Wisconsin Hometown Stories

- Marcus Mickey Marzette: The Flats, they were built to accommodate the Black families coming from the South who got enlisted to work at Fairbanks.

It was like, "Okay, we are here, and we're going to make the best of it."

[laughs] And we did.

– Pastor Lawrence Hoskins: I love the Flats!

And just the love that we had for each other and the children and the kids, all of us... We're just family.

Every last one of them, the mothers or the fathers, they was our father and mother.

[laughs] You couldn't get away with nothing!

- Marcus Mickey Marzette: If you did something wrong before you got to the house, you were already dead meat.

[laughs] - Pastor Lawrence Hoskins: Cause this was the main spot, on Sunday, was when we were playing baseball here.

And they'd all come.

They had barbecue, they had everything, they'd sell everything.

My mother, at that time we were living there, she would make ice cream.

– Wanda Sloan: Yeah!

– Pastor Lawrence Hoskins: Remember that?

- Marcus Mickey Marzette: My fondest memory is on Friday nights after everybody would get off of work, they'd all get together and they'd just relax and have a good time.

- Pastor Lawrence Hoskins: And then they used to go... they used to go hunting.

– Wanda Sloan: Oh, my God!

– Pastor Lawrence Hoskins: Ya' know, food and everything.

– Wanda Sloan: Fishing... - Pastor Lawrence Hoskins: Yeah, fishing, go hunting.

– Wanda Sloan: That was a lot of meals at dinnertime.

[laughing] - Wanda Sloan: Like, oh, my God, everything just comes flooding back and those, those precious memories.

We got to pass it on to our kids, to the rest of our families.

They gotta' know, they gotta' know this.

That sense of history, the sense of resilience, I want them to understand what we've come through.

But it's up to us to keep it moving, gotta' keep it moving.

Baby, I love you, too.

I love both of you guys.

[laughing warmly]