WEBVTT 1 00:01.000 --> 00:08.000 And August 19th, 1995. Okay, why don't you go ahead with what you were starting to say to me? 2 00:08.000 --> 01:07.000 Oh, I'd say I guess as far as I can remember back as a child, I had my own mind about things. I was very rebellious in the first place. And things that most people went along with, I disagreed with, and I guess I did even at home. And I decided at a early age that I was not going to be controlled or I guess be bossed by anybody, I thought anyway. And so I had my own mind about life, in terms of what you should do and what you should not do, and how you should be treated and how people should be treated. So that made me very rebellious in school and got a lot of flack in school, caused a lot of problems. 3 01:07.000 --> 01:50.000 I was always, even at home as a very young child, I was the leader. And we stayed in trouble. But it was three of us who are the older children, there was nine of us but it was three of us older kids that was born in the '40s. Me, my sister, and my brother. My brother was the oldest, I'm the middle child, and my sister, she was youngest at that time. And it made it hard for me and them because I was the leader and I would always tell them things mama said do that she didn't. 4 01:50.000 --> 01:51.000 Like what? 5 01:51.000 --> 02:40.000 Well, I used to love to do things like I used to love to dress up every day. You didn't dress up and go to a field, but I could. And I told them mama said to put on our Sunday clothes. Then, we had Sunday clothes and weekday clothes and school clothes and so they would find themselves in all kinds of trouble. And very simple things like if mama said don't mess with something, she would tell the rest of them, "Don't y'all bother that." And then she would give me personally, to tell me, "Don't bother." Because she knew as soon as she turned her back, I was going to do it. No, I was going just to see how it worked or, "Why can't I bother?" And I would do it. 6 02:40.000 --> 03:17.000 I can remember as a child, we had this a huge wasp nest outside the house and my mama said, "We are fixing to leave. Come here Pearl. Don't bother that wasp nest. We going to get it down when night come." I said, "Yes, ma'am." The minute they left the house, I got me a broom and went to get the wasp nest down. And by the time my mom and them got back home, I couldn't see nothing. The wasps had almost killed me. I was crying, I couldn't see nothing. 7 03:17.000 --> 04:13.000 When I first, I was about seven years old and everybody was going to the field and I couldn't go to the field because I had to stay at home. I learned how to cook, so I cooked and cleaned house, and I wanted to go to the field with everybody else. So we supposed to get up on a Sunday morning to go to Sunday School, and while mama was fixing breakfast and was supposed to be ready to go to Sunday School, I went and got me a hoe and went to the field. And when they looked for me, I was halfway down the field chopping cotton. And my mama carried me to the field that Monday morning. That Monday morning, I went to the field. They said if I could chop cotton on Sunday, I could chop it on Monday. I had no business out there in no field, so I went to the field. 8 04:13.000 --> 05:06.000 But I grew up too as a sickly child. But at the same time, I was always doing something. But I was a slow learning child in terms of books, in terms of, so I didn't comprehend everything as fast as others, as the other children did. But as far as common, everyday things, I comprehended them well. But I was not that good in books. But as far as organizing, preparing something and telling other people to, telling somebody else what to do, I was good at that. And getting them involved, I was very good at that. So that's how I got started going to the field was by going on Sunday morning instead of getting ready to go to Sunday School with everybody else. 9 05:06.000 --> 05:10.000 Now was that because you as a girl wasn't supposed to go to the field? 10 05:10.000 --> 05:17.000 No, that was because I had a baby sister at home that I supposed to stayed at home and took care of. 11 05:17.000 --> 05:18.000 Sounds very familiar. 12 05:18.000 --> 06:05.000 Yeah, there was a younger sister that I was supposed to stay at home and took care. Then, it wasn't bothered by what age you was. The older child was responsible for the smaller kids because everybody had to go to the field. Even if you went to the field with them, if they didn't need you in the house, if they took you to the field, you sit on the end of the cotton row under the shade or somewhere. They fixed you somewhere under the shade and you stayed there and you had your food and everything with you, and you stayed there all day. But you would take care of your baby sister, that was supposed to be my job. And I never liked babysitting. Those are the things I never liked, I didn't like babysitting. I didn't like babysitting my own kids. 13 06:05.000 --> 06:50.000 So I grew up working at an early age. Everybody learned how to work. The one thing that I think is missing now with the kids, they don't know how to do anything. And we learned how to work as children. You had a responsibility. You had a responsibility. We had certain duties, if it was chopping wood, cutting wood, picking up the chips, feeding the cows or the hogs and we had them all. So we had a responsibility to learn how to work. 14 06:50.000 --> 06:52.000 Now, your parents were farmers? 15 06:52.000 --> 06:54.000 Yeah. Sharecroppers. 16 06:54.000 --> 06:56.000 Sharecroppers in Walls? 17 06:56.000 --> 07:02.000 Yeah. My mother and my stepfather. I never knew my father. 18 07:02.000 --> 07:12.000 Okay. And were they sharecroppers the whole time that you were growing up? 19 07:12.000 --> 07:27.000 Up until about till I got my teens, and I guess about 15 years old. About 14 I stopped going to the field, I found me another job. 20 07:27.000 --> 07:29.000 Oh, what was that? 21 07:29.000 --> 07:40.000 I started work at the Sacred Heart Catholic Catholic School, which is still going on as of this day. 22 07:40.000 --> 07:41.000 And what did you do there? 23 07:41.000 --> 07:57.000 We would stuff little statues and necklace in boxes. But I think they shipped them all over the country. So I worked there for years. 24 07:57.000 --> 08:02.000 Oh, really? 25 08:02.000 --> 08:04.000 I worked there at, and then I. 26 08:04.000 --> 08:06.000 While you were in high school? 27 08:06.000 --> 08:58.000 Yeah, while I was in high school, and then I used to work, I used to work with the lady always running the cafe. So Walls was wide open then. And so I worked for her and I also worked. And I could create me a job at any time because I could fix hair, which I never went to cosmetology, but in the country you didn't have to. I could fix hair, I could iron with the old iron, and I could iron, I could clean house. So I always had me a job to make my own mind and I figured I had to do that, keep going to, because I hated going, after I got to be a teenager, I hated going to the field. One thing during the summer I couldn't go because it was too hot. I had a heat stroke when I was about 14. 28 08:58.000 --> 09:00.000 Oh okay. 29 09:00.000 --> 09:23.000 So I can't stand heat after this time. So I had to stop going. Then, like I said, I was always sick so half of the time I didn't go and was at home anyway because I was sick, I was ill. I stayed out of school a lot so far as illness. Some of it was I was really ill, and some of it, I didn't like going to school so. 30 09:23.000 --> 09:27.000 Oh, why didn't you like going to school? 31 09:27.000 --> 09:30.000 I just didn't like school. I didn't like teachers telling me what to do. I didn't— 32 09:30.000 --> 09:32.000 Was this a Black or White teacher? 33 09:32.000 --> 09:53.000 No, this is Black teachers during that time, I never had a White teacher. No, I never had a White teacher that I can remember. Even when they built our new school, the first year at my new school when they combined all of us together, I didn't have a White teacher. 34 09:53.000 --> 09:56.000 When they combined White and Black students together? 35 09:56.000 --> 10:08.000 No, they really didn't combine White and Black students when they first started busing. Riding the buses. And we was riding the bus past the White school to get to the Black school. 36 10:08.000 --> 10:14.000 So who were they combining? 37 10:14.000 --> 10:15.000 Huh? 38 10:15.000 --> 10:16.000 Who were they combining? 39 10:16.000 --> 10:47.000 They was combining, see when I first started going to school, you had all this classes under one school. You had from the first grade through the eighth grade was all in the same building. And so you didn't get away from there until you got in the, at one time they had even to the high school all was in one building. And we had one teacher who taught everybody when I first started going school. 40 10:47.000 --> 11:32.000 And I guess it must have been in about the fifth, maybe the fifth or sixth grade, they broke the schools down where they had the first grade, the second and third grade kids going to school together at one school. They had the fifth, sixth, and seventh grade kids going together at another school. And they had the eighth through high school going to school together at another school. So we had three different schools and they was basically around in a circle, but you had to be bused to the schools depending on where you live at. 41 11:32.000 --> 11:34.000 Okay. So that's why you were bused past the White students? 42 11:34.000 --> 11:35.000 Right. 43 11:35.000 --> 11:35.000 Okay. 44 11:35.000 --> 12:15.000 So all the Black kids in those different grades was bused to the school that they were to go to. If you didn't live close to the school, then you had the opportunity to ride the bus. And where we lived and we wanted to ride the bus, we lived too close to the school to ride the bus. So we used to walk a mile almost to get chance to ride the bus and ride back around, which was real crazy. But we wanted to ride the bus. So in order for us to ride the bus, that's what we had to do. 45 12:15.000 --> 12:16.000 Why did you want to ride the bus? 46 12:16.000 --> 12:52.000 Because hey, all the years we had been going to school, we wasn't used to no bus. So when they start busing the kids, we wanted to ride the bus with the other kids so we would have to go a roundabout way to get chance to ride the bus and that's what we did. And then we would ride the bus and keep up disturbance because that's what we did too. Look at the kids now, they're not much different than we were. We did our share. So that's how we started, that's how we went. 47 12:52.000 --> 13:36.000 But see, when I say we passed the White schools, which we did, and there was a Black school bus that the bused the Black kids. But there was also a White school bus that picked up the White kids and carried them to the White school, because the White school was Sacred Heart Catholic School. And the White kids went there. And so they had been being picked up on the bus all the time and going to school, we were the one who had to walk in the cold. In the winter, in the cold and rain and stuff to get to school. They was always on the bus, as far as I can remember, they had a bus for them. 48 13:36.000 --> 14:18.000 And so as I got older, I began to realize that there was a big segregation gap there or that things White folks could do, Black people couldn't, that's what they told me. I never really experienced that because I thought I'd do what and stay whatever I want to say or do and I've always been that way. So mama told me growing up that I would never live to get grown because somebody was going to kill me, some White folks going to kill me over my mouth because I'd tell anybody just what I thought. 49 14:18.000 --> 14:24.000 Did you ever have any occasion to be telling any White folks off when you were growing up? 50 14:24.000 --> 14:24.000 Yeah. 51 14:24.000 --> 14:26.000 What were some of your memories about that? 52 14:26.000 --> 14:43.000 Oh, by the time, I guess I was about 17 or 18, I was [indistinct 00:14:32] them, but as matter of fact, I had one child then. And me and my son's father got to fighting outside. 53 14:43.000 --> 14:43.000 Say that again. 54 14:43.000 --> 15:17.000 My son's father, we got to fight outside of the house, and the White people that ran the store lived right over the fence where his grandparents would live. And we was out around his grandparents' house when we got into it. And he told me to be quiet because there's Mr. So-and-so over there across the fence. And Mr. So-and-so standing out there being nosy, and I told Mr. So-and-so needed to go so-and-so in the house because it was not his business. 55 15:17.000 --> 16:01.000 And I didn't care. So the next day he told my son's father's grandfather that his grandson need to leave me alone because I had a real bad mouth and I didn't even respect White folks. And this was the early '60s. And he asked him what was he doing out there listening? So I went in the store and he looked and he said, "You have a real problem." I said, "Real problem with what?" I said, "I wasn't bothering you. You were there being nosy." I went home. 56 16:01.000 --> 16:31.000 And I remember that when my sister got into it one time with some people where we used to get into it quite a bit. And the sheriff of the town told my mama one day, "You got the two hatefullest girls that I ever seen in my life. When they get into it with somebody else, I'm going to carry them to jail." Well, he wind up carry one of them to jail, my sister, but I never did go. They wind up did carry her to jail. I never did go to jail. I just told him to mind his own business. 57 16:31.000 --> 16:42.000 You told the sheriff to own his own business? 58 16:42.000 --> 17:18.000 Uh-huh. But they were used to us. We grew up from small kids so they knew us, and they just said we were mean and hateful, said my mama was too. Because see I grew up in a family where my mama said if you think you right, and my stepfather did too, then you have a right to defend yourself. And I grew up with that. And don't let anybody stray you different from that. And I guess because my mama left the country when she was very young and my stepfather did too. 59 17:18.000 --> 17:18.000 They left the country? 60 17:18.000 --> 17:32.000 When they was very young. They moved back after they was adults, my stepfather went in service. So he had left the South and my mother, she ran out from home at 16 years old so she left the South. 61 17:32.000 --> 17:32.000 Where did she go? 62 17:32.000 --> 18:09.000 To Missouri. That's where she finally wound up at, settled there. How many places she went prior to that, I don't know. But that's where she wound up settling at. And so she stayed there for years. And so, for us coming up, we had parents that did not just grow up in the South where there was yes, sir boss, and you do what White folks say you do. So we didn't have that experience in our household. 63 18:09.000 --> 19:11.000 So my mama was real mean and she would tell whoever where to get off that real quick. So even with us being sharecroppers and farming and everything, nobody really bothered us. They didn't bother my parents and they didn't bother us as children because mama and daddy did not play that. So they didn't. So we didn't have that because they said my mama was mean as they White folks and Black folks said my mama was mean as a rattlesnake but we worked. So all you have to do is leave them alone and these Joneses and all you have to do is leave the Joneses alone. And they will do, they work, but do not go over there and bother them and tell them nothing to do because it wasn't going to work. So when I ran into what prejudice was when I came to Memphis. 64 19:11.000 --> 19:15.000 Now, when was that? 65 19:15.000 --> 19:23.000 I came to Memphis in '62 when I actually came here to live. And my sister, she moved here then right after she got out of high school. Huh? 66 19:23.000 --> 19:26.000 [indistinct 00:19:25]. 67 19:26.000 --> 19:51.000 Because prior to that, I really didn't know it. Now, the only time that we, it's because we're living on a plantation, everybody was treated the same so you really didn't deal with prejudice. So when I moved to Memphis, well, my first knowledge of prejudice when I was 13 years old and that was when Emmett Till got killed. 68 19:51.000 --> 19:52.000 Oh. 69 19:52.000 --> 20:41.000 And about three years, I guess after that, I must have been about 16 was when three other men, two or three of them came up there, came to Memphis. Well, that's when they first got cotton pickers to pick the cotton machines to pick the cotton with, which was called cotton pickers. And they brought some cotton pickers up there to pick cotton to pick, and to show how to pick cotton. And they were supposed to pick cotton with them, but the people recognized who they were. The Black people recognized them, and the White peoples recognized them. So they told them they didn't need them, so they sent on their way. 70 20:41.000 --> 20:43.000 What do you mean that they recognized who they were? 71 20:43.000 --> 20:51.000 They recognized that they were the men from the newspaper. The newspaper articles and things that killed Emmett Till. And this was three men. 72 20:51.000 --> 20:52.000 Oh, these were the same people? 73 20:52.000 --> 21:09.000 Right, this was the same people. And they recognized that they were the White men who killed Emmett Till, so they didn't let them work. So they didn't not hire them, they couldn't work for them so they had to leave there. 74 21:09.000 --> 21:12.000 So these were White men who came with these cotton picking machines. 75 21:12.000 --> 21:13.000 Right. 76 21:13.000 --> 21:15.000 And got kicked out. 77 21:15.000 --> 21:16.000 Right. 78 21:16.000 --> 21:17.000 Okay. 79 21:17.000 --> 21:53.000 They got kicked out because the White plantation owner that owned the plantation would not let them work for them after they found out who they were. And the Black people knew who they were. So they wasn't going to have them disturbing, I guess disturbing they Black folks so they didn't use it. So we really, because if there was a problem, if things was going on, we really didn't have a problem really with White people. Now, my brother or I experienced. 80 21:53.000 --> 22:49.000 But that we never couldn't figure out that wasn't a race issue no more than the fact that my brother got in some trouble by a White girl. But they didn't do anything to him, but sent him off to a school. And we later learned that the White girl liked him, he was seeing the White girl and he was on there trying to step through the window to see her. And so they got after him. And so at that day and time, you wasn't going to have no Black boy going with no White girl, that was just out. But they didn't hurt him, and didn't even jump on him or nothing. They arrested him the next day for prowling, and then they sent him out to a school but they didn't do a thing that was too. 81 22:49.000 --> 22:53.000 So it sounds like the Emmett Till murder had a big impact on you at age 13. 82 22:53.000 --> 23:49.000 Well, it did to the point that there was another thing, what made me really, I always wanted to be involved in things, and I did it in school. So the Emmett Till murder was the biggest thing that we had ever heard tell us where White folks had done did something to Black folk, to a Black person. So after that, the next thing that came about was the Freedom Ride. And I can remember the Freedom Ride real well when the high school kids during the summer and college students was going on Freedom Ride for for register to vote. And I remember when I wanted to do that, but by that time I had a child, and my mama wouldn't let me go. 83 23:49.000 --> 23:50.000 Oh. 84 23:50.000 --> 24:19.000 No, she would not let me go. And I told her if I ever got away from home and I got grown, I was going to do that. That's what I wanted to do. So as soon as I could, I did. I didn't get a chance to go on that Freedom Ride. But as soon as I moved from [indistinct 00:24:09], one of the first thing I did, the first day I was able to register, old enough to vote, I registered. 85 24:19.000 --> 24:21.000 That was in Memphis? 86 24:21.000 --> 25:17.000 That was in Memphis because at that time you could register until you was 21, so I was in Memphis because I didn't get a chance to vote. I think I voted next year after President Kennedy because the year he was elected, I wasn't old enough to vote. But my ambition was to always to get involved in politics, voter registration, community, things that was going on. I always wanted to do that. And I did, I worked and I started in voter registration. And then we started doing a few things on our own, like going places in the city where Blacks wasn't allowed. I can remember when we went to Leonard's Barbecue and I think that was 1963, that was when they was. 87 25:17.000 --> 25:25.000 This is Leonard's Barbecue. 88 25:25.000 --> 25:49.000 Leonard's Barbecue. It used to be on Elvis Presley. It used to be called Bellevue, now it's called Elvis Presley. It was Leonard's Barbecue. And we used to go over there, they had a drive in. So we decided we was going on the inside and we went on the inside. Now that was my first real experience of prejudice. 89 25:49.000 --> 25:49.000 Oh, okay. 90 25:49.000 --> 26:11.000 Okay. My first real experience in this was in '63. Prior to that, I had just dealt with working on jobs where you would basically have prejudiced supervisors. Like at Chesca Hotel, the poor woman up there. My name was Ellis and her last name was Ellis. She was White and I was Black. And I used to tell her that she was my sister and she used to get mad. 91 26:11.000 --> 26:12.000 She was your supervisor? 92 26:12.000 --> 26:52.000 Yeah, she was my supervisor. I used to tell her she was my sister, and she'd get mad and I would, both our names was Ellis. And she would get aggravated, and that was funny to me because she was real prejudiced, and I used to tell her that just to make her angry. During that time, I didn't bother about getting fired, no way. I'd just go find another job. I had worked, like I said, in private homes and what made you. 93 26:52.000 --> 26:55.000 You worked in private homes after you came to Memphis? 94 26:55.000 --> 27:23.000 One time. I worked in private home once before I came to Memphis for a week or two weeks or something, until a White man told me that the Black girls, not only did they work for them, but they also had sex with him. And I told him I wasn't a girl. Number one, I wasn't no girl. And number two, I didn't do what other Black girls did. 95 27:23.000 --> 28:01.000 So he fired me. He carried me home and told his wife that I was no longer needed. He needed to go back and get the girl that had been working for him. So I experienced that real quick. But he really quick found out that I had a smart mouth, and I didn't work for him no more. And I came to Memphis and I worked for a private home out in Walnut Grove area, which is East Memphis. And then White children used to be in the bushes every morning when I get off the bus. 96 28:01.000 --> 28:02.000 The White children? 97 28:02.000 --> 28:39.000 Uh-huh. The White kids and they would go nigger, nigger, old Black nigger. And they did this for about a week. Every morning they'd be in the bushes White waiting on me to get off the bus. And that's what they said: nigger, nigger, old Black nigger. So being me, this last morning I got off the bus and I wasn't going back. I had made up my mind my last day of working out there anyway. When them children, I knew they was in the bushes. 98 28:39.000 --> 28:41.000 Were they the children of the people that you worked for? 99 28:41.000 --> 28:42.000 That I worked for, no. 100 28:42.000 --> 28:42.000 Different children. 101 28:42.000 --> 29:26.000 Those were different children. These are the children I had to pass there to get to the house that I was working at. And so that morning, by the time they raised up, I said nigger, nigger, Black nigger. Scared the living daylights out of them. The next morning I went to work, I didn't find them, they wasn't there. Right, I did. Scared the daylights out of them so I didn't have that problem no more with them next morning. But I quit. I wasn't going back out in the neighborhood, no way. I didn't like private homes. I didn't like washing other folks' clothes, had to come home, wash mine and ironing and stuff. So I quit that real quick. 102 29:26.000 --> 29:53.000 But as far as having a problem with the people that I worked for, I didn't have a problem. It just the fact that the prejudice. And I guess I experienced prejudice on the city bus one time when this old lady got on. Bus crowded, she going get on the bus, she on the bus, she going to take her stuff and put it in the seat to keep anybody from sitting down beside of her. 103 29:53.000 --> 30:31.000 And we standing on the bus and this where I was coming from private home that time and I asked her to move and stuff so I could sit down and she looked at me and turned her head, and I just politely took that stuff and put her in her and lift her up and moved over and sit down. And she got up and then I told the other Black person that was standing, I said, "Now you can sit down because she going to stand up." She stand up and somebody's going to knock her over. So things like that. 104 30:31.000 --> 31:29.000 Then the next prejudice I guess I remember was when my son got hurt. My son got hurt in 1965. And that's when I had to really start learning how to deal with the system. I didn't know nothing about welfare. I didn't know nothing about nothing. I had always worked so I never had come in contact with the sister. And that was my experience with the system. And I didn't run up on prejudice in terms of prejudice as we know it, as people just being prejudiced towards you or White folks doing things to you, as it was that the built-in prejudice system. And there's a difference. 105 31:29.000 --> 31:30.000 Not personal. 106 31:30.000 --> 31:58.000 Not personal prejudice, but a built-in prejudice system. A system that was built, geared, worked one way for White folks, another way for Black folks or other nationality of people. I ran into that. That's where I began to really experience the discrimination within a system. 107 31:58.000 --> 31:59.000 Now, what happened to your son? 108 31:59.000 --> 32:30.000 My son got hurt. He was dealing with my mother and he got his arm caught in a washing machine ring, old type washing machine. You probably never seen one. Old type washing machine with the wringer type where you stick the clothes through it and wring them. And he got his arm had caught in one of those, they pulled all the way up to his arm and grabbed at his all under his arm, his shoulder, which caused him in a year after that to lose his hand. 109 32:30.000 --> 32:31.000 And how old was he? 110 32:31.000 --> 33:07.000 He was five. So in terms of going through the system, I found good people, mostly good people, White people and only a few prejudiced folks. Most of them was following the rules and guidelines that was not laws, they were not laws, but there was rules and guidelines that was built in for people. 111 33:07.000 --> 33:11.000 Can you give some examples of how it worked? 112 33:11.000 --> 33:34.000 Okay. My first experience was when I had to put him in the hospital. Okay. My son stayed in the hospital over a year the first time. And that was at the Med, which is called Med now. But at that time it was the old John Gaston Hospital and the children hospital was Toby Hospital. 113 33:34.000 --> 33:35.000 Toby. 114 33:35.000 --> 34:34.000 Toby, Toby Hospital. That was the name of it. That was for the kids, now it's Labona. And he lived in that hospital in one area for nine months. Then to where my first experience was that I was working, like I said, that my last job for them was at Case Nursing Home. I was working, okay. I had just went to work there. So the director called me in the office, the owner of the nursing home or the manager, whatever he was, he called me in the office and talked to me about whether I could work and I was trying to work and then stay up all night at the hospital with my son and then come to work the next day. 115 34:34.000 --> 35:34.000 So he asked me, "Did a social worker talk to me?" And I didn't know what a social worker was. I said, "No." He said, "Well, they have a social worker at the hospital, and you need to be with your son. So you need to." And he explained to me, he said, "Plus, you can apply for assistance. Who is going to pay the doctor bill?" I said, "I don't know," because I had been off work six, which means I had lost my insurance and which I later learned that it wouldn't have did me no good anyway. I really didn't need it because it wasn't going to pay the bill. And as long as I had any kind of insurance, they wasn't going to pay the bill. So he explained to me what I needed to do to go to do apply for assistance so that the state would pay the hospital bill for my son. He said, because he going to be in the hospital a long time. 116 35:34.000 --> 36:10.000 So I told him. So after he explained to me, I didn't understand what he was talking about. He gave me a letter. He wrote a letter and gave it to me and told me to take one copy to the social worker at the hospital and take the other copy to the director of the welfare department. So I did. I took the copy the letter that he gave me then, and I took the one to his social worker. 117 36:10.000 --> 36:34.000 And so then he explained to him that I was no longer working for him. So in other words, he basically fired me so that I could get help. And I took these two letters and I immediately got the help. There was no problem about getting the help. They did not change words for me with that letter. 118 36:34.000 --> 37:27.000 But what I ran into was after me getting the help, I ran into the problem of being controlled by the system of laws that made you feel that you belongs to, that you was no longer human. They control your life. And when I say that they told you what you could have, who you couldn't have, what you could have in your house, what you couldn't have in your house, what you could own, what you couldn't own, which was basically nothing. 119 37:27.000 --> 38:22.000 Only that you could not have owned, if you had during that time, and this was in the '60s, mid '60s at that you could not have a telephone, you could not have a television, you could not even think about having a car even if somebody gave it to you, the social worker could come in and out of your house whenever she felt like it. Or you could not have another child as long as you was in it. And unfortunately I was pregnant then and didn't know it, and I could not deal with all of them couldn'ts. And I was getting $80, I think it was $80 welfare. They didn't have food stamps. 120 38:22.000 --> 38:23.000 $80 a month? 121 38:23.000 --> 38:53.000 Uh-huh. From welfare department, and they didn't have food stamps. But I met some nice people and by me was a determined type of person who was willing to help me. And it started with the man, the director of the Case Nursing Home, and then from there to the welfare department, and also the hospital. 122 38:53.000 --> 39:19.000 So then, in my son's case was such a serious case, but it wasn't a ordinary case because of the fact of him getting hurt like he did and the suffering and everything that he went through, because for two or three times they thought they was going to lose him due to the fact [indistinct 00:39:14] bleeding death. So he had a series of operations and stuff. 123 39:19.000 --> 39:46.000 And then so that made, the welfare department was involved, crippled children's services was involved, health department was involved. Then they later told me that I had to, because of his known state, that I had to find a place to live outside of where I was living because at that time I was, for a long time I was rooming. 124 39:46.000 --> 40:14.000 Then my mother moved to Memphis, so I moved there with my mama. We all moved in the house together. But they told me due to his mental state that he couldn't stay in the house with nobody because he's hypoactive, very hyper. And I had to get a place by myself. So they told me to go and apply for a public housing and that's when I met this prejudiced woman, old White woman. Ms. Wilson. I'll never forget that woman. 125 40:14.000 --> 40:14.000 Ms. Wilson? 126 40:14.000 --> 40:53.000 Yeah. I never will forget that woman. Only thing I can think of now is Ms. Wilson, she was over occupancy at the housing authority. Prior to that, I hadn't ran into no real problems. I did have to send my son over to the state in order for them to pay for the services that he needed. So we had to go to court and let the state take custody of him, but I still kept him due to the fact it didn't have no place to put him. 127 40:53.000 --> 42:15.000 But Peggy Edmondston, who was over County Human Services today, she worked for the county. She was one of my social workers and I had a bunch of them that was all working together, various people. Her and the other workers, like a lady named Ms. Ruby Davis, who was a child social worker, Virginia Moore. The director at that time, he's dead now was Mr. George Latham, was director of welfare department. But I forget two people, what was her name? Ms. Phelps, who was over in crippled children's services. Miss, what's her name? I'm sure she dead too by now, was over at the health department. But as far as, and I've always told people as far as as people, I haven't never really had a lot of experience far as prejudice. 128 42:15.000 --> 42:19.000 Well, you were starting to say what happened with the housing authority? 129 42:19.000 --> 42:20.000 Oh, Ms. Wilson? 130 42:20.000 --> 42:21.000 Right. 131 42:21.000 --> 43:22.000 When they told me that I had to get a place to stay, and they sent me to the housing authority and I went down there to apply for a apartment. I told her exactly what they told me. This woman, she told me that they didn't make no exception. My child wasn't better than nobody else's, and if I needed a special place for him to live, been I needed to move out of town. And I go ma'am, and being me as I was, I told her, okay, I'll see about. And so I left and went back to the welfare department and went to the director and told him exactly what she said. 132 43:22.000 --> 44:36.000 And Henry Long, God bless his soul, was the mayor. So the director sit there and wrote a letter and told me said, "You take this letter and you carry it over to the mayor's office and you give it to the mayor. Do not give it to anybody else." So I said okay. So I got my child, and I went and carried the letter to the mayor. So they told me, "Leave it with the secretary." I said, "No. The director told to bring this letter to the mayor and not to give it to anybody but him." So they sit there and they looked at me and they called two or three different folks around and I just sit there. And they called two or three different people around and they looked at me and they people out to go and look at me. And I'd just sit there, and they'd look, and they run back and they'd look and I just sit there. 133 44:36.000 --> 45:34.000 So finally they figured out that I wasn't going anywhere. I wasn't giving nobody the letter, and somebody had told me to give the mayor that letter. So finally, they let me in to see the mayor, and I gave him the letter. And when I gave him the letter, he looked at the letter, he wrote some notes, he sealed his letter up and he gave me a letter and told me to go back to the housing authority. And whatever they tell me, if I didn't like what they give me, I take it. And if they didn't give me an apartment for me and my child to let him know, and I would not have to deal with that same woman again, which I didn't. When I went back over there, I carried that letter and I had to carry that one to the director, and I carried director of the house authority. I carried it to him. 134 45:34.000 --> 46:23.000 He looked at it, told me to have a seat. He assigned a worker to me and told them to work with me until I was satisfied with where I wanted to live. So they offered me an apartment that had two front doors and no back one. I told them no, ma'am. Upstairs. I said, no ma'am. So they said, "Well, that's all we got." I said, "Well, I can't accept that. I will not live nowhere where I ain't got but one way out." And with my child being as hyper as he is, I don't want to stay that high up, no way, he's going to throw me away from up there because he was a terrible boy. But I then began to look at this.