Neighborhood Culture

 They really, they you know they always spoke about you know the good times, the fact that it was a traditional neighborhood. Uh it was a neighborhood in which uhm black people were very affluent, uh they had, many of them had their own businesses, and it was a—it was just really a very tight-knit community uh everyone knew everybody. Uh adults could chastise anybody’s child if they were doing wrong, that kind of thing. It was sort of like a community you’d see on T.V. like The Waltons or something. It was the type of environment where a neighbor could borrow a cup of sugar, a cup of flour—maybe adults could be out talking across the fence, so to speak and somebody could tell a child, “Baby, go in the house, go in my house and, and check on those peas that were on the stove and turn them off.” Uh, people didn’t lock their doors. People as a whole, they uhm slept on the porch if they wanted to when it was hot yeah during the summer because they had screened-in porches, lot of people did.

It’s, it’s a different culture. Different feeling. It’s just different now.

That’s another thing, you know like I was mentioning earlier, uh you know adults could chastise other people’s children. You didn’t bring shame to your family. So, yeah you were hoping word didn’t get out that Miss Brown or, or, or Mr. White had to say something to you. You were hoping it didn’t get back to your parents you know, yeah.

Phyllis Theresa Shepherd, History Harvest Interviewee

The Rosedale neighborhood's culture centered on honor, hard work and respectability. Community members looked out for one another, checked up on houses and children, and contributed to the sense of security that many Rosedaleans remember fondly. Parents reprimanded any child on the streets, shared stories "over the fence" and kept tabs on any potential troublemakers in the streets. Despite the racial challenges of living in segregated Alabama, most Rosedalean children can't remember ever feeling unsafe or feeling want. Adults in Rosedale worked tirelessly to create an environment of peace within the borders of their community. Harriet Hall Pullom, a lifelong resident, recalls the joint effort to produce a comfortable life: 

"I think-I don't think we understood the challenge until we got older. I think because if I had sugar, you had sugar. If I had something you didn't have, then you could ask me for it and they would provide it. We used to call it like a cup, if you didn't have sugar then you sent next door and said, “Tell Mrs. so and so to send me a cup of sugar.” And if you needed something—and everybody on our street didn't have a telephone so if one person had a phone, it was the community's phone, you know they would say, “Go down the street and tell so and so they have a call,” so I don't think we really understood just how poor we were, because we never felt that. Because our parents never, never let us feel that way. Because if we needed something, there was going to be a way for us to get it. I can remember that, when we had to go to Edgewood and the Homewood High School and the middle school our parents got together, and they got a bus. You know they put their money, their resources together--we had a bus to take us to school because the school system did not provide that for us, so our parents always made sure that we had what we needed."

"I tell people this constantly, I have seen grown men in my lifetime, behave and show more respect than I see in a six-year old today. The guys in the neighborhood, dependent on who it was, if it was one of the deacons, or one of the pastors, I've seen those men literally stand still and would not move until that person walked by--because they knew they were--that they had drunk a little bit, they would be stumbling a little bit, and they did not want Mr. Benson to see them stumble, did not want Mr. Granger to see them stumble, they would stand right there and not move until they got out the way and then they would start moving. So that shows you, they knew what they were doing, but they had been taught you respect your elders and that's what they did. And even when we were playing as kids, the different houses that were the houses, everyone knew who they were, where they were, if it got a little bit rowdy, we were out in the street playing, the guys would come out and they start to get rowdy, they would say “Kids outside playing, take it in the house.” And they would literally stop, and go back in the house. But that was the culture. That was just the culture of the neighborhood. And it was a vibrant, working community. All of our parents worked. But everyone looked out for each other. No one locked the door. I mean that was just psh! In fact that wasn’t even thought of. Sitting on the porch watching everybody go by. Sitting on the porch until one or two o’clock in the morning. And you know, didn’t think a thing about it."

Each oral history housed within the Rosedale Memory Project Archive shares a unique human perspective on Rosedale's past and sheds a new light on the cultural practices of the neighborhood. While many aspects of the Rosedale community have changed over the past fifty years, the memories collected reveal individual interpretation and experience of what Rosedale was like. For more oral histories or memories of Rosedale culture, please browse not only the Rosedale Memory Project Oral Histories but also those of S.T.O.R.I (link and more information found on "About the Project" page).