Abstract
The interview with Mary Helen Washington focuses on her childhood and early life in Cleveland, Ohio, her education, and her experiences with segregation. She describes growing up in a working-class Black family, her parents' migration to Ohio, and the importance of neighborhood-based recreation due to limited formal opportunities for Black children at the time. She discusses attending Catholic schools, where she experienced a racial and social divide between her predominantly white academic environment and her Black social life. Washington reflects on her time at Camp Mueller, a summer camp run by the Phillis Wheatley Association, detailing her excitement, the types of activities available, and the social dynamics between different groups of campers. She describes her admiration for the camp's staff but also recounts her attempts to run away. The interview also touches on Cleveland’s racial segregation, particularly in education, employment, and recreation, as well as her family’s outdoor activities and experiences in parks.
Interviewee
Washington, Mary Helen (interviewee)
Interviewer
Abdullah-Smith, Hazim (interviewer)
Project
Phillis Wheatley Association
Date
12-11-2024
Document Type
Oral History
Duration
34 minutes
Recommended Citation
"Mary Helen Washington interview, 11 December 2024" (2024). Cleveland Regional Oral History Collection. Interview 110010.
https://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/crohc000/1363
Transcript
Hazim Abdullah-Smith [00:00:01] Hi, this is Hazim Abdullah Smith calling on behalf of Cuyahoga Valley national park. And thank you for agreeing to speak with me today. Could I ask you to introduce yourself, please?
Mary Helen Washington [00:00:18] Mary Helen Washington. I am Emerita Professor, Distinguished professor of English, the University of Maryland, College Park. I am a scholar of African American literature specializing in African American women’s literature and literature of the left, especially during the Cold War era. Also have done several anthologies on black women that were the earliest to introduce black women writers in the US And I have just completed the manuscript for a biography of Paule Marshall, and it will be called “Paule Marshall: A Writer’s Life,” and it will be published by Yale University Press in February 2026.
Hazim Abdullah-Smith [00:01:18] Thank you. It’s an honor to speak with you today. I wanted to ask you some questions that bring you back to your childhood. First, could you state what year you were born?
Mary Helen Washington [00:01:30] 1941. January.
Hazim Abdullah-Smith [00:01:34] And where were you born and in what neighborhoods did you grow up?
Mary Helen Washington [00:01:39] Born in Cleveland, Ohio. At that time, I think it would have been called just the east side, Cleveland, the Glendale area.
Hazim Abdullah-Smith [00:01:51] And were your parents from Ohio originally or had they migrated to Ohio?
Mary Helen Washington [00:01:59] Both migrants. My father migrated from Georgia and my mother from Indianapolis.
Hazim Abdullah-Smith [00:02:08] And what was it like for them?
Mary Helen Washington [00:02:11] And before that, my grandmother from Kentucky.
Hazim Abdullah-Smith [00:02:15] And what was a little bit about what your parents were like and what they did for livings?
Mary Helen Washington [00:02:23] My father was what they called a. A bank messenger. He did all of the inter-… Interbank business. So at that time there was no Internet, so all of the bank business had to be done by car. And so he did, you know, he transferred money and documents from one bank to the other. My mother eventually became a homemaker, but before that she was a chef at the Cleveland Trust Bank. Very excellent chef.
Hazim Abdullah-Smith [00:03:05] What were some of the activities that you enjoyed doing as a child for recreation and fun?
Mary Helen Washington [00:03:15] You know, one of the things about my mother is that, you know, there were eight of us, and my mother was very, very good at keeping us all involved with things in the neighborhood that didn’t cost money. So we always had games. We always had all of our jump ropes and we had our paper dolls. We had our balls and bicycles and whatever we needed, you know, coloring books, all of that. She kept stashes of those around the house. So that was one of, you know, the main things we did, I’m thinking, during the summer and then, you know, in the wintertime, because again, there weren’t a lot of activities for black kids in Cleveland. We sat by the radio and listened to radio programs. I think you’ll find that’s A staple of people who were children in the 40s and 50s, that they were very much attached to radio programs. We did picnics and, you know, I had a lot of aunts, I think five aunts and two uncles. So they were people who came and took us to the park and to the circus and to the. What else am I thinking of? The zoos and all of that. So we got to, you know, spend a lot of time with my aunts and uncles. We went to their houses for many occasions.
Hazim Abdullah-Smith [00:04:52] And what about your school life? What school did you go to or what type of school did you go to growing up?
Mary Helen Washington [00:04:59] I went mostly to Catholic school. I started off in the public school that was at the corner. And all of us did. We all started our first years in Parkwood Elementary. But as soon as we could ride the bus, we all were transferred to Catholic school. And that was St. Thomas Aquinas, run by the Sisters of St. Joseph nuns. Very strict and a very strong and stable kind of elementary education. I left elementary school in the eighth grade because we. Those schools at that time went all the way from kindergarten to eighth grade. And I went across the street to a wonderful school called Notre Dame Academy. And that was one of the best schools in Cleveland, one of the most prestigious schools in Cleveland, with probably the most excellent curriculum and the most excellent faculty that you can imagine. So I got a really good education in the sciences, the arts there with teachers who were, all of whom were nuns, but teachers who were completely dedicated to education and completely dedicated to the formation of young girls. So that was. You know, those four years were really exciting and very satisfying. And I think I could say that that was the place that set me off on to the intellectual life, sent me onto an intellectual life, because those nuns really did inspire you to intellectual work. So it was really a dream school.
Hazim Abdullah-Smith [00:06:52] In terms of school and social life. How did being a black girl affect your experience in school as well as how you form relationships in your neighborhood? So, I know it’s a lot, but what comes to mind in terms of social opportunities and life, social life in school and out of school?
Mary Helen Washington [00:07:16] The first thing that comes to mind is this sense of a split self. You know, you were one person in the neighborhood, but going to a predominantly white school, you know, highly prestigious school, that was my other life. And so I really always felt that kind of division that in. In one area I had social friends and parties and dances, and then the other one, it was all about education. And I think, you know, because it was also a black, white split, it Made… Well, I don’t know. In a way, my sisters, who were, two older sisters, kind of gave me the model for just how to handle that. And I think we handle it pretty well. You had, you know, if you were black in those days, you had to learn to dance. And, you know, we learned to dance, you know, on the weekends and learn to, you know, socialize and go to parties and just not ever expect to be part of a white social world. That the white world was the world of school and the black world was all the rest of it. And I think it was very. It didn’t seem hard so much hard to manage then as it seemed… I guess there were times when it seemed strange that the music white girls played was so different from what we, you know, played and danced to. The sense that they lived in a neighborhood that was off limits was very clear. Not that we ever, you know, in any kind of conscious way, said, you know, you can’t go there, but you just didn’t go there. And Cleveland was very much a divided city, you know, because the immigrants who came to Cleveland, mostly Eastern European immigrants or Irish or Italian, all established their own ethnic neighborhoods. And I don’t think they did it entirely out of prejudice, but it ended up being a kind of prejudice because those were the neighborhoods for white people. And Cleveland was divided by the Cuyahoga River. So on one side was the west side, and the other side is the east side. And gradually, more and more white people moved to the west side, and more and more black people stayed on the east side. So there was a geographical division there. And in a lot of ways, it was so seamless that only a few things would make you realize how segregated Cleveland was. And one of the things. I remember a friend who lived down the street. She was one of the youngest mothers, but she was quite a bit older than me, told me that when the 55th Street Market, which is on the east side, opened, they didn’t hire any black people to work in it until, I think his name was John O. Holly, and he was a councilman, and he started a boycott of the 55th Street Market. And in no time at all, they were hiring black people to work at the cash registers. But that just goes to show you just how deeply segregated it was that they could open up a market right in the heart of the black neighborhood and absolutely not hire black people. When I look back on it, that’s what I think about Cleveland. I think about how clearly it was segregated, but how little, I don’t want to say how little we noticed, how we adjusted to it. So the downtown department stores, for example, because you remember now we’re Talking about the 40s and 50s when there were no malls, there were, you know, these high rise department stores. Well, nobody black worked on any of those floors unless they worked in the, in the back rooms or they worked in the laundry or they worked in the kitchen. And, you know, these are major institutions in downtown Cleveland. But there was no hiring of black people at a cash register.
Hazim Abdullah-Smith [00:11:42] Thank you.
Mary Helen Washington [00:11:43] That’s my, my impression of, of Cleveland. You know, I think as soon as you ask me about early Cleveland, those are the things I think about.
Hazim Abdullah-Smith [00:11:52] Thank you for the rich response. When it comes to some of the activities mentioned, like with segregation, what were some of the activities that might have been popular amongst the white children at Catholic school that maybe weren’t available to black children? And what were some of the activities that you learned about, whether that was summer camp or a place to hang out? What were some of the activities that you kind of learned about from social life as a girl?
Mary Helen Washington [00:12:32] One of the things that I, I remember very clearly learning about in the ninth grade, because that was my first year at Notre Dame Academy, and I was meeting new white students, and they were all girls, of course. And the first thing I remember about meeting them is the things that they did in the summer because, you know, it’s September and they’re coming in to school from camp and they would be talking about CYO camp and that’s Catholic Youth Organization camps, and they had all kinds of songs that they would sing and, you know, memories of camp. And I remember that the person who was in charge of CYO was a Monsignor Corrigan. And Monsignor Corrigan was actually the chaplain at Notre Dame Academy. So, you know, I was in his presence Often. black kids did not go to CYO camp, period. And CYO camp was really inexpensive. And that was because, you know, these black immigrant kids didn’t have a lot of money. So whatever they charged, it was, it was, it was a small amount. And if they charged them anything at all. But I know all of those white girls went to CYO camp in the summer. And, you know, I was always kind of just intrigued by the things that they came back and talked about. But I never thought for a moment that I could go to those camps. They were Catholic, and I knew if they were Catholic, they were white.
Hazim Abdullah-Smith [00:14:13] And did you have any friends or opportunities to go to a summer camp? And around what year do you estimate that was?
Mary Helen Washington [00:14:23] I almost sure it was 1950. Well, I’m almost sure it was ’51 or ’52. It was either one of those years, because I came back. I think when I came back, I was in the seventh grade, so I was about 12, either 11 or 12 around, you know, maybe ’51. And that’s when the young girl across the street, her parents knew about this Camp Mueller that was run by the Phillis Wheatley Association. And I just begged my parents and my aunts to send me. But again, I remember exactly that. It cost $25 for two weeks. And, you know, my parents did not have that kind of money, but I found that I had this little savings account that I had kept when I was in grade school, and I had $12.50, and my aunt gave me the other $12.50, and I went to Camp Mueller. And I was just, you know, so enthralled because I had never, ever had an entree to a camp.
Hazim Abdullah-Smith [00:15:34] And do you remember how you got down to the camp? Do you remember riding a bus? Or did your parents drop you off? What was it like?
Mary Helen Washington [00:15:42] My parents dropped me off somewhere, and then we all got on the bus together. So I know we went there on a bus, some kind of chartered bus, or it might have even been a Phillis Wheatley bus, but we got dropped off in front of the Phillis Wheatley.
Hazim Abdullah-Smith [00:16:00] What were your expectations for summer camp going into the experience? Were you anxious? Were you excited? What were kind of some of the hopes and expectations going into it?
Mary Helen Washington [00:16:13] Oh, I think I was just totally excited. I was going with my girlfriend across the street, and we had been friends for a long time. She was excited. Her parents were excited. I think my mother was not quite as excited because she always wanted to keep me near to her, but I was very excited. And, you know, they had handed out some kind of brochure, because I remember on it they had activities, including. It was canoeing and swimming and archery, and they had pictures of all of these things. And, of course, when I got to camp, the disappointment was that they didn’t have all of those activities. They had a beautiful, beautiful swimming pool, though. They had built that swimming pool. And they hired a wonderful swim teacher. I just remember that she was in college, maybe in Ohio State, but in any case, she was very good teacher. And the pool was so beautiful. That was the highlight for me of every day, because we had swim every day, either for an hour or two hours, probably an hour. But they. And. And they had crafts. They. They did crafts in the tents. And, you know, I. I remember them teaching us songs, but it was a kind of bare camp. The tents were beautiful. We didn’t have cabins, but the tents were very nice. And the other thing, you know, I think that made me have such a miserable time, because I did have a pretty miserable time, was that they had, Phyllis Wheatley had, reached out to some of the girls who couldn’t afford camp. And so there was a whole level of girls there that, you know, socially very different from the way I was raised. Some of them were older. You know, here I was. I was probably at the Most, I was 12. And some of these girls were 15. And so they were, you know, a little bit more adult. You know, you could tell they had been around. Some of them were cursing, which is something that I had never, ever done or know, even heard. So that was. I think that was my. The biggest problem I had at the camp was there weren’t girls that I felt comfortable with. And then, you know, here I am coming from a mostly white school and, you know, I’m very, very. I guess now they would call you nerdy, and these girls are all kind of hip. But they had wonderful counselors. I just remember, because one was a public school teacher and then there was a swim teacher. But they were all. They seemed elegant to me. And that one who was in charge, her name was Tommy Patty. And I remember that just because it was such a strange name. She was tall and quite beautiful. And I just felt that they were women of a real stature. You know, they carried themselves elegantly and, you know, they brought a kind of dignity to the camp. They just, you know, there just wasn’t enough for us to do. I think it was. I think the camp was, you know, pretty much on a shoestring. And maybe it was just getting started at the time. I don’t know, maybe it was in its early days.
Hazim Abdullah-Smith [00:20:21] And going back to the swimming pool, do you recall how the swimming lessons were structured? Was it kind of one on one coaching, or was it more just open play? And how did that. I guess. What did you notice about how people enjoyed or didn’t enjoy the swimming lessons in the pool?
Mary Helen Washington [00:20:45] First of all, I can tell you that there was no playing around in the pool when you were having a lesson. And I also, I mean, I don’t remember anybody else being in the pool but me and this teacher. But I know she started off with what she called rhythmic breathing. I mean, this is how clear clearly this all is to me. We had to start doing rhythmic breathing. And then we did something where you had to keep your head in the water. And then you went from that to floating, and then you floated on your stomach, you floated on your back. And then she put the arms together with the legs. I remember each one of those steps. It was a very, very rigorous and very good lesson, but there was always a lesson. They wanted us to learn how to swim, and I did.
Hazim Abdullah-Smith [00:21:47] Did they ever talk about why there was an emphasis on building that pool and making sure that the lessons were available? You recall?
Mary Helen Washington [00:21:57] No. I mean, I’m. I’m 11 years old, so I don’t know. They’re not talking about that to me.
Hazim Abdullah-Smith [00:22:04] Were there any. Oh, go ahead.
Mary Helen Washington [00:22:06] I could see that even as a child, that was really, you know, quite a state of the art pool.
Hazim Abdullah-Smith [00:22:15] Were there any mischievous activities or disobedience that you engaged in during your time in camp?
Mary Helen Washington [00:22:24] It was just me. You know, I ran away. I ran away, I think, twice. And the first time, when we got to the. I got all the way to the Greyhound bus station, and my girlfriend from across the street got the cramps, and I couldn’t leave her, so I had to go back. The second time, I must have gone by myself, but they found me. They came out with the station wagon and put me in. And on the way back, they sang camp songs. And I was not, you know, I was not moved at all. I still didn’t want to go back. I just wanted to go home.
Mary Helen Washington [00:23:03] And, you know, I don’t know why they didn’t just send me home, But I think part of it was, you know, the expense of trying to, you know, take one child and. See, that’s also part of the problem with the camp. They didn’t have counseling where they would call you in, you know, talk to you and try to make you feel at home there. They didn’t have that kind of staff. And then, as I say, I was in a cabin with these girls who totally intimidated me.
Hazim Abdullah-Smith [00:23:42] Is there anything else you recall about some of the daily rituals at camp, Such as the food served in the dining hall or.
Mary Helen Washington [00:23:53] I remember there was a. Yeah, there was a nice dining hall, and they served excellent food. The food was just fabulous. Because when I got back home, I remember my mother saying, you know, that I had gained weight, and when I weighed, I went. I had gone from 102 to 112, and that was just in two weeks. So I was eating, you know, quite well, but the food was good. They have very good food. They. They took care. You know, I think they took care of all of the. The real basic things. Yeah, yeah.
Hazim Abdullah-Smith [00:24:29] And what did. Oh, go ahead.
Mary Helen Washington [00:24:31] You know, I. I’m just struck by how little counseling they had there. Just very. I know they took us to mass on Sunday because I remember that. That all the Catholic girls were taken to mass because, you know, in those days, it was a sin to miss mass on Sunday.
Hazim Abdullah-Smith [00:24:55] Did they take you to a place off site, do you remember? Or were they doing worship on the Camp Mueller property on Sundays?
Mary Helen Washington [00:25:03] Well, they took the Catholic girls to a Catholic church. They didn’t do it there.
Hazim Abdullah-Smith [00:25:15] And zooming out a little bit from the Camp Mueller experience, if you had to pick something that you left camp with, what would you say that was? It might have been regret since you didn’t have a good time, but what would. What would you say is kind of something that you left camp with?
Mary Helen Washington [00:25:37] Hmm. You know, my first thought is that I never wanted to go back again to any camp. So it just ruined me from going to camp. And I think, you know, what I took away from it was that I had been taken out of my, totally out of my environment and that I would have been much happier in the CYO camp with kids that were more like me and a camp where there was lots of activities. But I also took away my absolute admiration for these women. I was enthralled with them. I thought they were gorgeous and elegant and, you know, sharp and sophisticated. So it’s like I had this, you know, really split screen view. I admired the staff so much.
Hazim Abdullah-Smith [00:26:58] As you grew into your teens and twenties, were there other times that you traveled to more rural areas out in the country with either your father or your mother and any activities that you remember doing kind of around that period?
Mary Helen Washington [00:27:19] You know, my father, because he was from Georgia and he was from a rural area, he loved to go out in the country. And in those days there, you know, there was no suburbs. So, you know, as soon as you got to the end of the, you know, wherever the end the line, you know, the Cleveland, you know, borderline, you were in the country. And he loved to go out there. And he would go out there to get some kind of special water. I don’t. I just remembered it. I didn’t like it, but he thought it was very special. And we always like, you know, being out in. In the woods, and there were. There were lots of beautiful areas where you could go picnicking. My aunts took us to all of these different areas for picnicking. But there were, you know, I never did any hiking until I was grown, and there were beautiful hiking trails around Cleveland. But again, there Was no one to organize the hike in those days. And it was, you know, it’s like yoga is now. You know, everybody knows yoga, but in those days, nobody that I knew went hiking. Cleveland was kind of like a, You know, it was always a city to me that was a little behind itself. It had these beautiful areas, but not much, you know, you know, attracted us to being there.
Hazim Abdullah-Smith [00:29:00] And do you recall the names of any recreation areas, like parks, reservations, lakes, that kind of. That you spent time and enjoyed either in the Ohio area or from when you moved to Michigan or even Maryland, kind of. What were some of your memories of how you enjoyed outdoor recreation over. Over your lifetime?
Mary Helen Washington [00:29:27] Well, now I do remember that we went to Garfield park, and that was a park that wasn’t too far, and it was beautiful. And I remember Rocky River Reservation, and we must have gone there. There were. There were another. Some others that I’m not recalling. We went to. Did we go to Lake Erie? No, Lake Erie wasn’t very well built up in the. The nice part of Lake Erie, again, was on the west side. That was the white side. So, you know, on our side there was a. There was a beach, and I think it was called White City and it was so polluted that they closed it. So that was, you know, that was the story of the east side of Cleveland. They never developed it as well as the west side. So I’m trying to think of what other outdoor areas we would have been in. No, I just remember Garfield Park.
Hazim Abdullah-Smith [00:30:32] And one other question for you was, in terms of other camps, had you heard of any other camps that some of your friends had gone to? Not the CYO camps, but camps such as Hiram House, Camp Karamu, if that rings a bell. And any other camps that were kind of discussed amongst your peers?
Mary Helen Washington [00:30:54] I don’t remember any of those camps. I mean, now that you say it, you know, I’m thinking, well, I went to Karamu, but I didn’t know Karamu had a camp.
Hazim Abdullah-Smith [00:31:04] What sorts of activities did you do at Karamu House?
Mary Helen Washington [00:31:09] Oh, you know, we went to plays at Caramu. We went to. Let me see, what else did we go to? I remember plays. We went to the plays. And I had a friend who was in a craft class there. So I remember she used to go to classes there. But Karamu was kind of well known, at least the name.
Hazim Abdullah-Smith [00:31:43] And is there anything else that you want to share or that comes to mind? Could be anything about your Kent Mueller experience or anything about relationships to the outdoors, recreation, just kind of life in general.
Mary Helen Washington [00:31:58] See, I mean, you know, one thing that comes to mind is how much time we spent outdoors, you know, because we played the games that, you know, I’m thinking of double Dutch. You know, everybody had, had to learn double Dutch. If you were a girl, you had to learn double Dutch. So, you know, we did that. We played hopscotch. We rode bicycles. We rode. What else did we do outside? Went to the playground. Playground, this big thing. Then we went to Forest Hills. Forest Hills Park. Forest Hills Pool. They had a nice pool near our house. So, you know, because we were, you know, kids in the 1950s, where there weren’t a lot of, you know, things that you could afford, we were always outside. And so it seems kind of a shame that we didn’t get introduced to hiking and the parks and those kinds of things, but we were out on the street or in somebody’s backyard. We were always outside.
Hazim Abdullah-Smith [00:33:17] Okay, well, thank you so much for the interview.
Mary Helen Washington [00:33:21] Okay, where is this going?
Hazim Abdullah-Smith [00:33:24] This is going on National Park Service archives, as well as the Cleveland Voices page that has other interviews from people who attended Camp Mueller.
Mary Helen Washington [00:33:38] Oh, good. I would love to see that.
Hazim Abdullah-Smith [00:33:41] Okay, I’m going to stop the recording.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License.
