Lawrence/Douglas County African American Oral History Interviews

Dorothy Harvey

Dorothy Harvey was born in Kansas City, Kansas, in 1925. Her father was a railway clerk and her mother a teacher. Her grandmother was the child of a slave/master relationship and her grandfather was a Cherokee Indian. She also had Cherokee and white ancestors on her father's side of the family. She grew up in a segregated area of Kansas City and graduated from Sumner High School and later the University of Kansas. She married Dean Harvey, whom she met at KU. They farmed southeast of Lawrence in an area of black farmers. The Harveys had three children. Dorothy has been active in St Luke AME Church and the Civil Rights Movement in Lawrence. She still lives on the family farm.

For additional background on the Harvey family, read "Rebecca Brooks Harvey," by Edward S. Harvey.

For more information on the Harvey family, see also "Taking on the Color Barrier, Twice," by Jayson Jenks in the University Daily Kansan, January 26, 2011.

Interviewed by Sherrie Tucker, Alice Fowler, and Amber Reagan-Kendrick

Sherrie: Mrs. Harvey, can you tell us when you were born and where you were born and a little about your family history?

MRS. HARVEY: Yes. I was born in Kansas City, Kansas, August 11, 1925. My parents were Ida Singleton and Walter Singleton. My mother was born in Missouri but moved to Kansas City, Rosedale area, when she was a year old, so she grew up there. My father was born in Chicago and moved to Springfield, Illinois, at the age of five and he came to Kansas City, and it must have been about 1914 when he came.

Sherrie: And what brought him to Kansas City, Kansas?

MRS. HARVEY: He came to visit an aunt and an uncle. His aunt was teaching at Sumner High School. My father had elected to quit school, this is my understanding, and his aunt convinced him to go back to school. So he went to Sumner and that's where he met my mother.

Sherrie: What did your parents do?

MRS. HARVEY: Well, my mother went on to normal school and became a teacher in Kansas City. I understood she taught out in Rosedale. And then when she married... Married teachers were not allowed to teach in Kansas City at that time, so she just tutored children at the church. Then in World War II she went back to work and she taught out in Quindaro, Kansas. My understanding is that my father was a railway mail clerk and he took his first run from Kansas City, Missouri, before his graduation. My grandmother came from Springfield, Illinois, and accepted his diploma because he was unable to be there.

Sherrie: Were there a lot of black railway mail clerks at that time?

MRS. HARVEY: No, there were not. Her family doesn't seem to have the exact knowledge... Some of us think he was among the first black railway mail clerks, others believe he was the second, but he either way he was among the first railway mail carriers.

Sherrie: And what about your grandparents? What do you know about your mother's parents and your father's parents? Can we start with your mother's parents?

MRS. HARVEY: My mother's mother was Mary Snell-Craig. She was born in Texas and she was the product of the slave woman and the master. She had red hair and, because she had red hair and looked so much like the child in the big house, my great grandmother was given her freedom, and she left Texas and settled over in Missouri. What we can find out about our grandfather on that side, his name was Andrew Craig. The family has been trying to get that history together. We do know that he came out of Oklahoma and that he was a Cherokee Indian. But other than that, we don't have any information on him. Don't really know where they married or anything about that. Just know that they had nine children, my mother was the eighth child. My grandfather, Andrew, died when mother was three, so she never really knew him. But her mother lived until... I believe until about '28, 1928... I don't remember. I was about three, I think, when she passed. But my sister remembers her and often. Tells us about her.

Sherrie: Did you know your mother's siblings?

MRS. HARVEY: Yes, I remember most of them, I think. You want all their names (laughter)?

Sherrie: Yeah (laughter), if you can..

MRS. HARVEY: I've got to start... Uh, I'm not sure that I can give them all. Uh, she had, uh, three brothers, John, Andrew and Elmer. The sisters as I remember were Mary, Eleanor, Nellie... Ida... That's seven, so I'm missing two sisters. I can't think of them at the moment.

Sherrie: What about your father's parents?

MRS. HARVEY: I know that his mother came out of Ohio. She was part Cherokee Indian also. Her father was white and her mother was Cherokee Indian. I don't know where she met my grandfather, Oliver Singleton. I just know that he was, uh... ...had a business in Chicago. He sold coal there. I believe when my father was about five or six, he decided that he didn't want to rear them in Chicago, so he moved to Springfield. So that's where my father grew up, was in Springfield. And, as I said, he came to Kansas City on a trip and remained and had all of us (laughter).

Sherrie: Uh-huh. You have Cherokee relatives then on both sides. Do you know anything about that history?

MRS. HARVEY: We have tried to look them up. From what I have been able to gather, one aunt on my father's side... We tried to find the history. We do know that the great grandmother was named Menqua Papoose, but other than that... I've seen her picture and I don't know who has it now, one of my cousins in St. Louis I believe has a picture of her. There is a family history in a bible floating around, and when that generation died I don't know who got all that, I just know my father didn't.

Sherrie: Was this something that you were told about as a child? Were you interested in the Cherokee side of the family?

MRS. HARVEY: Truthfully, no. My father had elected to live as a black man. Of course, in those days the term was 'Colored,' and I asked him, as a child, "Why did you elect to do this?" And he said, "Because they treat the Indian just as poorly as they do the blacks." And, so, that was his choice. Mother had never, to my knowledge, been anything but Colored. She only mentioned it in passing. What her parents were.

Sherrie: What are your memories of your early childhood?

MRS. HARVEY: Well, it was a happy childhood as I remember. I was born at 422 Greely and grew up there, married there. So... I had one sister who was seven years older than I... Who is seven years older than I. There were other brothers that I did not know, but... I had a brother who's eighteen months older than I and then a brother who's four years older... Four years younger than I. My father, he put a play set in the backyard that he made out of pipe, and swings and a slipper slide and all those things. So everybody usually was in our yard playing. We played baseball and we went to church on a regular basis. One of my best friends lived just a block away, so I was allowed to go over to her house. My parents were rather strict, we were only allowed to go into two homes. We could go on the porches, but those were the only two homes that we were allowed to go into.

Sherrie: What was the church that you...?

MRS. HARVEY: Trinity AME.

Sherrie: And what the neighborhood like that you grew up in?

MRS. HARVEY: Ahh! Quiet, uh... I'm sure the older folks didn't think we were quiet (laughter), because there were a lot of kids around as I remember it. They were real proud of the neighborhood, they kept the yards up, and my mother did a lot of flowers. She was very artistic, I didn't get that but... She did a lot of gardening. My father cut the grass on a regular basis. I can tell you we were not allowed to play in the front yard (laughter). We stayed in the back yard, my father did not want us on his grass (laughter). Uh, like I said, my sister being seven years older, she was one of these young women who finished high school at the age of 16, so she was out of the home very young. She went to college and that left me with two brothers, and being between the two boys, I... They always told me I was bossy, so (laughter)... I... I don't know... I just enjoyed being at home. My mother would let us go out doors early in the morning, after you did your chores. You'd come in at noon and you went in the house until evening. And you didn't have to go take a nap or anything, but you had to be quiet. You either read, or I sewed, or it was something, but there was not a lot of playing like that. We played a lot of games. That's... That's probably it.

Sherrie: What kinds of chores did you do?

MRS. HARVEY: Basically, I guess just helping her with the housework and peeling potatoes is one of things I remember. We were playing baseball and at that time we used to play work-up and, so, I had worked up to bat and mother called me to come in and peel potatoes. I went in and I very quickly peeled potatoes. I went back out, I worked up again and she made me come in and peel peelings (laughter). So I learned to peel potatoes, believe me (laughter). But not just doing. You had to keep your room clean and after my sister left, then that left me with a room of my own and the boys had the larger room. We lived in a two-story house and three bedrooms and a bath. Which was good for those days I'm sure. I learned to cook, and to sew, and made quilts with her and that type of thing. I finally learned to knit. Crocheting, my mother did beautifully, but I never did learn to crochet, like I wanted to.

Sherrie: Uh-huh.

MRS. HARVEY: I can do it, but I never did learn to really crochet.

Sherrie: What was Kansas City, Kansas, like at that time? Was it a...?

MRS. HARVEY: It was a segregated area. Of course, I don't think we realized that it was segregated in the sense that we just all lived in that neighborhood. We all went to school together. We had stores. We had a hospital. There were good churches. We looked up to the teachers, the ministers and the doctors who were close by. You just learned to respect people, that was one thing. I can't remember us ever just calling somebody by their first name, it was always a handle on it, it was Mr. or Mrs., aunt or uncle, or cousin... It was something, but you didn't call people by their first name like the young people do today.

Sherrie: Where did you go to school? What was the first school you went to?

MRS. HARVEY: Dunbar was the grade school that I went to and it was approximately six blocks from home. The principal lived around the corner... Like I said, most of the teachers lived in the area where they taught I think. I had all female teachers in grade school. We had a black superintendent and he was in and out on a regular basis, checking on the school. I went to Northeast Junior High School for seventh, eighth and ninth grade, and then there we had a mixture of teachers. And then went to Sumner High School for the last three years and then on to KU.

Sherrie: What do you remember about your school experiences? What kinds of things stand out in your mind when you think back to going to school?

MRS. HARVEY: I remember that the teachers always impressed me with their high ideals that we go on to higher education, that you always had something in sight. They always said to you, "You have to have something to do with your life." You had a skill or anything like that, it was always prepare yourself for the future. Although when I was in high school they did put in a cosmotology class. And that was about it, because Sumner High School had a swimming pool back in that day. That's one thing I remember growing up, that we did have a large olympic size pool in the neighborhood, and we had Red Cross classes early in the morning. I remember it cost ten cents to swim in the afternoon. They had beauty contests and all that type of thing at the pool. Had tennis courts at that same area. My parents played tennis. It was not a sport I ever enjoyed, but they played it when my father was home. Early in the mornings they would... Like I said, we had the hospital and there were always doctors and nurses talking to the young people. And in the neighborhood... There was one thing about the neighborhood, everybody knew what you were doing. Honey, you didn't get away with anything (laughter). And, of course, it was during my high school years that World War II started, and my oldest brother went to the Navy, and my sister had married and moved to California by then. My younger brother and I were left at home.

Sherrie: What did people do differently during the war?

MRS. HARVEY: Well, we had the rationing for one thing. People had been... Some of the men I know had been on the WPA. It was a hard time because we had gone through the Depression. Now, being young and my father having a job, I don't think it affected us like it did neighbors. Because I can't ever remember us having to sacrifice. Now, I'm sure my parents did, but they didn't tell us what we were going through. Basically, I can remember that we had the grocery store that Mr. Duvall owned and mother would send us over there. Prices were cheap back in those days, but you just assumed that was life. She would send me to the store and get what she wanted. Mr. Duvall would charge her and when my father got paid she paid the bill. And he would give her a large peppermint stick and a peanutbutter stick. Now those two things stand out in my mind, and every year he had a picnic at Swope Park. Now, Swope Park had a segregated area back in those days and we would go up on that hill and have a big picnic. Everybody who had bought from him all that year was always invited. And I can remember during the summers, my mother would take us on a streetcar ride, and we would ride over into Kansas City, Missouri, get off down town, walk up what they called 'Pettycoat Lane' one block, catch the streetcar and go on to Swope Park, ride to the end of the line and just get off. And the trolley had the cable and the man had to turn it around, and we'd just go to the other end and be facing the right direction, and reverse the trip. Now that was because it was so hot and we couldn't sleep. Mother would let us stay out on the porch, oh, until about eleven o'clock, then we had to come it. She made pallets and we laid there. Now, if my father was home, we could keep the door open. When he wasn't home, she would lock the door. But, other than that, I can't... My father was able to get what they called a run out of Atchison, Kansas. It was my understanding that the men, instead of being laid off, went to other runs. Now that's what they call a 'run-run' and he dead-headed from Kansas City to Atchison to take his run out. He'd be gone, say like all day Monday, Tuesday... He'd back Tuesday night. He'd have to go out again Wednesday morning and he'd back Thursday night, then he'd have three days off.

Alice: Did you explain what 'dead-head' means?

MRS. HARVEY: 'Dead-head' meant that he would ride the train from Kansas City, Kansas, to Atchison and then come back the same way. And He just stayed in Atchison the nights that he worked. I'm not sure, but I believe his run at that time might have been from Atchison to Dodge City. I know he had a run from Dodge City... From Kansas City to Dodge City, and then he took a run to, uh, La Junta, Colorado. And he was ready to retire when they opened it up so that the black men could become Clerk in Charge and he took that. So he took that for seven years and that helped him with his pension.

Sherrie: You have described the neighborhood a little bit and it sounds like that there was a black hospital. And were the stores also, were they owned by African Americans?

MRS. HARVEY: Most of them were. The drugstore was owned by a white man, but everybody that worked in there was black.

Alice: Was that Katz Drugstore?

MRS. HARVEY: No. His name was Kirk Condon, and ... Eventually we did have... I think it was because we didn't have black pharmacist. Eventually we did have a black pharmacist and then he sold it to him, and went on somewhere else and I don't know where he ended up. But in the drugstore we had the fountains where you could get sodas and that type of thing. So, we didn't really go out of the neighborhood. We had black undertakers, black filling stations, uh... Just as far as I knew, everything was... There were a few whites who remained in the neighborhood. Most of them left when blacks started to move in. As I said, my parents moved in before I was born, in fact, they moved in before my brother was born and, so, I never lived in any house but there until I came here to go to school and then married.

Sherrie: You had mentioned something about a milk boycott?

MRS. HARVEY: Oh, yeah.

Sherrie I wonder if you could tell us a little about that?

MRS. HARVEY: Well, the company that, uh, sold milk came around to house to house and my mother would never buy milk from them. So the gentleman came to the door to ask her why she wouldn't buy milk from them, and she told them "Because you don't hire my boys. " Of course, the girls in those days didn't go out to work very often, if they did it was usually out in service or at one of the stores or something of that nature. My parents did not allow us to go out and work 'in service' as my mother called it. She said she worked her way through school by doing maid work and her daughters were not going to do that. So we didn't do it. My brothers worked for a Mr. Duvall. Because in those days they brought the groceries to a home. Also, one brother, the oldest one, Richard, as I remember, sold The Call paper and the Kansas City Kansan. My father believed that everybody helped a person keep their job. So, if he was running late throwing paper, then everybody got up and went out...

Alice: And helped throw the paper?

MRS. HARVEY: Uh-huh. That was the way that they did it in those days. Families just stuck together. There was no division. You weren't allowed to really quarrel, I don't remember us really... Unless we were out of the sight of our parents. Because, the minute you start it, somebody was sent to their room.

Alice: Uh-huh. The term 'in service'... "Working in service, uh...? "

MRS. HARVEY: As a maid.

Alice: As a maid?

MRS. HARVEY: Uh-huh.

Alice: Okay.

Sherrie: You have a lot of ties to Sumner High School. Do you know anything about the history of Sumner?

MRS. HARVEY: Uh, yes. Uh, Sumner was started, according to what I know, because some young men had a fight and one of the father's was upset. They didn't want their children to go to school with black children. So they organized a black high school. The other schools, I don't know anything about because I'm sure that they must have just always had black, uh, grade school and Northeast. Because, in Kansas City, Kansas, there was Northeast for the blacks and Northwest for the whites. And Sumner was for the... A high school, and Wyandott was the white high school. Wyandott burnt and they rebuilt it, and they made sure they rebuilt Sumner. Sumner was on the schedule, but after the school burnt, of course they had to make a school—build a school. And they put in a swimming pool and we had a football field right across from the school. Most of our teachers had Master's degrees, there were a few who had Ph.D.'s. They were in the school system because they could not get jobs in their field. So, we were blessed in that we had teachers who had all these degrees. And, as I said, their main issue always was to move ahead. They wanted us to stand on their shoulders and reach just a little bit higher.

Alice: Uh-huh.

Sherrie: So, how did you decide to come to KU?

MRS. HARVEY: That was the decision of my parents also. My father said that everybody could go one year and then make a choice if they wanted to go to another school. So my sister came and went one year, and then she went to the University of Illinois, in Champaign, Illinois. And my brother who was in the Navy went to the local junior high school... I mean Junior College. He went to the local Junior College. Then, he didn't want to go in the Army, so he enlisted in the Navy. And, that way, when they drafted him, they drafted them into the Army. If you wanted to go in the other service, then you had to enlist.

Alice: Uh-huh.

MRS. HARVEY: So he enlisted while he was in Junior College. Then, when it was my turn, I came to KU (huh!), I ended up getting married (laughter). But, uh...

Alice: Fell in love!

MRS. HARVEY: Uh-huh. My youngest brother also came to KU for one year, and then he went to Howard University and graduated from there.

Sherrie: Why did your parents want you all to go to KU?

MRS. HARVEY: It was close to home (laughter). And I remember Daddy saying he wasn't going to waste his money (laughter)... If you didn't want to go to school (laughter). So you had to prove yourself that first year.

Alice: Uh-huh, uh-huh.

MRS. HARVEY: And, then, like I said, my sister was so young when she went that she... They really hated to let her leave home that early. But, uh... That was their decision.

Sherrie: So, how old were you when you came to KU?

MRS. HARVEY: I had just turned 18. I turned 18 in August, on the 11th, and I came to KU... Uh, I think it was the 20th or so, because of the war, we had three sessions. They had a six-week session and then we went into the semester system.

Sherrie: And was the war still on at this time?

MRS. HARVEY: Oh, yes. Yes, in '43.

Sherrie: This is 1943...?

MRS. HARVEY: Uh-huh.

Sherrie: When you came to KU? So, you were making some transitions here. You'd moved from Kansas City, Kansas, to Lawrence. What was Lawrence like and what are your memories about moving from your hometown?

MRS. HARVEY: Well, I was supposed to come with one of my good friends and we had already gotten our rooms and everything. Her father was a math teacher and because of the war opening up jobs, he decided to move to Detroit with his family. So, she didn't get to come to KU, she went on to Detroit with her family. And I came on to KU, and when I got here, the rooms that we had originally gotten, the woman had decided it was easier to keep boys, so she was going to keep boys. So she made arrangements for me to stay at another house up the street. Now, we did not stay in the dorms or anything. We lived by dorm rules, but we could not live on campus. We lived just under the campus. It wasn't that far to walk, but yet it was a definite difference. So, when I came... This lady, Mrs. Arnita Brown, had two rooms and one of my friends came from Kansas City and she also lived there. She ended up marrying a Lawrence boy also. But my roommate was from Hutchison, Kansas, and we became real good friends. Uh, there were four of us who were living there, one out of Kansas City, Missouri, two out of Kansas City, Kansas, and the one from Hutchison, Kansas. And we, uh... ...had to walk, as I said, upon the campus. I had never had a white teacher, so it was a new experience for me. Those who came from the smaller Kansas towns had gone to mixed schools, so they adjusted, I think, more easily than Julia Ann and I did. The buses ran every hour on the hour back in those days. So, usually as soon as school was out on Friday, we caught a bus and we went home. The first month or two, I remember that very vividly, we were homesick, so we went home. I was fortunate, my father ran through Lawrence at that time, so I could go down to the Union Station... Or, its Santa Fe Station here in Lawrence, and see him about once a week. So, it wasnt' that I was completely up here alone. Lawrence was a segregated community. As I said, I had lived in a segregated area, but not knowing the difference, it was real shock, because we had our own movie theaters at home and, when I came here and I dated a fellow and he asked me to go to the movie and when we started to the movie we went up and up the steps, and I said "Where we going? " And he said we had to go up to the loft, and that's where we went. So I did not got to the movies very often in Lawrence, uh, my first year here. We went downtown once in a while, not too often because, like I said, we went home, so whatever we needed, we usually got at home. I had one teacher who was very prejudice, who just point-blank told me "I don't care what you do, you're going to get a 'C'. " So, that's what I got. I was... You know? And when I talked to my sister about it, she said "I had that same professor (laughter). " We also had an English professor and she was a woman, because she asked me if I had known Marian Singleton, and I said "Yes, she was my older sister. " So, she told me that my sister was very brilliant and that she could have done a lot with her life, and I explained to her that she did, that she had left KU, gone to the Univeristy at Illinois and had done very well. So... Some of those things always bothered me because I had not lived like that. We weren't sure whether we could go in the stores without getting into difficulty. Basically, all we did was go to church. Having grown up as an AME, I immediately found the AME Church and got involved here. But, uh, Lawrence was just a real transition...

Sherrie: Uh-huh.

MRS. HARVEY: For me. And, then, after I met Dean and he... He and I had altogether different ideas about living, because he had lived in this area all of his life. He had gone to a one-room school, Blue Mound, and he'd never had a black teacher. So, he didn't always understand where I was coming from and I didn't always understand his ideas. But, uh... We moved to Kansas City one year and he was so unhappy that I told him "No, we'll go back. I married you knowing you were a farmer. " So we came back, and he said "Give me five years. If I don't make it as a farmer, I promise you I'll get a job and educate the children, " which is what we both had in our minds all the time. And he was good to his word. We were blessed in that.

Sherrie: Why don't you tell us about your husband's, Dean's, family history, and the farm, and...

MRS. HARVEY: Well, their family history is pretty well recorded here in Douglas County. His grandmother was a slave in Arkansas, and General Blunt raided in Arkansas and brought a number of black families to this area. She was fortunate in that she had been able to take her children. My understanding was her first child was Annie Brooks, who was the master's child. Then she was... And I have to use this term... She was mated to Mr. Harvey, a David Harvey. I don't know how many children were in that set, but I do know that she got here with at least one child who was a Harvey and then she was mated to a Mr., uh... Parker and she had three sons by him. She was pregnant with the last child when she was brought here, and after she got here she settled on five acres of ground. And I don't know just when David Harvey came this way. He was with the Army, he came to Leavenworth, Kansas, and he heard about the settlement over in this area. So, he came over here and, sure enough, it was his family and he legally married Rebecca here in Douglas County, and then they had three sons, Sherman, Grant, and Edward. And Edward, the youngest one, was my husband's father. Now they sent all three of those boys to KU and one became a doctor, one became a lawyer, and Edward stayed on the farm. He broke his leg at some point. It had to have been after he left KU, because he played football and baseball at KU. But, according to what the family said... And I did know him... I did have the opportunity to know him. After he broke his leg, he went into politics and stayed here at home, and the other boys, as I understood it, helped with the expenses of the farm. Because, I know Grandma Harvey had... Great Grandmother Harvey had continued to just buy property, five acres at a time, until she was able to accumulate 130 acres (phone ringing). The 160 on this side belonged to the three men. The 160 that I live on, she, uh... The deed, original deed that I have shows that at one point the Sheriff of Douglas County, when it was raided by Quantril, was on... He lived over here and the three brothers bought this land, then they bought quite a bit of other land, but during the Depression they sold all but this 130 and 160 here.

Sherrie: So, how many acres were there then when you first moved here?

MRS. HARVEY: When I first moved, they owned 290... No, wait a minute... A hundred and sixty and... Is 290, yeah.

Sherrie: And so you met Dean in your first year of college?

MRS. HARVEY: Yes.

Sherrie: And then you moved?

MRS. HARVEY: Well, we got married in '45 and Karen was born in '46, so we moved to Kansas City in '46.

Sherrie: Then you came back to Lawrence?

MRS. HARVEY: Yeah, we came back to Lawrence.

Sherrie: What was it like for you? You grew up in a city, what was it like for you to live on a farm (laughter) in Lawrence, Kansas (laughter)?

MRS. HARVEY: Well... I'll be honest with you. I wanted to be wherever Dean was and so wherever he was I made it a point of being. So I learned to do a lot of things. I had never been around cows or chickens, things like that, and never really gardened because I didn't like to hoe (laughter). But I learned that there are a lot of things you do as a farmer's wife. We were farming ground for Jess Carson, who was a neighbor, and I wanted to be where Dean was, so I walked down to the field and he put me on the tractor to disk and the first thing I did was take out Mr. Carson's fence (laughter). So we spent the rest of the day putting the fence back together (laughter) because Mr. Carson was a dairyman. He had milk cows. We would come home and milk and gather the eggs and, then, in the evening, really I think we sort of sat around because he had so much family and the brothers were real close. So, usually we just get together. Allen married and his children are basically the same age as my children. So the kids just grew up real close. We lived on the west side of the home place, Allen lived on the east side, so the kids were allowed to go to the grandmother's home and she had a big mulberry tree. And any time we missed them, that's where they were (laughter), up in that mulberry tree or the cherry tree or whatever, and then she also had, in the attic, a lot of the books of the men of the family. My son loved to go up there and usually on a rainy day like this, that's where he would be, up in that attic, reading. Helen had a boy. Dean had two sisters and two brothers, and he was the youngest of the lot. David never married. Joyce didn't have children. She married but didn't have children. Helen had two childrens, a boy and a girl. Allen married and had... She had one child and they had two, and Dean and I had three. So... Michael lived out here, who was Helen's son. So, basically the kids just always grew up together. Shari would be out on weekends and that type of thing? But she didn't ever live out here, just Michael.

Sherrie: How much of the farm land around here was owned by black farmers?

MRS. HARVEY: Uh, Mr. Carson had 160 acres, and Nelson 80 acres.

MRS. HARVEY: I did not know, but they are buried over in the family cemetary and I can't honestly tell you where their property was. In later years some of the blacks moved out, but there's nobody left out here now but my family.

Sherrie: When did the black families that you mentioned leave? Was there a particular time?

MRS. HARVEY: When they died.

Sherrie: When they died?

MRS. HARVEY: Uh-huh. Mr. Carson... The Carson family had lived out here for years. He had two families that... The first wife... Jess Carson, son of the second wife, stayed on the farm. I think there was a grandson who stayed on the farm from the second family, and he owned 40 acres as I remember. But the Nelson's... I don't know when they came out, they were here when I came, they had not been here too long from what I could gather. Mr. Nelson had grown up around... What? Lakeview?

Sherrie: Uh-huh, yeah.

MRS. HARVEY: I think it was Lakeview. So he had been a farmer all of his life also. As I said before, Jess Carson was a dairyman and he had a milk truck and he'd go around to the other farmers and pick up their milk and take in to the dairy there in town. Dean said that during the Depression, when things were so bad and when it was so hot and crops were very poor, that they went to raising peas and tomatoes for the canning factory.

Alice: Uh-huh.

MRS. HARVEY: And he talked about some kids picking potatoes, but they just did, uh... I'm trying to think of this... Will Harvey, out of Eudora, who was a cousin, came and farmed some of the ground and I understood that he had a potato crop. But, other than that, when I married there was just Mr. and Mrs. Carson, and she had two sons who eventually inherited the property. Eighty acres had been sold, and Idessa Riley, who is the widow of Isaac, still owns 80 acres. The Nelson's did not have a family and after Mr. Nelson died, my son had become very close to Mrs. Nelson, and he would go down there and do for her. We were farming her ground by that time and she passed... Bless her heart, she left it in her will that Dean could have the first opportunity to buy the property, so we bought it (laughter).

Alice: Oh, yeah. That's nice.

MRS. HARVEY: So that's how I owned 160, because we owned the 80 here and then bought that 80.

Alice: Uh-huh.

MRS. HARVEY: So, there's still 290 in the Harvey family.

Alice: Yeah.

MRS. HARVEY: And, then, Idessa owns the 80, but other than that, not too many blacks out here any more.

Sherrie: Did you ever have any problems with white farmers in this area?

MRS. HARVEY: No. From what I could gather, the Harveys were well respected. When I came, the men used to go from farm to farm to help with the harvesting and what they would do is have a crew... Dean said when he was a little, he started out being the waterboy, taking water to them, and then as he got older, then he began to go on... I think he called it the pitching crew, where you pitch the wheat or whatever crop it was upon the wagon. And then they brought it into a station area of harvesting and it was combined, and put it in their barns that way. The same way with hay, they picked it up loose and put it up in the barns. So whoever had their crop ready to go, then that's where they went and the women fed them. That's how I learned to cook for a large crew, because these men ate like there was no tomorrow (laughter). So you got up early and fixed a lot of food. And, of course, these women all had big gardens, so they fed them out of their gardens. And they killed the roosters that morning to fry and baked their pies and... I don't know how they did it. I really admired them because they worked over hot stoves. You had to go out and pump the water and all of that. It was not quite as modern as it is now. The Harveys were one of the fortunate families had their own generator, so they had had lights... Electricity all those years. They had a bath and I remember them bringing the water in the house. There was a cistern and you could pump it just outside the door.

Alice: Uh-huh.

MRS. HARVEY: So I don't know why they never brought that in the house, but, uh...

Sherrie: How did you learn how to do all of this? It sounds like a lot of work and a lot of work that was new to you.

MRS. HARVEY: It was, and... It was just something that you learned to do. I learned to milk on a one-legged stool and the cows would swat you with their tails and might step on your foot (laughter) or that type of thing. It took a while to figure out how to get the milk out. But once you started... And what I discovered was once you take over, then the men stay in the field longer and longer. So pretty soon you're doing all the work (laughter). You do the milking... And then when Dean went to work after the '51 flood, then he went to Sunflower, then all of the chores became mine because he was working around the clock. So there would be mornings when he wasn't here to milk and it would be evenings when he wasn't here to milk. I was afraid to put my hand under the chicken to get the egg at first. I'd heard all these tales about snakes being in the nest and everything. And he would always say "Shoo the chicken off of the nest. " I mean things that you wouldn't even think of. That should have been simple... I should have followed (laughter)... I thought you had to put your hand under there (laughter).

Alice: How many head of cattle did you have to milk?

MRS. HARVEY: Oh, God! We milked about twenty-four head at the... Probably the largest herd that we had. And you milk them twice a day, early in the morning and late at night. And we quit milking after Karen and her husband separated and she brought her two boys home. I told them "I cannot milk cows and take care of two babies in diapers. " So we went to beef cattle there at the farm.

Alice: Uh-huh.

Sherrie: How many children did you have?

MRS. HARVEY: I had three children. We were fortunate. We had Karen, who's the oldest one, Dean Junior, and then Debra. We lost Dean Junior at the age of fifteen and a half in a hunting accident, so... Both girls live here in Lawrence. Karen married and had two boys, Dwight, who is the oldest grandson, and then Craig, who is the next child, and they both live out here. They do not live with me, but they live on what we call the David Harvey farm. It's across the road.

Alice: Uh-huh.

MRS. HARVEY: And Dwight lives in a trailer, he and his wife, and Craig lives in the old house, which was rebuilt after a tragic fire. Uh, I'm trying to think... It must have been in '68 that house burned... That big three-story house. So David just moved up to the one-story house.

Alice: Uh-huh.

MRS. HARVEY: And Debra has one boy, John, who's a ninth grader this year.

Sherrie: Where did your kids go to school?

MRS. HARVEY: Well, my children started out in Fairview, which is a few miles from here. Blue Mound was closed the year Karen was born because there weren't enough children at that time to keep it open. So the only ones who had a vote were the landowners... One landowner. And in those days, you know it was always the male. So my father-in-law was one of those who voted to close the school at that time. So my children then went to Fairview. When they left Fairview, they went to West Junior High School and then to Lawrence High School. The grandsons went to (India?) and then to Kaw Valley, and Dwight went to South Junior High, Craig to Central Junior High, and then both to Lawrence High School.

Sherrie: What was it like raising a family in Lawrence in those years?

MRS. HARVEY: Unfortunately there was nothing for them to do in Lawrence. The pool that they had was segregated, so our children were not allowed to go to the pool. I, having swam all my life, wanted my children to know how to swim, so I took them, either to Kansas City or Topeka to swim. There were a number of young mothers at church, which was St. Luke AME Church. So we would get together and carpool and take our kids. When it came to the grandsons, they had opened the pool in Baldwin and it was really a little closer, so I took them to Baldwin and that's where they learned to swim. But there wasn't much for the young people to do. I remember Dean Junior wanted to play baseball one summer. So, one day when I wasn't able to take him, he decided he would walk, but he didn't try that again. He wore blisters on his feet because that's a long walk into Lawrence. But that was what the kids did. Basically they had horses and neighbor kids. The boys would get together and just be boys climbing trees and... We had a coal mine and they would try to go down in the opening. By that time it was filling up, so ... They didn't... They couldn't really hurt themselves, but because we were concerned that somebody might come on the place, Dean and I finally filled it up and put up a wire fence around it so in case somebody did come on, they'd see that fence.

Alice: Uh-huh.

MRS. HARVEY: But, uh... They hunted. Dean Junior was an avid hunter and just the girls learned to sew. Things around the house here. Karen did not mind being outdoors. Debra was not an outdoors person (laughter). She did not enjoy going out and having to do any of that kind of labor. So she got around it by always having to practice piano (laughter)... Just at chore time.

Alice: At chore time (laughter).

MRS. HARVEY: But we did give all the children music. I guess I was like my parents, they each had to take at least one year of piano...

Alice: Uh-huh.

MRS. HARVEY: And then they could have an instrument of their own. So Karen played the accordion and Dean Junior played the electric steel guitar.

Sherrie: What about doctors and hospitals? I know that in Kansas City, Kansas, there was a black hospital...?

MRS. HARVEY: Douglas Hospital, yes. uh-huh.

Sherrie: What about here in Lawrence?

MRS. HARVEY: No, there was just the Lawrence Memorial Hospital and they were segregated in that there was only two rooms that I remember set aside. So, if you had a child who was sick and there was an adult who was sick, they'd be in the same room in those days. Debra had her tonsils out and Karen was in the same room, they put three beds in the room that day. I guess that was when she had had surgery also, so I was busy taking care of both of the children and Debra was in the hall in a baby bed. And the man was cleaning and he kicked the bed and woke her up, and they came and told me I had to keep her quiet. At this time of night I was tired, so I just told them I'd take them both home. They called the doctor and he asked me to wait until he could get there and so... They begin to realize that there were changes that were going to have to be made, because I felt as long as they were charging me the same price, then they needed to just give us a room.

Alice: Yes.

MRS. HARVEY: We didn't have any black doctors here. I understood there had been blackl doctors here, but there were no black doctors here when I came who were at the hospital. Later one came, but he said he couldn't make a living here because the people were used to going to white doctors and he knew it would be years before he could get a clientel built up, so he moved on. I don't... Dr. Harvey had been here, but he died back in the '20's and then there was one other doctor that I heard them talk about. I never knew him.

Alice: Was it Dr. Kenner or Dr. Cabell?

MRS. HARVEY: I think that David had mentioned both of them, but Dr. Kenner I believe was still here when I came here, although he wasn't actively practicing. There was only one lawyer that I knew of... Harris.

Alice: Harris?

MRS. HARVEY: Uh-huh.

Alice: His wife was a nurse?

MRS. HARVEY: Yeah, uh-huh. Now there were a few nurses, but I don't remember them doing too much here. Mrs. Black and Mrs. Harris.

Alice: And Mrs. Laura Patterson.

MRS. HARVEY: Right, Pat's mother.

Alice: Uh-huh.

MRS. HARVEY: But those were probably the only professional women. Because you only had two black teachers and they were over in Lincoln School.

Sherrie: What are your memories about the Civil Rights Movement activities in Lawrence?

MRS. HARVEY: Well, I was active in the Civil Right Movement. We met at St. Luke. We marched. We tried getting housing, fair housing. I was working with a Church Women United at that time, when all of that was going on. So we would meet and there were a lot of people who were willing to help break open these areas that Lawrence lacked in. I don't ever remember us being involved in any of the altercations that happened, except that there was a young man over at, uh... Was it... It wasn't Lincoln School... Yes, it was Lincoln and...

Alice: Leonard Harrison?

MRS. HARVEY: Right. And he came out once and asked if we would let them have ground so that the kids could make a garden. And they did that for a while but it didn't last too long. But other than that, I... Reverend McMillan was here at that time and he was very active. And, like I said, we marched downtown, that type of thing... And, then, of course, when the union was burnt, Karen was a student a KU then and there was quite a bit of hassel at that point. We finally got things so that the kids could go to the swimming pool, the housing became more open, the restaurants... I can remember being asked "Well, where are all the people that wanted to go...? " And it wasn't that we were rushing to the restaurants or anything like that, it was just that we wanted the right to go.

Alice: Uh-huh, uh-huh.

MRS. HARVEY: People were still eating at home, but if you wanted to go out, you wanted to be able to go out. Now there were, uh... It was Mr. Green's... What did Mr. Green call...?

Alice: Not the Gable? Oh, Green Wood!

MRS. HARVEY: Green Wood, yeah, first and then Green Gable. Uh, I'm trying to think of the name of the family that had the...

Alice: The Shamrock was, uh, Colemans.

MRS. HARVEY: Oh before that... Uh... I can't think of their names.

Alice: Wrights, uh...? What was her name?

MRS. HARVEY: No, they lived over in North Lawrence. Uh... I can see them, but I cannot call their names who... Who originally had that place of business.

Alice: I thought it was Bud Wright's sister, but I can't think of her name, but I don't know...

MRS. HARVEY: Well, now she had a place...

Alice: Grace Coleman and her husband had it for a while.

MRS. HARVEY: Yes. When I was up here they called it 'Our Way'.

Alice: Oh, uh-huh. Okay.

MRS. HARVEY: Because they had a sandwich that they made, instead of making the hamburger, they made it like you were going to make chili...

Alice: Oh, uh-huh, and put it on there our way.

MRS. HARVEY: And just put that on it, and they called it 'our way' sandwiches. So the place was called 'Our Way'.

Alice: For Pete's sake! I didn't realize that.

MRS. HARVEY: Yeah, uh-huh. But this was...

Alice: Oh, I know what, uh... The Golden Arrow... Hines.

MRS. HARVEY: Yeah, Hines, that's what I was trying to think of, the Hines.

Alice: Uh-huh, the Hines, uh-huh.

MRS. HARVEY: Yeah, yeah, had a place. So there were places. It really wasn't that we didn't have places, it was just that we were denied entry into other places, and whites were never denied entrance. They came to any place that we had, even in Kansas City, they came to the movie. We had the Princess Theater and the Regal. And there, again, our young men were given opportunities, because John Adams became the projectionist...

Alice: Uh-huh, uh-huh.

MRS. HARVEY: Back there in Kansas City, they had opportunities there, but here in Lawrence there just weren't those opportunities.

Alice: Uh-huh.

Sherrie: Uh-huh.

MRS. HARVEY: Like I said, with the swimming pool, we became lifeguards. We just worked our way up into these positions. But here in Lawrence, there just wasn't... If somebody wasn't kind enough to let you have a job, you were just out.

Alice: Uh-huh.

Sherrie: Uh-huh, uh-huh.

MRS. HARVEY: But, uh, since Dean had always lived on the farm, about the only jobs I ever knew him to have was the one down to Sunflower. He worked up to being, uh... Again, I'm losing my terminology here.

Alice: Foreman or a supervisor?

MRS. HARVEY: Yeah, a supervisor. And, then, even then he had an all-black crew he would supervise. And they had three supervisors because they had three shifts.

Sherrie: Was he also active in the Civil Rights Movement, or was it different for him having grown up here?

MRS. HARVEY: Uh... Yeah, he was active since he belonged to the church, but he probably wasn't as avid as I was, because I felt that many things needed to change in Lawrence.

Alice: Uh-huh.

MRS. HARVEY: And the only way they were going to change is if we did get out. It wasn't like those who were working for fair housing... We weren't looking for houses, we already basically owned our homes. But we wanted the right to move out into other areas. If you had the money, we felt like you should be able. Plus the fact... My brother definitely impressed this upon me... He had fought for the right to live where he wanted to live and he, although he remained in Kansas City, definitely made it a point that he did not feel his child needed to go to a segregated school or anything like that...

Alice: Uh-huh.

MRS. HARVEY: And that it was time for some things to change. So, as I listened to him, I realized that those of us who were here were the ones who had to make the changes for our children.

Alice: Uh-huh, that's right.

MRS. HARVEY: So that's what we did.

Alice: Uh-huh.

MRS. HARVEY: But we both worked in the community, basically in areas of Douglas County because that where we were, we were not in the City of Lawrence. So most of the things we did, we'd do in Douglas County.

Alice: Uh-huh.

Sherrie: Uh-huh.

MRS. HARVEY: Yeah.

Sherrie: Well, what do you do now? What are the things that you enjoy doing, the things that you...?

MRS. HARVEY: Well, I'm still on the farm...

Sherrie: Still on the farm?

MRS. HARVEY: Because my grandson wanted to stay on the farm. When my husband got sick... We had educated the boys, they went to Pittsburg. So Craig was working in Kansas City, he's a manufacturing engineer, and he gave up his job to come home and help me with his grandfather. He couldn't find a job here that paid the kind of money that he was making there, so he set up his own shop. And Dwight came back and David was living alone, and he had become a little afraid. He would say people would drive in the yard and never get out... You know that kind of thing? And he couldn't get out to see who was, so he didn't want to stay up there, so Dwight and his wife, Kayla, put a trailer on that property. So they were then when the men passed. And after David passed, then Craig went up and moved into that house. So the land all passed down from generation to generation. The boys farmed part of it. Dean had rented out what we called the lower eighty, the Nelson farm, years ago to some neighbor men, and when he passed, I just asked them to continue to do that eighty. So they do that, but that still leaves the boys with some ground to do, because I still have the eighty up here and the 130, so... There's a lot of it that's in wood land, but they plant corn, oats and soybeans basically, and still run cattle. And a lot of it is hay. So we still... We're still here.

Alice: Still farming?

MRS. HARVEY: Yeah, we're still trying it.

Sherrie: Do you still work on the farm?

MRS. HARVEY: Oh, yeah. There are many things that I still do, uh... Basically just check the cows. We have automatic waterers, so we don't have to really water. But in the winter they have to be fed and, while I can't handle bales or anything like, I do go with my youngest grandson, who is 15. John loves to farm although he and his mother live in town. I haven't talked about my girls. Karen worked a number of years at Furr's as a cook and she also worked at the printing plant here for years. And, then, Debra teaches math at Lawrence hosp...

Alice: High School?

MRS. HARVEY: High School (laughter).

Alice: Yeah.

MRS. HARVEY: Yeah, she teaches there. So, anyway... The two older boys are Karen's and John is Debra's. And he comes out, he feeds the cattle basically for me. We still raise corn and oats to feed them. The boys just recently got chickens. I'm waiting to see how long that's going to last (laughter). They basically raise dogs, but I'm waiting to see. They think it's still... I think they still think it's fun.

Alice: Uh-huh, yeah, as long as it's fun.

MRS. HARVEY: Yeah, they don't mind, but when it comes right down to doing all the actual work sometimes it's not that much fun for them. And I have remained because the boys really wanted me to stay, and they said "Well, Grandmother if you'll stay, we'll make sure that things are so you can live out there. " So they do.

Alice: Uh-huh, uh-huh.

MRS. HARVEY: But I tell them I'm getting older and as life goes on, if I have to make the changes, I will. And I like to go to town, and that's what I'll do. Debra would, as soon, that I move to town...

Alice: Yeah (laughter).

MRS. HARVEY: But with a teenager, I've been there and done that (laughter).

Sherrie: And you're still involved in your church?

MRS. HARVEY: Oh, yeah. I'm very active at St. Luke.

Alice: We should have got that conference report.

Sherrie: Right! Conference report, yeah. And that homestead is still there?

MRS. HARVEY: Yeah. The homestead is over on the North side of the road. It's up on a hill. She could overlook Lawrence and, uh... She, uh, planted irises up there. And irises are a flower that will return year after year, and I've gone up there and I haven't been up there for a couple of years, but I have gone up there and seen a few of those irises. So we know where the foundation was. There's nothing up there now that would indicate... Other than a little piece of foundation there...

Alice: Uh-huh.

Sherrie: Uh-huh, uh-huh.

MRS. HARVEY: But, I've always admired her. She had to have a lot of spunk...

Alice: Uh-huh.

MRS. HARVEY: To just start out and being pregnant when she got here.

Alice: Uh-huh.

Sherrie: Uhh, yeah.

MRS. HARVEY: But, like I said, she was blessed that she was able to bring her children. She lost children on the trail coming here, but I don't know all of that story and all of them are gone.

Alice: Wasn't she part of the Exodusters? Was that the movement, or was she separate from that?

MRS. HARVEY: I think she was. She came here in 1863 I believe. It was just that this gentleman raided that area, so I don't know if that was a part of the Exodusters or so, because I think they went on more to Western Kansas.

Alice: Right.

MRS. HARVEY: Now I don't know how they happened to settle here, whether they were just tired of going forth and just...

Alice: Uh-huh.

MRS. HARVEY: Stayed... I never did think past that.

Alice: Well, it was a question that...

MRS. HARVEY: Uh-huh, well, it's a good question, but I have no idea. It never even crossed my mind.

Sherrie: Yeah, this is wonderful. Is there anything that you'd like to add?

MRS. HARVEY: Can we do a second session?

Sherrie: Yeah (laughter). What we would like to do is maybe come back to see sometime when it's a nice day and maybe drive up and look at the homestead if that would possible?

Alice: We can also get her artifacts, too.

Sherrie: Yeah and scan some photographs.

MRS. HARVEY: Oh, okay. Okay. Alright. If we go up there, I'll almost have to have one of the boys here with a truck. I don't think we can...

Alice: Could get clear up in there?

MRS. HARVEY: Uh-huh.

Sherrie: Okay.

Alice: Well, I wonder if they would take some pictures of the area.

MRS. HARVEY: I think that's great.

Alice: Yeah, if you would just take some pictures of the area where the homestead is, or any of that surrounding area, so that we can put it in... Scan it in when we're scanning the other things.

Sherrie: Yeah.

MRS. HARVEY: Alright.

Alice: Or, if you have snapshots already of it that we could use or if you have pictures of that area...

MRS. HARVEY: You know, they might have. I don't... We're still going through stuff. Craig fusses all the time because he says it's all up at his house (laughter). And he's probably right, that's probably where a lot of it is.

Alice: Yeah, yeah.

Sherrie: Well, thank you so much for a wonderful interview.

Alice: A wonderful interview.

DOROTHY HARVEY
Interviewed by Alice Fowler and Amber Reagan-Kendrick
February 4, 2005

ALICE: Today is February the 4th, 2005, and we're going to talk to Dorothy Harvey, a delightful lady. We're going to continue with our interview with her. We are at Mrs. Harvey's home, which is in southeast Lawrence, Kansas, on her farm. Interviewing Mrs. Harvey is Alice Fowler and Amber Reagan-Kendrick, and I'm going to begin with a question.

ALICE: Mrs. Harvey, we want to hear about Mrs. Henrie-Harvey and her contribution to the building of this community through her children or other things you remember.

MRS. HARVEY: I have always felt that the Harveys have been well documented, but we never talk about the Henries, and families have two sides. On the Henrie side, being Dean's mother, she was Maud Henrie-Harvey. But I looked up some information, and her mother's name was Sally Ann Williams-Henrie. Her father was John Henrie. They came from Phillips County, Kansas, to Douglas County in the late 1890s. They had five children, two boys and three girls, and a sixth child, John, was born after they arrived here. They lived in the Stoney Point district, which is still south of here.

John passed, and Sally took the children and went back to Phillips County. As far as I know, she was probably there about a year or two, and then she came back to Douglas County, back to the farm which she and her husband had started. When she came back, she was Sally Henrie-Fitzpatrick, and Mr. Fitzpatrick had three children. Now the interesting part of that story is that he had been married to her sister and then, after she lost her husband and he lost his wife, they married and reared these nine children together. You probably know Rene Lewis?

ALICE: Yes.

MRS. HARVEY: She was one of the daughters, she was a Fitzpatrick. And he had three daughters. Two of them moved to Topeka and, of course, Rene continued to live here.

ALICE: Can I ask you a question?

MRS. HARVEY: Surely.

ALICE: You talked about Stoney Brook?

MRS. HARVEY: Stoney Point.

ALICE: Stoney Point, I'm sorry. I just am curious. I know that Lawrence is not like Kansas City back during that time, because Kansas City had a lot of black people living there. But in Lawrence at that particular time were there pockets of black people living out at Stoney Point in this particular area?

MRS. HARVEY: They were the only ones I knew that lived in Stoney Point, and that farm was sold after I got in the family, so I knew where it was. But, in fact, it's now where Quantrell Acres is. But the Harveys were the only blacks out here for a while, and then the Carsons, and then the Nelsons moved in this area.

ALICE: Were they white families?

MRS. HARVEY: No, they were black. They owned probably a thousand acres altogether, those three families together did.

ALICE: Are they still around?

MRS. HARVEY: No, the Carsons are deceased, and we now own the Nelson property. We bought that many years ago because it adjoined us here. And the Carson property was across the road. But, Idessa Riley, a black woman, owns a part of that because her husband was Mr. Carson's stepson.

ALICE: The Harveys are the only black family out here now?

MRS. HARVEY: Yeah. But I'm sure there are other blacks in the county. The Shepards own farm land; they're the only ones I know that farm. There are people who've moved into the housing districts. But as far as I know, we're the only ones left out here. Shall we go back?

ALICE: Yeah, I'm sorry.

MRS. HARVEY: I was going to say Sally and George Fitzpatrick owned 160 acres in southwestern Douglas County. They sold it because no one wanted to farm it. Even though Maud had three sons, David, Allen and Dean, none of them wanted to go over and farm that particular land and I'm not sure why. But in the '40s they decided to sell because it wasn't bringing enough to pay taxes and give the six kids any money. So that's what they did. And, like I said, the oldest daughter, Maud, was united in marriage to Ed Harvey, and they became the parents of five children, three boys and two girls. Now my mother-in-law told me that when she came, she brought with her a trunk and in it she had quilts and linens and the type of things that women brought into a marriage. Plus, she bought chickens, some hogs and a cow, and she said that the egg money was hers to use for the household.

The milk money was used I think just for basically the household things. And, when Allen Harvey was born, her sister, Pearl, came to help her. And Pearl stayed and helped them rear her children. Pearl was the only one of those children who did not marry.

The women of that day worked very hard. I admired her because she worked right by her husband's side in the field. But the men didn't come in and do any housework. The women went out and helped in the field, but she gathered the eggs and she had to haul water to wash. Now she had a washing machine, but she had to heat the water because they didn't have a hot-water heater.

But I understood that they were the first family out here that had a generator. So they eventually had lights. But they used to have those lamps, and I can remember them cleaning those chimneys on those lamps and sitting there doing all of this handwork, because they did everything. She made their clothes and everything. But she was a hard worker.

Let me see. What else can I tell you about her? Of course, they used to say that as each child reached the age of five or six, you were given chores to do, which would help. And so Dean, being the youngest child, he said that he often rode with his mother over to see his grandmother and it was an all-day trip in a buggy. Even though now it's probably ten or fifteen minutes from here to where they used to live. But he said he can remember her getting up, getting the other children off to school, putting him in the buggy, and then he and his mother rode over there and she would spend the day with her mother. And then they'd come back, it would be almost dark when they got home. But he said that they had to do chores before going to school, and then they had chores after they got home. And then he talked about when they used to gather the wheat. They cut it, put it in shocks.

ALICE: Right.

MRS. HARVEY: And then the farmers would all come together and they had a stationary combine. It separates the wheat from the chaff.

And that type of thing. And he said that he was probably about five when his father put him on a horse, and they had jugs of water, and he would go out to the men who were working and give them drinks of water. Then he'd come and fill it up, and he'd have to go back again. So that was how they worked the children into the farm work. And doing the milking. But when I came, they eventually had a generator over in the barn and they had a milker. But, when I first came, they milked by hand and sat on a one-legged stool (laughter).

ALICE: Oh my!

MRS. HARVEY: I thought I'd never last through that.

ALICE: And you would milk?

MRS. HARVEY: Yeah. I wanted to be where Dean was. Wherever he was, I was willing to go. And so one of the things he used to laugh about was he was farming Mr. Carson's place and he was disking, and I walked down there. Now this was shortly after we got married. And he said, "I'm going to show you how to disk, and I'll go ahead and get the grain ready to plant." So I said, "Okay." And he put me on the tractor with the disk, and I took out all the fence (laughter).

So he had to spend the rest of that day putting the fence back together. But I learned to do it, and I did a lot of the work myself. But some things I never did do. I never did use the mowing machine, but I did do the raking. And then, after they baled, I would drive the truck so they could put the bales on the truck.

But I didn't work near as hard as my mother-in-law had to work. I learned to milk them eventually. We gave up the milk cows when Dean and I took the grandchildren. Because with our children, we just took them over to the barn with us.

AMBER: Let me ask you this as I'm reading your pre-interview. You came to KU?

MRS. HARVEY:Yes.

AMBER: You came to KU and this was where you met Dean?

MRS. HARVEY: Right.

AMBER: How did you guys meet? How was that encounter? You love him very much, I can tell.

MRS. HARVEY: I don't honestly remember where we met. I'm just sure that somebody introduced us. But he declared that he had met me prior in Kansas City. That he had come to Kansas City and we had a mutual friend when he told me. I know where the house was and everything, but honestly I don't remember meeting him at that point. It wasn't until I was here and it wasn't Bud or Pat that introduced us. But Bud Monroe and Pat Patterson were two of his friends and I know that we ran around together. But truthfully I don't remember who introduced us, I just know we started dating and then we eventually got married and I moved to Lawrence.

AMBER: So you attended KU too?

MRS. HARVEY: Yes.

AMBER: For how long?

MRS. HARVEY: I only went for one year.

AMBER: And he went for one year?

MRS. HARVEY: He went through what they called the welding course. He got a certificate in welding. But in that day you didn't really get jobs in Kansas with that skill. He used it here on the farm for himself, but he never did get a job, so he went to Wichita, he told me. When he went into one of the plants there, he thought he could get a job, and it didn't work out.

I was trying to tell you about when I met Dean. I was telling you when he went to Wichita. He said that when he went in and applied for the job, the man told him he'd give him a broom. So Dean came back home. And then he had gone to Indiana. The war had started, of course, and he was up there working, and he said that the man that he went with was called into the service. And so he then returned back to Lawrence and stayed. But I've never been able to just really remember just where we met.

ALICE: What did you major in when you were at KU?

MRS. HARVEY: English. I was going to teach.

ALICE: Did you sit in the back of the classroom? How was it like on that campus for you as an African American?

MRS. HARVEY: There was a lot of prejudice when I came, and we did not live on the campus per se. We lived up in houses at the foot of the campus, and we had to abide by campus rules. They had rules that we could not live in the dorms or anything like that when I came. And I had two teachers that I remember very vividly. The man teacher told me that no matter what papers I turned in or what my test scores, he never gave anything above a 'C' to a black. Of course, in that day we were Negroes, we weren't blacks. But that was his particular view. And the woman was an English teacher, and when I went in to talk with her, she asked me if I was from Kansas City, Kansas, and I said, "Yes." And she said she had had Marian Singleton. Singleton was my maiden name. Marian was a very brilliant person, but that when she was here, they just didn't give you grades no matter how much you earned them. And I was very happy to tell her that my sister had gone on to the University of Illinois and was a Phi Beta Kappa.

So I really resented KU when I was up here and just wondered why they treated us the way they did. There weren't any jobs in Lawrence for blacks, except maid jobs, cooks, that type of thing that I could see. Of course, I wasn't looking for a job, but the women that I knew those were the only jobs they seemed to hold. They didn't have any doctors. I think we had two nurses that I knew of, but no professionals. There might have been one lawyer, but I never really knew him. Someone was telling me from Eudora. What was that lawyer's name?

ALICE: Was it Harris?

MRS. HARVEY: Yes. Johnny Harris was the only one that I ever knew here. Although the Harveys had a doctor and a lawyer and one of the men taught at New York School at one point. So it had been opened for some time, but when I came, Lawrence was very prejudiced. We went to the movies, but we either sat upstairs or sat in the back of the movies, so I didn't go. Having come from Kansas City, Kansas, and having gone to an all-black school, I was not prepared. It was really a cultural shock for me. And it remained that way for a long time. But we finally got it opened to where we got a few teachers, and right now they're going through the same type of ordeal trying to find black or minority teachers to come. Because we don't have but three: Debra, Francis, and Ron Lang in the high school.

ALICE: And Ron is going to retire soon.

MRS. HARVEY: Yeah, I'm sure. You know Francis can retire next year, and I think Debra could probably retire also, but with a sixteen year old, she said she would be teaching for a long time yet. But if we don't get somebody in, it's just going to be again a closed issue. And somebody needs to let our young people know that we are capable of doing other jobs. We really don't have too many business people. We have two car washes that I know of.

ALICE: We have an older teacher at Central. Cheryl Hamilton.

MRS. HARVEY: Yes.

ALICE: She's one of the teachers, and then there's a gym teacher. I think his name is Hall. He's still in the district I think as far as I know, and, uh, Mr. Parks probably is ready to retire now.

MRS. HARVEY: Charles?

ALICE: Charles Park.

MRS. HARVEY: Charles has been retired.

Alice: Alicia Reynolds' sister, Cathy White, is a teacher, elementary teacher, but I don't really know what the makeup of the district is anymore for minority teachers.

MRS. HARVEY: We don't have a whole lot. I know there's one, Stewart, at Kennedy that I know is a principal, but she's retiring this year.

ALICE: Yes.

MRS. HARVEY: And Mr. Pearson is there.

.ALICE: We have very few. You're right. We have very few.

MRS. HARVEY: Very few. And we need to do something about it. But until these younger people realize that we opened up some of these areas. Like fair housing and that type of thing. And it's going to be incumbent upon them to keep these things going.

ALICE: That's right. I'm going to ask this question because I know that Dean's father, Ed Harvey wrote letters to the Chancellor at KU, who was Lindley, and complained a lot about the segregation that was going on. And he was kind of like an activist.

MRS. HARVEY: Right.

ALICE: He protested by writing all these letters. Was Dean like that? Did he do any of the similar type of activities?

MRS. HARVEY: I can't say that he was of that same type of protester, but Dean was an elected official here in Douglas County. He was first treasurer of the Wakarusa Township and then became a planning commissioner here. But he spent 18 years with Wakarusa Township, and because he was active and they knew who he was, he was elected to go to—I'm sorry, I'm using the term elected. He was sent to Topeka for that planning commission for the state, and he was on that board when the new state building was opened, and his name is on the plaque up there.

He was vocal in many things. He was active in many organizations, but it seemed to me that he wasn't the same type of person that his father was. He and I were both active on boards, trying to keep things equal. And most of them were involved with the county instead of the city, because we would be appointed by county commissioners instead of having much to do with the city. And the planning commission was city and county together, and so he spent many years on that committee.

AMBER: Were you and your husband involved with NAACP here in Lawrence?

MRS. HARVEY: Yes, early on we were involved through our church, St. Luke AME Church, because the NAACP often met there. We were paid-up members and that type of thing. But, as far as referring to the fair housing, we were more active at that point because we weren't looking for anything for ourselves; we were just trying to get things opened up so that the young people would have a place to go. At that point, about the only housing was either in East Lawrence or Old West Lawrence, because they just didn't seem to show you other housing.

ALICE: They didn't show you North Lawrence either?

MRS. HARVEY: No.

ALICE: The realtors wanted to put black people in east, in a ghetto situation, or in a section of the far west. They didn't want you in West Lawrence, because that was where all the rich white people lived.

MRS. HARVEY: Okay.

ALICE: But part of West Lawrence, like around Michigan, Mississippi, Indiana, Alabama, like that, in those lower numbers, that's where they showed houses.

MRS. HARVEY: Yeah, all around the hospital.

ALICE: Right.

MRS. HARVEY: There was quite a group of blacks that lived over in that area.

ALICE: But North Lawrence was foreign land (laughter), so to speak. People weren't showing North Lawrence. Nobody wanted to live north of the river, number one.

MRS. HARVEY: And, as far as I know, there wasn't any farm ground being purchased by blacks.

ALICE: There wasn't any available over there by that time. There used to be farm land out on that curve going toward Tonganoxie. All that was owned by black people.

MRS. HARVEY: Yeah.

ALICE: And then the land in Tonganoxie (inaudible). But when those people got old and there weren't any kids that wanted to take it on or inherit it, they sold it.

MRS. HARVEY: Yeah. That's what happened with the land, all of that area. Washington Creek and...

ALICE: and all that. A lot of that land would owned by black people if the kids had stayed or either other blacks had bought it.

MRS. HARVEY: Having been married to a farmer, I can understand how it was hard to hang on. And, if Dean and his brothers had not worked together, they probably would have done the same things. But, because the three of them stayed out here and their father and his brothers had accumulated quite a bit of ground, they had enough to pay taxes. And work together. Now David never married and he always felt the pressure to be sure that taxes were paid.

ALICE: Yes.

MRS. HARVEY: And since his brothers had families, then he picked up where he thought that Dean and Allen might be pressured because they had a family. And, I hate to say this but, because I had the only boy that carried that Harvey name, they sorted of babied Dean a little bit (laughter). And they were proud of the fact that he was out in the community, so David especially would do things to be sure that Dean was free to go to meetings. And he would go to support him and that type of thing.

And then there were the two sisters. But now Helen had moved Denver. And her daughter was being reared in Denver. Her son was grown and had moved to Salt Lake City. And he was related to the Carsons, by the way. So he was a great- nephew, I think, to the older Carsons who had moved here.

Joyce didn't have a family, but she was a good aunt. She made sure that the kids were always able to go to something or whatever she thought they needed to do.

But, as far as being active, I would say we were active for a long time. And, in fact, Dean was active until his health began to fail, and then he gave up the job at the Wakarusa Township. Or didn't run, let me put it that way. He didn't run again.

ALICE: I remember at one time a group of black people tried to start a black historical society.

MRS. HARVEY: Right.

ALICE: And your husband was very instrumental in doing that.

MRS. HARVEY: Right.

ALICE: And helped bringing blacks together with trying to get their information together and showing maps and things of the county and where blacks had been. He had lots of maps and pictures and things up there. I got to go to a couple of the meetings and he was very instrumental in trying to pull that together. It didn't stick, but he worked very hard trying to get that off the ground.

MRS. HARVEY: I was going through some papers trying to get things cleaned out and I ran across some of that information.

When he was active in that, it took him a little while to really talk about the family per se. I think there had been so much talk about his father and his uncles. But he was not one who really did a lot of talking about that part of the family. David and Allen were both interviewed, I know. But Dean was not. If they asked him, he never accepted, so they never got any interviews out of him. And it wasn't until that group met, talking about the black history, that he became active in that.

And, of course, we were proud when Debra came back and wanted to teach here.

ALICE: Yes.

MRS. HARVEY: I was surprised. I didn't think she'd ever want to come back to Lawrence. But she said she'd always wanted to come back, because she felt like they needed to know that blacks did do something besides menial labor.

ALICE: Yeah, that's right.

MRS. HARVEY: So she's still at Lawrence High now, for over twenty-five years.

AMBER: Can I ask you about this house? Is this the original house or when did you build this house?

MRS. HARVEY: We built it in sections. We started out in one room and Karen was almost three and Dean Junior was almost two when we moved in. And then we were able to build on a little more, and then eventually we got it to three bedrooms and got a bath and kitchen. After we took the grandsons, then we built another section where they could go out and have their activities in that section. But, we started building. In fact, there was a hill here and we cut it down and put the house in and started. The Harvey home was across the way, and my middle grandson is in it. But it burnt in the year he was born, 1968, and so David rebuilt it, but he only put one story. It was a big three-story home.

And the children used to go up there. Any time I'd miss my children, I knew they were either there or at Allen Harvey's house, because those were the only two places they were allowed to go. But they could go to their grandmother's and what would happen was she lived between Dean and Allen, and the children would converge there. And any time I missed Dean Junior, he would be up there. Especially if it was a rainy day, he would be up in the attic reading.

And she had a lot of books and things. And they lost a lot of antiques when that house burned. A lot of the history went with it. But we're still trying to get things together and keep the farm. So I have two grandsons who live out here. One has a trailer and the other one lives in the old David's home.

He moved in after David passed. So that's the history of how they did it. Allen moved on the east, and we were on the west of it because the road used to run right in front of my house.

And that's why we are down where we are, because we built on the road originally. And it wasn't until in the '70s that they straightened the road out, and that left us down below the hill, so to speak.

That's how we did it. Dean moved to Kansas City, but he was so miserable. I told him, "Oh, we'll go back to the farm." And he promised me if I'd come back with him, he'd see that his children were educated, and he stuck to his word. The girls both elected to go to KU, so that's how we ended up.

AMBER: So is Debra your daughter?

MRS. HARVEY: Yes. Debra is my youngest. And she has the one boy, John, who'll be sixteen this month. And Karen has two boys, Dwight and Craig.

ALICE: And they're the two that live in the houses out here?

MRS. HARVEY: Right. They moved back when their grandfather got sick. Craig was working in Kansas City. Craig is a manufacturing engineer with a degree from Pittsburg. And when his grandfather became ill, he was working in Kansas City. He told me that the commute wasn't doing him any good because he couldn't help me with any of the work. So he decided to give up that job and move back. So he lived with us for about maybe six months, and then his grandfather passed. But, in the meantime, David Harvey, who was the oldest of the family, was ill and he became afraid to stay alone. And he kept saying he didn't want to be up there by himself, because he would wake up and people would have driven in the yard, or he couldn't get out to see what was going on. And so Dwight, who is our oldest grandson, put a trailer up there, and he moved in the trailer. That's why he was in the trailer house. People ask you all kinds of questions and say, "Why is Dwight and Kayla in the trailer and not in the house?" It was because it was their trailer. They put it up there. And then after David passed, Craig moved into that house.

MRS. HARVEY: But that puts them here with me.

ALICE: Right.

MRS. HARVEY: And, because they are out here, I'm able to stay.

ALICE: Yes.

MRS. HARVEY: They take care of the farm, the cattle. We still have cattle and that type of thing. And John thinks that he's supposed to come out and dictate (laughter). That sixteen year old. But without him I would have some problems then, because if the other boys aren't able to do, he comes out and does the chores. He feeds the cattle and gets the hay up.

ALICE: That's good.

MRS. HARVEY: Yeah. I'm really proud of them. Because Craig has tried hard to get a business going and it hasn't (pause). He's had to hold a job in order to get things done. But Dwight also went to Pittsburg. He just went to the two-year course, and Craig went for four years, but they're in the same field. And then we had taken in a young man, Bryan, who also went to Pittsburg. So we had three of them there at one time.

MRS. HARVEY: And Dean was working at K-Mart at that time.

ALICE: Uh-huh. At the distribution center?

MRS. HARVEY: Right. He retired from there. But, like I said, he promised that he would see that the kids were educated, and he knew the farm wasn't going to pay it. And so he went to work. He worked at K-Mart for a while and he worked at Hallmark. He was a hard worker.

AMBER: So how many head of cattle do you have here?

MRS. HARVEY: Right now we have twenty-nine head. We culled out this spring, because we have to be sure that the older cows are going to breed. If you have any that the boys have made into steers, then we sell those. What we don't use for ourselves, we sell. So they culled out this spring, and we have seven young calves. Also, it's a matter of feeding—how much hay you have, if you have enough hay to feed them all winter, the grain and that type of thing. You have to figure all that in. There's expenses. So we just try to keep about thirty head. And that's enough really, because you have to have so much pasture for each head.

MRS. HARVEY: And right now they're on the pasture over on the—we just call it the David Harvey side, that's how we speak of it, but that's where the boys live is on across the road. They're on the place where the original homestead is.

When Great-grandmother Harvey came, Rebecca, she started homesteading here and she homesteaded five acres, and then they tell me she just kept getting five acres as she could.

And then after she got those three boys educated, then they began to buy land.

ALICE: What relationship was Rebecca to the colonel or the army man?

MRS. HARVEY: Mother. Oh, no, you're talking about David Harvey, the husband who came?

ALICE: Yeah.

MRS. HARVEY: Okay. He was in with the army.

ALICE: Right.

MRS. HARVEY: And he heard about these blacks who were brought up out of Arkansas. And he came over to this part. He was in Leavenworth and he came over to look up these people, and it was his family.

ALICE: Some of his family?

MRS. HARVEY: So they legally married here in Douglas County and had these three boys. And Ed was the youngest one, and he's the one who married Maud Henrie. John asked me the other day if I knew about their story, and the only thing I could tell him was that he was twenty years older than she was. And he said that he saw her as a young girl and saw how beautiful she was, and he decided to wait for her. So he waited until she was grown. And I don't know when she met him. But they did marry.

ALICE: Isn't that something? Things in the romantic area were handled differently then than they are now.

MRS. HARVEY: Right. And it could have been that her mother could have helped arrange it. I don't know that part of the story, I just know that she married him and came on over here, from their farm over there.

And I didn't mention earlier that the Henrie spelling is H-E-N-R-I-E, which is French. And the history that we had, they came out of, from Martinique Island. And Debra has a part of that history that David gave to her.

ALICE: Dandridge?

MRS. HARVEY: No, my Debra said that John Henrie's father came from the Martinique Island, and he floated down the Ohio River and at some point got off and came over to Kansas to Phillipsburg.

MRS. HARVEY: But I don't know how or why, but that's where he met Sally Williams and married her, and then they came over here. He's buried here. They're buried at Brumbaugh Cemetery. And it's a small cemetery. I know when we buried Aunt Pearl, who was the only child who didn't marry.

ALICE: Right.

MRS. HARVEY: When we buried her, the undertaker didn't know where Brumbaugh was, so they had to get a map to find it.

ALICE: Where is it?

MRS. HARVEY: It's off of the 59 Highway.

ALICE: Fifty-nine is out toward Baldwin.

MRS. HARVEY: Okay, 59. It's off of 59, where the big filling station is there, as you turn and come back east.

I can't tell you the name of the road, but it's off over in there. And the headstones are John Henrie, Sally Henrie-Fitzpatrick, and George Fitzpatrick. And then Aunt Pearl is buried there. Those are the only headstones I know. Since we're the only ones here, we do try to go over and put flowers on that memorial grave.

ALICE: Yes.

MRS. HARVEY: Dr. Harvey is buried up at Oak Hill. But, as far as the rest of them, they're...

ALICE: You don't know?

MRS. HARVEY: No.

ALICE: Do you remember a Dr. Henry? Do you remember a Dr. Henry that—I don't know his first name, but he used to deliver babies and doctor people. Also, a doctor kin to Dudley Quinton and the Rogers? Dr. Rogers?

MRS. HARVEY: Dr. Gabell?

ALICE: No, Dr. Gabell I know was my grandmother's doctor, but this was a doctor over in North Lawrence, Dr. Rogers was. He lived over on North Third Street, had a great big old house.

MRS. HARVEY: He must not be anybody that I knew.

ALICE: It might have been when you first came too.

MRS. HARVEY: Dr. Harvey was here for years, but he died in the early '20s.

ALICE: He passed. Because I think I was little when Dr. Henry was still living, because I remember seeing him. But I don't know exactly what year he died. And then my grandmother said that I should remember seeing Dr. Gabell, because I was born when he was living.

MRS. HARVEY: I remember hearing about him, but I don't remember ever meeting him.

ALICE: His wife lived right across the street on Connecticut from my grandmother, just down a house or two, on the east side of the street. The little stone house that sits there.

MRS. HARVEY: Oh, yes.

ALICE: That was Dr. and Mrs. Gabell. But I never did meet her.

MRS. HARVEY: When I came, there were none of those old Harvey—I shouldn't say that, my father-in-law was living. But the doctor and the lawyer were both deceased. And Annie. But, as far as I know, it was a lawyer who taught at New York School before he got his law degree. I just know that he taught. So, you see, at some point . . .

ALICE: In our history there have been both integrated and segregated schools. There were times when there were pockets of schools, like in every section of town there was a black school or a school for Negro children. Then there was a time when there was no segregation and there wasn't any racism towards the students. Of course, my great-grandmother went to KU when it was only Corbin Hall, and she had to climb steps to get up there. And she went to college there. And then she taught. You only had to have a ninth-grade education, but she went beyond that, and she taught for a while. And so, we've had mixed history. But, whenever the racism came, segregation came in in a big way.

MRS. HARVEY: Yeah. It makes you wonder how it really got a firm hold here in Lawrence. And I've never been able to get any of that history per se.

ALICE: And how it appeared.

MRS. HARVEY: When I was in junior high, I went to Northeast Junior High in Kansas City, Kansas. We had a teacher who had taught at Moon before she came. So she had the experience. And then, after I married Dean, I met Trace Harvey-Mitchell. And she had taught in one of those black areas out around Bloomington. They used to laugh and to joke that any teacher that came out there, one of the Mitchell men was going to marry (laughter). So she had married one of those Mitchell men.

Because when I met her, it was, we went on a picnic. My sister had come home from California and was visiting, and her friend had invited friends to come to this picnic. And, of course, being her sister, I was invited. So I had Karen and Dean Junior, and I was sitting there and this lady came over. She was an older woman, and she looked at me and she said, "Honey, I don't know which Harvey you're married to, but that's a Harvey baby." (laughter). Because Dean Junior looked so much like his father. That's when she told me that she was kin to the Harveys. But she was one of the Harveys out of Eurdora, out of that side of the family. But you never know who you're going to run into.

AMBER: Is that your husband on the wall there?

MRS. HARVEY: No, that's my son. That's the last picture we have of him. I have pictures of my husband, but I think they're all in my bedroom.

ALICE: But I got some of her pictures. I think they put a picture of her and husband on that panel.

MRS. HARVEY: I think our wedding picture is there.

AMBER: Did you have any more to add, because I see you have stuff over here?

MRS. HARVEY: I think I've given you most of it. Sally passed in 1943, in Topeka, at the home of her third daughter, Nettie Brown. There are, to the best of my knowledge, five grandchildren. And I talked with one of their boys the other day. His father was John Henrie, and he was telling me he didn't have any more information than I seem to have been able to gather. So, I wanted to just show you these pictures.