Betty Wade: Growing up segregated

Growing up in Oakland during the era of segregation was, as Betty Wade puts it, “ignorantly pleasant.” She has no memories of racism as a child.

The Oakland native was born in 1946 in the family home on what is now Gulley Avenue with the assistance of two black midwives.

“Back when I was born, black people couldn't go to the hospital to give birth; so few doctors were willing to see black people,” Wade said.

She recalls one white doctor who lived in Oakland who welcomed black folks into his office. That was where Wade and her eight brothers and sisters went when a trip to the doctor was necessary.

“Mama and Daddy never talked about segregation,” she said. “Mama and Daddy never told us what we couldn't do. They never told us we had limits.”

When her father loaded up the nine children and took them to New Smyrna Beach or Silver Springs for the day, she was never bothered by the fact that there was a separate area for black people. If anything, Wade grew up thinking that the white people weren't allowed on the black beach and in the black springs.

“Mama and Daddy never told us what we couldn't do. They never told us we had limits.” — Betty Wade, Oakland native

Wade attended Charles R. Drew High School, the black secondary school in Winter Garden, in the early 1960s. Racism isn't much of an issue when all the students are the same race, she said.

“Now, my younger siblings had a completely different experience than I did growing up,” Wade said. “It was more of an impact on them. Especially when they couldn't go to Charles R. Drew, and they had to go to Lakeview (High School) when segregation ended. And that was hard on them. And that's when the racism really did take an impact. And I guess that's kind of where we started recognizing it full scale how bad the racism could be.”

She realizes Oakland didn’t have the racial tension that other places did.

“My grandmother would tell us about when the black people were run out of Ocoee,” Wade said. “She let some of the people come into her home and stay until they could move on.”

Her father, a longtime employee at Lakeview, lost his job because of an incident with one of her brothers. He worked the rest of his life at Southern Bell.

RAISING FAMILY

Wade is a third-generation Oakland resident. Her grandparents moved there when her grandfather took a job helping lay railroad tracks. He later worked for several pioneer Oakland families. After he died in 1918 in the flu epidemic, his 36-year-old wife, Wade’s grandmother, had three children to care for, so she contracted to handle all the linen washing for a Lake County academy.

She held this job for many years, Wade said, with six women working for her.

“They had a big wash pot, and they had to boil the water,” she said. “They had to hang them to dry and iron them. Individuals kept bringing her laundry until she was really old. That's how she raised her children and kept the house going.”

When her parents married and settled in Oakland, they lived with Wade’s grandmother, and they all remained under one roof as each of the nine children arrived.

“From the day you were born, you had to do church,” Wade said. “And then you had those activities having to do with the church. In the summer, the youth would have conventions.”

Her childhood was spent at St. Paul Missionary Baptist Church; she now attends Purpose Church Orlando, the recently renamed Next Community Church.

Oakland was once home to Oakland Elementary School, strictly for black students. It closed and reopened several times, depending on the number of school-aged children in the area.

Wade attended this school and then transferred to Drew High for sixth through 12th grade. She graduated in 1964.

Like most children, Wade had dreams.

“I wanted to finish school and go to college,” she said. “I had a brother six years older than I was, and if I looked up to anyone, it would be him. … He went to school at Morehouse, and I wanted to leave and go to college.”

LEAVING OAKLAND

After graduation, she moved to Atlanta, as her brother did, and she attended Clark College (now Clark Atlanta University), earning her bachelor’s degree in history with a minor in education. Before graduating, she took a job as an operator at Southern Bell.

“My mama told me I had to get a job and they weren’t sending me any money,” Wade said. “I thought it would be a summer job, and that was the longest summer job, because I worked for them for 35 years.”

After living in such a big city, Wade thought Oakland was just too small and wouldn’t return to her hometown for 37 years.

Her final two years with Southern Bell found her on assignment in Sydney, Australia, to set up the customer service department for the country’s first competitive telephone company.

Race, once again, came into play, but this time, she was a novelty.

“They had to put me through a lot of psychological testing to make sure I could survive being in that environment as the only black person,” Wade said. “There weren't a lot of black people in Australia. They had the Aborigines.”

Locals wanted to talk to her and invited her into their homes. Little children ran up to the schoolyard fence to see her and touch her. It was a positive experience.

Once the contract was up, Wade moved back to Atlanta, and she retired after 30 years with the company.

GOING BACK HOME

Wade decided it was time to return to her roots in 2000 after her mother became ill. She was surprised to see her sleepy little hometown had experienced a growth spurt and was producing subdivisions on both sides of Highway 50.

She built in a new neighborhood going in on the west side of town, and her home backs up to one of the quiet trails of the Oakland Nature Preserve.

She has been busy as ever, maintaining a presence on various boards in the town. She has served on the Charter Review Commission and the town’s finance committee. She has helped find a new town manager and a new police chief. She has held a seat on the nature preserve’s board of directors.

In 2006, she became heavily involved in the restoration project at the Oakland African-American Historic Cemetery, where her grandfather’s 1918 grave was discovered.

In recent years, her health has slowed her down and she has been relatively quiet in the town. That is, until a large development was proposed across from her neighborhood that will abut all three of the town’s cemeteries.

When she’s not meeting with developers, Wade is opening her home to her young family members and her neighbors’ children. Thought she never married or had children of her own, Wade considers herself a child magnet and is constantly surrounding herself with little ones. Twice a week, she entertains a 3-year-old great-niece.

She is happy in Oakland. This is home.

Contact Amy Quesinberry at [email protected].