Toledo Littlejohn interview recording, 1995 July 18

Download
- Rights
- Limited Re-Use
  CC BY-NC 4.0
  More Rights Info
- Files (2)
- MP3 Part 1
- MP3 Part 2
- Please be patient with media downloads. They are often large files.
Share

Embed Code
<iframe src='https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r41j9kh7f?embed=true' height='125px' width='100%' frameborder='0' marginwidth='0' marginheight='0' scrolling='no' loading='lazy' allowfullscreen></iframe>
Permalink

https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r41j9kh7f
Skip to Item Info

Loading the media player...

Files for this Item

Transcript

Transcripts may contain inaccuracies.

Kisha Turner	Can we begin by you just stating your full name and when you were born?	0:04
Toledo Knuckles Littlejohn	My full name, that's not including my maiden name and everything?	0:10
Kisha Turner	Your maiden name too, please.	0:15
Toledo Knuckles Littlejohn	Toledo, like the city, and B., Beatrice, and my maiden name is Knuckles, and now I married a Littlejohn, Toledo Knuckles Littlejohn.	0:18
Kisha Turner	And what year were you born?	0:43
Toledo Knuckles Littlejohn	March 8th, 1928.	0:46
Kisha Turner	Where were you born?	0:52
Toledo Knuckles Littlejohn	In Gaffney, South Carolina, Cherokee County they call it.	0:53
Kisha Turner	And what kind of community? Were people primarily agricultural workers?	0:59
Toledo Knuckles Littlejohn	Yeah, they all were agriculture. They did a lot of farming with the cotton, wheat, and that's about the biggest thing. Some of them did have, in the spring, they had a lot of cucumbers they would grow when you pick— Oh peaches, I forgot about that. Peaches, can't forget that.	1:03
Kisha Turner	And what kind of work did your parents do?	1:29
Toledo Knuckles Littlejohn	They farm. They were sharecroppers mostly, and they raised a lot of cotton, and that was corn and all of that had to be gathered and shared with the people that own the land. Like on half us, they had to share half of it, whatever they got. If they had two bales of cotton, we'd keep one and they would take one and stuff. That's just an example, and the same way with the corn and stuff like that.	1:34
Kisha Turner	Now, did you participate, did you work also on the farm with your family?	2:20
Toledo Knuckles Littlejohn	Yes, when I got older, I did, what little I did. They told me I never did do too much, because I was always slow.	2:26
Kisha Turner	Couldn't keep up.	2:38
Toledo Knuckles Littlejohn	No. But yes, I participated. I had to be out there whether I did that much or not with my parents, because we all did. There was eight of us in the family, and we all had to go out when we got large enough and help work, [indistinct 00:03:01] the cotton and picking it. Then during the break in the season when we were waiting for it to get large enough, mature enough, then we had other little things we did, like picking peaches or picking cucumbers to help out with the income.	2:40
Kisha Turner	Did your mother or father have a plot, like a garden?	3:28
Toledo Knuckles Littlejohn	Oh yeah.	3:32
Kisha Turner	Just for your family?	3:33
Toledo Knuckles Littlejohn	Oh yeah, you had to do that, otherwise you wouldn't have any food to eat.	3:34
Kisha Turner	So that's what you all ate pretty much?	3:39
Toledo Knuckles Littlejohn	Yeah. You just about had to raise most of your food, your chicken, all of your meat, just about, because you really didn't have that much money to go out and buy. Plus, you didn't really have that much food in the store like they have now at Market Center. So everything just about was fresh.	3:41
Kisha Turner	Did all eight of you live together?	4:08
Toledo Knuckles Littlejohn	Yes. Well, for a while I lived with my grandmother. My grandmother raised me. Then I would go back and forth to live with the—	4:11
Kisha Turner	Oh, you would go back and forth?	4:30
Toledo Knuckles Littlejohn	Yeah, back and forth to live with my, because I was the oldest one, so they told me I was four. You know how you go visit your grandparents, and then you decide you want to stay and you come back and stay with them.	4:32
Kisha Turner	But you just didn't do it?	4:44
Toledo Knuckles Littlejohn	Yeah, I get lonely. I'd go back and stay with them a while and come back and stay with my grandparents. But most of the time, she just about, I guess you could say my grandparent raised me.	4:48
Kisha Turner	And did your grandparents live nearby?	5:06
Toledo Knuckles Littlejohn	Yeah, [indistinct 00:05:09].	5:08
Kisha Turner	Also in what plants are good for the Midwest in the summer and require very little water?	5:08
Toledo Knuckles Littlejohn	It was in walking distance.	5:12
Kisha Turner	Did they also share crop or?	5:16
Toledo Knuckles Littlejohn	Mm—hmm.	5:19
Kisha Turner	On the same land?	5:19
Toledo Knuckles Littlejohn	No, they had a different, I guess what you would say, a different person that owned the farm maybe. They lived on the, the same person didn't own all that land, so they lived on one person's farm, and my mother and father lived on another person. Then we lived in the same area, got together in the same area, and then they did live on with the same people, the farm or with the same farmer. My grandparent and my mother and father did.	5:21
Kisha Turner	Do you remember that farmer's name, that landowner's name?	6:15
Toledo Knuckles Littlejohn	Let me see, when it was separated. Let's see, seemed like my mother and father lived with, I believe their farmer's name was called, I'm not sure how it's spelled, Sosong, Sosong. I'm not sure what his name was. I'm not sure how that's spelled either, Sosong. But they lived there, and then my grandmother and father was living with Blantons. They're called Blantons at that time.	6:18
Kisha Turner	That's right.	7:05
Toledo Knuckles Littlejohn	But you were just about doing the same thing with all the farmers in that area, because that's about all that was done there in Cherokee County was cotton and peaches.	7:07
Kisha Turner	As your grandparents grew older, did they still share crop or how did they—	7:21
Toledo Knuckles Littlejohn	Yeah, until they got where they couldn't and then they moved away and they lived on their Social Security or welfare. Well, then they didn't get that much Social Security because most of the White people didn't take out Social Security on them. So when they got where they couldn't farm, got older, then I went to school and I became a teacher. So they lived with me at that time when I was older.	7:28
Kisha Turner	Good.	8:08
Toledo Knuckles Littlejohn	I just started to say, and as they were older and I had gotten grown, so to speak, or then we moved into the city in what little city it was. But they were too older for them, and I was teaching at Granard High School.	8:12
Kisha Turner	Let's back up just a little. When you were young and you'd visit your grandparents, did they ever tell you about how Gaffney was when they were younger, or wherever they grew up? What life was like?	8:38
Toledo Knuckles Littlejohn	I used to hear my grandfather say that during the time when he was childlike, it wasn't called Cherokee County then, he knew it as Union County. Then as the time went on, then the county was, it was Union and York County, and then they formed Cherokee County. I'm not sure how they did that, but I guess he knew or whatever. But at that time, it wasn't. Early, it was called Union County.	8:49
Toledo Knuckles Littlejohn	Then I guess they deeded off part of their land and called it Cherokee County or something. That was back in the beginning, in the 19— Back in the 1900s. I'm not sure what year and what part of the 1900 it was when he was in a Cherokee County, because I think my grandmother was born in Union County. My grandfather was born in York County and then it became one in Cherokee County, I guess they call it. So I can't help you too much with that.	9:36
Kisha Turner	No problem. How about your parents? Were they also from Gaffney?	10:33
Toledo Knuckles Littlejohn	Yes, uh—huh.	10:38
Kisha Turner	And did they talk about it?	10:39
Toledo Knuckles Littlejohn	Oh well, when they came along, it was all Cherokee County then. It wasn't too much— It wasn't York County or Union County at that time. It had become, because my mother was born in 1917, I think. Or 1918, somewhere along in there. But it had become a county, Cherokee County, then when she was born.	10:41
Kisha Turner	She was born in 1917? Or 19, I'm sorry?	11:26
Toledo Knuckles Littlejohn	I think it was, I believe it was 1917, somewhere back. It was in the teens. I have it here somewhere, but I think it was 1917 she was born.	11:37
Kisha Turner	Did they ever talk about social relations? Just the atmosphere or how things have changed from when they were children to when you were a young child?	11:49
Toledo Knuckles Littlejohn	Yeah. Well, when I was a young child, everything was segregated. You had your own school, you had your own church, like you said, church school, and it was the same way when she went to school. I think she started the school in [indistinct 00:12:23] Ville. Seemed like I heard it say she started school in [indistinct 00:12:33] Ville and that was a church, and then they had the school there.	12:03
Toledo Knuckles Littlejohn	It was just a one room school, and everybody was in that same one room school, and then from there, she went to Wesley Chapel. That was on one room school. I think she got exposed to, I believe, seventh grade or eighth grade somewhere. She didn't go to high school.	12:37
Kisha Turner	How about your education?	13:16
Toledo Knuckles Littlejohn	Well, I started my education at a church school. It was called Mount Sinai.	13:19
Kisha Turner	Mount Sinai.	13:32
Toledo Knuckles Littlejohn	I went to school there. Then I think until I was in the third grade, and we moved and I went to another school called Shady Grove, and we moved back to that area, where there's a different farmer, a different plantation, I guess you would say, and that's where I fit. I moved back and started school back at Mount Sinai. I think I started in the fifth grade there, because I went to Shady Grove and we stayed there about two years and moved back to— You just went back and forth, you know how that— No, you don't know, but I mean in—	13:35
Kisha Turner	Why did you go back and forth?	14:27
Toledo Knuckles Littlejohn	Well, because we were moving from one place to the other, and then you were too far to go to the same school. See, when I first started the school, we lived, what was his name?	14:28
Toledo Knuckles Littlejohn	I can't recall the man's name, and then we moved from his place. I stayed there til third grade. Then we moved from his place to another farmer, which was too far for me to go. I was closer to Shady Grove School and I think we stayed there like a couple years or so, and then we moved back to the Mount Sinai area. But it was a different farmer. We was on a different farmer's place, so Cleary was his name, Cleary farm. Then we moved back to the Blanton's plantation. That's where I finished school and I went to school at Granard High School, which was segregated at that time.	14:47
Kisha Turner	Briefly, before we talk about Granard, could you explain what was the impetus for your parents moving from one farm? Was it to work?	15:49
Toledo Knuckles Littlejohn	Because, well, in a lot of areas, a lot of times they would fall out with the band, and couldn't get along. Either like I said, the people had to share, and then sometime the man, the plantation owner, it wasn't called a plantation at that time because he didn't have that much.	16:04
Toledo Knuckles Littlejohn	But anyways, they would fall out, because of the way the crops was divided, because sometime the White men would take more than he was supposed to and they didn't get along. So they moved from one area to the other, different farmers. And that was the reason for moving around. But we didn't really move that much. A lot of people moved like every year, but we didn't really move that often, because I guess either my father decided that he would just take what the man said or whatever, but some of them didn't.	16:30
Toledo Knuckles Littlejohn	Well, they were pretty good people, but some of the plantation owners were terrible. You couldn't really get along with them that well. I can remember three different people's farm that we were on during my time, and after I started to school, things started getting a little better then.	17:19
Kisha Turner	For your parents?	17:46
Toledo Knuckles Littlejohn	Yeah.	17:47
Kisha Turner	And they were still at the Blanton's?	17:48
Toledo Knuckles Littlejohn	Yeah, they were with the Blantons, and then we stayed there and then it's another man came in, his name was Weaver. He bought the Blanton's farm, and so that give us a chance. We just still lived in the same area, because he was buying out the plantation. He had peaches and all of that so we could make extra money picking peaches and working like that along with cotton. So that gave you a little more income.	17:51
Toledo Knuckles Littlejohn	You just didn't have to depend on one farm to make it, so then that's when things got a little better. So I went to high school. We didn't have a bus or anything, a carriage, we had to walk about seven or eight miles to school. Then when I started the high school, we had to find out our own way to high school, which mean it was about four different people, and one of the guys could drive. He used his father's car to, and we had to go back and forth with them. We paid him and we went back and forth to school like that in the car, because we didn't have buses at that time. Well, the White people had them, but the Blacks didn't, they couldn't ride them.	18:39
Kisha Turner	Where was your school and what was it? Oh you said Bernard, where was your school? What town was the high school?	19:38
Toledo Knuckles Littlejohn	It was in Gaffney.	19:43
Kisha Turner	It was also in Gaffney?	19:45
Toledo Knuckles Littlejohn	Yeah, they just had one high school.	19:47
Kisha Turner	Now, was this a state supported school or do you know?	19:48
Toledo Knuckles Littlejohn	Yeah, I think it was county or state, whichever. They supported because we weren't able to pay or anything. I think we had to try to get our books, buy the books. But it was supported by taxes as far as I know it was. Then I finished there and I went to school in Claflin University in Orangeburg.	19:57
Kisha Turner	Do you know Miss Aiwa Blue? Wait a minute. Hold on, I can't put her in here. Before we talk about Claflin, what do you remember about Granard, the structure, the teachers, the other students, anything, your subjects?	20:45
Toledo Knuckles Littlejohn	Well, Granard was a high school and elementary school, all combined at the time when I started there, elementary, junior high and high school. When I first started it went to the 11th grade, and then a year after that it and went to the 12th grade, but all the teachers and everything was real nice, principal.	21:02
Toledo Knuckles Littlejohn	I wish I could have gone to elementary school there, but I wasn't able to go to elementary school. So I mean, not there. But we started in the eighth grade at that time in high school was eighth grade, and we had, although foreign language only thing was French at that time. You had your regular subjects, math and algebra, English and Miss Deedee Simpson, who was from Greenville, South Carolina, was my English teacher.	21:50
Toledo Knuckles Littlejohn	She was very good, and I think she did most of the teaching of English. You nobody else. They had some others. But when you got up in the grades, like 10th grade, you had to go through her before you could get out of school. All as a whole, we changed classes, and as a whole, all the teachers were very good I thought. Most of them— All of them had their degree, because at the time then you had to have a degree to teach the high school. Now, you could teach elementary school or something without a degree, but at that time you had to have a degree.	22:41
Kisha Turner	What kind of—	23:36
Toledo Knuckles Littlejohn	BS or maybe you weren't required to have a master's or anything. But some of them did. I think Miss Simpson had a masters. She went to school in South Carolina State in Orangeburg, and that's about it, as far as the teachers go. Basketball, we had a good basketball team. However, I didn't play. But we had that and everything was still segregated. You had your own, if you went out to places, you had to go to your own Black place, whatever they had. If you went to a doctor or dentist or whatever, you had to go in your section what says Black, or at that time it said Negro and you had to use your own room to sit in.	23:37
Toledo Knuckles Littlejohn	You weren't all sitting together. So it was still segregated at that time. And you had to drink your Black water, your White water, White water and Black water. You had your fountains, just call it Black.	24:42
Kisha Turner	Did your school sponsor dances?	25:03
Toledo Knuckles Littlejohn	Sure did. I guess we had about three dances a year, and you had your junior—senior prom and it was hell at your high school. You didn't have any place else to take it at that time. Couldn't go to a hotel or anything because you weren't allowed, and the other places weren't really large enough. But I don't think anybody wanted to go anyplace else. They did it in, they fixed up the gym, and we did have a cafeteria. So it was a nice school. Well, I didn't know any better. I thought it was nice, and then they outgrew it so they built a bigger school.	25:08
Kisha Turner	What schools did your teams play?	26:02
Toledo Knuckles Littlejohn	Spartenburg, I forgot. I don't remember their name. Spartenburg and Union, but they had different names.	26:18
Kisha Turner	How large an area did your school serve? How far away did people come to—	26:28
Toledo Knuckles Littlejohn	Just that school?	26:36
Kisha Turner	To Granard?	26:37
Toledo Knuckles Littlejohn	It was in just the Cherokee County, but the county wasn't really that large then but they had expanded. It has expanded now, and they had another little city they called Blacksburg. At that time they had to come to— They didn't have a high school in Blacksburg. I think they had to use the school at Granard. That was during that time, and then—	26:40
Toledo Knuckles Littlejohn	Let me see, my husband was in the World War. He was in World War II, and then when they came out from service, then they had classes. They had classes for all of the soldiers and sailors that, because they didn't finish their high school at that time, because back then they were drafted. When they came out of service, they could come back and go to school on the GI loan, they called it. A lot of them would go in the afternoon and then a lot of them would go just a regular school, regular time, that was during World War II at the end.	27:30
Kisha Turner	Other than the dances at school, what other types of things do young people do or older people for recreation?	28:33
Toledo Knuckles Littlejohn	Nothing.	28:39
Kisha Turner	Nothing.	28:40
Toledo Knuckles Littlejohn	Well, unless the church would get together on the 4th of July, and they'd have a barbecue or a ballgame or something, the different churches would come together. Or a church would have a big barbecue and they would sell barbecue or whatever, and then this church had a ball team and they would play with another church like that. That's about the only recreation you had of what the church sponsored it, so to speak, to get similar to what it is now.	28:41
Toledo Knuckles Littlejohn	You didn't have that much recreations. Like I said, some of the different people that owned the different clubs or restaurants, or, well, they call them cafes back at that time, it's like it is now. You weren't allowed to go in because it was kind of rough. So if they had something there, most of the younger people couldn't attend unless you slipped in there. Then if you did, you better make sure they didn't start fighting or what have you, because they would just, like they are now, they still fight and carry on. But they didn't do as much shooting as they do now, and drugs wasn't plentiful back then like it is now. But they did have a lot of alcohol because a lot of people made it White liquor, they call it White whiskey. So they would usually get that.	29:23
Toledo Knuckles Littlejohn	You had to have your own entertainment, and a lot of times the church would have entertainments and things for you like they do now. In different schools sometime, I mean not different school, well, high school or elementary school sometime would have a little, it wasn't dances or anything. They'd have some little boxed suppers or something they'd have and raise money to buy different little things for the children, because wasn't anything furnished like it is now. Your paper and pencil and all that stuff, you had to buy that, and then a lot of the people or children, just like they are now, were in worse shape than others. Sometimes the different parents would get together and have different little things to raise money at school to help out, and we didn't have hot lunches like they do now.	30:32
Toledo Knuckles Littlejohn	That was about way things are, because when I was in high school, we didn't have hot lunches. They would sell different little stuffs in the cafeteria, but you had to have the money to buy your sodas or cinnamon buns. You don't know about those, do you? They had big sodas and big cinnamon buns and sometime different classes would make sandwiches and sell, because they was trying to raise money for a project and that was about it. They didn't have all the food and stuff they have now.	31:51
Kisha Turner	Living on the farm, I guess the Blantons, how many other families, sharecropper families lived?	32:40
Toledo Knuckles Littlejohn	Oh, they had a good many. They had, well, it wasn't a lot. They had about six or seven other sharecroppers' families there living on the farm.	32:55
Kisha Turner	And what was your family's relationship with these other families?	33:13
Toledo Knuckles Littlejohn	It was good. You would always meet up with them at sometime different times, and say you get caught up on your farm. I mean, I just say picking cotton, you get caught up with picking cotton and some of the other families needed help or could use you, then you would go and help them. However, you did get paid, or the man, the owner of the farm, would pay you to pick the cotton for them.	33:15
Toledo Knuckles Littlejohn	That way they could keep up when it wouldn't get so far behind. They paid you by the pound you pick, it wasn't nothing much, and you would go back and forth like that and help out, so to speak and get caught up, and you get to know some of them. You didn't get to know all of them, and all of them wasn't Black. They had some Whites out there too.	33:56
Kisha Turner	Really?	34:28
Toledo Knuckles Littlejohn	Mm—hmm.	34:28
Kisha Turner	Were they treated any differently?	34:30
Toledo Knuckles Littlejohn	Oh well, I don't really know. Most likely they were, but we didn't know that, at least I didn't know how they were treated. But it was more Black families than Whites.	34:32
Toledo Knuckles Littlejohn	So the houses weren't all that good, naturally. You didn't know what air condition was. You had your fireplace or heater, which you had to buy your own heater and stuff like that if you wanted a heater. Most of the time you just had a four room house, two bedrooms and your living room and kitchen. If you had a lot of children, you had to use a living room for a bed. Most likely the parents were sleeping in the living area.	34:53
Toledo Knuckles Littlejohn	Some of the houses when we first start sharecropping like that, a lot of the houses, they didn't have electric lights, electricity, and you had outdoor bathrooms and you didn't have electric lights. So you had to use your oil lamps. I guess that must be my husband.	35:37
Kisha Turner	You were talking about oil lamps.	36:09
Toledo Knuckles Littlejohn	Kerosene.	36:12
Kisha Turner	Kerosene.	36:13
Toledo Knuckles Littlejohn	That's what you had. Just like when your lights go out now, well, some people use candles now, but you had kerosene lamps all the time back then, wood stoves, no electric stoves.	36:15
Kisha Turner	Did you travel much or—	36:34
Toledo Knuckles Littlejohn	Mm—mm.	36:35
Kisha Turner	No.	36:36
Toledo Knuckles Littlejohn	Maybe during the summer when I was in college during the summer, probably I would come out and go someplace and stay with my relatives. But no travel, what you have to travel on? You didn't have no money to travel. You did good if you—	36:40
Kisha Turner	So since we're talking about your trips in summer when you were in college, what was Orangeburg like?	37:07
Toledo Knuckles Littlejohn	Oh Lord, nothing like it is now. It was still during segregation, and we had but one dormitory. We just had one dormitory at that time. Now, I think they have more than one, and they had about four other buildings, about four other buildings that they were using for classrooms at that time, science and English and all of that. They had a big gym and a big chapel.	37:14
Toledo Knuckles Littlejohn	That's pretty nice. I hadn't never been away from home to stay for any length of time. So it took me a good while to get used to being away and getting used to the food they had, which is terrible. You all said terrible food now, but it sure enough was terrible back then. But you had to eat it because you couldn't go out to eat.	38:07
Toledo Knuckles Littlejohn	When you did go out, you had to be chaperoned. You couldn't go like you do now, just wherever you want to go or wherever, and you had to be chaperoned. A lot of students lived off campus with different people that board, was boarding. They could board with different people, because a lot of schools knew families that would use boarders because no hotels or anything like that, it wasn't available.	38:39
Toledo Knuckles Littlejohn	But the dormitory was pretty good size. I think it was about, what, three or four stories high, and I don't remember how many students lived in the dormitory, probably about 200 or 250 or something like that. Then a lot of the people lived out in the city, and then some had relatives that they could come and live with and some just lived in the area, and that's where they could come from [indistinct 00:40:00] to school.	39:22
Kisha Turner	Where both male and female students chaperone when they left?	40:02
Toledo Knuckles Littlejohn	Oh no. Well, no. The male, I think the first, the freshmans, I think they had chaperones, the men. But yes, you had to be chaperoned, even to seniors. Some of them, they had to be chaperoned, but they did give them more freedom. They would sometime use the senior students to chaperone the first freshman and sophomore classes like that. You had to go in a group, at least five or six in a group, and you had a chaperone for your group.	40:06
Toledo Knuckles Littlejohn	You had certain time to be in the dorm when you went out. Even if you went to one of the dances or whatever they had on campus, you had to be back, because they locked the doors around 12, and you had to be back in unless you had somebody down there to open the door for you, to slip in. So that's the way it was then, and I think you could leave campus twice a week. That was about it, because a lot of children slipped off of campus.	40:58
Toledo Knuckles Littlejohn	A lot of them got caught. But you don't always keep up with all of them, because some of the children going to do what they want to do regardless. But that's the way it was at that time. You had to be chaperoned. Even if you went shopping, you had to have a chaperone to go shopping to buy whatever it is. If you wanted to buy a pair of pantyhose or whatever, you couldn't go by yourself, you always had to go. When you went to a dance, you had to be chaperoned to a dance, and that was right there on campus. So they really had some strict rules.	41:49
Kisha Turner	How about dating?	42:40
Toledo Knuckles Littlejohn	Oh yeah, you could date.	42:42
Kisha Turner	What age was pretty much there?	42:46
Toledo Knuckles Littlejohn	Oh, when you got to college, you could date back then, because most of the time you were at least 17 or 18 at that time when you went to college. You didn't go as young as the children do now. You were on an average of 17, and so you were allowed to date, but you had certain hours that you could date and certain days.	42:48
Toledo Knuckles Littlejohn	But now out, when you were outside, before you came in, in between your classes or going from the dining room or something like that, you could always do that. But then regular Sundays you had dating hours like maybe two to three hours dating and weekends and things like that. If you went to a game or something, you had a chance to see your friend or whatever.	43:18
Toledo Knuckles Littlejohn	If you didn't have a friend on school and you went off campus, you had to get permission for them to come to see you whenever they came in town. Like you said, you had a friend or your family or whoever was coming, you had to let your matron in the dormitory know that you were expecting company or something like that.	43:50
Toledo Knuckles Littlejohn	Sometime they would, if they spent the night, they had a room or something, I think, downstairs that maybe your parents or something could stay if they came to spend the night. So that's about it.	44:23
Kisha Turner	Do you remember organizations that were active on campus or even outside of campus, civil rights organizations maybe, or clubs or fraternities?	44:43
Toledo Knuckles Littlejohn	Yeah, they had the different fraternities they have now and sororities. And the only thing that I remember at that time was NAACP. That was the only one. They might have had some others but I wasn't familiar with. They have the different sororities and fraternities that they have now. Maybe not. Maybe they didn't have all of the newer ones that have been organized in recent years.	44:54
Toledo Knuckles Littlejohn	But all the old ones, like the Alphas and Kappas, I mean, the Deltas and stuff like that, AKAs, all of those were available at that time. Well, because everybody was trying to make those, because that's about the only leeway you had of trying to have a little more freedom. They did initiation, but I don't think they did it quite as bad as the children are now. Especially the guys, if so, I never did hear about it there.	45:32

Toledo Knuckles Littlejohn	No, the NAACP wasn't too active at that time in Gaffney. They could have been, but it wasn't widely known like it is now. But in Orangeburg, they had a, and it was. They would talk about it like sometime you go to different, well some of the children would go to the different meetings. I never did attend any of the meetings. They might have said that they was going to meet on campus and some of them would attend the meeting. But it wasn't widely known too much back then like it is now. If whatever they did, it wasn't, I guess you didn't have a news media or something like that to tell you about whatever was happening and you didn't hear, if you didn't participate that much, you didn't really know unless you heard someone else talking about it. So they didn't blow things out of proportion back then like they do now.	0:04
Toledo Knuckles Littlejohn	But if they heard of a case or something that needed help or checking into, they did that. And they might have done that in Gaffney too. But like I said, at the time you didn't hear a whole lot about it. And I didn't. Some of the churches, maybe there in the city, the bigger churches might have had the organization working, but they didn't make a whole lot of noise over what they were doing, more or less. I guess they did more work and less talk. But it wasn't widely known like it is now.	1:23
Kisha Turner	Did you have to work in college?	2:11
Toledo Knuckles Littlejohn	Yeah, I did.	2:14
Kisha Turner	Did you work to pay your tuition?	2:14
Toledo Knuckles Littlejohn	Yeah, to help pay it. Well, I worked in the library but it didn't really, wasn't enough to help pay all of my tuition. So I had to drop out of school one year or two because I didn't have the money to return. So I was out one year and then I went to work in, when one of the teachers went back to school, she was working and she went back to school. So I got her job. I taught her job one year while she went back to school.	2:17
Kisha Turner	Okay.	3:01
Toledo Knuckles Littlejohn	And that kind of helped me to get some money to go back. My, yeah, second year. I could work then because like I said, when you were teaching in elementary school, you didn't really have to have a degree then.	3:03
Kisha Turner	Right.	3:19
Toledo Knuckles Littlejohn	So I dropped out of school for a year and worked in one of those one—room schoolhouse.	3:20
Kisha Turner	And you eventually did get your degree?	3:32
Toledo Knuckles Littlejohn	Yeah.	3:35
Kisha Turner	In what?	3:35
Toledo Knuckles Littlejohn	Elementary Ed.	3:37
Kisha Turner	Okay. I want to, I know— Was the racism or segregation any more apparent in Orangeburg? Was it any different than in Gaffney?	3:41
Toledo Knuckles Littlejohn	Gaffney?	3:53
Kisha Turner	Because I know you said you never had any encounters with any.	3:55
Toledo Knuckles Littlejohn	Now listening to some of the children taught, because they came from all different sections. Like you sit down in, what, Clarendon County where a lot of the Ku Klux Klans was and listen at some of them talk when they came into school. I guess they did have a little more run—ins with segregation, more or less. I guess it might have been worse or something than where I came from in Cherokee County. I guess by our place being small or something, everybody just went on and abide by whatever rules and regulation. You had a few that didn't and it wasn't a whole lot of people throwing you out and all of that kind of stuff. You just, even talking about killing you, which they would do if you didn't follow and you didn't really have too much of that.	4:02
Toledo Knuckles Littlejohn	But I heard some of the other children would talk about how it was in their place where some of the places they lived. But in Orangeburg itself, it wasn't. Seemed like— I don't think we did, but over in South Carolina State, some of them had a run in with segregation because they was going to go in someplace they weren't allowed to go, the students and—	5:07
Kisha Turner	Sort of sit—in or something?	5:43
Toledo Knuckles Littlejohn	No, I don't think they were doing a sit—in or anything. I think— I don't know, I guess they didn't want to use the door, the wherever or the water fountain or, I'm just using that as example. I don't know what the incident was, but it was something pertaining to segregation or something. And if they were supposed to go in this door, they probably went in another door or something, or they didn't want to wait outside to be served or whatever it was. And they just decide to go in, because a lot of the places you could buy food, but they didn't want you to come in except for the little area they had for you or they handed to you out the window or so to speak. And I guess maybe some of them didn't want to do that. And I heard some of the students talking about it over in South Carolina State where they had had run—ins and things with it there in Orangeburg.	5:46
Toledo Knuckles Littlejohn	But where you have college students and things like that, a lot of times they don't take a whole lot once they get together with other students. And especially when you hear the ones that come from up north and talk about what they did. And see, they would come from there, from different areas in the north, and when they come to the southern cities, they didn't want to do that. And that a lot of times would stir up confusion, make confusion with the student. I think that's probably some of the cases that happened over at South Carolina State because they had students from different places.	6:49
Toledo Knuckles Littlejohn	And then we had foreign students too from, like you do now from some parts of Africa and then the islands. And I don't know that they had segregation because they didn't, everybody, most especially from the island, everybody was the same. It wasn't no White or Black. They just was whatever they supposed to be. And I guess they couldn't understand that when they came to the states, similar to what they do now.	7:37
Kisha Turner	So they realized kind of restricted your movement in terms of where you could go—	8:12
Toledo Knuckles Littlejohn	Yeah.	8:17
Kisha Turner	— in Orangeburg?	8:18
Toledo Knuckles Littlejohn	Mm—hmm.	8:19
Kisha Turner	How about public transportation, like the buses or anything?	8:19
Toledo Knuckles Littlejohn	Oh well, you could ride it, but you had to sit in the back like you were supposed to. And if it was filled and you didn't want to wait for the next bus, you could just walk and go wherever you wanted to go. If you had the money, you could get you a cab or whatever like that. But no, they didn't never did have an encounter with the bus like that.	8:25
Kisha Turner	Did your parents or teachers or anything, do you remember anyone kind of telling you how to deal with White people or any words of wisdom I guess, or advice?	8:54
Toledo Knuckles Littlejohn	Yeah. Well, they just always said, "Just kindly do what you're supposed to do according to the law." They just tell you, "Don't break the law or the rules." They called it the law, which was the rules. And they just said, "Do accordingly if you go out and you won't have any problems." And I guess maybe most of the people around in the area did that. And like I said, it wasn't that many places you could go in my hometown anyways because in order to get in trouble, because you just went on and did what you was supposed to do. And I think you had more trouble with your own race than you did with the other race similar.	9:04
Toledo Knuckles Littlejohn	Because if you went to a public gathering, especially like after the basketball games and football games and things like that, you would stop in a different little, or night spots they called them, and everybody, it was small. Everybody couldn't get in those places. So they would have their big fights and fusses and scrapes on the outside. That's why I said I think they had with themselves, they treated themselves worse than the other race did.	10:00
Kisha Turner	Okay. Is this when your grandparents came to stay with you or was that back in Gaffney?	10:35
Toledo Knuckles Littlejohn	That was back in Gaffney.	10:42
Kisha Turner	Oh, okay.	10:43
Toledo Knuckles Littlejohn	Just like, well, when— My parents kind of, we got kind of separated like a long, two, four, that we couldn't really visit back and forth unless you had a way. My grandparents decided that they wanted to move in the upper parts of the county and my mother and father stayed in the lower parts. So unless you had a car, and which you didn't have too many cars back then, you couldn't go back and forth. So then I just lived with my grandparents then.	10:44
Kisha Turner	Okay.	11:24
Toledo Knuckles Littlejohn	I didn't go back and forth as much, except maybe like during the summer or sometime I might go and stay a week or so with them.	11:26
Kisha Turner	Okay. Quickly, I guess we can talk about, I know you— Just about church. What church did you go to when you were a child in Gaffney as a young adult, I guess, before you went to college?	11:36
Toledo Knuckles Littlejohn	Oh, well my church that I belonged to was Wesley Chapel ME Church. And the churches in the country then didn't have church every Sunday.	11:54
Kisha Turner	Did you say Emmy or AME?	12:11
Toledo Knuckles Littlejohn	ME.	12:12
Kisha Turner	Okay.	12:14
Toledo Knuckles Littlejohn	They didn't have church every Sunday. They just had it like, maybe some of the churches had it once a month and some had it twice a month. But then I attended other churches like on Sundays or I went to Sunday school at a church that I lived nearby, which was a Baptist church, like Mount Sinai. And that was a Baptist church. And I attend that church and Shady Grove. And during revival meeting time, everybody went to all the different churches during revival. Because this church was invited and you go, and that church was invited and the churches was all crowded like that during revival time or if there was any special program or anything. But I attend Mount Sinai and Shady Grove.	12:15
Toledo Knuckles Littlejohn	That's about most of the church. But then I would always go to our church, which was Wesley Chapel, and that was in the lower part of the county. And we didn't really get, we had service like once or twice a month. Most of the time it was just once a month. And if there was a special program or something put on, you were always there. But as far as a Sunday school or something, you lived too far to have Sunday school there. So I always went to Sunday school at one of the closer churches or Baptist church. So it really didn't— I was just going to Sunday school anyway. I don't guess it really mattered that much. That's the way I guess we looked at it.	13:26
Kisha Turner	Did you all, how'd you get to church?	14:21
Toledo Knuckles Littlejohn	Well, my uncle had a car and a lot of times he would take us to church.	14:24
Kisha Turner	Okay. And let's see, when did you come to Virginia Beach?	14:34
Toledo Knuckles Littlejohn	After I got married.	14:40
Kisha Turner	Oh, when did you get married?	14:42
Toledo Knuckles Littlejohn	I got married in '56. Leroy was in service and he was in the Navy, but my grandparents was living with me then. So I didn't really come. I came my first, I came here in '70. I came here in '72.	14:46
Kisha Turner	Okay.	15:10
Toledo Knuckles Littlejohn	And that's when I really came and I been here ever since.	15:12
Kisha Turner	So you all met in Gaffney and got married in Gaffney?	15:15
Toledo Knuckles Littlejohn	Mm—hmm.	15:18
Kisha Turner	What was the wedding like? Where did hold it?	15:18
Toledo Knuckles Littlejohn	I didn't have a wedding.	15:21
Kisha Turner	Okay.	15:23
Toledo Knuckles Littlejohn	I just had a marriage like in my home.	15:23
Kisha Turner	Okay.	15:26
Toledo Knuckles Littlejohn	I just had a marriage ceremony in my house and that's where he came home on a furlough and on leave. They called it furlough at that time. But I had known him for some time. But when he was going to school, but I didn't really, didn't go with him at that time when he was in school. And then he went back into— He was in the Army first and he came out of the Army and he went to school when I was in school. But I didn't really pay him any attention or we didn't pay each other any attention at that time because I guess we had other friends. And then he went back, he went into the Navy and when he came back on his leaves, that's when I really met him. And we got married in '56 and I came, start traveling with him in '60, '64, I think it was, I start traveling with him because my grandparents had died then. So I could afford to go back and forth with him.	15:27
Toledo Knuckles Littlejohn	I had a home in South Carolina, so I bought a home. Then when I started working, and they was living with me, so to speak, but when I was renting, they also was living with me when I started, got my job and started work. And then I bought this home and they lived with me. But then after they died and Leroy said, "Well, now that they dead, you can travel back and forth with me." And I start traveling with him and we came here first and we stayed here one year and we left and went all around to different places, Florida, California. And then we came back here and we've been here ever since.	16:58
Kisha Turner	Okay. All right. Thank you.	17:48

Item Info

Title:

Toledo Littlejohn interview recording, 1995 July 18

Date:

July 18, 1995

Creator:

Littlejohn, Toledo Knuckles

Contributor:

Turner, Kisha

Description:

Name: Toledo Knuckles Littlejohn; Date of birth: 1928-03-08; Place of birth: Cherokee Co., SC; Occupation(s): educator; teacher; Residence: Virginia Beach, VA
Informant ID: 994; Interviewed by: Kisha Turner.

Occupation:

Location:

Format:

Language:

English

Digital Collection:

Behind the Veil

Source Collection:

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

Series:

Related Resources:

See below

Provenance:

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

Rights:

Limited Re-Use

CC BY-NC 4.0

Rights Note:

Copyright for content created by the Behind the Veil project is held by Duke University and made available to the public using a Creative Commons Attribution / Non-commercial (CC-BY-NC) license.

Identifier:

RL00170-CS-1318
1e30b333-978a-4fc8-93cd-8413b7e6364d
behindtheveil
a554e6a8-25b1-4b61-8cdb-8d21f772d9f6
ark:/87924/r41j9kh7f
a554e6a8-25b1-4b61-8cdb-8d21f772d9f6

Permalink:

https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r41j9kh7f

Sponsor:

Sponsor this Digital Collection

Toledo Littlejohn interview recording, 1995 July 18

Transcript

Item Info

1. Toledo Littlejohn administrative file, 1995

John Hope Franklin Research Center

More Info & Options

Toledo Littlejohn interview recording, 1995 July 18

Transcript

Item Info

Related Items

John Hope Franklin Research Center

More Info & Options