Charles Smith interview recording, 1994 June 29

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Felix Armfield	Today is June the 29th, 1994. I'm Felix Armfield, the interviewer. I'm about to interview Mr. Charles Smith at 2608 Chartres Street in New Orleans, Louisiana. Mr. Smith, would you state your full name for us just for the record?	0:05
Charles Smith	My name is Charles C. Smith.	0:27
Felix Armfield	The mic is going to pick it up.	0:28
Charles Smith	My name is Charles C. Smith.	0:28
Felix Armfield	Okay. Mr. Smith, how long have you been here in New Orleans?	0:29
Charles Smith	All my life.	0:32
Felix Armfield	All your life?	0:33
Charles Smith	78 years.	0:34
Felix Armfield	78 years old.	0:34
Charles Smith	Yeah.	0:37
Felix Armfield	When were you born?	0:37
Charles Smith	June the 27th, 1916.	0:38
Felix Armfield	1916?	0:43
Charles Smith	'16.	0:43
Felix Armfield	All right. Where were you born here in the city of New Orleans?	0:43
Charles Smith	I was born in the Treme section. That is around where, I don't know, you know where Dooky Chase is at?	0:49
Felix Armfield	Yes, sir.	0:53
Charles Smith	In that area.	0:53
Felix Armfield	And that's called the Treme section?	0:55
Charles Smith	Yeah, it was part of Treme.	0:55
Felix Armfield	What special about the Treme section?	0:57
Charles Smith	Well, it's just a matter of section that people call different section. Like downtown around below St. Bernard, around there, they call that the Creole section. Different section. It was just different section, type of—	1:00
Felix Armfield	What was the Treme section noted for?	1:10
Charles Smith	Well, I really don't know exactly the difference in the name. People just say it was the Treme section.	1:13
Felix Armfield	Was that pretty much the Black community or Black neighborhood?	1:19
Charles Smith	Well, no, that's a part of the thing. That's a part of what integration did. When I was living there, in my early years—I'd have to back up.	1:23
Felix Armfield	Okay.	1:33
Charles Smith	To talk about integration. To me, integration was a necessity.	1:34
Felix Armfield	Okay.	1:41
Charles Smith	I realized that. But in integration, it also brought about segregation to a great extent, in my early experiences.	1:42
Felix Armfield	Now what years are you talking about here?	1:53
Charles Smith	I'm talking from '30 up to the '50s.	1:57
Felix Armfield	Okay. Okay.	1:59
Charles Smith	You understand?	2:00
Felix Armfield	Yes, sir.	2:01
Charles Smith	For an example, all my life, say my earlier life, I live, when I said the Treme, where project is at, the Lafitte Project, right where Dooky Chase is at. In that area, I lived in what we had called double houses. You know the double house? One side and other side. We've always had Whites living on other half of the house.	2:01
Felix Armfield	Really?	2:25
Charles Smith	Yes.	2:25
Felix Armfield	And this was in the Treme?	2:26
Charles Smith	That was in the Treme, all over the city.	2:28
Felix Armfield	Really?	2:29
Charles Smith	That was basically the way the city was composed of.	2:29
Felix Armfield	Do you think that was unique to New Orleans?	2:32
Charles Smith	Well, I don't know about other places, but it was typical of New Orleans.	2:34
Felix Armfield	Okay.	2:37
Charles Smith	All over the city, you had White and Black living in a double house. One half was White, one half was Black. There was no such thing as you could go and say, "This is a White neighborhood and [indistinct 00:02:52]." It was an integrated neighborhood. When integration came in, when they so-called forced integration, then you start seeing the exiting.	2:39
Felix Armfield	Now you're talking about after the '50s at this point?	3:07
Charles Smith	Yes. Yes.	3:07
Felix Armfield	That's when you saw—	3:08
Charles Smith	Well, I mean, it started leading towards it when they started bringing up all this movement about integration of the schools and all these things. Then you start seeing, the early part of integration, a problem with integration, while you were living in that section, you found out that the kids played together in the neighborhood up until they got to the junior and senior high school. What I'm talking about White and Black. For an example, I lived on Miro and Orleans, if you know where Dooky Chase is at?	3:08
Felix Armfield	Yes, sir.	3:40
Charles Smith	At that corner, diagonally across the street where the project is. I was living in a house there. Next to me was a White family and all along that street was Black and White. Black and White, Black and White, Black and White. All right, three blocks down, going towards the lake, going back to what we call Backatown, was the same process. The boys in our area had a team, a baseball team.	3:41
Felix Armfield	When is this now?	4:09
Charles Smith	This was around in the '30s.	4:10
Felix Armfield	Okay.	4:14
Charles Smith	Between the '30s and the '40s.	4:14
Felix Armfield	Okay.	4:15
Charles Smith	All right. When we would play ball, we'd play ball against the team. Now the team that was down the block was integrated in the sense that they had Black and Whites on the team.	4:16
Felix Armfield	Okay.	4:25
Charles Smith	What happened on that team was some of the White boys' father played on the Pelicans baseball team and they were playing on the—mixed with Black and our team and we'd play against them in the middle of the street. We didn't have playgrounds at that time.	4:26
Felix Armfield	Okay.	4:40
Charles Smith	We be playing in the neutral ground, so-called neutral ground. The police would—	4:41
Felix Armfield	This neutral ground is what most people would call a median?	4:45
Charles Smith	Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Right.	4:47
Felix Armfield	Okay.	4:48
Charles Smith	Well, what was happening here, police would come and make too much noise and run everybody. Never try to catch anybody, but just run us and break up the game.	4:49
Felix Armfield	Okay.	5:02
Charles Smith	You understand? Because we'd be breaking glass and all that. But that went on until—The boys and girls played together all till they got to junior high school and senior high. Then you start seeing them pulling apart.	5:02
Felix Armfield	[indistinct 00:05:15] Huh?	5:15
Charles Smith	Yes. They began to realize that White and Black were getting at the age or stage where they didn't want that co-mixing. All right, for an example in my area, noted people like Louis Prima. I don't know if you ever heard of Louis Prima.	5:15
Felix Armfield	Louis?	5:33
Charles Smith	Louis Primo.	5:34
Felix Armfield	Spell that last name.	5:35
Charles Smith	L-O-U-I-S. Primo, P-R-I-M-O. He was outstanding trumpet player.	5:37
Felix Armfield	Okay.	5:45
Charles Smith	He used to play with—imitate Armstrong.	5:45
Felix Armfield	Okay.	5:50
Charles Smith	And he was internationally known.	5:50
Felix Armfield	Oh, he had to be if he could imitate—	5:55
Charles Smith	Yeah. Yes. But he used to be playing, be all with the Blacks, playing all around in there. Now he lived about four blocks from my house.	5:55
Felix Armfield	Okay.	6:01
Charles Smith	You se?	6:02
Felix Armfield	Was Louis Prima—	6:02
Charles Smith	He was a Italian. I don't know what he was, a mix. He's White. He was White, yeah.	6:04
Felix Armfield	Okay.	6:09
Charles Smith	He was White and all that. And see? And all [indistinct 00:06:11] would be mixed up and all in that area. You understand? Okay. Now in that neighborhood, we had Clark School—Not Clark. What is that now? Bell School is what they call Bell School now. It used to be Benjamin Franklin. We used to have Benjamin Franklin school, that was White.	6:09
Felix Armfield	Okay.	6:30
Charles Smith	All White. Surrounding that, we had Joseph A Craig School was the elementary school, which was all Black. Now the Whites went to the Benjamin Franklin. We went to Craig.	6:31
Felix Armfield	And this is kids from the same—	6:41
Charles Smith	Same neighborhood. Same—	6:44
Felix Armfield	When it came time to go to school—	6:44
Charles Smith	They went—	6:44
Felix Armfield	Went to different schools.	6:44
Charles Smith	That's—	6:44
Felix Armfield	But yet, when you came home—	6:44
Charles Smith	They played—	6:44
Felix Armfield	Came to an integrated neighborhood.	6:44
Charles Smith	Exactly. All right. When they started with—	6:52
Felix Armfield	So interesting.	6:55
Charles Smith	And then when they started integrating, when they start the forced integration, when they start putting the pressure integrating, this is when you found that realtors, I believe, began to realize this was a way of making big money. They start building these divisions, subdivision and all, and the Whites start escaping out of the neighborhood, slowly withdrawing and withdrawing and withdrawing. And then you start finding the neighborhood became either predominantly Black, predominantly White. And this is where you have now Metairie. You see what you call Metairie?	6:56
Felix Armfield	Yes, sir.	7:35
Charles Smith	This is where they start escaping from New Orleans to go into Metairie.	7:36
Felix Armfield	Now is that over what they call on the West Bank?	7:41
Charles Smith	No, no, no. The West Bank's across the river.	7:43
Felix Armfield	Okay.	7:46
Charles Smith	This was just as far as out—Let's see, how I can show you? Do you know where—Oh Lord, I can't think of the name of things. See now, I stay out of that area. That's around Kenner, you know where Kenner and all that section is?	7:47
Felix Armfield	Yes.	8:02
Charles Smith	Up in that section. On that section. Going that way, where Metairie is, so-called.	8:02
Felix Armfield	Okay.	8:06
Charles Smith	Where all the big stores is at now and these subdivision and stores and—	8:08
Felix Armfield	Okay. So they basically moved from the inner city—	8:12
Charles Smith	Inner city. There to the outskirts.	8:13
Felix Armfield	Moving to the outskirts.	8:13
Charles Smith	There you—That is. And that's where Metairie was built.	8:13
Felix Armfield	So they were moving to the outskirts—	8:13
Charles Smith	Outskirts of the town and they started development and predominantly White. That's when you start building up these White buildings.	8:18
Felix Armfield	And that's where you find that the realtors come into this picture?	8:32
Charles Smith	Well, I mean, you see what they—	8:36
Felix Armfield	They're basically going to sell property.	8:39
Charles Smith	Well, that's what they were doing. They would taking and go to these White people, "Look, I got a place over in—" And while these White people didn't want to be in there and went on through like that, you see? And that's my early experiences.	8:39
Felix Armfield	It sounds like an interesting one, and certainly, it's one that sounds like to me that may even be unique to New Orleans.	8:52
Charles Smith	To me, like I said, in the very beginning, integration was a necessity because it afforded you to do the things that you couldn't do. Prior to that, we had to ride on a bus behind the thing. We couldn't go to this, neither could, we could do all these things.	9:01
Felix Armfield	When you said you rode on the bus behind, what—	9:16
Charles Smith	What they call a little screen, a screen.	9:19
Felix Armfield	Okay.	9:21
Charles Smith	You know that little piece of—No, there's a bow, a little thing you'd move to the back and you sit in the back of it and it was moveable.	9:22
Felix Armfield	So from one seat to the next?	9:29
Charles Smith	Yeah, for an example, you didn't have any room you move it up and it moved. Even all that anybody in the back there would be White, Black, White and Black in the back of it. It was just one of these kind of foolish things. And we used to get in trouble. Even when we got to college, we'd take it, throw it out the window and all this kind of foolishness.	9:35
Felix Armfield	Really?	9:50
Charles Smith	And some the boys went to jail, some of the girls went to jail for doing all this kind of thing. But we would do it and get away with it and all that.	9:50
Felix Armfield	Doing what you had to do to survive.	9:58
Charles Smith	Some of the White people come from up north, were coming here, and they would come sit back there with us and they'd put them in jail because they didn't want them to come move them. They'd said they had a right to sit where—It was a mixed-up situation.	10:01
Felix Armfield	There were Whites who didn't necessarily want to subscribe to these views of segregation and they sat in the back of that sign—	10:11
Charles Smith	And they'd take him off the bus, put them off. They'd stop the bus and had the police come and take them off the bus and—	10:18
Felix Armfield	Really?	10:24
Charles Smith	They would do that. I've had experience with that on the bus myself, you see? Coming from Xavier, now that was in the '30s when I was at Xavier, between '35 and '39. All right? I can remember distinctly this man and it must have been his wife who came to sit in the back by me. He was talking with me and the bus driver stopped the bus and told me he had to come sit. He said, "No, I want to sit there." The bus driver stopped the bus and called the police, the police go to the man say "You just got to get off the bus." So they got off the bus.	10:24
Felix Armfield	Simply because he wanted to sit and talk with you?	11:01
Charles Smith	Sit and talk. That's right. You see, it was a unique thing. It was a peculiar type of situation.	11:05
Felix Armfield	It was a very peculiar type—Jim Crow was—	11:07
Charles Smith	Jim was a mess.	11:12
Felix Armfield	He was a mess. If we could for a moment, we're going to come back to it all, but let's back up and talk about your early life, your formative years.	11:12
Charles Smith	All right.	11:23
Felix Armfield	What are some of your earliest recollections of your neighborhood and the world around you as a youngster? What do you recall? What are some of the first images you recall? Tell me something about your parents.	11:23
Charles Smith	In what respect now? Well, I'll put it this way. Okay, I get an idea what you're trying to say.	11:38
Felix Armfield	Okay.	11:43
Charles Smith	My early life, I would consider, would be thinking in terms of neighborhoods. We had what we considered the best thing, that what this world need today, extended family. For an example, everybody from Broad Street, now Broad Street, it was about 10 blocks from Broad Street to Claiborne Street.	11:47
Felix Armfield	Okay.	12:16
Charles Smith	You understand what I mean?	12:16
Felix Armfield	Yes, sir.	12:17
Charles Smith	Say from Lafitte to Esplanade, from Lafitte to Esplanade was a difference of about—Let's see, that was about eight or 10 blocks too. Within that radius, within that radius of 10 or better, and eight, in that square, just look like everybody seems to know everybody. Every family knew just about every family in that area. So what—	12:18
Felix Armfield	That blood kin whatnot?	12:48
Charles Smith	No, no. Just knew everybody.	12:49
Felix Armfield	Exactly.	12:51
Charles Smith	All right. Now as I said, in that area, early years, Whites and Blacks knew everybody. You understand what I'm saying?	12:52
Felix Armfield	Gotcha, gotcha.	13:02
Charles Smith	If I was doing something on the streets, let's say, I was playing ball, somebody made me angry and I started cursing or anything, and some old lady or some old man, walk up to me and slap me in my mouth. I might not even know him. "Boy, using that kind of language out on the road!" I would take it and I would be frightened to death—	13:03
Felix Armfield	Exactly.	13:34
Charles Smith	—to go home. Because I don't know who he was or who she was and what they would tell—	13:35
Felix Armfield	Tell your parents.	13:41
Charles Smith	Knew my parents. So I would go home very quietly and would never say anything until a few days passed and then I would know that they didn't tell them. But these people had that kind of extended relationship—	13:44
Felix Armfield	It sounds like—	14:02
Charles Smith	—to protect each—the children.	14:07
Felix Armfield	Exactly.	14:08
Charles Smith	They were caretakers, all the children.	14:08
Felix Armfield	It sounded like you revered the elderly people.	14:08
Charles Smith	Oh, that's the part I'm getting ready to say to you. We revered and respected all elderly people, regardless of what color they were. We would extend our service to them.	14:09
Felix Armfield	Yes, sir.	14:18
Charles Smith	It's not like today. Today they see the elderly as a victim. They can take advantage of them, they can victimize them, do anything they want with them. And there's the difference.	14:19
Felix Armfield	Yeah. Major difference.	14:29
Charles Smith	There's a major difference. That's the difference. The same thing was in the school. The teachers were the role model for us. They came to the school all dressed up neat and clean and we aspired to be like them. And then they have a new breed of teacher that came in there, looking this sluggish and doing it, looking just like all other people. You see? So these are things. So we knew at the beginning that we had to be very careful what we did out in the street because we never knew who was looking. We could not be sure that what we were doing there wasn't being seen by somebody.	14:30
Felix Armfield	Yeah, yeah.	15:04
Charles Smith	And we knew that if it got back to our parents, it wasn't no explanation other than you were wrong. They were not going to let you say that Ms. So-and-so was wrong. Whatever Ms. So-and-so did, she was right and you going to get a second one.	15:05
Felix Armfield	Exactly.	15:19
Charles Smith	Whatever the teacher did to you at the school, when you got home, you would get another one.	15:20
Felix Armfield	I hear you.	15:25
Charles Smith	This is the type of thing that we had. So we had a different feeling towards school, towards teachers, respect. We had different teachers were respectful people. And everybody looked out for everybody. You could walk through the street any hour of night, any time of day and everybody knew everybody.	15:26
Felix Armfield	Really?	15:45
Charles Smith	It was amazing.	15:46
Felix Armfield	Sounds like it was a beautiful world.	15:47
Charles Smith	Oh, it was. It was extremely. It was.	15:49
Felix Armfield	In spite of Jim Crow.	15:52
Charles Smith	Oh, that's exactly what I'm saying. That's what I'm saying to you, why I said it in the very beginning, it had advantages, it had disadvantages.	15:54
Felix Armfield	Yeah. Yeah.	16:01
Charles Smith	You see?	16:02
Felix Armfield	But it sounds like because of such things as Jim Crow, you all knew how to build a protective world around yourselves and there was a greater sense of respect for one another?	16:02
Charles Smith	That's right. That's it. That's it.	16:15
Felix Armfield	And there was a lot more of a wholesome community there.	16:19
Charles Smith	Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.	16:22
Felix Armfield	Because you knew that once you veered outside—	16:23
Charles Smith	I'll give another example. I'll give another example.	16:26
Felix Armfield	Okay.	16:28
Charles Smith	My grandmother, she talked French.	16:30
Felix Armfield	She talked French?	16:39
Charles Smith	She talked.	16:42
Felix Armfield	She could speak—	16:42
Charles Smith	Speak French.	16:42
Felix Armfield	Okay.	16:42
Charles Smith	The lady next door to us was old French lady.	16:43
Felix Armfield	Okay.	16:47
Charles Smith	Miss Poisson.	16:47
Felix Armfield	Miss Poisson.	16:48
Charles Smith	Yeah.	16:49
Felix Armfield	Can you spell it?	16:50
Charles Smith	I'm going to tell you the way I think it was spelled. I think it was P-O-I-S-S-O-N.	16:51
Felix Armfield	And it was pronounced Poisson?	16:59
Charles Smith	Poisson. Yeah. Some of these words they used, you don't spell them, you just say them.	17:01
Felix Armfield	Okay.	17:05
Charles Smith	You see? But I think this is the way she spelled it, I believe. Now she made her living—She had a nice little house, but she had flowers and she made her living by selling fresh flowers. People in the neighborhood would go there and buy flowers for all occasion. And Miss Poisson was living next door to my grandmother.	17:06
Felix Armfield	She lived next door. Now, what was your grandmother's name?	17:27
Charles Smith	Pichon.	17:28
Felix Armfield	Pichon?	17:28
Charles Smith	P-I-C-H-O-N.	17:30
Felix Armfield	P-I-C-H—	17:38
Charles Smith	O-N. Yeah.	17:38
Felix Armfield	That was pronounced Pisson?	17:38
Charles Smith	Pichon.	17:38
Felix Armfield	Pichon.	17:38
Charles Smith	Pichon. P-I-C-H—	17:38
Felix Armfield	What was her first name?	17:39
Charles Smith	Oh, Lord. Let's see, I've forgotten it now.	17:40
Felix Armfield	You just knew grandma?	17:44
Charles Smith	No, Mémère we used to call her, mémère. Mémère. M-E-M-E-R-E. Accent E. French. Which is grandmother.	17:45
Felix Armfield	Oh—	17:54
Charles Smith	Mémère, mémère.	17:54
Felix Armfield	Mémère?	17:54
Charles Smith	Yeah.	17:55
Felix Armfield	That's neat, that's neat.	17:55
Charles Smith	You see?	17:55
Felix Armfield	Okay.	17:56
Charles Smith	Mémère. You see? Now let me explain something else about that. She would wear her big bonnet.	17:59
Felix Armfield	Okay. You're talking about your grandmother?	18:06
Charles Smith	My grandmother.	18:06
Felix Armfield	Okay.	18:07
Charles Smith	A big bonnet, all starched up in a, what you call that little thing in front of them? I done forgot what they call that thing.	18:09
Felix Armfield	The—	18:16
Charles Smith	Apron. Like a little apron, a little starched apron on it. And them long dresses, and she and Miss Poisson would walk down Claiborne, down Orleans Street to the Treme Market, which was an open market on the other side of Claiborne Street near where the auditorium is at.	18:18
Felix Armfield	Yes, sir.	18:35
Charles Smith	In the neutral ground, what you would call, what you say, the median.	18:36
Felix Armfield	The median.	18:39
Charles Smith	Yeah. All right. There was a market, a open market on the east side where you—Food.	18:40
Felix Armfield	Now when was this?	18:46
Charles Smith	This was back there in—	18:47
Felix Armfield	The '20s?	18:48
Charles Smith	In the late '20s, yeah. In the '20s, yeah.	18:49
Felix Armfield	Okay.	18:49
Charles Smith	In the '20s, you see? And she'd be walking, these two old ladies would be walking down the street, arm in arm, Black and White, talking French.	18:52
Felix Armfield	Ooh.	19:03
Charles Smith	Now right around the corner from my house on Orleans, she was living on Orleans Street, in the same block where Dooky Chase, on this side where I was telling you my grandmother was living at. That was before I moved to this other side. I was a baby then. They would send us to the grocery store, which was around the corner. The grocery store was owned by a Frenchman directly from France. J. Taillac. T-A-I—	19:05
Felix Armfield	T-A-I—	19:31
Charles Smith	L-L-A-C. Taillac.	19:33
Felix Armfield	And that was the owner's name?	19:36
Charles Smith	That was the owner's name. J. Taillac. Now when they would send us to the grocery store to buy food, my grandmother would not tell me to go buy food in English. She'd tell it to me to go get it in French. So we'd go to the grocery and ask for—For an example, I had a unique experience with my grandmother in my early days, which carried over into me when I went into the service. To show you how much left. When I would go to the grocery to go get what they call liverwurst or liver cheese. You know?	19:37
Felix Armfield	Mm-hmm.	20:13
Charles Smith	All right. She would never say go get liverwurst or liver cheese. "Go and get pâté foie gras."	20:14
Felix Armfield	Pâté foie gras?	20:20
Charles Smith	Yeah. P-A-T-E, F-O-I, G-R-A-S. Pâté foie gras.	20:22
Felix Armfield	G-R-A-S. Pâté. And that meant liver cheese?	20:32
Charles Smith	Liverwurst, yeah. You look in one of these big unabridged dictionary, you see "French for liverwurst or liver cheese."	20:33
Felix Armfield	It's pâté foie gras?	20:39
Charles Smith	Yeah. Now, let me make you laugh, what happened there. I'm in Oklahoma sitting down at the table. I'm a sergeant in the dining room in the—	20:40
Felix Armfield	When is this now?	20:53
Charles Smith	This is way back there in 1943.	20:54
Felix Armfield	Okay.	20:57
Charles Smith	1943, yeah, '43 or '44, something like that. I'm in Oklahoma, sitting at that table on a Saturday and them jokers say, "Man." And then they serve cold cuts for this Saturday meal. And man, I was enjoying, I made the mistake and said, "Whoo boy, this pâté foie gras is something good." (Armfield laughs) And these jokers fell out laughing, thought I was crazy. (Armfield laughs) And they called me, "Geechee this, Geechee this. Sarge, you a Geechee." Do you know what I had to do with these guys? I had to take these guys, bring them to the orderly room and show them in the dictionary, pâté foie gras was liverwurst.	20:57
Felix Armfield	And you slipped and called this stuff pâté foie gras?	21:41
Charles Smith	I just said it—	21:43
Felix Armfield	Not even thinking, really?	21:43
Charles Smith	Not even thinking, it was an ordinary thing. And they'd say off and all that. We used to talk—I can't say, I can't talk too much of it now.	21:49
Felix Armfield	Well, if you don't use it—	21:55
Charles Smith	I can understand.	21:56
Felix Armfield	—you lose it.	21:56
Charles Smith	Yeah. I don't talk as much and I don't claim that I can understand it. And when we weren't talking French, we were talking Creole.	21:57
Felix Armfield	Okay.	22:03
Charles Smith	You see, my grandmother talked pure French. The rest of them talked Creole. My mother and I would be talking Creole. They still talk Creole. My mother's dead though. But they used to, and we could do all that talking Creole and all that stuff. We knew everything.	22:05
Felix Armfield	So obviously, if your grandmother was communicating with you in French, you clearly understood French.	22:19
Charles Smith	Well, we understand. She would tell anything, she'd say anything, well, yeah, we could understand that, what she was saying.	22:25
Felix Armfield	Really?	22:30
Charles Smith	But I was a little youngster though. You see, my other cousin that's living in Chicago, she was older than me. She's 85 now. She was older than me because when my grandmother died, I think I was seven years old. Something like that. See, I was a youngster.	22:31
Felix Armfield	So you were real young at that time.	22:44
Charles Smith	But we knew that. You know [indistinct 00:22:47]. Oh man, we, you be surprised the thing that would stick with you in your mind of these things.	22:45
Felix Armfield	Now what was your grandmother's origins, so far as ethnicity?	22:55
Charles Smith	I made a family tree. I'm trying to make a family tree. And all I can get for her is her name—What the devil, her last name. I couldn't get nobody background on one thing. And just like with my father, I couldn't—	23:00
Felix Armfield	Clearly she had a heavy French influence.	23:16
Charles Smith	Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well—	23:18
Felix Armfield	From somewhere.	23:18
Charles Smith	Most of them people now, most of them had that French background. Most of the people around there had the French background. Most of us.	23:20
Felix Armfield	Clearly.	23:26
Charles Smith	Yeah.	23:27
Felix Armfield	That's interesting. Interesting. Now tell me a little bit about your parents, if you would. How big was the family? Did you have brothers and sisters?	23:27
Charles Smith	No. No. I was the only child. I was the only child. I can only tell you about my mother.	23:38
Felix Armfield	Okay.	23:42
Charles Smith	My father—My mother was my father's second wife. His first wife died. He had about five or six children with that family. But now, let me show you the funny thing about how that happened, my father mother was a Black woman.	23:44
Felix Armfield	Your father's mother was a Black woman?	24:03
Charles Smith	All right. His father was an Indian.	24:06
Felix Armfield	Okay.	24:10
Charles Smith	His grandfather and grandmother were both Indians.	24:10
Felix Armfield	Okay.	24:13
Charles Smith	So he was leaning more on the Indian side.	24:15
Felix Armfield	Was it the Black Indians?	24:16
Charles Smith	Yeah. He looked so much—He was just like an Indian, they used to call him Indian Charlie.	24:18
Felix Armfield	Really?	24:24
Charles Smith	Yeah. He was just like—nobody, everybody. And that's the only one I knew in the family when I got up to do. Now from his first children, I knew them all. And when I was born, that part of the family accepted me just like I was a part of the other family. You understand?	24:26
Felix Armfield	Which you were.	24:47
Charles Smith	Which I was and all that we got be. And so I knew them, but all the rest of them dead. You see?	24:48
Felix Armfield	So all the other children—	24:51
Charles Smith	Children are dead.	24:52
Felix Armfield	Were you the youngest child that he had?	24:55
Charles Smith	Yeah, I was the last one. I was the last one, you see? And I had a sister that was just like him, looked just like an Indian with long, pretty hair. Just finished college.	24:57
Felix Armfield	Really?	25:09
Charles Smith	And getting ready to teach. She was a beautiful somebody. And she died the same year.	25:09
Felix Armfield	Now when was this?	25:13
Charles Smith	Oh, that was way back then, man. Way back then. I had forgotten what year was that. That was was a good many years ago.	25:14
Felix Armfield	Really?	25:22
Charles Smith	Yeah.	25:22
Felix Armfield	And just as soon as she finished college, she died?	25:22
Charles Smith	Yeah.	25:22
Felix Armfield	Oh, that must have been tragedy.	25:26
Charles Smith	Yeah.	25:27
Felix Armfield	Now tell me a little bit about your mother. What did your mother do to make ends meet? What did she do for a living?	25:29
Charles Smith	Well, first of all, she started doing domestic work. And she did odd jobs. She worked with in a cigar factory for a while. The last real job she had was with nursing an old lady.	25:33
Felix Armfield	Nursing an old lady?	25:57
Charles Smith	Nursing an old lady. And that was the last thing she did. Now, the old lady that she was nursing was so fond of her because she would nurse her, but then end up by doing the cooking and all that and that kind of thing. And the woman, the daughters of her, one was a school teacher and one was something else and the other was a [indistinct 00:26:22] and all. The family, the people she was working with and they wanted her to bring me up there to help around the house. And she didn't want that. She said, "No, no, I don't want you to get mixed up in nothing like that." She encouraged me, wanted me to go to school.	25:58
Felix Armfield	This is your mother?	26:39
Charles Smith	That's my mother. Then my mother, after a while, my mother, when the old lady died, she got into the WPA program.	26:40
Felix Armfield	Your mother?	26:48
Charles Smith	My mother. WPA, the working program, and she worked on the quilting, making quilts. She worked with the quilt. By that time, I was getting ready to finish college. The old lady lady had died. So she didn't have—But the shorehouse people, the one that was a teacher, she continued to give my mother money, continued to pay rent for us. And she continued to try to keep me in school.	26:48
Felix Armfield	Really?	27:23
Charles Smith	But she didn't give me money to go to school because I was working my way in school on WP—It's one these programs that was made for school and I worked my way in school, the schooling. Okay. Now, but when I finished school, I had an option of going into the classroom to teach for $50 a month. You hear what I'm saying to you? $50 a month in the public school.	27:23
Felix Armfield	When did you finish college?	27:52
Charles Smith	1939. You wasn't born yet?	27:54
Felix Armfield	No.	27:57
Charles Smith	I figured that.	27:59
Felix Armfield	My father wasn't even born then.	28:00
Charles Smith	You see that? 1939, you see?	28:01
Felix Armfield	Yeah.	28:03
Charles Smith	Okay. All right, then. But WPA was offering 70 some odd dollars fee, but they would take my mother off the work. So I decided, let my mother rest. So they changed my mother off the job, put me on WPA. So I started working WPA recreation. You understand?	28:05
Felix Armfield	Yeah.	28:29
Charles Smith	All right. After I worked with WPA recreation, then I got a little more money than my mother would've gotten. But then I had to assume the responsibility of the household.	28:30
Felix Armfield	Yeah, yeah.	28:38
Charles Smith	So that worked out nicely. Plus the fact that this woman, a school teacher, continued giving my mother a little stipend. So that helped out beautiful. Then here come Uncle Sam. I'm 3A because I'm the household provider.	28:39
Felix Armfield	Yeah, yeah.	28:56
Charles Smith	After they sent me the first letter from the American Red Cross, I'm a trained recreational worker. Well qualified, got a degree.	28:57
Felix Armfield	And what was your degree in?	29:08
Charles Smith	In education.	29:10
Felix Armfield	Okay.	29:12
Charles Smith	All right. From Xavier University, asking me to accept the job with the American Red Cross. Not locally, but they wanted me to go overseas. Do you understand?	29:12
Felix Armfield	Yeah.	29:27
Charles Smith	But at that time, everything that hit that Atlantic Ocean, the U-boats were sinking and I was scared to death. I wasn't going to get on none them boats and get me—You see? So I said no. All right? Three months later, I got another letter. "Will you accept this position overseas? We have a beautiful job overseas. We need people with your caliber, blah, blah, blah." By that time, I was well entrenched in recreation work with WPA. Well qualified. I turned them down again.	29:28
Felix Armfield	Who is it that they're sending you these letters?	29:59
Charles Smith	These letters were sent to me in the 1940s, '41, '42.	30:04
Felix Armfield	Okay.	30:04
Charles Smith	'42. Right in the latter part of '42, latter part of '42. Then they turned right around and before I knew it, I got the third letter, after I refused the two. "You are to report down to induction center for examination." In one week's time, they changed me from 3A to induction. From Monday to Friday, I was inducted into the service.	30:08
Felix Armfield	Really?	30:37
Charles Smith	Because I refused these things. Now, that wasn't supposed to be done like that.	30:38
Felix Armfield	No.	30:42
Charles Smith	You understand?	30:43
Felix Armfield	Yeah.	30:43
Charles Smith	But I guess they call themselves punishing me. They sent me to this camp in Louisiana and I was supposed to go into special ed, but I mean, the special division with the army [indistinct 00:31:04]. When I got there, they'd already sent the people out. So they kept me there and before you know, I got lost in the shuffle. When they found out I was still there, they sent me into an infantry unit and God knows I didn't want be in no infantry at all.	30:44
Felix Armfield	Good.	31:21
Charles Smith	And they put me in—	31:21
Felix Armfield	You didn't want to be there in the first place.	31:22
Charles Smith	They put me in the infantry unit in the 4th Platoon, which was a heavy weapon platoon.	31:27
Felix Armfield	Really?	31:30
Charles Smith	That was in 1943 when I went into the service and I served—Then when I got into there and they sent me, I'll never forget it the rest of my life, I went into Camp Wheeler, Georgia on the Saturday before Easter.	31:30
Felix Armfield	You went into what part of Georgia?	31:45
Charles Smith	Camp Wheeler.	31:47
Felix Armfield	Can we spell that one?	31:47
Charles Smith	W-H-E-E-L-E-R.	31:49
Felix Armfield	W-H—	31:51
Charles Smith	E-L-L-E-R. Camp Wheeler. That's it. That's it.	31:52
Felix Armfield	Actually, the first part is Camp, C-A—	31:57
Charles Smith	Camp. Camp. Camp.	31:59
Felix Armfield	Oh, Camp Wheeler.	32:00
Charles Smith	Camp Wheeler, Georgia.	32:01
Felix Armfield	Okay.	32:02
Charles Smith	Let's see where Port of Georgia that's in. Yeah, that's in Wheeler. Yeah, that's right out from, what's this other big camp? The big place in Georgia? Fort Benning. You heard of Fort Benning, Georgia?	32:04
Felix Armfield	Fort Benning is—	32:17
Charles Smith	It's right off from there. Not too far.	32:17
Felix Armfield	Okay.	32:19
Charles Smith	Yeah. Yeah. And well, when I was there, I got there on the Easter Saturday. Now everybody, you meet very religiously inclined, would think you'd be talking about something about Jesus and all that kind of—Man. We got there and they made us fall out and here this guy talking about killing. You here to learn how to kill and start to be killing, they talk about and discuss got us—So I stayed in that thing and until I went through all the basic training. Then when I got through, they told me I could go to OCS.	32:20
Felix Armfield	What's OCS?	32:55
Charles Smith	Officer Candidates Training School. You know the officer unit?	32:58
Felix Armfield	Okay.	33:00
Charles Smith	But here's what they offered me. Combat engineer or infantry. I didn't want either one of those.	33:01
Felix Armfield	[indistinct 00:33:14].	33:11
Charles Smith	Yeah, I said I didn't want either one of those. And they told me, "Okay well, we'll send you into another." So they sent me into the—What the devil they call that thing? With the ammunition, ordnance company.	33:13
Felix Armfield	Okay.	33:27
Charles Smith	I went into the ordnance ammunition company. I got into that. So that was—	33:28
Felix Armfield	Really?	33:33
Charles Smith	[indistinct 00:33:35]	33:33
Felix Armfield	Interesting. Interesting indeed. If we could back up just a few minutes and tell me about your social surroundings as you were a youngster before you left home to go off to college. What were your social surroundings? What did you do for entertainment?	33:40
Charles Smith	Oh, man. That's easy. That's easy.	33:57
Felix Armfield	Okay.	33:59
Charles Smith	First place, played baseball.	34:00
Felix Armfield	Okay. Baseball.	34:02
Charles Smith	Baseball.	34:04
Felix Armfield	Clearly that recreational entertainment.	34:05
Charles Smith	Baseball, football.	34:07
Felix Armfield	Okay.	34:08
Charles Smith	Baseball and football we played, did all of that. And dancing was my specialty. Dance, dance, dance, dance, dance, we did.	34:11
Felix Armfield	You know what that implies to me if you liked to dance as a youngster? That obviously, the girls were always available.	34:19
Charles Smith	Well, yeah. Oh, yeah. That was no problem, that. We was always that. But the funny thing about it was this, I considered myself a top-notch dancer and I considered myself a pride waltzer. And I was top waltzer. But you know why I was a waltzer?	34:26
Felix Armfield	Why is that?	34:45
Charles Smith	Because I learned from the old folks.	34:45
Felix Armfield	Okay.	34:47
Charles Smith	These old people would take us and teach us.	34:47
Felix Armfield	How to waltz?	34:50
Charles Smith	How to waltz and make us—The old people, "Come on on the floor and dance." You see, a long time ago, Negroes used to have what they called social gathering. And they would call them banquet.	34:51
Felix Armfield	Call them what?	35:05
Charles Smith	Banquet. We say banquet, but it much like banquet. You say banquet?	35:06
Felix Armfield	Okay.	35:10
Charles Smith	But they would say banquet. And that was a lot of place where they had a lot of food, a lot of drinking and music festive every day. And I was always available to learn how to dance with these old people. They always, "Come on out and dance with me." And them old ladies in their eighties, seventies, eighties, they had a youngster that wanted to dance, would be dancing the quadrilles and all these old-time dance. And I'd be right out there dancing with them until I learned how to waltz. Right now, I would consider myself top waltzer, but I can't do it no more. My legs—	35:10
Felix Armfield	You can't do the waltz?	35:38
Charles Smith	I can still waltz, but my legs hurt me and all that.	35:39
Felix Armfield	Oh, okay.	35:42
Charles Smith	So I don't dance. People can't believe that I won't waltz. When I don't want to dance [indistinct 00:35:47]. When my cousin give a dance, I dance, I told 'em I won't waltz, people say, "Oh man, you should be out there waltzing. You look so good." My wife and I. But my leg hurt me so much now.	35:42
Felix Armfield	But that's something I never learned to do.	35:55
Charles Smith	Dance? Never?	35:57
Felix Armfield	Waltz.	35:58
Charles Smith	Oh lord, that was my specialty. That was my specialty, man. And see Morris Jefferson, Dr. Jeff's father?	35:59
Felix Armfield	Uh-huh.	36:05
Charles Smith	He and I'd get on that floor together. We'd waltz, everybody'd be watching us on that floor. When I went to graduate school at AU, shucks, I had a little gal from Texas, we'd waltz and even had faculty members, the young one dancing. One or two young faculty teachers there and one or two or those saw us [indistinct 00:36:25] and said, "Look, the next waltz, you going to dance with me." And I had to go dance with them because they were faculty. I was looking out for my grade.	36:06
Felix Armfield	Exactly. You were always looking out for that graduate [indistinct 00:36:35].	36:34
Charles Smith	Yeah. Yeah.	36:34
Felix Armfield	Where'd you go to high school?	36:43
Charles Smith	McDonogh 35.	36:43
Felix Armfield	Another one of those McDonogh 35.	36:46
Charles Smith	Here's what we did. Now here's [indistinct 00:36:51] We are celebrating, on July the 18th, we will be celebrating our 59th anniversary.	36:49
Felix Armfield	From high school?	37:02
Charles Smith	From high school.	37:03
Felix Armfield	Really?	37:04
Charles Smith	July the 18th, we will be celebrating the 59th anniversary. But this year will make 59 years ago that we [indistinct 00:37:15] high school.	37:05
Felix Armfield	And you were in which class?	37:16
Charles Smith	Class of '35. 1935.	37:19
Felix Armfield	1935. So many moons ago.	37:22
Charles Smith	Yes, sir.	37:24
Felix Armfield	What are some things that you recall best about those high school years? Obviously, this was an all-Black high school?	37:25
Charles Smith	Yeah. Yes.	37:32
Felix Armfield	Was McDonogh 35 private or public?	37:33
Charles Smith	Public.	37:33
Felix Armfield	It was a public—	37:36
Charles Smith	Man, I was poor. I was poor, man. I couldn't go nowhere else but my [indistinct 00:37:39] I couldn't go nowhere but no public school.	37:37
Felix Armfield	Public school. Okay.	37:45
Charles Smith	The first place I went to. Well, that made me say something else to you.	37:46
Felix Armfield	Okay.	37:50
Charles Smith	The first time I went to any place that I had to pay, I ended up by owing them more than I paid. The first time—I went to public school all my life because I couldn't even pay 25 cents a week to go to Catholic school, elementary school. So I went to public school all my life. When I went to Xavier University, now you not going to believe this when I tell you this. Tuition was $25 a semester. $50 a year. Four years, it came to $200.	37:50
Felix Armfield	$200?	38:27
Charles Smith	For four years. And when I ended up, I owed them $190. You hear what I'm saying to you?	38:29
Felix Armfield	So you only paid $10.	38:39
Charles Smith	And I was on working scholarship. I can't think of this guy named—Oh, if I could think of its name. It was a program, NYU program. NYU. National Youth Administration—	38:43
Felix Armfield	[indistinct 00:38:54] the National Youth Administration.	38:54
Charles Smith	National Youth Administration. There was a program, JP—I can't think of the name of it. I wrote away to Baton Rouge for it and they told me, "Go apply to the school." I went to the school. Maybe you might want to know this, what happened. When I finished high school, everybody was talking about where they were going to go, where they were going to go. Some of the kids were saying they going to go to Tuskegee. This one's going to Southern, this one's going to this place, this one going to—They say, "Smitty, where you going?" Say, "I'm going to try to get me a job somewhere." Said, "I ain't got nowhere to go."	38:56
Felix Armfield	So they called you Smitty, huh?	39:33
Charles Smith	No, they didn't call me. They called me Charlee. My name was Charles. But the girls that knew me called me Charlee, just for a nickname. Charlee or something like that. Now they call my son Smitty now. You understand?	39:35
Felix Armfield	Smitty?	39:48
Charles Smith	Yeah. They call him Smitty, you see? So I had no idea of going to college because I had no money. I knew I had no money in front and that would be wishful thinking. Here, three of my friends came one summer to my house. "Charlee." JB Hatcher. That's the name of the man. "Look man, here's a application." I said, "What's that?" "We found this application and I brought you one. You fill it out, let's send it to Baton Rouge." Three of us sent that Baton Rouge application. We all got answers from Hatcher to apply to the school we wanted. We all applied to Xavier University, Albert Miller, Wadey Mill and another other boy, Moses Davis. Several other, Moses—	39:49
Felix Armfield	These were all neighborhood kids, right?	40:37
Charles Smith	No, no. Yeah, yeah. Most of them neighbor. Moses lived across the river, but he applied for Southern. Okay. Now here's what happened. See, there were six of us that used to bum together when we was in high school together. Okay. But while we were in high school, our teacher, one of our teachers who—We used to work at a book room and she gave each one of us a Wentwood Trigonometry and said, "Y'all might need this one day when you go in the college." But I ain't never had it. We just took it and I brought it home. And that was the only book I owned in my four years of college.	40:38
Felix Armfield	Really?	41:18
Charles Smith	Only book I owned. So when I went to Xavier and I applied and I got in the thing, I went the whole year. And we had a dean over there, Sister Madeleine Sophie, who was the dean of [indistinct 00:41:36] and she loved the men. She would do anything for the men. The women caught hell with her. So whenever we knew we need to take our examination, one guy would get in front and say, "Go ask, get permission to take the examination."	41:19
Charles Smith	So when the [indistinct 00:41:51] get in there, say, "Well, who's out there?" He said, "Charlee's out there." [indistinct 00:41:54] "All right, give me the name of it." She'd write all the names down there. Say, "Tell them, don't come see me. Just give this to the register." So we get our name in there, we go take our exam.	41:50
Felix Armfield	Really?	42:04
Charles Smith	That's the kind of stuff we were doing [indistinct 00:42:08] And we did that, man. And at the end of the year, we went to Sister Madeleine's—Madeleine Richardson. Sister Madelina. She was beautiful, tall, graceful-looking, stern. And I used to think she was mean, but I guess that was a facade, a front to keep the people off her or something. And she called me in. She said, "Mr. Smith, you've been here all this year, you have not paid a penny."	42:05
Charles Smith	I said, "Yeah, I've been here all this year, but I came on a scholarship and I came in to working and I haven't been—" "Well, you need a—or you cannot return." And everybody was afraid to even talk to her. I have always been the type of person, if you ask me something, I'm going to answer you. And I'm going to say it, tell it like it is.	42:42
Felix Armfield	Yeah.	43:03
Charles Smith	You may not like it, but that's it. And I said, "Well, Sister, I wrote this letter to Mr. Hatcher in Baton Rouge. He told me to apply here." I said, "I thought this was for people who needed jobs." I said, "My father is dead. My mother doesn't have anything. I applied for a job here. I've been there all this time." And I'm looking around there. I say, "So-and-so is working. Her father works as a railway mill clerk. So-and-so is here. She's working. Her father's a doctor. So-and-so working." When I started pointing out and called her names, she started changing colors. I said, "Now is that what this is supposed to be?" I said, "Well, evidently I'm wrong then." I said, "It's not for us poor people, it's for influential people who has contacts."	43:04
Charles Smith	"What do you mean?" I said, "Just what I said. I can't pay if you don't give me the job." "Oh, no, no." For one thing [indistinct 00:44:08] She said, "Let me see your grade." Well, I had one or two As. I had Cs, a couple of Bs. Well, I didn't have no failing grade, but I didn't have—She said, "Well, you didn't do the best." I said, "But I don't even have no books either. I didn't own a book." I said, "I couldn't buy a book. I didn't have no book. I did what I did to try to study in the library."	43:57
Felix Armfield	Yeah.	44:32
Charles Smith	"Well, I'll tell you what you do. You come back here in August, come before school open, and I'll see what I can do for you." That's all I wanted to hear and I was right there. Guy named Manny put me on a work detail and their big mop was bigger than me at that—You see the size I am now? You know what I was weighing then?	44:33
Felix Armfield	I can't imagine.	44:55
Charles Smith	127.	44:56
Felix Armfield	Ooh.	44:59
Charles Smith	You know what my waistline was? 27 inches.	44:59
Felix Armfield	So you were tiny.	45:05
Charles Smith	More than tiny. When I went into the service, I was weighing 127.	45:05
Felix Armfield	Ooh.	45:07
Charles Smith	127, 127 pounds.	45:09
Felix Armfield	Never been a big man, huh?	45:12
Charles Smith	No, no. I got big in the service. Look, when I went overseas, I was weighing 127. I got overseas and we got on the Guadalcanal and we had nobody to fool around with, do nothing around there and just start putting on weight. I got to about 150-something. Then we got in the Philippine and they had all them women around there and we went crazy, after years of nothing. Then when I got to be discharged, guess what I got back down? 127 again.	45:16
Felix Armfield	Got right back—	45:40
Charles Smith	Right back down.	45:40
Felix Armfield	127.	45:40
Charles Smith	But then when I came back here and started getting the food back in me, I went back up to where I stayed 150 until I stopped smoking and I had a cold. I stopped smoking. And I jumped from 150 within a period of five months to 200 pounds.	45:44
Felix Armfield	Ooh.	46:01
Charles Smith	And I've been about 200 like that ever since.	46:02
Felix Armfield	Really?	46:03
Charles Smith	I'm about 30-some odd years now.	46:04
Felix Armfield	You certainly didn't spend your young life as a heavy man?	46:07
Charles Smith	Oh, no. Oh, no, no, no, no. Man, I was always slim and trim.	46:11
Felix Armfield	For one thing, you sounded like you were—	46:15

Felix Armfield	Take two with Mr. Smith. Mr. Smith, finish telling me a little bit about your high school days at McDonogh 35.	0:05
Charles Smith	Okay. At McDonogh 35, unconsciously, we developed, six friends of mine joined together, with six of us. And you talk about that coalition that Jackson talk about, the Rainbow Coalition. That was what we had at McDonogh 35. We had three fair ones, three shades of the fair, then three shades of the Blacks. We had one guy who was real fair, and then the next one, a little darker fair, and a little darker to that one. Those were the three fair sides. I was the lightest of the darker side. Then Albert Miller was the darker, the next one, and that other boy, Moses Davis, was the darkest. In other word, we had from a black Black to a high yellow, all six of us together.	0:14
Charles Smith	Now, Tom Lee, who was the biggest one, a man mountain youngster, 6'5, 6'6, wearing almost 300 pounds. Brilliant mind. We were always together. All the six of us were always together as a team. The teacher, they had a teacher there, he was a brilliant man. Brilliant Mr. Carpenter. He used to tell Tom, "Thomas, what are you doing with them Black stinky niggers?" You know?	1:12
Felix Armfield	Uh-huh.	1:42
Charles Smith	And Tom would be embarrassed. "Those are my friends." "Oh, you don't want to be with them." It wouldn't affect us because you knew Tom didn't have a prejudice bone in his body, but we would tease. So, I would say, "Tom, what you doing with us Black stinky?" And we do all that. So, it was something that was really unique with us, and we stayed together a long time.	1:46
Felix Armfield	Was that typical, the kind of thing that that teacher was saying?	2:09
Charles Smith	Oh, that teacher, he could talk seven or eight different languages. He taught all kind of language and math. He was a genius. And then he was—It wasn't, what'd you say, gay at that time. We would just call him a punk. He was just something else, but he was brilliant.	2:15
Felix Armfield	Really?	2:36
Charles Smith	He was brilliant. He was the most brilliant man I've ever met in my life.	2:36
Felix Armfield	Really?	2:41
Charles Smith	Yeah.	2:42
Felix Armfield	And he was teaching high school?	2:43
Charles Smith	Yeah, he was teaching high school. And everybody respected him. I mean everybody. You might not like him because of his manner, and he didn't pull any punches, but you had to respect his intelligence and all that stuff because he might do anything and say anything. And he was slouchy and his beard was dirty, and his shirt hanging out and that. Boy, you got to know him and he walking all like, oh.	2:44
Felix Armfield	With his wrist like [indistinct 00:03:09]?	3:07
Charles Smith	Yeah. Boy, you don't know. But you get to learn to like him. See?	3:10
Felix Armfield	Yeah. It sounds like he was a good teacher.	3:13
Charles Smith	Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Oh, excellent. Better than that. He was the best teacher in the whole system, man.	3:15
Felix Armfield	Really?	3:21
Charles Smith	You see?	3:22
Felix Armfield	Really?	3:22
Charles Smith	Now, coming back to the school, that experience at McDonogh 35 was—	3:23
Felix Armfield	Now, was this the same experience that you were talking about early on in the tape when you said that the neighborhood kids, you all, the Black kids, would go to this, to the Black school?	3:25
Charles Smith	Yeah.	3:35
Felix Armfield	And White kids would take off for their school?	3:37
Charles Smith	Yeah.	3:39
Felix Armfield	What school were the White kids going to in the neighborhood when you all went from McDonogh 35?	3:39
Charles Smith	Well, when I went there, they were going on Canal Street to Warren Easton. Or to Warren Easton, which was all White at that time.	3:44
Felix Armfield	Okay.	3:51
Charles Smith	Now, Warren Easton is more Black than White now. I don't know if they ever have no White down there.	3:52
Felix Armfield	How do you spell Warren Easton?	3:55
Charles Smith	Warren, W-A-R-R-E-N. Eastern, E-A-S-T-O-N. That's two words. Warren and then Easton.	3:56
Felix Armfield	Easton, okay.	4:03
Charles Smith	Yeah. And then they had all these other high schools. They had all these other White high schools. Now, as far as the Blacks concerned, McDonough 35 was the only Black public school in the city.	4:04
Felix Armfield	So, all the kids from New Orleans.	4:18
Charles Smith	All the poor people went to McDonough 35. All the people who had no money.	4:21
Felix Armfield	This had to be a pretty big school then.	4:29
Charles Smith	No, no, no, no, no, no. It wasn't that big. It was just a school.	4:33
Felix Armfield	I mean, if it housed all the Black kids in New Orleans who could not afford private school.	4:35
Charles Smith	Yeah, well, I'm telling you that many didn't go. That's what I'm trying to tell you.	4:42
Felix Armfield	Oh.	4:45
Charles Smith	You see? That truancy law was not enforced as much as it would be now.	4:46
Felix Armfield	Okay.	4:50
Charles Smith	Now, you had Gilbert's Academy, you had Gardere, which was another private school. St. Gilbert, Gardere, and you had Street. Daniel Hanley Street College. You see? Daniel Hanley was called a high school. Now, those were paid.	4:51
Felix Armfield	And those were private.	5:10
Charles Smith	And you had Xavier Prep. Xavier Prep was a Catholic school. Now, those are private schools, and quite a few went to these schools. You see?	5:13
Felix Armfield	And this is during the thirties?	5:21
Charles Smith	Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.	5:25
Felix Armfield	When you were in high school.	5:29
Charles Smith	Yeah.	5:29
Felix Armfield	Okay.	5:29
Charles Smith	Yeah.	5:29
Felix Armfield	Okay.	5:29
Charles Smith	You see, all the poor people like me went to McDonogh 35. And we would walk 30 blocks, 30 some odd blocks to 40 blocks to go to school. When rain, anything. Raining, anything, we had to walk there.	5:34
Felix Armfield	And you walked about 40 blocks to get to McDonogh 35.	5:44
Charles Smith	Yeah, and bus fair was seven cents and we didn't have seven cents to ride. If we had seven cents, we wouldn't ride.	5:48
Felix Armfield	You weren't going to put that seven cents on that bus.	6:01
Charles Smith	No, indeed. No, indeed.	6:01
Felix Armfield	Exactly. Exactly. Now, did most of the kids from the Treme section?	6:01
Charles Smith	Not on the Treme. When I said 35, that covered the whole city.	6:03
Felix Armfield	That's what I understand. I'm just trying to see, now did most of the kids in the city—	6:07
Charles Smith	By the time I got to high school, I wasn't living in the Treme there now. I had then moved down to the Seventh Ward. I moved down Seventh.	6:13
Felix Armfield	Okay. Now, they tell me the Seventh Ward is Creole city.	6:18
Charles Smith	Yeah, yeah. I had moved down on Claver.	6:18
Felix Armfield	What you doing up in the Creole sector?	6:18
Charles Smith	Well, we moved different parts of the city. Yeah, I know. Well, you see, we were part all mixed up. We were all mixed up.	6:26
Felix Armfield	I haven't met anybody yet here in New Orleans that wasn't mixed up.	6:31
Charles Smith	No. We all mixed up, man. All mixed up.	6:35
Felix Armfield	Whether they claim it or not.	6:38
Charles Smith	Yeah.	6:39
Felix Armfield	But no. So, by the time you got into high school, and when was this? 1930?	6:40
Charles Smith	That was 19, when I went to high school was in 19, what? '33 when I went into the high school.	6:47
Felix Armfield	Yeah, because you finished in '35.	6:49
Charles Smith	Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But, see, I went to junior high school.	6:53
Felix Armfield	So, but by '33 you were on the higher education section and in the Seventh Ward.	6:55
Charles Smith	Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah.	6:55
Felix Armfield	Okay. Well, then many kids from Seventh Ward did in fact go to private schools, didn't they?	6:55
Charles Smith	Yeah, some went. Yeah, they went all over the city. They went all over the city. Even those way down the river, walked down, go all the way to McDonogh 35. People that lived way across the industrial canal was going to McDonogh 35, too.	7:07
Felix Armfield	Now, how did they—They definitely had to take the bus there.	7:19
Charles Smith	Yeah. Yes.	7:22
Felix Armfield	That's interesting how there was only one public Black high school.	7:23
Charles Smith	That's right. That's right.	7:30
Felix Armfield	To provide education for the entire city.	7:32
Charles Smith	That's right. That is correct.	7:35
Felix Armfield	That's interesting. Now, as you're remembering—	7:39
Charles Smith	What you might do, if you have time, go over to McDonogh 35 school and ask them to give you a copy of the history of the school.	7:39
Felix Armfield	I'd like that. I really would because I've heard so much about this McDonogh 35.	7:47
Charles Smith	Well, you go and ask for them.	7:54
Felix Armfield	Okay.	7:54
Charles Smith	I got a book, but I can't give you my book because I—	7:58
Felix Armfield	You can't give me your book.	8:00
Charles Smith	No, I can't give you.	8:00
Felix Armfield	I'm going to stop by there and check and see if I can get one.	8:00
Charles Smith	You might have to buy it, though. Maybe you might. It cost me $5 to buy it, and I got one from my friend that was in my class out of that six. He's living in Washington, DC. I told him when this book came out I was going to get him one, and I got him one and I mailed it to him. I mailed him one.	8:04
Felix Armfield	Okay. Yeah, I'd like to see a copy of that. McDonoghs was an interesting place to be going to school. But now, you finished high school.	8:22
Charles Smith	I'll tell you what you do.	8:27
Felix Armfield	What's that?	8:28
Charles Smith	Talk to Dr. Jeff.	8:29
Felix Armfield	Okay.	8:29
Charles Smith	And ask him to see his sister. Jolene works over there.	8:32
Felix Armfield	Okay. Because I have to do a follow-up meeting with Dr. Jeff anyway. He's supposed to let me interview his mother.	8:38
Charles Smith	Oh, yes. Selma, yeah.	8:44
Felix Armfield	Yeah, I know.	8:45
Charles Smith	Oh, she love my baby. Selma's all right then.	8:45
Felix Armfield	All right.	8:47
Charles Smith	Just tell her you talked to me and all that.	8:49
Felix Armfield	I sure will.	8:50
Charles Smith	Miss Selma something else. In fact, she called me yesterday. We talked almost an hour on the phone.	8:53
Felix Armfield	Well, when you speak to her, you make sure you tell her that I'm interested in interviewing her. And I'm going to do it as soon as her son can get it all together.	8:55
Charles Smith	Yeah. Yeah.	8:58
Felix Armfield	Okay. Now, you finished high school in 1935.	9:06
Charles Smith	Yeah.	9:06
Felix Armfield	And off to Xavier you go.	9:08
Charles Smith	Right.	9:09
Felix Armfield	But you said that you really hadn't planned to go to college.	9:12
Charles Smith	I couldn't plan. I had nothing to plan with.	9:14
Felix Armfield	It takes money to plan those things.	9:18
Charles Smith	That's right.	9:19
Felix Armfield	But at any rate, somehow by some fate or luck, you ended up there.	9:20
Charles Smith	Yeah. I got in and after that first year, I stopped when I told you that big mop. When I started, they put me on that first job I had with a big mop. That mop was bigger than me. When I slinged the mop, instead of slinging the mop, the mop was slinging me.	9:26
Felix Armfield	You weren't wearing but 127 pounds.	9:36
Charles Smith	That's right. The mop was heavier than me. And John, who was the head man over there, we had been good friend a long time ago. John said, "Man, that mop going to kill you." He said, "Wait, I'm going to get you another job shift."	9:39
Felix Armfield	Oh really?	9:51
Charles Smith	So he said, "I'm going to see you again." So, he went off to sister and they transferred me to the library.	9:51
Felix Armfield	Okay.	9:58
Charles Smith	All right, now that's what you need to know, too. So, what did I do was simple as this. I went in the library that second year and worked from the library until I finished school, working in the library. That helped me all through my years in school. When I finished, I worked all that time in the library. That's when I told you I still owed them. So, I don't know how they took the money out or what they were doing. You see? But they said I owed $190, but I don't know what the—I was working every day doing everything, but I didn't know what they was doing.	10:00
Charles Smith	So, when I got ready to graduate, the dean sent for me, Sister Madeline-Sophie. She said, "Mr. Smith, did you get your invitation?" I said, "No, sister. You know I have no money and all that." She said, "Well, who you need? You need a—" But in fact, they wouldn't give me no what you call them, because you pay your bill there.	10:34
Felix Armfield	Great, yeah.	10:55
Charles Smith	She said, "How many you need? You got everything?" I said, "Yeah." "Here. Get take this note." They gave me all 15 invitations, did all these things. I said, "Oh, this is too much." She said, "You got car fare to go home?" "No." "Give him car fare to go back home."	10:55
Felix Armfield	Somebody was always looking out for you.	11:11
Charles Smith	You see? So, I got my car fare to go home. All right. Then, summer started. I didn't have no job. I didn't do nothing. I said, oh shit, I got to go do something. I went up to the dean. I said, "Look, Sister. I need to work." I said, "I'm not working, so I need to come help you pay for my bill." "Oh, that's so sweet to you." You know the dean. "Go work with Mr. Doley." I went and worked in the book binding department with Harold Doley. He's dead now. He just died not too long ago. We bound books the whole summer. You understand?	11:14
Charles Smith	Man, we had a Bible, a real manuscript from Germany. This German priest came there. It was a relic, I mean, a rare, rare book. We did such a tremendous job on it and put that thing in order. That guy went crazy with it for the job we did putting that book back together. He came and told us that, and Sister and them called me in there and called and she said, "Here." And she wrote me a letter, bill paid in full.	11:49
Felix Armfield	No she didn't.	12:25
Charles Smith	For a job, for sending this letter. You know, and moving.	12:26
Felix Armfield	If I was you, I would have kept that note.	12:31
Charles Smith	But I had the letter. But look, when I got married, let's see, I put the note somewhere. And moving it over to another—I don't know where that darn thing turned up at.	12:34
Felix Armfield	Over the years.	12:45
Charles Smith	Over the years, that letter plus my teaching certificate, all that went. I had to get a copy.	12:47
Felix Armfield	It sounds like to me, Mr. Smith, that there was always, in those early days of those historically Black colleges like Xavier, there were always those forces there that were looking out for your better good. Although, they maybe didn't appeal to you in the best of fashion sometimes, but they always were looking out for your better good. Can you say that that was typical of Black colleges at that time?	12:51
Charles Smith	Oh yeah, I think so. I think so. I think so. And what is more about that was this. When I was attending Xavier, 95% of the male student were Blacks. When I say black Blacks, my color and blacker. The other 5% of the good women were White almost. Light.	13:18
Felix Armfield	Really?	13:36
Charles Smith	And these Black boys came from all over the country. So, all that White gal, oh, they went, wow. They were in heaven and got all that mix and all that. It was something else, and it was unique. But I say this and tell it to anybody, I owe Xavier everything that I have.	13:37
Felix Armfield	Really?	13:52
Charles Smith	I owe Xavier everything I have, because if it wasn't for Xavier, I'd never have known.	13:52
Felix Armfield	It sounds like that Sister Dean.	13:57
Charles Smith	The dean? She would put a—Now, here's an example. I'll give you an example. If a girl got pregnant, look like if the boy, they find the boy, look, they'd put them both out of school there.	13:59
Felix Armfield	So, do what now?	14:17
Charles Smith	If a girl is pregnant and they put them out of school, put the girl out of school. Look, she would put both the boy and the girl out of school for messing up, if they were going to be messing up. But she put the girl out of the school, left the boy there.	14:18
Felix Armfield	Yeah. Yeah.	14:30
Charles Smith	But you understand what I mean?	14:31
Felix Armfield	Double standards almost.	14:32
Charles Smith	Yeah, yeah. She let the boy—	14:32
Felix Armfield	It's like the pregnant by herself.	14:32
Charles Smith	Yeah, yeah. You understand what I mean?	14:36
Felix Armfield	Yeah. Yeah.	14:39
Charles Smith	She was something else. Yeah.	14:40
Felix Armfield	Yeah. Well, I guess you're talking about a time when there were different standards that were set for women and different standards that were set for men. A woman that was certain things she was supposed to do. And a man, he did it because he was a man.	14:42
Charles Smith	Yeah.	14:54
Felix Armfield	Now, you finish up your educational experience, but back up to Xavier. Did you participate in any kind of fraternal organization there?	14:57
Charles Smith	Yeah.	15:07
Felix Armfield	Or did you—	15:07
Charles Smith	Yeah, I went Q.	15:08
Felix Armfield	You went what?	15:10
Charles Smith	Omega.	15:11
Felix Armfield	Oh, you're one of those Omega men?	15:12
Charles Smith	Yeah.	15:12
Felix Armfield	Omega Psi Phi, huh?	15:12
Charles Smith	Mm-hmm.	15:12
Felix Armfield	I didn't know whether you had been joined the same one I belonged to.	15:17
Charles Smith	What are you?	15:20
Felix Armfield	Alpha Phi.	15:20
Charles Smith	Alpha Phi Alpha.	15:20
Felix Armfield	Of course, I don't belong to the Omegas.	15:25
Charles Smith	No, that's all right.	15:26
Felix Armfield	But we all in the same struggle.	15:27
Charles Smith	Yeah, that's the same thing. You all right.	15:28
Felix Armfield	Same struggle. Did you play sports there at Xavier?	15:32
Charles Smith	No, I was too small. I told you I was 127. 127. I could only carry a water bucket. (laughs) I tell you what I did, I worked in the stand selling pop and selling peanuts for the school.	15:34
Felix Armfield	Okay. Okay.	15:48
Charles Smith	Yeah. But I didn't. No. I couldn't take part in no sports or nothing.	15:49
Felix Armfield	Okay, okay. Now, you've left Xavier.	15:56
Charles Smith	All right.	15:57
Felix Armfield	You've completed your college degree. You have become a prominent Black man simply because you have a college degree. Where do you go with that college degree?	15:57
Charles Smith	The first thing I got as soon as I finished, I taught for a half a year at one of the parochial schools in the place of a nun that was out sick. Then the next year, I went into the WPA Recreation, like I told you.	16:10
Felix Armfield	Okay, and you did that.	16:23
Charles Smith	From that, I went into the service.	16:23
Felix Armfield	Okay.	16:26
Charles Smith	Came out the service, immediately enrolled in the graduate school at Atlanta University.	16:26
Felix Armfield	Okay. How segregated was your stint in the Army? Was it strictly a Jim Crow?	16:35
Charles Smith	Jim Crow.	16:45
Felix Armfield	All the way?	16:46
Charles Smith	All the way.	16:46
Felix Armfield	What are some of your recollections?	16:48
Charles Smith	All right, I'll tell you for an example.	16:48
Felix Armfield	Are you comfortable? You need anything?	16:48
Charles Smith	Yeah, no, I'm all right. I'm all right. For an example, when I started off, it was segregated all the way around them thing. When we got to go overseas, we began to see Jim Crow racism. We got to New Caledonia. Right before we got to—	16:55
Felix Armfield	And this is in '43 or '44?	17:20
Charles Smith	'43. Yeah.	17:20
Felix Armfield	Okay, 1944.	17:20
Charles Smith	See? It was March of '43 when we started overseas, and we got to New Caledonia. We found out New Caledonia is right out from—Oh. No, they just had a picture of this doggone—What's the name of the thing right out from New Caledonia?	17:25
Felix Armfield	How would we spell that?	17:48
Charles Smith	N-E-W C-A-L-E-D-O-N-I-A. Caledonia.	17:51
Felix Armfield	C-A-L-L—	17:56
Charles Smith	C-A-L-E-D-O-N-I-A, I believe. Caledonia.	17:57
Felix Armfield	Okay, gotcha.	18:04
Charles Smith	Guadalcanal. See, that's right out from Guadalcanal. You see? We found out right there when—We didn't get off the ship, but we glad we didn't get off because the White guys had gotten there before us and told the native and people that Negroes had tails. They were like monkeys. Yeah. When we got the Guadalcanal, we were asked did we get off at Caledonia? Said, "No, we stopped in the port but we didn't get off." He said, "Well, good thing you didn't." See, because they got off, say, "Man, they had some trouble on that island." See? Because they couldn't shower, couldn't do nothing because the people were running there to see their tail, that White people had already told them that.	18:04
Felix Armfield	So, White soldiers had already gotten there.	18:47
Charles Smith	Yeah.	18:47
Felix Armfield	It's interesting that—	18:47
Charles Smith	That Negroes had tails.	18:53
Felix Armfield	It was such a mockery of this time, but everybody was supposedly fighting for US democracy.	18:54
Charles Smith	Oh yeah, yeah. Then when we got to Guadalcanal—	18:55
Felix Armfield	Profound establishments.	19:04
Charles Smith	When we got to Guadalcanal, then we found out that the Negroes had really taken over Guadalcanal, man, because they did all the fighting.	19:05
Felix Armfield	Guadalcanal?	19:12
Charles Smith	Guadalcanal.	19:12
Felix Armfield	Spell that.	19:13
Charles Smith	G-U-A-D-A-C-A-N-A-L. You heard of that, the Guadalcanal.	19:13
Felix Armfield	G-U-A-D—	19:16
Charles Smith	A-C-A-N-A-L.	19:17
Felix Armfield	Okay, Guadalcanal. It's one word. That's why.	19:21
Charles Smith	Yeah. Yeah, it's one word.	19:30
Felix Armfield	Okay. Now, where is this located?	19:31
Charles Smith	That's in the Pacific.	19:34
Felix Armfield	Okay. All of this is in—	19:36
Charles Smith	All this is in the Pacific, yeah.	19:37
Felix Armfield	Okay. Okay.	19:39
Charles Smith	All right? Then, what was that? That Black unit? I can't think of the name of the Black unit. 82nd or 83rd division, one of them. One in Boganville and left, then went to Boganville. They were the fighting unit. The Black unit that did all that fighting. Did all that mopping up.	19:39
Charles Smith	And then when we got back, after I went up there, went to Peleliu and the one thing, we got back to Latay in the Philippines. Then we found out that the Whites had gotten there ahead of us and was poisoned the Filipino's mind about the Blacks.	19:58
Felix Armfield	There again they told the stories over the table.	20:16
Charles Smith	Yeah. Yeah. Nothing about the table, about everything. About Negroes just that—And had them fight. Incidentally, on Guadalcanal, The Hawaiians were going there. The Whites and the Hawaiian got into so much fighting that the Hawaiian—Would never hit the public, was the Hawaiian who were waiting to get back to the Hawaiian islands because they heard of so much things that the Whites had done to their people on the Hawaiian Island that they were waiting to get revenge when they got back.	20:21
Felix Armfield	Yeah. Now, when you say the Whites, are you talking about strictly the American Whites?	20:50
Charles Smith	American Whites. Man, you'd be surprised how the American Whites were hated on these different places.	20:52
Felix Armfield	Really?	20:58
Charles Smith	Because they did so many different things that were wrong. You know?	20:58
Felix Armfield	Yeah. That's everywhere.	21:05
Charles Smith	Yes. Yeah. Oh. While I was also on—Let's see, where was this? This was in the Philippines. Just to show you how prejudice things were. When we got to the Philippines, armistice was signed. Armistice was signed, or what do you call it? The peace treaty was signed. Yeah, the peace treaty was signed.	21:07
Charles Smith	Okay. But right before that, we had what we call the ammunition dump. I was in charge of the dump. I had a White major who was leaving. He was from Georgia. He called me into the office. He says, "Sergeant, I want to tell you something." He said, "Now, you know I'm from the south." He said, "And you know since you've been here, and all your men have been here, how have I treated y'all?"	21:31
Charles Smith	I said to him, I said, "I don't have any complaint." I say, "I think you treated us excellent," which is true. He said, "I just want to be honest with you. I want you to give me an honest answer. If I've done anything wrong, let me know." I said no. I say, "I think you've done excellent with us." He said, "Now, there's the difference." He said, "I treat you the same way I would treat you in Georgia. He said, "When you're right, you're right. We treat you right."	22:09
Charles Smith	He said, "But I'm not going to fool you. Now, you're going to get a captain that's coming in. He is from out of New York with the Rainbow Division. Beware of him." He said, "Now, I'm not going to say anything anymore about him, but beware of him. All that glitter is not gold." He said, "Now, I'm not going to say any more than that to you. You seem to be a highly intelligent individual, I'm going to let it go at that." I said, "Okay."	22:36
Charles Smith	So, he left and I'll be damned if I didn't understand what he said later. This guy was coming in there, apple polishing me and telling—But cutting our food behind, doing all kind of little things at headquarters against us.	23:07
Felix Armfield	Really?	23:23
Charles Smith	Yeah. Did all kind of negative things, man, to try to tear us—	23:24
Felix Armfield	Undermine.	23:29
Charles Smith	Undermining us. You know? And then I realized what the man was saying to us. Now, he was straight up with us and did all kind of little favors for us. This guy was taking all our privileges away from us, yet laughing and grinning in our face, talking about he's from the New York and he did—And he was doing just the opposite from it. You know?	23:30
Felix Armfield	Yeah. The fact is, New York didn't change the fact that he was a racist.	23:48
Charles Smith	But this is what I'm talking about. This is what the man was trying to tell me. That's what he was trying to tell. So, we realized what he was and I learned a lot from that. Those are the prejudice. In the Philippines, we found out that—	23:52
Felix Armfield	What kind of privileges was he removing from you, or undermining?	24:04
Charles Smith	Well, he would go down to headquarters, and the kind of privilege that we had, that we could be going in the city during the day. He would take away privilege that go into town and this. All these little things. And he would say, "Let it come from headquarters," as if it wasn't coming from him. You see what I mean? He was stay in the background but—	24:07
Felix Armfield	But he had already spoken with the people at headquarters.	24:28
Charles Smith	That this is what he wanted to do, but he let them—	24:31
Felix Armfield	Yeah. I wonder, what was his concern about you going, when you'd go into town?	24:33
Charles Smith	He didn't want us with them there women. Boy, where the women are concerned, I don't have to tell you when the women are concerned. And then you had this kind of thing in the Philippines that was a different funny. You had the very fair Filipinas and you had the dark Filipinas, and there was a caste situation. That same thing that you find among the Blacks there. Color caste and all.	24:39
Felix Armfield	Yeah. Yeah.	25:06
Charles Smith	It was all that. Then, everything was fine until we got ready to come back. When we got ready to come back, I was a top sergeant, a highest ranking sergeant when we got to Latay coming back, so I was in charge of the replacement depot. They had another Black sergeant from St. Louis, and another one from somewhere else, I've forgotten, under me. We ran the whole thing. I was in charge of the whole thing. Everything was running smooth, smooth, smooth. Man, we got on the train and we were all mixed up. Man, we were all mixed up. Everything—	25:06
Felix Armfield	When you say you were all mixed up?	25:50
Charles Smith	I mean, Black and Whites in the same coaches and all.	25:51
Felix Armfield	Okay.	25:54
Charles Smith	All mixed up. We was coming back.	25:55
Felix Armfield	Now, when was this?	25:55
Charles Smith	This was after the war.	25:55
Felix Armfield	Okay, when you were coming back?	25:55
Charles Smith	Coming back home.	25:58
Felix Armfield	Okay. Okay.	25:59
Charles Smith	We done left the island, we all done hit San Francisco.	26:01
Felix Armfield	All right.	26:09
Charles Smith	You understand?	26:09
Felix Armfield	Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.	26:09
Charles Smith	We done hit San Francisco and we coming back. We got off from that camp, got off at the camp there, left the [indistinct 00:26:17], and we stopped somewhere around New Mexico or somewhere around there. And they stopped the train. Fall out. That's where they broke it up again. Now, listen well what they did us. They start calling a name, calling a name, calling a name, calling a name. Before we knew what had happened, they had done broke up the damn thing and had all the Whites in one section, all the Blacks in another section.	26:10
Felix Armfield	When you made it as far as New Mexico.	26:43
Charles Smith	Yeah, and they segregated us in the States. When we got back there—	26:45
Felix Armfield	And all had gone to fight in the war.	26:50
Charles Smith	Yes, right. And when—	26:52
Felix Armfield	One nation.	26:52
Charles Smith	When we got to San Antonio, Texas, we were a segregated outfit again. Boy, I was so damn mad. When I got there, the officers, the major, this major, I'm going to be be discharged. The major said to me, he say, "Well, Sergeant, your record shows a beautiful record here, and I would like for you to enroll to the Reserve because we need men like you." I said, "No, sir." I said, "Next time I come into this home, I'm going to have what you have of it."	26:55
Charles Smith	"What do you mean?" I said, "What do you have up there?" "Oak leaf." I said, "I'm going to have that on, maybe more. Because I found out a lot of things that I didn't know. I went overseas, and so all these years overseas, and I've learned a lot of things since I hit back to these States that I would not tolerate anymore. None of it." He looked at me, but there's nothing he could do because I'd already been discharged and I had my discharge paper in my hand.	27:27
Felix Armfield	Exactly.	28:00
Charles Smith	And I had everything. It was just a matter of him bidding me farewell. That was the last speech I would hear from him. You understand what I mean?	28:01
Felix Armfield	Exactly.	28:09
Charles Smith	Ain't nothing he could do, a damn thing about it. If he had all these papers in his hand, I would be very careful of what I said. But I had everything I needed to have.	28:10
Felix Armfield	You had all the papers in your hand.	28:18
Charles Smith	So, he looked at me and said, "What you mean?" I said that I'm leaving and going right to graduate school. I said, "When I come out, I'm going to be—" He looked at me, and must have said, this nigger think he's smart. And I did it, man.	28:18
Felix Armfield	Smart enough that you weren't going to serve in Uncle Sam's Army.	28:38
Charles Smith	That's right. That's right. That's right.	28:38
Felix Armfield	That's for certain.	28:38
Charles Smith	And so that—	28:38
Felix Armfield	You can go fight a war—	28:39
Charles Smith	That's the way to it, boy. That army was a desegregated—	28:40
Felix Armfield	And to get back in the States and see segregation still alive and well in 1940—	28:43
Charles Smith	Yeah, that was '46.	28:55
Felix Armfield	1946.	28:58
Charles Smith	Yeah. Yeah.	28:58
Felix Armfield	Amazing. Amazing. I think your military recollection is fabulous in just how much Jim Crow played its role.	29:03
Charles Smith	Oh man.	29:19
Felix Armfield	From the segregated units to them wanting to have control over involvement with the women.	29:20
Charles Smith	Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.	29:20
Felix Armfield	It's just an amazing story, Mr. Smith.	29:22
Charles Smith	Man, you'd be surprised. I would put nothing past the White man. And you know the bad feature about that. I don't know if you've ever had this experience. As soon as you tried to condemn all White people, you cry, one White guy come up and be so darn nice. You say, oh hell, I can't condemn everybody.	29:24
Felix Armfield	No.	29:46
Charles Smith	Then, when you let your guards down and you go take one into, you see another fellow do just the opposite. You say, now I'm a fool for trying to be—And you be don't know.	29:48
Felix Armfield	The thing of it is, I don't think it's all White people are that way.	29:58
Charles Smith	Well, we know that. We know that.	30:00
Felix Armfield	But certainly, I don't have time to sit back and figure out who is and who isn't.	30:02
Charles Smith	That's what I'm saying. You got to be very—Boy.	30:05
Felix Armfield	Exactly. Exactly.	30:07
Charles Smith	It's a hell of a thing.	30:10
Felix Armfield	But certainly, by and large, the [indistinct 00:30:16].	30:11
Charles Smith	Well, you see, that boil down to the thing back to what I said in the very beginning. Segregation. I opened my interview with saying that segregation and desegregation had advantages and had disadvantages. Now, I showed you up to that point. Now, I can show you some other points that came.	30:16
Felix Armfield	Now, what happened when you got back in the States? Did you go right off the graduate school?	30:35
Charles Smith	Yes, yes. I came back in March. Three years. I went in in March and I came back out in March, three years apart. You understand that? Three years in the service and then I came back and I went to graduate school that September.	30:39
Felix Armfield	Okay.	30:53
Charles Smith	Okay. Now—	30:54
Felix Armfield	So, you headed it for Atlanta? Atlanta University.	30:55
Charles Smith	Atlanta University. I spent a year in Atlanta, a half a year, a semester. Came back down here in New Orleans and did my fieldwork placement at that Arlene's Neighborhood Center.	30:59
Felix Armfield	At Arlene?	31:08
Charles Smith	Arlene's Neighborhood Center, which was a group work agency.	31:09
Felix Armfield	Okay.	31:12
Charles Smith	And then, I left and went back to Atlanta and did another placement at Morehouse with—	31:17
Felix Armfield	Okay, now when you say you were doing field work, what were you studying, Mr. Smith?	31:27
Charles Smith	Group work.	31:34
Felix Armfield	No, I mean, what were you trying to pursue in a degree?	31:35
Charles Smith	In social work.	31:47
Felix Armfield	Okay.	31:47
Charles Smith	Math and social work.	31:47
Felix Armfield	I just wanted to get this down.	31:47
Charles Smith	You wanted me to say it, yeah. Yeah.	31:47
Felix Armfield	Getting a master's in social work.	31:47
Charles Smith	A master's in social work, yeah.	31:47
Felix Armfield	Okay. Now, Atlanta University was one of the leading [indistinct 00:31:49] schools for many Black social workers.	31:47
Charles Smith	The top one. Top one. And so, Black school in social. Yeah, on the Forest of Bee Hill.	31:49
Felix Armfield	Forest of Bee Hill.	31:55
Charles Smith	Yeah.	31:56
Felix Armfield	Okay. Yeah. Now, when did you successfully complete your program there at Atlanta University?	31:57
Charles Smith	February 1948.	32:04
Felix Armfield	1948. So, actually two years.	32:05
Charles Smith	1948. Yeah, but that's a two years time. It's a two-year program.	32:09
Felix Armfield	Okay. Now, in 1948, you finished this master's degree in social work coming out of Atlanta University, which obviously was prestigious and still is. What kind of work was available for you as a trained Black social worker with an advanced degree?	32:18
Charles Smith	Well, I came out here. I came out here and I tried to get into the school system as a social worker, but they weren't hiring Black social worker right then. They weren't hiring social workers at the time. They only had three social workers at high. Three.	32:36
Felix Armfield	And that's in New Orleans Public Schools?	32:57
Charles Smith	Public school. They had three ladies, three women high.	32:58
Felix Armfield	Were they all White?	33:01
Charles Smith	Black. Black, White. Plus, I mean, they were Whites but there were three. At that time, the school was segregated.	33:02
Felix Armfield	Okay. Still segregated?	33:10
Charles Smith	Yeah, still segregated. Okay. When I came out, so what did I do? I started, in '48, I started teaching school.	33:13
Felix Armfield	Okay.	33:19
Charles Smith	I got in the school system.	33:21
Felix Armfield	Okay. Now, teaching public school?	33:22
Charles Smith	Public school, yeah. I taught for two years.	33:24
Felix Armfield	And what course?	33:27
Charles Smith	Elementary education.	33:29
Felix Armfield	Okay, so you [indistinct 00:33:32].	33:31
Charles Smith	Elementary school. Which to understand, I applied for social work, but they told me go on and wait until—	33:32
Felix Armfield	A position came available?	33:43
Charles Smith	In '50, two years later, I was called. In the meantime, here's what was happening. Several people called upon me. See, I had no problem getting in the system because I had five principals trying to get me, and the superintendent—	33:45
Felix Armfield	You got the mad skills.	34:02
Charles Smith	Well, I'd worked with these people as a WPA.	34:03
Felix Armfield	Of course you did. Yeah.	34:04
Charles Smith	Not only that, but I'd work with them as WPA Recreational worker.	34:06
Felix Armfield	Exactly.	34:09
Charles Smith	And they knew me.	34:09
Felix Armfield	Exactly.	34:10
Charles Smith	All these people—	34:11
Felix Armfield	[indistinct 00:34:13].	34:11
Charles Smith	They wanted me, see. And so, they knew me. They were fighting over me. The superintendent, "What the devil you must be? You think everybody in here is laughing? You see, everybody wants you and all that." So, I got into the system and in 1950 I had a choice.	34:12
Felix Armfield	You had a choice?	34:28
Charles Smith	They wanted me to go into as a counselor at Cohen High School. I told them I didn't want to go into counseling.	34:30
Felix Armfield	Now, was that a private Black school?	34:42
Charles Smith	No, that was a public school.	34:43
Felix Armfield	And it was called what?	34:44
Charles Smith	Cohen, C-O-H-E-N. Cohen. Walter L. Cohen High School up there.	34:45
Felix Armfield	Okay, okay. Now, that was Black?	34:51
Charles Smith	Senior high school.	34:52
Felix Armfield	Senior, okay.	34:53
Charles Smith	Black, yeah. Yeah.	34:53
Felix Armfield	Okay. Just so I get all these details.	34:56
Charles Smith	Yeah. I didn't want to. See, counseling and social work were two different fields.	34:57
Felix Armfield	Yes they are.	35:04
Charles Smith	They're two different fields. I'd only be fooling myself.	35:05
Felix Armfield	They are different.	35:07
Charles Smith	Yeah. See, and I didn't want to get mixed up in a field that I wasn't really trained for, you see?	35:07
Felix Armfield	Yeah, yeah.	35:13
Charles Smith	But in the meantime, I was called also by the director of the Social Service Department. She said, "Mr. Smith, we were going to experiment." I said, "What do you mean?" She said, "We need a Black male because we have so many areas that we are afraid to send our women into." She was saying, "We'd want you to try." And man, I worked there, and after working there for one year, they went crazy about it.	35:15
Felix Armfield	So, you had a job.	35:44
Charles Smith	I was the first male social worker high in the system.	35:46
Felix Armfield	In New Orleans Public School System.	35:53
Charles Smith	Yeah.	35:55
Felix Armfield	Be he Black or White.	35:57
Charles Smith	That's right. That's right.	35:58
Felix Armfield	One of the first male social workers. All right. In New Orleans Public School System.	35:58
Charles Smith	Yeah.	35:58
Felix Armfield	And that was in 19?	35:58
Charles Smith	'50 when I went.	35:58
Felix Armfield	1950.	35:58
Charles Smith	Yeah.	35:58
Felix Armfield	Okay. Still in a segregated system?	36:09
Charles Smith	Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. But now, I'm going to make you laugh about the situation here. This is the thing that almost blew our mind. By that time, they hired me and another worker. The other worker was trained in counseling, but they hired her as a social worker that could help out. We had five social workers, so-called social workers, to cover the entire Black system. You hear what I'm saying?	36:10
Felix Armfield	You had to do all that legwork with just five.	36:45
Charles Smith	We had five people, yeah. In other words, you'd go to one school in the morning and another school in the afternoon. You see? Okay. We used to meet. We used to meet. Our meeting, integrated. The Black workers and the White workers would meet and discuss the thing. We would meet with the psychiatrist. We would meet with everything there as a group. Now, this is well what I'm saying to you. All of a sudden, here they come, they desegregated the school.	36:48
Felix Armfield	Right. Now, this will take place when?	37:23
Charles Smith	Right after. Right after that. In '50, you know when they desegregated?	37:30
Felix Armfield	When they founded desegregation.	37:30
Charles Smith	Yeah.	37:30
Felix Armfield	You're talking about that?	37:30
Charles Smith	Yeah.	37:30
Felix Armfield	1954?	37:33
Charles Smith	Yeah, yeah, yeah.	37:39
Felix Armfield	Okay.	37:39
Charles Smith	And then we couldn't meet together anymore. We had to meet separately. You had never seen a mix-up that way in the world.	37:42
Felix Armfield	Why was—?	37:48
Charles Smith	Well, we could never understand. We never could understand what the hell was going on. I think it was either right prior to that or something, they pulled us apart and we were the only integrated group in the world.	37:50
Felix Armfield	Well, it sounds like when things heated up in the '50s, they snatched you up.	38:04
Charles Smith	Yes. That's the way. Something like that, yeah.	38:06
Felix Armfield	Just before 1954, they do the split up.	38:10
Charles Smith	Yeah, something like that.	38:10
Felix Armfield	To fight this whole integration thing.	38:10
Charles Smith	Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. And we were the only one who was together, but we could never understand what had happened, brother.	38:14
Felix Armfield	Really? How did you get along with—How many White social workers were in the group?	38:23
Charles Smith	Well, they had more than us, I think. They had more than us.	38:26
Felix Armfield	But in your particular group?	38:28
Charles Smith	In our group, but I mean, we all met together in the system.	38:29
Felix Armfield	Oh, throughout the whole system?	38:32
Charles Smith	The whole system, Black and White.	38:33
Felix Armfield	And there were five of you that was on the Black system.	38:35
Charles Smith	Yeah, five Black. We were five Blacks.	38:38
Felix Armfield	Oh, and then—	38:40
Charles Smith	And then all the Whites, they had a bunch. They must have had, let's see, they must have had about eight Whites, I guess, to five Blacks. They always had more Whites than Blacks.	38:40
Charles Smith	Okay, but now here's the kick spot. Like you say, when it started heating up, then—	38:54
Felix Armfield	About this integration business.	38:58
Charles Smith	They broke us up and they stopped us from meeting. When they were meeting, they'd hold two meetings. One meeting would be with the White, one meeting would be the Black. We could never understand that. Among ourselves we were mad. The Whites were mad, the Blacks were mad, the supervisors were caught in the middle. Because the Whites wanted to meet with us, the Blacks wanted to meet with them. We all wanted to meet together. We said to hell with them other people. We've been meeting together so long, we saw no reason why we couldn't continue to meet. We were the only real integrated group in the whole system prior to—	39:00
Felix Armfield	And that was social work?	39:38
Charles Smith	Yeah.	39:40
Felix Armfield	Well, social workers have been struggling for a long time.	39:40
Charles Smith	Yeah. See, and we were together, oh boy.	39:45
Felix Armfield	Now, what did your duties entail as a social worker in the public school system, Mr. Smith?	39:46
Charles Smith	Well, first of all, attendance was one thing. Secondly, evaluation. Help recommendation in the evaluation of students.	39:50
Felix Armfield	Of the students?	39:59
Charles Smith	Yeah, of students. Recommendation for psychiatric evaluations, all these necessary things like that and things of that nature.	40:02
Felix Armfield	Now, did you do the kind of evaluation of financial and economic status of students as to whether they need to be referred to social services for financial assistance?	40:07
Charles Smith	Not necessarily. Sometimes. That was done through the—	40:21
Felix Armfield	DPS?	40:28
Charles Smith	Welfare, the Welfare Department.	40:28
Felix Armfield	Welfare Assistance.	40:29
Charles Smith	The Welfare system.	40:30
Felix Armfield	But now, you basically took care of that.	40:31
Charles Smith	Yeah, we took care of the school programs.	40:33
Felix Armfield	The school system.	40:34
Charles Smith	Yeah. Now, we find those, and if they needed, we also would try to provide shoes. Anything dealing with attendance of school and things of that nature [indistinct 00:40:45].	40:35
Felix Armfield	Now, how did you deal with the whole problem of attendance? When you say attendance, meaning if a child was absent too much, you'd need to get in there and find out.	40:45
Charles Smith	Yeah, that's exactly right. Exactly right.	40:54
Felix Armfield	Was there something that you could do to aid the school?	40:56
Charles Smith	Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. At that time, now listen well to what I'm saying. That's why I tell you I was in the experiment. At that time, we'd go to the house.	40:59
Felix Armfield	Okay.	41:09
Charles Smith	Oh, man. There wasn't nothing to go—	41:10
Felix Armfield	So, this is about the '50s.	41:12
Charles Smith	Yeah. Go in the house and knock on doors and ring bells, and why your daughter's not in school. They'd have to tell us why. You get that child in school, blah, blah, blah. They'd bring them back in school and all that. If they didn't do nothing—	41:13
Felix Armfield	They would be reported to the [indistinct 00:41:30].	41:28
Charles Smith	Juvenile court, having the judge or having this court and all this kind of thing. You see? We had no fear of going into the homes and all, even in the Desire Project, all these different places. Not now. You couldn't get nobody go to nobody's house right now.	41:31
Felix Armfield	That's what I'm talking about.	41:50
Charles Smith	No, not right now. It's a different ballgame.	41:51
Felix Armfield	Yeah. Yeah.	41:53
Charles Smith	See, we did all this.	41:54
Felix Armfield	In the 1950s, you all did that.	41:55
Charles Smith	Oh man, we did that.	41:56
Felix Armfield	You knocked on folks' doors, where is this child? Where?	41:57
Charles Smith	I'm going to give you an example. My first job, the first time I went on Rampart Street, which was next block from McDonogh 35. You went to a big alleyway. I don't know if you know what I'm talking about when I say alleyway. That's like a hallway, but between two houses.	42:01
Felix Armfield	I know what you're talking about. I've seen them. They're all over New Orleans.	42:19
Charles Smith	Yeah, and in there like a—What do you call this thing? What the hell you would call it? Like a patio. Like a patio in the back, right in the back. In that back there, when I walked in the place, now, it was Black in the alley up to the—When I came into the Oakland, there were three Negroes sitting in the back there smoking pot.	42:22
Felix Armfield	Okay, and then when was this?	42:54
Charles Smith	That was right in the '50s. '55. '53, '54, '55. When I walked in there, man, they were smoking pot. They looked at me, they didn't know which way to go because they didn't know what to do. Because I was dressed up there, and they didn't know who the hell is this.	42:58
Felix Armfield	They didn't know if you was the police.	43:06
Charles Smith	No, no, no. So, they didn't know what way to run. I just happened to look up, and there was a little girl. I say, "Hey, girl." "Oh yeah, come upstairs. My mama's up here." I said, "Okay, I'm coming up." I eased the tension because I could see the frighten on them people's face. I hollered at the girl and her holler at me, so that eased the tension and they eased themself out. I wanted them to go because I didn't want to get caught there myself.	43:08
Felix Armfield	Yeah, exactly.	43:31
Charles Smith	And so I got on. All right. That was the first experience I say how dangerous it could have been. The next time I went around there on Julia Street, which was right around the corner, and this big 505 Julia Street. No, no, 1005 Julia Street. I remember the number houses. A great big apartment and a house of prostitution and all that. See? And so, when I go in the house to go see about this girl, I hear a woman go, "Say, baby, come on baby." And she didn't realize who I was. Then she realized she thought I was a damn policeman or something. Until that same evening, that same night, they raided the joint.	43:32
Felix Armfield	Really?	44:11
Charles Smith	Now, you know I didn't go back there any more.	44:13
Felix Armfield	Yeah, because [indistinct 00:44:15] right there.	44:14
Charles Smith	Because they'd be thinking I was the one that did it. But these are the kind of things.	44:15
Felix Armfield	Yeah. So, you did run up against some tough spots.	44:20
Charles Smith	Yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.	44:23
Felix Armfield	In spite of the fact that you knew you were going to do your job and see to it that you—	44:24
Charles Smith	Now, the other part of what I said, when I said in the very beginning about integration had advantages and disadvantages. Later, after all this had been done and integration was passed, they used a unique system. The system itself started weeding out the best Black teachers from the good Black school, putting them into the good White school.	44:31
Felix Armfield	This is when integration is in place?	44:59
Charles Smith	Yeah, in place.	45:02
Felix Armfield	By the late fifties?	45:03
Charles Smith	Yeah, and taking the good—The poor White teachers, dumping them into the Black—	45:04
Felix Armfield	Now, when you say the poor White teachers, you mean White teachers that aren't as adequate?	45:15
Charles Smith	Amen.	45:17
Felix Armfield	Exactly.	45:17
Charles Smith	And who didn't give a darn.	45:17
Felix Armfield	Exactly. Exactly.	45:19
Charles Smith	And putting them into the—	45:20
Felix Armfield	Who were only there for a paycheck.	45:21
Charles Smith	Amen. And didn't give a damn whether it's Black or not.	45:23
Felix Armfield	Exactly.	45:24
Charles Smith	And putting them in that thing like that, you see? So, that's the way that goes. That just killed me because they had the attitude, I don't care, I've got mine. I don't care if you ever get it, and that little thing. So, that was the whole thing. I don't know if I got any more you want. Anything else?	45:26
Felix Armfield	What's your greatest experience with your social work? How long did you remain a social worker in the public school system?	45:46
Charles Smith	30 some odd years.	45:53
Felix Armfield	Okay, so when did you retire?	45:53
Charles Smith	I retired in 1979.	45:59
Felix Armfield	1979, and you had put in 30 some years?	46:06
Charles Smith	33 years.	46:06
Felix Armfield	33 years of social worker in New Orleans Public School System.	46:07
Charles Smith	Okay, now the funny thing was this. In '79, I retired, like say, and I had a cataract removed. Then, a friend of mine, who I—	46:09

Felix Armfield	Take three. Mr. Smith, as you were saying.	0:04
Charles Smith	What I started telling you about, we were talking about—	0:10
Felix Armfield	You were telling me about after 33 years of retirement.	0:16
Charles Smith	Oh, good. After 33 years of retirement, a week later a friend of mine who I'd worked with while in the job, I was approached and asked to give him a hand. He was working with the Council on Aging.	0:19
Felix Armfield	Okay.	0:39
Charles Smith	That was in '79.	0:40
Felix Armfield	Gotcha.	0:40
Charles Smith	And I said, "What you want me to do, man?" He said, "I can't pay you that much, but I can give you something." He goes, "I want you to help me working with the senior citizen [indistinct 00:00:54] group, Council on Aging." And I said, "Well, okay." He said, "You might have to supervise about six workers or eight workers." And I said, "Okay. All right." I said, "Now I don't know how long I'm going to do this with you, but I'll do it a while to help you." But I'll let you know I ended up working 10 years from '79 to '89 when I retired again.	0:42
Felix Armfield	Ten years beyond.	1:20
Charles Smith	Beyond retirement.	1:21
Felix Armfield	Now what were you doing there?	1:22
Charles Smith	I was supervising a homemaking service, that is working with the senior citizens who receive homemaking service. That is people coming into their house, cleaning their house, doing errands for them, and doing things like that. I saw to that it was being accomplished and supervised that activity. Plus the fact, over and above what I was supposed to do, I finally made it a point to go and visit these people who were very lonely, who really needed companionship more than the cleaning of the house.	1:23
Charles Smith	Because they were in these homes, these nursing homes, not a nursing home, but in these various homes. And if relatives had more or less deserted them, and they had no one to talk with. Now this was an integrated setup and they would just welcome me and all that. And it was something.	2:01
Charles Smith	I also ran into so many problems that amused me because we ran into two or three real serious situations where these old people were fearful of Blacks. And I had to remove that fear by being able to overcome it. And then they started adoring me and I couldn't get rid of them and all that. I can cite several incidents of that type like that, you know.	2:18
Felix Armfield	Now, of all the things we've talked about so far, there's one thing we haven't talked about and that is, and I do want this for the record, when did you meet and marry your wife? You never even told me when you met her. Are you married when you go to the war, or is it after the war when you get married, or just when?	2:43
Charles Smith	Well now, there's a joke there.	3:00
Felix Armfield	Okay. We want those too.	3:00
Charles Smith	I know. But I mean, I was in the service and I didn't marry until 1949. But I met my wife right before I went to graduate school.	3:08
Felix Armfield	And that's at Atlanta University?	3:31
Charles Smith	At Atlanta University. Which means I went to graduate school in '46, which means I must have met my wife around '46. It was right before '46.	3:31
Felix Armfield	[indistinct 00:03:40] '46.	3:38
Charles Smith	That's right, you see. And it must have been around '46 when I came back. I met my wife.	3:40
Felix Armfield	You returned in March.	3:46
Charles Smith	In March, yeah. It had to be March of '46, somewhere around like that, because I went to school in September of '46 and I met my wife. I was going into the theater, or she was coming out the theater. Loew's State Theater.	3:48
Felix Armfield	The what?	4:04
Charles Smith	Loew's State? L-O-E-W-S Theater. L-O-E-W apostrophe S Theater, which is located on Canal and Rappaport.	4:06
Felix Armfield	Now was that a Black theater?	4:19
Charles Smith	Yeah, it was Black upstairs and White downstairs, and now it's integrated, yes.	4:21
Felix Armfield	Oh, okay.	4:23
Charles Smith	And we stopped and talked that around that day. And I talked to her and I went uptown to see her. And then I left and went to graduate school. And then when I went, I started writing back and forth. When I came back out of graduate school, we started being friendly again.	4:30
Felix Armfield	Graduate school?	4:42
Charles Smith	Yeah. Yeah. So it was one of these things like that.	4:43
Felix Armfield	Okay.	4:47
Charles Smith	So we got married in 1949. 1949.	4:47
Felix Armfield	Okay. Got married in 1949. Now you said she was an uptown girl?	4:56
Charles Smith	Yeah.	5:00
Felix Armfield	Uptown girl.	5:00
Charles Smith	Strictly uptown. Didn't know nothing about anything below Canal Street.	5:02
Felix Armfield	Oh, really?	5:06
Charles Smith	Yeah.	5:06
Felix Armfield	Now, was that unique within itself?	5:07
Charles Smith	Well, yeah. Uptown people and downtown people are two different breeds.	5:09
Felix Armfield	Really? How did you manage to convince this girl's father?	5:13
Charles Smith	Well, her father was dead then. I didn't have to convince him.	5:17
Felix Armfield	So this downtown Negro wants to marry my uptown daughter.	5:22
Charles Smith	Well, you see, we both finished from Xavier. She's a graduate of Xavier.	5:25
Felix Armfield	You both had gone To Xavier?	5:28
Charles Smith	Yeah. She's a Xavier. She played on the basketball team with Xavier. She's a Xavier basketball star. The woman's team.	5:29
Felix Armfield	So you had known of her?	5:39
Charles Smith	I'd seen her. I knew her before seeing her, but I didn't know her until I saw that then just talking. I don't know.	5:39
Felix Armfield	Really. Now what was your wife's name?	5:47
Charles Smith	Juanita. Juanita Signel.	5:50
Felix Armfield	Juanita Signel.	5:53
Charles Smith	S-I-G-N-E-L.	5:53
Felix Armfield	S-I-G-N-E-L.	5:53
Charles Smith	Mm-hmm.	5:53
Felix Armfield	Okay. Is Jim Crow dead, Mr. Smith? Or is Jim Crow alive and well today?	5:55
Charles Smith	I think Jim Crow is still alive myself personally. And the funny thing about it, Jim Crow can always be there as long as the people feel like they feel. That's the way I feel about it.	6:10
Felix Armfield	In spite of whatever laws.	6:20
Charles Smith	That's right. Laws are not change it.	6:21
Felix Armfield	Man has to change it.	6:24
Charles Smith	Man has to change it. That's the way I feel.	6:25
Felix Armfield	Do you feel we've made significant strides since the thirties, forties, and fifties? Certainly I feel that there were things that people in your generation did that paved the way.	6:28
Charles Smith	I agree with that.	6:40
Felix Armfield	Many of us have opportunities now that would not have been available had it not been for people like you long ago who paved the way that we could have opportunities.	6:41
Charles Smith	I feel this way. I feel—Now this is my personal opinion.	6:51
Felix Armfield	That's what I want.	6:57
Charles Smith	As soon as the people of today recognize and accept what you just said, that the people of yester years helped them to this point and not put them down as most of them are trying to do now and refer to them as Uncle Toms, that they will realize that if it wasn't for them that they would not be where they are today, and that they would work from there and carry it a little further. But then again, they got to work together. They don't have that togetherness that we had back there. They don't have that togetherness.	7:02
Felix Armfield	It's interesting, Mr. Smith, that you make that comment, that people referring to people from your generation, in some instances as Uncle Tom.	7:45
Charles Smith	Yeah.	7:58
Felix Armfield	I think that's one of the most unfortunate mistakes that we could ever make. Because basically people had to make choices.	7:58
Charles Smith	That's right.	8:02
Felix Armfield	And I don't think we're in any position to blame people for the choices that they made regardless of what they may look like from this end. I think people had to make choices and sometimes people had to make choices that weren't always—	8:03
Charles Smith	What they didn't know, what these people today doesn't understand is the power structure during our days are different from the power structure of today.	8:22
Felix Armfield	Exactly. Exactly.	8:29
Charles Smith	And see, the power that these Whites had when we were coming up is so much different from the power we had now. And it is only because we fought and battled with that power and got it down to where it is more acceptable here now. Because a long time ago they could shoot you, cut you, hang you in a tree, and nothing would be done about it. Nothing.	8:31
Charles Smith	But you see, the strategy—Personally I feel that the White man also have learned a lot. He did all those things to us way back there and what happened? He began to be criticized by his own race from other lands. And so why? He said, well, he had to find a new method or technique for doing it. He couldn't afford to be caught with all they doing there. So he got a new gimmick. He went and got all that drug, and brought all that drug in here, and let these fool do it to themselves.	8:58
Felix Armfield	Yeah.	9:32
Charles Smith	But who brought the drug down here? It wasn't the Blacks. The Blacks doesn't have these big planes, these big ships to carry all that stuff down here. It's the Whites.	9:33
Felix Armfield	Neither do we own.	9:44
Charles Smith	That's right. That's right. That's right. So you see, they got to recognize that and realize that. You see, they're going to have to recognize the fact that you got to work together.	9:44
Felix Armfield	And plus obviously it sounds like what you're saying is that we're dealing with a sophisticated system of Jim Crow.	10:02
Charles Smith	That's what it is. That's exactly what it is.	10:02
Felix Armfield	It's sophisticated.	10:03
Charles Smith	I said this to a priest the other day. I said—I don't know what religion you are.	10:04
Felix Armfield	I'm Baptist.	10:13
Charles Smith	Okay, I'm Catholic.	10:14
Felix Armfield	Okay.	10:16
Charles Smith	For as long as I can remember, I have always had the feeling of ecumenical feeling where religion was concerned. And I feel so good that it has gotten to the place where has it been acceptable to be considered ecumenical. Because I've always felt that way. But I've also said this, that until such time when all religion realize that everybody has the same right as long as you have the belief. And to say in your belief that you can accomplish the same goal and you got to recognize that. And this is what happening here.	10:16
Charles Smith	I told a priest just the other day, I said, I find my Catholic religion is the same today as it was 50, 60 years ago when I was [indistinct 00:11:09]. I said, the only difference is they're more sophisticated in what they're doing. I said they doing the same thing then when I was a kid and all that, but they're doing it in a more subtle way. They're doing it in such a way that they're using bigger words, and they're doing—	10:53
Felix Armfield	So they used to be closet about the [indistinct 00:11:30].	11:27
Charles Smith	That's right. And I say so you see, I say, don't tell me that. I say, that's why I've always said I'm going to say what I have to say. You see, I have self-respect for everybody. Everybody. And quiet as it may kept, I have attained as many things and as many honors as I could have achieved. I belong to the Knights of Peter Claver.	11:33
Felix Armfield	The Knights of?	11:55
Charles Smith	The Knights of Peter Claver.	11:55
Felix Armfield	Peter Claver.	11:57
Charles Smith	Yeah. That's the organization of the Catholic Church. I mean the Knights of Peter Claver. For an example, I have received with them the silver award and the gold award. That's medals. That's the two highest medal that the third degree offers to any member. Now, I'm also a member, the fourth degree of the Knights of Peter Claver, and I received the Cartagena Award, which is the medal. That's the highest medal they give.	11:58
Felix Armfield	Okay.	12:27
Charles Smith	All right. Now there very little more they can offer me as far as those two organizations, 'cause they're as high achievement, because they don't go any higher than that. But I still continue working with them, do my part with doing that. Now, as far as the church is concerned, I was just about five or six years ago, I received what they call a pro ecclesia pontificate from the Pope, which is a honor, a papal honor from the Pope for working with the church, working with the community and all.	12:28
Charles Smith	But I don't go around there bragging about doing these things. I worked all these years with the church and when I received that thing, I was so shocked when I got it 'cause I didn't even know I was up for it. You see, they called and gave it to me, but I didn't know it. The letter was on my table three days before I opened it. Because when it came from the archbishop, I told my wife, I said, "They want me to do something, I know." My wife said, "Why don't you open it?"	12:58
Charles Smith	The second day, she said, "Why?" I said, "Look baby, you could. You open it." On the third day she opened it. She said, "Lord, look at this!" I was so overwhelmed I could have cried. It's just one of these feelings. When you do a thing, you do it because you want to do it. You don't do it because you're looking for an award. And I've always felt this way. You feel better when you do something and if you get a award, okay. But if you don't get an award, you don't lose nothing.	13:22
Felix Armfield	No.	13:44
Charles Smith	If you do something for an award and you don't get it, you in trouble.	13:45
Felix Armfield	Because you did it because you wanted to do it.	13:58
Charles Smith	That's right. That's the way I feel.	13:58
Felix Armfield	You do it because you wanted to do it and you didn't do it looking for anything.	13:58
Charles Smith	That's right.	13:58
Felix Armfield	Now, if something, if an accolades come with it then so be it.	13:58
Charles Smith	That's right. But you don't do it. I tell the people, I say, don't do something looking to be awarded for doing it. No, you do it because you want to do it and you feel this is what you're supposed to. But don't go do it just for the award. No.	14:03
Felix Armfield	So in essence, to wrap it up.	14:17
Charles Smith	Yeah. You about to wrap. I'm getting hoarse now.	14:20
Felix Armfield	You're getting hoarse now and you're getting tired. But just to wrap it up, for the most part your view is that Jim Crow is still alive and well?	14:23
Charles Smith	I think so. I do honestly believe it. And I still think that the best thing that can happen to the Blacks is to revert back to the extended family.	14:39
Felix Armfield	The extended family.	14:43
Charles Smith	This is mine.	14:46
Felix Armfield	It certainly was one of our greater assets in your opinion.	14:46
Charles Smith	Yeah, that's what it is.	14:46
Felix Armfield	Okay. I hope that we can get back to that, that whole concept. I don't know if we will anytime soon.	14:54
Charles Smith	No, I don't know. But there's so much can be obtained from that. I don't know what part, where you live at?	15:02
Felix Armfield	I grew up in North Carolina.	15:11
Charles Smith	North Carolina. What part of North Carolina?	15:13
Felix Armfield	Greenville, North Carolina.	15:13
Charles Smith	Oh, and I can't think of who. I was in school with somebody from Greenville. I got Robert Person live in Charlotte, North Carolina. Robert Person. Robert Person in Charlotte. He finished at Atlanta U with me.	15:18
Felix Armfield	And raised by my grandparents, interestingly.	15:30
Charles Smith	Yeah.	15:32
Felix Armfield	So I had the extended family around me too. And went to college at North Carolina Central University in Durham, North Carolina.	15:32
Charles Smith	Durham, yeah. I have some people from Durham I knew in school with me.	15:32
Felix Armfield	I bet you did.	15:32
Charles Smith	I mean, man, all in that section.	15:32
Felix Armfield	You probably have known people from all over the world, Mr. Smith.	15:32
Charles Smith	I worked with a lot of people.	15:32
Felix Armfield	Yeah, yeah.	15:32
Charles Smith	I don't know. I hope I have been helpful to you.	15:32
Felix Armfield	Oh, you've been a wealth of knowledge. It's because of you that this project will certainly be a success, because of people like you. This is going to conclude my interview with Mr. Smith. Again, today is June the 29th, 1994 and we have been interviewing Mr. Smith at 2608 Charter Street in New Orleans, Louisiana.	16:00

Item Info

Title:

Charles Smith interview recording, 1994 June 29

Date:

June 29, 1994

Creator:

Smith, Charles Clarence

Contributor:

Armfield, Felix

Description:

Name: Charles Clarence Smith; Date of birth: 1916-06-27; Place of birth: New Orleans, LA; Occupation(s): social worker; Residence: New Orleans, LA
Informant ID: 593; Interviewed by: Felix Armfield.

Occupation:

Social worker

Location:

Format:

Language:

English

Digital Collection:

Behind the Veil

Source Collection:

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

Series:

Provenance:

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

Rights:

Limited Re-Use

CC BY-NC 4.0

Rights Note:

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

Identifier:

RL00170-CS-1262
RL00170-CS-1263
RL00170-CS-1264
fa887e5d-855d-43b4-a6b6-027dbc178852
behindtheveil
5ef111b5-97e8-454e-9a71-dd1f19e65fdb
ark:/87924/r4zc8438f
5ef111b5-97e8-454e-9a71-dd1f19e65fdb

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https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r4zc8438f

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Charles Smith interview recording, 1994 June 29

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John Hope Franklin Research Center

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