Don Coleman

0:00 Carpenter: Okay. Great, so I'm Nathan Carpenter with Oberlin College I'm here with Ify Ezimora also from Oberlin College and Mr. Don Coleman, who's going to be giving an oral history interview today as part of the Africatown Oral History Digital Archive, so the collaboration between MEJAC and the Mobile County Training School Alumni Association. I just want to state at the beginning that Mr. Coleman's participation in the interview is 100% voluntary and that you're welcome to decline to answer any questions or to stop the interview at any time. And so with that, I guess I'd like to start with kind of-- asking what this reunion means to you, what you're looking forward to this weekend.

0:57 Coleman: It's-- I guess it would be, connect. Reconnect with people that I 00:01:00had central ties with in the school and in the community. Over the years we have gone in so many different directions and still a lot of the-- my, I guess, source, a lot of the motivation and energy emanates from that tie with going to Mobile County Training School so there's like a continuing connection that doesn't go away. So it's time to see where- I guess to kind of gauge where I'm 00:02:00at and also where everybody else is.

2:07 Carpenter: And so were you, did you attend the prom that was here, the class of '68?

2:13 Coleman: I did not. I was in many ways an outlier to some degree cause I stumbled across this community. I was born in Virginia, in Western Virginia and I came here from New York when I was probably about 7 or 8. And my mother, who was a single parent was born in Mobile and she attended Mobile County Training School as well. And, single parent there were struggles so, especially, particularly in New York and then we ended up coming back to Mobile, or she 00:03:00returned to Mobile and I was introduced to Mobile. It was- particularly being in Africatown was-- my initial connection was when I was probably about 14 or 15, cause I had attended other schools in the Mobile area and like I said, we had- it was me and my mother, there were financial challenges so we mainly lived either with relatives or we lived in boarding houses. My, when I was about 14 my mother became eligible for public housing and there was an area in Africatown 00:04:00right adjacent to it called the Happy Hills, and so it was a public project. I don't know- I think there's been some renovation out in that area so I don't know whether the original project is still there. That was the first place we had a fairly stable home and it happened to be in Happy Hill, which was adjacent to the Africatown- Africatown. From there, that was the beginning of my connection. It probably was a lot more positive than other communities I've been in. A lot of my friends were in homes that both parents were in and so I sort of patched together role models from them and through them there and bonded with 00:05:00them, friends that I still stay in touch with from time to time, through the phone. That was the beginning because there were role models in the community while I didn't have any male role models, there were male role models in the community and in the school that I could draw my self-image and develop it, and friendship with the children. So, that to say no I didn't go to the prom because it was most of the kids there grew up and went to kindergarten, they went to first grade, elementary school together. And they were well bonded so I kind had to, kinda come from the outside and become part of the community. So it took 00:06:00them time to bond, and I went to some other proms but not to that one. (laughing)

6:12 Carpenter: Can you talk more about what that experience was like, kind of coming in from the outside, cause you also mentioned that it was a really positive community.

6:20 Coleman: Yeah, it was because literally, we lived in boarding houses and people from all different kind of backgrounds, mostly suspect and unstable backgrounds were there and there was a lot of sensitivity and security issues, living from week to week as far as whether you would be there the next week. So going, moving to Happy Hills first was the first sense of stability, place we 00:07:00could afford and we know that next week at least we'd still have a place. And when I started going to school there I met people like Anderson Flen and Gary Simpson and they were kind of the leaders in that class and in that school. Anderson was the prototypical big man on campus, he was the star quarterback and he was star baseball player, so it was fortuitous that I bonded with him and from there I got more connection with the community. It sort of was a.. Endorsement, hey this guy's okay. So I got to, you know, spend time with his 00:08:00family, I got to spend the night, I had dinner, we would go around the neighborhood, I mean the neighborhood was probably five miles in radius, we walked everywhere so I got, through him I got to know a lot of the kids that I would not have known as soon, because of his stature.

8:33 Carpenter: And what was that experience kind of like, as high schoolers kind of walking around the neighborhood? You know, what kind of things would you do, who'd you talk to, that kind of thing.

8:48 Coleman: It would... it would be-- I guess the other way that I got in was 00:09:00that I could learn things pretty quick and so, a lot of my interaction was, ok, I'll show you how to do this, this is what she said, here are my notes and stuff like that. And helped people with preparation for exams and things like that, so I had that kind of collateral to, I guess, negotiate with. And it can be- my mother and I were a household of two, it was the average household in that community was 4, 4 or 5, some of them had like 11 kids. So it could be kind of daunting, you know, they were well-bonded, so you always knew that you, while 00:10:00you could get close, you're not as close as the family. So it was, I always viewed myself as the outlier and I could socialize and communicate effectively and develop a relationship, but it was always a question of degree. It would never be the bond that they would have but it was comfortable, and for me it was better than what I'd had in the past.

10:45 Carpenter: I'm curious, one thing you mentioned is about the role models you found in the community and I was wondering if your comfortable talking about who some of those people were for you.

10:56 Coleman: Yeah, I don't have any problem. The biggest male role model were 00:11:00the coaches, the football, baseball coaches.

11:13 Carpenter: Were you on both teams?

11:15 Coleman: I was not on the football team, I was a statistician on the baseball team. That was my way in, more of an academic connection. Now I would play, coming up we would play tackle football in, here in the park and we'd play baseball so I played with the, but not in the organized sense. So, Charles 00:12:00Harding was probably one of the, my biggest role model, he was a paratrooper in the army and then he came- well, first of all, football star at county then he was a paratrooper in the army, and then he was the - wasn't the head football coach but he was defensive coach and baseball coach. And he was very-- intimidating but very fair. He expected you to do your best and would let you know when you wouldn't. And when we, you know, and he would reward when you done your best. So, and he was- he stayed in shape, he was athletic up to his maybe 00:13:0050's, 60's. So he was a very impressive personality. And then the head coach, Charles Rhodes, that R-H-O-D-E-S, he was the president in the sense that, he was the head football coach but there was a lot of-- he was probably the most academic of the personalities that I had in football, two civic courses, and it was very engaging academically, and I was impressed with him. And, let's see, Mr. Chapman, he also was talented academically, motivated me in his class. I 00:14:00took about two classes from him. And then there was a counselor, she was a female, Valeena (14:23), Ms. Valeena McCans and you probably, people either love her or hate her but she was probably the person that, I mean I really didn't think about college until maybe my junior year, late junior year. I went to this program, she was responsible for getting me into a college preparatory program, summer program, called Upward Bound. And from there I, I mean I've always been, 00:15:00I love to read and I love to debate, so it was instinctive but it was not a-- I didn't see a future in it. And that experience, she was responsible for getting me into that and that opened my eyes to college, and really motivated me to want to go to college. And I worked hard, but- actually it was my sophomore year that I got into the program- but I worked hard my junior and senior year. Before that 00:16:00I was pretty average, I was better than- I was average and sometimes better than average when I had a real interest in the subject. But after that experience, I committed more intensely to developing my academics and ended up in my senior year, I had the highest SAT score in the history of the school and she had a lot to do with that, I mean, she kept me on task and exposed me to, she helped me through the application process. Cause my mother, basically, she worked hard but it was not- it was more labor intensive and she worked at a club, it was 00:17:00basically- I don't know if you've heard of the Chitlin Circuit? You should google the Chitlin Circuit but, through the Chitlin- Chitlin Circuit, you had performers like James Brown, B.B. King, Tina Turner, they came to what- the Chitlin Circuit would be something that, it was a tour from, that started in Detroit, came through Chicago, down to New Orleans, Mobile, Atlanta, so it's all the cities where there were significant Black populations and they performed in clubs, in nightclubs. My mother worked as a waitress at one of the clubs- at the 00:18:00only club in Mobile that was part of the Chitlin Circuit. But it's pretty historical cause a lot of your blues icons and rhythm- rhythm and blues icons came through that circuit. But anyway, she did not, I mean she had like one year of college but she didn't finish. When I got through my senior year and graduated, I got a full scholarship to Clark College in Atlanta, she went back to school and she came out with a nursing degree. So, a lot of good things happened from my having attended school in that community.

19:02 Carpenter: So it sounds like a lot of your mentorship you found through the school, is that right?

19:11 Coleman: Oh, definitely. There were, the students there were pretty close, bonded, families, probably their parents had bonded as classmates the generation before so there was a really tight community bond there and basically, you were raised by the community cause if something happened on this side that you did, eventually everybody would know. And there would be those that would step in and say "no, don't do that." So it was, in a sense, a pretty open community.

20:09 Carpenter: So then, you- Clark College, is that what you said?

20:12 Coleman: Yeah, it was- it's Clark Atlanta. Clark Atlanta University.

20:16 Carpenter: Clark Atlanta University. What was that like?

20:19 Coleman: It was a whole new world. Cause Atlanta, about a couple years after Atlanta exploded. The counselor, Ms. McCans, she was- I had gotten scholarship offers from Tuskegee, Billard, Talladega, and Clark College and, I was undecided as to where I wanted to go and she helped, she led me to qualify for full scholarship. But Atlanta is a place that is going to grow, and when I 00:21:00started at Clark it was about the same time Atlanta really, it started blossoming from a- it was always a big southern town but it exploded into a city, you know. There, you, at Clark there was- you learned there was a whole first world, people from as far as New York, Chicago, Detroit, California, they came to the Atlanta University and a lot of things were happening at that time. Civil rights, the student movement and the civil rights era was pretty- it was 00:22:00growing and probably that was the first, student involvement was at its peak. And we did, we did the marching and did some bus riding to some areas in southern Georgia, so it was a really exciting, challenging time.

22:35 Carpenter: Yeah what was that like, kind of participating in those student movements?

22:39 Coleman: It - I would say it, our- in a way it was unique in the sense 00:23:00that it was driven by the students and the, well, when- from my perspective, it was a liberating time because when I went, when I came- I came from New York to Mobile. I had no idea about Jim Crow, didn't know anything about riding on the bus, didn't know about separate entrances, separate drinking water fountains, until I hit Mobile and that was like a brick wall. And I basically had to have a guide to say, when my grandmother visited had to be the person to teach me 00:24:00socially you don't wanna do that, you gotta do this. And it always was irritating because I couldn't do what I was used to you know, the equal footing. And my grandmother was a, she was a maid for private homes and there were times when she would come home and she worked for, she worked for this woman who was in her thirties and my grandmother was in her fifties, and she would come home so many times, just hurt sometimes in the way how she was spoken to, how she was 00:25:00treated. And that stayed with me a good while. So when I got to Atlanta and I met other people that had different experiences that were more equalizing, it was like I had stepped into another world and we - we had at that time, the civil rights movement had some charismatic leaders like Hosea Williams, Andrew Young, they were all based in Atlanta and so that was, I was exposed to that and 00:26:00so it was motivating and I felt that it was making a difference and so they showed courage, which helped us to have courage. So we would go on these, we would go to South Georgia, there was- a lot of times they had to do with someone's wrongfully imprisoned. And we would go and we would march and it would be frightening but at the same time knowing that you had so many people that believed the same thing you did, it was encouraging at the same time. So I was 00:27:00glad that I had the opportunity to- to live and attend school at that time and have that experience.

27:13 Coleman: Were you in touch with any of your Mobile County Training School Classmates during that time?

27:19 Coleman: Flen. Probably has been the main connection for probably the majority of people that are here today, this weekend for the reunion. To me it was more, he was a surrogate brother because it was- I was the only child for most of the time until I went to college. And he, I stayed in touch with him from the moment he went to Virginia to school and we stayed in touch and then he 00:28:00moved to Atlanta and we have always maintained contact. And there's a couple people from Mobile that when I come back I would make sure I would look them up and get in contact with either them or their parents, cause a lot of times they'd be out somewhere out of Mobile but the parents, siblings stay in direct contact with each other.

28:49 Carpenter: So you decided to stay in Atlanta? After college.

28:53 Coleman: Yeah, I wanted to stay south and Atlanta was an oasis.

29:00 Carpenter: In what way?

29:02 Coleman: In as far as career opportunity and personal growth. I, when I graduated- here, my junior year I had a friend who was a couple years ahead of me, he had went to Alabama State, graduated with good credentials, and he applied for a job in Mobile at the Greyhound company and he was a college graduate, and the only thing they offered him was a maintenance job. And that convinced me, I wanna stay south but not wanna go back there. And so Atlanta was, Atlanta really was boomin' in the seventies and even more today and still 00:30:00is, in different aspects.

30:08 Carpenter: So what was kind of your career trajectory?

30:13 Coleman: I was a, like most students I changed my major a couple times. I went in as a psychologist major and I switched to sociology, and then at the end of my four years I counted up- I ended up with a diploma- a degree in economics. So I worked with the US Labor Department for about... year and a half but at the same time I was going to night law school. And so I went, completed the law 00:31:00school, took the Georgia bar, and at the- probably halfway through my law school I had gotten a legal assistant job with Atlanta Legal Aid, and when I passed the bar, I got offered a staff attorney position at Atlanta Legal Aid. And that was in 19-- 77 was when I passed the bar and got the offer shortly after I passed. And I've been there since then. I currently am co-manager of their, the county office. I guess in certain ways I still do social work but in the legal context.

32:02 Carpenter: Yeah, what pulled you to go to law school and do the work that you do?

32:08 Coleman: Well, I can't- it was, growing up in the community that I did-

32:19 Carpenter: And do you mean Africatown?

32:21 Coleman: Yes. It was not, it was not from a material standpoint a rich community. It was a hard-working community. And there were some wonderful people there. And a lot of the clients that I work with legal aid are in similar low income working, they're the working poor. And I relate to them in the sense that that is the place that I came from and it's a place that I wanted to lift up and 00:33:00give back to. I also, probably during my most impressionable years, John F. Kennedy became president. And the most memorable thing I remember was, it's not what your country can do for you, but what can you do for your country, to paraphrase that. And I took that to heart. And I always looked at law school as being a way to improve social justice, but in a more empowering way. Because as a social worker you give people food to live for a day but it doesn't give 00:34:00people- feel a sense of empowerment that there is justice. I think that's-- significant.

34:11 Carpenter: And you feel like that's tied at all to your- the work you did during the Civil Rights Movement in college? Tied to that work for social justice?

34:21 Coleman: Yeah, and the role I also had because, but for the grace of God I could be in that working poor population. And the, you know our most valuable resource is our human resources and the more you can improve that the more you improve your community. So it's a, it's really was a, maybe a frustrated social worker, I mean from a legal standpoint. But that was, once I got into law I knew 00:35:00I didn't want a job where I had to chase the dollar, I wanted to be able to make a difference in people lives even if it's just for that moment, and that was a way to do it. And I, and I think it's a... continuation of the work that I did when I was a student at Clark College and the participation that I had in the Civil Rights Movement.

35:39 Carpenter: You keep returning to this idea of the community within Africatown and how strong that was, I was wondering if you could think of just, a story that kind of shows what that experience was like for you?

35:57 Coleman: Well, I, my mother was a single working parent. And I was a 00:36:00teenager, active and adventurous, and rebellious. That some point in time happens with everyone. The, my mother would go to work. She'd go to work at 7 in the evening and she'd come home maybe 4 in the morning. So I would have full run of the house or the community during that time. A lot of times I would go to my friend's house, have dinner there. I can't think of the number of times I spent 00:37:00the night over at Anderson's house. I was probably the poster child for latchkey, but I could kind of, I would go out and -- (laughs) that's a different story. But a lot of the, my friends' family would welcome me into their home, they would, you know, feed me, and they treated me no different than their children. So, you know and I would get along with one kid and I'd get along with their brother but that's different. But it was a common place for me because I 00:38:00probably was not the normal-- my family was not the normal family in that community. There usually were two parents and I had a unique experience, you'll probably see as stories go.

38:30 Carpenter: And you said you'd slept sometimes at school? Is that what you said?

38:32 Coleman: Well, I mean, I definitely got home before my mom got home. I would go, like I would go to Flen's house and stay a couple days late, and then I would come home by the time my mom got home. And I would, sometimes I would, 00:39:00you know, I came from, I had relatives in other parts of the city. I would go- if I had a bike, which I did for most of the time, I would ride 20 miles to the other side of town and spend the evening there and then come back. But mainly, as I got older I got more friends in the community and I stayed around that community for the last two years of school. But it was, there probably was a network for me of about a dozen families that I could drop by their house and play and hang around until dinnertime and have dinner. It was a, I probably was 00:40:00a community kid. (laughs) So that's why I value that community experience.

40:15 Carpenter: I don't wanna take up too much of your time so I don't know if there's anything you wanna add, anything we've talked about, anything about the weekend-- anything more generally...

40:25 Coleman: Well it's gonna be, it's kinda like you've been on a long journey now you wanna see who made it back, what they're doing. So I-- I'm going to relish cause I don't know how many other times we'll have the opportunity but I'm gonna relish the weekend, and connect up and communicate with as many people as I can, just it's-- it's kind of like reconciling your present perception with 00:41:00your memory. So i'm gonna spend that time, trying just to reconcile, get a balanced perspective. Because when we graduated our perspective is totally different from what we have now. So it'll be good just to catch up with people.

41:34 Carpenter: Is that bringing up stuff for you too, in terms of reconciling, you know, where you're at now versus where you were 50 years ago?

41:41 Coleman: Yeah. Yeah. It sort of-- sort of a review in sense, you know.

41:56 Carpenter: Cool. Alright, well thank you so much for your time this was awesome.

41:58 Coleman: My pleasure.