Marjorie Pajeaud (primary interviewee) and Jessie Mouton interview recording, 1994 June 23

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Felix Armfield	It is June 23rd, 1994. My name is Felix Armfield and I am doing the interviewing. I'm at the home of Miss Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud. We're in the company of Miss Jessie Laurence Mouton. Basically, we're going to sit around and we're going to have a conversation with the two of them as they share their experiences here in New Orleans coming up in Jim Crow.	0:00
Felix Armfield	The interesting thing about Mrs. Pajeaud and Mouton is that they have been lifelong friends. They even were schoolmates. I think that you're going to get a chance to hear about that in just a moment. Would you state your full name?	0:31
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Just speak in here? My name is Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud.	0:47
Felix Armfield	Would you state your name?	1:01
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	My name is Mrs. Jessie Lawrence Mouton.	1:03
Felix Armfield	Okay. Miss Pajeaud, would you just sort of tell me how long you've been in New Orleans and if New Orleans has always been home for you?	1:14
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	I have been living in New Orleans all of my life. I was born in New Orleans and—tell my age?	1:22
Felix Armfield	Mm-hmm.	1:36
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	And I was born November the 11th, 1919.	1:36
Felix Armfield	Okay. Right here in New Orleans.	1:42
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Right here in New Orleans. My parents also were born here in New Orleans.	1:47
Felix Armfield	Okay. Okay. Miss Mouton, what about you?	1:54
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	I was born in New Orleans but my parents were both from Pointcoupee Parish in Louisiana.	1:56
Felix Armfield	That [indistinct 00:02:04] that you told me about a while ago? P-O—	2:04
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	P-O-I-N.	2:05
Felix Armfield	I-N-T-C-O.	2:07
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	C-O-U.	2:11
Felix Armfield	C-O-U.	2:13
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	P-E-E.	2:14
Felix Armfield	E-E. Pointcoupee.	2:15
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	Mm-hmm.	2:15
Felix Armfield	Okay. You were born here in New Orleans you said?	2:18
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	I was born here in New Orleans.	2:22
Felix Armfield	When were you born?	2:25
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	June 27th, 1920. My birthday is Monday.	2:27
Felix Armfield	We got a birthday coming up. Okay.	2:41
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Do you have one of these on you?	2:41
Felix Armfield	No. No. This is picking us up right here.	2:41
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Oh, I see.	2:41
Felix Armfield	How long have the two of you been friends?	2:44
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	We have been friends since the end of the first grade, and I imagine we were five or six years old at the time.	2:47
Felix Armfield	Okay.	2:57
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	We were in every grade together in the same room.	2:59
Felix Armfield	Really?	3:06
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	From first grade all the way through high school.	3:06
Felix Armfield	Really?	3:09
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	We graduated together in 1936.	3:09
Felix Armfield	Graduated high school in 1936?	3:15
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	From high school. 1936.	3:16
Felix Armfield	Where did you graduate high school?	3:18
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	From McDonogh 35.	3:19
Felix Armfield	McDonogh 35. I've heard of this McDonogh 35.	3:24
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	The only Black high school, public, in the city of New Orleans.	3:24
Felix Armfield	Now when you say public, what are you trying to differentiate?	3:31
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	There were other high schools but they were not public high schools.	3:35
Felix Armfield	Okay. Other Black high schools?	3:39
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Paid by taxpayers.	3:41
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	They were Black. One was by Methodists and other religious—	3:42
Felix Armfield	Sectors.	3:46
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	Yes.	3:47
Felix Armfield	Within the city.	3:48
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	The other—Both of them were religious. One was Catholic and the others were by the Methodist congregation religion.	3:48
Felix Armfield	You all attended the only Black public—	3:57
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	The only Black public school in the city of New Orleans.	3:58
Felix Armfield	How do you suppose you didn't go to one of those?	4:03
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Well, our parents just sent us to public schools.	4:07
Felix Armfield	Okay.	4:11
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	And public school is the school system that is funded from the taxpayers monies.	4:11
Felix Armfield	Okay but did you both grow up Catholic?	4:18
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Yes. We were Catholic.	4:24
Felix Armfield	And you didn't go to none of the public—	4:27
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	No. I don't know why.	4:28
Felix Armfield	—or Catholic high schools.	4:29
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	The Catholic high schools—	4:29
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	We did not.	4:29
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	I went to the public school, because of my parents—They were unable to send us anyplace else. They didn't have they money.	4:35
Felix Armfield	Okay. Okay. Now what end of town—Where were you born here in the city of New Orleans? Where did you grow up?	4:43
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	In the Treme, the section of New Orleans that's called the Treme, T-R-E-M-E.	4:50
Felix Armfield	Okay. Over in the Treme section.	4:56
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	Yes.	4:57
Felix Armfield	Now—	4:57
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	Our school was McDonogh, O-G-H.	4:58
Felix Armfield	O-G-H.	5:06
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Adapted—adapted—	5:06
Felix Armfield	D-O-N.	5:07
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	O-G-H.	5:10
Felix Armfield	Oh. Okay. I'm glad you corrected that spelling.	5:12
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	McDonogh.	5:15
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Jessie, since you're not hooked up, would you mind go stirring my red beans for me, please. (all laugh)	5:16
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	You see, this is where we—she knows I don't like the food hot—	5:20
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	This is where we fuss.	5:27
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	Yeah.	5:27
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	This is where we fuss. (all laughing)	5:27
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	No, this is—I'm sorry, [indistinct 00:05:30] get me to cook. (all laughing)	5:27
Felix Armfield	Mrs. Pajeaud.	5:27
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Pajeaud.	5:27
Felix Armfield	Pajeaud. Where did you grow up here in the city of New Orleans?	5:36
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	In the same area as she did.	5:44
Felix Armfield	In the Treme?	5:46
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	In the Treme.	5:48
Felix Armfield	Treme?	5:48
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	You know where the Lafitte project is located?	5:48
Felix Armfield	What project is that?	5:51
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Lafitte.	5:52
Felix Armfield	Lafitte. Spell Lafitte.	5:52
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	You want me to pile that high under the pot?	5:52
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Yeah. That's okay. L-A-F-I-T-T-E.	5:58
Felix Armfield	T-T-E. Lafitte. Okay.	6:02
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	It's the Lafitte project. There were houses there where the project is now and that's where I was born and lived.	6:05
Felix Armfield	Okay. Okay. How many brothers and sisters did you have?	6:18
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	None.	6:20
Felix Armfield	None? You were an only child?	6:21
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Only child.	6:21
Felix Armfield	[indistinct 00:06:24]?	6:21
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Mm-hmm.	6:21
Felix Armfield	What kinds of things did your parents do for a living?	6:25
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	My mother was a homemaker and my father was a racehorse man. (laughs)	6:28
Felix Armfield	A racehorse man? That's interesting. That is so interesting. Your father was a racehorse man.	6:31
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Yes. Yeah. He fooled with the horses.	6:42
Felix Armfield	Really?	6:46
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Yeah.	6:47
Felix Armfield	He obviously made a living from it.	6:47
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Yeah. Yeah. He did very well. He did very well. He did very, very well.	6:48
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	We aren't picky and choosy. My father was a mattress maker. He worked in a factory for many years.	6:55
Felix Armfield	Really?	7:01
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	In fact all these Black—	7:01
Felix Armfield	There was a mattress industry here in New Orleans?	7:03
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	Yes. Southern Mattress Company. It was at one time the only, and then there was another one that—	7:06
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	There was a Black one, wasn't there?	7:11
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	No. Mr. Reed was the Black one.	7:13
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Yeah. Mr. Reed.	7:15
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	Mr. Reed worked with my father at one time but then he went into his own business.	7:17
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	His own business.	7:19
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	He wanted my father to go but his business wasn't doing so hot, and Father's contentions was that he had five children to feed. He wouldn't take the chances and so he stayed. My brother also worked at Southern Mattress Company. My father worked there for 40 years.	7:22
Felix Armfield	What did your—	7:36
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	—for 40 years.	7:36
Felix Armfield	What did your mother do?	7:41
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	My mother was a house—	7:42
Felix Armfield	Was a homemaker?	7:45
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	A homemaker. A housekeeper, if you want to call her that.	7:45
Felix Armfield	Housewife?	7:47
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	Yes. She worked one day a week out. You know, as a maid.	7:51
Felix Armfield	She did domestic work outside?	7:54
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	Outside.	7:54
Felix Armfield	Now where did she go to do that work one day a week?	7:54
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	Back of Dumaine Street for some of our richest people. Dumaine and that's by St. John.	7:55
Felix Armfield	Now was this a White neighborhood, Dumaine? (phone rings)	8:07
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	Positively. Yes. All he could give us was a decent place to stay, and something to eat. That was very important.	8:14
Felix Armfield	Now Mrs. Mouton, you're talking about your father?	8:28
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	My father.	8:29
Felix Armfield	Okay. Okay.	8:32
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	He paid high rent through all calibers.	8:32
Felix Armfield	Mm-hmm.	8:37
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	So that we wouldn't be sleeping all in one room.	8:37
Felix Armfield	Really?	8:40
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	That's right.	8:40
Felix Armfield	This was over in the Treme area?	8:40
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	That's right.	8:40
Felix Armfield	Really?	8:40
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	We lived right in front of the school that we attended.	8:46
Felix Armfield	McDonogh?	8:53
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	No, no. As children, we went to Craig School, Joseph A. Craig School.	8:53
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Tell me what.	8:55
Felix Armfield	Okay. Okay.	9:02
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	Craig was on St. Philip, it still is.	9:04
Felix Armfield	Okay. Okay.	9:06
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	That school was built before we started school.	9:10
Felix Armfield	That school has been around almost a hundred years.	9:17
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	'20 something, something like that. We had first grade in another school, and then the next year we went to Craig School. It was a brand new school.	9:20
Felix Armfield	Really? Then you went to first grade. Was it like a one room school or something?	9:29
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Did you tell him that? Did you tell him that? So he's—he means he's making those lies up on you? Yeah—	9:33
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	No. Indeed, it's a whole block school. A half of a square.	9:33
Felix Armfield	No, not Craig, but the school that you went to before you went to Craig.	9:38
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	No, Craig is the only elementary school that I entered.	9:42
Felix Armfield	Ah, okay. Okay.	9:45
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	We entered Craig and it was the first—Really one of the first newer schools, brand new schools that Blacks had here. If we had any other, I don't know of it.	9:45
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Would you have a man—and not to be emotional about it but, woman! I mean—	9:56
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	Craig was a brand new school when we went, because I remembered how Mama used to say, "Don't put your hands on the wall and dirty the wall, because that's a brand new school." You know? Keep it clean. This was just a part of that, because I don't ever remember being real dirty. You just have to know families to know why things go on as they do in the house. I was brought up in that kind of family. My mother washed every day.	9:56
Felix Armfield	Really?	10:30
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	Really, so that we could go and hang our clothes on the line in the yard, so that we could go to school clean every day. The teachers would comment on the fact that we were always nice and clean.	10:32
Felix Armfield	Really?	10:46
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	This has been something that we hand down, because I did the same thing with my two children. Both of them went to elementary public schools but when they began to get to high school, they both went to Catholic.	10:47
Felix Armfield	Okay.	11:05
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	You see, I was more in a position to pay tuition than my parents were, because the first time I went to college, right after high school, I did the first year but the next year—It was a struggle that first year. I had to stop for financial reasons. See, she taught longer than I did, because she went on through college, but I was out of college 20 years before I went back. I did better than a lot of the youngsters and I had two small children, two and four years old, and a husband giving me a hard road to travel.	11:06
Felix Armfield	Really?	11:49
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	That's right.	11:49
Felix Armfield	And you persevered.	11:49
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	I persevered. I was determined, I had to be—I had done housework, domestic, when I first came out of school. I knew that this wasn't what I wanted to do all my life. I really didn't like to be. It just happened that the people I worked for were so very kind to me. You know, in many ways. I worked there four years and the war broke out. Four years and the war broke out.	11:50
Felix Armfield	This was what war?	12:25
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	World War Two. The jobs were opening up everywhere. And when I applied—	12:29
Felix Armfield	With the war opening up?	12:35
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	Yeah. The war. When I applied for a job in the war industry, at that time, they were giving most of the jobs to the White girls in the daytime, but I passed examination and everything that they gave but they wanted me to work from 12 o'clock at night until early morning and my father could not see that, no more than he could see my mother going to work and leaving five children in the house.	12:36
Felix Armfield	Okay. Okay.	13:02
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	He said to me, I wasn't outdoors and I wasn't hungry, so I didn't work, I didn't take that job. I took another job working in a sewing factory and I worked there, all in all, for about 10 years. This is when I made up my mind that this wasn't what I wanted to do either. That was hard, strenuous—That was a very nerve-wracking job because you just work, work, work. The salary wasn't what I had thought it should be. I needed a job. As one woman said, "Why are you working here? You've been to college", "Because I need a job." The children now don't want a job and the man didn't pay but 15 cents an hour.	13:04
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	That was a very low-paying job. Like I said, I guess you have to know what you want to do with your life. Some of them don't know. My father used to use an expression about you must want something in life, even if it's just a new pair of shoes, and I could never—I used to say, "Why do you always tell us that?" You have to want something bad enough to work for it. That's all it meant but I didn't understand that but I understood it afterwards, later.	13:53
Felix Armfield	Yeah.	14:35
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	Like I said, we were poor but we had loving parents, and I say my children—so my father, but my mother had died before my children, because I was expecting my son when my mother died. My children have experienced the love of family life. You know? With the rest of my sisters at the time. I lost the last sister three years ago. I'm the only living one now.	14:35
Felix Armfield	Okay.	15:03
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	Of my mother's children.	15:03
Felix Armfield	Now what was life like there in the home amongst you and your brothers and sisters?	15:09
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	Loving, because you didn't get mad and say, "I am not saying anything to you." You had to get the Bible. Anything you did, that's why I say we got a lying—you told a lie, you had to get the Bible and say tell the truth and shame the devel.	15:15
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	I'm sorry, that was my daughter. Her daughter had an accident. It's not serious, though.	15:31
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	Who?	15:35
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Dominique. She slid into a bump up on the [indistinct 00:15:37]. She slid into a lady's car but Daphne said the damage is not even—In other words—	15:37
Felix Armfield	Miss—	15:48
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Pajeaud.	15:48
Felix Armfield	Pajeaud. Miss Pajeaud is now joining us back in our conversation. We've just been speaking with Miss Mouton and she was telling me a little bit about what she was doing and the kinds of things that her parents did. What do you recall your parents doing? Do you have any memories of your father?	15:54
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Oh, yes.	16:11
Felix Armfield	Horse race man?	16:12
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Oh, yeah, because my father and mother were married 54 years when my father died.	16:13
Felix Armfield	Long time to be with someone.	16:23
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Yes. A really long time. I was very close to my father. In fact, my father was much more lenient with me than my mother. When my mother told me no about something, I'd go ask my father.	16:24
Felix Armfield	Used to play for kicks—	16:35
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Yeah.	16:36
Felix Armfield	With an only child and [indistinct 00:16:39].	16:38
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Yeah. Right. Right. Right.	16:39
Felix Armfield	Really?	16:41
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Perhaps you would like to know something about the economics and how they lived, because I really thought that was a good way of doing things. My father would put the money on the dresser for my mother to run the house with, and then he would give her money for herself. Like an allowance or something.	16:45
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	If she wanted something for the house like a new stove, or something like that, he would give her the money to buy it and whatnot. To me, that was a good way, because the woman didn't have to worry like I did. In my marriage, I took care of everything. My husband wouldn't know whether I got a new stove or a new anything. (laughs) He'd give all the money and I had to—If I spent all the money in one day, that was it. He didn't care what you had. You know? Whatnot or whatever you want. I kind of liked the way my father did things. Then he would give me money for myself, like 25 cents, which was a good deal during that time and whatnot.	17:16
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	She got a lot of money when she was coming up, being an only child.	18:10
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Yeah. An only child.	18:12
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	I used to come in on a Saturday and put the money on the table and then with all us hanging around the table, and I remember that very well and my mama is sitting there and they would put so much out for the rent, because they paid rent every week to this man, who was our landlord. Then you put money on the side for the groceries, for the rest of the week, and then you put—Then he had his car fare to get to work, and he was a heavy smoker, so he had to have some money to buy his cigarettes. And I think cigarettes must have been 15 cents a pack at the time. I used to put a lot of it before the—	18:12
Felix Armfield	Tell me about—When was this?	18:50
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	In the 40s—	18:51
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	That was in the '30s.	18:51
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	That was in the '30s.	18:53
Felix Armfield	We're talking about actually end of Depression.	18:56
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	Yes. Mm-hmm.	18:58
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	In the '20s also, because I was born in 1919. If you remember, she was born in 1920.	18:59
Felix Armfield	Okay. You're talking about cigarettes were about 15—	19:03
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Yeah. 20—	19:08
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	Yeah. I remember him—I could go to the grocery and get it and I used to like to throw things up on the house top, then he'd have to get a ladder or a stick or something and get the cigarettes, because he didn't have another 15 cents to buy another pack. Money just was hard to come by.	19:09
Felix Armfield	Mmm. So you didn't want to use that for cigarettes—	19:25
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	—but all we got was a nickel. You know? When you have five children, everybody got a nickel.	19:26
Felix Armfield	Okay. That one quarter had to go five ways.	19:36
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	Yeah.	19:37
Felix Armfield	I imagine you must have bought an awful lot with that one nickel.	19:39
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	You could buy good candy for a penny. You could go buy—You could get two and three cookies for a penny. You know? That meant that—Then my mother was a person who made something all the time for us. It wasn't a matter of every time—We'd buy Snowballs and Snowballs wasn't but a penny, two pennies if you wanted two colors.	19:46
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Being an only child, I was very protected in all that, especially by my mother. I couldn't do this. I had a tricycle and I couldn't ride. I had a swing in the yard. The bottom in the two swings, and I couldn't do that, I couldn't skate. So many things I couldn't do. That's why I had all the children that I had. I didn't want one child, I said that.	20:04
Felix Armfield	Really? Just did not want an only child?	20:30
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Nope. I didn't want only one child. No. So I had about—	20:33
Felix Armfield	You're saying, you got lonely as an only child?	20:37
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	No. I wasn't lonely. I wasn't lonely.	20:38
Felix Armfield	But you certainly you would have liked to have had some other siblings?	20:40
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Not necessarily, because, you see, in the south, we were a very close family. The cousins and whatnot. You see, there's this aunt, she lived with us. She and her husband separated when her son was 10 months old, and she came to live with us. Her son and her daughter really grew up like my sister and brother and whatnot and we're very close now, her daughter.	20:43
Felix Armfield	You had what was clearly what was called the extended Black family?	21:13
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Yes, we did. We were definitely an extended Black family. I had grandmothers—	21:16
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	—we are—He tells people that I'm his sister and they don't refer to us as cousins. Except the people who really know us. You know? Because we were raised and was born in the same house, and then when we moved on St. Philip Street, they moved in the apartments in the back.	21:25
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	That's how she was. You see? She's the one, her mother and—	21:45
Felix Armfield	Okay. Okay.	21:50
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	She and her brother lived with us, so we were very, very close. Then my father's mother lived in the 7th Ward and I was always there with them, with my aunts and with my—	21:51
Felix Armfield	Where is the 7th Ward? I've heard people talk about the 7th Ward. What is the 7th Ward? What should that mean to me?	22:07
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	The 7th Ward started at—	22:10
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	That's where the Creoles lived.	22:13
Felix Armfield	That's where the Creoles lived?	22:15
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Mm-hmm.	22:15
Felix Armfield	Okay. Now did you ever live in the 7th Ward?	22:16
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	Not until I was a teenager. The project that she was telling you, the Lafitte project, we had to move and so we moved downtown.	22:20
Felix Armfield	Okay. Okay.	22:30
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	That's the only thing that they—	22:30
Felix Armfield	You didn't move downtown, Ms. Mouton?	22:34
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	Yeah.	22:35
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	I never lived in the 7th Ward.	22:36
Felix Armfield	You never lived in the 7th Ward?	22:39
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Yeah—	22:39
Felix Armfield	—but you had your family?	22:39
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Yeah, but that's a different 7th Ward. Yeah. It's different. It's different. It's different from downtown. It was never the 7th Ward like Blacks think of it.	22:41
Felix Armfield	Okay. Okay.	22:55
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	That was downtown.	22:56
Felix Armfield	Okay. Okay. Now when you talk about that 7th Ward from your childhood, that was clearly where the Creoles lived?	22:56
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Yes, but, as I said, I did not live in the 7th Ward.	23:06
Felix Armfield	But you had family in the 7th Ward?	23:09
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	I had family who lived in the 7th Ward too.	23:12
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	I did not.	23:14
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Yeah. They were light skin people, it was straight hair, and whatnot. As I said, it isn't only fair skin and straight hair. Creole is a form of life, a form of culture, because I have a friend who is very, very dark and I'm always teasing, we've been friends for years and years, I say, "Girl, you sound just like one of them ol' Creoles." I tell her. And act like it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It wasn't just the fair skin and the straight hair.	23:16
Felix Armfield	Now would it be fair for someone to say Ms Pajeaud was Creole?	23:48
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Well—	23:52
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	I'm Creole.	23:53
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Everybody who meets—who meets me—	23:55
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	See this lady around here, she's so Creole, she still got an accent you can hear.	23:59
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Antoinette Pierre—	24:02
Felix Armfield	Okay. She's a dark skinned lady?	24:02
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	And Naomi too—	24:02
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	Yeah. She's from the Treme too—	24:07
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Yeah. And my friend Naomi is dark skin too. In other words, she's [indistinct 00:24:14].	24:07
Felix Armfield	Are you in fact Creole?	24:13
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	I don't look upon myself as Creole. Just because I'm fair with as they say "good hair," they used to say and whatnot. I don't look—Everybody who sees me, of course, they have stopped doing that, they will say right away, "You from the 7th Ward." I was not from the 7th Ward. It does me very much good to tell them I was born in the Treme, and not in the 7th Ward.	24:16
Felix Armfield	Okay, the Treme is—Clearly, that was the Black neighborhood?	24:45
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Yes. It was a Black neighborhood. It was a Black neighborhood.	24:46
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	Black neighborhood. Black area, you may as well say.	24:48
Felix Armfield	Okay. It was an area.	24:55
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	Yeah. It's a whole area.	24:56
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Let me tell you this, of course, we didn't know when we were coming up—In fact, we didn't know until the '60s, what existed beyond segregation, because that's all we knew. We came up with segregation and that's all we knew. According to us, we had a very good life. We had a full life. We played—	24:58
Felix Armfield	What made that life—Go ahead.	25:22
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	We played games. We came from the school. We'd play hop scotch, Jack's, rope. We'd play with paper dolls. We had dolls and whatnot. We would—Well, we had friends around the block and we would sit on the steps at night and tell ghost stories and whatnot. Our parents and our aunts and cousins were all involved with us, so we had a good life.	25:25
Felix Armfield	Yeah.	25:58
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	As far as we knew.	25:59
Felix Armfield	Yeah.	26:00
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Because we didn't know anything about all of the this.	26:00
Felix Armfield	You didn't know anything outside your community.	26:03
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	No. We didn't know. Now we went to Chicago every summer.	26:06
Felix Armfield	A family outing?	26:11
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Well, my mother and my aunt and her friends, and myself went to Chicago.	26:12
Felix Armfield	Your father [indistinct 00:26:19].	26:18
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Every year. Oh no. My father wouldn't come but he would send those checks. My mother would be looking for the mail.	26:19
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	We went to the country, which was rural Pointcoupee Parish for my mother's people and by my daddy's people.	26:32
Felix Armfield	And you would go out to the country?	26:34
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	I would go out every summer.	26:36
Felix Armfield	Leave the city and go to the country.	26:37
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Jessie, go see about my beans, please. (laughs)	26:38
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	Now, this is the last time.	26:39
Felix Armfield	She can go. She can go. You finish talking.	26:42
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	I smell them.	26:45
Felix Armfield	It smells good. I know that. Well, tell me a little bit about your parents. You said that they say that you are Creole.	26:47
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	Yes.	26:57
Felix Armfield	What makes you Creole?	26:58
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	Because my father's people were of the light skin—	27:00
Felix Armfield	This is Mouton who is speaking? Okay.	27:07
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	Because they were of the lighter people but my mother's people were also considered Creoles because my mother's father was very fair and all of his sisters were. My daddy's mother was very fair but she had sisters and brothers far darker than you.	27:07
Felix Armfield	Really?	27:24
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	They were so Creole. Because they all talked that language. Now my grandmother knew how to talk French, because she's from Haiti, in that area, French Haiti.	27:25
Felix Armfield	Okay.	27:38
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	My father's mother was born when the slaves were freed. After the slaves were freed, her mother must have married a fellow and had these other five children after that.	27:41
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	They were like—You wouldn't believe that they were not lighter people in the 7th Ward. They were prejudiced against dark, because my grandmother's sisters and brothers were very dark. She was very light. They loved—and they'd come here every day [indistinct 00:28:20] the bus just to get a cup of coffee on their way to work. I always knew that we would go by my daddy's and uncle on a Sunday and then we'd go by my mother's aunt and uncle. My father's uncle married my mother's aunt, so that made it both—	28:02
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	You burned it? I asked if you wanted—	28:44
Felix Armfield	The coffee was a hospitable thing?	28:44
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	A hospitable thing and if the person like my mother and her sisters and all of them knew how to make biscuits, and what we call Johnny cake, that was sure good, sat down and you talked about this or that. That was a family, and a friendship thing.	28:48
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Yeah. You should have said something. I had it warming for you.	29:07
Felix Armfield	That's fine. That's wonderful. I'd love to have a cup.	29:19
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	I have some, because I make it in—	29:19
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	You drink slow?	29:19
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	[indistinct 00:29:20].	29:19
Felix Armfield	I tend to drink it all day long.	29:25
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	I have it in the coffee maker, so there's some in the coffee maker.	29:27
Felix Armfield	Okay. Good. Good.	29:29
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	I made it this morning. We used to go to Chicago. There was a railroad company here, TNP. I think that had excursions for $9—This picture of me when I was 11 years old, that's where it was taken, in Chicago.	29:32
Felix Armfield	Okay. Is that the one that I'm going to take with me?	29:50
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Yeah. My mother—You want to take it with you?	29:52
Felix Armfield	No. Well, I'm going to get a copy of it.	29:54
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	A copy of it—	29:55
Felix Armfield	I'm just going to get a copy.	29:58
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	You see how? That was taken in Chicago. You see the buildings?	30:00
Felix Armfield	Yeah. Look at that. Look at that. We want a copy of that.	30:02
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	My aunt had friends. I was 11 years old then.	30:06
Felix Armfield	11 years old.	30:09
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Every summer, we went to Chicago.	30:10
Felix Armfield	Now whose car is that you're on?	30:13
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	That was—	30:15
Felix Armfield	The family or someone, a friend—	30:15
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	We didn't have a car. My father never learned to drive. I don't know why.	30:18
Felix Armfield	He was busy driving horses. (all laugh)	30:21
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	He was busy going to the racetrack, betting on those horses (laughs) he was busy doing that!	30:26
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	And mine was so busy working, he used to do mattresses on a Sunday in the yard, and we had to help pick the moss to make extra money, so that he could have that for us.	30:30
Felix Armfield	Really? He would bring his work home with him?	30:37
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	Yes.	30:40
Felix Armfield	Was your father a workaholic?	30:41
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	No, but I guess he knew that this was how it got to be when you have children, because he didn't believe in you being hungry. My mother used to say he didn't come in the house unless he's—when we would get—say, "Where are the children? Did the children eat?" People didn't have telephones, so if he had to work overtime, he had to know that evening before, so when he worked overtime, mama didn't have to wait to feed us until he came home, because eating at our house has always been that everybody sat down and ate. You know, like, everybody—	30:43
Felix Armfield	It was a family affair?	31:17
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	It was a family affair. Everybody sat to the table, ate, and then you told papa what you did in school.	31:19
Felix Armfield	What do you recall—What do either of you recall about the Depression years? What stands out in your mind most about the Depression decade? Did you feel the Depression? Did it bother you? Did it impact on your family lives? Your social lives?	31:25
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	We just kept on living after we finished school and getting a job. That's the thing.	31:43
Felix Armfield	Because you're finishing high school in 1936?	31:46
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	And couldn't get a job that some of these White girls who didn't have the education I had would get jobs far better than—Like salesgirls and things like that. They didn't give us jobs like that. Domestic—	31:49
Felix Armfield	You had just as much education as they did or sometimes more.	32:03
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	That's right.	32:06
Felix Armfield	Really? You came out of high school right at the height of the Depression.	32:07
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	I think so.	32:10
Felix Armfield	Yeah. [indistinct 00:32:11].	32:10
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	No, '36.	32:10
Felix Armfield	Yeah. 1936. The Depression was still going on.	32:11
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	But, you see, quite as this kept—the Black people were not affected too much about any of this, because we were not high rollers. We were not high livers. It didn't affect us too much.	32:11
Felix Armfield	Basically [indistinct 00:32:32].	32:31
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Even after World War Two, or during World War Two, when they had the rationing—You wouldn't know about it.	32:31
Felix Armfield	No I don't remember but I've heard—	32:36
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	The rationing of shoes and the ration of meat, the ration cards. I was very young at the time too but I realized, I said, "This is not affecting us."	32:36
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	It didn't affect us either.	32:50
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	No.	32:51
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	Because we were still living—	32:52
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	We were not accustomed to having gobs and gobs of shoes and all like that, and all of this—	32:55
Felix Armfield	You weren't accustomed to living that high anyway.	32:59
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	No, we weren't. We didn't have—and the Black people who were living— Sure. The way we had been. It affected the rich White people.	33:02
Felix Armfield	Okay. Okay.	33:09
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	More than anything.	33:10
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	The middle class Whites. You see?	33:11
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	They started killing themselves during the Depression. They were killing themselves because they couldn't—	33:15
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Because they couldn't take it.	33:17
Felix Armfield	Now who is they? White men?	33:18
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	The White people.	33:19
Felix Armfield	They were killing themselves?	33:20
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	They jumped out of windows. When the stock market crashed in '29, they—	33:23
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	They killed themselves.	33:27
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Because they couldn't take—They couldn't live without money and big cars and whatnot.	33:29
Felix Armfield	You're saying for Black people, they had been accustomed to living without all along.	33:36
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	—accustomed to living without. Yeah.	33:41
Felix Armfield	Yeah. Yeah. That's interesting.	33:42
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	We lived decent. You know? And whatnot. But we didn't have all of the luxuries we have now when we were coming up.	33:45
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	We have more now than what my parents had ever had.	33:52
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Most of us—all of us—	33:56
Felix Armfield	Basically, your parents were concerned with making ends meet?	33:58
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	Yeah. That was about all they could do at that time would be to make ends meet. I'm telling you now, you put that little money on the table and everybody would come—	34:01
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	But they enjoyed their life and they were satisfied because I'll never forget during the civil rights time—You can relate to that, can't you?	34:11
Felix Armfield	Well, I do know about the civil rights movement.	34:20
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	You know about it. How old are you about?	34:23
Felix Armfield	No, I was born in 1962, so I was too young to have been a participant.	34:25
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	That was along in the '60s, the '50s and the '60s.	34:28
Felix Armfield	Yeah. The movement took place during the '60s and I was a little too young to realize what was going on around me.	34:34
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	You're in your thirties.	34:39
Felix Armfield	Yeah. I'm 31.	34:40
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	Yeah. He's too young. So was my daughter, and my son was young. [indistinct 00:34:47] had to be young.	34:40
Felix Armfield	Basically, my parents—	34:48
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	If they're 41, they know.	34:49
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	Yeah. They know—	34:53
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	—Daphne was here the other day and she's 41 and we were talking about some of those things. She said, "You forget, Mama. I remember that."	34:53
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	Yeah, they were big enough—	34:59
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	"I was part of that." And whatnot. But when they start sitting at the lunch counters, the Black young people, I'll never forget, my mama said, "Why they want to do that? We doing fine. Why would they want to start all of that?" My older son was at St. Aug.	35:02
Felix Armfield	That's St. Aug High School here?	35:20
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Mm-hmm. The priest took them one evening after school to City Hall to picket. And they went to jail. My mother she called me on the telephone and, goodness, she would have thought I was two years old, "How could you allow that to happen? How could you allow that? How could you allow that boy to go to jail?" She just carried on so terrible about that. You know?	35:24
Felix Armfield	You're talking about that generation who the last thing they want to do was go to jail but those kids who were in that civil rights movement, going to jail meant a sense of pride.	35:50
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	They were the ones who did it. If it hadn't been for them—	35:57
Felix Armfield	Everybody wanted to go to jail.	35:59
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	—we would have still been—	36:00
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	I had a friend—	36:00
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	To be honest with you, I didn't have enough courage to go sit at anybody's counter. (Armfield laughs) We would have still been standing up in the back and still—	36:00
Felix Armfield	Really?	36:09
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	I give all the credit to the young people.	36:13
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	When I went back to Dillard, all of this was just starting and I sat at the counter when Walgreens was across from the graveyard. I sat, because all the youngsters were sitting at the time, from Dillard, and the professor who had gone with us, we all went down there. We sat in at the Walgreens but nothing really happened except that they didn't want to serve us. But we stayed there.	36:15
Felix Armfield	Which was enough by itself.	36:41
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	Yeah.	36:42
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	I never went to sit down, in fact I—	36:42
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	We had one White professor and a Black professor from Mississippi and he was something else. He was in philosophy and he was very good. He was a very intelligent man and he was determined that we go down there and we would sit in. He assured them that nobody would come to any harm. I did that then, because it was necessary. It was necessary.	36:42
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	When all this integration came about, I went to register my daughter at one of the all-White schools at that time, and they told me—I had no problems, because when they ask you where you live and I said 3535 Buchanan Street, they had no problems—See, they knew where all the Black schools were located and you were right near a public school, which was Nelson School. That's what they told me. I said, "I did not know that. I thought that I could send her to any school I chose to", because of the integration. You know? And that there was a test, a psychological test being given to these little Black children.	37:16
Felix Armfield	Really?	38:04
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	Oh, yes. They gave them a test to see if they were capable and I knew that my daughter was capable.	38:04
Felix Armfield	Yeah.	38:11
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	But they did not give me—They did not give her the test and quickly told me the school that she could go to.	38:11
Felix Armfield	Where was the first place that you found work, Miss Pajeaud?	38:25
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	My first job was at [indistinct 00:38:31] Hospital.	38:29
Felix Armfield	Okay. Is this after high school or after college?	38:37
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	It was quite an experience. No. It was a couple of years after—About three or four years after high school. Yeah. It was quite an experience. It was my first job. I had a friend who was working at the hospital. I'll never forget her. [indistinct 00:38:55]. She called me one day. She said, "Girl, come here tomorrow morning." She said, "This man—" I really forgot who the man was, what the name was, but he was a seasoned man and, at the time, we said he was an older man, because he was in his forties.	38:44
Felix Armfield	Oh my goodness.	39:14
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	He was a legal secretary. He was very well-qualified. Very well-qualified. He was the secretary to the business manager at the hospital and the business manager was a short, White Jew. 73 years old. Mr. Lippman. I'll never forget that as long as I live.	39:16
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	[indistinct 00:39:36].	39:34
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Yeah. What I said, "But Hanna, I can't get that job. I don't know enough" because I went to business school at night and I said, "I can't get this job." She said, "Girl, come on, come on." I said, "Ooh, no. I'm afraid." I said, "I can't do that." She said—She kept persisting. She said, "Come on, I tell you, come on. The man is leaving." I got up enough courage and I went, but I was afraid to death.	39:37
Felix Armfield	Really?	40:07
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Here he comes and, as I said, he was a little short, White man, a White Jew, a French Jew. He had an accent. He was 73 years old. I was talking myself out of the job. I kept telling him what I couldn't do. He said, "You have a brain, huh?" I said, "Yes. I have a brain." He said, "Well, if you have a brain, you should be able to learn." I said, "I don't know." He says, "Yes. You come here tomorrow morning." I went the next day, but he was hard. He was very hard.	40:07
Felix Armfield	You did get the job?	40:52
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	I got the job, because there must have been something about me that he liked. Maybe I looked innocent or something. I don't know. Maybe he felt sorry for me. But, anyhow, I got the job and, goodness, that man was very hard.	40:53
Felix Armfield	Really?	41:06
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	I'd write the letters, because the hospital had a lot of compensation cases. You know? The man, the longshoreman would get hurt on the job and they'd come to the hospital, and they'd have insurance and whatnot. I'll never forget it. I think Dr. Geismer must have been—I've never forgotten that name. G-E-I-S-M-E-R, because I used to—	41:08
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	G-E-I-S-M-E-R. Because he was [indistinct 00:41:34]'s doctor. Yes.	41:26
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	I wrote so many letters to Dr. Geismer. Every letter I'd write, he would tear it up. I said one day, "I'm going home to my mama. I'm going home. (laughs) I can't take that no more." But something kept telling me not to go home, to stay, to stay. You know, the times have changed, so we were paid twice a week. All the nurses, all the dieticians.	41:35
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	Twice a week?	42:12
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Twice a month I mean. Twice a month.	42:13
Felix Armfield	Twice a month?	42:17
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	We were paid twice a month.	42:17
Felix Armfield	I did not catch that.	42:17
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	My salary was $75 a month. I made $37.50 every two weeks. That was my salary. The nurses made the same salary. The only people who were paid by check was Dr. Prokol, who was the superintendent. He had just come. He was new and I was new. Mr. Lippman was paid by check. Every two weeks, Mr. Lippman would take his briefcase and go—The hospital is on [indistinct 00:43:02] Avenue, if you've ever passed there, you've seen it.	42:19
Felix Armfield	Yes.	43:04
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	It's a home now [indistinct 00:43:06], a nursing home now. Well, he would leave the hospital, go get the streetcar, and go to the bank on the streetcar with this briefcase in his hand. It would never happen now.	43:04
Felix Armfield	No.	43:21
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	He would go to the bank and get the money and then he'd come back and he'd come and get me from the office and we would go in the library. It had a big table, something like this, and we would count the money, everybody's salary, and put it in one of these big envelopes.	43:22
Felix Armfield	He paid everybody in cash?	43:40
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Everybody in cash with that money. I said the only two persons who received checks was the superintendent, Dr. Prokol, and himself.	43:41
Felix Armfield	Really?	43:54
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Paid by check but, otherwise—Do you know? I stayed there and I would run in the hospital.	43:54
Felix Armfield	Really?	44:00
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Yes. I used to go—He could go get the money, give it to me, and I'd go in the library, by myself, and count all of this money out for all the people.	44:01
Felix Armfield	Really?	44:12
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	I'd go on the wards and tell the patients that they owed so much money and whatnot. In the meantime, I got married.	44:13
Felix Armfield	Okay.	44:22
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Then I told him I was going to have to leave. Mr. Prokol came in the office and they wanted to send me to business school. They wanted me to take Mr. Lippman's job but while I was at the hospital, that's where the nursing school, Dillard's nursing school was developed.	44:23
Felix Armfield	Okay. Now when was this?	44:43
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	This should have been around '40. 1940 or something like that. I think it was.	44:45
Felix Armfield	Now this Flint Gooderich Hospital—	44:54
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	They were housed at Flint Gooderich Hospital.	44:58
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	[indistinct 00:44:58].	44:58
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	It was called Flint Gooderich Hospital of Dillard University. It was connected with Dillard.	45:00
Felix Armfield	It was connected with Dillard University.	45:06
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	With Dillard.	45:07
Felix Armfield	Okay.	45:07
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	That's history within itself.	45:09
Felix Armfield	It is. It was being run by this little Jewish White man?	45:10
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	This Jewish White man, Mr. Lippman. He was the business manager and I was his secretary.	45:14
Felix Armfield	Mr. Lippman, that's spelled L-I-P-M-O-N?	45:19
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	L-I-P-P-M-A-N. L-I-P-P-M-A-N. He was a French Jew. He was hard as nails.	45:23
Felix Armfield	But, obviously, you got through to him.	45:30
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Oh, I got through [indistinct 00:45:33].	45:31
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	Do you remember when they built Flint Gooderich? When we went up there to that Sunday when they had the dedication?	45:33
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	[indistinct 00:45:42].	45:39
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	Well, I did. I remember that. [indistinct 00:45:45]. You had to wear little white dresses.	45:42
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Oh, yeah. What was this woman's name? The first director of nursing at Dillard.	45:51
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	Was that Miss Lyons Baker?	45:57
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	No. No. Lyons Baker was a nurse.	45:58
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	I don't know. I know she taught at Dillard.	46:02
Felix Armfield	Now was this a Black woman who directed the nursing program at Dillard?	46:06
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	Yeah.	46:08
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Yeah. Yeah.	46:08
Felix Armfield	Okay.	46:09
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Oh my goodness. Did you know Dr. Biles?	46:12
Felix Armfield	No, ma'am. I don't.	46:18
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	You don't know? He should know something about that. I'm talking about the young Dr. Biles now. [indistinct 00:46:25]. His father was a doctor and he was very prominent in the—	46:19

Felix Armfield	—that was the first year that the State of North Carolina went full scale integration, so I don't have any recollections of—As a matter of fact, it was one of the reasons that my father was very insistent when I got ready to go off to college, that I get my undergraduate education at a historically Black college because he felt that I had missed something by not having that kind of schooling. He felt, for some reason, that his education was somewhat superior to mine in the sense that all of his high school and formative education had been done by all Black teachers and Black principals and things of that nature. He just was so insistent that I go to a Black college. After I got there, I found that it was the greatest thing that could have ever happened to me, was happening.	0:01
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	It's interesting because Daphne has a friend who thought the same way. His daughter went to Metairie Country Day School, which is the most prestigious—	0:45
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	Most expensive.	0:58
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Most prestigious and expensive school here in the New Orleans area. The former Kings of Carnival and Queens of Carnival went to that school and whatnot. They wanted her to go there, and then she went to Mount Carmel. Carmel, I think it is.	1:00
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	Carmel.	1:20
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Yeah. Carmel. That's an expensive school too and whatnot.	1:21
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	It was an all White girls school.	1:24
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	When it came time to go to college, they took her out I think in about her second year and sent her to the prep because they felt that they wanted her to get in the school with Black children, with her own kids. They had to do that.	1:27
Felix Armfield	I went to an integrated school system in high school, but my father was rather concerned that I seek out any one of the historically Black colleges in the country. He said, "There's enough of them out there that you ought to be able to select one and you ought to be able to select a good one." I stayed in my home state and I chose North Carolina Central University, which was a liberal arts college there. I got a fine education and a lifetime of friendships came out of there, but I'm grateful to have had that experience. It was a small college, five to 6,000, and I think that was what I needed at the time. I didn't need one of the big, major institutions in this country.	1:46
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	My life has been very interesting because I have all of these children in different sets. It's surprising that each family unit has different ideas and whatnot. They're very diverse. Now, the daughter in Albuquerque, all of her children have gone to White schools, and they've gone to White colleges. Now the children here, they've all gone to Black schools and Black colleges.	2:30
Felix Armfield	Yeah. Well, then again, does Albuquerque have any Black colleges to offer? New Mexico. Sometimes people have to make choices.	3:03
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Yes. They do make choices,	3:12
Felix Armfield	Personal choices.	3:13
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	But when it came to the colleges, they could have sent them to Black colleges.	3:14
Felix Armfield	Yeah. I agree with you.	3:19
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Yeah, because my son's son, he went to Morehouse and one girl is at Howard. It's strange when they get together, [indistinct 00:03:34] tell the other one, "Why you going to that school?" One of my daughter's sons is in the same fraternity as Bush and Quill. When they came here, Rashida carrying on something awful [indistinct 00:03:50], "Mom, did you hear what he's saying? That he's at this fraternity that Bush and Quill belongs to. Can you feature that?" They carried on something terrible about that. You can imagine that.	3:21
Felix Armfield	Yeah.	4:08
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	It's very interesting, and it's varied, to see how each family thinks.	4:15
Felix Armfield	Yeah. It varies across lines.	4:17
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Yeah, it does. It does.	4:18
Felix Armfield	For one thing, I guess my parents didn't do the college thing. They came out of high school and went to work and that kind of thing. My parents were very concerned that I did receive a college education.	4:20
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Yeah. That was important to all families too.	4:31
Felix Armfield	Not only that I received a college education, but that I received the kind of education that they thought I should have.	4:35
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	That they thought that you should have.	4:40
Felix Armfield	They came out of school in the early sixties, so Black colleges were a trend at that time. For the most part, if Black students were going off to college, that's the only place they had to go. They were insistent that I selected a Black college, and I'm glad I did. I have no regrets. None whatsoever. None. But I do want to, so we can wrap up talking about this, the educational system. You were talking about the different pay scales?	4:43
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	When we started teaching, the Black teachers were paid much lower than the White teachers.	5:12
Felix Armfield	When Did you start teaching?	5:18
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	I started '50.	5:21
Felix Armfield	Okay. You started in 1950.	5:22
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	1961.	5:23
Felix Armfield	1961. The pay scale still were not equal?	5:28
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	No. Because with the same Mrs. Hill that we referred to. I went to Baton Rouge with the group, and they went with Sarah Reid. You remember? She was a fighter. She was about this big, a little White woman. She's the one who worked with that Veronica Hill, you would say worked with her. But she's the woman who helped Black teachers to get equal pay. I went to Baton Rouge with the group that year when they went to—McKeehan was our governor. She got on that floor and she did, you know what they say about filibuster, and she would not sit down. She told him, "If you want our help, as you said," because his slogan was, "Would you please help me?"	5:30
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	She said, "All these teachers here will not vote for you again if you don't do something about this teacher." She would not sit down. They could not make her sit down until the session was over. She stood up there and fought all the way so that we could get equal pay. At that time, the White teachers were getting good salaries, fewer children. They had more schools to go to than we had in the beginning.	6:21
Felix Armfield	The classrooms were small?	6:52
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	The classrooms were small.	6:54
Felix Armfield	Is that what you meant a little while ago, Ms. Pajeaud, when you talked about that you had to work harder than the White teachers?	6:56
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Yeah. I had to work harder because we didn't have the supplies and the materials, and the schools were not the same type of schools that we had. That's what they argued so much about, giving the Black children the same type of test that you would test a White child, who was in a fine school with all kind of materials, the beautiful rooms and whatnot, air conditioned and whatnot. And this poor Black child is in the hot classroom, dirty walls and whatnot. So how can you compare the two children on the same test?	7:03
Felix Armfield	The environments are totally different.	7:42
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Right. Entirely different. They haven't been exposed. For instance, one of the questions on the first grade test was about the seashore. Black children don't know anything about any seashore! You know that.	7:43
Felix Armfield	Yeah.	7:58
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Especially the Black children from the projects and whatnot and the little towns. They don't know anything about the seashore. They know about the river and the water maybe and the sand, but they don't know the word "seashore." That's not in their vocabulary.	8:01
Felix Armfield	Exactly.	8:14
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	So how can you test a child on a test with words like that that they've never been exposed to?	8:18
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	Like the one that says about the toboggan. What does a child who's born and raised in the South know about a toboggan? I used to say all the time, and you would be training them for that test, you'd be trying to help them so they could do a good job on the test. I would say to them, I had a picture that I would get so that they would know that the only way you could have a toboggan, you would ask them first anybody knows what a toboggan is, and nobody knows what a toboggan is. Then I do show them a picture of it so they could know and know that you needed a lot of snow and ice to use that. I don't think we saw snow but twice in our lifetime here.	8:26
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	No, not in New Orleans. We have to go up—	9:17
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	No. I'm saying about here. Us. We saw snow and my little boy was because he made a snowman in the front yard. Schools had to close because we don't even have facilities to fight that kind of weather. And then one other time I remembered it snowed when I was at Village, it snowed, and some other time it snowed. But we are not accustomed to snow. The children who came after me are not accustomed if they've never been out of the city of New Orleans. What do they know about snow? This is the thing that they have those kind of questions on. A lot of the questions I never agreed with that because the questions were for children, California and Boston and those areas. And then, I don't think the questions were geared to the Black children. I think all those questions were to those White children who had everything. That's how I felt about it. It was not geared to what the children hear, not for their climate or anything else. I could say from their backgrounds and from where they came from.	9:20
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Our children were not even exposed to books. They didn't have books in the homes and whatnot. How could they read about those things either? The parents didn't know anything about that. No. And the parents didn't know anything about that. You couldn't even tell your children about them. They didn't know what seashore meant themselves.	10:37
Felix Armfield	Yeah. Exactly.	11:01
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	That wasn't in the Black family's vocabulary either.	11:03
Felix Armfield	As you said, it has a lot to do with the lack of exposure.	11:07
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Right. Yeah. Right. They weren't exposed to that type of environment. To give you an example, one of the teachers taught kindergarten at Tall Timbers. That's a section across the river. Terrytown I think it is. Exclusive section. In fact, the assistant superintendent lived over there and his children went to that school. You know what she told me they did for Halloween Trick or Treat? She took the [indistinct 00:11:46] to the parents, one of the parents is home and the parents played the piano and whatnot and children milled around it and sang songs and whatnot and played games and they passed refreshments, cookies.	11:10
Felix Armfield	That's what they did for Halloween?	12:05
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	That's what they did for Halloween.	12:05
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	If a public school didn't give a Halloween party so that the children could attend and have a little fun for Halloween, the children didn't have the exposure of knowing what it was all about if they didn't do it in school, and try to provide those children with some of the activities that they needed to know about here in the city, that they have been deprived so long. Unless you had parents who would insist upon doing some of the things like going to the library with a child like I did. Excuse me. You could tell. May I have some water?	12:08
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Sure.	13:05
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	A half glass.	13:05
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	[indistinct 00:13:06].	13:05
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	No. You have to have parents who provided and did things like that.	13:08
Felix Armfield	I understand.	13:10
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	I got pride.	13:10
Felix Armfield	Now, this is your father?	13:27
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	My father. And it's coming up as children. I've been working crossword puzzles in the paper since I was able to write and read because he used to get the daily paper. We had to study, come from school, you had to stay in and do homework. If you didn't have homework, you had to read because you could read on something else so that tomorrow when you go to school, you'd be better prepared to know what the teacher's talking about because you didn't go outside and stay in the street and drag all over the neighborhood in the first place. But we had to work the crossword puzzle. I've been working crosswords and I love to do it now.	13:28
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	The word for a donkey was an ass, three letter word. As children in the family, every time we would get the crossword puzzle in the head donkey, we would say, "Papa, what's a three letter word for a donkey?" Now we knew, but we just wanted him to say ass because we weren't permitted to use that kind of language. Our mama would say to him in Creole that those children are making a fool of you because they know what it is. You see? We knew what it was, but now the children talk about it.	14:07
Felix Armfield	Why do you suppose your mother would say it in Creole?	14:44
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	So we wouldn't know what she's saying. That's how they used to do.	14:46
Felix Armfield	Okay.	14:49
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	My grandmother did too. All of them. All of my aunts and everybody, when they didn't want the child to know what they were talking about, they would start talking to each other in Creole so you don't know what they're saying. And then, we didn't understand it because my mother never encouraged us to talk Creole, but my father and his sisters and them when they would get together, that's all they talked.	14:50
Felix Armfield	Was Creole.	15:16
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	That's right.	15:17
Felix Armfield	That's interesting.	15:19
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	We had to read. We had to read what was in the paper. We had to read those books. He would buy books when he could afford it and bring it home and put it there so that we could—I have my mother's McGuffey reader that they used to use out in the country in the school. I still have it.	15:24
Felix Armfield	Your mother's?	15:46
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	My mother's McGuffey Reader.	15:47
Felix Armfield	Really?	15:51
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	That's right.	15:52
Felix Armfield	Is it still in good condition?	15:54
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	It's sort of yellow like anything else would get.	15:56
Felix Armfield	What's interesting is you still have one of those things.	15:59
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	I still have it.	16:02
Felix Armfield	The archives may want to borrow that.	16:05
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	No, they cannot. I will not part with that. When I was at Dillard, I brought it just to show when the education students. This instructor wanted me to, and I told them no because that's just how things get away from you.	16:12
Felix Armfield	You just don't want to part.	16:29
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	No, I will not. But that's what I have at my house, that mama. I have books. Like I said, he bought a book that said Negroes in World War I. I have that. Now, when World War II came about, he bought another book that said the Blacks in World War II.	16:30
Felix Armfield	Well, your father was certainly making certain that you get some materials around you.	16:58
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	He made sure that we went to school. That's what's the problem with a lot of children now.	17:00
Felix Armfield	There's no one there to say.	17:07
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	They give any excuse and the child won't go to school. I've had it to happen to me too many times when I was teaching a project and I used to didn't go along because I'd tell them all those excuses, I said I was taught that excuse was a sign of ignorance. That's what my papa would say. I never wanted to be ignorant. So now, when you come with all these excuses from one flimsy, that he didn't come to school because I didn't want—they been eating grits every morning, at least he ate. Now what's wrong with grits if you don't have anything else? I had to a lot of mornings right behind. Mama would get up and make biscuits, and we would have preserve and biscuits, milk if they had it, coffee if they didn't, water if they didn't, but you didn't go to school hungry.	17:09
Felix Armfield	Yeah.	18:03
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	Because I'd say all the time, and people say about the Depression, I don't ever remember being hungry because I had a mother who cooked every day and fed other people in the neighborhood. I don't ever remember being hungry. Maybe she cooked something I didn't like.	18:05
Felix Armfield	That's a different story.	18:26
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	That was a different story. But they had food.	18:27
Felix Armfield	That's a different story. Is there anything else that either of you lovely ladies would like to say concerning your lives here in New Orleans in the Jim Crow South?	18:30
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	The last thing I want to say is, even though we went to McDonogh 35 and we walked, and McDonogh 35 was upon Rampart Street, and Rampart Street was an area for Black businesses at that time.	18:45
Felix Armfield	So it was quite a business district.	19:00
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	Yes. We had to walk up there and the girls were not permitted off the ground on mornings. Now, we were not permitted off the grounds until three o'clock?	19:04
Felix Armfield	What do you mean? You couldn't leave the school?	19:12
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	No. Unless you were sick and they saw that you got home. Boys could leave at 12 o'clock at lunchtime and go down to the restaurant and get something or go to the bakery and get something.	19:16
Felix Armfield	Oh, really?	19:25
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	But the girls were not permitted to go off the school grounds. You had to stay once you got to school. You got to school until—	19:27
Felix Armfield	And you had to take your lunch there at the school.	19:35
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	Yeah. Yes. At that time, most of us brought lunches because 35 didn't even have a cafeteria. Now, lady used to sell us little sandwiches from that little booth, but they didn't have a cafeteria. Most times, we brought lunch.	19:37
Felix Armfield	Now, were you and Ms. Marjorie, were the two of you best of friends in high school?	19:55
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	No. We were friends. We just were friends. You see, not only did we go to school together, we went to the same church together.	20:00
Felix Armfield	So you were neighborhood friends and everything. You went to all the same social.	20:09
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	That's it.	20:14
Felix Armfield	You went to the carnival together.	20:14
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	Yeah.	20:14
Felix Armfield	Did you double date and all that kind of good stuff? (laughs)	20:14
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	No.	20:14
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	No.	20:14
Felix Armfield	That's why I just said oh, no.	20:14
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	You know why? She lived on the other side of Claiborne where as a child growing up that was supposed to be out of bounds for me to be running all over the neighborhood, the street. People didn't let children come all, that came—they lived further from Craig's School. I lived right across the street from Craig. If I went on the other side of Claiborne, I used to go to go Yvonne's because she was just one block off on Claiborne Street. I had to be back home for six o'clock. If I went there and play a little while, I had to be home for six o'clock.	20:24
Felix Armfield	Okay.	20:59
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	You didn't come back.	20:59
Felix Armfield	Just to play there.	21:00
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	Yeah. But now Marjorie lives near Galvez Street, didn't you?	21:01
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	I lived on Lafitte.	21:07
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	Yeah, I know. But didn't you live near to Galvez?	21:08
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Yeah.	21:10
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	Yeah. You see?	21:11
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	I lived on Lafitte, on Lafitte between Miro and Conti.	21:11
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	Yeah.	21:11
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Around the corner from Elaine's house.	21:17
Felix Armfield	Conti?	21:17
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	That was further from my house. You see? That was a good 10 block away.	21:23
Felix Armfield	You were always friends and you started school in first grade there.	21:25
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	We used to see each other and stop and talk with each other.	21:28
Felix Armfield	Was Ms. Marjorie just as—	21:32
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	She was a quieter person in school.	21:36
Felix Armfield	Oh, she wasn't as witty then as she is now?	21:38
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	She was quiet, oh, and scaredy cat. (all laugh) Scaredy cat, the teacher says "Stay in," and look, she started crying before three o'clock. (all laugh) Don't make me laugh.	21:40
Felix Armfield	You were already laughing. [indistinct 00:21:56]. Yeah.	21:40
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	I remember that.	21:40
Felix Armfield	You weren't the social butterfly that Ms. Jessie was.	22:03
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	She was something—she was always the way she is now.	22:07
Felix Armfield	Okay.	22:24
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	I would talk and laugh and answer back.	22:24
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	You'd answer teachers back, and in those days nobody answered teachers back.	22:24
Felix Armfield	But Ms. Jessie would.	22:24
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	Yes, I was. I knew what was going to happen when I got home. I knew that. If you went home and said you were kept in the so and so and such, Mama, teacher said, "Yes. Well, tomorrow mama's going to come to school and get the other side of the story." Now that's the kind of parents we need here. Now, I knew that my parents were not ripping people, but my mother would deprive you of something you like to do. I used to love to play hopscotch in the evening with my friend Louise next door to me and I couldn't go and play hopscotch. I could sit there and watch them play hopscotch, but I couldn't play hopscotch. My brother couldn't shoot marble. Anything that you really like to do, my mother deprived you of that. The next time you would think about it and say, "I'm not going to do so."	22:24
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	It was hard for me to get out of that because I'm like that right now. It's just hard. She say you're born with your personality. Every time I think about a teacher who taught all of it, and especially when you see Marjorie didn't have other sisters and brothers. Being the youngest, I had the four of them to go ahead of me. We all used to be most times in those same teacher's rooms. Ms. Thompson, I don't know what Ms. Thompson did me that particular day, but I know I answered Ms. Thompson back. Ms. Thompson told me don't come to school tomorrow until I bring my mama. You see, that morning, mama, when I went home, I had to tell mama she had to go to school tomorrow. You'd be telling your side of the story.	23:24
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	Mama had to come to school that morning to talk with Ms. Thompson and Ms. Thompson told my mama—Now Ms. Thompson taught my mama's four other children, a [indistinct 00:24:31] and the twins. When she got out, they were in the hall talking and when she told my mama, she said, "Ms. Lawrence, Jessie is nothing like those other four." My mama said, "No. I know," she said, "Because I birthed them all and they all got different dispositions." And I'm laughing because we didn't say it, "I birthed them all." That was wrong, but that was my mother's way of expressing herself and you dare not to say that that's not what you're supposed to say.	24:20
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	She said, "Because I could tell who's coming in by the way the dog react." We had a big shepherd. This is the truth. My mother would be in the kitchen preparing supper and she could tell who, and she would just say, and she didn't even see you, "Jessie?" or if that was sister she would say, "Sister?" because the way the dog reacted to us.	25:05
Felix Armfield	Really?	25:27
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	I'm telling you. You see, sister never did like animals. When it was her time to feed the dog, she'd get the food and instead of going and putting it in, you know, and saying "Eat," she'd pitch it in the plate. That's true.	25:31
Felix Armfield	I just can't imagine Ms. Marjorie without this sense of humor back then.	25:48
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	She would sit laughing about things, and maybe she thought something was—But she was a quiet girl, and so was Yvonne. They were quiet in school, scared of being punished, but not me.	25:57
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	My mama never came to school for me.	26:08
Felix Armfield	She just wasn't having that.	26:10
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	I don't ever remember her, except the plays or something, and then they would come. And then, we were in all the plays. We were dolls. We were angels one time. We were bumblebees. Do you remember when you were a bumblebee, Marjorie?	26:11
Felix Armfield	This is great. (laughing)	26:35
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	You remember when we were bumblebees?	26:35
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Yes.	26:35
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	Yes. My mother used to help make those great paper costumes because my mother sewed.	26:35
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	I'll never forget. We were in something. I think we were elves. We had pink barrel dresses on that were cut from the bottom and we had to wear tennis shoes.	26:40
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	No. We were angels then.	26:49
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	No. Elves.	26:52
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	Elves?	26:53
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Yeah. We had pink round dresses on and we had to wear tennis shoes. I was so happy because my mother never would let me wear tennis shoes. She would never buy me a pair of tennis shoes and I wanted to wear tennis shoes so badly. And I could never walk barefoot.	26:54
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	Us either.	27:10
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	When I was an adult, my mother would come to my house and I'd be barefoot. She would say, "Put your shoes on. Put your shoes on before you catch a cold."	27:18
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	We see people go to the shopping malls looking like hell and some of them smelling like it. We were not committed to go to Canal Street, which we call uptown, without dressing up. You dressed up to go and you could walk to Canal Street and you weren't that far from Canal, but you didn't go to Canal unless you were dressed.	27:25
Felix Armfield	Canal Street was the main [indistinct 00:27:52].	27:50
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	It was. It was.	27:53
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	That's where all the stores were.	27:54
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	That's where all the stores were. You just didn't go to Canal Street looking any kind of way or outside playing and pick up and think you're going to Canal Street.	27:57
Felix Armfield	Oh, really?	28:06
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	Now, when I was going to 35, like I say, we walked to school, we had to walk. There was what they call a red light district had not closed down then. We could not go through that area, through the red light district to go to school. We had to walk all the way to Rampart Street and then go straight up Rampart Street. If anybody saw you going through their district and said that back to my mama, "Why were you coming through that way?" Because you just weren't supposed to. That was off limit to you. You know what the red light district was.	28:06
Felix Armfield	Yeah. Red light districts remain the same. They haven't changed.	28:40
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	It doesn't change.	28:51
Felix Armfield	Red light means red light.	28:51
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	That's it.	28:51
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Right.	28:51
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	We weren't permitted a lot of the things. My grandson will say to me, if my daughter says, "I'm coming to get you and we're going to the shopping mall," and I said all right, I'll get ready to go and, "Grandma, where are you going all dressed?" I said if we pass by somebody who doesn't look like I think presentable, I tell him, I say, "If I would come out with you looking like that, you'd be ready to say, grandma, you look a mess." He say, "I sure would." That's it. You have to instill those things in children. Now, I really don't feel that integration worked down here. I don't know about other areas. Because as soon as integration came about, even in neighborhoods, if you moved in Black, they moved out.	28:52
Felix Armfield	White people?	29:47
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	White. When the schools became integrated, the White children, I don't know who, they went in other places. They went to other schools. And then eventually, the schools that was predominantly White at one time, they are now predominantly Black. The ones that were Black from the beginning, they're still Black. That's how it is.	29:49
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	I think that's all over the country.	30:18
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	That's all over because when I was working at 42, that's what that used to be, an all White school, the McDonogh number 9, the name is still above it. That's right. Black children had to pass in front of that school to walk away to Jones School.	30:19
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	But I enjoyed my life. Even though we had segregation, we didn't know any other life. It was good.	30:41
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	I enjoyed my Black friends and I still do.	30:48
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	It was good. You wanted to know what else we did for social life. We were in clubs and we went to club meeting. And then, we went to each other's homes during that time, played bridge and whatnot, and we did a whole lot of social things. We socialized. We went to the movies.	30:50
Felix Armfield	Didn't concern yourself what White folks were doing.	31:12
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	No. We didn't worry about it at all.	31:13
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	As long as I didn't have to go and work for them.	31:13
Felix Armfield	As long as you didn't have to what?	31:13
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	Work. Domestic work for them. I was happy. I did not like doing it.	31:13
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Not only that. My parents had a very nice life. I can remember. It wasn't my father so much because he was never a social man too much, but my mother and her sisters had a lot of friends and they used to disguise on mass for Carnival Day. I can remember seeing the other ladies coming to the house and dressing the different costumes. And they'd go out on Carnival Day and they would go to some of the clubs, like the Center Center. What else? Chers Amis, I think another. You see, they used to go, my mother I'm talking about, they used to go to the dances. They used to dance a lot. They would have dances, play dances. My father would bring them, but he wouldn't stay because he didn't like to dance. But as I tell my friends all the time now, they went to dance, the men would dance with them because they like to dance and they would dance. Nowadays, if you don't have your own escort, you don't dance.	31:36
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	That's [indistinct 00:32:52].	32:51
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Because other guys don't ask you to dance. They're with their own wives or their girlfriends and whatnot, and that's it. But they would go to the affair, not to socialize so much, but to dance.	32:51
Felix Armfield	Yeah.	33:06
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	All the fellas would ask them to dance and they would dance.	33:07
Felix Armfield	So you didn't even have to go to the dance with a date.	33:11
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	No, we didn't. No. As I told you, my father would bring my mother and her sisters and the other girlfriends who wanted to go. And then, he would come back for them when it was all over. And then, they used to go skating. I can remember my mother in a big white sweater. They'd put on their skates and they'd go skating. They had activities.	33:14
Felix Armfield	Now, this was when you were a youngster.	33:39
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	When I was a youngster. I remember seeing them doing that. And then, the friends would come to the house. We had a piano. I never forget, it was Mr. Alfred White, his name was, and he'd come and he'd play the piano and they would sing and whatnot. And then after the piano, we had a Victrola where you'd put the needle on the—	33:41
Felix Armfield	It's called a what?	34:12
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Victrola. V-I-C-T-R-O-L-A. Where you'd put the needle. It was like this, and you'd put the needle on the record and then it would play and you would [indistinct 00:34:25].	34:13
Felix Armfield	Okay.	34:24
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	And then we had a pianola.	34:25
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	And the pianola was that you need to know how to play the piano. You'd put the rollers on and pump.	34:34
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	You'd put the roller on it. It was like a music sheet and you'd pump with your feet and then it would roll and then the music would come out.	34:37
Felix Armfield	And it was called a pianola?	34:50
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	Yeah.	35:23
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Pianola. We had one of those. Everything came out.	35:24
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	But when you played with the rollers, the [indistinct 00:35:30] is moving. You didn't have to [indistinct 00:35:30].	35:29
Felix Armfield	But you put the notes in.	35:30
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	No. It was like a roller.	35:30
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	It was like a roller and it had the paper on the roller with the holes which were the notes.	35:30
Felix Armfield	And it read from those notes.	35:30
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	The music. Yeah. And you pumped it with your feet.	35:30
Felix Armfield	I've never seen one of those.	35:30
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	I guess you're right.	35:30
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	My mother [indistinct 00:35:31], that's what she had.	35:31
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Everything came out.	35:31
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	[indistinct 00:35:31] probably had one like that.	35:31
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Yeah.	35:31
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	We didn't have a piano, but we had a—Papa would buy anything like radio when it first came out, washing machine. That's the kind of person he was.	35:31
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	You see, the people at that time visited each other and they would come to the house and they would have refreshments and talk and whatnot. You see, they didn't have the TV when you come to visit, which they don't do too much anyhow these days. They turn the TV on for you.	35:38
Felix Armfield	Yeah.	36:07
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	No. They would come and my mother's friends, the ladies would come and they'd have coffee and whatnot and sit down and talk. They visited each other.	36:08
Felix Armfield	Really?	36:19
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	You can't visit like that after dark, unless we have somebody to bring us places. We don't hardly go out at night anymore. Now, one time you could go out at night and not even be bothered. Nobody would even [indistinct 00:36:37] you or tell you anything. As close as I am now, if I do come here and it gets dark, I'm ready to go back home.	36:21
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	We had the Lyric Theatre, a Black theater, wasn't it?	36:48
Felix Armfield	It was called what?	36:53
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	The Lyric.	36:54
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	L-Y-R-I-C, the Lyric Theatre.	36:55
Felix Armfield	That was the Black theater.	37:00
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Wasn't it a Black theater?	37:01
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	Yeah. Because papa used to take mama, but I didn't ever go there.	37:04
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	My mother used to take me before I went to school. It was on the corner, [indistinct 00:37:15]. They had a restaurant, a Black restaurant. and they would have, like certain days they'd have cabbage, and other days they'd have red beans and different things. I can remember my aunt going with us and my mother, but of course I was the only child anyway, she made sure to take me. And then, we'd go to the restaurant place and eat our dinner and then we would go to the Lyric Theatre and they'd have live stage.	37:08
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	Vaudeville shows.	37:42
Felix Armfield	Okay. There were live performances.	37:42
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	Yeah. The Palace had that too. The Palace gave that too.	37:48
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Performances. Yeah.	37:52
Felix Armfield	Now, was The Palace of Black theater?	37:54
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	Yes. That was Black. It was at the next corner from the Lyrics, but The Palace was later when we were coming up. Bigger, you may as well say.	37:57
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	And then we went to the White shows, I guess you'd call it that, the like the Orpheum and the [indistinct 00:38:19]. You need to go up the steps.	38:12
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	And you had to sit upstairs.	38:20
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	[indistinct 00:38:22] sit upstairs. You couldn't sit downstairs.	38:22
Felix Armfield	When you went to the White theater, that's what you had to do.	38:40
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	Now, The Senger you couldn't go at all.	38:40
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	I couldn't go at all there.	38:40
Felix Armfield	You could not visit the Senger.	38:40
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	No. You couldn't go to the Senger.	38:40
Felix Armfield	They didn't even allow Blacks to sit in the balcony.	38:40
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	No. You couldn't go to the Senger and you couldn't go to the Tudor, which was also on Canal Street.	38:40
Felix Armfield	Tudor. Would you spell that?	38:44
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	T-U-D-O-R, Tudor. There was another one.	38:46
Felix Armfield	I guess the Tudor and the Senger were those places that you talked about your friends would sneak in?	38:53
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	Yeah.	38:58
Felix Armfield	And come back and tell that they got in.	38:59
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Tell they got in. Yeah. They wanted to see what the place was like.	39:00
Felix Armfield	I see. Well, it looks like we better wrap this up because my battery is getting low on this thing.	39:07
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	College. This is not high school.	39:17
Felix Armfield	I'm talking back again now with Ms. Pajeaud, and we're having an interesting conversation here where she's talking about her educational experience. That is her advanced education. Now, what were you saying, Ms. Pajeaud, about the fact that from 1952 to 1960, you were pursuing your master's degree? Why such a long period of time?	39:19
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	I had started that summer in the fall semester. I did enroll in the fall semester. After I started, I found out that I was pregnant, and I knew that I could not return for the January semester because at that time, women were not on the campus pregnant so I did not return. My baby was born July the fourth, and I decided that I was going to enroll in school that fall, which was a September.	39:41
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	When I went to register, sister Anne Xavier told me definitely that she didn't think that I should return to school so soon because she learned that I had had a baby over the summer. She was very insistent that I did not come back to school so soon. She asked me how old was the baby. I had to tell a little white lie. I told her the baby was older than what it was. Then, she proceeded to ask me who was going to mind the baby. I told her that my mother was going to mind the baby, and I really wanted to return to school to pursue my master's degree. She reluctantly registered me and I was able to continue.	40:25
Felix Armfield	But you told her a lie.	41:22
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	I did. I had to tell a white lie to get back in school. Otherwise, she wasn't going to let me register.	41:22
Felix Armfield	Well, the interesting thing is that what you were telling me just a moment ago is the fact that when you discovered that you were pregnant, what was the decision that you made in the middle of your educational process?	41:28
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	That I was going to stop it because I knew that I could not return. You see?	41:41
Felix Armfield	Why couldn't you just continue going?	41:49
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Because you see, if I had returned for the January, I would've been in school until May, until the end, and I would've been very much pregnant at that time.	41:50
Felix Armfield	What would've been the problem with that?	42:04
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Well, they would've asked me to leave. I am positive about that because it was not permitted. Never had pregnant women on that campus.	42:05
Felix Armfield	Even though—	42:16
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	You were married. Sure.	42:16
Felix Armfield	And had already had a family in place.	42:17
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Right. And I had a husband.	42:22
Felix Armfield	Exactly. Well, you were married, so you had to have a husband.	42:22
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	The husband was there. You could be married and not have the husband there.	42:28
Felix Armfield	Yeah.	42:30
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	No. My husband was there. He was in the home, definitely.	42:31
Felix Armfield	You knew that you would've been dismissed from school.	42:36
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Yeah. I could not have continued there at that time so I did the wise thing.	42:39
Felix Armfield	Pregnant women just were not permitted on college campuses.	42:46
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	When I am on Xavier's campus now, I look around and first thing I say, "Boy, what is Xavier doing?" (laughs) Now looking at these girls with their shorts on and whatnot. That was not permitted.	42:49
Felix Armfield	Yeah. Was there a strict kind of dress code?	43:04
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Yes. One day I came to school with a sheer blouse and I was called into the office about my blouse. Yeah.	43:12
Felix Armfield	I don't think anybody's getting called into anyone's office today.	43:28
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Remember, that was a Catholic school.	43:30
Felix Armfield	Yeah. Okay.	43:32
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	You see? And they were very strict during that time. Very, very strict.	43:33
Felix Armfield	Interesting stories. Interesting stories. Yeah. Very interesting. Okay. Anything else you'd like to say, Mr. Pajeaud?	43:38
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	No.	43:48
Felix Armfield	We've had a long evening.	43:48
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Yeah, we have.	43:49
Felix Armfield	We've had a very long evening. Thank you.	43:50

Item Info

Title:

Marjorie Pajeaud (primary interviewee) and Jessie Mouton interview recording, 1994 June 23

Date:

June 23, 1994

Creator:

Contributor:

Armfield, Felix

Description:

Name: Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud; Date of birth: 1919-11-11; Place of birth: New Orleans, LA; Occupation(s): educator; Residence: New Orleans, LA. Name: Jessie Lawrence Mouton; Date of birth: 1920-06-27; Place of birth: New Orleans, LA; Occupation(s): educator; Residence: New Orleans, LA
Informant ID: 576; Informant ID: 577; Interviewed by: Felix Armfield.

Occupation:

Educator

Location:

Format:

Language:

English

Digital Collection:

Behind the Veil

Source Collection:

Behind the Veil: Documenting African American Life in the Jim Crow South interviews, photographs, and project records, circa 1864-2011, bulk 1990-2004

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Related Resources:

See below

Provenance:

The David M. Rubenstein Rare Book and Manuscript Library acquired the Records of the Behind the Veil Oral History Project from the Duke University Center for Documentary Studies in 1997, 1998, 2000, and 2002.

Rights:

Limited Re-Use

CC BY-NC 4.0

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Copyright for content created by the Behind the Veil project is held by Duke University and made available to the public using a Creative Commons Attribution / Non-commercial (CC-BY-NC) license.

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RL00170-CS-1238
RL00170-CS-1239
RL00170-CS-1240
5135aa52-5830-467c-a6d6-bf5bb6bfa8a3
behindtheveil
045f609f-16ce-4bc2-919d-9a355506ea3a
ark:/87924/r4cr60n4s
045f609f-16ce-4bc2-919d-9a355506ea3a

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Marjorie Pajeaud (primary interviewee) and Jessie Mouton interview recording, 1994 June 23

Transcript

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1. Marjorie Pajeaud and Jessie Mouton administrative file, 1994

2. Marjorie Pajeaud slides: (Left to right from top) Lyle, Ms. Pajeaud's youngest son; Daphne and Roger Pajeaud; Ms. Pajeaud's mother and friends in Chicago; Belcina and Lynne Pajeaud (the two oldest Pajeaud children); Pajeaud's mother and friends in Chicago, circa 1899-1960s

3. Marjorie Pajeaud slides: (Left to right) Adams and Nat King Cole; Mr. Adams at far right, circa 1899-1960s

John Hope Franklin Research Center

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Marjorie Pajeaud (primary interviewee) and Jessie Mouton interview recording, 1994 June 23

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