Edwin Thorpe (primary interviewee) and Annette Thorpe interview recording, 1994 August 08

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Edwin Thorpe	—how the things taper. The further your move south, the more things taper off.	0:01
Stacey Scales	Oh. Yeah?	0:02
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	We had a very advanced culture. We had taken a step backwards, back in time, we thought.	0:10
Stacey Scales	Hmm? When did you—	0:13
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	But we found so many people, so many very nice people here.	0:15
Stacey Scales	—Yeah.	0:18
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	That, of course, makes the difference.	0:18
Edwin Thorpe	And the job.	0:19
Stacey Scales	Right.	0:21
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Good jobs.	0:21
Stacey Scales	When did you all come to Tallahassee?	0:22
Edwin Thorpe	1948. September 1st, 1948.	0:24
Stacey Scales	1948? How was the city?	0:26
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	It was no city.	0:27
Edwin Thorpe	Well, it was 60,000 people, but 130,000 now.	0:27
Stacey Scales	Oh. Okay.	0:27
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	How many were—Was it '50?	0:27
Edwin Thorpe	This was under 55.	0:27
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Under 55? Okay. I was going to say—	0:27
Edwin Thorpe	We won a radio, predicting the 1950 census.	0:37
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Yeah.	0:42
Edwin Thorpe	About Tallahassee. They had a city-wide contest.	0:42
Stacey Scales	Oh. Really?	0:46
Edwin Thorpe	Of what the official '50 census would be. And we won 3rd place, on the radio.	0:46
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	You did. You did.	0:49
Stacey Scales	Okay.	0:49
Edwin Thorpe	That's why I know it was 55.	0:49
Stacey Scales	Were you living—	0:49
Edwin Thorpe	Well, about 48,000.	0:49
Stacey Scales	—What neighborhood were you all living in?	0:56
Edwin Thorpe	Well, just on the other side of the campus, just about the same distance from the buildings, as here. It was Polkinghorne Village, you see?	0:59
Stacey Scales	Okay.	1:00
Edwin Thorpe	It's the campus, married children's project now.	1:06
Stacey Scales	Oh. Okay.	1:06
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Yeah. And so, married student's project. But it was, then, the faculty, married faculty. And single faculty lived there, too, didn't they? No. No. No.	1:07
Edwin Thorpe	It was for faculty.	1:16
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	It was primarily—	1:16
Edwin Thorpe	Yeah. Since house was very difficult, at that time, they opened up, it was actually barracks, barracks from Seymour Johnson—	1:21
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	—The Army base.	1:27
Edwin Thorpe	—Base.	1:27
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Mm-hmm.	1:27
Edwin Thorpe	They brought the stuff here. And we were glad to get that.	1:27
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Yes.	1:27
Stacey Scales	Oh. Yeah?	1:27
Edwin Thorpe	Mm-hmm.	1:27
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	And it only cost us, what? $15.00 a month.	1:28
Edwin Thorpe	Very, very low cost. And we liked it. This was about the only place available, so we stayed over there for six years.	1:38
Stacey Scales	Oh. Yeah?	1:48
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Until the president ran us out.	1:49
Edwin Thorpe	That's how it goes.	1:49
Stacey Scales	Oh. Yeah?	1:49
Edwin Thorpe	Dr. Gordon came in and said, "You no longer can—Faculty members, he better get out of that cheap housing."	1:49
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Yeah.	1:49
Stacey Scales	Okay, great.	1:55
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Oh. Yes. Southern—	1:56
Stacey Scales	So the city was segregated in Florida?	1:56
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	—Oh. Absolutely.	1:57
Edwin Thorpe	Very much. Very much. Very much. Everything was segregated.	1:59
Stacey Scales	Was it very difficult, functioning?	2:01
Edwin Thorpe	It was really southerner. We knew what the story was, but it was a little bit more so than mid-south, where we come from, North Carolina, Tennessee. It was a little bit more rigid than that.	2:03
Stacey Scales	Yeah?	2:15
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	The way you learned to handle segregation is that you know that it's there.	2:16
Stacey Scales	Right.	2:24
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	And you avoid as many unpleasant experiences as you can, by just not positioning yourself in them, so you do. And Blacks pretty much had their own society, so we didn't have to.	2:24
Edwin Thorpe	That's right. Especially in the—	2:39
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	We had our own churches, our own schools—	2:40
Edwin Thorpe	—college community.	2:41
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	—our own social life.	2:41
Edwin Thorpe	Right.	2:41
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	So our contact with segregation was when we needed to go-	2:47
Edwin Thorpe	Buy something.	2:50
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	—shopping at the department stores.	2:51
Edwin Thorpe	Right.	2:56
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	And when we wanted to go to the movies. And when we wanted to make a major purchase, like a car.	2:57
Stacey Scales	Okay.	3:07
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Then, you wondered how you were going to be treated.	3:07
Edwin Thorpe	Even on my checks now, I never put my full name.	3:07
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Yes.	3:10
Stacey Scales	No?	3:11
Edwin Thorpe	I just put E.M.	3:11
Stacey Scales	Yeah?	3:11
Edwin Thorpe	Because they'll call you by your first name, so they never knew, E.M. So I never changed it.	3:12
Stacey Scales	Oh. Yeah?	3:16
Edwin Thorpe	It's still E.M. Thorpe. And I put Mrs. E.M. Thorpe, so they didn't know what her name was.	3:16
Stacey Scales	Right.	3:16
Edwin Thorpe	They didn't know what my name was.	3:16
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	And this is what you went up against, they would—	3:16
Stacey Scales	Hmm? How would you feel about that?	3:16
Edwin Thorpe	And I just never changed that all. And here is 48, that means the year we came here, when I went to that bank.	3:16
Stacey Scales	Oh. Okay.	3:16
Edwin Thorpe	1948.	3:16
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	—Well, we were exhausted by it. You know?	3:16
Edwin Thorpe	In September of '48, I took out an account at this bank. And I took it out as E.M. Thorpe and Mrs. E.M., so they wouldn't know that her name was Annette and didn't know my Edwin.	3:16
Stacey Scales	Right.	3:16
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Because this is how they would address you, by your first name.	3:16
Edwin Thorpe	First name.	3:16
Stacey Scales	Hmm?	3:16
Edwin Thorpe	No matter how, you could be a professor, a doctor—	3:16
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	That's right.	3:16
Edwin Thorpe	—Indian Chief, or whatever.	3:16
Stacey Scales	Really?	3:16
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Yeah.	3:16
Edwin Thorpe	Oh. Yeah.	3:16
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	This is there way, of course—	3:16
Edwin Thorpe	And I could—	3:16
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	—of keeping Blacks in their place, whatever their place was.	3:16
Stacey Scales	Right.	3:16
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	So you attempted to avoid it, by doing that kind of things, so that they wouldn't know your first name.	3:16
Stacey Scales	Okay.	3:16
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	And so, how would—Then, they had no way to address you. They weren't going to say, "Mrs. Thorpe or Mrs. E.M. Thorpe."	3:19
Edwin Thorpe	—Or, "Mr."	3:37
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Or, "Mr. Thorpe." They were just going to say—	3:37
Edwin Thorpe	They would call you a reverend, now, right quick.	4:20
Stacey Scales	Really?	4:24
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	—Mm-hmm.	4:24
Edwin Thorpe	Mm-hmm. Because they that was belittling. And so—	4:24
Stacey Scales	Oh. Okay.	4:30
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Everybody was a reverend.	4:30
Edwin Thorpe	—Blacks, it was, "Reverend."	4:30
Stacey Scales	Hmm?	4:30
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	All Blacks.	4:30
Edwin Thorpe	A preacher, a preacher going to call you a preacher.	4:34
Stacey Scales	Now, where were you living, before here?	4:35
Edwin Thorpe	Charlotte, North Carolina.	4:37
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Uh-huh.	4:38
Stacey Scales	Was it very different?	4:39
Edwin Thorpe	Yeah. Yeah. It's in mid-south, see? In mid-south there's a good compromise.	4:40
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	But we didn't run into quite as much. I only lived there two years because I was teaching at Johnson C. Smith.	4:45
Stacey Scales	Okay.	4:53
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	And he lived—	4:54
Edwin Thorpe	And Knoxville and Memphis are about the same.	4:54
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	—Right. Knoxville. Not Memphis. No Memphis.	4:59
Edwin Thorpe	Maybe not quite as liberal as Charlotte.	4:59
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	See, my home is Memphis, Tennessee.	5:02
Edwin Thorpe	Yeah. Near Mississippi.	5:05
Stacey Scales	Right.	5:05
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Yeah. So—	5:06
Stacey Scales	Can you recall any racial incidents that you may have been faced with?	5:06
Edwin Thorpe	You mean, back there, or here?	5:10
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Back there.	5:12
Stacey Scales	Back there. And then, maybe in comparison with here?	5:12
Edwin Thorpe	Oh. Yeah. A guy ran into the back of my car. And the highway patrolman came up and said, "Y'all each want to fix your own?" He hit me from the rear. It's true. Just like that.	5:16
Stacey Scales	Man.	5:20
Edwin Thorpe	And he said, "Each one of you, fix your own cars." Now, isn't that true?	5:29
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	But then, you see—	5:32
Edwin Thorpe	True story.	5:33
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	—you did not contest that, you just let that go. Because you knew that if you did, you would be in big trouble.	5:35
Edwin Thorpe	You would've ended up paying a big fine and one thing and another.	5:40
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	And maybe you'd be taken out and lynched. You know? If you confront and—	5:43
Edwin Thorpe	Well, not quite. But that's the kind of thing.	5:49
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	—Yeah.	5:49
Edwin Thorpe	Where, after he looked at his car and looked at mine. And, "Well, weren't you about ready to stop or something?" made up some nonsense like that. Like, "No. He just ran into the back of me."	5:50
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Mm-hmm. But, now—	6:00
Edwin Thorpe	That's just the one incident I'll always remember—	6:03
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	—Remember that. Yeah.	6:06
Edwin Thorpe	—before coming here.	6:07
Stacey Scales	Yeah? Were there any people, that would contest these things, that you all knew?	6:10
Edwin Thorpe	Yeah. And they'd lose.	6:14
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Mm-hmm.	6:14
Edwin Thorpe	Lose in the courts.	6:14
Stacey Scales	Yeah?	6:14
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Yeah. And ran the risk of—	6:20
Edwin Thorpe	Losing their job.	6:22
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	—Right. And that was possible.	6:23
Edwin Thorpe	If you're a teacher, probably get you on public money. And [indistinct 00:06:31], like I was.	6:27
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	So you were intimidated, to a great extent, to accept the status quo.	6:31
Stacey Scales	Right.	6:39
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	You feared for your life, sometimes. You feared for your security. And your feared for your—By that, I mean, your good jobs.	6:39
Stacey Scales	Right.	6:49
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	And just your wellbeing. So, as we said, we tried to just it, as much as possible.	6:49
Edwin Thorpe	Avoid it?	6:54
Stacey Scales	Right.	6:55
Edwin Thorpe	And part of the community of a Black college, you really have a, and just like my wife my said, you have a social language in yourself.	6:57
Stacey Scales	Right.	7:07
Edwin Thorpe	You [indistinct 00:07:10], until you're getting ready to purchase something. I remember one incident here that really upset me. I was walking through the—Was going to buy some tires. And the tires were in the paper one way and went down there, said I wanted a set of tires, and he brought some other tires out. I said, "Well, this is the one that I told you that I want, the one you got advertised here." "Well, they just as good as the other," or something like that. And I said, "But that isn't what I asked you for." "Well, you want to make something out of it?" "I'm the one, I'm buying." He tried to sell me something, other than what I want, he said I'm making something out of it. That's, I really felt like, that was the first time I'd really—I didn't want to run into anything, I had a job here.	7:09
Stacey Scales	Right.	7:53
Edwin Thorpe	And so, I finally went over to see the guy over here, who owned that place, too, about it.	7:55
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Mm-hmm. Oh. Reagan Roberts.	7:59
Edwin Thorpe	Reagan's. Mm-hmm.	8:03
Stacey Scales	You said they were a city within itself, almost, the Black community?	8:04
Edwin Thorpe	Oh. Yeah. That's true. The Black college journey in the south.	8:09
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Yes. Uh-huh. [indistinct 00:08:11]—	8:09
Stacey Scales	What would you do for entertainment.	8:09
Edwin Thorpe	Oh. We had-	8:09
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	—We had the nicest parties.	8:14
Edwin Thorpe	—Yes.	8:16
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Dances on the weekends.	8:17
Stacey Scales	Yeah?	8:17
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	And house parties, go to each other's homes. And everybody, you played cards. And, as I said, we socialized.	8:20
Stacey Scales	Right.	8:35
Edwin Thorpe	Yeah. It was a community. You said it just right, "A community, within a community."	8:35
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Yeah.	8:35
Edwin Thorpe	This is true of the Black colleges, generally, in the south.	8:37
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	And I think that even in, if it's not a college town, a Black community finds itself.	8:42
Stacey Scales	Yeah.	8:46
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Finds ways to revive for themselves. That's why you have a little corner grocery store, so you don't have to go shopping at the supermarket. You have your own little dry cleaner's, a little business. Oh. You see, Black businesses flourished, to an extent.	8:46
Stacey Scales	Do you remember any of them from the '50s?	9:14
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	From the '50s?	9:14
Edwin Thorpe	Incidents, you mean?	9:14
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	No.	9:14
Stacey Scales	No. The stores.	9:14
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Businesses.	9:14
Stacey Scales	The Black owned businesses?	9:14
Edwin Thorpe	Oh. Yes. We had a dentist downtown. Dr. Camel's office was down on Adams Street, which he—They finally moved him out.	9:14
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Yes. Mm-hmm. Black dentist.	9:22
Edwin Thorpe	Right downtown.	9:23
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	But that's just where Mrs. Howell was talking about, Frenchtown.	9:24
Stacey Scales	Right. Frenchtown.	9:27
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	It was in that [indistinct 00:09:29]—	9:27
Edwin Thorpe	Well, he was right on Adams, there.	9:27
Stacey Scales	So you all would frequent Frenchtown?	9:27
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	—Yes. Right.	9:27
Edwin Thorpe	Well, just a little bit.	9:38
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Uh-huh.	9:38
Edwin Thorpe	Yes.	9:38
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	But then, there was a little nightclub that was right down here on Osceola Street, we used to go to. Didn't like it too much because it was a little bit noisy. But so, that's what a community does, it makes its own provisions, through its own businesses and its own circles. And, of course, the Black church was always there.	9:38
Stacey Scales	Right.	10:01
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Although, we are Catholics. And—	10:02
Edwin Thorpe	We had a Black Catholic Church, on the campus.	10:03
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	—Yeah. We have a Black Catholic Church on campus.	10:07
Edwin Thorpe	Not really a Black church, but it's the Student Center.	10:11
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Student Center.	10:12
Stacey Scales	Oh. Yeah.	10:13
Edwin Thorpe	So we went over therapy.	10:14
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	But before the Student Center, we'll tell him about going to the-	10:15
Edwin Thorpe	The one, used to be downtown?	10:15
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	—the church downtown.	10:19
Edwin Thorpe	Yeah. They had one of the, even the Catholic Church, which has never had any non-admission policy, it's supposed to for everybody, but they did. But she did try to put on the back row, back two rows.	10:23
Stacey Scales	Oh. Yeah?	10:33
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Yes. So we sat—	10:34
Edwin Thorpe	If you would do it, but I—	10:34
Stacey Scales	In the church?	10:34
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	—Mm-hmm. In the church.	10:34
Edwin Thorpe	—Yeah. But I told him to, "Move out the way, fellow," and I walked on upfront.	10:38
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Uh-huh.	10:45
Stacey Scales	Hmm?	10:45
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	They did have us—	10:45
Edwin Thorpe	Us try to do that.	10:45
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	—Yeah.	10:45
Stacey Scales	Right.	10:45
Edwin Thorpe	Because it was generally segregating everywhere else.	10:47
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Uh-huh. To see if you—	10:49
Edwin Thorpe	You couldn't even get in the Protestant churches. At least, Catholic Church, you can. It's never been segregated, even in the deep south. But that's the kind of thing you'd have to suffer, some indignity.	10:51
Stacey Scales	Right.	11:03
Edwin Thorpe	Especially, here, now, in Virginia, where I went to prep school. And back in the '30s, there was a law in Virginia, they knew about the Catholic Church, and so they said, "The Whites should sit on one side," this was a law. "And Blacks on the other." But this military school, of course, we occupied all the pews upfront, on each side. We went in two-by-two. But in the back, where the people from the community in—	11:04
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	—People from the community?	11:26
Edwin Thorpe	—the Whites would tend to sit on the right side and the Blacks on the left, but they didn't pay too much attention to that.	11:30
Stacey Scales	Hmm? Okay. Do you remember, just any stories that your parents may have told about life, during their time, and segregation, that may have come down through your family?	11:36
Edwin Thorpe	Of course.	11:52
Stacey Scales	Or to go even further, any stories about slavery.	11:52
Edwin Thorpe	No. Nothing like that. But we have lived through complete segregation, okay? And we've seen this great change in America.	11:57
Stacey Scales	Right.	12:12
Edwin Thorpe	So—	12:12
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	What he's talking about, you'll—	12:12
Edwin Thorpe	—But I'm thinking about when I was a child—	12:12
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	—Your parents. Yeah.	12:12
Edwin Thorpe	—Yeah. Blowing Rock and Monroe. Sure, we had all—Yeah. We suffered indignities.	12:12
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	But, stories? I can't remember the stories.	12:17
Edwin Thorpe	Well, all right. I remember one, in which there was a highway, in which they were making some outside [indistinct 00:12:28], where they was building a bridge or something.	12:19
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Mm-hmm.	12:32
Edwin Thorpe	And they had a team of mules there. And they knew the cars would have to be pulled through. And so, when Daddy drove in there, they pulled him out and then charged him $5.00. They didn't charge anybody else.	12:32
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Mm-mm. To—	12:42
Edwin Thorpe	The city had put these people there to pull. But here's a Black family, "Now, all right. It's $5.00."	12:45
Stacey Scales	Hmm?	12:51
Edwin Thorpe	True story.	12:51
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	—But everybody else—	12:52
Stacey Scales	But everybody else didn't have to pay?	12:52
Edwin Thorpe	No. He was just supposed to pull him out. And pull him—	12:52
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	I know. And I said, but nobody else was charged—	12:56
Edwin Thorpe	—No.	13:03
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	—except your family.	13:03
Edwin Thorpe	So that's a real story.	13:03
Stacey Scales	Damn.	13:03
Edwin Thorpe	Ain't nothing to do, but pay it, back in those days. And I'm talking about, I was just a kid, then, maybe seven, eight, years of age.	13:03
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	No. I don't have any of those great stories, like Mrs. Howell has. She had some great ones to talk about.	13:11
Edwin Thorpe	Oh. I remember, too, up in Blowing Rock once, where they were looking for a Black person, was supposed to have been escaped from prison or somewhere. And since we were the only Black family in town, up at the old summer resort, we were the only Blacks that owned a home there, the police and deputies went up there and slammed on their brakes and ran to the house, and knocked on it, saying, "We're looking for so-and-so and so-and-so. A Negro, who is Negro." They would never say, the White, "Nigger, who escaped from the penitentiary," or something. And so, the fellow just kind of pushes me on in. And went back, and looking under beds, and all that.	13:21
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Mm-hmm.	13:56
Edwin Thorpe	I said, "We haven't told you to—" "Well, we was looking for an escaped convict."	13:56
Stacey Scales	Oh. Okay.	14:03
Edwin Thorpe	That's a true story. Went looking under our beds, in our house.	14:09
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Mm-hmm. That's when—	14:09
Edwin Thorpe	But that was, what I'm talking about, in the '20s.	14:09
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	—Yeah. That was when you were about seven, eight, or nine.	14:09
Edwin Thorpe	And they assumed that, because we was the only Black family in town—	14:12
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	That that's where the Black convict would go.	14:15
Edwin Thorpe	—that he'd come to our house, to hide. (laughing)	14:15
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Yeah.	14:15
Stacey Scales	Do you remember any accounts of the KKK ever coming through.	14:22
Edwin Thorpe	No. No. No. I never bumped into them. Thank God.	14:28
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	No. And not that I remember in Tennessee, either.	14:35
Edwin Thorpe	No, but they were around.	14:36
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Yeah.	14:41
Edwin Thorpe	Except that, by that time, they were fading out in the mid-south—	14:41
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Mm-hmm. Yeah.	14:44
Edwin Thorpe	—When we were growing up, too, openly. The recent marches, around here, that's a joke, more or less. But back in those days, it was no joke, in the '20s.	14:45
Stacey Scales	Right.	14:54
Edwin Thorpe	But when they have these parades now, it's a joke, as far as the Blacks and the liberal Whites are concerned, they laugh at them, and throw eggs at them, and everything else.	14:56
Stacey Scales	Right.	15:05
Edwin Thorpe	Which, you dare not do, back in the '20s.	15:06
Stacey Scales	Hmm?	15:08
Edwin Thorpe	[indistinct 00:15:10].	15:08
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Mm-hmm. Oh. Yeah.	15:09
Edwin Thorpe	Or tried to. They didn't have anybody there, or something.	15:15
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Right. The doctors didn't want to sell her medicine, or something.	15:18
Edwin Thorpe	Yeah. Now, this is a liberal town and a city, now, of 130,000. But only 26 miles from here, 130,000 population. And it's a very liberal because it's a university town, we had Florida State University with 30,000 students.	15:21
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Well, let's say, it's getting more liberal, as the time passes.	15:33
Edwin Thorpe	Oh. Yes. Yes. And people are—	15:38
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	It has not always been.	15:38
Edwin Thorpe	—I'm saying, now. I was talking about now.	15:40
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Yeah. You're talking about in 1994.	15:41
Edwin Thorpe	Yeah.	15:41
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	But, when we were here-	15:41
Edwin Thorpe	Now, it's a fine place. Well, we told him about the incidents.	15:42
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	—Yeah. But, also, FSU was over there and FAMU was over here.	15:49
Stacey Scales	Oh. There was a division between the schools?	15:54
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Oh. You know? They had the White university on the other hill. And then our, FAMU, here.	15:57
Edwin Thorpe	Well, you couldn't go to school over there, that's for sure.	16:01
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Couldn't go to school over there. And—	16:01
Stacey Scales	Okay.	16:01
Edwin Thorpe	Or in the—The first Blacks attended in the late '60s.	16:06
Stacey Scales	Oh. Yeah?	16:10
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	—and after—Yeah.	16:10
Edwin Thorpe	We'll say, you were one of the first students over there.	16:11
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	And then, after the—	16:13
Stacey Scales	Yeah?	16:14
Edwin Thorpe	Yeah. She was one of the first students at Florida State, to just taking part-time, non-degree courses.	16:16
Stacey Scales	How was that past experience?	16:21
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	—It was fine. It was all right.	16:24
Stacey Scales	Yeah?	16:24
Edwin Thorpe	Well, the people over there, the professors, are fine.	16:24
Stacey Scales	Hmm?	16:24
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	At least, I didn't run into anything. And sometimes, I think, because I am fair, light-skinned—	16:30
Stacey Scales	Right.	16:34
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	—I have a—I sort of blend in.	16:34
Stacey Scales	Right. Right. Right.	16:34
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	And so, I don't—I'm not a threat.	16:43
Edwin Thorpe	It's not obvious.	16:43
Stacey Scales	Mm-hmm.	16:43
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Huh?	16:43
Edwin Thorpe	I says, there's no obvious—	16:46
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Yes. And see, so therefore, I'm not a threat.	16:48
Edwin Thorpe	—thing about being Black. Some of them, sometimes, don't even recognize who you are.	16:48
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	But if you're your complexion and you stand out, then it can be a little different.	16:54
Stacey Scales	Oh. Yes.	16:58
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	I think it was, for some [indistinct 00:17:02]—	16:58
Edwin Thorpe	And you took English under—	16:58
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	—Under Dr. Yost.	16:58
Edwin Thorpe	—a person, as a—And, I think, I don't remember anybody going over there, before you did. And, of course, I think I made the arrangement, as the registrar for her at A&M, with the registrar over there. You know, he was talking about that the other day, can you believe that?	17:11
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Really?	17:19
Edwin Thorpe	[indistinct 00:17:19] Walker. Yeah. Yeah.	17:19
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Yeah. Well—	17:21
Stacey Scales	How was it, traveling throughout the south, let's say, in a car, during the 40s and 50s?	17:24
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Lord, it was something.	17:28
Edwin Thorpe	40s and 50s? All right. You'd still be trailed a little bit by the highway patrol, a little longer than they would trail anybody else.	17:31
Stacey Scales	Oh. Yeah?	17:39
Edwin Thorpe	Mm-hmm. Oh. Yeah. And that might be going on to this day, even. You know?	17:40
Stacey Scales	Right.	17:42
Edwin Thorpe	They might trail you a little bit longer.	17:45
Stacey Scales	How about gas stations and [indistinct 00:17:49]—	17:47
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Oh. Yeah.	17:48
Edwin Thorpe	Oh. Right. The gas stations-	17:48
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Yeah. We chose those extremely carefully.	17:50
Edwin Thorpe	—And you had to be—Yeah.	17:53
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	—Folks that—	17:54
Stacey Scales	—How did you choose?	18:05
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Well, you'd hope there would be a little meter and maybe wouldn't be—It'd be a little closer to a town. You certainly wouldn't choose one that was out in the rural areas. And you'd try to get one in town. And you'd hope there would be a major service station, like and Exxon or an Amico [indistinct 00:18:20] had a Gulf.	18:06
Edwin Thorpe	And, also, their restrooms were, "Men," "Women," and, "Colored."	18:22
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Mm-hmm. You're right.	18:25
Stacey Scales	So the, Colored men and women used the "Colored"—	18:30
Edwin Thorpe	Right. Men and women.	18:30
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Yeah.	18:31
Edwin Thorpe	Men and women was the, "Colored."	18:31
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Yeah. We had unisex bathrooms, back then. You've seen those in Mr. Eaton's.	18:31
Stacey Scales	Right. In Mr. Professor Eaton's, right.	18:31
Edwin Thorpe	And then, after that was ruled out, by law, they had this, "Out of Order," when you come there, it's, "Out of Order," signs. Well, we knew then not to buy any gas, until we checked the restrooms. If the restrooms were okay, we would drive up there and say, "You got a restroom." When they'd tell you, "They're out of order," we'd just say, "Well, thank you." And we go on out of there.	18:38
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Yeah. That's the way we would handle that.	19:00
Edwin Thorpe	This is the way Blacks have learned to beat the system, after trying to beat that segregated system.	19:02
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Now, of course, we used the woods for our bathrooms—	19:09
Stacey Scales	Right.	19:13
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	—to a certain extent.	19:13
Edwin Thorpe	And that was driving to—	19:18
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Wherever we went.	19:19
Edwin Thorpe	—Memphis and Mississippi.	19:21
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Yeah.	19:25
Edwin Thorpe	We had a spot, in between—	19:25
Stacey Scales	Oh. You had a spot, you would consistently stop at?	19:28
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Yeah.	19:28
Edwin Thorpe	—Between Tuscaloosa, Alabama and Columbus, Mississippi—	19:32
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	That sounds right.	19:36
Edwin Thorpe	—where we always stopped.	19:37
Stacey Scales	Oh. Yeah?	19:42
Edwin Thorpe	Because I stopped at his place in Columbus, Mississippi, and the guy handed me a can and said, "You can go down in the back there, somewhere."	19:42
Stacey Scales	Really?	19:49
Edwin Thorpe	Handed me a can to urinate in. And this was a Black guy, who was working there. He knew that we couldn't use the restroom.	19:49
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	He knew. Mm-hmm.	19:55
Edwin Thorpe	He says, "Here's an oil can," he said, "Go down, around the back, there."	19:58
Stacey Scales	Right. Hmm?	19:59
Edwin Thorpe	But we, as Annette said, every—	20:02
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	And getting the children to—	20:05
Edwin Thorpe	—two or three years, we knew this place, we'd always stop in the woods.	20:06
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	—to use the outdoors, was always quite an experience.	20:14
Stacey Scales	A safe place, right?	20:14
Edwin Thorpe	That's to keep from suffering any indignities, by having to go in and ask—	20:14
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	And then be refused.	20:20
Edwin Thorpe	—and then they'd say it was out of order and all that foolishness.	20:20
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Yeah.	20:20
Edwin Thorpe	But we learned not to buy any gas. We would just out.	20:24
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	And the same thing about eating, we just took our lunches with us.	20:28
Stacey Scales	Hmm?	20:32
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Or, if we knew, the thing that made it a little nicer for us, we would go by a college campus, and there's where we would possibly sleep overnight, maybe, on the campus. Where were we?	20:32
Edwin Thorpe	Yeah. That was Stillman, in Tuscaloosa.	20:47
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Stillman, in Tuscaloosa.	20:49
Edwin Thorpe	Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Stillman.	20:50
Stacey Scales	Yeah?	20:52
Edwin Thorpe	You've heard of Stillman, haven't you?	20:53
Stacey Scales	Yes.	20:54
Edwin Thorpe	Yeah. Well, we stopped at Stillman. And we knew the president and the registrar.	20:54
Stacey Scales	Oh. Yeah?	20:59
Edwin Thorpe	I was the registrar here and I always knew—	20:59
Stacey Scales	Stayed at the registrar's place?	21:02
Edwin Thorpe	—E.B. Harding was the president and dean.	21:03
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Yeah. Because, generally, it would be during the summer, when the students were away.	21:04
Edwin Thorpe	Away. Mm-hmm.	21:04
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	And so, there would be space in the dormitories—	21:04
Edwin Thorpe	We found that big in Alabama and Montgomery. Mm-hmm.	21:09
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	—for us to stay.	21:11
Edwin Thorpe	See, she lived in Memphis, so we'd be driving from here to Memphis, through Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi.	21:13
Stacey Scales	Okay.	21:17
Edwin Thorpe	We'd take, we'd go Montgomery, Birmingham. And sometimes we took 82 West, from Montgomery. And that's when we went through Columbus, Mississippi, all the way up to Tupelo and to Memphis.	21:18
Stacey Scales	Oh. Okay.	21:32
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Have they talked about how women were not allowed to try on clothes in the—	21:35
Stacey Scales	I've heard, maybe, a couple of stories about that.	21:44
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Yeah?	21:46
Stacey Scales	Do you have any experiences, like that?	21:46
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	No. Because, let's see, by the time we come here, I think they—But they did have separate dressing rooms.	21:51
Edwin Thorpe	I'll tell you, Stout and another woman had trouble downtown.	22:02
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Mm-hmm. But that was because—	22:04
Stacey Scales	They couldn't try on the clothes?	22:06
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	—No. Because she didn't want to be called by her first name. And so, she really—And that was—And what did happen to that?	22:08
Edwin Thorpe	Well, the Blacks boycotted the place, for a long time.	22:20
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Right. Right.	22:20
Edwin Thorpe	And they lost money.	22:20
Stacey Scales	What was the name of the business?	22:20
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	It was called—	22:20
Edwin Thorpe	Annette's.	22:20
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	—Was it Annette's?	22:20
Edwin Thorpe	Mm-hmm.	22:20
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Okay. It was a women's dress shop, called Annette's.	22:29
Stacey Scales	Yeah?	22:44
Edwin Thorpe	And the word got back to campus. And so we decided to boycott the place and they lost money.	22:44
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Yeah.	22:44
Stacey Scales	Hmm?	22:44
Edwin Thorpe	And they finally [indistinct 00:22:47]—	22:44
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	So that's one incident that took place, I think, in the '50s.	22:44
Edwin Thorpe	—Our first year.	22:44
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	First year, here?	22:44
Edwin Thorpe	Mm-hmm. Our first or second year.	22:44
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Okay. Well, the '49 or '50, where this woman was very—She was from Philadelphia. And she was not accustomed to the customs of the south.	22:46
Stacey Scales	Right.	22:55
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	And she's a very, very smart woman. And a very well-educated. And she had a doctorate, at that time.	22:56
Edwin Thorpe	I don't know how much time we got, but we need to talk about our own personal school student's experiences.	23:10
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	And she went on to become a judge in Philadelphia.	23:15
Stacey Scales	Oh. Yeah?	23:23
Edwin Thorpe	Judge Juanita Stout.	23:24
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Judge Juanita Stout.	23:24
Edwin Thorpe	She was the JV here, up in the law faculty.	23:24
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	She was already—Oh. Was she on the faculty here?	23:24
Edwin Thorpe	—On law. Wasn't she on the law faculty?	23:25
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	I think she was.	23:25
Edwin Thorpe	Oh. No. She was a lawyer, in '53.	23:31
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	I think she was in political science.	23:31
Edwin Thorpe	That's right. That's right.	23:31
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Uh-huh.	23:31
Edwin Thorpe	She hadn't gotten to law school.	23:33
Stacey Scales	Okay.	23:34
Edwin Thorpe	We, also, speaking of the experiences, we must talk about our own kids, even in the basketball team.	23:34
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Oh. Yes.	23:40
Edwin Thorpe	And how the coach called them off the floor.	23:40
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Well, this was after segregation was outlawed. This would be after '64, right? Schools were—	23:48
Edwin Thorpe	Let's see? That's right.	23:53
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	—desegregated.	23:56
Edwin Thorpe	But this was a team from out of town, from Monticello.	23:56
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.	23:56
Edwin Thorpe	They came to play. Our son, we've had—I don't know if Eaton or Mrs. Howell told you, but we've had some—What do you call first experiences? Pioneering experiences, here, with our own kids?	24:00
Stacey Scales	Yes?	24:15
Edwin Thorpe	Yeah. But, yeah, just I think maybe that's why they sent you here, I thought it was the integrated schools of Tallahassee, I always thought that. My son played in the first integrated basketball game, that's when the team coach called him off the floor. And they substituted him in the game.	24:16
Stacey Scales	Yeah?	24:30
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Mm-hmm.	24:30
Edwin Thorpe	Yeah.	24:30
Stacey Scales	So they put your son in the game, and then—	24:30
Edwin Thorpe	Yeah. They didn't start him. They knew not to start him, so they started five White boys. And then, they substituted Edwin. The coach, the opposing team, told all the players to come off the floor.	24:35
Stacey Scales	—Really?	24:49
Edwin Thorpe	Really.	24:49
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	So when they began to—	24:49
Stacey Scales	So that was the end of the game?	24:49
Edwin Thorpe	No. No. We ain't afraid. We all sat there, the people in the stands, all laughing, and chewing their thumbs, and wondering what's going to happen. And the coach, our coach, and the principal, all of us—	24:56
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Was that Barkley?	25:07
Edwin Thorpe	—Yeah.	25:09
Stacey Scales	What's the name of the school?	25:09
Edwin Thorpe	It was Blessed Sacrament Catholic Junior High School. We were playing Monticello Junior High School, out of town.	25:11
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	These were eighth graders.	25:19
Edwin Thorpe	Eighth graders.	25:20
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Mm-hmm.	25:21
Edwin Thorpe	And this is junior high school basketball. They're from out of town. And this was the first integrated basketball game in Tallahassee. I went to see the superintendent before the game, that afternoon, and I said, "Now, you know? You got an integrate—" My son, he was the only one in an integrated school. And I said, "And he's going to play basketball tonight." "Well, you have to be very careful with something like that." Anyway. So the team, coach called them off the floor, said, "You can't play with that Black fellow, out there."	25:22
Edwin Thorpe	And so, we prevailed upon him, it took about half and hour, 45 minutes, and everybody was sitting in the stands, laughing, and talking, eating peanuts, waiting to see what's going to happen. Nobody left. And we prevailed upon him and, "The roof isn't going to fall. Nothing's going to happen." He said, "Well, I'll lose my job, when I get back to Monticello." And I said, "No. No. All you need to do is—" So we finally prevailed upon him.	25:49
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Did you go back, then—	26:16
Edwin Thorpe	Hmm?	26:18
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	—and talk too?	26:18
Edwin Thorpe	Yeah. We were all there. It was right there on the side, they never went anywhere.	26:19
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Oh. Oh.	26:20
Edwin Thorpe	They just called all the players, off to the side.	26:20
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Oh. I see. Mm-hmm.	26:20
Edwin Thorpe	And I had joined our folks, Father Madden, and everybody, trying to prevail upon this coach from Monticello, to let his team play, finish the game. And he finally decided to do that.	26:27
Stacey Scales	Who won?	26:41
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Yeah.	26:41
Edwin Thorpe	Because we beat the dickens out of them.	26:41
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Because, by that time, the little Monticello players were probably very discombobulated, at that time.	26:41
Edwin Thorpe	Yeah.	26:55
Stacey Scales	Mm-hmm. Yeah.	26:55
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	But how about the incident, where—This, again, is after the—	27:00
Edwin Thorpe	We're talking about the '60s now.	27:03
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	—[indistinct 00:27:05]. Uh-huh.	27:03
Stacey Scales	Right. After—	27:03
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	The public accommodations. Public, what?	27:08
Stacey Scales	—Accommodations?	27:11
Edwin Thorpe	Accommodations?	27:12
Stacey Scales	Mm-hmm—	27:13
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	When restaurants and all public places were opened up. And you and—	27:13
Edwin Thorpe	You talking about Walgreens?	27:17
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	—Right. And—	27:18
Edwin Thorpe	Edwin.	27:18
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	—Edwin—	27:19
Edwin Thorpe	Went to Walgreens.	27:20
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	—went to Walgreens to have lunch.	27:20
Edwin Thorpe	And we were—That's right. It was just about on the edge of things. I don't think anybody had been to anything much, but we knew that the law had been passed. And so we went Walgreens, down at the shopping center.	27:22
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Had a little lunch counter.	27:36
Edwin Thorpe	So we went in to have breakfast. And we sat down at the booth. And a thoroughly, very intelligent looking man, he said, "I've just lost my appetite."	27:36
Stacey Scales	Yeah?	27:47
Edwin Thorpe	He got up, stormed out with his son, "Come on, here," because we sat down. And we hadn't been served yet. Now, the law was that—And they served us.	27:48
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Mm-hmm.	27:55
Edwin Thorpe	But this is a customer.	27:56
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	A customer.	27:58
Edwin Thorpe	Very intelligent looking man.	27:58
Stacey Scales	Hmm?	28:00
Edwin Thorpe	You'd think he was a professor somewhere. "I've just lost my appetite," because we sat down in there.	28:00
Stacey Scales	You're kidding me? Man.	28:10
Edwin Thorpe	But we got served, we ate breakfast. And—	28:10
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	But I'm glad we thought about Juanita Stout's, that incident.	28:12
Edwin Thorpe	Incident.	28:13
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Because, see, that took place—	28:17
Stacey Scales	That was with the clothes?	28:18
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	—Yes. Right.	28:18
Stacey Scales	Okay.	28:18
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	I think it happened to do with her first name. I think they wanted to call her Juanita. And she refused to respond to that. And so, she then came back and told the other members of the faculty. And said that we should let—	28:21
Edwin Thorpe	Word got around, we should boycott.	28:35
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	—the owners of that store know that we do not want to be treated like that. You know?	28:38
Stacey Scales	Did you find a lot of people from the north functioning different than people that were used to the southern ways?	28:45
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Yes. Yes.	28:55
Edwin Thorpe	They tried to—They became more southern than some of the southerners.	28:57
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Not the Blacks, now, you mean?	29:01
Edwin Thorpe	The Whites.	29:01
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	The Whites.	29:02
Edwin Thorpe	You're talking about the Whites, right?	29:02
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	No. He's talking about Blacks.	29:02
Stacey Scales	The Black folks, did they respond differently to the Jim Crow system that was already—	29:04
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Yes. Because I think that's a good example of one who had grown up in Philadelphia and who did not know anything about these southerners.	29:09
Edwin Thorpe	And not willing to accept it.	29:20
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	And were not accept it.	29:21
Stacey Scales	—Hmm? Okay.	29:21
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Because, now, we didn't have a lot of that because people, again, you see, you find that they are weighing the consequences of bucking the system. And if you get out there and do too much, you have to determine, "How much are you willing to lose?" in the case.	29:22
Stacey Scales	Right.	29:45
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	And so, then, and people were not willing to lose a lot. They might lose their job. Didn't want—	29:46
Edwin Thorpe	And that's right. You didn't want to be stressed, going through some nonsense, brought on by these people. Our daughter was at the first integrated schools in the city.	29:51
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	—That was a stressful time for her.	30:01
Edwin Thorpe	Yeah. She had to go. But we cooperated and we—	30:05
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Was it eighth grade that she had to—	30:11
Edwin Thorpe	—Eighth grade. Blessed Sacrament High.	30:11
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	—So she was there for two years.	30:12
Edwin Thorpe	That was junior high school.	30:13
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	And then the next year—	30:14
Edwin Thorpe	We—I was going to tell him about how it happened.	30:15
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	—Oh.	30:18
Edwin Thorpe	We had to play some games. Now, this made the social press, all around the country. The Baltimore Sun, I remember, I got a copy of that paper, that school was integrating in Tallahassee. It's just one little Black girl, so we planned this thing, we called Patrick Madden, the big, Irish Priest. Then, one of the church members was an FBI agent, Don Hughes. And so, seven of us had met, two or three times, saying, "Now, how we going to break up this stuff?" before the public schools opened up. And so, we agreed that Elaine, our daughter, would be the first one. She would, first, she would go late, about a week after school had started.	30:18
Stacey Scales	Okay.	31:00
Edwin Thorpe	After they had all paid their tuition fees. You had to pay tuition for private school.	31:00
Stacey Scales	Right.	31:04
Edwin Thorpe	With no refund. And so, [indistinct 00:31:10]. And said, "And then, on the day she would go, she wouldn't be there at 8:00, she'd go a 10:00, after everybody's in classes and things are going on, wouldn't be any crowds." And so, we did that, and it worked beautifully.	31:04
Stacey Scales	Oh. Yeah?	31:27
Edwin Thorpe	Just fine. Nothing—	31:27
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Now, there was a—	31:28
Edwin Thorpe	—Only four parents pulled their kids out of school.	31:31
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	—Mm-hmm.	31:32
Stacey Scales	Hmm?	31:33
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	There was a patrolman, that had parked—The patrol car parked up the hill, or somewhere. Wasn't there?	31:34
Edwin Thorpe	Make sure there's no problems?	31:40
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Uh-huh.	31:40
Edwin Thorpe	But there wasn't. And it went just smooth as silk. But four parents, at the end of the day, they heard about this one little brown-skinned girl over there, they took the students out.	31:44
Stacey Scales	Hmm?	31:55
Edwin Thorpe	But, maybe two weeks, they were back, on their knees, begging to get them back in.	31:56
Stacey Scales	Oh. Yeah?	32:00
Edwin Thorpe	Yep.	32:00
Stacey Scales	Hmm?	32:00
Edwin Thorpe	But it was a big deal, it made the associated press. We got a lot of calls here, from many of them.	32:02
Stacey Scales	What was the name of that school?	32:11
Edwin Thorpe	Blessed Sacrament Junior—	32:11
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	That's the same one, where the basketball—	32:11
Edwin Thorpe	—Same one.	32:11
Stacey Scales	Oh. The same school? So you all have done a lot of work at that one school?	32:11
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	—Yeah.	32:11
Edwin Thorpe	Yeah. The Catholic school decided it would jump ahead, and go ahead and work against these crazy rules.	32:20
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Mm-hmm.	32:26
Stacey Scales	Hmm?	32:26
Edwin Thorpe	and so, then—	32:28
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Yeah. Not wait to be forced to integrate, but rather to start.	32:29
Edwin Thorpe	—But it said something to the public school system. The next year, they took in a couple of students.	32:33
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	At Leon?	32:39
Edwin Thorpe	At Leon High.	32:39
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	That's right. We had three Blacks enter Leon High, which was—I think, one entered 10th grade. And two entered 11th grade.	32:40
Edwin Thorpe	After they found out that the sky didn't fall and one thing and another.	32:51
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	But they had a rough time.	32:54
Edwin Thorpe	Rough time. And even the third year, when our daughter went over there, well, there was still only about four students over there. The kids always had some remarks in the hall. And one time, some [indistinct 00:33:09] landed in her plate.	32:55
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Oh. They threw food and stuff like that.	33:16
Edwin Thorpe	Yeah. Anything.	33:16
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	You've heard all those stories.	33:16
Edwin Thorpe	Anyway, we got her out of there and put her in a private Florida State University lab school, the next year.	33:16
Stacey Scales	Okay.	33:20
Edwin Thorpe	Where, they immediately assigned her to play piano for the choir. And she was a celebrity over there. Well, it's a little different, it wasn't a public high school, it was FSU lab school.	33:21
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	But they still had their problems, over there.	33:33
Edwin Thorpe	Yeah. They had some students. There's always some students. But the school itself, the administration didn't stand [indistinct 00:33:42].	33:35
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	What other kinds of things would you like? I can't remember any incidents from my parents had told me.	33:44
Stacey Scales	Well—	33:53
Edwin Thorpe	But there's plenty. We've lived through this.	33:54
Stacey Scales	—Yeah.	33:58
Edwin Thorpe	We [indistinct 00:34:01]. And I appreciate the fact that I saw this country change so.	33:59
Stacey Scales	When did you first recognize the change, or changes, taking place, other than-	34:05
Edwin Thorpe	Just like, when we were going through this, in the '60s, when we were—	34:10
Stacey Scales	—Okay.	34:12
Edwin Thorpe	—And then, like I said, going to Florida State, which I had no-	34:15
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	It's all kind of gradual too.	34:16
Stacey Scales	Right.	34:19
Edwin Thorpe	—Yeah.	34:20
Stacey Scales	Did you find yourself testing it, little by little?	34:21
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Oh. Yes. Oh. Yes. Because you didn't know—	34:24
Edwin Thorpe	You never know.	34:27
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	—even though it was the law, how it was going to go.	34:27
Stacey Scales	How'd you feel about the separate water fountains?	34:31
Edwin Thorpe	Terrible.	34:34
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Oh. Well-	34:34
Edwin Thorpe	Many Blacks didn't pay any attention to it.	34:36
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	—That's right. Like, we drank the water.	34:37
Edwin Thorpe	I said, "I'm going to try some of this White water, over here. It's almost as good as the Black water."	34:40
Stacey Scales	Yeah.	34:44
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Yeah. But you got a little tense, though.	34:47
Edwin Thorpe	That was a losing battle. The Whites even knew that was a losing battle.	34:49
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Mm-hmm.	34:52
Stacey Scales	Did people think that they were different, the fountains?	34:56
Edwin Thorpe	No. No. No. Everybody knew it was just a pattern of segregation.	34:58
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Yeah. Didn't want Blacks drinking out of the same fountain with the White people.	35:04
Edwin Thorpe	Mm-hmm. Didn't want Blacks drinking, they'd say, "That's too close."	35:05
Stacey Scales	Right.	35:09
Edwin Thorpe	And I'd drink and, "That's too close, drinking out of the same fountain."	35:09
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Did you ever see that movie, Mrs. Jane Pittman?	35:12
Stacey Scales	Yes, but it's been quite a while. Yes.	35:17
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	I know. The last scene of that movie, she steps up and drinks out of a water fountain.	35:21
Stacey Scales	Right. Right.	35:25
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	She's getting a taste of the White water.	35:27
Stacey Scales	Right.	35:29
Edwin Thorpe	White water.	35:29
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	That's White, where it's White and proud.	35:29
Stacey Scales	Who were the local leaders, when you all came, people that were maybe pioneered for change?	35:38
Edwin Thorpe	Baptist church minister, Reverend Steele.	35:44
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Yeah. Reverend Steele. Mm-hmm.	35:47
Stacey Scales	Did you ever get a chance to see him?	35:48
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Oh. Yes.	35:50
Edwin Thorpe	Oh. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.	35:50
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Right. Right. Many times, we went, especially when they were organizing—	35:51
Edwin Thorpe	On our own campus, we had—	35:57
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	—when Martin Luther King came here. They were very good friends. And they were organizing the bus boycott here. I hope that you get a chance to talk with C. Smith.	36:01
Edwin Thorpe	—Charles Smith?	36:15
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Charles Smith.	36:17
Edwin Thorpe	He's a professor of—	36:18
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Of sociology.	36:20
Edwin Thorpe	—sociology.	36:21
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	He may not be in town. Did Miss—	36:27
Stacey Scales	Professor Eaton had given us a list.	36:27
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	—A list? Okay.	36:28
Stacey Scales	But we may have spoken with him, because I'm working with two other people.	36:30
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Okay. Okay.	36:33
Edwin Thorpe	All right.	36:33
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	All right.	36:33
Stacey Scales	And we took a few names, a piece.	36:33
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Right. Because he was very active in the forming of the bus boycott.	36:36
Stacey Scales	Oh. Okay.	36:44
Edwin Thorpe	See, we did out little thing, sort of quietly, like in the school and all that.	36:44
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Yeah.	36:49
Edwin Thorpe	But we had confrontations.	36:50
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Yeah.	36:51
Edwin Thorpe	Open confrontation [indistinct 00:36:54]	36:52
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	And see, now, leaders, back when we first came, here, now.	36:54
Edwin Thorpe	On campus, you mean?	36:57
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Campus and city.	36:58
Edwin Thorpe	Well, yeah. And the church. People lost their jobs here, being so outspoken. And a girl in my office, I was [indistinct 00:37:09], Daisy Young, was one of the leaders.	36:59
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Mm-hmm. In the NAACP.	37:13
Edwin Thorpe	And she was called in by Dr. Gordon, our own president, saying, "You have to be very cautious about—"	37:13
Stacey Scales	Oh. Yeah?	37:14
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Yeah.	37:14
Edwin Thorpe	Our own president said, "Don't get us into real hot water about it."	37:15
Stacey Scales	Was there a lot of friction, would you think, between those who sincerely wanted to go out and actively participate, and because they had a job on a campus?	37:25
Edwin Thorpe	No. No. Not really?	37:35
Stacey Scales	No?	37:36
Edwin Thorpe	Everybody was sympathetic.	37:36
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	No. I think—Yeah. Right.	37:37
Edwin Thorpe	They were sympathetic and afraid.	37:37
Stacey Scales	Right.	37:37
Edwin Thorpe	And everybody was sympathetic. But the ones who didn't do anything—	37:39
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Were very proud of those who were willing to step forward and—	37:43
Edwin Thorpe	—Who were willing.	37:45
Stacey Scales	Oh.	37:45
Edwin Thorpe	That's right.	37:45
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	—took a chance.	37:45
Edwin Thorpe	And that's true, in general.	37:48
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Yeah.	37:49
Edwin Thorpe	And everybody was sympathetic, but some didn't do anything, afraid to lose their jobs.	37:49
Stacey Scales	Right.	37:53
Edwin Thorpe	And the president was in a very precarious position, because they called all of them here and, "Oh." They're going, everybody, "You're letting your students do this and that?" Anyway, Dr. Gordon called me in one day and said, "You know that girl in your office, Miss Daisy Young, is very militant. And she's going to get us in trouble." Poor thing [indistinct 00:38:14]	37:55
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	There's another person, did he give you her name?	38:13
Stacey Scales	Yes.	38:15
Edwin Thorpe	Daisy Young.	38:15
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Daisy Young.	38:15
Stacey Scales	I think she is on the list. Yes.	38:16
Edwin Thorpe	So he said he may have to get rid of her or something. I said, "No. No. Uh-uh." He wanted me to get rid of her.	38:16
Stacey Scales	So she was going on the marches?	38:26
Edwin Thorpe	Yeah.	38:28
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Oh. Yeah.	38:28
Edwin Thorpe	She was one of the leaders.	38:28
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	She was very active in the NAACP.	38:28
Edwin Thorpe	Yeah.	38:28
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Who was the President of the NAACP, then?	38:33
Edwin Thorpe	Let's see? I think I know the fellow. I can't think of his name.	38:38
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Yeah. But I'm sure Daisy probably has told you all that.	38:40
Stacey Scales	Yeah? Okay.	38:43
Edwin Thorpe	But, so he just said, "I'm in a precarious positive, here. The President of Florida A&M, they're expecting me to keep students under control and their running amuck all over town."	38:44
Stacey Scales	So he sent you in there, to try to [indistinct 00:39:01]—	39:01
Edwin Thorpe	Yeah. That's right. And he called me in to see if I couldn't do something with Daisy Young because she worked in my office.	39:01
Stacey Scales	—Right. Did you have to talk to her?	39:05
Edwin Thorpe	Yeah. But, you know, she and I were together.	39:05
Stacey Scales	Good.	39:05
Edwin Thorpe	I said-	39:05
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	That's right. You told her.	39:05
Edwin Thorpe	—Yeah. I said, "This is what he's saying. But, you know? Don't worry about it."	39:08
Stacey Scales	Right.	39:08
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Well, you told her to tone it down a little bit.	39:08
Edwin Thorpe	Cool it a little bit.	39:22
Stacey Scales	Right.	39:22
Edwin Thorpe	But, that's all. But, you know were supporting you 202%. Say, "Here. Here's a dollar to help out."	39:24
Stacey Scales	Right. Were there a lot of organizations that you all were familiar with, that—	39:30
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Let's see? CORE was active.	39:37
Stacey Scales	—CORE?	39:39
Edwin Thorpe	Yeah. That's right. CORE was active.	39:40
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	And let's see?	39:42
Edwin Thorpe	They had a chapter in [indistinct 00:39:44]-	39:43
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Yeah. Sure did.	39:44
Edwin Thorpe	—Congress of Racial Equality.	39:45
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Uh-huh. That's the one that—	39:47
Edwin Thorpe	Farmer was the head of. You know? This guy.	39:48
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	—Yeah. But I'm thinking on campus, this girl Daisy. Not Daisy. What was it?	39:51
Edwin Thorpe	I wanted to call her Daisy Base, but that's not it.	39:55
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Dew. Is her last name is Dew?	39:58
Edwin Thorpe	Dew. Yeah. She was Patricia.	39:59
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Patricia Dew was leader of that—	40:05
Edwin Thorpe	Yeah. Put her name down, Patricia Dew, she was very active in the—	40:05
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	—Yeah. In CORE.	40:05
Edwin Thorpe	—leadership, during that time.	40:05
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Mm-hmm. Did H. Wright Brown ever come to campus, do you remember?	40:12
Edwin Thorpe	No. But you know what? The governor met him in Jacksonville and they had a debate.	40:16
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Oh.	40:17
Edwin Thorpe	Him and Claude Kirk.	40:19
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Oh.	40:20
Edwin Thorpe	We had one good governor, though.	40:21
Stacey Scales	Oh. Yeah?	40:24
Edwin Thorpe	He was ready to debate him. He wasn't angry about it. I think, somehow, some kind of way, he kind of sympathized with all of it.	40:24
Stacey Scales	Really?	40:31
Edwin Thorpe	Yeah.	40:31
Stacey Scales	So basically—	40:31
Edwin Thorpe	And he debate Wright Brown right on television, that one night.	40:32
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	And that was Claude Kirk.	40:36
Edwin Thorpe	Claude Kirk.	40:37
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	He was a Republican.	40:38
Edwin Thorpe	Yeah. That's all right. He was Republican, but he was personally. K-I-R-K.	40:44
Stacey Scales	—Did you see the discord?	40:50
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	The debate?	40:50
Stacey Scales	Yes.	40:50
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Yeah.	40:50
Edwin Thorpe	Yeah. We saw it on television, didn't we?	40:50
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Did we? I don't remember.	40:50
Edwin Thorpe	I think so.	40:50
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	I don't remember.	40:50
Edwin Thorpe	But he said, "I'll debate him." And most Whites wouldn't even have anything to do with the guy.	40:50
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Mm-hmm.	40:58
Stacey Scales	Hmm?	40:58
Edwin Thorpe	He was a radical, very radical. I wish he had been a better type of Black leader. But he really threw it at him.	40:59
Stacey Scales	Did he come to campus?	41:10
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	I think he did.	41:12
Edwin Thorpe	I think so. I'll tell you who did come here, the other guy from Washington. What's his name?	41:12
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Oh. I know who you're talking about.	41:17
Edwin Thorpe	What's his name?	41:18
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Another outstanding leader. And he's the one who coined the phrase of, I think, "Black is Beautiful." What's his name?	41:24
Edwin Thorpe	Yeah. What is his name? Oh, boy, boy.	41:31
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Hmm?	41:34
Edwin Thorpe	Anyway, it shows were getting old. And another thing.	41:34
Stacey Scales	Stokely Carmichael?	41:35
Edwin Thorpe	Stokely Carmichael.	41:35
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Stokely Carmichael, that's it. That's it. Stokely Carmichael.	41:35
Stacey Scales	Hmm?	41:35
Edwin Thorpe	Yeah. Over the years, we've had outstanding Blacks, speaking in behalf of race.	41:43
Stacey Scales	Right. How would students respond to these fiery speakers?	41:50
Edwin Thorpe	Fine. Fine. Everybody treaded right behind. All the students wanted to do something about it.	41:53
Stacey Scales	Okay.	42:03
Edwin Thorpe	The night, of course, Martin Luther King was killed, that was really a mess.	42:03
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	As most towns were.	42:07
Edwin Thorpe	As were, everywhere.	42:09
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	What is that young man, now, finished FAMU and is leading the church out in Los Angeles? Was he in school, about the time? I'm just wondering if he picked up some of the enthusiasm and some of the—	42:09
Edwin Thorpe	Yeah. He's the leader of this church in Los Angeles. He's a main person in LA, right now.	42:28
Stacey Scales	Oh. Yes?	42:32
Edwin Thorpe	Also, we have two or three of our boys, of Florida A&M boys, who are leaders around the country today. I'm trying to think of his name.	42:33
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	—I was thinking that you probably don't want to get just the side of people, from the middle class, college educated? Have you-	42:41
Stacey Scales	Well, we just, they're doing this in the age group.	42:53
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	—Yeah. But have you all been out in the community.	42:57
Edwin Thorpe	Well, you had to pinpoint somebody. You couldn't just say, "And most people."	43:00
Stacey Scales	Well, we've been out into some of the rural areas.	43:02
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Yeah. Right.	43:07
Stacey Scales	And just out. Just a variety of the fabric of folk because were working off of the list that Professor Eaton gave us.	43:10
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Yeah.	43:21
Edwin Thorpe	That's it. That's it.	43:24
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	And doing some—Oh. So that's why you're tired.	43:24
Edwin Thorpe	You got it. Well, if he gave it to you, he's the historian.	43:25
Stacey Scales	Yeah. That's a whole story.	43:30
Edwin Thorpe	He's the historian.	43:30
Stacey Scales	Right.	43:31
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Yes, indeed. Because, see, you need that perspective, too, of people.	43:31
Edwin Thorpe	But what I'm saying, well, they have to have someone specifically to give it to, that's all.	43:31
Stacey Scales	Right.	43:35
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Well, they can go out into a community and find them sitting on the porch. They're glad to talk.	43:37
Edwin Thorpe	Well, she and I remember, now. These people are younger and they—	43:41
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	No. No. No. These are not. I'm not talking about younger people. I'm talking about those who are in their 70s and 80s and 90s.	43:43
Stacey Scales	We actually are doing people about 50 and up, so it's very—	43:50
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Yeah. Right. Go into some of these nursing home. Have you been going to—	43:54
Edwin Thorpe	—See, our own grown children don't know anything about these problems.	43:58
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	—Yes, they do.	44:01
Edwin Thorpe	No. Not really. Not—Just mildly. Mildly. They just mildly-	44:02
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Well, let's see? How old are you?	44:05
Stacey Scales	—26.	44:05
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	26? Okay. Well, our kids are older.	44:05
Edwin Thorpe	—Our kids are 40.	44:05
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	40 and older.	44:05
Edwin Thorpe	42, and 43.	44:05
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Right. So you didn't go through any of these kinds of things?	44:06
Edwin Thorpe	No. No.	44:17
Stacey Scales	No.	44:18
Edwin Thorpe	No. And not only that, he was—	44:18
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Has your mother talked about it much?	44:18
Edwin Thorpe	—and he was in Gary. And he was in Gary, Indiana.	44:22
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Yeah. But still, Gary-	44:23
Edwin Thorpe	Oh. Yeah. It's all of The United States. Oh. Yes. Yes.	44:24
Stacey Scales	I mean, people are still prejudiced and biased, but not—We don't have the same, I guess, external—	44:26
Edwin Thorpe	That's not the same kind of thing.	44:31
Stacey Scales	—Right.	44:33
Edwin Thorpe	What is it?	44:33
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	—What is it called? That is overt in the north.	44:34
Edwin Thorpe	Oh. When I was a graduate student, in Illinois, in the '40s.	44:38
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	This is a southern-	44:39
Edwin Thorpe	We had to open up restaurants in downtown Champaign, Illinois. You know what I'm talking about? In the 40s.	44:39
Stacey Scales	You had to do what, sir?	44:47
Edwin Thorpe	Open the restaurants. We had to have teams from university, White and Black groups, three or four of us would go downtown and sit-in, in the restaurants.	44:47
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	—In Champaign, Illinois.	44:55
Edwin Thorpe	Champaign, Illinois. [indistinct 00:44:55] in '47 and '48.	44:55
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	That was in '47. Yeah. So we know, Gary—	44:55
Edwin Thorpe	And the thing is all over the world, all over the country, it's just that it's a different kind of insidious kind of thing that didn't manifest itself openly, in the north.	44:55
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	—Yeah.	45:14
Stacey Scales	Right.	45:14
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	That's right, because they didn't have laws.	45:14
Edwin Thorpe	That's right.	45:17
Stacey Scales	How did people respond to the imagery, like your Amos 'n' Andy and the different characters that were-	45:18
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	We used to enjoy them, as a kid.	45:27
Stacey Scales	—derogatory?	45:27
Edwin Thorpe	It took a long time—	45:27
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Before we realized.	45:27
Edwin Thorpe	—for us to decide that that was something-	45:27
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	That's right. Negative. Yeah. It really did. My father used to enjoy Amos 'n' Andy. Oh.	45:34
Edwin Thorpe	—And same here. But, you know, all the way back in the '30s, when we got some tablets with the cover it had Amos 'n' Andy in it. And Mr. White, and those guys would say, "Tear the covers off of them."	45:42
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	What was this, dear?	45:53
Edwin Thorpe	At Saint Emma, in the '30s.	45:54
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Okay.	45:55
Edwin Thorpe	And we were—You know? The school used to buy stuff in lots.	45:57
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Okay.	46:00
Edwin Thorpe	And they had some tablets—	46:01
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Oh. These are your writing tablets?	46:04
Edwin Thorpe	—Yeah. Well, the cover had Amos 'n' Andy on it.	46:04
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Oh.	46:05
Edwin Thorpe	And so, Mr. White was at Xavier and he said, "Tear the covers off of them."	46:05
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Uh-huh.	46:11
Edwin Thorpe	In the '30s.	46:11
Stacey Scales	Yeah?	46:11
Edwin Thorpe	And we hadn't reacted, that early.	46:16
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	And it was Mr. Wright?	46:18
Edwin Thorpe	Mr. White—	46:20
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	White?	46:21
Edwin Thorpe	—was a professor of English, who was graduate of Xavier and was a teacher at Saint Emma.	46:21
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Was he Black?	46:22
Edwin Thorpe	Oh. Yeah.	46:22
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	He was Black, okay.	46:22
Edwin Thorpe	But we had the Catholic Priest.	46:22
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	You never told me that.	46:31
Edwin Thorpe	Oh. I haven't told you? She doesn't know all about me. We've only been married 47 years. The Catholic Priest was White, this was in [indistinct 00:46:40], Virginia. The only Black ministry school in the country. And it was run by the Benedictine Priests, they're all White. And they had, the other half of the faculty were Black.	46:31
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Mm-hmm.	46:49
Edwin Thorpe	Men from Xavier University in New Orleans.	46:50
Stacey Scales	Hmm?	47:01
Edwin Thorpe	And, of course, they bought this stuff in lots.	47:01
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	They bought all of the—	47:01
Edwin Thorpe	And they passed stuff, in the first—And so, no one had a reaction. Mr. White said, "If I were you, I'd tear the covers off of those things, throw them away."	47:01
Stacey Scales	Right.	47:06
Edwin Thorpe	So they did.	47:06
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	—Because Amos 'n' Andy was on the cover of these tablets?	47:08
Edwin Thorpe	That's right.	47:09
Stacey Scales	Oh. Okay. Right.	47:09
Edwin Thorpe	And that's what I wanted to say.	47:09
Stacey Scales	That's interesting.	47:09
Edwin Thorpe	And he had a reaction, in the '30s. '30s, between '30 and '34.	47:19
Stacey Scales	Right.	47:19
Edwin Thorpe	And we hadn't thought anything about it, it was kind of funny. You know?	47:21
Stacey Scales	Mm-hmm.	47:23
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	But, you know, I think if this is jumping to the press, then, I'm wondering if we're kind of going back to far.	47:24
Stacey Scales	No. That's fine to go back.	47:31
Edwin Thorpe	I think he saying he wanted far back.	47:31
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	No. No. No. What I mean is, on television and in the Black shows, and even when I look at the MTV, all of the behavior and the action is so reminiscent of that stereotypical kind of thing we were trying to get away—	47:34

Annette Pinkston Thorpe	When I look at some of the shows, and what's the one that—In Living Color, I think—	0:01
Edwin Thorpe	[indistinct 00:00:11].	0:06
Stacey Scales	Right.	0:06
Edwin Thorpe	Today.	0:06
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Yeah, today. How do you like that show?	0:06
Stacey Scales	I have to be quite honest. I don't watch very much television.	0:15
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Oh, I see. You don't have time to watch TV.	0:17
Edwin Thorpe	Well, you have to have mixed emotions even today with things like that because we—	0:18
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Well, I think what he's trying to do is to—I mean, in a subtle way, he's trying to poke fun at these character types.	0:21
Stacey Scales	Right.	0:34
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	And to show them for what they are, but in the meantime, how many people are going to look at it that way are just going to see it as another stereotype?	0:35
Stacey Scales	So most people, you think, weren't bothered by those images? Do you think most people were bothered by the—	0:43
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	No.	0:50
Stacey Scales	—stereotypical watermelon eating?	0:50
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	No. No. I don't think—	0:52
Edwin Thorpe	Not a long time ago.	0:54
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Yeah. I don't think—	0:57
Edwin Thorpe	We are now are more conscious—	0:57
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Yes.	0:58
Edwin Thorpe	—of these things.	0:59
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Thank goodness for those who made us conscious.	0:59
Edwin Thorpe	And we had to sort of live in this system. I mean, you couldn't get your neck cut off. That's what I mean.	1:04
Stacey Scales	Right.	1:08
Edwin Thorpe	You had to learn how to—And this is a joke on a White policeman, he said, he stopped—And I'm going to use the word to show you how funny it was. This is an ignorant White policeman, stopped somewhere. And this was during the—	1:14
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	It was you. By yourself.	1:25
Edwin Thorpe	No, I know. I was with some others.	1:25
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	[indistinct 00:01:31]	1:25
Edwin Thorpe	And so he said, "Don't you exist, nigger, don't you exist." And he didn't even know what the word resist was, he called them "exist."	1:31
Stacey Scales	Exist.	1:36
Edwin Thorpe	"Don't you exist, nigger." It was so funny.	1:36
Stacey Scales	Exist.	1:36
Edwin Thorpe	"Don't you exist." Because a lot of the White policemen were ignorant. Ignorant.	1:44
Stacey Scales	Right.	1:45
Edwin Thorpe	I mean, [indistinct 00:01:49] but not educated.	1:49
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	And about that—	1:51
Stacey Scales	Were there any Black policemen around?	1:51
Edwin Thorpe	They just had came on the scene in the '50s.	1:54
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Yeah.	1:58
Edwin Thorpe	Wouldn't you say?	1:59
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Yeah. Right.	1:59
Edwin Thorpe	And that was the problem. That's the problem throughout the South, all the policemen were White. [indistinct 00:02:04] whatever, all the police—	2:01
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	All the judges.	2:08
Edwin Thorpe	Yeah. Everybody—	2:12
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Everybody who was in—	2:12
Edwin Thorpe	And that was really one of the major problems of this whole thing.	2:12
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	And it continues to be a problem.	2:14
Edwin Thorpe	Yeah, the people who were running things, controlling things, disciplining their people, all White. But in the beginning—	2:16
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	And generally came from a background of ignorance and prejudice. And therefore could not even see that their actions were—	2:24
Edwin Thorpe	Ridiculous.	2:40
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Or were bad.	2:40
Stacey Scales	Did you all ever run into any racism while working some of your earlier jobs prior to teaching?	2:42
Edwin Thorpe	Well, I started off teaching, so did she.	2:49
Stacey Scales	Oh, you both started off-	2:51
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	No, you didn't.	2:52
Stacey Scales	—teaching?	2:52
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	When you went to New York during the summers to work.	2:52
Edwin Thorpe	Oh yeah. Well that, all right. But—	2:56
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	When he was a—	2:58
Edwin Thorpe	—of course, you know, she—	2:58
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	But did you?	3:01
Edwin Thorpe	[indistinct 00:03:05] not much to run into.	3:04
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Because he—	3:06
Edwin Thorpe	Dining hall waiter.	3:06
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Because he worked in New York, so—	3:08
Edwin Thorpe	In New York. You didn't run into any—This is the one place in the world. New York City. [indistinct 00:03:15]	3:09
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	I grew up on a farm and we worked the farm. So I didn't come in contact with [indistinct 00:03:22]	3:18
Edwin Thorpe	I was—	3:21
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	—that cotton.	3:22
Edwin Thorpe	I was so pleased to be free.	3:24
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	And those sweet potatoes and the corn and whatever else we were growing and the chickens and the cows. So I didn't—	3:25
Stacey Scales	What'd your parents do for a living?	3:34
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Your mom was a—	3:38
Edwin Thorpe	School teacher.	3:39
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	School teacher.	3:40
Stacey Scales	Oh, yes?	3:40
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	And your dad was?	3:40
Edwin Thorpe	Daddy was—Even though he was a college graduate, he found he could make more money being a sort of a—I don't want to call him a servant. He was a maitre d' for the doctor. This man called him his friend.	3:43
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Mm-hmm.	3:55
Edwin Thorpe	His mother was a very—He was a maitre d'. He worked for a very rich family in the mountain in the summer. Zilionaires. He put in a call from Baltimore and he'd hire all the help and it'd be about 15 people—	3:55
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	[indistinct 00:04:10] house.	4:09
Edwin Thorpe	[indistinct 00:04:10] 20, 30-year-old mansion.	4:10
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	He was the maitre d'.	4:15
Edwin Thorpe	And then in the winter, he worked for Struthers Burt also as his—	4:16
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	As a chauffer.	4:22
Edwin Thorpe	No.	4:22
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Oh, a valet?	4:22
Edwin Thorpe	Valet. Yeah. Just a general—	4:22
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Oh.	4:25
Edwin Thorpe	—person around the house. He was a butler. In addition to whatever, Struthers Burt wanted him to go and—	4:28
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	And he also—	4:35
Edwin Thorpe	Gopher.	4:35
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Yeah.	4:35
Edwin Thorpe	He was a gopher.	4:36
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	And he also sold insurance too.	4:38
Edwin Thorpe	Sold insurance in Monroe, North Carolina before he decided to go with these rich people. Struthers Burt a writer in Southern Pines and he respected my dad as Mr. Thorpe. Charles. But he was a really fine person. He was from Philadelphia. The Cohens, even though they were rich and paid him good money, they always call him Charles. And anyway, when we were in Baltimore, I asked about this address.	4:39
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Yeah.	5:05
Edwin Thorpe	[indistinct 00:05:10] Eutaw Place and the guy said it's no longer.	5:05
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	That's right.	5:05
Stacey Scales	How about your parents?	5:05
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	My father was a physician, a country doctor, he was. And my mother taught school before she married my dad. But after she married him, she—	5:14
Edwin Thorpe	Had eight children.	5:35
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	—became a housewife. Hm?	5:36
Edwin Thorpe	She had to take care of eight children.	5:36
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	[indistinct 00:05:37]	5:36
Stacey Scales	That's a nice number.	5:36
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Well, so she was a housewife, but she had finished high school and was teaching. She didn't go to college. Was it—What was it?	5:37
Edwin Thorpe	You could teach back then.	5:45
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Oh, yeah. Right. Because my oldest sister went into teaching.	5:47
Edwin Thorpe	Well, we blazed a lot of—My family blazed trails. In the mountains, we were the only Blacks that owned a home.	5:51
Stacey Scales	Oh, yes?	5:59
Edwin Thorpe	Yeah. And because my father working for these millionaires, they did not bother him very much because then he worked for the Cohens.	5:59
Stacey Scales	Did the Depression have an effect on your family?	6:07
Edwin Thorpe	Yeah.	6:11
Stacey Scales	Big?	6:11
Edwin Thorpe	Yeah. By that time, let's see, my father died in '31. We were in military school in Virginia. My mother really had it tough for one or two years. Matter of fact, only because we didn't pay anything the last two years [indistinct 00:06:26] We paid no money at all.	6:12
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	They let you go?	6:28
Edwin Thorpe	Just let it go.	6:29
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	That's great. You got financial aid.	6:31
Edwin Thorpe	They knew what the situation was.	6:34
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Right.	6:34
Edwin Thorpe	They didn't pay it.	6:39
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Yes. Well, the Depression, my father was practicing in Memphis and in the meantime he had bought a tract of land just in a community called Cordova, which is about 20 miles—Is that 20 miles east?	6:40
Edwin Thorpe	West?	6:57
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	West.	6:57
Edwin Thorpe	West.	6:58
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	—of Memphis.	6:58
Edwin Thorpe	I'm sorry. East.	6:58
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	East of Memphis. So when the Depression hit, we left the city and moved to the country. And that's how we survived.	6:59
Stacey Scales	Okay.	7:12
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	We went to school in this little country school. But later on, we drove into high school because this little elementary school that we went to did not go farther than sixth grade. So then we had to go back. So then we began to rent. But also we traveled back and forth by car. I also went to LeMoyne College. What were those financial aid programs that they had back in those days?	7:14
Edwin Thorpe	Yeah, I got one. [indistinct 00:07:55]	7:51
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	[indistinct 00:07:55]	7:51
Edwin Thorpe	FERA, Federal Emergency Relief Aid. NYA.	7:51
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	NYA.	7:51
Edwin Thorpe	NYA.	7:51
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	NYA.	7:51
Edwin Thorpe	And FERA. Federal Emergency Relief Aid.	7:57
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	[indistinct 00:08:05]	7:57
Edwin Thorpe	National Youth Administration.	8:05
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Right. Through the NYA, you got a little job on campus with that. But we always had to have that bale of cotton fixed and planted and sold.	8:06
Stacey Scales	How was farm life compared to your moving into city area?	8:15
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Oh.	8:20
Edwin Thorpe	But you were rotating—	8:21
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Back and forth.	8:23
Edwin Thorpe	She wore it very well. I mean, this is a big deal if you owned a farm like they did because many Blacks didn't ever own the farm. And they did their own—They had 250 acres, didn't they?	8:24
Stacey Scales	Who would you sell your crops to if you had that much land?	8:40
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Oh, well of course, there was a—Let's see, there were merchants that would come to—	8:43
Edwin Thorpe	Well, the cotton people.	8:54
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Right. For, to buy the cotton.	8:56
Edwin Thorpe	Yeah.	8:57
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	And then we had, my father sold the corn and he would take the hogs into market. And let's see—	8:59
Edwin Thorpe	I remember he—	9:07
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	We had a dairy for one year.	9:09
Edwin Thorpe	They weren't doing too bad.	9:11
Stacey Scales	Did folks ever try to cheat your family or your father out-	9:15
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Oh, I don't know. And I don't think so because I think they respected him a great deal. They knew that he had this training and he was the Black doctor for the surrounding area. Now there was a White doctor and that was a White dentist. But most of the Blacks came my father for treatment. So he had a very good reputation in the area. They respected him. They didn't call him Dr. Pinkston. They would—	9:19
Edwin Thorpe	He was Doc.	9:53
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	—call him Doc.	9:53
Edwin Thorpe	Doc. Doc.	9:53
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Doc.	9:54
Stacey Scales	Where did he go to school?	9:55
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	He went to Meharry.	9:56
Stacey Scales	Okay.	9:56
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Went to Meharry. Yeah.	9:56
Edwin Thorpe	[indistinct 00:10:02]	9:56
Stacey Scales	Oh yes? Beautiful.	9:56
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Well, listen, let's don't keep you too long. How many more—	10:04
Stacey Scales	Yeah?	10:06
Edwin Thorpe	We [indistinct 00:10:08] We trying to—	10:06
Stacey Scales	It's very interesting.	10:06
Edwin Thorpe	—just giving you off the cuff.	10:10
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	How many more people have you got scheduled to see today?	10:10
Stacey Scales	Well, sometimes we make phone calls up until 5:00 and 6:00. But I don't have anyone else to see today. If you have anything else you want to share. I don't have any more questions really. If you had anything else you'd like to share, you can—	10:14
Edwin Thorpe	Well, you see the general idea.	10:30
Stacey Scales	Right. Right.	10:30
Edwin Thorpe	But we appreciate the fact we lived through this, complete segregation and on into the way things are now.	10:34
Stacey Scales	Right. Okay.	10:39
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	And we really are proud of the way Tallahassee has—	10:41
Edwin Thorpe	Changed.	10:43
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	—has grown.	10:44
Edwin Thorpe	Yeah.	10:46
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	We used to have—The local newspaper used to have a Black page for Black news. You remember that, dear?	10:47
Edwin Thorpe	Yes.	10:56
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	And most of the news was about—	10:57
Edwin Thorpe	First we had no news.	10:57
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	—funerals and—	10:57
Edwin Thorpe	And [indistinct 00:11:04]	10:57
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	And crime.	10:57
Edwin Thorpe	And crime.	10:57
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	That was the Negro page.	11:06
Stacey Scales	Oh, yes?	11:07
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Uh-huh.	11:07
Stacey Scales	That's the Tallahassee Democrat.	11:07
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	The Tallahassee Democrat.	11:07
Edwin Thorpe	Jacksonville had one too. Jacksonville, big city, they had a Black page.	11:11
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	A Black page.	11:16
Edwin Thorpe	News for and about the Colored peoples. Colored. Because you know—	11:16
Stacey Scales	Right. Colored, Black.	11:35
Edwin Thorpe	Colored, Afro-American.	11:35
Stacey Scales	American.	11:35
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Afro-American [indistinct 00:11:36] African American.	11:35
Stacey Scales	Well, I'd like to thank you all.	11:35
Edwin Thorpe	Oh well.	11:35
Stacey Scales	[indistinct 00:11:36] everything—	11:35
Edwin Thorpe	We hope we gave you what you wanted.	11:35
Stacey Scales	Most definitely.	11:35
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Let's see, now wasn't there a Black newspaper? Did we ever get one?	11:36
Edwin Thorpe	Well, yeah, we—	11:38
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Oh well [indistinct 00:11:43]	11:39
Edwin Thorpe	That preceded the present one.	11:42
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Right. Well, that was—	11:44
Edwin Thorpe	That preceded the present one.	11:44
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Well, what was that?	11:44
Edwin Thorpe	It wasn't the Outlook. It was something else.	11:46
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Oh. But I mean, before, was there any Black newspaper back—	11:48
Edwin Thorpe	Well, we had the Afro, the Journal and Guide.	11:51
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	I mean, in Tallahassee.	11:53
Edwin Thorpe	The national. No, no.	11:54
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	The national Black papers that would come this way.	11:56
Edwin Thorpe	But our lives have been pretty good. As I said, this Black college community is a good life to live. You not bothered with the ongoing problems of world.	12:00
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Kind of isolated.	12:15
Edwin Thorpe	And see, we came here from Johnson C. Smith University in Charlotte, North Carolina, where we worked four years. And then I was in high school, working five years prior to that. And she worked at Knoxville College prior to that.	12:16
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Incidentally, I'm a graduate of—	12:27
Edwin Thorpe	Atlanta University.	12:27
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Atlanta University.	12:27
Stacey Scales	Oh, yeah?	12:27
Edwin Thorpe	Yeah. She got her master's degree in Atlanta.	12:27
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	That's right.	12:27
Edwin Thorpe	AU.	12:27
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	That's when—	12:32
Stacey Scales	All right.	12:32
Edwin Thorpe	When it was Atlanta University.	12:34
Stacey Scales	Right. Now they've merged.	12:35
Edwin Thorpe	Yes. And we know the president, is son of a friend of ours who is at the University of Florida.	12:40
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Yeah. What's your president's name now?	12:47
Stacey Scales	Benjamin Payton. Dr. Payton.	12:50
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Oh, Payton.	12:51
Edwin Thorpe	Payton?	12:52
Stacey Scales	Yes.	12:53
Edwin Thorpe	Payton is the president now?	12:54
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	You're thinking about Morehouse?	12:54
Edwin Thorpe	Well, yeah. No.	12:55
Stacey Scales	No. That's Tuskegee.	12:57
Edwin Thorpe	Tuskegee. I thought you meant Atlanta.	12:58
Stacey Scales	Oh, the president of Atlanta is um—	12:59
Edwin Thorpe	Atlanta U. Well, you're bad as we are now.	13:00
Stacey Scales	I don't know why I was thinking about Tuskegee. That's my undergrad.	13:06
Edwin Thorpe	Well. I know him too. Payton.	13:08
Stacey Scales	Right.	13:11
Edwin Thorpe	But the president of Atlanta Clark now is the son of our friend at the University of Florida.	13:12
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Oh, yeah.	13:21
Edwin Thorpe	We know him very well. We don't know him, but we knew his father.	13:21
Stacey Scales	Right.	13:22
Edwin Thorpe	His father was a friend of mine when we were registrars together. He was registrar the Wiley College. That's where he came from. And anyways—	13:23
Stacey Scales	Who's the president of Spelman? What's-	13:32
Edwin Thorpe	Oh, that's the woman.	13:34
Stacey Scales	What's her name?	13:39
Edwin Thorpe	What is her name? Well, you're as bad as we are.	13:39
Stacey Scales	I sure am.	13:39
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	I can see her.	13:43
Edwin Thorpe	Yeah. Yeah. John—	13:43
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Cole.	13:43
Edwin Thorpe	Johnnetta. Johnnetta Cole.	13:45
Stacey Scales	Same name.	13:47
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Same name. That's right. Cole.	13:52
Edwin Thorpe	And Tom Cole.	13:52
Annette Pinkston Thorpe	Thomas Cole, that's right. That's a good association.	13:52
Edwin Thorpe	Tom Cole's father was a registrar at Wiley College in Texas.	13:54
Stacey Scales	Right.	14:01
Edwin Thorpe	We used to meet at the Registrars Associations and we were friends there.	14:01
Stacey Scales	Okay.	14:05
Edwin Thorpe	That's right. And we visited him a few times in Gainesville.	14:05
Stacey Scales	Okay.	14:15
Edwin Thorpe	But it's been interesting. Life as a Black person interesting.	14:15
Stacey Scales	Right.	14:15
Edwin Thorpe	Though it's been a lot of negatives, it's called how you wear it.	14:15
Stacey Scales	Right.	14:23
Edwin Thorpe	I've never worn it as a thing that—bruise about anything.	14:24
Stacey Scales	Right.	14:28
Edwin Thorpe	You take it as it comes. I guess my dad taught me, he learned how to live with rednecks and how to get along with them.	14:28
Stacey Scales	Right.	14:39
Edwin Thorpe	Because they had to.	14:39
Stacey Scales	Mm-hmm. Okay. Good.	14:39

Item Info

Title:

Edwin Thorpe (primary interviewee) and Annette Thorpe interview recording, 1994 August 08

Date:

August 8, 1994

Creator:

Contributor:

Scales, Mausiki Stacey

Description:

Name: Edwin Thorpe; Date of birth: 1916-12-02; Place of birth: Monroe, NC; Occupation(s): clerical; managerial; university registrar; Residence: Tallahassee, FL. Name: Annette Pinkston Thorpe; Date of birth: 1920-05-17; Place of birth: Cordova, TN; Occupation(s): educator ; Residence: Tallahassee, FL
Informant ID: 397; Informant ID: 398; Interviewed by: Stacey Scales.

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Location:

Format:

Language:

English

Digital Collection:

Behind the Veil

Source Collection:

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

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Provenance:

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

Rights:

Limited Re-Use

CC BY-NC 4.0

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Copyright for content created by the Behind the Veil project is held by Duke University and made available to the public using a Creative Commons Attribution / Non-commercial (CC-BY-NC) license.

Identifier:

RL00170-CS-1558
810fc615-c694-40ee-aecf-84595249e24f
behindtheveil
247b3139-1a3f-4b4e-8b7c-c615354f9c59
ark:/87924/r4057r25v
247b3139-1a3f-4b4e-8b7c-c615354f9c59

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Edwin Thorpe (primary interviewee) and Annette Thorpe interview recording, 1994 August 08

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Item Info

1. Edwin Thorpe and Annette Thorpe administrative file, 1994

2. Edwin and Annette Thorpe slides: "Festival in Bagdad" sign above man and woman in costume, 1955

3. Edwin and Annette Thorpe slides: A nun and three girls in white dresses, 1950s

John Hope Franklin Research Center

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Edwin Thorpe (primary interviewee) and Annette Thorpe interview recording, 1994 August 08

Transcript

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