Melison Green interview recording, 1995 July 04

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Mary Hebert	Answer what you can remember, and what you don't remember, that's okay. I'm going to start by having you say your full name?	0:03
Melison Caldwell Green	Melison Green.	0:10
Mary Hebert	Melison Green? Where were you born, Ms. Green?	0:12
Melison Caldwell Green	Right here in Clarendon County.	0:15
Mary Hebert	What's your birthdate?	0:17
Melison Caldwell Green	August the 16th, 1927.	0:21
Mary Hebert	What were your parents' names?	0:26
Melison Caldwell Green	Eugene and Josephine Caldwell. Eugene Caldwell.	0:29
Mary Hebert	Caldwell? And your mother's name was Josephine?	0:35
Melison Caldwell Green	Mm-hmm.	0:53
Mary Hebert	What did they do for a living?	0:53
Melison Caldwell Green	All I know, they do farm. All they did, they didn't never work on no job no place, farming.	0:53
Mary Hebert	Whose farm did they work on?	0:55
Melison Caldwell Green	From one man's place to the other.	0:57
Mary Hebert	And when you were growing up, you had to work on the farm, too?	1:00
Melison Caldwell Green	Right on the farm. And after my father got his own farm, you just had to work for him on the farm.	1:03
Mary Hebert	Did he buy his own land eventually?	1:12
Melison Caldwell Green	Mm-mm, he didn't buy no land.	1:14
Mary Hebert	He rented it?	1:14
Melison Caldwell Green	Rented, yeah.	1:16
Mary Hebert	He'd rent?	1:16
Melison Caldwell Green	Right.	1:17
Mary Hebert	What kind of work did you have to do when you were growing up? Did you have to pick cotton and that kind of stuff?	1:19
Melison Caldwell Green	We picked cotton. The most we'd do is pick cotton and work on the farm.	1:25
Mary Hebert	Did your mother have a garden?	1:33
Melison Caldwell Green	Oh, yes.	1:43
Mary Hebert	What kind?	1:47
Melison Caldwell Green	A large garden, vegetables, plenty of vegetables, and plenty of potatoes, and some of everything, what they can remember to plant.	1:47
Mary Hebert	So she had a plot by the house or something where she'd plant her garden?	1:49
Melison Caldwell Green	Mm-hmm, right by her house.	1:52
Mary Hebert	Did y'all work in the garden with her?	1:52
Melison Caldwell Green	Mm-hmm.	1:58
Mary Hebert	Did y'all have [indistinct 00:02:02]?	2:01
Melison Caldwell Green	We had to work. If you didn't work, you'd get a whipping.	2:02
Mary Hebert	If you didn't work, you'd get a whipping?	2:04
Melison Caldwell Green	Oh, yeah. My mother didn't have but four children, and we had to [indistinct 00:02:12].	2:05
Mary Hebert	How many pounds of cotton were you supposed to pick when you were a little kid?	2:14
Melison Caldwell Green	Pounds of cotton? When I growed up sometimes I'd picked 50, a small one coming on up, 50 and 100.	2:25
Mary Hebert	Pounds a day?	2:29
Melison Caldwell Green	100 pounds some days, 75 some days, yeah.	2:31
Mary Hebert	Did your grandparents live around you?	2:38
Melison Caldwell Green	In [indistinct 00:02:41], South Carolina, up there.	2:39
Mary Hebert	Where'd they live?	2:44
Melison Caldwell Green	[indistinct 00:02:45].	2:44
Mary Hebert	Did you visit them a lot?	2:48
Melison Caldwell Green	What did you say?	2:49
Mary Hebert	You didn't visit them, your grandparents?	2:53
Melison Caldwell Green	Visit?	2:54
Mary Hebert	Yeah.	2:54
Melison Caldwell Green	Oh, yeah. I'd go and visit them and spend the night up there, weeks. My mother would take us up there and leave us up there. Oh, Lord, we had a time up there.	2:55
Mary Hebert	What did y'all do?	3:02
Melison Caldwell Green	Played. That's all we'd do, play.	3:02
Mary Hebert	Y'all didn't have to work while y'all were up there?	3:09
Melison Caldwell Green	Didn't have to work.	3:09
Mary Hebert	Would y'all go up during lay-by time when y'all weren't chopping cotton or picking it?	3:12
Melison Caldwell Green	Well, how you say that?	3:19
Mary Hebert	Lay-by time, when y'all weren't chopping and picking the cotton?	3:22
Melison Caldwell Green	You mean [indistinct 00:03:28]?	3:27
Mary Hebert	Yeah.	3:28
Melison Caldwell Green	Well, we did that, too. We did that, too. You didn't have nothing else to do, no work around there in that time, and there weren't no way out nowhere.	3:30
Mary Hebert	So you'd go over and visit your grandparents?	3:49
Melison Caldwell Green	Yeah, we had—We'd visit the grandparents and come back home again [indistinct 00:03:56]. In the wintertime, we didn't have to do nothing. We didn't have nothing to do around here in the wintertime. I'm coming frow way about now, but play and eat [indistinct 00:04:15]. Oh, and yes, sir.	3:55
Mary Hebert	So in the winter y'all would just play and have fun? And did y'all go to school in the winter?	4:14
Melison Caldwell Green	[indistinct 00:04:19] started us at the Liberty Hill school, a country school out here near Liberty Hill Church, and I started—The people back then didn't start the children until late. They didn't start them like they're starting now. Well, I'd have been about nine years old when I seen the school house built.	4:19
Mary Hebert	And how many years did you go to school?	4:35
Melison Caldwell Green	Six years.	4:43
Mary Hebert	Six?	4:44
Melison Caldwell Green	Mm-hmm.	4:44
Mary Hebert	Was that all the grades they had at that school?	4:45
Melison Caldwell Green	The other grades?	4:48
Mary Hebert	Yeah, did they just go up to sixth grade at that school?	4:50
Melison Caldwell Green	Mm-mm, up to 11th grade, and they'd finish and come out here to this school here.	4:51
Mary Hebert	Scott's Branch School?	4:57
Melison Caldwell Green	Mm-hmm, Scott's Branch, [indistinct 00:05:05]. But Liberty Hill school is for the—I call it community school.	5:04
Mary Hebert	Was it St. Paul or St. Mark? I forget the name of that school that was in—	5:07
Melison Caldwell Green	St. Paul.	5:21
Mary Hebert	St. Paul?	5:21
Melison Caldwell Green	That's between St. Paul and Summerton.	5:21
Mary Hebert	Okay.	5:21
Melison Caldwell Green	Mm-hmm.	5:21
Mary Hebert	So it was just a community school? Did the parents in the community have to build the school? Do you remember?	5:21
Melison Caldwell Green	I couldn't tell you. The school was built before I went. I couldn't tell what they did before I went there, now. But I could tell back when I started.	5:23
Mary Hebert	Did all of your brothers and sisters go to school?	5:37
Melison Caldwell Green	No, me and my brother, we started—they started us two, and they'd only started the second brother, the third one. And he went awhile, and he's more than I did, because he come out here to Scott's Branch School a while. And then my baby sister, she hasn't had no school but right here.	5:40
Mary Hebert	Scott's Branch?	6:03
Melison Caldwell Green	Mm-hmm, yeah.	6:04
Mary Hebert	So you're the second child? Or are you the oldest?	6:08
Melison Caldwell Green	I'm the third.	6:09
Mary Hebert	You're the third?	6:09
Melison Caldwell Green	Mm-hmm, third child.	6:09
Mary Hebert	What was your house like when you were growing up? Did y'all live on a house that was provided by the owner of the land?	6:17
Melison Caldwell Green	How you mean?	6:22
Mary Hebert	The house you lived in when you were growing up? What was it like? Was it a two-room house, or a four-room house?	6:28
Melison Caldwell Green	Oh, yeah. Yeah, we had a four-room house. Then the two largest ones, and then two rooms beside that like that. Yeah, we called it the kitchen and the shaving room. Oh, dad already had the house built on the man's place he was working for.	6:34
Mary Hebert	And y'all moved from place to place? Y'all didn't work for one?	6:57
Melison Caldwell Green	That's right. He moved from [indistinct 00:07:01] to come back down. He just left Summerton and my father, he opened up a farm of his own and we just had to work right on his farm. And we'd finish up and go over to someone else's farm and work and we would help them.	6:59
Mary Hebert	And would you get paid for that extra work you did?	7:20
Melison Caldwell Green	Mm-hmm, we got paid.	7:21
Mary Hebert	Do you remember how much?	7:26
Melison Caldwell Green	It was cheap, cheap in that time back then. Sometimes I picked—They was a paying a dollar-and-a-half a 100 way back. But you just had to do it, yes.	7:27
Mary Hebert	Did your grandparents or parents ever tell you stories about when they were growing up and what life was like for them?	7:41
Melison Caldwell Green	No.	7:46
Mary Hebert	No?	7:46
Melison Caldwell Green	No. Not as I can remember.	7:50
Mary Hebert	Did you always work on the farm.	7:54
Melison Caldwell Green	I didn't work no more where but on the farm.	7:55
Mary Hebert	So even after—	7:55
Melison Caldwell Green	And after I married twice, nothing but farming. My first husband had a big, nice farm, and the second one had a farm.	8:00
Mary Hebert	Did they own their own land?	8:09
Melison Caldwell Green	Mm-mm.	8:11
Mary Hebert	No?	8:11
Melison Caldwell Green	Sharecroppers. Sharecroppers to the man, the boss man. I used to live [indistinct 00:08:20] first husband. Yeah, we owned a big farm down there.	8:14
Mary Hebert	So he had a large farm?	8:23
Melison Caldwell Green	Mm-hmm, a nice farm, nice.	8:23
Mary Hebert	Did y'all work it, just the two of you, until—	8:28
Melison Caldwell Green	No, he hired different people to help him, yes.	8:30
Mary Hebert	And when your children were born, did they—	8:35
Melison Caldwell Green	No, no.	8:37
Mary Hebert	They didn't work?	8:37
Melison Caldwell Green	No children. We didn't have no children. He had children, but I didn't have none.	8:39
Mary Hebert	How old were you when you got married?	8:45
Melison Caldwell Green	Hm?	8:45
Mary Hebert	The first time?	8:45
Melison Caldwell Green	Wait, now let me see. I'd have been about 30 years old when I married the first time. I didn't crave no man at that time.	8:45
Mary Hebert	Mm-hmm.	8:47
Melison Caldwell Green	As a children, I played most of the time—	9:06
Mary Hebert	[indistinct 00:09:07].	9:07
Melison Caldwell Green	And I'd run from the men. Oh, Lord, that sporting like these girls sporting now, I didn't do that. Yes, my mother, I stayed around her all the time.	9:07
Mary Hebert	Did you teach you how to cook and how to—	9:23
Melison Caldwell Green	Cook, yes, and do her housework.	9:28
Mary Hebert	And sew and that kind of stuff?	9:29
Melison Caldwell Green	That's right.	9:29
Mary Hebert	Would y'all make quilts and things like that?	9:33
Melison Caldwell Green	Quilts, made quilts? Oh, yeah. I made quilts. She learned me how to make the quilt, and then we'd go and sit with the next neighbor in the night, and she'd put on a big stew beef supper, and all would be eating and quilting, eating and quilting, yes, Lord.	9:35
Mary Hebert	Would y'all do that with a lot of the women around your neighborhood?	9:59
Melison Caldwell Green	No, just the one neighbor.	9:59
Mary Hebert	Just one neighbor?	9:59
Melison Caldwell Green	Mm-hmm.	9:59
Mary Hebert	What about food from her garden? Would she share it with people around?	10:06
Melison Caldwell Green	Yeah, she'd help other people, too. Yeah, give them cabbage and collard greens, sweet potatoes, also [indistinct 00:10:22] pumpkins and peanuts, sugar cane. I can remember all them, we was eating them things. And sugar cane, and what else? And we used to plant pumpkin. And my dad used to plant some of everything he see other people got. [indistinct 00:10:45], he had some of that.	10:09
Mary Hebert	What would he do with his sugar cane? Would he bring it to a mill and make it into syrup?	10:47
Melison Caldwell Green	No, one man used to have a mill run by the mule. It's something, oh, Lord, I couldn't remember to describe it right now. It had the mill, the masher. It had a long pole, a long pole. And then hitched the mule to the end of that pole and the mule would just carry it right on around and around and around. And they had a [indistinct 00:11:45] can under there the catch it. And then they catch all that juice, and he had a pan to cook on, something bigger than that half of that porch there, then put the fire underneath there. That's the one they cooked it with, and then cooked that mash and it turned into a syrup. Oh, Lord, come back with the cans of syrup, then. Oh, Lord, mm-hmm.	11:44
Mary Hebert	Would y'all use it on cornbread and stuff?	11:49
Melison Caldwell Green	Oh, Lord, cooked cornbread. Man, we had a time back then, cornbread. Mama used to put it even in mixed flour, syrup bread, you call it, and ginger bread. And then she'd bake up cornbread, and she'd fry some meat. That one, I loved eating. And I used to put syrup in the grease and just sop the bread. Oh, Lord.	11:52
Mary Hebert	What kind of oven did she have? I'm sure it wasn't an oven or a stove like we have now. What kind did—	12:28
Melison Caldwell Green	No, we had wood stove, burned by wood back then. And most of the people, they'd cook on their chimney. Wasn't able to get no stove back in the Hoover time, you remember. Wouldn't nobody no nothing about that.	12:31
Mary Hebert	I know. I read about.	12:47
Melison Caldwell Green	Did you read about it?	12:48
Mary Hebert	Yeah.	12:48
Melison Caldwell Green	Yeah, Lord have mercy, tight times back then, mm-hmm.	12:48
Mary Hebert	Did y'all have trouble with getting food and that kind of stuff?	12:54
Melison Caldwell Green	Well, we didn't have to buy too much, raised it on the farm. Yeah, we raised everything on the farm. About the only thing we had to buy is the rice, sugar, and corn, and other things, flavoring, butter, and like that. No, we didn't have to buy no butter. We had a milk cow.	12:59
Mary Hebert	You had a cow?	13:20
Melison Caldwell Green	Yeah, we had back then. Yeah, we had all those things [indistinct 00:13:24].	13:20
Mary Hebert	What made Hoover's time so hard? Why was it so hard during that time?	13:26
Melison Caldwell Green	Hoover? He freezed down on the money, holding it tight. And give the people privilege, their farm, and plant all those things, all those vegetables and raise their own and live at home. But he honed that money down.	13:31
Mary Hebert	There wasn't a lot of money circulating at that time?	13:51
Melison Caldwell Green	No, things were cheap back then.	13:53
Mary Hebert	Did y'all get flour from the government and stuff like that? Did y'all go stand in line for that?	13:57
Melison Caldwell Green	You said flour?	14:02
Mary Hebert	Yeah.	14:08
Melison Caldwell Green	I can't remember. Oh, yeah, the government did give some people some flour, put it out there to Summerton and to share it out right uptown. The people come far in there to get that flour, and meat, and egg, and butter. And so [indistinct 00:14:31] one man was open. And so he got to the [indistinct 00:14:37], he didn't—stopped giving it out to the people, so he had to pull in town. Yeah, he had to pull in town for it and take it and pull it out.	14:12
Mary Hebert	So he stopped giving the flour out?	14:45
Melison Caldwell Green	Yeah, back in that time, and then threw it out in the woods.	14:48
Mary Hebert	He threw it out in the woods?	14:52
Melison Caldwell Green	Yeah, in the woods because the people didn't get it, and somebody reported him.	14:54
Mary Hebert	And what happened to him?	14:58
Melison Caldwell Green	Well, I couldn't tell [indistinct 00:15:02].	14:59
Mary Hebert	Okay, but he wasn't—	14:59
Melison Caldwell Green	I reckon he's dead now.	14:59
Mary Hebert	Yeah.	14:59
Melison Caldwell Green	Yeah, but he ain't here now to talk for himself, but I can remember when I was a little girl coming up.	15:07
Mary Hebert	What about Roosevelt? Did he make things better?	15:12
Melison Caldwell Green	Roosevelt [indistinct 00:15:17]. Roosevelt, President Roosevelt.	15:15
Mary Hebert	Yeah, do you remember him?	15:27
Melison Caldwell Green	I remember everybody [indistinct 00:15:27] right now. But now I can remember President Roosevelt, you know I'm rather small.	15:28
Mary Hebert	You're small?	15:35
Melison Caldwell Green	Right.	15:35
Mary Hebert	Did your father have mules and wagons and things like that?	15:43
Melison Caldwell Green	Mm-hmm, he had mules and wagons. He had automobile. That's all the car we had. Hitch up the mule.	15:46
Mary Hebert	So if you wanted to come to town, y'all would hitch up the mule.	15:48
Melison Caldwell Green	Yeah, and go to church, we'd hitch up the mule. Hitch up to the wagon.	15:56
Mary Hebert	What church did y'all go to?	16:02
Melison Caldwell Green	Liberty Hill AME church.	16:03
Mary Hebert	Did a lot of people go to Liberty Hill?	16:14
Melison Caldwell Green	Way back yonder when I joined there, at the first church, that's the first I knew, I joined St. Peter's Church up on the [indistinct 00:16:28] when I was 13 years old, and I didn't like it up there. We didn't have no transportation to get back. And so I went to Liberty Hill and I joined Liberty Hill Church. Yeah, that was a crowded church back yonder. But now you go there, you won't see nothing now but the young people. All the graveyard is full.	16:17
Mary Hebert	So the people who would go to Liberty Hill were the ones who lived around—	16:50
Melison Caldwell Green	Yes.	16:53
Mary Hebert	Liberty Hill area?	16:54
Melison Caldwell Green	That's right.	16:54
Mary Hebert	Was St. Peter an AME church also?	16:55
Melison Caldwell Green	Yeah, St. Peter, and [indistinct 00:17:02] young people.	16:56
Mary Hebert	When you were going to school, did you have to walk to school?	17:06
Melison Caldwell Green	Yes, and walk in the cold and the rain, some days sleet. We had to go and try to make our grade, and if it'd be snowing heavy, we don't go that day. I'd stay out of school. Yes, I'd stay out of there.	17:10
Mary Hebert	How far did you have to walk?	17:27
Melison Caldwell Green	We had to walk about a mile-and-a-half to school.	17:29
Mary Hebert	Did your parents want you go to school?	17:30
Melison Caldwell Green	Yeah, they had wanted us to go to school. But they went for the—They had back there and they weren't able to send their children to school. And [indistinct 00:17:56] the number they would have sent me. So a lot of the [indistinct 00:17:56] get over in their 20 years, or in their teen years, they quit out of school, and some come out here to school, the high school. Yes, back when I was coming, I stopped school in 1932, but I studied my books home. My sister used to come out here and she was in ninth grade. And when she'd come from school, I'd take her books and get back in the room and shut the door to myself, and, oh, I was just reading back there. And the hard words what I couldn't pronounce, I asked my mother and she would tell me.	17:34
Melison Caldwell Green	And every book I'd get hold that come along, even when I was married, you was to go in my house anytime, I'm sitting up there reading the Bible, looking in that book, looking at the papers, reading. But that's where I get mine. I can do my work now myself. Yeah, that's why I can read now.	18:34
Mary Hebert	So your mother was educated, too?	18:55
Melison Caldwell Green	Yeah, my mother went to high school, yeah.	18:58
Mary Hebert	Did she teach you at home at all? You said you'd ask her words and stuff, but would she teach you, say, well—	19:02
Melison Caldwell Green	Well, then I'd ask her the word, but she wasn't a regular teacher now, because she had to work. Now the only time we had to—I studied my books, we didn't have nothing to do. Maybe too wet to pick cotton, and I'd stay home until—just so the cotton would dry out, and go back to the fields. See, I'd be home studying my books. Yeah, that's how I got my education.	19:08
Mary Hebert	How long was the school year? Did it start after the cotton was picked? Did you start going after the picking cotton?	19:46
Melison Caldwell Green	After picking?	19:54
Mary Hebert	When did it start? When did the school year start?	19:54
Melison Caldwell Green	Let me see, the Liberty Hill School, it usually started just like the school is starting now, but I couldn't remember now what month it was, yeah. But, anyhow, we'd go all through the winter until the next spring and the time of the school was up, about then.	19:59
Mary Hebert	Do you remember your school teachers?	20:20
Melison Caldwell Green	Ms. Emma Riggin was one, Ms. Emma Riggin, and Professor Chisholm, Chisholm and Ty Nelson.	20:25
Mary Hebert	Ty?	20:53
Melison Caldwell Green	Ty Nelson. And Lucille Oliver taught me in third grade, Lucille Palmer Oliver.	21:04
Mary Hebert	What was the school like? Were there like more than one room for different grades? Or did more than one grade share a classroom?	21:15
Melison Caldwell Green	Yes, three-room school, and then just had this teacher take fourth, and this teacher take first, second, and third. And the next teacher, fourth, fifth, and sixth, fourth and fifth. And the next one took fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, yeah, like that.	21:24
Mary Hebert	So they were divided between the three rooms?	21:58
Melison Caldwell Green	Three rooms that's right. Yeah, that's as far as I can remember, now.	22:00
Mary Hebert	Who were some of the people that worked on the same farm as your family?	22:14
Melison Caldwell Green	With my family?	22:17
Mary Hebert	Were they relatives of yours? Were you related to some of your neighbors and things like that.	22:20
Melison Caldwell Green	Mm-hmm, some of my neighbors, and different people at [indistinct 00:22:30] who that father asked to help him, you see. But I can't remember [indistinct 00:22:40] because sometimes the field would be full and I don't know them. I can't remember them all now because they all died off.	22:28
Mary Hebert	And when you were growing up, did you play with a lot of the children on the farms nearby?	22:45
Melison Caldwell Green	Play?	22:54
Mary Hebert	Yeah, did you have some time for play?	22:55
Melison Caldwell Green	Yes, I played some with my next door neighbor. She had 10, 11 had a—she had 12 baby children, and she had nine little girls. And that's all I'd do, playing. We'd play and go down inside the woods and like that. We had a milk cow, take the cow and take him outside the woods and hitch it, and we children would get together, and we'd play, play, and we'd play cook. We'd get together, we'd play cooking. And we'd take the food, something growing in the woods, and look at the [indistinct 00:23:37]. And then we'd get the mud and mix it up like a cake, and we'd dress it over like a fruit cake.	22:56
Melison Caldwell Green	And, oh, we used to do something, and slip to mother's, slip home, and get some of my mother's meal, and we'll carry it down and cook our play cooking, and the water right there, the boys would go in that pond and get those fish. We done some playing there, oh, Lord. It was fun to us, you know? We didn't have to do it, we'd just do it, yeah.	23:45
Mary Hebert	Did people around play baseball and things like that?	24:20
Melison Caldwell Green	We had a place to play baseball at the school, and sometimes when the children got together we made our baseball players. And so, yeah, I used to [indistinct 00:24:37] in third grade. I used to love third grade because I was a good catcher and they'd chuck the ball out, it'd come right in my hands. Oh, and I used to play in school. We'd go to school early, ahead of time, and we we're out in that plot playing ball, and the teacher rang the bell, ding-a-ling. And then we'd have to drop the bat and come running in the school. And one of the teachers, he had an old big drum about that wide and about that high. All right?	24:25
Mary Hebert	So it was like about three feet high, maybe?	25:09
Melison Caldwell Green	That's right, yes.	25:10
Mary Hebert	Two feet wide?	25:13
Melison Caldwell Green	Mm-hmm. And he could have knocked that drum, boom, one, two, three, four. We had a kind of music. And when he had that drum, the children had to be there. You had to sit right in the yard. And we had to run our shoes off to get to there on time. If you don't be on time, you got a whipping that morning. And so the teacher beat me one morning, and my hand was so cold. I remember that, me running to get to school on time and so it was cold. As soon as we [indistinct 00:26:15], the teacher said, "All them who's late, come on and get in class." And we'd line up. I was in the number. And she started the beating. Hold your hand and so you can be on time the next time. I remember my hand was so cold, and just took that, and pow.	25:14
Mary Hebert	On your hand?	26:20
Melison Caldwell Green	On my hand, beat up.	26:20
Mary Hebert	Oh, it must of hurt on your cold hand, huh?	26:21
Melison Caldwell Green	Mm-hmm, hurt. It hurt but I wouldn't cry. I'd just hold it tight [indistinct 00:26:28] stop hurting. Yes, those old people used to have a time back yonder, they hit you, the teacher. And one man then, this Reverend Joe DeLaine, the boys and I, he used to lay the boys across his lap when they'd do wrong. He caught them and laid them across his lap, and he used that hand. Oh, Lord.	26:23
Mary Hebert	Was he a teacher at Liberty Hill?	26:50
Melison Caldwell Green	Liberty Hill.	26:57
Mary Hebert	Is that the same Reverend DeLaine who was involved in the civil rights—	26:59
Melison Caldwell Green	Yeah, the same man. Same man, but he's dead now.	27:04
Mary Hebert	Right.	27:07
Melison Caldwell Green	Mm-hmm, same man. He wasn't married, had no children of his own.	27:08
Mary Hebert	This was when he first came down here?	27:12
Melison Caldwell Green	Right. He's raised down here. This is his home in South Carolina. Yeah, so he graduated to be a teacher, and they gave him a job at Liberty Hill to teach the children. Yeah, he used to keep the boys strict.	27:14
Mary Hebert	Were your classes divided between boys and girls?	27:31
Melison Caldwell Green	That's right. That's right.	27:34
Mary Hebert	You had all girls in one class?	27:35
Melison Caldwell Green	Mm-mm.	27:38
Mary Hebert	Or y'all sat on different sides of the—	27:38
Melison Caldwell Green	It was together, together. It's like fifth grade, all the boys and girls right together. And I was a good speller. And so the teacher said, "The boy who [indistinct 00:27:49] spelling, I'm going to give you a pencil." And the next morning the spelling match come on, they lined up. And she started calling the words. One morning, every time she called a word I'd catch it, and I'd catch every word. But one—and all the rest had to sit down. Now, the last one, I [indistinct 00:28:05] and one word that I missed is knowledge, and I couldn't remember the word. And so that happened and I had to sit down. Yeah, about the only thing set me down when I was catching all them [indistinct 00:28:34] out, yes, sir. Yeah, I enjoyed going to school, but I wish I could've went on. But my own people wasn't able to send us to school.	27:46
Mary Hebert	So you had to quit to go to work for your parents?	28:46
Melison Caldwell Green	I quit school. Right, right, when [indistinct 00:28:52]. I sat right there and helped them on the farm, yeah. Did your brother, the one you started with at the same time, have to stop, too? Yeah, he stopped. He stopped. There wasn't no jobs [indistinct 00:29:08] then but the people, no more than cooking and working in the White people's houses, back to that time.	28:52
Mary Hebert	That was during Hoover's time, right?	29:38
Melison Caldwell Green	Mm-hmm. Yeah, that's in Hoover's time, and [indistinct 00:29:39] time. And I couldn't remember that [indistinct 00:29:39]. Back in '33, I can remember back then at the time we used to go to school, back in the 30s and then. That's the 30s. I started going in '26, yes. And I stopped in '32.	29:42
Mary Hebert	Right.	29:50
Melison Caldwell Green	Yeah.	29:50
Mary Hebert	And that's when things were really bad?	29:56
Melison Caldwell Green	It is, but that man had his hand on that money and wouldn't turn it loose. He squeezed that money so tight, oh, Lord.	29:57
Mary Hebert	And what year did you get married the first time?	30:03
Melison Caldwell Green	The first time, in '47.	30:03
Mary Hebert	What was World War Two like? How did it impact Summerton?	30:22
Melison Caldwell Green	World War Two?	30:27
Mary Hebert	Yeah, did your brother have to fight? Any brothers have to go off and fight?	30:28
Melison Caldwell Green	One of my brothers. My youngest brother went to fight. Yeah, in World War Two, I remember, [indistinct 00:30:45].	30:34
Mary Hebert	Did a lot of men from Summerton leave to go off to fight?	30:44
Melison Caldwell Green	Oh, yes, a crowd of men, 18 to 21. My brother went in—Let's see, what year did he leave in? '40, and he was all overseas, working over there. And so he came back in '45.	30:51
Mary Hebert	During the 40s, did you still live with you parents and help them on their farm?	31:21
Melison Caldwell Green	Hm?	31:22
Mary Hebert	Before you go married, you lived with your parents and helped them on the farm?	31:22
Melison Caldwell Green	You mean my brother?	31:24
Mary Hebert	No, you, before you go married?	31:25
Melison Caldwell Green	Yes, I stayed with mom and them after I got grown. You know at 21, you're grown?	31:33
Mary Hebert	Right.	31:39
Melison Caldwell Green	From 21, through 21, I didn't marry until '47. I just stayed right there. No, I went to North Carolina.	31:42
Mary Hebert	Oh?	31:48
Melison Caldwell Green	North Carolina.	31:48
Mary Hebert	What did you do in North Carolina?	31:54
Melison Caldwell Green	Worked on a vegetable farm up there. And I worked in a boarding house three weeks.	31:56
Mary Hebert	How did you find out about the job up there?	32:02
Melison Caldwell Green	[indistinct 00:32:10] by my cousin. I had a cousin, two cousins, that lived there.	32:11
Mary Hebert	So you went—	32:14
Melison Caldwell Green	When I leaved here, I went and straight on through this town, and then I went up in the country, a place you can Wrightsboro. That's where the vegetable farm was.	32:17
Mary Hebert	How did you get there? Did you take a bus?	32:31
Melison Caldwell Green	Yeah, we went on the bus from Summerton.	32:31
Mary Hebert	Was there a bus station in Summerton?	32:32
Melison Caldwell Green	Mm-hmm, right up there on the corner of that road.	32:38
Mary Hebert	On the corner of [indistinct 00:32:52] and Main?	32:51
Melison Caldwell Green	No, right up there. You see that car over there? That's them.	32:51
Mary Hebert	Where the [indistinct 00:32:52] is?	32:51
Melison Caldwell Green	Across the road from that road going this way, right on the corner, that little bus station there. And then right by the Piggly Wiggly a station had been there, but they tore it down. The bus station had been there. You'd catch the bus right there from Summerton, and it went on to North Carolina.	32:52
Mary Hebert	Was that your first trip?	33:07
Melison Caldwell Green	That was my first trip I've ever made. The first trip, my cousin come down and then she asked my mother to let me go back with her. And she let me went. And so we went, and I didn't stop in town. I went right on out in the country above the [indistinct 00:33:28] around Wilmington, North Carolina, yeah. And they was working on the vegetable farm, so I had to then work, too.	33:09
Mary Hebert	And how long did you stay there?	33:36
Melison Caldwell Green	I stayed there on that farm one year. One year, yeah. I stayed—I went that last week in September, and then I worked after I got up there, October and the first of November pulling radishes. We had talked about radish, well, we pulled radish at that time. And so with the season I picked radish. So we come here for weather. I had to work up there in the wintertime. It was so cold when you worked in the field up there.	33:42
Mary Hebert	It was colder than here?	34:17
Melison Caldwell Green	Mm-hmm, and see, my cousin holed me up the whole time I was there until February, this time [indistinct 00:34:28]. And those warm days, I'd go out and work. I'd go out and work with her, and those little [indistinct 00:34:37] that they let me stay in, because I didn't carry nothing like clothes, and they helped me out like that.	34:21
Mary Hebert	Did you live with your cousins while you were up there?	34:40
Melison Caldwell Green	Mm-hmm, they had tried me on [indistinct 00:34:50] so when her husband—I stayed with them, and then for the season, I worked for the farmer. Then I come home in July of that year in '42. And I helped my mother at her farm before I went back in September. In September I went back up there and I [indistinct 00:35:12] the country. I stopped in town with my other cousin so I could get a job at a boarding house. It wasn't no motel like it is down there, but the hotel, I'm at the boarding house. And I worked there three weeks, and a real short time, because I was planning on coming back home. My sister got married and they had a wedding for her. And so it wasn't nobody to help but my mother, so she'd write telling me my that father went up there and get me to come to help my mother clean up for the wedding. So I come, that was in '43, in November she got married. And then—	34:50
Mary Hebert	And so you stayed after that? You stayed here?	36:04
Melison Caldwell Green	I stayed here after she married, so my mother didn't have no one to help her and I still stayed right on there. I didn't went back. I stayed home to help her after my sister got married.	36:09
Mary Hebert	Had you wanted to go back?	36:20
Melison Caldwell Green	No, I didn't want to go back. There would have been nobody to help her on that farm her but [indistinct 00:36:27], and she wasn't no young woman. She was on near 70. Yeah, it would've been too much to [indistinct 00:36:36] the cows, and work on the farm, too, so I decided to stay home. I didn't went back up there. And so that would be 12 months I stayed up there.	36:25
Mary Hebert	Was it different from down here? Were you treated differently when you were down here?	36:50
Melison Caldwell Green	Well, I was treated good as long as I'm making some money, and that's everywhere you go.	36:57
Mary Hebert	Right.	37:01
Melison Caldwell Green	When you ain't got no money, you're pitiful. So if I worked and made a little change, it was everything running smooth. And the boss man gave us a house to live in on the farm. He gave all the people a house to live in and work right on his farm. And you didn't have to pay no more or go buy food. We ate all the vegetables off the farm. Yeah, that's why I get out cheap. That's why I didn't go to the city, because you had to buy everything there.	37:01
Mary Hebert	Right.	37:35
Melison Caldwell Green	And I'd stay out there where I could eat like I wanted. And I was an eater, too. I loved to eat.	37:35
Mary Hebert	But you got to eat all the vegetables you wanted from the farm?	37:35
Melison Caldwell Green	All those vegetables, white potatoes, and carrots, spinach, and collard greens, water cabbage, all kinds of things I'd eat up there, cauliflower and radish, some of everything I could remember when we'd work in there, as long as I worked there. But we didn't have to buy nothing, no vegetables, just get the meat and cooking that, you understand. Yeah, we'd got to town on Saturday. They gave us the truck. We had a truck driver, and my cousin [indistinct 00:38:26] to drive on the truck. And they all made us get on the back of that truck and [indistinct 00:38:29] on Saturday and do our shopping, and come back in the country, yes.	37:39
Mary Hebert	What kind of stuff would you buy in Wilmington?	38:29
Melison Caldwell Green	Meat.	38:58
Mary Hebert	Meat?	38:58
Melison Caldwell Green	Oh, Lord, if I can tell you, I'd buy—First, I'd have a little candy. I would keep [indistinct 00:38:59] downtown to the candy kitchen and buy some every kind of little candy up on the shelf. And then I used to come back by the fruit stand and get different fruit, orange, and bananas, and apples. That's where they had the selling grapes. And I would take it home and put it in my suitcase. I had enough to last all the week. So enjoyed being up there. Then I'd get ready to come back home then.	38:58
Mary Hebert	What would y'all do on Saturdays here in Summerton? Would your family come to town?	39:29
Melison Caldwell Green	Yeah, this is our hometown right here. That road is a nice one. Well, that road is okay, but it was a dirt road running from here around there. And so-	39:34
Mary Hebert	Would y'all take the wagon?	39:46
Melison Caldwell Green	The wagon, my father would bring us out there in the wagon. And we was too small to get in the streets. He'd leave us in the wagon, and then he'll go and do his shopping, and buy us cookies and candy, like that, and we'll go back in the country. Yeah, I remember.	39:56
Mary Hebert	And when you were older, did you come to town with him and go to the ice cream store and things like that?	40:12
Melison Caldwell Green	Mm-hmm, when I got older. And I traveled my myself, and I used to go and come out there and get me a little cookies and candy and get back in the country, yes.	40:23
Mary Hebert	Would you stay around and walk up and down the streets with people?	40:30
Melison Caldwell Green	Mm-mm, mm-mm, because we had to walk. We come here home, and leave for home. We had to make it back in the country before night. Old people were strict on the children then and didn't allow them out after sundown.	40:30
Mary Hebert	So you had to be in by sundown?	40:48
Melison Caldwell Green	Mm-hmm, we had to get out candy quick and start to look a while, and back in the country and be home in the night, be home before night. Yeah, that's how I did. So like the girls going all time of night now, I didn't have that when I was growing up. Yeah, we didn't have no privilege.	40:50
Mary Hebert	Did you ever go to a market and have to wait to be served because a White person came in and wanted to be served before you?	41:11
Melison Caldwell Green	Mm-mm?	41:21
Mary Hebert	That never happened?	41:21
Melison Caldwell Green	Mm-mm, never did, because I served on [indistinct 00:41:25] I was working at that boarding house. And this lady had two large dining rooms. And she served three hots every day. And she was from Monday—three meals a day, and that place used to been full of people every day. And on Sunday, I worked on Sunday, because Camp Davis was, you know, and the soldier train put off a load of soldiers on Market Street one Saturday. And so we had to get out of the road when they let the soldiers pass. They took the whole street. And now on Sunday, that place crowded.	41:24
Mary Hebert	Her boarding house was crowded?	42:15
Melison Caldwell Green	Oh, Lord, [indistinct 00:42:18]. And you talk about working, we had to work, work. And I didn't [indistinct 00:42:25] looking for no job. My cousin used to work there. And so I go down there and she said, "Come on and go over with me on the job, to keep from being in the house by yourself." [indistinct 00:42:37] know I'm going with her, and I'd go to her job every morning. But I'd stand out on the back porch, and she had two cooks, two cooks, and one of them—Well, she had one, she was the head cook. She does all the spoon food.	42:17
Melison Caldwell Green	And the second two cooks would scramble the eggs, and then grits and like that. But I was standing in there. I said, everything—One day I went in the kitchen looking at them working and looking at the people working around the stove, and there was a pile of pots and pans piled up on the table. And I said, "Is there anything in here I can help y'all do?" She said, "Yeah, we'd be glad if you'll wash up all those pots and pans for us."	43:02
Melison Caldwell Green	So I [indistinct 00:43:40], and I washed them up clean and put them to their place. Now the next day, I went on that job and so I'd stand out and let my cousin go in and work. I would cut them off the job working. I'd stand on the back porch. And so the cook tells me, the lady said, "Why don't you give her a job? She can do good. She can do good." And you know, she went upstairs and come back with a big white apron. And she put it on me, myself—on me herself, "And now you go in there. I want you to work in the dining room." Now, I ain't never worked on no job before and went in that dining room behind everybody's back and I watched the tables. See, they had to take plates in order for the table set up. And so I watched the plates and see how they put it, and see what they put on the table.	43:39
Melison Caldwell Green	And so when supper time come, I didn't have no trouble. I'd draw notes and take notes, and I watched everything. And I went right on and do it just like they did. Yeah, I stayed there three weeks, but I had to come home, but I enjoyed.	44:42
Mary Hebert	Did you help serve the food and stuff like that?	45:00
Melison Caldwell Green	They had a big old tray like this, a big round tray, and had a woman, we used to call her Sally. But we—I'd go to the stove with another girl. We'd dip the food out the pot and put it in those round bowls like this and set it on that tray, everything on that tray, from pot to pot, and set it on that tray. And then Sally would come and take that tray and put it on [indistinct 00:45:26] like that, and on to the dining room, and put on the edge of the table. They call it the buffet style, and those people served their own selves. And so as fast as I could get one, I done filled up another, and she'd take that come back out, and fill up another. So that's the way we used to serve in that time, yeah. And so I—	45:03

Melison Caldwell Green	Yeah, and so we—So I enjoy working up there. And so, one old big lady was there going to me, and she'd been there 30 years before me. 30 years going on a shift cook. She don't do nothing but make that tea and coffee, and go in the kitchen and check the [indistinct 00:00:24], and see if it's seasoned enough. And that's all she doing, is one big woman, can't hardly get around. I look at her one day, I was getting around so fast, I got to me that time, and I ran right into that woman. "Hey, you trying to throw me down." I say, "Excuse me." And she hit the corner. I said, "Lord, let me get out here right now." And I said, "I ain't going to work at no [indistinct 00:00:53] but I knocked that woman—You know about it. And she was mad because I run into her. And that's what get me from—I don't want to come out there now. Yeah.	0:02
Mary Herbert	And so then you came back home?	1:03
Melison Caldwell Green	Mm-hmm. Because I didn't want to cause no trouble, you see. So I leave and come back home.	1:03
Mary Herbert	And when you came back, you helped your mother around the house?	1:12
Melison Caldwell Green	Mm-hmm.	1:14
Mary Herbert	Would you work out in the field too?	1:15
Melison Caldwell Green	Yeah, and help them. That was in '43. '43 on, until I married in '47. Right on the farm.	1:16
Mary Herbert	Did your husband live on the same farm and start the same land as your parents? I mean the same—	1:25
Melison Caldwell Green	Yes.	1:30
Mary Herbert	Worked for the same person as your parents?	1:35
Melison Caldwell Green	No, [indistinct 00:01:38]. One of the boys [indistinct 00:01:36] plantation in [indistinct 00:01:42] He had his own farm, And I help him. Yes sir.	1:38
Mary Herbert	How did you meet him? Did you know him from growing up?	1:50
Melison Caldwell Green	Yeah, I knew him a long time ago. Yeah, he was a nice little Christian man.	1:54
Mary Herbert	And you helped him take care of his children?	2:00
Melison Caldwell Green	He ain't got no children. Only children was when I get there. He had nothing there but me. I was the only children.	2:05
Mary Herbert	Oh, okay.	2:06
Melison Caldwell Green	Just me and them two in the big house.	2:09
Mary Herbert	How big was the house?	2:12
Melison Caldwell Green	My room, [indistinct 00:02:15].	2:13
Mary Herbert	With a front porch and—	2:13
Melison Caldwell Green	Front porch, and the living room, bedroom, dining room, and the kitchen on that side. Then you come back up the living room, it's a large room built out on the side. There was room for three beds in there.	2:20
Mary Herbert	And it was just the two of you in that big house?	2:30
Melison Caldwell Green	Round in the trees, it was like those trees over at that house there, you couldn't hardly see the house top with the trees.	2:37
Mary Herbert	So it was cool in the summertime in there?	2:44
Melison Caldwell Green	[indistinct 00:02:55], you know they had [indistinct 00:02:55]. Yes. So I work on the farm right down there.	2:54
Mary Herbert	Y'all had a lot of land?	2:55
Melison Caldwell Green	Mm-hmm.	2:55
Mary Herbert	So y'all hired people to help?	3:01
Melison Caldwell Green	Yes. [indistinct 00:03:06].	3:05
Mary Herbert	And did you have your own garden and that kind of stuff?	3:05
Melison Caldwell Green	Yeah, I planted some of everything, just like my daddy. I didn't want nobody to give nobody no trouble, worrying them about what they had. So I would like to have my own. I worked hard, and plant potatoes in the garden. Potatoes and collared greens, teas, all kind—three different kind of beans. Hello.	3:08
Speaker 1	Hi.	3:30
Melison Caldwell Green	Sweet pea, and bean, okra in the middle, squash, Sweet potatoes, peanuts. I had all them.	3:32
Mary Herbert	Would your husband plow the land for you and you'd plant it? Is that how it worked? Your garden. Would he plow it for you and then you—	3:45
Melison Caldwell Green	No, we had a boy hired.	3:51
Mary Herbert	You had help?	3:52
Melison Caldwell Green	We didn't do no plowing. His son was there, in the little house. And they all work on one farm.	3:54
Mary Herbert	He was older than you, your first husband?	4:04
Melison Caldwell Green	Yeah. He was an old man. His children been grown [indistinct 00:04:14].	4:06
Mary Herbert	And then when did—Did he die?	4:20
Melison Caldwell Green	Yeah, he died.	4:22
Mary Herbert	And you married again later on?	4:25
Melison Caldwell Green	I moved back to my father. I stayed there two years.	4:27
Mary Herbert	And you helped them again?	4:35
Melison Caldwell Green	Yes, I helped them. Well I didn't have no notion of going nowhere else, So I just moved right back in their house and helped them on the farm until I find another [indistinct 00:04:50].	4:36
Mary Herbert	Could you have stayed on the farm, on the Smythe Plantation? After your first husband died, could you have stayed there?	4:51
Melison Caldwell Green	No, the boss man told me I could've stayed right in the house. But I changed house. Told me to take the little house, where his son was in. That was a little smaller for him, little house, and then let the son move in the house what I've been in, more lodging, more roomier. Because he had wanted him to carry the farm on. And so I did that. But he told me I can stay there, but I didn't agree to stay down there. And I was afraid to stay in the house by myself.	4:58
Mary Herbert	So you went back home.	5:37
Melison Caldwell Green	I went back home to my mother. Yeah, so I leave all the [indistinct 00:05:46] the house, and moved the one I bought since I lived down there. [indistinct 00:05:54], and the chicken, and then I'm right next to the chickens where the son. Come back [indistinct 00:06:04] for him. And I winded up with him. But all the rest of them, they didn't get no [indistinct 00:06:12]. He had the only one. Yeah, but they still [indistinct 00:06:15] when Daddy left, where I done [indistinct 00:06:19] I'm going to move. I tell him I could move in. And I moved too, just to getting, I get on, I took [indistinct 00:06:31] out what I bought. He bought me a brand new stone, and a living room suit. I get all that and so moving back in my mother house. And they come and they didn't have nothing to move but them other things, what I left her. Oh, lordy.	5:42
Mary Herbert	So they wanted everything that he had left to you?	6:47
Melison Caldwell Green	Yeah, so want to shade up the yellow [indistinct 00:06:53]. Don't want my daddy buying—my daddy [indistinct 00:06:56] children, but yet they want to grabbing their daddy made. But I fixed them. I said [indistinct 00:07:06], and I moved to—And so didn't have nothing to carry but them other things. Yeah.	6:51
Mary Herbert	Were they mad at you?	7:13
Melison Caldwell Green	I mean, yeah, some of them got mad, and we'd come around there. But all of them come here, except—My son died. And so after they heard about him dying, all of them come except one. That was the oldest girl. That was the oldest one.	7:15
Mary Herbert	Did you have to do a lot of work while you were married to your first husband? Did you have to go out to the hill to pick cotton and that kind of stuff?	7:36
Melison Caldwell Green	Mm-hmm. Picked cotton, broke corn. I [indistinct 00:07:46] all the corn, and him and his son can too. I was young and strong then.	7:49
Mary Herbert	So you carried three of them?	7:50
Melison Caldwell Green	Three of corn, [indistinct 00:07:56] corn [indistinct 00:07:58]. I still hated them, and [indistinct 00:08:02] helped them. See, I could've worked fast. And you're used to doing this fast, you're literally going to [indistinct 00:08:07]. Yeah, that [indistinct 00:08:11]. Yeah.	7:59
Mary Herbert	Did y'all grind your own corn to make a meal and stuff, cornmeal?	8:15
Melison Caldwell Green	Mm-hmm.	8:20
Mary Herbert	Did he have a—	8:22
Melison Caldwell Green	You mean grind corn? No, we went to the mill.	8:25
Mary Herbert	It was the mill? Did y'all go to the mill in Summerton? Or was there a mill on—	8:28
Melison Caldwell Green	[indistinct 00:08:32]. Summerton, and I could remember none then [indistinct 00:08:39]. Yes, there's a mill [indistinct 00:08:42] down there too. Yeah.	8:36
Mary Herbert	And then when you married the second time, did your husband live near your parents? Did your second husband live near there too?	8:46
Melison Caldwell Green	Yes. He lived on [indistinct 00:08:57] Road over there.	8:55
Mary Herbert	On River Road?	8:55
Melison Caldwell Green	No, near Summerton.	8:55
Mary Herbert	Oh, okay.	8:55
Melison Caldwell Green	When you're going out of town, one mile out there. It used to been a train coming through here is, Northwestern train. It come from well sin, and keep on out in the country. And used to have [indistinct 00:09:17] tank up, they would never enter the town. And then they go to St. Paul, passed right by our house every day, and come back by two o'clock in the day and they go to Summerton.	9:02
Melison Caldwell Green	And so we used to live near the train. And had a train coming, me and my brothers would run down to the railroad and looking at the train [indistinct 00:09:39]. And my brother used to go down in, and it's a high hill, he going down in there. So he's going down there looking at the train. I said, "You better stay up on this hill." I said, "You better stay up here." And then the train [indistinct 00:09:57] nearby to another—The train getting there by the time, he said, "Oh, look at the train coming."	9:32
Melison Caldwell Green	I'm up on the hill looking. And so and that engine, old engine comes on. The coach, used to be pushing the coach [indistinct 00:10:14], and two men were sitting on the coach, and he blew a little whistle on the front. And then when the engine get by that particular spot, and the man went and blew that, and then shoot the steam off, oh, Lord. Talk about running my brother up the hill. and they just laugh, [indistinct 00:10:36] the engine.	10:04
Mary Herbert	Did he go back down the hill again to watch it?	10:36
Melison Caldwell Green	After it passed, I said, "Oh, I told you didn't go down there." [indistinct 00:10:43] my brother, they don't shoot that steam off, he ran back up on that hill. I said, "I told you didn't go down there." Yes, Lord. We was having a lot of fun back [indistinct 00:10:57]. Every time the train come we'd go on to the railroad, and we're stand in the [indistinct 00:11:06] and wave at the people on the train.	10:38
Mary Herbert	What they wave back to you?	11:09
Melison Caldwell Green	Mm-hmm, wave back. My daddy's used to plant—There used to been a long train coming something, and he knew a man working on the train this, and he plant a sugarcane. When that training got on through the wood, and that man would stand up on the side, look to our house, he said, "One day [indistinct 00:11:39] I'm going to give that man some sugarcane." So he chopped down some and stripped it, and he carried it down to the railroad and push it on the flat. He get it.	11:12
Mary Herbert	He got it?	11:52
Melison Caldwell Green	Yeah.	11:52
Mary Herbert	He got the sugarcane?	11:52
Melison Caldwell Green	Yeah, and he thanked him for it. Yeah, he got the sugarcane. Yeah, so the time now is so much different. So much of different stuff that started again.	11:54
Mary Herbert	It was simpler back then? Life was simpler, there wasn't as much—	12:09
Melison Caldwell Green	Easier. How you say that?	12:15
Mary Herbert	It was more simple back then?	12:20
Melison Caldwell Green	Yes.	12:21
Mary Herbert	Now, after you married the second time, you still worked on the farm?	12:27
Melison Caldwell Green	Mm-hmm. On the farm.	12:30
Mary Herbert	And you two had children? And you have children?	12:35
Melison Caldwell Green	Mm-hmm, four.	12:39
Mary Herbert	Four?	12:39
Melison Caldwell Green	Mm-hmm, with the second husband.	12:40
Mary Herbert	When they were born, did you have a midwife to deliver them? A midwife?	12:45
Melison Caldwell Green	Mm-hmm. And he's coming on up.	12:53
Mary Herbert	Was she someone who lived around you?	12:58
Melison Caldwell Green	My children? Who you mean?	12:58
Mary Herbert	When they were born, did you have a midwife to deliver them?	13:05
Melison Caldwell Green	Oh, yes, yes. She lives out here. Had to come out here and get her while we're living in the country. Yes.	13:08
Mary Herbert	Now, did your children ever have to work on the farm?	13:13
Melison Caldwell Green	Mm-hmm. Second husband.	13:23
Mary Herbert	Yeah.	13:26
Melison Caldwell Green	No, my children didn't work on no farm.	13:33
Mary Herbert	They went to school?	13:35
Melison Caldwell Green	Yeah, they went to school.	13:35
Mary Herbert	Is there anything else that I haven't asked you that you want to talk about? I mean, I think I pretty much covered what I had.	13:42
Melison Caldwell Green	You mean to explain?	13:52
Mary Herbert	Yeah, anymore things you want to tell me about, like you told me about the train and stuff like that?	13:55
Melison Caldwell Green	Not that I can remember. The best time [indistinct 00:14:07] was this later time. I live with this man here 18 years, and he even went to Connecticut. He broke up his farm and we had to sell out everything, and went to Connecticut for his other children. His first wife's children. So, I [indistinct 00:14:35]. I stay home, so things didn't run out [indistinct 00:14:41].	14:08
Mary Herbert	[indistinct 00:14:43].	14:40
Melison Caldwell Green	Yeah. And so we had to come back home in that time. And he took sick in 1970, and he passed. [indistinct 00:14:56] after the funeral. So I just been working out by the day to help. I would love to have people help me some too. Yeah, they help me [indistinct 00:15:11].	14:48
Mary Herbert	When did you move to the city?	15:11
Melison Caldwell Green	Out here?	15:11
Mary Herbert	Yeah.	15:11
Melison Caldwell Green	What year did I been here? I moved here in—[indistinct 00:15:26] I didn't think. Now, I can think now what year I had come out here.	15:19
Mary Herbert	In the 70s, 80s?	15:36
Melison Caldwell Green	My husband died in '70, and I've been here—My youngest boy come out here a while ago, he was four months old when I come here. I moved here alone, but Lord, I can't remember now.	15:42
Mary Herbert	That's okay.	16:05
Melison Caldwell Green	50—Let me see. I got married in '53. I'm going to tell you now. My oldest boy born January 24th. And the next, the girl, born in '55. And the other boy born in '36. The one you were talking with yesterday. And then, the baby boy born in 1960.	16:12
Mary Herbert	So you moved to here in about 1960?	16:37
Melison Caldwell Green	Mm-hmm. So I moved here, he was four months old.	16:45
Mary Herbert	Do you remember Reverend DeLaine getting involved with the school desegregation stuff here in Summerton? Do you remember any of that? With Harry Briggs, and the Briggs'? Do you remember when any of that happened? That was in the 50s.	16:47
Melison Caldwell Green	In the 50s?	17:06
Mary Herbert	Yeah.	17:06
Melison Caldwell Green	I remember when [indistinct 00:17:11]. I remember when he had—Now, he told the people about the schools, and he went to Washington and talk up there. And so, that's as far as I can remember right now. And then—	17:13
Mary Herbert	Did you ever go to any of the meetings that he [indistinct 00:17:36]?	17:34
Melison Caldwell Green	No, I didn't have a chance to make none of the meetings. You see, I didn't know much about it.	17:35
Mary Herbert	Okay.	17:40
Melison Caldwell Green	I didn't went to none of those meetings. But I was hearing what the people say.	17:42
Mary Herbert	And people talked about it a lot?	17:45
Melison Caldwell Green	And tell what done, when they had the meeting. [indistinct 00:17:56], about the school. And he took the picture and went to Washington. And so they showed the picture up there. The Black school. The Black school right thereby that church.	17:50
Mary Herbert	Right.	18:12
Melison Caldwell Green	That burned down.	18:12
Mary Herbert	Yeah, the Scotch Branch?	18:41
Melison Caldwell Green	Mm-hmm, got burned down.	18:41
Mary Herbert	The old one, the wooden one.	18:41
Melison Caldwell Green	Right. And old Bill, they send the money to Bill, a school [indistinct 00:18:42]. And they build that school up there.	18:41
Mary Herbert	Yeah.	18:41
Melison Caldwell Green	Right up there. And build the Scotch Branch up there for the Black people.	18:42
Mary Herbert	So they built Summerton High and Scotch Branch right around the same time? No?	18:44
Melison Caldwell Green	You see, the White people had the school, the brick school.	18:47
Mary Herbert	Right.	18:47
Melison Caldwell Green	And so they—	18:47
Mary Herbert	And so they built a brick school for the Black students.	18:47
Melison Caldwell Green	That's right. They built Scotch Branch up there. It was a long—The school, they build that warehouse there, no windows on the front.	18:59
Mary Herbert	It didn't have any windows on the front of it?	19:12
Melison Caldwell Green	Just on the side. No windows on the front. And so later years, after the segregation's not there, they took the picture [indistinct 00:19:28]—	19:14
Mary Herbert	To Washington?	19:27
Melison Caldwell Green	Washington. And so they told me a man come down here. Ain't nobody come. He come and see for his self, and take the picture, and then went back to Washington. And then they're right back down there, they tell them get the school the money, and they had to build that school, and then they had to tear down that old [indistinct 00:19:57] that old warehouse flew in, and do that.	19:32
Mary Herbert	The brick school?	20:02
Melison Caldwell Green	The school up there for them [indistinct 00:20:05]. And so after then the children been going up there. Yeah.	20:03
Mary Herbert	Is that where your children went to school?	20:16
Melison Caldwell Green	My children went up there. [indistinct 00:20:23], they went up there to that school too. Yeah, but this here meeting, I never did. I heard that man come through here, had a meeting, but I never been into it. And a lot of people had to move off [indistinct 00:20:36].	20:20
Mary Herbert	For going to the meetings?	20:35
Melison Caldwell Green	Yeah. They didn't like it, because the Black people moved off the [indistinct 00:20:43].	20:41
Mary Herbert	Did you know some people who had to move?	20:44
Melison Caldwell Green	Yes. A good many of them had to move. I couldn't remember all. But they old and dead now. But I couldn't remember. But I'm sure they had to move.	20:47
Mary Herbert	But you did know some of them?	20:54
Melison Caldwell Green	Mm-hmm. [indistinct 00:20:57], he had to move. And [indistinct 00:21:01] Johnson, all them had to move [indistinct 00:21:02] they place and find another home. [indistinct 00:21:02] went to Washington. And Lee Richardson, he had a [indistinct 00:21:02], and he had to move [indistinct 00:21:02]had to find a house to live in, but the house wasn't wide enough to hold the furniture he had [indistinct 00:21:02] they doing him that bad.	21:01
Mary Herbert	So they had to leave quickly a lot of them? They had to just leave right away and not—	21:01
Melison Caldwell Green	Yes. Had to move off [indistinct 00:21:36].	21:02
Mary Herbert	They didn't have any time to pack everything?	21:36
Melison Caldwell Green	Right. [indistinct 00:21:40], and he went to New York, him and his family.	21:39
Mary Herbert	Do you remember Reverend DeLaine's house being burned?	21:48
Melison Caldwell Green	Yes, I remember that too. They burned his house down, and so he leave, and went down to the King Street, they burned his church down. Burned that down. Yeah, I can remember some of that.	21:51
Mary Herbert	But you really weren't involved in any of it?	22:08
Melison Caldwell Green	No, I ain't involved in none of it, because don't seem like I had sense enough to getting into nothing like that. Yes. But the most of these people who have been on their own had been in that meeting had something. We didn't have nothing, so we didn't join it.	22:15
Mary Herbert	Well, they owned their own businesses, some of them?	22:29
Melison Caldwell Green	No, there ain't even no business at that time, they owned farms.	22:34
Mary Herbert	They own their own farms?	22:37
Melison Caldwell Green	And houses like that. Yeah, so we was renting, we didn't have nothing like that.	22:38
Mary Herbert	And if you would have gotten involved, you would've been kicked off your land, and you would have done it.	22:44
Melison Caldwell Green	Right. Right. See, I wasn't into all that. All those people who had something, that the one been into that meeting. They called it [indistinct 00:23:00]. And the men had to sit down and tell them to just let us have. This is our only one more chance. And then the next [indistinct 00:23:18] they end up in Charleston, and they all had to meet down there, in Charleston.	22:48
Melison Caldwell Green	And that Black man been down there talking. "Oh, get up and talk." He tell him to sit down. Everybody said—[indistinct 00:23:37] people say when he come down here, "Sit down. Sit down." And he'd get up and explain [indistinct 00:23:44] then he'd come back and tell the news. And she said, "Lord, that Black man [indistinct 00:23:50] something. Tell him to stop this, stop this." She said, "[indistinct 00:23:54] in the country. And the children, the poor children have to go to school in the rain and cold." Raining and cold, [indistinct 00:24:05].	23:24
Mary Herbert	So you heard about all this from your neighbors and people who went to the meetings?	24:09
Melison Caldwell Green	Right. Yeah, tell him to sit down. And he'd get up and blow it up, tells them, "That's why so much [indistinct 00:24:22], and children taking they [indistinct 00:24:26] in there [indistinct 00:24:26] the cold and the rain trying to go to school." Man, so that long passed. And they come out to started building these schools [indistinct 00:24:42] school. Building the [indistinct 00:24:45], Scotch Branch, [indistinct 00:24:47] Black school. My Black man, they agree with him. They see that he was coming out right. Yeah, people used to have TVs and [indistinct 00:25:04] back at that time.	24:18
Mary Herbert	Well the people who got that, where their doctors that they could go to around here? If someone got TB, was there a doctor they could go to for treatment?	25:08
Melison Caldwell Green	Mm-hmm. Dr. [indistinct 00:25:15]. If they get the fever, malaria fever, and typhoid fever, used to rush in that time, and just come out here and get Dr. Stukes, and he'll go out there to that patient, and wait on the family, and then they go to another family. So that's how they did it.	25:24
Mary Herbert	Was Dr. Stukes White?	25:38
Melison Caldwell Green	Mm-hmm. White doctor. All them White.	25:38
Mary Herbert	And so they go from house to house?	25:43
Melison Caldwell Green	Yeah, house to house. And the midwife [indistinct 00:25:50] hospital. Yeah, and later you had it building hospital and manner.	25:44
Mary Herbert	But before they built that hospital, there wasn't one in Clarington County?	25:57
Melison Caldwell Green	No, [indistinct 00:26:03] in Charleston. Something. Something.	26:02
Mary Herbert	So if you got really sick and had to go to hospital, you had to travel a long way?	26:05
Melison Caldwell Green	Sure. What if something—	26:07
Mary Herbert	To get there.	26:07
Melison Caldwell Green	Back then they'd be sick at the house. And back then if anybody died, they'd lay them out to [indistinct 00:26:32], go and get the neighbors, and go there and watch that dead body. [indistinct 00:26:32] in a box. You put the box up on two chairs, and lay them out, and then they carry them to the church in a wagon. Hitch a mule up to the wagon, and we'd have a body on there. And a string of [indistinct 00:26:40] in the back, and [indistinct 00:26:42] back in that high time. Yes, sir.	26:15
Mary Herbert	How long would they keep the body out? Was it just a day or two, or was it a week?	26:47
Melison Caldwell Green	[indistinct 00:26:53]. Some keep it. But a day and a half, like that.	26:55
Mary Herbert	And people from the community would come around to visit?	27:02
Melison Caldwell Green	Yeah. They just setting up every night, overnight. Yeah, because I went to some myself, certain people house, seen [indistinct 00:27:12] dead. And I didn't know nothing but dead people back then that time. I was so scared, and Lord have mercy, when the neighbor daughter took sick and died one Saturday night. And she sent my mother and my on all the way over there to sit with her. But the two doctors was there, and Dr. Kagan and Dr. Stukes. They work there.	27:08
Melison Caldwell Green	And I walk in there, and she had the rattles in her throat. [indistinct 00:27:50] she was going—But they knew her. And that thing went on, and went on, until I got in there. I was so scared that night, I'd sit right between my aunt and my mother, all night long right there until the next morning. I didn't move. So she passed, [indistinct 00:28:14] that night she passed. The last breath leave the body, and then the mother, she—They didn't even look at her. And I heard her say these words. She said, "Oh, my child gone," and she started to scream and holler. [indistinct 00:28:38]. I was so scared.	27:43
Mary Herbert	You were scared?	28:40
Melison Caldwell Green	Mm-hmm. Yeah. And so we buried, let me see, buried that next Sunday. Yes. But Lord, that been a time back then.	28:45
Mary Herbert	So would the women take care of the body? Would the women wash the body and dress it?	28:55
Melison Caldwell Green	Yes, and man wash man.	28:58
Mary Herbert	Oh, okay. And who would make the coffins? Was there someone?	29:02
Melison Caldwell Green	They use to send it out here [indistinct 00:29:14]. He used to sell coffin up there by the old Piggly Wiggly store up on [indistinct 00:29:20]. But my sister, [indistinct 00:29:23] and I was not. I've been about three years old. We had a sister die. And all I can remember, my father come out here, and we were chilling out in the yard and playing, and he come out here and get me.	29:12
Melison Caldwell Green	He come back in the rain, he had a little box like that, White, and that was a coffin, the box to put the baby in. And the neighbors come and laid out [indistinct 00:29:57], and put down a girl in the box, and closed it up, and take two chairs, and set that box on top until the next day they carried it to the graveyard and buried it. I can remember that. Yeah, [indistinct 00:30:15]. It's like a funeral home. We didn't have that. When I didn't know nothing about the funeral home, then we moved back in. This [indistinct 00:30:29], you know where that is?	29:45
Mary Herbert	Yeah.	30:29
Melison Caldwell Green	Yeah. Back there. The old man—You see that church around there? Right around the block there. There is a house sitting right near the road right on the corner. That's where the old man living, right there. He raised up his children right there. And then, he had a funeral home uptown on the street that [indistinct 00:31:02]. And then the meeting years he died, and then his son take the business.	30:41
Mary Herbert	And that's where King funeral home is now?	31:11
Melison Caldwell Green	Right. Right. His son, he was a preacher. He moved from Quincy, Florida up here, and he take over. And he carried and carried on until—And he raised a son, Larry Junior. Larry King Junior. And so after the son died, so little Larry King Junior take over. And he carried on until he got killed in an accident on 15 going to something [indistinct 00:31:47], and he died.	31:14
Mary Herbert	Well, how are the funeral homes different than having a funeral at your house?	31:48
Melison Caldwell Green	You mean—	31:56
Mary Herbert	Was it a lot different than the way people mourned? I mean, would they still stay up all night with the body after they had the funeral home?	31:57
Melison Caldwell Green	You mean in a way?	32:07
Mary Herbert	Yeah, a wake. Was the wake all night long at the funeral home?	32:07
Melison Caldwell Green	No, there's a certain hour. From 7:00 to 8:00. Yeah, from 7:00 to 8:00, the family going to meet there, and they bury the next day. But they didn't do that back [indistinct 00:32:26] the house way back. Yes, sir. And then Aman [indistinct 00:32:34] lived down on the other end of town, old man they called Gip Reagan, he used to have a hearse, and haul dead people. You see, I didn't know that having children in those time. But I can remember the older I get, and I can remember seeing him. And I saw the hearse too. Yeah. He used to live on the other end of town. Go down 301, there's a big house sitting on the side. He had a whole street down there for his self. Gip Street he called it. And a lot of people used to stay on his street down there too, back in the 30s and the 40s.	32:12
Mary Herbert	Well, I don't have any more questions. Is there anything else you want to talk about that I didn't cover with you?	33:25
Melison Caldwell Green	No. [indistinct 00:33:30] that I can remember.	33:29
Mary Herbert	Okay. Okay, I'll stop this now and take—	33:38

Item Info

Title:

Melison Green interview recording, 1995 July 04

Date:

July 4, 1995

Creator:

Green, Melison Caldwell

Contributor:

Hebert, Mary

Description:

Name: Melison Caldwell Green; Date of birth: 1938-11-06; Place of birth: Summerton, SC; Occupation(s): agriculture; volunteer farm laborer; kitchen worker; Residence: Summerton, SC
Informant ID: 1215; Interviewed by: Mary Hebert.

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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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a5007562-6cb6-45e0-baf7-13d688043f68
behindtheveil
a6f7efec-52f2-4cf6-b9ef-7be5c9d817a8
ark:/87924/r42r4162v
a6f7efec-52f2-4cf6-b9ef-7be5c9d817a8

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Melison Green interview recording, 1995 July 04

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1. Melison Green administrative file, 1995

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