now. And a lot of people want to drive their own cars, so we don’t use limousines near as much as we did I’d say five or six years ago.

NG: So I guess what did you think of the area of Brooklyn when you did go in, like your, your impressions of the neighborhood?

LL: Well, being reared in the country, coming to town was a little different. Sometimes fellows was a little rough ( ) so you had to be careful where you went to in Charlotte. It wasn’t like it is now you, course it’s getting bad again now. (pause) We’d have funerals at several black churches in the Brooklyn area and we went ahead and ( ) all those black churches.

NG: So like the House of Prayer, Friendship…

LL: Yeah the House of Prayer. The House of Prayer when it first started was on Long Street. All those, I can’t think of all the churches were there at that time. But I remember the House of Prayer well, it moved up Long Street from there up on McDowell and 3rd Street, I believe. And then it moved over here to Beatties Ford Road.

NG: They were talking about major churches but they also mentioned a couple of, there have been mentions of a few little store front, they call them, churches. Do you recall any of those? Did you…

LL: Well, there’s a lot of the churches out here now that was there in Brooklyn. East Stonewall street up here Grier Road, it was down in town there on Stonewall Street that’s where it got its name. St. Paul Baptist Church up here is split. One portion of it was up here on (pause) I can’t think of the name of that street but that’s what happened with it, it split. Ebeneezer was downtown there and it had a fire one time and they moved over on Trade Street in front of the Law Building and they had a fire there. And its now up here on (Derider). (pause) I have had some strokes and when I want to think of something it leaves me.

NG: No that’s fine sir take, take your time.

LL: I can’t…as good as I know the street’s name it won’t even come to me.

NG: No, that’s fine sir.

LL: Well several of the churches, the church right down here on Oaklawn Avenue, it was downtown. I believe it was on Church Street, I believe it was. Practically all these big churches that you see out on the edge of town, one time were downtown. And some of them split. A couple of churches came out of that one church, you see. The House of Prayer has been the same, but they have more House of Prayers around here. This is the mother house across the street, and there’s another one down here on Beatties Ford Road and there’s one over in First Ward and one in Third Ward and got one out here on Sugar Creek Road.

NG: So they’ve expanded quite a bit, over the years.

LL: Yeah. A lot of the young fellows started preaching at the House of Prayer during the time I started in business. And there’s, I know where one of them is still living. He attends the church across the street. Practically all the rest of them our age is passed. Buried some of them. They’re all gone now. Every now and then I run upon a person that I can talk with back in those days. A lot of the time I’m talking to the young fellows around here and they don’t know a thing about what I’m talking about. Funerals, funerals have changed. There had been a time when we would roll the body in the grave while it was being covered up the family would sit around and they would sing songs while they covered up. But now you go to the grave they don’t even see you let the body down, they all leave and the cemetery folk take over. Altogether different. I could mention many many differences now. Used to be a time when you picked up the body at the home, you took the bed down for the people, put it out somewhere. When I first went into business, before I got the embalming table off of the truck, we got our first death call. I went and picked up the lady and she was on a little iron bed that you fold the legs up. And they had me carrying it out across the field ( ) of that little house out there. I had to carry it out through that house, I asked them I said, “What you going to do with this?” He said we’re going to throw it away or something. I said “Well, let me have it.”. I folded the legs up, put it in the hearse, rolled the cot, put the body on top of it. I slept on that bed for about three years.

NG: (Laugh)

LL: I didn’t use the mattress, I put me another mattress on it but I had that same bed. I was remodeling the place we was going into, moving into the same time. I did a little bit of everything. And my uncle and I we were together and he was married and living in a house, and so I was single. And so I worked every night, day and night while he was getting his house built.

NG: Working, so were you still working for McClure at this point?

LL: No, no that’s when we started out for our own.

NG: Oh for your, oh for you and your uncle.

LL: Yeah.

NG: Ah, ok.

LL: 1947.

NG: 1947. We were talking earlier about all the churches being moved. Guess a lot of that was due to the urban renewal process. What do you think when you hear the term “urban renewal”?

LL: Well it, it changed the city. And change is, is a thing that too many people are not so in favor of changing, but changes come. Now, I can hardly go downtown now, because they got the streets all cut up. I’m used to getting on a street and I know where I’m going, but today I don’t bother going downtown. I get somebody to carry me if I got to go. Churches, churches moved out and people, they get accustomed to the changes, it’s kind of like moving. You move into another house, and it’ll be awhile before you get, you feel like it’s home, but you stay there long enough, get used to it. Now that the churches are scattered out, we’ve gotten used to it. So, we like it. But, it’s a lot different than what it was. I used to know every street in town that black people lived on. Of course they lived in certain sections, today they live everywhere, I don’t know any of the streets. Some of the young fellows that work here, I be riding with them they tell me “We had a funeral there the other day.”, I don’t even know about it, “We had a funderal there the other day.” “This church is down here”, I haven’t even been to it.

NG: So you’re saying back in the day was more centralized

LL: Oh yeah, yeah. Years ago a lot of black people came here to Charlotte from South Carolina, wanted to be buried back in South Carolina. There’ve been times they would be as much as I’d say maybe twelve funeral services, from different funeral homes, burying in South Carolina. We went down there in South Carolina so much, into South Carolina, we couldn’t go down there unless we had a South Carolina man on the service. So we had to pay him. Today we got a man, one of our part time people, with a South Carolina license so when we get ready to go to South Carolina we don’t have to pay anybody. (laugh)

NG: During the time of urban renewal did you see a lot, since you lived out in the country, did you see a large influx of people moving from the city to the country?

LL: They didn’t move from the city to the country first, they moved from one part of the city to another part.

NG: Ah, ok.

LL: And sometime a lot of crime started when they moved certain people over to certain areas. And it’s doing that same thing now. I live out in the Hickory Road section, and we see strangers and strange looking folk out there that we’re not accustomed to, but we see them. Car the other day, my wife was home, pulled up in the driveway. Two strange looking fellows sitting out talking, just so happened that somebody ran a red light. The police pulled them right up in the, in our driveway and the police got out of their car and the person got out of their car like they was coming to our house. The police told them “No, you weren’t going there. You just started there because you saw me coming.”. Those kind of things is happening now that people are not so happy with.

NG: Would you say that was the same way back during the times as well? That people felt a little unsure about other people moving in?

LL: Well, it it wasn’t the most pleasant thing that strangers were moving into your neighborhood. Parties you see. We were in the rural area, we wasn’t used to a whole lot of music playing and hooping and hollering you know, way on into the night. When that starts, people going down the streets and you hear them cursing and all. It’s a different day and you’re not so much in love with it. But you are having to put up with it.

NG: Interesting. Actually I do have a specific question about the Excelsior Club in Brooklyn. I was listening to this forum that was being conducted on September 16 in 2006, and they were talking about how there were advertisements I guess or awnings for Long Funeral or Mortuary Services. Did you…

LL: Yeah, we used to use quite a bit of advertising. We advertised for a number of years on WSOC out on, that was at a radio station. Anyways, it was the first Afro-American, well it wasn’t Afro-American, but the announcer was an Afro-American. It was a good way of getting a message out, all the black people listened to it. And if you had anything you wanted to get out, any business you put it on that station and the whole community got it. But now they got several of them doing the same thing, some listen to this one, some listen to that one so it costs you more if you going to be on three or four stations and getting the same thing you used to get on one. So make it more expensive, I don’t do any of that now. I haven’t been on the radio now in several years.

NG: And you say it’s the first Afro…at what date was that roughly?

LL: I guess it was, 1947. It was between 1947 and 1951.

NG: Well I remember you, in our previous discussions before, you were talking about an ambulance service that you had, or that you as part of a part time…?

LL: The funeral homes at one time offered ambulance service, you see. An ambulance call was three dollars and a half. I..you didn’t collect one out of a dozen, but it was profitable for you to have an ambulance service because if anything happened, if the person died then there would be a chance of you having a funeral, you see. So people stuck to their ambulance business because it was a line that might turn something in favor your way. Then it got later on, you had to have special training, first aid training. See, we didn’t have to have that. Just two people in an ambulance, one drive and one sit back there with the patient. But now you got to have somebody back there who has first aid and all that stuff. They get paid today, in fact the law here will see that they get paid. Nobody saw that we got paid those years.

NG: Did you find you had to go a lot into the Brooklyn area?

LL: Oh yeah, oh yeah.

NG: We’ve heard other people tell that it was a pretty high crime

LL: Oh yeah, oh yeah. We used to get a lot of…wasn’t shooting like it is now, there was cutting. Or stabbing with an ice pick. People don’t, people used to fight back then. They don’t fight now. It’s just a matter of shooting, killing each other. So things change. Altogether different than what it is now. When we made our calls, people were fighting, cutting each other. We had blood all in the ambulance, and the cot and the sheets and all that. But today it’s not that way. We don’t make the calls, and the ambulance people who’s making the calls don’t run into that kind of stuff.

NG: Oh, so you would, would you show up and there’d still be it going on or…

LL: What?

NG: Well, you’re talking about “they don’t run into it”, would it still be going on while you guys showed up, I mean would the cops be there or anything?

LL: Well sometimes, if there was killing, a cop would be there, sometimes he’d be there. Person bleeding. Sometimes they’d have the person there. I remember going on an ambulance call once down on 3rd…I believe that’s 3rd Street near the Good Samaritan Hospital where it used to be. A man had shot and killed his son. And they had the man in the police car and they showed us where the body was. So we got the body, brought him back here and undressed him, and we washed him up he didn’t have any blood on him anywhere. There was a great big hole in the door where the shotgun shot through the door. And we examined the man good, didn’t have a drop of blood, anything on him. So we called the coroner and told him, says “What, what happened with this man?”. He says, “Daddy killed him. Shot him with a shotgun.”. I said “Well you better come over here and look at him, we can’t find where he hit him.”. And so when the medical examiner came, it was a coroner at that time, came over and looked him over and sure enough he wasn’t touched. The man shot through the door, and the man had a heart attack and died. And they just saw the hole in the door and saw the man laying in there, they knew the man had shot a hole in, and the man wasn’t even touched. They had to turn the man loose, his daddy.

NG: Geez.

LL: It was, if I could remember well I’ve seen some strange things happen over the years.

NG: Sounds like it. We are talking about, been making a lot of comparisons between the past and the present. I guess with the whole urban renewal process do you see the same thing occurring now as it did then?

LL: No it’s quite a, quite a different now. People have nicer homes now. And they got these Section Eight houses that people get in, and they pay just a little or nothing to stay in those homes. And they’re moving those people in some high class areas. The people who living in Section Eight homes they’re not likely to take care of those homes like a person who owns his home. And when they move in there with you, sometimes it has a tendency to make your community to look a little different. You may have your yard all cleaned up, they may not think enough of their yard to have theirs cleaned up. Some of them, every now and then you find one that does fine but quite different. You got to be more careful, just make sure you have your house locked up and all that. Strange people in your area. Some of them are sex offenders, some are murderers, been in prison, all kind of things. Makes it, life is a lot different.

NG: From the perspective of people living out in areas like Mint Hill, were the people from Brooklyn, were they viewed that general idea, that it was an area of…

LL: No, no out in Met Hill was just a quiet area to live in. In fact, I really hadn’t had the experience of a certain section where black people lived and a certain section, out in the country we just all lived together. We didn’t go to the same church, and didn’t go to the same school. But we weren’t all in one section and the white all in another section, we was just together. We played, black and white played together, ate with each other. You had in Charlotte here quite a difference, all the whites in one place mostly and all the blacks in one place. Now its not like that, it’s getting back like it was.

NG: Get back like it was in Mint Hill?

LL: In Mint Hill, I mean so far as it getting mixed up. You can’t go through a section now hardly and it be no blacks in it, or go through a black section and there be no whites in it, you can’t hardly do that now. Ain’t always been that way.

NG: From some research I have been doing, I’ve been going through some urban renewal manuals and they’re talking about the purpose of urban renewal was to remove “urban blight” and “slum clearance”. Would you, from the times you went into Brooklyn, would you consider that, would you use that to define the Brooklyn area? Or parts of it, all of it, some of it?

LL: They say that’s what it was for, but I don’t know if that’s the real purpose or not. Sometime a person might have some property that might be prime property and might be black. And it could be that some of the well to do whites want that so they work on urban renewal to get them moved out. Then they come in and build something else, seen that happen. I’ve seen a church down on 2nd street and ( ) moved out of town because they were downtown, and a big white church, got a great big place, right downtown where they moved from. So I don’t know what that was for. Looked like some people who had the money and had the power could do some things, where other folks had to go. That kind of thing is really happening now in a sense. You have to watch (pause) the situation in Charlotte or North Carolina where there’s black and white. Everything that you see done for the blacks may not necessarily mean they are doing it for the blacks. Maybe showing just like for the blacks so that he can benefit somewhere else. We got something going on now. I don’t know what’s happening, we got a lot of teachers being fired because the students aren’t performing like they should. I’m sure that there are some teachers that are not doing their job like they should, but it’s difficult to raise a child when you can’t spank him. You got to tell him what to do, you come to school, you tell him what to do and there’s no punishment or anything. You can’t, that’s almost impossible. You, you’re a young man. If somebody hadn’t told you not to do some certain things you know what might be the consequence. That’s why you’re doing what you’re doing now.

NG: Well my dad was a military man

LL: Huh?

NG: My dad was a military man so…(laugh)

LL: I been in the service. I learn lots of that’s…you sure enough do what you are told to do.

NG: Yes

LL: I thought, when I came out of the service, I would have sworn to the Lord that every young man ought to make at least make one year in service. And I banked on that, I said every young man ought to make one year. And then I lived to see soldiers come out drug addicts. You know, got that way in service. And we didn’t have that kind of stuff in service when I was in there. I seen people come back from service now, wasn’t worth a dime. Don’t work, don’t do nothing. Beat, cheat, steal anything they can do. So I had to change my mind, the Army must not like it be, must not be now like it used to be. We were taught discipline, when I was in the Army. Hardly ever leave ( ) Had to leave ( ). Best thing that ever happened. It taught me that, to do things that I didn’t want to do. My wife can tell you right now you can’t tell whether I like to work or not. Anything you put me on I’ll do it. (laugh)

NG: I guess I just have one last question. What do you think the effects of urban renewal were on the Brooklyn community and the community as a whole?

LL: All that I can say is, the well-to-do folks benefited from it.

NG: Well to do as in, on both sides of the…

LL: People who had money benefited from it. Hardly weren’t too many of us had money (laugh). And the poor people suffered from it. But now out of that suffering, some of them did them good. But, it’s kind of like, I hear young boys saying now that I’m in trouble because my daddy didn’t do much for me. And that’s the reason I own this place is because my daddy didn’t do much for me. I’m not saying a thing about the way I came along and that’s the reason I can’t do anything because I had such a hard time. If some of those boys had the time I had they’d have blown their own brains out (laughs). No I don’t blame. I worked for fifty cents a day and I don’t blame the people who had me working for fifty cents a day at all. I’m happy. We stayed on the farm, we got half of what we made. And the man’s land we lived on, he got the other half. I figured if we could live off of half of what we made, if I ever got to the place where I could all that I made, that was a blessing. Can you imagine giving up half of what you make?

NG: No, no.

LL: Be pretty rough wouldn’t it? I lived that way, I lived that way. I went into the army, my daddy owed the man that ran a grocery store in that community, owed him $350.

NG: Was this a white owner or a black owner?

LL: A white, white man, we lived on his farm. I went in the army, stayed three years. Came back, went into that office told the man, I said, “I understand my dad owes you some money.” He looked it up and he said ”Yeah.” Said he, called me Jr., said he owed me $350. I said “Would you write a receipt for it, I want to pay it.” He said “Oh no Lem,” he said, “Everybody got in debt with me in 1932.” Said everybody in the Mint Hill area owes me. And he said “They couldn’t pay it. I don’t want you paying your daddy’s debt.” I said “But, I want him out of debt.” He’d been living on this farm for about thirty years and he never been out of debt. He said, “ Well if you want to pay it, give me 150 dollars.” I said, “Well write you a receipt for $350.” So I got him out of debt. And I told him, I said, “I don’t want you let my daddy have anything else on the credit.” If he needs something, I’m going to see him, talk to him and tell him see me and I’ll have him get it. (pause) I could tell you some stories but I don’t want to tell them. They’d make me cry. (pause)

NG: Well, I just want to say thank you very much sir for speaking with me today. Really appreciate it.

LL: Glad to. I’m sorry I was late uh my wife hadn’t had anything to eat so…

END OF INTERVIEW