A South End Holiday.
Remembering a neighborhood from a time gone by
This time of year always brings back memories of Christmases from my childhood. The result of my reminiscing is that my wife, siblings, and of course, my adult children are subjected to lengthy retellings of stories they’ve no doubt heard many times before. To their credit, they listen politely, laughing in all the right places.
Some of my most cherished recollections are of childhood Christmases in Little Rock, Arkansas.
Before we moved away midway through my seventh grade year, we lived in a three-bedroom rental in Little Rock's South End neighborhood. My parents had reunited after being separated for a time, and 2815 Marshall Street was to be the site of their reconciliation.
After our father spent weeks preparing the fixer-upper for our arrival, the tidy, one-story home with its windowed den overlooking a big, sloping backyard, was perfect for our young family. For me and my three younger brothers, this was an opportunity to reacquaint ourselves with the man who would help our mother raise us to adulthood.
Our neighborhood’s transition from all white to one hundred percent Black was all but complete. Aside from Mrs. Pearl, the elderly woman who paid me a few dollars to tend her yard, the neighborhood's other white residents had fled the South End for the rising suburbs of West Little Rock.
Little Rock was a city still in the grip of Jim Crow. But as a Black fourth grader, I hardly noticed the system that surrounded me. It was all I’d ever known.
Our new stomping grounds consisted of block after block of single story homes. Each home contained at least one child, so it was the perfect environment for hide-and-seek or the touch football games we played in the street.
Jim, a boy from the next block over, was the first to befriend me. In no time, I became friends with the bow-legged boy with an ever-present grin in no time.
We inseparable. When I joined the Boy Scout troop at the Unitarian church my family occasionally attended, Jim joined soon after. It was a win-win; Jim’s presence kept me from being the only Black face in Troop 503’s weekly meetings, and he was introduced to a world he otherwise would not have known.
On summer days, my brothers and I were left to our own devices while our parents were at work. As the oldest of our foursome, I was responsible for making sure that chores were done, and using the few dollars left behind each day to organize lunch. Around lunchtime, I’d climb the gravelly, one-block road that technically was 29th Street, or I'd make the longer walk down Marshall to the white-owned grocer.
With autumn came school. On weekday mornings, I’d head down 28th, past Bishop Street, to High Street. When Wyatt, who was three years my junior, began the first grade he joined me on my daily trek to school.
Our morning bus stop was only a few blocks away from the home of Daisy Bates, the civil rights activist who’d organized the “Little Rock Nine,” the group of Black students who integrated Central High School ten years earlier.
Aside from our satchels of educational essentials, Wyatt and I were equipped with five dimes apiece; two coins for our fare on the city bus, and three for lunch at Rightsell Elementary, the segregated school the two of us attended. Once aboard the bus, we settled in for the fifteen-minute ride to the corner of 19th and High Street. From there, it was a short walk to begin our day.
Ninth Street, Wright Avenue, and Roosevelt Road—the unofficial boundary of where the South End began—were the veins running from east to west through the city’s Black neighborhoods. High Street was the north-south artery that connected to each of them.
Beginning at the end of Woodlawn Street, which ran the length of the State Capitol grounds, High Street continued southward, slicing through residential communities. At 37th Street, the street transformed into High Drive, encircling a small subdivision of the same name.
A perverse side effect of the town’s embrace of apartheid was that it necessarily required an alternative ecosystem of businesses to provide services to its Black residents.
West Ninth Street was considered the official Black business district, however, the two-and-a-half-mile stretch spawned a unique ecosystem of businesses and professional enterprises. There were doctor’s offices, law firms, barbershops, retail stores and restaurants peppering the area—all Black-owned.
Adjacent to Arkansas Baptist College, the W.G. Hall Building at 16th and High Street was a business hub that included Woods Barber & Beauty, and Soul Brother’s Record Shop, the city’s first Black-owned record store. Ballard’s Barbecue, one-third of Little Rock’s “Barbecue Triangle” which included Fisher’s Bar-B-Q on 12th and Pulaski, and Sims Bar-B-Que on 33rd, was also nearby.
Side note: My mother was no fan of Sims’ mustard-based barbecue sauce, and she staunchly avoided patronizing Fisher’s, I suspect because, although it was Black-owned, the restaurant segregated its Black and white customers. Ballard’s chopped pork sandwich, with its spicy, tomato-based sauce was, in her opinion, second only to her homemade recipe. Years after the closure of Ballard's, however, she came around to Sims' brand of smoked pork ribs.
Midway between 28th and 29th on High was Sears’s Barber Shop, where I went for a haircut when my mother wasn’t up to the task. The Murphy-Jeffries Building anchored a smaller business district. Andrew Jeffries, a Black insurance and real estate broker, acquired the building in 1963 from John and Ethel Murphy. From its location between 29th and 30th Streets, the business became an incubator for shepherding African Americans as they built their professional careers.
When Christmas approached, we poured over toy catalogs that arrived in the mail. We gathered around our black-and-white Zenith to watch “A Charlie Brown Christmas”, and “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” just as we had the year before.
As the big day drew closer, my parents debated over the Christmas dinner menu. My father, who was the head chef of the newly established Pleasant Valley Country Club, preferred a meal centered around a gigantic prime rib, while my mother insisted on a traditional meal of turkey and dressing. Rather than let their disagreement escalate to the point of no return, they decided to prepare both menus.
When Christmas Day finally arrived, my brothers and I received every toy we’d requested. Still believing in the mythology of the season, we marveled at Santa’s benevolence. Somehow, our parents managed to shield us from the financial reality of our circumstances.
As our family dove into the cornucopia of food, I noticed Jim walking by our house from the picture window in our living room. A few minutes later, I saw him walking by again, this time in the opposite direction. Jim continued this process for several minutes, each time stealing a glance through the window in our living room.
Noticing Jim’s back-and-forth, our parents exchanged glances. “Is that boy hungry?” my mother asked, already pushing her chair from the table. Without waiting for a reply, she was at the door, calling out to Jim. Before we knew it, she escorted the boy to our dining room table. Jim ate Christmas dinner with us that year, no questions asked.
On New Year's Day, my Uncle Calvin arrived at our front door like clockwork, carrying on the tradition that, as with collard greens and black-eyed peas, having a man as the home’s first visitor of the year ensured good fortune for the next twelve months.
This holiday season, my wife and I managed to watch Charlie Brown’s Christmas program, despite our two children's preference for Polar Express. And as in years past, those halcyon days returned to the forefront of memory.
It's a time to remember the bus rides, touch football in the street, and the Christmas dinner I once shared with my first best friend. I find myself scanning the internet, searching for reminders of what once was.
But like so much of the South End, my Marshall Street neighborhood is little more than a patchwork of vacant lots. Jim Crow is gone, but so too are the shops, restaurants, and the Black business owners who gave High Street—now Dr. Martin Luther King Drive—a flavor all its own.
In their places are an assortment of convenience stores and chicken franchises, the obligatory liquor store, and of course, a charter school.
They say you can never go back. My youth was spent moving to a new place every 2 to 3 years because of Dad’s job. There are pluses and minuses to that. I did come to find out that when you leave, the world quickly picks up its business without you. D’aint no going back.
Thank you for sharing a bit of your childhood with us!