Home > Stories > Deena White and Althea James

Biography

Deena White is a native of Clinton; Althea James moved here as a young bride. Mrs. White is a mother and grandmother. Mrs. James is a mother, grandmother, great grandmother and a great-great grandmother! Both are retired from very different careers, yet both faced some of the same prejudices, segregation, and trials. Both also have experienced the changes over the years which have made Clinton a better city for everyone.

Transcript

Date of Interview: October 10, 2008

Monique Harris: Thanks for coming to our Oral History Reports.

Teaya Lewis: Clinton Youth Program Drug Prevention Dance Group

Monique Harris: Would you like to introduce yourselves?

Deena White: My name is Deena White.

Althea James: And I am Althea James.

Monique: I’m Monique Harris. I go to Lyons Middle School. I am in seventh grade and I enjoy to play basketball, volleyball, softball, and dance.

Teaya: My name is Teaya Lewis. I’m in ninth grade and I’m a freshman in Clinton High School and I like dancing, singing, and playing volleyball.

Monique: It’s nice to meet you guys. And where are you employed at?

Deena White: I recently retired from 3M, twenty-nine years. And I have a…now I have a part time job. And my part time job is at the Chiropractic Works.

Althea James: I’m Althea James and I’m retired. I was a housekeeper for thirty-six years. I’m retired now and I don’t work anymore.

Teaya: How long have you lived in Clinton?

Althea James: I lived in Clinton for sixty-five years.

Deena White: All my life, almost. [laughter] I lived in Madison, Wisconsin for a while, but most of my life right here in Clinton.

Monique: Are you in any civic groups around the community?

Deena White: I’m on the Human Rights Commission and I …civic?....I belong to the Leah Chapter, number eight here in Clinton, Order of the Eastern Stars. I believe that’s about it. Oh the Vins Jetter Youth Center, I’m on the board for that.

Althea James: I’m active in church now, not as active as I used to be. But, a long time ago, I was active in school, PTA, and all of that stuff and I had a teenage place and did well with kids and schools and whatever. So, now I don’t have any activities now.

Teaya: How many children do you have?

Althea James: I’m the mother of eight kids and I raised ten.

Deena White: I’m a mother, too. I have a son and a daughter.

Monique: Do you have any grandchildren?

Althea James: Yes, I have twenty…twenty-one grandchildren and I think I have nineteen great grands and I have two great, great grands.

Deena White: I have three grandsons.

Teaya: With your community groups, how many years have you served for them?

Deena White: The Order of the Eastern Star, I’ve been in that probably oh, maybe thirty years. And in the Vinson Jetter Youth Center, we’ve had that going with the Youth for a Safe Non-Violent, we’ve had that going on for fourteen years.

Monique: Why are you involved in these groups that you’re in?

Deena White: Why am I involved?

Monique: Yeah.

Deena White: Because, it makes a difference for me, to be able to work with the youth around here. Because I feel if the youth, if they have something to do they will grow and they’ll become better citizens. And the Eastern Star, we’re just now trying to get back going. We have a lot of older members. And…the younger ones are trying to, (I’m considered one of the younger ones), [chuckles] and we’re trying to, you know, get back on our feet again.

Teaya: Have you encountered any discrimination in your civic groups?

Deena White: No, I haven’t had anything negative that I can remember. Because we were….the Eastern Star was opened…was given a chance to meet at the Masonic Temple here in Clinton. Which there is no affiliation, but they did allow us to meet at their facilities.

Teaya: How was it like to growing up as a child in Clinton?

Althea James: What was that?

Teaya: How was it like to growing up as a child in Clinton?

Althea James: I didn’t grow up as a child here. I was an adult when I came here. I was a young girl when I came here. But I was, I was married when I came here. I was young, but it wasn’t like it is now. It was hard when I came here. Jobs was hard to get. All I could find with no education all you could get was house work, when I came here. So that was…..

Deena White: I was born here in Clinton. And my folks came from, my mother was born here. And they came from, they lived down in what they called the Cement Plant. And it was down in the lower part of Davenport. They used to call it “Buffalo, Iowa”. [editor’s note: One of Davenport’s cement plants is located near the town of Buffalo, Iowa.] It was just a lot of blacks from the South came there and they settled in that area. Well, my dad was in that group and so he met my mom and they moved to Clinton. We used to live out on Liberty Avenue which is like if you go over that bridge by ADM, you’ll see our street and it’s right by the railroad tracks. I remember when we were kids growing up, there were families that didn’t want us down in that spot we were at. And I remember my mother taking us upstairs and hiding us under the bed, because the neighbors were shooting at us. I remember my dad calling a couple of his friends that were ’coon hunters. That was Bill Jordan and Julius Hinton. They came out and then my brother, they had a gun, my brother Billy he was a good shooter, he was a hunter. So they were out there and we were upstairs under the bed. And they were shooting at the white people that lived next door…not next door but they were in the next block. They didn’t want us there, but we stayed. We stayed and we all, we went to school. When we were kids we all would hang together. You know everybody was close. And we, at one time, we had an interfaith interracial group. That was with the Catholic Churches mostly. And we would go there and we’d have potlucks with the white church. And it was very good because we were able to keep a lot of friendships. That organization with them helped all of us make things a little better in Clinton.

Monique: How was it living in Clinton in the ’50s and ’60s?

Althea James: It was…it was bad. It was bad. When we was living in the ’50s and ’60s here, it was …it was…we knew what we could do and where we could go, but it was really…you would run into a lot of problems….When we bought….When we came here we bought our house where we are living now. That’s where we was told that we could buy. Our lawyer told us where we could buy when we came here ta not be...that the white peoples would not mind us living there. So that’s where we bought at when we came here. It was…It was different. The schools was different. We had a problem with the kids in school and the teachers and whatever, but now it’s different. It was a lot different then than it is now. But in working. Climax is the place….they call Climax where, my husband got a job at Climax…him.. Then when Curtis Company opened up. We had a Curtis Company open up and they hired black peoples. Otherwise jobs was hard to find, for black men to find. And I just did day work. That’s what the black womens did was just practically day work was all you could get, housekeeping. That was also what you could get to do then. Otherwise there wasn’t nothin’ to do. I washed dishes at night. There was places you could wash dishes at night. Wasn’t too bad. You run into some good peoples. ’Cause in the late ’50s early ’60s I was the first black waitress here in Clinton. I got a job with a good man and he hired me as a waitress. And there were some people didn’t want me to serve them. But he was nice and he said, “We have anybody that come in and don’t want you to serve ’em, then you tell me and I will ask them to leave.” So that wasn’t too bad. There were three peoples that didn’t want me to serve them so they was asked to leave. That wasn’t too bad. It was pretty bad back then, yeah, racial problems.

Monique: How bad did you feel when they didn’t want you to serve them?

Althea James: Well I knew – I mean it made you feel bad. If you were working, it used to be down on 5th Avenue where they have the movie place now. Where you go and get the movies down here….

Off camera student: Family Video?

Alethea James: the big place there, they call it the Manor House, and that’s where I was working at. And so, the man what was running the place he was a nice guy and then the peoples finally got used to me. So after a while it wasn’t too bad. ’Cause they didn’t mind me; it wasn’t bad. But anyways, I mean it was…it was hurtin’ you know it was hurtin’ for somebody to be sittin’ in and you would go to a table and peoples are sitting there and then you would hear somebody say, “Well, we would like ta have a waitress.” I said “Well, I am your waitress for the night.” They would say “Well, uh, well.” Then this one lady, I only heard it one time, this one lady got up and she says, “Well, I’m not eating if a nigger serve me.” So alls the man said was, “Well good-night.” So that was it. So it was embarrassing, you know. It was a hurt.

Teaya: Is there any black history in Clinton that we should know?

Althea James: What was that?

Teaya: Is there any black history in Clinton that we should know?

Althea James: Well, not that I know of, because things are so much different now till. It’s different. So there’s nothing now. But, there’s nothing now that would help the kids, now. The only thing now that you kids should know and that’s go to school and get a good education. That’s the main thing in the world now is a education. So if you go to school and get a good education you can get good jobs and you can do something. But if you don’t know nothing you can’t do nothing. So you need an education ta, ta do something. That’s your main thing now, a good education. And that was bad back then because most of the black people, most of them didn’t have no education. See, I only went to school to eighth grade because down south you went to work, you couldn’t go to school. And then when you went to school you didn’t have teachers qualified to teach ya, because they haven’t had, you know, they didn’t had good educations.

Monique: Right.

Althea James: When you went to school you had a little black place, little black school to go to. Then the white kids had better schools, ya know, white kids was better schools. And then black kids didn’t have nobody to teach ’em down there because the teachers that taught you didn’t know anything. That was what was bad. That was the main thing. They didn’t know nothing. So when you don’t know nothing you can’t get good jobs. So that was why, that’s why I did housework when I came here and dishwashing and stuff like that, because no education. And the peoples came up from the south they didn’t have education, ’cause they didn’t have, they couldn’t go to school. They had no schools to go to, no proper schools to go to. Didn’t have no sports or nothing, they just went to school. They didn’t have basketball, nothing like that. They have it now, but then they didn’t have any kind of activities like that.

Monique: Thank you for your time.

Althea James: Mm-hum.