Elwood Williams interview recording, 1995 August 03

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Kisha Turner	—stating your full name and when you were born.	0:02
Elwood Williams	Elwood L. Williams. I was born in 1942 in Elizabeth City, North Carolina.	0:06
Kisha Turner	When did you come to Norfolk?	0:16
Elwood Williams	I came to Norfolk in 1971.	0:18
Kisha Turner	How many places did you live in between Elizabeth and Norfolk?	0:25
Elwood Williams	I lived one other place, in Rich Square, North Carolina.	0:29
Kisha Turner	How do you spell that?	0:34
Elwood Williams	R-I-C-H, and then it's S-Q-U-A-R-E.	0:35
Kisha Turner	Okay.	0:40
Elwood Williams	North Carolina.	0:41
Kisha Turner	When did you move to Rich Square?	0:44
Elwood Williams	In 1964.	0:46
Kisha Turner	Okay. What was Elizabeth like in your childhood?	0:49
Elwood Williams	Segregation was the same, but it wasn't real hardcore. The Jim Crow that you experienced in the deeper South, at least it was a kind of covert type of thing. There weren't many job opportunities there. Most of them, the Blacks worked at the lumber mill, males. And the females, most of the women that I knew were domestic workers, like my mother. They worked long hours for small wages. When I graduated from college in 1964, my mother was working 12 hours a day as a domestic worker, making $18 a week. And the families that she worked for, in that time, thought they liked her because they treated her good. We never owned a car, our family never owned a car. They would come pick her up and they would make sure she got there because she would have to walk back home [indistinct 00:02:26] to get back home.	0:54
Elwood Williams	So in the olden days, she would [indistinct 00:02:31] to start to work on time. So if you look at it now, she saving daycare money, she provided for the whole family and their families were able to prosper by depriving our family. So as I grew up and looked back over the struggles and sacrifices that were made, I'm kind of bitter about the things she had to endure during those times.	2:29
Kisha Turner	What kind of work did your father do?	3:02
Elwood Williams	My father was a minister and a carpenter. He was a multi-talented person. He was a barber. He did everything. We'd go to barbershop and [indistinct 00:03:29] our own haircut, he cut our hair. He grew the family good. He was a great repair person. He could build a house from the ground up and he only had a 5th grade education. So I think that he was kind of a genius.	3:04
Kisha Turner	Did he build the house that you all lived in?	3:49
Elwood Williams	He built the house that we lived in and he built most of the houses in that community, on our street, I remember. It seemed it would take him a whole year to build a house. You can build a house in three months, but he built it from the ground up. He did everything. Now you have specialists, but he did everything. He could read blueprints and his 5th grade education was the highest that he had. I think that most of the Black men and women during the times that I grew up had skills. One of the things that impressed me most about people from the neighborhood where I grew up, it was not the things that people did, the type of skills that they had, but it was the sacrifices that they would make for the welfare of their children.	3:50
Elwood Williams	We were very fortunate because our house was right over Elizabeth City State University campus and that kind of exposed us to people who were hard workers, college professors. It exposed us to guys who were coming to school and they were good athletes. But during that time, Blacks had had an aspiration of going to pro, and they used their athletic ability to get a scholarship and to finish college to get an education. But now the roles are reversed. Kids use talent, to go pro is their first goal.	4:43
Elwood Williams	Over those years, you see some of those same guys that would be a water boy for the football team, they come back there as doctors, lawyers and school principals. So it kind of shaped my life. Of course, at that time, Elizabeth City was a small school. Very small school, a small school and they were small schools. And it was a teachers college. But first it was called State Normal School and the normal was that they only took normal Black kids. So then it went to State Normal School to State Teachers College, and from State Teachers College to Elizabeth City State University.	5:28
Elwood Williams	But they had a few people and then we were the guinea pigs for—They only did elementary education teachers. I think in 1960, they changed to secondary majors, but up until 1960, they trained elementary teachers. So we came in contact with a lot of male elementary school teachers, something that's rare today, because most of the Black schools in North Carolina, they got Winston-Salem State, Fayetteville State, all those schools produce Black teachers and so you came up for a lot of Black male elementary teachers.	6:11
Kisha Turner	How much education did your mother receive?	6:47
Elwood Williams	My mother received a 7th grade education.	6:50
Kisha Turner	Both of your parents put a high premium on education for children?	6:53
Elwood Williams	Right. They put a high premium on education for the children, but I think that the thing that motivated me was the fact that they didn't have the money to send us, but they saw the opportunity because the school was so close to us. And the only way we got through school is my brothers and I became good athletes because we used to practice with the teams and just hanging around, being a waterboy, we did all the exercises, went through all the drills, so by the time we got to high school, all of us were exceptional athletes and all of us got football scholarships to college. If we had lived on the other side of town, that opportunity might not have been available.	6:55
Elwood Williams	But during the summers when the kids were at summer school, they used to recruit us for the guinea pigs, the kids in the neighborhood, we would be in the drama, and they would teach us how to read and stuff like that, because that's what they had people that went out. So it wasn't any summer schools during that time, so they had to go out and find their own guinea pigs. So we benefited a lot from that experience and we went on to become good students and good athletes, and then because we had that universal exposure.	7:48
Elwood Williams	But I think that from my perspective, one of the things that really helped me in my life was the time that I was newspaper carrier. So I got to visit all of the houses in different neighborhoods. So each neighborhood had different atmospheres. Drugs weren't popular during the time that I grew up, but the bootlegger houses were. I would go to certain houses and people would not let you in. But I had one old lady on the route and she would tell me about bootlegger houses and not to go to those houses. She said that older women would try to get you to come in and go to bed with them and she said if they come to the door in a nightgown, you just tell them you'll come back later. So you kind of got that training from people and they were very sincere about helping you.	8:22
Elwood Williams	I think that now those kind of things are missing out of the Black communities because we don't have a sense of community anymore. We were always taught that you got to work harder than a White person because ever if you're better, he's going to end up with the job anyway, but you never give up, you always keep trying and if you work hard, something good will happen. But if you don't work hard, you got to take care of your reputation, make sure that you got a good reputation, you got a good attitude, so that people will be willing to work with you. I think that those are older people with a strong philosophy of survival that they inherited from their parents and grandparents will kind of hand it down to their children. And today, kids are kind of helpless because they can't do anything.	9:25
Elwood Williams	But one of my brothers who is a Director of Admissions at Delaware State, he was interested in the carpentry part of my father. Now he can build houses, he can do anything because he learned it from my father. But he had opportunity to go to college and he had a good job. He would never use those skills, so he does things for the [indistinct 00:10:49]. I was never interested in carpentry and I wasn't really interested in the ministry, but I was just interested in the sacrifices that he made and how he kept going and never complaining and how he got around and built these houses and never owned a car. But he bummed ride with people and most of the times, he rode a bicycle, all his tools on it. But it was the sacrifices that he made for the welfare of the family. Those were the things that left an indelible impression on me.	10:31
Elwood Williams	I think that most of the people that I grew up with were poor people. But they had a sense of pride, a sense of survival. They had [indistinct 00:11:45] church. They had those strong spiritual connections and those were the glue, I think, that held families and communities together. Now kids don't get those exposures, because kids still go to church, but during that time when I grew up, the church was one of the few things you could go to on Sundays. Now you have all these other things that parents have to compete with and parents have to work on Sundays and all these kind of things. So the church has kind taken a back seat as far as embracing the whole communities or part of it.	11:31
Kisha Turner	How many brothers and sisters do you have?	12:24
Elwood Williams	I have four brothers and two sisters.	12:26
Kisha Turner	Did everyone go to school?	12:28
Elwood Williams	All but my youngest sister and she had a physical handicap that would not allow her to go.	12:30
Kisha Turner	How about your pre-college education?	12:37
Elwood Williams	Okay.	12:41
Kisha Turner	You had someone on—	12:41
Elwood Williams	We had, I think, a good elementary school and high school. We didn't have a middle school, but we went from elementary school to high school.	12:47
Kisha Turner	What were the names of the schools you attended?	12:59
Elwood Williams	We went to H.L. Trigg Elementary School.	13:00
Kisha Turner	How do you spell it?	13:03
Elwood Williams	H-L, T-R-I-G-G.	13:03
Kisha Turner	Okay.	13:08
Elwood Williams	He was a Black educator in North Carolina. And I went to P.W. Moore High School. He was also a Black educator. Then I went to Elizabeth City State University. Then I went to Appalachian State University.	13:08
Kisha Turner	How'd you get the name Coach?	13:36
Elwood Williams	Well, I got the name Coach because I coached in Rich Square, North Carolina for six years. When I came to Norfolk, this is my first big city experience and I kind of got here by accident, I only came 15 months, I been here 25 years. But anyway, I knew that coaches always had things the kids wanted. So I insisted they call me Coach. So that was by design and now it just stuck and I think by me being called Coach, it enabled me to have a successful career and just worked, because kids gravitate to coaches.	13:39
Elwood Williams	And before the SAT scores became dominant, I used to recruit kids for colleges. I don't care if they were benchwarmers or what, but I was trying to recruit kids to send them anywhere, just to give them an opportunity to go to college. I was very successful, but when the SAT scores started dominating, you couldn't find too many people who could get in. So just by going around and doing that, Coach, that was part of it was (phone rings) [INTERRUPTION 00:14:58]	14:24
Kisha Turner	What area of Elizabeth City did you live in?	15:02
Elwood Williams	I lived—God, I'm glad you asked me that because I think this is a vital part.	15:12
Kisha Turner	Okay.	15:12
Elwood Williams	Okay, I lived in an area, they call it Poorhouse Lane.	15:18
Kisha Turner	Poorhouse Lane.	15:22
Elwood Williams	Okay.	15:24
Kisha Turner	Okay.	15:27
Elwood Williams	I'm glad you brought it up because out of my back door was Elizabeth City State University. Out of our front door, there was a poorhouse called the County Poorhouse. They sent all of the people there who couldn't take care of themselves. That was the only place in Elizabeth City that was integrated, was the poorhouse. They had all these people there and one of the first jails in North Carolina, it still sits there in Elizabeth City, where the poorhouse was.	15:28
Elwood Williams	That's where they locked up the people who were—I guess now you call it Alzheimer's but the people who used to fight and run away, they put them in the jailhouse. The treatment there was kind of cruel and I don't think the people who ran the poorhouse had any formal training in handling people. So we saw that and parents used to always say, "Well, this is what you don't want to be. You don't want to end up in a poorhouse. But if you walk out the back door, you have an opportunity to make a decent household we want you to know."	16:16
Elwood Williams	But by seeing that poorhouse and seeing how the people were treated, I think it was motivation for all of us to stay out of the poorhouse. So they called that area Poorhouse Lane. But the kids who lived on Poorhouse Lane or in Poorhouse neighborhood, most of those kids went on to become successful because the college was right there.	16:59
Kisha Turner	So they had a lot of outreach in the college, right?	17:25
Elwood Williams	In the college, yeah.	17:34
Kisha Turner	A lot of interaction.	17:37
Elwood Williams	Lot of interaction. And those teachers back in college then, they weren't as stiff-shirted and as sophisticated as these professors are now. They came out of the community to help people and they knew the families and they encouraged people to send their kids to college. That paid off and now it's a total different atmosphere. But between the poorhouse and Elizabeth City State University, we kind of [indistinct 00:18:08]. So those kind of things kind of shaped our life and we always had to work. Between carrying newspapers, cleaning at the bowling alley in the morning and carrying the evening paper, those all the things what I did in high school. And I still played all sports, football, basketball and baseball. And parents gave you the opportunity to participate, but they also said that if you wanted to do this, you have to work.	17:39
Kisha Turner	Okay.	18:37
Elwood Williams	During the summer, the available job in Elizabeth City, and this is what a lot of people don't know, is that they had potato farms. Most of the kids worked in the potato fields and you made six cent a bag, a 100-pound bag, fill a 100-pound bag up, you get six cents per bag. So that means that you had to fill up 100 bags to make $6 a day. So my brothers and I used to work in the area and it took three of us to pick 100 bags a day and that was a lot of work. So at the end of the week, you had $30. And this day stretched from about 4:00 in the morning until about 5:00 in the evening. Working consistently, days like hot like today, no shade, you had one break for lunch and you had two water breaks, all that day.	18:47
Elwood Williams	Those things were kind of motivation because it exposed you to the work ethic and most of all, you say, "Well, I don't want to be doing this the rest of my life." So you had something to compare with. But now kids don't have to work and kids are so fragile today because everything is given and they think that life is going to always be like that.	19:42
Kisha Turner	When you went to school, your elementary and high school, I guess, elementary, middle and high school, did you walk to school or were there buses provided?	20:07
Elwood Williams	Oh no, wasn't buses. When I tell people that I spent—I was 21 when I left home. But 21 years, my education was in less than a mile radius because elementary school was right across the street from the college. The high school was about half a mile from the college. So for 21 years of my life, that was where I circulated.	20:24
Kisha Turner	Right in this—	20:43
Elwood Williams	Right in the same area. And the kids who lived farther from the college and the school had to walk to school. I think in about 1960, my senior year in high school, they had the first busing program for Blacks in Elizabeth City, where the Whites were already [indistinct 00:21:05]	20:56
Kisha Turner	Do you remember the kind of movement or the struggle that led to the buses in that area or hearing about it? Was it an issue that you remember?	21:05
Elwood Williams	Well, it never became an issue. I think the only time that Elizabeth City had any racial things, and when the cap really came off, was during the sit-down demonstration by the college students in North Carolina and it spreaded all across the state, all the colleges got involved. Well, during that time, my brother was highly active and outspoken and that was the first time that we felt some opposition from the same people that my mother worked for.	21:18
Elwood Williams	So that was the first time that we felt any pressure from White people and in fact, one of the families that my mother worked for, we taught one of their sons how to play football, baseball and now, he one of the bigger Klansmen in North Carolina, due to the fact, this guy, because we kind of lived right across the street from his family. And he used to come sleep in our bed and with us, and play sports and then he's the biggest Klansman in North Carolina. In Elizabeth City. He started the Klan, he's the spokesperson, what do they call it? The Wizard or whatever they call it, in Elizabeth City.	21:52
Kisha Turner	Grand Dragon.	22:41
Elwood Williams	Whatever he is, he's the top guy.	22:41
Kisha Turner	Wow. Okay. Do you remember learning about Black people in school? Or any kind of African American history?	22:51
Elwood Williams	I remember learning about Booker T. Washington, George Washington Carver and Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman. Those were the people that we were exposed to. But Black history just happens to be one of my hobbies, so I learn some Black history now, so I know a lot of things about Black history, but it was in the book. You only found maybe one paragraph or something about it, but these were the pictures that you saw up and they didn't really expound on the contributions that Blacks have made. And you just have that one day only for Black history.	22:58
Kisha Turner	Did Elizabeth City have a policy of just non-compliance with the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education? So when was it that they finally started to—	23:45
Elwood Williams	I think Elizabeth City schools integrated in—probably about 1970.	23:57
Kisha Turner	Okay. All right.	23:57
Elwood Williams	Yeah.	23:57
Kisha Turner	What about the issue of voting?	23:57
Elwood Williams	Well, the issue of voting, they had, I call them the literacy clause where you had to go down, you had to read something and then they would ask you stupid questions, and I don't think either one of my parents ever voted.	23:57
Kisha Turner	Okay.	23:57
Elwood Williams	Because they could never get past the literacy thing. Then I can remember that we used to have prayer meetings, and you're too young to remember this, but instead of having prayer meetings in the churches, they had them in different houses because they didn't want them to make a fire. You remember the old stories, they'd go to the church and make a fire, blowing the church up and all this. Instead of doing that, they would have the prayer meetings at different houses. Excuse me. So they used to meet, and our house was one of the prayer meeting sites and my brothers and I used to sit on the stairs and we would [indistinct 00:25:54] as people testified and all this kind of stuff. This too had big part of my life. I didn't know until [indistinct 00:25:54] really had a big part of my life.	25:54
Elwood Williams	And you used to hear [indistinct 00:25:54] say how the White folks loved them and then how they couldn't vote and some things they would do to you. They would tell it, kind of, a fancy way. Some of them will say, "Well, it's not stealing, but sometimes I bring a little food home. Then sometimes I bring a little clothes home." So they were doing things, and then they were bringing books home so their children could read. So although they couldn't vote, read and stuff like that, I think that some of the things that they learned White people did, they brought it back to their own families. Then you could hear some of them had asked that, they were really trusted and they would be talking about, "How can they treat us so bad and hate us, but we're doing everything. They trust us with their children, we cook their food, we know their business, but yet, they hate us" So those were the kind of things that we used to listen to on the steps.	25:54
Elwood Williams	But one of the things that impressed me about the prayer meeting is that I rarely ever heard any of those women and men pray for themselves when they started praying and testifying. They would always pray for the children. "Lord help my children to do this. And I know they're weak and I know they're—[indistinct 00:27:12] your help." I was left dead almost with pneumonia at nine years old. The doctor, he had given up. So my mother, her prayer, she used to always pray for me because she thought I was the weak link in the family.	26:39
Elwood Williams	And then I was a very quiet kid, so she didn't want me to have [indistinct 00:27:24] exposures. I think by going over to the college and doing the exercise, going to different athletic teams and running and jumping and stuff, I became strong. I had played football almost a whole year before she knew I was even on the team. She thought I was so fragile, but it was a point that with the sacrifices that they made for the families, they always prayed for their kids. Their children were the top priority.	27:15
Elwood Williams	Then I look at some of these kids and the parents that's [indistinct 00:27:56]. That's why I'm so committed to teaching young people because the whole community that I grew up in was committed to my success [indistinct 00:28:07] my son and most of the kids in the area, in the Poorhouse Lane. There was something about Poorhouse Lane, it had a mystique to it. When we used to go to school, everybody said, "Are you the guy from the Poorhouse Lane?" And it was kind of fun. In fact, the street that I lived on was called Poorhouse Lane. That was the street that was called Poorhouse Lane. It was called the Poorhouse [indistinct 00:28:30]. But the whole community was called Poorhouse Lane.	27:51
Kisha Turner	Were there areas of Elizabeth City you remember your parents or adults telling you not to go?	28:36
Elwood Williams	Oh yes. Sawyertown and Pennsylvania. At that time, Pennsylvania was so bad, they used to call it Hell's Half Acre.	28:42
Kisha Turner	Hell's Half an Acre?	28:50
Elwood Williams	Yeah. I don't know how they came up with that. Right now, those communities are still bad in Elizabeth City.	28:51
Kisha Turner	It's called Sawyer?	28:53
Elwood Williams	Sawyertown.	28:53
Kisha Turner	Sawyertown.	28:53
Elwood Williams	Sawyer's Town and Pennsylvania.	29:12
Kisha Turner	Okay.	29:12
Elwood Williams	Like Berkeley Avenue divides, come down one side of the street, the neighborhood was Sawyertown and the other side was Pennsylvania. As you come into Elizabeth City from 17, when you get to [indistinct 00:29:17] the first parts of the city that you pass through would be Sawyertown or Pennsylvania.	29:12
Kisha Turner	Okay. When you traveled—I'm sorry.	29:26
Elwood Williams	Go ahead. No, you go ahead.	29:28
Kisha Turner	When you traveled around town, the buses were also segregated?	29:29
Elwood Williams	Yeah, you had to sit in the back of the bus.	29:36
Kisha Turner	Now were these buses, did they have two entrances or did you have to enter in and out of one door?	29:37
Elwood Williams	Well, you had to enter in one door, but you went to the back of the bus. But the bus system didn't last that long in Elizabeth City. Even now they don't have buses, you know, public transportation. They just have little taxis to get around. Then when I went to Rich Square, I think I saw more discrimination in the '60s in Rich Square than I ever saw in Elizabeth City.	29:42
Kisha Turner	Where is Rich Square?	30:18
Elwood Williams	Rich Square is about 80 miles to Norfolk. It's on Highway 258. It was a small town, mostly farmers. When I went there in 1964, Gone With the Wind was its movie [indistinct 00:30:36] I mean, I thought I was in a different world.	30:19
Kisha Turner	What took you to Rich Square?	30:39
Elwood Williams	Well, both of my parents were heart patients. I was seeking a job close to home and I had passed up a couple jobs. Then one day, one of my friends came by and told me that he knew the school needed a football coach. I said, "Okay." I said, "How do I—" He said, "Come on, son, I'm going to take you down there now." I said, "Let me go get dressed." He said, "No, [indistinct 00:31:01] come as you are." Anyway, we went down there to interview for this job, and during that time, you didn't have to go through the school board. The principal did the hiring. This was one of the good things about when schools were all Black, the Black principal was the man in the town, so he did the hiring.	30:44
Elwood Williams	So this man was out on a tractor plowing. This where I had my first interview for this job in Rich Square. And this name is a famous name in North Carolina education. The guy's name is W.S. Creecy, was the principal. And the guy that took me was a long-time friend of a friend who also lived in [indistinct 00:31:51] He was a football coach and a teacher in Winton. Winton's about 20 miles from Rich Square. So when we got there, Mr. Creecy did the plowing and everything. Mr. Creecy said, "[indistinct 00:32:10] a coach." He said, "Well, Cooper, is he any good?" He said, "Yes, he good." "Do you know his family?" He said, "Yes, all of grew up in the neighborhood." He said, "Okay, that's all I need." And he told me when to come to work.	31:27
Elwood Williams	Okay, but he told me to come to work the last week in August. Now we had to play the football game the first week in September. And I said, "You sure you want me to come the last week in August?" He said, "Yes." Said, "We got a game during that first week in September." I said, "This don't make sense." Because I played football all my life. I knew about when practice started. He said, "Well, most of the boys you playing with, they go away during the summer." And they would go away and work in Wildwood, New Jersey, where most of the kids in Rich Square would go for the summer. So the kids were all in Wildwood. A few were in Atlantic City. I said, "Okay, Mr. Creecy." And he said, "Well, I'm going to send you stuff in the mail." I said, "Don't worry about it."	31:37
Elwood Williams	So he took out his old farmer pad, wrote my address down. In a couple days, I got his contract. I signed it. August 15th, I showed up in Rich Square. And I told him, I showed up and after I was getting these guys together and he said, "Well, [indistinct 00:33:38] have anybody." I said, "If I only have one, we going to practice." In the meantime, I started practicing and some of the guys who were left there, they started coming out and then our regular guys who on the team last year, and so they kind of came in. And the first game, we got beat something like 52 to nothing. But anyway, we went on to win three games the first year. But it was a different culture and nobody took sports serious. It was just something to do. And the year that I got there, the schools were closed in September and October for Black kids.	33:18
Kisha Turner	Because they had to work?	34:28
Elwood Williams	They had to harvest and they had to pick the cotton and the peanuts. When the White schools were open, they still had to play football schedule. So the guys would go to work in the fields all day, come to football practice at night and we played our schedule. Then in the movie, the Whites sat downstairs and the Blacks sit upstairs. If something funny came on and if the Black laughed first, the White, they would put them out for [indistinct 00:35:05] That was in '64.	34:41
Kisha Turner	Wow.	35:04
Elwood Williams	I mean, [indistinct 00:35:05] Most of the old people had great fears of White people. They really came down hard on Black people and by those people being sharecroppers, they depended on White people for their livelihood and the sharecroppers were always cheated and [indistinct 00:35:38] You never would have made a profit, although you had got money at the end, you never really made a profit because you were cheated out of so much. But one thing that I can say about Rich Square, about those students there, they were highly motivated to go to college. Most of them went on to college and a lot of them are doing well. But now the area is just as contaminated with drugs, other social problems as a big city because the farm has died out. People have to commute a long ways to work. So the drug industry there in these small towns, it have become the major industry.	35:10
Kisha Turner	Were your parents from Elizabeth City?	36:15
Elwood Williams	My mother was from Elizabeth City. But my father's from a little place called Scranton, North Carolina.	36:19
Kisha Turner	Did they ever tell you about their childhoods?	36:25
Elwood Williams	Yeah. My mother talked about her childhood the most. The only thing that my father ever talked about was hard work, follow the rules, behave yourself and don't get in any trouble [indistinct 00:36:48] the White folk [indistinct 00:36:49] That was basically the message. He was very stern. But I think that my mother was a soft-spoken person. But she was the philosopher and really the glue that held the family together. She talked often about her childhood. She would always say, "I had it good. I worked in White folk kitchen."	36:29
Elwood Williams	But when she grew up, she worked in the fields. She worked hard and it's back-breaking labor and she thought she had it good now because she worked in the White folk kitchen. And she say, "I know the White folks love me. I'm working in the house." That was a thing. I talk about the potato fields earlier, but if you worked out in the field, you're a nobody. But if you got a job working in a potato grader where they check all the bad potatoes and bag up the good potatoes, that was almost like going to Harvard. I mean, you working in potato grader.	37:12
Elwood Williams	So they looked at that as being progress. But they always said, "I don't want you to work in White folks' kitchen. Y'all going over there and you going to college." State Teachers College is what they'd call it. So their childhoods were very painful. My mother had 11 brothers and sisters. My father is four [indistinct 00:38:26] But all of them had painful childhoods. Because of the fact, my mother used to always talk about how some of her brothers and sisters died early in life and that was because lack of medical treatment and some of them had worked themselves to death. My mother died young, it was 66 [indistinct 00:38:44] But she died of a heart attack and she just worked herself to death.	37:12
Elwood Williams	My father was 70 when he died and he had worked himself to death. I mean, he was old-looking, broken people when he died. Now I'm closer to my—Well, 12 years, 14 years [indistinct 00:39:06] I'll be 66, same age as my mother when she died. And I don't feel tired or worn out like she was. So when she died, it was kind of peaceful to me because I know that finally she could rest. They never stopped working. She has blood pressure problems and she used to have severe nose bleeds and I used to see her bleed—A wash pan, you don't know anything about wash pans?	38:31
Kisha Turner	Sure.	39:36
Elwood Williams	Full of blood and get up the next morning and go to work like none of it happened. And those are the things that really motivated me to keep going and keep giving. Then they talked about determination and using what you have to get over, and talking about their parents. They kind of learned the skills they grew up with from their parents. My mother was a great cook. She knew how to cook because her job with all her brothers and sisters, she did most of the cooking for the family when they were out in the field and doing [indistinct 00:40:15] thing. My grandfather on my mother's side, he was a root doctor.	39:38
Kisha Turner	Oh.	40:26
Elwood Williams	A root doctor [indistinct 00:40:27] what they called him. But this guy was a medical genius. He was the only one in the family that we could never remember working. But he used to go to a place called Ivor, Virginia. God, Ivor—Zuni, that's what it is.	40:27
Kisha Turner	How you spell it?	40:30
Elwood Williams	Z-U—	40:30
Kisha Turner	Z-U-N-I.	40:30
Elwood Williams	Z-U-N-I.	40:30
Kisha Turner	I've seen—	40:30
Elwood Williams	Okay, well, this where he used to go. He used to take his little black bag and all these White people used to come to the house and they called him Dr. Nixon. Well, we had a cousin. In fact, she went to [indistinct 00:41:07] Central. And she died a few years ago of an aneurysm at age 37. She had a real bad skin disease and none of the doctors in Elizabeth City could do anything about it. But the day she died, her face was looking smooth as an apple and I don't know what my grandfather did, but he was the one that cured it. She never had any problems after he treated her. And he always had money. He wore the white shirt. They actually called Dr. Nixon.	40:49
Kisha Turner	Dr. Nixon?	41:21
Elwood Williams	Yeah. This is my mother's side.	41:24
Kisha Turner	Oh, okay.	41:24
Elwood Williams	They called him Dr. Nixon. I don't know what his formal education was. It couldn't have been much, but he just knew how to use the herbs and spices or whatever to cure people. He was the only one in my family that I can't remember working. So then when I met my wife, first she was telling she's from Suffolk. She talk about they have [indistinct 00:42:07] Ivor.	41:24
Kisha Turner	Oh, okay.	41:51
Elwood Williams	I said, "That's where my grandfather used to go to get the roots." And I can't say how he got down there during that time because it's so far in the country. You go off of a little back side—You go off 460 and once you get off and start to go back in the woods, the houses are three days apart back there. It's [indistinct 00:42:26] But that's where he went. But he was also very smart.	42:22
Kisha Turner	What—	42:32
Elwood Williams	No, you go ahead.	42:32
Kisha Turner	No, I want you to finish.	42:32
Elwood Williams	No, no. Okay. I think he was very smart, but he didn't have any visible job or [indistinct 00:42:49] My father was very smart. My mother was a philosopher and she was smart. So when I look now at the children, most of us are smart. We have different talents, but whatever we've done, we have been highly successful in this and we when you narrow it down, and if you would talk to the people in Delaware, they would say that my brother Jethro, he's Director of Admission, works too hard. He works too hard. You talk about people in Norfolk, I believe [indistinct 00:43:24] say, "Coach works too hard." Talking about my brother in New York, now he doesn't work too hard because I think he has my grandfather's—And he's the oldest one so he knew more about my grandfather. So he kind of has his personality and he like to dress up and he have a job, but he not going to do any extra time.	42:43
Kisha Turner	Oh, okay.	43:50
Elwood Williams	And my sister has a work ethic. My younger brother died at 35 of a massive heart attack and he was a football coach at Smyrna High School in Smyrna, Delaware. But he had a work ethic. So I think that the things that we grew up on we kind of pulled from it. Dominant thing in our family was the work ethic, was the dominant thing.	43:54
Kisha Turner	When you were sick as a child and when your mother was sick, was there a doctor? Was there a Black doctor in town that you went to by any chance?	44:20
Elwood Williams	Well, yes. Well, let me go back to the midwife. None of us were born in the hospital. All of us were born at home and you had a midwife. And the same lady delivered all the children in the Poorhouse Lane. Her name was Ms. Watson. I never knew her first name. But when we were sick, the only time that I was ever sick was when I had the pneumonia and almost died. We had about one Black doctor in town, name of Dr. Jones. He treated almost everybody. But usually if you got a cold or some little minor stuff, your parents treated you. When you had a cold, you had sassafras tea, something, things you don't know about.	44:21
Kisha Turner	Okay.	44:21
Elwood Williams	You ever heard of sassafras tea?	44:21
Kisha Turner	Yeah.	44:21
Elwood Williams	They even had stuff called salve. This lady used to come by, we called her the Watkins lady. She sold Watkins product. And the big tin of green stuff, we called salve. No matter what you had, you rubbed on the salve and you ate the salve, you swallowed it.	44:21
Kisha Turner	What is it?	44:21
Elwood Williams	It's called S-A-L-V-E. Salve.	44:21
Kisha Turner	Oh, yeah.	44:21
Elwood Williams	No matter what you had, that's what [indistinct 00:45:43] that green can. And the kids were healthy. I can't ever remember anybody—During that time, kids just didn't go to the doctor. They didn't go to the hospitals. They were healthier. On one side of the family, they had 23 children and it's one family. They were healthy and then we had, let me see, six of us. On the next house on the other side, it was 10 of them. So within three houses, you had almost 60 kids. But it was that camaraderie in the house and then after studying dysfunctional families and all that kind of stuff, the house [indistinct 00:46:41] they had 23 kids, most of those kids ended up in jail. Maybe today just became dysfunctional people.	46:30

Elwood Williams	Have happened in my life, happened to me about two months ago in Seattle, Washington. We had our national conference there. And this particular day, I walked out to this little mall, and these guys were on the street, they were singing and people [indistinct 00:00:24] cup. So one of them kept watching me. So he would look at me. Then, I would look at him. I said, "Well, I don't know what the guy will do," so I felt I better move on.	0:02
Elwood Williams	So I walked on to try to get lost in the crowd. I thought I had lost him. And this guy came, he grabbed me from behind and called my name and he called me Ren. That's what they used the call me in Elizabeth City because my middle name is Lorenzo.	0:26
Kisha Turner	Okay.	0:36
Elwood Williams	And so it was one of those 22 kids and they could sing and all of them had a great musical talent. And he was singing Sam Cooke songs in the street. And he told me he just goes from city to city singing as a street person. And he just said, he's never been able to piece a life together.	0:48
Elwood Williams	So then I started asking about the rest of his family. Some of his brothers are dead. Some of them are sitting in prison. Some of the sisters are dead and they're just a family that never pieced it together. And out of all those 22 children, they have one lawyer out of the family, a very prominent lawyer in Suffolk, a guy name Harold Bonds that's doing doing very well. And just to see somebody 35 years from the past and he recognized me but I would have never recognized him.	1:06
Kisha Turner	Sorry, I just saw someone.	1:23
Elwood Williams	Do you remember his name?	1:23
Kisha Turner	I don't remember his name. I really don't.	1:41
Elwood Williams	It might have been Levi.	1:43
Kisha Turner	He wore like a top hat?	1:44
Elwood Williams	No, this guy didn't—	1:46
Kisha Turner	He wore like a [indistinct 00:01:50] well, he didn't [indistinct 00:01:51]. He had like a [indistinct 00:01:52]. He was just singing. I can't remember his name, though, but he told me he was from North Carolina and he had been in Philly and all over just singing.	1:52
Elwood Williams	It might have been Levi. Real dark skinned?	1:57
Kisha Turner	Uh-huh.	1:57
Elwood Williams	It could have been Levi, but he said he goes from city to city.	1:57
Kisha Turner	Yeah. Anyway. Okay. How about any other Black businesses that you remember in Elizabeth City—	2:08
Elwood Williams	Well—	2:11
Kisha Turner	— or Black business people?	2:15
Elwood Williams	Well, the barbers, the barber shop and the beauty parlors and the funeral homes were most of the Black owned businesses during that time. And my brother that's in Delaware, he had one of the few places. He owned this business, it was— Do you remember Happy Days, with Fonzie, where you know that little thing they used to go to, Arnold's? Well, my brother owned a little thing just like Arnold's, it was a shoeshine parlor and it was a place where all the kids came after school. And he was kind of like a leader.	2:16
Elwood Williams	And so he owned that. He always dreamed of owning businesses, but after that, he just got his education and he never got back to it. But the taxis, you have taxis, the barbershops, the funeral homes, the beauty parlors, those were mainly the only businesses, and you found a few independent carpenters and bricklayers and things, but as far as owning companies, there weren't too many of those around.	2:52
Kisha Turner	And finally, I just wanted to ask you one thing. You said your father was a minister.	3:15
Elwood Williams	[indistinct 00:03:29].	3:28
Kisha Turner	Could you show me a little more about church and what church you grew up in?	3:29
Elwood Williams	I grew up in St. James Baptist Church in Elizabeth City, North Carolina, and it's located right in front of where the poorhouse is.	3:33
Kisha Turner	Were your parents very active in the church?	3:43
Elwood Williams	My parents were very active in church. In fact, I go around the country doing motivational speeches.	3:45
Kisha Turner	Really?	3:45
Elwood Williams	And most of my sermons— not sermons, but most of my speeches are about church type stuff. And I just take different Bible stories that I learned in church [indistinct 00:04:05] my father preached and tie them together to bring them to today's problems.	3:56
Elwood Williams	One of my favorite thing's the prodigal son. And we used to think that that's the only sermon my father could preach was the prodigal son. But then when you look back [indistinct 00:04:24] prodigal son [indistinct 00:04:26] the value system. And then, when the son left home, I think the moral of the story was that to bring him back and [indistinct 00:04:35] he survived in the values that he learned at home, the work ethic, being honest, never be ashamed to do a job as long as it's honest.	4:06
Elwood Williams	The kids today have the same mentality as the prodigal son, they're greedy, they want it all right now, but the only difference, they don't leave home. But those who leave home, they don't come back as the prodigal son did. They come back in body bags and stuff like that.	4:38
Elwood Williams	And so that's how I kind of tie it together, and just listen to the prayer meetings. So those things are— I think the church played a bigger part in our lives than we even thought because you had those exposures and although you might not have been serious when you were going, but some of the messages kind of sunk in. And as you grow up, you started leading on some of the things that you learned.	5:00
Elwood Williams	I know we've been through some tough times here as a Black Boys Club but this is one of the first Boys Clubs in the country that was founded for Blacks by Blacks. And then one time, Blacks couldn't even go to the Boys Club.	5:35
Elwood Williams	So about two weeks ago, we had an article in the paper [indistinct 00:05:55] and then we had an $80,000 budget deficit. And that was demoralizing news. But one of the things that used to happen in our home was, no matter how tough a situation was, my mother would always say, "The Lord will make a way somehow." [indistinct 00:06:20].	5:51
Elwood Williams	And so that's what I believe. I said, "Well, the Lord will make a way somehow as long as you work hard and [indistinct 00:06:26] what you do, good things will happen." So as a result of the story going into paper and us trying to help ourselves, in three weeks, we had taken in $61,000 just through the mail and the money was still coming in.	6:19
Elwood Williams	But if we didn't have a track record and a good work ethic for helping ourselves, we would have lost all of that. And those are the kind of values that you learn in church. In church, when people used to testify about the hard times they had and we used to laugh at them sometimes, but they could tell it and then you kind of focus in on the struggles and the place that we're helping to overcome, the church is the meeting place. They came for spiritual healing, but it was also a good group therapy because people were facing the same problems.	6:39
Elwood Williams	And you could really call church, back then, religious anonymous, just like they have Alcoholics Anonymous for the alcoholics. But this where the people came and vented their frustration. And if you thought your boss bad, just listened to this man testify about his boss. And we used to tell, "ain't no White folks going to treat us like that."	7:25
Elwood Williams	But you never wanted to attack the people because, on the other hand, your parents were telling you that the only way to defeat people, is just you got to be prepared. You got to be educated. You got to have something that people want. And so then that was the weapon of how we used to fight back.	7:46
Elwood Williams	And the scariest thing to me now with the young people today is that they don't have that courage or the desire to fight back. And I think that the White man knows this and this is why he's snatched this Affirmative Action Act because when you looked at the '60s, most of the things that happened in the '60s that brought the attention of the world to Black problems, it happened with young people, college students, high school students standing up and marching and making sacrifices.	8:10
Elwood Williams	And now, these kids won't do it. They think because we have integration, everything is all right. But once they started getting stepped in the face or these things happen with welfare reform and all these things that we fought for so hard, have been taken away. And so then you look at the initiative across this country to build more prisons and jails.	8:41
Elwood Williams	They know they are coming because if you're uneducated, undereducated, don't have any skills, welfare been cut, Affirmative Action been cut, what's the most lucrative business in this country for Blacks? You can't go to the Army anymore because Blacks used to go. You can't go to the military because they're cutting back and the athlete requirements are so high, you can't get in.	9:06
Elwood Williams	So they know the only place that these Black men are going to go, they going to end up in these prisons and jails. And so now, if they don't stand up and fight, Black America can almost wipe itself off the map. Y'all finished?	9:25
Kisha Turner	Mm-hmm. Thank you.	9:52
Elwood Williams	Yeah, I mean, you look kind of—	9:53

Item Info

Title:

Elwood Williams interview recording, 1995 August 03

Date:

August 3, 1995

Creator:

Williams, Elwood

Contributor:

Turner, Kisha

Description:

Name: Elwood Williams; Date of birth: 1942-11-05; Place of birth: Elizabeth City, NC; Occupation(s): educator; youth coach; teacher; Residence: Norfolk, VA
Informant ID: 976; Interviewed by: Kisha Turner.

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Language:

English

Digital Collection:

Behind the Veil

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

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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.

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

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RL00170-CS-1345
e99db729-1be1-41ed-8221-f0a0b8dcbc24
behindtheveil
558b24da-8fd2-42b0-a0cf-cbdaeb57c61c
ark:/87924/r4cj8kv84
558b24da-8fd2-42b0-a0cf-cbdaeb57c61c

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Elwood Williams interview recording, 1995 August 03

Transcript

Item Info

1. Elwood Williams administrative file, 1995

John Hope Franklin Research Center

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Elwood Williams interview recording, 1995 August 03

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John Hope Franklin Research Center

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