Malcom Slaughter

Malcolm Slaughter Transcript
Interview by Mark Locker, Mike Meyers, and Tim
Date: October 23rd, 2010
Time: 73:50
Also Present: Arlie Sommer, Unknown

0:00:29.0

MALCOLM SLAUGHTER: Hello, name is Malcolm Slaughter. I’m here for the Eliot Oral History Project. Today is October 23, 2010.

ARLIE SOMMER: Tim, do you want to introduce yourself into the microphone?

LOCKER: My name is Tim [inaudible] and I, uh, work at Port City Development Center. Um, I do fabric work and things like that.

SOMMER: Okay, Mark?

LOCKER: My name is Mark Locker, and I work at Port City Development Center in the neighborhood, and today is October 23, 2010 and I’m just here to hear about the Eliot neighborhood project.

SOMMER: Well, um, I guess do you want to do some quick introductions before we start asking questions, of yourself and your relationship to the community?

0:02:01.0

SLAUGHTER: Okay, yes. Um, my family moved here in approximately June of 1939. I was born in Bakersfield, CA. My uncle was here before—well, my uncle, my mother’s brother. My mother’s name is Bernice Slaughter. My uncle was Theodore McDonald, and he was here-- had moved here before my family did, and he told my father and mother that this was a good place to live, so… they migrated up here. Like I said, I was born in Bakersfield, CA, that’s where they lived at that time, and they told them—well, the doctor wouldn’t allow me to travel until I was six weeks old so I came up here when I was six weeks old. I lived—um, I’m not sure where my family lived when they first got here, but the first place is remember is I lived in an apartment house around the corner here on Rodney. It was 2028 NE Rodney, and that’s like a block away from here. I lived there from the time—like I said, I was six weeks—I don’t know how old I was when I moved into that apartment, but anyway—I lived there until I was ten years old, and at that point we moved up to the 4400 block on Williams Avenue.

0:03:55.06

SLAUGHTER: My father was, uh—originally when he came here he worked on the railroad. My uncle worked on the railroad. He worked, he was a—my father was— a Pullman car waiter, I guess. Well, I’m not sure exactly but I know he worked in the kitchen. He was a waiter, and he worked on the railroad, and then later on he went to work in the shipyard. And at that time, the shipyard, well—at that time, when he went to work at the shipyard, and that was after the beginning of the second world war, the Kaiser shipyards were some of the biggest—I think the biggest shipyards in the country, and many people were imported here from the South to work in the shipyards. That’s where the black community—many who lived in Vanport, moved—came up from the South to work here.

Like I said, my father worked at the shipyard. He was a painter in the shipyard, and he was a union organizer when he worked there. He wasn’t too popular with the management because of his union organizing, and he later—he opened up a pool hall on Williams, down at the 1500 block on Williams. It was across the street from where the Madrona detox center is down here. At that time—and I have some pictures; I brought a book. It’s called Jumptown: Portland Jazz from 1942 to 1957, and it’s got—in fact, it has a whole chapter about my father and his pool hall.

0:06:18.0

SLAUGHTER: And anyway, like I said I grew up in this neighborhood. There was a store right across the street on the corner there on, um, I guess it’s Tillamook and Williams. It was Bill’s—neighborhood—we called him Neighborhood Bill, and, like I was telling Laurie, there was a dog there called Butch. Butch was a—I think he was part Chow. He was a big dog though, and anybody that came into the—over to Neighborhood Bill’s—Butch would examine everybody that came into the store, and if you brought a dog with you [laughing] it was bad news [laughing], because Butch was a—he was a fighter. So, anyway, that was where we went to get—we’d just buy candy and ice cream there.

0:07:24.0

SLAUGHTER: And at that time on Williams there was a bus. There was an electric bus that run on Williams. It was one of the nice—well, as far as the Portland Transit Company was concerned, it was one of the nicest buses. They were big and kind of wide; they had soft seats, and one of the things I did when I was a kid was we’d ride to the end of the line on the buses, and we had a bus here on Williams. They had a—I think streetcars-- on Broadway that ran downtown, and you could get on any of the buses and I’d—we’d go to Council Crest, we’d go downtown and get transfers, and go—they had a—it was almost like a—it wasn’t a cable car, but it was like the streetcars that ran up on Council Crest, there was a lot of hills, and we’d go up there and we’d go to Washington Park, which was a zoo, and we’d go to the zoo.

0:08:35.0

SLAUGHTER: I remember one particular time when we went to the zoo and there was a—they had a pit up there with garter snakes in it, and there was, like, it was during the spring, and the garter snakes were—they were being born, you know—garter snakes are born alive—and there was balls of little baby garter snakes, so I put ‘em in my pocket. I got two pocketfuls of garter snakes. And, so, we were riding back home on the streetcar—I can’t remember what streetcar it was—but, we were in the back of the streetcar and I took all these snakes out of my pocket and released them on the streetcar, and we got off, and we watched the streetcar, and it went about two blocks and stopped, and everybody got off. And so that was [laughing]—that was one of the adventures.

0:09:40.0

SLAUGHTER: Let’s see, in this neighborhood we also had, like, on—on Russell, there was a ‘Y’, and I can’t remember who worked there, but we used to go to the ‘Y’, and there was some workers there—they’d take us up to Forest Park, and we’d go on hikes in Forest Park. There wasn’t a lot of houses up there then, but Forest Park was a real—I mean, it was the biggest—well, I guess it still is the biggest park inside of a city in the United States.

0:10:32.0

SLAUGHTER: Um, we, um—well also, I went to—I guess the first school that I went to was on Knott Street. It was Eliot School—the original Eliot School, which closed in 1945. I think I went to the first—I don’t know if I went to the second grade there, but I went to the first grade at Eliot School, and then I transferred to Holladay. Holladay School was over where the—where the Lloyd Center is now. There was a grade school there, and the Lloyd Center was all vacant lots. I guess Lloyd bought that property over there and there was a lot of old housing there that he tore down. There was a golf course over there—Lloyd’s golf course. There was—where I-84—that was Sullivan’s Gulch, and…

0:11:26.0

SOMMER: Could we, uh—break to ask some questions?

SLAUGHTER: I guess so, if you want to. [Laughing] I could go on.

SOMMER: Oh, we would love to hear it.

SLAUGHTER: Okay.

SOMMER: So, do you guys have some questions so far from what he said? Um, he talked about the pool hall, he talked about Williams Avenue growing up here, and the differences, how it’s changed…

LOCKER: Was the Silk Hat still around when you grew up?

SLAUGHTER: Yeah. Silk Hat was later, you know, than the period I’m talking about.

LOCKER: Oh.

0:12:01.0

SLAUGHTER: Okay? Okay, until my—when the Coliseum was built, which was—I think that was in 1956—no, it was—wait a minute—it was before 1960. Anyway, before they built the Coliseum, the black neighborhood was where the Coliseum is now, and there was no blacks living any further north than Russell, or anybody livin’—there was a tavern right on the corner of Russell and Williams, then like I said all that area—like, Russell was the dividing line. You can go—if you went further North, it was all white, and so—go ahead. You have a question?

LOCKER: I was waving at somebody outside. [laughing]

SLAUGHTER: Oh, okay. I thought you were waving at me. Okay.

SOMMER: Tim, did you live in this area when you were growing up? Do you…

LOCKER: No, I live in Gladstone now. I live towards Oregon City and Gladstone and stuff like that…

SOMMER: Oh. Well Malcom was saying that—it sounds like this street was a lot different..

LOCKER: Yeah.

SLAUGHTER: Oh yeah.

SOMMER: … than it is now.

0:13:32.0

SLAUGHTER: Well, and this—okay, Williams Avenue was—notorious, kind of. It was like—well, I mean it was—notorious, you know. There was gambling houses. There was the—well, the Dude Ranch, which was a night club. There was—they call it the Frat House. There was—um—oh hell, I can’t think of the name of it, let’s see, I can’t remember it. Let’s see, it was—the Keystone. yeah, the Keystone was the one I remember. The Keystone was right across the street from my father’s pool hall, and I could stand on the sidewalk in front of the Keystone and there was dice tables and card tables in there. My father had card tables in the pool hall, but the Keystone was like Las Vegas, and gambling was not legal in Portland, but [laughing] it was legal on Williams Avenue, and they—pretty much the mobsters, like, controlled the businesses, and my dad was like a—he was like a rebel. He was like—my father had a—when he had the pool hall. He had his own cigarette machine. He had his own jukebox. All the other businesses—all the jukeboxes and cigarette machines were controlled by the gangsters, so—and I’m not sure exactly what his relationship was with them, but they didn’t bother him.

0:15:30.0

SLAUGHTER: Like I said, my father was a pretty formidable person. He was very political. He was—you know, like I said, he was a union organizer. He was—intellectually he was a pretty sophisticated person. The only reason he didn’t go any further in his education was because all the—well, all the lawyers, the engineers, even some of the—well, Dr. Unthank, he was exercising his profession, but the other professional people were working on the railroad. They were—up ‘til, let’s say 1960 was when people really—professional black people could get jobs. Like working at Boneville Power—there was a man that lived in the building where we were. His name was Gaskin. He worked at—he was an engineer with Bonneville, but he couldn’t get a job there until—until after the second world war, so…

0:16:57.0

SOMMER: Mark could you ask him to describe the pool hall?

LOCKER: How was the pool hall? How’d you describe it?

SLAUGHTER: The pool hall had four pool tables in it. It had a card table in the back. You could play poker… and that was the way my father made—he made—he loaned money to people—short-term loans, you know. He was like a shylock, you know. He also, um, he was—well, like I said, he was a very political person. He liked to talk to people. He liked... a lot of kids looked up to him.

0:18:03.0

SLAUGHTER: I don’t know. I got—oh yeah. His other—well, he sold cigars. He was a—my dad loved cigars. He loved Cuban cigars. And at that time that was one of the few places on Williams Avenue that you could get a decent cigar. So uh, I don’t know, he had—the ones I really remember were the Berings. They were a dollar, which was a lot of money then. I’m talking like, 1950, ’51, ’52, ’53.

LOCKER: That’s a long time.

SLAUGHTER: That was a while ago.

LOCKER: That’s a long time.

0:18:46.0

SLAUGHTER: [Laughing] Okay—and the other thing is, I was going to Holladay grade school in 1948 when the Vanport flood happened, and after the Vanport flood, they—many people—there was people living in the gym at the school. That changed the whole neighborhood a lot, because there was a influx of people from Vanport—particularly black people is what I’m talking about, and like I said the black community was pretty much separate from the white community here in Portland.

0:19:26.0

SLAUGHTER: The other thing I was going to say was that on Knott and Union was a theater—the Egyptian Theater.

MEYERS: Yep, I remember that.

SLAUGHTER: Yeah. Well, the first time I went to the Egyptian Theater, we had to sit in the balcony. It was segregated at that time.

MEYERS: [inaudible] What was it, like 5 cents a movie? 5 cent popcorns, Cokes 5 cent. But now a movie’s like, what, 3 or 4 dollars now for a movie?

SLAUGHTER: Right. But, you know, like my impression was, to me, that I had to sit in this glassed-off area of the balcony. We weren’t—you couldn’t sit in the theater with the white people.

MEYERS: Why?

SLAUGHTER: It’s called segregation. Portland before 1950 was totally segregated. You couldn’t go to—my parents couldn’t go downtown to a restaurant, you know. My parents would go downtown, and they were both from New Mexico. They’d speak Spanish to each other, and they could go in restaurants, but if they thought you were American blacks, you could not go in restaurants.

MEYERS: That’s not fair. That’s not right. They’re prejudiced, man, they’re prejudiced. People back in them days were prejudiced, man.

SLAUGHTER: And they still are, but it’s not as blatant now as it was then. I’m just telling you about my experience of the world.

MEYERS: Right.

SLAUGHTER: And, I mean I lived in a—I grew up in a segregated world. In Portland, and a lot of people don’t know about it, the first black man that married a white woman—it was in 1950-

MEYERS: Right.

SLAUGHTER: When they changed the law.

MEYERS: Okay.

SLAUGHTER: It was against the law.

0:21:37.0

SLAUGHTER: There was neighborhoods, like a said, there was a—well, when they opened the first black business on Russell—it was a man—his name was Paul Stewart…

MEYERS: Right.

SLAUGHTER: … and he was a black man, but he looked like a white man, and he was married to a black woman. He rented a space up there between Vancouver and Williams on Russell, and he opened up a—I think it was at first a pool hall, and his wife was working in there, and the landlord came to him when wife was working in there, and he said ‘There’s some black women working in your business,’ you know, and it was like—it was something that was not happening, you know. It was not acceptable.

0:22:32.0

MEYERS: Now can I ask you a question?

SLAUGHTER: Okay.

MEYERS: How about the jazz?

SLAUGHTER: The jazz?

MEYERS: You said there was jazz in the Williams Street night clubs.

SLAUGHTER: Oh, all up and down Williams Avenue, yeah.

MEYERS: Now, what happened to it? Now look at it. Look at the businesses around now. What happened to all the night clubs? Where they all went to?

SLAUGHTER: Well, they built a coliseum, to start with…

MEYERS: Right.

SLAUGHTER: … and that was the end of all the businesses from—well, from Broadway south to the Steel Bridge and from Williams west to the river. All those businesses disappeared. I mean, that became the Coliseum.

MEYERS: Woah.

SLAUGHTER: And so they all had to move—my father had to move his pool hall. He moved it up to Russell…

MEYERS: Right.

SLAUGHTER: … and that was—like I said, that was around 1960. So, at that time, he—the businesses after the Coliseum, they opened up—well they had to let black people move somewhere.

MEYERS: Right.

SLAUGHTER: So, it was, we moved—in 1950 we moved from where we were around the corner here on Rodney. We moved up to Williams and Prescott.

MEYERS: Right.

0:24:02.0

SLAUGHTER: Okay. And I went to Highland grade school when I moved up there, and it was me and, I think one other black kid in the whole school. And so, that was—like I said, that was 1950. And so, I transferred. I went to Highland one year, and then I transferred to Boise-

MEYERS: Right.

SLAUGHTER: Which was on Russell—not Russell, Fremont. Fremont—that area was predominantly black-

MEYERS: Right.

SLAUGHTER: Then. You know, up to, like I said, up to, um-

MEYERS: Yeah, yeah.

SLAUGHTER: Um, let’s see, up to Fremont, yeah. There was some-- there was a—predominantly for black is—that’s a relative term in Oregon—in Portland. [laughing]. We’re talking 10 percent. That’s a predominantly black school [laughing] at that time, you know.

0:25:09.0

MEYERS: You know a guy named Curly?

SLAUGHTER: Curly. Curly Massey?

MEYERS: In a wheelchair? Black guy?

SLAUGHTER: Uh huh, yeah. Yeah, he used to hang out...

MEYERS: 22nd and Alberta? By the corner? Yeah, I used to live right around the corner on at the little store there.

SLAUGHTER: Oh okay.

MEYERS: When I came to Portland, and…

SLAUGHTER: What year did you come to Portland?

MEYERS: I came to Portland in ’76.

SLAUGHTER: ’76, yeah.

MEYERS: And I met him and then I started working with him almost every summer I worked with him, almost every day. He drives that big—a big black Cadillac. You know [laughing]?

SLAUGHTER: Yeah.

MEYERS: Yeah, he—he’s okay, but his wife is a little crazy.

BOTH: [Laughing].

MEYERS: And there was a—right across the street—a black and white night club.

SLAUGHTER: On…?

MEYERS: Alberta. Right there on 42nd and Alberta.

SLAUGHTER: 42nd and Alberta. Okay, yeah. I’m familiar with that. And—I don’t know—I’m not sure what else to talk about or what areas…

0:26:16.0

SOMMER: Do you remember any of your teachers at Boise Eliot?

SLAUGHTER: At Boise Eliot? Yeah. There were—well l remember Mr. Vickers, was—well, I remember, and I know like in the Portland teachers—he was a black teacher at Boise. I was in the 6th and 7th grade with him, and I had a run in with him. It’s funny. He lived—he lived on Vancouver and—wait, no, no. That’s not him. That’s another teacher. Anyway, Mr. Vickers, he taught 6th and 7th grade, and I was in 6th grade with him, and I wouldn’t do my homework, and I could pass all the tests, so he told me if I didn’t do my homework that he was gonna flunk me, so—and I told him—well, he said I was in danger of flunking. And I told him, ‘Well, you can’t flunk me,’ because I [laughing]—I was acin’ all the tests, so for what—you know, how could you flunk me, you know? And Mr. Vickers went and talked to my father, and he flunked me. And so—but we were in, like I said, we were in a 6th and 7th grade class, so that was my—one of my—I was pretty a shy person up to then, you know. That was—I was in a rebellious mode then. Obviously.

0:28:05.0

MEYERS: What high school did you go to?

SLAUGHTER: Jefferson. Yeah. And I graduated from Jefferson in 1957.

MEYERS: Another Jefferson person.

SLAUGHTER: Hmm?

MEYERS: You had to bring another Jefferson person in.

SLAUGHTER: Uh huh! [laughing]

MEYERS: Another Jefferson person! Every time you bring people in they’re always from Jefferson High School. They’re always from Jefferson!

SLAUGHTER: Well, what school did you go to?

MEYERS: Grant.

SLAUGHTER: Oh, okay.

MEYERS: Big rivalry right there in football and basketball: Jefferson and Grant.

SLAUGHTER: Right. Yeah. Well, Jefferson had the best high school football team in the country in 1958.

MEYERS: Yeah, that’s right.

SLAUGHTER: Yeah, they had a-

MEYERS: They had a good football team back in the day but they didn’t have a good basketball team in 1960, until Grant came in!

BOTH: [Laughing]

SLAUGHTER: Well, lately they have.

BOTH: [Laughing]

SLAUGHTER: Anyway, what was I talking about? Oh, they had Mel Renfro and Terry Baker, yeah. Terry Baker won the Heisman trophy at University of Oregon, and…

0:29:21.0

MEYERS: Are you a Ducks fan?

SLAUGHTER: Huh? Of course.

MEYERS: Oh, man! Why do I always bring the Ducks up? I’m not a Ducks fan. I don’t care. I’m not a Ducks fan.

SLAUGHTER: Well, my wife went to Oregon State, so I live in a split house.

BOTH: [Laughing]

MEYERS: Well, I went to—I was from Arizona. Phoenix, Arizona’s my home town. And I’m a ASU and a Cardinals fan and a Diamondbacks fan, Phoenix Suns fan, Arizona Wildcats fan. I am not a Ducks fan and you will not catch me wearing a Ducks hat or a Ducks shirt. If someone gave me a Ducks shirt I would burn it.

SOMMER: Okay, back to the neighborhood.

BOTH: [Laughing]

MEYERS: I was burnin’…

SLAUGHTER: Okay, I went to the University of New Mexico.

MEYERS: Hey, cool! I have a cousin that went there.

SLAUGHTER: Uh huh, El Lobo. Okay, alright, but that’s where my parents—my parents were from New Mexico before they got here. So anyway, back to the neighborhood.

0:30:28.0

SOMMER: Could you talk about your mother more, maybe? Do you want to talk about your mother: what she did, and maybe how she dressed?

SLAUGHTER: Okay, well my mother was—she worked at the shipyard when my father worked there. I was trying to think—I can’t—I think she was, like, they had people that went around and—the women were pretty much segregated. There weren’t any women painters or anything, and you know, I mean, they show—I was trying to think—they show in some of those ads where they’re selling bonds, you know, women doing supposedly men’s jobs, but there was still a lot of discrimination against women. But the women at the shipyard earned a lot more money than they did as housekeepers and other things—you know, traditional jobs for black women. I know my—well, see, my brother was born in 1950, and that was somewhat of a conflict in our household. My father always thought that my mother got pregnant because she didn’t want to go to work, you know. He wanted her to work. [laughing]

0:31:55.0

MEYERS: What did your dad do?

SLAUGHTER: He had a pool hall.

MEYERS: Was it a good pool hall?

SLAUGHTER: Yeah. My father had—well, if you read this book here, Jumptown, there’s a whole chapter about my father-

MEYERS: Cool.

SLAUGHTER: And he had a juke box in his pool hall, that uh, he bought. And he—well, my dad was a jazz fanatic.

MEYERS: Cool.

SLAUGHTER: You know, fanatic—I mean, I’m talkin’ Dizzy Gillespe. I’m talkin’ Miles Davis. I’m talkin’-

MEYERS: The good stuff.

SLAUGHTER: The bebop.

MEYERS: The bebop. The good stuff.

SLAUGHTER: Yeah. You know. And my uncle, his older brother, was a musician, and he played with Charlie Parker.

MEYERS: Cool.

SLAUGHTER: So that’s how my father got into jazz, and when he opened up his pool hall he had his own jukebox, and he would buy records from New York. He’s—my dad was an avid reader. He would go-- after the pool hall closed he would go downtown to Rich’s. Rich’s was a cigar store downtown on 3rd. He’d go down there and buy cigars and read newspapers, you know. He loved to read. And one of the things he found in the New York Times was he could mail order records from New York with people that he knew from my—from my uncle.

MEYERS: Right.

SLAUGHTER: So, he’d mail order records and put ‘em on his jukebox, and when musicians would come to Portland they’d come to his pool hall to listen to the records-- the—like I said, the Miles Davis, the Charlie Parker, the-- all the jazz innovators at that time were on his jukebox, and so, like Count Bassie—well, Nat King Cole—his early stuff was—he was into jazz, but he was more—he crossed over into pop, so—and not, you know, to—if you wanted to make money, you had to be on the wider market, so you didn’t want to stay in just the black genre. So, anyway, he—let’s see, I was trying to think where I was going with—oh—we had musicians at our house.

0:34:35.0

SLAUGHTER: Thelonious Monk came to our house when we lived over on Rodney.

MEYERS: Who?

SLAUGHTER: Thelonious Monk. Have you ever heard of Thelonious Monk?

MEYERS: Yes I’ve heard of him, yeah.

SLAUGHTER: Okay. He spent the night at our house.

MEYERS: Woah!

SLAUGHTER: Yeah.

MEYERS: Dude, let me shake your hand, dude! I gotta shake your hand.

SLAUGHTER: [Laughing] I was like, you know—well, I was under ten years old so I wasn’t—it was not—it didn’t impress me at the time-

MEYERS: Right.

SLAUGHTER: [Laughing]… you know. I’m more impressed with it than I was then.

MEYERS: Having a big star at your house, man. That’s gotta be important.

SLAUGHTER: Yeah. And, I mean, my father was friends with Oscar Peters and Ray Brown-

MEYERS: Geez!

SLAUGHTER: Sammy-

MEYERS: Is your father still around?

SLAUGHTER: He’s dead now.

MEYERS: Oh, he’s dead.

SLAUGHTER: But, he was friends with Sammy Davis Junior’s father and his uncle, Sammy Davis Senior and Will Maston. Now, Will Maston was his uncle, but they would—they—before Sammy Davis Junior got famous, they were like on a vaudeville tour, and they would go—they played at county fairs in Oregon, Washington, Montana, Idaho, you know—Sammy Davis Junior, he was a tap dancer. He was-

MEYERS: Yeah, he was one of the best.

SLAUGHTER: Yeah. His father was a tap dancer too-

MEYERS: Cool.

SLAUGHTER: So they would—he was the—the fact that he was so young was a part of their attraction. And so, anyway, my father loaned them money when they got broke here and they needed money, and that’s one of the things Sammy Davis Junior talked about was—was my father. And so, but—but like I said my father was closer to his uncle and his father than he was to Sammy Davis.

MEYERS: Right.

SLAUGHTER: When they came to town Sammy David would hang out mainly downtown. Sammy Davis was—he hung out with white guys more than—than the black guys, you know. He was—he was always—you know, I guess—like I said before—you know, the black revolution and everything started Sammy Davis Junior was—he was one of those ‘other’ black entertainers. He was more into entertaining white people and hanging out with white people, but—and, you know—he became black after he got popular. Like Lena Horn, like—there was lots of black entertainers that didn’t claim their blackness ‘til after they got popular, and my dad was—that was one of the things he got angry about. Well, he was—he was angry about not being treated, equally. You know, so—he kind of used his pool hall as a place—a gathering place for intellectuals and people that were interested, you know, in—in equal treatment.

MEYERS: Right.

SLAUGHTER: Okay, so—and I like, much of the, like—the jazz music, the bebop, was like rebellion against-

MEYERS: Jazz.

SLAUGHTER: Well, it was a rebellion against—I guess—what do they call it—what’s the old jazz like? Well, I’m thinking of [inaudible]. No, I’m thinking of—what do they call it? Dixieland.

MEYERS: Dixieland.

SLAUGHTER: I mean Dixieland was—Dixieland jazz was started by black artists and then it was taken over by white artists. And so, bebop was a music that white people couldn’t play. So it was like—like Miles Davis, like Charlie Parker, like—all these people could play it, and there was a few—there was a few white bands, so forth, that could play it, but it was more exclusive to the jazz—to the black jazz players.

MEYERS: Right.

SLAUGHTER: So, and, there was nobody that was more of a rebel than black Miles Davis. I mean, he played with his back to the audience.

MEYERS: He was the best.

SLAUGHTER: I know, yeah. But he didn’t get recognized until later.

SOMMER: Did your parents go out to the jazz on this street?

SLAUGHTER: Oh yeah.

0:39:50.0

SOMMER: And so what clubs did they go to, and what did they look like when they went out to a night on the town?

SLAUGHTER: Okay, there’s a—I have a picture from this book here. Let’s see…here’s a club picture. I think that was from MacElroy’s, which was a nightclub that’s in down—that was downtown Portland. It was like on 4th Street downtown, and many times, entertainers they came to town would—they’d play there at MacElroy’s or they’d play at like Jantzen Beach, like County Bassie or Duke Ellington, if they came to town they’d play at Jantzen Beach. They had dances there. So, you know—I don’t know. That whole era there was so much—there was so—well, I think—jazz was like a—an expression of the black community, of what their frustration was with what was going on, with being discriminated against, held back. I mean, you know, you could even take like Elvis Presley. I mean, Elvis Presley was singin’ songs that—you know, like Mama’s Maybelline—well, not Mama’s Maybelline, but…

MEYERS: Is this your dad?

SLAUGHTER: That’s my dad right there, yeah. That’s in his pool hall, yeah. The big man.

0:41:33.0

SOMMER: Can you describe him?

SLAUGHTER: Well, he was 6—well, he was over 6—6’ 2’, 6’ 3’, he was like over 200 pounds. He was a—a large man, and a formidable man. When you came in his pool hall, he let everyone know that he was the one—he was in control. There’d be pimps and gamblers and all that that would come in and try to floorshow or, you know, or talk down to him. I mean, he could—he could hold his own with the best of ‘em. Like, as far as—I don’t know if you’re familiar with the Dozens. This is like—well, it’s like, I’m talkin’ about your mama, you know, it’s like—I don’t know, are you familiar with the Dozens? Okay, well, it’s where you talk about people’s mothers, their parents, like ‘Your mama’s workin’ down on…’ you know, like ‘Your mama’s so ugly that tears flow down the back of her head,’ you know, or that ‘Your mama got a job in front of the doctor’s office makin’ people sick,’ you know [laughing]. It’s like—it’s like word games, and everybody—it can get really personal. And my father was—he was very adept at that. And, his size was—he wouldn’t allow anybody to intimidate him is what I’m saying. And he let people know, and he—but he always tried to be respectful to people, and he told you that he would respect you, but don’t try and come in here with no bullshit, you know. Take it somewhere else. And that’s the way he ran his place.

SOMMER: Mark, do you have to leave? Do you want to go?

LOCKER: Do you have anything you want to ask me?

SOMMER: Do you have anything else you want to ask him?

LOCKER: Did they have any gangsters like the Bloods and the are now today Crips today, like Bloods and Crips back then? [laughing]

SLAUGHTER: Well, yeah. We had the bandana gang, which was—they wore bandanas. And that was even—that was before the—that was before, like, you know—the Bloods and the Crips came after the…

LOCKER: The 80s or something?

SLAUGHTER: … After the 60s. We had um—I’m trying to think of the gang that really upset the FBI.

LOCKER: [inaudible]

SLAUGHTER: No, no no no, they carried guns, they—like in Sacramento they—what are they called? Shit, I can’t think of the name.

SOMMER: You said the 60s?

SLAUGHTER: Yeah. The Black—the Black Panthers.

SOMMER: The Black Panthers? As a gang—they were considered a gang?

SLAUGHTER: Oh, yeah. They were national, and the FBI targeted them, and when they broke up, that’s where the Crips and the Bloods came from. They were like the—after they broke the Black Panthers, and the Black Panthers, like I said, they were into defending the community. They had breakfast programs where they fed people. They fed lower income black folks. But they were into self—self enhancement, you know. They were real proud black people.

0:45:47.0

LOCKER: Were black people afraid of the Gypsy Jokers? The KKK?

SLAUGHTER: Mmmm, they had confrontations, yeah. I mean, I—well, I went through a period where I was a drug user, and one of the things was if you wanted—if you wanted good drugs, it was—you came over to Williams Avenue. So like, the Gypsy Jokers and the…

LOCKER: That was in Southeast Portland.

SLAUGHTER: Yeah. That was in Southeast, but if you wanted heroin, you came over here, and that’s where you’d have conflicts or standoffs, you know.

LOCKER: The Gypsy Jokers were just a bunch of motorcycle riders and motorcycle gangs and stuff, and they were afraid of the Hell’s Angels because the Hell’s Angels came in—I think it was 1962 or ’62 they had that big fight downtown Portland on the old waterfront park. Yep, I remember that.

[Mark Locker leaves]

SOMMER: Alright, thank you Mark.

MEYERS: Yeah, my uncle told me about—my grandpa told me about that, when they came over here and they had that big fight in downtown Portland. It was terrible. All the Gypsy Jokers went down there and the Hell’s Angels came in. He told me, he said ‘aren’t you moving down there?’ I said heck no, I’m not goin’ down there with no gangs- [laughing]

MEYERS: Well I gotta go anyway too, nice to meet you, bye Tim-

SLAUGHTER: Nice to meet you too-

[Shuffling of people as they leave]

0:48:05.0

SLAUGHTER: This is a book you should get. Written by Robert Dieche. He’s a—Robert Dieche is—he taught at Portland State. And he taught jazz class down there, and he wrote this book for his class, so—and, a lot of the pictures and articles in there are things that he’s—he interviewed a whole lot of people to get the information. I mean, he didn’t—he knew more about what was going on in the white community than he did about the black community but he interviewed a lot of people to write this book, so—like I said, there’s a lot of good stories in there and situations—things you might be interested in.

0:48:56.0

UNKNOWN: So what was your favorite thing growing up here, like when you look back?

SLAUGHTER: Well, riding my bike. We used to—we rode bikes all over town. We—there used to be buses that would—during the summer you could pick strawberries, you could pick beans, and during the summer they had school buses here that would stop and pick people up at 5 or 6 in the morning to go pick strawberries or pick beans. That was a-

[Shuffling of people as they leave]

SLAUGHTER: But, a lot of the kids would go and pick strawberries and beans. It was like a social activity, you know. It was a way to get out of the house, you know. And it was a way to earn some money for school, for our school clothes. I wasn’t in that position. My father was—he did pretty well—he was an adept businessman, and like I said, he was a—he loaned money, so he—my dad—and I can say this with no—he never—I think, after he stopped working at the shipyard, he never filed an income tax return from then to the end of his life right from 1950, and he died in the 80s. But, as time went by he got more and more nervous about that whole situation. [laughing]

UNKNOWN: Understandably.

SLAUGHTER: You know. The house we moved into up on Williams—on Williams and Prescott, he paid cash for it and it was 3900 dollars. Now, the last assessment was $287,000. Same house, you know.

UNKNOWN: Nice.

SLAUGHTER: [Laughing] Yeah. But, you know-

UNKNOWN: Is that house still in the family, or-

SLAUGHTER: Yeah, I own it now.

UNKNOWN: That’s great.

SLAUGHTER: Yeah. So, fact is I owe a $1200 tax bill right now. I just got the latest assessment, you know.

UNKNOWN: That’s amazing. That’s like a third of the buying price.

0:51:25.0

SLAUGHTER: [Laughing] Right, yeah, yeah, yeah But, like I said, well, my father—there was—well there—well, I’m thinking about Henry Barnes. Henry Barnes was a—he was a star at Jefferson High School in 1947, right. He was 6’9’. And I think I have pictures of him. He’s standin’ there with his arms out like this, and the whole—the basketball team is standin’ there with him, and none of them can touch his [laughing]—his arms, you now. Anyway, Emery—he lived with his mother but his father was absent, so he kind of looked up to my father as a father figure, and he played at Jefferson. And so, when Jefferson would play the other teams, they would send somebody out to just hang on him, and try to get him thrown out of the game, get him to start a fight, get him thrown out of the game. So my father told him well, and this is one story that I always remembered was, he told him ‘Well, what you do is when they send the guy, you just give him an elbow, you know, like don’t look at him, but you know, get a lock onto his head and give him an elbow, and knock him down, and then help him up, you know, and you won’t get thrown out of the game. They’ll look at you like you’re a good sportsman,’ you know. But guaranteed, this guy—he ain’t comin’ back for another elbow. [laughing] But that’s the way my dad always thought, you know. He was always a thinker. He was always tryin’—he was figuring out strategies, you know.

UNKNOWN: It sounds like your dad was really involved in the community.

SLAUGHTER: Oh yeah. He was, yeah.

UNKNOWN: Was your mom?

0:53:42.0

SLAUGHTER: Okay, yeah. Well, my mom was more—my dad was really protective about his family, so he didn’t—he wasn’t—well, he wasn’t in social clubs. He wasn’t in—he didn’t like the Masons, he didn’t like the Elks, all that. He made fun of them. So, in one way he was involved—he was like a rebel, a political person, but more intellectual, not into the social thing, you know. He felt like, like the Elks and the Masons were copying white organizations that would not allow black people in them, so the blacks would form their own, you know. So the blacks would—he was a very proud black man, you know. The police would come to him and talk to him and ask him, well— you know, like, he was in an area—like I said down there—I mean, this was like—I mean it was wide open, there was whore houses with red lights on ‘em, you know. I mean, you could come—the sailors would come over here and they would just, I mean, get drunk, walk up and down the street, go to whore houses, and gamble—you could do all that during the war. Portland was wide open. It wasn’t ‘til Dorothea McCollough-Lee became the president—the president—the mayor of Portland, and she changed all that. So it was like, there was this rebellion against the criminal element. There’s a book called—there’s a book about Portland, about the crooks in Portland. Portland was famous on the West Coast as far as a place where you could go and you could do whatever you wanted to, if you had the bucks. It was like Las Vegas it as, you know. And so, I got to watch a lot of that. You know, we used to go around and try to peek in the windows at the whorehouses, you know. [laughing] You knew where they were.

SOMMER: Where were they? They were right—what neighborhood were they in?

SLAUGHTER: Oh yeah, they were all around.

SOMMER: What streets were they on?

SLAUGHTER: [Laughing] There wasn’t one street. It was like, they were just in the community. You know. And like I said, before—before 1960, all the—almost any city you went to, all the black folks lived in one area. I mean, if they were rich, they were entertainers, whatever, they lived next door to the poorest, the gamblers, the criminals, whoever. We were all forced into an area. And that’s the way you lived, you know. It was like, when entertainers would come to town, they couldn’t—they could entertain downtown but they couldn’t stay downtown. Ella Fitzgerald, anybody. Pearl Bailey, any of them—they had to find—there was people over here, there was—they’d stay at—there’d be boarding houses that people would stay at. There was boarding houses all up and down these streets, you know. There was certain people, you know, and that was one way you could earn money.

0:57:22.0

SLAUGHTER: And like I said, my mother was a housewife. That was her thing. She was a, like intellec—she was very—she was educated, you know educated in the way that—she was a book reader. And you can—that was one thing I was telling Laurie is she’d get a—she’s 93 now but she’s very lucid and she loves to talk and she’d like to, you know…

SOMMER: She’s still alive. She’s 93!

SLAUGHTER: 93, yeah. Right. I’m 71.

SOMMER: Are you?

SLAUGHTER: Mmm hmm. So I…

UNKNOWN: You don’t look it.

SLAUGHTER: [Laughing] Well, my mother has—let’s see, it was 4 sisters and, well—her brother actually was her cousin, because her brother’s parents died in the flu epidemic in 1918, so he came to live with them. So it was him and my mother’s 3 sisters, and they all lived—they all—she’s got one sister left who’s older than she is, but they all have lived past 93. They’ve lived older than she is right now, so it’s like, yeah. That’s the [laughing] the genes I’m tryin’ to hold on to.

0:59:04.0

SOMMER: Wow. Did they put up a big fight when they were being pushed out of there, like when your dad had to move his pool hall?

SLAUGHTER: Well, it was—it was—well, and like I was telling Laurie, that it was an organized thing. It was Tom Johnson [laughing] who’s in this book…

SOMMER: What was it like? Do you remember them talking about it, as a child, or…

SLAUGHTER: Well, I—what I remember—see, okay, I was a—I went to college in—in New Mexico, and when they built the Coliseum, that was in 1960. Well, in ’57, ’58, and ’59 I was in Albequerque, so I wasn’t really aware of what was going on here.

SOMMER: Oh, what was that like coming home from college?

SLAUGHTER: It was a shock! You know, everything was-

UNKNOWN: I can imagine.

SLAUGHTER: Yeah. Well, it was called urban renewal, and it was this progressive thing. Oh, they were gonna improve the neighborhood. What improvement to urban renewal meant we’re gonna build the Coliseum, and displace a whole lot of people, but they never told you that that was what was gonna happen, or they just kind of ignored—the whole situation was-

UNKNOWN: What were the buildings like down there? Real similar to what you see here, kinda like 2 or 3 story kind of deals?

SLAUGHTER: Mmm hmm, yeah. The neighborhood was similar to this—it was, well like, this park back here, not—the houses that are—that were north of Russell were like—like a different time period, like newer, yeah. But we’re talkin’ like—hell, I had a paper route on Russell Hill. The houses down Russell hill were—they were like shacks. You know, we’re talkin’, you know 3 or 4 bedrooms—I mean 3 or 4 room houses, you know.

UNKNOWN: Oh wow.

SLAUGHTER: And, it was like, nobody wanted that paper route on Russell. It was the one that the new guys got [laughing], and when you collected you had to collect your own money. They didn’t send them a bill [laughing]. You had to…

UNKNOWN: I was a paper boy too, so…

SLAUGHTER: [Laughing]. Yeah. You’d go to a house and they’d say ‘We’ll pay you tomorrow,’ and tomorrow they’d move—yeah. You come back and there’s nobody there, yeah.

1:02:03.0

SLAUGHTER: But here, I’ll show you a picture of this guy. Now, he’s like—[laughing] some people get mad at me when I talk about him, but anyway, it’s like, he worked for the gangsters. The downtown gangsters. And when they—se, they knew—they knew about the Coliseum before it happened. Here he is. This is him.

SOMMER: And he was a gangster.

SLAUGHTER: Yeah.

SOMMER: Tom Johnson.

SLAUGHTER: Mmm hmm. He was—he was like a pillar in the community, because he was a gangster, you know, and in the black community, traditionally we kind of looked up to gangsters. You know, it’s like—as long as he didn’t—he was doing more—he’d hire you, you could get jobs working for him, or [inaudible]-

SOMMER: A sub-economy-

SLAUGHTER: Right, right. I mean, he ran gambling houses and whorehouses and it was like, well, you know, it wasn’t directly aimed at you. So, anyway, what they did—the downtown gangsters bankrolled him, and what he did was he bought up a lot of the property down in that area, you know. He was a friendly face, ‘Hey man, you wanna sell your house? I’ll give you cash,’ you know. And, so, that’s what he did, you know. And…

SOMMER: He bought it up and then he sold it for the Coliseum? Is that what you’re saying?

SLAUGHTER: Yeah. Well, actually he didn’t sell it. He was buying it for the people downtown. He didn’t get—he was like the middle man.

SOMMER: Were your parents talking about this when you were a kid? Were you like in on the conversation?

SLAUGHTER: Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah. And they were-

SOMMER: You were in high school probably when that was happening?

SLAUGHTER: Yeah. But, I mean, it was something you didn’t just talk about openly. One thing was a lot of people looked up to him as he was—and a lot of the people in the community were not politically aware of what was going on. You know, it’s just like urban renewal. I mean, the government comes at you with this urban renewal and it’s like, ‘Hey man, this is gonna improve our community. We’re gonna build this coliseum, it’s gonna bring all these jobs…’ It’s just like what they’re doing now with this—with the—the race track out here that they’re gonna convert into a gam- It’s like—this is a con, as far as I’m concerned, you know. We’re gonna get you, you know, you can get—you know—we’re gonna get dealers—they’re gonna have card dealers, and it’s like—who’s—where is the money goin’? That’s what I want to know. All the money that you’re—that they, you know, takin’ in on these gambling dens—where’s that money goin’? That’s where—you know, that’s the part that they’re not tellin’ you. You know, they’re talking ‘about all the tax benefits, how we’re gonna be payin’ taxes on this—yeah. On the—the principle is leavin’, though, and it’s goin’ somewhere else. It’s not stayin’ here, and it’s takin’ the money out of the—out of poor people's pockets.

1:05:35.0

SOMMER: I had a question: what did you do in Portland when you came back from college?

SLAUGHTER: Okay, I worked at—first my—no, let’s see when I first came back, I actually—I [laughing] I did really well the first two years I was there and then I fl—I actually got suspended for takin’ a test for a guy, so I came back to Portland, and at that time, we’re talkin’ 1959—that was the Beatnik generation. You know, you’re aware of the Beatniks, but, anyway, I worked at my dad’s pool hall, and I used to—and there would be guys that’d come in there, with pills, like—okay, they’d rob a pharmacy, and they’d have pills that they didn’t know what to do with, so I had—I had pharmacy books and I’d look it up, you know. Phenobarbital, and—you know, different barbiturates and all that, and I figured out what I could do with these pills, so we’d go downtown to sell ‘em. So we were kind of like—being in this community, one of the jobs you could have was, like, to be a connection for the people downtown, for the people-- would say ‘Hey man, we want some good heroin,’ so we’d get ‘em some good dope, you know, so that was—that was kinda what I did. And then, after I got into trouble, and I joined the air force in 1960, and…

1:07:06.0

SOMMER: What happened when you got into trouble? You got arrested, or…

SLAUGHTER: No, I got close to being arrested. I joined the air force, and they showed up at my house about a month later lookin’ for me, and my parents told ‘em I was in the air force and they said ‘Oh, good.’ [laughing] So, that was like my first brush with the law, and I had some more—well, actually, the story goes on, you know. After I got out of the air force I came back here and I—and I worked for my father and he had the pool hall up here, and he pretty much had me managing the pool hall then, and then I got into troub—well, I worked at Tektronx first, then I started using drugs, and I gradually got into heavier and heavier, and ended up in 19—let’s see, 1969 I got busted for criminal activity, drugs and forgery, and I got sent to—well, I went to Rocky Butte, which is out where 205 is. You know where Rocky Butte—the park—Rocky Butte Park—there was a county jail there, and they used to—I guess in the old days they had—they made the prisoners break rocks or something. There was a quarry there that they worked at. Anyway, [laughing] so, anyway, I go from there to a treatment hospital over in Vancouver. The 60s was a—you know, drug treatment was a—you know, the hot thing. So I got into a drug treatment program. I graduated from drug treatment program and I became a counselor, you know, like that was kind of my road back then—into drug-free lifestyle. So, I worked there as a counselor for 6 years, and then I went to Bonneville power after that, and I used the knowledge—well, I worked in electronics in the air force so I used what I had there at Bonneville, so—and that’s where I retired from Bonneville in ’97.

01:09:26.0

SLAUGHTER: So, like right now I’m working for the Miracles Club, which is a clean & sober social club that’s up here on Mason and Martin Luther King, and we’re—fact is we just started a new building. We got 12 million dollars from US Bank and we’re constructing a new building. Let’s see, I might have some cards here that have a picture of the building. That’s my next [laughing]…

SOMMER: Your next project!

01:10:00.0

SLAUGHTER: Yeah. Yeah, I’m [laughing]—I’ve had several lives. (Laughs.) Everybody says—well, people tell me, ‘Well you should write a book,’ you know, I’m thinkin’ ‘Yeah, that would be somethin’ for my kids, for—you know, and it would just be good for me to go back and review my whole life. I guess my card’s in my car. I’ll give you a card before I leave.

SOMMER: Okay.

SLAUGHTER: Okay? Oh—I went to see Obama the day before yesterday. I got to shake his hand.

SOMMER: Oh! That was a big deal.

SLAUGHTER: I know!