Elaine Jones interview recording, 1997 December 02
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| Amy Murnick | I wanted to figure out if we didn't have to wear it like that. | 0:30 |
| Elaine Jones | No, that's just— | 0:31 |
| Amy Murnick | Okay. Last time—this conversation might be a little more focused on certain things. Last time you had mentioned a couple things that really interested me like when you talked about the schools becoming integrated. What was it like between the teachers? What type of relationships were formed? | 0:31 |
| Elaine Jones | In the school at which I taught, we had a very, very close relationship early on before the schools were integrated, very close, close. It was more like family relationships that you formed. Many of them still exists from that initial experience that I had in the schools. We continued to have some ongoing relationship. That was back in the '60s when this integration occurred. | 0:50 |
| Elaine Jones | Since then, we've had reunions of various kinds, get togethers just to keep in touch with those people with whom we had formed very deep relationships and friendships. After integration occurred, that family feeling did not seem to exist with the same intensity that it had previously. We got along well. We had, as best as I can remember, no conflicts, but the deepness of the relationships just wasn't as intense as it had been prior to that. | 1:32 |
| Elaine Jones | In the school at which I worked both before and after the schools were integrated, we used to just do things together. We'd have Christmas parties. We'd just have lots of fun. If someone was sick, sometimes we'd form, after a PTA meeting for example, most of us would decide we are going to go by and just sing some songs or chat with the person who was confined. I just can't describe the kind of relationship that we had. | 2:27 |
| Elaine Jones | Not that everybody was just closely friendly with everybody in the school, but you did form some very deep, lasting relationships. But everybody tried to be as cooperative as possible, supportive as possible. If you were having difficulty coming up with ideas for your classroom activities, I know in my school, which was a union school, I think I described to you grades one through twelve, the elementary teachers were more close. Of course, the upper grade teachers were more close because they had so much more in common. But we helped each other. That was just no problem for us. | 3:09 |
| Elaine Jones | I've seen the time when a teacher who was somewhat shaky about how her classroom activity was going prior to the Southern associations coming into accredit the school, we just as a team go from room to room and sit down and talk with the teacher and give her suggestions as to things that she might do to make her classroom, as well as her instructional program, more productive and successful. | 4:03 |
| Amy Murnick | Is this post-integration? | 4:40 |
| Elaine Jones | Pre. | 4:42 |
| Amy Murnick | Oh, pre. | 4:42 |
| Elaine Jones | We'd do that kind of thing without any reservations. If one teacher did manuscripting better than somebody else, they didn't hesitate to ask you to do something for them to help get the bulletin board display ready or something, do the lettering for the bulletin board or that kind of thing. You never felt as if they were imposing their responsibility upon you. You just felt willing to do it. Following integration, I don't ever recall that kind of relationship existing. There were some differences pre and post. | 4:44 |
| Amy Murnick | How do you think it affected the children coming back and all of a sudden, did they understand? | 5:36 |
| Elaine Jones | No, maybe that was good To a degree. It happened so rapidly that they didn't have a chance to become frightened prior to the actual beginning of the integrated school situation. As I think I mentioned to you, it occurred over a Christmas holiday period of about two weeks when all of the reassignments were sent out through the mail for teachers and students. That was the only notification they had as to where they would report after the holidays. I find that sometimes things are less painful if you just act on them as quickly as possible or make whatever changes are necessary as quickly as possible. The longer you have, the more you hesitate, the more you become frightened, the more difficult it becomes. | 5:45 |
| Elaine Jones | I think it went relatively well for our children. Children adjust to change, although it was shocking to them to have had, say, one teacher prior to the holidays and one particular group of children and to find all of that had changed in a short period of time. They are resilient and they bounce back and they adjust. I think it was the adults who had the greater difficulty, both parents and staff, in making adjustments. Children adjust. I don't recall them after the first day or so and once they saw the new setting and met their new teachers and their new classmates, they went on from there. There was no great problem. | 6:49 |
| Amy Murnick | You said there was no incidents at your school. Can you recall anything happening in other schools can you remember? | 7:52 |
| Elaine Jones | Not after that first day. Now the principal might have encountered some difficulty or individual teachers might have, but there was no uprising experience or feelings of distress or frightening feelings that I recall that existed after that first-day trauma. | 7:58 |
| Elaine Jones | There were a few parents who continued to come and to guard their children for a day or two. Once they were not encouraged by the principal or teachers to just be in that school all day long watching over their little brood, they adjusted. I think, as I mentioned to you, I thought the principal did an excellent job of setting the stage for it. Those people who would become very volatile and created some unnecessary problems for the school in general, children and teachers, once they were discouraged in doing that, and the setting wasn't right for them in which they could do it, I think they adjusted to the idea. | 8:29 |
| Elaine Jones | I remember some men who were very, very vocal that first day and were just going to interrupt things and just lay down a mandate as to what they were going to accept and not accept. I think the way that the principal handled it in that initial setting in the auditorium, they were discouraged from that. Then they didn't see a lot of other people doing that. They didn't feel support from a lot of other parents. They were not encouraged to continue. | 9:37 |
| Elaine Jones | We had some very, very supportive parents who were only concerned that their children be provided the best possible educational setting and people who were willing to make sure that their children got a good, basic education. They were very supportive and willing to work in parent groups and do little things that made the setting warm and receptive for everybody. | 10:14 |
| Elaine Jones | Those of us who remained at that school were fortunate in that we still felt the support of the principal with whom we had become accustomed. We didn't have a brand new principal to deal with whose whole philosophy would've been different from what we had been accustomed to. We knew him quite well and we felt comfortable. We were able to continue. Then new staff coming in were given the feeling at the outset that they would have his support. Those of us who remained were trying to be warm and trying to create that kind of atmosphere in which people felt safe. | 10:50 |
| Elaine Jones | It went well, I think. It was surprising by the end of the school year the kind of feelings that people generated and the appreciation they showed for what had occurred. It wasn't a real difficult time after that first day for me. | 11:42 |
| Amy Murnick | I just couldn't imagine. What it had been like on that morning. | 12:08 |
| Elaine Jones | Had anybody told me that I'd have to experience that kind of thing, I would never have believed it. But as I said, it happened so quickly that people didn't have a chance to talk with little groups and form little oppositional kinds of attitudes. Some people might have gotten together and plotted and planned what they were going to do, but it didn't work out. I think the shortness of time in which this whole thing occurred was an asset. It really helped. Had we had a year or so to think about it, I think it would have not gone as smoothly. | 12:12 |
| Amy Murnick | What about other occurrences within the Civil Rights Movement? You had been speaking about, how, I'm not sure, you said when someone went to jail. You were saying how when kids were in jail, the parents would go down, not in jail, but— | 13:04 |
| Elaine Jones | They would stand around the jail and wave at their kids up in the windows of the jail. It gave you a strong sense of pride. They were doing something we hadn't either the times had not been right for, or we had not been willing to do on our own. But the young people, I say youth has some baggage with it as well as some strengths about it. | 13:23 |
| Elaine Jones | At a young age, you don't think through all of the possibilities of what could occur. You just act. For that reason, our young kids were out there. My kids were too young to have been involved at that time. But the younger teenage, well I guess maybe as early as — I don't think you had any kids below thirteen maybe involved, but they were kids from your communities, kids whom you knew. You knew their parents and you wanted to be there to support these kids. | 14:02 |
| Elaine Jones | At that point in time, whereas we might have been afraid to be involved in some situations of that type previously, we no longer had that fear. It caused us to lose what fears we might have had. You said, "The heck with this, I'm going to support these kids no matter what happens." I remember the Sunday when a large number of our kids were jailed. I had left church and my friends, a couple of friends and I got in somebody's car, I don't know whose car. | 14:44 |
| Elaine Jones | We said, "Let's go." We did. One Sunday we rode out on 15-501 to say, "Excuse me. Go ahead, go ahead because you are dressed." We went out on the boulevard where the kids were sitting down. I think the place was, I believe it was Howard Johnson's, some little restaurant out there. The kids were doing a sit-down in this restaurant. We went out there. | 15:31 |
| Elaine Jones | I think on another Sunday we went down to the jailhouse and just stood around and waved and hollered up at them and let them know we were there. It created in us a sense our pride for our kids that they were willing to do this. We knew some of the hardships. We knew about some of the police beatings because the sit-down movement started in Greensboro at Woolworths. That was the first one. | 16:08 |
| Elaine Jones | Then it spread to Woolworths and other places all around. We knew some of the things they would have to endure. That was our only way of supporting them, just being there. We knew that if they were willing to take the beatings, there was nothing we could do about it. We couldn't stop it. We had no way of stopping that should it occur. But we wanted them to know that our hearts were with them. We did that. | 16:48 |
| Elaine Jones | People did other things and raised little monies, all to support different little activities maybe then which they were going to be involved, that kind of stuff. But there wasn't very much you could do. | 17:27 |
| Amy Murnick | Where were you when Martin Luther King was shot? | 17:43 |
| Elaine Jones | I'm trying to think. I think when I heard about it, I was actually here. I don't think I was away from home at the time. I don't think I was at home at the time it occurred. But when I learned about it, I was here. Now I remember with John Kennedy's death, we were at school. I was at school. The same principal had turned on the intercom system and said there was some very important news. We heard about that or when the first spaceship went up. You remember all of those kinds of things and you followed it all day, twenty-four hours a day. You just stayed glued to the TV set in both instances. | 17:44 |
| Elaine Jones | When Martin Luther King died, I just remember having, I'd just been numb almost in both those situations. Not as much so with Robert Kennedy's death, assassination, but with John Kennedy's, I guess by that time I guess I had experienced enough assassinations to become numbed to some degree. They were all just unbelievable events and just remember just being glued to the television day and night. | 18:49 |
| Amy Murnick | How do you think that affected the Durham community and its push for equal rights? | 19:38 |
| Elaine Jones | The Martin Luther King event? As with all communities, it left such a void because you just felt helpless. You just felt as if this person, a one-in-a-billion people, whom you felt had done so much, who had not done it selfishly or for any personal acclaim, but really felt that God's will was being done through his efforts. I don't think he had any idea when he set out to get involved in the movement and Rosa Parks sit down on the bus and he was asked to be a civil rights leader in his community, I don't think he had any notion of what it would entail or how far it would go or how successful it would be or how much power even he had. | 19:46 |
| Elaine Jones | One of my ex-neighbors before we moved into this house, had been a classmate of his in Massachusetts before, I think she was in graduate school too. We had talked about him as a person. I felt as if I knew a little bit about him as an individual. Although he was a good person, even then, her surprise at his getting into this kind of leadership position made it, it seemed a little unreal that he was the catalyst for so much that did take place. | 21:12 |
| Elaine Jones | I think it affected people. Everybody knew, all Blacks and many whites in the community, knew about what he had done and how effective it had been in getting some changes to begin to occur. Not that he was a perfect person because all men have clay feet, all people have flaws. We weren't looking at it, but we felt that deep down he had some special blessings to even protect him to that point in time because I don't see how he managed to live through some of it. I really don't know, except for the grace of God. I really don't think that any earthly powers that he had or any special things except his special gifts and God's plan to use him to achieve some things. I don't see how he lived through much of it. | 22:06 |
| Amy Murnick | What—oh. | 23:31 |
| Elaine Jones | I just think it had a powerful effect on us in particular. Not that we worshiped him, but we were so appreciative of what he had been able to accomplish. | 23:33 |
| Amy Murnick | What was your feeling or anybody within the community feeling about Malcolm X and his ideas? | 23:51 |
| Elaine Jones | Now, I can only speak for myself because the views vary. Those who supported him and felt strongly about Malcolm and those who were totally opposed to his philosophy and all and the Muslim religion was just really beginning to spread. Initially, I think I didn't think too much of it really. Initially, I didn't because I didn't agree with everything that all of their philosophy and their beliefs. I think that when Malcolm X went to Mecca, went to learn more about the Muslim religion as seen through the eyes of people who were not of African descent, I mean, they're all of African descent, let me say that. My grandson goes through it and he says, "But, that's not Africa." I said, "Yes, it is Africa. All of these people come from Africa." | 23:57 |
| Elaine Jones | But when he went there and spent time there and he began to see things somewhat differently, then I could appreciate to a greater degree that religion as he began to view it, which was somewhat different from the way that others had viewed it and what their beliefs were and their hatred for what they felt had been done to them and to hate. I saw it as a religion that had as its bases hating other people. I think hate can destroy. I think hate can destroy. We get angry. We don't agree, but I think the degree to which many of the early Muslims—and yet I understood where they were coming from. | 25:31 |
| Elaine Jones | I could understand how they felt maybe as they did, though I didn't agree. I began to listen more to what Malcolm, his views. Then when he and Martin Luther King had had some meetings so that there was more of a meeting of the minds of both religious, well, religious and non-religious Black community people, then I began to respect many of his views more. | 26:47 |
| Elaine Jones | I guess early on I had not. I can't even remember at this point what the name of the leader was, Elijah Muhammad. Some of the things that I had learned or had heard that had come out of that community were disturbing to me. Then as Malcolm began to view it somewhat differently, then I began to be able to accept some things that he was saying more so than I had in the past. | 27:23 |
| Amy Murnick | What was the things? | 28:06 |
| Elaine Jones | Well, as best as I saw it then many of the Muslims who had come from the Elijah Muhammad base were more prone to violence. I didn't see Malcolm as being the kind of person who was as willing to accept violence blindly. I think he was a thinker. He studied deeply so that there wasn't as much confusion about some of the things that some Muslims had begun to believe about their religion and to practice. I don't know if I'm making sense. Anyway, but it gave me a different view of him as an individual, a little bit different. | 28:12 |
| Amy Murnick | Do you remember the boycotts in Durham in 1968? I think it's stores. | 29:18 |
| Elaine Jones | Yes, I remember it. As best as I remember, I don't know how effective they had become because they weren't like the Montgomery bus boycotts. They weren't that severe and long lasting and all. But I do remember some of the boycotts of stores and places of business that— | 29:28 |
| Amy Murnick | Was there a community leader who— | 29:55 |
| Elaine Jones | I don't recall a community leader. I remember that the NAACP and some of the Committee on the Affairs of Black People were quite active in different ways about regarding protests or meetings. They had some impact on Black community life. We had strong community leaders. I think, as I told you, because we were restricted to certain areas, we became strong. We had some very good leadership at that time. Some of the businessmen and professional people in the community were key figures in developing what was called the Committee on Black Affairs. I guess that's what it was originally called. They did some very good, sound— | 29:57 |
| Elaine Jones | About political things, issues about educational matters. In many ways, the Black church has been a leader in its own way because many Blacks depended on the church to keep them apprised of things that were happening that they maybe, as individuals, couldn't interpret and be aware of for themselves. And so they counted the Church has always been a major, performed a leadership kind of role in the Black community, I would say. | 0:01 |
| Amy Murnick | You say that you were restricted to a certain area and you said before, there's nothing you can do about the things that were happening, really. | 0:51 |
| Elaine Jones | The times were not right prior to this. And then I guess we, as Blacks felt that the older, middle aged and older individuals would be the ones who would lead the children of Israel out of the wilderness, but it didn't end up being that way. It was the younger people who had the vision and the determination and the lack of fear for their own personal lives that made it. They, who delivered us rather than the older generations. | 1:02 |
| Elaine Jones | Times had not been right because even though, maybe in some of the major cities, you didn't find as much violence, but there was violence. At least there was violence, but you didn't, it was covered up. I'll put it that way. But in rural communities and smaller communities, as does exist this day, and when I say that I'm really being emphatic because people think that those were olden times. That was then and this is now, but a lot has not changed. | 1:47 |
| Amy Murnick | Definitely. | 2:25 |
| Elaine Jones | It has not changed. And the more rural the communities, the more people are able to get away with certain things. And I don't know if I mentioned to you, I was talking someone not long ago about some issues that took place, Chaney and Schwerner and the Mississippi case. But before that, there were cases like the Emmett Till case, which you probably have never heard. | 2:26 |
| Elaine Jones | Where a young Black, I saw some pictures of this on TV fairly recently, a Black teenager, maybe fourteen-ish had gone down to spend time with his grandparents in Mississippi and as teenage boys do, he probably whistled at this woman and she told her husband and they lynched this child. I can see. I can actually see the pictures that were taken of him. They had chained him down and put concrete weights on his body and had drowned him after having beaten him. | 3:07 |
| Elaine Jones | Then there was situations all around us where these kinds of things occurred, but nobody—that was reported nationwide, worldwide. But there were things of that nature that happened every day around you. So this is why I said the times were not right, because if a person even spoke, as they say, "Boy, speak, don't talk back to me." But you had not a chance to express yourself. In many situations and with the police or the city leaders or town leaders, you dared not voice your opinion. | 3:48 |
| Elaine Jones | And if a Black male—and people wonder today, what has happened to the Black male and it's generations of a lot of things, abuse, and that they don't even understand. The younger generation doesn't even understand what has happened to him. They don't even know, but I can just remember the respectable Black males during my youth. Older males, during my youth and the ways people would talk to them, disrespect, lack of respect for them. And they subservient kinds or roles that they had to play. And anything that someone said about them was taken as fact. They weren't given a chance to defend themselves or to protect themselves in any way. So all they could do was to just go out and earn, especially if they had no education. | 4:40 |
| Elaine Jones | And even with education, you were still a boy in people's eyes. And that is humiliating. That is humiliating, to say the least. And so all kinds of things are a part of the Black male history. And this female has always had a stronger, more dominant role. And that goes back to the initial years that slavery started in this country and she was treated differently. And so some of that heritage, it continues until we somehow the cycle can be broken. | 5:59 |
| Elaine Jones | And I don't know how. At this point it doesn't look so hopeful. It doesn't look hopeful because over the years, with the introduction of drugs into the culture and the lack of education and the insecurities that people feel and all of that, and the kind of pit in which people fall, because all of these external things exist and historically what has happened, effect and you don't know how it got to be that way. It just gets to be so entangled until you can't put your finger on it. But I know in my heart, I know that all of these sorts of things are a part of what exists at this moment. I don't know how it is specifically what it has done or how it can be undone. I just know that it exists. | 6:55 |
| Amy Murnick | We were listening to this interview. Our teacher had of this lady at Tuskegee and she was saying, her and her friends had driven to the closest town to go to church. And they got pulled over by a cop. And they were told that they had to go down to court the following week. So she showed up dressed nicely in her Sunday clothes. | 7:59 |
| Elaine Jones | And the people are insulted then. | 8:22 |
| Amy Murnick | The male showed up wearing overalls undone. He put dirt on his face. And whenever the judge asked him something, he acted dumb and because it was what the judge wanted. And they only had to pay a little fine. Whereas the female, the lady was like, "I couldn't have ever done that. I had to be—" | 8:25 |
| Elaine Jones | I'll tell you something happened. This is something I know factually. And I'm not saying this—you are a Duke student. And Duke often wonders about the relationship between the Duke community and the town or the outer community. And lots—when my children were small, I was not working. If they were ill, I took them to the outpatient clinic at Duke. They were always clean, always as well dressed as, I don't want to say fancily dressed, but neatly dressed. And I guess I was able to articulate some things that maybe some people might not have been able to articulate quite as well about my kids. | 8:47 |
| Elaine Jones | That was as great a difference in the way my children were treated as the person sitting next to me. And this was obvious to me, very obvious. And I was spoken to in a different tone. But many times we talk about things—this is just something that I observed. We talk about why Blacks maybe mistrust people who are not Black. Sometimes I took my daughter—I received a card saying to bring her back to the clinic. Well, naturally that's alarming. What does she need to come back for? Got her back there. And this is the outpatient clinic now so you don't have to pay as much, if you pay according to your ability to pay us. | 9:48 |
| Elaine Jones | And I guess at that time, I didn't know that you needed to ask a lot of questions. So they told me to just get her undressed. And so this intern or resident came in and he knew as much about getting a blood sample, intravenous insertion of the needle as I did. And so I stood there and I watch, and my baby was crying and he wasn't able to get any blood sample. | 10:48 |
| Elaine Jones | And so I just said, "Excuse me, one minute. Let me just take her back to the dressing room." I took my baby back there, dressed her and they haven't seen me since. She is now forty-two. Less than a year, about a year. They haven't seen me since in that clinic. But it is just that you feel as if you are being used, that you have no voice. And when the Tuskegee experiment occurred with the syphilis study that you just feel as if you are a chattel. | 11:20 |
| Elaine Jones | You're not people sometimes. And this was not anything really major, but I was owed the knowledge. They needed to inform me of what they were going to do. And later I found out they were doing some studies. So I surmised that they were going to use this baby in their study, but over my dead body. So it's that kind of thing that people over the years you learn to mistrust because you don't think anybody has your interest at heart. They're interested in their own accomplishment of their purpose, whatever it is. And so you do develop— | 12:00 |
| Elaine Jones | Some years ago, this hadn't been that many years ago, five or six, maybe five. I was taking an elderly lady who was not that well informed about healthcare necessarily out to do—we thought she'd had a stroke at church. And so I took her—and we were friendly with each other anyway. So I took her to emergency. They asked me to bring her back that next day because she hadn't had a stroke. | 12:50 |
| Elaine Jones | So it was at the time when the new residents were coming on duty that Monday morning and I had her there at eight or eight thirty. We stayed there until almost four o'clock. No one had seen her. And the residents were so excited about seeing each other again, after their little break. And so they were chatting and whatnot. Finally, just before I spoke to one of the supervising nurses in that same outpatient clinic and I told her about my concern. We had sat through lunchtime, we've just been there and been there and been there. And so this particular person told me that I should write a letter. I was really livid. | 13:21 |
| Elaine Jones | About three o'clock in the afternoon, there was a lady standing there with no help. She was by herself, unable to care of herself. She was had a walker. She'd been left there I guess, by a family or someone. And I just kept seeing her standing so I walked over and said, "May I help you?" And all needed was to get to the bathroom. And she'd been standing. I had been observing her, but nobody had paid her any attention. And you get to feel like you are a piece of meat. Nobody really cares. If you don't say anything, nobody will say anything. So I helped her into the bathroom. | 14:15 |
| Elaine Jones | Then maybe about three thirty, or quarter of four, they called the name of this lady whom I had taken. And we went into the examining room and the same little doctor who had seen her, I think in the emergency the day before, came in and he was talking, but he's talking up here. The lady whom I took is understanding at this level. And the questions, the manner in which he was questioning her was not something that she understood. And I often thought about the fact I said, had I not been there as an interpreter, this lady would've gotten lost in shuffle. | 14:59 |
| Elaine Jones | And then he said, "Get her undressed," as if I was the aide, "Get her undressed and then we'll examine her." I didn't respond to that. I just said, "Okay." He went outside, met all of his friends, fellow residents and they were seeing each other from the—and they were just having the best time out there. And we sat and we sat and we sat and they were talking about being back in the Ivory Tower, Duke. And all of this time I was sitting there just about to die, about to explode. And we sat there and we sat there and we sat there. | 15:52 |
| Elaine Jones | Finally, I got up and I'm not a person who customarily loses her temper. I got up, went to the door and they say when the Black woman does this, I put both hands on my hips. And I looked at the group of them. I didn't open my mouth. I just looked. In disdain with my eyes. And then I turned around and went back inside and he came in. And it was just that kind of thing that you endure for forty, fifty, sixty years that it gets deeper. It gets more raw. It's just to get you to understand feelings of some people. Some don't handle it as well as I. | 16:33 |
| Amy Murnick | I was just about to ask you, do you think it made you more patient or do you think it boils up inside until— | 17:42 |
| Elaine Jones | I don't know. I see things totally differently from the way that I did when I was twenty. I guess at this point in time, maybe when I was twenty, I wouldn't have said anything. I would've been mad inside, but I wouldn't have said anything. I wouldn't have done anything. At this point in my life, I feel as if I don't say anything now, when am I going to say something? Either act on or say whatever. So I came home that night and I had worked in school system, a young lady who used to do a lot of typing. [buzzing obscures dialogue] | 17:52 |
| Elaine Jones | "—you sure you want to say?" And so some things I did tone down, but I tried to get them to understand—I sent it to the head of that department and tried to get them to understand from a poor patient's point of view how they are made to feel. You feel as if you are not able to afford the best medical care in the first place, so that doesn't help your esteem. | 18:51 |
| Elaine Jones | Then when you are shuffled around or overlooked from eight until almost four o'clock in the afternoon, you're tired, you're hungry, you're everything. How that must make you feel. Then to hear the residents outside the door talking about how great it's to be back in the Ivory Tower. Of course, she probably didn't relate to what the Ivory Tower was, but all of these things, this is just in the course of one day of your life. | 19:25 |
| Elaine Jones | This is not all of those other days that you encounter different situations that hurt you in the same way, but it just made me angry. And I just felt as if I didn't say it, I would explode. If I hadn't said it, they would never know. Not that it's going to cause them to change much, but they will know. So I did get a response, a written response thanking me for, but denying some portions of it, but it did at least let me know that somebody there knew. And I think that the younger people today are more willing to say whatever it is in whatever crude way it is. And that it is not being vulgar, whatever doesn't help much, but this is the way that they know to do it. And so they're rebelling and showing their anger and their unwillingness to accept. | 20:00 |
| Elaine Jones | Whereas during those years we didn't have as much choice back when I was growing up. We didn't have as much choice we couldn't. Had I spoken out to, say a clerk in the store, who's to say, I might not be here today. So you knew that the times weren't right then. In the sixties they became more right. But I don't think we handled all of that as a nation very well because we are almost right back at the point at which we were, when the Civil Rights Movement really was in full bloom. In many ways, we don't see, we see some changes. We see some economic changes. We see some educational changes for some small segments of the population, but still basically you cannot legislate what's in people's hearts. | 21:09 |
| Elaine Jones | And so we haven't worked on in the kinds of ways that really help people to see the need to change or how important it is that all people better understand each other and are willing to maybe take less for themselves in some regards. I don't mean in economic terms, but to be able to give some. Take some and give some, that's what I guess I'm saying. I don't know whether I'm making any sense at all. I don't know whether I am. | 22:24 |
| Amy Murnick | You had mentioned one time you were driving with your children and your son wanted to eat somewhere. | 23:11 |
| Elaine Jones | Yeah. I think it was S and W cafeteria, one of those cafeterias where the current police station now, it's this. | 23:19 |
| Amy Murnick | Do you remember the first time you could eat somewhere? The first time sitting down eating somewhere where you hadn't been able to? | 23:29 |
| Elaine Jones | I don't really. Probably Woolworth. Probably. And I say that because Woolworth stands out in my mind as one of the places where the first boycotts occurred. And I do recall some years, maybe after those sit downs eating in Woolworth's. So probably then I did finally eat in that cafeteria. Eventually. I don't know how long after that incident when my son asked me about it that it happened, but I did eat that. | 23:37 |
| Amy Murnick | What stands out most in your mind over, with the Civil Rights Movement, any one particular incident that has maybe left an impact on you? Or person? | 24:29 |
| Elaine Jones | I think there were so many things just seeing the police brutality and the use of dogs on crowds, the bombing of the churches in Alabama, where the girls were killed on a Sunday morning, the drowning of Emmett Till, the assassination of Martin Luther King, the marches where the police dogs were used, so all of those things left the impressions. I don't know of any—the original March in Washington at which some of Martin Luther King's more powerful speeches were recorded. | 24:45 |
| Amy Murnick | Do you remember hearing that speech? | 25:41 |
| Elaine Jones | Watched it all day that day. Hello, excuse me. This is Miss— | 25:41 |
| Speaker 3 | How you doing today? [INTERRUPTION] | 25:44 |
| Elaine Jones | —talked about the events. Oh, that day of the March. I remember it as if I were there because I watched all day the throngs of people and the speeches. And the different speeches that various individuals made, Martin Luther King's speech. So those things I will remember. | 25:47 |
| Amy Murnick | It must be so amazing. I was looking through newspapers the other day from when Lincoln was assassinated, just to be able to touch a newspaper. That's so interesting. | 26:22 |
| Elaine Jones | I know. | 26:32 |
| Amy Murnick | I mean, not that I would ever hope that we live through anything that significant, I mean, definitely significant, but not that tragic. | 26:34 |
| Elaine Jones | Yeah. Yeah. | 26:44 |
| Amy Murnick | I guess the Berlin Wall. | 26:45 |
| Elaine Jones | Yeah. Yeah. The coming down of the Berlin— | 26:47 |
| Amy Murnick | Your generation seems so— | 26:50 |
| Elaine Jones | Yeah, yeah. So much. And I know Oprah's doing, I guess it's sort of a journalistic kind of thing, which she has visited—it might have taken place last week and I might have missed it, visited this old plantation and people don't understand sometimes. And Oprah is a crier, just like I am. She'll cry at the drop over hat, but some things just touch you so deeply. And when she was describing her feelings while being there—and sometimes people don't feel that. I don't think they feel quite that, what it does to you emotionally, but just being at a place where these things occurred. And someone telling you what this represents, and this is where so and so, and it just touches you deeply, it touches you deeply. | 26:53 |
| Elaine Jones | Did I tell you about my father being from Jamaica and went on a cruise and we were just outside Haiti? Well, this is some years ago, went on one of the Caribbean cruises and Haiti was a place to remember. But then when we had gotten back on board ship and the natives were trying to sell some of their wares—there is one of the things I purchased. And we had gone on the island and had paid, they sort of barter bargain for prices and all. And then I bought a large statue that I had and a carving and got back on board. | 28:05 |
| Elaine Jones | And the person who was in charge of these young boys who were on the little boat had driven to try to continue to sell items, crafts. And when we got out there and we were looking down into the water at these kids trying to sell to people up in the ship, still trying to make a sale of the items such as that. And the group of people who were bargaining with the people in the boat were trying to buy these items. | 29:03 |
| Elaine Jones | And they said, "How much? How much?" From up above, "How much do you want?" And maybe they'd say, "Ten dollars." And the person up there would say, "No, no, no, no, no." And they'd say, "Maybe eight dollars." "No, no, no, no, no, no, no." And by that time I started to cry. And my reason for crying was that whenever the people in the boat could get the people up on the ship to decide on a price, the person in the ship would throw his money down. These kids had to dive down into the water. | 29:51 |
| Amy Murnick | That's terrible. | 30:36 |
| Elaine Jones | My heart just broke. It broke. I could not—and somebody standing there looking at me wouldn't understand might have, and I don't think he ever had to do that kind. | 30:39 |
| Elaine Jones | —but to have a little money. And then half the money that he was going to recover from the water would not be his. It would go to the man whose boat they were on, and the people who manufactured the items, who produced them, and maybe the kids would get a few cents, change to take home to their families. | 0:01 |
| Amy Murnick | Did your father ever tell you stories? | 0:25 |
| Elaine Jones | No, nothing like that, but I could just [indistinct 00:00:31] do that kind of thing just to earn a few cents for their families to help make a way for their families to have food and whatnot. And I just imagine the rest of the world taking advantage. It happens every day. When you think about the sweatshops with Nike and all of these people endorse these products make millions of dollars, billions and millions of dollars. And the people who work in these shops make fifty cents or a—it hurts. It hurts. But that's the way the world has been. I don't expect it to change. | 0:26 |
| Elaine Jones | I really don't expect it to change overnight or ever. But it just hurts when you see people having been used. | 1:32 |
| Amy Murnick | How could values change so much? | 1:44 |
| Elaine Jones | But people have been this way since the beginning. As my mother said, since the beginning of time, it [indistinct 00:02:00] now that it has not changed than we were before the communication were available so that you can see things on TV and see people working in the sweatshops and see [indistinct 00:02:22]. Owners want them to produce. But it's been happening and it's going to continue to happen because money is the bottom line, power and money. And as long as that is true, and as long as man lives, there will be that thrust to have more and more of those two things, money and power. | 1:47 |
| Elaine Jones | And so that's where we end up, not having any consideration for anybody else because we want it all for ourselves. I think I might have mentioned to you, "God bless me, my wife, our two children, us four and no more." [indistinct 00:03:07] it is. But those are the kinds of things that are in my mind when I reminisce. I'm trying to understand mankind, which I'll never do. | 2:51 |
| Amy Murnick | When you take the integration example, you grew up going to an all Black school, the school you taught is all Black, did you want the ultimate goal to be integration and equal rights or were you happy? | 3:29 |
| Elaine Jones | I think that I was misled as many of us were into thinking and feeling that integration would solve a multitude of sins, solve the problems that resulted from not having equality or facilities. I, however, now know that that was not the answer. And as I said, you cannot legislate feelings and attitudes. And until much is done in our hearts to improve or to change so that we are truly concerned about our fellow man, our neighbor, our whomever, and making certain that we don't mistreat or gain at someone else's expense, then none of that is going to change anything. | 3:50 |
| Elaine Jones | It is not going to change. And I don't know what happened during that period because much was done, not any of it could have been done without the involvement of people of different races. That whole movement was based on people seeing that things had not been as they should have been and wanting to make them right. And so it took people from all levels, all strata to be sort of involved in that whole movement. It couldn't have been done by Blacks. There was no way. It had to take people of all cultures, politicians, clergy, ordinary housewives, young teenagers, children, small children. | 5:02 |
| Elaine Jones | In some of the pictures that you'll see of those movements, you'll see little kids in the mix in a group of people who were marching or whatever, or fighting off the dogs or whatever. Like the Chaney's, and was it Schwerner? Schwerner's and Chaney's. It took people all along the spectrum, all kinds of people had to be involved in order to achieve that. What happened after that? I'm not sure. I'm not after all of the sacrifices, after all of the legislation changes, changes in legislation, after—I really don't know what happened. | 6:18 |
| Elaine Jones | What went awry? What did not happen? Because it didn't work. It just didn't work. Busing and all of that occurred, integration of schools. But as someone I've heard often, the most segregated hour in America is on Sunday morning. And no matter how much people go to their churches, we're still miles and miles and miles apart. And that should be a time that you would expect people's hearts to be sort of in the right place. But isn't the way it happens. It doesn't work that way. You can go to church and sit there and be pious all you want to, and then get up and go out of church and then practice all of the things that you feel it while you are in church that you're against. | 7:14 |
| Elaine Jones | So it just doesn't work. And how people's hearts change, and that's where it is. | 8:23 |
| Amy Murnick | So awful to feel so helpless. | 8:37 |
| Elaine Jones | But I am of the feeling that it is something, and I don't like being a pessimist, but I have to acknowledge the fact that there are some things about which man can do nothing. He can go to the moon. He can go to Saturn, Pluto, wherever, but there are some things that he will never be able to solve because he has made such a—from the beginning of time, we have done things all wrong and to undo it with any one step, one movement, it isn't going to work. And until we reach that time, that level, that place where people are sincere and hatred and all of these things for no justifiable reason are going out the window, then it cannot change because it's just too entangled. | 8:39 |
| Elaine Jones | And you want to know why somebody hates somebody and you'll never be able to understand it. If they began to explain to you what it is they —many times they can't explain it. I don't know. I don't know. So if they don't know, how can anybody else untangle their web? So I don't know. I really don't. | 9:57 |
| Amy Murnick | So— | 10:25 |
| Elaine Jones | I just don't think that it's a solvable thing. | 10:26 |
| Amy Murnick | So you think the end result of— | 10:30 |
| Elaine Jones | For us, humans. | 10:30 |
| Amy Murnick | Right. | 10:30 |
| Elaine Jones | I don't think so. | 10:30 |
| Amy Murnick | So you think the end result of integration wasn't necessarily what everyone— | 10:30 |
| Elaine Jones | It wasn't what we envisioned. | 10:44 |
| Amy Murnick | Right. | 10:47 |
| Elaine Jones | We expected something different and we lost control during the '60s as well. Now the hippie movement era, when people stopped paying attention to rules and regulations and they wanted freedom and to do my own thing and life can't be doing your own thing. Because when you do your own thing, you are offending or hurting somebody else in the process and you can't have free range to do your thing. And there has to be some structure and people at this point in time don't want any structure. They don't want the government. They don't want anybody telling them what to do. | 10:48 |
| Elaine Jones | We're tired of the government. We can't manage it now, but we don't want anybody else telling us what to do, and it just isn't logical. You can't have your freedom and infringe on everybody else's freedom. Freedom to carry guns. Yes, everybody just get a gun and have a gun toting society and then we'll kill each other and that'll be the end of it. But everybody wants the freedom to do what he wants to do when he wants to do it his own way. Me, my wife, us two, us four and no more. Our two children, us four and no more. And that's where we are. | 11:39 |
| Elaine Jones | I do truly believe that we are not—I don't know what happened during that era, but we lost it. We lost it in the schools. Nobody wants anybody to say anything about what can be done. We've lost it so far as having control over young kids in the schools. When they get to high school, we have less control. When they get to college, we have no control. And then when they get out in society, there's even less. So I don't know. I don't what we expect if we don't want any restrictions and no parameters within which we all have to operate. | 12:22 |
| Elaine Jones | So we have to accept a society that is totally out of control, in my estimation, my feeble estimation. That's just the way I see it. I just don't understand nobody wants anything. Things that worked for people some years ago, and please excuse me. Things that worked for people, having some restrictions, having some order to things. The universe works because there is a sense of orderliness about things. But if everything up out in space was totally out of control doing its own thing without there being in an order and without things operating within their own orbit, if they get out of their orbit into some other orbit, then there's going to be catastrophe. | 13:14 |
| Elaine Jones | And we can't seem to understand that. So, I don't know. Why am I philosophizing? And I don't know what I'm talking about. | 14:16 |
| Amy Murnick | I agree. | 14:28 |
| Elaine Jones | I don't know. But that's where we seemingly are, that we are resisting all structure, whether it is family structure, a governmental structure or whatever. And now the church churches are getting to be more liberal in their thinking and nobody wants the church to tell them about anything. So everybody wants to operate without any interference from any other source and marriages fall apart because everybody wants to do his own thing without any concern and consideration for anybody else. Children want to be independent. Don't want anybody telling them what to do. | 14:29 |
| Elaine Jones | I know. Mom, I know. You don't know. So, that's just where our society is, I think. Amy, I have no answers. I just have lots of questions. | 15:29 |
| Amy Murnick | So do I. I agree. I have a question. Going way back, why did you not want to tell your parents that you had gotten married? | 15:45 |
| Elaine Jones | Because I knew it was the wrong thing to do. I had made a mistake. I should never have gone that route. I should never have married at that—I guess I felt a sense of independence. I thought I could make my own decisions knowing nothing. But I chose to do that and then I realized this is my first year in college. I have as much business being married as what is as ridiculous as that? What other situation? But I knew that I shouldn't be. I knew that it would probably just unearth and shake my parents up. And I wasn't sure how they were going to accept it, but my mother and father were pretty calm people. | 15:57 |
| Elaine Jones | Looking back, I maybe thought they weren't as reasonable and wouldn't understand me and my move at that time. But they were able to talk with me calmly about it. And my husband and I sat down with them and talked about it. And I had options because I was only seventeen. So I could have undone the marriage— | 17:10 |
| Amy Murnick | Right. | 17:43 |
| Elaine Jones | And they let me know that this was an option, but I chose not to have it annulled and they supported me from that day on and were just always there. So they weren't as distraught as I thought they would be. I thought just the distress would've just been so great they wouldn't have been able to handle it. But see what you know when you're young, you think you know it all, but your parents are more— | 17:44 |
| Amy Murnick | Happy, maybe. | 18:26 |
| Elaine Jones | No. Well, yeah, in many ways, yes, because it's sort of a natural process. | 18:27 |
| Amy Murnick | I'm just 26 and no boyfriend. | 18:34 |
| Elaine Jones | No need to rush, Amy. You've got a lifetime ahead. But I guess at that age at seventeen— | 18:37 |
| Amy Murnick | Right. | 18:46 |
| Elaine Jones | I was younger than my sister and made such a move. But anyway, they were very supportive after that once they knew that we were serious and wanted to make it work. And so they did everything possible to help it to work. Foolish with foolish age, age of doing things without thinking them through completely sometimes. And at that age and stage not having been as experienced as an average seventeen-year-old is nowadays and having as much knowledge about the world and the expectations of being married and just not knowing much. In other words, being a little bit on the dumb side, you do foolish things sometimes. | 18:49 |
| Elaine Jones | So, that's the way that was. | 19:54 |
| Amy Murnick | [indistinct 00:19:59]. | 19:59 |
| Elaine Jones | I won't comment. I won't comment. | 20:04 |
| Amy Murnick | [indistinct 00:20:09]. | 20:09 |
| Elaine Jones | Yeah. Well, you're doing fine saying it. | 20:10 |
| Amy Murnick | Haven't shocked my parents yet. | 20:16 |
| Elaine Jones | Yeah. Not with anything like that anyway. | 20:17 |
| Amy Murnick | No. | 20:18 |
| Elaine Jones | Well, at this point in time, when you make that decision, they'll feel as if you've lived long enough now to kind of understand and seen many, many young people who've made the move both be successful and not successful. So, you've seen it from both sides. | 20:20 |
| Amy Murnick | Well, I guess that does it. | 20:43 |
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