Mosier Valley
Mosier Valley was the first all black community in Texas. It was established a few years after the Civil War, primarily by former black slaves.
In the period 1900 to 1930 the community reached a peak population of about 300 people. It was never measured separately in a census. The community was made up entirely of black people who received only a minimal education at the Mosier Valley School. There was little opportunity for them to be a part of the white communities that existed in Hurst, Euless and Bedford. The social life in Mosier Valley focused on church and school
Because of the lack of education and income other than from small farms, the community was not able to organize to establish water and sewage systems. There were not community services and each family assumed responsibility for all aspects of the home. By the 1920’s the automobile provided a means to travel to the surrounding metropolitan areas and obtain jobs that provided a larger income. Even with that opportunity, the jobs were limited mostly to service and labor activity.
In the 1940’s the Mosier Valley School was part of the Euless School District. Since the school had few students and was in poor condition, the Euless school superintendent decided to close the Mosier Valley School and transfer the students to “colored” schools in Fort Worth. With the help of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, parents of the Mosier Valley students obtained an opinion from a United States District Judge that students had a right to be educated in their own district. On September 4, 1950, parents of the Mosier Valley students attempted to enroll their children in the Euless School. They were repelled by a crowd of white people and eventually returned to their homes. The Euless School district did, however, repair the Mosier Valley School building to make it useable as classrooms. It existed until 1968 when it was closed and the Euless school district was fully integrated.
There are two historical markers in Mosier Valley. They are:
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Marker Title: |
Site of Mosier Valley School |
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Marker Text: |
In 1870, former slaves Robert and Dilsie Johnson received a 40-acre tract of land here as a wedding gift from plantation owner Lucy Lee. Soon other freedmen settled in Mosier Valley, and in 1883 a community school was organized. A schoolhouse, built at this site about 1924, served as a focal point for the surrounding area. It was replaced by a brick structure in 1953. Mosier Valley students were integrated in 1969. Today the site serves as a reminder of the area's earliest citizens and as a symbol of the community's rich heritage. (1983) |
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Title: |
Saint John Missionary Baptist Church |
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Marker Text: |
In 1874 a small group of former slaves met at the the home of Frank Young and organized this congregation, which originally was named Oak Grove Baptist Church. During the late 19th-century pastorate of the Rev. Jim Carroll, the name was changed to St. John, and a two-story church and Masonic lodge building was constructed near this site on land donated by Tennessee Blackburn. The congregation built its own sanctuary here in 1911. Throughout its history, St. John Missionary Baptist Church has been a source of service and leadership for the Mosier Valley Community |
In 1960 Mosier Valley was annexed by the City of Fort Worth. No zoning ordinances were designated for the area. As a result, commercial business and industry began to locate in the area since there was no prohibition to protect the residential area. Today few people live in the area.
Two people who were early residents of Mosier Valley were interviewed by members of the Euless Historical Preservation Committee in 2006. One of them, Beatrice Parker Green was one of the parents who attempted to enroll the Mosier Valley students in the Euless School on September 4, 1950. The transcription of those interviews follows.
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Beatrice Parker Green |
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Interviewed by |
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Dan Clark |
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18 October 2006 |
Beatrice Parker Green
was an early resident of Mosier Valley. Her family lived in the area for
many years and she recalls her childhood and family associations there.
At the time of this interview, Dan Clark was a Euless resident and a member of the Euless Historical Preservation Committee.
Beatrice Parker Green
With
Dan Clark
Dan Clark
Today is October 18, 2006 my name is Dan Clark and I’m representing the City of Euless Historical Preservation Committee. I'm interviewing Beatrice Green who lives at 900 West Parkway in Euless. Beatrice tell me when and where you were born?
Beatrice Green
I was born November 4, 1907. I’ll be 99 years old next month.
Dan Clark
Really, tell me where you were born?
Beatrice Green
I was born here in Mosier Valley. Do you want my parents’ name?
Dan Clark
Yes, tell me about your father.
Beatrice Green
My father was a Parker. William Parker.
Dan Clark
And where did he come from? Was he born here as well or did he come from another place?
Beatrice Green
He was born here. He was born in Mosier Valley. I think he was the first born of that family.
Dan Clark
Do you remember what year he was born, or what day?
Beatrice Green
No.
Dan Clark
They didn’t issue birth certificates back in those days, did they?
Beatrice Green
Well, papa was pretty good about keeping records of things.
Dan Clark
Was he?
Beatrice Green
Yeah, down through the years as we moved around he had books. He liked to read and he spent time reading to himself.
Dan Clark
And what was his first name?
Beatrice Green
Bill.
Dan Clark
Bill Parker? And what was your mother’s name?
Beatrice Green
Judy Easton, ah Esther F-a-r-r-e-a-r.
Dan Clark
Where was she born?
Beatrice Green
Here…somewhere around Euless, Bedford, but may be another …way out in the country.
Dan Clark
Tell me when you were born, do you remember if your grandparents were still alive?
Beatrice Green
Oh yes, I remember my grandparents very well.
Dan Clark
What about your grandfather, what was his name?
Beatrice Green
His name was John Parker and her name was Betty Elizabeth Parker.
Dan Clark
Yes, you have an article about them here on the wall. And where did they come from?
Beatrice Green
I don’t know. I never discussed with them about where they come from, only that she was put off here by…old master and them, she was born of a slave. Uh hum, her and her brother, she had a brother. His name was…lets see what was his name, I think they called him Little Bill, I’m not sure.
Dan Clark
Do you know where they came from, where they were slaves?
Beatrice Green
No, but I do have, I have a cousin that know more better because we started to make a record of that. She’s a school teacher, she lives in Dallas. She comes and see me real often, not every week but she’s much younger; she knows a lot more that she could help me with, but she’s a school teacher, she’s busy.
Dan Clark
So your grandmother had not been a slave but her parents had been slaves?
Beatrice Green
Her parents were slaves. She was born by the old master…she and her brother. When they freed the children, this old lady right there, well she taked them in.
Dan Clark
What was her name, do you remember?
Beatrice Green
Yes, Lish Young.
Dan Clark
And she lived around here?
Beatrice Green
Yes, my grandmother lived with Lish Young. Her husband was older and he had been married before and he had three maybe four boys. I know she had three…and she got sick…his wife got sick. You know they used to live a long time ago cause they didn’t have much to depend on the Doctor and them…so he worked around over the railroad down by the Trinity River. And his wife was layin sick a long time and he come over to Lish Young’s house and asked her to let my grandmother stay with the children during the day while he had to be away…I don’t know what age she was but she must have been maybe twelve…I don’t know how long she laid but anyway, Lish Young said, yeah she can go and stay with your wife. I don’t know how long this happened and his wife finally died. And when she died they buried her up the railroad you know where the old burring ground for the blacks was. He carried her up there and buried her and he had these four little boys that my grandmother was sittin and he asked her when he come back, he asked her, do you think enough of me to marry me? And she said, yes sir. I don’t know what age. So, then they got on their horses and went out to Bedford and got married. So they do…some of them went and got a license, and they got married and come back there and that’s where she lived, and then…my daddy was the oldest of that union.
Dan Clark
Oh I see. So that was your grandmother and grandfather. And he already had four boys before he married?
Beatrice Green
Yes. He had four boys by his first wife.
Dan Clark
Did you call those men uncles? Were they your uncles?
Beatrice Green
Oh yeah. They were my uncles, I knew them.
Dan Clark
Did they all live around there?
Beatrice Green
Yes.
Dan Clark
So you had a pretty large family living around here?
Beatrice Green
Yes. It was all by name…Uncle Ace, Uncle Johnny…and Uncle Phodie, he died. I did never see him. I don’t remember him. There was Lance and Johnny and Uncle Phodie and…I’ll think of…he had another brother.
Dan Clark
Where did they live after they got married, that’s a pretty big family, did they have a big house?
Beatrice Green
Yes, they had this old house, that was a very big old house, must’ve had something like a family room with a big fireplace and on the side there was a kitchen and then a dining room. And then the next was the bathroom but you had to go out doors then.
Dan Clark
No pluming inside?
Beatrice Green
Uh uh…they’d come in to the bathroom, they had a big tub and there was a hall that divided…you could come back out on the front porch all the way across from the fireplace room over to another bedroom. And then grandma and granddaddy’s room was on the southwest end. And then the girls’ room was in the front.
Dan Clark
Was that a brick house or a wooden house?
Beatrice Green
So far as I know, when I seen it, it was just a wooden house like these there on…
Dan Clark
So, they had four boys by the previous marriage and then how many people all together all lived there?
Beatrice Green
Was in the family?
Dan Clark
Yes, in the family.
Beatrice Green
My daddy was one he was the oldest, and then there was Aunt Clara, Aunt Kelly and Aunt Lucy. I think that was the three sisters. Aunt Clara, Kelly and…so that was the family.
Dan Clark
So that was about ten all together in the family?
Beatrice Green
I would guess so.
Dan Clark
How long did your father live there? Till he got married or did he leave before?
Beatrice Green
Yes he lived there with them, as I learned it. I was way down the line of the children…so he…when this marriage started…my daddy was the oldest, and he had two brothers, three brothers and then he had about three sisters, which was a large family.
Dan Clark
Large family. So, your father left there when he married your mother?
Beatrice Green
Yes.
Dan Clark
And did they move in to another house then?
Beatrice Green
I don’t know, I was too far down the line…but they still lived in the area, here in Mosier Valley.
Dan Clark
What’s the first house you remember?
Beatrice Green
It was a log house. It didn’t have a upstairs room, it was built high. The boys went up on a…like a ladder and they’d sleep in the upstairs. And downstairs was large enough for two bedrooms and a fireplace, sitting room and the dresser, they’d call it then, where your lamp sit on it and the drawers were for certain things that they kept in there.
Dan Clark
And did they cook in that fire place or was there a kitchen?
Beatrice Green
No, not when I knew about. It was a big kitchen built on a long…across this log house. One end had a big safe…it was fixed where flies couldn’t go in there.
Dan Clark
Did they have a refrigerator or an ice box?
Beatrice Green
They’d…never had a ice box until…I’m about the fifth child down and I don’t know…
Dan Clark
How many brothers and sisters did you have altogether?
Beatrice Green
We have twelve of us, seven boys and five girls.
Dan Clark
Well that’s a pretty big family.
Beatrice Green
Seven boys and five girls.
Dan Clark
And you were the youngest?
Beatrice Green
No, I was the fifth child down. I was the second girl. The oldest boy was named Fodie Parker, next one was named Dan, and the next one was named Lloyd, double L-o-y-d. Lloyd and then my sister named Kellie, named after one of her sisters, and then there’s me next, Beatrice, and then there was Emma.
Dan Clark
Are any of your brothers and sisters still living?
Beatrice Green
No.
Dan Clark
Tell me what did your father do, did he work or…?
Beatrice Green
Farm, not share farming, he must have farmed his own. See, they had…this is stuff that they told me about on the research that we’ve been going through with my cousin. We’d already been through some of this…probly if she’s here she could help me better but she’s a school teacher. She got on to the, that this land…well my grandfather parted it all to each one to have a place to live, farm and to also build. So, we went into the research and found out this land was given to his wife by the ones that had been slaves.
Dan Clark
The ones that had been slaves or the slave holders?
Beatrice Green
Yes, the slave holders. My cousin found out that the land didn’t belong to my grandfather at all; it belonged to her, the girl he married. And so, then like it was in those years, it was just turned over to him you see.
Dan Clark
So how much land did your father get, do you know?
Beatrice Green
No, I can’t say exactly how much but they all got like a acre or two, something like that. All the way from there to Hwy. 183 and so it reaches clear across Mosier Valley. The reason I know, my aunt, my oldest aunt whose just next to my father, she got married, even the second time and when she did, you’ll probably want to go over this again, she wanted to be sure, she had such a good husband the second one, she wanted to be sure that if she passed first, she wanted him to have some land that the children born from her and him, ah nobody could take…so she carried me up to Union Bank and Trust Company and I signed on the papers for him to have a certain amount of it…so you’ll find that in record too. So he cut this land up into parts, I don’t know how much each one but that’s where it reached to Hwy. 183. The reason I know, my aunt passed it, deeded part of her land to her second husband and so her first children always know that he had a place to stay. And so, well that’s the info. she passed, she sold…oh no, when she passed, those children sold some of this land on back to them and the one they sold it to said…come got me and said…I know you the one that signed on it cause it says your name, cause you all went to Union Bank and Trust, they did…she felt like I was a responsible person, they didn’t thought that I was gonna live the longest. I don’t know…and so, cause she knew there was so many of them there might be a misunderstanding.
Dan Clark
So when you grew up, you had family all around you?
Beatrice Green
Ohh, yeah. I knew all of my aunts and uncles. I didn’t know uncle Phodie, he passed away. There’s Uncle Lance and Uncle Johnny…
Dan Clark
You pretty well knew everybody in Mosier Valley?
Beatrice Green
I knew everybody in Mosier Valley.
Dan Clark
You mentioned earlier that your father liked to read. Did he go to school?
Beatrice Green
He never, we never talked about that, I was too young but he always did the figuring. He’d sit up and read novels, they’d called em books, at night you know and then we’d play checkers together.
Dan Clark
I see. You had electricity or you used…?
Beatrice Green
Oh no. Big old lamp light, you had to feed your lamps everyday.
Dan Clark
What about your mother, did she read?
Beatrice Green
Yeah, but not a lot because she was much younger than he was. Gosh, she must have been…she was eighteen; I think when she got married. I don’t know.
Dan Clark
Did she ever work or was she a housewife?
Beatrice Green
Housewife. Never, never worked.
Dan Clark
How long did she live?
Beatrice Green
I don’t remember the year, see when I got sick about four years ago, well, they just cleaned out my house and divide the stuff cause they thought that was the end. I don’t know anything about the records.
Dan Clark
What about your father, do you remember when he died?
Beatrice Green
Oh yeah, I remember when he passed. Sure do.
Dan Clark
How old were you then?
Beatrice Green
I was married…I married when I was sixteen. My daddy lived a long time, my children knew him.
Dan Clark
Tell me, when did you get married?
Beatrice Green
I married on December the 3rd, 1923. I was sixteen years old, sixteen in November and married in December.
Dan Clark
Did you go to school?
Beatrice Green
Yes. We all went to school over here, just a little one room school; even teach was in the same room.
Dan Clark
What was that called? Just Mosier Valley School?
Beatrice Green
Um hum. Yes.
Dan Clark
And was your husband in school there too?
Beatrice Green
Oh no, he was at Dallas County. He was in Perris’ farm. See, I went to school here and I didn’t know them until a couple of years before I got married.
Dan Clark
How many years did you go to school?
Beatrice Green
Very few, very few. I was pretty good to get with the others and learn, you know? We started moving around cause we outgrew the house and they didn’t build on to houses and so we just moved out and went to Benbrook.
Dan Clark
That was a long way off, wasn’t it?
Beatrice Green
That was back on the other side of Fort Worth. I was trying to think of the community there…
Dan Clark
So was that a pretty major thing in your life, to move to Benbrook?
Beatrice Green
Ah no…yes it was, we didn’t wanna leave all the kids cause there’s not a school out there…only for whites. So then we come back here at school time when we was through picking cotton and doing the things that needed to be done. We’d come back and lived with my grandma and her girls cause always one lived…maybe a couple of them lived and helped…you know see after her, because I never knew her to do anything except to see after the family.
Dan Clark
So how old were you when you moved to Benbrook do you think?
Beatrice Green
Eleven.
Dan Clark
Eleven, so you moved to Benbrook and you’d stay there in the summer, pick cotton and…?
Beatrice Green
Work out there, no there wasn’t a, I don’t remember us ever picking any cotton. I don’t think they were raising a lot of cotton out there. They had something, we used to have a big garden and we’d have to do that…they’d walk through it, going back to the…what ever patch, I don’t know, but we didn’t…the boys did but I was only eleven years old and when we moved out there, why then there was just a barb wire fence between our house and the white people and so, we had to have the papers drew up that we wouldn’t molest anything, you know, on their property. And so when the year was gone, Mr. Scrubbs say, well Bill, I mean my daddy said to Mr. Scrubbs, I’m ready to resign the papers and he says, you don’t need to, your children didn’t molest or bother anything and we was raised like that, what ever needed to be done, we did it, if our ball went in their yard, which was just a barb wire fence, we might would’ve asked them if we could come over there and get it. It was some very, very, very nice people that we lived with…of course I worked for them till they died.
Dan Clark
Did you? Well, was your father pretty strict with you?
Beatrice Green
Yes, very strict with us. We had to walk the short line. Like I said, Bill, daddy went to him and said, now Mr. Scrubbs I’m ready now to sign papers another year that we had to sign at the beginning and he said, your children haven’t molest anything, you don’t have to sign those papers.
Dan Clark
Were any of your brothers a problem for your father? Did he ever have to discipline them?
Beatrice Green
No, if he did, I don’t know it. He probably took em in the other room and talk to em and tell em what he’s correcting them about.
Dan Clark
You came back to Mosier Valley to go to school?
Beatrice Green
Well, we come back when we got through picking them, whatever, doing the stuff in the yard, in the garden, in the patches…probably some cotton, maybe we did, but anyway we come back and stay with my grandmother. My grandfather passed while we were out there. And we stayed with my grandmother and the oldest girl and her husband. They stayed there and taken care of the place.
Dan Clark
When you got married, did you move with your husband out of Mosier Valley?
Beatrice Green
Oh yeah, we’d come on back here and lived and went to school, continued going on to school after we’d come out here and stayed so many months and go to school, then when it come time to do farm work, we had to pick cotton.
Dan Clark
Where would you go to do that?
Beatrice Green
Out in Arlington Prairie, we’d go there and Grapevine Prairie.
Dan Clark
Where ever there was cotton to be picked you’d go there?
Beatrice Green
Um hum.
Dan Clark
What was your husband’s name?
Beatrice Green
His name was Clifford Green.
Dan Clark
Clifford Green. How old was he when you got married?
Beatrice Green
I think he was twenty one.
Dan Clark
So he was older than you?
Beatrice Green
Yeah, he was older than me, a very good husband.
Dan Clark
How long were you married?
Beatrice Green
We married in “23” and he must’ve passed in…I can’t remember.
Dan Clark
Quite a long time?
Beatrice Green
We got it in my books and things, on my records…they thought it was the end of me, they kind a divided it all up so I have no record of it…but he was twenty years old, his birthday was…
Dan Clark
When you married did you move into your own house?
Beatrice Green
No, we stayed with his parents for a while.
Dan Clark
Where did they live?
Beatrice Green
They lived in West Irving, they called it Bear Creek at that time…we lived in West Irving and then we’d pick cotton on the Grapevine Prairie.
Dan Clark
How did you meet your husband?
Beatrice Green
At a picnic. They used to have…they’d have it down in west Irving. We’d all get in a truck and everything, riding down, see em play ball and all the games and things, and he…he’d then come home when I’d come.
Dan Clark
Would that be like a church picnic or a school?
Beatrice Green
I don’t know, but I’m sure at sometime a church picnic. But they also have a dance place where they could dance but when night come, we had to…we’d have to come home, we had to go back home, we couldn’t stay out after night.
Dan Clark
Was that a long drive? Did it take a long time?
Beatrice Green
No, this was truck and time for cars and things.
Dan Clark
Dirt roads?
Beatrice Green
Yeah, sure.
Dan Clark
When you were growing up, did your family go to church a lot?
Beatrice Green
Oh yeah, my mother was a church person and I don’t know if my father was a Deacon or anything…I don’t think he was, but he went cause we didn’t live too far from the church.
Dan Clark
What church did they go to?
Beatrice Green
St. John Baptist Church, its still there. The most beautiful building, especially the inside. And then the next building is a, Church of God in Christ. I haven’t been in it since I was sixteen.
Dan Clark
You were in a different church than your mother?
Beatrice Green
No, we all belonged to the same church until I got married and then when I got married and went to west Irving, there wasn’t a church down there that they belonged to. They were Baptist and when I come from here, I said oh, I says, I’m going to Mosier Valley and join that church because that’s where we were raised, in the Baptist Church. So, we all come up here, I wasn’t a member, I was just a child and go to Sunday School like that and so when I brought them up here, well I joined St. John with them. And so, we’d come back and forth together and that lasted about two years and then I was born again in the Church of God in Christ.
Dan Clark
That time right after you got married when you lived with your husband’s parents, how was that, did you get along with them okay?
Beatrice Green
Oh yes, she was one of the nicest…I was just like one of the children and when we worked in the fields, she’d wash down my clothes, washed mine and my husbands, washed our clothes. When we’d come in, the meal was ready and on the weekend, everybody went together and cleaned the house, shell the peas together.
Dan Clark
Did they have indoor plumbing in that house?
Beatrice Green
No.
Dan Clark
Did they have a well?
Beatrice Green
Yeah. They had a well in they yard. They were living better than we was. They was nice peoples. I stayed married from that time until forty years ago when my husband passed. And they were like my own parents.
Dan Clark
How long did you live with them?
Beatrice Green
Oh, not too long. We moved into a house. My husband worked, we picked cotton and did things like that until we got…we also moved to a…trying to think of the little town right off of Mosier Valley…between Mosier Valley and Fort Worth…anyway, we used to go up a hill and the school was right on the…I don’t know what they called it up there.
Dan Clark
So you and your husband moved in to your own house after a couple of years?
Beatrice Green
Yes.
Dan Clark
Do you have children?
Beatrice Green
We had two. The first one she…my mother-in-law don’t want us to leave there so she could kinda see after me and so we had ah…I’m trying to think of the doctor…in West Irving…well he’d come and I wasn’t ready to deliver and he said to deliver on the rocking chair and waited till I was ready. And of course we only had two children.
Dan Clark
So your child was a daughter?
Beatrice Green
Yes. The second one was a little boy. He wasn’t premature but he was born…course they didn’t have doctors then, mostly midwives you know, so they had a couple of them and I was so tiny then, small, and so they had to tie my arms and someone would hold them…
Dan Clark
Tie your arm?
Beatrice Green
Yes, work on em, help me through delivery.
Dan Clark
Was that hard?
Beatrice Green
No, it was…they were very much hard to work with, my grandmother too; my mother’s mother was a midwife. Every time white people…you see em going in a buggy…grandma would be with em, she delivered the blacks and the whites too.
Dan Clark
Your daughter, what was her name?
Beatrice Green
Martha Rae, see the blue picture?
Dan Clark
And so she lived? Your son didn’t live though?
Beatrice Green
No, he died the same day he was born. My daughter went to Fort Worth and she finished there and she went and got her license, she’s in Cosmetology. She worked in Grand Prairie.
Dan Clark
Was she the first person in your family to graduate from High School?
Beatrice Green
Yes, of my sisters and my brothers.
Dan Clark
Did they all graduate from high school?
Beatrice Green
No, just went to this plain old simple school where we had one room. They’d teach in there and you have to be quiet while the teacher’s teaching over in one corner, until segregation was brought in.
Dan Clark
Did you have your own books at school or did you share books?
Beatrice Green
No, we had books but no telling how people had…see I was here when segregation was broke down in Euless. They also got a record with me cause I’m just about the oldest person around. So we got the books when we…some of them were good books and some of them wasn’t, what ever was left over from Euless, that’s what they brought up here…
Dan Clark
From the white school, they brought books?
Beatrice Green
Yes….a black man done always brought the books; just put them in the back of a wagon and brang em…
Dan Clark
When you were growing up in Mosier Valley as a child, did you have much contact with the white people in Euless or did you just stay pretty much in Mosier Valley all the time?
Beatrice Green
Oh no…no more than…I’d pick berries you know, that used to be what we did in the spring time.
Dan Clark
You picked berries?
Beatrice Green
Blue Berries, Black Berries and those kinds of things. They had fields of them, you know. We mixed in; you know we had no problem with the whites. We all worked well until when we got ready to ah…course gave them that information too…
Dan Clark
When the schools were integrated, that was the first problems?
Beatrice Green
Yeah, we went down cause my daughter was in high school and I had a nephew, but he was living with my mother…and so, she asked me to go with him when we had to carry our children down there. And so when we went down, I went with my nephew.
Dan Clark
To the Euless school?
Beatrice Green
Uh hum.
Dan Clark
And what happened?
Beatrice Green
Well, we knocked on the door and the principal came and we told him we’ve come to enroll our children.
Dan Clark
Were you frightened?
Beatrice Green
Noo, we…we were just as brave as anything. I went with my nephew, we faced them, it was all that noise.
Dan Clark
So you knocked on the door and the principal came to the door?
Beatrice Green
Um hum and we told him we come to enroll our children in school, and he closed the door and he went back, so they turned down school.
Dan Clark
They let everybody out of school?
Beatrice Green
Yes. I guess it was the teachers you know, and the whites, they all got out you know. We just rolled up just like how the lawyer told us to, and so when they got em all out of there, well then they told us to come in…so then, I’m the only one that’s left that went, but my mother was the one that got me to go with my nephew.
Dan Clark
Your nephew and your daughter were there too. So what happened when you got inside the school?
Beatrice Green
We told them we’d come to enroll our children in there. Well, that kind of turned it off you know. And so we kind a talked about it, and so one of the black guys come to take some pictures of it and I did know the principal’s name, he reached back and got his pistol.
Dan Clark
He had a gun?
Beatrice Green
He did.
Dan Clark
Were you frightened?
Beatrice Green
No.
Dan Clark
No?
Beatrice Green
No, we just sat over there cause we had a order from the headquarters to go on and enroll our kids in there, and we just knew they weren’t gonna bother with us, may be some trouble but it wasn’t no big deal. So, this boy came in to take a picture and when he did, he snatched it, this camera from him…
Dan Clark
The principal did?
Beatrice Green
He had also reached for his…
Dan Clark
To get his gun?
Beatrice Green
Yeah, I don’t know who he was but you could find out who he was. And so there was nobody left in there, of course I’m the only one that’s living now. And so, we stayed right in there and enrolled our children. Course, somebody notified them we was coming and they figured there probably be trouble you know. So this street that go right by the school…where it was at that time…and they had a big bridge that go right in there…
Dan Clark
As this was going on, was your daughter or your nephew frightened?
Beatrice Green
No, he just stayed to his self with the children. We had them with us, so we just sit there together so they go to class.
Dan Clark
How did this end?
Beatrice Green
It calmed down, and we enrolled our children and the law was…covered the front to see that there was no trouble and this one that snatched his thing, well he went there, there used to be this bridge there, kind a like, used to be going over Arlington, it’s a big bridge, whatever, so this one that had the camera, he sit in the edge of that taking our picture, anyhow, we went on over to the other school…you could probably find it in the record…you would probably see me sitting up there, my little nephew was.
Dan Clark
How old was your nephew when this happened?
Beatrice Green
He must have been, probably nine, eight or nine.
Dan Clark
So, in the end, did you just leave for that day?
Beatrice Green
Everything was just as calm, you see all the white children and they teachers went away. There wasn’t nobody there but we black people, them and the law, so we stuck around.
Dan Clark
What was the final result, did your children then go to Euless school?
Beatrice Green
Yes, they went with them; they just taught them just like they do em. They had a few fights but nothing bad, they had a few fights.
Dan Clark
Where did your daughter graduate from high school?
Beatrice Green
Fort Worth. She was bused every day. We had to be able to furnish the bus if we didn’t carry em in our car. Course there’ll be days when we go in to Fort Worth and we carry em…would be the way we would go to town during the day. We go by the school, eat late evening so she could ride back in that bus. So it was no easy thing but we weathered it.
Dan Clark
Tell me, did your husband work, did he have a job or did he farm?
Beatrice Green
Oh, he was a mechanic, he was a good mechanic and he was a good builder. He worked on buildings.
Dan Clark
Did you ever work or were you a housewife?
Beatrice Green
Yeah, I worked, I worked a long time. I worked at Meacham Field. I had certain white people that I worked for. The ones that we lived in, in Benbrook, well they come over here and they get this farm, we worked on their farm, that’s where my little boy was born. And my husband worked there cause he was a smart person.
Dan Clark
What did you do at Meacham?
Beatrice Green
I was a bus first and then I was on the floor with the waitresses.
Dan Clark
In the cafeteria, in the dining room?
Beatrice Green
Me and my daughter too, we had certain kinds of clothes that we…
Dan Clark
Was that a good job?
Beatrice Green
Oh yeah, good job, we all got along.
Dan Clark
Did a lot of people pass through there?
Beatrice Green
Oh yeah, I guess there were soldiers and things, but whatever, what they called it, tips, yes, they tipped by the month and whenever they tipped, well its split and me and my daughter got part of that.
Dan Clark
So that was pretty good money?
Beatrice Green
Oh, that was nice.
Dan Clark
do you have grandchildren? Did your daughter have children?
Beatrice Green
yes, I got me some grandchildren. I wish you could see the rest of them.
Dan Clark
How many grandchildren do you have?
Beatrice Green
Not many. My daughter had three boys, that’s who takes care of me, and he works for Meacham Field airport and the other one is retired, I don’t know what company he’s working for but he’s retired.
Dan Clark
You have great-grandchildren?
Beatrice Green
Yes.
Dan Clark
how far can I go, great-great-grandchildren?
Beatrice Green
Yes, there’s some great-great-grandchildren. Some was just born, not even a month old. Yeah, big family, I had eleven sisters and brothers.
Dan Clark
Well, that’s a good thing.
Beatrice Green
Seven boys and five girls. My daddy was just strict as the police. Whatever was supposed to be done, he told us to do it and we did it.
Dan Clark
so they grew up knowing how to follow the rules?
Beatrice Green
Oh yeah, and they made…they worked everywhere, west Irving, my brother worked for companies in West Irving, the one that lived down there. And the other one worked for…if I could remember I’d tell you. People…outstanding people that my oldest brother worked for til he died. They didn’t have any children so his wife and her brother adopted some children in the family and had brought one out here to be with her and he carried em back to the bus line and while he was there, well, some of our neighbors caught…his pigs was out…he said I’m gonna drive these pigs here back out of town and when he did, some boys come along, hit him, knocked him and killed him right there on Christmas day.
Dan Clark
On Christmas day? And he was just trying to get the pigs back in?
Beatrice Green
Oh yeah. And they called him “Happy”. But you know, there wasn’t a lot done, don’t know how many years ago.
Dan Clark
Do any of your families still live in Mosier Valley?
Beatrice Green
No, I’m the only one that’s here now.
Dan Clark
Do you still own land in Mosier Valley? You don’t own a house there now, do you?
Beatrice Green
Oh no, I don’t.
Dan Clark
Tell me, let me go back a little bit about your father’s family. The Parker name…where does that come from? Do you know?
Beatrice Green
I don’t know where it come from…her name or his name but, you know them they’re gone. There’s a place up here called Parker Graveyard, right there on Hwy. 183 and the highway that go right into Fort Worth…I can’t think of it right now. Anyway, it come from…of course I don’t know where it came from but that’s from my granddaddy. But there is a Parker Graveyard, I don’t know where it’s still at, that’s called a Parker Graveyard. Now it used to be that on Sundays there was more white people going back and forth down there to my grandfather and them…because you couldn’t tell my daddy was black …so what I’m asking is, was he white? I say no, no, my daddy…well all his people was real white, you couldn’t tell…my sister, why her hair was down to here and so it just come from her people…my grandmother and grandfather, he was tan you know. But more white people be down there on Sundays I don’t know what. Some kin you know, them to her…cause this wife did not want these two children that was born from the old master and so they put them off and Lish Young…she’s the one that kept my grandmother and her brother until he went over there and asked her to let him stay with the children cause…I don’t know how long they stayed together, but that was a sweet old couple.
Dan Clark
Did you have much contact when you were growing up with the white people in Euless?
Beatrice Green
Well, just like a peep. Did some cook, pick mostly. But we’d always went there for groceries, like I…with no problems.
Dan Clark
Did you go to the grocery store there?
Beatrice Green
Yeah, they sold, grocery stores there...as we grew up my daddy and my mother was east of the Star and Mason and so they would say okay ya’ll can work, after that you can have your money to buy you clothes for the summer. We were well, very well disciplined; we knew…it was just like soldiers….we knowed what’s right and what’s wrong and that’s what we did, and no problems. Don’t mean that we didn’t get some whippings some time.
Dan Clark
Did you buy your clothes or did you make your clothes?
Beatrice Green
My mother was a good seamstress, she made a lot of em. All the boys got…you know, course she didn’t make for the boys but she always kept us pretty nice…people say…you dressed nicer than most of em cause mama could make our clothes.
Dan Clark
Did you get dressed up for church every Sunday?
Beatrice Green
All the time. She’d get us ready if she…I’m sure that she was pregnant with some of my little sister or brother. She didn’t go but she had the big boys walk with us and carry us, we could get dressed up and go…
Dan Clark
Did she have a big hat that she wore to church?
Beatrice Green
I don’t remember, I don’t imagine she (laughter) with so many other big things to do, but she never had to work. My daddy made their living, he and the boys. The boys worked on them railroading…two of them, and when they got their check, he’d take one check and let one be divided between the two, and that’s the way there was no problem about who made the money daily. We were brought up in a very clean and intelligent family. We were poor people like every body else, don’t want to make you think we was living…we had plenty of food, a little itty biddy house to live in, not even a…upstairs, they just had a hole cut out up there and made like a step ladder on the wall, the boys slept upstairs and we slept downstairs.
Dan Clark
Do you remember if your father always had a car or a truck?
Beatrice Green
No, when they come in existence well people was given; well he always had a truck or something.
Dan Clark
What was your favorite thing to do when you were growing up? What did you enjoy the most?
Beatrice Green
The picnics. The picnics, and my daddy, he’d start the night before, cooking the meat, and getting everything together. I mean whoever was sponsoring it, the next day then mama would have our clothes and things, our clothes all stand out like we were all actors, actresses, all dressed up. They thought my mama was the best seamstress and housekeeper there was around and she had to be…had five girls. We had small houses but we were raised clean and intelligent, as much as we could.
Dan Clark
Would they have music at the picnics?
Beatrice Green
Yes, late evening they would, you know, they would let everybody get dressed in they best and when they’d get that late, mama would get ready to go home and then he’d get…who ever belonged…the jig, they’d call it a “jiggy” that’s the reason how these little boys that lived in Arlington…he’d come over here and bring them and then papa’d get him to come and bring us and when its time for us to start going home when night come, my mother’d go home and carry us home and put us to bed.
Dan Clark
Would the boys, your brothers go home at the same time or would they stay?
Beatrice Green
They wasn’t, no they could stay out a while but they was some big boys, I mean they weren’t grown boys, you know big boys, they stayed out longer and mama would stay with us.
Dan Clark
Would there be people at the picnic that drank beer or whiskey?
Beatrice Green
If they did, I didn’t know about it. Most of them were just so happy to meet together, you know…
Dan Clark
All well behaved no fights or anything?
Beatrice Green
No, I never heard, never heard of it.
Dan Clark
Do you remember the first time you went to a movie theater or the first time you saw a movie?
Beatrice Green
Ah, yeah, that was after I got in my teens, the boys would carry us, we’d go to Fort Worth one time and we went to Dallas. Not a whole lot, but I got to go to Fort Worth and Dallas, mostly Dallas cause the people down there was more in time with what’s happening. You could go to what was a nice one where black people could go to and we were going with the boys that lived down there and so then they’d come get us after dinner and then we’d go there and then we’d come home in the evening and always had something. We used to have library tables, you know in the living room.
Dan Clark
Long tables?
Beatrice Green
No, it’s a beautiful table, they called em library, cause it had books and we’d have a cake or something to serve to our company when they’d come so we had to be home at the night. They didn’t let us be out at night you see.
Dan Clark
When you went to Dallas, how would you get there?
Beatrice Green
We went in a car, the boys we was going with was Irving boys, was a little bit ahead than some of these boys up here.
Dan Clark
I see, they’re a little more modern, huh?
Beatrice Green
Um hum, some of them was.
Dan Clark
Did you think that was a long trip?
Beatrice Green
Oh no, we thought it was just wonderful to be with them and then most times they’d have these sisters with them and you know…and we’d have other girls that be talking…
Dan Clark
What did you do when you got to Dallas?
Beatrice Green
Go to the, go to the picture show.
Dan Clark
Movies?
Beatrice Green
Movies it was, I don’t know what they would call them but they were really acting people at that time.
Dan Clark
Oh, it’s like stage show?
Beatrice Green
Yeah, see I had just started doing that, I had only been to very few in Fort Worth but they were more up on everything than the Mosier Valley people and so, I guess they went to Dallas more.
Dan Clark
Would that be expensive?
Beatrice Green
I don’t know, those boys, they’re the ones…
Dan Clark
Someone always paid for you?
Beatrice Green
Yeah, the boys would.
Dan Clark
You did pretty good if you got em to pay for you…
Beatrice Green
Yeah, the boys, they’d come. There’s sometimes they called. They’d corner us, we were pretty nice looking girls and things, dressed nice at that time and they come on and show us off and go with us there and then we’d go into Dallas to the picture shows. Not a lot of them but we were…
Dan Clark
When you went to Dallas to the picture show or to the play, whatever it was, would you have to sit in a certain area?
Beatrice Green
Yes, you had the white seats and the black seats.
Dan Clark
How would you feel about that?
Beatrice Green
We were used to white people. We were born and raised around, you know the Scrubbs and in Benbrook you know…
Dan Clark
It just seemed like a natural thing?
Beatrice Green
Um hum, we kinda stayed apart you know, not like they are today, but we don’t have no problem.
Dan Clark
Do you remember the first time you ever saw a television set? Do you remember the first television you ever owned?
Beatrice Green
Um uh.
Dan Clark
Did you learn to drive a car?
Beatrice Green
Oh yeah. Right after I got married, my husband had a car…his family…
Dan Clark
Did he teach you?
Beatrice Green
Yeah, we’d be going, you see a car coming and I’d go to pull out the side, he’d go, why did you turn? Didn’t you see that car coming? I can’t pass that car. He’d put his foot on my…on the accelerator and make me pass that car. He’d teach me how to do it and after then when I got ready to go forth I’d go forth.
Dan Clark
Drive the car yourself, huh?
Beatrice Green
When I worked at Meacham Field, I went every morning. Yeah, see he’d get up and have my car warmed up and everything.
Dan Clark
Did you ever take the train some place?
Beatrice Green
Let me see, did I go anywhere on the train? I don’t know, not after I got married, no further than Tarrant or Eu…what’s the nice little town up here?
Dan Clark
Hurst? Tarrant or Hurst?
Beatrice Green
Hurst. We lived down there, you know his mamma’s biggest sister and she was a soul. She was a singing star and she…we’d have to walk a pretty good ways to get on the train and they come up there and help us out and then we’d…dusty going on the road…
Dan Clark
Did you ever fly anywhere in an airplane?
Beatrice Green
Never did that until I got married.
Dan Clark
And, where did you go then?
Beatrice Green
Oh, any place I wanted to go. My husband was a good provider. I flew here to Washington, not when I was…I done got more mature then, but I had a…I had a…up that way and I didn’t wanna fly…
Dan Clark
Were you frightened?
Beatrice Green
Oh yeah, I told him…I say, well can’t I get a bus or something? No, it’s so long, that’s been years ago when…well I just couldn’t hardly stand it, and finally they talked me into it and I got on there and started talking to somebody else till I know I was in Washington. Ever since then I’ve been flying regularly. When I got ready to go to California, I just go up there, down to Euless, get on the…wouldn’t go to sleep cause usually somebody on there to talk to. But I been everywhere, I had a good providing husband. I had my own farm, plenty of clothes and I’ve had a good life.
Dan Clark
Good.
Beatrice Green
My daddy did the best they could with twelve of us. We wasn’t the poorest ones, we had a little bitty house, like was roosting sometimes but as best they could afford cause they did everything they could to make us better, happier and more classier…they did it, we know that, we know that by heart.
Dan Clark
Well that was good.
Beatrice Green
Thank God all raised up good, got a little education, we didn’t none of us gone to high school but I prepared my daughter. That’s the first time I seen a high school, but I went to school.
Dan Clark
So you’ve been interviewed for the paper too? Someone told me you had an article in the Star Telegram?
Beatrice Green
Yes.
Dan Clark
I don’t see the date on here.
Beatrice Green
It’s just two years ago.
Dan Clark
Two years ago? It says, “Woman is getting ready to celebrate ninety seven years in Euless. The woman known as Mother Beatrice Green is in good health and has several generations of family living nearby”. So were you called Mother Green…Mother Beatrice?
Beatrice Green
I’m the mother of the Church. I’ve been there since I was sixteen.
Dan Clark
Well, I will have to find this article. I can probably get it out of the Star Telegram.
Beatrice Green
You can.
Dan Clark
It was about two years ago, huh?
Beatrice Green
Yes, that was when I was ninety seven. I go to church; I haven’t missed church, not one Sunday. I have a cousin that’s not very far up there and she’s got children, she carry children off to Sunday school, come back and get me.
Dan Clark
So, you still go to St. John?
Beatrice Green
No, I go to Cathedral of Faith Church of God in Christ. The one that’s being built right next to the church before you get to St. John.
Dan Clark
So you are a very religious person?
Beatrice Green
Yes, I’ve been in the church since I was sixteen. I study the word as much as I can see and of course I’m a missionary out here. I have my license. The Lord has blessed me.
Dan Clark
Do you read a lot?
Beatrice Green
Not a lot.
Dan Clark
Do you watch T.V. very much?
Beatrice Green
I don’t watch T.V. You might know the white lady, I don’t know her name but she’s of course, in the hospital somewhere, she’s a teacher and she comes here all the time to see me. About my T.V., they removed it, the line wasn’t far enough for it to connect and she got me a connection so that it’ll reach there, she is one sweet lady.
Dan Clark
Do you go out much, besides church?
Beatrice Green
I don’t have a opportunity to go out cause it seems like not anybody to carry me. Now at Christmas they take me over to Arlington to see everything.
Dan Clark
Do your grandsons come here?
Beatrice Green
They would worship me if I let em…them big ole boys come lay down on my bed so they can look me in my face “are you really feeling alright? Sure, I’m just fine. And put me a telephone in, I have the best if they can afford it.
Dan Clark
Do you talk on the telephone a lot?
Beatrice Green
Not a lot…yes I guess a lot, I don’t dial no body because I am a missionary, a lot of them call me for information…got to pray with them. And sometime I’m on here at night when they call me.
Dan Clark
Do you sleep well?
Beatrice Green
I sleep well; I’m the last one to get up. I eat my breakfast in bed everyday.
Dan Clark
That’s a pretty good life, isn’t it? Breakfast in bed?
Beatrice Green
It’s a good one, I never seen nothing like it, never. They just roll my bed up, give me a wash cloth, fix a place for my telephone and my call button.
Dan Clark
That’s a good life.
Beatrice Green
God is a good god; he will supply all your needs according to his riches and glory. I have some girl use to belong to my church, she sells property, what do you call them?
Dan Clark
A real estate agent.
Beatrice Green
She’s a real estate, we’re all suppose to give a thousand dollars for getting the foundation down in the ground cause such a great big building go on the top…and she sent me back two hundred dollars on mine. That’s just the kind of friends that I have, what ever they can do for me. So the Lord has done great things for me and I couldn’t be in a better place.
Dan Clark
That’s great Beatrice, thank you for talking to me.
Reverend Lloyd G. Austin
with
Chris Jones
Chris Jones
Let’s start with your name.
Rev. Austin
Lloyd George Austin, like Austin, Texas.
Chris Jones
And your address sir, I know its somewhere in Fort Worth?
Rev. Austin
2700 Galvez, G-a-l-v-e-z Avenue, Fort Worth, Texas, 76111.
Chris Jones
Phone number?
Rev. Austin
817-335-3120.
Chris Jones
Date of birth?
Rev. Austin
December 1, 1923.
Chris Jones
Well, happy belated birthday.
Rev. Austin
Thank you.
Chris Jones
Where were you born sir?
Rev. Austin
Clarksville, Texas, well no, Greenville.
Chris Jones
Uh hum, are you married?
Rev. Austin
Yes sir.
Chris Jones
And your spouse’s name?
Rev. Austin
Macie, M-a-c-i-e Austin.
Chris Jones
Children?
Rev. Austin
One, Gergina, G-e-r-g-i-n-a.
Chris Jones
Her birth date?
Rev. Austin
March 15, 1955.
Chris Jones
Your father’s full name and birth date?
Rev. Austin
George Austin, I don’t even know his birth date.
Chris Jones
And your mothers name and birth date?
Rev. Austin
Ida Austin.
Chris Jones
Do you have a maiden name for her?
Rev. Austin
Umm, I think it was Allen.
Chris Jones
How about, do you have a birth date for her?
Rev. Austin
No. I don’t.
Chris Jones
Any sister’s of yours?
Rev. Austin
My sisters, they all passed on.
Chris Jones
Okay. How about brothers?
Rev. Austin
I had a bunch of brothers but they all passed on. No body left but me, Lloyd. They said there was twenty three on two wives, eleven on one side and twelve on the other side.
Chris Jones
All from your father?
Rev. Austin
My daddy married twice.
Chris Jones
Do you have your, either of your grandparents’ names?
Rev. Austin
No.
Chris Jones
Where did you attend school?
Rev. Austin
Fort Worth public school.
Chris Jones
And where was the last school you went to, did you graduate from high school or?
Rev. Austin
Twelve Street Junior High, went to the seventh grade.
Chris Jones
And that was in Fort Worth.
Rev. Austin
Yes sir.
Chris Jones
I’m gonna guess that was on 12th Street somewhere?
Rev. Austin
It was on 12th Street.
Chris Jones
Okay.
Rev. Austin
Still standing up there, used to be the old (I.M.) jail school made it into a junior high. Way back then we just had one school, I.M. Terrell.
Chris Jones
Oh, that’s still there isn’t it?
Rev. Austin
The old building still over there got a elementary school it. Where I was going was the first building that they had. Daddy use to have to come from 12th Street, watch practice here, down here to Greenway Park right on Belknap and play football and practice then jog all way the way back to school to take a shower.
Chris Jones
So you were raised in Fort Worth and you live there now? My understanding is that you had, at least part of your adult life, was spent here at Mosier Valley?
Rev. Austin
No.
Chris Jones
No, is that incorrect?
Rev. Austin
Just pastored in Mosier Valley, I lived in Fort Worth all my time.
Chris Jones
All your time, okay…where did you pastor?
Rev. Austin
St. John Missionary Baptist Church in Mosier Valley.
Chris Jones
And that is, I presume that’s your occupation, your occupation has been in ministry all your life?
Rev. Austin
No, I worked for National Cash Register. I’m retired from them after twenty four years but I pastored all the time, most the time that I was working for them, first pastor in a little town Sanger, Texas on the other side of Denton.
Chris Jones
You know where it is? What church was that?
Rev. Austin
Galilee, been up there eleven months.
Chris Jones
What denomination is that church?
Rev. Austin
Baptist.
Chris Jones
Baptist Church. I’m a Baptist myself.
Rev. Austin
Are you?
Chris Jones
What year were you in Sanger?
Rev. Austin
1963 I think.
Chris Jones
And you retired from National Cash Register you said twenty four years, what year did you say did you retire?
Rev. Austin
1985.
Chris Jones
Now what the name of the church in Mosier Valley?
Rev. Austin
St. John Missionary Baptist.
Chris Jones
And how long did you pastor in Mosier Valley?
Rev. Austin
Pastored forty two years.
Chris Jones
Wow. From when to when?
Rev. Austin
From 1964 to 2005.
Chris Jones
Oh, very recently.
Rev. Austin
Um hum.
Chris Jones
The idea is to draw a history from you about the area, including Mosier Valley. What highlights or things occurred that you think would be pertinent that you think would need to be included in an oral history concerning this area that you had first hand knowledge of.
Rev. Austin
Well, I met some people lived in Mosier Valley, Fowler, F-a-r-r-o-w. I came by, had this visiting different guys, come out here on hay rides and stuff like that and ah, that was in my days before pastor before preaching really, hadn’t started preaching then. And then I, after I started preaching what’s called a pastor nap, and ah, it was a rural area, black people lived out there, just black lived in Mosier Valley and they shuck corn, they’d take the stuff to Fort Worth and sell it, some cattle and um, things like this but they were kind of self supporting. Mosier Valley really was kind a productive cause they raised stuff born on the land. And ah, well when I was called to St. John in 1964 it was rural like and ah, organized what they called the Mosier Valley Community Club and I became the president of it.
Chris Jones
What was the purpose of the club?
Rev. Austin
To help get it cleaned up, the Mosier Valley community, you had wreck cars sitting up side the house, then have the streets fixed, they were mostly torn up. No street lights, so these were things that we had to work with through the City of Fort Worth.
Chris Jones
Is that a part of the City of Fort Worth?
Rev. Austin
It’s in Fort Worth. Anything south of Pipeline is in Fort Worth, north side is Euless.
Chris Jones
How do you, do you have any history on Mosier Valley; you know how it became established there?
Rev. Austin
No more than just heresy, I don’t have anything but the way they spelling it now, not the way it was spelled when it was organized when the slaves came in to.
Chris Jones
How would was that?
Rev. Austin
It was name Moshia M-o-s-h-i-a Valley. That’s the guy who gave the land to em and let go free…from where all of them...
Chris Jones
And who was he?
Rev. Austin
He was the owner of all this property, all of em up in here and he gave each one of those slaves a some of that land north of the Trinity River and ah, they farmed it and worked it.
Chris Jones
I know that the City of Fort Worth acquired that area right after WWII in an effort to make the connection between downtown Fort Worth and the old Greater Southwest International Airport. I’m gonna guess that the residents there probably didn’t see a lot of city services?
Rev. Austin
No, that’s the thing I had out there. I started pasturing out there, you didn’t have water, you didn’t have light, gas…everybody was on butane and had wells to get their water from. Well, Fort Worth annexed it but they didn’t do anything to em.
Chris Jones
Yeah, they just wanted the connection to the airport I guess.
Rev. Austin
Yeah, to get the taxes from it and whatever, course it had become a part of Fort Worth. First there’s just Tarrant County.
Chris Jones
So you were not around, one of the big stories that I hear is the attempt at integration that took place here in 19…, some time early 1950’s I’m not sure, you were not here, not involved in seeing any of that?
Rev. Austin
No, they had a problem with em getting a school in Mosier Valley, the HEB School District was then in Euless, Hurst, Bedford, they had they own school operation and ah, Mosier Valley fell in the district of Euless and they had problem getting Euless to build em a school, take care of the school and blah, blah, blah. They had to do a march down here downtown on Euless to see if they could get them to do something with that Mosier Valley, and from there on they went on and they finally build them a new building then integrated it. The old building stood there and before I left, it was integrated; and they had, was integrated it just be old black children went there and finally integration came and they sent the children to all these schools around here HEB School District. The old building sat there for myself as the president of the Community Club, we kept working and we went up to Euless School District, HEB School District, and gave em a proposal and asked them what it would take for us to use the old school building in Mosier Valley and they said we could lease it for $100 a month and they leased it to us and let us use it for a community building, a community center. This is where the Methodist Church came in because we had dreamed of having a school, what is that, what you call it, helping slow children and we went to that Methodist Church and they offered their help to the children, to help them pick up their grades. First United Methodist Church, they were real nice, they were wonderful, they came out and helped us get that to going and helped us they did, they came in the afternoon and taught those slow children. Then they decided that we needed a library and they got it set up and organized, helped get books put in it.
Chris Jones
In Mosier Valley?
Rev. Austin
Um hum, in the Mosier Valley old school building.
Chris Jones
Okay, so the old school building became a Community Center and public library.
Rev. Austin
Um Hum. It was a great blessing to get it cause we had a lot of things went on in that building, you know for the community.
Chris Jones
I’ve been told that building later got moved. Is it correct? Did you know anything about that?
Rev. Austin
Trying to think, yeah, they moved it up here in Hurst somewhere. I don’t know if it’s still there or not but it used to sit on the corner.
Chris Jones
In ah, off somewhere in Hurst?
Rev. Austin
In Bedford that’s where it was, it wasn’t Hurst, it was Bedford. Bedford used to have just a little Library and Post Office and all that stuff it wasn’t building or nothing, I think it sat in that old building kind a south there, I believe it was.
Chris Jones
We kind of skipped over, I should have asked you earlier, did you ever have any military service?
Rev. Austin
No sir. Got burnt when I was about four years old, in Hugo, Oklahoma, that’s where we lived, playing with fire. Burned my leg all over the back over here and I had to lay on my stomach till I healed. Well when I healed then we moved to Fort Worth in 1932. Yeah, my sister came up there and got us. She was there in Fort Worth, moved us to Fort Worth and ah we been there ever since, 1932, it was January.
Chris Jones
What did you do when you worked for National Cash Register?
Rev. Austin
I operated a warehouse; shipping and receiving.
Chris Jones
In Fort Worth?
Rev. Austin
Yes sir.
Chris Jones
Anything else you can tell me about that occurred in Mosier Valley that you would deem important to be captured and included?
Rev. Austin
Well, that’s about all I know about Mosier Valley.
Chris Jones
How about any other part of the northeast Tarrant County?
Rev. Austin
Well I had some problem when I bought a home in Fort Worth in the rural side area out on Judkins, 209 North Judkins.
Chris Jones
That was your home.
Rev. Austin
I bought it yes. Well it caused a race disturbance. The guy that sold it to me didn’t care about my color or anything he just wanted to sell the house. I passed his house coming out of Mosier Valley and he had the sign in his yard so I asked him could I buy it? He said, well yeah, I thought he might object to me being black but he didn’t even think about the color, he just wanted to sell the house and he did, he sold it to me. And ah, get to stuck a lean on it, didn’t have a lot of money to put down on it but he did, stuck a lean. Well after I bought the house I used a company truck which was a term in the brand…we called it a Blue Tag Feed and Seed, and I used that truck to move down there at what they called Rock Island Bottom down by (unintelligible) and moved over there. After I got moved, everything seemed going pretty good. Late that next day they got to gathering, the white people coming from everywhere, hollering that they didn’t want us in there and called me names and all that.
Chris Jones
When was this?
Rev. Austin
In 1955, well 56, 1956.
Chris Jones
Where exactly is that, you said Riverside, where on Riverside?
Rev. Austin
It’s the street that runs into 121, it would be, well, it’d be south of 121. Judkin run north and south.
Chris Jones
Runs parallel with the Riverside, the street?
Rev. Austin
No the street run north and south and my house will be sitting in the middle of 121…if it was still there.
Chris Jones
Oh, okay, so they put the highway in where your house was?
Rev. Austin
Yeah, they had to move it. After I had bought it, then later on they decided to build that 121 Freeway through there. I could a kept the house but I couldn’t find no where to move it to, I tried every kind a way to move that house, couldn’t find no where to put it but they bold over it and just knocked it down.
Chris Jones
What did they, did they probably declare it Imminent Domain to acquire that property, to put the highway?
Rev. Austin
Yes, something that you had to, you can’t keep what they called progress; the state can not stop progress. They say you can not have something to hinder it and ah, they needed my property to make that freeway there.
Chris Jones
When was, when did that happen, when did 121 go in?
Rev. Austin
1960, somewhere along there.
Chris Jones
Going back to 1960 is about when they build the highway, tore down the house?
Rev. Austin
Yeah.
Chris Jones
How did you finally resolve the situation with the folks that didn’t want you there?
Rev. Austin
Well I tried to get the City of Fort Worth police department to come out cause they was just marching up and down that block and ah, they wouldn’t, The City of Fort Worth wouldn’t, and ah the chief say, well there have to be some violence, I say, I don’t need no violence, I said, I don’t need no violence, they throwing rocks all on my house, standing out front of my house calling me names. The lady that live across from me, she was a alcoholic and she drank a lot and she would come over and shake my door and all that kind of stuff so I ah, kept calling them and police still wouldn’t give me no kind a assistance. So I had gotten enough of it, they went talking about burning my house, all out in the front of my house they talking about, let’s burn that nigger house and had hollered images on a tree that was in front of my house, and my child was there, she was about, bout a year old and ah, I’d had enough of that, so I prayed standing in the living room, said to the Lord I’ve had enough of this, I can’t handle no more of it so I went to the window and raised it, didn’t aim at nothing, just shot out the window with a .22 rifle and it hit a young man’s car that was out there. He had no business over there, he came over to pick up a girlfriend but he saw the surroundment, he come over and park, walked around with them. Anyway, the bullet hit his car and then, and within 10 minutes I guess, the Chief of Police was out there with a voice horn saying that anybody that don’t live on this block, I want you out of here in five minutes right now. I don’t mean nothing else I mean right now, and he cleaned that block and then he gave me I guess you’d call it some kind of patrol, they was also to be there day and night just marching back and forth on that block. They kept that going and then some of them officials, rich people in Fort Worth, they called a ah council, some kind of consoling council and we’d go down there and meet them at the Fort Worth National Bank up in the meeting room, a long table, and all the executive of Fort Worth, most of them anyway and a guy name Daily cant tell) Johnson, he was president of Fort Worth National Bank and he called me and he chaired it, so I went up there twice and they didn’t feel like they’d get nothing done. Then there’s a black doctor in Fort Worth named James Burnett and they posed to give him some money if he got me to move out of that block. They said I was causing a confusion, I didn’t cause no confusion I bought some property, paid my down payment, I worked every day hauling feed…370 sacks of feed…I hadn’t stole nothing and I…well anyway they kept having those meeting so Mr. Johnson asked me, he says, Lloyd, why don’t you sell that house and have peace, you won’t have all this confusion from the white race, they don’t want you in there, why don’t you sell it? Mr. Johnson, I ain’t done nothing to nobody, I bought me a house cause I wanted a house. I work every day, I bought the house so therefore its mine. He says, well why don’t you move and have peace? I’m gonna have peace. I’m not gonna move, its mine. So finally he stood up like this with his hand down his pants and he said to the whole group, a whole big group of em, well, ya’ll heard what this nigger said so just keep asking him, keep talking to him. This meeting is adjourned. From then on, had peace and I made myself friendly and then the lady that was an alcoholic, she quit drinking that devil and I could go to church come back, if anybody came to my house while I was gone she’d come on and said Lloyd, Mr. Austin, you had a car come over here while you were gone. Thank you very much and the boy’s car that I hit, he said, he put a write up in the paper, the Fort Worth Star Telegram, that he was gonna sue me for hittin his car, so I said back to him in the paper, any time you wanna do that we’ll meet and see about that, so he just dropped it left it alone and you wont believe its been bout 2 years now when the Fort Worth Star Telegram writers called me and said he had met this boy, the guy had called him, cause he read the write up in the paper and he wanna know if, and he joined the church and he got saved, he wanna know if he can come over and talk to me. He wanted to meet me and beg my apology for being over there. Sure! He didn’t come to my house but then we met on the side of 121, on one of those service roads there, shook hands, apologize and went our own way and that was the end of that story.
Chris Jones
And so you were there from about “56” to roughly about four or five years.
Rev. Austin
About four years I think it was.
Chris Jones
And apparently once all these meetings and so forth took place and they adjourned the meeting you never really had any trouble after that I guess.
Rev. Austin
It was all over.
Chris Jones
Okay, very, very interesting.
Rev. Austin
I’d taken St. John when it was, the membership was scattered, it had outside restrooms, toilets, the seats was built on slated material which was nailed on pieces of board like, I guess 2’ X 6’s put together and then made the post underneath the bottom and I came to church like that and it was struggling, course I was still working, thing of it was, and ah, every morning as I started pastoring there’d be some lady would come up and turn around and show me the bottom of her leg that the seat would move like this like you sittin in it and it tear that holes. I said, well mam, just give us some time we’ll work toward to get some pews and we finally got everything fixed and ah, we taked the old pews out, bought some new ones. First thing about that though we had to sand the floors, it was a pretty building but it need a whole lot of work done to it and so we got that done and had to have the yard fixed, it was muddy and you couldn’t hardly get in there without getting mud all over you. So, had the yard fixed, then we had the floors fixed and the sanctuary finally then we got the pews in and then we had carpet put down. Got the restrooms put in to the building, inside the house, things just went and after a long good while, some property south of the church, they dug out what they called topsoil, set it to contractors cause they had to have clay to put on a home to…first they wouldn’t let you built a piece of concrete without it being some solid soil, black dirt shifts, so they dug all that out next door to the church and a young man…and he died and his kids had it and they wouldn’t agree to letting us have it so I tried to buy a acre from em to keep our land on the church…erode every time it rained the land would drop in and ah, finally the kids, they went on their way and ah they lost it by taxes. The hole, big ole, had ducks swimming in it like a pool and fish jumping up and they come up on the courthouse, stopped up there auction off well, this white fella came out, didn’t look at it cause he was a head real estate man he looked at that hole and said, I understand, ya’ll wanna buy this? I said yes we will, man you never get that thing filled in at least in ten years if you tried. Okay, Lloyd’ll fill it in. Well I just…we gonna buy it. So we went down to the auction, the bid came up, no body bidded on it but one lady went down there with us and she bidded first and made it go up a little bit but other than that we bidded and got it, for the church. And it was a deep hole, it was as this thing here, this room
Chris Jones
Really?
Rev. Austin
And ah, I prayed about it and I got out there, used to be and I guess they still do it, well somebody’s moving soil from somewhere they fixin to build or something like that and rather than them going to the land fill with it they had to pay out $50 a load at that time, takin it to the landfill so they’d drive out to Mosier Valley and they’d find a place, they’d dump it, take off. But I got out there by the church and I went to flagging them down, they’d come through and I told them to pull in there and dump…well how much is it I said? They said nothing, so they’d pull in there and just dumped and then ah, got to where I needed somebody to push it back cause you couldn’t just keep dumping so the white gentleman down the street from me, he had a…some kind a landscaping company, business…but he had a big ole bull dozer down there he used for different things so, I went down and asked him if he’d push it back for me and we’d pay him. Well he’d just keep it pushed back, keep on dumping in there so he came up and he pushed it back and I tried to pay him, he’d say no Brother Austin, you don’t have to pay me and everyday he would go out on his job…he done any of their work someway he had tap parking lots and knocking down some buildings for houses and stuff like this and he’d come on out after he’d come home from work, get up on that bulldozer, pushed that stuff back and get it in there and he did that till it became level just like this, but he wouldn’t take no pay. So finally he got engaged and ah, he wanted to know if I would marry em, I said yeah where you gonna marry? So I married him in this little, down there in here, so I went up there to the house and married him and this young lady, last I’d heard they were still together.
Chris Jones
That’s interesting, ah where exactly is the Mosier Valley church building? Is it like at Halls Anderson and Pipeline or where was it?
Rev. Austin
Well the church was organized on the property on the far northern (unintelligible 37:28) which is going down Mosier Valley Road, just to the right there where you see that…what is it, T.V…some kind of tower there they got up, I can’t think what the name of it is but anyway, they bought that from us too to put that thing and just beyond that is where the church was back off to the right of Mosier Valley Road. They organized there and then it bounced around and went back up Mosier Valley Road to another person property up there and finally they decided to come down to where it is now but they didn’t have that, no building and they had the land. The land was donated to them; lady gave them four acres of land to build the church and a lodge hall. The lodge would meet upstairs, the church met downstairs then they had a school cause there was only way they could have school cause they didn’t have no black schools in edge of Dallas County which was called Bear Creek and Mosier Valley…Tarrant, so they just organized the school, then they had in the bottom of it the Lodge Hall, but then they church decided they gonna build them a building, they build a wood building. I did have a…I used to have a picture. And then they went on with the wood building and finally they had a preacher name Reverend. Hemphill, he came in from down south Texas somewhere and they needed a new building so they build the red…the new brick red building that way there’s none and that’s the way it was.
Chris Jones
Well I’m trying to remember where that is.
Rev. Austin
What Mosier Valley?
Chris Jones
No, the church itself. It’s still there?
Rev. Austin
Yeah, you just go where 10 is and turn left and what is that…yeah turn left on Euless Bedford Road that there, is some bank or something there, I can’t think of the name of it now but just turn there on Bedford Road and you turn left and go on and its gonna change name to Pipeline don’t worry about that, just keep going south then you gonna cross Trinity Boulevard they got a red light there now there’s a Wholeness Church sittin near by that left keep going you cross through that light the church going to be on your left. You go to Euless parkway you be going south and you go through all these streets I was telling you then when you go across Trinity Boulevard you goin to be right at it pretty close cause its set to your left, and over here is a lot of commercial building and things like this. It’s a red brick building and it has a sign out in front says St. John Baptist church.
Chris Jones
When was that particular building build? What year?
Rev. Austin
1960, 1960, Hemphill, he was the pastor.
Chris Jones
And he was there before you or after you?
Rev. Austin
Before me. He was there about 16 years He did all the building of the sanctuary and the church and I added on to the back of it cause we ran out of room. Yeah that’s the picture of Mosier Valley just went commercial.
Chris Jones
I’ve been down there and it looks like mainly a bunch of commercial buildings down there now and maybe one or two residential streets not much
Rev. Austin
Yeah, its got some west on Garrett and then you got some on, I can’t think of the…
Chris Jones
Are many of the black members of that community still there or did they move on?
Rev. Austin
No, they moved on they have a few that are in there, some live down below the church and behind where the church is a few down there and then down on Frasier Court that’s the name of the street. Garrett and Frasier Court, that’s Mosier Valley community. One family now, was two on south Pipeline, and got a Seventh Adventist Church on South Pipeline at the corner of Alexander and…
Chris Jones
That I’ve seen, I’m familiar with.
Rev. Austin
Well, that’s where you going on pass there you go on to down to St. John.
Chris Jones
Can you think of anything, anything else that would be pertinent. Again our focus is primarily northeast Tarrant County but are there other areas that you want to go to that’s fine
Rev. Austin
A picture of Mosier Valley, I’ve gone through it that I could remember course got a cemetery down below us.
Chris Jones
Your not talking about the Calloway Cemetery are you?
Rev. Austin
No that’s Mosier Valley cemetery.
Chris Jones
Where’s that?
Rev. Austin
You go past the church, keep going south until you get down there, there’s a trailer house, you turn left and go on down in to the cemetery.
Chris Jones
And that was the community cemetery?
Rev. Austin
Yeah.
Chris Jones
Okay.
Rev. Austin
It was donated too, the main one that people made, I kept worrying them into finally putting a wall, brick wall or a sand rock wall around it, and ah, some of the name you can read and some of them you can’t but they, they’re the one that donated it…for the land for Mosier Valley cemetery
Chris Jones
Is it being maintained by anybody?
Rev. Austin
There’s a young man that’s working with the community club now name Benny Tucker. He heads it up, earth haulers how they do landscaping work but he, he gets them work from the town, well what you call it, prisoners, sheriffs, whatever they is they come out and clean it up, sometime they bring the prisoners out to see to the cemetery
Chris Jones
I’m just wondering if it’s even on the list of cemeteries that we got, it might be but I don’t remember.
Rev. Austin
That’s what they call it, Mosier Valley Cemetery. What they do to find that one up there by Bell Helicopter? They posed to have been moved… down to Mosier Valley.
Chris Jones
Another cemetery?
Rev. Austin
Yeah. It was on the paper.
Chris Jones
I missed that, where is that, where’s that located, south of Bell you say?
Rev. Austin
I think it is, I don’t know if its south or north, right there where they building on ah, Trinity Boulevard. I don’t recall what its on the south side or on the right side but anyway they found it up there when they were doing that landscaping for that building and they left it there. Now they want to move it cause I think they wanna do some more building and just out of courtesy…they wanna bring those names, I don’t know, the bones, whatever but they wanna move the name to Mosier Valley cemetery cause its just a small community cemetery up there in Hurst back there behind Bell they had it in the paper one time
Chris Jones
Did you have reason to believe it was a black community cemetery or do you know?
Rev. Austin
I don’t know what it was I don’t know if it was white or it might a been, I don’t know but it’s just a small cemetery I think.
Chris Jones
I’ll have to ask about that, I’m not familiar with that.
Rev. Austin
Be historian there around Hurst I guess could tell you. I don’t know if William…I don’t know much about it cause he was born and raised there you know where Bell used to be at Hurst. William…might could give you some input on it.
Chris Jones
Okay.
Rev. Austin
Just about all an old man can call to memory, about eighty three years on this old earth and I don’t know if I get any more but if I got…
Chris Jones
Well I guess unless there’s anything else you want to throw in there, I guess we’re about done. I appreciate your time today.
Rev. Austin
Thank you for asking, I don’t know if I was any help.
Chris Jones
Any questions for me or…?
Rev. Austin
Yeah, they ah, keep asking me about writing a book what all is involved in writing a book.
Chris Jones
Ah, well really don’t know, ah, who is they and what kind a book are they talking about?
Rev. Austin
Just some history on my life for the black race to read, have in the library like this one for someone who wanted to come in and read about the history of Lloyd Austin, about the history of whatever, just pioneers that grown old.