Clarence Marable interview recording, 1994 July 14
-
Download
- Rights
- Files (4)
-
MP3
Part 1
-
MP3
Part 2
-
MP3
Part 3
-
MP3
Part 4
- Please be patient with media downloads. They are often large files.
- Share
Loading the media player...
Transcript
- Download transcript as:
-
Text
-
PDF
-
WebVTT (includes timecodes)
Transcripts may contain inaccuracies.
| Paul Ortiz | Mr. Marable, could you tell me about where you were born and what kind of area, community that you grew up in? | 0:02 |
| Clarence Marable | Yes, I was born in Wedowee, Alabama, 10th of February 1932. And I'm the 8th child of 13 in the family, 9 boys and 4 girls. And brought up as a tenant. My father, he was an unlearned man and he was a tenant farmer. It was in a rural setting in a very poor area of Alabama. I was born in Wedowee, Alabama. | 0:11 |
| Paul Ortiz | And did you live in one location or did your family move from time to time? | 0:59 |
| Clarence Marable | We moved. We moved in 1932, the year I was born, and then in 1946 we moved again. That was basically my childhood. | 1:04 |
| Paul Ortiz | I see. | 1:22 |
| Clarence Marable | We lived on a farm that were owned by my mother's sister, a little small farm, but we rented land from the White landowners. But we would never move on their place, we always lived on this little small farm that belonged to my mother's sister, but then we would work the White landowners, we'd rent from them, as we call it. | 1:26 |
| Paul Ortiz | I see. Now, did your parents own their own farm implements? | 2:08 |
| Clarence Marable | Yes, we did. That was one thing that we always owned. Such as it was at that time was farm animals and mule wagons. The first car I remember my father having was in 1938. He had an old Model T. | 2:13 |
| Paul Ortiz | Was that a used brand? | 2:42 |
| Clarence Marable | Oh, a very used Model. In fact, he bought it from the mailman, the man used to carry the mail. And when he bought him a new car, he bought the mail carrier's car. | 2:45 |
| Paul Ortiz | Oh. Do you remember life changing for your family after that purchase? | 3:00 |
| Clarence Marable | Well, because the car was used for going to church and to go get the farm supplies, but mainly it was used for church services and when you went to town during the week to get farm supplies, et cetera. | 3:06 |
| Paul Ortiz | Did it seem like the car gave you an enhanced sense of— | 3:39 |
| Clarence Marable | Well, yes. The car, it gave us an uplift. It was considered a status to have a car, such as it was was, and it brought joy to the family. We'd all get in the car and go to the church service. We'd get in the car sometime and ride. We had a farm about five miles away. Sometime we'd go to the field in the car. So it was an uplift, yeah. Where my dad could take the car, and go to town and back in four hours, which in the wagon would take all day. So it brought technology at that time. | 3:44 |
| Paul Ortiz | I see. Now, Wedowee, Alabama, which county is that in? | 4:48 |
| Clarence Marable | That's in Randolph County. | 4:50 |
| Paul Ortiz | Randolph County. | 4:52 |
| Clarence Marable | Yes. | 4:54 |
| Paul Ortiz | What are some of your earliest childhood memories? | 4:58 |
| Clarence Marable | Being brought up on the farm, some of my earliest childhood members would be the amount of tasks that we had to do around the house, milk the cows, and clean up the barnyard, clean up the yard around the house, and they would just work, work, work all the time. My dad, he always had something for us to do and enormous amount of tasks that we had to do, most especially milking those cow twice a day. And everybody had a cow from the time you were about eight years old, you had to milk the cow, and we usually kept seven or eight. We'd milk in the morning, milk them in the evening. | 5:08 |
| Clarence Marable | And then during the summer, I'd have to tie them calves out. Didn't have a pasture put the calves then. Now, that was around the house. Now, going to school, I remember I loved to go to school. I remember from the time I was in the second, third, and fourth grade, I didn't miss two days of school and I walked to school. I went to a one room schoolhouse where they was in the neighborhoods. It went from 20 to as high as 75 students and one teacher, grade 1 through 6. | 6:06 |
| Paul Ortiz | How many months out of the year would you attend school? | 6:57 |
| Clarence Marable | We would start in September, we'd go about six months. And by then, later in the years, they began to have school in July and August, and then we would skip when the time to gather the crop, then they would stop school in September and October, start back about the 1st of November, and you'd make that time up in July and August. | 7:01 |
| Paul Ortiz | Do you know what brought about that change and starting to go to school in July and August? | 7:48 |
| Clarence Marable | Well, what it was, see the crops wouldn't get right together until September and October, and then the kids would be going to school, so they would make that time up, they would pre-school. You see, they'd put those days. That's what it was, go ahead. | 7:55 |
| Paul Ortiz | Now, was that a public school? | 8:18 |
| Clarence Marable | Public school, very much. Segregated school. | 8:21 |
| Paul Ortiz | Do you remember much about your teachers? | 8:24 |
| Clarence Marable | Yes. Starting with my first grade teacher, who was Ms. Goldsby. She was my teacher for the first six years and what I would call a very good, in-depth teacher. And course, she was a disciplinarian, I would say. She did believe in paddling and she would paddle some of the students, but from the time I was first through six, I only got one paddling. But she was what we would call a good one room school teacher. But we never had any supplies or books, we'd always get the used books. In other words, if the Whites got new books, then we would get the whole books and they would be just filthy and dirty. | 8:31 |
| Paul Ortiz | Would you have to pay for those books? | 9:45 |
| Clarence Marable | No, they were free. Such as they were, they were free. | 9:48 |
| Paul Ortiz | Now, at the end of the year, when it came time to turn in the books, do you ever remember your parents being charged for? | 9:57 |
| Clarence Marable | Yes, then. I believe there was a little fee there. Maybe it was 10 cents, or something in that, 9. And if you didn't turn the book back in, I remember the trucks would come from Wedowee a couple of days or a week before school was out and pick the books up. I believe I remember that, yeah. Because they didn't leave them there at the school building. And there was a fee if you lost the book, I believe. | 10:05 |
| Paul Ortiz | I see. Now, were your teachers, well I guess in this case, Mrs. Goldsmith was your primary teacher, was she Black? | 10:43 |
| Clarence Marable | She was Black, yes. Goldsby, Goldsby. G-O-L-D-S-B-Y. | 10:51 |
| Paul Ortiz | Well, obviously the school was segregated. | 10:56 |
| Clarence Marable | Yes. | 11:04 |
| Paul Ortiz | In Randolph County, do you remember having experiences with segregation other than schooling discrimination? | 11:07 |
| Clarence Marable | Oh, well that was every day. If I could use the word it— Let me see. We knew our place in society and we stayed within that rims. You didn't cross the line. Now, what I mean by that, we didn't try to go to the White school. We knew it was too big at that time for us to tackle. So, you would condition yourself to live within that society. | 11:18 |
| Clarence Marable | Along that same line, my dad used to tell us we would go to this store, and it was a White lady that was the clerk, and he would tell the boys not to look at her. And believe it or not, that never affected me to this day. He'd say, "Boy, don't you look at that White woman." Said, "You can be hanged for just looking at her too hard." And we didn't. I would go to the store and I wouldn't even look at her. In fact, I was afraid to. Well, my daddy would condition us to that effect. It's bad to say, but it really affect to this day. | 12:15 |
| Paul Ortiz | Were there other things that your father told you, rules for survival? | 13:06 |
| Clarence Marable | Yes. See in Randolph, the land that we stayed on was very hilly, and rocky, and poor. Your big landowners, they had to find the land. We wanted to move on the White man's place because the soil was better, but my dad told us never to do that. He said, "Once you move on the man's place," said, "You won't never get off. You will never pay yourself out of debt." So he chose to keep us on these little pull farm and do what we could. | 13:12 |
| Clarence Marable | Now, we would rent the man's land, but he would never let us move on. I tell you a little incident that happened, it may need to come up in this interview and it may not, but my father was a bootlegger. He made whiskey. Whether it was right or wrong, but if he had a crop failure, he knew how to make whiskey. Not only him. And really that's how we escaped from being full-time, full-blooded tenant farmer, you might say. He would take a little still and make him some whiskey. | 14:02 |
| Clarence Marable | But we knew our place and he dealt with us, I'd say almost daily. It was his philosophy that a person could work himself out of poverty. He was not too much on education. My mother was, my dad only just finished second grade. Mother finished sixth grade. But he said a man should work. | 15:10 |
| Paul Ortiz | Now, did you know or hear about perhaps stories about Black people who were victimized or who perhaps violated some of these rules that you talked about and were severely dealt with? | 15:54 |
| Clarence Marable | I can't say I know of a fact other than we would always hear these stories. And there were several cases there where this one guy was put in army because this White lady's husband was in service, this is 1942, and she couldn't drive. She was a fairly young lady, and this soldier had left her a car, and this young man, first of month when she'd get her check, he would take her to the little village to buy groceries. She'd always sit in the back and he did this for several months. And few months later, he was inducted into service, which he was too old for World War II. This was during World War II and he was close to 40 years old. And for some strange reason, he was put in service. Name was Cephus Johnson. | 16:18 |
| Paul Ortiz | Oh, so the local draft board— | 17:38 |
| Clarence Marable | Local draft board got the wood and they just put it in seconds. | 17:40 |
| Clarence Marable | But we would hear these stories of different violations, but my dad, that was one thing we say he preached to us, "You know your boundaries, so you stay within that boundary." | 17:52 |
| Paul Ortiz | Were there stories of Black people who perhaps at some point rebelled against those boundaries? Or perhaps even yourself? I mean breaking some rules, so to speak? | 18:14 |
| Clarence Marable | Well, let's see. Let me start by saying my father, he finally got him an old tractor, and we would go out and plow for different people. Then one time, my brother was plowing for this family and when they brought his dinner, the man came and got him, and told him to come up to the house for dinner. Well, the lady fixed his plate and in the rural country, out beside the back door, we would put what we used to call the slop bucket, with the bread and whatnot. So they had a shelf back there for the slop bucket. | 18:32 |
| Clarence Marable | So that's where she set his plate, right down by the slop bucket, and he wouldn't eat it. So he just left the food there, came on home, and told us about it. So next day, Dad went back, and got his tractor, and told the man that he just wouldn't plow for her no more. Says, "I'm a human being too." Said, "Just best you get somebody else to plow for you." Now, you couldn't say it was just incidents, but I'll go a little further. In 1938, my dad bought him a little sawmill. | 19:26 |
| Clarence Marable | And the timber that he would cut with this little sawmill, he would cut it off. My grandfather left him a plantation and I had to deal with that after that, but see a Black couldn't sell no lumber, and my dad knew that. Now, in him being a bootlegger, different type of people would come through. Now, he didn't just sell his whiskey [indistinct 00:21:06], but anyway, this White guy that was a heavy drinker, but he could operate the sawmill. He was White. | 20:18 |
| Clarence Marable | He won his confidence and he bought this little sawmill, and this guy would operate the sawmill, carry the lumber to the Whites, and then get the check. He would get the check in his name, go cash the check, bring it to my dad. He did that for I guess five or six months until finally the guy that buy the lumber, he realized what was happening. So it was just a system and you had to work within that system and deal with that system. | 21:17 |
| Clarence Marable | If I could, let me back up to my grandfather. My grandfather was half White and half Black, sold in West Point, Georgia when he was 13 years old. And he was sold for a pair of mules, swapped for a pair of gray mule. And he was brought into Roanoke, Alabama and there, he stayed from 19 until he was about 26. In fact, he claimed he went— You see during the war between the states, the sovereign captains, in which he used to call his master, was a captain in the Confederate army. | 22:05 |
| Clarence Marable | And he went with him to take care of the horse and take care of him. He claimed he was in Atlanta when it burned. But anyway, after the war, he had the opportunity to become a tenant farmer or he could drift North, and at that time you could [indistinct 00:23:59] land meaning that they, when I say they, the government would give you 160 acres of land, but in three years, you had to have a little lean-to on it and start paying the tax. And I believe he said tax at that time on 40 acres was about $2. | 23:24 |
| Clarence Marable | So he chose to be an entrepreneur rather than a tenant farmer. He said when they went free, he went through the wood pile and picked up ax, and he had two dogs and they followed him, and that's what he started off with, with them two dogs and that ax. Now, he was born in 1845 and died in 1926. From 19, by time he died in 1926, he had accumulated about 600 acres of land which we still own some of that today. | 24:30 |
| Clarence Marable | He was an entrepreneur and he instilled that in his children. I thought I'd just deviate that just to give you a little background on Granddad. From the end of slavery, he lived until 1926, he died at the age of about 82. He was a great church man. He couldn't even read and write, but he was a Sunday school superintendent for about 40 years. He would have his children to read the Sunday school lesson during the week, and then he would get up on Sunday morning and teach it. | 25:26 |
| Paul Ortiz | Do you know what church that he taught? | 26:13 |
| Clarence Marable | He taught at Pleasant Grove Baptist Church. In fact, that church still exists today. | 26:15 |
| Paul Ortiz | It's in Randolph County? | 26:23 |
| Clarence Marable | Randolph County. It's not at the same place, but it's still there. We go there once a year and clean the graves off. In May, we have a big grave cleaning. Now, my grandmother was a Creek Indian and she derived from the Indians at Horseshoe Bend. Now, you probably wouldn't be familiar with that, but anybody live in Alabama's pretty well with Horseshoe Bend. She came from the Creek Indian. I don't remember, I was born in '32, she died in 1928. So that just gave you a little of my background. | 26:24 |
| Paul Ortiz | Were there other stories that your parents told you or that other people in the family told you about your grandparents? | 27:32 |
| Clarence Marable | Yes. See, my mom and dad, they remember them real well. You see, they were deep religious church workers and entrepreneurs, meaning he had his own land, lived on his own place. He had a little cotton gin and had a little old shoe factory. Just things like that. | 27:50 |
| Paul Ortiz | And the land that your father's sawmill was on was originally your grandfather's. | 28:34 |
| Clarence Marable | It was my grandfather's. See, the timber had grown up and that's what gave him a start. That timber that my granddad had left. One little incident I'd like to tell, my grandfather was one of the first Blacks that sit on a jury in Randolph County. And I take it a little further, the judge was charging the jury, and my grandfather spoke out and said what he felt like should be done to the man. And they pulled him out of the jury and they had to start trial over. That was just little one incident I thought of. | 28:39 |
| Paul Ortiz | Do you know about what year this happened that he was on the jury? | 29:36 |
| Clarence Marable | Well, let's see. He probably was say 50 years old. It would have been, let's say, I would say somewhere around 1900, close to 1900. I tell you something else along that same line, I had an uncle and I don't quite understand it to this day, during the '40s, he would serve on federal juries, but they wouldn't let him serve on a county jury. He had gone to Opelika many time. His name was McKinley Heard and he served on the federal grand jury in Opelika. | 29:42 |
| Paul Ortiz | Heard his last name? | 30:36 |
| Clarence Marable | Heard, yes. And I can remember several federal grand juries in Opelika, Alabama that he served on. That would've been sometime in— It was during the war, I remember that. World War II. | 30:38 |
| Paul Ortiz | And you've given a very rich description of your family and some of the background of your family. What was the neighborhood, if you would, when you were growing up? | 31:10 |
| Clarence Marable | Okay. We grew up in this little, I'll say a little Black section. At that time we called it a Colored section and it was called Woodville. And there was 14 or 15 Black families. We would call them Colored back at that time. During the week, quite naturally, you'd work in the field, but come Sunday you'd go to church. But my father, he was a deacon in the church, but he would never pressure his children to go to church. If we volunteered to go, that's fine. If we want to stay and play, that was fine. The community was centered around, we had a little school, and when school were closing, that was one of the biggest events in the community when you'd have the little school plays, and that was the highlight of the community. | 31:26 |
| Clarence Marable | Then after that, it was the main social, we would have these little Saturday night, what we call suppers. Now, then after that, I start the high school, and once I started the high school, the high school is 12 miles away. I started high school and this brings on a different change in your life because you begin to interact with the little kids in town and then the rural kids. However, we would still live within that rim. We stayed on our side of the fences, we would say. We were segregated from the White. | 32:59 |
| Clarence Marable | We didn't try to cross the line because we used to say it was just too big. It was bigger than us. Then in high school, I had a teacher that really had an impact on my life. His name was Theodore Shemper. Really on my family. He was a Tuskegee graduate, name was Theodore Shemper. Mr. Shemper was my shop teacher, we would call, vocational ed teacher. | 34:07 |
| Clarence Marable | And he taught about four of us boys. He would come out to the house and he would put emphasis on feeding the family, how to make life better. He taught us how to build a screen door. We didn't have screen door on the house, he taught us how to build screen door. He taught us how to dig, not a cesspool, but a sanitary toilet without water. So he taught us that, he taught us how to build a chicken brooder. | 34:59 |
| Clarence Marable | And he really had an influence, not only in my family, but the whole community. If you were to go back there and interview people of my age, he were there for some 30 years, and they would tell you that he really made an impact on that county. In fact, I wanted to come to Tuskegee to school, but it cost a little too much. Tuition at that time for a whole year was only $450, but that was just monstrous, it was too much, we couldn't think about, so I chose to go to Alabama A&M. | 35:47 |
| Paul Ortiz | Did you hear about Tuskegee through him? | 36:41 |
| Clarence Marable | Well, in schooling in February, for one week, the teacher would teach a little Black history. It'd be on the calendar, Black history. The two people she would talk about was Booker T. Washington and George Washington Carver. That was when I first learned about Booker T. Washington was that chart, and we would never see anything in the paper. She had a little book. | 36:46 |
| Clarence Marable | It wasn't nothing in our textbooks, but she had some kind of little book and it had a picture of Booker T. Washington and George Washington Carver. Now, that was how I first heard about. Now, my grandfather on my mother's side used to come to the Farmer's Conference during the 1900s. Before Booker T. Died, he used to come to some of the Farmer's Conference. So that's how I heard about it, through him. | 37:31 |
| Paul Ortiz | And what was the name of that school? Was it County High School? | 38:22 |
| Clarence Marable | Randolph County High School. | 38:24 |
| Paul Ortiz | Was there a difference in the quality of the— Well, you mentioned that Mr. Shemper was quite an outstanding teacher. | 38:29 |
| Clarence Marable | Yes. | 38:39 |
| Paul Ortiz | Was there a difference in the quality of the materials, books, desks, structure of the school compared with your earlier grammar school? | 38:40 |
| Clarence Marable | To me, it was a great step forward. However, the school had burned in 1939, and then the county set up army barracks set up below the CCC. The CCC went out. You've heard of the CCC, so when the school burned, they brought these CC barracks and set them up, set up about seven, and that was considered our high school. There were some 500 students at the high school. We did not have a telephone, the high school that I went to. The first four years I was in high school, we did not have a telephone at the high school. | 38:56 |
| Clarence Marable | I do not remember seeing a typewriter. The only modern technology I remember seeing in that school the first four years was, they call it a little Stenograph machine. It would print. I think that's what they call it. Fact, I used to turn it. Now, in about '48, the county built us a brand new block school and then we got a telephone. And then they began to teach typing. I was never taught typing. I was 22 years old before I answered a telephone and 16 years old before we got electric lights in the house. | 40:05 |
| Paul Ortiz | Do you remember who would work on those CCC projects? Were there Black people working on those? | 41:17 |
| Clarence Marable | No. Oh, yes, in Randolph County, there was a Black CCC, but I had a brother that was signed up to go, but he never did get in. But Randolph County's CCC was tetotally Black. The supervisors were White, but the people, most of them, well everybody in there were Black, the main people that did the work. But when they moved the barracks over for our school, they was all White that did that, that moved it. See, they didn't move us to the CCC camp, they moved the barracks over. | 41:24 |
| Paul Ortiz | Talked a little bit about the community, do you remember any disputes that arose in the community? | 42:28 |
| Clarence Marable | Let's see. Well, we never did dispute because my dad— Even if we got the short end of the stick, we didn't get in no dispute with no White. He said, "You ain't going win." I'll tell you this little incident, when we'd pull our corn and this guy that we were renting the place from, he didn't trust us, he would make us haul that corn up and put it in a pile, and then we would separate it with a basket. He'd be sitting at a chair. We would put two baskets on our wagon, put one on his. | 42:38 |
| Clarence Marable | And we did that for two years and then the boys were getting on up. See nine boys. And we began to get a little disgruntled about it. And my dad then told him, says, "I want to buy the place because my boys is getting disgruntled." And so he bought the place and the guy financed the place for us. So yeah, they were disputes but you didn't hear too much about it. You did, but far as winning in the law, there wasn't no point going to no law. In fact, you couldn't get no lawyer to take it. | 43:49 |
| Paul Ortiz | Were there any kinds of political activities in Randolph County? Any attempts to say perhaps organize NAACP chapter in the 30s, 40s? | 44:48 |
| Clarence Marable | Well, no. I'm speaking of my life now. I used to hear the Whites say that the Blacks had no right to vote unless they'd been in service. And that was some of the first people that began to vote is people that had been in service. | 45:05 |
| Paul Ortiz | In World War II. | 45:39 |
| Clarence Marable | In World War II. And then they had another thing called a poll tax. And that was, I believe, $2 a year. And we didn't have no money pay no poll tax. | 45:44 |
| Clarence Marable | Now, I remember 1950 was the first time that I joined the NAACP in 1950. | 46:04 |
| Paul Ortiz | [indistinct 00:46:22]. | 46:18 |
| Clarence Marable | Yeah, in not 1950s and '53 when I came out of service, I went up to register to vote. And I remember when I was registered to vote, the registrar asked me, what do it take to become a registered voter after I filled out the little blank. And then you had to go around and go before, oh, elderly man sitting, all that, that's you. He say, "Boy, what'd it take to be a registered voter?" I remember saying, "Be a good citizen." And he gave me my paper. | 0:03 |
| Paul Ortiz | Randolph County? | 1:19 |
| Clarence Marable | That was in Randolph County. That was in 1953. | 1:20 |
| Paul Ortiz | So there was a chapter of the NAACP already organized? | 1:26 |
| Clarence Marable | Yes. | 1:30 |
| Paul Ortiz | Do you know about the year that organized? | 1:30 |
| Clarence Marable | I would say it started about 1950. The first guy that approached me with becoming membership was a guy named Robert Rowe. | 1:34 |
| Paul Ortiz | Robert Rowe. | 1:46 |
| Clarence Marable | Robert Rowe. | 1:47 |
| Paul Ortiz | R-O-W-E? | 1:47 |
| Clarence Marable | R-O-W-E. And I believe the fee, something like $2 a year, $3 a year. I remember joining, they gave me a little card. | 1:57 |
| Paul Ortiz | How were you recruited? Was it through church? | 2:04 |
| Clarence Marable | Usually, after a sermon, then they would give announcement that certain time the next week NAACP meeting was going to be held at the church. We would meet, oh, maybe once a month. But usually most of the time that we would meet would be election years and then— | 2:11 |
| Paul Ortiz | Presidential elections? | 2:50 |
| Clarence Marable | Mostly the sheriff election, sheriff, probate judge, things of that sort. | 2:53 |
| Paul Ortiz | That was considered to be the most important? | 3:04 |
| Clarence Marable | The most important was the sheriff election. See that was the law. He was the law in Randolph County and that was the biggest thing as I remember the NAACP. They were other candidates, but mainly we would deal with that sheriff election. | 3:10 |
| Paul Ortiz | Now did you register to vote before you became a member of the NAACP? | 3:39 |
| Clarence Marable | I believe it was kind of simultaneously. | 3:49 |
| Paul Ortiz | Okay. | 3:53 |
| Clarence Marable | You see, I'd been in service and came out of service. And if you had been in the service, they had little or no trouble in Randolph to get registered to vote. | 3:54 |
| Paul Ortiz | I see. | 4:09 |
| Clarence Marable | But now, if you were not a veteran, you had to pay those poll tax, and that could add up over the years. You see, you had to pay from the time you were 18, and so it would add up on you. And that was one thing I was glad to see when they abolished it. | 4:10 |
| Paul Ortiz | Now you mentioned that veterans from World War II would come back and sometimes vote in Randolph County? | 4:37 |
| Clarence Marable | Yes. Yes. | 4:50 |
| Paul Ortiz | Okay. Do you remember, let's see, you would've been about 12, no, you'd been a little older, 45, 46, you'd been about 14. Do you remember those veterans coming back and talking about politics, perhaps seeming to be a bit political minded than perhaps earlier? | 4:50 |
| Clarence Marable | Yes. That anytime you talk to a veteran, he was more enlightened. He was more interested in voting. Most all the veterans were. And of course all of them didn't vote, but they were really interested in it. He felt that, when I say he, I'm talking about a veteran, he felt that he had won the right. And I have heard Whites say, I remember this guy telling my daddy. He says, "Manning says Colored folks didn't have nothing to vote for, they never fought for this country. They ain't have nothing to do with this country until the war. So now the veterans, he has a right to vote." | 5:18 |
| Clarence Marable | I remember a man telling my dad. My dad would never challenge him. He wouldn't agree with them. He probably wouldn't say nothing, because he had this little quirk. See, there were a lot of poor Whites in the community where we lived. He told us to never mistreat them. He said, "Don't mistreat them, because he's the one they going to send with the rope." You see, he knew the big man wasn't going to do it, but he say them poor guys out there, he's the one that's that's got the rope. So you don't mistreat him. He ain't going to do it until he get the orders, but don't cross him. Don't have nothing to do with him. | 6:22 |
| Clarence Marable | That was basically his theory. And he instilled that in us. My granddaddy, instilled entrepreneurship in my dad and my dad instilled entrepreneurship into us, and that what was just drilled into us almost daily. You be your own man. If you run up against segregation or an obstacle in this avenue, well you switched it up. | 7:31 |
| Clarence Marable | I have went to get my check cutting lumber, sending lumber, I'd go around to the back office, go to the back of the door. I would be the last one that they would pick up to check for. I'd get that first. Pick up everybody but me. But I didn't get annoyed. I dealt with it. My dad always told me, you can work around the thing. And he said, "Don't never get no money from him. So you just do without." | 8:21 |
| Clarence Marable | I didn't mean to deviate from that, but it just came to mind. | 9:21 |
| Paul Ortiz | That's a very interesting story. Did you hear about the Scottsboro case as a young boy? | 9:26 |
| Clarence Marable | Yeah, but that was in Alabama. Of course, that happened a little bit before my time. We used to hear about it, but we really didn't know too much about it. We used to hear about it. Believe it or not, I won't say my dad, but I have heard some, I use the word Colored people, in the community say, "Well, them boys didn't have no business in Scottsboro." Said they didn't have no business on that train. See that was how it was so ingrained into people. I've heard people say that, "Well, them boys, if they been at home, they wouldn't have been into that trouble." You had to coexist within the system. Many opportunities, if you knew you were Black, it just wasn't for you. | 9:43 |
| Paul Ortiz | What year did you graduate from high school? | 11:11 |
| Clarence Marable | 1950. | 11:26 |
| Paul Ortiz | 1950. So you went straight— | 11:27 |
| Clarence Marable | 49, 50. | 11:30 |
| Paul Ortiz | So you went straight into the service? | 11:34 |
| Clarence Marable | No, I went and spent one year at Alabama A&M. That was in September 1949. And I stayed a year at Alabama A&M. | 11:36 |
| Paul Ortiz | What kinds of courses were you taking? | 12:22 |
| Clarence Marable | As I said before, Mr. Shemper had a great influence on my life. I was taking agriculture. It was my desire to be a county agent or agriculture teacher. | 12:22 |
| Paul Ortiz | So one year at Alabama A&M. Had you left or were you drafted into the service? | 12:24 |
| Clarence Marable | It's kind of interesting. When I went up to Alabama A&M, it was my intention to work and go to school. So I get to Alabama A&M, and I go down to the Dean at the School of Agriculture. And I asked him for a job. He looked at my application and this is what he told me. He said, "Marable, I see that your dad had four mules and two wagons and 200 acres of land and he's able to send you to school. I ain't going to give you no job." | 12:29 |
| Clarence Marable | Well, that was disheartening to me. I knew if I wanted to stay in school, I had to work. So I go on down. I talked to one of my teachers about a job and his name was Mr. Thomas. He was over at the dairy barn and he said, "If you come down to the dairy barn, I'll give you a job." So I go down and start the work. After the first month, your name go back across the Dean's desk, because he got to sign off on you so you can get your little voucher down at the Dean's office. I mean a finance office. | 13:28 |
| Clarence Marable | So the Dean called me back in his office, shook the thing in his face and says, "I told you not to go down to that barn and work." Your daddy got four mules and two wagons, 200 acres of land. He's able to send you to school. I ain't going to pay you. | 14:20 |
| Clarence Marable | So I go back and told Dr. Thomas, who was over at the dairy barn. He said, "You come on down here and work, I'll take care of it." And he did. I used to work a hundred hours a month for 30 cents an hour and that's what it took. It took $30 a month to pay my board. Dad would scuffle up a little money to pay my tuition, my little fees and whatnot. For about six months, I used to work a hundred hours, 150 hours month, 30 cents an hour. I'd go up to the Dean's office once a month. I had to get a meal ticket. At that time they issued a meal ticket the first of every month. So you'd go in and they'd check the record, and usually I would have a $28 voucher or a $30 voucher. But they was paying me 30 cents an hour. I would milk the cows, run the pasteurizer, clean up the barn, drive the tractor, pull corn. | 14:40 |
| Clarence Marable | And I enjoyed it. It was not a task to me. Because that's what I did at home. And I knew I wanted to stay in school. So at the end of that, almost at the end of the first year, my dad got sick. But I began to see something in college that I didn't like. That was the long way out of poverty to me. | 16:04 |
| Clarence Marable | I had a better car than my teacher had. I'm talking from what I saw at that time. My college professor wore the same suit every day, almost every day. And I saw that I didn't want to get into that trap. I wanted to make money. They taught me theory in school and I didn't want theory. I wanted to know how to put a bathroom in my mother's house. I wanted to put a heating system in my mother's house. They were teaching me theory in school. So at the end of that year, I left and came home. By this time, my father's name is a little more recognizable. The lumber prices is a little better. He can go in the front door of the office and pick his check up. This is about '51. | 16:40 |
| Clarence Marable | I had an older brother that has come out of service and he's worked in the business with my dad, and he's began to get a little name recognition. Blacks is riding in better cars. They're coming out service, they're on the GI Bill. The communities got a little uplift. My daddy has built a new house, so the economy is better. So he's living better. | 18:14 |
| Clarence Marable | So I chose to come out of school and start to work there. Then he died, 1952. | 18:53 |
| Clarence Marable | You want me to go ahead? Okay, now this is a setback. Now father died. I'm 19 years old, I mean I'm 20. I quit school, but I have three brothers and a sister younger than me. They had died without any insurance, no social security. And that was with a small debt, not too much. So now I'm 20 years old, and might say head of the family. Mother is 57. And then I have three brothers and one sister younger than me. I stay there a year, took over the farm, and then I'm drafted in service. Do you want me to go ahead with service? | 19:27 |
| Paul Ortiz | Yeah. | 20:44 |
| Clarence Marable | I'm called up to go in service and I'm inducted in at Wedowee, Alabama. I go up there, one Black and two Whites. I go in service. I get on the bus. I'll never forget, the White lady came out, the two White guys that were going in service with me, they sat down in her office and she told me to wait down the steps. Said, "We'll be out after a while." I didn't know what was happening. | 20:48 |
| Clarence Marable | So after a while here come the Greyhound bus and she came out with the tickets. And says, "Clarence, this guy has your ticket. He'll take care of you." She didn't give me my ticket, she gave it to one of the White guys. So I get in the bus, I go on back to the back and she came back. The bus was fixing to pull off. And she says, "Clarence, he has your meal ticket when you get to Opelika, he has a meal ticket for you." | 21:36 |
| Clarence Marable | So I go in service, and I was one of the first companies that was integrated. We went into Georgia, I can't think of the name of it right now, but it's not Fort Bennet, and it's down at Augusta. | 22:22 |
| Paul Ortiz | Fort Gordon? | 22:54 |
| Clarence Marable | Fort Gordon. Well I was one of the first integrated companies at Fort Gordon. | 22:55 |
| Paul Ortiz | Which company is that? | 23:03 |
| Clarence Marable | I can't remember. But it was a training. Let me give you the month. So it was March, no, January of 1954. And now it was maybe in this company, maybe 20 Blacks and, I believe, 250 Whites. Now the drill sergeant, he would never say anything about Black and White. But I remember him saying this— See there were just as much animosity between a Northerner and a Southerner, Yankee and a rebel. And I remember him announcing that, "We are not going to have any disturbance between you Northerners and you Southerners." I don't believe he said it that way. I believe he said a Yankee and a rebel. He said, "That's over with. And I'm not going tolerate it." | 23:07 |
| Paul Ortiz | He was a Southerner? | 24:39 |
| Clarence Marable | He was a Southerner, but he was a drill sergeant. So it was just routine. I didn't have any incidents. I did attempt to go into the little town one Saturday night. Now the Whites would come back and tell us what a great time they had socially. | 24:51 |
| Paul Ortiz | In Augusta? | 25:32 |
| Clarence Marable | In Augusta. But we didn't have any place to go. Now the town is segregated, but the post is beginning to integrate. So I only went into town one time, because you'd go into town and you got these little hole in the walls and it was just such low life to lie. I didn't go back to town anymore. | 25:33 |
| Clarence Marable | Well, I leave Augusta, came home and got a speeding ticket. Never will forget it. Got a speeding ticket. Had my little girl in the car with me. The patrolman stopped me and he knows me. He said, "Marable, you speeding?" I said, "Yes." And I told him I was in the army. He said, "Well, I tell you what." He said, "I'm going to put your address on here, like you still up there, and say this won't go on your record. I'm going to help you out there." If he would've sent it back in, it would've went to my Company Commander. | 26:07 |
| Clarence Marable | So anyway, I go on there and I go out to Camp Chaffee, Arkansas. Now, I'm in the army of the United States and I get on this trailway. I got to go to the bathroom. | 26:53 |
| Clarence Marable | I get to the bus station at Birmingham, Alabama. I start in the front door. See I'm leading a double life. On the post at Camp Gordon. You go wherever you please. I start in the front door in Birmingham, Alabama. And a policeman just pointed for me to go around to the back. I'm a soldier in the United States army. I didn't defy his orders. I just went around to the little hole in the wall around there. | 27:19 |
| Clarence Marable | I go on out to Camp Chaffee, Arkansas. And I never went into town. And now, me being a Creek, I'm about half Creek Indian. My philosophy of socializing is a little different than a Black. So I chose not to go in. I never left the post, from the time I was in. And most of my friends was Northerners, most of my friends. So I never went into town. I just stayed on post, Saturday, Sunday. I used to pull KP for some of the guys, they would want to go. And I said, "Well, I'll just pull KP for you." I wasn't doing nothing. They'd pay me 10, 12 dollars. | 28:07 |
| Paul Ortiz | These primarily Black friends? | 29:22 |
| Clarence Marable | No, mostly White. Mostly White. And Camp Chaffee, Arkansas, we still maybe 180 in the, they call it battery there, because I'm in artillery, about 180, maybe 25 to 30 Blacks. You see the army, they always sprinkled just a few Blacks in the services where it was [indistinct 00:30:02] there. | 29:23 |
| Clarence Marable | Okay, I go overseas, go into Korea and go right up on the DMZ and stay there. Stayed right up on the DMZ for about four months. I got into my company on a Saturday evening right up on the DMZ. So they just put me over in a little tent there. Monday morning, the Captain called me up to his office and he says, "I want you to be my company clerk. My company clerk is leaving in three months. I see that you have been to college. I want you to be my company clerk." Well, he said, "You just stay around here. He'll show you what to do, Clay." Now Clay is a White Jew fellow. I said, "Man." | 30:05 |
| Clarence Marable | Now I've never answered telephone, only seen. Only seen a typewriter once in the principal's office, a real typewriter, had some dummies. So this was just completely Greek to me. I said, "Man, I don't know nothing about no typewriter." He say, "Man, I can learn you how to type in three months, and I'm going to be here." He said, "You ain't got to type but two little pages, the morning report. You got all day to type it. I can teach you in three months." I said, "No." I said, "I can't do it." | 31:38 |
| Clarence Marable | I'll never forget. He said, "Well, you got to go tell the Captain that you can't do it. I ain't going to tell him." So about the third day I went in, told the Captain, and I'll never forget the expression on his face. He said, "You really think you can't do it? I was counting on." You see the army is segregating. And he really was trying to help me. I said, "No sir, I just can't do it." He dropped his head. He said, "Well, go on back." He sent me back, meaning I got to go out now with the troops. | 32:28 |
| Clarence Marable | And I [indistinct 00:33:20] every other night, mosquito nearly eat me to death. I remember one night, now up on that DMZ and them North Korean, they would come over in that DMZ. and they feed them thing called kimchi, which is garlic and cabbage and whatever else. And you can smell it, believe it or not, a hundred feet away. His breath, and then him too. And I remember I was out there one night and I began to smell that kimchi. Well, I know they in the area somewhere and I'm so scared to death. And this Captain came up about midnight checking the guard. | 33:18 |
| Clarence Marable | I remember him shining the light in my face and said, "Soldier, are you all right?" I'm scared to death. He say, "Are you sure you are all right? I believe I want to change you." I said, "No sir, I'm, I'm okay. I'm okay." He said, "Well, okay, but if you don't think you're all right. I'm going to trust you." So anyway, I made it through, but those were some scary nights. Of course, the truce was on when I was there. | 34:15 |
| Clarence Marable | The Captain did pull me out and sent me to leadership training. I guess he saw I had potential. So he did. I didn't stay up on DMZ two, maybe two months. Then he sent me to leadership training. I really liked that, it was mostly classroom work. They would train you for sergeants and blah blah blah. | 34:53 |
| Clarence Marable | So then they sent us to Japan. I get over in Japan and I'm in artillery. And I like this old gun. They put me on this gun. I start off with ammo [indistinct 00:35:56], but I had my eyes. I said, "I can be a Chief." And to make a long story short, I went on to be a Chief of Section. In going up through the rank, they made me a Specialist. Okay? But I was so good with this thing. I was a gunner and I was super. The record standard. By the way I'm a expert rifleman. I made expert at Camp Gordon. The record would show that. So anyway, now there are three Chief of Sections in the battery. Two White, and I'm a Black, they don't really know what I am. But see, a Chief of Section [indistinct 00:36:50] is a SSC. | 35:26 |
| Clarence Marable | But I'm a Spec and had the best battery in the company. We'd win all the inspections because they would send me all— Some guy just can't take the army. We were the regular army. And all the mess-ups, they put them with me. We'd shape them up. | 36:52 |
| Clarence Marable | I had a gunner that was a sergeant, had more rank than I had, and I'm the Chief of Section. I would go in a S1 meeting, they would not promote me. I get an A1 evaluation every time. | 37:25 |
| Clarence Marable | I remember my Sergeant Commander, Sergeant Major, come up to me one day, said, "Marable, I did everything I can to get you promoted. I just can't get you promoted." I said, "Well Sergeant, I tell you what, I'm going to quit." Now our guns, we trained at Camp Drake, but we kept the guns at Camp Fuji. That was north. Fuji if you've ever seen a postcard of Japan and you see this mountain with all the snow on the cap. The Marines had a camp and that's where we kept our guns there, at this Marine camp. And see, I'm in the army, but the main troops is down at Camp Drake. They were training there, and about every three months they'd come up to Camp Fuji and fire the guns and blah, blah blah. | 37:43 |
| Clarence Marable | And we had a little skeleton crew up there. So I told Sergeant Major, I says, "I ain't going to stay down here. I'm going up with the guns. I don't have nothing to do. You ain't giving me no recognition and I'm going up there and just sit down with a gun." So the last six months I was in the army, I just sit up there and kept that gun clean. Had I got the right recognition and got paid for my dues, I probably would've stayed at the service longer. | 38:51 |
| Clarence Marable | I came back through Tacoma, Washington. I was discharged in Little Rock, Arkansas. Camp Chaffee. Now this happened to me on the bus. I get on the bus coming home. I get up about a hundred miles out of Birmingham, I'm the only Black on the bus. The bus is very crowded. This is '55. The economy is getting a little better and people ride the bus into town. Now I'm sitting almost in the back and these people are all White. Now I'm on the back of the bus. | 39:43 |
| Clarence Marable | And they standing all in the aisle. And I'm alone in a corner next to the window. This huge White guy sit down beside me. He weighed about 250 pounds. Another one sit over on the side of the seat down, jammed in the car. This White lady was standing up in the aisle. She looked over and saw me, said, "How's a nigger over there sitting down? He needs to get up and let me sit down." | 40:44 |
| Clarence Marable | Well, I tried to get up and here's a guy sitting here, weigh 250 and another one about 200. He said, "Goddamn man, goddamn that old woman. Hell away with her. Hell, keep your seat." He said, "Let the old bitch stand up there." He's a great big husky guy. | 41:17 |
| Clarence Marable | Okay. So I get back home and as I had said before, my dad had left us a little sawmill, and I got with my other seven of us brothers that worked together. Of course, I'm just mainly telling my story. So we hooked up, when I got out of service. We started working at this little sawmill and we began to buy the lumber, buy a little timber. | 41:48 |
| Clarence Marable | By this time, I go up in the Talladega National Forest and I stayed in that forest, cutting timber in that forest for this one lumber company. I stayed there about two years. Now, if you was to sell lumber to a Southerner and you were Black, you had to be super good, your lumber had to be cut perfect. He going to come out there and look at every load. We had a reputation of cutting good lumber. | 42:40 |
| Clarence Marable | Now about this time I had another brother who came out of service, and he had saved a little money and we tied up together. The seven of us got together. This is getting up to about 1959. 1959. We had a younger son that we brought to Tuskegee and entered him into the School of Agriculture. And I met Dr. Mayberry. I talked with Dr. Mayberry about getting him in school, and Dr. Mayberry said, "It's a lot of Black land owners in this county, you ought to check them out for timber." This is 1960. | 43:23 |
| Clarence Marable | So what we decided then that we were Black, the landowners are Black. That we could the probably do better if we were in this county. So in 1960 we set up and brought our little sawmill to Macon County. In buying timber, all of the saw millers in this area, they would buy timber by the thousand. But we chose to pay cash, whatever small amount it was, we would pay cash for it. And that reputation kind of went ahead of us. Now we knew we were dealing with people that didn't know anything about timber. You go in there and buy about a thousand, he going to always think you beat him. But we would pay cash. The way we would raise the cash is, we had over the years of us working together, we had set up a little account there in my bank that my dad had. | 44:38 |
| Paul Ortiz | Now, Mr. Marable, the sawmill operation was always basically a family operation— | 0:04 |
| Clarence Marable | That is correct. | 0:10 |
| Paul Ortiz | —[indistinct 00:00:12] your brothers? | 0:11 |
| Clarence Marable | That's correct. This was a sawmill that my dad had left us. | 0:12 |
| Paul Ortiz | Now, what was the name of the operation? | 0:18 |
| Clarence Marable | We always call it Marable Brothers. See, it's in my family. There are nine boys and four girls. And we called it Marable Brothers Lumber Company. We operated that way from— Well, let's see. They had died in '52 until '68. | 0:20 |
| Paul Ortiz | Now, you mentioned some of the struggles that your father had when he was running the sawmill company and that he had to have a White person basically run the operation. | 0:48 |
| Clarence Marable | Yes. | 1:01 |
| Paul Ortiz | Whereas when you came out of the service and began operating the business, it was still tough. But could you, at that point in the fifties, actually sell the lumber yourself in Randolph County? | 1:04 |
| Clarence Marable | Yes. Yes, we could because— Well, word would get around. Over the years, word would get around Marable has a sawmill. And we learned see about, all of us could saw, and that was the key to have a good saw. And then, let's see, during the war, what put my dad's name recognition out there, we had a German guy named Paul Barron from Loachapoka, Alabama. He started there cutting lumber. He started buying lumber from there. He was a German guy from Loachapoka, Alabama. | 1:18 |
| Clarence Marable | Now, see after he started, then it was no problem. Then this guy, one guy bought my dad a mill named Hugh Cotney. And we paid him for it, so much a month. We could sell to Hugh Cotney, Amos Cotney. These were just little local guys. But what really began to put us ahead was a man in Atlanta, Georgia, named W.C. Meredith. It was a family-operated business. And Mr. Meredith would write the check and his wife would sign it, then after we drive in on the yard. And he would always pay you for whatever lumber you brought in; he would pay you for it the day that you delivered. Now, that was a big help to us. That was cash flow. And what we were cutting with is what we call cross arms up on a power pole is that piece you see up there. | 2:10 |
| Clarence Marable | I've cut thousands and thousands of those. And I sold it to W.C. Meredith coming in Atlanta. East Point, Georgia. | 3:40 |
| Paul Ortiz | Is that a Black-owned company? | 3:48 |
| Clarence Marable | No, it's White one. No, it's White. Now, once I get down in Macon County, I never forget. See the people won't tell you nothing. To my surprise, when I got down here, the Whites— I bought more timber from Whites than I did Blacks and I got here in '60. So when the word got around that we would pay cash and we would go in what we call cruise timber. And I didn't buy it from— I bought it from— I'm a great trader. Very few people could beat me trading. And when I would go to Atlanta, I would take him with me to look at his timber. | 3:51 |
| Clarence Marable | And you see a Black man never tells a White man what I would give you for your timber. You'd never tell him that. I asked him what he wanted for it. Now, I know in my mind when I look at it, I know what I can pay. And it is a thing in the South, a Black don't tell a White man, not a [indistinct 00:05:37] or nothing. He tells the Black man what he wants for his timber. And he would do it every time. | 5:10 |
| Clarence Marable | And he would under price it. He would under price it every time. Now, that was the theory that I used and it worked. I would take him with me. He said, "Well, [indistinct 00:06:00] that, you go look at it." I said, "No, sir. You go with me." And I go over there and I said, "Now I want a timber deed." "Oh, you don't need no timber." "Yes, sir. I need a timber deed." | 5:47 |
| Clarence Marable | And I would come down to Tuskegee to a lawyer named W.C. Hale. And he would make us up on little timber deed, and they would sign it and we would go up in Randolph County where I had my background was. See, I'd go to the Bank of Whatley, banker named Mr. Leon Phillips. And he would let us have a $1000, $2000. | 6:20 |
| Paul Ortiz | Which bank was that? | 6:55 |
| Clarence Marable | Bank of Whatley. | 6:56 |
| Clarence Marable | Okay. I used another strategy. I would have, if I approach— When I approached the bank in Tuskegee, I would have Mr. Phillips call Mr. Parker. See, this raised my line of credit. You see what I mean? When Mr. Phillips would call Mr. Allen Parker, who was the banker here, then I was the good old boy. You see, he is a White man recommending a Black man. That gave me stability. Because now it's getting to be 1960 now. | 7:00 |
| Paul Ortiz | And now who is Phillips? | 7:57 |
| Clarence Marable | Okay. Okay. That's bad. Okay. Mr. Phillips was my banker and was really my first banker in Whatley, Alabama. | 8:00 |
| Paul Ortiz | So he would just call— | 8:11 |
| Clarence Marable | Yeah. Okay. Then let me hit on that a minute, okay. I started back with Mr. Phillips. My dad— They had a thing in the South called a crop note. In January, my dad would go there and sign a crop note and borrow $1000 dollars, $500. You see this crop note would— My dad could go to the bank and borrow money because he had cows and hogs. | 8:17 |
| Clarence Marable | Whereas if he could not have borrowed money on that crop, no, we would've had to move on a big landowner's place. See, a lot of people couldn't borrow money on a crop note because he didn't have nothing. This crop note don't cover everything from the chickens to the cows to peas to everything you raised was mortgaged if you didn't pay it, okay. Now that was the strategy my dad used with Mr. Phillips. | 9:00 |
| Clarence Marable | Mr. Phillips then recommended us to Mr. Allen Parker. I entered Mr. Parker's bank on the 12th day of January in 1961 with the borrowed $2000. And it was borrowing. And that was when the story starts in Macon County, 12th day of— That's when Marable Brothers hit Macon County. 12th day of January 1960. | 9:32 |
| Paul Ortiz | So you had really— Prior to this though, you had really kind of scoped out the county to see what the new prospects were. | 10:16 |
| Clarence Marable | Yes. I came in and— To get into the county, I was kind of looking for the Black community. And I stopped at a store up at the Y. And this little man at the store, his name was Baker. Baker Store just right up 29 there. It was one of those stores where they live in the back and the store is in the front. It's one room, canned goods in there. And I told him, I was buying some gas there and we was putting the gas in, I told him that I had a little sawmill and I wanted to know, "Where did the Black people live?" | 10:26 |
| Clarence Marable | And he told me how to get to Brownville. Brownville is a community of, oh, at that time, it was 40 or 50 families. They are Black landowners. And so I went over into Brownville and in fact, this White fellow at the store, he gave me the name of two people and there was Jeff Baker and the other guy is still living up there now, Willie B. Talbert. | 11:21 |
| Paul Ortiz | Talbert? | 12:24 |
| Clarence Marable | Talbert. I paid Chest $500 for his timber, Chest Baker. And that was the beginning, here in Macon County. Now we are— Okay, now, when we got here, it's mostly hardwood timber here and [indistinct 00:13:02] some good pine mixed in there with it. But we began to accumulate a lot of what we call number two, soft hardwood. We were selling to— This one guy came by the mill and he's a White guy and told us he could sell his lumber parts. Well, you just took a man at his word. So we sold him four loads of lumber and he didn't pay us for it. | 12:24 |
| Clarence Marable | So what had happened was we had loaded the lumber and taken it to— We had taken it to the Ryan Brothers and they ran the park. We took it down there for this guy. You see what I mean? So I went on about a month and he didn't pay us. So my brother and I drove down to the Ryan Brothers, and when we went in, the secretary asked— So we told her, secretary, that we had delivered some lumber there and we hadn't been paid for it. Well, Mr. Ryan is in the back. He heard. He came out and says, "I saw y'all the day you came in here. See, that guy is one of the biggest crooks there ever were. See, I paid him for that lumber the next day after y'all delivered it here." | 13:48 |
| Clarence Marable | But says he did his hand like this. He said, "It was good lumber, and you don't have to sell through him. I need the lumber. Bring it on to me." And says, "I got a Black man out there checking lumber, and I give him instruction to check it like it is." He said, "I don't take lumber. I don't have to." He said, "You got a good lumber, bring it on down here too." | 15:04 |
| Clarence Marable | Well, that was the beginning of my prosperity. I could deliver a load of lumber there on Thursday and Saturday at 12 o'clock, I had a check in the mail. Then I must tell you this. See, this guy would send his trucks to the mill and get my lumber, but he wouldn't tell us where he was taking it. So one day, one of the drivers— We would have to load the trucks. One day, one of the drivers had a little book in his pocket and he went to sleep and his book fell out of his pocket and I saw it. So he was laying there asleep. I went there and covered it up with sawdust. | 15:31 |
| Clarence Marable | So we got his truck loaded, and when he pulled out, I went and got that little logbook. In that log book was the name of the company he was carrying to. He was carrying it to the lumber to Elberta Crate & Box in Bainbridge, Georgia. I get on the phone and I didn't hardly know how to ask, but the operator told me and says— I asked for Chattahoochee Box. She said, "Well, I don't, don't have a Chattahoochee Box," and says, "I have an Elberta Crate." I said, "Well, that's what I want." | 16:30 |
| Clarence Marable | So I called in, I get another secretary, and the secretary said, "Well, yeah." I asked her, "Do you buy lumber?" She said, "Yeah, we buy lumber." But says, "You don't call down here. You want Mr. John Simmons." Now, I don't know who John Simmons is. Says you, "You need Mr. John Simmons. And he's in Chattahoochee, Florida. He does the buying down there. We just deliver it here." I said, "Wait, give me his"— She said, "Well, let me give you his number." | 17:20 |
| Clarence Marable | So I called Mr. John. Took me about two days to get him. He said, "Yeah." Says, "I buy lumber," said, "We want number two, soft hardwood. If it's four feet long to 20 feet long, just bring it on, check it, and invoice it to me." | 17:55 |
| Clarence Marable | Now, I don't even have an invoice. I don't even know what he talking about when he says invoice and checking it. So I said, "Yeah, we got to get us a letterhead." Now we didn't even have a letterhead. So we get a letterhead and he said, "Now we have so much lumber coming in. You can't just bring it down." Says, "You got the air dry," and say, "I give you delivery dates." And say, "You tell me how many loads you've got and I'll book you a month ahead." | 18:20 |
| Clarence Marable | And finally, we got on track and got us some invoices. And I sold lumber to Mr. John for, I believe, 12 years and I never saw him. You see, dealing in the lumber business, he don't know to this day that I was Black. I'd like to tell you two little incidents and then we get back to the agenda. | 19:06 |
| Clarence Marable | I had a— See it was a seven-month brother and one of the brothers always drove the truck and he kept the truck just immaculately clean. We had a little doctor come into Tuskegee. His name was— I can't remember what his name was now, but he told us one day— We would go to him and he said, "My dad would buy that lumber from y'all." | 19:40 |
| Clarence Marable | Says, "Call this number and take this lumber over there to Dad." So he sold in Shellman, Georgia. So now he doesn't tell his daddy that we Black. Anyway, now my brother always kept his truck just immaculately clean. So we get over there and the old lumber yard is real muddy. Before this, we had sold in seven, eight, or ten loads. So this White guy had to pull my brother and he hooked another truck to it. And when that truck in front started throwing mud on my brother's truck, Aaron stuck his head out the door and says, "Hey, don't throw all that mud on my truck. See my truck." This little White guy says, "He stopped me. Look." He pulled him on out. Said, "That's your truck?" He said, "Hell yeah, it's my truck. Don't throw mud on it." | 20:18 |
| Clarence Marable | The little guy went up to the office. So when my brother got in the office, the man asked him and said, "That is y'all's truck?" Said, "Yes, sir." Said, "Yes, my truck, my lumber." He did say it like that. Wrote him a check and said, "I don't need no more." | 21:36 |
| Clarence Marable | I'm going to tell you one better than that. I was selling to— Mr. John Simmons called me one day and says, "I'll tell you." Says, "I got a friend down Mississippi. Want to buy some lumber from you and says he wants some green lumber." Said, "I mostly buy dry." Said, "Call this number." He said, "He'll buy two, three loads from you." Said, "I just saw him up at the football game in Auburn." | 22:08 |
| Clarence Marable | So we called a guy. This is in Jackson, Mississippi. I can't remember his name or the company. Oh yeah, Brandon Lumber. We carried him four, five loads. He would send a check a few days later. Called me on the phone one day and said, "Mr. Marable, that is your good lumber." Said, "[indistinct 00:23:12]" Said, "Do you ever ride with your truck?" I said, "Yes, sir. I ride with my truck sometimes." Said, "Why don't you come down here sometime? I want to meet you." | 22:46 |
| Clarence Marable | Okay. I got in the truck and went down there with my brother. We go in the office. They got the lumber off the truck. And we told the secretary we wanted to see— I can't remember his name. Excuse me. He came out of the back office and we were sitting over there. | 23:26 |
| Clarence Marable | We weren't the worst dressed, but we looked like laborers. He said, "I thought you said there was somebody out here who wanted to see me." She said, "Yes. Those two guys right there." He turned as red as a coal of fire. Well, I believe she used the word say, "Yeah, Mr. Marable is here." Well, I told her— I said, "I'm Clemson Marable. I'm here with Marable Brother Lumber Company. I want to see Mr.—" whatever his name is. | 23:57 |
| Clarence Marable | So when he came out of the back office, he says, "I thought you said there was somebody here that wanted to see me." She said, "Yeah, Mr. Marable and them want to see." That guy didn't ask me in his office. He turned red. He ummed and he awed. And he done bragging about the lumber on the phone. He couldn't say nothing about it. He wanted to ask me, "Was I really what I want?" We had seen what was happening and I didn't want to embarrass him. So we cut the conversation short. We left. And the next day, I got a letter from him and said he didn't need any more lumber. | 24:31 |
| Clarence Marable | So now when you dealing in the system, I can't fight the system. So I got to coexist. And basically, that's what we did even until this day. | 25:21 |
| Paul Ortiz | Oh, really? Now did you see changes from say the fifties to the sixties, or seventies? | 25:41 |
| Clarence Marable | Yes. There were changes. There were changes. We stayed in the lumber business then. There were changes. And I don't think it would've made any difference with John Simmons whether I was Black or White. Now— | 25:47 |
| Paul Ortiz | John Simmons was the— | 26:06 |
| Clarence Marable | He was the guy in Bainbridge, Georgia. Okay. Now, Ryan Brothers, he knew I was Black. It didn't matter to him. He said, "You got a good product. I pay you the same thing I do anybody else. All I want you to do is keep cutting it just like you cut it." | 26:08 |
| Clarence Marable | So that's where we came to— Okay, now let me deviate now for just a minute. Okay. Now, we saw milling see and each one of us be at our own house here in Macon County. And the way we did it, we would cut the lumber at the sawmill and then here selling them. We come together and we would build each other a house, and then we would get a little financing. And one of the reasons that we stopped here is Macon County had a Black bank, Tuskegee Federal Savings and Loan. And that was really why we stopped here. We felt that if we came to Macon County, we would have a financial base and our children could go to Tuskegee Institute. It was the Institute at that time. | 26:25 |
| Clarence Marable | Okay. The first piece of land I bought here was a little small two acre track. This same guy that I bought the two acre track from, his name was W.C. Hare. He was a lawyer. So he had seven acres of land on Auburn Street. He wanted $9000 for it. Okay. At this time, we had decided that we were all going to move our families to Macon County. And we have— At that time, we all lived in a house. We would rent a house and all of us were living there, and we would just go home on the weekend, which meant that every night here, the seven of us would have a family meeting. | 27:45 |
| Clarence Marable | We would talk about what we going to do, and we decided that if we bought this seven acres of land and each one of us bought an acre, that would be $7000. And I had a sister; she wanted an acre and she had a daughter that wanted an acre. I saw where we could sell off nine acres and pay for the seven acres, but we didn't have that thousand dollars a piece. So I called my sister and she said, "Well, I'll put up a thousand dollars." | 28:58 |
| Clarence Marable | See, I went back to the guy then, Mr. Hare, and told him. I said, "I'll give you $9000 for the seven acres of land, but I can only pay you a thousand down and I pay you a thousand dollars a year, and each time I sell off an acre, I want you to release it." And he said he would. And I bought it. Borrowed a thousand from the system. Instead of paying her back, I just deeded her an acre of land. That was how I bought my first. And then each brother bought an acre and we would get together and build a house on there. We'd borrow a little money up there at Tuskegee Federal Savings and Loan. And we would get a loan in my name, and that would be my little house [indistinct 00:30:52]. | 29:45 |
| Paul Ortiz | Now, where was the sawmill located? | 30:53 |
| Clarence Marable | The sawmill, when I first moved it to Macon County, I moved to Brownville and then I moved it from Brownville to Auburn Street. | 30:56 |
| Paul Ortiz | And is it there now? | 31:18 |
| Clarence Marable | No, I sold it. I moved it to Auburn Street in '65. It stayed there. In 1971, I sold it. | 31:18 |
| Paul Ortiz | And when you first began in Macon County, how many trucks did you have? | 31:27 |
| Clarence Marable | Oh, I had two. Just two little old raggedy log trucks. | 31:33 |
| Paul Ortiz | Did you have people other than your brothers working for you? | 31:42 |
| Clarence Marable | Yes. I had approximately 15. | 31:45 |
| Paul Ortiz | And were they people that lived here locally? | 31:54 |
| Clarence Marable | No, when I first came here, I didn't hire any from Macon County the first year. So I imported all my labor from Randolph County due to the fact that we didn't work eight-hour shifts. We would work 12 hours a day and if I had hired someone from Macon County, he didn't want to work, but eight hours a day. In fact, I couldn't work him, but eight hours a day. But see if I brought them guys in from Randolph, they were away from home. They stayed in the camp. It didn't make too much difference with them whether they worked 12 hours, eight hours. They were away from home anyway. | 31:58 |
| Paul Ortiz | I see. | 32:42 |
| Clarence Marable | Yeah. | 32:43 |
| Paul Ortiz | Well, did you also have a sense that the people in Macon County weren't used to that kind of labor or— | 32:45 |
| Clarence Marable | They were not used to that kind of labor. The people that we were hiring from Macon County were mostly farm hands. Just farm hands. And it's a lot. You got to be skilled and then very skilled to work around a sawmill. In fact, the first guy that I hired from Macon County got his leg broke about the second week I hired him. And that was one reason that I always— Those guys out of Randolph were skilled in it. They knew it. And that's why I was very particular about hiring them here. | 32:52 |
| Paul Ortiz | Now, the kind of equipment you were using in terms of saws. | 33:40 |
| Clarence Marable | Okay, we had power saws, but we pulled our logs with mules and we had some old secondhand log trucks. Once I got here, I got me a new, what we call lumber truck. A truck to deal. See segregation— I guess you could— Well, certainly it would hold you back. But it's like my dad always said, "If you produce the product and there's a need for it, it doesn't matter whether you're Black or White." Certainly you should be paid. Yeah, our trucks were— But then we could work on them. We had one tear up. We would work on it all night. They would run next morning and if it wasn't just a motor job, but. | 33:47 |
| Paul Ortiz | Now, when you move Macon County in 1960— | 35:03 |
| Clarence Marable | 1960. | 35:03 |
| Paul Ortiz | Did you take part in social life, community life in Tuskegee? | 35:11 |
| Clarence Marable | No. No, I didn't. I didn't take part. I felt like I was an outsider and I believed that I was kind of looked upon as an outsider. I didn't really take part in the community affairs until really about 1970. I'd say '68, '69. As our kids begin to go to school then you start in the PTA. I remember telling a man— I won't call his name. He's a highly political figure now. When I bought this seven acres, I said, "I'm going to build me a city over here." He laughed at me. He is a high political figure now. He laughed at me. But I saw the need here and that need is greater today than it was 30 years ago when I came here, 34 years ago. And that need was entrepreneurship. All phases of entrepreneurship. | 35:18 |
| Paul Ortiz | Did you think that at the time, and maybe looking back on this as well as a successful entrepreneur, that the Institute was providing a climate for that kind of trajectory career-wise at the time? | 37:10 |
| Clarence Marable | No. As I sit here on this campus, my dad was in the hospital, about the only hospital of any recognition for Blacks. He was in a room right around that corner right there. To get just right to the root, Tuskegee, the information, the technology is not transferred from this institution to the community. It's bleak, it's a wall between the technology and the community. And I'm just only speaking from my little small world. They have a lot of great technology here, but it's not transferred to the community. | 37:37 |
| Clarence Marable | Now, bear in mind now, I talked about Mr. Shemper, who was a Tuskegee grad? | 38:53 |
| Paul Ortiz | Right. | 39:04 |
| Clarence Marable | And he really was a shaker and a mover in Randolph County, but I believe he was the last of a breed. In that era that he came along, I don't see that technology. Seemed like after the farming, I don't see that technology being transferred from the university to the community. I don't see it now and yet I see technology every day. On the campus here, there is a great need for it in the community, but somewhere there's a wall. It doesn't get out to the people. | 39:05 |
| Paul Ortiz | Now, you mentioned earlier that Jim would start taking hardened social life [indistinct 00:40:16] | 40:09 |
| Clarence Marable | Okay. About 1960. Okay. I had told a few people. I said, "We going to change the course of Tuskegee." And actually, we did. When I bought the seven acres and we built homeless for each one of us then the community came to us. One of the first people that came out and needed a house was Colonel Carter. Colonel Carter came out and as I stated before, I had given my sister an acre of land for the down payment, and then she came back and told me, "I'm getting ready to retire." Said, "I want you to build me a house." I cut the lumber down at the mail and built a nice little two-bath, three-bedroom house. | 40:19 |
| Paul Ortiz | Okay. | 41:08 |
| Clarence Marable | So I built this nice brick house, it's still over there, and it's finished and my sister is not going to move in until a year later. Colonel Carter says, "I got a Lieutenant Colonel coming here. I got to find him a house." Says, "I give you $150 a month for this house, guaranteed rent for the next three years." I called my sister. She said, "Let him have it." Says, "I ain't going to retire until 18 months from then." | 41:09 |
| Clarence Marable | Now, once I put the Colonel in there that gave me a little recognition. Then I began to take part in the little neighborhood meetings and [indistinct 00:42:16], joined the church, Holy Mount [indistinct 00:42:19]. | 41:55 |
| Paul Ortiz | Now, looking back at a very long and successful career, and then thinking back on your upbringing, what would've been the most important changes that you've seen or perhaps most important experiences that have stayed with you in forming your character? | 42:29 |
| Clarence Marable | Well, first of all, it was, entrepreneurship was instilled into us. Then, financial recognition. Now, that brought about the biggest change in my life. Financial, and what I mean by that is when I met Mr. Allen Parker, of course, we had our ups and downs, but when I could go into the bank and had financial recognition, that brought about the biggest change in my life. When I go in the bank up at [indistinct 00:44:02] and Mr. Frank Plummer, president of First Alabama Bank, just stroke of the pen says, "Mr. Marable, I believe you are worthy of $450,000 line of credit." | 43:03 |
| Clarence Marable | And just a stroke of the pen. Said, "I'll tell the boys down there. Let you have a— We just going to go ahead and set you up a line of credit of $450,000." Then was the— And that happened maybe in about '72. That was as soon as I realized the American dream and when I don't have to go in and fill out a mortgage and a note and all that. And say along in '74, '75, I go in the bank and Mr. Parker, I call him on the phone and tell him I need $50,000, I need $100,000. | 44:19 |
| Clarence Marable | He said, "Go ahead and write the check and come in next week and sign the check. Sign the mortgage." That is when it had been the motivational factor in my life. The other thing is— Now I'm in home building now. Is when I'd like to tell this story about this one family. I've— | 45:06 |
| Paul Ortiz | Let me turn the tape. | 45:43 |
| Clarence Marable | Now, bear in mind I sold a mill in 1972. Now the reason I sold a mill, I'll get to that story in a minute, you see, I saw the timber coming to an end. Now what I mean by that, MacMillan Bloedel moved down to Pine Hill Union Camp, would put all the big timber companies coming into the South and this is the beginning. They've been buying land here since in the '20s, but the mill, they started building the mills here in the '60s and '70s, Georgia-Pacific Union Camp. | 0:04 |
| Clarence Marable | And this is what they would do to me. Okay, I go out and look at a truck of timber. Now, I got to be right, I can't miss like he can. What I mean by that, if I say it's $10,000 worth of timber there, it's there. Now they know that, they done sit back and watched me. So what they would do, they tell the landowner, the landowner would say, "Well, I got somebody else that want to see it." Well, they put that nose [indistinct 00:01:55], Bucks County Lumber Company. They tell them, say, "Well, when they look at it you just call them and tell me what it was, now. I'll see." Well, the landowner call them. My brother said, "They'll give me $10,000 for it. Well, I'll give 11." | 1:11 |
| Clarence Marable | I knew then it was time for me to get out. When the Colonel came out and bought and rented this house, then the doctors, the nurses began to come out and want houses. And then I seen it was time for me to change home. And when I first started building houses, that's what I built for, nurses, doctors, lawyers, professors. Now I get to the story that I was about to tell of what really gives me satisfaction. This little lady walked in my— Well, first of all a 60-year-old man walked in, 62 years old, and the wife was 60, who had never had indoor plumbing. | 2:13 |
| Clarence Marable | And I built that gentleman a house. I believe he's still living in it today and that's been 30 years ago now. But it's that type of thing that gives me satisfaction. The little lady came in my office one time with six kids, four boys and two girls. She was a LPN out the VA and I looked at them and they were living in this house. The kitchen didn't even have a floor in it, this is in '70. I built them a house, she had kept that house magnificent in that time. Boys went on to be policemen, one is as a security guard, one is in service, the girl is a nurse. The mother, her yard is immaculate care. She's retired now. That gives me satisfaction too. Yeah. | 3:29 |
| Paul Ortiz | Are there any other particular memories that you have that you, looking back on that period of time, of segregation that still strike you today, still think about? | 4:47 |
| Clarence Marable | Well now that you come out into just a— I only enjoy just a portion of America. Yeah. I'll tell you in that segregation era, I stayed in my place. Now what was my place? I knew if I had to go to the back door to get my check, I just go on back there and get my check. Now, I never skin and grin to the man. Now, you probably don't know what skinning and grinning mean. I never skin and grin to any and I always, whatever I was, that's what I was when I went to him. No, I never was an Uncle Tom, I didn't carry no message. | 5:13 |
| Clarence Marable | And I didn't bring back a message. Like I say, I stayed within the system. I knew that I was, as they say back then I was Colored and he thought that I was Colored. But I really knew what I was, I knew it was just a matter of time with me. Just like when I left school, I knew school was not for me. That was it, it just wasn't for me. Because my family needed a bathroom. They didn't need it four years later. They needed it then. I had brought, my sister needed shoes. They didn't need them four years later. That may not have been the right thing. | 6:18 |
| Clarence Marable | I educated myself into the system and I knew that I would never reach that system through the system's education. My dad always told me that there was another way and that's what he instilled us into, entrepreneurship. And then, I like to use the word "finesse". There's a certain way you do business. Yeah. So I couldn't say that there were, oh yeah, they were little incidents. I called them little incidents. Oh, the Sheriff told me one time, I was a little boy and I had some steel jackets. You know what a steel jacket is? It's a steel ball. No, it's about an inch in diameter. | 7:20 |
| Paul Ortiz | Like a bearing? | 8:20 |
| Clarence Marable | Yeah, a ball bearing. That's a steel bearing. I had two of them in my pocket and I was taking some money out of my pocket in the store. And these steel ball bearings fell out on the floor and I'm picking them up and old Sheriff in the store there, he said, "Boy, what's that you got?" I said, "It's some steel jackets." He said, "Give me them damn steel jackets. I'm going to blow me a hole in them, put a string in them and whoop down niggers in the head with them. Give them to me." Took my steel jacket. Yeah, now that's him. Now, I could just tell you some of them all day long. But that didn't stop me. You see, I would reverse it. I knew, and my dad say he was the damn fool, not me. | 8:20 |
| Paul Ortiz | So your dad would give you support. | 9:18 |
| Clarence Marable | Yeah, that's right. Yeah. He said— I went back and told my dad and he said, "Well, he's the damn fool, not you." Said, "Don't worry about it." Well, there's truth in that, you know. | 9:20 |
| Paul Ortiz | So your dad, earlier you said that your dad felt it was his duty to teach the kids about the rules, but at the same time he understood the injustice of the system. | 9:34 |
| Clarence Marable | Oh, yes. Yeah, he understood the injustice, but he knew it was bigger than him. And why should you go out there and they come in and burn you out. And so his main thing was if you know who you is and you become an entrepreneur and as long as you know what you doing. Now what I mean by that is if you ply, then you know, you ply for yourself. And see, this is one reason we— He told this man, says, "I'm going to have to buy this place." Because see, I had two older brothers, they done made it up. | 9:53 |
| Clarence Marable | No, they was certain to have killed that man, put him in the creek. They had talked about killing him and putting him in the creek and Dad knew it. I didn't want to bring out all that, but my two older brothers said— Old man couldn't hear and I got a picture [indistinct 00:11:21] he couldn't hear and my two older brothers said, "Hell, he can't hear, let's catch him and put him in that damn creek." Saying that'll be the end of him. | 11:01 |
| Clarence Marable | But you know these little lies, well, it's a terrible tragedy but you don't let that stop you. You move on. But Macon county it's— I came here, I borrowed $2000, I borrowed it up in Randolph. Another little incident I would like to tell y'all is, you see, we started off with Mr. Phillips and then I built my house, me and another of my brothers built our house over in Clay County. And the way we would build these houses, we would first go out and we were cutting up lumber to saw mill. You see what I mean? And then we build the house, we would get it up, maybe get the roof on it. Then I would take it, go down and talk to the banker. | 11:38 |
| Clarence Marable | This is my first house, I'm going to just show you how the system would work, it would work against you and it'd work for you. I walked in this hardware store in Lineville, Alabama. I was building my first house for myself. And I began to buy a little lumber and cement and whatnot from this hardware store. And I was making my business to always talk to the owner of that store. His name was Mr. Smith, John William Smith. His son's a MD up in there. So one day Mr. Smith came out to where I was building my house, came driving up in this big black Cadillac. Typical Southerner with his white hair, said, "Boy, you building a nice house here." I said, "Yes." He said, "I want money to use this stuff [indistinct 00:14:13] material. I said, "Mr. Smith, I'd like for you to furnish it to me, but I don't have the money and I need about $3000 in work material." This is in 1959. | 13:01 |
| Clarence Marable | He's all, "Come on down there to the hardware, my first cousin owns the bank. Well, you own this lot?" I said, "Yes sir." "Let's come on down there and get what you want. I'll call my first cousin up at the bank in Hilder. We'll let you have the money." Two weeks later, I'm down there in the store. "You need to go on up and talk to my cousin, Mr. Cotton, up there. He waiting on you." You see, I'm seeing the system. I go up, introduce myself to Mr. Cotton. He said, "Oh, yeah. John William told me about you." Says, "I know your daddy-in-law and so Fannie Mae used to cook for me." | 14:28 |
| Paul Ortiz | Your mother? | 15:20 |
| Clarence Marable | My wife's mother. | 15:22 |
| Paul Ortiz | Your wife's mother. | 15:22 |
| Clarence Marable | Said, "I know your wife's daddy." He said, "Tell you what, just come on and get what you want. But tell your wife's daddy to come up and sign a note." My wife's daddy worked on the railroad. He made a dollar album. So this is the system at work, you see what I mean? So if you knew how to work in that system, you know it ain't too much different today. So that was the story of my first house. So the hardware man introduced me to the banker and so I borrowed the money, paid it back. | 15:26 |
| Clarence Marable | Now Mr. Parker, Mr. Phillip was my daddy's banker. He called Mr.— Well, they know each other anyway. They just 12 miles apart. Mr. Conley called Mr. Phillip. And he'd say, "Yeah, them boys is okay. I knew their daddy and all that stuff." I get down here, now I'm dealing with Mr. Allen Parker. Mr. Allen Parker, they all blown. He called Mr. Phillips and Mr. Conley even sent me a letter of recommendation. So see, even though it was segregated, I went within that system. You got to tap into the system. I couldn't— | 16:10 |
| Clarence Marable | Yeah, there was a cloud of segregation hanging over me, but I dealt with what I had to deal with. I didn't let it stop me. You hear a lot of people— Now, I remember when Autherine Lucy, first they having that big uproar at the University of Alabama. I drove up on the lumber yard in Lineville, Alabama. This old guy come down there and smacked my truck dome and said, "Mamma." They didn't call me "Mamma", called me "Momma". Said, "What do you think about old Autherine Lucy over there at the University of Alabama?" | 16:59 |
| Clarence Marable | Just looking at me and the eyes were jumping. I said, "I don't know nothing about it. What you talking about?" "You didn't know nothing about Autherine? "I said, "No, I don't even know." Well, did I tell him a lie? Did I deny my heritage or did I deal with the system? "I didn't know nothing about it", I knew all about it. I go in and pick up my check and here's Mr. Matt Hooden. He want to talk about it and I don't know nothing. "You mean you don't—" I said, "I ain't reading no newspaper." Did I deny myself or did I just keep silent? See, it was no point in me. I felt like I had to deal with what I could deal with within the system and what I had to deal with. | 17:46 |
| Clarence Marable | When I got to sit there, I'd wait for Mr. Hooden, all of those, some 10 or 12, I go to pick up my check on Saturday. I'm the only Black in there and this is what they talking about. They talking and watching me. I don't never look up at them, nothing. I get nothing. You don't read the newspaper, get you a funny book. And I don't know nothing about it, they talking loud. See, they be talking and seeing what I'm going to say. Well, I can't fight all of that. Now, the question is I had to do what I had to do. So yeah, there plenty of incidents, but I had to tune it out because I had a mission. I had a mission on hand and nothing deviated me from that mission. We just talked about everything, but I guess that's what the hell that was about. But in 1972, there were three White ladies killed in this town in one night. All right. Now, yeah, I hate it. And the next day, there was a White man named Mr. Crab. | 18:59 |
| Clarence Marable | Heddy Crab had 450 something odd acres of land right across the street from this 70 acres that I bought. He was out feeding his cow that morning and I'm over there just right across the road from him. And so I'd always go and talk to him, so he told me about this great tragedy. I know it all about it. And he says, "I'm getting ready to leave here." So I rushed back to the house and I say, "Mr. Crab, say he getting ready to leave here, let's go buy his land." So next day, he's out feeding his cow. And I said, "Mr. Crab, why don't you come over and look at some of these houses I'm building? I'm building a couple little houses over there." | 20:37 |
| Clarence Marable | He said, "Yeah. I sure wish I had a house at [indistinct 00:21:46] because I got an adopted son over there in North [indistinct 00:21:48] and my wife is locked up in the house and she just scared to death." See, you see a scrap with white and he was in his 70s, wife was about 72. So anyway, I started negotiating with him. Three weeks later, he sold me 450 acres of land, 150 cows, two tractors, all the tools go with them, and financed it. $65,000, nothing down at 5% interest. | 21:42 |
| Clarence Marable | The record is laying down in the courthouse now. Well, and then he gave me a tenant with him. He said, "I'll tell you what. I'll let you have this place for that, but I want you to give Buddy a job." Buddy's been with him 20 years and he's been with me now 25 years. I still got Buddy, but it was tenant farmer. Stayed with Mr. Crab 25 years, yes, he'd been with me about 25 years. So in a way, I bought the place and then I say, "Now, what you going to do at your house, Mr. Crab?" | 22:41 |
| Clarence Marable | He said. "I want to swap this house to you for a new house in North [indistinct 00:23:31]. I said, "All right, that's a deal." So yeah, there's segregation out there, they're a system out there. But I dealt with it, I dealt with it. And when I bought the Tuscika Lumber company, I bought it from Mr. Olson. I went in there one day. He was a good fellow, but I would say he was a strict segregationist. But if you would work and pay your bill, it didn't matter with Mr. Olson whether you was— Didn't matter what color you were, he would tell it just like it is. I walked in there one day and I was beginning, this is '70, I'm building quite a few houses. | 23:21 |
| Clarence Marable | I sold my mill and I'm building quite a few houses, had an account there. And he says, "Instead of this being my business," said, "this ought to be you brother's business." I said, "You mean that?" He said, "Yeah." Said, "My wife is tired." He's done about 70 years old. He said, "My wife is sick", because she's still living today and he dead. And I went back down there and negotiated, talked to him and I gave him, he said, "I want $100,000." And so he paid me 20,000 down and I'd finance the rest. Well, he had about $100,000 worth of inventory, but he was worn out. So that's how I bought the hardware. | 24:55 |
| Paul Ortiz | And you still, is that store still in existence? | 26:04 |
| Clarence Marable | The building is still there, but we not running. Then again, you reach the end of an era when Walmart come in and they can sell. Lowe's. So we knew it was time to get out. I tell you another incident that happened. When I bought the hardware, I had a line of credit. I still got a line of credit with Morton Henley and I used to go to the show at Morton Henley, they have a trade show. Morton Henley, they sell everything from a broom to doors, windows, it's general hardware. I'd be the only Black there, but I'd be the only man that would buy five trailer truck loads of roofing, trailer truck load of windows. Then they don't matter whether you Black or White when you do that. Anyway, my check is good. | 26:07 |
| Clarence Marable | Yeah, but this might not be the right thing to say, but segregation, I got mad. It made me mad and I fought my way out, not fighting him but I fight the system from within with what I had to fight it with, you see. And that was just more or less knowledge and skillfulness on trading. Yeah, you hold me down one way but I guarantee you I'll beat you trading. I guarantee you I beat you. I don't mean— So I go out there to buy a piece of timber, I take him with me and I don't process to timber. The land and stuff that I bought here, three months before Mr. Olson died, I bought a tractor from him. | 27:20 |
| Clarence Marable | Hey, you know what he said when I went down to buy a tractor? He says, "I got the old tractor out there now, look at it." I think about what he's told me. So my brother got up on the tractor and we were trying it out. He's 91 years old, man. He said, "That's the first Black man ever been in that seat. See, that's the first, ain't a Black man never been in that seat." I said, "I'm going to make you pay for that." I said, "I'm going to make you pay for that." I just said that. Yeah. I said, "Mr, Olson, what you want for this tractor?" And he told me. So he paid, I don't want it. | 28:38 |
| Paul Ortiz | So he undersold himself. | 29:37 |
| Clarence Marable | Yeah. | 29:37 |
| Paul Ortiz | Okay. Did that happen in the '70s or '80s? | 29:37 |
| Clarence Marable | No, that just happened last year, that just happened last year. He just died about six months ago. So it is still out there. But I deal with with it. | 29:47 |
| Paul Ortiz | Now, I've taken entirely too much of your time. I learned so much, but now I have one more question. | 30:00 |
| Clarence Marable | Yeah. Okay. | 30:07 |
| Paul Ortiz | If you will, you talked earlier about the system where you would go out and this was when you were going to Christ Timber. | 30:07 |
| Clarence Marable | Right. | 30:21 |
| Paul Ortiz | And you said that it was against the rules for a Black person to name the price. | 30:21 |
| Clarence Marable | That's right. | 30:28 |
| Paul Ortiz | You would wait until the White person named the price. | 30:28 |
| Clarence Marable | That's right. | 30:30 |
| Paul Ortiz | And yet you were sure enough to be able to get the White person to undersell. Now what kind of technique—? | 30:32 |
| Clarence Marable | Okay, here you see, I knew that him being a farmer, he don't know the price of timber. | 30:43 |
| Paul Ortiz | Oh. | 30:52 |
| Clarence Marable | He think he do. He think he know the price. And now, at this time, I have maneuvered and I'm selling lumber to the great people down in Florida and they's calling for this low grade timber. And that's what he's got. See, I pretty well— See, up until the '90s, the stock market didn't even carry the price of lumber. It was one of the most ripped off things ever was, even I'd say up until five years ago. You just didn't know what the lumber price was. They come out there in the Wall Street Journal. | 30:52 |
| Clarence Marable | But you can check the record and that's six, seven years ago. I pretty well I knew, and he didn't know. Okay, see he understood pine but he didn't understand hardwood. See, hardwood was a nuisance term. He had his eyes on that pine and I would go in and I'd tell him I want to buy his hardwood. And so we would buy the hardwood and then he would want a big prize for his pine. I'd take the hardwood and make up for it, you see. That it would— He didn't know. But he didn't know he didn't know. | 31:39 |
| Paul Ortiz | Okay. | 32:28 |
| Clarence Marable | Yeah. That how that went. | 32:29 |
| Paul Ortiz | But what if he somehow lucked out and overpriced? What would be your next move? | 32:31 |
| Clarence Marable | Okay, my next move was then, I can't make you an offer. I'm so much lower. I'd just go to the next man. | 32:40 |
| Paul Ortiz | Okay. | 32:50 |
| Clarence Marable | I'd go to the next man and, of course, I wouldn't know then whether it was overpriced or not. Now if he came in with a fair market price, I'll deal with him and I never bought from a White on about $1000, I'd always paying cash and most, 90% of all the Blacks I'd pay in cash. Let me go back to a little incident that happened. When I came out of service in '55, my brothers had alleged cut some timber over a line on this big White man, cut over on this big White man's place. | 32:51 |
| Clarence Marable | And he sued us for $500 and I went to a lawyer. This lawyer that I went to was a Sapiro. He had that reputation in Randolph County. And he told me, he said, Malcolm says— He asked me some questions. He said, "Who saw you cut the timber?" I said, "I didn't even cut the timber." I said, "My brother said they cut it." He said, "Well, who saw them cut it?" I said, "Nobody." I said "The timber was cut 18 months ago." | 33:47 |
| Clarence Marable | He said, I take your case for $25 and I ain't never lost a case in Randolph County and I ain't going to lose your case, so I'll take it for $25 and I ain't going to lose it. So I went back and told my brothers. I said, "We can win the case but I don't want to win it. We would be winning the case for one of the richest men in Randolph County. Sam Wilder." And I say, "I would rather give him the $500 because he going to cut me off at the bank." He going to stop me. So I paid him that $500, but I told him in my mind, "You going to pay." | 34:34 |
| Clarence Marable | And folds over, he paid. See, that's dealing with the system. I knew man could have won a case because he told me, he said, "Nobody saw you cut the timber. How they know you cut it?" He said, "I'll win this case", but I didn't want to pay it, I didn't want to beat that man. I didn't want to beat him. See, I would've lost too much. You got a deal in that system. Yeah, there are plenty incidents, but that was the way my dad taught us to deal with this system and Mr. Wilder, I even sold him lumber. | 35:37 |
| Paul Ortiz | After that? | 36:26 |
| Clarence Marable | After that, several years. Oh, six months later I go in his office and you see, now, I'm the great Christian now. It's out of my heart and then it's out of his heart when he started buying my lumber back, you see? And so, I didn't hold no vendetta against him because I know I had to deal within that system. So anyway, that's how I feel. | 36:27 |
Item Info
Related Items
The preservation of the Duke University Libraries Digital Collections and the Duke Digital Repository programs are supported in part by the Lowell and Eileen Aptman Digital Preservation Fund