Geraldine Vaucresson
Tape No. 4300
VAUCRESSON: My grandmother, like I said, my great grandmother
didn't speak English. They spoke Creole. What they call Creole.
NGUYEN: Creole French?
VAUCRESSON: Yes. The only thing is . . . We grew up with
that. But what they would tell us when we would go to school,
"English! No. When you go to school, you got to speak English." So
we had to speak English in the schools, you know. And we all went to
Catholic school. We stayed in our little neighborhoods, and that was
it. You grew up like that. My daddy used to say, "You see them
children down there? Don't you play with them. They're too black."
They didn't want you to mix. Of course it's not like that now. You
know, I mean, things have changed. But at the height of segregation
it was not nice. That Jazz Fest made a big difference, because when
you went to Jazz Fest, white, blacks, blue, greens, yellow,
everybody's out there having a good time. Nobody cared about nothing
but the music and having a . . . Jazz Fest did something for New
Orleans. It really did. Because people, like I said, they came from
all over. And this is the only city [laughs] . . . You come out your
house sometimes, and you hear music playing. They're walking out in
the street, they're dancing. What are you doing? That's a part of
our culture. We love it.
