Ruben Gray interview recording, 1995 July 05

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Kisha Turner	If you could just state your full name, your date of birth, and your place of birth.	0:02
Ruben L. Gray	Okay. My name is Ruben L. Gray, G-R-A-Y. And I was born on November 6th, 1938 in Georgetown, South Carolina, which is down on the coast near Myrtle Beach, which is a recreational area down on the coast.	0:07
Kisha Turner	And could you tell me a little bit what it was like growing up there?	0:31
Ruben L. Gray	Well, in my area we had, when I was growing up, one major industry and that was International Paper company, probably employed 2000 people at that time. It was primarily involved in the processing of wood products to manufacture various sorts of paper that the principal industry, other people were engaged in fishing activity, commercial fishing and still others farther inland were involved in some farming. Naturally, there were a lot of spinoff industries and activities related to this wood processing plant, so a lot of people were also involved in the timber wood pulp harvesting business. And that was what my father did for a lot of years, particularly my younger years.	0:37
Kisha Turner	So what was the area like socially?	1:48
Ruben L. Gray	Well, it was a time when there was obviously very evident segregation. For the most part, Blacks were poor. Didn't realize that we were but for the most part, we were poor. There were large numbers of poor Whites as well. There were certain distinct differences, but there was not a massive amount of friction in the sense that it was very common that White and Blacks lived next to each other and whatnot and worked together and shared together and wasn't a particular concern a lot of the time. It only got to be, I guess, a problem when Black men dated White women. Other than that, it was really not a problem.	1:51
Ruben L. Gray	The institutions were segregated, churches, schools, that kind of thing. There were difficulties in my very young years as I can remember, difficulties with voting and that these were the early days of the Democratic primary. And of course, in many instances, a positive effort on the part of the locals to prevent Blacks from voting enlarged numbers that were.	2:58
Kisha Turner	So that was in the 1940s?	3:37
Ruben L. Gray	That would be in the 1940s, right. Most of my male relatives ended up as military drafting during the war. There was a bit of friction, distinct friction in the area when large numbers of Black men would come back after the war. I think for two reasons. Number one, they had been through most of them so very much and were very intolerant of mistreatment and different than war since then, it was very common for a soldier to bring home his weapon or a weapon and ammunition and such as that.	3:37
Ruben L. Gray	And many Whites became very testy that Blacks would be more aggressive and violent and so forth. And there were a lot of mistreatment of soldiers because there were so many of them coming back as the war wound down. And of course, that's not true only in that area, that would be true over the South and many other parts of the country because as you know, it was during that time that large numbers of Black men went to Canada and other places like that never came back, because of their disaffection with what they found after having fought in World War II.	4:32
Kisha Turner	Do you remember anyone from your community who left South Carolina or left because of their experiences?	5:24
Ruben L. Gray	Well, I know many. Yeah, sure. I know many that went various parts of the country. None that from my community that went to Canada, but certainly other parts of the country. Yeah, many did. Many did. Some came back, some never did come back. That was a particularly difficult moment because the young men had seen so much and gone through so much. And many of them did have the occasions to see the German soldiers who were treated a thousand times better. Fort Jackson, Columbia area was one of the holding areas where they had thousands of Germans. And they had, in many respects, a far better deal than the American soldier.	5:32
Kisha Turner	I've never heard of that, that there were German soldiers.	6:30
Ruben L. Gray	Oh, there were thousands that were brought to this country in hell. And while they were holding the German soldiers, they had, in fact, one of the things that there's some history, considerable bit of history written about is when the German prisoners were driven, brought through the country on the troop trains. They could get off and go eat and get washed up, and the Blacks in the troop trains were not allowed to get off because it would create great uneasiness on the part of the locals and that sort of thing. And a lot had been said about that over the years. And that was done at about the same time that there was the quarantining of the Japanese Americans who were principled out in the West Coast of the United States at that time.	6:31
Kisha Turner	So in your community there was increased activity towards voting after the war?	7:32
Ruben L. Gray	Yes, during that time, because that was about the same time that in the South you had what was called Democratic primaries, that was the birth period of the Democratic primaries. And there was a great reluctance on the part of many of the locals to see Blacks vote in very huge numbers and impact, obviously the outcome of some of the elections. So it started off with the literacy requirements of people getting registered to vote, having to read and this and that, and interpret supposedly the constitution of some provision and the constitution. And the person who was doing the testing probably had no capacity to interpret it any better than the person who was sitting there trying to get the voter registration so.	7:44
Kisha Turner	So did anyone from your family attempt to go vote?	8:47
Ruben L. Gray	They registered, they voted, they carried their shotguns, and large numbers of Blacks did. Some were fearful and things like that. But we did not live under any White person's control. So, excuse me. Yeah, I remember very well when I was a little boy. Now the word would go out that they are not come to the polling place to vote. And they would go and they would take a chance. And like I said, they would have their shotguns and whatnot. Fortunately, there was not a major accident in so far as related to.	8:52
Kisha Turner	So was-	9:43
Ruben L. Gray	During back that time.	9:43
Kisha Turner	Was there a lot of organizing to push Black people to push for that right?	9:49
Ruben L. Gray	I wouldn't call it a lot. For the most part, the principal, I would say institution through which encouragement came would've been the churches, and the NAACP and things like that because they were members of the NAACP at that time. And they would be encouraged to get registered and to vote. And information regarding in the election would be disseminated for the most part in the Black churches during that time.	9:55
Kisha Turner	Okay. So to backtrack a little bit, could you tell me some about your schooling? You went to segregated school?	10:34
Ruben L. Gray	Oh, definitely. I started, or my family moved out of Georgetown, a little bit out of Georgetown when I was probably about five or six, just at the point of starting school because as I indicated, well, at a point he was working at the International Paper company, and then he decided he wanted to get in the timber selling business and so forth to International Paper Company. And of course in doing that, we moved out of town, and more in the countryside. And my first school then was a small country school that, I don't know, may have had three classes, something like that. And two or three teachers. And I, of course, because of the size and so forth, I knew all of the students who were attending and attended that school until about the seventh or eighth grade.	10:41
Kisha Turner	What was the name of that school?	11:55
Ruben L. Gray	It was called Deep Creek Elementary School, I believe. And then upon leaving that school, there was no, at least in the Black school, there was no junior high or middle school at that time. And then I went from there to high school. And this was Howard High School in Georgetown and had a fairly sizable enrollment, probably 1,200 or something like that. But obviously still segregated. I guess the facilities were somewhat similar between local White high schools and this high school, somewhat similar.	11:56
Ruben L. Gray	And then I finished high school in 1956 before y'all were born. And then I stayed out of school a year. And primarily I stayed out. I don't know, I was just 17 at the point and my brother was in college. And at least my impression was that it was a real struggle for my brother, to keep him financed in college. And I had a great reluctance to be still an added burden for college. I was very, very interested in going, I had catalogs from colleges everywhere and so forth. But I told my parents that I was not going to school at that time.	12:53
Kisha Turner	How many siblings did you have?	13:52
Ruben L. Gray	Well, there were two of us at that point, but later, a younger brother. And so I insisted that I wanted to go away, and satisfied myself that I could live independently. That's what I decided I wanted to do. And then I had a number of friends who were going, wanted to do the same thing. And it was a strange type of thing really. About two weeks, about a week after we got out of high school, we decided we wanted to go somewhere as far away that we didn't know anybody. And it was going to be a survival thing for us, we wanted to satisfy ourself if we could survive. And we went to the train station, and we really had not done any significant good traveling at all before that time. And so we asked where is this train go, or where some of the places that go, and the person gave us a little card, about nine inches long, three inches wide, something like that.	13:54
Ruben L. Gray	And it had the southern roots and the eastern northern roots and the places that it was going, we looked up and down trying to decide, we knew we didn't want to go any further south down to Florida or Georgia or any place like that. And we knew we didn't want to go to New York or any place like that because we need people there. So we saw a little thing on there, said Norwalk, Connecticut, and we inquired how much would it cost to go there. I think it was 23 or $26, one of those numbers. And we had never heard of the damn place so we said, "Well, this is where we'd like to go." And we bought tickets and a few days later we were gone. And parents were very upset, but they knew we were determined to do this.	15:14
Ruben L. Gray	We rode for a couple of days and got to Norwalk and got off the train just totally lost. And it was beginning to hit us at that point, what are you going to do? And I think we had, I probably had $20 left and my couple friends had about an equal amount left after ticketing some lunches. So we were just walking the street with a little bit of luggage and we were looking for a rooming house. That's what we said we were going to try to get. And so we met some fellas just walking in, asking if they know of any place where there might be a room now so that we could rent a room, a couple rooms.	16:10
Ruben L. Gray	And they started talking themselves and said, "Well, sometimes our parents rent rooms, maybe we take it to our house and ask our mother," and see what she said and want to know where we were from and all of that. So after walking three or four blocks, we got to their home and the lady said, "Yes, I'll put you up, what's your name, where you from?" And all that.	17:08
Ruben L. Gray	And then it turns out they're cousins. They're cousins of ours. We never knew. We didn't know, our parents knew them them and all. And oh dang, we wanted to get away from anyone we knew. But anyway, we stayed there for maybe three months and looked for work, I did. Well, all of us looked for work, but I had no idea, did not realize that at least in that part of the country, if you were not 18, you could not work unless you had working papers.	17:36
Ruben L. Gray	And we were all out of high school. And so I had to get on a train several days later and go to Hartford, Connecticut and get working papers. Came back, and still had trouble finding work, but in a reasonable time, all of us landed working. So I worked through that summer and another year until, well, until the next fall, early fall. And I said, "Well, I've satisfied myself that I can survive." I had saved money, bought a lot of clothes. I said, well, I had been admitted to South Carolina State College in Orangeburg. I had been pre admitted before I got out of high school, but I just did not go. I went and did what I mentioned. And so comes early that September 1957, I was in school, but I had my own money, and I paid my own tuition for the first year and so forth like that.	18:13
Kisha Turner	So did you enjoy being in Connecticut?	19:24
Ruben L. Gray	I enjoyed the experience of satisfying myself that I was a survivor, but because that was the experience I was looking for, satisfying myself that I could make it on my own. But I very much did want to go to school, and none of my friends came back then went to school. I was the only one up there that left. And the three of us who went, and I've always felt the smartest of the smartest of us, he never did go back to school and probably had maybe the third-highest average at the high school that year. He lives in New Jersey, I'm trying to think what the town is, it's not Buena Vista, but it starts with an B. And it is in northern, it's in South Jersey. Yeah, because South Jersey would be on the coast. It's about 25 miles, 30 miles from Atlantic City.	19:30
Kisha Turner	Then she'd be very close in.	21:01
Ruben L. Gray	Yeah, that's where he lives now.	21:03
Kisha Turner	So did you enjoy the cultural differences between South Carolina and Connecticut or?	21:09
Ruben L. Gray	I didn't- I guess the biggest thing and the most exciting thing for me was that it was possible to very readily go to Eagle Hall in New Haven or someplace like that and see some of the people who were making records perform. That as a 17-year-old, that was the most impressive thing to me. You could see [indistinct 00:22:00] or anybody like that perform any given weekend. And I felt I was very impressive when I had never seen any of the artists of the time perform when I was living down here. I did not get too intertwined in the mass culture, just so to speak.	21:19
Ruben L. Gray	I got a job as a trainee in the shipping and receiving department of a company. And the people must have been terribly trusting and good because they were going on Jewish holiday when I got the job. And so they hired me, they made out a list of things to do and they were going for, the place was shut down for two weeks. But I went in and I had a key to this large plant and I would punch in every day. And I would do these things that were on the list. And I thought that was extremely trusting and nice for 17 year old that they really didn't know anything about. I thought that was unbelievably strange because it was millions of dollars worth of garments and the shirts and shoes and other kinds of male garments primarily. But it was a good experience, it was a very good experience.	22:27
Kisha Turner	Were there more work opportunities?	23:32
Ruben L. Gray	Oh yes, there were many, many industries there. And yes, because like I said, down here where I was from more particularly, there were very limited work opportunities. You were going to go to the mill, to the paper mill or you were going to work on a fishing boat or something along those lines, or you were going to be in a timber harvesting business.	23:44
Kisha Turner	So a lot of people left?	24:14
Ruben L. Gray	Oh yes. I would say typically back during that time, two-thirds of the young high school graduates would leave.	24:16
Kisha Turner	They would go mostly north for it or?	24:31
Ruben L. Gray	Or they would mainly go north, yeah. But two-thirds would leave because there were just so few opportunities at that time.	24:33
Kisha Turner	So what was South Carolina State like?	24:56
Ruben L. Gray	I enjoyed going there at the time. I thought it had a fairly large enrollment back during that day, but it really wasn't that large. They had about 2,800 students I guess, or something like that. But I made the adjustment fairly okay, I had aunt and uncle that worked there and stuff, and so that helped some. But I made the adjustment at school okay. And then my brother was right across the street at the other college is Claflin College and South Carolina State. He was over at Claflin ahead of me and so.	25:03
Kisha Turner	What'd you study?	25:50
Ruben L. Gray	Business administration. Well, what was called a combined program. I was in the combined business administration law program. That was a six-year concentrated program where after the fourth year, the fourth year would be your first year of law school, would be the year that you graduate from undergrad. At the end of the sixth year, you would get the law degree. And I was in that program.	25:53
Kisha Turner	Nice.	26:22
Ruben L. Gray	And so managed to get out in the six years.	26:22
Kisha Turner	Okay. What organizations did you join?	26:32
Ruben L. Gray	Not many. I joined the Thomas C. Miller Law Society, the Eddie B. [indistinct 00:26:41] Debating Society, the, what else? There was a legal fraternity, Sigma Delta Tau, a legal fraternity, and a few other minor groups that don't come to my mind.	26:34
Kisha Turner	How was Orangeburg at that time?	27:08
Ruben L. Gray	Orangeburg was terrible. Orangeburg had always been, even back going to the '50s, a real restless place. You had the locals and they were all benefiting. Not all the large numbers were benefiting from the fact of the colleges being there because of small town. Yet at the same time, you had this fairly considerable mass of energetic young people from two schools from all over there. And they articulated the attitudes and spirit of the time. And so this brought on for many clashes between them and the local community, the White community.	27:11
Ruben L. Gray	So during the demonstration periods, because that's the period we are talking about. Soon as we got out of 1957, '58, a lot of demonstrations and whatnot and the downtown air trying to integrate some of the public facilities, the bowling alleys and so forth like that. And it is one of the few places in the south, really, or in South Carolina, I would say, one of the very few places in South Carolina that had awful bloodshed at a point. Now this part though, occurred after I was gone, when the three students were killed on the campus, shot by highway patrol. There had been weeks of demonstration trying to integrate that bowling alley. And someone decided that, the question in my mind, someone decided that the best way to deal with it after other efforts failed was to kill somebody. And that's what happened.	28:06
Kisha Turner	Did you participate in demonstration?	29:25
Ruben L. Gray	Yes, I did as an undergrad student. I did not as a law student. We were urged not to at when we became law students, primarily for the reason that we wanted not to get prevented from passing the certification to take the bar and you have the police check, you could not have any criminal offenses on your record and all of this jazz. And so when we went into law school, we were encouraged not to. But when I was in undergrad school, yes I did.	29:28
Kisha Turner	Can you remember some specific demonstrations participating?	30:20
Ruben L. Gray	Yeah, mainly during the time, this is late '50s, '58, '59, when we would march. We would assemble on the campus, and march off the campus into the downtown area. And we would have different placards made up. And usually we would sing the Freedom songs and we would march through the downtown area and back upon the campus. And during a lot of the marches, of course, the fire department would have the water hoses and try to blow you down with the water, knock some people down, that sort of thing. None of the ones that I participated in were the violent type. After I left, things got more violent, and that was the time the students got hit.	30:24
Kisha Turner	So Black students in Orangeburg, was there a Black business area that you would?	31:34
Ruben L. Gray	Yes, small. There was a soda shop and the drug store and the barber shop and the liquor store. But if you talked about real clothiers or bowling alley and theater and whatnot, these were things on White people. And of course, like I said, the students were very much in tune to what students everywhere else were doing, particularly kids at A&T and so forth. And everybody knew Jesse Jackson and all of those back during that time. He was a student at A&T, a quarterback. He'd been on the campus many times and were part of the student coordinating, student non-violent coordinating committee and so forth. So everybody was in tune to the same things during that time.	31:42
Kisha Turner	Was there a chapter of that group on your campus?	32:46
Ruben L. Gray	Absolutely, yeah.	32:48
Kisha Turner	So that was by-	32:52
Ruben L. Gray	On both campus.	32:52
Kisha Turner	That was by when you started law school?	32:55
Ruben L. Gray	That would've been '60, '61, 2, 3. And when I got out of law school in 1963, June, I came here and I came here and took the bar examination in July of 1963, and was admitted in August 1963. And so I started work as a young lawyer for gentleman by name of Ernest Finney, he's Chief Justice State school going up. And the very thing that had been going on in Orangeburg was going on here, at perhaps only even a larger scale.	32:56
Ruben L. Gray	You had the students from Morris College, but differently here I felt, you had the high school students, massive numbers of them who were involved in demonstrations that were young people from other colleges, particularly during the summer and spring break periods, White students mainly from up the East Coast who would be here and they would bed down on the floors of churches and whatnot here, Black churches. And there would just be massive demonstration and massive arrest.	33:53
Kisha Turner	So this area was part of the Freedom Summer effort?	34:39
Ruben L. Gray	Absolutely. And there'd be just hundreds and hundreds of, all the jail areas share would fill up and they were taking them to the state prison in Columbia and whatnot. And it was a very unhappy time, unhappy for me because I didn't understand practicing law to be like that as a student, I figured. But that's all we did. We raised bail money to get kids out jail. And then you went into court and did trials and you never won, you knew you weren't going to win and you only won when it got to the appellate level some year or so down the road, that the local magistrate or recorder's court level. It was just no win in the situation, I was very unhappy.	34:42
Ruben L. Gray	And so come November, about November, I had been here from summer to November and got a notification of being drafted into the Army. And I was given about a week to report, and that was even more upsetting. And so I just leased a house and bought furniture and all of that. But anyway, my selected service board was in Connecticut. That's where I reached age at. And so that's where I registered. So I had to take a train and go to Connecticut and reported to Fort Dix in New Jersey. And was I very angry then? For sure. And stayed in the army for two years and back here.	35:45
Kisha Turner	So you served in.	36:54
Ruben L. Gray	Two years.	36:54
Kisha Turner	What was that like?	37:11
Ruben L. Gray	It really was not bad at all. I did what is called the base training at Fort Dix, and I got orders for a place in Alabama. And keep in mind, I'm from South Carolina, but I had heard nothing but bad things about Alabama, and I said I wasn't going. And after the training, basic training was over and all of the men were shipped out where they were supposed to go school or whatever, and I said, "I wasn't going." So they had this massive problem trying to figure out what to do with this guy and he won't leave. We know we gon probably put him in jail.	37:17
Ruben L. Gray	And so there was someone who had, from the unit who had been to this place, had just gotten back really. And they had him bring me all the material and I said, "You'll have your own bed and the place's air-conditioned, you'll really like it." And I said, I don't know anything about Alabama except that they mistreat Blacks, and I'm not going, I don't want to be in this damn [indistinct 00:38:30]. And so I finally agreed to go, but I told them I wanted, I'd go if they would let me come by Columbus, South Carolina and see my girlfriend, then I'd go to Alabama. They agreed. I came here, stayed. And yeah, then I then went on to Alabama, was Huntsville. And if you know anything about northern Alabama and Huntsville in particular, you know it's a very different place than the rest of Alabama, it was then, because that is where the Marshall Space Flight Center was.	38:00
Ruben L. Gray	So 60% of everybody in Huntsville was from someplace other than Alabama. This is where Wernher von Braun, German scientist, this where he was headquartered, there in the mountains and everything like that. And I was really impressed because we had the Koreans and all of the nationals that we supplied military hardware, they would be there for school. And that is the same place where the Saturn boosters were tested, very different than now. They were tested there in the mountains when they tested them, the whole city would shake. And when they were ready to ship them to Florida, they shipped them down to Tennessee River on a barge. That's how the Saturn boosters got to Cape Kennedy, on a barge from Huntsville. And that's when they would mount them on the spacecraft at that point in time on. And so it was, that sort of setting was very high level, very intelligent, very sophisticated and things of that sort.	39:07
Ruben L. Gray	So in the meantime, I had applied just as after I got the draft notice and after I first went in for appointment to judge advocate school, since I had to serve. And of course nothing happened. Just nothing happened. And so I went to a unit and they needed personnel, particularly personnel who could do some things because when the Vietnam War drain started, so combat types were going to Vietnam. And so I got a good position to do what I want while I waiting until something come about on the application to judge advocate school. And they did give me a private room and whatnot at this nice facility and so forth. But the judge advocate thing did not come through until I had completed 13 months.	40:26
Ruben L. Gray	And by this time I was married, wife said, and I had her there in base house. And she said she did not want to stay. She did not want me to stay because as it were, I had 11 more months to do. If I took the JD school, I had to do four more years because the time in only counted for pay purposes. And she said no, that's, don't do it. So I didn't take the appointment. I finished the 11 month. As a matter of fact, I really didn't finish the 11 month. I finished, I had three months left and the commander had asked me if you will take care of everything while I go on my honeymoon, whenever I come back, you can leave.	41:36
Ruben L. Gray	And I said, "Well, that's a deal. I'll take care of everything while you gone." He went, something went crazy with the honeymoon. He was gone only three days. When he came back, he said, "I'm going to keep my work. You can go." I was still in service. I had to call every Monday morning so that they would know I didn't get killed. They would count me present and I was hearing something. And so it was not a bad experience after all. And then also it was a point in time when I was just ready to get away from something because all of the jail and court and anger and meanness and that sort of thing, because I just didn't expect that.	42:39
Kisha Turner	So you had a lot of friction as a Black attorney during the time period?	43:29
Ruben L. Gray	Yeah. You had the friction because you represented, well, number one, you represented young people that the system was very mad at, and you had to defend them and try to protect them and whatnot. And so, it could not have escaped. You were a part of it. You were the only spokesperson they had. So yeah, it was very, to me as a young lawyer who was expecting to work differently, but that's what needed to be done. It had to be done. It was just not what I was looking forward to doing at that time.	43:35
Kisha Turner	So did that have any ramifications in your future careers?	44:23
Ruben L. Gray	Well, I'll say what it did do. It caused you to learn fast, to study hard, to get a lot of experience because we knew that the cases we handled, we were going at least to the Supreme Court. In most cases, not only to the Supreme Court, but to the federal court system through the district in court of appeals and up. We knew that you would have to at least go that far to try to find an address, you weren't going to get it down here in the lower courts. So it caused you to become extremely adept in the law and in procedure in the different levels of court. It forced that upon you, and it forced you to do it faster and more thorough than you might have otherwise done. It did that.	44:31
Ruben L. Gray	And I would say that that served, it certainly served me well. And I would say the other Black lawyers at that time, I think it served them well like us because I think about it. And during that time I was just a young lawyer, so I was just a helper so to speak. But Matthew J. Perry, federal district judge, he was one of the lead attorneys handling massive numbers of these cases. Like I say, he's federal district judge fixing the retirements and Ernest Finney handled a massive number of these cases, in these, the Chief Justice Supreme Court at this time. There are some guys who are dead like Lincoln C. Jenkins and Powell [indistinct 00:46:31] and people like that. And Powell.	45:28

Ruben L. Gray	- Those experiences.	0:01
Kisha Turner	Do you have any-	0:04
Kisha Turner	Oh yeah, this is just a quick question. You were talking about Georgetown and the plant that a lot of people worked for.	0:05
Ruben L. Gray	Mm-hmm.	0:16
Kisha Turner	Do you remember your father talking about any union activity, or-	0:17
Ruben L. Gray	No, no. I don't believe there was any union activity there.	0:21
Kisha Turner	Oh, okay.	0:24
Ruben L. Gray	I don't think so.	0:24
Kisha Turner	How about in Connecticut where you were?	0:25
Ruben L. Gray	I knew of union activity there. That was very commonplace there, at the time. I didn't have to worry about- I would have never became a member of a union in the short period that I was there. But I knew that that was commonplace. Because one of the things that I did: this particular company had showrooms in New York, and I would go with the people who decorated the showrooms. And we'd select stuff, and we'd get on the train, and we'd go do this, and whatnot like that.	0:32
Ruben L. Gray	And I knew that throughout, unionization was very heavy. But of course, as you know, in the South, unions were very taboo with the right-to-work laws and all of that. And even to this day, you have very limited unionization in this state, for sure.	1:15
Kisha Turner	In the plant in Georgetown, did Blacks do different types of jobs than Whites did?	1:47
Ruben L. Gray	The worst of the jobs. They did some of the better jobs, but they did the worst of them too. And it's probably not that way now, but it was very, very dangerous work. People got killed all the time. Because you can imagine thousands of tons of timber products going into big canals that caused these things to move along.	1:58
Ruben L. Gray	And they had all these big things with teeths, big steel teeth that grind up this wood, that little fire. And people would fall in, people would get shoved into it, I guess. And the equipment never was shut off before you grabbed it. That was not- I guess one of the worst things about that plant, Annie's Steel plant, German Steel plant that is down there, is they polluted the- As you know, Georgetown sits on the bay, Winyah Bay. And then that spills over into the ocean, and the Sand Pit River, and so forth. And there's massive contamination, mainly from heavy metals.	2:34
Ruben L. Gray	And so they discourage you from eating the shellfish and limit you from eating the other things, because it's not safe at all.	3:29
Kisha Turner	Do you have any questions?	3:41
Kisha Turner	No.	3:41
Kisha Turner	Thank you very much.	3:48

Item Info

Title:

Ruben Gray interview recording, 1995 July 05

Date:

July 5, 1995

Creator:

Gray, Ruben L.

Contributor:

Description:

Name: Ruben L. Gray; Date of birth: 1937-04-11; Place of birth: Georgetown, SC; Occupation(s): lawyer; attorney; judge; Residence: Sumter, SC
Informant ID: 1217; Interviewed by: Blair Murphy and Kisha Turner.

Occupation:

Location:

Format:

Language:

English

Digital Collection:

Behind the Veil

Source Collection:

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

Series:

Related Resources:

See below

Provenance:

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

Rights:

Limited Re-Use

CC BY-NC 4.0

Rights Note:

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

Identifier:

RL00170-CS-1485
f7e6c724-579f-4d9c-be79-9c2b08f91c67
behindtheveil
35d1e826-47e2-4c44-ac54-b288ac6bea54
ark:/87924/r46d61m4r
35d1e826-47e2-4c44-ac54-b288ac6bea54

Permalink:

https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r46d61m4r

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Ruben Gray interview recording, 1995 July 05

Transcript

Item Info

1. Ruben Gray administrative file, 1995

John Hope Franklin Research Center

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Ruben Gray interview recording, 1995 July 05

Transcript

Item Info

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John Hope Franklin Research Center

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