Lanetha Branch interview recording, 1995 June 16
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| Lanetha Collins Branch | You want me to sign on both lines? | 0:01 |
| Doris Dixon | Right here. Mrs. Branch, for the tape, could you state your full name and date of birth please? | 0:04 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | My full name is Lanetha Jule Collins Branch. My birthdate is January twenty-second, 1935. | 0:14 |
| Doris Dixon | Mrs. Branch, when did you come to Memphis? | 0:26 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | I've always lived in Memphis. | 0:28 |
| Doris Dixon | You were born here? | 0:29 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | Yes, I was born here. | 0:30 |
| Doris Dixon | What are your earliest childhood memories of Memphis? | 0:32 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | Well, the earliest childhood memories of Memphis was right in this neighborhood where you have LeMoyne-Owen College. We lived right down the street from LeMoyne College. The street before being named Hollis Price was called McDowell, and we had to move from McDowell when they built the LeMoyne Gardens housing project, they tore down our house and so we relocated to another area. | 0:36 |
| Doris Dixon | When was that, ma'am? | 1:05 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | I guess about 1941. | 1:05 |
| Doris Dixon | You were about six when they moved? | 1:07 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | Yes. | 1:07 |
| Doris Dixon | Do you have any memories of that neighborhood at that time before you moved? | 1:07 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | The neighborhood prior to LeMoyne Gardens being built was a residential area, had very large houses, nice yards. It was a good family community. People were a working class people, church going people also, I might add. So it was basically a very good neighborhood. | 1:08 |
| Doris Dixon | Were you at that time a member of Metropolitan Baptist Church? | 1:47 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | No, I was not at that time. I was a member of White Stone Baptist Church, which was my mother's church, which was located on what I called Long Avenue. It's not too far, I would say it's about eight to ten blocks from here. | 1:49 |
| Doris Dixon | Ma'am, after you all left the street that's Hollis Price now, where did you relocate? | 2:08 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | We moved to 274 West Illinois, which is farther west, near the river. We moved into an integrated neighborhood. I better take that back, it was not integrated, it was an all White neighborhood when we moved there, quite difficult most of the time for many years. I was six years old when we moved to that area and I was getting ready for college when we left that neighborhood. It also was torn down to make way for the expressway. So therefore, basically during my childhood we lived only at two residences. | 2:17 |
| Doris Dixon | What was the street again that became Hollis Price? | 3:04 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | It was called McDowell. | 3:06 |
| Doris Dixon | McDowell. Ma'am, do you have any memories of your grandparents? Did you ever meet them? | 3:14 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | No, my grandparents were deceased before I was born. | 3:18 |
| Doris Dixon | What did your parents tell you about them? | 3:22 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | My grandfather was a laborer and my grandmother was a business woman, but they preceded in death before I was born. As not unusual, African Americans did not have long lifetimes, probably up through the 1940s the lifespan was quite short. | 3:26 |
| Doris Dixon | You said your grandmother was a business woman? | 3:52 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | Yes. | 3:56 |
| Doris Dixon | What kind of— | 3:56 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | She did hair, she was a beautician. | 3:57 |
| Doris Dixon | Do you know what part of the city was she located here in— | 4:03 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | Yes she was, but I don't know what part of the city. | 4:04 |
| Doris Dixon | What else do you remember about your home and your neighbor's homes, on both McDowell and West Illinois? | 4:13 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | Well, on McDowell of course, as I said, it was a family-oriented community with children of all ages and a relatively quiet neighborhood. As I can remember it, we often did what most children did, played in the summertime and after school, then most times inside before it was dark. That was something that happened most times in most communities, you had to be inside before it was dark. And contrasting the McDowell residents with the Illinois residents, quite different. | 4:19 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | As I said, we integrated the neighborhood and racially it was quite difficult. My mother knew one woman on the street and of course that was her support system on that street. And I also had White friends, well, playmates, I better put it like that. So they're quite different. Some of their parents taught them the nigger word was used quite frequently, as you can imagine. But some parents taught their children that that term referred to anyone of any race who was bad, but yet some equated it with African Americans. So the neighborhood was quite unique in that some parents accepted us quite readily and others did not. | 4:57 |
| Doris Dixon | When you say it was difficult for your family— | 5:48 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | Probably not as difficult for me as my older brother, who is now deceased, and older sisters, who one, which is now deceased. My brother that is now deceased was quite, I would not say timid, but he was not a person who wanted any trouble at all, because of his demeanor. He often ran home and threatened. My sister, who is deceased however, was just the opposite. They would call her sometimes Aunt Jemima. And of course she was very tomboyish and so she'd beat them up and it was quite different. I had a younger brother who was also one of those fighters, and so they didn't bother him too much either. | 5:52 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | Neighborhoods in the south, at that time, were unusual and quite different than they are today, because it would not be unusual for you to find a street or an area where all Blacks lived, and right next to it all Whites lived in that situation. So even though on side streets there were some Blacks on, west of us on one street, about five houses, they were all Black. Then around another corner, you had a Black area, but it was not unusual during that time to find areas, little pockets, almost a patchwork area, if you could think of a patchwork quilt, one quilt part would be Black and the other would be White. And that was not unusual all over the south in that area in that time. So therefore you had relationships with Whites in that manner as far as neighborhoods concerned. | 6:43 |
| Doris Dixon | Now this neighborhood around the college, LeMoyne College, was it like a patchwork quilt? | 7:36 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | At the time, when I lived here, most of this area was all Black. Prior to that time, however, there had been the same type of setting, but as I remember it, and of course I'll have to say that we were not allowed to go too far away. I can say we went to school and in this particular area it was predominantly Black. | 7:43 |
| Doris Dixon | You said you weren't allowed too far away. | 8:15 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | Well, one thing in that area, I can say the farthest east of here that I would've gone would be Neptune Street, which is the beginning of LeMoyne Gardens. And then I went to school, the school was called LaRose Elementary School, which is on Wellington Street. And of course in this community we did not go beyond I would say Mississippi Boulevard— I'm sorry, Walker Avenue, which is right out here, to the south. And no further than I would dare say about what is now called Crump. It was our street then. | 8:17 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | But after the bridge was built, it was named after a former mayor in Memphis. And that was probably as far as we would go, unless we were accompanied to the Bill Street area to a movie or something like that. But most times we went right up the street, there was a movie theater right up on Walker Avenue and Mississippi called Ace Theater. And so therefore you really didn't have a need to go too far out of your community at that time. | 8:57 |
| Doris Dixon | So sometimes you did go down to Bill Street? | 9:36 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | Yes, we did. | 9:39 |
| Doris Dixon | What do you remember of Bill Street? | 9:40 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | Bill Street? Well, I've always remembered Bill Street as a place that had different scents. Because of the restaurants that were there and the food, some of the food would be all the way down the street that we went. Sometimes there they would have an amateur night at the theater called the Palace Theater. In fact, Rufus Thomas was one of the early MCs there. And he had a friend that was called Bones, and they would do comedy sketches at the Palace Theater. And so many people left in their own neighborhoods and went there for the amateur night. | 9:42 |
| Doris Dixon | Now were there, at various places, where there were, quote, unquote, "Jim Crow accommodations" at some of the places? | 10:22 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | Yes, all the theaters that were what we call Main Street at that time had Jim Crow accommodations. You'd have to go in the side door or on a alleyway. The only one really had a side door, and then some did not have any Jim Crow accommodations at all. They were all White. Basically, as I remember, there were three theaters that had Jim Crow accommodations, the Macro Theater, which is the Orpheum now. And I guess that was the only one that you went to the side door on the street, where there was actually the street, the others were on alleyways. Then you had the theater, the Warner Theater, that you went into the side. And the other one, I can't remember because we very seldom went there to that particular one. It was near what is now Gilson and the Mall. And I can't remember because we very seldom went there. | 10:31 |
| Doris Dixon | Mrs. Branch, what was your first job? | 11:29 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | My very first job was when I was eighteen years old. It lasted for one day. (laughs) When you get out of high school, you think you going work for the summer before going off to college. And I went to a restaurant, it was on Summer Avenue called, I think it was Ferguson's. I think it still exists in some kind of shape or form now. And of course I had always been taught by my mother, because of the neighborhood we lived in, because we were the first Blacks there, that we were not better than anyone else, but we were as good as anyone else. | 11:32 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | And so therefore, I might have had a different concept of Black and White than others. And of course my mother considered me her rebel child. I was not a fighter, but I would do things that she felt one day I'd get in trouble with doing, such as drinking out of White water fountains and these type things, I'd do that for spite. But it was at a restaurant, I was to be a bus girl. And the owner was upset because I wouldn't say, "Yes, ma'am." I said "Yes" and "No." And she said, I must call her, "Yes, ma'am." and I told her I could not do that. And so I worked for one day. That was my very first job. I'll never forget it. | 12:08 |
| Doris Dixon | After that, did you work anymore that summer before you— | 12:48 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | No, I didn't. The very next job I had was really at my foster aunt's restaurant. She would let me work during the summer times when I was out of school. And it was a waitress job, and I worked there. My mother at first did not like that, because my mother did not want me to work in a restaurant. Of course, it was the safest place for me because that was her dear friend and she considered me her niece. And of course I would work there and I'd always have to go back— After I'd wait on someone I'd have to go back and sit in the corner beside her, because she didn't allow any of the men to talk to me anything unless I knew them. And of course she'd always send me home in a taxi, there was certain taxi driver she'd call to send me home at night. So that was my only other job I had other than when I then moved into education. Those were only two jobs I had. | 12:51 |
| Doris Dixon | Do you remember the name of that restaurant? | 13:39 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | It was called Bulo's Tavern. Quite well known in this area. | 13:41 |
| Doris Dixon | Where was it located? | 13:46 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | It was located on Hernandez Street, right near Linden Avenue. | 13:48 |
| Doris Dixon | Now why did your mother call you her rebel child? | 13:54 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | Well, because of the fact that I would do things that— During the time of Jim Crow, it was just unthinkable that you would drink out of White water fountains in the department stores. And I would do that. And anywhere, when I see that, I would automatically— But the thing I'd do is get the little cups, I used to have these little cups that fold up and I refuse to drink out of the fountain. I'd get me a cup and get the water out of the fountain. And the thing that, yes ma'am, no ma'am, or this type thing, I just didn't do it. Because the fact she had said that I wasn't better than anyone else, but I was good as anyone else. And I felt that if I must do this, then they have to do that for me too. And so she would always say that I was her one child with a stop sign. | 13:57 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | I guess my activeness, if she had lived, she would not be surprised at it at all. I can recall my first going off to college at Fisk University, probably the first sit-in that occurred was not written, but a group of us were coming home for Thanksgiving and we decided we were not going to get at the back of the bus. That was 1953. And of course the bus did not move. And the bus driver said he was going to call the police. Well, I still didn't move, because my mother would've driven up and got me. And she would not have been surprised I had been arrested for sitting-in and she probably wouldn't have, because I used to do that on the buses here. I would not give up and give up my seat. I would sit in an area that I felt was middle of the bus and if the bus was crowded, there was another seat I would not get up. | 14:47 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | And so she would not have been surprised. But I guess some of my classmates got a little afraid on it. And so they convinced us all to get up. But we went back to college, there was an instructor at LeMoyne— I'm sorry, at Fisk University called Lee Lorch. Of course, anyone who sought to write injustices at that time were called communists. And of course we met with Lee Lorch, and I don't remember the other doctor that was there, to talk about what we had experienced coming home for Thanksgiving. | 15:36 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | I left Fisk after the first semester because of illness and came home. And then I spent a year and a half here at LeMoyne, before going to University of Arkansas. But those were the things that you would see and, sometimes you refused to eat because you could not get food services and what have you, you didn't have restroom facilities and what have you. I just always felt that those things were wrong and I would voice those opinions. So I think this is why she would probably say I was her rebel child because I did not conform to the status quo. | 16:09 |
| Doris Dixon | Well ma'am, you said for you this incident in '53 of not sitting back of the bus was not a new thing that you had done [indistinct 00:17:00]— | 16:52 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | No, I said in public buses, in the south, no matter how far back you sat, if a White person got on the bus and there was not a seat for them and you were sitting in a seat, you were to get up and let them have the seat. And so I had done that on the buses here, in Memphis, not getting up. I think when they think of you as a child that you don't know what you're doing, but I knew exactly what I was doing. | 17:00 |
| Doris Dixon | How old were you? | 17:34 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | I was about twelve. Eleven, twelve years old. And the bus came right by our house. The bus driver told my mother that I did it. Nothing. | 17:36 |
| Doris Dixon | Repercussions? | 17:45 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | Nothing. It was nothing. She just told him, "Thank you very much." And that was all. | 17:48 |
| Doris Dixon | I'm really interested in this because I think you've hit on something that is missing on the history books in that this kind of activism is placed in a timeframe, maybe starting in '56 with Montgomery, maybe starting in '63 in Greensboro. We really don't have an understanding that these types of things were going on before that— | 17:53 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | You had isolation incidents of things all along before that time. Then our chronicle, nothing came forward. In fact, in our own city, we had a number of boycotts prior to that time that might not be in a history book. For example, the Commercial Appeal. Commercial Appeal was boycotted by Black people twice. And one prior to the one in 1956, because of their refusal to refer to Black females as "Mrs." and Black people did not take the newspaper. One paper was bought was passed all over our neighborhood. | 18:17 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | And so everybody who wanted to read the paper who was Black could read the newspaper, but everybody ended their subscription. And these things are not things that you found a great deal about. In fact, they were not noted even in the newspaper itself. But it did occur all over this area. Somewhere someone wrote about it, but those are the kinds of things that occurred. The same thing within the bus segregation here as well. And so there have been incidences in some places where these things have occurred, but yet they seem to the wider population that's just things on the good of somebody's heart of doing and they were not from the goodness of somebody's heart, somebody agitated for them. | 19:01 |
| Doris Dixon | As far as the Commercial Appeal boycott, do you remember, was there a place where that was centered, were there leaders? Was it headquartered in a particular place? | 19:47 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | I don't remember, because as I said— I don't remember if it was headquartered in place, but I do remember that after my mother read the paper, I had to take it around the corner for other people to read and that they did boycott. And I can remember that at two instances, the Black people in Memphis boycotted the Commercial Appeal. | 20:00 |
| Doris Dixon | In a more general way, who did you, at that young age, consider to be the leaders of the community? | 20:20 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | I didn't think of anyone being the leader, because I really didn't recognize any one entity of doing that. I guess people just got fed up. One of the things that always happens with African American society is someone looks for a leader. My response to that is, who is a White leader? That's always my response, for if you look for Black leader, who is a White leader? And sometimes the leaders have been identified for African Americans, African Americans have not identified anybody as a leader. And so therefore I don't remember anyone in particular, I really don't, during that time, as far as that kind of action is concerned. | 20:26 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | The people who had been identified at as our leaders would not ordinarily have done that kind of thing. Well, at that time, those people who had been identified as the leaders were what we call elitist Blacks. Probably the name that you have probably might have heard, Lieutenant George Lee, who was a leading Republican. I did not see him as a person who would make any waves at all because he was enjoying the police publicity's success as being a part of the Black Republican. And I cannot recall anyone in that early time say being a leader. I think it might have been something that's caught on because people said that they were tired of it. | 21:12 |
| Doris Dixon | Now this was a time— | 22:09 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | I guess this first boycott had to be in the 1940s, late 1940s. | 22:12 |
| Doris Dixon | I'm unclear about something, I don't know as much about this as I should know now, when Lieutenant George Lee was a identified leader, he was a Republican, was this a time, did Blacks in Memphis had have any access at all to organized elections? Did they have any kind of voting rights at that time? | 22:22 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | Yes, you did have voting rights. But as I said, many people were told who to vote for. Now, by this time, most Blacks in this area were really identified as Democrats, after the election of President Roosevelt. Probably prior to that time we would've seen many of them as Republicans, which was what you found after the Civil War, and because they preceded, Republicans, being the liberators, they voted Republican. But of course, with the changes with Franklin Roosevelt and after the effects of the depression that most certainly impacted Blacks quite harshly, especially those who didn't have relatives in Mississippi who had farms, who brought food to them and this type of thing. Then you had the largest group of people and then moving to the Democratic party. And so therefore, during the late 1930s, '40s, even up to the present time, your largest African American groups, as far as voting is concerned, has been Democratic. | 22:42 |
| Doris Dixon | Did your parents vote? | 23:54 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | Yes, my mother and father voted. In fact, when I was eighteen years old, my mother took me down to register. She was very adamant about voting. I think I've carried it on to my son, because usually he'll vote in the morning, I vote in the afternoon, and he has to have been there when I get there. And he knows that I'll be looking to see if his signature is on the poll. | 23:55 |
| Doris Dixon | You mentioned people will hit hard who didn't have relatives in Mississippi? | 24:20 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | Historically, Black people have had to make do with very little. That's part of our heritage out of slavery, that you got what was left over on any kind of an animal and you had to do something with it, and during slavery, you got the feet of the chicken, and the head, and these type things. You got the entrails of a hog and a cow. So you had to make do with those things that were not usable. And so therefore Black people probably could eat because the fact that they knew how to use these kinds of things. | 24:25 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | And then too, you had not had the great migration from the south. You might still have some relatives who had a farm, that in the summertime grew vegetables and what have you, and animals. And so when it was slaughter time for the animals in the fall, then you got food. And then when it was the summertime, you also got food. And then I can recall, we had a cousin that lived with us who had no children. Her son had been killed in Florida, he had gone down to work, who lived with us, and she had brought from Mississippi with her the canning of vegetables and what have you. And so therefore Black people might have been able to have food more readily because of the fact that the skills that had been learned out of slavery and brought into their everyday life. | 25:00 |
| Doris Dixon | Did your family have relatives still in Mississippi? | 26:01 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | We had an aunt that lived in Arkansas, in Brinkley, Arkansas. And her name was Aunt Betty and her husband was a local principal, but they had a large farm, they had sharecroppers, but they also grew a lot, a very large vegetable garden. And so in the summertime we would go there for a couple of weeks and bring back all of these big huge bags of peas and beans and these type of things and fruits that were then canned and put away. | 26:03 |
| Doris Dixon | Where were your parents originally from? Did they come to Memphis from another surrounding area? | 26:44 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | My mother was from Memphis. She was born in Memphis in 1900. My father came from Mississippi. | 26:50 |
| Doris Dixon | What part? | 26:57 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | I don't remember. He never talked about where he came from, from Mississippi. He had mixed parentage, mixed White, Indian, Black parentage. And he never talked about, he never talked about. Which was not unusual for African American men at that time to not talk about their heritage, where they had come from, their parentage, it was not unusual. | 26:59 |
| Doris Dixon | Why? | 27:27 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | I'm not sure if they have said that we are a matriarch people, and that Black women were able to get things done that Black men couldn't. And then Black men had been so dominated that they did not talk a lot, I guess to keep your mouth closed and you'll be okay. Well, in this particular area you're talking about here in the Delta, by opening your mouth about any little thing could necessarily mean you were lynched. And we are not too far from the area, about two blocks up, where some businessmen used to be up here at Mississippi Walker that were lynched. In fact, this is where Ida Wells wrote about it and why she had to leave this area. And so it was not unusual in many of the corners in these areas where Black men had been lynched. And so you had Black men at that time who were not stepping forward because the fact that they might well be killed in remarks that they made. | 27:28 |
| Doris Dixon | Was there anybody who was stepping forward? | 28:37 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | I cannot think of any one person that was. We had two local newspapers. | 28:39 |
| Doris Dixon | The World. | 28:50 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | The World. Mr. Swinger would write about things. He would write about some things that we felt were unjust to the people in this city who were African American. And most people read his paper and then— | 28:50 |
| Doris Dixon | He wrote for the World? | 29:12 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | Yes, he did. One time he was the editor of the Memphis World. | 29:13 |
| Doris Dixon | You say there was no one particular person who stepped forward, but yet there was resistance. How do you think people resisted during these times? | 29:23 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | I think from word of mouth or people got together and talked about things. One of the things that people feared in this area was people who got information and took it back to the White population. This was always a fear. And many people did that. If there was anything that was done in the Black community, the White establishment knew about it. And so sometimes people were not as open as they might have been because they did not know who was going to be taking what back. And so I just can't remember any person who stood out as a person who would do this. I really think there was things that were just passed along and people just started doing pretty much like doing slave time. You had no leaders necessarily, but the message got around just from word of mouth that this is what you were going to do and that you couldn't identify who your leader was, but yet the message was there. | 29:31 |
| Doris Dixon | Would you say that your parents taught you certain lessons about living in this time, about dignity? | 30:33 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | My mother did. I'd have to say my mother did some more than anyone else. | 30:41 |
| Doris Dixon | What lessons did she teach you? | 30:44 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | Mother was the type of person who used get along with anyone. They used to call us the uppity niggers on our street because of the fact that we had a car and we were able to dress well and we always had food on our table. In fact, one of my friends, Peggy, one of my White acquaintances, Peggy, she used our house every single day and she'd come right at dinnertime, she'd come for dinner. But mother taught us that you are important, you are somebody and nobody can tell you who you are. You must decide who you will be. And so therefore the idea that— But she also stressed that you should not think that you're better than anyone else. She was very religious and she would say all of us are God's children, and so therefore you're not better than anyone, but you are as good as anyone else. And don't let other people decide who you are. You must find that yourself. | 30:47 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | I guess that's a lesson that's always stayed with me, that, number one, where there's injustice, I have no fear of speaking up. And then to have empathy for all people, recognize that all people might not be in the same economical, education status that I am, but there's still people and they have something to often have something to give. And that's the attitude I take toward all people. And so therefore, even though this particular area, some of my church members another are fearful of this area, I'm not. I walk in this area. I'm a volunteer for YMCA too. And I used to walk from one place to the other and I didn't have any fear in doing that. | 31:45 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | And we did a survey last week over in LeMoyne, I had no fear about going there, knocking on doors and ask, asking questions. I've done that before. We have gone on outreach there. And I just don't have the fear that some people seem to feel that it's necessary to have an area that's impacted by poverty or people who are undereducated or uneducated, people who have to exist in public housing and what have you. So I guess the lesson that she taught me was that you have to tread some places where others might not tread and therefore do some things that others might be reluctant to do. | 32:25 |
| Doris Dixon | These two guiding principles, this lack of fear of speaking out against injustice as well as this empathy for people in different stages in life, different levels in life. Where else do you think that lesson might have been reinforced with you? Where else did you pick these things? | 33:09 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | I guess a person that, there's one teacher that I remember very vividly. Her name was Mrs. Amanda Woofrin. She was my eighth grade social studies teacher. | 33:28 |
| Doris Dixon | Could you spell that for me? | 33:41 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | W-O-O-F-R-I-N. Woofrin. And she was a very strong woman, as most Black women were during that time, very strong, very forceful, a strict disciplinarian. But also always telling her Black students what their possibilities were and not making them feel that they did not have the possibility to do anything else. And then another of my instructors in high school, Nat D. Williams, my twelfth grade history teacher. Nat D., I would say he lived before his time because the fact he was a great orator, a great historian and really kept us and helped us to be in perspective of who we were as well. And to think positive of about Blackness and not negatively of it. | 33:43 |
| Doris Dixon | What high school did you attend? | 34:50 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | Booker T. Washington High School. | 34:51 |
| Doris Dixon | And what other things stick out in your mind about Booker T. at that time? | 34:57 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | It was a school. The principal was Blair T. Hunt, who was a pastor at Mississippi Boulevard Christian Church. Very stern, strong man, led a very tight ship. But also told us that because we was at school, you were at the best school in the world. He thought his school was the best. And really at that time, when you think about the high schools that were available for Black children, it was, because it had many things to offer that other high schools did not. Mr. Hunt would've made an excellent politician, even though he was a minister and did not consider himself a politician. He could manipulate the system, he was a master at it. He really was. | 35:03 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | And so he could get things for his schools that other people could not. And he also learned how to play the game very well with the White establishment. And he did that, I feel, very strongly so that his students would have the best it could possibly gotten for any students. Well respected by everyone, with curse sometimes, and was very stern. But he did have an excellent high school. And students still at that school every year have reunions of classes, in fact, they have a national reunion coming up— | 35:47 |
| Doris Dixon | In Chicago? | 36:24 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | — in August. So the spirit of the school continues on, even though there are many students who were there doing his tenure now, who were old as I am. | 36:26 |
| Doris Dixon | What were some of the things that he get that others couldn't? | 36:35 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | For example, lab equipment in labs and science and mathematics and your class. Our classrooms were never over packed in. So he would make sure that the materials that students needed and everything they needed was there. | 36:39 |
| Doris Dixon | I've heard through tradition that a lot of the materials from Booker T. actually came from Central? | 36:57 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | They might have, they might well have. But many of the schools did not have, for example, have commerce classes. They did not have cosmetology, and they did not have large shop classes. And Booker T. Washington had all of those things, not only one or two, but many shop classes. Cosmetology classes, home economics classes. And then we really never were over-crowded, even though it was the largest high school, it seems that he had an act with faculty where the class would not be packed with kids. | 37:02 |
| Doris Dixon | What was your course of study at Booker T.? What interest did you identify? | 37:40 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | Well, mostly by tenth grade I decided I was going to be in the commerce class, which was a secretarial class at that time. And because I had a sister there that these classes were chosen, I took typing in tenth grade and then if you were chosen, because many students applied, but because you could only have one class, there were really two classes. But the teacher picked up her class in eleventh grade and she'd have them for two years. The teachers chose their students. And so what they usually did was chose the top students in the building and this is what happened. That was my choice there. I wanted to learn how to type. | 37:47 |
| Doris Dixon | Did you go on to pursue business at Fisk, LeMoyne or the University of Arkansas? | 38:29 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | No, my interest had always been in history. My degree is in history with a minor in political science and government. And to tell you the truth, I went to school on boys scholarships and most people assumed that I majored in music, but I never did. I had no interest to major in music. I could sing, yes, but my interest had always been in political science, so law. In fact, my ambition had been to be a lawyer. I often tease Judge Lockett now about that, he's a member of our church. But he told me I did not need to go to law school, he was at our career day at Booker T. Washington. And I was the only girl in the group for a law. And he told me, "Just forget it." He swears he didn't do that, but I remember he did. But only one attorney ever encouraged me to do that. And that was Attorney Estes who passed away. | 38:34 |
| Doris Dixon | Are there moments or memories that you made or stick out about your days at these three universities? | 39:32 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | One of the things that I liked at Fisk was that there was some activism there. LeMoyne was not at that time, it came in much, much later. University of Arkansas, I loved it. I loved it better than all three really, because of the camaraderie that you found there, the faculty and staff, the president, it would not be unusual for him to be walking the campus with students, talking to them and this type of thing. And his door was always open to you. And I think the whole atmosphere of the campus was one that if you went there, you loved it. In fact, I'd been there three days and hadn't called home. And my mother called all over the place trying to find me to see what was wrong, because she was so positive— When I was to Fisk, I called home every day, and she was just so positive that I was going to do that. | 39:41 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | And I had not. I'd been there three days and had not called home. She was very concerned, so she called everyone until she found me to see what was— As soon as she found me to find what was wrong, and nothing was wrong, I was just having a good time enjoying the choir, had to go early. That's the times you bond together and practice and do a lot of things together. And so once she found out I was all right, she was satisfied. And I didn't call home every day either. So it was a difference. | 40:38 |
| Doris Dixon | Was there a spirit of activism at [indistinct 00:41:09]? | 41:06 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | Yes, in some cases. In fact, Martin Luther King spoke at our campus when in fact we had bomb threats. I was there during the time, because I stayed out of school for two years after LeMoyne. When I was there, we had a bomb threat because he was speaking there. We had him as one of our speakers. This was during the time of the activism that he was carrying on in Alabama. And of course right down the road is Central High in Little Rock that was going on. And during that time, President did not want us off campus. It was about forty miles away. He did not want any of us to go alone any place off campus because the fear for our safety was so great. And of course he put out a bull and he referred us to stay on campus. But if we had to go downtown, anything, we were not to go along, that a group would have to go together. | 41:10 |
| Doris Dixon | Which campus was it? Was this the Pine Bluff campus? And that's forty miles from Little Rock? You earlier mentioned one of the values that you've carried is a willingness to tread where others will not tread. What have some of those places been? Where have you treaded? | 42:04 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | Well, as a teacher in city school system, one of the things I took part in is some of the boycotts that we had. We boycotted trying to get a Black person on the Board of Education. And our boycott kept my child off school, we had to put what was called Black Mondays. | 42:26 |
| Doris Dixon | What were those? | 42:53 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | Black Mondays were an attempt to get representation on the board of education. And Black parents were asked to keep their children home every Monday. And the boy put pressure on the Black schools, the children had to have an excuse for why they were absent. And of course the superintendent made a statement that, of course I caught right on to, because he had said he could not assure our children's safety if we kept them at home. And of course, if you can't assure my child's safety at home, then you can't assure it at school. | 42:53 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | And so I wrote to that effect, to the excuse, "Well, since your superintendent cannot assure my child's safety. I'm keeping at home." So they couldn't do anything with that. Nothing. Because he said that he as a public statement that he made. And of course, since I knew I was going to keep him out, I made a ditto. If you're familiar to the Ditto machine, it makes purple copies. So I made them all in purple to make sure to let him know that I was not writing a new statement every time, all I did was sign it in black. And I sent that to school with him, even though I worked in Memphis schools. And I was at that time what we call the Memphis Community Lab. That was old Owen College. One building that was left on the campus. | 43:30 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | Advanced Junior High is built on the part of that lot now, it's a building that's very deteriorated right behind it, but that was called the Memphis Community Learning Lab. It was an experimental program to look at the modalities of children's learning. And so we all wore black bands, some of us, not everybody, some did, our directors did not and some others who felt they couldn't do it. But of course there were some of us there who worked there, who had been activists and been in the marches and whatever. And so we supported that through that. And also some of the bands that we had here in Memphis City schools also. | 44:18 |
| Doris Dixon | And what years did the Black [indistinct 00:45:01]? | 44:59 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | Let me see. About mid-'60s. They finally appointed two people to the Board of Education, who is now Judge George Brown, he was appointed, and Hollis Price. | 45:05 |
| Doris Dixon | And when did they finally make those appointments? | 45:29 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | After they saw that we were not going to change the Black Mondays. And in Tennessee, you get your funding based on the number of children who come to school. And parents really did do that. And of course, doing the garbage strikes also. | 45:31 |
| Doris Dixon | So they did the same thing in support of the sanitation? | 45:48 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | We took up money for sanitation workers, and they asked us not to put any garbage out on the street. Because they said, "If you put it out the street, we'll pick it up." I should have taken a picture of my backyard, it was horrendous. It was horrendous. But they had asked us not to put it out on the street. And some people did, they said it was is a hassle or what have you. But one of the things I did, my job at my school was to take up a dollar from each teacher every week. Because they didn't have any money. And really during that time, garbage men, if you looked at their salaries, they really would've qualified for welfare, because they were making so little money. And it amazes me now how fearful people were at that time to even give a dollar, that they were so fearful, that we had about close to forty people in my building, and only seven of us would give a dollar a week. And some people were so fearful. And then they asked— | 45:49 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | — Friday, but I understand you. In Memphis, you've never had [indistinct 00:00:05] you get it here. Okay, we've known for that. I was up this morning at six o'clock taking some medication. But we would be out on Fridays and— No, Monday, I'm sorry. And so, therefore, they asked us not to go to work. And so, some of us did, some of us. I just chose to stay out. | 0:01 |
| Doris Dixon | It's hard for, I guess, going after that period. Could you explain to me the fear? Where were they afraid to give the dollar? | 0:33 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | People were fearful that somebody might find out they gave a dollar in their jobs. They were so afraid of their jobs and the repercussions of those jobs and what have you. And sometimes people have fears that have no— There's no grounds for it. But some people are just fearful of little things that ordinary people would not be afraid of of being associated with the movement. Some people really were afraid to be around Martin Luther King. And we celebrate his birthday and all those things now, but you have to recognize during that time, there were many African Americans who did not participate and did not believe in what he was doing because some African Americans also thought that he was a troublemaker. But that always depends on who you are and how far your vision is or how close your vision is up to you. | 0:38 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | And you can always find the people who will wait until someone else takes a step or makes a sacrifice and enjoy the fruits of— and others who are willing to sacrifice even their lives, because those people who walked with him also had the same thing. They were afraid to attend the meetings down at Clayborn Temple and Mason Temple. They were afraid to go there even and support. But yet, it mobilized people that ordinarily would not have been a part of that structure. There was a gang— And that's why I say gangs are not new either. They're more destructive now, but there have always been gangs. There was a gang in South Memphis called The Invaders, and really virtually controlled that area. They became a part of the civil rights movement and they changed their lives. Some went on to higher education, no one got his doctorate degree and some still living the dream, you see? It changed people in many ways, changed people in many ways. | 1:41 |
| Doris Dixon | Mm-hmm, it did. | 2:59 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | Yes, it did. In the moment, you had to make a decision one way or the other. Either you had to join it, or as they say, get out of the way. And I can recall after Martin Luther King's death, because I had been in Mason Temple the night he had spoken, it was a eerie feeling. It was a very eerie. When I say eerie, it felt like he was somewhere else. And then, the next day, we heard about his shooting. I was at school. We were in service and we had a principal who was not the best person in the world. And I left because his [indistinct 00:03:50] was, "Well, we have to finish the workshop." And I told him I would not stay, that I would not stay. Because I had been following what had been going on all the time. | 3:01 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | In fact, in when he was supposed to march before he came back this time, the attention was so high we were sure something drastic would happen when it snowed six inches of snow. And it never snowed that late in March. Never. And just some of us felt that just really something was just in the air and that it was going to be something dreadful going to happen. It snowed. That kept the march from going on because prior to that, some young people had got in the march and started breaking out store windows on Bill Street. And that's what the police were waiting for something to happen. They were prepared for something to happen. And someone, and some have said that that was a plan anyway, that was something that they had planned to happen anyway, so that they could move in with the [indistinct 00:04:49] and what have you, and called out the National Guard and all those kinds of things. | 4:01 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | But it had been quite difficult during those times. It had been. And then, after that time, the White establishment stepped forward. What the union was asking for was not unreasonable and could have been done, but once the city broke out in riots after his death, then the decision makers who are not in public office, those who really control and tell others what they will or will not do, then they stepped in and said, "You will do this." And therefore, the city council did that. There was only one councilman, as I can recall it and remember it. One White councilman who really tried to get them to do that. I think his last name was Blanchard, something like that. He tried very hard to get the council at that time, it was still called city council, to really come to grips with that and go on and end the strike. | 4:53 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | And of course, he was always voted down because the mayor did not want, and those that the mayor had control of, of course, stuck with him. But it was something. But as we say, you can't can't change history. It was going to be that way anyway, that's the way it had to be. Maybe to draw the consciousness of this nation to a point, I don't know what can happen now to draw the consciousness back to that point because I think that it did draw the consciousness of Whites and Blacks as to what the predicament the America was in, the land of the free, the home of the brave democracy. What the democracy mean to whom. And so, it made people look at race relations in a different way at that time. I don't know what can happen now to make it change again. | 5:58 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | I was looking at the news this morning, I think Connecticut somewhere, I'm trying to think where it was. Some of the White boys in that yearbook did a code thing that says kill all niggers. And that's in the yearbook. Now that place is in turmoil because of the fact, I understand all this year, they've been trying to deal with race relations and having all kinds of meetings and sessions and groupings and what have you to do this. But yet, in that code, that's what they did. Because the superintendent said, the boys have been suspended, they will not participate in graduation and they have not been allowed at school, so they can't make up any tests or anything at this time. But we have a young generation of African American and White Americans who have the slightest idea about its history. | 6:53 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | One of the pet peeves I have is that we learn so little about our history in America. We put it on the back burner. And yet, you can go to most lands, most countries of the place and the children can tell you about their history. And we have no concept about our history of what the government is all about or what history's all about or what this country's all about. Democracy does not mean you can do anything you want to do. Democracy means that you must work harder than any other kind of government in order to make it fulfill itself. And we don't have the right understanding of what a democracy is. And the fear is that no one is really teaching the children. I often make the remark to some of my children, "If you going to be in charge of the world, I'm going to kill myself." Because the fact it's very difficult to get us focused. | 7:42 |
| Doris Dixon | There were people earlier who had focus that's been lost. | 8:40 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | Oh, it's lost because see, now all young people think it's a given. | 8:46 |
| Doris Dixon | Right. But I want to go back to where that earlier focus came from. That's what I want to understand. | 8:49 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | The focus had to be there earlier on because you were talking about a group of people that had been enslaved for 400 years, that were released from slavery that had nothing. | 8:55 |
| Doris Dixon | Right, exactly. | 9:04 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | That's no education, no money. I don't know what happened to the forty acres and a mule. I'm thinking about suing the government, see if I can get mine because I don't know what happened to it. | 9:06 |
| Doris Dixon | Exactly. | 9:17 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | And so, therefore, and lived in a system really where they were enslaved really up until this, I would say about maybe twenty, thirty years ago because the sharecrop system kept you in slavery. And so, basically, for many African Americans, there was no significant difference. And so, the only thing you had for you was the same thing that the slave had was I've got to get out of this situation. You were focused on getting out of the situation. Now, because through laws and the struggles of others, you are out of the situation. | 9:17 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | And so, therefore, you've lost your focus. Your focus has been clouded over. You are still in the same situation, but the terrain has changed, the people have changed. But when you really look at, there's still no significant difference. If the greatest majority of your people are operating on, for example, minimum wage, how do you get out of it? You're just as poor now as you were then because maybe poorer, because at least you had whatever [indistinct 00:10:29] were in food and shelter. And now, it's a struggle just to juggle those kinds of things. And then, you look now at the changes that the government wants to make radically without preparing the people for the change. | 9:54 |
| Doris Dixon | Let me ask you this, you said that— And when the movement or during the movement people had to make a decision to be with it or without it, how would you characterize it? What spurred those people who decide, "This is me, this is change I want to push for."? | 10:45 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | Because at some point in time, you get tired of the status quo, and someone has to. That's a personal kind of thing. You have to decide what is important to you. How would you rather live? And I think that people made that decision that either I will stand up on my two feet or I will stay on my knees crawling. And those people who decided I will stand up, then they made the decision, no matter what happens, this is where I am. And some people still were crawling. | 11:02 |
| Doris Dixon | Now, I guess what I'm wondering with that, are there historical reasons? Are there reasons from what— Because I guess in some ways, some of these people are coming from some of the same situations. I guess I wonder why some people did and some people didn't given the circumstances. | 11:50 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | You have always had some, even during the time of our enslavement. You've had some who said, "I'd rather die." You've had mothers who kill their children rather than let their children grow in slavery. | 12:07 |
| Doris Dixon | Right, right. True. | 12:19 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | And so, therefore, the decision has to be made on what do I want my legacy to be? Those mothers who kill those babies said this, "I'd rather this child die—" | 12:20 |
| Doris Dixon | Than to live— | 12:35 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | "— than to be born a slave." And less than an animal, really. And so, therefore, that's a harsh decision for a mother to make. At some point in time, a man must decide, "Am I a man or what am I? If I'm a man, then I'll die for my convictions." And in many cases all through history, you found people who had to make a decision. If I cannot stand upright, then I would rather be dead than bent. And I think that this is what people have to decide. What is more important to you? Your comfortable home, being in a comfortable situation of being uneasy? You see? And some people have said that I'd rather clear my conscience and decide that this is how I want to live or die than for someone else to make that decision for me. | 12:35 |
| Doris Dixon | Now, about our period of enslavement, you said that there were certain silences in your family about where your grandfather came from. Did you know or did you learn or were you taught anything about that time, or about your family's experience before you were born? | 13:30 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | No. My mother would talk about her father and her mother. They had not been born as slaves. They were born as freed people, but their parents had been slaves. And they knew nothing about their parents, which was not unusual. And so, therefore, she knew very little about her grandparents. We tried to capture as much as we could that she knew about. Her mother was part White, very, very fair. Her father was very dark. Which made her feel that her mother's mother had been a slave who had been impregnated by a— Her mother's mother was probably Black with a White father, and that had passed on into her mother. But very little information was known. | 13:47 |
| Doris Dixon | Did she know how they became free? | 14:55 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | No, she did not. Probably during the time of emancipation, Tennessee and Mississippi, really, we had a lot of great battles in Tennessee. But Tennessee as such was not in the war alone. | 14:58 |
| Doris Dixon | Right, right. | 15:16 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | It was up through Fort Dawns when Graham came through there, came those places, you see? You had hits in and out of Tennessee, out of Mississippi until they finally went all the way into Mississippi. As they said, to the sea. But Tennessee was under martial law almost that time. In fact, Andrew Johnson, the president after Lincoln's vice president moved to presidency, was a governor of Tennessee during that time. Because he was from East Tennessee. East Tennessee never succeeded from the union. They wanted to set up the state of East Tennessee, was not allowed to do it. But he had to flee into Kentucky in order to not be arrested, but he was a governor of Tennessee during the time we were occupied by the union troops. | 15:17 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | And this is one of the reasons why he was chosen as the vice president for Lincoln on his second term because of that loyalty.I don't know if you know too much about this state, this is a strange state. The shape is very long and they call it three Grand Divisions, and they're all different. Each division is completely different. As far as attitudes and all those kinds of things that make up a state, it's completely different. But the Blacks in this area were— Well, most of your Blacks were in west Tennessee anyway. You had some in middle Tennessee, where you had some plantations. East Tennessee was basically farmers. If somebody had a slave, it was almost like a part of the family. | 16:09 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | But small farms, subsistence farmers in East Tennessee, probably have all those small little counties over there. Most of your Blacks were in west Tennessee. This is the land that Andrew Jackson had, Shelby Winchester bought from the Indians. And the counties are very large, but this was the flat land that was used where most of your plantations were found. And so, therefore, this is where you found most of your Black population. And even the state today is where you found most of your Black population in the state. Found very few Blacks in east Tennessee. And some areas in east Tennessee you can go and you will not find one Black. | 17:07 |
| Doris Dixon | And you said your mother was born here. What about your neighbors growing up around this neighborhood? What were they like from Somerville and from Mississippi? | 17:43 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | Seemed like most of them, as I remember, basically I would've known the young people and they were basically all born in this area. | 17:53 |
| Doris Dixon | Okay, [indistinct 00:18:05]. | 18:04 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | Mm-mm, no, mm-mm. But now, Memphis was they stopping place, was first stopping place out of Mississippi. You have many people who have their heritage in Mississippi and Arkansas. Alright? And then, the next jumping off point would be Chicago, and then Detroit because this was where the Black migration basically went. You had some who went in Pennsylvania and those areas there. But I would say the great mass of Black people, once they left Mississippi, if they didn't stay in Memphis, they came to Memphis, they did not stay in Memphis, they went on to the industrial north, trying to get in the steel mills, automobile-making factories and this type thing, as laborers. | 18:06 |
| Doris Dixon | Did you have family who'd gone further north? | 18:53 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | No, I did not have any. | 18:53 |
| Doris Dixon | Members of your family? | 18:54 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | Mm-mm. I have have two brothers. My one that's deceased, he lived in Detroit. He went into service and he just decided to go there after coming out of service. He was drafted in service right before World War II ended. And then, I have a younger brother who lived there. But before he went there, he went to Chicago and lived out of service. And then, he went on to Detroit because our older brother was there. Those are only two of my siblings that ever left Memphis. They're only two. | 18:58 |
| Doris Dixon | You said you went to White Stone Baptist and you later joined Metropolitan [indistinct 00:19:40]. | 19:32 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | Before I joined Metropolitan, I went to— When we moved on Illinois Street over near the river, I then went to Salem Gilfield Baptist Church and I stayed there until I was eighteen. And then, when I was nineteen years old, I joined Metropolitan Baptist Church. | 19:40 |
| Doris Dixon | So do you have any members of Dr. Owen? | 19:55 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | I have some members of Dr. Owen. Dr. Owen was a person you could not get very close to. | 19:58 |
| Doris Dixon | Okay. | 20:02 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | Not very close to Dr. Owen. He was good minister, good administrator, good concerned person and active also. Our church, all those churches that first had Martin Luther King here during that time when the meetings were held. Some of the early meetings were held at our church. And one of the reasons we could do that is because our church, many Whites used to ask us what White church was there first and that church was built by Black people. And that was unusual at that time for a large institution such as that church to have be built by a Black congregation. | 20:03 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | And so, it always amazed some Whites that we built that church. The part of this phases over here, that was the first part of that church, what we call the educational building. And then, the sanctuary were built was built later on. But they purchased this land and built that church themselves. But Dr. Owen was a person who worked in the community, was well respected, really concerned with education for Black young people. Highly concerned with education of Black young people because he saw that I feel as really our salvation if everybody was educated. | 20:45 |
| Doris Dixon | This is something. One thing that I've always been interested in, at the local level at the church, were you all aware of the political wranglings or clinical goings-on at the National Baptist Convention level about the founding of the new convention and all? Did you [indistinct 00:21:43]? | 21:27 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | We knew something about it because I think Dr. Owen was the vice president at that time when that occurred. | 21:44 |
| Doris Dixon | Okay. | 21:48 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | He was the vice president of the National Baptist Convention. Because we heard after he came back and Dr. Owen was the type of person that he was not going to air any dirty linen. | 21:50 |
| Doris Dixon | Okay. | 22:02 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | So to really know anything, you had to find out from somebody else. But at that time, I understand that once the president had a group of declaring president for life that destroyed the convention. Now, one of the things that seemed to have done, those ministers who had higher callings, I'll put it that way, decided they could not stay in the convention. And those are the ones that withdrew out the convention. I don't have the slightest idea who decide on the second convention, but I think they approached Dr. Owen about that, about starting a new convention. | 22:04 |
| Doris Dixon | I think the reason I ask, because there seems to be a connection between that kind of thing going on and what you mentioned earlier about people making a choice whether to be active, whether not to be active. And also, the things you talked about about communities, how they're infiltrated by insiders, by insiders who actually go and tell White community all those things [indistinct 00:23:08]. | 22:47 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | One of the things that many of us say at our churches, that there are many things that wreck many churches. Because of the structure, our church, it will not wreck it because of the way Dr. Owens set that church up. | 23:10 |
| Doris Dixon | [indistinct 00:23:27]? | 23:25 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | As far as an administrator's concerned? | 23:27 |
| Doris Dixon | Mm-hmm. | 23:30 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | Most times when you find churches splitting and what have you, and of course, Metropolitan came out of a split church, came out First Baptist on Bill. But he developed the system that that church would operate under that makes it almost impossible for people to abscond with the funds. For example, many churches have problems with their funds and people getting loans and what have you, they shouldn't have on churches and using the funds as they should not. Well, that doesn't happen at our church. It cannot happen at the church. And we can always attribute that to Dr. Owen, the way he set it up. And one of our deceased members, Jesse Turner, whose president of Tri-State Bank, basically we have used the Tri-State Bank, since its inception as far as our finances are concerned. | 23:30 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | But the church is run like a business. The financial structure of the church is run like a business. And so, one of the things our members never asked about is where is the money? Because they know, if you ever try to get anything out there, you know that everything has have a voucher and signatures, and then it;s our finance committee operates with all the money. And so, we feel secure in those kind of things. And then, the church has always try to be on the cutting edge, I guess, of new things that are occurring and looking at the needs of the people in the community. And of course, Dr. Lofton has brought a great deal of that to our church as well. Dr. Owen, a good administrator, good minister, of an era. And then, you have Dr. Lofton who brought in some new ideas and new focus for our church as far as community outreach and being involved. | 24:24 |
| Doris Dixon | Now, how do you mean that Dr. Owen was of an era? | 25:27 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | I think that when you look at the old school of religion, for example, when we built our gym, we built a gym and the gym had a bowling alley and all that thing. But Dr. Owen didn't think you should use it. He saw it being used, for example, banquets and things like that. And so, therefore, the children didn't play in the gym, there were no basketball games or anything like that. And you didn't use a bowling alley. When Dr. Lofton came, we used the gym, used the bowling alley when it was fixed, when we get it to work. | 25:30 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | But he had a different idea about the involvement of children in the church, well-rounded one, where you have ministers of a certain era who saw the church, the building itself, as a sacred place where you couldn't do anything in there but pray and preach. Then you get someone such as Dr. Lofton, who looks at it as a building being all things that those people who must use it. And therefore, you must not only preach and pray, but you also help build other parts of that person too. And so, therefore, that's what it did. And sometimes, I looked at a young lady, she's an adult now, has a child and married, one summer when we were working there, we had a baseball team. She was really a hard person to handle. | 26:04 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | And at that time, Dr. Reginald Porter was our youth director and counselor. And she did something. He said she couldn't play, but I was feeling sorry for her. I said, "Reverend Porter, please let her play." He said, "No." Said, "It has to be this way." He has worked with her family through the years. She has finished college. I think often now, what would she have been had he said yes for me? But he had to get her to understand that there were rules you have to follow and things you have to do. And so, what we have tried to do is build character in our young people through sports and sportsmanship, how to get along with each other, how to respect each other and these type things. Sometimes you might preach that sermon, but a child might not hear. He has to learn another way. | 26:54 |
| Doris Dixon | Sure. Now, were there times as "your mother's rebel child" that you had to have those rules and things reinforced? | 27:44 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | I was so stickler on her rules. When she said, "Get in," I'd fly home, be home on time. When she said be there, I knew she meant it. I was obedient to her rules. She didn't have a problem with me. By being home on time, her demands were greater on me than other my brother I felt, but I can understand now. She didn't allow me to make any C's. And when I'd question it, because my brother who's younger than I made C's, D's and F's, she said, "He's doing the best he can, but you can do better." And so, therefore, I think that the kind of things that she required when I was rebellious, I wasn't rebellious against her rules because I knew better than to do that. Mother would let you slide a long way, and then she wouldn't take any prisoners. | 27:54 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | But as far as looking at injustices, you see, she never tried to stop me from doing that. Raising questions, she never tried to stop me from doing that. When I raised the question of [indistinct 00:29:05], she never tried to stop me from doing those kind of things. When I said something was not fair and it wasn't, she didn't try to show me that it was fair. And so, I think that there's a difference in that I'm obedient to rules that are rules that are fair and good. Those rules that are not, I probably will be disobedient to them. I'm afraid I've also passed it on to my son. Those things that he thinks are fair, it's fine, but if he thinks you're doing something unfair, he will question it. He's thirty four now, but he had occasion of being suspended. Only one time being suspended from school. | 28:47 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | And when the assistant principal called me at home, he said, "You got to come pick up your son because he won't take a paddling." And I said, "What do you mean?" He said, "He won't take a paddling." I said, "Let me talk with him." I said, "Bernie, whatever you did, take your paddling." He said, "No, I can't do that." He said, "I'm not wrong." And so, I talked to her, I said, "Now, for my son to say that he's not wrong and won't take a paddling, it's something else to this." I said, "I'll be picking him up." And sure enough, he wasn't wrong. He had no reason to be paddled. And even though he was out school four days, the board reprimanded that person. Well, [indistinct 00:30:18]. The quick thing to do is jump to some conclusion. That's the quick thing to do without taking the time to say, "What happened?" | 29:42 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | And so, when they took time to find out what happened from the study hall teacher and all the information, the other boy, they had been in a fight, he took his paddling because he knew was wrong. But when they got all the information together, he was the only one that should have been paddled. And of course, I went to the principal at school and gave him my understanding of what he needed to do, why he was wrong and what he should have done. And that before they ready decide to paddle my child, listen to him first. I said, "I listened to him. I expect everybody else to listen to him too because everybody has a point of view and everybody has a side." And I try to train him the same way. There are rules that you cannot break. If there are rules that you break, then there's a consequence for them. However, if you feel it's unfair, you have a right to your opinion and you have a right to raise the issue of its fairness. | 30:27 |
| Doris Dixon | You said you taught and you spent most of your adult career, professional career, as a teacher within the Memphis City schools? | 31:26 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | Mm-hmm, I went away for two years. My husband was transferred to Tuskegee, Alabama, and I worked at in Tuskegee, Alabama at the Board of Education. | 31:31 |
| Doris Dixon | And what schools did you teach here [indistinct 00:31:46]? | 31:44 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | Here? | 31:46 |
| Doris Dixon | In Memphis. | 31:47 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | All right, before I went to Alabama, I taught at really only three places for fourteen years. One, at Cardwell Elementary School, which is in north Memphis, area called Bearwater. And then, I taught, after I went out on maternity leave, my son was born. And then, I went to a place called Carpenter in north Memphis, area called Binghampton. | 31:49 |
| Doris Dixon | What's the name of the school? | 32:13 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | Carpenter. | 32:14 |
| Doris Dixon | Okay. | 32:15 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | It was there with the junior high high school. They only had grades one through four. And then, you had the high school starting in seventh grade. After fourth grade, the children went down to Lester Elementary, and then came back that school. And then, I went to A. B. Hill, which is back in south Memphis. And then, I went to what is called the Community Learning Lab. It was an experimental place where you did not have children in classrooms as per se, but we did have children to come in, or the experimental children to come in for five week visits, stays there at that particular school. And then, we had children that came every day for an experience in the lab. It was quite unique. Would've been great for education had they kept it. | 32:17 |
| Doris Dixon | How long did it operate? | 33:05 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | About six, seven years. I was there for the three, four years, and then I moved to Alabama. | 33:08 |
| Doris Dixon | Okay. And after you came back? | 33:17 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | After I came back, I went to work for Shelby County schools. The director of personnel at Shelby County schools, [indistinct 00:33:24], we worked together as volunteers on the YWCA board. And she asked me if I would come to work for them. They would need Black teachers and she knew. And Black teachers with advanced degrees, and so she asked where I'd come. I went because Memphis Schools wanted me to go back into the program that I had left. And I developed the program that they wanted me to go into. | 33:18 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | I developed a mathematics program there that became Title I program, mathematics in Memphis City schools. And it was never meant to be a lab program. And they were telling me what they were doing, and my feeling was I knew what I developed. Nobody can tell me what I developed. It was meant to be in a regular classroom where you would not isolate children out of a regular classroom, that you can teach the same thing on three different levels. And one of those levels would fall for that child in a regular classroom. And so, therefore, I refused to go. And so, they wouldn't hire me unless I went there. And so, I went to Shelby County schools instead. | 33:48 |
| Doris Dixon | And what did you retire from? Are you still working? | 34:28 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | Still working. This will be my last year coming up. | 34:28 |
| Doris Dixon | What schools did you— | 34:30 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | In Shelby County schools, Mount Pisgah. Which I tried to get University of Tennessee, at that time, to research. Dr. Ronna, who was one of my instructors in my postgraduate work here was transferred to Knoxville. And at the time, I went there. You could see what changes were going on in that part of Shelby County. At that time, you had almost a fifty fifty percent ratio. It was very evident that that ratio was going to change. And it did, drastically. And I doubt there's even ten percent Black children there now because Black people at that time were selling their land in that area. And that's where you find all those subdivisions out there now. | 34:32 |
| Doris Dixon | Right. Now, over the course of your tenure, especially early on Memphis City schools, how would you characterize the conditions of your job? And by that, I'm trying to ask a specific, but also a general question about race in the classroom, race in this whole system as a teacher. What were your experiences? | 35:17 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | In Memphis schools, we did not have it. They had not started. Well, they had started busing, but no White children would bus to our school. You see, most of the busing basically had been Black children going to other schools. And in fact, before I left, there were no White teachers in Cardwell or Carpenter. At A. B. Hill, I guess close to the time that I left, that two years before I left, I think we got two White teachers. One on my grade level, and she got along fine. No, we got along just fine. And she got along fine. The children tried to manipulate her a lot because she was trying to please. And oftentimes, we would have to step in. She had a problem with the boy. Every time she tried to take a break, he would supposedly have a fit, he called them, that's what he called them, and wanted to jump out the window. | 35:41 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | And she'd rush and rush and rush. So I told her one day, I said, "Sit down, I'm going to go handle this." I went up there. I told children, I said, "Children—" See, she should've used the same psychology, but she was young. I said, "Children, don't try to hold him back." I said, "Do you realize if he jumps out that window, he's going to carry you with him? So next time he has one of his spells, you get way over here by the board and you hold this board. Don't get near him and just go and let him jump because we'd rather just one person be hurt than a lot of people." He never had another fit. And I told her, I said, "Sometimes you have to be smarter than the children." And I said, "Stop running." But he wanted that attention, you see? It only occurred when she was not there and he wanted the attention, so we had to work with him to get him to understand that's not the way you get attention. Okay? | 36:45 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | You don't do that, you don't scare the teacher. I said, "You were scaring your classmates more than anything else because they thought you were going to really jump out of the window." I said, "Well, both of us know that you were not." Off a third floor window. So he didn't have anymore. And sometimes that's what it takes, just talking through and to. Well, she learned the lesson and she was grateful for learning the lesson. We never had any White children in the lab because, as I said, most of the busing was moving the Black children into White communities. And then, you had the White flight away from Memphis, much of it into Shelby County schools. In Shelby County, most of your classes are White. At the schools that I taught, I had Black and White children. In Mount Pisgah, we didn't have too many— In fact, no racial problems at all while the principal who was Black was there. He's a very stern man. Maybe not as educated or polished as some would be, but he had an excellent school. | 37:35 |
| Doris Dixon | Now, so up to a point in the Memphis City schools, Black teachers who are in one group of schools and White teachers at another? | 38:47 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | Mm-hmm. And then, what they started doing was asking people if they would go. | 38:55 |
| Doris Dixon | Okay. | 38:56 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | Oh, first, very small numbers at first. Usually, they would ask, maybe they might have two at a school. We had two White teachers, so at least they had somebody to communicate to. But in our school, on our grade, but we had the one teacher. She pretty much stayed with us and communicated with us. And the other teacher did the same, so the choices there were very good. | 38:58 |
| Doris Dixon | And when did they start asking? | 39:22 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | In the early 1960s. | 39:23 |
| Doris Dixon | Now, was pay levels equal to White and Black teachers? | 39:30 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | By that time, yes, they were. | 39:35 |
| Doris Dixon | Okay. Had they been throughout your [indistinct 00:39:38]? | 39:36 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | No. Well, I really don't know. | 39:37 |
| Doris Dixon | Okay. | 39:41 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | I really couldn't tell. But I know through law, they had to have equal pay. | 39:42 |
| Doris Dixon | Now, did you get any— I don't know the right word for it, but the generational Black teachers before you, do you remember what kinds of things they told you about? Did you student teach in Memphis [indistinct 00:40:06]? | 39:51 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | No, I didn't, mm-mm. | 40:03 |
| Doris Dixon | [indistinct 00:40:08]. | 40:03 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | I didn't student teach at all. | 40:03 |
| Doris Dixon | Okay, okay. | 40:03 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | They really didn't talk about it too much. | 40:12 |
| Doris Dixon | Okay. | 40:14 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | But the difference that you had in that era was these people were very professional and they loved their profession and they took great pride in what they were doing. And they worked very hard. They were very well respected in the community. And they saw themselves to be a teacher, that was something very special. And the community saw them as being very special. I can't say that is what it is now, I'm not so sure it is. Things have changed quite a bit. But they labored hard and long and provided for their children, even for things that they felt the children didn't have, provided extra kinds of things for them, for the children that were there. They were very special people and they were deemed special. | 40:15 |
| Doris Dixon | Do you remember any things like that your teachers did [indistinct 00:41:30] providing for children? | 41:27 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | Oh, well, I know some kids who might have shoes, they'd buy them and stuff like that. They make sure every child has some food to eat at lunchtime, those type things. They'd always have extra pencils and papers and those type things, which any child who would not have any and this type thing. And really took a great deal of interest. I can recall in my early teaching career. And I got it from other teachers, I used to visit the home in the afternoon. | 41:33 |
| Doris Dixon | Oh, really? | 42:03 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | Uh-huh. Oh, most afternoons I would go visit. And [indistinct 00:42:08]. When I first started teaching in Bearwater, which is an area of a great deal of poverty and neglect. The children, I would make sure that I check. I did the same thing that I had seen the teachers who had taught me to have extra paper and pencils, things like that. And I had no problem going to the homes to see if a child was absent or something like that. I'd talk to the parent out of being concerned about the child. And it became a habit with me really of in the afternoons, sometimes I just park the car and just walk. [indistinct 00:42:43] and I'd go to this house, this house, this house that afternoon and go another street in the afternoon. And so, the relationship that you had with the parents was quite different than the relationship you have now. I'm not so sure how parents would feel now if you came to their homes like that now. But it was the kind of thing that was not unusual. | 42:03 |
| Doris Dixon | And so, this was a custom of Black teachers? | 43:01 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | Yes, that you went to visit their home. In fact, it was a thing that your principal advised you to do. You need to make sure you visit every home of every child you teach. I remember one afternoon I was trying to find a little boy. He had a twin and he had been to school so long and I wanted to find out why. And I was so late trying to find his house to find out, so one of my students, they showed me how to get to it. I couldn't find the street cause there was no street there. It was a name of the street, but the street was not there. You had to get on another street and walk across a field and go to the back door. I would never have found it if that child hadn't come along and shown me where it was. But I always made a habit too, to visit and meet every parent that was a child I taught.And it's always a good working relationship to be in touch with parents. | 43:04 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | Black parents, they would be very happy for you to do that. They would be very happy if they knew you'd come and you could go in there and you could see it so spick and span and this type of thing. If I had to make a special visit, I'd call parents and let them know I'd be there. And you could tell that they had made special effort to make sure that no matter how humble their homes were, that it was clean and things were straight for you to make that home visit. It was definitely a asset too, because then you had an opportunity to tell them what their child was doing, what they needed to do, that kinds of things. Help them to know how to set up a study time for the children and this type of things. And this was something that Black teachers did on a regular basis. | 43:51 |
| Doris Dixon | When did it stop? | 44:41 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | I think it stopped with the desegregation of schools, with the busing. Busing started off very easily in Memphis. There was no incident. The chief of police was Carl [indistinct 00:45:05]. They knew it was going to start. No news was told about it until the day it happened. One of the schools that was first desegregated, my son was very small, I had came out on a doctor's visit, so I passed through that. I didn't know what was going on. Rozelle School, performing arts school now. And we saw so many police cars and policemen on motorcycles, policemen on every corner. They were on the neighborhood on motorcycles and cars. And we had no idea what had happened until we got back and it was on the news that schools had been desegregated. They would not let White parents there to pick up their children. The children had to stay there all day. | 44:44 |
| Lanetha Collins Branch | And so, it went rather smoothly in Memphis. I think it did cause a White flight because even though it's peculiar, people will say, "I'm not a racist," but they don't want their children to go to school with Black children. And in one of my postgraduate classes, Dr. Ronna, who's at the University of Tennessee, I wrote a paper, "It Ain't the Busing, It's the niggers." And it was in a school law desegregation class and he didn't want to believe. He said, "No, Lanetha. No, they have to get up so early in the morning and go to school and all these things." So one night in class, he came and said, "Lanetha, I want to apologize." He said, "I was up early." His father-in-law, I think was the president of Millsap or something. He said, "My father-in-law was coming in, ready go to hospital for cancer surgery." He said, "So I was up really early," and said, "I went out to get the paper about seven o'clock—" | 45:48 |
| Lanetha Branch | Everybody decided it was not an issue, it was a race issue and nobody wanted to feel that race was an issue. That the buses would be too early, the travel distance would be too great and nobody ever dealt with the race issue. I truly feel that's why we still have a race issue in Memphis today, because nobody ever wants to deal with the race issue. And so therefore, what you have in Memphis now is almost a Black school system, except for those schools that have special programs. And then people sit up all night, trying to get their children in there. My question is, what's so different about those schools than any other? Are you sure that they're doing a better job at any other school? | 0:02 |
| Doris Dixon | The optional schools? | 0:56 |
| Lanetha Branch | Yeah, that they're doing a better job at any other school. I'm not so sure. Many Whites ran the Shelby County. Shelby County's school system is not as good as Memphis' school system and that's just the truth. I'm not saying that as an African American, I'm just saying the truth. And what I see every day that goes on. But yet, they run to that system and think that it is better and even say it's better. And I'll question that, if that's true. There are difference in people, yet there are likenesses. If someone or you as a parent tell your child every single day how great they are, how wonderful they are and how smart they are, there's a self-fulfilling prophecy in that. | 0:57 |
| Lanetha Branch | On the other hand, if someone tells your child that you are nothing, you are dumb, you are stupid, there's also a self-fulfilling prophecy in that. Now, you will have a small percentage of each group feel this is not the truth and they will seek the truth and see where they really are. But if you tell somebody that all the time, you see, they believe it. When I first went to Memphis State University, that's where I got my master's degree, not many Blacks out there. | 1:53 |
| Lanetha Branch | I'd gone to all Black schools up to that time and I'd heard all this stuff about how inferior Blacks were. And then in fact, the first class I took, there were three of us, two young undergraduate students and myself. And then the next term, that summer I was the only Black in the class. And for my observance, and I'm just being honest with you, I didn't read the book, I didn't do anything but I made an A in the class because of the fact I found out then that what they said is not true. | 2:26 |
| Doris Dixon | What were they saying? | 3:03 |
| Lanetha Branch | Blacks were inferior. In fact, before I went to the—In fact, I'll never forget as long as I live. During that Summer, the superintendent of schools at that time was Mr. Stembert. And I'll never forget on the second section of the commercial appeal, he had an article saying that Black teachers were inferior to White teachers. It should be over that in the library, it ought to be about 1964. Summer of '64, June, July, somewhere in there. | 3:04 |
| Lanetha Branch | And I was in a class, instructor was Dr. Rosestelle Woolner I think she's still at Memphis State. And we went to the first term, it was a preschool education because at the time I was teaching a third grade, it was kindergarten through third grade classes. | 3:36 |
| Lanetha Branch | And the second semester was a methods class. Of course the young ladies, they didn't come the second time. I guess they were younger than I was, of course. | 3:53 |
| Lanetha Branch | And of course, the attitude of the class, nobody wanted to sit next to them, type thing about. And see, I was completely different. I'd go find the blondest person I could find, that's who I'd go sit by. The person I felt that did not want me to sit down, that's exactly where I'd go sit. And usually they'd get up and move one day and I just looked over my shoulder that way. | 4:03 |
| Lanetha Branch | And Dr. Rosestelle Woolner will caught this and she always talked about people being the same and having strengths and what have you in materials in methods, and this is the difference between people. | 4:22 |
| Lanetha Branch | In materials and methods, we had to do presentations in the class and I did my presentation in the class because I had some excellent students. I went over to school and brought stuff back and all these things. I did do an excellent, top notch presentation, plus we had to tell a story three different ways and I did a sock puppet, little roller thing and all that. But I had experience. I was a teacher and I'd learned from my peers. I learned all this, my own teachers taught me and the teachers I worked with taught me as a new teacher. And after that time, the person who had gotten up and moved from me, every other minute, she's in my face. Because she felt— | 4:36 |
| Lanetha Branch | When I finished my presentation, Dr. Woolner said this. "I did not know Mrs. Branch until she took my class last session. I have never been in her classroom. But what I have seen now, I would not mind either of my girls being in her room." | 5:16 |
| Lanetha Branch | So what she was doing is affirming me as a teacher, but also what they perceived to be is the teacher liked me. And so therefore, if the teacher likes this person, I better act like I like this person. And the person who moved from me had a terrible presentation and I knew she was going to ask me. You know how you know something? And she said, "Mrs. Branch, will you evaluate this?" It was all wrong, but you had to evaluate it because that's part of your grade, too. She did hers on the farm and you're talking about she worked with kindergarten children. She had a chicken almost as big as the barn. | 5:37 |
| Lanetha Branch | She had ostrich feathers, peacock feathers. These are not things you found on a farm. So when you're dealing with small children, you have to put things in perspective or they will have put them just like you give them to them. And so she did a horrible one. But the whole thing is when Dr. Woolner affirmed that I was just as good as anybody else was, I felt that I was, because I felt I did a good job. But for the superintendent of the schools who made that statement and for her to say, "I would put both my girls in her room," that told the others there that what he has said is not so, you see. And so I have learned through the years that sometimes what we perceive to be the best, what we be perceive to be the worst is not. They are some of the best teachers in the world [indistinct 00:07:10] I know they are. Some of the things I've done also is that for their SAC studies, I've gone into their classroom. | 6:13 |
| Lanetha Branch | But people want to believe that the system is a poor system, but it's not. And what those teachers do in poor facilities with poor materials and what have you, and compared to where I worked where the PTA buys, they have a whole computer room where children can go and learn computers, where I have one in my room, teachers have them there. They can pull them into that room. All kinds of audio/visual materials and all this stuff that's bought for the school. When you compare the children, but people, we could get parents of these poor children to tell them how important they are and how smart they are because they are. And not to look at so much, what their weaknesses are but what their strengths are and build on their strengths. | 7:17 |
| Lanetha Branch | Teaching and children have taught me a great deal. I taught a boy years ago and I'll never forget him as long as I live, I often think where he is. Okay. I taught a boy some years ago in fifth grade, he had come from Mississippi. He was 16 years old in fifth grade. And neat, shirt tail always in place, clothes clean, hair cut. He had a job after school. In his home they had no beds, they slept on mattresses on the floor. But he helped his mother with the grocery shopping and all those kinds of things, so he did that and he went to his job after school in the afternoon. | 8:09 |
| Lanetha Branch | His name was Arthur. I looked at his record because he seemed like he had so much knowledge now from talking to him and doing certain things. I went and pulled his records. He had come to our school at the age of 12 and had been placed in third grade. He failed everything in third grade, including handwriting. He repeated third grade and he passed handwriting and physical education that year. Then he went to fourth grade and he failed fourth grade. And then he repeated fourth grade and that was the first movement you saw. | 8:57 |
| Lanetha Branch | So I asked him, "Arthur, did you go to school in Mississippi?" He said, "Sometimes. Most times we couldn't go." What he had done in third was two years in third grade and two years in fourth grade, was he was picking up. You see, he was really learning on his own because the teachers were not teaching him first and second grade materials, he was teaching him third and fourth grade materials. But he was picking up because of second year in fourth grade, that's the only time you saw any movement. He was a slow reader, not a poor reader, a slow reader and these type things. Because of his age, they wanted to put him in a vocation program, he didn't want to go. And after they kept him down there almost two hours, I went to see why and they said, "We are trying to convince him to go." | 9:38 |
| Lanetha Branch | I said, "Well, what did he say?" He said, "He doesn't want to go." I said, "What are you trying to do? Here's a child who has a job, helps his mother at home." I said, "If he just says no." He said, "Do you think he'll finish high school?" I said, "If he wants to, yeah, he'll finish if he wants to." He did so well on his achievement test, the principal let him not go to sixth grade, but sent him on the seventh, because he said, "If he scores as high or better as our best sixth grader, I'm going to send him on." | 10:27 |
| Lanetha Branch | And he did, because he wanted to learn and he wanted to finish high school. Children teach us a lesson all the time. Even though he was in that segregated Jim Crow South where we had children whose parents had to flee in the 1960s, had to flee from Mississippi. We had another parent family there whose father was still there, but he had gotten his family out. And he had to stay on that farm because the man at the farm said he owed for a car and he had no car, but they would not permit him to leave. But he had gotten his family to Memphis ahead of him before. He had stayed so they could get away. Those are not isolated areas that kept coming up through that. | 10:57 |
| Doris Dixon | It was as late as the 1960s? | 11:51 |
| Lanetha Branch | Yes. Well, what I said, you still had that slavery mentality in the 1960s. It's only when people started looking more closely at Mississippi, Arkansas, Louisiana, parts of Florida. It's only when people started looking more closely that the system itself start deteriorating. There are still some pockets the same way. There are still some pockets the very same way with your migrant workers. There's no difference still. | 11:52 |
| Doris Dixon | Now , working out in the county, do you come across any of that? | 12:28 |
| Lanetha Branch | No, most of the county kids are White. They consider themselves affluent, that is debatable because they live far beyond their means because they're trying to live in a lifestyle that they do not have the money to do. | 12:32 |
| Lanetha Branch | The [indistinct 00:12:48] Appeal did a study, I guess about four or five years ago, that showed the average income was $30,000 a year. And the 15 years I've been out there where I am now has changed. When I first moved into that Germantown Middle School, I would say out of a class of 30 children, you might have two parents, two mothers who worked. | 12:47 |
| Lanetha Branch | I would say now you might have two mothers who do not work, because now those mothers have to go back to work to supplement the family income in order for them to live in those areas. There's been a complete change within that short period of time of where mothers are still going to work or trying to find some kind of work in order to supplement the income of the family. Many of them ask to sub our school, for example, to supplement the income. So we still in the same boat because people are still trying to isolate themselves away, no matter what the cost. Costs are going to be on the children, basically. The costs will be on the children because the children are pretty much growing up by themselves, entertained in afternoon because parents are not there. | 13:16 |
| Lanetha Branch | Pastor Lawton asked me the other day, he came out, I was in the office. And he asked me this question, "Why is it that Black adolescent boys lose their interest in education?" I told him, "White adolescent boys lose their interest in education, too. There is no difference." [indistinct 00:14:29] the same thing, there is no difference. The difference is as far as their losing their interest in education, the difference is who isn't there that gives a structure for them to stay in education and nourish them in that education, provide tutors in that education, all those kinds of things that makes the White child succeed and the Black child not? | 14:07 |
| Doris Dixon | Now, was that structure for the Black children, for the Black adolescent males, existed 20, 30, 40, 50 years ago? | 14:54 |
| Lanetha Branch | Oh, adolescent boys go through the same thing, every last one of them. | 15:03 |
| Doris Dixon | I guess I'm wondering the difference between- | 15:07 |
| Lanetha Branch | The difference 30 years ago would be that what the White child has now, the nurturing, the pushing, the prodding, the structure, was there 30, 40, 50 years ago. It is not there now for the African American child, that is the only difference. | 15:11 |
| Doris Dixon | What I need to know for these purposes is, what was that structure like? | 15:35 |
| Lanetha Branch | For example, you were expected to go to school. It was not a debatable issue. You did not disobey your parents. And in many instances, you had two parents in the family. When you didn't have, when you had just simply one parent in the family, that mother said, "You will go to school," and you went. You understand what I'm saying? Because you also had that support of uncles, the school itself, the male figureheads at the school. So you had that kind of support thing there. You had the community and what you did in your community, anything you did wrong, your parents knew about it. Everybody took care of everybody else's problems in the community. The extended family type of thing, you do not have that now. | 15:38 |
| Lanetha Branch | The difference now for the African-American child, even though he might have been 30 at 40 years ago in a one parent home, a poor one parent home, you still had goals that you had to meet. There's certain things, structures you had to operate in. There are certain things for you to do. You didn't do them, you obeyed adults period and the idea of skipping school didn't exist. Now, if you have that same single parent home, starting I think somewhere in the early '70s, you do not have that structure at home. Mother's doing something else. She has no help raising her children, therefore the children half raise themselves. They learn to disobey early. It's hard work disciplining children and keeping that structure, that's hard work. Most mothers now leave it alone. | 16:27 |
| Doris Dixon | Who set these goals, expectations and taboos? | 17:31 |
| Lanetha Branch | Your church. First, your family did. Your church also sustained them. The community itself sustained them. See, when I was growing up, anything I did, my mother knew about it if it was wrong, because the neighbor is going either walk right there and tell her, call her, or get get on me herself or his self, and then tell my mother he did it. The school was going to call home and tell her. And I stayed out of trouble most times because I knew. See, if you got it at school, you also got it at home because the school's going to call home and tell what you did. The school was going to punish you and home wasn't going to punish you. The idea that children shouldn't have any fear is false to me. Everybody ought to fear something. Today's child fears nothing. | 17:35 |
| Doris Dixon | What did you all fear? | 18:29 |
| Lanetha Branch | I feared my mama. I knew that my mother expected certain things. And what she expected, that's what I'd better do. And today's child fears no one. If someone in our neighborhood told you to do something, you did it. You didn't give any lip to it, you did it. But today's child, they feel they have the freedom to make decisions on their own because of what parents are teaching. And so when you have gang membership who have you, that means that mother has no control of their child. She has given that up to someone else and so therefore, what you had then is not what you have now. | 18:31 |
| Doris Dixon | Can I ask you a few more questions about then? You mentioned Black businesses in the context of both the lynching that happened in Mississippi, Walker, as well as the Tristate Defender. What do you remember about the way Black businesses did but not operating in your community? | 19:36 |
| Lanetha Branch | In my community, when I lived in this community, you had some Black businesses. Not a lot of them, you had some Black businesses. But grocery stores and things like that, you didn't have a lot of those. But you had photographers, you had the Black professional dentists, doctors. You had the newspaper, you had companies that did song books and this type thing, choir rows. There was a building at 4th and Bill, a big building, had a lot of businesses in it. | 19:49 |
| Lanetha Branch | Different kinds of things that people had in that particular structure. I don't remember the name of the building, but usually, most of your Black businesses were on Bill between, well, most of the professionals were there. Your doctors, your dentists, your tailors, some shopkeepers had certain shop things there and that's what you had. In most outlying areas, you didn't have too many Black businesses. You really did not. | 20:23 |
| Doris Dixon | Over here along this Mississippi Walker area, were there many Black business? | 20:55 |
| Lanetha Branch | You had a few. You had restaurants in that area that were Black owned you. If I remember correctly, there was a tailor owned that, because tailoring at that time, you didn't buy as many clothes ready made, especially for men and some women they didn't have that clothes tailor made. And there was a drugstore up on the corner, up here at Walker, Mississippi, there was a Black drugstore there. Across the street, there was a little store there. So you had Black businesses intermittent with that, but they were basically very small businesses. | 20:59 |
| Doris Dixon | What West Illinois, did that neighborhood change? Were there any businesses over there? | 21:38 |
| Lanetha Branch | There was no Black businesses at all then. That area was basically residential. Because of how it was patch-worked, the businesses basically were White businesses. You had some commercial areas in there also. I can remember only one Black business in that area, and there was a man who had a shoe shop. He had a shoe repair shop and it was on Illinois Street. When you moved down east of where I lived on Florida Street, you had some Black businesses that were there. You had the, oh, what was that name? There were a group of brothers, slipped me that fast. One of them owned one of the baseball teams here. | 21:44 |
| Doris Dixon | Oh, the Martin brothers? | 22:34 |
| Lanetha Branch | Yeah, the Martin brothers, they had a drug store there. And you had some other little Black businesses there like restaurants and what have you. Basically, that made up most of the Black businesses, restaurants, some drug stores, things like that. Until you got down the Beale Street area and then you found huge pockets of businesses there. And then in North Memphis, you find the same thing. Shoe shop, something like that, drug stores and those type things. | 22:36 |
| Doris Dixon | About the Martin Brothers, do you remember, did you ever go to any of the Red Sox games? | 23:02 |
| Lanetha Branch | I went to some over here at the park over here on Crump. But I wasn't a big baseball fan, but sometimes it's the only thing you had to do. But they did have some games over there. That park was right there on the corner, Wellington and what is now Crump. It was a nice baseball field there. They also had businesses and in addition to the drug store there, they also had a business on Beale Street. I'm trying to remember what it was, but they had other business on Beale Street. | 23:07 |
| Doris Dixon | What other? You said sometimes there wasn't much to do. Could you elaborate on- | 23:35 |
| Lanetha Branch | Well, really not that much to do because the zoo was only open on Thursdays for Blacks. And you did not go to the amusement park but once a year and that's when they had the Mid-South Fair. They still had the Mid-South fair but Blacks, they had after the first week of fair, Blacks went the, I guess a week and a half, then Blacks had a Friday and Saturday for the fair that time. | 23:40 |
| Doris Dixon | What about the Cotton Pickers' Jubilee? | 24:08 |
| Lanetha Branch | Cotton Pickers' Jubilee. They had that, that happened of course, once a year. And that was the cotton part of what they call the Cotton Carnival, that was a White contingency of that. Then the Cotton Pickers' Jubilee, it lasted about a week. In fact, my sister was one of the queens for the Cotton Pickers' Jubilee one year. And it would basically be centered on Beale Street, the parade was start I think, on Calhoun Street and come up to Bill, and then go down Beale Street. | 24:09 |
| Lanetha Branch | And one of the things they had was churches park auditorium, they tore it down. They really shouldn't have torn that place down. They have those little things down there now. But usually the activities would be based down there. In fact, that was the largest place where Blacks would come together for anything large at all. And then that's about it as far as anything to do. | 24:44 |
| Doris Dixon | Were there like community-wide picnics? | 25:10 |
| Lanetha Branch | No, not too much of that at all. And no other celebrations other than that. You don't own your own property like that, 4th of July or anything like that. I'm glad to see them start it here in this area on the Juneteenth, because Texas has been doing it for many, many years. And I guess it was more important to them because in fact, they were still enslaved and didn't know it. Because when the Emancipation Proclamation was done in the 14th Amendment, they just said that states that were in the union, Texas was not in the union at that time and they had to go do something else. | 25:15 |
| Lanetha Branch | But I'm glad that it is moving around, for far more African Americans to understand the history and the heritages. I often tell Dr. Lofton that you find any Jewish child, they can tell you about the Holocaust, but you cannot find any Black children can tell you about the middle passage. And until you understand the comparison and what you have gone through to this point, until we get an understanding of that and not feel ashamed of slavery. | 25:47 |
| Doris Dixon | Exactly. | 26:21 |
| Lanetha Branch | You see, not feel ashamed of slavery because that's part of your history. I think that one reason that teachers won't teach it and children don't learn it is that they feel it's a shame, but it is not a shame. You were kidnapped, stolen and understand that. And there's no shame there. Look at your heritage so it'll never happen again. | 26:22 |
| Doris Dixon | What things did you learn about Black history coming up? | 26:41 |
| Lanetha Branch | Well, as I said, I had Nat D. Williams. And number one, Nat Williams was a person who taught US history but he also taught Black history along with it. And he would have you to even go and find the limited materials that we had at that time. Because you recognized during that time there was not a great deal written that we had access to. The library system was still segregated, so you did not get E. Franklin Frazier and those people's books in, you understand? | 26:44 |
| Lanetha Branch | You did not have anything, so somebody had to teach you orally. And that's what Nat Williams did, he taught it orally and I always appreciate that, that he at least gave us some idea of what our heritage was all about, other than just on Negro history month, or a week at that time, that you learned about the people whose names are all written. And it's always something new to learn. | 27:17 |
| Doris Dixon | It is something new to learn. | 27:44 |
| Lanetha Branch | My son, when we were in Alabama, had to write a paper on, initials left me, but last name is Beckworth, who was a lieutenant governor in the state of Louisiana. | 27:45 |
| Doris Dixon | During the reconstruction? | 28:00 |
| Lanetha Branch | Yes, immediately after that. We couldn't find anything in Tuskegee and we had to go to Auburn University Library one night and found a little bit amount on him. He was a son of a White plantation owner. The plantation owner had taken he and his children, he had a number children by her. He had taken them to Ohio and later to Virginia. In fact, I was in Virginia once, I found a man who worked with this White house that was a servant. Had the same name and I told him the story, the owner of the house was not very happy, but I was there as a guest. But when he died, his family tried to get them back and then they moved. But some of his friends took them to Pennsylvania. | 28:02 |
| Lanetha Branch | But then they later on after slavery, after that time, came back to Ohio. Because he did that during the time of slavery that he did that. He married her and gave the children his name. So it was very interesting, I'd never heard the name before. There are so many names in history we don't hear about. There's so many. So our children, I had mentioned to him that maybe we need to, during Black history month, explore some areas, or every month explore some areas that are not known to our children, that they don't know so well. | 29:02 |
| Doris Dixon | Can you think of people from your memory, people that influenced your life or live in this community? Because I mean, we know about Nat D. Williams, but can you think of other people who don't know about, who we should know about? Do you understand where I'm coming from? | 29:33 |
| Lanetha Branch | One person, well, Sharon did something. A voice teacher I had, Madame Florence Cole Talbert McCleave. She was a opera singer. She sang in Europe, taught at some universities. She married a local, Dr. Dennis, and moved here to Memphis. But Madame McCleave also was one who had a great deal of raise pride because she had very, very beautiful, keen features and they wanted to make her everything, but wanted her to say that she was anything and everything other than an African American and she refused to do it. It did not matter in Europe and most her singing was throughout Europe because there was no color barrier. But she could not sing too much in the United States, other than doing concerts. One Sunday we were invited out to what is now Rose College, by Miron Mayors, who was a voice instructor there and the man over the music department. | 29:53 |
| Lanetha Branch | He had two students who were going to be doing their singing recitals, and so he asked Madam McCleave to come. Ms. Watkins who used to live up the street, she went with her doctor son and I went. He had been using Madame McCleave's records for the Bell Conte system of singing. But these students, soprano was a lyric soprano and a young man. And he had been using her record in his classes, teaching the Bell Conte system of singing. And they did their recital for us and all like that. And we we're talking and he asked them, "You recall the recording that we've been using in class by Bell Conte system?" They said, "Yes." He said, "Well, I would like for you to meet the artist." And they were just shocked, they turned 50 shades of red, because I guess they didn't know why he had all these Black people here. | 30:57 |
| Lanetha Branch | But then he introduced her as an artist, that she was the best that they had ever come across as far as her recording is concerned, showing the method. She was known locally here, taught voice lessons in her later years, but had a very celebrated career in Europe. Sang Aida because for coloring and what have you in that area also. But she is one person also here. And I'm sure you heard of George "Lieutenant" Lee and the Walkers and what have you at the bank and what have you. I'm sure somebody's told you about them. I don't don't know if they've told you about Jesse Turner, or not Jesse Turner. | 31:51 |
| Doris Dixon | I probably don't know as much as I need to know. | 32:45 |
| Lanetha Branch | Jesse Turner, he was a member of our church also. Jesse Turner came out of Mississippi and I'm trying to think, I think he either reached the rank of lieutenant or captain in the armed services. But he was a person who also fought this injustice too, because the fact he was Black. He raised the issue of race also. It used to be that if you—Noah Bond, I told you about Noah Bond. I don't know if you've got it or not. | 32:46 |
| Doris Dixon | Yeah, we got it. | 33:20 |
| Lanetha Branch | Noah Bond tells the story of when he was drafted and went into service, that they gave the orders, the charge that made the White young man put him in charge of the recruits. They gave orders but he couldn't read. He told Noah to read them for him. He had to read the orders for him and yet, he couldn't read, but they would put him in charge because he was White. You find so much stuff like Jesse Turner talked about the same kind of things that happened to him. And now he had to fight that all the way up in order to get the rank that he deserved to have in the armed services. I'm sure Allegra could tell you much more about him, his wife, much more about Jesse Turner. | 33:21 |
| Lanetha Branch | But he was a person who would speak out and had no bones about it, was his own man, his own person. And you might want to talk to Allegra, his wife, Allegra Turner, to find out more about Jesse Turner. As you know, he was the treasurer of the NAACP and he set up our system over there, so that's why it's so straight. But he is a person that you might want to find out about. Because he had had to deal with the same injustice, had the skill and ability. Because he was Black, he had to fight for it. I can't think of anybody else, who's still alive. That's the problem, who's still alive? | 34:06 |
| Doris Dixon | Is Mrs. McCleave still alive? | 34:51 |
| Lanetha Branch | No, she's dead also. She's been dead 34 years. In fact, I was eight months pregnant when she died. Let's see, what was that? She was a Christian scientist. She had cancer and of course, they do not believe in surgery or anything. Even though her husband's a doctor, she refused to have cancer treatment and she did die. But a person who had a great—But I can tell you who has a great deal about her, Sharon Dobbins, who was working at Lamoine. | 34:52 |
| Lanetha Branch | And Mrs. Green, Dr. Green in the music department, they did a study on her. And so you might be able to—Lamoine, the library probably has it because she did a oral. Because I did a session with her, with Esther [indistinct 00:35:41] so the library probably has a oral history over there about Madame McCleave. You might want to check it and see. I know they have something over there. But she did it in conjunction with what they were doing over here. | 35:25 |
| Doris Dixon | Is that M-C-C-L-E-V-E? | 35:46 |
| Lanetha Branch | M-C-C-L-E-A-V-E, McCleave. | 35:58 |
| Doris Dixon | And what was her full name? I'm going to get it for the record. | 36:01 |
| Lanetha Branch | Florence Cole Talbot, T-A-L-B-O-T, McCleave. | 36:04 |
| Doris Dixon | Well, Mrs. Branch, is there anything that someone would've come to the university and hear your tape to read your transcript, what would you want them to know about your life? Is there anything that you want emphasized? | 36:16 |
| Lanetha Branch | Well, I guess that my life has just been interesting for me. I've learned a great deal, I try to stay abreast of what's going on. I try to get other people to recognize that we do not live in this world alone and we never will. The planet is getting smaller with technology as it is, the planet is getting awfully small. We have to start learning how to appreciate people's cultures for what they are. It might be different from ours, but there's nothing wrong with it. There's nothing wrong with the African-American culture. I understand this morning that the Speaker of the House in Washington said that the reason that African-Americans are poor and don't do any better is because of their habits. I don't know what habits there are, but all cultures are important. They have worth, they demand to have the dignity they have. | 36:29 |
| Lanetha Branch | It's nothing wrong with anybody's culture. It might be different from yours, but it's nothing wrong with it. We are all enriched when we learn about somebody else and how different they are. And in America, we would be such a wonderful country if we didn't celebrate the differences as much as we do the likenesses. There's nothing wrong with the African American heritage, it's a beautiful heritage. It's a heritage of success out of despair. I think that we need to look at what we have here in this country, it is a quilt. It is a patchwork of differences. | 37:22 |
| Lanetha Branch | The only native people here were the ones who trekked over the Bering Strait hundreds of thousands of years ago. Those are the only natives in this country. All of us came from somewhere and we celebrate where we came from. But the bottom line is that we are all Americans and that's what we need to look at very closely. | 38:01 |
| Doris Dixon | Thank you. I'm going to go ahead and turn it off. | 38:24 |
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