‘It didn’t make no difference if you were black, white, blue, green or yellow.’
-Messenger photo by Peter Kaspari <br> Julia Naylor, of Fort Dodge, talks about what it was like growing up as a black person in Fort Dodge during the Black History Month event Saturday at Second Baptist Church.
-Messenger photo by Peter Kaspari <br> Helen Gully, left, and Johnnie Naylor, both of Fort Dodge, look over photos of famous blacks from Fort Dodge during the Black History Month event at Second Baptist Church Saturday.
-Messenger photo by Peter Kaspari <br> Julia Naylor, of Fort Dodge, talks about what it was like growing up as a black person in Fort Dodge during the Black History Month event Saturday at Second Baptist Church.
-Messenger photo by Peter Kaspari <br> Helen Gully, left, and Johnnie Naylor, both of Fort Dodge, look over photos of famous blacks from Fort Dodge during the Black History Month event at Second Baptist Church Saturday.
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Growing up as a black woman in Fort Dodge, Julia Naylor said she never experienced problems, and she got along with everybody.
Naylor talked about her life during the annual Black History Month event, which was held Saturday at Second Baptist Church, 1827 Fourth Ave. S. The event was originally supposed to be in February, but was postponed due to weather.
Naylor grew up in Pleasant Valley, which she referred to as the Flats.
"Fort Dodge was a really nice place to grow up," she said. "I grew up in Fort Dodge. I went to school in Fort Dodge. We never had a problem because you had two schools after the grade school -- you had South Junior High and you had North. Everybody went to those schools."
She added, "It didn't make no difference if you were black, white, blue, green or yellow. Those were the schools you went to."
While the kids in Pleasant Valley occasionally fought with each other, Naylor said the fights were never about race because all races lived in the valley.
"In the Flats, we had everybody," she said. "You can't count out no race, no culture. The Flats was everybody."
And when kids got in trouble, it was because of this reason: They talked back to an adult.
"And as I have always said, you listen no matter whose yard you played in," Naylor said. "Whatever that mother said, you did. It wasn't no big thing for her to swat everybody that was there.
"And you didn't worry about running home and telling Mama, because if you ran home and told Mama, you knew what was going to happen because you had talked back or acted bad in that person's yard," she said. "And that was it, buddy. You didn't talk back to grown people when you were young. And it didn't make any difference what color you were -- the behind meant for everybody."
As a black woman, she never experienced racial problems in Fort Dodge.
"And as far as growing up in Fort Dodge black, as far as I was concerned, I had no problems," she said. "The kids had no problems."
Sherry Washington, president of the Pleasant Valley Awareness Committee, also spoke Saturday. Originally, her mother, Charlene Washington, was going to speak, but she was out of town and unable to attend.
But Sherry Washington promised her mother one thing -- she would talk about "down South homemade remedies."
Her mother grew up in Mississippi, and sometimes couldn't afford to see a doctor, so she and her family came up with their own remedies for injuries and ailments.
Washington remembered one she experienced firsthand as a child. She and her brothers were playing outside. Washington, who wasn't wearing any shoes, stepped on a nail.
Her mother immediately went to work on her.
"Mom took a piece of salt pork, put it on the bottom of my foot, and she did something else and then she tied it," Washington said. "That was to draw out any of the rust or any of the toxins from the nail that went in my foot. Sure enough, my foot held, and she held that together and it started to mend."
Washington said her mother had a home remedy for everything, whether it was drinking vinegar water for high blood pressure or eating collard greens when she had a headache.
Washington added that, as someone who also grew up in Pleasant Valley, she never experienced any issues with race.
"Our first neighbors were the Witte family, and the Wittes were caucasian," she said. "And next door to us was another African-American family, and that was the Shivers family. And then we had the Ayalas. We had all kinds of folks that lived in our community. So we all grew up together and we all knew each other, so color wasn't an issue."