Man 1: For me, I um, I’ve always loved the structure of the bridge.

Just I’ve loved looking at it.

Uh, it’s got graceful lines, and it’s strong.

It’s just-- It’s my, it’s my playpen, my, my uh, my uh jungle gym.

Hello, my name is Kerry Davis and I’m an iron worker on the Golden Gate Bridge.

It’s, it’s like-- I’m like a caretaker of, of the bridge.

♪♪ My oldest son is, um, is 25 years old now.

On his 19th birthday, he enlisted into the Airforce and, and nobody’s seen him since or heard from him since.

I’d, I’d like to be able to reach out to my son and fix whatever it is that, that is broken between us and on, on the whole family.

♪♪ I’m all about family.

And if it’s broken, I gotta fix it.

♪♪ I gotta fix it.

♪♪ You can always reach out to somebody else and, and um, mend bridges.

Build bridges.

That’s what I do.

♪♪ - Hello.

I’m Lise Simms.

And each week on our show, we bring you the story of someone who for one reason or another wants to connect with an ancestor or an entire generation of their family tree, and we help them do just that.

We’re an ongoing project dedicated to connecting people across generations.

And today, that person is Kerry Davis.

Hi, Kerry.

- Hi.

Lise: Thanks so much for being here.

- Well thanks for having me here.

- Ah, it’s our pleasure.

In the opening, I noticed a moment of so much emotion, and it brought it up for me too.

You’re disconnected from your oldest son.

Kerry: Yeah.

- Can you tell me more about how that happened?

- Well, uh, his mother and I went through a divorce, and, uh, we still live in the same town of Sonoma, and um he lived with her and, and by that time I was selling our house and, uh, moved on to Suisun City.

And his growing, you know him going to high school and everything and, you know, I’d try to be supportive of, you know, the things he did, and then, uh, come time he graduated from high school, he turned 19, he just up deci-- decided to go and join the Airforce.

And-- which was I thought was a good move because he, you know, there really wasn’t a whole lot of options for him in Sonoma.

And, uh, he, he’s just starting to flourish in the Airforce.

He’s been there for six years now, so.

Lise: But you haven’t heard anything from him since then.

Kerry: No, I haven’t heard a thing from him.

- Was that a surprise to you?

Kerry: Yeah, it was.

I figured, you know, we’d be able to make contact especially ‘cause I-- You know, with my military background.

Like, I spent two years in Marine Corp. And, uh, you know, I could relate a lot of the things that he’s going through especially through boot camp and, uh, you know his, his basic training, uh everything.

I can, you know, I can relate to him.

But, uh, he never called, never, never got a word from him.

You know, it’s just this thing that he’s doing to distance himself from everybody.

Lise: Heartbreaking.

Kerry: Yeah, it is.

- What was your relationship like with your own dad?

Kerry: Uh, my dad and I, we had a real good relationship.

You know, he’s-- It was more of a subtle relationship.

We didn’t do the classic father-son things.

Lise: He was a military man as well.

- Yes, he was, uh, 20 years in the Army.

Lise: Mm-hm.

- And uh, you know, he, he supported me when I joined the service and, um-- but we didn’t have that classic relationship, you know father, son go out and play baseball, you know, throw the ball around.

But, you know, I still felt his love and his, you know, his, his, his being.

And, uh, I really appreciate that out of him.

And I still love him to death, you know.

Lise: That’s great.

I know at the beginning of your journey, you are aware that your dad’s relationship with his own parents wasn’t as tight as your relationship with him.

Kerry: Mm-hm.

- And you wanted to learn more about his disconnection with his family in hopes of building this bridge to your own son.

Kerry: Yes.

- So, you, you know along the way that your family lived in Alabama, moved to Pensacola.

You are going to research both those towns, and it all begins with a few phone calls.

Let’s watch what happens.

Kerry: Let’s watch.

Lise: Okay.

Woman 1: [on phone] Hello?

- Hey cuz, this is Kerry.

How you doin’?

Yeah, I was wondering if you could give me some insight on, um, our, our family.

Okay.

Yeah.

Um, who else?

♪♪ Lula.

Okay.

Mm-hm.

Okay.

You know, uh, my, my father, he left Pensacola.

And I’m, I’m trying to figure out why.

Well, she told me to call the Snow Hill Institute.

And she said that was the school that my, that my father went to.

And I was wondering if you had any information on, uh, a James Davis Jr.?

Oh, so you don’t have any information either, huh?

So, um, I’m, I’m to call who?

Pensacola?

Well, well thanks a lot for your help.

[beeping] He, he’s getting some directories to take a look.

[indistinct chatter on telephone] Can you send me this, uh, information by way of, uh, the internet?

Lise: Kerry has received the 1940 phone directory for Pensacola, Florida where he knows his dad’s family lived for a time.

Woman 2: Okay here.

Anna H. Davis.

Okay.

Kerry: Okay, so.

W-we got a good start.

Woman 2: Okay, good.

Lise: Kerry has found his grandmother’s name, proving that she lived in Pensacola in 1940.

But why doesn’t his grandfather’s name appear?

Kerry hopes the Generations Project researcher, Kendall Wilcox, will have found more clues to complete the puzzle.

- After, after a bunch of phone calls, I wound up, I wound up here with the, uh, Pensacola directory.

Kendall: Okay.

‘Cause I actually found-- I found a few things, again, searching to try to understand any clues that there might be about-- to answer your question, like, what happened with... your, your dad’s family life that kind of might’ve caused him to disconnect, you know?

Like, and your-- the disconnect that you’re still feeling today.

Kerry: Yeah.

Kendall: First thing I actually came upon in searching the vital records under the, that name was actually a death certificate for Harriet Anna Davis.

Kerry: Oh.

Kendall: And actually she passed away here in 1942 in Pensacola.

Kerry: In Pensacola.

Kendall: So at least by 1940, maybe even 39, she’s living in Pensacola, not back up in Alabama where she was, you know, married and, and had all-- most of-- all the kids, right?

- Yeah.

Kendall: So wait, if she’s in Pensacola, what’s going on back in Alabama with the family?

- Yeah.

- And I d-- came across a record, actually, and it’s a marriage record.

Kerry: Wow.

Kendall: Yeah.

For your grandfather by 1944, March of 1944.

He’s remarried.

- Wow.

- So... And he’s married to a, a woman who just-- who strange, coincidence, is also named Harriet.

Kerry: I guess he liked the name Harriet.

Kendall: I guess so.

But Harriet Brown, right?

Lise: Kerry has learned that his grandparents separated sometime prior to 1940.

Kerry’s grandpa James Sr. stayed in Alabama.

But Kerry’s grandmother, Harriet, moved to Pensacola, Florida where she lived with many of her children including Kerry’s father, James Jr., until her death in 1942.

That same year, James Jr. registered for the draft.

In 1944, his father, still in Alabama, remarried just six months before James Jr. was drafted in Pensacola and sent to the Pacific Theater.

- So but still we come back to the question.

So we see that the family’s done some separating, some splitting, but we still come back to your question of well what, what was my dad doing at the time?

And again, why did he get so separated from the family?

Well, if you do wanna find out more for him, uh, what we can do is, is we can, uh, request some military records.

So that-- I don’t know if that answers all your questions, but it sort of paints a picture of family separation and reasons that he might’ve stayed separated from the rest of the family.

- And this also paints a picture of what’s going on with my family, the separation and Shay enlisting in, in, in the Airforce at the age of 19, and it was a separation.

I moved, he stayed with his mother.

That, that just hit me when you said all this.

I mean, that’s more than paralleling what my father did.

My son is doing exactly the same thing my father did.

Kendall: Wow.

Kerry: The realization that my grandmother and grandfather split up when my dad was a teenager, and he’s kinda drifting between, that really parallels what my son is doing.

You know, the broken home, uh being in between, you know, his m-- his mother and father, and me relocating and he staying with his mother.

And then at some point in time, he decided it was time for him to go into the service.

And that’s exactly what my, my father did.

I’ve never stopped loving him.

I’ve never stopped loving him.

That’s-- he’s my son.

- Kerry, that parallel between your dad’s life and your son’s life is really profound.

And I know that since this time, you’ve had a chance to look over the military records of your father.

Uh, did you discover anything interesting in those records?

Kerry: Well, yeah, I discovered that my dad, um, in the beginning wasn’t so distant to his family.

He, uh, he was actually sending money back to support his father and his sisters.

And, uh, I, I thought that was amazing.

That was something, you know, that I’d never even...

I, I-- like I-- like I said, I never knew of his military background or what he did in the military.

And to find out that he was sending money back to support the family, that tells me he was all about family too.

Lise: That’s right.

- And, uh, I-- Lise: Like father, like son.

- I guess.

Lise: Well, not only have we received the military records, but in the meantime, the Generations Project, um, has pulled together the medals that your father earned during his service in the military.

And this is sent by the military records office, and that is our gift to you to have the medals from your father’s service.

How you feel about that?

- [sniffs] [emotionally] Thank you so much.

[sniffs] This means a lot to me.

It means a lot to me.

- I can imagine having a token of your dad’s life in your own hands.

Being such a family man does mean a lot to you, and we’re thrilled to give you that.

Kerry: Thank you.

Lise: It was a great pleasure.

I want to transition a little bit, and I hate to leave this beautiful moment, but we wanna talk about your mom.

Kerry: Okay.

- Who you have great admiration, respect, and deep love for.

Kerry: Yeah, she’s, was um-- She was, um... a great woman.

She really is.

- And you lost her when you were 13 years old.

Can you tell me about that, Kerry?

- Um, that’s, that’s real hard.

Um... she was, uh, shot by somebody that knew her and um wanted to have a relationship with her, and she didn’t want to have anything to do with him.

And, um, she was at the prime of her life as far as I know, and she just, um, you know, she, she fought to the end.

She was always-- She was always working and trying to, you know, take care of me and take care of the property that she owned and, and then this guy comes out and snuffs out her life.

Lise: That must’ve had a huge impact on your very young life.

13 years old.

Kerry: Yeah, I was, I was pretty young.

Uh, she was my world.

You know, she was everything.

She meant everything to me, you know.

Um, ‘cause like I said, my dad was in and out of my life and, you know, she, she gave me all these morals and these, these things in my life that just-- I hear her voice in the back of my head, you know, just telling me things, you know, as I’m-- as I do things, you know?

“Always finish what you’re doing,” you know?

“I’m not always gonna be here for you.” Uh, just different things that she would tell me, uh.

Lise: I know that because you lost her so early, you were somewhat disconnected from her ancestors as well on that side of the family, and that was where your search continues in searching to get to know your mother better and her history and in the process, get to know her side of the family better.

You started by calling your uncle, Bob Colvin, which is your mother’s brother-- Kerry: Mm-hm.

- for a little bit of information on her pedigree.

So let’s watch that.

Kerry: Okay.

♪♪ John Colvin.

Man 2: [on phone] And-- Kerry: Yeah?

Man 2: Uh, Bessie Mae Colvin.

Kerry: Richmond Colvin and Millie.

Man 2: Yeah.

Kerry: Wow.

I-- I, I’ve never known those names.

Really?

I was gonna ask you about that, uh, ‘cause, you know, seeing the date that they were born, um, they were slaves.

Man 2: They were born free.

- Oh!

Uh, wow.

Well that, that’s, that’s something.

Uh, wow.

That, that’s, that’s big, uh, that they were born bef-- you know, free.

Yeah, that they were born free.

Lise: Kerry calls Kendall for assistance, and they agree to meet in Louisiana, the home of Kerry’s great grandparents Richmond and Millie.

Woman 2: No, no no.

Lise: In Louisiana, Kerry hopes to learn how Richmond and Millie could’ve been born free before the Civil War.

[jazzy music] Kendall: I did some research, and the first thing we did was to look at the 1860 census.

‘Cause if they’re free, they’re considered, you know, at least somewhat of a citizen and, and so they were counted in the census.

We searched and searched and searched, and we couldn’t find them in the 1860 census.

Lise: But Kendall was able to find Richmond and Millie in the 1870 census suggesting that they were actually freed as part of the general abolition of slavery in the United States.

Kendall did a little more research and based on circumstantial evidence found the name of Millie’s master: Nathan Davis.

Kendall: ...from their gender and their age.

This is an account of one of the, the children of the former slave.

And there’s a particular part, um, where he talks about what happened when he freed his slaves that I wanna share with you, but first I think we should find the grave ‘cause he’s buried somewhere in this cemetery.

You wanna search for the grave?

Kerry: Yes, let’s go!

Kendall: Okay.

Let’s do it.

[chuckles] ♪♪ ♪♪ - Davis.

Reverend N.M. Davis.

Kendall: That’s the one!

Kerry: N-- N.M. Kendall: Yeah.

Kerry: 1809-1880.

Yeah.

Kendall: “He died as he lived, a christian.” And he’s marked as, as reverend.

Kerry: Reverend, right.

Kendall: Wanna, wanna hear about him?

Kerry: Sure.

Kendall: Cool.

Kerry: What do you have?

Kendall: Um, well what we found is-- again, this is, this is an account of a descendant of somebody who was a, who was a slave here.

Kerry: Mm-hm.

- Or, not here here but in this region, and he was owned by this man.

And this account kinda goes on about what life was like o-- working on the plantation, and he gets into the war years.

So the war’s begun.

It’s Ci-- Civil War time.

And then he, he, uh, explains that life on the plant-- plantation “went along rather well the first years of the war.

"The price of cotton went down, "but the war seemed to go along well "for the South, and the slaves were generally happy.” Well, it depends on your perspective.

- Didn’t, didn’t know any better.

- Exactly, yeah.

And so they say “war finally worsened.” And this is the part that I think I want you to read if you don’t mind.

Kerry: Sure.

- It’s actually taken-- as you see, it’s a quote.

It’s in his own words, taken from the man who, who was a slave here.

- A slave here.

He says, um, “The call went out to the fields "for the hands to assemble at the big house "as Massa Davis had news for all to hear.

"The front yard was soon crowded... "Soon old Massa appeared on the wide front porch "with Missie Lizzie at his side... "Massa told them they were free "to build a life of their own.

"They seemed not to understand.

"A murmur went up through the crowd.

"Some of the women "who had been maids in the big house "(a choice job) "began to cry, "begging old Missie "to let them continue their same jobs.

"Most of them returned to the fields as there was nothing else for them to do.” They just, they just didn’t know.

I mean, what do you do?

I’ve always thought about that.

What do you do once you’re, you know, you’re emancipated?

What do you do?

- Yep.

- And, and now this, this is coming from the words of others that were in that position.

What do they do?

And a lot of them didn’t wanna leave.

- Mm-hm.

- And, you know, I guess they thought they had things good there, and they just stayed along with it.

Kendall: And your family was in that group.

Kerry: Yeah, my family was in that group.

♪♪ Lise: After being freed, former slaves like Richmond and Millie needed work to make a living.

Because their skillset was often limited to agricultural production, and because they felt invested in the land they had worked as slaves, many chose to stay where they were and find a way to work on the plantations as free people.

Their former masters, already suffering the economic impact of the war, needed a way to maintain their labor force.

This led to a system known as sharecropping where plantation owners negotiated with freed people to work and live on small plots of 30-50 acres in exchange for a portion of the yield.

Kerry is visiting the Louisiana State University Rural Life Museum and meeting with expert, David Floyd, who has a copy of the sharecropping contract which shows Richmond and Millie agreeing to work a piece of plantation land in exchange for 1/3 of the crop.

David: And this is a contract in which their names are listed right here, and they are, uh, basically on Big Ridge plantation, and they’re sharecropping.

Kerry: Yeah.

David: Now what do you do?

As a person coming out of slavery, you don’t own any tools.

And you have no place to stay.

So what the owner did was said, Okay, I’ll rent you one of the buildings.

So in many cases, the ex-slaves had to rent the buildings that they were living in before.

- So they were responsible for their own, their own wellbeing, their own resources.

They had to provide for themselves to try to make money so they can live in the home that they had.

- But you know something else that was as important is that they created that word you just mentioned, “home.” Because in a slave cabin, that wasn’t home.

You shared it with people that sometimes you didn’t even know.

And now they were creating a unity as a family, and so, uh, they’re creating a family that you knew some way, either to your grandparents or your mama or whoever.

Kerry: Right.

Lise: To empathize with Richmond and Millie’s sharecropping experience, Kerry has asked to learn how to plow a field.

- Are you ready?

- I have-- I don’t know.

I, I-- I guess I am ready.

I’m ready for this, yeah.

- Malvin, he’s yours.

Malvin: Nothing to it.

You ready?

The trick is gonna be this: You put down on these, that point’s gonna go deep, and it’s hard on the mule and hard on you.

Kerry: Mm-hm.

Malvin: You’ll start seeing.

Level your handles out, and if you level ‘em out, it’ll make a good furrow and it’ll stir the dirt for you.

Kerry: Okay.

Malvin: I’m gonna step him up.

I’ll do the talking to him.

Now, the mule’s name is Fred.

Kerry: Fred.

That’s my dog’s name.

Malvin: Holler at him all you want.

Don’t holler at me.

Kerry: [chuckling] Malvin: Let the games begin.

Kerry: Ready to go.

Malvin: [kiss noises] Come up, Fred.

Come on, Fred.

Come on up, Fred.

♪♪ Walk it easy.

Now pick your plow back up.

We’ll back him up.

Get in the hole, Fred.

Get in the hole, Fred.

Ready?

Kerry: Yeah.

Malvin: Do it.

[chains clanking] Kerry: This is, uh... Malvin: Easy back.

- definitely what they mean by working like a slave.

Malvin: So here I’m gonna try to let you go by yourself.

Kerry: Uh-huh.

Malvin: You’re gonna have to control him with your lines in each hand.

Haw’s to the left.

H-A-W, Haw.

Gee’s to the right.

Come up, Fred.

[kiss noises] Kerry: Let’s go, Fred.

Malvin: Talk to him.

Kerry: Let’s go, Fred, come on.

Malvin: Come on, Fred.

Kerry: Come on, Fred.

Malvin: Come on, Fred.

Keep him in the bottom.

Kerry: Haw.

Malvin: Keep him in the bottom.

Kerry: Haw.

Malvin: Turn him this way.

There you go, turn him.

Turn him hard.

Kerry: Haw.

Malvin: Come around, Fred.

Kerry: Ha-- ♪♪ I picture my great-grandfather working fields like this all day long, sun-up, sun-down.

And, uh, this is enough to make you... really wanna do something different in life.

Hut, hut.

Let’s go, Fred.

This is, uh, this is definitely hard, hard work.

And you know, there was no holidays.

There was no sick days.

There was no vacation days.

Nothing.

They just had to go out there and had work.

Seven days a week.

My mother had, um, she had a base here.

She had family here.

But she decided to strike out on her own and, uh, leave, leave her family unit behind to make a living for herself, and that’s my biggest question is why would she do something like that?

Why would my mother want to strike out and be away from the family?

♪♪ Lise: Kerry’s mother, Bessie, was the granddaughter of Richmond and Millie.

When Bessie was born, the family was still working as sharecroppers.

Waiting for Kerry at his hotel is a package from his uncle, Bob Colvin, who lives in Champaign, Illinois.

[paper rustling] - “Son, this will give you some insight "on the history of your mother "as she was comin’ up "and overcoming some ups and downs.

"I had some friends help me make this movie "for you to watch.

"Watch this when you get to Rayville.

Uncle Bob.” Bob Colvin.

“121 Scott Street, Raymond, Louisiana.

This is the address where your mother was born.” Wow.

[rustling] Just-- [rustling] It’s a DVD.

It’s a DVD of my, of my mother.

Well, I can’t wait till I get there so I can watch this thing ‘cause I’m really looking forward to seeing this.

♪♪ 502 Scott.

We gotta go to 121 Scott.

♪♪ Is this it?

Is that Scott Street too?

Must be in this block here.

There’s 209.

213.

♪♪ There’s 220.

Do it go not far enough?

Man 2: ‘Scuse me, from here?

Kerry: No, I’m not.

Man 2: Your people?

Kerry: My mother’s from here.

Man 2: You got someone’s address?

Kerry: I got-- This is 121 Scott Street in Rayville.

- You got Raymond, man, that’s Rayville.

- The-- the-- my uncle put that there.

- You sure you’re in the right town, then?

- This is the right town.

- Okay.

- This is Rayville.

- All right.

- ‘Cause, uh... - What’s the town?

US 425?

- Uh-huh.

- What’s the 425?

- I don’t know.

- We gotta [indistinct] like that.

You might be in the wrong state.

- [laughs] No, we in the right state, bro.

“Follow road and make the first left you can onto Missouri street.” - Missouri?

We ain’t got no Missouri!

Hey!

Kerry: Hello, how you doin’?

Lise: Kerry gives his Uncle Bob a call.

Bob: [on phone] Hey!

- Hey, I’m over here where 12-- 121 Scott Street should’ve been, and I got a gentleman here-- What’s your name?

- Harry Summers.

- Harry Summers that said, uh, this wasn’t always Scott Street.

Bob: [indistinct] - Right.

Right.

You know R. B.

White?

Bob: [indistinct] - And Miss Irene?

That was his wife?

Bob: [faint chatter] - Th-- They live-- - It sounds like he knows some people.

- Okay.

Did you know Mr. Big-eyed Buddy?

Bob: [indistinct chatter] - What about, what about, what about Miss Black or Mr. Black?

Bob: [indistinct chatter] - Yay!

Bob: [indistinct chatter] - That’s right.

That’s right.

And that-- the-- the Klings was right there, right across the street.

- So this is the place.

- Yeah.

- This is it.

- Yeah.

They in the neighborhood, man.

They in the neighborhood.

They got neighbors, and I won’t try to put them together for ‘em.

Ah, here your nephew now.

Here your nephew now.

I think you got the right place.

Kerry: Yeah.

- You got the right place.

- I, I’ve got the DVD that you, you sent me.

Uh, I’ve got the DVD that you sent me and I gotta-- I gotta look at it right now.

[birds chirping] Bob: [through computer] Sorry son, I couldn’t be with you.

But I’ll tell you some things about your grandparents anyway.

Now first of all, I’d like to let you know that, uh, your poor parents was sharecroppers.

Those were the hard days that we went to work when the sun rose, come home for one hour, had lunch, and go back and work until the sun goes down.

- That was hard work.

Bob: We didn’t work eight hours a day punching in and punching out.

Again, I say they were hard times but we really didn’t know they was hard times because we never had any good times anyway.

[chuckles] So we wanna talk about your mother whom I love so much.

Who married at a early age to a young man by the name of Houston Penn.

He was... a very jealous man.

And by him being so jealous, he had a little rumble with your uncle, which is me.

And him being a little older, a little bigger, I had to use a little force.

[gun cocks] Kerry: [laughing] Bob: In 1937, your grandfather which is my father gave me this gun.

I was at the age of 14 years old.

He gave it to me to hunt, but I had to use it on a brother-in-law.

And the reason that I had to use the gun, she had come home several times with black eyes.

He claimed that she had hit her head on the steering wheel getting out of the car.

[birds chirping] And I let him know...

I didn’t believe a word of it.

When I started for the shotgun, he started to run.

Thank God he kept running ‘cause it saved his life.

I got a chance to nip him with a few shot but not as good as I was tryin’ to.

But him being, uh, the kind of guy he was, my sister decided to leave him.

And she knew that he was the kind of man that would hunt her down, so she moved to Lake Charles, Louisiana for a minute and changed her name and moved on to San Francisco.

[birds chirping] - [sniffs] It just hurts me to think about.

[birds chirping] [sniffs] [birds chirping] [sniffs] ‘Cause I miss her so.

I miss her.

[birds chirping] [sniffs] ♪♪ I, I couldn’t believe another man would hit her and she’d let him get away with it.

‘Cause she must’ve been really young.

Because I never saw any signs of that.

I never saw any signs of anybody wanting to put their hands on her or her letting that happen.

But I know she wasn’t running from him, she was running to something.

A better life.

She just knew she wasn’t gonna have it here.

♪♪ Lise: Kerry is following his mother’s footsteps and traveling from Louisiana to San Francisco.

He knows why his mother left Louisiana, but he still wants to know why she chose to move to San Francisco of all places.

♪♪ Kerry does know that his mother worked as a scaler in the shipyards of San Francisco Bay during WWII.

She was one of six million American women who worked building ships, planes, and other weapons during the war and who were embodied by the icons Rosie the Riveter and Wendy the Welder.

♪♪ Kerry is visiting the museum ship S.S. Red Oak Victory where he’s meeting with historian Steve Gilford.

Steve: This is just one of 747 ships that were built in this shipyard during WWII.

- That’s a lot of ships.

- Yeah.

And then this is, uh, ten thousand tons.

It’s over 400 feet long.

This was like a major battlefield in WWII, uh, the shipyard because these ships were so necessary for the war effort.

This ship carried ammunition to the Pacific.

It carried oil for the other ships.

It carried, uh, gasoline for planes and for jeeps and, uh, everything that was used went out by, out by ship.

- Whate-- Oh, okay.

- And so they needed thousands of them.

Kerry: Well, uh, my question, um, the reason I’m here is my mother, she, she was from Louisiana, and I-I’m just curious as what would, would’ve brought her out here?

I mean wh-- She could’ve gone to any place in the United States, um, when she left Loui-- Louisiana, and uh, I was just kind of curious.

- Well, Henry Keiser, who ran these shipyards, he knew that people could go any place.

And so in order to make sure that they came where he needed them, what he did was he sent recruiters out all over the country, especially in the South where there was more unemployment, and he brought people back on, uh, his own trains.

They, they rented trains, and they brought them back by the hundreds with the promise that when they got out here, there’d be a job waiting for them.

So he said pack a bag, get on the train, and you got a job.

Kerry: I, I heard that she was a scaler.

Steve: Uh-huh.

Kerry: What kind of work would a scaler be doing?

Steve: The scaler would be, would be really important for the, uh, putting together the ships for the actual welding of the ships and the painting because, uh, steel, in order to be, uh, to be welded needs to be very, very clean, so the butt joints have to be, uh, be clean.

And, and in this kind of environment, it rusts.

So, uh, the scaler gets in there and cleans down to the bare metal so that the weld will-- welds will hold.

So in order for paint to s-stay on ship, you-- o-on, on steel, you have to get down to the bare metal.

So any rust, any oxidation that’s there has to be, has to be cleaned off.

Any old paint, any, anything that has gotten onto that plate needs to be cleaned.

Kerry: Well, I can see there’s, there’s just a whole lot of welding out here, uh, to be done, so they, they must’ve really kept the scalers busy out here.

Steve: Yep.

There were, there were a lot of scalers, and uh they were very busy.

So, one more, one more flight up.

You get a really good view of the shipyard from up here.

Kerry: Yeah, this is beautiful.

[seagulls calling] Steve: A little windy but, uh-- Kerry: Well, that’s okay.

Steve: And toward the end of the war, w-- uh, one out of every four people working here was a woman.

Kerry: Wow.

Steve: If you wanna have a really even better sense of what it was like for your mother, there’s a, there’s a ranger, uh, Betty Soskin.

- Betty... Soskin?

- Soskin.

- Soskin.

- And she w-- she worked in the shipyards in WWII.

- Oh really?

- And, uh, she’s an African American woman.

And she has a very special viewpoint of what it was like to work here, and I think you’d find it real interesting to talk with her.

Kerry: Well I, I’d love to meet her.

♪♪ I, I, I love the bay.

I love this whole bay area.

I-- You know, and to know the possibility that my mother could’ve been-- had her hands in on this ship, you know, working as scaler, it, it makes me feel a lot closer.

♪♪ [seagull calling] Lise: Kerry is meeting with Betty Soskin at the Rosie the Riveter National Memorial.

Betty: The memorial as you can see is the keel of the ship as it was built upside down-- Kerry: Oh yeah.

Betty: And then flipped.

And it, um, was designed so that it tells a story of the home front from a woman’s orientation.

Kerry: Now, um, the fact that my mother, she came out of an, an era as you, as you have too in the, in the deep South where the segregation prevailed.

And she, she had this desire to, to leave all that behind to, to look for a better life.

Betty: Of course.

Black people who came out of those five s-southern states came out here with a lot of hope-- Kerry: Mm-hm.

Betty: because we knew-- or those, those families knew-- that things like education were not segregated.

Even women who started at $16.80 a week if you can believe that.

16 dollars and 80 cents a week.

Um, this was more than, uh, a cotton picker would have gained by three dollars a day.

Can you imagine a sharecropper coming out of those Southern states and ending up-- even with 16 dollars and 80 cents a d-- a, a, a week.

Would have thought they’d gone-- died and gone to heaven.

Kerry: Absolutely.

Betty: But people forget that you couldn’t d-- you couldn’t, uh, determine when the war was going to end.

You couldn’t anticipate that.

- Right.

- And when the war ended, that 90,000 workforce was reduced to 10,000 overnight.

And when it ended, within 24 hours, African Americans had 24 hours notice to move before their homes were torn-- the project were torn down.

- And that’s why they tore down those projects.

Betty: Mm-hm.

Immediately they were.

That was a, that was an agreement with HUD.

The expectation was that all of those sharecroppers would go home.

- Wow.

Lise: But there was nothing in the South to go home to, so most African Americans stayed in San Francisco.

But with the shipyards closing at the end of the war, work was difficult to find.

The African American women who stayed in San Francisco were at the bottom of an employment ladder consisting of the pre-war workforce, an army of returning veterans, and the white women who’d recently entered the labor pool.

What was Bessie to do in such an unfriendly work climate?

Kerry: After the war, I know she, she took the money that she earned, and she put it to use.

Uh, she became an entrepreneur.

Betty: Yeah!

Kerry: She actually opened up a, a night club in San Francisco.

Betty: Mm-hm.

I look back and see your mother’s contribution as being that of one of the very, very extraordinary ordinary people.

♪♪ Kerry: This whole experience has helped me grow to learn that my mom was really, really a special person and, and that she just had this intestinal fortitude that-- that she was not going to fail.

Um, failure was not an option for her.

The more I look back on all the things that I’ve learned on this journey, the more I just shake my head in, in admiration for that woman.

Lise: Bessie married Kerry’s dad, James, in 1956.

One year later, the same year Kerry was born, Bessie’s nightclub was damaged by fire and closed.

Bessie used the insurance money to buy and rent property.

She also helped manage her friend’s night club, the El Dorado, which is known today as Club Waziema, where Kerry has arranged to meet with Josephine Robinson, one of Bessie’s close friends.

Josephine: She was one of the entrepreneurs here in San Francisco.

And she was well known among the entertainers because she had live music.

I think it was Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday night.

After meeting her, I found out she had several apartment houses.

She didn’t call the plumbers, she didn’t call the electricians.

She did the work herself.

I couldn’t do any of that.

Kerry: I, I tell you, one time I was with her, and she was going to go get the rent from the place on Haight Street, and the fellow told her that he didn’t have the money.

She took the door off.

The front door of that apartment off and carried it down the stairs.

And the man asked, Well where’s my door?

And she says, Well where’s my rent?

And it wasn’t long after that what she got her rent.

She just had a way about her that just defied logic, the things that she would do.

Josephine: I think it was a surprise element that she had a way with so much because no one expected a less than a hundred pound woman to pick up a whole door.

Kerry: Mm-hm.

- And those doors were solid oak doors weighing at least a hundred and more pounds.

I didn’t know what she couldn’t do!

She participated in so many things.

Lise: Bessie and Josephine participated in San Francisco’s Civil Right’s movement.

The racial tensions that began in the WWII shipyards continued through the 1950s and escalated in the ‘60s in the form of demonstrations against San Francisco’s housing and employment practices.

Demonstrators protested against a system that required African Americans to pay up to 14% more for a house.

On the employment front, activists sought fairer hiring practices in the auto industry.

Bessie and Josephine joined other Black and white activists on the sidewalks of Auto Row, waving signs and singing songs, calling on General Motors to change their policy that relegated Black employees to such menial jobs as waxers, janitors, and lubrication men.

Josephine: Van Ness Avenue was the car lot places where all the car dealers were.

And they didn’t have anyone Black working for them.

And we would go down on Saturday mornings-- which we knew a lot of people would wanna buy a car on Saturday-- and we would sit, it would be at least 15 or 16 women in each car lot.

And we’d sit in those car lots and not let the people drive off of the, uh, lot when they buy the car until the owners of the lots would agree to give a job to a person that was qualified to work.

Kerry: You’re talking about Black men.

- I’m talking about Black men.

Kerry: Mm-hm.

Josephine: And then we went from that.

We started going into hotels and bars, picketing those.

The rest of the days, she was somewhere working.

Your mother was very energetic and could do more work than anyone I ever met in my lifetime.

Kerry: Yeah, she, she was something else.

Josephine: She was.

♪♪ Lise: In the summer of 1971, Bessie was still managing the El Dorado club, operating three separate rental properties, and raising Kerry mostly by herself.

Kerry was enjoying his last weeks of freedom before starting high school in the fall.

On August 15th, he came home from summer camp, not knowing that the next two days would be his mother’s last.

Bessie had incited the anger of one of her tenants, Gaynor Pedis, by refusing his romantic advances.

So Gaynor tracked down Bessie and found her painting one of her apartments.

Kerry’s cousin, Leonard, was a witness to the ensuing events.

- Let me just walk you through this, cuz, ‘cause, um, kinda hurts me to go back here, and so I have a little tears, you can understand.

Um, I was over here, back, working on my car.

You know, I used to work on-- You know I’ve worked so many cars.

Kerry: You had that 1960 Impala.

- Yeah, that 1960-- Kerry: Uh, blue.

- A blue Chevy Impala.

And I was jacking the car up, and then Mr. Gaylor Pedis, he comes and he walks over there and goes into the house, and I’m just still working on my car, jacking it up, and then all of a sudden I hear... Pow!

So I stopped and get up, who was that?

So he walks out of the house, and he had a big ‘ol shiny pistol in his hand.

I say, What you doin’ man?

And he says, I just shot your auntie.

So I goes inside.

I see her stretched out on the floor, gasping for air.

[exhales] taking one breath at a time, and I don’t know what to do.

I’m young.

I’m about eight-- nineteen.

So I picked her up, main room from out of there, and carried her outside.

He was still out here.

And then he just took off, and I’m just saying, Oh my gosh.

But then I just look at her chest, I just see, um, a little red spot right there, and-- but I don’t know.

I thought maybe she might, might make it, but she didn’t make it, but I rode all the way to the hospital with her.

She was still breathing hard.

I don’t know, she was fighting, she was fighting.

- She was a fighter, man.

- She was a fighter.

Man, man, man, man.

Man.

Whoo.

I didn’t know what to do.

I had never experienced nothing like that before.

But anyway, that the was the last day I saw my auntie.

Kerry: Well for me, you know I-- in my mind, my mind’s eye, I j-- I just knew she was alright.

She’s gonna be okay ‘cause she was always-- She was always so strong with everything she did, you know?

- Yeah.

- And, uh... we sat there, and the doctor came and got my father, and when he came and got my father, uh... Leonard: Mm.

- [sniffs] [crying] I don’t wanna do this.

Leonard: Yeah, I know man.

It was a terrible day.

Mm.

Kerry: He came and got my father and my father came, went, went with him.

He came back and, you know, there’s just a blank expression.

And my thing I wondered to my dad was, Well when’s she coming home?

When’s she coming home?

How is she?

Sh-- And he says, I don’t-- I’m afraid she’s not coming home.

She didn’t make it.

Leonard: Yep, I remember it.

She didn’t make it.

- Not to me.

[sighs] Leonard: Mm.

- [sniffs] Leonard: It was devastating, man.

- That was my world.

Mm.

That was my world.

Leonard: Mm.

[sniffs] Man, man, man.

Yeah, she taught us how to say our prayers and stuff.

I remember that.

She used to say, "when you get to the part about the temptation...” - “Lead us not into temptation.” - And we said, oh do the temptation, m-- “Whoa!

What’d I tell you?” [laughs] Yeah, we were so crazy.

- I remember we would, uh... we used to always go to church every Sunday.

We’d go to Sunday school.

- Oh yeah, the church.

Kerry: And we wound up, we wound up down the street one day.

Leonard: [indistinct] Kerry: At, at Smitty’s.

And we got down there and Smitty would let us in.

We were down there playing that pinball machine.

Leonard: Mm.

Turn around-- Kerry: I was watching Larry.

Larry just stepped away from the machine and he was doing so well and I just, “Don’t stop!” and I jumped on the machine too.

And then he reached over and grabbed me and pulled me back and I looked and there was my mother standing there.

- Ah, and we 'posed to be in church, in Sunday school.

Oh no.

Kerry: Oh no.

And then sh-- There wan't a word said.

We just filed out in a single file line, walked in-- got into the car, just quiet all the way down 46th Avenue.

Leonard: Mm-hm.

- We got out, went inside the house, everybody went to the rooms, take the clothes off.

You know, take the-- your good church clothes off.

Hang, hang up your suit and everything.

Leonard: [laughs] - Start putting on clothes.

Leonard: [laughing] - I look over at these two, Larry and Leonard, and they got on one pair of pants.

And all the sudden here comes another pair of pants.

[laughs] Here comes another shirt.

And they got two and three pairs of pants and shirts on ‘cause they know we gettin’ ready to get beat down.

- We gotta get padded up!

- [laughing] - Oh yeah!

[laughs] Oh, man.

That was all a blur.

I don't know about them clothes.

Woo-ee!

- She didn’t touch us.

She didn’t touch us.

- We got overdressed for nothing, huh?

- Sat around and waited.

I knew-- I waited all night long.

I was waiting for her to rip the blankets off us and tear us up.

Leonard: Oh man, that was a mess.

♪♪ Kerry: I feel like I accomplished everything that I set out to do.

I’ve built a bridge to the past to, to see where my mother came from, to see where my father came from.

I’ve lived it.

I-I’ve breathed it.

I-I’ve felt it.

I’ve made a connection with it.

And this, to me, is, is um, a foundation of, of the bridge I wanna build, and that’s to make contact with my son, one of the of the connections that I need to, to work on.

♪♪ - [phew] Kerry, I know that you really felt your mother’s presence along this journey.

Kerry: Mm-hm.

- Can you tell me in what ways she was there for you?

Kerry: Well, I mean, all the, all the information that she wanted me to know about her.

You know, I just felt that she was, you know, uh, she was there guiding, you know, people and guiding the Generations Project, Project to, uh, let you guys know the information I needed to know about her, uh, you know, the things that she did, you know, to build a life for me.

‘Cause I know all she did, she built for me, you know, she did for me.

Uh, she was not trying to get rich or anything like that, but she was out tryna-- Lise: Provide.

- Yeah, provide for her family.

And I was the only child, so, you know, that, that just-- I just felt that.

I felt that when I was there.

Uh, you know, listening to the, to the guy talk about her being a scaler and how, you know, the things that I have to do with steel now.

You know, that’s what I built a career on is working with steel.

And knowing that she was there, she kinda knew what that was all about already before I was even-- before I even thought about it, so.

Lise: Isn’t that amazing?

- Yeah.

Lise: Now, time has passed.

And I know you’re hoping all of this is to build a bridge to the future which is your son.

Kerry: Yeah.

- And you received some information last night I’d like to talk about.

Kerry: Yeah, yeah.

- Tell me about reaching out for your son.

Kerry: Well, uh, talking to my cousin on the phone, and she had just come up with the information of where my son was.

She found my son, uh, my son’s name.

Uh, the only problem was it was in with a bunch of other um, uh, words or something that needed to be deciphered, and she had to have her codebook to dec-- decipher that.

And, uh, um, so she just told me that she knew of, you know, where my son was.

She had located him, but she didn’t know exactly where he was.

Lise: You must be thrilled to feel like the trail’s getting shorter.

Kerry: It’s, it’s getting shorter.

We’re getting closer.

- Have you been concerned?

I mean, he’s, he’s in the military.

Concerned about his health and his welfare along the way knowing nothing?

Kerry: Well, I figure no news is good news.

You know, he-- and, uh, I know there’s things you can do in the military.

If you hear, if you hear any news, you know, there might be something but, uh, he’s, he’s experiencing, you know, what he has to experience.

Six years in the, in the Airforce.

I mean, he’s, he’s getting the full, the full, you know, range of what you can, you know?

Lise: You’re gonna have a lot to catch up on.

- Oh yeah, especially if he decides he wants to reenlist, so.

- Well, I know that it’s your deepest hope that somehow some way he gets to see this episode.

- Yeah, yeah.

- Which was sort of the impetus to begin with, wasn’t it?

Bridge builder?

- Yes, I got-- I do wanna build that bridge to, to him, to my future.

Lise: Well in fact you know that we’re doing everything in our power to make sure that that does happen, and I really-- This is your story, Kerry, and it’s a, it’s a very intimate story, and I want you to have the last word.

If there’s anything you’d like to say to your son here on the show to reach out, you have the floor, sir.

- Well, uh, Shay, we all miss you.

Uh, we all want to be a part of your life again as you-- to be our-- part of our life.

You’re missing out on a lot of your, uh, your nephews and nieces right now.

And, uh, son we just wanna tell you that we love you, and uh, you know, I’ll lead in myself, and we just long for that day when we all can be reunited again and, uh, enjoy life together, you know?

Finish building that bridge, huh?

Lise: Thank you, Kerry Davis.

- Thank you.

- For sharing this beautiful story.

I know you’re gonna touch others and cause them to reach out to family members as well.

- Well, I appreciate the opportunity.

Thank you so much.

- You bet.

And thank you for watching.

I hope you’ll become a part of our Generations community.

If you choose to do so, just visit us at byutv.org and tell us your story of searching out your family ancestry.

I’m Lise Simms, and I will see you on the next Generations Project.

♪♪