Sample Interview:
Hugo Owens of Portsmouth, Virginia

Note: The videos are not currently available
because of their large file size.

I. Owens Family Background [SEE VIDEO]
My name is Hugo Owens. Hugo Armstrong Owens… people often ask me, “What’s the history of that name?” My mother went to Virginia State University and the president there was, James Hugo Johnson, my father went to Hampton Institute, graduated in ’98, and the president there was Armstrong--I’m trying to think of his first name now--but it was Armstrong…so when they decided to name their last son, they named him after two college presidents, Hugo Armstrong Owens… and my mother put the curse on me at the time of my birth, she wanted one of her son’s, she had four, to be a college president and somewhere along the way I got shunted, but I got close enough I ended up being on three college boards, the chairman of the board of two of them. The rector of Virginia State and the rector of Old Dominion, so not only did I not get to be a president, but I was in the position to tell presidents what to do…but anyway I was born in Norfolk County, it was then 1916…and Norfolk County had little different boroughs and I was born in the Deep Creek borough, so I am a native and have never even entertained the thought of going anywhere else to seek my fortune, except home. I ah, ah went to a segregated elementary school, walked while the other kids rode, you know busing was very popular then, of course after 1954 busing was one of the most horrible ways to go to school…you might remember the history of that…but I finished elementary school, the great tragedy of it is that I can think of so many kids, who were as bright or brighter than I was, in the elementary years of school and the high school years of school who never got out of high school many of them, some of them dropped out in elementary school because of the lack of opportunity…poverty… and so many doors that were slammed shut, I happened to have been a little more fortunate, in that my parents were able. My mother taught school for a while, my father taught school for a while but retired as a postal worker…post office…a postal employee… and ah, we ah, all of us had the opportunity to go to school, there was five of us and I just think of the young bright kids who were in school with me in elementary, especially in elementary and high school, who never were able to follow to the fullest, because of the horrible limitations placed on us by the system of segregation and denial.


II. Owens on Education [SEE VIDEO]
After I got out of elementary school I went to Virginia State…I was ah…went ah…the school that I went to in Norfolk County was the ah…high school for Blacks it was called Providence…and the transportation-- because we had to…all who lived in Norfolk County that was the school that you go to, we had an old broken down bus…that made it half the time…broke down most the time…flat tires… transmission go out on it and my dad the last year decided I should go to Norcom…we used to go to Norcom my last year… cause at least we could get to school cause the regular bus…and ah…and after Norcom, after finishing Norcom I went to Virginia State … graduated in 1939…didn’t graduate…to become a college president…didn’t graduate to go into education…I… in my junior year in high school, we had a new teacher to come in and he began to teach physiology and biology was and he started to talk about endocrine glands and thought it was the most exciting information that I had learned my whole time in high school…and I decided as a Junior in high school that I was going to be an endocrinologist. Then I went to school and studied to understand as much as I could…about endocrinology… Went to school… finished my pre-medical work…didn’t know enough to get into Howard or Meharry [?]…I thought possibly I could get into school in Virginia…and of course ‘bam’ all the doors were closed…medical college right there in Richmond…No…so I taught for three years and was drafted out of teaching to the Army and I went into [?] artillery and anti-aircraft division…was stationed over at Fort Eustis…and while there I learned that the military…was sending people who had special college training in… pre-medicine… pre-law…in the sciences…they were sending them to school called an Army Specialist Training Program. well I had worked up to be a personnel clerk…at Fort Eustis…and there I…when I learned about it I went down and dug up the special orders and found the information and applied. I applied to medical schools… I applied to dental schools…I applied to meteorological schools… I didn’t apply to the Air Force wasn’t too interested enough. guys were going to Tuskegee many of them, but I wasn’t interested enough… and the first school that admitted me…was a dental school, Howard University, about two weeks later got admission to Meharry Medical School and Harvard Medical School…but I had accepted the dental school at Howard and that’s why I ended up a dentist. Of course in the military you don’t mess around what you are offered if it’s something you can use you better take it because somebody might second guess you who’s above you and tell you, look soldier pack–up you’re going to Mississippi, you’re going to wherever… and of course we took advantage of that admission to Howard Dental School, so I never got to be a college president and I ended up practicing dentistry for 40 years plus.

INTERVIEWER: So after you finished Howard Dental School what did you do?

OWENS: After I finished Howard Dental School…I came back, I worked for a while…I practiced for a while in Washington…and then I came back to Portsmouth.

INTERVIEWER: Were you at all involved…

OWENS: And there was a role model dentist in Portsmouth his name was Lou [?] Griffin, the dental society is named after him, the Portsmouth dental society for Blacks is named the John Eleanor [?] Griffin Dental Society and he was the one who persuaded me to come and practice here in Portsmouth…which I did so, he was very helpful because he was about nearing the point of retirement and we were able to pick-up some of his patients
and move along.

III. Owens on Politics [See Video]
Segregation and denial, and people often ask me, why it was that I got so involved in Civil Rights after I came out and came back to the area…it was because I came up on her system that would continue… to deny people the opportunities that somebody didn’t take it on, I just felt as compelled as anybody else, there was so many that wanted to do something there was Joe Jordan in Norfolk…Ms. Butts in Norfolk… Robinson who was the President of the NACP for a good while-- I can’t think of his first name now-- in Norfolk… Boyd [?] Cookman in Portsmouth…a number of us back in the…in the… I would say… beginning in the late 40’s… began to make noise. When I came in, in 1947 I had been practicing three years and by that time I had already initiated the first suit ever against the city of Portsmouth by a Black person, to break down barriers…up until 1951, the golf courses and the city parks…in the city of Portsmouth…they were…they were segregated and I never looked back. We sued the city for the library…we sued them for the cemeteries…White cemeteries and Black cemeteries…we sued them, the housing authority because it would not employ Blacks on the jobs the housing authority houses were all occupied by Black folks…whenever any shingling was supposed to be done, any painting was supposed to be done, any maintenance work was supposed to be done, there were White employees who did it...and of course we sued them to get them to put sidewalks…and pave the street in Black neighborhoods. We were just absolutely angry… that we were being denied...the last suit we initiated was the one to open the public library… and that was 1960, if you please.

IV. Owens on Healthcare [SEE VIDEO]
There are positive experiences we had that… the first thing when I came back, you know we couldn’t be on staff… we weren’t permitted to be on the staff at Portsmouth General Hospital…or… in Norfolk… in Norfolk Blacks were not permitted to practice there… in fact we had Portsmouth General Hospital for Blacks[?]…it was strictly segregated….and ah… we ah…we ah… were… relegated to the basement… the Black or Negro ward was in the basement of the hospital… and of course we took them on and broke that down in later years in the 60’s… but ah… in fact… it possibly might have been… it was in the 60’s, but coming back to…umh… Norfolk Community Hospital... the staff was well run, well managed… it was the hospital that Blacks went to in significantly large numbers… and ah…it was surviving and thriving until the barriers were broken down for the other hospitals where the facilities were greater… and the specialists… there were many more specialists… on board and what happened to all the hospitals throughout the country? They began to lose their income the Black hospital they could not survive.

INTERVIEWER: Do you think that the demise of community was primarily the result of integration or do you think that it had something to do with the urban renewal program that Norfolk initiated?

OWENS: I think historically throughout the country the demise of the segregated… if you please… hospitals, White and Black...Black hospitals were Black…White hospitals were white…when the barriers were broken down I think that spelled the doom of the weaker… less… able…devout hospitals and the Blacks began to go to the physicians they began to get involved in the hospital, where the facilities were better… and ah…the equipments… and all the… the everything about them was better because there was more
money involved even the [?] money that was involved was terrific as compared to the pittance that we got at the Black hospitals…or the funding

INTERVIEWER: Where was most of the funding come from?

OWENS: If we’re talking about Black hospitals… there was no such thing as ‘most’. It was a matter of barely surviving… because the insurances weren’t as powerful as their third party coverage and most people had to pay out of their pockets… and the little bit of federal, state or local funds were given, I’m not aware of a significant amount of it so it was almost a case of a struggle from the very beginning… there was an effort made in Portsmouth to ah… develop a hospital that just didn’t get off the ground because of the amount of funding, you must understand at the time I came back to Portsmouth… everything was originally segregated…and ah… and I don’t care how brilliant a person you were… how skilled you were as a technician, if you got a job in the Navy Yard you were lucky you made first class laborer… you were a laborer all of your life. You got a job as a laborer you taught all the white guys who came through, in fact I was talking to a fellow the other day who told me that when he was working in the Navy Yard… the lead man… who was White, told him that he was bringing a young fellow to work with him, say, I want you to teach him well because one day he is going to be your boss. That was par for the course, for Blacks were the teachers of the little, dumb, uniformed country White boys… who came in and learned from them, learned the skills of plumbing… electrical wiring… pipefitting… all the [?] trades and they ended up being not only their bosses, sometime they ended up being quarter men… top jobs that Blacks never had that’s why… I don’t know whether you’re aware of it or not, that’s why we led charges… and we were breaking barriers at the Norfolk Naval Yard we actually threatened to lay down in front of the main gate and close up the place. That’s the day we got a call from the ah… Pentagon-- asking us what did we want…evidentially you’ve been reading the papers you gave us a telephone call you know what we want. To take down signs… there are white signs, black signs… colored signs for water, for the toilet facilities… for the eating facilities, yet we’re working on the jobs in the same area and we want them taken down and we want those Blacks who are able and capable to be promoted as everybody else is… and ah… it happened as you are aware… but we were going to close the place up.

INTERVIEWER: Tell me were there any whites who worked on staff of Community Hospital during the period of segregation?

OWENS: I don’t recall any… I don’t recall any… I’m sure there were one or two… but I don’t recall any. There were consultants who would come in… during some special challenging case.

INTERVIEWER: Have you seen any changes in black health care over the years especially since a lot of the hospital have [?]

OWEN: It would be a difficult question for me to answer because being a dentist, I’m not as close to… the source to give you that answer…but I can tell you this…right now… an employee of mine who help to maintain my property has a son… who needs special care… and I’m in the process of doing something for him… for more than a year he has been having a problem that… he has not been able to resolve even though he’s been to hospitals and to facilities where he should have been able to get the care. Poverty… the improvised Black person in this country does not get the medical care he should get.

INTERVIEWER: If Community were still in operation do you think he would be able to get that?

OWENS: Yes… Yes…

INTERVIEWER: Can you elaborate on that… how and why?

OWENS: There is a matter of empathy… that is involved when Blacks are dealing with problems, that many of them have come out of, or they are so close to them that they can understand and can appreciate them. This young fellow went to one of the hospitals with his son… and spent a half-day and nobody ever saw them. You know I often say that… the breaking down of the barriers… was done by a cadre of aggressive… Black… leadership… The barriers were so high… and the burden was so difficult… that those aggressive people… got in the streets and did things, they were called, ‘crazy you know what’... I was called one of them… many of those… the…the… opportunities are wider, they are more available, but we have left behind a group of people who don’t have the guts to fight… and they are angry… and they direct their anger in ways that are… against each other… the address it in ways that make them forget what the situation is… and ah… they don’t have the fight to go…if I had been at the hospital, where I had my son… waiting to be cared for and they had me sitting there waiting and waiting… by the time… I had been waiting an hour or two hours… I don’t think I would have waited that long…some chairs might have been broken or some police might have been in the area or something… somebody would have seen me… rather than to have ignored me as was the case many, many years ago.