Abstract of an interview with Harriet Ann Walker Thornton and Johnnie Mae Thompson Spaulding

Benjamin Van Clark Neighborhood Documentation Project
Neighborhood Oral History Project
Savannah Department of Cultural Affairs
Oral History# 3
Joint lnte!View
Johnnie Mae (Thompson) Spaulding
Harriet Ann (Walker Thornton
May 15,2003
Savannah, Georgia
Mrs. Spaulding is on the Board of Directors of the Ben Van Clark Neighborhood Association. Mrs.
Thornton is a retired Chatham County public school teacher.
The following is an abstract of the inte!View, for a complete recording of the inte!View please see the
corresponding cassette tape:
Remarks by Mrs. Johnnie Mae Thompson Spaulding:
I was born March 25, 1936, and was raised at 22 6th Street which later became Edinburgh
Street. The only white family in the area was on 7th Street (later Reid Street), and they were the
Nelsons. There were no other white families except for a Chinese grocary store on Wheaton Street
between 6th and 7th Streets, and they lived over the store. They later moved to East Savannah and
opened a store there. Our parents did not allow us to cross Wheaton Street because they felt it was too
dangerous because of the traffic. I remember the Hohnerlein Store. It was a good store and people
came from all over Savannah to buy their meats. They kept cows at the bottom end of 6th Street to
President Street. Hohnerlein employed George, a black butcher. The Hohnerleins lived above their
business. I heard they moved as far away from this area as Wilmington Island. They were German.
Sixth Street was a pleasant place for a child to be reared. People were protective of children. Mrs. Alice
Hayward, who lived to be 100 years old, was married to Charlie Hayward, a railroad man. Reid Street
was 7th Street.
On 5th Street (later Sterling Street) the family names were Bessie and Sadie Mae Brown.
Sadie Brown's house is still on Sterling Street. The people who lived on 6th Street were the Clark family,
Reverend and Mrs. Boyd. Mr. Washington was a preacher and his daughter was Annie Mae. The
Connors moved to 6th Street, and Gwendolyn and Mildred Handy were college girls who lived on the
street. Also on 6th Street were Robert Patrick, his wife Annabel, and daughters Louise, Clemmontine,
Jean, and Robert Jr. Louise married Armstong McMillan. The Stephen White family lived on 6th Street,
and they had Barbara, a daughter. (Notes from Charles J. Elmore - Barbara graduated, in 1961 (she
was my sister Irene's classmate), from St. Pius X High School in Savannah, a black coed Catholic high
school, which opened in 1955, and closed in 1971 because of integration of schools).
The Slocums lived on 6th Street, and Mrs. Alice Lee Slocum was a tailor. The Peacocks were
the first Seventh Day Adventist family I met. John and Ida Fogarty (black) lived on 6"' Street. Mr.
Fogarty worked for Captain Frank Spencer at Atlantic Towing for fifty-five years. My job was to take
lunch to John Fogarty and other black men working on the tugboats on River Street. Also, Nadine
Campbell, a 6th Street neighbor, was married to Captain Campbell, a commissioned officer in the
United State Army. The Gauph sisters lived on the street, and were spinsters who grew up on a farm in
a small Georgia town. I did not see much of Idonia Williams on 6th Street as she was very quiet and had
a pleasant family. Juanita, Mrs. Williams' granddaughter, was always a young lady whom it was a
pleasure to be around. I would see her and see you coming to visit her on 6th Street in the early sixties.
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Seventh Street had !he Kruters (black family), Dorothy was their only child, and !hey attended Beth
Eden Baptist Church. Mrs. Salter lived next to the Kruters on 7"' Street. Reverend Gilbert had a church
on Waters Avenue. In the area was the John White family, Doby family, and the Sheppards. The city of
Savannah left 5"' Street Baptist Church, but tore down Friendship Baptist Church 806 Wheaton when
they build Edgar Blackshear Apartments.
Remarks by Mrs. Harriet Ann Walker Thornton:
I was born April10, 1923 at 908 Wheaton Street. 'Nick the Greek' had a store on Wheaton
next to our house. He had a black butcher whom they called 'Humpback Johnny.' Papa bought the
house at 906 Wheaton Street before he and Mama married in 1916. All six children were born at 908.
We had a fig tree in the back yard and Mama would let us pick the figs, sell them, and keep the money
for spending change. We sold them to white and black people. James Anderson Walker, my father,
was born June 18, 1869. Charlotte Rachel Moses Walker, my mother, was born January 5, 1888. They
called my mother 'Kitty' because she was the youngest of thirteen children and the only girl. My
mother's first husband was William Harrison, a black pharmacist, from Sumter, South Carolina. My
mother had two children from her first marriage- Mag Harrison- born in 1907, and William Harrison,
Jr.- born in 1909. Mama divorced William Harrison and married Papa in 1916. Nellie was born in
1918, Harry in 1921, me in 1923, Fred in 1928, Butch in 1930, and Earline in 1934.
There were white people living in row houses on Harmon Street. There were whites on 4"'
Street when I was a small child. The whites did not like us because we had indoor plumbing and they
did not. When the whites moved out, plumbing was installed, and then black families moved into those
houses. Clare!ha Jamerson's family lived by us on Wheaton Street, and her father worked at the
icehouse. The first house on Wheaton, close to our house, belonged to 'Nick the Greek.' The stone
yard was next to our house on Wheaton Street (on the Harmon Street end of Wheaton). Next to the
stone yard was the home of Reverend P.W. Greatheart, a Methodist bishop. He and Mrs. Greatheart
had Lillian Grea!heart, a daughter. She married a Mr. Howard, and they had two sons, Raymond and
Matthew, and a daughter, Lillian. The Howard children were home schooled by their mother.
Dr. George Smith, M.D. and Pearl Lee Smith, his wife, lived next to the Greathearts and
Howards on Wheaton Street (north side of street going towards Bee Road). The Frank Curleys lived
next to the Smiths. Eventually Frank Callen, who founded the Frank Callen Boys Club in 1917, married
Irma Curley (1925), who was a schoolteacher, and they occupied the house. Charlotte Curley, Frank
Curley's wife, and their daughters -Amanda Curley, Rosemary Curley, Agatha Curley, and Rebecca
lived with the Callens for a time before each of them married. Irma Curley Callen was my sister Nellie's
godmother, and Amanda Curley was my godmother. Next to the Curleys were the Simmons. Wade
Medicus Simmons, Sr., who married Ellen Dowse Simmons, was head bellman at the original DeSoto
Hotel on Liberty Street, and one of a few blacks in the area who owned a car. I am describing the
neighborhood in the mid 1930s to the early forties. The Curleys, Simmons, Browns, and Smiths, were
in the Wheaton Street neighborhood before I was born. I believe when blacks moved in the
neighborhood on Wheaton Street whites moved out.
Across on the west side of Wheaton Street was Susie Collins' store (her children were Dorothy
and Bubba). She was married to Teddy Collins (they later divorced). Next to the Collins family close to
the corner of Wheaton and Harmon Streets was the Philander Moore family, and Drucilla and Sally
Kate were their daughters. Philander Moore was a professor at Georgia State Industrial College during
the administration of Richard R. Wright, Sr., first president of what is now Savannah State University.
They had a row of houses on 7"' Street where whites stayed but !hey moved out as blacks began to
move into the 7"' Street area. In 1963, I bought my current home at 1001 East Waldburg from the wife
of Dr. Orr (they were white). She was very aged at the time, and her late husband was a medical doctor
at the old Oglethorpe Sanitarium. The old lady, who was very nice, actually stayed upstairs for three
months until her daughter came to move her. This house has eighteen rooms and I bought it for a good
price. At one time, all of this area of East Waldburg Street (it is located in the Ben Van Clark
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Neighborhood) was basically all white from Hannon Street to Waters Avenue. When blacks began to
move in the area in the late fifties and early sixties, whites immediately moved out.
Additional remarks from Mrs. Johnny Mae Thompson Spaulding:
Chester, my late husband, and I, bought a house on 1228 Park Avenue in the 1960s. A large
white family lived next to us, but once we moved in they moved out within two weeks." This was not
uncommon in this area.
-End of interviewAbstract prepared by:
Charles J. Elmore
Project Historian