Melma Sims interview recording, 1995 June 22

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Doris Dixon	Okay, Ms. Sims, for the tape recorder, could you state your full name and date of birth please?	0:05
Melma Guess Sims	Melma Sims. December 26th, 1922.	0:10
Doris Dixon	Thank you. Mrs. Sims, where were you born?	0:17
Melma Guess Sims	I was born in Arkansas, but in a little place called Indian Bay. That's on a bay.	0:27
Doris Dixon	Indian Bay, Arkansas?	0:30
Speaker 1	(loudspeaker) Mrs. Jones, front desk, please. Mrs. Jones.	0:30
Melma Guess Sims	That's right.	0:30
Doris Dixon	Where is that near? What part of the state?	0:40
Melma Guess Sims	The small town closest to that is called Holly Grove, Arkansas.	0:44
Doris Dixon	Holly Grove?	0:48
Melma Guess Sims	Uh-huh. The county is Monroe.	0:50
Doris Dixon	Monroe? Mrs. Sims, where did you grow up?	0:55
Melma Guess Sims	Right in that area, in the Helena area.	0:59
Doris Dixon	In the Helena area?	1:02
Melma Guess Sims	Mm-hmm.	1:02
Doris Dixon	How far is that from Memphis?	1:02
Melma Guess Sims	About 75 miles.	1:02
Doris Dixon	Mrs. Sims, what's your first memory of growing up in that area?	1:11
Melma Guess Sims	Well, my mother and daddy separated when I was three years old because I don't have much memory about them being together, but I did know them both. They were people that—It's called the Bottoms, down about as far as you can get. It's Delta country, and the place named Indian Bay because that's about the last place the Indians really held down in that area, Choctaw Indians. To me, now, it's a beautiful place. You know, it wasn't then, but it is a beautiful place. Just country with bigger bay, and they called it Indian Bay because the Indians were there. To me, now that I'm grown, it's a beautiful place.	1:15
Melma Guess Sims	It flooded every year, and we had to get out every year. I remember that. Get the things on the wagon and get on out to higher ground, maybe to a little town where some relatives were or something. Anyway, to the higher ground. There just ordinary people lived off farming, and raised their food, and sharecropping cotton. The cotton was the thing that they lived on.	2:11
Doris Dixon	You said it wasn't beautiful then, would you—	2:46
Melma Guess Sims	Oh, no, I said it wasn't beautiful to me then when I was a child.	2:50
Doris Dixon	Right, right.	2:51
Melma Guess Sims	But since I got grown and looked back over it, it was a beautiful place.	2:53
Doris Dixon	Oh, it is beautiful there, okay.	2:55
Melma Guess Sims	It is a beautiful place.	2:55
Doris Dixon	Could you tell me a little bit more about what would happen when it flooded every year?	2:57
Melma Guess Sims	Oh, yes. When it flooded every year, you stayed in the house until the water got in the house, before you started trying to move, because it'd flood every year. This went on every year until 1927. Then a great flood came, where everybody had to get out. Looked like on the seven, and every year since I noticed it do more flooding when it get to '37, '47, '50, all those sevens.	3:06
Speaker 1	Mrs. Jones. Front desk, line one.	3:40
Melma Guess Sims	It does a lot of flooding in that area. But anyway, we'd go on and now that was fun to me in the wagon, and the wagon kind of rocking in the water, and the poor little hard mules be swimming. It was dangerous, but to me that was fun, because I didn't know the danger. When your daddy's with you, you don't fear nothing. You don't think nothing's going to happen to you when you're with your daddy. That part was all right with me.	3:41
Melma Guess Sims	Then, if we'd go to a relative in the city, in the little town where they had real good food. It wasn't the same food been eating every day. I really enjoyed that, eating something different. Being dumb by not being around nicer things, I still knew that it was better. It had to be better somewhere. When I get to this little town, I'd say, "Oh, this is it." This is what I thought it should be like. After I got up a little size, my mother and daddy be separated, different ones would come and ask them, could I stay with them a little while. They did me like that until I got 10 years old, and I told them, "No, I'll decide where I want to live, and that's where I'm going to stay." Well, they jumped me around for that many years.	4:15
Doris Dixon	Until you were 10.	5:09
Melma Guess Sims	10 years old, and I made my own decision where I was going to live, and make my home. That worked fine. My grandma, daddy's mother had a daughter who was just five years older than me, and I always wanted to be near her. This daughter that was five years older than me. That worked on fine until she got married, and then they moved on a what you call a plantation. We didn't know about plantation life down there where I came from. Mostly it was a family thing with everybody.	5:10
Doris Dixon	You said you did or you didn't live on a plantation?	5:46
Melma Guess Sims	I didn't, until this time when my aunt got married and they moved on a plantation.	5:49
Doris Dixon	Okay, so you moved then.	5:56
Melma Guess Sims	Then that was about the end of that, because she was just as crazy about me as I was her. She didn't want me to work in the field, which was all right. It would've been a good experience, but she wouldn't let me. This boss man came to the house on this horse, ride the horses, and he said, "Why isn't she in the field?" She said, "She doesn't work in the field." He said, "Well, she going to work in the field if she stay here, and right away too." She called for my mother, and my mother lived in a little town about 50, 60 miles called Forest City, Arkansas. It's not far from Memphis now. I went on there where my mother cooked, and she lived in a servant house, and that turned out fine. Stayed there, went to school. Then my mother started getting married to these men. Then it got kind of miserable for me.	5:58
Melma Guess Sims	I went back to visit this aunt. She had moved to town then. Everybody had come to town, because in the forties, you know. She had moved to town, and I lived with her until I got married, which wasn't long, because I married him when I was 15. I got married when I was 15 because—	6:57
Doris Dixon	Excuse me, there's a cord.	7:18
Melma Guess Sims	Oh wait. Excuse me, I'd have forgot it. Here I didn't know the cord was on it. I know you put it up there, but I didn't know there was a cord. I'd gotten married, I didn't know anything, and I hadn't had any experience about men, or boys, anything. Well, I went on and did that thing called got married, wasn't any love or nothing nice. Nothing like that. Just getting married. You get your house, and a bedroom, and a living room with a kitchen, and you make yourself satisfied.	7:19
Melma Guess Sims	But my husband was a smart man, Black. He didn't just depend on one thing. He knew how to, what they call hustle. He was working on this called PWA. That was something that Roosevelt invented. He invented jobs for people, and this was one of them, the WPA. My husband worked on that, and he'd get his little check every month—every two weeks, rather. But he'd be able to get work, he'd be and got enough to live on, and I never had to spend that check for the living part. I'd put it aside, wasn't nothing much, to buy new things for holidays like Easter, and Christmas, stuff like that. Didn't have to use it. That was a real different life, and I guess I was doing fine. At least I thought I was. Then, he had a friend that ran some kind of, they called them joints, then.	7:52
Doris Dixon	They called them what?	8:56
Melma Guess Sims	Joints.	8:56
Doris Dixon	Oh, okay.	8:56
Melma Guess Sims	He had a part there where we could make a little restaurant and sell food. Honey, I went in there and cooked those beans and things for those working men every day, and those hamburgers, guess what a hamburger was? 10 cent, so you know about how much money you making.	9:01
Doris Dixon	Yes ma'am.	9:23
Melma Guess Sims	10 cents for a whole nice, big, juicy hamburger. I kept on working on. I worked my whole life up onto that. We would move into a better building every now and then, and progress, making progress, and not making too much money, but we were making enough to keep on going. My husband, he didn't bother with me too much. He just hung around there enough to see that wouldn't nobody bother me or nothing, but he went on into something else for himself.	9:23
Doris Dixon	You mean the restaurant? He didn't hang around the restaurant?	9:59
Melma Guess Sims	Not too much, yeah. Coming down there about dinner time, the time the crowd be coming and see that nothing go wrong. He was just born to be a boss. That was all, you know. That's what it was, all.	10:06
Doris Dixon	He would come and tell you what to do?	10:18
Melma Guess Sims	No, he just come and I'd pretend to be doing a little something. Wouldn't be doing nothing (laughs) but he'd be around to see what we were doing, so wouldn't nobody take the advantage of him. At that time, people there just beginning to see a dollar, to know the value of a dollar. Wartime had come in then, see. Before wartime came in, honey, we didn't know what money was hardly, you hear me?	10:25
Doris Dixon	What do you mean?	10:46
Melma Guess Sims	I mean we didn't make enough money to say we had any.	10:48
Doris Dixon	I understand.	10:52
Melma Guess Sims	We worked—I didn't do it, but the ladies worked out in the private homes, and my mother worked out in a private home. There was five people in the family. She washed, and ironed, and cooked, and cleaned up for $6 a week. You hear me?	10:53
Doris Dixon	Yes, ma'am.	11:13
Melma Guess Sims	Some of them told me they worked in these places and they gave them $3. I thought my mother was working for nothing, that's a reason I wanted to get away from that. She wanted me to have nice things like other girls, and she had a husband but he take care of bringing in the food and everything, but he didn't bring in no money. That was one reason I was in there, to get away from that.	11:16
Doris Dixon	Could we please go back a little bit? I just want to get the timeline right.	11:36
Melma Guess Sims	Okay.	11:48
Doris Dixon	You lived in the Bottoms until you were 10?	11:48
Melma Guess Sims	Uh-huh.	11:49
Doris Dixon	And then there was a flood? No, no, no, then you were—	11:51
Melma Guess Sims	I wasn't 10 when those floods came, that we passed through. The last big flood I was in is '27. I was five years old.	11:56
Doris Dixon	Then you said you lived with relatives until you were 10?	12:04
Melma Guess Sims	Mm-hmm.	12:10
Doris Dixon	And then you went to live with your aunt?	12:12
Melma Guess Sims	Yeah, mm-hmm.	12:12
Doris Dixon	Then after the boss man tried to get you to work, you lived with your mother in Forest City?	12:18
Melma Guess Sims	That's right.	12:20
Doris Dixon	Now this is what—You said that something made you miserable. You said she got marriages to men and that made you miserable?	12:24
Melma Guess Sims	Yeah, she got married, and they would take care of grocery, and the rent, things like that, but wasn't any money involved. That's why she had to work so hard, wanted me to have things like the other girls in the community. That made me want to get away from there, because she was working herself to death. They had daddies to work for them, the other girls in the community, and their daddies, some of them made good jobs working, at these oil mills and places like that, and sometimes, some of those special jobs where they made plenty of money. We always lived in two or three rooms, and these children lived in homes with bedrooms, dining rooms, and baths and things. Here she is, trying to keep me looking like them, which was impossible, so I went on, went and got married just to get away from her, so she wouldn't work so hard.	12:30
Doris Dixon	Tell me about school. Tell me about the different schools that you went to when you were young.	13:47
Melma Guess Sims	Well, I went to the school in Indian Bay. That's where I started. Then, when I left there, I went to Forest City and that's where I went to school up there. I came back to Helena and went a little bit there. Then, as I told you, I went on and got grown at 15. Then, after I got myself established, I went back to school. Finished high school then, night school.	13:51
Doris Dixon	What did you like and dislike about school?	14:20
Melma Guess Sims	Hm?	14:20
Doris Dixon	What you like—	14:20
Melma Guess Sims	Well, see now, I couldn't say too much about what I liked and disliked, because I was grown and the other people—The children that went in the daytime, I'm sure they would have a good story on the schools for you. But I was doing the adult school. You miss a whole lot in adult school. You don't get it all. They just pick out a little stuff and give you when you're going to that class.	14:29
Doris Dixon	What about in grade school, in elementary school? What do you remember about that?	14:53
Melma Guess Sims	Well, it was nice. It was very nice. They said we didn't have the nothing but those old used books that they had discarded, but they wasn't all raggedy. Some of them was nice. Some of the books turned out all right. If you're real interested, it really doesn't matter about things like that too much, just as you get to see what the lesson's about. But I just never did see it too hard in my—I just didn't understand. I guess if it was hard, I'd had nothing else. I didn't know nothing about it being so bad or so hard. I've heard other stories, you know about it. No, I didn't.	14:59
Doris Dixon	Your people, were they farmers in the Bottoms?	15:49
Melma Guess Sims	In the Bottoms, yes.	15:52
Doris Dixon	Did you have to work in the fields then?	15:54
Melma Guess Sims	I never had to work in the field. I was just one little girl in a big family, and everybody wanted me. You see what I'm talking about?	15:56
Doris Dixon	Yes, ma'am.	16:03
Melma Guess Sims	Just something for somebody to pet, because when I got out there and got married and got on my own, I worked too hard then, because I hadn't had any working work training, so I didn't know how to turn it on and turn it off.	16:07
Doris Dixon	Turn on?	16:20
Melma Guess Sims	Like I should work.	16:21
Doris Dixon	Okay, work.	16:21
Melma Guess Sims	Because sometime, I'd go to work in the morning, stay there all day and half of the night sometimes. But I didn't know that was against me, see?	16:23
Doris Dixon	Yes, ma'am.	16:31
Melma Guess Sims	Because I hadn't been anywhere to get any training or anything. I hadn't been around the real families. I saw families, and how they went, and how nice they were. But I wasn't in that. Sure did.	16:32
Doris Dixon	What was your first job?	16:48
Melma Guess Sims	That was my first job, baby.	16:51
Doris Dixon	The restaurant?	16:53
Melma Guess Sims	Uh-huh, on my own. Didn't know how to make a hamburger, but I saw the people make them at the carnivals in different places. I just did it like I saw them do it. They turned out fine, and people were so kindhearted then. There wasn't no lot of evil like it is now. It's always been evil, but there seemed to me the people I was finding was just kindhearted people, the men and everything. They would go from their little jobs to come there and buy those beans from me in the daytime.	16:53
Doris Dixon	Where did those men work?	17:26
Melma Guess Sims	Well, some of them was helping carpenter. They didn't have no carpenter job, they'd only be working with a carpenter. They'd go up and do carpenter work, and field working, oil mills, and cotton. Let me see, what did you call those? Compresses. Compresses. Those were the day jobs. They paid, at that time, what they called good money. They could have gone home to eat dinner, their wives' cooking. But they'd prefer to come there and, I guess, help me. I believe that, now that I look back. That's what it was.	17:28
Doris Dixon	What was your next job after that, after the restaurant? How long were you at the—	18:14
Melma Guess Sims	It was just restaurant business all my life, 37 years. Just improved it as it went along. I took one year off from my marriage, left my husband one year. I went to my mother, who lived in Ohio. Hamilton, Ohio. That's about 35 miles from Cincinnati. I went there and I found a job in another little town not far from that, a lot of little towns in Ohio, called Oxford, Ohio. They had a university in Oxford called Miami University. I went there, and I worked on the switchboard there for a year. Then I came back to Helena.	18:16
Doris Dixon	Did you ever feel like a second class citizen?	19:10
Melma Guess Sims	Wait, say that again?	19:12
Doris Dixon	Did you ever feel like a second class citizen, back in those days?	19:12
Melma Guess Sims	Oh always, honey. I was always Black. You know what I mean? Everywhere I went around them, I was Black. Only way you felt like anybody, you'd stay away from them, because they was going to see to putting you down, you know what I mean. Put you down.	19:13
Doris Dixon	Could you tell me how they did? Explain a little bit more about how they put you down?	19:32
Melma Guess Sims	How they segregated you and treated you so bad? Well, about me getting into the business by myself, I didn't get as much of it as other people. It was so prevalent until—You got it if you just walked down the streets. They might get off to the side and let you by, and you might have to do that yourself, if you didn't want to get walked over, because they didn't think you were anybody. Just treated you like you wasn't nobody.	19:39
Doris Dixon	How did you treat them?	20:14
Melma Guess Sims	Ma'am?	20:19
Doris Dixon	How did you treat them?	20:19
Melma Guess Sims	Well, I just tried to ignore it as much as I could, unless it was something I had to get. If they had something that I had to have, and I would go in there, "Yes ma'am. No ma'am," like everybody else. But I didn't have too much of that to do. After my business got big enough, then I started dealing with wholesales, and I didn't have any more problems with segregation and stuff. Because I'd go there sometimes, put my order in, and then sometime I'd call over there, put my order in, and I didn't run into any problems that way. But the other people had to go to the stores, and you had to stand back until the White folks get waited on. Don't make no difference who was there first. All those things that hurt you and drag you down. They would tell me about it.	20:21
Doris Dixon	You told me before we started the tape that you used to go to Memphis to shop.	21:18
Melma Guess Sims	Yes. That's after I got big busy. I was in big business then. I'd take off Thursday.	21:23
Doris Dixon	Did you have any of those experiences in Memphis?	21:32
Melma Guess Sims	Huh?	21:33
Doris Dixon	Did you have any of those experiences in Memphis with the segregation and stuff?	21:33
Melma Guess Sims	Oh, sure. Everywhere you went in the south, you ran into it. I was always pretty good on ignoring things that I didn't like. I pretty much ignored them. Now, as I told you, I loved these beautiful clothes.	21:35
Doris Dixon	Yes, ma'am.	21:54
Melma Guess Sims	But honey, some of those clothes, they wouldn't let you. If you was Black, I don't care how pretty you are, how good you smell. You couldn't put them on, try them on. You just had to take them on home, man. If you liked them, maybe you didn't like them, keep them, because they didn't want them after you tried them on. You see how unfair that was?	21:54
Doris Dixon	Now, your restaurant, was that in Helena?	22:17
Melma Guess Sims	Yes.	22:18
Doris Dixon	You operated for about 30 years or so?	22:20
Melma Guess Sims	About 35 years.	22:20
Doris Dixon	Tell me this, were there other Black businesses from Helena?	22:20
Melma Guess Sims	Sure. Well, let me see now. Let me see. I was so busy tending to my own little business. That one day for freedom I had, I came to Memphis. You see what I saw about Helena, staying in that place all day. That's about it. We had insurance companies, and they hired quite a few people, Black insurance. Like University of Tennessee here. We had a lot of Tennessee [indistinct 00:23:10] University, here in Tennessee Insurance Company. Universal Life Insurance Company, and they had offices there. Then we had a few Black doctors, and lawyers, and dentists, and service stations. A couple of Black service stations.	22:40
Doris Dixon	Were there any grocery stores?	23:37
Melma Guess Sims	Yes, we had grocery stores, little grocery stores, Black. All the supermarkets and large stores were with the other race. But we had enough sense to patronize them enough for them to make a living.	23:39
Doris Dixon	Now, what kinds of things did you have to go outside your community for?	24:04
Melma Guess Sims	That I had to go outside? We had everything in Helena that you can find any place else. We had all kind of cars, from the Ford to the Cadillac, those places. We had nice big federal buildings, and state and county buildings, and all that kind of stuff.	24:06
Doris Dixon	Did a lot of people travel to Memphis? A lot of Black people, I mean, travel to Memphis?	24:33
Melma Guess Sims	Quite a few. Not too many, but enough. Five or six of us big shots would come here, because we had to have something different than the people. Couldn't have those common clothes. I had to come up here and get something different.	24:39
Doris Dixon	You said big shots.	24:56
Melma Guess Sims	Big shots, honey. I know you heard about that, didn't you?	24:59
Doris Dixon	Yes, ma'am. Who were the other big shots? What do you mean by big shot?	25:01
Melma Guess Sims	I mean people who were able to get in their Oldsmobiles or whatever they had, and drive on up to Memphis and get things they wanted, and not just take the things that was there that you had to have, you had to buy to have anything. All of you have on pretty much the same thing. Everybody have on pretty much same thing if you bought it there, but they had brand things, nice things. Sure did.	25:04
Doris Dixon	Did you do anything else in Memphis other than shop, like go to any entertainment or—	25:38
Melma Guess Sims	I sure didn't, but other people did. They went down on Beale, to New Daisy and all those places. But I didn't, because I just was going to be up here in daytime, just going to shop. Maybe take a friend with me, a lady friend. We didn't do nothing but go into the stores, and go to places to eat. Before we stopped, before it ran out, we were eating at Goldsmith's.	25:44
Melma Guess Sims	Now before then, there was a place here called the Black and White Store that you could eat at. They had nice food, but Goldsmith's, they had a cafeteria and a cafe, and it was good food. Real good food. That was the time when Goldsmith's, you said you were going to Goldsmith's, you was going somewhere [indistinct 00:26:36]. Now, it's just a store like anything else.	26:10
Doris Dixon	Tell me about the community in which you lived in Helena. Did you live near the restaurant?	26:48
Melma Guess Sims	No, I lived at home. I had my husband. Husband bought me a little home way back in the '50s. Real nice, a little home. It's a nice big house, rather. Paid $5000 for it. Now, you couldn't get a yard. You couldn't get your front yard hardly for $5000. Then I didn't do too much socializing, because my husband had a niece in Mississippi, and she gave us one of her babies. That filled my hands up. I raised her, and she got 20 years old before she left home. Then she had children, and we adopted them like we did her, and raised them until they got about 15. Then, we were dead, our time was out then. They're all in Chicago.	26:53
Doris Dixon	Did you ever want to go leave this area?	27:52
Melma Guess Sims	Did I ever want to go up there and live with them?	27:59
Doris Dixon	Or just leave this area, period? This part of the south, did you ever try to leave?	28:01
Melma Guess Sims	No, I never wanted to leave this house. I've always gone—I went up to—	28:09
Doris Dixon	Ohio.	28:11
Melma Guess Sims	—Up north, and in Chicago and places. Oh, I went a lot of places in the north, because every year, I'd travel. I traveled by car, either plane, anywhere I wanted to, and I went all the places that I wanted to go. I always would wind up going north instead the other way. Never, no, I didn't want to live there.	28:11
Doris Dixon	Your grandparents, did you know anything about your grandparents?	28:49
Melma Guess Sims	Yes, I did. My grandmother, which was my daddy's mother, she was alive when I came along. That was her daughter that I was so crazy about. I had to be around her to be close to this girl. Then, I had a great grandmother, which was this lady's mother. Oh, she was a lady. To my idea, she was a grand lady. She would keep herself so clean, and all those white, snow white under clothes, and in the field, everywhere else. She was a lady. She would cook food enough so that any child or children, you'd go, everybody, crowds of people singing. You had something to go in there, and she'd serve you some milk and cookies. Then, they wasn't cookies. They were, what do you call those things? You don't know them.	28:52
Doris Dixon	No, ma'am.	29:55
Melma Guess Sims	The old folk cooked them. They weren't cookies but tea cakes. Tea cakes. You heard about them, didn't you?	29:56
Doris Dixon	Yes, ma'am.	30:00
Melma Guess Sims	She always had some tea cakes around there, some fresh milk. Yeah, the tea cakes was the main thing. Her biscuits. Her biscuits tasted so good, you'd eat them by themselves. Just run in there when I'd be out playing. Yard stayed full of children all the time, and just run in the house, and she'd have them sitting right where you could reach, get you one and keep running. Sure did. That was that grandmother. Her name was Mandy Low. That's my great-grandmother.	30:02
Doris Dixon	Mandy Logan?	30:34
Melma Guess Sims	Mandy Low, L-O-W. Mandy Low. Some kind of woman. They farmed, but she lived in a log house. I was blessed enough to get to sleep in a log house. That's my great-grandmother's house. It's like they always made good crops, because never did seem to be in any kind of poverty-stricken way, because they had the cows, the chickens and everything.	30:35
Melma Guess Sims	Sometimes, grandpa, he'd get tired of eating that food around the house. He'd go out and kill some birds. I'd go out and hear him make one shot. Boom. Come back to the house with a whole lard can half full of birds. My grandmother, they would clean those birds and cook them and make dumplings with the birds. They were delicious. They'd fish. We'd have all kind of fish. Just wonderful life. Beautiful life. Now, that's the house where I saw a beautiful life.	31:12
Doris Dixon	Yes, ma'am. Now, this aunt that you were so crazy about, what was it about her that you [indistinct 00:31:58]?	31:47
Melma Guess Sims	I don't know. I believe it because, five years difference was what made it close, I guess. I believe that's what. But she was kindhearted. She was so kindhearted, to me and everybody else. That's one thing which made me fall for her.	31:59
Doris Dixon	What did your husband do? You said at one point during the Depression, he worked in the WPA.	32:20
Melma Guess Sims	Well, you see he had lived, his home was out in the country from Clarksdale, Mississippi. He had done what the people, I know you heard your parents talk about people that get in trouble. You know what that meant? They killed somebody. When they said, "He got in trouble," I'd bet you he killed somebody. His daddy sent him over there, because they had an uncle over there in Arkansas. That's how he got there. He fooled around and got the reputation of being a bad man, you know. And he lived up to it, you know.	32:25
Doris Dixon	How did he live up to you?	32:58
Melma Guess Sims	By, if you mess with him, you get killed. You see what I mean? Well, a certain way you had treat those kind of Negroes, and the White folks had treated him the same. They demanded the same kind of respect.	33:03
Doris Dixon	Yes, ma'am. Yes, ma'am.	33:16
Melma Guess Sims	I left the restaurant business before he died, because he stayed down two years with cancer. Got me a little store right close to the house. The grocery store wasn't going to make no lot of money. Just going to be something to do. My little business was just going fine, and the people paid me. They get it on credit, paid me good. Everything worked fine, but when he died, I had $1,500 worth of the grocery around there. Neighborhood people stopped speaking to me. They had been trained all their life to be afraid of people or something, and after he died, they didn't have nobody they had to be afraid of, so they let me alone. Because that's what they respected, fear. They didn't know any better. I didn't figure it out until he died, when they stopped paying me. I said, "Uh-huh, that's what it is." I thought it was me. They were liking me. They were so nice. They were nice because they were afraid of him.	33:22
Doris Dixon	You said now, you raised your husband's niece's daughter?	34:34
Melma Guess Sims	Yes. I reared her, and she had three children, and she gave me two of them. Her husband took one when they divorced. He took the oldest child and she gave us the two little ones she had left, a girl and a boy. I didn't get anything out of that, but I enjoyed it so much. I really enjoyed raising those children.	34:38
Doris Dixon	What kinds of things did you try to teach them?	35:07
Melma Guess Sims	Huh?	35:09
Doris Dixon	What kinds of things did you try to teach them?	35:10
Melma Guess Sims	Oh, teach the children? Well, I called myself living in front of them. I didn't sit down like I should have, and talk to them like I should have. I used to call myself living right in there, in front of them. Thought they would do it, but now one of them turned out fine, but the other two didn't turn out so well. The oldest girl, after she got rid of her family, she got into the dope and stuff. But she had had an education, so she was already one of the top supervisors at the Blue Cross Blue Shield.	35:12
Melma Guess Sims	But she got into that stuff some kind way, and they caught up with it, so she lost that job. She had put 15 years in it, but lost that. Now that's the oldest one. The first child of me. Lucky to do that well, because we were so crazy about her. Now how you are about one thing. I think we were blessed to get that much out of her. See, she works now, a secretary somewhere. It's not a well known enough place for her to even tell me what the name of it is. Just, "Yeah, Mom, I'm working." That's all. Her daughter, this child that I reared, she was a kindhearted child. She did her little things like all other children, other young women, but she was kindhearted. It set her apart. I consider her being nice. She has a son and a daughter.	35:54
Melma Guess Sims	The boy I reared, he was rotten. We were too crazy about him, you know. Named him after my husband. He was little Roger. Little Roger turned out to be nothing, because his daddy let him have his way, and he wouldn't allow me to really chastise him like I should, you know. So I got tired and I told him, I said, "Okay, you just take him on to hell with you. I've tried to raise this little girl, me and the Lord, and I'm tired of fighting both of you. I can't win that way." So I let him go, and that's what he did. He's in the penitentiary right now. The little girl still holding on, working two jobs. See, she doesn't have a husband. Working two jobs, but she's so crazy about that little boy of hers, I don't think she mind it.	36:55
Doris Dixon	Are you ready to stop, ma'am? Is this painful to talk about this?	37:50
Melma Guess Sims	Talk about what, baby?	38:01
Doris Dixon	Is this painful to talk about your family? Are you ready to stop?	38:03
Melma Guess Sims	Oh, now when I got thinking about those children, I got onto that, that got me quite, not really disappointed, but it did something to me. You could tell, couldn't you?	38:07
Doris Dixon	Yes, ma'am. Yes, ma'am. We could just stop.	38:18
Melma Guess Sims	Make you feel like you—All that wasted time, you know. But every individual that's born into this world is his own person. And you hear people talking about how they raise their children. Their children, if they turn out good, they just wanted to be good. Because I've known people that just did everything they could to raise their children, and they turned out bad. But I guess that's the way it's supposed to be. He's turned out the way he's supposed to go.	38:25
Doris Dixon	Let's go and hit stop.	38:56
Melma Guess Sims	Oh—	39:02

Item Info

Title:

Melma Sims interview recording, 1995 June 22

Date:

June 22, 1995

Creator:

Sims, Melma Guess

Contributor:

Dixon, Doris

Description:

Name: Melma Guess Sims; Date of birth: 1922-12-26; Place of birth: Monroe Co., AL; Occupation(s): restaurateur; store owner; Residence: Memphis, TN
Informant ID: 873; Interviewed by: Doris Dixon.

Occupation:

Location:

Format:

Language:

English

Digital Collection:

Behind the Veil

Source Collection:

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

Series:

Related Resources:

See below

Provenance:

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

Rights:

Limited Re-Use

CC BY-NC 4.0

Rights Note:

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

Identifier:

RL00170-CS-0915
a770f79c-4b81-483c-944c-fdbb7cc62a0d
behindtheveil
2799fd53-d9cb-457e-8349-87445c68e6d8
ark:/87924/r4s75jt97
2799fd53-d9cb-457e-8349-87445c68e6d8

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https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r4s75jt97

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Melma Sims interview recording, 1995 June 22

Transcript

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1. Melma Sims administrative file, 1995

John Hope Franklin Research Center

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Melma Sims interview recording, 1995 June 22

Transcript

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John Hope Franklin Research Center

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