Herman Leach interview recording, 1995 August 08

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Herman Leach	Yeah, so.	0:01
Doris Dixon	And date of birth?	0:03
Herman Leach	Okay. My name's Herman Leach. I was born 1937, March 16, in a little place called Jonestown. This is it. I was born in the house down the street there.	0:04
Stacey Scales	Oh, really?	0:16
Herman Leach	And I've lived there all my life. So I been here a while.	0:18
Stacey Scales	Could you describe the movement?	0:22
Herman Leach	Originally, this was a neighborhood of about five families and four of those families were Jones'.	0:26
Stacey Scales	Mm-hmm.	0:35
Herman Leach	And that's how they hung the name Jonestown on it. It originally [Indistinct 00:00:41], I think that was the name of it. And you see all these houses over here now but it was originally just this house and about five more houses. Over here, see all these houses you see right here. When I grew up, I went off to college and when I came back they started building. And recently, they added about 50 more units so we're really full right now.	0:36
Stacey Scales	Was Jones African-American?	1:05
Herman Leach	Mm-hmm. It was all Jonestown, all Black. There were two stores. One was up on the corner and there was one straight off at the end of this street. They were White. Other than that it was all Black. It's always been that way. This is a—like you see a park over there, that's where I went to elementary school. And it was called Jonestown Elementary School and the Black community purchased the land, built the school and everything. That's how we get to control the park and everything. It's still Jonestown and the sole trustee and stuff. But it go way back. I mean, it's—	1:07
Stacey Scales	Do you know how [indistinct 00:01:40]?	1:38
Herman Leach	I can carry back as far as I can remember. My grandparents told me some stories about how it all started and stuff. But I can vaguely remember five or six years old.	1:42
Stacey Scales	And we'd be interested in some of those stories if you want to tell them—	1:49
Herman Leach	Well, some of them are kind of way out stories but then she did tell me about things. Like, I've got a sign here, oh, you can't get it. But anyways, so the Jim Crow things that happened?	1:59
Stacey Scales	Right.	2:09
Herman Leach	Just pull it off and I can—no, the top part of that. Yeah, it's just stapled, it'll come right off and I can put that back.	2:09
Stacey Scales	Oh, okay.	2:17
Herman Leach	But it tells a lot of the stories that—some thing I remember. I remember I was talking to Yvette. And she said that she talked to somebody up there that remembers when they would hang clothes along the highway to—it was intimidation, that's what it was. But my grandmother used to tell me that they actually hung people just like that.	2:18
Stacey Scales	Oh, okay.	2:36
Herman Leach	She said right up there where you make that curve coming around, when you're coming over here. It was a store and an old bridge there. She said they would hang Black people that they thought got out of line, and leave them hanging there all day for you to go by and see them. She described how they would buzz and this sort of stuff.	2:38
Herman Leach	But we took that kind of stuff for granted and we assumed that they were part of life. For a long time, we didn't know any better. Like I see here you got Black and White restroom and water fountain. Well, when we were growing up, we thought that's the way it was supposed to be. We didn't know any better. There were nobody teaching us anything any different. So we just got caught in that rut like most people do. And they still try to play that game. They want you to think that the same thing that's supposed to be the same way but then she used to tell me all the stories. And I think they used to kind of worry about us a little because we were kind of adventurous. We'd go to town and the police would be chasing us back. Just for nothing. You could walk on the sidewalk and they would make you get off the sidewalk because you hadn't paid—they called street tax, I believe it was.	2:54
Stacey Scales	Street tax?	3:37
Doris Dixon	Street tax?	3:38
Herman Leach	Yeah, street tax. Yeah. Just like you had to pay poll tax to vote, you had to pay street tax, too. So they—I mean, whatever they said, that was the law until I say '68. About '68, that's when Rudy Shields came to town. I got a lot of stuff on Rudy because Rudy's my hero. Yeah, he really kind of opened my eyes and and that sort of thing, you know, like rights for example and I did a story on Rudy about 10 years ago in Jackson Herald.	3:40
Herman Leach	But anyway, when Rudy came to town he confronted the establishment. We had a sheriff here, his name was Homer Hood. And we had a White police chief whose name was [Indistinct 00:04:24] Russell. And whatever they said, that was the law. But when Rudy came to town, Rudy knew all about Civil Rights and all these things. And he would go and tell them. And they wouldn't bother him. He would just approach them. They would say, "You can't do this." And he says, "That's my right." And he'd tell them where to look and stuff like that. And they wouldn't bother him. We expected them to just bust his head on down and take him to jail.	4:13
Herman Leach	But I realized then that they knew that they were wrong. They knew better than the way they were treating us. See, like, you go into the bus station and they would have Black washroom, White washroom, Black water fountain—but Rudy go ahead and he'd just go to a water fountain. They tell him, "You know that's a Black fountain?" And he'd tell them it looks the same color to him. Because he could drink out of any fountain he wants to. You know, Rudy just kind of made me know that all you got to do is stand up and get counted. So, since then we've been bail breaking. Whenever we see things that we think ought to be done, we just do it. And eventually we'll get it done.	4:45
Herman Leach	For example, in 1979, when I first decided I was was going to run for a supervisor position. I wasn't involved in politics at all but I had began to read that there were certain things that we were protesting, trying to get people to do things. I read that supervisors were in control of a lot of things that we were trying to get done. So then I decided to look at politics and registering people to vote. They're still doing stuff, nothing really changed. We just—we're still struggling right now. I got a lot of stuff. I wish you had come by earlier.	5:23
Herman Leach	I got—they ran me through the hammer last two years I was on the front page everyday. What they were trying to do is get me impeached but they had bogus information. They got the auto department involved in it. They got the insurance company involved in it. So they really engage in a big game of collusion on me. And after they couldn't get me to resign, they decided they got the insurance coming to withdraw my bond, and that way the statute said you can't hold office if you don't have insurance.	6:01
Herman Leach	So they tried to—excuse me. But anyway, I—you gonne be able to hear what I was saying? I got it. I collect my stuff because I'm going to put me a book together some time, you know what I mean? But I really don't have time right now. They come and they still haven't eased off.	6:29
Stacey Scales	—address if possible.	6:48
Herman Leach	Well, we can communicate that way.	6:49
Stacey Scales	Mm-hmm.	6:51
Herman Leach	I got some stuff you can look through, some of my scrapbooks and things if you want to. But anyway, I started with—well, I started out, I was a school teacher. That's what I went to Jackson State for, school teacher. I had no intentions of doing that but I knew I had to go to school and do something different. I had gone to Chicago and decided I didn't want to—I wanted to work, get me a job, get me a car, stuff like that.	6:52
Herman Leach	So I left when I got out of high school in Chicago and I had been offered a scholarship Tougaloo Jackson State but nobody was telling me about scholarships. Nobody was influencing us to go to college when you get out of high school so we went to Chicago. I went there for a while but then I noticed that seniority was controlling everything. You had guys there that couldn't spell their name but he had been there two or three years and he was my boss so we kind of dogged him around a little bit. So I said I'd go to school and get me an education. So I did that. I went back to Jackson. I played football and baseball down there four years and got on out.	7:11
Stacey Scales	Were your parents educated people?	7:46
Herman Leach	Not—my mother graduated from high school and my grandmother, she went to about eighth grade. So they weren't formally educated. I was the first in the family, me and my brother, Wadell. You talked to Wadell?	7:46
Stacey Scales	No.	7:58
Herman Leach	He's from Harlem. That's him on the [indistinct 00:08:01]. He's a [indistinct 00:08:03], a supervisor. But anyway, I went there and then two years later he come. So we got out of there and started teaching. I went to down south Mississippi. And the system—what really shocked me, when I started doing thing, I did it in Black schools in the community. So I started trying to do things to improve the Black community but then I ran into obstacles where the system really didn't want that. I was coaching so I started developing the team and things of that sort. And then I started trying to get them to develop some community identity.	7:58
Herman Leach	One of the particular thing I remember got me in trouble is that we had a real good season and everything so I decided I was going to get these kids some award jackets, and I did that. But then, the school didn't like it. I had separate superintendents. There was a Black superintendent and a White superintendent but the White superintendent was the Black superintendent boss. So the Black superintendent didn't really like that so they kind of harassed me a little bit and I eventually lost that job just because I did that.	8:32
Herman Leach	But those kids went on from there. I mean I went on a couple years in the city. I went to the highway department. I ran into the same thing. I got up here in one of my old cars and I see them. I got all these clippings and things right here. Sometimes I'll sit around and I'll look at a picture, then I can do a whole, recount a whole time. So, that's what I do sometimes.	9:00
Herman Leach	But anyway, I went to the highway department. I was the first Black in the administrative division of the highway department. I had my office down Jackson [indistinct 00:09:25]. But anyway, they didn't like that. They wanted me to treat—I was in relocation. You know when the highway go through, you relocate these people. But when I was relocating the Blacks, they wanted me to treat them different than they did the Whites. I couldn't pay a Black as much as I could a White for his home. I couldn't pay as much for a Black home as I could for a White home.	9:17
Stacey Scales	What year?	9:41
Herman Leach	That was about '68. That was '68. But I insist on doing it. I was buying the Black folks $35,000 - $40,000 home. That's what it would cost to relocate them. But they didn't want that so they ran me through the ring with that. Put me [indistinct 00:09:59] and then trick me into resigning from that. They had another job for me and when I resigned I had to resign this job to take that job. So they set it up that way but when I resigned this job, that job put me off for about a year. Eventually they wrote me a letter and told me it went through. And then I realized what the system would do to you so I got—I became independent then. I went into auto buy and repair and I stayed with that until I started politics. I've been at this for 16 years and ain't nothing changed. It's still the same struggle.	9:44
Stacey Scales	When you were growing up, who were your inspirations and motivation?	10:27
Herman Leach	I guess it had to be my mother. My mother was a nurse. There was a hospital about at the end of Leech Street. There was a hospital down there. There was a clinic and my mother worked there for 15, 16 years and she kind of really inspired us in every way. It was a mother that would—it was about nine or ten of us here in this area growing up together and the mothers would all play the same role. One by one [indistinct 00:10:59]. But my mother, then when—Rudy was the only other person that really inspired me to do—oh, I take that back. I had a coach down at Jackson State. His name was John Mayer. He really did a big change on me. Big John, they call him.	10:31
Herman Leach	And I worked a while at Saint Francis. There was a nun, her name was Michelle Doer. She played a big part, too. [INTERRUPTION]	11:06
Herman Leach	Together. Over there where you saw him at? That's where he grew up. He ain't been no further.	11:24
Stacey Scales	—rid of me.	11:29
Herman Leach	Yeah, that's Billy. You met them haven't you, Billy?	11:30
Herman Leach	But anyway, we all good together over here. Now he was one of the fortunate ones because his mother and his father would, they were both [indistinct 00:11:39] but most of the mothers were the ones that saw stuff. Yeah, Rudy. That's when Rudy came to town.	11:33
Stacey Scales	The community worked together good?	11:51
Herman Leach	Yeah, it was just like that. It was a very close community. They did everything together. I mean, they were organized. I talk to some kids now and I tell them about how those people organized. That were people who could carpenter. All the houses over here were built by these men in the community. They would get together and go build a house. They built this school. They built a church. They got money and stuff together and purchased that land. And it was Jonestown. Jonestown is slightly independent right now. We thinking about getting our own [indistinct 00:12:20]. We've just been talking about it.	11:53
Stacey Scales	[Indistinct 00:12:23]	12:22
Herman Leach	She was a nurse. She was a nurse. I got [indistinct 00:12:27] when you get a chance. But anyway, she was a nurse and she died [indistinct 00:12:37].	12:24
Stacey Scales	[Indistinct 00:12:39]	12:36
Herman Leach	Yeah, but it wasn't much to deal with the Black and White situation because that was a Black hospital so to speak. She and a couple other nurses who were Black went to Jonestown. So when people get sick they don't really cry about a Black nurse or White nurse, you know? They want some help. So, they even treated a couple of White people but it was basically a Black hospital.	12:41
Doris Dixon	[Indistinct 00:13:06]	13:04
Herman Leach	Hm?	13:04
Doris Dixon	After [indistinct 00:13:09]	13:04
Herman Leach	No, this was Yazoo Clinic. You talking about the Afro-American—	13:11
Doris Dixon	Yeah.	13:15
Herman Leach	—yeah, over on 8th Street. Yeah, it was owned by Black. This one was owned by a White doctor but it was a Black hospital.	13:16
Doris Dixon	Okay.	13:23
Herman Leach	Yeah.	13:23
Stacey Scales	[Indistinct 00:13:26]	13:23
Herman Leach	Is that right? I had one [indistinct 00:13:29]. I didn't know she had got to them.	13:26
Doris Dixon	What is most important to the people who [indistinct 00:13:37]?	13:30
Herman Leach	The most important thing?	13:39
Doris Dixon	Mm-hmm.	13:40
Herman Leach	I never really thought about that. It looked like we were in another world when we grew up over here. We didn't really think about things as they really were, okay? I don't if they were talking to us about it.	13:44
Speaker 1	[Indistinct 00:13:56]	13:55
Herman Leach	Yeah, and our family, we were just at home.	13:58
Speaker 1	—We didn't care about [indistinct 00:14:00]	14:01
Herman Leach	Yeah. See, nobody was talking to us about voting or our rights and we didn't have rights. We just thought things were the way they were supposed to be. We thought the police had the right to run us off the street if they wanted to. No matter whether we were breaking the law or not. I remember I married one of my classmates. Her name was Inez [indistinct 00:14:23] and she was a real shy girl. But anyway, she used to wear those pedal pushers. I believe they call them those kind of shorts—	14:01
Herman Leach	Yeah. But anyway, the sheriff told her to go home and take that off. She couldn't walk Main Street with that. White man would look at her. Yeah, that scared her. She didn't go downtown too much after that. But [indistinct 00:14:41] about time they make us come home. They'd threaten us. But then they got to the point where they realized that we weren't really afraid of them. We respected them but we weren't really afraid of them because we'd go right back where we were. And they eventually would kind of let us alone. But there was some young people who they would walk up to and just slap with a billy club and stuff, right? I think about that now sometimes because I think they kind of saw us. If they had done that to us it probably would've been the half of it. You would've had to do something.	14:31
Doris Dixon	[Indistinct 00:15:11] Jonestown?	15:07
Herman Leach	Yeah, we kind of hung pretty close together. It was about two dozen of us, boys and girls. And we Jonestown and it stayed like that. We're still Jonestown. [Indistinct 00:15:22] still there. And those guys that worked for me over there that grew up with me. So we're still together.	15:42
Stacey Scales	Was there a bad side of town? Places you couldn't go to?	15:42
Herman Leach	For the town?	15:42
Stacey Scales	Right. Old places that the mothers or parents suggested that—	15:42
Herman Leach	We didn't go to.	15:46
Stacey Scales	Right.	15:46
Herman Leach	Yeah, there were a couple joints that they told us don't go to. We didn't frequent them too much but we did peek in every while. I think Billy got into it a little more.	15:55
Speaker 1	[Indistinct 00:15:51]	15:56
Herman Leach	Huh?	15:56
Speaker 1	Young.	15:56
Herman Leach	Yeah, we were too young really but we would peep around.	15:56
Herman Leach	Yeah. We didn't get into too much stuff like the kids. It wasn't that much around then so it wasn't as bad. There were gang fights and things between other people but they didn't bother us because we were united. I mean we was just naturally like a family and we eventually broke up the little gang thing that was happening in—I'm talking about 38 to 40 years ago, you see? And they eventually started just fraternizing with us and all the communities came together. I remember [Indistinct 00:16:23] out here had a little gang and West Seven had a little gang, but when we got old enough to get out of this school and go to the high school, they all just fell in there with us and we all became Yazoo City then. So it wasn't really no bad stuff, not like it is now. We played ball all day everyday, too. Yeah, there was some Black businesses. Yeah, and you had people that had a few grocery stores. A couple of dry cleaning stores, shoe stores, that sort of stuff.	15:56
Herman Leach	As a matter of fact, I think we had more Black businesses here than we have now. See, because all down there where Verner Lee and all those people had to be and all those. Yeah. There were barber shops. I just remember Oakes but I don't remember the time when Oakes had so much power but I talked to some people now about John Oakes. He must've been a tough man. This was back in early 1900s, like 1901 and stuff like that. He had they said the biggest lumber yard in Yazoo City. A lot of those houses you see down Main Street and big old Antebellum houses, he sold them the lumber and materials to the White people on credit. They had to come to him for credit, that's how good he was.	16:49
Herman Leach	Yeah, and I'm just finding out all that stuff now but he was a powerful man. Yeah, he started the first private school here. They don't talk about it much. You know the name of it was? Manchester. It was a Black private school in 1901, started by John Oakes. But now it's—	17:32
Herman Leach	Yeah. Now Manchester's a White private school I think. Yeah, so he took that. They get everything.	17:51
Speaker 1	[Indistinct 00:17:59]	17:57
Herman Leach	Yep. But it's still basically the same but we—the only difference now was what Rudy Shields did. We see things that are happening and we see what we have to do. You see what I'm talking about? And we almost know that the key to the whole change is to vote.	17:59
Speaker 1	Rudy come to town—	18:17
Herman Leach	Hey, man.	18:17
Speaker 1	—and he used to scare the White boys.	18:17
Herman Leach	That's right.	18:17
Speaker 1	Rudy came in and they was scared of him.	18:17
Herman Leach	It shocked me to see Rudy walk up and tell the sheriff he was telling a damn lie. Man, he's supposed to got shot, or hit or something. You know what I'm talking about?	18:25
Speaker 1	Or mistreated.	18:32
Herman Leach	Yeah, mistreated. And he didn't care about him at all. He didn't respect them none. And women, they had a couple of women police. Man, he called her a dirty name down there. I know they supposed to kill him then. He downtown on Main Street, gone call this White woman a lying B. And they didn't bother him. You know, he had to know something.	18:35
Speaker 1	Found out he got—	18:52
Herman Leach	Rudy came here in '66, '65—'68.	18:54
Herman Leach	Well he come the same, a year just before that. When did you get on the police force? See, the first year that Rudy was the reason that we got to vote a Black policeman, Black every—we didn't have Black nothing before Rudy come to town.	19:00
Speaker 1	[Indistinct 00:19:13]	19:12
Herman Leach	Yep. And then Martin Luther King, that march came through [indistinct 00:19:20].	19:15
Doris Dixon	And that's when the Martin march through here—	19:15
Herman Leach	Yeah, that was the same year. Yeah, yeah. So from that time until—at least the Black people had some collateral, some power they could deal them because they were uniting, throw a boycott or something on. But we started drifting so now we trying to work on something different. It's got to be the vote. We used a boycott about two years ago. It worked. Anytime you shut that money off, you going to get some attention. We can do that. I find that the people around here seem to be asleep. But when something really happen, they'll come out. They'll come out. So yeah, this was a real low turnout this time but I expect a pretty good turnout next, in the general election. You got most of the Black candidates going to be running as Independent. And Black people are more conscious than people think they are about it.	19:25
Herman Leach	Yeah, I remember Malcolm but I didn't get much from Malcolm. Malcolm was dead before I really kind of picked up on him. But I remember when I was at Jackson State, Medgar Evers was down there. I was working with him but I really didn't know what he was doing. Nobody had really informed us about the battle, why we should be ready to vote. And Malcolm X was dead before I really got the message but I got it.	20:10
Herman Leach	Yeah, so from that point on, we've been on our own. Yeah.	20:41
Doris Dixon	So no one informed you about—	20:46
Herman Leach	Uh-uh. The schools didn't teach it. Evidently my parents didn't get too involved but I don't remember him talking too much about voting. So, we didn't really know what it was all about. I was a mature adult. Yeah, I was an adult before I really got the message about what a vote can do.	20:48
Doris Dixon	Did you know any Black history—	21:00
Herman Leach	Yeah, we did. Who's the man that raised the potato? We learned about him and one or two others. That's all they ever talked about. We did that for one week out of the year. One week out of the year.	21:05
Herman Leach	Yeah, and we had Black history week. Now they have Black history month though.	21:19
Stacey Scales	Mm-hmm.	21:19
Herman Leach	See, no, we try to instill stuff in the students now about Black history and Black culture. That's why you see so much stuff around—	21:28
Speaker 1	[Indistinct 00:21:39]	21:33
Herman Leach	Yeah. Say we catch a kid, we feel like we can get them now five, six, seven years old and raise them. They know what's happening. You can tell a difference in them, too. Yeah. Some of them been floating out over there today, trying to find out what's going on. So it's going to be different. That's the thing I know. We will never slip back into where we been in because our kids are going to be more informed. And you got some people who are determined that it won't happen and I call myself one of them.	21:40
Stacey Scales	[Indistinct 00:22:13]	22:07
Herman Leach	No.	22:17
Speaker 1	—foot on.	22:17
Herman Leach	Yeah.	22:18
Speaker 1	[Indistinct 00:22:21] then come to us.	22:18
Herman Leach	They tried something one time. They organized the NAACP in here and some guy they tell me that the name go downtown to the sheriff's office and they disrupted all that. Ran those people out of town, Black ball them, that sort of stuff. We had some plumbers that couldn't even buy pipes to work with. We had carpenters that couldn't get lumber. They wouldn't sell them none and they wouldn't let none come in. Some of them they just ran out of town.	22:20
Speaker 1	—and ran them out of town.	22:46
Herman Leach	Yeah. And like Stuart had a cleaner in his own home over there where the school is. They ran him out of town. He just got back here about two years ago. He told me he's been gone since 1940. I mean, they run them out because [indistinct 00:23:01] that's what's going to happen, we going to see them [indistinct 00:23:03]. That's what we going to see. We knew about that. Because I remember when we playing basketball—do you remember we were going to probably Greenwood and we went just before you get to Chula—	22:47
Speaker 1	[Indistinct 00:23:15]	23:13
Herman Leach	All, yeah, just like that.	23:15
Speaker 1	[Indistinct 00:23:17]	23:15
Herman Leach	They had the crows hanging all along. All along them tall trees. That what that remind me of every time I look at it.	23:17
Speaker 1	—bird.	23:22
Herman Leach	Yeah, black crows. Black crows hanging just like this. And now, how they got them up there, I don't know but they all along 49. That was keeping them to mind what they'll do.	23:23
Speaker 1	All them Blacks.	23:37
Herman Leach	We were familiar with—	23:38
Speaker 1	Black crows.	23:38
Herman Leach	Even when we heard about Emmett Till, we knew something was wrong with that but it didn't really stick in our mind because we just wrote through our mind that a White man did it. And they wrong but they did it, and that was wrong. But now, it's different. Well, you got more justice now, although we don't have what we need sometimes. But you guys know somebody will address things that happen like that. Sometimes you got to go all the way to Washington or somewhere but it gets done. So that'll keep you trying, that make you don't give up.	23:42
Herman Leach	Just like when they were running me through the hanger a couple years ago, they had all kinds of bogus charges. I mean they did some of everything. Run it through the newspaper twice a week for about a year and I eventually, I just stayed with it and then I got me a lawyer and then I started contacting some of my representatives like Bennie Thompson, Troy Smith, and they started to sponsor me. They started contacting the state audit department, wanting to know what we're doing and why we're doing it and that sort of stuff.	24:09
Herman Leach	So we eventually [indistinct 00:24:34] them off. So those things like that will make you keep going.	24:33
Stacey Scales	Did the churches play a role?	24:37
Herman Leach	The churches plays some same roles. I don't get involved as much as I should but the churches haven't changed much. They—	24:42
Herman Leach	No, you can't now. They get in all their circle and if everything's all right in their circle, they don't rock no boat. I don't care what else happening. For example, we deal with a lot of children at the—we try to teach them different right from wrong, or—but the church don't try to get [indistinct 00:25:07]. I don't know why. I said that I was going to start doing it. I've been talking to some of these young kids. We were talking about Sunday school about a couple of weeks ago, they didn't even know what I was talking about. What's Sunday school? They had never heard. They had never said the Lord's prayer. They didn't know about it so we had a guy who was coaching one of the teams so he ran them all off [indistinct 00:25:26]. That's some of the reason some of our kids don't really know the right from wrong now. The golden rule, they ain't never heard of that. They don't know it's all about do unto others as you—stuff like that.	24:50
Herman Leach	So that's the kind of stuff we got to do with our children and we trying. Because it ain't never going to go back the way it was. I don't think so. I hope not anyway.	25:31
Herman Leach	But I had if you want, I got probably some clippings here maybe around some of the stuff we used to do. I was looking at some of them a couple nights ago. Like I said, I like to kind of go back every once in a while and rehash what I did or what happened to me.	25:50
Herman Leach	We had some others help, too. There was a White boy come through here. His name was Rick Abraham. He was with Mississippi Home Coalition but we been trying to associate him with the FBI based on some of the stuff that he did. He had to have some kind of heavy bag but he stayed in here with us for a long time and there was some unsolved murders that happened and Rick, he pursued. He got it as far as the justice department but then all of a sudden he kind of faded out. Let me see, I got Rick's picture somewhere. But Rudy was instrumental in that.	26:17
Stacey Scales	Is he still around?	26:49
Herman Leach	Rick?	26:49
Stacey Scales	Rudy?	26:49
Herman Leach	No, Rudy dead. Rudy died about six years ago. Yeah.	26:49
Speaker 1	—to understand what he's saying.	27:03
Herman Leach	He had—let me see what that condition was, I forgot what that condition was that he had. But he lost control. He had muscle sclerosis. He lost control of his limbs and his muscles, and the same thing happened with his jaw muscles so he got to stammering a lot. But they weren't fair to him. When I say took off, I could point people to different boards and we had been having a big problem with the welfare department so I immediately appointed Rudy to the welfare board. He was in a wheelchair now and we had to roll him in there. But when we rolled him in the door, those bad White people, they really would be afraid. They would shake. He couldn't hardly talk but he's just fighting. I don't know what it was about Rudy.	27:06
Herman Leach	I was looking for one of my—oh yeah, this is the White boy I was telling you about, Rick. He demonstrated with us, too.	27:48
Doris Dixon	Mm-hmm.	27:54
Stacey Scales	Mm-hmm.	27:57
Herman Leach	He got right out there with us. They'd lock us up. We'd get out, they'd lock us back up. That ain't one of the person I wanted y'all to talk but he was real instrumental. His name was Joe Thomas. I had a hard time catching up with Joe. But maybe sometime at a later day we could get to talking to him. Joe was a really young person during that time, must've been about 17 year old when Rudy first come to town. But he immediately just congregated and a matter of fact his mother did, too. Rudy stayed with him the first couple weeks or so. White people were making all kinds of threats, riding by waving their guns and stuff like that but it didn't bother Rudy. He always told them he'd shoot back and I think they believed that.	27:58
Stacey Scales	Did many Blacks have to protect themselves with arms?	28:41
Herman Leach	Yeah, a couple times we had to make a break. They really never wanted no confrontation with no guns. What they wanted was to be in charge. I save electricity with that bell. What they want to do is them having the guns all the time and then they can be all kind of way.	28:48
Herman Leach	Hey, Miss Brown, how you doing? Have you a sit down there, Miss Brown. Bill, look in there and get that other.	29:05
Stacey Scales	As far as your experiences in the law of those times, where do you think emphasis should be placed on for someone trying to understand those times of Jim Crow? What would you—	29:13
Herman Leach	If somebody trying to understand it?	29:17
Stacey Scales	Yeah.	29:28
Herman Leach	I don't know how I would to make a person understand that don't know about it. I would just tell them and pull out these pictures. I can show some pictures. That why I guess I keep all my pictures and stuff around. But it would be hard for somebody to really believe and understand some of the stuff that we talked about. I remember when my mother told me about that Jim Crow deal, how they used to hang the people right up on the corner over there. And that didn't raise in my mind. I knew they would dog Black people around but they always said Black people stay in their place, so we assumed we had a place, I reckon. That's why I say we don't have much problem with them because we live over here and this was Black for the most part. And the Whites that were over here, they thought they were Black, too, though. So we didn't have much problem with them, we just stayed in our place I guess.	29:34
Herman Leach	But as I grew older and I started dealing with the system, if you want to deal with the system you got to get out of your place. You know what I'm talking about? You ain't got no special place if you in the system; you just part of the system. And that's when I started having trouble. From day one when I got out of college, I got off into education system, they wanted me to half-step there. They actually wanted me to half teach children, and I knew how to teach what I knew. So I was doing that and I kind of got shuffled around until I went to Saint Francis. When I taught at Saint Francis, I didn't know about all in one class. We had a lot of people come out of that maybe four or five doctors, couple professionals in the football feild, Congressmen, stuff like that. But Saint Francis was like that so that was different.	30:19
Herman Leach	Then I went to the highway department, it was the same thing. Like I told you when I started trying to buy the Black same type houses I was giving the Whites, they didn't want to do that. I just happened to walk up on a conversation one day and one White guy was discussing with another employee of the highway department. I had made an offer based on comparable that I had found, and he didn't like the price that I offered. He told the guy, he said, "He didn't offer me enough for my house. I can't even buy a nigger house for this much." I, what's a nigger house, you know? But he talking about this cheap shack. He figure that I think he ought to be able to buy $1,000 house and be gone.	31:00
Herman Leach	But anyway, I insist on Black people getting $35,000, $40,000 houses, just like everybody else was doing. Gotta fight. They made me quit. They tricked me into it saying they had another job. I was going to be working for the federal highway administration where I'd be supervising the state, that's what they sold me. So I had to resign from this job to take the job, and in the meantime when I resigned from this job, that job didn't pan out so I got left then and then I got off into politics. And it's the same thing except now I'm supervisor. I got a little more [indistinct 00:31:07]. Yeah.	31:33

Item Info

Title:

Herman Leach interview recording, 1995 August 08

Date:

August 8, 1995

Creator:

Leach, Herman

Contributor:

Dixon, Doris

Description:

Name: Herman Leach; Date of birth: 1937-03-15; Place of birth: Yazoo City, MS; Occupation(s): politician; educator; teacher; Residence: Yazoo City, MS
Informant ID: 1146; Interviewed by: Doris Dixon.

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Location:

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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:

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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-0758
64120aa5-09fb-4cff-b6ef-fa168d2c09e1
behindtheveil
552ce265-d4c6-40f8-8f29-82134b346463
ark:/87924/r4dr31j03
552ce265-d4c6-40f8-8f29-82134b346463

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Herman Leach interview recording, 1995 August 08

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1. Herman Leach administrative file, 1995

John Hope Franklin Research Center

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Herman Leach interview recording, 1995 August 08

Transcript

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John Hope Franklin Research Center

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