- Chronicles is made possible by a grant from the Erie Community Foundation, a community assets grant provided by the Erie County Gaming Revenue Authority, support from Springhill Senior Living, the Regional Science Consortium, and the generous support of Thomas B. Hagen.

- This is WQLN.

- History to me means learning about my people.

- I would say that writ large, complete histories of every group of people who has ever lived here is important.

It's important for social norms, it's important for the development of policy.

It's important when we think about the values of our society and our culture, our belief systems.

But specifically, Black history is important because it is the history of one of the dominant groups in the United States.

- So I challenge you to find any group in this country that's more patriotic than Black folk.

Black folk fought in every war in this country from the Civil War forward.

Who else can you say that about?

Who would do that for a country that hadn't afforded them basic civil and human rights?

And yet, in every war you can imagine, there we are.

- We have all had a part to play in the making of the American experiment, and people who are American descendants of enslaved people have a rich history.

- You take the presence of B lack folks that were African descendants, it changes the landscape of the entire historical narrative for this country.

- Prior to being enslaved, right, We were kings and queens and farmers and scientists.

- I learned so much about my history by going to Africa.

I spent time in West Africa.

But I learned why we are very humble.

We are humble people and we are, we are very courteous.

We are kind.

We are caring.

Oh my goodness.

The things that, that we have in our background are amazing.

- Having that kind of understanding is important.

When we don't have it, and we have not for a large part of our history here in the United States, it does make us feel untethered.

And it is important for us to think about the fact that people who were brought here, against their will, came from somewhere else and understanding the importance of what that somewhere else is.

It is really a fraught subject in the United States because many people of African descent here are untethered.

Our histories beyond the North American continent have been erased or ignored, and therefore are unknown.

And it's a dominant theme in our time here, right?

It's a dominant theme in our culture.

And so it's really important for us to understand from whence we came.

- "Differences are not intended to separate, to alienate.

We are different precisely in order to realize our need of one another."

Desmond Tutu.

- Earliest memories of me growing up in Mississippi was the camaraderie because it was Mississippi.

And because we were Black, there was a lot of companionship 'cause there were oppressive forces around.

I grew up looking at a big sign outside of the, the city of Belzoni.

It was a Klansman on a horse with a hood and the whole bit.

And the epitaph bottom said, "Run nigga run.

If you can't read this, run anyway."

And then you were told which side of the street to walk on, how to say yes, how to say no, and the whole bit, so...

But I had a lot of cousins and a whole neighborhood that protected you.

- If you look back on the history of Laurel, Mississippi, you will know that this is the place where we created our own middle class.

- Those neighborhoods were born, again, out of institutionalized oppression.

"We don't want you living in our neighborhood.

You need to go over there and build your own stuff.

Go build your own neighborhood."

And so we did.

- Our parents decided that they were tired of taking their children to a hospital where they couldn't get waited on.

I remember the time when my mother took my brother to the doctor, a white doctor, and he was very ill. She was able to stay in the Black waiting room.

It was terrible.

And the only time the white doctor saw anybody Black was if he had nobody on the schedule.

Ah, we never got waited on.

So that particular day, my mother had to take my sick brother home because the doctor didn't have time for him.

- A healthy neighborhood solves almost all social problems because a healthy community has all of the requisite factors that are necessary for a person to live a healthy life.

- Life was what they envisioned it to be.

- They actually brought in doctors from somewhere over this country.

They brought in attorneys, whate-, you name it, and our whole town turned around.

I until this day, don't know how they did all of that.

But they believed in working together.

They strategized.

They learned to use their minds.

And I think that was a part of the non-violence movement that people don't talk about.

But it wasn't just, you don't fight physically.

But it was, how do you work together?

How do you identify your needs?

How do you help yourself?

How do you reach out to others and get them to come on board?

- "If you can't fly, then run.

If you can't run, then walk.

If you can't walk, then crawl.

But whatever you do, you have to keep moving forward."

Martin Luther King Jr. - Imagine what it was like when America was fresh out of slavery, Then, although you are free, if you will, there's so much of the greater society around you that wants to see you in a, in a previous role.

In that environment, how do you find opportunity to just kind of recreate your existence?

For a lot of people, they felt like they couldn't, and so the North, in the minds of many, represented occupational opportunities and an opportunity to just rewrite the narrative for themselves and their families.

- After the Emancipation Proclamation and then after reconstruction, we started to see people decide maybe the South is not the place where we can be most successful, safest.

- If you study the history of this community or many Black communities, people in Erie basically came up from Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina and North Carolina.

- They wanted opportunity, economic opportunity, and the promise of jobs in northern cities gave a lot of people that hope.

- And it was one of the things that Erie was known for, these rust belt cities.

You know, there was work, meaningful work, dignified work.

- And Erie was a town that was full of factories, steel mills, all through the town, and they needed workers.

- This community was built basically by manual labor.

There was Hammermill Paper Company, General Electric, Kaiser Aluminum.

- And many of the Black population in Laurel, Mississippi heard about the jobs in Erie in manufacturing.

- So as a child, when Blacks were migrating north for jobs or better opportunity to live, they were being brought, many times, by other family members who had come here, come north and found out that there was employment.

- So when my grandmother came here, she was able to get enough money to put a, a deposit on a house on West 11th Street.

It was a big house.

She made it like a rooming house.

So when somebody's family would come up north and they didn't have anywhere to stay, they would say, go to Miss Pickens.

And you went there and you stayed there till you were able to get on your feet.

Then they would send word back down south and maybe two more family members would come up.

And that's how they started migrating up here.

- And my father returned from World War II and came home and he said, I went to, fought for freedom.

I knew it had, nothing had changed.

We got off the ship in New York and the white sailors came off the front of the ship and the Black sailors had to come off the back of the ship.

And we had an uncle had come through Erie working on the railroad.

And Erie, at that time, was trying to be a growing community so it was looking for labor.

Uncle Charlie said, come up here.

We get you a job.

So we packed up and came here and Uncle Charlie, sure as his word, Dad got a job at Hammermill and Mom got a little job, and all I had to do was go to school.

- "History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, - but if faced with courage, need not be lived again."

Maya Angelou - Negro spirituals always led to the Promised Land.

- We developed songs that would encourage, give faith, and give hope.

- That hope came in the form of words and melody.

And of course we could speak it, right?

But something about that singing and that worshiping.

It starts in pain and it ends in freedom.

Most spirituals, and even if you, you think about a spiritual, "I am a poor pilgrim of sorrow.

I'm tossed in this wide world alone.

No hope have I for tomorrow.

I'm going to make heaven my home."

These songs are cathartic.

They give you power.

When I sing He's Got the Whole World In His Hands and I go up to that high D, honey?

[Laughs] Power, in my hand, because of the gift that was given to me from above.

- There's nothing more powerful than church music that has been birthed out of the crucible of pain and suffering.

- We didn't know God over there in the way that the white Americans taught us God.

But we found it.

And we have weaved it into our culture in a way that nobody's gonna be able to take that away.

Nobody can take away the protection of that higher power who's guiding us to create these fantastic words, to create these fantastic melodies that are simple enough for a child to sing.

So that even if that 8-year-old was going along, they could sing Follow The Drinking Gourd.

They could sing This Little Light of Mine.

That is the power of music and the power, power of the spiritual.

[Porters Harmonize By Faith singing "Walk With Me Lord"] ♪ Walk with me, Lord ♪ ♪ Walk with me ♪ ♪ Walk with me, Lord ♪ ♪ Walk with me ♪ ♪ While I'm on this ♪ ♪ Tedious journey ♪ ♪ I want Jesus ♪ ♪ to walk with me ♪ ♪ Be my, friend, Lord ♪ ♪ Be my friend ♪ ♪ Be my, friend, Lord ♪ ♪ Be my friend ♪ ♪ While I'm on this ♪ ♪ Tedious journey ♪ ♪ I want Jesus ♪ ♪ Oh, Lord ♪ ♪ To walk with me ♪ ♪ Hold my hand, Lord ♪ ♪ Oh, Lord ♪ ♪ Hold my hand ♪ ♪ Hold my hand, Lord ♪ ♪ Hold my hand ♪ ♪ While I'm on this ♪ ♪ Tedious journey ♪ ♪ I want Jesus ♪ ♪ Oh Lord ♪ ♪ To walk with me ♪ - "I am the dream and the hope of a slave."

Maya Angelou - When every institutional system is arrayed against a group of people, you've gotta have somewhere to turn.

You have to.

That somewhere has to be community oriented because you can turn to a friend, you can turn to family, but the fact of the matter is, is that in order to survive, you need a structure.

- The Black church has been the inspiration, it has been the caretaker, it has been the director, the guide, the spiritual development of individuals, even in slavery, - Having a place of refuge, a place where you could eat both spiritually and physically.

And the church was central to Black people not giving up.

- That's where men and women received the respect that they hadn't received in society.

Black folks didn't have titles back then in a lot of areas, certainly not at jobs and things along those lines.

But at church, people were on the usher boards and they were deacons and they were part of the church board and things along those lines.

And so there was a prestige and a respect that came along with that.

- It gave us a sense of belonging.

It gave us a sense of our morals, what was right and good.

It gave us a sense of community, that we all grew up together.

We learned the same things together.

We were held accountable for those things together.

- What the Black church did was it provided solace and a sense of hope, right?

That's, that's just kind of the foundation.

- The family allowed us to survive.

The church gave us motivation to survive.

- The Black church became the place for not just religious expression, but for freedom expression, for socialization, for fellowship, people coming together, people learning how to read, learning how to handle money.

- Sunday school was very integral.

Prayer meeting and Bible study.

You had to participate in that.

And we enjoyed it because we were together and we learned together.

- Everything, and when I say everything, I mean everything, that has to do with human life and the, the progression of a community, it happened right there in the African American church.

- It was an area that we had control over.

It was the narrative that we had control over.

Even when you look at the Bible, the Bible was spun to us as Black folk a certain way.

- It's the only institution in this country that was charged with taking care of Black people.

There is no other institution except for the Black church.

- We just got finished talking about the building, but the church is actually the people.

We found ourselves in the fields worshiping God.

By the rivers worshiping God.

No edifice, no roof over our head.

We just worship God under nature.

So the church has been ingrained in the lives of African Americans and continues to this day.

- Every Sunday we had to go to church.

It wasn't a question whether you wanted to go or not.

It's time to go to church.

That was it.

- That was a part of your life cycle.

You know, like in our family, when we was raised, if you didn't go to church, then you didn't go skating, you didn't go to basketball games, you didn't do none of that stuff.

You had to go to church.

- When you became of age, you were going to join a ministry.

There was no such thing as coming to church and going home and you're not being involved.

So you had to join the choir.

You had to come to Sunday school.

You will participate.

We had no choice.

You will get up there, you will say your verse, you will look up in the audience, and you will give your best.

That was how we were raised.

- You didn't iron your clothes the night be, I mean, Sunday morning, getting up, start ironing.

You had to do that the day, be, the night before church.

You get all that stuff ready.

- And Black folks, man... - ♪ Okay ♪ - Wow.

[upbeat hip-hop music] [upbeat hip-hop music continues] - ♪ Get it ♪ [upbeat hip-hop music continues] [upbeat hip-hop music continues] - ♪ Okay ♪ [upbeat hip-hop music continues] [upbeat hip-hop music continues] [upbeat hip-hop music continues] [upbeat hip-hop music continues] [upbeat hip-hop music continues] [upbeat hip-hop music continues] [brass solo] - Wow.

Black churches on Sundays, you know, people are just arrayed in their refinery.

- We dress up because we're going to church and we're going, we're going to see the king.

- The Black church activities never end.

Sometimes you went to church at nine o'clock in the morning, you might not get home till three or four o'clock in the afternoon.

- There were so many things that came out of the church.

- We had picnics, church picnics, where we would just socialize and just have fun.

We would go to parks.

We'd have fun and just make up games.

Barbecues.

That was our life.

And we just felt free and we just felt secure and we felt safe.

- One of the things I could say, I was a good dancer and as a result of going to church on Sunday, sometime when those Black churches, when they get up and they start shouting around and doing a whole lot of stuff, I learned some nice dance steps from them because boy, they was kicking up some stuff and I said, Ooh, hey, I like that.

[joyous choir sings] [choir members harmonize] [joyous choir sings] [joyous choir sings] So that was the, that was the fun part of going to church on Sunday, to see what them sisters were going to be doing.

And boy, get out and make sure you can do it just like they do it.

[laughs] - The church just became an extension of the house in terms of keeping kids engaged, teaching kids the value of learning.

- We had men and women who took time outside of the family to form baseball leagues, basketball leagues, Boy Scouts, - Vacation Bible School was one thing that we had.

That was a social activity for us.

I can remember the street being closed off here between Fifth and Sixth Street all day long.

We would be here for a vacation Bible school and it was held outside.

We would have a big thing set up where kids would get ice cream cones.

We played a lot of games.

- You have Sunday school.

- Daycares.

Commitment to learning and education.

- It served a multi-purpose in the lives of the community.

- The church had a structure.

You know, there's different things that you can join.

The Women's Missionary Society.

They had a group for the men and then the voter registration, you know.

They had a a political action committee.

- Most churches also had some sort of financial funds.

Provide loans.

Large scale loans and/or micro loans to businesses.

- The church would oftentimes help those that were in need.

And so before you had these government programs, if somebody was doing bad, they were able to go to the church and say, Hey, we need help.

And so it just represented every aspect of our lives.

- I think of the sacrifices that our people have done down through the years to make sure that we have a place to worship and to fellowship and to grow together.

And the things that they did so that we stand on the shoulders.

They just gave so much so that we could have the opportunity to have our children, to have a place to grow, to feel safe, to come together as a community.

And I'm so proud of that.

Very proud.

- Church leaders back in the day, these were men and women who had unshakeable resolve.

They were able to lead successfully those who came into their influence.

You have to understand, if you're gonna lead somebody, you have to have experience in what you're leading them through and to.

So, church leaders represented the successful struggle in which many people were trying to overcome.

- The pastor was like somebody back then that you revered and he was preaching the word of God.

You know, people looked up to that.

- The Black preacher preached faith to individuals.

Faith became the great equalizer.

- You were also an advocate for the communities.

- When I came to this town in 1980, the church, they were keeping money at home.

Banks were redlining people, so we had to fight that fight.

- They set things straight in society as well.

And usually when somebody was at city hall raising sand over something that was going on in our communities, he or she was a pastor.

- There was Reverend Smith at First Good Samaritan.

And then the pastor at, at the time would've been Reverend Paul Martin.

Then there was Second Baptist; that was like Reverend Ford.

And then there was Shiloh, Reverend McFarland.

And these people had their hands on the pulse of their membership.

If the pastor said, we gonna have a protest or we gonna have a meeting or we gonna have, you didn't like discuss it.

You went.

- Leaders direct you how to get through your obstacles in life, how to get your best out of life, how to hear the voice of God, to follow direction.

And so leaders in the church are extremely important.

- Reverend Smith was very instrumental in the family unit in his church.

He started the, the Boy Scouts and the, the Cub Scouts.

But then he made sure, he went to talk to the principal at Longfellow School.

And he said, I wanna get a Girl Scout troop started for my young girls here.

He made sure that, if we wanted to do it, he was gonna be able to help us.

- I knew Reverend E. Franklin Smith before I knew there was an Erie, Pennsylvania.

He was a great man who built a great church.

- He was a, a phenomenal pastor and ahead of his time.

- He started the first training for Negro women nurse, to become nurses.

He started the Smith Negro Welfare Association.

- Every Christmas, you know, no family had to go without.

Reverend Smith made sure that there was toys for everybody.

He got, you know, these people in the community that would sponsor families that had toys and food.

- And he had a real good relationship with the founder of Erie Insurance Exchange.

H.O.

Hirt.

- And there was a big thing in Erie called the Shrine Circus.

H.O.

Hirt would give tickets for everybody in the neighborhood who wanted to go to the Shrine Circus.

Reverend Smith would get teenagers and what he did was have everybody after school, you'd come to First Good Samaritan Church and then you'd get your tickets.

You'd line up in twos and he had those young women take us down to the Gannon Audi.

We would go, walk, from West 11th Street, the 300 block of West 11th Street, to the Gannon Audi on Seventh and Peach.

And then made, got everybody back home safely.

- There were others like Reverend Paul P. Martin, who's the founder of the OIC, Opportunities Industrialization Center, in Erie - That was able to train people for jobs.

- And a lot of Blacks, and even whites, came through that program.

They would get better jobs.

They could leave the foundry and go to work and some of these people that didn't hire women to work in the offices, they were able to get that trade, get that skill and go and do that.

- "Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time.

- We are the ones we've been waiting for.

- We are the change that we seek."

Barack Obama.

- Growing up in Erie, we did not know we were poor.

We were always engaged in family, church, and community.

- In the earlier years, I thought Erie was a great place.

I mean I was young, but I still knew that I felt safe.

There was a, a good family structure for African Americans.

Everybody knew everybody.

- So the whole neighborhood became your parents.

So you came home from school.

Nobody was home.

You go next door and your neighbor would say, "You hungry?"

"Yeah."

"Get a plate."

- Well, in our neighborhood we had everybody talking and everybody knowing everybody's business.

And if you did something wrong, I can guarantee you, it got back to them.

They didn't go back and say, my child didn't do that.

They dealt with us right away because they had confidence that if we didn't do right in front of another adult, no.

Then you, you have to answer for that.

- As a kid, we stayed out all day, you know, until the lights came on, then we had to be home.

We'd be doing anything from playing baseball to basketball, just a lot of fun activities as a kid growing up.

- We did it at the centers, once, once they were built.

We did it at some of the adult clubs that would provide a special opportunity for kids from the East Side, kids from the West Side, to get together peacefully and talk about Black history and talk about role models who are from Erie and who were doing things.

- The community centers try to have a positive influence on kids, but more importantly provide a safe space for parents that are working or parents that are not able to have their kid at home right after school.

A place for them to come and get the assistance in homework, in tutoring.

- The rise of these neighborhood centers really came from the will of people wanting to not just serve their community but do better for their community and create these hubs of activity and services is kind of the FUBU model: For Us, By Us.

- A lot of people think they're just throwing out basketballs, but it's highly academic.

They provide prevention activities to kids to understand drug and alcohol.

They provide financial literacy to kids to have them understand what a dollar is, what the value of a dollar is, introduce them to different activities like culinary arts.

- And to have so many of 'em for a size of Erie was a big deal.

To have the King center, the Booker T., and then the JFK Center.

- When I grew up, the only center here for the kids to go to was Booker T. Washington Center.

And Booker T. Washington Center was on Third Street between French and Holland.

- As a kid, all we had was Booker T. Washington.

After every football game, we'd go down to Booker T. and dance and have a good time.

- It was a social place for young people 'cause they had debutante balls for the young women back then and they would have like oratorical contests and sports for, for kids.

They had a boxing program there.

Then they moved downtown on Seventh and French.

- They used to have dances there on Friday evenings.

And I remember my, myself and a good friend of mine, that, we, also grew up in the neighborhood, We would go there for the dances and we had to be home at a quarter to 11 at night.

- I started going to the John F. Kennedy Center, probably when I was five or six years old, to participate in the different programmings that they had.

As a kid, that was very important to a lot of us, from Rubye Jenkins-Husband.

She always called us "professors."

She always wanted us to be successful academically 'cause she knew that having a strong academic foundation could propel you into greater things.

Mr. Harrison also allowed us to recreate.

He was one of the first people in our community to have a traveling football team that was made up of community kids.

So that was something very dynamic that he did and, to this day, I think it has influenced a lot of these smaller leagues that are out there that are catering to our young people in athletics.

Mr. Thompson was the first executive director of the Bayfront NATO Martin Luther King Center.

- But my dad is actually one of the board of incorporators in the MLK Center.

It started out as just a house, so it was my cousin's house.

They bought the house and we had to help clear the land and all that, and they had us going around through the neighborhood and there was like a little ruler that's for a fundraiser and they would say, buy two inches for a dollar.

You had that little ruler and you own two inches of that place up in there.

- Mr. Thompson was a forward thinker from dance to housing, to the mini mall construction.

Just a positive man that laid foundation that still stands today and impacts many lives.

So there was many different activities going on in the early years at the Martin Luther King Center.

We had a huge cultural arts program.

They did photography.

- A lot of tutoring, a lot of field trips to various places in Erie and outside of Erie.

Those were really good.

It was a place that we learned about ourselves, our communities, and a place that mentors in the neighborhood got an opportunity to pour into us.

- It was an important aspect of kids development during those days.

One person that is very well known that came out of the Martin Luther King Center is Billy Blanks.

I know as a a child, I used to walk from the John F. Kennedy Center over to Martin Luther King Center to see some of the demonstrations that he held in the gym.

Another big influence was Alan Poole.

He had a huge influence on helping kids go to college.

He would get money out of his pocket to help kids buy books, get transportation to stay in school, and that's why we have our gym floor named after him.

- They were showing us a blueprint that a lot of us live by today.

- I look back over it now, we were blessed, like not only just the way you were raised and how people looked after you.

- Ben Wiley, the great Ben Wiley, who really became the catalyst for what we call GECAC in town.

- Ben Wiley had a huge influence on me, and I really didn't get a chance to know him very well.

His impact that he had on Erie really lets me know what an, an African-American man can do in a city like Erie.

You know, right now I think we suffer a little bit from low self-esteem and we have put ourselves in boxes in some ways of what we can and can't do as Black folk in a city like Erie.

Well, Ben Wiley defies that narrative, or that stereotype.

And so, he was somebody that was always at the forefront.

- My parents fought for him to be named the executive director of GECAC when he was at the age of 24.

And to see him transform that organization into a $30 or $40 million nonprofit organization before he died.

- He took GECAC from a small organization to what it is today.

He was very influential within the community.

He always wanted that academic thing behind you.

Go to college, get an education, you know, get a job, start a career.

GECAC was the main facility everybody looked up to, and Mr. Wiley was the man that everybody looked up to.

- None of these people did it alone.

None of 'em did it alone.

You need cooperation, you need commitment, you need resources, and everybody brings something to the party.

- Mildred and Howard Horton were great civil rights leaders.

In fact, their entire family.

- In the 1960s, when my mother was the education chairperson of the NAACP and then the president of the NAACP, to fight discriminatory practices within the public school system and the lack of minority teachers.

- They went south and they did a recruitment, went to HBCUs and other schools and they brought to Erie, they hired Black professionals, teachers, and maybe assistant principals and they're coming to the school district.

They're coming the school system.

And that was, those were some good flourishing years.

Back then, the NAACP, I would say, then, it carried a lot more weight then because as things have gotten a little bit better for, for African Americans as you go on, then people think they don't need these organizations and they won't join.

But back then people knew that the NAACP could help you.

My mother, she was the president during some of Erie's most turbulent years.

When they had the riots in the schools in 1968.

They had that bad riot at Academy High School where they tried to expel them.

When you get expelled, then you couldn't even graduate.

But my mom and the NAACP, they fought for them not to be expelled, but they had to go to different, they had to change and go to different schools.

So a couple of my friends ended up having to graduate from East instead of Strong Vincent or from somewhere else instead of Academy.

- "This is our home.

We have made these lands what they are.

- We have been always ready to strike for Liberty."

Henry Brown, 1865.

[ragtime piano music] - We can talk about churches and we can talk about grocery stores, we can talk about all of those things.

But interspersed in life, in general, is the social.

To be able to go to a club and dance to your own music, which in the early 20th century was still being called race music.

- There were limited venues owned and operated by people of color.

- The social life in Erie was something that you, like, kind of, you had to be creative on your own.

Black people weren't really welcomed into a lot of these social spaces, and I don't think they even really probably wanted to go there.

That racial divide was strong.

- Most of the activities in my life was in the areas of Parade Street between, I'll say, 12th and 18th Street, because there was the Kentucky Barbecue at 15th and Parade.

That was a restaurant.

and there was what we called the 14th Street Club at 14th and Holland.

That was kind of an illegal operation, but it was a nice place.

We called it the Joint.

Where you went in there, you, and you had a few little nips and we danced and we just socialized, had, just had good times.

- There were speakeasies and they called 'em juke joints and all that.

- My grandmother had a rooming house.

And then you know, people, and then in her basement, they played cards and they gambled.

They shot dice and they did all that.

- Erie used to be a stop on the entertainment road.

Groups that played in Cleveland on the weekend would stop in Erie on Wednesday and make a little extra money, relax, practice, and move on.

- Duke Ellington played in the Lawrence Hotel at 10th and Peach, and he couldn't stay there.

And the man played, he had on tux and ties and tails and looking eloquent as all heck playing the music and they danced by the music.

When the music was over, "You gotta go someplace else, you can't stay here."

That was the rule.

That was the rule.

- The Pope Hotel was this beautiful place that, yes, people could stay in, so it was in the Green Book.

And so Black folks, when they were traveling, knew that they could safely stay in the Pope Hotel.

- Ernie Wright's aunt was Mrs. Pope.

She was the owner of the Pope Hotel when I came up as a kid.

And Mrs. Pope was pretty strict.

You didn't, weren't old enough, you didn't get past her but when sometimes she would not be guarding the fort.

That was the day, which you'd turn sideways and slip into the Pope Hotel.

- You could do the kinds of dances that you wanted to do, or you could drink the kind of alcohol that was popular in your neighborhood.

It was the ability to be who you were.

- A lot of adults used to go to the Pope Hotel, and from what I understand, there was a lot of musicians that came through there.

- Count Basie came here.

- I know it.

It's right in here too.

[Count Basie playing piano] - Lucky Millinder came here.

[trombone solo] Erskine Hawkins, [Erskine Hawkins P lays trumpet solo] all them came through here.

They had to come through here because they were on their way to New York, and the only way for them to get there was when they left Chicago to Cleveland.

They hit all those spots and as they were going around, they had the agent going in front of them to get them to be able to take and play there because they needed that money that they were earning to be able to buy the gasoline and continue their trip.

So that's why Erie was one of the major stops.

- They finally let us young people in here.

"Is this what it looked like?

This was what we hearing about all them years?

The Pope Hotel?"

And, you know, and that it was a lot different than the aura that we grew up under.

- And as a kid running by there, I never went in there or anything, you know?

'cause that was off limit, but there was a lot going on there.

- The Pontiac baseball team was actually St. James African Methodist Episcopal Church's baseball team.

And, at that time, they had the Glenwood League.

But the name Pontiac came from the standpoint that General Motors had a Pontiacs automobile dealership.

And the man who owned the Pontiacs had a Black guy working for him.

And Buster Dance went to the owner of Pontiac and sold him on the idea of, "We'll advertise you with your name on our uniform if you buy the uniform."

- Two parallel societies, one Black, one white.

White folks wouldn't let Black folks play with them and so we said, hey, we'll have to start our own.

We always have to start our own.

- Over the years learning more about the Pontiacs, they were one of the most influential Negro baseball teams in this area.

And one of the greatest players, Sam Jethroe, was on the baseball team.

I think it was extremely important for young people to see a group of men of that nature that had such a significant impact on athletic as they did.

It gave the opportunity for people to come together in a safe environment.

I think the Pontiacs' influence is still there today.

People still have conversations around some of the games that were played.

- I knew about the Pontiacs because, again, HBCU graduate, I studied a lot of those teams, so I knew that they had existed here, but there's very little monument to them.

There is a monument, but that's pretty much it.

We have a history of Black business in Erie, as every community does.

- My father would talk to me about John Hicks.

They owned the ice cream store and then there was the Lawrence Cleaners that was owned by Blacks.

- We had a couple major Black funeral homes because basically a lot of funerals parlors would give you some time, but you couldn't stay but so long to have a service.

So we brought them out.

- I remember there was Mason's Funeral Home.

I remember there was John Taylor Funeral Home.

- And I think there was one before I was probably even born, but I used to hear them talk about Britton's Funeral Home.

- And most of 'em revolve around members of the churches they go to.

- There was a place in Erie, they used to call it Cimarron City.

Now, why, I don't know.

- You're from Cimarron City?

- Yes.

- It was on West 18th Street.

Reverend Paul Martin owned a restaurant where they sold hamburgers and hot dogs.

Next door to him was Sue Brown's Beautician.

And then they had the Brown's Cleaners.

They had a bar on the corner and it was called the Holland House.

Little roughneck place though.

But maybe that's why I got the name Cimarron City.

- Understanding who these business people were can help us understand where it is that we can go.

What it is that we can achieve in business, in home ownership, in community building, in education, and on and on and on.

- Man.

Woo.

My lord.

♪ Oooh yeah ♪ - There is a measure of Black life that is still deeply instilled in visits to barbershops and beauty salons.

Those are the people who know how to cut Black hair.

Those are the people who know how to style Black hair.

You cannot go into a white salon and expect that they know what to do with your hair.

You can't, right?

And even if they know what to do with your hair, they probably don't have that many Black clients.

And so you go to a Black barbershop and a Black beauty salon for the services that you're going to get.

But in the midst of getting those services, you also get some of the most important components of Black culture.

You get information sharing.

You get community.

You get laughter.

- Ernie Wright's wife was a barber.

She was the only female ba-, barber that I knew.

I used to like to go to her barber shop because soon as I went to her barber shop, she'd start to working on me and I'd go right to sleep.

So sometimes I thought that razor would an' go to slip and cut my throat, but it never happened.

- They were our safe spaces.

And so for Atkinson Barbershop, for example, it was, before Black folks went to therapy, that was counseling, therapy, generational mentoring.

You learned manhood.

You learned fatherhood.

You learned politics.

You learn economics.

All of these things were being discussed and it was so common, even when you watch these movies where this person got his haircut and he's sitting there still an hour after he's gotten his haircut.

That's the way it was.

- My sisters and I, we sitting in there laughing about these old women chitter-chatting and telling all everybody's business and everything.

But it was like a little place where people fellowshipped.

I remember going in there and they would say, "Oh, I know you.

You, you Mildred's girls, right?

You Mildred's girls."

We were like, "Ugh."

If you were next and some other older lady came in there, then you got pushed to the back of the line.

"Baby, you don't mind if I take her?"

I really do, but I'm gonna let you go ahead and get in that chair.

But you spend some time with these people and you get to learn how it was for them growing up when they were in the South.

They would be saying stuff that I might say about the younger kids now.

Oh child, these kids is lazy.

We work from sun up to sundown, picking tomatoes, picking this and all that kind of stuff.

You know.

- They were, and I think still are, staples in Black communities and I think that they are absolutely, positively necessary.

- So Blacks, when they had businesses, those were the establishments that they had.

It wasn't a lot like with clothing or retail, but you have more of that now.

You know, more Blacks, which I'm happy to see.

- We all have so much and we all make America what it is, my goodness.

And if we blend all of that together, it's a great country.

- A lot of things in this community that are, that are important, we have to teach that history because our kids don't know if we don't pass it on.

- It is up to us to reach out to this generation of children, to let them know that you are important, that you count, that you come from a rich heritage of faith and of people that God has guided and God has selected, and God has chosen, and not only for children in the community, but for the city as well.

That everywhere we go, we are obligated to stand on the shoulders to say, yes, we are here, but we still reach out.

We still trust in the God that nothing is impossible without him.

And we can show you that.

And so it's our obligation to show our young people, to show our children that.

- "Every great dream begins with a dreamer.

- Always remember, you have within you the strength, the patience, and the passion to reach the stars, to change the world."

Harriet Tubman - Chronicles is made possible by a grant from the Erie Community Foundation, a community assets grant provided by the Erie County Gaming Revenue Authority support from Springhill Senior Living, the Regional Science Consortium, and the generous support of Thomas B. Hagen.

- We question and learn.