Abstract of an interview with Juanita S. W. Elmore

Benjamin Von Clark Neighborhood Documentation Project
Neighborhood Oral History Project
Savannah Department of Cultural Affairs
Oral History# 7
Juanita S. Elmore
May 18,2003
Savannah, Georgia
Juanita S. Elmore is an elementary school teacher at Bluffton Elementary School in Bluffton, South
Carolina. Mrs. Elmore lived at 42 Edinburgh Street (formerly!' Street) off Wheaton Street from 1947
until she married Charles J. Elmore August 10, 1968.
The following is an abstract of the interview, for a complete recording of the interview please see the
corresponding tape:
Juanita Elmore was born July 30, 1945, in Savannah, Georgia. Her grandmother Mrs. Idonia
Stapleton Williams, who lived on 42 Edinburgh Street (formerly 6th Street), reared har. Mrs. Elmore
related- I moved to 6th Street when I was eighteen months old, and Henry Stapleton, my father, lived
with us from 1947-1950 then ha went to live in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania for the rest of his life (he
died in 1982 at age 68). I lived on Edinburgh Street until! was twenty-three years of age. My husband
and I lived there after we were married in 1968 until1971. First Street, which was a part ofthe "Old
Fort" black neighborhood, as was 2"" Street, comprised streets off Wheaton Street that ended just
before Harmon Street began. The houses on 1". 2"", and &d Streets were very dilapidated, and many
were literally shacks. Fifth Street through 7th Street was populated by many affluent black families.
My next door neighbor was Mrs. Lizzie Woods. Across the street from my house were the
Morgans, and the Ben Scotts. Ms. Bee lived on the last house on the right on 6th Street just before the
"Bottom" area- a hugh field at the end of 6th Street- where the Hohnerleins kept their cows for their
meat market on Wheaton and Waters Avenue. Mr. & Mrs. Robert Patrick, Stephen White, the Handy
brothers (they lived across the street from each other on 6th Street), Bessie and Sadie Brown (spinster
sisters), and Wilton C. Scott, an administrator at Savannah State College for almost thirty years, and
his wife Lillian Shank Scott, were my neighbors along 6"' Street during my childhood and early
adulthood.
There were many big Victorian houses directly on Wheaton. Mrs. Ellen Simmons, and her
family, lived in one of those Victorian houses. She was the lunchroom manager at Paulsen School,
which was located at Paulsen and Rockefeller Streets. I used two routes to walk to Paulsen School,
which I attended from grades 1 -to 4, before I enrolled at the newly built Frank W. Spencer Elementary
School, in 1955, in fifth grade. As I walked to school using the Wheaton to Harmon to Rockefeller to
Paulsen Street route, I remember there were poor white families living on Harmon Street from
Rockefeller to Wolf Streets. I remember Harry Ginsburg, who was a Jewish lawyer, and who owned a
grocery story called the Georgia Market on 701 Harmon Street, from 1939- 1960, and lived over his
grocery store with Irma (Eicholtz) Ginsberg, his wife, and three daughters from 1939-1949-(see
page 97 of Images of America- The Jewish Community of Savannah- by Valerie Frey and Kaye Kale
-Arcadia Publishing - 2002). Mrs. Idonia Williams, my grandmother, was his housekeeper on Harmon
Street and cared for his three young daughters. However, the girls were teenagers when I came to live
with my grandmother in 1947. Harry Ginsburg also served as my grandmother's attorney. Attorney
Ginsberg bought me a wedding gift when I married Charles J. Elmore in 1968. When his daughters
graduated from high school, he kept his grocery store, but he built a house away from the
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neighborhood in another part of Savannah in 1949. Luther Battle, my grandmother's sister Alice's son,
was the butcher in the Ginsburg grocery store.
When I lived on 6th Street, it was the last numbered street directly off the north side of Wheaton
Street. Reid Street and then Bouhan Street followed Sixth Street. The "Bottom" was an area that
extended from the end of Pounder Street down to 1st and 2"" Streets in the "Old Forf' neighborhood.
My grandmother did not permit me to go beyond 3'd Street because she said it was an unsafe area. I
recollect poor black families living in shacks and row house shanties on 1" and 2"" Streets. When I was
a child, there was an area celled 'Tin City' located by the railroad tracks where Robert M. Hitch Village
is now located. The houses there were made of tin corrugated sheets, and the black people there were
extremely poor. We would sneak down to 'Tin C~y,' without our parents knowing. A man with a beard,
whom we celled "George the Hermit," lived in 'Tin City.' He was a total recluse, and all the children
celled him Mr. George. He never harmed anyone and had a long mixed gray beard and a hair full of
shaggy hair. These recollections are from my memory at nine years old in 1954.
There were stores in our neighborhood like the Hohnerleins' meat market on Wheaton and
Waters Avenue. Susie Collins, a black woman, had a store on 4"' and Wheaton Streets. There was a
white owned television repair shop on 4" Street and a stone yard was also there. Almost all of the
families in our neighborhood from 1" to Bouhan Street were black except for the white families that
lived by the icehouse on Harmon Street and those whites on Wolf Street. When one passed Bouhan
Street all the way to Bee Road there were many white families. Some white families lived on Wheaton
Street above their businesses, but they did not socialize with blacks in the neighborhood. The
Hohnerleins were the only white children who played with black children. Ozell and Hazell Jordan, my
male second cousins, would go hunting in the "Bottom" with Mr. Hohnerlein's grandsons. To see any
other white families, one had to go down Wheaton to Live Oak, Cedar, Ash, and Adair Streets, to see
white family residences.
-End of interviewAbstract prepared by:
Charles J. Elmore
Project Historian