Laretta Torrence, December 13th, 2009

Laretta Torrence, December 13th, 2009

In this interview, Laretta Torrence talks about her life and growing up in a Detroit neighborhood.

Detroit Historical Society

Detroit Historical Society

en-US

Laretta Torrence

Laretta Torrence grew up in Detroit’s Black Bottom neighborhood where she remained until she relocated to Ethel. Torrence went on to get married and have two children.

Detroit, MI

12/13/2009

29:15

Laretta Torrence: 15 questions.

Mr. Keyes: Today is Saturday.

Laretta Torrence: Their Sunday.

Mr. Keyes: Today is Sunday.

Laretta Torrence: December 13th.

Mr. Keyes: December 13th. That's correct. 2009 2009. The informed consent has been signed. This is the very twins. How are you doing?

Laretta Torrence: I'm fine. Mr. Keyes. How are you?

Mr. Keyes: I'm good. I'm. I appreciate you. Allow me. In an interview today, Ms. Torrence, can you tell me a little bit about where you were born or where your parents?

Laretta Torrence: I was born 19th July fourth, 1930 at Herman Kiefer Hospital, Detroit, Michigan. My mother was born in Mississippi and my father was born in Arkansas.

Mr. Keyes: And when did they come to Detroit, Michigan?

Laretta Torrence: They came to Detroit, Michigan, probably about in 1925.

Mr. Keyes: And that's when they moved the Blackbottom, what is known as a Blackbottom.

Laretta Torrence: We lived on Canfield in Russell, 1456, East Canfield. I had one brother and one sister. I was the youngest of the three siblings. My father worked for the WPA. My mother was a homemaker. We went to Detroit Public Schools.

Mr. Keyes: How was schools in those days?

Laretta Torrence: Schools were good in those days. We went to school with black children and white children. The teachers seemed very interested in the students. My first grade school was Campbell on the Lower East Side. It went to the sixth grade, and then I went to Russell on Russell and and Elliott for approximately a year. Then I went to Garfield Intermediate on Russell and Frederick. I graduated from the eighth grade at Garfield. Then I went on to Northeastern High on Wine and Grandy, where I graduated in 19 and January 1948. At that time, my parents had moved to southwest Detroit on a street named South Ethel so we could have a better life. That my parents bought this home. Brand new $6,000 built from the ground up.

Mr. Keyes: 6000 and.

Laretta Torrence: $6,000. The house payment was $48 a month. We had three bedrooms, living room, dining room, kitchen, full basement and backyard. I continue to go to Northeastern High because I like the school, like the children that I went with. I graduated, like I said, in January 1948. After graduation, I got a job at a car and since elevator operator briefly in 1940. In August, I married Hermann Keyes. I was to take the stand. Stan and Rod were born. Rod was born in 1949. Stand brother. He was born in 1949 and all. I didn't continue to work because I needed to stay home and take care of my children. Stan was born in 1951, in July also.

Mr. Keyes: Stan. Tell me about their name. Stan.

Laretta Torrence: Stan. Keith. Stanley. Douglas. Keyes. We didn't have television in those days. We only had radio. And while I was home as a parent, I used to listen to what they called back in those days and still do the soaps, soap operas, Soap operas. And I got Stan's name off the soap operas. I got this name from my neighbor. She was. Go ahead, tell she's going to have a boy. But she had a girl. She will name her boy Rodney. But I name my son, Rodney. They also went to the Detroit Public Schools. Oh, I don't remember the name of the schools that they went to, but I know they went to the Detroit Public School because we couldn't afford private schools.

Mr. Keyes: No. I also. You say you were born on Canfield and Russell. That was considered a black bottom.

Laretta Torrence: Yes.

Mr. Keyes: Tell me about growing up in black Bottom.

Laretta Torrence: Well, growing up in black bottom for me wasn't so bad because my parents only let me go for certain distance on Main Street and Black Bottom was Hastings Street. We only went there on Saturday night, along with going to the Eastern market on Saturday evening to do our grocery shopping. And when I went on Hazel Street, that was with my mother always.

Mr. Keyes: When you say your parents let you go very far, what about entertainment? Socializing at nighttime?

Laretta Torrence: We didn't go out at night. We had to be home when the streetlights came on. I had one brother and one sister and we had to be in a house when the street lights came on for a social life was concerned. We went to the movies on Sunday and we couldn't go to the movies if we didn't go to Sunday school.

Mr. Keyes: What was the movies like?

Laretta Torrence: The movies were fine. It wasn't many black people in movies in those days. It was all always all white. If it was a black person in a movie, they always played a part as a under educated person. Oh, they I don't know what you call them, but the part wasn't a major role.

Mr. Keyes: How did they make you feel? Growing up as a child.

Laretta Torrence: It didn't make me feel I didn't think. Not because I was a child. It didn't bother me at all, you know? I understand we had three shows and we went to on Hastings. One was the Wallace, where we attended most of the time. The other one was the castle. It was down on Hastings in the lower part of the city, and we couldn't go that far. The other was Warfield, and we my parents wouldn't let us go that far. We attended, and the show was ten set back in those days. Sometime my parents couldn't afford the dime, so we would go to Sunday school. When I come back home, we play outside. Jump Rope, Hop Scotch content. We played with white children. We had white children as neighbors. Sometimes we fight with anger. They call us a [Unrecognized]. We call them a hawk. But the next day we were playing a game.

Mr. Keyes: That sounds good and sounds good. You say your parents good enough sometimes. Couldn't afford to let you go to the show. And the show was only a dime. Was your dad working?

Laretta Torrence: My dad worked for the W, what they call the WPA. It belonged to something that belonged to the city. He poured cement as a Detroit zoo. He poured cement at the Belle Isle. And rather than be on a public assistance, this is what the kind of work that he had to do. We were never hungry. Everything was extremely cheap back in those days, as I can remember. The house on Canfield, where I was born in the rent was $20 a month. My dad was able to save money from the money that he worked from at the zoo and at Belle Isle to buy a home on the south At home. And that's when we moved.

Mr. Keyes: Now, he said his house in Black Bottom on Canfield, he said, only had one bedroom.

Laretta Torrence: One bedroom.

Mr. Keyes: And there were.

Laretta Torrence: Three children. My mother and father.

Mr. Keyes: And your mother and father?

Laretta Torrence: Yes.

Mr. Keyes: Oh, you guys live in the same room?

Laretta Torrence: We had always slept in the same room. My mother and father slept in the living room.

Mr. Keyes: I came by the bathrooms and.

Laretta Torrence: We had one bathroom and it was in the kitchen. The landlord. It was a large kitchen. Extremely large. I'd say about 18 by 16 to part of the kitchen and made up. First of all, we only had a toilet. But I guess he realized we needed a bathtub because we used to take a bath in Atlanta on Saturday night behind the stove in the living room. That's all because we had to heat water on this stove to put in this tube.

Mr. Keyes: I see.

Laretta Torrence: So they put it back to part of the kitchen and put a bath tub and a hot water tank and a toilet. There wasn't any baseball. And then we got able to take a bath and a bath tub, and we were so excited.

Mr. Keyes: So then you guys were taken baths every day?

Laretta Torrence: No, Maybe three times a week.

Mr. Keyes: That's it. Okay. That's an improvement.

Laretta Torrence: Yeah.

Mr. Keyes: Okay, so when you moved out from.

Laretta Torrence: Canfield and Russel.

Mr. Keyes: Canfield and Russel to.

Laretta Torrence: Ethel to.

Mr. Keyes: Ethel, you had running water and bathrooms and all the facilities.

Laretta Torrence: Good facilities.

Mr. Keyes: Okay, let's go back to the black bottom for entertainment, like long weekends, because I was told that there were. What was the name of those things? And I was down there. But not the flats. But the Graystone.

Laretta Torrence: The Graystone Ballroom.

Mr. Keyes: Yes.

Laretta Torrence: It was on Woodward and Canfield. I my sister went more than I did go. She was the oldest. We only had dancing on the Monday night for the blacks. We had the big name bands come Duke Ellington, Lionel Hampton, Count Basie. But our day was Mondays. My sister would go, but I was the younger sibling, so I wasn't allowed to go. She was four years old and I was at that time she had a boyfriend so he would take her to the dance. The dances were from 9 to 2.

Mr. Keyes: Some things they only on Mondays. Or did that mean the white kids went to the other day?

Laretta Torrence: I don't know.

Mr. Keyes: You don't know?

Laretta Torrence: I don't know.

Mr. Keyes: But on Mondays, the black and teens will come.

Laretta Torrence: No, that's right.

Mr. Keyes: Okay. That sounds interesting. It's interesting because your days out in South Ethel, what was it like out there compared to.

Laretta Torrence: It was nice.

Mr. Keyes: For.

Laretta Torrence: You? We had a lawn. We had flowers. We had clotheslines in the backyard to hang your clothes in the summertime. And we owned Canfield and Russell. We had my mother would wash and hang the clothes in the house in the living room at night. But it wasn't any other place to hang them.

Mr. Keyes: We had no backyard.

Laretta Torrence: We had no backyard. So things changed. And the neighborhood was nice. We lived we were living between E course. Lincoln Park. River Rouge. Oh. Allen Park in that area out there.

Mr. Keyes: Okay. So when you say in black brown, you have any grass in a neighborhood was it was bad?

Laretta Torrence: And it was just something like a slum area for black folks. They were most black folks were extremely poor. And if one person had an automobile, he would share that automobile with all the black folks. If he wanted to go somewhere, they would take you. Gas was not expensive. You get five gallons of gas, $1 back in those days and you get to maybe two and a half. You said this is true. That's true. So you gave the man that he said, my purse, would we have somewhere to go? Like to the doctor, to the hospital? They demanded that he take you, but that was hard to come by sometime.

Mr. Keyes: Really. Pretty soon. I was a lot of money.

Laretta Torrence: A lot of money.

Mr. Keyes: So was it?

Laretta Torrence: Food was not expensive I can remember my mother. Buying greens, 3 pounds for dime. What can you get now? For a dime.

Mr. Keyes: Not a lot

Laretta Torrence: Not a lot. Ice cream cone. You get two for a nickel. What? Could you give her? A nickel.

Mr. Keyes: Now what about the crime? how was the crime?. Was it high? Low? Who committed the crime was white. Black?

Laretta Torrence: It wasn't any crime that I can remember. You know, we didn't know what a locker door was. You could sit on your porch all night long. Nobody bother you. You can leave home and leave the door open. Nobody broke in because we were all in the same boat. Nothing.

Mr. Keyes: Every man.

Laretta Torrence: Everybody was.

Mr. Keyes: Drunk. Everybody was.

Laretta Torrence: Equal. Even the white folks were struggling, just like we were. Of course, they lived next door to us. If they had had any more, they wouldn't have been there.

Mr. Keyes: What about the police department? Did you see a lot of them? They come around. Did they treat you guys any different?

Laretta Torrence: We had the police department was majority white. They would speak to the children, play in, you know, on the sidewalk. You know, they walk a beat more than they do now, you know, and they had them in the car, you know. But what about I can't remember seeing a black police officer, not in my childhood. You know.

Mr. Keyes: The business class went up to the fire department. If there was a fire, do they come and turn up with the fire?

Laretta Torrence: Yes, they arrived in time. They were all fired. So city duties were concerned they did that, you know.

Mr. Keyes: That's interesting. Interesting. So your father worked for the DPA. Your mother stayed home and took it out of.

Laretta Torrence: WPA.

Mr. Keyes: WPA. Thank you. And your mother? Stay home and take care of the house.

Laretta Torrence: Right.

Mr. Keyes: Okay. And you guys left Black Bottom in 48.

Laretta Torrence: 1948. I graduated from Northeastern in January 48th, and we moved to South Ethel that summer.

Mr. Keyes: What about college? Do you ever think about going to college?

Laretta Torrence: There wasn't any money to go to college. And far as grants and loans like these students out now, if there were any, the black kids didn't know about it.

Mr. Keyes: And we didn't know about it.

Laretta Torrence: We didn't know about it. We didn't know how to apply. There was nobody to help us assist us in doing that, cause there wasn't many black people in that. And those positions to help black children and white had those jobs and they would help their own.

Mr. Keyes: I see. So when you guys moved to Southwest Detroit, how did life changed for you other than we had a bigger house with running facility, running water and upgraded facilities, had a life change for you?

Laretta Torrence: Well, I got married, for one thing.

Mr. Keyes: Now, when you got married.

Laretta Torrence: 19, I got married for one for one thing. And I began to branch out more because I had more money. You know, I could take my children to the movies. We'd have to kids the car and go downtown to the movies. But we could do that. Movies. But with the price, there was 75 cent out there. And it wasn't a neighborhood movie cause the neighborhood was just beginning to get built, though. So we would come downtown to the docks. We'd come downtown the jail Hudson's and to see Santa Claus. And there wasn't any malls. We had a downtown, a real downtown. You had Gail Hudson, you had current, you had crawlers, you had a Woolworth's, you had Crosskeys, you had stores riding the bus wasn't but six cent. So it wasn't very expensive to catch the bus. And I think children, well, certainly they were free. So we would come downtown and you just walk and look. They called it window shopping. You wouldn't buy, but the kids would be happy just to go down there as long as well as the parents. Then you come back home.

Mr. Keyes: And 19, you got married. Did your husband live with you in the new house?

Laretta Torrence: Yes, because my parents was in the house and he moved in with us because he lived on fourth. And he said that and that was a movement over there was that just had left that area.

Mr. Keyes: So that was Black bottom, Yeah. Herdman Live.

Laretta Torrence: Right.

Mr. Keyes: Okay. So he.

Laretta Torrence: He worked at bird wheel manufacturing company.

Mr. Keyes: Budd Wheel.

Laretta Torrence: B-U-D-D W-H-E-E-L Manufacturing company.

Mr. Keyes: Okay so he was and he will you met him when you were living in Black Bottom.

Laretta Torrence: Yes.

Mr. Keyes: Okay. And you got married in 19 and he moved in with you.

Laretta Torrence: Blu ray with me and my parents in Southwest Detroit.

Mr. Keyes: Okay. And you were 19 then? Were you working?

Laretta Torrence: No, I was. And I had my children shortly after I got the job as an elevator operator. I stopped work because I had my children.

Mr. Keyes: Okay. So it's kind of like when you your mother was in black Bottom. She stayed at home with the children.

Laretta Torrence: Yes.

Mr. Keyes: And your dad raised I mean, they work in WPA.

Laretta Torrence: Yeah.

Mr. Keyes: So. Okay, I understand. So you got married and you stayed at home, and the husband was working. Where?

Laretta Torrence: But we'll.

Mr. Keyes: But we'll hang up.

Laretta Torrence: They weren't paying a lot of money in those days at the factories like they do now. But you could live out of it because expenses were very low. Anytime you buy a brand new house from the ground up for $48 a month, you know, food was not very high and clothes were not very high at Christmas time or Easter time while you were going out. I'd take my two my two boys downtown. They could get a pair of stride white shoes for $2.98. That was.

Mr. Keyes: Cheap.

Laretta Torrence: All for time, you know. So things weren't high like it is. But when World War Two broke out, expenses went up.

Mr. Keyes: Expenses and went up when the war broke out.

Laretta Torrence: People got jobs. People got jobs in factories.

Mr. Keyes: Did you get a job?

Laretta Torrence: No, not in the factory.

Mr. Keyes: What about a car? Did you have a car?

Laretta Torrence: No, I didn't. My parents didn't have a car.

Mr. Keyes: What about you?

Laretta Torrence: My husband had a car. He had a Chevrolet. We didn't buy new equipment. I can't remember the year, but it wasn't new. But I didn't know how to drive. But we would go to the supermarket. We go to Belle Isle. Places like that, you know, go to the luge park, which wasn't very far from where we live, you know, and take the kids a swing and play on the weekends, you know. And. It wasn't very many things that I knew what to do with. That was I led a sheltered life. My parents were strict when I was coming up and I led a sheltered life. So when I kept my kids close to me when I was home, the other kids in the neighborhood to play, they grew up with other children. And if you I don't I can't remember where we would take the children with us or not to these places.

Mr. Keyes: Your dad, poured cement for Belle Isle, did you go out there the time when your dad was working there?

Laretta Torrence: No. No, I didn't never visit when my dad was working now.

Mr. Keyes: What was Belle Isle like?

Laretta Torrence: It was fine, you know. It was okay. It was pretty. You weren't afraid to go out there at night. You could go out there and spend the night. The weather was hard because we didn't have no central air like they do now. You know, there wasn't any crime, you know, until later on. And then things got better for blacks, you know.

Mr. Keyes: How did thing go bad for blacks?

Laretta Torrence: Well, crime, I guess that's when Drew started appearing. I don't know. But things got bad, you know, So we stopped going out that much, you know, going to Bel Air. You know, there was a certain area, Belle Isle, that was called [Unrecognized] Beale, where all the young people hung out and it wasn't a place for little children. So we stopped going there on the weekends for a ride. You know.

Mr. Keyes: Where there where people in Bel Air as well.

Laretta Torrence: Oh, yes. It was more white there. It was black. So the whites had more automobiles and the blacks there.

Mr. Keyes: So when you guys were there together, Was there ever any conflicts.

Laretta Torrence: Not when I was there, it was it was peaceful. The kids would play in the water. They'd be on the swings, you know, and in the dark would come home. You know, He said, all your porch talk to the neighbors. And Ethel, we lived on Ethel between Autodrive and Salyer, and it was a black neighborhood, you know, And it was quiet. It was nice. It was just ten steps above black bottom.

Mr. Keyes: Ten steps above ten.

Laretta Torrence: Steps above black bar.

Mr. Keyes: How do you mean? They didn't tell us, but we were better.

Laretta Torrence: Better, better, much better.

Mr. Keyes: There were grocery stores and things of that nature that you can go to.

Laretta Torrence: Yes.

Mr. Keyes: So what about the Eastern market? Do you ever go back down there?

Laretta Torrence: No, we didn't go back down the eastern market. That was too far.

Mr. Keyes: Too far.

Laretta Torrence: To bring groceries home because we had stores like the AB. They've gone out to be they've been gone for years. But yes, stores like AB and Kroger in the area where I live. So we shop there, you know. It was a better life.

Mr. Keyes: And it's interesting. Interesting. Kroger. Kroger still exists today.

Laretta Torrence: Exist today, but AB is gone.

Mr. Keyes: A lot of your friends from Black Bottom, did you ever see them again? Have you moved away?

Laretta Torrence: No. Everybody went their own way. Some people maybe have went out of town, you know, to another city. I don't know. You know, But the kids that I graduated from high school with, I didn't see them anymore because I moved away from that area. And most of them, they stayed in that area or they went somewhere else. They maybe went to Chicago, I don't know, you know, but I never saw him again. You know.

Mr. Keyes: When in certain areas in the city where only blacks live and only I think whites live when you was child, when you were in Ethel

Laretta Torrence: When I lived only.

Mr. Keyes: Yes.

Laretta Torrence: It was whites up there, but not on my street. They were black, some of us. And when we started moving out there, they put aside their window house for sale. They wanted to get away. But we lived in black Bottom. They were poor, just like we were, so they couldn't get away.

Mr. Keyes: So it didn't matter.

Laretta Torrence: So it didn't matter because they didn't have no more than we did.

Mr. Keyes: So what you're saying is the West began to move out and the blacks began to move in.

Laretta Torrence: Right. Right. And the area became all black. They had to build so many homes for sale till they had to build another school. There were so many black children. But it was nice, you know. They had one school called Blind, all visible in Fourth Street. I think that's where Stan and Rod went to. When they first started the school. And I'd walk them up there every day and pick them up when school was out, you know. But it was so many children because the area was beginning with building new homes out there, like the home that I was liberated. My father both. And the people were buying them cause they were not expensive. You could put $500 down on the house, which you cannot do now, and move in. And you have people like I say, it would be 48, $50 a month. What can you buy now for that? Nothing.

Mr. Keyes: This is true. This is true. So as you look back over the years and you see when you moved from Canfield and Russell to southwest Detroit and you noticed that the white people who live there prior to you, people moving in, these guys moving out, did it become another black bottom?

Laretta Torrence: No, in a sense, no, it did not, because it was a different era. It was entirely a different era. People had jobs. And black bottom. You did not have a job for sale in the factory or for the city. But people had jobs. People would take those city the test for the city or the state or whatever. And they were hiring black in the fire department there and the police department. And that made it better. I can feel they were doing that.

Mr. Keyes: And this was before the war on Canfield? Yeah, it was.

Laretta Torrence: Started in December 1941. And we moved all Ethel 45 or 46, something like that, you know.

Mr. Keyes: And as you say, this opened a door for many jobs.

Laretta Torrence: Right. Right.

Mr. Keyes: Opportunities for black people.

Laretta Torrence: Right. To advance.

Mr. Keyes: For advance. Okay. And we started seeing black police officers.

Laretta Torrence: Right.

Mr. Keyes: And when I came back, things started getting better for blacks.

Laretta Torrence: Right.

Mr. Keyes: What about the surrounding areas? You said William Allen Park and Lincoln Park and River Rouge. Where are you allowed to go there?

Laretta Torrence: Well, we walked in course to the cleaners, which is one more two blocks away. Oh, to the barber shop. To the beauty shop. But we had to ride the car to go to Lincoln Park to the store, because that's where. And that wasn't over five blocks away. But you can't walk five blocks and come back with groceries. So you take your car and a neighbor that didn't have a car, we'd all ride together and get groceries. We had a neighbor who was doing what they call mom and pop stores. Black people, you know, And you go there and you buy your stuff during the week. If you run out, you know, get a loaf of bread or a bottle of milk. And back in the day, we had the milk man would come and put milk in line for you on the side of the house. There's something else on the house. Call a milk door. The milk man would put milk in. It always faded away. And at all times, for one, you know, it was most popular, you know, gray milk and orange juice and whatever you needed, you would put a note in the milk bottle, you know? And you had a man come around with good vegetables, fresh vegetables, maybe 2 or 3 times a week with a truck, and the neighbors would purchase things off of him during the week that you needed, you know, fruits and vegetables.

Mr. Keyes: Okay. You said you had a milkman that would come by and deliver milk to you?

Laretta Torrence: Yes.

Mr. Keyes: And you had a thing. I want to tell you how we put milk in.

Laretta Torrence: I've got it in the door. It wasn't a big door. It was a small door. And he would open this little door, we call it the milk chute will blend in, and you put your milk in there and he would put down the bottles and they would take the bottles and he leave the milk for the children out.

Mr. Keyes: Okay. Okay. How is the entertainment at home? TV and radio?

Laretta Torrence: Well, we didn't have a TV when we first moved on, but eventually we got a TV when we had one. And it didn't stay on all night like these TVs do now. You didn't have all these channels. You had two, four, seven, nine. That was it. Okay. And they went off at a certain time, like you always got the news at 6:00 and even at 12:00. And that's when the young children come home for lunch and they will see Soupy Sales. He would come on 1130 or 12:00. And that's when he became popular. Soupy Sales.

Mr. Keyes: Okay. And after TV went off and nine, what did you guys do? Let them go to bed. There was no other entertainment. Like a radio. Radio show.

Laretta Torrence: You had the radio, but it was time to go to bed at 9:00. It was time to put the children to bed and the parents would leave. But the children, to be able to sit on the porch with the other in the summertime, you know, and talk to the neighbors and so forth, so forth, you know. In the wintertime, you go to you build a house and you go to bed also because the TV would be gone unless you want to listen to the radio.

Mr. Keyes: Okay. So when you guys drove to the surrounding community like Eagle.

Laretta Torrence: On eight, are we.

Mr. Keyes: Having a party or things like that? Well, these people way that you encountered.

Laretta Torrence: Yes.

Mr. Keyes: Was there any.

Laretta Torrence: Problems? No.

Mr. Keyes: They just look at you and.

Laretta Torrence: We just beat you. How are you, sir? Fine, ma'am. How are you? And you go on about your business.

Mr. Keyes: So this was the beginning of integration, so to speak.

Laretta Torrence: Well, I don't know whether black people lived in those in those in Lincoln Park or not. Allen Park.

Mr. Keyes: Okay. Okay, So it seems like you came a long way. You know, you come from the black bottom of Canfield and Russell. They moved to southwest Detroit and in 1948, and that was right after the war. So it was it was silly. It was really exciting. Time for you after you moved out to Black Bottom.

Laretta Torrence: It was different. Really different. A new experience. A new life.

Mr. Keyes: New life. Okay. Mr. Wallace, Well, I want to thank you for interviewing me. Let me let me interview you today, and I really appreciate it.

Laretta Torrence: Thank you. Mr. Keyes.

Mr. Keyes: You're welcome. So I move my leg in time.