Charles Scott interview recording, 1995 August 04

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Paul Ortiz	Mr. Scott, can you tell me when you were born and something about the community that you grew up in?	0:01
Charles Rogers Scott	I was born in 1941, Sunflower County, Indianola, Mississippi. We were sharecroppers on the government project in the Kinlock Community of Indianola. I think that was the first government project from President Wilson, according to what my mom say, where each sharecropper had 20 acres and two mules to farm. We grew there for years until we moved to another plantation that is outside of Indianola.	0:06
Charles Rogers Scott	I began school at a church house where all grades, one through eight, was taught in the same room. My first teachers was Mr. and Mrs. Ratcliff at the Saint Rest Church. We moved again to another plantation, the Johnson Baird plantation. I recall these myself. We attended school at a sanctified church. I don't know, I can't recall the name of the church. I know one of the teachers there was Mrs. College Mack and all grades was taught in that room.	0:59
Charles Rogers Scott	We was sharecroppers on Johnson Baird plantation, too. Incidentally, that is the same plantation in which the famous B.B. King worked for the Johnson Baird plantation. He was a member of the sanctified church and he had several uncles and cousins that could play the guitar about as well as he could. Mom later moved to the cooperate members of Indianola, on the Robert Burnet plantation. This is where we gone to school at the Indianola Colored High School under the leadership of the late Mr. M.C. Dukes.	1:53
Charles Rogers Scott	Well before I went to M.C. Dukes' school, I was a product of a private Baptist school, Black Baptist school. The Reverend Annie Brantley was our principal and all the teachers was Baptist church members. I remember those folks, Mrs. Kirkland, Mrs. Banks, and Mrs. Leola McGee. It was eight grades at this Baptist school. I can remember real clear, we had to wear some type of necktie every day and all girls had to wear ribbons in their hair. We would have devotion every morning. Everybody had to say some type of prayer and got our day started off right.	2:57
Charles Rogers Scott	When the Indianola Colored High burned, which was a school that I believe the last grade was 10th grade. If a Black child wanted to go further than 10th grade in Indianola, he had to go either to Drew Institute, Pineywood School because the local school did not go to 12th grade for Blacks.	3:52
Paul Ortiz	Now Drew Institute is a ways away.	4:20
Charles Rogers Scott	Drew Institute was a way away. At that time, this was no more than 25, 30 miles from Indianola, but at the time, transportation was basically mule and wagon, so to speak. The young people had to live on dormitory type settings in order to go to Drew.	4:22
Paul Ortiz	What year did the high school burn, Mr. Scott?	4:44
Charles Rogers Scott	Indianola Colored High burned neighborhood of '51, I believe, somewhere thereabout. Somewhere thereabout. The public school structure asked the Baptist association to allow the public school students to use the private Baptist school for part of their classes. From the Baptist school to Belgrove Church, to Raspberry United Methodist Church, to Center CME, we had about a two block radius that we had to walk from one church, to the next church, to the next church for different classes. We did that until I believe the school was rebuilt in about '53. I think it was complete again in '53.	4:48
Paul Ortiz	Now, did Whites have their own high school?	5:50
Charles Rogers Scott	They had their own high school, first through 12th grade school, so unit school.	5:54
Paul Ortiz	That must have been quite an adventure, walking to different churches for different classes.	6:06
Charles Rogers Scott	Yeah, for different classes. We would have classes at Belgrove. Then we had to move up to, I guess about a short block to Raspberry Chapel for class. Then we would move to Center CME. The lunch room did not burn, therefore we would go back, make that square circle back to the Colored high site for lunch. Lunch then was I think 10 cent or 15 cent, something like that for lunch, 10 or 15 cent.	6:11
Paul Ortiz	Mr. Scott, you mentioned that your family moved on several different plantations when you were young. Was there a difference in living and working conditions on each plantation?	6:46
Charles Rogers Scott	Basically all the working conditions was the same. We were sharecroppers. What precipitated my mom having to move is that she and my daddy had separation. He left and went to Memphis and she had the children, so her thing was to move. Each step was closer to town for convenience sake, so she would be able to maintain and take care of the business.	6:58
Charles Rogers Scott	Otherwise, possibly we would have stayed with the government project thing. I think there are a few Blacks left there that family was originally government project people and they're owning that land now, 80 acres, 120 acres. They had a chance to increase by buying out the 20 and 40 acres that other people moved from. So it's a possibility if Dad and Mom had stayed together, we would have been owners out there on that government project also. I guess that's what President Roosevelt's new deal thing, what he come up with.	7:23
Paul Ortiz	Mr. Scott, was your family able to take, you mentioned that the families were provided with some implements from the government projects like mules. Were you able to take those to the next plantation?	8:09
Charles Rogers Scott	No, no, no. The next plantation had to supply what we needed. When we moved off the government project, I was real small. I think they was mule farming. When we moved to the Barret plantation, he had mechanized so to speak. He was using tractors. So what he would do is plow the sharecroppers crop and back charge that to the sharecroppers at the end of the year at settlement time. So what he would do is keep the number of times that he had to plow your crop, whatever else, and that amount of money was taken from your profit at the end of the settlement time.	8:25
Charles Rogers Scott	Well, some people did not have the ability to keep up with the number of plowings or the number of fertilizing that the Johnson Baird agents would say they put on a place. But incidentally, my mom was a real good fifth grade scholar and she kept a good notebook. When they tell her they did so and so things, she'd pull out her notebook and say, "You plowed on such and such date. You did this on such and such date." She kept good records, so we always was one of the few folks always profit at the end of the year when it come settlement time, when they have to go to the big house to get the bills subtracted and the number of plow and the number of fertilizing. Mama would have her record, the number of bales we had picked, and our gin, and our seed tickets, and everything. She'd have a record of that.	9:05
Paul Ortiz	Mr. Scott, were there times when the plantation owners would try to get over on the family?	10:02
Charles Rogers Scott	Oh, yeah. They got over on a whole lot of families. One of the tricksters thing, in the wintertime, they had a thing that they called, I can't think of what they called it. It's some kind of money that the boss man would give the family to tie them over to the planting and the beginning of the next year. It had a name to it. I don't know what the name, can't recall the name of that. I may think about it in a few minutes.	10:07
Charles Rogers Scott	Some time they'd claim they'd given a person more than that. Nobody kept a record of it. He had more or less a commissary on the plantation, a big store that carried dry goods, and groceries, and shoes. You go in there all the winter months and get groceries, go get your shoes, go get whatever else you need. All of that is being recorded, so to speak, against next year's crop. So if people were not keeping up with the materials that they were getting, how much they owed, then at the end of the year, settlement time come, he would say, "You owed the store $150, $200. We paid the doctor bill for your child that got his foot cut. We did this." It end up, you're in the hole. I think they call that thing furnishings, when they, I believe that's the word they use is furnishings.	10:44
Paul Ortiz	Mr. Scott, you mentioned this kind of money. Was it not cash?	11:45
Charles Rogers Scott	More or less, it's cash money.	11:52
Paul Ortiz	Cash money.	11:53
Charles Rogers Scott	Yeah, it's cash money. Especially if you had to go to stores other than the plantation commissary, you had the cash money. Well, the doctor bill was charged to the owner. You go to the doctor and he want to know who's plantation you was from and that would be charged to the plantation boss or agent would have made prior arrangement with the doctor that, charge so and so bill to whomever the boss is. That's the way that thing worked.	11:57
Charles Rogers Scott	I found little inkling of that when I got grown. That's skipping way ahead. My first child got injured and I had to take her to the hospital. She fell off her bicycle and broke her front teeth. When I got to the emergency room, I took her over there in a borrowed car. The receptionist, that was past '66, my baby born in '66. I guess that could have been in the '70s, wanted to know who was going to pay. I guess we can see the plantation mentality, who was going to pay this bill. I just laughed at her. Had to be in the '70s because my baby born in '66 and she was riding her bicycle and had fallen off, so that was in the neighborhood of '69 or '70.	12:33
Paul Ortiz	So they still assume—	13:29
Charles Rogers Scott	Still assume that, being Black, I did not have the wherewithal to pay for my child's emergency services. I've been teaching there in the system, in Indianola for at least seven years. But being Black, that didn't mean anything to them.	13:29
Paul Ortiz	Mr. Scott, can you describe the Black communities that you grew up in and how they worked and how people survived?	13:50
Charles Rogers Scott	All of them was, I guess it was poor. We didn't know we was poor because nobody had anything else. We all shared and had basically the same thing. You had a garden spot. Most of the houses had three to four rooms, had a kitchen room and probably a room that all the little cots and beds went in for all the girls to sleep in and another room for all the boys to sleep in. Incidentally, I had two brothers. We all slept in the same bed. It wasn't no king size beds, either. Then you had room that Mom and Daddy had the front room, so to speak. That served as her bedroom plus what you could call a living room because it had a couple of sitting chairs there in.	14:03
Charles Rogers Scott	We grew most of our food. We would slaughter a couple of hogs a year and maybe one beef, a two year old cow or calf. To supplement that, most of the folks was hunters. They'd go hunt rabbits and do whatever else they had to do to survive. And they shared. If you had hog killing on Monday, then all the men would gather at this house and kill all the hogs this man would kill and get a piece of meat. Well, the next week, it may be the next fellow's hog killing time and all they go help kill there.	14:57
Charles Rogers Scott	We didn't have violence as we have it now. You could sleep under the tree anywhere you wanted to. Nobody bothered anybody else's stuff. You had more, I guess you could say comrade-ship among the Black race then than you have now. Everybody was your mama. Every old lady on the street, on the dirt road. It wasn't no street. Every old lady out there could call your attention to something you were doing wrong. If need be, they'll strap your rear end and tell your mama at church and now you get another one. You just hope that she forget to tall your mama that you was clowning somewhere. We enjoyed it. It was another world anyway.	15:43
Paul Ortiz	Mr. Scott, what would happen if you took sick? Now earlier, you mentioned that the plantation doctor system didn't always work as well. Was there times when the sharing would extend to—	16:34
Charles Rogers Scott	Well, you had most of babies was delivered by granny women or Black midwives. Had no medical training, but they could deliver those babies. There were a lot of home remedies handed down through the generation, what you do for cuts and what you do for wasp stings. These type things was handed down. We didn't have to have no doctor to any great extent.	16:47
Charles Rogers Scott	If you got sick to the point that you needed a doctor, the agent or even the boss man would carry this family or child to the doctor. I was a victim of, what did they call that stuff? Can't think of that now. Had to learn how to walk again at about five or six years old, rheumatic fever. I had rheumatic fever. It was two doctors in town. There's more than two, but the two that served me was Dr. Joe Hull and Dr. An Hull. They was brothers and Mama say they would take turns coming to the house. One of them would be to the house every day at a certain time to provide medication. They took care of, so to speak, the medical needs, basically, the general medical needs. Nothing exploratory or corrective. It was just what you needed to keep working and keep well.	17:23
Paul Ortiz	Mr. Scott, do you remember some of the home remedies that were used in the community?	18:43
Charles Rogers Scott	For a cut, more or less, use kerosene and vaseline. They would wrap the cut with kerosene and vaseline. For a fester or your body had set up some type of rising or fester with puss, they would get some, I think it's called Big Jim's Soap, which was a strong detergent type soap and spray that over the area and then put a piece of salty salt meat on there and wrap it up. Later on, I found out why the salt meat. Because the salt would draw from that fester and pull the poison out of the body onto this rag and onto this meat. I didn't know why the salt, but this is what happened.	18:48
Charles Rogers Scott	Look like they used to have a thing called Thrust. That's when a child's mouth would break out with little sores on the inside. It was a blue in thing that people used in wash, in the rinse water. They'll make a little solution of blue in for the child to rinse their mouth out with. That took care of that Thrust thing.	19:59
Charles Rogers Scott	I recall one, this was a ghastly one to me, when a child's tongue would encrust from nursing and build up that little cake of milk or whatever on it. They would take the corner of a diaper, the ammonia and the urine of the baby and they'd clean his tongue out. They have to use it all. It didn't kill us. I've had certain things, ragweed tea, for what reason, I don't know. Hog hooves tea; their little hooves, would make tea out of that.	20:30
Charles Rogers Scott	Looked like they had a thing, corn shuck tea. They made some kind of shuck tea to break a fever. I guess it gave you something hot and kept you wrapped up. Maybe they thought the corn shuck was doing it, but I think the hot concoction was more or less the ease of that, rather than the corn shuck, but they used the corn shuck thing.	21:12
Charles Rogers Scott	These are some of the remedies that was used. It worked. We didn't have no much problems with that. Some old folks would have more, I guess you say more concoction than the next one. That becomes the plantation, I guess you say the plantation doctor, would wait on folks all around and do different things, make different little concoctions of liniments and vaseline, and rubdowns for sore muscles and what have you.	21:36
Paul Ortiz	Mr. Scott, was the plantation doctor usually an older person?	22:13
Charles Rogers Scott	It would be an older, more or less an older woman.	22:18
Paul Ortiz	Oh, okay.	22:21
Charles Rogers Scott	More or less an older woman.	22:22
Paul Ortiz	It might be perhaps the midwife?	22:23
Charles Rogers Scott	Midwife or maybe one of the older women who's no longer in the field but of the church missionary type that had a lot of prayer with the medication. It could have been that when you pull you off the work that all your body needed was rest and to heal itself. My mama don't like to hear me say that now because she figured that they were doing a good job. That's all we needed was a little rest.	22:27
Paul Ortiz	So there was a blend in those days of church, of the spirit, and the medicine?	22:57
Charles Rogers Scott	Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it was closely related, closely related. I don't know how we got so far from it. I guess when modern medicine took over we tend to move away from the prayer and the home remedies.	23:06
Paul Ortiz	Ironically, some of those are coming back.	23:27
Charles Rogers Scott	Oh, yeah. I was reading recently in Health Magazine for the holistic curing and the ginseng root, I was reading about. I was reading in the Jackson paper a few days ago, a few Saturdays ago where a health farm is being developed and in operation and this is what people are using. This fellow went back to the scripture. This is a Black fellow that wrote this thing, said the reason why that we are so ill and sick is that we are putting poison into our bodies that was never intended to be there.	23:29
Charles Rogers Scott	When men learned to cook and learned to eat meat, then he started getting sick. Nowhere in the Garden of Eden did it say eat any meat. He said, "I place all these trees and all these fruits and all these herbs for you to eat." He also, in the scripture, I think quote Leviticus say, "Eat the fish," but all this other stuff that we start doing, he said that's what makes you sick. He attests to the fact I read that he had colon cancer. When he pulled out all the meat and started eating all his fruits and vegetables and whatever else, raw food, the cancer cleared up. He say he does not advocate people leaving medication, but he would advocate them going into a more healthy eating style and give the body a chance to heal itself. Just read it. It's on the way back.	24:14
Charles Rogers Scott	Midwifery is a big thing now. Doctors say they don't have time to deliver babies. It's too expensive and they're running women out of the hospital now within 24 hours after delivery, so they may as well have the baby at home. Let the midwife deliver the child at home and, no complication, the baby's going to come anyway. We had a couple of granny women, we called them in Indianola, delivered more babies than all the doctors together. I don't think any of them deliver now. Miss Sadie been, but she had direct contact with the doctors. If Sadie had to call them when we moved up to telephone type stuff, if she had to call, if the doctor was not in an emergency, he would drop whatever he was doing and find where Sadie is because she would not call them if she didn't have an emergency.	25:12
Charles Rogers Scott	(phone rings) That's fine, I'll let that—	26:04
Paul Ortiz	Mr. Scott, talking about some of the beliefs and the older, I guess you say value systems, was there also, did elders talk about other things such as spirits or ancestors that remain part of—	26:13
Charles Rogers Scott	No, not in the Delta area. Not in the Mississippi Delta area. I understand it's a part of the Louisiana culture, the spirit and voodooism and what have you. In the Mississippi Delta area, I guess we had a different breed of Blacks or a different upbringing. It was not this type of stuff. I would say stuff was not put on the Black community by the White boss or owners, that these things will hex you, blase, blase. I think that was a part of it. We didn't have the voodooism or the séance and what have you. This was not a part of the Delta culture.	26:36
Charles Rogers Scott	Now, I understand it's part of Louisiana culture and the swampland. These people leave the Delta, so to speak, and go to Louisiana to get a lucky hand for gambling or for luck and go to the Seven Sisters down somewhere in Baton Rouge. Whatever they need to sell their soul to the Devil and all this kind of stuff. We didn't have a whole lot of that type of spirituality or that the spirit remains with the family until something was appeased. We didn't have that.	27:19
Paul Ortiz	Mr. Scott, earlier you mentioned B.B. King's family. Was there a lot of music in the plantation?	28:00
Charles Rogers Scott	Basically, church.	28:08
Paul Ortiz	Church music?	28:09
Charles Rogers Scott	All, most Blacks that are professional musicians now have their roots in church. Aretha Franklin's dad's a preacher, Reverend Franklin. B.B. King, all his folks, Riley King, that's his name. All his folks are still sanctified, Christ Holiness People. Reverend [indistinct 00:28:35] Davies that pastored a little church in this town. Old man James Fair, he taught B.B. to play the guitar. All three of them used to play in the church and they would have a good time in the sanctified church with all them guitars and they'd sing half the night. They'd have church almost until daylight. They ain't got to go to sleep, but they had church all night.	28:10
Charles Rogers Scott	Quite a few Blacks in our area here. I didn't know. I was reading something on the Blues Fest. It's supposed to be in Clarksville today, I think. Denise LaSalle is somewhere out of Mississippi. I didn't know Denise LaSalle was a Mississippi product. They're supposed to have something up in Clarksville today. Some gospel group going to sing something and then they're going to have a blues morning tomorrow morning.	28:58
Paul Ortiz	Mr. Scott, when you were growing up, you briefly mentioned telephones. Did families on the plantation have telephones?	29:37
Charles Rogers Scott	No. That telephone stuff was way up later on. First telephone I owned, I was married. So that was a long time between the plantation and getting married. It more or less was a telephone at the commissary, at the store. You dropped your coin in there and connect to operator and she asked you what number you want to try to connect with. Then you tell the number and she'd connect you with it, thing. That type of system existed.	29:45
Charles Rogers Scott	No, we had no modern telephone. My aunt that lived in town on Church Street in Indianola, she had a telephone. We had moved to the outside of town then. The first time I had a chance to use it, I easily picked the phone up. When the operator said, "Number, please," I hung it up. I asked Auntie, "What's somebody else doing talking on your phone?" She laughed about it and said, "Fool, that's the operator trying to find out who you want!" Well, I didn't know who to call. I was just going to use the telephone. I had never had a chance to use no telephone.	30:26
Charles Rogers Scott	No, telephone was not [indistinct 00:31:04]. That was when Sadie, that was when they had moved up to, I say up into the '60s and '70s. There was still a whole lot of midwife activities. They had that telephone connection with the doctor's office. Before then, I guess if they had a problem, they'd try to save that girl if they could, and then they'd make a decision, either they'd save the baby or the mama. They made that type of decision. Because if they couldn't get the doctor there, and more or less, the doctor didn't know more or less about childbirth than the midwife did, or not as much.	31:03
Paul Ortiz	Mr. Scott, what was your first and your worst experience with segregation?	31:48
Charles Rogers Scott	Well, we had a thing more or less. It was instilled in us that you maintained your "place". In other words, you did not get around. You didn't hang around, you didn't have jokes and make these jokes with White folks. Especially, you never said nothing to a White girl or a White woman, being a Black boy.	31:57
Charles Rogers Scott	I guess the first really in depth, and I'd heard about some lynchings and some drownings. I'd heard people talk about, they'd found so-and-so in the river, in the lake. But the first really encounter that I can recall that really impacted me and still impacts me is the Emmett Till situation. If Emmett Till had been living, we'd have been the same age. I think he was 15, 14 or 15 when he was killed. I was 14. When that thing first crossed the news, it was the most devastating thing to me, to know that this boy had been brutally murdered and the people who perpetrated this thing was released from jail and opened up grocery stores in Black community.	32:25
Charles Rogers Scott	Emmett Till thing was in the paper. I think it said 50 years later in Emerge Magazine. I think it was Emerge Magazine. I've been reading this thing. I don't know whether I still have it here or not, but it said 40 years later the mama will not let this die. She keeps it from the paper.	33:26
Charles Rogers Scott	We live what you could say on the White side of town, outside of town. Therefore, we had to walk to school through the White community. We had fights every morning or we would yield to the pressures of the hecklers and step off the sidewalk and get out in the street to keep from having to fight. These things happened frequently. Sometimes the White crossing guard, Jimmy Cox, police Jimmy Cox, would walk with us. We had to pass right by the White school from where I lived to walk all the way across town to the Colored high school and Jimmy Cox would walk a couple blocks with us to get us out of the way of the White folks from throwing bricks at us.	33:47
Paul Ortiz	The White kids would actually throw bricks?	34:36
Charles Rogers Scott	Oh, yeah. Throw bricks, bottles, call you all kinds of names. Which we was tough, now. We would fight.	34:37
Paul Ortiz	You would fight back?	34:48
Charles Rogers Scott	Oh, yeah. We'd fight like hell. We never was afraid to fight. We had that kind of encounter, but the Emmett Till thing was one of the things.	34:50
Charles Rogers Scott	I had one encounter when I had gotten, I guess, [indistinct 00:35:16] maybe 15. Maybe 15 or 14. I had got old enough to drive a tractor. We was living on Bonnet, part of his plantation in town. I was old enough to drive a tractor, so he would come by the house and pick us up and we'd go out to the plantation in the country. I had been driving a tractor that morning, did some land. For whatever reason, he come out in the field and he stopped and said I wasn't doing a damn thing. I didn't know what was his problem. I told him I thought I was working hard. I'd been in the fields before the sun was up. He said two or three other things. I cut the damn tractor off and told him he could drive it back. I walked I guess about 10 miles to home.	35:04
Charles Rogers Scott	When I got in the house, my mom was there. I went in and told her what had happened and I got my rifle. House was built up off it. I went under the house. I knew he was coming. When he pulled up in the yard, I think he saw me under that house because I was going to shoot him and Mama cried and went on. He told her, "You can stay with all your children, but that damn Charles got to go." Mama being the lady she is, she said, "Yes, sir."	36:09
Charles Rogers Scott	We moved that night off of the plantation. It was the whole family. Mama moved us that night to a little shanty in town. We all piled in. I think it was two rooms or three rooms. That was moving from the plantation to town from that thing. I don't know. Maybe we'd have still been on the plantation if I hadn't done it, but I never was one to be able to take, I could work. I could get along, but I wasn't going to take that harassing, abusing me. I could work, but you didn't have to cuss me to work me.	36:43
Paul Ortiz	Mr. Scott, did you feel like there was a threat when he pulled up to your house, that he was going to do something?	37:12
Charles Rogers Scott	He had that reputation. I had heard. We had never had any encounter with him, but I had heard that he thought he was bad enough to hit folks. See, I was going to take care of it, no if, ands, buts about it. Maybe I'd have been dead in hell if I'd have done it, but I was going to take care of him. That was my intention, but I guess the spirit of Mom prevailed and to hear her cry and tell me to put that gun down and all that stuff shocked me back to realization.	37:20
Paul Ortiz	Mr. Scott, were there other cases of armed self defense when you were growing up?	37:52
Charles Rogers Scott	In '65, 1965. I had been teaching two years at Gentry High School, predominantly Black. Incidentally, school I finished from. That summer, the U.S. Department of Agriculture had said something to the fact that they had to have Black surveyors to survey the crops and the acreage. So the USDA agent, I guess, in Indianola decided to get some people to measure cotton and measure the acreage. He selected Black male teachers as his people and probably because he figured they would be easy to learn the processes. Had a little math involved, had to be able to read maps and stake out preliminaries.	38:02
Charles Rogers Scott	We had gone through the class and our last evening there was a graduation from the school. We was paid good money to go to school. I was making more money going to school than I was teaching school. A teacher wasn't making nothing then. The evening of our graduation, we was out at the USDA office on the highway. It was a service station, a little old bus station. When I mentioned the Colored waiting room, it had all that stuff in it.	39:09
Charles Rogers Scott	Owned by old man Floyd Marcus Marquis. I think that was his name. He had gotten him a bunch of folks together because we had never seen that many White folk, men, out of all the six weeks that we were going to school. But that particular evening, I guess it was over 100. A youngster from Drew, Billy Leggett, you could go to, they had a restaurant. Blacks couldn't go in, but you could go to the service window on the side. It was hot. He went over there to get, he said a strawberry malt, but the lady gave him a vanilla malt. He told, "Ma'am, I asked for a strawberry malt."	39:38
Charles Rogers Scott	So that time, one of the men folk, White men folk, or Italian, or whoever they were in the store, asked him, "Are you calling my wife a liar?" So he did, he took the strawberry malt just to cut out and went on and paid for it. About that time, the whole mob was coming up with chains, and sticks, and pistols, and all cussing that niggers was taking White boys' jobs and we didn't have no business measuring nobody's cotton. Oh, it got real ugly. Guns, knives, and everything.	40:26
Charles Rogers Scott	I'd been teaching a couple years. I thought this kind of mess, I knew it wasn't over because we still had White and Colored fountains in the City Hall and the courthouses. Black folks fountain, the Colored fountain had a gray color, more or less. They was all gray and the White folks had White fountains.	41:02
Charles Rogers Scott	When the police got there, Chief Alexander was Chief of Police in Indianola. When he got there, he searched the Black folk. I asked him and I got arrested there because I asked him what the hell was he searching us for, we didn't have nothing. I said, "Man, they got pistols." He wouldn't even search him. So I got arrested for raising hell out there that evening. He told me he was going to take me. I told him, "You do what you have to do."	41:19
Charles Rogers Scott	So he took me down. The principal of the school, the late Mr. L.R. Brown and whatever little bond they put me under, he came and got me out. The Jackson Department of Agriculture and the Tennessee Regional Area, all of them come to my house and asked me would I still survey cotton if they offered protection. I said I wouldn't go across one of them fields for all the money in Mississippi. That's when CBs were becoming popular, the two way radios in these farmers' trucks. I said, "No way in hell you're going to get me out across no field. They put me on the radio and I'll be buried in one of them ditches back there and nobody never find me."	41:51
Charles Rogers Scott	So that was a heck of an encounter that I was real close to. Then I got involved with the Freedom Riders and a couple things when they come through Indianola. We took that as fun. We just harassed the hell out of them, go into the bus stations and make them close, go in the lunch counters, sit down and get a coffee. One old lady, every time we'd drink coffee, she'd break the cup. I said, "We're going to break every damn one of them because we're going to use every one of them."	42:30
Charles Rogers Scott	We had a lot of fun on that. It was fight. It was straining mamas. You didn't want to get isolated. They'd beat the heck out of you if they catch you by yourself. If you had a good mama, you could get away with these things.	43:00
Paul Ortiz	Mr. Scott, it must have been really tough in Indianola. I was talking to Mr. Dorsey White about this briefly last night. Because Indianola was the center of the White Citizens.	43:19
Charles Rogers Scott	It's the birthplace of the Citizen's Council. It was tough but you always had a semblance of Blacks that did not back down. My uncle, my mama's brother told me that before he died, he said, "Something that your granddaddy did to Old Man Gresham, you never will get the positions in Indianola because they remember the Scott." I said, "I don't know what Papa did, but Papa didn't take nothing."	43:32
Charles Rogers Scott	I understand Papa wore two pearl handle pistols. He wore them up and down the street, so Papa didn't take no mess. He was the molasses man in the community. He made molasses. All the White folks, everybody had to buy molasses from Papa. He just didn't take no mess. Uncle told me. He said, "Now, that Gresham remember the name Scott. Maybe Young Gresham don't know just what Papa did." I never did know what Papa did.	44:08
Charles Rogers Scott	It was always some tough folks there. Meg Edwards would visit there. Irving Taylor decided and went registered to vote. James Smith, the undertaker, led a couple of people up to the vote. In '65, we formulated a little old biracial committee with the originator of the citizen's council, representative John Huff. I was the spokesman for the Blacks, and Huff was the White. He asked me, "Suppose I tell you I'm a member of Citizen's Council." I said, "Suppose I tell you I'm a member of the NAACP." I said, we both stood here looking at each other. I said, "At least we ought to get along. I don't want to eat at your house, but I want to have the money for what I do to be able to buy and eat what I want to eat."	44:39
Charles Rogers Scott	I asked him, "How can Black teachers teach citizenship and they wouldn't vote?" See, at that time, if a Black applied to vote, then they didn't get a job. They listened at that, Jack Harper, the President Chancery Clerk now. He's running again. He's old enough to quit. And several others listened. They made a motion that they'd move the Sunflower County BAR Association to Gentry High School on a Saturday and all teachers that wanted to register to vote would register to vote on that Saturday.	45:45

Charles Rogers Scott	And from that it become a part of the contract, the teacher contract. You had to be a voter in wherever your hometown in order to work. And you couldn't even list on your application that you was a member of the NAACP, which I put mine down when I applied for the job. The principal that hired me was my principal in high school. And he told me, "I always come up with some mess." I said, "Well, Mr. Brown, I'm going to put it down. If this going to get you fired, then don't you hire me." And I put it down. But it always was the strong folks they had.	0:02
Paul Ortiz	Mr. Scott, who were the strong local people?	0:45
Charles Rogers Scott	At this time then?	0:49
Paul Ortiz	Yeah, in the '50s or—	0:50
Charles Rogers Scott	Well, then you had the late Irvin Taylor. He owned his own dry—not dry good. Dry cleaning shop.	0:54
Paul Ortiz	Okay.	1:10
Charles Rogers Scott	You had James Smith, he played almost both ends to the middle, but he had a leadership ability to him. He was an undertaker, Smith and Dillard Funeral Home. Dr. Bell, C.C. Bell was there then, a Black doctor. And he was real vociferous in speaking out.	1:16
Charles Rogers Scott	His daddy, old man Bell, was a contractor, had built most of the homes and buildings, an old good contractor. And he sent his son to medical school. And Mississippi sent him to school outside the state because they wouldn't let him go to Mississippi Medical School. Therefore, they assisted and provided Black doctors with sustenance, sent them the of state to study. He was pretty tough and they never let him become a full doctor, so to speak. He did not have hospital privileges. If he had to operate on a person, one of the White doctors like Hubb brothers or A.E. Aiden had to be there.	1:54
Charles Rogers Scott	And incidentally, he was the first doctor to successfully separate Siamese twins. The girls are still living now, they're young women now, the Matthews girls. C.C. Bell separated those twins. They was joined at the chest. I think he separated them in Memphis somewhere, they took them to Memphis. And they would follow him around and harass him and do those things that had to be—I guess that's harassing. And throw his car, and put his cars on flat when he passed. He was a pretty powerful fella.	2:39
Charles Rogers Scott	We had one preacher, a lot of people don't want to give him credit, I think you supposed to talk to him, David Matthews. A lot of folk called him an Uncle Tom, but I never did see David as an Uncle Tom. He taught me in government and economics when I was in high school. He had basically the old Booker T. Washington philosophy, train their minds, train their hands, do your job, pay your way, and you're going to be respected. Now, if he went out there cussing raising hell, then folks didn't accept him as being a strong Black leader. But he planted some good seeds in training the minds and get your skill and do these things, so he was a pretty good fella in those days.	3:24
Charles Rogers Scott	Moving up for a few years, I guess into the seventies, we had the late Nelson Dawson. Maybe you heard of Nelson Dawson in some of your talk. He was the local NAACP chairman. He was a great agitator during the Colfort area. No one educated, self-educated, he could fix any small engine that you brought to him. He didn't have the skills to order what he needed, he had to go see. And when he walked into—He could know what he needed by picking it up, and he'd put it together. But those are a few of the leaders you had. We didn't have many women out there then, you have quite a few women that takes the position now. But you didn't have many women in the leadership role then.	4:19
Paul Ortiz	Mr. Scott. Was there a sense in the sixties when you were really beginning some of the freedom activities that you had to be prepared to defend yourself?	5:17
Charles Rogers Scott	Yeah, oh yeah. Even up until—there was an incident about the land measures. And I would sleep with my baby, I would put her in the bathtub. That's the strongest part of the [indistinct 00:05:47], I would let my baby sleep in the bathtub. Because I didn't want anybody throwing anything into the house, or shooting through the house. Then we had Blacks, we got into it with some Blacks. I was so-called an insurrection leader, a boycott breaker. I guess that was in '66 when I went before the Citizen Council, and the Chamber of Commerce, and whoever the powers to be, the owners of Lewis Grocery Company. And asked them to put Black clerks and cashiers in these stores and on these cash registers. And asked the bank to put Black tellers in one—And old lady Swats had taken over from her husband then, President of People's Bank.	5:28
Charles Rogers Scott	And those people delivered. And they didn't have no light-skinned Black girls on the cash, they had Black-Black girls on the cash register, especially stores, the Sunflower stores and the Piggly Wiggly stores, and the Jitney Jungles. Those were chain stores. I did not put a lot of pressure on the mom and papa stores, because their family was running the thing. They would always have more or less a Black boy to help janitorial service around those stores. Ben Freed, and Saver, a few small stores, family-owned stores. And the late Nelson Dawson and I went at odds on this. We had threatened a boycott out of town if the powers to be did not deliver. And when the power was to be delivered, they still, and I say "they," a few Blacks, Dawson or Tony Carver [indistinct 00:07:38] now was with Dawson. I don't think he was interning then, he was in school.	6:41
Charles Rogers Scott	Still called a boycott. And I told him I would not respect him. And they had some Black fella from Bell's owner named Rudy Shia, supposed to have been butt kicker. And they would put out hate literature, say the Spirit going to get you. I got several Spirit letters, so I had to stay up at night. I would asleep early on, but I'd get up at night and my wife and baby would go in the back room. And I got in my house at night. Not only against White folks, against Blacks, too.	7:47
Charles Rogers Scott	And there's a Black fella got killed on our street. Because in, I guess '68, '67 or '68, I was in school in Baton Rouge working on my masters. And the Spirit was real high. The Blacks on our street, we was a group of young folks that had built a brick home, good yard, keeping our street clean, one-way street. And well, most Blacks tend to resent that, that we thought we were the big shots. And Rudy and I got into it about that. And I told him, "Hell, if I pay my notes, I can live where I want to live."	8:23
Charles Rogers Scott	But one man come down the street and he stopped in front of Silver's house, he could have got killed anywhere on that street that night from my understanding. My wife called me in Baton Rouge. And he stopped in front of Silver's house and caught the fella outdoors on the car port, and he told him, "Don't get out the car." And the man started opening the door of the car, he just opened up. And when my wife called me, and she was so upset, she didn't know. She had my baby. I called my mama and told her, "Go over the house and get my wife and baby, because she don't even know where she put the pistol." No, she found the pistol next week. But that was some of the things. We had it from both ways. And I guess some of that exists now.	9:11
Charles Rogers Scott	We resent statements that the Clarence Thomas has made, the ruling that he made on affirmative actions. He never would be another Thurgood Marshall to us. He will never be able to fill the shoes of Thurgood Marshall. They put the Black powers to be in a position when they selected this boy. I would say in that if we had not supported him, it's a possibility they would not have appointed another Black. So we tried to take the lesser of two evils. That's why the Jesse Jackson and the Baptist Association, all these folks come out for Clarence Thomas. But we knew he was the lesser of two evils, he a southern boy and married a White gal. He just wasn't one of us, no way. We're going to try to see if we could ride the tide out. Somebody said they hope his wife feed him a lot of fat back and collard greens so he'll have high blood pressure die from a stroke. (laughs) Oh, yeah.	10:03
Paul Ortiz	When things began, through all of the freedom struggles in the sixties, and you began forcing some social changes in Indianola, and building up a power base, how did that affect day-to-day race relations in Indianola? Say, now you're walking into town in the 1970s. What was different about walking into town and shopping then say if you had walked in in the early sixties?	11:05
Charles Rogers Scott	Well, my family, my mama had a burning desire of education. She instilled that into us. And the Chamber of Commerce, more or less, say that they had talked to these store owners and told them that these Black folks wanted courtesy titles and to be treated. Now, if you carry yourself in such a manner, it was no more, "Hi, boy, hi, girl," or "Hi auntie," or "uncle," like they call older Blacks and older—That was cut out and you was treated with respect. And those stores that treated Black with respect prospered real good, because that's the store Blacks would go to. The educational level increased, and spending power increased, therefore Blacks had got a better treatment.	11:45
Paul Ortiz	So the courtesy titles were really, that was a change that was pushed by Black people as consumers?	12:35
Charles Rogers Scott	Yeah.	12:42
Paul Ortiz	And the store owners that wouldn't use courtesy titles—	12:43
Charles Rogers Scott	They more or less failed, because we basically are consumer race, so we are not really producers to any great extent. We spent all our money. Billions of dollars are spent by Black folk, but if a Black got a store in a Black community, money only sits in a community for one time and only passes hand once. Because the store owner, all his vendors are outside of the community. Everything that he buys to sell comes from White folks. We are not producers to any great extent. And that could be a reason why we are still where we are, we are still consumers. And we are coming out more than that a little bit now, but we are still consumers. And we are in the service connected-type jobs. We are teachers, and we are moving into medicine and law, but we are not producers. We are not developing catfish ponds, food processing plants, textile plants.	12:46
Charles Rogers Scott	And I believe we could do it, but the seed that was planted years ago, and the late Harden Carter, the editor of the Democrat Times made a statement that "It appears that they plant a seed into the genes of the Blacks. They still have an innate distrust of each other. Where a group of Black men would not come together and put up—"	13:54
Charles Rogers Scott	Say you had 100 Black men with $1,000 apiece, that'll be a $100,000 base to start. $1,000 ain't no bunch of money, you can get 100 Black men probably in this little town that can come up with $1,000. But they don't trust each other. And I think that's one of the mentalities, mental blocks, that Whites still plant the seed that we distrust. We even would question the qualification of our Black election officials. He could be a college graduate, a White fella could be a high school graduate. We want to know is he qualified to serve? That's the thing. I guess that's one of our holdbacks is what I'm trying to say.	14:19
Paul Ortiz	Mr. Scott, I know you have a busy schedule. I just have a couple more questions.	15:19
Charles Rogers Scott	Okay.	15:25
Paul Ortiz	Now, earlier you mentioned tractors on some of the plantations. How did mechanization affect Black sharecroppers and families around Indianola?	15:25
Charles Rogers Scott	Well, when the farmers went from mules to tractors, and the tractor driver man, more or less, in the family, the owner would build good homes for the tractor drivers. They would put them in good homes, brick houses, put an old pickup truck beside the house. The others that did not have tractor drivers still had to live in the shanties, or move off the plantation to the little town and become day workers. See, they left the farm and moved to town and became day workers because the man did not need a hundred families of Blacks to farm his land. He only needed a couple of tractor drivers and then he went to the mechanical cotton picker, and the chemical grass killers, so he didn't need the Blacks so they went to town and they became date workers. I guess I chopped for as little as dollar and a half a day, so I guess they equated to about 15 cents an hour, so I did chop for cash.	15:40
Paul Ortiz	Mr. Scott, through your lifetime and throughout your life and in Sunflower County, what have been the major changes that you've seen in the Black community in Sunflower, and then what have been the things that haven't changed?	16:55
Charles Rogers Scott	Well, the primary change was the education status of the Blacks. You had a great love and a push for education in the Black community. Black Panther was concerned with that child moving on to higher heights, and they supported him and pushed him on with whatever means they had to push him on. It was instilled into Blacks to become owners of your own home and not just a renter, so Blacks started buying homes. The agitation on the jobs was of such nature that if you wanted to better yourself, you better get a better education. All of these things was pluses that equated to moving on to higher heights.	17:13
Charles Rogers Scott	My opinion, and this is mine, I say it every once in a while, that the entitlement programs and whatever else that Blacks get now was a protracted trick against Black enterprise. Because now we don't have an even reason for that Black boy to go to school. He lives in a brick home already, he eats steaks, he got subsidized this, that, and the other. So he does not have a reason. Therefore, it looks like we are going back the other way faster or much faster than we progress. Somewhere down the line that thing needs to be turned around, and the cotton fields, and compresses, and gins and these things made me have the desire to go get me some education. But these kids don't have to do that no more. They were out, they walk the street, they wear Nikes, they wear Air Jordans, and Calvin Kleins, and they do whatever else everybody else do. They got cars, they got TVs, and [indistinct 00:19:34], and beepers, so they don't have no desire to go to school.	18:20
Charles Rogers Scott	And I would think that was a calculated risk. That's just my little narrow summarization. No, it probably wasn't a calculated risk, but I can see it as being one. It did take the fight out of the Black. There's no desire to go do anything. Very limited numbers going on trying to push up. That's what makes school happen so difficult now. It's a difficult struggle to try to show youngsters that it is important to be educated, and he see's the fella, Superfly on the street. They got a lot of money in his pocket. That's it. He riding in a Mercedes, he went to find his clothes. That is the epitome of success in America. Here you are, school teacher riding a beat up truck. You see? So who's making the most, who's done the most, so I don't know what we're going to do with these things.	19:36
Paul Ortiz	Mr. Scott, throughout your life and the struggles that you've had to go through to achieve your goals, what have been the main things that have inspired you to keep on fighting?	20:35
Charles Rogers Scott	Well, my mama planted a seed that if everybody helped the next body, then we all would be benefited in the end. And I tried to instill that to my daughters. One is a nurse now, master RN, and my baby girl is studying medicine. My brother's a PhD in chemistry at Ole Miss. I have a nephew, a master's degree in computer science in Virginia. I have a sister that's a nurse anesthesiologist in St. Louis. The seed of education was planted in us, and the ownership was planted in us, by a sixth-grade dropout of my mom. And I don't know whether daddy even dropped in school, so I don't know whether you drop out or drop in, but that was planted in us that we need to have you something, to have you some education, and be able to make you a decent living, and respect and treat folks as you wish to be treated. And don't be submissive, but be firm. That's my mama saying that. She's 85 years old. She [indistinct 00:22:10].	20:55
Paul Ortiz	Mr. Scott, were there other experiences that you'd like to share that we didn't touch on earlier?	22:11
Charles Rogers Scott	Well, I don't know. I think I covered pretty much. We had the segregated school houses, the segregated college life. And I had a fear that I was not trained as well as a White student until I had an opportunity to go to school with them. And that fear was soon shattered, because they could not get more or less than I could. So I guess that's about the whole thing of what I've been through, where I am now. I could be retired out of the schoolhouse, but I think at this time, and where I am, that I can talk to these children, try to lead them out of wherever they are and tell the superintendent a few things. If he don't like that, then I can go home. I have 32 years in. I don't have to just sit around and take it.	22:18
Charles Rogers Scott	But I think we are in the position now, those of us who made this the level, that we are better even now to help our people. We just got to go out and do it. And they make you mad as a hornet, but that's still all we got. And if we don't save them, we will be a sure enough dead generation. That's my life.	23:07
Paul Ortiz	Okay.	23:31
Charles Rogers Scott	Okay.	23:31

Item Info

Title:

Charles Scott interview recording, 1995 August 04

Date:

August 4, 1995

Creator:

Scott, Charles Rogers

Contributor:

Ortiz, Paul

Description:

Name: Charles Rogers Scott; Date of birth: 1941-01-22; Place of birth: Sunflower Co., MS; Occupation(s): educator; principal; teacher; Residence: Itta Bena, MS
Informant ID: 1170; Interviewed by: Paul Ortiz.

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Behind the Veil

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

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

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Charles Scott interview recording, 1995 August 04

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1. Charles Scott administrative file, 1995

John Hope Franklin Research Center

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Charles Scott interview recording, 1995 August 04

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