Martha Braswell interview recording, 1997 November 03
-
Download
- Rights
- Files (2)
-
MP3
Part 1
-
MP3
Part 2
- Please be patient with media downloads. They are often large files.
- Share
Loading the media player...
Transcript
- Download transcript as:
-
Text
-
PDF
-
WebVTT (includes timecodes)
Transcripts may contain inaccuracies.
| Janet Reilly | Hello? Hello? Hello? Testing one, two. If it works. Yeah. Okay. Last time, I had a couple of questions about—I was listening to the interview last time, and it was so interesting. There was something you mentioned about when you were married, and you were working on a farm, and you were sharecropping, you said. There was one part in the interview where you said that a lot of the other farmers would buy the materials and stuff on credit, and then not be left with anything at the end of the year when they had to settle up their accounts. But, you were saying there was a farm agent who helped you build some savings so that you could—do you remember that? | 0:07 |
| Martha Braswell | Yes, we did have a farm agent, and he would need to set up a meeting, and I think once a month and he would come out and they help the farmers. I think they started this credit union during his time. I don't remember credit union before. From the credit union, a lot of people started the saving a little bit, and from year to year they was saving. It kind of increased, and that gave them a little something to have to depend on. So, in my experience of my husband and I, we was married four years and he had a small crop. After he did his work, then he would work for the boss man. I would do the same thing, that I had one child at that time. | 1:47 |
| Martha Braswell | I had to have somebody that stayed with the baby. So, we had a girl that stayed with us. She had a baby too. So, I would do the work that was needed for our crop. Then, when it come to the boss man, what he had to be done, she would do it in order to get some money for herself and her baby. We went back there for a fact three years. Then we moved from that farm to another one, and we worked the same way, I think for about one or two years, I'm not quite sure. But, then my husband wanted not to be in the position that every year he had to go to the boss man and just pick what he said, and all the settling up would be what he said. He wouldn't know anything about him. So, he was talking to one of them on the phone, which was a White man. | 2:46 |
| Martha Braswell | He would go and pay what he was going to have to need right up in the front. So, at the end of the year, he wouldn't be owed him anything. So, he suggests to my husband that he think he could do the same thing. So, my husband went to the boss and asked him about it. So, he told him, yeah, he could do that. So, he started doing that. Then, the end of the year came, everything was already paid for. Work the crop, sell half of with him, half of with him, with no more work to go, and we didn't have to take what boss man said or anything. So, that's what—that was very, very good. So, I think he told me that the boss, that he wish everybody was on his farm would do that. But, my husband was on this white farmer that was doing that on that farm. | 3:55 |
| Martha Braswell | So, he did that, I think for two years. Then he left from that farm and went on another farm. He did that, I think the same way. I had a cousin that been on that farm, that last farm removed them. That's what he was doing to my husband, and him kind of work together, but they still take everybody on the farm to put in the crops to get it done. So, it worked out very well. So, we lived on the farm for 12 years after I married, and then they broke up from farming and they moved him down. He got a public job. | 4:48 |
| Janet Reilly | So, the farm agent on the first farm though, the one who helps you build the savings, is that right? | 5:31 |
| Martha Braswell | Well, it says— | 5:41 |
| Janet Reilly | I'm sorry. I don't understand farming very well. | 5:44 |
| Martha Braswell | It was just a farm agent. He came out and he had commands and everything showing the farmers how they could save. If they make so much, take part of that and put it in their savings. At the end of the year, sometimes they wouldn't make something, and sometimes they wouldn't. Sometimes the boss man say they didn't make anything. They had went the whole year without anything, some years they would come out and they could do with some, but would never amount to much. But, this farm agent said, regardless how much we made, just take a little bit and start savings that you would get in a habit of saving. Then you could grow up in your savings and you would really have something to rely on and become more independent. So, this started before we ever married. | 5:49 |
| Martha Braswell | So, when we married, we was already had again, saving something. So, we was able just to add to it. So, our farming years we always made a little something, but then my husband started to paying his part of the, whatever to produce the crops. He came out much, much more larger in saving than he did before. | 6:46 |
| Janet Reilly | Did the farm agent work for the boss, or why did he counsel with people and help people save? | 7:18 |
| Martha Braswell | Because he was a agent that worked for the whole county. | 7:27 |
| Janet Reilly | Oh, okay. | 7:33 |
| Martha Braswell | At that time, it was a very few Black people owned their farms, but it was some there in Edgecombe County that owned they farm. But, most of them was what we call sharecroppers. It would help sharecroppers to make more, save more, and probably long run, would become farm owners, if they saved enough to get a farm. Long time ago, they said a lot of people had Black people had farms. But then when they come to time or something like the weather, storm or something, or when the crop didn't produce, and they didn't make enough, whatever they have, wherever they would farm and live, would take everything to pay what they owe. And see that would come up to nothing in so many years, they would even take their farm. And see, that would left them without anything, and they had to become sharecroppers. | 7:34 |
| Janet Reilly | When you moved to town, you said, were you working in the florist shop? Is that right? | 8:44 |
| Martha Braswell | When I first moved to town, to leave out the country, I had a lot of canned goods. We had a lot of meat, so we kill hogs and we put pigs, our meat in the—they had a freezing locker in town that farmers could take their meat after they kill hog and put it in the freezer, and had fresh meat all the year through. I canned meat, I canned a whole lot of things. I had over 300 quarts when I left the farm, I had chicken, I moved some of the chicken into town 'cause we was right on the edge of town. We weren't what you'd say in the town, but we were hoping that it was going to cross right into town. So man, it is. So, my husband, he got a job at the lumber company. There just the man that owned the lumber company, but the last farm that we lived on, so he just stopped farming and got a job with the same fellow, so to speak. | 8:50 |
| Martha Braswell | So, the first year he lived there, I think, he got his pay for three places there at the lumber company. So my son, I think he was about 13 years old. So, he went out and got a job. I wasn't working, because I had decided I was going to rest some after leaving the farm, going in town. My first year I wanted to rest up from working. So, my son was working as a boy that delivering package from a store. It wasn't that grocery store, was a store that paid with clothes and everything. So, one member of this family that the store belong to wanted somebody to do some ironing. So, my son told this lady that worked with this lady that "my mama would do it." So, he came home and asked me would I do some ironing for this lady? I told him, "Yes, I would." | 9:53 |
| Martha Braswell | I was working there. My husband, he was home with a broken leg. So, he brought these clothes up there and I ironed, they was already washed. Then, she wanted me to wash for her. So, I took the washing. And then in the same family, she had someone working for her. So, she had to be out one day. So, she asked me, would I go up there and work in her place? I told her I would. From that day, I started working, not regular, but just doing work for people who wanted to do domestic work. In the fall of the year, I got on to the tobacco factory in Rocky Mount. I was working in Tarboro. It was a seasonal job, so I worked there awhile. When they closed down, the work got scarce. Then, I was laid off, and I don't know exactly what year it was now that this family, that my son started working for us. | 10:59 |
| Martha Braswell | He had a florist in the family and she had somebody working for a young man. He was married, had children and everything. So, somehow, I don't know what or how it happened, but I started working with her in the florist shop. Then, he came and I don't know where he got another job or what, but he didn't come regular. But, he did come some days, especially when she was really busy. So, he worked there with her for a while, but then I became a regular worker for her. That would be, I think, about two years and a half, I guess, I can't tell. I got sick and had to go in the hospital. Then in the meantime, this company that my husband was working with, it went out of business. | 11:59 |
| Janet Reilly | The lumber? | 12:50 |
| Martha Braswell | That lumber company went out of business and that left my husband without a job. So, then he went in and tried to get job other places and he wasn't successful. So, he went back to the farm and did whatever worked that the farmer need to be done, digging rails, ditching, or anything just to have some income coming in. After he went back to work, I think that's when I been in full time working. My son was in school and then he was do this work after school and my daughter, she was home. So, this job that I had worked in the florist, I could go back and follow it. So, I was delivering for her and check on how she was doing it. Then my neighbors were very good too her. I didn't want nobody at my house and I was away except my children and my neighbors knew that. So, they was very helpful in helping me with my children. Then sometimes I would go get my daughter and take her where I was, in [indistinct]. | 12:50 |
| Martha Braswell | I had someone deliver her, and I would drop her off again, but it took my husband a good little while to cooperate. Think it happened in the spring or the year. Then was there in the fall before he was able to go back to work or do anything. I don't know just how long he worked when he went back to just come to us. They had closed down. No, he went back out there and worked until they closed down. So, then I became a full time worker at the florist. | 13:59 |
| Janet Reilly | You said your son was two years older than your daughter? Your son was two years older than your daughter? | 14:29 |
| Martha Braswell | He's 30 months older than she is | 14:39 |
| Speaker 3 | But, she did she go to school at this time? Or was she—you said she was home? | 14:43 |
| Martha Braswell | Well, she went to school and my son went to school too, in Friday was in school. But, then when they came home, they didn't have very long to stay home until my husband was there from work. That's what happened. I was working to the factory, to the tobacco factory. I would begin in the morning and I would work at nights, go in the afternoon, signing to them, and work began to slow down. The hours changed. I had to go in that night. So, I would fix dinner and have dinner ready for them. They came from school and my husband got work in the morning, and I come from work, my husband would fix breakfast and see that my children get off to school and everything, but they were big, then. | 14:51 |
| Martha Braswell | So, they could mostly get themselves dressed and everything. But, he saw that they did get to school and everything. Then he definitely do it. Then, I was there home and I, some days I was there when they came from school. So, it worked out very well for us like that for a while, until finding him, then my husband didn't have no work to do and he decided he would go to Massachusetts. His sister had been living up there. That's her, that's in the [indistinct]. | 15:36 |
| Janet Reilly | Okay. | 16:03 |
| Martha Braswell | So, he went up there, stayed up there with her a year. He went up in July. He came home in Christmas, and I had a job. My son had a job. He was still in school, though, and we were doing pretty well. | 16:03 |
| Martha Braswell | But my husband just didn't have no work to do. So, then he came home the next year, we had a flood there in the spring of the year, I think it was. The water rose up real high. We had to move out and we went to live with the neighbors, which was a distant relative of the family. To get back to our house, they had to go in these little paddle boats. Our house was—water was all in the streets and everything. So, when the water went down, they had got a whole lot of branches and trash all up under the house. I had my son and I took the yard rake, and clean out from under that house real good. But, I had a lot of trouble. I was come up sickly in my young years anyway. During my teenage, I had a lot of problems. So, my back got to giving me so much trouble that I had to go in the hospital. I think I just overworked and done. | 16:25 |
| Martha Braswell | And I went in the hospital, they gave me a hysterectomy. I didn't know I had a hysterectomy. I'd been in there for—I think I had to go in there for a tumor. Just when they sewed me up and everything, I had a—what they call it, fibroids or something on my womb. So, they just gave me a complete hysterectomy. So, I didn't get the way like I thought I was going to do and go back to work. | 17:33 |
| Martha Braswell | So, when my husband came home, he decided we would go back to Boston with him for the summer. Then they were coming back. That's when I got Boston, I still didn't do well. I just seemed like was getting down more and more, I guess, getting depressed and crying and doing a lot. So, the doctor told me when I left Tarboro to get right under a doctor when I got in Massachusetts. But he didn't tell me no reason and everything, but he told me he wanted, because it was just two weeks after the operation, when I went up there, went to Boston. We had planned—so, I had planned to go to Boston, but after I had the operation, I planned to— I think I had plans to go, cause I, my mother-in-law was living with us. | 18:01 |
| Martha Braswell | She and my son was going on the train, and my daughter and my husband and I, he couldn't take us all back on the car. But, after I had operated, they thought that would be too much for me. So, I went on the train with my mother-in-law and my two children and my husband went on the car, so we could close the house up. But we wasn't planning to stay up there. 'Cause after I got around so poorly, the doctor told me to write back and get a—ask the doctor at the hospital there in Tarboro to release the report of my operation to him. That's when I found out what kind of operation I had. So, he advised me to get a job, not to stay by myself, stay around people. He said his wife was going through the same problem. | 19:01 |
| Martha Braswell | So, that's what I did. I soon got a job, but it took me a long time to kind of get myself together until I was living in the house with my sister-in-law. I had children, she never married. She never had children. I think probably that was somewhat, kind of bothered me too. So we soon—we went there July. So, we got our apartment in November, I think it was, but he was out of there by Thanksgiving. So, I went to work and I kept on and I took me a long time to get over it. But I finally got myself together. | 19:55 |
| Martha Braswell | So, we stayed there for 27 years before we came home, but I always wanted to come back home. And too, I had heard before I went up there, how the people were doing in the city, they were doing so much better than the people in the South and people were—White and the Black went to school together. They got good jobs and everything. I was so disappointed when I got out there to find out they was just about as bad as it was in the South. | 20:30 |
| Martha Braswell | I heard that they would put the children back in school. They couldn't get along, been making the same progress as the children up there. I said, well, I thought my children was doing pretty good. I was interested in them. I was interested in the school that they were going to. They had parent teacher meeting and we moved up in that very, very much. So, when I got in Boston, my children started the school. I think it was in September, but we were there few weeks before they went to school. So, they were there in school and they was much better than I thought than the children there. My daughter, my son, came back with the same report card that they had when they was in North Carolina, and what I heard from some children up there, it was just as good as they were. So, I was kind of satisfied at that. So, both of them graduated from high school then. | 21:01 |
| Janet Reilly | Was that in the '40s, I guess? | 21:58 |
| Martha Braswell | No, it was in the '50s. I think it was in '57 when I went there, I got married in '41 and she left in '57. | 22:01 |
| Janet Reilly | Oh no, sorry. I thought you were thinking of something. Did you get a job when you went to Boston? | 22:28 |
| Martha Braswell | Oh yes. I got a job after I went to the doctor and he told me to get a job. He thought that would really help me. I went out and my sister-in-law took me out and we went to an electronic place called Raytheon. | 22:35 |
| Janet Reilly | What was it? | 22:47 |
| Martha Braswell | It was electronics. | 22:47 |
| Janet Reilly | Oh, okay. | 22:48 |
| Martha Braswell | They said there that you had to take a little test, skill test. So, I passed and I went to work that Monday. So, I stayed there I think about three years, three and a half years until they went out of business, they had laid off a lot of people, and those had seniority, they were the ones that stayed on. So, they pulled them on plants and transferred some of them working to other plants. So, they transferred me to another plant and I stayed there for a while, and then I put in for unemployment, and I joined unemployment for a while. Then they said, whenever they find an opening, a job or other place, they would call me back. So, they called me back one year, and I had been out, I hadn't been out a year, I think, but this place was a long way from where I lived. I had to make a lot of transfers before I could get there by public service. | 22:54 |
| Martha Braswell | Then they tried to find some way that I could go on with some other people. I had to go a long ways to get with them. So, that didn't work out good for me. So, I just tried to find me another job. So, I went in and took training for sewing and that didn't work out good for me. I just couldn't catch the neck of it, of being a stitcher. But, that's what I really wanted, and after awhile I saw this advertisement about another electronic place and they were making switches and that was nearer to me. So, I went down and took a test for that. I passed and I got on there. That was [indistinct]. So, I back there, I stayed there. I don't know exactly how many years I stayed there, but I think I was—stayed there about nine years already. I stayed there that long. | 24:04 |
| Martha Braswell | But anyway, until, after the Civil Rights Movement started and everything, then they got to open up jobs for a lot of people. They could take training, go in for a lot of jobs that they hadn't been able to get into. So, there was enough positions in veteran hospitals, all the federal jobs, they was opening up for people, and they could go in with not too much education. You could go to school and go in training. So, I saw this ad in the paper, I cut it out of one of the Boston papers and took it down to where they said to go. So, they said they hadn't heard nothing about it. So, I told them it was a clipping, and told them that I would like to get that clipping back. I never got that clipping back. | 24:44 |
| Martha Braswell | I don't know what in the world they did with it, but they hadn't heard of that opening up like that, they said. And it was to the post office. But anyhow, they called for me to come down for an interview, the first one. I don't know what happened, but I didn't get there, but I was working. I didn't want to give up my job until I was sure I was going to get in. So, because it took me another two weeks later, they sent another, and told me to come down for the interview. So, I then told my boss what I had done, and what I wanted to do. I think then, I don't know exactly what the price was for [indistinct], but it was much more than what I was getting. So, he told me and said, well, you never know, he would try. So I said, if I fail, and can't keep it and don't get the job, could I come back? He took me I could. So, he told me let him know how I do. | 25:58 |
| Martha Braswell | I had to go to school three months. During the three months I went to school, I would be working night doing this job too. So, that's what I did. I didn't miss a day from going to school. I was there to get that work. I found out they would require to you work. I think it was six hours, four hours, but they had a lot of work, and they would make you work 40 hours a week, but not over that. So, I found out they would let me do that. So, I worked 40 hours, and I just worked four days a week, because I had made up them forty hours in four nights. I stayed there there long enough overtime they had it. I think you might do forty hours, you had to start for that [indistinct]. So, I was really enjoying it. I felt like if I could just get in there, I could have stayed there. I felt like my work would be sufficient, and be good enough for me to keep a job, if I just got it. | 26:48 |
| Martha Braswell | So, we didn't have a car at that time. So, we had been in car business, but my husband was having quite a few accident. People running into him and he was getting hurt, and we had just got a car not too long. He went back to had some work done on it. On the expressway there in Boston, some doctor, he was going out of Boston and he ran across the center strip and hit another car. He ran clean across, and my husband was in the accident. He got his nose broken. | 27:43 |
| Martha Braswell | So, we been out of car business. So, we said, we just going to save our money for the car until we felt like we wanted to get enough. At that time, I felt like we needed a car from there, getting back and forth to work at night. 'Cause they would put us out any time of night. They had transportation that they—but at nighttime, I didn't want to be out there. So, we went, got that car. So, we was able to help other people to get home too. So, after my three months of going to school, then I was permanent hired, and I was glad that I stayed in that job 16 years. | 28:24 |
| Janet Reilly | At the post office? | 29:00 |
| Martha Braswell | That's where I retired from. But, one year I was sick and I didn't work for a whole year. I did work one or two days, one or so in there. But, then I was out for a whole year, but I really liked that. I enjoyed working there, because I enjoyed all the jobs I had, anyway. So, I was glad. When I was 55 years old, I wanted to stop when I was 62, but I checked into what I would be earning and everything and what would my earning be if I worked until I got 65, it would've been much more, but not a whole lot, but it would just give me more every month. So, I just stayed there until I was 65. I was had to be on— what they call it— and not able to— | 29:01 |
| Martha Braswell | I can't think of now what they call it. But, anyway, I was sickly, and they put me on night duty job, and I had to stay on night duty job for a number of years before I came out of there. And the night duty job they didn't make you do no overtime at all. Only time I got a chance to do overtime like a storm or something coming up and they required everybody to stay on. They let me do light duty—stay on the job then. But I was so thankful to God. I was there, and they put me on this night duty job until I was permanent on that night duty job. But, that was a great help to me. 'Cause I didn't know what I could be doing and being sick. I had a serious operation during that time too. And everything worked out well for me. | 29:54 |
| Janet Reilly | When did you do all this traveling? When I met you at the Hayti Heritage Center, you said you had traveled so many places. | 30:43 |
| Martha Braswell | Well, my son, after he graduated from high school, he saw this ad in the paper about, he said he wanted to be an engineer. I think it was an engineer. We came home and in the same credit union that we had put some money and we continued to put money there and added up and then would getting interest from it too. So, he saw this ad in the paper, he wanted to take up this correspondence course. I believe it was in Maryland. | 30:55 |
| Martha Braswell | But, anyway, I came home and borrowed the money for him to take this course. But, then after he graduated—he was going to school, was in high school when he went, was taking this course. So, he started, but he didn't finish it. So, when he graduated, he told us he could get it cheaper in California. He wanted to go out, and he was a boy always ambitious and always knew everything. At that time, a lot of young people beginning to know more than their parents, knowing everything. So, he decided he would go out and wanted to go to California. So, we told him, well, if he going out there and go to school, we'll try to help him. But we told him he could not get married. If he got married, we wasn't able to help him, because we were not able to take care of his schooling. His tuition. He was told to get a job, a good job was promised to him and everything. | 31:32 |
| Martha Braswell | So, we checked into that and they told us, yes and he had a job waiting for him. He came down to this credit union, set up a plan that we would pay for his tuition and something else we would to pay for. But, this money would go direct to the school. He wasn't supposed to see this money. We wasn't supposed to see he was going right from the credit union to the school. Whenever he failed or dropped out, this money would be cut off right then. So, somehow he got married before he even left to go to school. He didn't tell us about it at all. So, after he got out there, the girl he married, she worked in the Boston, she had a good job. | 32:28 |
| Martha Braswell | And he got disappointed when he got out there, he didn't get the job, he didn't get the room he was supposed to get. He said, they thought he was white, and they found out he wasn't white, then everything just changed it. But he didn't tell us that. I guess he was still out done and everything. He got behind his wife and wanted her to come out there. | 33:13 |
| Martha Braswell | So, she said, they said, when they got married, she was going to stay in Boston until he saw himself enough in school to finish. Then she came out there, that it wouldn't be any problem. No, he got right behind her and wanted her to come. So, she got ready. She went on out there. I think that was in—before December, he had to stop school. He had to come out of school. He wrote and told me he had, didn't have but $20 to his name. His wife had one little boy already, and she was out there and didn't have a job. I guess all them was depressing. Wouldn't it upset me so bad. I didn't want him to go into stealing or doing anything. I cried. I cried and I didn't know what to do. | 33:35 |
| Martha Braswell | So, I went around to my mother-in-law and I had a sister there. I went to her and I tried to get up enough money to send him a hundred dollars. So, I did and I packed that letter, put that money in that. I think it was—wasn't in cash, money in a check. But anyway, I put a hundred dollars in there and backed it to me, had his name on it but it had my address on in California and it made it to California. I think it was there about two weeks or something. Anyway, I called him and he hadn't got the money. | 34:31 |
| Martha Braswell | That's when I really cried. Not when I first sent it to him. And I sent him that check and he hadn't got it, that money. I said, "what in the world happened?" So, he finally came back to me and that's when I found out I had put my address instead of his, so I called my husband at work and told him what I had done. So, he said, "Well, can you send a telegram?" So, I went down to the telegram office and said something to them and tell them. They told me I could wire it there. They was just like talking on the telephone, said he soon get it for there. | 35:07 |
| Martha Braswell | So, he did. So then I mailed the letter back to him that what—showed him what I had done. So, in the meantime, he had gone down and put in for a position at the post office and he had got that. So, he was able to continue on without pulling into any crime or anything. I just saw him trying to steal to do something to happen. I just didn't want that to happen. I don't know why, but he really upset me. | 35:40 |
| Martha Braswell | So, he got this job in the post office. Then he began making more than my husband and I was making together. I suppose he doing that, his wife and children, she got pregnant pretty soon as she got out there. So, they made it pretty good. So, he's still there and they still together. Had four children, one of them died and got four grandchildren there, two boys, three boys and one girl and the grandchildren. So, that's so far, so good. The Lord had brought us through. | 36:13 |
| Janet Reilly | He got married without telling you? | 36:46 |
| Martha Braswell | Yeah, he got married and we didn't know until, I think his wife was the one that was telling us about it, that she was married with him. But, when we took him to the airport to go, she went with us. I didn't know he was even going with the girl. I knew her family. Her family was the first family we had met there in Boston. Her brother was the first boy that my son was his friend, in Boston, they was classmates together, I think. They had twin sister and they didn't live too far from where we lived, and they would always pass the house. So, we were very friendly with the family, but her, I didn't know her, but the two younger girl and her brother and she had our older sister that I was acquainted with. | 36:50 |
| Martha Braswell | So, when she went down and she cried and done so bad, I said to my husband, I said, "That don't look like nobody girlfriend, crying and carrying on like that." She carried on. She carried on. So, I didn't know until he got behind her, wanting her to come out there. Then she told us that she was married to him. So, we helped her get ready to go and she moved some of her stuff from her house over there to our house. Her wedding dress and some dishes and stuff she had. So she stayed there and she never got it. So, she told me I could do what she wanted to with her wedding dress. She had a beautiful wedding dress. | 37:43 |
| Martha Braswell | She said they been in New Hampshire and got married. And she had some dishes, said she never came back and got her dishes. Well, they didn't get back here. No waiting. Too much. She lost her one of her her twin sisters, she came back for her funeral. He came back too. So, then he got a job. He left the post office. | 38:22 |
| Martha Braswell | What did he do then? I don't know what he did then, but he stayed at the post office, probably not too long, but he went on to school. He finished and became a teacher. So, he said he still teaches some night teacher class, but he's a supervising insurance company in there. I think Blue Cross, he worked for. So, he'd been there for a number of years. So, one of his sons worked with insurance company, too. His wife, she went back to school and became a teacher. She taught me in high school for a while. So, so far God had blessed them up until now. | 38:43 |
| Janet Reilly | When you moved up to Boston, and your children started going school, were the schools integrated at all at that point? | 39:32 |
| Martha Braswell | Yeah, it was integrated, but it was just a few Black, not too many Whites in school. | 39:40 |
| Janet Reilly | Wow. At the end of the '50, at '57 | 39:44 |
| Martha Braswell | '57? I think of '57 til, I don't know, think she graduated now. I can't think for, she was in elementary school when they went there and she went to finished high school at, I think a girls' high school there in Roxbury. I think it's still a girls' high school there now, I believe. No. I think that school has gone down. She went back last year and tried to look up a lot of her classmates. They was integrated. Yeah. Both schools was integrated, but it didn't have too many Black, just a few. Some them just, I had one student in just enough to say integrated. | 39:52 |
| Janet Reilly | You were saying in the last interview a lot about the businesses you saw in Boston in the north, when they would change hands from White to Black owners, a lot of times people would lose business. Where in Boston did you live in? Was it—? | 40:36 |
| Martha Braswell | In Roxbury and Dorchester. | 40:58 |
| Janet Reilly | Did you see the community go down at that? | 41:04 |
| Martha Braswell | Oh yes. It really went down. Then when I went to the post office, I think I was already living in Dorchester. | 41:07 |
| Martha Braswell | Because when I moved in Dorchester, on the street I lived on, I think we were the second Colored family that lived on there. Most everybody in that Dorchester area around there where I lived, left there and went in the Brookline section. That was all—most, all Whites lived out there. But, up there where I moved to was all White until the Blacks started going up there. It was a nice place. The streets was nice, had a lot of stores and everything. Then in the Blacks moved in, that community came down, the house came down and everything, the whole place came down. I don't know when all this burning and everything started. I think—I don't know it had started with—I know when we got there—no, it hadn't. I don't know what year that was, but that's when everything really meant, just messed up Boston and Roxbury, and with the ten fires, and burning and doing, I guess you heard about all of that. | 41:15 |
| Martha Braswell | It looked so bad and in some ways has never been built back. Some of they store there, they cleared it up and nothing is there in its place. It has improved some, but nothing like it used to be. I worked beside a fellow, I think he was Jewish. Because most Jews lived up there in that section. He lived across the street in the house at that time, we moved into, he was there. His parents were, at the time we moved in. And I was sitting beside him one night working and he got talking about the area. And he said, he go through there sometime now, said, that it broke his heart to see how them houses come down, to see how the street was run down. It broke my heart to see how fast they come down. But when you don't have nothing, you can't buy something. If you don't have something to keep it up, you cannot do it. | 42:30 |
| Martha Braswell | That's what Colored folks did not have. Black folks did not have enough to keep— if they bought something nice to keep it going there. Something happened to them because they had done lived there and got the best service that the owners said they'd give out and come to need some repairing. When it come down to repairing, you didn't have money to do it. It just got worse and worse and worse. A lot of the [indistinct] at the house was real nice and everything, but we soon had started having something done to it, waterline leaking or doing something. But, see they done got the best deals of it, and a lot of folks up there weren't in any position that we was in, to continue caring for businesses. | 43:26 |
| Martha Braswell | My husband was working, and I was working at that time. He was working with the clothing manufacturing company. Before he went there, some of the jobs, 'cause he didn't have the sight in but one of his eyes, and he had lost some fingers on his right hand—was his right hand or left hand? I think it was his left hand. Doing some work on the farm. And a job that was in a union would not hire him. So he had to take whatever he could. And so I was always able to get a better job than he was. But before he left this manufacturing company, they fought for the union and they got a union in there. And so he was able to get in, to that a union. And then that job went down. They went out of business too. | 44:10 |
| Martha Braswell | They sent him to another manufacturing company in Dorchester. This was when I was working at this electronic place. And he said it was all closed in and it was a lot of dust there and he just couldn't take that dust. And said that he said, that it just wasn't a good place to work, that it was just getting to him. So, he just had to stop. He had to give it up. So he finally went out and put in an application at the state hospital. So, he got him right away. And he enjoyed it much better than he did working to the other place. So, he said he just couldn't stand that no how, too much staff, and it too was close to him to work. But, after that, he done pretty good. That's the job he retired from, too. | 45:09 |
| Janet Reilly | Did you see a lot of the issues in the '60s and in the city's—was the city officials' neglect of certain areas? Like when the Black Panthers started, they started trying to organize breakfast for children and— | 46:04 |
| Janet Reilly | A group in New York City, the Young Lords, began organizing, because this New York City didn't pick up trash in their area, in their section of the neighborhood. It was a Latino/Hispanic area and the city didn't have garbage facilities to collect the trash and everything. So there was a lot of organizing and trying to get the city officials to pay equal attention to parts of the city. Did you see that in the— | 0:05 |
| Martha Braswell | I knew that they did not have no Blacks in the garbage collection. All the good jobs, they didn't have too many Blacks in them, and it was hard seeming to get them in there. I don't know if the city had these—organizing these groups or not, but seemed like they was really fighting to get that and I think most all of the people trying to fight to get better everything. Schools, superintendents and get teachers. Now they had from the South, a lot of people moving from the South, looking for better jobs and we got better jobs. | 0:40 |
| Martha Braswell | But a lot of the teachers just could not get into the job. I guess since they was integrating—that's the way it seemed to me—that they just didn't want Blacks over their children, and it seemed that way today to me, right down here in the South. They just don't want Blacks to be any kind of position that has anything to do with the White folks. They was very clear that you wouldn't have a job teaching around here. If you want to stay a teacher, you better keep your job here, because you go up there, you wouldn't get it. They didn't get it. And I was told—it didn't happen to me and it could happen to me too, because I knew a lot of people to go in for a job, you had to pay for it, to be able to interviewed. If they were advertising a job here and a job there, and you go to that job, you had to pay so much money to get that job and sometimes you still wouldn't get it. | 1:28 |
| Martha Braswell | I had a lot of people from down South tell me they had gone in to a place to be interviewed and they sit there and they write out the application and everything and then after everything, they tell them that somebody has already got the job and it didn't feel like two or three days that they were supposed to get there and somebody they know, went in after them, a White person and get that same job. A lot of people had that trouble. A lot of people had that trouble. The job was not opened up to us. | 2:28 |
| Martha Braswell | I know when they talking about integrating the South and everything, you could go anywhere. When we first went to Boston, I came home. That was a big year. We came home in a year and so many people had gone to Boston to live, or gone North to live and they were going back home, I guess on their vacations. I say their vacations, back then when we were on our way, we had to stop and sleep along the road. Hotels did not let us come in to sleep. You could not go in the hotels. Howard Johnson. There was a lot of Howard Johnsons along the highway. They just saw cars all along the road. Black people had to stop and rest, to sleep, because of the segregation. | 3:09 |
| Janet Reilly | Did you come back down to visit back then? | 4:05 |
| Martha Braswell | Yeah, just often actually, I love down South and I still love down here. Yeah, some years you would come back two and three times a year. The expenses on the bus was a bit high then. Then the buses was running regularly and you could come back and go back and get transport if the bus was, you had to change in Washington. You could change and sit around at the bus station. The bus would soon come. Sometimes you could get a school bus that wouldn't start to have so many people coming. It didn't fill up. In Boston, you wouldn't have to change when you got there. They would say you was going. Then some places, they had buses that just fill up and they wouldn't even stop nowhere to change for nobody else 'cause they would have the bus full up. Then my first trip to California to visit my son. We left Boston and came to New York. They filled up two buses going to California. | 4:08 |
| Janet Reilly | A bus to California? | 5:17 |
| Martha Braswell | Two buses going to California with people and when they got in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, some changed there and I think they had a few people to get off and a few get on. But those two buses stayed together, all the way to California. They had enough and they would take us in places we could stop and eat and get back on that same bus. All the way from New York to California on the same bus. | 5:18 |
| Janet Reilly | Wow. | 5:52 |
| Martha Braswell | I enjoyed that trip. That was my first time going out there to visit on the bus, but I came back by plane. That was my first plane trip too. | 5:54 |
| Janet Reilly | You've been to Africa though? | 5:59 |
| Martha Braswell | Yeah, I went to Africa last year. | 6:00 |
| Janet Reilly | Last year. | 6:15 |
| Martha Braswell | Yeah, I went to Africa, last year I believe. | 6:16 |
| Janet Reilly | So have you traveled—has all your travel been recently? | 6:19 |
| Martha Braswell | No, I had started traveling even before I left for Boston. I had gone to California several times, two or three times. I had gone to Denver and I had gone to Hawaii. | 6:23 |
| Janet Reilly | Before you left to Boston? | 6:39 |
| Martha Braswell | Uh-huh and I took my granddaughter to California on a tour with the Rick's Trailer. And every year and they had the spring break, it was around Abraham Lincoln's birthday, I think. So around my birthday here. They had several buses that would leave Boston going to California. Rick's Trailer. And I took my granddaughter out there and she really enjoyed the trip. We were gone for a week and they gave us a traveling bag, a small traveling bag and gave us hats and something else they gave us for identification. Whenever you saw those, you didn't have to worry about what bus you got on, because they had so many buses. And you're on the plane, but so many people in the plane wasn't going to California. They had buses for, whenever you move from planes, people would get identification hats and it was something else, what it was that we had, I don't know if it was a jacket or something. | 6:41 |
| Martha Braswell | Because whenever you saw, you could get on either one of those buses and you would get back to where you came from. You wasn't lost, because they had tour guides too, but then there were so many people and children and they had escorts for them, that they would all get on the same bus. But as long as you were with somebody's group, we were safe. And they had something planned for us, all day, every night. It was very, very enjoyable. Now on the plane we was on, my daughter and I, and two more Colored ladies, and three children, was the only Blacks on the whole plane. They had a few Colored people, but not that many. But it was an enjoyable trip. Very exciting. There was a lot for me to learn because I wasn't used to nothing like that. I sure enjoyed it. Everybody they was really nice, really nice. | 7:49 |
| Janet Reilly | How did you go to Africa, in Kenya? | 8:51 |
| Martha Braswell | My church in Boston, our pastor, he would take a group every two years full-time. They would fly out there and working and doing and I did never get a chance to go. Then he got sick and they stopped. So, year before last, he went back. He got better enough to take a trip back. I can't remember fully, was it last year or year before last year? Or last year. I'm getting so forgetful now. It was last year in February and so I been up to Boston then and a lot of the people that I knew from Boston and a lot of them I didn't know. But I sure enjoyed it too. We went to Kenya and then we went to [indistinct 00:09:50] and we went to [indistinct 00:09:55].That was a well planned trip. Well planned. All of our breakfast included. All our dinner was included and then it had a lot of dinners for us that they, I think they had to pay the company that you travel with, gave us a deal. | 8:58 |
| Martha Braswell | Then they had a lot of problems too, because there in Kenya the water failure—you only got water from Sunday about 12 o'clock until Tuesday night, I think. No water at all coming in. So somehow, they did flush the commode once or twice while we were there and they furnished us drinking water. Brought in water. But that was a problem we had to adjust for the week. And then we went to the Holy Land in Jerusalem. We were there for a week and I sure would like to go back to all of those places. | 10:16 |
| Martha Braswell | I went to Germany. I went to Holland and France and I had a nephew over in France. He was an officer in the Army. I went over to visit him. His aunt and I went together. So then they had these buses going from all these other small countries down there. They would get on, feel like a [indistinct 00:11:24]. So many buses out there, taking people from one country to another. Switzerland, France, a whole lot of places they would just go and just go and so my cousin and I, we went to France on the bus and we went to Holland. | 10:58 |
| Martha Braswell | We were there about 10 days, I think over in Germany. Then my cousin that was over there, that officer, he just took us around into a lot of places too. Then I was in Hawaii, he was the one in Hawaii, that's why I was over there visiting him then and then I had his aunt that I went to Germany with. She was living there. Her husband was stationed over there for a while. While I was over there with them, he being an officer, he took me to a lot of places. I tell you I wouldn't think would exist. I wouldn't think nobody would be living that good and enjoying theirselves, because man, everything they had to eat. Big parties and all these things there, an officer there, not just soldiers. If he wasn't an officer, he wouldn't have been able to have seen all that and be a part of that. | 11:44 |
| Martha Braswell | So he just took me places just to let me see how folks live and how some folks wasn't able to live, or couldn't even go in certain places. People that are in the high class, are in a good position, could enjoy and get in there. The other person couldn't do it. But I really did enjoy it. It was a great experience for me too. Same thing in Germany. He took us around into a lot of places. A lot of places that they could go, other soldiers couldn't go. So he's back over in the States now. He lives in Maryland. He's a, colonel, colonel—how do you pronounce that? | 12:42 |
| Janet Reilly | Colonel? | 13:26 |
| Martha Braswell | Uh-huh. | 13:26 |
| Janet Reilly | Wow. | 13:26 |
| Martha Braswell | That's what he is now. He has two daughters and his wife and his daughters grown now. They're out on their own and married and doing very well. All of them got good jobs. [indistinct 00:13:43], for us most Black people couldn't get that. When I finished elementary school, I was 13 years old, there wasn't even a high school and I could go to. It wasn't one there. In the family that I was raised up in, my aunt's daughter and her brother was in high school and they had to do a lot of walking and they had to carry from one place, to get close to the school, so they could walk from there and meet them Friday afternoon and bring them home. When they finished, he did go to college, and so she became a teacher. So after then, things began looking a little better. So they got school buses for the Blacks and then high school, the new high school for the Whites and the Blacks used the old school. My younger cousin, all of them finished high school. | 13:27 |
| Martha Braswell | Which, I wasn't even able to go to high school. I started once when I was 19. No, about 14 or 15, I think it was. An old bus they'd gotten used to be a milk truck and we didn't even ask them once before it broke down. But then when I was 19, I started going to high school again. I went one year, until they got a bus. I transferred from that Bethel High School to [indistinct 00:15:06] High School, because they had the bus. So I went to the end of that year and then I got sick, so I didn't go no more. I was 19 and I was 21 when I got out of there. | 14:40 |
| Janet Reilly | Who was it, your sister you were saying, went to college? | 15:24 |
| Martha Braswell | No. | 15:27 |
| Janet Reilly | Who did you say went to college? | 15:29 |
| Martha Braswell | My cousin, the family that I was raised up in, her family. | 15:31 |
| Janet Reilly | Uncle's daughter. The uncle that you went to stay with? | 15:38 |
| Martha Braswell | Yeah, his daughter. So he had three, he had a daughter that finished college. His youngest daughter, she went on, sent herself to school, so she's a minister now in DC. He has another daughter they sent to school. She finished high school after they got buses and everything. She finished. And I think that's about the only three children in the college that's down there. | 15:42 |
| Janet Reilly | Were they all younger than you? | 16:13 |
| Martha Braswell | Oh yeah. Except this older one. And his youngest child, she finished. She's the one that's a minister. So she's still in school. She's 60 something now. But she's still going to school and all of the children coming up under them, they was able go to high school and finish college. And this other cousin that I went to Germany and Hawaii, he had four boys. They've done very well, very well. They're still doing good. But the opportunity wasn't at first like that. | 16:14 |
| Janet Reilly | When they went to college, did they go around here, or did they usually leave? | 16:52 |
| Martha Braswell | They went, all of them in North Carolina. All of them in North Carolina. I don't know, not one that's out of state. | 17:00 |
| Janet Reilly | I have a question. On the last interview tape, you said, when you were talking about civil rights and everything and you were saying that you thought ministers should have played a bigger part. I was just wondering what you— | 17:23 |
| Martha Braswell | Yeah, I still think that now. I think ministers should have fought for more civil rights than they did. I think they ought to do it now. Now one thing I really think about the Ku Klux Klan and everybody knows that's a group that really don't like Black people and they're really against Black people. You don't know who they are. I think they ought to fight—even you in your group, in your state, and everything, y'all ought to get behind it—this is just me what I think—and then have some law passed that they would take off them robes, not getting rid of they club, but take them robes off so folks will know who they are. Now I really think that a law should be passed. | 17:39 |
| Martha Braswell | Anything they want to happen and want done, they keep on until they change the law and they could have changed that law and I think it ought to still be changed and I think the ministers should get behind it and I think everybody should fight behind it. Now, don't say get rid of the group. But get them unrobed, so folks will know who they are. People that I have heard say, "I don't know" who are coming out in front saying they are with us and making laws for us, and they can get behind their hoods and hide theirselves and end up against us. Now I've heard that from long ago. I don't know about now. But I heard long ago, then there folks—maybe some of these people that know, that you was working for—and then with their hood up, they'll come up there and going to lynch you. I really think that. What you think about it? | 18:28 |
| Janet Reilly | I agree. | 19:23 |
| Martha Braswell | I really think they should get behind it and a lot of people that's working for the civil rights. I really don't think they're working for civil rights and then again, I'm kind of doubtful. I says I don't know. I just don't know how a person feel. I'm reading a book now, I don't want to read it and I like to read it too. It's hard to believe that such things was happening. How these people say it happened, it really happened to them. It's hard. It's hard. | 19:25 |
| Martha Braswell | And then I was working in this electronic place, after I was laid off from Raytheon. At the time when Martin Luther King and the president was killed and his brother. They was talking with a group of us there, White and Black, and we had a rather young boss man. He was very young, much younger than us, and he had been in service. One White lady said, "You know I just don't believe that White people are that mean to Black folk. I just don't believe it." And he came up there and he told her, "Oh yes they were. Yes they were." He thought for himself, a White person could do things and get by, that a Black person do it, that it wouldn't even happen. | 20:00 |
| Martha Braswell | I heard right here in North Carolina, I think it's up in, I'm getting so forgetful, I can't remember. But a Black man by the name of Drew, I think he was the one that invented the blood plasma? You haven't heard of that? His monument is not far from here. Now going on off the Highway 7, I think. Going out somewhere that way. There's a little place, that's got a little monument set up there for him. He had an accident and I think he died, because they would not accept him in that hospital to get blood. They let him die. | 20:32 |
| Janet Reilly | Just because he was a Black man? | 21:29 |
| Martha Braswell | Just because he was a Black man. I can't think of his name now, but I would like you to know and I'd like you to see the little monument that they put in his honor. | 21:30 |
| Janet Reilly | Could you show me where it is? | 21:40 |
| Martha Braswell | I can't think right now, but his name is, his last name is Drew. | 21:43 |
| Janet Reilly | Drew? | 21:48 |
| Martha Braswell | Mm-hmm. D-R-E-W. I can't think of his first name. | 21:49 |
| Janet Reilly | I bet I could find it. | 21:54 |
| Martha Braswell | Well you ask somebody about the man that invented, what do they call it, blood plasma? | 21:57 |
| Janet Reilly | I guess so, yeah. | 21:58 |
| Martha Braswell | I think it's blood plasma. Where they save the blood. What do they call it? Isn't that the blood plasma? | 21:59 |
| Janet Reilly | I guess so, yeah. | 22:07 |
| Martha Braswell | Then he had an accident and then he couldn't even get blood or nothing to even save his life and he died, in North Carolina. | 22:11 |
| Janet Reilly | Was the Ku Klux Klan present when you were growing up? Did you— | 22:27 |
| Martha Braswell | I heard talk of them, and I saw pictures of them, just like I do today. And I heard it said, I heard people say, they had seen them in the hoods and were people that they did attack, or tried to attack. I don't know if they really attacked them or not. | 22:31 |
| Janet Reilly | Were other groups like the NAACP, was there a presence, were they here? Were there chapters of the NAACP [indistinct 00:23:06]? | 22:57 |
| Martha Braswell | Well during that time, just like anywhere, they've got them around. Got the NAACP now and they're still going on and the Ku Klux Klan. Didn't they have them in here sometime this weekend? | 23:05 |
| Janet Reilly | I don't know. | 23:17 |
| Martha Braswell | Yeah, I think they did. I heard on the news today that someone was arrested concerning that group. I don't know if they were a member of the Ku Klux Klan, but they had a meeting here somewhere, I don't know, in the South. I don't know if it was in North Carolina or where, but it was this weekend. | 23:19 |
| Speaker 3 | [indistinct 00:23:42 to 00:25:25] | 23:37 |
| Martha Braswell | Is there anything else I could— | 23:37 |
| Janet Reilly | Are you looking for Drew? | 23:37 |
| Martha Braswell | Huh? | 23:37 |
| Janet Reilly | Are you looking for Drew? | 23:37 |
| Martha Braswell | I thought I might have been able to find it with the blood plasma or something, but I don't see it here. | 23:37 |
| Janet Reilly | I bet I can find it. | 25:40 |
| Martha Braswell | Yeah. | 25:41 |
| Janet Reilly | I don't have any more questions. Is there anything you'd like to add? | 25:46 |
| Martha Braswell | No, I can't think of anything else. My mindset now, in these times, from the time that I heard talking, but I've had the experience. We have a lot of crime. A lot of crime. And it seems like the people are so young, so young committing these crimes. But I like these days better than I do the days when I was young. I didn't know nothing, I didn't go no place. I didn't see nothing. So I hate all this crime and stuff is in here, but now I talk to some of the people that's older than I am in my family and they talk about how people were killed and how people used to shoot and how people used to steal. And it wasn't that much of it, but you remember, all of that stuff was still going on, but it's just more of it now. I said, "We still been doing the same. Children didn't go to school. Children didn't have the clothes." So I was able to get some of that stuff and enjoy some of it. | 25:48 |
| Martha Braswell | I like these days even better. And yet, I can see why a person don't believe in some things and then I wonder, and then I don't know, and I wonder why I believe like I do believe, I don't know. But I do believe there's a God somewhere. I believe there's something that man cannot control, even though I think the Lord allowed a lot of this stuff to happen. But I think it's going to be an end to it one day. I really do and I see so much stuff is happening now and I didn't hear tell of, because I wasn't conscious of it til now. Didn't hear about it, because we didn't have papers. We didn't have radios. So much stuff has come in since our time, my time. I really like these days better. Didn't have cars and telephone and now they're talking about the internet— and you hear that on 20/20 Friday night? | 27:11 |
| Janet Reilly | Yeah. | 28:16 |
| Martha Braswell | They're talking about children. I heard from that Barbara Walters. They sat up there talking and said it's just like— a mother opening her front door, letting her thirteen years old child, at that age that they'd be in the house, and going out and telling her, "Anybody can come in there who want to." That's what the internet is. And said them young girls and young boys is getting to that internet and bringing them just what they want to hear, just what they want to see and a lot of that they don't know nothing about. They seen it and they just listening and you just don't even know what is going on. It says they can invite friends in they never seen and never know how dangerous they are. It's like it just opened up. | 28:17 |
| Martha Braswell | Just something that we just don't know what's going to happen. But the storms we are having. The floods we are having. Tornadoes and all of that. Men can't do anything about it. So I think it's a higher power than what men can control. The airplane and all of that and a lot of people dying and getting killed. It's so unnecessary. All the young driving by shooting and taking lives that should be living, and they don't even think about it. And I remember a time, in my doing domestic work, that the people that I worked for ever thought more of their pets than they did of you. So now it's like a person, young people don't think no more of a person's life than they do anything. You could drive by, and standing up somewhere, just shoot them. And talking about man they can get the gun from them. All this drugs. You started it—where'd it come from, these children didn't start it? They got it from somewhere. | 29:10 |
| Martha Braswell | So it comes to the hand of some grown people somewhere. And like I say, a lot of grandparents having their children to sell drugs for them, they help them out. And them children admiring the whole thing, if they're doing that. It's just sad. It's just sad. I don't know what the world coming to. But I know they keep on going, and I keep on getting older and getting aching and doing. Had to go into [indistinct 00:30:47] nursing home. I don't know if I want to go in it or not. Get to so far gone that I can't do nothing. I don't know. I just see so many people in the nursing home, a man down there can't do anything, just like a vegetable. And what the doctor want to keep on living for? And hearing what they say about how some of these nurses are treating them and everything. | 30:20 |
| Martha Braswell | And the children, some of them don't have children, but some of them got children and they're checking on their relatives and everything and find out how they are being treated? It's just sad. People just don't care anymore. If they care, they will change. But then the unappreciative young children. You got to leave them home and they coming up. I don't know. It's just sad to me to think about how things are and everybody want want want and then they done leave everything. They leave everything and then some people they'll give everything, they get everything. They don't care about family, their children. And this was in the news some time ago, but this year too, that people, they're gambling, and these casinos, they take their children and have them sitting there. | 31:09 |
| Janet Reilly | Yeah. | 32:08 |
| Martha Braswell | Ain't that sad? What else is a child going to do? The best they can do. They do what they think is best and you cannot fault that child and yet still, they do fault the child a lot of times. "The child ought to have done this, the child ought to have done that." Well, what that child going to do? Then I heard that this five year old boy had a gun at school. Did you hear that last week? The week or last? Five years old. | 32:10 |
| Janet Reilly | Yeah, yeah. | 32:34 |
| Martha Braswell | The media and who—everybody got it all out in the papers and I think that should not have been reported out. Most of it is and so many people don't care. For many people, they want the child punished. But I don't think the child should be punished. Whoever that gun belonged to, I think something should be done to him. How they think that child get the gun? It's just sad. It's just sad. I listen to that story this weekend, about this lady whose son had came to Massachusetts to check on this child. | 32:38 |
| Janet Reilly | The one who was caring for the baby? | 33:16 |
| Martha Braswell | Mm-hmm. | 33:18 |
| Janet Reilly | Yeah, that's sad. | 33:18 |
| Martha Braswell | It is sad. And I would hate to be a juror. I was a juror on a case that day. I would never want to pass judgement on nobody. You really don't know—you have to go by what's your judgment. Let them tell you. I would hate to pass judgement on somebody and they didn't do that crime. It's sad, it's sad, it's sad. And you don't know whether it's true or not. She knows, but I don't. | 33:23 |
| Martha Braswell | Just like the OJ Simpson case. And you know so many—I haven't seen it, but I heard so many husbands and wives, doing so much, so many crime, and then—I don't know whether OJ done it or not, but I can't say from what I hear, that didn't happen. He did that. I can listen to the trial and everything. But to me, they didn't look for nobody else. Now, I think they should have looked for somebody else, since they said they had evidence of somebody else. Don't mean OJ did it 'cause husband and wife are doing, killing each other somewhere. | 33:57 |
| Martha Braswell | And I was reading in today's paper here. Boy called 9-1-1 and told that his mother had just shot him. He didn't know that the mother was dead and one of the children was dead, but the son lived and called 9-1-1, all of them was in the car. So parents, fathers and mothers, killing each other and we have wives and husbands, when the boyfriend and girlfriend. | 34:29 |
| Martha Braswell | I just don't know. But in the OJ Simpson case, there has been something that I think most people got [indistinct 00:35:19]. But that was a case that I never seen one like that. I never heard of one like that. Because, anything can happen. I do think they ought to look for somebody else besides just OJ. They said there was somebody else in there and they didn't bring up enough evidence to prove that it was him. To me, they didn't. But still, it could've been him. It could be him. It could very well be him. If it could looked like, for him to have done it, looked like he had no blood on him. Seemed like to me, they just didn't, I don't know. But it might have been, I can't see into it, and then not justifying it, just listen and have a little more details about it, I might be able to think it a little bit better. But I just don't have that wisdom to know it. I haven't been around it enough, I haven't heard enough about it. | 35:12 |
Item Info
The preservation of the Duke University Libraries Digital Collections and the Duke Digital Repository programs are supported in part by the Lowell and Eileen Aptman Digital Preservation Fund