RL00170-CS-1050_02

Loading the media player...

Files for this Item

Transcript

Transcripts may contain inaccuracies.

Clay White	— ties him to the ambiguity of people. That's what we're trying to say [indistinct 00:00:05]. When you think you're doing good, you end up maybe hurting others that you didn't intend to hurt.	0:01
Clay White	He had a vision. He could see things way down the line that most people, sometimes we couldn't see it. But it's unusual. I can't think of too much if not anything really, Ross, if I sit here and think about it, that he had vision on that has not really come to the pass that it made sense, the things generally that he talked about or pronounced or looked down the road toward.	0:11
Clay White	When you look at urban renewal in a proper sense, that the way it's being done treated now a lot more, because we are a lot more intelligent and it can control our own directions to some extent. I think that it has brought some good.	0:31
Ronald White	The one thing throw this in there was always different about my father comparatively. My father was a big one on Negro history. So there were always books here on Negro history, and he was the first person who I remember saying that Negro history week ought to be a year round for us.	0:46
Ronald White	That as a small child, he used to say that to him, and he used to give us little quizzes, and if we got the answers right, he'd give us a nickel and told us that it was important to know famous Negroes, because that's what he called them, because Black hadn't become a term yet, and African American was unheard of. Everybody was calling each other Colored, and that was supposed to be bad.	1:19
Clay White	And that was interesting point you raised, and that's true. And not only that, every friend that we have today, I don't care who they are, if anybody was close to us as we were growing up would tell you they mentioned it even now, how if they came over here to visit, they had worries. They didn't want to come because they sometimes, because they had to always stand up here and answer some of these questions and my mother-	1:55
Ronald White	Any of our friends, he'd give them quizzes.	2:17
Clay White	And my mother used to make him, she said, "Charles, let those children go," because he was staring right here in this living room. I can see him just like it was yesterday. And you had to go, I mean, in North Bern Street too, but you had to answer them questions.	2:18
Clay White	He loved Frederick Douglass and he could just expound on all these Black Americans, well, man, as you say Negro, and famous, because he felt that, one, we should know our history and that should encourage us and propel us to do great things ourselves. That's really the way we bothered you in nutshell.	2:35
Clay White	When I look at that, that was a very inspiring kind of situation, and I think that all of that has helped to lead all of us, with my sister before she came here to take care of my mother, and even only in embryonic stage here at New Bern and not as much as she would have want. But she's always been involved in advancement of people and a lot of people.	2:52
Clay White	In her way, she wasn't a Rosa Park but helped young children do all of those kinds of things. My brother functioned so gratefully in the community programs in the state of North Carolina, and before moving on up to DC.	3:18
Clay White	And while I'll be a school teacher but I just worked in a lot of other little groups in terms of projects trying to make a difference. But again, all leading from that basics that we got here, and it is true and you sit back and all this becomes a part of you, part of the psyche.	3:36
Clay White	But let tell you the New Bern, because of that one march has just made so many changes, and even because today it's nothing like it was a few years ago. We talking about this, it was 30 years ago, and today you have a whole different type of White person here now, because they had moved there from New York or other places.	3:56
Clay White	They're not the original native New Bernians. It's a whole different kind of culture here today, and it has changed and I have noticed it since then.	4:22
Kara Miles	Tell me about the old New Bernians, the kind of White people from New Bern who were here when you were growing up here. How would you say they're different from the ones who are here now?	4:34
Clay White	I wouldn't say that. Well, I think that one thing is that newer people here have no sense of real community, number one, and it's because they're new to community. I mean it's hard for you to have it. There's no legacy, no ties. I can tell you, it used to used to be all man, when the daddy died, the son would take over the business and so it was always continuation there.	4:47
Clay White	I know Reverend White, Daddy used to bring [indistinct 00:05:14] for it, so it was always a continuity. I think now you have another man may have an oil company that has no sense of tie whatsoever. It could care less and that's less sensitivity. I mean that's how I see it, though I'm not here that much now, natural like I used to be.	5:10
Clay White	I think that as we have gone and we had some house work done this house, we have seen people, some of the older people still remembering times past. "I know something about your parents, I know that there is a time," remember the house or maybe something about you or symbolic of you that they can recount.	5:39
Clay White	All that brings a homogeneous feeling, I think, a lot more than you will find for the more younger person or the person who roots are not really here. I think too, the older people have seen those changes, gone through them right along with Black folks. So their way of being handled by you, that way of handling you, I guess is if you get blooded by it, the way that you communicate with each other, it's going to be just different. It's going to be a better camaraderie I think between you than those persons who have not those same type of sensitivities.	6:01
Kara Miles	Would you say that camaraderie existed when you were growing up?	6:56
Clay White	No, I don't think so much camaraderie existed at that time. I think that over time, even though you're still different, White is White and Black is Black, but over time, there is some type of coming together I think in a sense of— I think there's a common ground of events that occurred. That's what I'm trying to say.	6:59
Clay White	I think that if they are 50 years old and if they were here during the time that I was here during the march at Crest, they could have seen the tension as I saw the tension. Here, at the same time, once it was integrated you could see that people really could eat and drink water. They didn't want you there. But because we didn't have the money to go down there, but at least we had the right to go, and that was important to us.	7:28
Clay White	When we did go, they might have thrown the water in there, but you could sit there still and eat without being put in jail or be called a nigger right to your face right then and there. I'm saying that, so there tends to be out of conflict sometimes a sense of ownership to issues and happenings over a period of time that there is some type of commonality.	7:50
Clay White	It's no more than just a common sense of knowledge, doesn't mean that I fully even accept it now, but a common sense of knowledge. I'm saying that when you have come from New York living here in the new harbor across the river, you just work over here in the store, but you the manager or something, you don't bring that dynamic with you, and therefore, the way you treat me, it's going to be, in a sense of, I don't want to say disrespect, but it's not going to give you that— You're not going to treat me with the same commonality because you don't have that sense of legacy and that sense of issue for orientation together.	8:20
Ronald White	I think I see it just a little differently.	8:56
Clay White	Go ahead.	8:56
Ronald White	And that 30 years ago, if you're a good nigger, "I'm going to like you, boy, and I'm going to be all right by it. I'm going to be paternalistically beholden to you as long as you live on." What has happened over the 30 years is that the words have changed, but the realizations are the same because we don't own nothing.	9:01
Ronald White	We didn't own it there. We don't own it there. It's still America, North or South, east to west. It's the racism that is the best. And I say it in that way because it's true throughout the world that what has evolved here as a racist society has permeated to its core. There is an influx finally of older Whites, adults, from the the North mainly into the New Bern area as a retirement area.	9:44
Ronald White	It's changed the economic flavor of the environment. It means that, "No, I ain't looking for no boys. I just want the job done. I don't care if you're good or bad going, going to do it right or wrong, I don't care. But I ain't going to give you nothing neither." So nothing economically has changed.	10:39
Ronald White	Socially, we are seeing the end of a cultural approach to racism, but that's all, just the culture's changing. The economic base, which is the reason it exists is still there. It's still American.	11:12
Clay White	As it relates to racism, I can identify with that. But I still think that there's a market difference between people who grew up in this area versus people who just come to, that's all I'm just trying to make distinction of. When you're bring it on the area where we stand there, racism. I mean I'm [indistinct 00:11:56] to understand how racism still exists, there's different formats.	11:38
Clay White	I can remember the time when we used to talk about having shotgun houses, where you open the door, you see straight through it, and that was called the ghetto. Now your ghetto are your projects and the projects of ghetto because of the dynamics and rules and policies and how they step up and a whole host of reasons. But I was just thinking that when I sense when I go downtown, I see a older person who's here, you get a different kind of feeling from that person.	12:00
Clay White	I mean, he didn't love you. I don't mean that kind of thing, but I'm not sure it's respect, that's why I just call it commonality that exists. But that's just a sense I feel. And the same with White, I mean, brothers and sisters, I mean people who going to the North or who came here now have families. You know what I'm saying? Those young people living here or grew up in New York for a while, then moved here.	12:33
Clay White	But they're different. I mean they don't carry the same ties out or something. I really think it's speaking of, I guess I'm sitting here and talking about it, it's really White and Black. It's those who have that commonality and the one that really do not.	12:59
Clay White	But in terms of racism, I concur, I think racism still exists. I think it's just formatted differently here than there, as it's formatted anywhere differently. But racism is very much alive. There's no question about that, and the poor is still getting poor and the rich is getting rich. There's no question about it.	13:10
Clay White	Many of us who graduate now are not finding jobs. They're the same host of things that are going everywhere, we in trouble. There's no question about it.	13:40
Kara Miles	I want to get back to some of this early civil rights stuff. Your father wasn't pleased that you all being involved in that. Were there other preachers in New Bern who were active in the movement?	13:49
Ronald White	Yeah.	14:08
Kara Miles	What churches were they in? Who were these preachers? What churches were they at who were active.	14:08
Ronald White	In the beginning, I think the ministers who were the educated preachers did not immediately evolve and involve themselves, those with all the degrees and the theological seminaries. They had become a part of the New Bern bourgeoisie and the bourgeois was scared.	14:24
Ronald White	Really, they didn't see that they were really the ones who were going to benefit from all of this. They didn't really realize that. Had they known that, maybe they would've acted in a different manner. They didn't know it. So they thought they were the ones who had something to lose. They initially held back.	15:02
Ronald White	There were those ministers who had small churches, or those ministers who didn't have a church.	15:20
Clay White	Or the ones we call jackleg.	15:32
Kara Miles	What's that?	15:35
Ronald White	It's somebody who hears the calling, and gets ordained by somebody else who maybe not has had any training. You had some of the younger ones who didn't have a church but who were affiliated with some churches he initially started. You had one or two who had been up North and come back down, because there was always movement back and forth from New York City to New Bern, New Bern to New York, back and forth. So you had one or two of those.	15:36
Ronald White	That's how it started was just that small group, because it wasn't legitimized yet. Martin Luther King was a nobody. Martin who? King. Who was it? When the sit-in started by students in Greensboro, there was no recognition of legitimacy. There was no real development of the Southern Christian Leadership Council.	16:14
Ronald White	There was the NAACP. The local NAACP initially was a nothing group, but it became, and it gradually pulled in more churches. As the movement nationally grew, then it grew locally too. Again, television, I go back to television, was our most important tool for organizing.	16:50
Ronald White	There are two things that legitimize and organize the movement. One is the television, the other's police. Every head the police hit produced a convert. You had only made him sure he was right. You made his mama and his daddy and his brother and his sister know that he was right and there's something wrong here. The more people they hit in the head, the more converts they made.	17:36
Ronald White	It was at that point that the ministers here, if you going to be the leader in the Black community and you're supposed to be the leader in the Black community and a movement is just rising right up, you got a choice. The choice is you don't become a leader and you move away or back down or you jump onto me. So after a couple of years, after a couple of years, some of the established ministers jumped on.	18:09
Kara Miles	What choice did your father make?	18:42
Ronald White	My father did not, because my father did not decide until '63 that he needed to be a part of it and that he was wrong.	18:44
Kara Miles	And again, goes back to TV with the March of Washington, watching it.	19:02
Ronald White	Straight to TV. But in '63, he realized that he had made a wrong decision, and he felt bad. I mean, you could see it in his face because he knew he was wrong. The movement per se had already moved on from New Bern by then. It changed in its character and its nature.	19:05
Ronald White	By '63, there was a well-developed NAACP. There was a structure here in New Bern by then, so he wasn't needed and it wasn't a factor. My father was always a, what is the right word? I guess he was a transparent kind of person. So it didn't matter that he wasn't that, everybody still accepted him and he just continued. If something would happen, he'd go see if there's something he could do.	19:37
Ronald White	In the latter '60s, if you needed to meet at his church, you could meet. But he never led. He never led. But he didn't want to be a stumbling block. That's what he understood. He didn't want to be a stumbling block.	20:19
Clay White	I think too that while that's true, I think that he chose his battles, if you will. He didn't seek that one. But he did after that, speaking about '63 and all, he got really involved, he and my mother in elections and voting, and he got very, very caught up in that concept. Because he could see from that movement of King and all that, local elections were becoming very important.	20:43
Clay White	So you got involved with that, and that's something you got to understand clearly and see the value in it. Would you agree with that?	21:14
Ronald White	Yeah. But that was in the latter '60s and '70s, he—	21:20
Clay White	Yeah, that's what I'm saying.	21:23
Ronald White	— [indistinct 00:21:24] care in. I mean—	21:23
Clay White	[indistinct 00:21:25].	21:23
Ronald White	The movement itself, it had crest. It had crest.	21:26
Clay White	[indistinct 00:21:35]	21:33
Ronald White	It was no longer [indistinct 00:21:37].	21:35
Clay White	I was just thinking that he was choosing it the in the sense of moving from that, because he did not take the leadership there.	21:36
Ronald White	Oh no.	21:42
Clay White	That I think he was then moving to something that I think he could feel more comfortable taking the leadership in, because I think he did see a greater need there on a local level for elections. And that's all I was talking [indistinct 00:21:52].	21:42
Clay White	And he then he worked feverish on that, of course with a lot of his health and others of the community now. That's how we get into eventually over the years, after he died, we began to get Black mayor that we have now [indistinct 00:22:13] other people to support politicians.	21:51
Kara Miles	But could Blacks could vote in New Bern before '60s?	22:16
Clay White	Oh yeah.	22:18
Ronald White	He voted. I went with him to vote in the 1952 presidential election. And I mean I remember clearly it was yesterday, because I wanted him to vote for Adlai Stevenson because his name was Steve, and I had an Uncle Steve that I liked. I mean I remember it so clear. And my dad tried to tell me, "No, you going to make decisions that way, man." What was Stevenson?	22:19
Ronald White	But yeah, he always voted, and he always encouraged members of his little church. But again, it was a Presbyterian church, a little bourgeois church, very few ministers. I mean members, a lot of school teachers per capita. I mean most of them in there were, and they were expected to vote.	22:51
Ronald White	See, it was never a problem in the South about the role players. If you play your role, you're okay. Your ministers and your school teachers could vote anywhere, anytime, anywhere in the South. They could vote. Your doctors too, and your lawyers. Really, how many of them are there? What difference are they going to make? It's the masses.	23:17
Kara Miles	So could the masses not vote here? But for the masses—	23:43
Ronald White	The masses, it wasn't an issue because they were so controlled over the years that they didn't register. They didn't try. They weren't a factor.	23:46
Clay White	No, but the question is, could they?	24:00
Ronald White	Could they? No.	24:03
Kara Miles	No.	24:08
Clay White	[indistinct 00:24:08]	24:08
Ronald White	I mean, was there a ruling? Did somebody say No, you can't vote, no. But had the masses come, they'd have closed the door. That's all I'm telling you.	24:08
Clay White	Ron's still using projection in that way.	24:21
Ronald White	There's no way to know.	24:23
Clay White	I want to stick to the issue. The issue is could they vote? Yes, they could vote. Did they vote? No, they didn't do a lot of voting. That's why [indistinct 00:24:31].	24:24
Ronald White	They could vote if they were registered. But there was the grandfather clauses, they would— I mean, Black folk, by and large, couldn't register. You had to take a test. You had to read, Daddy went through it. Daddy had to do all that.	24:31
Clay White	I'm not suggesting that they were not, it was not a criteria probably. I'm simply saying that the real basis is we did not vote, we did not attempt to deal with the criteria. That's what I'm saying for the record. I'm saying that, and one of the main reasons that we didn't, because we didn't see that it would be of great results in our behalf anyway, all right.	24:50
Clay White	Now, I agree that the laws were passed and made it a little easier. But even then, historically, Blacks did not vote. We only began to vote once we could see that there was a need, something that we could get out of the deal. That's what I was raising the issue of that in the late '60s when he and others began to move to the issue of voting, and that in turn stimulated our people to begin to vote. That's what I'm talking. I think that's the real story.	25:14
Ronald White	Well, but I'm saying, but see again, it's that the small town was sucked up into a national movement like everywhere else through television.	25:43
Clay White	Well, Ron leans a lot on TV. I think TV has a part to play here, but I don't lean on it to that extent. I think that a lot of it has to do with all those voting, and can we get somebody elected who would be strong enough to stand up against White folks?	25:52
Clay White	If we found people like that either had our interest at heart, that would stimulate us to get out and vote, and those are the kind of issues that we utilize in order to mobilize people. Now, during those years we were here, but I'm just saying that he worked in the state so he would know more about that directly. I think that's what you're going to find.	26:05
Clay White	We've always traditionally, historically, we were picked apart by White folks. I mean, you have some people who like Mr. John, because Mr. John said he is going to take care of you. Then you had some who, like Miss Sally, because miss Sally said she going to take care of this little group. So you always had White folks who split us.	26:25
Clay White	But I'm just saying that once we ever came to agree on a one person, then that would give us something to mobilize our people around, and I think that's traditionally what we did. I know that's what we did here in New Bern. But I mean, I hear what you're saying, but I don't think it's all related to just TV. I really don't, and I think that—	26:43
Ronald White	All I'm saying is that the energy, the drive, the realizations that were necessary to do what you're talking about came through that vehicle, didn't exist within a vacuum.	27:06
Clay White	No, not just in a vacuum, but I think that—	27:17
Ronald White	No idea that, hey, I can be evolved.	27:18
Clay White	Well, I'm not going to debate it. But I think that the TV has a part to play in it, but I don't think it's all in all end, and I definitely don't think that at all. I think also it should be noted too historically that Black folks, Ron calls them the bourgeois, I'm not so sure I would call them that, but maybe they were that.	27:22
Clay White	But the educated, for the most part, voted Republican, and that was across the board national—	27:39
Ronald White	Across the board.	27:53
Clay White	— expectations. Like the majority of them vote Democrat now. But history will tell you that that did not come about until the Kennedy era, that they really began to vote in block in Democratic situations. Up until that time, we were fervently Republicans.	27:54
Clay White	I think what he didn't tell you was that we, that's what Daddy voted, if I remember, correctly.	28:11
Ronald White	Absolutely.	28:15
Clay White	Republican, all right, so—	28:16
Ronald White	Absolutely. I was trying to get him to vote for the Democrats, excuse me.	28:21
Clay White	But there's nothing, I'm not ashamed of that history, because historically, and we voted the—	28:21
Ronald White	It was a party of Lincoln.	28:26
Clay White	Exactly right, and it was based on that concept, you see, and that was a traditional concept—	28:28
Ronald White	And the Dixiecrats were empowering the South.	28:34
Clay White	And that was a traditional thing that history ought to reflect that we were a party, a Republican Party, because we were party of Lincoln, and it was a handed down concept all along. That's what I'm trying to say.	28:36
Clay White	A lot of times I find Black people don't want admit that on this day and time. But that was a history and he was a part of that thinking that that was the right choice to make in that time. So I mean, I just want to break that part out. [indistinct 00:29:05]	28:48
Ronald White	[indistinct 00:29:06] no doubt in New Bern.	29:05
Clay White	Kennedy came along, changed that, even for him, and I think that's when the great exodus began.	29:06
Kara Miles	I want to ask you about, you were talking about that even before the sit-in started, that there was an umbrella, you called it. Talk about that for me. What was there before? Because we know as historians, we know a lot about the Civil Rights Movement, but we don't know what the structure was that allowed that to happen. What is this umbrella?	29:22
Clay White	You had a lot of inequities going on, and again, going back to what Ron had mentioned earlier about what I call the jackleg preachers, and that's being disrespectful to them. Let's just say it was the less education, put like that, everything tended to mobilize around the church in the Black community.	29:41
Clay White	As he said, your main Baptist church, or etc., tended to not press a system as much or as hard as they could. Whereas your jackleg or your less educated ministers tended to do that. They generally work somewhere else maybe. And maybe if they had a chance to preach on Sunday, then they could preach. But the point was that they had an issue with either education, urban renewal at the time was, or getting your street paved or some kind of city service.	30:02
Clay White	If you went down and asked Mr. John for this and he didn't want to do it, then they would try to mobilize something in order to try to get it to work. Because again, we had these various boards or city council people, etc., and you had to go and try to appeal your case.	30:39
Clay White	The umbrella was established, not for the furtherance on those, the marches, but it was in place because of other inequities that people were trying to rectify. It always started in little small groups, and these groups tended to always met in somebody's church, but on another common ground type issue. You also had what I call internal community groups, such as, and this was strictly bougie, but use this concept, a little garden club.	30:55
Clay White	Well, everybody who was a member of the garden club made a full member, but was indoctrinated toward that concept, tended to try to do something in order to fix up your yard or what have you. So you had an umbrella there doing good for the [indistinct 00:31:55] community before yourselves as well. They had little contests and stuff of that nature, all right.	31:37
Clay White	So you had all these little groups, you had your fraternities and all of that. That was a very competitive little group during those years, and I think even now where they would have some kind of community function. So these little umbrellas were always existed within our community, doing some type of good for the community at large. Could be a scholarship program.	31:59
Clay White	But say for example, if that was an educational issue, I don't know. Let's say there was an issue one time just getting a school bus for JT Bob, that's our high school. We didn't have a school bus, where the White schools had school buses. So we had some people who took a leadership, whenever your main top people, no doctor for example, but somebody and generally it was some kind of a preacher, who would go down and though he might have been afraid, but because he was able to function in fear.	32:23
Clay White	I go back to that concept again. People don't talk about that, but that's really the truth of matter. The process, whatever that was, I did not know, but assuming the process would be you get on the road to call, to speak to the board, they would go and speak. They were disrespected or nothing really happened.	32:59
Clay White	Then they would come back and contact all these little groups and said, "We want to meet on this issue because our children ought to have a school bus like everybody else," using that example. So it's easy that time to bring that group together.	33:16
Clay White	You had some people who worked on what we call the state level. That was something going on in the state. Say for example, something happened in somewhere maybe in Charlotte or Durham or Raleigh, and it affected Black people in a negative way. That was a little network around the state of North Carolina that if I knew here in Raleigh, then I'm going to call or get word to John here and the network with go to place to place to place.	33:31
Clay White	There was always some contact. We're all talking about NAACP. That was one major conduit, but there were probably others. I can remember we had a little, at one time, not at beginning, in the very end, [indistinct 00:34:15] stages just went away. SCLC, they ever really last. You had little voting club, the voting rights group, but they would get the information and pass it on. So it was a real high network here.	34:01
Clay White	Now, this man, what was his name? Faison's father-in-law, what was his name?	34:28
Ronald White	You talking about Nixon?	34:29
Clay White	Yeah, Mr. Nixon doing—	34:30
Ronald White	Reverend Nixon.	34:39
Clay White	Reverend Nixon, he would be calling Jack Lake.	34:41
Ronald White	They called him Buckshot.	34:44
Clay White	Buckshot is what they used to call him, but he'd be halfway crazy. Literally, I would think, frightening to you at some time, but what stand up against White people. Traditionally in our culture, we've always had those one or two people that would stand up on anything and anybody knowing that they put their lives on jeopardy.	34:45
Clay White	But for some reason, the crackers wouldn't kill them. They would just shoot somebody else. You know what I mean? But wouldn't kill him or them or that type of person. Then our people would tend to say, "Oh, Buckshot is crazy." But when you sit down and listen at the issue that he was raising, he might not have been able to articulate it as well as we learned people want to hear it, but the essence of the issue, he was on target.	35:10
Clay White	It's just we were afraid. I guess what it boiled down to. So he was one of the ones, for example, the state network could get information too because they knew old crazy Buckshot was here in the Craven County area. So then he would know Reverend So and So, and then they would try to move and pull people together on that umbrella. Yeah, that's all right.	35:36
Kara Miles	All right. Well, I'm pretty much out of questions now.	36:02
Clay White	You told me you'd be all night. We already planned to be here all night.	36:06
Kara Miles	Oh, well, I could think of some more.	36:09
Ronald White	I'll tell you, I had enough.	36:10
Kara Miles	I sensed that you had, so I'm trying to let you off the hook.	36:16
Ronald White	Dang.	36:20
Kara Miles	But if you want to stay, I can—	36:20
Clay White	No, you got another question, [indistinct 00:36:25].	36:20
Kara Miles	— tons more questions.	36:20
Clay White	[indistinct 00:36:26] answer, but I just want you to know, that it's interesting. Obviously, I haven't done this in so long. I think everything that we talked about is basically honest. I tell you what I would like, just for my own posterity. I don't know whether we can get a copy of that tape or not, but we paid for it. If it's possible, I'll like to get a copy of it. I don't know whether that's a part of the process ruling or not but anyway.	36:26

File Info

File:

1.19 GB — Audio (audio/wav)

Title:

RL00170-CS-1050_02

Part of:

Mary White (primary interviewee), Clay White, and Ronald White interview recording, 1993 July 25

Identifier:

btvnc060250040
ark:/87924/r4n01477h
321ee366-11c8-45f7-ab34-6c94c04e246b

Permalink:

https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r4n01477h

Sponsor:

Sponsor this Digital Collection