Benjamin Van Clark Neighborhood Documentation Project
Neighborhood Oral History Project
Savannah Department of Cultural Affairs
Oral History# 11
Devereaux Dixon
June 1, 2003
Savannah, Georgia
Devereaux Dixon is a retired United states postal worker (1950-1984).
The following is an abstract of the interview, for a complete recording of the interview please see the
corresponding cassette tape:
Devereaux Dixon was bom December 18, 1927, 946 Wheaton Street, Savannah, Georgia. He
stated, My parents were Met! Dixon, born in Sardis, Georgia, and Marie Blalock Dixon, my mother,
was a Savannahian. Father ran away from Sardis, as he did not want to live the farm life. As a young
man, father piloted a boat from Augusta to Savannah for his livelihood. After the steamship line went
out of business, father went to work as a mail carrier for the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad delivering mail
from the main railroad office on Wheaton and East Broad to the Union Station on West Broad Street.
My grandfather, Devereaux Blalock, whom I am named for, passed the railroad job to my father after
he retired from it. I was told my family had a grocery store at one time in the Wheaton Street area. He
kept the railroad job as I grew to my teenage years. His railroad job was terminated, and he did odd
jobs after that, including working for the Works Progress Administration 0/VPA). However, he never
worked a full-time again after the railroad job ended in the early thirties during the Depression.
On the east side of Wheaton Street the families were all white, and lived in tenant houses. Our
block of 900 Wheaton Street was all black. The black Brown family lived next to us. We lived two doors
down from Reid Street. Our house at 946 Wheaton Street faced Rockefeller Street and the other side
of Wheaton Street. Philander Moore and his family lived at 929 Wheaton Street near Rockefeller Street.
Near Waters Avenue and Wheaton, there were about four white families living in the block in the thirties
and early forties. There was a Standard Oil Station on Wheaton Street near Waters Avenue owned by
whites. Eventually, blacks owned the gasoline station. There was also an A & P supermarket on
Wheaton Street when I was a boy.
I lived in the area from 1935-1954. We moved from Wheaton Street to 716 Waters Avenue
next to the Walter Bogans (black) who lived at 716 Wheaton. Then my family moved from Waters
Avenue to Pounder Street next to Bouhan Street on Wheaton. Pounder Street had one white familythe Grotheers. Ms. Grotheer worked at the Chatham County Court House, and she was really a diehard. Ms. Grotheer would tell blacks not to walk on the sidewalk in front of her door- to walk in the
street. John White lived on Bouhan at the comer of Wheaton and Waters Avenue. At Waters and
Wheaton was tha Hohnerlein's meat market. There was also a white beer parlor and a white
barbershop near the Hohnerlein store. One of the most important things I remember growing up was a
big laundry, the New Way Laundry, located a block and a ha~ from the comer of Wheaton Street and
Waters Avenue. Many black people worked at that laundry.
They built Garden Homes for whites in the early 1940s, and it was all white when I left for the
military in 1946-1949, and until the 1950s, as I can recollect, I recall taking mail to Garden Homes in
the early 1950s, and a little white boy came to me and called me a 'Nigger.' I responded- 'How are you
doing little Nigger.' He ran away screaming and crying- 'No, I ain't no Nigger.' I had four brothers and 
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four sisters. Three sisters are living- Eldora Dixon Marks, Caroline Dixon, and Marie Dixon Pollens.
Our baby sister died in childbirth. Marion Dixon was my oldest brother, followed by Herbert Dixon, Sr.,
and then Samuel Dixon, my youngest brother whom we called 'Chink.' Herbert and Samuel died in
2003, which was sad for me. I am the only Dixon son left.
-End of interviewAbstract prepared by:
Charles J. Elmore
Project Historian