Mary Smith interview recording, 1996 October 28
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| Nicole Spira | It's October twenty-eighth. This is Nicole Spira and we're interviewing Mrs. Mary Smith. | 0:01 |
| Mary Hester Smith | I got some material here you can look at, too. | 0:05 |
| Nicole Spira | That would be great. I'll start, first, just asking where and when you were born. | 0:15 |
| Mary Hester Smith | Okay. Well, I was born in Springfield, Ohio, March 23rd, 1918. | 0:19 |
| Nicole Spira | What was your family life like growing up? | 0:33 |
| Mary Hester Smith | Well, we lived in a White neighborhood in Springfield, and my mother and father, I guess they married in about 1912. Then, two years after they were married, I was born. My father died when I was four, so my mother really didn't get to stay married to him but six years. | 0:35 |
| Mary Hester Smith | After that, they had built their house. Then, my grandmother husband had died previous to that time, so therefore she came to stay with me, because mother came down here to work. See, she was a bookkeeper, and she had finished Willis Business College in Springfield, but she couldn't ever get a job as a secretary or something like that. | 1:10 |
| Mary Hester Smith | Dr. James Shepard came up there one time. He was the person who started North Carolina Central. At that time, his school was the National Training School, which was a Baptist training school. Let me see. National Religious Training School in Chatauqua, and it was originated in 1909. He was up there trying to raise money for his school when it was a religious training school. She asked him if she could get a job down here. He told her he needed a secretary, so she came down as his secretary. | 1:46 |
| Mary Hester Smith | Of course, that was before she married my father. That was before I was born. So, she came down here and she stayed. I don't know how many years she stayed, because I don't know the year exactly when she came down here, but she got homesick, so she wanted to go back home. That's when she went back and she met my father where she was teaching his wife music, because my mother was a musician, and she was teaching his wife piano lesson, giving her piano lessons. | 2:40 |
| Mary Hester Smith | One day she came and she told my mother, she said, "No, you don't need to come next week because I'm going to die," something. Mother said, she thought that was so weird for her to have thought of that, but sure enough, by the next week she, or the next time she was supposed to go there, she had died, Mother said. Then later on, I guess about a year or so, my father started coming to her house to take music lessons. She said, "I wonder why the world is man coming here taking music lessons," because he wouldn't have practiced. | 3:17 |
| Mary Hester Smith | She had a friend to visit her and this friend said, "Aren't there any men in this town? Looks like you would introduce me to a fellow." So she told her, she said, "Well, I know one who comes here to take music." She said, "I don't know why he comes, because he certainly isn't learning any music." So she said, "When you come to take your lesson," she said, "and when you see him," said, "he'll talk to us, so why don't I introduce you to him?" and all like that. She said, "But when you see him look at his watch, you know he's getting ready to go, and I'll ask you if you are afraid to go home by yourself and you say yes and I'll get him to take you home." So she said, "Okay," so that's what they did. | 4:04 |
| Mary Hester Smith | When he took her friend home, he talked about Mama the whole time, how much he liked her. He said, "But I have a friend that I bring and we can double date." So, he brought his friend for her and he, of course, took Mama out. Mama said he kept on coming and he kept talking to her and so finally he asked her to marry. She said okay. But he had been married, and that was my brother. That was his first wife's son. | 4:55 |
| Mary Hester Smith | When he got sick, somebody, my brother's people wanted him to come home and visit. So, when daddy died, they wouldn't let him come back and they never did call or never did tell us what happened, anything. Finally when— well, I'm getting ahead of the story now. But anyway, we didn't see him at all. My mama would tell me about her stepson and she'd tell me I had a brother and all like that. I always wanted to meet him, but I couldn't ever meet him. | 5:33 |
| Mary Hester Smith | Then, she came back. Well, after Daddy died, she wrote Dr. Shepard and asked him if she could come back down here and work for him. By that time, he was about to lose the school. That must have been in about, let's see, I saw in here about 1924, '25, when he was about to lose the school. He told her that he would get her a job at North Carolina Mutual. So, she went up to North Carolina Mutual for work. | 6:17 |
| Mary Hester Smith | I have some material on North Carolina Mutual. North Carolina Mutual is the largest Black insurance company in the world. | 7:04 |
| Nicole Spira | That was when your family moved, you moved together to Durham. | 7:09 |
| Mary Hester Smith | Well, not right away. She came down here. Well, I came with her when I was five years old. The first year I came with her when I was five, because my great-grandmother was living with my grandmother and she, I guess, had Alzheimers because she lived in the past. She always thought she was living in slavery, because she had been a slave. There were White people who lived next door to us and grandma would get out and go over there because she thought that was her master. They didn't like Blacks, so Grandma would have to keep her locked in her room most of the time, unless she was right with us because she didn't want her to go over there and the lady would get angry. | 7:17 |
| Mary Hester Smith | Of course, the lady didn't like us to the extent that if we came out on the porch, she would go in the house. So, when I was a little girl, I just let her stay in the house most of the time, especially in summertime. Because when I'd see her go out, I'd go out in the front and she'd go in the back, I'd go in the back, so she stayed in the house most of the time. | 8:14 |
| Mary Hester Smith | Then Halloween time, she had her son or somebody to plant outside of the lamppost. There was a lamppost in front of the house. They didn't have any lights like we have now, but there was a lamppost between the two houses, and she had them to paint outside black. So, the mayor of the city, my mother went and told the mayor about her, my grandmother. He came down and scraped it off and he told her, "Now you put any more paint on this and you are going to pay for." So, she didn't do that anymore. But I remember one Halloween, she took the garbage and threw it in our yard, so my grandmother just put it back in there and threw it right back over there in their yard (laughing). She was the only one that we really had a lot of trouble with. She was from Mississippi and she just couldn't get used to Blacks living in the same neighborhood. We had a real nice house. | 8:39 |
| Mary Hester Smith | We had about 10 rooms and all of them with hardwood floors. I mean, just a nice home. We had about three bedrooms upstairs and one great big bedroom, which was my mother and father's room. I had a little bedroom on the side and then there was a guest bedroom. There was another little bedroom that you kind of went up the stairs. That's where my grandmother used to keep her mother when she was staying there. | 9:44 |
| Mary Hester Smith | So, Mother brought me down here the first year when I was five years old.,I guess that was about 1923, and she was working at the Mutual. The ladies at the Mutual had a house that they all stayed in with single women, and they called it, I've forgotten what they called it, but it was right behind Mr. Spaulding's house. He was the president of the Mutual and it was kind on the street that was right, it faced another street, but it was right behind his house. That's where my mother was living. | 10:17 |
| Mary Hester Smith | When I would come home from school, they had a room, a big house where they served meals for the clerks. I would come home and the lady who served the meal, she was supposed to kind of look after me, but she wasn't real nice. She'd put the milk up so I couldn't get it, things like that. I think she really didn't want to be bothered with a child. | 11:03 |
| Mary Hester Smith | Finally Mother moved from there and we moved down on what was Pine Street. It's now Roxboro Street. But we moved down there with a lady by the name of Mrs. Green. She had a daughter and she was very nice. Mrs. Cooper lived across the street and she was nice. I really enjoyed living over there because I think we stayed at Miss Green's, but I think we ate at Mrs. Cooper's most of the time, as far as I can remember. I'm not real sure about that. Because Mother worked so she wouldn't have time to. (door opens) | 11:34 |
| Mary Hester Smith | Now, this is my husband. You better turn it out. [INTERRUPTION] | 12:20 |
| Mary Hester Smith | Okay. Start where now. | 12:20 |
| Nicole Spira | Well, first of all, do you remember your mother saying what it was like losing her husband at such a young age? | 12:39 |
| Mary Hester Smith | Well, she would think about him a lot and I know, one time, she said she was lying in the front room, over at Mrs. Green's when we were staying on Fayetteville Street, one time we stayed on Fayetteville street at Mrs. Green's. She said that, I guess she was dreaming, she declared that Daddy came and touched her and told her he was so sorry that he had to pass and leave her and she had to come way down here. But I imagine she was dreaming, but she declared she saw him and that he told her that. She didn't grieve a whole lot, but she did talk about him and she missed him a lot, and she hated to have to give up her home and come down. | 12:41 |
| Mary Hester Smith | So then, she took me back. That year my great-grandmother died, so she carried me back and I stayed with my grandmother in our house, in my mother's house. Because my grandmother had a house down on Southern Avenue. I remember when my grandfather died and I went down and went to the funeral, seemed like some lady told me that I needed to touch him in the casket so I wouldn't be afraid of dead people. So I did that, and I've never been afraid of him. Course, I don't know whether that was reason or not, but that was—you know how they have old wife's tales. If you touch a dead person that you won't be afraid of them. | 13:36 |
| Mary Hester Smith | So then, I stayed up there until I was 11 years old and I went to school, because the school was right near where we lived. We could walk to school. We didn't have to ride a bus or anything like that. I stayed there until I was, I think let's see 11, I started school when I was five. So five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11. I guess I was in the seventh grade when I came down here. | 14:23 |
| Nicole Spira | Did you like school? | 15:04 |
| Mary Hester Smith | Huh? | 15:04 |
| Nicole Spira | Did you enjoy going to school? | 15:04 |
| Mary Hester Smith | Yeah, I liked school. When I came down here, well that was the first time I'd ever been to an all Black school, because see, we didn't have many Blacks in our neighborhood. It was predominantly White, except kids who lived down on Southern Avenue and that area. They were Black. That was sort of a Black neighborhood where my grandmother lived, and I used to slip down and I'd get a whipping. Every day after school. | 15:06 |
| Mary Hester Smith | See, my grandmother worked in service. She didn't have any education, so she worked in service and she'd wash and iron for people, and serve parties and cook, stuff like that. Well, I would call myself going to visit one of my little friends in Adelaide Black, and I would go down there and stay with her. We'd always say we were going to get back home before Grandma got home. She would always have to bring her little sister, Letha, with her home. We would come on home and we'd be saying what we were going to tell Grandma is why we were so late home. | 15:38 |
| Mary Hester Smith | We'd get up there, Grandma said, "Why are you so late?" So Letha said, "Oh we had to stay in, and we helped the teacher wash the boards," and we'd tell all this long story. I mean, Adelaide. And so, Grandma would look at Letha and said, "Are they telling the truth?" "No, ma'am. They not telling the truth? They been down the house playing." And then I'd get a spanking. But that didn't mean anything, because I'd go right back down there again and that same day I would be told again, and I'd get another spanking. | 16:23 |
| Mary Hester Smith | But I was lonesome, because see the kids in my neighborhood would let me come to their house and go there and play, but their parents would never let them come to my house. | 16:56 |
| Nicole Spira | Are these White people and their children? | 17:10 |
| Mary Hester Smith | Except some Catholic kids who lived over on Center Street. Now, they would come to my house and, of course, my grandmother worked over there and they would make their children call her Mrs. Shivers. They couldn't call her Mary. I remember one time, Grandma said the two little girls were sitting there and playing, and they were counting something about niggers, and so, the little girl looked at Grandma and said, "Isn't she a nigger?" She said, "Oh no, she's Mrs. Shivers." They just didn't have any prejudice toward us at all. | 17:10 |
| Mary Hester Smith | So Theresa, her name was, she would come and play with me all the time and I'd go to her house and play. But the other kids they'd want me to come to their house all the time. I just didn't enjoy doing that because they didn't ever come to see me. So, I would go there and play with the Black kids and we would have a lot of fun playing together. I don't know why grandmother would never think that, "Well, this is why she goes." | 17:55 |
| Mary Hester Smith | But then, when I got to be eleven, Mama decided was too expensive trying to keep a house in Ohio and take care of herself here, so she said she would bring both of us down here. We came down here and that was the first time I had gone to a Black school. Of course the kids, I had a Northern accent, and the kids would tease me all the time. Oh they would just run up behind me, "Let me hear you talk. Let me hear you talk." Then one of the boys said I thought I was cute, so he hit me because I talked differently. | 18:24 |
| Mary Hester Smith | So then, I decided that I need to change my accent. I go in the bathroom and I'd practice talking real slow. I talk just as slow and talk just as Southern as I could. Mama never lost her accent, and my grandmother never lost it, but see nobody ever teased them about that. I got real Southern in my speech and we stayed here, but I always wanted to go back to school, to college there. | 18:59 |
| Mary Hester Smith | Wilberforce was about thirty-five miles from Springfield. My mother used to take me over there all the time when I was a little girl. I told her I wanted to go to college over there, so she said, "Okay, you'll go one day." So then, of course, when we got down here, Mama said, "Okay, you can go, but you can't come home for Christmas and Thanksgiving and Easter and things like that." She said, "You'll have to go to Springfield and see your friends there." | 19:47 |
| Mary Hester Smith | So I would. I had Louise Johnson, at that time she was Louise Porter when we were in college, and she would have me to go home with her or else I'd go home with Dorothy Posey, because that was one of Mama's very close friends, and I would spend Christmas with them. | 20:22 |
| Mary Hester Smith | I did that every year, except one year. I wanted to go home with my roommate, and my roommate lived in Louisville, Kentucky. But Mama would not let me go home with anybody unless she knew them. So, I called Mama and told her I wanted to go home with my roommate, that she lived in Louisville, Kentucky. So Mama said, "I don't know her, and you cannot go." I begged and I begged, she said no. She said, "Well, you've talked so long, you really can't go anywhere now. You just have to stay on the campus." | 20:46 |
| Mary Hester Smith | So I had to stay on the campus, and there weren't but about twenty-five of us in the dormitory. There were just a few of us scattered around, because see all the kids from Ohio, they lived on one side, they lived on the state side, and I lived on the out of state side. I could have gone on the state side if I had registered as living in Springfield, but I wanted to meet a lot of kids from other places, so I told mama I'd rather live on the out of state side. I did, but she wouldn't let me go with her to Kentucky, so I had to stay on the campus. | 21:25 |
| Mary Hester Smith | That was the most lonesome Christmas I ever had, because it snowed and they couldn't get anybody take us to Xenia. Sometime they would take us to Xenia to the movies, something like that. We couldn't go to Xenia to the movies because it was snowing so hard. There were very few people who were using their cars, because see, in Ohio, snow would get on the ground around November and you wouldn't see the ground anymore until about March or April. Most of the time, April or May, when you would actually see all of the ground. So I said, "well, I'll never do this again." | 22:11 |
| Mary Hester Smith | So the next year, I went on back to Springfield with my girlfriend and we had fun. They would have parties and things. We'd really have a good time, and we'd go.. | 23:03 |
| Nicole Spira | Was this a co-ed school? | 23:20 |
| Mary Hester Smith | Yeah, boys and girls, but it was a state and out of state. The state took care of the state side and the church took care of the out of state side, the Methodist church. I was Baptist, but that didn't make any difference. It was a Baptist, I mean Methodist school. We'd have to go to the out of state if you were out of state. | 23:24 |
| Mary Hester Smith | At that time tuition wasn't but two hundred and fifty dollars a year and that included everything except for books. That included your food and everything. My last year I was a two fifty student because Mama had some insurance on, and it came through, and so she paid it and she didn't have to pay anything else for none of it. | 23:53 |
| Mary Hester Smith | But now it's different, right? Just like my daughter went to Hampton, where my brother taught, and the year that she went, it was only nine hundred dollars, and I'd get that nine hundred dollars. But now Hampton's about three thousand or more just for tuition. Then you got to pay for your room and your board and all that, but at that time that was everything. | 24:15 |
| Mary Hester Smith | So, after I came down here, I finished high school. When I finished high school, I went back to Ohio for college and I used to go to Springfield every year, except that one year. I enjoyed it. Since I've been married, we used to go back to Ohio because there was one little girl that lived with me four years when she was in college. When my children were small, I used to keep girls who would go to college. Usually, they were girls that I had taught in Creedmore. | 24:50 |
| Mary Hester Smith | I kept about four different girls that I taught in Creedmore. One was Vida, I think her name was Vida, or something like that. She didn't stay but a year, because she had lived with her sister and her sister had a whole lot of children and she got so behind in her lessons because she didn't have a good place to study. So when she came here, she had a good place to study and I would help her with her lessons. Her grades came up, but it wasn't enough for her to stay there. So I told her, since she wanted some type of occupation just to go to beauty school, so she went to DeShazor's Beauty School and she stayed with me the rest of that year and she finished. | 25:32 |
| Mary Hester Smith | Then the next child I got was, her name was, can't think of her. Maggie. Her name was Maggie Grissom. She stayed with me, but that Christmas, she went home and her daddy told her he didn't have no money to send her back. Now, he wasn't paying for anything but her tuition because he didn't have to pay for no food, didn't have to pay for her room, or anything like that. But he just told her he didn't have any money so she couldn't come back. She was so disappointed, because she really liked school and she wanted to finish. But I think after she got older, she sent herself to school, because she moved Philadelphia. I think she said she went to school somewhere up there. I saw her not too long ago. | 26:29 |
| Mary Hester Smith | Then, after that, I kept Jessie, Jessie Parker. I taught her. And she took nursing, which it was practical nursing, at Hillside. She went out to Duke to work. She stayed out there for forty years then, and I mean, as a practical nurse and she was very good. She'd go back to school and do different things. | 27:25 |
| Mary Hester Smith | But she got married at my house and she had a little reception and her little wedding and everything right here. Then she moved out, when she got married, she met a fellow out at Duke who was working at Duke hospital when. She got married, he already had an apartment for her right down the street on Nelson Street. She was just so happy. Then they had a little girl and the little girl's name was Lahoma and they would bring her back and stay with us. | 28:00 |
| Mary Hester Smith | Of course, I married a family. I didn't ever have any children of my own, but my husband had two children when I married him and they were four and seven. I raised them, and my daughter taught in Philadelphia for thirty-two years. She's retired now. She says she's coming home after she gets all of her business straight and everything. But she lived in Philadelphia, and my son went in the Air Force and then he played in a band. He's married and lives in Raleigh. This is our family, right here. | 28:41 |
| Mary Hester Smith | [indistinct 00:29:47]. In fact they never called me, referred to me as Mrs. Smith. And this is when Jessie got married, and that's when she celebrated her anniversary. | 29:47 |
| Mary Hester Smith | We celebrated our 50th anniversary and this is our picture. Yeah. We're really happy. This is the picture [Indistinct 00:30:39]. | 29:47 |
| Mary Hester Smith | I taught for 34 years. I taught in Creed, well I taught in Bayboro, a place called Bayboro, which is way down near New Bern. You know where New Bern is? You don't know anything. Where are you from? | 30:39 |
| Nicole Spira | I'm from New York. | 31:09 |
| Mary Hester Smith | Oh, you don't know a thing about North Carolina. Well, it's almost down to the ocean, to the Atlantic Ocean. | 31:10 |
| Nicole Spira | What did you teach? | 31:16 |
| Mary Hester Smith | Down there I taught, I served as a librarian and taught eighth grade, no, fourth grade down there. I taught one year sixth and seventh grade combination, but I never heard of two, those classes being together. So the man said I wouldn't be able to come back, so I told the lady who got me the job. She said, "Well, if he doesn't take you back, I'm not going take his teacher back." So she told him he didn't have any business putting me in a combination like that for my first year teaching. He gave me a fourth grade, and that was out of my field, but I did a good job and I really enjoyed it. | 31:17 |
| Mary Hester Smith | I stayed there two more years after that, but it was so bad teaching there because it was a place where they didn't have very much. And they had wells, they didn't have indoor toilets or running water. Of course, they didn't dig the wells deep. The wells were so shallow until they used the oil can on a stick to get the water and the water was sandy, and you couldn't drink it unless you boiled it. Then you were always afraid that you'd still be drinking sand, so I really didn't drink very much water those three years. Then it was a place that had a lot of mosquitoes. You had to take quinine the whole time that you were working there. | 32:07 |
| Mary Hester Smith | The kids were fairly smart, because all of them wanted to learn as much as they could so they could get out from down there. We had two twin boys that were very good in school, but their daddy never wanted them to come to school because he was a farmer. He was a tenant farmer, and he wanted those boys there working, and we would have to almost go and beg him to let those boys come. Because we saw that they had great potential, and both of them went to Boston and went to school, to college, and did well. Most of the kids that I have met have done very well. | 33:06 |
| Mary Hester Smith | After I stayed there three years, I was in college in summer school, because at that time I said, "Well, if I don't ever get a job teaching in high school or in junior high school, I might as well go on and change my certificate." So I had decided I was going to change my certificate. One of the teachers was a supervisor of schools in Halifax County. So, one day, we were talking about our school situation. I was telling her about how it was so hard to live down there. She called me to her desk one time and asked me, she said, "You don't seem like you are real happy about where you are teaching." I said, "No, I'm not." So she said, "Well, I would like for you to teach in my system." So I told her, "Well, I would be glad to." So she said, "Now, I can't get you anything this year," she said, "but the next year I can get you something." | 33:51 |
| Mary Hester Smith | So she did, but she sent me way out in the country and I had to walk three miles to school and I said, "Shoot." so I hadn't given up my job there. She was away in school, so I wrote her a letter and I told her that I thought I would go back to my other job. Because see, I had started in July because there, they picked cotton and they would have you go to school July and August and September, then you'd be out October and November because that was the time when they would have to pick cotton. You would go back about the last of November or the 1st of December, something like that. | 34:54 |
| Mary Hester Smith | I told her that I thought when the school started in September, I would come back. She said, "You better send your resignation in. You can't hold two certificates." She said, "I get you something else," because I told her I could not walk that far. Because I had had an operation and I thought I just couldn't walk that far, and I needed to cook for myself because the people didn't eat — So she said, "Well, I'll get you a better job, so just stay there." So I did. When she came home, she got me a job in Harpwood, which was a nice little town, and we roomed with other teachers and I just had a lot of fun. | 35:41 |
| Mary Hester Smith | I liked Harpwood, but my grandmother got sick, because that was after my mother had died. I graduated from college in June and my mother died in September. My grandmother had a heart condition, so the doctor told me I would have to come home. He said, because she can't do all the things she's doing. Grandma was just used to just cleaning up everything and she would wash windows and she would take curtains down and do all that. He said that I would have to come home and look after her. | 36:29 |
| Mary Hester Smith | So I did, and I got a job at North Carolina Mutual. I got a job at Mutual when I finished college right after my mother died, because I couldn't get a job teaching around here because they said I was too young. I was just twenty, I was twenty when I finished college because I started at sixteen and finished at twenty. They said that I wouldn't be able to handle the kids and all that kind of stuff. But I had done practice teaching in a practice school at Wilberforce, and most of the kids were problem kids because the people who had put them in that private school, because they couldn't handle. I did all right with them, but they didn't know. Most of the people that I had to ask for a job, they knew me when I was little and I just always seemed little to them. | 37:16 |
| Nicole Spira | What was it like working at Mutual? | 38:15 |
| Mary Hester Smith | Well, it was all right, but see, I didn't take business. So I had to do filing and then I did work in the printing department. I did learn how to operate the mimeograph machine, because that's what they had at that time. We would put books together and advertisements and pamphlets and things like that together. But I couldn't do any secretary [indistinct 00:38:50] because I hadn't majored in that. I majored in English and social studies, so I couldn't do all of that. | 38:15 |
| Mary Hester Smith | But I took a course in insurance and I would've done well I guess, but when I talked to the man about a salary, he said the most I could make would be $90 a month. So I said, well I can make a hundred and twenty five dollars teaching at that time. So, I heard about a job being open in Creedmor, so I asked Mr. Hill if I could be absent that day, and Mr. Spaulding, because I was working with Mr. Fuller Spaulding who was over the manager of the printing part. I told him I had to do some business, look after some business for my grandmother, so he said okay. | 38:58 |
| Mary Hester Smith | So I went over to Creedmore, to Oxford rather, because that's where the superintendent was. So I went over there to see him about a job. Well, I had to go real early in the morning because that's was the only time the bus left. So I went over there and they had a little, they wouldn't let you come in and sit in the little waiting room. You had to sit in the little bench in the hall. I sat on that little bench and I waited. So pretty soon the superintendent came in, he never did look at me. I asked him about getting this job that was vacant. I told him that I would have to go to school because it was a library, teacher librarian job. I told him that I could get a certificate in library science by going to summer school that summer for two sessions. You'd get a credit of six, then a credit for six more, which would be twelve units. | 39:53 |
| Mary Hester Smith | He never did look up. He said, "Well, do you have a recommendation?" I said, "I have some," I said, "but I don't have them with me." So he said, "Well, you have to get your recommendations in." So I said, I came all the way over here for nothing. | 41:08 |
| Mary Hester Smith | Then I happened to think, I couldn't go back until three o'clock and my mother had a very good friend who was in charge of the Oxford orphanage for Black kids in Oxford. So I said, well I believe I'll go over to Mr Hammond's house. I went over there. He said, "Girl, what in the world are you doing over here?" So I told him, "I was trying to get a job in Creedmore," I said, "but the superintendent never did look at me." He said, "I know that superintendent," said, "I'm going to call him." | 41:24 |
| Mary Hester Smith | So he called him and he told him that I was a good person, and he thought that I would do a good job, and all like that. So the superintendent told him to tell me to go to school and come to work. I got the job. I went back and I told Mr. Hill, he hired me at the mutual and he said, "Well, I don't know why you want to leave here and go to Creedmore to teach. You got to go fifteen miles." I said, "Well, it don't cost but fifteen dollars to go there." He said, "Well, you still might not make." I said, "Well I've been making one hundred and twenty-five dollars." I said, "That'll be one hundred and ten dollars, cause I still be at home and I can get a ride over there for fifteen dollars a month." So he said, "Well, you might get fired." I said, "No, I haven't ever gotten fired. I don't intend to get fired." | 41:55 |
| Mary Hester Smith | I didn't know why he was saying all that, but his niece had worked there and she had lost her job there. That's the reason he was saying that. I mean not his niece, but his secretary. So anyway, I got the job and I stayed there seven years. I liked it very much. | 42:56 |
| Mary Hester Smith | I stayed there until I married and I got married in '46. So then, my husband got a job here in Durham and course the lady in library science—I went back and got my degree in library science, I got a BS in library science. And she wanted me to go to Oxford because that's where my husband was working. But after my husband got a job in Durham, I said, no. I said I had to stay in Durham. | 43:19 |
| Mary Hester Smith | I knew the principal at Whitted Junior High, because he was from Springfield, just like I am, and he knew me ever since I was a little girl and all. I talked to him, I heard he was going to need a librarian, so I talked to him. So he said, "Well, I'd be glad to hire you as a librarian at my school." But the superintendent wouldn't let me get the job because he claimed I didn't have a degree in library science. I told him I did have a BS degree in library science, but he said I had a teacher librarian. I said, "But I have gotten a degree in it now," but he would never change so Mr. Schuler said we'll just hire her as a teacher. So I got to this job teaching eighth grade English and social studies. | 43:53 |
| Mary Hester Smith | I stayed there twenty-four years. I stayed in Durham as a teacher for twenty-four years and I did all right. But I was in junior high, because at that time high school teachers didn't move. I mean if they got a job, they stayed. My husband got a job as a math teacher in high school. Then, after they integrated, well, they started switching us around. I went to Shepherd first, that was a brand new school. Then I left Shepherd and I stayed there until they integrated school and Mr Schuler had them transfer me to Rogers-Herr. And I liked Rogers-Herr pretty well, but I didn't like it too well because Rogershire was really built to be a school for White children, those who went to Duke, who lived in Duke Forest, most of the kids there. And they built a project, so they put the project and the project kids had to go to the same school. Well, the teachers who were there were still the same White teachers that were with the Duke, and they just hated those Black kids. It was just such a hard job fighting— | 44:57 |
| Mary Hester Smith | The teachers were treating those kids. And so they would come to me and they said, "Ms. Smith, you can't teach us 'til you let us talk." And so I'd have to let them talk out what they experiencing. And White kids said, "Yeah, Ms. Smith, you have to let them talk." So we would talk and then after that we go on with class and everything would be all right. And in the meantime, when I was at Whitted School, I started the first student counsel in the junior high, at Whitted, because they was the first junior high. And Mrs. Spaulding worked with me. She was Charles Spaulding Jr, her, his wife. But soon after that first year, well before the first year was up, she died. So then Mrs. Echen worked with, and we took the kids to` the state conventions and different places like that. Then when I went to Shepard I had—well, see Mr. Spooner went to Shepard too. | 0:01 |
| Mary Hester Smith | So he took me with him to Shepard and I had tried the student council again. And by that time I became involved in the state student council, course there were two separate ones. They had the White and the Black, but we would go to the convention, the national convention in the summertime. I would carry the kids. And of course I'd have to carry them on the bus. One time we went all the way to Dallas on the bus and I declared I'd never do that again because when I got home, I was just worn out. But then finally I got to be the executive secretary of the state association for Black. So then they started working on integration. So I had to go to the state and talk to the White teachers and talk with them about integrating. And now they asked me to make up a speech about the help, why it would be best for the student councils to be integrated. | 1:18 |
| Mary Hester Smith | So I made this speech up. So I went to this meeting and of course I was the only Black person there. So the lady told me, she said, oh, you have a nice room. So they put me up on this floor. I was there by myself. I did carry a Black student with me, but she didn't stay with me. And so I was at there on this floor. I had a bath to myself and everything. So they wanted to know why I was out there. I wouldn't tell them because I figured if I told them they wouldn't come to the meeting when I got ready to speak. So pretty soon the executive secretary, they were looking for this man or somebody that was supposed to be such a great speaker and all to come to this meeting. And he was supposed to speak that day and he didn't come. | 2:41 |
| Mary Hester Smith | So she came and asked me, she said, "Are you prepared to speak?" I said, "Well, do you think I would come all the way and not be prepared?" So I told her, yes, I was prepared. She said, "Well, we going have to get you to speak because he's not coming." And course that meant everybody came. See? So I take my speech and they accepted it. Of course one man told me, he said that, "Well, I'll tell you right now I don't want student councils integrated because I don't want my daughter to marry a Black man." I said, "Well I don't want my daughter to marry a White," so I said, "so what." I said, "where are you from?" He said, "I'm from South Carolina." I said, "Well, I see why you like that." I said, "I can understand." But all of them accepted what I said. I told them that I felt that all children should be allowed to be in the student council and that they should be allowed to hold office. | 3:42 |
| Mary Hester Smith | Because I knew that they were going to fix it so that our kids would never hold office. So we set up guidelines and we fixed this so that one year they would have a Black president, one year they'd have a White and then the offices, they would alternate. If they had a Black president, they'd have a White vice. And then of course other offices, they would integrate them too. So it did go like that very well. And I stayed in there four years and I got to be a district office. I got to be a district executive secretary for Piedmont district. And that was the largest district because that was the district that I was in. But the lady got sick and she couldn't. And I had had so much experience until one of the Black girls nominated me and they had to let me go on and did. | 4:45 |
| Mary Hester Smith | So I served and we did very well, but after four years at Rogers here, I just got tired of fighting the race war there. So I just decided that I would come out. So I retired and I had taught thirty-four years. So I didn't have anything to worry about coming out. And I enjoyed my teaching in all instances except the last year or so. I got kind of tired of it and then the kids began to change some to, and of course our kids, a lot of them misbehavior was because of the way they were treated. And I could see that that was why because they weren't treated fair. Because I don't know what's the problem now, but that's what it was then. | 5:54 |
| Nicole Spira | What was it like also living in Durham at that time? Because we learned a lot about the Hayti community. | 6:58 |
| Mary Hester Smith | Well now the Hayti community when I first came here, they had restaurants, they had a hotel, Biltmore hotel and it was a nice hotel. They had two movie theaters. When I first came in, my mother played at the Wonderland theater and Mr. Watkins was the owner and manager at that theater and she used to, it was silent movies. So she would play piano for the different things that they were doing on the screen. And she played until they started having movies on Sunday and she wouldn't play then. So she stopped then. And of course she was organist at Mount Vernon church for a while. And then after leaving Mount Vernon, she went to White Rock and she was organist there for fifteen years and she died on the organ. I was in Arkansas when she died because that year my brother came, well, I didn't tell you how I happened to meet my brother. | 6:59 |
| Mary Hester Smith | He went to Hampton and my mother used to play for a guy who sang and he was at Hampton too. So one year when he came home and she was playing for, he said, "You know one thing, I met a guy by the name of Lapis." And he said, "That's such an unusual name. I figured that he must be related to you." So she said, "Well, that's my stepson, tell him to write." And so he did. He wrote, and of course when he wrote, he knew I was getting ready to finish high school. He wanted me to come to Hampton, but I didn't want go to Hampton. I wanted to go to Wilberforce. So he came, when he finished Hampton, he came and lived with us. And I was a senior in high school when he had just finished college and he took architectural engineering. | 8:22 |
| Mary Hester Smith | So he would help build houses, things like that. And he stayed with us until he got married and he married [indistinct 00:09:34]. And of course I had a girlfriend, a girlfriend and I were so glad that he had come because his momma never would let us go anywhere. But when Ace came, they called him Ace. Because when he went to school, he didn't have any money. And he told the president that he wanted to go to college, he didn't have money. He said, but I can cut hair and take care of myself if you just let me have a work scholarship. So they gave him a work scholarship and then he cut hair on the side to get his other money because his, whoever was keeping him, his father's people, they didn't want to send him, they wanted to send him to Kentucky State and he didn't want go to Kentucky State because he said that he couldn't take architectural engineering there and he wanted to go to Hamilton. | 9:21 |
| Mary Hester Smith | So they told well if he went to Hampton, he'd have to do it on his own because they couldn't send. So he went on, he cut hair and saved money and got up there. And then he said, when he got there, he didn't have but 10 cents. And he told that he didn't have any money, but he wanted to go to school. So they told him, okay, so they let him go to school on a work scholarship. That meant he had to stay there five years instead of four. But he finished. And then he went on to, well, he always wanted to go to Massachusetts School of Technology, but I don't think he ever got to go there, but he did go to Pennsylvania, University of Pennsylvania and got his masters. And then he worked on different army related. | 10:34 |
| Mary Hester Smith | Well, he didn't go in the army, but he worked in factories that were making stuff for the army and all like that. And finally he got a job teaching at Hampton. So he went back there of course, after he that he stayed because that's where he always wanted to teach anyway. So he taught architectural engineering there and his son is a civil engineer. He went to what's the name of that school? A school I can't even think of the name of it now, but it was a White school and he took civil engineering and of course he married and had these three kids, had two girls and a boy. | 11:35 |
| Mary Hester Smith | So then after I came back to Durham, I met my husband one summer and we went around together. But then I was working and he had to go back home. So he finally married somebody else. We didn't get married right away. So then I looked in the paper one time in the Carolina Times I saw where his wife had died. So I sent him a letter and told him that I was sorry that his wife had died and I was still single. So he came to visit me and we got married. We got married in June the twenty-ninth, 1946. It is the twenty-ninth. And we been married for fifty years now. So we have really enjoyed our marriage. | 12:24 |
| Nicole Spira | Did you stay the member of White Rock? Of White Rock. | 13:15 |
| Mary Hester Smith | Yeah. I am a member. He's a member of Presbyterian church. So that's my life story just about. | 13:28 |
| Nicole Spira | Well there's certainly—well how have you noticed how Durham has changed? | 13:41 |
| Mary Hester Smith | Well, one thing I feel that a lot of, let me go look at this meat I got cooking over here and turn it off while I—when I first came to Durham, because I remember they had a restaurant and two theaters, all Black and they had pretty good movies and they used to have shows that would come at one movie and they would have people like Peg Leg Bates. He was a tap dancer and sometime they'd have Cab Calloway and different people who would come and we would get to go to see those shows there. And then finally they started having the shows to come to a big warehouse. And then later on when they built the civic, I mean, I guess they call it the civic center. It's right across the street from the Omni hotel, well they built that then the shows would come there. | 13:50 |
| Mary Hester Smith | But before that they would use tobacco warehouse and they put a stage on one side of it and people would go there to hear. Because I remember after my brother came, my momma let me go with him to hear Cab Calloway. And then one other time we got to go hear Duke Ellington and different—I think Count Basie has been here and there was a man by the name of Leith Alston who used to sponsor all these people come. And people would come, now sometime when they moved in the civic center, the Whites would come sometime and sit upstairs. But the Blacks would be downstairs because they could dance. But sometimes Whites would come and sit upstairs if was somebody they really wanted to hear. | 15:06 |
| Mary Hester Smith | And course it wouldn't be a whole lot of them, but a few would come. | 16:04 |
| Nicole Spira | And so was there animosity at that time? | 16:09 |
| Mary Hester Smith | No, it was just we lived in our part of the world and they lived in that part of the world. In fact, I ain't never pay much attention to White people because only time I would see them was be when I go downtown. And of course at that time they had the White drinking fountain and the Black drinking fountain and we would go down there and drink out the White drinking fountain and say wonder how this water taste. | 16:10 |
| Mary Hester Smith | We just do it for devilment. And then of course, sometimes when you go in the shoe store, they tell you come back here where the shoes are but see they want you to sit in the back of the store, didn't want us in the front of the store. And of course when you catch the bus well you'd always had to go to the back of the bus to sit. And I know one time after I married, we used to have to go to Statesville to see my husband's father and mother, we'd take kids. So one time we went on the bus and the bus caught a fire and my little son was sitting on the back and he was looking out the window. He said, "It's sparks coming out, momma, the bus is catching a fire." So he went up there and told him, I said, "Well go up then tell that guy." | 16:38 |
| Mary Hester Smith | He said, "Boy, you don't know what you talking about. Go on back there and sit down." And sure enough, the bus stopped and he had to stop. And the bus had had caught fire. So then that meant all of us had to get out the bus. He had to send another bus to get us. So when the other bus came, of course all the White people got on first. And by the time we got on, we had to stand up. So my husband said we never do this no more because we are going to get a car. So after that we went on, we bought a car because we said we were not going through that again. So after that, we didn't have to bother with it. And I remember one time when we went to Cleveland, that was the next year after we married. The year we met, we couldn't go on a honeymoon anything like that because he was in school. He was working on his masters. He had just gotten out of the army and he was working on his masters. | 17:35 |
| Mary Hester Smith | So we couldn't go anywhere because he had to go back to class that next day after we married, we got married on a Saturday. Because we went to church on Sunday and then Monday he had to go back to class. So that next year his uncle lived in Cleveland and he told us that if we would get the fare to come up there, we wouldn't have to worry about anything because he would see that we had a good time and that he would feed us and everything like that. So we did, we went up there and we caught the bus and we had to stop in somewhere in West Virginia, I think it was. We could go in the restaurant, but we couldn't sit. | 18:41 |
| Mary Hester Smith | We'd have to stand up and eat at a counter. And of course there were seats in front of the counter. So when we went in the restaurant, I just put my knee up on the seat so nobody could sit there and we ate all this stuff there. But a whole lot of places down this way, you would have to go to a back door and get your food. And a lot of times you wouldn't have anywhere to sit. You'd just go back there and get it and bring it out and sit on the bus or somewhere and eat it because you wouldn't have anywhere to sit. And then when they started integrating the bus for intrastate, going from one state to another, where you could go in the White part if you were going intrastate, but if you were going interstate, you'd have to sit in the Black part. | 19:31 |
| Mary Hester Smith | And so I remember when I took this student council to Dallas, we stopped somewhere in Mississippi and I told him, I said, okay, we are intrastate so we can go in White part. So we went in and I was kind of glad when the bus came, because I know [indistinct 00:21:04] goes to run us out of there. But we went on in and sat down because we were intrastate. We were not in the state. We were going to another state saying, and we knew we could tell them that if we did. And course when they had the sit-ins and all my little daughter, she wanted to be a part of it. So I told her, okay. I said, "But anybody spit on you come on home because I ain't want nobody spitting on me." And so she would go down there and they would go and sit someplace and then they would put them in jail. | 20:39 |
| Mary Hester Smith | So one time she had to go to jail, I think. But the thing about it, they would have so many of them thinking they got nowhere to put them. I don't think she ever went, no, she didn't ever have to go to jail. But some of her friends had to go to jail. So we would pass by there and they would be waving out, "Hi!" Because see, they had so many kids that were, they had been in line and all like that. There wasn't anything they could do about it. And of course the parents would come up there and get them they'd come on home anyway, because they couldn't charge them with anything because they would just sitting or going somewhere and staying that they didn't want them. And of course, Kress' they had a little restaurant in their store with little counter seats and they took all his seats down because they didn't want Blacks to come in there and sit down. | 21:45 |
| Mary Hester Smith | One man closed his restaurant up because he didn't want, and Walgreens, they took that. No, I think Walgreens was one that was determined that they weren't coming in there, something like that. And so finally Walgreens just went out of business, because they didn't want integration. And then of course, some of the other restaurants that they had a little restaurant out on Chapel Hill Boulevard, it was supposed to be such a fine little restaurant. And so when they had the teachers dinner or something, we all went out there to eat and it was so crowded and all, I said, "Lord, is this what we were trying to get to?" Because it just seemed so funny that we were— | 22:50 |
| Speaker 3 | [indistinct 00:23:49]. | 23:43 |
| Mary Hester Smith | Yeah, you hungry? You ready to eat? | 23:43 |
| Nicole Spira | Okay. I was very intrigued by what you were telling me about your great-grandmother, how she was a slave. I wanted to know if you could recall any stories that she had passed down maybe to your grandmother or to your mother about what that was like. | 0:09 |
| Mary Hester Smith | No, because I was so young. See, I was four years old when she—was about five when she passed. My grandmother didn't talk about that part of her life as much. Seemed like she did tell me that they slipped from Virginia into Kentucky or Ohio some kind of way. They got into Ohio, but she didn't give me any details of that. | 0:25 |
| Nicole Spira | But she was a slave in Virginia? | 1:02 |
| Mary Hester Smith | Yeah, they were in some part of Virginia. Now I don't know which part, but they were in Virginia. | 1:02 |
| Nicole Spira | She didn't really talk about it that much? It was difficult? | 1:13 |
| Mary Hester Smith | Mm-mm. | 1:16 |
| Nicole Spira | But you had said that she had Alzheimer's so she thought that her next door neighbor— | 1:16 |
| Mary Hester Smith | Yeah, but she thought her next door neighbor was the master. | 1:19 |
| Nicole Spira | What was your first impression when you came to Durham, when you moved here? You said you were eleven, right? | 1:25 |
| Mary Hester Smith | Well, in a way I was glad because I'd be around more Blacks, but I missed my home place, because I really liked that house in Ohio. I was very happy to be here because my mother was here and I didn't like being away from her much, because I loved my grandmother and she took good care of me, but I just wanted to be with both of them. | 1:35 |
| Nicole Spira | Mm-hmm. Do you remember, was the community here very different from when you were living in Ohio, when you lived with your— | 2:00 |
| Mary Hester Smith | Well yeah, it was different because we lived around all Black people and then there were a lot of Black businesses and things, and I remember when we first came, we were rooming in a lady's house because she had just built her house and she had two vacant rooms. Mama furnished those two rooms so that the three of us would have a place to stay. We lived right across the street from Lincoln Hospital. That was an all-Black hospital, and the nursing home was right across the street. One of my little friends, her mother was the—I guess the matron of the nurses, the nursing home where the nurses lived. We used to play together because that was enjoyable because I was close by to where people were. I remember enjoying going to North Carolina Mutual, because that was largest Black insurance company and it was right in the heart of town on Parrish Street at that time. My mother worked there and I enjoyed going up there with her sometimes. | 2:20 |
| Mary Hester Smith | I liked going—she used to take me to everything that happened at North Carolina Central. She would take me to all the lyceum programs, and I remember getting to hear Roland Hayes and I used to get to hear a lot of speakers at North Carolina Central because she would take me down there to hear prominent people speak. I'm trying to think of some of the people that I got a chance—there. I can't think of any names of the people now, but—my mind is just gone. | 3:51 |
| Nicole Spira | Did your mother like working for North Carolina Mutual? | 4:26 |
| Mary Hester Smith | Mm-hmm. Yeah, she enjoyed working there. She played for the forum and she also operated a bookkeeping machine that wrote up the policies and put the information on the policies, because at that time they didn't have all this machinery that they have now. She had to write information on those policies, and she—I guess it was the bookkeeping department she was in because it was a bookkeeping machine that she operated. That's about all I can remember about that. | 4:48 |
| Nicole Spira | What was it like, because I know your mother was raising you while living with just you and your grandmother. What was it like not having your father around? | 5:38 |
| Mary Hester Smith | Well, I'd always wished my mother would marry again. I wanted her to marry again, but she didn't want to because she always felt that if she married somebody they may not be nice to my grandmother and to me. It was just normal because that was—I knew my daddy was dead, and I had known my daddy, and so it was just a normal thing. Of course, my friends used to tease me and tell me my grandmother spoiled me, but she didn't. | 5:45 |
| Mary Hester Smith | She provided me with all the things, most of the things I wanted. We had all the things—we were poor I guess, but I didn't know it because we were—and we did all right with other people around. We didn't have a car, and my mother didn't get a radio until I was almost a senior in high school, because she wanted me to play music and she was a teacher, and she always felt like if she got a radio that we would listen to that all the time and we wouldn't provide our own music. I used to get a lot of whoopings about not practicing, especially when I was living with my grandmother in Ohio. | 6:27 |
| Mary Hester Smith | I remember my mother was teaching me the Fifth Nocturne and I kept making mistakes, and so one day she said, "Just get up from the piano and don't bother any more," because I think she had just about gotten disgusted. She wanted me to—and I wish now I had, because she was a very accomplished musician and if I could have played half as well as she did, I would've done a great job. | 7:23 |
| Nicole Spira | Did she play for the church? I think you said? | 7:58 |
| Mary Hester Smith | Mm-hmm. She played for White Rock, and at first she played for Mount Vernon Church when they were down on Mount Vernon Avenue. It was just a little church, and then she had this job playing for White Rock. She played there for fifteen years. She was stricken on the organ while she was playing. At that time I was in Arkansas with my brother. I had just gone there for a week, and they said Mama just kept hitting one note and they looked up there to see what was wrong and her eyes looked wrong, something, so she had a stroke and she didn't ever regain consciousness. They carried her to the hospital. She died by eleven o'clock that night, I guess. | 8:00 |
| Mary Hester Smith | Everybody said, well, she was doing what she really enjoyed doing, and that was a good way to die. Of course I'd just been gone a week and my brother had just gotten a new job, and he was late getting there because he'd had car trouble, so he couldn't come back with me. Of course he was my half brother anyway, he wasn't my mother's son, he was my father's son. I had to come back—and then he had a new baby too, and so I had to come back on the train by myself and that was a kind of weird thing because I knew she had died before I got there. They weren't going to tell me, but I had prayed over it. I always—if I prayed about something and I'd ask God to let me see in a dream if it happened, and I asked if my mother was dead to Him, and I dreamed about it all that night and couldn't do anything, couldn't get to her, something like that, so I knew she was dead the next morning. | 9:00 |
| Mary Hester Smith | I came home and I read my little Bible all the way, and it happened I sat down beside a minister and he saw me reading the Bible and saw me crying, so he asked me what was the matter and I told him. He talked to me and tried to console me, and that made the trip less of a trauma. Then I also—when I got to Memphis, we had to change trains and I had to stay there, and I wanted to get something to eat. One of the porters was going off, so he told me that there was a restaurant there, but he wouldn't advise me to go by myself. I didn't have nobody with me so he said he would take me out, so he took me over there and I ate and he paid for my meal and told me to come on back. He brought me back to the train. | 10:17 |
| Nicole Spira | Why didn't he want you to go by yourself? | 11:30 |
| Mary Hester Smith | Well, he said at night—it was night and he didn't know whether somebody would bother me or not. Just a public restaurant. It wasn't a hotel or anything, just a public restaurant where a lot of people—so he went with me and brought me back to the train station. Because see, at that time you couldn't eat in the train station. Blacks couldn't eat in the train station, so it was just a little restaurant near the train. | 11:33 |
| Nicole Spira | Was it a Black porter or— | 12:09 |
| Mary Hester Smith | Yeah, uh-huh. | 12:13 |
| Nicole Spira | Okay. | 12:13 |
| Mary Hester Smith | Yeah. Well, most—that's where a lot of Black people worked, on the trains, too. All of the porters were Black, just about. Maybe the head person might be White, but not the porters. | 12:15 |
| Nicole Spira | Did they have at this time, was it separate cars in the train? | 12:19 |
| Mary Hester Smith | Mm-hmm. Yeah. Just sitting. Of course now if you were going to Ohio, when you got to West Virginia you could change and go into the White coach. I know when we were going to college, I had a friend that I would meet in Virginia. We'd all get on the train together, and so as soon as we would get in West Virginia, we'd walk right straight through the White section and go sit down and go up there and use the lavatory. The same people on the train but wouldn't be anything they could do about it. | 12:37 |
| Nicole Spira | Right. | 13:19 |
| Mary Hester Smith | A lot of times we would do that, especially when we were going to college, because see we were back on the train to college, and you could sit anywhere you wanted to when you got in—I forgot the name of that town in West Virginia. Because it was a border town. It wasn't Southern, and it wasn't Northern, but just kind of bordering, and it was above the Mason-Dixon Line. Because see, they called the Mason-Dixon Line was where — below the Mason-Dixon Line, everything was segregated, but above it wasn't. | 13:20 |
| Nicole Spira | What was that—do you remember what it felt like for you having to, I guess— ? | 14:00 |
| Mary Hester Smith | Well we'd just laugh about it all the time because we'd say, "Now let's go up there and worry them to death now." Because we knew the same people were still on the train. They hadn't gone anywhere, but there wasn't anything they could do about it, so we'd go up there. See, where we had to sit was right behind the—see, at that time, trains were operated by coal, and so we had to sit right behind the engine, and a lot of times soot and stuff would blow in the windows because you didn't have air conditioning so they'd have the windows down. If it was warm and the windows were—it was not very comfortable sitting in those seats, but we went on where the Whites sat. They sat farther back and it was more comfortable because it wasn't—we wouldn't get as much dust and dirt from the engine. We'd just go on back there with them because we could do it when we got to West Virginia. | 14:04 |
| Mary Hester Smith | It was all right. I enjoyed it. First time I went, my girlfriend from here was going up as a junior. She had gone two years here, and so we went up on the train together, and I remember my mother told her, "You take care of her now. Don't let anything happen to her." My mama was kind of protective, and my grandmother both were very protective of me because I was the only child, let's say. Didn't want anything to happen to me. | 15:23 |
| Nicole Spira | Well, once things started becoming integrated in the South, do you remember, was there a lot of violence? Do you remember? | 16:07 |
| Mary Hester Smith | In some parts. We didn't have too much violence here in Durham because we had Black policemen. Of course none of the Black policemen couldn't arrest White people, but, we had. Of course, now, they would arrest the kids because my daughter went uptown to picket. Now some of the—now, I remember there was one restaurant, he just closed because he didn't want to have to integrate. And Kress, they took all their stools out of the store where people would go to eat and sit on stools, so you'd have to stand up and eat. | 16:15 |
| Mary Hester Smith | Walgreens—it seemed like they had a lot of trouble trying to go into Walgreens, and so they finally closed. But those were the only two places and I mean definitely. Woolworth's, it seemed like they went on, people just went on and they started sitting down and eating and they didn't have any—and of course they would gather up the kids and take them to jail, but they would have so many of them, they didn't have nowhere to put them. The kids would be sitting all on the window ledges and hollering out the windows, (laughs) and of course when the parents came up there and got them, they let them go anyway because really they hadn't done anything but just picket. | 17:09 |
| Mary Hester Smith | I used to tell my daughter, I said, because in some places people would spit on the kids and have dogs—especially in the Deep South, have dogs after them and all like this. I used to tell my daughter, "Anybody spit on you, come on home, because I don't want nobody to get spitting on you." She would go, but she didn't go every day. I think she just wanted the experience of going. I remember when Martin Luther King came here and spoke at our church, and we thought it was such a thrill. Of course he got everybody interested in picketing and going into the town and having—what they called it? Non-violent picket. In other words you would just picket. You wouldn't fight back and you wouldn't resist arrest or anything like that. | 18:01 |
| Mary Hester Smith | Of course the police here were not mean to the kids. They didn't put dogs on them, like they did down in South Carolina and Alabama and places like that, where people would sic dogs on them and beat them up and of course some kids were killed. I remember one little boy down in—I don't know if it was Alabama. But anyway, he was from the north and he came down to visit somebody and it seemed like he whistled at a White lady, just something, just kiddish like, and they killed him. Buried his body in the cement or something and buried his body in the water, because he did that. He was nothing but a kid, but— | 19:07 |
| Nicole Spira | This is in Alabama? | 20:01 |
| Mary Hester Smith | Mm-hmm. Somewhere. I think it was either Alabama or Georgia somewhere. I can't remember the names of the places, but I do remember that his name was Emmett Till. I might have something about him—oh, Mississippi. Turn it up. | 20:01 |
| Nicole Spira | Okay. | 20:19 |
| Mary Hester Smith | Pictures of the different things that happened in the quest for freedom. | 20:19 |
| Nicole Spira | You don't think there were any experiences that were that severe in Durham? The situation— | 20:45 |
| Mary Hester Smith | No. Uh-uh, nobody. See, "Civil Rights Struggle in the South." That's the thing. Let's see if it's in here. [indistinct 00:21:05]. I'm sure it was. Yeah, page 248. | 20:50 |
| Nicole Spira | How did the White law enforcement, the White police officers, get along with the Black police officers? | 21:12 |
| Mary Hester Smith | Well, they got along with them all right, because they didn't let them arrest any White folks. They weren't allowed to arrest Whites, and one while they didn't want them carrying guns, but I think later on they changed that. | 21:16 |
| Nicole Spira | Did you ever go up north when you were living—like to New York or any of those big cities? | 22:09 |
| Mary Hester Smith | Not until I graduated from college. First time I went to New York was when my—after I married, my girlfriend lived in New York, one that went to college with me. Now that's Rosa Parks, you've heard of her. | 22:13 |
| Nicole Spira | Mm-hmm. | 22:29 |
| Mary Hester Smith | [indistinct 00:22:30] Page 248. I guess they mentioned Emmitt Till. Yeah, here it is. It was in Mississippi. It says the first such atrocity—the first was the April lynching of Mac Parker in Parkville, Mississippi. The first such atrocity since fourteen year old Emmett Till had been kidnapped and lynched in Mississippi. That's the little boy who whistled at a White lady on or said something kind of flip, and so they kidnapped him and killed him. That was the first thing. That happened before the Civil Rights Movement. These are some of the things that happened after Dr. King's assassination. Somebody assassinated him, then they just had riots. | 22:30 |
| Nicole Spira | Were there riots in Durham after his— | 24:02 |
| Mary Hester Smith | No, people in Durham really didn't riot. They didn't tear up stuff, because see one thing, the Blacks in Durham had a lot of their own things they were proud of, so they didn't tear it up. But see, in the large cities, most of the places where the Blacks lived were slum areas anyway. Of course what was so sad about it was they tore them up and then they didn't really put them back. It was really sad, because some of them lived among that rubble so long until Johnson got to be president, and he started trying to rebuild some of the places, and had a lot of [indistinct 00:24:58]. | 24:09 |
| Nicole Spira | So, here the Black community took pride in their businesses, their neighborhood. | 24:58 |
| Mary Hester Smith | Mm-hmm, right, but see now the only thing that happened in Durham was urban renewal. | 24:58 |
| Nicole Spira | Right. | 25:20 |
| Mary Hester Smith | Of course that cut out a whole lot of the smaller businesses. | 25:23 |
| Nicole Spira | Do you remember how you felt about it when Durham was— | 25:26 |
| Mary Hester Smith | Well, when they first started talking about it, it was going be so nice. They were going to rebuild Fayetteville Street and have places for people to—and they tore down a lot of the old houses, and people had real nice homes. Because I remember Mr. Pearson who was principal of Hillside High School, he had a nice beautiful big brick stone home. It was a really nice home on Beverly Street, and then the Merricks had a nice home, and the Spauldings, and those were people who worked at Mutual who helped to found Mutual. The Kennedys had a nice home, but see, those people all had to move. Ms. Darnell, she had a nice big pretty home down on the end of Beverly Street, just almost the corner of Beverly and Pettigrew Street. She had to move and build another house up here on Fifth, and she really never got over that, the fact that she had to give up this beautiful home. | 25:29 |
| Mary Hester Smith | But they didn't do what they said they were going to do. They're gradually building now, where the arts center, I mean Hayti Heritage Center is, and where that shopping center is and then that other little shopping area near Hayti Heritage. They're just gradually building another and then Rolling Hills, but it was a long time before that ever happened. See, and White Rock was right in that area, near just before you got to—no, you'd get to St. Joseph first and then to White Rock. But now the people at St. Joseph—for some reason the people of Durham wanted to save that building. It's a historical site, but there were a lot of nice homes that could have been saved as historical sites but they didn't do it. They just tore down everything. | 26:48 |
| Mary Hester Smith | They had a hotel. They had three theaters at one time, but then one of the theaters [indistinct 00:28:17] had to be tore down, and they had a Knights of Pythias or something like that. It was a lodge that had a building down in Hayti, and I can't remember exactly what the name of it was. Then they had restaurants. The Green Candle was on Pettigrew Street, and of course when we first moved to Durham, there was a lady by name of Mrs. Coleman. She had the tavern on Fayetteville Street and it was a nice restaurant. We used to eat there every Sunday, because where we'd room, the lady had a lot of men coming in and out because her husband was a road builder with Nell OT. Of course, my grandmother would cook her food on Saturday so she wouldn't have to be in the kitchen with the lady on Sunday, and put it in the warmer and the oven. | 28:01 |
| Mary Hester Smith | That was when we'd go in there and eat it, so we just got to a place where we just started eating out every Sunday. We would eat out every Sunday and we ate at this tavern and the lady made good rolls that she always had. Always had good food. | 29:29 |
| Mary Hester Smith | Let me see. What else was right down there? Then Scarborough's Funeral Home, who was on Pettigrew Street. Of course they have a nice funeral home now in Roxboro, right behind the jail. A big funeral home. Then they had Amey's Funeral Home, which was on Roxboro Street. Well, it's Roxboro Street today but it was Pine Street then. There were a lot of nice homes there, but see, all of that was taken in urban renewal. | 29:46 |
| Nicole Spira | How do you think that affected the Black community? | 30:31 |
| Mary Hester Smith | Well, I think that it made them sort of angry that so much—some of the little businesses needed to be discarded probably, but still that was a way for them to make a living. I think they were very disappointed, especially after they found out that it wasn't going to be rebuilt. See, they had a plan all in the paper and everything, and it was really going to be beautiful, but it's never been put back like they planned to be put back. I don't know whether they claimed they ran out of money or the government stopped furnishing money for it or what, but anyway, it's— | 30:35 |
| Mary Hester Smith | Now people have come out this way and built particular businesses all up in this part of Fayetteville Street, and right down from that church, but even that, there was a school called—it was a business school that was up here between Fayetteville Street and where White Rock Church is now and the cemetery. This lady, I think they tried to expand too much and see, Durham Tech was right over there, and they were teaching the same classes as some of the people in Durham Tech, and of course she tried to fix a dormitory and so she lost that. Now, a lot of those buildings are still empty because the Muslims have bought part of it right in front of the Chicken Hut. I think we have Muslims that bought that, and I think they have a school and a church and stuff like that. One man had a sort of a night club. He had to give that up, and so— | 31:30 |
| Nicole Spira | Do you think people were angry at the government and the state for not—was there distrust in the Black community? | 32:44 |
| Mary Hester Smith | Well, I guess they had a lot of distrust, but I think it encouraged more Blacks to run for offices after they found out that they weren't going to be around, so you had more Blacks to run for city council, run for the school board and also for the county commission. Of course you had—Bill Bell was the county commissioner before, so he's running and was very reluctant. I think they had more interest in politics after they found out that nobody was going to look out for us. | 32:59 |
| Nicole Spira | Right. | 33:46 |
| Mary Hester Smith | Because really, in order to work with the system or beat the system, you got to join it. You can't just sit back and say—and of course they had Stanford L. Warren Library and that. A long time ago, Stanford L. Warren Library used to be all the way at the bottom of Fayetteville Street and it was just in a building kind on the end of Fayetteville and Pettigrew Street, but then they built this nice library which is nice, and people enjoy that. | 33:47 |
| Mary Hester Smith | Of course the schools—I think when the first schools were built, it was Pearson Elementary School. Because see, when I first came here, we were at Hillside School, but that's where Operation Breakthrough is now. Well, that was Hillside, and I think it went from the—well, one time it went all the way from first grade through the twelfth. Then they built Pearson, and kids from the first through to sixth grade went to Pearson. Then you had—because I know when I first came here, the fifth grade was at Hillside, so all of the grades were. Of course you had recess at different times, and you didn't have school buses, anything like that. Kids would get to school basically and some of them had to walk long ways be cause they was on the high street, and then they built Pearson School. | 34:29 |
| Mary Hester Smith | Then when I started teaching here, Whitted was from first through the ninth— through the eighth grade. And then they built Spaulding and they took those people from Spaulding from first through the sixth grade and put them at Spaulding. Then they made Whitted seventh, eighth and ninth grade, which was a junior high. Then the other students, tenth, eleventh, and twelfth, went to Hillside, which was up here. This up here used to be Whitted, because my son there, when we first got married, that was Whitted and he went there to school. | 35:34 |
| Mary Hester Smith | But my daughter, she went to Pearson. I don't think she ever went to Whitted because then they made that Whitted Hillside. That became Hillside there, and of course later on Operation Breakthrough took on old Whitted. | 36:32 |
| Nicole Spira | I'm not that familiar with Operation Breakthrough. Please— | 36:54 |
| Mary Hester Smith | Now Operation Breakthrough is a—well, they have the Head Start program there and then they have a revitalization program, and they have programs to help people with bills and things of that sort. But the main thing is the Head Start program, and that is to give kids a chance to go to nursery school without having to pay. Now, Scarborough Nursery School, which is downtown—now when we first came here, Scarborough—I can't think of the name of the street, but it was back of Pettigrew Street. And that's where I put my daughter when she first came because she was just four years old when her daddy and I got married, and she wasn't ready to go to school. His son was in school, so he could go up here to where Whitted, where Hillside was. | 36:56 |
| Mary Hester Smith | I think people were a little disappointed but they gradually got some of the things that they wanted. Of course Dr. Shepard at first had a training, Baptist training school, and then he got the state to take it over and we would get the bill and he said he wanted to come out, and after the state took it over and then later on it became a part of the university system. Of course I think it became that part after—when—it was just before Dr. Chambers became dean, because it hadn't been in the university system all the time. It wasn't in it—my husband graduated from [indistinct 00:39:10]. | 38:12 |
| Nicole Spira | How do you feel the school system has changed since then? Do you think that—I remember, I know you were a teacher and you were very involved. Do you feel that—I know integration was difficult at first, you told me a lot about that. Do you feel that the school systems today are positive or Black students are getting a good education—? | 39:10 |
| Mary Hester Smith | I don't know. I don't go in the schools that much now as I used to when I first retired. I used to do some subbing, but I'm not too sure that Black children are really getting—now, upper class Black kids are advancing, but I'm not too sure about the children who are from lower income. Because I noticed that—now, the Operation Breakthrough, most of the kids are Black. Of course they have a few White children, a few Asians, but those kids over there are really smart and the teachers are interested in them. I can't see—I would like to see somebody take as a master's project to follow a class that finishes Operation Breakthrough, and goes into the school and take that class all the way through high school and see how many of the kids continue to be in school and to do well. Because they are all from lower income class, but they're happy and they enjoy going and they do have a few that are very fidgety, but their attention span is good because I go and read to them every week. | 39:30 |
| Mary Hester Smith | They are really nice bunch of kids and I often wonder what happens to a lot of those kids when they get into the regular schools. The teachers over there seem to be interested in trying to get them to advance. I think some of them are even being taught to read now, but they do learn attention span, they do learn how to get along together, and they do learn to do little projects and things of that sort. Then they have a play area in the classroom where they can play house and stuff like that. They have little mattresses where they can lie down and sleep and they eat their lunch there, and I think they give some of breakfast if they aren't able to have breakfast before they leave home. | 41:14 |
| Mary Hester Smith | I often wonder, why is it they have so much trouble with the kids? But I know one thing. That sometimes, not all of them, but sometimes White teachers can't bear the kids to the extent that they just are rebellious. I know that happened to a lot of the kids who were sent to Rogers-Herr, because Rogers-Herr was really built for the rich Whites. The people who worked at Duke, most of them, and Duke Forest. Rogers-Herr was the only air conditioned school in the city. Then they built the project. They built the Cornwallis project, but then when they integrated all the schools, then the Cornwallis kids had to go to Rogers-Herr. Well, a lot of the Whites just pulled their kids out, but there were some who really wanted to see it work, so they kept them in there. But those same teachers were there, and they just did not like those kids, and they just really felt that they were beneath. And a lot of them felt like they couldn't learn anything. And there were a lot of smart kids out there, and— | 42:21 |
| Nicole Spira | How did the White teachers teach you, and the Black teachers? | 43:56 |
| Mary Hester Smith | Well, I didn't ever have any White teachers except in Ohio. | 44:02 |
| Nicole Spira | When you were teaching in the same school, when you were both teachers, like the interaction between—? | 44:07 |
| Mary Hester Smith | Oh you mean how did they treat us? | 44:11 |
| Nicole Spira | Right. How did they teach you as a fellow teacher? | 44:13 |
| Mary Hester Smith | Well, at first they were very distant. Well, I remember, when we first went to Rogers-Herr, the librarian, she stayed in the principal's office over there to help him. I was right across from the library, so I went to see what they had in there. And when I went in there, when I was back in there, they had opaque projectors, almost one for every room. They had—what do you call those other things that—they don't use them now since they got—? They had some opaque projectors, they had movie machines, they had—I can't think of the things that they used to. But they just had all kind of—they had books. You could get a whole class, you could have your class study one book, one novel. She had never told us anything about any of that. Now I don't know whether she was slipping the books and stuff to the White teachers or what, but so I told her, I said, "Oooh, I didn't know you had all those things in that library." | 44:15 |
| Mary Hester Smith | She said, "Oh, I just haven't had a chance to get them out to the teachers." So I said, "Well, our other librarian," the Black librarian at Shepard, I said, "She made a list of everything that she had in that library," and I said, "Then we could check out what we wanted," and I said, "and we could kind of build out classes around the things that we wanted." After I told her that, she did fix that thing so that we knew what was in there, but I don't know what would've happened if I hadn't slipped back there and found out all that stuff that was in there. Because she—and see one thing, they had all White tables. [indistinct 00:46:39]. When the Black kids would come in there, she would be washing them tables off as soon as they'd leave out. I don't know where she thought that they were dirtying them up or what, but anyway, she washed those tables. | 44:56 |
| Mary Hester Smith | He is. And the kids knew he was afraid so they would cut up because they knew he wouldn't do anything. | 0:01 |
| Nicole Spira | What did he think they were going to do? | 0:10 |
| Mary Hester Smith | I don't know. He had a Black assistant and I know if the kids were even just standing in a group, he ran out there and say, "I think they're getting ready to fight." And he'd make the Black assistant go out there to see if he could—he said, "You make it hard for me." He said, "Because they think I'm the big bulldog." But he was afraid of kids, and the kids didn't do all that much fighting. | 0:11 |
| Mary Hester Smith | But they would get angry because sometimes they'd come in my room and even the White kids say, "Ms. Smith, we got to talk. We got let us talk before we can have class." So I would let them talk because I remember one time that Dean of [indistinct 00:01:01], she hated Black kids. So she came in, and of course they stopped talking and I don't know whether she had stood at door and listened or what, but she said, "Do you suppose if I leave they'll talk again?" So I said, "I don't know you can ask them." So she was kind mad with me because I said it, but I mean she just got on my nerves, always, and kids, lot of time, kids would just do things to aggravate her because they knew that she didn't like Black kids. | 0:49 |
| Mary Hester Smith | Like I remember one little White girl jumped on the Black boy's back who was coming down the step and ooh, she got so mad. She took him in the room and told him, if—told the girl, "Don't you ever let me see you jumping on a nigger's back. And Jack came out and told her because she knew that she hadn't been saying that. Course nothing was done about it, but I mean just things like that. | 1:46 |
| Mary Hester Smith | And then there was some that were very nice, that were very helpful. | 2:20 |
| Nicole Spira | So you have both types of people? | 2:26 |
| Mary Hester Smith | Mm-hmm. Both types of people. And there was some who tried to work with the kids, but then there was some who would let the kids do what they wanted to do. Anything they wanted to do and really wouldn't teach them because I remember one little girl telling me, they said "We wear that teacher so much, he let us use coloring books." So I told her, I said "Coloring books?" And I said, "What grade were you in? Seventh grade?" I said, "Well, I hope you got a good seventh grade education out of coloring books," I said. Because they don't even use that in kindergarten. They let kids draw their own pictures. | 2:26 |
| Mary Hester Smith | And so I told, I said "Don't you realize that you are going to be trying to get the same job that their children are going to try to get?" I said, "And if you don't learn anything, you will not be able to get that job." I said, "Because everybody has to take a test in medical jobs." So she said, "I didn't think about it like that." I said "Well honey you need to think." I said, "Because they thinking while you sleep." And which is true because they knew that if and so—that kind of worries me even today because some kids just seem like they think it's just a hopeless case. They can't learn and then they all end up in jail. It's bad. | 3:13 |
| Nicole Spira | I wanted to ask you before. I remember you had told me when I had asked about [Hey Ty 00:04:19], when they used to have performers and sometimes White people would come to watch you perform. Were there other times that you can remember when there was that kind of interaction? I mean, I know they weren't really interactive, but when White people would come into the Black community and take part in what was going on. | 4:13 |
| Mary Hester Smith | Well now, sometimes we might come down and knock it around the center to see something. But now, those were public dances and they would sit up in the balcony, and if they wanted to see Duke Ellington or some of the other, Fats Waller, some of those real prominent band people. But other than that, I don't think there was too much interaction. Now, Dr. Shepherd would invite every governor to speak at his college, and then he would tell him that if you don't give me the thing you said I want in my school, then my kids will have to go to your school. Of course, they would give them. That's how he got a whole lot of stuff. They used a lot of psychology that—because he would know that children—they didn't want the schools integrated. | 4:16 |
| Mary Hester Smith | And then a lot of the kids who participated in integration, they caught a rare, hard, but it took a certain type of kid that could take stuff like that to be a part of that. Because everybody can't take a whole lot of people being mean to them without reacting. And course at that time, they were trying to teach kids not to react because I don't think that you do kids like that. They're going to react. | 6:06 |
| Nicole Spira | It's different. | 6:48 |
| Mary Hester Smith | Kids are just different. But you have a lot of kids who are going well and if you look at TV sometime, especially on Black programs, you see a lot of intelligent Blacks. But the news media and all seem to want to play up the bad things that people do and stuff. There's good things. There's a lot of good things that are going on and people who are professional and very good professionals. | 6:48 |
| Nicole Spira | How do you feel—during today, how do you think it's changed? I know it's a broad question, but since you came here from— | 7:34 |
| Mary Hester Smith | Well, it's a larger town and it's more integrated because people can live in wherever they want to live now. And I think they live in so many different places until it was really nowhere for the people to run. And at one time, out there—so old farms that was all White and Blacks got out there and lot of Whites moved out. And then, Blacks went in the Hope Valley and some Whites moved out. But I think they stopped doing this much running because no place to go. And I think because they would copy that Blacks, some White would and may have—I don't know how much interaction there is there. I don't they they would each socialize. Doesn't mean they do that much in the home at the side, White people, they didn't [indistinct 00:08:57]. | 7:40 |
| Mary Hester Smith | But one thing about northern White people, they would like individuals, but they didn't particularly like groups. And so therefore, you find that a lot of people in the north and Blacks that move in and move out. And so therefore, you had a whole lot of where Black living anything is a ghetto. Where all people are living together in the same race. Not necessarily just Black, but you get what I mean. | 8:58 |
| Mary Hester Smith | And I remember in Washington when they integrated Washington, a lot of people move out and you go there and the houses are just as nice as they were when they lived. It was really nice. I often say I imagine some of them wish they hadn't even moved. God, but now when people move out to west and Blacks are moving out there too. I mean since they have the law that you can't keep them from buying, if they can afford to go. | 9:54 |
| Mary Hester Smith | So it's different. And of course you have Blacks living everywhere in general. Where this area here, well I mean this section. Not this area because this was all woods, but this section of Durham and you had a Walltown and you had East End and you had Hickstown where those were Black neighborhoods. All were Black. And you see Walltown, East End, Hickstown, and I can't think any. But anyway, you just had really Black neighborhoods. | 10:28 |
| Mary Hester Smith | But now, you don't have that much. Now some Blacks are moving back in this neighborhood. People have moved out and gone somewhere else. Just like my neighbor right in back of me, Justine Clemen. She used to be on County Commissions and she was on the Board of Education. But now she has moved to Atlanta because her children. She and her husband, older and he's not too well. So they moved to Atlanta to a retirement home because their children. Most of them live in—no one has bought their house but the Duncan's died and somebody has bought their house and the Steward's died. | 11:18 |
| Mary Hester Smith | Steward was the first person on the—let me see. Was it City Council? One of the first Blacks and he lived on Mason there. Well, he and his wife there saw a Black minister has bought that home. And then the people who owned the donut shop and then her husband became a judge because he was a lawyer so he became a judge. The Peterson's and the minister bought their house. | 12:14 |
| Mary Hester Smith | And Mr. Spiden here taught at North Carolina sanction, and they lived up there so people came here for him from New York, I think, and somewhere, and they bought that house in Dixon. I think they had originally lived in Durham. They went up north and worked, and so they bought that house and kept it—they really had kept it real nice. | 13:01 |
| Mary Hester Smith | And then the neighborhood's changing because people are dying now. See this is a whole neighborhood in this area. And the people who built that house, both of them died. Son thought about it and he's in the nursing home now so I don't know what they're going do with that house. | 13:37 |
| Mary Hester Smith | But as the people die out, other people seem to come and [indistinct 00:14:09]. | 14:03 |
| Nicole Spira | So you think the Black community's staying together? | 14:07 |
| Mary Hester Smith | Yeah, it will be a Black community because there are some people who prefer to live in Black communities. | 14:16 |
| Mary Hester Smith | But a lot of new people are coming in and of course, they live wherever they want to live. And they're coming in from other places where they were already integrated. A lot of people who work out and reach and join in, they just they [indistinct 00:14:44]. | 14:20 |
| Nicole Spira | So do you think today, race relations, it's getting better? Do you see it? How do you see it? | 14:39 |
| Mary Hester Smith | I don't know. Sometimes I think it's more devious and undercover. I don't know. | 14:51 |
| Nicole Spira | Like subtle racism? | 15:13 |
| Mary Hester Smith | Kind of subtle because I just look at different things that happened and a lot of times, even Blacks who really have made it—not just like the Governor of Virginia Wild, he went somewhere and the man asked him to pick up his bag and care for him. I mean, he didn't know he was a governor, but just thinking that Blacks are—work in service jobs and then see a lot of things that too is, people are not getting as good a jobs as they should because see they using a lot of temporary jobs and they don't have to give benefits, you don't have to have any retirement, and—well they had to have social security, but they don't have to have health benefits and things like that. | 15:14 |
| Mary Hester Smith | And they get around and they're doing that in big business. And it's bad because people really don't have any roots. And you never know when you going not be there. It's just temporary. | 16:19 |
| Mary Hester Smith | Go there one day and they say "We don't have anything for you to do. You got to go home." And see, I don't like that because at one time, if a person was working at a certain place, they were going to work their lifetime and they would be able to plan on how they would live after they retired. | 16:37 |
| Mary Hester Smith | But see what this thing now, I don't know where that has come up, why it's been so that people can use temps to man their businesses and it makes it hard and especially hard for people who—well it's making it hard for the people who have a good education and can't get anything but a temporary job. And it makes it harder for those who have none. Beause see most of the jobs for the uneducated are service jobs and they don't want the minimum wage to go but so high. They fight that every time, but who can live off of four seventy five, five fifteen an hour? If they're going to have such low wages, they need to bring prices down because it makes it hard for people. | 17:03 |
| Mary Hester Smith | Course I do think this Habitat for Humanity is good because it does make affordable houses for people who wouldn't be able to afford. | 18:22 |
| Mary Hester Smith | And I really admire Carter. He seems like he gets done more than any president too, because he's still going around helping bill Habitat for Humanity and pushing that program. And he was just too honest for man to be a president because he wouldn't be like a politician. But it's a sad affair when we just got to have people in there going to say one thing and do something else. You can't. So it's really sad. | 18:37 |
| Nicole Spira | Well is there anything you'd like to add? | 19:20 |
| Mary Hester Smith | Yeah, no. I guess not. | 19:22 |
| Nicole Spira | Nothing special? Nothing special? | 19:22 |
| Mary Hester Smith | No, but I've enjoyed meeting you and talk to— | 19:32 |
| Nicole Spira | It's been so interesting to listen to your life because I'm actually, I'm a history major so I can learn about everything, but when you say it, all the stuff I've learned out a book into reality. | 19:34 |
| Mary Hester Smith | Yeah. Are you planning to be a historian or are you planning to teach or what? | 19:49 |
| Nicole Spira | I might want to be a lawyer, but that's—we'll see how that goes. | 19:56 |
| Nicole Spira | I was also hoping—I don't know if you have any pamphlets or pictures also to borrow [indistinct 00:20:09] | 20:00 |
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