Home
Search transcripts:    Advanced Search
Notable New     Yorkers
Select     Notable New Yorker

Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
Photo Gallery
Transcript

Part:         Session:         Page of 915

We drove very slowly. There was a local band playing some kind of a funeral march. So we went to that tempo and pace. It is true that Jasper was out en masse. The whole town was out - children, women, dogs, Negroes, whites, everybody. The town fathers were up near the church. There was a stand built near the church and they were there. We went through the village and then came up the hill. The church was halfway up a rather steep hill, I think.

As I saw the church, to my horror I observed that it must have had a hundred steps from the sidewalk to the main entrance. It seemed to me I had never seen a church up on such high steps, and I couldn't imagine why that was, particularly in a country town where there's no great land value. I know why they do it in big cities where the land values are high. They want to use the basement for a social hall because the land values are so great that they can't afford to buy another piece of land for that. The church really ought to be down on the level of the surrounding ground. I couldn't see why in a small town where the land values couldn't be very great that should be. It was an enormous church. If they could have afforded to build it all, they could have afforded to buy lot more on the side for a





© 2006 Columbia University Libraries | Oral History Research Office | Rights and Permissions | Help