Marguirite DeLaine interview record, 1995 July 08

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Kisha Turner	Can we begin by you stating your full name and when you were born?	0:04
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	Marguirite DeLaine. July 7th, 1940.	0:08
Kisha Turner	Where were you born?	0:14
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	Manning, South Carolina.	0:16
Kisha Turner	What was Manning like that you can remember in the '40s?	0:18
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	We lived on a farm. It was very rural. There was only one high school in my district for Black families, students. That one was in Manning. There were a number of small one- and two-teacher schools scattered throughout the district. Those were basically in churches, and I do mean in the sanctuary. It wasn't an educational building, it was in the sanctuary. The teachers were responsible for all grades, first through seventh. The high school started at, no, first through eighth. I'm sorry. The high school started at ninth, and it went 9 through 12. But very few students went from the rural schools because there was no transportation whatsoever. There were no buses. There were very few cars. Most Black people did not have cars during that time, I think, in the rural areas. So once they finished the eighth grade, that was as far as most students went.	0:24
Kisha Turner	Okay. As far as your own household, who lived in your house with you?	1:49
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	My mother and father, and I have three sisters in the early forties. In about 1944, my sisters went to college. They were there basically in the summer, however, because in the winter they lived in Summerton with my uncle and went to Scott's Branch. Scott's Branch went as far as 11th grade at the time. Then when they finished 11th grade, they went on to Allen University in Columbia to finish the high school year and then go on to college. But I had my mother, my father, my three sisters, and me. There were at various times a cousin or two who would live for short periods with my parents. But that was basically short periods.	1:57
Kisha Turner	Did your parents own the land you lived on?	2:56
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	Yes.	2:58
Kisha Turner	Do you know how many generations that land was in the family?	3:00
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	A portion of it, I believe my great-grandfather purchased a portion of it. I'm not quite sure when it was purchased. It was probably the late 1800s.	3:06
Kisha Turner	Okay. And it was just passed down through your father's side, is what you said?	3:22
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	Right. My father's side, yes.	3:28
Kisha Turner	Okay. What did you have to do on the farm? Did you have any tasks?	3:30
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	Until I got to be about four or five years old, it was basically feeding chickens and following my father. I lived with my grandparents a lot, and there I had no chores. But when I was at home, it was basically feeding the chickens after I got to about six years old. Yes, we all had responsibilities. We would take care of the cows, and during the summer months, we would go out and do what we call mind the cows. We would take them out into the fields and out to the edge of the woods. My sister who was next to me and I would be out there most of the day basically playing, supposedly watching the cows, but basically playing. Then we would take them out in the morning and then we would bring them back in the evenings because then my father would do the milking and bring the milk in the house.	3:36
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	We fed the chickens, we gathered the eggs. As we got a little bit older, we fed the mules, took care of the hogs, did a lot of what we call suckering tobacco, getting the growth that was unwanted off the tobacco, and hoeing cotton, raking corn. I was a tomboy, so I did a lot of plowing also. Most of my childhood was spent climbing trees and really basically being very happy.	4:43
Kisha Turner	Okay. You mentioned that you lived with your grandparents periodically. When would you go live with your grandparents?	5:25
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	There was no set time as such. You know the saying, when the spirit hits you. My grandparents as this were my mother's parents now. My father's parents, my father's father died way long before I was born. My father's, my paternal grandmother died when I was about two years old. I don't remember her at all. My mother's, my maternal grandparents, my maternal grandmother died when I was seven. Up until that point, we would go over there or they would come over to visit us. And that was usually on a wagon, in the early years. My father had a car, though, as far back as I could remember, because he did a lot of work on his own cars. He kept the car, and we would go and visit my grandparents at least once a week. I think they basically kept clothes there for me because I would go there, and they would say, "You want to stay?" I'd say yes. I was very happy with them.	5:32
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	I remember only one time that I demanded to go home. The house that we lived in, my parents lived in, had a shingle roof, wood shingles, and the house caught fire. My father came over because my grandfather had some shingles, and he came over to get the shingles from my grandfather. I got very upset because the house caught on fire. So I had to go home, because I had to go and see about the house.	6:43
Kisha Turner	Okay. While you spent time with your grandparents, did they ever tell you any stories about how it was when they were young?	7:19
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	I really don't remember many stories. Because like I said, my grandmother died when I was seven, and I don't remember too many stories that they told. After that, I think my grandfather grieved my grandmother quite a bit. Well, he just didn't talk too much after that about what was going on. Most of the stories that I heard came from my mother and from my father, who would tell us stories.	7:26
Kisha Turner	Do you remember any of the more interesting ones?	8:09
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	I remember a few stories that they told. But it was basically things that went on, probably during Reconstruction or right after slavery. They would tell stories about how everybody had to work, my mother's ancestors especially told her that everyone had to work. There was one story that there was one fellow who—Each person was given, say, an allotment, a certain number of rows or certain amount to hoe in the cotton field. There was one person, one woman, I guess she was, because most of the men I think did the plowing and the women did a lot of the chopping the cotton. She said that this particular woman would be very slow with what she was supposed to be doing, and the others would feel sorry for her. They would finish their chores during the day, and when they were finished, they would all double up. Then the woman took to, when they would come and start hoeing her area, she would leave.	8:14
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	One day they just got tired of it because they knew that if she hadn't finished, she was going to be beat, she was going to get a beating, and they wanted to help her to prevent that. So one day they stopped. They just didn't go. She screamed. She carried on trying to get them to come back. That evening, of course, she got the whipping, say, within an inch of her life, because evidently it was a pretty cruel master. My mother grew up in Summerton, and that's basically my—Or grew up most of her life in Summerton. I think they moved out of Summerton when she was about 12. They moved to an area that my grandfather, a small acreage, about 12 acres that my grandfather purchased about halfway between Manning and Summerton. Of course our ties are still, because of her association and being from that area, our ties are still strongly in Summerton.	9:34
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	But that was one. The other one was, she had two aunts, and they were very short. To hear my mother say that was very funny because my mother was about 4'11", and she said one—Aunt Dinah, and I can't remember the other name, that they were getting ready to go to this wedding. The other aunt was very spiffy. She'd dress up, she kept her things all neat. But Aunt Dinah wasn't quite that neat. They were getting bows ready to go on their heads. Aunt Dinah, the other aunt had her nice bow, and she was fixing herself up. Dinah was sitting there fiddling with this little dirty bow. She was trying to get it loose so she could retie it. Then she looked at her sister, and she said, "Give me that bow." The sister looked at her and said, "Give you my bow? If I give you my bow, what am I going to do?" "Do without." Aunt Dinah was pretty selfish, I think.	10:38
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	There's one more that we had a good time laughing at. We had a family reunion up there at Liberty Hill Tuesday, on a part of my mother's side. She had an aunt named Aunt Eliza. Aunt Eliza, this one involved White folk in Summerton, a White man. Evidently he was very influential and well-to-do. He had the really nice horse and buggy and the whole bit. But Aunt Eliza had a son who was very devilish, and he would get into a lot of little scrapes. So this particular day, he went to downtown somewhere in Summerton, and he did something, I don't know if we ever knew what he did, but he came running home and got into the house, went into Aunt Eliza's bedroom, and got under her bed. So she knew that he had done something.	11:51
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	Well, a few minutes later, here comes this White man in his buggy with his fine horse, roll up to Aunt Eliza's door and came to her door. I think this would have to be a visual. But anyway, he came to her door, and she opened the door, and she, "Yes?" "Where's that boy? Aunt Eliza, where's that boy of yours?" "Oh, he's in the house under my bed." "Well, you go in there. Move, because I'm going to get that boy and I'm going to whip him." She looked at him, she had the door cracked open, wasn't fully open.	12:59
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	She looked out at him, and she said, "You mean to tell me that you are going to come into my house, go in my room, look under my bed, and get my child and whip him?" He said to her, "Yes, I am." She swung that door open and she started shouting, "Well, walk in, Jesus, walk in. Walk in, Jesus, walk in." When she finished, he took off, got his whip, jumped in his buggy, and hit that horse all the way back downtown. She said that she knew that if he was going to walk over her and go into her house and get her child and beat him, he had to be Jesus.	13:45
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	But that was all on my mother's side. My mother's family was related to the McBrides and the Greens in Summerton. They were all, yeah. It was the McBrides that had the reunion. Now, my father's family did not originally come from Summerton. They came from around Wedgefield. The way my father basically got to Summerton, my great-grandfather, I think, purchased the land. So my grandfather in his teens, I suppose, lived there. He became the minister, and he was the minister at Liberty Hill for a number of years. They came there through my grandfather. Now, my father had 12 sisters, 12, 13 sisters and brothers. There were 14 of them in all. My grandfather was married twice. His first wife died, when the second child was born. Then he married my grandmother, who was a Gamble from Manning. They had 12.	14:38
Kisha Turner	Are those the Gambles from Walker Gamble?	16:00
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	Yeah. They're all related. They're all related. So they grew up, and as it is with that many children in the family, and they were all about two years apart. With that many children in the family, a lot of things went on. My grandfather was evidently a very long, boring preacher, but my father said that his brothers, his older brothers, my father was one of the younger ones. His older brothers, when my grandfather would be in the pulpit preaching, when they knew that he had gotten up to preach. Now, how long, I don't know. From all accounts, I don't want to know. But he would get up to preach, they would—He had A Model, T Model, whichever Ford that was back in the early 1900s, they would get it cranked, had the hand crank in the front. But it would make a lot of noise. The parsonage is right by the church. Parsonage is on a little hill. They would roll the car down the hill away from the house and crank it up.	16:02
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	Then they would go on and whatever. Then when they knew it was just about time for him to sit down, they would come back to a point, cut it off, and then push the car back up there.	17:27
Kisha Turner	Back up the hill.	17:39
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	Yeah, the point where it had been. During that time, it was very sandy down there. I don't understand how they could do it. However, with three or four boys, anything could happen. Let's see, one story he told us about the parsonage burning down in Liberty Hill. There was a two-story parsonage, and it burned down when they were living there. They all got up and got out, scrambled out, and not anyone saved anything with the exception of one of his brothers. He was running through the kitchen, and there were a pot of peas on the stove. He grabbed the pot of peas and ran out with it.	17:40
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	I said, "Well, at least you had some food to eat." The other thing that I remember that he told us was about one time one of his brothers got in jail, for some reason. They were pretty rowdy bunch. The guy tore down, and this was in Summerton, but they were living in Manning at the time. Evidently the jail was wooden. There was no, it was [indistinct 00:18:50] board. He kicked the back out of the jail and got out and ran off.	18:26
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	One time he was talking, and he told us about how they went to school. When they got in, I think school went to fourth grade or fifth grade or something like that, there was a Mayesville Academy up in Mayesville, South Carolina. That's where they would all be sent, because my grandfather would've been considered the upper middle-class of the Black people at that time. So his children, those who would go, were sent to Mayesville Academy to go as far as, I think they stopped at eighth grade. The schools for Black during that time didn't go any farther than about eighth grade.	19:06
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	Anyway, when they went school at home, how they would get angry with the teacher. They would leave school, and there was a swamp, and they would run through the swamp so they could get scratched up. They would get home and tell—See, these were the younger ones because the older brothers would always, if you bother one of the DeLaine boys, you had all of them to deal with. However, they made sure that it was equal. You would fight one. Okay? But if you beat that one, you had to beat the next one. You going get beat whichever way, if you mess with one of them. But they would run home and get all scratched up because they knew that the older brothers would go back to [indistinct 00:20:36]. During that time, most of the teachers were all men. They would go back, but they didn't do that for women. I said, "Well, at least you had, Grandpa gave you a little bit of respect for women."	19:48
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	Yeah, they would tell us a lot of stories about things when they were growing up. I asked him one time, what would he do if I came home, if I did that, I ran out of the school? He just looked at me, because I know he didn't believe—If he erred, he erred on the side of the authority. He didn't err on our side. But then my mother was a teacher, so I didn't get away with anything.	20:48
Kisha Turner	So your mother was a teacher?	21:15
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	Right.	21:19
Kisha Turner	Did she ever talk about her education?	21:21
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	I think I lived through most of it. She went to school until, I think eighth grade was where they stopped, where the school stopped. When they got out of eighth grade, they were considered, if they went to eighth grade, they were considered educated enough to teach other Black people. Okay? She started teaching right out of eighth grade. But at that point, she decided, or somehow she decided, I don't know, maybe it was my grandparents, her mother and father, that decided that she needed to go on. I remember many days where, when she was taking class, going to Morris College in the evenings, because she would work. I actually remember when she graduated from college. She graduated from college in 1948 from Allen. I think I have her diploma here somewhere.	21:26
Kisha Turner	Did you all go to the graduation?	22:31
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	Yeah. I have a picture that we took of her. As a matter of fact, she and my second older sister graduated at the same time. I have pictures that we took of the two of them together at graduation. But she continued to go until she graduated. A lot of times that meant leaving us or we would go to—The sister that's next to me and I would be, she would travel to Morris after school, after she worked, and take classes. We would sit in the car, and we would study our lesson or we would hang around. There were a couple of young people, students at Morris, who we got to know. Sometimes we'd go up to their dormitory room, but most of the time we would be in the car, and we would study. She would leave specific instructions, "Study your lesson."	22:33
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	They were, my father now did not go on to school. As a matter of fact, he finished high school, I think, in the GED program after I had children. But it was something that he decided, but he was very much into education. Because he would tell us, "I didn't have the sense to go, now you are going to go." I have to say this for him, he could do more in his head with math than I can do with a calculator today. But I think the education was, the equivalent of the eighth grade education at that time is probably the equivalent of a high school education. Because they had to do, I mean, he spoke Latin, and even as far as eighth grade.	23:36
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	It was a very strict educational process for those who went. But then most of them didn't get any farther than first or second grade. I remember going to the little one-teacher school, because my mother was my teacher first and second grade.	24:30
Kisha Turner	What was the name of the school?	24:50
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	It was Fair Haven. It's on June Burn Road outside of Manning. School, they called it. She taught at Fair Haven. She taught at Cypress—Both of these were churches. She taught at Cypress Fork, and she taught at Fair Haven. Then she taught, when I was in third grade, she went to a four-teacher school. It was Pleasant Grove Elementary School, and that's out on Highway 301 going toward Florence from Manning. There were four teachers, and each teacher then had two grades instead of all seven. She had fourth and fifth grade, I think. First, second, third, fourth, no, fifth and sixth grade.	24:53
Kisha Turner	Fair Haven went—	25:42
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	It was a Baptist church. Went through eighth grade.	25:44
Kisha Turner	Eighth grade. Did it go eight months out of the year?	25:46
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	I doubt it seriously. I really don't remember because I was in second grade when she left there. But I doubt seriously. Probably four or five months. I know that it didn't start until after the cotton was in, and in the springtime when it was time to harvest crops or to do the plowing, even if it went until the end, nobody was there. All of the kids were out because they had to work. I remember her telling me that her pay was $25 a month.	25:50
Kisha Turner	Did the parents pay her or did the state pay her?	26:29
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	The state paid.	26:31
Kisha Turner	Okay. You all moved with her when she went to different schools?	26:40
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	Yes. I went to one other school, and that one was called Halleytown School. That's out on Highway 301, between Summerton and Manning. At that time, it was after my grandmother died, and I went there, I guess it started in March. I started, and went to the end of the school year. But I think I was in fourth grade or fifth grade or somewhere at that time. But it was after my grandmother died, and she was staying over there with my grandfather for a while. I remember my first day at that school because a lady named Mrs. Esther Pearson was the teacher.	26:43
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	There was two, it was a two-room school. She was also the principal. I was in Miss Esther's class. The first day that I went in the class, the students sang this little song. "Teacher told a boy to don't—" Well, actually I think they said girl. "Don't be late at half past eight for the teacher won't wait." That was my first day. I just decided at that point, rules were very relaxed about Black students, especially going to school. We were staying over there and I told my mother, "I'm going to school. I want to go to school." She said, "Well, go ahead." I got dressed and I was very late, I'm sure. I stayed there. Then my sister came with me the next day, and we finished that year.	27:32
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	Then after that year, I think I stayed with my sister in Loris, South Carolina, for a year. Yeah, it must have been in fourth grade. I went to fifth grade in Loris, South Carolina. Stayed with my sister. She got married and moved down there. Her husband was working there. I went there for one year. Then I came back and went to Manning Training from 6 through 12.	28:29
Kisha Turner	Okay. Did you take history classes in school? Do you remember any history American or any history about Black people in America that you got?	28:56
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	Surely you jest. The only thing I could, what I remember in third grade was South Carolina history. I think what I remember from that was, that picture, and I've seen it over and over again, that picture of the Indians on the bank with the deer skin over their heads. I remember that picture. I think that was third grade, and that was South Carolina history. But no, we didn't get anything. I don't even remember in high school that much. Now when anything about Blacks were mentioned, it was because of the fact that the teachers themselves did an aside, so to speak, to teach something about or somewhat, I don't remember that much. Because even when I got in, I don't know now whether U.S. history is a full year. But at that time, when I graduated high school, U.S. history was only a semester. We took U.S. history a semester, and we took economics a semester.	29:10
Kisha Turner	Did they ever talk about slavery?	30:24
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	The teachers basically did sometimes, but not too much. It was not, that was basically a taboo subject. The older I get, the more I wonder why, but it was basically a taboo subject. They didn't talk about it. Most people, I think considered it, they were ashamed of it, so they didn't do any talking about slavery. It was mentioned basically in the history books, a paragraph or so about slavery. And that's about it.	30:26
Kisha Turner	This is kind of backtracking. Did your parents ever talk about any African traditions or anything like that to you?	31:01
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	[indistinct 00:31:18] traditions.	31:17
Kisha Turner	Well, not necessarily traditions, but just did they ever make any references to an African past or something like that?	31:18
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	Now my father's family originated in Morocco. We know that. That was, our oral history had come down from us for years and years. It had passed right on down. My mother, as much as she knows, she knows that her father's father, I think, came from the West Indies. But whether he came to the West Indies from somewhere else and stopped there and then came on to America, she doesn't know. But there has been a reference to West Indies. We would laugh about my grandfather, because my grandfather would—My grandfather would butt you. I mean, he'd get angry and he would [indistinct 00:32:16], went to that. He did that to the mule one time. I think it was my father said he knocked the mule out. I don't know whether that happened.	31:26
Kisha Turner	He would headbutt him?	32:24
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	Yeah. He would put a headbutt. He would do that. Now, I don't know whether someone told us this, that that was a tradition in the West Indies or not. I don't know. But he would do that.	32:25
Kisha Turner	Wow. That's interesting.	32:36
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	But now, as far as traditions, other than the fact that they would talk about jumping the broom.	32:44
Kisha Turner	Okay. What did they say about that? That just was symbolic of what? I mean, the actual—Did anyone ever talk? That wasn't the whole thing.	32:52
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	No. There was something. There was a ceremony. But the jumping the broom came at the end of the ceremony. Now my mother did tell me this, that white was not a tradition at weddings for Black people.	33:04
Kisha Turner	For Black people.	33:20
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	Right. As a matter of fact, she got married in brown, and she said she got married in brown because she wanted to live downtown. We laughed at that because she ended up on a farm. But she lived in Buffalo for a while, and I think she couldn't stand it.	33:20
Kisha Turner	Was brown the traditional, or was it you chose your own color?	33:40
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	No, I think you chose your own color. Because now we still have my grandmother's wedding dress. We might have my mother's too, but hers was just a straight chemise type. I remember seeing it. I don't remember if we still have it. My grandmother's, though, was very elaborate. It has big puffed sleeves and then it's tight down here. It is, if I can remember, it's a floral.	33:43
Kisha Turner	Really?	34:10
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	But it was linen, the material was linen. And it's floral, and it was a two-piece. It was a top that fit and flared out and then a skirt that it was very long and then it flared at the tail. But that is, I think my older sister has that dress somewhere.	34:11
Kisha Turner	Were you married in churches?	34:36
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	No. My grandmother, I think, was married at her home. I really remember being at her 50th wedding anniversary. It was at her house, and they went through the ceremony again. But I think it was at her mother's house that she was married. There were not that many church weddings. Most of the weddings, even when I was small, most of the weddings took place at the house. The wedding, the reception, the weddings were basically in the garden or in the front yard or in the parlor.	34:39
Kisha Turner	Would everyone come in the community?	35:25
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	Oh, yes. It was a big thing. There were no invitations per se. It was just word of mouth. So-and-so's getting married on Saturday night. A lot of them were late evening, and then of course it just lasted on into the night, into the night, into the night. There was a whole lot of partying going on. But most of them were at home. As a matter of fact, with us, church weddings are a recent thing, especially [indistinct 00:36:00].	35:27
Kisha Turner	Okay. How about holidays? How were holidays celebrated? What your parents told you, what you remember from your childhood, like Christmas or Easter or birthdays or something like that.	36:03
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	Well, my parents always celebrated Christmas. They celebrated Easter. Birthdays were very special. We always had a birthday cake. My mother always cooked a birthday cake for everyone. I remember this one, I think you might find this interesting. I wish that somehow we could have done this with my sisters because I'm sure they, they're all older than I am, and they would remember a lot more. We get together a lot. One of the reasons why I remember as much as I do, because we do get together a lot and we do talk about things when we were growing up. My sister who's next to me has cerebral palsy. She's five years older, but she was two years behind her grade because of her illness. She was born premature, too. As a matter of fact, it's basically a miracle that she's alive.	36:17
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	My father said she was so small that he could hold her in his hand. The midwife told him that she was not going to live. She was born in January. Being probably two pounds and born in January in the Deep South in a house in which the only heat was a wood stove, I would say her life is a miracle. But my father would come home. He worked in the fields or whatever he did during the day in February. There wasn't much doing in the field. But he would come home and heat bricks and put around her and keep her warm. He'd sit up all night and keep bricks around her. That basically, it served as an incubator.	37:24
Kisha Turner	Wow.	38:20
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	We have perhaps still at the house that little cap. The cap was so small that my fist would be too large for it. That went on her head. But now they did, back to the story about this particular birthday. My mother was in school. Evidently she had taken a year off to go to school. But I had to be about, oh, I guess 10 years old. Because when I was eight years old, we moved from one house to the next. We was living in the second place, so I had to be older than eight. But my mother was in school, and she was not home to bake my sister's birthday cake. My sister was very upset because she would not have a birthday cake. I think her birthday was in the middle of the week because my mother always came home on the weekend. But my mother was not home to bake her a birthday cake, and she was upset.	38:22
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	We went to school that day. When we got back home—We always had a pan for the cornbread, and there was a pan for biscuits. Those pans, it was the only thing my mother would cook. One she would cook cornbread and the other one she would cook biscuits. My father, we got back from school that day, my father had baked my sister this cake in the cornbread pan. I thought that was so funny. I remember teasing her about her cornbread cake. It had no frosting on it whatsoever. But it was, I really, I look at my father. This is my father. This is my mother. I look back at that time, and I see now my father was a very sensitive man to realize his daughter would've been upset. A lot of men today would've said, "So?" But he baked my sister that cake. Now we didn't turn it down. We ate it. But I tease her still about the cornbread cake.	39:29
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	Yeah, we celebrated Christmas, we celebrated—We didn't do that much celebrating the 4th of July. Of course, that was during work time. We celebrated Easter. We always got the new dress, and we had the homemade Easter baskets. We spoke—Well, we weren't allowed to carry Easter baskets to church, but every Easter we had to learn this speech. Mine was always long. Then we'd go to Liberty Hill Sunday morning, and then Easter Sunday afternoon, we spent going from one church to the other, all of these Easter programs. They would be staggered around the community. We would go, and each time you would go in the church, if you went in that church, your name was automatically put on the list of speakers because everybody knew that you had a speech.	40:41
Kisha Turner	Who chose the speech?	41:36
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	Mostly my mother.	41:38
Kisha Turner	Oh, okay. Was it biblical?	41:39
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	Yes. It was always biblical. But we would always have, sometimes we'd go to the church and whomever would be in charge. Now, my aunts were very into working with the youth. So a lot of times they would come by and bring the speech. "Okay, this is one for you to learn." We would learn it, we knew we had better. There was not an excuse there. We accepted no excuse. We were told that there was Santa Claus. Now our house, the first house I lived in, did have a fireplace.	41:41
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	But now I remember once, we always had, we got some gifts, but they were usually things that we could use. We had oranges and apples and raisins, but the raisins were not of course like they're packaged today. The raisins were, they would just go to the store and pick the raisins, and they were still on the branches. They picked them out, and they would put them in a bag and weigh them. That was it. The raisins were still [indistinct 00:42:56]. We'd have to pick the raisins off the branch. For the longest time, I thought raisins were on branches.	42:24
Kisha Turner	Oh, okay.	43:03
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	Because that's how I saw them. My mother and father would buy this big bag of oranges and apples. We'd eat oranges and apples for days. Of course we had all of the cakes and the pies. Oh, it was really festive. We would cut down, it was a big deal getting the Christmas tree. We would go and cut down a pine tree out of the woods, and we would come back and we would decorate.	43:07
Kisha Turner	What would you decorate it with?	43:38
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	We would have, my mother would buy the Christmas decorations from the store. There were a number of tinsels and stuff that we would put on it. Then of course, when it was time to take it down, when it started shedding, it was time to take it down. Then she would put it back in the box for the next year. It was a long time before we got the artificial snow, though. But then they would put a cloth under it to cover the bottom, a tablecloth usually so that the bottom wouldn't show. Then she would put the gifts after we went to bed.	43:45
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	I remember one night, I was about six, I had to be about six. Because I had started school already. I got a bookbag for Christmas. But when we got up that Christmas morning, the bookbag wasn't under the Christmas tree. When I went outside, the bookbag—Where my father and my mother had brought things in, because they would hide stuff in the barn. Where they were bringing it in, it was night. There were no electric lights. So they dropped it outside, and they didn't realize they had dropped it. Of course they told me that Santa Claus dropped it on his way in, on the chimney, on the rooftop. He dropped it.	44:30
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	That was basically birthdays, we had the cake, and of course everybody had dinner. We had the homemade ice cream, because we would churn the ice cream. That was a big deal, churning the ice cream.	45:19
Kisha Turner	Was it?	45:33
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	Yes.	45:34
Kisha Turner	What went into that?	45:35
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	My father would usually go and buy the ice, because you bought the ice in 50-pound chunks. Because you had to buy the ice from—The earliest recollection of an ice box was just that, an ice box. It was kind of like a refrigerator now. The top was an area in which you would put the ice, and then it had a pipe going down to the back. A basin would sit under it to catch the water as it melted. Then you'd put your food or whatever in to keep it cool. Every so often, of course, you had to go to town and buy the 50-pound bag.	45:39
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	I think there was an ice wagon that used to come around at some point. But you'd buy the 50-pound or hundred-pound block of ice. When we got ready to make ice cream, we had a hand-cranked churn. My mother would stir it up, eggs and milk, eggs and cream, flavoring and sugar. She would cook it until I'm sure she knew what point she was supposed to stop. Then she would cool it, let it cool, and put it in the churn. Then my father had an ice pick, and he would chop the ice up and put it in there. It had rock salt that we would also put on.	46:22

Marguirite Louis DeLaine	We'd take turns churning. And when it started getting really hard to churn, that's when we knew that it was time to stop. And after that, my father would pack it around with the ice and the salt, and then put a croker sack around to keep it cold for a while. And about half an hour later, then he would take it out. And everybody wanted to churn because you couldn't get all the ice cream out to churn. And so everybody would lick the churn. We'd want to lick the dasher. "I want the dasher, I want the dasher," we would lick, and that ice cream would be running all down the sides. Another thing we did when mama made cakes, so everybody, and they tell us now that you're not supposed to do that, but we would lick the, "I want the bowl. I want to lick the bowl." And we would get every bit of that dough out of that bowl we could possibly get out of it.	0:02
Kisha Turner	We did that too. Why?	0:54
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	But they tell you.	0:55
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	Yeah. Trichinosis or some foolishness.	0:57
Kisha Turner	Yeah, absolutely.	1:02
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	If that was the case, I would've been dead, yeah. But I think the eggs during that time, I don't know what they do now, but I think they were better. I can remember we didn't have refrigeration so to speak, and my mother had a sideboard, but it was longer than that. And she would bake the cake and she'd bake the pies and she'd set them up there and they would stay there for a week and not spoil. No mold, no anything. Try that now. Two days later, it'd be covered with crawling stuff.	1:03
Kisha Turner	Yeah.	1:32
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	But we did that. We would lick the bowl and we wanted the dasher. Oh boy, yes.	1:35
Kisha Turner	Well, I'll ask you. You said that you had all got dresses for Easter. Now, did your mother sew for you all or did you go into town?	1:46
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	We went into town. My mother wasn't one for sewing much. She went into town and bought the dresses. But then see, most of the time at Easter time she'd be working too.	1:57
Kisha Turner	Where did she work?	2:12
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	She taught.	2:13
Kisha Turner	Okay. That's her, she's a teacher. She taught, okay.	2:15
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	Yeah, she was a teacher. And so she would be working, which means she didn't have that much time to do that. So I remember having a sewing machine, but I don't remember her making too many clothes and stuff. Now she might have done that for my older sisters, I don't know. And I had an aunt who was my godmother who did a lot of my purchasing my things for Easter also.	2:17
Kisha Turner	Okay. How do you remember what it was going into town as far as your treatment, I guess? Were they White store owners?	2:48
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	Well, of course.	2:56
Kisha Turner	Yeah. What was that like?	2:57
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	We did most of our say clothing shopping in Sumter at Belk.	2:59
Kisha Turner	Oh, really?	3:06
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	Yeah.	3:07
Kisha Turner	Okay.	3:07
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	Or BC Moore in Manning. I don't think there was a Belk in Manning at that time. I do remember Belk having the Colored drinking fountain and the bathroom outside. You have to go out the back to go to the restroom and it would not close completely. Was no lock on it. Someone had to stand out there and watch for you. There was only one, and men and women used the same one. It was never clean. We did as little of that as possible. There was one little area in the back under the stairs where you had to go and try on shoes.	3:09
Kisha Turner	But you were able to try shoes and dresses?	3:52
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	Yeah.	3:54
Kisha Turner	Okay.	3:54
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	I remember now, what they probably did was they probably put them back there. And this is Black folk, don't let anybody else try these other Black folk. I don't know that now.	3:56
Kisha Turner	I don't know.	4:04
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	I don't know that. But anyway, we always speculated that that's what they did. Bring out the same ones for the Black folk over and over and over again. But yeah, we did. We were able to do a lot of the trying on. But we did have to go, I remember they had this little x-ray machine I remember, that you'd put your feet in and see how your shoes were shaped. I think those things were outlawed because they was supposed to be, too many of those x-rays was harmful for you. But I could—	4:05
Kisha Turner	There was an x-ray machine?	4:42
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	Yeah, in the store. In the shoe store. And you would go and stick your foot in, and it would show you the outline of the bones in your foot.	4:43
Kisha Turner	Right. That's interesting. So as far as your food, is it pretty much self—sufficient on the farm?	4:51
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	Yeah, I don't remember buying anything but rice and flour. My father would buy the 50 or 100 pound bags of rice and flour, and we kept them in a large tin can with a top on it. Most of it came with the flour and stuff at that time came in colorful sacks, material that you can make things out of. And a lot of kids, a lot of families used those sacks to make dresses and stuff for their children. Now, I don't remember ours being taken to make anything, but I had a lot of people who gave me a lot of things.	5:03
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	And I had ribbons and stuff, but Lord. As a matter of fact, my sisters teased me that I had so many ribbons and stuff that my mother would give things away. One day I saw a little girl at church and she had on one of my ribbons and, "I demand to take my ribbons back." But a lot of those things, we did some shopping. Of course, having a car made us a little bit more, made more so was accessible to us.	5:56
Kisha Turner	Right.	6:29
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	And I remember also shopping in Columbia. But now there were certain stores in Columbia of course we could not go in. Yeah, I do remember that.	6:30
Kisha Turner	Do you remember any of them?	6:41
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	Not names. I sure don't. Probably Taps. I'm sure Taps would've been one of them down on Main Street in Columbia. Some of them, however, my parents, my mother didn't go in because she knows she couldn't afford to go in. But some of them, we could not go in.	6:42
Kisha Turner	Aside from the Jim Crow, the symbols in Jim Crow, were those exciting days?	7:06
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	I would say I can't remember being sad. I can't remember even knowing that I was poor. But I guess that was because I was secure, and my parents loved. I had food, I had clothes. And so it wasn't a sitting down lamenting, "Oh, I'm hungry," because I never been hungry in my life. We had to work. Now, and we did have to work. Even though I did not work as hard as a lot of people worked because most of my work was for us. And I never had to stay out of school to work, because my father, my parents would not hear of my staying out of school.	7:15
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	The only time I remember staying out of school after I got in sixth grade was when I had the measles. I was in eighth grade. I had measles and I stayed out for five days with measles. But other than that, I never stayed home from school, especially doing the work. I never remember working for a White man per se. I remember once, one day the next door neighbor needed some tobacco put in, and my father said, "If y'all want to," and there we were given a choice, "If you want to, you can go and help old man White."	8:13
Kisha Turner	So your next door neighbors were White?	8:52
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	Yeah.	8:53
Kisha Turner	Was that uncommon? Was that?	8:56
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	No.	8:58
Kisha Turner	Okay.	8:58
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	No, that was very common. That was very common, especially living in a rural area. The next person, the next farm was White owned. And it was all up and down where we lived that that was just basically the way it was. And there was a grudging respect that they had for my father. As a matter of fact, even after my father died, a number of merchants, and we went into Manning, they noticed the name and they would have some comment because my father had to do business with them.	8:58
Kisha Turner	Right.	9:39
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	My grandmother now, my father's mother was basically half White. My grandmother was more than half White. My grandmother was about three quarters White.	9:42
Kisha Turner	On your father's side?	9:53
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	Yeah. She had blonde hair and green eyes, so she was basically White. As a matter, she had two sisters. She had two sisters that I didn't bother to speak to her until they spoke to me and we were out. And when I went to their houses, I know there's that there lives Aunt Jane. But if they were not in that house, they would have to speak to me first because I really didn't. And I was young.	9:54
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	I remember one story my sister tell that when they were coming home from school, they went to Allen. They'd come home on the bus. And of course during that time, they had to sit on the back of the bus. And one time they got on the bus, and Aunt Mary was sitting on the front seat. And when they got on the bus, Aunt Mary said, "Oh, Daisy and Alonial, come and sit here girls come and sit right by me." And they went, "Hey Aunt Mary, hey, how you doing?" And they talked and talked. She asked about, "How's your father?" And so forth and so on, and all those White folk, they just nodding and smiling because what they thought I'm sure was that this is these little Black kids that grew up around her. In essence, that was my father's aunt in reality. But she passed. She passed whenever she wanted to.	10:21
Kisha Turner	Okay, so she could pass even in the area where people knew her family?	11:13
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	Right.	11:17
Kisha Turner	Okay.	11:17
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	They were just that White.	11:20
Kisha Turner	Now, did the men they were married to, were they also light?	11:24
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	No, I don't remember Aunt Jane's husband at all. But Aunt Mary's husband was brown-skinned man and her children were all brown. Usually when she passed, she was by herself.	11:29
Kisha Turner	Okay.	11:41
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	Yeah.	11:43
Kisha Turner	She was by herself.	11:45
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	And I don't know how often she did that. Maybe it was just on the bus. Hey, why?	11:45
Kisha Turner	Get up there.	11:49
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	Yeah, I'm serious. Why sit in the bus in the back when I don't have to? And I can't say that I blame her.	11:50
Kisha Turner	Okay. What were the customs about dating?	12:02
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	At my father's house? Forget that. Usually though, when someone came, a guy would have to come to the house. He had to talk to the parents, and he had to sit in that parlor. And quite frequently, a parent was either in the room or in the next room, very close by. And those are the customs.	12:08
Kisha Turner	Okay.	12:36
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	But my father had a reputation and the guys around there knew that and they didn't bother with us too much.	12:41
Kisha Turner	Really? He was hard on the time. Sounds like my dad.	12:45
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	It sounds like your dad.	12:45
Kisha Turner	Exactly.	12:45
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	Yes. My father was very rough. They knew that they did not bother with Lucy Lynn's daughters, no way.	12:54
Kisha Turner	Okay. About what age though, do you remember?	13:00
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	Probably, well, it depended on the family really. Because some started at 12, 13. I remember a girl that got married at 13.	13:07
Kisha Turner	Wow.	13:16
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	And the husband was a good bit older, and my father thought that was the worst thing in the world. And I agreed because the husband, I think probably was in his thirties. I mean, as I got older and realized that, what a cradle robber he was. And it was with the consent of the parents. And my father thought that was absolutely, totally ridiculous. But usually around at that time, around 16 they would start. 16, 17, they would start.	13:17
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	Now, of course at church, most of us did according to church. You went out, we went to church. And during that time, the church services were long. You had the preaching, and then after preaching, they took up collection, and then they did whatever else they did because very seldom we stayed in. We got up, went and put our money on the table, right outside. And then that's when most of the courting really took place. And we, under the tree and by the cars or by the buggies or whatever, you talk to the guy that you liked. And that's what. And then there were always afternoon services, evening services, week long revivals twice a year. So you got the opportunity to do the talking and meet the guys, meet the boys. Yeah.	13:54
Kisha Turner	While we're on the subject, what kinds of things did you do for fun? Or parties or recreation or theater or something? Yeah, any of that kind.	14:47
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	I remember going to the movie once when I was growing up and my sisters took me. And at that time, you had to sit in a balcony. My mother and father were definitely against that.	14:58
Kisha Turner	Because you had to sit in the balcony?	15:12
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	Right. Because my mother, my family were very much into equal rights.	15:12
Kisha Turner	Okay.	15:17
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	But they took me to see Snow White and Seven Dwarves. And I bought that movie not too long ago because of that. But they took me to see Snow White. And that was in Manning, in the movie theater in Manning. Most of what we did, we did not have television. Of course we had radio and we would listen to the stories. There was something called Stella Dallas and Pepper Young's Family. They were the serial, the soaps of the day. There was also The Screeching Door and The Shadow Knows. And those are two that I remember.	15:20
Kisha Turner	What was that?	16:03
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	The Shadow Knows?	16:05
Kisha Turner	Yeah.	16:06
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	It was a.	16:07
Kisha Turner	I know they just made a movie.	16:09
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	Yeah, but it's a revival of that radio.	16:10
Kisha Turner	It was on the radio show, okay.	16:14
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	The radio show. It was.	16:30
Kisha Turner	Do you know about what time? Was that in the '50s? Or the '40s?	16:30
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	Probably late '40s, early '50s.	16:30
Kisha Turner	Okay.	16:30
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	Yeah, because we would do. The Screeching Door, I remember that one. The Screeching Door would always open with the door. Needed rusty hinges, and it would screech to open. And those were all mystery. Those two were mystery. And The Shadow Knows. Now, I don't know whether the Shadow was supposed to be a ghost or what he was supposed to be, but he would solve a lot of crime. I can't remember how it started, but who was whatever, and then it would laugh, The Shadow Knows.	16:31
Kisha Turner	Right.	16:59
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	And I can remember sitting in there, my father liked that. And I remember sitting there doing this in there, and they would tease me because I always wanted to know what happened, but I didn't want to hear it.	17:02
Kisha Turner	Oh, you're scared?	17:20
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	I didn't want to hear it. But now the radio was basically, they would listen to that, but it was basically for news. We would listen to it on Sunday mornings, but that was about what it. And then my sister and I would listen to, there was a one hour of Black music in the afternoons, 4:00 to 5:00, I think it was WIS TV, I mean WIS Radio. And the disc jockey was Jiving Joe, I never will forget that. He had his little—	17:20
Kisha Turner	Jiving Joe?	18:01
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	Jiving Joe, when the clock strikes 4:00, you start jiving with Joe, and you dig that jive from 4:00 to 5:00. And my sister and my mother, Black principals always had long meetings. And I declare they would meet, looked like every day. And when my mother had meetings, my sister and I would come home and listen to that radio and listen to Jiving Joe in the afternoon. We stayed by the window because if my mother caught us, we would be in trouble.	18:01
Kisha Turner	She didn't like Jiving Joe?	18:31
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	No, we didn't listen to that music.	18:33
Kisha Turner	Oh, okay.	18:35
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	She didn't want us listening to that music.	18:36
Kisha Turner	What kind of music was it?	18:38
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	It was, hey, basically the same thing. Dinah Washington and LaVern Baker and the rhythm and blues, and the jazz. Bessie Smith and all of that. Now, my father was a different story, but my mother would roost.	18:39
Kisha Turner	Okay.	18:57
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	But he would be across the field singing. We got a kick out of daddy's singing because daddy couldn't sing. And he would sing his little Bessie Smith tunes and we'd get a kick out of that. But all in all though, they were compared to some people, they were pretty lenient compared to some people, because my mother taught me to do the Charleston. And they didn't have that much of a problem with us without dancing because they would take us to dances at school.	19:02
Kisha Turner	Really?	19:32
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	And they would watch. When the new steps come out, I'd go home and sometimes in the afternoon she would let us listen and we would dance for them. And Daddy would give, he would always give our steps a name, something way outlandish. But I think that it was the situation though that I knew what they didn't want me to do because they were telling me that that's not lady like, I don't want you to do that. So I mean, that was basically all it took to let me know, this is not something that I want you to do so I wouldn't do it.	19:35
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	But we would go to, well, a couple of times we went to 4th of July picnics that the church would sponsor, or the community in Summerton would sponsor. We listened to the radio. We would go down to, there was a place called Mill Creek. The Black area was called Mill Creek. The White one was of course Poinsett Park. Everybody goes to Poinsett Park now. It's up in Sumter County off of Lake Marion. And sometimes we would go there. Saturdays we didn't do much. But my father didn't allow us to go to town after 12 o'clock Saturday, we couldn't go to town. We'd have to go. If we had to go to Manning to do something, we had to be in and out by noon.	20:22
Kisha Turner	Oh, what was going on that he didn't want you all to get involved in?	21:12
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	All the Black folk would be in town. And he said that there was just too much that could happen. And I can remember wanting so badly to go to town one Saturday night because the kids would come back to school and they would talk about going to this place and going to that place. And one Saturday I got the opportunity to do that. And then I wondered, why? I remember that so vividly. I walked down to the soda shop and I walked back downtown and I walked back to the soda shop. So big deal, what's this? What's that all about? But my father was not what was not into that at all. And I couldn't go to those joints. Oh, Gino, forget that.	21:15
Kisha Turner	The juke joints?	22:04
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	No way. No way. They would not allow that. Said, "I don't not want to have to bury any of my children because of being in a juke joint." And right now I cannot, if a place has one door and I go in, uh-uh. Later for this.	22:05
Kisha Turner	Okay.	22:27
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	It's how you are conditioned. It's really wondrous sometimes how you're conditioned. But he did not allow that at all. But there was another, my father used to go places on Sunday afternoons, we'd come home from church, we'd get in the car and just ride. We got lost more times.	22:31
Kisha Turner	You got lost?	22:51
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	We got lost more times. Daddy would say, "Hey, wonder where this road goes?" Be off on down that road. Not having the slightest idea. And right now, sometimes I'll go past by a road and I'll say, wonder where that road goes. I don't do much of that though. I don't do much of going off. A lot of times I'm by myself. Now my sisters and I together, we'll do that sometimes. "Don't know where this road goes. Let's see, let's do a daddy. Let's pull a daddy." Yeah. I remember one time we went to see my sister living in Georgetown and we left home early. And by the time we got Georgetown was night, because daddy just kept wandering.	22:55
Kisha Turner	Yeah. You said that your parents believed in equal rights. What kinds of things, values, or attitude did they instill in you, teach you how to approach or deal with racism and segregation and those kinds of things?	23:38
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	I don't know whether it was more of what they said as it was and what they did.	24:02
Kisha Turner	Okay.	24:09
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	And I think a part of it was keeping us out of town on Saturday evenings when all of the Black people, for instance, per se, would be in town. And those White folk would be on you and watching you and doing things like that. And standing by the police, walking up and down. And I think a part of it was that. A part of it was the way he had made us. And I mean, literally made us, before, for instance, after I got to be old enough to drive and I started driving, I was 11, but hold on a minute.	24:13
Kisha Turner	Okay.	25:03
Kisha Turner	We were talking about, you were saying that they pretty much made an example by their actions, how to deal with them.	25:03
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	Yeah. Okay. If he wanted me to go into Manning to do something for him, I'd have to go in the house, take a bath, put on nice clothes. I could not go. I mean, hair had to be nice. You had to be dressed nicely because it had, I think your image, he felt that your image had a lot to do with how people treat you. And so we always had to project this image. Of course, with my uncle being involved with all of the situation down in Summerton, that was discussed in the house so we knew 100% how he felt about that. And we were never asked, for instance, "Do you want to go to college?" It was always, "When you go to college." There were a number of things we were not given choices about and the dressing was one of them. You didn't go looking tacky. You always presented, you didn't get loud, you carried yourself a certain way. You were always respectful.	25:10
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	Whenever someone did something or said something, one of the things he would say is, "You're not responsible for the way anyone else acts. You're always responsible for the way you act." So we just grew up knowing the schooling was important, the education was important, the way you carried yourself was important. People are going to be people and the way you respond to people have a lot to do with how people respond to you. Even if they come off negatively toward you, you don't have to be negative back. They were both very religious. My father read Bible all the time, and a lot of his sayings came from, as I grew older and realize that came from Proverbs. And there was always something, if a situation came up, he always had something to say to us or some saying, quote some verse to address that particular situation.	26:31
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	And so by the way he acted and things they did, we just knew that. And then of course he would say things like, "That's not right." Or old man and so on did such and such and such and that wasn't right. But then by the same token, if some Black person did something that he considered not Black, he said that too. It was not a one-sided thing. So we learned by the things he said we did.	27:38
Kisha Turner	Okay. At what age do you feel like people perceived you were an adult, in your parents' eyes?	28:06
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	My parents' eyes? I don't think I ever became an adult. No.	28:20
Kisha Turner	Okay. Well, at what time could you make your own decisions? Or did you move away from home?	28:29
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	Basically when I went to college.	28:32
Kisha Turner	Okay.	28:37
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	Yeah. When I went to college, I basically became able to make choices. I think I made some choices before that too, because they would respect a lot of things. Mama, I want to do so-and-so, may I do so-and-so? But when I went to college, I became of age so to speak. And then, because I remember saying to her, "I don't think I want to become a teacher. I'm going to become a nurse." And mother said, "Okay, if that's what you want to do, that's fine. However, I would like for you to go to college two years and then you can take the nursing test," and whatever. And I went to college the necessary two years. And I came out, I remember getting on the bus by myself and coming to Charleston to take the test. And then I was told when I took the test that I needed some more science.	28:37
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	However, I did not like science. I did not like science. So I changed my major then to English, and I enjoyed it. But I think what I was trying to run away from a whole family of teachers. My mother was a teacher, my sister was a teacher. Both of my sisters become teachers. My aunts were teachers, uncle teachers. I wanted to get away from that. I wanted to maybe blaze new trails or whatever. But after I went back to college for the third year, chase the major, a friend of mine from Manning came to Columbia Hospital and went into nursing. And after talking with those girls, I am so glad that I did not. I didn't know what to do, but I just didn't—I was all writing science, but I just didn't like science. Not particularly grades my math either, but I guess my aptitude is more literary. So then I went on into teaching. I taught French for a while, taught French and English for a while. Then I went to English and I haven't regretted it.	29:44
Kisha Turner	I know you because of your relation to Reverend DeLaine and because of what was going on in Clarendon County. I know you grew up hearing about those kind of things. At what point, or did you ever get involved in early civil rights?	31:07
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	Being a DeLaine in Clarendon County meant that you were automatically involved in civil rights. I was president of the youth chapter, the NAACP for years. And I went to the meetings, I went to state meetings. I went to, I think I was president of youth chapter for my four or five years. And as much as Liberty Hill was a church, which I attended, a number of our sermons were about, because our pastor at that time, the Reverend Richburg, was also very much involved also.	31:28
Kisha Turner	Right, okay.	32:00
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	So a number of those, as a matter of fact, he would come pick us up to take us to meetings a lot of times when my father couldn't go. So we were always involved. A lot of times things cannot, you cannot escape some things because there were some things that happened to my father as a result of my uncle being involved. Even though we were not living in Summerton School District, there were some things that happened to my father. There were a number of people who showed up to the house and did things to our property and stuff. I remember a period where, as a matter of fact, I think that's one of the reasons why my mother sent us to Laura's for a while, to live with my sister. There was a period in which my father didn't go anywhere without a gun. My mother would open the door, if someone came to the house after dark, my father would be behind her with his gun.	32:03
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	We always had a lot of dogs. And my father made sure that those dogs were vicious. They were ferocious. But they were, I mean, we could do anything to those dogs, and it's amazing. We'd do anything to those dogs that we wanted to do to them, and they would not do anything, but you let a stranger walk up to that house and he might have been torn apart. But my father made sure that we had that protection, especially we had to be home sometimes alone. And so we had a couple of suspicious fires, a barn burned down, some things like that.	33:07
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	But then by the same token, there were a number of White people in the community. When that barn burned down, it was in the spring of the year. It was just at planting time. All of the crop from the previous year was in the barn so my father had no corn or hay or anything to feed his livestock. A number of White men in the community came up with corn and hay. So while a lot of them didn't necessarily want, as mom maybe used to say, want to go to school with you, a lot of them had certain respect for certain people. And my father was always a forthright man who did what he said he was going to do. And he talked straight. He was a property owner.	33:39
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	One thing that struck him and me in hearing him tell us was that he went to ask, why didn't Black kids have buses to go to school? And he was told that Black people didn't pay taxes. But yet, he was a property owner, he paid property taxes. And there were other Black property owners in that area who paid taxes. But all, everyone was lumped into this one. This was their excuse. Black people didn't own property, Black people didn't pay taxes. Number of people in the town of Manning who owned their own houses and paid taxes. But yeah, he didn't have a problem with going and asking.	34:28
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	And he basically told us all men are created equal. A lot of things that are being taught now, especially in the churches, in some churches, the African American history and the presence of Black people in the Bible, which we didn't get at that time because we all grew up with the image of this White Jesus. And I'm happy that a lot of churches are, however now some churches are still not. But I'm happy that a lot of churches are beginning to make the young people aware of the fact that, "Hey, the question is, are there any White people in the Bible?"	35:23
Kisha Turner	When do you remember that being even a debate?	36:07
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	Oh gosh, recently.	36:10
Kisha Turner	Okay.	36:11
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	Very recently.	36:12
Kisha Turner	Yeah.	36:13
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	Very recently. As a matter of fact, my sister Edith got based more into than I did. And then she and I discussed a lot of things together. And she told me, she started telling me, you need to read such and such a book. You need to read such and such a book. And I started getting involved. And then I took the book to the pastor of the church where I attend.	36:15
Kisha Turner	Okay, What book was it? Let me grab that mic.	36:40
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	Oh.	36:46
Kisha Turner	Okay.	36:47
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	Two or three others that we use. But that one was Black Biblical Heritage.	36:52
Kisha Turner	Right, okay.	36:55
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	And so I got that and I read it and I gave it to my sons so that they could begin to realize also. So that if and when they decide to have children, they can be intelligent about certain things. Yeah.	36:55
Kisha Turner	Couple of final questions. You mentioned a midwife delivering your sister. Now, as far as, were you all born in the house?	37:19
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	Yeah.	37:27
Kisha Turner	And if someone was sick, how are they taken care of or who took care of them?	37:28
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	When I was coming along, we did have a doctor. His name was Dr. Bazard. He was a White doctor. His office was in Manning. And Dr. Bazard would come out to the house. It's been a long time since doctors made home visits. But I can remember going to Dr. Bazard's office. Now at that time of course, there was a Colored waiting room and there was a White waiting room. And now when we got in that office though, I think that was the same office. And I don't see the difference. If you pull off your clothes, you're sitting on the table. What is the difference if you're sitting in the same room? But Dr. A. C. Bazard was our doctor. But midwives always handled births.	37:34
Kisha Turner	Who were the midwives? Women?	38:24
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	Women.	38:26
Kisha Turner	In the community.	38:27
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	Women in community, yeah.	38:27
Kisha Turner	Were they usually older?	38:29
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	Older women. And I don't think they had any formal training per se. This was something that they probably started doing, just being around. And they had no, of course, all births were natural birth. I like that term. Nowadays, saying we want to have natural birth. All births at that time, especially for Black women, were natural. And they would just come when the woman would go into labor and be there and make sure that the cord was cut and the placenta was expelled and stuff like that. She would be cleaned up and whatever, baby cleaned up. And I think that's basically a judge. She had no formal medical training, but midwives delivered all of us.	38:31
Kisha Turner	When babies were born, did people come over? Was it an event or did just?	39:28
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	People would come around to see the newborn, of course. And others, some would bring stuff and bring, but usually the mother or the grandparents or someone would move in. And sometimes I think the midwives stayed a couple days.	39:35
Kisha Turner	Oh, okay.	39:52
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	Yeah.	39:52
Kisha Turner	To make sure the baby got off.	39:56
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	Right, exactly. And the mother would have food because I think the midwives, part of their responsibilities also would be to cook, see to it that the parents, that the mother had food, whatever. And I think the one that mom used, and I don't know, probably if I would find, I would go up and find my birth certificate. Her name is probably on me, but I think she would stay a couple of days.	39:57
Kisha Turner	Oh, okay. I was just thinking about your aunts that you were talking about before. Did people treat, was Color an issue? The Color of your skin, like lighter or brown?	40:29
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	Of course that one was a little, that we had the same, what was that? If you're White, you're right. If you're Black, get back.	40:43
Kisha Turner	Brown, stick around.	40:53
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	Brown, stick around, yeah. There was of course that caste system in the Black society. I don't know whether my father and mother were both of the lighter complexion. But now dad used to have this. My grandfather though, my mother's father was dark, but my father used to have this expression of Black are the bearer suit of Jews. So I don't think that they were. Or if they were, they didn't show it that much, but most of them, there was a.	40:54
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	Now, but I was not allowed to be that way because I can remember the high school, my best friend was colorless thing here. And I remember somebody making a reference to the fact that, however, my friends were all colors. Someone making a reference to the fact that Ida and I were good friends. And I remember my older sister saying, my oldest sister actually saying she, in fact, I'd go around talking about she can't be with anybody because they're Black. I wish I would catch her doing something like that. So we didn't get this you can't be with somebody, or you can't be friends with somebody. You can't marry somebody because of the color of their skin, yeah.	41:39
Kisha Turner	But those ideas did.	42:25
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	Oh, yeah.	42:27
Kisha Turner	Yeah, those attitudes.	42:28
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	Right. They did, and we knew about them.	42:29
Kisha Turner	Did you find that it was more for women or girls an issue than for boys? Or was it?	42:32
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	Let's see now. I think that, well, during the time that I was growing up, of course I was around girls more than I was around boys. I had a few male friends. I think most of the boys though tried their best. From what I can understand, what I can remember, most of the boys tried their best to find a light-skinned girlfriend. But now, whatever attitude was one that came from the home most of the time.	42:46
Kisha Turner	Right.	43:19
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	And if that was not a prevailing attitude in the home, then the child did not have it.	43:25
Kisha Turner	Right.	43:33
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	But if it was a prevailing, it did not matter whether it was boy or girl. If it was prevailing, then both male and female had that attitude.	43:33
Kisha Turner	I see.	43:40
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	And I really don't remember having that much of a problem with that. Tell you was how many, there weren't that many kids in my high school class by the time we got in high school to the point where I could remember that. Because when you're little, you just play.	43:45
Kisha Turner	Right.	44:02
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	And the boys played their little games, sticks and stones and baseball and whatever. And the girls played the ring [indistinct 00:44:13], and I'd jump back, Sally, jump back. But after I got older, I don't remember, there were so many. By that time, so many kids had dropped out of school until—Because I think my high school class had about 50 kids and 50, 52, 53 kids in. And I know it started out a bit more than that.	44:06
Kisha Turner	And this is just, I was thinking about you receiving fruit for Christmas. Now, did you get apples and oranges a lot? Or was it infrequent when you got those?	44:38
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	Christmas apple? Every Christmas.	44:51
Kisha Turner	Every Christmas you got the apples?	44:53
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	Right.	44:55
Kisha Turner	Any other day of the year did you get the apples and stuff?	44:55
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	Not too much. Mom, I guess as money was available. But now in the summertime, see, we had a lot of fruit trees. My grandfather had grapes, about four or five different varieties of grapes. He had peaches, he had peach trees, he had walnut trees, he had pear trees, he had pecan trees. And all of those things were just there for the picking up. So during the summers, especially when those things were in season, we ate all we wanted.	45:00
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	Now during the winter, it was a little bit more difficult because they weren't readily available. And I really think most of the apples were probably mushy by the time we got them anyway, because they would have to come all the way from Michigan or somewhere. And by the time, as slow as things were during that time, by the time they got to South Carolina it was, but I didn't remember too many grapefruits during that time. But I do remember at Christmastime, the great big bag of oranges and the bag of apples every year. And the raisins on the stem.	45:41
Kisha Turner	Okay. All right. Thank you.	46:27
Marguirite Louis DeLaine	You're welcome.	46:29

Item Info

Title:

Marguirite DeLaine interview record, 1995 July 08

Date:

July 8, 1995

Creator:

DeLaine, Marguirite Louis

Contributor:

Turner, Kisha

Description:

Name: Marguirite Louis DeLaine; Date of birth: 1940-07-07; Place of birth: Manning, SC; Occupation(s): educator; Residence: Charleston, SC
Informant ID: 1203; Interviewed by: Kisha Turner.

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Educator

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Language:

English

Digital Collection:

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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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.

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Marguirite DeLaine interview record, 1995 July 08

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1. Marguirite DeLaine administrative file, 1995

John Hope Franklin Research Center

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Marguirite DeLaine interview record, 1995 July 08

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