Albert "Bruce" Washington - Background information (clip)
Interviewed by Yvonne Cleveland and Priya Sreenivasan on March 11, 2023
Yvonne Cleveland: What made you interested in becoming a brick mason?
Albert Washington: Well, I took it in high school at Chatham County, Horton High School, and they used to interview us and say who’s going to college? If you weren't going to college, they would teach you a trade—carpeting, brick masonry and all that. It just went on from there. When we graduated, they sent us to Burlington to work for a man named Richard Robinson, and then I came to Chapel Hill and started working for DB Rankins; he stays over in Northside too, him and Roland Harris. And I went to work for William E. Smith, he’s from Chapel Hill. Me and my partner, Barry Kelly, we were in business for, I think, 37 years. And we started working in the triangle area.
Yvonne Cleveland: So, you took up the trade in high school and it was because you didn’t want to go to college. So you weren’t interested in [or] were there other trades?
Albert Washington: Yeah, we couldn’t afford to go to college, and then I wasn’t interested in it. I was trying to work and make some money.
Yvonne Cleveland: Were there any other trades that you might have been interested in? What made you become a brick mason?
Albert Washington: My uncle was a brick mason, and I kind of took that after him.
Yvonne Cleveland: When you were younger, did you lay bricks with him? Did he train you a little bit?
Albert Washington: A little. Mostly, I worked for DB Rankins. He stayed over in Northside too, and Roland Harris they were partners. I went to work for them, then I went to work for William E. Smith.
Yvonne Cleveland: How old were you when you went to work?
Albert Washington: I had to be about 19, but I started off working down where my mother worked at [a] fraternity. I used to work on the produce truck, delivering groceries to the fraternity when I was about nine or ten years old.
Yvonne Cleveland: Nine! What! I guess you didn’t need work permits back then.
Albert Washington: Then I went to work at Southern Insurance. It was an insurance company that was on Main Street, and they used to pay me seven dollars a week.
Yvonne Cleveland: What! Wow!
Albert Washington: I went to work at the Five and Ten, that was over there on Main Street. I was just trying to get into something to make some money, and at that time, good money was in laying brick.
Yvonne Cleveland: Laying brick because a lot of things were being built at that time?
Albert Washington: Yeah.
