Audio
Oral History Interview with Boyd Valentine
Transcript
Abstract: As part of her master’s thesis and internship with Biscayne National Park, Aisha Loman conducted the following oral history interview with Boyd Valentine. In this interview, Valentine talks about living in segregated Homestead, Florida, visiting the local beaches, the community pool. Valentine is a boat mechanic and he worked at Everglades National Park from 1975 to 2007, where he then moved to Biscayne National Park. Throughout the interview, Valentine talks about his childhood and tells many stories. PLACEHOLDER: Insert Interview Transcript (pdf-1234KB)
AISHA LOWMAN: This is Aisha Lowman, Master Student at University of South Florida. Um, I intern at Biscayne National Park. I am interviewing Boyd Valentine, employee at Biscayne National Park. And Boyd, do you give me consent, uh, to videotape and audio record this interview?
BOYD VALENTINE: Yes, I do.
LOWMAN: Okay. And this interview is going to be for Biscayne National Park as well as my master’s thesis; do you give me permission to do that?
VALENTINE: Yes.
LOWMAN: Okay. Thank you very much. Okay. Boyd, first off, uh, we're just going to start off with some, uh, information about you. Would you state your name, um, your age, and location where this interview is taking place?
VALENTINE: Uh-huh. My name is Boyd Valentine, and I'm 58 years old. And this interview is taking place out here at Biscayne National Park.
LOWMAN: Okay.
VALENTINE: Of Homestead.
LOWMAN: And what racial group do you identify with?
VALENTINE: Black.
LOWMAN: Okay. Now, could you just, uh, tell me about your experiences at Homestead Bayfront Beach, um, during the 1950s and '60s?
VALENTINE: Yeah, when I go back, you know—you know, as time goes on, you know, being that I'm 58 and that ended in like 19—in the '60s, the late '60s, mid '60s, I don't even know—remember what year, but you know, my mom, she, uh—she was like a very protective lady, and we didn't come to the beach that much. But when we came, you know, we came with people who she knew was going to, you know, look after us, make sure we didn't get into trouble or anything. But uh, coming out here, I remember coming out here in the—I remember the roads. They were more like the first bridge up there when you come in where the blinking lights are. That was the last chance you had to get on this side—to get on this—to get on this side, you know, to go to the so-called black beach, and which were—I remember a sign said colored beach at one time. And uh, the other side of the road, I never experienced that until they did integrate it. When we was coming down this road, it, uh, went—one area it turned to more like a rocky road, you know, that's gravel. And um, we used to come on out here and I'm trying to remember exactly how it looked. But I remember when we used to get in that—there used to be a lot of, uh, a lot of seaweed in some area. And when we got into the water, the rocks—you didn't notice them right then, but they were—you know, you had to really—you get out so far, the rocks got a little sharper. And uh, there were—I remember fish being in the water, occasionally a jellyfish or something like that, you know, occasionally. I remember seeing a jellyfish out there. And uh, we used to, uh, we were so—we were actually comfortable out here. You know, you'd come to the beach and everything. You have a little picnic. There were not too many [inaudible] out here, you know, there were, uh, no—I can't remember any snack bars, anything like that, and I can't remember any lifeguards. I'm not saying that there weren't any, but I just can't remember them. One time, um, actually, I can say this now, my—my—a couple of my friends and I we played hooky. And we came out here, you know, one of the older guys, you know, we hung out with, he had a car. We came out here and people were out here, and they were actually swimming and everything. We were swimming in the water. And uh, it's an incident that nobody knows about. The guys that I was with are dead, they're dead now. But uh, there was this one girl, I don't know who she was, but she was a young girl probably around maybe about 14. She was in the water out there and she got out there and she couldn't touch the bottom. She got a little too deep. And she started going under and swallowing water, and I swam over there and grabbed her. I pulled her back, and then I walked her out of the pool, and she was coughing and gagging. I guess she was drowning.
LOWMAN: Yeah.
VALENTINE: And I pulled her out, and I pulled her out, you know, I was—she was pretty. I mean I was looking at her and I sat her down, and then she ran over. She's like—she said, told her brothers, hey, why wouldn't you come get me? He had to save my life. I said, wow, I saved her life, and that was the end of that. I guess I did save someone's life sometime.
LOWMAN: Wow.
VALENTINE: I mean one time—I mean in my life, I mean it wasn't like wow. That would've been, uh, totally different if she would've drowned, girl drowns at the beach.
LOWMAN: Yeah.
VALENTINE: I don't know at the black beach they probably would've, you know—it wasn't that other side, it was this side here. And that was just one incident, you know. Another, uh, incident that I remember, uh, when we were—uh, we came out here. I can't exactly say who we were with. I mean like I say, I'm 58 now. And uh, we had, uh, like wieners and everything. We had a little—we did a little fire, roasting the wieners on the fire. I hated wieners. I mean still do. They were roasting wieners on the fire, you know, they had, uh, like little marshmallows and stuff. I hated marshmallows too, especially when they were roasted. I mean I was a picky kid. It don't look like it now, but I was. And uh, we were down here—I think—I don't know if the place closed at a certain time or not, but I remember the kids—a lot of kids playing, you know, the kids from up the, you know, [inaudible] or a lot of people come out here, and uh, having fun and just doing what people do on the beach. And I'm going to tell you, uh, like I said, it wasn't too many times I came out here but—to swim, but we used to come out here and fish.
LOWMAN: Oh, okay.
VALENTINE: Right on here, what they call the Jetty now, that walk that goes to the Jetty, that actually—the walk wasn't there then. It was actually just rock that went all the way out to the end of the channel before they blocked it off. And actually, I don't know what happened but the tides actually come up higher now than they used to come. We used to walk all the way to the end, and my dad and I, my sister, we used to go out there and fish. And when we'd go out here and people used to be in the little pool right here; that we called it a pool. And uh, we'd come out to fish. We caught jacks, barracudas and then we'd come back and always watch them, and uh, you know, just fun, people having fun. And then we'd go out there again, you know, and that's what most—that's where I spend most of my time out there on the Jetty with my dad, used to go fishing. But as far as the beach area, I didn't—I didn't swim too much in there, you know. I learned how to swim around 10 years old. The boy scouts used to come out here. Now, for a long time, I thought that there was a drowning out here. My friend Julius say it wasn't here; it was in a lake somewhere. But I thought it was out here and when a—a guy by the name of Kelly Scott, he was in the boy scouts. The boy scout leader then—I don't know, can I say his name? He's dead now. The guy—his name was Joe Remy [phonetic]. And Joe Remy was a boy scout leader. And some way Kelly Scott drowned. That was a big thing in Homestead then. When he drowned, uh, everybody—I mean a lot people just didn't die in Homestead like that, especially kids. He, uh—that thing was, uh—it's more like a hurting thing. Everybody was like, wow. His family became, you know, loved by everyone because everybody, you know, giving them sympathy and everything. And um, like I say for a long time, I thought it was out here, and I'm pretty sure it was. But like I say, Julius has, uh, he has a better memory than me. He remembers things like I can't imagine. But uh, that, uh, incident, you know, it was a separate incident, but I remember all the guys, you know, when I got older right before they closed this down, we used to swim across.
LOWMAN: To?
VALENTINE: The other side, you know.
LOWMAN: Oh, I see.
VALENTINE: Just get in the water and swim across, we see who could swim across. Now, I say we, but it wasn't really we. Me, I used to get about one-third of the way out, and I come back because I was—I was cautious, you know. I said, forget this. Then when—when the water got a little cold, a little deep, I didn't really know how deep that water was. I just—I just hauled right back. Like I said here, I never remember a lifeguard. If lifeguards were here, they were more out here in the earlier parts of the day, and I don't remember who they were either if they were here so you can scratch that one.
LOWMAN: Okay. And when you, um, swam out, you know, that third of the way, did you—you saw the other side of the beach, the white side of the beach, or you just mainly saw the black side?
VALENTINE: Oh, no. Actually, um, you couldn’t—I couldn't—I can't remember seeing, you know, they didn't have a lot of these buildings here. You could hear things over that other side and where the headquarters building is now, those were more like, uh, weeds—I mean mangroves.
LOWMAN: Okay.
VALENTINE: And—but when you go out on the Jetty, you can actually see over to that side. You know, it wasn't—it didn't look like it looked today, but you could see on that side, and it was more like a—a foreign land. It was something that you always looked at and you sort of wondered how it is over there. But you know, you're like reluctant to ever go that side. As a matter—as a matter of fact, you wouldn't go. Your parents weren't going to take you on that side. I can't remember if we were even allowed to go over there, maybe to work or something like that. But like I said, it didn’t bother us.
LOWMAN: Okay. Well, um, what did you see when you looked over there? Did you see people doing stuff like—?
VALENTINE: Activities, you know, they—they were playing. You know, you couldn't really see everything over there. You know, they didn't have the divisions that they have over there now, but you could see, you know, things that people just playing, you know, you—I can't—actually, I remember seeing people though kind of a long way off. Like I say, it was, uh, mangroves blocking a lot of things. You go out on the Jetty to see things. I didn't know if—I really can't say whether they kept the mangroves up so can't, you know, maybe see people in bikinis, you know. I don’t' think—I don't think that was accepted. It's true. You know, it's more like remember how I say about people are very possessive of what's not theirs.
LOWMAN: Yeah.
VALENTINE: Because you know, one color or race say, wow, that's ours. No, it's not. It's whatever, you know, people have, you know, their freedom. They probably ridiculed, persecuted, and everything for doing certain things. But hey, people always had freedom. Other people take it away from them.
LOWMAN: Okay.
VALENTINE: That goes on today. I will not get on—I will not get into that part, you know, but it goes on in a certain—I mean—I mean if you really look close, look between the lines, you'll see it. And it's certain things, you know, you say, wow, people are still possessive. They still shallow-minded and God, that is—that is one of the biggest things that—it, people say things they don't realize what they're saying; they actually don't. Like uh, you know, I've been a boat mechanic. I can say this right quick. I've been a boat mechanic for, you know, I am a Mercury technician. My title is boat mechanic. That was the title—I'll say I'm not a mechanic. Mechanics don't exist anymore. They really don't. But whatever, you know, I say boat technician or boat mechanic, whatever, and um, I have had actually had people still doubt my abilities. It's not, uh, it's not too much you can do about people doubting your abilities. I mean, uh, all races can doubt your abilities. But there are some white people who are going to doubt you. There's a lot of polite black people who are going to doubt you. But there's still there's tension that goes on, like, uh, wonder does he really know? No matter what you do, no matter how things improve, people can't—they can't accept things. Sometimes people can't accept things. They—I mean it's, uh, it's more like, uh, superior type attitude, and a person feels better when someone is inferior to them. And believe it or not, it happens. I mean it's a mental thing or an emotional thing, or whatever it is, some people just feel better when they feel someone is inferior to them because it makes them seem like they're more than what they really are.
LOWMAN: Yeah.
VALENTINE: And people have trouble with that. They can't, uh, I don't know if it's—I think a lot of it is teaching, when people teach you and they get it embedded in you. I mean you get it embedded in your mind in the back of your head. I mean something I mean like, uh—you can take, uh, an animal and you can train that animal to do a certain thing. And I mean—I mean it's hard to break that animal from that. I mean that is the way of life for him. Some people like that. There was one guy I brought fishing one day. It was recently, about two years ago. I brought him fishing out here one night, and he's an older guy. And I'm not going to call his name, but you know, he's the dad of a friend of mine. And uh, his daughter said she knows this guy named Boyd Valentine that would take him fishing, an old guy about 80-some years old, and he was so afraid. He was asking questions like, do any white people hang out out there? You know, them people will get you out there. They'll bother with you. You could end up dead. And I was like, what? I said, no, I say Biscayne is about the safest place you can be in Homestead. I mean nobody's going to bother you out here. And he was so frightened he came out here and he—you could see the nervousness on him. And uh, after a while when he started catching those snapper, and you know, especially when, uh, those 14-inch snapper, you could see him calming down. I mean he—he was calming down I mean tremendously. We're allowed to catch, you know, five snappers over 10 inches, you know, and I caught a few and I gave them all to him. He was so happy. Well, you know, I thought about that for a while. I say, this guy still lives in the past. His memory is so intense that it still affects him, and uh—.
LOWMAN: But you helped with that?
VALENTINE: Huh?
LOWMAN: But you helped with that?
VALENTINE: Oh, yeah. I mean it—I mean momentarily, yeah. I mean I guess it did, uh, relax him a little bit. I mean he relaxed a little bit more and he probably seen something that, uh, realized something that he probably never thought existed before that people are not really out to get you anymore. You know, you have some that do that, but a lot of people don't. I have friends of all races, I mean good friends, creed, or whatever. And I have never looked at it like that. I just look at people as being—most people of being naïve to the world, and um, believe me, uh, it's best to not say a lot of things because there's a lot of things going on that you don't know about. You know, sometimes you can get, uh, paranoid. A person—I can get a little bit paranoid. I try not to, you know, for my protection and everything, and say, wow, man, I may be going too far. But Aisha, in the early years of my life, it was more intense than it is now. The older you get, the less it bothers you. A lot of things don’t bother you now. You know, you getting to me being 58. In 20 years, I'll be 78 years old. If I—I'll be 78 regardless whether I be dead or alive. And believe me, I don't have much—I mean I don't have that much longer on this planet. I mean you just don't—things just don’t' bother with you. I mean fear, it just don't bother you the way it used to do. I mean that while you're reluctant to go here, reluctant to go there, right now as of today I was born in the era that I was discriminated against and people don't understand it. People think you're supposed to get over things. As a child, that's where you experience the most—you experience the most fear, caution, and everything else. That's when things are really burned in your head.
LOWMAN: Yeah.
VALENTINE: And it's hard to get them out. When you're uncomfortable with things as a kid, and uh, if you were a kid and someone you had some kind of fault with you and someone made fun of you, that's going to stick with you throughout your adulthood.
LOWMAN: Yeah.
VALENTINE: It's just certain things a person can say it bothers you, and there's—I mean there's some things that, you know, people that do not—there's some places I can go right now I'm not comfortable at, even if the people are friendly. I don't feel it. I see it, but I don't feel it. If it makes me uncomfortable, I don't want to be there. Believe me, it's not fear. It's emotions. It's the feelings that I get. It makes you—the feelings, it—you revert to the old misery, miserable type feeling you had, and that's not—you don't like that kind of stuff. I mean people right now, anybody, if someone comes up to a person and he says, uh, something that makes him think of something that really bothered him before, they don't want to hear it. Activities, a lot of things go on, you just don't want to hear it anymore. I heard the N-word so much when I was a kid. It was so—it was accepted. I mean it was really—I mean it was something over like nobody liked it but nobody wanted to say anything too much. I mean it was—I mean the people say it, but that's how they address you. And it was not like, uh, you know, spook, N-word, and all this. But I mean more like, yeah, whatever. And then you throw a racist word back or something like that, someone comes in a car and they, you know how they do.
LOWMAN: Yeah.
VALENTINE: And then you're more like, wow. But I'm going to tell you, you're really not too aware of a lot of things until—until you're aware of them and someone makes you aware of it. If someone starts retaliating, they are more like—and then it starts bothering you, and then that's when the anger comes in. Believe me, if you don't control that, you don't get over yourself, it'll bloom. It'll emerge. You'll start thinking, doing, and actually believing stuff that's not even there. You know, when someone can say a certain thing, you relate it to the other person who said it. A lot of people have different meanings and then some people just don't even realize. Like we talked about earlier, what they're saying, when you get a super-sensitive person like me that is—uh, it could be beneficial. But it's more of a curse. Makes your life very unpleasant a lot of times. You want to go to a neutral place.
LOWMAN: Yeah.
VALENTINE: But you don't feel it. I guess that's maybe why I'm so fascinated with Norway, because what I was thinking. You know, and so when I start researching, I kind of lost my feelings a little bit for it, you know, going to France. I mean some people say go back to Africa. I've never been to Africa. Never in my life have I been to Africa. Matter of fact, I've never been out of this country other than the Virgin Islands, and that's American. I went to the British Virgin Islands. That's as far as I've been out of the country. But um, I feel uncomfortable in a lot of things right now. I would defend myself in a lot of ways, you know. I'm not afraid of, uh, people. Never been afraid of people, but as of now, I'm not afraid to speak. I will speak my mind. People look at me and they're reluctant to say a lot of things to me because of—they say, uh, you don't want to make Boyd angry. Those are degrading words to me. I don't want to—I'm not the Hulk. Don't make me angry; you wouldn't like me if I'm angry. I'm not like that. I mean I am not a, uh, violent guy or anything, and um, when a person does something or says something always thought you supposed to—I mean in my mind, I have to blow that match out before it becomes a forest fire. Believe me, people will go too far. Sometimes a person does things. They get into their own zone and a person does—a person will do a thing because they are trying to break you down so they can entertain themselves for some reason, or they can feel like they want to feel about something. And uh, so I always more like act defensive on a lot of things I hear. People come to you on the street, you know, someone just come at you and say a dirty word to you. And you're like—especially, I look at people; I look at the way they look. I mean they're all walks of life. You have people what they call different names; white people, black people, they have different names—you know, the names that they call people. You know, they have the Southern people, the Northern people, and you—you have—some people are just totally ignorant, hateful, taught to be hateful. The kids, they teach them kids—they teach their kids to be hateful, and they don't know what they're doing. They use the words, they stink. How—I never understood that. He say, they stink. What you mean they stink? You know what stinks? Uh, a skunk, when he lets out his musk. I mean you still have that scent lingering, and uh, a stinkbug stinks, a polecat stinks. People don't stink, unless they don't bathe. Now, it don't take the black person, red person, yellow person, because that they stink, they steal. Aisha, what—I mean, can you identify with that? How in the world they steal? I mean they do this. If you ever go on that site I was on, you wouldn't believe the things people still say these days. I never finished those sites because I can't understand, Aisha—or Aaliyah. You know, the singer Aaliyah? When she died in the plane crash, I read an article, you know, online that's where I usually read my newspaper now online, much better, and it came in, who cares about this N-B. She was just a—singing all that rap crap. They ought to all die. I say, God, people is still ignorant. It's still go back to Africa. Who in America is from America? I know the American Indians when Columbus or the Pilgrims came over here, they were here. You know, and Columbus discovered America or rediscovered America, or whatever you want to call it, America the beautiful. I'm not going to get into some things because I mean it'll be—you know, it's not—it's not really appropriate, but uh—when someone comes into a place and claims it and claims God's country, you know, God's world, whatever, they take the, uh—if you notice that, there's a lot of kinds of religions. There are different bibles. And America has, uh, different cultures, religions in America, you know. They say the land of the free, the land—you know, United States—United States of America; okay? You have, uh, the people that wrote the King James Bible here, new King James Bible, the uh—this bible. And then you have people who wrote the Mormon bible, the Jehovah witness, and then you have the Muslims. And if you think about it, you come into America, you say, wow, all these other people in the world, they're going to hell. They have all the wrong idea of what—I wonder who deceived them? Tell me this part. Who said that we were right? Can you prove that we wrote the right bible? That it was translated in the right language? But the people will see they do the same thing. They will say those people are pagans. They are infidels. They are everything. People say it all over the world. Tell me who's right?
LOWMAN: I don't know.
VALENTINE: You don't know. I'm going to say it right nobody knows anything. They can't even tell for sure where they came from. I mean over the past—I mean we can—we can actually record back, you know, from the Bible 6,000 years, how we've come now in the last 100 years. I mean people on this planet has come further than they did in the first 5000—I mean 5,900 years. You know how many—how much technology they had since 1912 to now? You go to that Pioneer Museum. You'll see back in the '40s, the, um, equipment that they were using, the telephones that they were using, and the things that they have now, it was unimaginable back then that they'll have a cell phone; this thing you called a cell phone, touch tone. My phone here, I can take it and read books, whole novels. This thing is just like unlimited. I really can't use it that good, but you know. I mean that's for you all young kids, you know, born into this stuff, still an old world. But you know, if, um, it's hard to imagine a lot of things, you know, the way people think. I think it's a miserable, miserable life to hate. It got to be.
LOWMAN: Yeah.
VALENTINE: People, uh, you know, back in the '60s when, uh, James Brown, you know, started it, you know, say it loud, I'm black and I'm proud. You had the Black Panthers come out. The Black Panthers, they were a good organization, you know. They weren't violent and everything, but you know, people was going to make them look like they were violent. They got to get the leaders out of there. They got to get the people who's going to bring these people to the realization that they may be someone. And uh, so they started saying all kinds of terrible things about them, arresting their leaders, while falsely accusing them of things. Angela Davis, I mean gee-whiz, yeah, I mean it's—uh, you wonder, you know, why did—why did they do that? It's an ego trip, superiority. I want to be God. We are God. The white Christian race, uh, when I get to heaven, wow, I love you black people—these things I heard, God, I love that music that you black people play in church. When I get to heaven, I'm going to—I'm coming over to you all side so I can hear that stuff. I heard these things with my own ears, and I was like, wow, are you sure you going to get there? I be saying to myself, man, you going to have to pray just to go to hell. Gee-whiz, what kind of attitude is that? What? I mean when we—when you get to heaven, tell me this, Aisha, how—who knows who's right? Anyone knows God; do they? I mean you been told this; you been told that, you know. I mean when you're young that's when you start believing things. I mean anybody who can—if you think about these days, if you can believe in Santa Claus without a doubt when you were a child, I mean this fat guy with the red suit existed in your mind. He was real. No matter what the odds were, you never doubted. You look up on your house. You have a flat roof. You have the only thing up there is a pipe and you wonder how in the heck that guy got down that pipe. You never think about how that guy goes around to millions of houses in one night. You have no concept of time. You, really when you a kid, you really don't think about that there's a place outside of your little town there. You don't doubt. That is why people are so conceited with their thinking these days when it comes to racism because they taught as kids they have no doubt that people are inferior. That's why that beach was black; that beach over there white, one-third the size as that one. That was—I mean when we started going over there, people started going over there I couldn't believe the size of that place. It was like, I'm not kidding, it's about one-third the size of that one. When I got in that water over there, believe me, uh, it wasn't too much tension because when we went there a lot of people stopped going.
LOWMAN: Yeah?
VALENTINE: Oh, they honestly did; I'm not kidding you. And uh, I remember getting in that water and walking—walking out in the deeper water, I didn't feel the sharp stones anymore. They were all smooth. It was like, wow, I wouldn't have dared try to swim across there. I—I probably wouldn't have made it. It's like, whoa, this is pretty nice, you know. It's, um, you forget about things, you know, the picnic grills. I can do a little picnicking out there and everything, and um, the salinity of the water, you know, it's the same and everything like that, but I could've sworn that water seems cleaner. I think it might have seemed cleaner because of the, uh, sea growth on the bottom. Out here like I say, there was seaweeds in there and there were some over there too, but not like here. We had more. The sand looks better, and the water couldn't have seemed cleaner because all the water was coming from the ocean, and we still had the little fish over there.
LOWMAN: Um, when it was integrated, did you go to the beach more like—?
VALENTINE: Well, I actually went—when that was integrated, I was, uh, more like a teenager then. I mean—I mean my mom was more like losing her grip on me for confining me in a place. You know, I mean it was like, you got to let go sometimes.
LOWMAN: Yeah.
VALENTINE: I mean I'm 15/16 years old. Hey, I just take off sometimes. You don't have to meet long, you'd be back home at a certain time.
LOWMAN: Yeah.
VALENTINE: Have too much—I was one of the—I mean I was a very good swimmer by then. I was on the swim team at school, and uh, so—I didn't have—I don't remember having a lot of trouble over there, you know, when they integrated it. And you know, like I said, I really don't know what year it was they integrated. I really don't. But I know that, uh, this place over here you still have to come at the entrance right there where the red—uh, where the red light, the blinking lights, there was a flood gate there. And you turn off the main road. It was actually two roads. And you turn off the main road and you come down, and uh, it might've been the second road. I can't remember that good. But you come—you came on down and that little bridge, that place, and where you came in today, that little place where you would cross?
LOWMAN: Yeah.
VALENTINE: That was—that didn't even exist. That canal came all the way through.
LOWMAN: Oh.
VALENTINE: All the way through. I mean that was cut off—I mean wasn't allowed to get over there at all. As far as I know, that side wasn't working, and I don't know anyone that worked over there. I don’t' know all the—I think all this place was the county's at one time. And when they, uh, I think the park service actually had something to do with the, uh, integration of the place over here because, you know, this became Biscayne National Park. It become Biscayne National Park, and it was, uh, I mean very historic out here. I mean the Biscayne Bay and everything, I mean that—it's a treasure out there. I mean that place is beautiful. And uh, it's not like it used to be all the coral reefs and everything because I guess it's—I don't know if it's dying or it's just not like it used to be. You know, they putting in the effort to, you know, restore a lot of areas and preserve and then the big water park. I mean they did a great job. This is a beautiful place to me. I don't say that too often. I love working here. I love being here. I like being here more than working. I'm getting where I don't want to work anymore. I been working for a long time, you know, but I enjoy the park a lot. I stay here after work. I might stay here in two or three hours. I mean I don't—it's a lot of things that I don't be concerned about like I was. And I be more concerned about safety walking around town than, you know, out here.
LOWMAN: Yeah.
VALENTINE: Any parts of town. You know, safety is no issue out here.
LOWMAN: How long have you lived—uh, how long have worked at Biscayne?
VALENTINE: I've worked at Biscayne since 2007. I worked at Everglades since 1975 up until 2007.
LOWMAN: Okay.
VALENTINE: Down in Flamingo the whole time. This my 36th year in the park service.
LOWMAN: Congratulations.
VALENTINE: Thank you. I never worked for anything else—I mean anyone else. I went to the military, from there to the National Park Service. I always worked for the government. Apart from the few jobs when I got out of high school, just to get me a car or something, you know.
LOWMAN: And so, you were born in Homestead?
VALENTINE: No, I was born in Greenville, Mississippi.
LOWMAN: Okay.
VALENTINE: And my mom, um, she was a single mom. She, uh, she had four kids. We—some kind of way we ended up in a place called Coatesville, Pennsylvania. And believe me, I remember that place. I was about three or four years old. I know I was. I remember we lived in a building, because she was a migrant worker. And uh, this building that we lived in was, uh, people go—I don't know who used to keep the kids while other people go to work. I only remember the building, a long building. And I know that that bathrooms or the outhouses they were at the end of the building. The rooms or apartments that we were in, probably rooms, they didn't have a bathroom. You went down to the end of the building to cook and to use the restroom when you need to. And uh, some kind of way, I don't remember leaving Pennsylvania, but I remember when we first arrived in Homestead. I get kids are able to sleep the whole journey. I guess as you come from Pennsylvania on a bus back in them days, I mean with the, uh, vehicles that the way they were made and the way the roads were, which were very few that they have these days, 27, you know, was the—I think it was the main road coming down here then. You know, I don't know how old US 1 is, not really. But uh, I remember being in Pennsylvania one time and then being down here. The first place that I remember seeing was Williams Hotel, Phichol Williams Hotel. I'm going to show you that in my book. As a matter of fact, I'm going to, if you're interested, I'm going to give you that book, and I—I will. I mean I actually will. You know, I like what you're doing. And uh, it's a very cheap book. It's not really that special at all. I'm going to get me another one. But um, I think you'll find it there interesting. I remember, um, Phichol Hotel, and we were living in a place called Mary Russell's place for a night. And after that, we moved to a place right behind Fourth Street on, um, I think Third Terrace, a single road, you know, Terrace always cuts off, and it was in a long building. We were living in Apartment No. 4. I remember I was four years old then. I remember my birthday. I turned four, so that made me about three years old when we were in Pennsylvania. Now, back then when you're a kid that—that young, time really don't exist. A month is 10 years to you. I mean things are bigger than they are these days. I remember, uh, we moving on over there to a place out by Elroy School and a place then we moved on 6th Court. And uh, moving on 6th Court, we stayed there something like I believe about five years. My mom met a guy by the name of Charles Williams, my step-dad. That's the one I used to call him my dad. She met him, and we had—you know, she had more kids. I mean actually she had eight kids with him, and she had four already, so there was 12 of us. And um, that's the one who used to bring me out here all the time, you know, whenever we came. But uh, it was so many things went on there. When you get this book, you—when you read this book, you know, a very easy read, and you'll see a lot of things that went on in Homestead. I mean it has a lot of information. This book is written by, you know, co-authored by Jesse Robinson, and uh, actually called it Jesse Robinson because he was a great community leader in Homestead. Back then he came from, uh, a town up in—he was born up in the panhandle of Florida somewhere. You'll see it in there too.
LOWMAN: Okay.
VALENTINE: And uh, great community leader like I say, you know, there was a lot of activity going on back then, but it was major separation back then, segregation. The black town started right there at the Florida East Coast railroad tracks in Homestead, which don't exist anymore. It's the metro bus, uh, pathway now. They dug those railroad tracks up, you know, some years ago. Right there at the place, other part, I used to call it white town. We did. Florida East Coast Railroad was right there. They tore that building down too. I actually have a few pictures of that thing, you know, somewhere I have tons of pictures, not from the beach though, I don't know why, but that railroad when you go, we used to go in the back of the railroad at the end of first place, you know, you go, boom, downtown right there on Mowry Street. That was one of the main roads there, but Krome Avenue, that road is old. I used to see pictures of that, you know, renovating and everything. I used to see pictures of—I got pictures, you know, of that road when it was dirt, wooden buildings. That First National Bank, which is the police station now, Homestead Police Station, that was the First National Bank established in 1932 as a First National Bank. But that building was there way before that. It was much narrower. It used to be called J.D. Redd, a place on it, be J.D. Redd's. And as time went on, they actually expanded that building to—some J.D. Redd's, they made the building bigger and made it better and everything. That's when, uh, Jesse started working there. He started working there for $1 a day. I'm not going to talk too much about that because that's all in the book.
LOWMAN: Okay.
VALENTINE: And uh, you—I mean you'll find that very interesting. I do; I love history. I mean, you know, out here I mean, you know, on the town history. I like the other parts too. I mean I do research a whole lot of things. I have a book called Ghost Towns of the Old West. Well, Ghost Towns of the Old West is actually—a ghost town is, uh, determined by, you know, a town that is not inhabited by people anymore.
LOWMAN: Yeah.
VALENTINE: And out west, they have—I mean this book is this thick [indicating], Ghost Town. I mean it has so many places on there and they have a story right there. If you want to actually go back in time, I mean imagine it, oh, man, that's the book to read. It makes you feel—I mean it gives you a brand-new feeling like it does when I go back in time, you know. Actually, let me tell you something, Aisha. Actually, being comfortable is way—feels much better than being modern. And back in the days, uh, I mean a lot of people were comfortable. I mean it's a comfort zone what a lot of people called it. And I always thought in my mind the less you know, the less things you get into, the more happier you are. You think about it. There are just some things of more you get involved, the more complicated, you know, life can be, you know what I mean? You don't have to—sometimes right now, you know—I'm in so much activity now, you know, just being a citizen of the United States, you know. You have—there are so many things you have to do these days. You know, you have to deal with everything. And um, it's not relaxation. You can't—it's not the park where you just sit down and just—there's no such thing as sitting down and doing anything—doing nothing. If you do, everything around you deteriorate. And when I say deteriorate, you'll end up with nothing. If you have a home and it's paid for and you're just going to enjoy your home for the rest of your life, miss paying taxes on it for three years. You know what they're going to do. They're going to sell your taxes to these people who out there waiting on someone and then when they sell your taxes it's more like on hold for three month until this outstanding interest rate goes up on it and some people can't pay it. And then the next year they do it again, and it—I mean it doubles every three months or something like that. And it gets outrageous. In about three years' time, those people claim your home whether you—I mean you can have it paid for; they can get it for a little less, $25,000. But they paid the tax people. They can take your house. That's why you can't sit around and do anything anymore. It's over. It's gone. So, your whole life you're going to have to be partially stressed out just to hold onto your life unless you're moving somewhere in Canada up in the wilderness and freeze to death. Someone told me that. They say if I ever move to Canada, I ain't never want to come back. I don't think that's true. When the weather gets below 50, it bothers me. I mean I like it, but momentarily. I don't want to live in it. I've been to New York in the wintertime. That is not forgiving. Oh, my God, I didn't know it could get that cold. It can. What a town New York, 10 miles from Ontario where the snow—you have snow drifts where it actually snows sideways.
LOWMAN: That's weird.
VALENTINE: I mean—I mean it's blowing. It's just a blizzard though. It's coming off the lake, I guess. I mean it is cold there. People get used to it. My daughter spent two to three-and-a-half years there in the military. And we used to go visit her; oh. You can go from here to probably about a quarter mile down the road. I don't think—I don't think I would've made it back. I think I would've froze solid. It is cold. But you know, they're native birds—not native, I don't know, crows are everywhere. I see crows out there when it's five below zero walking around. I don't know how in the heck they did it. They just walking around. I don't know what it is. I think they're survivors. Mankind should study crows, not to be conniving like a crow, but you know, study how they survive. Do you have any more questions? Let's go and knock some questions out, I mean.
LOWMAN: I have no problem listening to you talk. Um, I did want to know were there any parties or events or anything at the beach that you all had, you'd all get together for, or anything like that?
VALENTINE: Talking about in the—in my older days, something like that?
LOWMAN: Uh-huh
VALENTINE: Oh, yeah. Uh, like I say, the boy scouts came out here. Okay. I remember I used to put out newspapers.
LOWMAN: Okay.
VALENTINE: The Homestead News Leader. And it was a guy that he actually used to work for the park service, but he—uh, was the main guy who recruited—recruited the paperboys. My brother started being the paperboy first, you know. And then I took over, you know, making—I mean we were making tons of money, $5/$6 a week. I mean, oh, man, I mean come on. And um, the papers back then, you know, wasn't—they came out on Thursdays and Sundays, and they were $0.15 a week. And we used to keep the nickel and the paper gets the dime. And uh, that's why, you know, we had a big paper route. Bo Ellington, uh, he—uh, what's the, uh—Homestead News, the recruiter for the paperboys, he picked up—he brought all our papers and everything and every now and then he would bring us out here and have a picnic. And uh, we'd have, uh—we'd buy these big bag—he'd buy—he'd buy us these big bag of wieners called Circus Wieners. I—I would never forget those wieners. They were the worst, awful tasting wieners in the history of wiener—of wieners. They tasted like they were made out of 70-percent flour. They were awful, but they were cheap. You get a big bag of 50 for about $2. I'm not kidding. And they cooked all of them and people run around happy; they didn't care. Used to have sodas, you know, can sodas. Back then, uh, they had a few can sodas, but a lot of sodas back then were in bottles. So uh, we ain't had too many. We had Kool-Aid, you know, in a big cooler and everything, have it in a cup. And potato chips and I can't remember having hamburgers, but we probably did. I don’t' know. And the, uh—when we used to come out here, you know, we saw—you know, we had chaperones, you know. We had grown people, you know, you have to have a certain amount of grown people to watch out for those kids and everything. So um, not that that's actually a chaperone, but you know—but anyway, uh, I don't remember exactly who they were, but we used to come here and we used to have fun. I mean the, uh—I can't remember any BBQ grills in the picnic. There might have been some. There might have been the ones—there might have been a few. I don’t think it was that many, but—and I remember a shower being outside. We didn't have the inside shower. Over the other side, they had inside showers and outside showers. But over here we might have had—I can't really remember. But I remember the shower, you know, you go outside you have to hit yourself with water first, you know, to get used to it again before you get in the water. And Mr. Bo, he was one of the nicest men, you know. You know, I can't remember. He worked at Everglades for a long time. He passed away some years ago. And he had a son named Winston Ellington. He's still around. Actually, he's in that book as a little kid. Winston's about 60-some years old now, but he was in—he was in the choir. Thing about it, he looks the same way. Gosh, gee-whiz, I mean. And um, I don't remember coming out here like to have a family picnic. As a matter of fact, I know we didn't. Some people did, but we never did, you know. My mom, she, uh—she wasn't an activities—outdoor activities lady at all, you know. Like I said, she was very protective and water like that—that's more like the death penalty to her. That's dangerous like a lot of people think of snakes, deadly. All snakes should be dead, you know how some people think about snakes. And uh, I mean when it comes to water, she always warned us about water. Stay away from that water. Drown, she tells these stories about people drowning. Scare the crap out of you, you know. You know, when I started coming up, my favorite thing water. I used to love to swim. Used to be out there, you know, the few times that we did come out here and have a lot of fun. It was totally different. Now, we had a pool in Homestead too.
LOWMAN: Oh, really?
VALENTINE: Yeah, it was in Roby George Park. It was, uh, for the black part of town. That's right on Fourth Street, Roby George Park. And I think at Fourth Street and 11th Avenue. Roby George Park is still there. They had a pool. I don't know if a pool is there now. I don't really think it was, but that pool was there a long time. And only black people swim in that pool. Now, right on the corner of Campbell Drive and US 1, there was a pool there. And guess what pool that was? Yeah, you got it. Now, I never ever swam in that pool. I never thought of swimming in it. I didn't want to swim in it. I loved our pool, the one we had, you know, the eight feet. You know, when I was in, um—I learned how to swim in fifth grade. When I was in fifth grade, we started going to that pool in summer school. My mom always put us in summer school. That's the best babysitter in the world.
LOWMAN: Yeah.
VALENTINE: And um, we used to go there when I learned how to swim. They were giving free swimming lessons, and uh—and that's why I really got hooked on swimming. And we, uh, never—let me see. We never had a tragedy in that pool or anything like that, you know. I swallowed some water a couple of times, but you know, that's one of them things. But I remember this one time where this black guy, it was an older man, he came out there. He had a little white boy with him. This boy was about four years old, and he was there, you know, looking, you know, I mean like, wow, you know. This little boy, he got up on the diving board, and he jumped in and everybody's like [indicates noise] and that little rascal went down and he came back up, [indicates noise] just up. We never seen anyone that small swim. They're, whoa. You see that little bitty boy, he's swimming. I mean, heck, you know, like we were 10 years old learning how to swim. And I'm sure there were a lot of people that could swim, but you know, that young. I don't even really know when they put that pool there, but that's how a lot of people learned how to swim in that pool. Plus, out here, I guess a few people learned out here. Otherwise, it was the canals.
LOWMAN: Okay.
VALENTINE: The uh, rock pits that we did a lot of swimming in. Rock pit right off Rutland Road, I remember swimming there as a teenager. I don't think that thing has a bottom. I mean, you know how Florida is. Florida goes down. I mean and it's kind of [indicates noise], goes into nothing in some places, and that thing is deep. It's still out there now. I think it used to be Florida Rock & Sand, and we used to have a little place called the Mussel White. It was still—it's across Palm Drive in Florida City. It's still there. I think, uh, actually they started digging there again for rock and sand. But people used to go out there, and I heard there were a few drownings out there. It's some—at the one right on Rutland Road and Davis Parkway, there's been quite a few drownings out there. And uh, you know, you can't really call this the, uh, consequence of not having nowhere to swim because we did. You know, in my days, you know, we had the pool. We had the beach area out here. Sometimes people just chose to go out there and swim, you know, kids they'd sneak off. I was one of them. And fortunately, I'm here now, so I didn't drown. But you know, I could've easily drowned like anyone else, but you got another place right off Lucy Street and Sixth Avenue. Right now, there is a neighborhood community center there. That used to be a rock pit. It was—and oh, my God, did some kids drown out there. I don't know who they—I know we had some kids that drowned out there. They used to go out there and swim in that place. It was right behind the Fannie Turner, which is called the—right behind Fannie Turner's home. That's a home that Fannie Turner was the first, you know, lady that, you know, actually established schools down here in Homestead. You know, and she had a house built right there on the corner of Lucy Street and Sixth Avenue, and it's still there today. And it was back in the '30, something like that, maybe '30 something or early '40s, something like that. It was nice. Uh, it's Commissioner—Commissioner Moss' office right now. But right behind that on that street, it was a rock pit right in that area. It used to be wooded area, and they used to warn us a lot. I mean the thing was we used to actually make up poems about not going to the rock pit. Um, don’t' be a fool, just swim in the pool. You may live long enough to finish school. That was mine, you know, first place. Going to the—flowers in the garden got to be chopped, swimming in the rock pit got to be stopped, written by, I'm not kidding, he's probably remembered today, one of the Florida City Commissioners, name Eugene Berry. He won—he won the first prize. He beat me out. I bet if you talk to him right now, he'd remember that.
LOWMAN: Okay.
VALENTINE: You know, some of my experiences in Homestead, oh, man, I—we didn’t' get our first vehicle 'til around 1960—maybe around '64/'63. My dad had a Chevrolet panel truck, which they call SUVs these days. Them SUVs just came out, but Chevrolet came out with a six-cylinder engine, size 230 engine. I remember that so good. He bought it from a guy named Mr. Israel, who is from Nassau, and the top speed on it was 80, but it only gets 60, and wow, we were living high on the hog. People used to pick at our truck, make fun of it, you know, don’t care. I mean—I mean that was like, uh, an Escalade to us, I mean the equivalent to these days. And uh, I remember, uh, getting out the first week—I remember living in that place on A.L. Lewis, you know, for the first time going to school. I didn't even know my name was Valentine until I got into first grade. All my brothers' and sisters' names were Hudson. My mom named me after my grandmother because she said she wanted to keep the name going on.
LOWMAN: Oh, okay.
VALENTINE: You know, I didn't ask, you know—the thing is it's like I caught hell with that name. I'm not kidding. You know, I was the Boyd Valentine. You know, I didn't never think that there was another Boyd Valentine in the world. Who could be named—it was a doctor, the doctor that delivered me in Greenville, Mississippi was named Dr. Boyd. She named me his first name and named my last name Valentine. The reason she named me his first name because it was $35 what it cost for me to be born, and she didn't have it, and he let her go. So, I was a Kmart baby. I was born absolutely free. It was like, wow, you know, and my name ended up being Boyd Valentine. My grandmother's name was Lizzy Valentine when she married a guy named Louis Valentine from Louisiana. I found all this out. He was in Greenville, Mississippi because at that time they were working on the levy, you know, for the river. And uh, he met her then, but I didn’t know she was married before then to a guy. But you know, she had a divorce and everything and my mom, she loved her grandmother, which was Lizzy Valentine, and that's how I ended up with the name Valentine. But guess what? I don't have any sons. Two of my daughters kept their name after they got married—no, all three of my daughters—two of my daughters—all three of them kept their name; they loved their name. And uh—but the kids' names is whatever they were. Some of the girls are named Valentine, but the boys; Hortons, Nunez'. There ain't no Valentine. And so—if Tamara don't—I mean Tamara is not going to have any more kids. Kim, Angie, she has a boy they named Valentine so I can go on. Maybe the grandkids will have—I don't know. I don't think I'm going to care after I'm dead, but I would like for it to keep on going. I love history. I like to go back, you know. Ancestry.com, I don't fool with that stuff. That's phony to me. What I believe in is Peopletopeople.com. Get me some old people that mostly gone now. When I was coming up, I hung out with old people, older people all the time. They could tell you stories, and they're wise. Most of them are wise. But you know, they can tell you stories, unbelievable. You know, the stories that they used to tell me, you know, some things scare the crap out of you. But you know, my mom used to tell me stories about, you know, in Mississippi and everything, there was a lot of things she kept secret. I don't think she really wants to think about them too much, you know. She didn't have the most happiest life in the world when she was coming up. I made my world happy. I actually did. I do it now. My favorite—my favorite person, my favorite partner is me. I get off somewhere and I can just do what I want to do is in my mind. People can't—people can't relate to that, and there's some people who can actually—can actually deal with you and hang with you and actually enjoy the things that you enjoy. But the people who don't, they really don't understand the things that you are going through in your head. Sometimes you have to reminisce just to recapture that peace you had in the older days. Like I said before, modern times are not as good as the peaceful times that you had back in the days. I mean the less complicated things were the better off it was. The less you know about a lot of things the better off you are. Like I was saying earlier, you know, the different things as a kid you can believe. You can either corrupt a kid or you can teach him some good stuff. And a lot of people, you know, some people they decided to bring their kids up like them, corrupted them.
LOWMAN: Yeah.
VALENTINE: Discriminate, telling people that, you know, this person is like this, I have never done that. I will never do that because I have been treated bad and good by all walks, people and life and everything. People can be ignorant. People can be naïve, subject to anything. They just can't—sometimes they just can't. I mean they're limited. A lot of people are. You know, they—I mean they're in a comfort zone where if I go down this road here, I never have to figure out how to get through another road in life in the mind. And they get like that and they're not going to accept anything. If—if it takes for a person to look at another person as being inferior to make them feel like someone, they're going to do it. And there, the mind is set that why it happens. That's why, you know, from the days that whatever happened I wasn’t there. However, all this racism started, it started as, uh—I guess it did with the Jews and the Germans. Hitler, I mean it been going on way before then, you know, Medieval days, you know, racism has been going on. But you know, there for the Germans, they actually looked at the Jews as less than animals. They honestly I mean thought in their mind that these people were below nothing, just trash. They made them wear yellow everything—I mean—I mean just so they could recognize what they are, and like wow. And you think to say how is your mind ever—how can your mind be that corrupt and you can still feel like a human? I mean—I mean you think about that, if you ever recover in some kind of way, I think it'd be bad repercussions within yourself. I mean you would be so ashamed of yourself and some people actually were. There were people who remember doing things and it came I mean some kind of way they had a change of heart, and they committed suicide. They couldn't even take—they say how could I do that? Some of them never did, you know, some of them came to America and lived to be 90 years old and then some of the war criminals, they finally caught them, 87, 92 years old and gave them life in prison, a whole three days. But that's probably how long they had to live. I mean gee-whiz. If like I say, if you can, um, just be taught the right thing, I mean if people can be taught the right thing, which will never happen, look at the world today, Aisha. If you look at people right now, you look at, uh, the leaders of the countries. I say plural, countries, you have leaders, what are they doing; why do they kill each other? I mean we have this planet here, have enough resources for triple the amount of people as of right now. You know what it is? Pride. I want to be God attitude. I want to be the leader. I mean and the people they do wars; they get into wars. Do you know that probably 80 percent of the people fighting don't know what the hell they're even fighting about? They don't have the slightest idea, and then they go forward and say, I hate those people. They are dirty. They're—what do you mean you hate those people? Hate them for what? You don't even know them. You—somewhere, someone here, you're killing up each other because these people are telling each other to kill up each other. That's the way I look at it. I can't help but think of that way why they doing it? Some people are crazy, I tell you. Uh, World War II—.
LOWMAN: Boyd, I hate to cut you off, but uh, I think we can—would you like to go for another interview, you know, later on?
VALENTINE: Oh, yeah, I mean me, I can talk for weeks, you know.
LOWMAN: It's been like an amazing interview like—.
VALENTINE: Well, is it? Well, I thank you, but—excuse me, I have a lot of things, you know, I can talk for weeks, you know, maybe I shouldn't talk so much, but yeah, I would. Yeah, I would.
LOWMAN: I was wondering, do you have anybody else you think I should talk to or any place else—?
VALENTINE: Like in the park?
LOWMAN: Well, anywhere, like anybody you think would have any information for me?
VALENTINE: Yeah. Let me—let me get a couple of people.
LOWMAN: Okay. Okay.
VALENTINE: Get their permission and everything, but I think I do.
LOWMAN: Okay. Okay. So, we'll—we'll continue this another time. Thank you very much.
VALENTINE: Oh, you're welcome.
[END OF INTERVIEW]
Description
In this interview, Boyd Valentine talks about living in segregated Homestead, Florida, visiting the local beaches, the community pool. Valentine is a boat mechanic and he worked at Everglades National Park from 1975 to 2007, where he then moved to Biscayne National Park. Throughout the interview, Valentine talks about his childhood and tells many stories. Interviewed by Aisha Lowman on January 30, 2012.
Credit
Biscayne National Park
Date Created
01/30/2012
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