0.26 Willie moore, b. 1935

Art instruction inc.

Hampton, Arkansas, was my birthplace. Ever since I was a little child [I was] drawing at the church—that’s really where I used to hang out—and that’s one education, and the other one is when I first recognized that there was such a thing as “art” that I had been doing. The problem wasn’t the term…there weren’t any artists in the little town, so I didn’t have any art teachers. Secondary education was a correspondence course: Art Instruction Incorporated. I took part of it. I was I guess about 15, 16, about that age. I’m not quite sure. Drawing got my attention and everybody said, “Willie can do that. He can draw good just like it is.” At first they would not accept me. I was a little young. Eventually the salesperson came from Minneapolis, Minnesota, Art Instruction Incorporated and he got to talking with my dad. Before I knew it, I was signed up for Art Instruction Incorporated, which I enjoyed, and began to recognize this field of art from the samples that they showed me. One thing in particular was the artists which they showed me on the covers of Look, Time, Life, or I think it was Saturday Evening Post. I would be allowed to take time out in the school day to go and practice my art. That was one good thing. My instructor was open-minded to see that this was the gift I should develop.

Houston bound

When I came to Houston I lacked one year in high school, and I didn’t go immediately to high school because I wanted to make a little change; have some jingle in my pocket. Matter of fact, when I came here I left my cotton sack hanging on the fence from the cotton patch I had been working in. Houston was a hayfield. All out by the Astrodome, they had cattle out in there and I was by chance off for the summer. I met a man who loaded hay on his truck and I started talking with him and he offered me a job. I had been around hay—but I had never pitched hay. I kind of enjoyed it because it was like taking me back to my raising or rearing. I did the farm chores that most boys do, baling hay, picking cotton, plowing—the whole works. Then came the night life. The Eldorado Ballroom. I was crazy about the music. I used to think I was going to be a guitarist with my own band. I never did—but I did make acquaintance with some of the musicians who made it. When James Brown was a singer he used to come to the Eldorado Ballroom, and this group called the Midnighters. James Brown and the big-time singers we all had records of, they’d come into town and they’d stop at the Eldorado before they’d go to the Coliseum. This was a time when it was highly segregated as far as public places; when they came to town they went to the black places.

To texas southern by way of yates

I went to Jack Yates High School for that one semester that I lacked. Before graduation day we had different people come, you know, out of a profession, and John Biggers came to be a speaker for the artists and art-intended students. My instructor, who had known John Biggers for a while, spoke to him particularly about what I was producing in her class. And John was marvelous at it, you know. He says, “Now, I’ll tell you what—as soon as you get out of here you come and see me at TSU, and I think something can work for you.”