Eddie Brumfield (primary interviewee) and Johnny Hunter interview recording, 1994 August 12

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Kate Ellis	Will you say your name and when you were born?	0:03
Johnny Johnson Hunter	My name?	0:07
Kate Ellis	Yeah.	0:07
Johnny Johnson Hunter	My name is Johnny J. Hunter, Sr. I was born August the twenty-fourth, 1929.	0:08
Kate Ellis	Okay. Will you say your name and when you were born?	0:17
Tommie Mayberry	Tommie Mayberry, born September eighth, 1914.	0:18
Kate Ellis	Your name again is—	0:19
Tommie Mayberry	Tommie Mayberry.	0:30
Kate Ellis	Tommie Mayberry.	0:33
Tommie Mayberry	T-O-M-M-I-E.	0:35
Kate Ellis	Oh, M-I-E.	0:39
Tommie Mayberry	M-A-Y-B-E-R-R-Y.	0:39
Kate Ellis	When were you born?	0:39
Tommie Mayberry	September eighth, 1914.	0:43
Kate Ellis	Where were you born?	0:50
Tommie Mayberry	When was I born?	0:50
Kate Ellis	Where?	0:52
Johnny Johnson Hunter	What state you were—	0:53
Tommie Mayberry	Oh, that was back in Macon, Mississippi.	0:53
Kate Ellis	Oh, okay. Mississippi. All right. Since you only have a few minutes, let me just ask you, you joined the longshoremen in the '40s?	1:01
Tommie Mayberry	Yeah.	1:09
Kate Ellis	That's when you first started working as a longshoreman?	1:10
Tommie Mayberry	Yeah.	1:15
Kate Ellis	Okay. Can you tell me what you remember about what it was like to work as a longshoreman in the '40s?	1:16
Tommie Mayberry	Well, it was hard out there, I'll tell you that. Because we didn't have no nothing out there. Everything had to be done with muscle. I used to sit out there a whole week to get a job.	1:22
Kate Ellis	You'd just be waiting for work to come in, basically?	1:41
Tommie Mayberry	Yeah. Till some of them burn out or something there.	1:47
Kate Ellis	Really?	1:47
Johnny Johnson Hunter	There was plenty of work.	1:47
Tommie Mayberry	There was plenty of work but this—	1:47
Johnny Johnson Hunter	All I like said, there was also plenty of men that were looking for work.	1:47
Kate Ellis	Even though, there was always a lot of work, there was always a lot of people—	1:58
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Still looking, yeah.	2:01
Kate Ellis	— competing for the jobs. So what would you do while you're waiting for a job?	2:06
Tommie Mayberry	Just had to sit down round and wait.	2:10
Kate Ellis	Really?	2:11
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Till someone burn out.	2:11
Tommie Mayberry	Just sit around and wait if you want to work. You didn't have no other choice. Doing some work yesterday and I find a new job. I stayed around here a whole year. And I left and went to Pascagoula, Mississippi, working in the shipyard, then come back.	2:11
Kate Ellis	You said that you went to the shipyard in Mississippi and then came back again because you couldn't get work here?	2:41
Tommie Mayberry	Yeah, I come—	2:56
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Work was a matter of, like he was saying hardly ever— At that time, it was a must that you worked. Like I said, he had to work to take care of his family. Well, those guys, they'd just told him— Now I said a lot of time, I would get down, I would cramp up so bad my wife had to roll me over. You understand?	2:57
Kate Ellis	Mm-hmm.	3:05
Johnny Johnson Hunter	You just had to even though you knew you was going to suffer after it. Didn't think twice just to make money to take care of your family.	3:08
Tommie Mayberry	[indistinct 00:03:17] that.	3:12
Kate Ellis	What kind of jobs did you do? When you would get work on the docks, what was your job?	3:18
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Just working there for the labor.	3:26
Tommie Mayberry	Labor, that's what I would do.	3:33
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Truck and ship work. There was a lot of different cargoes. They moved all kind of cargo from different places of the world. There was a lot of cargo that was coming in here, like a ship was coming in from Cuba, and there was iron ore coming in from all different places, I couldn't say just where, and stuff like that. We'd work every day to dig that out the ship hold?	3:33
Kate Ellis	You had to dig that out of the ship hold?	4:03
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Mm-hmm.	4:06
Kate Ellis	Dig what out?	4:06
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Put that in a bucket and send it out. You see, there's a long, drawn-out story to explain these. I have some gear that I made. When you come back, I'll explain all of it to you. I think the ship maker would roll in their grave because I still have the equipment that I made for those two so [indistinct 00:04:31] could come back finish.	4:08
Kate Ellis	Oh, really?	4:29
Johnny Johnson Hunter	See, there was a lot of different ways that you could discharge. I even made a mock for ship. I think I threw that away. I might have it. We made a boom like on a ship to explain to you all this stuff would dock.	4:36
Kate Ellis	That's why I asked that question, as far as the kind of work that you did. I meant, I guess just the little knowledge that I have about working on the docks, there were jobs like, I guess, the lifting, the loading and unloading of the cargo, and working on the ship. Like you were talking about the person who worked by the hook and things like that. What was your job in?	4:49
Tommie Mayberry	Well, I was a truck driver, I'd have to get the load of cargo on the wagon, bring it to the ship hold.	5:17
Kate Ellis	I see. So you—	5:33
Tommie Mayberry	You had to pull that by hand.	5:33
Kate Ellis	Wow.	5:33
Johnny Johnson Hunter	See, there was no tractors and lifts at that time, back in the '40s. It wasn't till the late '50s that they had got lift machine to lift the cargo. When automation would begin to take the main powers and then there they cut on the gangs, also. See, a gang of loading drums and cargo, stuff like that, that might be a gang of maybe forty men. Now, as of today, a drum gang consist of no more than eight to twelve men because of the power allows you now to band around it. Whereas that we used to have to break them down, roll them to the ship, hook them up, then go into the ship, roll out the same way. They used to come in, they used to truck that by hand. I got all those baby little hands up to show here.	5:35
Kate Ellis	All those you had that you can show me?	6:25
Johnny Johnson Hunter	All those little gadgets, to show you how hard. But since automation come in, now that they've got lift truck go and pick these things up and put.	6:28
Kate Ellis	So you'd sit around for a long time and wait to get picked for a job?	6:36
Tommie Mayberry	Yeah.	6:41
Kate Ellis	Is that right?	6:41
Tommie Mayberry	Yeah.	6:42
Kate Ellis	Did it ever help to know somebody who was picking? Was it the foreman who'd pick the gang to work on the job?	6:45
Tommie Mayberry	Well, you might just wait down there and get a job, then work a couple days, then you ain't got no job.	6:52
Kate Ellis	What about as far as how much Black people and White people worked together in the '40s? Did they not work together at all? I mean—	7:04
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Not at that time.	7:19
Tommie Mayberry	No, not that time.	7:20
Johnny Johnson Hunter	There was no White. That's what I'm telling you. When I went on in 1950, you could count the White man on one hand, almost.	7:26
Kate Ellis	So they had disappeared from the docks? I guess, not disappeared, but I mean—	7:29
Tommie Mayberry	They just wasn't out there then.	7:35
Johnny Johnson Hunter	They were—	7:37
Kate Ellis	They just weren't there?	7:37
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Yeah. Until they started hiring fewer Whites then become foreman, that's when the White become— See, it was all Black. It was too hard for the White man, back in that time.	7:39
Kate Ellis	In the '40s.	7:49
Johnny Johnson Hunter	You understand what I'm saying?	7:50
Kate Ellis	Yeah.	7:50
Johnny Johnson Hunter	And then when the White man come in, then that's why you started accumulating the jobs that either the spots for the White man.	7:53
Kate Ellis	Because they would hire the White foreman—	8:05
Johnny Johnson Hunter	They'd hire a White foreman would hire a White—	8:05
Kate Ellis	— and the White foreman would pick the few Whites that there were.	8:05
Johnny Johnson Hunter	To give, they use a job. That's the way the power man, the man working at the hook, that's the man who'd go out to see what's to be loaded, which would be a White boy and a group of the White boy.	8:13
Johnny Johnson Hunter	But in the all Black gang, well, they had the same quality of men, but they were Black doing it. Because, see, as the more White come, well, naturally White man when he hired, he wasn't going to hire no Black man to work at the hook. Then so at one time that they was saying that that was a White man's job, working at the hook.	8:36
Kate Ellis	It was—	8:51
Johnny Johnson Hunter	In 1956, the White fellows there asked the Black president, Mr. Shay Kendalwood there, Black fellow there, and Al Churney was the White. He asked that his that were Local 1418, which was the White, Local 1419 was the Black— He asked that he was trying to secure the best job for the White. So he asked for the deck of the ship. What I mean by the deck, that's the [indistinct 00:09:37] runners, the man who flag the load in the hold, and the man who work at the hook. He asked that, all on the wharf. See, that's where the easy job was, on the wharf.	8:59
Kate Ellis	So the Whites or White union president in the '50s said, "We want the Whites to control or to have the jobs on the deck"?	9:51
Johnny Johnson Hunter	On the deck and on the wharf, those were the easier jobs.	9:59
Kate Ellis	He was going to negotiate this with the Black union leader?	10:08
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Yeah. He tried to come on that kind of a turn.	10:12
Kate Ellis	Did that—	10:15
Johnny Johnson Hunter	No. That didn't work. They had a vice president, the president was about to fall for it. But the vice president asked the White president, was he crazy? Fella I'm talking about out of—	10:16
Kate Ellis	Do you remember that?	10:33
Tommie Mayberry	Yeah, yeah. Used to [indistinct 00:10:37].	10:34
Kate Ellis	Well, I want to get a question to you and then keep going with what you're saying. Right around the turn of the century, I mean, there were still more Black workers than White workers. But there were a lot of White workers, too. And even they had that kind of half and half arrangement?	10:36
Johnny Johnson Hunter	It never did. There was a discrimination— Well, see, the easy job, like you said the clerk with [indistinct 00:11:07] what I was talking about, that's the man who'd get the—	10:54
Tommie Mayberry	Crate.	10:54
Johnny Johnson Hunter	— crate and reload it. Okay. And that was another local, called the clerk and checkers local. That's an easy job. They're the ones who have to check out everything, even where it goes, ship.	11:21
Kate Ellis	Oh, okay.	11:34
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Now that was the all-White local—	11:35
Kate Ellis	Okay. I take your meaning.	11:39
Johnny Johnson Hunter	— until 1966 when the— I think in 1966. It was between '62 and '66 when they broke the arrangement, they down the bid to first of the discrimination of that local, that they must hire Black clerks. Because a lot of clerks struck because the Army base authorized it and then you've got to report it forward some of the purchase. So the major of the Army base told them if they didn't allow these people to work, they would put them all out and have nothing but Black.	11:46
Kate Ellis	Okay. So it was the Army that told the clerks? What is it called, the clerks?	12:48
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Clerk and checkers union.	12:54
Kate Ellis	It was the Army base that told them—	12:58
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Yeah.	13:00
Kate Ellis	— they had to hire Black workers.	13:01
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Black workers.	13:03
Kate Ellis	And that was in the mid-'60s.	13:03
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Right, mid-'60s.	13:03
Kate Ellis	Now why did the Army base do that? Was that just a result of new federal laws that the Army base had to enforce?	13:06
Johnny Johnson Hunter	New federal laws, yeah. They had to enforce, yeah.	13:17
Tommie Mayberry	Man, I've got to go, y'all.	13:17
Kate Ellis	You have to go?	13:18
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Okay. Okay, Mayberry.	13:18
Tommie Mayberry	Yeah.	13:18
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Okay. I'll just thought maybe you'd mind this fella more since you're the older one on the ship. See, I spent thirty-five, thirty-nine years on the waterfront.	13:18
Kate Ellis	You got it?	13:18
Tommie Mayberry	Yeah.	13:18
Kate Ellis	Well, good. Let's keep talking, thank you.	13:29
Tommie Mayberry	I'll see you. When you coming back?	13:33
Kate Ellis	When am I coming back? I may be back next Friday. Will you be around?	13:36
Tommie Mayberry	Yeah, I might be up in here Friday.	13:41
Kate Ellis	All right. Well, think of some stories.	13:42
Tommie Mayberry	My wife [indistinct 00:13:46].	13:43
Kate Ellis	It depends on her— she's not feeling too well?	13:46
Tommie Mayberry	Yeah.	13:48
Kate Ellis	I hope she gets better.	13:50
Tommie Mayberry	Yeah. Me, too.	13:51
Kate Ellis	Yeah. Yeah.	13:51
Tommie Mayberry	Me too. sick every day.	13:58
Kate Ellis	Yeah. Yeah.	13:58
Tommie Mayberry	All right, Johnnie. I'll see you.	13:58
Kate Ellis	Okay.	13:58
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Okay, Mayberry.	13:58
Kate Ellis	Bye. I know he's got a family. Okay. I know you can't talk too long—	14:07
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Well, I think it—	14:08
Kate Ellis	— but just—	14:08
Johnny Johnson Hunter	I think it'll pick me up.	14:08
Kate Ellis	Okay, okay. I can see that. So you started working in the '50s.	14:14
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Right.	14:17
Kate Ellis	In the early '50s.	14:17
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Early, yes.	14:19
Kate Ellis	What year did you start working as a longshoreman?	14:19
Johnny Johnson Hunter	1950.	14:20
Kate Ellis	Okay. Okay. At that time, you're saying there were only longshoremen?	14:25
Johnny Johnson Hunter	No, they had very few, very few.	14:32
Kate Ellis	Okay. Almost then you could count them on your—	14:34
Johnny Johnson Hunter	You could count them on your hand. Beside the clerks union. See, they had a clerks union, that were all White. I mean, as a laborer, there were very few.	14:40
Kate Ellis	I see. Because the White didn't want to do the hard labor?	14:45
Johnny Johnson Hunter	That kind of work because it's hard work. They couldn't do it. Until— I don't know what started them to start hiring half and half, but that was I think around 1952, that was half and half working at the Army base. The Black were on one side and White was on the other because, of course, that was a White foreman. In the company, at the time, we had something like thirty-nine companies working on the waterfront. On Fridays, we had to go sometime seven to eight, maybe nine pay tables to get all our monies working because it wasn't consolidated. You see, they had not merged. I think they merged around— I don't remember the year. I would say it was in the '70s.	14:57
Kate Ellis	That the stevedores merged?	16:00
Johnny Johnson Hunter	That they made a central check. All the checks were reporting to one company and that was a consolidated—	16:04
Kate Ellis	How would you even track, like in a given day or a given week? You said you worked for—	16:13
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Different companies.	16:20
Kate Ellis	— different companies. How would you even keep track of your hours, say, for each one?	16:21
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Okay, that was a good question. There were cards given. It was in the contract that each foreman at the end of the day, that was mandatory that they give you a card with your hours on it and so—	16:24
Kate Ellis	For each different—	16:37
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Yeah. And each company had their names on the card, that's how you would know how to go and pick your monies up.	16:40
Kate Ellis	Oh, that's interesting.	16:45
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Yeah.	16:47
Kate Ellis	So it's almost like eight or nine different time sheets or something?	16:47
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Yeah. Well, there's a lot of people probably never pick up all their check because they didn't know where to go to get the money. Now if would go down there, Joe might could tell you. Down there, there's a lot of check down there now, at the headquarters on Poydras Street, that nobody claimed.	16:52
Kate Ellis	Oh.	17:16
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Well, see, there's so much racketeers was going on when we were— In the later years, there were deadhead people that people was carrying. Well, the company, you had to— when you'd go and sign your check, you had to show some companies an ID to pick up your card. See, because there were so many people where they probably was supported twenty men through the gang, he only sixteen and he'd carry someone else. That other person he probably carried on the payroll didn't know they was carrying him. So that's money when they could get at those foremen.	17:16
Kate Ellis	Wow. They would— I mean, Mr.—	17:55
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Hunter. Johnnie Hunter.	17:57
Kate Ellis	Right. No, I was going to say, Mr. Joseph had said that a number of longshoremen couldn't read and write. I mean, they didn't a lot of access to education. I mean—	18:02
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Right.	18:17
Kate Ellis	So if you have this system where you have eight or nine—	18:18
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Companies to pick your money up from. Imagine if—	18:24
Kate Ellis	I mean, if you can't read. I don't even know— that must make it a lot more difficult as far as figuring out where you're supposed to go.	18:28
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Yeah. Well, they were a union— You would have a rates sheet telling how much so much hour would come to. They could always get with their friends and ask him, say, "I got forty hours." Well, okay, your rate sheet would tell you how should owe, to be paid. Yeah.	18:34
Kate Ellis	So you would know if you weren't coming up with the right amount of money— like if you went to get the pay from different people, you'd know if you weren't getting enough money?	18:58
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Well, like I say, I never worried about it too much. I'd know how many hours. Well, I would add up my money. I'd know how much I was supposed to be made. But, see, a lot of times you'd go there, the foreman sometime would even shorten you somehow.	19:12
Kate Ellis	Really?	19:37
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Yeah.	19:37
Kate Ellis	The foreman would?	19:37
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Right.	19:37
Kate Ellis	And pocket the money, himself?	19:37
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Well, I wouldn't say he'd pocket. See, some of the foremen, all the stevedores wanted to know that he could drive the other man. He didn't care whether he had any kids or not. A lot of them was caring about who was hiring them and they'd tell the man who were hiring for him who to hire, which he could not write out there.	19:42
Kate Ellis	You mean the stevedore would tell the foreman?	20:02
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Not the stevedore.	20:07
Kate Ellis	Oh.	20:09
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Okay, say for instance, let me give you like that. If you were the foreman, you could not read or write, I would be your second man. All right, you would tell me, "Hire that man. Hire that man." But you can't write, you understand? Read or write.	20:09
Kate Ellis	Mm-hmm.	20:22
Johnny Johnson Hunter	So that's the way that worked.	20:24
Kate Ellis	So I wouldn't even know if you hired the right people or not?	20:25
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Yeah. You would tell me who to hire. You would leave at the end of the day, tell me how many hours it'd give. See, I'm your second, see. You are the foreman but I'm doing your work for you. Then that made me [indistinct 00:20:45] his job and [indistinct 00:20:46]. So it's just power, man. You know, something like that. People call me a lift driver. So it really was a racket on the waterfront.	20:30
Kate Ellis	Really?	20:58
Johnny Johnson Hunter	I intend to make forty years. See, I retired at age sixty, although I had thirty-nine years. I was trying to make the forty years, which it wouldn't have any different to me or not, but—	21:00
Kate Ellis	It wouldn't, but you wanted to make forty?	21:12
Johnny Johnson Hunter	But the work had got so hard. They cut the gang so light. Like I said, when I went on the waterfront, called it what kind of a gang that I went in. Sometime I might've went in the gang where there were forty mens in that gang. But, see, now they'll cut the gangs so low.	21:13
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Now, since I retired, I really don't know a gang now— Biggest gang they probably got on the river now is a container gang, which would be around eighteen to nineteen men. Well, at one time in 1950, there had to be as much as— and some company was carrying as much as twenty-three men as a regular gang. Because they had power man— They had eighteen mens in the gang. They had a power man, and then they had five, eight men— and what was their other name? So some gangs carried regular— that was a regular gang. But, see, those regular gang was like that. They're now down to twelve and fourteen. That's much automation have cut per gang.	21:29
Kate Ellis	So a lot of dockworkers, have they been put out of jobs because of—	22:33
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Right. Like I was saying, back in that time, there were four thousand—something longshoremen. Now, if you've got two thousand, you've got a lot out there now. It's cut just about in half because of automation, the machines, and stuff taking the jobs and so they don't need as much to operate.	22:38
Kate Ellis	Just tell me something about what you were saying off-tape which was really interesting. You were talking about, I guess, when you first came on, some of the most difficult jobs that Black longshoremen had were with the grain, when they would have to dig—	23:02
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Dig the stuff out?	23:23
Kate Ellis	Mm-hmm.	23:23
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Yeah. Why don't you let me explain to you when I make you a little ship to show you how, what I'm talking about to share? Or you think you could understand if I would just try to—	23:25
Kate Ellis	Oh, I understand what you were saying. I just want to have it on tape.	23:36
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Okay.	23:38
Kate Ellis	No, I got what you were saying. It's just an interesting story, especially when we talked about what happened once they had automation. You had been talking about how the Blacks had the hardest jobs over the Whites and then once certain automations would come in, that made the job easier, then the Whites—	23:39
Johnny Johnson Hunter	White— Yeah.	23:56
Kate Ellis	— would get those jobs.	23:56
Johnny Johnson Hunter	The easy jobs. Okay. Let's see now, how did I— right now in— Well, I might not say it exactly like I said it—	24:00
Kate Ellis	You don't have to—	24:10
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Okay.	24:10
Kate Ellis	— I just want to hear about it.	24:11
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Now the grain gang back in the early '50s, could be anywhere from twenty to thirty men. In loading the grain, it would come in through the hatch. There had to be longshoremen to transfer the grain from the center of the hatch to the wharf. Other words, what I'm saying is, they would fill the hatch up with the longshoremens and down in the ship, and he had to dig himself out. What I mean by dig himself out? He had to shovel the grain from the center of the hatch to the back of the ship or the four corners of the ship to make the ship level where it could sail easy or to get more grain into the ship. But you want to go about reason here?	24:13
Kate Ellis	Yeah.	25:16
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Okay. And the reason here— This was done all by Black. And the reason here is, when they discovered that the grain could be pumped from the cellar hatch by machine, then that's when the White boys become the head of the grain. Which, there was lots of Black cut off and White take the gang. That's about what you—	25:18
Kate Ellis	Yeah. See, that's why I was like, "Let me get this on tape!"	25:52
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Okay.	25:52
Kate Ellis	I mean, just because you have been saying— Again, and I'm not trying to put words in your mouth, I just want to say what you had said to me before I turned the tape recorder on. What you had been mentioning is that the Black workers had really tough jobs. Then you said that they started to hire White foremen and the White foremen would get the easier jobs.	25:59
Johnny Johnson Hunter	The easier jobs.	26:24
Kate Ellis	So if automation made a job easier, then that's when they'd bring—	26:24
Johnny Johnson Hunter	The White.	26:28
Kate Ellis	— Whites, yeah.	26:28
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Okay. Well, you said there just about what it means. But you want it on tape or you're going to rewrite this one though?	26:33
Kate Ellis	I'm not going to rewrite it. I just want it on tape as far as your perspective on things.	26:39
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Well, the waterfront have come a long ways when the '50s up until now. It really was hard for a man, like I said. In the '50s, there were at least four thousand longshoremen. They worked hard and there were plenty of work. But there was also a plenty people looking for work. Then, there was some people who did not have jobs would lay around the ship to wait until someone burned out, because the work was just that hard, to get his job.	26:48
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Of course, I was unfortunate, I was a young man when I went on the waterfront. I had a determined to make it and I did make it. A lot of times, I would have cramps when I'd get home. But that was a big steak I had to make.	27:43
Kate Ellis	The end.	28:12
Johnny Johnson Hunter	That's it.	28:13
Kate Ellis	Okay. Let me just ask you a couple more things. Did you have other jobs? I understand that because sometimes the work was hard to come by, did you have other—	28:14
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Well, there was a lot of different types of work, all times. See, when that job's completed, we'd probably go on another job, it wouldn't be of the same caliber. See, there were a lot of different cargoes that we worked.	28:26
Johnny Johnson Hunter	The most hardest job was trucking sugar. We had to pull it by hand on the hand truck. The truck and sugar combined would've weighed something like from thirteen to fifteen hundred pounds, which is five bags of sugar that you had to pull by hand on the truck. I'll say you had to put them on a truck and you had to run with the sugar to make you a— You couldn't just pull it by power. There was a ramp built from the ship to the scale. To get a start, when you come off the scale and come off the ramp, you would have to run with the truck and to the power.	28:43
Johnny Johnson Hunter	That was the easy way to do it. It might've been seem hard, but that was the easy way to do it. Well, I'll say, the union couldn't do nothing about it, neither could we because we had to work and we had other work. We was running to make the stevedores rich and make the load lighter on [indistinct 00:30:11]. See, because you couldn't just pull it by hand, it was too heavy. You had to run with the truck as it'd go off the incline to make easy for you.	29:45
Kate Ellis	As far as the union's concerned, how long had the— Let's see, this is what I want to ask. How much protection do you feel you got from the union? I mean, how well do you think the union worked for you, as a worker?	30:27
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Well, they had certain laws that they went by and certain stipulations in the contract. The union would stand by you if you were being mistreated, of course. But they didn't never say that you had to run with that truck, but we'd run with because it was easier to run with it. Yeah.	30:46
Kate Ellis	So there was no way— The union couldn't make your life easier—	31:14
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Tell us not to. He could not tell us not to because that actually was making the burden more light on us by running with the truck.	31:18
Kate Ellis	How well did the White union and the Black union work together?	31:26
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Well, they had their little ups and down, but they always got along. Well, you know there's discrimination everywhere but they never had no problem with it.	31:32
Kate Ellis	Well, what do you mean? Like when you say there was discrimination everywhere but they had never had problems with them, what do you mean?	31:48
Johnny Johnson Hunter	What I'm saying about discrimination, like I'm saying when the White foreman would hire the White boys and put them in. Although he had Black working for him, now. The White foreman had all Black in the hold, very few. Well, later on years, when they got to squawking about it, well, the oldest man in the gang if there become a vacancy on the wharf, he was entitled. That was in writing, that he's the oldest man, he could come campaign for that job. But this wasn't until the early '60s.	31:54
Kate Ellis	The early '60s?	32:29
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Mm-hmm.	32:30
Kate Ellis	So it started to based more on how long you had worked than on the color of your skin?	32:35
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Right.	32:41
Kate Ellis	Is that what you're saying?	32:41
Johnny Johnson Hunter	That's what I'm saying.	32:42
Kate Ellis	When you say squawking about it, how was squawking?	32:44
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Well, when the members see what was going on, if the White man hire a whole Black gang to go in the hold and then White to go to a hook, if his White boy quit, he'd go get another White from anywhere else, where he didn't allow a man in this gang to— I guess the union— now don't quote me on that— I guess the union, they was saying because this president wanted the wharf and ship, the deck— What I mean, the wharf and the deck for the White. And they were saying at one time that that was their job, the wharf was for Whites.	32:48
Kate Ellis	They just announced it? The wharf is—	33:36
Johnny Johnson Hunter	It definitely was not official but they were saying that. And if they got away with it, well, they got away with it. If they didn't, well—	33:39
Kate Ellis	Well, [indistinct 00:33:45]. Did this create tension between the White and Black workers on the docks? I mean, how would people get along?	33:45
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Well, they were all right as long as— That was a different after you left the job. They cooperated and worked together, as long as they were on the— See, the work was watched, you had to go up sometime at that hook, call it what were loading. It was hard. But in most cases what you'd use is spread about or just hooking up something, it was good.	33:55
Kate Ellis	So you're saying you had to cooperate on the job?	34:17
Johnny Johnson Hunter	You had to, yeah, to get along.	34:22
Kate Ellis	And you're saying but off the job—	34:22
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Old Whitey what nothing to do with your head.	34:22
Kate Ellis	They want what? They want?	34:26
Johnny Johnson Hunter	They didn't want no more to do with you. They didn't want their friend to see that that's who they associate with or whatever. It's just like I'm saying— How old are you?	34:26
Kate Ellis	Thirty.	34:38
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Oh, yeah, that's what I'm saying. You need to know a lot about what had went on in the world. The Blacks, really, in the South have had a hard time, my foreparents. And like I said, I was born in '29, well, at my home, it was perfectly legal that a White man could go with a Colored woman.	34:39
Kate Ellis	Could go with a Colored, mm-hmm.	35:08
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Some of them had them, they did live in the house with them, but they had a house on the side there. That was their— well, not their wife or their woman.	35:10
Kate Ellis	But the same wasn't the case for the other way around?	35:25
Johnny Johnson Hunter	No, no. Oh, no. No way.	35:28
Kate Ellis	So you came up— Where are you from? You said you're—	35:37
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Woodville, Mississippi.	35:39
Kate Ellis	Woodville?	35:39
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Mm-hmm.	35:39
Kate Ellis	Is that where you grew up?	35:45
Johnny Johnson Hunter	That's where I grew up until I went in the Army	35:46
Kate Ellis	I'm sorry?	35:47
Johnny Johnson Hunter	That's where I grew up, in Woodville.	35:50
Kate Ellis	What did your parents do?	35:51
Johnny Johnson Hunter	They were farmers.	35:57
Kate Ellis	Farmers? Okay. Did they work on a plantation or did they—	35:57
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Well, my dad used to rent land. He worked [indistinct 00:36:06] on his own. He put up a certain amount of money at the end of the year for rent and we worked. See, a lot of people would sharecrop. See, my daddy owned his own mules and horses and gear to work. But the person who sharecrop, the White man furnished everything, they worked on half, furnished the feed for the plant. See, my dad always kept his own. Had his own horses, mules, and all the gear. He paid rent on the place that he was working.	36:00
Kate Ellis	Okay. Then he got money from the crops that he raised and—	36:49
Johnny Johnson Hunter	To pay the rent.	36:52
Kate Ellis	I see. Did your mother help with that? Did she help on the land?	36:55
Johnny Johnson Hunter	No, my mother was the mother of ten boys and three girls. And when we got big enough, we didn't allow her to work.	37:00
Kate Ellis	Did you work in the fields with your father?	37:09
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Oh, yeah.	37:11
Kate Ellis	Did you help him when you got old enough?	37:11
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Oh, yeah.	37:13
Kate Ellis	Did you have much of a chance to get any schooling at that point?	37:15
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Well, not too much. See, when school opened in September, we'd still be harvesting crop up until the last of November. So we'd go half days, we'd go and leave at twelve. We'd go to work in the field for, say, sunrise. See, like this time of year, we'd be in the field for five o'clock, just when you could see. Okay. Then we'd go to school and it was [indistinct 00:37:54] by seven thirty and get ready for school for eight. Then twelve o'clock we'd come back, that's when we would harvest the crop. But after all the crops, we went a full day of school. So it was rough when I was coming up.	37:20
Kate Ellis	Yeah, it was. So when did you come to New Orleans?	38:16
Johnny Johnson Hunter	In 1950.	38:16
Kate Ellis	In 1950?	38:22
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Mm-hmm.	38:22
Kate Ellis	Did you come here with the intent to work as a longshoremen or was that the work you found once you got here?	38:22
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Well, see, I went in the Army. When I got out of the Army, I came here. I married and I came here. And then that's when I would start working as a longshoreman.	38:31
Kate Ellis	Okay. I see. How long were you in the Army for?	38:39
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Two years.	38:48
Kate Ellis	Okay. So it was growing up in Woodville, Mississippi, working on the land with your father until you went to—	38:50
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Yeah, on the farm.	39:00
Kate Ellis	On the farm.	39:00
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Mm-hmm.	39:00
Kate Ellis	Till you went to the Army?	39:01
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Mm-hmm.	39:01
Kate Ellis	For a couple years.	39:02
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Two years.	39:02
Kate Ellis	Two years. Then from there, went to New Orleans and started working as a longshoreman?	39:04
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Mm-hmm.	39:10
Kate Ellis	And here you are today.	39:10
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Here I am today.	39:10
Kate Ellis	And you've got to go.	39:12
Johnny Johnson Hunter	I've got to go.	39:12
Kate Ellis	All right. Let me just put this on pause.	39:15
Johnny Johnson Hunter	— to you.	39:23
Kate Ellis	What was your father's name?	39:25
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Henry. William Henry Hunter. William, W-I-L-L-I-A-M.	39:27
Kate Ellis	William Henry Hunter.	39:33
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Mm-hmm. Right.	39:33
Kate Ellis	Do you know when he was born?	39:36
Johnny Johnson Hunter	September fourth, 1897.	39:39
Kate Ellis	God, you have a good memory for that.	39:43
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Yeah, well, you see, most of the stuff I can remember. Like when they passed, I got it all wrote down because it's so happen in life. It's wrote down, it's in a Bible at home. I like to look in there.	39:45
Kate Ellis	Right. So you don't remember when he passed?	39:58
Johnny Johnson Hunter	He passed in the early '80s, I guess, around 1982.	40:04
Kate Ellis	Okay. Where was he from?	40:12
Johnny Johnson Hunter	He was, I guess, worker to call it because I don't know [indistinct 00:40:18].	40:14
Kate Ellis	Okay. Then— Oops, Mississippi. Now I can't remember what you told me when we met last Friday. Was he a sharecropper or were they farmers that rented land?	40:24
Johnny Johnson Hunter	He would rent.	40:36
Kate Ellis	They rented land?	40:36
Johnny Johnson Hunter	He would rent, yeah.	40:37
Kate Ellis	So I'm just going to say he was a farmer.	40:39
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Yeah, a farmer's fine.	40:40
Kate Ellis	And that was the primary way that he supported the family, right?	40:42
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Right.	40:45
Kate Ellis	Okay. Which, in Mississippi, that must've been— It's a rough life.	40:45
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Rough, rough.	40:51
Kate Ellis	Yeah. Will tell me a little bit about that while we're on the topic? Because part of what I want to talk to you about is your life. I mean, your life before you were a longshoremen. I'd love to just find out what you want to tell me about what you come from.	40:52
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Well, other than farming, I mean, we never got a chance to put in a full term in school when we we was farming because that was the time of harvesting there, first of September. So we would go half days until the harvest was over. Then, we'd put in full-time.	41:13
Kate Ellis	So during harvest, you'd go to school at all? I mean, you could actually—	41:47
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Yeah, half days. See like now, the daylight hours are early, we'd get up when we could see and go to the field and work until, say, whatever, seven thirty. I don't remember what the school time was then, I think it was maybe nine. Yeah, it was six hours, yeah.	41:51
Speaker 1	Good morning, good morning!	42:15
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Yeah, that's the man.	42:15
Kate Ellis	Good morning.	42:15
Johnny Johnson Hunter	That's the man will give you all the info—	42:15
Kate Ellis	Hey.	42:15
Speaker 1	How are you doing this morning?	42:15
Kate Ellis	Good.	42:15
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Well, where we left off was, we went to school half days, it was six-hour days. Well, we'd go in the field and work until eight o'clock. Then, we'd come prepare to go to school for nine. We'd go from nine to twelve. Then we'd come back and go back to the field—	42:20
Kate Ellis	Wow.	42:46
Johnny Johnson Hunter	— and finish harvesting the crop until we couldn't see. Like I said, at that time, it was rough. When I became fourteen years old, my daddy and my bother next to me, we did a little work outside, so just cutting cedar. Then we were getting fifteen dollars a thousand feet. And he would break that back down. That's where I got my start from. Well, he would buy grocery one week and my brother would buy the next week, I'd buy the next. But he split right down the middle.	42:46
Johnny Johnson Hunter	At the same time, this was part of the time that I was in school also, and that's why I was making half days. We'd go and work until eight o'clock, go cut down the timber. He would limb it up and we would come back, ledge it off where the most he could get out of it. Then me and my brother would cut it off. Like I said, he broke the [indistinct 00:44:08]. He was fair with the— My daddy, type of fella.	43:36
Kate Ellis	He was?	44:11
Johnny Johnson Hunter	He didn't give you nothing and by the same token, he wouldn't take nothing from you. "What's never was yours, was yours." So I can appreciate him of today because he kept us busy, made, none of us have went to jail or anything of that sort. So I can appreciate— I thought he was cruel at one time, but, I mean, I can appreciate him now.	44:13
Kate Ellis	You thought it was cruel because you had to work so hard?	44:41
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Right. But it took all that to make it and put me where I am today.	44:43
Kate Ellis	When you would get up in the morning, I mean, I guess you'd call it, "Can't see morning"? Is that right?	44:49
Johnny Johnson Hunter	You would get up when—	44:58
Kate Ellis	Can't see morning, they can't see anything.	44:58
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Right. You'd go to work— He'll be able to— You'll probably interview him, he'll the same thing. That's the way we had to work, to survive.	45:01
Kate Ellis	Yeah.	45:10
Johnny Johnson Hunter	I think I told you something about the discrimination. He might can tell you more or some part.	45:10
Kate Ellis	Yeah.	45:17
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Was that all you wanted to— Well, like I said, I got up fourteen and then I started working other job, making money when the cedar run out. Then, when I become eighteen, I went into the Army. Come back, and then that's when I went on the waterfront.	45:17
Kate Ellis	I see. So that's where you— Okay. Well, let me just ask you something. I'm just trying to imagine getting up before dawn, working, and then going—	45:44
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Well, you can see had to go to work.	45:57
Kate Ellis	— to school for a few hours. I mean, if it were me—	45:57
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Three hours.	45:57
Kate Ellis	— I probably would've just fallen asleep in school. I mean, how did you do that? I mean, how did you even— I don't know, I mean, that just seems like it—	46:00
Johnny Johnson Hunter	You'd be surprised what young people can through with. Ain't nothing hurts you when you're that age.	46:09
Kate Ellis	Yeah. This is hard work.	46:16
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Yeah, it's hard. Hard work wasn't about— My daddy always said hard was good for you. What? I have some back problems now but like I was saying the other day, it's— And I'm up every morning. See, like when you called this morning? I had been up and reading the paper. Now see, at that time, I didn't have no time to do nothing like that. When I could see, I was at work.	46:20
Kate Ellis	Yeah. So let me just ask you a few more questions while we're just on the topic of your life and then we'll have to hear about yours. How many brothers and sisters did you have?	46:39
Johnny Johnson Hunter	I had ten brothers and three sisters.	46:52
Kate Ellis	Okay. So y'all worked together and—	46:57

Kate Ellis	I see. What I mean is, did everybody in the family work as hard as you did?	0:00
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Oh, yeah. Well, my oldest brother, he was forcing shit, now. He finished what we call at that time was grade school at a early age, something like around fourteen, fifteen. Then he came here and he worked on the waterfront by down there. That's who you was supposed to interview, my brother. The one you was talking with.	0:08
Kate Ellis	Oh yeah. Who I met last week at the table.	0:35
Johnny Johnson Hunter	And so he was able to work on the waterfront and put himself through college. I often asked him as a foreman, he worked on the waterfront and sent himself to college, and then after he finished college, then he became a foreman on the waterfront. Well, anybody could have worked on the waterfront and I wanted to know what was his proposition.	0:40
Kate Ellis	What was his what?	1:06
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Why would he spend money and send himself to college to work on waterfront.	1:09
Kate Ellis	And what'd he say?	1:11
Johnny Johnson Hunter	He said he could make more money as a longshoreman than he could a white collar job. Then that answered my question. See, you could make as much money as you want to at that time. Like I told you, there were plenty of work and plenty of hard work.	1:14
Kate Ellis	Yeah. But you also said that there are plenty of people competing for those jobs, trying to get those jobs.	1:31
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Yeah. Well, he going to be able to explain it to you, like I'm saying. There were plenty of people here in the city and there were plenty of work. But it wasn't not enough for to—	1:39
Kate Ellis	For everybody.	1:51
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Everybody. So those guys was standing around the ship until someone bought out, and he might can tell you more about it, see, because it was more when I came on the waterfront, that was in the '40s, so that was before my time.	1:52
Kate Ellis	You came on the waterfront in the— Tell me again when you came on?	2:07
Johnny Johnson Hunter	1950.	2:10
Kate Ellis	1950. And when did you come on the waterfront?	2:12
Eddie Jack Brumfield	1943.	2:16
Kate Ellis	Oh, okay. So you have a few years on him.	2:17
Johnny Johnson Hunter	He was out there when it was rough.	2:20
Kate Ellis	So there was a—	2:22
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Go ahead.	2:22
Kate Ellis	You going to—	2:25
Eddie Jack Brumfield	You [indistinct 00:02:36] from here.	2:36
Kate Ellis	Okay, I see you want to put it on your car. I'm going to put it— You mind if I—	2:36
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Turn it over?	2:37
Kate Ellis	Yeah. I'm going to make an announcement into the tape recorder so that anybody who listens to this in the future will know who this—	2:42
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Yes.	2:47
Kate Ellis	Okay. Will you state your name?	2:50
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Eddie J. Brumfield.	2:51
Kate Ellis	J. How do I spell your last name?	2:55
Eddie Jack Brumfield	B-R-U-M-F-I-E-L-D.	2:56
Kate Ellis	Let me just check to make sure you're getting picked up properly. All right. So you came on the waterfront in '43, and you were just saying that it was harder for you than—	3:03
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Yeah, it was much, much rougher work out there in '43. See in 1943, they didn't have but a few machines. Mostly was man handled. Just about everything they do, man had to handle it.	3:18
Johnny Johnson Hunter	I got all the gear that [indistinct 00:03:38] you go to and explain too after you tell about it. I got the most of the gear starting from time that I was—	3:36
Kate Ellis	Oh, great. Well, we could even walk over there. I mean, if you want— Or go ahead, you talk, and then we'll look at it.	3:43
Eddie Jack Brumfield	And everything just about to be handled was man handled. At that time, the bags was when they took them out the box cars— See, the train used to bring them in the box car. They had gangs to unload it, and they put it on the floor inside of the shed. And then the longshoreman would pick it up and put it on the wagon and load it in a sling where they— A sling is a rope, goes up together and the hook could carry it into the hole for the men to store it in the hole. During that time. Plus—	3:49
Johnny Johnson Hunter	If she go down there, it save me some problems.	4:31
Eddie Jack Brumfield	All right.	4:31
Kate Ellis	[indistinct 00:04:32].	4:31
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Now, these are sacks. Now, this is a sling.	4:31
Kate Ellis	I'm watching.	4:31
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Sling. Now, what you see with man handling,, now see this is the wagon that was used to carry. This is the hand [indistinct 00:04:44] when we had [indistinct 00:04:45].	4:36
Kate Ellis	I can't believe you built all this stuff.	4:45
Johnny Johnson Hunter	This is a pallet [indistinct 00:04:50]. I got everything the wrong way. I want explain to you how we got the stuff back into the ship and all. These are the rollers going be in the pinch bars that—	4:48
Eddie Jack Brumfield	They had to lift.	5:00
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Yeah. Okay. So as you talk, I'll point it out to her as you are.	5:02
Eddie Jack Brumfield	All right. Okay. We load the bags into this sling. All right?	5:06
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Now this is what you call a sling. That's the way you load. Load it like that.	5:10
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Okay? Sling already be on the wagon.	5:17
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Already be on the wagon, right. Correct.	5:21
Kate Ellis	Load. I see. So it's just lying flat on the wagon?	5:23
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Yeah. It's like that. Then they tie the sling up to keep the bag from falling off. They bring that to the hook, to the ship. All right. When they bring it to the ship, they had two men that are hooking on to take it in the ship, now hooking on.	5:25
Kate Ellis	So would one person be standing there and one person's—	5:45
Eddie Jack Brumfield	That's right.	5:46
Johnny Johnson Hunter	That's why we went [indistinct 00:05:50].	5:49
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Yep, that's right. Two White fellas would be out there. No Black. No Black.	5:49
Kate Ellis	Two White people would be there.	5:54
Eddie Jack Brumfield	That's right. That's what all the easy job— What few easy jobs it was, the White man had that at that time. Okay, now picking up the bags. That was the Black man job. To pick up the bags off the floor and working the ship hole.	5:58
Kate Ellis	Now picking up this bag.	6:11
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Yeah. That'd be stacked on the wall. You'd have to pick them up and everything. There was no machines.	6:17
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Other words, the bag weighed from 100 pound to 140 pounds each.	6:22
Johnny Johnson Hunter	So the two men would be here, loading these on to here.	6:27
Kate Ellis	And these are Black men loading here.	6:27
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Oh yeah.	6:27
Kate Ellis	These are White man right there?	6:33
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Yeah. White man's at to hook to hook it up when they get there with it, and the White man driving the tractor.	6:36
Kate Ellis	Also driving [indistinct 00:06:45].	6:42
Eddie Jack Brumfield	It's a machine, not a tractor, but we call it a tractor.	6:44
Johnny Johnson Hunter	If we didn't have a machine we had to pull it.	6:44
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Had to pull it by hand.	6:49
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Had to pull it by hand.	6:49
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Well then, the Black man was pulling it by hand when they was pulling it.	6:51
Kate Ellis	The White man would drive it, the Black man—	6:54
Eddie Jack Brumfield	But when they got a machine, when they did get a machine to pull it, then the White man had to drive the machine.	6:55
Kate Ellis	Wow, okay.	7:02
Eddie Jack Brumfield	The Black man would load it and the White man would pull it to the hook and the White man would hook it on, and then he would take it in the ship hole and they got all Black down there to store it in the ship hole.	7:03
Johnny Johnson Hunter	[indistinct 00:07:18].	7:13
Kate Ellis	When the Black man has to pull this, is that, when you were talking last week, you were talking about how they'd go and they'd run.	7:18
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Oh, that's [indistinct 00:07:23]. No, this different operations. [indistinct 00:07:23].	7:23
Kate Ellis	Different— Okay.	7:23
Johnny Johnson Hunter	We'll get through [indistinct 00:07:23].	7:23
Kate Ellis	Okay. Okay.	7:23
Eddie Jack Brumfield	And they would load it into the ship hole, and then the men down there would take it, sometime they'd had to carry it as far, far from here to that front door, back where you came in? Back in the ship. That's how far, how long— We call it a long drag. How long we had to go back in there to take freight to stow it up.	7:23
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Then when it come to the dolly, we could sit there on this dolly and dolly would [indistinct 00:07:59] back here and then you would take it off. See like this? Simulate. Yeah, to simulate, this is—	7:51
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Ship hole.	8:05
Johnny Johnson Hunter	The square of the ship hole. Well, this dolly would be placed right under the [indistinct 00:08:14].	8:05
Kate Ellis	Under this what?	8:12
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Under the hook. Where the hook come in at, where the hook bring it in at.	8:17
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Now we got to, when they're bringing in this dolly is on the run.	8:22
Kate Ellis	This is the run?	8:24
Eddie Jack Brumfield	That's the run, yeah.	8:24
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Sometimes you have to make an extension to that run, to get this cargo back.	8:32
Kate Ellis	[indistinct 00:08:35].	8:32
Eddie Jack Brumfield	All the way back to the back of the— That's right. The back of the ship.	8:34
Kate Ellis	Is this the ship hole?	8:36
Johnny Johnson Hunter	No, no, no. It's not the hole.	8:38
Kate Ellis	Oh okay. This is.	8:39
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Yeah.	8:40
Kate Ellis	Okay.	8:40
Johnny Johnson Hunter	I had a box before with [indistinct 00:08:44] for showing where the booms and all that were, but I got rid of it after I gave her— One [indistinct 00:08:51] come down from New York for a class on this.	8:42
Kate Ellis	She came from New York?	8:53
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Same thing. Almost the same thing. But we didn't talk [indistinct 00:09:01]. We just talked about—	8:54
Kate Ellis	You just talked about—	8:56
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Yeah. From how modern— What took the man's job, I told you about that, was the machine.	9:04
Kate Ellis	Oh. And so that's what she was telling you about?	9:11
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Automation.	9:11
Kate Ellis	Yeah. That's what we was— Automation took it. [indistinct 00:09:17]. I'll give you her number.	9:13
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Okay. Now that was the bag proposition. Now we used to handle, used to ship automobiles, trucks, all kind of big box a lot of time. Jeeps and thing would be in boxes crated up, and we would land it down— You may think this is a joke. They would bring it in, land it in the ship hole and we would push it.	9:18
Kate Ellis	Push the—	9:40
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Push the box. Maybe it might weigh four or five tons. Push the box back into the ship hole.	9:42
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Now this, you tell her about the bottom. I got a phone call to take.	9:48
Kate Ellis	Okay.	9:48
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Yeah, go ahead. How	9:48
Kate Ellis	How would you push something of that many tons? How many people would you—	9:53
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Maybe about eight men would get around it and push it. Now, see, the [indistinct 00:10:03], they would land it on a roller like this. Now this was a roller.	9:57
Kate Ellis	Okay.	10:06
Eddie Jack Brumfield	And they could take this bar here, see when them do that, see how that will roll?	10:09
Kate Ellis	Yes.	10:12
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Then they have another roller here to catch it when they jump over that roller, then they catch this roller and put in the front again. Just keep on yank it.	10:12
Kate Ellis	What were these rollers made out of?	10:19
Eddie Jack Brumfield	They made out of wood.	10:20
Kate Ellis	So these are wood rollers.	10:21
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Wood rollers.	10:25
Kate Ellis	So you just rolled. I see.	10:25
Eddie Jack Brumfield	You see, the wood rollers that made for that—	10:26
Kate Ellis	This is cargo.	10:27
Eddie Jack Brumfield	That was the cargo. Yeah. And this way the roller would roll it back. When it get close enough, then they'd take it off the roller so they'd be able to use the roller again and take bars and do like a man would get on this side and do this, and another would ball on that side, and they'd push it. When he raise it up like this, they'd push it, you see. They'd push it back in place.	10:28
Kate Ellis	Are those the people that are called the—	10:49
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Longshoremans.	10:50
Kate Ellis	Okay. But I thought there was a special job with a name like screwmen.	10:53
Eddie Jack Brumfield	No. They call them a hole mens.	10:57
Kate Ellis	Ho—	10:59
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Hole mens.	10:59
Kate Ellis	Hole mens.	10:59
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Yeah. Fellows working the hole, they call them hole mens.	11:00
Kate Ellis	Oh, okay. And that's what these fellows were doing [indistinct 00:11:11].	11:02
Eddie Jack Brumfield	They down there in the hole. They working in the hole. They hole mens.	11:11
Kate Ellis	And that was a tough job. I mean, I guess it goes without saying that that was— Working down in the ship like that.	11:13
Eddie Jack Brumfield	In the ship hole. Yeah. Down in the ship hole. Yes.	11:18
Kate Ellis	Wow.	11:21
Eddie Jack Brumfield	All right. Now that's about the heavy cargo, where they had on the heavy cargo. They would put the heavy cargo down, like this down, and then block out on top of it with bags.	11:23
Kate Ellis	So the bags of stuff would go on top of it?	11:33
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Going up over, have bags and things, would stack them on top, go into the top of the ship with the bag then, after they put the heavy stuff down. And that's where they worked the ship hole. Now then, like cotton, they used to have bales of cotton. Well, bale of cotton would weigh around five hundred pounds. Now two men would handle that. Here the hooks.	11:34
Johnny Johnson Hunter	I ain't that [indistinct 00:12:01].	11:58
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Okay. A bale of cotton. It was kind of round, but it wasn't round as that. It's kind of made— Have you ever seen a bale of cotton?	12:01
Kate Ellis	Yeah, I think so.	12:10
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Okay. Each man would get on this side like that with his hook and hooking that bale of cotton and just roll it back to where they want to store it at. And sometime, when they get to where they want to block it out, they'll stand it up back there. That would block the top. They'd call it heading it out. That's what they called it. Heading.	12:11
Kate Ellis	Heading it out?	12:28
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Head it out. Other words, last till, where they wouldn't have to pick it up so high, they would stand it up, they call it heading it out.	12:30
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Other word, still, still, it wouldn't be high enough for a man to go back there and work comfortable. You understand? The height would be cut down or you wouldn't be able to work comfortable. So that's why you had it head out the last [indistinct 00:12:53] because when you get up this high, see, they fill the ship to the top.	12:38
Kate Ellis	Okay. Right. So you wouldn't even be able to stand up if you were working. I see.	12:56
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Right. If you're bringing [indistinct 00:13:01] from there.	13:00
Kate Ellis	I see. Yeah.	13:01
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Now, that's the way they have a [indistinct 00:13:09]. Now, sometime again, they used to have like when they ship an automobile during the war time, when they started shipping automobiles and I mean shipping trucks and things overseas for those guys or soldiers, they would load those same boxes like I was telling you about up so high, then they block out on top with trucks and different machinery like tanks.	13:02
Kate Ellis	Did you say that they'd block out on top?	13:35
Eddie Jack Brumfield	On the top of those boxes. See, after they put these boxes down, they put some, we call it dunich, but it would be actually wood, what it would be. We call it dunich.	13:37
Kate Ellis	Dunich?	13:47
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Dunich. That's the name we give it.	13:49
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Do it like this.	13:51
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Put on top of those boxes.	13:53
Kate Ellis	These boards are like planks in a way that you would—	13:54
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Yeah.	13:57
Kate Ellis	And then there'd be another—	13:57
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Another floor.we would call another floor. You would go up. You'd crib up to fill up.	14:01
Eddie Jack Brumfield	And make it level.	14:05
Kate Ellis	I see.	14:05
Eddie Jack Brumfield	And after you make it level, and then you put machine guns or whatever you want to ship over sea, put it right on top. Just fill that ship hole. And the ship hole would be— Some of them ship would be as deep as twenty— twenty-two feet. That'd be twenty— twenty-three feet.	14:07
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Bottom hole [indistinct 00:14:24].	14:23
Eddie Jack Brumfield	From the top to the bottom, twenty-three. That's the low hole, twenty-three feet. Well then the next day it ain't quite that high, you see. Maybe be about, maybe I say about twelve feet in the next day. That's some of them older ships. Now that's the way we load those ships out.	14:24
Kate Ellis	Huh. How long would it take? I mean, if you had a, you said a twenty foot hole, how long would it take to load that up?	14:41
Eddie Jack Brumfield	To load that, to fill it. Depends on what you loading in there, you see? See, if you loading large cargo, it wouldn't take— Maybe I said two days large cargo at the longest. But if the bags, we're going to fill it with bags, it might take them four or five days because bags, see, they wouldn't be no more than about this high, and you to have to keep going back and forth.	14:49
Kate Ellis	And you have to keep going back and forth. If you're hired to load a ship, which is going to take maybe two days to do, you're hired in a gang, is that right, to do that?	15:13
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Yeah.	15:21
Kate Ellis	If you are hired in that gang for one day and it's going to take another day, are you assured that you'll be on that same job the next day, or do you have to wait around again and see—	15:22
Eddie Jack Brumfield	No.	15:33
Johnny Johnson Hunter	At that time you didn't [indistinct 00:15:36].	15:33
Kate Ellis	In the '40s?	15:35
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Back in the '40s, what a foreman could do, he could hire you, hire a man today. And if he didn't like the way you worked the next day, he wouldn't harm me. Hire somebody else.	15:37
Kate Ellis	Now the foremen at this point, were they White or were they Black?	15:51
Eddie Jack Brumfield	White. They had some Black foremen, but special cargo for the Black foremen to handle, such as sugar, black sand, dirty work. We called it dirty work.	15:55
Kate Ellis	Why is sugar and black sand dirty work?	16:09
Johnny Johnson Hunter	More harder.	16:12
Kate Ellis	Okay. Okay. So the Black foremen would have that. Why was the sugar harder? I just don't—	16:13
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Other words, the sugar would come in from Cuba. The sugar was coming in from Cuba, and it'd be in bags of 350 what them bags weighed, wasn't it Johnny?	16:21
Kate Ellis	350 pound bags of sugar.	16:29
Eddie Jack Brumfield	350 pound bags.	16:31
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Some of them weighed [indistinct 00:16:33] blew out the side. 'Cause see that's the way that was loaded. This the kind of sling that we used to load them in.	16:32
Kate Ellis	That was a sling for the sugar?	16:40
Eddie Jack Brumfield	For the sugar also. Yeah.	16:41
Kate Ellis	How many bags of sugar might a sling hold?	16:44
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Well, the one that weighed 350, we only put five in. One weighed 265— I mean, we put three in. But the one who waited 265, that was five.	16:47
Kate Ellis	Five. Okay.	17:00
Johnny Johnson Hunter	So the actual load would always would be what we'd be pulling this truck [indistinct 00:17:07] that to run with.	17:02
Kate Ellis	That's the truck that you run with?	17:08
Johnny Johnson Hunter	That's the one. And I was trying to tell her how the [indistinct 00:17:14] out there, we wasn't— It was better that we run with it than try to walk with it, because we had the car, the scale was here, there was a ramp. You see, when you go over the scale and you come off that ramp.	17:09
Eddie Jack Brumfield	They'd give you a little start.	17:28
Johnny Johnson Hunter	They'd give you a little start so you can keep running with it to make it easier for you.	17:29
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Yeah, make it easier for you get there. I mean, if they wouldn't have to push as hard because it already got a start, you already keep it going.	17:35
Kate Ellis	That momentum that— Okay.	17:42
Johnny Johnson Hunter	That I told you why because I was trying to show her, she kept reaching down the floor. I said if you can't [indistinct 00:17:48], you can't work.	17:44
Kate Ellis	I thought you said read. And I'm like, "If you can't read, you can't work? Okay." And then he says rig.	17:48
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Rig.	17:59
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Yeah. Rig. Rig up to work. See you got to—	18:07
Kate Ellis	Tell me what that means, 'cause I—	18:08
Johnny Johnson Hunter	What, rig?	18:08
Kate Ellis	For the naive.	18:08
Johnny Johnson Hunter	To make it easy for you. That's what rig.	18:09
Kate Ellis	Rig.	18:09
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Yeah.	18:09
Kate Ellis	Rig means to make it easier.	18:09
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Right. You got to rig it why ever you be comfortable in what you doing.	18:09
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Other words, I used to work—	18:16
Johnny Johnson Hunter	It can be used in a lot of different instances, now.	18:17
Kate Ellis	So rig is something that means—	18:20
Eddie Jack Brumfield	That's like you rig up, like you, in other words, fix something or other, do something with. That means you rigged it up. You rig it up on your own, you understand. You fix it up.	18:22
Kate Ellis	And you can be—	18:31
Eddie Jack Brumfield	[indistinct 00:18:33] No shares over there. You wouldn't have to keep it down reaching it. All you got to do is sit [indistinct 00:18:37] one on each side of it. You could take it away from this one or away from this one. So that's what you call a rig, and make it easier for yourself.	18:33
Kate Ellis	I see what you're saying. So if you can't rig, then you can't work.	18:44
Eddie Jack Brumfield	You can't work. I used to work with a foreman, I ain't going to waste too much your time. Foreman said, he said, "I don't hire no big man, 'cause a big man, see, a big man, he can't stoop over just like that." He said, "A big man had to rig up before he— Otherwise he got to pull his pants up on."	18:45
Johnny Johnson Hunter	[indistinct 00:19:07].	19:01
Eddie Jack Brumfield	He going to reach right down and do what he got to do, you see. That foreman said, "I don't hire no big men, Because a big man got to rig up before he can stoop down and pick up a bag." I used to work with a foreman— Miss, I'm going to tell you the truth. I thought he was the meanest man in the world. But I really learnt something under him. I worked with him until he retired from the river. And I found out by working with him, that's what it took to make it on the river. I left him, I got a job working over the hatch. That meant the safety man over the hatch for another foreman.	19:07
Kate Ellis	Over the hatch?	19:48
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Over the hatch. That meant the safety man. Other words—	19:53
Johnny Johnson Hunter	That's the [indistinct 00:19:59] stuff [indistinct 00:19:59].	19:56
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Where the freight come in now you looking out for the mens in the hole, you looking out for the man in the hole. When the load come in, if anybody in the way you hold the winchman, don't let him come in until the people got out of the way. And then kind of watching the work, see to it going on, and so forth on like that. Then I was fortunate enough to get to be a winch operator. That was in the '60s, though, up in the '60s I got to be a winch operator.	19:58
Johnny Johnson Hunter	[indistinct 00:20:27].	20:23
Eddie Jack Brumfield	And I liked that job better than anything I did on the river. Then I made a foreman. I was a foreman in 1971. I got a job being a foreman. And I was a foreman for eight years until 1979. That's when I retired. 1979. But the winch job was the best job, I thought, on the river. Foreman paid more. Why the foreman paid more, see, anytime a foreman go out, he gets eight hours paid.	20:27
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Regardless.	21:00
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Regardless. He go out, if it rained two hours, he get eight. If he go for seven o'clock in the morning, he get nine. He get eight and one. If they order him back out that evening and he go out again and rain, he get eight hours that night. But the mens would only get two.	21:01
Kate Ellis	Wow.	21:22
Eddie Jack Brumfield	That's how come I went with the foreman job. I said I never had a guarantee in my life and I thought that was something nice, a guarantee. Well, see, when I left the river, I had a three hundred dollars a week guarantee work or play. But what I'm trying to tell you, by working with this hard foreman and learning how to work, it built me up when I did make foreman, I knowed how to handle mens and how to handle the work. You see, it's quite a few guys was out there, they never did work in what we call a number one gang. Just made some money. But with this particular foreman, we never had a bad week.	21:24
Kate Ellis	When you say a bad week, in other words, you never had a slow week.	22:07
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Right, that's what it means.	22:10
Kate Ellis	Every time you worked for this foreman, you worked.	22:11
Eddie Jack Brumfield	The only time we worked— During the strike, they don't strike. How about the longest strike they had, that was fifty-some a day, wasn't it, Johnny?	22:15
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Sixty-four days.	22:20
Eddie Jack Brumfield	I never had a bad week.	22:23
Kate Ellis	Even during the strike?	22:24
Johnny Johnson Hunter	They didn't strike at the Army bay, so you were working at the Army bay. [indistinct 00:22:32] For the government. See, that was a government job.	22:26
Kate Ellis	And so you kept working under the government. Okay, well I'd like to hear about— Which strike was the— What year was the strike?	22:32
Johnny Johnson Hunter	That was 1963.	22:41
Kate Ellis	Okay.	22:41
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Wait a minute. Could have been '61.	22:47
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Well, now they, see, they had a strike.	22:50
Johnny Johnson Hunter	They had one in '56.	22:51
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Yeah. They had one in '56.	22:51
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Right. Right.	22:51
Eddie Jack Brumfield	But they had about four different strikes.	22:51
Johnny Johnson Hunter	[indistinct 00:23:01] Push that round. '56 was the sixty-four day.	23:00
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Yeah. Yeah.	23:04
Kate Ellis	Okay. And '56, sixty-four day strike. Yeah. But you had— Oh, I'm sorry, go ahead.	23:11
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Go ahead.	23:12
Kate Ellis	No, you go ahead.	23:12
Eddie Jack Brumfield	We never had a bad week. See, a good foreman, they going to find if they got any work at all, they going give this— I mean, what I call a good foreman, a man that keeps his men working. You understand? That's what the other word, the stevedores, the stevedores got paid by the ton, and the foremen that put in the most tonnage, that's the one they going keep going. And that's what I learned. Now, we could go to the ship—	23:14
Kate Ellis	Interesting. I mean no, it's just the way you're describing it, I mean as far as if you've got people working together, you've got somebody who knows what he is doing.	23:42
Eddie Jack Brumfield	That's it.	23:49
Kate Ellis	And gets his men to work hard for him, then it all, the stevedore's happy, the foreman's happy, the workers are happy.	23:50
Johnny Johnson Hunter	[indistinct 00:23:57].	23:55
Kate Ellis	The workers are sore. What'd you say?	23:56
Eddie Jack Brumfield	The workers tired.	23:58
Kate Ellis	The workers are tired.	23:58
Eddie Jack Brumfield	But still, you see, you got a family, you want to take care of your family.	24:01
Johnny Johnson Hunter	That's the same thing.	24:06
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Now, I don't like working with this man, but I got to take care of my family.	24:08
Johnny Johnson Hunter	I got to work.	24:12
Eddie Jack Brumfield	And I got to work. Why go over there and work with somebody and we hungry, half of the time we got nothing to eat and things kind of rough. Ain't got nowhere to stay if you don't— I mean, if you don't make no money, you ain't got nowhere to stay. You can't buy food. So I said, well— Let me tell you something. I had me and my wife, we had ten children. Seven girls and three boys. Now you know the expenses of girls, you know that. Nobody working but me.	24:14
Eddie Jack Brumfield	The foreman I was working with worked at night. We would sometime work nine hours. I'd come home and sit in a chair, 'cause I know I ain't going to sleep. I ain't going to sleep too sound in the chair. I sit in the chair until six o'clock, and get up and go back and work that next day. After I did it a while, I got to the place I could come— This might sound like a joke. I could come home at five o'clock, take a bath and go to bed and get up at six and go back.	24:50
Kate Ellis	Six—	25:32
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Six that morning.	25:33
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Six that morning.	25:33
Kate Ellis	Wait, you don't mean come home at five— you mean come home at five at—	25:35
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Five in the morning. Come home five o'clock in the morning.	25:38
Johnny Johnson Hunter	And eat breakfast.	25:40
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Take a bath and lay down in the bed and wake up and go back for six. You know what I can do? I mean, I'm not as active now since I left the river for fifteen years, but I can wake up any time of night I want to.	25:42
Kate Ellis	To get up and go to work?	25:56
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Get up. I can wake my childrens. I got children working now. They call me, "Daddy, wake me up at four o'clock in the morning. Daddy, I got to go to work for five, wake me up."	25:57
Kate Ellis	And you'll just wake up?	26:09
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Just wake up. Doesn't matter, wake up.	26:10
Kate Ellis	You just know.	26:11
Johnny Johnson Hunter	No, it just, I don't know why—	26:12
Eddie Jack Brumfield	I don't know what it is.	26:14
Johnny Johnson Hunter	I can go home, like I said, I can lay down and say I'm going to lay down and sleep for a hour. An hour's time can I lay down and get up.	26:15
Eddie Jack Brumfield	It's depend on what you practice, you see. That's the [indistinct 00:26:29] depend on what you practice.	26:25
Kate Ellis	And you were going to say that, you said that you'd go to work on Friday?	26:29
Johnny Johnson Hunter	I went to work on Friday and just go home sometimes, take a bath [indistinct 00:26:38] and wait till Monday morning without lying down. That was just before the strike, I believe that was the one in '63. You see they'd Rush you, try to get all that— Anyway, they would get them ships in the sea, go and get those ships in there and it would be a rush to try to get them out while they wouldn't lose so much while you on strike because when you strike, you don't know how long the strike's going to last.	26:32
Kate Ellis	Oh. So right before the strike, when they were anticipating the strike, they had you work extra to get as much done as possible before the strike. What kind of things would you strike for? I mean in 1956, what was that strike about?	27:01
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Sometime be working conditions, sometime more money or whatever. I don't remember just What the strike—	27:17
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Yeah, most times it's most condition, working condition.	27:20
Kate Ellis	What kind of things would you be asking for when you'd strike?	27:26
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Well, okay, let me try to explain this to y'all. Remember I think that was in '54. See, the agreement went, they makes agreement. So we going to put twenty bags to the sling. Twenty bags of flour or whatnot to the sling.	27:30
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Fifteen with the coffee [indistinct 00:27:56].	27:53
Eddie Jack Brumfield	And that was agreement. Now the stevedores, like I said, they wants to make much tonnage they can. They want you to put more bags in the load. More than twenty. See, [indistinct 00:28:11] have a contract would call for twenty bag. But the stevedore would want you to put twenty-five or thirty if they could. The president—	27:56
Johnny Johnson Hunter	[indistinct 00:28:18] Cut in now. What did you look like now if you had to put twenty bags on this, picking up off the shore. The wagon's already so high. What did you look like? You'd be up like that. You understand?	28:17
Kate Ellis	Right. You couldn't even reach to get the next bag on there. I see. Wow. Okay. So there was—	28:30
Eddie Jack Brumfield	And this particular president was Dave A Dennis. He was the president of the longshoremen at that time. If he would come in on the docks and count the bags, if they had over twenty bags in the load, he would just open up the sling, let them all fall off. He was the president.	28:38
Kate Ellis	Of the union.	28:56
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Of the Union. Right. Okay.	28:56
Johnny Johnson Hunter	[indistinct 00:28:57] 15 though.	28:56
Kate Ellis	But he would just let them all—	28:56
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Let them all fall and make them pay for it. He was a hard president about conditions.	28:56
Eddie Jack Brumfield	He was the only president in my book that we had on this river. I was out there thirty-six years and I've been away fifteen. And in my book, he was the only president they had on the river.	29:08
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Best.	29:21
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Like I said, he would open that sling and let them fall. Okay. The agreement was lead. Lead. It was about lead. Lead is heavy. Just about this long. The agreement would put twenty pieces on the load. They had a ship working at Mandeville Street. For a solid week, every day they'd hire gang to go to Mandeville Street. The stevedore would want to put twenty-two pieces on the load. Dave Dennis said the contract called for twenty, that's all they going to put. They said, "Mr. Dennis, two pieces don't make no more difference." He said, "Why you want to put on if it don't make no difference?"	29:22
Johnny Johnson Hunter	[indistinct 00:30:13].	30:12
Kate Ellis	Always the best risk, the most logical question.	30:12
Eddie Jack Brumfield	If it don't make no difference, why you want to put it on? Then they're going to try to bribe him then. They said—	30:12
Kate Ellis	Bribe the [indistinct 00:30:18].	30:17
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Bribe the president. "Mr. Dennis, come down to the office, we want to talk to you." He said, "No, you come to my office."	30:18
Johnny Johnson Hunter	If you're going to talk to me.	30:26
Eddie Jack Brumfield	"If you want to talk, come to my office." Said, "I got an office at 518 South Rampart Street. So you come to my office if you want to talk to me." Well then, they see they couldn't get to him. Then they went to thinking a way to get rid of him. Now this what they did. At that time, the union was strong, they had money.	30:27
Kate Ellis	I want to interject a question. I don't want to interrupt what you're saying, because I want to hear all of it, but just to say it's like [indistinct 00:30:51], now, this is Dave A. Dennis is the president of the Black Union.	30:47
Eddie Jack Brumfield	At that time.	30:54
Kate Ellis	At that time, okay. There were two—	30:55
Eddie Jack Brumfield	The White Union, Al Chillen was the president of the White union.	30:57
Kate Ellis	Al—	31:01
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Al Chillens.	31:01
Kate Ellis	Okay. He was the president of the White union. Yeah. Okay.	31:01
Eddie Jack Brumfield	And the White union was Local 1418 and the Black union was 1419. All right.	31:09
Kate Ellis	So, okay, go on. This was just the Black union who is—	31:22
Eddie Jack Brumfield	The Black union president. Because see, at that time it wasn't but a few White fellows on the river, because the White fellows only had the key jobs and they didn't care much about the river. They called the river nothing then, at that time, because they have a few hook on men, maybe and a winch man. Other words, if it was three White mens in a gang, that was a plenty at that time.	31:23
Johnny Johnson Hunter	[indistinct 00:31:51].	31:49
Kate Ellis	Okay. Yeah, you did. But I don't remember everything you said, but it was okay. But yeah. [indistinct 00:31:58] Tell me that.	31:51
Eddie Jack Brumfield	And Dave Dennis, well, this is what they did. The union was [indistinct 00:32:07] putting you a million dollars in treasure. The Black union.	31:58
Kate Ellis	It would— Okay.	32:10
Eddie Jack Brumfield	That's what they had in treasure. About a million dollars.	32:11
Speaker 1	[indistinct 00:32:23].	32:22
Kate Ellis	Good morning.	32:22
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Good morning.	32:22
Speaker 1	Everybody.	32:22
Eddie Jack Brumfield	How you doing?	32:22
Speaker 1	I was thinking about you yesterday, boy, you have gained so much weight, I was thinking about you yesterday, I didn't know you [indistinct 00:32:27].	32:23
Johnny Johnson Hunter	[indistinct 00:32:27].	32:23
Kate Ellis	Hi, how are you?	32:23
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Hi, how you feel?	32:23
Kate Ellis	[indistinct 00:32:27].	32:23
Eddie Jack Brumfield	I'm talking. I done forgot.	32:23
Johnny Johnson Hunter	[indistinct 00:32:32]. Man, I don't know.	32:23
Eddie Jack Brumfield	The stevedores said, now, we can't do nothing with this guy. And we going trick him. Like I told you about the black foam and they had black foam and they had sugar. Well, they carried long gain such they made it forty mens apiece, those foremen. They had a foreman that was Jerry Perkins, Willie Walker, John Manice, Bowman, Pelman, Walter Ware. I think [indistinct 00:33:16] were working for John at that time. Yeah. Okay.	32:36
Kate Ellis	These are all foremen?	33:18
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Black foremen. All Black foremens. For T. Smitt and Son.	33:20
Kate Ellis	T Smitt—	33:21
Eddie Jack Brumfield	And Son.	33:21
Kate Ellis	And that's a stevedore.	33:22
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Now what they did, they had them foremens to spread amongst they men that Dave Dennis was taken their money. He bought— That's what they told him. He bought his mama a home. He bought his daddy a home. He bought him a home. Just wasting their money. A rumor can get out fast. Now, when these foreman told the men that, you take, this foreman got forty man, that foreman got forty man, you know that rumor can get around. The rumor got around—	33:27
Johnny Johnson Hunter	[indistinct 00:34:07]. It could even be more when they had drums. That's how you got a bow breaker there. See, there's a lot of stuff that we could— See, you should have come while you could have had about a week.	34:06
Kate Ellis	Well, I wish I had, believe me.	34:18
Johnny Johnson Hunter	You put all his gear, talk about, we can explain from back in that time up until now. See this [indistinct 00:34:26], this is what we got this [indistinct 00:34:32] now.	34:20
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well—	34:32
Johnny Johnson Hunter	[indistinct 00:34:32].	34:32
Eddie Jack Brumfield	What the stevedore did, I mean what they did, they said that Dave was wasting your own money. Y'all ought to get rid of him. Well this, "Oh, well if he— " Foolish, a lot of fellas just got a bad understanding. "If he throwing away our money, we don't need him no more. We going to get rid of him." But see, that's what the stevedores want. They impeached him.	34:32
Kate Ellis	They impeached him?	34:51
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Impeached him. Listen, when I went on that river mess—	34:52
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Now, the White man, see, White man is the stevedore.	35:00
Kate Ellis	Right. White man's— Right.	35:01
Johnny Johnson Hunter	He got to the Black man.	35:04
Eddie Jack Brumfield	When I went on that river, we all had to drink out of the same bucket. I know you ain't never seen a lard can. A long time ago, they used to have them old square lard cans. They'd be about this high, about like that. And our water boy would take a piece of wire and [indistinct 00:35:23] a hole in each side to make a bail to handle it. And that's the way he brought our water to the ship before Dave Dennis was the president.	35:05
Eddie Jack Brumfield	But when Dave Dennis got to be the president, Dave made him got rid of all that so we got to have sanitary. Made them get water coolers with sprouts on them and water cups so every man could drink. And I see what these longshoremen used to do, they would never pull their glove off to go get a drink of water. They got gloves on, they put one hand at the bottom of the bucket and one hand at the top, and that's how they drank out the bucket. Everybody drank out the bucket. And a lot of guys chew tobacco, and you could imagine. You could imagine about—	35:30
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Now see, me, I'm watching for the water bucket. When the water bucket come, I get me a drink of water at the beginning. I ain't going to drink no more water till another new bucket come in. And that's the way I would do. But after Dave Dennis got to be president, see, he broke all that up. He made them get sanitary water bucket, water cups. But the stevedore didn't like that. Made them get ice. They used to buy ice. They started to buying ice, let me see, I believe it was well up in May before they started buying ice. They bought ice maybe about three or four months, and that's all. Dave Dennis made them buy ice year round. For ice water, they had water to drink. Now, they didn't like that. But see, anything they could get on him. Then they even had an investigation, had a senator come from Washington DC to investigate him. They had. They run it on TV.	36:02
Johnny Johnson Hunter	See, he was a powerful man.	37:11
Eddie Jack Brumfield	The trial—	37:16
Kate Ellis	He was a— Yeah.	37:16
Johnny Johnson Hunter	He was a powerful president.	37:18
Eddie Jack Brumfield	The trial, the [indistinct 00:37:18] to get rid of him. The longshoremen was going for all that, but they couldn't trick him. He was a smart man. He had a smart lawyer. They couldn't trick him no kind of way. This same guy come from Washington, he died in the process. Other words, he was in with the stevedores, see money.	37:18
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Money.	37:40
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Stevedores didn't have nothing but money, and the average guy went for money.	37:41
Kate Ellis	So they could buy off whoever they needed. Let me ask a second, did they buy off the foreman? Did they pay the foremen [indistinct 00:37:55].	37:48
Johnny Johnson Hunter	[indistinct 00:37:57] For the foreman said what he trying to get you to see. When he went to work as a foreman, if it rained all day, he got paid eight hours. And see, at one time we wasn't— We would get half and half. We'd get up, we stayed out there two hours, if he sees it going to rain all day, well, he would let you stay those two hours. You would get one hour. First hour went through him, and then we'd get—	37:57
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Yeah, one hour. Second hour.	38:26
Johnny Johnson Hunter	[indistinct 00:38:27] Send you home. Sometimes you wouldn't make but one day if it was going to rain all day. If you call the weather, okay, it's fine out. And then later on they— How did they—	38:27
Eddie Jack Brumfield	The union.	38:37
Johnny Johnson Hunter	The union come in.	38:40
Eddie Jack Brumfield	In the next contract. See every time, every so many years, they have a new contract. And the union would try to get more for the mens to have a contract. Well, after this lowdown guy, Chank Henry, a lot of these fellows thought he was the best fellow in the world, but I thought he was the worst.	38:42
Kate Ellis	He was the next union—	39:00
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Next president behind.	39:01
Kate Ellis	What was his name?	39:03
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Chank. Clarence Henry.	39:04
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Clarence Henry.	39:04
Kate Ellis	Clarence Henry.	39:05
Eddie Jack Brumfield	They call him Chank. I mean, I just always call him Chank, but his name was Clarence Henry. He got to be the president. Okay. Now in your opinion, if automation coming up, you supposed to be— If you had a thing, you supposed to be see far enough ahead to know what's coming to come to your people and tell them, or your child, let's say your child, come to him and tell him, say "Look, such and such a thing is happening, and for you to get ready for it. Prepare yourself for it." You know what automation was coming.	39:06
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Now still to him, telling the mens, say "Fellows, automation is coming. We can get a guarantee. That means if no ships don't come here, you going get so many hours pay a week anyway." Now, this what he told them. "We can get a guarantee, but you going have to work what you don't want to work, such as [indistinct 00:40:09], you going to mention the worst thing was black sand and all that stuff. You going to have to work all that kind of stuff." Well the longshoremen now, "Well we got to work all that, we don't want it."	39:41
Johnny Johnson Hunter	So that might make you get a broom and sweep the [indistinct 00:40:21].	40:15
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Yeah, might make you even get a broom sweep it.	40:21
Johnny Johnson Hunter	[indistinct 00:40:25].	40:22
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Whatever they want as long as they paying you.	40:25
Kate Ellis	You're there to make money.	40:26
Eddie Jack Brumfield	But it was so many lazy guys with no understanding. I used to say it was more ignorant people on the river than any place you ever seen working in your life.	40:28
Johnny Johnson Hunter	All kinds of people would've worked on the waterfront—	40:39
Eddie Jack Brumfield	No education and no understanding. I don't have no education, but I have good mother wit.	40:42
Kate Ellis	You had good—	40:48
Eddie Jack Brumfield	I'm seventy-seven years old. Yeah. And you know about what was happening when I was coming up. All right. Some people didn't have— Now, I said this. I said "We needs a guarantee, fellows." I said, "If we get a guarantee, that means that we going get some kind of pay if it ain't no work at all." "I don't want no guarantee." Well, stevedores had this guy Chank Henry to tell them that, you understand?	40:49
Kate Ellis	To tell them—	41:16
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Don't worry about no guarantee. See, the stevedore going have to pay that money. If they get a guarantee, the stevedore got to pay it. Now they go to Chank Henry and tell him, "Now you go to your mens and show your men the place that they don't need no guarantee, and we won't have to pay no guarantee."	41:19
Eddie Jack Brumfield	And he did it. And the majority of the fellows hollered, "We don't want no guarantee." Well, the majority don't want it, they don't want it. And I cried and begged them fellows, I walked that river and begged them fellows for years. I said, "Fellows, we needs a guarantee." "Oh, shut up [indistinct 00:41:51]. You don't know what you talking about." But in the late years, they found out how wrong they were, but it was too late. See, like now. They don't have no guarantee. And New York was the same union. Those guys that was at that time was getting, had a guarantee of twenty hours a week, work or play, we could have got the same thing. But our president misled us.	41:32
Kate Ellis	How was it the automation, the automation started—	42:24
Eddie Jack Brumfield	But see, what actually happened about the automation, well, they used to had to pick these bags up out of the floor. They went to putting them on pallets like this. That what we call a pallet and [indistinct 00:42:47]. Other words, we call that a pallet. A pallet board, you understand?	42:27
Kate Ellis	Your pallet is leaking.	42:43
Eddie Jack Brumfield	They the pallet. We call that a pallet. They put on a pallet.	42:46
Johnny Johnson Hunter	He just trying to give you an idea what's going on.	42:51
Eddie Jack Brumfield	They put on a pallet board and the lift machine, a machine would come there and pick this up.	42:52
Kate Ellis	This is the pallet boat?	43:01
Eddie Jack Brumfield	That pallet board right there. Now here it, see, that's sitting on the pallet.	43:02
Kate Ellis	Okay. And then there's a machine that would lift this up?	43:05
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Pick and the make up the whole thing and bring it to the hook. And then all they got to do to hook it up and bring it in the hole, they got a lift machine that take it when you get the hole and store it. Now they don't need many men to do that. You understand? That's automation.	43:08
Johnny Johnson Hunter	You see, that's the way that's called. [indistinct 00:43:23].	43:22
Kate Ellis	Yeah. Look at that.	43:23
Johnny Johnson Hunter	That's the way you hook it up. Pick it up and carry right on the machine.	43:27
Kate Ellis	That's great. That's so neat. Now, getting back to the— Well not getting back to, but was it then that White men came in? Would a White person then have this job of operating this?	43:33
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Operating the winch. Yeah, the White man still had the job operating the winch. But now—	43:49
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Let me explain this to her. What I told her, up until 1956, you could almost count the White on the waterfront on [indistinct 00:44:04].	43:54
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Yeah, that's right.	44:03
Johnny Johnson Hunter	But Al Chillen, he brought all these White guys in here and give them free [indistinct 00:44:12] to try to get the ship and the wharf for the White, which was the easier the job. And this was the same man with you, what he's telling about. In my opinion, I worked with him the first time in 1952, and I went against him until he died, because he was the rotten man. He could be bought.	44:07
Kate Ellis	Wait, this was Al Chillen?	44:40
Johnny Johnson Hunter	No, this was Clarence Chanky.	44:40
Kate Ellis	Oh, okay. Oh, okay. Because he could be bought.	44:45
Johnny Johnson Hunter	He could be bought.	44:45
Kate Ellis	By the White—	44:48
Johnny Johnson Hunter	By the White. And like he said, as a president, he's supposed to have the foresight and be able to tell us what was going to happen. But he kept all that from us.	44:49
Kate Ellis	Wow.	45:04
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Yeah. Let me see. Yep. Well, Chank, when the automation come in— You be asking about the White man. Well, I mean what they did, what he was talking about, Al Chillen said, "Look, Dave." Said, "Now, you want [indistinct 00:45:30]— " Other words, naturally he, Al Chillen White. He going to kind of agree with the stevedores. He said, "I'll tell you what we'll do, Dave." He said, "Let's make this thing half and half." That meant half Black and half White. Dave said, "All right with me. Make it half and half."	45:06
Eddie Jack Brumfield	A contract was coming up. In order to get Al Chillen to go along with Dave to get the things he wanted in the contract, that's the only way he could get him to go is agree to go half and half. So Dave agreed to go half and half with Al. So that meant if a Black man working here, a White man working here. If a White man hooking on, a Black man hooking on with him. If a White man got to— See two winch runners. If a White man up there running a winch, a Black man got to be there with him. So that made Al Chillen run a ad in the paper. "All the White boys that want to, come to New Orleans and get a job on the waterfront making— " I just remember what, do you remember what the—	45:52
Johnny Johnson Hunter	I think we make a dollar back that time, about a dollar sixty-five cent a hour.	46:47
Kate Ellis	A dollar sixty-five an hour?	46:48
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Well see, a dollar sixty-five— Other word, what happened. See, the riverfront paid more money than any job in the city. A guy can make more money—	46:48

Johnny Johnson Hunter	Scoop the sugar. I used to pull it from the wing and pull it back in there.	0:01
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Oh yeah. Yeah. That loose sugar.	0:05
Johnny Johnson Hunter	We can rid school. You make, you lost your [indistinct 00:00:12].	0:09
Kate Ellis	Could you just see me lifting 150 pounds? Yeah. I'll have too hard.	0:12
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Yes indeed. It was rough on that river.	0:18
Kate Ellis	Yeah. Well now you were telling about the deal with the White Union.	0:22
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Oh yeah. Al Chilling tells Dave says, we'll make it, said we'll reach agreement on this contract. Providing if you let us go half and half, let me have half that meant half of the men's and you got the other half. That meant he would have many men's as the Black. They came and started to work, but the White man wasn't used to working that hard work like the Black man was. They couldn't stand it. Now at the army base, there was a lot of light work down there. They'd handle a lot of lift machine work and lot of light freight. Now they more, a bunch of White guys stayed at the army base. The foreman one I was working with kept two gangs, half and half.	0:32
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Many.	1:24
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Now uptown where they was working at, we call Army Base Downtown and Al's place is uptown.	1:25
Kate Ellis	Army Base.	1:33
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Army Base.	1:33
Kate Ellis	It's up, is downtown.	1:33
Eddie Jack Brumfield	It's downtown, Army base Downtown. But see, the White boys left those jobs in the hole but not the job. Them had the job on the docks hooking on and running lift machine and driving tractor whatnot. They stayed there because that was easy. But in the hole they left. Now you might uptown, you might see one—	1:35
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Gang uptown.	2:00
Eddie Jack Brumfield	You might have one or two White boy was strong enough to stay in the whole uptown. But at the army base they stayed there because the work was light there. But see, my foreman went to the army base in '49 and I stayed down there. After this foreman retired, I got with another foreman working at the army base. And he stayed there other words, I worked at the Army base until '71 from '49 to '71. Because it was light work and easy work. I stayed down there and worked. Now I used to work a week, day and night. Nine hours in a day and ten hours a night.	2:00
Kate Ellis	And that's how you supported your family?	2:54
Eddie Jack Brumfield	That's right.	2:57
Kate Ellis	Let me ask you something about just going back to World War II and the gear, you came on the river in 1943. How did, and so that was right around the onset of World War II. What impact did World War II have on the work life there on the dock?	2:58
Eddie Jack Brumfield	How would the work like on, what work like on the—	3:21
Kate Ellis	Yeah, during World War II, I mean did it make that work real different or? I mean—	3:24
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Well see other work, before the war they would get, they was getting a ship maybe about, maybe once a month, maybe two ships a month. Wasn't much work going on. At that time the fella would go on the river. You could see him sitting out there waiting for a man to burn out.	3:30
Kate Ellis	Thank you.	3:54
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Waiting for a man to burn out to get his job.	3:56
Kate Ellis	Now that that's actually, you have talked, now this thing about waiting for somebody to burn out, what would it take to burn out? I mean, you're talking—	3:59
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Get tired, wait till they get tired. Working hard.	4:07
Kate Ellis	You're talking about working.	4:09
Eddie Jack Brumfield	That's right.	4:11
Kate Ellis	Many hours a day. I can't believe that.	4:12
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Fill out a good material. We could do it.	4:15
Kate Ellis	You could do that.	4:16
Johnny Johnson Hunter	People couldn't do it but—	4:17
Kate Ellis	Okay.	4:18
Johnny Johnson Hunter	And like I said, I went home many times with cramp, but it was a must that I had to support my family.	4:19
Eddie Jack Brumfield	See, after you get used to it, you can do, it's a lot of things that you can do after you get used to it. But when you first start, it seems hard.	4:26
Johnny Johnson Hunter	My coffee. See, I smoke. I don't—	4:33
Kate Ellis	Okay, well when you talk talk loud, so make sure, okay.	4:35
Eddie Jack Brumfield	And well then after the war come in, that made to go to shipping freight overseas that made more ships come to this port. Well when more ships come to the port, they went to run the ad in the paper. Longshoreman wanted at a dollar and ten cents an hour. Well see I went and finished, went to— went back to Xavier and took up welding.	4:41
Kate Ellis	Xavier.	5:03
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Yeah.	5:04
Kate Ellis	In the, tell me when this was in the '40s?	5:04
Eddie Jack Brumfield	That was in '44.	5:13
Kate Ellis	Okay.	5:13
Eddie Jack Brumfield	I took up welding.	5:13
Kate Ellis	Okay.	5:13
Eddie Jack Brumfield	When I finished, I went to Higgins shipyard. The Higgins.	5:13
Kate Ellis	Higgins.	5:17
Eddie Jack Brumfield	The shipyard. They wanted to start me off at fifty-seven cents an hour. I said this look foolish to me to go to work here for fifty-seven cents an hour. They're paying a dollar and ten on the river. Well I forgot about the welding. I went to work on the river.	5:18
Kate Ellis	Like your brother.	5:33
Eddie Jack Brumfield	That's right.	5:35
Kate Ellis	Dropping his job.	5:35
Eddie Jack Brumfield	That's right.	5:36
Kate Ellis	Dropping his college education. But yeah, after college, going back to—	5:37
Eddie Jack Brumfield	See you didn't have to have no educational to work on the river. You didn't, I mean you didn't have to know your name. I mean, because when you see it—	5:41
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Not a foreman, remember I explained to you about the phone, but this one man would carry gang footer name.	5:48
Eddie Jack Brumfield	They had foreman. They had foreman out there. He had knowledge pushing but no education.	5:55
Johnny Johnson Hunter	But they were just pushers for the steel.	6:00
Kate Ellis	The foreman so they couldn't write necessarily—	6:02
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Couldn't write. No, they couldn't write, couldn't read or write.	6:05
Kate Ellis	But they could get their—	6:11
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Then they knew how to do the work and they could get the work done. Now let me tell this foreman, they told him one day his name Ricard. Ricard I want you to go pick up a gang for tonight. I want you to pick up eighteen mens and get six extra mens for the help in case the work need each game. Ricard told like that's his runner there. He would tell him, go pick up me eighteen and six. Why the guy come back said, okay Ricard come back with twenty-four. I didn't want twenty-four. I told you eighteen and six. (laughs) Now that's how much understanding he had. But he was the foreman. He know how to work the men but he didn't know A from B. That's a fact. And it was on the riverfront. You met a many guy out there that didn't know A from B at that time.	6:13
Kate Ellis	And a lot of them had come in. You had said from the rural areas. I mean they'd come off the farms.	7:18
Eddie Jack Brumfield	That's right.	7:24
Kate Ellis	That was worse.	7:25
Eddie Jack Brumfield	That would work. They could work.	7:26
Kate Ellis	[indistinct 00:07:28] was worse.	7:28
Eddie Jack Brumfield	They was trained to work just like—	7:29
Kate Ellis	You had been.	7:29
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Yeah, that's right. Just that's like, see when I come up, I started working when I was about eight years old. Plying in the field and had been working all my life. I know nothing but work. See we didn't have anything. Listen, when I was going to school we had to walk about five miles I imagine to school, White children would pass us they riding the bus. They would pass on their way to Mississippi. They would pass us and try to spit on us. That's how rough it was up in there. Yeah. We tussling, hustling, walking to school and they riding. They would give us books.	7:32
Johnny Johnson Hunter	What their leftover.	8:20
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Leftover that they had maybe three years ago, wouldn't give us the book like update book.	8:21
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Right.	8:28
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Now we was coming up Baby Ray books such as Baby Ray, Little Bo Peep, Humpty The Dumpty. Now that's all we had in the premier, in the first grade and the second grade. It was the third grade we got, in the third grade before we got any books with any knowledge at all. [indistinct 00:08:52] foolish to make. That's like chew out book that you have now, cartoons and thing. That's all they had. Otherwise they didn't want you to learn nothing. They didn't want us to learn nothing I mean at that time. But it was some people was fortunate enough that had understanding and all and they got education. Well my daddy had taken sick in 1931. I was in the sixth grade. I had to stop school and go to work to try to buy medicine for him. And so I didn't get to go to school no more. And listen, I went to work making two fifty a week, two dollars and fifty cents a week and three meals.	8:29
Kate Ellis	That's amazing.	9:46
Eddie Jack Brumfield	It was rough.	9:46
Kate Ellis	Yeah. What was the work that—	9:46
Eddie Jack Brumfield	That was in the '30s.	9:46
Kate Ellis	It was farm work?	9:47
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Farm work in 1930.	9:49
Johnny Johnson Hunter	I used to hold from sun up to tell that the whole cotton from time I could see it till I couldn't see, fifty cent a day.	9:50
Kate Ellis	Wow. Fifty cents a day.	9:57
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Right.	9:57
Kate Ellis	Wow.	10:02
Johnny Johnson Hunter	When my dad would have time, let us be hard out, try get some.	10:02
Eddie Jack Brumfield	It was rough. I'm telling you the facts. We didn't have anything. See other words President Hoover, when he ran for President in 1928, he told the Black peoples, I mean told the White peoples, the Black people wasn't voting. Now and then you might see a Black person what wasn't voting for White folk. If they make him President, he would make the Black women eat their babies. That's how rough he would make it for them. Well see that's what they wanted to hear. Anything against a Black person, they wanted to hear. And so that's what he told them. They elected Hoover President in 1928. He stayed President '28 to '32.	10:07
Eddie Jack Brumfield	I wouldn't tell you a word, a joke. You talking about rough. It used to be pretty good work before then. The saw mills closed down. All the public work closed down during his administration. When President Roosevelt took over in 1932, he went to doing different things to try to help the poor people live. On the farm what he would do, he would let them plant the cotton and pam for it and ply it.	11:03
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Ply it.	11:37
Eddie Jack Brumfield	But because they had so much cotton on the market because the market was down. See it wasn't cotton it got the place went for five cents a pound. He would let them plant the cotton. And then pam the, ply it up, he said, make the ground rich. Try to help the people and give them different little jobs. Well that's how social security started in 1936. Social security started in 1936 in February and it didn't get sound to 1937.	11:39
Eddie Jack Brumfield	I'm working on a little small job. They started taking social security in '36. But it gave us that little change back and started over new in '37. That's when it really went into effect in '37. It's just like this program that the President trying to get now for that health program. It wasn't sound, but you got to start somewhere. See a lot of people, it ain't no good. It ain't this but you got to start somewhere. When social security started, it wasn't no good. They kicked against it. But look at it now.	12:18
Kate Ellis	Yeah.	12:52
Eddie Jack Brumfield	That's the way it was. It was rough. I have caught the train hoboing.	12:54
Johnny Johnson Hunter	I'm sorry?	13:02
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Caught, you'd call it hoboing, what you mean—	13:02
Johnny Johnson Hunter	You don't know what a hobo is?	13:02
Eddie Jack Brumfield	That's riding the train without having no money. They called it a hobo.	13:10
Kate Ellis	Hobo.	13:12
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Hobo.	13:14
Kate Ellis	Okay.	13:14
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Now listen you wasn't in the passenger seat now. You was a box car. The box car opened when the trains stopped at a station to pick up water. See they used to have that time they had the old time train. They had to stop at ever so often and get water and get coals and things. You go there and help them load them coals up and do what they had to do. Then you get in a box car ride. They called it hobo.	13:14
Kate Ellis	Oh, hobo	13:42
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Called it a hobo.	13:43
Kate Ellis	Oh thought you, oh, okay.	13:45
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Hoboing. What he mean, he was a hobo. You understand that? Yeah.	13:45
Kate Ellis	Wait, what tell me what—	13:49
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Ride the hoboing that what they called a hobo.	13:52
Kate Ellis	Okay.	13:52
Eddie Jack Brumfield	That meant riding the train but not paying, you don't have no money.	13:53
Kate Ellis	I thought you said, okay.	13:56
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Riding the train bit not paying, you don't have no money. It would be 40 or 50 people maybe in a box car. You know how long a box car is, is that's sitting down this talking about, you know how rough it is with him. How rough it is with them. I have, that was during the time when Hoover was in. I've seen a White lady on that train with her baby. See it was not only for the Black, it was rough for every poor person. See the poor peoples didn't think about when he said he going to make it rough for the Black. They didn't think about how rough it could be for the poor White. All they was thinking about keeping the Black person down. You understand?	13:57
Kate Ellis	Yeah.	14:44
Eddie Jack Brumfield	See some people got a one track mind. See, they looking at thing one way.	14:44
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Be glad you born New York.	14:49
Kate Ellis	Because I was born in New York as oppose to down here. Close to where?	14:51
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Well you have the experience in Mississippi.	14:55
Kate Ellis	It was rough in Mississippi. I mean it was rough all over. But—	14:58
Eddie Jack Brumfield	It's, it rough all over. But see, see like—	15:03
Kate Ellis	Alabama.	15:06
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Mississippi, Alabama lose all these southern states. It was rough because it wasn't no public work. Wasn't no money in circulation for us. If I went out on a Saturday night and had fifteen cents, I had plenty of money. I remember—	15:07
Johnny Johnson Hunter	You can buy a lot for fifteen cents.	15:26
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Oh yeah at that time. I remember two guys and I went out, we taking some girls out and we went to drink, we buy some wine. The wine weren't but forty-five cents a fifth, we didn't even have enough money to buy it. Lacking a nickel from having that.	15:28
Kate Ellis	Wow.	15:47
Eddie Jack Brumfield	That's how rough it was back at that time.	15:48
Kate Ellis	That must have been tough as far as when you're on a date and you're trying to impress somebody and—	15:50
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Yes indeed. You just—	15:56
Johnny Johnson Hunter	You don't know about the tokens. See we had a— that was how it work as a mill. We had to have ten tokens before we had get a penny that come under Hoover too. Had to come under—	15:59
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Yeah.	16:12
Kate Ellis	Ten tokens before you had a penny?	16:13
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Penny right.	16:15
Kate Ellis	From the mill?	16:16
Johnny Johnson Hunter	It wouldn't mean they would call mill. They see take ten mills to make—	16:16
Kate Ellis	Oh okay. Ten mill to make a penny.	16:20
Johnny Johnson Hunter	That I used to save. I go over at least till a dime. I used to go, I used to hide token until I could get ten where I could have a penny when I was a little boy. And I used to go out back out to old home seat in Mississippi and be looking for stuff I used to hide when I was little boy looking for those tokens, pennies. They had a five cent token and they had a—	16:23
Eddie Jack Brumfield	One cent. I mean one tenth, when I say one tenth of a cent.	16:49
Johnny Johnson Hunter	You had to save ten token before we had a penny.	16:53
Eddie Jack Brumfield	But at that time, see like, see I used to like Baby Ruth candy plenty.	16:59
Kate Ellis	Baby Ruth candy?	17:06
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Baby Ruth candy. You could get five. Hello. You get five bars of Baby Ruth for a nickel at that time. You see that's how cheap thing was.	17:08
Johnny Johnson Hunter	And it's twice as big. You see the Baby Ruth now it was twice as big then.	17:17
Kate Ellis	Oh, wow.	17:22
Johnny Johnson Hunter	They were twice as big.	17:23
Eddie Jack Brumfield	At that time.	17:24
Johnny Johnson Hunter	At that time.	17:25
Eddie Jack Brumfield	And I used to eat Baby Ruth and I liked it Baby Ruth and I eat it until, see what happened with Baby Ruth come with any kind of candy peanuts in it.	17:27
Johnny Johnson Hunter	I was trying to get back in the conversation.	17:35
Eddie Jack Brumfield	If it sit too long, worms will get in it. Until I broke one open and found a worm. And that just killed me with Baby Ruth. I don't—	17:36
Kate Ellis	That makes sense.	17:42
Eddie Jack Brumfield	I ain't eaten a Baby Ruth since.	17:44
Kate Ellis	But that's what you spend money on.	17:47
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Yes indeed. Baby Ruth candy, I love that Baby Ruth because it was really good to me at that time what little money I could get ahold to.	17:51
Kate Ellis	How where, and this might sound like an obvious question but I'd still like to hear you talk about it. I mean you talk about White students on the bus going past you and spitting on you. In general, I mean how else were your, were relations between Blacks and Whites during that time when you were coming up in Mississippi? I mean, how were you treated? I mean—	18:01
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Now let me explain this much to you. The White peoples in Mississippi, they called Mississippi rough but they was much better than the peoples are in Louisiana.	18:21
Kate Ellis	Really?	18:34
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Sure.	18:35
Kate Ellis	Because it's true. I've heard—	18:35
Eddie Jack Brumfield	They were straight.	18:36
Kate Ellis	Heard people say that Mississippi is—	18:37
Eddie Jack Brumfield	They were straight. See you can handle, you can get along with a person straight than you can a crook. Now the peoples in Louisiana will grin in your face and cut your throat. I'm just telling you the facts.	18:38
Kate Ellis	Right.	18:52
Eddie Jack Brumfield	The White man in Louisiana, will laugh with you. This wasn't [indistinct 00:19:03] me and nobody in here but you and I we talking. Now another White man walk up you see him getting away from me. Now he going to get over there and talk to that White man and that's where a White, that's where the Louisiana White man is. But see—	18:53
Kate Ellis	Say that again.	19:18
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Like nobody but you and I sitting here, we sitting here talking. Now another White man walk up. Maybe he go there to that table—	19:20
Johnny Johnson Hunter	What he trying to explain?	19:26
Eddie Jack Brumfield	I'm Black and you White.	19:27
Kate Ellis	The White man—	19:28
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Another White man come over there.	19:29
Kate Ellis	Yeah.	19:30
Eddie Jack Brumfield	And the 90 minute he done left me and went over there with him.	19:31
Kate Ellis	The woman, the White woman.	19:34
Eddie Jack Brumfield	The White with the White man.	19:37
Kate Ellis	Right.	19:38
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Now in Mississippi they didn't like, don't get me wrong. But if they would talk with you, you could go to their house and sat down to their table and eat with them.	19:38
Kate Ellis	In Mississippi.	19:52
Eddie Jack Brumfield	In Mississippi. I remember one night, let me tell you this.	19:57
Kate Ellis	Yeah.	20:03
Eddie Jack Brumfield	My daddy was afraid of snakes. The high sheriff, the deputy at that time, they used to have cold ranches set them all on the outside over the bottles because you didn't put them inside because people wasn't bad like they breaking them up and going there bottle was set. They was all sitting down talking to see my daddy coming, said there come old Willis. We going to have some fun out there the artificial snake, they put the snake around his neck. Put the artificial snake around his snake and he was afraid of snake.	20:04
Eddie Jack Brumfield	He went to get and pop them bottles thrown after them. They were running like everything. He breaking glass and everything else. My daddy was mean. So this is what they said. They said we going to take him out and whip him. That's what they used to do. Then when they do something they figured he ain't going to act right. They going take him out and whip him.	20:34
Johnny Johnson Hunter	There was stories on TV, I know.	20:46
Kate Ellis	Yeah. But—	20:46
Eddie Jack Brumfield	You thought it was just a joke.	20:56
Kate Ellis	When you talk to somebody and they tell you about stuff that they remember, it's always—	20:57
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Okay, my brother-in-law and two White men come stay with my daddy all night that night waiting for him to come to whipping. You understand? Now what I'm trying to say in Louisiana you wouldn't find hardly a White man that born and raised in Louisiana that would stick out against another White man for a Negro.	21:02
Kate Ellis	Yes sir.	21:27
Eddie Jack Brumfield	See the people, like what I was trying to tell you, the Negro, the White folks in Mississippi, if they was for you, they was for you. Now if they was against you, they say, well I don't want you around me. See you rather be around a person like that than be around a fellow that's going to grin with you today and tomorrow he won't speak to you.	21:28
Kate Ellis	He'll be the first person with the whip in his hand if he thinks that you've, whatever.	21:51
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Yeah.	21:57
Kate Ellis	Done something. Wow.	21:57
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Now get back to the same thing that you was just telling her. I was telling her the other day that either the White will work with you, but when you got ready to leave the job, now you can finish tell him how just like it started when he was talking about the White man. If you and him was talking that White man, he going to leave you for the White man. The same way when we working on, although we work together, we didn't have too much problem amongst ourselves—	21:59
Eddie Jack Brumfield	When we working.	22:31
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Yeah. But—	22:32
Eddie Jack Brumfield	When he leave—	22:32
Johnny Johnson Hunter	When he left that job. He'd see you, he'd walk if you meet him on Canal Street, he act like he didn't even know you.	22:37
Eddie Jack Brumfield	It was a White boy working canal gang. Oh he was nice to us while we were working. At that time they used to have that, on the streetcar used to have that sign the Black had to sit behind. We'd all knock off together going the same way. Now he'd be the first man to grab the sign and put it between me and him. That's a fact. That's a fact.	22:48
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Would you [indistinct 00:23:17] and him?	23:13
Eddie Jack Brumfield	I mean he was nice while we were working. I mean nice. He would come anything he could do for us, he would do it. But when he got out there amongst some other White folks, don't want to have nothing to do with you. He was living in the neighborhood where I live at right now. This what another White boy told me. And I don't know whether it's true or not. He says he left and moved all the way to [indistinct 00:23:38], which is about what I proposed for [indistinct 00:23:40] is for me I'm talking about.	23:16
Johnny Johnson Hunter	About 10 miles.	23:40
Eddie Jack Brumfield	And don't have no transportation. He say he want to get away from them niggers. He didn't want to be living, he done lived up there all his life. He didn't want to live with that round them nigger and went to [indistinct 00:23:53] and they ain't got no transportation to get back here to work. He had to ride, this is what the White boy telling me. He said, "Brum," said listen to this, a guy named Mickey. He said "Mickey move from up there where he was living and move to [indistinct 00:24:06], say he didn't want to be them among them niggers and had to ride with a nigger all the way." (laughs)	23:42
Johnny Johnson Hunter	But like I said that he went with [indistinct 00:24:15]. But if he had didn't want to be friends, he didn't want his—	24:11
Eddie Jack Brumfield	That's a fact, I'm not making up nothing. (laughs)	24:15
Johnny Johnson Hunter	He didn't want his friend to know he was [indistinct 00:24:19].	24:18
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Didn't want his friend to know he's so [indistinct 00:24:28] Negro.	24:19
Johnny Johnson Hunter	That show what he tell you about the new way.	24:32
Eddie Jack Brumfield	That's the way, that's the way they is. That's the way they is.	24:33
Johnny Johnson Hunter	And that's the way they did on the job as long as you here. We had no problem working. But when he got ready to change, you don't even know him.	24:41
Eddie Jack Brumfield	No, no.	24:49
Kate Ellis	Well I have two questions for you about that. How do you, I don't know, it's like how do you deal with people like that? I mean, you got to work with them then you got to see them when they're ignoring you on the street. I mean, would you all just laugh amongst yourselves about them? What would it do to you? Or how did it—	24:50
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Well just made— just make you watch him more closer or like I'm saying, it ain't nothing that he can do for you. He got to work just like you so what can he do you?	25:13
Kate Ellis	Yeah.	25:25
Johnny Johnson Hunter	That the way he had to figure that.	25:25
Kate Ellis	Wow. What about the White guys who you said who are for you? I mean, who would stand by you?	25:27
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Oh, they had some that would.	25:32
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Yeah they had some, they had a couple White boys that came from Mississippi working in the gang. They had some White boys from Louisiana working in the gang. Okay. See like, we couldn't go in any restaurant and get food. Just White only, just White only, White only. Especially late hours at night so we would ask those White boy to bring our lunch back we working at night, bring our lunch back. The White boy from Louisiana, we call him Keys. We give him the money. He would come back, he would cheat us, come back and tell us lunch was a different price. This boy named, we call him Red, Red Fagans.	25:33
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Red Fagans.	26:25
Kate Ellis	Red what?	26:25
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Red Fagans, Fagans from Mississippi. He called me not too long ago. He said, Brumfields, says, what did Keys tell you all that lunch was? Would tell him, he said, well lot we going get on Keys about, he said don't give Keys no more money. Tomorrow give us your money and we'll bring your lunch back. Now he's from Mississippi.	26:26
Kate Ellis	He's from Mississippi.	26:43
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Right, Mississippi.	26:43
Eddie Jack Brumfield	I'm just telling you the truth.	26:44
Johnny Johnson Hunter	What he telling you is fact. That's why—	26:46
Eddie Jack Brumfield	I'm not telling, I'm not putting nothing on nobody.	26:48
Johnny Johnson Hunter	See River Hayden work on the water for the 1918.	26:51
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Yeah. And he really knows that—	26:54
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Eyes on his head. I know that man. When I work the waterfront he looked just about like he's in his nineties.	26:56
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Yeah. This guy Fagans, he called me not long. He said, Brumfields, I used to get lonesome and I get to thinking about long time ago and I just call you for us to have a little chat. I said, well I'm sure glad you called me Red. And we talk, we talk, you know that's from Mississippi. But I ain't had no White boy from Louisiana to call me since I retired, about to work, about the times we used to have or nothing.	27:04
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Well little just like you talking about your man, Mickey the one who—	27:34
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Yeah, Mickey let make a little fast.	27:36
Johnny Johnson Hunter	What you called now you all work together many, many years.	27:36
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Oh yeah. We worked together.	27:38
Johnny Johnson Hunter	And they gang [indistinct 00:27:42] for twenty-six years at the Army Base. Twenty-six years from 1958 up until it broke up. '79 I believe I went home.	27:40
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Yeah.	27:51
Kate Ellis	And he was a White guy and he never called, you said he never called.	27:52
Eddie Jack Brumfield	And meet you on the street act like he don't know you.	27:57
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Right.	27:59
Kate Ellis	Even today he was—	27:59
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Even today. Even today. Even today meet you on— meet me on the street. And—	27:59
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Like he said, they worked together them many years. I know.	28:07
Kate Ellis	What happened with that incident with your father. When those guys said they were going to take him out for a whipping, did they ever come around?	28:12
Eddie Jack Brumfield	No, indeed.	28:15
Kate Ellis	Because they knew that there were other—	28:21
Eddie Jack Brumfield	They probably found out that these other guys had come there to help him, you understand? They never did. They never did. I never hear no more from it.	28:21
Kate Ellis	Did that ever, I mean I hate to bring up bad memories but that, did it ever happen to you? Did any White guys ever take you out and rough you up?	28:33
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Well no. I was fortunate. In other words, let me explain this to you, I was well raised.	28:40
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Respect. You always knew how to handle yourself.	28:49
Eddie Jack Brumfield	I know how to talk to peoples. I never misused nobody. See, if you treat everybody the best you can, you ain't going to have too many problems. What a problem come in when you get to the place that you can't talk to nobody or nobody can't talk to you. I knows how to say yes ma'am and yes sir.	28:51
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Oh wow.	29:13
Eddie Jack Brumfield	And that's what they wanted.	29:14
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Yeah.	29:15
Eddie Jack Brumfield	It didn't hurt me. I'm seventy-seven and I'm still walking and talking. It didn't hurt me, it's a lot of guys all about I'm, I ain't no Uncle Tom. I said well you can call it what you want. I said, but I knows how to get along with peoples.	29:24
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Right.	29:37
Eddie Jack Brumfield	When your finger is in a lion mouth, you be careful.	29:39
Kate Ellis	I'm sorry?	29:42
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Because he'll cut it open like if you got your hand in the lion mouth.	29:42
Kate Ellis	Yeah.	29:46
Eddie Jack Brumfield	You ain't going to snatch it out because he bite it off.	29:46
Kate Ellis	Okay.	29:50
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Yeah. The lion will bite it off. If you got your hand in the lion mouth and you snatch your hand out, just pet him and go until you get your hand out of the lion mouth and then you, then everything's all right. (laughs) Well that's what I'm talking about. See when you're behind the gun, ain't nothing you can do. Cool it. You'll make it. That's why I always made it.	29:51
Kate Ellis	That's what made that. Yeah. That's interesting though that other people would say that your uncle Tom, somebody if, I mean it sounds like what made sense to you is that that's you do what you have to do to just stay out of their way.	30:16
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Get along, to get along whatever.	30:28
Kate Ellis	Other people might see that as somehow compromising themselves.	30:32
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Yeah. They said the Uncle Tom, he's Uncle Tom or whatnot, but he can't hardly live because he see it a different way. Other words, if you got the money, you got the work. Everything I get I got to come to you to get it. Why should I come to you acting nasty and I know I can't live without you. You understand?	30:35
Kate Ellis	Yeah.	31:00
Eddie Jack Brumfield	That's the idea about it. I know I need you to live, but I'm going to come to you. No, I ain't going to do such and such a thing. Well you say, well if you ain't going to do it, take a walk. Doesn't mean I ain't got no more job.	31:01
Kate Ellis	Right. It's a very practical—	31:15
Eddie Jack Brumfield	That's it.	31:18
Kate Ellis	—approach.	31:18
Eddie Jack Brumfield	That's right.	31:20
Kate Ellis	To making sure you have a livelihood.	31:23
Eddie Jack Brumfield	I have a son, he's a computer technician. He living in Shreveport. He called me, said daddy, he says they gave me my paper, little piece of my pink slip. I said, what happened? Well I was mouthpiece for the fellows. In other words, see he anything they wanted, he would go to the man farm. You know he going to go down, we need a raise or you ain't treating us right or this, that and the other. They got rid of him. They say he was a Jonah.	31:26
Kate Ellis	A what?	32:07
Eddie Jack Brumfield	A Jonah. Other words. Oh, he got something to say. He was a Jonah. They going to get rid of him. They got rid of him. I said, let me tell you something boy. You named after me. I call him June. I said let me tell you something.	32:07
Johnny Johnson Hunter	All right.	32:17
Eddie Jack Brumfield	All right. I said—	32:17
Johnny Johnson Hunter	We ]having an interview right now. We ain't open yet.	32:17
Kate Ellis	We'll be over, we'll be open soon.	32:17
Eddie Jack Brumfield	I said, if you on them people's job, if he wants a raise, you go to the man, catch him off to himself and tell him I wants a raise. If he think he ain't treating you right, you catch him off to yourself and tell him don't get out there amongst everybody because he don't want everybody to have the understanding that he ain't treating the right. Make them come to him and talk to him too any kind of way. Catch him off to himself and you can get it. I said, then he said, well daddy too. We all be sitting around the table and they call for somebody to come and do something. They send me and the White boy still sitting. I said, let me explain something to you again partner. I said, you working ain't you?	32:26
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Go right.	33:13
Eddie Jack Brumfield	I said, they paying you. He said, yeah. I said, well then you do what they tell you to do. If everybody's sitting down but you and you working and getting paid, you ain't got no problem. That's the first thing. And then the next thing, that might be his brother. That might be his cousin. It might be his uncle. Might be his, no telling who it is. I mean you going to look out for your peoples, anybody with any common sense going to look out for these peoples. You don't look for me to get the same break on the jobs that your brother get, either your daddy get. If you working, do as you told and you'll make it. He called me, he said, daddy, he said, I've tried what you told me. It worked. Fellows had been on the job fourteen, fifteen and twenty years. He worked for IBM. They cut, when they cut back, they cut some of them off and kept him.	33:14
Kate Ellis	And they kept him.	34:15
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Kept him. Twice a month he's gone either to Atlanta, New York or somewhere taking training, new training for computer technicians. See new computers coming out.	34:16
Kate Ellis	Yeah.	34:36
Eddie Jack Brumfield	And they sending him for training.	34:36
Kate Ellis	Yeah.	34:38
Eddie Jack Brumfield	They sending him somewhere all the time because he listened to what I told him about dong his work. And anytime they send him somewhere he go and do his work and do it like it's supposed to be did and he has no problems.	34:38
Kate Ellis	I have a question and it's a, instead of trying his question, it may not be one that, I don't know. It's hard to answer in a way, but it's just this thing that I keep wondering. I mean when you talk about having to work with Whites in a certain way because you know that they, that on some level that they're the ones who are going to pay you. They're the ones, I mean as you were saying, they— you have to go to them for your livelihood and therefore you're going to interact with them in a certain way. Right. To keep your job.	34:56
Eddie Jack Brumfield	That's right.	35:30
Kate Ellis	To put food on the table.	35:31
Eddie Jack Brumfield	That's right.	35:32
Kate Ellis	Even though they're mistreating you and you know they are.	35:33
Eddie Jack Brumfield	You know that. That's right.	35:36
Kate Ellis	You know that.	35:37
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Yeah.	35:38
Kate Ellis	And you have numerous examples daily of how that's happening. I guess this question I have is, what do you, even though you have to act that way with them, I don't know, how do you feel about them? How do you deal? Does it make— how do you deal with the anger that I would think it would make you feel inside? Or do you just give yourself over to it?	35:38
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Just give yourself over to it knowing like I said, you got to work for a living and regardless, it is not that you are Uncle Tom or nothing but you— though you got to make it. Even though— my thing is it either right or it's wrong. But he the boss, if he said do it and it's wrong. You got every right to tell him what you told.	36:02
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Do as you're told.	36:29
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Do as you told. That's the way, that's your superior. And so best he going to give you respect. That's the way, that way he got to use psychotic even though you know it's wrong. But he told me, you use [indistinct 00:36:48].	36:30
Eddie Jack Brumfield	If he tells me to pick this spoon table up, well see I got no choice but to come in and do this.	36:47
Johnny Johnson Hunter	If I can't pick it up, I can't.	36:54
Eddie Jack Brumfield	I just do this act like I'm picking it up. He said pick it up bro. I'm doing the best I can. Well see he can't say I didn't try to pick it up. That do as your told. That's all. I mean, you know it's wrong.	36:55
Johnny Johnson Hunter	And later on his conscious going, then he going to respect you. And then his conscious going work on some of that. Well yeah, he got to use psychotic on them as well. They always staying ahead of you, they go to bed to stay how to beat you.	37:06
Kate Ellis	They what— they go to—	37:20
Eddie Jack Brumfield	They go to bed, they go to sleep. They go to sleep with you on their mind, figuring out how to use you.	37:22
Johnny Johnson Hunter	To use you. Do you know what the word nigger means?	37:28
Kate Ellis	Well, I mean a specific definition. I mean, what's—	37:33
Johnny Johnson Hunter	That's why we are called a nigger. That's a tool. That's something that you can use. Look at [indistinct 00:37:44].	37:39
Kate Ellis	It's a tool?	37:42
Johnny Johnson Hunter	It's a tool. That's something that you can use. That's why we got the call nigger. Now you go, you come look this up like I'm saying I'm not highly educated, but I know enough to get by. Now you check this. You never thought of it that way. That's why we got the word nigger. Because they say tool, they say—	37:45
Eddie Jack Brumfield	They can use you.	38:05
Johnny Johnson Hunter	That's why the Black man got the word nigger.	38:12
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Yeah.	38:20
Johnny Johnson Hunter	You learn more here than you even got in college.	38:20
Kate Ellis	I know. I was never [indistinct 00:38:26], you're right. Absolutely.	38:22
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Well I will say what the Black then most of the stuff that was discovered was by Black, but he never got—	38:33
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Got no credit.	38:41
Johnny Johnson Hunter	No credit for it.	38:42
Eddie Jack Brumfield	No credit.	38:43
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Like they said this who discovered the miracle.	38:44
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Watch that slide off there.	38:46
Johnny Johnson Hunter	This who did they say? But that was a Negro. That was a Negro who invent the economy of that. Was Negro that did a lot of things but the White man—	38:51
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Got the credit.	39:04
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Got the credit for it. Of course, you know [indistinct 00:39:09].	39:04
Kate Ellis	No, you know, I don't know it the way that you know it. I said I know, I don't know it the way that you know it.	39:09
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Don't know it the way he know it.	39:22
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Okay.	39:22
Kate Ellis	I don't know it as well.	39:22
Johnny Johnson Hunter	I want you to circle this—	39:25
Kate Ellis	And you know I don't know it as well as you know it.	39:26
Johnny Johnson Hunter	Okay. I want you to circle this word nigger. And I want you to look at a dictionary and you think in your way all called away what it could mean. That's how the White man took advantage of us down through the years. And they still called us. They tried to get away from it, but they still calls us niggers. But like I said, don't bother me. I am what I am, I don't care you called me this name. Just don't call me too late to eat.	39:28
Kate Ellis	Well you got your, I know you said—	40:09
Johnny Johnson Hunter	My wife going to tape it.	40:09
Kate Ellis	Your wife's going to tape it and I, but I've got another interview I've got to go to.	40:09
Eddie Jack Brumfield	All right.	40:14
Kate Ellis	But I wish I could spend a lot more time talking with you. No really I feel like I just— we just got started. I mean there's a lot more to talk about.	40:15
Johnny Johnson Hunter	When you coming back?	40:25
Kate Ellis	Well, I don't know if I'm coming back. [INTERRUPTION] Testing one, two, testing. Asked you, oh, say— actually, will you say your name.	40:26
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Spell my name. Spell my name?	40:43
Kate Ellis	No, just say it.	40:44
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Eddie J. Brumfield.	40:45
Kate Ellis	Okay. This is Kate Ellis with Mr. Brumfield on Saturday morning, August thirteenth. We're just finishing up the family history forms. Okay so you were just saying you came to New Orleans with the intention of learning how to do welding.	40:48
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Welding, take up a welding.	41:06
Kate Ellis	Take up welding. And then you were going to go to California.	41:08
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Yeah, that was my intention. But after got here and after I left, I told you after I'd taken up welding and they was paying fifty-one, started me off at fifty-seven cents an hour at the shipyard. And they was paying a dollar and ten cents an hour for work on the river. I couldn't see myself working for fifty-seven cents in that heat.	41:10
Kate Ellis	Yeah.	41:39
Eddie Jack Brumfield	And where I could go on the river and work for a dollar and ten cents an hour.	41:39
Kate Ellis	Right. Had you gotten the idea to go into welding when you were in [indistinct 00:41:50]?	41:41
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Yeah, that was my idea. Some guys, we left about four guys. We left Pascagoula to come here and take up welding and go to California. They went. The other three guys went.	41:50
Kate Ellis	They did.	42:06
Eddie Jack Brumfield	They went on to California.	42:06
Kate Ellis	Did you ever stay in touch with them? Did you ever keep in touch with them?	42:07
Eddie Jack Brumfield	No. No. I don't never get in touch with them anymore after they left here. And they left in '43, I hadn't got in touch with them since.	42:11
Kate Ellis	Did you have— where were you trained in welding?	42:21
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Back at Xavier.	42:23
Kate Ellis	Xavier. Oh.	42:26
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Back in Xavier City. They had back at Xavier College, they had some program back there that you go back there and take up welding.	42:27
Kate Ellis	Oh, okay. And before when you were in Crosby, that's where you worked in the—	42:36
Eddie Jack Brumfield	At the saw mill.	42:46
Kate Ellis	Saw mill. Okay. I know that you had said earlier that you didn't get a chance to spend a lot of time in school. Do you remember the name of the school that you did that time?	42:49
Eddie Jack Brumfield	I went to a school by the name of, they call it Pink Hill, P-I-N-K H-I-L-L. And another school, St. James Public School. Those are the two schools that I attended.	43:00
Kate Ellis	Was Pink Hill School, was that in Tylertown?	43:22
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Pink Hill?	43:26
Kate Ellis	Yeah.	43:27
Eddie Jack Brumfield	That was in Pike County.	43:28
Kate Ellis	Oh, okay.	43:32
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Both schools in Pike County.	43:32
Kate Ellis	Okay. Why did you go to different schools?	43:44
Eddie Jack Brumfield	By moving different section of the country, you see other words we was living close by this school, Pink Hill School, then my father moved close about the St. James. Then we went to St. James School was close to.	43:48
Kate Ellis	Okay. And did you go up, what grade did you go up to at St. James?	44:02
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Well, I went as high as sixth grade.	44:09
Kate Ellis	Okay. And then later at Xavier you took up—	44:18
Eddie Jack Brumfield	No, no, I didn't go to school at all no more. Yes, they had, that's training for welding back then. That's all.	44:21
Kate Ellis	Okay. But that was, okay.	44:27
Eddie Jack Brumfield	That's a training, that's all.	44:27
Kate Ellis	And now I need to list your most important, the most important jobs that you've had.	44:33
Eddie Jack Brumfield	The important job?	44:37
Kate Ellis	I mean, yeah, this is, it's a work history.	44:39
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Well, longshoreman was the most important job I think I had, because I worked out there thirty-six years.	44:47
Kate Ellis	Okay. That was from 1943—	44:58
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Up until '79.	45:00
Kate Ellis	Okay. Now, and as far as what employer I put down for longshoreman, you had many different employers. Is that right?	45:02
Eddie Jack Brumfield	How you said it?	45:17
Kate Ellis	Well, it says here, I need to list the job that you had longshoreman and the name of your employer.	45:20
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Oh.	45:25
Kate Ellis	But in this situation—	45:25
Eddie Jack Brumfield	See, like—	45:27
Kate Ellis	There were so many.	45:27
Eddie Jack Brumfield	See on a longshoreman, let me see if I can explain it to you. I'd say would have approximately about sixty foremans. Okay. And if you was a good longshoreman, you might have a regular foreman you work with. Now, if this regular foreman don't have no work, you could catch, go with most any of those other foreman if he was a good worker, you see? Because they wants the best man all the time to work. You understand? And so that's how I worked like that during the time I was during longshoreman work.	45:28
Kate Ellis	Okay. And as far as your paycheck.	46:04
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Okay.	46:12
Kate Ellis	Did your paycheck came from different Stevedores?	46:13
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Yes. Well [indistinct 00:46:19] okay. I'll just name a few.	46:16
Kate Ellis	Oh.	46:20
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Lights, T. Smitten's Son, New Orleans Stevedore.	46:21
Kate Ellis	Okay.	46:28
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Okay. If you work for Light Brothers, you go to, they pay table to get your money. If you work for New Orleans Stevedore, you go to they pay table. That happened for quite a few years and then they put them all together. Where Ralph regards to who you work for, you go to one place and get your check.	46:28
Kate Ellis	Okay.	46:46
Eddie Jack Brumfield	At what they call a—	46:46

Eddie Jack Brumfield	— and then convert all the checks into one regards to where you work for all the checks, all the money would be put on one check.	0:01
Kate Ellis	Gotcha. When I talked to Mr. Hunter, he'd said that there was a real racket on the docks as far as getting paid. I mean, the question of whether you'd always get paid what you should get paid for all these different things.	0:08
Speaker 1	[00:00:23] the lumber [ 00:00:24].	0:22
Eddie Jack Brumfield	All right. I'm going to be—	0:22
Kate Ellis	So anyway, well, you don't have to go into the— You were just talking about the pay for the workers for the longshoreman, as far as how you got paid. But that's—	0:25
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Yeah, how do we get paid?	0:37
Kate Ellis	No, no. You explained that.	0:38
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Yeah.	0:40
Kate Ellis	I just— Okay. So you were longshoreman from '43 to 1979.	0:40
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Listen, I was a longshoreman, did longshore work. I did, you're right, all that time. But from '43 to '71, I was doing longshore work. Then, I got to be a foreman in '71. From '71 to '79, I was a foreman.	0:50
Kate Ellis	Okay.	1:04
Eddie Jack Brumfield	I was a foreman for Cooper Stevedore and Company.	1:05
Kate Ellis	Cooper Stevedore and Company, 1971 to '79. Okay. Then before, that you'd been at Pascagoula, working in a shipyard?	1:13
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Shipyard.	1:36
Kate Ellis	What was the name of that job?	1:37
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Ingoe. Ingoe Shipyard, I-N-G-O-E.	1:39
Kate Ellis	Shipyard. Okay. I was going to ask—	1:43
Kate Ellis	Then you lived in a sawmill? Sawmill?	2:01
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Worked there, how you say that?	2:06
Kate Ellis	You worked in a sawmill?	2:06
Eddie Jack Brumfield	At Crosby Lumber Company.	2:07
Kate Ellis	Okay.	2:09
Eddie Jack Brumfield	At Crosby Lumber Company.	2:09
Kate Ellis	Okay. Sawmill.	2:25
Kate Ellis	Okay. And then before that you did farm labor?	2:25
Eddie Jack Brumfield	At the farm, working on the farm.	2:28
Kate Ellis	Okay. You worked with your father doing that?	2:32
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Worked with my father and in the farm with my father, yes.	2:33
Kate Ellis	Okay.	2:37
Kate Ellis	Okay.	2:43
Kate Ellis	On rented farmland, is that right?	2:48
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Yes.	2:50
Kate Ellis	Okay.	2:58
Kate Ellis	Then have you won any awards or honors or held any offices?	2:58
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Win any award?	3:06
Kate Ellis	Won any kind of award for something?	3:09
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Well, no, not really. Uh-huh, no.	3:15
Kate Ellis	Is it okay that— See, I saw that plaque up there?	3:18
Eddie Jack Brumfield	That was a little plaque that I got from the Carver Center down there. When I first retired, I used to go for them every Wednesday and pick up food for the peoples in the neighborhood.	3:20
Kate Ellis	Yeah.	3:36
Eddie Jack Brumfield	And that they gave it to me from Carver's.	3:36
Kate Ellis	Is it okay, I wrote that down?	3:36
Eddie Jack Brumfield	You did?	3:37
Kate Ellis	Well, I just saw it there. Is it okay?	3:37
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Got it down already, huh?	3:37
Kate Ellis	Well, I can tell—	3:47
Eddie Jack Brumfield	It's all right. It's all right, it's all right.	3:48
Kate Ellis	I just was sitting here, I thought, "Oh, there's an award."	3:50
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Yeah. Yeah.	3:51
Kate Ellis	Sorry.	3:51
Eddie Jack Brumfield	That's what it was, yeah.	3:52
Kate Ellis	Okay.	3:55
Kate Ellis	So you're a Baptist?	3:55
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Baptist, right, yes.	3:57
Kate Ellis	Yeah? What's your church?	3:58
Eddie Jack Brumfield	New Hope Baptist Church, 1807 Lasalle Street.	3:59
Kate Ellis	Baptist.	4:05
Kate Ellis	Was there a church that you grew up going to? Was there a church you grew up going to?	4:08
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Pankeyville when I was— Pankeyville Church.	4:28
Kate Ellis	Mm-hmm. Okay.	4:30
Kate Ellis	What organizations do you belong to?	4:30
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Well, really no organization.	4:33
Kate Ellis	Or that social club? What is that, the retired longshoreman's— it's not benevolent— social aid and everything?	4:39
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Well, John and them have a club there, but I never had participate with them because I really don't have too much time. See, my wife would be sick and I'd mostly be around the house, yeah. Because she's not able to do anything much and I don't have time to be back there with them, so I don't ever hardly go back there.	4:48
Kate Ellis	I see.	5:07
Eddie Jack Brumfield	That's on account of my wife is sick.	5:08
Kate Ellis	Okay. Mm-hmm. Okay.	5:14
Kate Ellis	Can I write down the union the name of the union that you belonged to as you?	5:14
Eddie Jack Brumfield	What, the name of the union?	5:20
Kate Ellis	Yeah.	5:20
Eddie Jack Brumfield	It's Local 3000 ILA. ILA Local 3000.	5:20
Kate Ellis	Okay. Local 3000.	5:24
Kate Ellis	Any other clubs that you used to belong to when you were younger, social clubs or groups?	5:42
Eddie Jack Brumfield	I used to be a Mason, St. Luke number two.	5:51
Kate Ellis	Mm-hmm.	6:01
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Yes.	6:03
Kate Ellis	That's it?	6:03
Eddie Jack Brumfield	That's about all that I can remember.	6:04
Kate Ellis	Any other activities or hobbies or affiliations or military service?	6:06
Eddie Jack Brumfield	No military service.	6:12
Kate Ellis	Any hobbies or anything like that?	6:15
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Hobby?	6:17
Kate Ellis	Yeah.	6:17
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Domino and checkers. Domino, checkers, and whis.	6:19
Kate Ellis	Okay. Whis? Is that how you—	6:26
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Yeah. Whis, yeah.	6:26
Kate Ellis	Okay. Okay. That's it.	6:42
Eddie Jack Brumfield	That's it?	6:43
Kate Ellis	Yeah.	6:43
Eddie Jack Brumfield	Okay.	6:43

Item Info

Title:

Eddie Brumfield (primary interviewee) and Johnny Hunter interview recording, 1994 August 12

Permalink:

https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r4f47v36q

Date:

August 12, 1994

Creator:

Contributor:

Ellis, Kate

Description:

Name: Eddie Jack Brumfield; Date of birth: 1917-05-06; Place of birth: Tyler Town, MS; Occupation(s): longshoreman; Residence: New Orleans, LA. Name: Johnny Johnson Hunter; Date of birth: 1929-08-24; Place of birth: Lessley, LA; Occupation(s): longshoreman; Residence: New Orleans, LA
Informant ID: 518; Informant ID: 520; Interviewed by: Kate Ellis.

Identifier:

RL00170-CS-1184
RL00170-CS-1185
4af676b5-5354-418f-8257-748997ff559b
behindtheveil
bee3c006-0947-4265-9aeb-373c7d8ad7ca
ark:/87924/r4f47v36q
bee3c006-0947-4265-9aeb-373c7d8ad7ca

Digital Collection:

Behind the Veil

Source Collection:

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

Related Resources:

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Location:

Format:

Language:

English

Occupation:

Longshoreman

Provenance:

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

Rights:

Limited Re-Use

CC BY-NC 4.0

Rights Note:

Copyright for content created by the Behind the Veil project is held by Duke University and made available to the public using a Creative Commons Attribution / Non-commercial (CC-BY-NC) license.

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Type:

Sound

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Eddie Brumfield (primary interviewee) and Johnny Hunter interview recording, 1994 August 12

Transcript

Item Info

1. Eddie Brumfield and Johnny Hunter administrative file, 1994

John Hope Franklin Research Center

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John Hope Franklin Research Center

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