Borough President

Now, before I get you to school, can you describe the neighborhood? We always ask this question: what was, what was some of the sights, and sounds and smells of growing up? And you can go back to Harlem [New York, New York] and then take us to the Bronx [New York].$$Okay, well in Harlem I remember my cousins lived, my Uncle Donald, my father's brother lived in, two blocks down and he had four sons and one daughter. And so that, and the daughter was the same age as my, my cousin, their daughter Juanita is the same age as my sister, so we would go there and visit Uncle Donald and so on. And I remember happiness in Harlem. I remember my mother use to walk us on Sunday morning up to Abyssinian Baptist Church. We'd walk from my house all the way--we lived on 112th Street. She would walk us all the way up to the church, which was like 137th or 38th [138th] Street. And we also used to play in Morningside Park right nearby. Friends, I remember that Mrs. Innis, Mr. Innis was, they were our neighbors on 110th Street.$$Roy Innis?$$No, no (laughter), no.$$Not that one, a different Innis.$$No, Mr. Innis was a seaman with my father [Jerald Sargent] and so the first address we lived at was on 110th Street and Mrs. Innis was white. She was British, still talked with a British accent, and her husband was black, who was a, a merchant seaman with my father. And so they became very, we always were very close to them and friends. And their oldest daughter and then their two daughters used to babysit for my sister [Joan Sargent] and I, because my mother [Artemesor Hasty Sargent], as I told you was a dressmaker. She didn't always work but she worked sometimes and then she stayed home sometimes. So they took care of us and we, we lived above them. And so it was a very convenient arrangement. And I remember many happy days playing, going to Morningside Park and playing there and so on. And on 112th Street, again, I was a New York City kid. We played out in the street in front of our houses and jumped rope and all the things that kids do. But I was seven, I was still pretty young and I couldn't go wonder far from the house at all. And my grandmother came up; my stepmother [Artemesor Hasty Sargent]'s mother came up to live with us when we had moved to 112th Street. We had a great big apartment and we were on the ground floor. And cats, we use to have cats. What happened is that one-day this cat decided to have her litter behind our kitchen door (laughter). And I remember we couldn't even hardly walk in the kitchen without her getting crazy. But we, the thrill of having the little baby kittens was really nice. I don't remember too much more about it, except I remember there was still white families in Harlem because on the corner of our block we used to see this family with the tennis outfits and their tennis rackets jumping into the car to go away for the weekend, you know, or else to go play tennis. It was a very peaceful time in New York City; it was not turmoil. And walking down the streets, I used to go to the Schom [Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York, New York]...well, at the time it was just the Countee Cullen Library [New York, New York] there on 135th [sic, 136th] Street. I remember getting a library card and to walk, there was no, I mean it was so easy to do that, you know. 116th Street was like a main drag.$My color is very fair so there were times when I would overhear things that were very painful, okay. There were times when questions were asked of me. This is full acknowledgment of the fact that I'm black. But that--even the teacher when it came to writing out the information for the tags, she had me go up and write on the board, "colored." She had Harold Russell, who I still know 'till today, he went up and wrote on the board, "Negro." So we could choose whichever one we wanted to be called, you know. And colored was the general accepted term then. Many of the teachers in those days were so darn strict; they were so strict. They were even, they were strict to all the kids, and many times they didn't even have patience with the, the white kids in my group who came from immigrant parents, you know what I mean. Well, graduation time came and I'm in front of the mirror and I'm saying my, I'm singing the songs and practicing for the graduation and during that--and my mother [Artemesor Hasty Sargent] heard me singing 'Ole Black Joe', okay, without saying a word to me she went to school and she, she and a lady named Mrs. Snipe [ph.], who I later learned was my, my husband's aunt, he was staying with her, but I never knew him through all of this, but I knew of her daughter, Phyllis, was in my class and Mrs. and Harold Russell's grandmother came to school and they said, "They are not going to sing that song at graduation, in fact no child is going to sing that song at graduation, it will only humiliate these children."$$And what school was that?$$P.S. 042 in the Bronx [New York].$$Okay, alright--$$Claremont Parkway--