BILL  WILLIAMS

CONTINUES  HIS  STORY

BILL WILLIAMS: I said, "The thing of it is, and I know -- I ain't dumb, I ain't stupid -- I may be dumb, but I'm not stupid. The point is, if there's only one seat here -- that's just this one seat that's open -- your wife come to this meeting, you don't want her sitting there close to me." I said, "That's it." The guy looked at me! And .... I said, "She’s not thinking about me, and I’m not thinking about her. I got my wife at home. I’m not thinking about [your wife]."

So further come to further. Look at me, and they smile. They say, "Yeah," said, "that's it, Bill."

I said, "I know it is ...."

JIMMY H.: And that made it better there in South Bend when you guys got together.

GLENN: Do you remember? -- does anybody know? -- were they having the open meetings at St. James church at that point, or was it at the Hotel LaSalle?

RAYMOND: Bill [Hoover] said it was at St. James Cathedral.

JIMMY H.: Yeah, I think he told me that -- that was later on. When did he die? Bill, Bill -- cause I met Bill Hoover.

RAYMOND: He just die about ’85, ’86.

JIMMY H.: Yeah, cause I was up there before he died. And he came to that meeting -- that was Brownie -- but didn't they have a meeting named after him there, didn't they have a . . . ?

BILL WILLIAMS: Bill Hoover?

JIMMY H.: Bill Hoover.

BILL WILLIAMS: Yes, there’s a group named after Bill Hoover.

RAYMOND: "Interracial Group."

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THE  INTERRACIAL  GROUP

&  BROWNIE'S

Two early South Bend answers to racism

The two most influential black leaders in South Bend A.A. during the early period were Bill Hoover, who died in 1986, and Brownie (Harold Brown), who came into A.A. around 1950, shortly after these events, and died in 1983.

Brownie

Brownie was a quite flamboyant speaker who did powerful leads, spent more time doing things with the white A.A. members, and was perhaps better known by them. There was a weekly group meeting in South Bend which was known even after his death simply as "Brownie's meeting." Bill Williams and Jimmy H. were partially confusing Brownie and Bill Hoover. But Brownie was also extremely important. The large basement meeting room at 616 Pierce Street, just off Portage Avenue near downtown South Bend, is currently referred to as "Brownie's," because of its linkage with Harold Brown's heritage. One can see the old barber's chair (no one remembers where it originally came from) in which Brownie would sit during meetings. There are a number of A.A. meetings held there every week, attended by a relatively equal mix of white and black people.

There are also A.A. groups still making month-long pilgrimages to Brownie's every year from many miles away, to do honor to him and Nick Kowalski (a Polish brick layer and ex-con who had found A.A. while imprisoned in the Indiana state penitentiary at Michigan City for murder). These are white A.A.'s, who received the message either from Red K., who had had Brownie and Nick as his sponsors, or from some of the people whom Red in turn had sponsored. The spiritual message which one heard from Brownie (who was black) and his friend Nick (who was white) was so powerful that it could bring alcoholics from drunkenness and anger to sobriety and serenity of life even at second and third hand. There is a group from Ann Arbor, Michigan, making this pilgrimage every year, as well as several groups from Chicago and its suburbs. There is also a group in Lansing, Michigan, which sometimes comes to South Bend, and another group in Bloomington in southern Indiana, which invites people from Brownie's like Raymond to speak to them. There are also supposed to be groups as far away as Florida and the New York City area composed of people who continue to honor Brownie's and Nick's memories.

Bill Hoover and the Interracial Group

The meeting with which Bill Hoover was most closely associated was officially called the "Interracial Group," to signal clearly, to anyone reading through the list of A.A. meetings, that there would be numerous black people present at that meeting. When there were enough black members in South Bend, they rented a building on Ardmore Trail and set up what they called an Interracial Club House, to continue the work that had been begun in the house meetings in Bill Hoover's home.

A later version of the Interracial Group was revived around 1975, when some of the black A.A.'s in South Bend again were feeling unwanted and out of place in many of the white groups. Some blacks felt that they could not talk openly in white meetings about many of their deepest resentments and fears: as this faction among the black A.A.'s perceived it, the white dominated meetings allowed white alcoholics, especially if they were newcomers, to be angry and obnoxious on occasion (at least up to a point), whereas black members were expected to be genial, smiling Uncle Toms at all times. This revived Interracial Group continued on for a few years after Bill Hoover's death in 1986, but the last mention of it in the meeting list put out by the South Bend-Mishawaka A.A. Central Service Office was in 1990 -- it seems to have died off at the end, because certainly by the 1990's there were many A.A. groups in the area which had both black and white members and where everyone present felt comfortable talking about anything they wanted. Some had just a few black members, but there were other groups where some of the black members played the major leadership role and at least 40% of the people present would be black. A group which was specially labeled the "Interracial Group" seemed like an anachronism by then.

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SOUTH  BEND  IN  1948  AND  1949

Raymond and Jimmy H.'s Summary

EDITOR'S NOTE: Raymond I. and Jimmy H. then summarized what they felt was the real significance of what happened in South Bend back in 1948 and 1949, based upon what they already knew, and what Bill Williams had talked about so movingly today.

RAYMOND: Tell me, here's something I never got straight. Bill say it was either you or Earl Redmond, one of you all made the statement, "Same whiskey as get a white man drunk, 'll get a black man drunk."

BILL WILLIAMS: Earl made that one.

RAYMOND: That was Earl ....

JIMMY H.: Yeah, one of the main reasons, I believe, after they came -- I'm just carrying around, cause he told the story already. But I'm just saying, after he came -- after they came -- and then they got in harmony, and they said "You're right," and so they got together, and I think they open up the doors. Everybody got in the spirit, and ... that's the main thing ....

RAYMOND: After he left, after he came and talked, Ken Merrill, he played piano, and in playing the piano, this was the way of accepting blacks into the program -- Ken Merrill. I wasn't there now.

BILL WILLIAMS: I was there.

RAYMOND: But you said, after they played the piano, this was making the amends.

JIMMY H.: And I hear what was said, and so I know now how it got started, how that integration came about -- spiritually -- not officially through politics. Because I found out something here today, and I've heard it leaped through, but I heard it talked though and lived through here.

EDITOR'S NOTE: The small black (or actually interracial) A.A. group in Chicago was for two or three years an absolutely vital support to Bill Hoover and Jimmy Miller in South Bend, and the small group of black A.A.'s that started to form around them there in north central Indiana beginning in 1948, 1949, and 1950. Bill W. made a few more comments about that period, and how he and the Chicago people had helped.

BILL WILLIAMS: Oh, about three years one of us came -- one, two, or three of us -- came over here every Sunday afternoon ... whatever time it was.

GLENN: To support the people in South Bend. To support those people in South Bend.

BILL WILLIAMS: Yeah. Cause, see at points it was just Bill and some woman -- I forget her name -- black woman.

RAYMOND and GLENN: Jimmy.

BILL WILLIAMS: That was the only two it was.