Booker Federick interview recording, 1995 August 02
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Transcript
Transcripts may contain inaccuracies.
Booker T. Federick | My name is Booker T. Federick. | 0:01 |
Stacey Scales | Okay. And where were you born, Mr. Federick? | 0:10 |
Booker T. Federick | I'm born in the LeFlore County from about, I'd say about five miles east of Itta Bena. | 0:10 |
Stacey Scales | What are your earliest memories from growing up? | 0:21 |
Booker T. Federick | On plantations around the city of Itta Bena? | 0:26 |
Stacey Scales | Yeah. | 0:31 |
Booker T. Federick | Different plantations. I lived there on plantations until I was about twenty-eight years old and then I moved into the little town here. That's where I've been ever since I was twenty-eight years old. That was back in the year '58. | 0:31 |
Stacey Scales | And did your parents live on that plantation too? | 0:55 |
Booker T. Federick | Yeah. Well my mother lived on the last plantation that I worked on is out from about a mile from the compress where I began to work after I quit working on the farm. And she stayed there about two years and then she moved to the city. | 0:59 |
Stacey Scales | Okay. Were you sharecropping? | 1:19 |
Booker T. Federick | That's right, sharecropping. That's what we were doing. We sharecropping. | 1:21 |
Stacey Scales | Could you tell me how that process works as you experienced it? | 1:25 |
Booker T. Federick | As I experienced this share cropping, it was something like making a contract. That's what I called it, a contract with landowner where you would work, sharecrop with him and halve us, something of that nature. If you made twenty bales of cotton on his place, you gathered all of it, but ten of them belonged to you and ten belonged to him. That's the way that share cropping went as I experienced it. | 1:31 |
Booker T. Federick | And would often time, they would have you to work other places other than in your crop there like cleaning up the old [indistinct 00:02:23] and what like that old, old places. Well, bushes and trees grow and they wanted to get it up. They called it cleaning up new ground. | 2:07 |
Stacey Scales | Oh new ground. | 2:29 |
Booker T. Federick | Well getting it ready for next two, three years, they gone use it for planting grain cotton or corn or beans or whatever that they wanted to plant. And we'd have to work in those places a lot of times. Very hard work. But I guess we thought it was nothing else to do with that and so it didn't bother us that much, we went at it. | 2:30 |
Stacey Scales | So did the boss man treat you fair or the people fair? | 2:56 |
Booker T. Federick | Well, according to the way that after I growing up and see what was going on, had a chance to be in on them settling up with the parents and things, to me it wasn't fair after I growed up and find out what fairness was. After I grew up and find out what fairness was, it wasn't so fair. And a lot of them would be do better than others. There were other places in where the landowner would settle with you as he sold. He sold all of the cotton. Well he would settle with you if he got twenty-two cents a pound for cotton, he might would settle with you on thirteen or fourteen cents a pound. You wouldn't know anyway how much a pound he had got for it. He settled with you on that. I didn't think that was fair, but that's what happened to us. And in that, after I'd grown up and kind of had a chance to be in on that then I thought it was a very unfair and was thinking at the time it wasn't nothing to be done about it but somehow we worked out of it this far. | 3:01 |
Stacey Scales | Would Blacks ever steal cotton and sell it? | 4:20 |
Booker T. Federick | No, I didn't experience too much of that. I heard it said people would do that. Sometimes they would get caught selling cotton to— from off of his boss man [indistinct 00:04:39] to the other one. And there was some Black people that did rent land and they sold their own cotton but they still didn't get the fair price for it. The White man still had something to do with the price of his. And if the Black man will sell his own cotton, well he still might get eighteen cents if it was twenty-two cents a pound, he still might not get but eighteen cents. And the sharecropper might not get that. | 4:26 |
Booker T. Federick | Some places they would do it, but most places they would cut in half or something of that nature and we wouldn't really know how much a pound he sold it for because he wouldn't tell us the truth about it. He'd say, "Well I got thirteen and a half cents a pound for each bale, you get ten bales," and then whatever that half cent a pound brought you out that sometime he'd say, "Well if you had had made one more bale of cotton, you could have some money." So that sounds like unfair to me. But at that time we didn't know anything to do about it but try to make another crop with him or move to another plantation. | 5:09 |
Stacey Scales | The people that steal was there a punishment for them if they got caught? | 5:54 |
Booker T. Federick | Most time they would be, they got caught, they would punish him. A lot of times he would punish him sometime by some landowner would go get him out of jail if he got in jail and he still would be punished because he couldn't move off that fellow's plantation until he treated him. That's still in prison to me. If he had to— You was in jail for doing something and I go and pay your fine put you in my field and you can't do anything but work for me for nothing, that's still imprisonment to me. So I call it punishment. And there was a lot of that going on. Whenever some Black person would get caught stealing or taking something. | 6:01 |
Stacey Scales | Did they have whippings and things like that? | 6:55 |
Booker T. Federick | Well during that time they had the old county farm that they would— These old counties would have some sort of old place where they grow cotton and corn, beans and stuff like it went on plantation, they would carry out there and want you to do so much if you didn't do it, they'd take you in at night and strap you and things of that nature make you do without food for that particular night if you done something that they disliked or if you had been kind of— I call it little hardheaded, if you didn't want to do what they say they would strap you on, that's what I understood about it. I never got a chance to go to see it and never have been in jail anything and nothing of that nature. | 6:59 |
Booker T. Federick | So I had never had a chance to experience seeing this. I've seen them on policemen would whoop Black folks and I've seen that, I've experienced that on the streets in town and they would think he would have done something or police would whip him in if he didn't talk to suit him. And a lot of time a man would be telling him the truth but he'd wanted to hear it the other way and he'd whoop him, make him pay for that. Not— | 7:47 |
Stacey Scales | What was the relationship between Blacks and the police? Could you go to them if something happened? | 8:26 |
Booker T. Federick | Well yeah, if something happened between you and the other Black man, you might could get some help with him, but most times you ain't going to get very much help. If something happened between you and a White man, you wasn't going to get very much help. And sometimes they would get together and talk like they was going to give you a break somewhere down the line, but later on you when the results come back you'd know that you wasn't treated fair. | 8:38 |
Booker T. Federick | So these things that happens many years ago, I was just fortunate enough to hear about it all and see very little of it, the beating parts and all that they used to do and there that were plenty that I've learned through listening to older people that the plantation man, boss of the plantation, man didn't do well like he wanted him to do, if he thought he'd done something he didn't want him to do, he'd take him to the little commissary shop somewhere and fashion him up in there and whip him. But I never did have a chance to see it. Kind of glad for my feeling that I didn't get a chance to see it. If I hadn't had a heart attack and died from it, I'm sure I would've got killed about it. | 9:11 |
Stacey Scales | Did people ever defend themselves? | 10:06 |
Booker T. Federick | Every once in a while there were some Black people defended themselves and something would happen later on. But they had a chance to defend themselves because they would fight back sometime. They would fight back and get by for a long time with it. But finally if they couldn't catch up with that person that done the fighting, he'd do something to some member of their family or somewhere along the line to get, they call it revenge I reckon. | 10:12 |
Stacey Scales | And would they ever use guns and armed self defense, whatever? | 10:46 |
Booker T. Federick | Yeah, I've known them to— The listening part, way I've heard, like I said, I never experienced eyewitnesses of it. I've always had a chance to hear these things because I'm a very good listener and when older people would visit my parents and things like that to make sure that I wouldn't be looking them dead in eye. They didn't want us to during that time. I would go to bed and cover up my head and keep ears open. I would hear a lot of things that were going on. That they really didn't want the children to hear about these things. But I'd had a chance to hear when they were talking because I would play sleep a lot of time. | 10:50 |
Stacey Scales | What would they say? | 11:33 |
Booker T. Federick | They would be talking about the thing that have happened to a friend over there on the plantation and he and the boss man got into it and he jumped on the boss man. And then he had to run off and leave his family and then they would threaten his family and all that kind of thing. And the wife, she couldn't tell where the man was then they wanted to try to punish her and sometime the children and those are kind of things that in my listening I would hear from older people about how we were treated. And it was— there were some plantation, we did live on one plantation that if you working, when you working, you just work. You didn't even take time to go— When time come to go get your groceries, you take time to go get your groceries. | 11:33 |
Booker T. Federick | You just make out your list that night and hand it to the boss man when he come to see if you was in the field, hand it to him and he would go get it and bring it back and you would have a chance then to go to the house and take it out of his truck or out of his car or off the wagon, which ever way he brought it there and carry it in the house because if his work time you just had to stay there and work. Now there was some plantation that they allowed the women folks some time to kind of wash and clean up. They didn't allow them a whole lot of time if it was work time during the cotton chopping time, they stayed ready and chopped that cotton and a lot of times they wouldn't have a chance to— There was some plantation, the ladies had young little babies at the house and then the older child stayed there with the baby when she got ready to nurse the baby, then that old child carried it to the field, the baby to the field for it to be nursed. | 12:42 |
Booker T. Federick | And some of them would be nice enough to let the ladies go to the house and nurse their babies and to keep them from having the nurse them from that hot breath, from that heat. They'd allow them chance to go up there and kind of cool off where they were. But some of them they, that older child would bring that baby in the field to that. | 13:50 |
Stacey Scales | What was the youngest person that could work on the farm? | 14:13 |
Booker T. Federick | Well I think I started working on the farm type of work that we were doing when I was about seven years old. My mother had had me out there with them. But whenever you get around seven years old, you go to the field chop some cotton. Well if you wasn't a tall individual well they take up something, cut their whole off so it wouldn't be too much of it in your way for you. | 14:25 |
Booker T. Federick | So a child could chop some cotton, and most of us that was in the rural area and on the plantation, we wasn't allowed to go to school until we was finished with our crops. A lot of time our crops wouldn't be finishing until about December in the year. So then there we was our [indistinct 00:15:18], we had to wait until about the middle of last December for him to make the settlement with the parents to get whatever we going to get if we come out behind and didn't clear any money. We didn't know nowhere to go but stay there, we'd have borrow from him, go get some clothes and by that time it'd be for Christmas holiday. Now you can't get your start to January and planting time I didn't start til first week in January of the next year, they start getting ready for getting cotton planted and start chopping sometime in April. | 14:49 |
Booker T. Federick | You see a lot of time when we bigger boys got pretty good size, they would want us to help our fathers in the breaking up the land, getting it ready around March and February and March like that. But see then we might got a chance to go to school about twenty, maybe twenty-five days and now we got to help the father with this breaking up. And by that time school would be out for us during that time about the last of April. | 15:58 |
Stacey Scales | Did the girls go longer than you? | 16:32 |
Booker T. Federick | Most time they would've a chance to go until cotton chopping time. If they were small they could go into school. But a lot of our parents, that smaller child, if that larger child couldn't go to be with them, then they all stayed. See they would had so far to walk and things because those smaller children that wasn't able to go to the field, then we couldn't send the older child with him to school and that cut the whole bunch off a lot of time. And we had plantations were like that. And me, myself, I didn't get chance to go to school that much. And like I said, sometime it may go around forty-five days out of a season. If it got bad, you had old creeks and things to cross trying to get to those old little schools and sometimes your shoes and things, well, parents didn't have enough money to buy a pair boots to go through these muddy places. | 16:35 |
Booker T. Federick | But when it got bad, it stayed bad two, three weeks was it. They was kept at home but we had it rough, some of us. Now there, some of them had a chance to go to school. The children that was here in town during that time, they had better chance than we did out in the rural because they had a lot of rural schools. They had an old school, I've never went to a city school but about three days of my life. I went to this little school, I told you [indistinct 00:18:33]. | 17:53 |
Booker T. Federick | I went to that school and about two weeks now I didn't go every day. Then I went to that school about two weeks in the last of 1939. And I moved from right across the lake over here down [indistinct 00:18:51], we still call it Itta Bena area. And we was down in there about ten miles back in there. And we was about six or eight miles from the school. We had to go through two or three little old breaks and bough, sketchy woods to get to it. | 18:31 |
Stacey Scales | Were your parents educated people? | 19:09 |
Booker T. Federick | No, they were not. My parents. Well my daddy, I learned him after I [indistinct 00:19:19] print his name. But my mother, she got to, well she'd learned a little bit how to read after she got grown and started sitting around in the house when she did have that time and read old magazines and things and scuffle up on something and that way. But they didn't have any education. Now there was some people I known that was sharecropping and working on these plantations, some of them had very good learning but they didn't have their rights. They had to learn, they didn't have no rights. [indistinct 00:20:01] to be just about in the same shape that I was in myself. | 19:14 |
Stacey Scales | Did your grandparents talk about their experiences to you? | 20:09 |
Booker T. Federick | Well no. My grandparents never did talk too much about their experience as much. And to me, like I said, the only time I would get a chance to hear this was because when they'd get together during my time in childhood was when older people come to visit the parents and things like they didn't like the children to gaze after the older people while they was talking and they would make them go to bed or something like that. But see, I'd go to bed but I wouldn't go to sleep. And that make me have a chance to hear many things that I can talk about. Not from the eyewitnesses experiences but from listening. | 20:15 |
Stacey Scales | And what stands out the most out of all those stories that you heard? | 21:08 |
Booker T. Federick | Well right now it won't come to me like I'd like for it to come because there's so many things that you have went on and when I gotten in the shape I'm in now, just try to let it go on out of my mind. Don't think about it because sometimes you go thinking back right that way sometimes and get you upset. | 21:20 |
Stacey Scales | Did they ever talk about lynchings? | 21:43 |
Booker T. Federick | I've heard them talk about how they would lynch people and how they hung them up in trees and things of that nature. I heard them talk about that and then after a few years ago they showed some films, pictures or where they used to do these kind of things. And so that made me believe that that part that I heard must have been true. And I've heard of them drowning people. That happened back in the fifties here, town here. Well a young man wasn't drowned here in this lake, but he is up the road over in the river. But the things that they put on him, they make keep him from coming up, make sure he drowned those weights and things come from here in town. It was about ten years before I learned that. | 21:54 |
Booker T. Federick | And those people that they said that would've got these things and give them to those people that are going to lake to drown these young man were people live here in town. And they was some of our own people. Well I guess they didn't know that's what was going to happen. And if so it was a mighty evil thing for them to do, but I guess they were trying to defend their own lives. But if you don't do this, you don't do that. | 22:57 |
Booker T. Federick | I can recall a friend of mine lived here in Itta Bena when the Scott's and them first came here. They came in some way back in the fifties and they had a Black man working for him. He was a real nice fella but he didn't take too much off of White folks. | 23:36 |
Booker T. Federick | If they done something to him he didn't like, well then they had to hurt him because he didn't back up off him. They had to whoop him off of them because he was just that type of individual. He'd work. And so Mr. Scott would get him out of jail when he would get drunk, get uptown, get to fighting with some of his friends and he'd go to jail and Scott would get him out of jail. And so somehow or another, he learned that he had jumped on the White man down there and then he told him, said, "Now I've been getting you out of jail and trying to keep you from going to the penitentiary." Said, "But now you going to have to go the next time out here tell you hitting a White man." And the boy quit working for him right behind there. | 24:00 |
Booker T. Federick | He didn't work for him no more. And so he had him put in jail for because he quit working but a man up here Schlater, Mississippi somewhere, got him out of their jail. And the last I heard of him where he was working at was somebody up there around Schlater, Mississippi. But some of these folks on these plantations that if you live there, if you go out town got in trouble with some of your fellow man, friends or something of that nature and went to jail, they'd come get you. They wouldn't allow you to stay in jail. Sometime the policeman, if he find out who plantation you live on, he wouldn't lock you up. Tell you to get out of town because he knew that White man was going come up there and raise hell with him. But if he fool around and got in trouble with another White man, he just about had to go. He just about had to go. Every now and then one would defend the Black man if he got into it with the White man and if you'd search the record then you'd find out he didn't like that White man either. That really would help him out. | 24:57 |
Booker T. Federick | We come through these things and many of us experienced a lot of things that went on in our town and around our town and on these plantations and many of us, like myself, had a chance to hear through conversations of older people. I've heard a lot of things that about this town through older people. Didn't have a chance to, because I lived in the rural area, didn't have a chance to be uptown much because I think I was around sixteen years old before I come to town and would be up here by myself. They bring me to town and sometime maybe twice a year and my father and mother wasn't going to be right there with me while I was in town. They carry on back home. But I had a chance, like I said, to receive some information from listening to conversation. And there was a time when there was a lot of Black people owned businesses right here in Itta Bena. They was being treated unfair by the White, but some did own businesses here. | 26:19 |
Stacey Scales | What were those businesses? | 27:39 |
Booker T. Federick | Well we had a family here if I could think I am one of their name, the first name, but the last name was Browns. And they had what they call the Browns beef market. And it was located down here on this lake where this Greg's Tune-up Shop here. Right along in that part there. They owned that and the people would buy— they had some White customers but they owned some land somewhere. I don't know exactly where it was. But they would raise cows and they would kill those cows and they'd haul that and had a little old cold storage thing in that they kept the meat in and that's where they owned that. In later years, White folks undermined them. Finally undermined them. | 27:41 |
Stacey Scales | How did they undermine them? Would they threaten them? | 28:50 |
Booker T. Federick | Well you see they would want to buy your business but quite that they want buy your business, they will give you what they want for it. They won't to give you what you would want for it. They'd ask you but then they say, "Well, I can't give you that." Well then, if you didn't go right on and sell it to him for what he wanted to pay you for, he'd have a threat out you see. Well, anybody want to live, he feel like he can pick up somewhere else. If he think he going to die over here he can leave. And so those are the kind of things that did happen to some of our Black people that own business. | 28:50 |
Booker T. Federick | My mother and I had a uncle own the bake shop right in Itta Bena. People like these little places where they cook donuts and he owned the bake shop at just about from here to the corner from where this man had this beef market. And the streets we got coming in from the schoolhouse down here called Mann Street coming, everybody old Scott plays, Butane plays in that now. That was barbershops, cafes, and different little businesses along that street. And then it was owned and run by Black folk and they finally worked it out back in the forties. All that was in under the Black folks, they had, all a sudden they was all the whole south end of Itta Bena. | 29:33 |
Booker T. Federick | From Delta Park's place back in there all the way down to the south end. All that used to be owned, the property and everything owned by Black folk. And they got the working round to they we them all of them up there back in here. | 30:41 |
Booker T. Federick | And we used to have a lot of Black folks that owned barber shops and cafes and things like that. And everybody was getting on pretty good and some of them had little money but somehow or another they undermined them around and threatened until they frightened them out of there, a lot of times we was frightened out of here. We was mostly frightened out of it. And we try to dodge being put in the river or lake or found dead somewhere else. By the time you find somebody's done something other you left for sure. You say, well old Uncle so-and-so got mad and Mr. So-and-so jumped on, he hurt him or he did something to Mr. So-and-so. You can rest for sure if he didn't hurry up and get out of him you'd have to bury him. | 31:01 |
Stacey Scales | Did any survive those threats, any of those businesses? | 32:10 |
Booker T. Federick | Yeah, some of them lived here a long time and then finally they left those browns and things. Well year before last two three of them was back here for school reunion and they wasn't here last year. And yes it was one of them was here last year but wasn't none of them here this year for school reunion and a bunch of them, the older part died out but the younger part from my age back down, well some of them are still alive and we have mostly all these older people that own it, these businesses and things, they moved out there if they wouldn't allow them to be up there, then they finally died out and left. Some of them left and died up in the northern parts and some of them died here. | 32:17 |
Stacey Scales | Were Blacks landowners too? | 33:20 |
Booker T. Federick | We had a few of those. It was Mrs. Dorothy [indistinct 00:33:36]. She owned from this house right here all the way back down there to the end of it, all the way. She had a great big home house back there. | 33:27 |
Stacey Scales | So about a block? | 33:48 |
Booker T. Federick | It was a whole block practically. She owned this land and then she owned a lot of farm land on back towards the highway back there and she would have a chance to sell her cotton and things. When she harvest her cotton and she had a chance to sell her cotton. But like I said, those kind of people were watching, they made sure that they didn't get no top price for that cotton. Whatever they sold, they didn't give no top price. If Black man own enough land to have some, hey this is something that they would get it together and fix it up to feed their stock with, used cows and things like that. And if the Black man owned some land and got a chance to have some hay and got it baled and up to sell to the White man, well if he bought from another White man, the other White man wanted twenty cents a bale yield. Well then he wasn't going to give that Black man a twenty cents a bale yield. Now I call that unfair. | 33:49 |
Booker T. Federick | But that's the way they mostly did these things. They just wouldn't allow him to get as much for whatever he had that the White man would get. And I'm thinking that even the government was in on it. (laughs) | 35:06 |
Stacey Scales | Because of those type of conditions did people try to leave? | 35:27 |
Booker T. Federick | Some people after they had enough left and some people left and stayed away some number of years and came back and we have had some, they'll come back and start other little businesses for a little while and then it would cost them so much. If he owned a business uptown now he got have electricity, well see if he has electricity, if they say he used so much electricity, then he's got to pay for it. Well the White man might just give him something on his electric bills, if he run the business. The Black man, he going to pay that and they check him out and things like that. | 35:39 |
Booker T. Federick | And so a lot of times the expense would make them close back down. If they was invented the first time that was closed down because of a threat or trying to save their lives and when they come back to try to open up a business, so much expenses on him until he just couldn't make it. See and then most time if he run the business he going have to rent a building from some White and— We come a long way. We ain't completely out under pressure yet I don't think. But it's better now than it was then. | 36:18 |
Stacey Scales | Those people that had debts on those plantations, did they ever try to sneak away to the north? | 37:18 |
Booker T. Federick | Well there were times that I learned, as I say through listing, there were times that they men would slip their family away off a plantation. He was left owing the man something after the crop was over, he'd going to go leave and he'd sneak his family away and he'd stay there a day or so and then he'd leave and they would threaten them sometime after they find where they would be at. Sometime they'd be a mood on another White man plantation that didn't care that much about that over yonder. He just tell him he don't bother him. But now he was still in prison to me because he couldn't leave there. | 37:22 |
Booker T. Federick | Because if he leave there he don't know where this other fella is. So he had to stay there and work because he done protected him. So the kind of thing that would [indistinct 00:38:24]. | 38:07 |
Stacey Scales | And so how would they manage to leave? Would they leave on at night? | 38:24 |
Booker T. Federick | They would slip off through after dark that he'd get his family out there like this night and man probably wouldn't be paying much attention because he would've done, it went a winter month, he wasn't doing nothing no how and he would stay around and own the place with his family all already gone for two, three days. And then one night he would leave hisself, he might be done, went somewhere and made a trade with a White man to make a crop with him and put his family there and told him what's happening. | 38:32 |
Booker T. Federick | Then he would make a trade with him. He'd come on over there and after he get over there then this man find out that he done left him. And when he find out where he is, then he might contact this landowner that this fellow move with and he tell him, "Well, he's on my place now. Don't you bother him." And most time they wouldn't wouldn't bother him. But like I say, I still thought it was you still putting yourself in prison because if this man done protected you can't go nowhere. You got to stay there. | 39:08 |
Stacey Scales | Were there any Blacks that had farms and you could go work for them on their share? | 39:49 |
Booker T. Federick | Very few of them. Very few of them. We had very few people. We had a man used to live right there, Mr. Arthur Brooks. He had some land of his own and a lot of times he would hire people to work for him, hire people to chop his cotton and corn and things of that nature. And that time of year he'd hire people to pick cotton for so much a hundred and real young and they coming up from the time I got started in the field because when they would get ready for you to do the same, when they would get ready for you to pick cotton out, if you done got seven years old in that house, well then when the man bring those cotton sacks around for you to start picking cotton, he'd make sure he bring that one because he know how old you is. | 39:55 |
Booker T. Federick | He'd bring that child. Say you got a child now seven years old, so this is his sack. All of his cotton sacks were nine foot sacks. | 40:47 |
Stacey Scales | Nine foot sack? | 41:00 |
Booker T. Federick | Nine foot cotton sack. But they bring that child a seven foot, he'd have a short sack. But now when he get nine years old, then— He knew he was nine year old, he know how old every one of them is because that's what you going have to tell him when he move on the place. And he keeps up with their age and he just about knew how when they were born because you had to go through by him a lot of time to get a midwife to wait on the ladies with birthing children. But that's just about the way all children were just born in their own home. They had midwives, some of them stayed on the plantation. | 41:01 |
Booker T. Federick | But if that midwife stayed on the same plantation, you go get her. She still got a report to boss man you know about she done delivered a child out here because he going to have to pay her. He going to have to pay her for it. Might not been but three dollars but he pay her. And then when you get through getting your crop and then he'd sit down and settle with you and say, he'd say, well Miss So-and-so, whoever the midwives said "Today I paid us in [indistinct 00:42:28] for such and such a child you got there." So then that made him know. If you stayed there a number of years that made him know how old all your children were and when they got big enough to go to the field, he knew that. | 41:44 |
Booker T. Federick | And he let you know he know it. And now you might get by if you had a child seven years old and then fool around and got a little baby at the house and you say, "I would like for that child stay there with that baby so I can go to the field." Now he might go make a [indistinct 00:43:06]. If your child need to go to the field. He's seven years old since a man got and his wife got a child up there five years old. We take your baby up there and let it stay with that child. He's not old enough to go to the field. Those kind of things would happen a lot of time. Yes sir. We've come through all of that. Yes sir. | 42:40 |
Stacey Scales | And how soon would a mother go back out into the field after she's had a baby? | 43:41 |
Booker T. Federick | Well they would— Most time it would be at least a month. They wouldn't allow her to go back out like the people are today. They'd be around a house about a month before they were allowed to go back in doing this hard work. Most— | 43:45 |
Stacey Scales | They would wait about a month before they would— | 44:13 |
Booker T. Federick | They'd wait about a month before they would get back out into the field. If the field was a distance from the house would even if they had some long rolls that this mother wasn't allowed to for the first eight or ten days, she'd go to the field, wasn't allowed to pick cotton. If she was picking cotton all the way down to the other end. She would pick a little piece up in the field and get some [indistinct 00:44:50] and come back so she be closer to the house. | 44:16 |
Stacey Scales | Oh, instead of going to the farm? | 44:52 |
Booker T. Federick | Instead of going a distance from the house until after say about forty days or something like that before she was allowed to get too far away from the house. Now that was on some plantation. Now some plantation, they didn't care what— They told her, "You carry it down to so-and-so's house, they got some kids ain't big enough to go to the field." So you carry your baby down there and they'll keep your baby for you, let you get on out there in that field. | 44:56 |
Stacey Scales | So would Blacks help other Blacks? | 45:23 |
Booker T. Federick | We had much more of that then than we do now. We had much more of that. If we would be fortunate enough to get through with what land we had traded with the man to work. We traded with him to work fifteen acres of land. We was far enough to get through our fifteen acres and you had fifteen acres and you wasn't quite through when we got through. We just take our hoe and go over there without asking any question. That's the way we help one another then and going over there and make sure every, and if another person wasn't through all of us, that's just the way we did right around one another. We try to make sure everybody be sitting on the porch at the same time. | 45:26 |
Stacey Scales | So that's when you got a chance to rest. | 46:12 |
Booker T. Federick | Yeah, and we all get through it. We'd go around it the first time and maybe be out of there sometime about ten days. Grass start growing back, then you got to go back around and chopped it around at least sometime we got to chop around our cotton the third and fourth time. Because what they would do, they would— | 46:16 |
Booker T. Federick | A lot of time, what they would do when we would have to get through with our chopping our own crops, the man would have some extra land somewhere. He called it his day field. Then he would let everybody that gotten through theirs go to his field and chop. He would pay them by the day. Course now, they wouldn't get the pay until on the weekend, but he'd pay them by the day. That was during my childhood days when I first started working the field, well, cotton chopping was somewhere around seventy-five cents a day. | 0:01 |
Stacey Scales | That's what [indistinct 00:00:58]. | 0:57 |
Booker T. Federick | Seventy-five cents a day. I've chopped cotton for less than— Well, I've chopped cotton for a dollar a day. I have chopped for a dollar a day. But during the early forties my mother was chopping cotton for seventy-five cents a day. The day didn't start like our days start on these jobs we got now. See, it didn't start at no seven or no eight o'clock. It start at the beginning of the day. See, when the sun come up, if there's enough light out there, you'd already be out there chopping. Be already out there chopping. Then, if it got five o'clock, you didn't pay that no attention. You chopped until sundown. | 1:00 |
Stacey Scales | Yeah. | 1:48 |
Booker T. Federick | When the older people used to work, you had to be out there from can to can't. Can see until you can't see. Then, I've chopped like that. I've chopped cotton until that. | 1:49 |
Stacey Scales | Did people use almanacs and the signs? | 2:00 |
Booker T. Federick | A lot of older people use almanacs and sign for the planting of their gardens and truck patches they would have. That's the thing that they would like you to have on these plantations was a place for a garden to raise some vegetables and things of that nature. We had another little spot, we called it our truck patch where we raise watermelons and cantaloupes and things of that nature. | 2:04 |
Stacey Scales | Why'd you call it truck patch? | 2:33 |
Booker T. Federick | That the old word to your people use it, called it truck patch. Even when I was coming up. Why did they call it a truck patch? And then a lot of times when man would come and say, "Ain't you going to leave this spot here for your truck patch?" You tell him, "Yeah." A lot times he picked the place for you. A lot of time he let you pick it. But most time he would let you have a little somewhere in the corner of the cotton field. | 2:37 |
Stacey Scales | Oh yes. | 3:11 |
Booker T. Federick | To plant something like that. Where a lot of times we would plant, in our truck patch, we'd plant watermelons. And well we had two kinds, we had a thing we called a cantaloupe and a [indistinct 00:03:27] melon. All those kind of things we'd plant out there. And there was something else I can't think of what it is now. But anyway, we plant it. And popcorn, see we plant popcorn out there. So those are the kind of things we plant in that spot that he give us. | 3:11 |
Stacey Scales | And how did you plant popcorn? How is that different than regular corn? | 3:46 |
Booker T. Federick | Well see it was a different type of corn from the regular corn. Because you take a regular corn, you sheared it off there and put it in a skillet or somewhere it's hot at, it'll just parch up. But see you put the popcorn there, the pop turned just white as snow. | 3:51 |
Stacey Scales | Right. How did you tell the difference between regular corn and—? | 4:08 |
Booker T. Federick | Well see it was a different in the size of the grain. | 4:13 |
Stacey Scales | Oh yeah. | 4:16 |
Booker T. Federick | Most of the grains on popcorn were the round grain and this other one was kind of square looking grain of corn. And that's where you could tell the difference. And now they had two different kinds of popcorn but it would all was the same thing, meaning it pop when you put it in hot skillet or whatever object you put that in. And a lot of times those landowners, they would come and ask you for some vegetable out of your garden. Theirs wouldn't be growed up enough for them to eat from, they'd come get some out of yours. It was on his plantation, he could come get it if he wanted. (laughs) Use what we had. | 4:17 |
Stacey Scales | You didn't have any— He had access? | 5:11 |
Booker T. Federick | Had access to whatever he wanted to have access over. He had it, access over. We didn't know nothing else to do but think that he was right. We had grown up from the older people behind us that they was doing it when we got here. So we went along with it until things went to looking better. | 5:17 |
Stacey Scales | Were there ever any bad storms or weather problems? | 5:41 |
Booker T. Federick | Not as regular and not as many as we have now. But we used to have those, have them every once in a while. | 5:47 |
Stacey Scales | Oh yes. | 5:55 |
Booker T. Federick | And the older people mostly I've heard them call. I think I was about twelve years old before I heard anybody call the name of tornado. | 5:56 |
Stacey Scales | Oh yeah. | 6:10 |
Booker T. Federick | But I see storm and I would say, "This is a twister. This is a cyclone." Had different names for it. | 6:11 |
Stacey Scales | Oh yeah. | 6:21 |
Booker T. Federick | But I say I was about twelve because it in '42 when the tornado wrecked us, about everything in here, all out in the rug park. And when they told me that's what it was and from then on I hear people talking about tornadoes. But we didn't have them as often as we have them now then. Because there was plenty houses have the roof of them blow down if it had to come because that's where we all was at. Just about out on these plantations. | 6:23 |
Stacey Scales | Do people have ways of making a storm go away? I've heard of— | 6:57 |
Booker T. Federick | Well I have had heard of the thing that people had some sort of action that they would go into, to, they said divide the storm. I don't know what happened. I see big dark clouds make up and be look like he's figuring to do something. Then all at once, one part will go that way, one part go that way. And two, three days later I hear him say, "Well ain't so-and-so, see she prayed and stuck her axe up in the ground and had faith. And the Lord divided the storm and let it went around us." | 7:03 |
Booker T. Federick | And so I read a little reading about that after I became working in the church over here and was made a Sunday school teacher. I would read little things and I read a little reading about that once. And had mentioned that when those folks would do this, they would do it with faith. They didn't think the axe was going to do this. They used the axe for the exercise in their faith. | 7:46 |
Booker T. Federick | They is showing that they had faith in the Lord. They believe whatever they done in faith, the Lord would grant it to them in great. And that's what they felt like. It felt like it wasn't the axe just split the storm, that action that they had, that their faith let them do that. And they really had faith in and it would happen when they would. And so that's what made it happen. That's what this reading said about it to me. | 8:22 |
Booker T. Federick | And so that's what I gained within myself. So because of you just go out there and stick your axe up in the ground and then storm go around you. Something like that, well you could say it was the axe if anybody go out there do it, you hear what I'm saying? But if you had faith that something different would happen from you exercising your faith, then it had to have been faith for it to happen. | 8:56 |
Booker T. Federick | And I have never made no effort to do it because I've heard people do it, say it. No, I've never made no effort to do it. And after I heard it, and years ago, before I come in contact with that little reading, after I heard it, I'd always, when I see a storm coming, I would believe that somebody else would do it. And I would feel the effects of it too. I believe somebody else would have faith enough to stick this axe up in it, go around, and I wouldn't bother about it myself. | 9:27 |
Stacey Scales | Right. Was it any type of axe? Or was it a particular axe? | 10:00 |
Booker T. Federick | Well they would just use axe. They would, I guess it was was this whatever axe you had. | 10:04 |
Stacey Scales | Oh yes. | 10:11 |
Booker T. Federick | And like I say, after I started to being in the Sunday school and I read a little reading about the people that used the things of that nature. Now there's a lot of folks years ago, they would use different things for different types of sickness. They would use, I don't know whether it was faith, I'm sure it was, that they had faith. | 10:13 |
Booker T. Federick | But I would see people so sick, look like they wasn't going to live. And some older person come down and say, "Go sit in such a place and get some bark off the side of the tree. And then peel that little stuff off of that and bring it here. Put it in the kettle and boil it and give it to him." And then in a few days that person would be moving around. So in my thinking that that had to come by faith, that's an act of faith. | 10:44 |
Stacey Scales | Was that something that the older people would do? | 11:15 |
Booker T. Federick | Older people would use. They used it a many time and didn't have to have no doctors. They used a lot of different things. There were a lot of old things that I had to experience myself, my mother and them using. I was the type of person to have what they call a— they had a old fever would break out among people in the summertime, they call it the malaria fever. | 11:17 |
Booker T. Federick | And this thing would break out among people, and I would have it every year, sometimes twice a year. And that was something they call a [indistinct 00:11:54] bush. And they would dig that thing up and cut that root off and put it in some water and boil it, and just bathed me down in it. And that fever would go away. And later on as I gotten grown, when that fever come, I got to go find some medicine at the drugstore to get some of that. | 11:45 |
Stacey Scales | So that wasn't handed down to the next generation? | 12:20 |
Booker T. Federick | It was handed on down, but I think, I don't know where we just lost the faith that we should have kept or what happened. But most people say now you can't use this kind of thing. Well it could be the doctor telling you that. You can't use this kind of thing because it's against you. We've got too much chemicals going into the ground now for you to use this stuff. | 12:22 |
Stacey Scales | Oh okay. | 12:45 |
Booker T. Federick | And so that's why people are not using it, I think. Because hear people say that things like that won't do you any good now because it's too much chemicals going into the ground, and try to make this cotton and beans and whatever they plant to grow. And it could be so. But I'm still thinking that it was somewhere along line we lost some of the faith or quit exercising our faith as the older people did years back. | 12:48 |
Stacey Scales | Do people still practice the faith and the prayer with the axe when storms come? | 13:19 |
Booker T. Federick | Well I hadn't seen it since back in the forties. Since back in the forties I hadn't seen that happen. It could have but I hadn't seen it. I know that I've heard people's talk of this, about this, and I've seen these clouds make up and disappear. The dark part would disappear and one side would go that way and one side would go that way and that one. Then you hear somebody say, "Well, ain't so-and-so stuck the axe up in the ground and turn the storm around." And I don't see, it couldn't be anything but faith. | 13:32 |
Stacey Scales | Right. | 14:09 |
Booker T. Federick | So we come out all of, from all that, we come from that. And we don't bother about using anything now that you used to use to try to do something about our bodies when we get sick or something like that. My father used to, if he had the headache, he'd just pour him a handful of table salt, just regular table salt, and throw it back in his mouth and drink a glass of water and go ahead on. And he wouldn't think about it. | 14:12 |
Booker T. Federick | I never have seen him take anything for a headache but salt. And if he's had some sort of stomach ache, he'd just go get the baking soda and pour a handful and drink some water, and go ahead on. I never seen him take anything when he's sick, he had any stomach ache or anything of that nature. | 14:52 |
Stacey Scales | Did people back then talk about haints and spirits and things like that? | 15:10 |
Booker T. Federick | Yeah, that's one of the main things I used to want to listen to when the older people would come. | 15:16 |
Stacey Scales | Oh yeah. | 15:22 |
Booker T. Federick | And I wanted to listen to that kind of thing. And I guess I listened to it so much until there were times that my conscience I guess made me thought that I see these things. Because I see such as that I heard them talk about. I had a chance to see them, but I never was afraid of it. I sometimes see people walking and I've heard folks walking at night and there wasn't nobody there and all this kind of thing. | 15:23 |
Booker T. Federick | And I had heard the folks say these kind of things was true. And so I felt like if they survived and these things was about when they was out there in the streets at night, or out in the road at night, I felt that I could survive too. And it didn't bother me whenever I saw it or thought I saw it. I just kept going and kept and didn't think nothing about it. | 15:54 |
Booker T. Federick | Now I thought I've seen people and I knew that person was dead. And I'd see him and then I'd go somewhere else to try to see if that was somebody, other person that I thought it was. And if I went to the other end of the house and didn't see nobody, that would come back in my mind that's who it was. That person, that person's spirit. And I still wouldn't get excited about it because the older folks said it was so. | 16:27 |
Stacey Scales | Was that something that people could communicate with? Or would they? | 16:53 |
Booker T. Federick | I've heard people say they have talked with their mothers. And they didn't say they saw them, this their spirit, but they could hear their voices. I've heard people say they could hear their mother's voice speaking to them and things of that nature. | 17:01 |
Booker T. Federick | And those things have happened to me. But like I said, it didn't frighten me or anything because I'd heard the old folks say it and they survived, and I feel I can too. So those kind of things is in the background of our lives and I think it should be some history about some of those type of things. | 17:22 |
Stacey Scales | Do you remember any of the stories that stand out the most in your parents telling about when you would be up at night listening? You remember any of those stories? | 17:54 |
Booker T. Federick | A few days ago I didn't see it all, but I experienced some of it. And my mother was talking about it the other day in there. Back in the year for '39, after we had finished and it beginning to come close to the end of the year, is a man come the first of the year. I mean the man came through and had everybody that wanted to. He talked with everybody that wanted. | 18:06 |
Booker T. Federick | He came through talking that evening on a loudspeaker or something saying that he had 100 acres of cotton that had never been picked and he needed somebody to go and pick this cotton. And I think he's paying about forty cents 100 for it. And that was a lot of money for him during that time. You was going to have to pick 250 pounds of cotton. Because at forty cents 100, you picked 200, you wasn't going to but eighty cents. | 18:41 |
Booker T. Federick | So you pick 250 pounds to get the dollar. So then this sound good to the people because if there is some cotton had never been picked, you was a good cotton picker, you go and pick you a lot of cotton that ain't never been picked. So everybody that wanted to, got up the next morning before day. Got themselves ready to go get this cotton that had never been picked. And my mother and them got up around four o'clock that morning and fixed the little food that she had left it there for us. | 19:11 |
Booker T. Federick | I was the oldest child and they left there before sun up. Got on this big truck and they goes on. And it quit on them up on the railroad track and had them all scared to death that the train was coming and this thing. Done quit up on the railroad tracks with about 100 head of folks, everybody on the truck. Now they excited but they survived that and got into the field where they cotton had never been picked. | 19:50 |
Stacey Scales | How did they get past the track? | 20:17 |
Booker T. Federick | Well see after they got over that, well the train didn't— wasn't fast enough to destroy them. They finally got the old truck cranked up and got it off the track and went on to this field. And sure enough, like he said, it hadn't never been picked but it wasn't nothing to pick at to start with. It was this kind of thing that they had. He had some poor land he had planted. There's a lot of old gumbo land or whatever it was. | 20:19 |
Booker T. Federick | But anyway old stalks about this high. And just about that high. And those little bolls of cotton sometimes would have one lock in there. Most bolls of cotton during our time, that boll of cotton had five locks of cotton in it. And you get to picking it. But this thing didn't grow enough, it didn't develop, them bolls didn't develop. Boy you was got it. And every now and then you'd find four, five stalks from you and growing outside my cotton. Them stalks didn't have nothing on it. But he had told them the truth. They had never been picked. But from the sound of it, it was going to be a lot of money made. Because you made a dollar, you had a heap of money in '39. | 20:52 |
Booker T. Federick | Yes, sir. You could buy some grocer, that right. A twenty-five pound sack of flour you get it for about twenty-five cent. Or boy, if find one for thirty cents, it was good flour. But that is one of the things that after she told me that, I often think about how they was making preparation to get something that wasn't there. They were told it was there but it wasn't there. | 21:51 |
Booker T. Federick | And so that was one of the things that I often tell when we are talking. And I experience sometime talking with young people, I bring this story up. And I'm sure it sounded like a story to them but it's a true fact. And there was many times that we were made preparation for one thing and what we were looking for wasn't there. And so those some things that you never forget. | 22:20 |
Booker T. Federick | Or even myself, I never forget, I caught myself going to cheat a man one time picking some cotton for him. Well I did, I cheated him. And he's a Black man on the farm. And he got, I think that street right there is named after him. His name was Tom Gamut, but this street right here called Gamut Street right up coming up there. And he had me picking some cotton for him by the 100. | 23:01 |
Booker T. Federick | And I wanted to pick 100 because he's paying a dollar per 100. And I wanted to pick 100. And I picked two sacks of cotton and I had thirty-eight pound in one sack and the other sack had forty-eight pound in it. Now I need fifty pounds in both of these sacs. So what I done to keep him from, I weighed myself. I wasn't supposed to, but I weighed it myself. What I done, I weighed this thirty-eight pounds, I knew it was thirty-eight pounds. I could read the scale, thirty-eight pounds. | 23:35 |
Booker T. Federick | I knew from looking at the other sac that other sac wasn't going to be no sixty-two pounds. I knew it wasn't. So when I got through with it, I put it up on the scale. It weighed forty-eight pounds. I took out this sack laying there on the ground until I got sixty-two pounds in there and weighed it. Then I throw it up in there and I let that big sack stay out there and I was emptying the little one when he come up. | 24:29 |
Booker T. Federick | So I told him, I said I had. He said, "How much you had, son?" Said, "You ain't supposed to weigh your own cotton." I knew he probably going to take that two pounds that I had, that sack was sixty-two pound, knew he going take that one. I felt like he gone take it. So I told him I had forty pounds in the sack I was emptying. So that if he took the two pounds off there, forty and sixty was going to be a hundred. Found I was going to make the dollar. | 25:02 |
Booker T. Federick | So I cheated him. And down through time that whenever I'd run into some sort of problem like that, and I'd fool around and get cheated, my mind would go back to what I'd done. And that made me try as much as I can to be fair as I can with people. Because those kind of things you get by with it while you doing it, but down through time that thing will come right back on you. And so that's what makes me try to be as fair as I can with people because it doesn't profit you anything no more than why you're doing it. | 25:38 |
Stacey Scales | Was there a lot of cheating going on? | 26:25 |
Booker T. Federick | I'm sure it was. I'm sure there's those people who cheat you that were weighing their own cotton. I believe that a lot of times. We used to cheat the White man that way. We cheat him lying like that. We drive out, we try our best, we cheat him if we could. Pull all green bolls and put it in the bottom of the sack. | 26:27 |
Stacey Scales | Pull all the what? | 26:50 |
Booker T. Federick | Pull off the green bolls that wasn't open and put it in the bottom of the sack and then picked the cotton and had it on top of it. | 26:52 |
Stacey Scales | So you weigh it? | 27:00 |
Booker T. Federick | That green bolls going to weigh a whole lot. Yeah there's a lot of cheating going. | 27:01 |
Stacey Scales | Was it considered cheating you considering how times were? | 27:06 |
Booker T. Federick | Well I said it was cheating because anytime you doing something unfair, you were cheating. That's the way I feel about it. It's unfair. We thought because of when we find out that the White man had been being unfair for all these years, it was time for us if we could, to get some payback. And that's the way we thought that we'd get it by doing that. | 27:10 |
Booker T. Federick | We got caught a lot of times because after my unfairness, I didn't try it no more. But we got caught a lot of time and got caught a lot of time. And he'd find out about it and he said, "Well I ain't going to pay for [indistinct 00:28:00] thing with that sack of crap." But that was, and he cheated. And most times when we had a chance, we would too. Cheated, and even in our farm and out on the plantations. Whatever, if we raised corn, half of that corn went to him and half would go to us. | 27:41 |
Booker T. Federick | And a lot of time we would pay attention to the corn. If we had a few rows of corn that had some full heads on there, we would try to pull those from his. Because the first load of corn go into his corn house, you know what he put it. It'd go into his house. What we would do, we would feel like he going to come out there and search it. And we put all them little short nubbins of corn and wasn't full the other, and put it over in the bottom of that wagon. Then we start putting some full heads on top. | 28:22 |
Stacey Scales | Oh yes. So when he's searching— | 28:59 |
Booker T. Federick | So when he's come out and climb up there and look, sometimes he climbs in and look and see all the little short ones. And it may be the load that go into his house but he take it and carry it to yours. | 29:07 |
Booker T. Federick | And so whenever we got a chance, we could get by with it, we trying. And some of them got by with it many times. And for a long time, sometime he would find it out way on up in the wintertime as he feeds his stock out of there and get that. Because see when you unload this corn, you got to throw that fully off that front. So that when you — | 29:19 |
Stacey Scales | The first thing. | 29:48 |
Booker T. Federick | First thing he going to run into it when he go in there, that nubbin. Unless I mean, some of them are smart enough when they throw that nubbin over in one corn. And then the good corn over another corn. And when they get through unloading it, before he'd come out there and look, they'd get over there and rake over the top. | 29:49 |
Stacey Scales | Did people have an underground network where they would take food? | 30:10 |
Booker T. Federick | Well I— | 30:16 |
Stacey Scales | If there's a bad season? | 30:16 |
Booker T. Federick | I never did have anything. But I've known people, there were many Black people in the country. They had what they call a storm pit for when storm come they had this thing with a big old hole in the ground. And they'd have it sealed up like a house in there. And they had a door up in the top where when the storm come, the people that was afraid of storm, that had those storm pit, they'd go down in there. They would see the storm making up. To survive the storm. And sometime they would get caught there. Hold on just a minute. Let me see. | 30:21 |
Booker T. Federick | There it is. That were many people out in the rural area. Well we had some people in the town here built some storm pits that was to go in to during the time of a storm. And a lot of people had them a good piece away from their house. And some of them had them right in the backyard. And they would go in those places whenever a storm would come and sometimes the storm would last, weather would be so bad they'd spend the night in there. | 31:03 |
Booker T. Federick | But a lot of people had them. But I never had a chance to go in one. But I see many of them built and I heard of many people going in there. But I never went in them. And because now we had some people, a lot of people would use them sometime for what we call utility. People have utility, little utility houses. So a lot people use them for that. And they'd have different things in there that they'd use in the house. And there was some people had them fixed up near about like a house. | 31:36 |
Stacey Scales | Really? Under the ground. | 32:18 |
Booker T. Federick | Under the ground. So those are the only underground events that I know about, is people had stone pitched things like that, and they would protect themselves. And there are times that I heard that they had to be dug out of them because the storm would come and blow the house down on top of that thing. | 32:20 |
Stacey Scales | Really? | 32:43 |
Booker T. Federick | I had never experienced seeing it but I heard people say that the whole family would be in that thing sometime way on up until the next day because of the storm. It done move the house. They would run out of the house into this thing. And then when the storm blow the house down on it, then they don't have no way out of there because too much weight. | 32:47 |
Stacey Scales | Did people have — I'm sorry. | 33:09 |
Booker T. Federick | I didn't hear of anybody suffocating and dying and from it, being in there those things. But I have heard of people getting trapped in them. | 33:17 |
Stacey Scales | On the plantations, did you get days off like holidays? Or did the boss give the Blacks time to do what they wanted to do? | 33:34 |
Booker T. Federick | Well on many places, that they would give you that Fourth of July. Now that would depend upon what they call how they work. Because if you needed to work bad enough, they didn't bother about giving you time off. Then most of us wouldn't worry about it. We'd be trying to finish up. We didn't worry about them. But most of them would give you that day off, the Fourth of July. | 33:45 |
Stacey Scales | Did they have a day for the Blacks? | 34:18 |
Booker T. Federick | They'd have them. Sometimes they would, the boss man would go to his pen and kill a hog or a cow or a something or other. And have this meat cooked and let everybody on the place come up to this and they would just eat and have a good time. He'd have things to drink there. Whatever they wanted to drink, from lemonade to alcohol, whatever they wanted. | 34:20 |
Booker T. Federick | Yeah, it was there. And they would have a lot of it. A lot of times they would have somebody, they come do some sort of little play, a little show or something or other, and some sort of activity they would have. And then some of them they would like to have a ball game, baseball game. He would buy different baseball and bat for and maybe two plantations would get together and do this. | 34:55 |
Stacey Scales | Oh yeah? | 35:25 |
Booker T. Federick | Buy baseball bats and things and let the men play baseball. This plantation play this one. They would have a good time with that. | 35:26 |
Stacey Scales | Was that a big event when that was? | 35:36 |
Booker T. Federick | That was a big event to me. When I got old enough to get go to it, I enjoyed it because it was a lot of fun to me, I thought. | 35:38 |
Stacey Scales | Did you ever play? | 35:48 |
Booker T. Federick | No, I never did play. Only little baseball playing I played was at school and it wasn't very much. But I'd be out there with them and be out there watching and having a good time out there with them. And every now and then they'd have big round of what we called a big fight. Somebody would get too much of that heavy stuff in them and they be lose their temper, lose their understanding, and get into it or something like that. | 35:52 |
Stacey Scales | Would the Blacks ever play White teams? | 36:27 |
Booker T. Federick | Not, no. You never would. Lot of White people would bet on those Black teams playing one another. They would bet one another on their team. They would do that. But they never did hardly. | 36:30 |
Stacey Scales | Were there benefits to playing baseball being on a plantation? Like you said, they would bet. Would they ever— | 36:44 |
Booker T. Federick | Well, see, those folks, the men put that money in their pocket and fellow that playing. Only thing they got out of it is a fun time. Yes, sir. That's the only thing they could get out of it. We call them pasture baseball. | 36:51 |
Stacey Scales | Pasture baseball? | 37:12 |
Booker T. Federick | Yeah. We played it out there in a big old pasture where he had fenced in. Yeah, we'd play out there once. See they would come together, a bunch of other. They with other White friends would come and they'd sit and watch those men play baseball and bet their monies on them. Yes, sir. So only thing we would get out of it was enjoyment and be tired. | 37:12 |
Stacey Scales | Do you remember any of the All Negro League players? | 37:43 |
Booker T. Federick | Well, not really. We had had a ball team here and they'd been on one time. I don't know whether they called it a Negro League, but it was a good ball club. Because they would go to Arkansas and Louisiana and different places like that and play on the weekend. And if some of those folks lived on the plantation and if he didn't get back on the Monday to go to his workday, they didn't bother him. | 37:46 |
Stacey Scales | Oh no. | 38:27 |
Booker T. Federick | No, they wouldn't bother him. He could be late getting back because he done gone to Arkansas somewhere to play ball. Well, the last one we had here, I believe they called it, they'd have been All Stars. | 38:29 |
Stacey Scales | Oh yeah. | 38:54 |
Booker T. Federick | But we had a ballpark here down on the Freedom Street, by account of going out of town. They had a ballpark. And one of the last players died two or three weeks ago. One of the last one of those men that played. | 38:55 |
Stacey Scales | Was that from the thirties and forties? | 39:13 |
Booker T. Federick | That was way back in the forties, in the thirties and forties. These folks playing ball. And the last man that I know that did play with that team, he died about a month ago. | 39:13 |
Stacey Scales | Oh yeah? | 39:29 |
Booker T. Federick | Yeah. Carol Townsend. He was one of the pitchers of that ball club. Now all the rest of them had died some eight, nine, ten years ago and back further than that. But he was the last one that I know now that died. It been about two months ago, I believe it was, he died. So they had a good ball club here. They'd go Friday. They could get out of the field and make themselves ready to leave Friday night going somewhere that they had to transfer. Because they're going to be transferring on the back of old truck or something. | 39:30 |
Stacey Scales | Oh okay. | 40:21 |
Booker T. Federick | They had an old truck with a tarp over it. And they'd enjoy that, man. And then they would, if they had to go, I think they had a chance to at one time go far as up in Missouri somewhere. Playing a team and they would play. Mississippi had a nice little bunch of ball clubs. Greenville had a pretty good ball club and Adabina had a pretty good ball club. And Greenwood had ball club. | 40:22 |
Booker T. Federick | But most of those fellas are— Then none of them, I don't think, if I can remember, I can't think of none of those fellas had a chance to go into the big leagues. Now I've hear some people from Mississippi have played and some are playing in the big leagues now. From Mississippi where they had gone away from here and played somewhere else before they went into the big league. Yeah. | 41:04 |
Booker T. Federick | I can't even think of that young man name now. His people still live back here somewhere. Went up into the big leagues of playing baseball. But that's young, in the earlier days. But back in the old days, I can't recall none of those mens having a chance. It could been had, but I can't recall. | 41:45 |
Stacey Scales | Did they play any other type of sports? | 42:12 |
Booker T. Federick | Well, there wasn't any other type of sport that they played right around here that I know of. But that baseball. And you'd basketball always were played mostly by White folk until some recent years. And then any other kind of sport, was pretty much played by White folks. So Black people wasn't interested in those kind of sports then. | 42:15 |
Stacey Scales | Yeah. Do you remember the Joe Lewis fights? | 42:51 |
Booker T. Federick | No, I can remember hearing people talk about him. I never had a chance to even read about any of his fights. In the paper, I could hear about him. And I believed he was what the folks say he was. I chanced to see his picture. Some people have his picture in their house when we go visit and said, "This is Joe Lewis." And they talked about how good he was in his skill of boxing and things like that. And I never wanted to be no boxer. And the only thing that I ever really, really wanted to be, and I started watching, going to the picture show when I was about sixteen years old. | 42:57 |
Stacey Scales | Was it a segregated picture show? | 43:51 |
Booker T. Federick | And they was oh, these old Western pictures. And that's about the only thing I wanted to be. If I wanted to be anything, I wanted to be a cowboy. | 43:56 |
Stacey Scales | Yeah. | 44:05 |
Booker T. Federick | Yeah. I wanted to be a cowboy. | 44:09 |
Stacey Scales | Did the Blacks have their own movie theater here? | 44:11 |
Booker T. Federick | Well they done a lot of working at these places. They didn't have a really owned. Now they was a Black man set up a little place around here. But we around y'all on the other side of that place where I was telling you about them. Brown used to have their market shop, this Black man set up around there. But he was so far back behind everything else that didn't very many people go around there. | 44:15 |
Stacey Scales | Oh, no? | 44:42 |
Booker T. Federick | No, didn't very many people go around there. And he just had little screen set up there and he didn't have a sufficient screen and thing. He had it fixed so he could just on there, hang up on there a sheet you see, against something and show it in his now. | 44:43 |
Stacey Scales | So where did you go to the movies? | 45:00 |
Booker T. Federick | We went to the movies here. We had one, the Dixie Theater in Itta Bena. We had one called The Strand Theater. But each one of those theater was belonged to the White. | 45:02 |
Stacey Scales | Oh, okay. When you went in, did you sit in the separate place? | 45:15 |
Booker T. Federick | Well the Dixie Theater didn't nothing go in there but Black. | 45:17 |
Stacey Scales | Oh yeah. | 45:19 |
Booker T. Federick | The Strand Theater, the Black and White went in, but they had the Black people in a little old up upstairs place. It couldn't hold but about fifty people up there if it was that many. But that was the only place I know where they had the Blacks above the White folk was in that Strand theater. Because they had them up and the White folk downstairs. We could sit up there and look right down on top of them that way. | 45:23 |
Stacey Scales | Yeah. | 45:51 |
Booker T. Federick | Other words, if a fire broke out, we had to come downstairs. They could come right out the door. That's the way I see it there. | 45:52 |
Stacey Scales | Oh yeah. | 45:59 |
Booker T. Federick | And eventually before they shut it down that, I think that's one of the reasons they went on to shut it down. Some Black people started coming in here from different places and they just going in there and go in there and sit down. They didn't ask could Black go in there. When they bought the ticket, they just kept on instead of going up that little stairway that it is, going in and sit down. And I think that's one of the reasons that they shut it down. Because they shut down two other cafes here because of that. | 46:04 |
Stacey Scales | What was the name of them? | 46:35 |
Booker T. Federick | Well, we had one here— | 46:36 |
Booker T. Federick | They had a Southern Cafe that, it was run by a man named Joe Sovera. Him and his wife running it, but they had one side where they served the Black people and the other side where they serve the White folk. But eventually, in taking down their old cooking equipments and things to put up new equipment, they put it in the corner over there where the dancing room was, where young people go in and dance. They filled that in over there with all this old cooking equipment stuff over there in the corner and those Black children didn't have nowhere to dance in that end and they quit going. And whenever the Black folk got ready to eat, some of them, they'd just go in that White folk side. They would serve them, but I'm thinking that's the reason they went on and closed it down. | 0:01 |
Stacey Scales | What was the name of that again? | 1:02 |
Booker T. Federick | The Southern Cafe. | 1:04 |
Stacey Scales | The Southern Cafe. | 1:04 |
Booker T. Federick | Sure was. The Delta Cafe was around the corner there, they're nice. Still got a cafe there, but they don't make no difference on who go in there and how they go in there. But it was run by a White. His name was Joe [indistinct 00:01:33] and he had a little table about as long as this thing in the back part of here, where the Black folk go in there. If more than ten people go in there, they couldn't sit down and eat. If they wanted to eat, they just had to stand up and eat back there. | 1:10 |
Booker T. Federick | But the White folks ate up front, they had it. But eventually, the Black people come in here from different places and just walk on up there and go to eat. They'd serve them, but I'm thinking that's the reason they eventually closed it down, because they did so long, served only the White folks up there. Now here, they got to go in and serve these Black folks. | 1:49 |
Stacey Scales | Those Blacks that went up North and came back, they looked at differently when they came back? | 2:15 |
Booker T. Federick | I think that's what started these cafes to closing, because those were the people that when they'd come back, would go in there. But when they'd go in there, well then, that would make some of us go in, too. | 2:20 |
Stacey Scales | Were Blacks down South here in Itta Bena look at Blacks that came back from up North different? | 2:34 |
Booker T. Federick | No, not that I know of. I don't think they looked at them different, unless there was a different way. We had some Black people change their— To maintain their attitude when they got away, then went up there. Well, then sometimes the Black folks here would say, "Well, he done got different since he went up there," and that made them treat him a little different sometimes. But I don't think it would happen too many times because most of us knew one another, worked in the field together, went to school together and fight some too, and all that kind of thing, so we didn't. | 2:45 |
Booker T. Federick | I never looked at nobody any different and if they came back and I had a chance to meet him and talk with him, I enjoyed his company and invited him to my house if I met him uptown. I never used to treat anybody any different and I haven't really had nobody to go away and come back and treat me any different. All of the people that I've known and that knew me, when they come back, a lot of times if they didn't have a chance to see me, they'd ask about me and try to find me before they— | 3:28 |
Stacey Scales | Did you ever get a chance to go up? | 4:08 |
Booker T. Federick | No, never did live up there. No, I never did lived up in there. | 4:13 |
Stacey Scales | Did you ever visit? | 4:13 |
Booker T. Federick | Yeah, I visited Chicago and Gary, Indiana. I visited those two cities and I was forty years old before I ever left our state of Mississippi. | 4:14 |
Stacey Scales | Well, when you were growing up on the plantation, did Black people vote? | 4:30 |
Booker T. Federick | No, no. They didn't want you to say nothing about it. | 4:49 |
Stacey Scales | No? | 4:49 |
Booker T. Federick | Didn't want you to say nothing about it. When I first heard of people voting, it was in '60. I knew that they had it going before then, but I was working at this company here where I just retired from. And there was a lady, she worked there in the fall of the year, so they let her had a job of cleaning up the office. After they laid her off in the fall, they just give her this job, cleaning up the office. Every morning she'd come down there and just move this, empty garbage or whatever from the day before. And they wasn't paying her but two dollars and fifty cents a week. She happened to go to the courthouse and registered to vote and they put the names in the paper. | 4:50 |
Booker T. Federick | And so when she came to work one morning, the boss man met her at the door, said, "Margarite, I saw your name in the paper yesterday, talking about you went over there registering, talking about the vote." She said, "Yes, they told us to come over there and register to vote." He said, "What you voting for?" She said, "Well, we just register to vote for whoever we would like to have in the office as president or whatever office that they're running for." He said, "Y'all niggers don't know what y'all doing." Saying, "That registering to vote ain't going to do nothing but cause a lot of problems, especially with you niggers." And he said, "Give me that key." She handed him the key. He said, "I'll get somebody else to do this job. Don't you come back here no more." | 5:52 |
Booker T. Federick | Wasn't paying her but two dollars and fifty cents a week. I know he wasn't paying but that because I'd bring her check every Friday, two dollars and fifty cents. He took that job away from her. The next time he got ahold of a paper and he come out there and asked us, did we know this Beverly boy? And we said, "Well, we know his daddy." Says, "His daddy live in Itta Bena. His Daddy is named Dennis Beverly." He said, "Y'all better try to get to his daddy and tell his daddy to try to try to make him stay up there in St. Louis or wherever he's, because he going to get killed down here, running down here and telling these niggers about voting." | 6:50 |
Booker T. Federick | We had a time when that started. Yes, sir, we had a time. Sure did, there's a lot of people lost their jobs when they found their names in the paper, registering to vote, now. They lost their job. There was some school teacher who was threatened, right here in the Mississippi. They had to prevent their jobs from being terminated, they wouldn't go. I think some of them went on anyway, but they were still threatened. But we had a time when that started. When they did get it started, then they started having these little marches. They was protesting and Black folk were protesting and they was making bombs and things, throwing them in our churches. We was having a time during that time. | 7:33 |
Stacey Scales | Did anyone ever on the plantation, talk about voting, or was that— | 8:53 |
Booker T. Federick | Well see, most of the Black people that owned land at that time had to give up that farming anyway. They had give it up and rent the land out, a lot of time to the White folks. They didn't bother them too much. They would still be threatened a lot of times for voting, because they would feel that they was trying to entice somebody else to vote, too. They would threaten them a lot. A lot of times those people was threatened too, because they registered to vote. People that owned these little, like this land here, still belong to Colored folks. | 8:58 |
Stacey Scales | Oh yes. | 9:50 |
Booker T. Federick | This next lot here belonged to this lady here. Her husband was old lady Street's son, and so he owned this lot and the next lot. And his mother owned from that on back around yonder to all the way around to the next block back there, and then she owned a lot of land. I don't know how much back in that, and I think they're in the process of selling some land now. | 9:53 |
Stacey Scales | Did Blacks own cars when you were growing up? | 10:32 |
Booker T. Federick | Yeah, a few of them had them. A few people had cars. My uncle I was telling tell you about, had the baker shop, he had a pretty good car and several other Black people had nice cars. They had to be careful about having that big old car. They'd have to buy a Chevrolet or something like that. They couldn't buy them Rolls Royces and things like that because them White folks would start some mess. A few Black folks that have them. We had some people in here, Robertsons, they were running what they call little a taxi cab here in town. And they bought some of these big old cars because they were running taxis here. Then what they done, they paid extra tax here in town to run that cab here in town and they done pretty good. | 10:37 |
Booker T. Federick | But just a man, put on him some good clean clothes and things like that, he would do pretty good with a nice Chevrolet or a Ford or something like that. And they had some old funny named cars, I don't even hear tell of them no more during that time. Old Studebaker cars and the old— Well, they still running these Plymouths and Dodges, they still running them. But Black folk could own something like that because he wouldn't get that. If he went over there, he'd have to buy one of them cars that didn't have all this shiny stuff on it. He couldn't buy a car like that too much. He might get the life-threatened if he— But now, he could buy one with no decoration on it, he was pretty good at it. | 11:45 |
Stacey Scales | Were there places in Itta Bena where Blacks couldn't go? | 12:52 |
Booker T. Federick | Yeah, they had their side of the town. Now, if they didn't like it, they'd come over on our side of town but we couldn't go over there on their side of town. | 13:00 |
Stacey Scales | Where did their side of town begin? | 13:13 |
Booker T. Federick | They're pretty near. They would hang around those two cafes if they were uptown, but most of the time White folks didn't come up on the street no way like we Black folk come up on the streets on Saturday evening sometime. If we wasn't doing nothing during the time we laid the crop by that, means when you finished chopping your cotton and yeah, you got to wait until it opened to get it. That's what we call lay-by time. That was a time in there we could go fishing if we wanted to and be up on the street. But we would come to town then, early on a Saturday evening and we'd be up there on the street just gathered up like this. But the White folks never did gather up like that on the street. They would drive uptown and stop over there at them cafes and put in all of these little business things, like they had to have their car worked on, it was going to be over to Greenwood anyway. | 13:15 |
Booker T. Federick | Well, one time we did have a well, but I believe it was Delta Shore Lake Company used to have a little old place over here. It'd have been a long time ago. Had several service stations in here a long time ago. But that's the only place you'd see them White folks hanging around at them places like that, here in Itta Bena. And they would have something out on the plantation, they would get together like that. But most time when you'd see them, Black folks and them practically are mingling together would be something they have out on plantation. And they would have a bunch of us to come out and be out there, eating around there with everything. That was something to entice you to know that you ought to want to work for him because he's a good man, work with him. So that was all that, but we seed it the way they wanted us to see it. | 14:23 |
Stacey Scales | Were there places that were considered the bad sides of town? | 15:41 |
Booker T. Federick | Well, we had a few Black men here. They didn't fool with one another too much because they was known as the men that didn't take anything. The White folk would put on like they wasn't afraid of them, but they were. They was afraid of them because anytime you's a man, I'm a man, me and you get into it and I got to go get a great big group of folks to come back. Well you, I got to be afraid. Those things would happen a lot of times when one of us would get in our mind, we wasn't going to take it anymore and they found it out, then they'd get them a gang and come after you. | 15:43 |
Stacey Scales | Did you ever have any mobs that went after? | 16:45 |
Booker T. Federick | No, no. The only thing, I didn't get a chance to see it, but I knew it was some of the people out of this town went down in that area. I don't know whether they went to try to help with what was going on. Something happened in Lexington something back years ago in the '50s, I believe it was. | 16:57 |
Stacey Scales | Lexington, Tennessee? | 17:24 |
Booker T. Federick | Lexington, Mississippi. And a Black man got in a shooting spree down there and his name was Eddie Knowldan. Those White folks come from everywhere, they had him cornered off somewhere in some woods or something or other. And they supposed to have been shooting at him and he was shooting back at them. Of course, it was a bunch of them. Now, I was told that after they did catch him, that he told them he could've killed about all of them if he'd have wanted, but he didn't want to kill them. They wonder why he would shoot close enough to one for him scare me so bad he would leave, he wouldn't stay out there. And when they did catch him, well, he give himself up. I think he stayed a week or so out there in the woods and they was shooting and had dogs out there and anytime one of them dogs got close to him, he had to turned around, too. | 17:24 |
Stacey Scales | His name was Eddie Knowles? | 18:37 |
Booker T. Federick | Eddie Knowldan. | 18:39 |
Stacey Scales | Knowldan? | 18:43 |
Booker T. Federick | Yes. That was the only event that I can recall that I could hear it every day. | 18:43 |
Stacey Scales | Why did he turn himself in? | 18:50 |
Booker T. Federick | Well, I'm thinking that he felt like because I don't even think they ever sentenced him to a very long time in prison. Somebody said they finally just got him on [indistinct 00:19:10]. Because now, he was half and half. You didn't know whether you were a White man or Black, but he lived among the Black folks and he had a Black family, wife and family. But they tell me he thought he frightened a lot of them. And I know it was a bunch of them left here and went down there, but I don't know whether they went down there to participate in the shooting, trying to— | 18:53 |
Booker T. Federick | I'm sure if I hadn't have been going to try to help, I wouldn't have went down there and fella already cutting folks shoes off their feet and stuff, I don't think I would've went. But that's about the last real bad event that I had known. Before then we had a Black man here in town, they beat him. He was a little old preacher. I said a little old preacher, he wasn't pastor of no churches but he's a big man and he hadn't been working and he'd gotten some furniture or something from one of the furniture stores there in Greenwood. Something happened, job laid him off or the job was finished what he was doing and therefore, he wasn't working. And so I'm told that he went over there and told these people that he owed for the furniture to just let him keep the furniture and he would pay them just as soon he get a job. | 19:43 |
Booker T. Federick | And they wouldn't allow him to keep it, so they told him they was going to come get it. And so when they come at it, he didn't approve of it. He frightened them away from there with his gun, so they went back and got the law here in town. Wasn't nobody here but Mr. Weber and one other law man. He went down there, he was scared of him and he wouldn't get him to act right. So they got the sheriff from over here, Greenwood, brought back over there and they talked about bringing his house down and things like that. I think he shot at them a few times or something and frightened them off and they talked about burning his house down. So Mr. Bill Bailey, sometime that night he went down and told him, said, "If you give yourself up, maybe we can help you work this thing out so that you couldn't get your family and everything burned up there with that thing going on like that." | 20:52 |
Booker T. Federick | Say, "Because they ain't going to let you alone. Because when you fired at them, that put them on edge and they ain't going to let you alone. They allowed have the FBI down here." Well, he was a White man so he talked to into giving himself up. And so they still carry him on to the county farm, had a county farm. And they carried him on to the county farm, they put chains around him and beat him over there, right next to the block over there for his shooting and things like that. Well then, that kind of stirred up a lot of the Black folks then and everything. | 22:03 |
Stacey Scales | What year did that take place? | 22:44 |
Booker T. Federick | This was back in the early '50s. They carried him to the county farm, but he didn't stay out there no great long time. Well, he hadn't killed nobody but he frightened them pretty good and they just were that way when you do something, let them know you're not afraid of him. Then they'd try to do something to calm you down, to cool you off, you see. Scare you if they could. If they could get you scared, well, then they'd carry you to county farm and wake you out there and that man out there would whoop you and all that kind of stuff. | 22:49 |
Booker T. Federick | And if you went out there and acted right, you'd get some days cut off your time. But if you went out there and didn't do what they say, then you would have a long time out there and a heap of whoopings. Now, one thing for sure, we didn't have a whole lot of young folk who went out there then. We didn't have a whole lot of young folk went out there, because the young folks, most of the older people there had big sized children, they was already taught what to do and how to do. And many of us done like our parents told us to do. | 23:35 |
Stacey Scales | Were there local leaders that would speak up against the injustices that were taking place? | 24:17 |
Booker T. Federick | Not too many Black folks, they didn't speak outwards. They would sit around and talk about, a lot of us felt there was a day coming. We were waiting on the day until we got some folks that were brave enough to come from some other place and come in here and join with the folks that had that in mind. But see, you couldn't hardly get too many folks. If you got to talking about doing something or other brave, you couldn't get too many Black folks to join in with you. And so when they got somebody come in from other states and they'd join these people here that did have the nerve and were brave enough, then that's when it went to moving. But we had some Black folks that got by with a lot of things. He had an old man, he owned a plantation and he was bad about getting drunk and so they would catch him. | 24:26 |
Booker T. Federick | Because the man owned a plantation, if he flew out and got high, got drunk, they'd put him in jail because they was going to make him pay a big fine. He'd get drunk some Saturday and get uptown and he wasn't that thick, but he was just a dangerous old man. He didn't bother nobody, but it was kind of dangerous to bother him. If they'd come to arrest him and he done got drunk, he didn't resist arrest, but he didn't allow them to take his gun from him. He told them, "I get up in the morning and put my pants on. Before I put my shirt on, I put the gun on. I don't intend to leave it with nobody." And when they'd lock him up, they'd had to lock him up with that gun on him. He wouldn't allow them to take his gun. But now, he didn't resist arrest. He didn't tell them, "I ain't going," but he'd tell them, "I don't depart from this gun." And when they'd lock him up, they'd lock him up. His wife would come up here and get him. | 25:31 |
Stacey Scales | Were there ever relationships between White men and Black women or Black men and White women? | 26:43 |
Booker T. Federick | Well, there was a lot of relationships between them White men and Black women. And some of them would done it they say, because they was afraid that something would happen to the family. Some of them would've done it because they felt that they could get a little more support out of it, something to help them. And some of them never did say why they did it, they just went into it and that was something never did bother me. And I guess I've always thought that an individual, whatever he wanted to do, if he was satisfied that it was all right. But there was a lot of that going on. | 26:58 |
Booker T. Federick | There was a lot of old insurance men would happen up in houses and men gone to work somewhere and helping up there with that woman and keep her flashing money around until he get her attention about some money and things like that. And next thing you know, if she's a young woman, there'd be a White child coming out. But if that Black man, he's afraid to say anything. He know something going wrong, but he was afraid to say anything. But you didn't hear too much going on about no Black man and a White woman. If they thought anything, if they even heard of it, they'd get ready to give you a big drink of water. That mean put you in the lake. | 27:47 |
Booker T. Federick | And so I learned that it was a few times that it did happen that Black men was dealing with White women, but it wasn't public as it was with the Black woman and the White man. So all those things went on right here in our town. We had some of everything that went on here in this little town here. Yes sir, had some everything I guess, that went on anywhere else happened here in this little town. | 28:36 |
Stacey Scales | Were there Black doctors here? | 29:26 |
Booker T. Federick | No and was never has. There wasn't no Black doctors here. We had people that knew some things to do but they wasn't licensed, so that told them not to be able to do anything other than just go by personally and do something. Whoever it was, only thing we had close to anything of that nature was these Black women that were delivering children from these ladies, the midwives. They were the only thing close to the doctors we had. | 29:29 |
Stacey Scales | When you left the plantation, where did you work, Mr. Federick? | 30:20 |
Booker T. Federick | When I came off the plantation, I come to the Itta Bena compress in the year of '54. And I worked there and around from there to other compresses until the year of 1980, I came back to this compress here in Itta Bena. And that's where I retired for them about two weeks ago. | 30:24 |
Stacey Scales | Great. When you worked there in the '50s, were they treating Blacks with respect or was there discrimination still? | 30:50 |
Booker T. Federick | It was the same, they just treating Blacks just like they treated them everywhere else. They wasn't getting nothing for your work. When I first started working, I was getting fifty cents an hour. Don't care how many hours, nowadays you see you work so many hours and then you start overtime after that. It wasn't no such thing as that when I went, first started. If you made or put in 100 hours, you just got your fifty dollars there. | 30:59 |
Booker T. Federick | That's what that was. That's what I started off with, fifty cents an hour. And it wasn't no machine equipment to move the cutting around, it was all muscle work. You moved those bales of cotton, you moved them on, most people call them a dolly. It's a two wheeled thing you load this bale of cotton on. If you had to carry them around, up yonder that school, you carried it up there on that thing. | 31:28 |
Stacey Scales | That's how you delivered cotton? | 32:08 |
Booker T. Federick | That's how you had to carry it from one section of the compress to the other one. Even when you had to take it off of the truck that brought it in from the gins, you take it off and load it on this thing and carry it where it's supposed to go. | 32:09 |
Stacey Scales | Were Whites working there, too? | 32:26 |
Booker T. Federick | Very few, few Whites working there. They didn't fool too many White folk. Most White people that worked there were real poor, in the same condition we were in. And they would have to wait for that fifty cents an hour. | 32:28 |
Stacey Scales | And so everyone made the same wages? | 32:49 |
Booker T. Federick | Yeah, everyone made. Now, they had some people that made a little more for an hour. They had a press there during that time, they got all the cotton from the gin, they needed to press it, bale down to a uniform bale. Then they would run that press where they had men to tie those bales of cotton down to a smaller sized bale. Those men would tie those bales, and then they paid those men that tie that cotton about ten cent more an hour. | 32:51 |
Booker T. Federick | Some of them wasn't getting but five cent more per hour. Most of them were getting ten cent more an hour, which was about sixty cents an hour. And the man that had to operate this press might would get ten cent more than the other man would. I was getting fifty cent an hour, that man that would operate the press, he was getting about twenty cents more than hour getting. That's the way we tore down in old office there in '81 or '82. And looking at some old back time records, they had sixteen men that they worked there year round. And that sixteen men, that whole payroll for one week for sixteen men was 128 dollars. | 33:22 |
Stacey Scales | What year was that? | 34:27 |
Booker T. Federick | That was way back in the '30s sometime. Sixteen men, the whole total payroll for sixteen men in one week's time, 128 dollars. Wasn't that something? | 34:33 |
Stacey Scales | It was. | 34:52 |
Booker T. Federick | Those was hardworking mens. | 34:52 |
Stacey Scales | Those poor Whites, did they get treated like the Blacks or did they get treated differently? | 35:01 |
Booker T. Federick | Most time if he would go to his boss man to ask for some kind of relief, they'd talk to him about it, how he'd been treated, he'd tell him to hit the door. He would tell him to go. The only time he'd hire a man anyway, a White man, he'd have to have been somewhere else working, being a little foreman or something on another job. He'd hire him and he quite naturally, going to treat him different. But those White fellows three, five fellas that were working out there with us, doing the same kind of work, they was getting in. One of them, after they started using and buying the equipment to move the cotton around with those White men, they allowed them the chance to operate those things first, they done that. But he would have to learn how to operate that thing before you upped his salary. | 35:08 |
Stacey Scales | Would Blacks have their own way of protesting, like breaking machines or anything like that? Would they ever protest how they were treated, in their own way? | 36:26 |
Booker T. Federick | No, they never would protest against how they— If they allowed that White man to drive the machine, it didn't bother us because we knew that when that machine come there, we knew it was a White person there, he was going to be the one to drive it anyway. At least we thought that was going to be, and so we never did go to them and we never did protest against it. We just keep on working because if it's any rough work in that machine that he was operating, we going to try to push it until he'd want to get off it. Several times we did and we made one leave there one time. | 36:36 |
Stacey Scales | So you just worked— | 37:18 |
Booker T. Federick | Work him so hard he'd have to leave there. We had the skill of what to do to keep him busy with what he was doing. See, we'd keep him so busy until he'd get off that thing, leave there. We'd do it that way. We'd make a plan since he got job of sitting down, we're going to make him tired of sitting down. Don't give him no room to get off and stretch his legs. Let him stay going. | 37:19 |
Stacey Scales | How would you do that? | 37:57 |
Booker T. Federick | Well you see, most time when the fresh machine, the equipment that they got in there, got one in there that would stack cotton. And when we started doing that, well, we who we was using these two-wheelers to bring that cotton from one shed over there for him and stack it. Well see, if we'd play around, he'd have a chance, we have a long way to go. We'd play around, he'd have a chance sometimes to get off that machine and stretch his legs around like that and cool off, because that thing had an old leather seat on it. | 37:59 |
Booker T. Federick | And this time of year you get wet behind and we didn't give him not change to get off it until twelve o'clock. When he get back on that one, five o'clock come, he'd be just as wet behind as we would. Because see, we had a lot of youngsters. I was young at that time and it was a lot of fun to race with one another with these two-wheelers. We'd see how many bales I could haul more than you, so that worked him to death, so that's way we do it. He'd soon get away from there. | 38:43 |
Stacey Scales | You all laughed about it? | 39:21 |
Booker T. Federick | Oh yeah, it was lot fun to us. Fun to us, a lot of time we'd done made up our mind to let him stay busy. And a lot of time we would, the little foreman, you didn't have but one foreman and this big old plant. A lot of times three or four fellas over yonder and three or four fellas there, it was hard for him to just keep walking through there and keep up with us. And a lot of times we'd do something, kick up a lot of dust over there and have him. He looked down, he see all that dust, he think we real busy. We'd be outside down there in that little cemetery out behind, we'd be out there behind in that cemetery, smoking cigarettes. We'd be where we could watch him, though. We'd work him, too. | 39:23 |
Stacey Scales | Did you keep the dust up? | 40:14 |
Booker T. Federick | Yeah. What we'd do, there'd be a lot of dust in those places where that cotton come in and they had that old dust. They come in from them old gins and haul them up and down those old dirt roads and there'd be a lot of dust, and all we had to do was just get there and get the plan with eight or ten bales of cotton around and get around the circle. This dust that falls up like there's a lot of work going on. And if that foreman was way down, see that dust up, he thought there was work going on now, so he'd stay up that way. He didn't have to come down. But we'd get to where we could see him and watch him and if he happened to start that way, then we'd get back out there where we worked him, too. | 40:17 |
Stacey Scales | Did he ever figure out what you all were doing? | 41:03 |
Booker T. Federick | Well, that foreman, later years he found out what we were doing and he eventually said, "I don't blame y'all, I don't blame you." See, you wasn't getting nothing for you work. He knew we wasn't getting— He was a very nice fella anyway, but the old head boss, he was pretty rough at first. When I first went there they had a man there, he was the roughest fellow I ever seen in my life. But somehow I got along with him just like that no sooner I went there. But he was a rough man, he was rough. He didn't care how White you was, if you didn't do it like he wanted it done, he'd point you to that door. He was just rough, he was rough on his own self. | 41:07 |
Stacey Scales | Did you all have vacations? | 41:54 |
Booker T. Federick | No, no vacations. You didn't any down there. If you left there, you didn't get to for them hours. You left there sick, you didn't get paid for them unless you got hurt out there. They'd pay you for that day if you got hurt. But if you stayed hurt, they wouldn't pay you no more. But you got hurt around 1:00 and you get paid for that whole eight hours. Well now, if you stayed hurt next two months, you wouldn't get nothing but your doctor bill paid, that's all. That's all the benefit we had. | 42:03 |
Stacey Scales | Did they have healthcare back then for Blacks? | 42:42 |
Booker T. Federick | No, we didn't have nothing like that too much on no job like that. No, you didn't have too much. The only insurance they carried was if you got hurt, they were supposed to pay your doctor bill. They'd pay your doctor bill up to so long, then they cut that off. | 42:44 |
Stacey Scales | Was it safe working in the compress? | 43:14 |
Booker T. Federick | No, not really safe. You had to try to make it safe as you possibly could. It wasn't safe at all time because if was some danger in it, any way you went, your body, there's some danger there when I went there. Because they had old wooden floors and those old wooden floors in some places had some weak place in them. I would see and I have done it, too. I walked over one of the old little place where the weak floor was and leg went through there all the way up to here. And if you were hauling this bale of cotton on your two-wheeler and that floor break in, one of your wheels go off in there, automatically, that bale of cotton going to turn off on the floor and lay down. | 43:16 |
Booker T. Federick | Now, if I was right behind you, I couldn't stop and help you pick that bale of cotton up, you had to scuffle with it and get it up yourself. I'd just drive around you and keep it going, that's the way we had to work. You lose your bale of cotton, it belong to you. If I stopped and didn't get caught, it is all right for me and you to help one another that way. But if I got caught helping you— | 44:08 |
Stacey Scales | Oh, so that was something that was put forth by the boss man? | 44:38 |
Booker T. Federick | No, every man was for himself. He lose that bale of cotton, he tried to get it back up on that two-wheeler and get it where it's supposed to be going. The other man wasn't supposed to stop and help. Many times that happened to a lot of us, it has happened to me and I thought I was a good man. Fun to me, reached down to you. You reached down and pick up this end of it and stand it up. And when you get it stood up, then you go back and get your two-wheeler and push it up there and reach over there and pull it back down there. | 44:42 |
Stacey Scales | Would there be just one bale on each one? | 45:18 |
Booker T. Federick | One bale from 480 to 600 pounds sometimes. Very few times we run into a bale of cotton weighed 700, but most of them weighed from around, I reckon ninety percent of them bales of cotton would weigh 520 to 550 pounds and we had to handle them, though. It got to be where we thought it wasn't much to it. We thought it was a lot of fun as young people did, we had a lot of fun. But after we'd gotten two or three machiners and things like that, well, it made it that much better, so they went to giving us a little benefit for that machine. | 45:25 |
Booker T. Federick | Because they company they bought that machine from, then they would have some sort of insurance and they had to have some to us. And so they would give us a little something to go on for something, we got hurt, something like that. Or if we got sick, a lot of time I've seen people get sick out there and I'm sure it come from being out there because— | 46:18 |
Stacey Scales | Cold in the wintertime. | 0:00 |
Booker T. Federick | Yeah, it's cold and hot in the summertime in any place I know. See got this cotton in it and before they built all metal sheds, they had these old wooden sheds. And they had this old regular tin on top and then the big slab of tar would be pulled up on top of that. And when that tar gets hot up over your head, you got a lot of heat coming down. | 0:02 |
Booker T. Federick | And then in the spring of the year, a lot of time we would have to where the roof, it spring a leak during the winter time when it freezes up, we had to go up there and fix it. Or either if it the roof got in bad shape, we had to go up there and tear that roof off and put another one on. And that sun up there about 105 degrees and we have— that was a rough job. When I come away from that other Saturday morning, my mind went all the way back to those days. | 0:30 |
Stacey Scales | Oh, yes. | 1:04 |
Booker T. Federick | When I punched that the other Saturday morning to, nope, did it go, not to go back to work? I was punching out for done the time. My mind went all the way back the whole day when I come up through there. I sometime I wondered why, how did I make it through all that? But I made it up to that day. | 1:05 |
Stacey Scales | What did those times back then mean to you? | 1:29 |
Booker T. Federick | Well I look at it this way. First thing I knew, it wasn't the sense I had, caused me so much sense I had. I give myself credit for having something knowledge. It wasn't all the knowledge that I had caused me to be, make it through there. But I'm thinking that it was the good Lord who made everything and everybody and made it possible that I made it through. Because there was some times that I was in very much danger of being killed, you know. | 1:34 |
Stacey Scales | Right. | 2:18 |
Booker T. Federick | I drove off one morning, I wasn't, didn't pay attention what I done, had thing in here, drove off anything. Taught, deepen this thing in, turned off this machine, bottom up and oh, I didn't even knock the skin off in no way. Didn't even. And all of the fellows see'd it when it went on and they thought I'd killed myself. They all broken around all up through the sheds and things until they saw me climbing up out of there. And then they came back. And when I got up out of there, as soon as I got out of there and got back up on the flat farm, this thing caught a fire. | 2:19 |
Stacey Scales | Man. | 2:59 |
Booker T. Federick | And now they afraid to go back down there and try to with the fire extension to put it out because they afraid the gas tank going blow up on him. And I took the fire extension and jumped back down there. Water was this deep and jumped back down there and sprayed up under there until I got the fire. Now that was one of the dangerous times that I know that I gotten through and could have been killed. | 3:02 |
Stacey Scales | What made you do that? | 3:35 |
Booker T. Federick | Oh, I wasn't paying any attention. That's when I said— | 3:36 |
Stacey Scales | Yeah what made you go down there and put that fire out? | 3:40 |
Booker T. Federick | Well they had a fire, they kept a fire extension on all of them and they said if any time one catch a fire that's what we were supposed to do, was to take that fire extension, know and spray this stuff on him, put it out. So I was operating this thing and so I couldn't get back down and get the fire extension off it because it was already on fire. So I took one off another one and went back down in there. Because— | 3:43 |
Stacey Scales | You weren't afraid it was going to blow? | 4:10 |
Booker T. Federick | — I understood and, no I wasn't afraid. I was hoping that I'd get it put out before it reached the gas tank, butane gas and had caught a fire under there where it turned over and the transmission fluid came out of and got on the manifold and that's what started to fire. And so as long as I could see the fire wasn't getting into this gas tank, I cut it off first. That fire then went on and put it down. And the old fellow told me, said "I never would've did that." And he, my boss man told me, he said, "I never would've done that." He said, "that thing would have that burn up." But I took that chance and went back down there and put it out. Because I down in a pit and it was deep as this, from this up here down. | 4:13 |
Stacey Scales | That's seven feet tall. | 5:03 |
Booker T. Federick | It was otherwise his hill here, this thing is fifty-five feet deep— fifty-five inches deep I mean. Fifty-five inches deep there. Because that's way we measured it when we got ready to build that little pit in there for the— We measured it's fifty-five inches from the top of the floor down in the bottom. So that's near about six. | 5:07 |
Stacey Scales | Right. | 5:32 |
Booker T. Federick | But anyway, those, that was something. One of the dangerous things that I went through. And there was other dangerous times but to me that was one of the dangerousest times that I went through it and I— | 5:34 |
Booker T. Federick | The last event that happened to me that was dangerous that I could have been killed because I had one night and I working that night anyway, then I was on the night shift and those, see that thing have to have water, and have water run through it for just in case of a fire. And they have a little old thing that if it get hot enough it'll trip this thing and cause the water that to come out these pipes and things to put out the fire if it comes the fire. | 5:54 |
Booker T. Federick | And sometimes those old little old, they have a little old what they call a fire bell, when it started ringing it either done trip in there, little firehouse in the shed out there. And I knew this thing hadn't tripped in the shed because I heard this bell rang. So I went around there to just cut off because it had tripped in there. I knew it wasn't no danger up in there. So I to went around there to cut it off and didn't have a flashlight. And I walking down the side of the building and there's so many bricks and things up there that was hurting my ankles, twisting my ankles. So when I decided to go back I thought I'd go out there and road where we used to walk up and down out there. And had dug up a fire hydrant out there. And that thing was about near about deep as the same thing and it was full of water and I didn't know they had dug it up out there. | 6:43 |
Booker T. Federick | And I dropped off in that thing at night by myself and that thing, it dug straight down. And I got out of that thing and I went under there two, three times and somehow or another I look around on the top there that I found little something about big— it might have been two times big of this part here. And I caught my arm down there when drug myself up out of there. Now that thing, I coulda got drowned in that thing because all of them boots got full of water. And I, man I went down about twice below the water and I came back up. And this thing that I pulled up by, I didn't know what it was because it was dark. I knew it was something that I caught a hold and pull up out of there. | 7:40 |
Booker T. Federick | So the next day after it quit raining, I decided to go around there and look at what I had fell off in and see what was that I found to pull up by. And when I went around there it was just the clot of dirt. Just big old clot of dirt. And I said, "Well, some." And I took a foot and bumped it that way and it fell on off in that. | 8:29 |
Booker T. Federick | So that, not ever one of the things that got by me. When I discovered I done pulled up out of this big old hole of water by this object and it wasn't strong enough the next day for me to put my foot against it. It was strong enough that night to hold me and the boots full of water and all them wet clothes. So that was the last thing that really happened that could have kept me on away from here down there. Many other little things that happened. But that's one of those things that that happened that carried me on the way. So there was many experiences in working that are— I don't mind thinking about them but I sure wouldn't like to turn around and go back. | 8:54 |
Stacey Scales | Yeah. | 9:48 |
Booker T. Federick | Ain't that so. | 9:48 |
Stacey Scales | Is it anything that you think that has been omitted from history that should be included? | 9:52 |
Booker T. Federick | Well I can't think of right now. I guess I'd have to give you in a big conversation for it to come back through my mind right now. | 10:02 |
Stacey Scales | What do you think young people could learn from your experiences about through those times? Jim Crow? | 10:13 |
Booker T. Federick | Well if they would— If all the young people would believe these things, you see I used to say and tell my children these things and I could see that it was, to them that I was saying something to make them laugh. And the other way they didn't really believe all this stuff I was saying and it was all true. See if you could get them to believe in it— If they didn't want to do nothing but do what you done, use it to write a history to go back and look over, it would help them a whole lot. A whole lot. | 10:24 |
Booker T. Federick | I often do it over here to the church. I get up sometime, tell them about some experience that I had by being disobedient when I was at home. Something like that. I tell them about those events and what happened to me because I was disobedient. And then when all the time my mother whooped me because I did disobedient that something happened, because I was disobedient. And I tell them about that and if they would use it and write, make a history out of it, have something to go back to. | 11:00 |
Booker T. Federick | Well Mr. Federick said this and that, so on and so that. And they Google somebody else and hit something else and it'll be something in years to come that might be real interesting to them. It would be real interesting to them. I used to tell my children, I have never been arrested in my life by no policeman. And I would tell them this, I said, "Now it wasn't because that I was so good I didn't do nothing. But I was fortunate enough not to get caught in doing what I would get arrested about." See I never didn't get caught in nothing like that see? | 11:34 |
Stacey Scales | Right. | 12:19 |
Booker T. Federick | And what I was trying to let them know that I wasn't trying to teach them that I was the best person in the world. I was just trying to teach them what will happen in life, what can happen in life. And you have to kind of be looking and forward to those things that I've told you, so you may know how to handle it when you're facing it. See I tell them how things I've facing in life and I tell them, "I'm telling you this, so if this thing happening to you, you may think of what I told you. You may know how to make it easy on you and it did, was on me." So that's those kind of things that would might help some of young people. | 12:19 |
Booker T. Federick | All right. I never did— I wasn't bad about stealing anything. The first thing I ever caught myself stealing was just a little play thing, truck boys. And I got in, carry it to the house and my mother asked me where I get it from? I told her I got it from somewhere else and she knew where it belonged to. She said, "You take it and carry it down there and back to them boys and call their mother out and tell their mother you stole it and put it down on the porch and call them back." Said "Call them, be standing right here." Say, "If you don't tell her exactly like I told you," said, "I'm tearing you up when you." So now I got to go down there and call this White woman out and tell her I stole her boy's truck. So these kind of things were rough to me. | 13:06 |
Stacey Scales | How did you feel when you did that? | 14:02 |
Booker T. Federick | Well I felt like I wasn't going to get the whooping. In later years I find out that's how come I didn't get the whooping. And then later years I find out what can happen if you make a roll at yourself, you go try and steal something other, eventually you going to get caught. And if I got caught right off like that, I was afraid to do it anymore. So that eliminated me from wanting to steal anything of anybody. | 14:03 |
Stacey Scales | Do you remember your parents or grandparents telling you stories about slavery times or things that you remember that you would pass down? | 14:34 |
Booker T. Federick | Well not too much because a lot of parents, you know after they parents talked to them about this slavery time thing, they told so much of it and let go. And like I said at the beginning, we were not supposed to sit in the company of these are older people while they talking anyway. Sit there looking right at them you know. And so you have to be out of there. Or I had to play sleep or something to hear. But most time we didn't, I didn't chance to say too much about way back in the slavery time. Now I've heard of an old man used to come to our house and he talked about when they would get in the slavery time, his father told him that the White folks used to deny the Black men to go to church on Sunday. He said that they would let the women go church on Sunday but didn't let the Black men go to church on Sunday. | 14:48 |
Booker T. Federick | And on Sunday they all through the week they'd be out in the field like chopping their cotton and corn and then they would have these mens out there on Sunday, these insects that would be out there in their beans like grasshoppers and old bean weavers and things would be out there. They'd have them men out there all day Sunday parting out there, getting them things out of there, putting them in cups and things, bring them back to the end and fill in the cup full of dirt and letting these things smother to death in this dirt. And he would often talk about that kind of thing that the White folks used to didn't allow the Black men to go to church. And so I never experienced that and I'm glad I didn't experience that. But— | 15:59 |
Stacey Scales | Since it was church mandatory when you were growing up. | 16:54 |
Booker T. Federick | Oh, yeah, that's one thing that I haven't strayed away from. I might have strayed away from a lot of things that went on when my time was there. Church is something I just had never strayed away from. I've stayed with it all down through time from the beginning of my starting going to up until now, I've always stayed with it. And it was something that got in me and it never have come out. Nothing that I've done, not so much of I've been the kind of church man that the Lord would want. But I been stayed in me to want to stay with it and go to the church and do all of this service I can now. | 16:56 |
Stacey Scales | And did they have baptisms and revivals? | 17:49 |
Booker T. Federick | Yeah, they had them. During the time when I come up they didn't have pools in these churches to baptize. They would baptize us in the lakes and rivers and sometimes they'd have some sort of little pond or something on a plantation. Great big old thing with a lot of good water and it deep and we'd have a good time down there. Oh, we'd go down there. We used to baptized on this Robuck lake here. We would be over on this side baptizing, where we baptized on the other side of the lake. | 17:52 |
Booker T. Federick | We'd be over there on the other side of the lake baptized, having a good time over there. And then we'd look across on this side and I imagine we'd have more White folks down on this side down there listening at us. So over there they would be down, down on this side of the lake down there, more of them over here at the baptize. They only thing between us was the lake. But they could hear us because I echo our voices was— | 18:30 |
Stacey Scales | And they wanted to hear— | 18:53 |
Booker T. Federick | — and they would, they'd be there and everybody, every time they would know about it and they'd come. Hey now we had few on White people some years ago would go to our church. We had the White lady used to go with my mother and my grandmother at the church every third Sunday. If she didn't go that day, she'd go that night when the revival would come, she'd go every night. | 18:57 |
Stacey Scales | Really? | 19:17 |
Booker T. Federick | She would go with them every night to the church. So they would, we'd find some here once a while I would do something that looked like wasn't so mean. | 19:20 |
Stacey Scales | Oh, yes. | 19:30 |
Booker T. Federick | So we had a good time. | 19:30 |
Stacey Scales | You said that as a child you couldn't look into the adult's face. When were you considered a man? | 19:40 |
Booker T. Federick | Well when you, yeah, you was going to be around twenty, twenty-one years old as a man, considered as a man. You know they would change their way of— Which you when you got up in your teen. But it was that older people way of teaching their children not to, you said, look right in the face of the old people when they were talking like that. And I guess that would come down through old and older generations and they just come on down because they don't do it no more now you see. | 19:48 |
Booker T. Federick | So, and all that was happening in my time and when I was a child and my mother didn't really have to get me about it because when I heard them say that that's what they did back in those days, I just knew it was going have to be done with me and I just be on the lookout. Whenever I look out and see somebody coming late in the evening, I make sure I got everything, a little work if I was doing work. So when they get there, if I had to go to bed, I'd be ready because I'd have my work done. | 20:27 |
Stacey Scales | What type of courting practices did they have back there when you were ready to date a young lady or see a young lady? | 21:11 |
Booker T. Federick | Well they had hours, you know. They had it on schedule hours, schedules. You didn't go there and stay long as you wanted to and leave when you get ready. You didn't go there and they didn't know who you was. Sometime we were up on this day and time, now young lady allowed to bring a young man to the house and the parents ain't never seen him before, but that's who she brang there with her. And he don't ask the parents anything, they just sit there and talk. | 21:17 |
Booker T. Federick | But see you back in my day if you want to be with that young lady, you going to have to go to those older people and get a okay. If it is all right with them, they'll say all right and then they give you that time, you put near your parents. If you was the young man, your parents done already give you the time, "Don't you go to that house and stay." | 21:51 |
Booker T. Federick | Nine o'clock was a good leaving hour at any time. If you didn't get there till fifteen minutes to nine, you had there fifteen minutes, you had to go. And it might would work, if it practice enough, people practice it nine might would work. These times are strange but that's where it was done. And it was still some things went on like it is today. Young ladies got out the places because of the young man visit them and the parents wasn't at home. But after all they slipped out from the house and the parents didn't know it. But they had a strict rule and most of all of the older people went by that same rule. You go there and you didn't go there no, every night. They had night and put near young man he visit, he put near, he going have service some church on Sunday night. That's how he going to get a chance to be with her Sunday night. | 22:20 |
Stacey Scales | Oh. | 23:33 |
Booker T. Federick | He going to walk her home from church. But now after you walk her home church, that's it. You just turn around at the steps and go. So now that Wednesday night is your night for you, you and her, they get together and sit down and talk. So you going come down and you ain't going to stay outdoors or out around the house. You going to have enough respect to come in the house. And she entertained you there in her house. And that was time when they, sometime the mother and father all be in the same room. Mother sitting over here, father sitting over here, the boy, then the girl sitting here, the girl sitting over there by the mother. So now they anything going on, they know about it because they sitting up there. | 23:33 |
Booker T. Federick | But now in my day I had a chance to be in a different room but I knew how to act in that room and I knew what time to leave there. And there was a time that I got with friends of mine and we left and sneaked back. But now— | 24:27 |
Stacey Scales | When you would sneak back— | 24:51 |
Booker T. Federick | When you sneak back you see you done made some kind of preparation for young lady, you know leave the house or something like that. Well then most time if those old folks were still up here, I wasn't no used to making that preparation. | 24:52 |
Stacey Scales | So she— | 25:08 |
Booker T. Federick | 'Cause she would, they going look that thing over after you leave anyhow. If any movement be going on after you leave there, then they going to know what it's about. And so you didn't get very many chances on going back there, seeing her after you leave. | 25:09 |
Booker T. Federick | Then from that Wednesday night, if you, a bunch of you get out there and get the plan, you know run up down the road you might run up one another. But now you ain't gone back that house to be no company until Wednesday night. Till Wednesday night again or Sunday night. They had some strict rules went by and they didn't just fuss at you by them rules. They'd go get something other and work on you about them if you disobeyed it. | 25:31 |
Stacey Scales | What if a young lady was pregnant in the neighborhood? | 26:06 |
Booker T. Federick | Well a lot of times they would kind of house her up little. That parent were kind of hide up a little sometime from the other. Oh yes, goods. And sometimes the other parents wouldn't lie. They cheer into the goods to be with her. That didn't seem so fair to me. But I guess if it's that rule you had to abide by and that was when the young lady did become pregnant and had to tell who the boy was involved, then I thought it would be too late to make him stay away from her then because a lot of times they'd make him stay away from her. Why she— | 26:08 |
Stacey Scales | Yeah, why she— | 26:57 |
Booker T. Federick | Danger was already been done with sometimes that was their rule. You stay away from him, don't fool with him no more. | 27:00 |
Stacey Scales | And what if you wanted to marry a young lady? | 27:10 |
Booker T. Federick | Well a lot of times they were old enough they would work on that. They would try to get that done. And I wondered sometime if the girl had just dealt with the boy and didn't love him, if you made her marry, wouldn't you be putting her in a position where she was mess up in somewhere down the line later on, you see? But I think what the older people had in mind that if you marry him, if he's the daddy, then if by chance you have anymore, they all be one man— | 27:14 |
Stacey Scales | Oh, yes. | 27:49 |
Booker T. Federick | — child, you won't have no mixed bunch of children. I think that's what they had in mind. I feel that that's what they had in mind. And they felt like, well maybe if they stayed together long enough they'd become to be in love. Because evidently they wasn't in love that quick anyway. They'd have to become to be in love one another. I'm thinking that's what the older people had in mind. And it might have been a whole lot better for our time now if they, Heather could have made everybody get married that would gotten pregnant by a young man. He could've married her and let all the children that she had been that one man child. | 27:50 |
Booker T. Federick | And sometime I feel like that the reason why, especially our Black young people can't get along one other like them is because of the, there's so many mix. Sometimes you got five children in the house and five different mens is supposed to be their father. So that's a little difference itself right there. | 28:33 |
Booker T. Federick | But I can appreciate a lot of things that didn't seem right when it was done that these old people done. But since I come into knowledge of knowing about life and running into things in life, I appreciate a lot of things that the older people done. And I feel good about it. I feel good and I'm glad I know about it and glad I was a part of it because it have helped me. I've done a lot of things in the way of old people telling me that I see somebody else do it in difference and something, it wouldn't get nothing out of it. And when I do it like the old folk did it, something would happen for me. And so that what made me appreciate a lot of things old people did back in those days. | 28:59 |
Stacey Scales | Would there be a place for Blacks to take their money? Like banks? Were they Black banks or— | 30:01 |
Booker T. Federick | No, they just had to whatever. If they carried their money to the bank, they carry to the same bank then, back in those days that the White man— | 30:12 |
Stacey Scales | Oh, yeah. | 30:17 |
Booker T. Federick | — carried their. I learned that they got a lot of, it took from them that way because they would proclaim something happened, and the bank went broke and all this stuff and with that Black man money in it and he couldn't get his. And if the thing went broke, because see he couldn't get his and I never did believe that. So I believed that it was some way they had fixed up that they didn't want him to have it after he accumulate so much. | 30:18 |
Booker T. Federick | Because a man that I was tell you about had the bakers shop. He had money in the bank. And the man that I'll tell you about that had them would allow him to put him in jail and take these guns take, he had money in the bank and those people who had lost a lot of money in the bank up here out a business. | 30:51 |
Stacey Scales | Did Blacks bury their money? | 31:13 |
Booker T. Federick | I never just heard too much about Black burying any money They had places they kept some, if they had a— I've known people to have some money and kept it hid around and things around the house there somewhere you wouldn't. So probably wouldn't even if he buried it, he buried in his yard somewhere. | 31:15 |
Stacey Scales | Yeah. | 31:37 |
Booker T. Federick | He kept nowhere else and buried it. | 31:37 |
Stacey Scales | Did they have an all-Black cemetery [indistinct 00:31:44]? | 31:40 |
Booker T. Federick | Yeah. That's what everybody was. Black person buried you. If he wasn't buried at some of these churches, they buried in this cemetery out here at the end of town here. And the White cemetery was up here. | 31:44 |
Stacey Scales | Is that still practiced? | 31:59 |
Booker T. Federick | Yeah, it's still in practice now. Mm-hmm. Yeah, they still got that going. The White folks still going to their churches and we still going into ours. | 32:01 |
Stacey Scales | Do you have anything else you would like to add to— | 32:17 |
Booker T. Federick | Well not ready— | 32:18 |
Stacey Scales | — Talking about? | 32:18 |
Booker T. Federick | — Briefly I don't. You know sometimes things come to your mind as you sit around and as conversation continues, you sometimes things that come in mind like that. So you— | 32:26 |
Stacey Scales | Well, we'll have to come back and talk to you. | 32:37 |
Booker T. Federick | So there are a lot of things that you can think of when you don't necessarily need to think of them. But then there are a lot of things that are you done experiencing. You done forgot most of it. And so you'd have to leave it all out because you'd forgotten most of it. There's a lot of things that I've experienced it there in my working and in my going here and there. And especially going to churches. Well that's the thing that I've been doing since I was fourteen years old. | 32:47 |
Booker T. Federick | Going to churches and visiting churches and trying to get whatever I could out of what going. And then being among the all kinds of people now. Been out among them drinking kind, you know the cutting up kind. I've been among them. But whenever I get in a crowd, whether there was going to be some trouble that I thought maybe would cause me to be hurt or hurt somebody, to prevent me from being, getting hurt myself or go to jail I would figure some way that he leave. And I'd always be successful in figuring out a way to leave. And I'd always leave. | 33:20 |
Booker T. Federick | And so that before, I've been around mostly all kinds of money now and the only work I've ever done was on the farm and in these different compressions buildings here. That's the only kind of work I've really done long enough to know anything about it. | 34:10 |
Stacey Scales | Mm-hmm. Okay. | 34:34 |
Booker T. Federick | I've had many experiences in life where with friends and things like that. But I have never had no great big problems, no falling out where we couldn't see one another again, communicate with one another. I never had no problem with that kind. So that may, and that's when I say I can appreciate something that I've gotten from older people because that's the way I avoided a lot of things in life that I could have got into, by remembering what I was taught by some older person. So we just— | 34:40 |
Stacey Scales | Okay. Well I've enjoyed talking to you. | 35:23 |
Booker T. Federick | I'm glad you did, huh? | 35:39 |
Stacey Scales | Learned a lot— | 35:39 |
Booker T. Federick | Around here. Yeah. Sitting around here trying to take it easy in this bad weather. | 35:39 |
Stacey Scales | — Attitude, farms. | 35:42 |
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