Interview with Omer Jean Winborn

Finn Bell: Okay, so this is Finn Bell interviewing, and could you please share your name for the recording?

Jean Winborn: My name is Omer Jean Dixon Winborn.

Finn Bell: Great, thank you so much. And what do you go by?

Jean Winborn: Jean Winborn.

Finn Bell: Okay, great, thank you. And would you mind sharing the year and place of your birth, Jean?

Jean Winborn: I was born in 1950, in Ann Arbor, Michigan, at St. Joe's Hospital on Engel Street.

Finn Bell: Wonderful. And could you tell us your parents' names and how many siblings you had, just sort of basic stuff about your family?

Jean Winborn: Yes, my father's name was William Dixon, and my mother's name was Minnie Allen Dixon. And I had... I was in the middle. There were six... I had six... Five siblings. There were six of us.

Finn Bell: Great, thank you so much. Yeah, and could you just briefly tell us about how your family came to live in this area?

Jean Winborn: My parents were from Brownsville, Tennessee. Both of them were sharecroppers, and they came in the mid-'40s. My mom came first. Actually, my uncle came first, her brother, then my mom and my grandmother. And then my dad followed.

Finn Bell: Great. And did they come straight to Ann Arbor then where you were born, or?

Jean Winborn: They first moved to Ypsi. Ypsilanti, and then they moved to Ann Arbor, and they all lived on... Everybody who lived on 4th Ave with me as I was growing up, we all lived on 5th Ave first... And then my parents bought a house on 4th Ave, 620 North 4th Ave.

Finn Bell: Great, thank you. And so I know you've said before that your dad had a really big garden there, so could you tell me more about your dad's garden?

Jean Winborn: Yes, there was a vacant lot across the street 00:02:00and it was owned by Mr. Russell, and my dad asked him if he could plant a garden there, and the garden was more like a community garden, and anybody was allowed to come and take whatever they wanted, they would ask... They would ask my dad and he would allow them to pick any kind of vegetables, anything we had, cabbage and greens and tomatoes and beans, and strangely enough my dad didn't ask us to work there, but he brought us over sometimes and showed us what to do, but he really was the main person that worked in the garden.

Finn Bell: Great, thank you. And what impact do you think growing food had or has on your family, your community, with your dad growing food like that? Could you just tell us some about what your family and community was like and how growing food was a part of that?

Jean Winborn: It was very important 'cause nobody was hungry, and everybody could come there and pick whatever they wanted to eat, and my mom was a wonderful cook, and she would cook and we would have friends over, and if you came... Everybody knew if you came and played with the Dixons, or if you are out there when the Dixons were cooking dinner you were invited in too. It was not, "No you go home and eat your own dinner." No, it was come in and you eat with us, whatever we had.

Finn Bell: Great. Yeah. And what do you think are some of the values or traditions or lessons that you learned from your family's food-growing?

Jean Winborn: Well, I shared my food-growing, my cooking skills as a teacher at Lincoln schools, I would take food in 00:04:00and fix it for the teachers and give it away, 'cause that's the way I grew up with nobody going hungry in my community, nobody going without food, they were welcome to eat whatever my dad grew or whatever we had in our house if they were hungry, so it made me... Food is such a universal language, and it just made me grow up without any food insecurities and knowing that I was secure in the world and that food was a very important part of my life and making... And my community.

Finn Bell: And what do you think... So I know that you said that your family came up from Tennessee, so in terms of thinking going back aways and thinking about their earlier experiences of growing food, I guess I'm just kind of interested in thinking about what were some of the traditions that they brought with them when they came to Michigan? Or ways that growing food might connect you to people who've come before or ancestors, just if you wanna chat about that at all?

Jean Winborn: Well, in the South, most people, after the Civil War, they didn't have places to go so they stayed on the farms where the enslaver was. And they were in charge of the crops and I remember my uncle saying to me sometimes they ate, and sometimes they didn't depending on the crops. And if you look into what sharecropping was really about. It was another form of institutionalized slavery is what it was, is that... Because they didn't have... I even have documentation where my grandmother as a six-year-old after the Civil War when she was born, that she was 00:06:00placed into an apprenticeship program where they... Teaching her skills, like growing and planning and household skills and the people that were in charge of her gave her a wage, supposedly. But it was another form of institutionalized slavery, and then from that came the sharecropping.

Finn Bell: And your parents were sharecroppers, is that correct?

Jean Winborn: Absolutely, yes they were. Both of them.

Finn Bell: So how did their lives change when they moved up to Michigan?

Jean Winborn: It was a totally different world, first of all, they couldn't vote, they couldn't go in the library and check out books, so my life just became so different, and there were a lot of things that they couldn't do. Well, they were... They said they could vote, but they wouldn't be allowed, they were threatened if they went to vote. So the first thing they did when they came to Michigan was register to vote. And my mom and dad voted in every single election at school board, everything, and my mom even took us and showed us what it meant to vote. We were little kids, go... And the importance of voting. How important voting was. And so their whole way of life changed and so they couldn't own property, and a lot of the farmers had... My family had land, some of them and some of the ways that they got the land was hard and unusual, but my dad's family and my mom's family really didn't own, they were both sharecroppers. And so when they came here, the first thing my dad did was buy a house, 1951, and that was on 4th Ave. And then the next thing he did was find a lot and grow the garden, but first we had chickens.

Jean Winborn: So the city of Ann Arbor, I think you can... You're allowed to have chickens, but we had chickens, and then after the chickens, 00:08:00we had the garden, and then... The garden for a long time until they built something in that place. Mr. Russell passed away and then the city took over the land and there's a... I'm not sure what's there now, but afterwards it was a park, just a little playground for kids and stuff in the neighborhood.

Finn Bell: Wow yeah. And so when you were talking about your family owning land that was in or around Brownsville, and you said that there were some unusual ways that they came to that. Is that something you wanna talk more about?

Jean Winborn: Oh, sure, absolutely. One family member was a product of the enslaver and so, the child, and so when that enslaver's family, well the person who was the father, the white father, passed away, he left one of my relatives land and unfortunately he lost the land in some circumstances. Someone got in trouble and the township or the city, wherever they were, took the land away from him, but they would get land like that or... That's one story I know, but there's a lot of them. I still have family members that own land there, and I don't know all the stories. But that's one of the stories that I know.

Finn Bell: Yeah. Absolutely. And I know that you've talked before this, obviously your dad was the big gardener, and your mom, as you said, was a wonderful cook and I know that you've talked before about some of the ways that showed up in the neighborhood in terms of caring for people in the neighborhood, do you wanna 00:10:00talk more about that at all?

Jean Winborn: Yeah. She made sure that everyone had food or something to eat, and I can remember a family coming in from the South, just newly coming from the South and living in Ann Arbor, and how everyone gathered around that family and made sure they had enough clothing, enough food. And the people in the community, it was just such... I grew up in such a warm, loving, community. Everybody was allowed to discipline me, it went without saying, the whole community went without... That village that I grew up in. And so nobody, there was nobody, to my knowledge, no one that was hungry and no insecurities, no... Everybody was equal. We had our own psychiatrists, our own doctors, our own stores, our own barbers, our own grocery stores, and so there was a sense of strong African American community. Yeah, so I never remember being hungry, I never remember anybody in the community being hungry, and if they were, they knew where they could come to get food, and our house was one of them.

Finn Bell: Thank you so much for sharing that. And I know... The neighborhood that you grew up in, could you talk a little bit more about what that looked like at the time? So certainly, you've talked about the social pieces of that that are so powerful in terms of this culture of care, but also the pieces, what it looked like at the time, some of the kinds of other businesses that were around that affected you or parks, that kind of stuff?

Jean Winborn: Yeah, a lot of people didn't know who my relatives were, and I had a 00:12:00relative that was a barber, and they used to call him Papa John, that was my dad's cousin, and he was a barber, and barbers were so important in the African American community. They were like therapists. And also our minister, I had a wonderful African American minister, Reverend Carpenter. I was a member of Second Baptist Church in Ann Arbor. And I can remember our neighbors, and one neighbor in particular, Miss Shoecraft, lived right next door to Bethel Church, and she had some hedges that my dad loved, and I watched my dad cut a piece of that hedge, about two inches, cut it and split the bottom of it put it in a jar, and I watched him root it and then he grew those same hedges around our house.

Jean Winborn: And I can... There's a old picture of Bethel AME Church with Miss Shoecraft's hedges. And every time I see that picture, I think about my dad and how he grew those hedges around. If there was anybody who was sick, that couldn't cut their grass, my dad and all the people in the community would go cut their grass for them, anybody like...

Jean Winborn: Well, Miss Shoecraft, when she got older, he would cut her grass and plant flowers. There were beautiful lawns up and down 4th Ave. Nobody went without. Everybody took care of each other. Very tight-knit community.

Finn Bell: Thank you. It's very powerful. Were there difficulties when you're growing up in your community that you wanted to talk about at all?

Jean Winborn: Absolutely. There was. There down the street from us. I grew up in a community... I have asthma now, and I grew up where there was a slaughterhouse and there was also a junk yard, and I remember going to the park right across the street, and 00:14:00now there is no... There was... Summit Street went right through the park, now it's all closed in because my parents and the community went to the City Council to get the slaughterhouse removed, and my most vivid memory is going to the park early in the morning, getting on my favorite swing, because I wanted to get up before my siblings, going down there, getting on the swing, swinging, and then a pig came running out of the slaughterhouse directly at me in the swing, and then Peter Sausage, that's the name of the company, was there and he came, the man came and grabbed the pig by the tail and his coat was covered with blood, and that was a traumatic thing for young kids to see in the community. So, my parents, along with the other parents in the community, went to city council with Dr. Wheeler as our leader and the head of the NAACP, and got that park removed. And that's why the park is called Wheeler Park, because he was instrumental in helping us clean that park and that area up.

Finn Bell: And so got the slaughter house removed?

Jean Winborn: Slaughterhouse was removed, yep. And so was the junk yard. And so where the pavilion is, that's where the junk yard was. And there was a street that went directly through the street.

Finn Bell: Wow. It sounds like your parents were real leaders in the community in lots of ways.

Jean Winborn: Yes.

Finn Bell: Yeah. Were there other struggles that your parents got involved with in the community that you wanna talk about anymore or?

Jean Winborn: Yes, there was, and there was Jones School, and Jones had its 100-year anniversary, and my mother was very involved in our education because as children they couldn't go to school. 00:16:00So my mom, and this is why I think... I'm a retired teacher, and I think this is why I became a teacher. Because my mom... I was afraid to act up in school, she would walk those halls, and even though she wasn't educated she knew how important it was for us to be educated. So she was there, she was the vice president of the PTA. She was in the newspaper for being on a panel for talking about television and kids, and all of that, very involved, her and my dad, and then later led to some of the involvement that I did in the community also growing up in Ann Arbor.

Finn Bell: Absolutely. Thank you for sharing that. And so now, I know as an adult, so you moved to Ypsilanti and that's where you've been now for a number of years. So how did you end up in Ypsilanti growing up in Ann Arbor?

Jean Winborn: Couldn't afford to live in Ann Arbor. And so Ypsilanti was the next place that I could move, I could afford to move. But Ann Arbor had gotten really expensive, and so Ypsilanti was the closest and the area where I was familiar with. Because most of the people, African American people in Ann Arbor and Ypsi were like one. There was no distinction when I was growing up, you knew the people in Ypsi and you know the people in Ann Arbor. Particularly the religious communities were together, and so you couldn't help but know the people that went to Second Baptist in Ypsi and Second Baptist in Ann Arbor. And the unique thing that I found from doing genealogy is that my parents, first they lived in Ypsi and then when they first came from Brownsville, they belonged 00:18:00to Second Baptist in Ypsilanti. Well, the reason was, is that Reverend Hopkins was a minister in Brownsville, Tennessee and they just followed him to Ypsilanti.

Finn Bell: And so thinking about when you were growing up and now, obviously there are lots of things that are different. I guess I'm wondering if you think about culture around growing food and preparing food? And some of the ways that you see how things have changed? Or how things were when you were young versus now? If you could talk a little bit about that?

Jean Winborn: Yeah, there's a huge difference between now, and... There are places where it seems like it's harder for people to get to food, I can remember the community, the places where there was Kroger's on Broadway, there was A&P stores in our community that people could walk to and then those things started disappearing and then harder for people to get food. And then we had the Farmers Market in Ann Arbor on 4th Ave that was every Wednesday and Saturdays, the farmers would bring their goods, and I mean eggs and vegetables, but now it's more like... There's not very much food. It's all different kinds of art, there's different things, but it's not food, but it used to be apples and eggs and fresh eggs and apples, and fresh vegetables. But it's not like that anymore. I haven't been there in a long time. But that's very 00:20:00different. Very different for me.

Finn Bell: Yeah. Sure. And what impact do you think people continuing to engage in growing food and vegetable gardening or farming... What impact do you think that can still have? Or why might that still be important, in your opinion?

Jean Winborn: A huge... I can close my eyes right now and taste the tomatoes that came from our garden, and know that the tomatoes that are grown in the store are hard, and I can always remember the soft, juicy taste of tomatoes coming from the garden and just put a little salt on them. But these are, the ones that we get from the store, are hothouse, tomatoes grown in a hothouse and not with the sun and the sweetness, you could almost take a tomato and just bite into it and eat it like an apple, and I remember that. It's very different now. Growing food is very different, and there's some areas where people don't have access to food. And Ann Arbor is maybe not one of them, but there are still not grocery stores or farms or gardens like it was when I was growing up.

Finn Bell: Yeah. Where did your family get most of their food from when you were growing up?

Jean Winborn: Well, we had the garden and then we would go to the market on Wednesdays and Saturdays, the Farmers Market, and there were grocery stores in the area that we could get to and walk to, and then eventually there was Kroger's on Broadway, you could walk but it was a long walk, and most of the time, my mom before they started driving… 00:22:00My father didn't learn to drive till he was like in the 60s, and I taught him how to drive, and they would go in a cab, they would take a cab. There were no regular bus services until I got to be out of high school where they had regular bus routes that would take you places. So it got a little harder to get to places rather than walk downtown. Now, our town was on Ann St. 'cause we lived on 4th Ave, so we could walk down. There was a grocery store down there, and like I said, barber shop and all of that, beauty shops...

Finn Bell: Thank you. So you had talked about how the garden that your dad had was on a vacant lot across the street, and so do you know more about what that arrangement was? Or then when things changed, how old was your dad at that point? Was he still interested in gardening? Was that something he would have kept doing if the land status hadn't changed, do you think?

Jean Winborn: I think so. He was... I'm not sure how old he was. I could do a little math, but it was because the lot was vacant, and he knew who owned the lot, and it was a nice area for... The sun would come right there, and I'm trying to remember how he watered because he took water from somebody's house. Next door was Miss Day, lived next door, and Mr. Span lived on the other side. I'm not sure how he got water, I think from either one of them, he would take a hose and hook it up to there and then water 00:24:00when needed. Yeah, I'm trying to remember, my sister might remember, but I don't remember how he got water there, but yeah, it was because the land was vacant, he knew the person, and he allowed him to do that, and then after the city took over... And Mr. Russell had passed away, and then the land became part of the city, then it was just different. And I think had the land still been there Mr. Russell still being alive, my father probably would have still been gardening.

Finn Bell: Great. Thank you. And you're talking about the tomatoes, that's so powerful. Are there other early memories that you can think of, of growing food or eating food that was grown that you wanna share with us?

Jean Winborn: Yeah. There was not a week that went by that... Not one week that went by that my mother didn't cook greens. My brother loved greens, I love the smell of them, and I can remember my mother saying, talking about, "We're gonna wait till the first frost and I'm gonna cook these greens and they're gonna be good," and I couldn't remember... That's all I remember is the first frost, and the collard greens, and the smelling of the collard greens, and the cornbread and the fried chicken, and, oh my goodness, our house, every single week smelled like greens. So that's a wonderful history and a wonderful memory to me because it brings back so many things I can think about. The greens, the garden, the first frost, the taste of the greens, watching my mom cook the greens, and I remember she used to use ham hocks and 00:26:00now we've evolved to we don't use ham hocks in greens anymore, we use turkey legs, or I would like to sneak a ham hock and put it in those greens and cook them and remember that smell of my mom and those greens. Boy, I mean, that's some good eating. [chuckle]

Finn Bell: Absolutely. And so you all had the slaughter house right there. Did you get food from that or was that part of your sort of food web?

Jean Winborn: That's another interesting story. My brother loved greens, and he loved cracklins, you know, pig skins and... And this is my memory of the slaughterhouse, early in the morning, around 5 or 4 o'clock, we could hear the pigs squeal, and after they squealed, about 2 o'clock in the afternoon, blood would be running down the street, and then around 3 or 4, we knew we could go down there and we would get cracklins, pig skins, dried out. My brother used to just love those and put hot sauce on them, and you can buy them in the store now, and it's nothing like the fresh ones that we used to get.

Finn Bell: Yeah. Thank you for sharing that. So I know that you had talked about that part of your move from Ann Arbor to Ypsi was about being priced out of Ann Arbor, so how did that impact your family as housing prices and obviously vacant land was no longer available for your father's garden? But how did that impact your family more broadly, that transformation?

Jean Winborn: So we all... My parents stayed there, and at one time, after they died, I went back and I lived in the house for a little while, and then there... Because it was six of us and they were all over 00:28:00everywhere, my brother was in Las Vegas, and one of my sisters was in, at one time, Texas, Philadelphia. And so all over, so they decided they wanted to sell and we all bought our own and what I could use with the money was to buy, a purchase in Ypsi, and that's what I did, but my dad stayed there until... That was one of his wishes and my mom to stay there until he died and he wanted us not to sell and he said, "But if you decide to sell” and everybody was away and everybody agreed that we would sell. And so that's what we did. Yeah, but it's a sad time for me because I remember I had so many wonderful memories in that house and just the community and the people that raised me, and I have no, absolutely no food insecurities in my life, and I think about growing up as a child, and what you need to give a child and make them secure, feel secure, and I had that, and I think that's why that community, my parents, that community, school, my education is why I turned out to be... I'm a pretty decent person. [chuckle]

Finn Bell: For sure. Absolutely. Yeah. Well, I guess I'm wondering too, are there things that we haven't talked about that you feel are important in terms of thinking about farming and gardening and history and land that you'd like to share? Any stories or thoughts or anything?

Jean Winborn: I think it's so important and so wonderful 00:30:00for a person to tell their own story. No one, absolutely no one can tell your story for you. You have to tell it yourself. You have to tell it in your own words, and I really, really, truly appreciate you, and thank you for all you've done around this topic. It is absolutely wonderful, and this will go down, and I hope my ancestors will learn from this and learn who I am, and this is so important to who I am today and who I will be in my future and in my grandchildren's future, my daughter's future, is so important that they know who I am and my story, and I thank you.

Finn Bell: Well, I'm gonna ask you one more thing, if that's okay.

Jean Winborn: Mm-hmm.

Finn Bell: Thank you. And is there anything that you feel like, for people listening to this in the future, your descendants or other community members, any message that you would like, you're thinking about your history, your family, your food-growing traditions, any messages that you would like to give to those people?

Jean Winborn: The importance of sharing, the importance of telling your story, the importance of passing it on and making sure if you don't write it, that you do oral histories or speaking in a microphone, pass it on, do whatever you can to keep the tradition going and making sure people know who you are and what you did.

Finn Bell: Well, thank you, Jean. This has been a pleasure, and I really appreciate you taking the time to talk with us.

Jean Winborn: And I appreciate you. Thank you.