Willie Brown Interview

What was it like growing up in poor, rural, segregated Mineola, Texas?

Willie Brown: It was not a pleasant experience, I can tell you that. When I graduated from high school and went away to college in 1951, that was the first time I'd ever actually left the town. So I didn't have a whole lot to compare it to, except that I knew there was a better life somewhere.

There was a better life than worrying every day about your physical safety. There was a better life than being a vegetarian, and not by choice. That there was a better life than having only a pot-bellied stove in one room in a household. There was a better life other than outdoor plumbing. There was a better life than having a job of going a block away to get water and bring it back. There was a better life than taking a bath in the third use of the water that had been acquired. I knew that there had to be a better life. And there clearly had to be a better life than having no shoes. I knew there had to be a better life.
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It was a horror chamber. It got to be a little bit better, even in the horror chamber, when, at 10 or 11 years of age, I could actually produce for myself. I could work in the fields and make a couple of dollars a day. At 12 years of age, I could actually make six bucks a week shining shoes. Using those dollars, to buy the things that ordinary kids had, relieved the misery a bit, but only a tiny bit.

Who was important to you in those early years in Texas? Who inspired you, who influenced you, who did you look up to?

Willie Brown: In the early years of my life, my grandmother was the single most powerful force in existence by my little kid standards. She showed no fear of anything. In spite of the fact that we lived in a totally segregated community, she would not take anything off of white people.

They would mistreat her, or attempt to mistreat her, and she would stand up to them. She was an 80-year-old black woman and I suppose they had at least a little bit of respect for her life and the contributions she had made. I had great respect for her.

I had great, great respect for my mother. She seemed to have more interest in life than any other human being that I'd ever known, although she was only there on weekends. She lived in what we called "in service," up over somebody's garage in Dallas, Texas, working as their maid. But she would dutifully come home practically every weekend. She'd bring with her the excess food that she had cooked and not served to the other families. She'd bring home the ham, which was a way to get away from being a vegetarian. She would bring cakes and cookies that she had made. And obviously, she made them in excess, so she could bring them home. She'd also bring home the clothing of the kids from the house that she worked for, that they would give her.
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So she was my treat. She also had a great interest in what we kids were doing every day, what we were doing in school. She was very inspirational, although, on reflection, she was not even a high school graduate. She was very important to me.

And then I had an uncle who literally defied description. He had had no education, never had a job, but seemingly owned everything in the world. He was a resident of San Francisco, California. He drove his car back once a year. He sent money to his mother, my grandmother, to help take of his sister's children. He had a lot of style and a lot of pizzazz about him. He was the hero of every little kid in Mineola. And of course, being my uncle, he was my hero. He also knew how to curse, and at the time that seemed important to me. There must have been a warrant out for him, or something, because he would never stay for more than three or four days, but he was very important to me.

That was probably the sum total of this little kid's collection of people. Although I did have access to things like the Houston Informer, which was a black newspaper, or the Kansas City Call, which was a black newspaper that was distributed in Mineola for five cents a copy, about once every two weeks. You would check that newspaper out and you'd read these stories about Harlem, and about black entertainers. But I couldn't really relate to them, because it just didn't seem like something I would ever be able to do. had no vision beyond Mineola. The people whom I respected and admired were pretty much restricted to my family members. I didn't have a whole lot of teachers that had anything going for them, that would warrant my admiring them.

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