Edran Auguster interview recording, 1994 July 19
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| Michele Mitchell | —how you spell it and I'll check and see how it sounds. | 0:00 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Uh-huh. | 0:00 |
| Michele Mitchell | Okay, whenever you're ready. | 0:02 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | My name? | 0:03 |
| Michele Mitchell | Mm-hmm. | 0:03 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | My name is Edran Auguster. Louis is the middle name. | 0:08 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | I'm Black, as far as that is concerned. (both laugh) | 0:19 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | I was born in New Iberia, way back yonder in 1915, on March the 17th. | 0:26 |
| Michele Mitchell | March 17th? | 0:47 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Mm-hmm. | 0:50 |
| Michele Mitchell | [indistinct 00:00:54]. | 0:50 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | I went to public school and finally finished high school at the Iberia Parish Training School in 1933. During the time that I was in high school or before, even in the elementary school, I worked. I had to work. I worked for Pendleton's Drug Store. I started out as a delivery boy, and by the time I finished high school, why, I was actually filling prescriptions in the drug store. | 0:54 |
| Michele Mitchell | Really? | 1:44 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Yes. I had thought that I wanted to be a druggist, but I wasn't sure about that. In 1933, I left New Iberia to go to college. I enrolled at Straight College, which is an A.M.E. school in New Orleans. My intentions were to get two years of college and then go to Xavier University in New Orleans to take pharmacy. But the closer I got to the end of those two years at Straight, I was thinking less and less of being a druggist because of the problems that I had seen the druggists in New Iberia encounter. | 1:46 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | For example, a privately-owned Negro drug store was on the way out. The chain drugstores were coming in. The confinement that Pendleton experienced, I didn't know whether I wanted to share in that. For example, doctors would make home visits. They would usually wait until they finish their office practice and then make home visits. Sometime those home visits were made at 10:00, 11:00 at night. They would give the prescription to the patient and the patient wanted the medicine so Pendleton would have to get up at night and come to the drug store and fill prescriptions. I wondered if I wanted to share in such experiences. | 3:08 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Then on the other hand, Straight College, which was a good college, and I loved it for the two years that I was there, Straight was closing and Dillard University was opening. There was a merger between the Methodist New Orleans University of New Orleans and Straight College to form Dillard University. Big things were planned for Dillard so I wanted to go to Dillard. I decided that I would go to Dillard rather than go to Xavier and take pharmacy. | 4:24 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | My field of concentration was physical science, mainly the chemical phase of it and the math phase. But anyway, I went on to Dillard. For the next two years, two years I finished from Dillard in 1937. In my last year, I decided to take practice teaching because I didn't have any money. I figured that that was a good job for, I mean, that was necessary that I do some kind of work to get more money. Teaching seemed to be the best thing open for me. | 5:14 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | I decided to take practice teaching, and as a result, I came out in '37 and I applied for jobs. The state superintendent of Negro Schools at that time made recommendations. The first job I got was at Kentwood because Iberia Parish told me that they didn't have any openings. He recommended that I go to Kentwood. Well, Kentwood was a small town. It was down on the other side of New Orleans. I didn't know if I wanted to go that far, but if I didn't get a job in Iberia Parish close around, well, I would go have to go to Kentwood. | 6:21 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | But this Mr. Jordan at Weeks Island got wind of it. He told the superintendent he wanted me at Weeks Island. He wanted a principal. He wanted a man principal. He didn't want any more women. I got the job. | 7:26 |
| Michele Mitchell | Why didn't he want any more women? | 7:52 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Well, I mean, let's say it's conduct, you see? I got the job at Weeks Island and ended up there 19 years. | 7:53 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | I spent 19 years at Weeks Island. Then they opened the school right across the street from here, a block from here in 1956. I asked for that transfer. I met the requirements as far as the owner of the company insisted that is that in order for me to get a release from out there, why, I had to recommend somebody that they would accept. I made a couple recommendations. The first one they wouldn't accept, but I finally got one that they did accept. They really, they said it's all right for me to go. | 8:19 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | But the school was on the way out, Weeks Island was on the way out. They had built a brick, eight-room school right after the war, but then the company said that they were going to do away with the village, and everybody had to leave. I could see that coming. I was glad to get away from Weeks Island. By '69, they closed everything. | 9:23 |
| Michele Mitchell | '59 or '69? | 10:10 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | '69. | 10:10 |
| Michele Mitchell | '69, okay. | 10:10 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Yes, in '69 they closed everything. I worked at J.B. Livingston School, which was right across the way from the house here from '56 to '69. Then because of the court order, desegregation of the schools, the superintendent and the board of Iberia Parish were bent on not obeying or defeating as much as possible the achievement of total integration in the schools of Iberia Parish. | 10:10 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | The superintendent and his board members were dead-set on saying that, or proving that Negroes were not as good or as Whites, that Negroes had never achieved anything. And that no school where Negroes were—Negroes said they were inferior, so they would prove, then, that they were inferior by closing all of them. | 11:17 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | That's what they did. They closed J.B. Livingston school. They closed every, in New Iberia, every school that had been all-Black prior to 1969. The only one that they kept was what was called Jonas Henderson High School, which was the high school. It was a magnificent building, air-conditioned and everything. They reduced that to a freshman high school, but they demoted the principal to assistant principal of New Iberia High School. Every other principal they tried to demote them to assistant principals in the other elementary schools, you see? | 12:05 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | I happened to be on the inside to get a reading of the court order. There was one part in that court order which said that they could close the schools, they could demote the principals—No, they did not demote the principals. I take that back. But those principals of the schools that were closed had to be offered jobs comparable to what they had as principal. | 13:31 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | The superintendent didn't live by that. He assigned the displaced principals to schools that were existing as assistant principal. Because I knew that, I went to the superintendent and told him that I would meet him in court because I wasn't satisfied with the job that he had offered me. I also went to the president of the school board and talked to him. He was a personal friend of mine. He was White, but he was a friend. | 14:26 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | When I told him what the court order was, he was surprised because the judge had told them not to discuss his decisions, you see? But, it wasn't discussed. They didn't tell anybody that. Even the NAACP, which knew it, didn't tell these principals that the school board was supposed to give them something equal to what they had or better. | 15:20 |
| Michele Mitchell | Why didn't they tell them that? What do you think? | 15:58 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Well, the positions they gave them. They had to give you a position either equal to a principal or a supervisor's job, you see? | 16:01 |
| Michele Mitchell | But why didn't the NAACP tell people this? | 16:15 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Well, let's say there was a lot of personal animosity between the leaders of the NAACP that was pushing for that, you see, and the educators. Because most of the educators, I mean Black educators did not see that much difference between the schools, you see? Iberia Parish had done a magnificent job of trying to make the schools equal. | 16:17 |
| Michele Mitchell | Really? | 17:05 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Yes. For example, this building over here, the J.B. Livingston School was a 24-room classroom, 24-room building with auditorium and cafeteria. The very same plans, architectural drawings for J.B. Livingston School were also used to build a school on North Lewis Street for Whites. | 17:05 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | The school, they had built a new high school here for Whites. They built a new high school here for Blacks and named it Henderson High School that was top rank, air-conditioned, very modern. A matter of fact, the auditorium at freshman high, or Henderson High School, was larger than the auditorium at New Iberia High School. As far as the teaching is concerned, Negroes learning, it was better in the Black schools than in the White schools. | 17:43 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | In the discussions before integration where the racists were bringing out the qualifications of Blacks, or, "Blacks are this. The Blacks are that. They're going to ruin our school," and all of that, "Black teachers are not certified," the school board ordered a survey, or the supervisors to make a survey of the qualifications of Black teachers compared to qualifications of White. This was never published because you had no Black teachers in the Black schools that were not certified. But you had many, many Whites who were working under two-year certificates and had to go to school every two years in order to renew those certificates, better qualification. | 18:44 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Coming back to my threat to go to court, the compromise that the president of the school board made with me was that we cannot, the Iberia Parish School Board, does not have money. We've spent all the money we had buying portable buildings to try to house all of those students and still keep those Black schools closed because the superintendent had told them that White people wouldn't go to schools that had been used by Black. They were filthy. They were not clean. That those were lies, you see? White teachers wouldn't work under Black principals. That was a lie because before we integrated, the summer before we integrated, we had a summer program where you had a Black principal on one hall and a White principal on the other hall. Each one of them had a mixed faculty. | 20:06 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | When I asked the superintendent, I said, "You saying that, but why is it just this summer? I had White teachers and they worked well with me." | 21:39 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | "Oh, they'll do that for their little extra money that they make in the summer, but they won't do that for a regular job." I said, "Man, you mean to say they would give up a regular job that's paying a whole lot more money just to make a little extra change in the summer?" Then he went on to tell me about other things that had happened. A janitor locking himself up in the boiler room and died of a heart attack when he saw Negroes going to vote at the school for the first time and all that sort of stuff, you see? | 21:50 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | But anyway, when I talked to Mr. Burns, who was the president of the school board, he told me, he said, "We going to have to reopen the schools. If you would just bear with us, just more time at New Iberia Middle School, I'll guarantee you before the semester is over we'll reopen the school and you'll be the principal at it." Sure enough, just like he said, by October they reopened what was the A.B. Simon, used to be the A.B. Simon Elementary School. I went over there as principal. I stayed there one year. | 22:30 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Then they got permission from the court to reopen the Anderson Street School, which was a seven and eighth grade school, a middle school. They called it junior high, but it was nothing but a middle school. The superintendent asked me to take that school and buttered me up because I had told him I did not care to work with seventh and eighth-grade children. I mean, they were too much problems, you see. | 23:28 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Being a disciplinarian, I was a disciplinarian. When you get to seven and eighth grades there, you tell them to do something, they going to do what they want to do or they going to tell you. I couldn't take that. I had told him before when they moved the eighth grade from J.B. Livingston School that I didn't care about bothering with seventh and eighth grades, but he showed me the problems. He said, "We are going to have problems at Anderson Street School. You have two public housing projects in that area. Those people are problems. I mean, that a low class of people, low income. They're in the process of building another housing project in that area." | 24:08 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | He said, "Across the street from the schools, you have a lumber company, Mixon. Mixon has 20 or more houses, little sharpshooter houses, to rent to poor people." He said, "Those children are problems." He said, "On top of that, we are going to bring the poor Cajuns from the Ti Coteau area and the poor Cajuns from the Coteau area, they'll all be going there. You're going to have a problem of poor, underprivileged Negroes and poor, underprivileged Whites, mix them together. I don't have a principle that I think can handle it." | 25:30 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | I went on and told him I'd accept it. I accepted it. But I told him when I took it, I said, "I'm not going to be there long," but I did work five years as principal of Anderson Middle School. | 26:29 |
| Michele Mitchell | Was it called Anderson Middle School or was it always called Anderson Middle School? Because you said that they reopened it. | 26:44 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Yeah, they reopened it. | 26:59 |
| Michele Mitchell | Was that always the name of it, Anderson? | 27:00 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Yeah, it was originally the Henderson Junior High School. But when they reopened it, they reopened it under the name of Anderson Street Middle School. | 27:03 |
| Michele Mitchell | You told me about a school that was turned into a ninth grade school. | 27:30 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Yes, that was the Henderson High School. | 27:35 |
| Michele Mitchell | Oh, so there was a Henderson High School, and then there was another Henderson school? | 27:38 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | There was a Henderson. The first high school was built. They named it as Henderson High School. Then when they built this new school, they changed the name of the old high school to junior high, Henderson Junior High. Then the main new building, or the new school, Henderson High School. | 27:41 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Now, all of these schools, the names I've given you, they were names of Negroes that had made distinctive contributions to Negro life or Negro education. The school board had done that. | 28:29 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | But when they integrated, the superintendent said that no Negroes had ever done anything, therefore we take the names off the schools. They took all those names off, but in so doing, they had to take some Whites also because some of the schools had been named for White people that had White supervisors and White principals and everything. They took all the names off with the exception of the superintendent that was here for so long, Lloyd Porter, they let his name remain on the stadium, the football stadium. They let it remain as the Lloyd Porter Stadium, you see? But everything else, they took the names off. | 29:02 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | They not only took the names off, they demoted the principals. They transferred all of the Black children into formerly all-White schools, which created a terrific adjustment problem for Black students that Whites didn't experience. | 30:11 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | They also said that, I mean, among themselves I guess, that nothing would be left in the school system or made a part of the school system that would serve as an inspiration for Blacks. Even until today, Iberia Parish, instead of the school system in Iberia Parish, instead of observing Martin Luther King's birthday, every year, every year there's a big hassle. They call it, they give them the day off, but it's Great Americans Day. Everybody else in this area and over much of the United States observing Martin Luther King's birthday, but in Iberia Parish it's Great Americans Day. That comes up every year. That has come up this year in making the calendar for next year. | 30:38 |
| Michele Mitchell | Great Americans Day? | 32:02 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Great Americans Day, yes. Because one of the disciples of Duhon, Duhon's disciples, who was his favorite and he gave him a good job, is when Duhon was superintendent, he decided that he was going to run for school board when he retires. When the Negroes went up and asked for Martin Luther King's birthday, he said, "Well, there were a whole lot of other great Americans that we don't observe their birthdays," (laughs) so they made it Great Americans Day. (both laugh) | 32:05 |
| Michele Mitchell | That's something. | 32:55 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | The Negroes have, particularly in sports, they've done well in the schools, but it's because they've had TV to look at. They were able to see Michael Jordan and all the other great athletes perform. They have attempted to imitate them. They've gotten good, you see? But as far as the school system, you don't want anything that would serve as an inspiration for Blacks in this school system. | 33:00 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | I would say that there's as much or much, much more segregation and discrimination in the school system in Iberia Parish than before integration. The institutions that they want to keep White, they've come up with all sorts of regulations that exclude Blacks. | 33:56 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | In one of our middle schools, they had built up a reputation for a dance team. But in order to be on that dance team, it cost you over $500 a year. Blacks can't afford it. A few Blacks can, teachers' children and other people as well, they'd make the team because they got the money to pay. But the dance team is not open to all students like it should be, you see? | 34:38 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | At the high school, the same thing. It's over $1,000 over there. When you buy your uniform and all the workshops that you have to go to and pay in order to go, if you don't go to a workshop, you can't dance. I don't care how much dancing you can do. You can't dance if you didn't take dancing in a dancing school because that's one of the requirements. You have to so many years in dancing school in order to be on the dance team. | 35:28 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | I had been working for the past, I think over 30 years with the Boys State Program of the American Legion. When the schools were integrated, the only high school in New Iberia was New Iberia Senior High. That's its public high school. I went through the process of asking for a boy for Boy State because our post is small, therefore we have a quota of only one. When I asked for a boy, they gave me a list of names. There were no Black boys on there. We had to send a White boy. But since we are all Black as far as American Legion is concerned in New Iberia— | 36:14 |
| Michele Mitchell | Really? | 37:24 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Yeah, you say you have a White post, but you— | 37:25 |
| Michele Mitchell | Uh-huh, exactly. | 37:27 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | —but you have the Black post too. We felt that if we are going to put out this money, then we want a Black to be a part of it. We want to spend our money on Blacks. You have about four, there are three, you have three American Legion posts that are White that's really a part of Iberia Parish. They have quotas larger than ours because they have more membership. They can send boys. They send four, at least four boys every year, but they never send a Black boy. It's always a White boy because the school does not give them a list of anything other than White boys. | 37:29 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | We said we'd get around that, but we weren't going to send any boy if we couldn't send a Black boy, the school couldn't provide us a Black boy. We had one of the guidance counselors at New Iberia Senior High was Black. We talked to him and said, "Listen, can't you get us a Black boy?" He did that. Every year I would contact him to get a boy and he would get us a boy. I'd give him the application, you fill it out. You'd fill it out. Now, I don't know if the school knew anything about it or not, but you'd send the boy to Boy State. | 38:46 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Well, he retired and then we had a former Boy Stater that was assistant principal. I went to him. Every year I would get a boy for Boy State through him. This year, at the close of last year, he retired. That put another Black as assistant principal. This year I say, "Well, I'm going to just see." I don't want to think that I'm being prejudiced. I call this principal of the school. I told him that I had a problem. | 39:34 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | "What's your problem?" He's a friend of mine, I mean, "What's your problem?" I said, "Every year that it come time for Boy State I have to go through the back door in order to get a Black boy for Boy State." | 40:27 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | "What you mean?" I said, "I'm supposed to go to the guidance counselors, but the guidance counselors can never give me a Black boy. What I had them do through the years is go to the guidance—I had a counselor or a Black assistant principal in order to get a Black boy. It seemed as though the guidance counselors never recommend Black boys to Boys State. I'd been going through it. I said, "Now, Bashay retired. The only one that's left now is your new assistant principal." I said, "Well, what must I do? Must I go to the guidance counselor or must I go through the back door to the assistant principal?" You know what he told me, "You better do like you've been doing. I'll talk to the assistant principal." That's what I had to do. | 40:48 |
| Michele Mitchell | Well, when you started, you said that you've been doing it for 30 years? | 41:57 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Huh? | 41:59 |
| Michele Mitchell | You've been doing it for 30 years? | 42:00 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Probably longer than that. Oh, yes. It is much longer than that because we've been integrated 25 years. I was district procurement chairman, I guess, about 15 years because when we had the all-Black high school, we were saying, and the program was segregated. You see the Boy State, we had two Boy States. We had one for White. Then we had Bayou Boy State for the Black boys. The Whites would meet at LSU. The Blacks would go to Southern, you see? | 42:03 |
| Michele Mitchell | The Southern in Baton Rouge? | 42:53 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Southern University, yes, in Baton Rouge. We had the two programs. They were identical as far as what was done, but it's just that they was segregated. At that time, I would carry as many as eight boys from Henderson High School alone. What they had was a matter of money, you see? If we could get sponsors to sponsor a boy, why, we could send as many as we could get sponsors for. That's what happened back in those times, you see? But now, it's not like that now because they allow a post to sponsor only boys based on membership quota, you see? As a result, we can send only one now regardless of how many sponsors. Then the other thing is the cost has gone up so. | 42:54 |
| Michele Mitchell | Right. | 44:15 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Yes, we used to sponsor a boy for $40 or $50. Why now, this year it's $161 to sponsor a boy. | 44:16 |
| Michele Mitchell | Did you go to Black businesses to get sponsors? | 44:29 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Huh? | 44:31 |
| Michele Mitchell | Did Black businesses sponsor them? Who did you go to get sponsors? | 44:32 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Oh, we had, back in those days, you had the Knights of Peter Claver, which is a Catholic organization, sponsored boys. The Masonic lodge, everywhere you had a Masonic lodge, they were acquired by their Worshipful Master to sponsor a boy. We had a Masonic lodge here. We didn't have to worry about it. The Masonic lodge would come up with that money, you see? | 44:36 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | I've even gone to the sheriff and talked to the sheriff. The sheriff sponsors a boy. We had this building here, this American Legion, I mean, this was a [indistinct 00:45:34] building, when they had money, I'd ask them $40 to sponsor a boy. The American Legion would sponsor as many as they could afford with the money that they had, you see? Sometime one, sometime two, sometime three, if necessary, trying to meet the quota that we had for this area. | 45:18 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | There was no big problem with getting sponsors. We could get the sponsors, but now, no need to get the sponsors because you can't send but one boy because of the quota of the American Legion folks, see? | 45:56 |
| Michele Mitchell | Has there been a Girl State program too? | 46:20 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Yes, uh-huh. The Girl State program is— | 46:23 |
| Michele Mitchell | Yeah. Were there any, before the schools were integrated, were there any organizations that Black teachers and principals had amongst themselves? | 0:01 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Yes. The Blacks had the Louisiana Education Association, the LEA. That was statewide. And we had, excuse me, IEA, Iberia Education Association, locally. They played a big part in getting, well, probably the biggest I'd say, was getting a law which called for equalization of salaries because there was a big distinct, a differentiation, between what a white teacher with a master's degree got and what a Black teacher with a master's degree got, or one with a bachelor degree, or one with no degree, you see? I remember when Negro teachers, when I started to teaching, the Negroes were receiving around $40 a month, but the whites were receiving $60 a month. | 0:21 |
| Michele Mitchell | When was that, sir? When did you start teaching? In the '40s? | 1:58 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | 1937. | 2:00 |
| Michele Mitchell | So you did, I mean, because you came back. You told me about how you left Dillard and how Mr. Jordan wanted you for Weeks Island. | 2:02 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Yes. | 2:09 |
| Michele Mitchell | So you started that in 1937? | 2:10 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | '37, 1937. I'm just thinking about this, when I was telling you about Mr. Jordan and football. There's one thing I didn't tell you. In 19—Well, I went into service in 1943 and I didn't come back out of service until 1946. I got out in '46, but the school was shut. It was in April, so school closed. | 2:13 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | In the fall of '46 I didn't know whether I wanted to go back to teaching or not, and I certainly wasn't going back for what I was getting when I went into the service. | 3:12 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | I decided to open up a little business, put into effect a hobby that I had, that of making pictures, photography. So I opened a little shop and then when it came time for contract negotiations, I went back to the superintendent and talked about my job because he had to give me my job back if I wanted it, you see? That was a part of the draft program at whatever job you had. If you were drafted into the service, you got the job back when you came back out of the service. | 3:33 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | So I went to him to talk about the job. I had been making $80 a month, so I told him I couldn't work for less than $125 a month, 12 months in a year. They'd gone to 12 months then. | 4:26 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | "Oh, I can't. Don't see how I can give you that." | 4:49 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | I said, "Well, that's it," but I also told Mr. Jordan that I wasn't coming back unless I got $125 a month. | 4:57 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | A few days after that, the superintendent called me. He had the contract all drawn up for $125 a month, gave it to me to sign. I said, "I'm not going to sign this until I see what contract you got for my wife." (both laugh) | 5:14 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Well, he had her down there still getting $80. That's what she was getting when I was in the service. So I said, "Well, since you paying her $80 and going to pay me 125," says, "you got a deal," and I went over and I signed the contract. | 5:34 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | In 1947, the next year, the very next year, the superintendent was having trouble with getting white teachers at the white school in Weeks Island. They wouldn't mind going out there to teach, but they didn't want to live out there because, I'll tell you, mosquitoes. Mosquitoes were hell out there. And those white teachers, he couldn't get white teachers to go. | 5:59 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | So what he did, he went and ordered a 1947 Ford station wagon at a school board, the school board. The superintendent ordered this 1947 Ford station wagon, and the cars were hard to get at that time. Coming after the war, you couldn't buy them. | 6:41 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | So they brought up the question and went to the attorney general, and the attorney general said that the school board could not buy a station wagon to transport white teachers, or teachers period. So he was in a predicament. He had a station wagon on order that he couldn't buy, and he still didn't have any way to get his teachers to Weeks Island. | 7:12 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | So he called me and asked me. He said, "Don't you drive to Weeks Island every day?" | 7:49 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | I said, "Yes, I drive. I drive every day." | 7:54 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | I had an old Chevrolet and I'd have to stop and remodel or rebuild it sometime on the road. See? So he say, "This is what I got. I got a problem." He said, "I've ordered a station wagon and the school board can't buy that station wagon, but I bought it to transport my teachers to Weeks Island. He said, "Would you buy that station wagon and transport my teachers to Weeks Island?" | 7:58 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | I said, "Sure, I'd be happy to." | 8:35 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | He said, "I'll pay you $25 a month for each teacher riding with you, and I got five going out to Weeks Island, so that's $125 a month I'll pay you extra. That's over salary." | 8:35 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | He went on to show me that gas, how much gas I would use, and I could make money on it. I told him—And I needed a station wagon. God knows I was happy to be in a station wagon, brand new too. I told him, I said, "Well, Mr. Porter," I had a superintendent named Porter, I said, "Mr. Porter, I'd be happy to do that, but you have seven teachers that going to Weeks Island." | 9:02 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | "No, it's just five." | 9:45 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | I said, "No, you got those five whites. But I'm a teacher and my wife's a teacher. Now, if you pay me for seven teachers to ride, why, we got a deal." | 9:48 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | "Okay, I'll go." | 10:00 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | It was against the law for him to pay for any teachers to ride to go to work, but they got around the law and he was willing to get around it, wanted to get around it just for his white teachers, you see? | 10:08 |
| Michele Mitchell | Yeah. | 10:21 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | And no, but I did that until, oh, I guess—Let's see, I bought this—I wore that '47 station wagon out. I bought a '53 station wagon, and then in 1955 I said I wanted to buy a car. And by that time, they had opened a road where, from near to Weeks Island, which was 18 miles compared to the 40 miles. You see? And naturally, when they cut the distance down, why he cut the amount of money that he was paying down. | 10:21 |
| Michele Mitchell | Right. | 11:01 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | You see? And I agreed with him. That was right because it wasn't costing me nothing. So I told him to, since the road was good, the white teachers wanted to ride to work, let them drive their car, buy a car and drive it. That's when I stopped. I bought a—I told him I was getting rid of the station wagon and I was going to buy an automobile. | 11:02 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | You see, I couldn't get away because any time I'd make a demand on Mr. Jordan, that demand was granted by the school board, and I couldn't let him down by just leaving anyway. | 11:31 |
| Michele Mitchell | But the station wagon, that '47 station wagon. | 11:52 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Uh-huh? | 11:55 |
| Michele Mitchell | They paid for it or you paid for it? | 11:56 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | No, I had to pay for it, but they gave me—I mean, I made enough money to, oh, I paid for the station wagon in less in just about a year's time. | 11:58 |
| Michele Mitchell | That's not a bad deal at all. | 12:07 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | No, see? And I was making, I think, seven times 25. That's $175 a month. The station wagon, I wasn't paying more than about $125 a month on the station wagon, and the other $50 I'd take care of my gas and tires and everything else, you see? And then I got a chance to go to school free because before that, the old car was costing me like everything. | 12:09 |
| Michele Mitchell | Is it the same car? You told me earlier about how the roads used to wash out going to Weeks Island? The old Chevrolet that you had was the car that you were driving then? | 12:48 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Yes. | 12:57 |
| Michele Mitchell | And what year was it? The Chevrolet? | 12:58 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | The first, let's see, first car I bought was the—I mean, the Chevrolet was a '35, I think. No, yeah, '35. That's what it was. And I wore it out. When I got the station wagon, I thought I could do something with the Chevrolet and the junk dealer came and looked at it. I had to pay him $25 to haul it off instead of giving me something. Instead of giving me something for it, I had to pay him to take it off the land. | 13:02 |
| Michele Mitchell | Goodness. But when you had to drive 40 miles to go out there, how would you have to do it? Because if they cut it down to 18, what was the old way that you would have to go? | 13:57 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | The old road that I'd have to go to 40 miles. I had to go from here to Jeanerette, and then from Jeanerette to Glencoe, that's on the road, going on out, and go on out to Louisa, which is quite a distance. And the road was—The roads were bad. And then come back to Weeks Island. But with the new road, the new road went through the swamp and went directly to Weeks Island. That was just 18 miles. | 14:22 |
| Michele Mitchell | When you first started at Weeks Island in 1937, well, I'm curious about a couple of things. What made you decide not to stay in New Orleans? And what did you think of the school out in Weeks Island when you first got there? | 15:01 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Well, I had no reason to stay in New Orleans because I didn't like New Orleans for a place to live. My ties were in New Iberia. My family, my mother was here and everything I knew was here. So I wanted to come back. If I was going to teach, then I wanted to come back here and teach. | 15:20 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Another thing that—why I wanted to come back to New Iberia is because when I finished high school, I had taken—We had what was a teacher training course, and those of us that graduated got a teacher certificate. And with that teacher certificate, all my other classmates went on into teaching right after high school, you see? I chose to go to college. I didn't want to teach. And after graduation, the superintendent offered me a job in teaching. So I said, "Well, I got it in made. I'll come back here and I'll get a job." But he first told me he didn't have anything for me, you see? | 15:51 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | That's my real reason for coming back to New Iberia. And Weeks Island, when I got there, it was a disappointment in that there was no school. I had never been out there before. It was in the church. | 16:50 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | I knew several of the people that lived out there, but they were all strangers to me. But there was a need for education out there. And there was seemingly a desire on the part of the people that they have somebody that would really be interested in education of their children. | 17:18 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | I don't know how long the school had been there before I went to work there, but it had been there for a long time because I know—I knew some of the teachers that had worked out there. And at the time that I went to Weeks Island, only one student had finished the elementary school at Weeks Island, gone on to high school and then went to college and got a college degree. Most of them worked. Most of the children, that aspiration of the young men, the boys, was not to get old enough to work in the mine, but to get big enough to work in the mine. | 18:08 |
| Michele Mitchell | When would they go work in the mine? How old would they be? | 19:17 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | It didn't matter how old you were. It is just big enough, you see? And the girls to work in some of those white people's kitchens or the bosses. See? | 19:22 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | And you had some of those people out there that lived, those bosses, and would even name their children after to gain favor with the boss. Whole family named after the boss's folk, you see? And one of the reasons was that it was isolated. | 19:44 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | The high school in New Iberia was 40 miles away. The high school in St. Mary's Parish in Franklin was 30 some miles away, you see? And there was no such thing as bus transportation. You either had to get somebody to bring you to school every day and pick you up in the evening or go and live with somebody where there was a high school. And the families and other students were interested enough in education to pay for the children to stay in New Iberia so they could attend the high school, see? | 20:24 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | In the first place, there wasn't an interest. And in the second place, there wasn't the money because even though that was a salt mining community, those people were not making any money. Would you believe it that I stayed at Weeks Island for two years? | 21:24 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | I couldn't afford to come home but every two weeks. I'd come home on Saturday and go back on Sunday. I would come up Friday night if we could get somebody to bring us, and go back Sunday afternoon. If I couldn't get anybody to bring me from here, I'd have to catch the bus and I'd have to leave here 3:00 in the evening in order to catch a bus to go to Weeks Island to get there by 9:00 or 10:00 at night. They were just not making the money. But I stayed out there for two years, and I was guaranteed two meals and a place to stay, $10 a month. | 21:54 |
| Michele Mitchell | And you started out at $40 a month? | 22:41 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Huh? | 22:49 |
| Michele Mitchell | You started out at $40 a month. | 22:49 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | No, I started out at 55. | 22:51 |
| Michele Mitchell | 55? | 22:51 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Yeah. You see, as principal— | 22:55 |
| Michele Mitchell | Principal, teacher. | 22:59 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Yeah. But $10 a month and I had my own private room because, see, things were—I mean, the people weren't making any money, but they didn't have to spend that much money because the houses were used, provided by the company. They were the company's houses, you see? | 23:00 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | They didn't have electricity in them. They had water, but no electricity. And then through the years, they added electricity to the community. The church had electricity, but nothing else. No street lights, no lights in the homes. They went a number of years without it, but when they did add it, they abused it. | 23:34 |
| Michele Mitchell | How so? | 24:11 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Huh? | 24:12 |
| Michele Mitchell | What do you mean? | 24:13 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Oh, when they got electricity first, they put them on electricity and no meters, you see? | 24:14 |
| Michele Mitchell | Oh, okay. | 24:22 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | All right. (Mitchell laughs) | 24:23 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | They reared hogs out there. And those Negroes would put a light so the hog could eat at night, a 200 watt bulb. (both laugh) And so the hog could do at night. He's growing and getting fat faster. (both laugh) | 24:26 |
| Michele Mitchell | When did they get electricity? What year was it about? | 24:59 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Let me see. '37. They got electricity about just before the war, '41, '42. Yeah. | 25:02 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | They ran up such a bill on the company, the company had to get meters to put on the houses (laughs). And refused—they used to buy the bulbs, the company would—you'd buy the bulbs at the company, you see? They had a store out there, but the company sold a lot of things cheaper than you could buy it in the store. So the company decided they would no longer sell 200 watt bulbs. They cut out the 200 watt bulbs (laughs) and finally cut out the 100 watt bulbs. So if you go to the company and buy, you couldn't buy but a 75 watt. (laughs) You can't keep down that electric like this. (both laugh) | 25:20 |
| Michele Mitchell | Do you think that the Depression in any way affected that community? | 26:05 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | The Depression? Yes. You see, when I went out there in '37, they were just coming out of the Depression. | 26:15 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Yes, the Depression had hurt them severely because the economy of the island depended on the salt company and the demand for salt wasn't as great, you see? | 26:24 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | And you had three salt mines in this area competing. You had Avery Island, Jefferson Island, and Weeks Island. And those salt mines, just looking on a map you might say that they were far apart, but we could stand on the hill at Weeks Island and look across to the west and see the smoke coming from Avery Island and Jefferson Island. | 26:45 |
| Michele Mitchell | Really? | 27:27 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Yes. On a clear day, that's how close they were. | 27:27 |
| Michele Mitchell | Did Jefferson Island and Avery Island, did they have school rooms before Weeks Island did? | 27:35 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Schools? Yes. They had little shacks, you see? Yeah, but the schools never—Because of the isolation of Weeks Island, the number of students were larger. The numbers were larger. Yeah, the enrollment was larger at Weeks Island because everybody lived out there. At Avery Island, Avery Island was just about seven miles from New Iberia, and many of the men go to work. They live in New Iberia. They go to work at—Jefferson Island is the same thing. A few people lived at Jefferson Island, but most of the men working at Jefferson Island came from New Iberia. Avery Island had a community. They have, still have to a small extent, housing for the people. | 27:40 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | But you had two big industries out there. You had the salt mine and the McIlhenney Tabasco Pepper plant that employed people, but most of the people, men working out there, they commute every day. | 29:04 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | But at Weeks Island, it wasn't like that. After they got this new road, then the company said, "Well, it's too expensive for us to keep up all these houses," so they closed the village because with the new roads, men could go back and forward to work. Most of the workers that were at Weeks Island that were displaced, I mean when they closed the village, they went to Jeanerette to live. Most of them ended up at Lydia and eventually they to moved the church from Weeks Island to Lydia, and it's out there now. They have a nice church out there now. They improved it. And those two classrooms that were built on the site, they're still there. Put brick around them, but they're still there. | 29:25 |
| Michele Mitchell | Yeah? | 30:34 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Yeah. The company gave, and many of those people, they gave them the house and then paid to move it off. So that's why I went to Weeks Island, what I found at Weeks Island. It was a dismal place, but through the years the interest that the parents showed in education made me stay. We had students. Every year we'd send students. I mean they provided, after they got the short road, they put bus transportation out there and our graduates would come here down from high school, and you could count on eight of the best 10, top 10 in the class, you could count on 10 of them coming from Weeks Island. We had some good students out there. | 30:39 |
| Michele Mitchell | Yeah? | 31:51 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | We had some good ones. Right now, I have in the Iberia Parish, we have one school board member, the supervisor of transportation, the principal of the Anderson Street Middle School, the principal of the Louisville Elementary School, the guidance counselor in [indistinct 00:32:50] in Jeanerette High School, a guidance counselor in Jeanerette Middle School. All of those are my students that I had at Weeks Island. And when I went out there, only one student had ever gone to college. | 31:51 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Yes. We also have one student that, well, we have some that are retired principals, but we have another one, Frank Francis. I think he's at—I don't know. I'm a little confused on those schools, but Wiley, Wiley College. I don't know if Wiley's still in operation, but I know it was in that Wiley Bishop. He was the librarian over there. He's been librarian at Texas. He was librarian at Texas Southern for a while. He was librarian at Prairie View for a while. And the last time I talked to him, he told me he was over at Wiley or Wiley College, I believe. But anyway, I know Wiley and Bishop merged and they was still over there. But we've had some terrific students that were turned out there, and that talent was just being lost before I went out there. | 33:10 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | I don't claim credit for it as being responsible for it, but by just insisting that they not go to work as soon as they're big enough, we were able to get them to go to school, educate them. | 34:40 |
| Michele Mitchell | I'd like to ask you a question Mr. Auguster. Would it be possible? I don't know how much time you have. Would it be possible for me to schedule another interview with you? | 35:16 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Sure. | 35:26 |
| Michele Mitchell | Because I would really like to spend some more time. | 35:30 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Okay. I mean that's all right. I mean, I got plenty of time. | 35:32 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | My time is usually my time, and most of my time is, well, I volunteer, for example. | 35:37 |
| Michele Mitchell | Okay. It's July 21st, 1994, and this is a continuation of an interview with Mr. Edran Auguster. I'm just curious, sir, you told me last time, when you went out to Weeks Island that they wanted a man principal? | 0:03 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Mm-hmm. | 0:19 |
| Michele Mitchell | Were a lot of principals in schools, women, or how many principals were men? | 0:20 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | On the whole, the parish seemed to have been shifting from women principals to men principals. However, in the Black schools, since most of them were one-room schools, two-room schools, they were principal teachers, and they were women, you see? Only in the larger schools, like the city schools were men. But they did that. They were shifting to men principals, but wasn't the reason that I selected at Weeks Island. It's just because of, well, other things other than teaching that had put the company against women, you see, breaking up homes, and things like that. | 0:26 |
| Michele Mitchell | Okay. I'm wondering a little bit about your role as a principal, and what sort of leadership role have you played in the community. Because it sounds like you— | 1:55 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Well— | 2:06 |
| Michele Mitchell | —weren't afraid to speak your mind. | 2:06 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Yeah, this community was—I guess you would say that my activities in community started when I came to, or rather before I came to New Iberia as a principal. But I was living in New Iberia at that time, while working at Weeks Island. We were involved with a number of issues in the community that affected Black people. For example, you had a city park, but it was strictly White. You had no park for Blacks, no playgrounds for Blacks, everything was for the White, and the Blacks were not allowed to go there. | 2:08 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Well, we organized community civic, what we called civic leagues. And we went on and approached the city council for these things, that we were entitled to them. That was before the Civil Rights Movement actually started. | 3:28 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | And by going to them, and making demands, why they had began to provide some of those things. We found that a lot of these stores where Negroes purchased things, Negro was patronized. They would have such things like water fountains, and a big sign of, "White." If you were Black, you couldn't drink at a water fountain. They didn't want you to drink that, and they didn't provide any for Blacks, see? So, that's another movement that we took on, and were successful in that the owners put these water fountains for Blacks. | 3:54 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | We also demand, if you had a restaurant for White, then if you didn't want us in there, provide one for us, see? And probably one of our biggest achievements as a civic group, one of them was the City of New Iberia passed—Well, we started agitating for a swimming pool for Blacks, because you had one in for Whites. The City had purchased land for a park, the park right out there. And we wanted a swimming pool, because children from here would have to go to Abbeville, where there was a swimming pool Blacks could use, or go to Lafayette, or somewhere else. And a couple of them got drowned swimming in canals, you see? So, we demanded a swimming pool. | 5:03 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | So, the City went to the people, and asked a bond election, first to repair the swimming pool in City Park, which was for White, and to build a swimming pool in the West End Park for Blacks, since we were segregated. After the bond issue passed, they started fixing up the White swimming pool, City Park. And every time you'd read about it in the paper, they found something else wrong with City Park that had to be fixed. They hadn't anticipated that expense. | 6:25 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | So, what they were actually doing was taking away from the money that had been appropriated for West End Park to fix up City Park. And our city group went to the City, and demanded that they start work on West End swimming pool. And when we raised enough sand, okay, they went on, and got a contract to build the pool in West End. But they had spent some of the money, so their plans had to be altered on the West End swimming pool. We wanted members on the Park Commission, so that Blacks could be able to share in those plans, and have a voice in how the money was spent. Of course, that was just before the Civil Rights, or well, during the time of the Civil Rights Movement. | 7:35 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | I was a spokesman, and when the Daily Iberian came out with it, because I had asked for Black representation on the park board, the Daily Iberian carried it that "Edran Auguster, principal of J.B. Livingston School, demand integration of City Park." And I didn't ask for integration of the park. I asked the integration of board. | 9:14 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | All right, Louisiana had passed a law that any teacher could be fired if they advocated integration. So, this happened on Thursday, I think, when the superintendent was out of town. When he got to town, he called me on a Saturday. The school board office doesn't open on Saturday, meet him up at the school board office. So, I went, and he told me he had read the article in the paper, and he knows the laws about advocating for segregation. | 9:54 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | I told him, I said, "Well, now first place, you know that law is being contested as unconstitutional. That's the first place. And second place, I'm a private citizen. And I went there as a private citizen, and I can talk as a private citizen." "Yes, but they used the name of the school." I said, "Well, I don't have any control over the Daily Iberian. The Daily Iberian put the name of the school in there, because they didn't want anybody to misunderstand, or not know who was doing the talking." Well, he agreed with me that the lawsuit was being contested, and that most likely it would be declared unconstitutional, which eventually happened, you see? So, that did that. | 10:41 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | We also took part in defense of people that were accused of doing things that we know they hadn't done, you see, which was really nothing but prejudice or racism. And we spent our money defending those people. The first time that I ever sat on the first floor of the parish courtroom was in one of those defenses, where we had hired a Black lawyer out of New Orleans to come and defend the doctor. And we just took our seats in the courthouse on the first floor. Otherwise, Negroes had to go in the balcony, you see? The only ones that would be down there were ones that are being tried, you see? All the rest, that was reserved for White. Negroes went in the Jim Crow balcony. | 11:45 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | But in New Iberia, the City officials, parish officials, and any other White that was in authority, they tried to keep any Civil Rights Movement out of the city. And they intended to do that, or they did that through intimidation, you see, violent intimidation. We had an incident here where the school board, to help the war effort, they- | 13:24 |
| Michele Mitchell | Which war? | 14:40 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | World War II, World War II. To help the Manpower Commission, they opened a welding school. But that welding school was open to Blacks—I mean, to Whites only. Because you had shipyards down here that were hiring welders, and paying big salaries. I mean, big wages, if you could weld. We had one Negro, who was not educated, but he had worked all of his life with the Conrads. The Conrads owned a big rice mill here in New Iberia, and one of the Conrads is a historian at USL, and he wrote books on the history of New Iberia. | 14:42 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | So, when this Lawrence Fields talked to those people, evidently, they wrote a letter to the Man Power Committee—I mean, to the War Production Board. And the War Production board sent a representative down here to investigate the superintendent, because Lawrence had applied for admission to the School of Welding, and they had refused to let him attend, because he was Black. Well, this man from—representatives of the War Projection Board came down here, and the superintendent called the principal of the Black school, and told him of this meeting. And he wanted the principal to get around, and get some Black leaders to meet at his office at 10:00 on that particular morning. | 15:59 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | When we got there, Professor Simon came by and asked me to attend. And when we got there, we didn't know what we were going there for, but it turned out that this representative from the War Production Board was there, and the superintendent wanted us to come there, and say what all he had done for Blacks other than the welding school. And in the process, he brought up about—He had established a blacksmith shop in the Negro high school to teach Negroes to be blacksmiths. And I was a fool. I mean, I was young, but I was a fool, you see? | 17:13 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | And I told him. I said, "It's true. Everything that you say, all the band—I mean, hiring a band director, a man to teach music." And they had hired Bunk Johnson, who was at one time a great trumpet player. He claimed that Louis Armstrong taught him to play trumpet. And he was good, but he passed his time. | 18:16 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | I said, "You said about the blacksmith shop." I said, "That was good, but with a blacksmith, the blacksmith works on the farm. He shoes horses and mules when it rains. But when the sun shines, he gets out there, and plows just like the rest of them." I said, "We don't want that. We want welding, where you can go into the defense projects, and make some money while the money was being made." | 18:48 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | And I was rewarded for that. I was rewarded by just three months before that happened. I had been reclassified, and that was a part of the deal that brought my wife to Weeks Island. I had been reclassified from 3A to 3B, which put me further back down the line of being drafted. But automatically, I jumped from 3B to 1A, you see? And how I know he did it, I went to him, and told him, I said, "Listen, I've been ordered to report for physical as the superintendent of the school," you see? I told him I reported to—"Well, we don't—The school board will not ask for a deferment." I told him, I said, "I didn't ask for a deferment. I said, I'm simply telling you that I had been ordered to report for physical examination for the draft." | 19:29 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Well, I went into the service, but there was another group. I mean, really, the NAACP continued the fight to get this welding school in New Iberia for Blacks. And the superintendent had been ordered by the War Production Board to provide welding for Blacks, but he didn't want to bring them into the White school. So, he decided that he would establish a welding school here for Blacks. | 20:45 |
| Michele Mitchell | This was Porter? | 21:35 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Porter, yes, mm-hmm. But he was dragging his feet. So, the NAACP had a meeting, and they wrote a letter to the superintendent about his delay in getting this welding school started. But in the letter, the writer of the letter didn't begin it, "Honorable Lloyd Porter, Superintendent of Schools." He just put it, "Lloyd Porter." Porter was infuriated. And the next thing we know, this man, Leo Hardy, was ordered out of New Iberia by sundown. That Negro addressed the Superintendent of Schools just by his first name, Lloyd G. Porter, and didn't put Mr. on him? He had to go. Okay, so Lloyd Porter—I mean, Leo Hardy— | 21:36 |
| Michele Mitchell | Leo Hardy, now what did he do? | 23:20 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | He was the secretary that wrote the letter, you see? | 23:22 |
| Michele Mitchell | Of the NAACP? | 23:28 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Huh? | 23:33 |
| Michele Mitchell | He was the secretary of the NAACP? | 23:35 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | The NAACP, yes. | 23:35 |
| Michele Mitchell | Did he have a job in town? | 23:35 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | He was an insurance collector. | 23:35 |
| Michele Mitchell | Mm-hmm. | 23:35 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | But he wasn't originally from here. He had come here, and he was an activist, you see? So the group wanted somebody, who probably was able to stand up to them. So, they elected him secretary. Probably, if he had been from here, he would've known better. | 23:36 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | But Leo had some money in the credit union, and he had to get his money out of credit union before he left town, before he got out of town at sundown. So, he went to the secretary of the credit union and the president, because the secretary and the president had to sign a check. So, they gave him a check. That night, they watched Leo, and they caught Leo, and beat him up, because he hadn't gotten out of town before sundown. They searched him, and they found the check signed by a Herman Faulk. Herman Faulk was an ag teacher in Iberia Parish, and he was secretary of the credit union. Dr. IA Pearson, a local dentist, was the president. So, his name was on the check. When they saw that, they said, "Yeah, two others that's in cahoots with Leo Hardy." | 24:09 |
| Michele Mitchell | So, these were both Black men? | 26:04 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Huh? | 26:05 |
| Michele Mitchell | Herman Faulk, and IA Pearson were Black? | 26:07 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Oh, yes, they were Black. I mean, these are all Black organizations. So, they went and got Herman. They beat Herman, and drove him out of town. They beat Pearson, and made him leave town, because they were in cahoots with Leo Hardy. | 26:09 |
| Michele Mitchell | Because they had signed the check? | 26:34 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Yes, mm-hmm, because they found their names on that check. I was in the service at the time. And probably if I had been home, been here, I would've been in the gang too. There was a Negro doctor here by the name of Lewins Williams. I had gone to school with Lewins. Lewins was a very good friend of mine. | 26:34 |
| Michele Mitchell | How do you spell that, sir? | 27:05 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | L-E-W-I-N-S. | 27:06 |
| Michele Mitchell | Okay. | 27:06 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Dr. Lewins, after finishing medical school, came out here to practice medicine. He was told—I mean, when he came, he told us, at the drug store, that he wanted to practice medicine, but he wanted to give one day each week to community service, and he would do that through the health unit, Iberia Parish Health Unit. Along about the same time, the director of Iberia Parish Health Unit went into service. He was White. He went into service. Lewins took over the duties of the director. | 27:08 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | They reported to the sheriff and officials that Lewins was up there with those White nurses ordering them around. They reported even that they found one White nurse sitting on Lewins's desk, talking to him. | 28:30 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | So, while they were getting rid of Negroes, they went and they got Dr. Hugo M. Williams, and beat him, and drove him out of town. We had another doctor here, Dr. Scoggins. They went to get him, and they would go at night. They went to get him. He put the lights out, and opened the door, and told them to come on in. They didn't want to go in. They wanted him to come out. So, he said, "I'm not coming out there, but you come in," see? So they left him. But Scoggins, for his own safety, moved away from here. | 29:01 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | There was another Black doctor here, Dr. Eddie L. Darcy. Eddie Darcy had built up a terrific practice here. He had built a clinic, and was doing well here. This was in '40, or '43 and '44. Dorsey had come here in 1930 to set up a practice. He wanted to show, so he would buy the biggest cars he could find. Sometimes they barely could turn the corner, they were so long. So, he asked the sheriff for protection. The sheriff told him that he couldn't give him any protection. He couldn't assign—The law wouldn't allow him to sign a deputy for starters. So, Darcy left. | 30:05 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | In other words, they ran all the doctors out of Iberia at one time. While they were getting rid of what they call agitators. They got rid of the doctors, too. I was in the service when I heard about it. I had just left to be on a furlough, and my company commander wanted me to come back. I told him, "No, I talked to my family on the phone, and they are all right, so I don't want to go back." Because I wouldn't go back unless I had one of these Army pistols. And I said, "Now, if you give me one of those, I'll go." He said, "I can't do that." See, I had a very understanding commander that he really did like me, although I didn't like him for a long time. It was for years before we could get another doctor to come to New Iberia to practice. | 31:21 |
| Michele Mitchell | Were most of these doctors from out of town? | 32:38 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Yes. All of them were from out of town. There were none of them local. | 32:40 |
| Michele Mitchell | So, you went to school with Dr.— | 32:44 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Lewins Williams. That was in college. | 32:47 |
| Michele Mitchell | That was in college, after Straight, or Dillard? | 32:50 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Yeah, but he was originally—Straight and Dillard. But he lived in New Orleans. He was a native of New Orleans. Darcy was a native of Dallas, Texas. And I don't know where Scoggins were. Scoggins married a woman from here. But that was his second marriage. And— | 32:50 |
| Michele Mitchell | So— | 33:25 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | It was four years before we could get another doctor to come here. We were interested in getting doctors or some doctor here. Because as I told you, I worked at Pendleton's Drugstore, and Pendleton's Drugstore depended on the doctor. If there was no doctor, then Pendleton's Drugstore was nothing but a delivery service for the White drug stores. Because every time you'd go there for something, if you didn't have it, you'd have to run down—I would have to run down to the wholesale, and get something, or go to one of the other drug stores that buy one or two, because that's all he could pay for, you see? | 33:26 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | But when you had a doctor here, you did a lot of prescription work because you had the doctor's office right there in the drug store. And when the people go in there, and get a prescription, they come out, they just have it done there. | 34:23 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | But if you didn't have a doctor, then the White doctors got all the practice, and they went to a White drug store, you see? We've always been a people of—The White man's sugar is sweeter than the Black man's sugar. White man's medicine is better than the Black man's medicine. White man's ice is colder than the Black man's cold, you see? | 34:35 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | And right, now we have two swimming pools here, and you'll find that when this swimming pool is open for swimming, you have few swimmers come over here, many times, not enough to pay for the course of our opening the pool, you see? | 35:10 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | And if you don't have a certain amount, why, they close. They close it during that day. It takes 10 or 20 students, I mean, swimmers to pay for the lifeguards, and so forth. If only 10 come out there, they'll let them swim a little while, and then give them a rain check, you see? (laughs) "Come back later." | 35:37 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | But over at the White pool, across the bayou. Those Negroes flock over there, because their water over there is cooler than the water you have in West End Park, (both laugh) cooler and wetter. (both laugh) | 36:04 |
| Michele Mitchell | Did anybody agitate to bring any Black doctors back in the '50s? | 36:28 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Say what? | 36:33 |
| Michele Mitchell | During the '50s, did anybody try to get any Black doctors back into town, or they were just afraid to? | 36:34 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | We tried to get doctors to come back, but they wouldn't come. We had a one. Dr. Braden came here, but he was a New Orleans boy, and he was from a popular family in New Orleans, so that every weekend he was going back to New Orleans, where the good times were, you see? | 36:41 |
| Michele Mitchell | But he came down? | 37:09 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | He came down, and practiced here for a little while, you see? He'd come on Mondays, and practice through Fridays. But on Friday evenings, he would leave, and go on back to New Orleans. But we finally did get a woman, Dr. Chatters. | 37:10 |
| Michele Mitchell | Doctor, what's the last name? | 37:30 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Chatters, C-H-A-T-T-E-R-S. | 37:31 |
| Michele Mitchell | Chatters, mm-hmm. | 37:36 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | She was from New Orleans, but she was one of these, what they call, cocky women, you see? Came out here, and set up a practice, and was doing well. She had a wreck. She was wrong. But when the police came there, she balled them out, see? | 37:36 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | So that went against her record. Then she went up to the courthouse, the driver's license—Where you go and apply for your driver's license was in the courthouse at that time. So, she went up there to get her driver's license, and she stood around while the person that's supposed to issue the driver's license was standing up talking to another White woman. | 38:08 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | So, after waiting for, say, a length of time, she went over to him, and told him that she was there to get a license, and she didn't have time to stand around while he gossiped with this other woman. So, he hauled off, and slaps her, and arrested her for creating a disturbance in the courthouse. | 38:45 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | They set the trial, and since it happened to be in the courthouse, that was supposed to go to district court. Well, she claimed that he slapped her. He said he didn't. So, they set her date for trial. | 39:24 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Just before the trial, the city judge called Dr. Pendleton, and told Dr. Pendleton to come up to his office at 9:00 that. Well, Pendleton had been here through all the other turmoil, you see? So, he called me. He say, "As president of the Negro Civic Association, I wish you would go with me to see the judge." I said, "Are you sure that it was Judge Tilley that called you?" | 39:49 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | "Oh yes, I know Judge Tilley. I know his voice. That was Judge Tilley called." I said, "He wants you to come up there at 9:00 at night?" | 40:36 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | "Yes, that's the time he told me to come." I said, "Well, if he told me to come, and you're sure it was Judge Tilley—" I said, "I'll go with you." So, we went up there, and I'm telling you, when we got there, the police station was downstairs, and the judge's office was upstairs. | 40:44 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | And when we got there, it was dark, very poorly lighted. And we told the police what we were there for, and Judge Tilley told us. He said, "Judge Tilley is not here now, but I'll go upstairs, and put the light on, and you can go, and sit up there, and wait for him." I said, "Okay." We went on and we sat. Just about 9:00, here come Judge Tilley. | 41:07 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | And Judge Tilley told us he asked us to come, because they had decided that if they would transfer the charges against Dr. Chatters from District Court to City Court. And if there was a penalty, if she's found guilty, why, it wouldn't be anything, you see? But if it went to District Court, why, it could be a big fine or something like that, you see? | 41:39 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | So, he wanted Dr. Pendleton to talk to Dr. Chatters, and get her to agree, and come up to City Court, and I guess, plead guilty, and nothing would be other than that record would show that she admitted that she had disturbed the peace, but nothing about the man slapping her. So, Dr. Pendleton told him—He said, "Well, I'm sorry, Judge, but did you read the paper today?" He said, "What?" I said that she said the—Dr. Chatters has filed a suit against the sheriff and his deputy that slapped her, and I can't make her take her mind back on that. So, that ended that discussion. | 42:30 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | When Dr. Chatters's trial came up in District Court, that was the time that we hired a lawyer from New Orleans, and came here to plead her case. Of course, everything was set. They found her guilty, and they found the White man innocent of slapping her, because he had a White witness there, and Dr. Chatters didn't have any witness. So, we lost that case. | 43:41 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | She wanted to appeal, but she didn't have the money or didn't want to spend the money. And the Negro Civic Association wouldn't put out the money that the lawyer wanted to appeal the case, you see, appeal the verdict. That was one thing. And then, we also found out that Dr. Chatters had married a man, a doctor, who was still in school from The Bahamas or someplace like that. And he had told her that as soon as he finished his internship, that he was going back home, and she was going with him. So, why put out all that money for a doctor that'd be here maybe six months, and then be gone somewhere else? So, we didn't spend the money. That's why it was never appealed. | 44:20 |
| Michele Mitchell | What year was this? | 45:26 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Dates and years, I'm kind of hazy on, but that was in the '50s, you see? Because those doctors were driven out '43 or '44. And he stayed about six, seven years before another doctor would take a chance coming here. We had one to come here and stay, and that's Dr. Diggs. He lives right over there, but he does not take part in any civic activity, you see? His wife will take part, but not him. He would even go to church most of the time to see if he might get involved. | 45:32 |
| Michele Mitchell | So Dr. Diggs came in the '50s, the late '50s? | 46:36 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Huh? | 46:39 |
| Michele Mitchell | Dr. Diggs came in the late '50s? | 46:40 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Oh, he came, yes, in the middle '50s. | 46:43 |
| Michele Mitchell | Middle '50s? | 46:44 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Yeah. | 46:45 |
| Michele Mitchell | After Dr.— | 46:46 |
| Michele Mitchell | This whole thing about the doctors, it's amazing how it started. The way that you told me how it started is amazing. | 0:06 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Well, that's actually what happened, but that was a typical pattern, to intimidate and eliminate anything that showed that the Negroes were trying to be White or trying to be equal to the White. | 0:13 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | We had another incident, and this was later on. This was around 1955, I think. After the war, the government set up trade schools for veterans, and veterans could go to these trade schools and learn a trade. The government didn't set them up. They authorized the money, they gave the money, but individuals set those trade schools up. And there was one here on Hopkins Street that taught carpentry work, and veterans could go to there. The government would pay them for going to school to learn to be carpenters. You had another one with cabinetmaking. The Kings, Thomas King opened that. | 0:48 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | And the veterans took advantage of it because they didn't have any work. There wasn't any work for them, so if they could go there and get that little money that the government would give them every month, when they would graduate, they would give them all the tools that the carpenter needed. And most of them went right to Compton and pawned them as soon as they got them. They went to school just to be going to get the check. some of them did learn and become good carpenters. | 2:13 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | You had a young man, Joseph Hardy. He was teaching at that school. He was from Lafayette. The men, they wanted to vote. They wanted to vote before they went into the service. They weren't allowed to vote even if they were in the service. Iberia Parish, you were supposed to be able, if you were in the service, all you had to do was write the Registrar of Voters, and they would have to register you, and you would be able to vote in national elections, even though you were in the service. You're a registered voter, and you could vote. I wrote. | 2:56 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | They never would answer me. These men, a group of them decided to go up to the courthouse to register. They let them get to the front door, but they turned them around and sent them back. Then, in 1955, five prominent citizens of New Iberia decided to go and try to register to vote. Those five were Whitney Bosland, who lived at Avery Island. That's A private island. Reverend R. King, who was a pastor of the Cottrell Chapel Christian Methodist Episcopal Church. (phone rings) Another was Reverend F. M. Boley. | 3:58 |
| Michele Mitchell | Do you need to get that? Do you need get that? | 5:23 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Let it ring. He'll call back. | 5:34 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Reverend Boley was pastor of the Mount Calvary Baptist Church and also President of the Sixth District Baptist Association. Another was Gus Barone. Gus Barone owned a funeral home and had been in insurance business, particularly the insurance connected with his burial, the funeral home. | 5:40 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | And of course I went, I was one of the five. We went up to the Registrar of Voters and told him we had come to register. Well, he assigned each one of us to a different table so that we wouldn't be able to help each other. And we filled the forms out, gave us the forms, and you fill the forms out. He went and whispered something to one of the women working in the registrar's office. | 6:19 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | And a few minutes after that, five deputies came up and lined up against the wall, swinging their Billy's. After we didn't run, he completed the registration forms. They took the registration forms and looked at them. Reverend Boley did not know the precinct he was in, but he had asked me. I knew what precinct I was in, and Reverend Boley lived on one side of Persian Street, and I lived on the north side. He lived on the south side. But Persian Street was the dividing line. | 7:14 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | So told him he couldn't register him because he didn't know the precinct that he was living here. And then after a while talking, told him what precinct he was in. So when they finished checking all of us, he said, "Everything's all right, but before I can register you, you have to bring two registered voters here to identify." So Reverend Boley told him, he said, "That deputy there, he knows me. Deputy Proshow looked at Reverend Boley. | 8:04 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | He said, "Yeah, boy, I know you, but I can't vouch for you."So Gus Barone got into an argument with him. "I'm going to go and see if I can get to Whites to come up here and vouch for me." The Registrar of Voters told him, "They don't have to be White, they can be Black." He said, "If you don't have any Blacks registered, how am I going to get Blacks to come up here and vouch for me?" Said, "I'm going to see. We going to see about this." And we left. | 8:42 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Before Gus Barone got to his house, they had called his house telling him to get out of town before sundown. Gus Barone had been for a long time, the only person that would volunteer to be president of the NAACP. After they drove those doctors out, the NAACP had to go on underground. All communications would come with no return address. | 9:41 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Most of our communications, we'd get them through the state president, who is Mrs. Combry, who owned a funeral home in Lake Charles. And she would write no return address. And when we would write to her, we had to write everything as a personal letter to her because she felt that these people might be watching the mail and see if anything was coming from the NAACP or going to NAACP. So we had to do that. I was secretary, and that's the way we communicated with Mrs. Combry and the NAACP. | 10:35 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | So Gus Barone, when they called him five times and told him about getting out of town, he immediately got on the phone and called Thurgood Marshall. All right, Thurgood Marshall told him, "If they told you to get out of town for your personal safety, do that. And give me a little time to get this thing straight." So Gus Barone had another Black leader in New Iberia, Arthur Lily Jr, to take him to Lafayette, put him on the train in Lafayette. And he went to Lake Charles to wait, because Thurgood Marshall had told him to, wherever he would go, to get back in touch with him and let him know where he was so that he could communicate with him. | 11:30 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | In the meantime, Gus Barone was a mason. So Reverend Heard who was pastor of the Methodist Church, St. James Methodist Church heard about it. So he went to the president of the police jury, who was also a mason, and told him what it was all about. That was on a Friday afternoon that this happened. Saturday, Reverend Boley, it was in the summer, hot. So Reverend Boley sat on his porch until late at night because it was hot in the house, sit out there and get cool. Reverend Boley told me he saw a man walking backward and forward in the shadows across the street from his house. There was a high fence there of a lumber yard. He said he saw this man and he wondered about it. When we got the news, when Gus Barone told us the news, I personally went to all of those five that were with us except Whitney Boldman, because Whitney Boldman lived on Avery Island and they weren't going to go out there and bother Whitney. | 12:49 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | So we all said that we weren't going anywhere. We going to stay here. They hadn't told us anything, so we weren't, weren't leaving. I found out later, Reverend Boley found out later that Thurgood Marshall and notified the FBI and that was an FBI agent patrolling that area in case they should come there, try to run Reverend Boley out or run me, because we were right close together. But they refused to let us register to vote. A few months after refusing to let us vote, running Gus Barone out of town, the superintendent of public works in the city of New Iberia told men working for him, "You can go up and vote now. Go up and register to vote. I want you to go up and register to vote." | 14:31 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | He went downtown and told Frank Moore, who was a retired teacher, "Frank, why don't you all get some of these people down here to go up and register to vote?" Well, Frank wasn't an activist. Frank just forgot about it. Finally we had one, a man that worked under John Rochelle. John Rochelle was the Superintendent. Abraham Roy. He was a little plumber and he worked for the city in the maintenance department or public works department, making sewage repairs. So he had the courage to go up and try to register. | 16:01 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | That Friday evening the Iberian headline was "Abraham Roy become the first Negro to register to vote." Saturday morning couldn't come fast enough because they were getting ready before an election. And the Registrar of Voters office stayed open until 12 o'clock on Saturday. 55 of us were able to be registered that morning. Is that somebody or thunder? | 17:07 |
| Michele Mitchell | That's thunder. | 17:53 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | To be registered that morning. And to show you just how they changed. While I was up there registering, a White woman came in to register and she wanted to cut the line, get out, get in front. The Registrar of Voter asked her what she wanted, and she told him that she wanted to register to vote. I heard him tell her, "Listen lady, you have had all your life to register to vote and these people had never had a chance to register. So you come back next week and register these." I heard him see that. | 17:56 |
| Michele Mitchell | This is in 1955? | 18:48 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | '55 or early '56. | 18:50 |
| Michele Mitchell | Oh really? | 18:56 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Yes. I wondered why. Because people that registered that day, they didn't have to know anything. They didn't have to fill out the registration form. The forms were being filled out for them. The only thing about it I found out afterwards by working at the polls, some of those people after the name they had "I." | 18:57 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | So I inquired from the registered portal. I said, "What's this I is for?" It was illiterate. (laughs) So I started laughing because those people, I had one woman working at the polls as a commissioner, and yet they had her down there as illiterate. | 19:36 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | I told one woman that I had gone to school with and they had her down there as illiterate. So she went up there to find out why they had put as illiterate. (laughs) They told her, "Well, when you registered, you didn't sign the application form." She said, "They didn't ask me to sign it." And those people that didn't sign the application, they just said they couldn't read and write. So they put them—(both laugh) | 19:59 |
| Michele Mitchell | Oh God. | 20:30 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | But anyway, they went on and they registered them. I found out afterwards why less than six months earlier you were born the Blacks and six months later they didn't even have to fill out the application form. They didn't have to have anything. All they had to do was go up there and say they wanted to register. I found out why. There was an election in the fall of '56, national election in Louisiana. The Republicans were making headway in getting people to join the Republican Party. A lot of Whites were switching from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party. So the State Central Committee decided that we got to do something to get some Democrats in here. So they opened the polls up to Negroes, and you didn't say what party you belonged to. You automatically were put in the Democratic Party. | 20:36 |
| Michele Mitchell | So they filled out these forms— | 22:08 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | They filled out forms— | 22:09 |
| Michele Mitchell | —were literate to register them in the Democratic Party. | 22:11 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Yes. So you were Democrat. You registered, you were Democrats. You didn't have any choice of parties. So that's how Negroes got to vote in the Iberia Parish. | 22:13 |
| Michele Mitchell | Was Gus Barone ever able to come back to town? Barone? | 22:32 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Oh yes. Barone came back by Sunday. | 22:49 |
| Michele Mitchell | So he did come back. Okay. | 22:51 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | By Sunday he came back. Yes. I didn't tell you that. Yeah. They got busy with the president of the parish council, what did the police jury at that time. Howard Levy was the President. | 22:53 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | They got back there. They called the sheriff and told him to lay off. And called Thurgood Marshall and told him, Thurgood Marshall to tell Gus Barone to come on back home. It wasn't anything going to happen to him. And Gus came back that Sunday, Sunday afternoon. But it was just the intimidation. And that is how they lessened any civil rights activity in Iberia Parish through intimidation. If you activist and try to start something, they run you out of town, get you out of the way. That started way back there during the war with this. | 23:12 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | And incidentally, I didn't tell you that, I didn't say that this sheriff that was in office when all of this happened—he was taking a bath in his bathtub, but he forgot to take his pistol off, take a bath with his pistol on him. He slipped in the bathtub, pistol went off and killed him. The Iberian (laughs) sheriff killed by accident. (laughs) They wouldn't say he committed suicide. (laughs) He was taking a bath and his pistol went off. Man going to take a bath with his pistol on him. His name was Gilbert Ozam, committed suicide. | 24:16 |
| Michele Mitchell | When did that happen? Did that happen later? | 25:32 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | That happened while he was in office in the four years when he was in office when those doctors were driven out of town. That's after he drove those doctors out. He lived a few months after that, or maybe a year, but he accidentally killed himself. | 25:35 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | The sad thing about it, all of this that we went through in order to get the vote, we have too many Blacks that are still not registered to vote. And so many of them that are registerable, that won't even take the time to vote. They will come and vote when there's a big election like the sheriff. And most of them, when they come, they've been bought. | 26:15 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | They come because the sheriff, this candidate or that candidate has given a barbecue for him, or "He's a good man because he give a barbecue for us, or he bought us a lot of beer," and they'll go and vote. But generally, I work at polls of every election and the young people, the older people will vote, but the younger people won't come. Probably they don't know what we had to go through in order to get the vote, and they've never been able to realize the importance of that vote. | 27:00 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | We had an incident here not too long ago at our pressing governor, Edwin Edwards. And you had a David Duke candidate. Well, everybody knew David Duke had been an ex-Klansman. He was a racist. And his platform, whereas it might have been say legitimate, it was aimed to a great extent against Blacks. | 27:55 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | He was opposed to welfare. He was opposed to aid to dependent children and a few—The Negro would stay home because they felt that David Duke didn't have a chance. But in Iberia Parish, David Duke got the majority. A big majority of people voted for David Duke, but they were White. When the second primary came out, they got the Negro vote out and David Duke got a sound beat because Negroes went to the polls. | 28:52 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | But unless it's something like that, they don't go. And David Duke didn't stand a chance against Edwin Edwards in the second primary or the general election. They repudiated David Duke all over the state. And it was largely due to the number of Blacks, not only in Iberia Parish, but state that were opposed to David Duke. They voted for Edwards. Swept him in the office. | 29:49 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Now, any other phase you interested in, the Occupations or people around here, or would it be something else that you might want to— | 30:41 |
| Michele Mitchell | There's actually— | 30:57 |
| Michele Mitchell | Mr. Auguster, what sort of benevolent societies were here? | 30:59 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Well, there were a number of them in this area. They were prompted by a need for medical attention. Many of these people worked on these plantations. And they were usually sick enough to see a doctor when the overseer felt they were sick enough. | 31:02 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | And then many of them were sharecroppers and they didn't have the money to go to the doctor, even though the doctors visits were just a dollar. The doctors would make office calls for $2. They didn't have it. So they band together and formed these benevolent societies. And as I tell you, there were many of them. And those benevolent societies gave them doctor, they paid their doctor and they bought the medicine for them, which was in compared to now nothing. And in each month those members were required to pay some of them 75 cents, some of them are dollar. Very few of them were more than a dollar. | 31:42 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | And they got a doctor and medicine when they were sick. They got a burial, funeral when they died. And above all they had a big funeral. And that's what they loved, big funeral. Because all the society members would have to go to the funeral. So you are sure of a big funeral. (both laugh) | 32:43 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | These benevolent societies prospered and they did help the people, their members. Plus they were the sole support of those drug stores, that Black drug stores in New Iberia. Because each month they would have a big bill with the insurance, with the drug stores. | 33:19 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | There was a little racket along with it in that the drug stores usually gave a little rebate to the marshal. He got his 10%. And then the presidents usually came by to get their little rebate. But they were doing it for just practically nothing to start off with. That Marshall, he was doing it for nothing. They didn't pay him that much. They paid him a little something, but it wasn't nothing to brag about. | 33:58 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | But those societies built, each one of them built them a hall to have their meetings in. And you had a number of them here. St Matthews Hall is still up there. Although there's practically nothing left to St. Matthew because when the inflation, the cost of medicine, the cost of doctor visits, they could no longer provide those services. So very few services now that benevolent societies can offer, and as a result people don't join them anymore. | 34:35 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | They can afford to buy insurance. That'll cost them a whole lot more, but give them more, so they join insurances now. Back in those days, the biggest insurance was the little weekly sick and accident insurance paid you $5 a week when you were sick and you had to pay maybe 25 cents a week premium. | 35:17 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Each one of these societies had had their own hall and they would have a turnout every year, give a big collection to the churches where they turned out. And St. Matthew did buy up a lot of land and they have a cemetery. They converted that land into a cemetery. And right now, St. Matthew is the only cemetery where Blacks are buried. Blacks can be buried in Memorial Park or the other cemeteries. But cemeteries and funerals to 99% of them, they're still segregated. We have two funeral homes here and they get 99 and nine, 10% of the Blacks that die. So they're still segregated. They don't get any Whites. The White funeral home get all the Whites. | 35:48 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | St. Matthew is the only cemetery that we have here other than church cemeteries. And most of these church cemeteries are not open to the general public for burials. For example, my church has a cemetery, but we'll sell grave sites only to members of our church or members of St. James Church. Or if you belong to another church or if you don't belong to any church, but you have somebody in your family buried in St. Paul's Cemetery, we'll sell you a grave site. But just to come in and die and get a grave site, you don't get it. | 37:20 |
| Michele Mitchell | So then there's a real benefit to belonging to a church too, | 38:15 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Huh? | 38:19 |
| Michele Mitchell | There's a benefit to belonging to a church? | 38:19 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Yeah. Yes. Mt. Calvary has a cemetery. They have one up here that's filled up and then they bought eight or 10 acres of land out in the country and opened a cemetery. The Catholic Church, St. Edwards has its own cemetery, but it has reached a point where they're going to have to go somewhere else because they don't have any place left. Don't have any space left. | 38:21 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Within 50 grave sites, St. Edwards would be filled there. I doubt if it's 50. They have mausoleum, but in that mausoleum, most of the crypts in the mausoleum are paid for before they build the mausoleum. So it's families that buy their vault in order to build the mausoleum. If you have enough money and want to spend it, you can still go into these big White cemeteries. They don't bother you if you have the money for burial. Now in the rural churches usually have their own cemetery. | 38:56 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | As I said, most of the benevolent societies had their own halls. When the Iberia Parish School Board was building schools and consolidating schools, that's before integration, and overcrowded. They would always go into these benevolent society halls, set up classes in there to teach the children, until they get classrooms. They didn't plan ahead as far as Blacks were concerned. The only time they started planning on building was when the crowd was so big they couldn't get them in the school. They put them in a society hall until they were able to build a classroom. | 40:00 |
| Michele Mitchell | That's fascinating. | 41:10 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Huh? | 41:11 |
| Michele Mitchell | That's really interesting. | 41:11 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Yes. Well, that's— | 41:13 |
| Michele Mitchell | Beside St. Matthew. What were some other ones? | 41:14 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Oh, you had the True Friends. You had the Lincoln. | 41:18 |
| Michele Mitchell | Lincoln or Links? | 41:22 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Lincoln. | 41:23 |
| Michele Mitchell | Okay, Lincoln. | 41:24 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | True Friends was one, Lincoln another, the Young Union, the Morning Star, Solid Rock. | 41:26 |
| Michele Mitchell | Solid Rock. | 41:44 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Yeah. You had a True Friends in Louisville. That's a community right off of here. It's still quite active. You had a Morning Glory out at Olivia that was very active, and I believe they're still operating. You had also in New Iberia at one time the Morning Star, they were so solid that they were able to build a two story building, not just a little frame building to have a meeting. They had a two-story building that was in good shape. Of course you had the fraternal in the fraternal orders, you had the Masonic's that they been here and they'd built a big building, gym and everything in it downtown in a place we call Annville. | 41:46 |
| Michele Mitchell | Annville? | 43:18 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Annville. A-N-N-ville they call it that, but it's the east end of town. They have a nice building there now, but it's strictly Masonic. They do rent it, but it's for the organization. That's about it. | 43:18 |
| Michele Mitchell | Well, Since the tape's almost out, maybe we'll just stop here and then— | 43:49 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Okay. | 43:53 |
| Michele Mitchell | Okay, Mr. Auguster, if you could just say your name. | 0:00 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | I'm Edran Auguster. Now, in talking about the economic conditions, we just finished talking about the benevolent societies. Those benevolent societies did contribute much to economic conditions among Blacks in New Iberia. | 0:08 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | First I say they had their officers, who were usually paid. They were of tremendous help to the drug industry and the doctors. And those people in turn spent money in the community, which did help out. | 0:33 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Before the benevolent societies, since most of these people were farmers or sharecroppers or just living on the plantation, working on plantations, there were very few professional jobs other than the teaching profession, when they wanted to go to the doctor if they were sick, they got to the doctor only if the plantation owner felt they were sick enough to go to the doctor and give them money to go to the doctor. | 1:03 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | But if he didn't think they were sick enough, why, they didn't go to the doctor, you see. And with the benevolent societies, why, they were able to go to the doctor or able to get the doctor to come to them if they were sick enough and not have to depend on the plantation owners. | 1:43 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | But for the worker who had to do jobs in order to make a living, it was tough. Women usually did housework, washing and ironing, washing the White people's clothes and ironing them for little or nothing. Those people who were not residents of the plantation but would do farming work like harvesting, those people worked for less, in some instances 50 cents a day, from can to can't. | 2:12 |
| Michele Mitchell | 50 cents a day? | 3:08 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | 50 cents a day from can to can't. I've had friends of mine that were in that type of work say they would work a whole day for a dollar digging harsh potatoes or digging sweet potatoes. I did not experience that. I went to work at 12, at age 12, as a delivery boy for Pendleton's drug store, and I had to buy my own bicycle. And I started out at $2.50 cents a week. And to give you an idea how bad it was at times when Pendleton didn't have a doctor, in 1927 we had high water, a flood in this whole area, and we left. We closed the drug store and my mother took me to Lake Charles. But at that time, Pendleton owed me almost $500 in back wages. That's right, at $2.50 cents a week. Of course, right after the high water came the crash of '29 and it was even worse from an economic viewpoint. The jobs closed down that they did have, very little other than cane farming. | 3:10 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | And at that time cane farming, cane harvesting was a big thing. And many people wouldn't work all the year, they would just wait for that harvest season because the cane was cut by hand. And either they got so much a day for cutting the cane or so much a ton for cutting the cane. And they waited for that. Many would come from different places to work during the cane harvesting season. The mills would operate and there were Negroes that had jobs with these mills, and they would earn enough money to last them the year. They wouldn't work after the harvest, see. But after '29 we really had a hard time. The good Lord looked out for us in a way, because in 1929 or after the higher water in '27, we had something that happened here that has never happened before and that has never happened since. You had what looked like an infiltration of salt water crabs in the bayou, and people were there catching those crabs, and that's what they ate on. I mean large saltwater crabs. | 5:40 |
| Michele Mitchell | After 1927? | 7:43 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Yeah, that's after the flood, you see. Some people would go there and catch them, sell them, just like we did when we were kids. We sold everything in order to make some money. And when we talk about money, we're not talking about a whole lot of money. We're talking about 10 or 15 cents to go to the show once a week and little things like that. Food was cheap. You could buy bread for a nickel. That was after Depression. Later on things began to get better. By 1933 the schools of Iberia Parish closed seven weeks ahead of time because they had run out of money and could no longer pay the teachers in script. | 7:43 |
| Michele Mitchell | They paid teachers in script? | 9:07 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Yes, teachers were paid in script. | 9:08 |
| Michele Mitchell | How long before that? | 9:14 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | That was in 1932. | 9:16 |
| Michele Mitchell | They were paying teachers in script? | 9:16 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | That's right. 1932 and '33 they paid teachers in script, and some of the teachers who had saved money were able to live and hold that script. But others each month had to find a store that would accept that script at a reduced value. So my class in 1933, the school closed seven weeks ahead of time, and the state required that we have nine months of schooling. So for those seven weeks we had to pay the teachers, those teachers that would stay on and teach, we had to pay them out of our pockets in order to graduate from high school. | 9:16 |
| Michele Mitchell | That's amazing. | 10:27 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Yes, and we did that. | 10:28 |
| Michele Mitchell | How much did you have to pay? Do you remember? | 10:38 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | No, I don't remember. It wasn't that much, but I don't remember exactly how much. It was $2 or $3 a week that you had to pay, but it wasn't that much because people couldn't afford it. I guess it came to around $20, $21, $28, something like that for the seven weeks, each student paid that. And we had some in the lower grades, that is, we graduated in 11th grade at that time. The state was on a seven-four plan, seven years of elementary school and four years of high school. So we graduated at 11th grade. The 12th grade was added afterwards, after '33. | 10:41 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Well, as I say, things began to get better after '33 as we came out of the Depression with Roosevelt's recovery program, the NYA, the NNRA, and they opened up jobs. | 11:49 |
| Michele Mitchell | For Blacks too? | 12:23 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | For Blacks, yeah, Blacks as well as Whites. The WPA was the main one that Blacks profited from, because it was manual labor and they were hired for those things. Of course, they developed some bad habits, but it was a livelihood, see. Bad habits were, they were working by the hour, and when that boss man would say the time is up, if they had a shovel of dirt in the air, they'd just drop it. (both laugh) Yeah, they'd just drop it and walk out from under that shovel and pick it up the next morning. (both laugh) | 12:24 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | But it was a lifesaver. For the younger people they had the CCC, civilian corps, I've forgotten now what it is. But anyways, the CCC, there were camps where young boys could go, and it was like an army camp. They did work, landscaping and clearing away brush and just something to keep them busy, you see. And I wanted to go to CCC camp, but my mother wouldn't allow me to go. She wouldn't for it. But quite a few of my friends went. It was like an army life. And when I finally got in the Army, I didn't like it. | 13:31 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Now, that was before the Civil Rights Act, you see, 'cause when you came up to the civil rights movement, Negroes were demanding consideration. And they demanded it here, didn't always get it. And we had a lot to go through in order to get respectable jobs for Negroes. | 14:48 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | But that was after Civil Rights, I don't know if you'd be interested in that. We did have two or three instances where we broke down, along with breaking down segregation, we were able to break it down in the economic field. We had a lot of trouble integrating our schools even after court order, but we didn't have the problems that we had in other parts of the country with in integrating public businesses like lunch counters. We didn't have that trouble. | 15:29 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | We had here, the mayor of the city had an interracial committee, and here in New Iberia we had an exceptionally good interracial committee. It consists of Whites, leaders in business, leaders of the major religious denominations, the Catholic, the Baptist, the Methodist, the Episcopal church. | 16:34 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | On the Black side we had ministers from the Methodist Church, from the United Church of Christ, from the Baptist. We had representatives, we didn't have any of the priests of the Black Catholics with us. And then there were others, teachers and principals, most of them were principals of schools. And that group were able to accomplish a lot, not through demonstrations but through negotiations. | 17:38 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | With the integrating of the eating places, one group tried it and behind it was a White citizen who had been named as one of the leading ones that beat up those those doctors and Leo Hardy. He was a deputy sheriff, and he was reported as being the leader of the beaters, but he was on this biracial committee and he did more than anybody else toward integrating the lunch counters. | 18:41 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | And he did it by simply taking Black members of this Community Relations Council into those eating places and demanding that they be served. They did set up one, and the word leaked out and they were there too. They had someone there, had a woman that was supposed to come in and say that she was attacked by the Negroes or insulted by the Negroes, and there were others there to beat them up, you see. | 19:51 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | But he got wind of it because a secretary in the mayor's office had leaked the information out, you see. And he got there in time to get those people that were supposed to be there, and they were there to eat, but they were standing on the outside, and sent them on off. | 20:36 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | But the next attempt was successful, and we didn't have any trouble after that. Once one accepted the Blacks and served them, the other places, particularly the chain store lunch counters. But before that, you always had to go to the back door, see, to eat. Or if they would serve you, they would serve you on the end of the counter. You could stand on the end of the counter and they'd say— | 21:01 |
| Michele Mitchell | You could stand. | 21:38 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Huh? | 21:38 |
| Michele Mitchell | You could stand. | 21:38 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Yeah, you would stand there but you couldn't sit down. The integration of the working force or the banking institutions was another objective of this Community Relations Council that we had. | 21:39 |
| Michele Mitchell | Community Relations Council? | 22:07 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Yes, it was the Mayor Diggs' Community Relation Council, or the Community Relation Council of New Iberia. | 22:08 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | I might say we had an equal number of Whites and an equal number of Blacks on that committee. The integration of the banking institutions was really a brainchild or a brainstorm of Bishop Boudreaux, who was at St. Peter Catholic Church here. | 22:13 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | And he tried all he could by talking to the members, the presidents of the banking institutions on his own about hiring Negro tellers in the bank. And they always gave him the excuse, "I can't do it." One of them told him that the day that he put a Black behind the teller cage in his bank, his bank would lose $1 million or $2 million worth of business, where White people with money would pull their money out. | 22:51 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | And that went on, I'd say, for a year, Bishop Boudreaux trying on his own to convert these financial institutions to hiring of Blacks. They were doing it in Lafayette. Lafayette had started hiring them, but Iberia Parish wouldn't. | 23:34 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | So the Community Relations Council decided to call a meeting of all the banking institutions and try to talk them, not only the—well, in some cases, the president of the board of trustees of the bank also had big businesses in New Iberia, particularly in the oil field business. We got them all together at the United Methodist Church's fellowship hall, and when we finished with them, each one of them agreed to hire a Black as a teller in the bank. The Red Fox Industries, Beldon Fox rather, of the Red Fox Industries here, he told them that he had hired some Negroes and had offered them promotions. | 24:04 |
| Michele Mitchell | This is oil, isn't it? | 25:25 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Huh? | 25:26 |
| Michele Mitchell | What is the Red Fox, that's oil? | 25:26 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Red Fox was a company. | 25:29 |
| Michele Mitchell | Mm-hmm. | 25:31 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | And the owner of it was a Beldon, B-E-L-D-O-N, Beldon Fox. He was one of the owners, but it was a machine shop— | 25:32 |
| Michele Mitchell | Okay. | 25:47 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | —that worked primarily on oil field equipment, you see. | 25:47 |
| Michele Mitchell | Okay. | 25:52 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | They agreed to hire them, but their contentions were that a Negro didn't have the qualifications to be tellers in the bank. So they put the responsibility on the Community Relations Council to go out and find them some Blacks that were qualified. And we did that. | 26:00 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | I was talking to a Negro history program and I mentioned that, and at this program was a young man, Raymond Spencer. And after the talk telling them about the work of the Community Relations Council, he told me, he says, "You know, I often wondered what had happened." Because he had been a teacher at Catholic High, which was the White high school, Catholic high school, he was a teacher over there. | 26:39 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | And he said that when he decided he didn't want to continue teaching, he went to City Bank and Trust and applied for a job, and they told him they didn't have any janitor's job open. He told him he was applying for no janitor's job, he was applying for a teller's job, and they told him no, they didn't have any job for him. | 27:21 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | And then after about two months he said they called him and offered him a job, and he didn't know what had happened. But it was after we had gotten an agreement, the Community Relations Council, they'd gotten an agreement from them that they would hire Blacks. | 27:53 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | And they hired a few and they worked out fine. And one of the conditions that we had asked in the Community Relations Council is that you not hide them, but that you give them every opportunity for advancement. And sure enough, the banking institutions did that. And before you know it, why, we have plenty of Blacks working in the banks now. Raymond is a vice president, City Bank and Trust. | 28:20 |
| Michele Mitchell | Really? | 29:08 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Yes. And we have a number of other Blacks that are vice presidents in those banks. They were made branch managers, they became branch managers, yeah. So everything worked fine. In spite of what the bankers said, the banks would lose money, the banks actually made money because Negroes were able to, by having better jobs, they were able to put money in the banks. But we were proud of that achievement that the Community Relations Council was able to achieve. | 29:08 |
| Michele Mitchell | When did that happen, what year, around? | 30:00 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Oh, that was, let me see now. That was in '69 after the integrations of schools, along with the integration of schools, '69 and '70. I know in 1970, that was in '70 because I went to Anderson in '70, and I had a young lady— | 30:03 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | First I had the President of the Peoples Bank, I had his daughter on the faculty of Anderson Street. And Daddy must have talked to her about, she knew about the promise of the banking institutions to hire Blacks. And I had a young lady that did not have a job as teaching, but I did use her for quite a bit as substitute. | 30:38 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | And this daughter of this bank president came to me and said, "I know you are looking for somebody for a job in banking, and don't you think so-and-so would do well in the bank?" I said, "Well, I don't know, but I don't see any reason why she couldn't." So we talked to that girl. She didn't have a regular job, she was just doing substitute work, and her name was recommended and they hired her. | 31:21 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Well, I think the reason why they hired her was because it was kind of hard to tell the difference that she was Black or White, you see? And a lot of those banking institutions, a lot of those business places, they hired them because you couldn't tell whether they were Black or White. You had to look very close, look for certain features, lips and nose, in order to tell that they weren't White. But they got jobs. And in most instances that has disappeared now. They hire them all different colors now. | 32:08 |
| Michele Mitchell | Yeah. | 33:07 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Yeah, but we still have some stores here that you've got to be a certain color and have a certain grade of hair. You must have both. You can't have one and the other, you see. And that's to keep the Whites, they feel that the Whites don't know that they're Black, and usually they're from out in the country. They're not from right in town, you see. | 33:07 |
| Michele Mitchell | You mean Grand Marais or somewhere else? | 33:49 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | You know them if they're in town, chances are you know them. But that is disappearing. Not completely, but it's disappearing. | 33:52 |
| Michele Mitchell | Back earlier before that, like in the '40s and '50s and '30s, was there a lot of passing going on? | 34:09 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | A lot of what? | 34:17 |
| Michele Mitchell | Passing, people passing for White. Did that happen a lot? | 34:18 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | No, they weren't passing. The only thing that you had, you had a certain group, we called them Mulattoes, they stuck together. And if you were Black, you couldn't attend their social affairs. One of my sons has dark brown skin and Darryl, the one that lives here, is light complexion. He took hair after his mother, so he has a good grade of hair. And he could go to any of those Mulatto affairs, but not my older son. The older son is darker. His hair isn't quite as good as Darryl's, but he couldn't go. | 34:22 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | I had a hobby that turned out to be a vocation, or avocation, of taking pictures. I started taking pictures when I was a freshman in college and learned how to develop and enlarge and print. So when I came out of the service, well, in the service I bought some equipment, cameras and so forth, and I taught photography in the Army as a special service to those people that wanted to learn that in their spare time, I taught them. And I also developed and found me a good bit of money taking pictures in the Army. So after coming out of the Army, I was undecided about what I wanted to do, so I opened a picture studio and I made pictures around here for years. | 35:36 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | And just yesterday a fellow met me in the store and he said, "You Mr. Auguster?" I said yes.He says, "You took my wedding pictures." I says, "Yes?" "Yeah, you took my wedding pictures." And I think that he told me, I think it's 41 years ago that I took his wedding pictures. I didn't know him, I wouldn't know him now. If he'd tell me his name, maybe I would remember, but I didn't go into details. | 36:51 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | But I've seen the time that these Mulattoes would call me to take pictures, and when I'd go, they'd usually have it in the country in the home, you see? When I'd go there, those Mulattoes would be standing on the steps and on the porch and so forth. But when I'd walk up, they'd get out the way. They didn't want me to be close to them because my hair was bad (laughs). See, I wasn't a Mulatto, my hair was bad. I swear I had a dreaded disease. (laughs) I'd go in, take a picture, and go on to my house. Those people were something. | 37:30 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | There's one area which we'd call the Grand Marais, and those were Mulattoes out there. My wife was from a Mulatto group. Not my wife, my wife was from a group that were White and Blacks mixed up. She was a Diblanch, and the only Diblanch there were that family, they were originally from Loreauville, and White Diblanches. And they claim a relationship there that they all came from one source. | 38:26 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | And my wife's father was from that Grand Marais bunch. Now, he was not light complexion, he was sort of like an olive complexion, but he had good hair and he was known from out that way. Well, his uncle, I'm just saying this to show you how things were with those people, had an uncle that got sick and we went out to see him. I took my wife, my oldest boy, and my baby boy, and her sister. And her sister had a daughter that was very bright. | 39:26 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | When we got out there and met those people, they came in, even the little children came running out to greet her. And my wife was saying, "And this is my son," my oldest son, which is dark, you know. He reached out like that, shook his hand. "And this is my baby boy." He was running in, hug him and grab him and kiss him, they hug and kiss her, but wouldn't hug and kiss her sister because her sister, even though her hair was good, she's dark, you see. | 40:40 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Oh, my. You had schools here, and particularly in that Grand Marais school, that you couldn't teach there if you didn't have good hair and be bright. But there was not that many passing for Whites, you see, they had their own society. They didn't mix with the Blacks and they didn't necessarily—They may have catered to the Whites, but they didn't try to pass for Whites. And a lot of that is still today. | 41:22 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | I'll tell you what you did have as a result of that, you had a higher percentage of children born with birth defects or mentally retarded because of their intermarriaging, you see. | 42:09 |
| Michele Mitchell | But you said that your wife came from Loreauville? | 42:40 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Originally the family came from Loreauville | 42:51 |
| Michele Mitchell | Originally the family came from Loreauville. | 42:51 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Yes, uh-huh. | 42:54 |
| Michele Mitchell | You said something a while ago and I want to ask you before I forget, you said that you would make 10 or 15 cents and you would go to a show. Where would you go? | 43:02 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | The picture show, you had the picture shows here. | 43:10 |
| Michele Mitchell | Which theater? | 43:12 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Huh? | 43:12 |
| Michele Mitchell | Which theater? | 43:12 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | They had at that time the Elks Theater, later the Palace Theater, Evangeline Theater. They were Jim Crow. You could go up in the balcony, go upstairs, and the Randalls, at that time they had these serials, maybe 15 weeks and it'd be on Fridays, and every Friday we wanted to see the next chapter. So we'd do everything to get that money. | 43:12 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | We even, I know I have, even stolen milk bottles. At that time they delivered milk, and you'd steal a milk bottle and you could sell it for a nickel. (both laugh) People put the milk bottles out, go get a milk bottle and go sell it. A lot of that went on. I had a friend that went to the owner of a grocery store, went to his house and stole a bunch of turkeys, and then went right back to his store and sold them to him. | 44:04 |
| Michele Mitchell | Oh, no. | 44:59 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | But we did everything for money because our parents couldn't give us money. We would sell wood, pick up scrap wood and sell it. We'd walk the tracks down and pick up stone coal where it would fall off of the, at that time the locomotives burned coal, you see, anthracite coal, and pieces would drop off. | 44:59 |
| Michele Mitchell | Do you need to get that? | 45:23 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | What is it, the phone? | 45:25 |
| Michele Mitchell | You were telling me about picking up coal off of locomotives. | 0:07 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Yes, we'd pick up coal and you could always sell that coal. People could buy that for heating in the winter, you see? Wood, we'd sell wood. Small pieces, kindling, bigger pieces for them to burn in the stove, the fireplace. We had a paper mill here. We'd collect paper and go down and sell paper. And that was way downtown, a long, long walk. But we had little wagons, we'd go sell them, sell paper. And in the pulp that came from the paper mills, the manufactured paper, you had a lot of pulp that they would pile up, and somebody, one year somebody went there and planted just some turnip seeds in there. And they had were the turnips, and anybody that wanted turnips could go down there and pick turnips. So we'd take a load of paper down and then get a load of turnips and bring them back and sell them. (laughs) For a nickel and dime. (both laugh) | 0:10 |
| Michele Mitchell | Oh, that's wonderful. Did any Black people work at the paper mill? | 1:44 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Yes, you had laborers working there. | 1:48 |
| Michele Mitchell | How long did the paper mill last? | 2:00 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Huh? Oh, I don't know, it last, I'd say 10, 15 years. But it finally went out, the old paper mill. The only thing that's left to it now is—I think the tower is still, the chimney is still there, but they have the trucking companies using what buildings are left there. | 2:01 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | But that didn't last long. The only thing that really last were the salt mines, you see. I don't know, it seems though the city officials through the years have been—Had been dictated to by the farmers that this is a farming community, and any other industries that would come here would take away farm labor. And for that reason it is believed that many of the businesses that would've hired people, and a number of people, stayed away from New Iberia. I remember in my time there was a move or an opportunity for the city of New Iberia to get the terminal of the Southern Pacific. Southern Pacific chose- | 2:31 |
| Michele Mitchell | So you were saying that they— | 4:19 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Yeah, the Southern Pacific terminal. You see, what was happening, the trains would make up—Passenger trains and so forth would make up in New Orleans on the way to California. The Sunset Limited, you see. And they normally changed crews at a certain point. Lafayette was given that point. As a result, you had a lot of jobs created in Lafayette, and the Southern Pacific used that for a long time, you see? Engineer, conductors, porters, and dining club workers and so forth. They'd get on in New Orleans, they'd come to Lafayette, they'd layover in Lafayette. Then the next train, they'd go back to New Orleans. Those that got on in Lafayette went maybe to Houston. And in Houston they'd come back here. New Iberia didn't get that, but I understand that—I mean, that was before my time, that New Iberia was in the running for it. | 4:22 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | That had been the case of a lot of industries. For example, when I was telling you about the salt domes, the government came in and wanted to use salt dome for storing petroleum for an emergency. And one of the places they considered a number of salt domes along the Gulf of Mexico, along the course, and Weeks Island was one gas, I mean salt dome that they wanted, you see. Well, by being privately owned, if the company wanted it, then they got it. | 5:57 |
| Michele Mitchell | I see what you're saying. | 7:16 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | So the governments chose Weeks Island. And they had this big storage facility there, and it hired quite a few people. I mean, I know a personal friend that has a job out there. She's doing well as a result of that. | 7:17 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | On the other hand, at Jefferson Island Texaco was drilling for oil in the bay or bayou, lake that surrounds Jefferson Island, and accidentally bored into the mine, and that killed the mine because it flooded it out and the water rushing into this opening destroyed some land around the place, you see? | 7:43 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Now another company has come there and want to use the salt dome that's not being used now, they want to use the salt dome to store natural gas, because they'll be close to a pumping station or a distribution center at Henry, Louisiana. And they want to come in there and store natural gas in the Jefferson Island salt dome. | 8:30 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | And they're having all sorts of opposition from the people around there. Even though the United States Corps of Engineers, they said it's safe, that nothing's going to happen. Everybody else involved has given the okay. And I was reading in the paper where the company had started dredging canals to start operations, you see? And the group of owners around there, land owners around there, they're talking about filing a suit, and oh, they've been raising all kind of saying to keep the company from coming in there, you see? Where if the company comes in there, it's going to create some jobs. But they're not interested in that. They want to see if something's going to happen. Science has been able to show them that nothing's going to happen. All the agencies regulating such activities, they said, "Okay, it's all right." But those people, they do a lot of things that—I just can't see the logic myself. | 9:16 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | For example, in waste, garbage, city of New Iberia and the parish, garbage disposal is a problem. One of the companies bought or took options on some land up here at Cade, of Captain Cade Road to build a landfill, you see. It's wasted land, not being used. Can't use it for anything. They want to build a landfill there. And they guaranteed—I mean they set their proposal to the Environmental Protection Agency and showed them how they would line the landfill so that no toxic waste would get into the water stream. And it so happens that it's right over or supposed to, very close to the main water stream for water for this entire area. And those people have fought the garbage company—It's been about three or four years that this thing has been—The hassle has been going on. | 11:04 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | The state, they had to get a permit from the state. The state finally granted them a permit, then the people went to court. So the court has put some other stipulations, and this thing has gone on. In the meantime the garbage from here is being transferred to Lafayette, and from Lafayette to some landfill in Evangeline Parish, and that landfill will be filled in a certain length of time, and then the garbage company acquired some land at Elton, Louisiana, I think it is. And that's over 50 miles from here. And do you know our folk in New Iberia objecting to that landfill in Elton? They don't want the landfill in Iberia Parish. They don't want it filled in Elton. So what do you expect to do with all this garbage that you're collecting? | 13:04 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | It's all right to put it on somebody else, but not—And that's one of the big problems. Every day you pick up the paper, it's something about a landfill. The parish has been negotiating for the longest, trying to get a dump for not garbage, but trees and stuff like that. Hand down buildings and so forth. You got to do something with it. They don't want you to burn it. Environmental Protection Agency to say you can't burn it. They got to do something with it. The city complaining about the city not picking up their garbage, their debris and stuff like that. The city doesn't have anywhere to put it. And when they find the place, somebody willing to accept it, we object to it. It's a mess. | 14:39 |
| Michele Mitchell | That just reminded me of what you told me the last time when I was getting ready to leave about the trash collectors being kidnapped. When did that happen? | 15:57 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Oh, well that was way back there, when they first started, the city first started hiring Blacks. Let me see, that was in the '50s. That was in the '50s. They kidnapped garbage men because that was a White man's job. And short time after that, when they hired the Negroes and put them in the ditch to dig in ditches, and the garbage men passed there on one of these hot summer days, sweating, picking up that garbage, and there was Negroes standing around with—Leaning on the shovels. That's a White man job, leaning on a shovel. So they wanted to put the Negroes back on the garbage truck and give them the job working in ditch. That was a White man's job. But those days are behind us. | 16:09 |
| Michele Mitchell | Oh, that's insane. | 17:29 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Most of the garbage men are Black now. You have some Whites, but they've gone to private companies, you see. And because of lack of other opportunities, Blacks get those jobs. | 17:38 |
| Michele Mitchell | And one other thing I wanted to ask before I forget. Back in 1927, when high water came, it sounds like—Did a lot of people from New Iberia go to Lake Charles like you and your mother did? | 17:58 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Well, a lot of people left from here and they went various points to get out of the area where the floodwaters were. The water came in on about three o'clock in the morning. I mean, it came in—Well let's say this. It came into New Iberia, a part of what we call the hill, that is the northwest section. The water came in one day. And the railroad were always elevated, the tracks. So that water stopped where the tracks, because it was high and had to build up. But in the city proper, the water didn't start coming in until about three o'clock the next morning. And it came in pretty fast, that by daybreak, I guess you had three or four feet of water in the streets in New Iberia on the other side of the track, this track. | 18:19 |
| Michele Mitchell | On that other side? | 19:49 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | On the other side. | 19:50 |
| Michele Mitchell | On the bayou? | 19:51 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | The bayou had been flooded over long before that, you see. The bayou had flooded in before the water came into St. Martin area, and the St. Martinville highway, because I remember going down to the Bayou, as close as I could get to the bayou, and seeing the dead cattle floating by and different things floating by from the upper part of Bayou Teche. But coming in New Iberia proper, particularly the other side of the track. And by sunup the water was about two or three feet high. But the people were for getting out. So everybody who wanted to get out, went to the station, which is elevated, and they were gathered there, and the Southern Pacific, first they sent a train with flat cars. And a lot of those people got on the flat cars and they took them to a refugee camp up around Cade, you see. | 19:52 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | But there were others that didn't want to go there. And finally the train did, I mean the Southern Pacific did send a passenger train out of Lafayette to pick people up that wanted to go further. And my mother and them chose to go, my mother chose to go to Lake Charles and take us to Lake Charles because we had relatives there. She had a sister there. But others went to Texas. And if you didn't have any money, Southern Pacific took you there free. And if you wanted to pay a little something and had some money and wanted to pay, you paid what you could. They were very nice in helping out there. Many of the people went where they wanted to go for nothing. They had to pay when they got ready to come back. | 21:39 |
| Michele Mitchell | So they have to pay if they wanted to come back. | 22:48 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | No, if they wanted to come back, I mean, after the flood water, you had to buy a ticket. | 22:53 |
| Michele Mitchell | I guess I asked because a lot of people have told me about Beaumont, and it just seems like there's a lot of traffic between Beaumont and New Iberia. | 23:03 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Yes, well, you had a lot of people from here were in Beaumont, lived in Beaumont. | 23:12 |
| Michele Mitchell | Why is that so? | 23:20 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Well, people went to Beaumont, Port Arthur, because of the oil industry jobs, you see, and naturally, you left somebody home—Some people stayed home. But there was that relationship between Beaumont because of the relatives. For example, my wife's people had had people that settled in Port Arthur. So most of our visits were to Port Arthur. We'd go to Port Arthur three or four times a year, and they would come here, you see. But it was because the jobs over there that they had gone and gotten. They got to build houses and were doing well, so they were able to entertain their relatives. Now that was not so with Orange. | 23:22 |
| Michele Mitchell | With where? | 24:41 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Orange. Orange, Texas is just this side of Beaumont. Orange had a reputation of being hard on Negroes and they didn't have the industries that Beaumont and Port Arthur had. | 24:44 |
| Michele Mitchell | So Orange is closer to New Iberia, but it had that reputation? | 25:08 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Orange you say is closer, yes. Orange is right after you get into Texas, you see. Orange is the first city you reach before you cross the—I mean, after you cross the state line. I remember in years going to Port Arthur and Ernie passed through Orange where you wanted to be careful. I think you had a—I'm not sure about that, but I think you had a riot there at one time. A race riot. And that put the people against—I mean, afraid to—You stopped in Orange. | 25:15 |
| Michele Mitchell | Really? | 26:28 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | But that wasn't so of Beaumont. Beaumont had a problem one time, but that was settled. | 26:32 |
| Michele Mitchell | Is this the riot that was during the war you're talking about? | 26:38 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | No, that was—The Beaumont deal was during the war time. Yes, Beaumont. But Orange was before. | 26:42 |
| Michele Mitchell | And before I forget, another thing. I think you've mentioned this before about Avery Island. Avery Island, has that been really cut off from New Iberia because people lived out there a lot. | 27:08 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Avery Island was not really cut off from New Iberia. Avery Island is just seven miles from New Iberia and it's a private island, and at one time—Oh, I think it's still, they have a gate where you have to stop and if you are on official business, why, they let you through. And if you're not on official business, why, you have to pay to get on the island. You also have Jungle Gardens out there, which is privately owned. And in order to visit Jungle Gardens, you have to pay, you see. Jefferson Island wasn't like that. Jefferson Island, you had two roads that you could go onto Jefferson Island, and you could go on Jefferson Island without any problem. No admissions, no checking or anything. You just going out there. | 27:23 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Weeks Island, it was a privately owned also. It was isolated. There's just one road going in. But there had no restrictions on you going out there, because you had people living out there and it was open. But they did reserve the right to bar anybody. I remember an incident while I was out there where a young man from out there had come to town in a car one night, and out on the road to Jefferson Island, the Hopkins Street Road to Jefferson Island, he had a wreck with some Whites and he knocked his car in a ditch, and he drowned, because the Whites wouldn't get out and help him to get in the ditch. It was a ditch full of water. So he drowned. After that, the Whites got together, I mean those people involved in the wreck wanted to say that he was wrong, that he ran into them and they got the police along with them or a lawyer, and they went out to Weeks Island to try to frighten the boy's parents into obtain some damages, get money out of them. | 28:49 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | They went out there and talked to the parents, and then they left and they said they'd be back with the police. Well, the parents went to the officials of the salt mine, and those officials told them, said, "When they come back, just let us know." And sure enough, they came back, and when they came back, the company was there, and he informed them that this was a private island and we give you so many minutes to get off of this island and we don't want you back here. And that ended that. | 30:59 |
| Michele Mitchell | Was this Myers? | 31:51 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Huh? | 31:52 |
| Michele Mitchell | Was this Myers? Which company was this? | 31:53 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | That was the Myers Salt Company. Now since the—In the early '60s the Myers Salt Company, or the Martins, they had sold out to Martin Salt. And Martins Salt found out that—I mean decided that keeping the village was too expensive, you see. So they decided to close the village. They either gave or sold at a giveaway price the house that any of those employees were living in. If you wanted the house, you could buy it. The church, they moved it out, got a moving company and moved the whole church and set it up on land that had been donated at Lydia for the church. | 31:55 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Those people that wanted to build their own house, why, they went on in and did it. But a lot of the homes were houses that they had lived in on Weeks Island. Then they close the village. And right now you can go just so far, and that's all, you see. You can go to the main gate or where the mine is or where the storage facility is, you got an oil storage out there. You can go to that. You can go to the chemical plant which was out there, part of Martins, but that's as far as you can go. | 33:25 |
| Michele Mitchell | That's interesting. | 34:21 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | You see. At one time you had good fishing places out there, and in order to fish there now, you got to get a special permit to fish, you see. It's privately owned and they've closed it. | 34:23 |
| Michele Mitchell | Wasn't there a long strike on Jefferson Island, like labor union strike? | 34:44 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Strike on Jefferson Island? | 34:49 |
| Michele Mitchell | Have there been any strikes in the area? | 34:50 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | I don't know. I don't remember any long strike. There might have been, because when the companies came in, I mean the unions came in, why, they had a lot of friction between union demands and company demands, you see. I know at Weeks Island union came in after negotiations and votes and intimidations and so forth. But that never resulted in any strike for any length time. I don't don't remember Jefferson Island being involved, but it might have been. | 34:54 |
| Michele Mitchell | But you don't remember any real nasty stuff with the unions or anything like that? | 36:00 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | No. The only incidents I know of was when the union was trying to organize at Avery Island. One of the union officials that came down here to negotiate or to observe the election, where the fellows would vote whether they wanted to be or so forth. The union had sent a representative down here that was a friend of mine, F.A. Piper, and he got a reservation at what was then the Frederick Hotel. Now, Negroes had never been at Frederick Hotel, but he had a reservation at Frederick Hotel. And he had another friend here by the name of JP Henderson, who was a principal here. He called Henderson to come up to his room. He got the friend to go there. I believe Henderson went. Henderson went, but he was very, very uncomfortable and he stayed there so long. But next morning, after he told him to call him next morning or he would call JP: to see how his night had been, you see. But they didn't bother Piper. But that was the integration of Frederick Hotel. | 36:01 |
| Michele Mitchell | Is this in the '50s too? | 38:16 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Huh? | 38:16 |
| Michele Mitchell | Is this the '50s or '60s? | 38:21 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | That was in the '50s. That was in the '50s. Yes, yes. | 38:22 |
| Michele Mitchell | Sir, the last thing I have, if you have time, is I just need to run through this and get a little bit of information about your mother and just about her name and things like that. | 38:37 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | About what? | 38:50 |
| Michele Mitchell | Your mother and just your family member's names, if you have time to do that. | 38:51 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | My mother was a Clara. | 39:01 |
| Michele Mitchell | Clara? | 39:03 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Clara. She was a Clara originally. Clara Augusta. She was married twice before I was born. And she couldn't stay with either one of the husbands. One was a drunkard and the other was a gambler. Had one daughter, Bridget, by her first husband. And Bridget died. I had another brother, Elliot, and we chose her, or rather she gave us her maiden name, because she was not married to either my father or his, you see. Then in later years she married Reverend Noah Jackson. | 39:12 |
| Michele Mitchell | Jackson? | 40:45 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Jackson. He was from the Christian Methodist Church. He was pastoring the Christian Methodist Church here in New Iberia Cottrell Chapel. Christian Methodist Church. And she stayed with him until she died. | 40:47 |
| Michele Mitchell | When did she pass? | 41:15 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | She died in '47. 1947. | 41:17 |
| Michele Mitchell | And do you remember when she was born? | 41:18 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Huh? | 41:26 |
| Michele Mitchell | Do you remember when she was born? | 41:27 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | No, that was never established. At that time, shortly after she was born, her mother died and she was raised by a sister. And the sister had one child. That was around Franklin, Louisiana. And as a result, my mother being the older, and not her sister's child, her sister's child went to school, and my mother had to take—I think it was about five miles to school ,and have to take that girl to school and go back and pick her up. She told the tale about—And she said it was true, that they would walk the track from Franklin to Baldwin to go to school, and one day they found a sack of money on the railroad track. Paper money and silver money. And they didn't know anything about silver money because—I mean, paper money, because all that they had dealt with was silver. So they took the silver and tore up the dollar bill, the paper money. | 41:29 |
| Michele Mitchell | Oh no. | 43:31 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | But my mother was a worker. She took ironing, washing and ironing in order to take care of us. Sent us to school. She worked as a janitor at New Iberia Savings Bank, Savings and Loan, a building association at that time for years, and also did janitorial work at what was it called, a big lumber company, Bertrand's Lumber Company here New Iberia. Worked at the lumber company in the afternoon, or late in the evening she'd go and clean up, and early in the morning she'd go and clean up Iberia Savings, or Iberia Building Association. And during the day she had washings. She became very proficient in laundering white shirts and white suits. At that time men wore linen suits, white linen suits, particularly the big people of the community, like the Weekses of a building. W.G Weeks was the president and he wore nothing but white linen suits, white shirts. And that's the way she was able to get money to take care of us and send us to school. | 43:37 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | —with the mangle. That is taking the sheets out of the wringers, and you pass those sheets, hold those sheets open, and pass them through a mangle, which would press them and dry them at the same time. | 0:01 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | And then when they found out that I could iron, I was put on ironing boys' shirts, and lady—the women teachers at Straight, a lot of them were missionaries, White missionaries. And they wore just plain old gingham dresses. | 0:27 |
| Michele Mitchell | Gingham dresses? | 0:54 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Oh, yes. And they would have to be ironed. And those of us that were working there did the ironing. And I got 15 cents an hour for ironing missionary dresses. That was my job. | 0:55 |
| Michele Mitchell | So all this came about when- | 1:25 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Huh? | 1:27 |
| Michele Mitchell | All this came about because you had started helping your mother and your wife? | 1:28 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Yes, learning to iron, yes. Not only that, after we were married, I got married in 1940, my wife and I, sometime I would go when my mother wasn't able to go to Iberia Building Association and clean up, why, I would get up in the morning and go there and clean the building up before I'd go to school, before I'd leave for Weeks Island. Yeah. And that went on until her health got so that she couldn't work. So you just had to stop her. But there was no social security then or anything like that. So when parents send you to school, they weren't ashamed to say that I'm sending you to school so that you can help me when I get old. And that is what happened in our case. | 1:32 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | When I got out and got a job, well, the first thing that I did was to buy the house that my mother had built, take over the notes. Because the house that we had before this one, she built it just before I finished college. See, she sold the other place, we lived on Corrine Street, she sold that and built on Pershing Street, and there was a mortgage on it. | 3:10 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | So when I got a job, well, the first thing that I had to do was to buy that mortgage out and include a clause in it that my my mother would have her room, use to the kitchen or any part of the house that she wanted to live in, as long as she lived, that she wanted to use. That was included in that sale, you see? Now, she was motivated by the fact that she had sold this house and she had used the money to build another house. But when she sold that house, which she had worked and bought, she was married. So when she borrowed money to build this new house, then Reverend Jackson was included in it. | 3:52 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | So he wasn't helping her to pay for it, so she didn't want him to inherit what she had worked for. So I bought him out. I gave him a place to stay and I gave her a place to stay. But the house was on me. So that when she died, there was no question, you see? There was no question. The two properties that she had, one she had bought in my name and my brother's name, and the other, she had bought in her name, and naturally, Reverend Jackson had to be included in it, you see? But the only way she could get around that was to sell while she lived. And so she sold, and I bought. | 5:13 |
| Michele Mitchell | You mentioned your wife. What was her name? | 6:25 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | My wife was named Irene. She was an originally Irene Boutte. B-O-U-T-T-E. | 6:28 |
| Michele Mitchell | B-O-U-T-T-E. Did she have a maiden name? Any middle name. | 6:34 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Bernadette. | 6:43 |
| Michele Mitchell | And was she born in—You said that her people were originally from Loreauville, so she was born in Iberia? | 6:51 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | So she was born in New Iberia, but the family originally came from Loreauville. She was born in New Iberia. | 6:58 |
| Michele Mitchell | And she taught, she was a teacher? | 7:09 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Yes, she was a school teacher. | 7:11 |
| Michele Mitchell | What was her birthday? | 7:12 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Huh? | 7:12 |
| Michele Mitchell | Her birthday. When was she born? | 7:12 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | She was born on January the 17th. I was born on the 17th of March, she was born on the 17th of January. But I was born in '15, she was born in '14. She was a year older than I. | 7:22 |
| Michele Mitchell | And your mother was born in Iberia Parish too? | 7:47 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | No, my mother? My mother was born in St. Mary Parish. | 7:50 |
| Michele Mitchell | St. Mary Parish? Was she born in a town or just in the Parish? | 7:54 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | She was born in Franklin. | 7:59 |
| Michele Mitchell | Franklin. | 8:01 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | But her people were from Virginia. | 8:07 |
| Michele Mitchell | Huh. | 8:17 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Yes. | 8:18 |
| Michele Mitchell | How'd they get out here? | 8:21 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Well, they came down this way. She didn't talk too much to me about her father. I didn't get too much out of there. But her mother was of Indian extraction, you see? And that determined her complexion to a great extent. She had an olive complexion, very smooth, but for no education she had a lot of intelligence. A lot of intelligence. But no education. I had to teach her how to write her name. Just didn't get a chance to go to school. | 8:21 |
| Michele Mitchell | And then your brother's name is Elliot and your children's name, you told me Darryl. Is Darryl the oldest? | 9:40 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Darryl is the youngest. | 9:49 |
| Michele Mitchell | He's the youngest, okay. | 9:50 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Carol is the older. | 9:50 |
| Michele Mitchell | Carol? | 9:50 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | C-A-R-O-L. Yeah. One of the girls was getting happy and so we gave her Carol. | 9:58 |
| Michele Mitchell | And he was born here in New Iberia? | 10:03 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Hmm? | 10:05 |
| Michele Mitchell | Born in New Iberia? | 10:06 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Both of them born in New Iberia. | 10:07 |
| Michele Mitchell | And Darryl is D-A-R-Y-L? | 10:12 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | D-A-R-R-Y-L. | 10:13 |
| Michele Mitchell | And Carol was born in what year? | 10:15 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Carol was born in 1945. And Darryl, I can't remember when Darryl was born. Darryl was born in '52, I think, or '53. '52. | 10:23 |
| Michele Mitchell | And you do have grandchildren. | 10:39 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Huh? | 10:39 |
| Michele Mitchell | You do have grandchildren. | 10:45 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Grandchildren? | 10:48 |
| Michele Mitchell | Do you not? | 10:49 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | I have two. | 10:49 |
| Michele Mitchell | Two? | 10:49 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | I mean, no, two. I have two by Darryl. Dana, D-A-N-A. That's his picture right there. He's a junior at Southern. And Nakesha. | 10:50 |
| Michele Mitchell | N-I? | 11:20 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | N-A. | 11:20 |
| Michele Mitchell | N-A? | 11:22 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | K-E-S-H-A | 11:24 |
| Michele Mitchell | Nakesha. That's a pretty name. And that's the young lady I've met? | 11:25 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Mm-hmm. | 11:29 |
| Michele Mitchell | And that's her picture? | 11:38 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Yes. Let see it. Yes. And that's my wife's picture. I can't see who the other one is. | 11:38 |
| Michele Mitchell | A woman with glasses on. | 11:41 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Let's see, bring that picture over here. That's my mother. | 11:57 |
| Michele Mitchell | That's your mother? | 11:58 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Yes. And that's my wife. | 11:59 |
| Michele Mitchell | Oh, I see what you mean. These are nice pictures. These aren't pictures that you took, are they? | 12:02 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Huh? | 12:13 |
| Michele Mitchell | Did you take these pictures? | 12:14 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Yeah. | 12:15 |
| Michele Mitchell | You did? | 12:15 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Mm-hmm. | 12:15 |
| Michele Mitchell | Those are nice. So you've got two by Darryl and those are your grandchildren? | 12:28 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | My oldest son had one that you can see his. Right now he married a woman with three. Well, I got three grandchildren there. But he has one son by his first marriage. | 12:35 |
| Michele Mitchell | And I think I've gotten the dates. I'm pretty sure I've gotten the dates straight on your job. But I just want to make sure one more time. I know that you went to school, you went to Iberia Parish Training School? | 13:15 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Mm-hmm. | 13:38 |
| Michele Mitchell | And that was from the beginning on through? | 13:38 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Yes. I went to the public school. It was named Iberia Parish Training School in the late years when it became a teaching institution. But before that it was Douglass Institute. | 13:39 |
| Michele Mitchell | So it was known as Douglass Institute, and then— | 14:10 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Yeah. See, it was a public school and they named the school when it was built, Douglass Institute, which was really after Frederick Douglass, you see? And then when it was condemned and we no longer had a school, the Iberia Parish School Board had just spent in 1922, all the money that they had building what they called New Iberia High School. Was for Whites. When the fire marshal condemned Douglass Institute, we had no school. | 14:13 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | And the superintendent told them that there wouldn't be any school for Negroes. Because the school board couldn't build any. Then he came back and said that there was some land that the school board could buy. And if the school board provided the land, the—Oh, shucks, I can't think of the name of the group. Rosenwald. The Rosenwald Fund would be able to build it. So the principal, Professor, A.V. Simon, presented that to the people, the Blacks of New Iberia, and they went on and raised the $2,500 needed to buy the land. | 15:18 |
| Michele Mitchell | With the Rosenwald or without? | 16:46 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | No, they would give the money to the school board and the school board would buy the land. | 16:49 |
| Michele Mitchell | Okay. | 16:51 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | You see? And once the school board had the land, then the Rosenwald would build the school. | 16:51 |
| Michele Mitchell | Okay. | 17:01 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | So that's how it was achieved. And I told you about the benevolent societies. Those benevolent societies did much, gave much money toward this $2,500, because $2,500 at that time was $2,500, you see? They got together and in a little over a month's time, they had the $2,500. And while they were in the process of billing the Rosenwald School, classes were held in these benevolent society halls. They gave the use of their halls in order to have school. And we had schools all over town where you had a benevolent society, giving use of its building. | 17:07 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Well, with the coming of the Rosenwald School, it was large enough to add grades. So a grade was added every year until it became a high school, you see? And along with that money from the Jeanes Fund, provided training of teachers. So it was Iberia Parish Training School because of the Jeanes program in there that trained teachers. | 18:27 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | And after you finished the 11th grade, because the high school then went to 11th grade, after you finished 11th grade, you took this teacher training program and you were certified to teach in the elementary schools of the State of Louisiana. And that's why it was called Training School. | 19:25 |
| Michele Mitchell | So the certification would be another year or so? | 20:03 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | It all depends on the amount or the score that the students made on the State examination. The State would give you an examination on this teacher training, you see? And if you made a good score and passed, they would take the average score. For example, if you had 20 in there, in the class, and the average was say 160 or 170, then the State said if your average came to a certain point, you got a certificate that allowed you to teach two years. If you fell below that point, but above another point, well you got a certificate for one year, and then you had to go back to school, take some sort of extension course or summer session in order to renew your certificate, you see? If you fell below a certain average, then you didn't graduate. Or if the class fell below that point, then you dropped off the State approved list. And none of your graduates would get certificates. | 20:09 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | When I finished, we actually had 22 in our class. But when they start to think in averages, only seven of us passed the cutoff point. And the school had already dropped to the point where you either take a one-year certificate, you cut the class so that you can average to entitle you to a one-year certificate, or you let the whole class graduate and nobody get a certificate because you fall off the State approved list. So in my class, we had only seven to graduate, because only the top seven graduated. The others that were in the class had to go back to school another year and try to make a better grade on that teacher examination. Well that didn't last, but one or two years after '33. It dropped off the State approved list and was no longer classified as a teacher training. | 21:56 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | But at one time it had gone up after I started teaching at Weeks Island in 1937, '38, '39, IPTS, Iberia Parish Training School was offering you two years above high school. Yes. Because I had some students from Lafayette in particular that were coming here to school, lived with my mother, roomed with my mother, to take that extra two years of schooling that was being offered by the parish above the 11th grade. You see? Grambling had been offering it, Grambling College, Grambling State University, many of our teachers, when they finished high school they just went on to Grambling, got two years of teacher training up there and then came out, got jobs teaching. Matter of fact, we have one that is teaching still. Been teaching 50 some years, still. And she was in a supervisory capacity and she just won't go. She retired and then she went back and she still fooled around with that stuff. | 23:24 |
| Michele Mitchell | So then you went directly to Straight College? | 25:24 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Straight College, Dillard University. | 25:28 |
| Michele Mitchell | Right. | 25:30 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | That's all considered Dillard now. | 25:32 |
| Michele Mitchell | Okay. And the first job was at Weeks Island. | 25:33 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Well, I had additional studies that I got a master's from USL. | 25:48 |
| Michele Mitchell | And that was a master, in which year? | 25:50 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Huh? | 25:50 |
| Michele Mitchell | What year was that? Because you told me about that and I forgot. | 25:50 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | At USL? | 25:50 |
| Michele Mitchell | Mm-hmm. | 25:57 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | I got my master's in '60. | 26:03 |
| Michele Mitchell | At University of Southwestern? | 26:07 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Yeah, Louisiana. | 26:09 |
| Michele Mitchell | I know you told me about that. Did I forget anything else? | 26:28 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | That's all. I may have told you about other studies, but that doesn't matter. I didn't graduate from those schools. I went to the School of Public Health at University of Michigan. | 26:33 |
| Michele Mitchell | That's what you told me about. | 26:54 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | But I didn't go back after I went in the service. | 27:01 |
| Michele Mitchell | So that was like 1940? | 27:12 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | In Michigan? | 27:12 |
| Michele Mitchell | Mm-hmm. | 27:17 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | That was in '42 because I went in the service in '43. In summer of '42. | 27:17 |
| Michele Mitchell | And you tell me you were there from '37 to—How long were you at Weeks Island? | 27:17 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | I was at Weeks Island for 19 years. | 27:37 |
| Michele Mitchell | And then from Weeks Island to—J.B. Livingston was in '60, to '69? | 28:17 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | '56 to '69 was J.B. Livingston. '69 to '70, Johnson Street Elementary. | 28:26 |
| Michele Mitchell | And then you ended up at Anderson Street? | 28:47 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | At Anderson Street from '70 to '75, 5 years. | 28:50 |
| Michele Mitchell | Okay. | 28:57 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | And I spent 31 months in the Army. | 29:18 |
| Michele Mitchell | 31 months. | 29:26 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Teaching Private Pete. | 29:29 |
| Michele Mitchell | Private? | 29:29 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Private Pete. The Army, you had so many illiterate people in Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina. The Army set up schools, special schools, and they drafted those illiterates and we were brought there as teachers and we had to teach them to read and write. It was required. What were required to do was in 12 weeks, we were required to teach them to read and write so that they could at least write home and sign the names in 12 weeks. | 29:30 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | If we couldn't do it in 12 weeks, why, we had to do one thing or the other. Either prove that they were faking or discharge them, you see? And many of them did come there faking. They knew that if they didn't reach that fourth grade level in 12 weeks, why, they would discharge them. And they were able to read and write, but wouldn't do. | 30:48 |
| Michele Mitchell | Well, I'm done. | 31:26 |
| Edran Louis Auguster | Okay. | 31:28 |
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