Tina Knowles
speaker
321 appearances
3 recordings
3 series
first heard Apr 2025
last heard Jun 2025
Tina Knowles’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
Yeah.
Boo, yeah, yeah. And isn't that crazy that I'm 71 and I can remember Sister Fidelis? A lot of teachers I don't remember, but my first five minutes of school, because I was very excited about going to school. I used to go there all the time because it was right across the street. And the first five minutes, she... Some kid pointed at me, and I pointed back at him. And she said, who's talking?
And she came and got me and took me to the front of the class. And she hit us with these sticks. And I had never been spanked before. So I was like, oh my god, I don't think I want to do this. So I ran home at recess and told my mom, I don't like that. She hit me. And I was thinking my mom was going to go over there and get in her case. And my mom brought me back and said, apologize to sister.
And I'm like, what? And so that's what I mean about her just being passive. And you know, my daddy used to drive the nuns and And my brothers worked in the schoolyard. All of us went to the school. And what I found out later is that my parents were actually bartering. My mom would make the altar boy uniforms and sew for this church. And I was just like, why y'all let them make us slaves?
What's going on? But she was actually bartering, which was very unselfish of my parents. And I really appreciate that now, because they just wanted to protect us again. But but the nuns were always because we weren't paying to go to school and we were poor. And, you know, it's like teachers, kids and nurses. They were like the elite.
And they always said that that I didn't belong there and that if I only knew and they would just they would just not. they tried to break my spirit. They told me that they wanted to break my spirit. And I was like, no, you're not. In my little five-year-old head, I just became this warrior because I had to protect myself.
Right. And that stuck with you. It stuck with me. And there were many kids. Well, I won't say many because... I don't think that my mom, I don't think that they were as, it was me and my brother Skip that they really picked on. And we were the last two, I think. But there were other kids, too. Like, I remember this guy, Glenn, and my kids always saying, don't say people's last name.
They're going to come back and sue you. But I remember Glenn. No, they've told me that many times.
I shouldn't have said that. Then I shouldn't even say that. But anyway, don't get no ideas. Don't get no ideas. But Glenn, they would, you know, pick on him too. And his dad was a barber. And so I don't know if they just had a thing about us not feeling like we were worthy to be there with these professional kids. people's kids, you know, I don't know.
Well, at that time, I think it was more so that I just said, you're not going to break my spirit. That's all I knew, because I had a mouth on me, and I, and you know, I think, you know, I, as a kid, talked back, and I just... What did they call you? Badass Teenie B. Mm-hmm. It was really just badass teenage. And I had these older parents. So by the time I came along, they were really tired.
And they didn't discipline me like they did my brothers and sisters. With me, they were more lax. So I was always talking stuff, talking back into everything. And so it gave me that spirit to actually stand up. to them, I believe.
Nothing, just being outside of a movie. And this cop came up and said, come here. And I went over, and my friend Vanessa, who was really scary, And we went over, and he was like, what's your name? And I said, why do you need my name? And it was all these kids waiting, and we had just seen Chef. So I was feeling really like, Chef, shut your mouth. Shut your mouth. That's right.
So, and he just kept saying, give me your name. And I said, I'm not going to give you my name. I don't know why. And so he's like, well, I'm going to take you down to the station. I said, well, take me, because I want to ask. And all the kids are saying, she didn't do nothing. She didn't do nothing. And so he puts us in a car, and he takes us to the station. And his sergeant chewed him out.
I could see him like, what are you doing? But he came out, and he said... officer, the officer is going to take you home and not on the corner where he found you. And I was like, the corner? We were in the front of the movies. We were high school students. And he said, oh, well, you know, y'all, you look like nice girls, but y'all shouldn't be out there on the streets.
So he had told him this story. And when we left out, he, like, talked to us so crazy because he said, the officer is going to take you home. and not take you, you know, leave you on the corner where he found you, whatever. And so when we were walking out, the guy says, is your brother's name Loomis Beyoncé?
And I said, oh, so you're, and he said, yeah, I'm the one that kicked his, and I said, well, from where I was, he kicked yours. So, you know, we had this big confrontation, and he actually said, called us some really bad names. And it was pretty bad. But that was just one of the incidences, because he actually wound up taking me to jail. Yeah, I went to jail, y'all.
Which my granddaughter just said to me the other day. She said, you went to jail? And I was like, I didn't think about that when I put that in the book. But just riding motorcycles and racing with my brother Butch. He had a bunch of kids out on the beach. And we were racing. And this guy came up, and he took me to jail.
And he rode me through the park, where if you come to Galveston, there's a park called Menard Park. And black people would just line up in their Sunday best and be out on the beach, and we would just walk, you know, people would walk through, showing off their outfits, you'd wash your car and drive through. It was like a parade, you know, it's a little small town.
Yeah, y'all know about that. So he drove me through that. So somebody saw me in the car, and they were like, Tina Beyoncé in the police car, and I'm like, oh, Lord. And they took me to jail and did a cavity search. And I talk about that in the book. And it was the most humiliating, traumatizing thing to me to be like, I think at the time I was like maybe 18. And it was terrible.
And he put me in jail. And I wound up having to pay all these fines. And we were outside of the city limits. But this guy was just like a nightmare to us because he just harassed my family.
Showing 121–140 of 321 · page 7 of 17
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