Evelyn O. Brown
On this stroll you will hear about the
famous and the prominent features of the African American influence
on this area. I am not famous and I am not prominent. My name is
Evelyn Brown and I am one of the first generations of my family born
in the north. I was born in Buffalo during the 1930s. Both my
parents were born in Mississippi and several members of their
families came to northern states during the Great Migration -- this
was a period when African Americans moved from the South to the North
for better opportunities for them and their children . The were
following the great American dream just as European immigrants did
went they made it to Ellis Island.
This area had been home to
African Americans since the early 1800s. I was a toddler when the Jessie Clipper Monument was
established by the Common Council in 1935.
It’s right over there on the corner William Street and Michigan
Avenue. Private Clipper was the first Negro soldier from Buffalo to
die in World War I. The monument stands in
memory of the valiant service of Negroes in all wars . . . take a
moment to visit it.
The Buffalo I grew up in was a
segregated city. I grew up in this area in the 1930s and 1940s and I
remember when it was a thriving community. And more than that, it
was a neighborhood. Children would walk to school together and then
back home again at the end of the day. After we did our homework,
had dinner, and did our chores, we got to play outside for a while.
The boys would play games like stick-ball or marbles. The girls
would play games like hopscotch or jump rope. We would play to
sing-song rhymes like “Ring-Around the Rosie” and “Miss Mary
Mack”.
Right along this area and down William
Street there were drug stores, restaurants, candy stores, cleaners,
hotels, nightclubs, funeral parlors. We didn’t have to leave the
community for anything. We certainly need to go downtown; of course
most of the stores downtown didn’t want Negroes in them anyway
unless we were the cleaning staff. That’s pretty much how I ended
up working at the Michigan Avenue YMCA. I had a secretarial diploma
from high school. My typing, shorthand and general clerical skills
were very good -- I was at the top of my class; but Negroes weren’t
hired to work the front offices of the white businesses and
companies.
Did you know that the Michigan Avenue
YMCA was designed by a Black man? His name was John Brent. The Y
had an important place in our community -- it was a gathering place,
a communal place. It had a cafeteria, gym, swimming pool, barber
shop, tailor shop, library; and classrooms, locker rooms, dormitory
rooms, and billiard tables. I started going to the Y in high school.
Several of my friends and I were members of a girls Hi-Y club. One
of my fondest memories was a powerful little woman named Mary
Chapelle, who taught us deportment classes -- that is, how to be a
lady. There were also similar classes for boys and young men on how
to be a responsible members of the community.
The media did not
report our news -- for that we relied on Ebony and Jet magazines.
For local news and events we had the Buffalo Star and later the
Merriweather family published The Criterion.
So as I said in the beginning,
I am not prominent in Buffalos’ Black history and I’m not famous.
The Michigan corridor IS important to Buffalo’s Black history and
it was important in my life. I met my husband, Willis B. Williams, at the Michigan Avenue Y and we dated along the Michigan Avenue corridor. We were married almost 60 years until he made his transition in 2011.
My name is Sandra Williams Bush and this is the story of my mother, Evelyn O. Brown.
When I got home later I had two messages from a dna cousin on my mom's side; a branch that she doesn't really know about. The Stamps family from Mississippi. Ancestors calling my name . . .
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| Sandra Williams Bush |
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| Tradition Keepers: Black Storytellers of WNY |
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