Felicia
30 Vienna Street right here. As you walked in, because it had gotten so rough but when we came up to visit my Aunt Ethel in the 60’s, it was like you see those older movies of New York City with those very eclectic neighborhoods that were not just eclectic racially, but culturally diverse, and by age.
You saw what I grew up with in North Carolina. You saw old men and women sitting on the bench like they were sitting in the park, and you had beautiful trees and you saw kids running around.
My name is Felicia Florence.
Almeta
And let's go back and let's talk about Felicia Florence's connection to the Joseph Avenue area
Felicia
50’s into the 60’s, my father-in-law, Mr. Franklin Florence, was instrumental in dealing with a lot of inequity on a number of levels here in Rochester. We relocated to Rochester, New York from New Bern, North Carolina the summer that I had completed fourth grade, and I was entering fifth grade in the fall. We moved to Hanover Houses. I lived on 30 Vienna street, in 5F, and my bedroom window faced the front of the…
Almeta
Courtyard?
Felicia
Yes, the courtyard. By that time, it really wasn't a courtyard. When we came up for a visit in, I would say the early 60’s before the riots, it was a beautiful place.
Almeta
It was.
Felicia
Oh my gosh, my Aunt Ethel lived there. It was a place that had trees, and flowers, and old people, and young people. There were all different kinds of different races and cultures, and the children were running around, and animals. It was just a beautiful place. It was like something that you saw in a movie in downstate New York.
Almeta
You gotta witness.
Felicia
And it was beautiful. But by the time we relocated here, it was kind of rough.
Almeta
Yeah, but we don't want to talk about that.
Felicia
But it's okay. It's okay because see, there's good stuff that comes out of the roughness too. And my mother—I am the eldest of my five siblings—my mother was very protective, by then she was a single mom. And my sister, my brother, and I were attending St. Bridget's. We were latchkey children before latchkey kids were a thing. Under my uniform I had a string with my apartment key and the rule was clear, I got all the three of us together, we walked home hand in hand, we got upstairs, we went into the apartment, locked the door. Had our, snacks, got out of those uniforms first—I reversed—got out of the uniforms, put on your play clothes, had your snacks, and then sat down to do homework until my mom got home. I had a friend, and we called her Sissy. She lived in 4F. Now I could go and visit her, but as far as visiting other people, that was a no-no.
My mom always had to know where we were and who we were with. I was pretty brave when it came to looking after my siblings, I was a little scary when it came to being outside by myself, my mom knew that about me.
I could look out my bedroom window and I love watching people. And so that was great, I had a great bedroom because I could look out my window and watch people all the time.
And Joseph Avenue…
Almeta
Oh, I love Joseph Avenue.
Felicia
It was such a multicultural experience. There was a woman, she owned a dress shop and I don't remember the name of it, the streets have changed. But I would walk by there with my cousin going to the drugstore sometimes, and my mom, when she was expecting—I am nine years older than the baby she was carrying—there was a beautiful, beautiful, just sunshine yellow gown with short puffy sleeves. My mom was going to the hospital and I would watch, I would look at that gown from the window and I'd say to my cousin, I want mommy to have that gown. I got money for chores and my cousin Diane, she's five years older than me, she took me to that store, to the shop, and she gave me the rest of the money and I bought my mom the gown and I gave it to her the night before she would go to the hospital to bring home my little sister. So there—
Almeta
Such a lovely memory.
Felicia
And my education at St. Bridget's was unique too.
Almeta
St. Bridget's was tops.
Felicia
It was, it was. And Sister Terrence.
Almeta
Oh, please.
Felicia
Sister Terrence, nobody played with. That was a Sherman tank in female form, she said what she meant.
And I'll never forget we didn't have a lot of space outside but it was enough space for us to play. It was important that we knew how to play with each other and respect, because they taught Christian principles but they still let us be kids and we had to learn how to actually live those Christian principles with each other.
Almeta
And interact with each other using those principles as a basis for how we connect.
Felicia
Yes, and Debbie Thomas and Donna Wood they always fought. On one particular day during recess, Sister Terrence didn't say a word. They were tussling she took them by the backs of their clothes, she lifted them up in the air, she said, “Didn't I say stop?” BAM! And they dropped. And we were all like, HUH!
Nobody fought again. Okay, nobody fought again. No one's parents came out to the school screaming and yelling. They knew that we were in a place that was safe. Now were there things that happened, later on within that Catholic faith? Again, I say to people all the time, Christians are people. Christians mess up all the time.
Almeta
We are flawed. Every one of us. Except for Luvon.
Felicia
When they tore down, they began to expand, Quamina Drive, I had a cousin who lived with us, who was my big cousin in North Carolina. He and I were the start of the fourth generation growing up and in our house with our great grandparents, our grandparents and our parents because two of my great grandmother's children, one being my grandmother, the other being his father, my great uncle, we all lived in that house. So when the weather was inclement at Easter time, we'd be shut up in the kitchen where we had a great wood burning stove that we used in the wintertime and then a gas stove in the summertime. He would take the eggs that had been colored and everything, and he would go through the house and hide them. We had our baskets and we were allowed to, once he was all set, to come out and we’s run through the house looking for those Easter eggs.
There is a plethora of experiences that came with me from New Bern, North Carolina to Rochester, New York. When we moved from—actually when I had completed sixth grade, our principal was a very petite woman and she was a nun. She had a meeting with my mom and me. And she said, “Mrs. Harris, our Felicia.” —Our. Not your daughter. Our Felicia.— “Is not city school district material.” She said, “She is a smart young lady and we were thinking it would be best for her to be enrolled in the Urban-Suburban Program, if you would allow us.”
My mom looked at me and I looked at her. And I was like, “Yes, if that's what Sister Victoria says, that's what it is.” And my mom would get up, walk with me through Chatham Gardens, stand at my bus stop in the dark until the bus came to pick me up, and I'd get on with my friends. We would take the bus all the way to Our Lady of Lourdes in Brighton on Rhinecliff Drive.
Almeta
That's something I was not aware of—that the Urban-Suburban Program included Catholic schools? My son was in Brighton in the first cohort, the year it started. I did not know. Oh, wow. Thank you. Because he's going to be 60 this year.
Felicia
And, I continued there. We moved from 30 Vienna Street to, Reynolds Street. I lived on the corner of Reynolds and Barton in new town homes that had been built, and I stayed there until my mom moved again when I graduated from Mercy.
Because from Lourdes, all my classmates, the girls, were applying for Mercy, so I said to my friends who were from the city, I said, “Okay, we're making, applications for Mercy, okay?” “We are?” “We are. That's what we're going to do.” So being the big sister at home, to encourage my siblings to maintain that level of expectation that was held by my great grandmother, my grandmother, my mother, now me, even at a young age—this is what's going to be good for us, so this is what we're going to do, and that's what we did. We made the application, we all got in.
Almeta
And it's just been excelsior.
Felicia
Well, it's not all excelsior, but nonetheless those valley experiences that we tend to discount because it's the worst thing in the world that could ever happen to us, but they're not.
When we understand what perseverance means, that there is a give and a take in everything. That we can—like, the story when the mule or the donkey fell into the hole and they thought, “Oh!” He cried, and he cried, and he cried, and his owner was just so sad and overtaken and he called the community. They could all hear him crying. So to be merciful to him, take him out of the suffering, they all got shovels and they began scooping, shoveling, huge amounts of dirt. It got quiet and they thought, “Okay, we're succeeding, but let's go.” Well, what he did was— he smart as he is— “Hmm it's a little heavy. Let me just take it all off.” And he shook it all off. And the more he shook off, the more he was able to step up, and he shook off, and he stepped up, and he shook off, and he stepped up, until it's like “I'm back!” That's how life is.
But in order to get that, you have to be told the story. You have to be allowed to experience the sunshine of a Vienna Street complex, Hanover Houses, to even see past the gloom of what it had become, what it was allowed to become, I should say.
Almeta
By intent and by design.
Felicia
Yes, that's exactly right. And still knowing that, because like this gallery, there are not always images of positive situations because some of these colors show the intensity of the struggle.
Almeta
It's the joy in the pain. We're in the Joy Gallery!
Felicia
Well, now! That's exactly right. Coming from North Carolina and the experiences on Church Street, where everybody knew everybody else. “And, girl, you better not be over there playing like that. Get on down that street. Get on home. Cause Miss Rosalie she gonna know.”
Almeta
And she gonna tell on you.
Felicia
And, coming to a place where, today as I teach at Edison Tech High School, to say to children, you can't do that and this is why, because I am a mother, and you have a mother. I am a grandmother, and you have a grandmother. I am a sister, and you have sisters. And when you begin to reshape the thought, that becomes a speech, that becomes a behavior, and that it's not always received by these younger parents. “You can't talk to my child.” Well, if I don't he or she becomes a negative statistic out there in that street.
So, the struggle continues in a different way because we now are cut off from living as families—in generations of families, in your immediacy, your bloodline. And then that extended family of neighbors that weren't just located on your street, but went around that old block. And so there is something for many of us from those generations that I hope the young people who had relatives like myself, like my Aunt Ethel—Who was herself an educator but has passed on—that they will grow to know of Rochester's history, that has, just like every other community, a history.
There are struggles that come, and those struggles can make us stronger. To persevere, to push through and not just for ourselves, but as we're making it to reach down, and hold on to and say, “Oh, yes you can. Because I'm not gonna let go. And because I have. You will.”
Almeta
Ashe
Max-Yamil
I really wish my friends at home could just hear the deeper history of Rochester. Cause a lot of people look at Rochester just like this horrible city that, nothing good comes from it. Everybody's kind of hating and nobody wants to see nobody win. But seeing elders not only be successful, but also tell their story, has brought a lot of inspiration as someone being from the city, so I appreciate it.
Felicia
Then you take your inspiration. Have you ever seen a stone tossed into a body of water? Have you ever thumbed a little stone? And you see the ripples? And we think because we can no longer see the ripples, that they have stopped. So now, you are a ripple and it is your turn.
Max-Yamil
Ripple in time.
Felicia
That's right. And it's your turn because of your influence with those that you wish could hear. Because it is the responsibility of media in all forms to be guardians of the story, to keep before the community as a reminder, visually, auditorily, so that we can remember that with the struggle is still so much that is connected to what was beautiful.
What happens from summer to fall? The beauty of the spring, the promise of spring, the budding of summer, the shedding of the fall, and the sleeping of the winter. Into the promise of another cycle of budding of spring. So you be that.
Almeta
We want to thank you so much.
Felicia
Thank you. There's nothing I wouldn't do for you, you know that.