Over the past two semesters, I have come to know the first floor of the Rochester Public library as the only place where wireless internet is accessible and the preferred place for unhoused men to escape the cold. After a few months of fleeting pleasantries with a number of regulars (pleasant conversation attempts tend to be the norm in Rochester as attempts to befriend passersby and fellow library patrons instead of overt panhandling since the practice became illegal within the past few years), I got up the courage to ask two men if they would be willing to be interviewed about the July 1964 events. One was eager to be interviewed for a price, and I refused-claiming unemployed student status. The other was willing to be interviewed for free, but was unsure how much he could remember, it now being 2010 (no, not a typo), so I politely declined.
I may try this again sometime, it was at least entertaining.
Friday, March 21, 2008
William Bub interview transcript
Two of the biggest problems with the UR collection are design and rules of the collections area, and the format of the collection itself.
Rules restrict who may access collections, how often, for what purpose, and where and how one may access. We are restricted in our visit in what we may bring into the viewing room- loose sheets of paper (not notebooks or binders), pencils (not any other writing instruments), and laptops (but not laptop cases). Much of this is understandable for the preservation of the collections. However, as the collection we are accessing exists fully one half on cassette tapes, we must access the tapes using only the cassette player provided. This machine is a very inexpensive and rudimentary walk-man style player, very difficult to do transcription from. Also, the tapes themselves are not copy-protected via the cassette tab, and the player does indeed have a working record button. While this last fact did not cause a problem for me, it does present the possibility of desruction of the interviews.
What follows is a transcript of just a few minutes of interview on "tape 10" of the collection. Because of the limits of UR technology, the few minutes of interview took nearly an hour to transcribe.
Tape 10
Anonymous interview with member of the working press (2 hours) “good sound quality”
007- WB “I would like to identify you as a member of the working mass media”
Verbal agreement for use of interview,
0014-AI “I was there within the first hour and a half of the time the riots started and then throughout the riot period.”
When called by a co-worker about getting down there to get the story-
024 AI “Relax. They have a riot in the Joseph Avenue area every week.”
Police calls coming in one every 15 seconds for over half hour.
027 AI “My God it doesn’t seem possible, but maybe what we thought might happen has actually come to pass. And the thing that struck me at that moment was that the least likely areas for racial rioting were probably Bangor, Maine, Butte, Montana, and Rochester, NY. So I was not prepared to imagine for a moment that this was going to be an eventuality in this city. I wasn’t prepared up to that moment that is because it seemed so far fetched to think that such a thing would happen in this particular city where so much progress seemed to have been made over the years in developing a feeling of harmony between the races.”
037- WB “You said that we should have known or that we were afraid would happen”
039- AI “Well yes because, what I said was it struck me that what we had feared might happen but which we you known tucked away into the back of our minds as an impossibility in this city. Perhaps we wishfully thought that it would never happen here but I think we really thought was always a possibility since rioting on racial grounds was a possibility anywhere in the climate that has prevailed over the past two years in this country. We had thought that it could happen but that it probably would never happen here. It was one of those things you say to yourself that anything, you know, anything is possible anywhere at any time, almost anything. But in this particular case it seemed very unlikely, most unreasonable assumption that it would ever occur here. Never the less, once he had brought into focus {break}”
049- WB “What were your first reactions then when you heard the um, when you got this first news, this surprise primarily?”
050- AI “Well as I say , yes it was a matter of great surprise, but the minute that Pete had brought into sharp focus all of the things that had been happening in the past hour and a half since the initial reports that disturbances had erupted on Joseph avenue. As I say I thought to myself, as Governor Connelly of Texas said to himself as he heard the first rap of the bullet strike President Kennedy, the inevitable has happened. The inevitable being that the end will always come to all human beings and he immediately, as he said, assumed that this was an assassination attempt, well I had to assume immediately that this was a riot because no amount of previously incurred experiences of, uh, riotous nature, rebellious nature down in the, that section of the city could possibly have caused the police to be on the air one after another every fifteen seconds for an hour and a half, it obviously had happened here.”
068- AI “Well, I say racial rioting because, uh, this is what I was told by our reporter had happened. That they were race riots. And presumably he had deduced this from what he heard over the police radio- that the rioting had erupted, and that it was between the blacks and the whites.”
073- WB “Did your observation down there bear this out? That you knew it was a race riot?”
074- AI “Without any question of a doubt.”
WB “That this was a race riot”
AI “Oh absolutely. Absolutely.”
WB “What about the Hoover Report?”
AI “Well the Hoover Report is one of those things that everyone must interpret for himself and you have to either accept it on face value or add your own conclusions to it. And I think that any dispassionate reasonable observer on the scene here uh would have to temper the Hoover Report with his own uh, deductions and observations and therefore in some respects reject it.”
WB “What specific incidents would make you think this was a race riot?”
AI “The fact that there were blacks standing opposite whites on every corner. The fact that stores operated by white people in that area just so happens they were almost exclusively Jewish operators, Jewish and Italian were damaged, but those places that were very obviously operated by Negroes were undamaged. “
WB “How would the uh, how would the rioters have known that?”
AI “Because they lived in that area. Because all of those stores were well known to the residents in that area.”
WB “One of the newspeople that I have talked to indicated that right in the confrontation, he noticed that certain of the buildings in the area were marked with either chalk or with temper paint. That he was going to record this on film if anything came up that would not wait. When he went back to get them the marks were gone. Did you see any of these?”
AI “Are you saying that he thought buildings had been marked for destruction?”
WB “Yes, he said that there were three initials, three different sets of initials, uh W, PR, and C.”
AI “Meaning white, Puerto Rican, and colored.”
WB “Yes.”
AI “Uh, I don’t recall whether I saw any such markings. I must say that I recall I did not see any such markings but that doesn’t mean they were not there. However, we did see markings- I beg your pardon, it seems to me now that you bring that up, one of our photographers mentioned to me that ‘there’s a building with a PR on it’ it looks as if someone had identified it as Puerto Rican. I hope you are not suggesting something to me that I am now thinking I did see. But it occurs to me that when we made the ride down Joseph Avenue in the early morning hours, this is immediately after sun was up, escorted by members of the criminal investigation unit both in front of our mobile unit and in back of it, that we did see a marking with P, uh some building marked PR. What we did see was a building that was obviously operated by Negores. And that I recall this was the headquarters of one of the civil rights organizations, and that building was right in the center of all the rioting uh, it could not have possibly accidentally escaped bombardment by bricks or missles. It was deliberately left.”
End 113.
Rules restrict who may access collections, how often, for what purpose, and where and how one may access. We are restricted in our visit in what we may bring into the viewing room- loose sheets of paper (not notebooks or binders), pencils (not any other writing instruments), and laptops (but not laptop cases). Much of this is understandable for the preservation of the collections. However, as the collection we are accessing exists fully one half on cassette tapes, we must access the tapes using only the cassette player provided. This machine is a very inexpensive and rudimentary walk-man style player, very difficult to do transcription from. Also, the tapes themselves are not copy-protected via the cassette tab, and the player does indeed have a working record button. While this last fact did not cause a problem for me, it does present the possibility of desruction of the interviews.
What follows is a transcript of just a few minutes of interview on "tape 10" of the collection. Because of the limits of UR technology, the few minutes of interview took nearly an hour to transcribe.
Tape 10
Anonymous interview with member of the working press (2 hours) “good sound quality”
007- WB “I would like to identify you as a member of the working mass media”
Verbal agreement for use of interview,
0014-AI “I was there within the first hour and a half of the time the riots started and then throughout the riot period.”
When called by a co-worker about getting down there to get the story-
024 AI “Relax. They have a riot in the Joseph Avenue area every week.”
Police calls coming in one every 15 seconds for over half hour.
027 AI “My God it doesn’t seem possible, but maybe what we thought might happen has actually come to pass. And the thing that struck me at that moment was that the least likely areas for racial rioting were probably Bangor, Maine, Butte, Montana, and Rochester, NY. So I was not prepared to imagine for a moment that this was going to be an eventuality in this city. I wasn’t prepared up to that moment that is because it seemed so far fetched to think that such a thing would happen in this particular city where so much progress seemed to have been made over the years in developing a feeling of harmony between the races.”
037- WB “You said that we should have known or that we were afraid would happen”
039- AI “Well yes because, what I said was it struck me that what we had feared might happen but which we you known tucked away into the back of our minds as an impossibility in this city. Perhaps we wishfully thought that it would never happen here but I think we really thought was always a possibility since rioting on racial grounds was a possibility anywhere in the climate that has prevailed over the past two years in this country. We had thought that it could happen but that it probably would never happen here. It was one of those things you say to yourself that anything, you know, anything is possible anywhere at any time, almost anything. But in this particular case it seemed very unlikely, most unreasonable assumption that it would ever occur here. Never the less, once he had brought into focus {break}”
049- WB “What were your first reactions then when you heard the um, when you got this first news, this surprise primarily?”
050- AI “Well as I say , yes it was a matter of great surprise, but the minute that Pete had brought into sharp focus all of the things that had been happening in the past hour and a half since the initial reports that disturbances had erupted on Joseph avenue. As I say I thought to myself, as Governor Connelly of Texas said to himself as he heard the first rap of the bullet strike President Kennedy, the inevitable has happened. The inevitable being that the end will always come to all human beings and he immediately, as he said, assumed that this was an assassination attempt, well I had to assume immediately that this was a riot because no amount of previously incurred experiences of, uh, riotous nature, rebellious nature down in the, that section of the city could possibly have caused the police to be on the air one after another every fifteen seconds for an hour and a half, it obviously had happened here.”
068- AI “Well, I say racial rioting because, uh, this is what I was told by our reporter had happened. That they were race riots. And presumably he had deduced this from what he heard over the police radio- that the rioting had erupted, and that it was between the blacks and the whites.”
073- WB “Did your observation down there bear this out? That you knew it was a race riot?”
074- AI “Without any question of a doubt.”
WB “That this was a race riot”
AI “Oh absolutely. Absolutely.”
WB “What about the Hoover Report?”
AI “Well the Hoover Report is one of those things that everyone must interpret for himself and you have to either accept it on face value or add your own conclusions to it. And I think that any dispassionate reasonable observer on the scene here uh would have to temper the Hoover Report with his own uh, deductions and observations and therefore in some respects reject it.”
WB “What specific incidents would make you think this was a race riot?”
AI “The fact that there were blacks standing opposite whites on every corner. The fact that stores operated by white people in that area just so happens they were almost exclusively Jewish operators, Jewish and Italian were damaged, but those places that were very obviously operated by Negroes were undamaged. “
WB “How would the uh, how would the rioters have known that?”
AI “Because they lived in that area. Because all of those stores were well known to the residents in that area.”
WB “One of the newspeople that I have talked to indicated that right in the confrontation, he noticed that certain of the buildings in the area were marked with either chalk or with temper paint. That he was going to record this on film if anything came up that would not wait. When he went back to get them the marks were gone. Did you see any of these?”
AI “Are you saying that he thought buildings had been marked for destruction?”
WB “Yes, he said that there were three initials, three different sets of initials, uh W, PR, and C.”
AI “Meaning white, Puerto Rican, and colored.”
WB “Yes.”
AI “Uh, I don’t recall whether I saw any such markings. I must say that I recall I did not see any such markings but that doesn’t mean they were not there. However, we did see markings- I beg your pardon, it seems to me now that you bring that up, one of our photographers mentioned to me that ‘there’s a building with a PR on it’ it looks as if someone had identified it as Puerto Rican. I hope you are not suggesting something to me that I am now thinking I did see. But it occurs to me that when we made the ride down Joseph Avenue in the early morning hours, this is immediately after sun was up, escorted by members of the criminal investigation unit both in front of our mobile unit and in back of it, that we did see a marking with P, uh some building marked PR. What we did see was a building that was obviously operated by Negores. And that I recall this was the headquarters of one of the civil rights organizations, and that building was right in the center of all the rioting uh, it could not have possibly accidentally escaped bombardment by bricks or missles. It was deliberately left.”
End 113.
Friday, February 15, 2008
Honesty is the best policy?
So, perhaps being honest was the problem today. J. Perkins set up an appointment for us to start listening to tapes and reading transcripts today at UR. On our first visit, they were insistant on knowing exactly what our finished project would be like/about/for. We said at that point we weren't entirely sure which wasn't a complete lie, but I digress...
Today they were again persistant about knowing what we were doing. I decided to be honest in efforts to be ethical in our field work. I told them that I already had a website started about the "riot" and quotes from these interviews might appear on the website. We assured them that we would cite them in any way they wanted and would keep any interviewees anonymous who desired such in their interview. The librarian looked panicked but set us up with the materials anyway and went "into the back" to check on what they could allow. After she returned, she said that we could keep taking notes today but that they would have to evaluate my website to see if they would allow us to use any of the interviews.
Not sure how our future acces will be effected by this, we will see. At least we got some "stuff" today while we were there.
Today they were again persistant about knowing what we were doing. I decided to be honest in efforts to be ethical in our field work. I told them that I already had a website started about the "riot" and quotes from these interviews might appear on the website. We assured them that we would cite them in any way they wanted and would keep any interviewees anonymous who desired such in their interview. The librarian looked panicked but set us up with the materials anyway and went "into the back" to check on what they could allow. After she returned, she said that we could keep taking notes today but that they would have to evaluate my website to see if they would allow us to use any of the interviews.
Not sure how our future acces will be effected by this, we will see. At least we got some "stuff" today while we were there.
re-post 1/28
Made initial contact with UR Rare Books and Special Collections today. Our hope is to une the "William Bub Rochester Race Riot Papers" as a starting point for our own work this semester. The collection includes newspaper clippings from the time of the July 1964 events and taped interviews with a variety of community members.
UR is very reticent to allow acces to the interviews as they are concerned that the collection is "being used to death". We did view one folder of clippings today (xerox copies of clippings, not originals). We will continue to try to gain access to interviews.
UR is very reticent to allow acces to the interviews as they are concerned that the collection is "being used to death". We did view one folder of clippings today (xerox copies of clippings, not originals). We will continue to try to gain access to interviews.
Re-blog
Due to current obstacles with archive access etc. we have decided not to link this progress blog with J. Wilkie's UB wesbsite for the time being. Until further notice, this blog will remain for the purposes of documenting our progress on work for AMS 540- Field Methodology Spring 2008, not as a larger publushable work.
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