Maizel Mitchell interview recording, 1994 July 30
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| Kate Ellis | Okay. Would you state your name and when you were born? | 0:03 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Okay. My name is Maizel, M-A-I-Z— | 0:07 |
| Kate Ellis | Maizel, M-A-I-Z-E-L. Mary, is that what you were going to say? | 0:15 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Mitchell. | 0:20 |
| Kate Ellis | Mitchell. When were you born? | 0:26 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | May the 13th, 1916. | 0:27 |
| Kate Ellis | 1916. Where were you born? | 0:42 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Right here in this house. | 0:43 |
| Kate Ellis | In this house, okay. Wow! | 0:45 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | On this side where I am. | 0:47 |
| Kate Ellis | So have you always lived in this house? | 0:50 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Mm-hmm. I was born and reared in this house. The only time I left was when I married and lived in New York, three years. [indistinct 00:01:00]. | 0:52 |
| Kate Ellis | And then when you came back from New York? | 1:00 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | I came back here. | 1:03 |
| Kate Ellis | Now, you moved with your husband back here? | 1:05 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | No, I was separated. | 1:07 |
| Kate Ellis | Oh, okay. You went up to New York together? | 1:12 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | I lived there for three years until 1949. | 1:13 |
| Kate Ellis | And then you came back down here? | 1:23 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Yeah. It didn't work, so I came back. Okay, gotcha. | 1:24 |
| Kate Ellis | Okay. But for the most part, you've lived— | 1:27 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | All my life. Maybe out of 78, 3 years away. | 1:29 |
| Kate Ellis | Will you describe this community that you grew up in when you were a little girl? | 1:38 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | All right. This is St. Martinville. It has always been, but when I was a little girl, there were no sidewalks. There were no street in the front. It was just a road, a little—I don't have the picture anymore. I used to have it, the children stolen. We didn't have sidewalks. We had a post office, one little post office. | 1:41 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Where the post office was, the bakery shop was on one side, the post office on the other. We still had this same [indistinct 00:02:20] house, but it wasn't as is now. And they have remodeled a lot on this street. This was always Main Street. There were more Blacks on the southern section, which is starts by the courthouse all the way down. This was all Black. | 2:10 |
| Kate Ellis | So down from the courthouse— | 2:43 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | From the courthouse to here was Blacks. | 2:45 |
| Kate Ellis | And then the other side was White? | 2:47 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Oh, across the track. Over there. Okay. Across. Now they had some Blacks lived, but they lived the way to the back of it. | 2:49 |
| Kate Ellis | How did it come to be segregated like that? | 2:59 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Born with it like that. You see in my mother time, it was segregated. | 3:02 |
| Kate Ellis | It was the same way. | 3:09 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | The same way. I was baptized, made my first communion and confirmed in the White church uptown. | 3:10 |
| Kate Ellis | The White church, what was that called? | 3:17 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | St. Martin of Pours. | 3:20 |
| Kate Ellis | St. Martin of? | 3:21 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | P-O-U-R-S, Catholic church. We are all—This is a Catholic community. | 3:25 |
| Kate Ellis | Oh, okay. And it was in a White church. | 3:31 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | The White church. If you get a chance, go in. It's beautiful. If you get a chance, go in. On the center aisle and the right side, all the Whites sat down. | 3:36 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | On the left side and the section on the left side, the Blacks sat down. We went to catechism. Some White girls taught us. The priest spoke French. We didn't speak French. So we actually did not know what they were saying. But my grandmother and my mother could. My mother finished the 11th grade. My grandmother sent them to Mercy, that school I show you. | 3:47 |
| Kate Ellis | Yeah. | 4:20 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | And my uncle and my aunt. But they didn't—In this school, this building was there. But on the side was a two room wooden structure little room. On one side was first grade to the third. And on the other side, was four to six. Boys and girls sat in the same room. But each had that isle. It was some nuns daughters, Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament. | 4:21 |
| Kate Ellis | Mercy School. Now, this would've been an all Black school? | 4:58 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | It was Black, but it was owned, by the Sisters of Mercy. We had to pay to go. I went to Catholic school all my life. Now, there was a public school. There was one. It was downtown. When I say downtown, I mean Black, where the Blacks were. | 5:04 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | We couldn't go no higher than the seventh grade. And when you finished seventh grade, that was it. | 5:24 |
| Kate Ellis | In the public school? | 5:30 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Catholic too. St. Martinville had no high school for Blacks. You may say that. We had no Blacks. Okay. | 5:32 |
| Kate Ellis | What did you— | 5:43 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | All right. My mother had a little education and my grandmother went to the sixth grade because she was not a slave, but her grandmother was a slave. Her mother was not a slave but her mother worked for some White people and they had a little girl the same age as my grandmother. When they would teach that little girl, they would teach my grandmothers— | 5:44 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | No, the little girl would teach my grandmother what they taught her. There was some Whites who were nice. There was some who weren't. So my grandmother went to the sixth grade. After my grandmother was grown, she met and married my grandfather, which was Charlie Davis, and he was from the West Indies Island. | 6:13 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | He came here to do sugarcane harvesting and married my grandmother. From this job with three children, my mother, my aunt and my uncle. My mother was Lily. Lily Rose Davis. | 6:43 |
| Kate Ellis | Lily Rose Davis. | 7:03 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | My aunt was Rena Angela Davis. My uncle was Frank Joseph Davis. My grandmother was Elise Marie Davis. Okay. You want to stop at—My grandmother, I told you it was Elise Davis and her husband was Charlie Davis. | 7:05 |
| Kate Ellis | Okay. | 7:32 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | My grandmother said my mother finished the 11th grade. My aunt finished the eighth, and my uncle finished the seventh. They didn't want to go. My mother wanted to go more. | 7:36 |
| Kate Ellis | I'm sorry, which school did they go to? Which school did your mother go? | 7:48 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Mercy. | 7:53 |
| Kate Ellis | So wait. But I thought you said that—Did you say that it's a Catholic school? | 7:53 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | It's a Catholic. | 7:56 |
| Kate Ellis | But it only went to seventh grade. | 7:57 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | That's all. Blacks could not go higher. | 7:59 |
| Kate Ellis | But your mother went to 11th grade. | 8:01 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Privately. | 8:04 |
| Kate Ellis | Privately. Where did she go? | 8:05 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | I don't know. It's a lady taught her. I can't recall the name. | 8:07 |
| Kate Ellis | Okay. But it was a private school. | 8:11 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | My grandmother paid for help to go private. | 8:12 |
| Kate Ellis | I see. | 8:15 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | She believed in education. Then I went there and Leonard went there. Merlin Dorothy did not go there, but— | 8:15 |
| Kate Ellis | Leonard. | 8:29 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Leonard that Dorothy and Myrtle's brother. I don't have sisters and brothers. | 8:30 |
| Kate Ellis | Okay. | 8:38 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | That's her daddy. | 8:39 |
| Kate Ellis | The one that just came in. | 8:41 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Mm-hmm. | 8:41 |
| Kate Ellis | Okay. Who is your cousin? | 8:43 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | They're all cousins. Okay. Okay. She is too. | 8:46 |
| Kate Ellis | Some of your—Okay, go ahead. I'm just— | 8:51 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Okay. Then my mother, when I finished the sixth grade, when I was a little girl in the second grade, there was a nun, the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament from Philadelphia, Mother Catherine Drexel. | 8:51 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | You know her? | 9:09 |
| Kate Ellis | I don't know her, but I've certainly heard a lot about her. She started a number of schools stuff. | 9:09 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Okay. Now that's what I'm about to tell you. | 9:14 |
| Kate Ellis | Okay, good. | 9:15 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | When I was in the second grade, she came to visit us at this little school, wooden building, next to the Mercy, which was taught by the Mercies. She was then a nun. I guess that's why she became an nun in Mercy. She told us, I can remember, she said, "You will not be here alone. I am going to see that you have a school of your own and removed from this pathetic situation." We were so crowded. | 9:15 |
| Kate Ellis | So you were really crowded in that? | 9:48 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | She did. When I got into the sixth grade, she had built a two-room school. | 9:51 |
| Kate Ellis | Which they called Notre Dame. | 9:59 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Notre Dame. Just hang it up right there. She built Notre Dame. I think that was in—Notre Dame was built in 1932. I went to say that was '31, '30. In 1930, I think. I may not have it quite, but I'm pretty close. | 10:00 |
| Kate Ellis | [indistinct 00:10:32]. | 10:31 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | All right. She built this school. There were no nun to teach us. It was some lay teachers from New Orleans came from Xavier University and there were three of them. All right. There was one room had first, second and third. The other one had fourth and fifth, and the other had six and seven. So there were three teachers from New Orleans. Later father built us—By the way, we were put out of the Catholic Church uptown. | 10:32 |
| Kate Ellis | What do you mean you were put out of the church? | 11:17 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | We couldn't go anymore. | 11:17 |
| Kate Ellis | Why? | 11:19 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Because the Black race had gotten—It was too many and they didn't care for us there anymore. | 11:20 |
| Kate Ellis | So they said, "No Black people can come to this Catholic church anymore?" | 11:28 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | We had to have church in the school. | 11:31 |
| Kate Ellis | Oh my gosh! | 11:32 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | We went to church in this school right there. And they put us out. We didn't even have chairs and benches, but we [indistinct 00:11:45]. | 11:32 |
| Kate Ellis | That's amazing. | 11:43 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | It's true. | 11:43 |
| Kate Ellis | What happened when that happened? Did people say much about it or— | 11:43 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | They did, but what could they do? They didn't have the money. | 11:54 |
| Kate Ellis | That was in the '30s when that happened? | 11:58 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Mm-hmm. That was in the '30s. We were put out of St. Martin of Pours. They told us we couldn't go anymore because the Black race had multiplied too much. It was too many. And even among the Black race they had, they would segregate themselves. The Blacks would not—The fair complexion Blacks would not be with the Black ones. | 11:59 |
| Kate Ellis | Really? | 12:27 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | And you see over here, there's a lot that. There's a lot of fair skinned people because just like I'm—My father, the father I know was not my father. My mother was raped. I don't know my father. I know just the father that married my mother. That's the only father I know. But my mother was raped. | 12:28 |
| Kate Ellis | She's never said— | 12:58 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | She never told me. Oh, she wouldn't dare. | 12:58 |
| Kate Ellis | No. | 13:00 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | I guess she was so hurt. | 13:01 |
| Kate Ellis | I'm sure. | 13:03 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | But my daddy told me before he died, but he never told me who it was. | 13:04 |
| Kate Ellis | Is that right? He told you before he died? | 13:09 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Yeah. Before he died. | 13:10 |
| Kate Ellis | So that you grew up not knowing? | 13:10 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Yeah, but I knew him and children weren't as they are today. You didn't question, you see. So they told me that was my daddy, so that was my daddy. Nor did we question color as to the skin. My sister was brown skin, and I was light because she took after my daddy and my mother was brown skinned. My mother was Spanish and Black and my daddy was White. So that makes me—I have three. | 13:14 |
| Kate Ellis | Yeah. The Spanish, while you have— | 13:51 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Spanish, Black and White. | 13:54 |
| Kate Ellis | White. | 13:58 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Yeah. Wow! Well, you were saying that within the Black community— | 13:58 |
| Kate Ellis | That's in the Black race. Yeah. | 14:06 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | There were divisions— | 14:07 |
| Kate Ellis | They would segregate. Yeah. | 14:09 |
| Kate Ellis | Color divisions. | 14:10 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Color division. They would give their own dances, their own socials. They did not associate with the Black. My grandmother didn't play that kind of mess. So she was strict. | 14:11 |
| Kate Ellis | What do you mean by that? She didn't play that kind of mess. | 14:23 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | With them, with this different color things, she didn't go for that. | 14:25 |
| Kate Ellis | She thought that was silly and she just— | 14:29 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | That was stupid, ignorant and everything else. They would marry among themselves, not to—You see. My grandmother was education, and that was it and she believed in manners and etiquette and all that stuff. But she didn't go for that color stuff because she herself was—I'm going to show you her picture. I have it somewhere. | 14:30 |
| Kate Ellis | She herself was— | 14:55 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Was not light-skinned. She was brown-skinned. Which means she was not Black. | 14:57 |
| Kate Ellis | Right. She was sort of in the— | 15:01 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Yeah. | 15:03 |
| Kate Ellis | So if there were light-skinned Blacks who would have their own dances and their own. | 15:04 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | That's caused the confusion uptown in the church. I think that's what started the thing in the beginning. | 15:12 |
| Kate Ellis | What do you mean? | 15:19 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Because you see, you had half of the altar to go to communion. The Whites had one half, and they would run there to get first, not to get in between, you see. | 15:20 |
| Kate Ellis | The Whites wanted to go first for communion. | 15:31 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | The White went on one half. | 15:33 |
| Kate Ellis | So who would run to get there first? | 15:36 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | The light skinned. | 15:38 |
| Kate Ellis | The light skinned to get on the other half of the altar, to get there before the darker skinned? | 15:38 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Mm-hmm. | 15:44 |
| Kate Ellis | And so you think the Whites at that— | 15:45 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | I think that affected it, some way. I still say it does, because I was a little girl. I had a girl. Her daddy had a store across the street. She was White, but we were the best of friends. She would sleep there with me, but I wouldn't go to her house. My mother wouldn't let me. | 15:49 |
| Kate Ellis | You couldn't go in her house? | 16:04 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | I could, but my mother wouldn't. | 16:05 |
| Kate Ellis | Your mother wouldn't let you. | 16:07 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | She and my mother—No. She know what happened to her. We were not allowed. Oh, no. | 16:08 |
| Kate Ellis | Keep you away from— | 16:14 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | All of us. We were kept away from across the track. No. | 16:17 |
| Kate Ellis | From the White community. Because that's where you— | 16:20 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Because, yeah. She wouldn't say why but when I got older, I realized why. | 16:24 |
| Kate Ellis | Yeah. I wonder if a lot of things fell into place for you when your father told you who your biological— | 16:28 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | I didn't give a thought to it. | 16:36 |
| Kate Ellis | I'm sorry? | 16:36 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | I didn't give a thought to it. I said, I used to call him Pop, "Pop, the only one I know is you and there's—" I didn't ask my cousin Dot. She said, "Oh, but you were stupid. Why didn't you ask him?" I said, "I just didn't. I loved him so much. It didn't make me no difference." Okay. So then when the sisters built this school— | 16:36 |
| Kate Ellis | Can I ask you one more thing about this, the color line that you were talking about? | 17:03 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Mm-hmm. | 17:10 |
| Kate Ellis | I've heard about the community in Grand Marais. | 17:10 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Oh yeah. Oh, yeah. I bet you Edith told you that. | 17:16 |
| Kate Ellis | No, she hasn't told me about it. | 17:20 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | They had Grand Marais. They had Spanish of the Lake right up there. | 17:22 |
| Kate Ellis | Spanish of the Lake. | 17:28 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Lady of the Lake. They had Grandebouis. | 17:31 |
| Kate Ellis | I'm sorry? | 17:34 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Grandebouis, big Wood. G-R-A-N-D-E-B-O-U-I-S. Grandebouis, big wood. And they had had another little—Lafayette. | 17:37 |
| Kate Ellis | Your naming in communities that— | 17:50 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | That had this segregation of color. | 17:52 |
| Kate Ellis | That had this segregate—Was there a community in St. Martin still that— | 17:55 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | They didn't have a community, but there was an outskirt, Lady of the Lake. | 18:01 |
| Kate Ellis | Okay. | 18:06 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | They're married among themselves not to marry the Blacks. | 18:08 |
| Kate Ellis | That's what I've heard. Frankly— | 18:11 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | In New Orleans, it's still going on. In New Orleans is still going on. Lafayette too to a certain extent. | 18:13 |
| Kate Ellis | Well, they just marry among themselves? | 18:21 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Lafayette still goes for color. | 18:23 |
| Kate Ellis | They do. | 18:24 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | They just start marrying the Black men and women now. | 18:26 |
| Kate Ellis | Really? | 18:30 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Mm-hmm. | 18:31 |
| Kate Ellis | Wow! | 18:32 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Isn't that awful, though? | 18:33 |
| Kate Ellis | Well, what I've heard is that some of the kids— | 18:34 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Because the children were from White men. | 18:37 |
| Kate Ellis | The children were from White men, and that's how it started in the first place? | 18:41 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Mm-hmm. | 18:44 |
| Kate Ellis | Well, let me— | 18:44 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Maybe that's why I can't understand why the Whites feel the way they do. Right now, if a Black boy marries a White girl down here, my God! | 18:46 |
| Kate Ellis | It's a big deal. | 19:00 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | It's a disgrace. | 19:00 |
| Kate Ellis | Oh, really? It's a disgrace. You're saying you can't understand why they feel that way because so many of their kids— | 19:03 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | God created us all equal and we would not be the way we are if they didn't take our opportunities where they shouldn't. That's how I feel. | 19:06 |
| Kate Ellis | What do you mean— | 19:16 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | These White men went again to these Black women and these women was, I guess, skeptical and afraid. I don't know why, because I have had them to come. White men come to me, but I don't play this. You see, I— | 19:18 |
| Kate Ellis | You stay away from them. | 19:34 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Yeah. I said, "Look, I'm Black." I worked in Austin, Texas teaching the Mexicans and everywhere I'd go, they would want me to—I said, "No, I'm Black." I lived in New York three years. I put Black on my applications. They would take it off. I said, "I'm Black." You see? | 19:34 |
| Kate Ellis | Yeah. Why was it important to you to let people know that you were Black? | 19:56 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | I'm Black? | 20:03 |
| Kate Ellis | Yeah. | 20:03 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Yeah. Because I think the Black is just as important as the White. You find the best in the Black and you find the best in the White. You find the worst in the Black and you do the same in the White. You can see that now. I let them know that the privileges and the best is not just in the White. We have it among the Blacks. | 20:04 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | We have very educated Blacks now, not before. I'm going to tell you all about that. Not before. Because over here, all we could go to is the seventh grade. How I got my education, I got it hard and we were just a few right now from St. Martinville, who's still living, who went to school in the '30s when there was no high school here. We had to go to school in New Iberia. We had to go to school in, not even lait at that time, but we went to New Iberia. That's how I knew Edith. | 20:25 |
| Kate Ellis | Oh, because you met her in school there? | 21:06 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | At her school, at St. Edwards. | 21:08 |
| Kate Ellis | Okay. So you went to Saint—After the seventh grade— | 21:09 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | After the seventh grade, there was no school. Leonard and I finished school, and my sister died because my mother was very poor and my sister was born with a bad heart. We didn't have charity hospital, so my mother had to take her to New Orleans to the hospital twice a month. | 21:14 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | All the monies went for us. So I could not go to high school. But I was a smart girl. The teachers from New Orleans who came to teach in this school for Mother Catherine [indistinct 00:21:48], when she noticed how Leonard and I were smart, two of the teachers brought us books from New Orleans, from Xavier and taught us in the afternoons when they would finish teaching school. We finished the seventh grade. | 21:33 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | See, Notre Dame was going on at the sixth. So we finished the seventh grade at Notre Dame. I was the first graduate from seventh grade at Notre Dame in the seventh. Then when my sister died, my mother asked me did I want to go to school? I used to play the violin or did I want to finish music? I told her no, I wanted to go to school. She preferred that I would go to school. | 22:00 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | We had no transportation, no bus. But there were three families of Blacks, which were fair. They were bright and they had cars. At that time, the cars did not have glasses. You had to tack. You know how you tack? They got those little Jeeps there [indistinct 00:22:54]. You had to tack those plastic all around. We were eight in a car. I think that they were the Mr. Mercy, Mr. Faulk. There were just two of them, Mr. Mercy and Mr. Faulk. So we were really 16, eight in each car. | 22:32 |
| Kate Ellis | Mr. Mercy, Mr. Faulk had cars. Okay. | 23:20 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | We would pay, my mother would pay $2 and a week and a half a week for Leonard and I each one to ride, $2.50 a week. | 23:24 |
| Kate Ellis | Wow! That sounds like it was a lot of—That must have been a lot of money for her. | 23:33 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | But she washed and ironed clothes for the Whites. I think that's what make them dies. My mother died. She was just 52. She died with bad kidneys, I guess exposed to the cold because she had to wash all these clothes on the washer bowl. There was no washing machine and tub. The little money she would make, then my daddy left in 1927 when the high water came and went to work at Barnes in Port Arthur, Texas and sent for my mother and we stayed here. | 23:37 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | The five of us stayed with my grandmother and my grandmother [indistinct 00:24:20] Leonard, Dorothy, Myrtle, and myself. We were four. | 24:15 |
| Kate Ellis | Four? | 24:25 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Yeah. Four. Okay. | 24:25 |
| Kate Ellis | So that was around the time— | 24:28 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | That was in the '30s. Okay. | 24:29 |
| Kate Ellis | That makes sense. He went to where? I'm sorry, the name of the town again in Texas? | 24:33 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Port Arthur. | 24:38 |
| Kate Ellis | Port Arthur. Okay. | 24:38 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | All right. He left and my mother too and they went and tried to work over there, to make money for us to continue our education. We were eight in the car. Sometimes the rain would come and the time it would take the boys to put—Some boys would have to sit on the girls, so we wouldn't get wet while two went around [indistinct 00:25:06]. | 24:39 |
| Kate Ellis | Oh, no. | 25:05 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | But it was fun. But they were nice. The children weren't as they are today. Sometimes the car would break. We would walk to New Iberia, 10 miles. You hear me? We would ride on pepper trucks and sneeze all— | 25:08 |
| Kate Ellis | Really? | 25:22 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | And sneeze all the way. We would ride on sugarcane trucks. The boys would put the girls on the truck and they would stay and try to fix the car and we would walk and some of these men who were working would see us and they would pick us up. But it was fun. | 25:27 |
| Kate Ellis | Wow. That's great that they would pick you up though. | 25:45 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Wow! Sometimes they'd tie us on those cans so we wouldn't fall. We were eight girls, four boys in each car and four girls. We had it hard. Okay. We went to St. Edwards. My mother had to pay my tuition at St. Edwards. Tuition. I forgot how much was tuition. I'd have to ask Edith. I forgot. We have to pay tuition. We had to buy our lunch. We had to buy our books and there was no paper and pencil. They had to buy our papers and pencil. | 25:48 |
| Kate Ellis | That's amazing. So your mother had to pay for the transportation, tuition, lunch, books, supplies. | 26:25 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | That's right. I went to St. Edwards in the eighth grade. I stayed there until I finished the 11th. At that time, it was 11th. The 12th year you taught school. But they started giving what you call teacher training. I went to Sacred Heart in Lake Charles. | 26:32 |
| Kate Ellis | That's where you went to teacher training? | 27:00 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | In Lake Charles from St. Edwards. I went to teacher training in Lake Charles. I stayed there 12 months. Then I came back here. I had to do my apprentice teaching. I did my apprentice teaching in Iberia Parish in Louisville. I did that for six weeks and then I finished at Sacred Heart in '37. I did my apprentice teaching in a one room school, grades one to seven, seven grades in the room by myself. 60 students. | 27:01 |
| Kate Ellis | In New Iberia? | 27:50 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Yeah, Iberia Parish. | 27:52 |
| Kate Ellis | What was that school called? | 27:53 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | It was called Bourda Island Elementary. I did my practice teaching there. That's when I met Edith's sister, she was teaching in another little school about three miles from me. When I finished my practice teaching, I went back to Lake Charles and graduate in '38. September the 9, 1937, in August. I finished in '37. In '38 or '37. I have it written, but [indistinct 00:28:27]. All right. But when I finished high school, but before that—I'm going ahead. | 27:55 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | All right. We went to St. Evans in the cars, '38 and '39. No, '32, '33. And then my mother and my daddy came back here. My sister died and my mother came back. And the man that has the television shop over there, right up the street, he was about to finish school. My mother, he was a Blacksmith. His daddy was a very smart man. He was a Blacksmith. I got pictures, I'll show you later. My mother and his daddy and my daddy got together and they said they wanted to build a bus for us to go to St. | 28:34 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Edwards because there were too many children finishing at Notre Dame and the public school over here in the sixth grade and could not go to school. Mr. Carl [indistinct 00:29:33] built the bus, the body, all the—I'm going to show you the bus he built. I'm going to bring you next door for you to see. He build the bus and my daddy bought a model A car from Port Arthur, Texas drove it here. And there was a boy named Leroy James, could not write his name. He was a mechanic. Johnny Fletcher. He could write Leroy James and Johnny Fletcher. I'll give you a history of that, so you'll have that to put with it. | 29:21 |
| Kate Ellis | Wonderful. | 30:05 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | I'll give you a history of it. Okay. All right. Johnny Fletcher and Leroy James were mechanics. Mr. Carl Pratt and Peter Mercier were Blacksmiths. They built that bus. Mr. Carl built the bus, but they, I don't know too much about cars, but they built the parts, those two men built the part to—They took out that motor out of that model A Ford and put it on that bus body that Mr. Pratt and Mr. Johnny Fletcher had built. | 30:05 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | And then my mother, they didn't want to give her license. They had to go all the way. The superintendent wouldn't give them license. They had to go all the way Mr. Carl, these men and the men who had the cars that we used to ride with, they got together and they went to Baton Rouge and demand that the governor give them license. | 30:44 |
| Kate Ellis | That's incredible that they weren't going to be given licenses. The authorities and the White officials in this meeting— | 31:06 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | The White officials say if we wanted wait for it, they were not going to give it to us. The superintendent said that. My mother went to see him. | 31:12 |
| Kate Ellis | I think building a bus wasn't working. | 31:19 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | But that man did it and he built the bus. Then they didn't want to give a license to drive the bus for Leonard to drive the bus. The boy over up there died, he drove the bus and then they had to go— | 31:22 |
| Kate Ellis | So he got the license, | 31:39 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Had to go back to Baton Rouge and demand that they get a license. So he got a license and he drove. So he drove—That was before integration. We had no high school here. | 31:41 |
| Kate Ellis | Yet. That was still in the '30s that they went up. We're talking about the 1930s. | 31:52 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | '30s and some of the '40s. | 31:56 |
| Kate Ellis | When they had to go up to Baton Rouge to get a license. | 31:58 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | That's right. | 31:59 |
| Kate Ellis | Because nobody here would give a license to a Black man? | 31:59 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Give them a license. No. Mr. Marty, they wouldn't give us a license. Nope. My mother and my daddy, they got the license. We went to school. We finished at St. Edwards. I went to Sacred Heart. I did my apprentice at Loreauville at Bourda School and then I graduated from Sacred Heart. | 31:59 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | When I graduated from Sacred Heart, I came here to get a job. I went to the superintendent. He told me no jobs were available, was available, that I would have to wait until December and perhaps someone would drop out and I'd be able. But I had done a good job at the school as an apprentice at Loreauville. The teacher who taught me, who was my supervisor there, they removed her and sent her the Baton Rouge at Southern to teach girls teacher training and they gave me that school. I worked at that school for 10 years, for $38 a month. | 32:24 |
| Kate Ellis | 30? | 33:06 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | $38 a month. | 33:06 |
| Kate Ellis | $38 a month. | 33:07 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | That was Iberia Parish. | 33:12 |
| Kate Ellis | Okay. But what was the name of the school? | 33:15 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Bourda. B-O-U-R-D-A. | 33:17 |
| Kate Ellis | B-O-U-R-D-A, in Loreauville. | 33:18 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Loreauville, Louisiana. | 33:22 |
| Kate Ellis | Wow! | 33:23 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | All right. | 33:25 |
| Kate Ellis | Did you ever get a raise in that 10 years? | 33:26 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Mm-mm. | 33:29 |
| Kate Ellis | $38 a month? | 33:29 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | They didn't give us nothing. And then we had get commodities and we had to cook the lunch on a little two minor stones. | 33:30 |
| Kate Ellis | Wow. | 33:40 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | [indistinct 00:33:41] My experience, I didn't know how to cook. | 33:40 |
| Kate Ellis | Really? | 33:43 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | And the girls I taught, whereas all—I was young, you see, and they were from the country, they could cook. So they had to teach the teacher how to cook. | 33:44 |
| Kate Ellis | Oh, really? The girls— | 33:54 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Let me you give you a joke. So the girl told me one day, "Ms. Mitchell," she said, "Why don't you make a bean soup?" They would give us salt, meat, bean rice and you had to cook to feed the children. She said to me, say, "Make a bean rice." But see, you don't want tell them you can't. | 33:57 |
| Kate Ellis | So what did you do? | 34:16 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | I made a mess. | 34:16 |
| Kate Ellis | I bet you made a mess. | 34:17 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | She said, "Let's make a bean soup." But I didn't know you had to cook the rice before you put it in the bean soup. I go and put the rice in the beans. I had plaster. | 34:19 |
| Kate Ellis | You had a plaster. | 34:31 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | It was a solid—The lady I was living with had to take all the children and feed them. But it was fun. It was a one room school. And this is the way you taught. You had grades one to seven. You taught first grade alone. They were alone. You taught second and third together. You taught fourth and fifth together. You taught sixth and seventh together. | 34:33 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | But this is the way it worked. If you was in first grade and second and third grade happened to be in second grade, all right. That group of first grade went into second grade. But if the year came around and they were in first, and that second and third grade was taken, third grade work, that first grade went in the third grade. And that was the same thing with the fourth and fifth, sixth and seventh. | 35:06 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | But the children were good and they wanted to learn. You would put assignment on the class board for everybody and while you was at, when one group of children, they would be doing the assignment. You didn't give homework too much because the parents couldn't read to help with the homework. I did that for 10 years. Then I left there and I came to Notre Dame, the school I went to, the sisters were there then. I taught second and third grade for $50 a month. But I was home. I was home. | 35:33 |
| Kate Ellis | Let me just get a couple of things straight. In the one room school, how many students about— | 36:15 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | 60. | 36:21 |
| Kate Ellis | There were 60 students, and they were, of course grouped into their different grades and stuff. And so you'd be leading a lot. Were you the only teacher though? | 36:21 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Mm-hmm. | 36:30 |
| Kate Ellis | The only teacher for 60 students in a one room school. | 36:31 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | That's right. And grade one to seven. The children learned. What happens, the ones in first grade would listen to what you teach in second grade. So when they got to second grade, they had a slight idea. Second and third and fourth and fifth and sixth were the same. They would listen and they would learn. I did that for 10 years. It was a lot of work. And you didn't have these kind of machines. You had a— | 36:33 |
| Kate Ellis | Like a Xerox machine? | 37:03 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | No, you had a—What they used to call it? You would cook it. You had to cook that. It was like a jello. Oh, what did they call that? You'd run papers off on that. In the winter, it worked beautifully. But in the summer, you had to put it in the ice box because it didn't have refrigerator. Sometimes it would be too cold and the carpet wouldn't come out. The thing would melt, you see? | 37:04 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | And then in the winter, you couldn't let it stay there too long. It would be too cold. I did that for 10 years. All right. Then when we went—By the way, I wanted to tell you this. When I went to school, we didn't get new books until the sisters from the Blessed Sacrament from Philadelphia came. They would take— | 37:28 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | When a teacher made her list of materials, textbooks she needed for the next year, she would be ordering new material. But when the books would come in, the superintendent and the staff over there at the office would take all the new books and give it to the White children and all the books that had no cover and pages torn. That's what we would get. I am serious. I am would not lie. | 37:52 |
| Kate Ellis | I believe you. | 38:20 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | But when the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament came from the north and they brought those boxes of books to them, they made us bring them all back and put it on the superintendent's office and said they didn't want the trash. They wanted what they ordered. | 38:20 |
| Kate Ellis | That's what the sisters—The sisters said this to the superintendent? | 38:36 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Yeah. They were from the north. They were White. | 38:40 |
| Kate Ellis | The northern Whites. | 38:42 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Northern White. | 38:43 |
| Kate Ellis | And they said it was trash. | 38:43 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | It was trash. But we learned anyway. Half of the time, the pages were torn. No page. But we learned. See, these children have everything now. And they don't want to learn. They don't want to become nothing. The bus picks them up on that doorstep. And here we had to walk 10 miles sometimes, soaking wet. You hear me? We wore uniforms, White blouse and blue skirt. Because I went to Catholic school. | 38:46 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | I had two blouses and two skirts. My mother would wash it, the blouse, because she's very neat and dried by the fireplace, because we had no heater. We cooked in the fireplace, made biscuits on these stove, little high pot little stove and everything was in the done there. We didn't have electricity. We had lamps. We had iron. I had one [indistinct 00:39:40], an old iron. Look right here. See that little iron by the door? | 39:14 |
| Kate Ellis | Oh, yes. That's the kind of thing that you used to iron? | 39:46 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | My mother ironed all those clothes. Irons like that. | 39:46 |
| Kate Ellis | It's amazing that it's a door stop now. | 39:49 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | For me to go to school. Oh, we had it tough. Then, I came back. We back to where I'm teaching. | 39:52 |
| Kate Ellis | One more question about the Bourda School which was in Loreauville. You stayed with a woman there? | 40:02 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | I stayed with an elderly. The old man wife was dead. He the one built the school. And I stayed with he, his daughter and his sister-in-law. They were elderly. I was the young one there. | 40:09 |
| Kate Ellis | And so you stayed there for 10 years? | 40:21 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | That's right. | 40:22 |
| Kate Ellis | You were never—And this is all of the '30s? Is that right? | 40:23 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | In the '30s. | 40:26 |
| Kate Ellis | Okay. Yeah. I guess you'll get to—You couldn't be married at that point. No, that was later. | 40:30 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | In fact, I don't think you were allowed to get married. | 40:33 |
| Kate Ellis | That's what I was thinking. Yeah. | 40:35 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Yeah. I don't—I stayed there and we made everything, like these divided alphabet and we had to cut those out. I went to the Blessed Sacrament and you had to do it free hand. I still can do it. I had good teacher trainer, Sister Josephina. She was from Notre Dame University in Philadelphia. All my teachers and nuns were from Philadelphia. I had, even at Xavier. When I went to Xavier, my mother had to pay. I had to go to summer school there in the summer. My mother— | 40:40 |
| Kate Ellis | Oh, you did? | 41:20 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Yes. | 41:20 |
| Kate Ellis | You went to Xavier for the— | 41:20 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Summer. To get a teaching certificate, this is the way I got my teaching certificate. I got a normal training. Then after that. | 41:20 |
| Kate Ellis | Which was the—That was the sacred part, that was normal training? | 41:31 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | In other words, you were trained to teach. We knew more how to teach than the teachers who going to college. I'm serious. I was a supervisor for 12 years and I was over 10 girls who went to college, and they could not teach as good as I could who had a normal training. | 41:36 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | I am serious. The sisters there taught us a lot of method courses, methods of teaching, which the colleges don't do. They don't give them methods. I did that. I went to Xavier in the summer. Every summer when school would close, we went to extension at night, we would teach all day and go to school as far as Franklin to get, maybe three semester hour. I did that. | 41:54 |
| Kate Ellis | You did extension. I see. So you didn't go to New Orleans? | 42:33 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | I didn't go and live there, but in the summer. | 42:36 |
| Kate Ellis | You did live there in the summertime. | 42:39 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | For six weeks. Every summer. | 42:40 |
| Kate Ellis | When you say every summer, every summer during the period that you were a teacher at Loreauville? | 42:42 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | I was working. Mm-hmm. | 42:46 |
| Kate Ellis | So you teach during the year in Loreauville and then you go to New Orleans for six weeks. | 42:48 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | And then on Saturdays, go to extension. That's going to school on a campus, either Southern or Grambling. | 42:53 |
| Kate Ellis | Saturdays during the year when you were teaching, that's when you went to [indistinct 00:43:06]. | 43:02 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | That's right. | 43:05 |
| Kate Ellis | For how many years did you go to Xavier? | 43:07 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Okay. I did that to Xavier for about eight years. | 43:10 |
| Kate Ellis | Really? | 43:13 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Let me explain it. I had all my academics from Xavier, but Xavier is a Catholic university. I was short of 22 semester hours of religion. I could not get my degree until I get those 22 hours of semester. But, the state was pushing, we who had normal training to get a teaching degree. They didn't want normal anymore. | 43:15 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | They didn't give it to us. We got it by the [indistinct 00:43:47]. But then they demand it. Can you see how they had? What I did, since I had to have 22 semester hour of religion, the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament arranged with Grambling to let me go there. Grambling accepted all my academic subjects from Xavier. I had good grades and let me go there to summer and do semester work in the areas that I did not get from Xavier. My degree is from Grambling but my class training is at Xavier. | 43:44 |
| Kate Ellis | Now, how did you get to Xavier every summer? | 44:36 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | I lived there. We live on campus. | 44:40 |
| Kate Ellis | No, but how did you get there from here? How would you travel there from here? You'd take a bus? | 44:42 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | My mother would—In the beginning, we'd go on the bus they had built. | 44:46 |
| Kate Ellis | The bus that they had built to take the kids to New Iberia School? | 44:51 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Yeah, they would take us. But then after that, some of my friends from St. Edwards had cars and they would go. So they would take me. Not Leonard. Leonard went to Xavier fully. | 44:55 |
| Kate Ellis | He lived there? | 45:07 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | He lived there. He had his degree from Xavier. See, he was in school. I was teaching and I would help him. | 45:08 |
| Kate Ellis | When he was in school with his work? | 45:17 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Yeah. No, I would help him with pay, money. | 45:18 |
| Kate Ellis | Oh, okay. | 45:21 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Then Dorothy and Myrtle finished at Notre Dame, and when I finished high school, Leonard and I—Myrtle and Dorothy finished. Now, they had to go to St. Edwards. | 45:24 |
| Kate Ellis | Dorothy and Myrtle finished seventh grade at when you and Leonard finished 11th grade? | 45:40 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Yes. Okay. So what they did, my daddy took me and he paid for me. My mother took Leonard at Xavier because his daddy was there. That daddy was there. They took Leonard and she paid for Leonard. My grandmother took Dorothy and she paid for Dorothy because see, Myrtle and Dorothy, they were just like twins. So they always were together, as you can see in the picture. | 45:46 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | And their mother took Myrtle. So each one took one and paid for us to finish school. So we all finished school. That's how we—Now, Myrtle and Dorothy taught school for the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament and Leonard taught school. But that's how we had it. My parents worked hard. | 46:12 |
| Kate Ellis | Did they? | 46:31 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | That's amazing. For 50 cents a bundle. Big bundles of clothes. | 46:32 |
| Kate Ellis | That your mother would do? | 46:36 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | And my grandmother— | 46:37 |
| Kate Ellis | You said your aunt did domestic work. | 0:03 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | In the houses. | 0:06 |
| Kate Ellis | In the houses. She'd go to the houses. | 0:07 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | And my mother did ironing, and cut sugar cane. | 0:09 |
| Kate Ellis | Did she? | 0:13 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | And picked cotton. | 0:13 |
| Kate Ellis | Oh, I see. | 0:15 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | And picked pepper. | 0:15 |
| Kate Ellis | She worked in the fields as well. | 0:16 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | And my grandmother did a lot of ironing for out. | 0:18 |
| Kate Ellis | And your father? | 0:21 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | My father was working in Port Arthur. | 0:22 |
| Kate Ellis | So he— | 0:24 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | He stayed there a while and my mother would go on once a month and meet him. | 0:25 |
| Kate Ellis | Oh boy. | 0:31 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | And then finally my mother went to stay over there with him and work in Texas. | 0:32 |
| Kate Ellis | And that's when you stayed with your grandmother? But then they came back after a few years. | 0:36 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Uh-huh. But then she went back again. When Merle and Dorothy had to go to high school— | 0:40 |
| Kate Ellis | She went back to Port Arthur | 0:45 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | She went out there. | 0:45 |
| Kate Ellis | And he— | 0:45 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Then she took her sister. She took Dorothy Mama. | 0:47 |
| Kate Ellis | Did your father ever come back to live here? | 0:51 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Yeah. In his old days. | 0:53 |
| Kate Ellis | But he went to Port Arthur. | 0:55 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | My mother died. | 0:56 |
| Kate Ellis | Oh. | 0:56 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | And after my mother died, he married, and he lived in California, but he came back and stayed with me. | 0:58 |
| Kate Ellis | Now what work did he do in Port Arthur, Texas? | 1:02 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | He worked in a bakery. | 1:06 |
| Kate Ellis | Really? So that was his primary, that's how he got money? | 1:07 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | And sent home. | 1:12 |
| Kate Ellis | Help put you all through school. | 1:12 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Yeah. And then wait a while, in the meantime. | 1:14 |
| Kate Ellis | Okay. | 1:16 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | My mother, they built this place right here. | 1:16 |
| Kate Ellis | Next door. | 1:19 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | That's for me. Uh-huh. And they made an ice cream parlor. It was an ice cream parlor in those days. And for us on Sundays. And we danced and entertain. And then the girls from the Iberia would come spend weekends. | 1:19 |
| Kate Ellis | Wait, this house next door— | 1:35 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | That's a place of business. | 1:37 |
| Kate Ellis | But they built—Who built it? | 1:39 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | My daddy. | 1:40 |
| Kate Ellis | And so you would sell ice cream there? | 1:42 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Yeah, my mother would take care of it. And then when she— | 1:43 |
| Kate Ellis | And then— | 1:47 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Yeah. | 1:47 |
| Kate Ellis | Oh, go ahead. I'm sorry. | 1:47 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | And she would, it was really social for the young teenagers, until we married. Yeah. I'll show you my mother. | 1:51 |
| Kate Ellis | Should I unplug you? | 1:58 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Oh wait, let's finish. | 2:01 |
| Kate Ellis | Okay. | 2:02 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | I forget. Chicken brain. | 2:02 |
| Kate Ellis | No, no, no, no. You get that. | 2:05 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Chicken brains. | 2:06 |
| Kate Ellis | Oh. So you had that place while, when you were a teenager and all? | 2:09 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Yeah. | 2:15 |
| Kate Ellis | That's interesting. So you'd have dances there, and people over. | 2:15 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Uh-huh. A lot of people. | 2:18 |
| Kate Ellis | Friends from school, things like that. | 2:19 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | She sold ice cream, soft drinks, hamburgers, and cakes, and candy. And we'd dance. | 2:22 |
| Kate Ellis | Oh. | 2:32 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Yeah. And many a girl met their boyfriends there. | 2:32 |
| Kate Ellis | Right next door. | 2:35 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Yeah. | 2:37 |
| Kate Ellis | Did it have a name? Was it was it called? | 2:38 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | It was just Lilly's Entertainment Center. | 2:40 |
| Kate Ellis | Lilly's Entertainment Center. Wow. | 2:46 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | She was something. She died younger. | 2:52 |
| Kate Ellis | Your mother did? | 2:55 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | 52. | 2:55 |
| Kate Ellis | Yeah. That was old. Okay. | 2:55 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Now. Okay, now then I married. I married in, I can't remember, '30, when did I marry? '48, I believe. '48, '49, I don't remember. I went to New York. | 3:08 |
| Kate Ellis | Married in the late '40s? | 3:23 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | In the late '40s. And I married a young man from South Carolina. I was a Cunningham. Part Irish. | 3:26 |
| Kate Ellis | Part Irish? | 3:38 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | He was part Irish. | 3:38 |
| Kate Ellis | He was part Irish. | 3:39 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | And I lived there. I lived Bayside, West Long Island. I lived there about three years. I taught school with a nun in Harlem for about a half year. But it was too dangerous. My husband made me stop. And then I got a job in Corona. And I was inspector of zippers in a zipper factory. | 3:42 |
| Kate Ellis | Really? | 4:08 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | And I inspected the zippers. And I did that until—He drank, and I couldn't make a go with it. There's no future with an alcoholic. And then he had gotten, he wanted to fight and hit. I came home. I never had, my daddy never did raise his voice on me. I couldn't put up with that. | 4:08 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | I came back here on a Wednesday, I went to teach the Thursday. And I never stopped till I retired. | 4:32 |
| Kate Ellis | Is that right? | 4:37 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | But I was teaching— | 4:38 |
| Kate Ellis | You got back on— | 4:39 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | I taught in another little school in Banker School. | 4:41 |
| Kate Ellis | Banker School. | 4:47 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | B-A-N-K-E-R. | 4:48 |
| Kate Ellis | Where? | 4:51 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | That's on the outskirts of St. Martinville. I taught there. I taught first, second, and third. I did that until—I came in '50, for about three years. '53, I can't remember too. And then they consolidated the school. Even when I was teaching in Loreauville, they consolidated all the little schools they had around. | 4:51 |
| Kate Ellis | Well, let me—Can I—Well, go ahead. I don't want to— | 5:19 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | They consolidated the school and they built Adam Carlson Primary. That's what it was called. | 5:21 |
| Kate Ellis | Adam— | 5:29 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Carlson Primary. | 5:30 |
| Kate Ellis | Who was Adam Carlson? | 5:35 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | He was a man. He was Methodist. And when there was no school, his children and some of the other children, he and the preacher got together and taught school in the Methodist church right up there. It wasn't as it is now. So he was a great educator leader. So they called the school Adam Carlson. All right. When Adam Carlson, when they integrated—Not integrated, when they built Adam Carlson, I taught first grade. I taught first grade 22 years. | 5:37 |
| Kate Ellis | Whoa. Can I interject a question there? The little schools, like the Banker School— | 6:11 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | That was all little schools. See, they didn't have one big school. | 6:22 |
| Kate Ellis | And these are all for African American children. | 6:25 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | African, no White. | 6:28 |
| Kate Ellis | Right. And so these were- | 6:30 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | The Whites had a big school. | 6:31 |
| Kate Ellis | They had their own? | 6:33 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Yeah. But the school right in my backyard and I couldn't go. | 6:34 |
| Kate Ellis | Yeah. | 6:38 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | The bus passed right in front of my door. They have to pass. I couldn't go. | 6:40 |
| Kate Ellis | Yeah. And that school was paid for by the state. | 6:44 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | By the state. | 6:48 |
| Kate Ellis | Whereas these— | 6:48 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | The books too. | 6:49 |
| Kate Ellis | Right. | 6:49 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | We got the— | 6:49 |
| Kate Ellis | Whereas these little schools were all started by different Black citizens. | 6:49 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | No— | 6:57 |
| Kate Ellis | Who would start these little schools? | 6:57 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Well, some of them were started by Black. But the Whites built them up for us not to be with them. | 6:59 |
| Kate Ellis | Oh, okay. Okay. But they were they funded by the state as well? | 7:07 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Yeah, that was the state. That was our money. | 7:11 |
| Kate Ellis | I guess I had heard, and correct me if I'm wrong, but am I right that sometimes Black citizens would just start a school? I guess like the one that you were talking about before, that was in— | 7:14 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | The Adam Carlson? Mr. Carlson? | 7:24 |
| Kate Ellis | Yeah. The one who was, it was in his home for a while. What was that, that you told me this? | 7:26 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Oh, my mother used to teach in the house. Yeah, sometimes they just start. | 7:32 |
| Kate Ellis | Okay, I guess that's what I had meant. But so am I right about that? | 7:38 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | That's right. | 7:42 |
| Kate Ellis | Sometimes you to start a school in your home. | 7:42 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Just start. They get books— | 7:42 |
| Kate Ellis | Teach the kids in the area. Okay. | 7:44 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Catechism, but by non Catholic called Bible, or Catechism for us. They would teach us. Yeah. | 7:47 |
| Kate Ellis | Okay. But some of these little schools did have state funding? | 7:54 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Oh yeah, the majority. Like Banker, Mr. Borda built the school, that's the one I told you. But the state gave him books and what have you. | 7:58 |
| Kate Ellis | I see. | 8:08 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | But he started, because he had a lot of grandchildren, and there's no way for them to go to school. | 8:09 |
| Kate Ellis | So he just started— | 8:15 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Loreauville was in town. They couldn't go there. | 8:17 |
| Kate Ellis | They couldn't get to Loreauville. | 8:19 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | So I was at three miles from Edith's sister, Irma. In other words, they had a little school in every little place where there was so many Blacks and they wanted to go to school. | 8:20 |
| Kate Ellis | Okay. | 8:33 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Banker School was on St. John Plantation. See? | 8:34 |
| Kate Ellis | Okay. | 8:37 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | That was a plantation. | 8:39 |
| Kate Ellis | Huh. | 8:40 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | And that was—And then St. John had one. You see? | 8:42 |
| Kate Ellis | St. John— | 8:45 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | St. John Plantation had one section named St. John, and another named Banker. I could show you where it is now. And then they had a school. So there was two schools that was really not too far apart. | 8:46 |
| Kate Ellis | They were both on the plantation. This must have been a big plantation. | 9:01 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | It's a plantation. Plantation is big. | 9:05 |
| Kate Ellis | I know, but that's a—Yeah. Yeah. | 9:07 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | You see? And they had the people that cut the cane, plowed the yard, the thing, they lived there. They sort of give them anywhere, a little taste of education, I call it. It was just a taste. But then you couldn't go no higher than—We have many girls here that just went to seventh grade, because some weren't interested. It was a hard thing, you see? And their parents just couldn't read. | 9:10 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | But I'm cutting myself. When they built Adam Carlson Primary, and they consolidated all the schools, we used to say, we Black teachers, the children we are teaching today are going to have real smart children. Because their parents cannot read, and they're sending them to school. And they were good parents. Those were good parents. I don't care what you ask, they tried to give you. They would work with the school, work for the school, and work with the children. | 9:38 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | And if you spank or you punish, whatever you did, it was well done. And they went back, you had better not go home and say you got punished. You got punished again, because you did something that you shouldn't have done. And that you were well-supported. And that's why the children learn. | 10:13 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | The reason the children don't learn today, you have no support from the parents. The parents tell the children what to tell the teacher. I know, because I wouldn't teach today if they give me a million dollars. | 10:31 |
| Kate Ellis | Really? | 10:44 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Oh, no. Uh-huh. But when we later continued to teach, and these children's children came to us, it wasn't as we thought at all. They were not like their parent at all. Their children are not respectful. Their children are impotent. Their children don't want to study. The children don't want to do their homework. The children don't want to do nothing. And I'm cutting, when I retired in 1980, I stayed one year. I didn't work. Then I didn't have Social Security because teachers don't have Social Security in that time. They had just retirement. And when I first retired, you could not join the retirement. Black teachers could not join Black retirement. | 10:45 |
| Kate Ellis | Wait, in 1980? | 11:45 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | No, not '80. Before that. Way up in the '70s and the '60s, you could not join retirement. You see, '70s and '60s? | 11:47 |
| Kate Ellis | You couldn't join Black retirement. | 11:54 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Retirement. So when they did allow you to join, and you could put your money, the Black teachers had to teach longer than the White teachers to try to get enough money. Because even though we held the same type of certificate, we did not get the same pay. Can you follow? | 11:59 |
| Kate Ellis | Yeah. | 12:19 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | So that made us have to work longer. | 12:20 |
| Kate Ellis | Just to get money for your retirement. | 12:24 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | That's right. Because when we were able to put in the retirement, we couldn't. | 12:25 |
| Kate Ellis | They wouldn't let you. | 12:31 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | No. Now it's different. Now, integration is all different. But when I retired, I did not have all of us, many of us in fact, don't have Social Security. We have only teacher retirement. Teacher retirement today is not enough. So you have to get a supplement insurance. Supplements are very expensive. I tried to pay, when I didn't have retirement, I tried to put monies in the retirement when we were able to try to catch up. But it was too expensive. | 12:32 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | So I had to stop. So many times, when it came almost time for me to retire, I didn't have any Social Security. So what I did, I went and I worked in a nursing home. I worked there three years, take care of the elderly, wash. It was hard to get Social Security. But when I married, and I went to live in New York, I didn't even have a Social Security card. All I ever did was teach school. You see, we didn't have it. So I got my card in New York. That's why I don't have a Louisiana card. I have a New York card. | 13:10 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | So while I was working in New York, in Corona, at the Zipper Factory, I made some quarters. See I made quarters. But then when I came to retire, I had to go back and get quarters. I went to the home. I stayed there three years. I got some quarters. | 13:51 |
| Kate Ellis | Quarters, making quarters? | 14:13 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Yeah. When you go to work now, you're going to be making quarter or whatever you're doing. You don't have a Social Security card? | 14:14 |
| Kate Ellis | No, I do, but I didn't know that term, making quarters? | 14:21 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Making quarter, working. | 14:24 |
| Kate Ellis | Oh, okay. | 14:25 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | I have to work. | 14:26 |
| Kate Ellis | Yeah. | 14:27 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | You see four quarters in a year. So you understand? I had to make those quarters. All right, I did that. But then the school system called me back. They asked me to come back. I had already retired. | 14:27 |
| Kate Ellis | This is in the '80s that the school system called you back? | 14:41 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Called me back and asked me to do compensatory teaching. So I went back six years and did compensatory teaching. I did that from— | 14:43 |
| Kate Ellis | What's— | 15:00 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Let's see, '80, '81, I work in the home. '81, '82 in the home. '82, '83 in the home. '83, '84—'83, I went back to do compensatory. Compensatory was, I would go from school to school and teach the children language arts and math that they failed in the state test. | 15:00 |
| Kate Ellis | Oh. | 15:27 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | I did that for six years. | 15:28 |
| Kate Ellis | Wow. | 15:29 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | You see, I would go back. And every school in the parish, it was integrated then, I went and I taught these children the math and language art. Language art, reading, spelling, writing, that's language art. | 15:30 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Okay, then it played out. It was a program by the federal government. Then the home called me back and asked me to come back. But I had my Social Security lady, Ms. Wiggins, she said, "No, don't go back." I was too old. If something happened to me, I still didn't have Social Security. I didn't have enough quarters. | 15:45 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | So the lady at the home told me they're supposed to give you work to make you quarters. She says, "So let me call. You go to Council on Aging." I went to Council on Aging and Council on Aging took me. I've been there now eight years. | 16:15 |
| Kate Ellis | Oh. Council on Aging. Now, Council on Aging in which town? | 16:36 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | The St. Martin Parish. But I work in, Brobridge. | 16:39 |
| Kate Ellis | In Brobridge. | 16:42 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | I've been there now eight years. | 16:44 |
| Kate Ellis | Working part-time? Full time? | 16:46 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | No part. Four hours a day. Oh no, I'm too old now. | 16:49 |
| Kate Ellis | Yeah, sure. | 16:53 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | I'm a case management specialist. | 16:56 |
| Kate Ellis | Looks like you like that. Do you like it? | 17:01 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Oh yeah. | 17:06 |
| Kate Ellis | Well, it looks like you do, because the way you talk about it— | 17:06 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | The only thing is I have to do a lot of driving, because I have to go all over the parish. I have to go into the homes, and take an assessment of the elderly, and see what they need. If they need a Meal on Wheel, or they need a homemaker, or they need an agency for a wheelchair or something like that. Now that's what I've been doing for eight years. | 17:06 |
| Kate Ellis | Huh. Hard worker. | 17:28 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Okay. Now we got as far in the school, we got as far as I was teaching? Let's see what else I could tell you. | 17:35 |
| Kate Ellis | Well, let me ask you a couple things. | 17:42 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Yeah. | 17:44 |
| Kate Ellis | About life in New York. Just what did you— | 17:44 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Oh look. | 17:46 |
| Kate Ellis | Don't talk about that. What? | 17:46 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | You're segregated there too. | 17:49 |
| Kate Ellis | Yeah, that's what I want to hear about it. | 17:51 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | They don't tell you. I didn't know how to get around. And when my husband would go to work, I would call these agencies for work in Bayside, within the area. I could sew, because I used to make all my clothes. So I called, it was a blouse. They make blouses and stuff. | 17:53 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | They asked me on the phone, some questions. They asked me if I can sew. So when I went over there, they told me, yes, they had a machine. Nobody was working on it. It was about four or five blocks from my house. And when I filled the application and they saw Black on there, they thought I was Mexican. | 18:20 |
| Kate Ellis | Oh. | 18:43 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | They said no. | 18:45 |
| Kate Ellis | They said they wouldn't hire you. | 18:47 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Yeah, my husband was angry. We wanted to go meet them and go to the law. I say, "Look, don't do all that. Leave it alone." | 18:49 |
| Kate Ellis | And that was in the late 1940s. | 18:58 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | That's right. And another time, I went to get a job. I forgot where it was. And the man, when I walked in, I asked, I forgot where I went. I can't remember. But anyway, I went, and they said, "Sure." When I filled the application, they said, "No, they hire only White girls." And you know? | 19:00 |
| Kate Ellis | Yeah. | 19:30 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Oh yeah, it's segregated, very much. I was the only Catholic where I went. And the church I went to, I was the only Black Catholic in there. But they were extremely nice to me. There was no—See the people in New York where I was, they were all non-Catholics. | 19:31 |
| Kate Ellis | They were all? | 19:57 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Non-Catholics. | 19:57 |
| Kate Ellis | What do you mean by that? | 19:59 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | They were either Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian. | 20:00 |
| Kate Ellis | Oh, I see there weren't any. Oh, I thought there were no—There were no, you were the only Catholic? | 20:04 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Black Catholic in that church. | 20:08 |
| Kate Ellis | Oh, okay. And they were nice to you? | 20:09 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Oh yeah. They were nice to my husband too, even though he was not Catholic. And they treated me nice. I can't lie. But most of them were doctors and lawyers, big shots. But I went to my church and I put my little $10 on dates. | 20:12 |
| Kate Ellis | Oh yeah. | 20:29 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | They had the hundreds and the fifties of them. My husband said, "Come on." I said, "No, God didn't save money. He said, pray." Okay, now we didn't cover what other school. Let's see. | 20:31 |
| Kate Ellis | Well, what else do we—Let me shut this off for a minute. | 20:46 |
| Kate Ellis | —for you. | 20:50 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Don't let me forget your bean and rice. | 20:53 |
| Kate Ellis | No, I won't. Believe me, I won't forget because it's delicious. Okay, one of the things that we started talked about when we were outside are how people in that time paid for— | 20:55 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Oh yeah. | 21:09 |
| Kate Ellis | —medicine. | 21:10 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | I have the history. That's what I was going to look for. | 21:10 |
| Kate Ellis | Oh, okay. No, it's the history of— | 21:14 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Okay. They didn't have Social Security and all this thing. So what they did, they made a biller organization, they had several of them around here. They had St. Joseph's Society, they had Goodwill, Union Benevolent. | 21:17 |
| Kate Ellis | So these were all benevolent societies? | 21:46 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Those were organizations of people getting together and pooling their money to help each other get medication and burial. They had many of them. And they had Ladies of Progress. | 21:48 |
| Kate Ellis | Ladies of Progress? | 22:10 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Uh-huh. True Friend. | 22:12 |
| Kate Ellis | That was the Polks one. | 22:16 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Yeah. | 22:18 |
| Kate Ellis | That was one that Matthew Polks father started, True Friend. | 22:18 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Maybe— | 22:23 |
| Kate Ellis | Ranch Polk. | 22:23 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Maybe they had one in New Iberia, but they had one here. | 22:24 |
| Kate Ellis | Oh. Oh, okay. | 22:27 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | That True Friend. What else did they have? | 22:28 |
| Kate Ellis | So these were all very local societies? | 22:32 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Those were, the Blacks within an area, or within a community, they would get together and they would buy a piece of property, Bella Hall, and use the hall for socialization, dances, and parties, and what have you, to raise funds to upkeep the treasure for medication, doctor, medicine, and burial. And this is what happened over here. | 22:34 |
| Kate Ellis | In the building next door? | 23:05 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Yeah, not that building, but the original building. | 23:06 |
| Kate Ellis | Okay. | 23:10 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | And then when the young children, their children became older, and Social Security came out, and other benefits for medication came out, most of these organizations had disband. Because the young children don't want to put up with that. | 23:10 |
| Kate Ellis | They don't want to do it that way anymore? | 23:38 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | They don't want. Not even to keep the money just—That they don't want to go to meetings. The young of today don't want to be bothered with that. They just don't want to. So these organizations are all fading out. | 23:39 |
| Kate Ellis | But in the time that you were coming up, and that you were an adult, they were an important part of the community? | 23:52 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Of the community, as the church. Same as the church. | 24:00 |
| Kate Ellis | Really? | 24:04 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Because most of them, the majority of them was affiliated with the church. Because you had your annual mass, you had your annual fair. When somebody died, you didn't have a funeral home. The wake was at in the home. Then these people in the organization came, just as they do now, prepare dishes and food, and stay with you with your dead body. And prayed, say prayer, and walk with the body. | 24:04 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | The organization, just as they do now, but they did it more closely. They were more closely knit, in other words. Now that went on among the Blacks. They were segregated. Whites, you could not. They had their own. | 24:36 |
| Kate Ellis | The Whites had their own? | 24:52 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Woodmen of the World and all that. Knights of Columbus. Blacks could not join that. | 24:54 |
| Kate Ellis | Now Blacks had Knights of Peter Claver. | 25:01 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Now they have that. That's where Dr. Myrtle is. They belong to it. | 25:04 |
| Kate Ellis | And that's a large— | 25:09 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | That's a large thing, all over the United States. Right now they're meeting in Atlanta, Georgia. | 25:10 |
| Kate Ellis | And that's a big—It's not exactly a benevolent organization, is it? What? | 25:21 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | It's everything to, I think, benevolent, church, everything. I don't know. I didn't like to get in. I didn't want— | 25:25 |
| Kate Ellis | You didn't want that? Why? | 25:32 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | I don't know. I just didn't like it. | 25:34 |
| Kate Ellis | You don't know why? | 25:36 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | No, I didn't like it. I just did not want to get in it. I could have been it, and my mother and I didn't want. | 25:37 |
| Kate Ellis | You didn't want—Your mother was a part of that? | 25:44 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | No. No. | 25:44 |
| Kate Ellis | Oh— | 25:44 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | She was at St. Joseph. | 25:47 |
| Kate Ellis | She was a what? | 25:48 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | St. Joseph. | 25:49 |
| Kate Ellis | So she was part of St. Joseph Benevolent Society? | 25:51 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Yeah, she was the secretary for years and years. And I was secretary. When she died, I took it. My grandmother was one of the beginnings of it. | 25:53 |
| Kate Ellis | Really? She helped— | 26:04 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Organized it. | 26:06 |
| Kate Ellis | Your grandmother, you said? | 26:08 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Yeah. | 26:10 |
| Kate Ellis | So right around, would that have been around the time— | 26:10 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Oh, that's in 1810, 18 something. Way back. Because this organization was all— | 26:12 |
| Kate Ellis | You mean 1910? | 26:17 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | 1810. | 26:17 |
| Kate Ellis | 19 or 18? | 26:17 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | 1810. | 26:18 |
| Kate Ellis | Your grandmother? | 26:22 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | That's when it started. It started around that time. | 26:23 |
| Kate Ellis | Yeah. | 26:26 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | In the 18th. 18th century, the 19th century. | 26:27 |
| Kate Ellis | Oh. Wait, your grandmother wouldn't have been— | 26:31 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | My grandmother died, she was 90. | 26:35 |
| Kate Ellis | Right. Okay, and she was— | 26:37 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | But she was around her time. | 26:39 |
| Kate Ellis | Oh, that's when that— | 26:42 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Started. | 26:42 |
| Kate Ellis | That's when St Joseph's started? | 26:42 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Her mother, it's her mother that started. | 26:44 |
| Kate Ellis | Your grandmother's mother helped start— | 26:48 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Yeah. | 26:49 |
| Kate Ellis | Oh, okay. That's why I was confused. | 26:50 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Yeah. | 26:51 |
| Kate Ellis | I was like, wait a second. | 26:51 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | I was saying it wrong. | 26:54 |
| Kate Ellis | Wow. So that's an old organization. | 26:56 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | That's right. St. Joseph was almost a hundred when we disband. We had to disband. We were just 48. And I'm 78. | 27:00 |
| Kate Ellis | Yeah. | 27:09 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Yeah, we were getting too old. We couldn't cope with that no more. | 27:10 |
| Kate Ellis | You couldn't cope with? | 27:15 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | All the bookkeeping and all that stuff. | 27:15 |
| Kate Ellis | Yeah. | 27:18 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Yeah, so we just— | 27:19 |
| Kate Ellis | So speaking of medicine, what did you do? This group, like the St. Joseph Society would provide money— | 27:21 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | We put 50 cents a month. | 27:28 |
| Kate Ellis | Oh, 50 cents a month. | 27:29 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | For medical expense. And then we paid a dollar tax every six months to help with other expense. And when someone died, we taxed ourselves $2. | 27:32 |
| Kate Ellis | Oh. | 27:47 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | To help. That's how we did it. Anything else? | 27:47 |
| Kate Ellis | I've got a couple more questions. You getting tired of questions? | 27:53 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Uh-uh. | 27:55 |
| Kate Ellis | Okay. Okay, I asked you about funerals. Were there other community organizations? There was the church— | 27:56 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | There was a Methodist church, a Methodist church, a Baptist church, and the Catholic. That's all we had. | 28:08 |
| Kate Ellis | We being, you mean we being Blacks? | 28:14 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Blacks. | 28:16 |
| Kate Ellis | Okay. And then there was the benevolent societies. | 28:16 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | All the church had— | 28:20 |
| Kate Ellis | And all the churches had. So in a sense they were like communal insurance agencies? | 28:21 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | That's right, but it was within the community. | 28:26 |
| Kate Ellis | Within the community, so very close— | 28:28 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Yeah, it wasn't like all over Louisiana. | 28:30 |
| Kate Ellis | Right. | 28:33 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | It was— | 28:33 |
| Kate Ellis | Was there any other kind of major organization— | 28:35 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Among the Blacks? | 28:39 |
| Kate Ellis | Yeah. | 28:40 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Social. | 28:42 |
| Kate Ellis | What kind of social clubs were there? | 28:43 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | The Mardi Gras organization. | 28:44 |
| Kate Ellis | What was it called? | 28:50 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | I don't know. I can't remember the name. One was Margaret. Margaret, she had Margaret kindergarten. | 28:51 |
| Kate Ellis | What? | 29:02 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Before they had kindergarten. And they didn't have that, she would teach school to these little children. | 29:02 |
| Kate Ellis | Her name was Margaret? | 29:06 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Margaret. | 29:07 |
| Kate Ellis | Margaret would teach kindergarten? | 29:07 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | And Margaret Kindergarten. | 29:11 |
| Kate Ellis | Just in her home? | 29:12 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Yeah. Margaret Kindergarten and Carnival Association. That's what it was. | 29:13 |
| Kate Ellis | Wait a second, it was the Margaret Kindergarten and Carnival? So she taught kindergarten? | 29:19 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | And her parents had this association for so carnival. | 29:25 |
| Kate Ellis | Oh, that's—Wow. | 29:28 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | It was little children. | 29:32 |
| Kate Ellis | So once a year, you were saying, so you do have a Mardi Gras here? | 29:34 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Yeah, my mother had that first. But now they have the, I forgot the name of— | 29:37 |
| Kate Ellis | She started that? | 29:42 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Yeah. | 29:42 |
| Kate Ellis | Your mother started the Mardi Gras here? | 29:43 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Yeah, for the Blacks. Look what they did, she would have it on a Sunday night. You know what they'd do? They'd have their boucherie on the same Sunday. | 29:45 |
| Kate Ellis | They do now? | 29:55 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Yeah. | 29:56 |
| Kate Ellis | Wait, who's they? | 29:56 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | The Whites. They have their boucherie the same time Sunday with our carnival parade. That's a shame. | 29:57 |
| Kate Ellis | Wait, the Whites would have the boucherie during the same time that the Blacks would have carnival? | 30:03 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | They have it like that now. | 30:08 |
| Kate Ellis | Oh, they have that now? | 30:11 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Yeah. | 30:12 |
| Kate Ellis | But they started it around the time that— | 30:12 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Not that time. They started it later, their boucherie after. | 30:14 |
| Kate Ellis | And it's a shame? | 30:18 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | I'm saying it's a shame. | 30:19 |
| Kate Ellis | Why is it a shame? | 30:20 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Because it'd be so congested in this little town. | 30:22 |
| Kate Ellis | To have the carnival and the boucherie. | 30:25 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | And the thing, it's not big enough. | 30:26 |
| Kate Ellis | Yeah. | 30:28 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Yeah. But we still have our fun. And do you know, some of the White people leave from uptown at the boucherie and come sit on my step, and everywhere, and eat crawfish and enjoy the parade downtown? | 30:28 |
| Kate Ellis | Really? How did your mother start the carnival in the first place? How'd she do that? | 30:41 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Seen some ladies just got together. And they couldn't go to New Orleans, so they decided they'd have something here. I can remember the first Queen, Mabel Hill and Harold Mitchell. Harold died last year. Mabel is still alive. The first carnival queen. But now they— | 30:45 |
| Kate Ellis | Around what year was that? | 31:07 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Honey, I can't tell you. That was in the '30s. | 31:09 |
| Kate Ellis | Okay. | 31:11 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | I would have to say in the '30s. I can't remember. Well, we used have fun. Children don't have fun now. All they know is dope. That's all they know, dope. And all that old rapping, I can't stand it. | 31:13 |
| Kate Ellis | You don't like that? | 31:30 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | That's not music. That's not refined music. I don't care who does rap, I don't like it. Black or White, I don't even put that on. I cut it off. | 31:31 |
| Kate Ellis | You do? | 31:43 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | I don't like that. Now my little girl, I'm glad she's not there, because I can't keep her from liking what she likes, because I liked what I was when I was young. I have to give leeway to her. But I don't like it. You see? Ooh, and she plays music so loud. I don't know how she can play television, radio, and that junk on the bed up there, all I don't know what you call it, all at the same— | 31:43 |
| Kate Ellis | Oh that tape deck, I see what that is. | 32:12 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | All at the same time. Her door stay closed. You know she got a little sign, knock before you enter. | 32:14 |
| Kate Ellis | Oh really? | 32:20 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Look at that. It's so loud. Oh Lord. | 32:26 |
| Kate Ellis | Wow. But so you— | 32:27 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | She didn't want to stay in New Orleans. Her mama came and get up. | 32:28 |
| Kate Ellis | She didn't want to stay in New Orleans? | 32:32 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | No, marrara. She came back | 32:34 |
| Kate Ellis | To live here? Wow. But your mother, that's neat that your mother started the first carnival here, got that going for the people. And so did it become something that a lot of people participate in? | 32:36 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | No, after she couldn't anymore, it's an organization, The Newcomers. | 32:45 |
| Kate Ellis | The Newcomers, that's what it's now called? | 32:51 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | The Newcomers. | 32:53 |
| Kate Ellis | And so they still haven't a carnival? | 32:53 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Oh yes. The Newcomers Carnival Association, I believe they call it. I think it's The Newcomers. That's right. | 32:55 |
| Kate Ellis | Hmm. | 33:03 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | What else you want? | 33:03 |
| Kate Ellis | I'm curious about a couple other things. Just your sense of politics around the time that you were— | 33:08 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | All right, when they first started to vote, I was among the first ones. | 33:17 |
| Kate Ellis | You were? Now when was that? When did you first— | 33:22 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Let me get my wallet. Wait. | 33:24 |
| Kate Ellis | Want me to do it? | 33:27 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Yeah. Look at my little girl coming up. | 33:30 |
| Kate Ellis | So this voting card is from 1952. So will you tell me about when you went to register to vote? | 33:31 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | It was all right. They didn't give us any problems. | 33:38 |
| Kate Ellis | Really? And this was in St. Martin though? | 33:40 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Oh yeah, we didn't have any problems. But not too many went. Some were frightened. | 33:40 |
| Kate Ellis | What did they think would happen? | 33:47 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | I guess they thought they'd do as they were doing in the other places. | 33:49 |
| Kate Ellis | Which was? | 33:52 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Beating them. | 33:52 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Come on. Hi, Sharon. You want your water, baby? | 33:54 |
| Speaker 3 | Yes. | 34:00 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | She's in the please don't knock room. | 34:01 |
| Speaker 3 | Okay. | 34:06 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | They didn't give us any trouble. Now I'm working with it. I'm a commissioner. | 34:07 |
| Kate Ellis | Are you now, really? | 34:17 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Yeah, I'm a commission voter. | 34:18 |
| Kate Ellis | So in this community in general, were— | 34:19 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | They didn't give any trouble to voters. | 34:21 |
| Kate Ellis | To any? | 34:22 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | No. | 34:22 |
| Kate Ellis | So you first voted— | 34:22 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | But the people over here are very stupid. I don't know when they're going to learn to stop selling their votes. | 34:24 |
| Kate Ellis | So they still sell those? | 34:30 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | They're still selling their vote for money. You know, we will always have that. That's never to— | 34:32 |
| Kate Ellis | There are people I've spoken with, in other communities near here, like around the Jeanerette Area, who didn't start voting until the '70s. | 34:39 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Oh, it's sad. Yeah, but we started to see— | 34:43 |
| Kate Ellis | But you started in the '50s? | 34:48 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Yeah. That's when I registered. | 34:48 |
| Kate Ellis | So I was that unusual in this whole region? | 34:53 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | I often think about this. I might be wrong. Iberia Parish has had education long before us. But St. Martinville, people have owned, and belong, to more organizations and their own places of business, more than New Iberia. And New Iberia is an educated place. Where still some of our people over here can't read and write. | 34:56 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | But the way I figure it over here, I think if you try to do something to build yourself up, just don't associate with the White man. But he will help you and give you, but please don't associate with him, that he does— | 35:29 |
| Kate Ellis | In St. Martinville? | 35:47 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Yes. That's the only thing. | 35:48 |
| Kate Ellis | And that was— | 35:50 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | That's been like that. I called them the aristocratic people. | 35:52 |
| Kate Ellis | Who? The White people? | 35:56 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Uh-huh. | 35:56 |
| Kate Ellis | What do you mean by that? | 35:58 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Oh, they're the big stings. The aristocrats, that's what I call them. Children and I used to call them that for too. They'll give you now. They'll help you now. Right now. And they're not going to, but just don't mingle with them. That's what they don't want. | 35:59 |
| Kate Ellis | And it's like that now? | 36:21 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Uh-huh. | 36:21 |
| Kate Ellis | And was it like that? What was it like when you were— | 36:22 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Oh, it was worse before. | 36:23 |
| Kate Ellis | Well, tell me about that. What was it like before? How was it worse? | 36:24 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | I can't tell you too much about the association, because we stayed on our side of the track. | 36:27 |
| Kate Ellis | You did? | 36:34 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | We didn't go. | 36:34 |
| Kate Ellis | Yeah. | 36:34 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | My grandmother didn't want that. She said they'd have to kill if they'd do us something. So stay on your side of the track. They don't want you get away from it. And we stayed on ours. But we used to have fun, because we didn't know how it was over there. You see? | 36:35 |
| Kate Ellis | Uh-huh, so you had fun in your own community? | 36:51 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | In our community. And it wasn't riff raff fun. It was good, clean, wholesome, fun. | 36:53 |
| Kate Ellis | Yeah. | 36:58 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Now they have education, it's not whole. And I don't like the way it is now. | 36:59 |
| Kate Ellis | It's not as wholesome? | 37:06 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Mm-hmm. And we always did work in the church, you see. We always stuck to our church and our school, and we never worry. Now when I became a school supervisor, and I would go observe the White teachers, and I would see they're not doing the right thing, and I know they weren't doing, I would bring the complaint. But they wouldn't tell me nothing, but they wouldn't accept it. | 37:07 |
| Kate Ellis | Really? | 37:32 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | No. | 37:33 |
| Kate Ellis | Meaning the job that you had in the '80s. | 37:34 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Yeah. Oh yeah, in the '80s. | 37:36 |
| Kate Ellis | That's what you're saying, they would— | 37:36 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Yeah, when I— | 37:36 |
| Kate Ellis | You would've never— | 37:36 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Yeah, they wouldn't say nothing. But sometimes they'd even try to use you to make you fire some Black teachers, that they knew who were not doing the job all along when the White supervisor was over. You see? But make you do it. Not me. | 37:40 |
| Kate Ellis | You wouldn't do that? | 37:56 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Oh, no. | 37:57 |
| Kate Ellis | So they wanted you to be— | 37:58 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | I wouldn't do it. | 37:58 |
| Kate Ellis | The henchman. | 37:59 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | That's right. Yeah. | 38:00 |
| Kate Ellis | Wow. | 38:02 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | And we, my area, we were all well taken care of and well-educated. So we just didn't worry about what they had and what they didn't do. Yeah. | 38:03 |
| Speaker 3 | Bye. | 38:16 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Bye-bye, baby. | 38:19 |
| Speaker 3 | My purse. | 38:22 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Leaving it, it must be full of money. Okay, what else you want to know? | 38:23 |
| Kate Ellis | So when, I know you said a little while, just a minute ago, that it was worse when you were coming up, as far as the way Whites were. You stayed in your separate area and stuff. | 38:31 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Oh yeah, you stayed in your area. Yeah, you didn't mix. | 38:39 |
| Kate Ellis | And I guess at that point, you say now these aristocrats, as you call them. | 38:42 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | I call them aristocrats, all along. But there's some White girls, if they love your children, you played together with them. I had, Gladys was White, and she'd sleep here with me. But when we went to church, she'd have to go on one side and I'd go on the other side. When we get in front of the church, we can separate. She said, "I don't care." When she married, she came here, "You coming to my wedding?" I went. | 38:46 |
| Kate Ellis | Did you go? | 39:14 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Uh-huh. | 39:14 |
| Kate Ellis | Are you still friends? | 39:14 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | I don't know where she is. No, I don't know where Gladys is. | 39:15 |
| Kate Ellis | But she wanted you to be at her wedding? | 39:18 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Yeah. I went. Had a good time. | 39:20 |
| Kate Ellis | Let me just ask you a little bit more about that kind of thing. Just as far as— | 39:27 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | But now, when I work, when you work with them, they're nice. I work with some White girls, they're nice. | 39:31 |
| Kate Ellis | Yeah. | 39:36 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Oh yeah, they're nice. I have a picture of one secretary with me. They're very nice. In that picture way over there, that White lady in there? | 39:36 |
| Kate Ellis | Yeah. | 39:45 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | That was my good friend. | 39:46 |
| Kate Ellis | Really? | 39:47 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | We were just, she used to call me her Black sister. | 39:48 |
| Kate Ellis | Her Black sister. | 39:50 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Oh, she died. Oh, we got along well. Aw. She would take me—She had four sons. I went to all of their weddings. She died. And the baby boy, the middle one married, in Shreveport to a White girl. I went. They came and get me, they brought me in a hotel. And the wedding, him and the bride came and get me, made me walk with them. | 39:51 |
| Kate Ellis | Wow. | 40:16 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Oh yeah, they called me Ms. Mitchell, my Aunt Mitchell. That's what she—We were good friends. If I didn't have something, sometime I wouldn't be there. I would need her. I remember my aunt was sick, I needed a washing machine. When I came from work with her, she didn't tell me nothing. She had a washing machine for me. We were good friends. And so I was sick, she'd come here and stay with me. | 40:17 |
| Kate Ellis | Wow. | 40:37 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | We were— | 40:38 |
| Kate Ellis | This was over what period of time? | 40:38 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | That was in the '70s. | 40:41 |
| Kate Ellis | Let me just go back a little bit, and we don't have to talk about this a whole lot longer, but I just want to get your sense of this if I can, of what about—Actually, you sort of started talking about this a little bit, before we even got on tape, when I was here a couple hours ago. And you were saying, I was telling you that the states that we were going to be doing interviews in, and you asked what, you're going to do Mississippi, things were bad in Mississippi. And then you were saying that you thought that things had been worse than Mississippi and Alabama. | 40:45 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Than here. | 41:16 |
| Kate Ellis | And not as bad in Louisiana because? | 41:17 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | In this section, the southern section. I don't vouch for the northern. I don't know, because I think they're still not too much for Blacks. Because I know I went to Graham, and as you'd go into ten cent store, there was somebody would follow aisle to aisle to see if you don't steal or something. Now they don't do that. They never did that with us here. Oh no. I don't tell you they're good, but they're—I'm not saying that I shouldn't judge, but I think that Catholic faith made them think a lot before they do you harm. | 41:19 |
| Kate Ellis | So they might not have—I'm wondering about also, whether like Black men in your community, whether they feared— | 42:01 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | They feared the Whites. | 42:16 |
| Kate Ellis | —violence from the Whites? | 42:17 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Yeah, they did. | 42:18 |
| Kate Ellis | Yeah. | 42:19 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | They did. | 42:19 |
| Kate Ellis | So they knew that there was a possibility? | 42:20 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | The people, the Blacks over here knew that they were not, they couldn't equal them with them. They couldn't associate. In other words, a Black man, just as you read all the time on the paper, the Black man was treated as if he was inferior to the White. He knew that. He knew better, but to avoid confusion in his family, he let alone, let it alone. | 42:23 |
| Kate Ellis | Yeah. | 42:48 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | And then you see the majority of the people over here were not educated. | 42:49 |
| Kate Ellis | Of the White people or the Black? | 42:52 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | The Blacks. | 42:55 |
| Kate Ellis | Yeah. | 42:55 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | The Blacks had no education. Those people on the plantation long years ago had no education. I'm just lucky, I came from one where it was prevalent. They wanted it, but the majority of them didn't. But then when later on in life, they were the best ones for education, because they fought for it, and they did everything they could to get it. You see? | 42:56 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | But they didn't give it to you. Not here. Uh-huh. That's one thing they didn't—Iberia had it, but not us. We didn't have it. | 43:20 |
| Kate Ellis | There are some people I've talked to, older people who may have come up on plantations, and they speak with a great deal of reserve about how Whites treated them. And many say, "I didn't have a problem with Whites." And they leave it that. | 43:30 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | They just [foreign language 00:43:47], leave it alone. | 43:47 |
| Kate Ellis | They leave it alone. What was that term that you just said? | 43:47 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | [foreign language 00:43:52]. | 43:50 |
| Kate Ellis | Yeah. | 43:50 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | That's French. I speak French. | 43:52 |
| Kate Ellis | Uh-huh. And yeah, that's a response that I've gotten from— | 43:57 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | They knew it, they left it alone. They wanted to live. They had children. They loved their children. They prayed to God and socialized to the best of their ability. | 43:58 |
| Kate Ellis | And to this day— | 44:06 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | And the children had more etiquette, more manners, more politeness. That's right, more than over there. | 44:08 |
| Kate Ellis | More than the White folks. | 44:15 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | To me. | 44:15 |
| Kate Ellis | Yeah. | 44:16 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | One credit I give the White, as I go along in life, I see, the young has a high respect for the Black, old Blacks. Yes, the White people over here, their young children will respect old Black people. | 44:18 |
| Kate Ellis | The old Black. | 44:35 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Oh yeah, they really do. They really do. Now that they will train them to respect the Black, the elderly Black. | 44:36 |
| Kate Ellis | Interesting. | 44:43 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | I see that as I go along. | 44:45 |
| Kate Ellis | Really? | 44:46 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Yeah. | 44:47 |
| Kate Ellis | To this day? | 44:47 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Yeah, today. | 44:48 |
| Kate Ellis | But I guess what I'm saying is that to this day, there are people I talked to who came up on the plantation who won't talk to me about things that happened— [indistinct 00:44:58] | 44:49 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | They're afraid. | 44:57 |
| Kate Ellis | Yeah. What— | 44:58 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | I don't care me. | 45:00 |
| Kate Ellis | I know. | 45:01 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | I'm old now. They can't do me nothing. And then I would—Oh, I've always been, I always tell it like it was, as it was. | 45:03 |
| Kate Ellis | Right. | 45:10 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | That's right. | 45:11 |
| Kate Ellis | But those that won't— | 45:12 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | But we were taught, I can remember walking to town to get stale bread, 5 cents a loaf. See we didn't have, we didn't have—And I've still got good health. | 45:13 |
| Kate Ellis | Yeah, you do. | 45:27 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | So the stale bread didn't do me no harm, and neither did the spanking I got. And I got some. It made me stronger. But now you can't touch them. I touch, when I get mad with you, want to look, I'm not thinking about, what they call that? Child abuse? | 45:28 |
| Kate Ellis | Uh-huh. | 45:47 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | I am not thinking about child abuse. I tell them, you can call all the abuse people you want, I'll abuse them. | 45:48 |
| Kate Ellis | Uh-huh. | 45:55 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Oh yeah. | 45:56 |
| Kate Ellis | But there are some older people who would still be fearful of the consequences of talking about this kind of thing? | 45:57 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Yeah. Yeah, they're afraid they'll do them bad. | 46:00 |
| Kate Ellis | But that somebody's going to? | 46:00 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Yeah. | 46:00 |
| Kate Ellis | Yeah. Because that's the kind of thing that might have happened in the past? | 46:10 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | In the past, yeah. But my grandmother told me, she used to have a stick, a big stick. And it had something like a lead in it. I don't know what I did with that. I think I threw it away. For the Ku Klux Klan. | 46:12 |
| Kate Ellis | What do you mean? She had that— | 46:31 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | They had it. She said they had that. | 0:01 |
| Kate Ellis | So what did she say about—The Ku Klux Klan would come by [indistinct 00:00:09]— | 0:03 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | And whip these Black men, whip them. | 0:08 |
| Kate Ellis | Yeah. Did she know of anybody who'd been whipped? | 0:16 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Maybe she did, but she didn't tell us. In other words, this is the way my grandmother was, you stay away from them, get away from them. I don't want you to be bothered with them and leave whatever they do alone. That is not your business. Take care of your business. Because she used to always say, "Any time they touch any of you, they will have to kill me." She used to say that all the time. So you keep out of their way. That's what she'd say. Because her husband was there and she raised us all without her husband so she just figured she didn't want to die and leave us. So we stay away from it. | 0:21 |
| Kate Ellis | And she had a stick ready in case they came. | 1:05 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | That's right. But she had her stick. Oh, yeah. | 1:09 |
| Kate Ellis | How did her husband die? | 1:12 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | He died when they had the bad flu. | 1:14 |
| Kate Ellis | Oh bad flu. | 1:15 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Many, many years ago. He died with that. | 1:17 |
| Kate Ellis | Wow. That actually reminds me of something else I was going to ask you which might sound like a funny jump from here. But the high water of 1927— | 1:20 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Oh, I remember that. | 1:31 |
| Kate Ellis | Now, your father had to leave after that. | 1:33 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | We all left— | 1:36 |
| Kate Ellis | Okay, so you were so were— | 1:37 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Okay. I made my first communion the Wednesday. It was raining cattle. They were bringing the cattle to high—That was in 1927. But my sister was living then and she had a bad heart. And the doctor told my mother, "Get her away from here because she will not last." | 1:38 |
| Kate Ellis | Now what doctor was this? | 1:59 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Dr. Beech, Jonas Beech. | 2:01 |
| Kate Ellis | Dr. Jonas Beech? | 2:03 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Uh huh. | 2:04 |
| Kate Ellis | Was he White? | 2:05 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | He was the family doctor. He was White. We didn't have no Black doctors, but he loved our family and he loved my grandmother and my mother and all of us because he was the family doctor. And he was very nice to us because my sister, they used to have—By the way, I was cross-eyed. I was born cross-eyed, but he took my mother to New Orleans and they straightened my eye but I was a little infant. I always wore glasses. | 2:05 |
| Kate Ellis | Wow. That's amazing. So the high water, came. They said, "Get your—" | 2:41 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | All right. And I had to get my sister away and bring her to a higher—So the lady that my grandmother saved from drowning was living in Cade. She was married and it is high there. So all of us went to Cade. In the meantime, my daddy was working in Port Arthur. | 2:41 |
| Kate Ellis | Oh, so he was already working there at that time. | 3:01 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | That's right. And he sent for the family. And when we left the train, when we got in Crowley, the water was up to the roof of the houses and the train had to go real slow. But we had to get my sister away from this water he said as much as we could. So we went to Port Arthur, all of us. But my uncle stayed here. He stayed upstairs. | 3:03 |
| Kate Ellis | Upstairs in here? | 3:35 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | This side. This is a new section. That's the old section. | 3:36 |
| Kate Ellis | Okay. I didn't know there was an upstairs. | 3:40 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | There isn't. It's just a loft. | 3:42 |
| Kate Ellis | And so he stayed up in the loft there while the water came. | 3:44 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Yeah. | 3:46 |
| Kate Ellis | Wow. | 3:46 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | He stayed there and took care of everything. | 3:47 |
| Kate Ellis | Wow. That's amazing. | 3:53 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | We were worried, but he stayed, my uncle stayed. And then when the water went down, and about three or four months after, my daddy wanted us to stay with him. | 3:53 |
| Kate Ellis | In Port Arthur. | 4:03 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | My grandmother didn't want. She wanted to come back home. I guess see her son was here. So we all cried to come with her. We didn't want to stay in Port Arthur. We wanted to come with my grandmother so she took us all back. Then when I got to be in my teenagers, she told my mama, "You have to come back." She said, "I can't take care of a teenager." And that's when my mother came back but my daddy stayed and work. | 4:05 |
| Kate Ellis | So I asked about voting and stuff. Do you remember much about, I know that somebody else—Actually, Matthew Polk had told me about him remembering when Huey Long came to New Iberia. | 4:35 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | No, Matthew was older than me. | 4:48 |
| Kate Ellis | Yeah, I was going to say you would've been about nine when that took place. | 4:50 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | I remember when they shot him. I was in school. I was at St. Edward— | 4:53 |
| Kate Ellis | Oh, really? | 4:57 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | —in class when they shot him. | 4:57 |
| Kate Ellis | What do you remember about that? | 5:01 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | I don't remember too much. I wasn't interested in things like— | 5:03 |
| Kate Ellis | You weren't. So you don't remember were folks upset? | 5:06 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | I was in my teenagers. | 5:06 |
| Kate Ellis | Right, right. | 5:06 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | I wasn't interested in that. At that time you were interested in school events. I can remember it though. | 5:15 |
| Kate Ellis | Were folks upset? | 5:23 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Yeah. | 5:25 |
| Kate Ellis | Do you remember him as somebody who was— | 5:26 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | I can remember when they electrocute Willie Francis. Did you remember hearing about him? | 5:28 |
| Kate Ellis | Tell me about that. | 5:35 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Okay. Willie Francis lived right up the street. His sister and my sister were good friends. Now, I can't tell you if it's true or not. I do know Mr. Thomas, who was a White druggist. He was a very nice man to Blacks. But maybe he was nice to his Black customers. But maybe when you worked for him, it was a different thing. I don't know. | 5:36 |
| Kate Ellis | Willie Francis worked for Mr. Thomas? | 6:04 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | And he said Mr. Thomas had kicked him I believe. So, I guess revenge. But I don't think that little boy could do that by himself. That little boy was just 13 years old. | 6:07 |
| Kate Ellis | Mr. Thomas accused Willie Francis of kicking him. | 6:20 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | No, Willie Francis accused Mr. Thomas. | 6:24 |
| Kate Ellis | Oh, okay. Willie Francis accused Mr. Thomas of kicking him. | 6:29 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Of kicking him, mm-hmm. | 6:30 |
| Kate Ellis | And then what happened? | 6:31 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | He killed him. | 6:33 |
| Kate Ellis | How'd he kill him? | 6:35 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | He waited until he closed the place. But I don't think he did that alone. Somebody had to help him. Mr. Thomas was too much a heavy man. He kill him and then dragged him where the train he used to pass back there. That little boy didn't do that. He did it though. | 6:36 |
| Kate Ellis | But how did he kill him? | 6:53 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | He shot him. | 6:54 |
| Kate Ellis | Mr. Thomas shot Willie Francis. | 6:56 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Willie Francis shot Mr. Thomas. | 6:58 |
| Kate Ellis | Oh, Willie Francis—Okay I need to back up. Willie Francis accused Mr. Thomas of him, who he worked for— | 7:00 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Of kicking him. | 7:11 |
| Kate Ellis | —of kicking him. Then Willie Francis— | 7:12 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Came back and— | 7:15 |
| Kate Ellis | —came back and shot Mr. Thomas. | 7:16 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | At night. | 7:17 |
| Kate Ellis | That night and shot Mr. Thomas. And you think he had somebody with him— | 7:17 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | He must've. | 7:21 |
| Kate Ellis | —because they dragged Mr. Thomas— | 7:21 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | To the track. | 7:23 |
| Kate Ellis | —to the tracks to leave his body there? | 7:24 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | I think he left it there. I don't remember too good. But when they came to electrocute him, the first time I was teaching at Notre Dame, we could hear the chair. They used to have a big tree there. And they put that chair in the courthouse and the chair missed him, didn't kill him. The electric chair didn't kill him. And they came back and they electrocuted him again which was wrong. Once the chair misses you, that's it. But they came back again. He was about 13 or 14, something like that. | 7:28 |
| Kate Ellis | He was that young. | 7:55 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | He has one sister left now. | 7:57 |
| Kate Ellis | Were they sure that it was Willie Francis who killed Mr. Thomas? | 8:00 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Yeah. He wrote it in the jail he had killed him. | 8:03 |
| Kate Ellis | He wrote— | 8:06 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Willie did. | 8:07 |
| Kate Ellis | He said that he did. | 8:07 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Mm-hmm. | 8:07 |
| Kate Ellis | And so they just strapped him to the chair? | 8:07 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | But I still don't believe I—My mother in all of us always said they don't think he did that alone. Somebody was with him. And it must have been. | 8:12 |
| Kate Ellis | And this electric chair was in the courthouse. | 8:21 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | They brought it from Baton Rouge in the courthouse. | 8:23 |
| Kate Ellis | They brought it down from Baton Rouge. | 8:26 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | To the courthouse connected it, and when they put it on, it didn't kill him. We could hear. | 8:28 |
| Kate Ellis | You could hear it? | 8:33 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Yeah, we were at school at Notre Dame. | 8:34 |
| Kate Ellis | Were people upset? | 8:39 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | They had people galore around there. Oh, the Black people. And his daddy walked on that ground and said—don't nobody say a word after that chair missed. That man died. That was sad. I went to his funeral after they electrocuted him, but they couldn't open the coffin, he was burned. All of us went. All the children downtown went on to his funeral. | 8:40 |
| Kate Ellis | To the funeral. | 9:05 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Uh huh. I can remember that. | 9:05 |
| Kate Ellis | That's so sad. | 9:05 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | I was an adult then because I was teaching school at Notre Dame. | 9:12 |
| Kate Ellis | That was in the '40s? | 9:14 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | That was in the '40s. | 9:17 |
| Kate Ellis | That's really sad. | 9:17 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | That's sad. And my grandmother told me when she was a young girl, they had a man they called Johnson. They hung him on the tree in the back of that courthouse. And before he died, they asked him did he have something to say? My grandmother said, he said yes. They was hanging the wrong man. He was Black, but St. Martinville would never prosper and it certainly doesn't. Oh no, it doesn't. It does not. They told him they were hanging the wrong man. My grandma said she was a little girl. | 9:22 |
| Kate Ellis | That is the saddest story. | 9:54 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | That happened right up there. He said, "You're hanging the wrong man. And St. Martinville will never prosper," and it certainly didn't. But, Willie, I knew him. Willie used to come here. | 9:57 |
| Kate Ellis | Really? | 10:11 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | That's right. The chair missed him. And they came back [indistinct 00:10:17]. Let me show you something. Ask me some more questions. | 10:12 |
| Kate Ellis | Okay, more questions. | 10:27 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | More questions. This I got to get for you and this and the one for the hall. The one for the hall has about the Black organization. It'll be about one organization, but all of them did it the same way. | 10:31 |
| Kate Ellis | Okay, good. | 10:41 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | So that's why I have to try to find it. | 10:42 |
| Kate Ellis | Okay, that'll be really good. | 10:44 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | It's one but they all worked in the same way. | 10:45 |
| Kate Ellis | Okay. Well, those are all my questions I can think of for now. Maybe we should move on to the family history part, this part where I'm going to ask you specific questions. | 10:51 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | This is it right now. | 11:01 |
| Kate Ellis | Yes, but I need to fill out some of this stuff here too. And then you wanted to show me— | 11:03 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | I wanted to show you some of the Black priests. | 11:08 |
| Kate Ellis | Okay so let's do that. And then I'll ask you—I was going to ask you something. In 1930 when the Catholic Church said that Blacks could no longer come, and they had to go to the building where you were taught— | 11:09 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | The school, mm-hmm. | 11:25 |
| Kate Ellis | Who led the services then? | 11:26 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Oh, my priest came down. | 11:28 |
| Kate Ellis | He came down from where? | 11:30 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | I think it was from Lafayette or New Iberia. That was from— | 11:34 |
| Kate Ellis | So a priest came down to lead the services there? | 11:38 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Yeah. I don't think I— | 11:41 |
| Kate Ellis | Okay, so you belonged to the NAACP from the 1930s? | 11:47 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Yeah, when it started— | 11:51 |
| Kate Ellis | To the 1980s. So the NAACP had a chapter out here in St. Martinville? | 11:52 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | In Iberia. | 12:01 |
| Kate Ellis | Okay. Let me ask you about what you remember— | 12:01 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | I think it had a chapter here. I don't know. | 12:04 |
| Kate Ellis | Well, do you remember what happened in 1944? | 12:06 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | I don't know what happened in 1944, but I can remember when I was going to St. Edwards in the '30s and the '40s, they had some Black doctors, Dr. Scoggins and Dr. Dorsey. I'm sure Mr. Polk must have told you that. | 12:10 |
| Kate Ellis | Well, yeah. I'm curious about what you remember about it. | 12:29 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | I don't know too much, but I know Dr. Dorsey was my doctor at one time. But it's something concerning something went on in New Iberia. I think they were trying to start the NAACP I believe and those doctors were, and some of the teachers and those White people ran them away. That's all I know. But I don't know too much about it because it wasn't here but it was in New Iberia, ran Dr. Dorsey, the hospital thing is still up there, that building. And Dr. Scoggins ran him away because Herman Faulk over here had belonged to it and he had to leave and go to California. | 12:33 |
| Kate Ellis | Herman Faulk? | 13:21 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Yeah. | 13:23 |
| Kate Ellis | Belonged to the NAACP. | 13:23 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | He had belonged to the NAACP. | 13:24 |
| Kate Ellis | And he had to go to California? | 13:26 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Yeah, he left and went to California. | 13:27 |
| Kate Ellis | Because they were going to run him out of town? | 13:29 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Yeah, because he belonged to that in New Iberia. | 13:31 |
| Kate Ellis | But you said that you belonged to the NAACP. | 13:33 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | But I never did attend the meetings or anything. I just gave my money. | 13:35 |
| Kate Ellis | Okay, but Mr. Faulk was more involved. | 13:39 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Involved in it. I can remember that. That's all I remember. I never knew too much about it because I was never around here. I was teaching then. | 13:41 |
| Kate Ellis | I see. | 13:51 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | I wasn't around here. I was teaching. | 13:52 |
| Kate Ellis | You were in Loreauville then? | 13:54 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Yeah, so I didn't— | 13:59 |
| Kate Ellis | And you were pretty busy. | 13:59 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Yeah. | 13:59 |
| Kate Ellis | And I guess we just didn't travel as much at that time, did it? | 13:59 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | No, see, these things were just beginning. | 14:02 |
| Kate Ellis | What things? | 14:05 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | For integration? | 14:07 |
| Kate Ellis | Okay. That's why when you said you belonged to the NAACP in New Iberia, I was like— | 14:11 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | But yeah, I belonged to it just like my teacher association. I had belonged to the one in New Iberia, because they didn't have one here. But later on they started one here but it's integrated. New Iberia's still segregated. | 14:15 |
| Kate Ellis | New Iberia's Teaching Association? | 14:31 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | It's segregated. | 14:33 |
| Kate Ellis | Is that right? | 14:34 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Uh huh, but not us. | 14:35 |
| Kate Ellis | Well, they have a Black teaching association and a White one. | 14:36 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | And a White one. | 14:38 |
| Kate Ellis | And [indistinct 00:14:42]. That's interesting. | 14:42 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Mr. Polk didn't tell you that? | 14:43 |
| Kate Ellis | I don't know if he did or not. I don't recall him saying that. | 14:44 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Because he was the president. | 14:44 |
| Kate Ellis | That he was the president of the Black— | 14:44 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | One time. And Edran Auguster and I— | 14:49 |
| Kate Ellis | He told me a lot and he may have said that and it might not have clicked or something, that that was still a segregated organization. | 14:52 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Oh yeah, still. But we're integrated. | 15:03 |
| Kate Ellis | Yeah. Wow. | 15:05 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | But we're integrated, the Blacks would pay their funds, their dues, but they won't come to meetings to hold office. You see now, they didn't take us. They would say something about the Whites. The Whites have us now. They don't want to participate. They pay, but they don't participate. | 15:10 |
| Kate Ellis | Why don't they participate? | 15:32 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | I don't know. They've been so used to not, I guess. Just is me and a few of us, I'm over the outreach [indistinct 00:15:43]. I've been in there since it started over here. | 15:34 |
| Kate Ellis | In the organization. | 15:45 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Yeah. | 15:46 |
| Kate Ellis | What's it called again? | 15:47 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | SMART, St. Martin— | 15:48 |
| Kate Ellis | Association of Retired Teachers? | 15:52 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Yeah. SMART, St. Martin Association of Retired Teachers. It's on here. | 15:54 |
| Kate Ellis | Okay. Are there any other activities or affiliations that you have? Any hobbies or interests that you haven't mentioned, or anything else that you do that you haven't talked about? | 16:01 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | My only hobby right now is Bingo. I live for— | 16:18 |
| Kate Ellis | Is what? Is Bingo? | 16:25 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | I live for Bingo. | 16:26 |
| Kate Ellis | You live for Bingo. | 16:27 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | I love bingo. Isn't that awful? | 16:28 |
| Kate Ellis | No. | 16:32 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | I like to dance. I used to go to the dances. But now that I don't have a friend to go with me, the women don't let those men dance with you no more. | 16:32 |
| Kate Ellis | Oh, really? You can't go single. | 16:42 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | If you don't have a man to go with you, you will be a wallflower. Those women won't let their husband dance with you so I don't go anymore. And my good friend that I used to go, she has Alzheimer's. | 16:44 |
| Kate Ellis | She does. | 17:04 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | And they had to put her an institution in New Orleans. We were just like sisters. And Jody, my other good friend across the street, she don't go nowhere, she's always sick so I just don't have nobody to go out with no more. But when I get ready to go, I go by myself. And I travel a lot. But friends, they're all dead or they're sick. I don't have anybody anymore. They're all dead. | 17:04 |
| Kate Ellis | That's too bad. | 17:34 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Good thing I like to read, so I spend a lot of time reading. | 17:39 |
| Kate Ellis | Okay, this is the final question. Do you have any comment or favorite saying or phrase that you would like me to quote you saying? | 17:48 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | I'd have to think. | 17:59 |
| Kate Ellis | Well, if you don't, that's fine. It's just if something comes to your mind- | 18:04 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | I'll let you know. | 18:08 |
| Kate Ellis | Okay. | 18:09 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | I'm enjoying this. | 18:12 |
| Kate Ellis | Good. So am I. | 18:13 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | We talked about everything under the sun. | 18:15 |
| Kate Ellis | That's nice. All right well, we can wrap this up for now, and when I come by again, maybe we'll feel like talking some more. | 18:17 |
| Maizel Mary Mitchell | Okay. All right. | 18:27 |
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