Jessie Rattley interview recording, 1995 August 03

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Jessie Menifield Rattley	Menifield. M-E-N-I-F-I-E-L-D. Rattley, R-A-T-T-L-E-Y.	0:02
Blair Murphy	Your place of birth?	0:14
Jessie Menifield Rattley	Birmingham, Alabama.	0:15
Blair Murphy	Okay. Could you tell me a little bit?	0:20
Jessie Menifield Rattley	May 4th, 1929.	0:21
Blair Murphy	Could you tell me a little bit about that community?	0:26
Jessie Menifield Rattley	What do you mean, tell you a little bit about it?	0:32
Blair Murphy	I guess what it was like, what your parents did for a living?	0:35
Jessie Menifield Rattley	Yes. I could tell you that we lived in Birmingham, out near the Ensley section of the city, if you're familiar with it. We lived with our mother and our father, but he was gone quite a bit of the time. He was a poll reporter where you have a run from one place to the other. So I really did not recall my father until, I guess I was very young. But when he left home to go to his job, I know I cried all night. My sister said I couldn't remember because she said I was probably around two or three years old, but I do remember. My mother took in washing and ironing. She probably went to the third grade, I think she indicated that. My father probably went to the third grade also, third or fourth grade. When he came home it was the day before I started in elementary school, which means I was six when he came home because he registered me in school.	0:42
Blair Murphy	What school did you attend?	2:07
Jessie Menifield Rattley	Fairfield Industrial High School.	2:09
Blair Murphy	What was the name of the elementary school you first went to?	2:16
Jessie Menifield Rattley	61st Street Elementary School. That was very original, wasn't it? 61st Street because it was on 61st Street.	2:19
Blair Murphy	What was that?	2:46
Jessie Menifield Rattley	I have one sister who is four years older than I am. She lives in Gary, Indiana at the present time. I have one brother who is older than I am, two years older. He lives in Los Angeles and I was the youngest of three children. My mother actually gave birth to four children, but the first one died. Of course, I did not recall any of that since I was the last one to come.	2:47
Blair Murphy	What was your elementary school like? Was it a small school?	3:25
Jessie Menifield Rattley	Yes, it was small. Even the high school was around 500 people. So elementary school you can—I never heard the figures, but it was small. All schools were completely segregated. We lived in two different worlds. We didn't have any mixed housing, or mixed schools, or mixed socially events. It was Blacks one place and Whites another. So it was a way of life for a child growing up at that time in Alabama and in many other states, all we knew was segregation. I was a good student. I graduated I think at the head of my class. It's a good school. The teachers were dedicated. We had courses outside our high school, including Black history, that many schools don't have today. We had a lot of cultural events there at school. Marian Anderson came and performed for the students of Fairfield Industrial High School.	3:28
Jessie Menifield Rattley	In elementary school, all I know is that I went to school and I did my work. Played, I guess, like other kids. We had no buses, we walked to school. I would imagine I walked about maybe three or four miles from the elementary school and one mile less I guess, for the high school. This high school was on, as I recall, 59th Street. No, I guess it would have to be 56th Street. I may not be accurate on that. But I remember that our teachers were dedicated, we were taught proper manners and etiquette. We were always taught how to behave or how to present ourselves. In other words, we were taught to try to change that image that Whites had of Blacks. Of course, it's ironic they still have that image of Blacks and the bell curve and the talk in the Congress today.	5:04
Jessie Menifield Rattley	If you see a Black boy, you cross the street and go on the other side. When I was going up, if you are walking on the sidewalk and Whites are coming towards you, you have to get off the sidewalk to let them pass. You were not supposed to look them straight in eye, but of course we were taught to look everybody straight in eye. I think we had an excellent beginning in the schools. I wish we could return to some of the rules and regulations and even the curriculum of that time.	6:27
Blair Murphy	Do you think the teachers instituted the Black history? Because this is the first time I've heard that you were taught it in high school.	7:05
Jessie Menifield Rattley	You may want to research it, I believe that in all of our Black schools, our Negro history was taught. I think I even had the book, there was a dark green book and we learned all about our heroes, our leaders of the past and our struggle. In fact, that's how I ended up here. I was convinced that Hampton University was the finest school in the world for Black Americans. And why? Because Tuskegee was right down the road a pace. That was started by Booker T. Washington who was an alumnus of Hampton. We were taught that and I was determined that I was going to the best school for Blacks and find out if I was as smart as all of my teachers thought. Although I had to stay out for a semester to work to earn enough money to get there. I got there.	7:14
Blair Murphy	What did you do that semester?	8:23
Jessie Menifield Rattley	I did clerical work. I was already skilled in typing and shorthand, things like filing, recordkeeping. So I got a job working for a savings and loan association, a Black firm of course, in downtown Birmingham.	8:24
Blair Murphy	Weren't you were telling me how you were coming to Hampton?	8:46
Jessie Menifield Rattley	Oh, yes. I was inspired to come to Hampton because of the information we were given about how the school was started and how for the first time we had an opportunity to go to school of higher learning. Of course, Hampton has a good record even today, for the success of their graduates. I was impressed and I knew all the time where I wanted to go. Although, I was offered scholarships from about three schools in Alabama. Alabama State was one. But I had nothing against those colleges. But I wanted to go to Hampton and that's what I did. So that's how I got here.	8:52
Blair Murphy	So how was Hampton when you arrived?	9:45
Jessie Menifield Rattley	Hampton was fine. I was a little bit short on money, but they let me register. I started, got me a job three days after I got there, working in the business office because I had the skills. My job was to type government vouchers so Hampton could get money from the GI Bill for the veterans. I didn't have much of a social life at Hampton except through my sorority. I was invited to become AKA and I remember the fee was $60.	9:48
Jessie Menifield Rattley	I didn't have it, so I borrowed it and paid it back in installments. I worked for 50 cents an hour and I maintained all of my payslips even until today. But it was sufficient to pay my tuition and to pay my room and board. Now the last semester, I took 24 semester hours. So I moved into a private home where our rent was cheaper, right outside the gate so I could take those 24 hours and finish early. I finished in three and a half years. Of course, normally they don't let you take 24 hours. I worked in the business office every spare moment I had.	10:34
Jessie Menifield Rattley	Had a key to the business office so I worked at night, especially around the first of the month when we had to get the vouchers out. I even had a key to the dormitory. See that tells you a little something there, that there was some trust and confidence that I could work and then I can go to the dormitory without a lot of hassle. Most times they even assigned me to a private single room, knowing that I worked so much and that I studied so as not to impose on other students. Of course we had to go to Vespers.	11:32
Jessie Menifield Rattley	We had to dress like a lady and if we were female, we had to display a certain attitude. In fact, we had to speak to everybody and we used to have what they call the Hampton grin, where we have to smile. All of the teachers, the faculty, took an interest in students. You see today, we are afraid to even speak to students about their behavior. Never shall forget one day, I had on some long dangling earrings, loved earrings.	12:29
Jessie Menifield Rattley	One of the faculty members walked up to me and said, "You wear those when you go out to a party, not to class." As I perform my assignment at Hampton University now, I see kids and what they wear to my class and I get amused sometimes. As they say, here we are at the same place and things are so different. We wouldn't dare wear pants or shorts and they have shorter shorts they wear now.	13:13
Jessie Menifield Rattley	The whole timeframe in which I grew up is so different from today. I'm not saying that we were all saints, that we did everything according to the rules, but we had the respect and we had a desire to learn. It was what we used to call a thirst for knowledge. I guess that's what they mean now when they talk about excellence. We were very proud of our school, very dedicated. I didn't see many conflicts between the student body and the staff or the administration. Maybe it was what you would call a ho-hum existence, but it wasn't. It was very exciting.	13:44
Jessie Menifield Rattley	We walked every place we went unless we came into Newport News and that's where we rode the bus. At that time here we were all segregated, had to sit in the back of the bus. Same way in Alabama except in Alabama they had a sign on one side they had White. So Whites could fill the bus up on the street car up to the sign. Then we would have to sit behind the sign that said Colored. Sometimes we were resentful and we'd mark out everything and just let it read red, leave the last three alphabets.	14:43
Jessie Menifield Rattley	There were stores we could not go into, theaters we couldn't go into. We went to segregated churches. We dated our own cult, there was no such thing as interracial lovemaking as we see it every day today. It was truly certainly a different time in our existence. But I think I had a rich background, I guess by standards I was poor, my family was poor. But I never felt that we were poor. We were not told we were poor. My grandmother owned property and we lived in her house, double tenant house, they call it.	15:28
Jessie Menifield Rattley	In a three room house is where I spent a lot of my early childhood. She lived on the other side in the three room. She had extra land and we had gardens and she even raised hogs and chicken.	16:21
Blair Murphy	Do you know how she obtained that land?	16:41
Jessie Menifield Rattley	I really don't. She has always worked hard doing days work, working for White folk. I would assume that when she was married to her husband, they used whatever income they had to acquire it because property was not as high as it is now. But she was a hard worker. But I never discussed with her how did she get her money? That's an interesting question. I guess after you leave, I'll call my sister and ask her if she knows.	16:43
Jessie Menifield Rattley	But she was a very industrious woman. She had a great parlor, vegetable garden, flowers everywhere. She used to grow dahlias like this big around, beautiful. She did a lot of the work herself. She's a strong woman of Indian descent. You could tell she was Black, but her skin was like silk, high cheekbones, jet black hair, straight hair. I think she was a Cherokee Indian. I haven't documented that but it was quite obvious that she was of Indian descent. I never knew anything about her parents. I don't even recall her telling us about her parents.	17:24
Jessie Menifield Rattley	I never knew her husband because he had died before I was old enough to remember. Her name is Amanda, Amanda Cochran. Same as the attorney who's defending OJ Simpson. In fact, I have a good feeling that he's related. I haven't tried to research it but his features are very similar to the Cochran's, very strong. Now on my daddy's side there were I guess six, seven children, maybe more. Maybe I miscounted. But for some reason I don't think the parents and us talked that much about their past.	18:21
Jessie Menifield Rattley	Through all of these interviews I have given, a lot of questions asked I never thought of. Maybe one day I'll try to research the family history. But my daddy, he had, since he's dead, a different surname than his brothers and sisters. Now what we were told was that he took his grandmother's name, which is fine, I didn't think anything of it. So my daddy's very light, but Negro-like features, nappy hair, thick, nappy hair. He was a Menifield. He took Jane Menifield's surname and he had a brother who looked just like his twin who was dark, just the opposite but the same features.	19:12
Jessie Menifield Rattley	So he's a Bedell, B-E-D-E-L-L. If I could trace it, maybe instead of telling you my name is Jessie Menifield Rattley, I would be saying it's Jessie Bedell Rattley. But I guess he did it legally because I got to know his grandmother who was a little old white woman. Petite, five feet tall maybe, blue eyes and a head full of nappy hair. It was long and she used to wear it up in some twist up here, way up there. But you can look at it and tell she had to be White and she was in slavery. She did tell us that in slavery, the White man who owns you, have sex whenever. So what I'm assuming in a sense is, and I was too stupid, too young, inexperienced, to recognize why my daddy probably had a different name. You probably know the answer. He was probably born out of wedlock. The only name he could have would've been Menifield. Then later his mother must have married a Bedell. So all the other children were Bedell.	20:18
Jessie Menifield Rattley	But they had a very dominant feature. It was like there was no man involved at all because they all looked like one another. I got to know most of them, my aunts and uncles, although most of them lived in Chicago because during that time you had a great migration to Chicago. If you'd seen that tape, the promised land where all the Blacks were leaving places like Alabama, Mississippi, going up to Chicago, looking for a good life. A lot of my people did the same thing. So I have I guess, more relatives in Chicago than I have in Birmingham. I have half of them, however, we had a lot of them up there. A lot of them are dying out now.	21:49
Blair Murphy	Would they ever tell you about Chicago? You ever hear stories about what it was like?	22:38
Jessie Menifield Rattley	Oh yes, the cramped conditions and all of that, you mean during that time? But basically they would cover that up. They didn't want to let you know that it was a failure. What happened whenever family members or friends went north, when they come back home, we say they were putting on airs, they talk differently, they act differently. They gave the impression that they felt they were better than you. I experienced that on my way to Hampton. Shall never forget it. I left on the Silver Comet. That was the name of the train that went from Birmingham to Richmond.	22:47
Jessie Menifield Rattley	In Richmond, a young lady got on, boarded in Richmond. She had come down from Arlington, Virginia. She had to get on this train because that's the only train that came into Newport News. She was very talkative and I was not. I had the southern accent and had difficult pronouncing certain words. We had a tendency to cut words short where we wouldn't always pronounce the endings. So we were a little withdrawn, especially from people who were so outgoing and proper.	23:38
Jessie Menifield Rattley	I don't know if you could understand that or not. It was kind of threatening. So she spoke, I spoke because we were trained to speak and we struck up in conversation. She wanted to know if I was going to Hampton, our institute. I said, "Yes, I'm going." She wanted to know where are you from? Like I asked you, I told her I was from Birmingham, Alabama. She said, "Well I'm from Arlington, Virginia." She went on to say, "Well why did you decide to leave the south and come north to school?"	24:27
Jessie Menifield Rattley	I said, "Well, I wanted to attend Hampton University because of the reputation, what I had heard." But I said to her, "Virginia is not north. We learned that Virginia was the first slave state." So she was getting under my skin by that point because she was so proper, so proper. I am from Arlington, Virginia. Yes, ma'am. Then this is how we became friends. I didn't really hold it against her, but after the first semester they were shipping her back to Arlington, Virginia. She flunked out.	25:09
Jessie Menifield Rattley	So that to me, gave an example of it's not where you're from, it's who you are and what your commitments are and what your desires are. But frequently we were made to feel inferior by our own people because we are from the south. I guess, since I have been grown living in this area, people have made similar statements. When I said I'm going home, I'm going to Birmingham, they kind of draw up. Why would you want to go there? That's home.	25:58
Jessie Menifield Rattley	I think it's the image. Most Blacks in this area, especially when I first came here, that was in '48. I started at Hampton January of '48. So when I came to this area, most Black people felt that they had the good life here. Although, they were still segregated in every aspect of community life, they had separate places to sit on the bus. They had Colored waiting rooms and White waiting rooms, Colored bathroom and Colored water. It's very ironic. My daughter who is an attorney, she's 36 years old, her name is Robin.	26:42
Jessie Menifield Rattley	Is in the process of opening up a restaurant in the same train station where they have separate waiting rooms. She has a small dining area that was the Colored waiting room and then she has the large room that was the White waiting room. So history is a little interesting in that now, as a young Black African American, I like Black, she's going to open a restaurant and she is keeping the whole theme of Black history. In fact, she's taking a lot of my things over there. I'll show you the little invitation she sent out. She's having an activity there tomorrow, but it shows a picture of it. But that was the train station that I would leave from and I would come into. But the residents of the area, many of them came from North Carolina. Most of them worked in the shipyard and they thought that that was paradise. But they had segregated everything.	27:35
Jessie Menifield Rattley	You couldn't get jobs in certain places, you could not attend their schools and the beat goes on. The thing that's interesting about my life is a lot of my involvement started before the civil rights movement, started before '54. I started—	28:55
Blair Murphy	People got to Virginia and got comfortable.	29:14
Jessie Menifield Rattley	Yes, they felt that it was a good life and that they didn't have it as bad as we had it in Birmingham. That was always the impression they would give me that everything was fine here. And my God, I found out that I had to fight everything to get jobs for my students, to get them into the public library. We couldn't even go to the public library. We had a suit that was instigated by Hill Thompson, a lawyer, to integrate the libraries.	29:17
Jessie Menifield Rattley	Segregated recreation centers, everything was segregated. It's a little difficult talking about my life really because it has taken so many courses. I never could understand why people here were so complacent. On that tape you have, when they interviewed me at one point, they asked me about the Warwick Hotel because I led the fight to integrate the Warwick Hotel. It was very successful because I knew I would go to jail that day, but for some reason I didn't and it's on the tape. But after I had opened several restaurants, people, Black folks, would call me.	29:57
Jessie Menifield Rattley	Is it all right for me to carry my family to such and such and restaurant? What I'm saying is, so in our becoming of age, you have a lot of Black heroes out there who led the fight for us to enjoy what we enjoy today because they did not have guts enough to join in. There was a lot of fear. The main reason in Newport News, the shipyard controlled everything and they were not going to do anything that would cause them to lose their job or that would be their perception. So I know I'm rambling, but I cannot tell you my life story in a few words and I don't think I could ever tell it fully, but I simply wanted to point out to you some contrast. Can you imagine buying a pair of shoes but you couldn't try them on? I lived through that. I've always had big feet. I wear size 12 and I guess, then I was wearing a 10 or 11 when I was in high school. Of course we didn't have much money, even though I didn't feel we were poor.	30:56
Jessie Menifield Rattley	I used to have to wear shoes. You never experienced this when the whole sole would come off, this part of the sole. When you walk, you would have to push your foot up and then put it down this way or else you were walking on your foot. One day I got sick of it. So I took my shoes off. My mother didn't know it, I didn't tell her. I went to school barefoot and it was in the wintertime and everybody got so upset. But I was just not going to be bothered with that. I don't think you have ever experienced that, have you? We didn't really access to shoe repairs and we didn't have the money for it anyway. Sometimes we'd try to glue it on, this much of it would come off and it would curl up. So to make it straight, you would have to push your foot out and then bring it back like this. I took them off and went to school bare-footed. Oh God, everybody hit the ceiling. My mother was very embarrassed and upset. I guess that's how determined I was.	32:21
Jessie Menifield Rattley	So I got some shoes, she got me some shoes. But they were hard to find because in so many stores you couldn't try the shoes on. I ended up getting some boy shoes to get them large enough. That's an interesting thing. I wouldn't think of going to the store now and buying anybody's shoes that I couldn't try on. Couldn't try on hats because they said we all wore grease in our hair and they wouldn't let you try them on. So would you buy a hat today that you couldn't try on? So it was an interesting life. I don't think about it as being negative. I think that it helped shape my future. I wouldn't want to live that way again. I can understand very well why Rosa Parks did what she did. All of this took place at home near me. Just like I gave you my date of birth, if you check it, Martin King was born the same year, a few months sooner. I guess it was January.	33:30
Blair Murphy	Yeah, January 15th he was born.	34:47
Jessie Menifield Rattley	I was born the same year in May. Frequently I tell my students, I said, "Listen to me, at least look at me. This would've been Dr. King, had he lived." Meaning, he would still hopefully be functioning. Many of my students don't know anything about King. They don't know anything about Black history. I had one little boy, apparently he made some comment in his other class, another class. He was not a student of mine, about welfare and they must have booed him or something. So he came for me to explain to him what was welfare. He was raised in suburbia in one of the urban centers somewhere and he didn't know anything about welfare. All he knew was the conservative view of welfare. So I think we still have a lot of work to do. So that's it. What else you want to know?	34:51
Blair Murphy	Well, I guess I want to back up and ask you what you did right after you graduated from Hampton?	36:02
Jessie Menifield Rattley	Okay, let me tell you what I did when I was 11 years old first, that's when I started working. I would work after school and on Saturday for $2 and a quarter a week, that was my pay in Birmingham. Worked for a White family. I was even cooking dinner at age 11, washing, ironing their clothes, cleaning their house, et cetera, for $2.50 an hour. So I've always been very independent and I used that money to buy clothes for myself and my sister.	36:13
Jessie Menifield Rattley	We used layaway because you can pay 50 cents a week and to buy gifts for my mother, in particular. I told you after I graduated from high school, I stayed out a semester and worked to get enough money to go to Hampton. I told you I worked for a real estate finance company, Joan Valley Finance Company. I got enough money, I came to Hampton. Went to Hampton with two dresses and a truck that I paid $10 for, I think. I painted it green and trimmed it in black. I told you after I arrived on campus, I was a little short.	36:53
Jessie Menifield Rattley	But I waited late, meaning I stood out and waited for Don Davis to walk toward his home as he did every day. I asked him for a job, told him what I could do. I knew a friend of his in Birmingham, Agent Gaston, who's a millionaire now. He gave me the job and I worked every day since then. I even waited tables some weekends at Langley Officers Club. I also worked as a relief, operated on the switchboard at Hampton. My commencement took place in August. They had formal commencements in August of 1951. I had already signed the contract to establish or set up or start the business department at Huntington High School. So I had my contract to teach school before I got my degree. The degree was issued to me in August and I went to work in September. My job was to establish the business department. Because up until that time, no Black high school in Newport News offered business training for its students. But all of the White high schools did.	37:50
Jessie Menifield Rattley	So to answer your question directly, I signed my contract, I believe in May or June, to go to work in September. That was before I actually graduated. So I worked there and I was determined that I was going to use my first pay to buy my mother a stove, a gas stove because she was still cooking on a wood stove. When you have to up early in the morning, make the fire, you don't know anything about that. I gave her a gas range. The next thing I wanted her to have was a refrigerator because we had an ice box where you had to stand out and wait for ice man to buy a block of ice. So I bought her a refrigerator. It is interesting, all the go then was gas refrigerators. I never really liked it. Later I bought her an electric refrigerator, but that was a special one. Now if you want to move on the next year, I opened my own business college.	39:40
Jessie Menifield Rattley	But also in '51—No, that's it. In '52 I married the person who is the father of my children, he's deceased now. Whom I met while I was a student at Hampton, he was not a student there. But I went to a Hampton dime dance. I had a red satin dress and he was attracting to me. Anyway, we married in '52, August the 26th, which means I would be having a wedding anniversary coming up if he had lived. But the point I'm making is, when I started my business college, or at some point between the first year at Huntington and the opening of my business college, I wanted to buy I think, an auto automobile. But I was not old enough to purchase it. So I started out very young, right out school is what I'm trying to tell you, right out of Hampton. My school was open June 9th, '52, and I got married August 26th, 1952. Initially, I went back to Huntington that second year to teach business. But I was also working every night at my business college teaching business.	40:59
Jessie Menifield Rattley	Inspired by the fact that many young people who went to school before I got there, never had a chance to learn business skills. Many of these young people were maids working in laundries, et cetera. They came to school and my tuition was $2.50 per course. Many of them could only take one course, some took two. After the first year we really went into a full curriculum where they would graduate at the end of two years training. It's ironic that this year they have decided among themselves, these are the graduates, to have a reunion and they're getting it together like mad.	43:00
Jessie Menifield Rattley	They're having a formal dance, it's going to be at the Holiday Inn. They wanted me to give them a list of all of my instructors and I'm supposed to review the history. They're doing it up good, in style. I look at those kids, most of them are very successful, a lot of them went to Washington and took jobs. But I had to fight like hell for them to have the opportunity to get these jobs. I had many who are holding very high GS positions with the federal government.	43:54
Jessie Menifield Rattley	That was the reason I got so involved in trying to get the shipyard to hire them. I was considered, I guess unusual or very radical, because every day I would send my students over to apply at shipyard. Word went out, what is that woman trying to do? They didn't even have a personnel office. They hired those White kids because it's the daughter of somebody. Our city government didn't have a personnel department and I kept hounding away until I got them to hire a clerical person.	44:32
Jessie Menifield Rattley	The shipyard and the banks, even the supermarkets wouldn't hire Black as checkers or cashiers. We had no opportunities for own young people. That's why I ended up in politics. I had no idea of ever running for any office. I didn't know anything about politics, that was not on my agenda. Our people living in below standard housing, they weren't getting jobs. I'm sure there were some Blacks who wanted me to keep my mouth closed. But they're enjoying the fruits of many of those labors. The thing that is difficult for me is to talk about what I did. I this and I that and I, the other.	45:18
Jessie Menifield Rattley	But those are the facts. So you can take any part of my life you want to and do a book on it. Because I have done things, I've been places, been involved in things that I never thought I would ever be involved in. All the travels, all of the national office and recognition. But from what I've told you, you can see that it all grew out of my background. Just determined as hell that I was going to make a difference. So it's an interesting story, but it's just so varied. Mainly that's why I gave you the resume. You read it and you—	46:13

Jessie Menifield Rattley	—about different aspects of my life. I've had some traumatic moments. I think basically God has been very kind to me. I must have been put here for a purpose. I don't quite know what that purpose is, but you talk about being poor, my sister resents it every time I tell someone about it. Many times we ate food from the garbage cans of Whites. Now, they would wrap the food up and put it on top for my grandmother to pick up. So, I've been at the very bottom, but I'm not complaining about it, and I'm certainly not using that as an excuse for anything.	0:01
Jessie Menifield Rattley	Then on the other hand, I guess I have been about as high as any Black American, as far as politics, national and international involvement. There are many items of proof around for that. For example, my high school has honored me many times, although it's nonexistent today. I just recently received a publication that I had not known about, that was mailed to me a few weeks ago, that my principal apparently wrote before he died, about Fairfield Industrial High School. You could read that and go back and check it with what I told you. It may even have something in there about 61st Street Elementary School, because I never thought anything about the name, because it could have been named after some great Black American in the community maybe. But they just called it 61st Street. That's about what they thought of us. Of course, in the North, don't they name them by number sometimes?	0:57
Blair Murphy	Yeah. Because I worked in New Jersey and my school was 10th Street Elementary.	2:21
Jessie Menifield Rattley	Oh, really?	2:25
Blair Murphy	In the New York area.	2:27
Jessie Menifield Rattley	Okay. Are you from New York?	2:28
Blair Murphy	No, I'm from South Jersey, close to Philadelphia.	2:30
Jessie Menifield Rattley	Oh, okay. You in the—I have a brother-in-law there, in Williamstown. You somewhere in there?	2:32
Blair Murphy	I live down the road. I have family there.	2:41
Jessie Menifield Rattley	Really? Well, I be darned.	2:41
Blair Murphy	I wanted to ask you, you said that your activity predates the civil rights movement. There must have been a lot of repression and backlash before pushing the system.	2:46
Jessie Menifield Rattley	Yeah. Yeah.	2:59
Blair Murphy	What types of things?	3:01
Jessie Menifield Rattley	You name it, I've had it. From threats to being followed, from bad press whenever they could, resentment. I was determined. I was not afraid. Maybe I didn't have sense enough to be afraid. My husband was a civil service employee and government employee, a veteran of World War II. He was a mechanic, so he had a trade. For many years before we married, he worked in his father's garage who had a business here.	3:03
Jessie Menifield Rattley	I was earning my own money at my own school. I wasn't dependent on the Board of Education. I had nobody to fear. Knowing me, even if I did work for somebody, I would've done the same thing. But all I'm saying to you is that if someone asked me, "Why did you get involved in politics or how?" My answer is clear to me, it was out of necessity because I had to end up going to the Pentagon to meet with the Chiefs of Staff in order to get their recruiters to come down here and recruit my students.	3:54
Jessie Menifield Rattley	So someone said, "Well how did you get there? How did you get that appointment?" I used a political friend in Washington to set it up for me. I soon learned that most changes come about through some political action. When our people say to me, "Politics is a dirty game," they look down on politicians as crooks and thieves and all of that. I simply respond to them by saying, "Think about it. Politics governs everything, I mean, everything you do while you are on this earth before life and even afterlife."	4:37
Jessie Menifield Rattley	They say, "How you figured?" I said, "While the baby is still in the mother's wound, politics tells you that you are supposed to go to a doctor who's licensed through politics. He's had to meet certain requirements. And in later years, they say in a hospital that's licensed and regulations decided upon by politicians, all of this before you're born." What type of milk the baby will be given, what type of food the baby will eat. You grow up in a world of politics that governs the foods you eat, where you live, what type of job you will have. The type of house, because you got building codes. You can't go out here and build a hut because it doesn't meet certain codes. Who made the codes? Politicians.	5:33
Jessie Menifield Rattley	They decide that if you're going to sell beans, you're going to have to have so many ounces of beans and the fact of counting what you going to get for your money because they cheat on that too. If you think about it, your college, your home, your playground, the food, the government says what food you eat. Why don't we eat cats? It's against the politicians rule. You can only eat, supposedly those things inspected and approved by the FDA. Politicians. Your churches, your schools, you name it. Even what we feel God gave us, the air that we breathe.	6:44
Jessie Menifield Rattley	We are saying now that this air is not right. It doesn't meet environmental standards. You going to have to withdraw these smoke stacks. Because as a child, when my daddy left the railroad, he went to work for steel mills. When fire and smoke was coming out of those stacks in Birmingham, that meant I had food on the table. That meant my daddy had a paycheck. But now we say no, that pollutes the air and you have to have certain emissions on your car. Even the air conditioner under certain circumstances, I could call somebody, come put some more Freon in here. But no, they have tight restrictions or repairing of air conditioning, that went into effect the last couple of years. So I always challenge the student name one thing that politics is not involved in. It's even involved in your sex life.	7:39
Jessie Menifield Rattley	Then after you live, we all are going to die. Who determines what happens to you after you die? Number one, you got to be pronounced dead. You're not dead unless a doctor or coroner says you are. That's the first thing you have to do. Who says you have to be buried six feet underground? Politicians. Or if you are going into a mausoleum, they have certain restrictions about sealing and the soil. Then to top it off, politicians decide how your worldly possessions will be distributed. Who gets what? You have a will or if you don't have a will, the courts take over and they decide who gets your possession. If you make out a will, or you name a person you want to execute it, that's one thing. But if you don't, it's politicians, same way. And regardless of how you leave here, politics says you're going to have to pay taxes on this inheritance, you're going to have to do this, you're going to have to do that. You're going to have to do the other.	8:41
Jessie Menifield Rattley	So if that isn't a good illustration of the importance of politics, what is. So I think all Black Americans should become [indistinct 00:10:18] steeped in the ways of politics. I think that sums up what I was saying. The reason I got so involved in it was that was the only way I knew to bring about changes that would make life better for my people. I'm talking about African-Americans or Blacks or Colored or Negroes. Because you see, when I was in school, we were Negroes. See, I studied Negro History. That was the name on there.	10:09
Jessie Menifield Rattley	Then we went to Colored because we wanted to soften it up a little. The next thing I knew, we've always been niggers behind the door and sometimes openly, we went to Afro-American, I guess because we were wearing Afro hairstyles. I don't know why. Then later we went to African-American. And I suspect now we'll be going to another name. I see this name, I had never seen it before, the last couple of years. Nubian, N-U-B-I-A-N. Now somebody, what does that mean? Well, it means Black, doesn't it?	10:51
Blair Murphy	It means you're from Nubia.	11:31
Jessie Menifield Rattley	From Nubia?	11:34
Blair Murphy	It's a place south of Egypt.	11:35
Jessie Menifield Rattley	Excuse me. Even in these ads in the paper, looking for somebody to go with to court. I had one, I'm saving it for my friend who just called, was a 61-year-old Black man, retired, plenty of money, two cars. Looking for a White woman. This was in Norfolk. It's interesting. And then some of them list themselves as Nubian. And that's how I picked the term up. Because I had my students to read it sometime to let them know what the trends are in politics. I teach Blacks and politics and urban politics at Hampton.	11:37
Jessie Menifield Rattley	And what I was trying to show them is that we have so many distractions out there and we talk about entrepreneurship and then we find out, on the other hand, many Blacks don't want to buy from Blacks because they feel their prices are too high or it doesn't carry enough prestige. And truth of the matter, we don't like one another, we don't like ourselves. And to prove that point, I talk about people like Clarence Thomas. I think he's the worst out there. And he's got this White wife and here's this 61 year old Black man who seems to be well off, is now asking for a White woman would like to have somebody who has some wealth. He says, but even if you don't, let's talk. He would've been ideally situated for me. And here he is talking about a—	12:28
Blair Murphy	[indistinct 00:13:39] White woman. [indistinct 00:13:39].	13:39
Jessie Menifield Rattley	Sure. Talk about his cause and all of that. I said, well, I'd be damned. I would love to have a nice man just to go out with. I don't want a husband. I don't want a relationship. That is really not much. I just like if I want to go to a dance or go out to a club or travel that you have a companion, somebody you can talk to. But when I saw that, it just blew my mind. It was the first time I had seen a Black man that old wanting a White woman.	13:39
Speaker 1	[indistinct 00:14:23] they have something to prove to the White people. Look at me, I have a arrived. Look what I have achieved and acquired.	14:25
Jessie Menifield Rattley	Yeah. And look at OJ Simpson, poor thing, White woman. And a lot of our leaders out here who espouse Blackness, who do they hire for a lawyer? A White man. Who do they use for a doctor? A White one. And it goes on and on and on. And it's a little frustrating. I wish somehow we could change that attitude. And maybe some of the sociologists maybe can come up with a real reason why this happened. Because I know that if you live in a free country, you go with anybody you want to go with.	14:25
Blair Murphy	Do you think that the end of segregation signaled a kind of a change that maybe Black wasn't good enough, when all before, that's all you had, so that [indistinct 00:15:23]?	15:09
Jessie Menifield Rattley	I don't think so. I think maybe is close to what Ms. Doja said. I think sometime Blacks feel as though they have missed something and that this is the pinnacle of success. This is my symbol that I'm successful. Because it seems to me, say when I grew up, and even though I'm old, I'm not the oldest person around, we always had to try to prove something. And even after so-called desegregation, we are still segregated in many ways, but I still don't think we like one another.	15:22
Jessie Menifield Rattley	We will do what we have to do. For example, used to be a Black man could not go to a White barbershop. Even if they wanted to, they would say, "We don't know how to cut your hair." No White undertaker would prepare a Black body. So we have to go to a Black funeral home when we have relatives to die. But as these institutions open up, I see a takeover of the Black churches. Many of them now go to White churches with White ministers. For some reason, he's going to get you into heaven I guess. And I shouldn't maybe say it that way, but there's some Blacks who just feel as though they want to be White.	16:16
Blair Murphy	Do you think that Black people care more for one another in segregation?	17:08
Jessie Menifield Rattley	I think that's what I'm trying to say. I'm rambling, but I don't know that we cared that much then. But out of necessity, we had to. What happened to Black restaurants after the White ones started letting us in? We call them what?	17:13
Blair Murphy	Soul food? A greasy spoon.	17:34
Jessie Menifield Rattley	Greasy spoon. How dare you? I don't want to go to a Greasy Spoon. So we go to Red Lobster and private restaurants and [indistinct 00:17:46] and or whatever.	17:37
Blair Murphy	Do you know of [indistinct 00:17:51] at Norfolk? She was the owner of a Black hotel, which during its time, Duke Ellington, Billy Eckstine, Pearl Bailey, [indistinct 00:18:01] Washington	17:48
Jessie Menifield Rattley	Yeah. [indistinct 00:18:07].	18:03
Blair Murphy	[indistinct 00:18:07], All the places they had to go or to your private home or my private home.	18:07
Jessie Menifield Rattley	Right. That's all.	18:10
Blair Murphy	What happened? We arrived. [indistinct 00:18:17]. We wouldn't go there.	18:11
Jessie Menifield Rattley	You see, I can tell you so many stories like she brought back to mind. After I came to Hampton, graduated, got a job, got a husband, started having children. I have two daughters. Every year we tried to go home to Birmingham. Of course we drive. We couldn't use the bathroom, we couldn't stop and buy any food. They would sell us gas, take our money for gas, but we couldn't buy the food. If we could, we had to go in the back door. If we wanted to stop over, we had no place to stop except in somebody's home.	18:18
Jessie Menifield Rattley	And the average person can't even visualize that today. And this is why I emphasized this was even before we got the so-called freedom. My kids used to have to get out the car and go out in the woods to do what they had to do. Then we started carrying a little pot so they could use the pot in the car and then we could stop and empty it. I never shall forget. One of my daughters said, "Mama, I saw a white horse. I said." I think it was her imagination. But her daddy carried out there in the woods that night. We were going to Birmingham. And she thought she saw a white horse in the woods.	19:00
Blair Murphy	[indistinct 00:19:42] use this section of the woods.	19:41
Jessie Menifield Rattley	So what I'm saying, it was just every day. You couldn't wake up a day and go without being insulting. Whites used to call us niggers. We would be minding our own business, but we would fight back. We would call them crackers. They said, "Nigger, nigger, nigger". Could be another kid. And we would say, "Cracker, cracker, cracker." We found out what they resented being called. But it was a everyday affair. It wasn't just when we went out. We lived in it. What stores did we have to go to in the community? We used to call them Dagoes, because they were, what? Italians. They had the store on the corner.	19:43
Jessie Menifield Rattley	And then if you research, you'll find that many of the Whites made their fortunes off Black folks. But how many Blacks would go to a Black market and really spend money? They would proclaim the prices are too high or he doesn't extend me credit. In fact most times, if you do extend the credit, they don't pay you because they don't think they have to pay you. I don't know. Your document should be interesting because you have so many resources. Last week or so they did a program, I hope you saw it, the different phases of slavery. And they show how Blacks are still in slavery. The migrant workers, they gave examples. I have the tape if sometimes you're interested. I taped it.	20:36
Jessie Menifield Rattley	Of course they not only showed Blacks, but they showed other groups of people in different countries, even down to the prostitution. I guess this was in Thailand, where the parents would sell their daughters off and they would be prostitutes with a promise of money that they never got. But they started off with the Black migrant workers, and how many of them work 40 some hours. And they don't collect any money because the White man will say, "Well, you owe me this and more for your keep."	21:36
Blair Murphy	So it was always embedded, even into the next week, into the next pay period.	22:17
Jessie Menifield Rattley	And that's how we live for many years, in Black communities in the south. And I can suspect in the north too.	22:21
Blair Murphy	When they went to work on Monday morning, they were, according to the White man, working off part of what you ate.	22:29
Jessie Menifield Rattley	The week before.	22:37
Blair Murphy	[indistinct 00:22:38] the week before. So they were always in debt.	22:38
Jessie Menifield Rattley	Always in debt. We never had anything, never had any money that we felt that we could decide how to spend it. They would charge us, overcharge us for food and the rental property because where these migrant workers are living, they showed those shacks and then they have a Black man who will go out and recruit these Blacks. And he was knocking down a lot of money through his scheme. And furthermore, they said they found crack cocaine in every one of those houses. And I guess he's charging—They're paying for that. And that's happening today. So you don't have to go far to understand just how devastating it is. And all of those things could be the cause of some of our attitudes now about one another. We pretend to be sisters and brothers, but we haven't gotten it together just right yet. Maybe your generation will.	22:42
Jessie Menifield Rattley	Truthfully, we buy things with our income that are made by people who don't look like us. And we don't hold any stock in those [indistinct 00:24:09]. And if you start thinking about, it would certainly open your eyes. We make up styles. And who gets the money from it? They do. As a Greek, when I was in school, we had all these sweaters and T-shirts and lamps and paddles and all this junk. You know what I'm talking about made by the Chicago Milling Company, especially the sweaters.	23:54
Jessie Menifield Rattley	So I made a search. At that time there were no stockholders, but they were making their income from Black fraternities and sororities. So wouldn't it make sense that a Black firm would make those items? And then the book of the 30 billion dollar market. That book was published some years ago. Now we are up to over 50 billion dollars. That's a lot of money. That's more than the GDP of some of our countries. Smaller countries. And the question is, how do we spend it? And you would be shocked. You would be shocked.	24:37
Jessie Menifield Rattley	They have it broken down in categories of that 50 billion dollars, we talking about expendable income. What do we do with it? We save very little of it, less than 1%. We invest very little of it. I think that's less than 3%. They have how much we spend for clothing, automobiles of course, housing and what type of things we buy. We drink a lot of sodas, and they have all that in there. It's interesting. And I'm not suggesting that we can tell people how to spend their money. If you work for it, spend it any way you want to. But if you start thinking in terms of crying the blues about the federal government, in many instances we could buy and sell the federal government.	25:26
Jessie Menifield Rattley	If we would pull our resources, we could provide our own jobs, we could create our own businesses. And the kids I teach, almost 95% of them said they going to law school. But if you look at the number of lawyers out there, your question would be what happened. In Newport News, the only law office in this community, what they call the southeast community, about 30,000 people is my daughter. She's the only Black lawyer in the community. Many of our kids who face law school, they go work for corporations, where they do one thing and they couldn't make a living on law if the life depended on it. But they're working for Whites. Where's that large law firm or Black corporation that could hire these Black lawyers? It just makes sense that young people should think about those things.	26:32
Blair Murphy	Is Bill Robinson the only Black law firm in Norfolk?	27:40
Jessie Menifield Rattley	Who?	27:40
Blair Murphy	Robinson. Bill.	27:40
Jessie Menifield Rattley	You have so many of them that have made judges now. I'm not sure. Billy Robinson, maybe. Wait a minute now we still have—What's the other one? Oh, shucks. Madison. Hugo. Is he still practicing?	27:52
Blair Murphy	Just retired.	28:09
Jessie Menifield Rattley	He retired. [indistinct 00:28:17]. And Robinson, he spends most of his time in Richmond, which means he's not available for say a [indistinct 00:28:26] who needs somebody in court on a certain day. We have [indistinct 00:28:37]. And the books that tells you how many Black lawyers, doctors, dentists, et cetera, that'll blow your mind. I never knew we had so few dentists, for example. And we are so lacking in numbers in so many areas. And the other thing that is interesting that we don't seem to increase our population very much.	28:10
Jessie Menifield Rattley	We seem to stay at around 12% of the total population. And if you would look back 50 years ago was probably still 12% of the total number. And in some periods we have declined. And with the high rate of murders now among our Black youth, I'm wondering what effect will that have also. And then with the fear that Asians will outnumber Blacks by the year 2005 and all the speculation about that and where will we be for jobs on the economic scale. Some interesting things going on. And I admire, historians or researchers who can kind of put it in perspective. And I really like Hacker's book Two Nations. He's just revised it also. He has updated it. And a lot of people say, "Well I don't believe this." But he gives his sources. That's what I'm impressed with, when you go back and check these figures.	29:03
Jessie Menifield Rattley	And then almost every day a lot of it comes out. I think the question was what is the average savings among Americans? And I don't know how they broke that down. And I believe they said only about 200 something dollars. And we were talking about Medicare and Medicaid and social security. How would we live if it is true that even though we worked a whole lifetime, we have say less than $300 saved. And at first I did not believe it. It wasn't until I saw the [indistinct 00:31:08] that it began to register with me. We don't save, we don't invest. And of course there's a whole string of whys and my students can give me a reason. Colonization, they tell me, especially for African nations. The White man did everything. The White man did it. Everything. And I guess the bottom line is we need to start taking some responsibility. And I see so much hope for the youth if they would move into a more positive direction.	30:24
Jessie Menifield Rattley	Because living in this country, you will find out that everything is measured by power and money. That's it. Power and money and politics controls both power and money. And of course, I guess my students feel I make it too simple. But that's it. All of it can be traced right back to it. And I guess maybe that's part of the Black dilemma, that we don't want another Black to have power or money. Give you one illustration. This was back in the fifties, I think I just bought a '54 Chevrolet, black and White.	31:59
Jessie Menifield Rattley	I remember the first day I drove it to my school, my students were peeping out the upstairs window. "Oh man, she got a new car." My money went to pay for that car to buy that car. And they were paying $2 and 50 cent a week, tuition. You understand what I'm saying? That's an indication that maybe part of the problem is we don't want another Black to possess this power or money and we do everything we can to discredit or to keep this person away. And the final illustration that I would share with you is that the average Black person doesn't know that McCall Patterns is owned by a Black firm and has been for years and they have protected themselves by making it appear as though it is owned by Whites.	32:58
Speaker 1	The White people on the cover.	34:15
Jessie Menifield Rattley	Yes, thank you, thank you. But whatever you need to do, do it, to get that power and money. And most of my students just don't believe it, even though they read it in their textbook. How can McCall be Black? Because every person who [indistinct 00:34:41], most of them will buy a McCall Pattern because it's got a White picture of the background. So why not open Black businesses and have a White man fronting for you? They certainly had a lot of Black folks fronting for them on this minority [indistinct 00:35:00] to make the government believe it's owned by a woman or by a Black. They just said [indistinct 00:35:12]. So do whatever's necessary. I talked enough. Yes ma'am.	34:17

Item Info

Title:

Jessie Rattley interview recording, 1995 August 03

Date:

August 3, 1995

Creator:

Rattley, Jessie Menifield

Contributor:

Murphy, Blair

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Name: Jessie Menifield Rattley; Date of birth: 1929-05-04; Place of birth: Birmingham, AL; Occupation(s): educator; Residence: Newport News, VA
Informant ID: 962; Interviewed by: Blair Murphy.

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Behind the Veil

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

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

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Jessie Rattley interview recording, 1995 August 03

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1. Jessie Rattley administrative file, 1995

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