Doris George (primary interviewee) and Stine George interview recording, 1994 June 28

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Sally Graham	Okay.	0:00
Doris Strong George	Okay.	0:03
Sally Graham	Today is June twenty-eighth, 1994.	0:05
Doris Strong George	Today is June the twenty-eighth, 1994.	0:08
Sally Graham	And who am I speaking with?	0:13
Doris Strong George	Doris Strong George.	0:14
Sally Graham	Okay. Ms. George, when and where were you born?	0:20
Doris Strong George	I was born in Moultrie, Georgia, north of Colquitt County, Georgia.	0:22
Sally Graham	In what year?	0:35
Doris Strong George	June eleventh, 1929.	0:38
Sally Graham	Okay. And tell me a little bit about your family.	0:43
Doris Strong George	Okay. My great, great, great-grandparents were slaves. The Strongs were born in Covington, Georgia, and they were slaves of a—anyway. Strongs something. And they got married, and then after slavery, they farmed. Then my grandfather met a lady by the name of Emma Bridges in Covington. They got married, and the Bridges family moved to Colquitt County. They were pioneers of Moultrie. Old man Tom Bridges and his boysa—had one girl and the rest were boys—they moved about five miles from Moultrie. They call is the Union Grove community. A Strong community. Tom Bridges purchased one thousand acres of land, and he got the loan from a bank in Macon. And he divided up the land between his boys and one girl. They had to pay for it, of course.	0:48
Sally Graham	What year was that?	2:18
Doris Strong George	In 1914 when the land was divided up. In 1914. Each son, each daughter was given 120 acres each approximately. Then he deeded out some for the school and for the church. The church is still standing.	2:21
Sally Graham	You pass a signed that says Union Grove Church.	2:41
Doris Strong George	Yes. Italica Road out there. Okay. That's the community. They own all the land on both sides. All of them had equal. They opened up turpentine, and they built house by house. Every brother had to help the other brother build a home. The houses were approximately the same size. And that son, Oliver, married Rita Strong. Rita [indistinct 00:03:15] who also were farmers. Their land was closer by two miles into Moultrie. And then my father and his older brother, Tom, went away to college. When they went into college, it was the Depression. They couldn't find a job. Then my uncle went to embalming school. Then my father borrowed 100 dollars from his father to open a grocery store when he first married.	2:46
Doris Strong George	He had a grocery store before he married my mother. And then they wanted to go in the funeral business. My daddy had saved his money. But the funeral home was built sixty years ago on the same land. They haven't changed the bolts at all. It's still standing. They cut the bolts and drive them out and used the poles from the farm to build the funeral home. Then my grandfather got sick. Before he got sick, my family bought one of the farms. See, my grandfather had bought one farm from his brother-in-law, so my daddy bought that farm at first that my grandfather wanted. The other brothers, they left, went north. They refused to sell the other land to my grandfather, but they rented the other land to him. So he farmed all the land.	3:49
Doris Strong George	So they sold one farm to my father and then when he got sick, my father bought the other farm, those two farms. [indistinct 00:04:54] And then my father [indistinct 00:05:00] until he died, along with my mother, in 1967. Then I was teaching school, and I resigned my teaching position. [indistinct 00:05:14]. And I've been running the funeral home. By myself. Daddy's not here. So we've come from farming families. We always kept farms in the family.	4:42
Sally Graham	And what were you farming? What was the farm?	5:24
Doris Strong George	[indistinct 00:05:28] farming?	5:26
Stine George	What crops are you talking about?	5:26
Doris Strong George	They farmed—I remember tobacco, cotton, peanuts. They farmed it all. Vegetables and watermelons. It mostly was cotton, peanuts. They grew a lot of peanuts, a lot of cotton, a lot of tobacco. A lot of watermelon. And they also had sugar cane, which they grounded and made into syrup, and they sold the syrup in cans.	5:32
Sally Graham	So your family also did the syrup making?	6:02
Doris Strong George	Yeah, syrup making. They had a mule to go around and 'round, and they grabbed the thing and they made a lots and lots of syrup. And they put it in cans, and they sold it to—they didn't have a lot of supermarkets. They sold it all over town to downtown stores, and also, they grew vegetables. And they would peddle some out on the streets, but they also supplied the local stores with vegetables through the year. Because you didn't have all these farmer markets or supermarkets like they have now.	6:04
Sally Graham	Was someone in your family that also took the vegetables around?	6:36
Doris Strong George	Yes. Somebody in my family. My grandparents did, about as good as I can remember.	6:42
Sally Graham	Okay. Was it also a family member that took care of the syrup grinding?	6:44
Doris Strong George	Yes. All of them. See, what they did, the boys—even when they got married, they would go home with the grinder, the cane.	6:52
Sally Graham	Okay. And when was the year that your—was it your grandparents that started the funeral home?	7:06
Doris Strong George	No, my parents. They started it in 1934.	7:11
Sally Graham	1934.	7:13
Doris Strong George	1934. He bid off the land—the floors and ceiling and everything, except the walls. The walls were plastic. But the top, they used the floors and everything. It's still standing.	7:16
Sally Graham	And that was pine?	7:33
Doris Strong George	Pine. It was pine.	7:33
Stine George	Probably a pine or cypress. You had a lot of, an awful lot of cypress at that time. I'm not 100 percent sure. Probably cypress. I can't say that for definite. But they did have an awful lot of cypress, and that's what they used to make chairs and floor, hardwood floor. They would go ahead and cut the cypress. It was an awful lot of everywhere. It could have been—of course, as she say, she's not sure about that.	7:36
Doris Strong George	I'm not sure.	8:00
Stine George	Then you have a lot of cured pines, too. Could very well been pine. It's been standing up for years and years and years. It's probably early 1900s when folks found out how to use the pines, what to use pine trees for. This has been standing there for fifty, sixty, seventy years. And of course, they were sound and they would have stood the test of time like, perhaps, you're talking about the lumber. [indistinct 00:08:27] It probably would have.	8:02
Sally Graham	Was the Strong family funeral home, was that one of the first in Moultrie?	8:29
Doris Strong George	It wasn't the first funeral home. It was not the first. It was another one here before this.	8:38
Stine George	No matter how initially you went about embalming the body, how that was handled at that time, they didn't embalm them, per se, like they do today. You know, they might do in that situation—	8:45
Sally Graham	How did you learn that? What's the sort of—	8:54
Doris Strong George	I've been around the funeral home all my life, and I first started just doing the hair and taking the calls and things like that and doing the funerals. Then I got into—I went to school for embalming. [phone rings] [laughs] They told me who's gonna die at home and all your relatives would come. And then they would go somewhere—a man would make some burial box. It's a box they put them in to bury and they stay. But they would put some pennies over the eyes to close the eyes. I guess they just push the mouth up the best they could and put some turpentine on them in case they might be smelling before they get a chance to bury. Sometimes they couldn't get a chance to bury them the next day because they had to go to work. They had to bury them soon. And they would hold the funeral a month after whenever—they didn't have church but once a month, and then they had the funeral after people be buried. Everybody come to the funeral. There wouldn't be no body.	9:00
Sally Graham	Oh. So they would actually bury—	10:03
Doris Strong George	They'd dig a hole.	10:06
Sally Graham	They'd dig a hole.	10:06
Doris Strong George	And bury them. But as long as they had a place to bury them.	10:09
Sally Graham	Okay. And what was with maybe poorer people or—	10:10
Stine George	Poor people. Poor people. That's what I experienced when I was a little boy coming up. People in the neighborhood that basically—initially, particular people who were very poor did not take the people to the funeral home, per se. They kept them at home after they died. And of course, they would put them on this here bench, and they'd lay there. And then they put—they'd close the eyes as well as they could, and then they'd put salt and stuff down their mouth.	10:15
Doris Strong George	They would put some pennies over their eyes.	10:52
Stine George	Salt in their mouth to keep the odor out to some extent and make them close their mouth. Burying them was a quicker process, make some kind of box, make a box and stick them in it.	10:55
Doris Strong George	And then they'd dig a hole in the ground and put them in the ground. You usually had a burial place, though, somewhere around the church or some land or something.	10:59
Sally Graham	What was the salt for?	11:11
Stine George	Try to draw the mouth together. Draw the mouth together. Because most people died had their mouth wide open. That salt helped draw the mouth, and then they could pull it together.	11:12
Sally Graham	What other things do you remember about the customs of before the '30s, what people did then?	11:25
Stine George	Back in the '30s—	11:33
Doris Strong George	By then, most people had—we [indistinct 00:11:44] funeral home. But there hadn't been much money, and so they get the funeral for thirty-five dollars. Whole funeral.	11:34
Sally Graham	That's how much a funeral would be?	11:46
Doris Strong George	And then they didn't have to come to a funeral that lived so far in the country. About twelve, fifteen miles. And they said, "Just put them in a casket like so and so was in." And everyone was saying, "Get a casket." And then in the meantime—we sound like we had a—we called a casket company. We would tease the casket company because we bought better caskets from [indistinct 00:12:18].	11:51
Doris Strong George	And my daddy and my uncle used to make the caskets. But they do get boxes. [indistinct 00:12:25] they could buy some cloth and they'd cover the caskets. They'd cover the boxes. And then what they did, in our house, we had a fine dining room—no. In our back bedroom—in the big living house, the bedroom was where they make the caskets inside where they wouldn't get wet, inside the house. And they'd be sawing in there during the daytime and getting some glue to glue that cloth on to the boxes.	12:17
Sally Graham	And this is when you were growing up?	13:01
Doris Strong George	When I was growing up. When I was a little girl.	13:01
Stine George	This is the '30s we're talking about. This is the '30s, late '20s and early '30s.	13:02
Doris Strong George	Early '30s.	13:05
Stine George	When I was in mid-30s.	13:06
Doris Strong George	No, no. It was still in the '30s.	13:08
Stine George	Yeah. I mean, they still made the box. But I'm talking about all this burying people in the county funeral went out of existence.	13:10
Doris Strong George	Because I remember that. I told everybody we had had a funeral. My daddy had to buy a casket, and they didn't have no money at all. They would take a collection at the church.	13:17
Stine George	Well, you got to understand, too, that we didn't have trucks and cars to carry them. We had a wagon pulled by one or two mules, and that's what carried people to the—	13:25
Doris Strong George	[indistinct 00:13:35] I mean, that was a—	13:34
Stine George	That's what we did. We had to go across—like us, we led us across the river down there, or we had to go across—the mule had to go pull the bodies on the wagon across to the burial place.	13:40
Sally Graham	Do I need to pause this? Is that the door?	13:58
Doris Strong George	He's at the door. I'm just going to be [indistinct 00:14:09] looking.	14:09
Stine George	Hey. How you doing? [indistinct 00:14:09] [INTERRUPTION]	14:09
Doris Strong George	His name was [indistinct 00:14:09]. All Black college. Are they only in the south? As far as I know, I know in southeastern. There was another embalming school that Blacks could go to, but it was Gupton-Jones in Nashville, Tennessee. But it wasn't all Black. It was predominant White college, but they didn't have enough staff. So what they would do—I didn't want to go to that school. They had a partition in the class. Same teacher. The Black folks sit on one side, and the White students sat on the other.	14:11
Sally Graham	Really?	14:48
Doris Strong George	We ain't in Florida. No Alabama. Just we're down south, south of the Mason-Dixon Line is only two schools. Gupton-Jones—and that's the White school—and they had separate [indistinct 00:15:06] and he sat there in front of them. And then the Black folks had to sit over here at a little bit of pace, and the White would sit over there.	14:50
Sally Graham	And there was just a glass that you could see through or—	15:13
Doris Strong George	You could see the wall. They could see through the wall because the same teacher was teaching the Blacks and the Whites. But they had to have it separated, so they did it by partition.	15:18
Sally Graham	Gosh. So there were only two schools that Blacks could go to?	15:31
Doris Strong George	Mm-hmm. There was an all Black school in Atlanta and this Jim Crow school in Nashville, Tennessee.	15:36
Sally Graham	And were the instructors at your school, where they Black?	15:43
Doris Strong George	They're all Black. Because the president of the college—he receives a lot of awards—he taught part—time at [indistinct 00:15:59] went to be president of the school. And they all were very good. All Black. They came from Black schools.	16:02
Sally Graham	How did the school start or the history of the—	16:07
Doris Strong George	Embalming school?	16:11
Sally Graham	Mm-hmm.	16:12
Doris Strong George	All right, I think it only started—didn't last too long. It was a very good school. After World War II, there were a lot of veterans, I think, during World War II came home who had benefits. And they had no school for them to go to except Gupton-Jones, who was segregated against them. So somebody got the bright idea that we would start our own school, and they start that school. Most of the students there were on a GI Bill except a few.	16:16
Sally Graham	Now was this unusual for a woman to go to this school?	16:51
Doris Strong George	Yes. Because very few women in any profession because—when I was there, we were lucky. They only had two classes at the time. In the class before me, only one woman. And then there were four of us in my class. And all the rest were men. All the rest were men. They had a men's dormitory for men. No place for women because they—they had no women at all, no place for them to stay. So they had to stay in private homes. [indistinct 00:17:27] So they had a list of approved homes to women to live in.	16:55
Stine George	I want to inject something there that you may not realize. Up until even up in the '40s, generally—	17:34
Doris Strong George	I'm not forty years.	17:39
Stine George	I said in the '40s. Generally Black farmers or Black people who sent their kids to school always wanted to send girls and not guys. Because they thought in terms of the girl, having an education and the boys had to take care of the farm, more or less. And that's something that went on for an awful long time.	17:48
Sally Graham	Okay. That's an interesting point.	18:04
Stine George	But then the problem was when the girls graduated and got out, they had nobody to marry because we were broke.	18:11
Sally Graham	Was that a problem, Ms. George?	18:19
Doris Strong George	Not really. Not really.	18:25
Stine George	Not [indistinct 00:18:28] you're right. That's what happen today. Not many of them are good matched couples because of the fact they don't have the value or understanding and advantage in getting somebody their equal. Because they had no choices. Very few choices.	18:28
Doris Strong George	A lot of my friends had problems.	18:42
Sally Graham	Did most of your friends go away to school like you did? Or did they stay on the farms or in the community?	18:45
Doris Strong George	Well, most of them stayed in the community and got lost in the crowd or either moved away and went off and then they had low-paying jobs. [phones ringing] Now there were some—both telephones ringing, Stine!	18:58
Sally Graham	Wow. So you've got both of them. Okay.	19:07
Stine George	Thank you, sir.	19:07
Doris Strong George	[indistinct 00:19:21] All right. There were only two children in my family. Two girls, no boys. I'm the older of the two. So I guess my father—I guess I'm the boy that he always wanted.	19:30
Sally Graham	I see.	19:40
Doris Strong George	And so from the time I was born, he was wanting me to be the funeral director. Now he's [indistinct 00:19:52]. Although I had a choice, but [indistinct 00:19:54]. Then I chose teaching. And my sister is a social worker. She went to find him when she moved to Chicago. We both went there. But she made a social worker. They would not hire her. She could not find a job even herself, so she had to stay north [indistinct 00:20:16]. But he didn't worry about her. He was worried about me. He wanted me to come home and get a job teaching at home where I could help him and one day take over. But he didn't know he was going to die as young as he did.	19:41
Sally Graham	How old was he?	20:27
Doris Strong George	He wasn't so young, but he was sixty-one. He thought he would just retire and help me.	20:31
Sally Graham	And what about your mother? Did she—	20:31
Doris Strong George	Oh, my mother. Yeah. She done got an outside job, but what she did is she came back because they had moved away. [indistinct 00:20:58] They already knew each other's family, but my father was older than my mother. So they left because they told me they were living in the same general area. And 19—something, a Black man was lynched. What it was, they accused—	20:49
Doris Strong George	They knew—the White folks. See, during that time, if you live on a farm, White folks and Black folks visit each other. They come eat. Children played together. And I guess they worked together. But anyway. They went to the big house and somebody had slashed the daughter's neck from here to here, and they accused a Black man of—they didn't know it, because it went unsolved.	21:20
Doris Strong George	And they treat her so nice when they had heard about the girl that was killed. They treat her real nice. So they went to see her, and they said she's dead. So they went back home. By that time, some Ku Klux Klansmen came from all over Georgia that night and went around from house to house. And the word got around. So we had to go to the cemetery and lay down because they're going around and beating up all the Black folks.	21:49
Doris Strong George	They did beat up a lot of them, looking for this one man who supposedly have raped this White girl and killed her. They were just about three to four knights and one of my grandaddy's brothers said he was going to run to the house and get him. So he shot a lot of them. And then he left that night and went to California. And the rest of us—walked away from their farms, walked from their crops. And they all left and went to Ohio.	22:13
Doris Strong George	Except the one who had shot at these folks. They got him. They shot at him, but didn't catch him. They never caught him. And then they beat up women and children who didn't go. They just go around and setting folks' houses on fire. So they said they won't ever live in the South anymore, so he took his family North and went and finished high school in Columbus. And then the Depression came, and he left and joined my grandfather. Not my grandfather Strong, my mama's mama. And so they had to come back.	22:32
Doris Strong George	They didn't have any—they was going to Florida, they wasn't coming to Georgia no more. Her mother had gone to Florida, and then they broke down in a raggedy truck.First they thought it was full of furniture, 'cause they thought the truck was through here like the wagon bed. And then it finally broke down in Paris, Kentucky. So he stayed there and then couldn't find a job there. He worked on a soup line.	23:20
Doris Strong George	So he wrote one White man that he knew that he had told him that he sent for him and his family, he would sharecrop for him next year. The man didn't even know whether he was going to come or not because he ain't seen him about ten years or twelve years or longer. But he sent the money for train fare for him. I think he had about five children. A wife and five children ride the train, that was a lot of money then. Next year, he rented a farm. And after then, he bought another farm after then. But she only did help my father. My father knew how to manage money much better than me. I ain't never learned that. [laughs]	23:42
Stine George	And in addition to what she's saying there, that is true how some farmers— Some Black people take a lot of, or were able to actually save money from farming from these White people.	24:25
Doris Strong George	They saved the money!	24:38
Stine George	Most White people allowed them to save. In most cases, and particularly in the poor communities, the White woman handled all the books, handled the money. And of course, it was a death thing if you ever said to a White man that his wife did not tell the truth about how she calculated the figures. And of course, in many instances, I had uncles on the same—that happened to them. They made money on the farm, but in the end, they had no money because see, they had nothing. They had to give them allowance every week or month. You mostly had what they called commissary or a store, these big farmers did. And of course, you got everything from that store. And they don't allow you to keep any records of what you got.	24:38
Stine George	They did all the keeping. The man's wife, he may have had 150 people working on his different farms. Because see, a one-horse farm was only forty acres, so every forty acres, you got to have another person doing the work. So at the end of the year, most times, if you challenged him and said, "Hey, we didn't get that money. We made a good crop of tobacco, and we deserve more money." Well, that was almost a death thing to you because he didn't allow you to say his wife was a liar. And that's what, basically, you were saying.	25:25
Stine George	And then of course, that was one of the things that caused a lot of Blacks to leave the South because they did not make it. They had to work a whole year, and when the man would say, "Hey, you called my wife a liar," or something like that, and then you just shut up because you know that night going to come and they going to lynch you. So they just kept quiet. And of course, many of them were not successful. This was unusual for a White man who helped them to allow him to make it. And that's not—	26:06
Doris Strong George	He's just a few. Because most of them, they ain't never got nothing. I don't care how much they work, they never had anything end of the year. But this man who sent the money, he was able to pay him back the money. And then pay him back and make enough money where he could leave the next year. He didn't leave owing the man, but he paid the man for the bus fare and then all that out of one year. Then he rented.	26:35
Sally Graham	Was that your father?	27:02
Doris Strong George	That was my grandfather. My mother's father. But see, many folks [indistinct 00:27:11] ever show up or not. [indistinct 00:27:14] because I know people that have children workers. End of the year, they have nothing. And all through the year, they have nothing. Because they didn't have a little bit through the year. Most of the people. Majority of the people. But he was the one that—I don't know. He was just one of the ones that was—	27:03
Stine George	Better. Now you know when you get down there and see my dad, he's going to tell you about the circumstance like I just mentioned now where those White guys, I remember, were not as nice.	27:30
Doris Strong George	No, all of them was mean except one or two. And I guess that was good of him. But he—	27:39
Stine George	You worked all the year, and I fed you. So now I don't owe you nothing. If you want to stay here, you're going to have to work another year. Some of them would stay another year. And some of them would make promise to them like, "If you work a whole year, I got this cow here. I got a cow here. I'll give you my cow at the end of the year." That was [indistinct 00:28:06] started happening. But another thing they would do is say, "At the end of the year at Christmastime—. [indistinct 00:28:12] and then they would say something like this, "I'll give you the quarter of the cow at Christmastime." And looking forward to this quarter of the cow at Christmas. You know how that goes, don't you?	27:45
Sally Graham	You said quarter of a cow?	28:31
Stine George	Uh-huh.	28:32
Sally Graham	What is it?	28:41
Stine George	Nothing.	28:41
Sally Graham	Nothing.	28:41
Stine George	[indistinct 00:28:42]	28:41
Doris Strong George	[indistinct 00:28:42]	28:41
Stine George	That's what they got. They didn't get the meat at all. That's the part the man gave them.	28:41
Doris Strong George	Not [indistinct 00:28:51] a lot of people, I knew they worked hard and they didn't have anything. But [indistinct 00:28:55] you had to get a doctor or get the midwife. And they put everything down and give them the bill every month. But see, if you could grow your stuff and you hunt—my grandfather literally hunted. He just hunt in his spare time, hunt everything. I guess the man didn't have no store. But I didn't have no store, either, but they would give him a little bit every—first of the month, they would come to town and, of course, by the end of the year, they never made nothing [indistinct 00:29:30]. Try to take it out. And then [indistinct 00:29:35] got bigger and better all the time. He had plenty of money. And the Black folks never have nothing. They living in huts. And they didn't never have a penny. They couldn't even got their children decent clothes or nothing.	28:49
Stine George	And they didn't have schools. The only schools they had were churches to go to. And another thing was a problem was they didn't have freezers or refrigerators to keep the meats and foods in. In fact, what happened in the '20s and '30s was that you had—a truck would come along from the city through the rural community with ice. I think the ice was a nickel or you could get a nickel's worth. You get a big piece for a nickel, and they would give you a piece and you wrap it up in burlap sacks. And that's what you got your [indistinct 00:30:27] make clothes out of it, too. But you can basically use it for those purpose, too. And they would wrap some of the stuff in that, but you couldn't keep it. What they do most with meat was salted the stuff down and try to keep it as long as they could.	29:47
Doris Strong George	They'd keep it.	30:40
Stine George	Yeah, they'd keep it.	30:40
Doris Strong George	Over a year. They'd keep them. My grandmama would say—	30:40
Stine George	Also smoke.	30:40
Doris Strong George	They have a smokehouse. [indistinct 00:30:51]	30:40
Stine George	[indistinct 00:30:51]	30:40
Doris Strong George	They would have ham and they'd get all the ham and the bacon. They'd be sat down, and they'd have salt fish.	30:54
Sally Graham	What kind of fish would they salt down?	31:09
Doris Strong George	The fish they would—	31:09
Stine George	[indistinct 00:31:10]	31:09
Doris Strong George	All kind of fish. They would salt down, and they put it in some water so it was salt out and fry the fish. And all the meat was salted, and they would make sausage. And they would smoke that and hang it up. It was never sour. And in the summer, they would put up—	31:10
Stine George	It didn't sour.	31:23
Doris Strong George	Huh?	31:23
Stine George	It didn't sour quickly. But they wouldn't put nothing in it to preserve it. So by smoking it and putting [indistinct 00:31:35]—	31:28
Doris Strong George	They did. They had some green stuff. They had some [indistinct 00:31:38] stuff they put all over it. I don't know what it was.	31:34
Sally Graham	What was the green stuff?	31:42
Stine George	I have no idea.	31:42
Doris Strong George	It would give it a good taste. Real good taste. And people don't do it now [indistinct 00:31:50] not like it used to be.	31:43
Stine George	I've never seen it [indistinct 00:31:54] kill the hogs and hung the meat up in a smokehouse and it'll smoke it. And they would salt it down extremely salty, and then—	31:51
Doris Strong George	Heat the water up before you cook it, to fry it. But they used a lot of salt. [indistinct 00:32:13] ham before she smoke it, and that would help preserve it. And then they would put up a lot of vegetables in jars.	32:06
Stine George	That was probably root herbs that they put in that. May or may not have done it good.	32:21
Doris Strong George	But I know she always had some meat to eat.	32:27
Sally Graham	You brought up schools. How much schooling did both of your parents have in their background?	32:34
Doris Strong George	Okay. All my parents and grandparents could read and write. They were very believe in education. Now see my grandfather, [indistinct 00:32:56], but he came down here. But he could read and write, and he'd read the paper all the time. [indistinct 00:33:02] Her sister goes to [indistinct 00:33:06] high school to go to college and university. And he educated his own family.	32:43
Sally Graham	Okay. And this is your grandfather?	33:12
Doris Strong George	Grandparents. They had an only boy like my daddy. My uncle was the oldest boy. They had to go away to high school because they only had seventh grade public schools. So they went to South Carolina for high school.	33:14
Sally Graham	Did they stay with family?	33:26
Doris Strong George	No, they lived in the campus, but they had to work in the summer. It's changed now where they come home. They didn't come home. They might have come in high school. In college, they didn't come home [indistinct 00:33:37]. When they went to [indistinct 00:33:42], they caught a boat and worked on the boat all the way up to New York or New Jersey. And they worked in hotels and restaurants waiting tables to save their money for college.	33:27
Doris Strong George	Then they'd get a job when they get back to college. [indistinct 00:33:59] by the time the depression came, so there was no money for the younger boys to —there was seven boys in my grandparents' family. No money for the younger boys to go to college during that time. Because my granny didn't have any to help them with. But he had some to help the older boys. Now my grandmama and my grandfather both—I don't know if my grandfather went to school. They both could read and write, and they all loved school. And their children went to school.	33:54
Sally Graham	And what about your father? How did he learn how to—	34:32
Doris Strong George	He went to [indistinct 00:34:38] in Chicago, both him and his brother.	34:35
Sally Graham	Both?	34:39
Doris Strong George	Uh-huh. [indistinct 00:34:42] in Chicago.	34:41
Sally Graham	Okay. And was that an all Black, or was that an integrated—	34:43
Doris Strong George	No. That was an integrated school in Chicago.	34:48
Sally Graham	And it wasn't separated the way—	34:49
Doris Strong George	No, it wasn't separated. It wasn't separated.	34:50
Sally Graham	What year did he go there? Or about?	34:54
Doris Strong George	He was married in '28, so he must have been about '26, '27, something like that.	34:58
Stine George	You got to understand, too, everything across the Mason-Dixon line was sort of integrated. Even the organization like people's farms was all integrated. Everything go across the other side of Kentucky was basically integrated.	35:02
Doris Strong George	They said Washington [indistinct 00:35:17].	35:15
Stine George	Even operated by White people, it was integrated.	35:17
Doris Strong George	In Cincinnati, that was the imaginary line because the Mason—	35:20
Stine George	Mason-Dixon line.	35:22
Doris Strong George	Mason-Dixon line. Down here was real segregated. And there, you had a farmer [indistinct 00:35:39] even when I went to Chicago and every place—they didn't accept Black folks.	35:26
Sally Graham	Really?	35:44
Stine George	Yeah. Everything.	35:44
Sally Graham	So you went to Chicago to the University of Chicago?	35:44
Doris Strong George	Me and my sister both. I got a Master's in counseling, and my sister had a Master's in social work.	35:46
Sally Graham	Okay. How common was that for—	35:49
Doris Strong George	It was very uncommon because even—my sister when she graduated from [indistinct 00:36:01] down in Tallahassee, then all the teachers wanted to [indistinct 00:36:06] education. She said, "No, I'm not going to teach. I'm going to be a social worker." "No, you might not find no job. You better get a job teaching." She said, "I'm going on to graduate school." When she finished college, she was going to graduate school. They really discouraged her, but she went anyway.	35:55
Sally Graham	And then she went before you went to Chicago?	36:19
Doris Strong George	Uh-huh. I went to Chicago to see her, and I said, "I got to come here." And I went. And then my daughter went. My son wouldn't go because he said that the women [indistinct 00:36:43] at that school.	36:36
Sally Graham	The women what?	36:46
Doris Strong George	All the women were [indistinct 00:36:48] at that school, so he didn't want to go.	36:52
Sally Graham	So where did he go?	36:54
Doris Strong George	He's a lawyer. He went to Tennessee State, and he went to Harvard in Washington D.C. to law school.	36:55
Stine George	So you're talking about education. You see, even with us, it's different. Our experiences are basically different.	37:04
Doris Strong George	Yeah, they did because I didn't grow up on a farm. Stan grew up on a farm.	37:12
Sally Graham	So you grew up in—	37:20
Doris Strong George	In little town of Moultrie.	37:20
Sally Graham	A town. I guess that would have been an urban area.	37:20
Stine George	Right. [indistinct 00:37:27] My grandparents were basically—didn't have an education, and they didn't believe in education, to be frank. My granddaddy, he didn't believe in education. But of course, for some reason, somehow, he had seven sons and one daughter. And of course-	37:29
Doris Strong George	Same thing as my grandparents.	37:45
Stine George	And of course by not believing in education, had an opportunity to actually rent farms. That's basically what he did. He rented farms because he had a large family, and therefore, he had plenty of land and mules for his boys to work. And of course, he didn't do any of the work himself too much. What he did was basically just rode around and checked on the boys because he would rent farms wherever he could get. He maybe had a farm here, and then about a mile down the road, may have another farm, another forty acres over here. May have eight acres over here. But then the boys did the work. He just rode around with a buggy and a wagon to check on them. And of course, like I said, he didn't believe in education of women.	37:49
Doris Strong George	Who?	38:31
Stine George	My granddaddy.	38:33
Doris Strong George	Your granddaddy [indistinct 00:38:36]. My granny didn't like it. My granny lived with my mama.	38:34
Stine George	And of course, he loved women. He didn't believe in education at all, and of course, my daddy, for some reason, wanted to go to elementary school. And of course, he got as far as fourth grade, and he always tell a story about how he wanted to go farther and he talked about how they would start plowing early with the mule around the field. So they would start early. In fact, just before Christmas, they'd start plowing and get all the land broke up so they could start planting. Time was March and April. So he couldn't go to school. He said that last year when his daddy decided he wasn't going to let him go, he and a couple of his brothers on the home—didn't own the farm, but they was renting it. But he said they went out there early and they broke all the land up and got it broke.	38:39
Stine George	He said his dad was, like I said, a womanizer. He wouldn't even come home at night sometimes. He's still the whole weekend—so he said they went on and worked. So he said that particular morning, they had the land all broken and they had to go through a gate to go into the house. And he said he was walking with books going to school, and he met his dad at the gate. And his dad said, "Where you going?" He said, "We fixing to go to school." He said, "You want to go to school and learn how to do nothing." He said his dad jumped off the buggy and beat him and said, "Now go back home. I just rented some more land somewhere down the road. Get that mule and go down there and start plowing." He beat him good. He vowed at that point in time that if he had any children of his own, he was going to send them to school and college.	39:38
Stine George	And of course, that's exactly absolutely what happened. He only got as far as fourth grade. And of course, when we came along, the four of us, he insisted on us going to school. [indistinct 00:40:46] and how to do it by just saying, "You going to go to school. You going to go to school." And of course, the two girls were older, so they went first. And of course, they graduated and my brother and I came along, too. And of course, going to elementary school while my sister being a little older, I started school at five years old, to be frank. And we had to walk two and a half miles every day to get to the schoolhouse. And of course, two and a half miles a day at five, six years old, you just not wanting to play around.	40:33
Stine George	And there were a time or two whereas—one day in particular that my sister and I didn't go to school. Of course, we kind of play along inside the fence all day, and we saw a White man who lived in the neighborhood. And we knew him, but we hid from him behind the woods. But he saw us over in the woods, and so he walked on down to the store two miles away and got what he wanted. And he came by, we were still hiding in the woods when he came back along walking. But he lived right below our house, and he came and told my dad about it the fact that he saw us playing by the road that day. So that afternoon we got home, my dad had rolled his barrel out in the yard out there, and he called us both out there. And of course, my sister had a fit when he beat her like that, and of course, he [indistinct 00:42:28] to beat us.	41:28
Doris Strong George	[indistinct 00:42:30]?	42:28
Stine George	Yeah. [indistinct 00:42:32] Turpentine barrel. So I saw him come in the yard with a broom stick. He had something called a broom, called a yard broom. We swept the yard with it. And he came home, I said, "What are you going to do with all them things?" And we was in the house. See, we came back home when the White folks' bus came in. Because they had buses. They'd come by us every day, but we had to walk those two and a half miles. And they realized we had to walk farther to our schools. Their school was probably two miles. Our school was half a mile beyond their school in a church. And of course, they had a nice school to go to.	42:30
Stine George	And of course, one other thing that kept us wanting to go to school, too, White folks had dogs along the way. And in fact, in that community we lived in, there was just enough White people mainly in that particular area in which we lived, and of course, they all had dogs. And a lot of times, the dogs got in the road and we'd have to fight them, beat the dogs off. But anyway, that particular day, he beat us. He beat us about not going to school. And of course, I guess that's a turning point for us staying in school, too, the fact that he beat us for not going to school.	43:11
Stine George	But anyway. After I finished elementary school, then the closest high school was six miles away. And of course, I was the only one in that community going to this high school because the other boys stopped. There was some more boys lived about a mile away. They decided they didn't want to go to school after they finished elementary school. Thought they had all the education they needed and their dad did not care about education, either, so they just stopped. And of course, that meant my dad said, "No, you can't stop. Got to go to school." So I'm in eighth grade, and I had to walk six miles. 12 miles a day. And of course, had a bridge over the river called Conecuh River to go across, and it's a wood bridge. And of course, kind of scared because that bridge—I was kind of afraid to go across that bridge.	43:46
Stine George	My dad always told me, "If you come up to that bridge and somebody's on it, you just go back in the woods and stay in the woods until they leave. And then you come on home or go on to school." And of course, that's what I would do. Every morning, I would leave and actually make it in a little over an hour, get to school in an hour every morning. And of course, I did that for a year and a half before we ever got a school bus. Of course, when we got the school bus, it wasn't—the man lived kind of in the area. He started a school bus route himself, and all the peoples would pay him so much money per week. They didn't have much to pay him. But anyway. Riding the bus worn out by White folks already. But anyway. That's what we were riding on. Of course, the bus would break down any time.And some mornings, I would walk to school before it ever could get there. And of course, my dad's thing was, "Don't wait for the bus. You just go on and the bus will pick you up along the way if it gets there." And that's what I did every morning was I would leave walking, and like I said, many mornings, that bus didn't make it at all. I made it to school. And that's one thing that he insisted, even in elementary school. I was in elementary school for seven years. I got six shirts because I went to school every day for those six years.	44:41
Doris Strong George	They gave you a shirt?	45:59
Stine George	Yeah, the teacher would give me a shirt. The teacher would give me a shirt every year.	46:01
Doris Strong George	I always got a piece of paper.	46:04
Stine George	She gave me a shirt about every year. Anyway. When I went on and—actually, after second year, the bus was still kind of ragged. So I bought a bicycle, and I rode the bicycle some days until the bus got in better shape. By the third year, the bus was in better shape, to be frank. In fact, they had got another bus. And then of course, I only spent four years in high school. And then that last year in particular, I rode the bus every day because it basically was on time.	46:13

Stine George	But anyway, funny thing. I used to walk to school and I'd come back home, and in particular in the eighth grade, I was taking agriculture. And of course, we called it New Farm North America at that time. They had the Future Farmers all over the United States. There was something called Future Farmers of North America, as you know it today.	0:03
Doris Strong George	FHA.	0:35
Stine George	But see—no, it's something different.	0:35
Doris Strong George	Wait a minute, what do you call it?	0:35
Stine George	He talking women's group. We'll get to that.	0:35
Doris Strong George	Men's group. They had initials for it.	0:35
Stine George	[indistinct 00:00:36] You take my train of thought.	0:35
Doris Strong George	Okay.	0:35
Stine George	I'm trying to make a point here.	0:35
Stine George	Okay, anyway, we had this New Farmer's of North America organization, which [indistinct 00:00:49] the Future Farmers of America. I think our group was organized in 1917, while the rational farms, they would not let us attend the Future Farmers of North America. We were not allowed—for the [indistinct 00:01:03] domestics [indistinct 00:01:04] attend the Future Farmers of North America, so therefore, we had to organize our own thing. We organized what we called the New Farmers of North America Organization, our leadership organized at that time. That's what we operated under. Of course, all of the boys had to take Vocation Ag whether they wanted to or not. Of course, certainly there were rules. We didn't mind that because that way we had our farms and we could go back and have projects and [indistinct 00:01:33].	0:43
Stine George	Of course, at that time, my dad had bought his farm, at least buying the farm, so that I could have just whatever I wanted. His thing was you can have any crop you wanted as long as you took care of it. But then, you had to take care of the cost for producing it, like tobacco particularly, I had to pay the expense for the fertilizer and that kind of stuff. But as far as anything else, he gave me all the money I would make from it, but he said, "Okay, you store this money. You put this money up, because if you don't have any money you don't get any." But see, we didn't put it the only way we had to get to town basically was walk. So therefore, we did not use the banks [indistinct 00:02:22]. What we all did was had cans. We hid our money in our field around. That's—	1:32
Sally Graham	Out in the field?	2:26
Stine George	Yeah, in the field around. Nobody knew where it was but us. Of course, when I graduated from high school, [indistinct 00:02:47], my sister had already gone to college, my little sister. She went through that eleven and a half years—we only went to the eleventh grade then. She got married to a guy, that he didn't particularly want her to get married. We definitely, no one wanted her to get married, because the buy, he was one of those guys that worked on the farm and did not go to school.	2:29
Stine George	Anyway, my other sister, she went on to finish high school and went on to college. Of course, she boarded with some people that she knew. Of course, in my case, I finished high school, I didn't want to go to college. In fact, I tried to keep on going to high school, to be frank, but he insisted on me going to high school. I tried everything in the world not to go. I pretended I couldn't urinate for about a week [indistinct 00:03:37]. Seriously. Then I later came and I couldn't defecate. The doctor, he went to the doctor one time and asked the doctor basically, "Nothing wrong with that boy. His stomach's not swollen." I'm doing it all for what I wanted to do, but I didn't want to go to school.	3:07
Stine George	Of course, also at that time when I got to about the tenth grade, my dad could pick an awful lot of cotton. In fact, he was picking something like 400 and 500 pounds of cotton a day. My stepmother, the same thing. She was picking 400 or 500 pounds of cotton a day. Well, by the time I got in tenth grade, I could pick 400 or 500 pounds too. So, now the rationale I used for not going to college. I said to my dad, "Look, Dad, I can pick 500 pounds of cotton a day. Let me stay here with y'all and we'll just pick cotton. The three of us could pick a bale a day." The three of us, my dad, my stepmother and myself. We'd pick a bale of cotton, 1500 pound bale. He picked like 530 or 550. I picked 510, fifteen, twenty. My stepmother picked 475, 480, around 500. So, we were doing a bale a day. So my thing was, "Dad, we could stay here and make a whole lot of money," but—	3:52
Doris Strong George	Picking cotton.	4:47
Stine George	But he insisted. "No, Son, you must go to college."	4:48
Sally Graham	So his father that didn't want—	4:51
Doris Strong George	Him to go to school.	4:51
Stine George	Yeah, his father didn't want him—didn't believe in education. So anyway, that's how it happened, how I went onto college. My brother came along. He had no choice. After I was going, he wanted certainly to have a highest case than I had, so naturally that kind of movitated him to want to go on anyway.	4:51
Sally Graham	What school did you end up going to?	5:13
Stine George	Graduate school or undergrad? Well, my sister went down to Savannah State, called Savannah State College then. Then the year I graduated, then they moved the agriculture program from Savannah State to Fort Valley State. Of course, if you were in Georgia, you had to go to either one of those schools. You had to go to Fort Valley if you were interested in agriculture because University of Georgia would not let Black folks into the holy ground. So, we had to go to Fort Valley. Of course, I never forget. When I got there, I had no writing much experience because, see, even in the high school and agriculture shop, we didn't have any equipment or tools. We just had a room that was saying this is the agriculture shop. We got theory. You do this. You farm like this. You do this. You do this like this. But as far as having something to work with, we didn't have a thing to work with.	5:18
Stine George	Got to college, the situation was really the same or worse. They had one old engine up in the shop. Of course, it hadn't run in years. I don't know if it had ever run before. I was shop at school. Then what we did get was a lot of theory and also farming experience. As far as the machinery and that kind of thing, we didn't get any of that because we had nothing to work with. I went there—	6:11
Doris Strong George	I thought they had a farm at Fort Valley.	6:46
Stine George	Yeah, they had a farm program. They had a huge farm program, because see, Fort Valley was supposed to be the land grant college for Blacks in Georgia, see. The University of Georgia was a land grant college for Whites. Fort Valley, land grant college for Black folks. Truly, we didn't have anything in our shop. The only thing we could get was the rural activities, the rural experiences. Of course, I never forget when I got there, I was so poor I didn't have no money when I got there because what I tended to do was use as much of my money as possible.	6:49
Doris Strong George	[indistinct 00:07:25].	7:23
Stine George	On farming. I saved a lot of the money I had earned. Naturally, my dad, he worked daytime work, did farming at night. Of course, when I would come home from school, I'd either have my hogs. What happened is White folk was mean, but they were help to some extent. But you see, nobody taught us to do. We had this Black cow show every year. Of course, they would get us around twenty-five to thirty yearling cows at the end of the year, like September, October, November. What the theory was these cows weighed about 200 to 500 pounds, see. What we were to do is feed them, take care of them until April when the [indistinct 00:08:20] cow show took place, show the cow, maybe won a prize by showing the cow and then selling the cow at that point in time.	7:24
Stine George	What happened was, after the last two years that I was there, they allowed us to get a male and a female. We'd get a steer and a female. What I did was you let the male, the steer pay for the female, and then you pick the female and keep on your farm. That was the idea behind it. But, the point was we were too poor to keep the calf. So what we did mostly—what everybody did really—was sold the cow so that last year I was there I got four cows. Of course, even though we got about thirty cow, twenty-five to thirty cows, every year, when showtime came in April, there were never any more than seven cows at the show, at the fair, because the Black guys, we would have sold the cows, ate the cows. It's true. They weren't there. There were never any more than seven Black guys showing cows—	8:31
Doris Strong George	That guys would sell [indistinct 00:09:39].	9:38
Stine George	Well see, what happened is you keep—you wouldn't have to pay anything down. And see, the Ag responsible. But you keep the cows until April, and the cow would pay for itself whenever he done growed enough and you wouldn't make no profit much, but you wouldn't have to pay anything. You paid the man back when the cow sold in April. Then he'd probably get everything. But if you fed a cow and took care of a cow, you would have a little bit of profit at the end. But you get to pay for having the cow and having shown the cow. Of course, again like I said, that last year, that second or third year, like I said, we had about seven cows that year.	9:39
Stine George	Now the fourth year I was in there was my last year. There weren't but three cows, and two of them mine. The other guys would eat them or kill them. I never get this. It bothers me now is one thing that motivated me to really want to farm too was that I took my cow down there, my steer, down there. I had a bit of a steer. I got his pictures somewhere now. We showed our cow to White folks. That's the only thing we did together. When they had a show, they showed all the cows together. But we weren't winning, but our cows was out there with theirs. Of course, I never forget this last year, which was the fourth year I was there, I had a beautiful cow. All of them were Hereford cattle with a white face and red body. I had a pretty one.	10:29
Stine George	The White man who came and picked up my cow, he said, "Boy, you going to win this contest today," because he had been and saw the other cows. He had followed all other cows in. I got out there. There should have been twelve or fifteen cows in all there. Of course, my cow was pretty. So, the show was supposed to start at something like eleven o'clock that morning. They wouldn't start it. They were waiting for another cow to come in. Somewhere in Jenkins County—what happened, a White guy had won a contest over there, and they got the cow from another county and brought it over there and put it in there so that he would look better than my cow.	11:32
Stine George	This is true. This has bothered me. This has bothered me ever since then. I mean, bothered me at that point and bothered me then. So anyway, that afternoon there's still a judgment. In morningtime, at ten or eleven o'clock, that the alarm was due. They didn't judge until two o'clock in the afternoon, two or three o'clock in the afternoon. Of course, the man who normally would judge refused to judge. He was from the community, and he knew everybody. So, he said, "I just ain't going to judge these cows. I'm not going to judge these cows." So, they got another guy in there and told him to judge. He was from another county. Of course, he looked at—it came down to my cow, and this cow they had brought in from Jenkins County. And looked at my cow—	12:09
Doris Strong George	He was supposed to be in the county.	12:51
Stine George	Was supposed to be in the county, he's not.	12:53
Sally Graham	Was supposed to be the county that you were in.	12:53
Stine George	County thing. That's right. This was supposed to be Camden County and not Jenkins County. This is what happened. The guy looked at my cow. My cow was the prettiest cow. He was taller than my cow, but my cow was just raw, pretty. [indistinct 00:13:10]. I had it cleaned up. So he looked at the cow, the two cows. He walked around and looked at them. Then he came over there and looked at my cow here. He said he saw some wax down my cow's ear. He didn't see no wax down the White guy's cow's ear. So, that's what—he gave me reserved champion. He gave the White boy grand champion because my cow, he said he saw some wax way down in my cow's ear. Now, this is true. This is absolutely true. That's why I didn't win the contest. That has bothered me ever since.	12:56
Doris Strong George	Did you cry?	13:45
Stine George	I was crying the other day [indistinct 00:13:47], I about cried [indistinct 00:13:47]. [laughs]	13:45
Sally Graham	Would that have been the first time a Black guy had won?	13:47
Stine George	That's true, absolutely. They were determined not to let that happen. We don't know what—White boy's been mad too had they given it to me. That's why the local guy would not judge, because he knew I—it was obvious that my cow the best cow there. But anyway, that's how that happened. Anyway, you asked about school. I got off on a tangent.	13:54
Sally Graham	Before you get back to school, let me ask another question about the cow.	14:12
Doris Strong George	[laughs] I'm enjoying this one. I'm enjoying this too.	14:14
Sally Graham	The man that wouldn't judge, was he the judge that was the judge the year before and the year before that?	14:21
Stine George	That's right, yeah. He was the judge. He was a professional man who judged, who would come every year to judge cows. We have a college person here who judged. He was a person that was designated to judge the cows. He refused to judge them because, [indistinct 00:14:42]. He was a professional. The other guy wasn't no professional guy. They told that judge, of course he didn't care. That's the decision he made. Blacks there had no bearing on the kind of cow you had.	14:25
Doris Strong George	[indistinct 00:14:59].	14:57
Sally Graham	And the White folks that showed their cows, were they—what kind of people were they in the community? Were they leaders or sheriff or—	14:59
Stine George	No, not necessarily.	15:07
Sally Graham	Were they just farmers?	15:07
Stine George	Well, just farmers. Everybody. Always brought to the city and whoever—see, the city boys didn't have cows generally. It's only the rural boys had cows. So, it didn't make a lick of difference there. Sharon lived downtown. Naturally, he lived in [indistinct 00:15:28]. His son wouldn't have a cow. He wouldn't have nowhere to keep it. It was rural farmers were bringing in their cows, and we all showed them together.	15:12
Sally Graham	What town was it?	15:37
Stine George	Candler, C-A-N-D-L-E-R.	15:38
Doris Strong George	[indistinct 00:15:40]. The town was Metter.	15:39
Stine George	The town was Metter. Metter, Georgia. That's where that transpired. Of course, after that year, they didn't—Black folk didn't show any cows after that year either. That was the end of that.	15:43
Sally Graham	[indistinct 00:15:59].	15:53
Stine George	That was 1949. 1949.	15:53
Sally Graham	What about with cows, was there any kind of segregation about what kind of cows Black folks would have as opposed to what kind of cows White folks would have?	16:05
Stine George	No. There was no difference. Black folks couldn't afford nothing. What Black folks had were basically a dairy cow, graded up dairy cow. They really didn't have a good graded herd because they never were able to buy a purebred or a beef type bull, see. What they'd do, see, is kind of pick the best bull out from the herd. An awful lot of inbreeding taking place. But, by taking the better bull and breeding it with the cow and getting the calf, then they growed out that dairy, that angular type body to a beefy type body, see. Of course, they naturally got more money out of them after that. See, that's what my dad was talking about a few years ago, is how he'd sell a cow and couldn't get anything for them, but they couldn't because they're basically dairy cow. The dairy had the angle type body. Therefore, nobody needed that. Dairy cows were for milk. Beef cows for beef.	16:17
Stine George	They were unable to buy beef bulls, purebred beef bulls, to put in there with the cow, because basically the beef breeds at that time was your Hereford and your Black Angus, and they wouldn't have any to buy either of those bulls to put with their female, with the herd. They always had this angular type cow, but a little bigger bones, but yet possessed that same angular type body. They never got very much money when they sold the cow to market.	17:18
Stine George	That was one of the very first things I did after I got out of college and bought me some cows. I went to some Hereford beef cows and didn't bother with that interim type cow that wouldn't sell nothing. Of course, with the farmers that came along at that time and the guys who did not go to school and men still have those type cow even though they don't milk them anymore. But many of them have not been able to, have not bought beef cows or bought purebred bulls. Many of them bought them now in the last, say 10, 15, 20 years, but at that time, most of them had those all graded up cows. You don't get top prices for them on the market. Of course, they don't really know. They don't question it. Even with the beef breed, the price has changed sometimes.	17:50
Stine George	Like six, seven years ago, I was growing Brahma cattle myself here, the one with the big hump across the shoulder, if you recognize that one. Of course, they didn't sell good that time of year. They didn't sell at all. Perhaps the low side. I went to the manager the next day and said, "Look, what happened? My cow didn't sell good yesterday." He said, "Well, for some reason the farmers are not buying the Brahma cow anymore. What you need to do is get you a Limousin and put in there, Limousin are a beautiful, red, English type cow.	18:54
Stine George	So I went and bought me a Limousin bull and put in there. He said, "Get that hump out of the shoulders." That's what I did. The Limousin bull, those calves didn't have the hump. So versus I got something like forty-seven cent. I think the highest I got for those Brahmas was forty-seven cent, and the head cow was getting six, seven, eighty-seven cent a pound for me. So then that next year, my calves, I got the same price. Eighty-seven, ninety-seven cent a pound where I got forty-six the year before. That's how things change. Unless you are knowledgeable and involved—	19:26
Doris Strong George	You don't know why.	20:08
Stine George	You don't know why and you get little money, see. Another thing, there's a lot of fear. White folks have taught us to fear asking questions, really getting involved. I can talk about when I first came out of college particular, and went down to Seminole County to work. I was the only Black Vocation Ag person there to help all the Black farmers in that county. Actually probably one third of the farmers were Black at that time. I'll never forget, they attempt to put together all our county's agencies. We had what we call kind of Ag committee, all the ag agents like FHA, 4-Hs and my New Farmers and Farm Bureau. All of us would get together periodically and talk about farm practices and that kind of thing. You see, again, I was just sort of a number there. I would never get—the very first time we met, I knew the kind of agent, I knew the ag teachers, but I didn't know any of the other agriculture agents, workers there I mean, administrators there in that county.	20:09
Stine George	So I go early to the meeting room. I sat down in a chair, and I'm talking to the county agent, Ross Hall, who I knew well. We just sat and talked. Finally, the other Whites come in. The head of the department, they come in. They sat down in the end there. Hall is the one, the county agent, the one that had called this meeting with the agriculture leaders of that county. Like I said, I'm the only Black man in there. So, he started to the right side of me introducing the Whites. "This is suchandsuch. This is Mr. So-and-so. This is Mr. So-and-so. This is Mr. So-and-so. This is Mr. So-and-so. This is Mr. So-and-so. This is Mr. So-and-so." Then he got to me. "You know Stine George. He didn't know me, none of them knew me. That's all. He wouldn't even—anybody shake my hand, he'd say—he want to shake everybody hand. He'd say, "You know Stine George." "Yeah, we know. Hey." It was like that.	21:21
Sally Graham	He wouldn't even shake your hand?	22:28
Stine George	He would interrupt handshaking. He'd introduced me sort of interrupt the others shaking my hand.	22:29
Doris Strong George	Everybody shake everybody's hand but yours.	22:29
Stine George	At the right side of me—	22:34
Doris Strong George	Everybody shake everybody hand but yours.	22:34
Stine George	That's right. This is in the leadership of the community. So, they had me—I went to two or three meetings and then they didn't invite me back no more. So, that's how that went. Now, you asked me about [indistinct 00:22:48]. Going back to the school thing.	22:34
Stine George	When I was in college, like I told you, we were poor. Of course, we farmed. I had another story, which is true. See, by me being the oldest son and I started growing really slow. I started growing out real slow. Of course, everybody called me a midget. They thought I was a midget, but I wasn't really a midget. In fact, I was just small. I started growing real slow. In fact, I was only about seven years old. They thought I was twelve, fifteen, you see. I was only about seven years old.	22:51
Stine George	See, my dad, I never forget one day he had this mule. He said, "Okay Son, I want you to go out here and plow this corn." We had this mule to go from one side the corn where he'd come back up the other side of the corn row. Well, like I said, I was only seven years old, and I didn't know the corn row from the mule, to tell you the truth. The mule just walked right everywhere. So, he saw I didn't know and I didn't know how to keep the plow from running in and plowing the corn, so he got my sister to plow the rest of that particular year.	23:36
Stine George	But next year, he told me to do it. Of course, I didn't mind that. I liked to work. I still like to work. He like to work too. Anyway, I never forget I was out there plowing, and people come by in cars. They would stop and looking over there. I thought I saw those folks looking, White folks riding along a car. [indistinct 00:24:35]. I would take the mule to turn and come back to the corn. It got about this high then. The corn was taller than I was, about three feet high. The corn was taller than I was. Many of them thought that the mule was just turning around in the field. They didn't know I was driving it. Believe me, they talk about that now. My dad and her had a fiftieth anniversary back here about six months ago. Some of them were talking about the White man talking about how they see this mule walking up and down the field. It was me out behind the mule. [laughs]	24:14
Sally Graham	Oh my goodness.	25:04
Stine George	Anyway, like in college, I only had two suits, two coats, in college. When I got there, I had a blue suit and a blue jacket. Of course, that didn't mean anything to me, that was all right, because I'm living [indistinct 00:25:30] with all the other kids. That was fine. Immediately I had to get a job to help myself up there. I had to go to school and then work too.	25:17
Stine George	They told me about this job at the kitchen, working in the kitchen picking up garbage every morning. We had to get the garbage out of there by four o'clock every morning. You had to get the garbage out of the kitchen. You had to first go out to the farm and get a tractor and bring a scooper and get it out. Rain or shine they'd come and get that garbage. What I did, I'd go in there, you had to power that stuff up and then mop that thing out. I had to get there at least by three o'clock every morning and start picking that garbage, get it clean in there by four o'clock. I did that every morning.	25:44
Doris Strong George	[indistinct 00:26:17] clean.	26:17
Stine George	Pick up, you know, garbage. This is a dormitory.	26:19
Doris Strong George	Did you [indistinct 00:26:24].	26:23
Stine George	Yeah, I had to get all garbage up, where they—you know how people throw garbage. It's supposed to go all in the bucket, but they don't go in the bucket. We had maybe six, eight cans there. I got to get my scoop and get all that garbage off the floor, make sure I get it and then drag it out and put it on my scoop and take that out for the hogs. They could feed the hogs raw garbage at that time. Of course, I did that. Along with that, I also worked out on the farm in the horticulture department, cleaning up the beds and [indistinct 00:27:03] and grow beds and crops and fruits and things. I also did that.	26:24
Doris Strong George	[indistinct 00:27:11]	27:09
Stine George	Huh?	27:11
Doris Strong George	You got [indistinct 00:27:12].	27:11
Stine George	Well, I had to do that between that time, and that's at night. That's why I couldn't take part of a lot of activities because I had to work. I had to work, and I couldn't socialize because I didn't have time to socialize and yet do all the other things too. Of course, another thing happened. By me only having one suit and a blue coat, everybody knew me as being, seeing me that way. Some of them would talk about me. So, they gave me a nickname. My nickname was Blue Baby.	27:12
Doris Strong George	Blue Baby.	27:47
Stine George	Blue Baby. That didn't matter much because Blue Baby was trying to get it. I was really country. I was really country for that time because like I told, we lived six miles out in the country, so therefore we only went to town—didn't go every week, to be frank. We didn't go to town every week. We just went to week every now and then, every now and then. But we would go to church on Sundays, but you got to ride out there on the wagon or walk and by the time church is out, everybody is going back home. So you don't do much socializing. It was only natural that [indistinct 00:28:35] in the first place.	27:48
Doris Strong George	He couldn't [indistinct 00:28:36] walk home every day.	28:35
Stine George	Never go there, because—	28:37
Doris Strong George	Work every evening.	28:39
Stine George	In high school, that's true. I never forget, there were at least two nights I had a [indistinct 00:28:45] was all night long because White folk were fishing on down the bridge. They would go back on the [indistinct 00:28:52]. I'd laid behind the woods. In the woods.	28:40
Doris Strong George	[indistinct 00:28:55].	28:54
Sally Graham	What would have happened if you—	28:54
Stine George	I thought there was something in the water, in the river. So I would stay back off the road in the woods, and I slept in the woods at least two nights in the process—	29:00
Doris Strong George	Your daddy be scared you be gone or what?	29:13
Stine George	Well, he knew probably what it was. He loved me. He knew something had happened, but there's no way of getting in touch with me, so instead of going on home, I'd walk on back to school the next morning.	29:14
Doris Strong George	With the same clothes on?	29:25
Stine George	Yeah. Well, I had no different. I had no other [indistinct 00:29:25]. I went on back to school. Next thing, I'd get home, and they knew what passed by.	29:25
Doris Strong George	[indistinct 00:29:43] they were never going fishing.	29:45
Stine George	Well, just some White guy on the bridge messing around at night. They we're there until probably late. I fell asleep in the woods. After twelve o'clock, wasn't no point in going home, so I stayed in the woods.	29:46
Doris Strong George	[indistinct 00:30:05]? Nothing?	30:01
Stine George	I eat, but I did have some money. See, I had some money, because like I said, he didn't take my money. He said, "Okay, you need to—" He gave me everything I made. Everything I made except above expenses. So, I carried—I had money every day in my pocket, but it wasn't much because I knew if I spent it all, he wouldn't give me any more money. So, I sure could pinch those pennies.	30:05
Doris Strong George	Pinched the pennies. You learned well.	30:26
Stine George	Anyway, like I said, I went on to college and got out of there, and that's [indistinct 00:30:38]. You asked about college. Okay. I went to Fort Valley. Did my undergrad work there. The bad part in Georgia was once you graduate from college, there were no institutions in Georgia that would let you attend. They had no high education in Georgia for Blacks. In fact, that was true up until '70, in fact '72.	30:36
Doris Strong George	[indistinct 00:31:04].	31:01
Stine George	[indistinct 00:31:04] never GA let Blacks in there. Alfre and Lucy [indistinct 00:31:10] were the first two Blacks there, and they rioted and they had to slip out the back door when they tried to go to school. Now, that was in probably 1969, '70, so while I was there. We had nowhere to go. We had to go out of state to do that advanced work.	31:05
Doris Strong George	[indistinct 00:31:26] University of Chicago because they had no graduate school for Blacks, and Georgia would paid—	31:26
Stine George	That's only thirty years ago.	31:35
Doris Strong George	They would give you—	31:37
Stine George	That's only twenty-five, thirty years ago.	31:37
Doris Strong George	—they would give you the difference between the University of Georgia and [indistinct 00:31:42]. Our University of Georgia tuition was so cheap. I got the whole thing, room and board and tuition even transportation that goes Chicago, [indistinct 00:31:55] University of Georgia.	31:39
Sally Graham	How did you hear about schools that were out of the South.	32:00
Doris Strong George	I'd go to any school that would take me. University of Georgia, see, they had to provide education for Blacks and Whites alike. They didn't have any state school that offered a master degree in anything. You have a degree, you have Black [indistinct 00:32:23]. Fort Valley, Albany State and [indistinct 00:32:27] Savannah State. They didn't have a graduate program, so you had—	32:03
Sally Graham	Wow. [indistinct 00:32:31].	32:30
Stine George	The only three. The only three for Blacks. [indistinct 00:32:31] go anywhere.	32:30
Doris Strong George	So therefore, they had to give the same opportunity. So rather than let you go to University of Georgia, you could go to any school. You pick your school. Any school anywhere that would take you. You could go and they would pay all of it. The state.	32:31
Sally Graham	The State of Georgia would?	32:52
Doris Strong George	The State of Georgia.	32:52
Sally Graham	All that work.	32:52
Doris Strong George	That's right, the State of Georgia. Any school that would take you. [indistinct 00:32:59]. They'd do anything to keep from integrating the schools, even lose money.	32:57
Stine George	We heard about it because your teachers, the teachers that taught at school had gone to some school someplace else. Going above—	33:07
Doris Strong George	The same thing went for White people. White folks didn't get—White folks around here didn't get to go to any school they wanted to go.	33:15
Stine George	Well, they had all of the [indistinct 00:33:28]. They had no reason to go.	33:27
Doris Strong George	Well, they come to—	33:27
Stine George	Don't come to them. [indistinct 00:33:28].	33:27
Doris Strong George	I'm talking here. They could go to the University of Georgia, anywhere else. No Georgia school because they was [indistinct 00:33:29] kids from here. They [indistinct 00:33:34] anything for Blacks. [indistinct 00:33:38] because [indistinct 00:33:38] still wasn't as high as having a separate university at that time. They didn't have a university that hire [indistinct 00:33:40]. It was still cheaper to ship off to somewhere else, some other state.	33:28
Sally Graham	So the University of Chicago. What were some of the other northern schools?	33:55
Doris Strong George	Every school in New York, NYU and all of them. Anybody, if their grades were high enough, the school accepted. You didn't have to worry about money. It wasn't no scholarship. There wasn't nothing. You were just [indistinct 00:34:12].	34:05
Stine George	[indistinct 00:34:12] basically chose Black folks chose NY and they chose Chicago—	34:14
Doris Strong George	Didn't anybody go to Chicago and look.	34:18
Stine George	Those were some of the basic schools.	34:18
Doris Strong George	Didn't nobody go to Chicago. Ain't no basics. Ain't nobody I knew went to Chicago.	34:18
Stine George	Yeah, I know some people that went.	34:18
Doris Strong George	Who?	34:18
Stine George	I'm talking about in [indistinct 00:34:24]. You know, Quiddick and them all went over there.	34:25
Doris Strong George	[indistinct 00:34:27]	34:26
Stine George	Yeah.	34:26
Doris Strong George	[indistinct 00:34:28] Columbia.	34:26
Stine George	Yeah, those were from basic school all the way. That [indistinct 00:34:34] passed around. See, I didn't choose to go there because—	34:30
Doris Strong George	[indistinct 00:34:38]. I knew [indistinct 00:34:41] from Georgia.	34:39
Stine George	You went there for four years? I hope not. [indistinct 00:34:45] for a year.	34:42
Doris Strong George	But there was mainly University of Chicago. There wasn't many Black folks there from Georgia at all. Only one other Black person along with me, and that was person was a pistol and [indistinct 00:35:00]. He was there. Ain't that many Black, you get to know all the Black folks. They either be in your class or be in your [indistinct 00:35:08].	34:46
Sally Graham	Were Black folks northern and southern stay together?	35:07
Doris Strong George	Yeah, they all stayed together. Even people from northern schools who lived in Chicago, there weren't that many Black folks over there because most of them went to University of Illinois branch in Chicago either, the one in—what is it? Urbana? Not Urbana. Champaign, Illinois.	35:14
Stine George	We kind of understand too that Black folks in the north do not go to college [indistinct 00:35:43]. There's Blacks nowhere now.	35:38
Doris Strong George	[indistinct 00:35:51].	35:51
Stine George	Down south chose to go to school in much greater numbers than Blacks in the north who went somewhere. That's the norm.	35:51
Sally Graham	Why do you think that was?	35:51
Stine George	Well, I think there was a number of reasons. Most of us are poor. They couldn't go. If there [indistinct 00:36:05].	36:01
Doris Strong George	I know why.	36:05
Stine George	They became indoctrinated to that. Go ahead.	36:05
Doris Strong George	Okay. Most of them didn't go because they were ignored. They could get decent jobs, a secretary or different things like that. People in the South couldn't get no secretarial job no kind of job. So, they were forced into college. People in bigger cities, northern cities, they were happy when their kids finished high school because they could get a job in the bank or something. But there were no jobs for Black folks out of high school at all. Even no factory jobs.	36:08
Stine George	[indistinct 00:36:38] that's right.	36:37
Doris Strong George	They could go to the kitchen or something.	36:41
Stine George	Sewing plant.	36:43
Doris Strong George	They couldn't even go to a sewing plant.	36:43
Stine George	[indistinct 00:36:45] wait on White kids.	36:45
Doris Strong George	[indistinct 00:36:46].	36:45
Stine George	That's [indistinct 00:36:49] right there. That's what they did. Even as late as 1970, we had a sewing plant here. They would not hire any Blacks in that particular [indistinct 00:36:58] in time, but they would hire Blacks from another town away. The agreement the plant put there, up here in Durham, when they put there, that for a number of years, I don't know four or five years, that they would not hire Blacks from that particular town. They could hire from other towns. The Blacks there were not to work so they could take care of the White women's kids for $15 and $20 a week. So, that's what happened.	36:46
Doris Strong George	[indistinct 00:37:26].	37:25
Sally Graham	That was up in [indistinct 00:37:26]?	37:25
Stine George	[indistinct 00:37:26] County. See, Durham is right up the road there. Here, it's in this county.	37:25
Doris Strong George	[indistinct 00:37:36]	37:34
Stine George	Absolutely. That's where most of the men you see here today were from here, but they worked at the Marine base after World War II. That was the [indistinct 00:37:48] for Black folks. That's when they would get some job other than farm jobs or rural jobs.	37:39
Doris Strong George	They would have most amount of [indistinct 00:37:56] women.	37:56
Stine George	That's what she was saying. That was [indistinct 00:38:01] they would not hire us [indistinct 00:38:04]. Black folk wanted some respect, and most Black families in the South look at [indistinct 00:38:13], especially the people. They wanted their kids to be the best. To them, getting in a position you could teach school, that was number one job.	37:57
Doris Strong George	And only job.	38:21
Stine George	And only job they had other than the farm, you see.	38:25
Doris Strong George	Nobody [indistinct 00:38:27] school [indistinct 00:38:27].	38:26
Stine George	That's right. That's why the aspiration was there. That they went off to school in a different area [indistinct 00:38:36].	38:27
Doris Strong George	And it's going to teach, is number one [indistinct 00:38:39] in the school. [indistinct 00:38:42] nowhere. You went to school.	38:42
Stine George	Then you [indistinct 00:38:46] teach and don't get no respect. After that, turn back into Georgia and other places. Another area that Black folks went from Georgia was Tuskegee, Alabama and also down in [indistinct 00:39:00] there were two other institutions that they went to. I attend those, and I also went out to Wisconsin.	38:50
Doris Strong George	Yes.	39:05
Stine George	[indistinct 00:39:06] University out in Wisconsin [indistinct 00:39:11] Minnesota.	39:05
Doris Strong George	[indistinct 00:39:13] go to Tuskegee. Now why [indistinct 00:39:15] Tuskegee when you can go to a school that costs more. [indistinct 00:39:23] they going to pay for it, you know.	39:13
Sally Graham	I see. If they're going to pay for it, then go somewhere more expensive.	39:28
Doris Strong George	Mmhmm. My daddy had to pay for my mama. I mean for my sister anyway. He had to pay for all hers because, see what it is, [indistinct 00:39:42]. He [indistinct 00:39:43] cheat. [indistinct 00:39:46] had to pay a state fee. So, my [indistinct 00:39:52] when you graduate, but then Georgia wouldn't pay. And then Father says he's from Georgia. Georgia says she's from Florida. So, he had to pay. [indistinct 00:40:04]. Because she had been living in Georgia, and then they said, "Well, you [indistinct 00:40:10] in Tallahassee. You have to pay it. You have to pay either way." Because you don't get by. You might get by for a little while, but you won't get by long.	39:33
Sally Graham	That still happens.	40:22
Doris Strong George	It happens.	40:23
Sally Graham	[indistinct 00:40:26].	40:23
Stine George	Where are we now? Where do you want us to go from there?	40:37
Sally Graham	Where would you like to go from now?	40:40
Doris Strong George	[indistinct 00:40:44] something to drink now?	40:41
Sally Graham	Sure.	40:41
Stine George	That's the real thing.	40:41
Doris Strong George	Real thing.	40:41
Sally Graham	Real thing.	40:41
Stine George	[indistinct 00:40:53]. My name is Stine P. George. Stine P. George.	40:41
Sally Graham	How do spell Stine?	40:41
Stine George	S-T-I-N-E. Stine P. George. Actually, I got named by—I got named by naming myself, to be frank. On my birth certificate and everything, you'll see just S.P. And I existed with S.P. even until I got out of high school in the first year in college. I got there. Everybody had a name-name something, you know. [laughs]. So, I decided, hey, if they got name-name something, I'd better name myself something too.	41:06
Doris Strong George	[indistinct 00:41:41].	41:40
Stine George	So, I just chose Stine P., like a name of [indistinct 00:41:45].	41:41
Doris Strong George	[indistinct 00:41:45]. How you think about Stine?	41:44
Stine George	Well, I had the S and I had the P. [indistinct 00:41:56] all kind of stuff. Anyway—	41:50
Doris Strong George	I don't know how you—is that a Steve or Steven?	41:57
Stine George	I had an uncle named Steve. I didn't want to be that.	42:00
Doris Strong George	How did you think of Stine?	42:09
Stine George	It's just a thing. Anyway, that's how I got that. Anyway, most people know me by SP. All of the folks at home call me SP. But they're learning now that my name is Stine. Most have been [indistinct 00:42:25].	42:09
Doris Strong George	Did you have a legal change to Stine?	42:19
Stine George	No, my birth certificate is just S.P. Anyway, actually, we came from slavery from Whites in North Carolina. That was back when we was freed of slavery, there was several, several families there. At least eight families there, Blacks at that time, when Abe Lincoln signed our freedom. Of course, in the area [indistinct 00:43:02] eight families of Georges still there. Eight different families, and they're none of kin, but all of them came from that farm at the time of slavery.	42:26
Doris Strong George	Geoge family and Strong is a slave name from the White, they took their slave masters' names. Strong, he married a Berry—from a White, her slave master was Berry.	43:21
Sally Graham	Really?	43:44
Doris Strong George	Mmhmm. Because Strong—well, Strong, the name Strong—well, you know, living with these White names during slavery, they all took their masters' last names.	43:46
Stine George	During the slave era, no Black had a last name. They only had first names. Of course, after they were freed, they had to have last names, so they all took the master's name for the most part. That's what happened to us. Of course, we all came [indistinct 00:44:07] North Carolina. There are still a few of them still around up there in that area. Then, my granddaddy got involved in turpentine [indistinct 00:44:20] still operations. He came from—what they did, they moved from their own wagon and came into [indistinct 00:44:32] County. The wagon worked on turpentine with a White man who had a plantation, a farm, wood plantation where making turpentine. Of course after they were there, some of the guys were bottling other things. Then my dad, my grandad [indistinct 00:45:00] this farm. Then after him, my daddy came up in farming the same way. Of course—	43:49
Doris Strong George	[indistinct 00:45:08].	45:05
Stine George	[indistinct 00:45:14]. Out there, when my dad—when we first, after he got married, he was sharecrop. He sharecropped several White people. Not several, but he'd sharecrop it with a number of different White people because some of them was as far as seven, eight miles away, sharecropping. Then of course he moved to a man's farm, called Jessie Morgan. This man had a lot of farms and a lot of people worked for him. Of course, for some reason, he liked my dad.	45:16
Doris Strong George	Liked your dad? [indistinct 00:46:02]. He liked your dad?	45:59
Stine George	Can I tell the story?	46:07
Doris Strong George	Yeah, [indistinct 00:46:09], you tell it. Go ahead [indistinct 00:46:11].	46:08
Stine George	Well, he liked my dad because my dad worked for him. It wasn't customary for Black folks to talk back to White folks. In fact, like I told you, if they talked back at them, there was lynching and all that kind of stuff. But see, my dad was the kind of person who would not talk back. If he didn't like someone, he just didn't go back. Of course, people he didn't go back had nothing to do with him. I remember one time, we were at a store near the house. I guess I should have been probably around seven, eight, nine-years-old. We knew these White people real well. They ran the store. So, [indistinct 00:46:45] we would go in there through the front door and get what we wanted, and we'd go out. But then they started selling [indistinct 00:46:54] in there, and they kind of [indistinct 00:46:55] back for us to—	46:11

Stine George	James Day.	0:03
Sally Graham	Okay, so what did the sign say?	0:04
Stine George	Niggers to the back, and White folks to the front. White folks in the front, niggers to the back. Now we all have been going the same door, because we know [indistinct 00:00:13] around these White folks. And of course, see I started working, we had our own farm. But see, at the back, you had to cooperate with somebody else. Because see you could not handle tobacco alone, so you had to always work with somebody else. Because we could always find Blacks, but this particular White farmer, this particular White man, he was basically poor to some extent, but he would get my dad to help him harvest his tobacco. And then when I got eight years old, he started getting me to help him, see?	0:05
Stine George	And I never were riding the sled. We had a mule pulling the sled through the field, and then you had the four people cropping tobacco from the stalk. And of course, eight years old, I started cropping tobacco from the stalk. And of course, we just couldn't knew them, because they all called me midget, too. They thought I was a midget. But see, like I said, I was only eight years old. They though I was fifteen.	0:46
Sally Graham	Why did they think you were fifteen, or why do they think you were older? Because you were small?	1:16
Stine George	Because I was small—	1:18
Doris Strong George	And working like a man.	1:18
Stine George	And working hard like a man.	1:18
Doris Strong George	And working like a man.	1:18
Stine George	Yeah. Well see, all the White boys who were ten and twelve, fourteen—	1:25
Doris Strong George	And still playing.	1:25
Stine George	Were riding the mules. They were riding sled to the field, and take the tobacco back to the barn. Well see, I'm eight years old. I'm out there cropping tobacco—	1:28
Doris Strong George	Like grown folk.	1:38
Stine George	For the White man, see?	1:39
Doris Strong George	Like a grown man.	1:39
Stine George	So therefore, they thought I was old. [laughs] But anyway, they would brag about me, this little boy was working with them. And I would stay out there all day. I would stay there from about—because we'd start working at daylight, see, and from about six o'clock in the morning until about twelve, and they we'd stop and eat dinner. But you see, the day I worked with them White folks, well see I was only Black out in the field with them. You had three other White men out there in the field, and they were half grown or grown. They were really grown men. And I would [indistinct 00:02:17] out there and see. I could pick, and I would stay up ahead of them. Truly I would pick faster and stay ahead of them.	1:40
Doris Strong George	Eight years old.	2:27
Stine George	Yeah I picked my tobacco. You know only get two and three leaves off the stalk. So naturally, I get off and I put them in the sled. And they were always talking about how I worked.	2:28
Stine George	So then, see about ten, eleven o'clock, they would bring some water to the field for us to drink. And what would happen is they'd bring a jar of water, maybe a jar of water usually about half gallon jar of water, just in regular jars. And what they would do, they'd bring the water out there, and all them three White guys drank first. And some of them used tobacco and chewed, most in the country use snuff and chewing tobacco, and they would drink first. And then they would let them little boys, the little White boys, drink out the jar first. And little boys just take and put their hands in the jar, like little kids, had their whole fingers all over the jar, dirty fingers all over it, and snuff powder running all down, tobacco, chewing tobacco all around here.	2:38
Stine George	Then they all looking to drink now give me, I don't want none. Because I work all half a day without drinking a drop of water.	3:39
Doris Strong George	And I saw—	3:45
Stine George	And they always gave me credit. "Oh, I admire this boy, he work a half a day without drinking—he ain't drank any water," and they would say. But I wanted some water so bad, but I wouldn't drank behind all them, see?	3:47
Sally Graham	Did they even realize why they—	4:00
Stine George	Never did, never did realize why I wasn't drinking. Because see, it wasn't customary for Black folks to refuse to drink behind White folks, eat food left over from them, see? That's what they expected. But I just had a little pride, and I just wasn't up to doing that. But anyway, that was the situation was that. But anyway, they paid me same thing that the men were getting, but I had a rule, I did the same thing they were doing. But anyway—	4:00
Sally Graham	About how much were the men getting paid?	4:29
Stine George	I was just trying to think how much I got, because I remember that first time I went to work, my mother was sick, and I was—that's right. I just turned eight years old. She was sick, and my dad went to work for another White man that day, and I went to work this man, and I think those folks were getting was nine—yeah, they give me eight dollars, and my daddy got nine dollars.	4:33
Doris Strong George	A day.	4:57
Sally Graham	A day?	5:02
Stine George	He worked for somebody else. The man I worked for with these people I talk about, they gave me eight dollars that day, and my dad worked for somebody, he got nine dollars. So my mama, she was sick then, she was talking about, "My little boy, he went to work. He got made about as much as his dad made." But anyway, okay, I was trying to get off [indistinct 00:05:26] I forgot. [indistinct 00:05:26] me and let me get my thought together.	5:02
Sally Graham	Is—oh no.	5:26
Stine George	You had to haul this tobacco to the warehouse, and of course, you put it on the floor. And then the auction you had to got go and bid it off. Now, they would always know the Black folks' tobacco from the White folks' tobacco. You would say they all look alike. But they would know about it, the numbers on the tobacco and know what the Black folks—	5:31
Doris Strong George	We had to know that.	5:50
Stine George	But I mean, you got to take it there, and they tell you where to put your tobacco. Like everything else, they had select area basically for the Black folks. And usually, you in the dark area during big building or something like that. And [indistinct 00:06:05] that, when the buyers get to you, or they put you where, when the buyers come along you they may be tired, so they going to put you where it's starting out at, going to put you in a location where the buyers maybe can take a break, or know how many sheets they going to sell before they take a break, or before they take off. And so, they going to put yours, the Black folks' tobacco where the buyers get the least attention to it, see? And then, they knew who they were. So anyway, we didn't get that much. Now you take a Black man who worked with White folks, sharecropper, actually he would get more for his tobacco most of the time than the Black—	5:52
Doris Strong George	Because that White man tobacco, once the White man—	6:43
Stine George	Right, because the White man tobacco, that's right. And another thing would happened is that big White farmers always have their daughters or their wife to come and sit on there. She's the tobacco, see?	6:48
Sally Graham	Why would they do that?	6:56
Stine George	Because they would automatically give more. The buyers just give more if there was a White girl is sitting on the sheet. Because I guess he [indistinct 00:07:10] her more or less. But that's a tactic they would use. But they knew always know where we were. And of course, like I said, they would give us less [indistinct 00:07:22] on our tobacco, but then we know we made it in spite of.	7:02
Sally Graham	Now, would the Black folks, would they have to have an agent to sell their tobacco to the buyer, or how would that work?	7:25
Stine George	The warehouse, man who owned the warehouse took care of all that. The man who owned the warehouse, because you had to pay so much to sell your tobacco there, he took care of all of that. And of course, he furnished the buyers to buy and ship it out, that kind of thing, too. The only thing your responsibility was getting us there. But we had to treat that tobacco. We had [indistinct 00:07:52] see, because what happened was you go buy and pull off two or three leaves, and he'd put it in his barn and cure this tobacco out, cure it out, and then they'd take about a week to cure out, see, in this barn. And then of course, you had to stack it down, and not break it up, and then make sure it's yellow in the field before you harvest it, the leaves.	7:32
Sally Graham	And when do you harvest tobacco?	8:15
Stine George	Generally in last of May or June you start harvesting. Last of May of June you start harvesting how the weather is generally last of May you start harvesting. And then you would have about five to seven croppings on it. See, usually last we'd get a whole lot of it. And then of course, then you start selling it. The markets opening in July. See, you just not open very long, maybe about four to six weeks at the most. But now, they're open eight to ten weeks. They're much longer now. And they don't take care like they did then. They just kind of throw it in any kind [indistinct 00:08:56]—	8:17
Doris Strong George	But a long time ago, people used to grade it.	8:56
Stine George	Bunch it up. Yeah, we had to grade that, because see, that's true. We had to grade it, because see if the leaves were red brown, you put it in the pile. Those pretty yellow leaves, you put them in another pile. Green leaves, you put them in another pile, and they give you different prices.	8:58
Doris Strong George	And it's a trash, they all broke up, [indistinct 00:09:14] you put them in a pile.	9:12
Stine George	But today, they got like sand lugs, like the first things you pull off, we call it sand lugs. And that's put in and sold separate from the middle of the stalk tobacco, and then that top tobacco is separated. You separate that. It got three different separations now.	9:14
Sally Graham	Which one is the better grade?	9:34
Stine George	The middle, in the middle of stalk, see. The sand lug, you got sand there, generally got a lot of sand in it, and you know may have some specks, worm specks all on it, generally. Then the top part, naturally you can't cull it too good, and you got the worms have pecking all the leaves, too. So, it doesn't sell as well as that tobacco in the middle of the stalk. You leaves that much larger, too.	9:36
Doris Strong George	[indistinct 00:10:06].	10:04
Stine George	But you see that there again, you got some of that—	10:07
Doris Strong George	These did not.	10:09
Stine George	All farmers farming differently, so therefore this farmer might be through with his, where this one just gets started over here, because they set it out at different times, you see? Another thing. So, that was the situation there. Then another thing was when we sold our tobacco, they didn't let Black folks work in the actual sale of it. They had the White kids, White high school boys, or they would have the tickets to put tickets on the bag, or the sheets. They would skip the tags to the buyers, or they just worked in the administration of it. But only Black folk, only thing they let us do was turn tobacco and haul it and put it on the trucks. Like the same things like Mexicans do now, basically, that's what we did at that time. We had to turn the tobacco over and get it off of sheets and loaded on trucks and that kind of thing.	10:11
Sally Graham	Have the Mexicans pushed Blacks out of those jobs now, or—	11:16
Stine George	In some cases, they certainly have. In some cases, they have. In fact, they will work for a little bit less money than Blacks willing in many instances. And so therefore, a lot of farmers rather have Mexicans working than Blacks. And then Blacks started copying the habits of White people, see, too now, like "I don't want do this, and I don't want to do this kind of work, and I'm not going to rush."	11:20
Stine George	Because see another thing, Black folks now aren't taught good work habits either. They see after we came to integration school, then that ended White—Black folks discipline Black folks, see? So, White folks don't discipline Black folks as a whole now. That was other that. That's one reason why we got the crime like it is today because as far as work habits and pride of Black folk who's instilled in Black folks, it's not there anymore. And nobody's talking about in fact, we don't have no control of Black folks anymore. We absolutely lost it in the South now.	11:48
Stine George	And whatever happens is through the White folks not disciplining them, [indistinct 00:12:30] in most our community now, we have very few Black principals per se in terms of high school principals in particular. Most principals, I think we got about seven or eight Black principals in the whole state. We used to have 149. Got seven, eight left in the whole state of Georgia today. And of course, many Black kids go through school now, and Whites go through school, and never have a Black teacher during the whole tenure in high school or elementary school. And so therefore, they don't get the guidance at all that they should get, and for certain not the discipline they should have. So, that—	12:24
Sally Graham	I mean, also more Blacks are going into professional jobs as opposed to—	13:15
Stine George	They don't have the education. They can't go into it. They can't go into nothing, because most of them don't get the education. You probably got more dropouts now than you ever had, and you got more ignorance out here than we ever had, simply because even but they may go in school staying there twelve years, [indistinct 00:13:42] law which said one time you can't hold a child back but one or two years, and you got to keep them going. And really and truly, see, these kids realize that nobody cares about them, and long as the Black kids stay quiet in the classroom, and generally they just pass them along. And so, that was other that. Either someone they found a little job like cleaning up or dusting up, and far as the kid is concerned, he's happy. I'm doing something, I'm staying busy. And most White teachers are contented with that, too.	13:23
Stine George	But yet behind closed doors, they always get with their kids and say something different. But leaving proms and activities, they have their own separate things still today down here. So, integration itself has helped them, it hurts them, too. That's like what the New Farmers and the Future Farmers of America organization see for the 1966 when the federal government said to us we need to combine the two units. Now see, we had had our thing, separate things about twenty-seven years. And I think in 1919, this is 1946, we had had our separate organizations because they made us have separate. And so, my thing was that even that time, that if we going to have to integrate that then in 1966, I said now we going to integrate, why can't we all sit down together, and then you keep what's good for the Future Farmers, and we keep what's good for the New Farmers, and then we can put them together, and then have us strengthen the one group? But their thing was, you just threw away with that. That was something that you created. And the Future Farmers is the land.	14:15
Stine George	So, this is what they forced us to do all over the South is abandon what we had. And like our colors, and all our thing that we had learned, we had acquired, they just told us do away with it, just come in with them. And of course—	15:42
Sally Graham	Future farmers, that was an all Black organization?	16:04
Stine George	No, Future Farmers was all White. Future Farmers—no, no, no, no. All White in the South. See, the original thing was Future Farmers all over the country, all over the whole United States, okay? Where you had farming, the Future Farmers was the organization.	16:07
Sally Graham	[indistinct 00:16:23].	16:20
Stine George	Then in 1919, the White folks position was we didn't want the down South, cross Mason-Dixon land back from Kentucky back this way, that we didn't want the niggers with us. See, they don't want the niggers. Because it wasn't that the Black folks prior to that did not do anything—they hardly go above elementary school. So, in high school when they got in high school and started taking ag and try to do something, then they said, "No, we don't want them in school with us." So, then they decided that we would have our separate thing. And they saw the support and they recognized our separate, what we call New Farmers of America. She was talking about go New Homemakers. We had New Farmers—	16:24
Doris Strong George	No, I know New Farmers, [indistinct 00:17:08].	17:06
Stine George	We got New Farmers, which is males.	17:07
Doris Strong George	I know it.	17:09
Stine George	They had New Homemakers, which is Black females.	17:09
Doris Strong George	I was trying to think the niches, honey.	17:11
Stine George	The White was all Future Homemakers of America. See, the White girls were called Future Homemakers, and—	17:14
Doris Strong George	Black girls called what?	17:23
Stine George	New Homemakers.	17:25
Sally Graham	Do you remember this? Was this in your school?	17:26
Stine George	Sure.	17:28
Doris Strong George	When I was going to school, we didn't teach ag. Our trade was—the boys had to take a trade, but their trade was bricklaying and carpentry.	17:30
Stine George	But that's different, though.	17:39
Doris Strong George	But we didn't have ag because the teachers all in my school all while I went to school. Never ag teacher.	17:40
Stine George	[indistinct 00:17:45] and Miss Lewis though were [indistinct 00:17:47]—	17:45
Doris Strong George	Home economics teachers for girls.	17:47
Stine George	We taught new farmers, they were New Farmers organization.	17:48
Doris Strong George	No, we didn't have no organization, we had home economics. But we didn't have a national organization at that time.	17:52
Stine George	Yeah. But Miss [indistinct 00:17:59], that's how I knew before I came here. Miss Lewis attended our meetings.	17:58
Doris Strong George	Yeah, but when you would teach it, but when I was in high school—	18:02
Stine George	Okay, okay, okay.	18:04
Doris Strong George	We didn't have no stuff like that. We had band, and we had [indistinct 00:18:14] clubs, and English clubs, all these kind of clubs.	18:07
Stine George	But that's why don't have the farmers this kind now that you can understand that. See, that was the training ground for Black farmers in general, see? And that's why in this county here, we got less than five farmers in the county today. And that is the reason. Because I didn't know—	18:16
Doris Strong George	Even when I finish high school—	18:35
Stine George	You had no agricultural agency, Black units to teach to train the Black, because this is farming number one, they used to have all the farmers they had.	18:36
Doris Strong George	We had farm.	18:44
Stine George	Yeah. You know, you had no Black—	18:48
Doris Strong George	[indistinct 00:18:49] farmers had one of the best counties in all of Georgia for farming.	18:50
Stine George	Only for White folks, see? They not giving Black folks a chance to learn farming practicing, and nobody teaching. So, it was other that.	18:52
Doris Strong George	And after I left high school, we still didn't have agriculture. But Levard came here, he's the first agriculture teacher [indistinct 00:19:06]. And when he came here, the boys were not restricted to agriculture. We still had what we call trade school, they had a choice between bricklaying, carpentry, and finally, agriculture. That was much [indistinct 00:19:20], because [indistinct 00:19:20] came after, and did what? But they taught trade. And they came, they taught Small, then they got before teach ag. But most of the boys took trade under Small. Or you [indistinct 00:19:34] for them. But Levard only agriculture teacher we had in the history of the high school.	19:00
Stine George	Agriculture, that's one added option that the kids had. Industrial art was something we always had, and basically had after slavery. But that was just another—	19:40
Doris Strong George	We still [indistinct 00:19:52] ag teacher to Mr. Levard. He's the first ag in that. Only ag teacher we had in the [indistinct 00:19:57].	19:55
Stine George	And then they closed him out, they finally closed his department, and they never hired another one. And that's another reason why we don't have any farmers, Black farmers in this county today.	19:56
Sally Graham	When did they close him out?	20:07
Stine George	I came here in 1970, they closed him out then. So, they must have closed him out—I remember him leaving probably 1960.	20:10
Doris Strong George	Where'd he go then?	20:18
Stine George	No, no, no. He went to secondary education.	20:18
Doris Strong George	Oh, secondary. Because he don't even go to [indistinct 00:20:27].	20:20
Stine George	He went to secondary education. That's what happened there. Probably 1966—	20:28
Doris Strong George	He the only one and the last one.	20:32
Stine George	Is when they closed him out completely. And of course, I don't have the emphasis he put on ag during his time, because probably the boys had basically left farming, there weren't a whole lot of them left here at the time.	20:35
Doris Strong George	He had a few boys, because he had some pigs and things, he used take them to the state fair, things like that. I remember there.	20:49
Sally Graham	Where was the state fair held?	21:00
Doris Strong George	In Atlanta.	21:05
Sally Graham	Atlanta?	21:06
Doris Strong George	Every year they would go to the state fair.	21:06
Stine George	They used to have Macon, too. We had one in Macon and Atlanta.	21:06
Doris Strong George	They go to Atlanta.	21:06
Stine George	But I know the boys from—well, we didn't participate in that.	21:09
Sally Graham	Was the state fair generally a White thing?	21:13
Stine George	Yeah, a White thing. Yeah.	21:16
Doris Strong George	But they always went. They would always—	21:16
Stine George	You could always go. You could all go stand up and look, see, but you weren't participating, see? We have a county fair here now, but all White folks doing everything. You know, you don't have any Blacks—	21:19
Doris Strong George	But it's state fair, they going.	21:30
Stine George	Participating in it, see?	21:31
Sally Graham	So, when you were talking about the fair and your cow, that was a county fair, or—	21:32
Stine George	That was county thing, right.	21:37
Sally Graham	Okay.	21:48
Stine George	That was county thing.	21:48
Sally Graham	So, Blacks really didn't participate on a state level, because they could never—	21:48
Stine George	They never won.They never win on the local level, so they didn't take part in enjoy—here they go and take part, just go and socialize.	21:48
Doris Strong George	You have to win locally there before you can participate in the state or regional level.	21:53
Stine George	You could go and socialize, but that's all they could do. Like they have the different rides and that kind of thing. They get on the bus and go for that purpose. But as far as participating in the real thing, they had nothing to participate in or for.	21:56
Sally Graham	You brought up something else like the rides, was that something segregated, or could Blacks and Whites ride the rides at the state fair?	22:09
Stine George	Yeah, they could all ride the rides at state fair. That's one of the few places that they let them, but they wouldn't let them ride on the same seats, per se. Black here and Whites there. But they all could ride on the same rides. Mm-hmm. Yeah.	22:18
Sally Graham	And any day, they could go any day?	22:37
Stine George	Well it wouldn't last about week. Would last a week. Well, they had special days, though. In the beginning, they did have days in Albany, when they had the district thing there, Black folks go one day, and White folks have another day for White folks. That's absolutely true.	22:39
Stine George	And at the evening in Albany, we have our district thing. That's what we have district were there. And of course, they would have our animals there separated, too. And the Black folks' animals be over there over one side, and the Whites over on another side, see? You know, I have cows and hogs. That's when I was teaching. They would have our animals separated even there. And of course then, the day of showing them, everybody be there I think at Thursday when they show them. Everybody be there that day. But as far as where they had them there at the fairground, they were in separate places. But everybody show them the same ring that particular day when they had the show and sell, see? Mm-hmm.	23:00
Sally Graham	What is the statistic about how many farms?	23:47
Doris Strong George	[indistinct 00:23:51].	23:50
Sally Graham	Okay. Black-owned farms back in the old days, as opposed to how many there are now?	23:52
Stine George	Yeah, good question. And that's something that had bothered me even that. I remember quite well when I left Donaldsonville and Seminole County in 1970. We had something like 115 Black farmers in that county at the time. But I have no idea what would have there now. I know we don't have nearly as many farmers, probably less than fifty there now. What happened was, see I went there in 1958, and of course I followed a couple of the ag fellows who had been there who had done pretty good with working what the program and keep the program going. And when I got there, I was determined to keep them going, come hell or high water. I was just determined to keep them going.	23:59
Stine George	And of course, what we had addition to the New Farmers organization, which was of Black boys, we also had a Young Farmer group of a young Black farmer under thirty-five. And I also had another group of what called Farm Bureau organization, too. That's where that was made up of adult farmers in the community. And we met every month. In fact, as part of our agenda and our curriculum that we were going to have this adult farm group—	24:46
Sally Graham	What was it? [indistinct 00:25:17].	25:16
Stine George	Adult Farm Bureau. Farm Bureau organization.	25:16
Sally Graham	Okay.	25:23
Stine George	See, it was made up, like I said, it was made up of older farmers. You see, you had the rest of your younger farmers under thirty-five, but the younger farmers could participate with the older farmers, but then, I mean, as far as the Farm Bureau is concerned, but generally the young farmers would not come to the older farmer's meetings. So, I had to have both. I had to have a Young Farmers organization, also the older farmers, which is the Farm Bureau, see? And of course, we met every month and sometimes twice a month, and in the state of George, they had a Black guy who operated out of Macon called [indistinct 00:26:10] Dunlap, he coordinated the whole state Farm Bureau activities. And we had different programs where we met certain times, and had meetings with other people, and had certain activities with others, and [indistinct 00:26:27] adult farmers.	25:24
Stine George	And of course, we also had dues that we had to pay. And of course, the state had a deal, as well. And of course, in 1966, '67, '66 when they tried, they told us we had to do away with our organization and come in with them then. And they weren't treating us fair. They told us now you don't your Farm Bureau organization anymore. The Black unit in the state, you don't need it. So, what y'all do is come on in with us, and we going to treat you fair. But now what y'all can do, you can still keep your chapters. But as far as participate on the state level, we'll do everything, see? And you want something, you contact us, and we would handle it. But they still kept some Black guy who was the coordinator, they put him in the state office in Macon. And of course, if we really wanted some information, wanted something, he would sometime come out. But see, he would work [indistinct 00:27:44] because he was running all over the state for the most part. Then he died, and then of course they never replaced him with anybody.	26:29
Stine George	And of course when we wanted something, we were to go to the White unit on the local level and get what we wanted, or get information. For the dues, we could keep a third of the dues in our chapter, and then send the rest of it up to the state office. And this is what we did. In fact, we did it down there that 1970. In fact, I think our branch was the last one to fold under the wisdom of these White folks. Because we were determined to keep our branch going. If I still been there, we still had our separate Black unit, because what happened, my thing was then is that if they wanted to merge, they should have given us an opportunity to sit down and talk about it, and then let us keep whatever we had good. And they kept well they had good, but that's not what they chose to do.	27:51
Stine George	So, after I left, it meant that the organization folded. But then, see in 1968, the Ford Foundation became intrigued by some of the work and the organizing I was doing down in that county. And they selected me to be a fellow for the Ford Foundation for a year. And at that time, it was so impressed because I had done several things, like set up certain organization and groups, and in addition to that, I also set up groups to fight racism in that area, as well.	28:43
Sally Graham	In Seminole County, or—	29:34
Stine George	Right, Seminole County. Yeah, in Seminole County. And not only that, I also organized opposition group to fight the merger to take over the New Farmers organization. I was determined to keep something, because I just still felt they should sit down and talk with us, and they refused to talk with us [indistinct 00:29:54] on the state level.	29:34
Sally Graham	Why did the Whites, with the Future Farmers of America, why did they want to get together with the New—	29:55
Stine George	Well, the federal government said that we had to consolidate.	30:04
Sally Graham	Okay.	30:09
Stine George	That just like the public schools, see? The federal government said that we can't have a—well, the Supreme Court said 1954 separate but equal was unconstitutional, integrate with deliberate speed.	30:09
Stine George	And I never forget, I was in Korea at the time this transpired. And the White folk bought all the papers that day. None of the Blacks were—they bought all the papers from the Blacks, and none of us saw in the paper, one Black guy stole a paper from a White guy, but he saw them hiding the papers, because we had been getting paper Stars and Stripes every day. And suddenly one day we didn't get any. So this guy, we were in combat in Korea at the time, and he stole the paper and hid it in his duffel bag. He told me, "See the paper yesterday? See the paper yesterday?" I said, "No, no, what happened?" He said, "Well, I tell you, I show it to you at night." So at night, we came back again, and he had it in his duffel bags, we got this light and went out behind the bushes there and they read it. "Supreme Court rules separate but equal schools unconstitutional." See? And like I said, none of the Blacks knew that in the whole unit, because they bought all the papers. But that's kind of thing. They kept as much secrets from us as they possible could.	30:27
Stine George	But like I said, it was the federal government who was saying we had to merge. In fact, for a long time, even at latest the early '70s, the federal government thought our thing was already merged. They thought even with the Future Farmers and the Farm Bureau, and even school program had integrated, when in fact they had not. What they did, they would not come in and check. What they do, even in the hospital, when they would send inspectors down and they would put Blacks on the White wards. See, they had separate wards in the hospital. Because see, up until, and I'm skipping, you got to get me back on subject sooner or later, but I went to tell you this, you see up until probably late '50s, you see most Black folks got sick, they had to go down the ground. The hospital, they had a basement. The only place Black folk could go in the hospital was down in the basement.	31:30
Stine George	So, that was in the '50s. In the '60s they brought us out the basement up in there with the White folks. And what they would do, I never forget the first time I heard about this, they were coming up to inspect Camilla's hospital. They had brought the Blacks out of the basement supposedly and had them up in the White folks. And what they did, they got some people who worked there, some Blacks who worked there, made them get in the beds during the time inspection took. Now this is true, this is true. And that was in at '59, '60, or somewhere along there. And actually, no Blacks had ever been up there. But just to get a good report, that was just some of the things that they did. And like I said, the federal government wasn't affected at all, but they sort of said these things must be done. And that's the same thing with a lot of the organizations.	32:42
Stine George	And in reality, they were not integrated, they were totally segregated. But as far as the federal government knew, because they put Black folks down, and you have Black folks signing. Because we do that even today. I mean, Black folks are not really aggressive even today, even in this time right here, to be frank with you. And not only here, but in most towns in the South, Black folks don't choose their representative. Even though we did away with a dual school system, I mean the dual reapportionment system, like Black, White.	33:41
Stine George	Truly even today, White folks pick most of our leaders. In fact, even this town right here, we got four politicians. But three of them picked the White folks. And they told us who to pick. They picked whom they want to represent us, and then they come over and tell us who to vote for. And we do what they say to. Generally we do it in this town, and they do it in most towns that Black folks don't pick the representatives. That's why the performance and the results that occur, it's all White folks' doing, and it's not [indistinct 00:35:10] to have is Black, because Blacks had no input in the system. You got a Black there. In fact, we could do better a lot times if they put a White there, because see we can criticize him, and it doesn't look the same way.	34:27
Stine George	You see, with a Black there, you can't hardly find another Black. But White, you can find him. And then other Black would do the same thing. But it's like most of our—you talking about what I know about Blacks being in position of leadership like me, and well see what they do, it's just tokenism is what it is. They just put one Black in, and then that shuts up all of Blacks. See, nobody gets mad too much now, because we got the Black, we integrated. But look and see there are no Blacks back there, only one up front maybe where they can be seen.	35:23
Stine George	And of course, when people are not upset, then things just kind of stay like they are. But see, everything we've gotten thus far, we had to apply pressure on them. And I'll tell you, so in half we got our first Black on the city council to be frank, what happened was we were at large, voting at large then. It took us in this context, well some kind of more racist than other, some kind of a little more favor to Black folks than the other. But this one has been a very conservative type county. And of course—	36:01
Sally Graham	What do you feel are the worst counties out there?	36:36
Stine George	Beg pardon?	36:38
Sally Graham	What do you feel are the worst?	36:39
Stine George	This is one of the worst right here. This is one of the worst. But worst from a standpoint that—well see, it's worse in two ways. In one way in particular where it's better in some counties. But it's like here, they fool the Blacks. They would tell us that they for us. They'll even come over our neighborhood at night and talk to us and tell us that I'm with you, I'm for you, we're with you. They'll even go out here and pick and get Whites to vote for Blacks and put them in positions of leadership. But that's all. He's just there, just there. But, yeah.	36:41
Doris Strong George	If everything fine, they don't like mess, like some people just be so [indistinct 00:37:29] with it. They got to. So, you know.	37:25
Stine George	Yeah, they're covert. What they do is they do it undercover. But all the same time, they got their way. They get everything done they want done. First like we had this Black guy on the council, we had three Whites running and one Black. And this got won the election, because he got the majority of the vote. So, actually he was put on the city council, first Black in this county. And of course, he didn't like the [indistinct 00:38:03] or meetings they were having closed door meetings. He didn't like the fact that they would not include him in the planning. See, when they come to the meetings, they're the ones that decide what they're going to have, how much they're going to have, and read the vote. He said, "No, I don't know anything about this." This kind of thing. And they resented him exposing them.	37:32
Stine George	So, they came to us and told us, "Look here, y'all need to send us somebody that can get along with us. He don't know how to get along with White folks. So, what y'all do is send us somebody." And no, we were at the meeting down there, see our leader had called a meeting. And these two White men there, and they said, "Well, who do you want? And who would feel you could work with?" So, they named a preacher and a teacher who was a coach at a school. And they also named another teacher at a school, and also named one guy who had been a cook. What do you call it? Bus boy?	38:24
Doris Strong George	[indistinct 00:39:20].	39:16
Stine George	[indistinct 00:39:21].	39:16
Doris Strong George	You know what? They carry luggage up and stir the food in the dining room for parties.	39:21
Stine George	Yeah. But he had done that for years and years and years. He said we sent out his kid to school through this process. He'd done good—	39:25
Doris Strong George	He was very polite, he'd get big tips, and when people coming [indistinct 00:39:35].	39:30
Stine George	He recruiting now way back in the '40s and '50s, he'd recruit Black women for White men, that kind of thing. He kind kept everything for them.	39:35
Sally Graham	He serviced White men with Black women?	39:44
Stine George	Yeah. Uh-huh. And so what they said was, "Okay, we'll take him," and named the two people, see? So, the other two didn't want the job. So then, they said, "Okay, we'll give y'all 500 votes." And that's what they did, they delivered 500 votes in support of this man. And we voted against him, because most of us voted against him because they said that they didn't want this one.	39:46
Sally Graham	The porter man?	40:08
Stine George	[indistinct 00:40:11] they want. No, that's who they wanted. They wanted him.	40:11
Sally Graham	Okay. But the Black folks didn't want to vote for him? Is that what you're saying?	40:13
Stine George	Yeah, some Black didn't want to vote. See, everybody not the same. Everyone doesn't feel the same way. But there were enough Blacks who didn't want to hurt the White folks' feelings to do what the White folks said do. And that's the way they're basically here. We don't take open positions against anything unless we decide first how the White folks going to feel, how they're going to react about it or towards it. And that's even today, even today. And of course, this White man was in there, and this Black man got elected, and he was so proud. And of course he looked like them. He was actually so White, you wouldn't know he was Black unless you knew his family.	40:16
Doris Strong George	But it was because of that man. And it wasn't because White people picked him. I've known that man, and some of those things could have been rumors, because that was a fine man, he was a church man, he had fine family, fine children. He believe in educated. He's well read. And he went to high school the way he finished high school a long time ago, but he was very well read, and he picked up all the good graces of the people he served. And he wanted the best for his family. It's a doctor, all his children well educated, and he had good—now, those things I said was Black folks, I don't know anything about that. Because that man had high morals and a good husband, a good father for those children, a good true role model for those children now. And those things, those little rumor, he had 10 times more good qualities than he had bad qualities. I know I'm not [indistinct 00:41:54].	40:59
Stine George	She's the lady. White women know very little about what White men do. She's a Black female, she know very little about what Black men do, as well. Men have [indistinct 00:42:07]—	41:56
Doris Strong George	I know them.	42:07
Stine George	Men have to keep a lot from women. And like White women today, they are more exposed to their male counterpart than ever before. But you see over the years, even though White women used to live with Klansmens, they didn't know their husband were Klansmen. Their brothers were actually out here lynching people and killing people, see? But they were there, they were doing these kinds. They didn't know actually—someone didn't know that their husband had concubines or Black women living in the house.	42:07
Doris Strong George	[indistinct 00:42:42] never did have any concubines or other women. Himself. [indistinct 00:42:47].	42:41
Stine George	A Black man couldn't have no concubines. Anyway, aside from that—	42:47
Sally Graham	They might not have called concubines, but—	42:52
Doris Strong George	You had the womanizer [indistinct 00:42:56].	42:55
Stine George	I just said that. I said he recruited Black women for White men. That's all I'm saying. That's what the people said here. That's all I'm saying. Not him. And he wasn't that type of person. But to survive, you had to do something to survive. And that what his means of surviving was doing what they wanted, because the only job he could get, and you say he was smart, he perhaps would've been very smart, he'd had an opportunity to gone to school, had an opportunity to have done better, but he was subjected to racism, and his thing was by being light-skinned, then they kind [indistinct 00:43:29] better—	42:56
Doris Strong George	And he could have more money for his family.	43:29
Stine George	Yeah. They treated him—	43:31
Doris Strong George	But he didn't do those things they said.	43:32
Stine George	They treated him better because of his light skin. And even today, most Blacks should still feel the same way that White people would treat you better if you got light skin, a lighter skin, the little more hospitable they are to you. But they still feel that way very strongly.	43:33
Sally Graham	What's the voting percentage of Blacks here in the county? You were saying—	43:52
Stine George	It's very low as far as Blacks registered to vote. We got something like about forty percent Blacks registered to vote of the total population. And any election, we can't get no more about six to seven hundred Black folk. We got about twelve hundred on the books. But we can't get no more than four to six hundred people to vote at the most at any major election, see? So, they just don't vote, and they're not registered to vote. And most of them don't do it because they don't see a need to. Some of them say they're afraid of being on jury duty and that kind of thing. Any frivolous reason. And then too, they feel, and we all feel, I ain't going to say we all feel, but a lot of folks feel that White folks can do what they want to do anyway, and that's what you hear out there, that it's no point in getting involved, because they do what they want to do anyway. But see, that has come from years past, whereas when they had separate ballot boxes up until we started using the machines, we had separate ballot boxes.	43:58
Sally Graham	Do you remember that?	45:04
Stine George	Oh yeah, very definitely. In fact, that didn't go out of exist until after the '64 Civil Rights Act. That didn't go out of exist until then, to be frank. We're separate. And then what we felt was they threw our ballots in the trashcan. That's what we felt. And of course, I'll tell you this, see, at my household we were poor, but my dad's thing was, you cannot register for the military at eighteen unless you register to vote, too. And that was the thing that came up in the house, we all had to do that, and we looked forward to registering to vote when you got eighteen. And I never get, when I went down register vote at eighteen, you had to answer twenty questions. They asked you thirty questions, you had to answer twenty out of thirty. And the questions would be anything. Anything. And I never forget one question was, "How high is high?" Something like this, "How high is high?" And I'd heard somebody talk about it before, and I say, "It depended on you." And what it meant was that they have controls of whatever they wanted, that's what it be. But that was just a question in there, just—	45:05
Sally Graham	What other questions?	46:22
Stine George	Another question was something like, let's see, I'm trying to get [indistinct 00:46:29] another question.	46:24
Sally Graham	Do you remember any of this?	46:30
Doris Strong George	I don't [indistinct 00:46:33] remember is they give you something to read, a Constitution, and then sit back and say, "Now explain it." All of them dumb folks sitting up there, I just said something.	46:35
Sally Graham	Were you able to vote?	46:48
Doris Strong George	Yeah, I vote. But I remember they ask you some question, some [indistinct 00:46:48] questions. And then they asked you to read, and when you read this thing, then they said, "Now, interpret it." And they sitting back there listen to you interpret it.	46:48
Stine George	All right. Yeah. And that was—	47:03
Doris Strong George	They didn't whether you could read or not.	47:04
Stine George	But see what they judge about was who your dad was or who your parents was, and then they would make the public [indistinct 00:47:14] know that you register. So therefore, that would scare everybody to death. And then a lot of people wouldn't hire you if you registered. That was why—	47:07

Stine George	I said to myself, I'm the local science teacher. People expect me to know everything, expect me to know, expect me to be helpful. I said, "Well now, the only way I'm really be helpful is find out what the experiences that they've been going through, or are going through, in order to help them." I went down to the registrar's office. Well, one thing I discovered when I got there was that we only had twelve Blacks registered to vote in that county and I go, "That's kind of small." We had a potential of about five hundred, but we only had twelve people registered at that time. Then, one of our first year, I just taught Ag and tried to get to know of the farmers that first year I was there, most of that first year. And then I began to get worried about the fact that it seemed like we weren't accomplishing very much. It just wasn't accomplishing much.	0:03
Stine George	I started thinking, "Well, heck, maybe we should get people involved in some way." I knew that if I had gotten involved directly as an Ag teacher, I would get fired. I decided to try to go through by way of certain organizations to get people registered. I joined every organization I could. Masonic Lodge, Eastern Star, I joined them all and I had in my mind—	0:59
Sally Graham	Really?	1:23
Stine George	Seriously. They even go men [indistinct 00:01:27]. Yeah.	1:24
Sally Graham	I didn't know that.	1:25
Stine George	Yeah. Everywhere. What I did—	1:27
Doris Strong George	Stop.	1:32
Stine George	That's true. That's true.	1:33
Doris Strong George	[indistinct 00:01:38]. Yeah, but why can't he start at the—okay.	1:38
Stine George	Yeah, okay. But I was the person—they had another man there who was old at the time. They let me come in and serve there, too. He was their week labor. I was there all the time, and my thing was—I had joined the Masonic Lodge not too long before then. My thing was, if I could get the Masonic Lodge people to register to vote, and get the Eastern Star people to register to vote, and then I can get my—I organized what I called an executive committee I had the presidents for all organizations to come in. See, I'm new, basically and therefore, I wasn't president of any club, in any unit there. What I did, naturally call them all together. They made me president of the new executive committee, and I had the presidents of all the clubs there.	1:38
Stine George	Anyway, but then my goal within my mind, that I couldn't say to anyone was that I'm going to make sure that everybody get registered to vote. That was in my mind, but I didn't say it to anybody. Not one person knew what was in my mind. When I got in the Masonic Lodge not even the worship master was, he was a registered voter, but the head deacon, the deacon of the lodge—I don't know if you know anything about it, but anyway. Second person in charge was not registered to vote and so well before I got in the Lodge, here's what happened.	2:32
Stine George	I went to where they had an advertisement pay for every week. You want to register to vote, you got to go down to the Justice of Peace—well, one of the judges' office had it. It wasn't Justice of Peace. You had to go to one—probate. Yeah. You had to go to probate judge granted that, the guy Neil. You had to go to probate judge office to register. Every week they put it in the local paper saying everybody should have to register. One week, I said, "I ought to do the same thing they do." I got me a paper, and I put the paper in my pocket, and I went down to the courthouse. I told them, I said, "I've come here to register." He said, "I don't fool with that down here." He said, "They got a border registrars and Mug Burke is chairman of it." Mug Burke was the Farm Bureau Insurance agent, I mean, he was their Farm Bureau Insurance agent for the county.	3:15
Stine George	We set up the Farm Bureau then, insurance company for the state of Georgia. He the Farm Bureau Insurance agent there. He said you had to go to him, and then Mug Burke, and he's the one who's in charge—I said, "No, no. He's not." I go, "I got the paper here. Paper say you are." He said, "No, no, no. Paper's are lying. It ain't not me. Go to see—"	4:26
Stine George	I knew Mug, because like I said, he was with the Farm Bureau, so I went him and I saw him. White folks are always the same. If you go in there alone, they talk to you like crazy. They really friendly, White folks are, but the moment some other White person come in, you crash. They don't want to talk to you. I went in that office and he was sitting in there with legs up on the table, and I sat down there. He just started talking. We started talking and asking questions, just nice conversation.	4:48
Stine George	And then, finally, I got ready to leave. I said, "Hey." He said, "Yes, what did you want, George?" I say, "I come out here to register to vote." I said, "I went over to the courthouse while ago, and they told me I had to come and see you." He turned red. "Dog!" he said. "Let me tell you," he said, "they got a board of registrar here. They do have board of registrar, and I am chairman of the board." He said, "We meet twice a year."	5:22
Sally Graham	Oh my gosh.	5:58
Stine George	It's true. He said, "Now, what I ought to do," he said, "I got three people's names down here already as one of mine." He had two of my coworkers on there. He had another man in the city, I'll never forget this, a lady named Jones, and another named Pugh in there. I forgot who the other person was. He said, "I got two person on here." I said, "You'll be the third one on here. I'll put your name down so when we meet, I'll put your name into the board." He said, "What they'll do is send you a letter when we meet next, next time meet. They'll send a letter and then tell you when to come when we're meeting next time, so you can take a test." That would have been a year and a half, see?	5:59
Stine George	I said, "Okay, okay." He never did call me at all, so then finally, coming up by '63, then they started at going to race at the other place. Now, this is probably 1960, and then '63, he didn't call me. My name never got around for him to call me, so in '63, I went down there and then they went on and let me register like they had done earlier. But see, like I said, I was already registered, but I wouldn't tell them. Of course, from that, I went on and joined, like I said, the Masonic Lodge and I got in there.	6:45
Stine George	My thing was to make them register to vote, but what I did, after I got in there. I said to them, "You know, we should make it a policy that anybody who comes into the Masonic Lodge should be registered to vote." I said the same thing to Eastern Star, I said, "You know, we should make it a policy everybody who comes in here should be registered to vote." They thought it a good idea. "Yeah, that's a good idea."	7:33
Stine George	Okay. I went to my other club and I said the same thing, "You know, we should make it a policy everybody who comes in here should be registered to vote." They though it was a good idea, even though they weren't registered. That went on about six months later, I talked to some of the folks who had been forced to register. I told them, I said, "Now, what I'm going to do after we get back to the meeting, I'm going to bring it up. They forcing y'all to register to vote, and they not registered themselves." I said, "I'm going to bring it up and say they should have registered, too."	7:59
Stine George	I brought it up. In each organization, we got it done, and we made it a policy of everybody who was already a member of the Lodge, a member of the Easter Star, a member of the club had to register, too. That's how we got folks started—	8:24
Sally Graham	How did y'all get past Mug though?	8:36
Stine George	Huh?	8:36
Sally Graham	How did they get past Mug?	8:36
Stine George	Oh, he after '63, that's when the market and all that started. In fact, I was there the night it started at the bus station, there in Albany in 1963. It was November 1963 when the first demonstration occurred at the bus station. See, they had separate waiting room for Blacks and White at the bus station in Albany, and they had gotten together over the campus to test it out that some Black guys go into the White waiting room, and so that was '62. This is '63. They knew things were beginning to happen, so they went on and changed before it got to that.	8:36
Doris Strong George	Now, we had another problem. They used to almost beg Black folks to register to vote in Moultrie.	9:25
Sally Graham	Why?	9:30
Doris Strong George	We never had a problem. Because they were the most powerful. Mm-hmm. They were the swinging group. Nobody ran for position but White folks, but the White folks could come over here, and they have some barbecue or some whiskey. Then if you got equal number—two White men running, see, you need the Black people's support to win.	9:31
Sally Graham	Oh.	9:56
Stine George	Because everything's at large. See everything's at large.	9:56
Doris Strong George	Everything in this is at large.	9:57
Stine George	Mm-hmm.	10:01
Doris Strong George	Now—	10:02
Stine George	Black couldn't win because—	10:02
Doris Strong George	Back then, they weren't allowed to even run. But they could vote, but they had to vote a—	10:04
Stine George	White person.	10:08
Doris Strong George	—and then we decided we would use a block vote. They try to get the less of the two evils. Both of them was evil, and it come and they'd say, "We going to pick up your garbage." Then they want to have a big fish fry for you and have penny-licking beer, and then they'd have something else for you. Trying to persuade the Black folks to vote for them, because these are when, I guess you couldn't have no more Black folks, but they still would have a hard time just running this with White people all across Southern here, everybody has the [indistinct 00:10:41].	10:12
Doris Strong George	See, we didn't have a position, and they didn't have to promise us very much, because they are the dirtiest streets over here. They said, "We'll sweep the streets more. Pick up the garbage a little bit." Stuff like that. Or even they said none of this and just give you—or didn't have some Black folks because at the time, would go out there and say we're going to support this so and so. Or he said he's going to do so and so, and he going to have a party for a year at Christmastime when they're [indistinct 00:11:09] send all the people a fruitcake, a powdered biscuit. They would! Try to get your vote. You remember that, Stine? They did.	10:41
Stine George	I sure do. But hey, [indistinct 00:11:22] every time a separate situation. Some of them would actually barbecues—	11:24
Doris Strong George	Barbecues.	11:28
Stine George	—and some of them would just give out half pints of liquor to any individual, take them into community. Sometimes they'd give separate two dollars. Go around and give all the Black folks [indistinct 00:11:40]—	11:29
Doris Strong George	Because they'd have barbecue—	11:40
Stine George	Yeah, but—	11:41
Doris Strong George	—but then people they want to campaign for them, they would give them I guess, two or three dollars of—	11:42
Stine George	They had—	11:51
Doris Strong George	—they send me big [indistinct 00:11:53].	11:52
Stine George	Liquor wasn't nothing much. They rely on moonshine liquor—	11:53
Doris Strong George	They give them—	11:56
Stine George	—they give what didn't cost so much, so they—	11:56
Doris Strong George	They give them moonshine.	11:59
Stine George	—they give them half pints.	12:01
Doris Strong George	Right. [indistinct 00:12:03].	12:02
Stine George	At that barbecue—	12:02
Doris Strong George	[indistinct 00:12:06] he had to live with the Black folks.	12:06
Stine George	Then they would say something like this, "We know who you going to vote for. We know who voted." That would scare the Black folks into voting for a certain White man, because they said they knew who you voted for.	12:09
Doris Strong George	But anyways, both of them White, you know they look like each one, but he had some Black leader that they said. Because most of Black folks voted strictly block. There might be one or two, but whoever the Black folks decide to support, that was it, and each White person was trying to get the Black people to vote. See, each day, they try to win on the first go-round, but a lot of times, they got four or five people in there, they couldn't get fifty-one percent of the votes without the Black votes. Therefore, you get Black votes to come in, then you going to have four or five hundred, then see, they would be up there in the wind. But neither one thought it was much.	12:31
Stine George	She, then they had a problem. But on the other hand here, we have the problem that they didn't have the problem [indistinct 00:13:17]. Seriously, please.	13:14
Doris Strong George	"See, we good. We don't have no problems. We get along just fine. Black folks, all of them vote in Moultrie." They did say, "We don't know what they talking about over there. Over there, Black folks vote, because they vote in Moultrie." But then, you see, it still wasn't voting really because they ain't promised you nothing.	13:17
Stine George	I said another reason why—	13:41
Doris Strong George	They forget that as soon as they get in office. I'm through.	13:44
Stine George	Another reason why they didn't have it often very much, was see, at that time, we knew that we'd try to vote for the least of the evils. There was always a particular in our major election, like governor election. Everybody would call you a nigger. Everybody would call you a nigger. "I don't want no nigger votes." This kind of thing, that's what they was saying when I went down there. Only twelve folks registered to vote Black, and they said, "We don't want to no nigger votes." That would hurt my feelings, and I said, "Well, I'm going to teach you White folks a lesson. They going to beg for Black votes before I leave and die here," and that's why I went and did what I did.	13:47
Stine George	Way back in the '50s, when we had the governor race and that kind of thing, well see, even in the president race, too, see Black folks were hesitant whether they should vote for republican or democrat. We were in a see-saw situation, even until Nixon came along. As long as when Nixon and Kennedy ran that Black folks became democrat. Before that time, even though the republicans seemed to be racist, we still voted republican because we thought about Abraham Lincoln. See, he freed us. We thought that should have been a carry-over to that day, but it wasn't the case. Of course, all the White folks, democrats, down South all the White—	14:22
Doris Strong George	[indistinct 00:15:06], Belford, all of them.	15:07
Stine George	Right.	15:08
Doris Strong George	It would have been party with them.	15:08
Stine George	Yeah.	15:10
Doris Strong George	You know? You don't know about them, but they were awful at speaking. They were terrible—	15:12
Stine George	Everything they see—	15:14
Sally Graham	I've read about them, but—	15:14
Doris Strong George	You read about them? What [indistinct 00:15:19].	15:17
Stine George	And then when Kennedy and Nixon were running, and then when chair for Alabama put King in jail over there, and then again they put him in Reidsville jail too. Then—	15:18
Doris Strong George	Because he was—	15:32
Stine George	—it was Robert Kennedy who called [indistinct 00:15:39] over in Alabama asking to turn him out. See, but he sent some group down and he called them as well, and Nixon was ordered to do that. Nixon who was a real republican was also told to do it, but he refused to do it, and then when they turned him out and Black folks all over the country became aware that it was only from Kennedy's word that he got out. Then all the Blacks turned democrat, until that time—	15:33
Doris Strong George	We weren't really democrat when we voted for him, because we figured he could do, but we just thought Nixon was a terror man, but we thought he could deliver.	16:09
Stine George	Uh-huh.	16:18
Doris Strong George	And then the first time the Black folks voted democrat.	16:18
Stine George	That's why we basically democrats now. From that point on, we've been basically voting democrat because of what Kennedy did, but before that time, we didn't fool no democrats. Democrats were always rednecks.	16:23
Doris Strong George	The republicans got so conservative—	16:35
Stine George	They were conservative all the time.	16:37
Doris Strong George	I know, but democrats got so liberal, with Kennedy and Johnson with his great, what is it?	16:40
Stine George	Great Society.	16:46
Doris Strong George	Great Society Program that he had, so we had no choice but to go democrat.	16:47
Stine George	But it was Kennedy who changed, because being a Catholic and they didn't want him because he was a Catholic they thought he would—	16:53
Doris Strong George	A republican never—	17:03
Stine George	Doris, can we talk?	17:05
Doris Strong George	I'm sorry.	17:05
Stine George	We thought we'd hold allegiance to the pope, and that's what a lot of White folk were saying. We don't want Kennedy, but then after he later get through, I remember those elections quite frequently, got through the primaries and stuff, then he take the position over like he took that certainly that sold us. And then when he called out and got Martin Luther King out of jail for a little bit of nothing, and Nixon didn't do it, then certainly we became large democrats. Then certainly, we realize now that had Kennedy lived, we probably wouldn't have got as much as we got out of it.	17:06
Stine George	When Johnson came along, Johnson was a racist, a conservative. He was a very racist cracker pride to him—even when he ran, running, as far as we knew. But here, the true Johnson come out once he got elected. He talked about elected how he had been a teacher in the school and they had crippled him about seeing Blacks being denied basic opportunities, and he said to himself then, "One day I'm going to see what I can do. I'm going to do what I can to help." But you couldn't tell it by his actions when he was running for president, or even before that time, you couldn't tell. He was in the race, and then he got out of it.	17:41
Stine George	Then Kennedy picked him as a running mate, because he had to have the south to some extent to help him, and he was a conservative. We were saying, "Dog, why he pick a racist as a vice president?" But then, he chose the right man, because the man only the way he act, so he could White folks support. That was like the Black who was one of our Supreme Court Justice, I think for Virginia, he'd go Black. He said he was a Klansmen. He said, "But I had to feel the way the Klansmen felt. I want to join the Klan in order to hold political positions." Only Klansmen were giving any privilege or opportunity to hold political positions. That's why he became a Klansmen.	18:26
Stine George	I forgot what president appointed him to the Supreme Court, but he appointed him because he was conservative, at least he thought he was going to be a very conservative, but he turned out to be one of the most liberal judges of all. That's what I'm talking about with Johnson. Johnson did more for us than anybody could have done. Of course, I shouldn't say ever, because I think Clinton has done more than anybody, but he done it on the back of what Carter and all the rest of them did that he's able to do that. But certainly that was a turning point for us in America, Lyndon B. Johnson. Even today, a lot of White folks dislike him, and talk about killing them all, that kind of stuff during that time. But particularly what it done, first of all, took place in this country, but he made a change and it certainly made a difference for us.	19:12
Stine George	But even that came up the Great Society Program, or your program that OEO program that the mentally retarded and other persons, the people who were hurt—benefited by that day. These are the results of the Johnson program that Whites and all poor outside us are benefited by it, but they don't realize that to some extent and they don't give him any credit for it.	20:03
Stine George	Of course, it was only his program that brought us into mainstream. He set up agencies that actually included Blacks for the first time, and whereas we could wear a collar and tie for other than being a teacher. You see, it was the program that Blacks were supposed to be in equal numbers all over this country. It was that for the first time, White folks got a chance to see Black folks wearing ties and acting accordingly. In fact, when I came in 1970 in Moultrie, there were no Blacks really in White collar and tie hardly nowhere. We just got a Black at the bank last year, or two years. They clean up, see.	20:42
Doris Strong George	Where?	21:31
Stine George	We got a Black guy down there in [indistinct 00:21:35]—	21:32
Doris Strong George	Where?	21:35
Stine George	He's at Moultrie National Bank. He's an officer there. We got another Black guy over there at—oh, that's the nice merchandise too. That's the other place down there. That really old bank down there. That's where one is down there. We've got two Blacks down there.	21:36
Doris Strong George	[indistinct 00:22:07] went crazy with the budget—	22:08
Stine George	No, no.	22:08
Doris Strong George	Oh my God.	22:08
Stine George	No, no.	22:08
Doris Strong George	[indistinct 00:22:09].	22:08
Stine George	No, no. We got him and we got two Blacks in there.	22:08
Doris Strong George	We got a lot of Blacks be tellers.	22:08
Stine George	The guy I got wasn't tellers, but that's all the farther its gone, see?	22:10
Doris Strong George	No, we got one—	22:14
Stine George	I know we got a lot more. We got them in there now, but that's saying up until this has been last year or two that this has come about, but I came in the '70s there were no Blacks hardly in the leadership positions. But I came with the OEO program, and you see even when I came like that, Blacks who were native Blacks who were already here resented that to some extent. Me coming and getting the job, and of course many of them have not accepted that fact, even today—	22:14
Sally Graham	Even after twenty years?	22:49
Stine George	—they still hold that against me to some extent. At one time, I spoke and I'm very active in community activities and community affairs, and yet, they are saying derogatory things about me, but yet, turning to her and saying nice things. See, they look at her as being one of them, but I came and I'm supposed to be the big bad wolf.	22:51
Doris Strong George	It was the same, when you started with me. Always giving me something. Give me something.	23:22
Stine George	They always gave her something. Even when we were in the same house. They bring her something, and don't even bring me nothing.	23:29
Doris Strong George	[indistinct 00:23:35], one serving.	23:32
Stine George	Yeah. One plate. One plate.	23:35
Sally Graham	Oh my.	23:36
Stine George	But see, this is the traditional way Black folks are. They don't like people to come in and develop anything.	23:40
Doris Strong George	They'd rather give me—	23:48
Stine George	Yeah. They don't even give me the time of day. She got her friends won't even speak to me. I pass them on this road, they won't even wave at me hardly because they just resent that I would come in here and—	23:51
Doris Strong George	And marry me. [laughs]	24:03
Stine George	Marrying her and wear a coat and tie. She's just [indistinct 00:24:08]. That's just—	24:03
Doris Strong George	That's just the way it is.	24:15
Stine George	That's just the way it is. Anyway, that's a thing. That's the way it is. Of course, that's all been the case. That White folks taught us, taught during slavery that you don't respect Blacks who try to be uppity. They call it uppity niggers. You don't respect uppity niggers, you see? That's what they said about me.	24:16
Doris Strong George	Yeah, but it's sad. They feel sorry for you. They say, "She so nice," they go back and just give me something for the mail. I have a big cross [indistinct 00:24:47] just so many nice things.	24:36
Sally Graham	They feel sorry for you for marrying Mr. George, then?	24:50
Doris Strong George	Mm-hmm.	24:51
Sally Graham	They do? How did y'all meet?	24:51
Doris Strong George	I just teasing you. I'm just teasing you about that. That's not bad.	24:51
Stine George	That is true, they do send her gifts all the time. They always buying gifts and cakes and all that kind of stuff for her, and they respect her for all high, but they don't give me any respect. They talk about me, and they always try to down me, too.	25:00
Doris Strong George	It's all right. They do that and they down me, then I said I ain't get along.	25:11
Stine George	But she's a part of them, that's why. But anyway—	25:14
Sally Graham	How did you two meet?	25:19
Stine George	How did we meet is a good question. It's a funny thing. I came in here, like I said, I came again with the OEO program, I came and worked with them. Funny thing, I got a job, too. Well, see, I've always done the right thing. I've always done the right thing. I don't go to church or nothing, but the Lord directs me—	25:20
Doris Strong George	I go.	25:41
Stine George	—in my actions. Yeah, she goes all the time.	25:42
Sally Graham	Well, maybe that's why they're not bringing you cakes.	25:43
Stine George	That's what I prefer. Not really. That's why they feel like they feel. But anyway, see, I had the whole family organized. See, another thing that calls—see, in 1966, '65, I realized that there was change taking place in this country in spite of what Martin Luther King was doing. I was attending meeting, let me tell you about that. See, he came to Georgia in 1962, in Albany. That's when he started his movement in Albany, in Georgia. In 1961, Federal Government became aware of the fact that they had to educate some of us to be in a position to work with the changes that were going to take place. What they did, they set up strategic places in different parts of the state of Georgia for us to go and take training.	25:48
Stine George	They sent federal people in to train us to prepare us for the changes that's taking place today. Our place was in Thomasville, that was they had a guy named Delta Thomas guy, who was doing the teaching, guiding, instructing us as to how to deal with these changes that were taking place. I'll never forget this, this is '61. Let me get this, when I first went there, when we had that first meeting from Thomasville, we had three colored folk, three, four colored folks and we're owed this meeting, at that first meeting. And then, we had this meeting probably every two weeks.	26:41
Stine George	Of course, the second time we went back out, it's about two weeks, there were two carloads of us, two full carloads going over there. They have about four or five meetings, we couldn't even get a carload to go. Truly. And then, it ended up, it wasn't about going with me. And then what I would do, see, what they would do, White people had a thing going on, what they would do, they knew about these meetings. They would get the tag number of every car that's there and send it back to the county where you came from, and then you'd call in on the copy, if you were a teacher. You're told, if you go to these meetings, you don't really have a job, see?	27:25
Stine George	That was all right there. I didn't have no problem with that meeting. But see, in 1962, when King came to Albany, and like I say that preparation there, I knew that was going to happen that I would probably lose my job as an Ag teacher in my day. They would say, "Son, you got to keep your first job you have." You always keep your real first job, you'll always have a job, which makes a lot of sense.	28:07
Doris Strong George	You [indistinct 00:28:36].	28:35
Stine George	I was determined to keep my job, but I got to do what I got to do. See? Even before I started, even before I really got involved in '59, '60, going to all those things, doing the things I was doing. I realized the possibility was I might get caught doing it, and also I might get fired. I never forgot, I wrote a letter home and I told my dad. I said, "Look, Dad, these people are backward. They're not getting nothing out here and just teaching Ag is not going to cut it. They've got to be more done, these folks. I mean, they don't vote. They don't do nothing, but just live," and I said, "I got to do something." I said, "But now tell you what, I'm going to have to do what I'm going to have to do." I said, "If it mean I'm going to lose my job, I'm going to return home and work turpentine the rest of my life."	28:36
Stine George	We had these turpentine boxes, and I knew how to chip these boxes. But I was willing to do that. I was willing to make sacrifice, if necessary, to return home and work turpentine the rest of my life, and help pick cotton and do all kind of things too.	29:31
Doris Strong George	You would pick cotton?	29:43
Stine George	I was willing to do that if I had to, but anyway—	29:43
Doris Strong George	You would pick cotton?	29:43
Sally Graham	Did your family vote? Did you come up—	29:43
Stine George	Oh, yeah.	29:43
Sally Graham	—with father? Okay.	29:43
Stine George	Oh, yeah. Yes, yes, yes. I don't know if I told you that, but see, my mother died, like I told you, when I was seven years old. She died when I was seven. For the next six years, I was the oldest child at home. My sister had gone to boarding school, so my brother were there with my dad. My dad doesn't cook, and of course, with nobody there, he couldn't cook. That's why I learned to cook. Here I am, eight years old, I had to do the cooking. After my mother died, then I had to start cooking for my brother and myself. Of course, I did that, and of course, I'd try to fix a sandwich or something, like eggs or make us some bread, so we could have something to go to school with.	29:44
Stine George	I was doing that, but the kids would laugh at my food every day. Laugh at my food every day. I mean, they would laugh, so I told my dad. I said, "Dad, those kids laugh at my food every day." Even though I was only eight or nine years old, I was fearing and I had feelings. Kids laugh at my food.	30:52
Doris Strong George	You ain't met me yet.	31:25
Sally Graham	Blue what?	31:25
Doris Strong George	[indistinct 00:31:26].	31:25
Sally Graham	What was it again? Blue Baby?	31:25
Stine George	Blue Baby.	31:25
Doris Strong George	Blue Baby.	31:25
Stine George	He said, "Sons, let me tell you something. What I'm going to do from now on, every day at lunch, I'm going to give y'all six cents a day, six cents a piece," me and my brother. Said, "Y'all buy you a cinnamon roll every day at lunch." Every day at lunch, we'd go by this man's store, and an old guy named Jess Samuels, and we'd buy a cinnamon roll. Four biscuits in that cinnamon roll. They're pretty big. They're bigger, almost as big as this right here, as long as this right here. Feed everybody here cinnamon rolls.	31:26
Stine George	That what we ate every day at lunch, ate that cinnamon roll, and the kids didn't laugh at that because we had something they didn't have. See? But anyway, and another thing, see even in that time, kids would pick at me a lot. We were so poor, we didn't have no clothes to wear much to school. I never forget frequently quite well that the government would give us some off-white pants that really it's the same color pants that the prison wear—	31:49
Doris Strong George	Convicts.	32:18
Sally Graham	Oh my gosh!	32:18
Doris Strong George	[indistinct 00:32:19].	32:18
Stine George	At that time, the convict wore striped clothes, you know what I mean?	32:18
Sally Graham	Mm-hmm.	32:18
Stine George	Today, they got solid White pants, but that's what we wore.	32:18
Doris Strong George	They got a stripe down the side.	32:18
Stine George	Yeah. But they didn't have the stripe on ours. We had solid White pants, and I would wear those pants. A lot of poor kids, but it looked like we might have been some of the poorest kids I ever seen. They would say to me, "Where you get more White pants from? Where are you getting more White pants from?" I wouldn't tell them.	32:19
Doris Strong George	Kids are so cruel.	32:56
Sally Graham	They are.	32:59
Stine George	Anyway, that's what I had to wear. See what I couldn't try to cook bread with, sometimes, they wouldn't give us self-rise flour. We'd go get that government commodity. It wouldn't be no self-rise flour; it'd be plain flour. I didn't know what in the world you put in the flour to make it rise. We had nothing to put in, but that's what happened, why that bread looked so bad sometimes.	33:00
Stine George	Anyway, just before my sister left, I should have been about nine then, about eight or nine. My sister left. Like I said, I didn't have no clothes to wear, and then I had one cap to wear. I had one for Sunday, and I had one to wear every day, a cap. What it was, it was one of these motorcycle caps, you see everybody on a motorcycle—	33:28
Doris Strong George	I hadn't seen it.	34:01
Stine George	—for a mile with the quality. A motorcycle cap with a little hood, little thing over your eye?	34:01
Sally Graham	Yeah.	34:07
Stine George	Over your ears? That's what I had. I had one to wear on Sunday, and I had one to wear every day. [indistinct 00:34:18].	34:09
Doris Strong George	Oh, really?	34:18
Stine George	It was common for everybody to wear hats that time, and so what happened was, that plastic started peeling off.	34:21
Sally Graham	Oh, no.	34:31
Stine George	Even like leather coats, you get what's it called? Imitation leather. All that start peeling off, too.	34:34
Sally Graham	Right.	34:39
Stine George	I mean, I didn't have no choice. I had to keep wearing it, and see, it's not like I was homely. I might be still homely looking these days, but the kids would laugh at me. They would say, "You're such a ugly boy." We'd have—	34:42
Doris Strong George	Oh, baby.	35:04
Stine George	—a field day. Now, you've heard of field day?	35:05
Sally Graham	Mm-hmm.	35:06
Stine George	That was where the other school would come in, and would come in and—	35:08
Sally Graham	Come in and compete.	35:17
Stine George	—and see the best time, see? The other school would come in and of course, we'd have our May Day thing and do our activities and everything. On two occasions, when we had things, teacher told me, said, "You go home so people won't see you."	35:17
Sally Graham	Oh!	35:37
Doris Strong George	He was crying.	35:37
Stine George	Let me go home.	35:37
Doris Strong George	[indistinct 00:35:38] start crying.	35:37
Sally Graham	That's so cruel.	35:44
Stine George	You about had me crying today. My sister took me back home, and we went on home before the crowd got there so I wouldn't be seen.	35:44
Doris Strong George	Kids can be so mean.	35:50
Stine George	I guess, I was hobo, I didn't have no clothes to wear.	35:55
Sally Graham	I guess, you were not—	36:00
Stine George	Huh? [indistinct 00:36:04] for a reunion, but they'd give me a shirt every year. But that was of course, because we just poor. Just poor. Of course—	36:04
Doris Strong George	I ain't never believe that.	36:12
Stine George	That's true. That's true. My dad tell you. I mean, when I got home that last time, he raised so much sand because—well, eight years old, how you be thinking about what's going to happen? You not thinking about changing clothes and all that kind of stuff. He told me I should have worn the other cap, my Sunday cap, to school that day, and I could have stayed probably. But anyway, that's what happened.	36:15
Sally Graham	Now, how did your father first register to vote?	36:38
Stine George	I think he registered in 1946. What happened, even though he wasn't educated, well see, my dad was what they call a good nigger. He just good nigger. My daddy never talked back at them. I don't care what they did, what they said, he would never talk back at the White folk. Rather than talk back, he'd just leave, go on about his business. That's what I started to tell, but I forgot.	36:45
Doris Strong George	You tell him about that. How your White man—	37:03
Stine George	I'm getting ready to.	37:03
Doris Strong George	His White man.	37:03
Stine George	Let me tell you.	37:03
Doris Strong George	He's talking about—	37:03
Stine George	What happened was, see, he had been working this White man I don't know now many years. I never really asked him how many years he worked for this White man. Name was Justin Morris, and he would do whatever the White man said. He didn't make no money much, but he'd been working for this White man. White man taken most what he had made, but he still sharecropped supposedly. But a White man kept all the records and did everything, but he just made enough to stay there. Next year start all over again, and they shifts start all over again, and then he wasn't making enough.	37:03
Stine George	This White man got real old and senile, and he was getting senile, and he came out one day and told my dad. He said, "William, uh, uh. William," that's the way he talked. "William, uh, uh, you've been farming for me so many years, and you've been a good nigger to me." I remember getting out of the house one day, and I don't know that man started stumbling out in the yard. He was getting old and weak. He start stumbling, he about to fall, and my dad run and grabbed and held him from keeping falling. I'm just saying these kind of thing.	37:42
Stine George	He got along with much. He said, "You've been a good nigger. You've been a good nigger, so I'm going to tell you what I'm going to do, I'm going to sell you this farm." Dad said, "Sell me a farm? Mr. Morris, I can't buy no farm." "Good man buy it from you," he said, "In fact, well, you already started buying it. You just go there and talk with Brown," that was the FHA man, "and he'll let you sign the paper. I already got it made up. We the government. We the government." That's it. You talk to my dad, Dad signed it. "We the government, so just go ahead and sign the paper."	38:19
Stine George	Bang! They took my dad to the hospital. I went over a weekend, he's in the hospital. The same man wife was in the same hospital suddenly. She killed her baby, and my parents were there the weekend. But anyway—	38:56
Doris Strong George	I remember that story.	39:08
Stine George	—yeah, so anyway. That's what happened. Then, he didn't tell his sons about what he had done. After my dad signed the papers, he didn't want to tell them he signed the paper. After he told his sons that he's going to sell my dad that farm, in that location, it's on the main road at that time, and nothing but White folks, and good land on the hill too. Well, see, Black folk were always getting the bottom. This on the hill. Nice hill land, because that was one of his choice farms.	39:14
Stine George	But anyway, those sons had a fit. There were two of them. Boy, they had a fit. They came, went over there and they going to stop it. Because their dad was senile, he didn't know what he was doing. The people at the FHA office said, "Well, he's signed the paper. We cannot withdraw it now." They came at the house mad. Told my dad—well, see, this man had a fence put all around the farm. Matter of fact, my dad, he bought the posts and the wire, this White man had put a fence all around the farm. My dad did all the work, but he bought the fence and the posts and everything.	39:46
Stine George	They came around and told my dad, said, "Look, that fence around that farm, it's new wire, just been up about a year." They say, "That's our wire." Daddy know what he done. It was our wire he got there. "Take all that wire down and roll it up and get it back to us." Around that whole farm, see? Take it off the posts, and that's what they wanted. My dad said, "Yes, sir. Yes, sir. I'll do that." Anyway, so my dad went back over to this Brown man's place and asked at the FHA office, and told them, said, "Mr. Morris's son," I can't think of what they name was, "came in and told me that I got to take all that wire down and give it to him because it belong to him."	40:23
Stine George	The man told him, "William, you don't have to do that. The wire belongs to you, because you done bought the farm." He said, "But now, if you want to get along with them, maybe you might want to take it down." That's what my dad did, he take up all that wire.	41:09
Doris Strong George	And all the posts.	41:23
Stine George	Uh-huh.	41:24
Doris Strong George	Wind up give it to him.	41:24
Stine George	Well, to get along with them. They get along to stay there. Because see, at that time, that's when the Black folk were going north. Because they said, once in a while they'd come and lynch you or do everything.	41:26
Doris Strong George	Burn your house down.	41:37
Stine George	Burn your house down. That's exactly right. But see, that's another thing. That's another thing. I don't talk about. It's too much, too. But see, after my mama died, see, I say four, but there really was six of us, to be frank. Of course, they built this government house to live in, and all the government housing looks alike. You can always tell a government house, because all of them were White and all looked alike in all over the South, in particular, you saw one, you saw the blue one. Anyway, after we bought the farm, that was part of the deal in buying this farm, that they going to put a house out there. They did, and that was part of the deal in the farm operation, so we had this house. We had a house out there. All were frame houses, but they resented it. The White folk resented the fact that we were out there and we had this frame house out there.	41:37
Stine George	We're not so sure what happened, but one night, I don't know probably about two o'clock in the morning, my oldest sister started running through house, "Hey! Daddy, Daddy! House on fire!" The house started burning on the front porch, and it went all the way around. When she hollered. She hollered, and we all were asleep at two o'clock in the morning. And then of course, she got my dad ran out, and she ran out, and my dad thought he could put the fire out. Because if it'd been a little place burning, he could have actually went and put it out. Then, I came out, my sister came out, my brother, he came out and I had one little sister, my baby sister and my baby brother did not wake up, and they got burned up in that fire. That has hurt so much, that I've never been able to talk about it that much.	42:53
Doris Strong George	He would never tell me and my family.	43:52
Stine George	I never told anyone in my whole life.	43:52
Doris Strong George	Then he started talking about it a little bit, but you would never talk about it. But you told me.	43:53
Stine George	We ran out there, we took water to throw it on the fire, we were running all the way around the house. What it was said, the White folks put gas on the house, and called the burn down, and burned the two children.	44:02
Sally Graham	How old were your brother and sister?	44:16
Stine George	About three and four. Mm-hmm. After it burned, my sister, my baby sister, she never wake up. She was still in bed, but the boy got up and go far as the door, and just didn't make it out. It was very painful. It was very painful that this happened, and of course, White folks came over and like my dad he didn't sleep with pants on. Well, a lot of people sleep with their clothes on. A lot of people sleep with clothes on. But that's why I sleep with clothes on now, because he didn't have any pants on, so he was trying to put the fire out because we were in a hurry. My sister, when she came out, her hair got burned almost all gone. He hair got burned off. She came out of there because she got very close.	44:28
Stine George	White man that lived across the hill, he brought him some clothes, and they'd never do anything about it. They didn't ever do anything about it. Never tried to find out who did it or anything, but we surmised that the White folks done it. See, my sister had been ironing that day before, and if that had caught from the iron, it would have caught inside the house, not outside. But they said, "Yeah, it did. When did you iron over that house?" She said, my sister, "Well, we ironed yesterday. I ironed some yesterday afternoon." "Well, that was the clothes. That's what caught from that."	45:26
Stine George	But the inspections had caught the front porch, went round the house, and burned that. I mean, right fast. It went around fast, just go "Shoom!" Burn the house down. That's why we couldn't go back and get the others out, but you see, but a seven, eight-year-old child, you couldn't expect him to go back and get the baby. I'm scared. I'm a nervous wreck. I really tried to help. See, we had a well. We had a bucket to try and draw the water out of the well, then my oldest sister run and throw the water on that house. That fire went all the way around the house, so it didn't help a bit. Like I said, White folks came around. They were talking to me, but nobody ever tried to apprehend anybody who committed the crime.	46:02
Doris Strong George	They probably thought some of the White folks had done it. Anybody could have done it.	46:47
Stine George	Well, we—	46:47
Doris Strong George	They used to burn every church and every school down in Union Grove.	46:53
Stine George	Yeah.	46:56
Sally Graham	What's what happened in Union Grove?	46:59
Doris Strong George	Uh-huh. They had big church, and big school, even we got a Rosenwald school. It's a foundation—	46:59
Sally Graham	Rosenwald. Julius Rosenwald?	47:07
Doris Strong George	Uh-huh.	47:09
Sally Graham	Okay.	47:09
Doris Strong George	They built a school down there. Nice country school at that time. They even burned that down. They burned the big church down—	47:10

Sally Graham	About what year was the church and everything in Union Grove burnt down?	0:05
Stine George	I tell you what, it would have all been burned up in 1960, '61, '62.	0:11
Doris Strong George	No, that was the integration.	0:12
Stine George	I know, right.	0:13
Doris Strong George	That was the integration. They burned all them churches down. [indistinct 00:00:17]. I guess it was the Thursday and the Fridays, everybody. Because they always build another. And always the churches get burned down, or the school get burned down. There in Selma, they get burned down, and then they would. They end up now with a little modern block church, just a little—like a store. We used to have big churches.	0:14
Sally Graham	Wow. What was the original church like?	0:43
Doris Strong George	It was a wooden church. It was a big one. It was about four times bigger than what they have now. And then they had the school separate. First school was not a big one, maybe a one room school what they built [indistinct 00:01:01], and then I think they grow our schools about three or four rooms or more. And they burnt that down, because these were for Black folks.	0:46
Sally Graham	And that was the church that your family owned.	1:09
Doris Strong George	That's right, went to.	1:11
Sally Graham	Mm-hmm.	1:14
Doris Strong George	Nathaniel ain't told you how he met me yet.	1:15
Sally Graham	No, you haven't.	1:18
Doris Strong George	Nathaniel going to tell that.	1:18
Sally Graham	Oh, okay. Let me ask you another question then. You were talking about the lynching that led your grandfather to take his family to Ohio.	1:21
Doris Strong George	Yeah.	1:29
Sally Graham	About what year was that?	1:29
Doris Strong George	Let's see. I don't know if it was 1936 or 1934. It's in there. It's in all the book, history books. [indistinct 00:01:42].	1:30
Sally Graham	And that's in Worth County?	1:47
Doris Strong George	In Colquitt County, right here.	1:47
Sally Graham	Colquitt County, right here.	1:47
Doris Strong George	I'm going to tell you, it's that they—you know, and they finally lynched, they finally—I think they lynched him downtown. They hung him, but listen, they told me for then in Moultrie, they used to just kill Black folks and put them behind the cars, White people, and ride around in the neighborhood behind the cars, and where all the Black folk would see them. They would, you know. And in public in the daytime. [indistinct 00:02:15] said they came on out of the house, came on out there with Black men, Black people, Black men. Dragging behind the car, dead, be done killed, and they'd drive around town in Black folks stations for them to see it.	1:47
Stine George	I heard that, too.	2:24
Sally Graham	Did any of these end up being a legal case? Did your son that went to Howard Law School, did he read about any?	2:26
Doris Strong George	Well, I guess he does because they do get—they mostly got those first pages of [indistinct 00:02:42] a long time ago [indistinct 00:02:44]. The only time you got a first page is if you got killed or killed somebody.	2:36
Stine George	That's right. Yeah, they never put us on the first page. That's the only thing integration did. It brought about the integration of Blacks on the front pages of newspaper. Used to be the only time we ever got there was something that we committed a crime or done something extreme.	2:47
Doris Strong George	Black people didn't have—but we always had paper. Moultrie's had a day's paper, but when we had, they used to have a color sheet.	3:07
Sally Graham	They had a [indistinct 00:03:14] sheet?	3:09
Doris Strong George	A color sheet.	3:09
Sally Graham	Was that only in Moultrie? Or would that go into the rural areas also?	3:16
Doris Strong George	It would go into the rural areas also. It was the paper, Moultrie [indistinct 00:03:22], and every Saturday you'd have what was called a color sheet to that.	3:20
Sally Graham	It's stuck into the newspaper?	3:31
Doris Strong George	It's stuck into the newspaper. It got stuck in the newspaper, and that's where all the Black news, from that Black paper, Black [indistinct 00:03:39].	3:32
Sally Graham	What about with the radio? Was there any kind of news in Moultrie for the Black community on the radio.	3:40
Doris Strong George	No, nothing on radio.	3:45
Sally Graham	Okay.	3:45
Doris Strong George	Nothing in the paper except when you get in jail or you kill somebody it was in the paper.	3:49
Stine George	Back in that, too, you talking about—	3:56
Doris Strong George	Oh, you ain't met me yet. She ain't meet me.	3:56
Sally Graham	Well, but go about the year.	3:56
Stine George	I want to tell you a little bit about that colored newspaper because I won't forget. Even today, they still do that in certain counties. Like Seminole County, they still have a Black section of the paper called Ebony News. Right now, they got the Black undertaker. See, Black undertakers or undertakers in most communities are the Toms. I guess that's one thing that attract me to her was the fact that I was going to make sure that this community, this here—we're not going to be no Uncle Tom in the family. I'm saying in most communities—	3:56
Sally Graham	Really?	4:31
Stine George	That was the people who sell the Black folks out. Over there, the undertaker was the biggest Tom in the town. He'd go out every single morning and report to White folks what the Black folks had done in the community during the weekend.	4:32
Doris Strong George	I thought he was a nice man.	4:45
Stine George	Howard Moore was the worst. He was the worst thing we had over there. [crosstalk 00:04:50]. He reported everything, everything. He was a nice man, I mean he was a nice man, but he was a Tom. I'm not saying he wasn't bad. He wasn't bad. He was a respectful man. Everybody respect him and everybody thought that everybody respect him, looked up to him, because he had money. He took care of all the bodies, but he was a Tom. He took all the news that transpired to White folks. When he died, became senile, then his son took over and his son done the Ebony News. After I left there, his son [indistinct 00:05:27] because it could have been had I stayed there, but his son now run the Ebony every week. If I had a paper right now that was going to come out tomorrow, and you'll see the Ebony Section they're all Blacks still there today in that same newspaper.	4:46
Stine George	In that you're doing a report, I'm going to tell you something that I never told nobody. In fact, they didn't tell her that, either. She didn't know this.	5:41
Doris Strong George	You didn't tell me either, even though I'm here.	5:51
Stine George	What I'm going to say is not to be telling everybody, not to be saying it to people in the street, but I'm going to tell you something more serious than I just told you about the burning and that kind of thing. I don't think we've ever said a breath to anybody, but in that you're doing a report, you should know the whole story about how we were treated, how our family were treated in particular, and that way you get a better picture of the situation. And you might also get an understanding maybe why I feel like I feel and why I fight for the betterment to some extent, I don't know if I'm overly hostile, right on, but I do heard this side from what happened to me when I were a child coming up.	5:52
Stine George	See, after the house burned down, we moved in with a Black family about a mile from where we lived, because like I told you, no Black lived right in the affluent neighborhood there, so about a mile from where we lived, we moved in with another family. But you know, that man had eleven children, and wasn't no eleven, twelve, thirteen people, and here we done move our five in there. That's just too much, so what we did, we decided that, my dad decided, that we would just move in the corn crib where you kept corn. That's where we lived. We moved in this corn crib until such time that they build us another house.	6:48
Stine George	Of course, what we did, we had a wash pot. We used to wash clothes, and what we did, we cooked our food in the wash pot until we got more pans and stuff to cook, but we built a fire in the yard with the bricks, and that's how we cook that. That's what we ate from out in the yard.	7:39
Stine George	Of course, I can never forget this, and like I say, this is something that nobody never know because I never pay no—we don't tell it. I wouldn't tell it now, but it's painful. It'll be painful to even tell it, but with you doing what you're doing, I'll tell it.	8:07
Stine George	We were over one day on a Sunday morning. Some Sunday morning, we would get a mule and wagon and four or five of us, five, six of us, would get a wagon, all of us under ten, all of us under ten years old. We'd get the wagon and go up and see, about six miles away, see some of our first cousins in the wagon. One Sunday morning, we had about, I think—well, that morning wasn't now five or six. There wasn't but three of us in that wagon that morning, three of us, my sister and my brother and myself, and we were in the wagon. We were going up to see my uncle's children. Like I said, me and my sister weren't but nine or 10, and of course I was driving. She was sitting in the wagon.	8:24
Stine George	We went by this house where the White guys were, and they were out playing ball. I guess these guys, them White boys, probably about eighteen, nineteen, twenty, something like that, seventeen to nineteen, something like that, and one of them White guys ran and got on the wagon, ran and jumped on the wagon. And they said, "I'm going to ride with you. I'm going to ride with you," because we were going by this house, you see. Because we knew him, see. He got on the back of the wagon and he ride with me. We got to the house, he took the mule from me and start the mule, start the mule at the house, took the mule from me, the wagon from me, and tie the mule to a tree in the yard.	9:22
Stine George	Then he made my sister get out and go in the house where he raped my sister. Like I said, she was about nine at the time, so he took her in the house. My brother and I jumped out of the wagon and ran through the woods, and so we were scared. We didn't know where to go. We were scared because really we'd never been in the woods before. We went through those woods, and of course he was with me because, like I say, he was about six or seven then, and he was about five or six, and no, he was about four, about four years old, four or five, and I'm seven, eight, and so I'm eight and nine. That's right, my sister, she about ten. She about ten, eleven at that time.	10:12
Stine George	Anyway, he followed me down through through them woods, and we went on out through the woods and [indistinct 00:11:15] was scared for somebody to see us. We finally went on through the woods and tried to get back where we thought our daddy was, and we'd go see this house where this guy was. We wouldn't dare go by there and be seen, so that mean we go around, way around through the woods and then come back around and go where my dad was, where the other White folks, where this man where we used to live were. They seen this from where these other, where this guy got on the wagon at.	11:04
Stine George	So about time we got halfway back, them branches were almost back over. You could see the house. We heard the wagon going back down that road running, that's going running the wagon, because see, what he had done after he raped my sister, he told her to get in the wagon and go home, see. She was driving the wagon. He went on home, and then, of course, and then she went by my house where my dad was, and they got out and they couldn't understand where I was, what happened. They were alarmed. They didn't know where we were down in the woods. We heard that wagon running, but—	11:53
Doris Strong George	He didn't look back for you.	12:38
Stine George	The corn was tall. We heard with that wagon, but the corn was tall, and so I was scared, and naturally my brother with me, so finally they had her, but they didn't know where we were. They finally called the sheriff, and of course he didn't do nothing. He did arrest this guy, but then we came out of the woods, and then we went back down to the house because we didn't have no more trouble out of them, but they didn't ever do nothing to that guy for what he did. That was just an experience that I throw out at you. You remember these things. It bothers you and it goes back, I say, that could be probably my reason for being like I am to some extent, why I have a tendency to fight the system, because the system ain't done to me.	12:39
Stine George	Of course, I feel bad, too, about the fact that when I read in high school, particular at elementary school particularly, we'd be walking. White folks would come by on that bus, and they would laugh at us, throw rocks and throw anything out the window at us. We had to get over the ditch and across the ditch when that bus come along because they would through anything out of it at us.	13:42
Stine George	I never forget one day we decide we're going to get them back. We had gotten with some older guy that live out that way then, some older kid who live out that way, and we got us some bricks and stuff. When that bus came on—see, they didn't have glass windows. They didn't have glass windows on that bus. What they had is some kind of curtain, a plastic-like curtain on those windows. That's what it was, a plastic curtain. It wasn't glass, all plastic curtain, but you could pull it like a bus has where you pull out from the sun. That's what they had, and we throwed at the bus one day and burst them, tore up a couple of curtains.Of course, that kind of stopped them from doing it, but I don't know what punishment came. I don't remember what punishment came. I don't remember what punishment came then.	14:07
Doris Strong George	You mean they didn't call the police on y'all?	14:55
Stine George	Yeah, they had the police, but then nobody told who did it, so it was [indistinct 00:15:04]. All us got beaten. Our parents beat us. Our parents beat us for doing it, but then—	14:56
Doris Strong George	It broke them up.	15:10
Stine George	It stopped them from throwing at us at that point in time, because you see—and like I said, that kind of thing bothered us. Then we were in school particularly, first year or two, we had the books. They had a bunch of books, but the books we had were books that they had. They were always three, four, five years old, them books that the White folks had. They'd pass on to us, and the library had old books, too. Even when I came here, that was still a thing. There were not many new books or any new books hardly for Blacks. They always used the old books.	15:12
Doris Strong George	We didn't get books when you came.	15:58
Stine George	Our library used to have some old library books.	16:01
Doris Strong George	I ain't never had a book at all.	16:05
Stine George	Yeah, you right. In 1965 when they—	16:14
Doris Strong George	There were no new books in the library.	16:14
Stine George	In '65, '66 when they came with new books, that's when the [indistinct 00:16:17] Foundation came out. Right, right, but that's still [indistinct 00:16:21] one of Johnson's programs.	16:14
Doris Strong George	Every time you get a book, it's somebody's White name is in the book.	16:23
Stine George	Yeah, or pages torn out most of the time. Therefore, they want us to measure up and how in the world can you measure up? You couldn't even read what they read four or five years ago, but yet they said we were so much inferior to them, and they would kind of say, "Niggers inferior, niggers inferior, they can't do nothing better," but they never gave us the current material to read, and outside of that, there was no way to catch up when we were always behind. That went on.	16:25
Doris Strong George	Only one time, when I went in high school, and I saw [indistinct 00:16:59]. He did get a lot of new equipment there. We had a real nice science department when I was in high school.	16:54
Sally Graham	Was there a library in [indistinct 00:17:07].	17:06
Doris Strong George	There was a library, but they send all the old raggedy books.	17:07
Stine George	Anything they didn't want, they'd dump over there on us.	17:07
Doris Strong George	You see, they'd get new books, [indistinct 00:17:07].	17:07
Stine George	The library books was old, man.	17:07
Doris Strong George	They didn't [indistinct 00:17:28] to the Black library.	17:18
Sally Graham	So there was a Black library and a White library.	17:28
Stine George	Yeah, they were separate schools.	17:28
Doris Strong George	They were separate schools.	17:28
Stine George	Separate schools.	17:28
Doris Strong George	In Moultrie.	17:28
Stine George	Yeah, Moultrie, two libraries in town, too.	17:28
Doris Strong George	And these libraries, two public libraries.	17:28
Sally Graham	There were two libraries?	17:28
Doris Strong George	Two libraries for the White folks, and then upstairs, what they did after the war, I don't know, during the war sometime, they took the—they had an upstairs building like a—I don't know, a downstairs garage apartment. You go up the side steps, and upstairs was where the Black folks [indistinct 00:17:51] library [indistinct 00:17:52].	17:33
Sally Graham	That was World War II?	17:51
Doris Strong George	In World War II they moved these barracks. First they got them out. Then they added a barracks somewhere down there, somewhere down the street, put in libraries for the Black folks, and there was a big library downtown.	18:05
Stine George	That's '40s. That's last of the '40s, '45, '46, '47, '49, '50 for that.	18:09
Sally Graham	Was there a library of any kind outside of the school?	18:14
Doris Strong George	[indistinct 00:18:19]. The school, we had a library in the school, but then you had a public library after school and on Saturday. You see, downtown was the White one. Up behind it was an upstairs building. You go up, and then upstairs was what they call a Negro library. We got to be Negroes then. What were we? I been so many things I can't remember because our school was—first it was Moultrie Colored School, and then later on [indistinct 00:18:54] was Moultrie High School for Negro Youth, so all of them be calling me Colored and then a Negro. You know, they changed the name, and you know.	18:21
Stine George	Then in the '60s, it became Black after '65.	19:06
Doris Strong George	Then it became Black.	19:08
Stine George	It became a Black school, a Black race. Now we African Americans, you see, so we've been changed four times. We've changed colors four times.	19:10
Sally Graham	But what do you both choose to call yourselves?	19:23
Stine George	It's habit forming, you know? We're still saying Blacks, or that's what we're indoctrinated in.	19:25
Doris Strong George	[indistinct 00:19:32].	19:30
Stine George	African American is just a—it ain't been around but about four or five years. African American is just four or five years old, see.	19:31
Doris Strong George	Four or five years. You're used to saying Black, so you got to get used to saying Black. It take you a long time to switch over. See, it took a long time to switch over. I guess they were niggers. Then it got to be Coloreds, so the time I got used to Colored I guess was [indistinct 00:19:49] was saying Negro, because I never liked the word Negro because all White folks in this town and in the South could not pronounce Negro. That's why I didn't like being Negro, because they said—we could say Negro, but they couldn't. They said—	19:42
Stine George	Nigger.	20:05
Doris Strong George	It wouldn't be quite nigger.	20:06
Stine George	It would be quite nigger, nigra or something like that. Every one of them, that was the norm.	20:08
Doris Strong George	They couldn't [indistinct 00:20:14].	20:11
Stine George	That was the norm. White folk could not pronounce the word Negro. They end up saying like nigger.	20:14
Doris Strong George	Like nigger, almost like nigger, and they didn't say nigger. It wasn't quite nigger. It was just something between. I don't know what word that was they calling us because it wasn't a word. It was between nigger and Negro, but they wasn't growing. They just showing they're growing in, like niggers. I don't know what it was they were saying.	20:20
Stine George	But that was the norm all over the South. It's like they would not speak, call us Negroes. They made up a word.	20:43
Doris Strong George	Made up a word.	20:51
Stine George	To use on us.	20:52
Sally Graham	What was your family's reaction when they found out about your sister?	20:55
Doris Strong George	They [indistinct 00:21:02] the crap out of them.	21:01
Stine George	Well, it wasn't about my dad, see, and other Black folks, and they wanted to survive, so they realized that if they said anything or did anything, then that meant they would have had to leave. My dad was trying to buy a farm with no education. He was smart by doing that, staying with it.	21:04
Doris Strong George	[indistinct 00:21:26].	21:22
Stine George	And nothing, knowing that courtroom won't do nothing to a White man for doing anything to Black people. They won't do anything today for doing nothing to Black folks, so certainly back in the '30s, they wasn't going to do nothing. In the '40s there weren't going to do anything.	21:28
Doris Strong George	When I used to go to see the plantation, down to the clubhouse, and the judge would call Black folks niggers. He means he took this White man's word and be trying to tell what it was, and the judge would say that. The lawyers would call you nigger right in front of your face in front of all those people's face, and no one thought you should have any word. They never done to you, and [indistinct 00:22:06] do it, and then they talk about getting mad with you for even accusing them of doing anything to you. They know they did it, too.	21:46
Stine George	You know, now, you're talking about racism, even right here in this town we experienced some more over the weekend down there in Durham. I understand that a White woman drew a gun on some Black folks over the weekend because she— I mean she said the Black was keeping a lot of noise, and she drew a gun to threaten them.	22:16
Doris Strong George	She live in the projects.	22:43
Stine George	Huh?	22:43
Doris Strong George	She live in the projects?	22:43
Stine George	I don't know, down in Durham what happened yesterday. So Eddie Warren, whose the president of NAACP, he—this woman came on downtown Monday and went to Annie Hunter who's the justice of the peace, and got her to give her a warrant. A White woman got her to give her a warrant against a Black woman down there in Durham. Then they called in, the NAACP, and they went up there then to try to get a warrant against her for having a gun. And just people wouldn't write, they wouldn't write them. They wouldn't write them a warrant. She told them, "I ain't going to do it," and just would not give them one. That's a norm here. They do that quite frequently.	22:47
Sally Graham	That a White lady judge?	23:23
Stine George	Oh, yeah. We got the judge and assistant judge are White, I mean two White women.	23:24
Sally Graham	Wow.	23:30
Stine George	Here in this town. That's a norm. Even when they had men, they would do the same thing. You could not take a warrant against a White person, but White folk could take out one on you for anything. That's true today, even here in this town. Even today, they can do that.	23:30
Sally Graham	What was her supposed reason for not giving a warrant?	23:53
Stine George	They don't have to give a reason. They White. They don't have to give a reason. They just say no to you, and that's how far it goes. Of course, that of course, this guy representing the NAACP and they still wouldn't give him a warrant against a White woman that actually had the gun, but they gave the White woman a warrant against the Black person—	23:53
Doris Strong George	For talking loud.	24:13
Stine George	Mm-hmm.	24:13
Doris Strong George	Sally, I'm going to ask you one thing. I'm going to ask you something. Are you going to Duke?	24:20
Sally Graham	No, I'm just working. I got my master's from the University of Mississippi.	24:22
Stine George	I thought you read that thing. There's people [crosstalk 00:24:28].	24:25
Doris Strong George	[crosstalk 00:24:28] she was doing documentary at Duke University now.	24:27
Sally Graham	No, I'm not a student there. There's only one there hired to do the job this summer that's actually a Duke student. Everybody else is from other schools throughout the country, and University of Mississippi, Jackson State, Michigan State, University of Michigan.	24:33
Stine George	You aren't in school now?	24:52
Sally Graham	No, I've got my master's, and right now I'm applying for a PhD.	24:52
Doris Strong George	That's wonderful.	24:54
Stine George	You know, that's how we were given some help in the South in the '60s was by young White girls and boys coming down here to help us. I remember I organized—I had an organization, organized in Donalsonville, in '69, and people were—Black folk were afraid. They couldn't come out. They were afraid to get out and participate in any kind of activity we had, so there was a guy from Albany named Charles Sherrod who had gotten a lot of Whites to help him with his farm thing up there, and he had a lot of White college kids. I talked to him. He brought them out there to help me organize and get the Black folks out to a meeting. When they came that night, before that, they came down there two days and helped me to talk to Blacks. Well, they went all over town talking to Blacks, getting them to come out to a meeting that night.	24:56
Stine George	Somebody tipped me off that the Black folks had talked to the White folks. The White folks had told them not to let us have the church because we were having a certain church that had Black church day and time.	25:55
Sally Graham	What County was this in?	26:03
Stine George	Seminole, Donalsonville.	26:04
Sally Graham	Oh, okay. So [indistinct 00:26:10] in Donalsonville.	26:04
Stine George	Right, and they would let—they had decided. Somebody tipped me off that they wasn't going to let us have the church that night when we were going to have that mass meeting at a Black church. Of course so I went to talk to the guy that run the café. His name was Philip Powell. He had took to [indistinct 00:26:30] over there and I talked to him about a regular place. He told me, "Okay, you can use it."	26:09
Stine George	Of course, we pegged that place full of people that night. [indistinct 00:26:42] and had these White kids, and they came in. In fact, some of them came in and sat there to the meeting. Of course, one thing, you don't realize that that former years of slavery had a normal effect on us, and even today we were—it was still mixed in that White was right. Up to that point, we had the tendency to believe what White folks said was right, and we'd been told that, and of course if White folks tell us something to do, we don't question it. We just do it.	26:37
Stine George	That's sort of the way to this day. Even like yourself, you might think you're scared of them, 30 back folks going to community, but you go in community and they will listen to you, and if you tell them to come somewhere, they will probably come, but if I tell them to come, they're not going to come, and I'm telling the truth. I'm sincere. I'm one of them. But they're not going to listen to me.	27:21
Stine George	And that's another thing. See, that's another problem I have here because I, in addition to coming here with a [indistinct 00:27:53], I also came in and assisted in setting up the NAACP here the second year. We sent the organization out in '73. I assisted in that operation, and I've attended all the social meetings that we've had, and of course, I've spoken against things that wasn't right and I emphasize it. Black folks here didn't do that. They don't think you should emphasize things that are going to upset White folks.	27:45
Stine George	That was one of the reasons I left Donalsonville, too. After the Ford Foundation came up and selected me to serve with them—	28:25
Sally Graham	How did they hear about you?	28:34
Stine George	That's a good question.	28:35
Doris Strong George	I want to know, too.	28:38
Sally Graham	Way down in Seminole County, how did the Ford Foundation hear about you?	28:40
Stine George	That's exactly right.	28:41
Doris Strong George	You got to tell her how you met me, too.	28:46
Stine George	I'm not 100% sure how they first found out about me, but I was so active in different things. I was so active in the community particularly, and then from the college and the university, college in particular, even though I was just a very countrified guy, but see, as vocation ag teacher, I was not standing ag teacher. We only had 159 of us in, 159, 57, was close to 159 in the state of Georgia.	28:48
Sally Graham	Black teachers in all?	29:31
Stine George	Ag teachers, vocational ag teachers.	29:33
Sally Graham	Okay.	29:34
Stine George	And see, by me and of course naturally, I tend always being in there. I'll be there. I don't do that much talking, but I'd always be there, and of course knew content around in that program, so when I went there, that particular program was rated out of our regular—see, we had one, two, three, four program. Four type program was the best program in the state, and that program that I [indistinct 00:30:09] was one, see. That program, that school, was a one, and of course in four years I made out a number four program. In fact, I was considered one of the best teachers in the state, and I got plaques and awards for that in that.	29:35
Stine George	Not only was I local in my local community about changes to some extent, I also became vocal on the state level as well. I attend all the state teachers meetings and I was not—I didn't do a lot of talking, but I was there. My presence was there and it informed my ag participation. That disseminated the rounds pretty well, and through that process they discovered—I mean someone mentioned me to them. Then I got— Oh, I know. I know what happened really.	30:28
Stine George	The lady that I had worked with who got a job in Perry, Georgia, and she applied, well, she applied for the program that year before, but she didn't qualify for that. She didn't get a commission with it for the Ford Foundation. I think she may have recommended me to some extent, may have mentioned me there. But over the years of say from when I started work in 1970, I got invitations to go to Africa to teach. They offered me jobs in Ghana, Africa. I had got calls from people out in Washington who wanted me to go. They'd say, "They found out about you that you're a dedicated teacher, and if you want to go to Africa," in fact I got applications to go over there and teach. But then I chose not to go.	31:04
Stine George	Then when I go this invitation to this, and see that time, I had my organization going. I had an organization in the community I had put together called People Unite, not People Unite [indistinct 00:32:20], Optimistic Organization.	32:07
Sally Graham	Is it optimistic?	32:21
Stine George	Optimistic, O-P-T-I-M-I-S-T-I-C, called Optimistic Organization. Well, the way it came, the way our name came about, I had called in some of the religious leaders in the community. We had met. We were talking about the fact that we were not participating fairly in the events in the community, so that way a guy by a name of Leroy Sanford, he says, "I'm not for optimistic. Nothing can happen. I'm not for optimistic that anything happens. I'm totally pessimistic."	32:22
Stine George	I said, "That's a good word right there. Maybe we should name our organization Optimistic." That's how the name came about. We have the same thing as the Southern Christian Leadership Conference or the NAACP, but because we had the Klan was so openly operating in the county, they had a sit out there in the middle of the county, way out in the middle of the county, and therefore they had every Saturday night they'd have their meetings out there. Then what they would do, every Saturday almost, and even the mayor, the mayor of the city, was a Klansman, too. They would come through the Black folks [indistinct 00:33:37] with these big [indistinct 00:33:38] in front of the car with these flames running from it, I mean lights coming through, and they had it blowing, boom boom, all through the Black section. Scared the Black folks to death. Then they would go out there in the county and have the meeting.	33:00
Stine George	So everybody was scared to death. Everybody was afraid to death. Of course, I had, well, I might be skipping around so I'll tell you that. We put together this organization to continue to do the other thing I had told you about earlier, and of course I could not take over the job of leadership. I was teaching school, and they wanted me there. They needed me there. Of course, what I would do in my classroom, I would tell my boys, my boys at vocational ag boys, about the fact that Black folks didn't have much initiative. I said, "Your parents just don't have any initiative. They don't do nothing. They don't try to do anything." I said that to the kids in the class.	33:53
Stine George	Some of the kids resented me saying that about their parents right when they [indistinct 00:34:50]. They said, "Mr. [indistinct 00:34:50], I don't know. We don't like what you're talking about our parents," and of course, that was in actually 1967, '66 when this took—yeah, '66. There was this boy, Charlie, in that classroom right there, and of course it went over. And so in 1968 is when the Ford Foundation found me. When they found me and they sent this White woman down there to monitor me that day, that scared the Black boy completely to death. I'll never forget. At lunch time, we went down to eat dinner, and a White woman—if it had been a White man, it would have been all right, but they sent a White woman down there. Her name was Dorothy Hatsfield, and we went in there, and that scared them to death. They were wondering what was going on.	34:42
Stine George	She sat in my class all day, and she said that she looked at some things I had done, and she talked to the three organizations that I had put together, and they all were saying identically the same thing about what I had done and what I could do. I had put together a cemetery committee, a committee down there. I had sponsored the Christmas decoration project, and like I said, I had these social organizations, two social organizations going, too.	35:40
Stine George	She said, "You know— " She was worried about, she was concerned, how I'd be able to do it. She said, "Where'd you get the training from? Where'd you get the information from?"I said, "From God. I just got it."	36:05
Stine George	She wanted to say, "Is that right? Do you know what you're doing is right?" "Yeah, since I got it from God, it's all right."	36:19
Stine George	She said, "Look," said, "How would you like to go to Washington," standing in the classroom, right here in front of everybody, she said, "How would you like to go to Washington DC?" I said, "No, I don't want to go to Washington. I don't want to go up there."She said, "Yes, I want you to go to Washington DC, and I want you to meet some people. Then I got some more ideas I want to share with you."	36:27
Stine George	I said, "Well, when you want me to go?"	36:50
Stine George	She said, "Next week, to be frank."	36:54
Stine George	So she goes. Now she talks to my principal to get him to let me off for that next week, and so then I went up to Atlanta and the Southern Education Association was there. They were having, holding their meeting. I sat in there for two days with that Southern Education Association, and then she flew me up to Washington DC and they were having, okay, was it? The Democratic Convention, the Democratic party was meeting up there at that time. They were in the process of having a convention up there, and we sat—we went to the meeting and then had dinner, and then what she did, she arranged for me in Washington to pick—there were six Black guys. There was one from Mississippi and I was from Georgia, another one from Alabama, and she—Mississippi, Georgia, Alabama, yeah, another guy from South Carolina, four of us.	36:58
Stine George	She arranged for us to meet there at the state, the attorney general, secretary of state. She had conferences after the major meetings, and they would come to a room where we were, and she gave us, I think, about fifteen, twenty minutes per official. And of course after, I think, after about three days in Washington—I spent two days in Atlanta, then I went back to my job. Then of course, she called me back about a week later and said, "Look, we want you to join the Ford Foundation next year. We want to give you a year's leave, and you decide where you want to—is there anyplace you want to go?"	38:01
Stine George	Heck, I didn't know where to go. And she said, "What we will do, we'll come back and I'll talk to your principal. We'll arrange to pay you the identical same salary you're getting now along with any increase in salary you're going to get for next year, and we will hire somebody to work in your place and pay him whatever salary you would get if you went there."	38:49
Stine George	That's what they did. They went and talked to the superintendent and got him to agree to do that.	39:16
Sally Graham	Was it a White superintendent or a Black Superintendent.	39:21
Stine George	They never have Black superintendents all over this country. All the superintendents White. See, that's where it stopped. That's another thing. Black folks, we do good to be where we are because what happens, Whites always pick the least of the evils of all the Blacks, where he didn't get the Black—he may have picked the Black who he thought would do a good job of teaching and educating the Black kids. He got one who was strong and ugly who he thought would keep the kids in place.	39:23
Stine George	This is true. This is true. You can ask anybody, and all the superintendent offices up through the '60s were always over in the front of the courthouse, I mean on the side there. It's two [indistinct 00:40:03] right up there in the courthouse, and what he would do—	39:51
Doris Strong George	I was in the courthouse.	40:05
Stine George	I say in the courthouse, but get over the front door. She says [indistinct 00:40:13]. That's where all of them were. What he would do, he'd pick his principals by—he'd have them all come at the same time. He got the car there. He'd look at how they walk and see how big [indistinct 00:40:23] they were. He'd pick them from out there, but they all would come in, but he done picked them from out there. That was big, Black, and burly, so I'm going to pick that right there. The rest of them can come in, but he already decided that this big Black one out here, this burly, big, that's what he's going to pick. He didn't worry about his brains. He just wanted somebody, just the personnel. That's what happened. And that's how it went.	40:06
Stine George	We do good to do as we are because we had no voice in choosing the teachers or—	40:51
Doris Strong George	And it wasn't about [indistinct 00:41:02] because they didn't worry about the [indistinct 00:41:03] for a lot of your kids. [indistinct 00:41:08].	40:59
Stine George	They didn't allow the principal to do that. The principal couldn't ask for nothing.	41:08
Doris Strong George	[indistinct 00:41:11] principal.	41:11
Stine George	Yeah, they get him, see? Therefore, once they got the principal, everybody was scared to do or say anything. Now, there was some few communities where the teachers were Toms themselves. They'd go tell everything on the principal just to promote themselves, but in general, like in Donalsonville in particular, that superintendent was a racist cracker, but he said to me [indistinct 00:41:39].	41:13
Doris Strong George	I was in [indistinct 00:41:40]. He listened to the teachers.	41:36
Stine George	That's where it was, the one down there. He told—I remember the day I [indistinct 00:41:44] now. He told me something like this. Even though he was a racist cracker, he did tell me this. He said, "Now, look here. Now you just out of college. You come here to work." Now, I started in July. Ag folks started in July first. He said, "Now, as a teacher around here in town, now, I don't want you dating them teachers now," he said, "Because when school start, you going to see some more that you like, and then you going to quit the one you start going with over summer and start dating the one this fall. That's going to bring friction to my school. When you bring friction to my school, I'm going to get rid of you because I don't want friction in my school." "Yes, sir. Yes, sir," and I'll never forget. See, we're taught racism. We're taught how to deal with a racist, you know? He asked me the day I walked in, he said, "Who's your superintendent," back at home. I hadn't been there in four or five years, six or seven years. I knew his name. I said, "Mr.," and I know to say Mr. because if I'd have said by his first name, he wouldn't have given me that job, see. I just act humble like he wanted me to act.	41:40
Doris Strong George	You?	43:04
Stine George	Yeah, I act humble like he wanted. I wouldn't have got my first job. I act humble like he wanted me to act. Yeah, R.D., my principal named R.D. but he said, "R.D.? We'll let him sign a contract. I expect you to respect him because he's the one I expect information from. I don't want y'all to bring me— " He told us. "I don't want y'all to bring any information. All the information you got come from R.D.," talking about my principal. That's how he did that thing.	43:05
Stine George	Of course, teachers in there didn't [indistinct 00:43:42] anything, but I'll tell you that principal, he was scared to death. I'll tell you this, and I say this now. I said this once when I was down there. You know, he knew what I was doing. He knew that I was—I never talked to him about the organizing I was doing, but it was around, circulating in the community that I was doing it, but I was always second man. I was always assisting somebody else. He never said a word to me about it. He never said a word.Any time, like when we talk about going to the National Parent Teacher Organization meeting, National Parent and Teacher Association meeting. Now, it didn't cost but 50 cent a year. That's all it was, but the superintendent's position was don't say you went out of the county." He said, "You keep them in the county. Don't send them out of the county."	43:39
Stine George	Well, see, everybody's fifty cents, that goes in the national treasury, see, but see, I tried for four years to get my people to join the National Teacher Parent Organization, but my superintendent's position was no. My principal's position was no. Finally, I kept calling the teachers and I got them to agree to vote. He let us vote, but we'd always lose. Finally I got the to vote, and we won, so the position was—I took the position if you let me, I will go out and get—I'm talking about where they have ten or twelve people to become affiliated with the national, and I agreed to go out and get ten or twelve people to sign a [indistinct 00:45:23] consent to join if we would do it.	44:39
Stine George	The super accepted that, and I tell you, that was the best thing that ever happened to that community because for the first time, we got information that parents could use when they'd come out and talk to the teachers. They were reluctant to come, but when the national office gave all that good instruction material that we could go back and use in the classroom and also instruction that parents could use when they come out and talk to teachers, give them a host of things they could use with information, questions and everything. It benefited that community tremendously. That was the was the rationale for not being a member, joining the outside community because of that. Of course, near the end, we didn't have a gymnasium, see. That was another thing I fought real hard. I talk about it. See, our kids really were going to school about seven months out of the year or less because for every ballgame, we didn't have any class that whole afternoon, and the guys were out all day and the girls, they [indistinct 00:46:27] every afternoon. In every game, we have a regular game, somebody else's team, and so finally they decided to build us a gymnasium, and of course the day we built it, and when we had our open house and our—what you call that thing when people build something? You have a—	45:26
Doris Strong George	You cut the ribbon?	46:50
Stine George	Yeah, what you call that?	46:50
Sally Graham	Opening ceremony or something?	46:50
Stine George	We didn't call them ceremonies. Something else. Anyway, when we—	46:50
Doris Strong George	[indistinct 00:47:06]. What they call those?	47:05
Stine George	Anyway, when we had this thing, you expect the contractor going to be there, your superintendent will be there and officials of the community. Your board's going to be there. Didn't no White folks come at all, but the Black folks were there.	47:05
Doris Strong George	Now go [indistinct 00:47:26].	47:22

Stine George	But I had bought a house and see, when I first there, I could've lived, along then, I could live like, could rent me a house probably, a room or something. But I didn't want to rent a house, because see, there wasn't no place to eat hardly. No place, we couldn't go to restaurants, we had to go to stores to buy, see Blacks didn't have any restaurants back then. We had one or two restaurants, but see I went there and it was greasy food. I had gotten so I couldn't eat all that greasy food. I felt something was killing me and I didn't know what it was. But I found out what it was later, see what it was.	0:02
Sally Graham	What was it?	0:40
Stine George	Well you see, they'd buy this cheap coffee and I was drinking all this cheap coffee, caffeine coffee. It was killing me and I didn't know it was killing me. All day, all day, my head be pain all in my head and all day I'd be pain all day, have most afternoons. It was a long time before I found out that coffee was what was killing me, that cheap coffee [indistinct 00:01:08]—	0:43
Doris Strong George	The only thing [indistinct 00:01:11] coffee.	1:10
Sally Graham	Oh!	1:10
Doris Strong George	It didn't make him sick, but he finally stopped [indistinct 00:01:16].	1:14
Stine George	Yeah, I didn't know what it was.	1:15
Doris Strong George	It didn't make you sick [indistinct 00:01:17].	1:16
Stine George	But it was the cheap coffee. But anyway, after they came, after I picked this guy that works in my place and everything. I went back to Atlanta and I worked, I served with the Southern Education Association. They had a workshop in Atlanta and I spent time with them and then she put me, she gave me a special assignment, like I had to contact every federal and state agency operator in Atlanta. I had to go out and establish some rapport. She gave me some assignment to work and establish myself with them, for rapport with them, like Ralph Miguel, I met him and I also been to the mayors who were prevalent mayors at the time of Atlanta.	1:16
Stine George	Of course, she set up some, what she does like mayors and business mayors like Ralph Miguel. They were all there at the same time, they'd be at a, she'd set up a meeting at her house, or some other location, where we'd come in and meet all these folks and then in addition, there were some of the people I had to go down and meet at all the places and attend those sessions with the Southern Education Association. Then she, in doing the process, she actually helped me work out a program.	2:11
Stine George	I could have gone to any college or university, I could have gone to any university or college in the United States at the time. But we decided that just going to college was not going to be just what I needed. She was concerned about the accuracy of what I was doing, what was reasonable and what's fair and that kind of thing. So she checked with some institutions out in Midwest, particularly a lot at state university in Manawa, Wisconsin. She established [indistinct 00:03:14] with the college and with the dean of the university out there and also the University of Madison.	2:44
Stine George	She sent me to monitor some courses over there and she also got me Father [indistinct 00:03:31] at the time, that was active in the movement, the Catholic priest. She set up some appointments with him, plus he scheduled me to come in to attend some of his meetings there at the time. There was some other White man that was around, I can't remember the other White man name, but anyway.	3:24
Doris Strong George	How you get to Wisconsin? [indistinct 00:04:00].	3:59
Stine George	Huh?	3:59
Sally Graham	When you were in Wisconsin, was that the actual—	4:01
Stine George	Yeah, I been the program there, I been the fellowship there and then [indistinct 00:04:08]—	4:05
Doris Strong George	[indistinct 00:04:08].	4:07
Stine George	See what happened, see I was actually staying, I was really going, basically assigned to Manawa, Wisconsin. But I monitor courses at Madison and Wisconsin campus and I spent a few days down there, depending on what was going on down there. Milwaukee, I monitored some courses on the University of Wisconsin there. Madison, Wisconsin. I mean not Madison, but Minnesota.	4:07
Sally Graham	St. Paul?	4:40
Stine George	St. Paul and Minnesota. I also at university there, monitored some courses there. Then also they had—	4:42
Doris Strong George	How long you stay in those places? All those places?	4:50
Stine George	Well it depended on, I went several times. It wasn't no, depending on what they were having at the time, was whether or not, how long I would stay there. Then what they would do, then they had what they called a way center there. That's where I learned the difference in Black and White and I mean Black and White and nigger and Negro and all those things, Colored, that's when that Colored and Negro went out of my system, at that point and time, attending that way center. See and there—	4:52
Doris Strong George	What's a way center?	5:15
Stine George	Way center. The kind of way center, the training center, that kind of oriented us to social causes and issues. The University of Wisconsin was really kind of sponsoring that thing. They were kind of sponsoring it and see they only had 2% Blacks in St. Paul and Minneapolis, Minnesota. All the [indistinct 00:05:37] Black.	5:18
Doris Strong George	What would you do, just go from class to class, doing what? Just monitoring classes?	5:42
Stine George	Well basically, I would basically, no, but I was actually participating. Actually, when I was in Wisconsin, I was in school at Manawa, Wisconsin. But see I was just sort of critiquing the monitor notes, programs and other places.	5:45
Sally Graham	In agriculture, or?	5:59
Stine George	No, no, no. No, no, no.	6:01
Doris Strong George	[indistinct 00:06:03].	6:02
Stine George	Hold that tape right there. No, no, no.	6:03
Doris Strong George	What were you doing?	6:08
Stine George	See, in 1965—	6:08
Doris Strong George	What were you supposed to be doing?	6:08
Stine George	'66, I realized that agriculture was actually going out for Black folks. I realized that. That eventually, there weren't going to be no Black ag teachers in the state of Georgia. In fact, see, we had like I said, about 159 ag teachers and in one year, we lost about thirty of them in one year. When I went back there, we have [indistinct 00:06:38] and Biltmore Hotel in Atlanta and then having lost thirty vocational ag teachers in one year, because school just got rid of them, just like Babar and the rest of them, they got rid of them. I said, "Dog, I better start doing something else, think about something else that I might want to do." That's when I changed to counselor and guidance at that point and time.	6:10
Doris Strong George	Now we down in the foundation now. Or in the foundation, Ford Foundation. Now when you get the money from the Ford Foundation, you got to be interested in one particular thing.	6:59
Stine George	No, no. No, no. No, no.	7:10
Doris Strong George	[indistinct 00:07:11] study.	7:10
Stine George	No, no. They wanted me—	7:12
Doris Strong George	[indistinct 00:07:13] study was about.	7:12
Stine George	They wanted me to get the experience. They wanted me to get experience. They wanted me to get experience to experience the organization. That's how I found out about the counseling Christian camps where they were repairing them to put Black folks in.	7:13
Doris Strong George	Oh I see, [indistinct 00:07:30].	7:29
Stine George	Then [indistinct 00:07:31] out of the Los Angeles, they sent me out there. San Francisco, I went out there. I came to North Carolina a couple times. I went to South Carolina. But wherever there was something really taking place, that could give me some experience in problems I was dealing with in my community, or dealing in the South—	7:29
Doris Strong George	[indistinct 00:07:57].	7:56
Stine George	In general, that's where I went. People who had, like in Wisconsin particularly where a White man, who had been all around the world and he know God then, because he's a professional man. But then they sent me to some conferences with him in like San Francisco.	7:56
Doris Strong George	Now what the idea was?	8:24
Stine George	When they were expecting that earthquake there, in 1969. Alioto, who was the mayor of the city, had a big shin-ding down there on the square that night and of course, I met all the mayors of the different cities and the idea of it was to establish some rapport with these people so if I needed their help when I came back, then I could know where to get it from. That was the idea.	8:24
Doris Strong George	Now were you over here, excuse me. I don't want to be [indistinct 00:08:56]. Your thing is that, you're meeting all these people. Now what you supposed to do when you get all these people? Do with it what you learn? What are they expecting you to do? [indistinct 00:09:02].	8:55
Stine George	I just told you. I was supposed to, I mean I was researching.	9:04
Doris Strong George	Researching.	9:07
Stine George	I mean researching and getting information to utilize back here, back down South, when I returned to South. Like I said, I went all these places and I could have stayed at, just decided I want to go to one university. I didn't want to necessarily do that. I thought it would have been better to get a whole [indistinct 00:09:24]. I went into probably right at actually twenty-three different cities and I think—	9:08
Sally Graham	Wow.	9:34
Stine George	Nine different states, during that time.	9:34
Sally Graham	That was over a period of a year?	9:37
Stine George	Yeah, yeah.	9:38
Sally Graham	Wow.	9:39
Stine George	Like 14 months.	9:39
Sally Graham	Wow. When was that? What year?	9:39
Stine George	'68, '69.	9:43
Sally Graham	'69.	9:43
Stine George	Uh-huh. They had that Democratic Convention in Chicago. In fact, I was right through there. As a matter of fact, I drove from here into Wisconsin and the convention was just over, at the time when I went through there. I had some meetings down in Chicago too. Just all the Blacks, I mean White folks and Black folks over this nation who were involved in some active program. See, that's where they took us to, just like in Alabama. But see there, the justice of the peace system was terror for Black folks. They were taking Black folks' farms like crazy in Alabama. They had been trying to get a test case over there for years and trying to get a test case to take them to court, take that justice of the peace situation to court and then try to do something about it. So what they did, the three of us, the guy from Alabama, the guy from Mississippi and myself, we set up the first OIC, Opportunity Industrial Program in Montgomery, Alabama. We set the first rural—	9:45
Doris Strong George	Oh, I knew you had to do something [indistinct 00:10:51].	10:47
Stine George	Our community program, OIC Program. I set up after Reverend Sullivan in Philadelphia. We set up the first one over there and of course, in the process, we were also supposed to be doing research with the justice of the peace system down there, get their court system changed. We were trying to get test cases at the time too. But you see, there again the White folks were real mean, observant and what we would do every morning, we're going over Montgomery to set up our, because we went from Bullitt County over to Montgomery every morning and we were expecting something to happen. We expected something to happen. So we would have guns. We had our guns and rifles.	10:54
Stine George	Every morning, we'd go in one way, we'd go out one way, we'd come out another way, every day. We had different signs we'd put on our car. We had a Masonic lodge, something Masonic decal that we used on one side one time and then we had another one kind of sign we'd put on the side of our car another time, like when we're doing certain things. See Martin Luther King had this way center down here at Frogmore, South Carolina, where they taught how to participate in a non-violent movement. Of course, we went down there for, I don't know, about a week. That [indistinct 00:12:19] kid got killed out there in Mississippi, the Schwerner and Chaney case and they put them in that dam.	11:39
Sally Graham	Mm-hmm and filled it in.	12:26
Stine George	That's right. That was probably about not too long after that, about four or five, six to eight months after that, that we went, the three of us, went through came out through Alabama, on through down through Savannah and on into Frogmore, South Carolina and took part in that non-violent type training site down there. They had a lot of folks down there too. A lot of folks were down there, taking that training for non-violent.	12:27
Sally Graham	Was that an interracial group that was at Frogmore?	12:54
Stine George	Yeah, yeah. Yeah, they were an interracial group. In fact, most of those areas you had Whites. In fact, even though a program I'd attend in Wisconsin and Minnesota, you basically had Whites in there and like Manawa, Wisconsin. I kind of want to go out there for the same reason that, it's 180 thousand people in that community and there were no Blacks. No Black families in that area of 180 thousand people. Of course, there's a group of Indians out there, but other than that, I was the only Black out there.	12:57
Stine George	Everybody knew me, because the school and the city and of course, I had some reservations, but I wanted to see what it was like. I'd heard about Black kids going to White schools and having to sit up in there being isolated at the time they began to integrate. I said, "God, I wonder what it was like." So Dr. Haskey and I talked about it, I said, "Well, maybe I should go out there."	13:39
Stine George	I'll never forget, the first day I was out there and I got signed up for everything, the vice president of the school, he was real nice, real nice. Of course, all the professors were nice out there and the students were nice. I can't say nothing. I didn't see nobody. No hostility. The only hostility I got, I went to a café and they didn't want to serve me quick. Well they served me eventually, they didn't want to serve me quickly. Of course, a guy told me later, he said, "If you'd been here two years ago, they probably wouldn't have served you here at all. But what happened when I was there and I'm not a very talkative person and—	14:04
Doris Strong George	[laughs]	14:48
Stine George	I don't want to talk to folks without saying anything. I mean this is very—	14:52
Doris Strong George	[laughs]	14:53
Stine George	I'm introverted.	14:53
Doris Strong George	Introverted, yeah, he only talks to me! [laughs]	14:53
Stine George	But anyway, I met this Canadian.	15:04
Doris Strong George	I know why. [indistinct 00:15:11].	15:11
Stine George	I'll never forget, I lived in a motel there for about a week and the man in the motel got tired of me. He wanted me to get out of that motel and get a house out there. But there wasn't no houses, mostly mobile homes around there and I'd never lived in a mobile home before. So there was a guy on campus who had a little small mobile home and he had to move me in. So after about oh a week, he got it moved into place and so he moved me out there in that trailer park and I guess at least a thousand trailers in that park. A thousand trailers in there. "God," I said. I went out there and had my own trailer out there and I'm scared to death all these White folks, they're going to beat me to death out here and lynch me out here.	15:11
Doris Strong George	[indistinct 00:15:52].	15:49
Stine George	No, no, I know. But they were so nice. The White women came next door and gave me some linens, some bed linens and told me they were glad to have me and if I wanted anything, what they going to do, I could get it and everything. They were real nice there. So anyway, that worked fine, but then that next day when I had to go, well I had already started the class, so in fact, I still lived in the motel at that time.	15:53
Stine George	I went to class and this guy, I can't think of this White guy's name. He had written this story about Black folks being inferior to White folks. He had written this research paper saying and proof and said that Black folks were innately inferior to White folks. Here I am the only Black in the class and the whole section for a whole classroom there. The whole class period about that, yes, Arthur Jensen. I can't remember that guy's name. I can't forget him. Arthur Jensen. He was the guy who wrote this article. Black folks are inferior to White folks and that's when they brought it up in the class. That was the first day in there [indistinct 00:17:07] class and they talked about that. The teacher, the instructor didn't say one word. The students just talking about it.	16:22
Doris Strong George	You're sitting there [indistinct 00:17:19].	17:13
Stine George	There's thirty students in the class and the truth is, now this is true. There were two seats between me and the next student. I mean nobody would sit beside me. Now this is true, honestly. This went on for two weeks. Nobody would sit beside me in that classroom and I sat there and I would sit close to the window and I'd look out the window, because I could see it was snowing outside. It snowed a lot. They were hauling snow and would empty it in the river. I'd never seen that before. It was just an experience. They'd take them big trucks and take that snow on the road and they'd go and empty it in the river. I'd be sitting there, looking out there, because I had to have something to entertain me.	17:19
Stine George	But anyway, I had that experience and then near the end of court, I want to tell you about that man. He challenged that class. He didn't fail nothing end of quarter and he challenged that class, told them about that theory wasn't accurate. But he didn't say nothing that whole quarter. At the end of the quarter, when he told them and of course he gave me an A as a result of that. Another thing, they would read your grades off out there. In all the classes, read your grades off. Everybody concerned about what this nigger from the South, what kind of grade he's going to make. I'm kind of nervous, because I didn't want to get no F.	17:59
Doris Strong George	[indistinct 00:18:40].	18:38
Stine George	Well I felt in fear, I felt in fear, because we did a research which showed that White folks down South were smarter than the Blacks and Black folks in the Midwest were smarter than White folks down South and the Whites in the Midwest were just smarter than, a grade level higher than everybody else. That was through research. So I mean naturally, I'm nervous. But anyway, they read them off and of course, I have to admit, I made good grades and of course, everybody so curious me being there and what they would do. See, they would have their little church groups. It was that kind of organization. They always wanted me to come. Then after about two or three weeks, I never ate at home no more. They always invited me out to somewhere, school, church, clubs. I mean I went every afternoon to somebody's house. Weekends, I mean they all invited me out. In fact, after about three or four weeks, I forgot I was Black, to tell you the truth. I started feeling like them, I think. But anyway, this was true.	18:45
Doris Strong George	[indistinct 00:19:51].	19:44
Stine George	After about four weeks, after about four weeks, there was a girl from Hudson, Alabama. A White girl. She came over and she started talking to me and then she was in my class and she was working her graduate degree too. Her dad was the superintendent of the school and so she became very friendly with me and then I would go down and visit them and she had a big farm out in the country. We'd go out there and I got real nervous and might disappear after a period of time out there. Of course, when I got ready to leave, I didn't want to leave. I got ready to leave, I didn't know whether [indistinct 00:20:25], huh?	19:53
Doris Strong George	[indistinct 00:20:25] what'd they do when they called your grade out?	20:25
Stine George	Well my grade was always better than most of them.	20:26
Doris Strong George	I'll never forget it.	20:28
Stine George	I'll tell you, another thing be exciting to me after awhile.	20:29
Doris Strong George	[indistinct 00:20:33].	20:32
Stine George	There was a White guy, also the Ford Foundation also had some White guys in that program. Had two White guys who were sitting at the university with me.	20:33
Doris Strong George	They didn't even sit next to you?	20:40
Stine George	Never said nothing. But there was one White guy from Alabama, he would always sit where he could see what I was doing, even when I go to Still Union, he would never come and sit down with me, because see like most of Still Union had real large tables. I mean about fifteen, a table like this. About fifteen people sat at one table and I would go in the Still Union, usually just nothing but White girls just sitting at the table with me. I was sitting there, they kind of made me like a king. They were from Alabama, Louisiana, Kentucky. Particularly Louisiana and Texas. A lot of White girls and they always saying, they were curious and they were saying to me, "You don't have to worry. We're going to make conditions better in the South." They were trying to address that and like we would study. They'd come to my house and we would study and everything. It got better after I stayed there a while and then I would leave and everybody get [indistinct 00:21:46]—	20:42
Doris Strong George	That White boy sit there and look at you?	21:45
Stine George	He would get [indistinct 00:21:49] after everybody leave and like I see him on campus, or I used to see him in one of the classes we would go in. He'd say, "All them gals sitting there. You ain't no good." Said, "We got White women that ain't no good either. Because ain't none of them women no good."	21:48
Sally Graham	Whew.	22:00
Stine George	So anyway, I never forget. One class I went to, it was a course in consumer economics. I being the ag fellow, naturally I had a pretty good understanding of that particular course. Also, thinking and realizing that we were supposed to be inferior to White folks. So there were twenty White females in that class and here, I'm the only Black sitting up in there. I'll never forget that White woman walked in that classroom that day. I'm sitting, she walks in the door, I'm sitting on the far side over here in this corner. She comes in and she said, "Good morning, girls." Eyes go around and [indistinct 00:22:49]. Then she hit me, she said [laughs]. I mean it's obvious that she was shocked to hear a Black man sitting in her classroom. So she asked three questions. She said, "We don't hold the class this whole period. So I got some questions I want to ask y'all before you go."	22:06
Stine George	So I can't remember all the questions. But they were consumer economic questions. So she asked questions and I said I knew the answer to the questions, but I would wait for them White girls to say something, because I figured they knew more than I knew. They wouldn't say a word. They didn't say nothing. They didn't know. So I raised my hand. So I answered the first question. So then she asked another question. I was waiting on the girls to say something. They wouldn't say nothing. I raised my hand. Gave answer. Then she asked three questions and after she asked the third question, I raised my hand and answered that and she said, "Class dismissed." [laughs]	23:09
Sally Graham	Oh my gosh!	23:49
Stine George	Then she went around there and told the president that why was I in her class, I knew something about consumer economics and why was I in her class? Was I some traitor? What was I doing there? Of course, she told him she wanted me out of her classroom too and of course, he—	23:49
Doris Strong George	Why [indistinct 00:24:05].	24:05
Sally Graham	This was in Wisconsin?	24:05
Stine George	Yeah.	24:08
Doris Strong George	At a university?	24:08
Sally Graham	Wow.	24:08
Stine George	Manawa, Wisconsin. Manawa, Wisconsin. Then he told me, he said, "Look." Said, "She says she doesn't want you in her classroom." That's where that White guy planned on [indistinct 00:24:21] classroom, after about three weeks he came and got in that classroom. I don't know what happened to the other class, but he came and got in that class too and that meant two men were in that seat.	24:12
Doris Strong George	But you didn't get out, because you were—	24:30
Stine George	Well, what happened was, well see I was also monitoring that other course on another campus and I was also attending these meetings, these social meetings in other places and I would be gone sometimes. Get a plane, or a bus and go and come back, sometimes same day, sometimes it might be two days getting back and then he told me, [indistinct 00:24:54], she didn't want me in there. If I wanted to stay in there, I could stay. So I stayed in there about—	24:32
Doris Strong George	I'd have stayed [indistinct 00:25:00].	24:58
Stine George	A month and a half, two months.	24:58
Doris Strong George	I would have stayed in there forever.	24:58
Stine George	Then I got out—	24:58
Doris Strong George	If it were me.	24:58
Stine George	Because she was [indistinct 00:25:05].	24:58
Doris Strong George	I'd still be in there, in your class.	24:58
Stine George	But that was, what is your question you asking me? You asking me something.	25:09
Sally Graham	Courtship. How did y'all meet?	25:18
Doris Strong George	[indistinct 00:25:18].	25:18
Stine George	You have a good memory. That's great. Oh that was simple. I came here, of course, I guess she was sort of like I am, to some extent. I guess she sort of wanted somebody who at least had a job. [laughs] I had decided a long, long time ago, that I wasn't going to marry nobody who didn't have a job. No job, or no real way of getting a job. That made no sense. I mean it didn't make no sense. But anyway, the real person who caused us to get together was Jimmy Carter.	25:18
Sally Graham	Really?	26:09
Stine George	Yeah. But how it happened was, see, Carter had the thing, "Goals for Georgia." When he became governor of Georgia, he had, "Goals for Georgia." He sent out books and had people who worked with EOEO Program, to get people in the state of Georgia to complete the book. It just told you all about it. A little intricate things that you take for granted, or you don't even think about, what's going on, or why things are happening. How the government works in its entirety. That book about this thick, see? It had Goals of Georgia in there and it had everything in that book. Here what he wanted us to do was get people to, different people in different places to fill the book out. Fill out and complete a book. So I had, I don't know how many books I had, but I decided to get them and complete one. I came out here, I had been here before and I had met her mama and yeah I'd met her too. I'd seen her walking up and down the street and of course, another thing—	26:10
Doris Strong George	Walking up and down [indistinct 00:27:17].	27:15
Sally Graham	That sounds kind of interesting.	27:16
Doris Strong George	Across the street, across the street.	27:16
Stine George	I had decided too a long time ago that, I don't know if I ever told you this though.	27:20
Doris Strong George	You ain't tell me that. What you going to say?	27:26
Stine George	I had decided a long time ago that, I could not stand a woman who walks slow. I couldn't stand one who talks slow. I was concerned about getting somebody, dealing with somebody who could walk fast and talk fast. And she did that.	27:28
Doris Strong George	[indistinct 00:27:48] you like the way I talk, you still like the way I walk.	27:48
Stine George	So after we came here, she was sitting here talking about [indistinct 00:27:57] got started with the book or something like that. She was sitting here talking about some guy who was supposed to come here and see her. She was telling me, "I don't want to see this guy." Some guy. She said, "I don't want to see this guy." So, I don't know. I really wasn't dating nobody and I said, "You want to go off?" She said, "Yeah." So I said, "Okay, let's go somewhere." So we decided to go off, go out and [indistinct 00:28:24].	27:52
Doris Strong George	See the movies. We went to two movies.	28:23
Sally Graham	[crosstalk 00:28:28].	28:23
Stine George	There wasn't nothing else to do the first time we went out, see and I wasn't even really dating her. We had just met each other. I mean I'm talking about, I had met her, but we weren't no friends.	28:30
Doris Strong George	We were talking.	28:42
Stine George	We were talking. Yeah, she was telling me she didn't want to see the guy who was going to come over and see her. I said, "Well, I'll just take you out. We'll just go out and just ride somewhere." So I'm taking her out so she wouldn't see the guy. [laughs] But it didn't make no difference to me, because I wasn't involved with her.	28:42
Doris Strong George	[crosstalk 00:28:58]. I didn't even know his name. [crosstalk 00:29:02].	28:58
Stine George	No, she didn't know my name. I wouldn't even tell her my name, see?	29:01
Doris Strong George	No, he had told me before we came in there. About two or three times, but I just even couldn't remember his name. But I tell you why I started liking him.	29:04
Sally Graham	How?	29:26
Doris Strong George	Go on tell me how you met me, how you like me, and I'll tell you why. Go on.	29:26
Stine George	I don't know. I ain't never heard that too, [indistinct 00:29:27].	29:26
Doris Strong George	[indistinct 00:29:27], go, you tell it anyway.	29:26
Stine George	Okay, but anyway. [indistinct 00:29:27].	29:26
Sally Graham	[indistinct 00:29:27].	29:26
Stine George	I'll tell you something that she ain't going to like about it. See, I don't ever tell this too, I don't ever tell it to too much, but see, I'm kind of like—these had a crazy governor, gentleman by the name of Lester Maddox. He was uneducated and a fool, see. But he still likes [indistinct 00:29:49] beat us up with and he was supposed to be a teetotaler, he abstained to all things, all liquor and parties and all that kind of stuff. I'm basically saying—	29:28
Doris Strong George	Now, I like parties.	30:00
Stine George	Of course, she loved parties and she loved—	30:01
Doris Strong George	I do like parties.	30:04
Stine George	People too, you really like people too. She liked to talk too, [indistinct 00:30:10]. Anyway, see so I hadn't lived in a wet county. County kind of wet. Seminole County is wet too. But in my life, I had never seen teachers and preachers and deacons and Christians going to the liquor store and I had never seen anybody of that caliber going to the liquor store. I mean no way I'd ever been and I came here, this town was dry. You couldn't buy liquor in this town, with no everybody but the county line. A liquor store on the county line, [indistinct 00:30:53] county line going through there, Adair, that's where everybody went. But this town drank like crazy.	30:05
Stine George	But all went to the county line and they done bought it, they had to get it from on the county line, see. So I never forget, I never said it, but she don't know I remember this. She doesn't remember this. But anyway, we were going out and we were talking and everything. So we got to county line. She said, "Stop. There's a liquor store on this side of the road. I stopped on the other side of the road. She said, "No, no." I says, "Oh, no, no." I pull on the side and I stop. She said, "Go in there and get me some liquor." I said, "I can't go in there!"	30:58
Doris Strong George	[crosstalk 00:31:40].	31:38
Stine George	[indistinct 00:31:44]. She said, "I'm going to go in there." I said, "No, you can't go in there either. You can't go in there either." Like I said, I had never seen the town people go in liquor stores, see? I just couldn't bear the idea of us going in the liquor store.	31:43
Doris Strong George	[indistinct 00:31:54].	31:54
Stine George	[indistinct 00:31:55], I'm just saying now. So anyway, she never from that day forward, asked me about liquor. I ain't never seen her buy none. I don't know if she bought it, I don't know if what she did. But that's the truth.	31:56
Doris Strong George	Well I don't mind drinking, but [indistinct 00:32:14]—	32:13
Stine George	That was [indistinct 00:32:14]. But anyway, from that, we gone too far from that.	32:13
Doris Strong George	You know how he got me to marry him?	32:17
Sally Graham	How's that?	32:19
Stine George	Don't tell too much now.	32:20
Doris Strong George	I'll tell you a sad story like he's telling now. I just felt so sorry for him. [indistinct 00:32:25], he needs somebody just to love him, because he's done had all these horrible things that happened to him how he grew up and I just said, "You've done so well. Had such a hard time." I said, here, and I said maybe I ought to sit with him. I feel sorry for him.	32:24
Sally Graham	So how long have you two been together?	32:38
Stine George	Twenty-three years.	32:38
Doris Strong George	Twenty-three years. We only dated four months.	32:48
Sally Graham	Four months?	32:51
Doris Strong George	Four months.	32:51
Sally Graham	Wow.	32:52
Doris Strong George	We were engaged [indistinct 00:32:55].	32:54
Stine George	Half of it.	32:54
Doris Strong George	Half of it.	32:54
Sally Graham	Oh my gosh!	32:54
Doris Strong George	But we sat there and [indistinct 00:33:02] early in the morning and go to work and how he saved his money and it worked. I said, "He'd be a good husband. He knows what it's all about. He knows how to save money." I said, "He'd be so loving and careful." Loving me in love.	33:03
Sally Graham	Oh my gosh.	33:19
Doris Strong George	I said, because I had never heard such sad stories before.	33:19
Sally Graham	I probably just got a taste of it. I probably just got a taste of the stories. You've got like four months full.	33:28
Doris Strong George	Four months, oh, every one gets sad and sadder. Because I just said, and then he did [indistinct 00:33:50]. Then oh, I go, I thought he just [indistinct 00:33:54], everything went wrong like all the social things. He never been to no parties. Never been anywhere. Just work. [laughs] I believe in that stuff.	33:54
Stine George	Well it's true though, I didn't believe in those parties. I was like—	34:06
Doris Strong George	[indistinct 00:34:11] social climbing.	34:14
Stine George	[indistinct 00:34:15].	34:14
Doris Strong George	He wants me to [indistinct 00:34:15]—	34:14
Stine George	[indistinct 00:34:15], but even down here. Down from here, everybody always drank to get drunk and they—	34:15
Doris Strong George	[indistinct 00:34:20].	34:20
Stine George	I mean even the teachers would have, I don't know where they got liquor from, but when they have a party, get a beer and stuff and they drank it. I just couldn't understand how teachers, how people, ain't no preachers, but there were teachers would have beer at our parties. I mean I just thought teachers were above, should be—	34:21
Doris Strong George	Why? Why we ain't supposed to be drinking?	34:43
Stine George	I'm just saying what I thought.	34:43
Doris Strong George	[indistinct 00:34:45].	34:43
Stine George	What I felt. I had not been subjected to that kind of thing. But I thought they were above that. But they didn't go to the liquor store. My superintendent told them, they better not go to the liquor store.	34:45
Doris Strong George	I didn't get the liquor.	34:52
Stine George	What I think happened in most cases, they would go to the service stations and they would have liquor at the service station and when they go there and get gas, the guy who runs the service station, bring it and put it in the back of the car and then they have it. I know that to be a fact in some cases. In fact, I know with—	34:54
Doris Strong George	[crosstalk 00:35:16].	35:15
Stine George	The party, that's how they got it in the party, was that they'd go out and get gas—	35:16
Doris Strong George	[crosstalk 00:35:20].	35:19
Stine George	While they get the gas, they take it and put it in the car. But see—	35:20
Doris Strong George	[crosstalk 00:35:26].	35:25
Stine George	[crosstalk 00:35:28] that liquor and everybody got—	35:28
Doris Strong George	[crosstalk 00:35:31].	35:30
Stine George	I tried, I tried. That's what—	35:32
Doris Strong George	[crosstalk 00:35:36].	35:36
Stine George	No, they weren't ever successful.	35:36
Doris Strong George	I know it.	35:41
Stine George	Then when they had liquor, I wouldn't go, see. In fact, the truth was, like I told you, we had no equipment at college.	35:41
Doris Strong George	I said all that—	35:48
Stine George	My thing was, I needed to learn—	35:49
Doris Strong George	[crosstalk 00:35:53].	35:52
Stine George	How to learn how to operate my equipment. So I had a shop. I had, it wasn't everything I needed, but there was a lot of stuff that I didn't know how to operate none of it. So I mean I had to read and learn how to operate it and try to set up programs for my boys and I was determined to, I had like 130 boys to teach. So I mean I had to really plan and work hard for that. Like Saturday nights, Sunday nights, I be out there planning for my boys, for the most part. Then I just thought it was bad that teachers had to drink liquor and smoke. Just to me, that was something that (Doris laughs) was above what they'd do.	35:53
Doris Strong George	Oh, Stine! But see, but even we would [indistinct 00:36:39].	36:38
Stine George	Yeah, yeah, we were. We were. But see, actually I'm going to tell you this story. See, when I was coming up particularly, see at my house, see like I told you my mother already died and of course my dad, he was a big church deacon and always [indistinct 00:37:01].	36:43
Doris Strong George	What church?	37:00
Stine George	Section, he was the section. He cleaned up the church. Kept the church in order for the service and everything, because we were then I think about a mile and a half from the church. So he was responsible for doing all that and of course, with our church, we were taught too that you just couldn't do certain things in church and you couldn't drink liquor, or socialize.	37:02
Doris Strong George	My church ain't never told us that.	37:30
Stine George	And go to parties and things like that, if you wanted to be a deacon, or be a leader in the church, see? It's like, because of my dad, he never drank liquor. We never had cigarettes in the house. We never had any liquor in the house. There used to be a guy that used to come by on weekends, who'd be drinking. I used to wonder for years, why that man would come by drunk. He was completely out of our class. We were poor, but we had class. Of course, this is true.	37:32
Stine George	This is about ten or fifteen years ago, I was home. See my dad right now, 92 years old. It was about ten or fifteen years ago. I mean it used to always bother me. Why that man come by the house? He was drunk. Why was he doing that? I never asked the question. So I was wondering. I was home one weekend and I said to my dad, "[indistinct 00:38:21]. This guy [indistinct 00:38:22] in the house. He'd always come to the house on weekends. That man be drunk." I said, "Why would he come by?" My dad said to me, he said, "Well he was my friend." "Dad, how the world could that man be your friend? He was a drunk." I said, "He couldn't be your friend." He said, "Yes, he was." He said, "Son, I'm going to tell you something." He said, "I'm going to tell you something you don't know." He say, "When you were a little boy," he said, "Me and this man all of them be out together." He said, "I would drink and I would smoke too." He said, "It's true that one day you should have been about five, six, seven years old. Five, six years old."	38:04
Stine George	He said, "I would come down the path and you don't remember this and I would come down the path up to the house walking and you saw me coming and you were on the back porch. You'd jump off the back porch. Run down there to meet me down that field, down that branch. I would come back from the store." He said, "I was drunk." He said, "When I saw you coming, I ran back in the woods and I laid down in them bushes."	39:03
Doris Strong George	In them bushes. He had to hide in them bushes.	39:25
Stine George	And said, "I watched til you came down there, you looked for me and you couldn't find me. So you turned and went back to the house. I watched you go back to the house." He said, "When you got back there on the porch, I laid there and I sobered up." He said, "From that day forward, I didn't drink anymore, because I didn't want you to see me drinking and I didn't smoke, because I didn't ever want you to see me smoking." In all those years, I lived thinking that, I didn't smoke. I didn't smoke, my dad doesn't smoke. Everybody said, "Why won't you smoke?" I said, "My dad doesn't smoke. I don't smoke."	39:30
Stine George	They said, "Why you don't smoke cigarettes?" "My dad doesn't smoke cigarettes. I don't smoke cigarettes." All at the same time, it wasn't necessarily the truth. He did do it, but he didn't do it and let me see him do it. Now I think now sometimes, I say, "That was good guidance, because had he drank, my [indistinct 00:40:11], I probably would have been doing the same thing."	39:54
Doris Strong George	What's wrong with that? I mean we always had [indistinct 00:40:16] in our house, all my life. Always cigarettes and beer and smoke [indistinct 00:40:23].	40:12
Stine George	They were in the city. We were in the country.	40:15
Doris Strong George	We always had parties. We always entertained people.	40:30
Sally Graham	You were in a sorority?	40:33
Doris Strong George	In college.	40:34
Sally Graham	A social—	40:34
Doris Strong George	Uh-huh, a social. Uh-huh.	40:34
Sally Graham	What was the sorority?	40:34
Doris Strong George	Zeta Phi Beta. It's a sorority and I guess we got old enough and my mama had [indistinct 00:40:48] when we was growing up and they sell whiskey and everything and when I got grown, [indistinct 00:40:57] and when we entertained we always had something for them to drink.	40:38
Stine George	See, that's the difference, because see what happened in the city, they didn't have much delight. It's like today, they don't have many things to do. But see in the country, we always had something to do. We had to feed the animals and get in wood. See, we had firewood we had to burn in the stove and also burn to keep warm too.	40:59
Doris Strong George	My children they're [indistinct 00:41:18].	41:17
Stine George	So therefore, it was a different story all together. Then we always thought too that country girls were always better girls, because they were disciplined. They did not subject you to—	41:18
Doris Strong George	Oh, we didn't think so.	41:26
Stine George	As a matter of fact, oh no, no, no, no.	41:26
Doris Strong George	These all country children are real wild, because all the country children I know, they got pregnant and got married and had a house full of children. That's all I know. Barefoot and hungry. You thought they were better than city girls?	41:26
Stine George	Well see that's the difference. See like, we talk about the era when the country was predominantly rural, see eighty to ninety percent of the people live in the country. Well today, it's just the reverse from what it was then, so now people can react and think differently—	41:49
Doris Strong George	Different.	42:07
Stine George	Than they did back then.	42:07
Doris Strong George	When I was growing up, we had the [indistinct 00:42:13], but most of the girls who left school, did live in rural areas. They got married early. They had children by the dozens.	42:14
Stine George	That's right. That's right. It was [indistinct 00:42:26] to have large families. The idea was to having large families, you have a child every month, have twelve children. I mean the idea was to have twelve kids, so you have somebody to live with and take care of you when you got old, see? Another words, you stay one a month, another a month, you go around twelve months. That was the idea of having at least twelve children, was so you have somebody to take care of you. Along with that, before that time, during the slavery era, you had kids so they could work and the White man could sell them and for property, more or less. But Black folks, like I said, we chose to do it [crosstalk 00:43:03]—	42:23
Doris Strong George	Well I thought city girls, when they were in high school, they didn't drink or smoke. It was when they got older. When they got old enough and that was at least, well some of them started drinking in college, but it'd usually be beer or something like that, light something and then when they got, because they didn't have no wine glasses and champagne.	43:07
Stine George	I tell you one other thing that was bad with us too, I guess another thing that kept us from drinking, another thing was—	43:24
Doris Strong George	They didn't drink in high schools down in here.	43:34
Stine George	I'm not talking about you now. I'm talking about me now. All right, well another thing was why we didn't do much drinking was the fact that the police was real mean to Black folks at that time too. In fact, if you ran along if you had any liquor on you whatsoever, they didn't have this thing where you're walking down the road and the chalk line. You had a little liquor on you, they take you to jail, see? I think that frightened a lot of us, just wouldn't do it, because any time they stop you, they was going to harass you.	43:35
Stine George	I never forget, one time we were at the elementary school. We were going to have this party that night at our school. I was just riding with those guys the first time, because my daddy did not stay out no more than ten o'clock. I was just riding with them. We had been to town that evening and we were going back. Just dark good and I don't know. It should have been at least six of us in the car, six or seven of us in that car at night. The police stopped us and see the guy pulled us, I'll never forget this. We all little. He pulls out the road, on the right side of the road. Now there was a big ditch down there. This is about this deep, really. The cop came right on the side where this was. He searched all of us and got in our car and smacked us down. He searched it—	43:58
Doris Strong George	[indistinct 00:44:50].	44:49
Stine George	He smacked us, put his behind the neck. Smacked us down in that ditch and then after he searched us all and smacked us all down in that ditch, then he got back in his car and took off. If one of us had had liquor on our breath, he would have taken us to jail, see? The thing about that, that kind of made some of us tow the line and not want to get in jail.	44:49
Doris Strong George	You like parties? You like parties?	45:18
Sally Graham	I like parties.	45:20
Doris Strong George	Do they sell liquor at your parties?	45:21
Sally Graham	I've been to parties that they sell liquor—	45:23
Doris Strong George	They sell some liquor?	45:26
Sally Graham	Yeah, sure.	45:26
Doris Strong George	That would be right.	45:26
Sally Graham	What about stump liquor and everything that I hear out in the country with—	45:27
Stine George	Well they have plenty of that. See, that was why I thought that [indistinct 00:45:34].	45:30
Doris Strong George	That was the country.	45:33
Stine George	I forgot to tell you a while ago about—	45:33
Doris Strong George	That was in the country. The rural people [indistinct 00:45:37] so good.	45:33
Sally Graham	Yeah, so [indistinct 00:45:39].	45:33
Doris Strong George	All them good folk.	45:33
Sally Graham	They don't have to go to the store, because they were making their own.	45:33
Doris Strong George	That's right, the good liquor.	45:33
Stine George	That's what I was going to tell you a while ago, is actually—	45:47
Doris Strong George	[crosstalk 00:45:48].	45:47
Stine George	Another thing that turned me off with liquor, another thing is that Black folks do too much of drinking. We don't think of value and the fact that knowing the history of where White man would encourage you to drink at Christmastime and the weekend and spend all your money, was another thing that—	45:48
Doris Strong George	[indistinct 00:46:18].	46:17
Stine George	Sort of told me not to do it. But we were not educated. I mean rural people—	46:19
Doris Strong George	Stop drinking up all that money.	46:29
Stine George	Well can I tell a story. People do different things. But we were not educated in general, so therefore, they used things to keep us poor and I was determined not to let them keep me down, through that kind of way anyway, I could avoid drinking and getting drunk, or be locked up in jail, see? So that was something I always had in my mind too, I think like we were supposed to be Southern like farming—	46:29

Stine George	—we try to live a pretty clean life. Cleaning, I had to, and we didn't want it to be talked about in the community. Like I was starting to say a while ago, when my dad had his fiftieth anniversary here about three months ago, there were some White people who lived in the community at that time, and one White man in particular, he said this, and my daddy's name was William, he said, "William was a good man". He said, "He was better than anybody in this community, either White or Black," he said, "I mean White or Black," and this was a White man talking now. He said, "The truth is, if everybody was good as William and his family, we wouldn't need no policemen in the United States. If everybody was just as good as him, we would not even need policemen at all in the United States."	0:02
Stine George	That just shows you how he acts and reacts. But you see, in his heart, I think he felt the pain, but he did not exemplify it by his actions out there in the street. He always said, "Yes, sir, yes, sir," he had to say that, "Yes, sir. No, sir." I remember one time, Key was hauling and taking out his cold storage. They had the meat cured so we could take it back home. My daddy didn't pick it up quick, like he normally would pick it up, and so he let it stay in there a little long. The man charged him for letting the meat stay in there longer than he'd normally let it stay.	0:55
Stine George	I went with him to pick it up, and of course, the man had got rid of our meat. Our meat wasn't there, but he gave us some old meat. He had some old meat and it was molding. See, our meat had a number on it, and the meat that he tried to give us wasn't our meat because it was molding and different stuff. I said, "Dad, that ain't our meat. That's not our meat". He said, "Y'all should have picked it up earlier," but see, we were paying anyway, paying to store it, so he should have kept it there. But he said, "Y'all didn't pick it up, so I let somebody else have it. You better take this right here. You better take this meat I'm giving you here." I said, "Daddy, we ain't got to take this meat. This meat ain't fresh meat. This is not our meat."	1:37
Stine George	He said, "William, if that damn boy doesn't shut up, I'm going to knock him off this platform." My dad turned to me and said, "Just hush, just hush. Let's go on back home. Just hush." My dad took the meat. We went on back home, but he didn't ever say nothing to me about don't me talking back at him, but that was some of the things that we were faced with, it wasn't right.	2:31
Stine George	I guess another thing that also is something that made me a little angry, and right now, sometimes when White folks say something to me, I get almost carried away with it sometimes. Some of them say, "I didn't mean to hurt the feelings," but see, it comes up, the pain, the hurt, it goes into a recessive state. I can deal with them, but then when they do me a little wrong now, it comes up now and I become very angry, but then I'm able to control my emotions to some extent, because of the huge number of things they have done. Well, I won't say that, that would open some problems. Let me go close the funeral home.	2:58
Sally Graham	Okay. I have a funeral home question. [INTERRUPTION]	3:46
Doris Strong George	You had to have everything. You had to have embalming—not everything. You had to have chemistry, organic chemistry, anatomy and physiology, pathology, mortuary law. You had to have English and you had to have math. Embalming is still a lot. I know, I fostered the courses, because his mama had to do the embalming. You had to learn about, see, all diseases, you had to, the symptoms of them, because they affect the way the body is to be embalmed, the person who died there. You're supposed to be able to make a pretty near diagnosis looking at the body.	3:54
Sally Graham	You're supposed to be able to make the—	4:34
Doris Strong George	The diagnosis just by looking at the body of what they died with, because they're going to have certain symptoms. See, it's different chemicals for different diseases.	4:35
Sally Graham	Oh.	4:44
Doris Strong George	You had to study what was contagious, you had to study microbiology. You had to study all the germs that invade the body, which is contagious and which is not. You had to learn that. You take an apprenticeship for two years. Every state requires at least one year in professional school plus two years of apprenticeship. Some states require two years of professional school and three years of apprenticeship.	4:44
Doris Strong George	Then you've got to embalm. You have to know where the main vessels are. You had to know all about the body because you have to go to any point to make the injection. You have to learn about the chemicals and how you make embalming fluid you either will use or you buy. See, you've got certain diseases, you have to use a stronger chemical than you do for other diseases, and how to protect yourself and to protect the health of the community. It's a mental health service too. In learning embalming, first, you have to pose the features to try to make it lifelike. You have to drain the blood.	5:33
Sally Graham	You learn that in class, in school? How to pose?	5:41
Doris Strong George	In school. You have to drain all the blood out of the body, inject it with the embalming fluid and do the same thing your blood does during a lifetime, do you know what I mean? But you have to put some chemicals to try to keep it soft, and also have a firm knowledge way to preserve it and keep it there lifelike, because you don't want it to hard. You want it kind of soft. You want to bring it back to the natural appearance.	5:42
Sally Graham	Right. How do you dispose of the blood?	6:48
Doris Strong George	The blood, I've got a drainage. We drain it out. We drain it from the vein and inject it from the artery. It makes complete circulation.	6:52
Sally Graham	Oh.	7:00
Doris Strong George	If you don't make complete circulation, you're in trouble. Then if you can't get a complete circulation—see, you've got six cardinal points where you make your injection. Those are the largest arteries. You go to one, you have to go one place for the complete circulation and drain that internal jugular. You can do it in that, but mostly, you don't want to because it there might be a little neck—you might be able to see that scar on there, so then we usually go for the femora artery and drain from the femora vein because that's the next largest. I don't like this one at all because it's small, most people have small veins, that's the axillary, the axillary artery of the vein.	7:00
Sally Graham	That's under your arm?	7:40
Doris Strong George	Under your arm.	7:41
Sally Graham	Oh.	7:41
Doris Strong George	But then if you can't get it, too much trauma, or you can't get it, you might do all six of them because if you can't get the blood, if you can't get it from here because something is obstructing that vein, then you have to take these smaller ones here or right here. You know where all of them are. You can do one in the finger, but it's going to take you all day because it's your hand and it's so small, but you could do it from here and go on down to your fingers. That's when you're having a lot of trouble.	7:44
Doris Strong George	Most average people, I make one injection, and the most common is the femora, because when you're cutting the femora, it goes up here and then comes and makes a complete circle and come back and drains. It drains from the same costal vein right there.	8:08
Sally Graham	Do you still do this?	8:21
Doris Strong George	I still do it. I got involved, but I like to because I'm real good.	8:26
Sally Graham	Wow.	8:26
Doris Strong George	I'm real good. I hate to brag on my own work, but I'll be there because that man, Dr Pete allows me to see everything, because I said, "Nobody knows more than I do." That's how I do. I have a business counter, [indistinct 00:09:06] and they could do all the work, but I do enjoy my work because I like to see the end result. Yes, I say I'm good because I think I'm good. And all my, in my field, and gives me credit for embalming good, even though AK said, "Everybody thinks that, that works here," but then when other embalmers see my work, they like my work.	8:38
Sally Graham	Okay.	9:27
Doris Strong George	And most of them men, will do the embalming.	9:28
Sally Graham	What do they see that's shows your skill?	9:31
Doris Strong George	Because my bodies are in good condition. The skin is soft, and they're lifelike appearances, mouth closed, eyes closed. Then our chemicals, they give us a good one, I just got them, and when I ship them, I ship them out, some of it, to places like New York or something, they arrive in good condition.	9:35
Sally Graham	What about different shades of African Americans? Are there different portions?	10:04
Doris Strong George	In real life, you've got to be sure you've got a good drainage, but I can do it. You'll be still be White in a week. Some White embalmers, they do good. There are two or three out there, sometimes everybody starts to turn dark, I don't have any.	10:11
Stine George	But that's the trait, that's why you're very quick because—	10:19
Doris Strong George	Now, I had some White people, I better quit though.	10:37
Stine George	They're doing dark. That's one of the things, we stay the same color.	10:39
Doris Strong George	No, no, no. They fake that. They do sometimes, but I give life and they still have their color a long time if they're Black folks. They say to them that they're scared they're going to turn Black. That's why they don't want to turn Black. White folks don't want to be Black.	10:43
Sally Graham	Really?	11:27
Doris Strong George	They're worried in case they might turn Black, and they don't want the possibility they'll turn dark, but if you embalm them good, and you embalm them right, they won't turn dark.	11:27
Sally Graham	I see.	11:27
Doris Strong George	If you just miss and they don't look White enough, they'll turn dark with fluid. If you put too much, they'll turn dark.	11:27
Sally Graham	So you've got to know, you've got to look at the color of skin.	11:27
Doris Strong George	White people do not want to be Black.	11:27
Sally Graham	Can that happen? Can you embalm a White person and make them look dark?	11:30
Doris Strong George	They can turn Black. Yeah, they turn Black.	11:36
Sally Graham	Really?	11:38
Stine George	That [Griffin 00:11:40] guy was the one who went to the South back in the '50s, the Griffin guy. He tried to turn himself Black to go and experience what we experienced. [indistinct 00:11:53]	11:39
Doris Strong George	Black people, they'll be as Black as you are.	11:56
Stine George	Yes, sir.	11:59
Doris Strong George	He'll still be just be like you are every time.	12:00
Stine George	Well, White embalmers don't feel that way. We've all got exceptions to rules. One thing I forgot to tell you, and I don't think got around to tell you why a White man decided to let my dad have that farm.	12:03
Doris Strong George	Let me tell you this now.	12:16
Sally Graham	Okay.	12:17
Doris Strong George	Some White people turned out anyway and they'd be scared they'd have a heart attack because if you have a massive heart attack, that blood is going to come in your face. You'll have trouble in how to get it. You're going to have it right before death, right then, and you can look at a person and tell they had a heart attack. They're already going bluish. They might just turn because of that, and then it starts turning darker and darker.	12:20
Sally Graham	Oh my.	12:43
Doris Strong George	So if a Black person turned dark, and if you're White and you have somebody Black, and they get Blacker if you put too much fluid.	13:13
Sally Graham	Wow.	13:13
Doris Strong George	You were telling me about turning himself Black to go around with Black folks, that book said.	13:13
Stine George	I'm through that.	13:13
Sally Graham	Black Like Me. Wow.	13:13
Stine George	Now, I'm going to tell you what that White man said that sold my daddy the farm, that one time.	13:13
Doris Strong George	Yeah, okay.	13:13
Stine George	He told my dad, he said, "Look William," he said, "I'm going to rent out this farm because you never sass me. You've worked for me for three or four years," or however many years it was, he appreciated the fact that my dad never sassed him. That was his rationale for letting him have the farm.	13:15
Doris Strong George	Because he was a child, he never said he was a good child.	13:37
Stine George	He had his own family, but the fact that he was always humble and said what he said.	13:45
Doris Strong George	And never sassed him and never talked back?	13:49
Stine George	Uh-huh.	13:51
Doris Strong George	I'm glad to live to hear it.	13:51
Sally Graham	How many acres does he have now?	13:58
Stine George	Well, he had 134 at the time we got it. It was a three horse farm at the time, you see. The I-16 went down to Savannah, and I think we lost something like twenty-five acres when the I-16 Highway went through there. It split the farm up completely, really. It separated it.	14:00
Sally Graham	How did that work? Did the government give you money because your land was taken over?	14:22
Stine George	Yeah, they didn't want to give us nothing. They didn't want to give us nothing. They wanted to give him eighteen thousand dollars initially for the roadway. They took it to court and the court gave him thirty-four thousand dollars. Of course, lawyer's fees and all that had to come out of that. The lawyer got the fees from the eighteen thousand and the eighteen thousand was set aside definitely for that. Then by going to court, they got additional money, and the lawyer's fees, they got their share out of that.	14:27
Stine George	See, that was another thing; in addition to Black folks not being able to make any money on the farm, even with sharecropping and even owning it, when you own your farm, you don't get as much as what you sell because they know who you are and they won't give it unless the buyers and the owners all get together. They just won't give you as much as they give the White men. Like I hear now, I work in the Building or Public Works, they're never going to give us, even on most jobs, as much as they give the White person. I don't care what it is. We did a rental housing, we tore down a section of town here in the city. We supposedly bought the property, and they came up and didn't want to give me but three thousand dollars for my houses. Of course, that's about what I paid for them in the beginning, the stuff for the houses. Yet, at the same time, they taxed me twelve thousand dollars, you see? I took it to court and the court did award me twelve thousand dollars for the properties, but they wanted to take it for much less.	15:10
Stine George	My point is that when they divided some of that property up at that time, they had some cents like forty-five dollars and eighty cent, but they always gave the White man—either he's going to get more, even today, they're never going to do it in your favor. They all want to do it in the White man's favor, even today. That's just the way it is, even now.	16:42
Doris Strong George	Now for me, even in the tax office. We have a house the same size as the White man, same location, yours look better than the White man's. All right, yours just looks the same, it's literally the same. All right? Now the tax thing, they have you appraised much higher than his. When you're getting ready to buy, the White man's is better than yours right then.	17:14
Stine George	The cars are the same way, they do the same thing in that. See, it's hard out here to really make it. Now, I've got a whole lot of tax statements today. They appraised some of my stock, reappraise some of my property every three years, which it's supposed to be every eight or nine years. I'm going to make it public. I want to top it in the paper, even though they know I'll do it, they still have to treat me wrong, and know that I'll even expose them, but they still continue to do that to me.	17:39
Stine George	Of course, other folks don't say nothing, I say something, but even with that, they still attack me at times or do things wrong to hurt me, to take my income. Last year, I appealed and I went before this board and they got all those old White folks sitting down there making judgment. They're so nice when you walk in. They tell you, "Yeah, yeah," just listening, "Yeah, yeah," and the policeman is sitting out there. Then they got this tax man who works there and they're sitting up there. He's getting fifty dollars a night sitting there, looking. Then the other folks, I think they're getting forty dollars a night sitting there, too.	18:07
Stine George	I'm sitting there explaining to them that the property is not worth it, I can't get nothing, I can't get nothing out of it. It's not being rented well because the whole area is impacted, the roof part of it. It isn't rented and I'm not getting anything out of it. In fact, I'm losing money. They're listening, they're listening. I bought a piece of property and I paid nineteen thousand dollars for it. They had it listed for thirty-four thousand. I said, "Wait a minute now. I only paid nineteen thousand for it. On the other hand, it's dilapidated and it leaks," I said, "I haven't even got a room. I haven't got the whole house fixed so we can rent it. I only got one side, so I can't rent it." I said, "It ain't worth that much now. It's not worth that much."	18:52
Stine George	They were just so nice, and I said, "Well, boy, I won this case now," totally sure, "I won this case now. These White folks, they're going to rule in my favor." I got a rushed letter two days later saying, "We're sorry, it's worth it." They wouldn't give me no relief whatsoever.	19:33
Stine George	There's a conspiracy to keep us from having anything. Like she was talking about, the property values. It's true that property all over here on the northwest, is appraised higher than it is in the other parts of town. Not only that, they do this appraisal every three years over here, whereas over there, they make it every seven, eight, nine years.	19:53
Stine George	With me, we're required to pay more money or have to pay more out. It's unfortunate, my position has been that the FHA will not build a house on this section, they say because of circumstances. For years, they have refused to build any houses, which means that the land should not be available in other places. That doesn't mean anything to them. They hold us to the same rigid standards that they hold other folks in other parts of town. Not only that, the inspection, the building code man, he's another one. I see we got a new one and he comes out now and is doing the identical same thing.	20:20
Stine George	He's saying, "You've got to have lights. You can't have a porch receptacle in the ceiling. You've got to have covered lights in all your rooms. You've got to have covered lights on the porch," and all these things. You've got to have, they were saying, no-fault breakers in your bathroom and in your kitchen. He's saying, "You've got to have this." Yet, when the window pane got broken, it's got to up, and people are walking by every night throwing bricks and bottles at your house, knocking out your window panes. It's an impacted area. Yet, he holds you to the same standards as they do on the other side of town. You put this stuff up and you go there the next night, and somebody goes and gets the stuff out.	21:02
Sally Graham	Interesting.	21:50
Stine George	He should understand that, but he doesn't give any consideration of that. He just wants you to spend money. He does this foolish thing now saying, if you've got some trash in your yard, it doesn't have to be a big pile of trash, just grass needed cutting. He won't approve the inspection, he won't even approve it just because the grass is not cut in the yard. That means you may have to wait another day or two before he comes back and gives you an okay on it. It's just a means to make you spend money.	21:52
Stine George	The other week or two weeks ago, I was trying to get the house inspected, so he came by. He's been by there twice. Every time he comes back, he finds something that's wrong. See, the inspector called that a pre-inspection. Then he tells you what he sees wrong, if he can find something wrong, he's going to tell you what's wrong. You get that fixed the next day or two or the next week or so, he comes back over there and then he'll look for something else. Then he tells you, "Well, this has got to be fixed now." Well, he didn't see it in the beginning, but now he's found something else for you to do.	22:20
Sally Graham	Oh my goodness.	22:57
Stine George	Then you've got to go and get that done. Now he's come three times, and the third time or the fourth time he came back, which was for the final inspection, he'd never seen that liner, that liner that's out there. See, our trashcans are in the ground. I saw it all the time, it's sitting out there in the yard. He came back the last time and he said, "Everything here is all right, but that liner is full of trash out there." I said, "Well, man, they're going to clean it, I imagine." "Well, you see it's broken on the side. You've got to put new liners out here. Let me call the man."	22:58
Stine George	He got on his phone, just to make me spend more money, he got on the phone and called the city and told them that, asked them when they're coming to put a new liner in. He just told them, "Now, you call Stanley George," he gave me the name. "You call him and tell him when you're going to be there and when he's going ready to put it in there." The man said, "Well, it's going to be two or three days," he says, "When you're getting ready to put it in, you call him so he can meet you over there and show you where to put the liner," and that kind of thing. It's just to make me spend more money.	23:34
Sally Graham	How did you learn the meaning of Jim Crow?	24:00
Stine George	Well, it's something you grow up with. We don't call it that now, we don't use that term now, but see, that was way back as children, you come up. How that term, how that word usually came up, I know they talked about, we called it crackers, you know where that came from. How did that Jim Crow, where did that come from initially? I know cracker came from, it came from a cracker beating the crop whips, they'd whip us with a crop whip, the White would crack it on the backs of slaves.	24:08
Doris Strong George	They call it cracker? I didn't know they called it that and that's why they called it cracker?	24:43
Stine George	Yeah, the crop whip, they used to beat us the way they used to beat horses.	24:44
Doris Strong George	That's why they call it cracker? The way they'd crack the whip?	24:52
Stine George	Yeah, they would beat their Black slaves with a crop whip and cracker came from that word. Jim Crow, I don't know how we established that one.	24:52
Doris Strong George	I don't usually see when they started Jim Crow, but they started the railroad, and I know if it's the Jim Crow.	25:00
Stine George	I'm not sure, I'm not sure, but I'm sure it's somewhere.	25:11
Doris Strong George	I've heard it all my life, but I don't know how it came about.	25:16
Stine George	Yeah.	25:17
Doris Strong George	That meant segregation and signs and you can't go here, and when you go to the movies, you had to go upstairs in the movies.	25:17
Stine George	And if you're sick, you've got to go downstairs in the basement.	25:32
Doris Strong George	In the basement to the hospital.	25:33
Stine George	That's right.	25:33
Doris Strong George	In the doctor's office, they said, "Colored waiting room," in the back or on the side.	25:45
Stine George	Right.	25:46
Doris Strong George	Even after integration, we had the right, and I remember it was '73, the doctor's office was still segregated inside.	25:48
Sally Graham	The doctor's office was?	25:56
Doris Strong George	The doctor's office.	25:59
Sally Graham	Ah, it still had signs calling it that?	26:00
Stine George	In Moultrie.	26:00
Doris Strong George	In Moultrie.	26:00
Sally Graham	In '73?	26:00
Doris Strong George	In '73.	26:00
Sally Graham	Wow.	26:00
Stine George	Absolutely, absolutely.	26:00
Doris Strong George	I had to write them a letter and tell them I was going to report them. I reported them too. Another thing, in Tiftin, the man came to see them and the next day, the signs were down. They knew the signs were supposed to be down, even a long time before then.	26:05
Stine George	Well see, the way the White folks are, they do no more than what they're forced to do, particularly [indistinct 00:26:29], they absolutely will not do anything more than you force them to do. Right now, they're in the process now, we've been in court for over eight years to try get them to reposition the community so that we are a single member voting district in the city, in Moultrie. They fought it for eight years.	26:25
Sally Graham	Single member—?	26:43
Stine George	Single member voting district, where you've got to live in the district where you vote. You've got to live in the district in which you vote or represent.	26:45
Sally Graham	Oh, okay.	26:52
Stine George	What we had large voting all over the county, the city had that, the county commissioner and the Board of Education at large, you can live anywhere and you represent the people in the whole area. All right. We could never get a Black elected to anything, to be frank. We asked the court to give us—	26:53
Doris Strong George	Are you cold? Are you all right?	27:15
Sally Graham	No, no, no, I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm just sitting like this.	27:15
Stine George	We asked them to give us a single member district and the court, they wouldn't do it. They absolutely refused to do that. Of course, we went to court. They started this thing somewhere in the 1960s, and then in 1974 or '77, '76, we finally got to federal court about this at large thing. Of course, the other kinds are doing the same thing, Blacks all over the South were going to court to get their thing changed so that we could get single member districts established so that they could have some of their own kind representing them.	27:16
Stine George	Of course, this kind will just head out, they wouldn't yield, they wouldn't do anything. That's when they tried to temper this thing in court by helping us elect a Black to represent us at large so that they could kill the court case. Finally, we got the court to say they had to have single member districts. Then we had it all sown up, and then the White folks in this community said, "Absolutely no. We will not. We're not going to help you with that. No, we won't give you no single member district."	28:14
Stine George	See, we were 37.5 percent of the population in the city of Moultrie, the Black population was 37.5 percent. We said, "Okay, there should be two Whites to five members of city council. We said, "Two Whites, two Blacks and one runs at large." Well, that makes a little sense because naturally, the majority is going to get their third position. They said, "No, we ain't going to do that. That's just too much. We're not going to give you all that. We're just not going to do that."For about a year, there was no talk about the thing at all, but all at the same time, there was no open talk, but the White folks were working out some system to beat this system. What they did, they came up with what they called a multi-member district, and then they brainwashed the Blacks, the plaintiffs, to support that new position, that new idea. What the new idea was to put all the Blacks in one district, that was 1984, put all the Blacks in one district and put all the Whites and about ten percent of the Blacks in another district, so we've got two, and increased the number of representatives from five to seven. All right? What they did, they kept the same five they had and they gave us two. They drew another line there and put all of us, ninety percent of us in one district, and they gave us two representatives. They kept the five they had.	28:57
Sally Graham	Right.	30:37
Stine George	Then they went to the plaintiffs, and one guy who was a plaintiff had moved from town, so therefore, it left the two of the plaintiffs in Moultrie. They went to them and told them and said, "Now look, you all got a chance. We're going to give you a guarantee for the rest of your lives and you'll never have to worry. You'll always have two Blacks on the city council." One of the guys told him, he said, "Well, that was something. We never had none and here, we've got a guarantee that from now on, we're going to have two," but yet, they've got their five, see?	30:37
Stine George	They swung it. Of course, myself, particularly, and a few other people, the other couple of people who worked with me, [indistinct 00:31:18], all this is '64, '65, so we organized an opposition to that thing, but we went to Washington DC and argued it before the Justice Department, but then see, William Radford Reynolds was the Attorney General. He was a racist cracker from the very beginning, from the core. He was from the old-school. He was racist from the core. I think Reagan had put him there to dismantle the whole civil rights program that we framed. He knew he would do it, he had a history of doing this. He put him to be in charge.	31:10
Stine George	We couldn't get nothing through. Of course, either Congress had set aside money or had talked about setting aside money to protect Black farmers. We're losing Black farmers like crazy. In fact, they said that, what is it—let's say 1984, something like in twenty years, there will be no Black farmers in this whole United States because they were losing their farms so fast. Anyway, Reagan had dismantled the agency that was set aside to even protect the farmers, for the most part, he did that.	31:58
Stine George	Anyway, we didn't get it through, and of course, we've been operating under this multi-member district thing. Now, we're in the process of going back to court to try to get their thing thrown out and get a single member district. Recently, the board of education came up with this idea, they had six members on the board and they came up with the idea that, "We need a seven member board," because they had a tie two or three times. When they did that, then they're going to go and have at large member, an additional at large member rather than another district.	32:39
Stine George	We are in litigation now with the Justice Department in that respect in the court. They're supposed to rule on this within the next week or so as to whether or not they're going to let them do that, but we've already rested our protest. We're hoping that they're going to rule in our favor. We sent up a map showing the seven member district. In fact, I've got another one sitting out there today from Southern Regional Council out of Atlanta, they sent another map out today to the Justice Department asking them to rule in our favor rather than the other way.	33:19
Stine George	We're having problems. Racism is still here, it's just more subtle, but we're faced with it every day, every day. Where are we now? That's how people mostly work. See, even though they thought I was done, they thought I was done and they really didn't want—like I said, they ostracized me then, of course. We kept the Board of Education there. The White folks picked this woman to represent us for eight years. They wouldn't fight her, they just accepted it because she's a retired teacher so they accepted her. She's a member of one of the big churches. That shows you how Black folks have been still stigmatized by slavery.	33:51
Stine George	Then of course, I went to her just before she qualified to run and I said to her, and I'm candid, I said to her, "Ms. Lewis, you don't need to run," I said, "You don't need to get involved because to be on the Board, you'll have the curse. You're a decent lady. You don't want a curse. You don't want that kind of job." She said, "Why does that even matter?" [indistinct 00:35:05]. She ended up running, she told the folks what I had said and if I didn't want to her run. In campaigning against me, "You all vote for me against John, vote for me against him." Then of course, she's stayed there for eight years. When she said she was going to retire, then they picked another Black woman who had retired from school about ten or twelve years ago and told her to run and represent us.	34:43
Stine George	Then we had a Black guy who was an assistant principal, they had kicked him out of school a long time ago, but he chose to run too. I was going to support him, but he gave a bad check and they just made a big to-do out of it. They just exposed him.	35:31
Doris Strong George	He gave a check that bounced, 108 dollars.	35:49
Stine George	They just talked about him, they just talked about him and then they disqualified him.	35:54
Doris Strong George	He's a AG right there? Is he a principal?	35:55
Stine George	After they disqualified him, then that meant we didn't have nobody but that choice to represent us. We talked about it, the committee has talked about it. We're trying to get some more people—	36:00
Doris Strong George	I thought you were going to [Meta 00:36:12].	36:12
Stine George	Can I finish what I'm doing?	36:13
Doris Strong George	I'm sorry.	36:14
Stine George	You do that to me all the time.	36:15
Doris Strong George	I'm sorry. What do you want me to do?	36:15
Stine George	Then we decided to—I'll fill that out.	36:19
Doris Strong George	This is mine.	36:22
Stine George	Okay. Well, why are you asking those questions then?	36:23
Doris Strong George	Because the spouse is supposed to pay the firm.	36:23
Sally Graham	Oh no, I've caused spousal fighting here.	36:29
Doris Strong George	That's right, yeah.	36:33
Stine George	She does that all the time.	36:35
Doris Strong George	No, no, no. I've got to fill that while you were talking about, what year were you born? See, I've got to fill it all out, [indistinct 00:36:48], then I listened, I can listen and talk at the same time.	36:43
Sally Graham	Okay. The White lady chose—	36:52
Stine George	Anyway, anyway, anyway, what happened, the final analysis had been then they tried to find somebody else to run. They didn't want me at all. Then nobody else wanted to run, then they had to turn to me. They came begging me to run, they almost drafted me, the whole community behind me. We were supposed to get petitions and we met, my committee and myself on Friday, my worst enemy and they're my strongest opposition called me and asked me about running, and of course, I had to meet them and talk to them and look them in the face and see if they're sincere, because I had decided to not to try to run for anything in this community. I decided that.	36:54
Stine George	We met on Friday night and they said, "Okay." We're talking about running an independent person, running as an independent rather than—because they're close, and actually, this is a qualifying period right now until July 1st for an independent candidate. Of course, we met Friday night a week ago, and of course, I committed myself to run and I said to them, I said, "Okay," I said, "I expect you all to work and show me that you're concerned and you really want me." They were desperate. Of course, from Friday night to Tuesday night. They only needed eighty-two petition, they went out and got sixty-two in those two days. Of course, we met last night and we had 180 signed petitions last night.	37:38
Sally Graham	Excellent.	38:39
Stine George	I'm going to qualify Friday.	38:40
Sally Graham	Is this the election for July?	38:42
Stine George	November.	38:43
Sally Graham	November? Okay.	38:45
Stine George	I'm running independent. It is July, but you see, I won't be on the July ballot because I run as an independent, so I'll be on the November ballot. I hope to win over that candidate.	38:46
Sally Graham	Yeah.	39:00
Stine George	It looks good. It just shows how the Lord works miracles when things don't go as they should. Everyone knows that I'm, perhaps, the best they've got, but they just didn't want me, truly. Oh Lord. See, I work for the state Labor Department, I've been with those folks for nineteen years. Of course, I don't know if they're going to force me to retire and get out of there or not. I'm not sure, I don't care what they do to me. That's what we're driving at in education of how folks are not getting the training and education that they need in this community.	39:00
Stine George	See, we used to have what we called Compulsory Attendance Law in the state of Georgia. It was being enforced and it's not enforced anymore. Kids go to school is they want to go to school.	39:56
Sally Graham	Compulsory Attendance Law?	40:04
Stine George	Right.	40:06
Sally Graham	Okay.	40:06
Stine George	Yeah, Compulsory Attendance Law. It's not compulsory anymore that they go, the kids go. You see them all hanging around the street all during the day, and there's nothing forcing them to go. Their names are still on the books but they're not forced to go.	40:07
Doris Strong George	You know why? I think because when they got this school at home, homeschool, and then they used to make you go to regular school, but now a lot of parents are teaching at home. They're still on the books, but they aren't forced because some parents pretend they're teaching their kids at home, but they're supposed to have a program or study or curriculum of approval of teaching.	40:23
Stine George	They're making it worse and worse, they're getting more ignorant every day. A lot of them are going to private school, homeschool. They don't even have a college degree themselves, see, trying to teach those kids at home. They're letting it by and they don't utilize the Compulsory Attendance Law.	40:50
Doris Strong George	But you know what? I guess but I have a friend and she teaches her child at home and her child has passed all. They had SATs and then she's been given a scholarship to more than five schools. She's off at school and she started at home.	41:11
Stine George	That was an exception.	41:31
Doris Strong George	She's an exception.	41:32
Stine George	You really understand there are exceptions, even with the kids in the better school center, some of them don't make it. The law of averages says that some of them are going to make it regardless. I think that's what's going to happen in that case, and what's going to happen in other cases. It's not an idea that's set in because you've got so many kids who have fallen by the wayside because they're not forced to go to school, and there's nothing from the parents to encourage them to go because they don't understand the value of an education and they don't see no need for it because the people that have got the most money, the most people that have money are drug people. Therefore, those are the role models.	41:33
Stine George	In our county, we don't have very many Black teachers. We've got less than fifty Black teachers in the whole school. Of course, as a result of that, they're not motivated to go to school. Parents are not motivating or encourage kids to go and the kids are not motivated to go, because like I say, they don't see any of their kind there anyway. It's a real problem here, education.	42:13
Stine George	I hope that I can—in fact, I'm writing my little story here, and I hope I can be effective on that board because I've got five other people there, but at least they have to respect me there if I don't much legislation through there. They have to respect me.	42:39
Sally Graham	Well, it certainly sounds like you've decided upon your goals and have been working for those for quite some time.	43:04
Stine George	Yeah, well, it's just persistence is what it is. It's just the persistent effort on my part. I had no real ambition or even desire to run for court, but then when they came up and said, "We can't get nobody and we really need you." My most staunch enemies were saying the same thing to me. I had no reason not to do it. Of course, I said, "I'll go, I'll go, I'll go." Next month this time, I'll be well into it possibly.	43:12
Sally Graham	Oh yeah.	43:43
Stine George	Of course, I may not have that job, but that doesn't make any difference to me. I think this is the right thing to do. Therefore, I must do what's right.	43:46
Sally Graham	Tell me about the days that you got involved in the mass meetings.	43:58
Stine George	Like in [Donaldsonville 00:44:04]?	44:03
Sally Graham	Well, in Donaldsville, with [Sharod's 00:44:08] group.	44:05
Stine George	Oh yeah, okay.	44:09
Sally Graham	With [Joachim 00:44:10].	44:09
Stine George	Absolutely. See, at that time, that's when we began to try to have—I was in the process, like I told you, to try to get people registered to vote and make them aware of resources, etcetera, etcetera. When Charles came, when I talked to him, I had him come over, when he talked to us, he emphasized those same points. The main thing is getting registered to vote, that's what we mainly talk about. Of course, we were successful in getting that done. In fact, a funny thing happened, the truth, and this is the truth, see actually, in possibly 1964 or '65, right after I got registered to vote, we began to ask for things for our community which had never been done before. Of course, the White guy on city council, and that's why we need White people to help us, but you've got to be careful. There was some White guy going to city council. His name was John Collins. When we would go to the council, I didn't hardly go, I just sent my group to go because I was teaching. I was still getting involved, because that's the easiest thing, these are leaders and they've got everything going that they wanted to go on, so therefore, I stayed way in the background. I was informed of everything that transpired.	44:11
Stine George	I might even say before I get it, even when I was off with the Forest Foundation, every reason they had, they called me and the Forest Foundation would pay for it. Every meeting they had prior to the meeting, after the meeting, they had a hotline to me wherever I was. I operated from wherever I went.	45:48
Stine George	Anyway, the idea was to get Black folks actually involved. Of course, we would have these meetings, and of course, now I didn't say much, my officer would do it this, they had this White guy who was on the city council. I know somebody tipped him off that—they just assumed that somebody had been giving those people some direction. He came to me one day and he said to me, he said, "George," he said, "I heard that you're behind the movement over here in—"	46:14

Stine George	He was constantly saying, "I want to run for mayor." Four to six years where he said, "I'll tell you what?" He said, "I know y'all been coming to the council meetings and I know y'all been trying to get things going for y'all over here." He said, "But now, I don't want to fool nobody but you." He said, "Now, I want this to be confident between me and you." He said, "For now," he said, "Every time y'all come to the council meeting, I'm going to call you after the meeting and tell you what to do next month. I'm going to tell y'all what strategies to use and who says what, so you can prepare for it." So I said, "I thought it was a good idea."	0:03
Stine George	So he did. He would call me after each meeting and tell me what was said and he said to me like this, he said, "I'm going to give you hell every time you come. I'm going to give y'all hell." He said, "To keep them from knowing what we're doing." He said, "But I'm going to call you and let you know what to do and how to do it next month." Because see at that time, we couldn't go to the movies. We couldn't go to restaurants. We couldn't even buy Coca-Colas. We couldn't do nothing really.	0:44
Sally Graham	Is that Coca-Cola, just Coca-Cola—	1:10
Stine George	Yeah, the drink, in the bottle.	1:10
Sally Graham	But you could drink—	1:10
Stine George	That was a White folks' drink.	1:10
Sally Graham	Okay, but you could drink like an orange soda.	1:16
Stine George	Yeah, uh-huh, right.	1:18
Doris Strong George	That's called RC. RC. Or grape.	1:23
Stine George	That's what I would drink.	1:23
Doris Strong George	RC	1:23
Stine George	It'd be like going in the fish market, we'd have to go around, see you couldn't even go in the front of the fish market and buy fish, food like that. So he said, "Okay," he said and then we were asking for all these things to be changed. So anyway, he would call me and tell me, so finally after about, oh about four, or five, or six months, he called after a meeting one night. He called and said, "George." He says, "I be over there in a few minutes." So he came over there where I was. He said to me, he said, "Look, you lock your car every night?" "Do I lock my car? I can't lock my hood of my car."	1:25
Stine George	Because, you had the hood open from the outside. The hoods of cars at that time, open from the outside. You couldn't have the pull in the inside. The hood of the car was from the outside. I said, "I can't lock no hood of my car. It open from the outside." He said, "Well I tell you what. From now on, you get you some tape. Get you some Scotch tape. Every night that you go to bed, you put some tape on each side of that hood and in the morning, every morning you go out—	2:08
Doris Strong George	[indistinct 00:02:31]—	2:31
Stine George	And you look—	2:31
Doris Strong George	[indistinct 00:02:31] hood. It was a shit hole.	2:31
Stine George	He said—	2:31
Doris Strong George	I said, "But pick the year."	2:31
Stine George	He said, "Every morning you go out there, every morning you go out there," he said, "Make sure you check that tape and see if it's cut. If it's cut, then you get away from that car as quick as you can and call the police." So this was what I did. He said, "I can't call you anymore." He said, "They've got our phones tapped. Your line tapped. Mine tapped." Saying, "I just come over here after the meeting and tell you what to do." Then we pulled that trick. We did that for, I don't know, about a year and then during that same process, see we were involved in everything. The voting and everything that took place down there. Then and we'd never had any Black run for public office down there either, see?	2:31
Sally Graham	Who was the first person to run for public office?	3:21
Stine George	Me.	3:24
Sally Graham	You were?	3:25
Stine George	Well see that happened like it happened here. That situation there was sort of like it was here, from the standpoint that, we tried and see they tried to find somebody in their community to run. But see, everybody's feeling was, they're going to kill the first person. That's what everybody thought. "Damn they're going to kill the first person." That's what they thought. So anyway, they tried and we tried, couldn't find nobody. So then the president told me. He lived in the county, he would have run, but he lived out in the county. Of course, I lived in the city. That's what we took, city licenses. So he said to me, he said—	3:25
Doris Strong George	Who?	4:01
Stine George	John Wesley Rambo, in Donalsonville. He said to me—	4:02
Doris Strong George	Oh, I was about to say.	4:06
Stine George	He said to me, he said, "George." He said, "George, you know," I had taught that boy. I had taught him. He graduated the second year I got there. He joined my organization, see? That kid loved me, see? He said to me, he said, "We can't get nobody to run." He said, "You're the only one that could run." I said, "Do you want me to run?" He said, "Will you run?" I said, "Why didn't you ask me in the beginning? I'm ready." So they ran me and a funny thing happened. I got to race in the day of election, I went there and stood around the polls like the White folks did. But see, I stood on the left side of the entrance.	4:07
Stine George	All my coworkers and everything, still were coming by and shaking my hand, or saying something to me and then nobody was talking to me, standing over there. But when they go in and vote and come out, they wave at me and go on. But they wouldn't speak to me going in. But they'd wave at me after they come out. I mean I didn't know that then, but they were driving on the other side of me and wouldn't come and park on the side I was standing on and come over and say, "Hey, how you doing?" Or something like that. No one wanted to get the impression that they were going to vote for me. So anyway and here's another sad part about the same thing. See, when I qualified for my organization to pay for my—	4:52
Doris Strong George	[indistinct 00:05:33].	5:33
Stine George	Qualifying fees, I asked the organization to pay my qualifying fees, I thought that perhaps my coworkers, which was what, forty-five of us, I thought surely they would at least call me and say, "Hey, glad you done this. It's a good thing to do." I thought they would at least have said that to me. I went on for two weeks, not one of them said a word. Not one called me. Not one said a word. They barred me in the street. I felt terrible. I thought, "Nobody will talk to me. Only my little surrounding around my organization. That's the only group that would, there was about seven of those people that were right around me, or my house, around with me."	5:37
Stine George	Then finally one night, one of my coworkers, I had been working with for nine years, she called me. She said, "Hey, I want you to meet me on the side of the highway tonight." Which was about nine miles away, wanted to meet there on the side of the highway. She says, "I can't talk on the telephone." She said, "Would you meet me?" I said, "Where?" She told me where she wanted me to meet her at. So I didn't know what she had in mind. I didn't know if they were trying to ambush me, or what it was.	6:17
Sally Graham	Was this a Black woman?	6:43
Stine George	Yeah, it's a Black woman. Well see nobody had said nothing to me the whole month. I mean nobody had said anything to me. I'm qualified and nobody, none of my coworkers had said anything. So she told me to meet her there at 10:00 at night. So I went out there that afternoon and looked at the terrain features and I decided what I could do. So I decided I was going to get my gun and go down there and—	6:44
Doris Strong George	[indistinct 00:07:12].	7:09
Stine George	Park my car and I was going to go up in the hill and wait for her to come and when she opened the door, I could see if anybody's in the car with her, because I didn't know if she was planning on trying to ambush me, or what it was. I wrote up the story on my diary I had. I wrote it up just in case I got killed. I wrote it up [indistinct 00:07:35]. So I left it beside the bed, so that when they find [indistinct 00:07:39]—	7:15
Doris Strong George	[indistinct 00:07:39].	7:38
Stine George	I told exactly what happened, who I was supposed to meet down there and the time and everything. So I went on down there, early. See she was supposed to come at ten. I got there about a quarter to ten and I parked on the side of the road there and I went up in the hill and set up there and waited for her to come, so when she opened her car door, I could see if she was by herself. So I just came on up the hill with my gun and we stood beside the car and she told me, she said, "I know how you feel."	7:39
Stine George	She said, "I know just how you feel, but the principal has told us if we are caught talking to you, or fooling with you, we're going to get fired. The superintendent say he's going to fire them. So that's why they're not saying anything to you." She said, "We love you and we're supportive of you, but we just can't come out openly and talk to you." So we talked about thirty minutes and then she took off back home and I took on back home. I felt better at that point and time. I had no idea why they were doing me like that. It was tough. But I got through it and I came over here, like I said, I've done the right thing and the Lord has taken care of me and of course, if I had it all to do over again, I'd do it almost practically the same way. I can't think of anything I would have done, that I would have done different, to be frank.	8:04
Stine George	I was within four days of not having a job and of course, when I came back from the sabattical with the Ford Foundation and they replaced me with this and this guy left and I took my job back. They let me work one year. He told me, the superintendent told me when I got back, he said, "Look here," he says, "The board been talking about getting rid of one of the ag teachers, where the White guy had been there twenty-seven years and I'd only been there nine." So he said, "Now you know if they only have one vocation ag teacher, I'm going to have to recommend him, rather than you." That was the first time he ever asked me to sit in his office. I had been there, in the nine years, he had never and I'd go to his office every month. I'd take my reports. He never asked me to sit down. He always be running around the office, just talking, talking, talking. Just fussing about something. But that particular time, he told me to sit down. He told me, he said, "The board says it's going to have to get rid of one of y'all." He said, "But I let you know, I let you know." Of course, before school was out that year, he called me on the phone and said, "Hey look here. You know what I told you about what the board was going to do?" I said, "Yeah." "They did it." I said and he hung up like that.	8:59
Stine George	But see before this, about a week or month before that time, he sent a letter around to all the seniors, the senior board and asked them if they wanted to take vocation ag. Actually, the seniors didn't take ag. So they said, "No." That's the survey he [indistinct 00:10:36] instead of making all the eighth, ninth, tenth and eleventh grade who take ag, who were required to take it. They didn't get a chance to even do an application, or do the survey. Only twelfth grade, who didn't take it, did it and they didn't want it. So I went to see him and I said, "What happened here? I mean why, what's this?" He said, "Well, we sent surveys already and none of the kids wanted to take, forty percent of them didn't want it. So that's why we had to get rid of you."	10:17
Sally Graham	So they fired you? I mean they basically let you go?	11:04
Stine George	Closed my department. Closed my department. See, I had a house at that time over there too and of course, he done sent the principal to me. The principal came to me and said something like this. He said, "Hey, the superintendent told me to tell you, if you wanted a job with the board, with the school, come up there and talk to him and he'd give you an elementary science position." Well I said, "Now, wait a minute." I said, "You'll give me an elementary science position." I said, "What is this guy going to do?" See, that's a Black guy who teaches elementary science. I said, "What's he going to do?" He said, "Well, he's going to fire him and give you that job." "Well you tell him I don't want to do that. I don't want to take his job." So anyway, that's what happened.	11:06
Doris Strong George	Going to fire him—	11:56
Stine George	I wouldn't go out and talk to him. So he wanted me to be humble and he said too, the superintendent done told me that day I was talking to him. He said, "White folks say I was going to be at trouble maker. I done gone off and got me a Communist and I done brought Communist ideas back down there to Donalsonville, and they just don't trust me no way." But what he said about if I wanted that guy's position, he was going to give me that position and see that would mean I would be humble and do what they want done. Therefore, they're going to let me stay and going to get rid of him. So I wouldn't take the job. So I kept working. I just figured something would happen, something good would happen for me and then of course, about three days before my contract ended, a guy came back from Thomasville, a fire marshal. He had a little paper with him, a newspaper. He said, "Hey, you ever seen this paper before?" I said, "Nope."	11:58
Stine George	He said, "Just take this paper here and you might like it thought. A Black paper." He said, "Take it. You might like it. You might want to subscribe to it sometime." I said, "Okay." I took it and looked at it. He left. We left. Looked and there was a job in Moultrie. It said, "Job. Moultrie, Georgia." The interview for that next night for a vocation teacher out here on a year program. I said, "Dog. I got to call these folks." I call them. He said, "Yeah." He said, "We're going to interview tomorrow." He said, "You can come by tomorrow morning and I'll talk to you." He said, "Now we're going to make a decision tomorrow night." So I came over here the next morning and talked to the man who was over the program and talked to him about two and a half, three hours. We were talking [indistinct 00:13:42].	12:53
Doris Strong George	He said doesn't even talk.	13:38
Stine George	He had his—	13:38
Doris Strong George	He fusses at me because I try to get a word in.	13:38
Sally Graham	That's right.	13:38
Doris Strong George	He did, that's why I did. I can't even get one word in.	13:38
Stine George	He had his assistant in there with him. They talked and so he talked to me and he said, "Look here." He says, "I'm going to hire you." He says, "I'm going to hire you today. Even though we're going to make the decision tonight, I'm going to hire you today." He said, "But I don't want you to be no vocation teacher. I want you to be the assistant director of the agency." I said, "Okay. That's better. That's 4,000 more dollars a year." I said, "Okay." So I took it and I went back over there and I ended up back over here. But see, before I left, see they had tried to fire the principal and they were going to get rid of the superintendent, the curriculum director, who was Black. They were going to get rid of, well these are all Blacks.	13:52
Stine George	Talking about get rid of the principal, the curriculum director and myself. Well, I sent my committee to talk to the principal and we called the superintendent. The men, their jobs, the superintendent's there. The curriculum director's job and the principal's job. There was no reason to get rid of them. What was he getting rid of them for? So then he changed his mind. He said, "Well we ain't going to get rid of them. We're going to keep them." But then, that left me in the cold, see? Then of course, he later said, he wasn't going to re-hire me, because my department and all that kind of stuff was closed. So then, they then said they was going to integrate in 1970, going to integrate that fall and they had attempted to, they were going to give tests to all the Black kids that were going to integrate the school and they were going to group them according to how they passed that test.	14:32
Stine George	Well I had been subjected to some experience of this. Something told me that I shouldn't let them do that. I shouldn't let them do it. I had done talked to my organization and I had my president, that's the one I gave the information to. I told him about what some strategies we could use and keeping our kids from taking the test, so that they wouldn't have these scores, when that school opened. I didn't want to let any of them take the test. So what I did. So I talked to the counselor. She was scared to death, but she trusted me. So I said, "Now you tell me whenever he says he's going to give this test, you let me know." I said, "I've got an idea I want to share with you. I want to tell you something." I didn't tell a whole lot of what I was going to do. But she came to my office about 9:00 in the morning. She said, "We're going to give a test tomorrow. A test going to be given tomorrow." I said, "Yeah." I said, "Okay, okay."	15:25
Stine George	So immediately, I sent them all to campus. I told them to go find my little president, see. He went and found the president. He came out there and I told him, I told him about what happened. So he had already talked to the presidents of all the classes, all the classes and their rooms. In fact, two persons, the president and the vice president in every class. We had already met with them privately and told them about what might happen and what we were going to be able to do. So anyway, he got word to all of the presidents that night, at his house [indistinct 00:16:52]—	16:16
Doris Strong George	Had to call them off campus and you [indistinct 00:16:57].	16:56
Stine George	Huh?	16:56
Doris Strong George	[indistinct 00:16:57], send them off, send them off.	16:59
Stine George	Yeah, okay. Yeah. It's a question. But I sent them off. But anyway, all of the presidents of all the classes, the seven classes, they met with us that night. We told them, said, "Now, tomorrow morning they're going to give y'all a test. You're going to pass [indistinct 00:17:16] all your class numbers, that whenever they tell you to take a test, just whenever they come in and give you the test paper, take the pencil they give you and anything else they give you, just take it and sit it there in front of you." We said, "But whenever they tell you to take a test, tell you to start writing, all of you lay on your desk like that and refuse to take the test." That was the most beautiful thing I ever seen in my life. I had a homeroom class myself and I did the same. I got all instructions like they had told us and this other lady helped me get her test and I said, "Okay, now take the test." All my kids just lay down on the table.	17:00
Doris Strong George	You felt so good!	17:54
Stine George	Believe me—	17:54
Doris Strong George	You felt so good!	17:54
Stine George	I had never felt so good in all my life. Not a single kid in high school would take that test. So when they went to integrate, they didn't have a test, didn't have that experience. That principal came down there and brought his security and [indistinct 00:18:13]. He didn't know what was going on. The kids all refused to take the test. The teachers all walk in the hall, "These kids won't take this test. The kids won't take this test." Then he called the superintendent down there. He went on down there and talked to superintendent. Called superintendent. Then the superintendent told him, "Well, we have to do something else then." Then of course, so then we continued to have meetings that summer.	17:58
Doris Strong George	What else did they do?	18:35
Stine George	Well that's all. They didn't [indistinct 00:18:38]—	18:36
Doris Strong George	You said they got to do something else. So what'd they do?	18:37
Stine George	Well we had to do something else. We had to continue to fight them to keep the White folks fighting. See that's what we to do, because they [indistinct 00:18:52]. We'd get together and we'd organize. So what I did, what I did. We had, see there was a meeting at a little house and I would get off with my president after meeting's over and I would tell him about what to say and how to say it and I was sitting back there and I wasn't saying nothing. Then what we did one night at a meeting, what they did, we had asked that they, we tried to get a Black policeman on the force, on the police force down there. They gave us one, but what we wanted, they offered us one, but what one they offered us, we didn't want him, because he was overweight and his shoes didn't fit him nowhere, his clothes didn't fit anywhere.	18:40
Sally Graham	Oh my God!	19:46
Stine George	So we didn't want that guy. But that's what they gave us. So then we kept insisting. Every time we go and talk to them, we said—	19:46
Doris Strong George	[indistinct 00:19:53].	19:51
Stine George	He couldn't read either. He couldn't read either. So every time we go down there, we said, "We don't go no finger-printing machine." That was it. "We ain't got no finger-printing machine."	19:52
Doris Strong George	What?	20:00
Stine George	This guy was twenty-two years old. The guy we wanted. He just came out of the service. We said, "We ain't got no finger-printing machine. We ain't got no finger-printing—	20:01
Doris Strong George	Finger-printing what?	20:10
Stine George	Finger-printing machine. They said they wanted—	20:10
Sally Graham	In the police department.	20:10
Stine George	A finger-printing guy before he considered him for the force. Finally, the finger-printing machine, they decided to get him finger-printing and then they decided to go ahead and hire him. But what they did, the guy they appointed to represent us, they would start sending him in on our meetings and I knew that strategy for sending him in. So I told the president one night, I said, "What we're going to do," I said, "It's open." I said, "What we're going to do," see because at that time, I didn't have no job. They didn't know I was working over here. I had done gotten a job over here and they didn't know it. I said, "We ain't going to let that old bus run over us." I said, "When that school accept him on August, we're not going to let the buses run. We're going to block those buses. No buses run in September, unless they give me, unless I get my job back and the principal and supervisor get her job back too." Because they didn't have their job that time, because I was a threat to them. Because they went on and gave them their jobs back and didn't give me mine back. See, but I was already working over here at that time. But anyway, then they sent McGraw, who was the FBI representative in this area, they sent him down there and see what happened, I had a [indistinct 00:21:32]—	20:11
Doris Strong George	[indistinct 00:21:31].	21:30
Stine George	I had a house and they wouldn't let, I had a house down there and he would come down there and try to catch me. Well see I was coming over here and I was staying over here and I'd go back over there some nights. I know when we had a meeting, I'd go back at night to those meetings, but then I would be back over here and I wouldn't go by my house. He set in my yard at night, trying to catch me. J. Edgar Hoover. You remember him?	21:33
Sally Graham	Yeah.	21:55
Stine George	He was the one who had sent him down here, to interrogate me and so—	21:55
Sally Graham	Oh my God.	22:00
Stine George	What happened was, I came—	22:01
Doris Strong George	[indistinct 00:22:03].	22:02
Stine George	So what happened was, I had work and so finally one morning, I was out here. I had my job and working and the phone rang. McGraw. McGraw from Thomasville. He told me, he said, "I'm McGraw from Thomasville." Say, "I've been trying to find you for more than a month." Say, "I've been in your yard, sitting there just about all night. Suppose you come in and out." Said, "I need to talk to you. So I asked for the captain to report on you to J. Edgar Hoover, a month ago."	22:08
Sally Graham	He told you that he was doing a report—	22:36
Stine George	Oh yeah.	22:37
Sally Graham	For J. Edgar Hoover—	22:37
Stine George	Yeah.	22:37
Sally Graham	On you?	22:37
Stine George	Yeah, mm-hmm.	22:40
Sally Graham	This is like '68, '69?	22:40
Stine George	This is—	22:40
Doris Strong George	'70.	22:41
Stine George	This is '70.	22:41
Sally Graham	'70!	22:41
Stine George	'70! So he said, "Look, I got to have that report. I got to have that report. This report was already supposed to be sent in." He said, "When can I see you?" I said, "Whenever." He said, "Well I'll see you tomorrow." He's like, "I'll see you tomorrow. I'll get this report then." He said, "Tell me how you get out there?" I said, "Look here, man. If you can find him on the telephone, you sure can find your way out here."	22:44
Sally Graham	That's great!	23:09
Stine George	I said, "I'll be here. I'll be here at nine o'clock." Sure as nine o'clock, he was there.	23:12
Doris Strong George	[indistinct 00:23:17] wasn't he?	23:17
Stine George	McGraw? McGraw?	23:17
Doris Strong George	He was Black or White?	23:17
Stine George	Tall White guy. Big tall, burly White guy.	23:20
Doris Strong George	Oh, oh. [indistinct 00:23:25].	23:24
Stine George	He came in and interrogated me from nine o'clock 'til twelve thirty.	23:24
Sally Graham	Why did he interview you? I mean [indistinct 00:23:32]—	23:29
Stine George	Well the idea was—	23:31
Doris Strong George	[indistinct 00:23:33] aggressor, was an aggressor.	23:31
Stine George	That's when they had renovated all these—	23:35
Doris Strong George	The Communists.	23:38
Stine George	Yeah, they thought that too, but see they had renovated all these—	23:39
Sally Graham	Oh, right.	23:44
Stine George	Concentration camps. That's when they had renovated all these concentration camps. They had earmarked the Blacks to go in those camps, Black leaders. They had at least over ten thousand—	23:44
Doris Strong George	[indistinct 00:23:52].	23:50
Stine George	They had over ten thousand—	23:51
Doris Strong George	[indistinct 00:23:52].	23:52
Stine George	They had over ten thousand Blacks for listed to go in the concentration camps. That's when, you remember when they had—	23:52
Sally Graham	Where were those concentration camps?	24:03
Stine George	One in Louisiana. They had one in Louisiana.	24:05
Doris Strong George	What part?	24:07
Stine George	Had two in California and had another—	24:07
Doris Strong George	What part of Louisiana?	24:11
Stine George	I don't know where it's at, but in Louisiana. If you remember that Mariel Boat lift out of Cuba, if you remember, they put them in that same camp, one of those camps, they had to repair to put Black folks. They already had them restored, refurbished. They refurbished three of those camps and they had a list of over, J. Edgar Hoover had a list of over ten thousand Black leaders and they were going to—	24:13
Doris Strong George	They were going to put you in one?	24:33
Stine George	Put them in those camps. I just told you.	24:36
Sally Graham	[indistinct 00:24:37].	24:36
Stine George	I just told you the truth.	24:36
Doris Strong George	I know.	24:37
Stine George	So anyway, they said all kinds of stuff. He asked me all kinds of questions. I was just thinking before you came in today, I said, "Well if you know anything about me, the justice department, they can send you all that information they got off me at that time."	24:39
Sally Graham	Have you ever done that?	24:53
Stine George	Huh?	24:57
Sally Graham	Like can you get that information?	24:57
Stine George	My folks got it, after the '70s. A lot of folks wrote and got, I just never wrote [indistinct 00:25:05].	24:59
Doris Strong George	[indistinct 00:25:05]. I want to see.	25:05
Stine George	But see all of them [indistinct 00:25:09]—	25:05
Sally Graham	It's like Freedom of Information Act, or something?	25:11
Stine George	Huh?	25:11
Sally Graham	It's like Freedom of Information Act, you should be able to get?	25:11
Stine George	Yeah well anything they've written up for you, you can find. Anything on you. But a lot of folks got their stuff from up there.	25:12
Sally Graham	Wow.	25:16
Stine George	I just never—	25:16
Doris Strong George	Go get yours.	25:16
Stine George	Was really trying to get mine.	25:16
Doris Strong George	I want to know what they said about you.	25:16
Stine George	I don't want to know that stuff. He interrogated me—	25:16
Doris Strong George	I want to know what they said about you.	25:16
Stine George	Interrogated me from nine o'clock to twelve thirty that day.	25:25
Sally Graham	So how did they hear about you? They just heard that you were doing—	25:28
Stine George	Well he said—	25:30
Sally Graham	Grassroots organizations?	25:30
Stine George	Well I tell you what—	25:33
Doris Strong George	How'd they find out about you?	25:33
Stine George	The truth was—	25:33
Doris Strong George	How'd they find out about you?	25:33
Stine George	That was true, but on then on the other hand, well having been with the Ford Foundation and having, being a vocational ag fellow and being involved in the local community, because there were White folks down there. They tell everything. See, I had called in Teddy Kennedy, the one that's up there now. That's the one I talked to.	25:36
Doris Strong George	Edward.	26:03
Stine George	Edward Kennedy.	26:03
Doris Strong George	[indistinct 00:26:07].	26:03
Stine George	I got him down there to get the justice department to send us some poll watchers down there. A year before that time.	26:07
Doris Strong George	He was writing him letters all the time.	26:16
Sally Graham	That was about '69?	26:16
Stine George	Yeah and let's see. Now all those things just kind of went together and they just marked me as being a Communist. See that's another thing. See, like nobody don't know this. I don't tell this, really. But see, when I left, when I left the education system in '70, see even though they closed my department, see the state of Georgia did what they call blackball me, for nothing. Just simply because I was acting and see, because I would not accept the kind of integration they tried to impose on us and because I almost did the thing [indistinct 00:26:58], but the truth is, I was perhaps the most vocal person in the ag fellow group. I organized an opposition group up at Blakely, to fight that merger thing and then the guys told it on me and it broke up the organization at that time. But—	26:17
Doris Strong George	[indistinct 00:27:19].	27:18
Stine George	But the big problem was—	27:19
Doris Strong George	[indistinct 00:27:22].	27:22
Stine George	See in 1970, 1969, we'd been having our state meetings in Atlanta and of course, at Biltmore Hotel. Well what would happen there, it was disgraceful. It was disgraceful what they did to us. We would go up there and they would put is in a section of the Biltmore Hotel, I don't know if you've ever been to Atlanta. It's got a place called the Biltmore Hotel. It's an old motel.	27:22
Doris Strong George	It was [indistinct 00:27:47].	27:47
Stine George	That's where Black people would go. They would put us on one side on the darn motel, down one side. It was about five or six floors. The White folks would be in the better section on this side of the motel. We would have meetings. Now what would happen is, they would have, White folks having their state meeting like they always have them. You know what I mean?	27:48
Sally Graham	Mm-hmm.	28:10
Stine George	They tell us, "Now boys, y'all go downstairs and y'all talk."	28:11
Doris Strong George	Boys?	28:15
Stine George	Yeah. "Til we get through.	28:16
Doris Strong George	[indistinct 00:28:17].	28:16
Stine George	"Then we'll call y'all up there, to meet with us." Another words, they wanted us to do away with our separate unit all together.	28:17
Doris Strong George	[indistinct 00:28:27].	28:26
Stine George	As far as the federal government knew, we had no Black unit down South. We done merged in with them. So our state supervisor, who wanted to retire, he didn't want to challenge them on what they were doing to us. So he just accepted this and in fact, he was passing out literature too all the time at the door and of course, I'm sitting there bitching and me the most time and of course, my brother now he teaches too over at Meadow and of course, I didn't want him in it. But I wanted to do all that stuff myself. I didn't want him in it. But he wasn't quite as vocal as I was, but he was quite vocal. What I did, because this guy was so afraid, the Black guy was so afraid, I would talk about their families.	28:27
Stine George	I would show them where we were serving and what effect it was having on us. So that last year, 1969, just before I was terminated from down there, see we were to have, the state of Georgia was going to have the National Vocational Association vice president that year. I mean another words, the ag program, the ag teachers of Georgia, were going to have the vice president for the National Vocational Association, okay? All right. We weren't supposed to have a unit all together, but yet, we go down there and meet and just talk. Then when they get ready for us, they're like officers for the year that represent all of us and then we go up there and sit up with them and listen to their officers preside. Well that wasn't right, see? So here we were, we had all these [indistinct 00:30:12] in there even from Washington that day and they're going to elect this vice president for the national office.	29:14
Stine George	They already elected him up there and they done decided who they wanted and then we weren't supposed to be a part of it. But we knew about it. So when we got up there and all about six hundred of us sitting in that room. We were sitting with those White folks then, see and all these different [indistinct 00:30:43] from different places sitting up in there and they're going, "Georgia this year has got to have the vice president for the National Vocational Association. So we're going to elect our representative, see?" Then they decided they were going to do it by affirmation see, so they jump up and nominate, which was silly. Nominate this one White guy they had picked to represent us.	30:24
Stine George	So then they said, "Any more nominations?" And God knows, I didn't know what I was going to say. I jumped up, from way in the back of that building and I ran all the way up to the stage. I said to them, "Yes, I have a nomination." Even at that point, I didn't know who I was going to say. But I knew my brother was strong and he was sitting up there on the stage. They let the four Blacks sit on the stage, with nothing to say. Just sit up there.	31:09
Sally Graham	Just sit up there.	31:37
Stine George	Just sit up there and the White folks do all the presiding and they just sitting there. I ran up there and I said, "I nominate William George Junior." That was my brother. Boy, there wasn't a sound. God, there wasn't a sound. Oh, everything went hush, hush. Then, finally someone got up and said, "Well, he's Black. He can't hold office with the National Vocational Association."	31:37
Sally Graham	They said that?	32:03
Stine George	Yeah. "He's never been, because that group has never been in our committee, so they can't hold office with the National Vocational Association." They sent my brother out. Then they asked the other Black guy, who was our president, before the merger all about it. He did a good job. He told them, he said, "Yeah, our organization is comparable to theirs. We pay the same dues." But we found out at that point, that we were paying nine thousand, I mean we were paying twelve thousand for insurance. They paying nine thousand for the same insurance. We found that out that day and then he went on to explain that to them and all that kind of stuff. So then, the state supervisor, he was [indistinct 00:32:55] Branch. He jumped up and man he just asked me to withdraw. He was beginning to cry. I mean, I've embarrassed him so bad. He said, "If you withdraw your nomination," he said, "I would personally appoint some Blacks to some of our committees, so next year they can hold office on the national level."	32:04
Stine George	So only that time I withdrew my nomination and then of course, just look up [indistinct 00:33:25] and all your second nomination that way, I withdrew my nomination on my brother then and went back. He's talked about it. He's took a seat. Then of course, they did appoint some Blacks to that committee and then three years from that point, they were letting them serve on some of the committees. But up to that time, it never happened. Then that's when from that little episode, they blackballed me in the state. Then what happened was—	33:18
Sally Graham	That meeting date was in 19—	33:56
Stine George	Huh? This is 1969.	33:56
Sally Graham	1969.	33:56
Stine George	All right and then what happened then was, well see I was up in '70, for a job, okay? They closed my department down there. Had jobs all over the state. But all of these district supervisors, so all of them were there that day. They told the state man, "Give me anybody but Scotty George. Don't send me George over here." All over the state, see? Then, I didn't know what was going on. Nobody had called me and then I knew there were jobs, but nobody had called me. My state supervisor, he wouldn't tell me either. So what happened was, a lady I knew that was the secretary, a Black man's secretary in the Fort Valley, got her hair done at a beautician's place there in Fort Valley. She knew me from having been there before.	33:57
Stine George	She calls me and tells me what's going on. Then she sets up an appointment with me, with this secretary and she tells me, she says, "It ain't right. Every time they call, they say anybody but you. They don't want you." But she didn't tell the supervisor that she had told me what was going on. So I was home one Sunday morning, I was home from over here. I was working. I mean I'd done got a job and started working. I was at home that Sunday morning. That was almost a year later and so he called. He didn't know I was working either. He called and said, "Hey look here. I got you a job in [indistinct 00:35:34]. An ag teaching job in [indistinct 00:35:37]." Said, "You want it?" I said, "Yeah." I just said it, because I know he won't let me have it. I knew I wasn't going to get it, based on what was being said already.	34:56
Stine George	So he said, "Well, meet me over there Wednesday at nine o'clock at the school over there, at nine o'clock on Wednesday and we're going to go up and talk to the superintendent." So that was on Sunday and Tuesday, he calls back and he told me he was going to call me Tuesday night anyway. So I go back over there and I come here to work and I go back over there and wait for him to call me. He calls me. He said, "Look I'm sorry, I can't meet you tomorrow, because the superintendent decided he doesn't want you."	35:45
Sally Graham	Oh my gosh.	36:17
Stine George	That's what happened. They blackballed me in the state and then they came and said, well anybody I talked to, somebody of authority said, "Well you got to go to Atlanta and talk to them and maybe some kind of pardon maybe would give you your job back, or restore you in the active in the state." But I got [indistinct 00:36:42] everything. But yeah, they blackballed me so I could not work. Anyway, trying to destroy me, get rid of me. But it hasn't worked, worth nothing. Lord's taken good care of me. I'm still going strong.	36:22
Sally Graham	Obviously. [laughs]	36:56
Stine George	Damn, I—anyway.	36:56

Item Info

Title:

Doris George (primary interviewee) and Stine George interview recording, 1994 June 28

Date:

June 26, 1994

Creator:

Contributor:

Graham, Sally

Description:

Name: Doris Strong George; Date of birth: 1929-06-11; Place of birth: Moultrie, GA; Occupation(s): funeral director; educator; Residence: Moultrie, GA. Name: Stine Paul George; Date of birth: 1931-04-23; Place of birth: Metter, GA; Occupation(s): agriculture; Residence: Moultrie, GA.
Informant ID: 780, 779; interviewed by: Sally Graham.

Occupation:

Agriculture

Format:

Language:

English

Digital Collection:

Behind the Veil

Source Collection:

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

Series:

Related Resources:

See below

Provenance:

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

Rights:

Limited Re-Use

CC BY-NC 4.0

Rights Note:

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.

Identifier:

RL00170-CS-0187
RL00170-CS-0188
RL00170-CS-0189
RL00170-CS-0190
d6d624d3-f339-40c7-bfbb-928af44db763
behindtheveil
06670352-d691-45db-aeb4-1557b97ddf38
ark:/87924/r4086ff09
06670352-d691-45db-aeb4-1557b97ddf38

Permalink:

https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r4086ff09

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Doris George (primary interviewee) and Stine George interview recording, 1994 June 28

Transcript

Item Info

1. Doris George administrative file, 1994

2. Doris George slides: 1992 Reunion Officers and Committees, circa 1991

3. Doris George slides: Ausberry Strong, Doris George's great grandfather, 1900s

John Hope Franklin Research Center

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Doris George (primary interviewee) and Stine George interview recording, 1994 June 28

Transcript

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John Hope Franklin Research Center

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