Jessie Wright interview recording, 1994 July 20
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| Paul Ortiz | Mrs. Wright, could you tell me when and where you were born and something about the area that you grew up in? | 0:04 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | Okay. I was born in Macon County and that's, it's Shorter, Alabama. They're near Shorter. It was called Hardaway then, but now they have divided it up in part of it's Shorter and part's Hardaway. And I attended school, is that all right to go down that way? I attended school at several places down there and the reason we had to divide them up because at that time you didn't know, your father didn't own a home, so you was moving from first one place and then another. | 0:10 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | So the first school I attended was Damascus School and that was a church school. The next one was Mount Pisgah and that was another church school. The next was Nebraska, still church school. Then after attending those schools, it was a lady down there by the name of Miss Fannie Wheelis. She wanted to know, in fact, she tried to help all the children down in that area that she thought wanted to do something. She brought them to Tuskegee and I was one of the persons that she brought to Tuskegee and I lived in the families in Tuskegee in order to go to school. But I hadn't yet finished high school. So then I attended the Washington Public School in Tuskegee. | 0:44 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | And after finishing over there, I didn't have enough money to go to a private high school. And at that time you had to pay a certain amount of money. It wasn't a lot of money, but it was just like paying to go to school. See now you don't have to pay anything but then you had to pay a certain amount of money. But I was from down to shore where it was eight of us in the family. And back then the people just didn't think too much about school. | 1:44 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | So when I left, in fact I was the oldest child of the family, but my mother passed when I was two. So therefore the way I felt didn't too many people have a lot of interest in me, whether I went to school or not. So when I came up here to Tuskegee, I was 16 and I was determined to get whatever education I could get because I've always thought that education was very important from knowing, checking how the people would treat you when you go different places. Cause if you were in school, you had a different air, they would talk to you or something like that. But if you wasn't in school, they didn't think you were any good. So therefore education meant quite a bit to me. So I stayed out of school a number of years and worked in families, and I was near the college campus. | 2:17 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | And the kids from over there, I was always a pretty good cook because when I was at Nebraska School, I'm jumping back now, the teacher would get me to cook for all the children. It wasn't but 32 of them in there. So I had to cook for the 32 children and I got very little lesson and she didn't worry me about getting my lesson because I was doing all the cooking. And I know that wasn't quite what it should have been, but that's the way it was. So when I came up here, I already knew how to cook. So when cooking and working with the Tuskegee families, I didn't have a big problem. | 3:10 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | So they finally had a school up here, the adult school so that you could finish high school. But when you went to one of the adult schools, you didn't get all of the science and all that you're supposed to get, they just gave you enough so you could get out of high school, so you could have a high school diploma. And one of the teachers up here saw me working one day and he told me, he said one thing, "I believe if you had a high school education, you might be able to get a better job." He said, "I'm going to help you." He was one of the principals of school. Said, "I'm going to go back and get all your grades and compile them and help you to get a high school diploma." So he did. He got me the high school diploma with the understanding that I would never try to go to college. | 3:43 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | And the reason for that was because I didn't have a background. So he said just I would have the high school diploma. Somebody said, did you graduate from high school? Okay, I'd have the high school diploma, but if they checked my records, I wouldn't have had science and all the other subjects that you had. So I started working close to the campus and the kids would come over, slip me through the back door and I would do all that cooking and they would get As. So I said one day I said, "Now if I can cook and get them a A, I'm going to get in that school somehow or another and I'm going to get me a A and I'm going to see if I can't make it." So the man said and I was writing, now don't you try to go to college cause you can't get in. | 4:39 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | So I went on up Tuskegee Institute and made a mistake. I got in the line, I was going to go up and get a two-year course. Cause if anybody had said four years, I never would've tried that cause it's a lot of subjects in four years but the two years you could take certain subjects. But through a mistake I got in the four-year line and when I got home, I checked my material and it's four years. So I started crying, told the lady, I said, "I can't make it four years, I don't have any money." She said, "Well you already registered for it," and that was Mrs. Calloway. You've already registered up for Calloway, the Calloway family for it and she said, "Go and try. You can't fail till you try." | 5:19 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | So I went up and started and I had a little trick as I told them that if I was in a class and the teacher would ask, who in here has had certain subjects? Well, I'd check around and if everybody had had it, I had it too. And then I'd go from there to the library and check it out and see what they was talking about, see what it was all about, so if anything came up I could be able to keep up. And so that was the way I kept up in school and I got out in four years. But it was hard struggle. But I got a BS degree in four years from Tuskegee Institute. | 5:58 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | And I graduated in '47, which I was a little late, but I got a job working on Tuskegee Institute's campus in '47 with the understanding that it was about 12 of us that graduated in that class and they were supposed to be building a school down at Florida. And the 12 of us was held over with the understanding that we'd get a job when they get through at the school. So I don't think they finished the school yet. So they didn't send for us. And I started working for Tuskegee Institute at the snack bar, recreation center snack bar. And I kept working and waiting and I worked there 32 years. So after working there 32 years, then I retired. | 6:34 |
| Paul Ortiz | Now Mrs. Wright, you said that the first schools that you went to, you mentioned Damascus school and then these were church— | 7:39 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | Church school, Damascus, Mount Pisgah and Nebraska. Those were church schools. And then Washington Public was school in Tuskegee Institute and Louis Adams in Tuskegee. See after I went to Nebraska, I came to Tuskegee. | 7:47 |
| Paul Ortiz | Oh, okay. And which church sponsored those schools? Was it a Baptist church? | 8:01 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | It was a Baptist. | 8:10 |
| Paul Ortiz | Baptist. | 8:10 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | All of them was Baptist churches. And I have, well I don't know where that would come in now, but after I, that's what I'm working on now because that could come in later or you want that to come in now? | 8:11 |
| Paul Ortiz | I'm sure that could come in now. | 8:24 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | Come in no? Cause I left Nebraska and I can show you the, can I get up? I want to get this book right here and let you look at this. This is what I'm doing right now. This is the school right here. | 8:26 |
| Paul Ortiz | Oh, okay. | 8:40 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | That's the school. And after I retired, I thought it'd be a good idea to do something for this and honor Mrs. Wheelis because Mrs. Wheelis brought me to school and I wanted to do something in memory of her. So I asked the church to let me remodel this old church. So I'm working on that now. I'm still in the midst of it. And that's it, that's what it looks like now and these are the progresses, things we worked on down to there. And I went back just last year, I mean this year and that's where I'm working. I put a steel door there and a storm door in the back of the church. That's the same church. That's where that put on that. And that's what I'm doing now. I'm in the midst of doing that now and I'm painting it. I painted the door so that's where I am now. And so that's jumping a little bit. | 8:41 |
| Paul Ortiz | And that's Damascus? | 9:32 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | That's Nebraska. | 9:33 |
| Paul Ortiz | Nebraska. | 9:33 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | Where Ms. Wheelis used to teach. | 9:35 |
| Paul Ortiz | And that's in Shorter? | 9:37 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | That's in Shorter. | 9:39 |
| Paul Ortiz | Oh. | 9:39 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | That's in Shorter. That's the old church right there. That's the first pictures of it. That's what it looked like when I asked them to let me remodel it. See?That's it right there. The original time. See that door is open. | 9:40 |
| Paul Ortiz | Oh I see. | 9:49 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | And that's what I'm working on now. | 9:51 |
| Paul Ortiz | That's great. | 9:52 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | So let's see now where were we? | 9:55 |
| Paul Ortiz | Oh okay. And I was also going to ask you about your, what was your early family life? | 10:01 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | Oh, my family life. As I said, my mother passed when I was two. My father got married again and they had six children and I was a nurse for three of them. And they used to be out in the field chopping and I was at the house nursing, but the children was more problem to me than out there chopping. So one day I got my hoe and told them, let me chop out there in the field. And then my mother came home to take care of the children so they kept me in the field. But I didn't like that after I got out there, but I stayed. | 10:10 |
| Paul Ortiz | And what kind of farming were your parents doing? | 10:44 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | Roll crop farming, corn, cotton and peas, butter beans, I mean soybeans. | 10:50 |
| Paul Ortiz | Were they renting or sharecropping? | 10:59 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | Sharecropping part of the time and renting part of the time. | 11:04 |
| Paul Ortiz | And this was in Shorter? | 11:09 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | Shorter. All this is down in Shorter. | 11:09 |
| Paul Ortiz | Do you remember what the conditions were like in farming? | 11:17 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | Well the conditions in farming was that, as I say, that was the reason for so many schools because the man would rent your farm this year and if you didn't like the way things would go, then you'd have to find someplace else to go. And I remember my father lived on a Mr. Jim Adam's place and when Mr. Adam would gin his cotton, he'd put his cotton on the porch but he didn't want the other people to put theirs on the porch. He didn't want that to happen. That was his cotton, he put it on the porch. But he wanted you to bring the first cotton to him. | 11:22 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | So then he had his porch off full of cotton. But daddy said no, I'm going to put me a bale of cotton on my porch and I'm going to take him the second bale. Well that was wrong. He shouldn't have done that because he told him point blank that he'd have to move because he would spoil all the rest of the, on this place and he didn't want them spoiled. So he would have to find someplace else to go. So he had to move. | 12:03 |
| Paul Ortiz | Now your father wanted to put the first bale on the porch? | 12:29 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | He put it on there. | 12:29 |
| Paul Ortiz | In order to sell it. | 12:30 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | Well no, the porch was the only place they had to cover, just the place keep from raining on it and your first bale of cotton looked good and most of the people would carry their first bale to Mr. Adam. But he wanted to keep his first bale and give him the second bale because he realized that first cotton was the cleanest cotton and the prettiest cotton, you get more money for it. But see a lot of the people didn't realize that and they give him the first bale, but daddy's going to keep his and he said if he let daddy do that, then everybody would want put the cotton on him, keep the first bale. So he had to move. | 12:34 |
| Paul Ortiz | Were there a lot of landlords like Mr. Adams who— | 13:08 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | Oh yeah, quite a few of them. Some of them would farm all year and they wouldn't get in at the end of the year, they stilled owed. And if you'd buy fertilizer, well my daddy wouldn't buy fertilizer. He didn't make as much cotton as his next door neighbor but at the end of the year all of his stuff belonged to him cause he refused to buy the fertilizer. The first year he bought fertilizer, it rained just like it's raining now. It rained, we put the fertilizer down, the latter part of May and it ain't stop raining yet. Rained all the way through and he didn't have nothing but grass. Now the first year he ever used fertilizer so you couldn't get him to use no fertilizer anymore. | 13:12 |
| Paul Ortiz | But if other farmers that worked there, they had to buy their fertilizer from— | 13:52 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | From the man, the Mr. Adams, from the boss man, they called him. They'd have to buy the fertilizer from him and he would charge whatever he wanted to charge them for it. And they didn't know when they paid for it or, he'd just tell them bring the rest of this in and you almost got out of debt, said you're not quite out. Said maybe you'll come out next year. Well then you hanging out with nothing for your family. And then the year that it rained so hard, that daddy bought that fertilizer, he got his money from the Alabama Exchange Bank because he had moved out by himself then. And— | 13:57 |
| Paul Ortiz | Your father? | 14:37 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | Yeah, after he left his place, he went to another place. And I remember the man came around and daddy said the man said he going to clean up. I guess you heard people talking about how they clean up and clean up means that if you owe some money and you haven't paid your money, then they come around and get everything you have, all your corn, all everything you have. And then some of the people told the story, I don't think it was really true, but they usually say they'd shoot the cat, get all the other stuff and shoot the cat cause the cat ate some of the corn. That's what they, that was, I think that was a joke. | 14:37 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | But anyway, they would take all you had. So I remember daddy had us to go down there and pull the corn, pull some of it and he left some of it on the stalks. And that's the only way we had any bread to eat because they took all the corn out and swept the thing, swept the shuts out. | 15:11 |
| Paul Ortiz | And this was the bank that came out? | 15:31 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | Yeah, that was from the bank. He borrowed some money from the bank that time. | 15:35 |
| Paul Ortiz | So it sounds like it was really hard. | 15:40 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | Well it was rough. The people, it was really rough on them, really rough. And that was in my childhood. And— | 15:43 |
| Paul Ortiz | Now, would these people like these landlords like Mr. Adams— This is right now, were there cases where these landlords like Adams, where they would discriminate against Black sharecroppers? | 15:55 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | Well really they just had Black on the premises. They didn't have anything but Black then. Cause the other White fella, he would've him some Blacks, he'd have farm and have Blacks. I don't remember any White people being on it. | 16:15 |
| Paul Ortiz | Did you feel at the time or did your father feel that he was treated unfairly by Adams? | 16:32 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | Well yes he did because he figured if he made the cotton he should be able to put it on his porch and it drove him to one thing, he went from there and he tried to find somebody and he bought him some land, bought him 40 acres of land himself. Mr. Logan in Tuskegee had some land down in that area and he came up here after he left for Mr. Allen's place and start bargaining to buy him some land and he let him have 40 acres of land. He started cleaning it up and that's where he made his little extra money and took care of his family after he got his 40 acres of land. And tried to encourage the other people in that area to buy. But no, they didn't. Very few of them bought, very few and they could have bought real cheap at that time cause he paid $600 for that 40 acres of land. | 16:40 |
| Paul Ortiz | So now your father would encourage other farmers to try and buy. Were they afraid of buying land? Was there a— | 17:27 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | No, I don't think they were afraid but they just weren't encouraged enough and the boss man didn't encourage you to buy land or anything like that. And it wasn't too many Colored people had land so it was no incentive. They used tell daddy, I don't know what you going to do with it. But after they didn't buy then White people bought it all up around there then they couldn't buy it unless they buy it from them, cause daddy bought his from Mr. Logan in Tuskegee. Mr. Logan was a Colored fellow that worked for, Logan worked for Tuskegee Institute. Mr. Logan was one or two of Logan and Calloway, was one or two of the persons that came to Tuskegee near the time Booker Washington came. | 17:43 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | And the story told about that is that Booker Washington asked everybody for all the cash money that they had or anything valuable that they had they could sell because he needed X number of dollars to put up to start buying land around Tuskegee Institute. And as he would buy land, sometime the White people would give land and as they would give land, he would donate so much land to these people that helped him out when they got started. And Mr. Calloway and Logan and two, three others, I don't remember their names, he gave them land. Some of it's out in the country and some of it was in the city. And this along here where I live now on back up that way belonged to the Calloways. In fact, he had from Greens Faulk all the way down here and that's the way they got their land. | 18:32 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | And then they started selling to people until a lot of people bought it. They just sold the last of it oh, a few years ago. And I was instrumental in handling 250 acres of it. And I sold it to, well Mr. Caldway used to talk to me and say what he liked to see the young people buy. And I sold, most of that sold to the younger couples that was getting started. So I sold all of it about two years ago. | 19:25 |
| Paul Ortiz | Mrs. Wright, would you say that there was a sense of community when you were growing up among other sharecropping families? | 20:12 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | Well yes. You could always get help because they used to, I remember people used to come over if you got through picking your cotton, they'd come over and help somebody that didn't finish. And you need to pull your corn, they'd come over help you pull it and they just pull it and everybody put it in the barn and that was all. And you didn't have to pay them cause ain't nobody have any extra money anyway. So they helped, they were really, you had a lot of communication in the community and you knew everybody and everybody was everybody's mama and daddy. And I said today that that is one of the reasons you can't get along with the children too well now. | 20:23 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | Because back then I wouldn't let nobody in the community see me do anything wrong because see, they spanked me right there and I wouldn't go home and tell mom I got to spank cause that'll be another one coming up. And that's the way we were reared. And you respect everybody. If you talk to girls today and they got married tomorrow, you had to start calling them Mr. and Mrs. and respect them as adults and you just got through playing with them. | 21:01 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | But that's what people had you to do. If they got married, they were grown and you weren't, you were still a child and they could spank you and the [indistinct 00:21:36] wasn't going to say anything. I mean if they caught you doing something that you weren't supposed to do. And therefore I think people were, children were respectful then. And right through in here, maybe I'm too old to think about it because you haven't asked me the main question yet. You get round to that after a while. And how old are you? I'm sorry, I forgot. | 21:29 |
| Paul Ortiz | I was going to ask. I was going to sneak around it. | 22:07 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | I know. | 22:08 |
| Paul Ortiz | So well actually now Mrs. Wright, what year were you born? | 22:08 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | Beg your pardon? | 22:15 |
| Paul Ortiz | What year were you born? | 22:15 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | 1913, 1914. 1914. | 22:16 |
| Paul Ortiz | Okay. | 22:19 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | I'm not but 80. | 22:21 |
| Paul Ortiz | Was there a church in the neighborhood that you grew up in? | 22:29 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | Nebraska and Damascus. Those are two churches that we always went to. And then when I came to Tuskegee I went to institute chapel every Sunday. Didn't miss a single one. | 22:33 |
| Paul Ortiz | And what kinds of activities would happen at Nebraska and Damascus Church? | 22:51 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | Well they used to have little plays and things like that to have children on the stage, acting and things like that. I remember way back when we used to have little plays and the kids used to wear little paper dresses and little skirts and things like that. And the little skirt didn't cost but 30 cents. But I always thought my mama couldn't even afford 30 cents so I wouldn't tell her. And I went to try to go on the stage. I thought they was going to let me come on there anyway but they wouldn't let me come on cause I didn't have my skirt. So I cried. Mama wanted to know why. So I told her that I thought she didn't have 30 cents to buy my little skirt because I don't know why I was always thinking that if I didn't have to have it, I don't have to have it. | 23:00 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | So they had plays for the children. I think sometime they had more down there then than they have right now for the children cause some of the churches are kind of fading out for activities for the children. And that was the reason we were trying to remodel that old church. That's what I had on my mind then that they could learn to do the stage acts and all that but it hadn't turned out yet. But I think maybe we might finally get around to it. | 23:41 |
| Paul Ortiz | What were, during the years that you were growing up, what were race relations like in Macon County? | 24:13 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | Well as I think of it now, I guess as Sam was saying, you knew where you belonged and you stayed where you belong. They had what was in my mind a long time when I was, I couldn't understand what's the difference between White water and Black water. So I never would drink the water any place like that cause it had White and Black and you had your White and Black restroom. Well you knew that so you didn't go in one of the White ones, you'd go in the Black ones. And I mean it was kind of understood, that's the way I felt about it. And I thought that's the way it was supposed to be. And we accepted it because we thought that's the way it was supposed to be. When I came here it was like that and that's all I ever knew. So when they started to change then I realized it wasn't supposed to be like that. | 24:27 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | Cause after I got married, my husband and I went out to California five times and the stories that you would encounter from here to California would fill a bucket where you go to places, you see the food but that's the end of it. They would not serve you. No. And we went to one place and they told us to point blank, we don't serve you all in here. So my husband asked him please give me a cup of coffee and started him to drink coffee. He wasn't drinking coffee but he started, he said they going to drink that coffee if it killed him. So they passed us a coffee. | 25:20 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | I never would go in. I would let him go in and I would stay outside. So he came to the door and told me, here's a cup of coffee. And they brought him one. So we got some coffee but we came out the front door with the coffee but they wouldn't let you stay in there and eat it. And it was fella that, I don't remember his name, but we went to his place and he felt bad about it. He said now he wished that he could let us sit down in there and eat. He said, "But if y'all sit in here and eat, then all my customers would go," and said "I can't afford to lose all my customers." Cause we understood, I understood that. So he had a little table back there in the kitchen and he let us eat in the kitchen and I think they said something to him about that because evidently somebody saw him. | 25:59 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | So we went back naturally to that place when we went back to California the next time and he couldn't even let us do that. He told us, he said, "I'm very sorry," he said, "but y'all stay in the car and I'm going to come out the car and bring about the food out to the car," and stayed out there till we got through. He didn't talk with us. And he said, "One of these times when y'all come back through here," he said, "I don't know when it's going to be but you all going to be able to come in that front door and sit down here and eat like everybody else." He said, "because I don't, I know this is wrong." He said, "but I can't do anything about it because they said this is the law of the land." So the next, third time we went back by there, we went back to that same place and we went in the front door and sat down to the table and we were served. | 26:40 |
| Paul Ortiz | Was that in Alabama? | 27:26 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | No, no, no this was in Mississippi. | 27:28 |
| Paul Ortiz | Mississippi. Did you have experiences like that when you were growing up, say as a child, experiences with discrimination in the county? | 27:36 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | No, as I said, I think I missed those experiences because I knew where I was supposed to go. You kind of know that you can't go different places and I kind of stayed where I was supposed to go. I remember I went in a White church one Sunday. I told the people they don't know what it is till everybody look at you one time, you freeze. But see I didn't know that it was a White church. I was looking for somebody and I opened the door and went in there and those eyes got me [indistinct 00:28:18] I been going, the soul moving. And I just stood there and somebody finally came to me and I told them what I wanted but I couldn't hardly turn around cause I froze. | 27:44 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | I realized what I had done but they didn't bother me anything like that, didn't say anything was just everybody, them eyes zoom in on me. And they got the man I was looking for, they sent him out the back door because the lady sent me and he was working on a house for us and we wanted to find him to tell him something and that's how, and he had told her he would be at this church but she sent me in. She didn't go in but I didn't know where I was going so I just went on in there. But you wasn't supposed to go in their churches, they could go in your church but you couldn't come to theirs. | 28:27 |
| Paul Ortiz | That was the church around here that you went into? | 29:02 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | Yes, in Tuskegee. But I don't remember where the church was, was in that direction. I know way on out somewhere we went was a White church. | 29:04 |
| Paul Ortiz | Is this down Highway 80? | 29:10 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | It was off of the highway as I remember. Cause it was when I first came to Tuskegee, I didn't ever go back. I done told the lady I was so hurt, when I got back I cried cause they didn't do anything to me, they didn't say anything but I just wasn't accustomed to doing that. And it was just something that I hadn't done before. And it was before things got straight. | 29:13 |
| Paul Ortiz | When you were growing up, do you remember hearing about or seeing cases of violence against Black people by White people like lynchings? | 29:36 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | Only thing I ever saw about that come through a TV. But when I was a little girl, I remember being at the church and the people down there used to drink moonshine, which they still drink it but they used to drink moonshine. And these policemen came down there to Damascus church one Sunday and arrested a man and his wife went up to get his billfold out of his pocket, which was right and the police slapped her.And I had been hating policeman and anything with the law, it just made me, I just turned against them, didn't never want see them cause I thought that was wrong for him to slap her. | 29:54 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | And I said, well I sure hope he come up and slap me one time, I had in my mind I'm going to fight me a police. I just got that out and left. I got a feel I couldn't fight one but it built up something in me to see that. And that's the only time I really was close to anything and it just turned me around. But he wouldn't let her get that pocketbook and her ass slapped. And as I said, all the Colored guys was standing up there and I wanted somebody to do something but see, they'd put all of us in jail. I didn't have no sense but I was ready to fight right there. | 30:38 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | So I told him if I ever get a chance I'm going to fight me one of y'all. But I never did get the chance, thank the Lord cause I understood. And that's about the closest I've ever gotten to it. All the rest of the stuff, I saw it on TV. I never did, actually never involved in any of it. | 31:08 |
| Paul Ortiz | Did you hear about people, about Black people who may have challenged that system and pushed the system, challenged segregation or who got just fed up with it at some point during those years? | 31:27 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | I don't remember an incident, not offhand. I know I remember when we was trying to vote it was hard to vote, real hard because I went down to take my exam and I was answering all my questions and this White fella came up and told me to let him finish my questionnaire. I told him no I wasn't going to let him finish. I said, because you going to put something down here and I never will vote because I've always been brave. I'll say what I think if you going to get me. | 31:50 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | He said, "Well, why can't?" I said "No, I don't want you to do it." So I failed anyway. So I went right back down there to the same place and I told him, I said, "I don't want you to even pick up my paper, let me give it to somebody else." And I gave it to somebody else, I wouldn't give it to him cause see he fixed it so I couldn't pass. See it was hard to even get a chance to fill out that paper so you could vote and you're so glad when you got to be a registered voter, you just knew you was on top then. See that was the main thing that people were trying to do to get everybody registered so they could vote and see a lot of things that you couldn't do because you weren't a registered voter. | 32:25 |
| Paul Ortiz | When did you first try to register? | 33:08 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | I don't remember what year. I don't, I really don't. But I know I was grown when I registered, in fact I was married. That means that— | 33:14 |
| Paul Ortiz | That was after you got your degree? | 33:20 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | Yes, it was about '51. It was about '51 when I got registered cause I was married and everything. | 33:29 |
| Paul Ortiz | Did somebody talk to you about registering beforehand? | 33:36 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | Well I knew they were trying. See you keep trying, I don't know how many times I went down there to try, but it always be something that they would throw you off. Just like the fellow wanted to help me finish and I didn't ask him to help me finish. I told him, "I didn't ask you to help me finish." I said, "because you not going to finish it right." He knew I knew what he was trying to do. | 33:43 |
| Paul Ortiz | In the community when you were growing up in Shorter, what was the medical care like if you got sick? | 34:15 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | Well we had two doctors and Dr. Booth and Dr. Leifer. And if anything happened to you, you'd go to them and they would take care of your medical problems. Two doctors in that community. | 34:26 |
| Paul Ortiz | Now were they they Black doctors? | 34:44 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | No, both White. We didn't have too many Black doctors then. Both of those were White. | 34:46 |
| Paul Ortiz | Did people use if they couldn't get medical care or if they were trying to cure something, would they use say herbal remedies? | 34:56 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | They used all that kind of stuff and it seemed to kept them going. Cause as I tell them, soon as the [indistinct 00:35:18] used to live across over there. Every time I get out there to cut those hedges, the walls would sting. That's why they had tall right now. Went out there the other evening and I thought I saw walls and I can't put the hedge clippers right there and sat down cause I thought I saw walls passed by. Because every time one was staying there I would call him to come over and he would get the kerosene bottle. I wasn't supposed to have no hair now and just do like this and dab all that kerosene on, it would take it down too. | 35:08 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | And they used to do that in the country and they used the cobwebs and soot to stop bleeding and it would stop it, cause we didn't have but two doctors. Doctor couldn't take care of all those problems so you had to learn how to do a lot of things at home. And they believe in using castor oil and turpentine and kerosene but you can't use that now, it'll kill you. | 35:45 |
| Paul Ortiz | Would people talk about spirits or ghosts? | 36:15 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | I know I'm this old and I think that it was something like a ghost cause I have seen something my own self, but I didn't know what it was. And when I was a little girl, I used to have what they call jack-o-lanterns, those lights over in the pasture. I still can't find out what they were. You could see them going, going away over the pasture. You look out the door at night when it was dark because there wasn't no other lights, and you can see them. | 36:28 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | I discussed the ghost problem with the preacher. I'm not saying that they know everything, but when he got through talking it made a little sense. And he said the reason you can't see the ghost now is because they have so many lights and so many other things that take from them. He said "They still here but you can't see them because of the lights and everything and they don't come around as much as they used to." Cause I know something used to come around but I don't know, I couldn't explain what it was. | 36:54 |
| Paul Ortiz | Oh, but you would see this at night? | 37:19 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | Yeah, I've seen them in the daytime. You see something in the daytime that just fades away, long time ago when I was small. So I don't know what that was. My imagination, I imagine. | 37:23 |
| Paul Ortiz | What'd they look like? People? | 37:37 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | They would look the image of people, people you didn't know. Cause I didn't know my mother and I used to see her all the time when I was young and after I grew up I stopped seeing. So I don't know whether to believe in ghosts or not to believe in them, look like little spaceman. I think the space people are coming here doing something to us now. | 37:39 |
| Paul Ortiz | Was there Ku Klux Klan activity in Macon County during the time that you were growing up? | 38:19 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | They were here but look like to me they were located someplace else. But the whole thing, the Ku Klux Klan, there was certain things you didn't do that they would, the boys said they'd get you. Cause it used to be as near as I can remember, it was some over the Tallassee because they came by the house to get my daddy once to take them to Montgomery. See Tallassee is right over there. And my daddy lived down to Shorter and they came from Tallassee to Shorter to get him to take them back by that and take them to Montgomery. | 38:28 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | Daddy had a new 1927 Chevrolet. Now they didn't like that. They didn't like for Negroes to have any new car. You're supposed to get a secondhand car. But my daddy said he didn't, wasn't going to buy anybody else's trouble. If he got a car, he going to get it new, so he bought him a 1927 Chevrolet. And shortly after he bought it, that's why they came all the way to get from over there to get him to take them to Montgomery. But see the word was out that they put a lot of people over there in that Tallassee River. We still talk about that now. So daddy was aware of that's what was going to happen to him because it didn't make sense for them to be riding in a truck and come tell him, take them to Montgomery. So they came to the house and they sat out there a long time and they went and got in daddy's car and told him to drive them up the road to see how the car sound. | 39:05 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | So daddy went around, didn't go too far and going up the road and he said he thought, he said, these folks finna get me. So he went up there to the church and turned around that quick, forgot something, let go back to the house. I don't have my driver's license. And he went, came back to the house and parked the car in the yard and went in the house and got his guns and laid them down in the door and said, "I don't believe I want to go to Montgomery. I got to clean my guns." And they talked and talked and talked. He sat down and doing those guns, those folks finally left. | 40:07 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | But I know that's what they was going to do for him. They going to take him over there and take that car from him. See they'd do that to you in a minute. If you had something they wanted, they'd take it. So that was his experience. So he say he had seen those people in Tuskegee when he was buying the car cause he bought it in Tuskegee and they trailed him on out down to where we was living and told him to take them to Montgomery. And they all riding up and down the road, talking about take us to Montgomery. See they really wasn't up for no good. It was three of them. | 40:39 |
| Paul Ortiz | But they were actually in the car with him? | 41:13 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | Yeah, they got in the car. The car was sitting out in his yard and they went on and got in the car. Hey come on, come on, does ride in your car? Let's see how the car ride. And when he got in there they said, can't you take us to Montgomery? And that's why he went the opposite direction. And he thought about that church and went up in churchyard and turned right around, came back home cause he couldn't very well go in the house and get the gun. So he came back and went in the house and came back, I got to clean my guns and laid the shotgun on that side and put the pistol down there by it and they decided to leave. They never did come back no more. | 41:15 |
| Paul Ortiz | So that was really the only way to defend yourself. | 41:48 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | Oh yeah. Let them know that you shoot. | 41:51 |
| Paul Ortiz | Do you know of other cases like that? | 41:55 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | No. I might have heard about them but I don't remember. This was a case that I knew about. | 42:00 |
| Paul Ortiz | Now you mentioned the Tallassee River, that they would take people there. | 42:07 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | That's what they would say. You'd miss them and they never would see them no more. And they'd say they just miss somebody like they doing today. You miss people and you don't know where they are. But they used to say White folks put them in the Tallassee River, but they never would come back. They might not have put them in there, we didn't see them put them in there but that was what they would say. But then you never would see them, you miss them. Cause I know if they had gotten daddy with that new car, we never would've seen him no more. And there wouldn't have been anything we could've done other than cry cause the policeman, they've never paid you too much attention when you say something. | 42:12 |
| Paul Ortiz | You wouldn't have been able to go to the sheriff or the— | 43:00 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | No, because see that was the group that was in charge and the sheriff wasn't going to do anything if they didn't want it done. And sometimes the sheriff would know where it was going to happen, but wasn't anything they could do either. Cause the Klansmen to me, they had everything under control. | 43:04 |
| Paul Ortiz | Do you think they were really, seem to be really the ones who were controlling? | 43:25 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | Yeah, they was in control all right. | 43:26 |
| Paul Ortiz | So you graduated from high school in 1919? Or no, I'm sorry. | 43:44 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | No, that was the high school. I told you that I came up a little bit later on because I had to get out of school and I didn't actually graduate from high school per se. I went to adult high school to graduate. | 43:48 |
| Paul Ortiz | Okay. And what kinds of subjects were you interested in in adult high school? | 44:14 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | Home economics and math. Cause they taught you to cook and make clothing and redo furniture, all that kind of stuff. | 44:19 |
| Paul Ortiz | Now was your father good at things like math? | 44:40 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | Daddy couldn't read. He couldn't read or write. He learned to write his name after he got grown. Cause he went to school but he just determined he wasn't going to learn. His mama sent him to school to get out and do something else. He really couldn't read or write, but he had good common sense. Now he could count faster than I could count with a pencil. Weigh up cotton, weigh all your cotton up and then ask How much is it? I ain't never put it down yet and he'd have it already in his head. He was good like that. | 44:46 |
| Paul Ortiz | So that was the way he had to stop from being cheated out of his— | 45:27 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | That's right. No, they couldn't. You could not defeat him with a pencil cause you have a pencil, I know sometimes you'd be saying six and five is 11 and you throw that one away in your mind and put it down there. And he said, "Well how did you get that little, I got such and such a thing." You be looking back and say, oh yeah. He said, "Well you better do like I do. Add it in your head. You ain't doing no good with the pencil." But he could keep up with it nicely. | 45:33 |
| Paul Ortiz | Would you ever go with him when he went to settle up with the landlord before he owned land? | 46:00 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | No, I was too young before he got his own place. By the time he got his own land, I was a fifth— | 46:06 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | Uh-huh. What I'm saying, he could keep up with his business. Mm-hmm. Yeah. | 0:02 |
| Paul Ortiz | Were there other Black farmers like you who could really— | 0:10 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | It was one or two others, but most of them had help. Yeah. One or two. | 0:15 |
| Paul Ortiz | Yeah. Who would help them when it came time to do those things? | 0:17 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | Well, sometimes the wife would help them, because most of them wives could read, because at that time quite a few of them had been to Tuskegee normal school. See, Tuskegee had a high school at one time, and a lot of them had already been to Tuskegee and back. | 0:26 |
| Paul Ortiz | Mrs. Wright, what would happen if a Black farmer who was sharecropping went to go settle up with a landowner and that Black farmer said, "You're not giving me the right price," or, "You didn't weigh the cotton correctly"? | 0:49 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | Well, he'd end up moving. The man would put him off his place. You wasn't supposed to disagree with whatever he said. See that's when a lot of them never did — Well, you almost got out of debt this year, and maybe next year you'll come out. So that was a settlement. They didn't give you figures. And if you disagreed then they'd tell you to find you another place to go. And most times, you weren't going to disagree if you didn't have no place else to go. | 1:17 |
| Paul Ortiz | Would families move around sometimes to try to find better places to go or— | 1:49 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | Well, that didn't happen too often because, you see, the White people were together, they always stuck together. And wasn't any point in you leaving Mr. Jones' place to go to anybody else's place because they really wouldn't want to accept you because you leaving the other fella. So you just about stayed put. Unless you did something and he's trying to put you off. Now, they would accept you if you was getting put off sometimes of somebody else's place. But most time, the people just stayed where they were. | 1:58 |
| Paul Ortiz | And what year did you start going to Tuskegee for your study? | 2:33 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | Well I came to Tuskegee in '32. | 2:44 |
| Paul Ortiz | '32. | 2:46 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | That's when I first came to Tuskegee, in 1932. And from '32 to '47 to get out of college. Because part of the time I was in school and part I was out. But I got out of college in 1947. | 2:48 |
| Paul Ortiz | And you were working during those years, you said? | 3:08 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | Uh-huh. Worked in the families. I was the housekeeper. | 3:10 |
| Paul Ortiz | Did you work mainly for White families? | 3:19 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | No, I've never worked for any White people in my life. Always been Colored. | 3:21 |
| Paul Ortiz | Was that something that you did on purpose, that you did that? | 3:30 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | Well, I never had the opportunity, and I didn't never want to work for any of them because daddy said down when — See, he moved by the time I was 15, and he would never let us go and work for any White people. And if we insisted on going to work for the White people, the next year he'd clean up some more new ground, and so we'd have to stay home and work. He always kept work for us to do because he didn't want us to work for them because sometimes they're kind of mean to you. And he always kept us at home. And when I'd want to go so bad, I'd see everybody going to pick cotton and getting money, and Daddy would clean up another new ground. So we stopped wanting to go. So I've never worked for a White person. Always worked for the Colored people. | 3:30 |
| Paul Ortiz | And your grandparents lived in Macon County? | 4:08 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | Mm-hmm, Macon County. As I say, Hardaway and Macon County, [indistinct 00:04:23] Hardaway. My grandmother lived with my daddy, and her mother lived with her. And as I can remember, she came from Virginia here. I don't know how she got here, but that's where she said she came from. And she and her husband came in from somewhere. Her husband was an Indian. But she had a lot of Indian her. She was of one tribe and he was from the other tribe, if you understand what I'm trying to say. But as I said, when I found them, when I saw them, they were here. But I don't know — That's the only thing I can remember about my great great grand mama, she said she came from Virginia. | 4:18 |
| Paul Ortiz | Now, do you know much about your grandparents' upbringing? Would they talk about it, or would your parents, your father talk about it? | 5:17 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | No, they'd never say too much about that, really. Other than how the grandparents used to make them do things that they were supposed to do, and respect people, and all that kind of stuff. But I don't know too much about [indistinct 00:05:41] anything else about it. Because I said they never talked about it. | 5:25 |
| Paul Ortiz | So you came to Tuskegee in 1932. Did you know somebody in Tuskegee? | 5:48 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | Not really. That's why I told you Mrs. Wheelis brought me up to the families and introduced me, and she just left me here, and I stayed with the people. And as I say, that's why I was trying to get this thing in her honor because I thought she didn't have to — She brought about five or six of us down there, and that's why we all getting together— | 5:56 |
| Paul Ortiz | I see. | 6:16 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | — to do something in her honor. But I didn't know anybody in Tuskegee because I hadn't been to Tuskegee too many times. | 6:16 |
| Paul Ortiz | And when you started working for Black families in Tuskegee, was it lived in work? | 6:26 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | I lived in. All the places I worked, I've always lived there. And when I got to Miss Callaway's house, it was just like at home. The rest of them, it was a little different. But when I met Miss Callaway, she was a real mother to me. That's why I went to California five times to see her, because she moved out to California. And when I was a little girl, I used to pray that something would happen so I'd get a mama. And when she came in, I said, "Well, the Lord gave me to you and I belong to you." And she treated me just like I was her child. | 6:35 |
| Paul Ortiz | Now you said that she was a very good person. | 7:08 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | Mm-hmm. Yes she was good. She was the pharmacist at Tuskegee Institute. Pharmacist, Uh-huh. Yeah, she was real good, real person. She treated you like a real person. So many times, even though you work with Colored families, you can't sit to their table, even though you cook the food. You have to eat yours in the kitchen. But she wasn't like that. All of us sat to the table and all of us ate. | 7:15 |
| Paul Ortiz | But some of the other families that you worked with weren't that— | 7:48 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | No. | 7:51 |
| Paul Ortiz | — way. Yeah. | 7:56 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | No, they wasn't that way. So that's one of the reason I didn't worry about whether I was working for White people or Colored people. I'd say, "You can't get treated any worse." If I had been working for White, I would've expected that. But I was working for my people, and I didn't expect it, but I got it. But I accepted it because I wanted to go to school and I wasn't going any place. I was going to stay here. I told them I didn't care what they did, unless they killed me, I wasn't going back down in that field. No, sir. Because daddy was still cleaning up new ground. | 7:56 |
| Paul Ortiz | And that was something that you wanted to get away from. | 8:24 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | Mm-hmm. Yes, sir. I was 16 when I left and I didn't go back. Stayed away all the way — been away ever since. | 8:33 |
| Paul Ortiz | Who were some of the families that you worked for in Tuskegee? | 8:43 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | When I first came to Tuskegee, I was with the Callaways, and I worked with the Birminghams, and then I worked for the Callaways again, different Callaway. They were related, but different. Then I worked for the Logans. And then I went back to the Callaways. | 8:54 |
| Paul Ortiz | They were the best, seemed to be the best. | 9:22 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | Oh yeah. Mm-hmm. | 9:27 |
| Paul Ortiz | It must have been quite a change to come to Tuskegee after living in Shorter. Were there new things that you were experiencing at that time that— | 9:32 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | No, it didn't make such a big change because, see, I was working most of the time anyway. But I got to go to chapel every Sunday morning, and chapel every Sunday night, and the movie Saturday night, and that was it. That was the round to go. The rest of the times you had to work. You didn't have time to do anything else. So you had the games, and football games, basketball games, and things like that. So that's how you got your entertainment. | 9:52 |
| Paul Ortiz | And when did you start classwork? | 10:33 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | Well I was doing some classwork while I was working, but I went to school at night. When I went to adult school, I went at night. And then the other times I would go to classes when class was, then come back and get my work done, and then go to class like that. | 10:39 |
| Paul Ortiz | Now were you working on particular subjects? Were you still working on home economics? | 10:58 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | No, I registered in home economics— | 11:04 |
| Paul Ortiz | You registered— | 11:06 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | — for the four years. And that gave me all the cooking, and so on, and all that. Art, math, English, physics, geography, all that stuff, whatever you was going to take in that field. | 11:08 |
| Paul Ortiz | Did you have favorite teachers, teachers you thought were better, or you really— | 11:28 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | No, there wasn't — A particular teacher don't really stand out in my mind right this minute. I guess if I thought about it real hard, I might could get one. But as I say, this Ms. Wheelis is the person that I thought more about in school because she was so kind enough to help us to leave from the country and come to what we call the city. Just 12 miles away, but that was still good. | 11:41 |
| Paul Ortiz | When you were taking the night courses, did you see, throughout those years you were going to Tuskegee, through '32 and '47, did you see changes happening in Tuskegee through those years? | 12:15 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | Well, yes, because the schools were changing. Lewis Adams School at that particular time was on the campus and then they moved out from the campus and moved out and built a school out here. So they were really improving all along. And that was when they had the adults to come up at — A lot of them hadn't finished high school, and they was trying to get them to finish high school. So where they had the Lewis Adams School, and they had the adults to come up to that section and use that to go to school. So they had some of the same teachers up there to teach them. | 12:39 |
| Paul Ortiz | Were there a lot of things happening at the institute at that time? | 13:18 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | Like what? | 13:26 |
| Paul Ortiz | Now, you talked a little bit about the changes. There was some changes happening. | 13:30 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | Mm-hmm. | 13:34 |
| Paul Ortiz | And did it seem like there were a lot of exciting things happening? | 13:35 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | Right through in there, things were kind of on the quiet side. As I say, we went to movies on Saturday night, or the game or whatever they had on Saturday night, and chapel Sunday morning, and chapel Sunday night. Wasn't anything else for you to do, really. Time to go back home, then. The early part. But by that time you look like you knew everybody on the campus. You didn't actually know them by name, but you saw them enough to know. But after they kept changing it, people kept coming in and it got so you didn't know anybody. It was almost like a strange place. | 13:45 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | And that's the way it is now. Because at one time if you [indistinct 00:14:24] — I guess that's why I can't give too good of directions because we gave directions then by the road and who lived next door to who. And I knew who lived next door to this one and next door to the other one. But at that particular time, we didn't even have streets. They had the streets but they weren't named. Because I helped to name the streets, and then I told them after I helped name them, I didn't know where they were after I got through with helping them name them. | 14:22 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | One young lady had the job, and she used to carry me around with her, and we'd tell this person. And you just went and told the person, "You live on such and such street." But they didn't put it on the house, they just knew where they lived at first. And then about three or four years later, they sent you a name out, what street you live on. But that was in your house. See what I'm saying? | 14:49 |
| Paul Ortiz | Yeah. | 15:14 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | And then later on, they put a name just like [Gomillion 00:15:19] is up there. It was a long time before they got the signs up. So I think that's why I can't know — I just say I remember over on the other side. Well, we did it by churches. As you say, you know— | 15:14 |
| Paul Ortiz | Okay. | 15:31 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | Or whatever was near. And that's the way we used to do. But now they got streets out there, and they got the numbers, and everything, which is nice. I just got my house number. I haven't had it but about four years. I guess that's why I can't remember it. I know what it is, but I can't remember it. Sometimes when somebody ask me, I get it mixed up with the others. | 15:32 |
| Paul Ortiz | So people would pick — Would people go down to the post office to pick up their mail, or— | 15:52 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | Mm-hmm. I still pick up mine at the post office. They bring it out here. But, I'm gone so much, and I don't want to have to stay home to wait for the mail man. So I just let them put in the post office. I still get mine at the post office. | 15:58 |
| Paul Ortiz | During that period of time, say during the thirties, and forties, and fifties, did the institute have a contact with the communities in Tuskegee, in Macon County? | 16:14 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | Mm-hmm. Yeah, because the people from the county and all around, when they'd have commencement, everybody from everywhere — Now, that's one thing the White people would do. They would let you off for commencement, and they close up everything. And everybody would come to commencement. And at that time, that was before my daddy got his car. He had a two mule wagon, and he'd hitch those two mules to that wagon and get all the community wanted to come, and they'd hitch up those wagons. Boy, we had a ball. | 16:28 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | And they would get along the road, and everybody had good mules and wagon, they would raced up and down the road just coming to Tuskegee. Once, the man thought Daddy's mules was running away. But Daddy was making them outrun the other man. And the man went up there and stopped those mules and call his self saving all them women in that wagon. And Daddy said, "Well, they safe." He said, "Man, I thought the mules was running away." He said "No, they not running away. I'm making them run." But we used to say where they have cars now, they used to have horse and buggies, and mules, and things tied around those trees up there. | 17:04 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | And we'd come up in the morning, oh about seven o'clock, leave home early, and come to the campus and stay all day long. And they would give you free lunch, and they would have fish fries or hamburgers and all that out on the lawn and you could go buy and buy your — because they didn't cost — I think daddy would give us 50 cents a piece and that would last us all day. We'd have plenty of stuff to buy. Because you could buy things for a nickel, and a dime, and all that. And we'd just have a ball. And that's one time they'd really turn out to let you come to Tuskegee. | 17:39 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | Because I say in Tuskegee and the whole surrounding Macon County was connected, and I thought it made it much better for knowing who's around than we have now. See, they cut that out, oh, about in the fifties, I believe. So they don't come in. They come in cars and things, and a few of them come in. But I think when they stopped letting them go where they could be free and have that free dinner, then a lot of people stopped coming. In fact, the older people started dying out that used to come up, and that made a whole lot of difference. And the young people just didn't — they didn't go for it. | 18:13 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | So we don't have a lot of people coming from — Unless you got somebody graduating, then they don't come anymore. But they used to be a close-knit thing because they are talking now about trying to get the community back into the campus because now a lot of people haven't been to Kellogg Center around in the community. They don't even know about it. But it's a beautiful place. Have you been in there? | 18:51 |
| Paul Ortiz | Yes, ma'am. | 19:13 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | It is beautiful. Because a lot of people in community haven't seen it. | 19:14 |
| Paul Ortiz | Mrs. Wright, when did you get married? | 19:25 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | 1950. | 19:28 |
| Paul Ortiz | And where did you meet your husband at first? | 19:35 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | On the campus, Tuskegee Institute campus. He got out of the Army and came here, and I met him as a freshman. | 19:39 |
| Paul Ortiz | So he had served during World War II, or— | 19:52 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | Uh-huh, War II. | 19:54 |
| Paul Ortiz | Were there a lot of veterans going to Tuskegee during that— | 20:02 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | Mm-hmm, quite a few. Quite a few of them came back to Tuskegee to go to school. Because in 19 — When did they — '40 — Well, I don't remember now. But anyway, the men, they took all the men folk away. When my class graduated in '47, I think it was about four men that graduated in it because they had all our fellows and gone. So then they came back and was going to school. Because didn't nothing graduate in our class but girls, look like. I think about four or five fellows. Because now when we go back up there, we don't have nothing but girls. All the guys either passed or they don't come back because there wasn't too many of them. | 20:07 |
| Paul Ortiz | When you were going to school and working during those years, what were your main goals, your aspirations? What were you working towards? | 20:52 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | Well, I was just wanting to get me an education so I could get me a job, make me some money, and get me a house. That was the main thing I wanted to do. As I said, as a little girl, I said I wanted to build me a house. And that was about the only way that you could get something done. So when I started working, I tried to save my little money. And it was kind of hard to get — You had to have X number of dollars in order to get your house started. I could never get my hands on them, X number of dollars to start it. | 21:02 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | So I talked to my brother one day. Now they had it on the campus so if you were in a certain field up there, architecture, you could go to school, and then if you could buy your material, you could get the students to come out and help you to build your house, if you could get the material, for practice. So I had thought once of going back to school and getting in whatever course, because I had to have that house. I was just determined to get me a house. | 21:41 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | And I talked to my brother one day, and he's a bricklayer. So I told him what I was interested in doing. And he said, "Well, I tell you what. With you and I together, I'll help you." So we started. And what I did first, I went out and talked to the lumber man, as I call him, and told him what I had on my mind. So I told him that I didn't have enough money to hire somebody to watch my material. So what I wanted him to do is to let me have what I wanted. I said, "I'll pay you for it, and let me pick it up as I need it." So we did that for a while. We got the foundation. | 22:15 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | And I don't know, the man had got crazy or something, something happened to him. So when I went back down there to get some material, he started charging me for each thing I picked up, and the fella picked it up twice. And so I went down there with him and talked with him, and he said, well he didn't understand. He understood, but he was just going to keep me from building my house. So I went on to another fella and we got all the material from him. And my brother and I put this house that you see here now up, and we laid the bricks. | 23:10 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | My husband said it was impossible, and he wouldn't help me do a thing. He said, "Now, you got the money. You can take my money, but I ain't going be in it." I said, "Well, if you just let me have enough money, I'll fix something. If you don't want to come in there, we'll tear it down and build it again." So this is what we did. We started off with that part, and this was supposed to be the garage, going to drive the cars up in here. And everybody at the church wanted to drive up in here in the shade. So I just fixed it in so they couldn't drive in here out the shade because I got tired of coming out here and somebody's car parked there and somebody's parked there. So that's how I got my little house. | 23:43 |
| Paul Ortiz | And you started building during the 1950s after you were married or— | 24:25 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | Yes, after I got married. We started on it in 19 — I believe it was '61. | 24:31 |
| Paul Ortiz | Okay. | 24:38 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | '61, '71 — yeah, '61. | 24:41 |
| Paul Ortiz | But you had been saving up money all this time? | 24:44 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | Well I'd save what I could, but I couldn't get enough to give the builders. No, they had to have X number of dollars, then you have so much on the side. So I took mine and bought what I would — I paid for it as I went. | 24:46 |
| Paul Ortiz | And then you and your brother actually laid the foundation? | 25:02 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | We laid the foundation, and after we got the foundation, we hired us two other guys to put the top on. So now all we have is the top and the foundation. Then after we got that, then we put this other stuff around it. He and I did that with one other guy. And then we put our felt down, and then he start laying the bricks. We laid bricks every evening. Boy, you should've seen us. I didn't know whether I was the brick, I got so much mortar on me. My husband came out here one evening and said, "Child, what are you doing?" I said, "I'm laying these bricks." So I'd get up on the scaffold. My brother would straighten the brick up, and I would put the mortar up and hit it in the middle. And all he had to do was to put the brick around and lay it up, and I did all the other stuff. | 25:06 |
| Paul Ortiz | But, now, at first you said your husband was pretty skeptical? | 25:55 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | Yeah, he said we couldn't do it. When he came to the house to see — He used to slip fellas out here, but he never did tell me, to see how we were coming. And they would say, "Well, man, what you complaining about? It's doing all right." So he came up Friday evening, I was out there on that — up on the scaffold, and he had a fit. Tried to find out what was I doing. I said, "Watch me." And we finished up that Friday afternoon. | 25:59 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | He was really disgusted with us because he hadn't helped. He said if he had known it was going to turn out that good, he'd have been glad to help. So we hadn't been having no problem. [indistinct 00:26:32] What can he do? Told him, "Nothing now." So we got it fixed up. And since he said he didn't like it, I locked it up, put the key in my pocket, took out the insurance on it, and walked around three months. Wouldn't let nobody come in it. So in November he said, "Well, I'm not going to pass that house another night." So we stopped and came in, been in here ever since. | 26:22 |
| Paul Ortiz | So, you had a bit of a — There was a bit of a disagreement over that? | 27:01 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | Well, yes, because he thought it couldn't be done. I had the access of all his little money, though. So that was a big thing. I didn't have to worry about that little bit. And I tried to fix it so that when we got through, we was through paying for it. | 27:06 |
| Paul Ortiz | Now where had you been living right before that? | 27:22 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | On Gregory Street in my mama's house. I was renting from her. She had gone to California, and I was living in her house. And I moved from up Gregory Street out here. | 27:26 |
| Paul Ortiz | So both you and your husband were living there? | 27:37 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | Uh-huh. | 27:39 |
| Paul Ortiz | So it must have been exciting to move from Gregory Street out to [indistinct 00:27:48]. | 27:44 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | Oh I liked it. Yeah, I liked it out here. He did, too, because he got him some dogs, and got him some cows, and things like that. That's what he wanted. | 27:48 |
| Paul Ortiz | Oh, and they were kept right out here? | 27:59 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | Uh-huh, down there in pasture. | 28:01 |
| Paul Ortiz | Do you still keep livestock out there? | 28:05 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | Mm-hmm. Got the cows out there. | 28:10 |
| Paul Ortiz | When you were talking about trying to save up money, where would you keep your money at, or where were you saving that? | 28:17 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | In the bank. Put it in the bank. Every time he gets a little check, he'd put it in the bank. | 28:25 |
| Paul Ortiz | Was it at the Alabama— | 28:33 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | Alabama Exchange Bank | 28:34 |
| Paul Ortiz | Now you said that you first — Let's see, now. You told me, and I already forgot. You told me you tried to register in '51, that you started trying to register in the early fifties? | 28:51 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | What for? | 29:13 |
| Paul Ortiz | [indistinct 00:29:15] | 29:13 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | Yeah. Uh-huh. | 29:16 |
| Paul Ortiz | Was that part of an organized effort? | 29:20 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | Yeah, they had a place downtown where you go and take your test. You had to answer questions, and if you didn't answer the question correctly, then you'd have to go back the next time, something would happen and you'd have to go back. Because I think I went back twice, at least I know I did because the first time that fellow messed mine up. | 29:25 |
| Paul Ortiz | Now, you told me earlier about race relations in Shorter when you were growing up. What were race relations like around Tuskegee during, say, the thirties and forties? | 29:51 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | Well, I didn't have too much connection with anybody because most of the people here were Black at that particular time. Only people you would come in contact with were the people that would come to chapel to speak or something like that. Because I didn't come in contact with any of them. Because they always act different when they came on the campus anyway, the ones that would come in. You know what I'm saying? | 30:06 |
| Paul Ortiz | How would they act different? | 30:33 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | Well they didn't have time to take advantage of anything because the only time a person would come in, if somebody knew him, they'd have him come in and speak to the students. And that's the only time any of them was here. Because all the students were Black, and the people around Tuskegee, mostly, except downtown. And we didn't come in contact with them, unless you go to the store or something like that. And if you went down to the store and bought what you was going to buy, they wouldn't bother you. They were nice to you if you mind your own business. You didn't have no problem with them. Some of them was real nice. | 30:34 |
| Paul Ortiz | So having the institute here made, would you say, a big difference? | 31:14 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | Yeah, it did. It made a big difference. Made a big difference. Because, see, as they say, they were on your turf, so to speak, and wasn't anything else for them to do but be nice when they come to you. And as I say, I always said if it was one-on-one, you didn't have no problems. But you had a problem if two or three others were looking. Because, see, when the White person got back, he'd have to go with his people. It was hard on them, too, because his people would criticize him for talking to these people over here. So if you could get them one-on-one, they were just as nice as they could be. | 31:18 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | Because it was a particular fellow that — Mr. Daniel downtown, every Saturday he would give me ice for the students. Because I worked at the concessions, and if the ice plant was out, he would come back and unlock his place and let me have ice free, and never would charge me for it, for the students, as long as it was for the students. And anytime you went to town, and you could go down there and say, "Well, I'm doing this for the students," and they would give you whatever you was doing for the student, they'd give it to you. They were real nice when it come to things like that. I didn't have any problem with them at all. As long as it was for the students, they would let you have it. | 31:59 |
| Paul Ortiz | Now, you told me that when you were in Shorter, when you talked about the law enforcement, and that the sheriffs didn't seem to be in control in Shorter, that it was more of the Ku Klux Klan that was in control during your childhood. | 32:52 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | Well, I would say it was like that, but I couldn't — The policeman were there. But I think the policeman had control of the — I mean, the Klans had control of the policeman. That's the way I understood it. | 33:11 |
| Paul Ortiz | Now, what about after you moved to Tuskegee, and how about conditions in this area as far as law enforcement? | 33:26 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | I didn't ever have any problems with them, see, because I was living with the families, and I never had any problem with the law enforcement. | 33:34 |
| Paul Ortiz | And during these years, and after you were married, were you going to church? Were you always going to the chapel? | 33:55 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | I went to chapel. Went to chapel until — My husband was working down in Camden, Alabama. And he went to church down there, and then he got a job at Auburn. Then we went back down to the church. I stopped going to chapel then. Went back down to the country church, down to Wayman Methodist Church. | 34:02 |
| Paul Ortiz | Okay. And what kind of work did your husband do? | 34:32 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | Teacher. Taught social studies. | 34:37 |
| Paul Ortiz | And that was in high school? Was he teaching high school? | 34:43 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | Uh-huh. | 34:45 |
| Paul Ortiz | And what kind of work were you doing after graduation? | 34:53 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | Recreation center, Auxiliary Enterprise. | 34:57 |
| Paul Ortiz | At the institute? | 35:06 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | Mm-hmm. Worked there 32 years. | 35:07 |
| Paul Ortiz | What were some of your job responsibilities? | 35:14 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | Well, my job responsibility, I was in charge of the news stand, Tuskegee student industry, and the snack bar and all auxiliaries outside, like the games and all that, I had all of that. That was under Auxiliary Enterprise. | 35:22 |
| Paul Ortiz | Do you remember who would be some of the people on campus who would be just outstanding to work with, people who were— | 35:37 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | Mr. Fernandez, Dave Fernandez. Mr. Walter Pitts, he's passed. Mrs. Elizabeth Wright, Ms. Ethel Larkins, Ms. Betty Whitehead and Mr. Reynolds. Those are the people we worked together with. And Mrs. Willis. And Collins, Olivia Collins. | 36:09 |
| Paul Ortiz | You were working there. Well, you saw a few different presidents at the institute in your time in school. | 36:59 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | Dr. Moten, Dr. Patterson, and Dr. Foster. And I left when Peyton got there, I was gone. But I worked on the three presidents. | 37:14 |
| Paul Ortiz | Who would you rate as being the best out of those? | 37:31 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | Well, I would say Patterson because I knew more about him, because Moten was about ready to go when I got there. So I would give Patterson credit because he was always kind, and I think he and I opened up the campus every morning. Every morning he'd speak, because I was going to work and he would be going to work. So he used to tell me all the time, "I think we opened up the campus." And he was always kind, and would recognize — Sometimes the presidents don't have time to speak, but he always had plenty of time to speak. So he was my president. | 37:34 |
| Paul Ortiz | Okay. And if you were asked to make, say, a critique or some — if you had to think about some things that could have been done better during those years, what would you say? | 38:09 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | Well, the thing I always wanted to see them do was for the institute to get a little bit more interested in the students from the standpoint of giving them something at the end, or something like that, if you understand what I mean. If I need something, just let me have it. I don't mean the tuition or anything like that. But sometimes the students would need just a little something, and that would've put the students more interested in doing something back for Tuskegee. | 38:37 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | See now, I used to go to each one of the stores downtown and ask them for some little gift to give the students at the end of the school year. And we would have what we call a student party. And I would always ask for the smallest item that the store could give. And the reason I'd ask for the smallest one, I could give it to more students. And they used to give me a lot of penny items, and in that way I could give everybody something. So the students used to look forward to that going away party, I used to call it, and we'd give them something. So I used to try to get Tuskegee to come in with me and to help me to do it, but I could never get a push from them. | 39:24 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | And I really thought that when they graduated, this would've been on their minds. Now I can't go anyplace out of town, I'm going to find one or Tuskegee students, they going to come to me. They still kiss me on the jaw, and they hug me, and they pat on me, and they tell me — I don't believe them, though, but they say, "You remember that hotdog?" I don't remember it. But that's what they always say. Or one girl came up to me and said, "I didn't have enough money to pay for my cap and gown, and you gave me the rest of it." Now I really had forgotten all about that. But that's what I was trying to get Tuskegee to do. See? And they would've had more students, I believe, giving to Tuskegee. See what I'm saying? That one little deal could have made them say, "Well, yeah, I'm going to contribute because —" But I couldn't get nobody to go along with me on that. And that was the only thing I kind of regretted. | 40:15 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | But everywhere I go, they know Ms. Wright, "Hey, Ms. Wright." I just be so happy sometime to go somewhere. My son say, "I know you going to find some of your children." He call them my children. He's jealous because I got more children outside. He said, "That's your outside children." But they were always nice, and they are just as nice to me now. Everywhere I go, I find one. | 41:16 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | I'm known here as George's mother. And when I go someplace else, they know me as — I belong to George and George belongs to me down here. All the people down here say, "Yeah, I know your son." They don't know me, but they know my son. But the other folks don't know my son, but they know me. So that would be the only thing I would say. If they had injected that into the program, to me, it would've made a difference. And that's what I always thought. | 41:41 |
| Paul Ortiz | What were some of your fondest memories of being at the institute as a student and as an employee there? | 42:17 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | Right now, I can't think of any because I worked all the time while I was there. Because when I first started work, we worked from seven in the morning all the way down to ten o'clock at night. And that's the only thing, they worked me to death. | 42:36 |
| Paul Ortiz | And that was when you were working at Auxiliary— | 43:00 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | Mm-hmm, Auxiliary Enterprise. | 43:02 |
| Paul Ortiz | What were the favorite parts of that job that you liked in particular? | 43:09 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | I guess the responsibility. I liked that because I had what I say good boss men. I knew what they wanted done, and they let me do it. And I enjoyed doing that. | 43:15 |
| Paul Ortiz | Now, at Auxiliary Services, is that an independent part of the institute? | 43:31 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | Well, yeah. They have different things set up. They had the bookstore, and they have Auxiliary Enterprise, and they had the cafeteria, and recreation center. And Auxiliary was just another one of them because that's where all the selling went on. | 43:37 |
| Paul Ortiz | Were you working under a dean? | 43:58 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | Mm-hmm, I had a supervisor. | 44:01 |
| Paul Ortiz | Okay. | 44:03 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | And I worked with the students. See, the students had to help me with the work. | 44:09 |
| Paul Ortiz | Were there parts of Tuskegee during those years that may have been outside the institute, that were considered to be low income areas or people who were trying to get a start? | 44:17 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | I can't answer too much for that because, as I say, I was kind of nailed up on the campus and I didn't get to know about too many people like that. If so, I didn't come in contact with them. | 44:40 |
| Paul Ortiz | Because I've heard now, some people have told me about that there were places like — Well, they've named different parts, like they named Greenwood, Green Lake, Rockefeller— | 44:56 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | Rockefeller Hall — I mean Hill. | 45:11 |
| Paul Ortiz | Hill. | 45:14 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | Zion Hill. | 45:15 |
| Paul Ortiz | Zion Hill. | 45:16 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | Yeah, they were there, but as I say, I can't speak too much for them because I don't — | 45:19 |
| Paul Ortiz | What have been the biggest changes in Tuskegee that you've seen over the years from the time you just came here? | 45:33 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | Those changes don't come to my mind right now other than changing with the times. And people coming in from different places, and that always makes a change. | 45:46 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | — the money and that's where she bought the land. And she bought the land for the school, but by the time she got the land bought and everything, the Rosenwald fund ran out and she couldn't build the school. So the church built the church on the school lot, and then I went down to keep them from tearing the church down, because if they had ever torn the church down, that land would've gone back to the giver. And I had a hard time trying to tell them that they couldn't do it, so I went to town and got the deeds to keep them from tearing it down. Because if they'd torn it down, then we wouldn't have had any place for that. And that's the main reason I'm trying to keep it up while it's there. And that's the deeds to the church. | 0:01 |
| Paul Ortiz | Oh, I see. | 0:48 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | The old church and they says if it's ever torn down, it'll go back to the— | 0:49 |
| Paul Ortiz | Oh, I see. | 0:55 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | I believe that's it, right there. | 0:55 |
| Paul Ortiz | So, Mrs. Wheelis was working for the Rosenwald fund? | 0:57 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | Yeah. And if she had gotten the land before this fund ran out, she would've been able to build a school on that lot. That's what she's doing to build a school. And people sold peanuts and anything they could sell and gave her the money, and she bought that acre of land out there to put that school on. | 1:01 |
| Paul Ortiz | And this is Nebraska? | 1:22 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | Nebraska. | 1:24 |
| Paul Ortiz | Nebraska Church. | 1:25 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | That's right. | 1:26 |
| Paul Ortiz | And school. | 1:27 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | Well, it was just a church, really a church. And we called it the school because she taught school in the church. | 1:29 |
| Paul Ortiz | Oh, I see. | 1:34 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | She taught school in that church. That's where we went to school, in the church. | 1:35 |
| Paul Ortiz | Oh, this is really an important document. And now, this was started in, it says 1900, or this is when the one acre of land— | 1:39 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | That's it, that's the same. That's where that old church is on that, that's the old church. They celebrated the 100th birth not even too long ago. | 1:54 |
| Paul Ortiz | Oh, I see. Yeah, 30 July, 1900. | 2:03 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | Right. But now, that's not the land that she bought, that's a church. | 2:08 |
| Paul Ortiz | The church land? | 2:13 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | But that's the one that I'm remodeling. And I told them since they had the church over there, then we would take that for the Wheelis Center. It's two churches there. | 2:13 |
| Paul Ortiz | And Mrs. Wheelis was working with— | 2:29 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | Ms. Wheelis doesn't have anything really to do with that. I'm saying she bought the land where the church is now. Not that church, where the other church is. | 2:39 |
| Paul Ortiz | The other church, Nebraska? | 2:46 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | Nebraska, it's still Nebraska. But see, she was teaching in the church and she wanted to give us a school. And she bought the land to build a school on. But by the time she got the land paid for, she got sick and the Rosenwald fund ran out and we didn't get our school. So the church, when they came down there, they wanted to build another church because that church was falling down, and they built another nice brick church on the side over there. And I got here just in time, they was fixing to tear that one down and push it aside. And I asked them not to do it and let me remodel it. | 2:49 |
| Paul Ortiz | Oh, that's great. She never had a chance to build that? | 3:26 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | No, she didn't get to build a school. | 3:52 |
| Paul Ortiz | Well, during the '40s and '50s, did you have a chance to take part in other political activities that were happening with the Tuskegee Civic Association? | 3:53 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | No, I didn't ever take part in that. | 4:21 |
| Paul Ortiz | Did you agree with what they were doing or disagree? | 4:33 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | Well, I can't say too much about it because I didn't get to go to meetings and everything, I didn't really know what was happening. So I wouldn't know whether to disagree or agree. | 4:38 |
| Paul Ortiz | Would people at the institute talk about those kinds of issues, about what was happening with the— | 4:46 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | Well, they discussed it from time to time when Mr. Gomillion was here. Gomillion was instrumental in getting a lot of stuff done. And he would have meetings and sometimes we'd get to go to his meetings, but you wouldn't get to take part, you'd just be there. | 4:46 |
| Paul Ortiz | Would there be meetings where people would get up and lecture or give talks and other people, you would listen? | 5:20 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | Right. They used to have meetings at the churches and all to plan their strategy and things like that. People used to come from everywhere because it used to be all out on the lawn and all on the outside and everything. | 5:32 |
| Paul Ortiz | Did you go to one of the meetings where they talked about starting the boycott of the downtown businesses? | 5:51 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | I wasn't at the meeting but I heard about it. I heard about it. | 6:00 |
| Paul Ortiz | Now, I'm sure that people probably talked a lot about that. | 6:07 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | Oh yeah. They knew what they was going to do and they had it all planned and the strategy and everything. | 6:11 |
| Paul Ortiz | Was there a disagreement over that strategy or did you think that that strategy was maybe too much at that time? | 6:21 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | Well, my personal feeling, I just didn't understand and I thought maybe they was going to get— See, when you think you fixing to get hurt, I'm always ready to step back. So I didn't understand and didn't know what was going to be the outcome. But when I look at it now, if they hadn't done what they did do, I imagine we'd still been back there, afraid to walk across the street. So I admire the people that were able to take part, but I didn't ever take part in it because I was usually doing something else. | 6:36 |
| Paul Ortiz | It seems like that improved conditions, because before that you said that— | 7:11 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | A lot of things you couldn't do and wasn't supposed to do. And sometimes the people, the stores and things would charge more than they were supposed to charge because you couldn't do any better. But after the boycott and everything went through, it changed it, that's when the change came. | 7:18 |
| Paul Ortiz | What were some things that you couldn't do before the boycott that you wanted to do? | 7:40 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | Well, a lot of places, you couldn't go in. You could go to the back door but you couldn't go in the front door. And after they decided that's what they was going to do, we had a lot of the students that went to integrate certain counters. You go to a place where you wanted to eat, you couldn't eat. | 7:45 |
| Paul Ortiz | What would you do if you went to a place and you were trying to eat or something and they said, "We're not going to serve you in the front entrance, you have to go in the back?" What would you do? | 8:09 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | I didn't go in the front door, I just went on home if I didn't want to go. Because I guess if I was said, I wasn't a pioneer to push. So if they say, "You couldn't come in," I just didn't go in, because that's the way I was taught. Daddy and them would always say, "If you don't get yourself out the front, you don't get yourself beat up." See, a lot of people would go and they get them beat up because we had, I remember Sammy Young, they told him he couldn't. Fella got killed or that's the one they talk about all the time with the Civil Rights thing. The man told him he couldn't go in the restroom and I don't know what happened, they never did say what happened. But I know he got killed, that's all we know, that he got killed. And when something like that happened, you're not going to force your way. I wouldn't. Maybe somebody else would, but I've never been a forceful person. | 8:31 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | Now, if they told me I couldn't come in the front door and I didn't want to go to the back door, I would come home. There's a little place up here, the side the road, my husband used to go by there when he come home from teaching, he'd go around to the, we stopped saying back because it looked bad. He'd go around to the side, it was still the back. And the girl in there was a Colored girl, cooking, and she would sell him some stuff out the back door. That's where he got his nice stuff if he wanted it, seafood and everything where they used to serve it up the road there. And he'd bring it home Saturday night, but he had to go down to the back to get it. He couldn't go in the front door and buy it and take it out. That was just a way of life because young people now don't know what they have. It's beautiful, they never had to do that. And they sometimes they don't believe you had to do it, but you did. | 9:23 |
| Paul Ortiz | Those are things that really happened. | 10:18 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | Yeah, they happened. As I said, it was a way of life and was a part of it and I don't think we worried about it so much because that's the way, when I came here, it was like that. When I was born, that's what daddy and them was doing. I thought that was the way it supposed to be and it never did really. Because we've been in places, standing up in there and they said, "We don't serve so-and-so's in here." And I just turned around, going back out the way I was going. We went one place out and was going to California, I don't remember, it was out of Texas someplace. And we went in the place and went up to a counter and we sat down. And then some other people that, I don't know nationalities per se, if they're White or if they're Black, that's the way I go. | 10:21 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | I can tell an American Colored person, I think, if I look at him long enough. Sometimes you can't tell him. But those people came in there and sat down and the man made them get up. And I've never felt so bad in all the days of my life because I've always been the person that they made get up. I don't know what nationality they was, I never could find out. But they told them, "You don't eat there. You get up and go back over there." And they made them go back over, way over on the side to a table. That's where we had been going all the time, but they told us we could eat up there and I felt bad because they made them move. So then I guess that's the way they felt when they used to make us move. | 11:25 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | They definitely made them move and I've never found out, because we were just traveling. Because if I hadn't been traveling, I'd want to go back by there and find out why. But that really happened and they got up because they told them they wasn't going to serve them and they went on back over, way over. They had a table way over in the back and they went over there and sat to that table. And my husband, I said, "What happened?" He said, "Well, I just don't know." I said, "What kind of people?" He didn't know either. | 12:05 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | He didn't know whether they were Mexicans or what. But evidently, it was one of the other races. It wasn't a White race, it was a race that I didn't know. But I could feel then how, I hoped they felt as bad for me as when they used to make the Negroes get up. So I don't know what was happening. But we sat there and ate our little stuff and came on out and they had to go way over there in the corner. I don't know, different rules, different folks. | 12:34 |
| Paul Ortiz | Yeah. Did you have other experiences with segregation when you would travel with your husband? | 13:08 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | We didn't stop at too many places when we found out we couldn't stop. We'd always go, you'd have to go all the way to Texas in Texarkana before you could start going in places. Because most of these other places, you'd have to go around to the back to get it from here to Texas. We would always go through Texas and soon we'd get out, going out and then we always eat there. | 13:18 |
| Paul Ortiz | Would you prepare before you traveled? | 13:43 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | Oh yes, I'd always prepare. I'd have my paraphernalia in there now, we had a stove and all the equipments, the little gas stove. And we'd go into the grocery stores and buy what you going buy and then go. Now, you had to be careful about that, too. You couldn't stop on a side road anywhere. You had to make sure that that was the place you could stop, because see they didn't allow you to stop on the side and cook. They'd run you out of there sometimes. So we'd go on as far as we could go and then I would fix a lot of food before I leave home and put it in the car with me, like soups and things like that, that you could put in thermos bottles and take it like that. | 13:45 |
| Paul Ortiz | You said that the first place that you could actually stop would be Texarkana? | 14:38 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | Yes, the cafes there, you could stop in and they would let you eat there. But the other place, you might could eat and you might not. We used to go places and buy gas and my husband asked the man he was buying the gas at, "I'd like to have some breakfast here," and you're right there by the cafe. He said, "If I buy my gas here, can I go there and eat?" "Oh yes, yes, yes. You can eat, you can eat." So you fill up with gas and went over there and lady told us, "Uh-huh, you don't eat here." Said, "No, we can't serve you here." And the waitress or the waiter, waitress, she's a waitress. She felt so bad and she really asked her boss lady, said, "Please let me give them something because I know they hungry. They just come from California." | 14:42 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | She said, "What did I tell you? I told you we don't serve so-and-so's in here." So my husband said, "Well, will you please give me a cup of coffee and I'll take it outside and drink it?" And she said, "Well yeah, I guess you can give him some coffee," so they gave us some coffee but I couldn't drink that coffee. I was afraid to drink it. I poured mine out because I didn't drink coffee nohow. I was just afraid to drink it, that was my fault. Because if a person don't want you to do something, they ain't going to give you nothing clean and they don't need to make themselves sick. And that's what we were always afraid of, that if you went someplace and people didn't want you to have and they gave it to you anyway, just take it but don't eat it. | 15:36 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | Because somebody had said that sometime they drop it on the floor and pick it up and put it on your plate because they don't want you eating there. It might not have been true, but that was what people would say. And so I just poured my coffee out. CJ poured his out there, he pretended to drink it, because he didn't drink coffee anyway. But he was just determined to try to get something since he was in there. It was hard, real hard, but you make it. And as I say, if you know can't do certain things, then you don't push yourself to do them until they said it's all right to come in. | 16:20 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | Now, when we went back there those last two times, we didn't have any trouble stopping any place except Mississippi. We came by one place in Mississippi and they said, "We still don't serve y'all." "Okay, miss," we went on. Because I'm not going to stand and argue if you tell me what you don't do, because there's no point in getting yourself hurt, not when you're by yourself. If it's a whole group, I'm with you, but I'm not a loner. | 16:57 |
| Paul Ortiz | But you went to a place in Mississippi and they still wouldn't serve you? | 17:29 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | They said they got some place in Mississippi now you can't eat. I don't have to do no traveling now, but somebody told me that here about three or four weeks ago. But they didn't say where, they just said it was in Mississippi. We was talking in general and they say, "Yeah, there's a place in Mississippi now you still, they don't want you served." But most of the people had always talked about going to the big cities and I wanted to go to the big city because they was always saying that in New York you can go any place you want to go and eat. And those people live in New York, would come back and tell me. So I want to go to New York because you can eat any place you want to go. My mother and I went to New York one weekend and we went in one of the stores and they shopping in there. You could shop in there but you couldn't buy no food in there. | 17:35 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | So she said, "Oh Lord, that orange juice looks so good and I want some of it." So I looked at her and she looked back at me. She said, "I'm going to go up here and get me some orange juice. So we got in the line, there was a Colored girl there, and she says, "I'd like to have some of this juice." The Colored girl say, "Go down on that end of the bar." I didn't understand that. "If the juice is here, why I got to walk all the way down to the end of the bar to get the juice?" So we walked down to the end of the bar, she had juice. And she said, "May I have two glasses of orange juice, please?" She said, "Go back up there to the other end of the bar." | 18:28 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | So I looked at her, she looked at me, she said, "I don't believe they going to serve me, but just because they told me to go back, I'm going to go back and see what kind of so and so she going tell." So we went back up to the thing and she said, "I told you to go down there," and she walked on down that way. So we never did get that juice. Went down there four times, this one twice and that one twice and we never did get that juice, because when we go down there to her, she'd do one of these numbers. | 19:09 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | They never would serve us in that store and when we went out, she was telling somebody, "Oh no, you can't do nothing but buy the clothes." And I said, "You can't eat no food in there, they don't serve you in there. They'll serve everybody but you, they ain't going to serve you." They didn't serve us. And so when they came back telling me about New York, I told me, "Tell me nothing about New York. Y'all can't eat." See, they wanted to make you think that, "Oh boy, you can come to New York and do anything." They couldn't tell me anything. I said, "Uh-huh, because we went there and couldn't get served." They said, "Oh, y'all went to the wrong place." I said, "Well, why didn't you tell us that?" | 19:30 |
| Paul Ortiz | Even though they didn't have signs, there was— | 20:08 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | No, wasn't no signs. They had to take the signs down, they just wouldn't serve you. But see, the signs had to come down according to the law, they couldn't put the signs up. But now, the post office, the grocery store and wherever else everybody went, I couldn't understand that either. That disturbed me, because everybody can go there. Everybody goes there and you together, but you just can't eat together. No, they don't want you eating with them. I hope it's over, but sometimes I wonder. | 20:11 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | And if you're not real careful, 20 years from now, y'all know what we was talking about if you don't watch yourself. Now, this didn't last for five good years, really, the good stuff. Because they were afraid for five years that if they did anything, they'd get in trouble. And so we discussed it with the students. I said, "We dropping back, you not going to step further." King left and you ain't moving nowhere, so we haven't moved since he left, really. Haven't gone another step further. | 20:55 |
| Paul Ortiz | But you think that there was about five years? | 21:31 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | It was five good years, those five good years. Because the people, they looked like they wanted you to come in, they made you feel wanted. And then after five years time, they started saying, "You can come on in here," but you wasn't as welcome as you used to be. And you can find that now in a lot of places you go. | 21:34 |
| Paul Ortiz | You think that those five good years were during the 1960s? | 21:58 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | Yes, in the '60s. Yeah, in the '60s, five years in the '60s and they start. It is easing back. I don't know whether anybody's knows it or not, but it's easing back. I heard some kids, some younger people on TV said they going to work with it, they ain't going to let it go no further than it is, they going to work with it. But they were talking about the baby boomers and this generation now you got, and then this other man was 80 years old. And the baby boomers and the other group, three groups on there was talking. But I disagree in a way. They talk about social security. Well, that was our only hope for getting old and knowing you got a dollar coming in. Now the young man tells me he is putting money in here for me to get Social Security check. | 22:04 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | And it's really bad because so many times that's why they take the check, because they think it's theirs. But they don't give me credit for putting anything in there. So if I put my money in there, where did my money go? And they were saying on TV the other night, "We are taking care." Ain't nobody taking care of us. We put our money in and started putting in, people work 30 and 40 years. They put their money in there and they put their money in savings account and that money made money. Because a lot of us sent when we got ready to retire to see how much money we had in there. And some of them had good money in there. But the people now saying, "No, no, you getting our money. We paying for you to get your social security check." And that's the way they feel, they really feel that way. | 22:58 |
| Paul Ortiz | Oh, Mrs. Wright, I was going to ask you a couple more questions about Tuskegee. Now, you said before you lived up here you were living— | 23:51 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | On Gregory Street. | 23:58 |
| Paul Ortiz | On Gregory Street. | 23:59 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | That's back up on the campus, near the campus there. | 24:00 |
| Paul Ortiz | And at that time, were your children in school yet? | 24:04 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | Yeah, I had one son and he was in school. | 24:10 |
| Paul Ortiz | And where was he going to school at? | 24:13 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | Tuskegee Institute. | 24:15 |
| Paul Ortiz | At the institute. Was that when the school was on campus? | 24:15 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | Yes. | 24:22 |
| Paul Ortiz | Were you involved or did you ever get involved in PTA activities? | 24:30 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | No, I didn't. | 24:36 |
| Paul Ortiz | What was that part of the town like on that street, that neighborhood? Was that a neighborhood that primarily Black people lived in? | 24:39 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | Yes, all Black. Yeah, all Black lived in that community. | 24:51 |
| Paul Ortiz | Would you call that a good neighborhood to raise children in during that time? | 25:03 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | Yes, I thought it was good because as I said, everybody knew everybody's children. And I was working on the campus at that time and on Saturday evening, the children want to go to the movie and sometime they'd want to slip in, so I got me a group of them and I had them working. They'd come over here, open popcorn boxes and fill popcorn boxes. I had about four of them that'd come over and work for me and they would get that ticket into the movie. | 25:08 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | And lady said she didn't know how her child was getting in the movie, so she came over there to try to find out. And when I told her, she was so happy. She said, "He leaves home, talking about he going to his job." And so, she came evening. I said, "Well, that's what." And I was standing right there and let some open the boxes and some fill them. And then when they get through, then they could go in the movie. I'd give them money to go in the movie and then give them popcorn. | 25:42 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | So they had the popcorn and the ticket to get in the movie. They were going to slip in anyway and I didn't want them slipping in. I mean, you could control them and you could talk to them and you could get them down there to work and the parents would be so glad that you helped them out, they wouldn't know what to do. But see, that isn't like that now. Nobody keeps— I had a gang of them and I don't know, they got mad. One sat up there about something and when out there and broke glass all in front of the newsstand, door, they just got bad. I found them and I stood out there and made them pick it up, every bit of it and clean it up, and then called their parents and told them about it and they were just as happy as they could be. Nobody got angry because everybody took care of everybody. | 26:03 |
| Paul Ortiz | Was there a part of Tuskegee at that time where you didn't want your children going? | 26:47 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | Not that I know of, because it was pretty open and nice then. Every place was all right for them to go and the parents would go and the children would go. Because at night when the little guys would get ready to stay out, like guys going to sit around and talk and everything, well, I was interested in knowing where mine was talking. There's a step over there, man had a dry cleaner, had them long steps over there. So I told him, "I tell what you do, you can stay out long as you want to." And I went over and asked the man if it'd be all right for him to sit on the front of his steps down there as long as they wanted to and didn't keep no noise, so I tell him not to keep noise. | 26:57 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | So they sat there for years, the gang. And they just found out about two years ago why they were sitting there. See, my son didn't tell them, he just said, "I tell y'all, let's go over here." And every night I'd peep out there and they was still sitting there, but they didn't keep a lot of noise to wake up to people. And sometime they still there until twelve, one o'clock at night, sitting up there, talking, but I could see them. And they all got together here about two, three years ago and I told them, I said, "Did y'all ever know why y'all was sitting on steps? They tried to beat my son up now." Said, "Man, why didn't you tell us?" But he didn't tell them, so that's what they would do, sit on that step. | 27:38 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | And on Saturdays, then her little boy wanted to drink beer. So I always fixing it so my son couldn't buy no beer by his self. He'd have to put his money with somebody if he bought beer, because I wouldn't give him enough to buy a beer. We'd give him enough to buy a Coca-Cola, something like that. So then I would go over sometime and buy them a whole case of drinks or two cases of drinks and take them to that little party where they was going, and let them go there and they'd drink them. They didn't never know where they was getting the drinks from. I would tell them man, so we'd sell them drinks and that kept him from drinking beer until they got old enough to drink beer. | 28:12 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | I told him if he had a quarter, he couldn't buy no beer, because beer cost more than a quarter. So we worked together, tried anyway. They have just had a world tour, had a trip around the world for four months and they just got back in May. And he works at Pittsburgh, the community college in Pittsburgh. And his wife works at the University of Pittsburgh. They have two children and they graduated from college this year. And I guess that's the end of my road. | 28:47 |
| Paul Ortiz | If you had to sum up your life and think about what have been the most important things to you in your life and would've been, say, perhaps the most inspirational things that have kept you going, what would they be? | 29:36 |
| Jessie Hill Wright | Well, I've always liked to work. I think working with the students and getting involved with things like that, I've enjoyed that very much. And I used to tell the students that work was beautiful. And don't fight work, because if you fight it, it'll fight you back and beat you up every time. That's been my philosophy of life. | 30:13 |
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