Major Hollister interview recording, 1995 July 15
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| Major Hollister | Born January the 9th, 1924. So that makes me about 71 years old at the present. I was born near Des Arc, Arkansas. | 0:01 |
| Paul Ortiz | And Mayor Hollister, did you grow up in Des Arc? | 0:22 |
| Major Hollister | Growed up till I was about 12 years old, at Des Arc. Then we moved near Cotton Plant, Arkansas. That's about five miles from here. | 0:29 |
| Paul Ortiz | And sir, why did your family move to Cotton Plant? | 0:40 |
| Major Hollister | Well, the farm that we was living on, they sold it to the government, and White people was the only one that got those plots, and we had to move out. So we moved to Cotton Plant and my dad farmed there for about two years. And then we moved over here and bought a little old 80-acre farm, moved to Fargo and bought an 80-acre farm here. We still own that little old farm. My father's dead now, and all of my brothers and sisters, except one sister and myself, is the one that's left now. So we still own the farm, but I usually rent the farm out. But I don't have it rented out now because I couldn't find nobody who wanted it this year. And I figured now what year I started the saw mill and I bought me a little old saw mill. And I've been running that saw mill for about 48 years. And that's the way I sent most of my kids to school, running my saw mill. I liked it so well I'm still running it. I'm still running the saw mill. | 0:44 |
| Paul Ortiz | Mr. Hollister, you were referring earlier to a government program where only White farmers were allowed to buy land. Was that the Farm Security Administration or— | 2:07 |
| Major Hollister | At that time, I really don't know, but I know it was a whole section of land where we lived. When we were there, we were share cropping and they sold it to the government. And when they did that, well after that we had to move out. Well, I know they built houses and stuff there and we had to move out. So we moved to Cotton Plant, and we stayed on the farm down there and farmed for a couple of years. Then we found this place over here at Fargo and we come over here and bought that 80 acres of ground, and that's where we've been ever since. | 2:20 |
| Paul Ortiz | So your original— the 80-acre farm is actually in Fargo? | 3:04 |
| Major Hollister | Yeah. Uh-huh. It's in Fargo. | 3:07 |
| Paul Ortiz | Mr. Hollister, when you were growing up, how many people were in your household? | 3:13 |
| Major Hollister | It was— let's see now, we have 10 children. My father had 10 children, six boys and four girls. | 3:18 |
| Paul Ortiz | And Mr. Hollister, what were your responsibilities when you were growing up on the farm? | 3:35 |
| Major Hollister | Well, we had to pick cotton, chop cotton, and we had split-time school. We wouldn't go to school nine months. We would go to school after we got to— let me see, I don't remember now exactly when that. But we wouldn't go a whole nine-month term. We had split-term school because we had to work in the field and make a living, that's when we were down there. We'd go to school and then school would be out and then we'd go back during the winter months. So that's how we had to go to school at that time. That's been a long time ago. | 3:41 |
| Paul Ortiz | And how old were you, sir, when you first began working in the field? | 4:38 |
| Major Hollister | In the field? As I can recall, I started working in the field when I was about six years old. Maybe a little bit earlier than that. | 4:45 |
| Paul Ortiz | Mr. Hollister, what are your earliest childhood memories of growing up? | 4:59 |
| Major Hollister | Of growing up? How far can I go back? I don't remember just how old I was, but that's just about it. I remember when we was real small, we had to chop cotton, pick cotton and do gardens, raise watermelons, raise potatoes and all of that. I learned how to do all of that when I was real small. I still know how to raise gardens. | 5:12 |
| Paul Ortiz | That's hard. | 5:39 |
| Major Hollister | Out in materials now, but— | 5:44 |
| Major Hollister | After we started the saw mill, well, things started picking up a little bit and we got to where we could make pretty good money. Back when I first started, I think railroad crossties were selling for about 55 cents. And we didn't have a saw mill at the time, but we made them with a thing you called a broad axe. And we made crossties with them. | 5:52 |
| Major Hollister | And after a few years of that, well I went to work for Southern Compress down here at Rackley, where they pressed cotton. They used to make great big bales of cotton and then they'd press it down to small ones so they'd have plenty of shipping room. So I worked down there for about 13 years and the guy, I was working on seasonal work at that time, and he asked me would I work year-round. That mean I had a permanent job, so I took the job. So I worked there until Christmas and he laid me off. | 6:24 |
| Major Hollister | That made me kind of mad. So I came back home, picked up my broad axe and went back to making crossties. That was right after Christmas and after, I worked there till about the 15th day of April. | 7:09 |
| Paul Ortiz | What year was that, sir? | 7:29 |
| Major Hollister | That was in, I believe, 1944. Yeah, it was on about 1944. And then I made enough crossties from December to the 15th of April, to purchase the little old one-man saw mill. And we started making ties from there. I would cut logs during the day, and when the kids come in from school we would saw our logs up, and that's where we made our living and that's where we sent our kids to school. During the summer months when they was out of school, we worked in the woods. And my kids was real small and we was using one of these cross-cut saws at that time, and we would put two of them on one side and I would pull the other side until we got enough logs cut up before we crank the mill up. Then we were farming a little bit down there on the farm. We would farm a little bit, raise a little cotton, corn, peas, first one thing then another. | 7:33 |
| Major Hollister | And that's how we made it. It seemed like to me we were happier then than we are now. Yeah, it was real. I guess it was a blessed thing. I enjoyed it. I still think about it. And after which we— Well, when I first married I built a little old house and after we got the saw mill and got to sawing and going on, we built us a nice house down there on the farm. And a few years later a snake crawled through the door and crawled on down in the room and went up under the hot water heater. And my wife, she used to hear me say, "If I find an old snake out in the woods, I would just throw a little gas on him and watch him run." She grabbed some gas and ran in the house and throwed it up under that water heater. She just ought not to have done it, so she got burnt trying to get out the house. So we lost that house and all of our furniture and everything we had, but what we had on. | 8:59 |
| Major Hollister | So my uncle was living right down the road. "Well Major," he said, "come on, stay with me until you get ready to build your house back." I said, "No, I can't stay with you that long." I said, "I don't know how long it's going to take before I can build another house." So we moved in with him, stayed with him for all of three or four weeks and then we found this house and rented it, and moved up here by the church and stayed there until we bought this little place and we bought a little old trailer and set it out here in the front yard. We lived in that trailer until I built this house here. I built this house here about three years ago. And all of that house except some of it, some of the dress part of it comes from the saw mill back then. | 10:11 |
| Paul Ortiz | Mr. Hollister, what were the challenges you faced in first setting up your saw mill? | 11:11 |
| Major Hollister | Well, I don't know. I think that was easy, because we had a agent in here from FHA, I think it is. I think that's what they called it. And he come by one day and he asked me what did I want to do and I said, "I always wanted me a saw mill." And he said, "Well you can get that." He says, "I can write you up and put you in business." So he did. He went to work and wrote me up and helped me get the saw mill and everything. So that was real good. I even enjoyed that part, because I found that — You might have heard of him, I think his name was Jesse Mason. He was a great person. He was a Black man, too. | 11:20 |
| Paul Ortiz | He was Black? | 12:17 |
| Major Hollister | Yeah. | 12:18 |
| Paul Ortiz | And he was an FHA agent? | 12:20 |
| Major Hollister | Uh-huh. Yeah. | 12:21 |
| Paul Ortiz | Oh, okay. So Mr. Hollister, he was helping small business people? | 12:22 |
| Major Hollister | Oh yeah, uh-huh. Yeah, uh-huh. He was a great person. He's well known around in this area. | 12:29 |
| Paul Ortiz | Mr. Hollister, thinking back on the earlier days, how would you describe the Black community in Fargo? Say when you were growing up, 1930s, '40s, what was the community like? | 12:42 |
| Major Hollister | Well, I wasn't here in 19 — I moved here in 1940, '39 or '40. And people were cutting wood, making crossties, picking cotton. I even hauled field workers for a year or so, and I made good money that way. Made a decent living doing that. And me and my family, we all— when the boys got big enough to work where they could make a day. We got by pretty good at it. Of course I had my own truck and everything where I could haul 40 or 50 people. We was getting paid so much a head for hauling them, so much a pound for picking cotton. So it was real nice. I think it was real nice. It was our way of making a living. That's one of my boys there. | 13:00 |
| Paul Ortiz | And so you were working for particular farmers? | 14:04 |
| Major Hollister | Yeah, farmers. Really, I done some of everything. I've done field work, I've done saw mill work and I don't know, somewhere I raised cucumbers, I raised okras and marketed them, and whatever I could find to do to make a living, that's what I done. | 14:09 |
| Paul Ortiz | Mr. Hollister, what were race relations like in Fargo back in the '40s? | 14:38 |
| Major Hollister | Back in the '40s we didn't have too much conflict. At least I didn't here at Fargo and I think it was pretty good, no more than usually. I would say that it was fair. Not really fair, but close to it. Really a person of my category, I can't focus my mind on a lot of things that a lot of people focus their mind on, because I stay busy all the time. But far as I was concerned, I think I got along pretty good with the White race as well as the Colored race. I always did, because I had to work all the time. So I guess I didn't have time to focus on that too much. Sure didn't. | 14:48 |
| Paul Ortiz | Mr. Hollister, when you were growing up, would neighbors share things with each other when times were hard? | 16:02 |
| Major Hollister | Pretty well. Pretty well. I've always been a person that shared and I just don't have no problem with people sharing with me, I really don't. I've always done that. Yeah, I've always done that. The only time that I had any conflict with the racist part was when I first became the first mayor. | 16:11 |
| Paul Ortiz | And what year was that, sir? | 16:47 |
| Major Hollister | For the first— What did you say? | 16:48 |
| Paul Ortiz | What year was that, sir? | 16:48 |
| Major Hollister | What year was I elected for mayor? You remember? | 16:48 |
| Speaker 3 | It was 19 [indistinct 00:17:00]. | 16:59 |
| Major Hollister | Somewhere back in that part. You might be able to pick up that down to the school, I'm quite sure they got a record of it somewhere down there. But I had problems there after I was in there for the first four, five or six months. Then problems started. The Whites started just loading in on me in the council meetings and some things that they didn't like. And finally— Well, when I was elected mayor, it was a split term. It was in the middle of the term, and I served that term out and after which some of the enemies that was against me got on the board and I knew I didn't have— what they was trying to do was to dissolve the city, make it go back like it was before it was incorporated. And after they got on the board, I knew that they was going to just sit down on me and I couldn't have no meetings, so I resigned. | 17:00 |
| Major Hollister | Well, I knew if they wanted to dissolve the city, they would have to have a mayor to do that, and if they elected another mayor it would take more time. By it being a split term, might have a chance to save the city. So it did happen like that. And after which Mr. Mahon, he got in there and he served in there for a whole term. And after he was out, well I came back and got it back again. | 18:13 |
| Major Hollister | So I've been kind of quiet this term, because I found out that I don't need to make nobody mad, I don't need to get nobody confused or nothing of the kind. And since we are all coming from the ground, see this little town has just been incorporated, and everything we do is got to come from the ground. And it's a hard struggle to do that and I know that, so I have to be easy with it although it may take my term and maybe somebody else's term or so before we can ever get it to rolling. But we hope to get it rolling someday, and we don't want to see it go back like it was because things are better here and now than it was back then, because we're beginning to get our street signs, we're beginning to get our street lights and we have a garbage pickup, something that we never had. And it's a lot better now than it was back there. Absolutely. | 18:45 |
| Major Hollister | And we don't get paid. We are doing this for our people. We don't even ask. None of the aldermans don't ask for no money. I'm the mayor, I never had a dime coming from the city since I've been in there, the other term I didn't either. I want to see it get up and move, and then when it get to rolling, maybe somebody can step in and get paid. That's the way I feel about it, and my work is free. I take my tractor sometimes and mow the ditches and do that free of charge until we can get things straightened out like we want to. | 20:00 |
| Paul Ortiz | Mr. Hollister, as mayor, and thinking back on your earlier life, what have been the most important changes you've seen in Fargo since the 1940s to right now? | 20:42 |
| Major Hollister | The important change? This is some of the important changes. By being incorporated, that's one of the great important changes that we had. And we know the school went out from on President Brown's administration, but Calvin King come through and picked up the pieces and put them back together, and we're still doing something worthwhile. And he's doing a agriculture situation down there, training some young people. I was at a graduation down there not too long ago, training some young people how to make a living. And I think that is one of the greatest important things that can be coming up in our younger people, is learn how to raise the food they eat and try to do some of the clothes that they wear, because that's what they going to have to have. And they need to know that because you don't never know when the time will come that you will have to raise your food. | 20:53 |
| Major Hollister | And I think that's great. Although President Brown had agriculture situations going when he was there, but Calvin King have picked up the pieces and put that together and they're coming directly from the colleges, look like to me, and doing it like it's supposed to be done. So I think it's a great success that has been made since the school closed down, and since 1940. It's really, in my way of seeing it, I think it is. | 22:18 |
| Major Hollister | I never saw so many potatoes since Calvin King has been down there, and I never saw so many peas and cabbage. I never seen cabbage being raised in the wintertime like he raised them down there. So it's been great as far as I know, and as far as I can see, because I plan on raising me some winter cabbage this year, and I'll learn how to do it. Whether I like to eat them or not, but I will learn how to do it. I'll go to school. I never did go to President Brown's school, but I sure have learned a lot from that school down there since I've been here. | 23:03 |
| Paul Ortiz | Mr. Hollister, when you were growing up, which school did you go to? | 23:46 |
| Major Hollister | I went to Spring Lake High School over at Des Arc, and I went to Mount Pleasant School over here at Cotton Plant. | 23:50 |
| Paul Ortiz | What was the highest grade that you completed? | 23:58 |
| Major Hollister | Eighth grade. | 24:09 |
| Paul Ortiz | You went to eighth grade? | 24:13 |
| Major Hollister | Mm-hmm. | 24:13 |
| Paul Ortiz | Mr. Hollister, how would you compare education of your day, or what are the major differences between the education you received and, say your children received? | 24:13 |
| Major Hollister | Well, they're faster than we were and everything that we've done. What they do now is so much faster and seem like to me is more direct. I don't really know how to put that together. But seem like to me that they're faster. Maybe they were more trained for today's going than— Well, we wouldn't have been able to make it if our days had been like these days today. And perhaps they could do what we done real easy, a whole lot better than we done it, this day of time. I don't really know just how to fix that. | 24:28 |
| Major Hollister | But it's a challenge, look like to me, to be able to see them do what they do now. And I guess it's a challenge to them to see how we done it back at that time, because to my saw mill, I still got some more improvements that I need to make that I feel like they would have already made those changes, to make the work much easier and make it more productive. So I think younger people nowadays, that they probably won't go get a half a package, they will get the whole package before they can make production move faster than we did when we was coming up. Well I guess money is out there and opportunities is better for them than it was for us when we came up. That's what it looks like to me. | 25:36 |
| Paul Ortiz | Mr. Hollister, what have been the things that have inspired you throughout your life to keep on struggling and striving to reach your goals? | 26:50 |
| Major Hollister | Well, I've worked all my life, and I don't steal, I don't take nothing from nobody. And I feel that it's right to work for what you get. And sometimes it might take a long time to get what you want, but when you do get it, you still have a clear conscience and that makes me work, and makes me work for what I want. And I work a long time. I bought a new saw mill about two years ago and went about $40,000 in debt to try to help two of my boys. And after I got everything straightened out, they quit. | 27:02 |
| Major Hollister | But that didn't stop nothing. I'm still going to carry out my plans, although I'm getting up in age now, not as strong as I used to be, but I'm still going to carry out my plans and it'll take a good spell of sickness or death to stop me because I intend to go on it until I carry out my plans. And after I carry out my plans, I intend to change and try to sit in this chair a little bit more than I've been sitting in, because I got up at a age now that I need to rest a little bit. And if I can help get Fargo up off the ground, that would be one of my goals. | 27:59 |
| Paul Ortiz | Mr. Hollister, are there any other experiences or stories that you'd like to share that you haven't touched on? | 28:58 |
| Major Hollister | Well, I was in the making of purchasing a small plot of ground to build a city hall here in Fargo. We've already purchased that and we got the deed to that. Now we are looking forward to trying to find some funds to build a city hall. That's one of the things that I want to see before my term is out. I don't plan on doing another term at my age, but I do want to get it up off the ground enough to where somebody else would be interested in taking it and moving on with it. That's really what I want to do. I tried to get Arnold to take that. I tried to get Arnold down there to take the mayor's place in Fargo. I like Arnold, Arnold's smart. Seems like he do all he can. He tell me every time he see me. "Mr. Hollister," he says, "anything that we can do down there, just let me know." And I tell him, I say, "Well, one day I may be calling on you so regularly, you may be trying to dodge me." | 29:11 |
| Paul Ortiz | Mr. Hollister, I know you have a— | 30:54 |
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