Mary Butler interview recording, 1994 June 22

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Michele Mitchell	Okay. Yeah, that'd be nice. Eleven o'clock? Okay. Ms. Butler, I'm just going to make sure that this works. So I'm going to pin this on you and just have you talk and just make sure that it works.	0:03
Mary Butler	Okay. Can you get to me?	0:19
Michele Mitchell	Okay. Just if you can state your name and where you were born, that'd be fine.	0:26
Mary Butler	Okay. All right. When I'm ready. I was born in Mississippi near the city of Hattiesburg.	0:33
Michele Mitchell	Hattiesburg?	0:49
Mary Butler	That's right.	0:50
Michele Mitchell	Okay. Okay, now it's going. And what year were you born, ma'am?	0:56
Mary Butler	In the year of 1898. 18— Oh, I got you wrong. 18— I forgets like that. I'll be ninety-six in September. And is it 1890 or 1898. 1889. 1890. That's what it is.	1:00
Michele Mitchell	Yes ma'am. September what day?	1:25
Mary Butler	Eleventh. Eleventh of September 1890.	1:34
Michele Mitchell	Okay. Mrs. Butler, I'm just going to ask you to start talking about your childhood, wherever you feel comfortable talking about it. What things were like growing up. What you were telling me yesterday about going to church barefoot.	1:37
Mary Butler	Yeah. And at that time we lived on a farm and at that time was picking cotton, but I don't hear of very much cotton being picked now, don't even hardly raise cotton. I used to think that we couldn't have any clothes without raising cotton and bringing the cotton to the gin, having it ginned, having clothes made. And it's seldom we hear tell of cotton, anything of that kind now because there's so many factories that they got now, but they didn't have at the time when I was a child. I can remember my mother raised me up working and my daddy would be plowing in the field and I was a little tot and she would raise me up as high as she could in her arm to show me my daddy, where he was plowing along.	1:48
Mary Butler	And I was well enough to, and experienced enough, I guess, or what you would call it, when she put me by down on the ground, I'd go right straight to him and he wouldn't be far from her, go right straight to him and take him some cool water.	3:00
Michele Mitchell	When you were a little girl.	3:21
Mary Butler	When I was a little girl. Yes'm. I can remember so many things. My mother used to teach me the not to meddle, not to bother anything that wasn't concerning me. My mother used to raise a lot of chickens and when she raised the chickens, we would be glad as children to see little bitties, we call them, running around. My mother, she went down in the field one day and left me and my cousin at the yard so while she was gone, we played a bad trick on her.	3:22
Michele Mitchell	What was that?	4:06
Mary Butler	We caught her little bitties and drowned them in the water. That was fun to us. But when she came back and found it out, it wasn't fun anymore. It wasn't fun anymore. She give us a good whipping. And that's the onliest whipping I can remember my mother giving me.	4:08
Michele Mitchell	Really?	4:33
Mary Butler	I always was afraid of whippings. I never want to hear tell of no whipping, no spankings or nothing. I didn't have to have that. I always was very nice and obedient. I can say that for myself and my people, if they were here, they could say so for me. But I've always been obedient and I just believe that that's why I'm living in life as long as I'm living because I was so obedient to my parents, obedient in the church, obedient in everything that was good.	4:33
Mary Butler	What I was taught. We was taught to go to school and we had to walk, I guess, I think I was around nine or ten years old at this time now. We walked three miles through the woods going to school. My daddy, when we'd come to places where the water would run through in the branches we'd have to cross and out daddy would cut little saplings down across the— I can see myself crossing those places now. We'd cross on there when the water would get up. We'd cross those places going to school, walking to school. Nowadays, their children don't know what walking to school is. The bus comes right to the door and pick them up, bring them back. Oh, I get the thing right. I said, "Well, wouldn't that have been fine for us?" But again, I said, "Well, I believe we did the best."	5:17
Mary Butler	We had the best end of it after all. We wasn't sickly, we were stayed well. And mother had the weeds, red top weeds to go in there when we'd have a cold, make tea out of them bitter weeds and then sweeten them and gave them to us. Rub our throat and things with tallow from the cows.	6:32
Michele Mitchell	With tallow?	7:00
Mary Butler	Tallow. You get to get off of the, or anything you cook, that tallow grease come to the top of the water. Well, when they get cold she'd take it off and squeeze it out and put it in something. And that's what she rub us with. Now in place of going to the doctors. Well, didn't go to the doctor. I was in my forties first time I went to the doctor.	7:01
Michele Mitchell	In your forties?	7:29
Mary Butler	In my forties. My mother always taking care of us. It's what her treatments, what she give us, look like did us better in them days than what the treatment you get from the doctor nowadays. Because seems like now it takes a lot of treatments from the doctor to help you any now with the cold or any kind of symptom. I don't care what happens to you now, you have to go to the doctor.	7:33
Michele Mitchell	Yes ma'am.	8:04
Mary Butler	Else you don't get any better. And seemed to me we had it in a way was more rougher way, but seemed like it was better for us. I can remember a little green bush. My daddy used to, when he'd have colic, something like stomach trouble, he'd go and pull them things up by the root. That's called Sampson Snake root. I don't know how he got that name back there because it wasn't so well learned about different things. But that's the name he give it. Pull that Sampson root to the green bush like it grew up like. Pull it up and get the roots and dry them when it comes to have some kind of little stomach ache about something, colic or whatever, he'd chew them roots and swallow the juice. That was about as good a medicine that you get to be, look like it getting better than what you get today. Medicine from the doctor. And, well, one thing about it, I'm here today to prove my living.	8:05
Michele Mitchell	Yes ma'am.	9:31
Mary Butler	What I say, I'm here to prove it. This ain't no hearsay from other people and you can see me. My trouble is now arthritis. Well, I'm thinking this arthritis come from, I think we gather this cold and coming up we had plenty cold all right, but we would get cured of it. And so I'm thinking this arthritis has accumulated from cold in coming up and our growing up. Sometimes we went barefooted plenty.	9:32
Michele Mitchell	All year round?	10:17
Mary Butler	Not all year round. Now when it begin getting cold, we'd wear shoes. But the cold, they always say cold begins from your feet. That's what I've always heard. And so I think together and cold from my feet then at times we would get cold and then at times through the year we'd get maybe caught in the rain or something. I think that's where this arthritis came from. That's what I believe. That's the beginning of the arthritis. So that's why I walks today like I'm walking and arthritis settle in my limbs. But after all, I'm getting around.	10:21
Michele Mitchell	Very well, too.	11:07
Mary Butler	Yeah. Well, I think I maybe find my daddy after I got up around eleven years old. My daddy moved to Louisiana.	11:14
Michele Mitchell	When you were eleven?	11:26
Mary Butler	Yes. I was eleven. He moved to Louisiana to [indistinct 00:11:33] where his people lived. And then I finished going to school. I didn't never get any higher than the tenth grade. Well, I think I did fine at that. Going to school, my tenth grade, I can remember this well. It was some lady, the girls at the time that I became acquainted with, they was young ladies going to school. And seemed to me like I was catching up with them and their grades. They would ask me to help them with their lessons, arithmetic lessons and things like that. And I did very good in helping them. Seemed like I was better learned or something in my mind and that what they were, but they was a grade higher than me. But I was well appreciated in that [indistinct 00:12:49] manner. And well, at the age of fifteen, I'm getting kind of grownish, I guess. I wanted to marry. So I married when I was sixteen.	11:30
Michele Mitchell	When you were sixteen?	13:03
Mary Butler	When I was sixteen, I married. But probably I didn't— My mother always wanted me to be a teacher, but somehow another in my heart and mind I didn't never want to be no teacher. I didn't like, I wanted to be in any kind of agriculture, which something like that. And I'm married. Me and my husband got along well and I began, I got into a school. Oh, well they had music teachers, had music school, and they had this same thing I got in what I'm in now, like crocheting, needlework, like that. Look like that's the way that I turned. I like that kind of business better than I did teaching.	13:09
Mary Butler	So when I began that, well, I became a very good seamster, so like that. All I seamsters for a while. I did that kind of work and I made, well, what I made wasn't much money, but it went me just about as far as a lot of money would go with you now because I learned how to manage when I make it. So we got along fine like that. And course, I did that and with that then I become a maid with the White people. And they all liked me. So I did good maid work and coming home for while and then taking up teaching. I mean a nurse. I wanted to be a nurse then. I studied nursing work a good while. Two, three years. And then my last work I did after I married was nursing and I nursed and made it very good at my nursing.	14:04
Mary Butler	Of course now, there's a lot I did between those times. But I'm just sketching now. And so my husband seems to be pleased at us. So I was very, as I said at first, I was very old being to stay in my place and so we got along fine. And so today I've turned out to come where the young peoples are here. I call us young folks now. I came here doing the work that we are doing here. And I've been doing fine with this work so they tell me. Yeah, I helped you all working around here. I think I'm doing very good.	15:43
Michele Mitchell	I do too, ma'am. No, that's amazing. What did your husband do, ma'am?	16:48
Mary Butler	My husband at the time I'm married, he was a sawmill man. And that went out of business. But course the peoples didn't sawmill very long after then, like they did before I married. And then him and I went out on a farm a little while, about two or three years.	16:57
Michele Mitchell	Oh, really?	17:20
Mary Butler	We did very good on the farm with him. Then I helped my mother a whole lot at that time. We washed and iron or plenty for the White people. That's what they called Negro work. So you don't know nothing about that, but I'm telling you. Yeah, we did right smart of that and we got along fine. We raised everything now. When we were farming, we raised everything. We raised our cows. He'd kill a cow, every two or three months or something like that. We raised our hogs and raised hogs enough to kill hogs and dry the meat, hang it up, smoke it, make lard. We had lard the year round and we had meat the year round. That's the way we lived. We lived off that farm.	17:21
Michele Mitchell	So you lived well off the farm?	18:27
Mary Butler	Yeah, I lived well off the farm. I didn't have any trouble living my life on the farm. We'd go to church and quite naturally, as I had said., We'd go to church in the wagon. Well, we didn't live so very far from the church. Sometimes go walking, sometimes we'd go in the wagon, and up and down those old long roads sometimes. Sometimes roots and stumps and bumps and holes and hollers, but we got along. Yeah, sometime I believe we did better then. I know we was more healthier. We wasn't sickly like peoples are today.	18:31
Mary Butler	It's just everything turned around the other way and in the place of getting worser, it got better with us. So we might have didn't like it so well, but we did well so that was good. Yeah, I liked it that. Yeah. And in my coming up too, I taken up music lessons.	19:24
Michele Mitchell	Music lessons.	19:48
Mary Butler	I take music lessons a while. I taken some of, I did some of a little of everything that I could get my hands on. I was glad to do that. Look like that was my life and I liked it. Yeah. So here I am.	19:49
Michele Mitchell	I don't know where to start because you've told me so much. What sort of music? You took music lessons. Was it piano?	20:13
Mary Butler	Yeah, piano lesson. Well, I took some organ lessons too here lately because we has a organ in our church. I taken some organ lessons too, because it look like I just want to do some of everything. I have a heart in mind want to do little something of everything. And I wished I could show you a quilt. Probably sometime you pass by where I'm living, I'll show you a quilt I pieced when I was sixteen years old, I pieced it and quilted it after I married. I married when I was sxiteen. I did this quilt the first year I married. It was called a lone star. I been saying I was going to bring it here and have them put it up so they could see it. And I have that quilt that I put up.	20:20
Michele Mitchell	It's called a lone star quilt?	21:17
Mary Butler	The lone star. It was made with one star. That quilt was made with one star, with this bring those panels on, sticking out on all around it. I think— Now, of course when it was new, anything have a fade after so many years. But still, after all, I think it looks well as it is. What?	21:18
Michele Mitchell	Do you need to get going with this other group? Because folks are leaving out.	21:45
Mary Butler	No, I don't go with that group.	21:52
Michele Mitchell	Okay.	21:53
Mary Butler	Mine comes as a Dial a Ride cab around quarter to one.	21:54
Michele Mitchell	Okay. We got a little tiny while.	22:04
Mary Butler	Yeah.	22:04
Michele Mitchell	I would love to take a picture of your quilt and see it to take a picture to go with your interview. I would love to see the quilt.	22:07
Mary Butler	Yeah. Let me see. Will you be here Monday?	22:16
Michele Mitchell	I'm going to be here at the center on Monday.	22:20
Mary Butler	I was thinking I would bring it with me and let you get a picture.	22:23
Michele Mitchell	I'm going to be here at nine thirty.	22:26
Mary Butler	Monday?	22:26
Michele Mitchell	Mm-hmm, yes ma'am.	22:33
Mary Butler	All right. I'm going think to bring it and let them hang it up and let you have a picture of it.	22:34
Michele Mitchell	I'd love to do that. Just get a few pictures because we're also trying to preserve people's artwork and crafts and what they did. So if you would let me, I'd be thrilled.	22:48
Mary Butler	Yeah. And then that would mean that was did so many years back there. I'm ninety-six and that was did when I was sixteen years old.	23:01
Michele Mitchell	Did it eighty years ago.	23:12
Mary Butler	Yeah.	23:13
Michele Mitchell	Please.	23:16
Mary Butler	Yeah.	23:21
Michele Mitchell	You do a lot of quilts?	23:22
Mary Butler	Yeah, I did a good many quilts back there, but this was the onliest one that I picked out to keep. I don't know, I just kept that quilt just to be keeping it as it being my first quilt, I guess, that I pieced and quilted.	23:24
Michele Mitchell	What got you interested in piecing together quilts? Your mother? Or just, is this something that you like to do?	23:45
Mary Butler	Now my mother, she pieced the quilts, but I didn't get my— That might have been born into me from my mother. That may be something like that. But for her, you just said teaching me. Now, what she did, I just take and she give me patterns and tell me how to do this and that. And looked at me when I started off like that, look like it just dwell within me to do things. Look like it just in me to do these things. Yeah.	23:52
Mary Butler	It's like we got a little three-year old at our church, a little girl and a little boy. And you'd be surprised to know how they can get up there and play a organ. One can play the organ and play a song for them to sing and they sings well. You know, when you come, I'm going to— We're going to have a, you know, when we come into our church. Our pastor says, be around, he think the first of August. And I'm going to try to get up with you. Give me your name and address and everything and then in case I can't get up with you at that time, I'll try to find you somewhere along the line and get you to come by our church and visit us.	24:33
Michele Mitchell	Yes, ma'am. I'd like that. I'd like that a lot because I'm going to be in Louisiana, this part of Louisiana until the fourteenth of August.	25:31
Mary Butler	Fourteenth of August? Well, that's going to be around somewhere along in August. It probably might be around the around the time that you'll be back in.	25:47
Michele Mitchell	That'd be nice. I'll remember to ask you.	26:02
Mary Butler	Yeah. Do you have a card with your address and everything on, your name?	26:05
Michele Mitchell	I can get you one.	26:10
Mary Butler	All right.	26:12
Michele Mitchell	I'll bring that on Monday.	26:13
Mary Butler	All right.	26:15
Michele Mitchell	Yes, ma'am.	26:15
Mary Butler	Okay. You'll give it to me when, you'll be getting the picture of my quilt.	26:16
Michele Mitchell	Yes. I might bring— You met Felix yesterday. There's another woman on the project, Kate, and she's really, really good at photography. And I want to see if I can bring her. I can do it, but I want it to be done really well. So I might be bringing her too.	26:25
Mary Butler	Yeah, well why?	26:38
Michele Mitchell	Because so many Black women work on quilts and do these amazing artistic—	26:43
Mary Butler	Yeah. Yeah.	26:49
Michele Mitchell	It's not just a quilt. I mean, it's a piece of art.	26:49
Mary Butler	Yeah. Oh, I know that's beautiful.	26:52
Michele Mitchell	Yes.	26:56
Mary Butler	Yeah.	26:57
Michele Mitchell	And you've just made many, many, many quilts all your life.	26:58
Mary Butler	Yeah. I wouldn't say all my life, but quite a while in coming on up, just like I'd piece and quilt three or four quilts or maybe, well, maybe I might stop that and start something else. Just like now my quilting and piecing quilts and thing, that was my first thing I can remember I was started out at. But after then I went to doing nursing work study. I studied nursing work. And you know where, you know where this hospital down here on Jackson Avenue and Tchoupitoulas?	27:00
Michele Mitchell	I only know where Southern is right over here, but I don't know this hospital down there.	28:05
Mary Butler	Oh yeah.	28:09
Michele Mitchell	Which hospital is that?	28:10
Mary Butler	New Orleans General. That's the name of it. That's where I did my first work in the hospital. I did my first work in that hospital. That's been quite some years ago.	28:12
Michele Mitchell	About how old were you, ma'am, when you started working there?	28:28
Mary Butler	Let me see. I could tell about. Now, I couldn't tell exact, but I'm thinking around in my 60s I started working in the hospital. Now I did practical nursing and I did most of that private nursing in home, private home.	28:31
Michele Mitchell	Well, ma'am, you said that before you were a nurse that you'd been working as a maid for White people.	29:11
Mary Butler	Yeah. A maid for White.	29:17
Michele Mitchell	Did you get sick of that and decided that you wanted to become a nurse?	29:19
Mary Butler	Well, I didn't get sick of that, but somehow or another I got away from that, moving from that place to another place. Then I come into another school, going to school after leaving that maid, a building, and moving to another place. Well, that's when I began going to taking up school again. Schooling.	29:22
Michele Mitchell	And where'd you go, ma'am?	29:56
Mary Butler	Going to school?	29:56
Michele Mitchell	Uh-huh.	29:56
Mary Butler	I'm mostly taking it through mail. And then that's where I first began taking school through mail. Nursing School. It was in New York where I was taking the nursing. I had some of mine school books now, for very few of them though. I didn't keep them so well. But I studied those and I think I did just a about as well, maybe, as I would've did if I had been going to school. I think I did just about as well taking nursing through mail.	29:58
Michele Mitchell	That must have been a lot of extra work though, to work and then do your class work.	30:53
Mary Butler	Well, that's right. I did one work at one time. I just like— Rainy weather, well, I couldn't work in the field then that's when I work at home. At the house.	30:57
Michele Mitchell	Okay. So when you couldn't go do other jobs?	31:13
Mary Butler	Yeah, I could work in the house.	31:21
Michele Mitchell	You could work in the house and [indistinct 00:31:21] school.	31:21
Mary Butler	That's right. That's right.	31:21
Michele Mitchell	Okay.	31:21
Mary Butler	See, my life kept very busy coming on up from one thing to another. Looked like it was in me to do something all the time. I was very apt. And I'm glad I was. My mother didn't have a one child and that was me.	31:23
Michele Mitchell	So you were the only child?	31:42
Mary Butler	I'm the only child.	31:42
Michele Mitchell	Did you play with other children when you were growing up or did you—	31:48
Mary Butler	Not too much.	31:51
Michele Mitchell	Not too much?	31:52
Mary Butler	She didn't let us play out with other childrens too much because she said we'd learned too much that wouldn't be good for us. And always I could hear of these dance parties and things. I learned that. But I didn't ever worry about wanting to go to any, no place like that. I always did tell mother I want to go see them. Well, she didn't even let me go one time to see them. She tried to explain to me how it went on and everything.	31:53
Mary Butler	Well, it seemed like the older I got, the more I wanted to see, you know, you get to where you want to see things. But I didn't get a chance to see anything like that until after I married. I could go then. After I married, I went and I seen the dance and I didn't care for it anymore. That's the way I was raised. Now, I didn't care nothing about the dances. And now going out to these parties now. I go to any place, like a nice place, there's so many different places that peoples ain't got no business to go and take the children to see different things or some things. I didn't go to that and I didn't worry about going. But I got grown, got married, then me and my husband go places. So I couldn't see nothing wrong in that.	32:30
Michele Mitchell	No, ma'am. Did you go to movies and stuff once you got married?	33:36
Mary Butler	I went to a few. I liked the movies, but seemed like I didn't care all too much about that. I guess it was because it wasn't brought up in me so I just looked like I didn't care too much for it. I think I'm better off, I believe.	33:43
Michele Mitchell	You and your husband have any children?	34:04
Mary Butler	No, we didn't have any children. Mother didn't have but one and I didn't have none. Her one, me none.	34:05
Michele Mitchell	Well, you were so busy.	34:21
Mary Butler	When I tell people, they'd ask me, say, "You have any children?" I said, "Nope. I didn't have any children. But I sure did have my fun trying to get some."	34:22
Michele Mitchell	Oh, that's wonderful.	34:38
Mary Butler	Yeah. Yeah. I had my fun trying to get them.	34:43
Michele Mitchell	Uh-huh. So you and your husband stayed mostly here in New Orleans?	34:52
Mary Butler	Well, mostly before he passed, mostly before he passed.	34:55
Michele Mitchell	And then you said that you started to farm after he got laid off at the saw mill?	35:04
Mary Butler	Yes.	35:09
Michele Mitchell	He went back to farming?	35:11
Mary Butler	No. No.	35:11
Michele Mitchell	Okay.	35:13
Mary Butler	Didn't go back to farming. We'd taken up other works. He would get— Seemed like other works would come to him to do. He did. And we didn't farm anymore. Just different works he could take up and things. He did pretty good in [indistinct 00:35:43] and from that on, so when he got disabled to work, we was put on the disability in the state, then we get a little check every month so we still did very good. We're still fine. I'm still living. I'm thanking the Lord.	35:14
Michele Mitchell	Yes, ma'am. Yes, ma'am.	36:11
Mary Butler	Yeah. I thank the Lord. Yeah. Everybody say I don't look too bad, so I thank the Lord I've got along this far and done fine. Yeah.	36:15
Michele Mitchell	Yes, ma'am. Yes, ma'am. Would you like to stop now and I can pick it up on Wednesday? Next Wednesday?	36:32
Mary Butler	Yeah, we can now. Yeah. I begin sitting at the door around one thirty. Be there when my cab come. I don't be late him too much. I always try to be ready.	36:42
Michele Mitchell	Okay, well then why don't we stop now?	37:03
Mary Butler	All right.	37:06
Michele Mitchell	And then I can pick it up.	37:06
Mary Butler	All right.	37:08

Item Info

Title:

Mary Butler interview recording, 1994 June 22

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https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r49c7493f

Date:

June 22, 1994

Creator:

Butler, Mary Jackson

Contributor:

Mitchell, Michele

Description:

Name: Mary Jackson Butler; Date of birth: 1898-09-11; Place of birth: Hattiesburg, LA; Occupation(s): nursing; seamstress; Residence: New Orleans, LA
Informant ID: 519; Interviewed by: Michelle Mitchell.

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RL00170-CS-1186
2dedc5e9-daee-4355-b92e-8e39fbd87271
behindtheveil
9ee9061d-259f-4994-9aca-c0bfc1551574
ark:/87924/r49c7493f
9ee9061d-259f-4994-9aca-c0bfc1551574

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Behind the Veil

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

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

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Mary Butler interview recording, 1994 June 22

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1. Mary Butler administrative file, 1994

John Hope Franklin Research Center

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John Hope Franklin Research Center

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