Home > Stories > Mr. and Mrs. Bill Sharp

Biography

Mr. and Mrs. Sharp have been married for 54 years. As a barber in Des Moines, Mr. Sharp has seen and experienced changing attitudes and outlooks among his fellow citizens. Mrs. Sharp moved to Iowa from Kansas. Together they successfully raised a family of strong men and women. The interview covers how and why he became a barber, the role skin color has played in their lives, as well as how education, expectations, and faith have contributed to their success.

Transcript

INTERVIEW –Mr. and Mrs. Bill Sharp April 23, 2008
Keith King: Hello, Mr. Sharp, again I am Keith King, your granddaughter Liza Sharp, first of all, we thank you and your wife for sitting down and speaking with us today and allowing us to interview you. This is in conjunction with the African-American history Museum, we represent MANNRS and we’ve agreed to interview people who are African Americans in the community to get a oral history of their take and how they were influenced and how the state of Iowa influenced their life and what part of Iowa history they may have played. And so your granddaughter suggested that we interview you and your wife being that you’re a prominent business man in the Des Moines community and we agreed that that would be a good start because sometimes you don’t hear about, I mean you hear about some of the other people in the community, but you may not hear about a man who works in a barbershop or owns a barbershop for numerous years so we thought that would be a good place to start interviewing prominent African Americans in the community.

Mr. Sharp: Well thank you. I think that’s a good idea for history because there are a whole lot of young people still wondering what to do and I hope this here will give them some kind of ideas. So whatever questions you want to ask. What would you like me to talk talk tell you about?

Keith King: We have a series of questions, some we’ll just start out and we’ll let Liza go ahead and ask you some and then we will get down to how opening your business, how it may have been a struggle being an African-American in a predominantly white city and some of the processes it took to get a business established, and keep customers coming back to you.

Liza: So we’re just going to start off with some general things like, how old are you? Time to be modest.

Mr. Sharp: 79.

Liza: Right.

Mrs. Sharp: 79 and holding.

Liza: 79 and holding. OK, are we stickin’ to that?

Mr. Sharp: I was going to say in another three or four months I will be 80__.

Liza: 80, Ok What were your parents’ names and where were they from?

Mr. Sharp: Well, my … I stayed with my grandmother. That’s the one that raised me mostly. She was from Kentucky, Louisville, Kentucky. Okay, she came up here in, uhhh, it had to been 18…1890 or something, something like that.

Liza: Okay.

Mr. Sharp: Okay. Then she had 7 kids with… my mother was 1 of them, of course, and her name was Celesta Sharp C-E-L-E-S-T-A Sharp. And my dad, he was from Oklahoma. Part was mostly Indians alright, cause he was part Indian. Okay, I guess he came up, his parents came up about 1892 and his name was George, George Brookes. Okay, we all used to live on, well my dad and my mother both on the southeast side of Des Moines. That was close to the river and close to the railroad tracks. Okay. They met that’s how I got here. Anything else you want to know about it?

Liza: Okay. Yeah. So you said your parents, were your parents actually born here or they came from Louisville and Oklahoma, or that was just__?

Mr. Sharp: It started with my grandparents come to here

Liza: Your grandparents then. OK

Mr. Sharp: and then my mother and all her brothers were…

Liza: Brothers wereborn in Iowa… so you are 100% Native Iowan then.

Mr. Sharp: 100%.

Liza: OK, So who was your inspiration when you were younger? Who in Iowa or even in just the, in the, world was an inspiration to you, a motivation to become an entrepreneur?

Mr. Sharp: Well, durin’ them times it was a whole lot of uh, well I would start like this. Joe Lewis.

Liza: Joe Lewis?

Mr. Sharp: Joe Lewis was one of the most popular guys when I was a young man to really recognize because he was the Brown Bomber. He was the champion... he was, he was good. He didn’t have a whole lot to say but what he did with his fists, he was dynamite. Of course, after that ladies__ I don’t know, you probably know more about Lewis and the ladies.

Mrs. Sharp: Oh no, this is about the barbershop.

Mr. Sharp: Well, it was; I think they want both of us.

Liza: Well, Maybe you’d like to join in. Yeah, sure. Who was your motivation when you were younger? Who did, who did you look up to? As a leader.

Mrs. Sharp: Well…I was from Kansas and so therefore it was real difficult to be aggressive and so my grandmother which was Luma Oakridge, was an inspiration. She liked to be hostess. At that time the nightclubs and places like that, they didn’t have negro hosts and hostesses and she was 1 of the first.

Liza: Oh, wow.

Mrs. Sharp: I always wanted to be different, which I was. So therefore, when I went to high school, we were encouraged to be homemakers. I was difficult.

Liza: A little rebellious?

Mrs. Sharp: I wanted to be a typist. And so therefore, they made an example and they let me in the
typing class. I did so well that the family doctor hired me after school, which like you know you did.

Liza: uh huh.

Mrs. Sharp: and I typed his records and stuff like that. So I went from there to work in the pharmacy department. I was an only child, so therefore, my mother would work and I would stay at the neighbor’s. Like in Iowa, you have the latchkey to come in, so to avoid that, I stayed at the neighbor’s till my mother came home.

Liza: Well that’s good.

Mrs. Sharp: Now let him go.

Liza: Well, how did you, how did you come to Iowa, then? What made your family come to Iowa?

Mrs. Sharp: Oh, oh, I was engaged for the sophomore, yeah the sophomore, to the senior year…

Liza: Of high school?

Mrs. Sharp: I promised my mother that I would graduate. And so I was engaged to a fella named Arthur Hunter and he wanted to better himself by coming to Iowa and he decided we would get married and he had a sister here, and her husband and so we came to Iowa. And where the Central school is, that was Solar Aircraft, so that’s the first job and this is how I got to Iowa.

Liza: So you came for education? Because you knew it had a great education system? Oh wow. That’s interesting. And how old do you, so you, you were engaged from your sophomore year to your senior year?

Mrs. Sharp: Uh-huh.

Liza: And when exactly during that time period was it that you moved? So was it like your senior year of high school that you actually moved?

Mrs. Sharp: After I graduated.

Liza: After you graduated, okay. Okay.

Mr. Sharp: You graduated when you was about 17. Didn’t you?

Mrs. Sharp: Right.

Liza: Oh wow.

Mrs. Sharp: Ahead of time.

Liza: Good. Okay, so now that you’re both in Iowa at this point, how exactly did you guys meet?

Mrs. Sharp: That’s funny. My first husband died. I had 2 children and he had developed steel dust on the lungs that comes from working at Solar Aircraft. They call it silicosis and so therefore, I was a widow for almost 3 years and my neighbor lived in an apartment across the hall and she was a little short lady and she was a hair stylist and she said, you’re too young just to stay taking care of your children. You should get out sometime. So I had a baby-sitter that her cousin was here wasn’t it?

Mr. Sharp: M-hum

Mrs. Sharp: from Kansas City, so I went with her and we were socializing and I met him.

Mr. Sharp: I was out with your cousin.

Mrs. Sharp: Yeah. He was __ and I had met his friend and we were all having a lot of fun and her cousin, her husband, didn’t he come up?

Mr. Sharp: Yes.

Mrs. Sharp: We were blind dates almost.

Mr. Sharp: We were blind dates.

Mr. Sharp: So, her husband came so that left me alone. Three’s a crowd. I think it was almost the same deal with you.

Mrs. Sharp: Yeah, uh-huh. Se we sat there and socialized. And that’s how we met.

Liza: So you both were alone in the club, so you kept each other company. And that’s how you guys met. So you came with other people but you left with each other, okay.

Mr. Sharp: And been together ever since.

Liza: And been, And how long is that? How long have you been?

Mrs. Sharp: 54 years.

Liza: 54 years. Geez….

Mr. Sharp: That’s strange.

Liza: It’s fate. It’s fate.

Mr. Sharp: We didn’t know each other at all.

Liza: Yeah. That’s wonderful. Okay, well grandpa, or Bill, excuse me, so growing up, what made you want to get into cutting hair? How did that come about?

Mr. Sharp: Well first, we decided, I graduated from school. I went directly into the Army because jobs was kinda hard to get and I was 18, 17 or 18, somewhere around there.

Liza: So after you graduated high school…What high school did you graduate

Mr. Sharp: East Des Moines.

Liza: East Des Moines High School

Keith: What year was that?

Mr. Sharp: In 1945.

Liza: Okay.

Mr. Sharp: And actually so I went directly into the Army. In fact, they put me in the Army Air Force. At first I was in squadron 459 Aviation Squadron and they tried to send most of the kids to school for to be cadet, cadets but I told them I didn’t want to go to school so I just wanted to be in the regular set up of the army, so I proceeded and I ended up being a supply sergeant.

Liza: Okay.

Mr. Sharp: So I was a sergeant, all the time I was there and the place I was at was Guam, from ___Guam, Saipan, Kenya, and that was in 45. Okay, I got discharged in 47. Okay, during the time in the service, we almost had to bootleg or either cut each others hair and kind of clean up each other because there wasn’t no professionals there cause where I was at was nothing but jungle, okay, and so I kind of got a knack of it in the service. So when I got out, I had all this here eligibility for schooling. So I said, what can I do? So I said, well, barbering school might be good, a trade I’m just guessing. So I entered in 47, might of been 48, it was between 47 and 48, I applied to get in barber school and luckily I got right in.

Liza: Good.

Mr. Sharp: And I went through that course, cause the government was paying for everything, okay?

Liza: Umm hmm.

Mr. Sharp: And I liked it, but it was hard to get find a place to work, so I worked in Des Moines for a while for a couple of barbers, master barbers as they called them. Then I moved to Waterloo and worked for another master barber. Then I moved back to Des Moines again and worked for another master barber and I did that for 3 years, then I said, the heck with this, I’m goin to work for myself.

Liza: All right… right.

Mr. Sharp: So me and another fella got together,. He had just got out of school, barber school and I was his master barber teacher to him. His name was Carl Martin and we opened up a shop on the same street, 18th…17th and Crawford, a block from where we are now.

Liza: Okay.

Mr. Sharp: Okay. We. we had business so good and I think I was about 21 during that time.

Liza: Oh, that’s all?

Mr. Sharp: I hadn’t had too many jobs at all.

Liza: So very young!

Mr. Sharp: Yeah. So I opened up the shop, we opened up shop when I about 21, then three years late well, in between times, he was having a little trouble at home and he wanted to live in, I think it was Seattle, Washington, wasn’t it? or was it Washington? Washington state. So him and his wife moved to Washington state and I bought his half out, so I could barber by myself. Okay, money was coming in so good and I was in a old building and I wanted to better the business, so in between times, course maybe I forgot to tell you in between times I was still courting your grandmother and we got married. And we seen this house on the corner, of 18th a block away. We bought this house and the barber shop at that time I was working in was kind of going downhill. So there was a little piece of land adjoining the house, so I had the shop built, I think I built it in 50 or 54?

Mrs. Sharp: Yeah.

Mr. Sharp: Early 50s. And it’s been belongin’ to me ever since. And that’s been for about… from 47 to now, so that’s over 60 years. And I have done nothing but cut hair.

Keith: Being that you are African-American black man, was it hard to establish a black-owned business in Des Moines? Did you find any resistance?

Mr. Sharp: Well, it’s like this way… it was easy for me. The reason why it was easy… when I first had the first barber shop, I had… it was easy getting the spot but I had to, the man who owned the place I had to give free hair cuts, free shaves, and all, take care of him of course that was part of paying the rent too. So, no it wasn’t very hard. But it was hard for other people because I was luckier, either chanced just to turn out right for me. So it wasn’t easy, wasn’t hard.

Mrs. Sharp: And when Edna Griffen was taking charge of getting Katz to serve blacks, so we had a lot of racial problems.

Liza: Getting, You said, getting Katz?

Larry (other barber): Katz was a department store. [Editor's note: Katz was a drug store.]

Liza: Katz was a department store! Okay. Getting Katz to serve blacks? Okay.

Mrs. Sharp: Right. Cause you had to sit at the end of the counter and that was a no-no for her. She got.

Larry: K-A-T-Z, Katz.

Mrs. Sharp: Right, right. So therefore, it was an accomplishment for Bill to come out of the shop he was in downtown and get his own place. Now he had a little problems with getting the loans for the building because they didn’t give out loans too much and to our race of people, so grandmother Was it grandmother cosigned?

Mr. Sharp: No, what, what I did, I had some a little equity in the home here and only way I got a loan for to build the barber shop, I had to get a home improvement loan.

Liza: Okay.

Mr. Sharp: They would accept that cause I was putting two rooms onto the house. But they didn’t know I was going to make a barbershop out of it. So that’s how I got the loan.

Liza: So you didn’t have… so to get the loans for the barbershop, you didn’t have to go through the Better Business Bureau or anything like that?

Mr. Sharp: No, I had to was uh…

Mrs. Sharp: Finagle. This was all one big lot where we’re sitting now.

Liza: Right, right. But it was your property. It was your property. ? And you just had room to build on it.?

Mr. and Mrs. Sharp: Yeah.

Mr. Sharp: And only way I could get the loan was a home improvement loan.

Liza: Okay.

Mr. Sharp: For to build two rooms. I didn’t tell them for what. __.

Liza: Okay.

Mr. Sharp: And it went into a barbershop.

Keith: Now Mrs. Sharp, you mentioned that Mr. Sharp had a light complexion or back in the time__ do you think the transition of some of the things like that made it easy for you all to get some things done?

Mrs. Sharp: Truly, I do.

Mr. Sharp: Or, well I experienced it being like…it’s true. It was always prejudice, the lighter you was more trusted I would say that you were, cause all my life I’d been around dark, brown-skinned people. At first I didn’t understand it. If I was going to look for a job, I would get the job. And other, my friends that went with me, they wouldn’t get the job. And I don’t know, by getting the loan, I think they gave a little credit for color when you asked for loans, just like when I got the home improvement loan. Well, I had a good, nice clean record and to them, I guess I seemed like a nice guy. They don’t know what I was doing at night but uh…. So, yes, I have seen it play a part in growing up and like when I was a child, for mixed groups, I was always in the mix but some of my darker friends, they weren’t invited, but I didn’t understand. During that time I just thought I was cute and, and I had something going for me. But, later, I understood color made a difference during them days.

Keith: Hmm.

Mrs. Sharp: In Kansas, where I grew up, they had blue veins clubs.

Liza: Blue veins? So you had to be…able to see, to see the veins

Mrs. Sharp: Never heard of ‘em have ya?__.

Keith: No, could you explain?

Mrs. Sharp: If you were light enough that your veins __.

Liza: You could see the veins. Wow.

Mrs. Sharp: Couldn’t belong to it unless you had blue veins.

Liza: Wow.

Keith: So do you think you’re experience in working in an all white barber shop and working in an all black barbershop helped you perfect your business here to make sure you could cater to any customer that walked in?

Mr. Sharp: Yes, I’d say yes, to that because you’re goin’ to know all kinds of people. You learn to know different races’ faults. And you gotta be careful with different races that you say the right thing to get along – be friends. And so that’s what that would be, very big __ yes. It helped me because it gave me knowledge and a lot of times I think with us, bein’ black, we wanted everybody to think like us, like we are, our race but I found out you gotta kinda swing it around like you think like everybody, even by the privileged, to their opinion and try and understand it and you get along better. So, I learned a lot.

Mrs. Sharp: Can I inject this? After he moved in here from.. it was just a block away where he had his first shop that he owned and it was practically all white area in there. You didn’t have as many white customers there as you do on this spot.

Mr. Sharp: Yeah. Makes a difference.

Mrs. Sharp: Just one block.

Liza: Oh wow, so you’re saying just the location changed?

Mr. Sharp: Well..

Mrs. Sharp: I think that’s A mixture of White and black.

Mr. Sharp: Well, I think it was because of brand-new building, from the ground up and it’s progressive and people notice that. But the first building I had, I can tell you right now it was run down and getting saggy cause I just getting started.

Liza: Yeah.

Mr. Sharp: And, so, people kinda judge what they see, they think good of it that you are trying, so to the public you’re trying.

Liza: So, in the 60 something years that you’ve been barbering in this shop, you had some pretty predominant people come in? Or prominent, excuse me, prominent people come in? Who have you… whose hair have you cut that you would think would be notable?

Mr. Sharp: Well, Judge Galantin was one and he was the first black judge in Des Moines. Lawyers, Bob Wright, Archie Greenlee, oh, there was quite a few, even the singer, Estes, uh, Solomon…

Liza: Simon, Simon Estes

Mr. Sharp: Simon, Simon. Uhh, well that’s a hard question, cause there’s been so many.

Liza: It’s been so long. It’s been so long.

Mr. Sharp: There’s been so many and the thing about it most of the Drake players used to come here, like Dolph Pullium, oh I don’t know,…Marion Weems. I have had just over and over just tons of people that were prominent in my sight. I don’t know, it’s quite a few.

Liza: Okay.

Keith: In that you’ve had such a diverse celebrity type people come to the shop. What things have you done to keep loyal customers or to keep people coming back to your shop?

Mr. Sharp: What have I done?

Keith: Yeah.

Mr. Sharp: You mean for social?

Keith: Social or business practice or, like, what are some… I guess practices that you live by or some basic standards in the way you run, operate, your business?

Mr. Sharp: Well, most things I did was try to be friendly and tried to keep a clean shop. Tried not to use bad language. I don’t know, I tried to put myself on the fair stone, too just like an organization I worked up out to be potentate of the city, in the shrinery in Des Moines. And in the Masons, worked up to be master of the lodges and always tried to go to church but I haven’t worked up to far at that other than being an usher.

Liza: That’s okay.

Keith: Somebody gotta hold the doors of the house of the Lord.

Liza: Yeah!

Mr. Sharp: You have to be seen in public to upgrade yourself. Is that…Am I…Did I get it clear? What have I done? And try to work with children in helping them and whatever advice you can give to them.

Liza: I’m sure you’ve given a lot of advice thtoughout your day, children sittin in your chair, talking ‘em, talking to them.

Mr. Sharp: You are so right.

Liza: I’m sure.

Mr. Sharp: And so luckily, trying to be a good fella and thinking right, I think this is what some of the public notices.

Keith: What is the most important thing about being a business owner?

Mr. Sharp: Most important thing? Boy, that’s a good one. You can do as you want, I mean, you have to go by the rules of your business, but it gives you a privilege to figure that you accomplished something, you know, other than being a doctor, lawyer, which I didn’t try to be one of those, but you have to accomplish something in life and of all my children, I tried to spread the word to them, if you got… just selling pencils, you know on the corner, being in business for yourself, in my mind is number 1. I don’t know if I got it across to all of them, but. All of them are doing successfully well. My oldest boy, Jake, he is what you call, What do you call them?

Mrs. Sharp: A consultant in Africa.

Mr. Sharp: consultant and he flies from here to Africa about every 2 months, so then the next boy, he was an engineer. He is an engineer and he was over in Britain, which he was…

Liza: Working for Boeing. Wasn’t he?

Mr. Sharp: Well he was, he had 5 different companies for Boeing in the engineering class, he stayed over there for what? about 8 years?.

Mrs. Sharp: Mm-hum

Liza: And then he moved to Belgium, didn’t he?

Mr. Sharp: He moved to Belgium and then the other grandchild…I meant, grandchild, my last one which is Larry, he went to Bell Telephone Company and he worked up to a position I don’t know what it’s called but he’s at Bell Telephone.

Liza: Bell South? It used to be Bell South, now it’s …

Larry: USWest now it’s Qwest.

Liza: Then it was USWest, now it’s Qwest. So it’s changed names quite a few times.

Mr. Sharp: But what I’m sayin in short, I don’t remember everything but three-fourths of my kids, they all been successful people and things, they have endeavored in so I think it did a little good…

Liza: Now, Larry, your youngest son, is he the only one that took up barbering?

Mr. Sharp: Larry is the only one who, that taken up barbering.

Keith: Did you mentor him or did he just come into the fold on his own?

Mr. Sharp: How’s that?

Keith: Did you mentor him or did he just come into the fold on his own?

Mr. Sharp: Well, I tried to get all of them to get into the barbering but I got better, Larry was the closest one to me being the baby. The older ones say I spoiled him because he was the last one.

Larry: I agree with that!

Mr. Sharp: So, he kinda fell more in love with dad who was trying to say get in the barber business. __.

Larry: Yeah, he spoiled me, he mentored me, been a, always been a mentor for me. I went to the same barber college that he did, Iowa school of Barbering and Hairstyling. I’ve been at this for 27 years myself. But I learned a lot from my dad over here. Not just barbering, just a lot __ .

Mr. Sharp: But he’s the only one that accepted barbering. So, I’m pretty proud of my boys and my girls. Cause ah, my, My oldest daughter, she’s a principal in Oklahoma at, where I was telling you before and my other daughter, she’s working, Where’s she work?

Mrs. Sharp: She was a dispatcher for the uh, like an electric company in Los Angeles.

Mr. Sharp: You wanna know what hard times though, there was a lot of hard times as a kid growin up, cause like I said we’re from the southeast bottoms that’s the poorest, poorest side of town in Des Moines. During them days it was so cold, you only had a big pot-bellied stove to heat, you didn’t have those push button things that turn the heart off and on. If it wasn’t for that stove, you’d freeze. And being poor, you had to sleep in your clothes at night to stay warm, cause you didn’t have heat going in all the rooms. And looking for jobs, see I was, and my wife, born in the 20s, that was during the depression times and those days a nickel and a penny was a lot of money. Down in Des Moines, I speak for myself, us kids had to gather junk like iron, copper…He probably, he heard us talking about it, copper, and rags and they had whatchacallit, junk, junk business and you take it to take them to your little junk houses and get a nickel, dime and a quarter. But actually you gotta have some fire in your blood if you wanna get ahead. Just like my wife growin’ up, there were certain places we couldn’t eat. If we did, we had to go to the backdoor, like they do down south, to get a sandwich. And I’m sorry, slurring up the south.

off camera: Sorry but it’s true.

Mr. Sharp: a sandwich or something and carry it out in a napkin you eat while you goin from the restaurant. There wasn’t no sittin down in there, you take it to go. But Des Moines has really growed a whole lot in my lifetime. I guess my kids, they grew up almost like rich kids because, like I said, I was well blessed, lucky. I didn’t know what I was doin half the time, but I was lucky. But things just went my way. I was very fortunate. And all my kids, they came up in pretty good shape.

Liza: How has church played a role in your life? You said you tried to do right by the Lord and go to church and what not and you were an usher, so…

Keith: About to cut out.

Keith: So as your granddaughter was asking before we cut. So you say you are a man of faith. How has church affected you and how did it dictate how you ran or organized your business?

Mr. Sharp: Well, it all started when I was a kid, during, in my younger days as a child. My grandmother, she was dedicated to church. So, my grandmother raised me. So, she would always take us to church. Church at that time was more fun when I was a kid then it is now, mainly because I didn’t understand the seriousness if it. Cause churches used to have baseball games, kiddie rides, well a lot of lemonade, you know, a cookie. This was a fun thing. Of course you had to learn your foundation of church, too, which I think everyone when you’re growing up you build as a kid kind of stays with you. But, you say how did the church help me with my business? I think it gave me personality and how to get along with people and try to… if you got something to say if you ain’t got nothing…if you don’t have nothing good to say don’t say nothing at all. That’s what I learned in church, and I’m still that way. So, I think I got me a bunch of things to be so successful for sixty years.

Keith: Had to be something right, that’s for sure! Well, we’ve seen that the technology of the camera that has helped us in this interview, what are some technology things that have changed from when you first started being a barber ’til now? Or what are some things you’ve seen change around here?

Mr. Sharp: I don’t understand what he wants.

Mrs. Sharp: Technology

Keith: Or, right, I know now there’s electric clippers that you could ___ but back in the day they had straight razors, things like that or even like the shaving cream concoctions, things like that. Has any of that changed over the years or is it still…?

Mr. Sharp: Oh I gotcha now. I would say, yes it has changed. Cause we used to, when I first stared we had a old brush and a cup and a razor strap. You really worked harder to keep a sharp edge on your razor because them were the big pride. Other than, I think things changed to be more modern. Oh, well we had hand clippers but nobody used them. But we always had electric clippers in the last sixty years to my knowledge. So, nothing has changed too much, other than your razor. They started making razors that technology, much sharper from factories than you could get ’em by honing a razor down, so forth. So, nothing has changed but the razor. That’s about the only thing. Clippers same, hair cutting the same and knowledge of what you are doing. So it hasn’t changed too much. What do you think, Glen?

Glen: No, I never, I’ve seen pictures of the old clippers, where they were like manual clippers…

Mr. Sharp: We never used them.

Glen: They worked liked scissors but they were actually a couple blades on them. I’ve never actually seen them.

Liza: Oh, I know what you mean. The blades would go…

Glen: That’s right. Actually before they had electric, they had those a long time ago.

Liza: That’d be weird, but I’ve seen them before in pictures. That’d be weird.

Glen: Yeah. That’s probably even before your time.

Mr. Sharp: Yeah, that was before my time we always had electric. So, the only change for me was the razor. You don’t see straps no more.

Liza: Yeah, grandpa used to have the straps hanging off his chair.

Mr. Sharp: And they used to give them all massages in the olden days, like facials and so forth. They don’t do that no more either.

Mrs. Sharp: Well the women taken over for that.

Mr. Sharp: Well they sure have.

Mrs. Sharp: I’m sorry___ this is his show.

Mr. Sharp: The young girls man want a man massage them for more than _____.

Keith: That’s true. In closing, Liza’s told us that you all were king and queen of Juneteenth recently. Could you tell us what year, and what that was for, and what that was like for you all?

Mrs. Sharp: It was quite a surprise that we were asked. And it was…..

Mr. Sharp: Well it was…

Mrs. Sharp: This is…Let’s see this is 2-o-8…must have been 2-o-5.

Mr. Sharp: 2-o-5.

Liza: Two thousand five?

Mr. and Mrs. Sharp: Uh hmm.

Mrs. Sharp: And we had been married 51 years. And you have to be married 35 years or more, to the same person. Everybody has their ups and downs, but we made it.

Mr. Sharp: Getting to Juneteenth Day, it was interesting to know that a lot of people in this country didn’t know when slavery was demolished. And I tell ya, Texas was the

Keith: was the last state.

Mr. Sharp: was the last one.

Keith: I know that one.

Mr. Sharp: You know that one, business.

Keith: Yes, sir.

Mr. Sharp: Well so that’s how the celebration got started. And so it started in the South more so because they was more conscious of it and finally it worked its way up to Iowa and around the Northern States. A lot of people in the north didn’t know, they didn’t know too much about slavery at all. They were against slavery, unconsciously, but they were fooled by, I don’t know, different signs were, I guess it was people just preaching that we are free but they weren’t cause like I said, the jobs during them days, the time I was coming up, if you didn’t have a good education, the only job you could get was being a houseman in the hotel, the cook, cause cooks make good money, it was a good job, a well, truck driver, it was the small, a street sweeper, smaller jobs. Cause during them days when I was coming up, very few black school teachers. They had most the black schoolteachers in the South where they had more all black schools, so forth. In fact some of our graduates from Des Moines had to go south to get a job teaching school then they would come back up here. So, but uh, getting back to Juneteenth Day, it’s really good that we are proud of our history and we’re doing something about it and let it be known. And that’s where my wife and I had the privilege of parading around town as the king and queen.

Mrs. Sharp: I’m going to interject. It’s quite a day. They have different booths at Evelyn Davis Park, and it’s an all day affair and a lot of good socializing, a lot of food, and everybody seems to just have a good time. It’s a community thing. And it’s…

Mr. Sharp: treats and everything else.

Mrs. Sharp: Oh! And the Icerettes, they’re a…

Liza: Marching band.

Mrs. Sharp: Marching band.

Mr. Sharp: Marching band.

Liza: Were you guys nominated to be king and queen…?

Mrs. Sharp: Yes.

Liza: Or did you nominate yourselves? Or, how did you get…?

Mrs. Sharp: No, we were nominated. And they have a committee that meets and, the number of votes, the highest…

Mr. Sharp: You have to be voted in,

Mrs. Sharp: So we were voted in…

Mr. Sharp: You have to have a good reputation…and you have to have so many years of being in your community and social life doing good. And this is what gets you to be king and queen. So we just barely made it.

Mrs. Sharp: And we belong to the Maple Street Baptist Church and for the next two couples, they were from the Maple Street Church…

Liza: To the same church…

Mrs. Sharp: So they got to remarking at some of the committees there’s something going on-Maple Street’s getting it.

Liza: Maple Street’s popping up some good people then.

Mrs. Sharp: Yeah. We do have a lot of young students in Maple Street.

Liza: Yeah, Ok.

Keith: OK, Mr. and Mrs. Bill Sharp, we appreciate you sitting down and talking to us this evening. It has been wonderful.

Liza: Yeah, thanks for talking to us.

Keith: We appreciate it.

Mr. Sharp: Well, I hope you got some good out of it, out of what we was saying. And I hope, if you was looking for a whole lot of hard times, _____ Des Moines been good to me, what I’m saying. But I do have a lot of friends who really do, did have a hard time. I don’t know if it was my personality; I don’t know if it was my color; I don’t know what it is, but I know I’ve been blessed. So that’s about the best I can say.

Keith: Can’t sum it up any better.

Liza: Enough said, enough said. Thank you!