Audrey Gabriel interview recording, 1994 July 30
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| Kate Ellis | Would you state your name and when you were born? | 0:03 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Audrey Metz—Gabriel. February 12th, 1925. | 0:07 |
| Kate Ellis | 1925. Okay. Mrs Gabriel, where were you born? | 0:12 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Jeanerette | 0:25 |
| Kate Ellis | Jeanerette, okay. | 0:25 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | It's in New Iberia | 0:25 |
| Kate Ellis | Is this comfortable, is that— | 0:36 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Yes. | 0:37 |
| Kate Ellis | What I'd like is for you to maybe begin just talking about your years coming up in this community. Just what you remember about your growing up years and the community that you grew up in. | 0:41 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | I wasn't raised here. I was raised for in Ward Seven. | 0:57 |
| Kate Ellis | In Ward Seven? Okay. And Jeanerette? | 0:58 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | That's in St. Mary Parish when you say Jeanerette. We got a Jeanerette address, so we St. Mary Parish. | 1:01 |
| Kate Ellis | Right. | 1:07 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Ward Seven, St. Mary Parish. | 1:07 |
| Kate Ellis | Okay. But the name of the town that you came up in was Jeanerette? And this is all part of St. Mary Parish. Right. So can you tell me about the community that you grew up in and what your parents did, what you remember of your family? | 1:13 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Oh, I had beautiful parents. My father name was Oscar Metz. | 1:31 |
| Kate Ellis | Oscar— | 1:35 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Metz. And my mother's name, Viola Barvin Metz. I had two brothers, Leon Metz and Earl Metz. I had four sisters, Gladys, who died when she was small. I had Ruby, Mercedes and Mary. We all living, we were seven, but my older sister died so we were six, and then my two brothers are dead. Now we only four girls left. And we were just some happy kids. All the things that my parents would do, they would make a provision for us. My father would work on the farm and then he had a farm. Most of the farm, what we lived on was ours and we'd raised everything. We ate mostly and we had cows. He milked the cows, everything that we had, and raised the sweet potatoes, raised the vegetable. | 1:35 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | My mother make the butter. We had the watermelons. It's everything that we had, it was provided for us. We just had to buy clothes and then we buy material 'cause my mother would sew the clothes. My mother was a seamstress. She used to make beautiful clothes for us. And each of us had our own chores. The boys had what they had to do, the girls had what they had to do. | 2:44 |
| Kate Ellis | What kind of things did the boys have to do? | 3:04 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | They would help my daddy with the animals and getting in the vegetables and whatnot and bring it in for us to clean and take care of everything. They had the outside work. We had the inside work, turn the house clean and helping my mother polishing, cleaning, cooking, everything like that. And the boys would help my father on outside to do the things that he had to do. Such as getting feed for the cattle and putting them up and changing the place, taking them out in the sun in the hot summertime and whatnot. | 3:11 |
| Kate Ellis | Did your mother do any paid work? | 3:38 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Any what? | 3:41 |
| Kate Ellis | Paid work or was— | 3:41 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Well, my mother did work for a family at the Landry's. She would do the ironing for them with those black irons, heating on the stove— | 3:43 |
| Kate Ellis | Those heavy black— | 3:53 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Heavy black iron heating on the stove. And she was a very good ironer. She would do iron work. She would on it, do the clothing for them, washing them, iron for them, for the Landry family. And then she would stay at home and do for us. And then sometimes she'd work in the field when we were small. | 3:54 |
| Kate Ellis | When you were small? | 4:13 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Yeah. She work in the field and then larger ones would take care of the smaller ones. And then she worked doing seasonal, doing the time when harvesting sugar cane, she wait that time. Then all the rest of the time, she's at home and she's working for you too. | 4:16 |
| Kate Ellis | Was this a typical family arrangement in the community that you come from? | 4:34 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Oh yes. Yes. Everybody was friend with everybody and if one needed something, the other one had it, you can have it. We just share and share like it. We had good relationship with our neighbors and everybody's house. And ours was mostly like the big house. Everybody would come to our house for advice and for this, and I think my mother was smart, she was so for everybody in the community, for us. Plus she would sew everybody's other clothes who they want. And we would walk to school three miles from where we live in the rural area up into the city of Jeanerette to the Jeanerette Colored elementary, at first it was. And after we graduated, we Jeanerette Colored high. We had segregated schools. The Whites had a bus and we had to walk. They wouldn't pick us up. | 4:43 |
| Kate Ellis | So they'd pass you on the road? | 5:36 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Yes, son. Throw spit balls at us. And my mother and my aunt, her sister went to the school board office to ask them while a bus passed into our house, if they can pick us up. And the secretary did not let my mother and my aunt even get to the superintendent. She said, We don't bus niggers. You don't have to quote that. But that's what she said. And we still had to walk up until we got to about seventh, eighth grade. | 5:37 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | By eighth or ninth grade, my mother bought a car and my aunt bought a little pickup truck and my aunt's son was in high school. And we would ride a week in my mother's car and a week in their car. That's how we finished school. But I walked to school 'til I was in ninth grade. Three miles going, three miles coming. Rain, sleet, snow or whatever. We walked, take off our shoes and put our good shoes in a bag and clean sock, walk in those shoes getting over to school. We wipe our feet and everything my mother give us and we put on our good shoes and our good socks. | 6:07 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | And going into school clean, we take the other little bag and stick it on our desk, put it back on and come home and eat. And we got an old principal, Mr. M.B. Poke, Matthew B. Poke, he used to come from New Iberia and he'd pick up all here, an old bus. And he'd pick up all the kids from New Iberia and the teachers all from Iberia and he'd bring them to the school. And if you get there early enough and the weather was bad, he'd come on the back streets, all where we were coming from and he'd come pick us up and bring us to school free of charge, just to get us out the weather. He's a doll. He was so good that we had, that was something to help us out too. And people see us. They had very few cars but people seen everything else. | 6:47 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | There was so many of us 'cause we would meet up with the group, we'd leave our house, my two sisters and myself and my brothers and all, we leave our house. By the time we get to the corner, our cousins will be there. We make another group. We get to the next spot and by the time we get to school, we a hundred kids walking up the street. We'll meet together at these different sections. Coming back, that's where we do drop off somebody. By the time we get to us, it'd be just us going home. We walked to church, we walked to Sunday school. | 7:27 |
| Kate Ellis | Walked everywhere. | 7:54 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Uh-huh, we had no transportation up until I was in the ninth grade when my mother and dad was able to buy a car. | 7:58 |
| Kate Ellis | And how were they able to buy a car? | 8:06 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Well, my mother was a skinner. My mother knew how to save money. | 8:07 |
| Kate Ellis | Really? | 8:09 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Oh yes. | 8:10 |
| Kate Ellis | She was a skinner, did you say? | 8:12 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | A good, a thrift. | 8:12 |
| Kate Ellis | A skinner? | 8:13 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | I just said a skinner, but used to thrift. | 8:14 |
| Kate Ellis | I just have never heard that term. That's a good term. Skinner. | 8:16 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Oh yes. She would naturally, she would do whatever. She would skin a flea for his hide. She was just that type of provider. She would do things like that. We'd go during the summertime when the fall, we were harvesting rice, after the people being fixed their rice. We would go in the field and pick what was left by sacks. And well there's a man named Mr. Coleman who had his truck and he would come around and pick up and take it to the mill. Oh, I think it was in Crawley, where that mill was. He take all of our, we had, my mother had our name on their sacks. They'd take it over there and they would husk it and clean it and they would take a share of it and give us all the rest of it back. | 8:20 |
| Kate Ellis | Do you say that everybody had their name on their sack? So he'd bring all the sacks there, I see. And then he'd know— | 9:07 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Know whose is whose. You see 'cause he just put it all in there. And we had to take a tag and tag on. Everybody tagged their own sack and he would take just a truck full and go bring 'em. And when the man put them back, he'd know who got to get their share and just whatever had to be, you see. We husk it right. We'd do the same thing with corn. When he finished planting corn, we'd go and scrap corn and bring the corn, the same gentleman. He'd run his taxi truck, he take his corn and bring it to the gin. You grind it to make cornmeal. Some of it was fine and need some course for yellow grits. And the man who did it, he would take his share for doing it and they send it back. We have all that respect. | 9:15 |
| Kate Ellis | Oh that was Mr. Coleman? | 9:57 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Mr. Frank Coleman drive the truck. He would bring it to them, bring that beer to the gin. | 9:59 |
| Kate Ellis | And so that was the way that you would make a little extra money? | 10:04 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | He'd make extra money for taking it for us. You give him little cash for his gas and for what not. He'd be taking things for himself you see, 'cause his wife would go out there and his daughter and help pick like we did. My brother and sisters, my older brother and sisters, Leon, Earl, Ruby, they pick cotton, they work in the field and everything too. When it got to me, I didn't do none of that. I didn't pick cotton 'cause I was too young. I didn't go in the sugar cane field because I was scared to go in there. | 10:09 |
| Kate Ellis | You were scared? | 10:39 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | I was coward. As soon as I finished high school, I went to New Orleans and I worked in the drug store in the daytime and I went to business college at night. Therefore I did, I missed the field completely. But my two sisters below me worked in the field, Mercy and Mary. And Ruby, everybody work in the field except me. | 10:39 |
| Kate Ellis | Except you? | 11:06 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Yes, because I was dodging. | 11:07 |
| Kate Ellis | You were dodging? | 11:08 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | I was dodging. I wouldn't— | 11:10 |
| Kate Ellis | Dodging the field work. | 11:11 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Yeah, I wouldn't work, I never did work in the field. Never did work in the field. | 11:12 |
| Kate Ellis | Why were you in afraid of the sugar cane fields? | 11:16 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | You hit a cane, a snake come out there. I was afraid. I wasn't going there. | 11:18 |
| Kate Ellis | You had a, I'm sorry, there was a— | 11:22 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | You hit a cane and sometime a snake come out there. Oh I was just frightened to death. I wasn't going in that field. | 11:24 |
| Kate Ellis | And they didn't make you go? | 11:28 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | No, my mother give me something to do around the house 'cause I would've cried so much and I was always small and puny and she didn't force me. I had an advantage being small. | 11:30 |
| Kate Ellis | They took pity on you? | 11:40 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Yes, and I went, now my sisters below me, they've worked in the field. My two brothers and my sister ahead of me worked in the field. But I didn't. | 11:43 |
| Kate Ellis | How long did your sisters work in the field for? | 11:52 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | My older sister worked a while up until she decided she go to Houston. After she got to Houston, she stayed over there working. She got married and she stayed away. But my other sisters, they finished high school and they work every season. When it was time to harvest, they would work every season 'cause they're home. When they finished high school, they went away too. After my sister Mercy went to Southern University, Mary went to Texas. So that was the end of that working. But they worked back and forth. | 11:56 |
| Kate Ellis | And the harvesting season for the sugar cane? | 12:31 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | That last about three months. | 12:32 |
| Kate Ellis | And that was, is that from about October to January? | 12:33 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Sometime. Sometime before. Sometime you get out in February, in December. Okay. Just according to how the cane is 'cause sometimes it be thin and sometimes it's thick. Sometimes it's laying down from the weather and just according how they can process the weather they get to get it out. | 12:36 |
| Kate Ellis | Now you all went to school, all of your, you and your brothers and sisters all went to school. | 12:54 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Every one. Three of us graduated. I did, Maurice and Mary. The three younger one graduated. The other stopped along the way. | 12:58 |
| Kate Ellis | Okay, so one sister, one sister stopped and the boys— | 13:06 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Two brothers— | 13:09 |
| Kate Ellis | Stopped and they went to— | 13:12 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | To work in the fields. | 13:14 |
| Kate Ellis | To work in the fields and make good money and start their own families? No, but just get out— | 13:18 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Well my oldest brother started his family a while, a good while afterward. My youngest brother went in the service in '43. And when he came back, well he's doing other work. He never did come back home. He stayed in New Orleans after they came out the service and he would do carpenter and plumbing work and all stuff as that, after he got out the service. But my other brother had a family with seven children. | 13:21 |
| Kate Ellis | In this area? | 13:46 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | They don't live too far. Back way— | 13:47 |
| Kate Ellis | Did he continue working in the fields? | 13:50 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Who? | 13:52 |
| Kate Ellis | Your brother who had a family of seven. | 13:52 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Oh no, he got out the field and he went to work to Sutton junk yard. And he went to work to all different things and make more money then. And during the war where they had money making it, he went all about there because he had his boys. But what he would do, when he was working for Sutton, he would hold— | 13:55 |
| Kate Ellis | Sutton? | 14:09 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Yeah. | 14:09 |
| Kate Ellis | What was Sutton? | 14:09 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Lionel Sutton, he has a salvage and he had junk business. Selling cars and buying old cars. And my brother would bring all the strip and cleaner, he had a truck. He would haul all that material, all that stuff to his house. A lot of things Sutton would give him to take the armatures out of it and all different parts that they can sell. And his two boys did that. My two big nephews, the older ones after they finshied High School, they would take that and they would clean all that, salvages part what they used to keep the armatures, the brass and aluminum. They would clean all that and put that in separate place and put strip and take the old cars and they haul them back and all the other material, they're boxing and Sutton would give them money for doing that. And that's how they got money for them to go to school, them two big boys. | 14:13 |
| Kate Ellis | For them, the two big boys to go to school? | 15:06 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Go to college. Go to college. They both went to Southern. One is, they both finished at Southern and then the oldest one went further. He's an ophthalmologist. He does, Dr. Leon Metz, he does surgery. And the other one is a IBM computer specialist. | 15:07 |
| Kate Ellis | Wow. | 15:27 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | And all the girls went to school. | 15:28 |
| Kate Ellis | To university. | 15:30 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | A lot of them went to Southern and some teachers, some— | 15:32 |
| Kate Ellis | The girls, you mean? | 15:36 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | My nieces, nephew. My oldest brother, his children. | 15:38 |
| Kate Ellis | So the generation coming up right behind you all went to university? | 15:42 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Oh yes. Every one of them. | 15:47 |
| Kate Ellis | And then your brother, the father of your nephews, of the ophthalmologist— | 15:51 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Metz, uh-huh. | 15:53 |
| Kate Ellis | So he obviously got out of the fields and went into the junk business. And then that's what he— | 15:55 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Then he went into drive the school bus and he went into carpentry. He was a hustler. Then he opened a grocery store for himself and whatnot. Well he do good, his kids came up real good. | 16:04 |
| Kate Ellis | Seems like almost anything, any work was better than the field work. | 16:13 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Oh yes. He got away from that field. Oh yes. When he can get better paying, he left. He certainly did. | 16:16 |
| Kate Ellis | That's a period that actually interests me, which I want to talk to you about some more. Let me just clarify something. When you were all going to school, elementary and high school, did you pause during the harvest season? Did you have to stop going to school during harvest season? | 16:22 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Sometime we did when my mother worked, and we stay home and my brother would stay home and mind us. | 16:38 |
| Kate Ellis | So you'd sort of stay out of school for maybe a month? | 16:44 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | About a couple of months. Give her a chance to work and catch up and pay bills and get things for, get some extra material and all kinds of stuff for us. So doing the grinding, we would doing sugar harvest. Not all the time, but whenever she would work, a few years that she worked then at last, she stopped. But when she was working, we were small. My oldest brother would stay home and take care of us while she worked. The rest of us would stay home. | 16:46 |
| Kate Ellis | And that again was something that a lot of families did at some point. That's what you had to do? | 17:11 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | 'Cause the money was needed, because money was needed and he would hire women. So they'll get out there and help their husband to catch up because after sugar cane harvest, it rain all the time. There's nothing too much you can do until the spring when weather clear up. So there'd be a gap in between sugar cane harvest and planting cane and cleaning up and do thing. It's a gap between there that you have to have some money to fill in until the things open up. | 17:17 |
| Kate Ellis | That's not called the lay by season is it? | 17:40 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | No, the lay by season is in fall, now. | 17:43 |
| Kate Ellis | Once it's planted, it's— | 17:44 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | It's lay by time now. You don't do anything to it now. You're just waiting, call lay by. You just wait until you've done all you can do for it. You're waiting now until it's time to cut and start planting again. | 17:46 |
| Kate Ellis | So is that a sort of gap? Gap is called— | 17:56 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | It's called bad time. | 18:02 |
| Kate Ellis | I'm sorry? | 18:04 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Call that bad time in between. That's time that you just have to make ends meet the best way you can, doing any gap between harvest and when you get some, see daddy can go out sometime and let off water or cut ditches. You cut the sickle, the ditch bank and all sort of stuff as that in the field. And that wasn't bringing in too much, you see. And during that time, just like they giving commodities, they gave that. | 18:04 |
| Kate Ellis | What was that? | 18:29 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Commodities, you know like they give the free food from the governor. Certain times the of month, you give certain times that the truck will come to a certain place and put off and then you would go there. And according to your family and whatnot and all your cards, you can get commodities. But that's the same thing they doing now. But during that time they were giving you, according to your family, they were giving you meat. Such a salt meat, a whole shoulder, a big 25 pound bag of rice and all sorts of stuff like that. They give you commodities. But they were giving you the large portions, according to your family. It was a lot, they had a lot of it at that time. | 18:31 |
| Kate Ellis | Yeah. Was this in the thirties that we're talking about that that the commodities? | 19:08 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Oh no, I was born in 25 and I remember, so it had to be in the thirties. Thirties and the forties. | 19:15 |
| Kate Ellis | And did you say that it was a truck? Would a truck come by? How would you? | 19:19 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Oh no, no. He would go to, put it onto Mr. Landry's store. One place, a George Landry's store in the back and the people who had no nothing, they would go and they would issue out to each person. He was the one, he's the contact place in our area and for corner, they would have it at one of the churches and he in Sorial, they would have it at another place and different things like that. And you would just go in and get your commodities. | 19:24 |
| Kate Ellis | Now Landry. Okay. Oh I see. And your mother worked for the Landry's, I was trying to remember. | 19:52 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | That's relatives. | 19:59 |
| Kate Ellis | Oh okay. The Landry, that was a big family around here, huh? And they had a plantation too? | 20:02 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Yep. They had a farm and a lot of boys used to work the farm and everything. Yeah and just call her mom. And that was for his cousins. Brother's children lived right up the street where Landry's Seafood is up there. The other bunch. And the ones live right around the corner that big, as you're going you see a big two-story house. That's the one. And we used to live right across the street from them. | 20:07 |
| Kate Ellis | The big two-story house. Where's the two-story house? | 20:31 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Going back this way towards Jeanerette on the right hand side. | 20:34 |
| Kate Ellis | So that was the Landry house. It's sort of set back from the road and— | 20:36 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Two-story, white. As you're going back full end, it's on that side. | 20:40 |
| Kate Ellis | Okay. | 20:40 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | That's Landry Seafood. | 20:46 |
| Kate Ellis | That's good to know. | 20:46 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Well that's the Landry's that my mother would wash and iron for. | 20:47 |
| Kate Ellis | She worked in that house? | 20:50 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Yeah, she washing, ironing over there for those people or she would wash it over there and they'd dry and everything and she would bring, the son would bring the clothes at home and my mother iron them at home. On a wooden ironing board with the hot irons and a cool bucket of, a furnace we would call it, the cool. And oh boy she would iron those clothes pretty with that kind and I always just think about it. | 20:52 |
| Kate Ellis | So she was good at what she did. | 21:17 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | You've ever seen those irons? | 21:18 |
| Kate Ellis | Yes, I've seen them and I can't imagine, that must have been such arduous work. Especially if it was hot. | 21:20 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | But she would do it and we didn't have no electricity or nothing like that at the time. We got to build our house over and got electricity and all kinds of thing, I think in 1937. | 21:28 |
| Kate Ellis | That's when you got electricity in 1937? | 21:37 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | When it started coming through. | 21:42 |
| Kate Ellis | When? | 21:46 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | When the electric people started expanding out in the rural area. We rebuilt a house, a family house. My daddy bought it from this other family and we rebuilt it and then we had electric. | 21:46 |
| Kate Ellis | Now let me— | 21:59 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | All before we didn't have any. | 22:00 |
| Kate Ellis | There's so many things I want to ask you. You mentioned this at the beginning. Your father worked, you said he had his own land that he farmed on and he also worked on other people's farms. | 22:01 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | He worked for the Morise's. | 22:16 |
| Kate Ellis | Can I, who was that? | 22:17 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | M-O-R-E-S-I | 22:18 |
| Kate Ellis | Oh, okay. On their farm. Was it a big farm? | 22:20 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Yes. A lot of people. | 22:24 |
| Kate Ellis | About how many acres was it? | 22:26 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | I don't know. But he had a large farm, he bought him. | 22:29 |
| Kate Ellis | I'm sorry? | 22:32 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | I don't know exactly how much, but he had a lot. | 22:33 |
| Kate Ellis | It was a large one? | 22:35 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Yeah, a huge farm. | 22:36 |
| Kate Ellis | So your father had some of his own land and with that he could grow food that would feed the family? | 22:37 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Oh yes. | 22:43 |
| Kate Ellis | And cows. | 22:44 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | He had his own little horse that could put a sled on to put a, what you call a sliding wagon in the back to go and get corn and grass and all kind of things to feed it. | 22:47 |
| Kate Ellis | Oh se he could haul things— | 22:56 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | For his animal. For hog, cows. And we had a horse, named Maude. | 22:58 |
| Kate Ellis | Named Maude. Maude, the horse. | 23:02 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | My godfather gave me that. And we kept him and we hook him up on the slide, they called it make a big square bottle and you called it the slide. You hook him up on it and you go in the field and you cut grass, and all kind of things you bring home and feed the hog, feed the cows and you mix it in with corn and water. And then slop and scrap that you have from the kitchen, you would feed your hog with. | 23:10 |
| Kate Ellis | So it sounds like it was a real self-sustaining sort of— | 23:31 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Sustainable agriculture. | 23:35 |
| Kate Ellis | Yeah. | 23:38 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | I know about that because we started out with sustaining. | 23:40 |
| Kate Ellis | Oh really? | 23:42 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Sustainable. | 23:43 |
| Kate Ellis | Sustainable. And that's, as you said earlier, that's basically what you lived on, and what you needed money for was— | 23:44 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | To buy clothing. | 23:51 |
| Kate Ellis | To buy clothing. | 23:51 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | And my mother was doing different things, she was working, she would sew for other people. That's when she do that, she buy material for us. And we were the best dressed children at school because my mother would sew and make clothes so nice and stitching. My brother, she wouldn't make pants. She buy pants and everything in the store for my brother and my two brothers and my father. But she made those shirts. | 23:54 |
| Kate Ellis | She made those shirts? | 24:15 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Oh yes ma'am. And she made all of our dresses. She just look at what you have on and she make them. | 24:17 |
| Kate Ellis | Right away? | 24:23 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | No pattern. Uh-huh, she make all that. | 24:23 |
| Kate Ellis | I bet she could get some of her ideas from the clothes that she ironed of the Landry's. | 24:29 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Everybody. That's right. | 24:33 |
| Kate Ellis | She ironed and say, Oh okay I'll make that. Is that right, would she? | 24:35 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | She would look at something and she would make it. She know how to make it and she would sit there and before she would cut on material, she cut a newspaper and she'd look at it and she will be sure that fits you. She make us up on one of us. She call us and she cut that newspaper according to how she wanted it. And she measured it. Then she cut that dress. She got that sewing machine, that big old, that you pat with your foot. And she would sew. And when you come out, you had one of the most gorgeous dress you want to see. That's right. She get cotton material and whatnot. She make panties for us, make dress. She would make the slips, she make jackets and we were just self-help, self-sufficient. | 24:39 |
| Kate Ellis | But still there would be the hard times that you talked about when there was almost no money coming in? | 25:26 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | And the weather bad, was no money coming in. When it rain, you couldn't work. | 25:32 |
| Kate Ellis | And so for those times you might go to the commodities? | 25:38 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | You'd go to the commodities and my daddy get out there and kill a hog. | 25:41 |
| Kate Ellis | And he'd kill a hog? | 25:47 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | He'd kill a hog. And then those hogs and everything, we had ice in the box. We had the refrigerator, put ice. And then you have a big crock barrel, about that tall. You clean that meat and everything and salt to pickle it. | 25:47 |
| Kate Ellis | I'm sorry? | 26:00 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Pickle. You pickled it. Pickle it, put salt and everything else and put in that big barrel and cover it. And it wouldn't go bad, and we could eat all that. And now everything that you eat, you get sick off it. | 26:01 |
| Kate Ellis | Right, now you mean, now you do. | 26:11 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Every winter he would have a calf that is big enough and he had been fattening up, ready to kill. And a nice big hole when you kill a hog, because after grinding when it's raining, you can't do no work. We need to eat and then during the fall, we have all that rice that we have saved and sacked up. We have that. We had the cornmeal that during the fall when they cut the corn we have that ground up. But we'll have rice, we'll have meat, we'll have corn, we'll have for cornbread, we'll have grits and we'll have all— My mother or my daddy raise it on the farm. My mama jar it up, put it in jars, preserves it. She'd make preserves, she jar her vegetables, tomatoes and all kinds of things. Dry okra, jar okra and we eat would eat all the time. | 26:13 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | We never were hungry. We were never hungry. And we had a lot of her, she'd make her own breads. She'd make light bread. Those are rolls. She make that or she would make corn bread, she'd make biscuits. She'd make her own butter from the fat from the milk, what not churn on it. We were never hungry. We had plenty and always had to give the other kids who would come play with us and everything. | 27:03 |
| Kate Ellis | Did you? | 27:26 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Give the neighbors, that's right. | 27:26 |
| Kate Ellis | It sounds like your family provided for the community in a lot of ways. With your mothers sewing for people and giving food and people coming to your house. | 27:31 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | We enjoyed that. It was fun. And she, my mother cooked and you go there even after we was grown and everything was so good and we were all married and everything. We go to the house and she'd cook on Sunday. Tell her we're not home. We just say, Uh-huh you don't want my food. She's the person that liked to feed you. | 27:41 |
| Kate Ellis | Oh really? Keep eating, huh? She'd get you to keep eating? | 27:56 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | She wanted you to eat some, she wanted feeding you. | 28:00 |
| Kate Ellis | Let's see. There's something else about [indistinct 00:28:11] going a little bit. Let me just write this down. | 28:08 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | My daddy go to town on Saturdays, he buy enough candy, apples and all different thing and he bring it home and hang it up in the basket. The house would be cool and we'd have enough to last us. All of us would have a piece of candy every day, end of day. | 28:18 |
| Kate Ellis | Really? | 28:30 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | It lasts all of it. He buy plenty, plenty. And when he come home, my mother save it and separate it and when we ask for a piece, it was there. | 28:31 |
| Kate Ellis | Were there special occasions that you celebrated? | 28:39 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | We celebrated, just like everyone else. The Christmas and the Thanksgivings and the Easter holidays and all stuff and we celebrate everything and we have company. Anyways, it'd be better celebration than it is now because you go to some of your neighbor's house and your relative house and all you'll have eats and drinks and all stuff as that, and they would come to you. But now it's not that. You stay to your house. The next one's stay to theirs. They don't go around like they used to. But that was just something nice to do. You go from house to house and have a slice of cake or do different things. They don't do that anymore. Cut that out completely. You might have some coming from out of town come and spend the holidays. But it's not like the people in the neighborhood would go from different one house thing. | 28:44 |
| Kate Ellis | But that's what it used to be like? You would go from house to house and— | 29:25 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Eat something or you share. But they don't do that no more. Just the very few that you used to or go you do that but not now, you don't do like these anymore. Times have changed completely. | 29:29 |
| Kate Ellis | They have haven't, they? | 29:43 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | I'm telling you truth. | 29:45 |
| Kate Ellis | Are you sometimes nostalgic for the way that it used to be? | 29:47 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | No. I don't want to go back. I enjoyed it while it was there, but since they improve, I wouldn't want to go back to the time no more. We had a hard time so I wouldn't want to go back to that no more. | 29:51 |
| Kate Ellis | What were the things that were hardest about it? What made them hard times? | 30:04 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | We had to walk to school. That was one of the things. I had to sit up there and strain your eyes at 10, 11 o'clock getting lesson by a lamp light. That was something hard. And just to see that you wanted go to the store, you had to walk to the store and come back and we had nobody to bring her back. My dad had to bring things back on his back with the sack and also stuff like that. That was tough. Really tough. And to see you walking, pulling the mud and everything on the school and the bus passing right by you and they couldn't pick you up. | 30:08 |
| Kate Ellis | That must have made your blood boil. | 30:44 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | It was slash mud. Then he hit the mud for the kids on that bus would throw spit balls at us, and walking. My mother would stand on the porch when the weather's bad and whatnot, and we didn't want miss school. And she'd stand on that porch and she'd be crying as far as she can see us. | 30:45 |
| Kate Ellis | Really? Watching you have to walk. | 31:02 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | And the others passing by sailing in the bus. I didn't have no bus 'til— I was out of school when I had a bus and I think my two sisters out of school and they had a bus. I think just my niece and nephews got some of the bus. I've never ridden a bus. | 31:05 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | And when you put something on the table, you'll cook a nice big part of everything and if it's something that you didn't like, you would find something on that table to eat unless you wouldn't eat. That's some of those things would happen. But right now if you don't want that, you go in the kitchen and find something else and cook for yourself, or you wouldn't even cook that. You cook what you like or some of that stuff. But not by that time. | 31:30 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | My mother fix a big pot of beans and rice and some salt meat, stewed chicken and make some biscuits or some dinner rolls or whatever she do anything. And you sit down at the table and eat it, or find something. Several menus where she got that, you eat it or else you don't have nothing to eat. She not going to take you out, say make a sandwich for you. She say eat what's there. And I appreciate that. I enjoy that. As for being forced by the kids these days, they'll come in and say you want that and give me two, three dollars and going to the hamburger stand, and they gone. That's right. | 31:53 |
| Kate Ellis | I want to ask you something that can be a sensitive topic but as far as those hard times, one of the things that I'd like to know more about is more about how Whites and Blacks got along during that period and how White people treated Blacks. | 32:33 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Well some of them are good. Yes, we had some good White neighbors and we had some different things but there's so many things that you couldn't in the business form and you couldn't go into their businesses because they cater to White only. The water fountain was White only, all different things like that you see. You couldn't go in there. But from our neighbors and for people around there, we had good people. | 32:56 |
| Kate Ellis | Can you tell me about your neighbors? Did you live in an area that was mixed race? | 33:22 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Yes. | 33:27 |
| Kate Ellis | You had White neighbors and Black neighbors? And what was the livelihoods of the people of those neighbors? Both White and Black. | 33:28 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Some of those White kids played with us because, some of Landry's then we go to some of their children. Wayne Landry was a mortician. He's dead now and he had his sister and all them. We would play with those kids and we had Mrs. Joe, I forgot her last name, that's her husband's name, Mr. Joe. And his family and they were White. They lived on Landry farm. We played with them. E.G. Landry and then we got the Landry on Landry shop. Anything over there. | 33:37 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | The Landry restaurant on 14, we played with them. We would go there, we'd go there to get corn or to do all kind. We'd play in the barn. We would play with those guys. We were small but you had your share of segregation among people. You would go to the stores, you couldn't, certain stores and certain things you'd go, whatnot. They wouldn't let you try on different things in the stores to see if it would fit you and all kinds of things like that. Just had nitpicky things. It was kind of rough at times. | 34:11 |
| Kate Ellis | So you had just been talking about how you played with White neighbors and now did you say Mr. Joe's, they were White neighbors? | 34:44 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | They lived on the Landry's farm. And the kids would play with us all the time. | 34:56 |
| Kate Ellis | They lived on the Landry's farm. Did they— | 35:02 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Lived on the Landry's farm to work on, working up here. You know how you have the farm houses, like each plantation. Each farm owners have several houses and the house, the people that live on the farm to work. | 35:03 |
| Kate Ellis | That's interesting to me 'cause sometimes I'm wondering if people forget that there were poor Whites who worked on land. | 35:17 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | That's right. They sure did. And they were nice people. | 35:28 |
| Kate Ellis | They were? So you played with the kids. But you went to different schools. | 35:29 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | We all went to segregated school. We had to go the Colored elementary, White elementary, the Colored Black, the elementary White, that's what they call it at that time. Colored. So when I graduated from high school, you see every time they had that grade was Jeanerette Colored High and that's what they call it. JCHS, Jeanerette Colored High School. We were the first, my class was the first graduating class. | 35:34 |
| Kate Ellis | I saw that picture you showed me and you had said that that was the first graduating class because every year of your class, it was just elementary. Well why don't you explain it. | 36:05 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | It was elementary. You used to graduate at the time, seventh and eleventh. And every time someone makes seventh grade in our class in school, you'll have to leave. You have to catch the bus to go to IPTS in New Iberia. But when we started school, every year, every time we made a grade, they added a grade. When we got to seventh grade, time for us to leave, they add eighth grade. When got ready for us to go to eighth grade, to go to ninth grade, they add another grade up until 1943 they started at 11th grade where they would graduate. I graduated in 1943. The first graduating class at Jeanerette Colored High School. | 36:16 |
| Kate Ellis | As you had said, there were 11— | 36:56 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Girls and one boy. The boy went into service and he went in service in April, inducted him during World War II. And he went and they took him in and they mailed his diploma. And then 11 of us marched. | 37:00 |
| Kate Ellis | Together. So all girls marching. And I had asked earlier why there were so many more girls than boys? | 37:16 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Boys would drop out. And it wasn't compulsory that they go to school 'til they're 16 and all like they're doing now. Dropped out when they got ready, go work in the field or they lay around and find other little jobs and different other things and stay home. They just didn't go and the parents didn't push them. But the girls wanted to go in and they went. | 37:28 |
| Kate Ellis | Was there labor— Did the boys have more opportunity for paid labor than the girls? Was there also more of an economic incentive for boys to drop out of school than there was for girls at that time? | 37:45 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | No, they just dropped out 'cause they wanted to. A lot of girls dropped out, like when we started in the sixth grade, we were 56, and that's what we ended up with when we got out of high school. They dropped out. And the parents weren't pushing them to stay in school like they did before. And they didn't have the convenience and things to send them to school. And some of the kids, some of them didn't want to go to school looking worse than others and so forth so some stay home. So it was just that easy. | 38:08 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Everybody didn't have opportunities like we had because we were on our own place. We didn't have to go from farm to farm, living in find places to sit with 'cause we had our own home. And my daddy would work and my mother would work and then she'd do things and keep things first and everything. We didn't have to go, if this farmer, your daddy pulled out with this farm person, you had to find somewheres else to go. But we didn't have that. We didn't have that to do. We stayed in the same place all the time. And then the house is still back there. | 38:34 |
| Kate Ellis | Your house that you grew up in? | 39:04 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Yes, it's still there. And we just, my sister bought us out, but the house is still there and she rented it to somebody's else. She renovated and rented it to somebody's else. | 39:05 |
| Kate Ellis | I was going to ask, how did your father get the land that he had in the first place? | 39:14 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | He bought it. | 39:19 |
| Kate Ellis | He bought it? | 39:20 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Oh yes, he bought it. | 39:21 |
| Kate Ellis | When he was young? | 39:22 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | He bought it, I think my mom— You see it was a family land. His daddy had the land. And he had his sisters and his daddy bought it, his sisters and brothers. And we stayed there 'cause all of them going, except him, stayed. And my daddy bought in '37, my daddy bought all their sisters and brothers out. That where was ours. | 39:23 |
| Kate Ellis | But am I right that it was unusual that your grandfather would've been able to purchase land? | 39:44 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Things were so cheap. It's a lot of people had land in those days, but they lost it because they didn't keep it up and whatnot and everything. And the White man ended up having it. | 39:49 |
| Kate Ellis | I'm sorry, they weren't? | 39:58 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | They didn't— | 40:00 |
| Kate Ellis | They lost it because? | 40:00 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | They lost the land some kind of way by not being able to keep it up or make the payments on it and whatnot and everything else. And the White man end up with it. They swallowed them in. | 40:02 |
| Kate Ellis | So the Whites just— | 40:10 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | That's why they end up with more because they were able to, the Black man wasn't able to keep his land because he couldn't make all his payments and whatnot and everything. And he lose his can trying to harvest it and whatnot 'cause he didn't have the right kind of equipments and whatnot all then. And the White man was able to buy 'em off. | 40:17 |
| Kate Ellis | So the Black man just didn't have the resource? | 40:32 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | The resources to keep his work going. The resources, equipments and whatever not. | 40:34 |
| Kate Ellis | And your father, your family was able to do that? | 40:42 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | My dad kept all that they had and passed to the children after they died. And all my other aunts and uncles had moved out of town, different place and all, after they married. So we stayed there and live at the place. And so my daddy bought them out and it's still there. It's still there. | 40:46 |
| Kate Ellis | Just up the road. | 41:05 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Passed the Landry's, going this way. Past the Landry's Seafood on the left-hand side. | 41:06 |
| Kate Ellis | How far are we from Landry's Seafood? | 41:08 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Not too far. | 41:12 |
| Kate Ellis | Oh, okay. We just drove by there last night. I'm still getting the lay of the land. | 41:13 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | So you just go this way, you go 318 and you make a right. And Landry's is on that side. | 41:16 |
| Kate Ellis | Of the four lanes? | 41:21 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Before you get there. And our property and everything's right around the corner. You see my brother bought— You see my daddy bought the family property and my uncle from New Orleans had the next spot where my brother bought that from him. So we got the whole spot. My brother has one and his son, his house is there and his son. My brother dead, but his wife live there still. | 41:25 |
| Kate Ellis | Getting back to what you were saying earlier about playing with the White kids. So there were kids who went by you in school, on the bus, who threw spitballs at you. But you also had White kids that you played with? | 41:48 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | In the neighborhood, we had a lot of White friends. Oh yes. | 42:02 |
| Kate Ellis | Was there ever a point at which you got to a certain age and stopped being friends? When the White kids and the Black kids stopped being friends? | 42:05 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Not those that we knew of. The few that was around us. No— | 42:15 |
| Kate Ellis | You were always friends. | 42:18 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | We're always their friend. I go back to E.G. and them now. They know me, this is good and everything. E.G died, but his family, his children are there. I think his wife's still living and whatnot and all those. We go there and then the Landry's would live by our house, the two-story building. Wayne died, he's a mortician. He died. And anyway, he would see me, he would speak to me. | 42:19 |
| Kate Ellis | He'd see you? | 42:41 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Oh yes, he'd speak to me, Hey Audrey. And he'd talk to me and go and everything. And his sister live in Franklin and she, we went to the body and everything when he died. And she came up to me and hugged me and talked. And oh, the Dareeses, oh we had some good friends there. The Dareeses. | 42:42 |
| Kate Ellis | The Dareeses? | 42:58 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Yes, they're two family of them. O'Neil Dareese had the grocery store and his brother, Lordis would work the farm. | 43:00 |
| Kate Ellis | Lordis? | 43:12 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | They work the farm. And they were backed on this end of us. And we go to the store and Mr. O'Neill give us candy. He and my daddy were like that. | 43:12 |
| Kate Ellis | They were close? | 43:19 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Oh, there was some good people. And they were so nice. And the kids, we all, and I see those kids right now. So one of them will come, one of the daughters have Williams Tire Center and some other girl lives in Franklin. Some of their daughters working, I even know— Their daughters call, Hey Miss Audrey, whenever you see them, anything. We see them all there. They were nice. There's some other White people that was real nice. From the grocery store, we go by our grocery store from here and we didn't have enough money, he let us have it anyway. And y'all go ahead on home now, I'm going to give y'all those extra pennies. Mr. O'Neil. He was so sweet. Oh, he was sweet. | 43:19 |
| Kate Ellis | This is what's interesting to me is that, and maybe you can sort of help shed some light on this for me. I've heard some terrible stories about what Whites have done to Blacks in this area. | 43:58 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Oh yes. | 44:18 |
| Kate Ellis | Things we haven't even talked about yet. But I'm sure you well remember or had perhaps documented yourself since you've been documenting the history of this area, and yet there also seem to be so close relationships that go way back between Whites and Blacks. So I don't know. I'm just wondering if you can talk to me more about— | 44:19 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | It's such a mixed emotion. That's why you guys said. | 44:43 |
| Kate Ellis | Yeah, it just seems complex to me. And it's something that actually Michelle, one of the other interviewers and I have talked about a lot like, what's going on here? | 44:45 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | I know they had the Guillotes and another set of Darville, Dareese, another brother and his family used to live up on this end from us. And Mr. Honor told Guillote that was his family. We got along good with those people and we still see some of them, speak to us and we speak to them and we pass a conversation. Everything. When we were small, we had no problem. But that was just those people, our neighborhood people. Those were in the surrounding neighborhood, from not too far from us, walking distance you would say. And it was nice. We had no problem with those people. But it's so many things that people has done to other people and mean things and everything. You don't even want to hear about it. | 44:55 |
| Kate Ellis | Well, I would like to hear about it if you'd be willing to tell me. | 45:47 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | It's so many things, different people who has gotten killed by Whites and some of them have gotten sent to jail for things that they didn't do and all sort of stuff as that. It has happened. | 45:51 |
| Kate Ellis | Would you mind telling me a couple stories? | 46:03 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | I better not. | 46:07 |
| Kate Ellis | Really? | 46:10 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Yeah, because it just, it's something, it's a man. It was a man. Don't write this down. It was a man had one time, the White fella used to like a good-looking Black girl and it was another— | 46:10 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | And don't it write down and don't record all that either. | 0:01 |
| Kate Ellis | It's okay. Do you want me to? Yeah. So let's see, where can we go? What church did you attend when you were growing up? | 0:04 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | St. Peter United Methodist. | 0:16 |
| Kate Ellis | Okay. So that, it's always been your church? | 0:17 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Always been there from a child. And we would go to St. Peter Catholic with my mother. So my mother was Catholic, my daddy was Methodist. So we go sometime with her, and sometime with him. But that was walking all the time. We'd walk to Four Corners, the Catholic Church. We walk to St. Peter, walk to Methodist Church. | 0:20 |
| Kate Ellis | What was the name of the Catholic Church? | 0:36 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | St. Peter Catholic. | 0:38 |
| Kate Ellis | Oh, so it was St. Peter United Methodist and St. Peter? | 0:40 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | And St. Peter Catholic. | 0:42 |
| Kate Ellis | Catholic. And in the Catholic Church, was it segregated? It was all Black? | 0:42 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | No. | 0:58 |
| Kate Ellis | I mean in the church. So if was Whites and Blacks attended it. | 0:59 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | They still do. | 1:02 |
| Kate Ellis | Did they sit? | 1:03 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Because there was the only one in that area, they had to go there. | 1:04 |
| Kate Ellis | Oh. | 1:07 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Everybody would go. | 1:07 |
| Kate Ellis | Did they sit separately though? | 1:09 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | They sat on the bench where they found a seat. The Catholic Church was always integrated out there in Four Corners. | 1:10 |
| Kate Ellis | Right. | 1:18 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | People would go out there. | 1:18 |
| Kate Ellis | But they didn't sit in separate sections. | 1:18 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | They just sat. | 1:21 |
| Kate Ellis | Wow. | 1:22 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Because that was a Catholic Church and that was the only church in that area. | 1:23 |
| Kate Ellis | But still, that's interesting. Only because I know of other Catholic churches where. | 1:29 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | They're sectioned off. | 1:32 |
| Kate Ellis | Blacks and Whites attended, but they sat in different sections. | 1:37 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | No, they were going and sit where you found a seat. It was nice because we were going there since we were small with my mother. | 1:39 |
| Kate Ellis | But with the Methodist church, was that segregated? | 1:47 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | That's the Black church. | 1:50 |
| Kate Ellis | That was Black church. | 1:51 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | It still is, but you can go to anyone you want to go now. But they just was there and they just stayed there. | 1:52 |
| Kate Ellis | And it stays, they stayed. | 1:58 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | To where they were because that's the closest one in our area from that. But you can go to anyone. | 2:00 |
| Kate Ellis | Huh. | 2:07 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | And they can come to you either way they want to go. | 2:08 |
| Kate Ellis | Yeah. So that's the way that things are different now, that people can go. | 2:13 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | You have a choice. | 2:18 |
| Kate Ellis | You have a choice. Uh-huh, yeah. | 2:21 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | And you have a choice. And you're welcome either way you go. | 2:22 |
| Kate Ellis | Yeah. What's I going to say? Oh, I know what I was wanted to ask you about as far as, you talked about people in your family who stopped working in the fields and took on other jobs, whether it was, well, some people went like you went elsewhere and I want to ask you about that in a little while, and your brothers did different things. I mean, that took place in the '40s and '50s then, were there a lot of people who came off the fields at that time and took other? | 2:27 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | When World War II came up in the '40s, a lot of people came out. | 3:13 |
| Kate Ellis | Because other jobs open, other jobs came available. Whether it was joining the army for the men or working on. | 3:19 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Shipyards. | 3:26 |
| Kate Ellis | Shipyards. | 3:26 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Fabrication plants and all kind of thing, all that came out. And so a lot of people left and went, started working and they cleaned them up going to the service. They had a lot. | 3:29 |
| Kate Ellis | They cleaned them up, you said? | 3:36 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | All those young, yeah. It's a lot. Just pick up, drafted everybody. | 3:37 |
| Kate Ellis | Yeah. | 3:45 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Went in service. A lot of them went in service. My husband did. | 3:45 |
| Kate Ellis | Your husband did? | 3:46 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Oh yeah. My husband been in service, World War II. | 3:47 |
| Kate Ellis | Oh, did you know him at that point? | 3:50 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Yes, but we weren't married. | 3:58 |
| Kate Ellis | Okay. | 3:58 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Because I was still in Scott College and he went into service. My second brother went into service and so many others went in there in the World War II. Drafted them all. | 3:58 |
| Kate Ellis | What kind of changes did you notice in the community around World War II? I mean, a lot of people left and people came off the field to take other jobs. Are there other things that changed or? | 4:12 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Some of the women were working in the shipyards and all kind of thing if they were hiring women because they didn't have enough men. Most of the men were going to the service. Who could work? The younger men, the older men weren't be able to go on that type of job, so they hired some of the young women. They gave a lot of work. | 4:28 |
| Kate Ellis | So a lot of people. | 4:45 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | They give a lot of work with good paying jobs. And it improved. It started, it really improved in World War II. | 4:46 |
| Kate Ellis | Really? | 4:56 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Mm-hmm. | 4:57 |
| Kate Ellis | Huh. | 4:59 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Because some of those women were in the shipyard and that's when the women started doing the men work. They were doing good. | 5:00 |
| Kate Ellis | And doing it well. | 5:07 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Oh yes. Oh yes, they did. Well, so that was really a change for change for the better during that time the economy changed. | 5:08 |
| Kate Ellis | It did. | 5:16 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Oh yeah, during World War II, it builds up a lot. | 5:17 |
| Kate Ellis | I imagine it was a relief for a lot of people to not have to work in the fields anymore. | 5:24 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Oh yeah. But it's still some of the older ones stayed in the funeral because there was nothing else for them to do because they were too old for the service, and they couldn't get hired on those public jobs and nothing because they were older, therefore they still met the crop. | 5:26 |
| Kate Ellis | What about, is that the case for your father? What did he do around, I mean did he stay working on? | 5:43 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | He still working on a farmer. | 5:48 |
| Kate Ellis | Farmer? | 5:49 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Because he had a edge. He was too old. And my oldest brother didn't go the service either, because he had age and whatnot and all. But he ducted different thing and stayed on different jobs and all that. And then during that time, the farmers could have deferred you from going into the service. Sign on that they would give you work and this, that, and everything else and that you couldn't go. And they would fill out some papers and everything with the governor and they call that deferment and to keep people save their crop. | 5:52 |
| Kate Ellis | Oh, deferment for farmers. | 6:20 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Farmers defer his employees. He fill up papers and everything. | 6:25 |
| Kate Ellis | Did the employees want that? | 6:33 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Some of them did not want to go and some. | 6:37 |
| Kate Ellis | Not want to go to the war, and would prefer to stay down at the farm. | 6:39 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | For them to stay. And they got deferred and they stayed, and they worked on the farm to keep from having to go. | 6:43 |
| Kate Ellis | Were any farmer employers made to stay on the farm when they would've liked to have left? I mean, did they? | 6:47 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | No, that was volunteered. If you didn't want to go, they would go and have deferred to help you to stay on a farm and work with them. | 6:54 |
| Kate Ellis | In general, did the farms suffer around here? Because I mean, were the number of farm laborers who left so great that the farms? | 7:04 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | No, it was enough people that would run the farm and anything. But the people did leave. A lot of them who went to the war didn't come back and that made less people. And as much one think about it. And there was less people living, those that were working on a farm do things who did not get deferred and they went into service or they were working on some other jobs. They left and found refuge and home livings and everything in other cities when they got discharged, they didn't come back to the area. So I mean, less people in the area. | 7:13 |
| Kate Ellis | So now let me just make sure that, I want to make sure this. So as far as what you did, you graduated in '43 you said. And you went to New Orleans. Now, how did you get to New Orleans? How did you decide to go to New Orleans? | 7:45 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | My aunt told me that told my dad and my mother, I could come live with her and go to school there because I went to go to business school. So I went still over there to go to business school, and I got re-enrolled in school and then I got a job working at a drugstore part-time. | 8:02 |
| Kate Ellis | In New Orleans? | 8:21 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | And I work part-time and I go to school. | 8:24 |
| Kate Ellis | And you said you stayed with your aunt. Where did she live in New Orleans? | 8:28 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | She live on 3102nd Street. It was my daddy brother and his wife. | 8:32 |
| Kate Ellis | Okay. And what did they do in New Orleans? | 8:38 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | My aunt would do ironing and whatnot and everything at the house. And my uncle worked for a feed company. | 8:43 |
| Kate Ellis | For a feed company. And so when you finished school, how long was that? Was that a four-year program or two-year program? | 8:53 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Two. | 9:00 |
| Kate Ellis | Two-year program. And so when you finished, did you then come back here? | 9:00 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | I came home. I got married in '46 when my husband came out the service. | 9:05 |
| Kate Ellis | Okay, so you had promised yourselves to each other. | 9:09 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Yes. And we came home. We got married in April of 24th, 1946. And we came here and we lived here a while. Then he was a carpenter. We went back to New Orleans and we stayed in New Orleans 1948, in '49 we came back home. We had one child in New Orleans, my oldest little girl because I didn't have a child until after. I spent about three years and I had my oldest girl, she's born in New Orleans and we moved back here and he went to trade school, to finish taking up carpenter work and more skills. And we stayed right here in a smaller, because he built a house in '47 and we stayed right here in a small frame house. | 9:12 |
| Kate Ellis | But on this property. | 9:54 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | On this piece of property right here. | 9:54 |
| Kate Ellis | I see, but on a smaller. | 9:56 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | In the small little white frame house that he built. And we came from New Orleans in '49 he went to trade school in Iberia to finish learning carpenter and whatnot on he did it all around. In '50, Lorraine was born, my second daughter. And we stayed here and worked and whatnot and everything. In '51 he finished that and he went to Chicago in '51 to take up coins, electrical school to take up electricity. And I went to, I went to take a course and I worked as a nurse's aid at the Cook County Hospital. And he went and he would work, he go to school and he would work, carpenter work and everything part-time. And we stayed there about five or six years. We came back. | 9:57 |
| Kate Ellis | Really? Wow. | 10:53 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Came back home in '54, which was born in Chicago. And we came here, we opened. My father ain't gotten old so he turned his store business and everything over to us and my husband rebuilt it and everything. We stayed here and ran the grocery store and launch up until '87 is when it burned down. | 10:54 |
| Kate Ellis | What was the name of the grocery store? | 11:19 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Tri-level Grocery and Bar. | 11:19 |
| Kate Ellis | Tri-level? | 11:19 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Tri, T-R-I. | 11:19 |
| Kate Ellis | Oh, Tri-level Grocery. Okay. | 11:19 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | And bar. We ran that up until '87 when it burned. We still have the motel down the street. | 11:29 |
| Kate Ellis | But you still run. | 11:36 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Okay. | 11:37 |
| Kate Ellis | So what did you think of Chicago? And especially in. | 11:42 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Love it, but it's still so cold. | 11:44 |
| Kate Ellis | I'm sorry, you loved it but it was so cold? Yeah. | 11:47 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | You didn't have too many warm months. And I had one fall running and had a fall running to catch my, during the lunchtime I was, had a perfume sale at a K&B Drugstore and I went to get it. I had boots on and I was running because I had to go and get back to work. I slipping, my knee was all swollen. The only fall I had and people would fall every day, but I had one fall the whole time I left in. And you see it would rain in the morning and then the snow come in the evening, it'd be ice and slush on top and then that'll drop. And next day the snow again. And it was thick and for was horrible. | 11:50 |
| Kate Ellis | Treacherous. | 12:35 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | And the wind was so high. When you make the corner to go be so cool, you have to back up and buckle yourself up real good to go back around and embrace it. That's when you be going to catch the L train to go in the south high to go home or some rough weather. Windy and water out your eye. It was some wind and cold. | 12:36 |
| Kate Ellis | So you prefer the heat? | 12:58 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | I could stand in this building. In the wintertime I'd rather summertime than in the winter. Anything. | 13:00 |
| Kate Ellis | Yeah. | 13:05 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Oh yeah. I'd rather summertime. Anything than the winter. I can't stand there. | 13:06 |
| Kate Ellis | So what about, I mean many people traveled north at seams and things were different there and things were different in, I mean in some senses between how people of different racial groups related to each other. I mean, there was still segregation and stuff, but did you notice differences when you were in Chicago? | 13:11 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | What segregation in anywhere you went? | 13:31 |
| Kate Ellis | Yeah. | 13:34 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | But it wasn't as bad. It wasn't showing as bad as it was showing in the rural areas. In the smaller cities and smaller towns, it wasn't as bad because you right side the next person. At the hospital, you wait on White patient, Black patient, just whoever was your patient, it had no problem. | 13:34 |
| Kate Ellis | So that was the kind of thing that went on up north that still hadn't, taking place down here. So what was it like when you moved back from Chicago and to move back to that, to the way that it was in the down here? | 13:54 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Well, I mean I didn't work when I came back here. I was working with myself. We had to place of business and everything. I had Black customer, White customer, Black salesman, White salesman. And everything comes to the store and everything. I had no problem. | 14:11 |
| Kate Ellis | Yeah. | 14:22 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Because everything was over with that time. | 14:23 |
| Kate Ellis | Really? | 14:24 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | I had no problem. Work with them and go in and do what I had to do. | 14:25 |
| Kate Ellis | Yeah. I just heard about some people talking about soldiers who came back from World War II, Black soldiers and coming back into the South. | 14:36 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Hard to get a job after they went, served the country, they didn't have nothing come to do. All them have to go and take what they can find and do everything is, and you wouldn't have a preference to go and do the thing that they want to do. If there's a job here and whatnot, and the next one, Black one, the White come there. White man get the job, they didn't have a preference to push it. | 14:47 |
| Kate Ellis | Yeah. Wait. They didn't have a preference to? | 15:10 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Get with the jobs. The job printing, you get what you can find. Whereas the next fellow come in, you get promoted and go on and get a job, everything, and both for the same one. | 15:14 |
| Kate Ellis | Right. For the same principal. | 15:25 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | For the same principal, I'm telling you. For the same damages that came to one, it came to the other, whatnot and everything. But when you come back in the state, you get segregated. You still can't go to this restaurant. You have to go into the back door. You can't go into this bus station. You have to go into the back door. You get on the school bus, you have to ride on the back of the bus and everybody's just in front of you. There was no seats. No seats with the reserve in the back, you stood. All stuff. So there was still a share of it. | 15:28 |
| Kate Ellis | After the war. | 15:59 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Still was until '69 when integration came through full force. Well, everything changed. The school system and everything else changed. I had no problem with mine because I got on school in '78. I had no problem because I was the only Black lady and one Black man and 13 white men. I had no problem. I went where they went. I came in and came in. They took care of me. They watched me, and they look out for me. | 16:00 |
| Kate Ellis | Did they? | 16:39 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Yes, they did. I would go, we were going to plan, going to different convention, whatnot. The first one you would look for, where are you? Just up thing. You had better come on, keep up there because we got to bring you back home safely. You come on here. And they were just nice. | 16:39 |
| Kate Ellis | Wow. | 16:56 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Oh yes. So I hadn't them. And I stood there, sit on the school board for 12 years. | 16:59 |
| Kate Ellis | Did you? | 16:59 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Going to 13, mm-hmm. | 17:00 |
| Kate Ellis | Now, I remember when we talked on the phone and you said that you lived on Gabriel Road. Is it Gabriel Road? | 17:01 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Yeah. I asked them for it. | 17:07 |
| Kate Ellis | You. | 17:09 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | In a consulate government meeting. They were put street names and he was wondering where they going to put the name. I said, "Why don't you put it after me?" I said, "I have made records." He said, "Good idea." And I got it. | 17:10 |
| Kate Ellis | That's great. | 17:25 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Yeah. And nothing but Gabriels lived on, there's Dudley Gabriel on the corner, George Gabriel here. Oscar Gabriel here, Gabriel family live all down here. | 17:26 |
| Kate Ellis | And these are all— | 17:36 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Mary Gabriel used to live right there. Your daughter right there. She's a [indistinct 00:17:40], but she was a Gabriel, all that. So that's most of who's down the street. | 17:36 |
| Kate Ellis | Well. | 17:45 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | And I asked them, they said, "Sure." Well I knew the sign was the front corner. | 17:46 |
| Kate Ellis | Well let me go back to the World War II period. And again, I'm going to ask you things and if you don't want to talk about it, that's fine. I imagine that you were in New Orleans in '44 when the whole incident, when the doctors in New Iberia took place. Is that right, that you were in New Orleans in 1944 when the doctors were run out of town? | 17:52 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | I don't remember. From here? | 18:19 |
| Kate Ellis | From New Iberia. | 18:21 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | I don't remember that. It's been away from me. I don't think I heard, but I don't remember that. | 18:23 |
| Kate Ellis | Oh, really? It was when there were a number of, it was a period when the NAACP had just been organized in New Iberia. | 18:29 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Yes sir. | 18:36 |
| Kate Ellis | And they had wanted, had been petitioning, I guess a superintendent to have a welding school put up or established for Blacks in the area. And I guess the superintendent objected to that, the superintendent of schools. | 18:40 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | And I wasn't here then. I don't think I know about that. | 18:56 |
| Kate Ellis | And so they were. | 18:59 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | In '44, I was in business college in New Orleans. | 19:00 |
| Kate Ellis | Right. And so the doctors were run out of town. The Black doctors were run out of town. | 19:01 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | I knew they had Dr. Dorsey and I don't know who else was because Dr. Dorsey was a—The eyes, I remember him. | 19:07 |
| Kate Ellis | Yeah. | 19:13 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | And I don't know who else were, they were there when I left here, but I didn't know what had happened to them because I wasn't here. | 19:14 |
| Kate Ellis | Oh, okay, because they were probably gone by the time. | 19:22 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | By the time I came back, they weren't there. But I don't know why they had left. | 19:25 |
| Kate Ellis | Oh really? | 19:28 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Because I didn't ask nobody and no one told me. So I just imagine. I just didn't know. | 19:30 |
| Kate Ellis | Oh, okay. That's interest. I mean this is actually, I guess this maybe this is the thing I've been trying to—I wonder if, I mean, because you're in separate parishes and stuff, maybe I had assumed that information would travel more. | 19:35 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Sometimes. | 19:53 |
| Kate Ellis | But sometimes. | 19:54 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | But now it does because the reporters go from parish to parishes and whatnot and all the same day the people come out, it'll come out with we both. | 19:55 |
| Kate Ellis | Yeah. | 20:06 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Come out of that in both parish, because I did hear something that happened in Franklin and the [indistinct 00:20:13] had the same thing and whatnot and everything, so they coincides now. But at that time I imagine this was separate papers and whatnot and everything. So I don't remember that. | 20:08 |
| Kate Ellis | Oh, I see. Okay. So people, the news didn't necessarily travel as far. | 20:22 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Being a teenager, I guess I didn't pay too much attention anyway at that time. | 20:27 |
| Kate Ellis | Yeah. | 20:36 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | But now I'm just into, and I look for things of interest. | 20:36 |
| Kate Ellis | I'll maybe bring you a copy of an article that came out in 1969 about what happened, because it might be interesting to you. It came out in the crisis. | 20:36 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Well, I guess I don't have that. No, I never did get that. | 20:47 |
| Kate Ellis | Well, actually I'll bring you a copy when I come by to photocopy because you might. | 20:49 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Okay. | 20:53 |
| Kate Ellis | You might want to add it to your— | 20:54 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Add to my collection honey? Add to my collection, because I just wish I had to place them to open up those things for others to see. But when somebody come for something, it's a lady wants something for the church, during Black History Month. But I went in to pick out several books that I have that I think would be interested to her of local people. But the football players from here and from the doctors had been here and teaching somewhere where it was already offered Franklin and Senior High and all about that. I brought that book out for, and she said, "I'll be here all day." I look and I said, "You just tell me something because if I go through this, I'm not going to ever leave you." So I have a lot of everything and I have autographs of them and all different things like that. Just I have them more just stacked up then somebody need to see them. | 20:58 |
| Kate Ellis | Yeah. Really sounds like you could open up your own personal library. | 21:42 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Yeah. I mean with all those things that I already have, I have enough that needs to fill up one side of shelves and everything with different things and all them to start off. Any other books that I have or school books, I can put all that in. I have spot enough to start with and I just have to get some more collection. But I don't have to get those different things, cutting them more because I have nowhere to put them. | 21:46 |
| Kate Ellis | What was your mother's full name? | 22:10 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Viola Barabin Metz. | 22:12 |
| Kate Ellis | Did she have a middle name? | 22:17 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | I don't know. I don't remember what. | 22:21 |
| Kate Ellis | Can you spell her maiden name? | 22:21 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Her maiden name, B-A-R-A-B-I-N. | 22:23 |
| Kate Ellis | Barabin. | 22:24 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Barabin. | 22:27 |
| Kate Ellis | Just like it sounds. And when was she born? Or I can make it. | 22:27 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | My mother was, was my daddy born 1894. My mother was five years younger. | 22:32 |
| Kate Ellis | Okay, so 1899. | 22:41 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | She's five years younger. Papa was born 1894. | 22:44 |
| Kate Ellis | Right. And so she's young. She was born after he was. | 22:47 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | My mother was born after pop. | 22:50 |
| Kate Ellis | So 1899. If it's five years, if she was born five years after. | 22:51 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Okay. That she put around 1899. | 22:56 |
| Kate Ellis | Do you know what year she passed? | 22:58 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | My mother passed in 1974. | 23:00 |
| Kate Ellis | And your father? | 23:05 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Father passed in 1979. | 23:06 |
| Kate Ellis | [indistinct 00:23:09]. Where was she born? | 23:16 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | New Orleans. | 23:17 |
| Kate Ellis | She was born in New Orleans, huh. Why did she come out here? How did that happen? | 23:18 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Well, her mother and father died and she came here with her sister. Her sister took her. | 23:22 |
| Kate Ellis | Now why had her sister come out here? | 23:28 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Well, her sister's already out here. I think they were, we see if they were two sister children. The father had married their mother, and they were living out here at that time, the father was. And then when my first aunts and uncle mother died, the daddy married to my mother and he had them and my mother, my grandmothers from New Orleans. | 23:30 |
| Kate Ellis | Oh, okay. Can I move your microphone a little? Only because I'm looking at the monitor and I'm not, that's fine. Perfect. Okay, thanks. So this was your father's second? | 23:51 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Second family. | 24:10 |
| Kate Ellis | Second family. Okay. | 24:11 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | And they were from New Orleans, they were New Orleans people. But his first family was from here. Until his wife died. | 24:12 |
| Kate Ellis | Oh. I think I just lost you. I know you just explained it and I just lost it. Will you say that last part again? That his, your father's. | 24:22 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | My grandfather was from here, and his wife and all was from here. And he had children from here. But after his wife died, he moved to New Orleans and he met my mother's mother and they married and that's where my mother name was born. | 24:29 |
| Kate Ellis | Okay, I see. And then they came back here, huh. | 24:44 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | After he died, their mother died. But they came to live one of those stepsisters out here. | 24:48 |
| Kate Ellis | Wow. | 24:54 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Raised them. | 24:55 |
| Kate Ellis | So as far as what I should write for her occupation, should I? | 24:58 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Housewife. | 25:01 |
| Kate Ellis | Okay. | 25:02 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Most of what she did, she did little other ways, but. | 25:03 |
| Kate Ellis | It was primarily housewife, okay. And then your father's full name? | 25:06 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Oscar Metz. Oscar T. Metz. | 25:11 |
| Kate Ellis | Do you know what the T stood for? | 25:15 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Thomas. | 25:16 |
| Kate Ellis | Thomas. T-H. | 25:17 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | O-M-A-S. | 25:18 |
| Kate Ellis | Metz. Okay. And he was born? | 25:21 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | May 15th, 1894. | 25:29 |
| Kate Ellis | Okay. And he was born in? | 25:30 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Here. He was always from here. | 25:39 |
| Kate Ellis | St. Mary, Louisiana. | 25:41 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | St. Mary Parish. | 25:52 |
| Kate Ellis | Oh, and his occupation, he was a farmer. That, okay. | 25:56 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Yeah. Farm working, farm for himself so help with that. | 26:00 |
| Kate Ellis | Okay. Now what I wanted to ask you about, you have just in our conversations, I think even just off tape mentioned various community groups and self-help organizations here in the community. When you were coming up, do you remember various organizations that were around, or benevolent societies? | 26:06 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | They had benevolent societies, church groups at the church, Sunday school and whatnot and all that. But as far as those NAACP came later, and all these other organizations came later. | 26:34 |
| Kate Ellis | Do you remember much of a presence of the NAACP around here? When— | 26:48 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Later, but not soon. | 26:53 |
| Kate Ellis | Right. So later being? What is later? Later is the '60s or later is? | 26:55 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | '60s and '70s, and whatnot and everything. That's when NAACP organized and became strong and whatnot and everything. And we had different things that they had done and whatnot all, but it wasn't up until the later years they really got publicized and really got well that interaction. | 27:00 |
| Kate Ellis | Would the benevolent, did your parents belong to a benevolent society? What was the name of their society? | 27:20 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | St. Peter Benevolent Society. | 27:25 |
| Kate Ellis | St. Peter. | 27:27 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | At the Methodist Church. | 27:27 |
| Kate Ellis | And was that the sort of thing where they paid dues once a month? | 27:30 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Paid dues once a month and you would get doctor, medicine, and if you would die, it would give you a certain amount on the funerals and whatnot. | 27:34 |
| Kate Ellis | So that was, I mean it's interesting the way you've described the community. It sounds like when you were coming up, people shared what they had. | 27:46 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | You talk about. | 27:54 |
| Kate Ellis | If somebody had hard times. | 27:55 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Oh yes. | 27:56 |
| Kate Ellis | You'd come there. | 27:57 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | In a country, I can tell you in the rural areas and everything, people will give you something. But in the cities, you don't get nothing. You have to pay for everything and buy it or do without. But in the country, if you say that you have this, they'll get together and bring things to you and all also stuff. But cities, you ask them what direction to go in, they'll you send you another direction. | 27:58 |
| Kate Ellis | So that was like in Chicago? | 28:18 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Yes ma'am. People fall on the street and on the fish, they'd walk over. You'd get help if a policeman would come and everything else and pick up that person and see what's wrong with them. But the other people keep going. | 28:20 |
| Kate Ellis | So when you fell in Chicago, did anybody come and help scoop you up or anything or? | 28:32 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | I got up too quick because I know I was doing wrong. I didn't have no business going there. | 28:36 |
| Kate Ellis | Oh really? | 28:42 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | I had no business going to the store. At that time I did because I was on work. So I just got up and hopped into the store and it passed off and I went and got my, what I was going to get and went on back to work. But I've seen people on State Street where it's hot and crowded, it's the main street. I've seen people passed out from heat exhaustion or something like that and other people just going on by. | 28:43 |
| Kate Ellis | And which city was this? | 29:04 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Chicago. | 29:05 |
| Kate Ellis | Oh, Chicago. Wow. | 29:05 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | On Main Street. They called it State Street. That was the main thing, where all the stories and where all the action was. And we just fall in, stayed there. | 29:06 |
| Kate Ellis | That was it. But in the community that you came up in. | 29:16 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | People shared and they were good. | 29:22 |
| Kate Ellis | And there was a benevolent society to help with expense, like medical expenses and funeral. | 29:24 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | I said, now mind you take your little book and you go to your dresser, get your medicine come. And medicine wasn't as high as it is now. Medicine is three and four time high as it was at that time because getting more money and everything is higher. | 29:29 |
| Kate Ellis | I'm assuming that it was probably hard to get a doctor, or for Black people to get a doctor in those times. Am I right about that? | 29:42 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | They would come. | 29:50 |
| Kate Ellis | They would come. | 29:51 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Doctors would go out at that time. | 29:52 |
| Kate Ellis | Black doctors would come? | 29:54 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | They'd go on calls. Yeah, we had some good white doctors would come. They would come on calls. | 29:56 |
| Kate Ellis | Oh, okay. | 30:00 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | That's mostly what they're having. They'll come on calls and work on a patient at their house. And if they have to go to the hospital, send to the hospital and so forth. | 30:00 |
| Kate Ellis | What hospital did you go to? | 30:07 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Iberia General was there, but it was real small, just a little straight building and they had Lafayette Charity, New Orleans Charity. | 30:10 |
| Kate Ellis | And those accepted or okay, I see. | 30:20 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Anybody. | 30:22 |
| Kate Ellis | And New Iberia General accepted African Americans at that time? | 30:24 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Yes, you had to pay. | 30:28 |
| Kate Ellis | Yeah. | 30:28 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | I know I paid a penny because my brother went there when he has appendix removed and I went to stay with him. But it was so small at that time. | 30:29 |
| Kate Ellis | Huh. | 30:35 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | It was tiny. | 30:36 |
| Kate Ellis | What— | 30:37 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Well, just the three or four rooms and whatnot and everything. And they would take whatever they could hold. But now you have the big one on the side and it's beautiful. | 30:38 |
| Kate Ellis | Oh, well one thing I was just going to ask was, I've heard from others that there were elders in the community who might know remedies and things like that. | 30:45 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | To use all those little midwives delivering your babies and they would bring teas and rubbing you and all different things like that and they were good at that. And it would help to prevent some of the sickness. And all the little children have cold, they'll make a lock, what you call with egg and honey and. | 30:55 |
| Kate Ellis | Oh yeah. | 31:15 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | And lemon. They'll fix that and everything and get the cold off the kids' chest. They'll rub it with Mentholatum and put a paper, a greaser bag and put on your chest and all that kind of stuff helped. | 31:17 |
| Kate Ellis | Yeah. | 31:27 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | You had the hiccup, to put a piece of paper on your head. | 31:27 |
| Kate Ellis | Put a piece of paper on your head, really? | 31:30 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | All the brown paper on your head right there. | 31:32 |
| Kate Ellis | Oh, your forehead. | 31:34 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | A small child, yes. | 31:35 |
| Kate Ellis | Who had the hiccups. And did it work? | 31:36 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Yeah, it would pass. I guess they thought it was passing because—It's some funny things that be done. I tell you, they go get that tea and boil it and let you drink that tea and that will help. | 31:38 |
| Kate Ellis | Really? | 31:49 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | There's a lot of things they were doing. It was helpful. But now you better not change that because everything make you sick. You can't eat this and give you cancer. You can't eat that. It does this. Oh, strange. And those old people eat everything they thought they could eat and they all lived to be happy, ripe old age. | 31:50 |
| Kate Ellis | Right. Yeah, I've been interviewing a lot of 90 year olds. | 32:04 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Sometimes, they live on, Ms. Chorus, 84. | 32:08 |
| Kate Ellis | Yeah, she's incredible. Yeah. Huh. So again, one things that's interesting in this project is again, because in the context of a segregation that existed at that time, one of the things we're looking at is all of these very, these self-sustaining communities and what were they able to provide for themselves when services were denied to them during the Jim Crow period. So things like how did people get medical treatment if that wasn't available? Or really important things, things to document, things for people of later generations to know about. See what I mean, does that? | 32:15 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | It is, it was very much of interest. Different thing that they couldn't get done. But the generation coming up now. Because a lot of things that we did and said and thinking my kids and grandkids would tell me, "Oh mama, that was old time." But over time, you had a hard time trying to get those things. Getting services. We had to walk from here, walk up there and sit on the corner and wait for a bus to pick you up, to bring you to Jeanerette, to the town where you had to go get your shopping and get on the bus. | 33:09 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | If it's full, you have to stand up to Jeanerette because you couldn't sit and they had empty seats in the front, you couldn't sit in them. You have to stand up in and get on and go get project again. You had have your shopping bag, whatnot, they come. And then after they had taxis, you can get a taxi to bring your bag home and then come from Jeanerette over here. The orange taxis, the first one had [indistinct 00:33:57]. They had taxis and we'd catch the taxi and come home after you do your shopping. But that was the only transportation you had because nobody, too many people had cars place. They have a car. Everybody knew that's that person passing by there because it saw very few cars. They would know who was in that car. | 33:38 |
| Kate Ellis | Oh really? | 34:14 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Why, yes. | 34:15 |
| Kate Ellis | Knew exactly who had the cars. | 34:15 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Because there was so many that didn't have. | 34:18 |
| Kate Ellis | Yeah. So you tell your kids that now, but. | 34:19 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Oh mama, that's old time. | 34:24 |
| Kate Ellis | Really? | 34:26 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Oh mama, we can't do that. Oh mama. Oh, I wouldn't do that. But they don't know. You had to do that to survive. | 34:28 |
| Kate Ellis | Uh-huh. | 34:33 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Oh yes. If you wanted to survive and be in Southern middle class and do the thing that you have to do, you have to do, said do what you have to do. | 34:34 |
| Kate Ellis | Yeah. Did your parents get to go to school much? Did they have? | 34:44 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Yes. My mother went to school. My mother could read and write and do a lot. And my father helped us get a lesson up until we got above him. | 34:50 |
| Kate Ellis | Really? | 35:00 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | My daddy went to school because his old uncle on Four Corners. Mr. Eddick Martin, Eddie Martin had the first little school on Four Corners. | 35:00 |
| Kate Ellis | Wow. | 35:08 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | AAVE Martin, one of my daddy's uncle. | 35:09 |
| Kate Ellis | Huh. | 35:11 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | And he would teach school from there before school was on Four Corners. | 35:13 |
| Kate Ellis | Before. Wait, he would? | 35:16 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Before there was a AV Martin, before there was the school on Four Corners, he had the first school. | 35:19 |
| Kate Ellis | Wow. Did he have it in his home? Where did he? | 35:24 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | At his home. And he would teach. He taught my father because my father was his nephew. Taught my daddy went up to about eighth grade. | 35:27 |
| Kate Ellis | Wow. | 35:33 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | My father was good at figuring and doing and nice handwriting. | 35:33 |
| Kate Ellis | Really? | 35:37 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | And he would help us as long as we were under him. But when we got in high school over him, well there's things he didn't know. | 35:37 |
| Kate Ellis | Yeah. | 35:43 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | My fathers had good. And my mother, nobody couldn't beat her figure and do anything. | 35:44 |
| Kate Ellis | Really? Where did she go to school? | 35:48 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | In New Orleans I guess. | 35:50 |
| Kate Ellis | Yeah. Okay. That's weird. | 35:52 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Because my father went to his uncle's school. I think it'd be AV Martin little school. | 35:56 |
| Kate Ellis | AV Martin School. | 36:00 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | That's right. And he's smart. My dad was a smart man. My mother too, they had good education. So I don't see why some children younger than those old people that they don't have education, because I guess the parents had no interest in sending them. | 36:00 |
| Kate Ellis | You mean during what period? | 36:14 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Afterwards, because some people my age don't know how to read and write different thing because they didn't want to go, and their parents did not push them. | 36:17 |
| Kate Ellis | Or the parents wanted, felt like they needed to keep them in the fields most of the time? | 36:27 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Not all the time, no. Lot of them wait to go fishing, sit around the house, do whatever they wanted to. | 36:30 |
| Kate Ellis | They just didn't make them go to school. | 36:34 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | They didn't want to go and do it and push him. | 36:36 |
| Kate Ellis | I see. | 36:36 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | But my mother would get us up in the morning, have breakfast, hunt for us to eat and get our little books out, we get dressed in our nice little clothes and hit the road because she'd get up first and she prepare for and then she call us something. That's right. She wanted us to go to school and all of us did. | 36:38 |
| Kate Ellis | Yeah, it sounds like she got all of you educated. Wow. There's another community that just sticks out in my mind as an interesting area, which is the Grand Marais area. Do you know much about that community? | 36:58 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Mm-mm. | 37:15 |
| Kate Ellis | Because that's another perplexing area in a way. I mean it seems like a community unto itself. | 37:16 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | It is. | 37:24 |
| Kate Ellis | Yeah. | 37:24 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | They stuck to themselves. But I don't know anything about people. I didn't go in that area. | 37:25 |
| Kate Ellis | Are a lot of communities like that? That they, do you— | 37:31 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Yeah, [indistinct 00:37:36] and Centreville are the same way. | 37:36 |
| Kate Ellis | What is it called? | 37:38 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | [indistinct 00:37:39] and Centreville. | 37:38 |
| Kate Ellis | Bordenville and Centreville? | 37:38 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | They have the same type of perplexity as Grand Marais. | 37:41 |
| Kate Ellis | As in Grand Marais. And people, they stay to themselves? | 37:43 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Both those areas, that's about the three close around in John, pass [indistinct 00:37:56] city at [indistinct 00:37:56]. Down in Amelia, that's another one. That's that sort of community too. But everybody everywhere else is just. | 37:49 |
| Kate Ellis | Other communities are more. | 38:05 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Mingle better. | 38:06 |
| Kate Ellis | They mingle better. That's what I was asking is I was wondering how much people in Loreauville—just stick with people from Loreauville and people from— | 38:07 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | And all those areas, at that time they were all like that and everything. But right now, they're beginning to mingle up. | 38:17 |
| Kate Ellis | I see. | 38:24 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | They're beginning to be easy, beginning is better. | 38:25 |
| Kate Ellis | Uh-huh, and I wonder partly if that's because transportation's easier now. Do you think? | 38:27 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | That helps? | 38:31 |
| Kate Ellis | Is that what? | 38:31 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | That helps. | 38:31 |
| Kate Ellis | Uh-huh. | 38:31 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | That helps. They can go where you want to go and come back. You don't just have to stay there in that area. You can go someplace else and explore. | 38:32 |
| Kate Ellis | Yeah. Huh. That's interesting. Oh, I guess the thing I've been wondering about as far as people going to different jobs, it seems like if people wanted to move out of the fields, one thing they might do was go to New Iberia as the place where they could be offered jobs and stuff. | 38:42 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Go to unemployment office. They have a unemployment office in New Iberia on Center Street. | 39:00 |
| Kate Ellis | You mean. | 39:07 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | It'd been there a good while. | 39:07 |
| Kate Ellis | Yeah. You mean a good while? | 39:07 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | I don't know exactly how long, but I never been there, a good while. They go there and see for jobs and whatnot all. And once you get a job off the farm, you could not hold that house. You'll have to move off that farm and find yourself somewhere to stay. | 39:12 |
| Kate Ellis | And how would they? And they would do that by, you mean? | 39:23 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Just look for some other house to rent, or if you made enough money you can get another house to rent and if not, you might get another house later on. Some bought houses. After the war, people start buying their own houses. | 39:27 |
| Kate Ellis | After the war they did. | 39:39 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | After World War II, a lot of people buying their own houses, getting off those farm. And a lot of times some of the farmers went, they working the land and whatnot. Sometimes they rent the land out now. And the houses that the persons are in, they would just the more farm houses loan, they give it to them. A lot of people got houses. | 39:40 |
| Kate Ellis | That were given to them by the farmers? | 39:58 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Yeah. | 39:59 |
| Kate Ellis | By the people they worked for? | 40:01 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | And then like Weeks Island back at the south mine. | 40:01 |
| Kate Ellis | Yeah. | 40:04 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | When they stopped working and they rent that mine out for storage of oil and using some different thing and they move out. All those people we had house living on Weeks Island, they gave them those houses. | 40:05 |
| Kate Ellis | They gave. And then those houses were actually moved off the island. | 40:17 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Moved off the island and they moved all different area. The people had bought some property and whatnot and put their houses on them. Some of the farmers gave the houses that the people only when they were renting their houses out, renting their property out and they got older, they weren't working anymore and they didn't need any arm hands and whatnot and everything else because they at lease their property after somebody, some younger farmer to work. They gave some of the people in houses what they were living in. | 40:21 |
| Kate Ellis | I see. And a lot of that took place after World War II. | 40:44 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Yes. | 40:45 |
| Kate Ellis | Yeah, okay. Let me ask you more about your family, but let me just ask you one more thing about just a couple more things about when did you first try to register to vote? | 40:45 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Oh, when I voted. When I got old enough, I registered to vote because they wouldn't allowing you to vote. When after I made 18, I was able to vote and whatnot and everything. | 41:13 |
| Kate Ellis | I'm sorry, after? | 41:20 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | After I made 18, I was able to vote. I didn't register to vote and everything because they had already started letting Blacks register to vote. Now I don't know when they first started, because I don't remember that. But when I made 18, I was able to register to vote. | 41:21 |
| Kate Ellis | Oh. | 41:33 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | And then in 1978, I have it somewhere, what the year that I was the first Black commissioner to in this area to work on the poll. I was among some of the first ones to that put Black in all area. And I was the first. | 41:34 |
| Kate Ellis | Really? | 41:53 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Black commissioner too. I was the first of a lot of things. | 41:53 |
| Kate Ellis | Yeah, sounds like it. That's, wow. | 41:56 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | I just stuck. I just went out and stuck myself in the area. | 42:00 |
| Kate Ellis | You did, didn't you? | 42:00 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Yes. | 42:01 |
| Kate Ellis | Wow. | 42:01 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | And then after that, when they reapportioned, well, a Black can run in this area, I went. Signed up to run for school one, and I won and won and won until I retired in 1991. | 42:05 |
| Kate Ellis | Well, that's when you retired. Okay, '91. Wow. But you voted, so you started voting when you came of age. | 42:16 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Mm-hmm. | 42:24 |
| Kate Ellis | Uh-huh. And there wasn't any, because I'm trying to think if you were born in '25. So that would've been in the mid '40s that you first, am I right about that? | 42:25 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | No, they didn't have it at that time. I said they were able to vote when he was around 18, when I was around 18 years old in '43. But I didn't even actually vote until later on when it came and I don't remember the year, I forgot. After the integration, they start voting, everybody start voting. | 42:34 |
| Kate Ellis | So was that in the '70s that you first started voting? | 42:54 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Should have been. | 42:55 |
| Kate Ellis | Okay, not in the '60s. | 42:56 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | I don't think so, no. | 42:59 |
| Kate Ellis | Yeah. Okay. | 42:59 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | But I was eligible to vote. | 43:00 |
| Kate Ellis | Did you ever go to try to register or you just knew? | 43:02 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | When it was time, I didn't even go. | 43:05 |
| Kate Ellis | Yeah. | 43:07 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Because I knew they weren't letting Blacks vote. But after the integration, I started voting, and in '72 I ran unsuccessful because the territory was too large because you had to run six who all wanted. But the top six runners would be district one school board members. But in '78, they had brought a lawsuit and going to court and had a reapportion all that a Black can run and get in. | 43:07 |
| Kate Ellis | I see. | 43:36 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | And that's the year I ran. And I said yeah, I got in and I've been going ever since and could have still been if I wanted to, but I had got older to travel up down that highway, whatnot and everything so I just retired. | 43:39 |
| Kate Ellis | Okay. | 43:48 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | I had no problem. And the school board members, they love me and I love them. We got along so good. That's right. | 43:51 |
| Kate Ellis | That's great. | 43:57 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | And if I make an error when I first got down there, they'd take me under their wings and show me how to do it. | 43:58 |
| Kate Ellis | Really? | 44:03 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Oh yes. They were good. They were very good. | 44:04 |
| Kate Ellis | I mean, again, just from what you say, it sounds like you've seen a real mixture of good and bad and as far as Whites are concerned. | 44:06 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Good and bad. I've had good, and I've had bad. We went on pretty nicely and I'll withstand it, I'm still here. | 44:15 |
| Kate Ellis | How are you? This takes a lot of. | 44:24 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | A lot of courage. | 44:25 |
| Kate Ellis | A lot of courage. | 44:28 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | And strength to keep on going. | 44:30 |
| Kate Ellis | I bet it does. | 44:31 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | And then you just have to look up to the Lord. And that's real one thing about it, if it wasn't for the Lord, I don't know what I would do. | 44:33 |
| Kate Ellis | Really. | 44:39 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Some of those things, they just go. | 44:39 |
| Kate Ellis | Because some things were really trying? | 44:42 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Oh yes. | 44:43 |
| Kate Ellis | Yeah. | 44:44 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | I've had different things and all, the death of my children. | 44:46 |
| Kate Ellis | Oh yeah. | 44:49 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Still forth and so on, two within three years time. | 44:49 |
| Kate Ellis | That must have been absolutely— | 44:53 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | It was rough. | 44:54 |
| Kate Ellis | Devastating. | 44:54 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | My mother-in-law during that time, and she was a doll. And my father and mother and a brother. From '73 to '83, I had 10 persons die that was near and dear to me. My parents, my father-in-law and mother-in-law, my kids. | 44:56 |
| Kate Ellis | Wow. That's— | 45:15 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | I've had a rough time in that category, but I'm still here. The Lord has brought me through. | 45:19 |
| Kate Ellis | And I have to say, you don't show it. I mean, what I mean is because of. | 45:25 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Everybody ask me, "How do you go that way? How you do this and how you get along that way?" I tell about just lean and depend on the Lord, and he bring you through. | 45:33 |
| Kate Ellis | Really? Yeah. | 45:40 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Oh yes. | 45:42 |
| Kate Ellis | Yeah. | 45:42 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | I pray a lot and ask the Lord to give me that strength, oh yes. | 45:43 |
| Kate Ellis | Yeah. | 45:56 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | I do church work, do community work and all kind of thing that keep me going. Keep me from being idle. | 45:56 |
| Kate Ellis | Well, this whole history project you have, again, I mean, just sounds really fascinating. | 46:03 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | That's a lot of things that I do. So when I sit down, I have that box full in. I already have the book, but by having my eye surgery, I had cataracts removed on both eyes. And I've had this car accident, but I just can't get there right. | 46:12 |
| Kate Ellis | I'm going to ask you some more questions about your family. Can you tell me the names of what I need is the names of all your brothers and sisters, and when they were born, if you remember. If you don't remember, don't worry about it. | 0:01 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Oh, Leon. | 0:28 |
| Kate Ellis | Leon? | 0:29 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Leon was the oldest one. | 0:29 |
| Kate Ellis | Okay. L-E-O— | 0:31 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | L-E-O-N. | 0:33 |
| Kate Ellis | Oh, actually, now I remember you— Leon Metz. | 0:35 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Mm-hmm. Leon would've been 76. | 0:36 |
| Kate Ellis | Now he'd be 76? | 0:46 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Mm-hmm. Figured that back quick. | 0:47 |
| Kate Ellis | Okay. [indistinct 00:00:54]. Okay. | 0:50 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | That's 1918. | 0:56 |
| Kate Ellis | Mm-hmm. Yeah. | 0:59 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Something like that. | 1:00 |
| Kate Ellis | And when did he pass? | 1:01 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | He passed in '90, I think. | 1:03 |
| Kate Ellis | 1990. Okay. And all of you were born in Jeanerette? | 1:09 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Mm-hmm. | 1:12 |
| Kate Ellis | Is that right? Okay. | 1:13 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Ask her. [indistinct 00:01:20] outside. Excuse me for a minute, okay? | 1:17 |
| Kate Ellis | Okay. Okay, so you got your diploma then? | 1:25 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Mm-hmm. | 1:25 |
| Kate Ellis | And then you went to—? | 1:28 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | YMCA Business School in New Orleans. | 1:45 |
| Kate Ellis | YMCA. | 1:45 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | School of Business in New Orleans. | 1:46 |
| Kate Ellis | Business. New Orleans. From 1943 to '45? | 1:46 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Mm-hmm. | 1:46 |
| Kate Ellis | Okay. And what was the degree that you got from there? | 1:51 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | A business degree. | 1:57 |
| Kate Ellis | Okay. Okay. Business degree. Okay, that's it, is that right? For schooling? | 1:57 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Mm-hmm. | 2:09 |
| Kate Ellis | Okay. Great. Now, your work history. Your current and most important previous jobs. So you don't have to list everything you've done, but the primary things were the store owner? | 2:09 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Yeah, I was a business owner. | 2:29 |
| Kate Ellis | Okay. Business owner. Okay. And I'm going to write down the name of the— It was the— Is it—? | 2:33 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | It was the Tri Level Grocery, Bar and Motel. | 2:39 |
| Kate Ellis | [indistinct 00:02:45] Grocery— | 2:44 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Bar. | 2:45 |
| Kate Ellis | Bar. | 2:46 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | And— | 2:46 |
| Kate Ellis | And Motel? | 2:48 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Mm-hmm. | 2:52 |
| Kate Ellis | And that was in Jeanerette? | 2:53 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Mm-hmm. | 2:53 |
| Kate Ellis | From what years to what years? | 2:56 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Well, '54 until now. This is the store [indistinct 00:03:01], and I came to Chicago, we opened up. | 2:59 |
| Kate Ellis | Okay. Until 1989, or to now, you said? The present? | 3:06 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | We still have them. | 3:09 |
| Kate Ellis | Okay. | 3:09 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | We still have the motel. | 3:10 |
| Kate Ellis | Okay. Okay. Any other job that stands out? | 3:10 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Oh, my school board job. That's important. | 3:17 |
| Kate Ellis | Right. Okay. I wasn't sure if you were— Yeah, okay. I wasn't sure [indistinct 00:03:27]. | 3:19 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | That was a job. I was working at a school board [indistinct 00:03:27]. | 3:26 |
| Kate Ellis | Yeah, okay. So what should I— So school board member? | 3:26 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Oh, school board representative. | 3:30 |
| Kate Ellis | School board representative? | 3:31 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Yeah. And put in parentheses, board member. | 3:32 |
| Kate Ellis | Okay. Representative. Okay. Board member. And that is the— What's—? | 3:35 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | St. Mary Parish. | 3:48 |
| Kate Ellis | St. Mary Parish? | 3:49 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Mm-hmm. | 3:49 |
| Kate Ellis | Public School? | 3:50 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | St. Mary Parish School System. | 3:51 |
| Kate Ellis | Okay. St. Mary Parish Public School System? | 3:53 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Mm-hmm. | 4:02 |
| Kate Ellis | From 1978? | 4:08 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Mm-hmm. | 4:08 |
| Kate Ellis | To 1991? | 4:10 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Mm-hmm. | 4:11 |
| Kate Ellis | The reason I asked about that is because the next question is, have you held any offices? | 4:18 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Yes. I was the only— Let me tell you how you put that. I was the only Black female to hold a public elected office in '78, and as now, I still am. I have retired and there still have not been another Black in St. Mary Parish. Female holding a public job. | 4:23 |
| Kate Ellis | To hold an elected..? | 4:47 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | An elected— | 4:48 |
| Kate Ellis | Public— | 4:49 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Office. | 4:50 |
| Kate Ellis | Wow. | 4:52 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | They have one, but no one has ever— They've run, but no one has ever won. | 4:57 |
| Kate Ellis | [indistinct 00:05:01] elected public office in St. Mary Parish? | 5:01 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Mm-hmm. | 5:02 |
| Kate Ellis | Mary Parish. Ever, I'm going to say. | 5:07 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Mm-hmm. | 5:09 |
| Kate Ellis | Wow, that's amazing. | 5:15 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | As yet there is still not another, because no one has won an office yet. Not a Black female. | 5:16 |
| Kate Ellis | Okay. And then have you received any awards or honors? | 5:26 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Numerous. | 5:31 |
| Kate Ellis | Numerous awards. | 5:31 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Let's put numerous because I digging those books, I found all kind of certificates. Look on the wall. | 5:36 |
| Kate Ellis | Over there? | 5:42 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Mm-hmm. You said you want to ask Ms. Cora to let you run her [indistinct 00:05:49]? | 5:43 |
| Kate Ellis | Yes. | 5:49 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | I know she will. [indistinct 00:05:54]. She'd do it. | 5:51 |
| Kate Ellis | Okay. Yeah. | 5:54 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | She'd be glad to do it, knowing that she going in a paper and all, she'd be happy with that. | 5:56 |
| Kate Ellis | Now, are there any other organizations that you have belonged to? Or I should say— I mean like civic organizations, community, educational organizations, political organizations? | 6:04 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Mm-hmm. I belong to the St. Pierre United Methodist Church. I'm the secretary of the Charge Conference. | 6:14 |
| Kate Ellis | Of the what? | 6:23 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Charge Conference in the Methodist Church. | 6:24 |
| Kate Ellis | Secretary of Church Conference? | 6:26 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Charge, C-H-A-R-G-E, Conference. | 6:26 |
| Kate Ellis | Of Charge? | 6:26 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Mm-hmm. | 6:26 |
| Kate Ellis | Conference. Not Church? | 6:29 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Mm-hmm. I'm the treasurer of the United Methodist Women. The secretary. | 6:30 |
| Kate Ellis | Secretary of— | 6:40 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | The United Methodist Women. I'm the secretary of the Sorel Community Organization. | 6:43 |
| Kate Ellis | Secretary of, did you say Sorel? | 6:57 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Mm-hmm. | 6:59 |
| Kate Ellis | Community Organization? | 7:00 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Mm-hmm. I'm the secretary of the Sorel Self-help Organization. | 7:02 |
| Kate Ellis | The Self-help—? | 7:07 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Help, Mm-hmm. | 7:15 |
| Kate Ellis | Organization? Association? | 7:16 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Association. | 7:17 |
| Kate Ellis | Okay. | 7:18 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | What else? I belongs to American Legion Auxiliary Post 549. | 7:21 |
| Kate Ellis | Post 549? | 7:35 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Mm-hmm. The auxiliary, Mm-hmm. I belong to St. Mary Parish chapter, NAACP. The Black Business and Professional Women. Life Senior Citizen Organization. That's all I can think about right now. | 7:36 |
| Kate Ellis | Okay. And then any other activities or affiliations you have? This can include hobbies and interests. | 8:28 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Well, I deal with the self-help, doing beautification of the community, and beautifying houses and surrounding area of the communities. | 8:32 |
| Kate Ellis | Okay. | 8:51 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | I help volunteer, give out commodities to senior citizens and needy. I help kids to do their schoolwork. | 8:51 |
| Kate Ellis | I'm sorry. You help kids with schoolwork? | 9:15 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Mm-hmm. [indistinct 00:09:18] they come sit around all on my floor here, and I help them with their work. | 9:16 |
| Kate Ellis | That's great. I want to say— Can I write about your— I want to say something about the history project that you're doing. Can call you a community historian? | 9:29 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | It's all right. | 9:39 |
| Kate Ellis | Or should I say historian of Black community? | 9:41 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Just historians. I have some of everything. | 9:46 |
| Kate Ellis | Okay. That's fine. Okay. I wanted to [indistinct 00:09:52]. So community historian? | 9:48 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Mm-hmm. I'm just writing down a little something else for you. | 9:54 |
| Kate Ellis | I'm sorry? | 9:56 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | I'm going to get something else to give you. | 9:56 |
| Kate Ellis | Okay. | 9:56 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | I'll be right back. | 9:56 |
| Kate Ellis | And the final thing is, do you have any sort of comment or favorite saying or quote that you'd like to make? | 10:04 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | No. I appreciate you coming by and considering me to help you out with what you want to know about the area, and I've done my best in helping out, and I [indistinct 00:10:24] you with all the information that I have, and hope that it'll be of good use. | 10:13 |
| Kate Ellis | Yeah. Thanks. It is. It really is. Yeah. Okay. I think that's it. So what I was just— Yeah, that's what I wanted to ask you about, was what people— I mean, what you were just saying that you haven't had any problems before with— | 10:27 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | I have not had any problem with Black nor White. I know how to handle the situation. If I see where they don't want to be talking to me or don't want to be about, I just move on. But if I see where I can get somewhere talking and asking questions— Because I am a person that will ask you a question, and it's something that I want to know. And if it's yes, it's yes. If it's no, it's no, and I'm just going to go about my business and I'm not going to get angry with them about it, because each person to his own. | 10:46 |
| Kate Ellis | Right, which makes sense. I guess, some people I've talked to— And this is not necessarily pertaining to your situation. How can I say this? Some people say that older people and people older than you who, say, grew up on plantations, might be particularly reluctant to talk to people like me about those sorts of things, about how Whites and Blacks got along, and that sort of thing. Can you tell me more about— I mean, I'm sort of— In a sense, I feel like I'm asking you as a community historian, how people in different positions have learned to talk about racial incidents and race relations in the community? | 11:16 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Well, I'm going to tell you how people talk about that because a lot of people have been into those situations. A lot of them have worked and lived on those farms, and they have worked, and they know what a farm hand would do, along with the farm employee, so they knew about that. But I have never worked on a farm, I've never lived on a farm, and I never had no dealing with the people for them to have to tell me anything out of place or something that I should do because I've never been there. So I've never been there, therefore, I can't tell you anything about something that I don't know anything about. But people have talked about what has happened, but for an on-hand, something [indistinct 00:12:53], I've never had to deal with that. | 12:09 |
| Kate Ellis | Right. Now, that I could see just from what you've told me about how you grew up. I guess, some people have said to me they wouldn't talk to— Some people have mentioned that they might tell you stories about things that they experienced, but they wouldn't necessarily tell me. | 12:56 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | I understand. | 13:17 |
| Kate Ellis | And do you think that— Is that the case? I mean, do you think that's likely to be true in a lot of cases because of wanting to— | 13:19 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | So the [indistinct 00:13:32] proposition and just not telling whatever happened. You just letting bygone be bygone, even though they have gone through something that was serious and that they shouldn't have gone through, but they just wanted to sort of put it in the back of their mind and forget it and go forward. They don't want think backwards. They want to go forward, because they know what they have passed through. | 13:31 |
| Kate Ellis | Mm-hmm. That's all I wanted to ask you about, was sort of like— | 13:52 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | That's okay. | 13:55 |
| Kate Ellis | Yeah, how folks think about it, whether they want talk about it, and, again, that sort of thing of it's better to just let it pass. | 13:56 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Let bygone be bygone and just forget it. | 14:04 |
| Kate Ellis | Yeah. Yeah. Move on. | 14:06 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Mm-hmm. You don't want to live in the past. You want to live in now and the future, and see what can be done better to make things better instead of dwelling on what has happened before. Leave that down, just let that dead horse lie. | 14:09 |
| Kate Ellis | Yeah. Okay. | 14:30 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | That's about what you want to know? | 14:35 |
| Kate Ellis | I just wanted to ask you a little bit more about that. | 14:37 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | That's okay. | 14:39 |
| Kate Ellis | Yeah? | 14:39 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | Mm-hmm. | 14:39 |
| Kate Ellis | Okay, thanks. | 14:40 |
| Audrey Metz Gabriel | You are quite welcome, my dear. | 14:42 |
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