CW: Where were you born and who were your parents?

Mrs. Hand: [I was born in] Aurora, Illinois to William and Lillian Moore.

CW: What did your father do?

Mrs. Hand: My father worked for a man in a grocery store. He was a butcher. Worked in a grocery store for thirty-two years. When I was born, he was driving the streetcar. The streetcars were horse-drawn. [He was making] seven dollars a week.

CW: So you are a social worker? Where did you go to school?

Mrs. Hand: I graduated from the Chicago School of Citizen Philanthropy. Finally, Chicago University took it over. And I went a quarter to Minnesota University. And I wanted to be a missionary and I went to Moody Bible Institute. I wanted to have a chance to go to Africa, but my mother was ill and she didn’t want me to go because she said she would die before I got back. So I didn’t go. I’m glad I didn’t because she did die. And so then I went into social work which is the same thing, only on a scientific basis. When I graduated, I went to the Chicago School of Citizen Philanthropy, and I had the privilege of having Jane Addams as my teacher. That woman had started the Hull House [settlement house] in Chicago and she was so sweet.

CW: Going into social work at that time-that was pretty unusual for a woman to have professional training.

Mrs. Hand: Um-hmm. I don’t know why. I tell you when I was little, I always wanted to be an architect. And there weren’t any women [architects]. And they said, “No, no, there’s no women architects.” No women for anything when I come along. And way back then, my mother had finished high school and she’d finished music. And she took so much time with my brother and I. We know our times tables, we know our ABC’s and everything before we went to school. I should have taken up something more with math because I was an expert mathematician. I skipped a couple grades which I shouldn’t have. My brother was a poor mathematician. We didn’t think he was going to get to college ’cause he had the worst trouble passing arithmetic he needed to get into college. He’s a graduate of Marquette in Milwaukee. But he was a splendid student in everything else. [Mrs. Hand’s brother was a dentist in Milwaukee.]

CW: It sounds like you were pretty focused all the way through school.

Mrs. Hand: I was always in something. I was always active. I’m from a small town. Our church had about seventy members. I’ve taught Sunday school ever since I was twelve years old. And I was secretary of the church. You know, when there’s only one or two to do something, you’re busy doing something all the time. And then, my mother belonged to a club and they sent me downtown to meet Miss Elizabeth Davis. (The big settlement house in Chicago is named for her.) And she was going to speak to the club one day. My mother’s club sent me downtown [on the interurban train] to meet her. And I went down to meet her, and took her to the lady’s house where the meeting was going to be. This lady was a very dear friend of my mother’s, and she went to everything. And when she’d go to conventions, she’d take me.

I was just out of school. Or was I out of school? And they [the church group was] affiliated with everything in Chicago. In those days, we could go back and forth to Chicago for seventy-five cents. And everything that happened in Chicago, we went. And they had all the great Negro minds. I know Booker T. Washington, [W.E.B.] DuBois, I know all those people personally. They come to Chicago a couple times a year for a meeting. And we used to go into all [the meetings]. And Miss [Mary McLeod] Bethune, I was her private secretary.

All the great colored men and women I’ve had the privilege of meeting cause everybody came to Chicago. I can’t stand Chicago, but Chicago gives you something that no place else gives you. And I had friends, and I had a girl [friend] that was secretary for one of the big insurance companies there. You know how they buy tickets and give them to their help. And she had tickets for everything, so I got to go to everything that was anything in Chicago, white or colored. And she’d always take me. I have been so very fortunate in my life that way.

CW: So what inspired you to go into social work?

Mrs. Hand: Ever since I was a little girl, I always wanted to do something for somebody. I’d take people bouquets of flowers that was no more than a bouquet of dandelions when I was a little bit of a girl. And when I got bigger, the boys would bring me candy, and I’d get maybe three or four boxes of candy and then I’d divide it up, and we had about six or seven old ladies and I’d take it to them.

From [the time I was] a little girl, it always hurt me to see people in want. I always just wanted to help somebody. The happiest part of my life is just helping.

CW: So did you work in any of the settlement houses?

Mrs. Hand: I was a caseworker for the American Red Cross, the Chicago Chapter, and during World War I, I was getting ready to go overseas when the Armistice was signed. And then I stayed here and worked with soldiers’ and sailors’ families. I was a family caseworker. I was working for them when the flu epidemic broke out in the camp-I believe that’s Camp Grant down in Rockwood, Illinois. The flu broke out and they was just dying by the thousands down there. And it was my duty on this job to get those bodies and to send them to the families. We could take them home. [The government] would give us tickets one way, but they wouldn’t give us a ticket coming back. We’d have to pay our way back if we went down with the body. But we had to arrange for all those bodies to go home. And, oh, I did that for pretty near a year, and it go so morbid that I just couldn’t go on with it anymore. It was terrible the way those people were dying, just like flies, with the influenza. And that’s when I left and went into library work.

CW: You needed a break.

Mrs. Hand: Yes. But I didn’t like library work. It was so quiet and dull. I stayed in library work for a couple of years. I stayed in library work in Chicago, and then I went up to Minneapolis. My aunt was widowed. Her husband died and left her with little children, and I went up to stay with her. [So] I went up there and worked in the library. I enjoyed that. And it got so cold. I’ll never forget one night, I had charge of a branch [library] up there, and I had to catch the last bus from Minneapolis [to St. Paul]. And we got as far as Ft. Snelling. It was eleven o’clock at night, twenty-five degrees below zero, snow to your waist. And I can hear that man as long as I live say, “This is as far as we go. You’ll have to wait for another bus to come through.” I said, “Lord, if you let me get back to Illinois, I’ll never come back again.” And I stayed home for a long time then.

And then I got a job working in commercial [design]. I was designing pillows and bedspreads and flowers and table decorations. They have a big art school in Chicago-Dennison’s Craft. I went there and I graduated from there. I been gifted with a gift for designing. I can design most anything. I can make all my own clothes. Never had to use a pattern. And flowers. I can create most anything. And I was head of a factory and had about three hundred girls in there. But the training I received helped me to handle those girls, and I think I go closer and was able to do more missionary work with them just being a social worker that had I been a missionary. The word “missionary” might have scared them.

And I’ll never forget one night my aunt–my aunt was a doctor in Chicago-and she went away and stayed all night over to Gary [Indiana] and I was afraid to go to bed. And I sat up and made flowers all night long, and I created the prettiest flower. Sears & Roebuck had the picture in their catalog for about four years. And I made flowers for Marshall Field and Carson-Pierie and all of those stores. And those great big wreaths you see in front of the Marshall Fields and Sears & Roebuck, I helped to make those wreaths. I worked on all those things ’til I came here [to Dayton].

CW: Where did you meet your husband?

Mrs. Hand: I met my husband at a party in Chicago, and he was a Dayton man and he came to Chicago to study medicine. My friend was a doctor and I was a social worker and she invited me to a party and I met him.

CW: So he grew up in Dayton?

Mrs. Hand: Um-hmm. Born here and graduated Ohio State. He had his Ph.D. from California. I forget what school in California. Oh, he went to school all the time. His mother was a very, very ambitious woman. She finished grade school after he was born. She was the oldest, I think, of three or four children. She was from Springfield, and her mother put her down here to work. Her mother gave her a dollar out of what she earned. The rest of it had to go to support the family. She went to night school, even after that, and she was the head of several clubs here. You never would have known that she had that limited schooling. And she just tried to make him everything she wanted to be, and that’s how he got to Chicago. He went over there to be a doctor. And he got over there too late. There wasn’t any place for him.

And then he got in the insurance business. And then he took up law. And he had just a little bit to go to finish law. I don’t know why he didn’t finish that law. He did lots of work. His head was in a book all the time. Oh, he had a marvelous library.

CW: So what did he do after law school?

Mrs. Hand: He worked for the newspaper there and in insurance. He always stayed with the insurance. And after he came back here he had a nice job at the Field [Wright-Patterson Air Force Base]. He was working at the Field when he took sick. [Mr. Hand died in 1965.]

CW: Did he work for the Dayton Forum [Dayton’s black newspaper]?

Mrs. Hand: He worked for the Dayton Forum for years. The Reeves were so lovely to him. I think they were the first people I met when I moved to Dayton. They owned the Forum. He was the publisher of the Forum.

And then he wrote for the [Dayton] Daily News until he died. He had a column there. He wasn’t as strong politically as I was though. I just worked from a kid up. Oh, I worked so hard in front of those polls. I don’t know where I got it from. My mother never bothered anybody. She went to church and went to her mother’s and that was the end of it. My brother’s the same way. And I was all over town. I know everybody from miles around.

CW: When did you come to Dayton?

Mrs. Hand: I moved down here in the thirties and I stayed two years and then we moved back to Chicago. Then I moved back down here in ’47. And I been here since ’47.

CW: What was Dayton like when you moved here?

Mrs. Hand: It was a booming town. During the war there was so many–Fifth Street was day all night. Busy, busy, busy! And I made artificial flowers and I had a booming business.

CW: Where else did you work in Dayton?

Mrs. Hand: When I came to Dayton I wanted to work free-my husband wouldn’t let me work anyplace as long as he lived. And then after he died, Montgomery County Community Action Agency (I don’t know what it was called then), they set up a place on [West] Fifth Street. Mr. McLin was a good friend of mine and he wanted me to go down there and take charge and work there. When [my husband was alive], he wouldn’t let me go. So after he died, they gave me the job. So I worked down there. I worked with MCCAA for eight years. I did family casework, filed, I did everything.

[MCCAA was] at Fifth and Hawthorn [Streets] at that time. Then when they moved over to Shawen Acres, I didn’t want to go down there, so I went over to Linden Center. I think it was 1969. I stayed there eight years. I lived on Hawthorn Street just around the corner from Fifth Street. I didn’t want to ride the buses. And I just walked down to Linden Center. I was always down there anyway. And so I just worked for them and stayed down there and took charge of the seniors. And I’ve had charge of them ever since. I’ve had many a good time down there.

CW: Did you ever meet Captain Mallory?

Mrs. Hand: No, he had gone when I came here. My husband told me so much about him. My husband used to teach psychology and philosophy over at Wilberforce, and he used to do lots of social work here, and he knew Mr. Mallory.

CW: What about Linden Center is especially important to you?

Mrs. Hand: I love Linden Center. Linden Center has touched the lives of all of our great colored men that we have. Every one of them here in Dayton, I think, have come through Linden Center. It’s meant an awfully lot to them. That and the “Y” [Fifth Street Y.M.C.A.] was the only thing they had. I worked as hard in that “Y” as I did at Linden Center.

I’ve had a beautiful life. A wonderful experience in life.

[Mrs. Hand turns her attention to the Clinton-Dole presidential campaign]. I wish I could live to see a woman president. It won’t come [in my lifetime], but I wish it would. I think women lead these men anyway. Women are smarter than men. I think they use better judgment than men do.

Interviewed by Claudia Watson
September 9, 1996
© Claudia Watson, 1996

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