Princess Wilson

September 30, 2020 - Interview between Scott Morris and Princess Wilson.

Ms. Wilson is a lifelong area resident, community leader, and employee at the Sweet Auburn curb market.

Okay, so I'm here with Princess at Sweet Auburn Market and then yeah if you want to just kind of, wherever you want to start with your history of of Atlanta and the neighborhood.

Okay? All I want to do is, like I said, my name is Princess Wilson and I want to talk about a little of our history. The history I had while living in Grady Homes. Which was a low income. Well, I don't know about low income or not because my father had a business, which was ...  Forest Shoe Shop, which was located on Forrest Avenue which is now Ralph McGill in Buttermilk Bottoms. He was there for about thirty years before we had to move up further.  So he came closer to Boulevard, still one time. And then finally, he moved back out to Thomasville Subdivision.

Well when I was raised up here I was born, raised,  there used to be a Grady Hospital or nursing home right across Pratt Street. This is before 75-85 had come through. So they were making changes to the city at that time. I think that was what I had to go through the history and verify all this.  I think it was during, I don't know. It was during Eisenhower's term or the next president after Eisenhower, but what it was it was trying to get an interstate to go through all the cities, especially in the South, and they built 75-85. just everything, just a one-lane, two-lane highway to get to where you are going to go. And one day I was going to school and of course I went to Elementary and high school in Old Fourth Ward, downtown.

I went to Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic School, it's on Boulevard. Okay, it's been here since 1901 or something like that. I think it was so. So we would walk to school down Edgewood, through Grady Homes, cut through Hilliard Street and then go up to Our Lady of Lourdes.  Well, one day I went to school, you know? And when I came home, my address before, I went was, like 57 Pratt Street and I came back it was 57 Bell Street. But what they did, they took the whole building, which is about maybe ten residents, ten families in this one building. They lifted the building up and put it on tracks and moved it back behind. So you see the difference? You see where the Pratt Street Bridge is? Right there? Our building was right there. I've been trying to picture since I was over here, exactly where it was but I think it was more where the emergency room - Grady is now…I think it was right there. The nurses lived right across the street. We could look onto their roof at night, okay, anyway when I came home it was 57 Bell Street, this all happened in one day.

That's crazy. That's, that's amazing. 

How people tear buildings down now because they have something else they want to put there. And back then, this was the 50s, this was ‘52 about ‘52, 53 when this happened when 75-85 was built … so they moved it completely across the street, they just put it all, everything was still in everybody’s house, and they just put it on the tracks and moved it across the hill.

And one of my favorite memories of when I was living there, even before they … well I think we were on.... we were on Bell Street then. I think, you know, whether it's like, we’d always have to ride. My daddy would …  off and put us in the car, we all, we’d drive to the country, well we  thought it was the country, but it was really the outskirts of Atlanta. We was so close to everything. So we always thought we were going for a ride … one  Sunday,  and I had, I had on my little crinkly dress and all the crinolines we used to wear underneath... And my brother, four kids, my brother saw a bug in my dress … I'm terribly afraid of bugs. I still am now.

So he said, okay, you got a bug its a bug on your dress, and I was just, I was screaming so hard coming from downtown Atlanta that my mother put me in the front seat with her and dad and then when you got to the house here on Pratt Street, I started running. Because as soon as I got out of  the car, one of my sister said, oh, there's that bug still in your dress. And I went flying down the street. I know, I need to come down this hill right here at Pratt Street, well Bell Street, and I went running down the hill, well, they had to go get me.  So to this day. I do not like crickets. I run away from a cricket, but that's just a little … my favorite memory. 

I love to ride the bike and you know, in those days, it was like a family thing we had in the projects, you know, nobody considered them as low-income.  My dad had his business over there. My mom was a housewife. All the kids went to Catholic schools, you know, four years, well eight years there from the 1st to the 8th. And then in 1962 is when I integrated Saint Joseph, Catholic High School, which is not there anymore, but it used to be on Portman and Peachtree before the Sacred Heart Basilica, that vacant land, its a parking lot now. That used to be where Sacred Heart High School was and also Marist was there first. So they started St. Joseph High School. So we integrated the Catholic High School. So I was one of the first ones to integrate high school that year in 62.

What was the reaction from the white students?

Oh, it was well, you know, Catholics. So they think they didn't say anything outwardly. They would say it inwardly. And so you could feel the difference as I was growing up that we couldn't do what everybody else was doing. We were eliminated from being included in some the activities that were going on. We could do it but you know, we were never gonna get accepted do that. Being a cheerleader or, only thing that they let us do, we had a pep squad. You could get on the pep and do what you could with that.  So yeah, you’re a teenager by then also and of course they has their little sweetheart dances and sweetheart balls.  And I just realized that we got another, he’s a historian, a preservationist, that’s on our alumni - Saint Joseph High School alumni association, Rob Augustine. He is supposed to send some pictures of how it used to look back then.

And also we went, they had a sweetheart ball. I think this was in sixty, in sixty-four that I attended. So the sweetheart ball, so we attended to sweetheart ball, what was the name of that hotel? It was downtown, it was the Riviera, it may have been the Riviera Hotel downtown and then the Klan were out there marching as we were going in with our little date. So we had to go, you know, get a date. And then the Klan were marching during this time. So they were, they were recently talking about that episode in our Sweetheart’s Ball, and someone said, do you know the Klan was there? And of course, I had to reply, I don’t ever forget, I will never forget the Klan was there. We had to walk right past them, but that's where I went to high school whereas my other siblings went to public school.

And did y'all, were you? Where you born, was your family living in Grady Homes?

Oh yeah, I was born and raised. My dad was ex-military. Just coming out of the army. They're both... They're both  from Atlanta. And so we were just coming out and the interview, we did an interview as a Black family, how Black families live in the city.  And I've been trying to remember, I used to have a copy of that magazine. I don’t know if it was Newsweek, Newstime… I think it was Business News. Showing how African Americans can lift themselves up. 

And also during that time they were moving people who had businesses out of the projects and especially black veterans. They created subdivisions for them. So they created Thomasville Heights out there. It was all dirt, no lights. It was mostly just farms out there.  So they built this subdivision out there mostly for black veterans. So you see a lot of the older people who are living there now are veterans. My mom is still there. Ninety-eight years old, so she’s still there and participating in that.  That’s when we had to move out of Grady Homes.  We had to move out there  So they got this new area and we thought we were really moving out to the country.

And what year was that?

This must have been in 1956.  Because my brother. He was the youngest he was, I think he was, he was, he was, he was five or six years old, I don’t think he’d started school yet.

Wow, so this is like before MARTA, before the connector, when you were living…

Oh yeah, that's how you feel. Then you have to ride the bus there before I would walk. You know and then my dad lived in Thomasville. If you start to feel, you know, as far as the deal he would just come right up. Drop me off at St. Joseph in the morning. Just come right down, either. I got to figure out where I could see was. Yes, yes, yes, yes.

The railroad tracks that go over Grant Street where that is, what was that a tunnel at that time that you may also?

That was a tunnel it was also be a place where we still get out.

Okay.

The kids used to go up here and get things and cell blocks of ice. Okay, so everybody in the neighborhood, the boys would always go up there, get lost in the light bulb and you needed some ice. You know, most people didn't have all that ice cream so they go get the block of ice in there.

And you just go under the tunnel? Because I know there was some cool yards and things kind of in that area?

Yea, and of course Decatur street was always … I need to go to Decatur Street. That's where a lot of the business was. That's where they, I think that's what I'm seeing. And I got some friends that I lived with me over there too. But you know trying to communicate with them particularly, some of them have passed on.

Okay. Yeah. And did y'all cut over too? I guess the Capital homes would have been there and Grant Park next door?

We could get as far as Grant Park, it was closer than that. It was it was right up at the top once you come out of Grady Home. Where the senior citizen places are now, are ya apartments are there? Yes, okay. And then, that's Decatur Street, I think. Like, I think it was across the street there.

I remember coming to this Market to come down here and doing that time it was still segregated. So we will come down and they have the water fountain and have the black and white water fountain. So me and some friends, come down here and we was going to try and get water out of the white water fountain. And we were not supposed to do that! And you see, why did we have this black water fountain and the colored water fountain?

I try to remember when I came back and started working here, I thought it how are we supposed to do this? How do we make it in here? I remember, they didn't have chickens, you know, whole chickens hanging down and things.

And of course, black farmers had to sell their goods out on the sidewalk. Because they weren't allowed to sell in here. There were black people coming in shop, but they couldn't, merchants couldn’t sell. So that's why we get we got the name of the curb market.

Okay, so the curb Market was specifically that black African American farmers are outside?

And then they came in. I did, I did one thing on the website, I gave a little history lesson on it on that. Did you ever look at our blog?

Yeah, I'll go back and look at that.

It lists the date that it was aloud to come in and then sell in here. Inside, that’s how Market Street got its name.

That’s fascinating, I never realized that before.

Alright, well I think we've got enough. I've got to get back to my office unless you got more. You want to share?

No, no that’s alright because I can talk forever. I try to remember, in comes back to me, but I have to get with somebody else to talk to them, who experienced it with me to let me know. How did we do all this and then one guy, he's real sick right now, but he's used to tell me, I used to wait for you, you remember coming up to Our Lady of Lourdes to wait for you to get out of school everyday and walk you back home? Over to the Girls Club over at Grady Homes? Well, this was before I moved down to Thomasville, it was before, he just ... bring me home to those days. I guess he .... he knew my elderly sisters, too. They're older, so....

Do you remember when the Antoine Graves building came ... that woulda been the high-rise that was adjacent to ... there was a senior high-rise right on Hilliard?

No, no. It was on Hilliard?

Yeah, I think it came up in the '60s. It was at Hilliard and Decatur, there was a high-rise there.

I left Atlanta in '62. So I left Atlanta in '62 after I finished high school at St. Joseph's. I went to Houston, Texas, and tried to get away from Atlanta for a while and um, so I went away for college.

I grew up here, I grew up in the Morningside neighborhood, then I did the same thing. I went to Arizona and then, I said I gotta get as far away as possible. And then I said "I miss y'all, I'm coming back."

Yeah. I did that three times. I stayed in Houston for about six years, then I came back to Atlanta, and then I says, oh gosh, then I found myself with my parents again. And I said "oh gosh I can't stay here any longer." So then I moved to Miami. I lived in Miami for about 2 or 3 years... North Miami. And then I came back here again.. I was married then, and so he was working at AT&T or ... so we kept moving around from Atlanta to Miami and then from Miami back to Atlanta. And here about three more years and then Greensboro, North Carolina. But now I'm back ... I'm living my best life. My mom had a house on East Avenue in Old Fourth Ward right off of Glen Iris. And my father passed so we're trying to delegate her property to her before she goes. So she gave me that house over on East Avenue. I've been over there now for about twenty years so...

Oh, wow. And I know you... I went to two of the...I'm in W but I went to the NPU-M meeting last month to get a feel for things ... I said "Princess is involved. That is cool."

Right, I got too involved. See with kids and all you don't get a chance to do anything. You raising your children, football, soccer, all this stuff is going on back and forth. My high school son, you know he's in high school and he's involved in all these activities. So I didn't get a chance to participate. So now, my focus is on the community and make it as much as we can. And I'm trying to back off of that a little bit now. I'm kinda tired of that, too. You know we didn't get off that call til about 9:30-9:45. And then I also work the polls, so I had to get up at 4 o'clock in the morning to work the polls yesterday.

Thanks for doing all that. Okay I will email you and keep you updated on the project and where we're going and all that

Please do, let me give you my personal email.

A project by Dashboard and MARTA | Artbound.