Wilhelmina Francis Baldwin: There were all frame houses. I don't think there was a brick building of any kind in Keysville. I don't think so. I don't remember there being any kind of brick building. All the houses were frame houses. The two kids who drove over from Keysville to Boggs every day that I mentioned sometime ago, Vivian and Clifford Wells, their family was those well-to-do Black family in Keysville. Mrs. Wells did not work. Mr. Wells, I don't know what Mr. Wells did when he was in Keysville, but every summer he went to New York, and he worked there, and they lived very well. That was the only Black family in Keysville that had a car. There was one lady, no, she had a car, Ms. Pearl, I can't think what her last name is, but she had a car because she ran a little, what we call a juke joint. Do you know what that is? She had—What do you call this that plays the records, the music? 

Paul Ortiz: Like a jukebox? 

Wilhelmina Francis Baldwin: Yeah, jukebox. She had a jukebox in there, and she sold little goodies the teenagers would like and everything. And she was a member of John I. Blackburn. And so she came to Boggs to church on Sunday and all of us knew her and whatnot. My daddy did not agree with her having her little place open on Sunday and whatnot, but we knew it was open on Sunday. And the one time that we lied to him about where we were going on Sunday, we were going over there, and we were having a real good time. We were just dancing and having fun, and I turned around and looked in my daddy's face. He was standing at the door. He never said a word to us. He never mentioned it at all, but we never went back over there on Sunday. We never did. Just the look that he gave me was enough to deter me from going back. But that was just one of the crazy things that we did as kids. 

Paul Ortiz: Now, Mrs. Pearl ran this. 

Wilhelmina Francis Baldwin: Mrs. Pearl, what was her last name? 

Paul Ortiz: And she was Black? 

Wilhelmina Francis Baldwin: Yeah, she was Black. She had a car. She had a nice home over in Keysville. One thing about it, she didn't keep that place open late at night, at 9;30, 10 o'clock, it was closed. So although we had time to go and have fun, if that's where we were going, we were able to get back home at a decent hour. 

Paul Ortiz: I see. 

Wilhelmina Francis Baldwin: If we said that we were at Ms. Pearl's place after 10 o'clock, everybody knew we were lying. Everybody would've known, you see? So she felt that that was necessary for her to do that. She said, your kids will be out of this place before any 12 o'clock. They weren't over here at 12 o'clock, so we couldn't lie on her. She was a real nice person, kind of astute, very strong, positive presence, that type of person. 

Paul Ortiz: And what was the name of her establishment? 

Wilhelmina Francis Baldwin: I don't even know whether it had a name. We just said, we're going to Ms. Pearl's place. I can't think of what the name of that place was. 

Paul Ortiz: And did that have a Black and White clientele, or was it— 

Wilhelmina Francis Baldwin: No, I never saw any White there. This was just something that Ms. Pearl did. And once or twice a week, she would have hot sandwiches to sell, like hot dogs and hamburgers and whatnot, and she'd fix them herself. But if you wanted a hamburger, she'd fix it. I mean, they were real big hamburgers. That's one of the first places I ate a hamburger, but it was just a place to have fun. I guess, Ms. Pearl was that type of teenager herself when she was a child. You can kind of tell when people have had a good time and nice clean fun, and they just enjoyed it. They want to share it. Because she enjoyed it. My brother James, he'd dance with anybody, and she wouldn't think that she had spent the evening if James was there, if she didn't dance with him, and dancing was the jitterbug then. So we all did this. He said, Ms. Pearl, the only thing I can't do with you is to swing you this way and this way. She said, don't you try it, don't you try it. 

Wilhelmina Francis Baldwin: But that place had no name to answer your question. If it did, I don't know what it was. It was just Ms. Pearl's place. Now, that was in Keysville. The post office was in Keysville at the little general store. 

Paul Ortiz: Do you remember any places like say taverns or places that served alcohol in that area? 

Wilhelmina Francis Baldwin: Let's see. I don't know of any, because I never went, but I know that one thing that was big in those days was the church anniversaries. Every church all over the county would have an anniversary program during the summer, and this was a big event. People would come from all the other churches if they knew that Noah's Ark Baptist Church was having—Now, Noah's Ark was one of the biggest churches in the county, and when I say biggest, they had a lot of members. You could hear them singing almost a half mile away when they were singing and whatnot. But every one of the church anniversaries, my brothers found out, I never saw it, but they told me, you know how adventurous boys are, that down in the woods there would be some men selling corn whiskey. They'd be set up down there on a tree stump selling whiskey. 

Wilhelmina Francis Baldwin: And CW said, do you know they could pour that whiskey in that bottle and not spill a drop. Daddy said, what were you doing down there? He said, I just went to see. I didn't drink any, I just wanted to see it. I didn't believe it. Daddy said, believe it. This happens at every anniversary, and it's well away from the church, but very well attended. And people brought food in foot lockers. And you know what a foot lock is? It's a little trunk, a metal trunk with a tray in it. They'd have food in it and boxes and boxes of food. 

Wilhelmina Francis Baldwin: They would come in the morning, they'd have Sunday school. They would have a break between Sunday school and church, but they didn't leave. They didn't have anywhere else to go. And then they would have church starting about 11, maybe 10:30 or 11. They'd have the prayer service, and then the preacher would preach, they'd have communion, and after that they'd have dinner on the grounds. Well, that's what all this food was for. They'd have everything from barbecue, goat. Have you ever had any goat? You wouldn't like it? 

Wilhelmina Francis Baldwin: Barbecue, goat, fried chicken, roast beef, pork chops, sausages, you just name it them. Then potato salad, baked beans, macaroni and cheese, cornbread, biscuits, hot rolls, anything that you might decide you wanted. And they'd get mad if you didn't come around to their table or to their car or wherever they were eating, and get some of their food, something that they had, they wanted you to share. So you had no problem with that. But they would eat, then they'd go back, they'd fellowship, and then they'd go back in for the evening service. 

Wilhelmina Francis Baldwin: And you didn't worry about the heat, and it was hot, but there were no fans and there was no air conditioning and whatnot. This is what I could not understand, when the preacher would get up to preach, they would close all the windows in the church. And they said that was to keep the preacher from catching a cold. I don't care how hot it was. It could be 95 degrees. They would close those windows, and you might as well prepare to start fanning. But that was to keep the preacher from catching a cold. 

Wilhelmina Francis Baldwin: But as far as taverns are concerned, I'm sure there must've been some in that neighborhood. I don't know about any particular place in Keysville, but the only taverns that were advertised were on the street in Waynesboro. 

Paul Ortiz: I see. 

Wilhelmina Francis Baldwin: And Blacks didn't go in there. That was just for Whites. I know in Waynesboro, that was a real problem with segregation there. 

Paul Ortiz: Oh, really? 

Wilhelmina Francis Baldwin: When I worked at Boggs—Oh, before I finished high school, there was Mrs. Hankerson who had a café, a little restaurant. She was Black, but when her husband died, I guess, the insurance money bought that for her. But anyway, she had a nice little restaurant and the teachers from Boggs would go and eat at Ms. Hankerson's place sometimes when they were in town. So she bought a Cadillac. Her car gave out on her somewhere, I don't remember, but she had to get her son to get a truck and come and get her. And they picked her car up and took her on into Augusta. So she bought a Cadillac. The police chief in Waynesboro asked her where she planned to drive that Cadillac. She said, I planned to drive it where I live. I live here in Waynesboro. He said, you can't drive that Cadillac, not in Waynesboro. So she took the Cadillac back and bought a Chevrolet, because that's the only place she had lived. 

Wilhelmina Francis Baldwin: And they also had a curfew for Blacks. If you were just a run-of-the-mill Black, your curfew was at 9:30. If you were what they call educated Black, you could stay out till 10:30. If you stayed out beyond 10:30, you had to have a written statement from the Chief of Police. And the reason I know this is true is when I was working at Boggs Academy, the principal, at Waynesboro High School, had a party at his house one night, and they invited the teachers from Boggs Academy. And so we went to his house. We played Bridge and some other table games and whatnot. But we were there past 10:30. He had his permit and he had all of our names on that permit, and two cars were riding past there at around 11:15 when we got ready to go back to Boggs. And one car followed us until we were out of the city limits of Waynesboro. They surely did. 

Wilhelmina Francis Baldwin: They would find people who were out beyond their curfew. They would find them, and they took that money, and they said they were taking that money to build a teacher's cottage for the White teachers who taught at the White school there, because a lot of those teachers didn't live in Waynesboro, they lived in Augusta, and they wanted to entice the teachers to live in Waynesboro. So they took that money that they got from curfew and put it toward the building of the teacher ridge for the Whites. And it is still standing there. 

Wilhelmina Francis Baldwin: The theater, of course, you know about it being segregated. The Blacks had to go upstairs. The entrance was on the front, the main entrance to the theater where the ticket office was, the ticket window was, that's on the front. Then there was a little door that went upstairs. So that's where we had to go to see the movie. What really teed me off about that was one day, my sister and I, we were living in Waynesboro. This is after my daddy had a series of strokes and whatnot, and he was recuperating. So he was living in Waynesboro, and we had nothing to do, but go to the movie in the afternoon. I was in college then. My sister must've been about 12 years old, and the movie only cost 15 cents in the afternoon. So we'd go to the movie. 

Wilhelmina Francis Baldwin: There was usually nobody there. We'd go to the ticket window, buy our ticket, and we would go on upstairs and take our seats for the movie to begin. And likewise, there was nobody downstairs when we would come out. So this particular day, Catherine and I were coming out, the movie was over, and there was a little White boy about Alexander, my little grandson, I guess, he must've been eight, nine years old. He was standing there with his hands across the door like this. 

Wilhelmina Francis Baldwin: And so when we got to the bottom of the steps, I said, excuse me, please. He said, niggers can't come out now until all the White people get out. I said, you better move. And he turned around. He said, you can't come out. I said, you better move. So he moved and instead of outgoing past that way, which was the closest way to go home, I took Kat by her hand and ran around the square that ran around the block that way. And we usually bought a popsicle. She said, we can't get our popsicle. I said, not today. We're going straight home. 

Paul Ortiz: Did you feel danger? 

Wilhelmina Francis Baldwin: Yes. I thought, I didn't know what would happen. It just hit me that somebody posted that little boy there to keep us in there until all the White people got out of the theater next door and got off the street. And I said, you better move. And I frightened him because I was bigger than he was. I was in college then, and I went home and told my daddy. He said, well, you did what you felt you had to do. I said, yes, I did. I said to have a little boy standing there keeping us in for no reason at all. And there couldn't have been 12 people coming out of the main theater. And there were about that many upstairs. We were just the first two to come down, but nobody was ever there anymore at that door. Nobody. That little boy, we saw him several times. 

Wilhelmina Francis Baldwin: He was standing peeping around the corner, but he never stood at that door. Not anymore. But Waynesboro was just one of those places that it wasn't as bad as the situation in Mississippi, but it was bad. I know there was one fellow who had come, he'd been in World War II. He had been wounded. He was a man of small stature. I cannot remember his name, but we knew him at Boggs Academy. His name just escapes me. One Saturday, he was walking down the street with a friend of his, a White guy and his wife were coming this way. The man should have been on the outside in the first place, but the man was walking close to the buildings and the woman was in the middle of the sidewalk. And this guy was talking to his friend, and the woman kind of bumped him, and he tried to be a gentleman. He said, oh, excuse me, ma'am. 

Wilhelmina Francis Baldwin: And this guy said, don't you put your hands on my wife? And he said, wait just a minute. I apologized. He said, she's walking in the wrong place anyway. You should protect your wife on the inside of the street. You don't tell me what to do. This little guy all of a sudden jumped on that guy, that White guy, and knocked him out with two. He hit him twice. And all that anger that he had and fear, frustration he had when he was in the war, World War II just came out on him. And he hit that guy twice, and knocked him out cold. And he walked away. He didn't run. And this other guy took him around the corner. He said, man, don't you're in trouble. He said, well, they can come for me anytime they get ready. He had one hand grenade that he had brought from the army, and he had some other stuff. 

Wilhelmina Francis Baldwin: And this guy says, I know where I'm going to take you. And you're going with me. And he brought that guy out to Boggs Academy, parked his car in the barn, and this guy was in one of the rooms over at the boys' dormitory. He stayed out there. We sent his meals over to him and everything. He stayed out there for almost a week until he made contact with his people in Florida, and he went to Florida. That was the year I left Boggs. But I heard that he had been back to Waynesboro twice and nothing happened. Nothing ever happened because of his wife, she said that the man did not run into her intentionally, and that he did try to apologize. But she said, my husband had a hot temper, and he jumped on the guy. And the man was really wrong to take it that seriously, but you didn't look at a White woman if you were a Black man. 

Wilhelmina Francis Baldwin: Don't touch her any kind of way. I guess that still happens. But that was a frightening time for me. I was still at Boggs Academy, and I tell you, we didn't know what was going to happen, but we knew we had him out there, and we didn't want him to come out at all. The sheriff came out to see if we had heard of him, if we knew him, last time we had seen him, nobody on campus. Some of us knew him, but hadn't seen him in a long time, didn't know of his whereabouts and whatnot. We prayed real hard. No, I had no idea they wouldn't do any searching, because it wouldn't have been hard to find him at all. But they would've had time finding that car, because in the barn—Let's see, what was in that barn? Bales of hay and a lot of tools. The tractor was up there, the school tractor and an old truck. 

Wilhelmina Francis Baldwin: So after they pulled his car in and piled the hay, and they put the truck across the front of the barn, it was just sitting there with tools on it like it had been just sitting there for a long time and whatnot. But when that guy left, he left, going to Florida. We took off a little collection for him, so he could have gasoline, but he had that hand grenade with him, two guns. One was about this long, and then he had a long rifle. And one of these things with the bayonet on the end of it, he was ready for war. He was still a very, very angry person. 

Paul Ortiz: Do you remember his name by any chance? 

Wilhelmina Francis Baldwin: No. I can't remember his name. He was little in stature, not tall. I guess, he might've been my height. And I remember his eyes. You know how some people's eyes look when they—Well, for a lack of a better word, I guess, when they are afraid or have a lot of fear in their eyes and whatnot. He didn't smile very much. He'd had a hard time during the while. He'd been wounded, but I don't remember the extent of the wound. 

Paul Ortiz: Now, you told me earlier that your parents tried as best as they could to shield you from the bitter realities of segregation. What would they do? I mean, I guess, what was their way of doing that? 

Wilhelmina Francis Baldwin: Well, there were just certain things that we did not do, for instance, and going to wherever we went out of town, they took us, we never went on the bus. The only time we'd go on a bus if it was a chartered bus, if everybody in the church went on the bus. We knew everybody on that bus. And so we might not know the driver, but we knew everybody else on the bus. We never had to go to the bus station for anything. And, well, the doctors were White until Dr. Young came to Anderson. Dr. Young had graduated from Johnson C. Smith, and then he went on to medical school, and he was the first Black doctor in Anderson, South Carolina— 

Wilhelmina Francis Baldwin: Alexander, come here a minute. I'd like for you to make—That's the only kind of bus that we rode on. Wherever we went as a family, we went in the car, and he always had a car. First, it was an old touring dodge. The windows snapped in. Then we had a Dodge, the windows that rolled down, but that touring Dodge was one where we had the most fun. And then he got this old Chrysler, and that's the one he gave to us when we were in high school. He kept the tires up on that car. But as far as the maintenance, otherwise we had to take care of that ourselves. We had to put in the gasoline and oil, and he would check it to be sure that we were taking care of it. And my brothers drove it. And, of course, the oldest brother, oh, he just thought it was the prettiest car in the world, and he kept it. 

Wilhelmina Francis Baldwin: That's when white sidewalls first came out, and you had to kind of keep painting them with the sidewall paint to keep them nice and clean. And he would do that. But Boggs was out in the country and Quaker Road had not been paved then. That's Quaker Road coming from Waynesboro all through to Keysville. And so after he would do the tires, he would drive very slowly to Waynesboro, because the road was dusty. But anyway, we always had a car, and wherever we went, we went either as a family or when we got to be teenagers, we drove ourselves. And we didn't run into the bus thing and the train thing. And of course, naturally nobody back then was flying. And so we didn't have much of a chance to meet White people except on a professional basis. And that's when two White men came from the Presbyterian church to visit Salem High School, which was under the Presbyterian church. 

Wilhelmina Francis Baldwin: They could not meet at the hotel, at the John C. Calhoun Hotel in Anderson. That's where they were staying. That's where they were going to stay. So for the meetings with my mother and father, they had to come to our house. And so I never will forget that day when we had to do some extra cleaning, and we had to be on our very best behavior. Andrew, the youngest one, was commissioned to leave his box alone. Whenever we had company, he had a box, and he'd love to push that box up and down the hall, but they didn't bother him about it except that we had special company. So they told him he'd have to go downstairs with his box that day. But anyway, mama fixed the meal. And, of course, we always sat down at a set table for dinner. That's one of the things I remember. 

Wilhelmina Francis Baldwin: We ate together as a family. Somebody said the Grace, we had tablecloth, napkins and napkin holders, and we sat down for our meals every day. But these two White men came to our house, and they were very friendly, as I guess they should have been. They were administrators in the Presbyterian church. I don't know what they are, but I imagine that they came to look over Salem Presbyterian Church and Salem School because it was not too long after that they closed it. The school was closed, but they could not meet with my parents at the hotel. So in order to meet with them, they had to come to our house. And that was one of the first experiences I had with anybody White, as far as going to the bank was concerned. Daddy took care of that himself. 

Wilhelmina Francis Baldwin: Mama never had to go to the bank, not in Anderson. Daddy did all of the outside things. Now, he would take CW, the oldest boy with him sometimes, and I think he was trying to gradually teach him about some of the things he would run into, but we just didn't have to. There were no White kids in our neighborhood. That's number one. And we'd see there was a factory about, I guess, three miles from where we lived. It was on the other side of the Black cemetery. There was a trail, a winding road, through that cemetery. And if you go through the cemetery, on the other side of the cemetery was this factory. And a lot of White people worked in that factory, but few of them would come from the other side, from the factory through the cemetery, and they would come past our house or come on our street going somewhere to the west of us. 

Wilhelmina Francis Baldwin: And they usually were just working class White people. They wouldn't even speak when they'd come by. We didn't bother them, so we didn't have much of a chance. When we went to buy shoes, well, until I got to be 10 years old, they didn't take me to buy shoes. They bought my shoes, and if they didn't fit, they would take them back and get another size. So we didn't get into the stores to have to deal with the clerks and whatnot. They bought the clothes for all of us like that until James had a foot problem, and they just had to take him to get shoes. But I can't ever remember going to a store to buy anything. Then there were stores that wouldn't let you try things on. I think that's another reason they'd let you take it home, but they wouldn't let you try them on in the store. Have you been to Selma? 

Paul Ortiz: Not yet. 

Wilhelmina Francis Baldwin: Are you going? There's a lot of history over there. Gertrude, a young lady who lived with me while she was in college here, and she took fashion, designing clothing and related arts. And Gertrude, at 20 years old, did not know that she was supposed to be able to try on a bra. She told my niece who lived here at the same time, we went shopping one day and Carol said, I need to get a bra, and Gertrude, and I was with her. And she said, I said, well, you got to go try it on. Gertrude said, she can't try that on. I said, yes, she can. I said, she won't buy it if she can't try it on. She said, oh, no, she can't. And Gertrude was just overwhelmed. She grew up thinking that she should not be able to try on a bra. I said, how would you get a good fit? She said, you just buy your size. I said, no, you're supposed to try it on. 

Wilhelmina Francis Baldwin: And Gertrude didn't believe it. So she bought one just to be sure that she could try on a bar in the store. And she never had a good fit because she had never been properly fitted. But that happened. I think it still happens in some places. I know they wouldn't let you try on hats in South Carolina. Where was I in South Carolina? Camden, that's where we went After we left Boggs, we went to Camden. And there was one little place that sold nothing but hats. I was looking for a hat for Easter, really. And I seriously wanted to buy a hat. She thought we were playing, just wanting to try on hats and whatnot. She told me if I liked the hat, I'd have to buy it. I couldn't try it on. I said, well, no, you keep your hat. I'll keep my money. But they just didn't let Blacks try on hats. 

Paul Ortiz: That was when you were in college? 

Wilhelmina Francis Baldwin: Yeah, I was in college then. This was my junior year. And we had come home from—Was that the junior year? 

Paul Ortiz: Oh, and so this was in Waynesboro? 

Wilhelmina Francis Baldwin: No, this was in Camden, South Carolina. That's where I had that problem with the hat. But Cotton Valley was different. I thought that coming to Tuskegee or being in Tuskegee 15 miles away from the university would be so different. Well, I just knew it would be a pleasure to teach school in a community that close to Tuskegee University. But I was sadly disappointed. It was out in the rural. What happened out in that community? We had students coming to our school from four communities. Cotton Valley itself was near the school. Then we had Spring Hill, then we had Armstrong and Fort Davis. Those were four communities. 

Wilhelmina Francis Baldwin: The children could not ride the bus unless they lived two miles or more from school. So the children from Armstrong and Fort Davis could ride the bus, and then the school bus would come by Cotton Valley School and pick up high school students who lived in that community, and then they'd take them on over to South Macon school. So we had these children coming in from all these four communities. But what was really noticeable was that there was a lost or missing generation of parentage. Most of those children lived with their grandparents. Their parents were nowhere in sight. They were either in Haynes, City of Florida, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Detroit, Michigan, or Cleveland, Ohio. And if they weren't in those places, nobody knew where they were. 

Paul Ortiz: Oh, they would leave to go work. 

Wilhelmina Francis Baldwin: That's right. 

Paul Ortiz: Okay. 

Wilhelmina Francis Baldwin: They would send money back, especially the women would send money. The females. So many of those little kids did not know who their fathers were. They just didn't know. I ain't got no daddy. 

Paul Ortiz: This was in the 40s. 

Wilhelmina Francis Baldwin: This was the late 40s and the 50s. The little boys wore overalls, what they call a deck. I don't know whether you know what a deck of overalls is. It's the denim overall that hooks up right here. It has a vent, a little dickie part, and you hook it, the straps cross in the back, and you put it here. And then you have a jacket, a denim jacket to go with it. So they call that a deck of overalls. And you could get a whole deck for something like $2.98. You know what denims cost now, don't you. 

Alexander: Excuse me, grandma. Judy wanted me to tell you that Annette just her baby at 3:20 this morning, and the name is Dan, August Junior. 

Wilhelmina Francis Baldwin: Dan. It was a boy, like she said. Thank you, Alexander. 

Alexander: You welcome. 

Wilhelmina Francis Baldwin: At three 20 this morning. 

Alexander: Yes. 

Wilhelmina Francis Baldwin: Thank you. That's one of our little girls. She's been expecting, and she's been so tired. So I guess the doctor did have to induce her. She's been having false alarms, but I'm glad she's finished with that. But anyway, this lost generation of parents. So the grandparents couldn't do very much for those kids except just give them a lot of love, because many of the grandparents could not read or write themselves, and they would give the teachers free rein. 

Wilhelmina Francis Baldwin: If you need to knock him in the head, you do it. And I'll finish when he gets home. They meant that they meant for you to take care of business at school, and don't come sending him home and then write me no note, because I can't read that note and they ain't going to read it to me right, which the kids would do. They'd go home and turn that note around to suit them themselves. And they knew that the grandparents couldn't do anything about it. So we had that kind of thing to deal with. 

Wilhelmina Francis Baldwin: And our principal at that time was Ms. Julia Johnson. She's deceased now, but she was a sociologist in a way. And it was fun working with her because she was interested in the people and what they had to go through. And she was instrumental in getting those farmers who were still sharecropping to try to buy property and to stop sharecropping. And she showed them how they were giving away so much of what they had earned themselves. You know about the sharecropping story. And, of course, her brother before her was a sociologist. He was the president, let's see, of a school in Tennessee, Nashville. 

Paul Ortiz: Fisk or? 

Wilhelmina Francis Baldwin: Fisk Johnson. Names are just— 

Paul Ortiz: Oh, Charles S. Johnson. 

Wilhelmina Francis Baldwin: Huh? 

Paul Ortiz: Charles S. Johnson. 

Wilhelmina Francis Baldwin: Yeah. Not Charles S. Johnson. No, what was his name? That's right. 

Paul Ortiz: Charles Spurgeon Johnson. 

Wilhelmina Francis Baldwin: This is right. This was his sister who was principal of Cotton Valley. 

Paul Ortiz: That's very interesting. 

Wilhelmina Francis Baldwin: Julia Johnson. 

Paul Ortiz: Because he wrote a book about Macon County. 

Wilhelmina Francis Baldwin: Yes, this is right. And, of course, I worked with her for 10 years out there. She did a survey and whatnot. I know I was with her one day when she went to one house, and she was talking to the mother and see, there must've been about six little kids there, stair steps. Ms. Johnson said, well, now, where's your husband? She said, I ain't got no husband. She said, he's been gone. She said, well, how long has he been gone? She said, well, he left here about three, four years ago. Well, these last two kids were under four years old. And so she said, now, who is this on your knee? She said, this is my knee baby. And she told how old that one was, and then this other toddler ran around. She said, well, how do you account for these two if your husband has been gone for four years? 

Wilhelmina Francis Baldwin: She said, oh, them is from my recreation. And it was all I could do to keep from really laughing. But she had told me, she said, you don't laugh about certain things. They won't give you the information you want if you laugh at them. But we had a good laugh on that many times. But those are her recreation. That's how she accounted for those children. But basically, the children didn't know very much. They had no documents in the family. What I mean, documents? They had nothing but the family Bible. Nothing. They got no newspapers, no magazines, no radio, no electricity and whatnot. And many of them were inspired to get electricity. When we found out it was coming out that way, going out to Cotton Valley, out Union Spring. 

Paul Ortiz: And now the name of the school you're teaching at was? 

Wilhelmina Francis Baldwin: Cotton Valley School. 

Paul Ortiz: Cotton Valley School. That was first through 12th grade? 

Wilhelmina Francis Baldwin: No, no, no. First through eighth grade. 

Paul Ortiz: First to eight grade. 

Wilhelmina Francis Baldwin: First through eighth grade. And we did everything for those eighth graders that the 12th grade schools did for their 12th graders. We had baccalaureate and class night and commencement, the whole works. So the kids were a little bit ahead. They knew a whole lot of things. They learned a whole lot of things that the kids even at Children's House on campus here didn't learn. And we had to make those kids feel good. We didn't take anything from them. We just added to what they had. And that's another thing I lost in that fire, this vocabulary that they had. The kids used words that we didn't use in the same way, but we would let them keep their words and let them know that. See, you know more than I know, because you will have two words. 

Alexander: Excuse me, I'm about to go outside. 

Wilhelmina Francis Baldwin: That's all right, Alexander. It's kind of hot out there, but have a good time. But anyway, dough face is a mask to them, regardless of what it's made of. It's a mask. And that's what they call a dough face. And so looking back into it, that's what a mask originally was for them. But they would make up dough out of flour and water and put it over the face like this, get the shape of it, and take it and put it in a slow oven, and let it—