Christine Jacskon Interview 08/09/2025
Christine Jackson Interview Transcript:
NATASHA: Hello, I am Natasha Fearon and I'm here with Christine Jackson at the Park Slope Old Timers Reunion at 4th Street and 6th Avenue on Saturday, August 9th, 2025. Can you please spell your name?
CHRISTINE: Christine, C-H-R-I-S-T-I-N-E, J-A-C-K-S-O-N.
NATASHA: What is your relationship to Park Slope or to Brooklyn?
CHRISTINE: My relationship is I lived in three places in Park Slope. I live on 4th Street, 326, and then I lived 336, right? And then I lived on 2nd Street, I don't know the address, but I lived on 2nd Street next to the big pink church. So, my mother–we were raised here. I went to 51 and I went to John Jay High School.
NATASHA: Do you have a particularly powerful or important memory of Park Slope or Brooklyn you'd like to share?
CHRISTINE: Uh let’s see. Other than the fact that we used to have a lot of parties, and the whole block used to [unclear]. We could go from table to table to table and nobody bothered about how much food you took or that you didn’t put nothing in it. We had beautiful block parties and we didn’t have any fights. We had no fights.NATASHA: Why did you decide to come to the Park Stove Old Timers Reunion today?
CHRISTINE: To see some of the old faces that used to be here, because Park Slope is different now. There’s a lot of different other nationalities in here now. So, I know the young man that runs it. My brother helps him out, Darryl Jackson. So that's why I come and be here.
NATASHA: What are some things you think more people should know about Park Slope or Brooklyn based on your own experiences?
CHRISTINE: It's a very beautiful neighborhood. I came from Bevis Dotson (?) when I was a little girl. My mother came over on the bus, and she brought us here, and it was so many different things and activities that you could go to and you learn a whole lot more than just being all with your own people. We had Spanish people down on Union Street, we had Italian people up here and down on President Street, and school was multicultural, you know, not just one nationality, so I enjoyed that. And I could work all the time, I worked all the way around, worked the winter, I worked the summer, worked in the school, up here at 321 on 7th Avenue, and almost got a teacher job up there. My mother worked there for years, 33 years, yeah.
NATASHA: What are your hopes for the future of the neighborhood and Brooklyn?
CHRISTINE: I hope that everybody comes together like we did when we were younger. Because there were more other people here before we came. I don't want to say white or black, but just to take that out. There were more white people on the block than there was. And there was a few black neighbors up the block and down the block. And uh, when we first moved here, a white woman that lived next to us, she made a cake and brought it over to us, and my little brother and her son used to play in the yard together. So, I wish that everybody would come together like they did then. You know, no color matters. Everybody just individuals and love one another. Love one another. That's how it was over here when I came and I left. I could have bought the house that we lived in, but my mother never told us that the man wanted to sell it. We would all be stood down here. Because it's a beautiful neighborhood. So there you go.
NATASHA: So thank you.
CHRISTINE: Okay.