Sammie Dilworth interview recording, 1995 July 18
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| Tywanna Whorley | Mr. Dilworth, could you state your full name and date of birth, please? | 0:01 |
| Sammie Dilworth | Yes, ma'am. My name is Sammie Joe Dilworth. | 0:07 |
| Tywanna Whorley | What's your date of birth? | 0:26 |
| Sammie Dilworth | August the 27th, 1923. | 0:26 |
| Tywanna Whorley | Mr. Dilworth, were you born here at Cotton Plant? | 0:26 |
| Sammie Dilworth | I was born in Forest City, but I was raised up here in Cotton Plant, after four years old. | 0:27 |
| Tywanna Whorley | Your family moved here at that time? | 0:34 |
| Sammie Dilworth | Yes. Yes ma'am. | 0:36 |
| Tywanna Whorley | Can you pinpoint a early memory, [indistinct 00:00:55] first memory at the cotton plant, what it was like back in those days? | 0:54 |
| Sammie Dilworth | The first memories I can remember, we had a train that run through here. It would come by our house and the conductor would throw us kids some candy off. I'll never forget that. We was just children lived out in the country, about three miles out in the country. We farmed before, I was small, we farmed, worked with our parents, was on the farm. We done farm work. After I grew up, got about 13 years old, I started working mechanic work, a little shop by the name of Maven's Garage. | 0:54 |
| Tywanna Whorley | Maven's? | 1:35 |
| Sammie Dilworth | Here in Cotton Plant. Mavens Garage, was called Chrysler Service at that time. That was our name of the garage. | 1:36 |
| Tywanna Whorley | How did you get that job? | 1:43 |
| Sammie Dilworth | What happened, my mother bought a car. It would need some work on it and I would go and work on it. Then I would start to work on it this morning and I wouldn't know what to do with it. I'd go to sleep at night and I would dream about what to do the next day to fix it. It just kind of come as a gift. It was, I said, a God given gift. I didn't go to school for it. As I worked on automobiles, the next day I go tell them the parts I needed, and boy, they would give me those parts, I put on there and that car would just zip like that. | 1:49 |
| Sammie Dilworth | I thought I was a real mechanic, as a 13 year old boy. I stayed with it, and the man that I went to work for, I worked for him 17 years, at Maven's Garage, I worked 17 years. After that, I started to work for myself. I bought this place and start work for myself. I've been doing this kind of work 45 years already. | 2:29 |
| Tywanna Whorley | You bought this place from [indistinct 00:03:03]? | 2:59 |
| Sammie Dilworth | Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yes, ma'am. | 3:03 |
| Tywanna Whorley | You say you never went to school to get mechanical training? | 3:07 |
| Sammie Dilworth | No. What happened, when I started doing this work and come into mechanic business, the parts people that sell parts would always furnish you with literature. Furnish you with literature. You could take them home at night and read this literature to know what the next automobile was going to be like, or what it was going to take to fix this automobile, or how it would act, to tell you what part to put on it. I got my training through the parts department that would furnish this book, furnish some equipment like that. I didn't go to school a day in my life for it. | 3:14 |
| Tywanna Whorley | Was that through Chrysler? | 3:50 |
| Sammie Dilworth | Uh-huh. Through Chrysler service. | 3:50 |
| Tywanna Whorley | I was wondering, was there anyone who showed you how to do it? | 4:05 |
| Sammie Dilworth | Yeah, as I said, this was already a trained mechanic that I came in under. | 4:10 |
| Tywanna Whorley | Mr. Maven? | 4:14 |
| Sammie Dilworth | Maven was already a trained mechanic and I came in under him. He would teach me some of the things that I didn't know. A lot that I didn't know. Then the things would come to me at night if we were working on an automobile, he wouldn't pressure me into fixing that automobile. He'd just tell me, that's your automobile, you fix it. All I couldn't do that day, I'd just dream about it that night. My daddy would say, wake that boy up, because he is going to talk about that car all night. | 4:15 |
| Sammie Dilworth | My mother said No, let him alone. He's fixing it now. Sure enough, the next morning she would ask me, Son, what was that you was doing to that car last night? I said, Mama, I was going to put a coil on it, I was going to put some parts in it, and that car wouldn't run yesterday. I said, But I bet it run today. I go back home that evening, she said, What did it do? I said, it ran. That's the way I was gifted. It would come to me how to do things like that. | 4:50 |
| Tywanna Whorley | Mr. Maven, was he White, or Black? | 5:25 |
| Sammie Dilworth | He was White. He was a White man. I worked for him 17 years. | 5:27 |
| Tywanna Whorley | What were your first wages? | 5:33 |
| Sammie Dilworth | My first wages, I was drawing about $9 a week. $9 a week. | 5:36 |
| Tywanna Whorley | Was that good money back in those days? | 5:45 |
| Sammie Dilworth | Back then. Uh-huh. | 5:45 |
| Tywanna Whorley | Were you pleased with the way it progressed over time? | 5:51 |
| Sammie Dilworth | Yes. As time grew on and the war started, we got a lot of work. I began to learn more and he would up my wages every week. He paid me a little more, little more, till I got up to where I had a very good living. | 5:54 |
| Tywanna Whorley | You mentioned the war. How did the war affect business? | 6:18 |
| Sammie Dilworth | The war added to our business. We would make parts. He was an old fella that knew how to interchange parts on this car, and a part would interchange to another one without having to buy it. He knew how to do that. Parts was hard to get. Tires was hard to get. They were rationing tires, rationing gas. You get maybe a pair of tires once a year, and stuff like that. Automobiles, we'd keep them going. | 6:21 |
| Sammie Dilworth | When it came time to go to the service, I would have gone to the service, but he got me a deferment for farm deferment because we worked on farm tractors. They needed somebody back home that could keep the farmers' equipment going. He signed papers to keep me from going to the service. I stayed there and worked with him, keeping tractors going, and produce to feed the people. That's how I stayed out of army. I didn't have to go. My brother went, but I didn't have to go. | 7:01 |
| Tywanna Whorley | How many Black mechanics would you say were in this part of the state through the years? | 7:46 |
| Sammie Dilworth | Through this town, it was myself, Sammy Joe, my cousin, John Floyd, Mr. Miller, Larry Miller, and Mr—What was Miss Money Williams husband named? Walter? Miss Money Williams' husband that was named Walter. Walter Williams. All of us was working for this—Then, he had a son named Buster Maven. All of us was working in his garage at the same time. They needed a lot of mechanics back then. They couldn't buy new automobiles and they just kept us overflow with automobiles, keeping them fixed. We kept busy from Monday morning till Saturday night. We worked six days a week. | 7:52 |
| Tywanna Whorley | Your parents, or your family had a farm at that time? | 8:51 |
| Sammie Dilworth | Uh-huh. At that time. | 8:54 |
| Tywanna Whorley | Were you helping in any— | 8:55 |
| Sammie Dilworth | After I got started in the garage work, I didn't do much on the farm then. I mostly stayed at the garage. This man hired me as a straight hand. That's all the time I had, doing this kind of work. | 8:57 |
| Tywanna Whorley | Who was at home doing the farm work? | 9:12 |
| Sammie Dilworth | That was three more of my sisters and brothers. I had two more sisters and two brothers, my dad, and my mother worked on the farm. | 9:15 |
| Tywanna Whorley | Did they own the farm? | 9:28 |
| Sammie Dilworth | Yeah, they owned it. They owned the farm. | 9:32 |
| Tywanna Whorley | When did they obtain the farm? | 9:34 |
| Sammie Dilworth | They bought this farm when I was about—I must have been about 15 years old when they bought one 40 acre farm. That was called the Dilworth farm. My mother came in possession of a inheritance of a portion of their farm, which was a Floyd farm. She had her portion of that farm that we worked. They worked. I didn't get to do much. | 9:36 |
| Tywanna Whorley | I'm from Memphis, and I know that in some of the large cities, well into the century, there was quite a tradition of Black skilled labor. Was that true in these parts too? Where there a lot of artisans and brick masons and carpenters? | 10:26 |
| Sammie Dilworth | Not very many here. Mr. Butler and a few fellas like him was good brick masons and carpenters. Quite a few of those. He trained his brothers and he trained Joe Williams and different other people. We had some skilled people here in cotton plant. You could almost find most any kind of a skilled person in cotton plant that you needed. It was somebody here. | 10:46 |
| Tywanna Whorley | There were still Blacksmiths at that time? | 11:15 |
| Sammie Dilworth | Yeah, we had some Blacksmiths shop was owned by Black men. Trying to think of that man's name now, but I can't recall his name. We had two at that time. I can't think of their names. Blacksmith. We had gristmills and all that kind of stuff to grind up corn and make meal for bread and all that. We had some of everything in this town. This was a town, one time, where people would come from Brinkley, Augusta and all down, come to this town. This is where, a little boy said, whatever is happening is what's happening here. | 11:17 |
| Tywanna Whorley | So it was like a real center of— | 12:08 |
| Sammie Dilworth | This was a center place for the county. People in the county, this was a center place for them. Yeah. | 12:12 |
| Tywanna Whorley | What Was the racial atmosphere like in those days? | 12:28 |
| Sammie Dilworth | It was a lot of Black people that owned their own land. This was a farming area. They called it cotton plant because this is where people grew the cotton. Most of this farming land was owned by Blacks from Brinkley, clear on through cotton plant, all the way plum up to Patterson, McCrory, Black people own land all the way up through there. Quite a few Blacks yet own their land. Mr. Willis Scott, Mr. Albert Knights, Mr. Warren Miller and ourselves, Dilworths, and Mr. Clem L Edmond. Quite a few people that I can't recollect the names right now that still own their land. | 12:35 |
| Sammie Dilworth | What happened to a lot of this land that the Colored people don't own now, the older people passed on, then the younger people had gone to the cities and what have you. They didn't want to keep it, so they'd come back down and would sell off so much. This family fell, sell off their family inheritance, and then here come another family down and they'd sell theirs off. That's how the Blacks lost a lot of the land. The children would sell it and then go back north and places where—We that stayed around in this area knew the value of our land, and we kept it. We kept our land. Through our family now, my brother and I that's operating our farm now, we still have 120 acres of our own land. We're operating 120 acres of, it's considered the Floyd's and Dilworth's land, but he's operating it. My brother is. | 13:42 |
| Tywanna Whorley | Mr. Dilworth, what kind of things do farming people do to help each other out? | 14:45 |
| Sammie Dilworth | It isn't too much they do to help one another. They get a lot of big equipment and everything and they can pretty well handle their own jobs. | 14:55 |
| Tywanna Whorley | I mean back in these days, back then before a lot of the mechanized labor. | 15:04 |
| Sammie Dilworth | Oh, yes. I know some neighbors of ours that we would catch up with our crops, then we would go and give these people a day, chopping the cotton, or take our team over there and help them plow and catch up if they was behind in the grass. That was the kind of fellowship that we had between one another at that time. If you had a neighbor, you always did something to help your neighbor, and the neighbor did something to help you at that time. That's how the Blacks really got along real good on their farms and they kept them going. They kept them until, like I said, the children began to sell it off. | 15:12 |
| Tywanna Whorley | Where did they meet? Was there common meeting places for the different families, different neighbors? By that I mean were there particular events or places? | 15:56 |
| Sammie Dilworth | No, not back at that time. Most of the time when you would meet your congregation and meet people, it was like a—Down this way, going back to toward Brinkley, would be what they call dark corner area. Then we would move up in this area, we would call Cotton Plant area. Then we had a place called Shady Grove area. Then we had another place we call Buffalo Area, New Minds Eye. The children, the people didn't mix too much. You raise up your family practically in this area without knowing what this next area was like. | 16:08 |
| Sammie Dilworth | They would come to town maybe once a week or maybe in the fall of year when you got picked cotton, ride the wagon to town to come to the gin or something like that. The children just didn't get out. It was always a school in their area. They had country schools in their area. They would all go to their school, they had their churches in their area. They'd go to school and go to church and they would play with their neighbors, and grew up like that, in their different areas. They didn't have to come to town to no special meeting area because it wasn't any place to really come. | 16:48 |
| Sammie Dilworth | Everything was owned, uptown practically, by the White people. The stores, merchant stores and stuff. We did have some Blacks at that time that had clothes cleaners, clothes cleaning shops, and they did have what they call cafes and stuff like that. If you was uptown, you could come in and eat. We had one Black man by the name of Mr—What is his name, lived out in the country that cut that meat so thin, Mr. Vault? Cade, Mr. Hezekiah Cade. He was the barbecue man. When we kids a come to town, we would run to find his little wagon. He'd have, on the back of his wagon, he would cut that barbecue and make sandwiches. We kids enjoyed that. We'd get us a great big tall bottle of pop. We done had a good time. We was ready to go back home. | 17:35 |
| Tywanna Whorley | Were you in the Buffalo area? | 18:39 |
| Sammie Dilworth | No, I was in what they call the Becton area. Becton area. My grandparents own that in through there. My great, great granddaddy, we celebrate his birthday now. At that time he was an old slave man. We celebrate his birthday and he was born on the fourth day of July. That's how he got all of his children and grandchildren together. He would cook a billy goat, cook him up and make lemonade and stuff, and have us come up on the fourth day of July. His children, grandchildren, his children had some more children. He'd gotten old, and he couldn't get about. | 18:40 |
| Sammie Dilworth | He couldn't come and see them and know how many he had unless he would fix this big eat out. The parents would bring all the children and say, "Grandpa, this is some more my kids, this is so-and-so." That's how he would know his grandchildren and his great-grandchildren. After he passed on, we kept this old tradition of celebrating his birthday. We found his stone in the cemetery last week that had been trampled down. The stone says that he was born in 1830. | 19:29 |
| Tywanna Whorley | What was his name? | 20:17 |
| Sammie Dilworth | His name was Lewis Floyd. Great grandpa, Lewis Floyd. His wife was named Nancy. They were old, real old people. They were slavery time people. We have this every year in order that we can keep up with our—We call it family reunion. A lot of people does, but we call it, well, it is still a family reunion, but it's because of this old grandpa that had started us to. | 20:19 |
| Sammie Dilworth | A lot of families don't come, where somebody die and you have to come to the funeral. A lot of people never comes and see their family. They just go away. They just stay away. But we do this once every year. We have built us a park out on our farm. A big beautiful park with a chain link fence around it, and a nice building. We got it in good shape. Lot of play equipment for the children. | 20:54 |
| Sammie Dilworth | We have potluck, the parents are all carrying potluck, and set on the table. We eat that way. I have a son that he cooks all the fish. We have fish, cooking fish, cooking chicken, cooking hot dogs and all that kind of stuff. We cook it out there and we just have a good time, start at about 12 o'clock and we stay there till about sundown, about six o'clock. People coming and going all time. Our friends, not only our personal family, but we invite friends, anybody. It's open, free, open for everybody. | 21:22 |
| Sammie Dilworth | This year on 4th of July, we didn't have, they came down pretty low. We didn't have about a hundred and something that attended, but we did have it built up where people was coming from California and also Washington DC. It got so big til the city gave us, my brother and I, gave us this spot in here from the firehouse. They roped it off and we had bad weather, going to rain that day. We brought all of the tables in here in this building, and we put up a curtain back there and cut off our tools and everything back there, and the people who come through outside by the table, eat and go and get the plates, and go back outside. | 22:10 |
| Sammie Dilworth | Now along at that time we was having about five to 600 people that was attending this affair. We had people in the area that would help donate, because this was a big expense. They would donate, different families here that said, my people's coming home. Instead of me cooking at home, we'll just come out there and eat. Here's $20 that you can put on your picnic. We have a big picnic, we'd have a whole truckload of watermelons and stuff we'd cut after they eat the dinners. We just had a good time. Everybody would look forward to coming. | 22:53 |
| Sammie Dilworth | A lot of people could come from California here, but their vacation wouldn't be long enough for them to go to Washington and then back. What they would do, they would call their people and say, we going to meet you at the Dilworth picnic in Cotton Plant. This is how we become what a lot of people call us, my brother and I, the corner posts of Cotton Plant. We had something to offer and the people would come. That's why they would come from Washington DC, they would come from Los Angeles, California, and they would get the motels in Forest City and Brinkley, and fill them up. Then they'd come to Forest City, fill them up. A lot of them would get them way over at Memphis. They would come to this picnic because this is what they would want to do. | 23:30 |
| Tywanna Whorley | Mr. Dilworth? | 24:23 |
| Sammie Dilworth | Yes ma'am? | 24:24 |
| Tywanna Whorley | Your great, great Grandfather, Mr. Lewis Floyd? | 24:26 |
| Sammie Dilworth | Lewis Floyd. | 24:30 |
| Tywanna Whorley | He was an owner in the Becton area, or the owner in the Becton area? | 24:33 |
| Sammie Dilworth | He was the owner. All that land. He bought it and then willed it on down to his children and his grandchildren. That's how we still— | 24:37 |
| Tywanna Whorley | You've had it for that many generations? | 24:49 |
| Sammie Dilworth | We've had it all that that time. Yeah, all that time. | 24:52 |
| Tywanna Whorley | Okay. Do you know when he got the land? | 24:54 |
| Sammie Dilworth | Far back as I can go is when my mother knows, was telling me that—Well, he helped to raise my mother. He and his wife, which was my great granddaddy. After slavery, he came out from under slavery back in those years, whatever those years were, then he purchased this land. Well, I don't know, maybe I shouldn't say this, but I think— | 25:04 |
| Tywanna Whorley | Turn it off? | 25:35 |
| Sammie Dilworth | Uh-huh. Turn it off. [INTERRUPTION] | 25:35 |
| Tywanna Whorley | Do you remember Lewis Floyd? Was he alive when you— | 25:36 |
| Sammie Dilworth | Yeah, we'd go up, my mother would take us up there, so we could eat this food and acquaint us with our grandfather once every year. Every fourth day of July. I remembered him. I was a little bitty boy then. I remember running down through the dirt, going up to grandpa's cause he's going to have us some good barbecue cooked up. He's going to have the big old kegs of lemonade made. Back in those times, if you got your glass of lemonade, boy it was good. It was good. | 25:40 |
| Sammie Dilworth | He had a son named Bob Floyd. He lived what they call in the Buffalo settlement. He had a store. That was his son, he had a store. He would have sugar and stuff. He would make the lemonade and furnish the sugar out of his store to make the lemonade. He a store, so he would get the lemons out of his store. That was his gift to the family on the 4th of July, is to make the lemonade. My mother and others would fix potlucks, cook some cakes, fry some chickens, different stuff. They would bring that. That's when they would spread everything on the table, and this barbecue my grandfather had cooked. That's where we'd have a big eating time. I can always remember that. Yeah. | 26:20 |
| Tywanna Whorley | That's been going on all your life. | 27:16 |
| Sammie Dilworth | All my life. Really, I was born. My mother would tell us that her uncles and all would come up to the house. This was her uncles, because her daddy was a Floyd. These other Floyd brothers and sisters would come and that'd make them be her uncles. She'd talk about her uncles would come, she'd see them. She was raised for a long time, a little girl, at this grandpa's house. Her parents, her daddy was kind of a roundabout man. He was a drunkard, he liked to drink and he'd get with the rough crowds and he'd come home and he'd whoop up on her mother and scare the kids. They'd all run off and they'd run up to grandpa's. | 27:17 |
| Sammie Dilworth | Her name was Nancy, she's named after her grandmother. She said, "I'll keep Nancy." She kept my mother. My grandmother would catch the train. Train would come right through by the house, there was a railroad come right through here, went all the way to Newport. My grandmother would catch the train and go to Newport. Then she'd get on another train and go to Martin. That's where our people came out of. The hills of Martin. My mother's side of folk came from Martin. They was part of the Indian people. My dad, he came out Mississippi. He was a Mississippian. He met my mother here and that's where he married her. That's how we become Dilworths. We'd have been Floyds if it hadn't been, my daddy was Dilworth. All of the family of Floyds, and this granddaddy was kind of, like I said, mean. He kept his family scattered all the time. Alright. | 28:13 |
| Sammie Dilworth | Well, this 80 acres that we own, that we work in now, he bought it and he gave it to this son. Then he had it fixed to where it can't be sold as long as it's a Floyd. That way, he'd know his grandchildren would always have a place to live. That's the way he done that. Over Buffalo settlement, he bought a place over there and gave them—Where he lived, he willed that too. He fixed the papers up where this uncle and his children on, heirs, it would be their property, never to be sold. He bought it, and that's the way he fixed the papers before he passed. So that as long as it was a Floyd, someone would have a place to live. | 29:15 |
| Sammie Dilworth | As many Floyds as there is, if any of them want to come home, build them a house on the farm, it was understood from the older generation on down that long as you are a Floyd, or connected with the Floyds, you have a right to a acre land, or whatever, to put you a house on. That's the way that it's set up. That's my brother there. That's the way that—He's the operator of the farm, the farm papers and all that stuff now. The deeds and all. The deed still stands as they was made. As long as it's a Floyd, property would not be sold. That's the way my parents fixed the last 40 acres that we bought. The Dilworths. We don't plan to ever sell it. | 30:07 |
| Sammie Dilworth | My brother and I was talking to my son, I had one that came home this month. He came home last week in June. He's been in the service, Air Force, 13 years. We was trying to figure who we could put in their hands at this time. Which one that would keep it in the Dilworth tradition, that would do it like we done it. Our parents have passed on, but we are holding on to the same tradition. We got to have somebody that we can pass it on to. He accepted that he would be the one, he would take it. He's my second son, but he's got more stability about him as a man than the older one. You don't want to give it to the older one just because he's the oldest. You want to give it to somebody that you think going to keep it. | 31:02 |
| Sammie Dilworth | When my mother and those got older and they couldn't operate, we consented to give it to my brother. He's been keeping everything in good shape. Taxes paid and keeping the farm up, fence rolls cut, keeping it worked. He's been keeping it up. As I said, we've got a park built out there now and we have running water from the city all the way out there, three mile to our homes. We ran it to the park and then we built us some brand new, a bathroom house where the ladies would have one half of the men in one part, ladies another. | 31:58 |
| Sammie Dilworth | We got running water, face bowls, toilet stools, looking glasses so when they go in they can re-freshen up. We got all that in the country. We got all that out there on our farm. As the people come, those that come every year sometime, some don't come one year but they come the next, they always give us the critic that we have added on. We keep adding on to it. | 32:41 |
| Sammie Dilworth | I've been a spokesman for my aunt Sarah. She passed last year. She was always the spokesman that was the last generation of my mother. She lived in Michigan. She'd come home to this affair. She had told us that whatever y'all do, keep it going. She passed on last year. I, being the next oldest in this area, I was the spokesman. I had to tell them what we expect out of the rest of them. To stay together, keep it going. His wife, she accepted my Aunt Sarah's responsibility. She told Aunt Sarah when she was living last year that, "I'll take your place if something happened." She was able to take her place this year. She told the whole bunch. She said, "Now, look. This is the second Aunt Sarah. I'm in control. Something y'all want to do or something y'all want to say—" | 33:07 |
| Sammie Dilworth | This is brother Tyler. That's brother Tyler. This is one of the leading posts in this country too. I tell you. He own his own land, still on his own farm down there. Yes he does. Good man. Good person. That's the way we got our farm and everything set up. The picnic, we keep it in good shape. The ground, keep the grass cut and it costs us. It's a watch light out there that I pays for the watch light each month. It's $7 and 10 cents a month. I don't ask any of the other family to help, I just want to see to it being done. I pay for it. | 34:11 |
| Sammie Dilworth | I brought that to their attention this year that we have the yard to be cut so many times, $35 a cutting and we cut it maybe four times or five times a year. Then we had a watch light, $7 10 cents 12 months a year. Then we mentioned that we built this bathroom setup, was I believe 700 and something dollars. We had it on paper that we was able to relate it to them. Before some of them left there, they was pitching them $20 bills in, said we got to help y'all take care of this thing. | 34:58 |
| Sammie Dilworth | Unless you make some improvement, nobody feels like they're responsible for anything. You make some improvement and show them that you're making some improvement, you'd be surprised at the rest of the family that will catch on. Some of them said, well we going to be sending y'all something to help sponsor this thing cause it's costing. We told them, it's costing. We're not begging the family to do anything, but we want to let you know it's everybody's responsibility as a Floyd. They just started pitching them twenties in, and that made us feel good. They appreciate what we had done. Are doing. As I say, next month I'll be 72 years old. The good Lord has given me my time here. All this other extra time that maybe I get, it's a blessing from the Lord. I belong to the Morning Star Missionary Baptist Church. | 35:38 |
| Tywanna Whorley | Is that the church you were raised in? | 36:33 |
| Sammie Dilworth | I was raised there. I fetched religion and was raised there. I fetched religion there when I was 12 years old. I was 15 years old, they made superintendent out of me. Junior superintendent. After I got married, I married when I was 19. After I got married, they made a junior deacon out of me, after I got married at 19. Then I grew on into a regular deacon for the church. | 36:37 |
| Sammie Dilworth | I'm the oldest member of that church living. Oldest member of Morning Star. We've got older people in the church, but I am the oldest member of that church. Our church, it's a big cemetery around it. We have five acres that belongs to the Morning Star church and cemetery that we bought. What happened is that this church was— | 37:11 |
| Sammie Dilworth | At that time, if you had a place that you put into a church or school, under the slavery time, predict me what happened. You would be a Floyd if you was a Floyd. It would come out under Floyd. This was a church place where—it was the Crowders people that own that land through there, was called the Crowders. | 37:41 |
| Sammie Dilworth | My mother went there to school. It was a church and it was a school. After that, I went to school out there. It was a little old Methodist church set just the other side of it. It went down. Then there was some old people live in the area said, let's have a Sunday school here. They had Sunday school there. Then it grew into a church, and they couldn't name it Crowders no more. They named it a Morning Star. Named it Bright and Morning Star. That was the first name of our church. | 38:19 |
| Tywanna Whorley | They dropped Bright? | 39:00 |
| Sammie Dilworth | No, they left that. That was the second church there. The first church was Crowders. | 39:01 |
| Tywanna Whorley | Okay. | 39:06 |
| Sammie Dilworth | The second church was Bright and Morning Star. So many people came in, began to raise a lot of families, big families. They would come to church there, and the church got too small. The pastor suggested we'd tear it down, build a bigger one. They built a big one, then he had to name it. | 39:07 |
| Tywanna Whorley | Right. | 39:23 |
| Sammie Dilworth | Then he named it Bright and Morning Star. It stayed there for a number of years. I got the pictures of the church and everything. The old church. Then it burned. It had a fire, it burned. Then we built back a brand new one. It's only been built five years. It was called the New Morning Star. That's the church that I belong to and that is sitting there, beautiful church now. It's beautiful. Lord blessed us to where we were able to see the right people at the right time and have the right communication. We got ourselves together, we deacons, and they made me the chairman of the building committee. We got this thing together, and people like Mr. Vault there, and our people of the community got with us on this thing. They had built a new church down here. They came to our meeting. We had been meeting at different other churches, cause ours burned, and he gave a lot of insight on how to go about it, things of that kind. | 39:24 |
| Sammie Dilworth | We then got in touch with a man in Little Rock by the name of Mr. Davenport. They had built a new church out here called Trist Chapel. Mr. Raymond Stoval was in here, that you talked to, they got a church built. The labor didn't cost him anything. We got with this company and they got us to get our material together. They said, we build a church, one in the area once a year, and they was going to leave ours and going overseas and build a church. This was a bunch of Christian men that owned those lumber mills and stuff like that. They said that this is one way they could give back to the Lord. A day out of once a year into this church. | 40:38 |
| Sammie Dilworth | They came and we got our material together, we got everything together just right, and the trucks bring it in this evening. All they didn't bring this evening that we needed the next morning, like the rafters, they brought it in morning before they could get this up. Do you know they put that church up in one day? | 41:38 |
| Tywanna Whorley | Wow. No labor cost? | 41:57 |
| Sammie Dilworth | No labor cost. They made me the chairman. I had to go to Des Arc the day before, and have about a hundred dozen donuts made at a donut shop. Told the lady that I got to have them next morning, nine o'clock. She got up and went to that donut shop about 2:30, 3 o'clock that morning and started cooking them fresh donuts. I went over and got those donuts. | 41:59 |
| Sammie Dilworth | They wanted fish. Okay. I got the fish. They cooked the fish out there under a tent, and those fellows wouldn't stop to eat. They would come down off the building and go get them a donut in one hand and some fish. They said, some of them had never eaten no fish, Buffalo fish, they said. They'd take it in one hand, and they got their hammers in the other hand, and they didn't stop building on that building. It rained that day off and on all day. They stopped 30 minutes each time. They had to come down off of that building 30 minutes each time and come up under this, we had a tent. They would go up under the tent until the rain would break, and they'd go right back up on that building. Those people got through with that building at 8:30 that evening. Had the windows in it, the building up, the top on it, the windows in it, the doors in it, and the locks in it. | 42:28 |
| Sammie Dilworth | The electricity man, he was there that morning and as they start putting it up, he start putting his electricity wires in the walls and reciprocals and all. When we got ready to put the inside in—They just put the church up, but the paneling and inside, we finished that ourselves. The church was up and they locked the doors, and gave each one of us a key. The deacons a key, the pastor a key. When we walked out of the church, that's 8:30 that night, it was locked. No one could get in and mess with nothing. We toted all the rest of the material inside. A lot of people of the community was there to see this church go up. Then Mr. Davenport said, "All we don't get done today, we only give y'all one day." He had a little talk. He said, "all the other material, y'all can put it on the inside, because it's going to be a top on it so it will not get damaged." | 43:30 |
| Sammie Dilworth | We had a undertaker over here in Brinkley, the Fowler Funeral Home. I guess you heard of him. That man let us use his tent. That man rode his britches legs up and waded in the mud and water, and helped us carry material up to the top of the building. Helped us carry material inside. He stayed with us all day that day. He called back home to get the Brinkley alderman to come and take a picture of this thing. He didn't come on account of it was raining so bad that day. He was really mad at, that was his friend at Brinkley. He said, "As much as going on here, this should be put in the paper." | 44:37 |
| Sammie Dilworth | But I got a paper in my car to where that Mr. Davenport and Dr. Crock, is the man came over, a White preacher, our pastor knew him. He was in negotiation of helping us get it. He wanted him to come and preach our dedication sermon. That man came in there and preached a sermon. Boy, if you were standing on the outside of the door, you would declare he was a Black man, the way he preached that sermon. I'll never forget his sermon that he preached. He said, "Y'all have come this far, now go ahead." | 45:13 |
| Sammie Dilworth | Some insurance, but not enough. We borrowed some $12,000, all we had to borrow, because we had some. The people of the communities donated cash and that's all we borrowed is $12,000. We got one year some having that paid back. We paid that back $211 a month. Our congregation is not big, so we set it where we could handle it and still pay the preacher. Our pastor, he had had a kidney problem. He was on dialysis. He passed away the first year. | 45:58 |
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