The FRONTLINE Interviews
Richard ‘Mouse’ Smith
Biden Friend
Richard Smith is the president of Delaware’s NAACP branch. He is a longtime friend of Joe Biden and acted as a liaison in Wilmington’s Black community during Biden’s early political campaigns.
The following interview was conducted by FRONTLINE’s Michael Kirk on June 17, 2020. It has been edited for clarity and length.
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Richard ‘Mouse’ Smith
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Biden’s Early Connection the Black Community
So when is the first time you remember laying eyes on Joe Biden?
At the Prices Run swimming pool in the ’60s.He was a lifeguard.He was one of two white guards.The pool had changed over.They had built houses in that particular neighborhood, a housing development called Riverside II and stuff.So that was close by the swimming pool.The pool was white.It was basically Irish white folks that lived in the community before they built the houses and stuff.So the pool was changing over.And a lot of Blacks began to come to the pool, and whites started leaving the pool and stuff.And Joe came to work at the pool.
When he came to work at the pool, he’s 19 years old.Does he know it’s transitioning to Black people coming to the pool and not white people?
Really, I think the man just needed a job, OK?And I think that once he got there, I think that he found it was also neighborhood gangs at the pool.It was the Romans, the Park, Riverside, and gangs like the Stompers and stuff like that.And I think that these guys were fussy, very fussy.And they would fight back and talk back…And what he did was, they gave you rules what to do, what not to do and stuff at the swimming pool.And I think he was glad just to have a job that summer.
When you met him, what was he like?
He was a tall, slim, young-looking, good-looking, Elvis Presley-looking kind of guy, or—who else can I say?I’ll use Presley because I can’t think of—but he was—he was a very nice-looking guy.
And what was he like?
He was quiet at first till he examined the pool, examined the people and stuff.And they used to switch chairs every two hours.So he would be in the low—the low part of the pool; then two hours he will be at three feet; two hours later he will go to six feet; then he would go to 10 feet, and then he will go to 12 feet.And when he got to 12 feet with the diving boards and stuff, and he used to blow the whistle and stuff like that.But nobody wasn’t paying him no mind…We was there to say, “Hey, we are—this is our pool; we’re going to do what we want to do.”And each gang took a piece of that pool, especially on the small part of where the diving board was.That’s the only time that gangs really got along.Now, when they stepped outside that pool, it was a different story for the gangs.
Was it Joe’s job to be the local policeman, the local sheriff?
All diving boards in Wilmington have rules, especially the high ones…If you wanted to do a gainer or something, you had to go up, up and then your feet had to go out, and then you had to swing back and do the gainer.Or back—or a backflip.You had to go out, and you had to spring to do your backflip, two and a half backflip to come down.So it was a safety reason why they didn’t want us to.A lot of us did those dives and did what we had to do.A lot of copycats was there and stuff.And we didn’t care about copycats, because once you did it wrong, you came down on your back.And once you came down on your back, that was the worst pain you could get.Or you could hit your head on the board.
So that was a concern of the city of Wilmington at the time in their park department.
Did he interact with the gang members, guys like you?
He cracked jokes and stuff like that.And he would play the dozens, use little French words and stuff.
What do you mean?
French words, I mean like the F-word and “the hell with you,” and different words and stuff.The words we would use, OK?He kind of picked up our slang a little bit because he was catching on.
One thing about Joe, Joe could make friends real easy.You look at this guy, pretty boy, and you say, well, he comes from a good family, the way he carry his self, clean-cut haircut and all that.But he could make friends.And once he made friends, he had a mind like a computer that he would store it back there in his mind, and anyplace he’d see you, he could call your name and stuff, or he could tell you what you all talked about and stuff like that.
So Joe was dealing with the oldest part of the gang called the Romans.We didn’t care about the Romans, OK, because we were the young guys, and we didn’t have—the Romans didn’t scare us, OK?They used to have processed hair and stuff; they had bandanas around their hair.Some of them had—some of them had women’s caps on, swim caps and all of that, and they would get to showing off.And sooner or later, we was going to take their spot from them anyway.
So the concept was, Corn Pop got bounced on the pool.Now, Joe, here was the strange part, because I was a skinny little guy.I only weighed about 98 pounds.The average guy was about 150 pounds, no bigger than that.We didn’t have too many heavy guys.Heavy guys was 160 or something like that.But they were 18, 19 years old.But Corn Pop was small.He was a really small guy.He was like—we had a gang in Wilmington called the Mighty Midgets, all young, all short guys used to hang together, OK?And they had this big guy named Phil.He weighed 400 pounds.So… you had the Mighty Midgets with Phil, OK?
And Corn Pop was small, but he did whatever he could do to protect his self…And that particular day it happened to be Corn Pop on that board.And Joe kept on—Joe kept on picking on him and telling him, “Stop bouncing.”Corn Pop said, “I ain’t gonna bounce nothing.”I’m trying to get the words right.And I know Corn Pop wasn’t going to stop because I wouldn’t have stopped.
The key was to get put out of the pool.The good part about the pool that made you strong was get kicked out, because we came back when the lifeguard was gone 12:00 at night and swim till 3:00 in the morning.The big party was 12:00 at night, not during the day.
So Corn Pop wasn’t going to do nothing that Joe say, so they—so Corn Pop starts using French words and stuff.“Go F yourself; I ain’t paying you mind.”And Joe starts talking about the way he were raised and stuff, the family part…And we played the dozens.But here comes this white boy now playing the dozens with us.And now he’s done ran our—learned our slang.So he starts hitting Corn Pop back.
So when he threw Corn Pop out of the pool, Corn would say, “I’m going to get you.”That’s when Joe got really scared.And “I’m going to cut you” and stuff like that.Yes, they did have razors.They had sticks.We didn’t have no guns.We had razors, sticks and knives and stuff like that.But very seldom it was used on anybody…
So Joe didn’t know what to do.You know, Joe ran around, and he tried to get people to pay attention to him.But when Corn Pop left, the Romans left.Everybody started disappearing out of the pool.So imagine being a white guy there, and all the Black guys start disappearing.You’ve got to walk out of that pool and to get to your car or wherever you’ve got to get to.You’ve got to walk around the pool, probably a quarter a mile to get to your car and stuff.And then you’ve got, where your car was parked, it was also the projects, OK?So you—so he got scared, so he asked management and stuff what he should do.I think he wanted to call the cops and stuff.
And it was told to him, don’t do it.Don’t do it.Start walking.So he ain’t coming back; go on home.Come on back the next day.I said, “I can whip the guy,” you know what I mean? …We young guys could whip them.We didn’t have a problem.We were about to take over the clubhouse and everything in it and was coming on their turf.
And Joe came.Joe went there.And Joe basically went away.They told him don’t call the cops.He came back.When he came back, that was the experience he had because he stood up to them; he didn’t run from the Romans.He never run from Corn Pop.He didn’t run from nobody.That’s when they started get into asking him questions about relationships between white girls and Black girls, how do they date and stuff like that.And that’s when he began to learn the slang.And he went to play basketball with them and travel with them and stuff like that.
So he became a household name of that part of the Black community.
Friendship with Biden
You guys become friends, you and Joe?
We became friends.We became friends.He said one thing, I said another thing.I was a very troubled child, OK?Leader of a gang, no food at home, electric cut off, no soap, sometimes no soap for to take a bath, no hot water.Live off surplus, a welfare check.The community shared our food with each other.Half the time I didn’t go to school because I didn’t have the right clothes and stuff.So I was a troubled guy.The gang was my safe haven; it was my village, because one thing I could do, I could go into a house and take a bath, go into the house and get a meal, because when you got big families and one family we had in our community, two families was 18 and 20 people.OK, that was the Wilmores and the Owens and stuff, and they always have a pot on the stove.And they brought, when you figure 20 people bringing their friends in or 18 people bringing their friends in, the pot got to be really big.
So when we became friends… he took to me.And next thing I know he got out of college.He was doing public defending and stuff…
So you guys are pals.You become sort of friends, but do you become more than—do you hang out together?
Well, what he would do, he would pick me up, and when they had Democratic Party—we would ride together.If he had something on his mind, he would get me; he would get all the Black leaders, especially political leaders, because we had two representatives and one senator.And he would get a roundtable, and he would basically talk how unhappy he was that Blacks wasn’t getting theirs, that we wasn’t getting our fair share and what could he do, and stuff like that.
And we didn’t exactly hang around together.We wasn’t no buddies like every day.It was when the need came.
Can I ask you another question?
You can ask me anything you want.
Biden and Stuttering
OK, he stuttered when he was a little kid, really badly.You stuttered, too.
I stutter to the day.I will stutter.And I will mix some words, and sometimes you can’t understand what I’m saying.So he basically told me, he said: “Man, I get in the mirror.I get a tape, and I check my stuttering and stuff.”I went to the speech class, by the way.And he said: “Go to the mirror; look at yourself, pronounce your words, your nouns and pronouns and all that.Go and put your voice on tape.”Now, if somebody go put their voice on tape and tape the stuff they play it back, it’s the most ugliest thing you want to hear in the world.Nothing sound right.But he say, “Continue doing that, and your speech would change.”Well, my words did change.I started reading the papers from the back to the fore, back and fore.I started watching people pronounce words and stuff like that.I wanted to be—I wanted people to understand me, because when they got me upset—and the same happened to Biden, OK?When they get upset, he said, “Aw”—you’ll see him sometimes say, “Aw, just go ahead to the next person.”He’d given up in his speech.When he get debating somebody, he’ll say, “Aw, nah.”
That’s because that stuttering ready to come, and he don’t want to muff up his words.So sometimes I would say something, I muff up the words, and people will say, “What are you talking about?”There was a guy who I went to negotiate with a union president, and he basically told me I would muff up my words.I was mad.We couldn’t get the raise we wanted; we couldn’t get the health care we wanted; we couldn’t get this.It was a standstill.And this guy was a CEO.He said, man—he told me everybody was making fun of me all weekend: “That guy can’t do nothing.”That CEO said, “You’d better watch him, because he if ever get the words together, he’s going to get everything he wants.”I got everything I want.
How much would you say Joe helped you with your stuttering?
A lot.A lot.Him and a woman named Miss Stockton helped a lot, because, you know, understand back there for Black folks back those days, when you stutter, you was retarded or you were—something mental wrong with you.They didn’t look at stuttering as you had a double tongue or your tongue got stuck or you couldn’t get the nouns out and stuff.They look at you like “Something wrong with that guy,” “That guy is trouble,” “Look at him; he can’t get his words out,” stuff like that.
Why do you think Joe helped you?Why did he do it, Mouse?What was it about you and him?
I never understand our relationship!OK?I never understand how he came to me, and he brought—when he came in town, he had important people with him, when he became a senator.And I’d walk down the street, he would stop me…He’d come to a meeting we have.I’d be sitting in the back.He said, “Mouse is over there.”I’d come in the meeting.He’d be talking.Then he’d stop talking and say: “I’ve got to salute my friend over there, Mouse.He saved me; he helped me.He was my security and stuff.”
That’s what he said?
Yes.
How does that feel to you at the time?
Shameful.It was shameful, because I didn’t feel like I was no security for nobody.I just feel that I did enough.I felt that it was a white guy in a Black pool that had problems, right, that he was scared to move around.It was my job to make him feel comfortable that he could continue making money and he could continue coming back and forth without someone picking on him in that community.That was my job. …
So my job was to tell the guys I’m around with when they wanted to get them, you got to come for me first.So that’s the same way about Joe.Joe, I wouldn’t let nobody harm.First of all, they wasn’t going to harm him anyway because he was a white guy, and every cop in Wilmington would have came and beat the hell out of us, OK?So he was already safe.But to let this guy, let people know that he was my friend, nobody was not going to do nothing to him…He was a person that was a people person, that once he get next to you—like I always say, once you get close to him, you talk to him, you see his passion, you will like him, and you will support him while he will become your friend forever.
Introducing Biden to the Black Community
I heard a story that you took him into the projects—
I did.
—and taught him what his etiquette should be, how to act, right?
Yeah, it was acting, because that was the first time.He was running for the Senate at the time.That was the first time he was running.So I had been—my family had been the third Black family to move into the new part of the project which was Riverside, 2502 Claymont.So we was all close.We all played baseball in that community and stuff.It was basically a nice project.We had—the grass had to be cut, the paper had to be picked up, or you would get out of there.You wasn’t staying there if you didn’t take care of your house and stuff.
And when he came, I told him, I said, “Man, let me tell you something.”I said: “I’m going to take you in these houses, and if a roach come on your shoulder, just push it off and keep talking, or let it go where it need to go.If they come with a mayonnaise jar or peanut glass—because all good glasses came from peanut butter, OK?They used to put glasses up there with little flowers on it and stuff.That was crystal to us, OK?And mayonnaise jars and stuff.If a mayonnaise—if somebody brings—and Kool-Aid was the thing.If somebody brings you some Kool-Aid and they put it in a mayonnaise jar or peanut jar, don’t look at the jar; drink it.Just drink it the way they drink it.If they offer you some food, eat it.I don’t care what type of food is, you eat it.If you sit in one of those chairs—we had these old big couches, big chairs and stuff, and a spring would pop up because they were used couches and used covers you sit on.I said, if a spring jump up and hit you in your butt, just move over, get out of the way, and sit there.Don’t embarrass those people by saying no.I know I’m using the word “those people,” OK?I’m wrong for using the word “those people.”But don’t embarrass the project and the poor people because the way their house is or what they give to you, because that’s all they got.
And he won the whole community.
Biden’s First Senate Win
When he wins, how much of his win can you attribute to the Black community?
Well, some people say all of it.Some people say the way I carried him around and what I did.You know, some people say every place he went he used my name and stuff: “My friend Mouse,” “My friend Mouse taught me this,” “My friend Mouse did this for me.”And I don’t know how much—I don’t think I helped him at all.I think I just took a guy who I liked who was a white guy and said, “Come on, go with me,” you know what I mean? …It wasn’t about a party.It wasn’t about a Senate seat.It was about Joe Biden.
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