Rufus Alexander interview recording, 1995 July 10

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Stacey Scales	—The tape.	0:01
Rufus Alexander	Okay. Oh no, no. See, like I said, this was after the training school left from out here, then the Brinkley Public School got it. Then we had to convert it to a vo-tech school.	0:04
Stacey Scales	Oh.	0:19
Rufus Alexander	I was in building trades and building trades had to take out blocks, set in blocks, tile partition walls, and post labs and rewire and all of that, a top on it. We'd done a museum over completely because when we got out here, moisture had gotten in it and we had to go in and do the inside and put a top on it. Mr. Burnett was in charge.	0:20
Rufus Alexander	The building just carries a lot of memories. Down in one of the conference rooms where the office is, was my classroom. The other part was a shop, and the kitchen area over there was another part of it. That was the part and the section where we taught bricklaying down there where the kitchen is.	0:56
Stacey Scales	Were you a student here?	1:22
Rufus Alexander	I was an instructor.	1:23
Stacey Scales	Oh, you were an instructor.	1:25
Rufus Alexander	I was an instructor. See, this first was turned over, and it was a girls training school. What I'm trying to say is—What's similar to what we call it? The training school is similar to what they call a reform school. That's what all of this facility was until 1970, and then the Brinkley Public School leased it.	1:26
Rufus Alexander	We had our vo-tech school out here for teaching. We had building trades, welding, auto mechanics, nursing and all of that. That wing back over there was for the nurses. That's where they had health education.	1:57
Stacey Scales	Oh.	2:19
Rufus Alexander	We stayed out here seven years. When we came in here seven years, I remember when we first came in, because it was heated with steam heat, we had to convert all that, fix it all, and make it workable.	2:19
Stacey Scales	Who taught you your trade?	2:47
Rufus Alexander	Huh?	2:47
Stacey Scales	Who taught you your trade?	2:50
Rufus Alexander	Who taught me my trade?	2:50
Stacey Scales	Building?	2:50
Rufus Alexander	I went to school at Pine Bluff, AM&N.	2:50
Stacey Scales	Okay.	2:52
Rufus Alexander	I went down there for what they call T and I, trade and industry.	2:54
Stacey Scales	Okay. Did you always know that you wanted to be an engineer when you were growing up?	3:06
Rufus Alexander	No. You never really know, even after you get grown. You have dreams and ideals as to what you want to be, but at the time it came along, I was without a job. See, I taught about 20 years where I was teaching elementary education, elementary math, sixth, seventh, and eighth grade math, and coaching over at Biscoe.	3:13
Rufus Alexander	Then my major in school was trade ministries. When this job became available, then I thought about the State Department, not locally. I applied, and then I went back into what I majored in school.	3:56
Stacey Scales	Were your parents educated people too?	4:25
Rufus Alexander	Were they what?	4:26
Stacey Scales	Were your parents educated people?	4:34
Rufus Alexander	No.	4:42
Stacey Scales	Did they inspire you to go to school?	4:42
Rufus Alexander	Yeah. No, parents were not educated people, but they were God fearing people.	4:43
Stacey Scales	Oh.	4:46
Rufus Alexander	See, there's a difference between people being educated and not God fearing.	4:48
Stacey Scales	Yeah.	4:53
Rufus Alexander	My background was nothing too unusual because my father died when I was about four years old. There were seven of us in the family. It was four boys and three girls,	4:57
Stacey Scales	Did you ever experience any discrimination in your aspiring to become just a better person?	5:26
Rufus Alexander	All of mine seems strange, strangely enough, but my coming up and my inspiring was by White man. It seems strange to say, but that's what it was.	5:35
Stacey Scales	Who was that?	6:01
Rufus Alexander	I was working, and his name was Cooper.	6:02
Stacey Scales	Mr. Cooper?	6:06
Rufus Alexander	Cooper, it was [Farlin 00:06:19] Cooper's lumber mill. So he inspired me by saying that this was a Black man who had the skill of grading lumber. I told him I wanted to be a lumber grader. He said to me, "That is going to play out. You need to go to school. You need to go to school and get you an education, or simply this lumber grading isn't going to play out. He's making it now, but one day, it won't be anything like that." He said, "Well, I'll help you." Then, we only had seven months of school, so it always started in November. When the weather was warm and all of this, he would give me some work on the Saturdays."	6:18
Stacey Scales	Oh yeah.	7:27
Rufus Alexander	Yeah. I'd just come over and just maybe go to the store for him. Then he would give me a half a day's work. He really was the one who really inspired me and kept after me. He'd see me on the street, "Rufus, are you still in school?" I'd say, "Yes, sir." That was the one who really inspired me and also helped me.	7:29
Rufus Alexander	Naturally in those days, in the early '40s and '30s, everybody was discriminated against, and even up into the '50s and '60s, and still was discriminated against, but I'm just saying that this is how it was. Then it came time to go to the Army. He told me, he says, "I can get you deferred."	8:09
Stacey Scales	Did you get drafted?	8:39
Rufus Alexander	Uh-huh, I was drafted.	8:42
Stacey Scales	Now, I wanted to understand something before that. I don't know what a lumber grader is.	8:44
Rufus Alexander	Have you ever seen lumber?	8:52
Stacey Scales	Yes.	8:53
Rufus Alexander	You know how lumber has number one and number twos?	8:55
Stacey Scales	Yes.	8:57
Rufus Alexander	Well, they're called lumber inspectors, yeah.	8:58
Stacey Scales	Okay.	8:59
Rufus Alexander	Right. He's grading lumber for number one, number two. If you buy any lumber now, it's graded, it's got stamp with a number one or number two.	9:01
Stacey Scales	Oh, right. The best is number one.	9:17
Rufus Alexander	Yeah. That was a skill that he had. When the board would come out, he would scale it, tell you how many board feet was in it, and then grade it number one or number two. That's what they call lumber graders.	9:17
Stacey Scales	Oh, okay.	9:27
Rufus Alexander	Or lumber inspectors, whichever one. There's still a few of them around now.	9:27
Stacey Scales	That wasn't a job for Blacks then?	9:36
Rufus Alexander	Oh no, it was the Black doing it.	9:38
Stacey Scales	Oh yeah?	9:39
Rufus Alexander	Yeah. This was the Black doing it. See, he was grading dry lumber. I was what you call walking stacks for him. He's grading the lumber to be shipped out. The Black man was grading the green lumber.	9:40
Stacey Scales	What's the difference?	9:55
Rufus Alexander	Well, there's quite a bit of difference because, see, when lumber is green, when it gets out in the moisture or in the air, it shrinks. If a board is, I'll just say, four inches wide, then when it stays out in the sun for a while, it might shrink to an eighth of an inch or quarter of an inch.	9:57
Stacey Scales	Oh, okay.	10:20
Rufus Alexander	It dries up. Okay? What other question now?	10:23
Stacey Scales	Oh, I was going to pick back up on that you were saying when you went to the Army that you had faced something?	10:32
Rufus Alexander	Oh, well, he just made this, he said, "You go to the Army, you take your chances at passing. If you don't pass, then you got a job. But I'd rather for you not to get deferred because there'll be an opportunity for you to see parts of the world that you would maybe not see." Then my going to the Army and then coming back, I was in the 11th grade when I went, and I came back and finished up high school and then went on to down to Pine Bluff.	10:39
Stacey Scales	Okay. In your community, were there any local leaders that you looked up to when you were growing up? People that inspired you?	11:31
Rufus Alexander	Yeah, I looked up to them, but there was one of the undertakers were E&G Branchcombe, but as far as inspiring—the pastor, Robin W. Brewer, he was a teacher, but he inspired me. I'm just talking about going over the long haul as a teen, but they didn't put as much emphasis on the educational end as Mr. Cooper.	11:42
Stacey Scales	Mr. Cooper really encouraged you to get an education?	12:27
Rufus Alexander	Yeah.	12:28
Stacey Scales	Would most White men do that in your area?	12:31
Rufus Alexander	Well, there were some that did it, I'm sure. Maybe I'm not the only one, but sometimes, it's the way that a person carried himself, whether or not you encouraged or inspired them.	12:36
Stacey Scales	Oh, okay.	12:55
Rufus Alexander	See, we can say even today, it's the way young men, Black men, carry themselves, whether or not they're accepted or inspired to reach their goals. With his inspiration and all of that, then I tried to use the same—Well, I did use it, as encouraging young men to get out and to be productive citizens and not citizens of destruction.	12:57
Stacey Scales	Were you raised in this area here?	13:33
Rufus Alexander	Uh-huh.	13:37
Stacey Scales	Was church mandatory when you were growing up? Did you have to go?	13:38
Rufus Alexander	Uh-huh, if you stayed at my momma's house, if you stayed in somebody else's house, but you had to go to church. I enjoyed it, Sunday school, and then in the afternoons, well, we had what we called a training union.	13:42
Stacey Scales	Yes.	14:04
Rufus Alexander	This was always where all of the young people usually had most of their activities was in the training union because they were designed for young people.	14:05
Stacey Scales	In the training union. Was that where you got a sense of morality coming up, would you say?	14:14
Rufus Alexander	Yeah, yeah.	14:25
Stacey Scales	So how does that differ from today, how you were raised and how, I guess, young people are raised today?	14:27
Rufus Alexander	Well, that's a pretty good question, but how I was and how they are now, parents is not—I don't know. They don't put the emphasis on discipline and respect. See, this is what we are losing. See, methods change, but principles never change, the principles.	14:43
Stacey Scales	Can you say that again?	15:18
Rufus Alexander	Methods change, but principles never change.	15:19
Stacey Scales	Okay.	15:21
Rufus Alexander	Where it says, "Train up a child," in your Scripture, that never changed, but the method in which you may try to change them up, it'll change, but that never changes. Discipline and respect for others was the basis for all of this. Today's young people don't have respect one for another, nor do they have any respect for themselves, or there's a lack of—What am I trying to say? Of motivation.	15:22
Stacey Scales	Lack of motivation?	15:57
Rufus Alexander	Mm-hmm.	16:08
Stacey Scales	Now, when you growing up here, did Fargo Agricultural School have an influence on you?	16:10
Rufus Alexander	No, I attended to Brinkley Academy.	16:20
Stacey Scales	Okay.	16:22
Rufus Alexander	That's five miles up there. We have a school, and I attended up there. It was supported or built by the consolidated White River Baptists. They had a concern about education because our schools only went to 10th grade.	16:22
Stacey Scales	And did you go to school all year round?	16:51
Rufus Alexander	No. The first 10 years of schooling in the Brinkley Public School, you only had seven months of school, and it went to the 10th grade.	16:56
Stacey Scales	And what were those other—	17:14
Rufus Alexander	Those other two years, you had to either come out here to Fargo or go to Brinkley Academy.	17:16
Stacey Scales	Oh, okay.	17:24
Rufus Alexander	It was a nine month school, more than a seven month. You had to go to a private school. The private schools then, White people were just coming in with private school. Black folks didn't have private schools for a long time because the free public schools, as we called it, that was the only way that you could get a high school education was to go to your private schools.	17:28
Stacey Scales	Did you come here after that?	18:01
Rufus Alexander	I never came. No, I never attended school out here. When I came out here, I came out here as an instructor teaching building trades, or our school played this school in basketball.	18:05
Stacey Scales	Oh yes?	18:23
Rufus Alexander	Uh-huh.	18:23
Stacey Scales	Could you describe how that was, the games?	18:23
Rufus Alexander	Well, they were just one school playing another school. They had a gymnasium and we didn't, so if we're going to play two games, we had to play both of them here.	18:24
Stacey Scales	Oh yeah.	18:39
Rufus Alexander	They had a gymnasium. They had good teams, where we were playing on the ground or practicing on the ground, like a sandlot. The relationship between the two schools was very good.	18:41
Stacey Scales	Would the sports teams play the White teams in school?	18:57
Rufus Alexander	Oh no, no, no. There was no such thing as White playing Black and the Black playing White. Everything was Black/Black and White/White. You played Black schools, they played White schools. You went to Black schools and they went to White schools. There was no integration.	19:01
Stacey Scales	So there was never a time when the two would interact?	19:26
Rufus Alexander	No, if you did, it was just a bunch of you get together on a Saturday, and some of the White boys would come out and play with some of the Black boys, something like that, but it wasn't connected with school.	19:30
Stacey Scales	So that was okay, to play on a weekend or something?	19:47
Rufus Alexander	Playing on a weekend?	19:54
Stacey Scales	Like on a Saturday, you just said?	19:55
Rufus Alexander	Yeah. Well, see, there's some right there in Brinkley that I grew up with, where we shot marbles on a Saturday.	19:57
Stacey Scales	Right.	20:09
Rufus Alexander	Everybody shot marbles in the same area.	20:09
Stacey Scales	Okay.	20:12
Rufus Alexander	If we played, it was just a voluntary thing.	20:13
Stacey Scales	Could you describe your community when you were growing up, the people that lived near you and the relationships that you had?	20:20
Rufus Alexander	Well, the people who lived near us, we were just in another Black neighborhood. All of our neighbors knew each other and shared with one another and so forth and so on.	20:30
Stacey Scales	So people helped each other?	20:50
Rufus Alexander	Yeah, very helpful, one to another.	20:51
Stacey Scales	So were there ever any hard times where people had to get together?	20:56
Rufus Alexander	Sure, there's always been hard times, and there will always be hard times. There will always be a time when people have to get together to help one another.	21:02
Stacey Scales	Could you describe how that process worked?	21:14
Rufus Alexander	How that process worked? Okay. If I'll say Ms. Davidson, if they didn't have sugar or milk or whatever, and we did have it, we'd share with them, and vice versa to us, they would share with us. This was just how we shared and, more or less, how we survived as sharing one with another.	21:18
Stacey Scales	Did your parents talk to you about how it was for them when they were coming up?	22:01
Rufus Alexander	How it was for them?	22:06
Stacey Scales	Yeah, how life was?	22:07
Rufus Alexander	Well, not really. They just said that my mother came from South Carolina and my father came from North Carolina. She'd just say that when she came over, that they said they had walked from South Carolina to Memphis and then they called a wagon or something. When they stopped, they were here in Brinkley.	22:09
Stacey Scales	So they walked from South Carolina?	22:39
Rufus Alexander	Yeah, that's what my mother's told me her grandmother did, yeah.	22:40
Stacey Scales	Did stories in your family—Did people ever tell stories about slavery times or things way back in the family?	22:48
Rufus Alexander	Not really, as to how it happened or what happened after this, no.	23:04
Stacey Scales	No?	23:12
Rufus Alexander	Uh-uh, they just told about their struggle and their journey, but I don't really think that there was too much of a lot of this "Roots" stuff, that, you know. See, because on my daddy's side, there was a lot of mulattoes.	23:12
Stacey Scales	Oh, okay.	23:38
Rufus Alexander	I had some first cousins that you could not tell from a White, but they all came over here. Then my grandfather and uncle, they looked like Whites. My grandmother was an Indian. My grandmother on my father's side was an Indian. She was short in stature. She sat in this chair, her hair would touch the floor. I can remember her. She smoked a little cob pipe, but that is far back. They never discussed any of that. They came over and became more landowners and homeowners.	23:40
Stacey Scales	Did your grandmother ever talk to you?	24:30
Rufus Alexander	My grandma died. I was quite young when grandma died. Both of my grandmas, we didn't really sit down and discuss that.	24:32
Stacey Scales	What made your parents walk to this area?	24:49
Rufus Alexander	To get here. They didn't have any way else.	24:53
Stacey Scales	So they just decided to leave?	24:57
Rufus Alexander	Yeah.	25:00
Stacey Scales	Were they unhappy where they were and stuff?	25:03
Rufus Alexander	I don't know now. I'm just telling you what she told me.	25:07
Stacey Scales	Okay.	25:10
Rufus Alexander	Evidently they were looking for a better place, okay? Even today, White people swim the Mississippi River to come into Arkansas. There's a difference in the way that Blacks are treated in Mississippi and the way they are treated in Arkansas.	25:12
Stacey Scales	What is that difference?	25:31
Rufus Alexander	What is that difference? Even to now, well, it has gotten a lot better, but they were, more or less, still treated as slaves. They didn't have any freedom to this or that. I've heard some of them say that if they were walking the streets in certain areas of Mississippi, you had to get off of the street if a White man was coming, but see, that never happened in Brinkley. If you were on a sidewalk and they were a sidewalk, you didn't have to get off.	25:32
Stacey Scales	Discrimination wasn't as bad here?	26:13
Rufus Alexander	No.	26:15
Stacey Scales	So in your family, who provided the discipline?	26:19
Rufus Alexander	My mother.	26:23
Stacey Scales	Your mother? Do you remember some of the instructions that she gave you?	26:31
Rufus Alexander	Well, one of the things that she would say when you would get yourself into something, "You do what you know is right to do. If the next fellow don't do it, then that's up to him and God." Those things still come back around and He remembers them.	26:36
Stacey Scales	Yeah.	26:59
Rufus Alexander	But basically, you just had certain things that you were supposed to do and she expected you to do them; do your chores like bringing in the wood and cutting the wood, and going and getting the cows and all these sort of things. Those were chores that you were assigned to and that's what you had to do.	26:59
Stacey Scales	What would you do for entertainment?	27:29
Rufus Alexander	Entertainment?	27:30
Stacey Scales	Yeah.	27:31
Rufus Alexander	Entertainment?	27:31
Stacey Scales	Yes, sir.	27:32
Rufus Alexander	What type of entertainment are you talking about?	27:32
Stacey Scales	Well, whatever type of thing you would do to enjoy yourself.	27:37
Rufus Alexander	Well, there were several things that we had done to enjoy ourselves. This time of year, we can go, what we call, find some pond to go swimming in.	27:42
Stacey Scales	Oh yeah?	27:54
Rufus Alexander	And then in the winter or that time, we found ourselves either shooting marbles or playing various types of games. The church provided social activities such as is the cakewalks and pin the tail on the donkey, and apple biting and all that sort of thing. The church was a social institution. It provided both the spiritual end and the social side too.	27:55
Stacey Scales	So what's the cakewalk?	28:32
Rufus Alexander	Oh, you is young. Okay. You're seeing this chair where, whenever you would pull a chair out, it's got nine people around it?	28:36
Stacey Scales	Oh, yeah.	28:54
Rufus Alexander	Okay. Well, a cakewalk, it would be in a circle and there would be numbers on the floor. Okay? You'd walk around in this circle and they stopped the music.	28:55
Stacey Scales	Oh.	29:09
Rufus Alexander	Okay? They stopped the music, and then if you was on that number, you got the cake.	29:09
Stacey Scales	Oh, okay.	29:15
Rufus Alexander	If you weren't on that number, you didn't get the cake.	29:18
Stacey Scales	Okay, great. Some of them could be playing an instrument?	29:20
Rufus Alexander	Yeah, playing a piano.	29:30
Stacey Scales	Oh, okay.	29:32
Rufus Alexander	Playing a march on a piano.	29:32
Stacey Scales	Did you ever win a cake?	29:33
Rufus Alexander	Uh-uh, no.	29:34
Stacey Scales	Did you ever really want to go someplace and couldn't?	29:43
Rufus Alexander	Have I really wanted to go someplace? Well, not really.	29:50
Stacey Scales	No? Were there places that just Whites could go here locally and that Blacks couldn't?	30:00
Rufus Alexander	Oh, they had cafes and places like that, that you could go and places where teenagers could go dance and they had movies and we could go to theater. We sat in the balcony, but we went. Then they'd have this place, and one of them was just geared up to teenagers and to youth. They didn't sell no beer and no nothing just pop and food.	30:06
Stacey Scales	Right. Well, were there any Black folks that had their own businesses?	30:43
Rufus Alexander	All of them, all of these I'm talking about were Black folks that had their businesses. We had one place where it was segregated. We called it the Chili House. The Blacks sat on one side and the Whites sat on the other side. It was a long building like this with a counter on this side and a counter on that side. The doors, on the one side, the Blacks went in and one side, the Whites went in. You were in the same building, but you were separated by counters.	30:47
Stacey Scales	And that was owned by a Black person?	31:23
Rufus Alexander	That was owned by a White.	31:25
Stacey Scales	Oh, okay. Do you remember any of the African-American businesses back then? Any of the Black folks, the names?	31:29
Rufus Alexander	Every business here, I'm trying to tell you, every business here was owned by Blacks. We don't have anything, but see, our town had a Black dentist, a Black doctor, a Black lawyer, a Black undertaker, everything but a Black banker. See, all of this area here, in this area here and surrounding areas were all owned by Black folk. They had their own thing, had their own cotton gins.	31:37
Stacey Scales	Do you remember any of those people's names?	32:14
Rufus Alexander	Well, there was Dr. Brooks was the dentist, Dr. Money was the MD. Warren was the undertaker. Then the [Geddes 00:32:39] had a newspaper.	32:22
Stacey Scales	What was the name of the newspaper?	32:43
Rufus Alexander	I don't know what's the name of the newspaper, but they had a newspaper. Carter had a tailor shop and a cleaners. Yancey had the blacksmith shop. Let me see. Well, there were several Black little community stores and every town had one of those. [Walster 00:33:24] had one not far from me, and then Thomas had one on the next corner, and then Wallace had one on the east side of town. I'm trying to think on it. But anyway, there were several little Black stores owned by Black people.	32:48
Stacey Scales	What was the local Black cemetery?	33:53
Rufus Alexander	That's where it is now.	33:56
Stacey Scales	Oh yes?	33:57
Rufus Alexander	We integrated. They took the fence down.	33:58
Stacey Scales	Oh yeah?	34:02
Rufus Alexander	Yeah. It's still very Black on one side and White on the other side.	34:04
Stacey Scales	Even though they took the fence down?	34:07
Rufus Alexander	Uh-huh, they just took the fence down. See, they took it over and they took the fence down.	34:10
Stacey Scales	When was the fence taken down?	34:12
Rufus Alexander	Oh, I guess that fence has been taken down, maybe, I want to say maybe 18 years.	34:13
Speaker 3	How are you doing?	34:20
Rufus Alexander	Hey, how are you doing?	34:20
Speaker 3	Pretty good, pretty good.	34:20
Stacey Scales	Okay. They took the fence down how long ago?	34:20
Rufus Alexander	The city took it down, I want to say maybe 10, 15 years ago.	34:21
Stacey Scales	Oh, okay.	34:21
Rufus Alexander	The city has the cemetery. They took it, they took the fence down.	34:34
Stacey Scales	It's separate areas?	34:39
Rufus Alexander	The Blacks are still buried on one side and the White's are still buried on the other. You ain't going to find too many integrated cemeteries in Chicago.	34:39
Stacey Scales	Wow. That's something that's popular in cemeteries?	34:51
Rufus Alexander	Well, popular? No, it's just the way they do things. You go to Chicago and I'll bet you find a Black cemetery and a White cemetery, a Catholic cemetery and the Jewish cemetery.	34:56
Stacey Scales	I'll have to look into it.	35:10
Rufus Alexander	Well, you look into it, you look into it. If they've integrated, it hasn't been a long time. You go back and they'll show you where this cemetery used to be where it with nothing buried but Black folk, and then they show you where there was nothing buried but White folks.	35:11
Stacey Scales	Did you ever go up to the northern areas like Chicago?	35:32
Rufus Alexander	Yeah, I've been to Chicago. I've been to Chicago, I've been to Minnesota, I've been to Iowa, I've been to Kentucky, Ohio, New Orleans, Houston, Texas, Los Angeles, Long Beach, California, Compton, California, San Francisco, California, Phoenix, Arizona. Yeah, I have traveled.	35:39
Stacey Scales	Did you go in the '40s and '50s?	36:13
Rufus Alexander	No. I went to California in '40 and '44. The Army sent me there now.	36:18
Stacey Scales	Oh yeah. Was it much different, do you think, than the Brinkley area?	36:25
Rufus Alexander	It was different. You meet a whole new class of people and most of them was out of Texas and Oklahoma. You meet a whole new group of people. Coming up in a town with a population of 3000, and going where it's a 100,000 or better, there's a whole lot of difference.	36:30
Stacey Scales	Did you run into discrimination?	36:54
Rufus Alexander	Discrimination is all over and has been and will be.	36:56
Stacey Scales	Could you share with me some of your experiences with that in California?	37:00
Rufus Alexander	Well, I didn't really—Well, as far as we were concerned, we had our own mess hall. The White folks had their own mess hall. We had our squadron, they had their squadron, and yet we were both all in on the Air Force.	37:09
Rufus Alexander	Other than that, when you got on the bus or the L train or whatever, you could sit where you wanted to. That was no big deal. But whenever you'd go to certain places—Because it didn't me about going to where the White folks was anyway.	37:25
Stacey Scales	What gave you that drive?	37:56
Rufus Alexander	Huh?	37:57
Stacey Scales	What gave you that attitude?	37:57
Rufus Alexander	Well, first of all, what was I going to gain to go where you're not wanted? What was I going to enjoy that there's two different cultures there? You see, I didn't know too much about his culture and he didn't know too much about my culture. They don't know anything about my culture.	38:00
Stacey Scales	Did your mother and father, when you were younger, ever have to explain why you couldn't go to certain places and why you could go to others?	38:27
Rufus Alexander	Uh-uh, no. You knew where you could go and where you couldn't go. There was no big deal.	38:40
Stacey Scales	So at an early age?	38:44
Rufus Alexander	Sure. Just like you know now, you can't go walking up in the President's house without getting an invitation. Huh?	38:46
Stacey Scales	That's true.	38:59
Rufus Alexander	Isn't that right? See, there are just some things we know, and automatically we can call it discrimination if you want to, or non-discrimination. You know where you can go and where you can't go. It's just simple as that. Boys buying them $1000 plate dinners and you can't buy a $50 one, you know can't go there so why are you going?	39:02
Stacey Scales	Right.	39:26
Rufus Alexander	Huh? Those are just some simple facts.	39:26
Stacey Scales	Let's say if I was traveling back then and I wanted to drive from here to Memphis or Atlanta, how would I learn how to respond in different areas?	39:32
Rufus Alexander	Okay, if you were driving at those times coming through here, okay, they had restrooms marked Colored and then they'd have them marked White. The sign that said Colored, you know that's where you go. In the bus station, the same way, Colored and White.	39:45
Stacey Scales	Did you ever contest those?	40:18
Rufus Alexander	Why should I contest them? Why should I contest them? That was the law of the land. Why should I contest it?	40:21
Stacey Scales	Do you remember when those things started to change?	40:37
Rufus Alexander	Yep.	40:42
Stacey Scales	When would you say that was?	40:44
Rufus Alexander	When they really started changing was during Dr. King's time. They were changing slowly. Certain companies like Exxon, they made them early pull the signs down, just have men and women's bathrooms.	40:47
Stacey Scales	Were there any people in this area really fighting for that change, even before Dr. King?	41:12
Rufus Alexander	Along with Dr. King.	41:20
Stacey Scales	Okay, with him?	41:20
Rufus Alexander	Yeah. Reverend [Earl Epps 00:41:26], that's the way ACORN got born. You heard about ACORN?	41:24
Stacey Scales	Yes, sir.	41:30
Rufus Alexander	That's the way it got born.	41:31
Stacey Scales	What did your parents do for a living?	41:38
Rufus Alexander	Worked in the fields and worked in hotels or restaurants as cooks. They worked in the fields, chopped and picked cotton or that sort of thing.	41:44
Stacey Scales	Did they have their own farm?	41:58
Rufus Alexander	Yeah, a lot of them had their own farms. A lot of them worked just as day hands then. In that area, like us, we were transported from here about 25 miles to chop cotton on certain farms. They would pick us up in the morning and bring us back. They paid you every day or every night.	42:03
Stacey Scales	And that's when you were younger?	42:31
Rufus Alexander	Uh-huh.	42:32
Stacey Scales	How much were you getting paid?	42:32
Rufus Alexander	Well, it depends. Well, I have worked for 50 cents a day.	42:39
Stacey Scales	A full day's work?	42:44
Rufus Alexander	Mm-hmm.	42:45
Stacey Scales	How far ago was that? How long ago was that about?	42:49
Rufus Alexander	Oh, that was back in, I would say around '37, '38, somewhere along back in there.	42:55
Stacey Scales	Fifty cents a day. Did you think that that was a fair price for your work?	43:10
Rufus Alexander	There was no use thinking, you had to work and if you got 50 cents, you got 50 cents. You had to eat.	43:14
Stacey Scales	And who were you working for?	43:26
Rufus Alexander	Well, I was working for different plantation owners.	43:26
Stacey Scales	Oh yeah?	43:34
Rufus Alexander	Mm-hmm.	43:35
Stacey Scales	For 50 cents a day?	43:35
Rufus Alexander	Mm-hmm. Now, some ain't even making 50 cents a day. Some young men, they ain't making 50 to cents a day. They might be stealing $20 worth a day, but not earning 50 cent day with their hands. See, you had to earn your money. There was no good time, no dope and all this stuff, where you could shuffle around. But see, there were some ain't even making 50 cents day. They might be getting more than that from welfare, but I'm talking about earning. It sounds like a big deal, "50 cents a day." If you think of some of your friends right now, but they ain't making nothing but a lot of noise earnestly.	43:36
Stacey Scales	That's true. How many of you would it be? You said they would pick you up in the morning?	44:24
Rufus Alexander	Yeah, they would pick up a truckload. They might pick up 50, 75, 100 people.	44:31
Stacey Scales	And it would be right here in Brinkley?	44:37
Rufus Alexander	Huh?	44:38
Stacey Scales	It'd be right here in the Brinkley area?	44:41
Rufus Alexander	Yeah. It'd be in the Brinkley area.	44:50
Speaker 4	Good evening.	44:50
Rufus Alexander	Good evening.	44:50
Stacey Scales	When did that price go up from 50 cents, or did it ever?	44:51
Rufus Alexander	Oh yeah, it went up years later where they was paying $1 to $1.50 a day and so forth and so on. Then my first public job that I started working on, it was 30 cents an hour.	44:55
Stacey Scales	That was a public job?	45:15
Rufus Alexander	Mm-hmm.	45:18
Stacey Scales	So you got paid less in a public job than you did working—	45:18
Rufus Alexander	Thirty cents an hour.	45:21
Stacey Scales	Oh, an hour. I'm sorry.	45:21
Rufus Alexander	Yeah, 30 cents an hour.	45:21
Stacey Scales	Okay. And what was your first public job?	45:26
Rufus Alexander	Southern Compress.	45:29
Stacey Scales	Southern Compress?	45:30
Rufus Alexander	Yeah. That's where they process cotton, press it and go on.	45:31
Stacey Scales	And could you describe your job duties? What did you do?	45:38
Rufus Alexander	My job duties was to pick that cotton and roll that bale.	45:40
Stacey Scales	Yeah?	45:48
Rufus Alexander	The cotton had been picked and was in bales, so then they brought it for the compress to be compressed into smaller bales for shipping.	45:48
Stacey Scales	Oh okay. Did you have to work a machine?	46:00
Rufus Alexander	No. You had to roll it to the machine.	46:01
Stacey Scales	And you rolled that by yourself?	46:02
Rufus Alexander	Yeah, sure, I rolled it by myself.	46:08
Stacey Scales	About how much would it be?	46:12
Rufus Alexander	Well, some of the bales would weigh 550 pounds. You didn't have to pick it up. They had what they called cotton trucks, and you pushed it over and then lay it on a truck and then you roll it, then dump it off.	46:14
Stacey Scales	Okay.	46:27
Rufus Alexander	Okay?	46:29
Stacey Scales	And were there other Blacks working there too?	46:30
Rufus Alexander	Yeah, yeah. That's all that was working there, with the exception of the foreman. But now, we were 16, 17, and the men, some were making 35, some were making 50 cents an hour.	46:34
Stacey Scales	Were there any Whites working there as well?	46:54
Rufus Alexander	No, none but the boss.	46:56
Stacey Scales	Just the boss?	46:56
Rufus Alexander	And the foreman.	46:56

Rufus Alexander	Back. For what you—see, you've got a perspective of things being like they are now, where things were not like they are now. So you had to work for a living and as far as—No, they didn't beat them or do anything like that, no.	0:01
Stacey Scales	I just guess wanted a description of the workplace and how the interrelationships with the boss and the workers.	0:26
Rufus Alexander	It's all right. You had a job to do. He'd holler, but he didn't mean it. You know, it still didn't make you speed up anymore than you did now.	0:35
Stacey Scales	So there was never any bad terms or anything like that with the workers and the boss?	0:50
Rufus Alexander	Well, I wouldn't know. There's always going to be bad time with workers and bosses even now. So we can't look back at our past history and say that it only happened. It's happening now.	0:59
Stacey Scales	Okay.	1:20
Rufus Alexander	See, it's happening now. Some Black folk don't want to work and they put all kind of excuses on him. They get to work late and he said, "Well, you know, you got to work 10 minutes late. I'm going to have to dock—" "They're discriminating." Then when they get to work, then they have to do their job and then they going to say he's discriminating.	1:20
Stacey Scales	So that was the case then too—	1:44
Rufus Alexander	No.	1:45
Stacey Scales	[indistinct 00:01:47] people being lazy?	1:45
Rufus Alexander	No. Or if a man didn't do his job, he'd just let him go. Just fired him. Simple as that, or the man fired himself.	1:48
Stacey Scales	Were jobs hard to come by in the thirties and forties?	2:01
Rufus Alexander	Huh?	2:04
Stacey Scales	Were jobs hard to get in the thirties and forties?	2:04
Rufus Alexander	No. Uh-uh. Not those kind jobs, not common labor jobs.	2:06
Stacey Scales	So if he got fired, he could easily find another job?	2:17
Rufus Alexander	Mm-hmm.	2:20
Stacey Scales	Who delivered the babies in the area?	2:30
Rufus Alexander	Hm?	2:31
Stacey Scales	Who delivered the children?	2:33
Rufus Alexander	Midwives.	2:35
Stacey Scales	Midwives. And how would they get their training? How would they learn?	2:36
Rufus Alexander	From their parent.	2:42
Stacey Scales	From their parent? Was there a hospital?	2:46
Rufus Alexander	Yeah.	2:48
Stacey Scales	What was the name of it?	2:50
Rufus Alexander	McKnights.	2:51
Stacey Scales	McKnights. That was the Black hospital?	2:51
Rufus Alexander	White.	2:56
Stacey Scales	That was the White? And Blacks could go there?	2:58
Rufus Alexander	Mm-mm. Just only emergency cases only.	3:00
Stacey Scales	So if someone got sick, how would they—	3:07
Rufus Alexander	Call the doctor.	3:11
Stacey Scales	Okay, the Black doctor?	3:12
Rufus Alexander	A White doctor.	3:12
Stacey Scales	A White doctor.	3:12
Rufus Alexander	Mm-hmm.	3:16
Stacey Scales	Now, did you ever—	3:20
Rufus Alexander	Cut this thing off? I need use the bathroom real quick.	3:27

Item Info

Title:

Rufus Alexander interview recording, 1995 July 10

Date:

July 10, 1995

Creator:

Alexander, Rufus

Contributor:

Scales, Mausiki Stacey

Description:

Name: Rufus Alexander; Date of birth: 1925-11-15; Place of birth: Brinkley, AR; Occupation(s): laborer; pastor; Residence: Brinkley, AR
Informant ID: 1027; interviewed by: Stacey Scales.

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Location:

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Language:

English

Digital Collection:

Behind the Veil

Source Collection:

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

Series:

Related Resources:

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Provenance:

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

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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-0255
b6fdd579-713a-4268-89f3-f13c511f69d8
behindtheveil
664ffdf1-fe43-48cf-af3d-afa7f3f4a06b
ark:/87924/r4p55rr58
664ffdf1-fe43-48cf-af3d-afa7f3f4a06b

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Rufus Alexander interview recording, 1995 July 10

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1. Rufus Alexander administrative file, 1995

John Hope Franklin Research Center

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Rufus Alexander interview recording, 1995 July 10

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John Hope Franklin Research Center

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