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Early Black AA -- Part 1 of 5
EARLY BLACK A.A.
ALONG THE CHICAGO--GARY--SOUTH BEND AXIS
The Stories and Memories of Early Black
Leaders Told in Their Own Words
Editor's introduction: Some of the earliest black A.A. groups in the United States were formed c. 1945-48 along an axis running from Chicago eastward through Gary to South Bend, Indiana. These three cities were linked by an interurban rail line called the South Shore Railroad which made it easy for people to travel back and forth. We know much more at present about early black A.A. in this area than we do about any other part of the United States.
Source: Materials gathered for the Northern Indiana Archival Bulletin, published by the Archives Committee of Northern Indiana Area 22 of Alcoholics Anonymous, and printed in South Bend (contact the Michiana A.A. Central Service Office, 814 E. Jefferson Ave., South Bend, IN 46617).
For further background information: Detailed material about four of the early black A.A. leaders who played a role in this story (Bill Hoover, Jimmy Miller, Brownie and Goshen Bill) can be found in the two-volume series on Lives and Teachings of the A.A. Old Timers in the St. Joseph valley region (northwestern Indiana and southwestern Michigan) put together by Glenn C. (South Bend, Indiana) in 1993-96. This work is due to come out in a second edition at the beginning of 2005, with the two volumes entitled The Factory Owner & the Convict and The St. Louis Gambler & the Railroad Man. Check the http://hindsfoot.org website in January or February 2005 (or the online bookstores) for further information.
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INTERVIEW WITH BILL WILLIAMS
EVANS AVENUE A.A. GROUP IN CHICAGO
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EDITOR'S NOTE: On Saturday, July 17, 1999, three people came from Chicago -- Evans Avenue Bill W. (recently turned ninety-six years old), Jimmy H., and a younger man -- and met at the lakeside home of Frank N. a few miles south of Syracuse, Indiana, a little before lunch time, along with two people from South Bend: Glenn C. and Raymond I., who had arrived a little earlier and had been sitting outside enjoying the serenity of the lake, and watching a family of Canadian geese paddling around the edges. This is the story of early black A.A. Frank and Glenn were the only two white people there, present simply to tape record the conversations.
Bill Williams ("Evans Avenue Bill W.," Chicago) was born in 1904 and spent his early years in East Texas. He eventually ended up in Chicago, where he came into A.A. in 1945, when he was around forty-one years old. At the time of this recording (transcribed below), he had just turned ninety-six. Fifty years earlier, in 1948 and 1949, he had helped the two earliest black members of A.A. in South Bend, Bill Hoover and a woman named Jimmy Miller, at the time when the A.A. program was just getting established in that town.
Jimmy H. (Chicago) is well-known as a dynamic and colorful speaker, who frequently travels to various parts of northern Indiana to give leads. Two weeks earlier he had been one of the featured speakers at the Fourth of July hog roast at Chic L.'s farm along the Elkhart River outside of Goshen, Indiana -- a major annual event which often draws almost a thousand people, traveling from as far away as Ohio to eat, chat, play horseshoes, go on hayrides, and so on.
Raymond I. (South Bend, Indiana) had also come. He first began attending A.A. meetings in 1974 and had been extremely close with the first two black people to enter the A.A. fellowship in South Bend, Bill Hoover and his wife Jimmy Miller. Bill Hoover became his sponsor in 1975. Most people in South Bend A.A. know Raymond, who is the "elder statesman" at Brownie’s at 616 Pierce Street, just off Portage Avenue near downtown South Bend. Brownie's (named after one of the other major black leaders in early South Bend A.A.) is the basement meeting room below a children's daycare center, where numerous A.A. meetings are held every week.
Frank N. (Syracuse, Indiana) came up with the idea of this get together after talking with Jimmy at Chic's hog roast. Frank had come to the event to socialize and enjoy, along with three other members of the Indiana Area 22 Archives Committee -- Floyd P. (Frankton), Klaus K. (Fort Wayne), and Glenn C. (South Bend) -- when he suddenly realized that the elderly Bill W. whom Jimmy was talking about was the same man who had come to South Bend to speak fifty years ago to help get the first black A.A. members in South Bend fully accepted.
Glenn C. (South Bend, Indiana) came along to help Frank tape record and edit the information which Bill Williams and Jimmy H. were going to provide.
When the group was all assembled, everyone sat down in a room with large glass windows looking out over the lake. Frank had trays of cheese and cold cuts and vegetables out on his dining room table, and asked who wanted coffee or a soft drink or something else. Jimmy H., who is a vegetarian and studiously avoids being around cigarette smoke, said he would just fix himself some hot water, while Bill W. asked if Frank could give him a cup of hot tea.
When the tape recorders were turned on, Glenn C., to start things going, read from a transcript of Jimmy Miller's story, and then asked Bill Williams what he himself remembered about those events. Now some background needs to be given here: the first A.A. group in north central Indiana was founded in South Bend on February 22, 1943, by Ken Merrill and Joseph Soulard "Soo" Cates, and quickly began spreading into the surrounding parts of Indiana and Michigan, but it remained a totally white organization until 1948, when two black people in South Bend, Bill Hoover (who died in 1986) and Jimmy Miller (an erect, impressive black woman who was still living at the time of this meeting) asked for help.
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JIMMY MILLER'S STORY
THE FIRST LADY OF BLACK A.A.
IN THE
ST. JOSEPH RIVER VALLEY
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EDITOR'S NOTE: Jimmy Miller (South Bend, Indiana) was born in Wayne, Arkansas, in 1920, but her family moved to South Bend when she was only three months old, so she is essentially a South Bend person. In March of 1993, Raymond I. arranged for Glenn C. to go over to Jimmy Miller’s house and tape record some of her reminiscences for the A.A. archives, including the story of how she and Bill Hoover (South Bend, Indiana) became the firs two black A.A. members in that part of Indiana. After they came into the fellowship, Bill and Jimmy eventually got married, so Jimmy was able to talk at length about Bill’s A.A. career as well as hers. She died around two or three years ago, so we can give her full name now. (This entire conversation is transcribed in Glenn C., The Factory Owner & the Convict, which is due to come out in a second edition in early 2005, see http://hindsfoot.org)
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JIMMY MILLER: I was a periodic drinker. Very much so. When I went out, I stuck to my 7-Up, my Coke. I drank at home. I was a loner. If I had a week’s vacation from a job, I stayed drunk that whole week. I mean drunk! -- go into D.T's, had to go to the doctor. We had an alcoholic doctor .... I found out about this doctor, and I'd go get a shot, and I’m all right. But I ... that was my pattern.
Maybe I would go a year without a drink, because I knew better, because then I would be drunk anywhere from one week to two weeks. But I would make sure it was during my vacation -- never lost a job, never got into financial trouble, no kind of way. But then I knew I had this time to stay drunk.
RAYMOND: It's cunning, it's baffling, and it's powerful.
JIMMY MILLER: But I knew I'd get drunk, because I know there was something wrong. The reason I didn't drink when I'd get out, go out: I knew better. I was going to get drunk! I knew that I would be clear drunk for at least a week, so I had to plan these things.
And I used to tell my mother, that I knew better. She said, "Oh honey, you don’t need no help. You just drink sometimes." So she would go and get, like, get the neighbor to go get me two or three pints of whiskey, and I'm quite young, maybe seventeen, sixteen, and when I started drinking she would hand me a pint. I'd go on up to my room. She'd check on me, or she'd bring me soup to eat. And I said, "Mama, I've got to be an alcoholic." And she said, "Naw, my baby gone stop one day." But she was ....
RAYMOND: ... Enabling.
JIMMY MILLER: She never .... No, I think she did the best thing she could do.
When I drank the whole fifth of vodka, that was my last drink. I decided to go to drink me a fifth of vodka, it was just coming out [on the American market]. So I drunk this fifth, I was working at the cleaners.
I blundered at work that morning, the temperature was about 115 [degrees Fahrenheit] in there. I worked for a solid week, without anything on my stomach but a drink of water. I'd get off from work, I'd make it as far as getting on the floor and I would stretch out. It almost killed me.
I didn't have no more afterwards. But like Ray Moore say [he was an Irishman, who became Jimmy and Bill's sponsor when they came into A.A.], he was surprised by me being a periodic drinker. To know that I was an alcoholic.
And you know, then I went to send and get all this literature. I was ecstatic at something.
Then I couldn’t get into A.A.
EDITOR'S NOTE: Jimmy made a phone call to the A.A. number in South Bend, but this was 1948, and she was told bluntly over the telephone that Alcoholics Anonymous was for white people only. However, unknown to her, Bill Hoover (who was also black) had also called the South Bend A.A. number about the same time, so a certain amount of soul searching had begun among a few of the A.A. leaders. Jimmy did not know that Bill had also phoned the A.A. number, but she did know who Bill was.
JIMMY MILLER: I had known Bill since '36 or '37. He and one of my brothers was strong alcoholics, so they was running buddies. They used to just say, "Mama, I'm going to sleep on the porch" (in them days you slept on the porch) and him and Bill would drink all night long. You know, I had known Bill for years, never thinking that we would ever marry.
RAYMOND: Talking about [your brother] Luxedie?
JIMMY MILLER: No, my brother Jesse. He was a "sophisticated drunk."
JIMMY MILLER: Bill and I had called in three days apart .... they didn’'t have any set up for colored people (that's what we were called) .... [first Bill phoned them for help, and then] I called in, and they also told me they didn't have any setup for "colored people."
And at the time that Bill called in, Ray Moore was there, and he heard this remark -- they didn't have anything for colored people -- so he said, "That's all right, I'll take it." So they tried to discourage him, but anyway, he made the call on Bill.
Three days later I called in, so he brought Bill over to my house, and he said, well he would sponsor us. Only they told him -- they didn't have any set up for colored whatsoever -- we couldn't come to the open meetings or the closed meetings, so Ray had brought two of his friends with him.
GLENN C.: He was an Irishman?
JIMMY MILLER: Uh-huh. Dunbar [came with him], and the other one was Ken Merrill. So in the meantime, they decided we could meet from house to house, so we met at my house, Bill's house, [and at the homes of] Ken Merrill and Dunbar.
EDITOR'S NOTE: Bill Hoover, and Raymond I. (whom he later sponsored), were convinced that it was not simply coincidence, but the power of God at work, that made these two particular people -- Jimmy and Bill -- call into A.A. at the same time. And Bill Hoover was convinced that it was the power of God at work that made Ray Moore, an otherwise perfectly ordinary Irishman who had a job at the Bendix plant, insist on making the twelfth step call on these two black people in spite of the stiff opposition from within the A.A. group itself.
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