Interview with Henrietta Thomas
by Venice Johnson <Venice49@aol.com>, 10/12/98©
Henrietta Thomas was born in 1940. She was of 11 children who picked cotton in the fields in Sunflower County, Mississippi on the O.B. Lindsay plantation. Although she dreamed of Chicago for more than 30 years, she become a permanent resident in 1970.
"The first time I went to Maxwell Street (and this was before it started to change), my brother took my Dad and I on the grand tour. It was like visiting a small town. The marketplace smelled of grilled onions and pork chops and all kinds of foods. There were crowds of people, eating, laughing, talking, some dancing. I'll never forget it. There were people of all races, going in and out of stores with flung open doors. We saw street vendors up and down the way, with their booths and tables filled with anything you thought you might want to buy. They sold everything from ribbons and lace to clothes and gadgets.
You could find things on Maxwell Street you couldn't find anywhere else. It was one great big carnival. I felt like I was Ruralville again and it was a Saturday night," says Henrietta Thomas who hails from Mississippi.
"Even before I ever visited Maxwell Street, I had a Chicago friend who'd always say, Oh, I need to get this or that. But, it'll cost too much downtown. I'm going to Maxwell Street!" Thomas chuckles softly when she remembers back to a time when the thought of coming to Chicago was a precious dream.
"When I was a little girl picking cotton in the fields near the highway and a Yankee drove by, I'd remember the number of his license plate, shut my eyes real quick and just see it stopping, and the man waving to me and tell me he was taking me all the way to Chicago! We had simple dreams like that back then. When we thought about going up North, Chicago was the place to go."
So when Henrietta finally got to visit Chicago and go to Maxwell Street in 1970, she and her father fell in love with it.
"It was like a little bit of Mississippi come to Chicago! My father and I walked through the street in shock. It was just like walking along Greasy street back home. You see, bach where I come from Saturday evening was festival night for black folks in Mississippi.
All week long we'd work hard in the fields and on Saturday night, everybody got cleaned up, put on their best clothes and went down to Greasy Street.
Just like Maxwell Street, all the stores were open and lit up, welcoming you to come in and shop. There were two places to go on a Saturday night. Front Street which was nice and quiet, very respectable. Church folks went into these stores and bought their fabric, lace and magazines. It was nice and parents didn't mind their children going. But around the corner was Greasy Street! Everything happened there. It was place where saint and sinners met at the same place and enjoyed themselves.
Because you could just relax and be yourself. You met up with friends, drank soda water, sat on the hood of your car and listened to music. You'd see people with fish sandwiches, pig feet, some sipping on potgosh (a homemade beer made of dried peaches.) Street vendors weaved themselves throughout the people and there wasn't a pocket of space that didn't have something going on. And the whole thing was alive with folks playing blues.
So, here me and Daddy were, walking down Maxwell Street and it might as well as have been 30 years ago. It had the same feel about it. My brother laughed because me and Daddy were in a daze.
How was it possible to take a piece of the Mississippi Delta and set it down in Chicago. But, here it was! And just like being on Greasy Street, we ran into people who we hadn't seen since they left the plantation and came North. We met old friends, we met their children and grandchildren. Sometimes we'd just break down and cry and hold onto one another. Because these were people we thought we'd never see again.
And the music was the same. Just like Greasy Street where the Blues oozed out of every pore, Maxwell Street wore the Blues like an old comfy coat.
My father, who'd stopped playing the blues, just stood there and listened to the players. 'I used to play a little guitar myself.'
But Jessie Thomas had played more than a 'little'. Henrietta's father had been born with a guitar in his hand. Playing the blues had been handed back so far down the family line, he couldn't even how he'd learned to play.
"One day, I woke up and I was playing the blues," he once told her.
I watched him walking among those street singers and wondered whether he missed playing the blues as much as I missed him playing them. But, Daddy and Mama had got religion when I was a child and had laid down their blues music so they we could have a better life. Somehow the preacher had gotten Mama and Daddy to believe that if they continued playing the devil's music, all their 11 children were going to turn out barrel-house drunks.
Thomas laughs when she recalls how fiercely her mother guard the secret from her church friends, that she once played a mean blues harmonica.
"She doesn't want me to even mention it to this day."
All I know is that day I knew somewhere inside the music stirred Daddy's blood. Because some of the songs they played I remember hearing Daddy play.
I'll never forget how amazed we were that this place was waiting for us. In this big city, far away from home, Maxwell Street had preserved a little bit of what we held very dear.
When you ask me what I think about Maxwell Street, why I'm opposed to it being destroyed, I say it would like destroying all the evidence to the Underground Railroad--like tearing down history. I get all caught up in the words. But, I mean, Maxwell Street is a place to meet your ancestors. It's as though their spirits live there, among the people. All the hopes and dreams of thousands of people are on the streets and in the buildings. It's a connecting place. Like Greasy Street was a place to relax and be yourself, that's what Maxwell Street was like for the immigrants who were new to the city and couldn't quite find their way. You got connected there. What you had lost you could find.
Why save Maxwell Street?
All over the country, people are holding onto their history. They are even preserving the places where Harriet Tubman conducted slaves through the Underground Railroad. In every city, people are beginning to realize the value of their history. I hope that Chicago will too.
She wrote and produced BAD STREET for NBC-WMAQ-TV in 1986. That production received five Emmy nominations which included Ms. Johnson as Best Writer of 1986. She was a winner of one Emmy in 1986 and won the Illinois Broadcaster's Silver Dome Award, also for BAD STREET.
Ms. Johnson has written several plays designed for specific community needs. She wrote and produced shows for Bethel New Life, the YWCA, Chicago Urban League, and toured with the City Lit, Just Plain People Company.
She is co-founder of the Westside Arts Council and is founder of the Birth of A Story Museum and the Now Theater Company.
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