Agnes Landry interview recording, 1994 July 25

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Michele Mitchell	25th, 1994. And this is an interview with Mrs. Landry. If you can tell me the exact same thing you just told me.	0:01
Agnes Chatman Landry	My name is Agnes C. Landry.	0:12
Michele Mitchell	And that's Chatman?	0:17
Agnes Chatman Landry	Yeah. Agnes Chatman Landry.	0:19
Michele Mitchell	You told me that you're from Texas.	0:21
Agnes Chatman Landry	Yeah, Beaumont, Texas.	0:27
Michele Mitchell	That's where you were born?	0:29
Agnes Chatman Landry	Uh-huh. Born and raised.	0:29
Michele Mitchell	And what year were you born? When were you born ma'am?	0:29
Agnes Chatman Landry	The third month, the 15th day of '17.	0:40
Michele Mitchell	15th day, 1917?	0:42
Agnes Chatman Landry	Uh-huh. I'm always getting the 17 and the 15th mixed up.	0:47
Michele Mitchell	And could you tell me a little bit about what Beaumont was like when you were young? What you remember?	0:55
Agnes Chatman Landry	It's been so long. It's been a long time ago. I went to elementary school and high school there.	1:06
Michele Mitchell	Did you live in town?	1:17
Agnes Chatman Landry	I always lived in town.	1:18
Michele Mitchell	Yeah?	1:21
Agnes Chatman Landry	Yeah.	1:22
Michele Mitchell	What were your parents' names?	1:25
Agnes Chatman Landry	My mother was named Rose Phillip.	1:28
Michele Mitchell	Spell that for me.	1:36
Agnes Chatman Landry	P-H-I-L-L-I-P-S. Phillips. But I lived with my grandmother. Her name was Matilda Mitchell. I named my daughter after her. And boy, she liked her dad.	1:38
Michele Mitchell	Oh goodness. She liked your grandmother, and you grew up with her?	2:08
Agnes Chatman Landry	Yeah. She died when I was 12. Yeah, I was 12 years of age.	2:11
Doris	Was was she from Texas too?	2:23
Agnes Chatman Landry	No, she was from New Iberia. My mama too was born here. My daddy too.	2:25
Michele Mitchell	Yeah? So how'd they get out in Texas?	2:33
Agnes Chatman Landry	My grandmother went to Texas first.	2:38
Michele Mitchell	I guess, I asked because so many people I talked to have gone back and forth between Beaumont and New Iberia. It's interesting.	2:40
Agnes Chatman Landry	And I visit. You want to know how I got back here?	2:57
Michele Mitchell	Yeah.	2:59
Agnes Chatman Landry	I came to visit my grandfather, and a summer and I met my husband, and we started communicating like that. In a couple of years, we got married.	3:01
Michele Mitchell	So that's how you came here?	3:18
Agnes Chatman Landry	Mm-hmm.	3:18
Michele Mitchell	So this was your grandfather Mitchell, or another grandfather?	3:25
Agnes Chatman Landry	No, this was my step grandfather Mitchell.	3:28
Michele Mitchell	Step grandfather?	3:33
Agnes Chatman Landry	My grandfather was Steve. Steven Phillip.	3:34
Michele Mitchell	And you mentioned your father too. What was your father's name?	3:55
Agnes Chatman Landry	Avery Chatman.	4:00
Michele Mitchell	And he from New Iberia?	4:01
Agnes Chatman Landry	Yeah. But he came back to New Iberia. My dad and my mama came back to New Iberia after I was married and over here. Both of them was living in Beaumont.	4:08
Michele Mitchell	Did your parents work? What did they do for work?	4:20
Agnes Chatman Landry	My mother used to do— While she was in Texas, they worked at a school. She cafeteria working. I had a step-daddy, he was janitor. That's what they did.	4:24
Michele Mitchell	And your father?	4:42
Agnes Chatman Landry	My father, it was common labor. I guess you would say, common labor. Because he worked as a janitor over here in the school too. Then he retired.	4:49
Michele Mitchell	Now I think, I just would like to find out some more about what it was like for you when you were young. Just in terms of what sort of things you remember that you would do? Where you would go? What it was like to be in school? Things like that.	5:12
Agnes Chatman Landry	Yeah, I always was a child that liked to go to church. I always did a lot. And we had a church in the community. Baptist church. And I attended the Baptist church. But my grandmother, she was Baptist, but she always had said she wanted me to be Catholic. But this church was right in the community, so I attend that church. And after she passed, I joined that church.	5:24
Michele Mitchell	Did she tell you why she wanted you to be Catholic?	6:04
Agnes Chatman Landry	I don't know. No, I don't believe. She always wanted me to be Catholic. But this church, Baptist church was in the community, and she used to send me there to Sunday school and different things. And I used to go with her sometime to her church. Now she was Baptist, and I used to go with her to her church. And her church was a good distance from our house, but we walked there. Her church was named, Antioch Baptist Church. And it was on Portside, up in the heart of town, but Black people. A street with Black people.	6:10
Michele Mitchell	And what was the name of that street again?	7:05
Agnes Chatman Landry	The church was Antioch Baptist, but I'm trying to think about— What was that? I believe it was Portside.	7:10
Michele Mitchell	So what was it like walking up that street, if there are Black businesses? Was it busy?	7:23
Agnes Chatman Landry	Yeah. Well, not as much as— Because we used to go at night, and she used to take me along with her, and I was young then. Used to take me. That church didn't move from Portside though. Antioch Baptist. And when I went back there, it had moved. It was a big church.	7:27
Agnes Chatman Landry	And if I'm remembering right, Reverend Shepherd was the pastor. They had their church, he was from Mt. Port Arthur, Reverend Shepherd. And he pastored at another church after that, after my grandmother. And I'm trying to think the name of that church. This was up in the north end. In the south end, he pastored at church. I'm trying to think about the name. I can't think of it right now. I used to love to hear him preach.	7:58
Michele Mitchell	Yeah?	8:52
Agnes Chatman Landry	Reverend Shepherd. And after my grandmother passed, I lived with my mother, at 12 years old.	8:52
Michele Mitchell	Did she live in the same area of Beaumont?	9:10
Agnes Chatman Landry	She lived in the south end. My grandmother lived in the North end.	9:13
Michele Mitchell	Right Now I've only been to Beaumont when I was really small. What was the north end like, as opposed to the south end? What was different about it?	9:22
Agnes Chatman Landry	Well, I don't know too much different. And at one time they had street cars that we rode from one end to the other end. Then after that, they had buses that you— The transportation was bus. In the south end you had the big refinery where a lot of people worked. Rod the bus, street cars at one time or another. And we lived close, I'll say about five or six blocks from the refinery. We did.	9:35
Michele Mitchell	What sort of a refinery? An Oil?	10:36
Agnes Chatman Landry	Yeah.	10:36
Michele Mitchell	Oil refinery?	10:36
Agnes Chatman Landry	Uh-huh. Big place. Sometime we used to go out there, walk. I remember my step-daddy having a old model T4. You remember that? I remember they had cars, different kind.	10:46
Michele Mitchell	Did you have to ride in the street cars a lot or did you walk?	11:18
Agnes Chatman Landry	We used to walk sometime from the north end to the south end. Now that was a distance, but we used to walk. From north end to the south end. And when I moved here, so I was used to walking, had to walk to church. My church is over there on Week Street. You know where Week Street at?	11:21
Michele Mitchell	Yes ma'am.	11:41
Agnes Chatman Landry	That's where my church at. Week Street. My grandfather was a deacon over there.	11:42
Michele Mitchell	What's the name of the church?	11:47
Agnes Chatman Landry	Mount Calvary.	11:54
Michele Mitchell	On the south end where you live, you were telling me about the neighborhood. Was that refinery being right there. Did only Black people work there?	12:10
Agnes Chatman Landry	Uh-uh. Black and White. And it was out from the school— You see my mom and my step daddy lived at this school. They had a place for them to live there. Of course it was a White school. It wasn't a Black school, it was a White school.	12:18
Agnes Chatman Landry	And I went to school out in the north end. I went to Pipkin Elementary School. And it was another school I went to after Pipkin, because Pipkin was way out in the north end. Way out. I went to another school, I'm trying to think of the name of it. I tell you, I had a stroke last year in the [indistinct 00:13:24]. Ramshacked me up a little bit. I don't remember as well as I used to. And then I was transferred back up to College Street, a school in where we was living, in the south end. Then I went to Charlton Pollard High School. That was in the south end. I used to like go school.	12:48
Michele Mitchell	Yeah?	14:20
Agnes Chatman Landry	I used to like to go to school. We used to have fun. We had a lot of fun. Of course, when I had to transfer back, I went out in the north in a long time. I used to catch the bus, and go out there. But it was kind of hectic. You had to get up early in the morning. I couldn't miss my bus. If I missed my bus. I would be late. So when they transfer me to College Street, that was better.	14:22
Michele Mitchell	Were those the only Black schools?	14:58
Agnes Chatman Landry	Huh?	14:59
Michele Mitchell	Were those the only Black schools?	15:00
Agnes Chatman Landry	That was all Blacks— No, they had, College Street was in the south end, and this other school where I attended, but I can't think of the name. I can't think of that name of that school. And they got in the west end of the city, we used to call it the Pearl Orchard. They had a school, Hebert High, I think. It was a elementary, then went into a high school. We used to go there when we have games and different things. Football game, with the two school. Like I said, I attend church. Then in the south end, I attended.. And I tried to be Catholic, but it just didn't— Something that I really— I liked to go to the Baptist church. And I attended the Beech Grove Baptist Church out there in south end.	15:01
Michele Mitchell	Breech Grove?	16:39
Agnes Chatman Landry	Uh-huh. Reverend F. Balls was pastor. And I was good friend with— He had a daughter. She was a little older than me, and then he had one a little younger than me, where we all used to hang out together. And I loved to go to church. We went to church, look like every day we—	16:40
Michele Mitchell	Did you go to socials and things like that? Church socials or whatever?	17:16
Agnes Chatman Landry	Church social, yeah and school social. But outside that, I wasn't in that too much.	17:20
Michele Mitchell	I'm wondering if either in the north end or in the south end, if you lived near anybody White? Or if they were all Black neighborhoods.	17:48
Agnes Chatman Landry	Where we lived was a White neighborhood, but they had Black a little down from us. The school set on Poplar and Doucette. And Poplar Street was a Black community, you would say. The school I attended, the Charlton Pollard High school was on Poplar. Further down from where I lived at. But you see, I was in a White neighborhood, that was a White school where my mom and them lived at. So I came in a lot of contact with the White people there. The teachers. The principal.	18:00
Michele Mitchell	What was that like?	18:48
Agnes Chatman Landry	It was all right. It was nice.	18:48
Michele Mitchell	Yeah?	18:50
Agnes Chatman Landry	Uh-huh. That was where my mom and them was working, and I went to live with her. And I tell you what, those White people treated us nice. My mom and them was working, so that's what they want the work, I guess.	18:50
Michele Mitchell	So it was okay then, huh?	19:17
Agnes Chatman Landry	Yeah. But they really was nice though. The teachers, the principal. Because they used to give my mama some handed down for me. The teachers did.	19:18
Michele Mitchell	It's not bad. In terms of getting clothes.	19:39
Agnes Chatman Landry	Yeah. And I used to work for some of them. Go in and help them on Saturdays. I knowed how to work.	19:51
Michele Mitchell	And how do they treat you?	20:10
Agnes Chatman Landry	They treated me very nice. And let me tell you something. I was a only child my mama had, and my grandmother was the only one she had. I didn't come from a big family. I had a lot of children, but I didn't come from a big family. My grandmother had two children, two girls. And my aunt had children, but they died babies. So it didn't leave anybody but me. And she [indistinct 00:21:00] too. Because I was the only one.	20:11
Michele Mitchell	What sort of things did you do for the people that you worked for?	21:13
Agnes Chatman Landry	Clean house, wash dishes and things like that on Saturdays. Light housework. And they paid me. They gave me a little salary. They gave me a little salary.	21:16
Michele Mitchell	Did you think it was a lot of money at the time?	21:42
Agnes Chatman Landry	Well, I didn't know too much about— It was just a little something just to help me— To help buy little things for me, but I used to waste it.	21:45
Michele Mitchell	Would you use it on going to other places or—	22:10
Agnes Chatman Landry	Well buy foolishness, shakes and candies and things like that. Maybe some stockings if I needed it. Little light thing.	22:12
Michele Mitchell	Do you remember how much that they would give you about?	22:38
Agnes Chatman Landry	It wasn't too much.	22:39
Michele Mitchell	Enough to buy cake?	22:41
Agnes Chatman Landry	Yeah, and candy. And catch the bus. See, when I first went out to the south end, when I first went out there to live with my mom and them, I used to go back into the north and quite often to a lady that I know really well. I used go spend Saturday nights, I used to go spend with her out there. She had one little boy. I used to go spend the night with her on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. The funniest thing, she was from here too. She moved back here too. She moved back here. She died here. And her son died here.	22:50
Michele Mitchell	Both of them dead?	23:51
Agnes Chatman Landry	Both of them. He died first, and then she died. But a little while ago. Her name was Rosa Edison.	24:05
Michele Mitchell	Yeah?	24:08
Agnes Chatman Landry	I used to like to call her Ms. Rosa, because we used to stay up at night, we play cards for the fun of it. Whisk. I used to go there. My mama didn't need to worry, I'd be right there. Right there. They wasn't rich people, but I had a fairly good life, coming up. I was the only one.	24:11
Michele Mitchell	But this is this during the '30s? During the 1930s?	25:10
Agnes Chatman Landry	Uh-huh. Around that time.	25:12
Michele Mitchell	Did The Depression seem to affect people around?	25:12
Agnes Chatman Landry	Oh yeah. Now you see, Depression came and a lot of people from Louisiana moved to New Iberia during that time, during the high water. See, Depression came after the High Water in '27. High Water was in '27, then Depression came. And people had to leave their home here in Louisiana, move to Texas.	25:17
Michele Mitchell	So a lot of them moved to Beaumont.	25:41
Agnes Chatman Landry	Yeah. A lot of them moved to Beaumont. I went to school with a lot of children from Louisiana.	25:46
Michele Mitchell	So you talked to a lot of these people. Did they lose everything here in New Iberia?	26:04
Agnes Chatman Landry	Yeah, some of them lost everything. Now the way I can understand it, this was family property, my husband family property. The High Water right here, this high ground they call it, it didn't mess them up over here. Some of the people live around, because not many of them left from here in '27 High Water.	26:08
Michele Mitchell	So then, when you were in high school, it was during The Depression, in the '30s?	26:32
Agnes Chatman Landry	Yeah.	26:48
Michele Mitchell	Did a lot of people seem to have it bad off, around you?	26:48
Agnes Chatman Landry	Well, yeah. A lot of people came— And at that time, people used to ride the freight train and everything. A lot of people came freight train, throw their clothes in the box card and move. You know what, they did have to accumulate. It was sad with some of them, but when it got better, they went back. They came back to Louisiana.	26:51
Michele Mitchell	When they had more money.	27:29
Agnes Chatman Landry	Yeah.	27:30
Michele Mitchell	So then, you came here in '37?	27:44
Agnes Chatman Landry	I married in '37. December '37. No, not December, January. I married January. My husband was born in December.	27:55
Michele Mitchell	Oh, when was your husband born?	28:26
Agnes Chatman Landry	December the 5th.	28:26
Michele Mitchell	The year?	28:26
Agnes Chatman Landry	1916. And my oldest daughter born in December. Her birthday was on the 4th. She going to be 56 this year.	28:27
Doris	[indistinct 00:28:30].	28:30
Agnes Chatman Landry	Yeah.	28:30
Michele Mitchell	What's her name?	28:41
Agnes Chatman Landry	Rose Marie Joseph. She taught school here. And then she worked at the school board office. She worked with the— They don't call them retarded, they call them special ed. She worked with them. She retired from the school board.	28:43
Michele Mitchell	So then she's born '38?	29:19
Agnes Chatman Landry	Who? Rose?	29:21
Michele Mitchell	Mm-hmm.	29:21
Agnes Chatman Landry	Rose was born in December '37.	29:24
Michele Mitchell	'37?	29:25
Agnes Chatman Landry	Uh-huh.	29:25
Doris	[indistinct 00:29:30].	29:25
Michele Mitchell	So she's born here in New Iberia?	29:34
Agnes Chatman Landry	Yeah. She born in New Iberia. And I had a son too, my oldest son. He died in the mine. He got trapped down in the mine. The salt mine.	29:36
Michele Mitchell	Was it on Jefferson Island or—	29:57
Agnes Chatman Landry	Jefferson Island. You hit it right on the nail, Jefferson Island.	29:59
Michele Mitchell	[indistinct 00:30:04].	30:02
Agnes Chatman Landry	That happened in '70. When Integration just started. He got trapped in the mine. He had seven children. Wife and seven children.	30:07
Michele Mitchell	Was working conditions bad for folks in the mine?	30:29
Agnes Chatman Landry	Well, the funniest thing about it, he said they had told the boss man, who was over. And that told him, something bad was going to happen. But he just had gone back to work. He was off on a vacation. No, he was off on his days off or something. And he just had gone back to work that morning, and the salt fell, and crushed him. And there was one Black and five White.	30:33
Michele Mitchell	What was your son's name?	31:17
Agnes Chatman Landry	Lennis Landry Jr.	31:32
Michele Mitchell	Lennis?	31:33
Agnes Chatman Landry	Yeah, L-E-N-N-I-S. That was the first time I heard that name. I married Lennis.	31:34
Michele Mitchell	That's your husband's name?	31:41
Agnes Chatman Landry	Uh-huh. I had four boys and five girls. No, I had five boys and four girls. Because all the girls living Rose, Brenda, Diane, and Doris—	32:03
Michele Mitchell	And then there was, Lennis and?	32:22
Agnes Chatman Landry	Lennis, Richard, and Michael, Terry. I said Michael?	32:32
Michele Mitchell	Mm-hmm.	32:38
Agnes Chatman Landry	Well, Terry before Michael. Is Lennis Junior. We used to call him junior boy. And it was Richard Herman.	32:40
Michele Mitchell	Herman. Okay. Did all your sons work in the mines?	32:54
Agnes Chatman Landry	Uh-uh. Terry is the police captain, Terry Landry.	32:56
Michele Mitchell	Now?	33:06
Agnes Chatman Landry	He wakes out Baton Rouge. He's over crime lab over there. And he owns all the casinos over there in whole state of Louisiana.	33:09
Michele Mitchell	You must be proud of him?	33:22
Agnes Chatman Landry	Yeah.	33:22
Michele Mitchell	Ma'am, what did your husband do? Where did he work?	33:28
Agnes Chatman Landry	He worked at the water plant.	33:30
Michele Mitchell	And he never worked in the mines at all?	33:41
Agnes Chatman Landry	This boy was the only one of my son who worked in the mine. Lennis Jr. Richard drove Greyhound bus and then they had that strike, the other day. And Herman is a minister in Baton Rouge. He live in Baton Rouge. Michael work in a oil field. That's where he work at.	33:45
Michele Mitchell	Yeah. And now I'm trying to remember what you were telling me about before we started talking about the children. You were telling me about coming to New Liberia.	34:33
Agnes Chatman Landry	When I came to New Iberia?	34:42
Michele Mitchell	Mm-hmm.	34:42
Agnes Chatman Landry	I came to New Iberia on a trip. On a summer trip. Summer with my grandfather, and I met my husband. And we maybe courted for about two years, and then we married. We had nine children, like I told you. We got 33 grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren. Rose [indistinct 00:35:30], Brenda is a housewife. Diane is a teacher in Monroe. She live in Monroe. And Doris went to college too, but she didn't finish. But she going to— Betty is in school right now.	34:42
Michele Mitchell	Richard, I think you told me about him. I didn't write it down.	35:56
Agnes Chatman Landry	Richard had seven children. He got seven children.	35:58
Michele Mitchell	Richard.	35:59
Agnes Chatman Landry	He got five girls I think it is, and two boys. Oh, that's Eva. Oh, Eva's got five boys and two girls. That was Lennis'. They had seven children too. One is a lawyer, one is a teacher, and one is a policeman. And William works out in the field. One in service, that's him over there in Woodson. He in service. That's my grandma.	36:02
Agnes Chatman Landry	My oldest daughter had three girls. Three fine girls. The girls didn't give her many trouble. One of them is in Connecticut right now. She's finishing engineer. Then she got the other girl in New Orleans, the one I was telling you about. Then they got another one in New Orleans who would go to Dillard. She go to Dillard. Chindela Went to Suno. Diane has five. Doris has one. My son, the policeman have two boys and one girl. And Richard has seven children too. I got to count them up to see how many girls they got. Shari, Robin, Christie. Four and three. Seven, yeah. Four girls.	36:51
Agnes Chatman Landry	They got the oldest one. And then they got Robin. And they got Christie, and they got the baby girl. That's four boys and three girls. His oldest boy named Joel Richard. And then he have Ryan, and then he have Craig. That's the three boys they have. Sometimes I get mixed up with them.	38:31
Michele Mitchell	Well no, I think you just did a good job.	39:11
Agnes Chatman Landry	Yeah. And Michael, that's my baby. He's the baby. He had two children. A boy and a girl. A big family.	39:18
Michele Mitchell	Yes.	39:45
Agnes Chatman Landry	A big family. I had to call a roll at night. [indistinct 00:39:55]. But I enjoyed these children, I really enjoyed them. It was a good thing. Because they have really took good care of me. For two years, I've been— I had the stroke, like I told you, last year. And then I had pacemaker. Heart problems. Before that, I fell. I broke my ankle, the bones and my feet, and I broke my hips. I did my feet in January. Six months after that, I broke my hip bone. Both of them was away from home. I go a lot with the church. One was in Baton Rouge, and the other was in 304. And all that was after my husband passed. If I didn't got children, I'd have been—	39:47
Michele Mitchell	Well, they taking care of you?	41:11
Agnes Chatman Landry	That's right. Because I don't have no sister, no brother. Was just by myself.	41:12
Michele Mitchell	It's good to have children.	41:20
Agnes Chatman Landry	Oh yes. A good deal. And them grandchildren is just as well. Sometime back, it hadn't been too long, Carisma got all word up there in Connecticut, she came home. She had to come and see about her grandmother. They call me, Big Mama. All of them call me big mama. And she come here. She took me out to— We went out to Jefferson Island to visit out there. To go down at the park. You been out there?	41:26
Michele Mitchell	Just last week.	42:02
Agnes Chatman Landry	Yes. Nice out there.	42:04
Michele Mitchell	It's pretty.	42:05
Agnes Chatman Landry	You been to— That's Jefferson. Then they got Avery Island. That's another place. I've been to Avery Island, but I haven't been all over like Jefferson. Rose had a friend that lived that there.	42:11
Michele Mitchell	At Avery Island?	42:35
Agnes Chatman Landry	Uh-huh.	42:37
Michele Mitchell	Because there's still houses back there, aren't there?	42:37
Agnes Chatman Landry	Well, I don't know. They was the longest one in— They done moved to town. Well, Maddy married— Anybody told you about Coach James? Coach. We call him Coach James. His [indistinct 00:42:58], what is his first name? Well, he married Maddy and Maddy used to live out there in Avery's Island Road. She's born and raised. Her and all her brothers. Born and raised out there.	42:39
Michele Mitchell	And her name's Maddy James?	43:20
Agnes Chatman Landry	Uh-huh. Maddy James.	43:21
Michele Mitchell	She still in this area?	43:24
Agnes Chatman Landry	Not too far from here, no. She live on [indistinct 00:43:30], I think it is. That's the— Oh, right over. The street right over. Harmon James, that's what his name.	43:26
Michele Mitchell	It sounds familiar. So somebody's told me.	43:39
Agnes Chatman Landry	Yeah. He was a principal. He just retired a couple years, junior high. Back here where old Anderson used to be. He was the principal back then. Harmon James.	43:41
Michele Mitchell	Okay. So she married him, and she grew up on Avery Island.	44:05
Agnes Chatman Landry	Avery Island.	44:07
Michele Mitchell	Said, she came into town when she got married.	44:08
Agnes Chatman Landry	Uh-huh.	44:10
Michele Mitchell	So she's about what, 50, 40? How old is she?	44:13
Agnes Chatman Landry	I don't think Maddy quite as old as Rose. I don't know, but they was friend together. But I'd have to find out exactly. She might not be— Doris!	44:19
Doris	Yes.	44:32
Agnes Chatman Landry	Maddy ought to be about 50 or—	44:33
Doris	[indistinct 00:44:37].	44:35
Agnes Chatman Landry	Rose 56. Rose probably going to be 56. Rose going to be 56.	44:37
Doris	That's interesting.	44:47
Agnes Chatman Landry	What did she do?	44:55
Doris	[indistinct 00:44:58]	44:56
Michele Mitchell	Oh, because she grew up on island?	44:59
Doris	Yeah.	45:00
Agnes Chatman Landry	And Harmon James was a principal. And Herman was the principal. Maddy is a teacher too.	45:04
Michele Mitchell	You have to remember this.	45:29
Agnes Chatman Landry	Hopefully, because I talk scattered.	45:34
Doris	Yeah. My mother had a stroke, I thought—	45:37
Agnes Chatman Landry	Bad.	45:42
Michele Mitchell	So far I think—	45:45
Doris	It just, she was much sharper.	45:46
Michele Mitchell	No, so far it's been great.	45:49
Doris	[indistinct 00:46:01].	45:51
Michele Mitchell	Do you remember what it was like here in New Iberia when you moved here?	46:04
Agnes Chatman Landry	Sad.	46:10
Michele Mitchell	Sad?	46:10
Agnes Chatman Landry	Dirty Street.	46:14
Michele Mitchell	Dirt Street.	46:14
Agnes Chatman Landry	Field Street was a dirty street. When it rain, it floods. Had to take off your shoes. I remember one night, we was out, me and my husband, when it rain, I'd take off my shoes. I was ashamed to take off my shoes. All this been developed, because all this was dirty road. Dirty street. All that was dirt street.	46:17
Michele Mitchell	When they paved it.	46:47
Agnes Chatman Landry	Oh, they paved the good wall. Doris?	46:49
Doris	Uh-huh?	46:54

Michele Mitchell	It was paved probably in the mid '60s.	0:00
Agnes Chatman Landry	You remember it being a dirt street?	0:08
Michele Mitchell	Between the [indistinct 00:00:14].	0:11
Agnes Chatman Landry	Right side here.	0:15
Michele Mitchell	[indistinct 00:00:17]	0:15
Agnes Chatman Landry	[indistinct 00:00:18] right here was dirt.	0:17
Michele Mitchell	The only paved [indistinct 00:00:23] were White.	0:23
Doris	So the White area has been paved for a while?	0:24
Agnes Chatman Landry	Oh yeah. Oh yes, ma'am. Now, I don't remember Main Street being a dirt road, but they say it was. I don't remember. When I came here, it was paved, Main, St. Peter.	0:25
Michele Mitchell	But what was interesting about the education [indistinct 00:00:53]	0:53
Agnes Chatman Landry	Maybe Washington Street. I don't don't know.	0:53
Doris	The college system was integrated before your high schools. The college system was integrated before.	0:54
Agnes Chatman Landry	Pershing Street. Pershing, name was changed, it was Madison. That's where the Blue Light District was.	0:59
Doris	Oh, that was called Madison Street.	1:22
Agnes Chatman Landry	Yeah, it was a mud street, dirt road, dirt.	1:23
Doris	Was the Blue Light District bad, was it bad there?	1:38
Agnes Chatman Landry	Wouldn't hardly pass there. We had to pass there to go to church, the light district.	1:41
Doris	So what'd you do to get around it? You just went around it?	1:58
Agnes Chatman Landry	Well, we always did go in a group. Let's see, a group of people go over together, didn't have many cars at that time.	2:01
Doris	But when you moved here, did White people seem different than they did back in Texas or about the same?	2:24
Agnes Chatman Landry	About the same.	2:34
Doris	About the same.	2:34
Agnes Chatman Landry	And I lived around White people, but no, over here was worse. I tell you, they wanted "yes, ma'am" and "no ma'am," wanted you to say "yes, ma'am" and "no, ma'am."	2:34
Doris	You told me about the voting story—	3:05
Agnes Chatman Landry	That's right.	3:05
Doris	— before I turned on the tape recorder, so I don't have it on tape. I'm have to ask you to tell me again.	3:05
Agnes Chatman Landry	Oh yeah, honey. He wanted me to say "yes, ma'am" and "no, ma'am." I said, "School I went to didn't teach me 'yes, ma'am' and 'no, ma'am.' Yes and no." Boy, he could've spit in my face, and I'd have spit right back, that's how— He was something else with me.	3:09
Doris	So this was in the '50s when you went to go vote, when you went to register?	3:34
Agnes Chatman Landry	Yeah, I registered. That's right. See, he wanted me to tell him, "Yes, sir. No, sir." And I said, "Yes, no," and I couldn't bring my stuff to say "yes, ma'am" and "no, ma'am."	3:35
Doris	So you never did?	3:54
Agnes Chatman Landry	No, I didn't. Line long, people was registering. Now, our children won't say "yes, ma'am" and "no, ma'am" right now, the Black children, but the White will. Yes, ma'am. The White will, the White pickup, I guess they get by.	3:55
Doris	But when people want to do say "yes, ma'am" and "no, ma'am," did that cause you trouble, other trouble, than this?	4:39
Agnes Chatman Landry	Mm-mm.	4:47
Doris	No?	4:47
Agnes Chatman Landry	No. We was registering at the school. I don't know. It didn't because me no other trouble, uh-uh, just that in there, I guess he felt like spiting in my face or slapped me. But I guess he said, "Let me let this fool get out of here." That's the thing about White people that I love. You stand up to them. You got to be able to stand up to them. They'll leave you alone.	4:49
Agnes Chatman Landry	I've had some real good White people, friends, treat you like you're a human being, because I work in a home taking care of old man, you see, nursing him. He was something else. He was something else, but not in a way of niggers or nothing like that, just was a— Had a mind of his own.	5:25
Agnes Chatman Landry	But he was a kind old man, Mr. Dewey. He was a kind old man. At night, my shift was from four to 12 in the afternoon, and boy, used to sit and talk and tell me a lot of different things. And I was listening to him, and told me, "You heard of Grand Marin?" That's where the Mulattoes at. He told me, "I got a place, I bet you you can't go." That's what he tell me. I couldn't go there unless he bring me.	6:25
Agnes Chatman Landry	I said, "I can't where that's at." I said, "Where in the world you talking about?" "It's between two railroads." That's all he could tell me. Couldn't tell me it was Grand Marin. But I found out after that, that's what he was talking about. "You too Black, you can't go over there." I said, "Oh," I said, "you got to bring me there." I said, "You going to have to bring me there."	7:23
Agnes Chatman Landry	I used to drive him around, bring him different places where he wanted to go on my shift. Nice to me as can be. Nothing for him to go get me a big old ham, and Lafayette, used to go shop and get them ham at Hermans and Lafayette cookies for my children, tipped me every night I brought him out to eat somewhere. "Come on. You want go?" "No, I don't want to go in there and eat."" You can come in there with me." I don't want to go in there. No, no."	7:52
Agnes Chatman Landry	I said, "I'll go back home and I'm going to give you my telephone number and you call me." And that's what he used to do. Call me, and I'd go back and pick him up. Honey, 10, 15, $20 wasn't nothing for him to give me to buy my, because I didn't want to go in there with him to eat dinner over there.	8:41
Doris	Why not?	9:00
Agnes Chatman Landry	I didn't want to go in them places. Them old White girls there, time they see him coming, I know he must have tipped them good too. "Come on, Mr. Dewey, come on." He used to get out. I used to see that he get in the door. I had to see him getting in the door and I see to him get in the door, and I'd tell her, "When he get ready to call me, I'd pick him up." They used to treat me nice because it was Mr. Dewey.	9:02
Doris	How long did you work for him?	9:40
Agnes Chatman Landry	Oh, I worked a good while for him, and he lived there with his two daughters. They lived way down Main Street on your way to Olevia, and they got trees all around they house, them tall bushes. Girl, I was scared to go in there and come out at night. Didn't know what you're going to see.	9:43
Agnes Chatman Landry	At night, I put him to bed, get in the bed after he made his little round where he wanted to go, and "I'm hungry," he tell me. "What you want, Mr. Dewey?" "Oh, I want some milk and some bread and some dessert." Different things like that. One night I had pain in my shoulder. I said, "Mr. Dewey, I'm sicker than you and I don't want you to be popping me tonight. I'm sick." "All right, all right."	10:19
Agnes Chatman Landry	About 25 or 30 minutes, "I'm so hungry. Oh, I'm so hungry." But they had a elevator in the house because he couldn't climb them steps. I go get on the old elevator making all that noise, go in the kitchen, fix him something. It wasn't nothing hard to fix. Always, he had a lot of things in the house that you could fix up. Go fix that, now bring it back up on a tray, bring it.	11:08
Agnes Chatman Landry	I would tell him, "Now, you tell me everything you want, because I'm not going back down there." I was scared in that big old house, anyway. Put it there, eat it, and he might go to sleep 15 minutes and wake up again. But he was nice.	11:45
Agnes Chatman Landry	I tell you one thing, because when I was going to class to care for these old people, they tell you not to take money from them old people because they forget about it. Give you money and they forget about it. And they'll say, "You done stole." Boy, when he [indistinct 00:12:27], and he used to give me a lot, I tell you. I went and told his daughter, she said, "If he give it to you, take it. Say whatever he give you, I want you to have it." But they didn't want you putting your hand, taking it.	12:04
Doris	So when did you work for him? When was this?	12:49
Agnes Chatman Landry	I was working at the school when I was working for him.	12:55
Doris	At Livingston or?	12:58
Agnes Chatman Landry	I was working at Freshman High.	13:00
Doris	At Freshman High.	13:02
Agnes Chatman Landry	And I would wait for them. I'd go in the evening, and I was off at 11 or 12 o'clock. So I had time to sleep and go back to work the next morning.	13:05
Doris	Now that must have been something working two jobs.	13:18
Agnes Chatman Landry	I guess so. I was so tired. Oh, when the old man died, when they put him in the hospital. But I went down there and I told his daughter and them that I find a change in him, that I find in him. He said, well, they was going to wait and see. Then he took very sick and they had to bring him to the hospital.	13:22
Agnes Chatman Landry	And I had to go backwards and forward to the hospital because they kept nurses. But by time I was just about to give up, the old man died. I just had gone my Lemon, my girlfriend of mine, she worked with me at school. She was just about to give up too, she said, "Agnes, I'm so tired." I said, "I am too."	13:51
Agnes Chatman Landry	At the hospital, all you had to do is just go, if he needed anything or sit on the bed pain or something like that. You see, that was his private nurse. By the time I said I was going to give up, they called and told me he had passed.	14:16
Doris	Were you sad about that?	14:36
Agnes Chatman Landry	Yeah, I was sad for him because in his own way, he was really nice. He was very nice, and had a boy that worked there, he had been working there for all years and more years. And he used to drive him around in the day anywhere he wanted to go or something. He wanted me to go to Franklin with him one day, and I didn't want to go.	14:47
Agnes Chatman Landry	He told me when we left the house, he said, "I'm going to tell you where to go. You just turned where I tell you to turn." So when we got to the highway from his house, he said, "Turn left." I turned left, got a piece— Now, I said, "Where are we going? We going to Franklin."	15:15
Agnes Chatman Landry	I said, "Oh no, we're not going to Franklin today. Uh-huh, we're not going, Mr. Dewey, I'm going home. I'm going back to the house. I ain't going no Franklin. I'm tired. I can't go to Franklin." I could've went, but I just didn't want to go traveling all the different places he used to like to go.	15:36
Doris	That's something, that's something.	16:04
Agnes Chatman Landry	You want a ham, he'll bring you ham. "Yes, bring me a ham. Bring me a big old ham." They was glazed, beautiful ham. "Thank you, Mr. Dewey. You're a good man." I used to treat him nice, because he had ugly ways at time. But in general he was nice, and his daughters and them were just like—	16:07
Agnes Chatman Landry	One night he got mad with me and he didn't want me to go bring him nowhere. I said, "Huh, isn't it?" And he said, "I'm going and you not coming with me." I said, "Where you going?" I said, "All right, I'm going, but you ain't coming with me." I went downstairs, and I told his daughter, I said, "Mr. Dewey said he going somewhere and I'm not going with him."	16:44
Agnes Chatman Landry	She said, Agnes, "Don't worry. Let him go. Call the cab for him." He left. I had to stay there until my time was up. Way after while, here he come. He peeked in the room. "Come on, let's go. I'm ready to go." His daughter said, "Tell him you're not going. He didn't want you to go with him before." I said, "Tell him you're not going—" That old man, I enjoyed him though.	17:12
Doris	And he even told you about Grand Marin, that he said he could take you there?	17:55
Agnes Chatman Landry	Yeah, he could go there, but I couldn't go there. He did pass for White too.	17:57
Doris	Was Grand Marin the same way when you first moved here? Yes?	18:05
Agnes Chatman Landry	See them mulattoes, some of them you can't tell from White, but I find out they don't treat them no different.	18:12
Doris	They don't?	18:27
Agnes Chatman Landry	They don't treat them people any different from you. They Black and they White. Your skin is whiter than mine, but you go come through the same thing I come through.	18:27
Doris	But you've never really dealt with anybody out there that much.	18:50
Agnes Chatman Landry	Mm-hmm, girl worked with Doris who lived out there, her mama.	18:53
Doris	[indistinct 00:19:04] if you know, a couple questions. I have more questions I want ask. Do you remember what it was like when they ran the doctors out of town? Do you remember that?	19:06
Agnes Chatman Landry	I was sad. That was the saddest thing that I know, and you know why they did that? You see, and I'm not going to say this. No. Because I can't prove nothing. But I can't prove.	19:12
Agnes Chatman Landry	But Dr. William, he wasn't from here. He was from somewhere else. He moved here. This school where I told he used to belongs to the Black people on Pershing Street, where the courthouse was. They had the clinic downstairs, and then Dr. William was working down there. They didn't have air condition, anything like this. And he worked in his short sleeve and thing. That's what they couldn't stand. See, they had White people going to the clinic too.	19:31
Doris	And he was a Black doctor there?	20:12
Agnes Chatman Landry	Yeah, he was a Black doctor. They went in the barber shop and got him out the barbershop and made him leave town.	20:13
Doris	Was this a barbershop on Hopkins Street?	20:36
Agnes Chatman Landry	No, barbershop on Pershing.	20:38
Doris	On Pershing.	20:40
Agnes Chatman Landry	And this barber called some of the other doctors to let them know, like Dr. Scoggin, he was waiting for him to come in there. They didn't break in his house or nothing. This barber had warned him. But the next morning, he left town. He left. He never came back. He had a drug store on— Not Corrine. Where's that drug store? Dory, where Dr. Scoggin was, Corrine. Huh?	20:47
Michele Mitchell	I think I remember y'all saying that. I don't remember [indistinct 00:21:37].	21:32
Agnes Chatman Landry	On Corrine. It was on Corrine.	21:36
Michele Mitchell	It was on a corner of Corrine and—	21:36
Agnes Chatman Landry	And Field.	21:36
Michele Mitchell	And Field.	21:40
Agnes Chatman Landry	It wasn't just on a corner because his was from the corner. His house sit mostly on the corner, but he has his drugstore sitting right next to his house. That was Dr. Scoggin, and then they had, Dr. Dorsey was a Black doctor. He left and never came back. He died in Dallas not too long ago, Scoggin, William. Dr. Pierson was a dentist, he left and never came back. We had another doctor I'm trying to think about. But they beat up Dr. William.	21:42
Doris	They beat him up?	22:48
Agnes Chatman Landry	Uh-huh.	22:50
Doris	Bad?	22:50
Agnes Chatman Landry	Uh-huh, they beat him up, and with Scoggin, they didn't get to because he was sitting waiting for them. If they'd broke his door, they'd have find plenty of them. But they didn't. They had sense, they didn't.	22:54
Doris	And didn't they run the NAACP—	23:17
Agnes Chatman Landry	Yeah. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, and then where it started again, this man, I can't think of his name. He was a teacher. And what did he want to bring in? It's something he wanted to bring into New Iberia, and they didn't want.	23:21
Doris	Was this the welding school?	23:45
Michele Mitchell	A welding school.	23:47
Agnes Chatman Landry	A welding school.	23:48
Michele Mitchell	Yes, it was.	23:48
Agnes Chatman Landry	Yeah, a welding school, beat him up, and him and his family flee from here. This NAACP man too, Leo Hardy. Oh, they beat him, and they left him almost for dead on the highway somewhere. They beat him up awful. Then they had a Black woman came after these doctors had been, a Black doctor, a woman, Miss Chatter.	23:49
Agnes Chatman Landry	She had some problems. They kicked her or they done her something, and she must have been wanting them talk back to them. But there's not many Black doctors come here since that happened. Dr. Diggs came out and he stayed. Dr. Pemberton stayed too. He was a pharmacy. Dr. Pemberton, he stayed. Dr. William stayed, he worked out of his drugstore, Dr. William. Then Dr. Diggs worked there until he bought him a place down there.	24:24
Michele Mitchell	So where would you go to a, I mean, after they ran all these Black doctors out of town?	25:25
Agnes Chatman Landry	Where you went, you had to go to them White one to do it. If you had to go, you had to go to White one. I mean, they ran. The only one stayed was Dr. Pemberton. That's the only one I really know is stayed yet.	25:30
Michele Mitchell	And Jimmy's grandfather, Dr. Garrett, didn't he stay?	25:51
Agnes Chatman Landry	Yeah, he stayed.	25:57
Doris	Dr. Garrett?	25:57
Agnes Chatman Landry	Yeah, Dr. Garrett. But he wasn't one of these power—	25:58
Michele Mitchell	Fair-skinned black.	26:13
Agnes Chatman Landry	Yeah, fair-skinned Black. But what I want to say, he wasn't— Because Dr. Garrett had to walk where he went. When Dr. Diggs place come here too, he was walking and cab and everything. But Dr. Diggs did and did good business. He was the only one, after them doctors was run a week, he came and stayed. He was an honest one, because Dr. Chatter came in and tried to stay.	26:17
Doris	And she left, huh?	27:01
Agnes Chatman Landry	Yeah. Because she had problems with those people in the courthouse. That was sad about Dr. Williams though. Dr. William was a fair doctor too. He had bad hair, but he was very fair.	27:05
Doris	And he had a drug store?	27:41
Agnes Chatman Landry	No, he worked out of Dr. Pemberton drugstore. They had another doctor came here, I'm trying to think of his name. He wiped out of the Cooper's Drugstore, which is—	27:50
Michele Mitchell	[indistinct 00:28:12]	28:11
Agnes Chatman Landry	No, a doctor. I had him when I had that blood clot in my leg.	28:13
Michele Mitchell	I don't remember.	28:21
Agnes Chatman Landry	He was at Sam Cooper Drugstore. I'm trying to think of that man's name, and they had a African doctor here.	28:23
Doris	When?	28:33
Agnes Chatman Landry	After the—	28:37
Doris	Yeah?	28:38
Agnes Chatman Landry	Uh-huh. I thought he was going to stay, [indistinct 00:28:47] he had bought his home, but maybe. I don't know what really happened, he left. He was a good doctor, because he bought across the bayou and build across the bayou on the Louisville highway. You done been there?	28:43
Doris	I was just there yesterday.	29:07
Agnes Chatman Landry	That's where he built out there. Close to the judge's house, Judge Corr.	29:13
Doris	I've seen his house, so I know what you're talking about.	29:18
Agnes Chatman Landry	You know where I'm talking about, huh? That's where that Black doctor stayed. He was from Africa. He was a nice doctor too, very good.	29:20
Doris	So then he left.	29:29
Agnes Chatman Landry	I don't know if they put fire under his foot or what with us. He left. This was a bad little town. Now, [indistinct 00:29:52] just had a power generator not too far from here, and them Black people stuck together there, honey.	29:33
Doris	Did they?	30:08
Agnes Chatman Landry	Oh, oh, oh, did they. I see that man's suing Reverend Jones right now, Arthur Lee Jones.	30:08
Michele Mitchell	That's the police officer's name.	30:19
Agnes Chatman Landry	What that policeman's name of Jones said it was Cohn? His name is Cohn. See, so that boy just hung himself in jail, and then they killed another boy on the street. They killed the boy down there from our community right there on Field Street. They shot him, died from it.	30:23
Agnes Chatman Landry	Boy had a little stick, he said about as big as your finger. When it fell on the ground, it just broke all up, and they talking about he resist the law. That man still on the force. But they didn't do that in January [indistinct 00:31:25].	30:55
Michele Mitchell	[indistinct 00:31:26].	31:22
Agnes Chatman Landry	Was he here in New Iberia?	31:30
Michele Mitchell	That man's still on the force.	31:35
Agnes Chatman Landry	The man that shot him?	31:35
Michele Mitchell	Yes.	31:37
Agnes Chatman Landry	No, I don't know. Lately, I don't know, lately, about if he but he stayed on there a while after they. He stayed on the force a— Because usually when they have something, they take him off but they didn't take him off. They didn't. He stayed on there a while, I know. You should know, you worked up there in the courthouse.	31:39
Doris	Are you okay?	32:13
Agnes Chatman Landry	Uh-huh. I got a phlegm that comes up since I had—	32:20
Michele Mitchell	[indistinct 00:32:28] so a lot of time it hits the fluid.	32:36
Agnes Chatman Landry	That's in my throat.	32:42
Doris	Anytime you want to stop, just tell me.	32:43
Michele Mitchell	And not just her throat, around the [indistinct 00:32:47]	32:44
Agnes Chatman Landry	I got a pill [indistinct 00:32:53].	32:52
Michele Mitchell	You don't have shortness of the breath, [indistinct 00:32:56], she's going to be fine.	32:54
Agnes Chatman Landry	Give me some water, please.	32:54
Michele Mitchell	She's going to be fine.	32:54
Agnes Chatman Landry	I started in AB Simon, they called that school, AB Simon School. That school was named after a principal here at AB Simon.	33:01
Michele Mitchell	I wondered why she had kids, she just—	33:16
Agnes Chatman Landry	I told her that.	33:19
Michele Mitchell	Remember [indistinct 00:33:20] had three kids from school.	33:20
Agnes Chatman Landry	It was nice. Mr. Kelly was the principal at AB Simon when I was the PTA president over there. Mr. Kelly was a character. He was a character. That's all I can tell you about that. But the PTA bought different things for the school. They did little things for the teachers to make their work—	33:27
Agnes Chatman Landry	Bought a piano at AB Simon, bought piano at JB Livingston. Teachers' Appreciation Week, we would give them a dinner or give them gifts, program. We bought, she told you about the laboratory, they didn't have— Well, we had one at JB Livingston and didn't Mr. Augusta tell you anything about the school?	34:06
Doris	He told me something about JB Livingston. He did. It sounded like it's a nice school.	34:41
Agnes Chatman Landry	It was a nice school. It was a nice school. We bought piano over there.	34:50
Doris	How'd you get the money to buy a piano? That's a [indistinct 00:35:01]	34:58
Agnes Chatman Landry	We used to have some kind of project where is it. At Henderson High, we had an annual tea over there, calendar tea, each 12 months, and raised a lot of money for Henderson, and JB Livingston, we had a fair once a year and sold so many dinners and had different activities. We raised that money for the school.	35:01
Agnes Chatman Landry	Mr. Augustus, he's a wise old man too. He was the head of principal because they probably would've had that piano and thing there for the White. But we transfer the piano, he was principal over here at Henderson High School. It wasn't Henderson, it was junior high. And he brought the piano over there, good piano.	35:50
Agnes Chatman Landry	And we took the money and give it to some needy, not needy person. But let me see how we did that. Oh, we took it divided. I know different places where we thought that they needed different things. That was JB Livingston. Henderson High, I'm trying to think, what did mister, what did he do about that? Did I tell you Mr. Augusta was a head? He work right now, so they couldn't take it.	36:42
Doris	I believe that.	37:31
Agnes Chatman Landry	I'm telling you, he work ahead. If they had paid attention to Mr. Augusta, he had told us that in a PTA meeting about something was going to happen. Something was going on and it was going to happen. Because you see this year, the way they did it, they closed down them school vacation time.	37:33
Agnes Chatman Landry	That's right, and then they opened the schools they wanted to open. By right, I wouldn't have had a job managing, because they closed our school down, JB Livingston. They closed JB Livingston down, and she was going to put me in a school working as a worker. I raised a little saying before. My supervisor was upset with me. She really was upset with me.	38:15
Agnes Chatman Landry	But she didn't know where she was going to put me at and I just wasn't going to take anything. She called me here and was trying to tell me. I said, "Well, I don't care. Who going to say I'm not going there?" But girl used to work with me back there at JB Livingston, they put her sister manager at Freshman High and she didn't want to go there. She didn't want to go back there yet, so she called me.	38:58
Agnes Chatman Landry	I don't know why they used to think that I could do so much. But she called me and she told me, saying, "I don't want to go back to Freshman High if Miss Barbara will give me a job closer to my house," she said, "because I don't drive, I don't have no car." She said, "I would change with you." I said, "Well, Gert, you call Miss Barbara and tell that to Miss Barbara." She said, "No, you called Miss Barbara."	39:39
Agnes Chatman Landry	But Miss Barbara and I had had so much a mess by where she had put me at anyway, so she told [indistinct 00:40:27] that I was mad because I wasn't getting a manager job, and she had done all she could do, but all them White didn't lose her job. You know what I'm talking about? They didn't lose it, but I was going to be out of a job.	40:11
Agnes Chatman Landry	JB Livingston, Henderson high school manager, she was going to be out of a job. She had to go work under somebody else, and at that time, new jobs was hard. You made your own menu. You ordered your groceries yourself. I made my menu, yes, ma'am. I had to plan it, plan my own menu.	40:51
Doris	How long did you do that job as a cafeteria manager? How long was that?	41:24
Agnes Chatman Landry	Oh, I worked 25 years in the school.	41:29
Michele Mitchell	It was longer than that.	41:35
Agnes Chatman Landry	What?	41:37
Michele Mitchell	You worked longer than 25 years.	41:40
Agnes Chatman Landry	I worked 25 years in a school, girl. That's how I retired, 25 years, and I work at JB Livingston. I said I worked about 14 years maybe back there at JB Livingston before integration, and then I worked the rest of the time, when integration came, at Freshman High.	41:40
Agnes Chatman Landry	The time I was back there at JB Livingston, I did my own menu's planning. I had to do it myself. I had to do them for a week at a time, my menus. Boy, our color, they swear sometime I had the hardest menu than anybody.	42:23
Doris	Really?	42:59
Agnes Chatman Landry	Because they want to do what they want. They want to do what they want. I said, "Well, that's my menu." Make them about a week. I had them up there for Monday. You come start Monday. I even had my workout line, who was doing what and everything, was there on the board, see what you had to do.	43:01
Doris	If they complained about the menu, what sort of things did they make?	43:39
Agnes Chatman Landry	Oh, we had to make our own bread.	43:43
Doris	You had to make your own bread?	43:47
Agnes Chatman Landry	Yes, ma'am. Sometime, we got sliced bread when we had sandwiches and things. But most of the time when I was planning my menu, we didn't get sliced bread that often. We had to make biscuit, cornbread, roll, cinnamon rolls, all them things like that we had to make.	43:50
Agnes Chatman Landry	I tried to suit with the children like. The children liked it. Bean and rice, that's what they're like, and vegetables. I had to have two vegetables. I had to have the protein, which was bean and then I'd put some salted meat in there or either some smoked sausages in there, and rice. Rice was just basic, and some mustard green, or a cabbage slaw.	44:28
Agnes Chatman Landry	Some of the things like that I would have from stew, hot dogs, hamburgers. But when that lady, when we had centralized menu came from the office, they couldn't say nothing. I used to tell them too, I said, "Look here, see what you got to do?" Boy, when we started making tacos and pizza, boy, they used to—	45:11
Agnes Chatman Landry	And our children didn't know it. It was hard with them because they didn't know nothing about tacos and pizza and all that. They didn't like that. They liked hamburgers and hotdog and they love beans and they love spaghettis. They like that.	45:51
Agnes Chatman Landry	I was glad when they centralized the menu. I was happy because I didn't have to bust my head of getting it out every week. I did that a long time. They used to fuss, "Agnes work the hardest, Agnes give us the hardest, or Angus this," and when I get them a dessert, like make a cake or something, oh, so you got to give them a dessert sometimes. You got—	46:15

Michele Mitchell	You said that when you first started working the cafeteria, that you worked downtown?	0:04
Agnes Chatman Landry	Uh-huh. Lawrence A. Pemberton. That's the first school I worked, two years as a worker, and the third year, I went as a manager at J.B. Livingston. And I stayed there till integration.	0:07
Michele Mitchell	This is the Templeton School?	0:25
Agnes Chatman Landry	Lawrence A. Pemberton. It's not Lawrence A. Pemberton. It's downtown — what it is now? Oh, it's an elementary school.	0:32
Michele Mitchell	Mm-hmm.	0:47
Speaker 1	Lee.	0:47
Agnes Chatman Landry	Lee Street, yes.	0:48
Michele Mitchell	Thank you.	0:49
Agnes Chatman Landry	You see they took the names of different one off of the school. They had a boy that went to Henderson High, fought that for the longest. Wanted them to put it back on Henderson High.	0:50
Michele Mitchell	Did he?	1:06
Agnes Chatman Landry	You know, a Black man, they weren't going to put that back on no Black man.	1:07
Michele Mitchell	Mm-hmm.	1:13
Agnes Chatman Landry	This boy used to come every year. He's in California now. Come every year and fight that.	1:21
Michele Mitchell	Comes back, huh?	1:31
Agnes Chatman Landry	Fight it.	1:33
Michele Mitchell	But what sort of — now when you worked at Pemberton, what sort of cafeteria was it? Was it a big cafeteria?	1:40
Agnes Chatman Landry	You talking about [indistinct 00:01:51].	1:50
Michele Mitchell	Was it now?	1:50
Agnes Chatman Landry	Oh, that cafeteria. It was an elementary school. And it was all broke down. Now they got a — you know they got another place.	1:56
Michele Mitchell	Mm-hmm.	2:07
Agnes Chatman Landry	Broken down, honey.	2:13
Michele Mitchell	Was the equipment broken down too?	2:17
Agnes Chatman Landry	Equipment wasn't as good as the White ones. But you had to work so hard to keep it up, to make it look like it was clean. Was four of us working, I think, the manager and three helpers.	2:20
Michele Mitchell	Did the children eat in the — was there a cafeteria with tables?	3:02
Agnes Chatman Landry	Oh, yeah. It was a cafeteria, old time, like them picnic tables.	3:05
Michele Mitchell	Mm-hmm.	3:10
Agnes Chatman Landry	That's what they had, like old picnic tables. That's what they had.	3:12
Michele Mitchell	Were they wood?	3:20
Agnes Chatman Landry	Yeah, wood, uh-huh. Yeah. J.B. Livingston was a new school, when I went to it. I think it had been built about two years, when I went there. And so we had tables and chairs at that school. And Freshman High was another school what was new. They had tables and chairs there.	3:21
Michele Mitchell	Must have been happy to leave Pemberton.	4:01
Agnes Chatman Landry	Oh. Oh. Girl. Old cement floor that you had to scrub, and the corners, you know how them dirt there form up, we had to get that out every day. We had us a hard time. I just did it two years.	4:03
Michele Mitchell	[indistinct 00:04:31].	4:30
Agnes Chatman Landry	When I left I was on my own.	4:31
Michele Mitchell	Yeah.	4:41
Agnes Chatman Landry	That's right. On my own.	4:46
Michele Mitchell	Did you start working in cafeterias after your children were —	4:46
Agnes Chatman Landry	Uh-uh.	4:51
Michele Mitchell	Yes?	4:52
Agnes Chatman Landry	Michael was a baby. Small child.	4:57
Michele Mitchell	How old was Rose?	5:06
Agnes Chatman Landry	Rose, Rose was almost ready to go to college, or finish high school I believe, when I — She must have — yeah, she was almost ready to go to college.	5:08
Michele Mitchell	Michael was the baby.	5:28
Agnes Chatman Landry	Michael was the baby. That's the only one I had a problem with when he get there in the morning. "Mother, didn't feed me no breakfast." See, I was at the school where he was going, you see. Michael, and then later, he's over there, used to spoil it. And get there and fix him some milk and bread — no, he didn't drink milk. Fix him biscuit or something and give him — fry him an egg, or something they give him. But I didn't have no problem with none of my children through school where I worked at, nobody but that old boy.	5:32
Agnes Chatman Landry	They'd tease him right now, "Mother, I'm hungry. They didn't fix me no breakfast." "Michael. Please, Michael." Them ladies would get right there and find him something up, stir it up for him.	6:20
Michele Mitchell	Yeah. Yeah, so he got him something to eat. [indistinct 00:06:54]. I think, ma'am, the only questions I have left — I think I've got everything. You told me that — now, did you have a job before you worked Pemberton, in some other place? Where were you working then?	6:43
Agnes Chatman Landry	I worked in a home, Laport bus line, they called it, because he had buses, that went out to St. Martinville, and went to Abbeville, and all them places, them places around like that. But I used to cook for them over there. I used to cook for them.	7:10
Michele Mitchell	Was this in a private—	7:37
Agnes Chatman Landry	House where, yeah, private home. But the bus his office was right there in the house. Yeah, I always did work. Believe it or not, I cut cane. Now I did that on my own.	7:37
Michele Mitchell	Can you tell me a little bit about that?	7:54
Agnes Chatman Landry	I did that on my own. I wanted to do it.	7:58
Speaker 1	And you know what's so weird. My mother was an only child. My mother was an only child and then had nine children. But you know life for her has — being an only child. And [indistinct 00:08:27] having nine children. And my mother, I know did the cane before she got married.	8:10
Agnes Chatman Landry	Mm-mm. No, I didn't.	8:27
Michele Mitchell	Nope.	8:27
Speaker 1	Had all these children, and had to survive—	8:27
Agnes Chatman Landry	Helped my husband.	8:31
Speaker 1	— [indistinct 00:08:32] when they moved. When he moved her here, from Texas. She had shoes to no end. And this is one of the things that he talked about on his dying bed, about how she had deprived herself of the things that she always had had, to take care, to help support him.	8:31
Agnes Chatman Landry	[indistinct 00:08:57] nine children.	8:56
Michele Mitchell	That's beautiful, though. It is. And—	9:09
Agnes Chatman Landry	They didn't have the best of clothes.	9:10
Speaker 1	And this might have been out of six marriage, because I think her mother was married three times, and I think her father was married twice. Five marriage, she was an only child. I'm sure she wished she would have dated, after having to do so much. It's like taking [indistinct 00:09:39].	9:14
Agnes Chatman Landry	Oh, but I enjoyed that year. Let me tell you about the cane cutting. I enjoyed it.	9:39
Michele Mitchell	So it was in the '30s or the '40s?	9:43
Speaker 1	This was in the late '30s. Got married in the late '30s, but I'm sure she cut cane—	9:49
Agnes Chatman Landry	It was in—	9:54
Speaker 1	— in the '40s.	9:54
Agnes Chatman Landry	— yeah.	9:54
Speaker 1	And probably the '50s. Okay.	9:54
Agnes Chatman Landry	I cut cane just one year.	10:03
Speaker 1	Well, that was in the '40s.	10:04
Agnes Chatman Landry	One year.	10:04
Speaker 1	I wasn't born, but I've heard this story so much.	10:04
Agnes Chatman Landry	A lady was — the thing about it, I've stayed three places since I married. This house — was the old house, this house, and then we moved out there on the farm where who my husband was working for then, Mr. Paul Hebert, we moved out there. I learned how to milk cows that I didn't know anything about, chicken feed, chicken and things like that. We raised hogs—	10:11
Speaker 1	Well, you did just farm work, period.	10:52
Agnes Chatman Landry	Yeah.	10:55
Michele Mitchell	Paul [indistinct 00:10:55]?	10:55
Agnes Chatman Landry	I learned — yeah, his name was Paul Hebert, but they called it Hebert.	10:56
Michele Mitchell	Hebert.	11:00
Agnes Chatman Landry	Yeah, Hebert.	11:00
Michele Mitchell	So Hebert is the pronunciation.	11:00
Agnes Chatman Landry	Yeah, but we called it Paul — I mean we would call him Paul. He wouldn't — [indistinct 00:11:11]. Hebert. Hebert.	11:07
Speaker 1	This area is amazing. With the French.	11:11
Agnes Chatman Landry	There's a lady lived by me, oh she, "Oh come on. You're going to enjoy it." And I did. I really enjoyed it. And the men used to — see, they cut so fast, and they used to — when they'd get they row out, they get in our row, come and meet us. Oh, we had a good time. My husband used to come and help me.	11:26
Speaker 1	At least she enjoyed working.	11:45
Michele Mitchell	Yeah—	11:48
Speaker 1	And made it a part of her. What she does, as she gets older, the people in our area, the older people, those were her friends. [indistinct 00:12:06]. I mean, it was just a part of us. She made it a part of us. And she's still doing it to us. I wanted to choke her yesterday. Her church was going to Lake Cho, and my mother is the oldest, now [indistinct 00:12:23] and I wanted her, listen to me, she's the oldest of the people that she wanted to go with her. All of these people have kids, just like she had kids. But she volunteered to take one of us. Well, hey girlfriend, my kid's got a friend, and she's still doing it. And we might be mad, but we don't dare say no. And that has just been a part of our upbringing. We know that we are supposed to do — it's going to be rewarding for us to do for the older people—	11:49
Agnes Chatman Landry	Ms. Robbie don't have no children.	13:03
Speaker 1	But she had three other ladies. And my sisters laugh all the time, how she would make us go. You'd have to go.	13:06
Agnes Chatman Landry	Old people always have been my friends, from young.	13:22
Speaker 1	See, my sister's—	13:27
Agnes Chatman Landry	There she coming now.	13:28
Speaker 1	— [indistinct 00:13:29].	13:28
Michele Mitchell	What happened?	13:28
Agnes Chatman Landry	My oldest daughter.	13:28
Speaker 1	She's been in university. She's in the area working on—	13:28
Michele Mitchell	Hello. Nice to meet you.	13:28
Rose	How are you?	13:28
Agnes Chatman Landry	That's Rose.	13:39
Rose	Nice meeting you. Working on what?	13:41
Michele Mitchell	We're collecting stories from people who remember life—	13:45
Agnes Chatman Landry	From way back.	13:51
Michele Mitchell	— in the South. Yeah, from way back, exactly.	13:52
Rose	That'll make an interesting collection. Mary [indistinct 00:13:55].	13:52
Agnes Chatman Landry	Yeah.	13:52
Speaker 1	No, this lady's [indistinct 00:14:06]. She's in pain.	14:04
Agnes Chatman Landry	And is—	14:08
Rose	This your assignment?	14:08
Michele Mitchell	Uh-huh.	14:08
Rose	They gave you her name?	14:10
Speaker 1	We got one to tell you. Did they tell you about it?	14:11
Agnes Chatman Landry	What?	14:13
Speaker 1	[indistinct 00:14:18] story. Oh, I wanted to tell her, but I didn't know whether I should.	14:20
Rose	Why?	14:22
Speaker 1	The abuse they brought on Blacks during those days. And that was before I was born, I think.	14:22
Agnes Chatman Landry	He was in — yeah. In prison, he was in jail.	14:32
Rose	When they would arrest them and put them in jail, they would sexually abuse them, they would physically abuse them, they would — I mean, abuse them. Some of the stories. On of the stories that we heard was about my daddy's friend, who was accused of molesting or flirting with a White woman.	14:34
Speaker 1	Flirting, Rose, not even molesting.	14:53
Rose	Whistling. Which is flirtation. And they put him in jail, and nobody, none of his friends and family was allowed to go and see him, and while he was in jail, he was sexually abused, he was beaten, I mean just abused. Abused. They abused him, and when he did get out, he had to leave New Iberia, and he couldn't come back—	14:56
Agnes Chatman Landry	They made him leave town.	15:23
Speaker 1	He came back when we were grown.	15:23
Rose	He came back a few years before my dad died. Very, very angry. Because he thought my dad had denied — had deserted him.	15:23
Agnes Chatman Landry	But they wouldn't let nobody—	15:35
Rose	They wouldn't let him, and he sat and told the story of what they — sexual abuse.	15:37
Speaker 1	Well, I don't know if my father ever tried to [indistinct 00:15:39].	15:38
Rose	My daddy said yeah. He said that that several of them had gone — I don't think Daddy tried, but I think friends, their friends had tried, but they were scared.	15:38
Speaker 1	They were all scared.	16:01
Rose	They were. And this man came back and sat and told us.	16:01
Speaker 1	Weren't they all afraid to go and see him?	16:09
Agnes Chatman Landry	Huh?	16:09
Speaker 1	Weren't you all afraid to go and see him?	16:11
Agnes Chatman Landry	Yeah.	16:16
Rose	[indistinct 00:16:16].	16:16
Agnes Chatman Landry	Oh yeah, he used to sit — he used —	16:16
Rose	That was his first time coming back into New Iberia. I heard them talking about it, but I must have been in my — I was in my 30s when he came back, so after 30 years.	16:18
Michele Mitchell	And he's here now?	16:28
Rose	No, he came just to visit, and I don't think he has been back since that.	16:29
Agnes Chatman Landry	He lived right there, in the house right there. His mom died when they was young, and his daddy raised him, and then he left them in the house and — see, he was a brakeman.	16:34
Michele Mitchell	A brakeman?	16:49
Agnes Chatman Landry	Uh-huh. And he moved to — what that place name? DeQuincy.	16:50
Speaker 1	She doesn't necessarily want to know about integration, she also want to know what life was like.	16:59
Speaker 1	I want to know more about what life was like—	17:04
Rose	And you could tell more.	17:09
Speaker 1	[indistinct 00:17:11].	17:10
Rose	That story is just what life was like.	17:12
Michele Mitchell	When did this happen? I have—	17:16
Rose	It happened in the '40s.	17:18
Speaker 1	In the '40s.	17:19
Agnes Chatman Landry	'40s.	17:19
Speaker 1	[indistinct 00:17:25]. What I also remember in the '40s is talking about life, talking about lifestyle in terms of employment, in terms of family, our family, and now I realize that, our family was probably considered, although we had our own share of problems because we were poor, and alcohol was always prevalent, moonshining and all of that other stuff. We made our own liquor.	17:26
Agnes Chatman Landry	Not me.	17:59
Speaker 1	Our own beer.	18:00
Rose	Not you, Mother, not you, but your mom—	18:02
Speaker 1	But during those days—	18:03
Agnes Chatman Landry	My mom and — yeah.	18:05
Rose	I remember them talking about the rise in the beer and all that.	18:06
Speaker 1	They make their own liquor, so they made their own liquor. Alcohol was always a problem. [indistinct 00:18:18]. But I think our family—	18:11
Agnes Chatman Landry	Why?	18:19
Speaker 1	— in the neighborhood was probably considered more prosperous, not in terms of richness, in terms of family. [indistinct 00:18:33]. The lady who lived right next door to us had 10 children. How many of those children belonged to [indistinct 00:18:42].	18:20
Agnes Chatman Landry	I didn't [indistinct 00:18:47].	18:41
Speaker 1	[indistinct 00:18:47].	18:41
Rose	And to be honest, the job Daddy had is the job that I wouldn't want. But in those days it was considered as one of the good jobs.	18:50
Speaker 1	But just to finish, Dad, he always had a job—	18:54
Agnes Chatman Landry	That's when he worked in the field. Worked for Paul and at Paul Hebert.	18:59
Speaker 1	Daddy's still working for [indistinct 00:19:06] in the '40s.	19:00
Agnes Chatman Landry	I know.	19:00
Rose	But even when he wasn't, the White man was always [indistinct 00:19:15] or whatever. Paul Hebert brought food [indistinct 00:19:21].	19:11
Speaker 1	I don't know—	19:25
Rose	The holding to the —	19:27
Agnes Chatman Landry	I did. Neighbor Lennox did.	19:33
Speaker 1	He was on the [indistinct 00:19:40] or whatever you would call it. [indistinct 00:19:46].	19:36
Agnes Chatman Landry	Yeah. He was on one of them.	19:43
Speaker 1	One of those government, and he kind of could share [indistinct 00:19:53].	19:43
Michele Mitchell	So y'all lived on his place.	19:53
Rose	One time.	19:54
Agnes Chatman Landry	One time. You remember when I told you how I was out there cutting—	19:56
Michele Mitchell	Cutting cane.	19:59
Agnes Chatman Landry	Uh-huh.	20:00
Speaker 1	We thought we were rich then.	20:01
Agnes Chatman Landry	No, when I cut cane, I wasn't on this property.	20:02
Speaker 1	No, you were here.	20:04
Rose	They have a lot of Black mistress too. When we was growing up. White men, with Black women.	20:06
Rose	But just to tell you about it [indistinct 00:20:08], I think we were considered fortunate. That was one big [indistinct 00:20:31]. Although we had a lot of problems. Lots and lots of problems. And I think for the most part the neighbors knew some, but not all of the problems. I started first working in a meat market and—	20:08
Agnes Chatman Landry	Uh-huh.	20:49
Rose	— because Paul Hebert owned all of it. So my daddy worked for him, and my daddy was like straw boss in the cane fields. Drove the truck while the other cutting cane, including my mom. But I hate to say this, but that could have come because my daddy also comes from a fair-skinned White — I mean fair-skinned Black, and that's how they used fair-skinned Blacks.	20:52
Agnes Chatman Landry	His grandmother [indistinct 00:21:22] too, his grandmother [indistinct 00:21:24].	21:21
Rose	[indistinct 00:21:24] and he came from a fair-skinned Black family.	21:24
Speaker 1	His grandmother was biracial.	21:27
Rose	With the soft hair, and —	21:29
Agnes Chatman Landry	His mama died when he was two years old.	21:30
Rose	I think biracial on both sides of the family.	21:35
Agnes Chatman Landry	Look, they had family reunion in their family, and they can't find — they don't want —	21:42
Michele Mitchell	So this is the Landry family.	21:50
Agnes Chatman Landry	The Landry family.	21:52
Speaker 1	No, no, not the Landry, the Robinson family.	21:52
Michele Mitchell	Could you spell that?	21:53
Speaker 1	B-A-G-A-S-S-E-U-R-E.	21:53
Agnes Chatman Landry	You're just like your husband.	21:53
Speaker 1	And in the study of that name, that's how they used their [indistinct 00:22:11] to migrate in.	22:06
Agnes Chatman Landry	Somewhat? What?	22:11
Speaker 1	I mean if especially if they didn't got a father—	22:14
Agnes Chatman Landry	I got a credit. Where's it at?	22:18
Speaker 1	[indistinct 00:22:21] let the person live if a Black man doing something—	22:21

Item Info

Title:

Agnes Landry interview recording, 1994 July 25

Date:

July 25, 1994

Creator:

Landry, Agnes Chatman

Contributor:

Mitchell, Michele

Description:

Name: Agnes Chatman Landry; Date of birth: 1917-03-15; Place of birth: Beaumont, TX; Occupation(s): food services; domestic; managerial; Residence: New Iberia, LA
Informant ID: 551; Interviewed by: Michelle Mitchell.

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Language:

English

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Behind the Veil

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

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

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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.

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Agnes Landry interview recording, 1994 July 25

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1. Agnes Landry administrative file, 1994

John Hope Franklin Research Center

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Agnes Landry interview recording, 1994 July 25

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John Hope Franklin Research Center

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