Contributed on November 23, 2007
By: bwatkins
Threads: Lawrence kansas memories
Lawrence, KS

Memories of childhood games, the black social network, the 1960s, and the Mason-Dixon Line

James Barnes was born in North Lawrence in 1934.  He attended Lincoln School, a black elementary school, and dropped out of high school in the eleventh grade.  After he joined the Army, he finished his GED.  He later worked at Dupont and was, at the same time, employed as a janitor by the Lawrence School District and a local physician's office. 

Jane Barnes was born in 1933 in Lawrence.  She attended Pinckney School, an integrated elementary school, junior high, and Liberty Memorial High School.  After graduating from high school in 1952, she worked as a maid at KU's Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority for 29 years before retiring.  Jane and James are married.  They have seven children.

Children's Games

Jane Barnes: We played rubber guns and games like that and then kick the can, hide-and-go seek. We played ball, marbles, and just had a good time playing in the yards.

Social Network

James Barnes: When I was a teenager, I knew just about every black that lived in Eudora.  I knew almost all of the blacks that lived in Ottawa.  I knew just about most of the blacks that lived  in Tonganoxie.  I knew a heck of a lot of them that lived in Topeka.  I knew a few people in Kansas City.  You know, then we went around to all the towns and I just knew a lot of people.  When my kids came along and they were growing up, the only people they knew lived in Lawrence, Kansas.  They hardly knew a soul from any other town.

Segregated Theaters

Jane Barnes: When you go to the movies, we had to take and set up in the balcony, and that was at the Varsity Theater.  And, at the Granada, they would have a white line where we had to sit in back of that line if you went there.  Then you had the Jayhawker Theater and you had to sit up in the balcony.

Memories of the 1960s

James Barnes: I was working for Dupont and I was working for the School Board at the same time when all that was going on.  They had the National Guards sitting around at various places around town to make sure people observed the curfew and there was a lot of tension at the high school.  By me working shift work, I had to leave town at four [p.m.]. But then when I came back in town at 12:30 [a.m.], the National Guard would be sitting up there on Sixth Street, probably phoning my license number in.  He was probably saying, "There's another trouble-maker coming to town to stir up trouble."  But I wasn't. I was just getting off of work.

Shopping and Eating

James Barnes: We used to shop at J.C. Penney's  and  Montgomery Ward.  I think there was some stores downtown that didn't allow blacks in their stores, like Weavers.  I remember we used to go into Litwin's and Brown's. They were across the street from Litwin's, and they were Jewish clothing stores and you seemed to be a lot more welcomed in there than you were in some of the other stores around town. 

When we were growing up in Lawrence, the blacks had their own cafes and places to dance and places to eat.  In fact, they had quite a number.  In North Lawrence they had a place called the Shamrock and had a place called the Golden Arrow.  Then there was the West Side, Green Wood, the Green Gables, and the Blues Bucket.

Traveling to the South

James Barnes: (Going to visit relatives in Mississippi as a child] we would get on the City of St. Louis when it came through Lawrence, and when we got to the Mason and Dixon Line the conductor would come through and say, "ALL OUT!" and all the black people had to get their luggage and move to a little raggedy coach right behind the engine where the smoke and the cinders were coming in, and it was hot even though you paid the same price for your seat as everybody else, and that's the way you rode through the South. Of course, even when you got out you saw signs everywhere "BLACK and WHITE," but it wasn't BLACK in those days. It was "COLOREDS."