Transcript of full Delores Quintyne interview

My name is Delores Quintyne. I'm 74 years old. And I was born in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Q: How did you become an activist?

Quintyne: I became an activist probably back in high school, believe it or not. Being raised in a Southern town is a big difference than being raised in New York. There are things that we had to fight for then at that time -- I at that time had no idea that things were bad up in New York. So when I came to New York and I met my husband and we married and we moved to Long Island, which is supposed to bring on the beautiful lawns and all that kind of stuff. We went into Levittown and of course we were told then, 'Not allowed here.' So we finally found our way out to Amityville, which was a little more friendly. That means "the friendly town." Amityville means "friendly." So we moved into Amityville. And we became involved in the civic groups and things, and then we became involved in the civil-rights movement. And fortunately the two of them worked hand in hand. Because the things the civic groups were fighting, they could only go so far, so we joined the civil-rights movement to progress more and to do more and more things for the people in the community. It worked itself out very well. We had good days, bad days, good stories, horror stories, but that was one of the reasons why we became involved. Especially in the area of housing. We came to Long Island and discovered that there were certain pockets that African Americans still could not move into out here in Amityville. And the few that were in the area, certain areas, there was only like one or two which were tolerated. We wanted it to be more open. People came to us because they wanted to get into an apartment out here and they weren't able to get into the apartment. We sent out some white testers and they tested and they told them that they had an apartment available. They told the black couple they didn't have an apartment available. So that's when we started to demonstrate in the housing area. And it worked out very well. They won their case, they moved into the apartment, and then people started to come in and ask us about housing. By that time, our organization had grown and so we decided to take on certain real estates and things out here on the Island that were not, they were like, there's one standard for blacks and one standards for whites, and they were doing quite a bit of that. So we decided, well let's get involved, and we did.

Q: Were there ever moments of fear or doubt?

Quintyne: I think I mentioned before, the vigilante real estate down in Hicksville, that was one of our biggest and ... scariest projects that we undertook. I was frightened for my family and myself at that time. Sometimes we would receive threats and things, but we kept going because we had to persevere.

Q: Can you talk about your activism and the things you worked on?

Quintyne: Long Island CORE [Congress of Racial Equality] was here from the beginning. Lincoln Lynch, who at the time was the president of it. Long Island being such a large, large, two counties ... Lincoln wasn't able to continue to do the both counties. So that's when we developed Suffolk County CORE. I was the first chair of that. And that, after a while, I turned it over to the men because it was just a bit much for me by myself. After that my husband became the northeast regional director of CORE… Suffolk County had its own chapter, Nassau had its own chapter. We worked together with the NAACP and the Urban League and whoever to get things done. They would send up maybe two or three people to help us out. If we needed to negotiate something, and we didn't have an attorney, we'd call on the NAACP. They always had a large bevy of attorneys available. So we would try to, you know, each one reach one, when we needed some help. If we needed a picket line, we'd call on the Urban League to come help us to do that, too. It worked out well. The groups worked well together, and I think that was a reason for the success of breaking down some of the barriers that we had in Suffolk and Nassau. The fear of working in civil rights, of course, it takes you back to the time with Medgar Evers being killed, it takes you also back to Dr. King being assassinated, Malcolm being assassinated, and the fear of beatings and things throughout the South when the blacks were trying to integrate into eating places, hotels, and things of that nature. We felt that Suffolk County was almost becoming like the South at one time because of the things that were happening here. And we were fearful. My husband used to receive threats and things on his life. And I was afraid for him. That was one of the reasons, he always told me, to stay home with the kids. Because he didn't want me to come out and anything happened to me, the children wouldn't have parents. So basically that's when I left and stayed home with the kids.

Q: How did you deal with your fear?

Quintyne: I think I became stronger as we moved forward. I became stronger and stronger. I wasn't afraid to get up in a meeting and go at somebody if it was something I strongly believed in. I wasn't afraid of that. I was, I developed my own strength through what we call trial and error, I developed my strengths. I wasn't afraid anymore. I was afraid for him, but not for myself. He used to come in at night sometimes and he would look through the bushes and things and he would toot the horn and say, "Is it OK? Is it quiet?" And I would say, "It's OK, come on in." I would open the door so the light would shine, lights and things on, so he could come in. We always had big high bushes and he was always afraid somebody would be behind the bush. Because that's how some of the [activists], Medgar Evers and [others] were attacked, they were hiding in the bushes and things.

Q: What was your proudest moment?

Quintyne: The best moment that I remember with the civil rights movement, I believe it came when we went to Washington to walk with Dr. King in the March on Washington. That was one of the ... proudest moments that I can relate to, that I really felt good about the civil rights movement, that we were moving in the right direction. And it helped us, it gave us more courage and conviction to come back home and pursue the things that we had dreamed about. That our kids could go to school with each other and they would not have any problems and that the education that they receive is not inferior, that the education they receive is the same that everybody else receives. And I think that was something that played back in our minds for a long time. And even after he was assassinated, we still kept that going, because we felt that he was trying to tell us something in that message that he gave that day in Washington, and it was something we needed to hear.

Q: How would you like to be remembered?

Quintyne: My legacy, I hope, one of the things I did, I worked with young people when I was working. I worked a lot with young folks. And last summer, the young people gave me that plaque up there. And it says "To Mother Quintyne, for all the work and things that she has done for us." And it was from a group of youngsters that I worked with when they were in high school. And they didn't forget me. And that's something that I hope they will, the young people will remember. And some of the students that I helped get into college, I hope they remember that. And the ones that I helped to get out of jail, that were in trouble, and I went to jails and things to see about them, I hope that they remember that. And I hope that the children that I helped along the way, at our programs and things that we had, Black History programs and programs that I worked in, that they will never forget me for that. Because I hope that I gave them a message that they will remember for a lifetime. And that I used to always tell them, "You have to succeed, succeed at something. Be strong about it." So I hope that they all remember that. And that's the legacy that I hope will carry on for me.

Q: Can you talk about some of your specific projects during your civil rights work?

Quintyne: We worked on the housing. The other part of it was the duck farm. That was treacherous. The Warner Duck Farm in Suffolk County. They had the migrants that they used to bring in to work the duck farms, and the living conditions were horrendous. It really was. We went there as CORE and worked together with the other groups. Some people, though, [thought] we were crazy for going out there. In the end it worked out quite well. They were given recognition. We stopped it, the living conditions which they were living in. And registered them to vote. I think we brought about some type of cohesiveness to the group of people, that they could reach out and feel like they're somebody and stop looking at themselves as second-class citizens. I think we did that, and we were very proud of that. ... Some of the things I see now have not changed that much. But we've come like almost full circle. There are some things that I think still needs to be addressed. Some of them are swept under the rug and hidden because nobody wants to address it. They say, "Everything's fine now, you know, we don't need the civil rights movement anymore ..." I still stay with the NAACP. They'll be 100 years old next year. I'm still with them and we still work together. CORE of course is not out here too much anymore. But NAACP is still in the forefront and still fighting almost the same battles and things, especially in the school system. It's just certain districts, it's not all of them. It's just certain districts that we still have problems with. So we're trying to iron some of that out as smoothly as possible without having to go back out on picket lines again. I think we'd just sit down at a table and talk more rationally now than going on a picket line, but we always said, if push comes to shove, we may have to go back and do the same thing. You never can tell.

Q: Can you talk more about your housing activism?

Quintyne: In the housing area, we discovered that when African-Americans went in to try to get housing, they were often told that there was nothing available for them. It was like turning away at the inn, there's nothing here, so go bye-bye. We had to use white testers, and they were very good. We had two couples who were excellent. They would take their children, and they would go into the different real estates, and they would ask, "Do you have an apartment for rent or a house for rent?" And of course they would show them the book, "Which one would you like? We have this, that and the other." The black couple had been in before, asked the same question about the same house in the same area and was told no. So when [the white couple was] shown that, they said, "Oh thank you very much," of course. And they said, "Do we have to put down a deposit or anything right now to hold it for us?" "No, it'll be here. We have plenty left." So they said, OK. Well, the white testers would come out, they would pass us on the picket line, and they would go and get in the car and then one of us would go in and talk to them, "OK, what was the deal?" And then they would tell us and they would show us what they showed them and we would write it all down so this way we had the proof to give to the attorneys that we had to go after them. And this worked very good until one day they finally got kind of smart, to say, something's gone wrong here. Because when we found out the guy who owns one of the buildings, he had a place in Huntington. So we picketed him. So that's when he realized that, "Oh, oh, somebody is ratting me out, because they had too much information." And the civil rights organization did have information, we had information because the testers were very good. They were very thorough, they took information, and they took the information and they brought it back. And we would give it to the attorney, who would in turn contact the person's attorney and relay the message to him and tell him, you are discriminating against African-Americans because you're not renting to them, while the white couple had gone in ... The only thing they couldn't identify was which white couple they had talked to, because many went in to ask questions. And out of maybe the six or seven couples that went in, two of them belonged to CORE.

Q: In which communities was discrimination a large problem?

Quintyne: The Long Island communities were Levittown, and that is where my husband and I went, and the other one was in the Hicksville area, where a couple wanted to move into a house there. And that was a shut-out. Amityville was the apartments down in Amityville Village, where that had taken place. We picketed. We did a sit-in on that one. We sat in there for almost four days, before the landlord decided, well, he was losing money, because no one was coming to look at the apartment because the picketers were sitting in at the apartment. He wanted to have us arrested, but we moved too quickly in and out of the building. He couldn't figure out who was sitting in and who was not sitting in. So when the police came, we were standing outside with picket signs. There's nobody in the building. We were warned in advance.

Q: What other struggles were you involved in?

Quintyne: The employment, the same thing. We always picketed for employment. We had that Shaffer Beer Company down on 110, where we picketed them, because not even the janitor was black there. And that's what prompted us to go to the World's Fair New York and picket the Shaffer Pavilion. That's where they arrested me the first time. And they were only supposed to arrest the ones that were in civil disobedience, but they arrested us off the picket line, too. They just grabbed us all and swung us up in a truck, and carried us from precinct to precinct. The lawyers, they couldn't find us. They said, "Where did you take them?" We went from 108th Street Precinct down to another precinct someplace in Queens over to another precinct in Manhattan and then down finally to the Tombs downtown in New York. They put us upstairs and put us in this huge room, which was the rec room for the prisoners. They put us in there because they had no place to put us. The inmates that were there, the women that were there, they said "You're taking up our rec space. We want our space back!" But they wouldn't let us out, they made us stay overnight. And the next day, the inmates said, "We'll get you out of here, not to worry." They used to come and talk to us, and say, "How do you do this?" One came by with a dead rat, and said, "See, this is what we have to live with!" And we were like, "Oh, gross!" I was like, "I want to go home!" That day, that evening, they started with the spoons and forks, against what they had, up against the bars and they started making noise and chanting, "We want them out! We want them out!" and they kept this up until the warden came and she said, "Call those lawyers --get them out of here!" And they did. All of a sudden, they found us like ,boom, when she came upstairs. They started reading names, "Get dressed, get out of here." You know, they put us out, because [she] said, "I don't want any uprising! I'm getting an uprising!" She was so upset. She said, "Get them out of here! I don't need them here! They shouldn't be here in the first place!" She was very upset about it. Then Shaffer beer finally did break down and did hire someone to sweep the floors. That was fine. We didn't care, as long as we had somebody inside. So each of the employment things was very good. Same thing with Suffolk County Water. My husband and two other people from CORE went in to negotiate with Suffolk County Water and they were able to get some blacks hired and that worked out very well ...

Q: How many times were you arrested?

Quintyne: I was arrested one time. The second time I was getting ready to, and my husband said, "Get over here, no." He said, "That's enough." He was afraid I wouldn't get out. He has to go to work, you know, and we still had young kids. Who's going to take care of these kids? Get over here. You're not going to jail anymore ...

Q: Were you intimidated?

Quintyne: Yes, they were trying to teach us a lesson. How dare they come in here and disrupt our things and say they're marching for civil rights. We were intimidated, oh definitely. They really intimidated us. They were trying real hard. But we didn't give in. We did not give in.

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