CHAPTER 5 CONTINUED. . .

Mr. John Clayton

John Clayton and his wife of 56 years reared and educated two sons and a daughter. They became a pharmacist, a teacher and a nurse. Mrs. Clayton did not work outside of the immediate family environment. Her husband found enterprising ways to support his family. Without formal schooling in a society stratified by race and class he became an entrepreneur and real estate investor. As a member of "Negro society in St. Petersburg" he influenced the lives of many youths. Despite his achievements, Mr. Clayton concludes, "The worst thing that happened to me was not getting an education." However, he considers his fate and status a blessing from God. As a devout Seventh Day Adventist, he asserts that God looked out for him even when he didn't.

In Search For A Better Life

Mr. Clayton is a product of secondary migration. He was born 1911 in rural Georgia. While in elementary school his family moved to Pelham, Georgia to find better work. There, his father, who was a Baptist minister, worked as a carpenter, and his mother did laundry and sewed as a seamstress. His older brother labored at the fertilizer plant. However, by the time he was eleven years old the family moved to Woodlawn, Pennsylvania, a steel mill town, 15 miles from Pittsburgh.

Although, his father began working in the steel mill, that job was short lived. He developed asthma and had to terminate his work in that industry. Hence, he resumed his trade as carpenter. He was very successful in securing clients and making money, but the weather was too severe for his health.

"His doctor told him that he could not make another winter there." The physician recommended that "he move to either Florida or Arizona." He suggested St. Petersburg, because he was familiar with its slogan -- "The Sunshine City." October 1, 1925, Mr. Clayton, his father and mother moved to St. Petersburg and joined an uncle who was residing here. His four brothers remained in Pittsburgh area.

A Life Defined By The Color Of Your Skin

When they arrived in St. Petersburg, Negroes were trying to create a community within prescribed areas of the city. He found several Negro owned businesses and professional establishments. There were beer gardens, chicken stands (fast food restaurants), two cab companies, funeral homes, and two doctor's offices. However, the majority of the residents were not especially prosperous. He remembers that few of them had cars and most worked for the Atlantic Coastline Railroad and in the tourist trade.

Although the weather had attracted many tourists it did not offer much relief for his father's illness. The Florida humidity did not offer him much solace. He continued to suffer from asthma.

His father's illness led his mother to take an active role in helping to support the family. "She was having to take in washing and ironing. She would wash all day and iron all night .... It really hurt me to my heart," he remembers. His family's financial situation led him to drop out of school in the tenth grade.

During the late 1920s, there were few employment options available to a young Negro teen. Therefore, his first job was a waiter at the Garden cafeteria. Later, he worked as a house-man for the Soreno Hotel. In this role, he assisted guests. Mr. Clayton describes this employment as being "something like a maid. "

St. Petersburg was a hostile environment for Negroes during his early days. "I want you to be shore to put this down," he emphatically states during our interview. "St. Petersburg was known for its green benches.... But the bad thing about it, they had "whites only" right across them. You (anyone black) couldn't sit on them." This caste system also required Mr. Clayton and his cohorts to find stores that had separate toilets for "blacks and whites." He exclaims, "I thought about how stupid the rules were!"

These despotic codes of conducts led to the death of a close friend. During 1937, J. C. "Honey Babe" Moses, who he describes as "a real light skinned brother, with good hair whom Whites often mistook as white," was killed. He vividly recalls the circumstance of this death as if it happen recently. The Friday night before Honey Babe died, he along with Mr. Clayton and another friend attended a Green Devils football game. They were not permitted to go in the stadium to see this all-white team so they joined the other ten or twelve blacks who were looking at the game through the fence. He saw his friend for the last time at a circus in Campbell Park. But his lasting image of "Honey Babe" would be of his dying body concealed in a basket on the lawn of Williams' Funeral home with hundreds of Whites parading around it.

Police brutality led to the fatal end of his twenty-something year-old friend. A few days prior to his death, "Honey Babe" was roughed up by the police because he refused to step off of the sidewalk when two rookie policemen passed. Mr. Clayton suggests that his friend sought to address the initial altercation through the police system. He reported the incident to desk sergeant. The officer allegedly told him, "If you don't get out of here, I'll kick you out." Mr. Clayton underscores, "Folks were very rude to black people in those days!" Reportedly, "Honey Babe" told the sergeant he would be sorry for his inaction. Later when he encountered the same rookie policemen who had attacked him, he shot both of them. One policeman died immediately and death came to the second one later while he was in the hospital. Before dying he managed to identify "Honey Babe" as the suspect. Mr. Clayton explains that in the beginning the press assumed that he was white. "The next day's paper (Sunday), they did not say whether it was white or black. In those days, if the race was not given, it was assumed that the person was white." However, when whites discovered the identity of "Honey Babe," they swarmed the black community. Mr. Clayton recalls, "I saw white people running all through the black area. There was even one white boy with a machete . . . hunting for him." When they found him hiding in his girl friend's apartment, he and some of the other residents were attacked by the police and the mob. Then the police called the undertaker to pick him up. Instead of permitting the mortician to take the body, the mob locked him in the stockade and took his hearse. Members of the mob took the dying man to the heart of area that is now Jordan Park for display. Mr. Clayton says his body remained on that lawn all day and was not removed until 11 o'clock that night. "We were looking right down on it," he recounts.

Despite the circumstances surrounding this tragedy, Mr. Clayton holds his friend in high regard because he fought a system that did not respect colored people. Disheartened, he explains that one of Honey Babe's friends told the police about his whereabouts. One clearly hears a sense of betrayal in Mr. Clayton's voice.

Despite the presence of obvious institutional racism, Mr. Clayton believes that when he was a youngster "white and black people got along better than a lot of people thought they did." For example, at age 9 he lived with a Ms. Cooper and served as her butler. He discusses his bond with her.

She bought me knickerbockers pants, black socks and shoes and told me so keep those shoes shined . . . I would answer the door bell, page the person who was coming in, help her clean up and wash the dishes. . . . She sent me home every night carrying a big old pan with everything they cooked and was left over. She gave me a dollar a week and ten cent every Saturday to go see a movie. A dollar was big money at that time (1922). I hated to leave her. She treated me so nice.

Strategies For Managing Racism

"Blacks who stood up for something and did not let white people run over them, got along well with whites," he believes. This principle guided his actions when his salary was short-changed while working at Drew Field, currently the site of Tampa International Airport. He was employed as a skilled pipe-layer during World War II. The owner's son-in-law accused him of mislaying a pipe and therefore paid him as a laborer. He went in the office and confronted the timekeeper. Although he was told to get out, he refused to leave. He recounts, "I stood right there in that office until they paid off all of the men. It was hundreds of them .... I used to be very stubborn, if you got me wrong ... " It did not matter to him that they did not allow Negroes in the office. With the aid of his friend and supervisor, Craig, a white man, he was eventually able to prove that he was correct. That day he went to purchase a new car, therefore, he was not at work. Despite verification, the son-in-law refused to pay him the amount owed. The owner eventually intervened and resolved the differences. His employer had learned to respect black men, after being hit in the face with a shovel by a black man, explains Mr. Clayton. He wore a "big scar on his face." He reports that he is like his daddy -- not afraid to take a position.

He proudly reminisces that when the company's contract ended, the owner asked him to go Texas to help build another base. He recalls, "I did good work and it pleased him But I couldn't go because I had a young family and I wanted to stay with my wife." When the owner suggested that he would make arrangements for his family to accompany him, Mr. Clayton responded, "I can't leave my business." Being a business owner allowed him various options. He infers, "I wasn't begging him."

Making My Own Way

Becoming an entrepreneur was his shield against racism. "After my first jobs, it made me make my own jobs," recalls, Mr. Clayton. "I went into building businesses." By 1938 just before World War II, at age 27, he purchased his first grocery store. It was formerly owned by his wife's "grand daddy." By 1944, he had bought the entire corner of Fairfield Avenue and Twenty-First Street where his store stood. "On that property, I had a three-room house, a two-bedroom house, my own house that was a big two-story home and the storefront. The storefront had two apartments upstairs and a garage that had enough room for my two cars and boat and my storeroom for my store," he remembers. Real estate in the Tampa Bay area and other parts of Florida were also among his assets.

In 1958, Mr. Clayton became semi-retired and sold his business. However by 1960 he had to develop another enterprise in order to maintain his dignity. He was one of two blacks who were hired by a large grocery franchise. He assisted in setting up the store. The store manager promised to employ him as manager of the produce department. "When the position came open, they gave it to a white . . . Because I was a black, they didn't want to give me the position," determines Mr. Clayton. With twenty one years of experience as a grocer, he was assigned custodial chores. Although, he cleaned the ladies' toilets, wiped down the meat cases and kept the store clean, he was "just piddling around." Angered by the conditions of his employment, he quit during a Christmas after working there for two years. To restore a sense of accomplishment and security, he returned to that which he knew -- being his own boss. He bought a cab from a late friend's widow.

Where There Is A Will, There Is Way

He attributes his accomplishments to skillful planning and resourcefulness. Prior to buying his first piece of property, Mr. Clayton's salary ranged from $14.00 to $18.00 a week. He had no money before buying his store. "We budgeted .... I could tell you what I was going to eat next Tuesday or Wednesday," he explains. However, his account of every penny, did not mean poor quality. Mr. Clayton says, "I never bought nothing cheap . . . because quality lasts." To prove his maxim, he notes that he has shoes that he purchased when he married 58 years ago. Maintaining a vegetable garden also helped to stretch his dollars. In addition, he found innovative ways to make money. He recalls that while working at the Jungle Golf Course, which is now Admiral Farragut Academy, he retrieved golf balls from rough palmettos and ponds to make extra money. "Selling golf balls to the golfers brought good money." He excitedly tells how he saved $60.00 and bought his three-year old son an electric train set for a Christmas present.

He acknowledges that his wife worked with him to support their family. She operated the store while he worked other jobs. For years they followed a routine that required him to open the store at 6 o'clock and go to work at 7 o'clock. While he was in the store, his wife would ready their children and send them off to school. From seven o'clock, until he returned from work in the evening around eight o'clock, she managed the store. With his wife's help he was able to work other jobs and "to make and save money."

Being adventurous allowed Mr. Clayton to create other financial opportunities. For example, to get an essential job during World War II, he used wit and verve to convince a timekeeper at MacDill Air Base to hire him and his friends as skilled pipe layers, even though only one of them had ever laid a pipe. While on his unpaid vacation from his job at Weavers' grocery store, a friend told him that MacDill Field was hiring people. The United States had just entered World War II and they were building barracks and putting in sanitation systems. Approximately 500 people a day were being employed, he estimates. He organized five friends who "hung around" his store into a work crew and drove to MacDill in his 1934 Chevy. They presented themselves as skilled pipe layers, although their knowledge was limited to what they had gained through their friend's brief lesson.

Skilled or not, one had to be ingenious to get into the gate. Mr. Clayton recalls, "it must have been 500 whites and 300 blacks outside of the fence. Plus a badge was needed to get in past the guard. He says, as God would have it, a friend came out of the gate complaining that he was not going to work in a ditch for no one and asked if anyone wanted his badge. "Of all those people there, nobody said anything." Mr. Clayton quickly jumped at the opportunity said, "give it to me!"

Mr. Clayton reminisces, "I took that badge and went to the guard and then walked all around the field. As I went by a big pipe company, a man called out, 'hey mister you looking for work.' Mr. Clayton remembers that such greeting was unusual. He explains the only time whites called blacks "mister" was when they were trying to sell them insurance policies. Anyway, he answered, "Yeah, how much?" The employer ask him, "What can you do?" Without hesitation, he responded, "I am a pipe layer by trade." Remembering his friend's lessons, he answered, "I have three top men and three bottom men."

While inside the gate, he noticed another friend from his neighborhood working in a nearby ditch. He called out to him, "let me get down in the bottom a little bit with you." But he was jokingly told by his friend to go back to his store. Mr. Clayton says, "I stayed there watching him work until I got it." Then he returned to the timekeeper and got enough buttons to bring in his other friends. They were all employed that day and paid $75.00 a week. That was a significant jump from $18.00 a week he was earning. He worked there for a year and a half, until the job was completed. He says, "They never had to go over none of my work."

Business Is A Family Legacy

Mr. Clayton's drive to be independent was also influenced by his family. His mother and grandmothers were seamstresses. They sewed all the clothes the family wore except for the shirts. His grandmother was also a midwife. "She brought as many White babies in as she did black babies. The black people could hardly get her because she was always busy with the white people. She made all kinds of money." An aunt who is 100 years old taught at the University of Pennsylvania until she retired. His older brother Joseph who refused to work on the farm, started a dry cleaning business and owned two barber shops. His father was a self-employed as a farmer and a carpenter. Even Mr. Clayton started a shoe shine business in his brother's barber shop when he was twelve years old. Within a couple of years, he saved a thousand dollars from shining shoes. Continuing a family legacy of self-sufficiency, he ensured that he was never fired but had the freedom to quit a job if the conditions were not favorable.

To Whom Much Is Given, Much Is Expected

He was also able to influence many young people. As a taxi driver, he often transported students to and from school. He recalls, "I saw these children's report card before their parents did.... I would talk with them about keeping their grades up." He rewarded their successes and encouraged them when they did not achieve. Frequently, he encounters parents who give reports of their adult children's successes. He tells of a recent report from one of his rider's mother. He describes the young lady as a straight "A" student at Gibbs who now has a college degree and works for the state of Florida in Tallahassee. He was able to inspire many young people and serve the community as well as provide an income for his family.

Not All Change Brings Good News

Mr. Clayton mourns the loss of the era prior to desegregation of the Black community. It was a time when its members were not as stratified by education and class and had its own distinct institutions and social life. Despite his lack of formal education, he socialized and hunted with the doctors. By the some token, he had friends whose enterprising ways were not always sanctioned in the church.

Mr. Clayton concludes, "Blacks lived better during segregation." He bases his conclusions on the social activities and club events that occurred in the community. Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Noble Sissle, and Count Basie all performed in the Negro community during that era. "It was time when Negro women wore mink coats and gowns and men dressed in tuxedos and danced in the ballrooms of the Elk Club, Joyland, and the Manhattan Casino. "Now everything is all nailed-up."

Not only are buildings boarded up, but people like Mr. Clayton without formal schooling are excluded from the remaining clubs and activities. Fraternities, and sororities are among the few groups that survived desegregation. "These organizations are not as strong as they once were....," he judges by the number of scholarships they now award. Furthermore, he determines that they are open only to people who have a college degree. He recalls that he once sat on Boards of the YMCA and YWCA with doctors. His skills as a businessman, and his distinguished persona were sufficient to allow him to participate in such decision making bodies. A college degree is now a criterion for access to that which remains as "black society." Besides, the advent of desegregation led to the closing of the Negro YWCA and YMCA.

"I have seen lot of changes," explains Mr. Clayton. However, he is baffled about the condition of young boys. He thinks desegregation created their problems. He reasons:

A lot of our boys going to school got messed up with that marijuana. Who brought that marijuana to the schools? Those boys off the beach, the rich people. How many black people in that business have connection with the big boys? They are on the front end of it. They are ones who use it and are being raped by it. The boys had to start stealing and robbing to feed their habit. That is one thing that I noticed.

The rapidly changing conditions in the community placed Mr. Clayton's life in harms' way. In 1974, his neighborhood was targeted for demolition to make way for Interstate 275. His neighbors agreed to the initial offer made by the State Department of Transportation (DOT) and moved out. He suggests that the DOT practically took the black people's property. Unwilling to give his home away, he sued for fair compensation for his property. Prolonged litigation left his home surrounded by other abandoned homes which were targeted by thieves for copper. After returning home from church one evening, two men robbed them. The gunmen tied-up him and his wife, took their keys and car, tore the phone out of the wall, and threatened to kill them if they called the police. Mr. Clayton managed to free himself and ran to a neighbor's house to call his friends at the taxi company where he worked. Over 15 taxi drivers and the police responded to his mayday call. This incident caused him to move to a middle-class suburban neighborhood.

He finally settled with the Department of Transportation, "but they didn't pay nothing for it (his home), although it had nice features and was well built." He complains that he should have received seven times as much money. In the end, he also lost several rental properties.

God Is Good To Me

Despite these losses, he proposes, "The Lord took care of me and enabled me to help a lot of people." Mr. Clayton believes that he was destined to become a Seventh Day Adventist. He recalls at a very early age asking his father why the family when to church on the first day of the week instead of the seventh. His father did not give him a satisfactory answer. He however believed that it was wrong not to go to church on the day that God had required people to rest and keep the Sabbath. Through his wife's family he found the Seventh Day Adventists and answers to questions he had pondered since childhood. However, several years passed before he joined the church. Although he asserts, "When I kept my first Sabbath, I was the happiest person in the world." Now he teaches a Sabbath school class. He measures his temporal successes by the spiritual mercy which has been given to him.