Bridges Digital Archive: Audio and Video Recordings

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Document Type

Oral History

Publication Date

7-10-2014

Abstract

Ratibu Jacocks interviews Jack Hill, a man with a prominent history in San Bernardino. Hill starts the interview by discussing his family moving from Texas to California and how, as a young boy, lived in an integrated community and attended integrated schools. During his high school education, he was drafted into World War II, where he remembers helping to feed a young German boy named Helmut Schroder. He also mentions being a soldier in the Korean War. During World War II and in the 453rd Quartermaster unit, he helped a German prisoner of war during his stay and took the Nazi emblem from the shirt as a token to mark which prisoner to help. The piece of the shirt was shown to the camera, which was a swastika with an eagle above it. After the war, Hill married the love of his life and mentioned that, if it wasn’t for his mother, he wouldn’t have ever met his wife. After later graduating high school and studying at San Bernardino Valley College, Hill started his catering business after servicing a friend’s Bar Mitzvah. He also mentioned that the catering service was not only a way to make income but to give back to the community. Once he speaks about buying a home next to his own and never raising the rent on his tenants, Hill shows his baptism from New Hope Baptist Church. Hill also mentions that he was the city’s first Black president of the Chamber of Commerce. Hill also mentions, with both pride and humility, that he liked having a room at the Norman F. Feldheym Public Library. The room is graciously titled the Jack Hill Learning Center. There is also talk about the many Black families that he remembered in San Bernardino, many who had diverse origins and had different jobs. Hill said that his message for youth is that education is the solution to problems. An example he gave was that, despite how his own Sunday School teacher hindered him due to his speaking, he was able to get some help with public speaking in high school. After confronting his Sunday school teacher when he created the first Black Boy Scout troop in San Bernardino, Hill’s daughter with his grandsons joined the interview. The interview ends with Hill’s grandsons, Jason and Justin, talking about him as well as a brief mention of Hill’s wife’s death in Athens, Greece.

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