Violet Chandler, Kaitlyn Greenidge

Description

Brooklyn Brownstoners; Longtime Brooklyn resident; childhood friend of Joan Maynard Violet (Hewitt) Chandler was born in Brooklyn in 1923. She was born on Sumter Street, between Saratoga and Howard Streets. As a teenager, she lived on Hancock Street between Reid and Stuyvesant Avenues. She remembers her neighborhood as being diverse, with Irish, Italian and Jewish neighbors. On Sumter Street, her family was the only African American family on her block. Her parents immigrated to Brooklyn from St. Phillips parish Barbados, around 1916. Violet was the youngest of their five children. Her father was a custom tailor, but also painted, drew and sculpted. Violet recalls their home as constantly filled with different art projects when she was growing up. The family moved to Hancock Street when Violet was in her teens. It was there that she befriended Joan Maynard, then Joan Cooper. Joan’s family lived in the apartment above Violet’s. She recalled first meeting the Coopers when Violet’s brother, home from the army, played recordings of “voodoo” chants too loudly. Joan’s mother, Juliana St. Bernard, complained because she said she could recognize the chants as authentic recordings, and asked Violet’s brother to stop playing them. Joan was 14 and some years younger than Violet when they first met, but Violet remembers her socializing with the older teenagers in the neighborhood. She had met Joan’s father, John Cooper, a ventriloquist, from when he used to perform at her elementary school. She remembered that his dummy was named Sam, and that John Cooper...

Record Contributed By

Weeksville Heritage Center