Roy Watford

Watford was born on July 29, 1906 in Brighton community in South Portsmouth. His mother's family was from Southampton County, VA while father's family was from Windham, NC. His father and grandfather were lumber talleys. Watford was a pipe shop helper in the Portsmouth Navy Shipyard from World War I period until the 1950s.

(Audio Interview transcription)

A: needed a glove, he'd get it. And if you needed four or five dollars--you played today and you wanted to to to a movie or you'd want to go somewhere . . .The only trouble [was] we had bed check. It was hard to keep that. Especially with one man we had. He was a good ball player and he was well liked. But you couldn't keep him in that bed. The bed check . . .he'd stay until the bed check, and when the bed check was over, he was gone.

Q: There's always one of them.

A: His name was Eugene, but we . . . everybody called him

Q: Very good.

A: World War I.

Q: Can you tell us about Portsmouth during World War I? How did World War I affect the Portsmouth community?

A: Well, World War I . . .it affect the Portsmouth community as far as living conditions, it helped it, you know. People were making money. It wasn't the class of money we're making now, but was the class of money in that day. And it wasn't a whole lot to get. You didn't have Frigidaires, tv's, and radios and what not, but you could go to the beach. Beaches then were called Mill Bay Beach and Buckroe Beach, and that was about all of it. There wasn't too much recreation. You'd go to a movie. and I don't think the movie was but about 15¢. I know it wasn't 20¢--it was 15¢.

Q: You said more people moving to the community with the government . . .

A: With the government, men . . .labor began to get short, and then it was a lot of Portuguese and Mexicans all through the neighborhood here, living in homes, you know.

Q: So the Portuguese and the Mexicans tended to move into the black community?

A: Yeah, Was full of it, full of it. I know right up on the corner of Elm and what is now Portsmouth Boulevard, but then it was Key Road. And that little street--it was called Key Avenue. And I guess in that one block there, it was about 20 Portuguese and Mexicans. And right behind me here, in the 1400 block here, I guess that house was 14-13 or something like that, it was about 8 or 10 there. And I know it was more in different places because I'd see them and know them you know. I was a good big boy then you know. I was a big boy--I was 15 or 14 years old.

Q: Now were blacks working at skilled positions in the shipyard before World War I?

A: No, no. You could name all of them on one hand. Now we had a man out here; his name was Tommy Jordan. You might know his son today His son was one time head of the convalescent home on North Truxton. His daddy was a shipbuilder . . .

[End of Side A, Tape #11]
[Begin Side B, Tape #11]

Q: (Muffled) go ahead.

A: But they just wouldn't let them be no mechanics.

Q: So when did they start allowing them into those skilled trades? [Do you] roughly remember?

A: Not real roughly--I know. It was 1938.

Q: Now what happened in 1938 to bring about that change?

A: World conditions. Unh, when that ship was sank. I think it was named Athelia, sank either Labor Day or the night before Labor Day. America wasn't into it. but she was preparing [to] help the other. . . helping Britain. Because I was working at the Navy yard myself.

Q: Now what was your position?

A: In the pipe shop ____ couldn't be mechanic. I was a helper. I was qualified to be a pipefitter, though. And we were taking them old destroyers, converting the hand rails to get 'em to

Q: How many minutes did it take to cross from Portsmouth to Norfolk?

A: Between six and ten minutes. Because when you'd leave Portsmouth, you'd meet the other boat coming back. Then busy-time, it woudl be three boats, you see, running. That would kind of speed up the time. And it was . . .it was very bad for colored people. You take when the white people come . . . when the boat come back, the white people woudl get off on this side . . .Here's the street car tracks right here, and you'd come off the ferry right here, and you'd walk around here to get a streetcar. The colored people had to come off on that side and then they got to come up, nothing to cover or what not, had to cross in the rain--just a disadvantage. And the street cars--when you got on the street car, you'd have to sit in the back. White people in the front, and you'd have to sit in the back. It was awful. No mistake about it.

Q: Was there anyone, any blacks in the 1930s or 40's, to challenge those practices or speak out against it?

A: Well, we had . . .somebody who was capable of doing so, but it would have been kinda useless like, you know. Because they didn't have nothing to fall back on--no help. Because we had three black lawyers in this town--Lawyer Walker, Lawyer Reid, and we had Lawyer Melville from Deep Creek. But they couldn't go down in the court room and plead a case. Couldn't do it.

Q: I mean . . . they couldn't win.

A: Well, you couldn't go down there.

Q: They couldn't?

A: No, you were barred from there.

Q: The blacks were barred from the courts?

A: Yeah. How you gonna win, we ain't goin' let you go down there _____or nothing. Back in the old days, we had a white doctor here. When my daddy was sick in 19 . . . my daddy passed in 1920, that's been sixty-some years ago now. . .We had one white doctor in this town that would treat colored people. Well, my daddy went to the lumber place up here, and. . .

Q: What was his name--the doctor?

A: Dr. Dumphrey, J.C. Dumphrey. And they had this man where my dadedy worked in this plant, mill, had Dr. Dumphrey to come to my house to see my daddy ____. Here was the name for Dr. Dumphrey among the white people--they called him "Nigger Jesus" and that's just the way a white man felt about a black man.

Q: Were there any black doctors?

A: Oh yeah. We had Dr. Reid, Dr. Brown, Dr. France, Dr. ____. Now Dr. France, he was an African doctor.

Q: Dr. Frances, I've heard about him.

A: You had one in Berkley, and [they had] one over here. But this one over here, he was ____on Glasgow and Effingham Street. He had a daughter; they said she was very smart. I didn't know her. Her name was Vivian France, and she was a great English teacher. And I heard that she went to Russia to teach. And I know one time when over here when segregation was so bad, Portsmouth General now was King's Daughters. And when you went to their hospital to see someone, you went in a side like this, and go to the back and go up some steps. In the back they had ward over here and a ward over that side for women. And you had sometimes 8 or 10 men in one ward; the same over there in the women. And if you 'd go to that hospital, this was on Lecky Street, you couldn't go up that front and in them steps. [You had] to go aroud that back.

Q: Can you say anything else about Dr. Frances? He came from Africa, was born in Africa.

A: He was a real smart doctor, very smart. Big heavy, very portly looking ma, dark man. He was smart. From what I understand, he had quite a few white patients. He was a smart man.

Q: Now what years did he practice in Portsmouth?

A: Well from the time that I can remember, and I'll say as near as I can recall now, from the time I can remember when I was a little boy, maybe until . . . longways after the first World War, but right now, I can't think about the time because I was quite a young man when he was living on the corner of Glasgow and Effingham Street. But I remember him so far back that he would go around to see his patients, he would have a horse and buggy and have a fellow driving him. In fact, all the doctors had a horse and buggy back in that time. And that's been a long time ago. They all had those little black bags they carried, you know. But he must have been a good doctor, because as much as his name went around, everybody know Dr. (everybody knows me [in response to passer by's greeting]) Everybody knew Dr. Frances.

A: Have you joined any organizations over the years, Mr. Watford?

A: Yes. I was a Mason. I belong to White Rock Lodge 133, but when I went on the road as a pullman porter--I was there for years--I got inactive into it, and never did return.

Watford, Transcript, interviewed on July 4, 1981, Lower Tidewater in Black and White (Portsmouth, VA: Portsmouth Public Library, 1981), 20-33. [entire interview, pp. 1-33]