Sarah Grimstead interview recording, 1995 July 27
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| Sarah Williams Grimstead | My name is Sarah Ruth Williams Grimstead, Williams is my maiden name. | 0:01 |
| Blair Murphy | And where were you born? | 0:08 |
| Sarah Williams Grimstead | Oak City, North Carolina. | 0:09 |
| Blair Murphy | And what was it like in North Carolina? | 0:09 |
| Sarah Williams Grimstead | Well, I didn't know too much about racism, things like that until I got up, left home and everything. But at that time when I was there, there were White children who lived on the same road that we lived on, and they used to play with us and we played with them, and I never heard them call any names or anything like that. But later on, it was after I left. So I left Oak City when my father died and I was nine years old. My older sister was married and lived in Rocky Mount in North Carolina. And she wanted me to live with her because there were no high school for Blacks in my area, none that I could attend. There were probably some a long ways off, but you have to go and live with somebody else to go there. So she persuaded my mom, let me go and live with her. | 0:17 |
| Sarah Williams Grimstead | And when I got ready to go to high school, and by the way, high school was eighth grade that time. When I got ready to go to high school, then I could already established my citizenship as you call it in Rocky Mount, and I wouldn't have any problems going. So I went to school in Rocky Mount, elementary school and when you finish the seventh grade at that time, you would go to the high school, which began in eighth grade. So we had a long walk, but I didn't see any, there weren't at that time any buses in that city. Everybody I think walked to schools, White and Blacks and all. But we had a completely Black high school, Booker T. Washington High School is the one I attended in Rocky Mount. And it was a long ways, but we had a lot of fun. And sometimes we would meet up with White kids on, we went right downtown, we meet up White kids through town and we would be walking, three or four abreast. | 1:19 |
| Sarah Williams Grimstead | We started doing it because that's what they started doing. And sometimes they'll run into us, they were saying like that. And sometimes we would just walk. We sometimes would increase around five of us right on Main Street. And they would almost push us off, we'd push them off one. So I don't remember them, I don't remember any of us getting their licks or anything in. But they would say things us, and we would say things. Then they called us N word, we'd give the C word, cracker, we called it. So we didn't really have any fights or anything. | 2:22 |
| Sarah Williams Grimstead | But one day when we were coming back from school, and you had to cross the railroad track, there were several tracks because all these Atlantic Coastline Railway were right side by side. And there was an old White man driving his car. He got on the track and his car stalled. And so we just looked at him and said, "Well, what happened?" And then at a distance we could see the train was coming, and that was called the Florida Special. | 2:55 |
| Sarah Williams Grimstead | And all of us got behind this car at that time, White and Black kids, and pushed it off this railroad track. And by the time he got it off, the train came by. And so he would've lost his life, had not been flushing, or no pushing no more. There was some White kids and Black kids that did that day, and that was really terrifying to all of us. But we managed to go through it all right. So at that time I didn't have any idea. | 3:30 |
| Sarah Williams Grimstead | I had never heard of Black and White kids going school together. That was something that I thought I'd never see. I ain't never heard about anything like that because there were, in the railroad station, railway station, there were waiting rooms for Whites, and waiting room for Blacks. And then we had Black and White drinking fountains. All right, this was a place over here. And it didn't say Blacks, said Colored. It said Colored, the word Colored was used all the time, Colored. And I started riding the train, I said it was when I was about nine years old and it wasn't too far between Rocky Mount and Oak City, so a lot of time I ride by myself on the train. But I was always in a coach that was entirely Black. | 4:01 |
| Blair Murphy | Right. | 4:54 |
| Sarah Williams Grimstead | And that was a porter who got down in, put down the little thing, climb up on here. And then that later further down there you would see a White one like that. So all that time, I didn't pay that too much attention because we didn't come in contact with them so much. And of course, that time I was too young to work and I knew too much about it. But later I didn't notice. One time in the summer at school was out, a cousin of ours said he was going to Philadelphia and that's where my oldest sister lived, in Philadelphia. She was really, I said that was the oldest one, but the really oldest one lived in Philadelphia. All right, the next one lived in Rocky Mount, the one I lived with. | 4:55 |
| Sarah Williams Grimstead | So we wanted to go with him. So there was about five of us on his car. And when we wanted to stop and get some gas, he got some gas put in his car and he said, "Would y'all like to have a cup of coffee?" So I didn't want any coffee because I never did like coffee. But anyway, those that wanted coffee, all right, he walked up and the man told him he would serve him at the back door. So they went onto the back door. I didn't know what, I said, "Now why would they go and get coffee? You don't have to have coffee." I was thinking all these things to myself. They went on to the back door and got the coffee, okay? | 5:36 |
| Sarah Williams Grimstead | So when he got back to the car, Lester said, "You know what we going to do now? When me get ready to leave, I'm going crank up my car and rev up the engine and everything and we are not taking these cups and saucers back. We going break them right there in front of the gas tank." And so that's what they did when they got through, bring the car. But they slammed their cups and saucers down on the, right on the cement right there by the gas tank and pulled on off. Oh, I bet I said, "Well, I know they called us some of everything," but that's what he did at that time. So he said that was his idea of paying them back for making us go to the back of their restaurant. | 6:20 |
| Sarah Williams Grimstead | So after that, well, I didn't know too much about, I didn't come in contact with a whole lot of people who were White. But then after I finished high school, I was going to college and I came back to Rocky Mount and stayed with my sister because that was a chance I might get some work to do. And I worked, I got a little job taking care of two little White girls and I learned that the mother was a native New Yorker, and she was very nice. She really was very nice. And the first thing she gave me, she didn't have to give me anything, she just paid me. That was just a little something. But the first thing she gave me, she gave me a slip that was so ragged I needed a map to get in it. But I accepted it, my sister had told me anything they give you, accept it. Thank them and accept it. All right, so I was glad she told me that because it paid off. | 7:02 |
| Sarah Williams Grimstead | And she worked downtown, in some of these offices and everything. But when she did the cooking, I just took care of the kids. And I was hired to do that because the lady, she had first, she told my girlfriend, "I want somebody who can use English better around my children." She said, "I have a girlfriend going to college and says she's looking for a job." She said, "I want her to read them stories, take them for walks, and put them down for naps at the appropriate time, but I don't need her to cook. She can just clean that mess of the kids," make in like that. And that's all I had to do, I wasn't doing that much. | 8:06 |
| Sarah Williams Grimstead | For the money that I got, a lot of people cleaned up whole houses for the money I got. But I found out she was different from the southern crackers I'll say. She was much different, because when she cooked, we all eat at the same table. And she was very nice. And I found out that she and I wore the same size shoe. So she bought a brand new pair shoes that she didn't like, and she gave them to me and I tried them on, well, she said, "Well, you can have those." And I was really very happy because I had never worn a pair of shoes so expensive in my life, that was really special pair of shoes. And I was glad to have those shoes take back to school with me. And she gave me other things. She was very nice. So she was a divorcee, and she didn't stay there so long. So the next summer where she had gone, she had moved away. I was hoping I'd get back with her again. | 8:42 |
| Blair Murphy | Where were you going to school at that time? | 9:29 |
| Sarah Williams Grimstead | Elizabeth City State University. It was Elizabeth City State Teachers College then, and they changed it later on. And now, it's Elizabeth City State University. So she was really very nice. So now the next job I had, summer job that I had, I worked for a lady whose husband was, had some kind of business downtown. And she always was a chronic complainer, she was always sick, something was always wrong. And she wanted me to do everything. She wanted me there at seven o'clock in the morning, fixed breakfast for him, who got to go to work, and she would always be in bed. But she'd get up to eat, a lot of time with him. But she stayed in bed most of the time. | 9:33 |
| Sarah Williams Grimstead | So I worked with her one week. I was there one week. And so her bedroom was so she could face the hallway and she could tell when I was going by the hallway, down hallway. But he was really nice. Now he was really very nice. And so in the morning, see when I was in the kitchen trying to get his breakfast done, see he'd help me but she didn't know that. He would help me get things straight and everything. And she was frankly calling me all the time, see my middle name is Ruth. So everybody, all my friends called me Ruth and she did too. So, "Have you got Mr.," I don't remember his name now, "Mr. So-and-so breakfast." I said, "Yes ma'am," well, he's sitting down says, "Stop worrying about it. Everything's all right here." Tell her like that. | 10:22 |
| Sarah Williams Grimstead | So I told my girlfriend, I said, "I'm not going to be here very long because I don't like this lady." She wants to work you guys, she still thinks we are still in slavery, all right? At that time, they used to bring milk in glass bottles. So her house, you had to climb up a lot of steps to get down. The steps were almost as tall as wall and bringing those bottles up sometime, I thought was going to drop them, but I didn't drop any. So everybody at that time wore a white uniform working thing. So came about Thursday, she was telling me what she wanted me to do, and I was doing as much as I possibly could do. But I was just standing to myself. I said, "Well, after I get what's coming to me on Saturday, I won't be back." | 11:06 |
| Sarah Williams Grimstead | So she, on Friday she told me, she said, "I'll tell you what I'm going to do." She said, oh, she thought she was doing me a favor. She said, "I'm going to pay you Saturday. You going to get you to pay Saturday about one o'clock after lunch." And as she said, "Then you can go downtown and buy anything you want." It's so funny when you think about it, said, "You can go downtown and buy anything you want, and then you come back, when you leave here, you don't have to stop till time you go home." See? See I didn't leave, I didn't leave there till about seven o'clock that night. See, okay? I said, "Oh, that's good." I said it's great. Meanwhile, and I did form my mind, I knew I wasn't going to be back that season. It might be my last day. | 11:57 |
| Sarah Williams Grimstead | So I said, "Well at that rate, I won't have to worry about coming back." When I go downtown, when I get my pay, I'm going to have my dress ready. I'm going to wear it home, and I'm going downtown. But she'll expect that, see. But what she didn't know, my things as I worked there and I put them in the bag and put them on the steps, on the porch and she didn't know that, see. So when I got ready to go, she gave me the money, "Mrs.," I don't remember her name. I said, "Look, I'm telling you now I won't be back today. This be my last day of work." "You can't leave me because I'm sick and I need this and I need that and you just can't leave me now and I don't have anybody to work for me," blah blah blah. She was saying to me, I said, "Well, I'm sorry about that," but I had my money then, see. And that's right, I had my money in my hand then. | 12:42 |
| Sarah Williams Grimstead | So I got home so early, my sister laughing, she can't do. She said, "Yeah, what'd you tell her?" I said, "Well, I done told her what had happened." And she said, "Well, that's good." She said, because somebody said there's another job's that's going to be opened up pretty soon. Okay. So the job that they opened up the next week was job at the tobacco factory. So they started hiring people at the tobacco factory, and the news was out everywhere that you had to have a social security card, they wouldn't hire anybody unless you had a social security card, see? So my two buddies and I went on down and got our social security cards. | 13:29 |
| Sarah Williams Grimstead | And that day while they were hiring people, we went down there and they hired us the first day. So that was a better job, you got a little bit more money. And so I felt like I was getting somewhere, but my little money that I made wasn't anything. See, my father was married twice and these sisters and brothers from his first marriage, if they had not helped my mom, I would've never been able to go to school, because ever since I was knee-high to a duck, I told everybody wanted to be a teacher. But my brothers and sisters were really super to me. My mama only had two children, myself and my brother. And what we did at the tobacco factory, the machine, you've seen cured tobacco, haven't you? | 14:07 |
| Blair Murphy | Yeah. | 15:05 |
| Sarah Williams Grimstead | All right, the machine took the stem out of the tobacco. But sometimes, the stem was not always, it didn't get all, the machine didn't get all the stem sometimes. Okay, so what was left in there, we had to get it as a belt that went on riding slowly and we would have to catch that leaf and get that stem out of it. It was fast work with fingers. But my sister said you can do it because you can pick cotton. She say you can do it because you can pick cutting. And so I didn't have any problems. So that's when I found out that they watched everything you did. Even when you didn't see them, they were up somewhere. | 15:06 |
| Sarah Williams Grimstead | They people, that's when I found that out. And so we didn't know that. So one girl, we were working that day, this girl, "Oh, I'm so tired of standing up." I said, "I'm tired too." I said, "But you know I got to work until 11 o'clock night." We go to work at three and work till 11. I said, "I know that." And I said, "I'm going to stick it out because I need this money." So we really worked. So one day without saying anything, he went and tapped the girl on the shoulder and back into her, and we didn't see her anymore. He paid her off, see? See, that's when I found out then, they had these little people, excuse me, that they could see through so. | 15:43 |
| Blair Murphy | Did she sit down or something? | 16:21 |
| Sarah Williams Grimstead | She must have not been working. | 16:23 |
| Blair Murphy | Fast enough. | 16:24 |
| Sarah Williams Grimstead | Uh-huh, fast enough, so that's what I was thinking. So when he fired this other girl and we said, "Mm-mm, we ain't going to get fired. We ain't going to get fired because we going to work. We ain't going to get fired because we going to work." So we worked that summer and then the next summer I went back, they hired us again. So we worked, and we got off at 11 o'clock at night because there wasn't that much bottles in the street thing. You didn't here tell a whole lot of things. | 16:25 |
| Sarah Williams Grimstead | But we always had some friends who met us, some guys used to come up there and meet us night shift, you know, we got off work. Especially when we got paid, they would always meet us. They said, we start, we come walk back, they go, somebody might, they know the factory's paying off and they may snatch your pocketbook, something like that. And so they would've always come meet us like that especially when we got paid at night. So I did that until, well, I until just about, I finished college. That's why I was doing that kind of work. And well now before then— | 16:50 |
| Blair Murphy | How was going to school? | 17:23 |
| Sarah Williams Grimstead | Okay now, when I first went, I went the second semester because of the first part of the semester, first year I was trying to get enough money to register, okay. And my sister, one of my sisters, her husband had this big farm and I used to stay with her. Well, actually my sister had nine children and I stayed with her more than I did with mama because I don't know, I don't know kids, I always love kids. And she told me that's why you didn't have any kids, you love them too good. But she had nine kids and this other sister that lived in Rocky Mount had one child who lived to get about two years old. So I worked in the field, I picked cotton, I hulled corn, I did everything that was in the field to do like that. And all that for that year. | 17:26 |
| Blair Murphy | Her own land? Did she own her own land? | 18:11 |
| Sarah Williams Grimstead | Yes, right. They own a big farm. My folks where I was born, they owned that land too. They sold the farm later on. So all right, I did everything in the field just about, so we had tobacco and I helped them in that, peanuts. And in the fall that year, that was the first year I had ever helped harvest peanuts. So when my brother and I were working in the field, I, at that time, and the girls that worked with, didn't have anything like they'd wear. I would wear some of his pants and mom used to always say, "I couldn't hardly tell one for us," she said look at us, I would wear some of his clothes. | 18:14 |
| Sarah Williams Grimstead | So what we call stacking peanuts. You put them on, you see them had to put them on poles. You ever seen him do that? Well, they put them, used to put them on, have a pole in the ground and you see peanuts growing vines and some vines are real long and you stack them around this pole, we did that. So at the end of that semester, at the end of time harvest time, my sister and her husband had given me, just about enough money to pay that fresh from that time on. But meanwhile, tuition was really cheap. And I'm going to tell you something, you're not going to believe it though. | 18:50 |
| Sarah Williams Grimstead | I went through college in four years with less than four books that I owned because, well, I always talked to a lot and made friends a lot. And they would let me keep their books. Say if I went to class today, they done had to go to class. I mean if I had to go to class tomorrow, all right, I would get a chance to keep that book overnight. They would let me keep it overnight. Some them would let you keep for nothing. Some would let you rent it for 50 cents a quarter. For 50 cents a quarter, you could rent a book. The book belonged to you, see? All right. And the book will be sack of world politics, world history, all right, you own the book, you might let me use it for 50 cents a quarter. It was your book though, see? But you let me use it, so that is what I did. And I tell you, it was funny thing my husband last said all the time right now. He said I would tell him, I told so many times, I told. | 19:25 |
| Sarah Williams Grimstead | So when we ride around and look at fields and everything, I said, I won't see any fields. I said, because I promised myself a long time ago that I was not going to work any field because I got enough field work when I was growing up. And I said for that reason, I knew I couldn't marry anybody in that area because they lived on White people's farms. And I said now, so I was not used to living on White people's farm. My people did at least own their land. So I said, "Uh-uh. No sir." So I always promised myself that I was going to have a future where I would be better off working in the field and sun and stuff like that. | 20:24 |
| Sarah Williams Grimstead | So I worked hard when I was in school, I really worked hard. Sometimes I was on honor roll, sometime I wasn't. But I knew if I failed, I would get a one way ticket back home, and that meant the field. And every time I thought about that, I would just work harder even though I didn't have a lot of books and things like that. I worked hard. And the first year I was there, I went into the dormitory, but my momma knew I could not stay at dormitory. It was too expensive. We couldn't afford that. | 20:57 |
| Sarah Williams Grimstead | But my mother had a very good friend who lived about a block from the college, and she got permission from the president for me to live with her so that's where I lived. I lived in the house with her, she had two daughters. She had three daughters, and her husband and three daughters. She had a great big house. So my job at that time, she took in washing for White people. My job was to help her wash the clothes and iron them. And she had what you call a laundry heater. | 21:32 |
| Sarah Williams Grimstead | You could, this little round heater, you could put your irons on there. She used coal in it. Put your irons on this heater, flat irons, and they would heat and that's what you iron with. And most times she saved all the white shirts for me to iron. So I did that for my room and board. I worked, I stayed there just about four years. What little time I was in dormitory. So cleaning the house and things like that, living room, stuff like that, I did a lot of that. But I got along real well with them and they thought a lot of me, I'm pleased to say. And then so I said, well, that thing worked out real well because mama knew her and had been friends with her a long time, see. So the president, must have in been a good mood that day. He told her, said, "Well, I know that you want your daughter to go to school," so that's what happened. So that's how I got my room and board. | 22:07 |
| Blair Murphy | You were one of a few students who didn't live on campus? | 23:01 |
| Sarah Williams Grimstead | No, I didn't live on campus. I lived on campus about three weeks. | 23:04 |
| Blair Murphy | And most other students lived on campus. | 23:09 |
| Sarah Williams Grimstead | Right, except for those who lived right in the city who walked. But I lived on campus. It wasn't a month, I know. So I got along fine and I was able to do everything she had me to do, and keep up with things too because I could go to the library and usually as I said, I made friends with somebody, they would always let me have the book overnight. If I keep it overnight, see, then I would be able to keep going like that so I did pretty well in that now, I'm proud of what I did then along that line. And my major at that time, you went to school, you couldn't do anything but a teacher. It wasn't a whole lot of programs, anything like out here now. | 23:10 |
| Sarah Williams Grimstead | But I always loved what I did because later on I probably could have done something else. But by that time I was always hooked on kids and that's what keeps me going right now, kids. That's my choir right there, organized a choir in 1977. And that's the first picture over there. And so I always worked with kids quite a bit. And my major was elementary education, I worked with the little kids and also I was in the main thing, I was in other clubs, but the main club, main thing I was in was the college choir. And the college choir had over a hundred voices in it. And so that was almost like having another subject, because the director tested everybody for words of each song, tone quality, and the knowledge of parts and everything. She did all of that before she chose the people who would travel. And the bus would only hold so many people. So I was happy to say I made that every year for four years. | 23:56 |
| Sarah Williams Grimstead | I was at, that meant the whole week you were from school and the teachers could not mark you absent, see? And when we went off to sing, we always lived in places in people's houses because we were Black and you couldn't live in hotel. So we lived in houses, people would provide nice meals for us and all these things like that. Many of the places we went to sing, they did not have pianos. So I became very familiar with the pitch pipe, I have one now that I use with my children. And so we went some places to sing, some schools to sing. I'll tell you, they were almost what we called [indistinct 00:25:48]. I'll tell you, they were really, really way out. But we went to those places and we really enjoyed the trips, and it was an honor for me to make that college choir every year. | 25:04 |
| Sarah Williams Grimstead | So I really appreciated that. When I was doing my cadet teaching that last year, I had no idea I was going to be allowed to go. I really didn't think I'd be allowed to go that year. So my supervisor approached me one day and she said, "Williams, I see that Ms. Johnson, I talked to Ms. Johnson about you last night." I said, "Oh, is that so?" She said yes. And she said, "She wanted to know if I were going to give you permission to go." She was my supervisor of cadet teaching, and she said she didn't see any reason why I couldn't go. So when she told me that, boy, I was on cloud nine because I knew at least I had a B at that point in time, so I did go. So I think about so many things now that happened while we were gone. | 26:02 |
| Sarah Williams Grimstead | And this lady I lived with, I told you she had three daughters, and one daughter was about my size. Now you talk wear another folk's clothes, she used to always let me, they had two, they had one. Oh, she and I wore the same size shoe and everything. And she had nice clothes and oh, I'd fall out there looking good, and I knew I'm looking good in somebody else's clothes. So I really got along with real well with them when I went to school, with my people on the campus, off campus. And when we got ready to do our cadet teaching, boy that was really, I don't know, it was terrifying because see so many people flunked out on that stuff see. It was terrifying. And I'm telling you, I spent a lot of time on that honey. | 26:54 |
| Blair Murphy | So you had your own classroom at that time? | 27:42 |
| Sarah Williams Grimstead | Oh no, I didn't have my classroom. I taught under another teacher. Say you were the teacher of the class, all right, and I would come into your class. I would have my lesson planned for the day and everything, see, and I'll put on your desk, you look at it and then you observe me, you make your comments about me in writing. And then my supervisor over the college at the end of the week would call a meeting of all of the cadet teachers and go over all the points. And it was terrifying because you see, you had the teacher in there who was, well, I called her Mrs. Cottage, she was excellent, she was excellent teacher, and I was nervous and everything. But I got along pretty good under her, see. So you got your grade from your cadet teacher and from your supervisor, that's how you got your final grade. So I knew when my supervisor told me I could make the trip, that I had, at least had a B, that I knew that. So yes, that was terrifying. | 27:42 |
| Sarah Williams Grimstead | And I learned so much under that cadet teacher because you observed her for two or three weeks before you taught, see? And it was really very good. I enjoyed it. And a lot of things I learned in teaching, I learned from her. As long as I stayed in the system, I was using some of her techniques, used a lot of her techniques from that time on. And well after, well I had to go to summer school one summer, because I missed the quarter when I came in second quarter, so I met that summer. But you see what was in my favor that summer I had had none of the instructors already. And I was laid back. I didn't have to worry. | 28:44 |
| Sarah Williams Grimstead | I didn't have to worry, everything that I had to make up, I didn't have any problem. I had had every one of my instructors before, and they knew my ability. And Mr. Murphy, you relate to, you a Murphy, aren't you? Mr. Murphy told me, "Ah, Ms. Williams, you don't have to worry. See, you know I know you." Said, "What I want you to do," listen to this now, "I want you to keep check my roll, all right? Help me check my exam papers." I did all, in fact, I was the secretary. And put the grades in the book and all this stuff. And summer school was made up mostly of teachers who had only had two years and came back to get rest of them. See, well by the time I got, they had to go four years. So I didn't have any problem with any of my classes. | 29:24 |
| Sarah Williams Grimstead | And I said, "Well," I said, "Boy, I'm glad I didn't have the first semester. I probably wouldn't have done this well." But they knew me so I got along fine. But what they did, they let me march though in May, but they had an asterisk beside my name because I had to go to summer school. But I marched through the class on that May so well, and then when I got out of that and when I went home to a city, I did substitute teaching there for about, I did substitute teaching there about a year. | 30:13 |
| Sarah Williams Grimstead | And I was at the school so much, a lot of people thought I taught that regular, I was at the school some days. Now, at that time, the principal used to teach a class too. The principal had a seventh grade class and he went someplace, and I worked in his place for five days teaching his children. And well, I got all notes and proposals and everything from the boys. When they passed their papers in, they always ask me for a date and all this stuff. Well see, I was pretty young, some of them. Well, I might have been two or three years older than they were. | 30:46 |
| Blair Murphy | Yeah. | 31:20 |
| Sarah Williams Grimstead | So I worked there right much. But then next year when I got married, when I got married, then I came to Virginia, see. And I got a job in Virginia. I had been here about a year before I got a job. | 31:22 |
| Blair Murphy | Did you come here to Virginia Beach? | 31:39 |
| Sarah Williams Grimstead | It was called Princess Anne County at that time. And the job that I had, job that I got then, I had first, second, and third grade. It was two teachers school and my head teacher, that's what, didn't call it principal, the head teacher. My head teacher taught me how to make out the reports and things like that. So I talked there about, I didn't teach there too long. Well, I guess about two years, something like that. | 31:43 |
| Blair Murphy | What school was this? | 32:14 |
| Sarah Williams Grimstead | They used to call it Nemo School. They called it Nemo School. But see here's what they had. They had just a lot of little one and two teacher schools, all scattered by the Princess Anne County. Black one and two teacher schools. Okay, now they had consolidated schools among the Whites now long before they ever had them for Blacks. All right, there was Nemo School, there was Creeds School, I taught at Creeds School. There was another two teachers school. And then that was another school right down the road from us. I didn't teach there, but it was a one room school. One room school. See? All right. So later on the journal and guide, I know you heard about an awful German guide. | 32:15 |
| Blair Murphy | Yes. | 33:02 |
| Sarah Williams Grimstead | Mr. Jung did a series on the school conditions in Princess Anne County. He took his camera and just went writing and photographed all this stuff. And I think it not only was published in the guide, I think it was also published in an Afro-American paper. And in other words, the whole nation knew the position, the condition rather of the schools in Princess Anne County and Norfolk, it was a little bit better in Norfolk. Many of the teachers who lived here in Prince Anne County had left, I mean had really gone to Norfolk to teach okay. Conditions were a little bit better in Norfolk than in Princess Ann County. But when he did that series of articles and pictures on the condition of things here in this county, it opened a lot of eyes. And so then, the federal government realized then they had something to do. I guess nobody had really told them too much about it then, I guess. But anyway. | 33:03 |
| Blair Murphy | What year about this? | 34:05 |
| Sarah Williams Grimstead | I really don't know what year, but this was in, it was in the '50s, I know. | 34:08 |
| Blair Murphy | Okay. | 34:12 |
| Sarah Williams Grimstead | Yeah, this was in the '50s. And okay then, all right. That went on a good while. I mean before we got a consolidated school, but later there was a school built in the Princess Anne courthouse area. All right. There was a big school built there. But the first one, I believe the very first one was Seatack School right here, right down the road here, the Seatack School. And that was what they called Seatack Elementary. But it was a school, they had people from the old Oceana Elementary School and Seatack Elementary School, that's a one or two room school and the four, five little schools. And they broke. | 34:13 |
| Blair Murphy | Like a regional school? | 35:03 |
| Sarah Williams Grimstead | Uh-huh. And they were all put right here, okay? Then that's the time they started bringing children by bus. Before then, my children who would come to school, walked rain, shine, snow or blow, and the White children would pass them by in a bus and throw things at them walking on the road, that's what they would do. So when they built this school, I was so excited when they built this school because I knew I wouldn't be in this school, but I felt like things were going to get better. I was going to get in a better place. So they built that school and it was, oh, look, I said, "My, that's the biggest school that I ever saw in my life." And they had open house, we went there and the teachers had all these great big closet space and everything. We were all so excited about it. And so then finally they built the school for us. It was called the Seaboard Elementary School, and we moved in that school. | 35:04 |
| Sarah Williams Grimstead | Now, I can't tell you exact year, but I can tell you what, I had purchased a 1956 Chevrolet brand new. And when it opened, I had had that car about two or three months. And I'm saying it was about that time, quite sure. And we went there to look at the school. For a while, when the children came, you couldn't do any teaching. They were just, well, they were just so excited about, so now a lot of the kids where they lived, they had outdoor toilets and didn't have running water and all that stuff. In fact, we had just gotten it. And so they would go to the restrooms and I had to go and get them out. | 36:10 |
| Sarah Williams Grimstead | We'd get them out. They were just so excited about the running water, everything. One little boy got so wet, he was a first-grader. He got so wet running water, they played. And they were just playing. So a long time before they get themselves down to teach, because they was excited about all these things. Many of them didn't have electricity in their home you see, many of the children didn't have to see. All right, now we had had it, but we had that. But we didn't had running water all the time. We didn't had that all the time. All right, so they. | 37:00 |
| Blair Murphy | Was this area rural at the time? | 37:32 |
| Sarah Williams Grimstead | Well, actually at this time, at that time, Princess Anne County, there was Princess Anne County and then there was Virginia Beach. All right, so now what happened later on, they consolidated the two because Norfolk City had annexed a major part of Princess Anne County. Actually, that was really one of the best parts that they got. Okay, so Sidney Kellam, one of the real leading political figures in Virginia in this area at that time, he just started having meetings and everything. And finally, they got together and they decided to consolidate Princess Anne County and Virginia Beach and called all the city Virginia Beach. So he knew if they didn't do that, Norfolk could annex another part, see? So that's why they did that. So after that, after had to, excuse me, get to all these schools, they had to put on buses there, you see, to bring these children in there. | 37:35 |
| Blair Murphy | So far away. | 38:41 |
| Sarah Williams Grimstead | Right. And of course the schools were all Black, but who cared? They were really schools. And because if you want to go to the bathroom, outside toilet, you had to put on boots. I had a pair of rubber boots I had to bring with me all the time. And then the little outhouse there, I was lucky, I very seldom had to go there but sometimes, we just had to go. And so when those children got to the restroom, I could understand how they felt, because I know I felt about it. See? | 38:42 |
| Sarah Williams Grimstead | So they were really very happy about that. And so now I taught at that school. I was there for 10 years and I had a sixth grade that time. And my children came all over. Everybody in that district, you see? And all right, we had a principal, somebody else was trying to get that principalship, but this person had worked in the high school was trying to get that principalship. But a lot of people wanted some of us to be. And I said myself, I said, "I wouldn't have that job. Nobody couldn't pay me enough money to ever be a principal." But my girlfriend did get it, and so I was there for 10 years. And so as I said, I had a sixth grade there. But see, I taught everything in first to the seventh grade, all right? And after I'd been there for 10, no, before I was there for 10 years, we started departmentalizing. | 39:10 |
| Sarah Williams Grimstead | In other words, I taught certain subjects to sixth and seventh grade people. And one year the principal asked me to move up with my sixth grade class. So when they went to seventh grade, our seventh grade would stay the same room would be seventh grade, all right? And I was really happy about a lot of the progress that some of my children did, but it was very hard work because you had children from everywhere and some of the children were up here and some were down here even though they were in sixth grade, so we worked hard. And I've been really proud of some of the progress my children have made. No, I can't get up right now. I got a picture I'm going to show you. Wait a minute. And Olivia, I taught her in the first grade and I get up with her once in a while and she tells me, I said, "Now, Olivia, don't start pulling my leg." | 40:11 |
| Sarah Williams Grimstead | All right, Olivia down there, that's where she is now. She was Olivia Lawrence first, her daddy was a deputy sheriff. And Bessie Bell works at the courthouse and she is, I'm trying to think what her position is, but she works with young people and she has a master's degree in whatever this thing is she did. I can't think of what it is right now because I want to. But anyway, Olivia has, she has done so many hours on her doctorate. | 40:58 |
| Sarah Williams Grimstead | And I have some, I had one boy is a pharmacist, one is a bandleader. All these I taught the first grade I mean. And somebody's working on their doctorate now, Carolyn Jones, that's what she used to be, read on her doctorate right now. So I had really been rewarded richly, I think for working with some children. | 41:38 |
| Sarah Williams Grimstead | And they called me, one girl came from Dallas to see her family and she said, "I didn't ever think I wanted to teach. I always thought, I didn't want to teach, but I think about you so much." She said, everything. "You inspired me." After she got married, she went to school and got a degree in teaching. So I laugh about that a long time. I said, "Well, I tell you, I said a lot of working." She said, "I know it is, but I seem to enjoy it now." I said, "Well, you know what your problem was? You had not settled down," and you were slight at that time. But now that you are settled and everything, you knew what you want to do, but you have to get yourself settled down first I said. But I always knew I wanted teach when I was knee-high to a duck. And my mom used to say, said to herself, oh, well I don't know where she's going to do it. She said a lot of them said, well, if my father had lived, he wouldn't have been interested in you going to school. | 42:08 |
| Sarah Williams Grimstead | Because he never sent anybody else there. That's what they said, he never sent anybody at school. So that's what they said, "Well, how? He wouldn't probably be interested in sending you. He ain't send any other children." When they said seventh grade, they didn't go anywhere else, so that's way that was. But they decided to help me. I was really proud of that. Okay, now I stayed there for 10 years. All right, in the federal government launched this Title I program, at this time they called it Chapter I. When they launched that Title I program to help students in reading in math, I went down to the office and applied to teach reading in that summer program. And I was hired, teach reading. So I taught reading in the high school up at the high school that summer for six weeks. And I had people in my classes from grade nine through 12 who were deficient in reading. | 43:00 |
| Sarah Williams Grimstead | And we gave them standardized tests and grouped them and did everything. Now, I had not had any really formal reading training in reading per se, but the supervisor felt like elementary teachers were more equipped to teach reading than these other people see, because we had to teach the basics, the sounds and everything you see, all right. So she hired everybody in elementary school. She had hired same person from high school, but we did teach high school people. All right. | 44:02 |
| Blair Murphy | So was this an all Black program still, or no? | 44:34 |
| Sarah Williams Grimstead | No. Well they had, at this time they were all Black. But the school at that time was integrated. But this was all Black. These were all Black people that came now, once in a while you were still a White one, but few and far between, they could. It was anywhere they could go. But I done guess they just going go at that time, I guess they didn't go. So some of them still have that stigma in them right now about that. But anyway, I had a boy who was in the 10th grade or ahead, my story. So after I taught that six weeks, I got a call from the office one day and a director personally called me and she said, "Look," she said, "Dr. King wants you to go, at the same school you taught, she wants you to work there this fall regularly." And I was so quiet. She said, "Are you still there?" I said, "Yes. Yeah." I said, "Well, I don't know." She said, "Well, I tell you she has these names out here and yours, top list. So she told me to call you." | 44:38 |
| Sarah Williams Grimstead | So she said, "I'll tell you now, you think about it." And that was about a quarter past nine that morning. She said, "Just call me before five o'clock." She said, "Because I have to make another contract for you." All right, so I thought about it all day. At that time my mother was living, so I talked to her about it and she said, "Well, I guess it would be nice to teach this one thing." And so I said, "Well, I imagine it would be." Said, "But it's up to you." So I thought about it till about 4:30, I called her. I said, "All right, I'll do it." And so, I went to ODU, Old Dominion. | 45:42 |
| Sarah Williams Grimstead | And meanwhile I tutored a little girl who was having a lot of difficulty in reading. She was in first grade. I did that for my practicum. I worked with her, and she was able to improve quite a bit because she just felt like she just couldn't do anything right. I worked with her while I was teaching at the high school. Her mom was bringing her there three days a week, and I had a reading lab and everything right there. See, we had all the up-to-date machines and everything in that reading lab. We had a tape recorder, all kind of—We had everything, we had. So I said, "My goodness," I said, "all this stuff." I said, "I should be able to do a pretty good job." | 0:04 |
| Sarah Williams Grimstead | But before I got that job, that summer when Dr. King was in the process of assigning what each person would teach, I never will forget that day. This was a little bit of racism, I could see that right there. She had a big board, and she had everybody's name up there. I was the first Black person whose name she called. Next was my name. "Now, you are going to be teaching SRA at such a time." "So and so at such a time," like that. This big fat White lady's face was so red. Her hand was up waving in air. "Dr. King—" No, it was Dr. Kelly. "Dr. Kelly, how do we know these people are capable of teaching these things?" That's why I said racism. I was the first Black person she called. She had called other people, but I was the first Black person she called. | 0:45 |
| Sarah Williams Grimstead | Meanwhile, there were only three Black persons teaching, and there were nine White ones. Okay, so I was the first Black person she called, and she didn't say anything until she got to my name. When she got to my name, then, "How do we know these people are capable of teaching these things?" Dr. Kelly told her, said, "Well, one thing, we know. One thing, we know. We know from the evaluation sheets that we have had over the years that these people are capable of teaching these things and have been doing a good job in the school system." Said, "I know because I have the record they go by, and I know what kind of work these people can do." Said, "I know we have the cream of the crop." Oh, my land. I said, "Mm, she went a little too far that time." That's what I said to myself, but I was glad she defended me because that was my neck on the line. She hadn't said anything about anything else until that lady called my name. | 1:39 |
| Sarah Williams Grimstead | Okay, every day when I would come to school, I would pass her room going down to my room. And so, "Good morning, Mrs. Butler." I'd speak to her every day. She said just as much as you did. All right, I kept on. Yeah. Meanwhile, Mrs. Bowman, who was also White, came to me one day, and she said, "I have a vacancy at this period." She said, "Can I sit in your room?" I said, "Sure, come on in." So she sat in my room that day. I had each room for, what, 35 minutes I think it was. She sat in my room that day. When she came out, she said, "Well, I enjoyed that." I said, "Thank you very much." I said, "Well, I don't think I have things every day at this time." So she came in my room. From that time on, she was in my room so much. Now Ms. Harrison was my supervisor. That was her funeral that we had yesterday. I don't think I'm going disconnect this. | 2:34 |
| Sarah Williams Grimstead | So Ms. Harrison, she was in charge of cultural programs for the children at that time. Her office also was in that building, so lot of times during lunchtime I go up there and talk to her. I said, "Ms. Harrison, you know what? Every day Mrs. Bowman comes in my room, every day, and sits there and listen at me." She say, "Yes." She always called me Sarah Ruth. "Sarah Ruth, don't you know she's learning from you?" That's what she told me. I said, "You think so?" She said, "I know it." She said, "I know that." All right. So as I said, Mrs. Bowman would always come in there, but when I speak to Mrs. Butler in the morning, she never spoke. It went on like that for a long time. One day Dr. King came out there with a photographer, and here I was up there doing what I thought I was doing and everything, that's teaching. Didn't know they had taken my picture. | 3:47 |
| Sarah Williams Grimstead | Oh, that Sunday morning somebody called me. I hadn't even gotten up out the bed. Somebody called me. So, "Why you calling? What's happening? Why you calling me?" Said, "You haven't seen today's paper, have you?" I said, "No." Said, "Well, look at the Sunday paper." I said, "What's in it?" Said, "You on the front page." Oh, I'd like to fell out. I couldn't believe it. I put on my robe, and went out there, and got the paper. I was on the front page, and I kept that paper until Joe and I got married. We'd gotten married, moving everything, I lost it. Meanwhile, every night—Lilly really worked with Dr. King and Dr. Kelly. Lilly Reese called me every night and telling me different things. She said, "I know you were surprised when you saw your picture in the paper." I said, "I didn't know they had even taken it." I didn't have any idea about that at all. All right. Now— | 4:43 |
| Blair Murphy | What was the Virginia paper? | 5:36 |
| Sarah Williams Grimstead | It was in the Virginian-Pilot. See, the Virginian-Pilot is all over this area, see? See, at one time they had a morning paper and evening paper. On Sunday they had one paper, but now they only have one paper a day. Anyway, it was there on the Beacon, and everything happened around Princess Anne County like that. Anyway, well, I looked at it, and I said, "Oh, shucks." I said, "I declare." I said, this is a terrible picture," I said, "but it's me." Anyway, in the meantime, one morning when I passed Mrs. Butler's room, and when I said, "Good morning, Mrs. Butler," she said, "Good morning," and came to the door. "Oh," I said, "well, I know I must be dreaming now," because see, all the time she ain't spoken. | 5:37 |
| Sarah Williams Grimstead | So she said, "Oh, you look so nice today." I said, "Thank you. That's a clean dress, that's all." One day Mrs. Bowman said, "Well look, I want to ask you a question." I said, "Sure, what is it?" She said, "These children we are working with now are supposed to be underprivileged children." I said, "Sure. A lot of them came from great big families. A lot of them have big families, seven, eight kids in the family, like that." Said, "I got this little boy in my room." She said, "It's like this now." Said, "He's oh so clean all the time." And she said, "He's not light skinned. He's dark skinned, but he's so clean. Hair, everything clean, and clothes all like that." She said, "I wouldn't look at him as being disadvantaged." I said, "Well," I said, "now his daddy has a job that's not paying much. I know the family," I say, "and his daddy has a job. It doesn't pay much, but he has to feed all his children and take care of them." | 6:29 |
| Sarah Williams Grimstead | I said, "Some of his children cut grass for people," I said, "and one or two days his wife would work for somebody like that." I said, "They can go to place like King's Department Store," it was here at that time, "and they can get these little things that don't cost much money, but she keeps everything spick and span. She's bringing all the children up like that." And I was so tickled. I said, "Why she think they got to be filthy just because they're disadvantaged?" I said. So one day these young White girls talking everything so they been on the beach and said, "Oh, I got sunburn and everything out there." They'd always talk to me, and I talk to them. I said, "Well, you know one thing, it's so good Black stays the same, and the more you use it the better it looks." | 7:25 |
| Sarah Williams Grimstead | They said, "You are really funny. You just make my day sometimes." So I don't understand—I didn't understand why they thought because you were Black, you had to be filthy, and all this stuff, but that's the way they felt. I said, "So when they—" and they really don't know us. They still don't know us. They really don't know about us, and they don't know us. Somebody said one day, said, "Well, I don't understand—" Oh, they say, "Mr. Watson, you know him?" I said, "Sure I know him." Mr. Watson taught history at high school. See we were up at high school, and he drove a Cadillac, nice car. She said, "He comes here every day all dressed up. He wear suits and drives a nice car." Said, "How can you afford that through teaching?" I said, "Well, Mrs. Bowman, I'm going to tell you something." She said, "What's that?" I said, "The only way you can understand us, you had to be Black." | 8:12 |
| Sarah Williams Grimstead | I said, "Now Mr. Watson, I can tell you his history, but I tell you Mr. Watson came to North Carolina like I did. He started working at dining hotels, and everything his mama done, and they bought property. She built some little houses on her property. His father was dead, and they worked." I said, "Now, and they rent these things out." I said, "You've got to be Black to know how we make it because what we make it on, you couldn't make it on what we make it on because you not accustomed to it." By that time, you see, I knew her real well when I told her that. I knew her real well by that time. But a lot of them still don't know us. When we got ready to get our children ready for the fall to put in this reading group, all right, there was a boy in 10th grade. I had to talk to him like I don't know what. He was a big boy, and he said they had started around the school a rumor that this was a dumb kid's class. | 9:20 |
| Sarah Williams Grimstead | So I told him, I said, "Look, I want to talk to you, especially today." I told him, I said, "Now look, your reading blanket is just full of holes. Your reading blanket is full of holes." I said, "You know if a man goes out there and try to fish, and his net is all full of holes, he can't catch any fish." I said, "Now, all right, say your reading level is here when you should be here." I had a ruler, and I pointed to it like that. I said, "Now, your test that we gave you the other day—" I told him, I said, "Look, here's what you made." He said, "I can read." I said, "You can call words, but your comprehension is zilch. You don't understand what you read. You can call words, but you don't understand what you read. All right? | 10:20 |
| Sarah Williams Grimstead | And I said, "Now, what I'm going teach you now," I showed him the book I was going to use. "I'm going to teach you how to read and understand something so we can condense it. A lot of people talk, and they would say something, and go on and on and on a long time before you get the bottom line of what their talking about." | 11:05 |
| Sarah Williams Grimstead | I said, "But this book will show you how to condense things." So I worked on him like that, because he was the one spreading the rumor, but he didn't know I had gotten it, and I knew he was the one spreading the rumor. Do you know, later on we had more children come to us than we could help because he did so well? I said, "I'll tell you what I want you to do today." I said, "Let's take your history book." After I taught him basic study skills, we worked on a history book. He said, "You know what? I was making Ds in history, and I got me a protocol. I made a B." He said, "I couldn't understand it. I don't know." He said, "Well, I don't understand because I can study it more now, and soon condense the stuff, and get to it." He was shocked by it, and he told so many people that they stopped calling the dumb person's class. I said, "A lot of people can call words," I said, "but you want to understand what you read." So I had kids from grade 9 through 12, and sometimes we had 8 to 10 kids in a period. | 11:24 |
| Sarah Williams Grimstead | We weren't supposed to take over 10 because, you see, it's a lot of individual stuff. Now if you get some on the same level, you can kind of watch them once in a while, but here's somebody here you got to work with over and over and over again before they understand. I did that for 15 years, and by that time my 35 years was gone, and I retired. My husband retired before I did. See, I retired at 79, and he retired before I did. He was working at the base, and so I guess I got a little jealous. I said, "I'm going home and help him." Lot of times he wanted to go places I couldn't go so I said, "No." I said, "May as well get on out." After a while, the government gets a major part of your money, and I don't like that so well. So that's what happened. Then we got out, but I've always done a lot of work at church. Now here's my—Richard Allen Ward. All right, that first one, the red one, was his. | 12:34 |
| Blair Murphy | Oh, okay. | 13:43 |
| Sarah Williams Grimstead | All right. The next one was mine. I think mine was in 1990. It was teaching. I still worked in the church. I've always worked in my church. | 13:44 |
| Blair Murphy | You always went to St. Mark? | 13:53 |
| Sarah Williams Grimstead | Well, no, before Joe and I got married I was a Baptist. All right. Well, I worked in that church. I was a presidency in choir, and I taught the adult class in Sunday school, and worked with the children. I was supervisor of children. I worked with them programs for history, for Black History, Adult and Youth—No, Children and Youth Day, and stuff like that. I did that when I was in our Baptist church. When I came here, then it was a whole new ballgame because see the AME, African Methodist Episcopal, so I first started out before I joined by reading the discipline. When I used to go to work sometimes at night, I read discipline. We have disciplines here for this. About every year we get a discipline. I would lay up on the couch and read it some nights, and I got the background of it, and I liked it so then I decided to join it, the church. | 13:56 |
| Sarah Williams Grimstead | So when I joined the church, then I started singing in the senior choir. My girlfriend told me, said, "You going to sing the senior choir. There's no need anybody else to say anything to you, just tell them you're going to sing in the senior choir." So I started singing in the senior choir. So I was now singing senior choir, the missionary choir, which is going to sing this coming Sunday, and then in '77 I organized this children's choir. I had 31 kids in there this year, in the children's choir. They're on vacation right now. They will start back singing—They'll sing the fourth Sunday in August. The children's choir is 17 years old. The rest of Christian education was a full-time job. I did that, as I told you, for 18 years. Many times we would get the children ready to go to the Sunday School convention. Whatever the theme would be, I would research the material and develop the theme, and then give them parts so when they got there, they could discuss things in our sessions. | 14:53 |
| Sarah Williams Grimstead | We taught a lot of leadership skills too. See, because it's important for children to know a few leadership skills. I don't say that we devote everything to it, but I tell him now, "Don't sit in a session and don't say anything. I'm going to be mad if you sit there and don't say anything because I know I have researched this theme, and I've given you things to put in." So I said, "Now, you're going to have something to say." I had one boy, I was always very impressed with him. He was in it, and two of my girls. They had this boy from St. John's Church. He said he just kept talking, talking, talking, talking. Said, "He talked so much I had to wait until he called his breath." When he called his breath, Previn jumped on in there, and he made his points. All right? He was called, and he was a leader. He was called to be a leader. When they got ready to elect officers, sometime they'd have them as a—What do you call these people? I can't think of name now that we would use. Marshall. | 16:01 |
| Sarah Williams Grimstead | He would be the Marshall, or something like that. So we would get our children ready, and long at first, they aren't doing that now, they would have them to have—It's something like a debutant thing. We would have our children to participate in that. Wherever they would go, we would have them ready to participate in things like that because my husband and I took them to Richmond. I had a carload, took them all the way to Richmond to be in that. They would have on the white dresses and everything. We've already done things like that. He's always helped me quite a bit. I wouldn't be able to do all this stuff because a lot of the time I would be in such a big hurry because see I was teaching too long then. I would get up at 5 o'clock in the morning a lot of time to do things. See, he can cook. I know it's my job to cook. I cook most of the time, but if I get in a straight, he'll go and fix food, see? | 16:59 |
| Sarah Williams Grimstead | So I was able to do all these things because he always helped me. So I did that for 18 years, and then in '90—What was it? '93. I believe it was in '93 when I told the pastor, I told him, I said, "Look, I'm not going to be doing this much longer. At the end of this year you can get somebody else now to do this job because I'm not going to do it any longer." So then he selected somebody else to do that job, Christian education, but it involved so much. I told the lady, I said, "Well look, you just can't find anything written in the book. You just have to kind of go with the flow. All right? If you're going to keep the children's interest, you have to plan some programs that they like." | 17:52 |
| Sarah Williams Grimstead | Now Easter time, now I know kids love to put on little pretty things for Easter. So when I give them things to say, their speeches for Easter or their little plays, all right, I tell her, "Now you got this play, you learn this stuff and everything." I said, "See, because we're going have modeling. You're going to show off Easter. Oh, they love that. Then you see, they will learn their parts then, see, because they like that. They learn their parts." | 18:43 |
| Sarah Williams Grimstead | So I had a good relationship with them when I was working like that, but most of all, it's better to have it with the parents. If you have it with the parents, you can make pretty good with kids because—Parents this day and time will take the kids away for anything, it's true, and they won't stand behind you a lot of times like their parents used to do a long time go ago. That's why I'm so happy I'm not teaching now in the school system now. I'll talk you deaf, I know. | 19:08 |
| Blair Murphy | No, this is wonderful. I wanted to ask you a little bit about what Princess Anne was like when you first moved here? Where did Black people mostly live? Where the shops open? | 19:36 |
| Sarah Williams Grimstead | When I first moved here, I was on the other end of Princess Anne County, which was near Norfolk County. It wasn't too far from Norfolk County. All right. There was a place called Great Bridge. You go out there, and there were grocery stores out there, but there wasn't any place too much to buy anything to wear. You had to go all the way to Norfolk to buy things to wear, and of course the people who live here were lucky. See this railroad track right here? | 19:49 |
| Blair Murphy | Mm-hmm. | 20:18 |
| Sarah Williams Grimstead | Okay. The rail bus would take them to Norfolk. See? | 20:19 |
| Blair Murphy | Okay. | 20:23 |
| Sarah Williams Grimstead | See my husband was born right there where the garden is. I'll show you when you go out, and they could catch the rail bus and go to Norfolk see? All right, but where I lived at that time, if you didn't have a car, you couldn't get ride somebody else, you couldn't go. People raised all kinds of vegetables and put them on the market. They would go for a day to Norfolk to put their vegetables on the market, go on Market Street and put their vegetable out there to sell. Sometimes you were able to catch a ride with some of those people to shop at Norfolk. All right? I didn't know too much about the Virginia Beach. Actually, I had never been to the oceanfront. This might seem ironic. I had never been to the oceanfront until Joe and I got married. We were married 24 years. | 20:24 |
| Blair Murphy | Because Black people didn't go to the Virginia Beach, right? | 21:06 |
| Sarah Williams Grimstead | No, no. I had been about this far because the school is right down here, see, but I had never gone beyond the school. I said, "I'm living right here, and the Atlantic Ocean is right here. That's the Atlantic Ocean." I said, "It's right here," and I had never been there. All right? They had a place called Seaside Park. I can't tell you too much about that, but I know they had all these things. It was almost like a circus, things you ride on, all that stuff. But when I went down there, they still had some of those things there, but now they've taken them away. But I heard him say—Now he was a part of this place being integrated. He played a major part in that. One time though, they had people coming from various places helping to integrate places, people. Well, cities and towns. There was a lawyer in Norfolk, and he was Black. He was supposed to come down here to help integrate Virginia Beach. | 21:12 |
| Sarah Williams Grimstead | Before that time, see, they couldn't go in there swimming anytime they wanted to. And on Atlantic Avenue, he said, "If a Black woman walking down the street Atlantic Avenue, she had to have on an apron or either pushing the cart of a White baby." It was like that. But now he worked for a family, a rich family, he worked for. He was their chauffeur. He used to drive the man's wife wherever she wanted to go, and she shopped in downtown Norfolk. He had his chauffeur's cap and everything to wear, and he used to take her anywhere he want. He kept the car up, and he took her anywhere she wanted to go. He did a few things around the house, around there. Well, later on then he started caddying for some of these White people, and he learned how to play golf after that. So that's one of his past times, playing golf and fishing. He can fish the day whether he caught anything or not, but he goes. He would do things like that. | 22:08 |
| Sarah Williams Grimstead | He said, "When you saw a Black lady walking down Atlantic Avenue anywhere, she would always have on a white apron uniform or something, and pushing a White child, or with some older person, something like that." He said, "Because you just didn't see them out there like that," and they did not go in swimming with White people, see? So my husband and two of his friends helped to integrate Virginia Beach. Let me see. I think they're right here on this picture. I think they should be. Let's see. Okay. That's my husband right there, this one. Where is that other picture? Oh, is this other guy? Wait a minute, I can't see. No, no, it's these two. This other man—Wait a minute, I got him. Oh, here's the other one right here. | 23:08 |
| Blair Murphy | Oh, okay. | 24:00 |
| Sarah Williams Grimstead | And of course they also organized the first volunteer fire department, first Black, all Black volunteer fire department. This is what this is right here. | 24:02 |
| Blair Murphy | Oh, okay. | 24:14 |
| Sarah Williams Grimstead | You see this? This was one of the vehicles, and these were the members of the first Black volunteer fire department in Virginia, at that time in the whole nation. There was not a Black volunteer fire department in the whole nation, and my husband, he was the chief. He was the president of the organization, and this was the main founder right here. So they did that. He has helped rescue a lot of people from fires and things like that. So when they decided to build another fire department, that's the brand new one right there with the green frame. They have their pictures as charter members of the fire department, and it's down Birdneck Road. It's down Birdneck Road. They were there when they first opened the building. Ribbon cutting, all that stuff, they were there on hand for it. When they first built the center, his father was one of the people who helped to found the Seatack Center right down here. | 24:16 |
| Sarah Williams Grimstead | They had my granddaughter to help cut the ribbon, and she was little something along then. She's in this picture right here with the shirt with green on. Maybe she was about five years old, something like that, and just shaking. I could see her dress just shaking. I said, "Go, grandma right here." There she is where she was a baby. See that baby picture right there? She looks almost like this right now, but she's a big girl. She's 13. She's real big. So her picture is supposed to be in the center of the fire department. No, the Center. Her picture is supposed to be at the Center, the Seatack Center now, okay? I don't know, but there were a lot of things going on. | 25:23 |
| Sarah Williams Grimstead | Also they were also successful in abolishing the poll tax, and we called them Three Musketeers. We used to call them. They would go to one of the head men and tell them, say, "Our people are not able to pay that poll tax." It was $1 a head when a lot of folks didn't have it. All right? So now they would pay it, and we think they should be allowed to vote. So this White man who had a lot of power, he went along with them. Now mommy's always said there's always some good White people, and he was a good White person. His whole family was pretty good. They would always talk to him, and he would help them out. Yeah. Anything else you want to ask me? I don't know what to say. I'm running on and talking a whole lot. | 26:08 |
| Blair Murphy | You've done a real nice job. I— | 26:54 |
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