Jessie Stewart interview recording, 1995 July 28

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Doris Dixon	Mrs. Stewart, could you please state your full name and date of birth?	0:05
Jessie Watt Stewart	My name is Jessie Watt Stewart. I was born in January 24, 1935, in Grenada, Mississippi.	0:09
Doris Dixon	And how many years did you live in Grenada?	0:24
Jessie Watt Stewart	I lived in Grenada 19 years.	0:26
Doris Dixon	And then where did you move?	0:31
Jessie Watt Stewart	I moved to Greenwood, Mississippi. Well, I left home, going to college in Mississippi Valley State University. Well, at that time it was Mississippi Vocational College. And after, I did not live on the dormitory of Mississippi Vocational College, I lived in the City of Greenwood. There, I met my husband, and we got married my sophomore year in college. So I have lived in Greenwood, Mississippi, ever since 1955.	0:32
Doris Dixon	What are some of your earliest memories of growing up in Grenada, Mississippi?	1:17
Jessie Watt Stewart	Some of my earliest memories of growing up in Grenada are, I came from a large family, and we were very closely knitted. It was a family of seven boys and five girls. And my father and mother, well, were very caring people, in that my mother never worked. My father worked three jobs. He worked on the railroad, for Illinois Central Railroad, and he also, there he was a what they call a engineer, a night watchman engineer, where he serviced the engine train engineers at night, and he made a pretty good salary. He also worked for the Coca-Cola plant. He did a lot of different things, but he was a good provider. However, I did not realize at the time that I was growing up, but he saw that we had most of the basic things that we needed.	1:23
Jessie Watt Stewart	And one of the things that I noticed different in living in the Hills when I lived there, everybody in the Hills practically owned their own house, even though it was just maybe a small house. Our house was five rooms. But when I came to the Delta, I noticed that people here live differently, and I took things like that for granted.	2:28
Jessie Watt Stewart	We did a lot of things in my family. We might have been poor, but I didn't really realize that we were poor, because we had so much love and family relationship growing up together. One of the things that I noticed in growing up, even though we knew our limitations as far as Black and Whites, but I found that in my neighborhood, the Blacks and the Whites knew each other just by names. We knew everybody in that neighborhood and they knew us. It wasn't until this integration did came that the differences really started showing growing up.	2:51
Jessie Watt Stewart	Because I worked for a White lady who lived along the street near where I lived in Grenada, when I was coming up, from the time I was about 12 years old, I babysat after school. And she taught me a lot of the things about their culture that I have been able to carry on over into my family. For example, she always told me how important it was for us to go to college, and go to school, and get a good education. She always would tell me how pretty you look, how well your parents dress you. It's things like that. Because later on, they didn't do things like that after integration.	3:38
Jessie Watt Stewart	But she taught me a lot of things about housekeeping. She taught me a lot of things about—She taught me different kinds of foods you're eating, and how to use the silver. It was just, she taught me a lot of things, almost like you would teach a child. I worked from her from the time I was about sixth grade until I finished high school. I would just go in after school and babysit. She was a teacher. However, she didn't teach, but she would help me with my homework, or anything that I had to do.	4:21
Jessie Watt Stewart	That was while I was in high school. We went to separate high schools. We had a Black high school and a White high school. One thing I remember very vividly was usually when little White girls get 13 or 14 years old, they wanted the Blacks to call them, "Miss So-and-So," or, "Miss." And that was one thing that I didn't really understand. But other than my mother and father taught us our place, whereas there were certain things we knew that we were not supposed to do. For example, when you went to some White people houses along the street that we had to pass going to school, you had to go to the back door. And it wasn't until after integration that you were able to go to the front door. So that made a kind of difference.	4:58
Jessie Watt Stewart	But basically, the White people that I grew up with were very friendly, and they were very caring, until integration. And then when we got integration, they drew the line. It was a line drawn. It was a wall that was built. Whereas a lot of things they used to would try to help you with, then they stopped trying to help you. I guess it's because they felt like maybe you might be getting more than they were getting, somehow. But I grew up with a lot of White girls, and we didn't really run together, but when you saw each other on the streets, you spoke, and you asked each other how you was feeling, and how you were doing in school. But that all cut out. We cut that out during integration. After the integration.	5:50
Jessie Watt Stewart	We went to a Black high school, and I thought our high school was pretty good. However, after finishing high school and coming over here to the Delta, I realized that there were a lot of things that the children in the Delta had been exposed to that I had not been exposed to. For example, I found the children in the Delta, they were a little more experienced in life than we had. It looked like the girls in the Hills had been sheltered a little more. One thing, if you had a baby in the Hills, you could not go to school anymore, before you finished high school. So a lot of the girls from the Hills would come to the Delta to finish high school if they had a child before finishing high school.	6:49
Jessie Watt Stewart	They seemed like—And when I came to Mississippi Valley State University, I was a little timid. I was a little shy, because I guess it was because I just had not been exposed to a lot of the things that they had been exposed to. For example, we didn't have any nightclubs, or we didn't have a swimming pool, inside swimming pool. We didn't have an inside gym at our school. But the children in the Delta and on the coast, they had been exposed to those kinds of things, so they thought they knew a little more than we did. And I thought they were a little smarter than we were. However, I found out really and truly, they were not. It was just a front that they put up.	7:41
Jessie Watt Stewart	But I did not actively participate in the integration struggle. I guess I was afraid. I always would contribute financially, but as far as marching in the streets, I remember I had finished college when they first started this at my school, and we had a march. And at that time, I had my children, and they wanted to participate in it, and I was just so afraid for them. But they did participate in that march.	8:27
Jessie Watt Stewart	And I remember when the schools started to integrate, I was working at the Black school, one of the biggest Black schools, that was Threadgill High School at that time. And they were going to integrate with the Greenwood High School, which was all White. And the children boycotted. They walked the streets, and of course we being teachers, we could not participate in that, because it might cost us our job. So however, we kind of encouraged the children, we kind of encouraged them to go ahead on, and take a stand to do what they thought was right to do, and they did it.	9:07
Jessie Watt Stewart	I remember one thing, when they integrated the schools, the superintendents, which was White, would come around, and they would observe the teachers, and they call themselves getting the best teachers to place them into the White school. Well, I was one of the first ones that they picked, but because I felt that I had seniority, I talked with the superintendent and I asked him not to move me from the Black school. I did not want to go into the White schools. And as a result, I was never moved to the White school. That was the first superintendent who was doing that.	9:52
Jessie Watt Stewart	And one of the reasons why I didn't want to go to the White schools, because I did not want to be subjected to the kind of atmosphere that I thought that most Black teachers were subjected to. You did all right in the White schools if you would go there and you started thinking, and acting, and doing what they did. But as long as you kept your same culture or did your same things, they did not accept you. And they would keep you over there for a while, and then they would send you back to the Black school.	10:34
Jessie Watt Stewart	For example, a lot of times they would come in, you'd just agree, whether you agreed with what they were saying, whether you really agreed or not. And you started, most of the Black teachers started talking like them, and I just could not stand that. It just really, it burned me up to see them. What I said, "Oh, we did this here, and we did that there, and we had tea." Those were the kinds of things that they did. And a lot of times they really was interested in what was going on in the Black neighborhood, but they never, never really would tell you what was going on into their neighborhood. And I resented that. I still resented, because we still have a lot of Black people who just spill their guts to the other race, and they never tell you what's going on in their race.	11:12
Jessie Watt Stewart	And I think I still have a little—I don't know what kind of feelings. Even though I have a lot of good White friends, I still do not really, truly trust them, because even working, I have been teaching for 36 years, and this affirmative action that I hear a lot of people talking about, they're saying we don't need it. I still think that we still need—Because our school system is 90% Black now, and all of our administrators are White, and Black teachers have not been able to move up the ladder as fast as they should because of their color. That's the reason. But some White teachers can come in and show just a little progress, and before you know it, they have been moved up into a different level.	12:03
Doris Dixon	Can I ask you to tell me about the school you attended in the Hills, those schools and those teachers? What were they like?	13:06
Jessie Watt Stewart	We had some of the best Black teachers. We didn't have White teachers in my school, because we were not integrated at the time that I finished. And those teachers were great. They taught the whole child. And it just so happened that, I don't know, I've had several people to tell me since I've been grown that we were special, but my teachers took extra interest in me. They taught me all of the things, a lot of the things that I picked up, because my mother and father were not educators as such, but they had a lot of common sense. And I've found, since I've grown up, a lot of people say we have always had something, but it really wasn't that we had a lot of material things. It was just that I guess they thought we did, because—	13:15
Doris Dixon	Were your parents actively involved in your education?	14:27
Jessie Watt Stewart	As much as they knew how. They said that as long as you was at home, you had to go to school. You could not stay at home and not go to school. You had to finish high school and go to college unless you found a job. And they always were good providers for that.	14:30
Doris Dixon	Where did you go to school? And for how long?	14:50
Jessie Watt Stewart	High school?	14:53
Doris Dixon	Elementary school.	14:54
Jessie Watt Stewart	I went to Grenada High School. At that time, it was just Grenada High School, and it was grades one through 12.	14:57
Doris Dixon	Okay. Okay.	15:04
Jessie Watt Stewart	And all of my teachers were Black. And like I said, we had a lot of different extracurricular activities. We had a lot of different clubs at that time, and we were active. I was actively involved in all of the different clubs, like Tri-Hi-Y, NHA, Girl Scouts, Brownies. We had one society club, I call it. It was called the Excelsior Literary Club. And this was, well, they would select girls to be a part of this. And we even had a debutantes when I was 16, and this lady from Chicago came down and put on this debutantes, and we thought that was something. It was really, really pretty. But you wouldn't think of Black children being exposed to that as long ago as that has been, because we brought the same thing over here in the Delta, and they're still having it now.	15:05
Jessie Watt Stewart	But our teachers, Mrs. Rayford was one of my home economics teacher. And that's one of the reasons why I really wish they would bring home economics back into the school systems now. She taught us family living. She would invite the Board of Education to the school once a year, and we had to actually prepare food and serve them like they would in a real nice restaurant. We went through the four-course meal. So we learned a lot about that. How to entertain, how to be a good hostess. But in the Excelsior Literary Club, they taught us a lot of things that children don't get today. They taught us how to play cards. They taught us how to be good hostess, how to set a table. They even taught us how to walk, how to be a lady. And we don't have that now. They taught us a lot of things about being a lady.	16:13
Jessie Watt Stewart	She was a home economics teacher, so she thought this was important. She selected girls who she thought would be leaders in their community when they grow up, and basically most of the young ladies that they selected to be in this club, they did grow up to be really, really leaders. And I'm not saying that I'm a leader, but I find myself doing some of the same things with the young ladies that I work with now in my community. And that's a lot of the things that we need a lot of.	17:27
Doris Dixon	Could you tell me a little bit more about that selection process?	18:05
Jessie Watt Stewart	They still have this organization. It's the Negro—I'm a member of that club now, but it's the Negro Federation. I can't even think of it.	18:10
Doris Dixon	Federation for Public [indistinct 00:18:25]?	18:24
Jessie Watt Stewart	Yes. That's it. Uh-huh. Okay. So it consisted of 12 ladies, professional ladies. You had to be a professional. And most of them were teachers. They would go about selecting a young lady who they felt had leadership qualities, and they would sponsor this young lady from grades 9 through 12. They carried them to all kinds of different activities that we did not have in Grenada. They were called our big sisters. They taught us parliamentary procedures, how to carry on a meeting. We'd have two meetings a month. One was social and one was business. And we learned a lot. They would invite speakers in, different people to come in and talk to us, and tell us about all kinds of things.	18:25
Jessie Watt Stewart	And I really try to do some of the same things with the young ladies that I sponsor. I work with a group of young ladies too. However, they're not as interested as we were. And I never, coming from the background that I came from, and coming from, like I said, my parents were not educators, I never thought that I would turn out like I did. And I'm not saying—But I was married, and my husband just passed in January. We have three beautiful daughters. Each one, all of them finished college, and we had a real good life together, and he was a good provider.	19:21
Jessie Watt Stewart	So I never even thought that I would be able to, coming from the background that I came from, thought that I would reach or I would make as much money, I would be able to live as comfortable as we are living today. And I give the credit to, I still have some teachers that I send cards to every holiday. Christmas, Mother's Day, and their birthday.	20:11
Jessie Watt Stewart	Another teacher I'd like to mention was Mrs. Kent. She is about 95 years old, but she was my English teacher. And we thought she was really, really mean, but she really wasn't. She was just interested in the welfare of all the children. She taught me a lot, too. She taught me a lot about values and goals.	20:37
Doris Dixon	Tell me more specifically what she taught? You say values and goals.	21:10
Jessie Watt Stewart	She always told us we could be whatever we wanted to be if we work hard at it. And she would give you the guidelines in which to follow in order to achieve that goal. And I never will forget, she was one of the teachers who always encouraged you to—She felt that it wasn't wrong to get married early if you really wanted to, because she said you could go ahead on. She said that if you have a goal, you shouldn't let anything stand in your way to accomplish the goals that you have. But you have to set goals, and you have to go at them one step at a time.	21:17
Jessie Watt Stewart	And she taught us about values. Values that—This was a poem she taught us to really, really live by. If you can look yourself in the mirror, and like what you see, then—And she just instilled those things in us. And I graduated with a class of, it was 42 in my class, and basically most of the people in my class went on to college, and most of the people in that class, and we were poor, and we didn't have financial aid, because we had to go with what our parents would give us. But we were striving for a goal. We wanted to do better than what our parents had done. So we worked at it. For example, when I left high school, I didn't have any money or anything, but I was determined that I wanted to be able to make a better living.	22:10
Denise	Come in here. [Indistinct 00:23:24] do y'all need something?	23:22
Jessie Watt Stewart	You want to turn that off?	23:25
Doris Dixon	No, thank you.	23:26
Denise	Huh?	23:27
Jessie Watt Stewart	Denise, we are being recorded.	23:29
Denise	Oh.	23:31
Doris Dixon	You seemed really determined.	23:37
Jessie Watt Stewart	I knew that I did not want to live the kind—Well, my mother and father, they were all right, but I wanted to do better. I never thought I'd be able to drive a Mercedes-Benz. I never even thought that I would be able to drive a car. Well, my father had a car, but I never thought that. And I'd like to say, Mrs. Kent also instilled in us that if you put God in your life, all of these things would be made possible. And I really and truly think that that was why my husband and I had been so successful, is because we really did put God in our life. And I never really planned for a lot of things, but I always asked God to lead, and guide, and direct me. So I feel that I give all the credit to Him for being able to lead us and guide us to do the things that we have. I wasn't any smarter. I didn't have a better job or anything, but we were able to accomplish quite a bit.	23:40
Jessie Watt Stewart	And Mrs. Kent was the reason my mother kept us in church. She saw that—Now, they didn't always attend with us, but I grew up in the church, and it played a big part of my life. And another thing I liked about my family, even though my mother and father had 12 children, they were never too busy to always invite other children in. And as a result, they raised about 18 children in their house. And I remember my father would go out, and if he would see a child in need, he would bring it home. Sometime he'd keep those children in his house two or three years before the parents was able to take those children back. And he tried to instill in them some of the same values that he taught us, but a lot of them didn't really catch on. They did fair, but they didn't have the background. They didn't have the pushing of a family after they would leave us to continue to want to strive to do better.	24:48
Jessie Watt Stewart	My daddy also was a very stern provider. He believed that you needed to work for what you get. And he never wanted anybody to give us anything. And he had gotten beaten up by White people any number of times, because he always believed in what he believed in, and he was going to say it if they killed him. I remember one time, the police arrested him, and they beat him up and put him in jail, because it was something that he kept saying over and over and over again. And he kept saying it, because that's what he believed in. And the only way he got out of jail was because they say he stopped saying that.	25:57
Doris Dixon	He was saying it to a White man?	26:47
Jessie Watt Stewart	Yeah. To a White policeman, and they beat him up. But they always say, "He going to say what he want to say." At that time, you didn't talk back to White people. But my father was one to do it, because he had a kind of job that they couldn't do anything about his job, see, because he worked for the Illinois Central Railroad. And at that time, it was a good job, and they couldn't fire him. So he thought he was a big man in there. He could say anything he wanted, but if he said it, they would hit him, but he still would say it. And I often remember my mama saying, "Plummy, you talk too much. You shouldn't say this." He said, "Well, I'd die and go to hell before I would let them get away with doing him wrong."	26:49
Jessie Watt Stewart	And another thing was something strange about my father. He was a good provider, but they didn't believe in the bank at that particular time. And my father used to have money in toolbox, and he'd have tackle boxes full of money, because he said that if the White man knew, White people knew he had this money, they wouldn't let him do these things. So he kept a lot of his money around the house, and as a result, we were not able to invest money. He was afraid to buy land, because he said the White people, they wouldn't want him to do that. However, he always kept a nice car and everything like that. But I never understood why he always said a White man wouldn't let him do this. And he was a real good provider. And he loved his children, too.	27:43
Doris Dixon	Your mother?	28:39
Jessie Watt Stewart	My mother was very good. She was very submissive, and I think that's the only reason why—I took a lot of her traits in, then when I got married, I thought I had to do a lot of the things that she did, and that was she was very submissive to my father. She never worked outside of the home. She was there for us. When we got home, we knew we'd have food cooked. Our clothes would always be clean. And another thing, they would always see that we had plenty of nice clothes. And she was just a homemaker.	28:40
Doris Dixon	You say on the one hand, that they always made sure you had plenty, but you yourself were determined to even do better than that?	29:21
Jessie Watt Stewart	Yes. We always had plenty. We didn't have any luxurious things, because during that time, White people just didn't go along with you doing that. They just wanted you there, the bare necessities. And so that's what we did. We had as much as we possibly could at that particular time that my father felt that they would allow us to have. For example, he wanted a bigger car, but he was afraid to get a bigger car. He got a Chevrolet. He wouldn't get a, he said, "because those White people would be talking," you know, he didn't get him a Buick or a big car. He just got a car that he thought they wouldn't say anything about.	29:29
Doris Dixon	Did you go to a school the entire year?	30:23
Jessie Watt Stewart	Yeah. Now, in the Hills, see, we went to school for nine months. But in the Delta, they didn't do that. A lot of people over here went to school when the cotton wasn't in, or when they didn't have to chop cotton, or when they didn't have to pick cotton. And I came over here, I worked about two years in what they call a split session. You probably have heard about the split session. That means we worked in the summer, in the sweltering heat. It would be so hot the children could hardly hold their heads up on the desk, and sometimes their little hands would sweat so they couldn't even hold the pencils in there. But that was the time we would have school, six weeks in the summer, and then we would not go back to school until late fall, after all the cotton had been picked, and we would turn out earlier in the spring.	30:25
Jessie Watt Stewart	I wasn't used to that when I came over here, because we didn't do that over in the Hills. We had about 50 little different schools in the county, in Leflore County. I worked in Leflore County my first years, and I think I had about 40-something children in my classroom. And it would be so hot in that classroom.	31:14
Doris Dixon	Can you tell me about teaching the split session in Leflore County schools?	31:42
Jessie Watt Stewart	We had all Black students. And my first year teaching over here, some of the children were older than I was, and I was teaching fifth grade. And that was because they had been out of schools, in and out of school, because of the split session. But they were eager to learn. We didn't have discipline problems at that particular time, because the children would do what they were told to do.	31:50
Jessie Watt Stewart	A lot of times, children would come from the North, and they would say our children would be behind the children from the North. But I have found in teaching through the years that it's according to what you call behind. The children in the South are much more knowledgeable about common things than children from the North. Now, the children from the North might have a little more academic skills than they do, but it's so many other things that they can't do. They can't ride a bicycle. They can't go out there and climb a tree. They're afraid to walk down the streets, and see a lot of things that they just—They don't know how to take care of another child. Children in the South could take care of the children. They could do the basic things much better than children from the areas where they thought. But they always said that our children were slower than the children in the North, and I never understood that.	32:17
Doris Dixon	Now, were you among the first generation of college educated teachers? Or when I say college education, college educated, had college education immediately after high school, in the Delta?	33:23
Jessie Watt Stewart	Yeah, because I went straight through college. I stopped one year, but I graduated with my class that I started with. Some of the teachers, a lot of them, when I came here, they had something to called in-service teachers. I was not an in-service teacher. I went straight through college.	33:35
Doris Dixon	Now, in the Hills, what were the requirements there? Could you teach after eighth grade, or—?	33:55
Jessie Watt Stewart	Yeah, I think so. But most of my teachers that taught me were basically either high school graduates, or had some college training. They were a little more strict on that in the Hills than they were were over here in the Delta.	34:00
Doris Dixon	And were the teachers there—It sounds almost like they were kind of cultural leaders [indistinct 00:34:23]?	34:15
Jessie Watt Stewart	Very much so. They were much more. They were role models. You didn't hear of teachers doing a lot of things that teachers even—They were role models in every sense. For example, I have never worn pants to school in all the years that I have taught, because my teachers from the Hills, they instilled that in me so until I just have not allowed myself to do that. They were good role models.	34:22
Doris Dixon	Now, you mentioned Mrs. Kent. They were allowed to marry, and there weren't any provisions against marriage?	34:53
Jessie Watt Stewart	No. Mrs. Kent made a statement to me. She didn't marry until she was 54 years old. And she said that that's why she encouraged you to get married. She told me, she said, "Jessie Pearl, if I had known like I know now," she said, "I would have had a child out of wedlock rather than go through life without any children." She said, "So get married and have your family." She said, "Because it's very important." She taught those basic things. And that was strange coming from a lady who I had always admired, and she said she really would have had her a child out of wedlock, because she didn't get married until she was 54, and she was too old to have children. So that's why she said, "It's all right. It's all right to get married, when you find someone you can really go with." And I found getting married early has more advantages for me than disadvantages.	35:02
Doris Dixon	What do you remember about your home and your neighbors' houses?	36:21
Jessie Watt Stewart	Yeah. We lived in a neighborhood where everybody knew everybody. And like I say, my father was a very outgoing person. My mother was too. But all the children, everybody just checked on everybody, because we went to church with a lady called Miss Callie, so when she'd go to church on Sundays, she would come through the community and just gather all the children up, and we would all walk to church on Sundays, every Sunday morning. And if we didn't do what we was supposed to do, see, she would come straight back and she would give a report. And my father, when we would go to school functions, he would gather all the children up in the community and take them, and he would tell you to be ready at a certain time when he was going to pick you up.	36:25
Jessie Watt Stewart	And at that certain time, he was six feet four. All you had to do was look for his head, because he's going to be there to pick you up at that particular time, and you really had to be there. As far as teaching them right from wrong, everybody just was, in the Hills, they were like that. Now, I don't know about the Delta, but in the Hills, they were like that. If someone saw you doing something that you shouldn't do, they automatically corrected you at that particular time. They didn't wait to tell your parents. They did it then, even in church. Even White people were good at that. Going down the streets, White people were very particular about their lawns, and if you would try and walk on their lawns, they would call you and say, "Come here, little girl," if they didn't know you.	37:20
Jessie Watt Stewart	You know you're not supposed to be walking on the lawn, don't you?" We would pass by White churches. We would go into those churches a lot of times, because the doors always was open, and if they saw us, they would say, "Well, you're not supposed to come in those churches, don't you, without an adult." They did it in a nice way. They weren't grouchy, or they didn't say it—And to me, that's kind of training you, telling you what you should do.	38:08
Doris Dixon	Now, you lived in a mixed neighborhood?	38:35
Jessie Watt Stewart	Well, for a long time, White people lived all around us. But after integration, then they started moving out. But they lived behind us. They lived on the street leading up from us. But after integration, they just moved away, and now all Black people live in that area.	38:38
Doris Dixon	How long had your parents lived in that neighborhood?	39:04
Jessie Watt Stewart	I was born in that neighborhood. I was the first child born in that house. And that house is 60 years old, so that's how long it had been. And like I said, the White people were basically—Because I learned a lot of things from the White people that lived in my neighborhood.	39:06
Doris Dixon	Can you give a geographic boundary, or what did you consider to be your neighborhood? How far?	39:32
Jessie Watt Stewart	Well, I lived near the railroad, but the White people, it was a street running around. We called it the Boulevard, but the railroad track crossed the Boulevard. The Boulevard ran almost into the Boulevard, but White people lived on the Boulevard, but the Black people lived near the railroad track, and White people lived across the railroad track, behind that. And so all of the people on the Boulevard and Snyder Street, we knew all of the White people who lived in that area, and they knew all of the people who lived down in that area. They knew my mother and father by their first name.	39:40
Doris Dixon	What was your address?	40:27
Jessie Watt Stewart	My address was 762 Railroad Avenue.	40:28
Doris Dixon	And were there parts of Grenada that were considered to be bad parts of town?	40:33
Jessie Watt Stewart	Yeah, and that was the part I wanted to live in. I didn't know any better, but it was a part—I don't think it was really bad, but it was called Union Street. And that's where all of the things happened. Everything happened on Union Street. They had a theater, and they had some cafes, and that's where all the Blacks would go on Sunday evening. And you put on your little nice skirts, and you walked down that street on Sunday evening, and you just, oh, you just enjoyed yourself. You got to see all your friends.	40:40
Jessie Watt Stewart	But see, at that particular time, we were in BTU, and I had a sister who never went to BTU. She would go to the street. See, it was a movie at the end of the street, a Black theater, and that's where all of the children went. And now we had fun, because we didn't do anything but walk up and down that street, and socialize, and go to the movie, and probably go to the cafe, until about dark, and then we would head back home. I didn't do it. However, my sister did it, because that was the time we were supposed to have been at church in BTU. And this lady, Miss Callie, would always tell my mother and father that my sister didn't come to BTU, and she would get a whooping every Sunday night because she didn't go to BTU, but she still went to those places.	41:21
Jessie Watt Stewart	And that was called Union Street, South Street, and Pearl Street. Those were the streets that we would walk up and down. It wasn't near the school. That was the Black neighborhood. Now, I don't know where the Whites congregated, because they didn't congregate too much at that particular time when I was growing up.	42:14
Jessie Watt Stewart	In the Hills, it's not as many children in the Hills as it is in the Delta, because when I came from the Hills, we had only one high school in Grenada and Grenada County. But when I came to the Delta, they had about four high schools for Blacks, plus they had the White schools, two or three White schools, and a private school. And I had never seen that many children before. But see, it was only 40 in my class. And when I came over here, it would be something like—It was just so many people over here. And we called the people from the Delta "bigfoot people," because they were—	42:36
Doris Dixon	Bigfoot?	43:13
Jessie Watt Stewart	Yes, because they were so boisterous. They were so, I don't know. For example, my husband is from the Delta, and my best girlfriend was from the Delta. So my best girlfriend married my classmate from the Hills, and my husband was from the Delta, and she was from the Hills. They would look at us, because they said that we were strange. We were kissing. Kissing. Every time we saw somebody, we ran and hugged. So they didn't do that in the Delta. Those were some of the things.	43:15
Jessie Watt Stewart	We were just glad to see each other. "Hey, girl. How you doing?" That's what we did in the Delta. And they looked at us very strange. When we were young, when we'd go out, and they said, "You can tell them hillbillies." That's what they'd call us. Because I didn't know I was a hillbilly until I came over here. And my girlfriend Sylvia would just look at me and my husband, they thought they were really reserved. They weren't. They were really country too, but they thought they were, and they would just—And see, when we saw somebody, we just ran, and that's a lot of difference in the Hills people and the Delta people. We're more outgoing. We touch each other more. We're concerned about each other more.	43:51
Jessie Watt Stewart	Because in my class in high school, everybody was concerned about each other. We care for—When I graduated from high school, I had to do the valedictorian speech. And when I finished saying my speech, everybody in the auditorium was crying, because even the principal, and the teachers, and everybody, and we just, oh, we just carried on. Because we really did care for each other. But the people over here in the Delta, it wasn't like that with them.	44:39
Doris Dixon	What was your valedictorian address on?	45:17
Jessie Watt Stewart	Valedictorian speech? I don't even remember it. I was not the valedictorian, but this is how I got to do the—I was the class president of my high school class. This is how I got to be do the valedictorian speech. The valedictorian of our class had done something she should not have done, so they took the speech away from her because of her conduct. See, they were really high up on morals, and they thought that she did not deserve to do the speech because she had done something. I think she had gotten drunk or something. One night they was having a senior party, and she had gotten drunk and done something, and the teachers found out about it, and they took the speech away from her and gave it to the class president. I was class president, so that's how I got to do it. However, I was an honor student too, but I should not have delivered the valedictorian speech. But if you did anything like that, they would take your privileges away.	45:20
Doris Dixon	And you mentioned single mothers coming to the Delta to have their babies.	46:23
Jessie Watt Stewart	Yeah.	46:28
Doris Dixon	How were single people in general treated?	46:29
Jessie Watt Stewart	Not very good. Because if you got pregnant in high school or anytime—	46:32

Jessie Watt Stewart	No, you know what? I really had a fear of getting pregnant when I was in high school, because my father had something called a chopping block. And he said if you got pregnant before you finished high school, he would take you to that chopping block. And he said, "I'm going to chop your head off." And I really believed that he would do that for so long, but however, I did have a sister to get pregnant and she got married right away, you know, before she finished high school and he didn't chop her neck off, but I still did not take a chance on that. But he instilled in us a lot of things that it wasn't right. And I tried to instill those same values into my children that I had, because it was good for me and I feel like it was good for them.	0:02
Jessie Watt Stewart	As far as having boyfriends over to your house, we had certain times that we could take company. We couldn't take company until we were 16 and boys were not alive to come to our house any time of the day. That had to be a certain time, and we could only go to a movie once a week. Those were things that if we didn't go to church on Sunday, we couldn't do anything else for the rest of the week. That was just his rule. And if one left, we leave together, we had to come back together. Those were his rules. He did not allow boys past our living room in our house. They couldn't come and go all over the house like I see youngsters do. And they could never come to the house without an adult being present. So I had those same rules for my children.	0:52
Jessie Watt Stewart	He kept us involved in a lot of extracurricular activities which kept us away from a lot of things that maybe other children were doing. And as a result, we grew up being very, very close. And things in our family, like my oldest sister always provided activities. We played bingo. We didn't have television. We played bingo, we played a lot of games in our family, parched peanuts, popped popcorn.	1:45
Doris Dixon	What's parched peanuts?	2:16
Jessie Watt Stewart	Okay, you get the peanuts and you cook them in the shell and we would eat them like that. You didn't know what parched—parched peanuts are very good. They're not shelled like they are in the bags that you get now. My sister, we always had a family prayer. My daddy drinked, and I don't care how much he had had to drink, he never forgot to say his family prayer on Sunday morning and he never sat down to his food unless he said for grace. And as result, I taught my children the same thing. And we always had a big breakfast on Sunday morning and a big dinner. And as a result I do the same thing and it's hard to break those habits.	2:17
Doris Dixon	Family gatherings. Did you have family—	3:08
Jessie Watt Stewart	Yeah, my brothers that left and went to the north, they always came back home. My father would always keep some hogs. And at this particular time, my brothers would always come back home from the time when they would kill hogs and they would bring their families from Detroit in Chicago. And that was a good time, but at Christmas time they always came home. We didn't have a whole lot of big family reunions, but our families would just really get together. And I always felt—every time they left, that was a sad time for me. I was the only one who stayed here in the south. Most of my other sisters and brothers all left and went north. I had one other sister to teach here in Greenwood, Mississippi. I had a brother to get killed in Vietnam too. He finished at Jackson State.	3:08
Doris Dixon	Did you and your husband ever think about migrating?	4:08
Jessie Watt Stewart	I did, but he didn't. I left and one summer I was really looking for a place to go, and I visited Milwaukee and I visited Indianapolis and Chicago and Detroit. And I found out that the people there were not nearly as happy and was doing nearly as well as we were doing here, and they were not nearly making the kind of contributions to their community that we were. So I came back and I began to get satisfied. So I never had the desire to want to go any other place. I realized then—and even though my teachers had told me, "Wherever you go, you make whatever you want out of it by doing what you're—" we were involved in—my husband was a dynamic basketball coach and he helped a lot of young people. And as a result, you feel like you was contributing something.	4:11
Jessie Watt Stewart	When I worked in the county, there were a lot of children who had never used a bathroom, indoors bathroom. And we brought them to our house and my husband would bring his basketball team, because he worked in the county, and he would let them stay here weeks just for them to be exposed to different kinds of setting. And I think it helped the children a lot. It helped them to want to go on, because just before he died, one of his basketball teams wrote him a letter. She lived in Chicago and she was telling him how much she thanked him for the things that he had done for her. And she said one time we was going on a trip and she said, "My shoes had a hole in it." And she said, "You took me into town and you bought me some shoes."	5:18
Jessie Watt Stewart	And she said, "And you told me don't tell the other children." And she said, "Now I have a good job and I have a closet full of shoes." She said, "I never had money when we was going on trips." She said, "But you would always slip me $2 and tell me to buy me something but don't tell the other children." And I found out he was doing all the children the same way. So when he died a lot of them got up and expressed things like that, but he brought them to my house and all for a week right after Christmas. They always looked forward to doing that. And a lot of these children lived in the rural areas where they had to bring water, go and get water two and three miles and haul the water to their house. But he would bring them here, and for that week we left and we went home and he would just let them be exposed to the things.	6:09
Jessie Watt Stewart	And as a result, I think it gave them a desire to want to get the same kind of things that we have. We've been living in this house for over 25 years. So he did that. And a lot of this rubbed off on the children, because they had lived in the rural all of their lives. And a lot of times if you can just get one child out of the conditions that they're living in, they will go and they will come back and try to pull some more of them out of the same condition. So I think that's what was for my husband and he encouraged, he helped so many young people go to college who would not have gone to college otherwise, had he not made some special efforts. However, I wasn't always understanding to that point at that particular time, because we had children and I thought he gave them so much more of his time than he did his children, but it worked out all right, really and truly.	6:56
Jessie Watt Stewart	He would buy them clothes. That's why I say I'm glad I did not go to the north because we—and I don't really mean to brag, but we have really done a lot of things for a lot of young people in our area. And I didn't realize how much he had really, really done. I remember the first young lady I brought from Money, Mississippi. She had never been in a bathtub before. So when she came to visit with us, I guess she thought it was—she got in the bathtub, she stayed in the bathroom over two hours. We didn't know what was wrong with her. We taught her how to wear a garter belt, a brassierre, things like that. And she went on and she said that she was going to get her some of those things. She didn't finish college. She went to college two years, but she came out of that environment that she was in, and that means a lot.	7:51
Jessie Watt Stewart	And I was telling you about the young ladies that I sponsor. I sponsor juniors and seniors from the county schools, 12 young ladies. We worked with them two years. And our goal is to try to develop leadership and to teach them to be young ladies. And one of our things too, if you have a child, you automatically do not—you cannot belong to this club anymore. It's Negro National Council of Women Federation. But we do that and it serves as an incentive. So many young people have children by the time they get in high school. And it's not that I have anything against it personally, but I feel that you got to have something to work toward. And as a result, we've had very few young ladies to get pregnant. And most of the young ladies that I have sponsored through the years have gone on to college and they have been successful and they have come back into the community and they have been contributing citizens, and that's what we are aiming for.	8:51
Jessie Watt Stewart	I only wish we had more people who would work with them, but we just don't have a lot of people to work with our young people to help for them to strive for those things, which we think—well I'm still a member of the Cotillion Federated Club and those are some of the things that we try to instill in our young people. It's kind of hard. And we have gone through some difficult times, especially doing integrations, where all of those things were just thrown on a sign, but we are working back up to it now. Doing integration, they thought anything go. And it has helped a lot, but it has also hurt a lot, in that I feel, I really truly feel that we really do need more Black people going into education because I think that the Black people really understand Black students better than the White teachers.	9:55
Jessie Watt Stewart	The White teachers put it there, and if you get it, that's all right, but those Black dedicated teachers are going to see that you get it. That was the difference. When I was in high school, they were going to see that you would get what they were trying to put out, but see, the difference—and then the White teachers say, "Well, he can't do it." I'm one of the few teachers who are still teaching who say, "You have to teach Black children because they have not been exposed to a lot of things that the other races have been." And I'm not saying that they're not as intelligent as they are, I'm just saying that they have not been exposed. For example, on the standardized tests, a lot of terms that's used on the standardized tests, our children have not been exposed to it.	10:50
Jessie Watt Stewart	And I don't think they should be penalized for that because they have not been exposed to it, but the norm has been set, geared to people living in other environments. So as a result they said, "We score lower." Most of the children across the river in this community that I teach to, parents are professional people. So that makes a lot of difference. And I often try to tell our teachers and our principals, "If you take our professionals' parents, the students of our professional parents, you'll see that they go right along with those up over there," but they don't do that. They just look at the overall picture. Another thing that it's hurting for me to see, and I know Ms. Love and I have talked about it, and I don't know why it's so disheartening to me because I'm a grandparent teacher. Some of the children that I'm teaching, I have taught their grandmothers.	11:38
Jessie Watt Stewart	The parents now do not seem to take as much interest in their children as their parents did. They're not doing it, and I don't know why. I don't know why and I wonder why. The children, they're not—and I see some of the children that I have taught standing on the streets and doing—and I wonder why. And good students. They should've—but I found out at one time, it has a lot to do with the educational arena that they're in. For example, I took upon myself about six years ago to work with a group of young men. I had 17 young boys, juniors and seniors from Greenwood and LeFlore High School, Greenwood and Amanda Elzy. And every one of those boys had signed up to go to the armed force. It was because that they had not been taught that there was something better that they could go to other than the armed force.	12:30
Jessie Watt Stewart	We had a time trying to get those boys unsigned to go—I had some councilors to come in. I had lawyers to come in and talk to them. And as a result, most of those young men did not—only about two or three of them went on into the service. They went to college. I don't know who was telling them that this was for them, but most of those boys came from parents who could afford to send them to college or they could have gotten grants, but nobody had taken the time to tell them that, "It's something better than the service. You can do better than that." I'm getting ready to start back working with a group of young men, but the reason why I stopped working with them was because I could not find an adult man to say that they would co-sponsor those young men with me.	13:32
Jessie Watt Stewart	And I already was working with a group of young ladies and it was really too much, but I did complete the course with those young men. They did finish high school, and most of them went to college, and most of them have done really, really well. It's nothing wrong with the armed force, but I think that's the last resort. If you can't go to college, if you can't do that, then it's good for you to go into that. And one time our club did a survey of the students finishing from Greenwood High. This is supposed to be the integrated high school, Amanda Elzy. Three fourths of the students who were finishing from Greenwood High stopped, but the children from Amanda Elzy, over half of their class was going on to college. So we were wondering what was the difference. They had White counselors over there. They had no Black counselors, and they had a Black counselor at Amanda Elzy.	14:17
Jessie Watt Stewart	And she was trying to show even the slowest students—and I have found that too, some of the slowest students are students who are C average students are the ones who go on and be really, really successful, but they don't encourage you. And our parents are not knowledgeable enough to realize that this is their way of really holding us down. They have several different curriculums that they can select in ninth grade. Our Black parents are not aware of this. If you go into this curriculum, you can't go to college. If you going—so whether or not they want to go to college or not in ninth grade, that's not important. I think they should be exposed to it so they might have a change of heart when they finish high school, but you can't get your parents to really, really see this.	15:13
Jessie Watt Stewart	So it's a problem. It's a cycle. It's a cycle and it's just going over and over and over. And instead of us moving out of the cycle, we are just going back over and over and over the same thing. And somehow you can't get our Black parents to understand that it's their responsibility to take charge of the children's education. They just don't see the importance of that. And I really, really wished that—in our club, the Cotillion Federated Club, it's a group of professional women. And most of us were teachers and most of us had our children [indistinct 00:16:43] and we worked with children from all kinds of backgrounds. And you can see a difference. You can really see a difference if you really have the interest. But I don't know, I wonder where we are going to end up. It's kind of sad, because you see children who can go on, but we just don't. And it's just a few who's trying to, really.	16:04
Doris Dixon	One thing that I wonder, you mentioned when we first started about not seeing yourself at this point. I often wonder, it seems to me that the people that I talk to somewhat expected a world different than the one that's ended up as far as what has happened to communities, for instance, what has happened to neighborhoods, what has happened to the respect that they were supposed to get, but they don't get. And I wonder—I mean, I guess I wonder about your grandparents and the kind of world that they lived and their kind of worldview and the expectations that you grew up around that were different than the expectations that people might have about their lives today. Does that make any sense? Do you see where I'm going with that?	17:19
Jessie Watt Stewart	Not really.	18:13
Doris Dixon	Okay. I'm sorry. Well let's scrap all of that. And could you tell me about your—did you know your grandparents?	18:15
Jessie Watt Stewart	Yes. They were very well respected. They were really, really highly respected, because my grandfather and my grandmother were outspoken people. They owned their own home. Like I say, in the hills, it was different. Most people in the hills, everybody had a little spot of land that they called their own. So my grandfather had a pretty good job and my aunts—I had two aunts to go to college and one was a teacher. They were highly respected. My grandfather was a deacon in the church and my grandmother was so outspoken she just—at that time, Black women could say whatever they wanted to say and they could get by with it. And she did it. So my father and mother were respected too. People thought a lot of them in their community. They kind of felt like they were leaders.	18:20
Doris Dixon	I wasn't trying to assume something about the respect of people today versus then. I guess I was asking about expectations, what they expected of the world versus what you can reasonably expect of the world today. I'm sorry if that doesn't make any sense.	19:16
Jessie Watt Stewart	Okay. You mean my grandfather and grandmother always expected their children to do better than they did, is that what you're saying?	19:32
Doris Dixon	That being part of it.	19:45
Jessie Watt Stewart	Okay. So they expected, and so every one of them, as a result, tried to live up to their expectations, even if they had to go away from Mississippi to do this, but every one of them tried to do it. I think all of them really tried to do a little better than what their parents did. However, they might not have always achieved it, but in a sense they did live pretty good life.	19:46
Doris Dixon	Who were the leaders of the Grenada community that you lived in?	20:12
Jessie Watt Stewart	At that particular time it was the teachers who were really the leaders, the role models. We had one lady, one family who was—they were funeral directors, and another family who ran a kind of little hotel. They were leaders. And basically the people who were in the church who have the leading roles in the church were basically thought of as the leaders in that community. I always looked up to my teachers, and that's not the case now. Children don't look up to their teachers now. They don't have that kind of respect for the teachers now that I had when I was growing up. And I had that kind of respect for them because they demanded it. They just demanded that you—they lived the kind of life whereas you could not do anything else but respect them.	20:15
Doris Dixon	Let me ask—usually I ask, as a concluding question, who should be remembered? And maybe that's along the same line to the people that we should respect. I ask people who—think back on the community in which they grew up in, and who do they think should be remembered?	21:12
Jessie Watt Stewart	In my community here or in the community in—	21:32
Doris Dixon	Either or both.	21:35
Jessie Watt Stewart	In my community that I came from in Grenada, two people who stand most in my mind—first of all, I like to say my mother played an important part in my life, because even though she was not an educator, she was always there nudging your arm, trying to get you to do better than what she did. Then I had two teachers, a Mrs. Rayford. Her husband was a doctor. She was my home economics teacher and she taught me a lot of things about life. She just would sit down and just talk to me about a lot of things that I didn't know about. And then there was Mrs. Kent, who was my English teacher. She taught me a lot of things. They just talked to me because I had never been anywhere and we had never been exposed to a lot of things, but they had and they expected me to go on and do better.	21:39
Jessie Watt Stewart	In Greenwood, when I came to Greenwood my sister lived here. She was teaching at that particular time. And I had some friends, Mrs. Hilton, who I thought was highly ranked in the community. And I had a desire that I just wanted to, when I finished college—a lot of my friends, when they finished college—Denise, tell him not to do that. When I finished college, the first thing I wanted was a house because when I came over here, these people over here was living in shacks. Professional people. So when I got out of college, the first thing I did, I bought me a house, and that was the best investment I could have made because that was a starter house. And then I started working.	22:46
Jessie Watt Stewart	I really didn't have a lot of role models over here, as such. I wanted to be like the people in Grenada, the people who I looked up to in Grenada, because I thought they were really fine people. And that's what I did. I did. And I think as a result, a lot of my friends—I always say that I'm a, whatcha call it, a trend setter, because when I bought my house, then all of my other friends started buying. It was a small house, but that was the first thing I did when I got out of school. Most people bought clothes, they bought cars. That wasn't important to me. I had never been used to paying house rent and all that stuff because my people had—so that's what I—and I went to church and most of my friends started going to church.	23:41
Jessie Watt Stewart	I became involved in a lot of different activities, for example. And most of the people over here were not used to giving. I was taught—we would go to the hospital when I was coming up and we would just give of our service. We worked in the community and we didn't get paid for that. And see, people here had not been used to that. So when I came over here, we started doing things, visiting the nursing homes and sponsoring young people and doing things like that. And as a result, I really and truly—for example, I had a girlfriend who tell me—we had gone to a dance one night and we had stayed out late. And when she called me the next morning, she said—I was up getting my two children ready to go to church. She said, "Whatcha doing?" I said, "I'm getting ready to go to church." She said from that day forward, she said, "If you could go out and stay and get up and on a Sunday morning and take your children to church, I can do it."	24:32
Jessie Watt Stewart	And from that time on, she's been in church. When I first came over here, professional people didn't really take an active part in the church, but when I came over here and I started going and my sister was going and they just started—I don't know why they didn't. I think that. I really and truly think that. And as a result—they would go, but it wasn't anything. They'd just go every now and then, but I made it a part of my life and a part of my children's life. And I think a lot of them took—a lot like having birthday parties. They didn't have birthday parties for their children when I—I started. So as a result, they started having birthday parties, having slumber parties. We did that when we were growing up in Grenada. So as a result, they have a few slumber parties, but basically they was always at my house and taking my children to all of the cultural activities.	25:29
Jessie Watt Stewart	I involved my children. They started. A lot of times I would always have to initiate it, but they started. And as a result, a lot of people, more people joined. I didn't let anything happen [indistinct 00:26:44] that I thought my children should see that I didn't take them to. We went on vacations and did things like that. And I would usually be the one who was bearing most of the expenses, but I felt that God had provided, had blessed me with this so I'm going to share with other people. And I did. So, like I say, basically—I hate to say this, but it looked like most of the things, well I was the first to do it and a lot of people just followed. And I'm not bragging, I'm not just saying that. It just so happened to be like that, but like I said, it wasn't too many people. Mrs. Hilton was one of the people and Ms. Mandells was one of the people that I might would've, but other than that, I wanted to be like the people in Grenada.	26:32
Doris Dixon	Okay, thank you.	27:50

Item Info

Title:

Jessie Stewart interview recording, 1995 July 28

Date:

July 28, 1995

Creator:

Stewart, Jessie Watt

Contributor:

Dixon, Doris

Description:

Name: Jessie Watt Stewart; Date of birth: 1935-01-24; Place of birth: Grenada, MS; Occupation(s): educator; teacher; Residence: Greenwood, MS
Informant ID: 1176; Interviewed by: Doris Dixon.

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Behind the Veil

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

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

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Jessie Stewart interview recording, 1995 July 28

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1. Jessie Stewart administrative file, 1995

John Hope Franklin Research Center

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Jessie Stewart interview recording, 1995 July 28

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