Estelle Graham: — like the favoritism of the light, would you believe that it's [indistinct 00:00:12]. There were the Tates, probably don't need to call names. 

Sonya Ramsey: People have mentioned them before. 

Estelle Graham: Oh, they had, and the Butans and all that. I think they made the paper. They were some of the— And the Hogans, the Dr. Hogans and all, [indistinct 00:00:36] Tyson, her family— They were some of the sweetest people you could ever be around. They were giving, sharing. They were people that were just people. Sometimes, I know it was hard probably for them, but when I think about it it was the way that they carried themselves. 

Estelle Graham: Now you take Ray Butan, everybody loved Ray Butan. He ended up being a police officer. He was just an in person, in—crowd person. Everybody loved Ray. They were people that were of more maybe financial— I'm sure of that because of the background family people, doctors, and teachers and all, but they didn't show it. They didn't act it. They were just decent people and naturally, I'm sure it came from the home training and the backgrounds and all. 

Estelle Graham: In my time, there was some very influential— Like the young lady finished high school that died last year, the Pillar Studio people, little Marjorie, she was in my class. There were people that you respected and there were people that respected you, and people that you mingled with and shared with and all. I think that's what I mentioned. First Ward, I loved First Ward because it was nearer to go into First Ward than [indistinct 00:02:06] where we lived. First Ward in Brooklyn was a little off limits for us. 

Estelle Graham: We were not allowed no more than to go to school. Now the reason for that is not like what was going on in Brooklyn. It was like the businesses there mostly. You could be into the little beer joints and things like that and the little things that it was off limit for us pre-teens, Brooklyn area, so we migrated to First Ward and then from First Ward we migrated this way, [indistinct 00:02:41] area and you just had certain limits and certain places that you could go. 

Estelle Graham: But with the theaters and things over there, and it was good little bit used to happen over on Second Street. That was a street where people would just go, hang out and have fun, but it wasn't like killing and things like today. You would be certain places and people would say— Going maybe to the library and you go around and ask, "Your mom and them know you're over there?" There would be people that would ask you if they knew you were where you were. Okay, your legitimate reason, you're at the library, you going around to the theater get some popcorn, but it was just like people stayed— A lot of people my age, everybody looked after everybody. 

Estelle Graham: Now you take Little Miss Pitman them, they were brought up over here right behind Smith on [indistinct 00:03:31], she and her sister and her mother. Her daddy worked on the train. If she would get the bus and some of her friends and come over to our house where we lived at the time, people would ask her that knew her from this side, neighbors and all that really didn't know that she's coming to grandmama's house, which was my mother. But it was in a way a little off limits to her to be leaving this area on the bus. Locun and Lisa, little Pitmans, her daddy railroad man and her mother was just a home person, you know. And Locun, "Uh-uh. I'm going over to my grandmama's." You know, "Locun, where you going?" "I'm going over to my grandmama's." That's when they were kind of reaching out and had the right to leave home and come over there. 

Sonya Ramsey: Okay. You said you changed neighborhoods. How old were you when your family moved, or did they move? They didn't. They stayed working— 

Estelle Graham: No. Now what happened— When you mentioned that this is interesting because I was married when the home, you know the renovation that they did in Charlotte with the highway through there? 

Sonya Ramsey: Mm-hmm. [indistinct 00:04:54]. 

Estelle Graham: The 77 and all of those things, when the time came to do the relocation, that's when we left the little homestead. Went to Liberty Street. 

Sonya Ramsey: What neighborhood is that? 

Estelle Graham: That was like two blocks. That was like two or three blocks what would have been designated as the Brooklyn area. But when I think about it, Brooklyn starts beyond [indistinct 00:05:19] Street so we lived on the corner [indistinct 00:05:22] and Liberty Street. So we still were not in that Brooklyn district. We were still like a block or two before we lived in Brooklyn because Brooklyn was beyond [indistinct 00:05:32] Street. And then from there we moved right back on College Street while this house was being built, and that was back where we started from on this side of [indistinct 00:05:45]. There were a little White neighbor there at the time when we moved there but they weren't there too long because it wasn't too long before where we were, that's where that terminal right now is through there. 

Estelle Graham: This two movings, knowing that these little monies was in trust funds and all, it was time for them to go. Well, daddy didn't make it him, but Mama moved here. We moved here in '60. '59, daddy died '59, '60 and she died in '81 and this was the home that they built from their little monies that they saved through the years. And it wasn't what you might call it wasn't— It was through their hard work, through their little labor, buying a little lot, and then through their little monies that they got from the little wills that was in trust for a home. And that's how they came about this little— And it was just like for mama and daddy and my sister [indistinct 00:06:44] in the nursing home, but with families being like families are— 

Estelle Graham: Let's see, my husband died in '72, but when my father died it was like a request. Since my sister was in Florida, my other sister in her own place, it was just like it wouldn't be fair for me. When I say fair, and I understood the situation, for mama to be widowed here with just that one sister so my husband and my son, he stayed here, so he went on into the home. The son did, went on into college and we just more or less just did what we had to do under the circumstances after daddy's death because mama didn't drive or anything. 

Sonya Ramsey: Okay. I want to go back and talk about [indistinct 00:07:35]. Did you live in the dormitory there or did you commute? 

Estelle Graham: No, I didn't go to [indistinct 00:07:40]. I went to— 

Sonya Ramsey: Oh, I mean Barber— I'm sorry. 

Estelle Graham: Barber-Scotia. We lived in the dormitory. I loved, I love Scotia. 

Sonya Ramsey: What was that experience? 

Estelle Graham: It was just like home really. You had those strict rules. You had that mannerism that you had to have. You had that dress card. You had those dating cards. Your company that came to visit you, they had to be on that list. You couldn't have company just coming on the campus. I mean your male— On Sundays is when you could have your day— Friday nights and Sunday evenings, and the Sunday that Pearl Harbor— You know, that had a lot to do with my not going my other two years too. The Sunday that Pearl Harbor was blown, we were sitting in the guest room. That was a sad time, and it came over the television, of course, a radio or whatever. A lot of time we'd be laughing and talking. 

Estelle Graham: And about six of the young ladies there went into hysterics because three of them brothers were at Pearl Harbor. They were sending them to school. And it was so sad. And one of the girls— Later on we learned it, one of the young ladies' brother was killed there. The other two girls, it seemed that nothing happened to their brothers or whoever there, maybe the uncles or whatever. But do you know, you'd be surprised to know how many people dropped out of school after Pearl Harbor. 

Sonya Ramsey: And why did they [indistinct 00:09:13]. 

Estelle Graham: It was just like a thing since it got bad because that support coming from those childrens, your uncles, your brothers and whatever sending people to school. There were times that we felt like Barber-Scotia was going to be closed because a lot of times for breakfast you just didn't have what you needed. 

Estelle Graham: I remember one morning and I thought it was so shameful and I think about it, that we had baloney and grits and it seemed like— She was a good little old dietician too. Seemed like she had a little gravy and things were such and sad and economically bad. It hit the school now. I don't know what happened there, but it did bounce back because you know it's co-educational now. It bounced back that a lot of the young— I'm trying to really, even in my mind, even with graduation, the year that we graduated without the two years, there were a lot of young people, young ladies just dropped out of school because of the finances. The financial reason that their— 

Sonya Ramsey: They had fathers [indistinct 00:10:24]. 

Estelle Graham: Fathers or the brothers or uncles or somebody that was helping them in school. They had to drop out. A lot of people lost [indistinct 00:10:34]. 

Sonya Ramsey: And you said that had an effect on your not continuing. 

Estelle Graham: It affected me to the extent that it was just like it was a defeat even for me to want to go on and want to do good, and then I would sit and think. Then I learned real young, tomorrow's not promised. It was just like I just said, "Well, well, well. You just don't ever know what's going to happen." Then I learned in years that I learned to live with certain things. It worked on me psychological. You seeing your friends in the war, and incidentally my friend was in the army. It was just things that bothered with me. 

Sonya Ramsey: Were you worried about your friends? 

Estelle Graham: Everybody and so many friends that we danced with and didn't ever see anymore. And the war from that, and we lost so many friends in the army even from that day, and it did work on us. It really did. 

Sonya Ramsey: How long was your friend in the army? 

Estelle Graham: My two years college. His two years overseas and his two years back, [indistinct 00:11:53] four years and I correspond— My sister in Florida, right today she kept a lot of letters of mine. She thought they were so nice for his writing and I— Do you know, and I'll have to admit this, after my husband's death he came back in my life. [indistinct 00:12:21] get on TV. I tell you that did affect me because my brother, our brother, he had come from the army. He was in Washington then. 

Sonya Ramsey: Your own brother was in the service too? 

Estelle Graham: Yeah, he was in the navy I meant, and my baby brother was in the army. He was in the navy. Just a lot of things. And then you'd be a home person, you wonder, you sit and think. I don't know, sometimes your friends— Just look like things just happen so fast and so quick and like I said, when the second war, when the summer came and you graduated and you were not with your little everyday life, then when after your two years college you come back, this person's in the army, that person's up north, this person this way. I really— My life had to be reorganized. 

Estelle Graham: And that's when— Let tell you what else I did. I'm trying to get this together. Oh, I went to the S and W after I was married, but before I went to the S and W I worked at the hospital. 

Sonya Ramsey: Which one? 

Estelle Graham: Shiloh Memorial. 

Sonya Ramsey: Shiloh Memorial, okay. 

Estelle Graham: It was just like it was something I had to do so the two years that I didn't go, and I may have a retraction on that because I mentioned S and W, but I went to the S and W to have to— Well, I used to work in the school cafeteria too. 

Sonya Ramsey: Oh, that's okay. [indistinct 00:13:55]. 

Estelle Graham: But anyway, but here's what I'm saying. After the war, I went to Memorial Hospital to work because it looked like it was something I needed to do. That's what I'm trying to say. But I was into the same area into the what they call the canteen, and I worked there with a friend of mine, little Louis McAfee, a dear friend. She's from Monroe. We were friends all the way through, and let's see, it was ad in the paper where it needed help at the hospital. It looked like when I went there it was like back in Second Ward back with my old friends again. And we worked there, I worked there the years— How long did I work at the hospital? That's where I met my husband too, at the hospital, because he was cooking there. 

Estelle Graham: It seemed to me— Well I put some years there. I'm trying to think— 

Sonya Ramsey: Is that before you worked [indistinct 00:14:57]? 

Estelle Graham: This is what I'm trying to think. You know, I am so confused. I went to the hospital. 

Sonya Ramsey: [indistinct 00:15:08]. 

Estelle Graham: Oh, I went to the cafeteria. 

Speaker 3: [indistinct 00:15:11] have a drink of water or something. 

Estelle Graham: She got the tape on. 

Speaker 3: [indistinct 00:15:13]. 

Estelle Graham: She got the tape on here. Now here's what I made a mistake. When I left the hospital and went to over here, S and W, it was that I needed more income. When I was at the hospital I was doing part-time. I didn't work full-time, and then after being married, needing more income, my son out of high school, my husband was a cook. He was a cook. He cooked at the hospital, two hospitals. He had a nice record as a cook, and knowing that he finished high school, wanted to go to college, that's when I went to S and W. 

Sonya Ramsey: Oh, because you had been married a while then. [indistinct 00:16:06] so you met your husband at the hospital? 

Estelle Graham: He was— 

Sonya Ramsey: How long before had you stopped dating the other boy? 

Estelle Graham: It was just that I was dating him in my mind and one day he came to me. I was sitting out in the little— Now you know Memorial Hospital opened up early when it came to desegregating. They really did because even when I got the job in the little canteen, it was little things that I had to go through this orientation and this and that and a lot of people would come in. They want you to wait on them. A lot of little situation. And one day Dr. Pemisteel was waiting on the— We didn't wait. We didn't wait the tables. They had the little White waitresses and this head doctor at the hospital, Dr. Pemisteel, he was a German doctor, brain specialist. He came in and he was watching his watch and he couldn't be waited on and he would always come down for coffee. He never would eat any food. 

Estelle Graham: We thought about this today and he sat in that little booth with his paper and looking and I got aggravated. I got the coffee and I took it to him and he did my hand like that. He said, "I was just wondering which one of you would do that." And I'm not thinking too long. He said, "Now, I can't understand why—" I was just wondering which one of us, there were three of us Black girls in the three of the waitresses and he didn't even— He never would ask for coffee. He would always come back there. The waitress [indistinct 00:17:40] and the other ladies, when he was sitting there, they'd take his coffee, black coffee or just coffee, take it to him. I did because I had a husband, didn't make me any difference. I knew it wouldn't be no racist situation but you wasn't supposed to do this or that so if I wasn't supposed to, I could come on home, think nothing of it. I wasn't going to be out anything. 

Estelle Graham: So I took his coffee to him and he thought that was so nice. Okay, two, three, four days passed. I came to work. Mrs, Miss [indistinct 00:18:11], Mr., "Well you got to go up to the office." I said, "Now, what do you mean I got to go to the office?" That's one thing I did speak my mind about that. So I went up there and he told me about how Dr. Pemisteel thought it was so nice for me to bring that coffee to him without him waiting for the waitress, the special waitress to bring it. Then I knew he had to go back where he was going because he was running down there, whatever. Even if that, it didn't make me any different. 

Estelle Graham: And from that day on, Louise— Oh, I can't call this other girl's name. There were three of us. We changed uniforms from our little uniform where we did the preparation, the sandwiches and things like that. We got to wait tables. Okay, it was no big deal. It was just gradually work to end. There would be times that people would come in and wouldn't particularly care anything about you waiting on, but it didn't make any difference. 

Sonya Ramsey: And you got better income [indistinct 00:19:13]? 

Estelle Graham: Yeah. We started that little waiting table from that. It's so strange that I'm sitting here talking about it. Oh, well. Here's what happened. After the courtship, after the friendship, after the marriage, and then when I left Memorial Hospital and I was home with my— After that, I never worked until— Let's see, I think Bobby was like six, five years old, because he went to the daycare. I stayed at home with my son, with my child. 

Sonya Ramsey: [indistinct 00:19:44]. 

Estelle Graham: And then when I went back to work, I went to the school cafeteria and then from the school cafeteria, when he finished high school, that's when I went to the S and W. 

Sonya Ramsey: Oh, that's a while. 

Estelle Graham: So I got all of that all twisted up because I needed that, I was able to venture out and have that more of income to help with his college so that's how that worked. So I did the type of work that I always wanted to do, but I wanted my own place, and I used to do it at home. I used to cook all the time. That's what's wrong with my knee. I used to cook, always have a house full of— I had to stop that. 

Sonya Ramsey: What was your wedding like? 

Estelle Graham: Very, very simple. I didn't have a wedding. We went to [indistinct 00:20:27]. It was just like— I just didn't know. I didn't dare think. I just wasn't intimate and the cutest thing about it, Robert was very— He was real nice. He would kid me about crying over spilled milk, say everybody go to the army change. He would kid me and so one day we would go out together. He was my boyfriend and all and he said, "You know, I just think about you." Said, "You so contented, same boyfriend, girlfriend and this and that." He said, "I'm going to be honest with you." Said, "I want a wife." Said, "You too old to be my girlfriend." And we talked about that. That's how he proposed to me. I was too old to be a girlfriend. He wanted a wife. He was tired of girlfriend and he just played along with it and it was just like, "No way you'd ever be my husband," but he proved himself to be a gentleman. We were married 23 years. 

Sonya Ramsey: How did he prove himself? 

Estelle Graham: Just pursuing me, letting me know that he was interested in me for a wife. "You need a husband. You're too old to be dating a boyfriend, girlfriend." I was 23 when I married. He just played it down. He didn't play with me. And he called y'all, right, [indistinct 00:21:34] call y'all in my living room on a Sunday evening, whatever it was. Might not have been a Sunday. Put the application there. We went down on a Tuesday and got married and then the coworkers I was working with gave us the nicest little reception and gifts and everything. 

Estelle Graham: And I was into another group of loving people with my school group and my Barber-Scotia group, with those Memorial Hospital group of people. They were just school people like, oh, I just bonded with those people. Right today, we have children together. I have a close friend. She called it. The four of us dated the men we married right at that hospital and we have our children around the same age. And we were just with the little in crowd and we had fun. 

Sonya Ramsey: Then you had your son and you stayed in the same neighborhood. 

Estelle Graham: On Liberty Street and then College Street. And then they were like eight, her two boys and my son. After daddy died, we all moved in here with mama and my sister when the house was— So they went to school on this side of high school, West Charlotte. Northwest was the high school then and University Park. They went to school in this area— 

Sonya Ramsey: [indistinct 00:23:00]. 

Estelle Graham: And now our children went to, excuse me for cutting you off, they went to the Seventh Day Adventist School until they got old enough to go to the first grade. 

Sonya Ramsey: Why did you— 

Estelle Graham: Because it was like our little neighborhood situation. We put them in the private school. Now Isabella White's was over but they went there until they were old enough to go to elementary and they went to Isabella White. 

Sonya Ramsey: I need to ask you, what organizations did you and your husband participate in? 

Estelle Graham: I'm going to be honest with you. Nothing but the NAACP, the little thing for the thing, the little— And then all of our boys went through the Boy Scout, I mean the Cub Scout, Boy Scout situations, went and got their little things there. 

Sonya Ramsey: Why did you participate in the NAACP? 

Estelle Graham: It was just something that you really had to do, and the main thing about it is once you got into it and you get your little letters and you get the little things and your correspondence and you send your little monies in, it was a dedicated thing that the little Alexander's worked so hard toward. Even paying your little membership fee and all, they were in close contact with you that you just [indistinct 00:24:12]. 

Sonya Ramsey: Were you in any social clubs? 

Estelle Graham: No, uh-huh. No, he wasn't. 

Sonya Ramsey: Was he in any social clubs? 

Estelle Graham: I tell you he was a card player. He loved being whist but it wasn't like— It was organized in a way, but he played cars. He was a whist, big whist he played. Okay. That was a weekend thing. It was more or less not what you might call advertised, but I'll tell you when you say like social life, we were more socializing into our friend's home. One week this one, that week this one, that week— We were in this little weekend thing. This friend of mine, she kid me last week, said, "You need to come and visit with us." I said, "No, I don't visit anybody with a living husband now." She died laughing. She was telling me, said they don't fight over nothing at night but the cover. 

Estelle Graham: But what I'm saying, my friends that I had then and our socializing friends and places we would go together and we mostly would go from house to house socializing. That was fun, and it was not into no particular thing. 

Sonya Ramsey: Did you vote as a young woman/ 

Estelle Graham: Always did and when I registered to vote, believe it or not, I had to go all the way back D.A. Till Elementary School with the big sign Colored. When I got old enough to vote, that's where I registered. I got a good voting record. I got a letter last voting time and I just vote every year. 

Sonya Ramsey: Okay. I think I'm getting close to my questions. Oh, I wanted to ask you, did you continue in the same church [indistinct 00:25:55]? 

Estelle Graham: All through the years, except the ones that married and moved and my sister up here, Locun now, they members of First Baptist. Well, it all depended. When you asking me, so I'm still a member of [indistinct 00:26:12]. I'm still a member. 

Sonya Ramsey: Is your husband from Charlotte? 

Estelle Graham: No, he was from South Carolina. Greenwood, South Carolina. 

Sonya Ramsey: Okay, and he just became accepted into your family? 

Estelle Graham: Very well. 

Sonya Ramsey: Okay. [indistinct 00:26:27]. Is there anything else that you'd like to add? 

Estelle Graham: No, I think I don't got— 

Sonya Ramsey: Oh, I wanted to ask you about your husband's death. You got reacquainted with your old boyfriend. 

Estelle Graham: Yeah. 

Sonya Ramsey: How did that come about? 

Estelle Graham: That was real nice, and then on top of that, my brother that died in Washington, I met another friend of mine from high school and this relationship lasted real, real long because we were real interested in a little very legal situation, but he deceased. That was nice because it was from his death that I got to visit back and forth to Washington— My brother died from Washington because I didn't go that much up there, and then my son lived in Washington for a while because he worked at— 

Sonya Ramsey: This man was in Washington? 

Estelle Graham: Mm-hmm, and I tell you, hon. I've had such a full life. I tell you, it's interesting even sometimes when I sit and think about it. So my life so far has been— I've been wonderfully blessed. I've said that. I really have, and it's just things and by him being a little Charlottean living in Charlotte, his mother became ill and he came down and we just had fun and went place, go [indistinct 00:27:44] Smiths dance together and just fun things. 

Estelle Graham: And just a few years back, he had a little situation in D.C. where he was living. He had a stroke and he was a nice gentleman. My mother, she was crazy about him. She kid him. Said, "I remember you used to come and sit," and he was the type of little friend in high school. He wasn't too old, but he would come at Valentine and leave a little Valentine card at the house. Going by Christmas time, leave a little box of candy, but he married his high school sweetheart. They were married for a while and they separated, divorced, whatever. He worked at the post office, supervisor. He was a very, very nice gentleman. 

Sonya Ramsey: That's the first boyfriend you had, married someone else from your high school? 

Estelle Graham: He didn't marry. 

Sonya Ramsey: Oh, he didn't marry. 

Estelle Graham: He never married. It was like a few years after. Well, when he became ill, he had to go on the kidney machine. It was real nice. I think about how nice my life's been. I was at work and somebody came and somebody wanted to see me and I was trying my best figure out who it was. I went to see who it was, and so this was the high school friend of mine. And I had heard about him not being well and he said, "You know, I've been thinking about it. I would like for you to meet somebody," and the first thing came in my mind, it was maybe the woman in his life, whatever. So he introduced me to two of his sons. One was like nine and the other one was 12 and he wanted me to meet the two fellows. Oldest child looked just like, and I thought that was nice. 

Estelle Graham: And then he would sometimes come and pick me up but all the while he was letting me know he had real bad kidney problems. He had to go on the machine and all. A friend of mine, a girlfriend of ours and he, they were on the same— Lot of times, have to go to the doctor together to be on the machine wherever they would go. And we talked about it all the time. He asked me one thing to do to come to this film, you know? I told you he was a member of Ebeneezer, and he'll call me at night and we'd talk and all and it was just— It was such a full film that all through his little illness, we talked nice. We never mentioned things about the past or whatever, that I felt good to know that we had that little friendship mostly over the telephone his last days. 

Estelle Graham: And when I went to the film, she went with— Now I'm telling you the truth, it was the saddest film I've ever been to. There was so many of us ladies moaning. We all remember. I don't know what that is, and sometimes I think I need to call the fire department, see if there's something down in that chimney down in there. Sometimes, honey, I try to— I think it's so nice that he would call me at night from the hospital. My brother was in a automobile accident. I went to see him. It so happened that I didn't know he was in the hospital until the night I went to see my brother and he was down the hall from him. I would visit him. 

Estelle Graham: I always respect people for things. As nice that people have been to me in life, I try to reciprocate as simple as I can without a thing there. Those things [indistinct 00:31:32] and I think about it, honey. Lord's been good to me. My little home life, my little love life and a little thing and now I'm old, man. I'm happy, satisfied.