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	Okay, now we're back on take two with—	0:03
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	Charity was—	0:06
Felix Armfield	Ms. Mouton.	0:06
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	Charity was a segregated hospital. One side for White, one side for Blacks. That's how you entered. You went on that side said Black, and this side said White.	0:10
Felix Armfield	Okay.	0:23
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	And so when you would go, there were no Black nurses or Black doctors. Black doctors [indistinct 00:00:40]—	0:24
Felix Armfield	Even to treat the Black patients that went in.	0:39
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	Even to treat the Black patients who went there. And that was when my mother was in there, there were still none. That was, she died in 52. And there were still nothing but White nurses and White doctors. That's right. When I had my son, they had just started letting, I guess a few nurses come there, but not to receive any training. They had not started giving them training.	0:41
Felix Armfield	So the Black nurses here [indistinct 00:01:18].	1:16
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	Had to go Dillard and come to Flint-Goodridge, that's where they got their—	1:18
Felix Armfield	That's where they could get their training.	1:23
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	That's where they got—	1:24
Felix Armfield	Nowhere else in the city.	1:25
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	Nowhere else. Because there was no other hospital here that took them. And that was our only hospital for Blacks.	1:26
Felix Armfield	Which was Flint-Goodridge.	1:35
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	And it was Flint-Goodridge. And it was sold not too many years ago by Cook, who's the president of Dillard now. Mm-hmm. That was a very sad occasion for me because I always said, we get rid of everything we had. My son says it's because we don't see into the future.	1:36
Felix Armfield	Were your children born—[indistinct 00:01:58].	1:57
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	No, my children were born at Charity because I had bleeding when I'm pregnant. And my doctor, my Black doctor told me to go there because they had better equipments to take care of me. And that's what happened.	1:58
Felix Armfield	Well, what was important was your health at that point.	2:13
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	That's it. And after I had them though, I didn't go back there except to bring, and then I brought my children to the doctor, to—	2:17
Felix Armfield	To Flint-Goodridge.	2:23
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	My Black doctor.	2:23
Felix Armfield	For their regular treatment.	2:24
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	That's right. That's right.	2:25
Felix Armfield	I like that. That was smart.	2:27
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	But I brought my son because he had what they call a mild case of clubfoot and they sent me there. The doctor who treated my son was also a cripple. And he said to me to have my son's shoes made at his shoemaker. This old man has died since. But no, Charity did not take any Black nurses for training until in recent years.	2:29
Felix Armfield	Really?	3:04
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	That's right.	3:04
Felix Armfield	So Black nurses who came out of nursing school at Dillard—	3:07
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	That's who, a lot of them are at Charity now.	3:11
Felix Armfield	A lot of them are at Charity now.	3:12
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	A lot of them work there. One of the young ladies, friend of mine who was a head nurse over there. I don't know in what area, but she was a head nurse over there in that Charity.	3:15
Felix Armfield	Ms. Pajeaud?	3:27
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Yeah. You ready for me?	3:30
Felix Armfield	Yeah. We want you to come back and join us and finish telling me about that incident of the nursing school.	3:30
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Oh yes. I can't pick up the lady's name, but I'll find it out for you.	3:40
Felix Armfield	Okay. Okay.	3:45
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	And as I said, there was also a midwifery school there, but it never got off the ground, I don't think.	3:48
Felix Armfield	Think that was at—	3:55
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	At the—	3:56
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	At Flint-Goodridge. Uh-huh.	3:56
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Mm-hmm.	3:56
Felix Armfield	So at Flint-Goodridge, there was some concern that they began training people in midwifery.	4:01
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	Yeah.	4:06
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Yeah.	4:07
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	And this is what, because at one time I was sitting here a lot of White midwives because they used to be able to put their signs out.	4:07
Felix Armfield	Oh, okay. Isn't that interesting that Black people have always welcomed these people into our neighborhoods and into our homes and those kinds of things? But by the same token, a Black midwife, and correct me if I'm wrong, would not have had any White patients.	4:16
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	No, not unless she couldn't go to a White, unless she went to a White one who refused to take her. Let's put it like that. But I've heard that some of them do. Some Black midwives did take White.	4:33
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	My mother had a midwife for me.	4:50
Felix Armfield	Okay. So you—	4:53
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	We were born like that. But in our time—	4:54
Felix Armfield	You were born home and all your brother and sisters.	4:57
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	Yes. Yes.	5:00
Felix Armfield	And a midwife was on hand?	5:00
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	Yes.	5:01
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Midwife.	5:01
Felix Armfield	Okay.	5:01
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	Her name was Miss Lucy. And she's on my birth certificate.	5:06
Felix Armfield	Miss Lucy. Really?	5:07
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	The lady's name and where she live.	5:09
Felix Armfield	Do you have a copy of that birth certificate so I can get a picture of it? And it says midwife?	5:11
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Yeah. I'm sure it does.	5:17
Felix Armfield	Midwife Miss Lucy.	5:18
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	Don't get up to go get it. We got to get through. My mother had—	5:20
Felix Armfield	You can get it later. We're going to get that later.	5:21
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	My mother had, she bored my ears when I was about five days old.	5:30
Felix Armfield	She did what now?	5:37
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Bored my ears.	5:37
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	Pierced her ears.	5:37
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Pierced my ears.	5:37
Felix Armfield	Oh, she pierced your ears when you were about five days—	5:37
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Five days old or something.	5:40
Felix Armfield	Really? I didn't know they would do that that young.	5:41
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	That's what they would do. Uh-huh.	5:43
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	[indistinct 00:05:47].	5:43
Felix Armfield	And then that way you don't have any recollections of it.	5:46
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Uh-uh. The doctor did the babies. But my aunt who used to, my aunt bored all our ears. She used to just do that around and then—	5:48
Felix Armfield	Now what are you saying? They bored your ears?	6:00
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	Yeah. We say bored. And pierced is the same thing.	6:02
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Pierced, that's the same thing.	6:04
Felix Armfield	Okay, now spell—yeah.	6:05
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	B-O-R-E-D.	6:05
Felix Armfield	B-O-R-E-D. Okay. I just need the correct spelling because the person—	6:10
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	They would take something and just bore it.	6:12
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	It's a needle.	6:13
Felix Armfield	Okay.	6:13
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	And put a piece of cork behind it and then you didn't feel it. And then stick that needle in it.	6:14
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	That's why they do the men and women who have their ears pierced now—	6:21
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	Ears bored now—	6:23
Felix Armfield	Well, I don't know. I'm not one of those.	6:23
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	You don't have earrings, huh? (laughs)	6:23
Felix Armfield	No, no. I don't think my grandmother would be too pleased.	6:34
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	I don't blame her.	6:38
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	I wouldn't be too pleased either.	6:38
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	Like I said, that's your ear, darling. But that doesn't mean I have to say I like it.	6:39
Felix Armfield	Exactly.	6:43
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	My grandson says now about he wants it. "Grandma, what'd you think about my ear being bored?" I said, "I think that you need another, if you get your ear bored, you need to have your brains out, bored in the head."	6:44
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Brains bored out.	7:01
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	Yeah. I said, "You don't need any earring." That's the thing. He has another word for it, another slang word for it. I don't care what the thing is. I said, "I don't like the style. I don't like it." Well, he was trying to see if I would say it was all right, because his mother had already told him he couldn't bore his ear. And I said, "I have a solid gold earring of one that I broke the post on that my grandmother gave me as a wedding present." And I said, "I wouldn't even give you that. And I only have the one." And I can't get the other one fixed because the jeweler says—	7:01
Felix Armfield	So your convictions against that are real strong.	7:39
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	Oh, very strong. And whoever wants can get it. I have no objections against what you do with yourself, but I don't really like the style.	7:41
Felix Armfield	You don't like to see men in earrings.	7:50
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	No, I don't.	7:50
Felix Armfield	Yeah. I have cousins and friends who wear them but my grandparents raised me and I don't think they'd approve.	7:54
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	I'm sure they wouldn't. I don't like it either.	8:01
Felix Armfield	Well, for one thing, it never has appealed to me.	8:05
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	It never occurred to you. Uh-huh.	8:05
Felix Armfield	No.	8:05
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	To want to get it done.	8:05
Felix Armfield	I never even had to sit down and think about it. It wasn't anything I contemplated. But at any rate, what do you remember during that period, during the war? Did you find work as Black women? Did you leave out of the home then to find work? Or were you already working when the war broke out?	8:09
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	I reckon I was married and having babies.	8:29
Felix Armfield	Okay. Did you find that you had to go, did your husband go participate in the war by chance?	8:31
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	No.	8:36
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	My husband didn't. And we married during the war. I've been married since '42 and right after the war broke out.	8:38
Felix Armfield	Okay. So you got married in 1942.	8:43
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	Yeah.	8:43
Felix Armfield	And what year did you get married?	8:46
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	'42.	8:47
Felix Armfield	Oh, okay. You all got married around the same time as my grandparents got married. I think they got married in '44.	8:50
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	Yeah.	8:53
Felix Armfield	Yeah. 1944. But what do you recall about the war?	8:57
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	But I did not—	8:59
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Well, all we know that is going on and all of the activity was that I was working at the hospital when it first started.	9:01
Felix Armfield	Flint-Goodridge?	9:11
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Yeah, Flint-Goodridge.	9:12
Felix Armfield	Okay.	9:12
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Yes, I remember there was a man that came to work at the hospital. I think he was promoting insurance, I think, health insurance during that time and whatnot. And I used to go with him at night to the plants. I put on a nurse's uniform to sign up to people with the health program and whatnot.	9:16
Felix Armfield	Oh, so there was a public health program?	9:44
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	I can't remember all because that's been so long ago. That's over 50 years ago.	9:46
Felix Armfield	Okay. Okay.	9:51
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	But I do remember that. But I think it was one of these health programs, health insurance.	9:53
Felix Armfield	Okay. Okay.	10:01
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Health insurance.	10:01
Felix Armfield	And you went into—	10:02
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	That we was promoting into the plants.	10:03
Felix Armfield	Into the plants. Those [indistinct 00:10:07].	10:05
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	You see, because a lot of Black men held two jobs, one job in the day. And in fact, they were a lot of the men who were school teachers and worked in these plants that night.	10:06
Felix Armfield	Yeah.	10:21
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Yeah.	10:22
Felix Armfield	So they moonlighted in the factories at night.	10:23
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	After World War II, that's when the Black people really were able to buy their homes and whatnot.	10:25
Felix Armfield	Following World War II.	10:33
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	That's how they got started.	10:34
Felix Armfield	Was it because the soldiers were returning with money or—	10:36
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	No, because they—	10:40
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	—worked in the service if you—	10:40
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Those who were home were, as you say, moonlighting, holding out two jobs. And in the plants, they paid very good money, much more than what they were making teaching school, I'm sure.	10:40
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	Yes. A lot of them used to be right there at Consolidated [indistinct 00:11:00]. Where I was working, we were making army clothes for the soldiers.	10:56
Felix Armfield	Army clothes. Okay. Mm-hmm.	11:06
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	We made army clothes for the soldiers at that time.	11:09
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	So the war really helped the Black people.	11:10
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	Yes. He had the contract.	11:14
Felix Armfield	So you think it really helped.	11:15
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Oh, it did.	11:16
Felix Armfield	Economically.	11:16
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	It did economically. That's what I'm talking about. You see. And they didn't have to fight in a way because they didn't want any Black men with guns.	11:17
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	And it wasn't until they got real serious that they started drafting the younger boys into service. Because that's how my brother-in-law got [indistinct 00:11:37] at 18, finished high school. And that June and September, he was drafted.	11:26
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	And as I remarked, I didn't hear of any Black people that I knew killed during World War II, but I heard of a lot of them killed during the Vietnam War.	11:44
Felix Armfield	Okay.	11:57
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Quite a bit.	11:59
Felix Armfield	Did you know of anyone who participated in the Korean War that followed World War II in 1950? The Korean Warfare?	12:00
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	No, I didn't hear much about the Korean Warfare.	12:08
Felix Armfield	Okay.	12:11
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	And that followed World War II?	12:11
Felix Armfield	Yes ma'am.	12:13
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	Yes it did. Mm-hmm.	12:13
Felix Armfield	Yeah, because World War II was over by '45, the Korean War broke out in 1950. As a matter fact, that was when it was supposed to be the first integrated army.	12:14
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	I had a baby in '45.	12:25
Felix Armfield	Okay.	12:27
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Mm-hmm.	12:30
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	She was saying Dr. Geisler was what we call the insurance doctor for a lot of the different companies, because he was the insurance doctor for a sewing factory where I worked.	12:30
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	And if I—	12:45
Felix Armfield	Now what do you mean by an insurance doctor?	12:45
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	You see? Like—	12:49
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Compensation.	12:51
Felix Armfield	Oh, a compensation doctor.	12:53
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	Yes. As big companies and something happened to you on the job, Dr. Geisler was the man they sent you to. And we used to call him the the horse doctor.	12:53
Felix Armfield	The horse doctor? (laughs)	13:05
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	As a matter of fact, there is a city, a little town not far in Jefferson named Geisler, and it's from his family. This is no joke. All those teachers, people used to refer to him—My brother-in-law worked on the—	13:05
Felix Armfield	(laughing) Ms. Mouton, why did you call him the horse doctor?	13:20
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	Because he treated you for everything. And I never forgot the needle broke and hit my eye. And when I was sent to Geisler, once he looked at my eye, he says, "I'm going to send you Stebbens." Stebbens was another eye doctor in the Maison Blanche building, because that's where Geisler was. And—	13:22
Felix Armfield	What building was that?	13:43
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	Maison Blanche building.	13:46
Felix Armfield	Spell that with me.	13:48
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	M-A-I-S-O-N, Blanche. Like Blanche. B-L-A-N-C-H-E. That means White House.	13:49
Felix Armfield	Okay. Okay. And it's M-A-I-S-O—	13:58
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Remember I told you, that every letter I wrote, I remember Dr. Geisler—	14:00
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	That's what I'm telling him now.	14:06
Felix Armfield	Yes ma'am.	14:07
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	Geisler, any company, if you had any company here, and an employer was hurt on the river. My brother-in-law used to go to him. The people in the neighborhood, everybody say they send you to Dr. Geisler, see? Send you to the horse doctor. And that's the reason why they referred to him as the horse doctor.	14:09
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	But he would not treat my eyes, he says. My eyes were too delicate. So when I went down to Stebbens, Stebbens was a doctor who didn't treat Blacks. And here I am, sitting in the office. And as soon as the little receptionist came, she called me in because Geisler had already called downstairs to Stebbens to let him know that he was sending me down. And he said to me, "Oh, you must be a special case," he said, for Geisler to send me. And when he looked in my eyes, he said the same thing. He said, "You have very delicate eyes." He said, "And that's probably why—" he said. And I told him that I had been going to ear, nose and throat hospital as a child, but he treated me.	14:30
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	Some more coffee? You're going to have the jitters.	15:16
Felix Armfield	I don't need anything in at this time.	15:22
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	But—	15:24
Felix Armfield	Let me ask you something about that sewing factory you said you worked at. What was it like working there? Was everybody working together? Did you sit next to White people?	15:27
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	No, most of his employees were, in fact, all of his employees were Black. And the office girls were White. And the few easier jobs like bundling the work up, they were White.	15:36
Felix Armfield	So what exactly type of labor were you doing at the factory?	15:52
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	When I first started there, I was what they call a trimmer. You cut all the loose threads off it.	15:56
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	I'll put it in the microwave.	16:01
Felix Armfield	Okay.	16:02
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	And then I asked for a sewing machine. My first job working for Bunk was buttoning uniform shirts for the soldiers, the shirts that they wore. And you had to button the two buttons here, and then you button all the buttons down here. That my first day on that job, my fingers were so sore and my legs were so tired. And I went home and I cried. And my father told me then, "Don't go back tomorrow." But I went back and then they put me in the trim. See this mark here? The girl who trimmed next to me, she flew her arm and she still had her little trimmers in her hand and it stuck in my arm. She didn't do it purposely because we were laughing and talking with each other while we doing. But the little scissors went right in my own. But after trimming, I got on the sewing machine and I was what they call a belt setter. I set waistbands on pants.	16:04
Felix Armfield	Oh, okay, okay.	17:06
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	And I left that job because I did it because I really needed a job at the time. My mother was very ill, in and out of the hospital for many years. And when she was almost down to her last time, then I gave that job.	17:06
Felix Armfield	Mm-hmm. Okay.	17:23
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	Because it was sitting up in the hospital with my mother and working like that. And I wasn't making it with the boss because I didn't want to work overtime. And he insisted that I work overtime. And I couldn't do it because I was sitting up at night and I was worn out to leave the hospital six o'clock in the morning when my other sister would come and go to work for eight o'clock. I just could not keep it up. And I just quit. I didn't go back. And this is when I said that after that, and I had my children, I decided to go back to school. I have never regretted it.	17:26
Felix Armfield	Okay. I understand. Well, that's one of the things you never regret. Ms. Pajeaud, what do you recall following that war period? What was the tone and the atmosphere?	18:04
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	World War II, you mean?	18:26
Felix Armfield	Exactly. What kinds of things did you all do for social and entertainment as young adults, I think you are by now, right?	18:28
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Mm-hmm.	18:36
Felix Armfield	By the time the war's over, you're both young adult people. Right? So what kinds of things were you doing here in the city of New Orleans?	18:38
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Oh, it was good.	18:44
Felix Armfield	Entertainment?	18:44
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	You still did the same things you did before the war.	18:44
Felix Armfield	Where did you go? Where did you hang out?	18:44
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	During Carnival time, we went to all the Carnival balls.	18:44
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	Carnival balls.	18:54
Felix Armfield	Carnival balls. Tell me about the Carnival balls. I don't know anything about this Carnival. I'm not from New Orleans so I don't know about the Carnival ball.	19:04
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Well, they have the various clubs. The men have the clubs. They have the [indistinct 00:19:11] Illinois, the original Illinois, those clubs where they had the debutantes presented.	19:04
Felix Armfield	Okay. Now, did you go to the debutantes?	19:17
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Oh, yes. We went to all of that. We went to both, and it was free. It was invitation. As I said, New Orleans around that time, it's a great big free circus, in a sense. And all of the clubs gave affairs during the Carnival time. And you were invited and you went [indistinct 00:19:42].	19:20
Felix Armfield	Now when did the Carnival take place?	19:42
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	Before Mardi Gras day.	19:45
Felix Armfield	Before Mardi Gras day.	19:47
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	Day. Yes. Mm-hmm. During the Carnival season. See, we call it Carnival, but it's the season of Carnival, which starts right after Christmas. Now, some people say it starts before Christmas. The White people, they started their balls in December, 12 days before Christmas. See, they started their balls—	19:49
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Kings Day.	20:15
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	Kings Day, yeah, that was right after Christmas.	20:15
Felix Armfield	But Black people started theirs after.	20:18
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	Just before the Mardi Gras day. Just before Mardi Gras day. Right after Christmas, you'd be going to Carnival balls. And you didn't go to the auditorium. They had their own little places you were not permitted to go in these other places where the White people had their balls.	20:20
Felix Armfield	So you held your balls separately.	20:38
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	Separately in other places.	20:40
Felix Armfield	What was the attire for this Carnival ball?	20:43
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Formal.	20:45
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	Long formal dresses.	20:46
Felix Armfield	Very formal.	20:46
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	Yes.	20:46
Felix Armfield	Everyone was dapper, huh?	20:47
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Formal, the man wore the black tuxedo and a black tie, and the ladies wore the long dresses.	20:51
Felix Armfield	It was strictly a black tie affair, huh?	20:55
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Yeah.	20:57
Felix Armfield	Well, what was this Carnival? What was it representative of? I don't know. This is the first—	21:00
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	It's supposed to be the social aspect of Black people and what we would consider the elite.	21:05
Felix Armfield	Okay. Okay.	21:08
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	I guess you can say too, that we were copying off the White people in a sense, because they had their Carnival balls. The king of Carnival, the Rex. I know you've heard about that—	21:09
Felix Armfield	—Black folks having their balls—	21:25
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	No, no, I'm just saying. I'm just saying. Sure.	21:25
Felix Armfield	Basically you all—	21:25
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	I think it originated in France, I think.	21:26
Felix Armfield	Okay. Okay. Well, this area had been heavily influenced by the French.	21:34
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Yeah. Because they—	21:38
Felix Armfield	You were influenced by them.	21:38
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	French and Spanish.	21:43
Felix Armfield	And it had nothing to do both with what color you were. You were here in this area.	21:44
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	My grandmother wrote and spoke French. And when they first came here, they had difficulty understanding the people who call themselves Creoles here from the Seventh Ward, because their language was not pure French.	21:49
Felix Armfield	Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Creole had to be a mixture of—	22:04
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	It was a mixture of—	22:08
Felix Armfield	French and African.	22:09
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	French and Spanish and everything else.	22:10
Felix Armfield	Yeah.	22:12
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	Just like said about some people's gumbo. Everything is in it.	22:12
Felix Armfield	Yeah. Everything's in there.	22:16
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	And their different about that, they have different versions, as I'm sure you have heard and you have read. Some historians say that Creole means a mixture of French and Spanish.	22:18
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	Spanish.	22:29
Felix Armfield	Creole, from what I understand, has been a mixture of everything.	22:33
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Of everything.	22:38
Felix Armfield	And it would be unfair of any historian to say that it is purely a mixture of French and Spanish.	22:40
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	That's what I looked to—	22:46
Felix Armfield	Because there are Black Creoles and there are White Creoles. And we know that those Black Creoles have to be something else other than French and Spanish.	22:48
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Right. Right.	22:56
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	Mm-hmm.	22:56
Felix Armfield	So clearly. And there's some Creoles that have a mixture of Native American Indians.	22:57
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Right.	23:04
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	Yes. My mother-in-law.	23:05
Felix Armfield	So the Creole is just—but I think it's more or less what you said earlier on.	23:05
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	It's a culture.	23:09
Felix Armfield	It's a culture.	23:09
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	It's a culture.	23:10
Felix Armfield	It's a culture. Because both of you have just expressed to me throughout the course of this interview that you do come from Creole backgrounds, but you aren't confessing Creoles now because you're not in the culture.	23:12
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	No. Right.	23:23
Felix Armfield	Exactly. So I think Creole, and I think that's the one thing that has been good for me in coming to New Orleans. I finally can say, now I know what this Creole is. It's a culture. It's not a person. I can't just look out at some person and assume that they are Creole by looking at them.	23:25
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Because they're light skinned, as I say, with "good hair," as they said.	23:43
Felix Armfield	Yeah. Yeah.	23:46
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	No.	23:47
Felix Armfield	Yeah.	23:47
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Uh-uh. It's more than that.	23:47
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	And they used to have their Carnival balls to themselves at one times, the lighter skins.	23:48
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Oh. I got to tell you about that.	23:55
Felix Armfield	Please. I want to—(all laugh)	23:56
Felix Armfield	Ms. Pajeaud, you want to start talking about that? How the Creole would have their balls separate from Black people's ball?	24:02
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Yes. The Autocrat Club is on St. Bernard—	24:10
Felix Armfield	Now, spell that for me.	24:13
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	A-U-T-O-C-R-A-T.	24:13
Felix Armfield	C-R-A-T. And it's called the Autocrat Club.	24:17
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Mm-hmm.	24:22
Felix Armfield	Okay.	24:22
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	On St. Bernard, but it's further down. St. Bernard.	24:24
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	It's near to Claiborne Avenue by the I-10.	24:27
Felix Armfield	Okay. I know where you're talking about.	24:30
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	And there is a saying, and I understand it as a true saying, that you could not be darker than a paper bag.	24:33
Felix Armfield	So they had to do the paper bag test.	24:40
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Yeah.	24:43
Felix Armfield	To get in.	24:43
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	You heard about that, huh?	24:43
Felix Armfield	I've heard about the paper bag test. I don't know about it in this particular incident. But I want you to tell me about this incident (all laugh).	24:44
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	Well, you see, as children, we were not yet down in that area. We weren't in that area. We were in what they call the Treme. And it was a different thing. You see? Marjorie is a Treme light-skin.	24:51
Felix Armfield	And people wanted to confuse you with Seventh Ward because she's so light skinned. She has to be from Seventh Ward.	25:07
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	Yeah. Yeah. She has to be from the Seventh Ward.	25:15
Felix Armfield	Uh-huh. And you took great pride in saying, "No, I'm from the Sixth Ward."	25:16
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	That's right. (laughs)	25:19
Felix Armfield	I've seen pictures of your father. What did your mother look like?	25:24
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	She was light.	25:27
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	She was light skinned also.	25:29
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	Mm-hmm.	25:29
Felix Armfield	Okay.	25:29
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	My mother was light skinned.	25:29
Felix Armfield	So both of your parents were from the Creole background?	25:31
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Yeah. Uh-huh. In color.	25:34
Felix Armfield	Okay. In color.	25:36
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	Mine too. But my mother was [indistinct 00:25:40]. My mother not, she may have been a little lighter than I, have a freckled face, but what in many times they referred to as a brick head, which meant that—	25:37
Felix Armfield	Brick head?	25:50
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	Yeah. That was a lighter person with not curly hair.	25:52
Felix Armfield	Oh.	26:03
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	That's when they called a brick head.	26:03
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Good hair.	26:03
Felix Armfield	Without the straight hair. The hair was a little kinky.	26:03
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Yeah.	26:04
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	Yeah. That's it.	26:04
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	They used to refer to it as good hair. "Oh, she had good hair" or "She had bad hair."	26:04
Felix Armfield	Yeah. Yeah. Simply because their hair was straight. Yeah.	26:04
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	Yeah.	26:04
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Yeah. Yeah.	26:11
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	But you see, my father was on the light side with hair like Chinaman.	26:12
Felix Armfield	Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. I want to finish hearing about this Autocrat Club.	26:18
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Well, they were very, very prejudiced.	26:23
Felix Armfield	Really?	26:27
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	Yes.	26:27
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Everybody who, all the members were fair skinned people. Fair skinned people. All of the members. Of course it is not the same now. It really has gone down.	26:33
Felix Armfield	Okay. Okay. I would hope.	26:43
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	I dare say—	26:45
Felix Armfield	The new generation is learning to move away from that kind of stuff.	26:45
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Well, you know what I say all the time? Of course as you know, I have a sense of humor. Always humor in everything.	26:49
Felix Armfield	I love it.	26:55
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	[indistinct 00:26:59] class lady, the first president of the Autocrat Club, after many years.	26:58
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	That was brown skinned.	27:05
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	That was brown skinned.	27:06
Felix Armfield	Oh well, he couldn't have been in the Autocrat Club.	27:09
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	He couldn't have.	27:11
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Oh no.	27:11
Felix Armfield	[indistinct 00:27:12] twenties and thirties like you all were talking about.	27:12
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	[indistinct 00:27:17] darker than he is now, in there now.	27:16
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	Now.	27:16
Felix Armfield	So it doesn't imply that one has to be of light complexion.	27:20
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Not anymore.	27:23
Felix Armfield	Or Creole.	27:24
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	Not anymore.	27:24
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Not anymore. We're glad to get anybody to become a member now. [indistinct 00:27:30]. If you wanted to join, you could join Autocrat Club.	27:26
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	Now.	27:32
Felix Armfield	I don't think I want to be a part of the Autocrat Club.	27:33
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	I'm just saying.	27:33
Felix Armfield	No, no, no. If they didn't take my two good friends based on the fact that they were good people, I don't want to be a part of it.	27:38
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	Let me see if I can find [indistinct 00:27:47].	27:43
Felix Armfield	So what kinds of things, was it a social club or?	27:48
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Yeah, it was a social club.	27:50
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	It was a social and pleasure club, as they call it. He and his brothers were members of it. And you could see, he's light. This fella right here. Charles.	27:56
Felix Armfield	That's his brother?	28:02
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	No, no.	28:02
Felix Armfield	Oh, okay.	28:02
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	Charles and his brother.	28:04
Felix Armfield	Okay.	28:06
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	Their father was a member of Autocrats when he was a young man. Lucille, the sister told me that, said then that's how I know that when he became the president, that he was the first real dark one. Lucille makes you laugh about that, Charles's sister. I said that they wanted to have a fit, some of the members wanted to have a fit over it. But all the older ones, old enough to be our parents in that age group. There were no dark ones at all. And neither were the ladies.	28:06
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Uh-uh. And they wives were light skinned too. But—	28:43
Felix Armfield	So you had to marry within this thing too.	28:48
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	Yeah, that's how they used to be. That's how they was—	28:49
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	That's how they did, the Seventh Warders. They remarried.	28:53
Felix Armfield	Well, how is it that you had obviously such a greater sense of understanding and pride in who you were and your Blackness, Ms. Pajeaud, and didn't get caught up into all that?	28:55
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	No, I didn't come up like that. My parents never, even though my father was very, very fair. In other words, you would take him for a White man anytime. In fact, they did think that he was White most of the time. That's how fair he was. And he looked like a White man even. But they never talked that around me in the home. Black and all like that.	29:08
Felix Armfield	Clearly they understood that you were going to have to survive in this world—	29:33
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	And they shouldn't.	29:34
Felix Armfield	As a Black woman.	29:34
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	And they never showed it.	29:36
Felix Armfield	They didn't want to set you up.	29:39
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	And they never showed it. And [indistinct 00:29:41], I never liked light men. (Armfield and Pajeaud laugh)	29:41
Felix Armfield	You are—	29:48
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	Tell you about Winchester. (all laugh)	29:48
Felix Armfield	Tell me about Mr. Winchester.	29:54
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	I'll tell you about Winchester.	29:54
Felix Armfield	I want to hear.	29:54
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	A dark man.	29:54
Felix Armfield	I want to hear about Mr. Winchester. That's important.	29:57
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	He was a dark man. That was all.	29:59
Felix Armfield	He was a dark man.	29:59
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	He was a dark man. He was a dark man.	29:59
Felix Armfield	Yeah.	29:59
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	And as you see, my husband Pajeaud, he was brown skinned man.	30:06
Felix Armfield	Yeah. I don't think either one of your husbands were light men.	30:09
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	They weren't.	30:17
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	No, they weren't.	30:17
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	They weren't.	30:17
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	They weren't. They weren't.	30:17
Felix Armfield	Okay. So you didn't have this thing about—	30:17
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	No, I never came up with that prejudice like that. Uh-uh. And you see the man my daughter married.	30:20
Felix Armfield	Yeah. Very handsome family.	30:28
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Yeah.	30:30
Felix Armfield	Yeah.	30:30
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	So we never had any qualms about that. But the other people did.	30:30
Felix Armfield	Yeah.	30:35
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Uh-huh.	30:38
Felix Armfield	I was just about to say, how—	30:38
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Strange as it was, strange as it was, I had a friend, because she's dead, she was very, very, very dark.	30:39
Felix Armfield	Mm-hmm.	30:47
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	But when Daphne started keeping company with Keith, she was outdone. She told me, she said, "How can you allow that? How can you—" Now, dark as she was. And she said, "How can you allow that?" I said, "Now, what are you talking about, Muriel?" "How can you allow your daughter to go with a man like that?" I said, "What you mean a man like that?" She said, "You know what I mean. This dark skinned man with your daughter." I said, "But what that has to do with it?" "Oh, but I just—" Oh, she was—	30:48
Felix Armfield	What does it have to do with the kindness in his heart and how he felt about her?	31:24
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	What did it have do with the manhood?	31:28
Felix Armfield	Exactly.	31:28
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	But you know what really amused me? When these light skinned girls, some of them had light eyes and light hair, started marrying these dark boys. I said the grandmas must be rolling in their graves! (all laugh)	31:31
Felix Armfield	Ms. Pajeaud! (laughing)	31:43
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	I said, "Oh my goodness." I know the grandmas and the mamas are turning over in their grave.	31:53
Felix Armfield	I'm just wondering what kinds of things did you encounter as a young girl growing up?	32:01
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Oh, I encountered quite a bit.	32:05
Felix Armfield	Here in New Orleans.	32:07
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Yes.	32:08
Felix Armfield	You know, good, bad, or just indifferent? What did you—	32:08
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	When I walked down the street with a dark man, White people would [indistinct 00:32:16].	32:11
Felix Armfield	Stop and look. (laughs) They wanted to know, were you or some little White girl that this Black boy was picking up?	32:16
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	White girl with this Black boy. Yeah.	32:27
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	They do it now. Marjorie and I went to a teacher's convention, that's about four years ago at one of the hotels here. And the sections were different, our different—So I went to one session, Marjorie went to another session, and then we would compare what was said so we wouldn't—Make as many of the sessions as we possibly could. And then she decided to go to one about the income tax. And I went to one about medicines. So while she was, my session ended first. So I had to come from around the room where I was at.	32:28
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	[indistinct 00:33:09], Jessie?	33:09
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	Huh?	33:09
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	[indistinct 00:33:13].	33:09
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	No thank you. I haven't eaten yet. So when I came back, she was still talking to this lady. At that time, Duke was running for mayor because we got up—	33:12
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	This is David Duke, isn't it?	33:23
Felix Armfield	Of course. The nation [indistinct 00:33:26].	33:23
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	He was one of the speakers at this thing. And I told her, I said, "I'm going to listen to Edwards, but when Duke comes up, I'm getting up and walk out." So when I come out of the session, she's with this White woman telling her to vote for Duke, huh? (Armfield laughs) Now, when I came up, the woman ended her conversation and gave her a card because she didn't want—I'm Black.	33:26
Felix Armfield	She thought Ms. Pajeaud— (laughs).	33:53
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	She didn't want me to hear what she was telling Marjorie, thinking Marjorie was White. She hurried up and gave Marjorie their card. So when we got around the bed, Marjorie said, "I'm so glad you came up at that time." She said, "Because let me tell you what she was telling me." So Marjorie went on to telling me. I said—	33:57
Felix Armfield	You told what she said? (laughing)	34:16
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Yes. Yes. Yes.	34:18
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	Told me what the White woman said. I said, "Yeah, you see? I'm just like—"	34:19
Felix Armfield	She was having bad, awful things to say. At least things that weren't nice, I assume.	34:24
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	No, you see, when she was—she was trying to encourage me to vote for Duke.	34:28
Felix Armfield	No she was not! (laughing)	34:34
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	That's what I'm telling you!	34:37
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	She didn't know that I was not White. You see? She thought that I was White. And she was encouraging me.	34:37
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	"And he's going to do things for you. He's going to get things done for you." She told us.	34:41
Felix Armfield	She really did?	34:46
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	She did not know Marjorie was—	34:48
Felix Armfield	You were just standing there, listening to her.	34:50
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	Standing there listening.	34:52
Felix Armfield	Saying all these—(laughs)	34:52
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	And I was the savior when I came up. (Armfield laughs)	34:53
Felix Armfield	Did she still, did she realize that you are Black?	34:58
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	I guess she did after—	34:59
Felix Armfield	Or just somebody who was being friendly with this Black woman?	35:01
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Yeah. Because you see, nowadays you can tell.	35:08
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	You can be with the Black person—	35:11
Felix Armfield	Yeah. But when Ms. Mouton walked up, she stopped her conversation.	35:11
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	Stopped her conversation. She gave Marjorie the card and say, "Here, you can get in touch with me at this."	35:16
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Yeah. She gave me—	35:19
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	She gave her the card. And that ended that conversation. Whereas she would've continued talking had I not come up at the time.	35:21
Felix Armfield	Had you not walked up. Oh.	35:36
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	You see? But I came up.	35:36
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	See how these hypocrites, they are.	35:36
Felix Armfield	Yeah.	35:36
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	And they don't mean you any good at all.	35:36
Felix Armfield	None whatsoever.	35:36
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	And my father's expression was that they don't know their own kind. And this is proof.	35:38
Felix Armfield	They don't. They really don't.	35:40
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Oh no, they don't. They don't know Black people.	35:44
Felix Armfield	But you know what? There is no way that I could be, either—we could be fooled that Ms. Pajeaud, anything else other than a Black woman. We know each other when we see each other.	35:46
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	I tell her, I said, "We going to go ahead and you tell them I'm the maid."	35:56
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	[indistinct 00:36:04].	35:58
Felix Armfield	But see now, the interesting thing is that we may have to look twice sometimes, but you can just—	36:06
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	We know them.	36:11
Felix Armfield	We know each other. We know each other.	36:12
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	If they have blonde hair and blue eyes.	36:12
Felix Armfield	I don't care what color, we know each other.	36:12
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	Marjorie, didn't you see a lot of light skinned women there?	36:12
Felix Armfield	Yeah. But there was no question that—	36:20
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	And those are women who have taught us and things like that. Have always worked in the public schools with Black children.	36:21
Felix Armfield	Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's interesting. But you were telling me before we started telling me about the David Duke incident, about your experiences of growing up here as such a light skinned girl.	36:30
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Yeah. Well, it wasn't too bad in New Orleans.	36:47
Felix Armfield	Okay.	36:49
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Because they had a lot of light skinned people up in New Orleans, you see?	36:50
Felix Armfield	Okay. Okay.	36:53
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Because they had the Creoles down there in Seventh Ward.	36:55
Felix Armfield	But see, the thing was is that you never knew whether the light skinned Blacks were going to be in the company of Black people or what they were going to do. You sound like you was one of these persons who clearly enjoyed being with them folk from trimming.	36:58
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Oh, yeah. I did. I did. I never wanted to be anything but what I was. I never had any aspiration or anything like that. In fact, I never passed for White.	37:14
Felix Armfield	Okay.	37:25
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	[indistinct 00:37:25].	37:25
Felix Armfield	Yeah. Mm-hmm. There were some people who were passing?	37:25
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	They were friends that I know when the Senger was first built, they wanted to go in the Senger.	37:29
Felix Armfield	Now what's the—	37:33
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	That was a theater for Whites only.	37:33
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	—a very pretty theater.	37:33
Felix Armfield	And what was it called? Can you spell it?	37:39
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	S-E-N-G-E-R.	37:39
Felix Armfield	S-E-N-G-E-R. Oh, the Senger Theater.	37:39
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Yes. The Senger Theater.	37:45
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	It's right on the corner of Canal and Rampart.	37:47
Felix Armfield	Okay. And they wanted to get in to see the Senger?	37:49
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Just to see.	37:52
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	They would go—	37:52
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Just to see. And they went.	37:53
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	My father used to—	37:54
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	A lot of people, all the light skin—	37:54
Felix Armfield	And they were Black people, but they passed, to get in.	37:57
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Yeah, sure.	37:58
Felix Armfield	They'd let us in—that is so hilarious to me.	37:58
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Yeah they did, that was common here.	38:03
Felix Armfield	So you could fool people with that.	38:05
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Sure. They didn't know, you could go anywhere you wanted.	38:07
Felix Armfield	You never tried it, just as a joke or gimmick?	38:07
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	No, I never did.	38:10
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	A lot of people didn't.	38:10
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	I was too afraid, you see? I was always kind of—	38:12
Felix Armfield	Okay. Timid.	38:14
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	She was afraid.	38:14
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	I didn't want to be embarrassed.	38:17
Felix Armfield	Yeah. Yeah.	38:18
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	I didn't want to be embarrassed.	38:19
Felix Armfield	Because you clearly knew who you were. (laughs)	38:20
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	I knew. I knew who I wasn't. I thought everybody else knew who I was.	38:21
Felix Armfield	Knew who you were.	38:22
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	That's why my father said they didn't know their own kind. Because he would do things just to, like he said, try them. He sat at a drugstore, little drugstore lunch counter. And our neighbor came in who was Black and said, "Hello, Mr. Norman," and spoke to him. And he asked her if she wanted a cup of coffee because that's what he was drinking. He had just come from the clinic. And before she could answer him, the waitress told him, "We don't serve Colored people here at this drug store." And he said, "How the hell you don't know if I'm Colored or White?" And he was about cussing, Ms. Arlene told him, said, "Oh, that's all right, Mr. Norman." And he got up and he left the drugstore and he didn't pay the lady and he left the coffee on the counter.	38:26
Felix Armfield	Really?	39:26
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	That's right.	39:26
Felix Armfield	Really?	39:27
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	And when he was ill, getting back to Charity Hospital with the Black and the White side, he was sick, really feeling bad. And my sister and I took him and we were each side of his arm. And when you walk up to the desk where the Blacks are supposed to go, it's this nurse sitting at the desk. And she said, you know your name. He gave her his name. Said, "Are you White or Colored?" He said, "These are my daughters." She said, "I said, are you White or Color?" He said, "God damn." He said, "I said, these are my daughters." At the time, a nurse's aide came up from the neighborhood, she said—	39:28
Felix Armfield	Oh, I wish I could have known (laughs)—	40:12
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	And we didn't say anything because we knew how Papa was.	40:13
Felix Armfield	Yeah.	40:16
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	You see?	40:16
Felix Armfield	So the lady came up, Emanuella came up and she says, "Oh, what's the matter, Mr. Norman? You're not feeling too good?" And I told her, "Yeah," I said, "That's why we brought him back." Now that went on down. She said to the, "Well, I'll take care of him." Said, "This nurse was very mad at this desk because Papa wouldn't say to her whether he was Black or White." So when we got upstairs, he was the person who, none of them gray, because you see, I'm not half as gray but she's been gray since she was young. But even so, I'm old enough to have more gray hair. Both sides of my family did not gray early.	40:19
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	Okay.	40:57
Felix Armfield	So Papa went upstairs. Here's this doctor. He said, "You must be Spanish." And my sister, who's the oldest one said, "Oh my goodness. Don't start that. He's going to get a little Spanish doctor to say." And he said to Papa, "Can you speak Spanish?" Papa said, "No, because I ain't Spanish. You see?" (laughs)	40:57
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Oh, I went to Cancun one time with another lady, a friend of mine. And I'll never forget. We were in line at the airport about to get the plane. And it seemed as if the airport man was letting all the Spanish people come in front of the line.	41:18
Felix Armfield	Now, when was this?	41:41
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Oh, that's been about eight or nine years ago. Something like that. And so I was with this lady, she's very fair, whatnot. But he came and got me and spoke in Spanish. (laughs) Said you can go up there. I said, "Uh-uh."	41:44
Felix Armfield	I ain't the one. Uh-uh.	42:00
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	No. He kept saying something in Spanish again. I said, "No, no speak Spanish."	42:01
Felix Armfield	"No speak Spanish." (all laugh) Oh my goodness. What do you all remember about your teaching experiences? Which is one of the last things we want to talk about before we run out of tape here. About your teaching experiences here in New Orleans. Now, did both of you teach before integration?	42:17
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	Oh yes.	42:39
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Yes.	42:39
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	That's what I told you. Back when integration came about, I had just transferred and I was the newest teacher in the building and I had—	42:41
Felix Armfield	What do you recall prior to integration? What was [indistinct 00:42:52]—	42:48
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	I taught right by one of what they call city projects. So I had no problems and no White children there. But the school that I transferred to had several White children there. I had three during the years there. But it seemed like except for one family, they get about second grade and they took them all out. They were just decreasing. When I first went to McDonald 42, there must have been about over a hundred children.	42:52
Felix Armfield	Really?	43:24
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	White.	43:25
Felix Armfield	Okay. Okay.	43:25
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	And I wasn't there that long before they were on me about three or four. And then after that, it became all Black. And that happened to most of the schools. We have a Catholic school right at the corner of St. Bernard and Gentilly. And that used to be an all White Catholic school. And now there's not one White child in that school.	43:31
Felix Armfield	Really?	43:54
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	And the nuns left. All of the nuns who were teachers there.	43:55
Felix Armfield	Once integration came?	44:01
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	Once integration came, they started leaving. Uh-huh.	44:02
Felix Armfield	The nuns left.	44:06
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	So now there are no nuns that I can understand.	44:09
Felix Armfield	Make you question folks' religion.	44:11
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	That's [indistinct 00:44:14].	44:13
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	We question it all the time. The two of us.	44:13
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	[indistinct 00:44:17] and the nuns too.	44:18
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	Yeah.	44:19
Felix Armfield	Makes you question folks and their religion.	44:19
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	Yes.	44:22
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	[indistinct 00:44:24] protected about everything.	44:22
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	I am too. Because you see, we went to a church where we had White nuns who taught us catechism as children. And they were prejudiced. Very, very prejudiced.	44:24
Felix Armfield	Mm-hmm.	44:37
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	This is something—	44:39
Felix Armfield	[indistinct 00:44:40] your little Black children.	44:40
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	Yes.	44:40
Felix Armfield	[indistinct 00:44:42].	44:40
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	Yes. Uh-huh.	44:41
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Oh yeah.	44:42
Felix Armfield	Yeah.	44:42
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	But unless you have somebody at home telling you the right this is supposed to be, then you confused about it.	44:46
Felix Armfield	What do you recall?	44:54
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Well, before integration, it was very nice far as the children and the parents. But I thought that administration was very hard on the Black teachers.	44:57
Felix Armfield	This was during segregation?	45:11
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Yeah.	45:13
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	Yeah.	45:13
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	[indistinct 00:45:14].	45:13
Felix Armfield	Okay. Now administration [indistinct 00:45:16] from White administrative.	45:14
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	The superintendent. Yeah. [indistinct 00:45:20]. And we didn't have equal pay.	45:17
Felix Armfield	Oh, really?	45:22
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	No. We had to fight for that [indistinct 00:45:26]. It was a mitigation. Yeah, because she was one of the persons started that year.	45:23
Felix Armfield	[indistinct 00:45:28] equal pay.	45:25
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Yes, she did. Uh-huh.	45:27
Felix Armfield	Now you were teaching here in the New Orleans public—	45:34
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	In New Orleans public schools. [indistinct 00:45:38].	45:36
Felix Armfield	And what grades did you teach?	45:38
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Second grade and kindergarten.	45:39
Felix Armfield	Okay. Second grade and kindergarten.	45:40
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	But the teachers, I mean the students and the parents were very, very cooperative and very, very nice. But as the time went on, it became very difficult.	45:45
Felix Armfield	Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.	45:57
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Parents were different, than the children were different. It's a whole new ballgame now.	45:59
Felix Armfield	Oh yeah.	46:05
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Oh yeah.	46:05
Felix Armfield	Makes you glad you're out of that system.	46:05
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Oh yeah.	46:07
Jessie Lawrence Mouton	Oh yeah.	46:07
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Oh yeah. Yeah. We saw both sides of it too. [indistinct 00:46:11].	46:11
Felix Armfield	But I think it's interesting that you pointed out here that although you were in segregated school facilities, your administration in fact was handed down by White administrators.	46:11
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Oh yes. Oh yes. Oh yes, it was. It was. It was.	46:25
Felix Armfield	Were you accustomed to getting things like secondhand books and materials and things like that?	46:27
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Oh yeah. Yeah. We were accustomed to that.	46:37
Felix Armfield	Really?	46:37
Marjorie Belcina Pajeaud	Uh-huh. And we had to work twice as hard as a—	46:37

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.

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Educator

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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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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.

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Limited Re-Use

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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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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

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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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