WEBVTT 1 00:02.000 --> 00:27.000 So they had those revolving doors like they have now at the bank. I used to get caught in those doors all the time, but I loved to go and get her stamps. The White men were very bad about following Black women at that time, and I was a Black girl. I was just a young girl in school. 2 00:27.000 --> 00:31.000 How old were you then? 3 00:31.000 --> 01:04.000 See, I would go after I get out of school, and see the factory people, they would be out because they'd get out about three o'clock, at three o'clock when I got out of school. Then I'd have to come home, and mama wanted me to go get her some stamps. As I would go up Blackwell Street after I come out of Matthews Street, there would be a White man out there riding up and down the street. I didn't have any [indistinct 00:00:59] they was after Black women or Black girls, you know what I'm saying? 4 01:04.000 --> 01:50.000 They would ride past you, and ask you if you wanted a ride. I thought I saw two. But in the meantime they would ask you if you wanted a ride. What you would do, you would ignore him, but in the meantime, you was afraid, very much afraid because we knew about those things during earlier childhood, how the White men try to get to the Black women, which they did get to some of them. 5 01:50.000 --> 02:19.000 So I would trot. I would start running and run on uptown. By the time I got up to the other corner, he be done going around and come back again, see? When I come back, I wouldn't come back that way. I'd come back down another street, come back down McMannen Street instead of coming back down the way I went. They were very bad about that at that time. 6 02:19.000 --> 02:55.000 So getting back to, after leaving the post office, just like I said, I come on back home. I would tell Mama about it, and when I would go again, I would always go up McMannen Street because they didn't hang around over there. They hung around over that other part because it was a family over there that dealt, a Black family over there that dealt in that kind of stuff. One time I was going up South Street—South Street was next to Matthews Street, and McMannen Street was another street over. 7 02:55.000 --> 03:51.000 So I started going up South Street. I went up South Street one day and this little White girl, real stringy hair, and she was out there on the sidewalk. I passed by, and she called me a nigger. I didn't pay her no attention. I said to myself I wasn't no mean person, but I just didn't want nobody calling me that, especially then. So I didn't pay that any attention. I went on, and the Devil got in there while I was gone, though, and told me, said, "If she say it to you again, what you do to her?" So when I came back she was still out there on the sidewalk, and she called me a nigger. When she did, honey, I lit into her. 8 03:51.000 --> 03:52.000 Did you hit her? 9 03:52.000 --> 03:53.000 I whipped her. Yeah, I whipped her. I didn't tell nobody, though. 10 03:53.000 --> 03:55.000 Did she tell anyone? 11 03:55.000 --> 04:34.000 I was running in the house. Yeah, she told somebody. She went in the house running, and about that time I had got home, and got in the house. After getting in the house, and giving Mama her things, I didn't tell Mama anything either. The policeman came riding by, but I didn't know anything. They didn't even ask nobody nothing. They just riding by because I don't guess she could have described me. How poor she was, he didn't know who she was hardly. I didn't ever tell nobody about it. I kept that to myself, and I didn't ever go back up that way. When I'd go again, I'd go up the other way. 12 04:34.000 --> 05:07.000 I don't know what happened to them. They were bad about calling you niggers and things at that time. There was one lived up there on South Street, Mama used to pass there going to work, and Mama said he would say to her, he said—and he was retarded. He was real White, had white hair too, like a zombie or something, and a real fat little boy. Mama said he looked at her and says, "I'm afraid of you." Mama said she looked at him. Mama said, "I'm afraid of you too." 13 05:07.000 --> 05:16.000 Oh, dear. 14 05:16.000 --> 05:52.000 Yes sir, honey, it was something else. But before we came to Durham—I didn't tell you that. But before we come to Durham—came to Durham, rather, we had nice people. We had nice people that stood for something because, just like I said, Mama worked for the most prominent people there because our family was the same, was a prominent Black family also. So you know how that run with the White man. He just felt that you was better than the others. 15 05:52.000 --> 06:35.000 Mama would come home in the evening, and she'd have a big old basket of all kind of fruit, [indistinct 00:06:04], and plums, and apples, and pears, everything that Mrs. Phillips, Dr. Phillips' wife, had fixed for her to bring to us. Mama had a telephone. We had a telephone at that time up on the wall. Mama's cousin had the telephone put in because her husband ran a cafe there in Sanford, a big cafe in Sanford. She put the telephone in there because she liked to keep in touch with Mama. 16 06:35.000 --> 07:44.000 If Mama needed anything, all Mama had to do was call over there because those cousins were very close. They were sister's children, but they were very close. They called each other Sister such-and-such, Sister Bob, that's sister Bob, so forth and so on. Even when they got ready to address them to you, they would say, "Cousin so-and-so, Cousin this, and Uncle so-and-so". That's the way they did it, so that meant for you to do the same thing. So we had this telephone, and this doctor, Dr. Baldwin, he was a Black doctor. I can't tell you everything about him though, but I can say at that time, he went over to UNC, went to school at UNC. I think the reason he got into UNC was because of the White man that he was taking the child—before he got to be a doctor, he was taking the child over there to school, and he was learning. He had to wait for the child, so he was learning too. So he come to be a doctor, a real doctor. I don't know how he come to be a real doctor, but he was a doctor. 17 07:44.000 --> 07:44.000 Do you want to stop? 18 07:44.000 --> 07:46.000 Huh? 19 07:46.000 --> 07:51.000 Do you want to stop for a while? Do you want to stop for a while and get a drink? 20 07:51.000 --> 07:51.000 Do you want something? 21 07:51.000 --> 07:54.000 No, I don't want anything, but do you? 22 07:54.000 --> 07:55.000 No, I can keep on right now. 23 07:55.000 --> 07:55.000 Oh, okay. That's fine. 24 07:55.000 --> 07:57.000 Yeah. We can stop after a while. 25 07:57.000 --> 07:57.000 Okay. 26 07:57.000 --> 07:58.000 If I have to stop, I will. 27 07:58.000 --> 08:00.000 All right. Just tell me if you want to stop. 28 08:00.000 --> 08:52.000 Yeah, all right. But in the meantime, after—let me see. After playing with these children in Sanford on Saturdays, as I said, Dr. Phillips' wife would tell Mama—if she was over there on Thursday or Friday, Mama would be at the coroner's house. He was Mr. Coon, John—what's his name? John Coon? Yeah, I believe his name was—yeah, because his daughter was named Mary John. Yeah, his name was John Coon. He was the mayor there. No, he was Connor. No, he wasn't. He was the mayor. 29 08:52.000 --> 09:15.000 He was the mayor, and they had one child, and her name was Mary John. She was older than I was, and I got all of her clothes, all her outgrown clothes. They were some good clothes. They were silks. I mean, mostly silk clothes. Yeah, they was nice clothes too. You don't have no clothes—you don't even make nothing like that no more. I thought I was something else, honey, because I was the only one could wear them. 30 09:15.000 --> 09:46.000 I got all of those clothes every year because they changed clothes every year, but they won't be—there weren't no rags now, because if there were any rags, they wouldn't give them to mama. But they give them to mama, and she bring them home, but she bought us clothes too. She was very good about that. She worked several jobs, and she bought us clothes. I mean, when we had May Day, things like that at school, when we went to church on Sunday before coming to Durham, we were dressed up. 31 09:46.000 --> 10:20.000 We had black patent leather shoes. We wore Buster Browns then, because see, just like I said, everybody knew Mama. Mama didn't have to do nothing but take us up to the shoe store to—what was the name? Stroud-Hubbards I believe it was. Stroud-Hubbards, and tell the man to fit our feet, and she could pay him when she got ready. She didn't have to pay for them then. We wore little Buster Brown shoes, little white nylon socks, cotton socks, all in the dresses, the hems in them about like that, peacoat around there. 32 10:20.000 --> 11:05.000 I saved my dress, but it got away from me, one of my dresses. I always like to save one. Of all of my children, too, I saved a lot of their things too, baby things, and coats, and caps, and shoes too. The shoes got away from me too. I would get all of Mary John's clothes, and we would go over to—as I said, we'd go over to Dr. Phillips' house on some Saturdays. Just like I said, Mrs. Phillips would tell Mama to let us come over there on Saturday to cheer her children. She would treat us just like we was her children. 33 11:05.000 --> 11:42.000 She wouldn't feed us by ourselves. She fed us all together. We sat at the—Francis and William and whatever the eldest was named. I remember those two. They were prominent people, and we sat at the table and eat with them. We didn't know nothing about no color. We didn't think about no color at that time. We were just children. We knew they was White. We knew that because they—I mean, because a whole lot of them wouldn't let you forget that, but they didn't ever mention it. They were that kind of people. 34 11:42.000 --> 11:43.000 Now this was in Sanford? 35 11:43.000 --> 11:46.000 Yeah, that was in Sanford. 36 11:46.000 --> 11:54.000 You said that, and I'm going to use your words. You said your family was a prominent family. 37 11:54.000 --> 12:37.000 Oh yeah. I mentioned that a while ago because I said my family was a prominent family because my grandmother and my grandfather was a leading family, was a leading Black family. They wasn't the only one, but they were the leading ones in the church, in the AME Zion Church. Also, the city claimed that too, also, when I went down a few years ago to the—I was a member of the Durham Human Relations Commission for four years. I went down there, and I pulled out my credentials, you see, let them know what I was down there for, and so they gave me—what's that they gave you? 38 12:37.000 --> 12:39.000 The key to the city or— 39 12:39.000 --> 12:51.000 No, it wasn't a key to the city. It was a—what do you call that? Sometime I know what I'm trying to say, but I can't say it. It wasn't a document. 40 12:51.000 --> 13:01.000 A commendation? 41 13:01.000 --> 13:20.000 No, it wasn't that. It was—what do they give you? What do they give you when you go into a city like that, and you tell them who you are, and the family you come from? What was that? 42 13:20.000 --> 13:21.000 I don't know. 43 13:21.000 --> 13:25.000 Well, that's all right. I'll get to it after a while. That don't mess it up. You can erase that. 44 13:25.000 --> 13:26.000 Mm-hmm. 45 13:26.000 --> 14:40.000 But in the meantime, when I went down there, and I went to the courthouse—was it the courthouse? Went to the mayor's office. Their name was Rex McLeod. I went to his office, and I laid my credentials on the table there, and some nice people, very nice people. So I just laid them up there, and I pulled out my card, gave it to her. Then I told him what part of the family I came from, and he was pleased. We was getting ready for our first family reunion. That was in '83? '81? '83? One or the other, but in the meantime, I'll just say he gave me a key to the city. Oh, a proclamation. 46 14:40.000 --> 14:40.000 Oh, proclamation. 47 14:40.000 --> 14:40.000 Yes. 48 14:40.000 --> 14:47.000 All right. 49 14:47.000 --> 15:33.000 He gave me a proclamation. Yes. I knew it come after a while. Well, you take a lot of people, they know what they're trying to say, but it just don't come right then. That's what, proclamation. A lot of times whenever I think of those things, and I know it's right on the tip of my tongue. I can't say it then, but after a while it seemed like I just say, "You know what it was," and just come right to me. You see what it was. That's what it was. He gave me a proclamation. He also came to our first family reunion, the services. We had services at Fair Promise and AME Zion Church. As I said, the Holmes family was the leading family. We had another family there. 50 15:33.000 --> 16:15.000 I don't want to put their names on there, but they had another family there that thought they were the head one. When we showed up, you see, we showed them that they wasn't, you see? It was us because Mama had already told me, told my sister also. But she didn't take heed to it like I did. You know what I mean? Because my children helped me, my two daughters helped me get the family reunion together. They didn't have to. I could have did it myself, but they wanted to help me so I just let them do. I let them do because they was more educated than I was, and they thought they had more sense, but they didn't because everything ain't in the books. 51 16:15.000 --> 16:17.000 I know. 52 16:17.000 --> 16:21.000 There's a whole lot in the books, and a whole lot out of the books too, babe. 53 16:21.000 --> 16:21.000 I know. 54 16:21.000 --> 16:51.000 You got to know some of both of them. That's right, but you got to have that mother wit. That's right. That means a lot too, and the books studies too. Because a lot of times in the books you're reading what somebody else said, but you know what you say is yours. That's your thinking. Yes, so that's the way I felt about it. So he came and he cried with us. We just had a nice time. He was a nice old man, and so getting—where you want me to go now, coming back to Durham? 55 16:51.000 --> 16:54.000 Yeah, go on back to Durham and— 56 16:54.000 --> 17:06.000 All right, I'm coming on back to Durham after leaving the post office and coming home, coming down South Street, coming back to the church. I'm going back to the church now. 57 17:06.000 --> 17:06.000 All right. 58 17:06.000 --> 18:08.000 All right, then. I worked in the church, I sung on the choir for twenty-eight years. I sung on the choir for twenty-eight years, and the reason I was off of the choir was on account of when Reverend Perry had to leave us after we built the church. We went back to church in 1955. I reckoned the bishop thought that Reverend Perry needed a break, so they sent him to Richmond, Virginia to Hood Temple. We didn't want him to go. He had been with us twenty years, and he was a father to us. You know what I mean? I mean, to me anyway. I don't know how nobody else felt, but I knew how I felt about it. I didn't want to see him go because I loved him just like a father did. I reckon just like his children loved him, I loved him. So they sent Reverend Speaks here. So when Speaks come in, he come in tearing up the church. Yeah. 59 18:08.000 --> 18:08.000 How did that happen? 60 18:08.000 --> 18:09.000 Huh? 61 18:09.000 --> 18:11.000 How did that happen? 62 18:11.000 --> 18:40.000 Well, he came in and his wife—see, Mrs. Perry, Reverend Perry's wife, she didn't never take a part. She took a part in the church, but she got on the choir. She sung on the choir. She didn't take no leadership part. You see what I'm saying? I don't think she was ever president of that choir. In the meantime, when Reverend Speaks came, see his wife was a musician. Oh yeah, and she wanted the job for herself. See what I mean? She wanted to direct the choir. 63 18:40.000 --> 19:19.000 She found out that my choir had the best voices, and she wanted the voices out of my choir, but she didn't want all of them. I was a civil right activist from my heart. I didn't let nothing stop me because I would take a chance almost anything, anything that I felt was wrong, and I could do something to help right it. That's what I would do. So what he did, so Ms. Alexander, being our choir directors, and Ms. Carrie Grant was our organist at that time. 64 19:19.000 --> 19:53.000 Ms. Odessa, we always called her Ms. Odessa, and I would call her Ms. Alexander, call him Ms. Odessa. Ms. Odessa told us that Reverend Speaks was going come on our rehearsal night, which was on Tuesday night, and talk to us about diverging to the other choir. I was always supposed to—if I seen something wrong, I'm going try to right it. I don't care. I'm going to tell you to your face, and so that's what I did. 65 19:53.000 --> 20:42.000 So when he came, and what burned me up too, what made me feel like—I mean, I just felt like that I was going to explode. When his wife told him who she wanted out of the choir that I was in, and I was one of them. I asked him, I said—it was four of us that she wanted. I got up, and this friend of mine, she's dead now, Lucille Gregory Horne. Lucille kept pulling on my jacket. I was standing up there. I was giving him H, and she was pulling on my jacket. I said, "Well, keep your hands off of my jacket. I haven't finished with him yet." 66 20:42.000 --> 21:15.000 I said, "Well, what's going to happen to the rest of them?" He said, "Well, it don't make no difference where they go. They can go to either choir they want to." I said, "Well, you don't need me then. Your wife don't need me." I went out, and I sat down in the audience, and that's where I'm sitting today. That was many years ago. He stayed here for twelve years himself, then Reverend Miller came and stayed twelve, and then Hagglers come and stayed twelve, and then they got another one down there. Now he's been here a few years, two or three years now, and you see how long I been sitting out there. 67 21:15.000 --> 21:18.000 Now you stayed at the same church though? You didn't leave the church? 68 21:18.000 --> 21:21.000 Yeah, I stayed at the same church, but I don't participate. I don't participate in nothing. 69 21:21.000 --> 21:23.000 Don't participate in anything at all? 70 21:23.000 --> 21:44.000 Uh-uh, because I done done my part. I done been in everything, so I just moved out of the way. Speaks used to come to my house every evening I get off from work. I was working then at the American Tobacco Company. 71 21:44.000 --> 21:44.000 Oh, uh-huh. 72 21:44.000 --> 22:04.000 Because I worked at the American Tobacco Company. I started working at the American Tobacco Company when we lived on Matthews Street because I was a young girl around twenty years old. I might have been a little older than that when I started working at the American Tobacco Company. I was working after school. I had a little job after school. I used to go and work for some of the White teachers, do little things for them. 73 22:04.000 --> 22:41.000 So Reverend Speaks would come to my house. Every evening I would get off from work, he would be sitting up on my porch trying to get me to come back to the choir. I told him, I said, "Well, I don't have a choir now," I said, "because you—" I said it this way. I said, "You tore our choir up." I said, "You got who you wanted for your wife's choir, and you didn't give a hoot about what happened to the others. So you don't give a hoot about me," I said, "and I'm not coming back." 74 22:41.000 --> 23:34.000 I said, "You can come all you want to," I said, "but I'll tell you one thing, I don't think you should come again." I said, "Don't come over here again asking me to come back because I'm not, and that's fine. I'm not. I'm through. I'm not." They kept begging me. Some of the members kept coming to me, asking me to come back. I said, "Well, I'm going to tell you like I told Speaks. I said no." The one, it was one of the girls that they wanted her too, and so she—and my sister was on the choir too. But they didn't want her. They just wanted the ones that she thought that she could use. You know what I mean? For her choir, the lead, to sing alone. You know what I'm saying? 75 23:34.000 --> 23:37.000 Mm-hmm. 76 23:37.000 --> 24:25.000 So I sat there, still sitting there, and sometime I would be kind of miserable, and they would be begging me to come back to the choir. I said, "Well, I don't have one," I said, "like I told Reverend Speaks," I said, "I don't have a choir." I said, "And I don't let nothing turn me around," I said, "because I'm a civil right activist for my heart." I wasn't a lifetime member at that time, but I'm a lifetime member of the NAACP. I said, "And I was just about the only one that I could remember, the only woman that I could remember, that took part in the demonstrations like I did." 77 24:25.000 --> 25:01.000 I said, "I didn't see none of you all out there laying down in the street helping those children." I went to McKissick when I found out exactly what was happening. I had two of my girls and my nephew was at Hillside High School at that time. I went out. When I come home in the evening, Mama said, "The children going to the picket line." I got off about three o'clock myself. 78 25:01.000 --> 25:43.000 I said to myself, I said, "Now no point in them going to the picket line, and I can't go." I said, "I get off at three o'clock. I can go too." So I start throwing my stuff up on the porch too. Their books and things be on the porch. Mama said, "You're going again." I said, "Yes, ma'am." I said, "I'm going now." I threw the books up on the—I threw my bag up on the porch. I lit out to McKissick's office because I had been going to McKissick's office, taking him little things that happened to me when I went out to the Social Security board to sign up for my mother's benefit. 79 25:43.000 --> 26:15.000 It was snowing, ice on the ground at that time, and I had wanted to go to the restroom. The lady told me—her name was Matthews, I think. I will never forget her name. She told me I couldn't use the restroom in the Social Security building. I would have to go across the street to the service station. She denied it though. I went right straight to McKissick's—I was riding the bus nightly when we had to ride the bus on the back seat. 80 26:15.000 --> 26:52.000 If there weren't no—if you was too close to the front, and some White people got on, you had to move. You had to stand up, and they had to sit down. So I came back by McKissick's office. I got the letter right now that she sent to him and denied it because we fixing to put something on the federal government at that. So after leaving that with him, I went on back to the office, to his office. 81 26:52.000 --> 27:35.000 I knew all the children there because I kept in touch with the children's classmates through the years. They knew me just like they did them because I wrote several letters for the children if they wanted to be on the student council or whatnot. I sent letters for them and every one of them that wanted to be on there, they accepted them. But my daughter, she didn't ever say nothing. She didn't want to be on there, but she was very smart. I didn't even know she was a class officer until she graduated. 82 27:35.000 --> 27:37.000 She didn't tell you? 83 27:37.000 --> 27:40.000 She was just that type person. She didn't want to be seen. 84 27:40.000 --> 27:44.000 Now where did your children go to school for high school? 85 27:44.000 --> 27:53.000 Went to Hillside, and my baby girl and my baby son, they went to Durham High. Alma and Jean and Joe went to Hillside. 86 27:53.000 --> 27:54.000 Hillside. 87 27:54.000 --> 28:20.000 They came out in 1960 an 1961. And Margaret Anne came out later because she came out in '70 something. She finished St. Aug. in '70 something. I think it's '70 something, and Alma finished at North Carolina Central. We went to North Carolina College for Negroes at that time. She came out '65. So she's a media specialist now at Summit High in New Jersey. 88 28:20.000 --> 28:55.000 So instead of calling it librarian, they call it media specialist because there is the media specialist building. So the state has already taken over their school this year. So she was here. She stayed with me from—she came here sometime about the first of—no, she got out of school the last—they got out of school the last of June, last week in June. She came in around the second week in July, and she stayed until about a couple of weeks ago. 89 28:55.000 --> 29:23.000 She had to get back home. She had to get back home because she had bought some new furniture, and the guy was going to bring it such and such a time, so she had to get back home. I talked to her since she left, and Jean, my oldest girl, she lives in Miami, Florida. She went to North Carolina College too, but she didn't finish. She's married now and all her children are grown. Margaret Anne, she finished St. Aug. in Raleigh, as I said, my baby girl. 90 29:23.000 --> 29:57.000 She's a certified teacher, but she don't teach. She works in the big office up here in Rosedale, some big firm up there she works. She used to substitute at Durham High at night when she didn't have nothing else to do. She worked on her day job. She worked out the Northern [indistinct 00:29:50], and she walked off from that job out there because she was just about the only one that have a decent education. 91 29:57.000 --> 30:18.000 But she wasn't White, and they would always put them in front of her, and so she wouldn't accept that. She left there, and she said that they didn't even think—they didn't think she was leaving. They just couldn't picture her leaving. She done the same thing at Duke when she was working at Duke in the library. They put her in the book room. They didn't never put her out front, and them old biddies out there didn't have no education. 92 30:18.000 --> 30:55.000 She did, and so she walked off from them. One of those old ladies used to call me all the time and tell me to ask Margaret Anne to come have lunch with her. Margaret Anne told me to tell her, next time she called, to tell her, "I don't want to have lunch with her. I don't ever want to see her again." So she walked off from that job because she just wasn't going to take nothing. She was just like I was and like my mother was. We wasn't going to take anything, but see, I didn't walk off from my job. 93 30:55.000 --> 31:46.000 I worked at the American Tobacco Company for thirty-eight years, and I worked there after my husband passed. I worked there so I could educate my children, and I could give us a decent place to live. You see? So after getting my children educated—in fact, I was educating myself along too because I didn't ever get my diploma. I didn't get my diploma. I went to night school, but I didn't ever get my diploma. I could go out here and get it now. I could get me—oh, what you call it? A GDE. I could get a GDE, but I said I didn't see—I told my daughter, I said, "I don't see no need to get it," I said, "but one of these days," I said, "I think I'll just go on out there and get it just for getting it." 94 31:46.000 --> 31:48.000 Just to get it. 95 31:48.000 --> 32:14.000 Yeah, just for getting it. I said, "Because I done had the training because I took eleventh and twelfth grade." See, when I come out of—when my schooling truncate, my classmates come out of school and have eleventh grade. So I went back and took eleven and twelve. I took that on night school, but the teacher that was teaching me, she died, and so I didn't ever get my diploma. 96 32:14.000 --> 32:25.000 Well, let's talk about school, and then we'll talk about work. Okay? When you went to school, you were telling me that you went to— 97 32:25.000 --> 32:27.000 Yeah, after leaving, I went to Hillside. I went to Hillside and then— 98 32:27.000 --> 32:27.000 You went to Hillside for high school. 99 32:27.000 --> 32:27.000 I went to— 100 32:27.000 --> 32:30.000 You went to Hillside in sixth grade— 101 32:30.000 --> 32:31.000 Yeah, I went to— 102 32:31.000 --> 32:32.000 —and then you went to Lyon Park. 103 32:32.000 --> 32:36.000 Park in the sixth grade. They transferred— 104 32:36.000 --> 32:37.000 What kind of school was Lyon Park? 105 32:37.000 --> 32:37.000 Huh? 106 32:37.000 --> 32:38.000 What kind of school was Lyon Park? 107 32:38.000 --> 32:42.000 Lyon Park was the elementary school. It was a Black school, but we had to pass by a White school to get to that. 108 32:42.000 --> 32:46.000 I thought so. Do you remember any of the teachers at Lyon Park? 109 32:46.000 --> 32:49.000 Yeah, Ms. Grissom. See, I didn't stay on there but one year— 110 32:49.000 --> 32:50.000 All right. 111 32:50.000 --> 33:22.000 —and I was there in the sixth grade. Ms. Grissom, Ruby Grissom, and she was the kind of teacher that we need today. She was a person that would—I mean, seemed like to me she just put her arms around me because she—I don't know what she just sensed in that I needed some help. I needed some love. I needed somebody's hands on me beside my mother's hand because my mother didn't have too much time. She had to work. 112 33:22.000 --> 34:13.000 I was a child that I reckon needed to be loved, and so she really put her arms around me and gave me strength. Every Sunday she would come over to my house, every Sunday evening. That's the kind of teacher we had at that time. Her family wasn't no prominent family. She was just a person that come out of North Durham, and I think she was the only child that her father had. I think her mother had passed, and she went to school, and she came back as a elementary school teacher. 113 34:13.000 --> 35:07.000 She was just like a mother to you. She was just so sweet. I just loved her to death. So I went over, they sent me over there after changing [indistinct 00:34:25], and I went to Lyon Park for that year. While I was there, she fixed it so that I could catch up with what they were doing, see? I called up, and we had this civic program, and the way she was, she wouldn't just single out a person to do some such a thing. Whatever it was, if it was to get Gettysburg Address, or whatnot, she would always let everybody do it. 114 35:07.000 --> 35:51.000 What she would do, she would give you that assignment for your assignment for the next day, and then when you go back to school the next day, you were supposed to been able to memorize them, and supposed to know it when you got back there. That's the kind of teacher she was. The one that had the most expression, that would be the one that the class would vote on. So after learning the Gettysburg Address, when I got back to school that morning, and we got into that class, I was good for putting hand up—my finger up first. 115 35:51.000 --> 36:39.000 A lot of times I wouldn't know it, but I would put my—I thought I did, and I'd put my hand up. I'd make a try at it. So that morning when she called and asked who was ready, I put up my hand, and I didn't stumble over it either. I said the whole thing, and I memorized it overnight. It didn't take long. You can teach a child anything. I mean, if you just start him off, right, he can easily catch on. I mean, small as they are, I mean, I don't care how young they are, you could teach them about a thing because I learned when I was small before I even started school. You see what I mean? 116 36:39.000 --> 37:06.000 So I got up there, honey, and I put my little hands in front of me like I was supposed to do. You know how I was supposed to stand, and I went to town. I said it, and everybody just clapped, and some of them didn't even know it. So they voted for me. That meant when we had the program, I would be the one to deliver it. 117 37:06.000 --> 37:08.000 [indistinct 00:37:07]. 118 37:08.000 --> 37:50.000 So we did, and I put something on it too, that morning that we had our civic program. I was up there. I thought I was something too. I was up there on the stage we called it at that time. So whenever we finished with that, she would just sing. Before that, we would have our devotions. We would have our devotions in the chapel, and then we would go to our classrooms. 119 37:50.000 --> 38:25.000 Everybody'd break up. We'd go to the classroom, and she would sing this song. I don't know why. I don't know what this song meant to her, but I found out what that song meant to me. It was only last year that I realized what that song meant to me. It was "Walk Together Children"—not children, but children, don't you get weary. There's a great camp meeting in the Promised Land. You ever heard it? 120 38:25.000 --> 38:32.000 Yeah, I have. 121 38:32.000 --> 39:12.000 We would sing that song every morning. It was easy to learn, and we would sing that song, and sing that song, and that song just stayed with me all through the years. When I left, I came out with the class and went to Hillside. See they had moved to sixth grade from Hillside, and the other children, because some of them on my end was already going to Lyon Park school, and some of them was already in Pearson school. So they moved Hillside to Pearson school, and this school. I don't know about North Durham. 122 39:12.000 --> 39:39.000 No, weren't nobody over there in North Durham because I think they already had sixth grade over there. So I came out on seventh—I came out seventh grade from Lyon Park, came out with the children. I didn't start school over there till November. I came out with them and came up in the second class, seventh too. 123 39:39.000 --> 40:55.000 So after leaving, after finishing over there, I didn't have shoes. We weren't on welfare. I didn't have shoes. I didn't have decent clothes to wear, and so the shoes that I did have to wear, they had holes in them. I was bad, having to go to school and have nothing—decent things to wear. So I just went and got me a little job, and I left school. So after leaving school, I got me a little job, and I messed around there, stayed home and help Mama with the house because she wasn't able to buy things for me, but I continued to study. Through the years I continued to study and getting on up to—working to the eleventh and twelfth grade. I took eleventh and twelfth grade. 124 40:55.000 --> 40:55.000 When is it you went night school? 125 40:55.000 --> 40:55.000 Yes. 126 40:55.000 --> 40:55.000 When did you go to night school? When was it? 127 40:55.000 --> 40:55.000 Say what? 128 40:55.000 --> 41:03.000 When? 129 41:03.000 --> 41:06.000 When? 130 41:06.000 --> 41:07.000 Yeah. 131 41:07.000 --> 41:42.000 I was working then when I went to night school. I had just started to work at the American Tobacco Company. I got a job. I asked—it was a guy, a man. You know during that time, the older people, the older men and the women, they felt like that you belonged to them. That they treated you like a child. They didn't treat you like somebody that they wanted to court. That's the kind of people—that's the kind of people that we came up around, and your parents could trust them. 132 41:42.000 --> 42:10.000 Just like I told you a while ago, my mother didn't have no help. My sister was older than I was. She had already quit school, and Mama didn't say, "Don't quit." See what I'm saying? She didn't say, "Don't quit," because she had done the best she could, but the others stayed in school. The three under me, they stayed in school, and she was very well help them better than she could all of us. 133 42:10.000 --> 42:33.000 Then she was so independent so she wouldn't ask nobody. She wasn't going to the White man to ask the White man for nothing. I mean, even to the welfare because we didn't know what the welfare was because we had always had what we needed through the years when we were coming up. You know what I mean? She didn't have to do that because we always had shoes and clothes and things, decent things. 134 42:33.000 --> 43:16.000 During that time, you see, I learned how to sew because when I was at Hillside, the teacher asked me, home ec teacher asked me if I knew how to sew. I told her, "Yes." She asked me if I knew how to sew on a machine. I liked. I said, "Yes." I went in that—and when I went to class, went to economic class, I sewed on that machine. I had been sewing on my fingers all the time, but I sewed on that machine. The reason I sewed on that machine is the old lady that lived up the street from us named Miss Grace—what's Grace's name? 135 43:16.000 --> 43:49.000 Seemed like all the old folks just took a liking to me, and she looked like an old White woman herself. She was the custodian up to the train station. That's when the train station was downtown, up there where they got that old place up there where you sit and wait on the train. That's where the train station was. So Ms. Gracie, I think the reason they hired her because of her color. That's why they hired her. I said it that way, and she lived up there on Matthews Street in her own little house. 136 43:49.000 --> 44:19.000 Every time I would pass by there, she would call me, want me to sit down with. I told her, I said, "I can't sit down with you now." She told me what her name was. I said, "I have to ask my Mama." I said, "Now I'll run back up here to see you," and so I told Mama about it. Mama let me run up there to see her. I went up there, and she had a old sewing machine with a wooden cover on top of it. You had to take it off and set it down. 137 44:19.000 --> 44:22.000 Yeah, I know the kind. 138 44:22.000 --> 44:24.000 I got a sewing machine now. 139 44:24.000 --> 44:24.000 Do you really? 140 44:24.000 --> 44:50.000 I sew some, yeah, every once in a while. I might jump on it now. Every time I feel like I want to sew something, I go in there and make a mess. I used to sew pretty good, used to make all my clothes. I could always go to church, and look decent too. I could make some pretty dresses, and I'd go up to Beall's and get me some material. Seemed like me, I'd buy the prettiest material they had, the best material they had, and I make me a dress. 141 44:50.000 --> 45:23.000 If I seen one somewhere advertised in a magazine or something, I'd cut that dress—I'd look at that dress, and I'd said, "Oh, I'm going to make one like that." The cap sleeves like you've got on your blouse there, had cap sleeves on it. And then I had this black satin—what was this? Crepe black satin they called it, crepe black satin, and I put a pink satin lining in it. It was pretty. I could wear it on either side. 142 45:23.000 --> 46:03.000 But in the meantime, after I told this man who lived down the street, Uncle Bob, Robert Smith was his name. Yes, we called him Uncle Rob, but he wasn't related because everybody called—all the people around there called him that, all the young children. I told Uncle Rob to look out for me because my husband had died. I told him to look out for me a job because I was back home with mama then, and because she wouldn't let me stay by myself. 143 46:03.000 --> 46:46.000 So I come back home, and so he came by. I was in the front bedroom, and the window was up. We slept with the windows up. I wish you could see that house we was in, but we kept it up. We kept it wallpapered. Mama had nice linoleums on the floor, and we kept them waxed. We kept around the rug painted, stained, and all that. We had nice beds, bed linen, dresser. They might not have matched, but they—