(gentle music) - What you may know about Midland, Texas is maybe that we are the home to two past presidents of the United States.

Or maybe you heard about a precious baby in a well.

Or that we are the oil capital of the United States.

But what you may not know is Midland is a rich and diverse community.

(gentle music) This is Midland, Our City, Our Stories.

(gentle music) This is Midland today.

Almost every city in America has a main street.

It will have a certain vibe, heartbeat if you will, for how the city functions and moves.

Restaurants, parks, nightlife, businesses, foot traffic, hotels, all make up the life of a downtown.

But let me guarantee you one thing, there is no main street like Midland, Texas.

There is no city like Midland, Texas.

From the earliest days of being a midpoint for cattle transport to becoming the oil rich capital of the United States, people of all backgrounds have found their way to Midland, Texas in one way or another.

The reasons were many, as you will hear from our historians.

Are you ready to take that journey?

Let's go.

- [Historian] My roots go back to 1893.

- [Historian] In 1935.

- [Historian] In 1939.

- [Historian] March, 1953.

- [Historian] 1975.

- My family moved from Palo Pinto County because they were sheep ranchers in that area.

And they wanted to branch out and have better grasses to graze.

And so they staked their claim from Jal, New Mexico, almost to Andrews in Goldsmith.

It was 121 section ranch called the Jal Ranch.

And they came out to be sheep ranchers, but the coyotes were something that they had not faced before so they quickly shifted to cattle.

- My father was in the plumbing supply business.

He got a job as a plumbing supply salesman because that's all, the only job he could find in The Depression.

So he said to my mother, I think we can make a go of it in the oil business and I'd like to go check it out.

He'd been reading about it.

So mother said, yes.

They'd gotten married in 1936.

They got in the car and they drove across the United States.

I think they drove down and across to Highway 80.

And when they hit Georgia, she said, she'd kept a diary, she said dirt roads.

So they came out here and my father looked around and he said, I think I can make a go in this business.

So why don't we try it?

And my mother said, that's a great idea.

So then they came to West Texas.

And he decided that Midland was gonna be the place where the oil business was going to boom.

I don't know, there may be 5,000, 7,000 people here at the most.

- My family came to Midland, Texas in 1955.

So in order to get to Midland, we had to find transportation to come to Midland.

My family was about four at the time and my mother had just had a baby.

And so that made five and she was two months old.

So in order for us to come to Midland, they hired a man to drive a truck, to come to Clarksville, pick us up and then transport us back to Midland.

And in order for us to get to Midland, my mother and my baby sister rode in the front of the truck with the driver and the driver was Caucasian.

And we rode in the back of the truck with the furniture and everything else that had to come.

And Clarksville is about, I would say at that time, maybe 11 or 12 hours away.

So we rode in the middle of the night in order for him to get us here.

And early in the wee hours of the morning, which was Thanksgiving morning.

I'll never forget it.

It was Thanksgiving morning.

- And I was born in Midland, Texas in 1955.

My parents were Dr. Viola and Raymond Coleman.

My mother was the first female black physician in Midland.

And my father was a school teacher at Carver Junior, Senior, High School in Midland.

- As I was growing up and generations before me had some African American families that worked for them.

These families came to Midland in 1913, mostly from Paris, Texas.

It was the Rollison-Posey family.

And many of those family members came to pick cotton, but eventually they went to work for the Calvins, the Scarboroughs, the Glasses, and the Abels, several other families.

And the Rollison-Posey family is probably seventh generation now.

I still know some of the great, great grandkids and maybe their great, great, great grandkids by now.

But they were, they're an amazing family.

For example, Brunetta Poke worked for our family for 43 years.

And Brunetta came as soon as my granddad died very suddenly one night.

Mother called from the hospital and she came and sat with us until mom got home to tell us.

And years later, my mom died and Brunetta again, stepped in and took care of us.

And then when Brunetta became very elderly and was in a nursing home, every day I'd go to Grandy's and get her grits, and take her grits, and feed her grits every day.

It was really a lovely balance of caregiving between our families.

- Got here when Midland was a small town, a small community.

And so not only did we get to know the people, they got to know us.

So we grew with them.

We were able to participate in the community.

- Midland had that small town feel because when I was a kid, we'd ride our bicycles down on Sunday afternoons to go to the Yucca Theater.

And afterwards, at the courthouse had the jail on top of it, and we'd go down and yell up at all the guys in jail.

And our parents kind of put a squash on that when they found that out.

(gentle music) - Midland's hometown.

Midland is definitely my foundation, my roots.

And with mom and dad moving here, and most of my aunts and uncles being here, there was a lot of culture developed in my youth, and it was amazing.

It was exciting.

We grew up a lot on the east side of North Big Spring Street on Shandon and close to Main Street in that area.

And just a lot of great memories of my aunts and uncles in their house with mom and dad, and spending a lot of evenings over there, a lot of family dinners.

And we were just talking about that, how when we would get together as family, all of us would get together and have just this great birthdays, great anniversaries, great celebrations as a family, with amazing motherly cooks and cooking.

And so we had the best times.

- Hard to remember everything about Midland when I was seven years old.

But I did attend school, elementary school in Midland and so did my brother.

We both attended elementary school in Midland.

The Midland Colored School, had students going through the eighth grade.

When you got to eighth grade, we had a graduation.

So he wanted his children to at least finish high school.

My brother was sent to San Angelo.

I was sent to a boarding school in San Antonio, that was a Catholic school.

I became a Catholic, which I'm the only one in my family that was Catholic.

And when I came back to Midland, I was the only African American to attend the Catholic Church.

It wasn't St. Anne's at that time.

It was St. George.

On the Midland Southside, we had segregated businesses.

We had our own restaurants, we had our own funeral homes.

We had our own everything, insurance people, or whatever you needed over there on the Southside.

And we did not really go to the other side of town.

I remember when I was teaching our kids, I said something about the post office.

They didn't even know what the post office was, but because everything was done on our side of town.

- Growing up in Midland was, well, it's the only town I knew.

And my parents moved here in the 1950s.

And we were told by my mother that the bank would only loan them money to build a house south of the railroad tracks.

So that's where we lived.

That was our universe.

And growing up on the Southside of Midland was, at that time, I thought was normal because everybody knew everybody.

And you, if you were someplace you weren't supposed to be, some parent was gonna say something, and say, you need to get home.

Any adult had the ability or took the responsibility to correct you if you were doing something you should not be doing.

But life on the Southside of Midland was fantastic.

We had barber shops.

We had to my knowledge, the only black pharmacy in West Texas.

We had grocery stores and we had hotels.

And those were the places that we interacted throughout our childhood.

- The majority of the blacks lived on the Southside of town.

And that was our school.

Our churches were there.

The school were there that we attended.

And we had support from the teachers, as well as the ministers, and then our parents, and other family members.

It was like, if you did something, you know, at school and the teacher had to call your parent, well, there's no way, the teacher was always right, no matter if we were wrong in some way.

But that's just the way it was.

And everybody took pride in being a part of that community.

- When I was a little girl, I think everybody in Midland knew James.

And James would ride his bicycle to our house and cut the lawn.

Well, then we didn't have power driven lawn mowers.

We just had the push lawn mowers.

And he always brought this little black lunch pail.

And I'd see him out underneath the elm tree in our backyard and I figured it was picnic time.

So I would grab a peanut butter and jelly sandwich or a baloney sandwich and go sit out with him under the elm tree.

And we would have our picnic.

But usually the picnic I had to sneak away from because he was snoring with a nap in the end.

(gentle music) - The Braceros they had a, I don't know how many they had, but they had all the farming lands around here, you know.

They had problems with the Braceros.

They work all week and then every Friday evening, you know, they paid them cash.

And lot of the Braceros they had money and they kept it with them, and they paid them cash.

And there was a few that got, went to the post office or wherever, and, or the boss man helped them send money to their wives and kids in banks in Mexico, but not all of 'em did that.

And then after Friday, they would bring them into town at the sundown market, which is just recently changed names.

And it was on there on east Highway 80, and they were strictly for blacks.

It was just this, a pretty good sized market.

And they had groceries and that's where the black community and some of the Mexicans bought their groceries.

They didn't have groceries like we have now, you know, United or HEB.

(gentle music) - Well, the Southside of Midland was kind of like a big family to me.

Right across the street, we lived on a street called Wiley Street, right across the street was the Gary's Grocery Store.

And we could go over and get whatever we wanted.

And if we were short a nickel or a dime, Ms Gary would always say, well, bring it back next time.

So we enjoyed that.

And people were friendly all down the street.

If you were going to school and you were running a little late, somebody would come out and say, hey, you better get on to school.

You're late.

Or if one of your braids were sticking way up, somebody might come with a bobby pin and pin it down.

And they were real friendly.

And those were the same people that later on in life, and they might say, well, I need a loaf of bread will you go to the store for me.

So the kids were always running errands for the older people on the block.

Well, we lived off of Terrell Street.

And we found a house and it was just two bedrooms.

And a lot of times it didn't look like it was two bedrooms.

It was so small.

So we were cramped in that little tiny house for about two years until we could find a bigger place and could afford a bigger place.

So we slept all over the house.

There were children on the bed, on the floor, (chuckles) just trying to find a space that they could find, you know, some sleep.

We found a house on the Southside of town and that house had two bedrooms.

It had a dining room, a kitchen, and a sizeable living room, but we still didn't have enough space for my brothers to have enough room.

So what my father did, he found a box car for sale, And we had a big yard.

So he had it moved in the backyard so my brothers had a big space.

Each one of them had two rooms and they made a small kitchen, but they had to come in the house for the bathroom.

(gentle music) - Discrimination is not a good thing because you do shut doors on things.

You know, in that time, the Little League was not segregated either as far as race was concerned.

Black children could play baseball, black boys, not girls.

At the time that it happened, it was the norm.

And my father said that, that's the way it was and so I took that as the way it was.

And it wasn't until I was older and could think for myself that I recognized how dreadful that truly was to say, I couldn't play baseball.

Another experience I had as a small child with discrimination was the bus station.

It was across the street, across the street from my father's office, as I recall it.

And back then the bus station or the buses were the Federal Express of the period.

They would come through the little towns all the way over to Fort Stockton, to El Paso, to Wink, all of those towns that had it.

And the geologists would go out to the well, and they would put the samples in a sack and they'd send it on the bus so that my father would go across the street to the bus station and pick up the samples.

Well, I would go with him.

When I walked in there and I could read at that point, and I saw this finger pointing in a, sign with a finger pointing at a door to the outside, and it said colored.

And then I saw a fountain that said whites only.

And I said to my father about the sign, I said, what does that mean?

He said, well, that means that people of color have to go outside to the, who are not white, have to go outside to use the restroom.

I don't understand this.

Particularly, after my mother had told me that we don't know who the color of God is.

I thought, why are we doing that?

But, you know, I was five.

I wasn't in charge of the world.

- During those times, Ritz Theater and the Yucca Theater, we could not sit downstairs.

We could come, but we had to sit upstairs.

The blacks, we were not allowed.

Whites were downstairs, blacks upstairs in the Ritz Theater and the Yucca Theater.

And we could not sit at the counter, but we could go in and buy things, but we couldn't sit at the counter and eat or order anything.

Later teenage years, I can remember my dad buying me a debutante dress.

The members of Midland Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, they sponsored young ladies.

We had a debutante ball and that was in 1964.

And I can remember my daddy my dress from Dunlap's.

I think that dress may have cost $60, but I think it took all of my daddy's paying for it for several months, almost a year to get the dress for me back then.

You know, because of the wages and things of that nature and all, but they did get it for me.

And I was presented as a debutante, but I can remember that dress from Dunlap's and all that we were able to get.

That was in 1965.

(gentle music) - My father was here working.

He came in 1950 and he came to Midland because he needed to make a living to take care of his family.

He decided to stay.

He would come home once a year.

And in 1954, late 1954, he became ill. And his doctor was Dr. Viola Coleman.

And my sisters came, I had older sisters, my older sisters came to Midland to check on him.

And Dr. Coleman's advice to them was that his family needed to come to Midland where he was living, because it just was too much of a strain on him to be away from his family.

(gentle music) - Well, I was born in 1941 just after, or just before the Pearl Harbor disaster.

And I was born at Western Clinic.

They didn't have a hospital at the time.

I think there was another clinic in town, but there were no, there was no hospital.

We didn't have a hospital until 1950 when Midland Memorial Hospital opened its doors that was following the end of World War II.

And the reason that Midland Memorial is named Memorial is it was built as a Memorial to the men and women who died in defense of this country.

- My mother did get her medical degree from Meharry Medical College in Nashville, Tennessee.

And was looking for a place to practice medicine and went back to her hometown of New Iberia, Louisiana, and wanted to borrow $300 to set up her practice.

The banks required that she have her parents and my father's parents put up their homes for collateral for that $300 loan.

And she said she could not ask her parents to do that.

So she got on the train and was headed to California, she thought things would be better there, stopped in Fort worth to visit a friend.

And he said, they've just built this new hospital in Midland and they were told that if the Negros helped build it, they would have a Negro physician.

So my mother rode the train to Midland, got off the train, went to the hospital and asked if they would give her privileges.

They looked at her and said, why wouldn't we?

My mother was instrumental in setting up the EMS service, the city ambulance service for the citizens of Midland.

Before that was started, the ambulance service were run by the funeral homes.

So they would take turns running the ambulance service.

And I can only imagine if you were in a car accident, the last thing you wanted was a funeral home showing up at the accident scene.

So she was instrumental in setting that up.

Also, she was involved in setting up the emergency room system.

Before she got involved in that, all of the community doctors took turns taking ER call.

So if you're in that accident and a funeral home shows up and takes to the ER, it might be an OBGN or a surgeon on call, or it could be a dermatologist that takes ER call at that time.

So she was involved in getting emergency room trained physicians to staff the ER, along with the EMS service, to make sure that we were getting proper emergency room care at the hospital here.

- So, I mean, we were involved in a lot of things and we had a lot of camaraderie and support, like I said, from community, family, teachers, and all.

- That we are a salad bowl, not a melting pot, and that we need to work together.

And once the dressing is put on the salad, then we are all one.

And the salad is delicious.

That means that Midland, we as Midlanders, we can all live together, we can all work together, and we can have one of the best communities that there is in the United States of America.

- The tenacity and drive that each one of our historians has is quite fascinating.

What could have driven them apart from community only made them stronger.

The blacks and browns had their own shopping, schools, businesses, doctors, pharmacists.

They took care of each other and each other's children.

The community was built on the south and east side of the tracks with love and respect.

They had their own rhythm and experiences that they brought to the city.

And that has been woven into the fabric of what Midland is today.

The love they have for Midland and the people in it is unwavering.

They were separated by race.

Was it fair?

No.

It was just the way things were at the time.

But despite that, enormous contributions were made that made us better.

While we were watching, did it make you remember what brought you to Midland and what your impressions were?

We've only scratched the surface.

We have so many more stories to tell.

We'd love to hear from you and know about your journey.

Interact with us on our website at mocos.com.

I'm Michael Williams.

Thank you for joining us as we will continue this important conversation on diversity, Midland, Our City, Our Stories.

Good night.

(gentle music) - I think Midland's a great place because there are different silos here.

And sometimes that can be viewed as negative, but I think it's also a very positive way to look at all the different opportunities.

You can come here and if you are interested in the arts and in that scene, there's a place for you.

If you come here and most recently you're interested in culinary arts and the food scene, Berlin's got an up and coming food scene that's actually been wonderful, personally, to watch.

And, you know, we have all these new restaurants coming in.

We have change, but we also have local ones.

And so those are exciting.

We have food trucks now.

And that's something that growing up wasn't here.

And so it's great to see that.

You know, we have entertainment districts where we have theaters and movie theaters.

And, you know, we have different sort of clubs you can join, whether you like sports like tennis or, you know, you have knitting clubs, there are book clubs.

There are all these different things and opportunities to have.

You just have to sort of sometimes go out and search for it.