“As soon as they declared segregation was unconstitutional, I went into restaurants I couldn’t afford to go in just for the hell of it and I started playing at segregated golf courses and country clubs,” said Jones who said he defied a lot of things. “I didn’t show or really have any fear or intimidation. I just acted like I belonged there, but there were times when that expression ‘you know your place’ would come out. Back in the day some things just didn’t happen. I will never forget another neighbor who was in the Air Force. I had just bought my first car and I took a friend girl with me to take my neighbor over to his base in Blytheville, AR. Coming back we want to get something to eat. We got inside this little cafe and saw nothing but white folks wearing straw hats and overalls. They all began looking at us strangely, but I took pride in doing that kind of thing. They couldn’t refuse us service, but thinking back now I can’t help but to wonder if they spit in our food or something. They were looking so hard at us. That was when I learned not to show fear or intimidation. The same thing happened to me at a restaurant that, up until recently, sat at the corner of Summer and Holmes. They were looking at me so hard that I felt like a signified monkey. I just recited in my head: I’m raggedy, but I’m round here; I wasn’t invited, but I’m down here. Now you let some SOB try to put me out!” “Me and Wade Scott went out to Audubon after they declared segregation unconstitutional. By this time, they had developed pull carts. You had to pay to play, so we went inside to pay for the course and the cart. It was something like sixty-five cents which included fifteen cents for the pull cart. I had put my golf bag on the outside where the pull carts were lined up and I was pulling the pull cart towards my golf bag when this white guy appeared. We were kind of zig-zagging to avoid running into one another and he kicked the cart out of my hand. I let it go, but Scott said if that SOB would have knocked that cart out of my hand… I stopped him in the middle of his statement and said, ‘We just getting out here and all they need is for us to raise some hell and give them a reason to say that’s why we don’t need them niggers out here.’ As I thought back I knew that I was used to doing things that I had to swallow and recalled being on the bus when we used to ride the bus to Easyway downtown to go shopping. On this particular day the bus was practically empty when this young white boy boarded. He got on the bus and came all the way near the back of the bus to sit down when all those empty seats were up front. In those days, blacks couldn’t sit in front of a white person on the bus. If you got on that bus and there were whites all the way to the back, you had to go behind them to sit or stand up and they would purposely go it from time-to-time.” “My momma and daddy had explained to me these are things you can’t do and you don’t think about doing them. People would tell you about things so you wouldn’t make no mistakes. That’s just the way I felt. I wasn’t looking for no trouble and I wasn’t going to try to make no trouble. Somebody has got to do it. They talk about fear and I can understand that, but I wasn’t intimidated back in the day. I long ago decided that I wouldn’t join a county club. They seem to be designed to kind of make you feel uppity. I don’t feel inferior to nobody and I don’t feel superior to nobody either. I don’t care how much money you got or what position you hold. I’m not going to allow you to put me down or make me feel less than. I had that mindset and I’ve carried it with me. I laugh about it now, but it would be hell to pay if some white person tried to treat me bad today.” 13
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