R. Kelly Bryant interview recording, 1996 November 15
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| Jennifer Steen | This is an interview with Mr. Kelly Bryant on November fifteenth, 1996. It is one-thirty in the afternoon. I first wanted to ask you some questions that I had in reviewing the first interview. And the first couple that I have are in relation to your family, some things that you had said. You said in the first interview that your grandmother was a nurse. | 0:03 |
| R. Kelly Bryant | Yes, my grandma. | 0:32 |
| Jennifer Steen | Yes. And I was just curious if it was unusual that Black woman received professional training like that. | 0:33 |
| R. Kelly Bryant | I'm not sure the amount of training that she had. She worked for a White doctor and she would go on cases that would last weeks. She would go and stay with the patient, live in the home back there then. And this was prior to 1930. And that's kind of what she did. And they were called a nurse. But how much training she had, I just don't know. | 0:41 |
| Jennifer Steen | And I also had a question, you had mentioned that your house had burned down when you were living in Rocky Mount, and I just didn't know if you recalled or had been told by any family members how that happened. | 1:13 |
| R. Kelly Bryant | Well, we didn't have a—the house that I was born in was torn down. | 1:30 |
| Jennifer Steen | Torn down. | 1:35 |
| R. Kelly Bryant | Torn down. Not burned down. Now, we had in our family here, in my family, we had two fires. Oh, gosh. One was in '87 I believe, and the other one was thirteen months earlier where I live now. | 1:37 |
| Jennifer Steen | And they were both in the same house? | 1:54 |
| R. Kelly Bryant | Same house. | 1:56 |
| Jennifer Steen | It was just accidental? | 1:56 |
| R. Kelly Bryant | No, the first one started as an electrical fire. We had a seat in the basement room, a long seat that was really made of two doors and put legs under them here and had then had gauchos or cushions on them. And so we had a long seat in the basement. Behind that seat was an outlet, and this outlet for some reason just caught fire. We don't know how it got to a point that it set the seat on fire because they were not together. In other words, the outlet was in the wall and the seat was above the outlet. But now there were children's clothing, clothes on top of the seat, but there was nothing that connected it. But that's where it started, the fire people said, the inspector said that was where it started. And it burned, oh, gosh. Well, the only thing that really saved us that time, we had, what do you call it? Flame retardant ceiling tiles. | 1:56 |
| R. Kelly Bryant | So the fire went across the ceiling, burned over into the back room and this kind of a thing. And it was at about 2:30 on a Sunday morning. | 3:05 |
| Jennifer Steen | And y'all were in the house? | 3:15 |
| R. Kelly Bryant | We were in the house. And my wife was in the living room looking at television above that, this area. And all at once she just looked down and the smoke, she couldn't see her feet, smoke was over the floor level all the way across the room. She called me, I was in the back room, and said, "This place is on fire." And of course we then went out to check to see what it was. I went down to the basement and it was burning. So our alarm system called the fire department. And so we got out of the house in what we had on, I guess I had on pajamas. But anyway, the fire people came and put the fire out. And I don't remember right off. It seems—I don't remember whether we spent the rest of the night in the house or not. But anyway, then we had the insurance people came in and did the room over, put in paneling and all that sort of thing, and new ceiling and whatever they needed to do. | 3:15 |
| R. Kelly Bryant | And then it was really in her office space. She had a little real estate office in the basement. And it burned the radio and television, the desk, things like the computer and this kind of thing. So she bought a new television and put it in there. Thirteen months later, the television set the house on fire. A brand new Zenith television. So this time we woke up, same thing, on Sunday morning about 2:30. And we woke up and saw smoke everywhere and the alarm system started with these alarms all over the place. And we checked with the telephone and the telephone was saying that there was a fire at 618 Bernie Street. And I said, "Please hurry, the house is on fire." | 4:31 |
| R. Kelly Bryant | I went downstairs this time and looked over into this room and it was burning like maybe a carton, a cardboard box. The flame was just everywhere. So we got out and the fire people came. And then there was a neighbor down the street that brought a car up and parked it right near where fire trucks were and asked if we wanted to sit in the car. We could not go back it burned it so bad. And we went over to our son's home and spent the rest of the night. And later we rented a house. It just so happened that the house right in front of us was vacant. So we stayed there until they did the work to restore the house. That particular fire was fairly expensive. I think it cost something in the neighborhood of sixty-five or or seventy thousand dollars to restore the place. But they did it and they put carpet even where we didn't have carpet in here, just fixed the place up. | 5:27 |
| R. Kelly Bryant | But then again, we had to buy new office furniture, in the same area, new office furniture. And the amazing thing about it was that my wife had collected some money on a sale house, and they were 100 dollar bills and they were just on the desk in an envelope. And it didn't strike anybody about this until I guess several days later. And my wife says, "Oh, I got to do something with this." And she said, "What did I do with the money?" So we went down into the basement and looked around. The carpeting was burned and all this sort of thing, but here was the money on the floor in this envelope. It had burned the edges off. It had burned all the edges off. And we took it to a bank in East Durham and they sent it to the Federal Reserve Bank and they sent us money back for it. But everything else burned up but this envelope on the floor. | 6:40 |
| Jennifer Steen | Wow. Your office [indistinct 00:07:41]. | 7:40 |
| R. Kelly Bryant | Yeah, that's right. But it really damaged the place that time. It burned through so that you could be upstairs in the bedrooms and just looked down into the basement. And we were afraid to even walk across the floor to get into any things that were left in the front [indistinct 00:07:58]. But all that stuff was, most of it was replaced. And I had one or two very important things that I almost lost. One was a set of autographs, and I don't if I mentioned these autographs. | 7:41 |
| Jennifer Steen | You mentioned that you had them. | 8:15 |
| R. Kelly Bryant | Yeah, well this book is smoked up badly. But anyway— | 8:18 |
| Jennifer Steen | Were they damaged? | 8:24 |
| R. Kelly Bryant | The autographs were not, but the book, something like an album or picture album with the leaves on the inside, and those plastic covers protected that part. But the edges were burned, smoked up badly. | 8:24 |
| Jennifer Steen | But the book [indistinct 00:08:42] special to you— | 8:41 |
| R. Kelly Bryant | Oh, yes, yes. Because I had autographs in that book of people that I would never get them again. I'll give you some idea. I got in there, I have George Washington Carver, the great scientist at Tuskegee that did all this work with clay and peanuts and cotton. I have his autograph in the collection. I have about seventy-five or eighty of them. But Clayton Power, Matthew Henson, the Black fellow that went with Admiral Peary to the North Pole. W.E.B. Du Bois, who was the first editor of the Crisis Magazine. And I can give you list of some of those names right here, I got a list somewhere here. And musicians like Duke Ellington, Satchmo, Louis Armstrong, Jimmy [indistinct 00:09:47], the Mills Brothers. Ball players like Jackie Robinson. | 8:44 |
| Jennifer Steen | So you collected primarily notable Blacks? | 10:12 |
| R. Kelly Bryant | Yeah. Yes. I had one or two Whites. I have William Demarest, the fellow that played on My Sons. His name was Charlie in My Sons. My Three Sons I believe was the name of the TV show. And he was the fellow that played Charlie. I have one of the Roosevelts, I have Johnathon Roosevelt's sister, I can't think of her name right now. I have Chief Justice Warren, I have Lyndon Johnson, and I got that one in Washington on an occasion that I was there attending a conference that he was at. I have Roger Craig, the guy who used to be a big baseball player in California, but he was from Durham. I got him while he was here at Durham. So I have just this big collection. And I'm frequently called upon to just talk about them, show them. I have transparency of them so I can show them on the wall and just talk about how I got them. Mary McLeod Bethune from an instance at Bethune-Cookman College of Marion Anderson, Dorothy Mena. I can't think of some of those names I have in that book. | 10:12 |
| Jennifer Steen | It's a whole book full. [Indistinct 00:11:49] | 11:42 |
| R. Kelly Bryant | And Buck Leonard, the ball player back when they had all separate ball leagues and he played with the Homestead Grays, he was one of the outstanding Black ball players. In fact, he's still living. He lives in Rocky Mount. | 11:49 |
| Jennifer Steen | Is he originally from Rocky Mount? | 12:11 |
| R. Kelly Bryant | He's from Rocky Mount. | 12:13 |
| Jennifer Steen | Did you know him? | 12:14 |
| R. Kelly Bryant | Yes, I did. And his family, very well. But he's had a stroke, and I don't have any idea how old he is. He must be close to ninety. Yeah, but he's still getting around. And every once in a while you'll see some pictures of the Black ball players in the past and they'll show his picture in the group. And I got some of the pilots that were in the Tuskegee ninety-ninth Pursuit Squadron down there, they were Black pilots during World War II. And what happened there I think was that they were not accepting them in the regular Air Force, this kind of thing. So what they did, they set up a special training place for them. And I don't know whether you've ever seen any of these pictures on A&E network showing these ninety-ninth Pursuit Squadron. Benjamin Davis was the commander. His father was a full fledged general. I think he was, yeah, he was general Benjamin Davis. And then he was a colonel when they set this up, his son. And he became a general too. They did quite a job in Italy and North Africa. | 12:14 |
| Jennifer Steen | And they actually [indistinct 00:13:58]. | 13:56 |
| R. Kelly Bryant | Yes. And in fact, they were, the stories, and this is on television, is that the bombers that were flown by the White pilots were fly over missions, but they needed the small planes to protect them. So one pilot had said that he wouldn't fly unless this group went with him. So they carried that mission on out with them on it. And they all came back. | 13:58 |
| Jennifer Steen | All of them survived? | 14:33 |
| R. Kelly Bryant | All of them came back. | 14:33 |
| Jennifer Steen | That's amazing. | 14:37 |
| R. Kelly Bryant | Yeah. But I knew some of them. | 14:38 |
| Jennifer Steen | Did you really? | 14:40 |
| R. Kelly Bryant | Yes. Now the way I knew them, when I was in college at Hampton, I finished in the year 1940. They had started a pilot training class at Hampton. And so when the war started in '41, I was still there, I was working there. And this pursuit squadron was set up, so they transferred, I don't want to say transferred, I guess most of the students in that class transferred to Tuskegee to become a part of that. So I knew all those fellows. And some of them had did real well and some had some accidents while they were there, during this training session, maybe they were flying [indistinct 00:15:32] and then got into these fast planes, they had some problem with them I guess. But I knew, as I said, a number of them. Since then, I have met some of the others. One is a lawyer [indistinct 00:15:45] down in Florida. And he was one of those decorated pilots in that group. | 14:40 |
| Jennifer Steen | So [indistinct 00:15:58]. | 15:57 |
| R. Kelly Bryant | Yes, yes. And they have, as I said, they have a documentary on it and they'll show it once in a while on A&E. | 15:58 |
| Jennifer Steen | [indistinct 00:16:08]. | 16:08 |
| R. Kelly Bryant | Yeah. And in that group of autographs, [indistinct 00:16:13], I'll give you a copy of them. | 16:08 |
| Jennifer Steen | I'd love to see that. | 16:15 |
| R. Kelly Bryant | Yeah. | 16:16 |
| Jennifer Steen | Did you speak with the pilots [indistinct 00:16:19] did you ever [indistinct 00:16:22]. | 16:17 |
| R. Kelly Bryant | No, no. I knew them in '38, '39, '40. And that group, I haven't seen any of them since then, but I just knew them when they were at Hampton. But I've heard and read about them and I've talked to these fellows that I've known. Now, the ones that I'm mentioning in the later years are persons that I have met since then who were in the group, who knew the fellows that I knew. | 16:18 |
| Jennifer Steen | Oh, wow. | 16:54 |
| R. Kelly Bryant | And that has been most interesting to just be a person that has known some of these and gives you something to talk about to the young folks. I get to tell them about things. And now first, my first autograph, I tell you how I got interested in autographs. My father was an active person in Rocky Mount in the NAACP. And he would always talk about the people that came to Rocky Mount, although we didn't go to those meetings as children, we just listened to what he had to say about these people. And we heard so much about some of the Black leaders. And then I had a teacher, there was no real, no organized class in Black history when I came through high school. | 16:54 |
| R. Kelly Bryant | But I had a teacher whose name was Anna Easter Brown, and she brought all the Blacks that she could get. And it seems to me that there may have been some agency that produced these pictures of Blacks. And there were pictures about the size of those there, and she put them across the blackboard. And she often would talk about them. And although she was I guess prohibited from teaching it as such, there were several books that were written. And she would get a book written by Carter Woodson. And then there was another one, the name doesn't come to me right now, on Black history. And some of the information in what was called then the Negro Yearbook, written by Monroe Work. Now he was at Tuskegee. And so she would teach American history down to about Christmas and then she'd put the book down and go to teaching us Black history. | 17:51 |
| R. Kelly Bryant | Now, if there appeared to be anyone coming in that would have something to say about her teaching Black history, she'd just pick up the American history book and start talking. And this went on. And she told us about all these people. Well, when I went off to college, I started seeing some of them. And I said, "Wait a minute." And the first one that I got was Mordecai W Johnson, who was at that time president of Howard University. And he came to Hampton and spoke. And when it was over, I went to him and I said, "I'd like to get your autograph." And I don't know why because I hadn't been collecting anybody's autographs and probably never heard of it, the little town, Rocky Mount. But anyway, I guess others were doing it so I just followed up there. And he asked me, said, "What you going to do with it?" I said, "I'm going to keep it." And I had a little, you seen these little fold over notepads that you carry in your pocket? | 19:01 |
| Jennifer Steen | Yes. | 20:05 |
| R. Kelly Bryant | I had one of those. And I just opened up to a page and he wrote his name on it. And I still have it. And after that, I began to see some of these other people that were coming in. See, we had a program in Hampton called Musical Arts Society. It was hyphenated, Musical Arts Society. And they would bring in these outstanding musicians and speakers and whatnot. So as a result, we got a chance to see a lot of people. I got James Weldon Johnson's autograph, and I got it about six months before he was killed. Now he was killed in a train automobile accident somewhere up in New York State. And he dated it June something 1937 I believe it was. '36, '37. And he was killed soon thereafter. But he's a fellow that wrote the Lift Every Voice and Sing. And his brother wrote the music. Recently, and I'm saying that within last year, the newspaper picked up an article on me about these autographs. | 20:05 |
| R. Kelly Bryant | And a fellow in Roxboro saw it, the paper, and he called me and said, "I read the article." And said, "I have an autograph you might be interested in getting." Warning. And I said, "What? Who is it?" He said, "Frederick Douglass." I said, "You got Frederick Douglass's autograph?" He said, "Yes." I said, "Well, I don't have money enough to buy that." He said, "No, I'll give it to you." And he sent it to me. And he received it from something associated with stamps. Because there's a stamp, Frederick Douglass stamp and his autograph on a little paper. And it looks like it's old because it's, you know how paper turns yellow? | 21:20 |
| Jennifer Steen | Yeah. | 22:11 |
| R. Kelly Bryant | So he really sent to me and didn't charge anything for it. So that was added to my collection. So there are just many, many others that I have. And I had to sit in fellows that started to sit ins Greensboro. I have them. | 22:11 |
| Jennifer Steen | Did you get to meet them? | 22:22 |
| R. Kelly Bryant | Yes. And I don't know, just so many. I'll get you a copy of that list. But that was an interesting thing. And as I say, I still have that. And I have talked about them in a number of the schools. Every year somebody calls and wants me to come and talk about these autographs. Particularly during Black History Week. And there used to be a group from Jacksonville, North Carolina, there was a teacher there who was really from Chapel Hill. | 22:29 |
| R. Kelly Bryant | And he would come to Durham every year in February and bring a busload of students. And they would visit Black businesses here and they would stop by and let me talk to them about Black history and these autographs. And I'm not sure whether he retired or what happened in recent years, but I haven't seen them in the last five years I guess. But for years he would come through Durham and go down to Central, out to Duke, and North Carolina Mutual, and through these banks that we have here and all this sort of thing, just so that these kids see. But he came from Jacksonville, North Carolina. | 23:10 |
| Jennifer Steen | Wow. What kinds of things did you talk about with the kids? | 23:45 |
| R. Kelly Bryant | Well, I would try to encourage them to get a good look. As a scout leader years ago, I always taught my fellows in the troop that just don't look at things, look at them to learn. And so see what you're looking at. Flash something across street, what'd you see? And they show all kinds of things. So I was telling them the same type thing, that these opportunities exist now, but it didn't exist in my day. | 23:48 |
| R. Kelly Bryant | And that they should take advantage of education and all kinds of training to make sure that they qualify to get into these jobs. And we used to take them to North Carolina Mutual, which is the largest Black insurance company in the world. And all the people and kinds of training that people need to work in that office. And we let them know that banks weren't available back then years ago when we couldn't get jobs in banks, we could get jobs here and several other places where they had banks. And at that time there were banks, there was a bank in Wilson, there was a bank in Richmond, north of Washington, DC, Atlanta, Durham. | 24:24 |
| R. Kelly Bryant | And in this part of the country, they were Black owned. And then there were Black banks in Chicago and Detroit and other places like that. And even though our opportunities were limited in many respects, there were good jobs that were available in some of these organizations. You see North Carolina Mutual operated in ten states. I guess they may still be operating in that many states, but at that time ten states and the District of Columbia. So they had, what—eight hundred agents selling insurance across the country, and something in the neighborhood of three hundred people working in this office here. So I had the opportunity to work in that office for thirty-seven years and my wife did too, she worked there, I think she worked there longer than I did. | 25:15 |
| Jennifer Steen | Did you ever consider before you started working at North Carolina Mutual working for a White owned company? | 26:16 |
| R. Kelly Bryant | No, not really. I tell you, I finished, I don't know whether I mentioned this on the other tape or not, I may have, but I finished high school at Booker T. Washington High School in Rocky Mount. And all that was there was the general high school course. We had a science department with maybe two, three stakes and a Bunsen burner and a bottle or something of that sort. But no big [indistinct 00:27:02] science department. We had the chemistry department. But there was no cafeteria, no industrial arts, I think people called it then manual training or something. There was nothing like that there. No gymnasium. That was about it. We had an auditorium in the building. And no football field, no tennis courts, anything. In fact, my wife finished high school in Virginia and her high school had everything you could have in a high school, including a symphony orchestra. We didn't have a band, anything. I'm talking about in 1935 when I finished high school there. So as a result, when I got to Hampton, I wanted to go into business because my father was a [indistinct 00:28:04] in Rocky Mount. | 26:28 |
| R. Kelly Bryant | And I may have told you another time, I had never heard the word accounting and had never touched a typewriter, didn't know what a typewriter was. And I got up there and you had folks from Norfolk, Atlanta, Tulsa, Washington, DC, and New York, and all these places when they had full courses. And I found myself trying to figure out how I'm going to make it here and I don't know any of this stuff. And I took the work year program where I worked all day at campus, on the campus, and took classes at night. And they had about ninety students, maybe ninety-one or ninety-two, that took that they would admit in that program each year. And during my first year, some fellows who were seniors, there were four fellows that saw me. I was a little guy. I didn't weigh but 103. [indistinct 00:29:08]. I'm out there pushing lawnmowers. | 28:06 |
| R. Kelly Bryant | So they said, "What do you want to take?" And I told them, "I'm going to take business." And that's when I found out that there was accounting I had to do, some shorthand, and all this other stuff, office machines. And so they proceeded to try to help me. And they told me what kinds of books I needed to get and get started with them. And if I needed any help, they would help me. And that's how I got into that accounting business. And I had some math, we call business math, which was just percentages and adding, division, subtraction. It was just above, a step above arithmetic. But they had percentages and whatnot and partial payments and that kind of thing. So when I got to the math there, that wasn't so complicated. But at accounting I had to learn that debit, credit, reserves, and all this sort of business. | 29:11 |
| R. Kelly Bryant | So I did so well in it my first year in the class as such, they used me to teach the slow students. And they paid me what was then under National Youth Administration, one of the alphabetical organizations that Franklin Roosevelt set up back then. And I don't remember now, but it seems to me that we were paid either fifteen cents an hour to work, twenty-five cents an hour, small amount, whatever it was, and we would turn it in and get credit for it on our school bill. Maybe that doesn't sound like very much, but the cost at Hampton then for a whole year wasn't but 320 dollars and that included room, board, laundry, books, uniform, everything I needed, 320 dollars a year. My daughter was in school a few years back and she spent almost that much money for books for the first semester. | 30:10 |
| Jennifer Steen | I know, it's true. My dad was like, "Whoa." | 31:28 |
| R. Kelly Bryant | Yeah, yeah, she told me, I said, "Golly." But anyway, we made it back then. And so as a result, when I got out of school, there were no jobs open for us as students in accounting, very few. And in 1930 something, '37, '38, they built a public housing project there in Newport News for Blacks called Newsom Park. And one of my classmates got the job there managing that. And I had relatives in Durham and my aunt worked under the personnel director at North Carolina Mutual. And she asked, said her nephew was finishing and he was wondering if there was anything around here that could be done. But were no, really, I don't think there were very few white organizations that would even employ me. Even the federal government had limited positions for Blacks. And so I could have gotten a job with North Carolina Mutual as an agent somewhere and they would send me wherever they needed. | 31:33 |
| R. Kelly Bryant | But she talked and told them I finished school. It just happened that this bank downstairs, which was called then, shoot, as the Mutual Savings and Loan Association located on Pear Street, needed a person because a young lady was leaving. And so they suggested I come to Durham and have an interview. I came and they hired me, and I stayed with them three years. Then my buddy in Newport News was leaving the Newsom Park and he suggested that I consider that. And I was getting ready to go to Newsom Park and I told Shay Stewart, who was the person that I was working on that I thought it was more money going up there. And believe it or not, I came to Durham to work for sixty dollars a month. And I had gotten to ninety dollars a month. And while I was talking with Stewart, and the top boss in this organization then was RL McDougald, and he's the person that McDougald Terrace is named after and the McDougald Gymnasium down at Central was named after him. | 33:03 |
| R. Kelly Bryant | And so he said to me, said, "Go upstairs." And that was, we were located in the first floor where the bank is now. At that time we just had a window in the bank. And so he said, "Go upstairs and talk to Billy Hill," who was the same person, the personnel director. And I went up to talk to him, he said, "You're leaving?" I said, "Yes. I think I'm going to leave." He says, "Well, I got a job that you might be interested in." Said, "North Carolina Mutual is a mutual insurance company, which means it's owned by the policy holders. Nobody holds any stock. And that we have never paid dividends to the policyholders. And we at a point now that we can afford to pay dividends, and they want to set up a program and need somebody to work it out." So I took the job here instead of going back to Newport News. I think I was getting 110 dollars then. | 34:42 |
| R. Kelly Bryant | And so as I said, I worked there for thirty-seven years after we got the program set up. I just kept working and finally became an officer. And I retired in 1981. And my wife, I met her at Hampton and she disappeared and I didn't know where she went. But I came to Durham to work and one day I went to the North Carolina Mutual cafeteria to eat lunch and she was in there. I said, "Where did you go? What happened?" She says, "I came to Durham." Now she was in Durham the years I was. I was here from '41. She finished Central in '42 and then she got work at North Carolina Mutual. And I'm working downstairs. And so this went on until we finally got married. And that's why she had had forty some years service with North Carolina Mutual. Of course she was in that organization before I got there. And I think she said she has forty-two years of service at North Carolina Mutual when she retired in '83. But that's I guess up to that point. | 35:50 |
| Jennifer Steen | Do you think that—it sounded to me that [indistinct 00:37:33] Do you think that that kind of thing still goes on and is still necessary [indistinct 00:38:02]? Just in the Black community. | 37:27 |
| R. Kelly Bryant | Not as much. Maybe some of it. You see, as I was saying, that there were just no jobs for Blacks except if I went into a profession like medicine or law or something of that sort then I would've to make my way through that. There were jobs as Black teachers, you could get those because the program was separated but other professional jobs were hard to come by. Now back there then, we had college trained men working as porters on railroads, working as bell hops at hotels because the jobs were not there. And Durham was just an unusual place for Black employment. Now I can remember years and years ago, and I'm talking back down in the twenties, when they had Black mail carriers here. But when I came back in '40, '41, there were no Black mail carriers, no Blacks employed at the post office at all. And so that was something that had happened. | 37:58 |
| R. Kelly Bryant | In fact, there were no Blacks in any banks or anything downtown. There was not a job downtown for Blacks other than the Black owned businesses except as maids, messengers, elevator operators, and janitors. That's all. And that went on until 1968. I wrote a letter to Ben Ruffin, who's now the vice president of corporate affairs at RDR. But now he grew up right here in Durham. And back in '68, there was an effort made to hit what we call respectable jobs. And it ended up with a selective buying campaign. Now they called it a boycott, but we called it a selective buying campaign. And places—well, there was some stores here in Durham, I can remember very well. There was right around the corner next to where the News and Observer office is now was a Butler shoe store that would not serve Blacks. | 39:24 |
| R. Kelly Bryant | There were no places downtown to eat except the United Dollar Store, which was something like a Five & Ten, and it was owned by EJ Evans. I think he's still living, you just don't hear anymore from about him. But he was mayor of Durham and his brother was the mayor of Fayetteville at the same time. And he owned the United Dollar Store. And the way he got around the segregation law was he didn't have any seats. So you could go and buy what you want, stand and eat it. And the same thing about a store that was in front of North Carolina Mutual that was named then Silvers. S-I-L-V-E-R-S. And I don't know any of the management of that store, but the same thing. They had a counter that you can go and buy. But right around the corner there was Walgreens that had a counter and they wouldn't let you stand there and eat or sit. | 40:49 |
| R. Kelly Bryant | And then there was a Harvey's Cafeteria in that block, in the next block that wouldn't serve anybody. Then up on, where am I? On Lamb Street was a place called Levi's that was an eat-in, it wasn't such a large place, but Blacks who wanted to get food from them had to go around to the back and they would fix a package for them and give it to them, sell it to them out of the back door. And so this was in '68. And so as a result of that, this selective buying campaign changed the complexion of this thing within a matter of six months. | 41:56 |
| R. Kelly Bryant | And we got good support from our Black community and we got support from the White community to help us turn this thing around. I can remember, Ben Ruffin was the executive director of that group. Howard Clement was the chairperson. I believe you seen his name or something in the paper this morning about Howard Clement, but he was in that group. I was the secretary treasurer. And we worked on it for that six month period for deep concentration. We had a meeting every Sunday night at some church, Black church in Durham, all over the city. And we called it a rally, we'd have speakers and we'd have a fundraiser to pay for printing of placards and leaflets and all that sort of business. And we would talk about the listings that we would prepare. And the executive committee met every Saturday at some place. And so as result of it, we ended up with the stores realizing, downtown stores realizing that they had stocked up for Christmas and they weren't going to get rid of this stuff. | 42:50 |
| R. Kelly Bryant | And so we had meetings with a number of Black leaders, leaders of the businesses here, the Chamber of Commerce, the Merchants Association, forgot those names, but Bill Burns of the Central Carolina Bank, Mrs. married Trent Seamen, some people of the city council, and then other businesses, some of the business people downtown who were ready and willing to consider for negotiation purposes. So we met until we got to the point that a week or so before Christmas they began taking the maids of the stores and elevator operators and making clerks out of them. And one or two banks began to make tellers. And so the thing just turned itself all the way around and we've had Blacks working in these jobs ever since. And [indistinct 00:45:44]. | 44:27 |
| R. Kelly Bryant | We had an organized program. We was really organized. We had people from North Carolina Central and all of the Bank people, everybody participating in it. We told everybody if you're going to buy for Christmas and it started in June. And we got down close to Christmas, if you want to buy for Christmas, go to Greensboro or Raleigh somewhere else. Don't buy in Durham. We stressed refurbishing old toys for children to save your money and we had a Black Christmas parade. It started at, what is now Fayetteville Street and Pettigrew, and went down a mile or so down beyond the College. We had our Black Santa Claus and our floats, and we had raised enough money to buy candies and things and [indistinct 00:01:02]. So as we went along, we threw candy to the children, all that sort of thing, and it was real nice and it made a difference. | 0:02 |
| R. Kelly Bryant | We were concerned about justice and we were talking about what was happening to Blacks at the court house. We were talking about education. We wanted better schools and things. At that time, we were being given furniture from a school that, in fact, they were going to redo a White school. They were going to take the furniture and bring it over here and then put new furniture there. | 1:17 |
| R. Kelly Bryant | We talked about employment. We talked about public housing, representation of the Black community. We had the whole gamut of things we included in our plans, human relations. Because prior to that, we didn't have a Human Relations Commission. The mayor had a Human Relations Committee and had one or two Blacks on it and we were told that they never met. I guess this was on paper, but we insisted on having a Human Relations Commission and that was granted. I was selected to be on the first commission. We drew straws, I think it was four years service term, and I got four years. For some reason I was elected for another four years. So I served on that for eight years. But at the same time that I was on there, there was a person who was a member of the Klan, to rally interest in, and when he— | 1:46 |
| Jennifer Steen | Who was that? | 3:09 |
| R. Kelly Bryant | I don't remember his name. | 3:12 |
| Jennifer Steen | It was C.P. Ellis? | 3:13 |
| R. Kelly Bryant | No, C.P. came later. | 3:13 |
| Jennifer Steen | Okay. | 3:16 |
| R. Kelly Bryant | He came during my second term, somewhere in there. This other fella left and the first fella was in a wheelchair and he got mad with the City really, when they couldn't do anything about a White person who was fired from a store on Main Street and I think the store was Efreds, E-F-R-E-D-S, I think some store like that. It was either that or a men's shop and when he appealed to the Commission, there was nothing that the Commission to do about his case. | 3:17 |
| R. Kelly Bryant | So this Klansman resigned. Then C.P. came on and we served together there for a little while. In fact, we're still good friends and we went on from there on into other things and just continued developing it. What was really happening all those prior years, we had a very hostile City Council. I can remember, even before the boycott, CC Spalding, who was the President of North Carolina Mutual, he and Dr. Shepherd went to the City Council, to talk about some problems we had, and they barely respected them. On one occasion, they went to the Board of Education to make some requests and when the suit was filed against the Board of Education, this was in the '50s. The court ordered all of the minutes and all this sort of thing and so they went to the meeting that they attended, went to the records and all that. There was nothing in the minutes that they ever showed up, never showed up in the meeting, nothing whatsoever. That was not a part of anything they considered. | 3:55 |
| Jennifer Steen | Was that kind of known throughout the Black community? | 5:29 |
| R. Kelly Bryant | Well, we had all kinds of problems in education. We did. We had Black kids being put out of school for things that White kids could do and this kind of a thing. So there were a number of situations that needed addressed, and these fellas went to try to get considerations and they were not even recognized. | 5:33 |
| Jennifer Steen | Did Black people within Durham believe though that people like Dr. Shepherd could influence City Council, even though they were hostile? | 5:57 |
| R. Kelly Bryant | Well, there may have been one or two situations where they got some consideration, but then there was so many that didn't and they were our leaders. They were our leaders. CC Spalding was the chairperson of the Durham Committee of Black Affairs. In fact, he was the President of the Mechanics & Farmers Bank. He was the President of North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company. He was President of the Mutual Savings Loan Association and he was active in just about everything we had going on in the Black community at that time. | 6:10 |
| R. Kelly Bryant | At that time we had the Banker's Fire Insurance Company, had our own fire insurance company. We had the Southern Fidelity Mutual Insurance Company, which was a hospitalization insurance. We had a number of other businesses like real estate and whatever. In fact, we had a whole little town on other side of the railroad of our own, and he was one of the leaders there. He was well respected in the Black community, by all. Of course, I can remember clearly when he would walk from home downtown to work, to his office, and even the street people, and everybody else would say, "How are you, Mr. Spalding?" He'd speak to them and so everybody respected him. He was that kind of person. | 6:53 |
| Jennifer Steen | I mean, you worked there for thirty-seven years. Everybody you worked with felt that way. | 7:51 |
| R. Kelly Bryant | Oh yes, yes. He would periodically come down through the building with all those people working there and stop at each desk and talk to them. Just come down and, "How's your family? How's your mother doing?" Just talk. So everybody respected him. Then he was an unusual person. Have you ever seen a picture of him? He was the kind of fella that, one person said, and I've been repeating it ever since I heard him say it. If you met him walking on the street out there, and he's Black, brown skin kind of fella, but he looked so distinguished that you turn around and look say, "Who is he?" You just wanted to know who that guy was. | 7:51 |
| R. Kelly Bryant | But he was very friendly. And I don't know how much I told you the last time, but I think it was Look Magazine wrote an article on him, called Mr. Public Relations, I believe that was the article. I may have a copy somewhere, but I couldn't find it if I look for it right now. Mr. Public Relations and back then when Blacks couldn't get into anything in the news, unless they were up for murder or robbery or something. There were other magazines and newspapers that recognized him and he's one of the few instances where the Durham people ever made a picture of a Black man on the whole page and I got that. | 8:34 |
| Jennifer Steen | What was that for? | 9:17 |
| R. Kelly Bryant | He and Dr. Shepherd were being recognized for something and they made a whole page picture, both of them. And as I say, I got that at home. I know where that is. | 9:22 |
| Jennifer Steen | [indistinct 00:09:38]. | 9:38 |
| R. Kelly Bryant | Oh, yes, yes. We bought up all the papers there. I don't think any of them got far. As I said, there were other magazines and papers. Look Magazine had something on him way back. Of course, all the Black magazines one way or the other, had them, the Ebony and there used to be one called Tops Black and just all kinds of magazines covered him, CC Spalding. He was just unusual person. | 9:38 |
| Jennifer Steen | Somewhat related, but do you recall any major event? So whether it was local or national or international, just thinking about Mr. Spalding, how there was a lot of [indistinct 00:10:39] attached to North Carolina Mutual [indistinct 00:10:45] that were successful. Can you think of any event that created that kind of pride, like when Joe Lewis won the fight? Can you think of anything like that? | 10:21 |
| R. Kelly Bryant | Well, I don't recall any time that we had big celebrations where we up and down the street and all that sort of thing, but I am on a picture and I've been trying to get a copy and the fella keeps telling me, "I got a copy. I'm going to give you one." And that's been going on for ten years, I guess, but anyway, one of these days, maybe I'll get a copy. But I'm on a picture in the bank, in the Mechanics & Farmer's Bank with Mr. Spalding and some of the officers of North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company. Joe Lewis and Sugar Ray Robinson, they were visiting Durham. | 10:53 |
| R. Kelly Bryant | I got Sugar Ray Robinson's autograph, didn't get Joe Lewis's. Oh yeah. I've thought about that one a million times. But there is a picture and the last time I saw it, it was on display during must have been Black History Week or something, but there was a series of pictures out at Northgate on—what do you call these display panels? There's the picture I want right there. But it was made by Alex Rivera, who was the public relations man down at North Carolina Central and he was also news photographer for the Pittsburgh Courier, which was a Black paper out of Pittsburgh. | 11:36 |
| R. Kelly Bryant | But now coming back to your question about things away from Durham or leading to this area, there was several organizations, national organizations, which Mr. Spalding participated in very strongly. He was in the NAACP. He was with Booker Washington when he organized what was then called the National Negro Business League. It's now just called the National Business League, but they met in Norfolk and Booker and Spaulding came to Durham on a number of occasions, but that organization got started and the recognition was made of those persons that participated at the time. | 12:31 |
| R. Kelly Bryant | My wife has a picture of Booker Washington, Mr. Spalding, at a meeting that was held in Wilson, North Carolina. The way she got the picture was that her uncle who was undertaking in Wilson was at this meeting and they just kept a copy of the picture. But then again, W.E.B. Dubois called Durham, what do you call it? A Black bourgeoisie, I guess, called a upper class group. | 13:23 |
| R. Kelly Bryant | He also named it Paris Street out there as the Black Wall Street and that name has hung on. They still refer to it as Black Wall Street, and there have been a number of other things where Durham was compared with Atlanta, with Detroit, Chicago, Harlem, as far as Black-owned businesses. Of course, we have shown very well in those comparisons. For years, Durham had one of the highest incidents of Black home ownership among cities, because we did have banks and places they could borrow money and buy their homes. | 14:06 |
| R. Kelly Bryant | They were saying that the Blacks couldn't really borrow money to amount to anything in most cities and there were insurance companies that wouldn't insure Blacks. That led to the development of the Black insurance companies and back, during that period of time, I think we got up to, at one time, about sixty different life insurance companies all over the country. They organized, what is called, still is, National Insurance Association. I guess the outgrowth of that, did lead to Blacks being covered adequately in insurance and it led to the development of Black businesses that were home builders, as well as the ownership of homes and businesses by Blacks. Then there have been a number of other things. As John Wheeler once said, "The fight for freedom begins every morning," and they still saying that, and his daughter is President of the bank around the corner down there, Julia Wheeler, because I know her name. | 15:04 |
| Jennifer Steen | [indistinct 00:16:46] very different note but also related [indistinct 00:16:50] remember last week, couple weeks ago, we talked a little bit about urban renewal, back in Durham, and I was just wondering, because North Carolina Mutual, I guess could be considered to be a big business depending on how you define things, but was North Carolina Mutual at all involved in the urban renewal of Durham that you saw? | 16:46 |
| R. Kelly Bryant | Not the development of the building where they are now, that was done away from the expressway, and in fact, the expressway had not been built when North Carolina Mutual got into the purchase of property for that building. That was purchased directly from the Duke family. It's maybe two or three blocks south of that, but the North Carolina Mutual Company as such was not involved in the planning and the development of the urban renewal. They did attempt to help Black businesses get a shopping center and relocate it. They did offer and worked on helping to do that. Well, that effort didn't materialize because we were not able to get these anchor tenants, but they gave whatever support they could in connection with those businesses and such. | 17:27 |
| R. Kelly Bryant | Now, Mr. Wheeler was on the Urban Renewal Commission that we had here, but I guess his efforts were to help Blacks salvage what they could out of it, and as a result of that, they were paying a certain amount for property and that was being taken. Let me put that little better, property that was being condemned, and people that had to relocate. In fact, I know his efforts were, just helped them get the best out of it that we could. But the project itself was cut, dried, and on its way when we got involved in it at all. So it wasn't a matter of our helping to decide which way it was going or anything like that, it was already decided. | 18:39 |
| Jennifer Steen | When you say we do you mean— | 19:45 |
| R. Kelly Bryant | The Black community. | 19:46 |
| Jennifer Steen | You mean the Black community? | 19:46 |
| R. Kelly Bryant | Black community didn't know much about it until they were driving stakes. That left us devastated because, as I may have said last time, there were 106 Black businesses that were displaced in one section, right on the [indistinct 00:20:10] Hayti area, 106 of them. Those businesses were located on Fairwood Street, north of the Stanford L. Warren Library, that's Umstead Street section up to Pettigrew Street and Fayetteville, and then west on Pettigrew Street to what is now known as Roxboro, and then going down Roxboro to the St. Mark out to Lakewood, St. Mark AME Zion Church, all these business that were located right in that area. The result of that has been that there are very few of those businesses still surviving as a result. Many just went out of business. They just couldn't see how at their ages that they could relocate and start over again. There were others that attempted and finally gave up. | 19:49 |
| Jennifer Steen | The ones that survive, do you have any idea how? | 21:17 |
| R. Kelly Bryant | Well, they were pretty well established, those that are still in operation. They moved out and did whatever it was to survive. Now I can think of a few of them. Let's see, Space Auto Service moved out and they're now located out Fayetteville Road, I guess, four miles down the Ohio, down the road from where they were. But that's a service center for automobiles. | 21:25 |
| R. Kelly Bryant | Then the Chicken Hut moved out. It was then called the Chicken Box. It is surviving. Scarborough Funeral Service is surviving. Union Insurance and Realty Company is surviving, it's out. Dunby Realty and Insurance Company is surviving. I don't think there's anything on Fayetteville Street at Burlington. Some went there, but they closed. But I don't think any of them there are those that were in the urban renewal area. | 22:03 |
| Jennifer Steen | [indistinct 00:23:18]. | 23:18 |
| R. Kelly Bryant | Yes, North Carolina Mutual had a district office there and it moved out and I think they're still located up on the Willard Street. The bank had a branch down there that survived and it's still in the area. | 23:25 |
| R. Kelly Bryant | Of course, the whiskey store was there, but it's not owned by Blacks. It's surviving and it's still there. The old St Joseph's Church is still there and it survived. But beyond that, I just can't remember. Oh, there was some barber shops. There were one or two barber shops and maybe beauty shops that moved out and they survived because they would make it anyway either way. Yeah. | 23:44 |
| Jennifer Steen | This is sort of different but somewhat related, when he did have the boycotters [indistinct 00:24:40]. You said that you met him Sundays at church, was it at [indistinct 00:24:47] that y'all met? | 24:26 |
| R. Kelly Bryant | No. All of the time. We pick a different church. Yes. Each Sunday night, we'd have this rally somewhere. | 24:40 |
| Jennifer Steen | Obviously it was important for that specific goal and program that you were working on, but the church in general, how would you view it, kind of a large question, but how would you view it as an institution in the last year? | 24:56 |
| R. Kelly Bryant | Well, we got very good support from the ministers during that time and they were together as a unit. I don't remember the exact name of their ministerial alliance, but they participated, made their facilities available and used their choirs and members to help us with that. We got good support from the ministers back then, and I mean all over Durham. It could be a small church that probably had more than couple hundred people in it, or that many. But they opened the doors and Blacks from all over town filled it up at these meetings. They were really rallies because we'd have a speaker there to talk about the status of the effort and kind of inspire everybody to participate and how important it was that we did participate together. So it was well organized. | 25:12 |
| Jennifer Steen | For that time, were they active and encouraging [indistinct 00:26:28]? | 26:27 |
| R. Kelly Bryant | Yes, we had the ministers, but they weren't organized in that effort as such. They were still with us and with their congregations. But when we got into this, then that kind of solidified their thinking and got everybody on the same piece of music, as I heard somebody say, and it was what we call one of the better types and out of that came a number of other things, Vanessa. | 26:28 |
| R. Kelly Bryant | We had the UOC, United Committee on Community Improvement, UOCI. We got some funding money and community money and all that sort of thing to set in operation a group and organization to help improve things in the community. See, we were doing with the boycott level. We weren't working with individuals as such and Operation Breakthrough. Mrs. Hazel Spalding put together the Women in Action and all these came out of our efforts back then. | 27:02 |
| R. Kelly Bryant | Mrs. Spalding, her name was Elna, E-L-N-A. They're still in full operation. These are women, wives of Blacks and Whites, and they worked together on trying to bring some fruition to the efforts that we had back then and they still are community oriented, people oriented as an organization. At one time, they maintained an office for any contact anybody wanted to make with them about a lot of other things that they had as community concerns. They're still operating because they give an award every year to persons who have done outstanding work in that area. | 27:54 |
| Jennifer Steen | But was it uncommon at that time for an interracial group like that? | 28:56 |
| R. Kelly Bryant | There was probably no such thing. Yeah, the Women in Action Clearinghouse on Queen Street. Yeah, I know they still have an annual meeting and they give awards and whatnot and she's still active in it. She's still active. | 28:57 |
| Jennifer Steen | Wow. | 29:25 |
| R. Kelly Bryant | Yeah. So, Durham has had a whole lot going for it down through the years and I guess that like any other place, they have some things they're maybe not so proud of, but then again, they work their way out of it. I guess we still have to work together to kind of keep everything going, at least make it a community in which everybody ought to be able to survive and live. | 29:30 |
| Jennifer Steen | Do you think that's possible right now? | 30:03 |
| R. Kelly Bryant | Well, I don't know of any other places I'd want to be, other than here Durham. Now I know that I've been just about—I don't say everywhere, but I've been a lot of different places, from Florida to New England and from East Coast to the West Coast and down in Texas and Arkansas and New Mexico and all this sort of thing. I just haven't seen any place where I feel that there's a kind of togetherness as we have in Durham. You've got other places, but it's just different. Even Atlanta, I've been to Atlanta any number of times, and it's a very nice place, I meant to stay, but the bigness of it puts one thing to it, that I don't appreciate it, getting up in the morning, riding twenty minutes to go to a grocery store. That's kind of a thing. | 30:07 |
| R. Kelly Bryant | You don't have that problem in Durham and you can get just about anything you want or need right in this area. For living reasons, I would like this area. Now for being in a place where you can travel to a number of cities within a small distance, a short distance, I guess the best place to my knowledge, end up around Norfolk. You can go thirty miles. You can go everywhere from Newport News to east, west, to Virginia Beach East to Suffolk, Virginia, south, and got everything up there, Air Force and everything. A few more miles, twenty miles, thirty miles from the Norfolk side, you are in Maryland—no, not Maryland. You are in the eastern shore of Virginia, but not far from that, you're in Maryland. | 31:22 |
| R. Kelly Bryant | So, you got so much in that area. You got an Air Force base, you got a Navy yard. You got shipping, all kinds of shipyard where they build ships, James River and Williamsburg, all these places, just a short distance, and for a place of variety like that, I think Norfolk, Hampton, Newport News area. They're all there together. | 32:27 |
| R. Kelly Bryant | I'm not familiar with another one that's [indistinct 00:33:08], when I went there with the children, grandchildren. I spent a lot of time just carrying them around, showing them and then we didn't go a long ways, just over to the Virginia Beach side and through the tunnel and back and down to the Fort Monroe. They never seen a fort with a moat around it and then all that sort of thing. It is a fort and we went inside and there's a seafront, waterfront, the Hampton Roads and Chesapeake Bay, Atlantic Ocean. So, they had a nice time there. I told them, "You got old. I talk about your classes in school now." A bridge almost five miles long, that was amazing. Just cross that James River Bridge. It's just a few hundred feet, it's like being five miles and they just enjoyed it. | 33:03 |
| R. Kelly Bryant | Let me see if there's something else about Durham. Did I talk about the charette that we had? I'm not sure the exact date, but it was prior to the 1960 and it was held at RN Harris School on Save Our Schools. It was put together by leaders here in Durham in an effort to get the very best out of our school system in connection with the integration and all that sort of thing. | 34:04 |
| R. Kelly Bryant | Mr. Lew Hannon, L-E-W, Lew Hannon was the superintendent at that time and we set this charette up to talk through the problems of our school system. We had Black leaders participating in that. I don't know how long it lasted, I think a week. I had some material on that, I loaned it to somebody, to write it up, write a paper on it and I never got it back. I had hand bills and the people who participated and all that sort of thing. I may have a little material now somewhere. But that was a program where Ann Atwater and Cleveland [indistinct 00:35:57] got together and they were on opposite sides when it started out. They ended up being co-authors of a book and they traveled together because of the unusual arrangement of that. So, as a result, there's even a documentary on it, but we got some things done. | 34:48 |
| Jennifer Steen | Was there a particular incident that provided [indistinct 00:36:33] or just the general situation [indistinct 00:36:35]? | 36:32 |
| R. Kelly Bryant | It was the general situation in the school systems. Well, we ended up dealing with Durham system, but we had this county system that was doing its own thing too. Even though we had been able to get one person on the school board in the city, we had one person on the county board for a short period of time, maybe a term or something of this sort, and were never able to get anybody else on the county board. I think somebody was appointed to fulfill the unexpired term of one Black person, but there never any Blacks that were really gotten into that system, yet we were able to get Blacks on the city school board through election. | 36:34 |
| Jennifer Steen | Can you think of any reason why that could have happened, you versus Durham? | 37:31 |
| R. Kelly Bryant | Yes. One reason is that the county was populated with more Whites than Blacks and people left city went to the county and so they controlled it, the county election. | 37:31 |
| Jennifer Steen | And were people satisfied with the outcome of the [indistinct 00:38:03]? | 37:53 |
| R. Kelly Bryant | Yeah, I think there was a meeting of minds on a number of issues and there was some groundwork lead to move on from where we were. There were some things that were talked about that were exposed, that not been known, I guess, to people, and so you just had to move from that, from dead center, whatever. | 38:02 |
| Jennifer Steen | Is [indistinct 00:38:45] the Black community or the White community? | 38:42 |
| R. Kelly Bryant | I think it was both. There were some things for both communities. Well, I'll give you an illustration on one, for instance. I was working with Burton School and- | 38:47 |
| Jennifer Steen | Is that [indistinct 00:39:06]? | 39:05 |
| R. Kelly Bryant | No, it part, PT, that's where I did my scout work all years. My wife was President of PT. But anyway, we were doing something over there. We had a committee called the School Improvement Committee and we were talking and comparing schools in the city. So we compared Burton School with EK Post School, which is up on Broad Street. Yeah, up on Broad Street. Both schools had about six hundred students, something in the neighborhood of six hundred, 625. But there was difference in the personnel, the cafeterias, the libraries, all the facilities were different. | 39:05 |
| R. Kelly Bryant | For instance, in the cafeteria, we had three people at Burton School. They had six out there. The library in Burton school was a small classroom with books on a couple walls. We went out there, they had a full library and had ordered new furniture. So what had happened, the principal carried us in a room and he said, "What's all this stuff stacked in here?" He said, "That's the new furniture." He said that, "We ordered it and the school system bought it. Said we aren't going to take it." He said, "It's going to sit right here until they order what we want." Over at Burton School, it was ridiculous. Here, this school could turn down stuff that we couldn't even get to begin with. | 40:03 |
| R. Kelly Bryant | Then he talked about the number of persons he had in the administration with him, which was far beyond what we had at Burton School. For instance, too, they had a room for health, where the nurse would come over to the school and what have. At Burton they would examine them in the hall, had a pair of students sitting out in the hall. There so many things that were so much different. | 40:59 |
| R. Kelly Bryant | Now out of all of that, we did get a room for examinations for children, they called a Health Room, including a place where there was a bed, emergency bed, for children. We got a library and a young lady that was the librarian over there, she was around Durham at the time. She called me one day and said, "Come over here," said, "What I'd like to see us do is ask for two classrooms on the front, take the partition out and make the library out of it and then over in this corner, put audio visual equipment for children and over here in this corner would be where we would do work for repairing desks." | 41:27 |
| R. Kelly Bryant | There were so many things that were done there that improved the [indistinct 00:42:26]. They also had an area where she would repair books in this kind of worked as a working area for her as a librarian. Then she was able to change the lighting and all this other stuff. So I drew it, just for drawing. I drew it and finally we got the school people to consider it and they built it. But now in the last two years, they rebuilt the school and you don't recognize that school at all from what it was two years ago. | 42:20 |
| Jennifer Steen | Does that look so much better? | 42:53 |
| R. Kelly Bryant | Oh yes. Oh yes. It's tops now. Instead of a library, they have what's called a Media Center now, a gymnasium, cafeteria, auditorium. They got everything there now. In fact, it's a special kind of a training program over there now. So what I'm saying is that things have been better as a result of some of the efforts of Dr. Shepherd and Mr. Spalding and Professor Pearson and all these other people that's who think— | 42:54 |
| R. Kelly Bryant | Well, I haven't done all that much. I'm one of those in the background. Yeah. Oh yeah. | 43:31 |
| Jennifer Steen | [indistinct 00:43:39] background you can play your activities down. Is there anything else you wanted to add [indistinct 00:43:57]? | 43:39 |
| R. Kelly Bryant | No, I tell you what. I will try to find some material that we might comment on. One thing that I don't think I've mentioned yet, there is a reunion of the civil right workers every year on Martin Luther King's birthday. That's in January at St. Joseph's AME Church. So what we are doing is getting back with the people who were active in this, and just talking about what happened and recognizing the jobs that were done by the individuals and this kind of thing every year, have a dinner and had a program. We usually get some speaker that was in it back then. | 44:00 |
| R. Kelly Bryant | You see, we had a group of young people. These were high school students, I guess, back there and they met at St. Joseph Church and they were the leaders on the street. They did all the walking for us and that group now is what might be called—what is it they call these people now? There? What do you call that thing, the booming—what is it? | 45:01 |
| Jennifer Steen | Baby boomers? | 45:33 |
| R. Kelly Bryant | Yeah, they might be some them and they're probably in their fifties, but they still real active, fifties or sixties. They're real active and they come out. So we hang in there together and it keeps the names of people who did make contributions there. This was a gang that really started in the cities in North Carolina. It didn't start in Greensboro, started right here in Durham in 1960. Let me get it straight because I got the article, '60 and it started in Greensboro in '63. | 45:35 |
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