Albert "Bruce" Washington - Changes (clip)
Interviewed by Yvonne Cleveland and Priya Sreenivasan on March 11, 2023
Albert “Bruce” Washington (ABW): Well, it is now, but a lot of things now is that, when I first started, it was all Black [people] doing it because it was hard, hard work, and then when the white [people] found out how much money was in it, they kind of took it over. I remember when I started, if I wanted to rent scaffolding and all that, I had to get the man that worked for me to rent them for me because they wouldn’t rent them to me because I was Black. And he would have to go rent them for me. And so, after a few years, we bought everything that we needed, you know, scaffolding, and tractors, and lifts and everything. And people that knew us knew that we were going to do a good job, and that’s how we went on like that.
Yvonne Cleveland (YC): Reputation. Good reputation.
ABW: Never advertised or nothing. Just word of mouth and people that knew me, and we worked every day.
