Dolores Bradley interview recording, 1995 July 23

Download
- Rights
- Limited Re-Use
  CC BY-NC 4.0
  More Rights Info
- Files (2)
- MP3 Part 1
- MP3 Part 2
- Please be patient with media downloads. They are often large files.
Share

Embed Code
<iframe src='https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r4d79hk9s?embed=true' height='125px' width='100%' frameborder='0' marginwidth='0' marginheight='0' scrolling='no' loading='lazy' allowfullscreen></iframe>
Permalink

https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r4d79hk9s
Skip to Item Info

Loading the media player...

Files for this Item

Transcript

Transcripts may contain inaccuracies.

Kisha Turner	Can we begin by you stating your full name and when you were born?	0:06
Dolores Coker Bradley	My full name is Dolores Coker Bradley. I was born on October 30th, 1934.	0:11
Kisha Turner	Where were you born?	0:23
Dolores Coker Bradley	I was born in Garysburg, North Carolina, which is in Northhampton County.	0:24
Kisha Turner	Northhampton, and what was Gary like that you can remember from your childhood, in terms of, what kind of work did people generally do?	0:30
Dolores Coker Bradley	It was basically a farming community, very small town. The people were either farmers, worked at the mill, or school teachers.	0:40
Kisha Turner	Okay. Did you live in the town or did you live out in the outskirts, in the rural?	0:54
Dolores Coker Bradley	Both. Where I was born was out at my grandparents' farm, which was about three miles out of town, and we stayed out there until—I guess I was about 10 years old, and then my parents built a house in the little town.	0:59
Kisha Turner	Okay. So your family lived—You lived with your grandmother.	1:23
Dolores Coker Bradley	In the house with my grandmother.	1:27
Kisha Turner	In the house with your grandmother.	1:28
Dolores Coker Bradley	With my parents. Yeah.	1:30
Kisha Turner	Right. Okay, so you were born in the home, in your grandmother's home?	1:32
Dolores Coker Bradley	Mm-hmm.	1:34
Kisha Turner	By midwife?	1:35
Dolores Coker Bradley	Yes.	1:36
Kisha Turner	Okay, was that generally—	1:37
Dolores Coker Bradley	That was the general policy. Mrs. Copeland, I think everybody that was born in that era, almost every Black person around me, she was one of the midwives.	1:39
Kisha Turner	Ms. Copeland?	1:52
Dolores Coker Bradley	Yes.	1:53
Kisha Turner	Okay. Okay. Did your grandmother—What kind of work did your parents do and what kind of work did your grandparents do?	1:54
Dolores Coker Bradley	My grandparents were farmers. My father started out as a farmer, then he was a carpenter, and my mother didn't really work for a while. She had two years of college, but she didn't—She helped out, I guess, on the farm a little bit, but not—I don't remember her doing that much farm work other than her garden and stuff like that. Then she went to work later.	2:02
Kisha Turner	Okay. Now, did your grandparents do commercial farming or was it primarily just for your family's subsistence?	2:43
Dolores Coker Bradley	It was, no, that was their livelihood.	2:49
Kisha Turner	Okay. Okay. What crops did they cultivate?	2:52
Dolores Coker Bradley	Peanuts, cotton, corn.	2:55
Kisha Turner	Did you ever help out on the farm?	2:58
Dolores Coker Bradley	A little, yes. I was never great at it.	3:02
Kisha Turner	Okay.	3:06
Dolores Coker Bradley	I tried picking cotton. We didn't have to do peanuts and stuff because the men more or less did that. I did some chopping. They used to have, you'd take the hoe and go out there and weed the stuff, but I didn't really do a whole lot of it. My father used to jokingly say that he got off the farm because he would've starved to death if he'd have depended on his children and his wife on the farm.	3:08
Kisha Turner	Speaking of his children, how many of them were you?	3:38
Dolores Coker Bradley	Just my brother and I. He's two years older.	3:41
Kisha Turner	Okay. Did y'all raise any livestock?	3:45
Dolores Coker Bradley	Yes. Cows for milk, and horses and mules, but I mean, that was on the farm. That's about it. No livestock for commercial use.	3:50
Kisha Turner	Now, how long had your grandparents lived in this town? Were they also raised in the area?	4:09
Dolores Coker Bradley	I know that my grandmother was. Her family goes back, went back at least two or three generations there. We weren't so sure of my grandfather's family. I never really—Well, I'll take that back. I knew a couple of his sisters. In fact, he's got a niece right here, but we kind of think that he came from South Carolina.	4:19
Kisha Turner	Okay. Okay. Living with them, did they tell you any stories? I don't know, about the way things were when they were younger, that stand out?	4:50
Dolores Coker Bradley	No, not that much. My cousin, Essie and I, my Aunt Verlie, who was real, very articulate, and she was a retired school teacher, and by the time we really got interested in what was going on, sister was not as clear as she had been. My mother used to talk a lot about her childhood, but I never—I don't remember ever hearing a whole lot about my grandparents' childhood.	4:59
Kisha Turner	How long did your grandparents—Did they own the land they worked?	5:34
Dolores Coker Bradley	Part of it. They owned where they lived, but they didn't own the—They rented or whatever, some farmland.	5:38
Kisha Turner	Okay. Okay. I see. You mentioned that your mother often told you about things when she was younger, the way things were. What did she tell you?	5:51
Dolores Coker Bradley	Well, my mother grew up in another part of North Carolina. She grew up in a little town called Middlesex, North Carolina, which is near Raleigh, and her father was a log-woods person. He cut trees and he had trucks and what have you, and that's how he made his living. They didn't have a high school in their town, so they went away to boarding school. First they went and stayed with some relatives, then they ended up at boarding school.	5:58
Kisha Turner	What boarding school?	6:47
Dolores Coker Bradley	Boyden Institute in Boyden, Virginia.	6:51
Kisha Turner	This is one of the Black private schools we were talking about the other day, that you said there were more of them.	6:55
Dolores Coker Bradley	Right, right, that no longer exist. Right.	7:00
Kisha Turner	Did she ever tell you what that was like?	7:05
Dolores Coker Bradley	Apparently she loved it. I have some pictures of her from high school and she seemed to be—She talked about it very fondly, and there were a couple of people that she knew, that she remained friends with, that were from that high school, but she didn't finish high school at Boyden Institute. She came to Garysburg and that's where she actually met my father.	7:07
Kisha Turner	Okay. Can I ask you something? Do you know, were these schools founded by Black people?	7:42
Dolores Coker Bradley	I can't be—I really can't say. She never really mentioned. I think that most of the—If not all, most of the faculties were Black, and I just have a feeling they were.	7:47
Kisha Turner	Okay. Do you know, were they all girls schools or co-ed schools?	8:04
Dolores Coker Bradley	I think that was an all girls school.	8:10
Kisha Turner	Okay. What about your own education?	8:11
Dolores Coker Bradley	I went to the public schools in Northampton County, and then I left there and I attended Northrup State for two years, and then I went on to North Carolina Central for two years.	8:22
Kisha Turner	The public schools you attended in Northampton County were segregated?	8:49
Dolores Coker Bradley	Yes. Yes. In fact, when I started school, we had to walk two and a half miles, because I lived—I started school, we lived in a little house. We didn't live with my grandparents until we moved into our own house. My father rented a house near my grandparents, just across the road from them, but it was still two and a half miles from town, so we had to walk into town to the elementary school, and the White kids used to ride by us on the bus.	8:54
Dolores Coker Bradley	There was a family that we used to play with, the Cooks, and the youngest daughter's name was Barbara Ann. She was somewhere between Essie and me, in age. We were real good friends, but then when she started to school, she went one way and we went another. I can remember her family, her walking out to the road, and she had to pass our house to get to the road where the school bus picked her up, and the school bus would come and pick her up, and we had to walk past them and walk two and a half miles into town.	9:40
Kisha Turner	Were there many other White families in the kind of immediate area you lived in?	10:28
Dolores Coker Bradley	They were dotted here and there, but actually, and I didn't realize it until much later, there were many more Blacks in my hometown than there were Whites. There were the Cooks, that I just mentioned. Then there was a family that lived right near us called the Stokeses, a real poor White family.	10:36
Kisha Turner	Did they also rent land?	11:03
Dolores Coker Bradley	Yeah. You know they were poor if they accepted clothes that my mother gave them, of mine. My mother used to give them—She was friendly with Mrs. Stokes and she had a whole lot of children, and Mother used to give them things that were mine, because, just being the one girl. Then, I had aunts who were in the north who were working, my Aunt Verlie who was teaching and what have you, so they were really—Fortunately, I always had plenty. I didn't realize we were poor until I grew up.	11:04
Kisha Turner	From how far around did people come to go to these schools that you went to? Were they in a kind of center?	11:48
Dolores Coker Bradley	They were bused in.	11:55
Kisha Turner	Town center?	11:55
Dolores Coker Bradley	People would come from as far as 20 miles away.	11:59
Kisha Turner	These children, they didn't walk 20—	12:03
Dolores Coker Bradley	No. No, no. There were buses. The buses weren't—There weren't any Black buses originally, I don't think, when I first started to school, because I can remember my older cousin who was almost 10 years older than me, and his friends. He would wait for them, and they came from a little town, it's called Pleasant Hill, which was two miles beyond where we lived. They had to walk up almost five miles into town. Then, I can remember a man named Mr. Buffalo, and my dad, Mr. Earl, who was the principal at that time. I guess I must have been between eight and 10 or 11 years old, because I vividly remember when they fought to get the school buses for the Black students to ride. They had meetings and what have you, and basically, that was the same group of people that organized the NAACP in our county.	12:07
Kisha Turner	Okay. Now, the bus issue came first and then NAACP. Do you remember the NAACP people coming and hearing about their involvement in the effort to get a bus for the children?	13:26
Dolores Coker Bradley	In the bus? I can't be 100% sure, but they were sort of—I think the bus issue came up. Now, I somehow don't remember the NAACP being involved in the bus issue, but it was, as I remember it, it was shortly thereafter that I think these same people decided that if they were going to make any progress or whatever, that they needed the NAACP. My cousin Jake, my dad, Mr. Buffalo, Mr. Earl, and a lot of people in the—A lot of them were school teachers and what have you. They were in very influential in organizing—In the bus thing first, and organizing the NAACP.	13:37
Kisha Turner	Were they successful?	14:29
Dolores Coker Bradley	Oh, yeah. In both endeavors. Then after the bus, they got a gym, because I can also remember when all of our activities, physical activities at school or what have you, were outside. Even the basketball team, when my cousin, the one that I said was older, when he played basketball, they had basketball courts outside. I must have been maybe third or fourth grade when they built the gym.	14:31
Kisha Turner	Okay. How many grades was in the school?	15:12
Dolores Coker Bradley	Kindergarten through seven, at that time, was in the little school, as we called it. Then almost on the same campus, right up the hill, was the high school, and it was eight through 12 at that time.	15:19
Kisha Turner	Okay. What was the name of it?	15:31
Dolores Coker Bradley	Northampton County Training School. Most of the Black schools, for whatever reason, were called training schools. Because, when I say now that I went to Northampton County Training School, sounds like I was in a reform school or something.	15:37
Kisha Turner	That's probably what they were trying to [indistinct 00:15:54].	15:51
Dolores Coker Bradley	There was the Southampton, over—The next county in Virginia was Southampton County. That's where Nat Turner had the insurrection and what have you, and friends of mine, because they were only maybe six, seven miles from us, they went to Southampton County Training School, but that was in Virginia.	15:54
Kisha Turner	All right. You said they were successful in getting the buses and getting the gym. How did the White community react to this movement?	16:16
Dolores Coker Bradley	I don't remember any—I'm sure that was resistance from the powers that be and the folks that held the monies, but I don't remember any open hostility. I remember some open hostility about voting, but that was much later. The thing was to convince the county superintendent that Black folks should have buses as well as White folks, because we had kids. My aunt taught in a little place called Gaston, which was between 18 or 20 miles away from where the high school was, where we lived. Those kids had to come in and live with families during the week and go home on the weekend and what have you, because they couldn't come back and forth back then. A few of them had cars, but in those days, I'm talking about long before I was in high school, not a lot of people had cars.	16:27
Kisha Turner	What grade were you in when they got the buses?	17:42
Dolores Coker Bradley	I must have been pretty low grade. I must have been in elementary, because by the time I got to high school, they were in place. I must have been maybe second or third grade, but I can remember the—I don't know if I remember all of it so much as I remember them talking about it.	17:48
Kisha Turner	Yeah, okay. Other than the schools, what were some other evidence of segregation or separate—	18:09
Dolores Coker Bradley	I remember the worst thing that I ever knew that happened in our county. Again, I was quite young, but they talked about it so much because it was very unusual. A fellow named Buddy Bush, who was a young fellow, I think he was an older teenager or something, supposedly said something fresh or looked at this White woman. He looked at her recklessly, and they put him in jail, and then a lynch mob broke him out of jail, and I think they hung him.	18:20
Kisha Turner	Wow. When was this?	19:07
Dolores Coker Bradley	Again, this had to be late '30s, maybe, because I was real small.	19:12
Kisha Turner	You remember hearing about it?	19:15
Dolores Coker Bradley	Yeah. I vaguely remember when it happened, but they talked about it so long and so much that a lot of it, I think I know from people talking, because it just wasn't something that usually happened around there, and that was really a bad thing.	19:18
Kisha Turner	Now, I'm sure people were very angry. I mean, in addition to other emotions. What were kinds of, if you can remember any of the, just feeling, the things people were saying?	19:38
Dolores Coker Bradley	They were really angry and upset. Again, I was really kind of small, and I think that was perhaps one of the things that kind of started them, because it became a fairly progressive community. As time went on, I think they were—The voting, the thrust to vote, came early. I can remember one of my cousins who at the time spoke about at least four languages, and he was a college professor, Edward Rice, he had come home. He taught at St. Aug in Raleigh, and he came home to sort of spearhead the voting drive and stuff.	19:53
Dolores Coker Bradley	He went to try to register to vote, and they asked him to recite parts of the Constitution or something ridiculous, not even the preamble. Something, and it made the papers and everything at that time, because he was a man who—Some of the people who were asking him to do this could hardly write their names, and he was a very learned man. Well, that kind of spearheaded, really spearheaded the voting rights thing. Going back to what you're saying, what happened after this Buddy Bush thing? I think that that might have been one of the incidents that led to some of the things that happened after that.	20:57
Kisha Turner	Okay. Did Whites in that town establish a White Citizens' Council?	21:51
Dolores Coker Bradley	No, no. To my knowledge, and I have to say to my knowledge, there were none of the organizations. Some of them may have been Ku Klux Klan, but we never heard of Ku Klux Klan in my area.	21:56
Kisha Turner	Now, was the Buddy Bush incident KKK, or was this just some—	22:11
Dolores Coker Bradley	I think it was just vigilante. I never heard KKK mentioned. I think it was just a bunch of angry, poor White folks.	22:15
Kisha Turner	Just came and got him. Wow, okay. How long was it, or, if you can remember, just the whole movement for voting rights, was this a community effort? Was everyone pretty much involved? Was it a certain group that was active?	22:24
Dolores Coker Bradley	It was a community effort, because I can remember them having meetings, and the people from the farms and from everything. They would have meetings at the school, and some of the meetings would be at our church, too, but they managed to get a lot of people involved in that. There were a lot of poor people in our county, which is true, but there were a lot of Black landowners, and these people didn't seem to be really afraid, so they became involved.	22:45
Kisha Turner	Now, okay.	23:28
Dolores Coker Bradley	Oh, that's—	23:30
Kisha Turner	In Summerton, they had a similar kind of, with the buses and so forth, and it was primarily the landowners who could kind of go out there and stick their neck out. That was pretty much the situation because they weren't as dependent.	23:31
Dolores Coker Bradley	I think that was kind of true, because it was kind of hard to convince somebody who's living in someone else's house and scratching for everything and they've got children and the whole nine yards, and if Mr. Whomever threw them off the land, where would they go? This is what they thought at the time. It was kind of hard, but I'm sure that some of the people who were involved, eventually at least, were people who were not landowners.	23:48
Kisha Turner	It was interesting that you said you met in the public school as well as the churches. Okay. What churches, do you remember?	24:31
Dolores Coker Bradley	I remember, of course, our own church, Roanoke Salem Baptist Church, which was about the oldest church. It's about 150 years old now. It was established—I heard my grandmother say this so many times, established in a bush harbor before the end of slavery, and—	24:42
Kisha Turner	What's a bush harbor?	25:05
Dolores Coker Bradley	I asked the same question, but a bush harbor was, they had built a shelter out of bushes and trees. They didn't have a tent or a building, so I guess to be away from the weather and from whatever, they probably used their African skills and almost made a lattice, whatever they call it, roof, and made a structure out of bushes. They called it harbor, safe harbor, so I guess that's why it was called a bush harbor. Then, I'll tell you an interesting story about that church. The church originally, they managed to get some property after, when they decided to build. It was right next to or between two large White owners' land. They didn't want the Black church there, so they gave, in exchange for that, they gave the church members the land where the church is now. They gave them, let's say they had 20 acres before. Maybe they gave them 40 acres.	25:09
Dolores Coker Bradley	Well, they came and they built the church. Started with a little white structure, because I have some pictures of that. Just last year, year before last, I think it was in 1993 or something, they discovered that there were 35 acres of land that this White man, Mr. Sykes, had claimed for his own, and he had had Black sharecroppers tending this land along with the other acreage that he owned, which adjoined it, but this land belonged to Roanoke Salem Baptist Church. His grandson, I believe it was, must have decided he wanted to get into heaven or something, so he approached them. They realized in recent years that this land was theirs, and they had a fight, an ongoing fight to try to reclaim this land.	26:48
Dolores Coker Bradley	Well, I think it was about three years ago that this grandson, I think, of this old man Sykes re-deeded the land back to the church, so they had a big celebration called the Jubilee to celebrate getting this land, which was theirs, which had been theirs for almost 100 years, but had been taken from them. Many of the church members, ironically, had lived on this land and sharecropped it and didn't realize it was their own land, so to speak.	28:06
Kisha Turner	Wow.	28:41
Dolores Coker Bradley	Yeah, so that was one of the stories I remember.	28:42
Kisha Turner	Wow, that's interesting. Did your family, y'all went to church together on Sunday?	28:44
Dolores Coker Bradley	Oh, yeah.	28:50
Kisha Turner	Now, did you go every Sunday?	28:51
Dolores Coker Bradley	Went to Sunday school every Sunday. We didn't have church every Sunday. We had church once a month at our church, and sometimes we went to neighboring churches. Our minister also pastored a church in the next town, which was Seaboard, and so we sometimes went there. I think it was second Sunday, he was there, fourth Sunday, he was at our church, but we had Sunday school every Sunday and we went to Sunday school. Don't care what you did, you went to Sunday school.	28:53
Kisha Turner	Were your parents active in the church?	29:30
Dolores Coker Bradley	Yes. My mother more than my father. My father attended church every Sunday, but my father, being the rascal that he was, he knew whatever. Anyway, he attended church, paid his dues, whatever, but my mother was very active with the Sunday school, the missionaries, and the choir, and other kinds of things.	29:33
Kisha Turner	What is your church, the physical structure? How did it look?	30:03
Dolores Coker Bradley	As I said, it evolved from a wooden, white, little white wooden country church, until now. Essie probably has a picture. I have beautiful pictures at home. We have a plate with it on it. Now, it's a beautiful brick—For many years it's been brick, but they've added onto it. It's a very large church now. Air conditioned, with an education building, and it's really—It's always been a very progressive church, even when it was before.	30:10
Kisha Turner	How about your school? How big was it? I forgot to ask you about your school.	30:48
Dolores Coker Bradley	Small. Are you talking high school or elementary?	30:52
Kisha Turner	Both.	30:57
Dolores Coker Bradley	Elementary was small. It was a one-story building with, what? Seven classes? Kindergarten through grade seven, was in this building. I guess it had seven or eight rooms or something, because we did have an auditorium. I remember the auditorium. That was about it. I don't remember a library at all. Even in high school, we had a library, but we didn't have a librarian. There was just a room set aside with a few books in it.	30:58
Dolores Coker Bradley	I was always a reader, and I remember, I don't know if I was telling you, but Essie and I were talking about it recently. We had a little library in—Not even in my town, I don't even remember there being a public library in my town, but my town and another little town called Weldon joined each other, so a lot of what we did was in Weldon. They had a small library there, and I remember walking by it all during my school and what have you, and never being able to go in it because it was a White library.	31:50
Dolores Coker Bradley	I came to Norfolk, as I did very often, and for some reason, I guess I was in high school by then. Essie needed something from the library, and we went over to the public library, which was downtown Norfolk, and we walked right in and all those books, and all those—I couldn't believe it, that here I am walking into a library. It was the first time I ever walked into a public library.	32:34
Kisha Turner	Okay. In Norfolk. Did you travel here, travel to Norfolk often?	33:03
Dolores Coker Bradley	Yes.	33:14
Kisha Turner	Did you have family in Norfolk?	33:14
Dolores Coker Bradley	Yes.	33:15
Kisha Turner	What brought you?	33:15
Dolores Coker Bradley	All my father's—Well, during the war, there were jobs in Norfolk, so my uncle moved to Norfolk first to get a job at the naval base or shipyard or something, and subsequently he brought my grandmother down here, and my two aunts eventually came here. By the time I was up and able, older and able to travel and what have you, all of my father's family, his immediate family, was here, so it was not unusual for us to come here for a weekend or something like that.	33:16
Kisha Turner	How did you travel?	34:10
Dolores Coker Bradley	By train or by car. There was a train that ran right from my hometown right to Norfolk, because we were right on the Seaboard Railroad and it ran here. Very often, particularly if my dad wasn't coming, my mother and my brother and I would get on the train. After we got up a little bit, she put the two of us on the train. We'd be 10, 11, 12 years old, and they put us on there. It was only about two hours or something, and my Uncle William would meet us here.	34:13
Kisha Turner	Was the train segregated?	34:51
Dolores Coker Bradley	Yes, there was a car.	34:52
Kisha Turner	What was that experience like? There was a car designated?	34:55
Dolores Coker Bradley	Yes. That was humiliating. Both going from here, and we used to go to New Jersey, and we would—From here, when I say from here, from North Carolina up to Washington DC, you would be in a segregated car. Then when you got to Washington, they changed the engine or changed the trains and you might be in—Usually you still ended up in this car because it was usually filled with Black folks, but same thing on the train. It was segregated. The buses were too.	35:02
Kisha Turner	Okay. Were there two different entrances on the bus or was there one?	35:51
Dolores Coker Bradley	One entrance, but you just walked to the back of the bus.	35:55
Kisha Turner	Did you have to let White folks get off before you and get on before you?	35:59
Dolores Coker Bradley	I don't really remember that, but they probably did simply because they were upfront.	36:05
Kisha Turner	Okay. I'd heard that from some other people.	36:11
Dolores Coker Bradley	I can't really say that I truly remember that. Yeah, but I do remember going to the back of the bus.	36:13
Kisha Turner	Okay. About how large was your town in North Carolina?	36:21
Dolores Coker Bradley	About 5000.	36:25
Kisha Turner	5000?	36:27
Dolores Coker Bradley	Yeah.	36:27
Kisha Turner	What was it like coming to Norfolk?	36:28
Dolores Coker Bradley	It was going to the city, big-time.	36:29
Kisha Turner	Really?	36:34
Dolores Coker Bradley	Believe it or not, even though it was a small town and what have you, I always felt pretty okay.	36:38
Kisha Turner	5000 is not—I mean, there's smaller towns.	36:45
Dolores Coker Bradley	I felt pretty okay there. I think that the Black teachers were so nurturing and so kind, most of them. I mean, you always had someone who wasn't nice, but they were so kind and so caring and so much a part of the community that they kind of helped to shelter you from what was going on. In fact, I know, they just over—They really prepared us to go to college and to go to other—For when we got to the college, because when I got to college, I was there with—At Essie's high school, they had a nice science lab and all these other things, things that I'd never seen.	36:48
Dolores Coker Bradley	Our little biology lab or science room was a couple of microscopes and a couple of Bunsen burners, and some frogs and snakes in some formaldehyde. Then I went and I decided I was going to be—I started out as a history major. Then I decided to be a physical ed major, and as a physical ed major, I had to take a lot of science classes, and I was really at a distinct disadvantage. I had to really work hard in the science classes.	37:54
Kisha Turner	They did try to do what they could. They did the best they could.	38:41
Dolores Coker Bradley	Oh, yeah. My English teacher, teachers, in high school were second to none. I think that's where I really got a real love of words and writing and reading. Well, I always liked to read, but they really gave us a good foundation. Any college I ever went to, I always did real good in those subjects.	38:43
Kisha Turner	You mentioned that your teachers, they kind of shielded you in a way from the harsh kind of realities of segregation and racism. Did you sense that adults in general, Black adults, tried to do that for their children?	39:13
Dolores Coker Bradley	My parents did that. The parents and those who—Yes, in many ways. By sending us away, those who could, for experiences that were not offered there. Just by saying, for instance, we used to—After we got the gym, because we didn't have a Y or what have you, well, we used to have a canteen at the gym. We had a lot of activities, as I look around. Not a whole lot, but to try to, because there weren't any outside activities. We could go to the movie, but we were up in the balcony looking down, which we did. We went to the movie regularly, but none of the other things. We had a Black drug store and we could kind of go there and hang out a little bit. We had a Black doctor and a Black dentist.	39:27
Kisha Turner	Wow, okay.	40:34
Dolores Coker Bradley	Yes, not only did the teachers, but most of the parents.	40:43
Kisha Turner	What was the name of the Black drugstore?	40:53
Dolores Coker Bradley	Cook's. Cook's Terminal Pharmacy, because it was right by the railroad station, but Terminal Drugstore, it was called. Dr. Cook was—	40:57
Kisha Turner	Was he the doctor?	41:12
Dolores Coker Bradley	He was the pharmacist, but he was called Dr. Cook, and right up over the drug store was Dr. Tinsley, who was a general practitioner, Black doctor. Then, Dr. Horne was the Black dentist.	41:13
Kisha Turner	Okay. That's interesting. I can assume you all visited this doctor and dentist, or did you see someone else?	41:29
Dolores Coker Bradley	I saw Dr. Tinsley, but my grandparents' doctor was Dr. Suitor, believe it or not. It was a White doctor there in town. I guess they had been with Dr. Suitor before Dr. Tinsley came, maybe, but I never went to Dr. Horne because they said that he was a butcher.	41:38
Kisha Turner	That's the dentist?	42:05
Dolores Coker Bradley	Dr. Horne used to like to drink.	42:07
Kisha Turner	Oh, wow.	42:13
Dolores Coker Bradley	He was a nice man. He was married to one of my mother's friends, Ms. Amanda, but we didn't go to him.	42:13
Kisha Turner	If someone became seriously ill, where were they treated, or did they get treatment at all?	42:24
Dolores Coker Bradley	You mean in terms of hospital?	42:33
Kisha Turner	Yeah, if it was a case that we'd now probably hospitalize someone?	42:35
Dolores Coker Bradley	There was a little section at the hospital that was for Black folks. I don't remember anybody going to emergency, but I think if someone became seriously ill, they called one of the doctors. At that time, doctors did house calls, and I can remember my mother, yes. My mother became seriously ill, because it was a few days before Christmas when I was nine years old, and she had, her appendix erupted or they were about to erupt, and I think Dr. Suitor came out. I don't remember, came out to the house and he said she had to get to the hospital right away, and they did. She was over in the hospital, so they did have an area of the hospital that was set aside for Blacks.	42:42
Kisha Turner	There was a hospital in your town?	43:48
Dolores Coker Bradley	No, the hospital was in Roanoke Rapids, which was six miles away. There was, actually, I said there were two towns. They call it tri-cities, actually. There is Garysburg, Weldon, and Roanoke Rapids. Roanoke Rapids is the larger of the three. Garysburg is the smaller, my hometown. The hospital was in Roanoke Rapids, which was six or seven miles away.	43:51
Kisha Turner	Okay. All right.	44:17
Dolores Coker Bradley	That's where my uncle—That's where the mills were, the cotton mills and the JP Stevens and all those. My uncle used to work in the mill.	44:21
Kisha Turner	Did these Black businesses have any problem existing? Were they pretty much accepted by the White business community?	44:33
Dolores Coker Bradley	You mean like the drug store?	44:40
Kisha Turner	Mm-hmm.	44:41
Dolores Coker Bradley	I don't remember ever having any—Them having any problems, really, because the drug store was there until Dr. Cook died, I guess. As I said, upstairs was Dr. Tinsley, so I'm sure that Dr. Cook—I think he owned the building and I don't recall them having any problems with that.	44:44
Kisha Turner	Did anything impress you about Norfolk when you would take trips there? Anything that you can remember now?	45:14
Dolores Coker Bradley	Excuse me. Mm-hmm. Believe it or not, the fact that—One of the things that impressed me was that we could walk right out to the back of my uncle's house and get the trolley and go downtown, and the transportation thing of it, because there was no transportation in my town except for taxis. Somebody took you someplace, your parents' car, or if your parents didn't have a car, you were in trouble. I guess the mobility. I always liked city life, kind of. What else impressed me? The library, I told you. I mean, I was just bowled over by the library.	45:19
Kisha Turner	Was this a Black library, or had they desegregated the library?	46:18
Dolores Coker Bradley	No, no, no. This was the Norfolk Public Library downtown. Big building, marble building. What else impressed me about Norfolk?	46:19
Kisha Turner	Did your family ever take you to Church Street, or?	46:38
Dolores Coker Bradley	I went to school on Church Street. The Norfolk State was on Church Street when I went there. As young, very young people, yes, because there were a couple of real nice stores on Church Street. My aunt—	46:41

Kisha Turner	Okay, but go ahead.	0:03
Dolores Coker Bradley	That has been around. But Church Street was kind of off limits because, Church Street was a rough street.	0:05
Kisha Turner	That's what I've heard from other people.	0:14
Dolores Coker Bradley	Yeah. And you went to do what you had to do. If your church was on Church Street, if your school was on Church Street, well you did it in the daytime or what have you, but you just weren't allowed to hang around Church Street.	0:15
Kisha Turner	And what went on, on Church Street?	0:30
Dolores Coker Bradley	Well see, Norfolk was a sailor town.	0:31
Kisha Turner	Okay.	0:34
Dolores Coker Bradley	And all the Black sailors hung out on Church Street. The White drunk sailors hung out on Main Street, and that was definitely off limits, and you didn't want to be down there with them. But sailors were not looked upon favorably. I can remember, and as you can too, when even as—In high school or college or what have you, if you were dating a sailor, he never wore his uniform. He would put on his civilian clothes, because no nice girl dated a sailor. That kind of thing.	0:35
Kisha Turner	Get a bad reputation, huh?	1:11
Dolores Coker Bradley	Yeah. Yeah. So Church Street had a lot of bars and clubs and whatever, so you just didn't—	1:12
Kisha Turner	Didn't do that, huh?	1:27
Dolores Coker Bradley	Yeah. Liberty Street was not a whole lot better in Berkeley.	1:30
Kisha Turner	Okay. And was it kind of the same?	1:36
Dolores Coker Bradley	Yeah. They had bars and porn shops and a lot of stuff like that.	1:38
Kisha Turner	Now, were these pretty much Black run businesses that lined Church and Liberty streets?	1:46
Dolores Coker Bradley	Some of them were. I can remember, the drugstore on Liberty Street was Black, and of course, Dr. Francis's office was there, and funeral home. There were a number of Black businesses. And then, same thing on Church Street. But there were a lot of Jews in there too.	1:53
Kisha Turner	Okay. How about traveling north to New Jersey? What part of New Jersey did you visit?	2:17
Dolores Coker Bradley	East Orange basically, because that's where my mother's—She had a sister in Newark, but East Orange and Newark are right beside each other. Yeah. Yeah.	2:23
Kisha Turner	Okay. Was that experience any more fun, or was it different?	2:36
Dolores Coker Bradley	It was different. And when we went, it was sometimes we'd go like on holiday. I remember Christmas, we got snowed in up there. But it was always fun, because when we went, we were on vacation or what have you, and my mother had six sisters, and four of them were in New Jersey. So whenever we would go, it was like a big family thing. So that was really kind of fun. I guess that's what made me decide to go there after I came out of college.	2:41
Kisha Turner	Do you feel like you were treated any differently by I guess, the people who tended to own things, by White people in general?	3:23
Dolores Coker Bradley	In New Jersey?	3:33
Kisha Turner	Yeah. Was the atmosphere any freer for you? Were you less limited in your mobility or anything?	3:34
Dolores Coker Bradley	No, I thought I was until I moved there. Then I discovered different, because I had heard the myth of the North and had bought it. And then, when I moved there, after I was grown and out of college or what have you, I realized that I was no more free than I was in the South. In fact, I think I felt freer, because I was younger and maybe more—Again, I was in that kind of shelter thing in the South. So in some ways, I felt freer than I did in New Jersey.	3:41
Kisha Turner	Okay.	4:22
Dolores Coker Bradley	Because when it came to buying housing and getting jobs, and—I got fired from a summer job for a dumb reason in New Jersey, and had all about racism. I think I might have told you.	4:22
Kisha Turner	You told us about that.	4:38
Dolores Coker Bradley	Yeah.	4:38
Kisha Turner	Yeah.	4:39
Dolores Coker Bradley	So I went to apply for—I guess this was a summer job too, or was I out of college? Two jobs. Anyway, I went to apply for this job at the telephone company. They gave me a spelling test. Now spelling, I've always been real good at.	4:39
Kisha Turner	Mm-hmm.	5:05
Dolores Coker Bradley	But I was not familiar with words like Frelinghuysen, Weequahic, those Indian names. Stuyvesant. These were names of streets and some of the telephone exchanges too, but I didn't have to know how to spell them in order to pronounce them or what have you.	5:05
Kisha Turner	Right.	5:30
Dolores Coker Bradley	So they gave me this ridiculous spelling test, and again crushed me when she told me that they couldn't hire me because I didn't pass the spelling test.	5:30
Kisha Turner	Right.	5:40
Dolores Coker Bradley	Another friend of mine—We were out of college by now. Marilyn and I were going to be airline stewardesses. Now, Marilyn and I are about the same height, and we were as thin as you are almost then. And we went down to the airport. I can't even remember what airline. Somehow, I think it was Eastern, but I'm not sure. They told us that they had a—We were too tall.	5:43
Kisha Turner	You were too tall?	6:14
Dolores Coker Bradley	That you could not be over five seven.	6:15
Kisha Turner	Oh, right.	6:18
Dolores Coker Bradley	I was five eight, and I think Marilyn was like five eight and a half or whatever. Anyway, so we knew that that was another put off, because in riding planes, I saw White girls that were towering and what have you. So those were some of the things that—I actually had more things of that nature happen in New Jersey than I did in North Carolina.	6:19
Kisha Turner	The incident at the department store, isn't that where you were working?	6:45
Dolores Coker Bradley	Yes.	6:49
Kisha Turner	When you were—	6:50
Dolores Coker Bradley	Yes, when she fired me.	6:51
Kisha Turner	Okay.	6:52
Dolores Coker Bradley	Yeah.	6:53
Kisha Turner	You want to talk maybe about it?	6:54
Dolores Coker Bradley	Okay. I think I was between my junior and senior year in college, and I had gone early because college kids get up before high school kids. So I had told them something, but of course I didn't tell them I was a college kid. I wouldn't have gotten the job. So I had been hired for this job as an order clerk, working with the buyers down in the fourth basement where all the merchandise came in. I was working with this woman, an Italian woman named Irene Precsielsa, and this was her life's work. I guess she was there until whenever.	6:57
Dolores Coker Bradley	And when I got there, I got along real well with the buyers, and I was picking up the work, because it was nothing. You compared an order with an invoice. You ordered 20 cases of apples, did you get 20 or did you get 19? And you checked off what you got and what you didn't get. Well after about two weeks I think, I was—And she was very cold to me. When I first started out, she was okay. And after about two weeks, I was called to the office and told that Ms. Precsielsa said I just wasn't working out. I wasn't catching on.	7:39
Dolores Coker Bradley	Now, I knew—Again, I was really crushed, because the telephone company had told me I was dumb. Now, they're telling me I'm too dumb to compare a paper with another paper.	8:18
Kisha Turner	Yeah.	8:28
Dolores Coker Bradley	So I knew what that was about. She really thought that I was after her job, and all I wanted to do was work to time to go back to school.	8:29
Kisha Turner	Mm-hmm. Hm. Speaking of you worked in a clothing store, when you were growing up, where did you buy your clothing?	8:37
Dolores Coker Bradley	In Weldon.	8:47
Kisha Turner	Okay.	8:48
Dolores Coker Bradley	You mean what kind of—	8:48
Kisha Turner	Did your mother make any of your clothes, or did you pretty much buy everything?	8:51
Dolores Coker Bradley	When we were real small, my grandmother—When I was like these kids, my grandmother made a lot of my dresses and stuff.	8:54
Kisha Turner	Okay.	9:03
Dolores Coker Bradley	My mother was not a sewer, so as I grew up, my clothes were bought from the local stores, generally. There was a woman there next door to us that was a beautiful seamstress. So for special things like prom and stuff like that, she made the dresses.	9:04
Kisha Turner	Okay.	9:27
Dolores Coker Bradley	But generally, no.	9:27
Kisha Turner	Were you able to try the dresses on in the store? Or did you just have to buy them?	9:29
Dolores Coker Bradley	Yes. Somebody said we weren't able to try on hats.	9:36
Kisha Turner	Okay.	9:41
Dolores Coker Bradley	Because they said we had too much grease in our hair, but I don't remember buying hats or whatever.	9:41
Kisha Turner	Mm-hmm.	9:45
Dolores Coker Bradley	But I know I tried on shoes and clothing. Yeah.	9:46
Kisha Turner	When you were coming up, did they still have the x-ray thing for your foot?	9:51
Dolores Coker Bradley	Yes.	9:55
Kisha Turner	Yeah?	9:55
Dolores Coker Bradley	Yeah.	9:55
Kisha Turner	Okay. Yeah. I've heard about that.	9:58
Dolores Coker Bradley	Oh yeah.	9:59
Kisha Turner	They said they had to discontinue those, because the rays were harmful. They discovered that—Okay. How did you all celebrate holidays before you went away to college, that you can remember?	10:00
Dolores Coker Bradley	Oh, holidays were great. My father was a Christmas person.	10:12
Kisha Turner	Okay.	10:16
Dolores Coker Bradley	Christmases were especially good. We used to go and cut Christmas trees, and that was a biggie. And Mother said it was not unusual to look up, and we would come back with two trees. I remember one year, we had one on the porch and one in the house, but that was a—And my father would get as excited about going to get the Christmas tree as my brother and I would. And she baked and baked and baked. And he did most of the shopping, believe it or not. So she would give him this small list with all the stuff, so Christmas.	10:16
Dolores Coker Bradley	And even until now, when I smell paint and linoleum, I think about Christmas, because in those days we couldn't afford good inlay, the good flooring like you have now.	10:52
Kisha Turner	Okay.	11:10
Dolores Coker Bradley	You put down tile floor and whatever if you—Then every year, you got a new rug for the kitchen.	11:11
Kisha Turner	Okay.	11:19
Dolores Coker Bradley	Piece of linoleum.	11:19
Kisha Turner	Okay.	11:21
Dolores Coker Bradley	And every year, Daddy painted the kitchen. And he would usually, I can remember Mother fussing at him, and, "It's almost Christmas. It almost Christmas. It's going to be Christmas Eve." But when I would smell the paint and the fresh linoleum, I knew it was almost Christmas.	11:21
Kisha Turner	Oh, okay.	11:39
Dolores Coker Bradley	So Christmases, holidays—Thanksgiving was not a big holiday with us. My dad used to go hunting every Thanksgiving usually, but Christmas was real big.	11:39
Kisha Turner	How about birthdays?	11:52
Dolores Coker Bradley	Birthdays were big. Not big. We didn't have big birthday parties and stuff, but we always did a little something. As I stop and think of it, we really didn't have a lot of birthday parties, but mother would always make a cake. And at supper, we'd have—My brother's favorite cake was chocolate. So we would have chocolate cake, or mine was coconut. You know?	11:54
Kisha Turner	Oh, really? Okay.	12:28
Dolores Coker Bradley	But birthdays, they were recognized, but not—I mean, we didn't get real spastic about them.	12:31
Kisha Turner	Mm-hmm.	12:37
Dolores Coker Bradley	But Christmas in our house just went on and on and on.	12:37
Kisha Turner	Really?	12:39
Dolores Coker Bradley	Yeah.	12:41
Kisha Turner	Did family come over for Christmas, or was it pretty much your—	12:41
Dolores Coker Bradley	Before my grandparents moved away, it was more family there.	12:48
Kisha Turner	Okay.	12:52
Dolores Coker Bradley	But it was more my parents friends, because we didn't have a whole lot of family. We had cousins, but not real close family in that town. But there was all—Now strangely enough, like Christmas day dinner would usually just be our family.	12:52
Kisha Turner	Okay.	13:15
Dolores Coker Bradley	But during that afternoon and during the whole season, people were dropping in and dropping in.	13:16
Kisha Turner	Okay.	13:22
Dolores Coker Bradley	That kind of thing.	13:22
Kisha Turner	Do you remember how weddings were growing up when you were younger? Were they any different than what you see today?	13:25
Dolores Coker Bradley	Most of the weddings were very simple, and they never served full dinners and that kind of stuff. It was some little tea sandwiches, some mints and some punch and that kind of stuff, but not elaborate like they are now.	13:35
Kisha Turner	Did the brides wear white like they do now?	13:59
Dolores Coker Bradley	Yeah.	14:01
Kisha Turner	Yeah? Okay.	14:01
Dolores Coker Bradley	Yeah.	14:01
Kisha Turner	Mm-hmm.	14:01
Dolores Coker Bradley	First wedding I really remember was a cousin of mine. She had a breakfast wedding.	14:10
Kisha Turner	Okay.	14:16
Dolores Coker Bradley	But that was the first wedding I remember, but I didn't go.	14:16
Kisha Turner	Okay.	14:26
Dolores Coker Bradley	Because we weren't—My parents went, but I didn't go.	14:26
Kisha Turner	Okay. How old were you when your father and your family was able to buy your own home, or when they did buy their home?	14:32
Dolores Coker Bradley	I guess I was in the beginnings of high school.	14:42
Kisha Turner	Okay.	14:50
Dolores Coker Bradley	I was about 13, 12, 13, somewhere like that. Yeah.	14:51
Kisha Turner	Now, was this in the town center or still out?	14:54
Dolores Coker Bradley	No, this was in the little town. Yeah.	14:58
Kisha Turner	Okay. And your father worked as a carpenter?	15:00
Dolores Coker Bradley	Mm-hmm.	15:02
Kisha Turner	Did he do work for White families and Black families?	15:03
Dolores Coker Bradley	Anybody that would hire him.	15:06
Kisha Turner	Okay.	15:07
Dolores Coker Bradley	But mostly it seems as I remember, was Blacks. A lot of Blacks were building stuff during that time.	15:08
Kisha Turner	Mm-hmm.	15:15
Dolores Coker Bradley	But they worked whoever would hire them.	15:15
Kisha Turner	Do you know what caused the kind of building boom? Do you know what was going on?	15:19
Dolores Coker Bradley	I guess this was the '40s.	15:27
Kisha Turner	'40s, after World War II.	15:27
Dolores Coker Bradley	So I guess it was, yeah, right after the war.	15:28
Kisha Turner	A lot of FHA type stuff, do you know?	15:28
Dolores Coker Bradley	Well, I didn't even know about FHA then.	15:36
Kisha Turner	Okay. Okay.	15:37
Dolores Coker Bradley	But I don't think there was a lot of FHA stuff, because I can remember my parents talking about going over to the bank and sitting—This thing makes me think something's crawling. I think they just took out two or three hundred dollars together or whatever you could get together.	15:39
Kisha Turner	Mm-hmm.	16:01
Dolores Coker Bradley	You went over, and if you had a good reputation in the town, that it wasn't quite like it is now where they did long credit reports and stuff like that.	16:02
Kisha Turner	Okay.	16:12
Dolores Coker Bradley	It was very subjective. If they knew you and you have a decent reputation—	16:13
Kisha Turner	Mm-hmm.	16:18
Dolores Coker Bradley	But I think most of the time I'm talking about was during and after the war.	16:18
Kisha Turner	Okay.	16:26
Dolores Coker Bradley	Yeah.	16:26
Kisha Turner	Okay. And did your father receive a loan to do his house or—	16:31
Dolores Coker Bradley	Mm-hmm. From First Federal Savings And Loan.	16:36
Kisha Turner	Okay.	16:39
Dolores Coker Bradley	There in the town.	16:40
Kisha Turner	Did he build it, or did—	16:43
Dolores Coker Bradley	He and Mr. Lewis Walden and another cousin of mine, cousin David, they—Yes.	16:45
Kisha Turner	Okay.	16:54
Dolores Coker Bradley	They did.	16:54
Kisha Turner	Were these often kind of when people would build homes, joint efforts from people in the community to help them out? Or was it pretty much, did they hire people to come [indistinct 00:17:06]	16:55
Dolores Coker Bradley	No, I think that—Because he and Mr. Lewis Walden used to do a lot of work together for other people and what have you, and I don't know what kind of arrangement, but I doubt if my daddy paid Mr. Lewis very much, because he didn't have much to pay him. So I just have a feeling that they just—	17:06
Kisha Turner	Helped each other?	17:27
Dolores Coker Bradley	Helped each other. And Daddy probably in turn, did something for him.	17:29
Kisha Turner	Okay. Did your father ever tell? You told me some things your mother said about how it was like when she was younger. Did he ever?	17:34
Dolores Coker Bradley	My father only went to seventh grade, and he talked about school. Now, he went to school, and a cousin of ours along with the pastor, then pastor of the church, started this school, which was not a public school, because there was no public school then.	17:42
Kisha Turner	Mm-hmm. Okay.	18:11
Dolores Coker Bradley	And he went to school at this little school. And I think the school only probably ever only went up to maybe seventh grade, because after that they went to Brick or some other—They had to go away to school.	18:12
Kisha Turner	Okay.	18:27
Dolores Coker Bradley	And he used to laugh and tease me when I would—I'd be getting ready to go to school, and I'd put on something and I didn't like it, and I'd go running back and I'd put on something else. And he'd say, "Well, I never had that problem. I knew what I was going to wear every day, because I had Sunday clothes, one set of Sunday clothes, and one set of school clothes." I think that there were times when they were kept home to work on the farm, supposed to go in to school. That was something that my brother and I never had to stay out of school to work anywhere. In fact, he was more insistent about education in a way than my mother. He was more vocal about it. And he had the least amount of education.	18:28
Kisha Turner	Okay.	19:27
Dolores Coker Bradley	But that's about—Well, he used to tell some antidotes about things that happened, just funny kinds of things. I remember, he talked about the time when he and a cousin of his, cousin Jesse, they were going to see these girls, and they were on a horse and buggy. And it was an area going up to Augustine or somewhere that was supposed to be real racist. And the White folks in there were known not to like Black folks and this kind of thing. And he said that they were going along on the buggy and just trotting along and stuff. All of a sudden, this White guy was standing there, and he hailed them down, and he said, "Where you boys going?"	19:32
Dolores Coker Bradley	And so, Daddy said—He said to him, "I'm going wherever." And he said, "Well, who told you all to go—" Something. So Daddy, he said to the mule, "Giddyup," you know, like we ain't [indistinct 00:20:36]	20:22
Kisha Turner	Right.	20:35
Dolores Coker Bradley	So cousin Jesse said he thought, "Damn, has Steve lost his mind?" So Daddy said that the mule wouldn't move. And they said that Daddy turned to the mule and said, "Damn it, mule. Is you scared?" In other words, they talked about, he was really tough. He wouldn't knock down. And cousin Jesse said he was like this, you know? But he used to talk a lot about things that happened, but not a lot that I can really remember, except maybe some funny things like that. But I'm sure it was really pretty hard for them. And I think that's why he was so good about really wanting so much for us, because they had really had it kind of hard.	20:37
Kisha Turner	Mm-hmm. Did you feel that life in general was any different living in the town as opposed to out in the more rural area?	21:36
Dolores Coker Bradley	Well by the time we came into town, we had electric lights and plumbing.	21:50
Kisha Turner	Okay.	21:53
Dolores Coker Bradley	That was one of the differences, because we had neither out there.	21:55
Kisha Turner	Mm-hmm. Okay. What were the customs about dating? You were speaking about your father going to see some young ladies during when you were growing up.	22:00
Dolores Coker Bradley	Well—	22:12
Kisha Turner	Or courting.	22:12
Dolores Coker Bradley	The boy came, and he sat in the living room. And your parents were usually in the next room or whatever. And then of course, we used to—As I start to think about it, we did a lot of group dating even in high school, because there were only a couple of people that had cars and stuff, and the center of our everything was at the church. I mean, what I mean, everybody went to Sunday school. So then, from Sunday school, we decided where we were going to go.	22:13
Dolores Coker Bradley	And a group of us would get together, and there may be two cars of us or something. And we would go. There were a couple of little clubs in town or something. So we did that, but we had to be home. Usually, if it was a Sunday, we had to be home really early, like sometimes by dark.	22:50
Kisha Turner	Okay.	23:08
Dolores Coker Bradley	You know, or shortly thereafter. And boys didn't just come to your house anytime. They came—I can remember people talking about Sunday and Wednesday night was the dating night, but I can't remember that being so hard and fast. But we could go out on the weekend. Boys could come. And—	23:08
Kisha Turner	Where'd you all go when you went out? To those clubs in town, or to movies?	23:40
Dolores Coker Bradley	Movies, to the club. A lot of times, they were at our house.	23:44
Kisha Turner	Okay.	23:48
Dolores Coker Bradley	Our house was always—A lot of them, they'd just come, and we had a little electric—Not even a stereo. A record player.	23:48
Kisha Turner	Okay.	24:03
Dolores Coker Bradley	And we'd sit around and play the records and laugh and talk. And the guys would steal my father's booze.	24:05
Kisha Turner	Really?	24:18
Dolores Coker Bradley	And another friend of ours, her father made grape wine. He used to make it for the church. And Sophie found the key to the—He had a little house built out in the yard, and we used to steal Mr. Eddie Bruce's wine and drink it.	24:18
Kisha Turner	Drink it, really? How old were you?	24:35
Dolores Coker Bradley	High school I guess.	24:45
Kisha Turner	Really? Okay. About how old were you when you could entertain men or boys?	24:45
Dolores Coker Bradley	About 16.	24:54
Kisha Turner	16?	24:54
Dolores Coker Bradley	Yeah.	24:54
Kisha Turner	And was your brother treated any differently?	24:54
Dolores Coker Bradley	Oh, yes.	24:57
Kisha Turner	[indistinct 00:24:58] boys' rules?	24:57
Dolores Coker Bradley	Oh yes.	24:57
Kisha Turner	How was it?	24:57
Dolores Coker Bradley	We used to have it, because he could go, and I can remember early on, my brother and his friend, Junior Stokes, I mean they could just go. And nothing was said. And they would just come in, and he was treated a lot different. In fact, I even teased my mother until she passed, that she made a big difference in the two of us, because she treated her son one way. I used to tell her like when I would come home from school, it was like, "Well, Dolores was coming home." My brother was coming home from even after he went in service, she'd say to my father, "Well, that boy will be home tomorrow. I think you'd better go get some chocolate, and let me make one of those old chocolate cakes."	24:58
Dolores Coker Bradley	It was a slight difference, I thought. And I know she loved us both. But they were much more lenient on him. They worried so much about you getting pregnant in those days. That was about the worst fortunately, because the drugs weren't there.	25:48
Kisha Turner	Okay.	26:07
Dolores Coker Bradley	And once you got pregnant, in most cases you didn't continue school, because you couldn't go to school like they can now. Nobody walked around with the belly out at school and stuff. So it was just a real stigma against it. And so, that was the thing that was preached to you more than anything else. So they really worried about the girls getting pregnant and stuff.	26:13
Kisha Turner	So did these young ladies have to leave town? Or did they—	26:35
Dolores Coker Bradley	Most of the time, if they were in the South, they'd send them north. And a lot of times, the Northerners sent them south, you know. But they usually left town very—I don't remember anybody walking around. Offhand, I can't. And there were a couple of girls, a few girls who had babies, but they had them somewhere else even if they came back later on, if the baby showed up a year later or whatever.	26:39
Kisha Turner	Mm-hmm. How about divorce? How was that viewed?	27:08
Dolores Coker Bradley	I don't know anybody that got a divorce.	27:15
Kisha Turner	It just wasn't something people did?	27:17
Dolores Coker Bradley	I'm sure there were people who just walked off and left somebody or something, but of all my friends, there was one friend—I saw her on the boat the other day. Her father had died very young, when she was very young.	27:20
Kisha Turner	Mm-hmm.	27:39
Dolores Coker Bradley	I never knew her father. But I don't remember any of my friends having—I hadn't thought about that.	27:39
Kisha Turner	Mm-hmm.	27:50
Dolores Coker Bradley	John Cotton's father had died, so his mother—It was just them. But most of the people I knew who were being raised by one parent or the other, their parents were—One parent had died. But I don't remember anybody being divorced.	27:54
Kisha Turner	You said that—Well, since you lived in the town so close to Southampton with Nat Turner insurrection, do you remember anyone ever talking about that? How was that?	28:13
Dolores Coker Bradley	They talked about it. Even before I read about it, that had been handed down. And it was one of those things that every so often, somebody would say, "Well, what we need is another Nat Turner."	28:23
Kisha Turner	Some people were proud?	28:35
Dolores Coker Bradley	We need to do a Nat Turner on that, and that kind of—Oh yeah.	28:35
Kisha Turner	Mm-hmm.	28:40
Dolores Coker Bradley	Yeah. I mean, Blacks talked to other Blacks about it.	28:42
Kisha Turner	Right. Right.	28:45
Dolores Coker Bradley	Yeah. So yeah, that was one of the things.	28:45
Kisha Turner	I think I have another question. How did your grandparents acquire the land they had the house on? Was that generations in the family, or did he buy it, or she bought it?	28:52
Dolores Coker Bradley	I think they bought it together. I really think so. I don't think it had been generations, because—Well you know, it might have come from my mother's side, my grandmother's side, because her—What was her name? Cousin Esther. Cousin Esther had a little house here, and her sister-in-law, sister Delia—Delia's house was there. My grandparents' house was there. So I know it didn't come from my grandfather's side.	29:04
Kisha Turner	Okay.	29:38
Dolores Coker Bradley	Probably came from the Bradley side. Believe it or not, even though I married a Bradley, my grandmother's name was Bradley.	29:38
Kisha Turner	Really? Okay.	29:46
Dolores Coker Bradley	Yeah.	29:46
Kisha Turner	Okay. And how long did your grandparents work that land before they—	29:49
Dolores Coker Bradley	All their lives.	29:54
Kisha Turner	All their lives?	29:55
Dolores Coker Bradley	Until after my grandfather died. Then as I said, then my grandmother came to Norfolk with Esther's father.	29:56
Kisha Turner	Mm-hmm. Okay. All right. Well, thank you.	30:05
Dolores Coker Bradley	Yeah. I tell—Spaghettis?	30:11
Kisha Turner	Just about quick briefly, about Norfolk, and the family. Just kind of the family effort in your going to school, and the importance of education, that it wasn't a question if you were going to [indistinct 00:30:33]	30:17
Dolores Coker Bradley	Well as I said, my father was a seventh grade—That's as far as he went. But education was real important as far as his children, my brother and I, were concerned. He was really a stickler. And I had always done real good in school, and I had planned to go to college. And their plan for me was to go to college. But when I was—I think I was a junior, or the beginning of my senior year, I can't remember what, my father became ill. And being that he was more or less self employed, there was no money coming in. So I thought it was a question. Oh my goodness. I'm not going to be able to go to school.	30:32
Dolores Coker Bradley	And when I kind of mentioned it to my mother, I just didn't want to mention it to him. Her answer to me was like, "Don't worry about it. Let us worry about it. You just go on and do what you're supposed to do, and we'll take care of the rest." So my uncle William, who had a big house here in South Norfolk, and my other aunt who also lived here, well they were a real close family. They would come down almost every weekend to see my father. And somehow, in the visiting, they said to my parents, "Well, there's no problem. We've got Norfolk State right there, so Dolores can come down and live with us and go to school." And that's what I did. I don't think my parents paid my uncle or my aunt, like outright paying.	31:22
Kisha Turner	Mm-hmm.	32:22
Dolores Coker Bradley	They took care of my expenses, which were less being here. But I ate what the rest of the family ate, and my aunt would give me—Many of the time, she gave me carfare and munch money and whatever. So it was like a crisis in the family, so my brother had gone to college for a year, and then he went in service. So by then, he was in service. So they just decided there was a problem, so they came together and did it.	32:22
Kisha Turner	Mm-hmm.	33:02
Dolores Coker Bradley	And I think that's kind of what most families did then.	33:04
Kisha Turner	Mm-hmm. [indistinct 00:33:11] Thanks.	33:08

Item Info

Title:

Dolores Bradley interview recording, 1995 July 23

Date:

July 23, 1995

Creator:

Bradley, Dolores Coker

Contributor:

Turner, Kisha

Description:

Name: Dolores Coker Bradley; Date of birth: 1934-10-30; Place of birth: N. Hampton Co., NC; Occupation(s): educator; physical education; guidance officer; Residence: E. Orange, NJ
Informant ID: 947; Interviewed by: Kisha Turner.

Occupation:

Location:

Format:

Language:

English

Digital Collection:

Behind the Veil

Source Collection:

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

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-1284
308ecfac-8dea-40b4-ad47-60a6701f312f
behindtheveil
0ea6e8d0-7b4e-4c02-8005-b9dc87a8a5b4
ark:/87924/r4d79hk9s
0ea6e8d0-7b4e-4c02-8005-b9dc87a8a5b4

Permalink:

https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r4d79hk9s

Sponsor:

Sponsor this Digital Collection

Dolores Bradley interview recording, 1995 July 23

Transcript

Item Info

1. Dolores Bradley administrative file, 1995

John Hope Franklin Research Center

More Info & Options

Dolores Bradley interview recording, 1995 July 23

Transcript

Item Info

Related Items

John Hope Franklin Research Center

More Info & Options