Vernon Herron

Tape Log: Oral History Interview with Vernon Herron

Interviewed by Tosha Mclean Pearson

03/13/2007

Time	Description of Interview Contents
	Track 2
0:01-0:24	Introduction
	Track 4-18
0:04	Welcome and Dr. Herron explains his ties to Brooklyn
2:45	Description of some houses where he lived
4:11	His family’s move to a blighted house next to a white- owned grocery store
9:24	Interesting story of Mr. Teague (Janitor at Myers Street Elementary School)
10:63	In-depth descriptions of the blighted house and the family’s experience with an “educated rat”
14:25	The rat problem in Brooklyn
15:61	The city bans fresh buttermilk as a form of economic control
21:20	Ebenezer Baptist Church and the influence of the church in his life
26:10	How other Churches in Brooklyn viewed the House of Prayer
27:33	Dr Herron’s confrontation with Bishop “Sweet” Daddy Grace in Dallas, North Carolina
31:35	How other Churches in Brooklyn viewed the House of Prayer
34:46	Observations of Brooklyn in 1947 as the Student Body President and the influence of black primary and secondary schools
38:48	His experience rubbing shoulders with the middle class
41.18	The influence of non-religious organizations
42:60	The NAACP, the Alexander family and black leadership in the Brooklyn Community
52:20	Women in the Brooklyn Community
58:23	His Cousin’s ownership of Herron’s Apartments located in Brooklyn
68:46	Describes his experiences living in Brooklyn in three words: tenacity, endurance and achievement
70.58	Closing an thank-you

Vernon Herron

Interviewee Name: Dr. Vernon Mack Herron

Interviewed at: the Home of Dr. Herron

Tuesday March 13, 2007

Interviewer: Tosha M McLean Pearson

Completed: April 29, 2007

Transcriber: Tosha M McLean Pearson

Editor: Dr. Karen Flint

Title: Interview with Dr. Vernon Mack Herron

Keywords: Housing, economics, Churches (House of Prayer and Ebenezer Baptist Church), Bishop Daddy Grace, Education, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), Black Cat’s Club, Middle Class, Poverty, Herron’s Apartments, the Alexander family, family, women

Description: Dr. Vernon Mack Herron was born in 1928 at 527 South Brevard Street and raised in the Brooklyn Community. His father died when he was one year of age, so his mother had to raise six children by herself. He and his family attended Ebenezer Baptist Church and he attended Myers Street Elementary School where his aunt was employed as a teacher. He progressed to Second Ward High School and became Student Body President in 1947. After his high school graduation he attended college at Shaw University and Johnson C. Smith, and then moved to various other locations in the United States before coming back to Charlotte, North Carolina to retire.

Contributor: Dr. Vernon Mack Herron

Interview Date: 2007-03-13

Format: WAV 72 Minutes

Identifier: [file number]

Coverage: Charlotte, North Carolina late 1930’s- 1950’s

Interviewer: Mclean Pearson, Tosha M.

Recorder (if different than interviewer):

Transcriber: Mclean Pearson, Tosha M.

Participant description:

Age: 79

Birth date: N/A

Birth location: 527 South Brevard Street, Charlotte, North Carolina

Residence: 2510 Century Oaks Lane, Charlotte, North Carolina

Education: Doctorate/Ministry

Occupation(s): Genealogist

Setting Description: At his home in Charlotte, North Carolina

TP: Tosha McLean Pearson (Interviewer)

VH: Dr. Vernon M Herron (Interviewee)

TP: The following interview is being conducted with Dr. Vernon M. Herron on behalf of the New South Voices project for the Brooklyn Neighborhood Oral History project taking place on March 13, 2007. The interviewer is Tosha McLean Pearson

TP: Dr. Herron?

VH: Yes

TP: I’m glad to be with you today

VH I’m glad to be with you

TP: The first question I want to start off with is, what is your connection to the Brooklyn Neighborhood?

VH: I’m glad to welcome you to my home, I’m very happy to have you here and to participate in this project. Now my connection with the Brooklyn community is that I was born and reared there so my roots are in the Brooklyn Second Ward community. Does that answer you?

TP: Yes, it does.

TP: Where exactly did you stay, what street?

VH: Alright, I was born 527 South Brevard Street, at that time they were born in the home. Brevard Street is right in the midst of Brooklyn. We moved from there to 514 South McDowell Street and that was adjoining the Myers Street School. And it’s really on the location of the school board now, across the street from the Adams Mark hotel. All of that South McDowell was my community. First and Second and Third Street across McDowell, that was my playground area. That was a second move. The third move is when we went to South Long Street-510, I believe it was. And the significance of that address is that the House of Prayer, which was a powerful force among black folks, were in the third block. So, I had that kind of connection. And then the fourth and the most significant stay was at 749 East Boundary Street and that is now of those four locations Long Street and Boundary Street are no longer on the map. They had wiped that out, that was wiped out with urban renewal reconfigured the streets, but Brevard and South McDowell are still on the map.

TP: Are there any memories of what your house looked like, any description you can give?

VH: Very definitely, all of those houses were rented houses. The 527 Brevard Street was a medium size house, and there was a black homeowner by the name of J.P. Hemphill; we rented from him, and also we moved to the McDowell Street address and that was a better framed house. He also owned that house and if you talk about class that was a middle class house. My aunt who taught school lived with us at that address. Well that is McDowell Street and she taught school there at Myers Street School. But she got married and she and her husband took over that particular house at that address. My mother with her children moved to the Long Street address, which was a less economic house, you might say. And then that’s where my mother and my aunt separated because she got married. And also my mother found the Boundary Street address. Now you asked me about a description, now I’m going to show you. This is the Boundary Street address and this little store here was a store on the corner and you can only see the top of my house. At the rear…This is a powerful little store; it is interesting when you talk about the economics. People would go to this store, and it was owned and operated by white people, they will come and they would make their living off of poor people. But eventually we would go the A&P store which was on Morehead Street, which was about seventh block, I guess and we would buy the larger items. And I recall two incidences that this little store on the corner’s prices was much more, the goods cost more than it did at the A&P store. And my mother was a religious woman, and she had very little money and she went through…I had a wagon, a little homemade wagon where I pull the groceries. So we went to the A&P store one day and she just bought groceries and she probably didn’t have a calculator and counted fast in her head. The point is they charged her about six or seven dollars for the food and I brought the food home and recounted the food and it was more than ten dollars. They had made mistake at the store, but we interpreted that as God giving us more food, I remember that so very well.The other thing that you are talking about, these are the houses on Boundary Street. Those were our neighbors. What I want you to see in terms of this picture is our playground. We played in the streets. Here you wanted to see the Herron’s Apartments. You see that big apartment there?

TP: Yes.

VH: That was the Herron’s apartments. Of course those were neighbors and that was on Boundary Street too. Now here is another example of the houses in Brooklyn. I don’t know what street that is but–

TP: So these were shot gun houses…

VH: Shot gun houses, do you know what a shot gun house is?

TP: Can you explain that?

VH: Do you know what it is? You’re interviewing me, I understand that.

TP: I somewhat know

VH: Tell me your understanding of a shot gun house

TP: Well, usually people say when you stand in front of the door and you can shoot a gun—

VH: Straight Through!!!! It wsThe architecture wasn’t so that you could have one room off or behind or upstairs or this kind of thing. You could shoot that straight through. Straight through the front room, straight through the bedroom and straight through the kitchen, that was a shot gun house. All right, now this is an example of Boundary Street coming into South McDowell. And I told you about the A&P store was over here on this hill-Morehead Street. And this was the Addison Apartments. And these were the houses in my day.

VH: This is a picture of Mr. Teague. Now I want to tell you this story. Mr. Teague was the janitor of the Myers Street School. He and his wife…Mr Teague used to run a Barbeque at his house down in the lower part of Brooklyn. Now, I want to tell you a little story about Mr. Teague. I told you that street was our playground. Now why couldn’t we go to the school and play on the playground? You could if school was going on, but when school closed down there was no park and recreation commission. They would have a structured program that was going on in the school department. See school was closed so the boys would climb the fence and play in the school yard. Mr. Teague considered himself an authority and he had a big paddle and one day I was on the bus going home, or going somewhere. And I looked out and saw Mr. Teague running a little boy all over the school ground trying to catch him in order to give him a beating for playing on the playground. And this little fellow was so lively, Mr. Teague couldn’t catch him. And it was so funny to see this old man running behind him with a paddle, running and trying to catch this little fellow. That was a true experience.

TP: I believe it.

VH: All right, you ask me a question, did I answer your question about Brooklyn and about the houses?

TP: Yeah the houses, but you did also mention in one of our conversation that …You remember a crack in the ceiling, there was a—

VH: Oh yeah. Oh yes that was the story of my house which I have the picture of the top of my house. There were two or three things about that house. It was a four room house, two rooms on each side of the house. And you could go through the front room into the bedroom or you could go through the front room and then the kitchen behind that will put you on the other side. And that was a four room house and it was frail, it was a weather worn house. Look like if you could strike a match to it would go up like…But the point I’m trying to tell you, trying to describe it to you. But the house…at the ceiling at the wall was breaking and you could see the sunlight through that crack. That was one thing that I remember, the other thing was that we had an educated rat in the house. I’m going to tell you what it would do. The rat would go up the ceiling of the walls. You could hear it climbing up the walls up in the ceiling. When we would retire at night, you could hear him coming down looking for food. And we would try and catch him and he would run. And he was this big, he was a monster.

TP: Was he bigger than a small dog?

VH: Yeah, a small dog. And that rat, when we would have company you would here him come down, we would knock on the walls to try to distract him and he just carried on. He was just out foxing us until somebody told us about a Dr. Brown solution or something ointment you get at the drug store. And they say you put it down and if he gets this ointment, this Dr. Brown ointment, that will kill him. So we went to town and got the solution and sprayed it all around. And one day I saw this huge monster outside the side of house, he was sick and looked like he was dying. And I wanted to pick him up and bring him inside and put him in mother’s… because she had a hot cooker and that is what I wanted to do. But I saw he wasn’t very much going to get away, he hadn’t much life in him, so we left him and he finally died. That is how we got a chance to see him and see what size he was.

TP: Was there a rat problem in Brooklyn?

VH: Oh Yes. I will tell you why we had a rat problem. We had a rat problem because of the store. See this store there would be all kinds of rats that would come out of this store. And then there was another thing, we had to put garbage on our street for the street to pick up and they didn’t have the covered containers as they have now. We had to use old tin tubs and we use the ones that were old and we weren’t going to wash with them anymore and so those were open tin tubs and so that was a feeder to the rats. So this store and the open garbage was a feeder.

TP: What about cockroaches?

VH: Oh yes, you had all of those things, you had all of those things.

TP: That’s interesting, who was in charge of coming in and exterminating these…I know you had Dr. Brown, that was what you gave the rat, right?

VH: Yes. But the city would come by and spray. They had someone come and spray in the night time you would be sleeping and they would come by and spay and this fume would come all in the house. And this was their method of control. And then there was another method of control. There was the farmers that would come to town. We had a white farmer that would come to town every weekend and sell us buttermilk. It was nice, good fresh buttermilk. And the city passed an ordinance that there could be no more homemade buttermilk brought into the city, that you had to use the homogenized and pasteurized store bought milk. So that cut out a lot of that farming product, and the milk–

TP: So actually it was another way of control, what type of control?

VH: Well they called it health control, but to us it was a matter of economic control.

TP: Ok, Ok, so do you remember any of your neighbors? Their names?

VH: Interestingly enough, I have been exposed to …. Yes I remember many of the names, but what I was going to tell you…many people remember me, but I don’t remember them because I was very popular and very well-known. We were poor but we were somebody. We were very popular, we were a popular family. And so people, even to this day “you lived on Boundary Street”, “you lived in Brooklyn,” “You are Vernon Herron”. I just …Johnnie Mae Gaither Collins was one of the girls that lived in one of those row houses. She’s a retired teacher… Another young man there …is this relative of mine, he is retired from the school system there, but he is retired from the school system out of New Jersey. Where they have SIT, AIT or SIT testing?

TP: Yeah, SAT testing.

VH: He was a big official in SAT testing and he is retired living here now. And just buried a young man last Saturday who helped me to get my first job at J.C. Penny’s, not J.C. Penny’s, Grimm, J.H. Grimm drugstore. And he was an Apostle, they called him an Apostle Minister at the House of Prayer in Derita and he just died last week; so we buried him and we all grew up together. Well I’m going to tell you the story. J. Grimm had a drugstore in First Street and Myers, and like about two blocks from my community. And he was very popular because it was a drugstore; he had another drugstore several block away. But Grimm… Samuel Ford was his name washed dishes in his drugstore and went and delivered medicine to people in the community. And that was my buddy. And Samuel Ford helped me to get a job there. And the way he did it he didn’t know how to tell me to fill out an application then apply for a job, he said “come on in here and help me wash these dishes and Mr. Grimm can see how you help me and he might give you a job”. I got in there and started working and washing dishes …they had these soda pops, and I would wash those dishes with Sammy and he said “I see you got a helper there, Sammy”, he said “yes- I have…” So I kept on doing that and he hired me. So he gave me my first job.

TP: All right, All right, that’s awesome, that sounds like a good experience.

VH: Yeah it was.

TP: So which church did you attend?

VH: I attended the Ebenezer Baptist Church. It was located on Second and Davison Street. And my parents and my mother had been a member at church for some time they had a man from Africa by the name of Dode Dhana as the pastor when she joined. But the Reverend Dr. Henry Morrison Moore was the pastor during my time. And when I became conscious of life and who I was as a person, I was a toddler, small kid, enrolled in the …Department of the Sunday School of the Ebenezer Baptist Church. So I had been in the church all my life. And I grew up until I was 12 years old, I gave my life to Christ and I was baptized by Dr. Moore in the Ebenezer Baptist Church. Sang in the choir under Hazel M. Miller who played the pipe organ and knew music well. And right here…all of this stuff, type of stuff called church music now. It boils my gull because we really had church music. And then when they would take up the offering. They would call it the missionary offering and then they would take up a general offering. When they got ready to take up a missionary offering, now they said this money is going for Christian education and to help Shaw University. Our children will go to Shaw University. And I had a fifty cents and a bold dollar in my pocket that I never spent, but that appeal that he gave for Shaw University inspired me to go in my pocket, pull out and give my bold dollar.

TP: So did that have any influence on you going to Shaw University?

VH: Absolutely, all I could hear in the church was Shaw University. We would have the Shaw choir to come. We would have the recruitment officer to come. We would have all kind of programs…and another thing. They would take us in the summertime to the Sunday School and the BTU convention. They would be meeting in Raleigh on Shaw’s campus and I went there.

TP: BTU? What is that?

VH: Baptist Training Union, I went there. So at the time…So we are talking about the influence of the church and I loved Dr. Moore, he was an inspiration to me. He was an inspiration to me for a number of reasons. First I told you that my father died when I was one year old. So Dr. Moore, the Chairman of the Deacon Board and the Superintendent of the Sunday school and the Deacons in that church threw their arms around me and guided me and I was their boy… There are other men like Bill Moore Jackson and others. There were men in the church who guided me, who encouraged me. Even so much so they even encouraged me to go into the ministry. Does it answer enough of that?

TP: Yes it does. But I do have a question, a follow-up question, how did you all view and react to the house of prayer?

VH: Oh, two in progressively, there was a progression. One was a manner of fear was the first thing because of Bishop Grace, they called him Daddy Grace., and he would go around and people would touch him, I guess they would touch him and when he speak to them they would fall all out and go into a frenzy, fit of frenzy. And we were told and we’re trying to figure out how could he be so holy and someone said that he had an electric belt on, that’s what they told us and if they touch him, they would get a shock. So we would go to the house of prayer and watch the march and dance and shout and worship…and pray…be baptized and all of that. And first it was a matter of fear, so I am going to go fast forward to get in the point, then I’ll come back. When I was pastor at my first church in Dallas, North Carolina, Daddy Bishop Grace had a little mission there. And he say, and the fellow who went to school with me and who was one of the ministers say “Daddy is down here on one of your member’s lawn and he wants to meet you”. So we were having tremendous bible school there, and I went down and he wanted me to leave my wife at this church to go with him and I said no I want to take my wife with me and I came down two or three, stopped in front of a little grocery store,. The owner of that grocery store was the superintendent of my Sunday School and Bishop Grace was across the lawn on this superintendent’s lawn. So I went in the store and said “Bishop Grace wants to meet me you come and go with me”. So he closed the store and went on across the street to meet Bishop Grace. And he just talked, he tried to, for the lack of… minimize me in front of his people. I said, “you come and worship with us sometime. Be glad to have you”. He wanted to play me off in front of his people, but he wasn’t able to do it. But that was fast forward, let me go back to Charlotte to my younger days, how did we react to the people of the House of Prayer was your question. I’m telling you it was a progression. First it was fear, then secondly, it was a sense of awe because his automobile, his home, his money, his parade, his ministry, I could just go on and on. He would have tremendous parades, you know about that? Oh that would be a big day …and then after the urban renewal tore his House of Prayer down along with other churches and then he built big brick beautiful churches cash money that he had assembled over the years. And it moved from a sense of awe to a sense of respect. And he began the mother House of Prayer on Beatties Ford Road is tremendous and he built other missions and they are beautiful churches, nice churches and they are paid for CASH!!! Oh and then they began to do construction so it was a manner of respect. That is the way it is now.

TP: What do you think was his appeal?

VH: His appeal was two or three things I think, his appeal. I think his appeal, part of it was economics because he would have Grace’s grocery store, he would have grocery stores that you could buy food for little or no money or you could buy things, maybe he would have clothing stores. But it was his economic appeal, I’m sure. Then the other thing was his appeal was that he was sensational, his mannerisms, he was sensational. He would blow into the microphone and the people would just fall over. And then he was a good-looking man. He was a prophet looking man, and that was appeal, the ladies and the men worshiped him and guarded him and this to them, he was God, see I guess that’s about enough on that.

TP: Ok, but I do want to know if other churches participated in the House of Prayer parades?

VH: Other Churches?

TP: Yeah, other churches?

VH: No, no, his organization was big enough to have, no, no, no, he didn’t have contact with, fellowship with other churches. If we did anything, churches closed to watch his parade.

TP: I think that’s the answer I was looking for. As far as whether you participated or whether you actually went and viewed what was going on.

VH: I viewed it because it came by my house, it came down our street.

TP: So when he came to you, when you had your congregation in did you say Dallas?

VH: Um Hmm

TP: Ws he trying to convert you, or?

VH: No he wasn’t trying to convert me. See he had his followers standing around and he wanted to show that he was God. He wanted to, I can’t remember all of the question but he wanted to show that he was an inferior fellow on the scene.

TP: That he wasn’t inferior?

VH: I was talking about me, that Bishop Grace seemingly wanted to show his people how superior he was to this inferior fellow. And s o…he asked some silly questions, but I remember saying to him will you come and worship with us some time? We would be glad to have you, indicating that we worship God, another God, you come and worship with us, we would be glad to have you.

TP: I think you handled that very well

VH: Well, thank-you.

TP: In 1947, you were student body president of Second Ward High School…

VH: I was

TP: At that time …at that particular time in your life, how was Brooklyn like when you were the student body president?

VH: It was like a circumscribed community. Many of these things we experienced with joy, pleasure and sense of awe and even the learning and new experiences we thought were wonderful because we had no base of comparison. We didn’t know the difference, see the point? We were poor and didn’t know it. We lived in the ghetto and didn’t know it was the ghetto, you see the point? But when I was the president of the school, the school did so much for me. First of all it gave me the opportunity to be the president of the student body, so that enhanced my leadership, innate ability and it nourished me and taught me and helped me to develop those skills that was one thing. Socialization with children…we had speaking contests and how to put on a tie, “I’m going to speak this morning, I got to dress up”. And plays, Jane Eyre, now and we did…that was exposure. Basketball teams, athletic programs. Now I want to say this word about the academic program, because the academic program…I’m going to put myself in there. We had a fellow that taught math and algebra, and I like many other kids was slipping and sliding up and down the business and refused to learn and half the time we wouldn’t go to class. And he said all right do you all want to learn anything…a few in the class wanted to learn, he taught them and he gave us up who cut his class and didn’t want to learn, and I don’t know math and algebra today. My Grandson, we hire a tutor to come in because I say I can’t handle this, you see how it goes down a generation? But on the other hand…

TP: That is so interesting

VH: Why so?

TP: How you said it goes down a generation

VH: Oh yes, on the other hand, I had teachers who taught me English that I love and Mr. Moore who taught me organizational and political history helped me to be a political man and those other teachers who met my needs in other areas and they were a great deal of inspiration..

TP: I understand that you were accepted into the middle class, I understand that when you were student body president, someone had gave you, they did a favor for you who was this person that sent you somewhere?

VH: I still have to remind you that I was a fatherless boy and I have to go back to that. And my mother consequently had very little income that she took in washing and ironing and she had very little money. Eventually she went and did domestic work. So my mother did not have the finance to support me in a lot of extracurricular activities that I wanted to engage in. There was some meeting, some political meeting, I think I heard the name of it the day at the Tuesday Morning Breakfast Forum and it struck me and I forgot the name of it. Some kind of congress, southern Christian congress and were meeting in Columbus, South Carolina. And Adam Clayton Powell, who was the pastor of the Abyssinia Baptist Church in New York and who was also a congressman who was coming down to speak and I wanted to go to that meeting and I didn’t have no money and I went around and asked some doctors if they would help me to go to the…Dr. Greene and a couple of other doctors.

TP: Was there a Dr. Blackman?

VH: Dr. Blackman, and I’m trying to think of one other one, but those are Dr. Greene and Dr. Blackman. They gave me checks to go to this conference- and I went. Now does that answer your question or were you asking me something else?

TP: No that answers my question, so obviously the overall attitude of the middle class were very helpful to people they could groom?

VH: That’s right, they reached back to help us.

TP: Alright, what influence of non-religious organizations, such as the Black Cat’s Club, NAACP and the medical associations have on Brooklyn?

VH: Well, I’ll show you—- we had…this is the school, Myers Street School faculty, but we had them. The Black’s Club was a social organization and they had their wives to help them, and the Excelsior Club, they had their activities. There was also a doctor’s group, they had…

TP: Did the doctors group have a name?

VH: I can’t remember the exact name…The Charlotte Medical Society, or something like that. But I had pictures I wanted to find, but I couldn’t put my hand on them fast enough. But they had medical groups, you had lawyer’s groups. You had non-academic groups, like the Black’s Club and so so on. So you had several groups, and they were social groups.

TP: Mostly social groups? The NAACP, did that exist in Brooklyn? I mean I’m sure it was everywhere…

VH: Yes, the NAACP was a powerful group. It operated out of the Alexander Funeral Home on South Brevard Street. Kelly Alexander was the head of it, and his son, Kelly Alexander Jr. was also one of the executive directors, he is no longer the Executive Director, but at one time he was. And Kelly Alexander was a very powerful…the Alexander boys, first let me tell you about the Alexander boys, you had the Alexander Funeral Home., You had the Alexander brothers who ran the funeral home, you had Kelly Alexander, you had Zach Alexander, you had Alfred Alexander and a couple more. But they were, they were all good men. One of them was a city councilman, who …Fred, Fred Alexander was the city councilman who also went to the state legislature. The other one was Zach Alexander. Zach Alexander…then you had Kelly; the thing about Kelly was that he was a NAACP man. And he did daring things; he even brought the NAACP to get a youth department, got the youth going.

TP: Now this was in Brooklyn?

VH: Oh yes, but when you say Brooklyn, the NAACP was Charlotte…was a Charlotte branch. But of course its headquarters was in Brooklyn. Because it operated out of the Alexander Funeral Home, I just told you that.

TP: That’s exactly right

VH: And , I told you about Fred

TP: Um hmm

VH: Oh yeah, I want to tell you about Zach. Zach was an economic man, he was the economic piece, he would get certain governmental programs for black folks and this guy, he and Dr. Nathaniel Tross who was a Methodist minister operating out of the Methodist publication house on Brevard and Second Street–

TP: AME Zion?

VH: Yes, AME Zion, Tross, Wertz–

TP: What was his name?

VH: W-e-r-t-z Dr Wertz

TP: Ok

VH: And Davidson, Moore and Tross and some other, but these were shake, shake, what is it mo-

TP: Movers and Shakers

VH: Movers and shakers, they got things done, they worked behind the scenes, they had pull, they had touch with the money.

TP: Did they do anything specifically for the Brooklyn area, or was it just all around Charlotte that they focused on?

VH: Well, my memories fade because there was something…Alexander…one of the Alexander boys…Zach Alexander told me that when urban renewal coming there was some great decision behind the scene where they had these black leaders contending for certain things and I can’t tell you the full story. But they were in on the decision making of urban renewal and also black life.

[Showing and describing photographs of churches that combined due to the effect of urban renewal.]

VH: Now, shall I finish showing…This is the Ebenezer Church in which I was a member of…This is Brooklyn Presbyterian Church which went out with urban renewal, and that was on McDowell Street. And this church united with the Seventh Street Presbyterian Church, and when the two formed, it became the First United Presbyterian Church which we have now.

TP: Ok

VH: But that was…This was the House of Prayer building, and they were building, but that was the House of Prayer right there. This is the Myers Street School, this is the old, the early days of the Myers Street…have you seen that?

TP: Yeah, that stair step

VH: This was later, this is the school I attended and the principal. This is the old school too. Then we had police officers…in Charlotte, they were in Brooklyn, these were our police officers. But they couldn’t arrest white folks, but it’s a different story now.

TP: Of course it is.

VH: This is Brooklyn, again. Now this is Friendship Baptist Church which was at the corner of Brevard and First Street, now it’s on Beatties Ford Road, see what I’m saying? This is the St. Paul Baptist Church; this was on First Street now, see those houses around there? And this is Stonewall, Stonewall Church, now the thing about Stonewall you know where independence Boulevard now it’s gone, part of…they took it away. That used to be East Stonewall and they had this wall left there, but now they make a new expansion…that street, now they taken the wall away, that’s gone. Did I show you everything? Oh here…here is the is the Black Cat’s Club

TP: Oh this is the Black Cat’s Club, wow. Ok, I’m going to definitely have to take a picture of this. Back to what you were saying previously, you said the black leadership, once they started getting into the city council positions, in local positions, that they were part of the decision making for urban renewal?

VH: …I won’t say they had the final say because…but they were part of the decision making process.

TP: So why do you think that they…was it all, from the best of your knowledge, were they for it or against urban renewal?

VH: As far as I remember, the impression that was given was that this was going to be better for the community and people took that and moved thinking that, I don’t know what they thought that whether they would build and come back or what, but gentrification set in.

[Making references to photographs]

TP: This is a wonderful picture; I’m loving this picture here [Black Cat’s Club photograph]. Ok, here is another question for you. Are you getting tired?

VH: No

TP: In your observance, men who were middle class and those who held middle class ideas, what was considered a good catch in a woman?

VH: Well, a good catch was that she had her head screwed on right and that she knew what she wanted. And ….didn’t want a home wrecker…someone that would help them economically. Someone that will help them, be a helpmate to the men…but a woman who could improve on their lives. Now that is what they were looking for, because that was drilled into us that you had to meet somebody that was on your level or had similar ideas.

TP: Did they prefer educated women?

VH: They, now who is they?

TP: The middle class, I’m sorry. Yes middle class men with, professional men, did they prefer educated women or…?

VH: There are two or three things that you will have to remember. Now the educated man certainly would look for an educated woman…You want to get someone on your educational level. But it was a different story with the women because it was more women than men, and there were more women who were educated than men who were not educated. There was a difference; they had more trained women than men.

So they had the women had to sacrifice, I guess it would be better to have a piece of a man than a man at all. I guess that was it, so my aunt is a good example. She had a masters degree and she married a man, I don’t think went to college. But he had sound economic principles; he was a great worker. He had… he was from a strong family, ministerial family. So he was no trash. But he was not of the same educational level, you see. And they together bought property. And I would like to give him credit, but I can’t. It was his wife, my aunt who put me through school, helped my mother. Did that answer your question?

TP: Yes it did. Ok, as far as, again, how were women treated?

VH: …I saw it from two perspectives, remember now I did not live in a totally cultural community, or high economic. There was a balance. So I also lived…had people of the community that was of low economic status and class and those men would be the women, they would fight, and I saw that. But then I also saw the woman put on pedestal and highly respected. I saw church women who were highly respected, I saw women in the street; I saw a mixture of it.

TP: So did they pretty much have to stay in their place, or, you know, did they have any leadership?

VH: They who?

TP: The women in the Brooklyn neighborhood, was there a leadership pattern for women, or?

VH: Oh yes, then I would say yes. Now you must remember, there were local people who were leaders and then you had national leaders who came into the local community like Mary McLeod Bethune, she came into the community, Charlotte Hawkins Brown came into the community. You had colleges, Johnson C. Smith which had sororities that brought in culture and programs to the community. I remember…I remember a sorority program they had, Intercollegiate Day at our church and I was just fascinated they brought in some great speaker, they played the organ and played all of the… all the organizations stood when their song was played. You know what I mean?

TP: Yes.

VH: And…that was new to me; I was fascinated.

TP: So what you are saying that is the women’s groups were usually the sororities, the all black sororities, women’s sororities?

VH: That was a factor…You had church groups…

TP: Church groups as well?

VH: …Who were missionaries…now you didn’t have the acceptance of women preachers in that day. They had one or two, but they were not, you were looked down on…This is a new day now. And you had nurses at Good Samaritan Hospital and Nurses in the school system who gave leadership…

TP: Herron’s apartments, Your uncle, I think you said it was Walter Herron?

VH: Yes.

TP: Ok, tell me a little bit about your uncle who owned Herron’s apartments in Brooklyn?

VH: We were playing in the street in the playground in the street and this man who owns the apartments …and he heard that my name was Vernon Herron and he said, “who are you? I’m a Herron”. And he questioned “Who was your daddy?” And I told him my daddy was Samuel Joe Herron; he said “that was a cousin of mine”. And he took me under his arm so tender and began to tell me the history of our family. And I was fascinated by that. And he told me a couple things; he told me the origin of our family, we were owned by a white slave master named Dr. Isaac Herron, he was a medical doctor that lived out in the Steel Creek community. And he owned our people and there were eleven children of us slaves that he owned which was Richard and ( __ ) Herron and he ended up having children and we are all descendants of them. And then my father had brothers living in Pittsburgh and I thought, at that time when he told me that I thought that my mother and her children were the only Herron’s in the universe.

TP: Wow

VH: And once that we died, there would be no more Herrons, now that was a concept that I had. I got in touch with the Herrons in Pittsburgh. In 1950 or 51, I went to Cleveland, Ohio to the Baptist World Alliance and the train was to past through Pittsburgh. And I had wrote a letter in my mother’s name to them and said my son is coming through Pittsburgh…could he stop and meet you all, and they said “yes!” Well, not realizing the geography and the time element. I thought that when I passed through Pittsburgh going to Ohio…and that’s what it was, I threw the schedule off…then I came back to Pittsburgh, then I went on to New York and then back down to Charlotte. My Uncle John, one of them, Ed, John, Lawrence and there may have been a fourth one. But my Uncle John was the griot of the family; do you know what a griot is?

TP: There the ones who remembers the genealogy of a tribe or…

VH: That’s right, that’s it. Uncle John gave me the outline of our family. I took a piece of paper and pencil, this size paper and wrote down from the beginning and made little arrows…I won’t go, I got carried away, I have it here…Uncle John gave me the outline of the family and he talked to me about all our relatives. And I researched what he told me…and I had written a couple books to verify what he told me. Uncle John, he was the griot of the family. He was a baseball owner in Pittsburgh.

TP: A baseball owner?

VH: Yeah, you know they used to have a black league, the urban black league? well he was a owner of a homestead team. And that’s another story…

TP: Ok, I guess back to the Herron Apartments

VH: Oh Yeah

TP: Yeah, ok, you said it was your uncle Walter who owned it?

VH: No, we were cousins

TP: Cousins, ok, he was your cousin. So how long did he have that property?

VH: How long? Well he must have had it until urban renewal. I don’t know. I don’t know how long he had it, but one thing is sure, he didn’t have it after urban renewal.

TP: So he had it for quite some time. Like do you know when he bought it? Did he speak to you about that?

VH: No no, I have a trace of it.

[Interruption/his assistant comes in]

VH: What did you ask me darling?

TP: Ok, I was asking you did you know about the time when he bought the Herron’s Apartments, did he have them built or …

VH: No, he bought it. Because in my record it was, excuse me just a minute…

[Interruption and Introduction of myself to his assistant]

TP: I was asking you did he have those apartments built or were they…

VH: As I understand it the apartments were not built, he must have bought it. The answer is I don’t know, but I don’t think he built it. Did I show you the layout of the apartment?

TP: Do you have a layout?

VH: No, where is that Picture I showed you?

[Talking to Assistant]

[Illustrates the layout of the apartment on a piece of paper. There was an apartment upstairs and downstairs. There was another building in the back where people also lived]

VH: What I’m trying to show you is that, there was an apartment, two apartments downstairs, one on each side. There were two apartments upstairs, so there were four in the front. And in the back there was another building that had a series of families let me just for the sake of it say that they had four families in the back. So at leas it was that.

TP: Was it the same building, or was it a different, separate building in the back of it?

VH: No, describe…now you get me a scrap paper beside that machine right there…Ok here is Boundary Street, and I told you that he had an apartment downstairs and an apartment upstairs and there was a little driveway down there. And this is one…but in the back there was a little hallway and it was another building and it was down the hallway, then he had people living back there. You Understand?

TP: Alright now, ok, here is the big question, if you could find at least three or four words that described you experience living in the Brooklyn community, what would they be?

VH: Tenacity, endurance and achievement-

TP: Now why do you pick those words?

VH: Because they best describe the atmosphere and the environment in which I lived and reared. What was the first word?

TP: It was tenacity.

VH: That means to hold on, don’t give up. And what was the second one?

TP: It was endurance.

VH: Well that is almost the same thing. Finish high school, go to college, that was an Alpha theme [may have been referring the fraternity of Alpha Phi Alpha in which he is a member]. And achievement, be somebody, clean yourself up, be somebody. And if you don’t have money in your pockets, hold your head up. It is that kind of attitude that I lived under. It was so…and then…I remember one time we had a butter molasses and bread and that was my food to go to school, did you hear what I said?

TP: Yes, yes sir.

[Dr. Herron becomes full of emotion]

TP: Is there anything else you would like to add?

VH: To what?

TP: To everything that we’ve said so far?

TP: Are there any important questions you think I missed?

VH: No

TP: I appreciate you giving me this time; giving me this opportunity to interview you said some wonderful things…

End of Interview

Vernon Herron

Interviewee Name: Dr. Vernon Mack Herron

Interviewed at: the Home of Dr. Herron

Tuesday March 13, 2007

Interviewer: Tosha M McLean Pearson

Completed: April 29, 2007

Transcriber: Tosha M McLean Pearson

Editor: Dr. Karen Flint

Title: Interview with Dr. Vernon Mack Herron

Keywords: Housing, economics, Churches (House of Prayer and Ebenezer Baptist Church), Bishop Daddy Grace, Education, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), Black Cat’s Club, Middle Class, Poverty, Herron’s Apartments, the Alexander family, family, women

Description: Dr. Vernon Mack Herron was born in 1928 at 527 South Brevard Street and raised in the Brooklyn Community. His father died when he was one year of age, so his mother had to raise six children by herself. He and his family attended Ebenezer Baptist Church and he attended Myers Street Elementary School where his aunt was employed as a teacher. He progressed to Second Ward High School and became Student Body President in 1947. After his high school graduation he attended college at Shaw University and Johnson C. Smith, and then moved to various other locations in the United States before coming back to Charlotte, North Carolina to retire.

Contributor: Dr. Vernon Mack Herron

Interview Date: 2007-03-13

Format: WAV 72 Minutes

Identifier: [file number]

Coverage: Charlotte, North Carolina late 1930’s- 1950’s

Interviewer: Mclean Pearson, Tosha M.

Recorder (if different than interviewer):

Transcriber: Mclean Pearson, Tosha M.

Participant description:

Age: 79

Birth date: N/A

Birth location: 527 South Brevard Street, Charlotte, North Carolina

Residence: 2510 Century Oaks Lane, Charlotte, North Carolina

Education: Doctorate/Ministry

Occupation(s): Genealogist

Setting Description: At his home in Charlotte, North Carolina

TP: Tosha McLean Pearson (Interviewer)

VH: Dr. Vernon M Herron (Interviewee)

TP: The following interview is being conducted with Dr. Vernon M. Herron on behalf of the New South Voices project for the Brooklyn Neighborhood Oral History project taking place on March 13, 2007. The interviewer is Tosha McLean Pearson

TP: Dr. Herron?

VH: Yes

TP: I’m glad to be with you today

VH I’m glad to be with you

TP: The first question I want to start off with is, what is your connection to the Brooklyn Neighborhood?

VH: I’m glad to welcome you to my home, I’m very happy to have you here and to participate in this project. Now my connection with the Brooklyn community is that I was born and reared there so my roots are in the Brooklyn Second Ward community. Does that answer you?

TP: Yes, it does.

TP: Where exactly did you stay, what street?

VH: Alright, I was born 527 South Brevard Street, at that time they were born in the home. Brevard Street is right in the midst of Brooklyn. We moved from there to 514 South McDowell Street and that was adjoining the Myers Street School. And it’s really on the location of the school board now, across the street from the Adams Mark hotel. All of that South McDowell was my community. First and Second and Third Street across McDowell, that was my playground area. That was a second move. The third move is when we went to South Long Street-510, I believe it was. And the significance of that address is that the House of Prayer, which was a powerful force among black folks, were in the third block. So, I had that kind of connection. And then the fourth and the most significant stay was at 749 East Boundary Street and that is now of those four locations Long Street and Boundary Street are no longer on the map. They had wiped that out, that was wiped out with urban renewal reconfigured the streets, but Brevard and South McDowell are still on the map.

TP: Are there any memories of what your house looked like, any description you can give?

VH: Very definitely, all of those houses were rented houses. The 527 Brevard Street was a medium size house, and there was a black homeowner by the name of J.P. Hemphill; we rented from him, and also we moved to the McDowell Street address and that was a better framed house. He also owned that house and if you talk about class that was a middle class house. My aunt who taught school lived with us at that address. Well that is McDowell Street and she taught school there at Myers Street School. But she got married and she and her husband took over that particular house at that address. My mother with her children moved to the Long Street address, which was a less economic house, you might say. And then that’s where my mother and my aunt separated because she got married. And also my mother found the Boundary Street address. Now you asked me about a description, now I’m going to show you. This is the Boundary Street address and this little store here was a store on the corner and you can only see the top of my house. At the rear…This is a powerful little store; it is interesting when you talk about the economics. People would go to this store, and it was owned and operated by white people, they will come and they would make their living off of poor people. But eventually we would go the A&P store which was on Morehead Street, which was about seventh block, I guess and we would buy the larger items. And I recall two incidences that this little store on the corner’s prices was much more, the goods cost more than it did at the A&P store. And my mother was a religious woman, and she had very little money and she went through…I had a wagon, a little homemade wagon where I pull the groceries. So we went to the A&P store one day and she just bought groceries and she probably didn’t have a calculator and counted fast in her head. The point is they charged her about six or seven dollars for the food and I brought the food home and recounted the food and it was more than ten dollars. They had made mistake at the store, but we interpreted that as God giving us more food, I remember that so very well.The other thing that you are talking about, these are the houses on Boundary Street. Those were our neighbors. What I want you to see in terms of this picture is our playground. We played in the streets. Here you wanted to see the Herron’s Apartments. You see that big apartment there?

TP: Yes.

VH: That was the Herron’s apartments. Of course those were neighbors and that was on Boundary Street too. Now here is another example of the houses in Brooklyn. I don’t know what street that is but–

TP: So these were shot gun houses…

VH: Shot gun houses, do you know what a shot gun house is?

TP: Can you explain that?

VH: Do you know what it is? You’re interviewing me, I understand that.

TP: I somewhat know

VH: Tell me your understanding of a shot gun house

TP: Well, usually people say when you stand in front of the door and you can shoot a gun—

VH: Straight Through!!!! It wsThe architecture wasn’t so that you could have one room off or behind or upstairs or this kind of thing. You could shoot that straight through. Straight through the front room, straight through the bedroom and straight through the kitchen, that was a shot gun house. All right, now this is an example of Boundary Street coming into South McDowell. And I told you about the A&P store was over here on this hill-Morehead Street. And this was the Addison Apartments. And these were the houses in my day.

VH: This is a picture of Mr. Teague. Now I want to tell you this story. Mr. Teague was the janitor of the Myers Street School. He and his wife…Mr Teague used to run a Barbeque at his house down in the lower part of Brooklyn. Now, I want to tell you a little story about Mr. Teague. I told you that street was our playground. Now why couldn’t we go to the school and play on the playground? You could if school was going on, but when school closed down there was no park and recreation commission. They would have a structured program that was going on in the school department. See school was closed so the boys would climb the fence and play in the school yard. Mr. Teague considered himself an authority and he had a big paddle and one day I was on the bus going home, or going somewhere. And I looked out and saw Mr. Teague running a little boy all over the school ground trying to catch him in order to give him a beating for playing on the playground. And this little fellow was so lively, Mr. Teague couldn’t catch him. And it was so funny to see this old man running behind him with a paddle, running and trying to catch this little fellow. That was a true experience.

TP: I believe it.

VH: All right, you ask me a question, did I answer your question about Brooklyn and about the houses?

TP: Yeah the houses, but you did also mention in one of our conversation that …You remember a crack in the ceiling, there was a—

VH: Oh yeah. Oh yes that was the story of my house which I have the picture of the top of my house. There were two or three things about that house. It was a four room house, two rooms on each side of the house. And you could go through the front room into the bedroom or you could go through the front room and then the kitchen behind that will put you on the other side. And that was a four room house and it was frail, it was a weather worn house. Look like if you could strike a match to it would go up like…But the point I’m trying to tell you, trying to describe it to you. But the house…at the ceiling at the wall was breaking and you could see the sunlight through that crack. That was one thing that I remember, the other thing was that we had an educated rat in the house. I’m going to tell you what it would do. The rat would go up the ceiling of the walls. You could hear it climbing up the walls up in the ceiling. When we would retire at night, you could hear him coming down looking for food. And we would try and catch him and he would run. And he was this big, he was a monster.

TP: Was he bigger than a small dog?

VH: Yeah, a small dog. And that rat, when we would have company you would here him come down, we would knock on the walls to try to distract him and he just carried on. He was just out foxing us until somebody told us about a Dr. Brown solution or something ointment you get at the drug store. And they say you put it down and if he gets this ointment, this Dr. Brown ointment, that will kill him. So we went to town and got the solution and sprayed it all around. And one day I saw this huge monster outside the side of house, he was sick and looked like he was dying. And I wanted to pick him up and bring him inside and put him in mother’s… because she had a hot cooker and that is what I wanted to do. But I saw he wasn’t very much going to get away, he hadn’t much life in him, so we left him and he finally died. That is how we got a chance to see him and see what size he was.

TP: Was there a rat problem in Brooklyn?

VH: Oh Yes. I will tell you why we had a rat problem. We had a rat problem because of the store. See this store there would be all kinds of rats that would come out of this store. And then there was another thing, we had to put garbage on our street for the street to pick up and they didn’t have the covered containers as they have now. We had to use old tin tubs and we use the ones that were old and we weren’t going to wash with them anymore and so those were open tin tubs and so that was a feeder to the rats. So this store and the open garbage was a feeder.

TP: What about cockroaches?

VH: Oh yes, you had all of those things, you had all of those things.

TP: That’s interesting, who was in charge of coming in and exterminating these…I know you had Dr. Brown, that was what you gave the rat, right?

VH: Yes. But the city would come by and spray. They had someone come and spray in the night time you would be sleeping and they would come by and spay and this fume would come all in the house. And this was their method of control. And then there was another method of control. There was the farmers that would come to town. We had a white farmer that would come to town every weekend and sell us buttermilk. It was nice, good fresh buttermilk. And the city passed an ordinance that there could be no more homemade buttermilk brought into the city, that you had to use the homogenized and pasteurized store bought milk. So that cut out a lot of that farming product, and the milk–

TP: So actually it was another way of control, what type of control?

VH: Well they called it health control, but to us it was a matter of economic control.

TP: Ok, Ok, so do you remember any of your neighbors? Their names?

VH: Interestingly enough, I have been exposed to …. Yes I remember many of the names, but what I was going to tell you…many people remember me, but I don’t remember them because I was very popular and very well-known. We were poor but we were somebody. We were very popular, we were a popular family. And so people, even to this day “you lived on Boundary Street”, “you lived in Brooklyn,” “You are Vernon Herron”. I just …Johnnie Mae Gaither Collins was one of the girls that lived in one of those row houses. She’s a retired teacher… Another young man there …is this relative of mine, he is retired from the school system there, but he is retired from the school system out of New Jersey. Where they have SIT, AIT or SIT testing?

TP: Yeah, SAT testing.

VH: He was a big official in SAT testing and he is retired living here now. And just buried a young man last Saturday who helped me to get my first job at J.C. Penny’s, not J.C. Penny’s, Grimm, J.H. Grimm drugstore. And he was an Apostle, they called him an Apostle Minister at the House of Prayer in Derita and he just died last week; so we buried him and we all grew up together. Well I’m going to tell you the story. J. Grimm had a drugstore in First Street and Myers, and like about two blocks from my community. And he was very popular because it was a drugstore; he had another drugstore several block away. But Grimm… Samuel Ford was his name washed dishes in his drugstore and went and delivered medicine to people in the community. And that was my buddy. And Samuel Ford helped me to get a job there. And the way he did it he didn’t know how to tell me to fill out an application then apply for a job, he said “come on in here and help me wash these dishes and Mr. Grimm can see how you help me and he might give you a job”. I got in there and started working and washing dishes …they had these soda pops, and I would wash those dishes with Sammy and he said “I see you got a helper there, Sammy”, he said “yes- I have…” So I kept on doing that and he hired me. So he gave me my first job.

TP: All right, All right, that’s awesome, that sounds like a good experience.

VH: Yeah it was.

TP: So which church did you attend?

VH: I attended the Ebenezer Baptist Church. It was located on Second and Davison Street. And my parents and my mother had been a member at church for some time they had a man from Africa by the name of Dode Dhana as the pastor when she joined. But the Reverend Dr. Henry Morrison Moore was the pastor during my time. And when I became conscious of life and who I was as a person, I was a toddler, small kid, enrolled in the …Department of the Sunday School of the Ebenezer Baptist Church. So I had been in the church all my life. And I grew up until I was 12 years old, I gave my life to Christ and I was baptized by Dr. Moore in the Ebenezer Baptist Church. Sang in the choir under Hazel M. Miller who played the pipe organ and knew music well. And right here…all of this stuff, type of stuff called church music now. It boils my gull because we really had church music. And then when they would take up the offering. They would call it the missionary offering and then they would take up a general offering. When they got ready to take up a missionary offering, now they said this money is going for Christian education and to help Shaw University. Our children will go to Shaw University. And I had a fifty cents and a bold dollar in my pocket that I never spent, but that appeal that he gave for Shaw University inspired me to go in my pocket, pull out and give my bold dollar.

TP: So did that have any influence on you going to Shaw University?

VH: Absolutely, all I could hear in the church was Shaw University. We would have the Shaw choir to come. We would have the recruitment officer to come. We would have all kind of programs…and another thing. They would take us in the summertime to the Sunday School and the BTU convention. They would be meeting in Raleigh on Shaw’s campus and I went there.

TP: BTU? What is that?

VH: Baptist Training Union, I went there. So at the time…So we are talking about the influence of the church and I loved Dr. Moore, he was an inspiration to me. He was an inspiration to me for a number of reasons. First I told you that my father died when I was one year old. So Dr. Moore, the Chairman of the Deacon Board and the Superintendent of the Sunday school and the Deacons in that church threw their arms around me and guided me and I was their boy… There are other men like Bill Moore Jackson and others. There were men in the church who guided me, who encouraged me. Even so much so they even encouraged me to go into the ministry. Does it answer enough of that?

TP: Yes it does. But I do have a question, a follow-up question, how did you all view and react to the house of prayer?

VH: Oh, two in progressively, there was a progression. One was a manner of fear was the first thing because of Bishop Grace, they called him Daddy Grace., and he would go around and people would touch him, I guess they would touch him and when he speak to them they would fall all out and go into a frenzy, fit of frenzy. And we were told and we’re trying to figure out how could he be so holy and someone said that he had an electric belt on, that’s what they told us and if they touch him, they would get a shock. So we would go to the house of prayer and watch the march and dance and shout and worship…and pray…be baptized and all of that. And first it was a matter of fear, so I am going to go fast forward to get in the point, then I’ll come back. When I was pastor at my first church in Dallas, North Carolina, Daddy Bishop Grace had a little mission there. And he say, and the fellow who went to school with me and who was one of the ministers say “Daddy is down here on one of your member’s lawn and he wants to meet you”. So we were having tremendous bible school there, and I went down and he wanted me to leave my wife at this church to go with him and I said no I want to take my wife with me and I came down two or three, stopped in front of a little grocery store,. The owner of that grocery store was the superintendent of my Sunday School and Bishop Grace was across the lawn on this superintendent’s lawn. So I went in the store and said “Bishop Grace wants to meet me you come and go with me”. So he closed the store and went on across the street to meet Bishop Grace. And he just talked, he tried to, for the lack of… minimize me in front of his people. I said, “you come and worship with us sometime. Be glad to have you”. He wanted to play me off in front of his people, but he wasn’t able to do it. But that was fast forward, let me go back to Charlotte to my younger days, how did we react to the people of the House of Prayer was your question. I’m telling you it was a progression. First it was fear, then secondly, it was a sense of awe because his automobile, his home, his money, his parade, his ministry, I could just go on and on. He would have tremendous parades, you know about that? Oh that would be a big day …and then after the urban renewal tore his House of Prayer down along with other churches and then he built big brick beautiful churches cash money that he had assembled over the years. And it moved from a sense of awe to a sense of respect. And he began the mother House of Prayer on Beatties Ford Road is tremendous and he built other missions and they are beautiful churches, nice churches and they are paid for CASH!!! Oh and then they began to do construction so it was a manner of respect. That is the way it is now.

TP: What do you think was his appeal?

VH: His appeal was two or three things I think, his appeal. I think his appeal, part of it was economics because he would have Grace’s grocery store, he would have grocery stores that you could buy food for little or no money or you could buy things, maybe he would have clothing stores. But it was his economic appeal, I’m sure. Then the other thing was his appeal was that he was sensational, his mannerisms, he was sensational. He would blow into the microphone and the people would just fall over. And then he was a good-looking man. He was a prophet looking man, and that was appeal, the ladies and the men worshiped him and guarded him and this to them, he was God, see I guess that’s about enough on that.

TP: Ok, but I do want to know if other churches participated in the House of Prayer parades?

VH: Other Churches?

TP: Yeah, other churches?

VH: No, no, his organization was big enough to have, no, no, no, he didn’t have contact with, fellowship with other churches. If we did anything, churches closed to watch his parade.

TP: I think that’s the answer I was looking for. As far as whether you participated or whether you actually went and viewed what was going on.

VH: I viewed it because it came by my house, it came down our street.

TP: So when he came to you, when you had your congregation in did you say Dallas?

VH: Um Hmm

TP: Ws he trying to convert you, or?

VH: No he wasn’t trying to convert me. See he had his followers standing around and he wanted to show that he was God. He wanted to, I can’t remember all of the question but he wanted to show that he was an inferior fellow on the scene.

TP: That he wasn’t inferior?

VH: I was talking about me, that Bishop Grace seemingly wanted to show his people how superior he was to this inferior fellow. And s o…he asked some silly questions, but I remember saying to him will you come and worship with us some time? We would be glad to have you, indicating that we worship God, another God, you come and worship with us, we would be glad to have you.

TP: I think you handled that very well

VH: Well, thank-you.

TP: In 1947, you were student body president of Second Ward High School…

VH: I was

TP: At that time …at that particular time in your life, how was Brooklyn like when you were the student body president?

VH: It was like a circumscribed community. Many of these things we experienced with joy, pleasure and sense of awe and even the learning and new experiences we thought were wonderful because we had no base of comparison. We didn’t know the difference, see the point? We were poor and didn’t know it. We lived in the ghetto and didn’t know it was the ghetto, you see the point? But when I was the president of the school, the school did so much for me. First of all it gave me the opportunity to be the president of the student body, so that enhanced my leadership, innate ability and it nourished me and taught me and helped me to develop those skills that was one thing. Socialization with children…we had speaking contests and how to put on a tie, “I’m going to speak this morning, I got to dress up”. And plays, Jane Eyre, now and we did…that was exposure. Basketball teams, athletic programs. Now I want to say this word about the academic program, because the academic program…I’m going to put myself in there. We had a fellow that taught math and algebra, and I like many other kids was slipping and sliding up and down the business and refused to learn and half the time we wouldn’t go to class. And he said all right do you all want to learn anything…a few in the class wanted to learn, he taught them and he gave us up who cut his class and didn’t want to learn, and I don’t know math and algebra today. My Grandson, we hire a tutor to come in because I say I can’t handle this, you see how it goes down a generation? But on the other hand…

TP: That is so interesting

VH: Why so?

TP: How you said it goes down a generation

VH: Oh yes, on the other hand, I had teachers who taught me English that I love and Mr. Moore who taught me organizational and political history helped me to be a political man and those other teachers who met my needs in other areas and they were a great deal of inspiration..

TP: I understand that you were accepted into the middle class, I understand that when you were student body president, someone had gave you, they did a favor for you who was this person that sent you somewhere?

VH: I still have to remind you that I was a fatherless boy and I have to go back to that. And my mother consequently had very little income that she took in washing and ironing and she had very little money. Eventually she went and did domestic work. So my mother did not have the finance to support me in a lot of extracurricular activities that I wanted to engage in. There was some meeting, some political meeting, I think I heard the name of it the day at the Tuesday Morning Breakfast Forum and it struck me and I forgot the name of it. Some kind of congress, southern Christian congress and were meeting in Columbus, South Carolina. And Adam Clayton Powell, who was the pastor of the Abyssinia Baptist Church in New York and who was also a congressman who was coming down to speak and I wanted to go to that meeting and I didn’t have no money and I went around and asked some doctors if they would help me to go to the…Dr. Greene and a couple of other doctors.

TP: Was there a Dr. Blackman?

VH: Dr. Blackman, and I’m trying to think of one other one, but those are Dr. Greene and Dr. Blackman. They gave me checks to go to this conference- and I went. Now does that answer your question or were you asking me something else?

TP: No that answers my question, so obviously the overall attitude of the middle class were very helpful to people they could groom?

VH: That’s right, they reached back to help us.

TP: Alright, what influence of non-religious organizations, such as the Black Cat’s Club, NAACP and the medical associations have on Brooklyn?

VH: Well, I’ll show you—- we had…this is the school, Myers Street School faculty, but we had them. The Black’s Club was a social organization and they had their wives to help them, and the Excelsior Club, they had their activities. There was also a doctor’s group, they had…

TP: Did the doctors group have a name?

VH: I can’t remember the exact name…The Charlotte Medical Society, or something like that. But I had pictures I wanted to find, but I couldn’t put my hand on them fast enough. But they had medical groups, you had lawyer’s groups. You had non-academic groups, like the Black’s Club and so so on. So you had several groups, and they were social groups.

TP: Mostly social groups? The NAACP, did that exist in Brooklyn? I mean I’m sure it was everywhere…

VH: Yes, the NAACP was a powerful group. It operated out of the Alexander Funeral Home on South Brevard Street. Kelly Alexander was the head of it, and his son, Kelly Alexander Jr. was also one of the executive directors, he is no longer the Executive Director, but at one time he was. And Kelly Alexander was a very powerful…the Alexander boys, first let me tell you about the Alexander boys, you had the Alexander Funeral Home., You had the Alexander brothers who ran the funeral home, you had Kelly Alexander, you had Zach Alexander, you had Alfred Alexander and a couple more. But they were, they were all good men. One of them was a city councilman, who …Fred, Fred Alexander was the city councilman who also went to the state legislature. The other one was Zach Alexander. Zach Alexander…then you had Kelly; the thing about Kelly was that he was a NAACP man. And he did daring things; he even brought the NAACP to get a youth department, got the youth going.

TP: Now this was in Brooklyn?

VH: Oh yes, but when you say Brooklyn, the NAACP was Charlotte…was a Charlotte branch. But of course its headquarters was in Brooklyn. Because it operated out of the Alexander Funeral Home, I just told you that.

TP: That’s exactly right

VH: And , I told you about Fred

TP: Um hmm

VH: Oh yeah, I want to tell you about Zach. Zach was an economic man, he was the economic piece, he would get certain governmental programs for black folks and this guy, he and Dr. Nathaniel Tross who was a Methodist minister operating out of the Methodist publication house on Brevard and Second Street–

TP: AME Zion?

VH: Yes, AME Zion, Tross, Wertz–

TP: What was his name?

VH: W-e-r-t-z Dr Wertz

TP: Ok

VH: And Davidson, Moore and Tross and some other, but these were shake, shake, what is it mo-

TP: Movers and Shakers

VH: Movers and shakers, they got things done, they worked behind the scenes, they had pull, they had touch with the money.

TP: Did they do anything specifically for the Brooklyn area, or was it just all around Charlotte that they focused on?

VH: Well, my memories fade because there was something…Alexander…one of the Alexander boys…Zach Alexander told me that when urban renewal coming there was some great decision behind the scene where they had these black leaders contending for certain things and I can’t tell you the full story. But they were in on the decision making of urban renewal and also black life.

[Showing and describing photographs of churches that combined due to the effect of urban renewal.]

VH: Now, shall I finish showing…This is the Ebenezer Church in which I was a member of…This is Brooklyn Presbyterian Church which went out with urban renewal, and that was on McDowell Street. And this church united with the Seventh Street Presbyterian Church, and when the two formed, it became the First United Presbyterian Church which we have now.

TP: Ok

VH: But that was…This was the House of Prayer building, and they were building, but that was the House of Prayer right there. This is the Myers Street School, this is the old, the early days of the Myers Street…have you seen that?

TP: Yeah, that stair step

VH: This was later, this is the school I attended and the principal. This is the old school too. Then we had police officers…in Charlotte, they were in Brooklyn, these were our police officers. But they couldn’t arrest white folks, but it’s a different story now.

TP: Of course it is.

VH: This is Brooklyn, again. Now this is Friendship Baptist Church which was at the corner of Brevard and First Street, now it’s on Beatties Ford Road, see what I’m saying? This is the St. Paul Baptist Church; this was on First Street now, see those houses around there? And this is Stonewall, Stonewall Church, now the thing about Stonewall you know where independence Boulevard now it’s gone, part of…they took it away. That used to be East Stonewall and they had this wall left there, but now they make a new expansion…that street, now they taken the wall away, that’s gone. Did I show you everything? Oh here…here is the is the Black Cat’s Club

TP: Oh this is the Black Cat’s Club, wow. Ok, I’m going to definitely have to take a picture of this. Back to what you were saying previously, you said the black leadership, once they started getting into the city council positions, in local positions, that they were part of the decision making for urban renewal?

VH: …I won’t say they had the final say because…but they were part of the decision making process.

TP: So why do you think that they…was it all, from the best of your knowledge, were they for it or against urban renewal?

VH: As far as I remember, the impression that was given was that this was going to be better for the community and people took that and moved thinking that, I don’t know what they thought that whether they would build and come back or what, but gentrification set in.

[Making references to photographs]

TP: This is a wonderful picture; I’m loving this picture here [Black Cat’s Club photograph]. Ok, here is another question for you. Are you getting tired?

VH: No

TP: In your observance, men who were middle class and those who held middle class ideas, what was considered a good catch in a woman?

VH: Well, a good catch was that she had her head screwed on right and that she knew what she wanted. And ….didn’t want a home wrecker…someone that would help them economically. Someone that will help them, be a helpmate to the men…but a woman who could improve on their lives. Now that is what they were looking for, because that was drilled into us that you had to meet somebody that was on your level or had similar ideas.

TP: Did they prefer educated women?

VH: They, now who is they?

TP: The middle class, I’m sorry. Yes middle class men with, professional men, did they prefer educated women or…?

VH: There are two or three things that you will have to remember. Now the educated man certainly would look for an educated woman…You want to get someone on your educational level. But it was a different story with the women because it was more women than men, and there were more women who were educated than men who were not educated. There was a difference; they had more trained women than men.

So they had the women had to sacrifice, I guess it would be better to have a piece of a man than a man at all. I guess that was it, so my aunt is a good example. She had a masters degree and she married a man, I don’t think went to college. But he had sound economic principles; he was a great worker. He had… he was from a strong family, ministerial family. So he was no trash. But he was not of the same educational level, you see. And they together bought property. And I would like to give him credit, but I can’t. It was his wife, my aunt who put me through school, helped my mother. Did that answer your question?

TP: Yes it did. Ok, as far as, again, how were women treated?

VH: …I saw it from two perspectives, remember now I did not live in a totally cultural community, or high economic. There was a balance. So I also lived…had people of the community that was of low economic status and class and those men would be the women, they would fight, and I saw that. But then I also saw the woman put on pedestal and highly respected. I saw church women who were highly respected, I saw women in the street; I saw a mixture of it.

TP: So did they pretty much have to stay in their place, or, you know, did they have any leadership?

VH: They who?

TP: The women in the Brooklyn neighborhood, was there a leadership pattern for women, or?

VH: Oh yes, then I would say yes. Now you must remember, there were local people who were leaders and then you had national leaders who came into the local community like Mary McLeod Bethune, she came into the community, Charlotte Hawkins Brown came into the community. You had colleges, Johnson C. Smith which had sororities that brought in culture and programs to the community. I remember…I remember a sorority program they had, Intercollegiate Day at our church and I was just fascinated they brought in some great speaker, they played the organ and played all of the… all the organizations stood when their song was played. You know what I mean?

TP: Yes.

VH: And…that was new to me; I was fascinated.

TP: So what you are saying that is the women’s groups were usually the sororities, the all black sororities, women’s sororities?

VH: That was a factor…You had church groups…

TP: Church groups as well?

VH: …Who were missionaries…now you didn’t have the acceptance of women preachers in that day. They had one or two, but they were not, you were looked down on…This is a new day now. And you had nurses at Good Samaritan Hospital and Nurses in the school system who gave leadership…

TP: Herron’s apartments, Your uncle, I think you said it was Walter Herron?

VH: Yes.

TP: Ok, tell me a little bit about your uncle who owned Herron’s apartments in Brooklyn?

VH: We were playing in the street in the playground in the street and this man who owns the apartments …and he heard that my name was Vernon Herron and he said, “who are you? I’m a Herron”. And he questioned “Who was your daddy?” And I told him my daddy was Samuel Joe Herron; he said “that was a cousin of mine”. And he took me under his arm so tender and began to tell me the history of our family. And I was fascinated by that. And he told me a couple things; he told me the origin of our family, we were owned by a white slave master named Dr. Isaac Herron, he was a medical doctor that lived out in the Steel Creek community. And he owned our people and there were eleven children of us slaves that he owned which was Richard and ( __ ) Herron and he ended up having children and we are all descendants of them. And then my father had brothers living in Pittsburgh and I thought, at that time when he told me that I thought that my mother and her children were the only Herron’s in the universe.

TP: Wow

VH: And once that we died, there would be no more Herrons, now that was a concept that I had. I got in touch with the Herrons in Pittsburgh. In 1950 or 51, I went to Cleveland, Ohio to the Baptist World Alliance and the train was to past through Pittsburgh. And I had wrote a letter in my mother’s name to them and said my son is coming through Pittsburgh…could he stop and meet you all, and they said “yes!” Well, not realizing the geography and the time element. I thought that when I passed through Pittsburgh going to Ohio…and that’s what it was, I threw the schedule off…then I came back to Pittsburgh, then I went on to New York and then back down to Charlotte. My Uncle John, one of them, Ed, John, Lawrence and there may have been a fourth one. But my Uncle John was the griot of the family; do you know what a griot is?

TP: There the ones who remembers the genealogy of a tribe or…

VH: That’s right, that’s it. Uncle John gave me the outline of our family. I took a piece of paper and pencil, this size paper and wrote down from the beginning and made little arrows…I won’t go, I got carried away, I have it here…Uncle John gave me the outline of the family and he talked to me about all our relatives. And I researched what he told me…and I had written a couple books to verify what he told me. Uncle John, he was the griot of the family. He was a baseball owner in Pittsburgh.

TP: A baseball owner?

VH: Yeah, you know they used to have a black league, the urban black league? well he was a owner of a homestead team. And that’s another story…

TP: Ok, I guess back to the Herron Apartments

VH: Oh Yeah

TP: Yeah, ok, you said it was your uncle Walter who owned it?

VH: No, we were cousins

TP: Cousins, ok, he was your cousin. So how long did he have that property?

VH: How long? Well he must have had it until urban renewal. I don’t know. I don’t know how long he had it, but one thing is sure, he didn’t have it after urban renewal.

TP: So he had it for quite some time. Like do you know when he bought it? Did he speak to you about that?

VH: No no, I have a trace of it.

[Interruption/his assistant comes in]

VH: What did you ask me darling?

TP: Ok, I was asking you did you know about the time when he bought the Herron’s Apartments, did he have them built or …

VH: No, he bought it. Because in my record it was, excuse me just a minute…

[Interruption and Introduction of myself to his assistant]

TP: I was asking you did he have those apartments built or were they…

VH: As I understand it the apartments were not built, he must have bought it. The answer is I don’t know, but I don’t think he built it. Did I show you the layout of the apartment?

TP: Do you have a layout?

VH: No, where is that Picture I showed you?

[Talking to Assistant]

[Illustrates the layout of the apartment on a piece of paper. There was an apartment upstairs and downstairs. There was another building in the back where people also lived]

VH: What I’m trying to show you is that, there was an apartment, two apartments downstairs, one on each side. There were two apartments upstairs, so there were four in the front. And in the back there was another building that had a series of families let me just for the sake of it say that they had four families in the back. So at leas it was that.

TP: Was it the same building, or was it a different, separate building in the back of it?

VH: No, describe…now you get me a scrap paper beside that machine right there…Ok here is Boundary Street, and I told you that he had an apartment downstairs and an apartment upstairs and there was a little driveway down there. And this is one…but in the back there was a little hallway and it was another building and it was down the hallway, then he had people living back there. You Understand?

TP: Alright now, ok, here is the big question, if you could find at least three or four words that described you experience living in the Brooklyn community, what would they be?

VH: Tenacity, endurance and achievement-

TP: Now why do you pick those words?

VH: Because they best describe the atmosphere and the environment in which I lived and reared. What was the first word?

TP: It was tenacity.

VH: That means to hold on, don’t give up. And what was the second one?

TP: It was endurance.

VH: Well that is almost the same thing. Finish high school, go to college, that was an Alpha theme [may have been referring the fraternity of Alpha Phi Alpha in which he is a member]. And achievement, be somebody, clean yourself up, be somebody. And if you don’t have money in your pockets, hold your head up. It is that kind of attitude that I lived under. It was so…and then…I remember one time we had a butter molasses and bread and that was my food to go to school, did you hear what I said?

TP: Yes, yes sir.

[Dr. Herron becomes full of emotion]

TP: Is there anything else you would like to add?

VH: To what?

TP: To everything that we’ve said so far?

TP: Are there any important questions you think I missed?

VH: No

TP: I appreciate you giving me this time; giving me this opportunity to interview you said some wonderful things…

End of Interview